Thomas Wylton's Quaestio de anima intellectiva presents a controversial defence of Averroes' interpretation of Aristotelian psychology. The detailed introduction guides the reader through the transmission of the text, as well as the philosophical contents of one of the most significant medieval treatments of the nature of the soul.

Telling tales and reading have been a part of human activity for a very long time. We review in brief the anthropological evidence, then the emergence of the 'modern novel'. This explores in narratives the psychological reflections of the characters concerned with life circumstances including loss, abandonment, despair, illness, dying, and death. We report findings that the response of crying to a novel occurs as often as to music, not reported before: both 'move us'. We note what several critics and (...) authors imply about the imagined world of 'novel space' which emphasizes the active not passive nature of reading dramatic action, the latter being embedded and embodied within us. This touches on the mind–brain problem. We provide a brief introduction to neuroscientific work with brain imaging revealing how cerebral networks to do with theory of mind and brain structures that are the basis of our movements are involved with the very act of reading words and narratives. Emotional tearing is an exclusive attribute of Homo sapiens, and crying can have positive benefits for mental health. We argue that bibliotherapy needs greater attention than has been the case at present. We also suggest that telling tales and the 'modern novel' are closely allied to the development of the consciousness of Homo sapiens. (shrink)

This article highlights the extent to which finding a job without actively searching sustains workplace sex segregation. We suspect that unsolicited information from job informants that prompts fortuitous job changes is susceptible to bias about gender “fit” and segregates workers. Results from analyses of 1,119 respondents to the 1996 and 1998 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are generally consistent with this expectation. Gender “misfits”—individuals employed in gender-atypical work groups— are more likely to move into gender-typical work groups (...) than neutral ones. Women misfits are more likely to move into male-dominated than neutral work groups without a job search, but they join mostly desegregated occupations and receive lower job rewards than men misfits who change jobs without searching. We conclude that the nonsearch process serves as an important mechanism that sustains sex segregation and workplace inequality. (shrink)

Too many visitors to the Silver State never see Ann Ronald and Stephen Trimble's Nevada: teal sky and a sea of purple sage, mountain mahogany and a crimson mass of claret cup cactus, a dust-blown sunset of vermilion, orange, and gold. More colorful than a neon display on Las Vegas Boulevard, Nevada is one vast landscape of tint and shadow and aesthetic dimension. In Earthtones, Ronald and Trimble provide a guide to understanding a challenging landscape. Their love for (...) the land shines through in six vivid personal essays and sixty-seven boldly emotional color photographs. In independent but interwoven visions, Ronald and Trimble cherish the same Nevada, an astonishing place to anyone familiar with the mistaken stereotypes Nevada suffers. After sharing the surprises of this collaboration, readers too will cherish a Nevada filled with earthtone treasures. (shrink)

Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr., Deadly Force: The True Story of How a Badge Can Become a License to Kill. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1983, 384 pp. Robert E. Goodin, Political Theory and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, ix + 286 pp.

Medical ethics and law (MEL) have a well-established place in medical curricula within the UK, but appropriately assessing MEL in a medical school context can be extremely challenging. The Institute of Medical Ethics convened a working group focused on assessment in 2021, and in this article, we present a summary of the work undertaken by this group. We start by explaining the challenges presented by the assessment of MEL, highlighting the potentially demanding requirements set out by the General Medical Council (...) in the UK. We then explore how MEL is currently assessed in UK medical schools. We go on to consider a number of different forms of assessment and their suitability for assessing ethics and law. Finally, we report the key recommendations from the working group and conclude that we are unconvinced that current approaches to assessing MEL are sufficient to robustly assess the General Medical Council’s learning outcomes. (shrink)

Hedgehog (Hh) signaling is a widely studied signaling pathway because of its critical roles during development and in cell homeostasis. Vertebrate canonical and non‐canonical Hh signaling are typically assumed to be distinct and occur in different cellular compartments. While research has primarily focused on the canonical form of Hh signaling and its dependency on primary cilia – microtubule‐based signaling hubs – an extensive list of crucial functions mediated by non‐canonical Hh signaling has emerged. Moreover, amounting evidence indicates that canonical and (...) non‐canonical modes of Hh signaling are interlinked, and that they can overlap spatially, and in many cases interact functionally. Here, we discuss some of the many cellular effects of non‐canonical signaling and discuss new evidence indicating inter‐relationships with canonical signaling. We discuss how Smoothened (Smo), a key component of the Hh pathway, might coordinate such diverse downstream effects. Collectively, pursuit of questions such as those proposed here will aid in elucidating the full extent of Smo function in development and advance its use as a target for cancer therapeutics. (shrink)

An interview with Gail Weiss concerning her interests and influences, especially the body and embodiment.

I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention to the (...) way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world. (shrink)

Meno's Paradox from Socrates to Sextus Gail Fine. sense that they consider the issues it raises; and they argue, against its conclusion, that inquiry is possible. Like Plato and Aristotle, they also explain what makes inquiry possible; and they do ...

Plato on Knowledge and Forms brings together a set of connected essays by Gail Fine, in her main area of research since the late 1970s: Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. She discusses central issues in Plato's metaphysics and epistemology, issues concerning the nature and extent of knowledge, and its relation to perception, sensibles, and forms; and issues concerning the nature of forms, such as whether they are universals or particulars, separate or immanent, and whether they are causes. A specially written (...) introduction draws together the themes of the volume, which will reward the attention of anyone interested in Plato or in ancient metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

The Peri ide^on is the only work in which Aristotle systematically sets out and criticizes arguments for the existence of Platonic forms. Gail Fine presents the first full-length treatment in English of this important but neglected work. She asks how, and how well, Aristotle understands Plato's theory of forms, and why and with what justification he favors an alternative metaphysical scheme. She examines the significance of the Peri ide^on for some central questions about Plato's theory of forms--whether, for example, (...) there are forms corresponding to every property or only to some, and if only to some, then to which ones; whether forms are universals, particulars or both; and whether they are meanings, properties or both. Fine also provides a general discussion of Plato's theory of forms, and of our evidence about the Peri ide^on and its date, scope, and aims. While she pays careful attention to the details of the text, she also relates it to contemporary philosophical concerns. The book will be valuable for anyone interested in metaphysics ancient or modern. (shrink)

The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. This orientation, I argue, is ill-suited to the work of epistemic decolonization. In this essay, I call and hold attention to the epistemic interests of those (...) who are epistemically marginalized on account of relations of dominance and oppression. To do so, I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work, which uses a systems approach focused on epistemic agency. I develop Dotson’s insights further to argue that epistemic inclusions may be just as pernicious as epistemic exclusions Specifically, I highlight some of the ways in which epistemic agents can be included in epistemic systems in a manner that is epistemically exploitative—extracting epistemic labor coercively or in ways that are distinctly non-reciprocal. I then turn to María Lugones’ distinction between horizontal and vertical practices to discuss avenues of resisting both exclusions and inclusions that thwart the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers. (shrink)

If social, political, and material transformation is to have a lasting impact on individuals and society, it must be integrated within ordinary experience. Refiguring the Ordinary examines the ways in which individuals' bodies, habits, environments, and abilities function as horizons that underpin their understandings of the ordinary. These features of experience, according to Gail Weiss, are never neutral, but are always affected by gender, race, social class, ethnicity, nationality, and perceptions of bodily normality. While no two people will experience (...) the ordinary in exactly the same way, the multiplicities, possibilities, overlaps, and limitations of day-to-day horizons are always intersubjectively constituted. Weiss turns her attention to changing the conditions and experiences of oppression from ordinary to extraordinary. This book is an impressive phenomenological, feminist reading of the complexities of human experience.M. V. Marder, University of Toronto, Feb. 2009. (shrink)

It is an ancient view, to be found even in Aristotle’s analysis of friendship, that the other is an alter ego, another myself. More recently, this conception has provoked spirited debate within and without the phenomenological tradition. It can be found in a wide variety of texts, from Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations to Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” The basic position can be summarized as follows. Intentional experiences are subjective, first-person experiences, not objective, third-person experiences.

This volume draws together a series of thirteen essays on ancient epistemology by Gail Fine. She discusses knowledge, belief, subjectivity, and scepticism in Plato, Aristotle, and the Pyrrhonian sceptics. They consider such questions as: is episteme knowledge? Is doxa belief? Do the ancientshave the notion of subjectivity? Do any of them countenance external world scepticism? Several essays compare these philosophers with one another, as well as with more recent discussions of knowledge, belief, subjectivity, and scepticism, asking how if at (...) all the ancient discussions of these topicsdiffer from more recent ones. In exploring these issues, the essays often make use of the distinction between concepts and conceptions, between an abstract account of something, and more determinate ways of filling it in. Together they compose a rich set of investigations, illuminating ancientperspectives on the central questions in epistemology. (shrink)

This paper is a counter to the view that names are always predicates with the same extension as a metalinguistic predicate with the form “is a thing called “N”” (the Predicate View). The Predicate View is in opposition to the Referential View of names. In this paper, I undermine one argument for the Predicate View. The Predicate View’s adherents take examples of uses of names that have the surface appearance of a predicate and generalise from these to treat uses of (...) names that do not have the surface appearance of a predicate. They show that the Predicate View can provide a unified account of these two uses and assume that the Referential account cannot. I propose an alternative view of names, the Polysemy View. This view allows one to resist the pressure to generalise from the cases with the surface appearance of predicates to all uses of names while nevertheless providing connections between the uses. On the Polysemy View names are not, in their core use, metalinguistic predicates. Names are predominantly referring expressions but they also freelance as metalinguistic predicates on occasion. They have a double life. This double life is possible because of the pragmatic and conventional connections between the two aspects of that life. My main aim in this paper is to show that the Predicate View is not the only view that can give a good account of apparently predicative uses of names. In addition, I offer some inconclusive reasons to prefer the Polysemy View over the Predicate View. My paper assumes a background framework that the Predicate and Referentialist Views share and I do not attempt to justify that framework. I ignore many other views of names (notably descriptivist views and relevance theoretic views) in order to focus on the debate between these two opponents. (shrink)

This essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment can be an extremely helpful ally for contemporary feminist theorists, critical race theorists, and disability studies scholars because his work suggests that the gender, race, and ability of bodies are not innate or fixed features of those bodies, much less corporeal indicators of physical, social, psychic, and even moral inferiority, but are themselves dynamic phenomena that have the potential to overturn accepted notions of normalcy, naturalness, and normativity. Taking seriously Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that (...) our bodies are the means by which we directly engage with the world, I suggest, encourages us to be attentive to how an individual’s or group’s gender, race, and bodily abilities differentially affect how their bodies are responded to by other bodies. The responses of others, in turn, directly influences the significance of an individual’s actions within that situation. This essay provides a critical examination of specific feminist philosophers, critical race scholars, and disability theorists who creatively utilize Merleau-Pontian insights to illustrate, and ultimately combat, the insidious ways in which sexism, racism, and “compulsory able-bodiedness”, impoverish the lived experience of both oppressors and the oppressed, largely by predetermining the meaning of their bodily interactions in accordance with institutionalized cultural expectations and norms. (shrink)

In most of the Socratic dialogues, Socrates professes to inquire into some virtue. At the same time, he professes not to know what the virtue in question is. How, then, can he inquire into it? Doesn't he need some knowledge to guide his inquiry? Socrates' disclaimer of knowledge seems to preclude Socratic inquiry. This difficulty must confront any reader of the Socratic dialogues; but one searches them in vain for any explicit statement of the problem or for any explicit solution (...) to it. The Meno, by contrast, both raises it explicitly and proposes a solution. (shrink)

This essay reflects on some of the problems with characterizing collective epistemic resistance to oppression as “unthinking” or antithetical to reason by highlighting the epistemic labor involved in contending with and resisting epistemic oppression. To do so, I develop a structural notion of epistemic gaslighting in order to highlight structural features of contexts within which collective epistemic resistance to oppression occurs. I consider two different forms of epistemic echoing as modes of contending with and resisting epistemic oppression that are sometimes (...) mischaracterized as “unthinking” or “group think.” The first sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in withdrawing from conditions of structural epistemic gaslighting that is sometimes mischaracterized as a pernicious self-sequestering that is antithetical to reason. The second sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in actively confronting epistemic structures that gaslight what is sometimes mischaracterized as an “irrational group think.” In both cases, I highlight how epistemic acts that may appear unreasonable “within the gaslight” are, on the contrary, engaged in serious and important epistemic labor. (shrink)

This article considers some of the ways in which ‘the black woman’ as both representation and embodied, sentient being is rendered visible and invisible, and to link these to the multiple and competing ways in which she is ‘present’. The issues are engaged through three distinct but overlapping conceptualisations of ‘presence’. ‘Presence’ as conceived (and highly contested) in performance studies; ‘presence’ as conceived and worked with in psychoanalysis; and ‘presence’ as decolonising political praxis among Indigenous communities. I use these conceptualisations (...) of presence to consider the various ways in which the black woman as figure and as embodied/sentient subject has been made present/absent in different discursive registers. I also explore what is foreclosed and how this is itself linked to legacies of colonial ‘worlding’. I end with consideration of alternative modes of black women's presence and how this offers a resource for new modes of sociality. (shrink)

This editorial critically engages with the understanding of openness by attending to how notions of presence and absence come bundled together as part of efforts to make open. This is particularly evident in contemporary discourse around data production, dissemination, and use. We highlight how the preoccupations with making data present can be usefully analyzed and understood by tracing the related concerns around what is missing, unavailable, or invisible, which unvaryingly but often implicitly accompany debates about data and openness.

Selections seeks to provide an accurate and readable translation that will allow the reader to follow Aristotle's use of crucial technical terms and to grasp the details of his argument. Unlike anthologies that combine translations by many hands, this volume includes a fully integrated set of translations by a two-person team. The glossary--the most detailed in any edition--explains Aristotle's vocabulary and indicates the correspondences between Greek and English words. Brief notes supply alternative translations and elucidate difficult passages.

This article explores the development of a novel biomedical research organism, and its potential to remake the species and spaces of translational medicine. The humanized mouse is a complex experimental object in which mice, rendered immunodeficient through genetic alteration, are engrafted with human stem cells in the hope of reconstituting a human immune system for biomedical research and drug testing. These chimeric organisms have yet to garner the same commentary from social scientists as other human–animal hybrid forms. Yet, they are (...) rapidly being positioned as central to translational medicine in immunological research and pharmaceutical development. This article explores the complex relations between species and spaces they seek to enact. Humanizing mice simultaneously moves these animal forms towards the intimate geographies of corporeal equivalence with humans and the expansive geographies of translational research. These multiple trajectories are achieved by the way humanized mice function as both uncertain ‘epistemic things’ and as expansive ‘collaborative things’, articulating mouse genetics with other research, notably stem cell science. In the context of post-genomics, their indeterminacy is critical to their collaborative value; their expansive potential follows as much from their biological openness as from specific expectations. Yet, these new research organisms have both accumulative and disruptive capacities, for there are patterns of interference between these trajectories, remaking boundaries between experimental practices and clinical contexts. (shrink)