This article argues that rape myths and domestic abuse myths constitute hermeneutical injustices. Drawing on empirical research, I show that the prevalence of these myths makes victims of rape and of domestic abuse less likely to apply those terms to their experiences. Using Sally Haslanger's distinction between manifest and operative concepts, I argue that in these cases, myths mean that victims hold a problematic operative concept, or working understanding, which prevents them from identifying their experience as one of rape or (...) of domestic abuse. Since victims in this situation lack the conceptual resources needed to render their experience sufficiently intelligible, they are suffering a form of hermeneutical injustice. Attending to this distinctive case sheds new light not only on the functioning of social myths of this kind but on the nature of hermeneutical injustice itself, since the case of the victim who accepts myths is importantly different from other cases of hermeneutical injustice discussed in the literature to date. In practical terms, this analysis supports calls for juries in rape trials to be warned about rape myths at the start of the trial, and may have implications for calls for statutory Sex and Relationships Education in schools. (shrink)

This essay demonstrates how the early Enlightenment salonnière madame de Lambert advanced a novel feminist intellectual synthesis favoring women's taste and cognition, which hybridized Cartesian and honnête thought. Disputing recent interpretations of Enlightenment salonnières that emphasize the constraints of honnêteté on their thought, and those that see Lambert's feminism as misguided in emphasizing gendered sensibility, I analyze Lambert's approach as best serving her needs as an aristocratic woman within elite salon society, and show through contextualized analysis how she deployed honnêteté (...) towards feminist ends. Additionally, the analysis of Malebranche's, Poulain de la Barre's, and Lambert's arguments about the female mind's gendered embodiment illustrates that misrepresenting Cartesianism as necessarily liberatory for women, by reducing it to a rigid substance dualism, erases from view its more complex implications for gender politics in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, especially in the honnête environment of the salons. (shrink)

This paper is a cross-cultural examination of the development of hunting skills and the implications for the debate on the role of learning in the evolution of human life history patterns. While life history theory has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the evolution of the human life course, other schools, such as cultural transmission and social learning theory, also provide theoretical insights. These disparate theories are reviewed, and alternative and exclusive predictions are identified. This study of cross-cultural (...) regularities in how children learn hunting skills, based on the ethnographic literature on traditional hunters, complements existing empirical work and highlights future areas for investigation. (shrink)

The way society is organised means that we all get made into members of various types of people, such as judges, wives, or women. These ‘human social kinds’ may be brought into being by oppressive social arrangements, and people may suffer oppression in virtue of being made into a member of a certain human social kind. This book argues that we should pay attention to the ways in which the very fact of being made into a member of a certain (...) human social kind can be oppressive in and of itself. For example, someone who becomes a wife under circumstances where husbands have unjust powers over their wives has suffered a wrong, even if her husband never in fact exercises these powers. The book argues that social movements against racial and gendered oppression, including efforts to advance trans liberation, must get to grips with this phenomenon, and it supplies the conceptual tools needed to do so. The first tool is an analysis of this general form of wrong, termed ‘ontic injustice’. The second tool is an account of ‘ontic oppression’, a particular kind of ontic injustice in which the wrong amounts to a form of oppression, in the sense of being structural and pervasive. The third tool is a pluralist account of race and gender kinds, according to which there is no single social kind that corresponds to a gender category such as ‘woman’, but, rather, there are various different social kinds, each of which is explanatory for different purposes. (shrink)

Experience the richness of classical literature and philosophy with this insightful analysis of the language used by two of its most famous practitioners: Lucretius and Cicero. Katharine C. Reiley provides a detailed examination of key terms and concepts, shedding new light on the complexity and sophistication of their foundational works. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public (...) domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This contribution to the adaptationism debate elaborates the nature of constraints and their importance in evolutionary explanation and argues that the adaptationism debate should be limited to the issue of how to privilege causes in evolutionary explanation. I argue that adaptationist explanations are deeply conceptually dependent on developmental constraints, and explanations that appeal to constraints are dependant on the results of natural selection. I suggest these explanations should be integrated into the framework of historical causal explanation. Each strategy explicitly appeals (...) to some aspect of the evolutionary process, while implicitly appealing to others. Thus, adaptationists and anti-adaptationists can offer complementary causal explanations of the same explanandum. This eliminates much of the adaptationism debate and explains why its adversaries regularly agree with each other more than they would like. The adaptationism issue that remains is a species of the general issue of how to privilege causes in explanation. I show how a proposed solution to this general problem might be brought to bear on evolutionary explanations, and investigate some difficulties that might arise due to the nature of the evolutionary process. (shrink)

In this article, I identify a distinctive form of injustice—ontic injustice—in which an individual is wronged by the very fact of being socially constructed as a member of a certain social kind. To be a member of a certain social kind is, at least in part, to be subject to certain social constraints and enablements, and these constraints and enablements can be wrongful to the individual who is subjected to them, in the sense that they inflict a moral injury. The (...) concept of ontic injustice is valuable in three main ways: it draws our attention to the role played by social kinds in enacting wrongful constraints and enablements; it clarifies our options for developing accounts of the ontology of particular social kinds, such as gender kinds; and, along with the related concept of ‘ontic oppression’, it helps us to understand and respond to oppression. (shrink)

Art works provide a unique and influential way to teach human virtues because they can place individuals (or particular artistic expressions) within the ambiguities, complexities, and forces of the human experience. I use four art works to teach about the virtue of kindness: Giotto di Bondonie's Scene 2: St. Francis Giving His Mantle to a Poor Man; Bishop Charles Francois in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables; Adam in William Shakespeare's As You Like It; and Sonya in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. (...) In these four examples, we see necessary characteristics of being a kind person: supererogatory behavior, altruistic behavior, a display of the way the world ought to be, and the presence of a kind soul. (shrink)

Although the concept of gender identity plays a prominent role in campaigns for trans rights, it is not well understood, and common definitions suffer from a problematic circularity. This paper undertakes an ameliorative inquiry into the concept of gender identity, taking as a starting point the ways in which trans rights movements seek to use the concept. First, I set out six desiderata that a target concept of gender identity should meet. I then consider three analytic accounts of gender identity: (...) the dispositional account, the self-identification account, and the norm-relevancy account. I argue that only the norm-relevancy account can meet all six desiderata. Finally, I defend the norm-relevancy account from three objections: that it is cis-normative, that it has problematic implications regarding trans women, and that it entails that some people do not have the gender identity they take themselves to have. (shrink)

: Tolstoy critiques the assumption one can live a meaningful life merely by following social conventions. Though they may give a semblance of control, they do not prepare one to face mortality. Compassion for others enables one to transmute a preoccupation with filling one's preferences and desires to an appreciation of others and one's individuality. In telling of Ivan's death, Tolstoy shows the ineffectiveness of the practice of medicine and marriage when they are treated only as conventions.

In this commentary on Karla Stroud and Kieran O’Doherty’s ‘Ethically Sustainable Governance in the Biobanking of Eggs and Embryos for Research’ (2015) I call into question the need for good governance to overcome the challenges facing biobanking of eggs and embryos. I argue that the principles of good governance for biobanking that Stroud and O’Doherty outline come up short in providing concrete normative guidance to resolve the challenges associated with a biobank for eggs and embryos.

If one of the purposes of an ethic is to help order our lives in a way we would think is fulfilling and purposeful, then with it, we should be able to learn about the significance of life in the experience of death. Not all well-known ethical theories can deliver this. Though preferential utilitarianism and duty-based deontological ethics are attractive as theoretical ways to order our lives, they fall short as useful ethical approaches before the humbling effects of death. Can (...) the experience of death teach us something about the importance of life and how to formulate an ethic to live meaningfully while alive? I think it can, and we can learn from art to do this. To make this case, I examine three ways in .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning from Art:Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian as a Critique of Divine DeterminismDennis Sansom (bio)Art's Critique of PhilosophyWe usually think the critic's role belongs to philosophy. That is, to understand art's essential characteristics and why and how we appreciate art, we need a philosophical explanation. Though our tastes for art are unique and personal, we typically think that to understand art we must first explain it. For example, Plato (...) thought he could explain art as an emotional inspiration for people, at best, or, at worse, a distortion of intelligible truths; therefore, according to Plato, art should be dismissed or censored in a society seeking social justice derived from the idea of justice. Aristotle understood art to be the imitation of nature; as an imitation, it needs clarification according to the purposes of nature, and philosophy clarifies these purposes. In either case, art needs to be critiqued by philosophy. It is customary to hear philosophical critics lecture on art rather than artists lecture on philosophy.But can art critique philosophy? Is it possible for art to provide a scrutiny of philosophy that perhaps a particular philosophy cannot give itself? I think art can provide this critique by using a feature that some philosophers have thought to be art's limitation to clear reasoning—the imagination. Though philosophers like John Dewey recognize the importance and influence of imagination on our moral and aesthetical orientation to the world of experience, typically Thomas Hobbes's view of imagination prevails in the empiricist-leaning philosophers (for instance, David Hume and Bertrand Russell): the imagination is about image recollection and hence necessary for connecting our ideas to empirical experiences. But for this latter approach, the imagination does not inform us about the world; rather it only bridges experience to abstract ideas. What is important, then, is proper understanding. For this approach, the main question is, Can we explain the world based upon our clearest account of the role of understanding? [End Page 1] Whether this account relies upon a psychological model of the brain's workings, a scientific model of successful theory formation, or a logical model reflective of truth relation possibilities, we need philosophy to clarify how we gain knowledge, even in art.Yet, this approach shortchanges analysis. Psychology, empirical science, and logic are not the only ways to analyze an idea. If a philosophy pretends to explain our experience of the world, then the philosophy opens itself to this question: Is the idea worth holding to be true according to our experiences of the world? A philosophical claim may be logically consistent, based upon generalizations of experience, and be coherent with acceptable views of God, the self, or morality, but if we envision the claim lived out within our experience of the world, would we want to accept it? Is it the kind of life we would want? It takes imagination to answer these questions, and the artist through her or his unique technique and representation can test the existential worth of an idea.Hobbes's description of the imagination represents only one way to explain it. Imagination is more than an act of memory and recollection. It is also reconstruction. John Dewey's definition highlights this role: "An imaginative experience is what happens when varied materials of sense quality, emotion, and meaning come together in a union that marks a new birth in the world."1 Imagination is always an interpretation of what the world could look like. It not only mirrors but heightens experience to focus on a certain viewpoint about the possible meaning of life. By doing this, the imagination enables us to explore whether certain ideas are worth keeping. That is, if we could picture living this way, would we want to live it?Because imagination occupies a central role in artistic creativity, art provides a useful means of analyzing philosophical claims about the world. Though a philosopher may be able to present an idea that is logically consistent, clear in its categories of quantity, quality, being, modality, and so on, explicit in all its assumptions, and even "clear and distinct," when the idea is imagined in life situations, it can lose its... (shrink)

In general, we know that gesture accompanying spoken instruction can help children learn. The present study was conducted to better understand how gesture can support children’s comprehension of spoken instruction and whether the benefit of teaching though speech and gesture over spoken instruction alone depends on differences in cognitive profile – prior knowledge children have that is related to a to-be-learned concept. To answer this question, we explored the impact of gesture instruction on children’s analogical reasoning ability. Children between the (...) ages of 4 and 11 years solved scene analogy problems before or after speech alone or speech and gesture instruction while their visual attention was monitored. Our behavioral results suggest a marginal benefit of gesture instruction over speech alone, but only 5-year-old children showed a distinct advantage from speech+gesture instruction when solving the post-instruction trial, suggesting that at this age, children have the cognitive profile in place to utilize the added support of gesture. Furthermore, while speech+gesture instruction facilitated effective visual attention during instruction, directing attention away from featural matches, and towards relational information, was pivotal for younger children’s success post instruction. We consider how these results contribute to the gesture-for-learning literature and consider how the nuanced impact of gesture is informative for educators teaching tasks of analogy in the classroom. (shrink)

Embryos, cells, genes, and organisms : reflections on the history of evolutionary developmental biology / Manfred D. Laubichler and Jane Maienschein The organismic systems approach : streamlining the naturalistic agenda / Werner Callebaut, Gerd B. Müller, and Stuart A. Newman Complex traits : genetics, development, and evolution / H. Frederik Nijhout Functional and developmental constraints on life-cycle evolution : an attempt on the architecture of constraints / Gerhard Schlosser Legacies of adaptive development / Roger Sansom Evo-devo meets the mind (...) : toward a developmental evolutionary psychology / Paul E. Griffiths Reproducing entrenchments to scaffold culture : the central role of development in cultural evolution / William C. Wimsatt and James R. Griesemer. (shrink)

Ethical review systems need to build on their experiences of COVID-19 research to enhance their preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations from representatives from over twenty countries include: improving relationships across the research ecosystem; demonstrating willingness to reform and adapt systems and processes; and making the case robustly for better resourcing.

Domination as opposed to what? Michel Foucault’s works on power and subject formation uncover the subtle ways in which disciplinary power structures create opportunities for domination. Yet Foucaul...

Artificial intelligence and robotics have increasingly been adopted in agri-food systems—from milking robots to self-driving tractors. New projects extend these technologies in an effort to automate skilled work that has previously been considered dependent on human expertise due to its complexity. In this paper, we draw on qualitative research carried out with farm managers on apple orchards and winegrape vineyards in Aotearoa New Zealand. We investigate how agricultural managers’ perceptions of future agricultural automation relates to their approach to expertise, or (...) the degree to which they think specialised skills and knowledge are required to perform agricultural work on their orchards and vineyards. Our research generates two insights: the perceived potential for work to be automated is related to the degree to which it is seen to require technical or embodied expertise, with technical expertise being more automatable; and, while embodied expertise is perceived to be more difficult to automate, it is sometimes attributed more exclusively to those in positions of power, such that embodied expertise can be highly valued while the majority of embodied work is viewed as non-expert and thus automatable. Our analysis illustrates that a robot can be an expert when expertise is technical. It also shows variability in the conceptualization of skilled or unskilled work, and that those conceptualizations can set the stage for the future effects of new technologies. This generates new insights into the conditions under which automation might reproduce existing inequalities in agriculture, and also raises new questions about responsibility in the context of automation. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 4-6.

In this paper, I aim to shed some light on what rape myths are and what we can do about them. I start by giving a brief overview of some common rape myths. I then use two philosophical tools to offer a perspective on rape myths. First, I show that we can usefully see rape myths as an example of what Miranda Fricker has termed ‘epistemic injustice’, which is a type of wrong that concerns our role as knowers. Then, I (...) show that it is important to recognise that rape myths are instances of misogyny. This word is of course a more familiar one, but I'll be drawing on a specific philosophical account of what misogyny is, developed by Kate Manne, that I think is useful here. Finally, I briefly consider some upshots of these claims. (shrink)

A proposal for a new model of the evolution of gene regulation networks and development that draws on work from artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind. Each of us is a collection of more than ten trillion cells, busy performing tasks crucial to our continued existence. Gene regulation networks, consisting of a subset of genes called transcription factors, control cellular activity, producing the right gene activities for the many situations that the multiplicity of cells in our bodies face. Genes working (...) together make up a truly ingenious system. In this book, Roger Sansom investigates how gene regulation works and how such a refined but simple system evolved. Sansom describes in detail two frameworks for understanding gene regulation. The first, developed by the theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, holds that gene regulation networks are fundamentally systems that repeat patterns of gene expression. Sansom finds Kauffman's framework an inadequate explanation for how cells overcome the difficulty of development. Sansom proposes an alternative: the connectionist framework. Drawing on work from artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind, he argues that the key lies in how multiple transcription factors combine to regulate a single gene, acting in a way that is qualitatively consistent. This allows the expression of genes to be finely tuned to the variable microenvironments of cells. Because of the nature of both development and its evolution, we can gain insight into the developmental process when we identify gene regulation networks as the controllers of development. The ingenuity of genes is explained by how gene regulation networks evolve to control development. (shrink)

This essay argues that Malebranche originated the model of sensitive taste in French thought, several decades before Du Bos. It examines the highly gendered, negative physiological model of taste and of the female mind which Malebranche developed within the Cartesian framework and as a witness to Parisian salon society in which women’s taste had great cultural influence, and strongly questions the common assumption that Cartesian substance dualism necessarily contained feminist potential. The essay argues for Malebranche’s great influence in this regard, (...) connecting him to later Enlightenment critics of women’s taste such as Rousseau, and to Vitalist physicians like Le Camus. -/- All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112. (shrink)

One challenge in providing an adequate definition of physical disability is unifying the heterogeneous bodily conditions that count as disabilities. We examine recent proposals by Elizabeth Barnes (2016), and Dana Howard and Sean Aas (2018), and show how this debate has reached an impasse. Barnes’ account struggles to deliver principled unification of the category of disability, whilst Howard and Aas’ account risks inappropriately sidelining the body. We argue that this impasse can be broken using a novel concept: marginalised functioning. Marginalised (...) functioning concerns the relationship between a person’s bodily capacities and their social world: specifically, their ability to function in line with the default norms about how people can typically physically function that influence the structuring of social space. We argue that attending to marginalised functioning allows us to develop, not one, but three different models of disability, all of which—whilst having different strengths and weaknesses—unify the category of disability without sidelining the body. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a systemic discrimination approach to defining a narrowly construed category of ‘hate speech’, as speech that harms to a sufficient degree to warrant government regulation. This is important due to the lack of definitional clarity, and the extraordinarily wide usage, of the term. This article extends current literature on how hate speech can harm by identifying under what circumstances speakers have the capacity to harm, and under what circumstances targets are vulnerable to harm. It also (...) shows how the capacity to harm can be mobile and involve the construction of new targets. Finally, it bridges the gap between conceptual understandings of hate speech and policy designed to regulate it. (shrink)

To investigate the metaphysics of gender categories—categories like “woman,” “genderqueer,” and “man”—is to ask questions about what gender categories are and how they exist. This chapter offers a pluralist account of the metaphysics of gender categories, according to which there are several different varieties of gender categories. I begin by giving a brief overview of some feminist accounts of the metaphysics of gender categories and illustrating how certain moral and political considerations have been in play in these discussions as constraints (...) on acceptable accounts of gender categories. I then present my pluralist account of gender categories and highlight some of its virtues. Finally, I assess how my pluralist account fares relative to the moral and political considerations identified earlier in the chapter. I argue that although the account does not fare well, we should in fact revise our understanding of what those considerations are and how they should constrain our accounts of gender categories. I then show that, on this revised understanding, my pluralist account emerges as a viable position. (shrink)

:Team reasoning is thought to be descriptively and normatively superior to the classical individualistic theory of rational choice primarily because it can recommend coordination on Hi in the Hi-Lo game and cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma-type situations. However, left unanswered is whether it is rational for individuals to become team members, leaving a gap between reasons for individuals and reasons for team members. In what follows, I take up Susan Hurley's attempt to show that it is rational for an individual to (...) become a team member. I argue that her account fails to show that becoming a team member is necessary to gain the advantages of coordination in Hi-Lo games or cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma-type situations, and that individuals will often fare better reasoning as individual agents than as members of a team. I argue further that there is a more general problem for team reasoning, specifically that the conditions needed to make it rational for a team member to employ team reasoning make becoming a team member unnecessary. (shrink)

This essay studies the different literary genres of Proverbs 1–9, including how they might have emerged, what social contexts generated such texts in Israel and in Egypt, and what their function might have been. A theological context is seen to be integral to both of the main genres of instruction and poem, despite the clearly more educational emphasis of the instruction texts.

"Plato texts, a retrieve": p. [108]-174.

If we accept that surveillance by the State and ‘sousveillance’ by the media in Western democracies tend towards a relative equilibrium, or ‘equiveillance’ supported by the function of journalism as a watchdog and that the rule of law largely protects fundamental freedoms, this paper argues that the act of ‘mutual watching’ is undesired by the State and comes at a very high cost to journalists. The combination of technological capacity, legislative change and antidemocratic sentiments of the State, in the context (...) of its willingness and ability to collect and process Big Data on an unprecedented scale, disrupt the preconditions for a strong democracy based on free media and free citizens. This paper examines the politics of investigative journalism under the conditions of dominance of the State by investigating the experiences of journalists with surveillance. Our interviews with 48 journalists show that journalists are acutely aware of surveillance and its noxious impact. Well beyond simple ‘watching’ these experiences are remarkably similar in non-Western and Western countries. Journalists are engaging increasingly with technological and other communities, as they aim to defend journalism and their lives. Their activism is operationalised in three areas: in reluctant often-fraught cooperation with hacktivists, in self-directed protection of communications and sources and in not always willingly acting as dissenters vis-a-vis the State. This paper explores the extent to which journalists consider equilibrium to be distorted, and how they are countering any slide into subdued democracy. (shrink)

Katharine Tait, daughter of Bertrand and Dora Russell, here vividly portrays the extraordinary and stimulating environment she grew up in. In refreshing contrast to the interpretation of Russell as philosopher and public figure, Tait's is a close personal account of her deep love and admiration for her father and its gradual tempering by the imperfections she came to see in him. Touchingly written and beautifully described, the book shows Russell to be a man of great warmth, charm and humour, (...) but is also a testament to the traumas created when he applied his views on marriage and education to his own home. My Father Bertrand Russell is essential reading for those seeking to understand the private background to Russell's ideas, the personal effects of his lifestyle prescriptions, and what it was like to live with a man of such genious. (shrink)