Published in the American Journal of Bioethics.

Bortolotti argues that the irrationality of many delusions is no different in kind from the irrationality that marks many non-pathological states typically treated as beliefs. She takes this to secure the doxastic status of those delusions. Bortolotti’s approach has many benefits. For example, it accounts for the fact that we can often make some sense of what deluded subjects are up to, and helps explain why some deluded subjects are helped by cognitive behavioral therapy. But there is an alternative approach (...) that secures the same benefits as Bortolotti’s account while bringing additional benefits. The alternative approach treats both many delusions and many of the non-pathological states to which Bortolotti compares them as in-between states. Subjects in in-between states don’t fully believe the beliefs which it is sometimes convenient to ascribe to them. This alternative approach to belief and belief-ascription fits well with an independently attractive account of the varied purposes of our ordinary attitude ascriptions. It also makes it easier to make fine-grained distinctions between intentional attitudes of different kinds. (shrink)

When a wrongdoing occurs, victims, barring special circumstance, can aptly forgive their wrongdoers, receive apologies, and be paid reparations. It is also uncontroversial, in the usual circumstances, that wronged parties can aptly blame their wrongdoer. But controversy arises when we consider blame from third-parties after the victim has forgiven. At times it seems that wronged parties can make blame inapt through forgiveness. If third parties blame anyway, it often appears the victim is justified in protesting. “But I forgave him!” In (...) other cases, however, forgiveness seems irrelevant: B can forgive A, but it can still seem that third parties can aptly blame A for the wrong against B. This perplexity adds a dimension to ongoing discussion regarding criteria for apt blame and the related issues of standing and fittingness. This paper explores the status of third party blame after forgiveness. I argue that while post forgiveness blame is often inapt, in many other cases forgiveness is irrelevant. This difference is explained by appeal to the various relationships third parties might have to wronged parties, and how these differences affect the ways we blame and thereby blame’s aptness. (shrink)

The imperviousness of delusions to counter-evidence makes it tempting to classify them as imaginings. Bayne and Pacherie argue that adopting a dispositional account of belief can secure the doxastic status of delusions. But dispositionalism can only secure genuinely doxastic status for mental states by giving folk-psychological norms a significant role in the individuation of attitudes. When such norms individuate belief, deluded subjects will not count as believing their delusions. In general, dispositionalism won't confer genuinely doxastic status more often than do (...) competing accounts of belief. (shrink)

Our behavior doesn't always match the beliefs attributed to us, and sometimes the mismatch raises questions about what our beliefs actually are. I compare two approaches to such cases, and argue in favor of the one which allows some belief-attributions to lack a determinate truth-value. That approach avoids an inappropriate assumption about cognitive activity: namely, that whenever we fail in performing one cognitive activity, there is a distinct cognitive activity at which we succeed. The indeterminacy-allowing approach also meshes well with (...) an attractive view of folk-psychology: that ascriptions can help shape the attitudes they report. (shrink)

Literature in the epistemology of disagreement has focused on peer disagreement: disagreement between those with shared evidence and equal cognitive abilities. Additional literature focuses on the perspective of amateurs who disagree with experts. However, the appropriate epistemic reaction from superiors who disagree with inferiors remains underexplored. Prima facie, this may seem an uninteresting set of affairs. If A is B’s superior, and A has good reason to believe she is B’s superior, A appears free to dismiss B’s disagreement. However, a (...) closer look will show otherwise. I first distinguish competent from incompetent inferiors and then argue that disagreement from the former often gives superiors reason to adjust credence and reevaluate belief. In other words, epistemic inferiority alone is insufficient grounds for dismissing opinion. More nuanced difficulties arise with incompetent inferiors. When superiors disagree with incompetents, this might provide evidence to bolster belief credence; however, agreement from incompetents can defeat justification. In either instance, inferior opinion carries epistemic weight. Yet, this fails to cover all ground; at times, superiors learn nothing from inferior disagreement. I finish by exploring these uninformative disagreements, how to distinguish them from the informative cases, and the proper epistemic reactions thereof. (shrink)

Current art world statistics demonstrate that the fight for gender and race equality in the art world is far from over: only sixteen percent of this year's Venice Biennale artists were female; only fourteen percent of the work displayed at MoMA in 2016 was by nonwhite artists; only a third of artists represented by U.S. galleries are female, but over two-thirds of students enrolled in art and art-history programs are young women. Arranged in thematic sections focusing on feminism, race, and (...) sexuality, Curatorial Activism examines and illustrates pioneering examples of exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Linda Nochlin's 'Women Artists' at LACMA in the mid-1970s to Jean-Hubert Martin's 'Carambolages' in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Including interviews with pioneering curators such as Okwui Enwezor, Linda Nochlin, Jean-Hubert Martin, and Nan Goldin, this volume is both an invaluable source of practical information for those who understand that institutions must be a driving force in this area and a vital source of inspiration for today's expanding new generation of curators. Preface by Lucy R. Lippard. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, concern that there could be a shortage of ventilators raised the possibility of rationing care. Denying patients life-saving care captures our moral imagination, prompting the demand for a defensible framework of ethical principles for determining who will live and who will die. Behind the moral dilemma posed by the shortage of a particular medical good lies a broad moral geography encompassing important and often unarticulated societal values, as well as assumptions about (...) the nature and purpose of health care and the consequences of long-standing choices about health care as a social good. This article explores what COVID-19 has exposed concerning values and choices around health care in the United States. Employing the lens of Catholic Social Thought, it argues for an approach to rationing that is grounded in respect for human dignity, committed to distributing social goods in light of the common good, and self-conscious about the construction of vulnerability to illness and death. (shrink)

From a feminist perspective, unlimited procreative liberty risks treating children as property, distorts understanding of the family, and neglects moral concerns about how we reproduce.

The distinctive nature of pains associated with menstruation and childbirth is used to argue against Klein's version of imperativism.

Jeffrey Bishop’s The Anticipatory Corpse exposes a functional metaphysics at the root of contemporary medical practice that gives rise to inhumane medicine, especially at the end of life. His critique of medicine argues for alternative spaces and practices in which the communal significance of the body, its telos, can be restored and the meaning of a “good death” enriched. This essay develops an alternative epistemology of the body, drawing from Christian theological accounts of the communal or Eucharistic body and linking (...) liturgical practices to the cultivation of solidarity. It argues for an epistemology of the body that makes visible the invisible bodies at medicine’s margins and illumines the disparate worlds of health care globally. (shrink)

“If I were a better human being, that person’s voice wouldn’t sound so shrill to me.” Many of us may have had such thoughts. They give voice to the worrying intuition that if we were less affected by sexism and racism, or better at keeping our tempers, our fellow humans would look and sound differently to us. Making sense of this unease requires us to re-think the relation between experiences and standing commitments; to reconsider what we mean by self-control; and (...) to attend to empirical questions about perception, attention, emotion regulation, and tacit cognition. (shrink)

Draft of forthcoming article in the Journal of Medical Ethics where I discuss ethical tension between LGBT testimony and testimonial trust of medical professionals.

In this chapter I argue that Alexis de Tocqueville describes the virtue of citizenship in a way that is relevant to contemporary virtue ethics. He explains how a group can possess a virtue that is distinct from the virtue of individual members of the group. (this is an unofficial draft).

In this paper, I aim to demonstrate that the consequences of the current United States health insurance scheme on both physician and patient autonomy is dire. So dire, in fact, that the only moral solution is something other than what we have now. The United States healthcare system faces much criticism at present. But my focus is particular: I am interested in the ways in which insurance interferes with physician and patient autonomy. I will argue in favor of an expansion (...) of the traditional conception of what I call “medical autonomy” or “healthcare autonomy” and the usual role it plays in bioethical discussions. More generally, I show that in morally designing or evaluating any healthcare system, serious attention should be paid to how this system helps foster what I call active autonomy. (shrink)

Some theories of language, thought, and experience require their adherents to say unpalatable things about human individuals whose capacities for rational activity are seriously diminished. Donald Davidson, for example, takes the interdependence of the concepts of thought and language to entail that thoughts may only be attributed to an individual who is an interpreter of others’ speech. And John McDowell's account of human experience as the involuntary exercise of conceptual capacities can be applied easily only to individuals who make some (...) reasonable judgments, because conceptual capacities are paradigmatically exercised in judgments. In both cases, we seem forced towards an error theory about any ordinary understanding of impaired human individuals as minded, or as undergoing human experience. (shrink)

Agnes Arber (1879-1960) was a British botanist who was a leading plant morphologist during the first half of the 20th century. She also wrote on the history and philosophy of botany. I argue in this article that her philosophical work on form and on how the work of the mind and the eye relate to each other in morphological research are relevant to the science of today. Arber's unusual blend of interests - in botany, history, philosophy, and art - put (...) her in a unique position to examine issues of form. Even her unorthodox ideas on evolution can now be seen as fitting in well with discussions of natural selection as the predominant engine of evolutionary change. Arber's views also throw light on present work dealing with developmental plant genetics and with the study of protein form. I will further argue that her marginal position relative to institutional science, while it may have left her vulnerable to criticism, also made possible her deep philosophical reflections on morphology. (shrink)

Berry, Daniels, and Ladin make a strong argument for discontinuing the use of, “lack of social support,” as an organ transplantation listing criterion. This argument, however, actually leads to conclusions much stronger than those that the authors’ propose: The argument works equally well against using, (1) any “psychosocial” factors at all as a listing criterion, and, (2) any criteria other than factors that directly relate to empirically established medical need, and/or empirically established survival rate. Moreover, while the authors rightly point (...) to a lack of empirical evidence connecting social support to survivability, they neglect mentioning that the empirical literature on social support provides grounds to favor listing persons who seem to, sadly, lack a social support system. (shrink)

We can increase our understanding of expression by considering an analogy to demonstrative reference. The connections between a demonstrative phrase and its referent, in a case of fully successful communication with that phrase, are analogous to the connections between an expressible state and the behavior that expresses it. The connections in each case serve to maintain a certain status for the connected elements: as actions of persons; or as objects, events, or states significant to persons. The analogy to demonstrative reference (...) helps show that a positive account of expression can make conceptual connections between expressed states and expressive behaviors without courting reductive behaviorism. A general account of expression as marked by these connections is compared to accounts of expression offered by Dorit Bar-On and Mitchell Green. Bar-On’s account turns out to be compatible with the account proposed here, once some of its consequences are fully appreciated. Green’s account rules out, as not expressive, some behaviors like crouching (in fear) that intuitively seem expressive. When Green’s account is altered to allow such behaviors back in, the resulting account also fits the one proposed. (shrink)

In Part I, this paper argues that Duncan Pritchard’s version of safety is incompatible with closure. In Part II I argue for an alternative theory that fares much better. Part I begins by reviewing past arguments concerning safety’s problems with closure. After discussing both their inadequacies and Pritchard’s response to them, I offer a modified criticism immune to previous shortcomings. I conclude Part I by explaining how Pritchard’s own arguments make my critique possible. Part II argues that most modal theories (...) of knowledge will run into problems similar to those found in Pritchard’s Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology. I hence offer my own theory grounded in risk assessment and explain why and how it does much better. (shrink)

After its publication in 1916, Democracy and Education opened up a global debate about educational thought that is still ongoing. Various translations of Dewey's work, appearing at different times, have aided in introducing his ideas within different conversations and across different cultures. The introduction of Dewey's masterwork through academic, institutional, or political avenues has influenced its reception within contemporary educational scenarios; these avenues need to be taken into account when analyzing the book's reception as well as its impact on the (...) reconstruction of educational discourse. (shrink)

Dorit Bar-On aims to account for the distinctive security of avowals by appealing to expression. She officially commits herself only to a negative characterization of expression, contending that expressive behavior is not epistemically based in self-judgments. I argue that her account of avowals, if it relies exclusively on this negative account of expression, can't achieve the explanatory depth she claims for it. Bar-On does explore the possibility that expression is a kind of perception-enabling showing. If she endorsed this positive account, (...) her argument would re-gain an explanatory advantage over its rivals. But extending this account to linguistic expressive behavior would bring Bar-On very close to constitutive accounts of first-person authority. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page W10-W15.

Situations in which patients lack medical decision-making (MDM) capacity raise ethical challenges, especially when the patients decline care that their surrogate decision makers and/or clinicians agree is indicated. These patients are a vulnerable population and should receive treatment that is the standard of care, in line with their the values of their authentic self, just as any other patient would. But forcing treatment on patients who refuse it, even though they lack capacity, carries medical and psychological risks to the patients (...) and the hospital staff. It is also often impractical to force some treatments, especially in the long term. For example, independent of the ethical “should” question, how would one force hemodialysis for the rest of a patient’s life, or force a surgery that requires weeks of post-operative physical therapy? In this article we present a novel algorithm that can help clinicians with ethical and practical decision making, with the goals of achieving the best outcomes for patients and reducing moral distress for their caretakers and clinicians. (shrink)

A necessary criterion of Duncan Pritchard’s Anti-luck Virtue Epistemology is his safety condition. A believer cannot know p unless her belief is safe. Her belief is safe only if p could not have easily been false. But “easily” is not to be understood probabilistically. The chance that p is false might be extremely low and yet p remains unsafe. This is what happens, Pritchard argues, in lottery examples and explains why knowledge is not a function of the probabilistic strength of (...) one’s evidence. This paper argues that, contra Pritchard, modality holds no epistemic advantage over this type of “probabilistic evidentialism” that he criticizes. I begin with a review of Pritchard’s argument supporting modality over probability; second, I explain the problems with this argument, and third, I offer an alternative explanation of the lottery example. At the completion of the paper, modality and probability are on equal epistemic footing. (shrink)

Celebrando os quarenta anos de A Hermenêutica do Sujeito — o curso ministrado por Michel Foucault no Collège de France, em 1982 —, este texto propõe-se a estabelecer conexões, gerais e específicas, entre aquele curso e a Educação. É feita uma discussão acerca da perspectiva analítica não metafísica adotada por Foucault, em contraste com o atual discurso pedagógico interpretativo dominante. São discutidos os sentidos que se pode dar a alguns insights daquele curso, em suas relações com a Educação contemporânea. Propondo-se (...) uma diferenciação entre pedagogia e Pedagogia, destaca-se a função subjetivante das práticas pedagógicas na educação escolarizada. Argumenta-se em favor da ontologia histórica, em oposição à ontologia transcendental e recorre-se ao conceito de frame, de modo a ressaltar sua importância e limitações em estudos como este. Discute-se a inversão moderna que colocou ênfase no preceito do “conhece-te a ti mesmo” (gnôthi seautón), deixando em segundo plano o preceito do “cuida de ti mesmo” (epiméleia heautoû), do que resultou a substituição do ideal antigo do sujeito das ações corretas pelo ideal moderno do sujeito dos saberes verdadeiros. Sugere-se que a Educação possa contribuir para suspender a anunciada morte do sujeito ou, pelo menos, mitigar os seus efeitos. Palavras-chave: Foucault; Subjetivação; Pedagogia; Ontologia histórica. Weaves: between Hermeneutics of the Subject and Education Abstract: Celebrating the forty years of The Hermeneutics of the Subject —the course by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France, in 1982—, this text proposes to establish connections, both general and specific, between that course and Education. A discussion is made about the non-metaphysical analytical perspective adopted by Foucault, in contrast to current dominant interpretive pedagogical discourses. The meanings that can be given to some insights from that course are discussed, in their relations with education. Proposing a differentiation between pedagogy and Pedagogy, the subjectivizing function of pedagogical practices in schools is highlighted. We argue in favor of historical ontology, as opposed to transcendental ontology, and we resort to the concept of frame, in order to emphasize its importance and limitations in foucauldian studies. We discuss the modern inversion that placed emphasis on the precept “know thyself” (gnôthi seautón), leaving in the background the precept “take care of yourself” (epiméleia heautoû), which resulted in the replacement of the ideal of the subject of correct actions by the modern ideal of the subject of true knowledge. We suggest that Education can contribute to suspend the announced death of the subject or, at least, mitigate its effects. Keywords: Foucault; Subjectivizing; Pedagogy; Historical ontology. Tesituras: entre la Hermenéutica del Sujeto y la Educación Resumen: Celebrando los cuarenta años de La Hermenéutica del Sujeto —curso por Michel Foucault en el Collège de France, en 1982—, este texto se propone establecer conexiones generales y específicas, entre ese curso y la Educación. Se discute la perspectiva no-metafísica adoptada por Foucault, en contraste con el actual discurso pedagógico interpretativo dominante. Se problematizan los sentidos que se pueden dar a algunos insigths de aquel curso, en sus relaciones con la educación contemporánea. Se propone una diferenciación entre pedagogía y Pedagogía y se destaca la función de subjetivación de las prácticas pedagógicas en las escuelas. Se argumenta a favor de la ontología histórica, en oposición a la ontología transcendental, y se recurre al concepto de frame, para enfatizar su importancia y limitaciones en estudios foucaultianos. Se discute la idea moderna que puso énfasis en el precepto de “conócete a ti mismo” (gnôthi seautón), dejando en segundo plano el “cuida de ti mismo” (epiméleia heautoû), lo que derivó en la sustitución del ideal antiguo del sujeto de las acciones correctas, por el ideal moderno del sujeto del conocimiento verdadero. Se sugiere que la Educación puede contribuir a suspender la anunciada muerte del sujeto o, al menos, mitigar sus efectos. Palabras clave: Foucault; Subjetivación; Pedagogia; Ontologia histórica. Data de registro: 08/07/2022 Data de aceite: 13/12/2022. (shrink)

The introduction describes the monographic section of Scienza & Politica dedicated to the innovations which postcolonial and feminist studies in Latin America are introducing in the history of political thought as a whole. The fundamental concepts of the following essays are presented here to introduce their historic and critic analysis. It is also highlighted the specific character of continental laboratory which the historic and political reflection is assuming in South American continent and the connections which are occurring with other countries (...) in the global South. (shrink)

The dispute on mongrelization starts to play a fundamental role in Latin America inside the modernist debates about the national unity between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century, to later acquire an unprecedented global diffusion in the eighties and the nineties of the last century. Using the writings of the Bolivian sociologist Silvia River Cusicanqui and of the Argentinian anthropologist, who has long since been active in Brazil, Rita Segato, the essay reconstructs the (...) historic and political happening of metissage in Latin America. The authors show that it is an historical concept which worked as an instance of legitimation both in the period of colonial oppression and later in the epoch of republican modernization. It represents the instrument to hide – if not to delete – the original character of modern State; for this reason it has been able to play a fundamental role in the epoch of liberalism as much as in the neoliberal one. However in mongrelization what is also at stake is that it can express the radically de-colonizing impulse of the differences as forms of litigation which inhabit the complex contemporary Latin American territories. (shrink)

Après le 11 septembre 2001, un ressort essentiel des politiques américaines de renforcement de la « sécurité nationale » a pris la forme d’une insistance quasi paranoïaque sur les menaces potentiellement catastrophiques constituées par le cyber-terrorisme. Un grand nombre de commentateurs politiques, militaires ou économiques, ainsi que d’universitaires et de journalistes, ont envahi..

Herbaria are collections of preserved plant specimens, primarily composed of paper sheets with pressed plants or plant parts attached to them. The most valuable kind of sheet is the holotype specimen. This is the specific plant that was used in describing the species by the person who first identified it. Botanists must reference the holotype when reclassifying or renaming a species. In the past, this meant either borrowing the sheet or visiting the herbarium in which it was housed. With digitization (...) of these sheets, there is much greater and easier access to this information. However, digital images are not substitutes for the sheets themselves. This article will discuss why this is the case, why scanning herbarium sheets is still worthwhile effort, and why the sheets themselves are still necessary to plant research. (shrink)