From the acclaimed writer and thinker--whose award-winning books include both fiction and non-fiction--a dazzlingly original plunge into the drama of philosophy, revealing its hidden but essential role in today's debates on love, religion, politics, and science. Imagine that Plato came to life in the 21st century and set out on a multi-city speaking tour: How would he handle a host on Fox News who challenges him on religion and morality? How would he mediate a debate on the best way to (...) raise a child between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a Tiger Mom? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato's brain, argues that all his philosophical problems can be solved by our new technologies? What would he make of Google, and the idea that knowledge can be crowdsourced rather than reasoned out by experts? With a philosopher's depth and a novelist's imagination, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein probes the deepest issues confronting us--from sexuality and child-rearing to morality and the meaning of life--by allowing us to eavesdrop on Plato as he encounters the modern world. By reviving the Platonic art of the dialogue for the 21st century, she demonstrates that the questions he first posed continue to confound and enlarge us. (shrink)

Recent philosophical literature on epistemic harms has paid little attention to the difference between deliberate and non-deliberate harms. In this paper, I analyze the “Curare Case,” a case from the 1940’s in which patient testimony was disregarded by physicians. This case has been described as an instance of epistemic injustice. I problematize this description, arguing instead that the case shows an instance of “epistemic disadvantage.” I propose epistemic disadvantage indicates when harms result from warranted asymmetric relations that justifiably exclude individuals (...) from hermeneutical participation. Epistemic disadvantage categorizes harms that result from justifiable exclusions, are non-deliberate, and result from poor epistemic environments. This analysis brings out a meaningful difference between accidental and deliberate harms in communicative exchanges. (shrink)

In this classic work, best-selling author Harry Frankfurt provides a compelling analysis of the question that not only lies at the heart of Descartes's Meditations, but also constitutes the central preoccupation of modern philosophy: on what basis can reason claim to provide any justification for the truth of our beliefs? Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen provides an ingenious account of Descartes's defense of reason against his own famously skeptical doubts that he might be a madman, dreaming, or, worse yet, deceived by (...) an evil demon into believing falsely.Frankfurt's masterful and imaginative reading of Descartes's seminal work not only stands the test of time; one imagines Descartes himself nodding in agreement. (shrink)

Originally published in 1983. The nineteenth century was a time of great economic, social and political change. As Europe modernized, previously ignorant and apathetic elements in the population began to demand political freedoms. There was pressure also for a freer press, for the rights of assembly and association. The apprehension of the existing elites manifested itself in an intensification of often brutal form of political repression. The first part of this book summarizes on a pan-European basis, the major techniques of (...) repression such as the denial of popular franchise and press censorship. This is followed by a chronological survey of these techniques from 1815 – 1914 in each European country. The book analyzes the long and short-term importance of these events for European historical development in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. (shrink)

W.V. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein have been compared with regard to the analytic/synthetic distinction, propositions known a priori or a posteriori, mathematical and logical necessity and naturalism, amongst other topics. Following Pieranna Garavaso and Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, I compare how Quine and Wittgenstein conceptualize a system of beliefs. Overlooked is Wittgenstein's description of the role of propositions and Quine's description of the location of propositions. The difference between the role and location signals a difference in how these frameworks conceptualize the boundary (...) between empirical and logical propositions, and in particular the justificatory status of propositions in the system. The Wittgensteinian framework accommodates a change in the justificatory status of propositions: propositions can play at one time a rule-like role and at another time an empirical role. For Quine, change in status refers to revising the proposition (or not) in the light of recalcitrant evidence. (shrink)

Recent work in judgment and decision-making has shown that a good’s price can have irrational effects on people’s preferences. People tend to prefer goods that cost more money and assume that such expensive goods will be more effective, even in cases where the price of the good is itself arbitrary. Although much work has documented the existence of these pricing effects, unfortunately little work has addressed where these price effects come from in the first place. Here we use a comparative (...) approach to distinguish between different accounts of this bias and to explore the origins of these effects. Specifically, we test whether brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) are also susceptible to pricing effects within the context of an experimentally trained token economy. Using a capuchin population previously trained in a token market, we explored whether monkeys used price as an indicator of value across four experiments. Although monkeys demonstrated an understanding of which goods had which prices (consistently shifting preferences to cheaper goods when prices were increased), we observed no evidence that such price information affected their valuation of different kinds of goods. These results suggest that human price effects may involve more sophisticated human-unique cognitive capacities, such as an understanding of market forces and signaling. (shrink)

This article examines physical and linguistic sites through which women and words about women circulate along Latin America’s Interoceanic Road, running from the Brazilian to the Peruvian coast. I argue that the discourse on women circulates with specific linguistic-packaging, made and remade at different sites. In analyzing how these sites form ‘cartographies of communicability’, this article engages Marilena Chauí’s discussion of the ‘semiophor’ to refer to people and things that once pulled out of daily circulation, take on new meanings beyond (...) their material existence. By complicating the socially viable/acceptable identities offered/imposed upon these women – victims or voluntary agents, this article seeks to avoid reinscriptions of difference that “muzzle the subaltern”, advocating for a practice of ethnographic vigilance. (shrink)

Virtues are standardly characterized as stable dispositions. A stable disposition implies that the virtuous actor must be disposed to act well in any domain required of them. For example, a politician is not virtuous if s/he is friendly in debate with an opponent, but hostile at home with a partner or children. Some recent virtue theoretic accounts focus on specific domains in which virtues can be exercised. I call these domain-variant accounts of virtue. This paper examines two such accounts: Randall (...) Curren and Charles Dorn’s discussion of virtue in the civic sphere, and Michael Brady’s account of virtues of vulnerability. I argue that being consistent with the standard characterization of virtue requires generalizing beyond a domain. I suggest four actions the authors could take to preserve their accounts while remaining consistent with the standard characterization. I also discuss how virtue education could be enhanced by domain-variant accounts. (shrink)