It is often argued that the general propriety of challenging an assertion with ‘How do you know?’ counts as evidence for the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA). Part of the argument is that this challenge seems to directly challenge whether a speaker knows what she asserts. In this article I argue for a re-interpretation of the data, the upshot of which is that we need not interpret ‘How do you know?’ as directly challenging a speaker's knowledge; instead, it's better understood (...) as challenging a speaker's reasons. Consequently, I argue that reasons-based norms can equally well explain this data. (shrink)

This paper is about the relevance of attitude-ascriptions to debates about singular thought. It examines a methodology (common to early acquaintance theorists [Kaplan 1968] and recent critics of acquaintance [Hawthorne and Manley 2012], which assumes that the behaviour of ascriptions can be used to draw conclusions about singular thought. Although many theorists (e.g. [Recanati 2012]) reject this methodology, the literature lacks a detailed examination of its implications and the challenges faced by proponents and critics. I isolate an assumption of the (...) methodology, which I call the tracking assumption: that an attitude-ascription which states that s Φ's that P is true iff s has an attitude, of Φ-ing, which is an entertaining of the content P (with entertain used in a stipulated sense). I argue that the tracking assumption must be rejected, not because it has deflationary consequences, but because it leads to unstable commitments. I also show that there are independent reasons to reject it, because ordinary attitude ascriptions underdetermine even the truth-conditions of the mental-states they ascribe. However, I argue, this does not involve rejecting the claim that attitude-ascriptions express relations between agents and contents. Instead, they state different relations depending on contextual factors other than the nature of the mental-states ascribed. (shrink)

Guidelines for revisions to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition asked those proposing certain types of revision to consider potential harms to patients. Specifically, those proposing new diagnoses were to consider whether ‘the harm that arises from the adoption of the proposed diagnosis exceed[s] the benefit that would accrue to affected individuals’, and potential for harm was cited as a possible reason for keeping a diagnosis in the appendix rather than promoting it to the main classification. The (...) ‘do no harm’ criterion was referred to in... (shrink)

Organizational culture and employee conduct in financial institutions are coming under increasing scrutiny by regulators who seek to identify the underlying sources of unethical behavior. The literature on ethics in the workplace has often emphasized the importance of the alignment of systems and processes with organizational values and the role of the leader in creating an ethical culture. Less is known about how individual employees experience the ethical decision-making process, especially in complex and high-risk business environments where there are discrepancies (...) between an organization’s formal ethical standards and its informal practices. This article combines ethical decision-making models with key concepts from organization and adult learning theories to develop a deeper and more nuanced view of how individuals in financial institutions deal with ethical issues that arise in their daily work. Eight practical ideas are formulated to help financial institutions narrow the gap between formal ethical standards and actual practices and develop a culture that promotes ethical behavior: challenging authority, creating opportunities for discourse, valuing positive emotion, making time for reflection, rewarding ethical behavior, strengthening escalation processes, eliciting feedback, and establishing a learning culture. (shrink)

Este artigo trata da importância dophronésai como uminstrumento da alma que se estrutura enquantoponto de intersecção da dialética ascendente eda descendente. Para a educação do filósofodialético, tanto a contemplação noética quanto oconhecimento para a melhor atuação dos homensna vida em comum são expostos por Platão desdeo livro IN, ao apresentar os homens que têmphrónimos. O tema é aprofundado no livro VII, naexposição do movimento específico de um órga-non do logístico, o phronésai.

Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Studying how children learn foraging skills can, therefore, provide us with key data to test theories about the evolution of human life history, cognition, and social behavior. Modern foragers, with their vast cultural and environmental diversity, have mostly been studied individually. However, cross-cultural studies allow us to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn their subsistence skills. We perform a meta-ethnography, which allows us (...) to systematically extract, summarize, and compare both quantitative and qualitative literature. We found 58 publications focusing on learning subsistence skills. Learning begins early in infancy, when parents take children on foraging expeditions and give them toy versions of tools. In early and middle childhood, children transition into the multi-age playgroup, where they learn skills through play, observation, and participation. By the end of middle childhood, most children are proficient food collectors. However, it is not until adolescence that adults (not necessarily parents) begin directly teaching children complex skills such as hunting and complex tool manufacture. Adolescents seek to learn innovations from adults, but they themselves do not innovate. These findings support predictive models that find social learning should occur before individual learning. Furthermore, these results show that teaching does indeed exist in hunter-gatherer societies. And, finally, though children are competent foragers by late childhood, learning to extract more complex resources, such as hunting large game, takes a lifetime. (shrink)

Why do we have a moral duty to fulfill promises? Hume offers what today is called a practice theory of the obligation of promises: he explains it by appeal to a social convention. His view has inspired more recent practice theories. All practice theories, including Hume’s, are assumed by contemporary philosophers to have a certain normative structure, in which the obligation to fulfill a promise is warranted or justified by a more fundamental moral purpose that is served by the social (...) practice of promising or adherence to it. Recent practice theories do have this structure, but, I argue, Hume’s own does not. Hume’s account, while it does trace the origin of promises to convention, is instead a causal explanation of the moral sentiments we have toward fulfillment and violation of promises, sentiments he regards as normative in themselves and not susceptible of further warrant. He explains how a collectively-invented social practice becomes morally obligatory for us to conform to, without deriving its moral authority from a more basic principle. I discuss one objection often made to practice theories that, in its application to Hume, presupposes the incorrect interpretation, and show that while it is telling for Hume’s descendants, for Hume it misses the mark. Instead I make a different challenge to Hume, and suggest how he might meet it. (shrink)

Anthology of readings in moral philosophy.

This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the concept of the 'model organism' in contemporary biology. Thinking about model organisms enables us to examine how living organisms have been brought into the laboratory and used to gain a better understanding of biology, and to explore the research practices, commitments, and norms underlying this understanding. We contend that model organisms are key components of a distinctive way of doing research. We focus on what makes model organisms an important type of model, (...) and how the use of these models has shaped biological knowledge, including how model organisms represent, how they are used as tools for intervention, and how the representational commitments linked to their use as models affect the research practices associated with them. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

The present work lays the foundations for a proposed longer work in which I shall defend an answer to the question whether immoral action is necessarily irrational. Here I first examine the traditional formulations, by Hume and Kant, of the crucial positions in the controversy over whether reason does or does not require us to do right or act well, or forbid us to do wrong or be villainous, and I criticize the views of each of these philosophers. I then (...) show how this issue has been transformed in contemporary philosophy, and address myself specifically to one subsidiary issue, whether there necessarily is a reason for every person to do each act that he or she ought, morally, to do. I then develop and defend an analysis of reasons for action based on our common sense notion of reasons, an account according to which there can be a reason for someone to act even though he or she does nor recognize it. Some moral reasons scepticism is based on the assumption that in order for there to be a reason for someone to act, he must have a desire that he can expect to satisfy by so acting. Consequently I next provide a detailed analysis of the relationship between reasons for action and desires, and argue that, contrary to this assumption, desire-independent reasons are possible, and a number of considerations appear to function this way. I then suggest a new approach to the issue of reasons to be moral, using the results obtained so far and the idea of a pattern of nongoal practical reasoning that it is rational for someone to have. I sketch arguments that might be offered within this approach and some difficulties that will arise, and conclude that, given an objective theory of human values, it will support moral rationalism or something close to it, but without such a theory it will support moral reasons scepticism. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckert's book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains. She argues that on Kant's view, human beings demonstrate a distinctive cognitive ability in appreciating beauty and understanding organic life: an ability to anticipate a whole that we do not completely understand according to preconceived categories. This ability is necessary, moreover, for (...) human beings to gain knowledge of nature in its empirical character as it is, not as we might assume it to be. Her wide-ranging and original study will be valuable for readers in all areas of Kant's philosophy. (shrink)

Would it be good, other things being equal, for additional people to exist whose lives would be worth living? I examine and reject several arguments for the answer that it would not be good; then I offer opposing arguments that I believe are more successful. Thus, I agree with utilitarians who say that it is better for there to be more happy people. Next I argue for the stronger claim that the happiness of potential people is as important as that (...) of adults. Potential quality of life, then, matters in a host of bioethical issues: abortion, commercial surrogacy, the treatment of defective newborns, and so on. What is the practical upshot of all this? I reject the idea that we must do whatever is necessary to prolong life worth living. But I also reject the view that the side‐effects of overpopulation always outweigh the value of realizing potential happiness. So I advocate a middle position, which I do not identify precisely. Even from this middle position, however, potential happiness is more important than is commonly assumed in bioethics. (shrink)

The evidence of high cognitive abilities in cetaceans does not stand up to close scrutiny under the standards established by laboratory researchers. This is likely to lead to a sterile debate between laboratory and field researchers unless fresh ways of taking the debate forward are found. A few suggestions as to how to do this are proposed.

What consciousness exactly is remains an unsettled issue among both philosophers and biologists. Three aspects of consciousness are generally recognized: awareness consciousness (through connection...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ManifestsRachel Blau Duplessis (bio)O great classic cadences of English poetry We blush to hear thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless.—Denise Riley, Mop Mop GeorgetteThat tall white pasture clump that we call cow parsnip, Queen Anne’s lace magnified, are, in Latin, umbellifers, a flat-topped or rounded flower cluster. But sometimes people call them “umbrella flowers.” This work is closer to umbrella flowers than to umbellifers, down there on the (...) ground with bricolaged theorizing practices, folk etymologies, my poetry, and intransigent details. That was a tribute to the essay as woodsy ramble [Good xii and x].And to the essay as personal—a way of marking and mocking the professional codes and impersonal solemnities of the representation of thought. If saying “I” like a heroine will adequately undermine unsituated false universals, I’ll say “I” yes I will. “I” will report that in 1966 or so I diminished all the way down to a scant handful of one-line poems, and to gnomic statements, barely effective. The kind of development they needed was not rhetorical but historical.I, Lady, you are my true love’s lady. You stand in the middle of the room, Sunlight streaming around you. Sunlight takes hold of the seeds in you And wets them. I want to hold myself to you, But you are myself. Can I?This 1966 fragment issues directly from, and is a preternatural reminder of a passionate problematic—questions of gender, in relation to an engagement with poetry, poetry figured as a set of psychosocial and intellectual institutions imbuing a practice of writing in lines. This fragment knew and represented issues, points of political and cultural contradiction about the construction of authorship and the poetic career before their maker could see them as such. The fragment was a cognitive act, not just in autobiography. It functioned as a probe of a situation then almost invisible and always underacknowledged; to have understood it then, one would have needed the cultural apparatus precipitated (though not elaborated) by a social movement—second wave feminism, something that had not yet occurred.Despite mirroring each other in a dramatic hinged appositive, with Lady as hinge (“I, Lady, you”), the female “I” is separated by the very concept “Lady” from her addressee, one traditional addressee of poems, the female “you.” “Lady” is both hinge and barrier; she belongs to “my true love”—a charming and smug ballad turn, filled with idealizations of class and sexuality. Yet the “I” wants to hold this “you” figure to herself, actualizing in female-to-female attraction the long half-life of a Petrarchan structure of feeling in order to create female authorship. Now that gesture could be interpreted as desire (in a [End Page 31] lesbian, matrifocal, or preoedipal plot), or as self-aggrandizing forms of egoistic desire. Is the desired embrace regressive? immature? narcissistic? self-serving? greedy? masturbatory? (all these having been thought of as bad attitudes with a bad press—one might now wonder). Fueled by an ambisexual or polysexual suggestiveness, the poem makes a wobbly declaration of vocation in its desire to embrace singular, hieratic woman herself, yourself, myself. Yet as pronouns multiply, a serious problem is accosted. “But you are myself. Can I?”The fragment stops, startled, where the cultural problem began. Authorship was compromised and almost aborted; in any event, these issues, which seemed to me, in my (then commonplace) ignorance of female cultural production, to have no analogues, pointed me toward total blockage. The “can I” is not simply a personal questioning of my own powers, but concerns general contingencies of gender and female place in culture, a then invisible social horizon. Am “I” forbidden to poetry by one—but one key—law of poetry—the cult of the idealized female? Should “Lady” be ditched totally? or examined? both? and how to poke at a Petrarchanism that seems utterly belated, never uniformly hegemonic, and not, after all, the whole content of poetry? (As I bear down upon it, it recedes, is evasive.) Yet any number of writers do take “Lady” for granted as one of the institutional assumptions of poetry. Many male writers get to say Lady early and often... (shrink)

Objective: Even when critically ill patients are almost certain to die from their illnesses, there is generally an element of prognostic uncertainty. Little is known about how physicians handle this uncertainty in conversations with surrogate decision makers. We sought to evaluate whether and how physicians discuss prognostic uncertainty with surrogate decision makers of patients who are highly likely, but not certain, to die. Design: We audiotaped and transcribed discussions between clinicians and surrogate decision makers at two major California teaching hospitals (...) from 2006 through 2008. Physicians completed a questionnaire addressing their prognostic estimates for patients' survival to hospital discharge. Participants: We included physicians and surrogates of 12 incapacitated, critically ill patients. Measurements: We analyzed transcripts of discussions in which physicians' estimates of patients' chances of hospital survival were 1% to 5%; we coded whether physicians disclosed the prognostic uncertainty and, if so, how they conveyed that death was highly likely but not certain. Results: Physicians' estimates of short-term survival were 1% to 5% for 12 of the 70 patients enrolled in the original study. In 8 of 12 cases, physicians conveyed prognostic uncertainty by using probabilistic language or by an explicit mention of uncertainty. In four cases, physicians made at least one statement that either implied or was ambiguous about whether death was certain. Conclusion: We observed variability in how physicians handle prognostic uncertainty in their discussions with surrogates of patients who are highly likely, but not certain, to die, including some circumstances in which physicians stated or implied that death was certain. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify the key characteristics of model organisms that make them a specific type of model within the contemporary life sciences: in particular, we argue that the term “model organism” does not apply to all organisms used for the purposes of experimental research. We explore the differences between experimental and model organisms in terms of their material and epistemic features, and argue that it is essential to distinguish between their representational scope and representational target. We also examine (...) the characteristics of the communities who use these two types of models, including their research goals, disciplinary affiliations, and preferred practices to show how these have contributed to the conceptualization of a model organism. We conclude that model organisms are a specific subgroup of organisms that have been standardized to fit an integrative and comparative mode of research, and that it must be clearly distinguished from the broader class of experimental organisms. In addition, we argue that model organisms are the key components of a unique and distinctively biological way of doing research using models.Keywords: Experimental organism; Genetics; Model organism; Modeling; Philosophy of biology; Representation. (shrink)

Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we have to this land and its First Peoples. We put out a call to colleagues whose work has been concerned with (...) the pedagogies of professional ethics, the ethical burdens of institutional injustice, and the application of ethical theory to education’s applied fields. In the responses we received it can be seen that ethical concerns in education are broad ranging, covering terrain varying from the preparation of preservice teachers, ethics in higher education, early childhood and care, educational leadership, relational and communicative ethics. Perhaps it could also be argued that this paper demonstrates Gibbon’s observation that ‘Assumptions about the particularity of this time as new and ripe with opportunity to make a difference through philosophy of education are not new and there’s much to learn from the persistence of wanting to imagine that they are’. However, while the field of ethics is perennially concerned with human relations and pedagogical interventions to improve these, the responses collected here show that educational ethics is far from static. Educational ethics is a field that continues to develop in response to changing contexts. (shrink)

Animal rights organizations in the United States are predominantly female and middle class. What are the implications of the composition of these groups for animal rights activists' abilities to achieve their goals? In this article, the author examines the role of class and gender in the outcomes of an anti-hunting campaign and an anti-circus campaign waged by one animal rights organization in the Seattle area. The article shows that hunters make classed and gendered attributions about the activists, whereas circus patrons (...) do not view activists in terms of these statuses and end up taking their demands more seriously. It is suggested that an “identity interaction” between the activists' class and gender identity and that of their targets helps to explain these different reactions. The analysis also highlights the role of emotion in social movements, especially the ways in which targets perceive and react to activists' emotional displays. (shrink)

In the yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the initiation of DNA replication is controlled at a point called START. At this point, the cellular environment is assessed; only if conditions are appropriate do cells traverse START, thus becoming committed to initiate DNA replication and complete the remainder of the cell cycle. The cdc2+ / CDC28+ gene, encoding the protein kinase p34, is a key element in this complex control. The identification of structural and functional homologues of p34 suggests that (...) it has a role in the control of DNA replication in all eukaryotes. The WHI1+, CLN1+ and CLN2+ gene products, identified in S. cerevisiae, are positive regulators that function at START and may interact with p34. Determining how passing the START control point leads to the initiation of DNA replication is a major outstanding challenge in cell cycle studies. (shrink)

for both introductory courses in philosophy, or philosophical methodology, as well as independent study for anyone interested in the methods of argument, assessment and criticism used in contemporary analytic philosophy. It is unique in approach, and written in a pleasant and considerate tone. Its authors are both competent philosophers, and the book visibly reflects their deep sympathy to the discipline and their appreciation of its unique character. This book will help one to get going to do philosophy, but more advanced (...) students might find this text helpful too. I wish I had had access to this book as an undergraduate. The book has six chapters. It presents instances of a certain kind of philosophical tool in each of these. These are: Basic Tools, Further Tools for Argument, Tools for Assessment, Tools for Conceptual Distinctions, Tools for Radical Critique, and Tools at the Limit. The tools presented get increasingly sophisticated, and the chapters are more or less explicitly built on the preceding ones. Characteristic entries are, in the first chapter, concepts such as “Arguments, Premises and Conclusions”; “Abduction” and “Intuition Pumps” in chapter 2; “Ockham’s Razor” and “Paradoxes” in chapter 3; “Knowledge by Acquaintance/Description” and “Realist/Non-Realist” in chapter 4; “Foucaultian Critique of Power” and “Pragmatist Critique” in chapter 5; and “Gödel and Incompleteness” and “Self-evident Truths” in chapter 6. All in all there are eighty-seven entries, usefully cross-referenced. (shrink)

Este estudo visa expor suas noções básicas do pensamento do estóico Marco Aurélio que nos falam ainda de perto na modernidade: o pertencimento a si mesmo e o cuidado de si. Elas estão intimamente relacionadas com a physis e a Ética estóicas. Pretende-se mostrar o aparente paradoxo da afirmação estóica sobre nossas ações éticas fundarem-se na determinação cósmica, ao mesmo tempo em que há uma abertura possível para deliberar particularmente a partir desta determinação universal.

What words we use, and what meanings they have, is important. We shouldn't use slurs; we should use 'rape' to include spousal rape (for centuries we didn’t); we should have a word which picks out the sexual harassment suffered by people in the workplace and elsewhere (for centuries we didn’t). Sometimes we need to change the word-meaning pairs in circulation, either by getting rid of the pair completely (slurs), changing the meaning (as we did with 'rape'), or adding brand new (...) word-meaning pairs (as with 'sexual harassment'). A problem, though, is how to do this. One might worry that any attempt to change language in this way will lead to widespread miscommunication and confusion. I argue that this is indeed so, but that's a feature, not a bug of attempting to change word-meaning pairs. The miscommunications and confusion such changes cause can lead us, via a process I call transformative communicative disruption, to reflect on our language and its use, and this can be further, rather than hinder, our goal of improving language. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article draws on Daniel Maximin’s extended essay on Caribbean identity, Les fruits du cyclone, to open up the potential in Luce Irigaray’s work for a decolonizing, elemental sublime. In so doing, it hopes to produce the kind of generative crossing that Maximin invokes via the figure of métissage: a term that recalls the forced breeding of the transatlantic slave trade, even as Maximin deploys it to resist the violence of colonialism and to affirm the unmasterable effects of the crossings (...) of difference. The article begins by outlining the importance of the aesthetic in its Kantian sense to Irigaray’s project, showing how Irigaray re-conceptualizes the form-matter relation in ways that also transform the relation between aesthetic judgments and the transcendental aesthetic. It goes on to examine the implications of Irigaray’s subversive re-appropriation of Kant for her approach to nature and art, setting out her reasons for pulling back from the sublime while using the work of other scholars to develop a critique of her privileging of harmony. The final section draws on Maximin’s image of nature as neither in harmony with itself nor with human projects to explore the possibility of an elemental sublime structured by co-existing contraries in ways that allow for a decolonization of difference. (shrink)

Selon plusieurs témoignages, l'éducation féminine au Brésil laissait à désirer au XIXe siècle. Les voyageurs Kidder et Fletcher, en visite dans ce pays en 1851, affirmaient que les Brésiliennes ne possédaient pas de connaissances très variées pour rendre leur conversation agréable et instructive, mais parlaient de choses insignifiantes toujours d'une façon agréable. Par ailleurs, ils admettaient que certaines écoles étaient excellentes. Mais les parents en retiraient leurs filles à l'â...

Tragic moral conflicts are situations from within which whatever one does—including abstaining from action—will be seriously wrong; even the overall right decision involves violating a moral responsibility. This article offers an account of recovery predicaments, a particular kind of tragic conflict that characterizes the current extinction crisis. Recovery predicaments occur when the human-caused extinction of a species or population cannot be prevented without breaching moral responsibilities to animals by doing violence to or otherwise severely dominating them. Recognizing the harm of (...) acting from within recovery conflicts adds force to appeals for interrogating and dismantling the systems of thinking, valuing, and acting that bring species to the brink of extinction. (shrink)

Extensive and diverse conceptual work towards developing a definition of ‘mental disorder’ was motivated by the declassification of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973. This highly politicised event was understood as a call for psychiatry to provide assurances against further misclassification on the basis of discrimination or socio-political deviance. Today, if a definition of mental disorder fails to exclude homosexuality, then it fails to provide this safeguard against potential abuses and therefore fails to do an important part (...) of the work it was intended to do. We argue that fact-based definitions of mental disorder, relying on scientific theory, fail to offer a robust definition of mental disorder that excludes homosexuality. Definitions of mental disorder based on values do not fare better: these definitions are silent on questions about the diagnostic status of individuals in oppressive societies and over-inclusive of mental or behavioural states that happen to be negatively valued in the individual's social context. We consider the latest definition proposed for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 in light of these observations. We argue that definition fails to improve on these earlier deficiencies. Its inclusion in the manual may offer false reassurance against repetition of past misclassifications. We conclude with a provocation that if candidate definitions of mental disorder are unable to exclude homosexuality, it might perhaps be preferable not to attempt a definition at all. (shrink)

We thank Lucy Frith for her thought-provoking response1 to our paper, where we argued that it would be ethically acceptable to contact an anonymous egg donor to help facilitate diagnostic genetic testing for a donor-conceived child.2 While we read Frith’s commentary with interest, we still think that the egg donor should be contacted in the case that we describe. Frith raises concerns as to whether contact would constitute ‘ overriding consent ’, thus ’ potentially set(ting) a dangerous precedent ’ for (...) existing gamete donors and donor-conceived children. In contrast, we consider that contacting the egg donor would not override her consent, as her views on contact in the instance that has now arisen were never sought. Our view is that given we do not currently know what she might want, contacting her is a more legitimate way of respecting her autonomy than trying to anticipate her likely answer. We strongly agree with Frith’s suggestion that future consent discussions around gamete donation should make explicit ‘ the possibility of being contacted in the future if there is a relevant reason for doing so ’. Frith expresses a concern that contact would constitute ‘ overriding [the egg donor’s] consent ’, meaning that we have to ‘ justify contacting the egg donor against her previously stated wishes not to be contacted ’. However, our argument is that the egg donor was never asked whether or not she was happy to be contacted in the circumstances that have now arisen. Thus, there is no consent to be overridden, given that she never gave or withheld it in the first place. Frith rightly acknowledges that her arguments therefore ‘ [do] not fully address [our] main worry that the donor’s wishes are essentially unknown, as she was not asked about this specific situation and …. (shrink)

Jealousy is an emotion that arises in diverse circumstances and is experienced in phenomenologically diverse ways. In part because of this diversity, evaluations of jealous subjects tend to be conflicting and ambiguous. Thus philosophers who are interested in the moral status of jealousy face a challenge: to explain how, despite the diversity of jealous subjects and experiences of jealousy, our moral evaluations of those subjects in light of those experiences might be unified. In this project, I confront and respond to (...) this challenge, which I call the challenge of heterogeneity. -/- In Part I, I refine and expand on existing descriptive accounts of jealousy, defending an account with three necessary but not sufficient conditions. On my view, if one is jealous: -/- A. One desires that oneself stand in some relation to a specific, non-replicable good. B. One has in mind a (possibly imagined) rival and regards the rival’s having the good as logically or causally inconsistent with the satisfaction of this desire C. One has in mind some (possibly imagined) set of circumstances in which this desire would be satisfied. -/- In discussing this view I emphasize the role that relationships play in giving rise to jealousy, since its connections to relationships make jealousy descriptively and normatively unique. -/- In Part II, I develop an account of jealousy’s moral significance. To do so, I divide cases of jealousy into three types: those involving jealous desires relating to (1) caring relationships, (2) non-caring relationships, and (3) material goods or personal qualities. I argue that in all three types of cases, jealousy undermines the actual or potential moral value of the jealous subjects’ relationships, and that this undermining provides the paradigmatic moral reason to criticize jealous subjects. Thus I respond to the challenge of heterogeneity without simply portraying jealous subjects as selfish or insecure. -/- After doing so, I consider multiple arguments for the claim that a person’s being jealous sometimes constitutes a moral reason to praise that person. I critique each of those arguments and conclude that we have good reasons to see jealous subjects as worthy of moral criticism but not moral praise. (shrink)

On October 29, 2013, Texas House Bill 2 went into effect, greatly changing women’s access to an abortion in the state. This bill requires that physicians performing clinic-based abortions obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. A few months later, on January 1, 2014, the Texas Health and Safety Code was amended to include the requirement that all abortion clinics must meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical centre. These requirements will result in heavy burdens (...) for women seeking an abortion. Many clinics cannot afford the upgrade and are being forced to close down. On August 29, 2014, a Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas ruling to overturned the two proposed requirements. The court deemed them unconstitutional violations of a woman’s right to obtain an abortion recognizing that their purpose was to create obstacles for women. The ruling was appealed and the Federal Appeals Court allowed for the new regulations, forcing all but eight clinics in Texas to close their doors. Before the enactment of HB2, there were approximately 40 abortion clinics serving Texas’ population of about 26 million. The new regulations would force all except eight clinics to close down. The remaining clinics are located in four cities forcing many women to travel hundreds of miles to access them. For some, it is more feasible to leave Texas to go to an abortion clinic outside the state. Even if every woman seeking an abortion was able to travel to one of the remaining clinics, the clinics could not meet the demand. Both of these requirements, the ambulatory surgical requirement and the admitting privileges requirement, constitute an undue burden for women. But what about the physicians? These requirements also place an undue burden on physicians who want to perform abortions. For affected physicians, it is difficult or impossible to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Many hospitals are denying these privileges to physicians because the hospitals have no interest in participating in performing abortions and gain nothing by allowing it. If the majority of abortion clinics are forced to close down, physicians who want to perform abortions would have to relocate to one of the four cities mentioned previously, or even leave the state. Women seeking an abortion have to travel to the clinic once or twice. Physicians would have to relocate permanently. Much of the focus of these rulings has been on women’s rights and what constitutes an undue burden for women. In addition to this, physician’s rights should also be considered. There have been several cases of doctors facing harassment and even death threats for performing abortions. Fear of such treatment has led to many doctors to decline to perform abortions. Doctors do not have an obligation to perform abortions but it is within their rights as physicians to do so. However, given this harsh treatment by anti-abortion groups, not a lot of doctors are willing. The new regulations will leave open clinics in four cities in Texas making it more difficult for those few doctors who want to perform abortions to do so. The new regulations impose undue burdens on women and doctors alike. On Tuesday, October 14, the Supreme Court struck down the new requirements allowing thirteen clinics in Texas to reopen. (shrink)

The most discussed puzzle about weakness of will (WoW) is how it is possible: how can a person freely and intentionally perform actions that she judges she ought not perform, or that she has resolved not to perform? In this paper, we are concerned with a much less discussed puzzle about WoW?how is overcoming it possible? We explain some of the ways in which previously weak-willed agents manage to overcome their weakness. Some of these are relatively straightforward?as agents learn of (...) the real costs of weakness, or as those costs mount dramatically, they can become strongly motivated to do what they already judged best. But other cases are more difficult to explain: sometimes, agents with a long history of forming and then weakly abandoning resolutions manage to stick to their guns. We argue that these cases can be explained by combining George Ainslie's model of agents as multiple preference orderings competing in game theoretic interactions along with the insights of evolutionary game theory. This can explain the puzzling cases where agents suddenly adopt successful strategies for avoiding weak-willed behavior, especially where agents gain no new information about themselves or the consequences of their actions. (shrink)

Hedgehog (HH) signaling is a conserved pathway that drives developmental growth and is essential for the formation of most organs. The expression of HH target genes is regulated by a dual switch mechanism where GLI proteins function as bifunctional transcriptional activators (in the presence of HH signaling) and transcriptional repressors (in the absence of HH signaling). This results in a tight control of GLI target gene expression during rapidly changing levels of pathway activity. It has long been presumed that GLI (...) proteins also repress target genes prior to the initial expression of HH in a given tissue. This idea forms the basis for the limb bud pre‐patterning model for regulating digit number. Recent findings indicate that GLI repressor proteins are indeed present prior to HH signaling but contrary to this model, GLI proteins are inert as they do not regulate transcriptional responses or enhancer chromatin modifications at this time. These findings suggest that GLI transcriptional repressor activity is not a default state as assumed, but is itself regulated in an unknown fashion. We discuss these findings and their implications for understanding pre‐patterning, digit regulation, and HH‐driven disease. (shrink)

O presente texto parte de uma analogia com a obra “Após o fim da arte: a arte contemporânea e os limites da história” de Arthur Danto para pensar perspectivas da produção artística após a decretação de seu fim, ou seja, após o momento em que os modelos tradicionais de pensar e fazer arte passaram a não se enquadrar às próprias obras de arte. A perspectiva abordada traz à tona os contextos de visibilidade e de participação do mundo da arte, o (...) qual acompanha um movimento simultâneo de globalização e regionalização. Para tanto, o presente artigo fará uma analise decolonial da tese de Arthur Danto, para então explicitar de que modo ela não se mostra suficiente. Por fim, trará para a discussão os conceitos de perspectivismo e multinaturalismo trabalhados por Eduardo Viveiros de Castro para apontar caminhos que permitam pensar a arte para além dos limites da arte europeia. (shrink)

This article explores how visual images of dependency and care reflect and reinforce perceptions of people who are ill, disabled, or otherwise dependent, those who sustain them, and the meaning of the work they do. Scenes of care are a valuable index for understanding cultural assumptions about who is deserving of care, how and where care should be given, and who is obligated to serve as a giver of care. It positions these images in the context of the emphasis, within (...) the disability rights movement, on independence. I argue that the insistence on independence entails a form of what Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism"—desire for the very things that undermine happiness and well-being—because they rely on a willful disregard of the inevitable interdependency that is a fact of all human existence, as well as the particular forms of dependency that pertain to many disabled bodies. The end of the article considers works of visual art that challenge dominant modes for representing how care is given and received. If the invisibility of caregiving is one aspect of our willful forgetting that all bodies are dependent, I'll argue that visual images of care are an essential resource for recognizing and reimagining its status in our society. One desired outcome of such reconsideration would be to complicate the meaning of autonomy—as it relates to choosing disability—as well as how the work of caregiving is acknowledged and valued. (shrink)

Hume's moral philosophy makes sentiment essential to moral judgment. But there is more individual consistency and interpersonal agreement in moral judgment than in private emotional reactions. Hume accounts for this by saying that our moral judgments do not manifest our approval or disapproval of character traits and persons "only as they appear from [our] peculiar point of view..." Rather, "we fix on some steady and general points of view; and always, in our thoughts, place ourselves in them, whatever may be (...) our present situation" (T 581-82), in order to "correct" our situated sentiments. This seems to create two serious difficulties for Hume's theory. First, moral evaluations become inductive, empirical beliefs about what we would feel if we really occupied the imagined common point of view, and hence are the deliverances of causal reason; this contradicts Hume's claim that the making of a moral evaluation is not an activity of reason but of sentiment. Secondly, given Hume's thesis that the passions do not represent anything else, he cannot say that our moral evaluations will better represent the object being judged if they are made from the common point of view. This leaves no clear reason to adopt it, rather than making judgments from our real position. Hume says that left to our particular points of view, we will encounter contradictions and be unable to communicate, but it is hard to see why. My interpretation resolves these two difficulties. I argue that every time we reflect upon someone's character from the common point of view, we feel an actual sentiment of approbation or disapprobation, which may alter and merge with the situated sentiment or may fail to do so, leaving two different feelings about the same character. Furthermore, whenever we make moral evaluations we also simultaneously make objective, causal judgments about the love and hatred, pride and humility that the trait will produce. We routinely take up the common point of view in order to achieve truth and consistency in our causal judgments, to avoid grave practical problems. (shrink)

Epistemologists of testimony have focused almost exclusively on the epistemic dynamics of simple testimony. We do sometimes testify by ways of simple, single sentence assertions. But much of our testimony is narratively structured. I argue that narrative testimony gives rise to a form of epistemic dependence that is far richer and more far reaching than the epistemic dependence characteristic of simple testimony.

I trace the relationship between the view that knowledge is stakes sensitive and Laurie Paul’s account of the epistemology of transformative experience. The view that knowledge is stakes sensitive comes in different flavours: one can go for subjective or objective conceptions of stakes, where subjective views of stakes take stakes to be a function of an agent’s non-factive mental states, and objective views of stakes do not. I argue that there is a tension between subjective accounts of stakes sensitivity and (...) Paul’s epistemology of transformative experience. (shrink)

This paper offers three objections to Leslie’s recent and already influential theory of generics :375–403, 2007a, Philos Rev 117:1–47, 2008): her proposed metaphysical truth-conditions are subject to systematic counter-examples, the proposed disquotational semantics fails, and there is evidence that generics do not express cognitively primitive generalisations.

SÍNTESE - A dialética em Platão é, por um lado, uma técnica que planta e semeia as "sementes do logos"; ela é, então, algo que pode ser ensinado e aprendido na relação Mestre e Discípulo. Por outro iado, Dialética é uma episteme, através da qual é possível contemplar o ser e o inteligível; ela é um saber mais perfeito e pertence, não ao âmbito da técnica, do poiefn, mas ao domínio de contemplar, do theorefn. Dialética neste segundo sentido trabalha, primeiro, (...) com hipóteses, para depois conduzir à visão noética, na qual ela co::isegue ver seus fundamentos. (shrink)

In United States v. Hensley, a unanimous Court set forth the rule that, "if police have a reasonable suspicion, grounded in specific and articulable facts, that a person they encounter was involved in or is wanted in connection with a completed felony, then a Terry stop may be made to investigate that suspicion." By expanding the scope of the Terry doctrine, Hensley strengthened the power of law enforcement officials to "stop and frisk" individuals who they believe may pose a threat (...) to the themselves and/or the public. Prior to Hensley, the Court's decisions merely sanctioned Terry stops of individuals that law enforcement officers reasonably suspected were about to commit a crime, or were committing a crime at the time of the stop. Thus, by authorizing Terry stops based on an officer's reasonable suspicion that an individual was involved in an already-completed felony, Hensley extended the types of situations under which law enforcement officers may engage in Terry stops. While explicitly expanding the scope of Terry v. Ohio in the context of completed felonies, the Hensley decision left open one major issue-whether the balancing test set forth in Hensley applies to investigatory stops based on an officer's reasonable suspicion that an individual was involved in a completed misdemeanor. With no answer from the Court, lower federal and state courts have attempted to answer this question on their own; in doing so, they have diverged on the issue. Most recently, in United States v. Grigg, the Ninth Circuit expanded the scope of Hensley and applied its balancing approach to Terry stops for completed misdemeanors. This Note argues against the Ninth Circuit's approach and rather for a per se rule against Terry stops for completed misdemeanors. This Note proposes that, in light of the inherent differences between misdemeanors and felonies, Hensley's balancing test should not extend to completed misdemeanors. Furthermore, the use of Terry stops for completed misdemeanors does not further the government and public interest in crime prevention and solving past crimes to an extent great enough to outweigh the great intrusion on privacy rights that Terry stops cause. Additionally, a per se rule provides for efficiency and guidance to police enforcement on routine patrols. Under such an approach, it is easier for private citizens to comprehend and appreciate their rights and understand when those rights are being violated. (shrink)

Many consumers are motivated to attend Farmers’ Markets because of the opportunity to purchase fresh and local products. The subsequent interactions at FMs provide an important pathway for the direct exchange of information. While previous research suggests that people value local food and the FM shopping experience and that purchasing directly from producers can lead to transformative learning, little is known about exactly how the shopping experience at FMs can influence consumer purchasing behavior. This study examines the extent of and (...) mechanism for such “influencing.” Using data from surveys, observations, and interviews gathered at six FMs, we analyze the interactions between consumers and vendors, including the motivations and values of both parties. We explore the question, “How do farmers’ markets facilitate change in consumer purchasing behavior?” We propose that the dynamic of change in consumer purchasing behavior at FMs takes root in the exchange of information between consumers and vendors during interactions. Our results suggest that there are three specific characteristics shared by FM consumers and vendors that lead to these meaningful interactions at FMs: symmetry of motivations to attend FMs, shared values, and mutual dependence on interactions. Then, when a consumer learns new information from a FM vendor during an interaction, the consumer is more likely to make a change in their immediate purchase. Information about the products for sale and the modes of production of those items can especially impact consumers’ immediate purchases at FMs. We found that FM interactions can also impact long-term purchasing behavior, such as purchasing more organic or locally produced foods. Our results suggest that FM interactions may have significant implications for consumer health, local economies, and the environment. (shrink)