In this article, Dembroff argues that the category nonbinary should not be understood in terms of presentation or psychological states, but instead in terms of how its members are politically situated with respect to the binary expectations of Western gender ideology.

I propose a new concept of solidarity, which I call “solidarity from below,” that highlights an aspect of solidarity widely recognized in popular uses of the term, but which has hitherto been neglected in the philosophical literature. Solidarity from below is the collective ability of otherwise powerless people to organize themselves for transformative social change. I situate this concept with respect to four distinct but intertwined questions that have motivated extant theorizing about solidarity. I explain what it means to conceptualize (...) solidarity from below as a form of power, rather than as a feeling, disposition, duty, or scheme of social arrangements. Finally, I suggest that the moral-relational aspects of solidarity emerge secondarily from the process of collective power, and not the other way around. (shrink)

"The doctrine of materialism is one of the perennial and most controversial ideas in the arts and sciences. Throughout history it has aroused strong passions, and in the Sixteenth and Twentieth centuries was a doctrine over which people were persecuted and killed. Yet it has been equally aligned with empirical, enlightened and tolerant thinking. This book explores the fascinating and important philosophy of materialism in an engaging and thought-provoking way. Opening with an overview of the ideas of some of the (...) most important materialists, including Lucretius, Epicurus, Hobbes and Hume up to Darwin and Marx, Brown and Ladyman show how materialism's origins were twofold: it was an early form of scientific explanation but also an intellectual outlook, or belief-system, about the world in general. They then explain how materialism's beginnings as imaginative vision of the true nature of things faced a major challenge from modern physics, in the form of quantum theory and the general theory of relativity. This posed major questions for materialism: how could it be reconciled with unobservable entities and new discoveries about the nature of space and time? As the authors show, out of this challenge materialism did not die but re-emerged - as the new doctrine of physicalism. Drawing on colourful examples throughout - from modern physics, the nature of the mind, and atheism - the authors argue that whilst materialism may not have all the answers, its humanism and staunch belief in observation, evidence and experiment remains our best hope in a fragmented and hyper-specialised world"--. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young’s influential Social Connections Model of responsibility offers a compelling approach to theorizing structural injustice. However, the precise nature of the kind of responsibility modelled by the SCM, along with its relationship to the liability model, has remained unclear. I offer a reading of Young that takes the difference between the liability model and the SCM to be an instance of a more longstanding distinction in the literature on moral responsibility: attributability vs. accountability. I show that interpreting the (...) SCM as a conception of accountability resolves a number of objections, while also highlighting the SCM’s distinctive stance on the relationship between ethics and politics. (shrink)

If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look more likely to become rich, expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happier and more interested in you.

This essay aims to show that arrogance corrupts the very qualities that make persons persons. The corruption is subtle but profound, and the key to understanding it lies in understanding the connections between different kinds of arrogance, self-respect, respect for others and personhood. Making these connections clear is the second aim of this essay. It will build on Kant's claim that self-respect is central to living our human lives as persons and that arrogance is, at its core, the failure to (...) respect oneself as a person. (shrink)

One of the most important students of Franz Brentano was Anton Marty, who made it his task to develop a philosophy of language on the basis of Brentano’s analysis of mind. It is most unfortunate that Marty does not receive the attention he deserves, primarily due to his detailed and distracting polemics. In the analysis presented here his philosophy of language and other aspects of his thought, such as his ontology , are examined first and foremost in their positive rather (...) than critical character. The analysis is moreover supplemented by translations of four important works by Marty, including his entire work On the Origin of Language. These are in fact the first English translations of any substantial writings by him. The resulting picture that emerges from the analysis and translations is that Marty has much to say that proves to be of enduring interest for the philosophy of language on a range of topics, especially the meanings of statements, of emotive expressions, and of names as regards both their communicative and their ontological aspects. The volume will be of interest not only to philosophers and historians of philosophy, but also to historians of linguistics and psychology. (shrink)

Many contemporary race scholars reject the biological reality of race.Elsewhere I have argued that they have been too quick to do so. Part ofthe reason is that they have overlooked the possibility that races canbe defined cladistically. Since the publication of the cladistic raceconcept, a number of questions and objections have been raised. My aimin this paper is to address these objections.

In standard belief models, priors are always common knowledge. This prevents such models from representing agents’ probabilistic beliefs about the origins of their priors. By embedding standard models in a larger standard model, however, pre-priors can describe such beliefs. When an agent’s prior and pre-prior are mutually consistent, he must believe that his prior would only have been different in situations where relevant event chances were different, but that variations in other agents’ priors are otherwise completely unrelated to which events (...) are how likely. Due to this, Bayesians who agree enough about the origins of their priors must have the same priors. (shrink)

"Nietzsche in Context presents a comprehensive reinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought, placing Nietzsche in the context of the philosophers of his own time. Offering a survey of important philosophical themes, Robin Small identifies the writer or writers with whom Nietzsche most felt himself to be engaging in dialogue. This historical dimension is complemented by original analysis and interpretation of the ideas under discussion. Nietzsche in Context takes Nietzsche scholarship into new and fruitful directions. By locating his ideas within a broader (...) context, this book provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of Nietzsche's thought adding to the continuing interest of his contributions to philosophy."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Arthur Fine and André Kukla have argued that realism and instrumentalism are indifferent with respect to scientific practice. I argue that this claim is ambiguous. One interpretation is that for any practice, the fact that that practice yields predictively successful theories is evidentially indifferent between scientific realism and instrumentalism. On the second construal, the claim is that for any practice, adoption of that practice by a scientist is indifferent between their being a realist or instrumentalist. I argue that there are (...) no good arguments for the indifference claim under the second interpretation, and good reasons to think that it is false. (shrink)

Donnellan famously argued that while one can fix the reference of a name with a definite description, one cannot thereby have a de re belief about the named object. All that is generated is meta-linguistic knowledge that the sentence “If there is a unique F, then N is F” is true. Donnellan’s argument and the sceptical position are extremely influential. This article aims to show that Donnellan’s argument is unsound, and that the Millian who embraces Donnellan’s scepticism that the reference-fixer (...) cannot secure the relevant de re belief faces a serious problem: Millianism about names plus scepticism about the reference-fixer’s de re belief conflicts with what seems to be an analytical thesis about the relationship between semantic content and understanding. The upshot is that the Millian has good reason to seek an alternative to scepticism. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022.

Background While most countries that allow abortion on women’s request also grant physicians a right to conscientious objection (CO), this has proven to constitute a potential barrier to abortion access. Conscientious objection is regarded as an understudied phenomenon the effects of which have not yet been examined in Germany. Based on expert interviews, this study aims to exemplarily reconstruct the processes of abortion in a mid-sized city in Germany, and to identify potential effects of conscientious objection. Methods Five semi-structured interviews (...) with experts from all instances involved have been conducted in April 2020. The experts gave an insight into the medical care structures with regard to abortion procedures, the application and manifestations of conscientious objection in medical practice, and its impact on the care of pregnant women. A content analysis of the transcribed interviews was performed. Results Both the procedural processes and the effects of conscientious objection are reported to differ significantly between early abortions performed before the 12th week of pregnancy and late abortions performed at the second and third trimester. Conscientious objection shows structural consequences as it is experienced to further reduce the number of possible providers, especially for early abortions. On the individual level of the doctor-patient relationship, the experts confirmed the neutrality and patient-orientation of the vast majority of doctors. Still, it is especially late abortions that seem to be vulnerable to barriers imposed by conscientious objection in individual medical encounters. Conclusion Our findings indicate that conscientious objection possibly imposes barriers to both early and late abortion provision and especially in the last procedural steps, which from an ethical point of view is especially problematic. To oblige hospitals to partake in abortion provision in Germany has the potential to prevent negative impacts of conscientious objection on women’s rights on an individual as well as on a structural level. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether gender affects ethically sensitive decisions of a personal or business nature. Data from 51 practicing accountants from both public accounting and private industry suggest that while differences exist between female and male accountants in responses to specific situations, overall responses are quite similar. Statistically significant differences were found for only five of the sixteen ethically sensitive situations. Further, when personal and business situations of a similar nature were paired together, two of the eight differences between personal (...) and business responses were significantly different between females and males. Taken as a whole, the results refute the suggestion that the ethical decision making of organizations may be enhanced as more women enter the business field. (shrink)

A boolean algebra is shown to be completely representable if and only if it is atomic, whereas it is shown that neither the class of completely representable relation algebras nor the class of completely representable cylindric algebras of any fixed dimension (at least 3) are elementary.

This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks's original analyses - concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members' actual activities - demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing, Sacks provided for highly technical, detailed, yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social (...) organisation. In this original collection, scholars working in a range of different fields, including sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, social psychology, and linguistics, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired, influenced, and shaped by Sacks's approach, as well as how their current research is taking Sacks's legacy forward in new directions. As such, the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to, and critical exploration of, the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society. (shrink)

We confirm a conjecture, about neat embeddings of cylindric algebras, made in 1969 by J. D. Monk, and a later conjecture by Maddux about relation algebras obtained from cylindric algebras. These results in algebraic logic have the following consequence for predicate logic: for every finite cardinal α ≥ 3 there is a logically valid sentence X, in a first-order language L with equality and exactly one nonlogical binary relation symbol E, such that X contains only 3 variables (each of which (...) may occur arbitrarily many times), X has a proof containing exactly α + 1 variables, but X has no proof containing only α variables. This solves a problem posed by Tarski and Givant in 1987. (shrink)

This article reviews the literature on Holocaust and genocide studies to consider the question, ‘what is the sex doing in the genocide?’ Of the three answers usually given: sexual violence is like other forms of genocidal violence, sexual violence is a coordinate in genocide and sexual violence is integral to genocidal violence, the author argues for the third position, but takes issue with Catharine MacKinnon’s claim that sexual violence destroys women as a group, thereby destroying the ethnic, racial, religious, or (...) national group to which women belong. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality, the author argues that sexual violence is an attack on a fundamental condition for the possibility of the existence of human groups. When political violence is used to force biological birth in the service of death, it is a form of thanatonatality. (shrink)

We consider the problem of finding and classifying representations in algebraic logic. This is approached by letting two players build a representation using a game. Homogeneous and universal representations are characterized according to the outcome of certain games. The Lyndon conditions defining representable relation algebras (for the finite case) and a similar schema for cylindric algebras are derived. Finite relation algebras with homogeneous representations are characterized by first order formulas. Equivalence games are defined, and are used to establish whether an (...) algebra is ω-categorical. We have a simple proof that the perfect extension of a representable relation algebra is completely representable. An important open problem from algebraic logic is addressed by devising another two-player game, and using it to derive equational axiomatisations for the classes of all representable relation algebras and representable cylindric algebras. Other instances of this approach are looked at, and include the step by step method. (shrink)

This note criticises an argument used by W. L. Craig against an actual infinity of past events. He argues that if Russell's use of the story of Tristram Shandy, who took a year to recount each day of his life, is extended into an infinite past, then Cantor's principle of correspondence leads to the absurd conclusion that Tristram Shandy has already written his last page. I show that no such conclusion can be drawn, and that a ‘past’ version of the (...) story which does allow this principle to be applied leads to no paradox. (shrink)

What emerges in Fischer’s phenomenological aesthetics is clearly the view that empathy is absolutely crucial not only to the apprehension of the aesthetic object, but also to the enjoyment of it. While this position certainly has merits, I have argued that in some ways his phenomenological description leaves something to be desired. This was particularly seen in his claim that empathy can never be described as an intuitive presentation of feeling. Perhaps another criticism which can be added here is be (...) found in a consideration of abstract works of art. In the case of these it would seem that empathy plays a much smaller role than it does in the apprehension of other aesthetic objects, especially works of art of other kinds. This is not to say that empathy could play no role at all in the apprehension of abstract works of art, for we may keep in mind that Fischer formulates the notion of mechanical empathy whereby one empathetically grasps power and other phenomena which are analogues of the will. It remains to be seen in the further development of a phenomenological aesthetics whether the notion of empathy can be applied in any other way in such cases. (shrink)

This article focuses on the issue of finding and illustrating a common ground for discussions between those academics involved in the science of entrepreneurial behavior and those involved in the ethics of entrepreneurial behavior. Several articles appeared in the April 1994 Business Ethics Quarterly on the relationship between the science of business and business ethics. In one article by Weaver and Trevino (1994; 130–143), the authors proposed three possible relationships between the normative and empirical business ethics. The author of another (...) article in that issue, Tom Donaldson (1994; 157–169), endorsed only one of the three relationships (165) offered by Weaver and Trevino and argued against the others. The relationship endorsed by Donaldson was called “symbiosis.” In doing so he recognized that both normative and empirical insights are necessary to business ethics. This article follows the combinedreasoning of these authors by describing a symbiotic relationship between the empirical and normative requirements of trust building for entrepreneurs. (shrink)

You are in a grocery store, and thinking of buying some meat. You think you know what buying and eating this meat would mean for your taste buds, your nutrition, and your pocketbook, and let's assume that on those grounds it looks like a good deal. But now you want to think about the..

The rapid implementation and continuing expansion of forensic DNA databases around the world has been supported by claims about their effectiveness in criminal investigations and challenged by assertions of the resulting intrusiveness into individual privacy. These two competing perspectives provide the basis for ongoing considerations about the categories of persons who should be subject to non-consensual DNA sampling and profile retention as well as the uses to which such profiles should be put. This paper uses the example of the current (...) arrangements for forensic DNA databasing in England and Wales to discuss the ways in which the legislative and operational basis for police DNA databasing is reliant upon continuous deliberations over these and other matters by a range of key stakeholders. We also assess the effects of the recent innovative use of DNA databasing for “familial searching” in this jurisdiction in order to show how agreed understandings about the appropriate uses of DNA can become unsettled and reformulated even where their investigative effectiveness is uncontested. We conclude by making some observations about the future of what is recognized to be the largest forensic DNA database in the world. (shrink)

We consider connections between number sense—the ability to judge number—and the interpretation of natural language quantifiers. In particular, we present empirical evidence concerning the neuroanatomical underpinnings of number sense and quantifier interpretation. We show, further, that impairment of number sense in patients can result in the impairment of the ability to interpret sentences containing quantifiers. This result demonstrates that number sense supports some aspects of the language faculty.

To simplify the relation between desire and morality, and between personal and moral good, we can imagine a world of only two people; let us call them Adam and Eve, for the sake of tradition. This gives us two types of personal good: good for Adam and good for Eve. What is good for Adam (or Eve) is what tends to realise his or her desires in general, and, where desires conflict, realises the desires that are stronger in the long-term. (...) A benevolent and omniscient observer - let's call him Snake out of perversity - could therefore draw up two plans of action, one which is good for Adam and one which is good for Eve. However, at this point, Snake must choose sides, since obviously these goods are not always compatible. It is here that Snake must evolve into a moral being, since he must find a way to choose between good-for-Adam and good-for-Eve in order to produce a general good (even though we have not really decided what the general good might involve yet). (shrink)