In this collection of previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory and on the resources of contemporary analytic philosophy to develop the idea that gender and race are positions ...

It is always awkward when someone asks me informally what I’m working on and I answer that I’m trying to figure out what gender is. For outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. And one thing people feel pretty confident about is their knowledge of the difference between males and females. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and (...) secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this background, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical inquiry, into “what gender is”. (shrink)

“Female sexual dysfunction” is the type of contested disease that has sparked concern about the role of the pharmaceutical industry in medical science. Many policies have been proposed to manage industry influence without carefully evaluating whether the proposed policies would be successful. We consider a proposal for incorporating citizen stakeholders into scientific research and show, via a detailed case study of the pharmaceutical regulation of flibanserin, that such programs can be co-opted. In closing, we use Holman’s asymmetric arms race framework (...) as a tool for evaluating policies in industry-funded science. (shrink)

Much contemporary social epistemology takes as its starting point individuals with sophisticated propositional attitudes and considers (i) how those individuals depend on each other to gain (or lose) knowledge through testimony, disagreement, and the like and (ii) if, in addition to individual knowers, it is possible for groups to have knowledge. In this paper I argue that social epistemology should be more attentive to the construction of knowers through social and cultural practices: socialization shapes our psychological and practical orientation so (...) that we perform local social practices fluently. Connecting practical orientation to an account of ideology, I argue that to ignore the ways in which cognition is socially shaped and filtered is to allow ideology to do its work unnoticed and unimpeded. Moreover, ideology critique cannot simply challenge belief, but must involve challenges to those practices through which we ourselves become the vehicles and embodiments of ideology.V. (shrink)

Across the humanities and social sciences it has become commonplace for scholars to argue that categories once assumed to be “natural” are in fact “social” or, in the familiar lingo, “socially constructed”. Two common examples of such categories are race and gender, but there many others. One interpretation of this claim is that although it is typically thought that what unifies the instances of such categories is some set of natural or physical properties, instead their unity rests on social features (...) of the items in question. Social constructionists pursuing this strategy—and it is these social constructionists I will be focusing on in this paper—aim to “debunk” the ordinary assumption that the categories are natural, by revealing the more accurate social basis of the classification.2 To avoid confusion, and to resist some of the associations with the term ‘social construction’, I will sometimes use the term ‘socially founded’ for the categories that this sort of constructionist reveals as social rather than natural. (shrink)

Theorists analyzing the concepts of race and gender disagree over whether the terms refer to natural kinds, social kinds, or nothing at all. The question arises: what do we mean by the terms? It is usually assumed that ordinary intuitions of native speakers are definitive. However, I argue that contemporary semantic externalism can usefully combine with insights from Foucauldian genealogy to challenge mainstream methods of analysis and lend credibility to social constructionist projects.

The terms ‘structural injustice’ and ‘systemic injustice’ are commonly used, but their meanings are elusive. In this paper, I sketch an ontology of social systems that embeds accounts of social structures, relations, and practices. On this view, structures may be intrinsically problematic, or they may be problematic only insofar as they interact with other structures in the system to produce injustice. Because social practices that constitute structures set the backdrop for agency and identity, socially fluent agents reproduce the systems, often (...) unknowingly and unintentionally. The account aims to capture how agents both depend on and enact structures, and do so in ways that, as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, ‘land on the body’. (shrink)

Building on existing studies suggesting that corporate social performance (CSP) is important in the job choice process, the authors investigate job seekers’perceptions of importance of CSP and explore effects of CSP dimensions on organizational attractiveness. Job seekers consider CSP important to assessment of firms and rate five specific CSP dimensions (environment, community relations, employee relations, diversity, and product issues) as more important than six other CSP dimensions. Using signaling theory and social identity theory, the authors hypothesize differences in effects of (...) CSP data on ratings of employer attractiveness and find that environment, community relations, and diversity dimensions have the largest affect on attractiveness ratings. (shrink)

This paper describes a pattern of explanation prevalent in the biological sciences that I call a ‘lineage explanation’. The aim of these explanations is to make plausible certain trajectories of change through phenotypic space. They do this by laying out a series of stages, where each stage shows how some mechanism worked, and the differences between each adjacent stage demonstrates how one mechanism, through minor modifications, could be changed into another. These explanations are important, for though it is widely accepted (...) that there is an ‘incremental constraint’ on evolutionary change, in an important class of cases it is difficult to see how to satisfy this constraint. I show that lineage explanations answer important questions about evolutionary change, but do so by demonstrating differences between individuals rather than invoking population processes, such as natural selection.1. Introduction2. Turning a ‘Scale’ into a ‘Plume’3. Lineage Explanations in Biology3.1. The evolution of eyes3.2. The evolution of feathers4. The Two Dimensions of a Lineage Explanation4.1. The production dimension4.2. The continuity dimension4.3. The dual role of the parts5. Constraining the Explanations6. Operational and Generative Lineages7. Explaining Change Without Populations8. Conclusion. (shrink)

Fieldworkers (FWs) are community members employed by research teams to support access to participants, address language barriers, and advise on culturally appropriate research conduct. The critical role that FWs play in studies, and the range of practical and ethical dilemmas associated with their involvement, is increasingly recognised. In this paper, we draw on qualitative observation and interview data collected alongside a six month basic science study which involved a team of FWs regularly visiting 47 participating households in their homes. The (...) qualitative study documented how relationships between field workers and research participants were initiated, developed and evolved over the course of the study, the shifting dilemmas FWs faced and how they handled them. Even in this one case study, we see how the complex and evolving relationships between fieldworkers and study participants had important implications for consent processes, access to benefits and mutual understanding and trust. While the precise issues that FWs face are likely to depend on the type of research and the context in which that research is being conducted, we argue that appropriate support for field workers is a key requirement to strengthen ethical research practice and for the long term sustainability of research programmes. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The overall aim of this article is to discuss how the MUSIC Model of Motivation can be applied to L2 instruction in a manner that is consistent with positive psychology, which emphasizes individuals’ strengths and the conditions in which they thrive. The article begins by describing the MUSIC model, which is a research-based framework that organizes strategies that instructors can use to motivate students to engage in learning. The MUSIC model can be used by L2 instructors to create learning experiences (...) that consider learners’ cognition, affect, needs, and desires in order to foster their motivation and engagement in L2 classes. The article also provides teaching strategies related to the MUSIC model and presents an assessment tool (the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory) that can be used by L2 instructors to measure students’ MUSIC perceptions of their class. The assessment tool provides feedback to instructors that can be used to improve their instruction by incorporating strategies that allow their students to flourish. Examples of how the MUSIC Inventory can be used to assess L2 instruction are provided. Although researchers have examined the use of the MUSIC model in L2 classes, this research is underdeveloped, and many questions related to its use in L2 classes remain. The article concludes by proposing unanswered questions that could lead to more effective uses of the MUSIC model in L2 classes. (shrink)

Argument is a pervasive feature of human interaction, and in its natural contexts of occurrence, it is organized around the management of disagreement. Since disagreement can occur around any kind of speech act whatsoever, not all arguments involve a claim supported by reasons; many involve standpoints attributed to someone but claimed by no one. And although truth and validity are often at issue in naturally occurring arguments, these do not exhaust the standards to which arguers are held. Arguers hold one (...) another accountable for cooperating in the management of disagreement, infusing argumentation with a natural normativity that exists apart from any theorized appraisal standard applied to the claim-reason relationship. Argumentation’s natural normativity is visible not only in how arguments unfold in interaction but also in how humanity continuously strives to improve its methods of disagreement management. (shrink)

Sally Sedgwick presents a fresh account of Hegel's critique of Kant's theoretical philosophy. She argues that Hegel offers a compelling critique of and alternative to the conception of cognition that Kant defended in his 'Critical' period, and explores Hegel's claim to derive from Kantian doctrines clues to a superior form of idealism.

This paper offers an account of ideology in terms of social meanings. Such meanings - constituting a cultural technē - are public, conflicting, and fragmented; yet because they guide our practices, they frame our agency and identities. A cultural technē is ideological when it perpetuates unjust subordination; ideology critique offers liberating alternatives.

Recent work by Brian Skyrms offers a very general way to think about how information flows and evolves in biological networks—from the way monkeys in a troop communicate to the way cells in a body coordinate their actions. A central feature of his account is a way to formally measure the quantity of information contained in the signals in these networks. In this article, we argue there is a tension between how Skyrms talks of signalling networks and his formal measure (...) of information. Although Skyrms refers to both how information flows through networks and that signals carry information, we show that his formal measure only captures the latter. We then suggest that to capture the notion of flow in signalling networks, we need to treat them as causal networks. This provides the formal tools to define a measure that does capture flow, and we do so by drawing on recent work defining causal specificity. Finally, we suggest that this new measure is crucial if we wish to explain how evolution creates information. For signals to play a role in explaining their own origins and stability, they can’t just carry information about acts; they must be difference-makers for acts. _1_ Signalling, Evolution, and Information _2_ Skyrms’s Measure of Information _3_ Carrying Information versus Information Flow _3.1_ Example 1 _3.2_ Example 2 _3.3_ Example 3 _4_ Signalling Networks Are Causal Networks _4.1_ Causal specificity _4.2_ Formalizing causal specificity _5_ Information Flow as Causal Control _5.1_ Example 1 _5.2_ Examples 2 and 3 _5.3_ Average control implicitly ‘holds fixed’ other pathways _6_ How Does Evolution Create Information? _7_ Conclusion Appendix >. (shrink)

The Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli was a pioneering and domineering voice during the early sixteenth century, especially at the genesis of the Protestant Reformation. Despite his stature, Reformation historiography has sadly relegated Zwingli to a lesser status behind reformers such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin. However, his contribution to the changing religious ethos of Reformation Europe was pivotal, yet always accompanied by controversy. In fact, this essay will argue that almost all of the Reformation gains made by (...) Zwingli over the course of roughly twenty-five years of ministry took place through conflict. All the Protestant reformers experienced an element of conflict as a part of their work. Such was the nature of religious renewal and reform in the sixteenth century. Still, conflict not only facilitated and drove Zwingli’s Reformation, but was also a theme woven throughout his life. And in Zwingli’s case war was both figurative and literal. His battles moved well beyond those of his contemporary reformers. Beginning with his haunting experiences as a young chaplain in the Swiss army and culminating with his early death on the battlefield at Kappel, conflict shaped Zwingli’s life, ministry and theology. His was a life characterized by volatility; his Reformation was contested every step of the way. As a portrait of Zwingli emerges against the historic backdrop of war, division and strife, his lasting contributions to the convictions and practices of Protestantism, especially in Baptist and Presbyterian life, should become apparent. (shrink)

Understanding how cooperation evolves is central to explaining some core features of our biological world. Many important evolutionary events, such as the arrival of multicellularity or the origins of eusociality, are cooperative ventures between formerly solitary individuals. Explanations of the evolution of cooperation have primarily involved showing how cooperation can be maintained in the face of free-riding individuals whose success gradually undermines cooperation. In this paper I argue that there is a second, distinct, and less well explored, problem of cooperation (...) that I call the generation of benefit. Focusing on how benefit is generated within a group poses a different problem: how is it that individuals in a group can (at least in principle) do better than those who remain solitary? I present several different ways that benefit may be generated, each with different implications for how cooperation might be initiated, how it might further evolve, and how it might interact with different ways of maintaining cooperation. I argue that in some cases of cooperation, the most important underlying “problem” of cooperation may be how to generate benefit, rather than how to reduce conflict or prevent free-riding. (shrink)

Recent work by Brian Skyrms offers a very general way to think about how information flows and evolves in biological networks — from the way monkeys in a troop communicate, to the way cells in a body coordinate their actions. A central feature of his account is a way to formally measure the quantity of information contained in the signals in these networks. In this paper, we argue there is a tension between how Skyrms talks of signalling networks and his (...) formal measure of information. Although Skyrms refers to both how information flows through networks and that signals carry information, we show that his formal measure only captures the latter. We then suggest that to capture the notion of flow in signalling networks, we need to treat them as causal networks. This provides the formal tools to define a measure that does capture flow, and we do so by drawing on recent work defining causal specificity. Finally, we suggest that this new measure is crucial if we wish to explain how evolution creates information. For signals to play a role in explaining their own origins and stability, they can’t just carry information about acts: they must be difference-makers for acts. (shrink)

This is a first course in propositional modal logic, suitable for mathematicians, computer scientists and philosophers. Emphasis is placed on semantic aspects, in the form of labelled transition structures, rather than on proof theory. The book covers all the basic material - propositional languages, semantics and correspondence results, proof systems and completeness results - as well as some topics not usually covered in a modal logic course. It is written from a mathematical standpoint. To help the reader, the material is (...) covered in short chapters, each concentrating on one topic. These are arranged into five parts, each with a common theme. An important feature of the book is the many exercises and an extensive set of solutions is provided. (shrink)

Ben Rich, J.D., Ph.D., presents a scholarly, passionate view of the ethics of the His manuscript is detailed, analytical, and compassionate. No reasonable sensitive person, especially a physician committed to caring for patients, can disagree with the proposal that human beings should have their physical, emotional, and spiritual pain tended to aggressively, meticulously, and compassionately. Similarly, the same individuals advocating for such pain management would agree that no one should go to jail unless he or she is guilty of a (...) serious crime, that decent people should not be robbed or murdered, that children should not be hungry or homeless, and that all citizens of the United States deserve healthcare. Our society attempts to achieve these goals. Laws are written, discussed, and approved by state and federal congresses, voted on by citizens, and theoretically upheld by the courts, churches, and decent individuals. But, unless the world suddenly becomes inhabited by virtuous, ethical humans who can unfailingly differentiate from then, in spite of an abundance of laws and lawyers, doctors, and nurses, this world will continue to have pain and suffering. And, although we want to hold our doctors, politicians, educators, champion athletes, and others to than the average citizen, it is best to remind ourselves frequently that all humans can be weak and are bound to make imprecise judgments, that there is not a homogenous definition of that values and religious beliefs are variable. (shrink)

Jahoda (2012) criticizes discursive social psychology (DSP) on several different grounds; specifically, he argues that DSP has opaque methodological procedures, is of questionable scientific merit, involves over-interpretation of its data, and implicitly claims its findings to be universal rather than contextually specific. We challenge these criticisms by arguing that observational studies of the kind typical within DSP research have a perfectly valid place within a scientific social psychology, that the interpretations made by DSP researchers should be seen in the context (...) of a temporally extended research process in which they are subject to criticism and potential replication, and that Jahoda is himself guilty of over-interpretation by inferring claims of universality when such an inference is not warranted by the data (i.e. the qualitative content of the sample of research papers considered by Jahoda). (shrink)

Using relations of solidarity in global contexts, this article explores some of the debates about what constitutes solidarity. Three primary forms of solidarity are discussed, with particular attention to the different nature of the solidaristic relations and their moral obligations.

In 1978, Barbara Carper named personal knowing as a fundamental way of knowing in our discipline. By that, she meant the discovery of self‐and‐other, arrived at through reflection, synthesis of perceptions and connecting with what is known. Along with empirics, aesthetics and ethics, personal knowing was understood as an essential attribute of nursing knowledge evolution, setting the context for the nurse to become receptively attentive to and engaged within the interpersonal processes of practice. Although much has been done over the (...) 40 years since Carper described these ways of knowing, and we have seen enormous advances in empirics and ethics, and I would argue even in aesthetics (understanding the subtle craft of nursing in action), personal knowing may not have attracted its fair share of critical unpacking. Further, we see increasing evidence of a distortion on how forms of personal knowledge, including beliefs and attitudes, are being taken up within segments of the profession; these include legitimizing idiosyncratic positionings and, most worrisome, challenges to the idea that there are and ought to be fundamental truths within nursing that stand as central to disciplinary knowledge. In this paper, the author reflects on the confusion that a continued uncritical deference to personal knowing may be creating and the evolving interests it seems to serve. (shrink)

A modest opposition to the brain disease concept of addiction has been mounting for at least the last decade. Despite the good intentions behind the brain disease rhetoric – to secure more biomedical funding for addiction, to combat “stigma,” and to soften criminal approaches – the very concept of addiction as a brain disease is deeply conceptually confused. We question whether Lewis goes far enough in his challenge, robust as it is, of the brain disease concept. For one thing, the (...) notion that addiction is a disease is challenging to refute or confirm because the disease concept itself is poorly defined in medical and psychological nosology. More important, quibbling over what kind of disease addiction is unlikely to be productive. The rational response to adjudicating whether addiction is a brain disease is not to engage in potentially fruitless debates over the question of disease classification but rather to view addiction as an enormously complex set of behaviors that operate on several dimensions, ranging from molecular function and structure and brain physiology to psychology, the psychosocial environment, and social and cultural relations. (shrink)

Unlike feminist ethics, or feminist political philosophy, or even feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, feminist metaphysics cannot be said (yet!) to have standing as a full-fledged sub-discipline of either philosophy or feminist theory. Although one can find both undergraduate and graduate courses devoted to the other sub-fields just mentioned, a course in feminist metaphysics is a rare find; and there are few professional philosophers who would consider listing in their areas of specialization both feminist theory and metaphysics. There are (...) many reasons for this, some having to do with academic politics, e.g., women have not broken into the ranks of metaphysicians in anything like the numbers that can now be found in ethics or political philosophy, and some having to do with tensions between the methods and topics of standard feminist projects and standard metaphysical projects, e.g., feminism is typically taken to be a normative enterprise whereas metaphysics is not. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPerception of emotion in the face is a key component of human social cognition and is considered vital for many domains of life; however, little is known about how this ability differs across the lifespan for men and women. We addressed this question with a large community sample of persons ranging from younger than 15 to older than 60 years of age. Participants were viewers of the television show “Tout le Monde Joue”, and the task was presented on television, with (...) participants responding via their mobile devices. Applying latent variable modeling, and establishing measurement invariance between males and females and across age, we found that, for both males and females, emotion perception abilities peak between the ages of 15 and 30, with poorer performance by younger adults and declining performance after the age of 30. In addition, we show a consistent advantage by females across the lifespan, which decreases in magnitude with increasing age. This large scale study with a wide ran... (shrink)

A cross-section of the writings of Dominique Lestel, Vinciane Despret and Roberto Marchesini is presented here in translation across three special issues on philosophical ethology. These thinkers, relatively unknown in anglophone scholarship, offer important contributions to contemporary debates in posthumanism and animal studies. Particularly in so far as they scrutinise our often awkward attempts to understand the behaviour of animals in labs and fields – to know what animal bodies can do – they share in the rethinking of interspecies forms (...) of life, as domains of both empirical knowledge and zoo-political performance, and thereby take important steps towards a new philosophical ethology. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 109-121.

In the UK, female genital mutilation is unlawful, not only when performed on minors, but also when performed on adult women. The aim of our paper is to examine several arguments which have been advanced in support of this ban and to assess whether they are sufficient to justify banning female genital mutilation for competent, consenting women. We proceed by comparing female genital mutilation, which is banned, with cosmetic surgery, towards which the law has taken a very permissive stance. We (...) then examine the main arguments for the prohibition of the former, assessing in each case both (a) whether the argument succeeds in justifying the ban and, if so, (b) whether a parallel argument would not also support a ban on the latter. We focus on the following arguments. Female genital mutilation should be unlawful because: (1) no woman could validly consent to it; (2) it is an oppressive and sexist practice; (3) it involves the intentional infliction of injury; (4) it causes offence. Our view is that arguments (3) and (4) are unsound and that, although arguments (1) and (2) may be sound, they support not only a ban on female genital mutilation, but also one on (some types of) costmetic surgery. Hence, we conclude that the present legal situation in the UK is ethically unsustainable in one of the following ways. Either the ban on female genital mutilation is unjustified because arguments (1) and (2) are not in fact successful; or the law's permissive attitude towards cosmetic surgery is unjustified because arguments (1) and (2) are in fact successful and apply equally to female genital mutilation and (certain forms of) cosmetic surgery. The people of the countries where female genital mutilation is practised resent references to ‘barbaric practices imposed on women by male‐dominated primitive societies’, especially when they look at the Western world and see women undergoing their own feminization rites intended to increase sexual desirability: medically dangerous forms of cosmetic plastic surgery, for instance …. (shrink)