The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

Philosophy is shaped by life and life is shaped by philosophy. This is reflected in The Philosophical I, a collection of 16 autobiographical essays by prominent philosophers.

This multidisciplinary collection explores three key concepts underpinning psychiatry -- explanation, phenomenology, and nosology -- and their continuing relevance in an age of neuroimaging and genetic analysis. An introduction by Kenneth S. Kendler lays out the philosophical grounding of psychiatric practice. The first section addresses the concept of explanation, from the difficulties in describing complex behavior to the categorization of psychological and biological causality. In the second section, contributors discuss experience, including the complex and vexing issue of how self-agency and (...) free will affect mental health. The third and final section examines the organizational difficulties in psychiatric nosology and the instability of the existing diagnostic system. Each chapter has both an introduction by the editors and a concluding comment by another of the book's contributors. Contributors: John Campbell, Ph.D.; Thomas Fuchs, M.D., Ph.D.; Shaun Gallagher, Ph.D.; Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D.; Sandra D. Mitchell, Ph.D.; Dominic P. Murphy, Ph.D.; Josef Parnas, M.D., Dr.Med.Sci.; Louis A. Sass, Ph.D.; Kenneth F. Schaffner, M.D., Ph.D.; James F. Woodward, Ph.D.; Peter Zachar, Ph.D. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:178 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nathan Snaza Biopolitics without Bodies: Feminism and the Feeling of Life Against a restrictive and imperialist concept of “the human,” which has become globalized during the long march of colonialist, heterosexist modernity, Samantha Frost’s Biocultural Creatures summons “counter-concepts” of the human that might authorize new political possibilities and theories of what it means to be human. She (...) writes, “These counter-concepts of the human are creatures who are embedded in various ecologies and networks of relations and who can integrate their acknowledgement of their embodiment, animality, physicality, dependence, and vulnerability into their self-conception and their orientation toward and modes of being in the world” (3). As this formulation suggests, whatever the new theory of the human is, it has been emerging at the edges of imperialist humanism for some time in a number of distinct political and intellectual projects clustering around decolonization, feminism, queer critique, technoscience, and ecology.1 Frost’s book, 1. Vandana Shiva and Ingunn Moser, editors, Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology (London: Zed Books, 1995); Cyd Cipolla, Kristina Gupta, David A. Rubin, and Angela Willey, eds., Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017); Sandra Harding, Sciences From Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Sandra Harding, ed., The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 179 Nathan Snaza Books Discussed in This Essay Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human. Samantha Frost. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Flourishing Thought: Democracy in an Age of Data Hoards. Ruth A. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets: A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman. Ruth A. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. The Economization of Life. Michelle Murphy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. along with recent work by Michelle Murphy and Ruth Miller, among many other feminist biopolitical thinkers, summons us to reconceive and decolonize the human by feeling it differently, and in so doing, open our intellectual and political projects toward what Miller calls “democracy as a nonhuman affair” in The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets (9). My sense is that this reconception throws into question the ways that we have understood both the human and politics through specific ideas about bodies. The body has a certain phenomenological obviousness for (some) humans, which might explain why it has been so central to most political projects of modernity, many of which share at least some commitment to the liberal individual as a self-contained entity.2 However, something else is beginning to press on contemporary feminist biopolitical thought. Karen Barad’s claim that “[o]bjects are not already 2. For a rich overview of the ways in which the body has animated feminist thought and politics, especially in light of debates in the physical and biological sciences, see Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally Shuttleworth, eds., Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (New York: Routledge, 1990. A different sense of the body begins to appear a few years later in Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993); and Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). 180 Nathan Snaza there; they emerge through specific practices” attunes us to this new orientation.3 For Barad, knowledge practices are open-ended, and “the differential constitutions of human and nonhuman designate particular phenomena that are themselves implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity, including their enfolding and reconstitution in the reconfiguring of apparatuses.”4 In other words, knowledge emerges from the world through “cuts” that reconfigure it: entities—such as “the body” or “the human”—come into being through specific apparatuses. These include theoretical concepts: “Theorizing, like experimenting, is a material practice.”5 The concept of the body, then, is a material part of the intra-active becoming of the world in knowledge production—its meaning exceeds the fact of its existence. While the body has been useful to an enormous number of projects, contemporary feminist thought, in a wide variety of ways, is feeling... (shrink)

Sandra Harding here develops further the themes first addressed in her widely influential book, The Science Question in Feminism, and conducts a compelling analysis of feminist theories on the philosophical problem of how we know what we ...

The world is complex, but acknowledging its complexity requires an appreciation for the many roles context plays in shaping natural phenomena. In _Unsimple Truths, _Sandra Mitchell argues that the long-standing scientific and philosophical deference to reductive explanations founded on simple universal laws, linear causal models, and predict-and-act strategies fails to accommodate the kinds of knowledge that many contemporary sciences are providing about the world. She advocates, instead, for a new understanding that represents the rich, variegated, interdependent fabric of many levels (...) and kinds of explanation that are integrated with one another to ground effective prediction and action. Mitchell draws from diverse fields including psychiatry, social insect biology, and studies of climate change to defend “integrative pluralism”—a theory of scientific practices that makes sense of how many natural and social sciences represent the multi-level, multi-component, dynamic structures they study. She explains how we must, in light of the now-acknowledged complexity and contingency of biological and social systems, revise how we conceptualize the world, how we investigate the world, and how we act in the world. Ultimately _Unsimple Truths _argues that the very idea of what should count as legitimate science itself should change. (shrink)

In a capitalist economy, taxes are the most important instrument by which the political system puts into practice a conception of economic and distributive justice. Taxes arouse strong passions, fueled not only by conflicts of economic self-interest, but by conflicting ideas of fairness. Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or (...) injustice in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights. (shrink)

In _ Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, _Dominic Murphy looks at psychiatry from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy of science, considering three issues: how we should conceive of, classify, and explain mental illness. If someone is said to have a mental illness, what about it is mental? What makes it an illness? How might we explain and classify it? A system of psychiatric classification settles these questions by distinguishing the mental illnesses and showing how they stand in relation to (...) one another. This book explores the philosophical issues raised by the project of explaining and classifying mental illness. Murphy argues that the current literature on mental illness -- exemplified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- is an impediment to research; it lacks a coherent concept of the mental and a satisfactory account of disorder, and yields too much authority to commonsense thought about the mind. He argues that the explanation of mental illness should meet the standards of good explanatory practice in the cognitive neurosciences, and that the classification of mental disorders should group symptoms into conditions based on the causal structure of the normal mind. (shrink)

In May 2021, Alan Bechaz, Racher Du, Will Cailes and Thomas Spiteri interviewed Sandra Leonie Field for UPJA’s Conversations from the Region. A series of discussions that invites philosophers from or based in Australasia to share their student and academic experiences. The segment looks into what inspires people to study philosophy, how they pursue their philosophical interests, and gives our audiences a better idea of philosophy as an undergraduate.

In this timely and provocative book, Nancey Murphy sets out to dispel skepticism regarding Christian belief. She argues for the rationality of Christian belief by showing that theological reasoning is similar to scientific reasoning as described by contemporary philosophy of science. Murphy draws on new historicist accounts of science, particularly that of lmre Lakatos. According to Lakatos, scientists work within a "research program" consisting of a fixed core theory and a series of changing auxiliary hypotheses that allow for (...) prediction and explanation of novel facts: Murphy argues that strikingly similar patterns of reasoning can be used to justify theological assertions. She provides an original characterization of theological data and explores the consequences for theology and philosophy of religion of adopting such an approach. (shrink)

In the first book wholly concerned with divine authority, Mark C. Murphy explores the extent of God's rule over created rational beings. The author challenges the view—widely supported by theists and nontheists alike—that if God exists, then humans must be bound by an obligation of obedience to this being. He demonstrates that this view, the "authority thesis," cannot be sustained by any of the arguments routinely advanced on its behalf, including those drawn from perfect being theology, metaethical theory, normative (...) principles, and even Scripture and tradition. After exposing the inadequacies of the various arguments for the authority thesis, he develops his own solution to the problem of whether, and to what extent, God is authoritative. For Murphy, divine authority is a contingent matter: while created rational beings have decisive reason to subject themselves to the divine rule, they are under divine authority only insofar as they have chosen to allow God's decisions to take the place of their own in their practical reasoning. The author formulates and defends his arguments for this view, and notes its implications for understanding the distinctiveness of Christian ethics. (shrink)

Worries about scientific objectivity seem never-ending. Social critics and philosophers of science have argued that invocations of objectivity are often little more than attempts to boost the status of a claim, while calls for value neutrality may be used to suppress otherwise valid dissenting positions. Objectivity is used sometimes to advance democratic agendas, at other times to block them; sometimes for increasing the growth of knowledge, at others to resist it. Sandra Harding is not ready to throw out objectivity (...) quite yet. For all of its problems, she contends that objectivity is too powerful a concept simply to abandon. In Objectivity and Diversity, Harding calls for a science that is both more epistemically adequate and socially just, a science that would ask: How are the lives of the most economically and politically vulnerable groups affected by a particular piece of research? Do they have a say in whether and how the research is done? Should empirically reliable systems of indigenous knowledge count as "real science"? Ultimately, Harding argues for a shift from the ideal of a neutral, disinterested science to one that prizes fairness and responsibility. (shrink)

In his recent book Bad Beliefs and Why They Happen to Good People, Neil Levy argues that conspiracy theories result from the same rational processes that underlie epistemic success. While we think many of Levy’s points are valuable, like his criticism of the myth of individual cognition and his emphasis on the importance of one’s social epistemic environment, we believe that his account overlooks some important aspects. We argue that social deference is an active process, and as such can be (...) helped or hindered by epistemic virtues and vices. With this in mind, holders of bad beliefs acquire more responsibility than is considered by Levy. (shrink)

Many countries have attempted to transition to democracy following conflict or repression, but the basic meaning of transitional justice remains hotly contested. In this book, Colleen Murphy analyses transitional justice - showing how it is distinguished from retributive, corrective, and distributive justice - and outlines the ethical standards which societies attempting to democratize should follow. She argues that transitional justice involves the just pursuit of societal transformation. Such transformation requires political reconciliation, which in turn has a complex set of (...) institutional and interpersonal requirements including the rule of law. She shows how societal transformation is also influenced by the moral claims of victims and the demands of perpetrators, and how justice processes can fail to be just by failing to foster this transformation or by not treating victims and perpetrators fairly. Her book will be accessible and enlightening for philosophers, political and social scientists, policy analysts, and legal and human rights scholars and activists. (shrink)

In the mid-1970s and early 1980s, several feminist theorists began developing alternatives to the traditional methods of scientific research. The result was a new theory, now recognized as Standpoint Theory, which caused heated debate and radically altered the way research is conducted. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader is the first anthology to collect the most important essays on the subject as well as more recent works that bring the topic up-to-date. Leading feminist scholar and one of the founders of Standpoint (...) Theory, Sandra Harding brings together the a prestigious list of scholars--Dorothy Smith, Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock and Hilary Rose--to not only showcase the most influential essays on the topic but to also highlight subsequent developments of these approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and intellectual and political positions. The Reader will be essential reading for feminist scholars. (shrink)

If humans are purely physical, and if it is the brain that does the work formerly assigned to the mind or soul, then how can it fail to be the case that all of our thoughts and actions are determined by the laws of neurobiology? If this is the case, then free will, moral responsibility, and, indeed, reason itself would appear to be in jeopardy. Murphy and Brown present an original defence of a non-reductive version of physicalism whereby humans (...) are the authors of their own thoughts and actions. (shrink)

This book focuses on the degree to which certain moral and legal doctrines are rooted in specific passions that are then institutionalised in the form of criminal law. A philosophical analysis is developed of the following questions: when, if ever, should hatred be overcome by sympathy or compassion? What are forgiveness and mercy and to what degree do they require - both conceptually and morally - the overcoming of certain passions and the motivation by other passions? If forgiveness and mercy (...) indeed are moral virtues, what role, if any, should they play in the law? (shrink)

Mark C. Murphy addresses the question of how God's ethics differs from human ethics. Murphy suggests that God is not subject to the moral norms to which we humans are subject. This has immediate implications for the argument from evil: we cannot assume that an absolutely perfect being is in any way bound to prevent the evils of this world.

Are humans composed of a body and a nonmaterial mind or soul, or are we purely physical beings? Opinion is sharply divided over this issue. In this clear and concise book, Nancey Murphy argues for a physicalist account, but one that does not diminish traditional views of humans as rational, moral, and capable of relating to God. This position is motivated not only by developments in science and philosophy, but also by biblical studies and Christian theology. The reader is (...) invited to appreciate the ways in which organisms are more than the sum of their parts. That higher human capacities such as morality, free will, and religious awareness emerge from our neurobiological complexity and develop through our relation to others, to our cultural inheritance, and, most importantly, to God. Murphy addresses the questions of human uniqueness, religious experience, and personal identity before and after bodily resurrection. (shrink)

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations.

Is there a limit to the legitimate demands of morality? In particular, is there a limit to people's responsibility to promote the well-being of others, either directly or via social institutions? Utilitarianism admits no such limit, and is for that reason often said to be an unacceptably demanding moral and political view. In this original new study, Murphy argues that the charge of excessive demands amounts to little more than an affirmation of the status quo. The real problem with (...) utilitarianism is that it makes unfair demands on people who comply with it in our world of nonideal compliance. Murphy shows that this unfairness does not arise on a collective understanding of our responsibility for others' well being. Thus, according to Murphy, while there is no general problem to be raised about the extent of moral demands, there is a pressing need to acknowledge the collective nature of the demands of beneficence. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have typically focused on “beauty”, “simplicity”, and “elegance” in their accounts of aesthetic values in science. But this is too narrow: other properties ought to be considered when thinking about aesthetics in science. In this chapter, Alice Murphy expands the discussion by asking: What makes a scientific experiment “profound”? To address this question, she draws on two accounts of profundity as developed in the philosophy of art to consider them in the scientific context. On the first (...) view, profound experiments are those which, due to their design, bring about understanding of some profound subject matter. On the second view, profound experiments are those which resist a straightforward interpretation, and can even prompt the development of new theories and concepts. To flesh out these two aspects of profundity, Murphy brings together theories from philosophy of art and topics in the epistemology of experiment. The chapter ends by demonstrating how broadening our class of aesthetic values to include profundity puts pressure on the scope of a central view brings together the epistemic and aesthetic by associating aesthetic experiences with “feelings of fluency”. (shrink)

The precise nature of W. S. Jevons's utilitarianism as a guiding rule for economic policy has yet to be investigated, and that will be the first issue treated in this paper. While J. A. Schumpeter, for instance, asserted that ‘some of the most prominent exponents of marginal utility’, were ‘convinced utilitarians’, he did not investigate the further implications for Jevons's policy analysis.

In _Sciences from Below_, the esteemed feminist science studies scholar Sandra Harding synthesizes modernity studies with progressive tendencies in science and technology studies to suggest how scientific and technological pursuits might be more productively linked to social justice projects around the world. Harding illuminates the idea of multiple modernities as well as the major contributions of post-Kuhnian Western, feminist, and postcolonial science studies. She explains how these schools of thought can help those seeking to implement progressive social projects refine (...) their thinking to overcome limiting ideas about what modernity and modernization are, the objectivity of scientific knowledge, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity. She also reveals how ideas about gender and colonialism frame the conventional contrast between modernity and tradition. As she has done before, Harding points the way forward in _Sciences from Below_. Describing the work of the post-Kuhnian science studies scholars Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, and the team of Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowtony, and Peter Scott, Harding reveals how, from different perspectives, they provide useful resources for rethinking the modernity versus tradition binary and its effects on the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, for the most part, they do not take feminist or postcolonial critiques into account. As Harding demonstrates, feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies have vital contributions to make; they bring to light not only the male supremacist investments in the Western conception of modernity and the historical and epistemological bases of Western science but also the empirical knowledge traditions of the global South. _Sciences from Below_ is a clear and compelling argument that modernity studies and post-Kuhnian, feminist, and postcolonial sciences studies each have something important, and necessary, to offer to those formulating socially progressive scientific research and policy. (shrink)

Following extended periods of conflict or repression, political reconciliation is indispensable to the establishment or restoration of democratic relationships and critical to the pursuit of peacemaking globally. In this book, Colleen Murphy offers an innovative analysis of the moral problems plaguing political relationships under the strain of civil conflict and repression. Focusing on the unique moral damage that attends the deterioration of political relationships, Murphy identifies the precise kinds of repair and transformation that processes of political reconciliation ought (...) to promote. Building on this analysis, she proposes a normative model of political relationships. A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation delivers an original account of the failure and restoration of political relationships, which will be of interest to philosophers, social scientists, legal scholars, policy analysts, and all those who are interested in transitional justice, global politics, and democracy. (shrink)

For twenty years, the renowned philosopher of science Sandra Harding has argued that science and technology studies, postcolonial studies, and feminist critique must inform one another. In The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader, Harding puts those fields in critical conversation, assembling the anthology that she has long wanted for classroom use. In classic and recent essays, international scholars from a range of disciplines think through a broad array of science and technology philosophies and practices. The contributors reevaluate conventional (...) accounts of the West’s scientific and technological projects in the past and present, rethink the strengths and limitations of non-Western societies’ knowledge traditions, and assess the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. The collection concludes with forward-looking essays, which explore strategies for cultivating new visions of a multicultural, democratic world of sciences and for turning those visions into realities. Feminist science and technology concerns run throughout the reader and are the focus of several essays. Harding provides helpful background for each essay in her introductions to the reader’s four sections. Contributors Helen Appleton Karen Bäckstrand Lucille H. Brockway Stephen B. Brush Judith Carney Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment Arturo Escobar Maria E. Fernandez Ward H. Goodenough Susantha Goonatilake Sandra Harding Steven J. Harris Betsy Hartmann Cori Hayden Catherine L. M. Hill John M. Hobson Peter Mühlhäusler Catherine A. Odora Hoppers Consuelo Quiroz Jenny Reardon Ella Reitsma Ziauddin Sardar Daniel Sarewitz Londa Schiebinger Catherine V. Scott Colin Scott Mary Terrall D. Michael Warren. (shrink)

In a rare full-length volume, renowned feminist thinker Sandra Lee Bartky brings together eight essays in one volume, Sympathy and Solidarity. A philosophical work accessible to an educated general audience, the essays reflect the intersection of the author's eye, work, and sometimes her politics. Two motifs connect the works: first, all deal with feminist topics and themes; second, most deal with the reality of oppression, especially in the disguised and subtle ways it can be manifested.

In the first sentence of the first section of A Theory of Justice Rawls writes that “justice is the first virtue of social institutions.” He soon elaborates.

Ellis and Murphy show how contemporary sciences actually support a religiously based ethic of nonviolence, not by appealing to the Enlightment's mechanismic ...

Against prevailing interpretations, this article contends that Plato's Sophist and Statesman accord the sophist a kind of ‘knowing-how’ (epistêmê). In Soph. 233c10‒d2, the Visitor and Theaetetus agree that the sophist has not truth but a δοξαστικὴ ἐπιστήμη. This phrase cannot mean ‘a seeming knowledge’, for –ικός adjectives formed from verbs express the ability to perform the action denoted by the verb—here, δοξάζω. Although not a first-order, subject-area knowledge, sophistry is a second-order knowledge of how to form and use judgements (doxai). (...) Other acknowledgements of the sophist's epistêmê and the ascription to him of τέχνη, ‘craft/expertise’, confirm that the Visitor's conclusion is not to be dismissed as irony. To critics who argue from the Gorgias and from other works that Plato must consider the Visitor's conclusion an error, the author replies: 1) other dialogues do not control the Visitor dialogues; 2) the Visitor does not validly demonstrate that the sophist lacks all knowledge; 3) by admitting sensibles into Being, the Visitor and Theaetetus allow the objects of epistêmê to include things in the embodied world, even likenesses. Non-philosophers’ epistêmê in the Visitor dialogues is not implicated in the difficulties that critics have raised about epistemology in the so-called Two Worlds dialogues. On this new ontology, even the sophist, if guided by philosophical rulers, can benefit citizens by employing his elenctic expertise as Socrates did, aiding their growth toward virtue. (shrink)

Is curiosity a virtue or a vice? Curiosity, as a disposition to attain new, worthwhile information, can manifest as an epistemic virtue. When the disposition to attain new information is not manifested virtuously, this is either because the agent lacks the appropriate motivation to attain the information or because the agent has poor judgement, seeking information that is not worthwhile or seeking information by inappropriate means. In the right circumstances, curiosity contributes to the agent’s excellence in character: it is appropriate (...) to praise the agent for being curious, blame the agent for not being curious, and also prompt the agent to cultivate such curiosity, at least in some of the relevant contexts. We believe curiosity can also manifest as a moral virtue when it helps an interpreter view a speaker as an agent with a valuable perspective on the world. Especially in interactions where either there is a marked power imbalance between interpreter and speaker, or interpreter and speaker have identity beliefs that lead them to radically different worldviews, curiosity can help foster mutual understanding, and prevent the interpreter from dismissing, marginalizing, or pathologizing the speaker’s perspective. (shrink)

When first published twenty years ago, The Logic of Medicine presented a new way of thinking about clinical medicine as a scholarly discipline as well as a profession. Since then, advances in research and technology have revolutionized both the practice and theory of medicine. In this new, extensively rewritten edition, Dr. Murphy includes changes to show how these different areas of scholarship may affect details of "the logic of medicine" without compromising its fundamental coherence. New to this edition are (...) discussions of the challenge of the flood of new empirical data, new ideas in genetics, molecular biology, homeostasis, pathogenesis, cancer, aging, and Alzheimer's disease. Murphy also comments on such new theoretical topics as dynamic systems, chaos, and fractals and their impact on the burgeoning fields of philosophy and practice of medicine. Written with medical students in mind, the book includes a glossary, many new examples, and problems for solutions with comments on each. An entirely new chapter deals with modeling. Clinicians and researchers will also find the principles thought-provoking and illuminating. (shrink)

Anyone taking a class in Modern Philosophy will learn that one of the most important issues in 17th and 18th Century philosophy was the debate between rationalists and empiricists. In 2005, Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa edited a book entitled Contemporary Debates In Epistemology, which includes a chapter entitled ‘Is There A Priori Knowledge?’. In this chapter, Laurence BonJour defends rationalism and Michael Devitt defends empiricism. So, this philosophical debate has been going on for four centuries, and it still has (...) not been settled. This is the kind of thing that gets philosophy a bad reputation. If a dispute can continue for four centuries without resolution, that is surely an indication that nobody knows how to tell a good answer from a bad one. In this article I want to consider why the debate is unresolved after so much time. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 167-181, July 2022. A growing cadre of influential scholars has converged on a circumscribed definition of empathy as restricted only to feeling the same emotion that one perceives another is feeling. We argue that this restrictive isomorphic matching definition is deeply problematic because it deviates dramatically from traditional conceptualizations of empathy and unmoors the construct from generations of scientific research and clinical practice; insistence on an isomorphic form undercuts much of the functional value (...) of empathy from multiple perspectives of analysis; and combining the opposing concepts of isomorphic matching and self-other awareness implicitly requires motivational content, causing the RIM definition to implicitly require the kind of non-matching emotional content that it explicitly seeks to exclude. (shrink)

This article is a précis of Mark C. Murphy’s _Divine Holiness and Divine Action_ (Oxford University Press, 2021), which offers an account of God’s holiness and of the difference this view of God’s holiness should make to our understanding of divine action.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates says he spent his life examining and questioning people on how best to live, while avowing that he himself knows nothing important. Elsewhere, however, for example in Plato's Republic, Plato's Socrates presents radical and grandiose theses. In this book Sandra Peterson offers a hypothesis which explains the puzzle of Socrates' two contrasting manners. She argues that the apparently confident doctrinal Socrates is in fact conducting the first step of an examination: by eliciting his interlocutors' reactions, (...) his apparently doctrinal lectures reveal what his interlocutors believe is the best way to live. She tests her hypothesis by close reading of passages in the Theaetetus, Republic and Phaedo. Her provocative conclusion, that there is a single Socrates whose conception and practice of philosophy remain the same throughout the dialogues, will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and classics. (shrink)

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content (...) of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding. (shrink)