Deliberative democracy harbors a recurrent tension between full inclusion and intelligible speech. People with profound cognitive disabilities often signify this tension. While liberal deliberative theorists sacrifice inclusion for intelligibility, this exclusion is unnecessary. Instead, by analyzing deliberative locations that already include people with disabilities, I offer two ways to revise deliberative norms. First, the physical presence of disabled bodies expands the value of publicity in deliberative democracy, demonstrating that the publicity of bodies provokes new conversations similar to rational speech acts. (...) Second, the inclusion of people with profound disabilities necessitates a form of collaborative speech in which individuals make claims collaboratively. Habermas offers an ideal site to pursue this analysis because he recognizes the theoretical tension between inclusion and intelligibility and because his personal testimony reveals important insight into the lived experience of disability. (shrink)

I argue that judgments of what is ‘true in a fiction’ presuppose the Reality Assumption: the assumption that everything that is true is fictionally the case, unless excluded by the work. By contrast with the more familiar Reality Principle, the Reality Assumption is not a rule for inferring implied content from what is explicit. Instead, it provides an array of real-world truths that can be used in such inferences. I claim that the Reality Assumption is essential to our ability to (...) understand stories, drawing on a range of empirical evidence that demonstrates our reliance on it in narrative comprehension. However, the Reality Assumption has several unintuitive consequences, not least that what is fictionally the case includes countless facts that neither authors nor readers could ever consider. I argue that such consequences provide no reason to reject the Reality Assumption. I conclude that we should take fictions, like non-fictions, to be about the real world. (shrink)

How do we understand the agency and significance of material forces and their interface with human bodies? What does it mean to be human in these times, with bodies that are inextricably interconnected with our physical world? Bodily Natures considers these questions by grappling with powerful and pervasive material forces and their increasingly harmful effects on the human body. Drawing on feminist theory, environmental studies, and the sciences, Stacy Alaimo focuses on trans-corporeality, or movement across bodies and nature, which (...) has profoundly altered our sense of self. By looking at a broad range of creative and philosophical writings, Alaimo illuminates how science, politics, and culture collide, while considering the closeness of the human body to the environment. (shrink)

From the blending of diverse peoples, a singular culture has developed in the lower Chattahoochee River Valley that persists to the present day-diverse, robust, and tradition proud. Published by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, A Chattahoochee Album is Fred Fussell's personal tribute to the region, lovingly compiled to honor the folklife and traditions of an enduring place and its people.

If there are no fictional characters, how do we explain thought and discourse apparently about them? If there are, what are they like? A growing number of philosophers claim that fictional characters are abstract objects akin to novels or plots. They argue that postulating characters provides the most straightforward explanation of our literary practices as well as a uniform account of discourse and thought about fiction. Anti-realists counter that postulation is neither necessary nor straightforward, and that the invocation of pretense (...) provides a better account of the same phenomena. I outline and assess these competing theories. (shrink)

The empirical turn in bioethics and the deliberative turn in democracy theory occurred at around the same time, one at the intersection of bioethics and social science,1 2 the other at the intersection of political philosophy and political science.3–5 Empirical bioethics and deliberative democratic approaches both engage with immediate problems in policy and practice with normative intent, so it was perhaps inevitable that they would eventually find one another,6–8 and that deliberative research would become more common in bioethics.9 This commentary (...) responds to a paper by Ford et al, who ran a single jury of 18 people in Brighton in the UK in June 2018.10 The jury were asked to consider whether secondary research use of non-structured, free-text data from medical records should be permitted. I will consider three issues: the effort required in deliberative work, the challenge of sampling and selection of jurors and the basis for drawing normative conclusions from deliberative research. First: this report makes clear the effort involved in running a jury. These researchers contracted an external agency experienced in the method, established an oversight committee of policy-makers with power to act, developed expert witness briefs, selected witnesses and coordinated their testimony, and created a questionnaire to measure participants’ views, activities to support their understanding, and a scenario for consideration. …. (shrink)

By insisting on the importance of materiality, this volume breaks new ground in philosophy, feminist theory, cultural studies, science studies, and other fields where the body and nature collide.

Book synopsis: New work on a hot topic by an outstanding team of authors At the intersection of several central areas of philosophy It is the linguistic job of singular terms to pick out the objects that we think or talk about. But what about singular terms that seem to fail to designate anything, because the objects they refer to don't exist? We can employ these terms in meaningful thought and talk, which suggests that they are succeeding in fulfilling their (...) representational task. A team of leading experts presents new essays on the much-debated problem of empty reference and thought. In the 1960s and 1970s Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam initiated a revolution in the then standard conception of reference—a concept at the core of philosophical inquiry. The repercussions of the revolution, particularly felt in metaphysics and epistemology, were soon refined by other influential writers such as Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and John Perry. They argued that some linguistic and mental representations have contents individuated by what they are about—by ordinary referents of expressions such as proper names, indexicals, definite descriptions and common nouns, i.e. by planets, people or natural kinds. The view was at odds with a central philosophical presumption at that time: that cognitive and linguistic access to objective reality is indirect and accidental, mediated by general descriptive characterizations, the only constitutive semantic feature of the expressions; hence its ontological and epistemological repercussions. A turning-point in the debate about how linguistic and mental representation reach external contents concerned the nature of empty mental and linguistic representations, framed by means of the very same expressions crucially invoked in the Donnellan-Kaplan-Kripke-Putnam arguments. The papers in this volume address different aspects of reference and thought about the non-existent. (shrink)

Drawing on past work, we introduce a new approach to the New Riddle of Induction, showing that the inductive projection of gruesome properties is unreliable under particular ideal conditions that are sufficient for the reliable inductive projection of non-gruesome properties. As an auxiliary to our account, we introduce rules for resolving conflicts between background information and the conclusions of otherwise reliable inductive inferences. Our approach to the New Riddle of Induction is quite permissive in the range of properties it recognizes (...) as suitable for inductive projection, allowing for the inductive projection of highly gerrymandered non-natural properties. However, as an addendum to our discussion of the New Riddle, we show that natural properties do form a more reliable basis for inductive projection in cases where one’s sample is small. (shrink)

Standard theories define fiction in terms of an invited response of imagining or make-believe. I argue that these theories are not only subject to numerous counterexamples, they also fail to explain why classification matters to our understanding and evaluation of works of fiction as well as non-fiction. I propose instead that we construe fiction and non-fiction as genres: categories whose membership is determined by a cluster of nonessential criteria, and which play a role in the appreciation of particular works. I (...) claim that this proposal captures the intuitions motivating alternative theories of fiction. (shrink)

Engagement with fiction often inspires emotional responses. We may pity Sethe while feeling ambivalent about her actions (in Beloved), fear for Ellen Ripley as she battles monstrous creatures (in Alien), get angry at Okonkwo for killing Ikemefuna (in Things Fall Apart), and hope that Kiyoaki and Satoko find love (in Spring Snow). Familiar as they are, these reactions are puzzling. Why do I respond emotionally if I do not believe that these individuals exist or that the events occurred? If I (...) merely imagine that my best friend has betrayed me, I do not become angry with him; if I did, I would be considered irrational. Yet although beliefs seem to be necessary for emotions in other contexts, we respond to fiction without the relevant beliefs. These observations prompt two questions about our emotional responses to fiction (henceforth: fictional emotions). The first is descriptive: Should fictional emotions be classified as the same kind of emotions we experience in other contexts? The second is normative: Are fictional emotions irrational or otherwise inappropriate? I take each of these debates in turn. (shrink)

Recent years have seen increasing calls by a few scientists, largely from the Global North, to explore “solar geoengineering,” a set of speculative technologies that would reflect parts of incoming sunlight back into space and, if deployed at planetary scale, have an average cooling effect. Numerous concerns about the development of such speculative technologies include the many ecological risks and uncertainties as well as unresolved questions of global governance and global justice. This essay starts with the premise that solar geoengineering (...) at planetary scale is unlikely to be governable in a globally inclusive and just manner. Thus, the ethically sound approach is to pursue governance that leads to the nonuse of planetary solar geoengineering. Yet is such a prohibitory agreement feasible, in the face of possible opposition by a few powerful states and other interests? Drawing on social science research and a host of existing transnational and international governance arrangements, this essay offers three illustrative pathways through which a nonuse norm for solar geoengineering could emerge and become diffused and institutionalized in global politics: (1) civil society-led transnational approaches; (2) regionally led state and civil society hybrid approaches; and (3) like-minded or “Schengen-style” club initiatives led by states. (shrink)

Book synopsis: The most debated issue in aesthetics today Written by an international team of leading experts Addresses growing methodological concerns in the field Includes an extensive introduction which illuminates key issues Through much of the twentieth century, philosophical thinking about works of art, design, and other aesthetic products has emphasized intuitive and reflective methods, often tied to the idea that philosophy's business is primarily to analyze concepts. This 'philosophy from the armchair' approach contrasts with methods used by psychologists, sociologists, (...) evolutionary thinkers, and others who study the making and reception of the arts empirically. How far should philosophers be sensitive to the results of these studies? Is their own largely a priori method basically flawed? Are their views on aesthetic value, interpretation, imagination, and the emotions of art to be rethought in the light of best science? The essays in this volume seek answers to these questions, many through detailed studies of problems traditionally regarded as philosophical but where empirical inquiry seems to be shedding interesting light. No common view is looked for or found in this volume: a number of authors argue that the current enthusiasm for scientific approaches to aesthetics is based on a misunderstanding of the philosophical enterprise and sometimes on misinterpretation of the science; others suggest various ways that philosophy can and should accommodate and sometimes yield to the empirical approach. The editors provide a substantial introduction which sets the scene historically and conceptually before summarizing the claims and arguments of the essays. (shrink)

This article focuses on how solidarity is negotiated in interactions during medical visits between nurse practitioners and patients. Drawing on data from ethnographic field notes, audio-recorded interactions and interviews involving one NP and 20 patients, the article outlines ways in which the NP creates a sense of solidarity by lessening the social distance between herself and her patients. These attempts at solidarity do not correlate with what has been noted in previous studies of medical visits involving medical doctors and may (...) represent a difference in how both the NP and the patients view the NP as a mid-level provider. As NPs are taking on a more prominent role in the healthcare landscape, it is important to understand what the interactional norms are and how these may deviate from the norm set by MDs. (shrink)

Michel de Certeau war Zeit seines Lebens ein Grenzgänger zwischen den wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen: Von der Theologie über die Historische Anthropologie bis zur Psychoanalyse durchstreifte er verschiedenste Felder der Wissenschaften vom Anderen. Figuren der Alterität können als einigendes Band von de Certeaus Studien begriffen werden, die er anhand der frühneuzeitlichen Mystik ebenso entwickelte wie anhand der Geschichtstheorie oder der Kulturgeschichte der Stadt und des Konsums.

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) theory of dialogue production cannot completely explain recent data showing that when interactants in referential communication tasks have different views of a physical space, they accommodate their language to their partner's view rather than mimicking their partner's expressions. Instead, these data are consistent with the hypothesis that interactants are taking the perspective of their conversational partners.

Statements about fictional characters, such as “Gregor Samsa has been changed into a beetle,” pose the problem of how we can say something true (or false) using empty names. I propose an original solution to this problem that construes such utterances as reports of the “prescriptions to imagine” generated by works of fiction. In particular, I argue that we should construe these utterances as specifying, not what we are supposed to imagine—the propositional object of the imagining—but how we are supposed (...) to imagine. Most other theories of thought and discourse about fictional characters either fail to capture the intentionality of our imaginings, or else obscure the differences between imaginings directed toward fictional characters and those directed toward real individuals. I argue that once we have an account of prescriptions to imagine about real individuals, we can adapt the same framework to specify the contents of prescriptions to imagine about fictional characters, and thereby to account for the truth (or falsity) of statements about fictional characters. (shrink)

Two assumptions are common in discussions of the paradox of tragedy: (1) that tragic pleasure requires that the work be fictional or, if non-fiction, then non-transparently represented; and (2) that tragic pleasure may be provoked by a wide variety of art forms. In opposition to (1) I argue that certain documentaries could produce tragic pleasure. This is not to say that any sad or painful documentary could do so. In considering which documentaries might be plausible candidates, I further argue, against (...) (2), that the scope of tragic pleasure is limited to works that possess certain thematic and narrative features. (shrink)

This paper reports the first empirical investigation of the hypothesis that epistemic appraisals form part of the structure of concepts. To date, studies of concepts have focused on the way concepts encode properties of objects and the way those features are used in categorization and in other cognitive tasks. Philosophical considerations show the importance of also considering how a thinker assesses the epistemic value of beliefs and other cognitive resources and, in particular, concepts. We demonstrate that there are multiple, reliably (...) judged, dimensions of epistemic appraisal of concepts. Four of these dimensions are accounted for by a common underlying factor capturing how well people believe they understand a concept. Further studies show how dimensions of concept appraisal relate to other aspects of concepts. First, they relate directly to the hierarchical organization of concepts, reflecting the increase in specificity from superordinate to basic and subordinate levels. Second, they predict inductive choices in category-based induction. Our results suggest that epistemic appraisals of concepts form a psychologically important yet previously overlooked aspect of the structure of concepts. These findings will be important in understanding why individuals sometimes abandon and replace certain concepts; why social groups do so, for example, during a “scientific revolution”; and how we can facilitate such changes when we engage in deliberate “conceptual engineering” for epistemic, social, and political purposes. (shrink)

A familiar question in the literature on emotional responses to fiction, originally put forward by Colin Radford, is how such responses can be rational. How can we make sense of pitying Anna Karenina when we know there is no such person? In this paper I argue that contrary to the usual interpretation, the question of rationality has nothing to do with the Paradox of Fiction. Instead, the real problem is why there is a divergence in our normative assessments of emotions (...) in different contexts. I argue that explaining this divergence requires a more nuanced account of the rationality of emotion than has previously been proposed. One advantage of my proposal over alternatives is that it helps to explain one way we can learn emotionally from fiction and imagination. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 57-59, July 2011.

Business schools around the globe are seeking effective ways of incorporating business ethics into their programs (Melé 2008, Swanson 2004). Indications from both the market and accrediting bodies suggest best-practice programs will include ethics education. However, the debate continues as to whether meaningful learning is best achieved through stand-alone ethics experiences or via an integrated theme across the program of study (Tesfayohannes & Driscoll 2010, Wilhelm 2005). While many examples of required ethics-experiences can be found, to date, there is only (...) one business school that we are aware of that has implemented a required full-term postgraduate ethics course based on the Giving Voice To Values (GVV) (Gentile 2008) philosophy and content.The purpose of this article is to share the tacit knowledge gained in the authors’ experience of implementing such a course at the University of Western Australia’s Business School. (shrink)

The aim of a theoretically ideal process of informed consent is to promote the autonomy of the patient and to limit unethical physician paternalism. However, in practice, the nature of the medical profession requires physicians to act as ontological decision architects—based on the medical knowledge that they acquire through their experience and training, physicians ontologically determine a subset of viable courses of action for their patient. What is observed is not an unethical physician limitation or biasing of the patient towards (...) certain treatment options that violates patient autonomy or consciously undermines informed consent, but rather a more foundational paternalism that is necessarily inherent to the physician–patient relationship. In this article we argue for a recognition of this underlying physician paternalism and posit that this necessary paternalism is not a foil to patient autonomy, but rather a foundational aspect of the duties of the medical professional within the physician–patient relationship. (shrink)

This article provides a commentary on Standards of practice in empirical bioethics research by Ives and colleagues. There is much to admire in the paper, and in the demanding consensus-building process on which it reports. I discuss the problems and limits of methodological standardisation, and a central conceptual tension that appears to have divided participants. I suggest that the finished product should be understood as a record of a methodological conversation, rather than being used as a disciplinary tool to limit (...) the evolution of empirical bioethics. (shrink)

The article begins by describing two longstanding problems associated with direct inference. One problem concerns the role of uninformative frequency statements in inferring probabilities by direct inference. A second problem concerns the role of frequency statements with gerrymandered reference classes. I show that past approaches to the problem associated with uninformative frequency statements yield the wrong conclusions in some cases. I propose a modification of Kyburg’s approach to the problem that yields the right conclusions. Past theories of direct inference have (...) postponed treatment of the problem associated with gerrymandered reference classes by appealing to an unexplicated notion of projectability . I address the lacuna in past theories by introducing criteria for being a relevant statistic . The prescription that only relevant statistics play a role in direct inference corresponds to the sort of projectability constraints envisioned by past theories. (shrink)

While models of business ethics increasingly recognize that ethical behavior varies cross-culturally, scant attention has been given to understanding how culture affects the ethical reasoning process that predicates individuals' ethical actions. To address this gap, this paper illustrates how culture may affect the various components of individuals' ethical reasoning by integrating findings from the cross-cultural management literature with cognitive-developmental perspective. Implications for future research and transnational organizations are discussed.

The currently standard approach to fiction is to define it in terms of imagination. I have argued elsewhere that no conception of imagining is sufficient to distinguish a response appropriate to fiction as opposed to non-fiction. In her contribution Kathleen Stock seeks to refute this objection by providing a more sophisticated account of the kind of propositional imagining prescribed by so-called ‘fictive utterances’. I argue that although Stock's proposal improves on other theories, it too fails to provide an adequate criterion (...) of fictionality. I conclude by sketching an alternative account according to which fiction is a genre. (shrink)