In the first monograph in this exciting area since then, William Fish develops a comprehensive disjunctive theory, incorporating detailed accounts of the three ...

Introduction: Three key principles -- Sense datum theories -- Adverbial theories -- Belief acquisition theories -- Intentional theories -- Disjunctive theories -- Perception and causation -- Perception and the sciences of the mind -- Perception and other sense modalities.

Whilst it may seem strange to ask to whom “I” refers, we show that there are occasionswhen it is not always obvious. In demonstratingthis we challenge Kaplan's assumptionthat the utterer, agent and referent of “I” arealways the same person.We begin by presenting what weregard to be the received view about indexicalreference popularized by David Kaplan in hisinfluential 1972 “Demonstratives” before goingon, in section 2, to discuss Sidelle'sanswering machine paradox which may be thoughtto threaten this view, and his deferredutterance method of (...) resolving this puzzle. Insection 3 we introduce a novel version of theanswering machine paradox which suggests that,in certain cases, Kaplan's identification ofutterer, agent and referent of “I” breaks down.In the fourth section we go on to consider arecent revision of Kaplan's picture by Predelliwhich appeals to the intentions of the utterer,before arguing that this picture is committedto unacceptable consequences and, therefore,should be avoided if possible. Finally, insection 5, we present a new revision ofKaplan's account which retains much of thespirit of his original proposal whilst offeringa intuitively acceptable way to explain all ofthe apparently problematic data. In doing so,we also show how this picture is able toexplain the scenario which motivated Predelli'saccount without appealing to speakerintentions. (shrink)

In the eyes of some of its critics, disjunctivism fails to support adequately the key claim that a particular hallucination might be indistinguishable from a certain kind of veridical perception despite the two states having nothing other than this in common. Scott Sturgeon, for example, has complained that disjunctivism ‘‘offers no positive story about hallucination at all’’ (2000: 11) and therefore ‘‘simply takes [indistinguishability] for granted’’ (2000: 12). So according to Sturgeon, what the disjunctivist needs to provide is a plausible (...) explanation of just how two mental states which have no common component might be indistinguishable for their subject and this in turn will require the telling of a positive story about hallucination. This is the goal of the present essay. (shrink)

In an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascist" are by the left--Stanley Fish would seem an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. A renowned scholar of Milton, head of the English Department of Duke University, Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the (...) culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of battle. In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. In his witty, accessible dissections of the swirling controversies over multiculturalism, affirmative action, canon revision, hate speech, and legal reform, he neatly eviscerates both the conservatives' claim to possession of timeless, transcendent values, and the intellectual left's icons of equality, tolerance, and non-discrimination. He argues that while conservative ideologues and liberal stalwarts might disagree vehemently on what is essential to a culture, or to a curriculum, both mistakenly believe that what is essential can be identified apart from the accidental circumstances to which the essential is ritually opposed. In the book's first section, which includes the five essays written for Fish's celebrated debates with Dinesh D'Souza, Fish turns his attention to the neoconservative backlash. In his introduction, Fish writes, "Terms that come to us wearing the label 'apolitical'--'common values', 'fairness', 'merit', 'color blind', 'free speech', 'reason'--are in fact the ideologically charged constructions of a decidedly political agenda. I make the point not in order to level an accusation, but to remove the sting of accusation from the world 'politics' and redefine it as a synonym for what everyone inevitably does." Fish maintains that the debate over political correctness is an artificial one, because it is simply not possible for any party or individual to occupy a position above or beyond politics. Regarding the controversy over the revision of the college curriculum, Fish argues that the point is not to try to insist that inclusion of ethnic and gender studies is not a political decision, but "to point out that any alternative curriculum--say a diet of exclusively Western or European texts--would be no less politically invested." In Part Two, Fish follows the implications of his arguments to a surprising rejection of the optimistic claims of the intellectual left that awareness of the historical roots of our beliefs and biases can allow us, as individuals or as a society, to escape or transcend them. Specifically, he turns to the movement for reform of legal studies, and insists that a dream of a legal culture in which no one's values are slighted or declared peripheral can no more be realized than the dream of a concept of fairness that answers to everyone's notions of equality and jsutice, or a yardstick of merit that is true to everyone's notions of worth and substance. Similarly, he argues that attempts to politicize the study of literature are ultimately misguided, because recharacterizations of literary works have absolutely no impact on the mainstream of political life. He concludes his critique of the academy with "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," an extraordinary look at some of the more puzzing, if not out-and-out masochistic, characteristics of a life in academia. Penetrating, fearless, and brilliantly argued, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech captures the essential Fish. It is must reading for anyone who cares about the outcome of America's cultural wars. (shrink)

In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those ...

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 211-226, December 2021.

Recent attempts to show that functional processing entails the presence of phenomenal consciousness have failed to deliver the kind of answers to the “problems of consciousness” that anti-materialists insist the functionalist must provide. I will illustrate this by focusing on the claims that there is a special “Hard Problem” of consciousness and an “explanatory gap” between functional and phenomenal facts. I then argue that if we supplement the functionalist stories with a relationalist conception of phenomenal properties, we can begin to (...) see the shape of a naturalistic theory of phenomenal consciousness that will provide intuitively compelling responses to these problems. (shrink)

Epicureanism after the generation of its founders has been characterised as dogmatic, uncreative and static. But this volume brings together work from leading classicists and philosophers that demonstrates the persistent interplay in the school between historical and contemporary influences from outside the school and a commitment to the founders' authority. The interplay begins with Epicurus himself, who made arresting claims of intellectual independence, yet also admitted to taking over important ideas from predecessors, and displayed more receptivity than is usually thought (...) to those of his contemporaries. The same principles of autonomy and openness figure importantly in the three major areas of focus in these essays: theology, politics and the emotions. (shrink)

He had made it all up, he said, and gloated that his "prank" proved that sociologists and humanists who spoke of science as a "social construction" didn't know what they were talking about. Acknowledging the ethical issues raised by his deception, Professor Sokal declared it justified by the importance of the truths he was defending from postmodernist attack: "There is a world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise?".

Under the general heading of what we might loosely call emotional states, a familiar distinction can be drawn between emotions (strictly so-called) and moods. In order to judge under which of these headings a subject’s emotional episode falls, we advance a question of the form: What is the subject’s emotion of or about? In some cases (for example fear, sadness, and anger) the provision of an answer is straightforward: the subject is afraid of the loose tiger, or sad about England’s (...) poor performance in the World Cup, or angry with her errant child. Although the ways we find natural to talk in such situations can alter (afraid of, sad about, angry with, and so on), in each case the emotion has what Ronald de Sousa, following Wittgenstein, calls a target—“an actual particular to which that emotion relates.” (de Sousa, 1987, p.116). (shrink)

Stanley Fish argues here for a narrower conception of academic freedom, one that does not grant academics a legal status different from other professionals.

Drones deployed to monitor endangered species often crash. These crashes teach us that using drones for conservation is a contingent practice ensnaring humans, technologies, and animals. This article advances a crash theory in which pilots, conservation drones, and endangered megafauna are relata, or related actants, that intra-act, cocreating each other and a mutually constituted phenomena. These phenomena are entangled, with either reciprocal dependencies or erosive entrapments. The crashing of conservation drones and endangered species requires an ethics of care, repair, or (...) reworlding. Diffractions, disruptions that expose difference, result from crashes and reveal the precarious manner by which technologies, laws, and discourses bring nature and culture together. To support crash theory, this article presents three ethnographic cases. A drone crash in the United Kingdom near white rhinoceroses while building machine learning training data exhibits the involvement of the electromagnetic spectrum; the threat of crashes in the Pacific Northwest near Puget Sound orcas discloses the impacts of drone laws; and drone crashes in Sri Lanka among Asian elephants presents the problems of technoliberal ideals around programming natural worlds. Throughout the article, a methodology is developed, parallelism, which attends to the material similarities in lateral phenomena. (shrink)

In the summer of 1977, as I was preparing to teach Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology to a class at the School of Criticism and Theory in Irvine, a card floated out of the text and presented itself for interpretation. It read:WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE AUTHORImmediately I was faced with an interpretive problem not only in the ordinary and everyday sense of having to determine the meaning and the intention of the utterance but in the special sense occasioned by the (...) fact that I didn’t know who the author named or, rather, not named by the card was. It might have been Derrida himself whom I had met, but only in passing. Or it might have been Derrida’s translator, Gayatri Spivak whom I had known for some time and who might well have put me on the publisher’s list. Or it might have been the publisher, in this case the Johns Hopkins University Press of whose editorial board I was then a member. In the absence of any explicit identification, I found myself a very emblem of the difficulties or infelicities that attend distanced or etiolated communication: unable to proceed because the words were cut off from their anchoring source in a unique and clearly present intention. That is to say, I seemed, in the very moment of my perplexity, to be proving on my pulse the superiority of face-to-face communication, where one can know intentions directly, to communication mediated by the marks of writing and in this case by a writing that materialized without any clues as to its context of origin. It may not have been a message found in a bottle, but it certainly was a message found in a book. (shrink)

The willows and the hazel copses greenShall now no more be seenFanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.[Milton, Lycidas, Ll. 42-44] It is my thesis that the reader is always making sense , and in the case of these lines the sense he makes will involve the assumption of a completed assertion after the word "seen," to wit, the death of Lycidas has so affected the willows and the hazel copses green that, in sympathy, they will wither and die (...) . In other words at the end of line 43 the reader will have hazarded an interpretation, or performed an act of perpetual closure, or made a decision as to what is being asserted. I do not mean that he has done four things, but that he has done one thing the description of which might take any one of four forms—making sense, interpreting, performing perpetual closure, deciding about what is intended. Whatever he has done he will undo it in the act of reading the next line; for here he discovers that his closure, or making of sense, was premature and that he must make a new one in which the relationship between man and nature is exactly the reverse of what was first assumed. The willows and the hazel copses green will in fact be seen, but they will not be seen by Lycidas. It is he who will be no more, while they go on as before, fanning their joyous leaves to someone else's soft lays . Nature is not sympathetic, but indifferent, and the notion of her sympathy is one of those "false surmises" that the poem is continually encouraging and then disallowing. Stanley E. Fish, professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of John Skelton's Poetry, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, and Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature. His other contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Facts and Fictions: A Reply to Ralph Rader" , "Normal Circumstances, Literal Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes without Saying, and Other Special Cases" , "A Reply to John Reichert; or, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Interpretation" , and "One More Time" . See also: "Professor Fish on the Milton Variorum" by Douglas Bush in Vol. 3, No. 1; "Stanley Fish's 'Interpreting the Variorum': Advance or Retreat?" by Steven Mailloux in Vol. 3, No. 1; "Interpreting 'Interpreting the Variorum'" by Stanley E. Fish in Vol. 3, No. 1. (shrink)

Under the general heading of what we might loosely call emotional states, a familiar distinction can be drawn between emotions (strictly so-called) and moods. In order to judge under which of these headings a subject’s emotional episode falls, we advance a question of the form: What is the subject’s emotion of or about? In some cases (for example fear, sadness, and anger) the provision of an answer is straightforward: the subject is afraid of the loose tiger, or sad about England’s (...) poor performance in the World Cup, or angry with her errant child. Although the ways we find natural to talk in such situations can alter (afraid of, sad about, angry with, and so on), in each case the emotion has what Ronald de Sousa, following Wittgenstein, calls a target---“an actual particular to which that emotion relates.” (de Sousa, 1987, p.116). (shrink)

A convergence of four genealogies reveals drone power. Environmentality describes the contradictory uses of drones in conservation. Humanitarianism articulates how control is enacted and challenged in human crises. Securitization examines drones in surveillance and counter-surveillance. Militarization, the use of drones in war, explains domination from above and resistance from below. While theories of governmentality dominate, an emergent materialism within drone studies emphasizes the diffusion of power and agency. A synthesis of drone governmentality and drone materialism exposes four flightways or elemental (...) trajectories. The drone is an existential technology – a tool for enlivenment and senescence. As such, drone power migrates between biopolitics and resistance. In doing so, drone performativity generates assemblages of human and nonhuman actants entangled at material-discursive and onto-epistemological levels. Entrapment designates the consequences of increasing dependency on technologies in sociotechnical systems of life and death. (shrink)

Book Information Perception. Perception Barry Maund , Chesham : Acumen Publishing , 2003 , 240 , £12.95 ( paper ) By Barry Maund. Acumen Publishing. Chesham. Pp. 240. £12.95 (paper:).

The lex talionis of the Old Testament has been widely perceived—understandably, but mistakenly—as a barbaric law of retribution in kind. It is better understood as a seminal expression of restraint and proportionality as moral principles of punishment. This has been recognized from the earliest times. Over the intervening centuries, the lex talionis has lost neither its moral significance nor its penal relevance. This is reflected in H.L.A. Hart's synthesis of modern retributivist and utilitarian theories of punishment and, again, in contemporary (...) Canadian law through the recognition of proportionality as the fundamental principle of sentencing under the Criminal Code. The tension between this fundamental principle and Canada's increasing resort to mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment is examined briefly in this light. (shrink)

During the 'What is Realism?' symposium at the 2001 Joint Session, Professor Ayers raised a number of objections to the disjunctive theory of perception. However in his reply, Professor Snowdon protested that Ayers had failed to adequately engage with the disjunctivist's position. This apparent lack of engagement suggests that the terms of this debate are not as clear as they might be. In the light of this, the current paper offers a way in which we might shed light on the (...) underlying nature of the dispute between disjunctivists and non-disjunctivists, and following this, goes on to recommend ways in which the debate might then be taken forward. (shrink)

Nothing I wrote in Is There a Text in This Class? has provoked more opposition or consternation than my claim that the argument of the book has no consequences for the practice of literary criticism.1 To many it seemed counterintuitive to maintain that an argument in theory could leave untouched the practice it considers: After all, isn’t the very point of theory to throw light on or reform or guide practice? In answer to this question, I want to say, first, (...) that this claim is unsupportable. Here, I am in agreement with Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, who are almost alone in agreeing with me and who fault me not for making the “no consequences” argument but for occasionally falling away from it. Those dislike Is There a Text in This Class? tend to dislike “Against Theory” even more, and it is part of my purpose here to account for the hostility to both pieces. But since the issues at stake are fundamental, it is incumbent to begin at the beginning with a discussion of what theory is and is not. 1. See my Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities , p. 370. For a response to the “no consequences” claim, see Mary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: on Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,” Boundary 2 11 : 222. Stanley Fish is the William Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. His most recent contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Profession Despise Thyself: Fear and Self-Loathing in Literary Studies” and “Fear of Fish:”A Reply to Walter Davis” . The present essay is the concluding chapter of Change. (shrink)

Ethical clinical practice requires cultural competency. In the United States, Hispanics report stronger attitudinal barriers to drug abuse treatment than any other racial/ethnic group. Hispanics report feeling that drug abuse treatment providers do not understand their unique cultural needs and are unfamiliar with their experiences of discrimination and immigration. Using this case study to explore broader ethical and policy issues, this study investigates the extent to which US universities train counselors to address the culturally specific needs of Hispanic patients and (...) how this is reflected in practice in Los Angeles County. Based on a content analysis of the required courses, syllabi, and course descriptions at 30 universities related to culture/race/racism/ethnicity/diversity at the undergraduate and graduate levels on the addiction therapist track, and thematic analysis of eight in-depth interviews with counselors working in outpatient rehabilitation centers in Los Angeles, I argue that cultural competency education for drug abuse counselors is too surface level and infrequent to adequately prepare students for a career in addiction counseling for Hispanic clients. Significant changes must be made to how cultural diversity is valued and prioritized in the field of psychology to provide better care for Hispanic people with a substance use disorder and fulfill the moral obligation to eliminate this health disparity. Although this study focuses on counselors in Los Angeles, these findings are relevant for professionals and healthcare systems across the United States and beyond who seek to provide equitable and effective care for Hispanic patients. (shrink)

In ‘On McDowell's identity conception of truth’ , we suggested that McDowell's Identity Theory, according to which a proposition is true if and only if it is identical with a fact, is only fully understood when we realize that there are two identity claims involved. The first is that, when one thinks truly, the content of a whole thought is identical with a Tractarian Tatsachen – a complex fact constituted by simple Sachverhalte – and the second is that these simple (...) Sachverhalte are in turn identical with simple Fregean senses. 1As an example, we suggested that the complex content/proposition/Fregean sense is identical with the Tractarian Tatsachen constituted by the two Sachverhalte: the object's being a tiger and the object's being undernourished, both of which can be seen, as the second identity with simple Fregean senses requires, to present an object in a certain way – as being, in turn, a tiger and undernourished.In his response to our article, Julian Dodd raises three internal criticisms concerning the coherence of the view as a whole, as well as the interpretative criticism that, regardless of the internal coherence of the view, it is not McDowell's. We think that Dodd fails to appreciate the view we have developed in our article, so much so that he believes that his own proffered view of McDowell, articulated in the final section of his response, is an alternative to our own position when in fact it is simply a restatement of that position. Because this point is so fundamental, we begin below by spelling out exactly where Dodd's understanding of our view goes wrong and so why his interpretative criticism misses its target before addressing the internal criticisms concerning the coherence of the view as a …. (shrink)

A common view has it that since we are far likelier to be killed in some road or household accident than in a terror attack, our fear of the latter is exaggerated. I argue that terrorism's relatively limited death toll need not mean that fearing it is unreasonable, nor does it immediately imply that counter-terrorism policies are unjustified – whatever other, legitimate concerns these policies give rise to. First, I argue that in the special case of terrorism, it is misleading (...) to focus on risk per capita, as critics typically do. Second, while terrorism has a probabilistic component which should be relevant to decision-making, risk is not entirely or even primarily what terrorism is all about. Third, I argue that fearing terrorism may be reasonable even while recognizing the small probability of personal harm. Due to terrorism's random character, the belief that one will escape harm rests on little more than statistical evidence. As I explain, this leaves some room for reasonable doubt, and a justified level of fear. (shrink)

A sentence is never not in a context. We are never not in a situation. A statute is never not read in the light on some purpose. A set of interpretative assumptions is always in force. A sentence that seems to need no interpretation is already the product of one...No sentence is ever apprehended independently of some or other illocutionary force. Illocutionary force is the key term in speech-act theory. It refers to the way an utterance is taken—as an order, (...) a warning, a promise, a proposal, a request, etc.—and the theory's strongest assertion is that no utterance is ever taken purely, that is, without already having been understood as the performance of some illocutionary act. Consider, as an example, the sentence "I will go." Depending on the context in which it is uttered, "I will go" can be understood as a promise, a threat, a warning, a report, a prediction, etc., but it will always be understood as one of these, and it will never be an unsituated kernel of pure semantic value. In other words, "I will go" does not have a basic or primary meaning which is then put to various illocutionary uses; rather, "I will go" is known only in its illocutionary lives, and in each of them its meaning will be different. Moreover, if the meaning of a sentence is a function of its illocutionary force , and if illocutionary force varies with the circumstances, then illocutionary force is not a property of sentences, but of situations. That is, while a sentence will always have an illocutionary force , the illocutionary force it has will not always be the same. Stanley E. Fish is the author of, among many other works, Is There a Text in This Class? Interpretative Authority in the Classroom and in Literary Criticism, and The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Facts and Fictions: A Reply to Ralph Rader" , "Interpreting the Variorum" , "Interpreting 'Interpreting the Variorum'" , "A Reply to John Reichert; or, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Interpretation" , and "One More Time". (shrink)

This article discusses preliminary data on advancing what we know about “sacred sites” and their effects on dreaming. Thirty‐five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four unfamiliar outdoor sacred sites in England and Wales. Another volunteer awakened them following the observation of rapid eye movement and asked for dream recall. The same volunteers monitored their own dreams in familiar home surroundings, keeping dream diaries. Equal numbers of site dreams and home dream reports were obtained for each (...) volunteer. The 204 dream reports had previously been subjected to inspection for bizarre and paranormal content, with no significant differences. This analysis used the Hall—Van de Castle Scale, and several differences were found, most notably more aggressive content in site dreams and more friendly content in home dreams. In addition, home dream reports contained more incidences of failure, striving, and success. A number of explanations were proposed for these differences, including expectancy, suggestion, the effect of unfamiliar surroundings, and possible anomalous properties of the sacred sites. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo investigate the external and ecological validity of a standardized test of children’s executive functioning (EF), the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome for Children (BADS-C).BackgroundThere are few standardized measures for assessing executive functions in children, and the evidence for the validity of most measures is currently limited.MethodA normative sample of 256 children and adolescents from age 8–16 years completed the BADS-C, and a parent or teacher completed rating scales of the child’s everyday problems related to EF (Children’s version of (...) the Dysexecutive Questionnaire; DEX-C) and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a commonly used measure of emotional, social, cognitive, and behavioral problems.ResultsExploratory factor analyses yielded a two-factor structure to the BADS-C, indicative of monitoring and abstract reasoning processes, and a three-factor structure to the DEX-C, reflecting behavioral, and cognitive components of the dysexecutive syndrome as well as emotional responsiveness. Regression analyses showed significant relationships between BADS-C scores and everyday functioning as reported on the DEX and SDQ. Furthermore, there were significant differences in BADS-C scores between those children in the upper and lower quartiles on the SDQ.ConclusionResults provide tentative evidence of BADS-C and DEX-C construct, convergent and predictive validity. (shrink)