Bergson scholars such as Leonard Lawlor, Alexander Lefebvre, Philip Soulez, and Frederic Worms have recently argued that Bergson “places the phenomenon of war at the center of his analysis” in Two Sources of Morality and Religion. We want to contribute to this line of interpretation. We claim that Bergson’s account of the causes of, and solution to, the problem of war can be effectively understood in light of a central tenet of classical political philosophy, namely, the City of God, both (...) the concept and Augustine’s great text, de Civitate dei contra paganos. We highlight the shared view of the root of war in Augustine and Bergson, namely the lust for domination, libido dominandi. Our contribution provides a useful heuristic for understanding Bergson’s account of war, not a claim of Augustine’s influence on Bergson. (shrink)

[From the publisher]Taking the term “phenomenologist” in a fairly broad sense, Early Phenomenology focuses on those early exponents of the intellectual discipline, such as Buber, Ortega and Scheler rather than those thinkers that would later eclipse them; indeed the volume precisely means to bring into question what it means to be a phenomenologist, a category that becomes increasingly more fluid the more we distance ourselves from the gravitational pull of philosophical giants Husserl and Heidegger. In focusing on early phenomenology this (...) volume seeks to examine the movement before orthodoxies solidified. More than merely adding to the story of phenomenology by looking closer at thinkers without the same fame as Husserl or Heidegger and the representatives of their legacy, the essays relate to one of the earlier thinkers with figures that are either more contemporary or more widely read, or both. Beyond merely filling in the historical record and reviving names, the chapters of this book will also give contemporary readers reasons to take these figures seriously as phenomenologists, radically reordering of our understanding of the lineage of this major philosophical movement. (shrink)

Media reflect and affect social understandings, beliefs, and values on many topics, including the lives of autistic and disabled people. Media analysis has garnered attention in the field of disability studies, which some scholars and activists consider a promising approach to discussing the experiences of – and for promoting social justice for – autistic people, who remain underrepresented on scripted television. Additionally, existing portrayals often rely on stereotyped representations of disabled individuals as objects of pity, objects of inspiration, or villains. (...) Television may also serve as a primary source of public knowledge about disabled people and the concept of disability. It is therefore essential that such portrayals avoid stigma and stereotyping. We take a disability studies lens to critically analyze and compare representations of diverse people, who may sometimes be conflated in the popular imaginary, across television series about autistic characters, those with cerebral palsy, and a character with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We employ an intersectional analytic framework to problematize representations of autistic and disabled people, using television, feminist, and critical disability studies literatures. We analyze how the formal structure of television storytelling can either enable or disable its characters, as well as how portrayals of disability that display a sensitivity to concerns raised by critical disability discourse do not necessarily display the same sensitivity when they intersect with marginalized experiences of gender, sexuality, race, and class. (shrink)

The article examines recent debates surrounding public sociology in the context of a UK based Department of Applied Social Sciences. Three areas of work within the department form the focus of the article: violence against women and children; community-based oral history projects and health ethics teaching. The article draws on Micheal Burawoy’s typology comprising public, policy, professional and critical sociology, and argues that much of the work described in the case studies more often lies somewhere in between, in the interstices, (...) rather than within one or other of the four types. The result is not without its tensions and dilemmas, some of which are identified and explored, notably those arising from attempts to appeal to diverse audiences and meet the sometimes conflicting expectations of each. (shrink)

Providing theoretical and applied analyses of Michel Henry's practical philosophy in light of his guiding idea of Life, this is the first sustained exploration of Henry's practical thought in anglophone literature, reaffirming his centrality to contemporary continental thought. This book ranges from the tension between his methodological insistence on life as non-intentional and worldly activities to Henry's engagement with the practical philosophy of intellectuals such as Marx, Freud, and Kandisky to topics of application such as labor, abstract art, education, political (...) liberalism, and spiritual life. An international team of leading Henry scholars examine a vital dimension of Henry's thinking that has remained under-explored for too long. (shrink)

Is it permissible to implicate non-epistemic values in the ‘core’ of scientific reasoning? This paper offers an appraisal of Parker’s (2024) Epistemic Projection Approach (EPA) prescribing acceptable relations between epistemic and non-epistemic values in research conduct. Non-epistemic values are granted a role in determining epistemic characteristics for a research project but are meant to be ‘screened off’ from core research decisions via epistemic projection. This discussion takes the EPA for a test drive. We identify three challenges to its conceptual and (...) practical viability and show how EPA currently lacks resources to address them, indicating a need for further development. (shrink)

The concept of evidence is central to both epistemology and the philosophy of science. Of course, ‘evidence’ is hardly a philosopher's term of art: it is not only, or even primarily, philosophers who routinely speak of evidence, but also lawyers and judges, historians and scientists, investigative journalists and reporters, as well as the members of numerous other professions and ordinary folk in the course of everyday life. The concept of evidence would thus seem to be on firmer pre-theoretical ground than (...) various other concepts which enjoy similarly central standing within philosophy. (Contrast, for example, the epistemologist's quasi-technical term ‘epistemic justification’.). (shrink)

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is a multifaceted disability, characterized not only by brain- and body-based challenges, but also high rates of environmental adversity, lifelong difficulties with daily living, and distinct sociocultural considerations. FASD is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disabilities in the Western world and associated with significant social and economic costs. It is important to understand the complexities of FASD and the ways in which FASD requires unique consideration in research, practice, and policy. In this article, we discuss (...) our perspectives on factors that distinguish FASD from other disabilities in terms of complexity, co-occurrence, and magnitude. We provide an overview of select literature related to FASD as a socially rooted disability with intergenerational impacts and multiple layers of stigma. These social issues are intertwined with notable experiences of adversity across the lifespan and high rates of co-occurring health concerns for individuals with FASD, all of which present unique challenges for individuals, caregivers, families, service providers, and policy makers. Understanding these factors is the first step in developing and implementing specialized initiatives in support of positive outcomes for individuals with FASD and their families. Future directions are proposed for advancing research, practice, and policy, and responding to the unique complexities of FASD. (shrink)

Big dreams are rare but highly memorable dream experiences that make a strong and lasting impact on the dreamer's waking awareness. Moving far beyond "I forgot to study and the finals are today" and other common scenarios, such dreams can include vivid imagery, intense emotions, fantastic characters, and an uncanny sense of being connected to forces beyond one's ordinary dreaming mind. In Big Dreams, Kelly Bulkeley provides the first full-scale cognitive scientific analysis of such dreams, putting forth an original (...) theory about their formation, function, and meaning.Big dreams have played significant roles in religious and cultural history, but because of their infrequent occurrence and fantastical features, they have rarely been studied in light of modern science. We know a great deal about the religious manifestations of big dreams throughout history and around the world, but until now that cross-cultural knowledge has never been integrated with scientific research on their psychological roots in the brain-mind system. In Big Dreams, Bulkeley puts a classic psychological thesis to the scientific test by clarifying and improving it with better data, sharper analysis, and a broader evolutionary framework. He brings evidence from multiple sources, shows patterns of similarity and difference, questions prior assumptions, and provides predictive models that can be applied to new sets of data. The notion of a connection between dreaming and religion has always been intuitively compelling; Big Dreams transforms it into a solid premise of religious studies and brain-mind science. Combining evidence from religious studies, psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, Big Dreams makes a compelling argument that big dreams are a primal wellspring of religious experience. They represent an innate, neurologically hard-wired capacity of our species that regularly provokes greater self-awareness, creativity, and insight into the existential challenges and spiritual potentials of human life. (shrink)

ExcerptIn my assessment, the first Trump presidency was always something of a non-event: pace Trump’s rhetorical bloviation—which has provoked almost a decade of histrionics about fascism that have become an article of faith for the urbane left—his presidency did not represent any distinctive departure from American politics as usual,1 with the partial exception of a relatively dovish foreign policy that saw no new wars begun during his tenure. COVID-19 constituted an exceptional interlude but was hardly Trump’s doing, and his administration’s (...) response to it (despite some contradictory statements from the man himself) was ultimately mainstream. (shrink)

Abstract Instruments have limits. Science knows this, names them, and builds accordingly. Law has been slower to apply the same honesty to itself. This paper draws on two sources separated by three centuries: Joseph Butler's Fifteen Sermons (1726), preached at the Rolls Chapel, and the physical definition of the SI second. Both illuminate the same structural problem. A caesium clock is, within its ruleset, essentially perfect. It will not lose a second in 300 million years. Yet science does not pretend (...) the ruleset is everything. Dark matter is inferred, not observed. The interior of a black hole is formally unknowable. These are not failures. They are honest acknowledgements of what an instrument can do, and what it cannot. Butler drew the same distinction in moral terms. A watch measures. It does not answer. A machine may operate with perfect regularity, but it cannot be charged with what is done. Only an agent — conscience-bearing, oath-bound, accountable — receives the charge. Law resembles the clock more than it admits. Rules can measure ordinary cases with great precision. But they do not exhaust judgment at the edge. The hard case, the exceptional circumstance, the moment equity was invented to address — these are the black holes of legal reasoning. They are not resolved by a better mechanism. They require a faculty that can answer. This paper argues that Butler's distinction between machine and agent is not archaic moral philosophy. It is a precise description of what law presupposes at the point of judgment, and what it risks losing if that presupposition goes unexamined. A longer paper developing the statutory and historical dimensions of this argument is forthcoming. (shrink)

Dealing with challenging topics like race and gender in the classroom can be a daunting task. Even when we mean well and try hard, we can easily make mistakes that can have serious consequences for our students, especially those in targeted or oppressed groups. Whether or not we explicitly discuss race and gender in our classes, well-meaning professors and students who believe in equality and social justice often commit racist and sexist microaggressions, which are words and actions that, generally unintentionally, (...) convey racist and sexist messages. These microaggressions have a negative impact on students, and impede their learning process. In this paper, I will explain what microaggressions are and why they happen, in order to help prevent them from occurring. I will also examine ways of effectively managing them when they do occur. (shrink)

English once knew the difference between conscience and consciousness and has spent centuries forgetting it. This essay restores the distinction by arguing that conscience is not a psychological faculty but the transcendent Form, the perfect right thought and perfect right action, while consciousness is the imperfect performance of that Form. Drawing on old language and law, with philosophy and theology in support, the author demonstrates that conscience can be known apophatically: by the interior wreckage (fear, confusion, resentment, despair) that grows (...) when fidelity lapses, and by the unexpected blessings that appear when the field is tended again. The relation between a life and its conscience is shown to be bilateral: conscience keeps its side of the troth unfailingly, so the human task is not heroic arrival but daily subtraction, getting out of the way so that what is already holding may act. The recovery of the source modernity misplaced is therefore not an invention but a remembering, verified in the court of lived experience. -/- It's in development and it's hard thought, if it trips it gets up again quickly. After all nothing is perfect. (shrink)

The Together-Knowing: Conscience, Consciousness, and Resonance Working capture. Philosophy, held at the border of physics and not across it. Conscience carries its meaning in its own name. Con-scientia. A knowing-together. Not a knowing held alone but a knowing held with, the act set beside the standard one holds and known against it. The word is old and it is honest. It tells you that conscience is not a store of rules. It is a bringing-together, and what it brings together is (...) the deed and the measure. Lived from the inside, this together-knowing has a shape the ear knows better than the eye. When the act meets the conviction, there is accord. When it parts from it, there is dissonance, a jarring the person feels before he can name it. Fidelity is the word for that accord held over time, the act kept true to the standard not once but as a practice. This is why the language of sound sits so close to conscience. Conscience is lived as consonance and as its breach. Two old words gather the thread, and the English ear hears them as one. A cymbal is a struck thing, all resonance, sound and its slow dying. A symbol, from the Greek symbolon, is a token once broken in two, the halves kept apart and matched again later to prove that they belong. The first carries the sound. The second carries the together, the deed and the measure that must be made to fit. Conscience holds both at once, the ringing and the matching. That the two words chime in English is an accident of the ear and not of the root, the cymbal grown from a word for a hollow bowl, the symbol from a word for throwing together. The chime is not evidence. It is a help to memory, which is the honest use of a likeness that does not run all the way down. There is a structure underneath worth marking. On one account of awareness, consciousness is itself a binding, the gathering of scattered information into a single field that holds together as one experience.*1 If that is what awareness is, then conscience is the same operation turned a different way. Awareness binds the incoming world into one. Conscience binds the deed to the standard and turns the binding back upon the self. The one looks out and gathers the world. The other looks in and gathers the act and the measure into a single relation that either holds or breaks. Said plainly. Conscience may be awareness reflected upon a person's own act. Not a separate machinery, but the same knowing-together, aimed inward at the fit between what was done and what is held. This is philosophy, and it is offered as philosophy. As a description of how conscience is lived, the language of resonance and accord is exact, and it earns its place. Whether that binding is, at the root, the same physical thing physics is circling when it reaches for field and resonance is a further question, and it is not one this can answer. The word resonance is generous. It fits memory, music, an ecosystem, almost anything that makes many into one, and that generosity is a warning as much as a gift. To be more than a likeness, the claim would have to say that conscience is the very same integrative act as awareness, performed reflexively, and would have to say what could tell that apart from a loose analogy, and what could test it. Until then it is a strong candidate and not a found connection. So it is set down here the way a thinker sets things down at a border. Standing on the philosophy, which holds. Pointing at the physics, which may one day hold or may not. Marking the question, so that it is not lost, and leaving the proving to an inquiry better equipped than this one. 1: Johnjoe McFadden, 'The Conscious Electromagnetic Information (CEMI) Field Theory: The Hard Problem Made Easy?' (2002) 9(8) Journal of Consciousness Studies 45. (shrink)

In biomedicine, practitioners often treat risk of disease as an illness in itself—suitable for monitoring and intervention. In some cases, increased diagnostics improve health outcomes by detecting problems early. Recently, however, science and technology studies scholars and medical practitioners have noted that the treatment of risk can also lead to unnecessary intervention and possible harm. Despite these findings, it is often hard to see changes in practice. Childbirth serves as an illuminating case because two models of health risk operate simultaneously—in (...) addition to the model valuing frequent intervention, there is another that seeks to mitigate risk by refusing medical surveillance. Based on interviews with birth providers and an analysis of professional documents, this article uses the case of fetal heart rate monitoring in American childbirth to demonstrate how some health providers are framing “intentional non-knowing” as a moral imperative to reduce medical risk. Studying the success and limitations of this “risk counterculture” illuminates how risk societies are changing in response to data suggesting that more information can have hurtful effects. This case integrates well-developed theories of knowledge production with less-developed theories of knowledge nonproduction, leading to a more fruitful discussion of the boundaries of responsible knowledge in risk management. (shrink)

“I have a hard year, a year of effort before me. . . . I think I shall very soon be completely ruined; it seems inevitable. What I have to do is to peg away and try to do my duty, and starve if necessary. One thing I must make up my mind to clearly. I must earn some money every day” (W8 lxiv). Peirce wrote these words in his diary on New Year’s Day 1892, at 12:05 a.m. His forced (...) resignation from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, his most reliable source of income, had taken effect at midnight. On another front, he had recently published the first two articles in his landmark Monist metaphysical series (selections 22–24). A replacement for his Coast Survey income never did appear, but three more papers in the Monist .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Garrison on Beauty in Artworks as a Response to Regulatory PowerA Focus on Butler and KantKelly Coble (bio)As Garrison concedes, critical theory and Confucian philosophy will strike many of his readers as unlikely interlocutors. One would be hard-pressed to find two intellectual traditions more historically and culturally remote, and at least at first glance, more antithetical in their stances on authority and cultural power. In Reconsidering the Life of (...) Power Garrison prosecutes a brilliant case against these appearances, bringing these traditions into sustained and productive conversation. He is able to do so successfully by steadfastly refraining from a style of intercultural philosophy that would force these traditions into abrupt conversation—an errand that would involve stripping each tradition of the cultural and historical circumstances that give it life (p. 31). Instead, Garrison delineates a vast, rhizomatic network in which these traditions can be observed interacting and intersecting, displaying "intriguing similarities as well as informative divergences" (p. 50). Tracing such a network is a daunting task, demanding one bring to bear (i) an elegant, accessible rhetorical style; (ii) redoubtable scholarly erudition: the book features close readings of texts by European philosophers from Kant to Foucault and Butler, Confucius and major figures in the classical Confucian tradition, and leading contemporary scholars of (and in) Confucian philosophy; and not least (iii) an original argument breathing fresh life into the many texts, old and new, under examination.In what follows I offer a summary of a large part of that argument and offer critical comment on a small part of it. As Garrison's title indicates, the book can profitably be read as a sympathetic development of, and critical response to, Butler's account of the psychodynamics of power as developed, [End Page 821] above all, in their 1997 The Psychic Life of Power. Of course, what sets Garrison's endeavor apart from the standard commentary is the use he makes of Confucian insights. One impetus for his doing so is recognition of fertile common ground. The poststructuralist, psychoanalytic, queer-theoretical tradition of which Butler is a major contributor shares with the Confucian tradition a "particular insight into how the relational self arises discursively through naming, ritual, and performance" (p. 49).On what grounds, then, does Butler's account of power merit a critical response, according to Garrison, and how do Confucian insights help shape that response? The point de départ of Butler's 1997 book is Foucault's affiliated notions of assujettissement ("subjection" or "subjugation") and subjectivation (in English as in French). "Subjectivation" is Foucault's coinage for the complex process responsible at once for the formation and maintenance of subjects and their subjection and subordination, a para-doxical achievement that is a hallmark of panoptic regulatory power. As Butler observes, subjection signifies "the way regulatory power maintains subjects in subordination by producing and exploiting the demand for continuity, visibility, and place."1 (We note that Butler's influential account of the performativity of gender also draws heavily on this concept of subjectivation.) In their 1997 book Butler gives systematic attention to the following dynamic: subjects depend on the subordinating effects of regulatory power for their existence, giving them an existential stake in, and concomitant desire for, their own subordination. Building on the Foucauldian thesis that the "psychic operation of the norm offers a more insidious route for regulatory power than explicit coercion," Butler proceeds through Hegel's "unhappy consciousness" and Nietzsche's "bad conscience" to an original reading of Freud's melancholia.2 As in Hegel and Nietzsche, so also in Freud, Butler observes, the ego is said to "turn back upon itself," taking itself "not only as an object of love, but of aggression and hate as well."3 And as in Hegel and Nietzsche, so also in Freud, this idea of a turn from the object to the ego that produces the ego, Butler observes, both defies intelligibility and describes a scene of failure. In Butler's words, "The turn from the object to the ego can never quite be accomplished," and as a result the subject "is haunted by an inassimilable remainder, a melancholia that marks the limits of subjectivation."4So far, Garrison... (shrink)

In Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health (Knopf, 2023), James Tabery traces the ascendance of personalized or precision medicine in America, arguing that America's emphasis on genetics offers more hype than transformational power. In his examination of the power struggles, social relationships, and technological advances that centered the gene in American health policy, Tabery demonstrates how an intensive focus on genetics draws attention away from both the fundamental causes of health disparities and more‐effective changes (...) that could be made to developmental, physical, and social environments. American policy‐makers, health care institutions, funders, and bioethicists should not let the technological shine and attractive politics of personalized medicine continue to replace the hard but necessary work of addressing sociopolitical causes of disease and illness. (shrink)

This thesis examines the prospects for mechanical procedures that can identify true, complete, universal, first-order logical theories on the basis of a complete enumeration of true atomic sentences. A sense of identification is defined that is more general than those which are usually studied in the learning theoretic and inductive inference literature. Some identification algorithms based on confirmation relations familiar in the philosophy of science are presented. Each of these algorithms is shown to identify all purely universal theories without function (...) symbols. It is demonstrated that no procedure can solve this universal theory inference problem in the more usual senses of identification. The question of efficiency for theory inference systems is addressed, and some definitions of limiting complexity are examined. It is shown that several aspects of obvious strategies for solving the universal theory inference problem are NP-hard. Finally, some non-worst case heuristic search strategies are examined in light of these NP-completeness results. These strategies are based upon an isomorphism between clausal entailments of a certain class and partition lattices, and are applicable to the improvement of earlier work on language acquisition and logical inductive inference. (shrink)

Readers of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics need hardly be told that each year a huge amount of very valuable work in bioethics is carried out in the academic's study and the university seminar room and appears in the pages of specialist, restricted-readership journals. However, if it is to be as effective, relevant, and influential as it deserves to be, there arguably comes a point when this work needs to leave the confines of the academy and engage the wider (...) public. This perhaps happens less often than it should. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 311-312 [Access article in PDF] Hill, Claire Ortiz and Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock. Husserl or Frege? Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. Pp. xiv + 315. Cloth, $39.95. Analytic philosophy is rooted in Frege; phenomenology, in Husserl: or so goes the old, old story. Most philosophers now recognize that Husserl has a role to play in analysis' roots, and (...) Frege in phenomenology's. Hill and Haddock try to show that Husserl's role in analysis' roots is larger than is now recognized, and to show that Husserl has much of relevance to say about matters currently central in analysis.Hill and Haddock tag-team the topic. Chapters are written now by one, now by the other. A common theme is: "Look, Husserl's bested Frege here!" One chapter is entitled "To be a Fregean or To be a Husserlian?" and the book pushes vigorously in the Husserlian direction. There are several chapters devoted to sense and reference, Fregean and Husserlian. There are chapters on logical abstraction and on the philosophy (primarily Husserlian) of mathematics. Other figures, such as Cantor and Hilbert, also put in appearances.The book's primary merit is in revealing how much of interest Husserl has to say about matters currently central in analysis—particularly in the philosophy of logic/language and in the philosophy of mathematics. There are also interesting extensions of Husserl's views, carefully kept Husserlian, that are worthy of attention: extensions of his views on the philosophy of mathematics and his Platonism. The book's primary demerit is in the often flat-footed readings of Frege that are offered. (In this respect, the book returns the disfavor of the flat-footed readings of Husserl offered by more analytically-minded philosophers.) Nowhere are the names of Warren Goldfarb, Thomas Ricketts or Cora Diamond mentioned—the philosophers who have provided a reading of Frege that makes him a much more interesting foil for Husserl. On the reading I have in mind, Frege is not a Platonist, and he does not have a truth-conditional semantics. Further, on this reading, Frege's ontological categories supervene on logical ones, and his ontology does not ground or explain objectivity. Instead of offering a sematic theory, on this reading Frege is denying that there is any coign of vantage for the offering of such. But this Frege, or this reading of Frege, makes no appearance in the book. Another noteworthy omission—related, I think, to the omission of the alternative reading of Frege—is any extended discussion of a crucial difference in the ways that Frege and Husserl thought of language: Frege thought of language as the universal medium, Husserl of language as a calculus. (Jaakko Hintikka both popularized this distinction and suggested that Husserl had the [End Page 311] calculus conception.) Conceived as the universal language, language is inescapable. Husserl's conception leads him to think that he can escape language, step behind it and survey it. If this crucial difference is not kept in mind, it is difficult, I think, to see the various disagreements between Frege and Husserl at their proper depth.For example, neglecting this difference makes it hard to see the parallel difference between Frege and Husserl over the appropriate conception of logic. Since Frege thinks of logic as universal (first and foremost), he would reject Husserl project of providing a geneology for logic as deeply confused. For Frege, there can be no grounding of logic, no justifying of logic from behind. Logical investigation is, for Frege, investigating the mind. There is no other type of investigation—no matter how transcendentally phenomenological—that can subordinate logical investigation to it, or can usurp the title of the investigation of the mind. There is no experience—no matter how pre-predicative (what would Frege make of 'pre-predicative'?)—from which logic springs. Wittgenstein's Tractarian comment is thoroughly Fregean: "Logic precedes every experience—that something is so." (5.552)Still and all, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the issues it discusses, since... (shrink)

Values are numerous, interrelated and hard to discern in professional practice. This article reports on key findings from research into locating professional values within health social work practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. The research explores how 15 health social workers experience and negotiate value demands when working with newborn infants. A staged methodology underpinned by constructivist grounded theory was utilised to generate theoretical knowledge through two phases of semi-structured individual interviews. The research firmly located health social workers practice in the (...) middle ground of a complex, tension-ridden practice environment with health social workers courageously striving to balance competing requirements. Within a health model influenced by neoliberal policy, key tensions related to challenges faced due to professionals oversimplifying social circumstances in risk-laden situations. This resulted in issues of judgements, bias and racism being a central concern for the participants’ social work practice. Despite these tensions, the place of social justice as a primary organising value was affirmed by the research. A stronger focus on the profession’s values would strengthen the collective voice of health social workers and their identity, in order to better address the systemic drivers of health inequities. (shrink)

The current informal practice of pharmacometrics as a combination art and science makes it hard to appreciate the role that informatics can and should play in the future of the discipline and to comprehend the gaps that exist because of its absence. The development of pharmacometric informatics has important implications for expediting decision making and for improving the reliability of decisions made in model-based development. We argue that well-defined informatics for pharmacometrics can lead to much needed improvements in the efficiency, (...) effectiveness, and reliability of the pharmacometrics process. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of the pervasive yet often poorly appreciated role of informatics in improving the process of data assembly, a critical task in the delivery of pharmacometric analysis results. First, we provide a brief description of the pharmacometric analysis process. Second, we describe the business processes required to create analysis-ready data sets for the pharmacometrician. Third, we describe selected informatic elements required to support the pharmacometrics and data assembly processes. Finally, we offer specific suggestions for performing a systematic analysis of existing challenges as an approach to defi ning the next generation of pharmacometric informatics. (shrink)

Now that mankind has created the capability of destroying itself through nuclear technology, is it still possible to think in terms of a "just war"? Johnson argues that it is, and in the context of specific case studies he offers moral guidelines for addressing such major contemporary problems as terrorist activity in a foreign country, an individual’s conscientious objection to military service, and an American defense policy that requires development of weapons that may be morally employed in case of need. (...) "Remarkable.... A thoughtful and even profound book, which can be warmly recommended."—Adam Roberts, _New Society_ __ "[A] wise, prudential, and moral thesis.... A most important book, one that all Americans who can should read."—George Armstrong Kelly, _Political Science Quarterly_ __ "At its heart, _Can Modern War be Just? _Is a challenge to the common assumption that any modern war must be total—an unrestrained, spasmodic release of one’s entire destructive capacity against the whole of the enemy’s population."—Richard Allen, _Journal of Religious Ethics_ __ "Johnson... seriously attempt[s] to balance principles and respect facts. For this he is to be praised."—Gary Jason, _Chronicles of Culture_ __ "Johnson’s application of just war doctrine to the hardest problems of contemporary warfare is both morally sensitive and intellectually bold. Readers will sometimes disagree with his arguments, but they will be forced to think hard, and they will learn what it is to work within a moral tradition."—Michael Walzer. (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 ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionSpatial, Environmental, and Ecocritical Approaches to Holocaust MemoryEmily-Rose Baker (bio), Michael Holden (bio), Diane Otosaka (bio), Sue Vice (bio), and Dominic Williams (bio)The successful implementation of genocide during the Holocaust depended on the spatial organisation of mass murder. From the concentrated ghettos and camps delimited by walls and barbed wire to the open fields and camouflaged forests where victims were shot en masse, Anne Kelly Knowles et al. (...) argue, specific locations, patterns of migration, deportation and evacuation, and other spatial elements such as scale, were all central to the Nazi regime's creation of a "comprehensive geography of oppression."1 This is hardly surprising given the biopolitical logics and colonial fantasies underpinning Lebensraum ('living space'), the territorial concept guiding the genocidal aims of the Third Reich, which designated zones of life as well as the inverse on the European continent. The Holocaust was also experienced spatially by its victims, who were forced to navigate new (and at times familiar) sites and landscapes as those of genocide, and whose testimonies in the aftermath of the event conjured these very places in detail.In recent years, the spaces of the Holocaust have been variously revisited, reconstructed, and reimagined within Holocaust studies scholarship. As a broader part of the 'spatial turn' in the humanities, Holocaust scholars have increasingly employed spatial perspectives of the event to deepen our understanding of the environments in which the Holocaust took place and the transformation of these spaces over time—particularly in the fields of history and social science.2 While drawing on diverse modes of spatialisation from interdisciplinary perspectives, contributions from these fields have tended to privilege methods we might describe as variously 'forensic,' including mapping, model-making, and investigations of material traces of the past.3 This work has resulted in many significant insights, not only into the [End Page 1] contexts and structures of Nazi genocide and the perpetrator imaginings of space, but also the experiences of victims and survivors.4Another significant body of work has attended to space and culture within Holocaust contexts. From early on in the postwar period, particular locations and buildings became identified with the Holocaust, such as the notorious entrance guard house at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which appears on countless book covers as well as within films and artworks. Engaging with spatial insights and methodologies from the perspective of cultural and memory studies, scholars have attested to the production and mnemonic significance of these and less well-known sites, as well as the symbolic spatial worlds and experiences to which they give rise. These include Paul Jaskot and Gavriel Rosenfeld, who have turned respectively to Holocaust and post-Holocaust architectures as commonly overlooked sites of history and memory. Drawing attention to the construction of Holocaust space, Jaskot shows how reading architecture 'as process' rather than static structures laden with symbolic meaning reveals unique histories of forced labor in which "the goals of the SS intersected with victims' experience."5 Rosenfeld demonstrates the ways in which spaces built in response to Nazi genocide after 1945 have been variously "imbued with Jewish significance" by their users and creators, resulting in the rise to prominence of Jewish-identified architects.6 Along similar lines, Michael Meng's work has explored the ways in which Jews and gentiles interact with ruined synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish districts as important remnants of pre-war Jewish life in the post-war period in German and Polish cities.7Studies such as those noted above have tended to focus on cities and public buildings, as well as state and civic policy. But as the spatial histories and geographies of the Holocaust have helped to show, extermination often took place in rural settings (mostly located in Central and Eastern Europe), such as the killing fields where Jews were shot en masse; the forests where victims hid and were hunted by Germans and local collaborators; or the open spaces of the dissolving Reich through which former concentration camp inmates were forced to march during the final year of the war—sites in which, owing to less contained spatial dynamics, violence played out differently.8These kinds of sites, which are sparsely documented and often simply thought of... (shrink)

One of the metaepistemology’s most central debates revolves around the question of what the source of epistemic normativity is. Epistemic instrumentalism claims that epistemic normativity is a species of means-ends normativity. One of the most prominent objections against epistemic instrumentalism features cases of epistemic indifference: Cases where there’s evidence that p yet believing that p wouldn’t promote any of the agent’s aims, wants, or needs. Still, there’s an epistemic reason for the agent to believe that p and thus epistemic instrumentalism (...) is false. In response, instrumentalists have modified their views in various ways, with new contributions still forthcoming. Here, we investigate a neglected aspect of this debate: Laypeople’s judgements on cases of epistemic indifference. In two studies, we investigated whether laypeople agree with the verdict in cases of epistemic indifference as well as the key ideas behind the more recent instrumentalist replies. Our findings indicate that a significant amount of participants found it hard to buy into the cases of epistemic indifference as Kelly has constructed them. Participants did generally share Kelly’s judgement in cases of epistemic indifference. Lastly, some instrumentalist replies are well suited to explain participants’ judgements that agents ought to believe in cases of epistemic indifference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 431 Cynthia Belmont and Angela Stroud Bugging Out: Apocalyptic Masculinity and Disaster Consumerism in Offgrid Magazine Popular conceptions of survivalism in the United States typically feature the eccentric, backwoods, working-class figures found in television shows such as Doomsday Preppers and Prepper Hillbillies. Offgrid magazine, which first hit the stands in the summer of 2013, however, sells a compellingly (...) bourgeois personal connection to disaster in the vein of men’s self-improvement literature, wherein successful masculinity requires courage, preparedness for calamity, and the resources to shop. Each issue of Offgrid focuses on a “real-life” survivalist or a singular catastrophic event that is dramatically represented on the cover by a self-sufficient man decked out in gear that will allow him to survive a crash landing, escape a city devastated by an earthquake, navigate the hazards of a hacker-created blackout, or evade the destruction of an erupting volcano.1 Filled with articles offering tips on how to prepare, self-defense strategies, profiles of survivalists, disaster scenarios, gear reviews, and advertisements, Offgrid mainstreams prepper culture by retooling the The authors contributed equally to this article; the order listed is alphabetical and should not be construed as implying differing contributions. 1. The terms “survivalist” and “prepper” apply to anyone committed to honing the skills and acquiring the resources required to survive in any context, including disasters, and are used interchangeably in Offgrid. 432 Cynthia Belmont and Angela Stroud face of apocalyptic survival as a regular-guy protagonist whose low-profile normalcy disguises the smoldering heroic potential that will ignite within him when disaster strikes. In this article, drawing upon insights from the sociology of masculinity, environmental feminism, and ecocriticism, we examine the representation of gender, nature, and disaster in issues of Offgrid, spanning nearly three years, from June 2015 through February 2018. While vivid depictions of cataclysm might seem provocative enough to captivate the Offgrid reader, we argue that its principal appeal is that it gives its ninety -one-percent male audience the opportunity to engage directly in what Casey Kelly terms “apocalyptic manhood,” an emergent version of American masculinity that “confirm[s] the necessity of masculine skills as society meets its demise.”2 Thus, Offgrid provides an occasion for readers to salvage a masculinity that feels perpetually threatened within contemporary American culture—a highly effective strategy in promoting the expansion of what we term disaster consumerism. We concur with ecofeminist Greta Gaard’s contention that “masculine gender identity has been constructed as so very antiecological, and thus its interrogation and transformation seem especially crucial” at this time of environmental crisis; this concern resonates particularly poignantly with regard to the apocalyptic imaginary.3 Marketing Disaster, Selling Masculinity Scholars have long argued that commercial media play an important role in circulating gender ideals that are “rooted in consumer capitalism wherein profit can be produced by generating insecurity about one’s body and one’s consumer choices.”4 Of course, despite their influence, advertisers do not create insecurities out of whole cloth; rather, they operate within the context of shifting gender discourses and cultural anxieties. Whereas the authors of a 2005 study found that alcohol ads portrayed men as affable losers who, rejected by strong women, 2. “2018 Recoil Offgrid Media Kit,” Recoil Offgrid; Casey Ryan Kelly, “The Man-pocalypse: Doomsday Preppers and the Rituals of Apocalyptic Manhood,” Text and Performance Quarterly 36, no. 2–3 (2016): 96. 3. Greta Gaard, Critical Ecofeminism (New York: Lexington Books, 2017), 167 (italics in original). 4. Susan M. Alexander, “Stylish Hard Bodies: Branded Masculinity in Men’s Health Magazine,” Sociological Perspectives 46, no. 4 (2003): 551. Cynthia Belmont and Angela Stroud 433 were driven to drink with their buddies, an analysis of Super Bowl commercials just five years later demonstrated that the tone had become “a simpler, angrier one [that was] crafted to galvanize men to buy.”5 The authors of the latter study suggest that the masculine aggression in the ads they analyzed reflects men’s economic insecurities, which advertisers exploit by encouraging men to feel nostalgic for and frustrated about their diminished power. Ads telling men to “wear the pants” and take a stand... (shrink)

For much of the 20th century, dance writers and critics regularly bemoaned a shortage of male dancers. As one writer put it, the average American father would rather see his son dead than performing on stage in tights. This article looks at commentary about male dancing as a means of understanding popular conceptions of effeminacy. It addresses the way discourses about sport, physical prowess and hard bodies have been appropriated in attempts to validate the manliness of male dancers. Drawing on (...) works by dance educators, critics and dancers, such as Gene Kelly and American modern dancer Ted Shawn, the article looks at gendered notions of the body and movement and the way these have been shaped by the late 19th-century conflation of effeminacy and homosexuality. The athleticism and muscularity of male dancers were to have brought them mainstream respect; that they have yet to do so at all but elite levels reminds us that even the hardest bodies must be read through the limitations of the discursive contexts in which they move. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Murder in the Garden? The Envy of the Gods in Genesis 2 and 3 Paul DuffJoseph Hallman George Washington University University of St. Thomas According to Walter Brueggemann, "No text in Genesis (or likely in the entire Bible) has been more used, interpreted and misunderstood" than the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. "This applies to careless, popular theology as well as to the doctrine of the (...) church"(41). Augustine attempted to explain the first few chapters of Genesis on no fewer than five different occasions throughout his career. Based on his reading ofPaul, Augustine and Western Christianity after him believed that the entire human race inherited the disobedience ofAdam and Eve. The story in Genesis 2-3 represents the beginning ofthe J narrative, the so-called Yahwist account of the creation which originated in the early years ofthe Israelite monarchy.8 Commentators have long acknowledged a variety ofelements in the Yahwist creation account which complicate its interpretation and defy any satisfactory explanation. Among the more puzzling elements in the story are, first, the implication in Gen. 3:22 of a plurality of divine beings, a fact which seems to contradict the rest ofthe narrative and which also flies in the face of Israelite monotheism. Second, according to Gen. 2:17, God threatens Adam with the punishment of 8 The Yahwist document, originally independent, was later combined with three other strands of ancient material to form the Pentateuch. For a recent study ofthe "Documentary Hypothesis," see Richard Friedman. 1 84Paul DuffandJoseph Hallman immediate death for transgressing the deity's prohibition (cf. 3:3, 3:4). God does not carry out the threatened punishment, however, nor does the text offer the reader an explanation for the deity's commutation ofthe sentence (Westermann 224-5). Third, the origin and nature ofthe serpent in the story is unclear. Where did he come from? The identification ofthis figure with Satan in the later tradition has no support in the text (Westermann 237-9). Finally, the prohibition not to eat ofthe single tree in the garden appears to be arbitrary. Hence the crime of Adam and Eve is obviously contrived. Despite the fact that the original sentence of death for their disobedience was not carried out, the curses invoked on Adam and Eve seem hardly warranted by the offense. Consequently, some sections ofthe text depict the deity as a petty tyrant, certainly a very different picture than that given by other scriptures ofthe Jewish and Christian traditions. We believe these difficulties can be overcome by approaching Genesis 2-3 from a Girardian perspective.9 We propose that this story has evolved10 in order to hide its original meaning. As a result—following Girard's understanding of the function and evolution of mythology—we will endeavor to "deconstruct" Genesis 2-3 in order to trace the evolution ofthis myth from its origin in a primal crime. This will enable us to explain the inconsistencies in the text as it stands and to appreciate the final revisions made by the biblical author(s). We will begin with a brief discussion of Girard's understanding ofmyth. Then we will turn to the problems ofthe Genesis text. Girard on myth According to Girard, myth is, quite simply, a narrative about a primal murder, rewritten from the vantage point ofthe killers (1977a, 64-7, 91-5; 1986, 24-44). As such, mythology covers up the role of the victimage mechanism as the basis ofculture. Myths which disguise or cover up such a crime can take many forms. For instance, the foundational murder of an 9 In his recent book on Paul, Robert Hamerton-Kelly presents a Girardian interpretation of this passage which is completely different from ours (92-7). Since Hamerton-Kelly appears to read the myth at face value without a sense of development, he, like most interpreters, ends with somewhat tortuous conclusions. 10It is virtually certain that the account found in Gen. 2 and 3 did not come into being as a free composition of the Yahwist. But, as Claus Westermann has pointed out in his history ofthe exegesis ofthis passage (186-91), despite the fact that most see it as a product of a long... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Ninth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference:"Hope: A Form of Delusion? Buddhist and Christian Perspectives"Elizabeth J. Harris, President of the NetworkCan we hope in a world that is shot through with suffering? Should hope be shunned as a form of attachment? Should we affirm our hope or let go of it? And, if we embrace hope, what should we hope for and what can inspire us? (...) Between sixty and seventy people, from sixteen countries, came together to address questions such as these at the ninth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies, held in glorious weather at Liverpool Hope University in England, between 30 June and 4 July 2011.At the heart of the conference were ten keynote presentations on five crucial aspects of the theme of hope: "Hope and the Critique of Hope," "Hope in Pastoral Situations," "Embodiments of Hope," "Hope in Situations of Hopelessness: Engaged Buddhism and Liberation Theology," and "Eschatologies of Hope." Dr. Sybille Fritsch-Oppermann (Church of Southern Hesse) gave the introductory lecture, which suggested that hope can be seen both as a utopian ideal within and beyond living religions, and a working hypothesis, through which humans can strive toward truth and transcendence.Each theme was addressed from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective, followed by a plenary to enable dialogue between the speakers, and between speakers and participants. Addressing the first theme, "Hope and the Critique of Hope," from a Buddhist perspective, Richard Gombrich (Balliol College, Oxford) robustly argued that hope was not a category relevant to Theravada Buddhism, distinguishing between hope and confidence, and hope and expectation. Werner Jeanrond (Glasgow University), taking the Christian perspective, suggested that a critical theology of hope—an inter-hope dialogue—is necessary, within a critique of other key concepts such as salvation, faith, and love. [End Page 135]Within the session titled "Hope in Pastoral Situations," Dr. Hiroshi Munehiro Niwano (Rissho Kosei-kai, Japan) focused on Rissho Kosei-kai's pastoral work, most movingly its response to the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Notto Thelle (Oslo University), speaking from a Christian viewpoint, sensitively explored pastoral situations caused by life experiences that seem to question and make a mockery of hope, drawing on decades of Buddhist-Christian encounter. Peggy Morgan (Mansfield College, Oxford), addressing the third theme, "Embodiments of Hope," concretized her brief by focusing on a contemporary embodiment of hope capable of emboldening Christians: Rosemary Radford Ruether and her listening dialogue with Buddhism. Mitsuya Dake (Ryukoku University, Japan), on the other hand, chose Amida Buddha as his empowering embodiment of the wisdom, compassion, and non-dualism that lies at the heart of Buddhism, focusing on Shinran's understanding.The theme "Hope in Situations of Hopelessness" was opened to the public in an evening session. Sallie King (James Madison University, USA), using examples such as the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka and the Dalai Lama's peace work, argued that Buddhism is "loaded" with hope, from an Engaged Buddhist perspective. Buddhist hope, at one level, is an amalgam of acceptance, lawful change, and effort. At another level, it is the conviction that everyone has the potential to change and that truth has power. Sathianathan Clarke (Wesley Theological College, Washington, D.C.) movingly examined Dalit liberation theology, suggesting that hope within this context could be seen as a proxy topos that extends faith into life, an alter-wisdom where love can enrich life, and an energy, a verb, leading to transformative action.Addressing the last theme, "Eschatologies of Hope," Anthony Kelly (Australian Catholic University) recognized a contemporary crisis of hope and, distinguishing between hope as an emotion and hope as a virtue, explored a paradox: that Christian hope is rooted in the resurrection of the crucified Jesus but that this event is described in a varied rhetoric of negations. Justin Ritzinger (Oberlin College, USA), noting that endings are hard to find in Buddhist literature, examined the coming of Maitreya, the future Buddha, as a possible candidate for a Buddhist eschaton. He concluded that the similarities to Christian eschatology are superficial, with the exception of a contemporary reinvention of the Maitreyan tradition in China.In addition to invited keynote speakers, a... (shrink)

Here's an exercise: take a piece of paper. Grab a pen, pencil, crayon - any drawing utensil within reach. Now, draw a typical family. The shape of family has changed in the 21st century. While the nuclear family still exists, many more types of kinship surround us. Kin is an investigation into what influences us to have children and the new ways that have made parenthood possible. It delves into the experiences of couples without children, single parents by choice and (...) rainbow families, and investigates the impacts of adoption, sperm donation, IVF and surrogacy, and the potential for a future of designer babies. Assisted reproductive technology has developed quickly, and the ways in which we think and speak about its implications - both legally and ethically - need to catch up. Written by journalist Marina Kamenev, Kin: Family in the 21st century is an incisive and powerful look at how families are created today, and how they might be created in the future. 'A careful and compassionate exploration of the creativity, pain and power involved in the eternally imperfect art of family making.' - Gina Rushton, author of The Most Important Job in the World 'A forensically researched book that's impossible to put down, Kamenev deftly demonstrates how society's understanding of family has changed through the generations and what it might mean now. You'll be thinking about the issues she explores for years to come.' - Isabelle Oderberg, author of Hard to Bear: Investigating the science and silence of miscarriage 'Kin is a veritable tome on family - from its evolution to the unique ways we build it - that makes clear Western society's concepts of family, reproduction and kinship need updating. Kamenev's thoughtful and often witty voice combined with meticulously researched stories makes Kin a fascinating read.' - Roz Bellamy, author of Mood: A memoir of love, identity and mental health and editor-in-chief of Archer magazine 'Well researched and animated by a multitude of voices, Kin is a complex and moving account of how our capacity to create new forms of family has not always been accompanied by sufficient reflection. Kin is an important addition to our understanding of how modern kinship relations are understood, generated, and regulated.' - Fiona Kelly, Dean of La Trobe University law school and an expert in family and health law. (shrink)

I examine two arguments for nonconceptualism from the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. The idea is that only the assumption that experience content is nonconceptual does justice to the phenomenology of experience. In particular, if experience content is conceptual, we cannot account for its finely grained representational content. The problem is that visual color experience makes differences between shades of a color that are much more fine-grained than our conceptual repertoire allows. Further, conceptualism is incompatible with the situation-dependence of perceptual (...) content Kelly (Philos Phenomenol Res 62:601–608, 2001b). For instance, it is hard if not impossible to make room, in purely conceptual terms, for the difference between perceiving a certain shade of purple instantiated by a steel ball as compared to seeing it instantiated by a wool carpet. As to the argument from fineness of grain, I concede that the conceptualist’s demonstrative strategy against the argument is initially successful. However, it fails in the end because of problems with the phenomenal character of hallucination, which cannot be accounted for by appeal to only demonstrative concepts. As to the argument from situation-dependence, I point out that the conceptualist cannot convincingly account for the perceived presence, at the same time and in the same place, of situation-dependent and independent properties in experience. (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 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)

Despite its centrality in the philosophy of cognitive science, there has been little prior philosophical work engaging with the notion of representation in contemporary NLP practice. This paper attempts to fill that lacuna: drawing on ideas from cognitive science, I introduce a framework for evaluating the representational claims made about components of neural NLP models, proposing three criteria with which to evaluate whether a component of a model represents a property and operationalising these criteria using probing classifiers, a popular analysis (...) technique in NLP (and deep learning more broadly). The project of operationalising a philosophically-informed notion of representation should be of interest to both philosophers of science and NLP practitioners. It affords philosophers a novel testing-ground for claims about the nature of representation, and helps NLPers organise the large literature on probing experiments, suggesting novel avenues for empirical research. (shrink)

What can contemporary machine learning (ML) models do? Given the proliferation of ML models in society, answering this question matters to a variety of stakeholders, both public and private. The evaluation of models' capabilities is rapidly emerging as a key subfield of modern ML, buoyed by regulatory attention and government grants. Despite this, the notion of an ML model possessing a capability has not been interrogated: what are we saying when we say that a model is able to do something? (...) And what sorts of evidence bear upon this question? -/- In this paper, we aim to answer these questions, using the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) as a running example. Drawing on the large philosophical literature on abilities, we develop an account of ML models' capabilities which can be usefully applied to the nascent science of model evaluation. Our core proposal is a conditional analysis of model abilities (CAMA): crudely, a machine learning model has a capability to X just when it would reliably succeed at doing X if it 'tried'. The main contribution of the paper is making this proposal precise in the context of ML, resulting in an operationalisation of CAMA applicable to LLMs. We then put CAMA to work, showing that it can help make sense of various features of ML model evaluation practice, as well as suggest procedures for performing fair inter-model comparisons. (shrink)

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)

Appearing in the feminist social science literature from its beginnings are a series of questions about methodology. In this collection, Sandra Harding interrogates some of the classic essays from the last fifteen years in order to explore the basic and troubling questions about science and social experience, gender, and politics.

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)

The field of AI safety seeks to prevent or reduce the harms caused by AI systems. A simple and appealing account of what is distinctive of AI safety as a field holds that this feature is constitutive: a research project falls within the purview of AI safety just in case it aims to prevent or reduce the harms caused by AI systems. Call this appealingly simple account The Safety Conception of AI safety. Despite its simplicity and appeal, we argue that (...) The Safety Conception is in tension with at least two trends in the ways AI safety researchers and organizations think and talk about AI safety: first, a tendency to characterize the goal of AI safety research in terms of catastrophic risks from future systems; second, the increasingly popular idea that AI safety can be thought of as a branch of safety engineering. Adopting the methodology of conceptual engineering, we argue that these trends are unfortunate: when we consider what concept of AI safety it would be best to have, there are compelling reasons to think that The Safety Conception is the answer. Descriptively, The Safety Conception allows us to see how work on topics that have historically been treated as central to the field of AI safety is continuous with work on topics that have historically been treated as more marginal, like bias, misinformation, and privacy. Normatively, taking The Safety Conception seriously means approaching all efforts to prevent or mitigate harms from AI systems based on their merits rather than drawing arbitrary distinctions between them. (shrink)

A recent methodological approach at the interface of metaphysics and philosophy of science suggests that just like causal laws govern causation, there needs to be something in metaphysics that governs metaphysical relations. Such laws of metaphysics would be counterfactual-supporting general principles that account for the explanatory force of metaphysical explanations. There are various suggestions about how such principles could be understood. They could be based on what Kelly Trogdon calls grounding-mechanical explanations, where the role that grounding mechanisms play in (...) certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play in certain scientific explanations. Another approach, by Gideon Rosen, takes it that there are essentialist principles or laws that tell us about what grounds what. Finally, Jonathan Schaffer defends an approach that he considers to be neutral regarding grounding or essences. In this paper I will assess these suggestions and argue that for those willing to invoke a non-modal notion of essence, there is a more promising route available: metaphysical and scientific explanations may be unified in terms of general essences. Accordingly, essentialists may be better viewed as outlaws when it comes to laws of metaphysics. (shrink)

Explores what the last few decades of European/American, feminist, and postcolonial science and technology studies can learn from each other. This book proposes new directions for thinking about objectivity, method, and reflexivity in light of the new understandings developed in the post-World War II world.

"The classic and recent essays gathered here will challenge scholars in the natural sciences, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and women’s studies to examine the role of racism in the construction and application of the sciences. Harding... has also created a useful text for diverse classroom settings." —Library Journal "A rich lode of readily accessible thought on the nature and practice of science in society. Highly recommended." —Choice "This is an excellent collection of essays that should prove useful in a wide (...) range of STS courses." —Science, Technology, and Society "... important and provocative... "—The Women’s Review of Books "The timeliness and utility of this large interdisciplinary reader on the relation of Western science to other cultures and to world history can hardly be overemphasized. It provides a tremendous resource for teaching and for research... "—Ethics "Excellent." —The Reader’s Review "Sandra Harding is an intellectually fearless scholar. She has assembled a bold, impressive collection of essays to make a volume of illuminating power. This brilliantly edited book is essential reading for all who seek understanding of the multicultural debates of our age. Never has a book been more timely." —Darlene Clark Hine These authors dispute science’s legitimation of culturally approved definitions of race difference—including craniology and the measurement of IQ, the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the dependence of Third World research on First World agendas. (shrink)

Where the old objectivity question asked, Objectivity or relativism: which side are you on?, the new one refuses this choice, seeking instead to bypass widely recognized problems with the conceptual framework that restricts the choices to these two. It asks, How can the notion of objectivity be updated and made useful for contemporary knowledge-seeking projects? One response to this question is the strong objectivity program that draws on feminist standpoint epistemology to provide a kind of logic of discovery for maximizing (...) our ability to block might makes right in the sciences. It does so by delinking the neutrality ideal from standards for maximizing objectivity, since neutrality is now widely recognized as not only not necessary, not only not helpful, but, worst of all, an obstacle to maximizing objectivity when knowledge-distorting interests and values have constituted a research project. Strong objectivity provides a method for correcting this kind of situation. However, standpoint approaches have their own limitations which are quite different from the misreadings of them upon which most critics have tended to focus. Unfortunately, historically limited epistemologies and philosophies of science are all we get to choose from at this moment in history. (shrink)

In a recent letter, Dillion et. al (2023) make various suggestions regarding the idea of artificially intelligent systems, such as large language models, replacing human subjects in empirical moral psychology. We argue that human subjects are in various ways indispensable.

According to a view assumed by many scientists and philosophers of science and standardly found in science textbooks, it is controlled ex perience which provides the basis for distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable theories in science: acceptable theories are those which can pass empirical tests. It has often been thought that a certain sort of test is particularly significant: 'crucial experiments' provide supporting empiri cal evidence for one theory while providing conclusive evidence against another. However, in 1906 Pierre Duhem argued (...) that the falsification of a theory is necessarily ambiguous and therefore that there are no crucial experiments; one can never be sure that it is a given theory rather than auxiliary or background hypotheses which experiment has falsified. w. V. Quine has concurred in this judgment, arguing that "our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not indi vidually but only as a corporate body". Some philosophers have thought that the Duhem-Quine thesis gra tuitously raises perplexities. Others see it as doubly significant; these philosophers think that it provides a base for criticism of the foundational view of knowledge which has dominated much of western thought since Descartes, and they think that it opens the door to a new and fruitful way to conceive of scientific progress in particular and of the nature and growth of knowledge in general. (shrink)