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Added by: Simon Fokt
Content: The first three sections of this paper offer a very useful overview of modern definitions of art. Most major types of definitions are introduced and explained in a succinct way, followed by a discussion of selected objections they face. First, Abell introduces functionalism and discusses its problems with extensional adequacy. Second, procedural theories including Dickie’s institutional and Levinson’s historical definitions are discussed, and criticized for their circularity and inability to account for art’s value. Next, Abell considers two mixed theories, formulated by Robert Stecker and David Davies. She shows how they can overcome the difficulties discussed above, but run into their own problems. Finally, Berys Gaut’s cluster account is introduced and criticized for its circularity and difficulties in determining all sufficiency conditions for being an artwork. In the remainder of the paper Abell focuses on developing her own version of the institutional theory.Abell, Catharine. Pictorial realism2007, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (1):1 - 17.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: I propose a number of criteria for the adequacy of an account of pictorial realism. Such an account must: explain the epistemic significance of realistic pictures; explain why accuracy and detail are salient to realism; be consistent with an accurate account of depiction; and explain the features of pictorial realism. I identify six features of pictorial realism. I then propose an account of realism as a measure of the information pictures provide about how their objects would look, were one to see them. This account meets the criteria I have identified and is superior to alternative accounts of realism.Comment:
Ahmed, Sara. “Hearing Complaint”2021, In Complaint! Duke University Press, pp. 1-26-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerPublisher’s Note:
In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.Comment (from this Blueprint): Sara Ahmed is a renowned critical phenomenologist who resigned from her job at Goldsmiths over sexual harassment in her department and the university's handling of it. In this 2021 book, she draws on an interdisiplinary corpus, and her own ethnographic skills, to research and theorize complaint against power abuse, broadly conceived. Important are her own experiences and supportive relationships with students that led to her resignation. One thing this book argues is that complaints, and the process of complaining, are an important part of changing the university, and are in themselves useful political tools, since they challenge (and hence illuminate) hidden parts of institutional life.
Ahmed, Sara. “Institutional Mechanics”, and “Mind the Gap! Policies, Procedures, and Other Nonperformatives”2021, In Complaint! Duke University Press, pp. 27-68-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerPublisher’s Note:
In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.Comment (from this Blueprint): Sara Ahmed is a renowned critical phenomenologist who resigned from her job at Goldsmiths over sexual harassment in her department and the university's handling of it. In this 2021 book, she draws on an interdisiplinary corpus, and her own ethnographic skills, to research and theorize complaint against power abuse, broadly conceived. Important are her own experiences and supportive relationships with students that led to her resignation. One thing this book argues is that complaints, and the process of complaining, are an important part of changing the university, and are in themselves useful political tools, since they challenge (and hence illuminate) hidden parts of institutional life.
Ahmed, Sara. A phenomenology of whiteness2007, Feminist Theory, 8(2), pp.149-168-
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Abstract:
The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they 'take up' space, and what they 'can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way.Comment (from this Blueprint): Ahmed provides a phenomenological account of White experience as comfort and being at home, which compliments Jones's analysis of the failure of White empathy. While Ahmed's focus is on race in this paper, her analysis of the structure of Whiteness equally applies to multiple domains, such as gender, class, sexuality and disability, so while it is marked as 'further' reading here, this text could easily provide the foundation to multiple themes for this blueprint, and would also make a good starting point for those that wish to read Ahmed's excellent "Queer Phenomenology".
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Chapter 2: “Sexual Orientation”2006, In Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, New York: Duke University Press, pp. 65-107-
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Abstract:
Focusing on the "orientation" aspect of "sexual orientation", Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being "orientated" means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached. A queer phenomenology, Ahmed contends, reveals how social relations are arranged spatially, how queerness disrupts and reorders these relations by not following the accepted paths, and how a politics of disorientation puts other objects within reach, those that might, at first glance, seem awry.Comment (from this Blueprint): This paper is especially stimulating if students earlier on the course also read the text by Ahmed on the week on race, as much of "A phenomenology of whiteness" informs Queer phenomenology. This specific chapter, however, focuses on sexual orientation, and discusses some of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy. Ahmed's article may also be required reading for those exploring a distinctly phenomenological approach to sexuality and could be read in alongside Díaz-León's chapter, which follows in the analytic tradition, for a broader range of 'styles' of discussion of sexual orientation in philosophy.
Baier, Annette. Reflections on How We Live2010, Oxford: Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Back Matter: The pioneering moral philosopher Annette Baier presents a series of new and recent essays in ethics, broadly conceived to include both engagements with other philosophers and personal meditations on life. Baier's unique voice and insight illuminate a wide range of topics. In the public sphere, she enquires into patriotism, what we owe future people, and what toleration we should have for killing. In the private sphere, she discusses honesty, self-knowledge, hope, sympathy, and self-trust, and offers personal reflections on faces, friendship, and alienating affection.Comment: The essays in this book are self-contained and accessible conversation starters. A number of them would make good initial readings for a class or unit on political ethics (concerning toleration, nationalism, and patriotism), friendship and love (concerning trust, friendship, and intimacy), and the ethics of reproduction and population.
Barclay, Linda. Genetic Engineering and Autonomous Agency2003, Journal of applied philosophy 20(3): 223–236.-
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: In this paper I argue that the genetic manipulation of sexual orientation at the embryo stage could have a detrimental effect on the subsequent person's later capacity for autonomous agency. By focussing on an example of sexist oppression I show that the norms and expectations expressed with this type of genetic manipulation can threaten the development of autonomous agency and the kind of social environment that makes its exercise likely.Comment: Useful mainly in the context of (the limitations of) reproductive rights and as a further reading on the ethics of genetic engineering and human enhancement.
Briggs, Rachael. Normative Theories of Rational Choice: Expected Utility2014, Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy-
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Added by: Giada FratantonioAbstract:
Introduction: This article discusses expected utility theory as a normative theory - that is, a theory of how people should make decisions. In classical economics, expected utility theory is often used as a descriptive theory - that is, a theory of how people do make decisions - or as a predictive theory - that is, a theory that, while it may not accurately model the psychological mechanisms of decision-making, correctly predicts people's choices. Expected utility theory makes faulty predictions about people's decisions in many real-life choice situations (see Kahneman & Tversky 1982); however, this does not settle whether people should make decisions on the basis of expected utility considerations. The expected utility of an act is a weighted average of the utilities of each of its possible outcomes, where the utility of an outcome measures the extent to which that outcome is preferred, or preferable, to the alternatives. The utility of each outcome is weighted according to the probability that the act will lead to that outcome. Section 1 fleshes out this basic definition of expected utility in more rigorous terms, and discusses its relationship to choice. Section 2 discusses two types of arguments for expected utility theory: representation theorems, and long-run statistical arguments. Section 3 considers objections to expected utility theory; section 4 discusses its applications in philosophy of religion, economics, ethics, and epistemology.
Comment:
Broad, Jacqueline, Karen Detlefsen. (eds.) Women and Liberty, 1600-1800: Philosophical Essays2017, Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Francesca Bruno
Publisher's Note: This book addresses the theme of liberty as it is found in the writing of women philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives. It covers both theoretical and practical philosophy, with chapters grappling with problems in the metaphysics of free will (both human and God's), the liberty (or lack thereof) of women in their moral, personal lives as well as their social-political, public lives, and the interactions between the metaphysical and normative issues. The chapters draw upon writing of both women and men, and notably, upon a wide range of genres, including more standard philosophical treatises as well as polemical texts, poetry, plays, and other forms of fiction. As such, this book alerts the reader to the wide range of conceptions of what counts as a philosophical text in the early modern period. Several chapters also grapple with the relation between early modern and contemporary ways of thinking about the theme of women and liberty, thus urging the reader to appreciate the continuing importance of these earlier philosophers in the history of philosophy and of feminism. Ultimately, the chapters in this text show how crucial it is to recover the too-long forgotten views of female and women-friendly male philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for in the process of recovering these voices, our understanding of philosophy in the early modern period is not only expanded, but also significantly altered toward a more accurate history of our discipline.Comment: This volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, including chapters on women's ideas about the metaphysics of free will and chapters examining the topic of women's freedom (or lack thereof) in their moral and personal lives. Some of the papers in this collection could be assigned individually in an undergraduate early modern survey course; or it could be one of the main texts for a more advanced (undergraduate or graduate) course on the topic of liberty/freedom, from a variety of philosophical perspectives (ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious).
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Abell, Catharine. Art: What It Is and Why It Matters
2012, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85: 671–91.
Comment: This text can provide the students with an overview of modern definitions of art. Theories are presented in a clear, succinct way, with their main features, strengths and weaknesses identified. The selection of objections discussed, however, is not representative – rather it serves the aim of developing Abell’s own definition. The later sections of the text are excellent, but address much more complex issues and are significantly less accessible for undergraduate students. They might be used in Masters level teaching or as advanced further reading on the institutional definition.