Lennon, Kathleen. Imagine and the Imaginary
2015, Imagination and the Imaginary. Routledge.
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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistSummary: The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary , Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes Imagination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics.Comment: This book introduces the reader to the history of imagination as an area of philosophy, as conceived by Hume and Kant, and as explored by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre. It concerns the relationship between imagination and perception, and the formation of the self and social world based on imagination. It is suitable in a module focusing on imagination, or more broadly on aesthetics.
Leonelli, Sabina. What distinguishes data from models?
2019, European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (2):22.
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Added by: Sara PeppeAbstract: I propose a framework that explicates and distinguishes the epistemic roles of data and models within empirical inquiry through consideration of their use in scientific practice. After arguing that Suppes' characterization of data models falls short in this respect, I discuss a case of data processing within exploratory research in plant phenotyping and use it to highlight the difference between practices aimed to make data usable as evidence and practices aimed to use data to represent a specific phenomenon. I then argue that whether a set of objects functions as data or models does not depend on intrinsic differences in their physical properties, level of abstraction or the degree of human intervention involved in generating them, but rather on their distinctive roles towards identifying and characterizing the targets of investigation. The paper thus proposes a characterization of data models that builds on Suppes' attention to data practices, without however needing to posit a fixed hierarchy of data and models or a highly exclusionary definition of data models as statistical constructs.Comment: This article deepens the role of model an data in the scientific investigation taking into account the scientific practice. Obviously, a general framework of the themes the author takes into account is needed.
Lim, Désirée. Iris Marion Young
2020, In: The Philosopher Queens: The Lives and Legacies of Philosophy's Unsung Women. Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting (eds.). Unbound
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Added by: Rebecca BuxtonAbstract:
From the Publisher: The history of philosophy has not done women justice: you’ve probably heard the names Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and Locke – but what about Hypatia, Arendt, Oluwole and Young? The Philosopher Queens is a long-awaited book about the lives and works of women in philosophy by women in philosophy. This collection brings to centre stage twenty prominent women whose ideas have had a profound – but for the most part uncredited impact on the world. You’ll learn about Ban Zhao, the first woman historian in ancient Chinese history; Angela Davis, perhaps the most iconic symbol of the American Black Power Movement; Azizah Y. al-Hibri, known for examining the intersection of Islamic law and gender equality; and many more. For anyone who has wondered where the women philosophers are, or anyone curious about the history of ideas – it's time to meet the philosopher queens.
Comment (from this Blueprint): In this chapter, Lim recounts Young's childhood and educational background as a way to inform our understanding of her philosophical and political practice. In this sense, this text should deeply enhance students' comprehension of Young's feminist political thought and would serve as uselful introduction to some of her writings on structural injustices and minority rights.
Logue, Heather. Why Naive Realism
2012, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112(2pt2): 211-237.
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Added by: John BaldariAbstract: Much of the discussion of Naive Realism about veridical experience has focused on a consequence of adopting it—namely, disjunctivism about perceptual experience. However, the motivations for being a Naive Realist in the first place have received relatively little attention in the literature. In this paper, I will elaborate and defend the claim that Naive Realism provides the best account of the phenomenal character of veridical experience.Comment: This text is valuable as an intermediate to advanced introduction to naive realism in Philosophy of Mind.
Logue, Heather. Good News for the Disjunctivist about (one of) the Bad Cases
2013, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86(1): 105-133.
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Added by: John BaldariAbstract: Many philosophers are skeptical about disjunctivism—a theory of perceptual experience which holds roughly that a situation in which I see a banana that is as it appears to me to be (the good case) and one in which I have a hallucination as of a banana (a certain kind of bad case) are mentally completely different. Often this skepticism is rooted in the suspicion that such a view cannot adequately account for the bad case—in particular, (i) that such a view cannot explain why what it’s like to have a hallucination can be exactly like what it’s like to have a veridical experience, (ii) that it cannot explain why the hallucination I have in the bad case is subjectively indistinguishable from the kind of experience I have in the good case, and (iii) that it cannot offer a viable account of the nature of hallucination. In this paper, I argue that a proper formulation of disjunctivism can avoid these objections. Disjunctivism should be formulated as the weakest claim required to preserve its primary motivation, viz., Naïve Realism—the view that veridical experience fundamentally consists in the subject perceiving entities in her environment. And the weakest claim required to preserve Naïve Realism allows for many sorts of commonalities across the good and hallucinatory cases, commonalities that can be marshaled in responding to the objections. Most importantly, disjunctivism properly formulated is compatible with “positive” accounts of the nature of hallucination (as against M.G.F. Martin’s widely accepted argument to the contrary).Comment: This text is best used as advanced reading in Philosophy of Mind. It is a valuable source of emergent research in disjunctivism.
Logue, Heather. Disjunctivism
2015, in Mohan Matthen (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception. Oxford University Press. 198-216.
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Simon Prosser
Abstract: Disjunctivist theories of perceptual experience claim that veridical and non-veridical experiences are radically unalike in some respect (other than the obvious difference in their causal histories). This chapter outlines four ways of elaborating this basic claim, each motivated by a different concern. The first is disjunctivism about the objects of experience, motivated by Direct Realism. The second is disjunctivism about the content of experience, motivated by the view that some experiences have object-dependent content. The third is disjunctivism about perceptual evidence (also known as epistemological disjunctivism), which is a strategy for responding to a particular sort of argument for scepticism about the external world. The fourth is disjunctivism about the metaphysical structure of experience (also known as metaphysical disjunctivism), which is motivated by Naïve Realism (a species of Direct Realism).
Comment: Good main reading on disjunctivism
Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the “Critique of Pure Reason”
1998, Princeton University Press.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Charlotte SabourinPublisher's Note: Kant claims to have established his table of categories or "pure concepts of the understanding" according to the "guiding thread" provided by logical forms of judgment. By drawing extensively on Kant's logical writings, Béatrice Longuenesse analyzes this controversial claim, and then follows the thread through its continuation in the transcendental deduction of the categories, the transcendental schemata, and the principles of pure understanding. The result is a systematic, persuasive new interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason. Longuenesse shows that although Kant adopts his inventory of the forms of judgment from logic textbooks of his time, he is nevertheless original in selecting just those forms he holds to be indispensable to our ability to relate representations to objects. Kant gives formal representation to this relation between conceptual thought and its objects by introducing the term "x" into his analysis of logical forms to stand for the object that is "thought under" the concepts that are combined in judgment. This "x" plays no role in Kant's forms of logical inference, but instead plays a role in clarifying the relation between logical forms (forms of concept subordination) and combinations ("syntheses") of perceptual data, necessary for empirical cognition. Considering Kant's logical forms of judgment thus helps illuminate crucial aspects of the Transcendental Analytic as a whole, while revealing the systematic unity between Kant's theory of judgment in the first Critique and his analysis of "merely reflective" (aesthetic and teleological) judgments in the third Critique.Comment: (This is the English translation of LONKEL-2). Difficult but excellent and influential interpretation of Kant's main theoretical work. Suitable for advanced courses, or further reading on Kant's First Critique.
Lotz, Mianna. Procreative reasons relevance: on the moral significance of why we have children
2009, Bioethics 23(5): 291-299.
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Added by: Simon FoktAbstract: Advances in reproductive technologies – in particular in genetic screening and selection – have occasioned renewed interest in the moral justifiability of the reasons that motivate the decision to have a child. The capacity to select for desired blood and tissue compatibilities has led to the much discussed 'saviour sibling' cases in which parents seek to 'have one child to save another'. Heightened interest in procreative reasons is to be welcomed, since it prompts a more general philosophical interrogation of the grounds for moral appraisal of reasons-to-parent, and of the extent to which such reasons are relevant to the moral assessment of procreation itself. I start by rejecting the idea that we can use a distinction between 'other-regarding' and 'future-child-regarding' reasons as a basis on which to distinguish good from bad procreative reasons. I then offer and evaluate three potential grounds for elucidating and establishing a relationship between procreative motivation and the rightness/wrongness of procreative conduct: the predictiveness, the verdictiveness, and the expressiveness of procreative reasons.Comment: This text is best used in teaching on procreative rights and the ethics of abortion. Since it is rather specialised, we recommend offering it as further reading in undergraduate applied ethics modules, but would suggest making it a required reading in postgraduate teaching.
Lovibond, Sabina, Scheman, Naomi. Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority and Privilege
1993, Routledge
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Added by: Clotilde TorregrossaAbstract: Naomi Scheman argues that the concerns of philosophy emerge not from the universal human condition but from conditions of privilege. Her books represents a powerful challenge to the notion that gender makes no difference in the construction of philosophical reasoning. At the same time, it criticizes the narrow focus of most feminist theorizing and calls for a more inclusive form of inquiry.
Lovibond, Sabina. Ethical Formation
2002, Harvard University Press.
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Added by: Clotilde TorregrossaPublisher's Note: Sabina Lovibond invites her readers to see how the 'practical reason view of ethics' can survive challenges from within philosophy and from the antirationalist postmodern critique of reason. She elaborates and defends a modern practical-reason view of ethics by focusing on virtue or ideal states of character that involve sensitivity to the objective reasons circumstances bring into play. At the heart of her argument is the Aristotelian idea of the formation of character through upbringing; these ancient ideas can be made contemporary if one understands them in a naturalized way. She then explores the implications that arise from the naturalization of the classical view, weaving into her theory ideas of Jacques Derrida and J. L. Austin. The book also discusses two modes of resistance to an existing ethical culture - one committed to the critical employment of shared norms of rationality, the other aspiring to a more radical attitude, grounded in hostility to the 'universal.' Lovibond tries to determine what may be correct in this second, admittedly paradoxical, tendency. This is a timely and valuable effort to connect the most advanced forms of thinking in the analytic tradition and in the Continental tradition, and to extend our understanding of the intimacies and resistances between these two prominent strands of contemporary philosophy.
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