Rini, Adriane. Aristotle’s Logic
, A. Malpass and M. Antonutti Marfori, editors. The History of Philosophical and Formal Logic: From Aristotle to Tarski. Bloomsbury, London, 2017
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Benedict EastaughAbstract:
Aristotle is generally credited with the invention of logic. More than two thousand years ago, he noticed that good, persuasive arguments have certain kinds of shapes, or structures. Logic was born when he began to study those structures, which he called syllogisms, identifying underlying patterns of ordinary human reasoning and then devising simple methods which can be used to determine whether someone is reasoning correctly. Aristotle was aware that this was a momentous discovery, and he himself thought that all scientific reasoning could be reduced to syllogistic arguments. There are hints that Aristotle saw his syllogistic logic as providing useful practice for participants in ancient debating contests, contests which he himself would have encountered as a student in Plato’s Academy. There are also hints that Aristotle might have envisioned his syllogistic logic as providing a way to catalogue facts about science. But Aristotle never fleshes out any such details. His Prior Analytics, the text in which he presents his syllogistic, focuses on the mechanics of the syllogistic far more than on its interpretation, and in fact the comparative lack of interpretive detail has sometimes led scholars to suppose that what we have today of Aristotle’s logic is his own sometimes scrappy lecture notes or his students’ notes, and not a polished, finished work. But in the end these are of course only guesses. In modern times, the main scholarly interest in Aristotle’s ancient logic has focused increasingly on the proper interpretation of the mechanical methods which Aristotle invented and on their relation to his wider philosophy.Comment: This chapter can be used as a first introduction to Aristotle's logic. It could be set in a course on history of logic, for example by pointing to the limits of Aristotle's system in order to set up later developments (e.g. Frege). It could also be used in an introductory logic course, with students set exercises such as working out whether syllogisms represent valid derivations in classical first-order logic.
Ritunnano, Rosa. Overcoming Hermeneutical Injustice in Mental Health: A Role for Critical Phenomenology
2022, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 53(3), pp.243-260
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Added by: Adriana Alcaraz Sanchez and Jodie RussellAbstract:
The significance of critical phenomenology for psychiatric praxis has yet to be expounded. In this paper, Rituanno argues that the adoption of a critical phenomenological stance can remedy localised instances of hermeneutical injustice, which may arise in the encounter between clinicians and patients with psychosis. In this context, what is communicated is often deemed to lack meaning or to be difficult to understand. While a degree of un-shareability is inherent to subjective life, Rituanno argues that issues of unintelligibility can be addressed by shifting from individualistic conceptions of understanding to an interactionist view. This takes into account the contextual, historical and relational background within which meaning is co-constituted. She concludes by providing a corrective for hermeneutical injustice, which entails a specific attentiveness towards the person's subjectivity, a careful sensitivity to contingent meaning-generating structures, and a degree of hermeneutical flexibility as an attitude of openness towards alternative horizons of possibility.Comment (from this Blueprint): Ritunnano's paper clearly situates the concept of hermeneutic injustice in the field of mental health, using psychosis as a case study. Although it predominantly deals with just one type of epistemic injustice, Ritunnano's paper is nevertheless an approachable entry into the topic that compliments Radden's chapter. The field of critical phenomenology is also introduced, which links strongly to feminist considerations when trying to understand lived experience. Thus, this paper makes for good further reading on the topic of feminist philosophy of mind and mental illness.
Roberts, Debbie. Thick Concepts
2013, Philosophy Compass 8(8): 677-88.
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Added by: Graham Bex-PriestleyAbstract: In ethics, aesthetics, and increasingly in epistemology, a distinction is drawn between thick and thinevaluative concepts. A common characterisation of the distinction is that thin concepts have only evaluative content whereas thick concepts combine evaluative and descriptive content. Because of thiscombination it is, again commonly, thought that thick concepts have various distinctive powersincluding the power to undermine the distinction between fact and value. This paper discusses theaccuracy of this view of the thick concepts debate, as well as assessing the prospects for a thickconcepts argument against the fact value distinction, while introducing the three main philosophicalpositions on the nature of thick concepts.Comment: Useful in metaethics courses and relates to work by Bernard Williams, but it is also useful for translating to epistemic values too e.g. in virtue epistemology.
Robeyns, Ingrid, Harry Brighouse. Introduction: Social Primary goods and Capabilities as Metrics of Justice
2010, in Brighouse, H. & Robeyns, I. Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-14.
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Added by: Carl FoxContent: A very short, but very clear overview of the differences between Rawlsian resourcists and capability theorists over the appropriate metric for distributive justice. It also sets out very nicely and very succinctly the main argumentative strategies employed by both sides in the debate.Comment: Would make good required or further reading in a module on distributive justice, especially in relation to questions about metrics of justice.
Robeyns, Ingrid. Gender and the Metric of Justice
2010, in Brighouse, H. & Robeyns, I. Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 215-236.
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Added by: Carl FoxContent: A relatively short but very illuminating discussion of the application of two key metrics (social primary goods and capabilities) to the issue of gender injustice in non-ideal circumstances.Comment: Offers a clear account of gender and what falls under 'gender justice'. Easy to read with some useful exposition but a reader would benefit from some background knowledge. Probably best as a specialised or further reading.
Robeyns, Ingrid. Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice
2008, Social Theory and Practice 34 (3):341-362.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Jojanneke VanderveenAbstract: In recent year a growing number of political philosophers have expressed worries about the nature of ideal theory and its dominance in the literature on social justice. Differently, in the post-Rawlsian literature on theories of justice, most of the work done by mainstream political theorists and philosophers is part of what is known as 'ideal theory'.Comment: Very influential article about the use of idealizations in theories of justice, and about the use of partial theories of justice. Cited a lot. Very good resource in a justice class.
Robeyns, Ingrid. Will a Basic Income Do Justice to Women?
2001, Analyse & Kritik 23 (1):88-105
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
This article addresses the question whether a basic income will be a just social policy for women. The implementation of a basic income will have different effects for different groups of women, some of them clearly positive, some of them negative. The real issues that concern feminist critics of a basic income are the gender-related constraints on choices and the current gender division of labour, which are arguably both playing at the disadvantage of women. It is argued that those issues are not adequately addressed by a basic income proposal alone, and therefore basic income has to be part of a larger packet of social policy measures if it wants to maximise real freedom for all.
Comment: This paper explores questions as the intersection of feminism and the basic income literature, offering a take on one of the classic feminist critiques of basic income: namely, that the purported conditions of freedom that basic income is supposed to bring about are only really available to members of the population who do not belong to an oppressed or marginalised class. For those that do belong to such groups - in this case, women - the availability of such conditions of freedom will be highly dependent on existing gendered divisions of labour and restrictions on choice. As such, the author argues that proposals for basic income, if they are serious about ensuring real freedom for all, must take this into consideration. The author also challenges existing (at the time of writing) contradictions in the claims being made about the effect of basic income policy on women, as opposed to men. The paper would therefore be interesting to discuss in relation to feminist politics or a survey of the basic income literature, especially assigned in tandem with some of the foundational literature, such as Phillipe Van Parijs' work.
Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg. Explaining Emotions
1978, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 75, issue 3
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Added by: Jimena ClavelAbstract:
Sometimes our emotions change straightaway when we learn that what we believed is not true. The grieving husband recovers when he learns that, because she missed her plane, his wife did not die in the fatal plane crash. But often changes in emotions do not appropriately follow changes in belief. Their tenacity, their inertia, suggests that there is akrasia of the emotions; it reveals the complex structure of their intentionality.'Comment: In this paper, Rorty discusses the complexity of the intentionality of emotions by focusing on the phenomenon of akrasia. The paper can be included in a session on the recalcitrance of emotions or on the intentionality of emotions. The paper can be listed as recommended reading for an advance undergraduate course or as mandatory for a graduate course.
Rošker, Jana S.. Classical Chinese Logic
2015, Philosophy Compass, 10(5): 301-309.
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Added by: Chris Blake-TurnerAbstract: The present article provides an introduction to classical Chinese logic, a term which refers to ancient discourses that were developed before the arrival of significant external influences and which flourished in China until the first unification of China, during the Qin Dynasty. Taking as its premise that logic implies both universal and culturally conditioned elements, the author describes the historical background of Chinese logic, the main schools of Chinese logical thought, the current state of research in this area and the crucial concepts and methods applied in classical Chinese logic. The close link between Chinese logic and the Chinese language is also stressedComment: Presupposes some familiarity with Aristotelian and Fregean logic, as well as ideas in analytic philosophy of language (e.g., theories of reference). This would be a good piece for countering the prejudice that nothing worthy of being called logic was done in the classical Chinese tradition. It is also a good piece for expanding students' imaginative horizons and showing them how their ideas of what logic is have been culturally shaped.
Russell, Jodie Louise. Problems for enactive psychiatry as a practical framework
2023, Philosophical Psychology, pp.1458-1481
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Abstract:
In recent years, autopoietic enactivism has been used to address persistent conceptual problems in psychiatry, such as the problem of demarcating disorder, that other models thus far have failed to overcome. There appear to be three main enactive accounts of psychopathology with subtle, although not incompatible, differences: Maiese characterizes disorder as distinct disruptions in autonomy and agency; Nielsen characterizes disorder as behaviors that relevantly conflict with the functional norms of an individual; De Haan emphasizes patterns of disordered sense-making, that are transformed through the existential dimension. Given that these accounts are intended to provide not only an ontologically richer account of psychopathology but also reduce the stigma experienced by individuals with mental disorders by accounting for lived experience, a critical analysis of these approaches is needed. Russell provides a problematization of enactive accounts of mental disorder, showing that this particular framework does not, as it stands, necessarily reduce the harm and suffering experienced by individuals with mental disorder because of its ontological openness; enactivism leaves much to be interpreted and applied by the clinician (or patient) such that practical and ethical problems in its use arise.Comment (from this Blueprint): This cheeky inclusion of Russell's paper as further reading would suitably compliment both the readings on mental disorder, and Butnor and MacKenzie's chapter on gender, for a deeper discussion. The positive feminist thesis is left vague at the end of this paper, which provides a nice starting point to discuss solutions to the problems with enactivism raised therein. This paper also provides a nice entry-point into the enactive literature, which might provide an enticing, situated model of mind to compliment particular feminist outlooks.
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