Diversity Reading List

Abstract:
Contrary to influential medical and cognitivist models governing how mental disorder is usually understood today, the socially embedded, disordered "mind," or subject, of feminist theory leaves little room for idiopathic causal analyses, with their narrow focus on the brain and its functioning, and reluctant acknowledgment of symptoms. Mental disorder must originate well beyond the particular brain of the person with whom it is associated, feminist analyses imply. Because the voiced distress of the sufferer cannot be reduced to the downstream, "symptomatic" effects of brain dysfunction, symptoms can be seen differently, as central to the diagnostic identity, and constitutive of (at least some) disorders. And new attention is required for the testimony of women diagnosed with mental disorder, vulnerable as it is to epistemic injustices. Corrected explanations of women's mental disorder leave remaining concerns, both epistemological and ethical, over the madwoman narrating her symptoms.

Abstract: Representationalist solutions to the qualia problem are motivated by two fundamental ideas: first, that having an experience consists in tokening a mental representation; second, that all one is aware of in having an experience is the intentional content of that representation. In particular, one is not aware of any intrinsic features of the representational vehicle itself. For example, when you visually experience a red object, you are aware only of the redness of the object, not any redness or red quale of your experience. You are aware of outer red without being aware of inner red. According to the representationalist, the phenomenal character of your experience is just (an element of) the intentional content of your representation. In effect, inner red just is outer red. For her part, the defender of qualia, or anyway the defender of qualia who will figure in the present discussion, grants that experiencing a red object involves mentally representing it, and that when you have such an experience you are aware of its intentional content. But she denies that that intentional content exhausts your awareness. The defender of qualia (call her 'Quale') contends that your mental vehicle is itself mentally or phenomenally red, and that in addition to the outer redness of the object, you are aware of this inner redness, the intrinsic phenomenal character of your representational vehicle. Thus, contra the representationalist (call him 'Rep'), you are not aware of the content of your representation without being aware of its intrinsic features

Abstract:

Being a pragmatic and not a referential approach to semantics, the dialogical formulation of paraconsistency allows the following semantic idea to be expressed within a semi-formal system: In an argumentation it sometimes makes sense to distinguish between the contradiction of one of the argumentation partners with himself (internal contradiction) and the contradiction between the partners (external contradiction). The idea is that external contradiction may involve different semantic contexts in which, say A and not A have been asserted. The dialogical approach suggests a way of studying the dynamic process of contradictions through which the two contexts evolve for the sake of argumentation into one system containing both contexts. More technically, we show a new, dialogical, way to build paraconsistent systems for propositional and first-order logic with classical and intuitionistic features (i.e. paraconsistency both with and without tertium non-datur) and present their corresponding tableaux.

Abstract:
Chinese philosophy has long recognized the importance of the body and emotions in extensive and diverse self-cultivation traditions. Philosophical debates about the relationship between mind and body are often described in terms of mind-body dualism and its opposite, monism or some kind of "holism." Monist or holist views agree on the unity of mind and body, but with much debate about what kind, whereas mind-body dualists take body and mind to be metaphysically distinct entities. The question is important for several reasons. Several humanistic and scientific disciplines recognize embodiment as an important dimension of the human condition. One version, the problem of mind-body dualism, is central to the history of both philosophy and religion. Some account of relations between body and mind, spirit or soul is also central to any understanding of the self. Recent work in cognitive and neuroscience underscores the importance of our somatic experience for how we think and feel.

Publisher’s Note:

Needs and Moral Necessity analyses ethics as a practice, explains why we have three moral theory-types, consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics, and argues for a fourth needs-based theory.

Abstract:

In this article we argue that the concept of need is as vital for moral theory as it is for moral life. In II we analyse need and its normativity in public and private moral practice. In III we describe simple cases which exemplify the moral demandingness of needs, and argue that the significance of simple cases for moral theory is obscured by the emphasis in moral philosophy on unusual cases. In IV we argue that moral theories are inadequate if they cannot describe simple needs-meeting cases. We argue that the elimination or reduction of need to other concepts such as value, duty, virtue or care is unsatisfactory, in which case moral theories that make those concepts fundamental will have to be revised. In conclusion, we suggest that if moral theories cannot be revised to accommodate needs, they may have to be replaced with a fully needs-based theory.

Abstract:

In our philosophical tradition and our wider culture, we tend to think of persons as agents. This agential conception is flattering, but in this paper I will argue that it conceals a more complex truth about what persons are. In 1. I set the issues in context. In 2. I critically explore four features commonly presented as fundamental to personhood in versions of the agential conception: action, capability, choice and independence. In 3. I argue that each of these agential features presupposes a non-agential feature: agency presupposes patiency, capability presupposes incapability, choice presupposes necessity and independence presupposes dependency. In 4. I argue that such non-agential features, as well as being implicit within the agential conception, are as apt to be constitutive of personhood as agential features, and in 5. I conclude.

Abstract:

A threat to women is obscured when we treat “abortion-as-evacuation” as equivalent to “abortion-as-killing.” This holds only if evacuating a fetus kills it. As technology advances, the equivalence will fail. Any feminist account of abortion that relies on the equivalence leaves moral room for women to be required to give up their fetuses to others when it fails. So an account of the justification of abortion-as-killing is needed that does not depend on the equivalence.

Abstract:

How can we justify partiality to those near to us, such as our own families, friends, neighbours and colleagues, when we could act in much more morally valuable ways by helping others who are merely distant from us? In 1972 Peter Singer used two now-famous examples, Pond and Overseas, to challenge our complacent partiality. The charge of neglect of an obvious moral duty to meet distant grave needs is refined and developed by Peter Unger(1996).

Although Singer is a consequentialist, he intends the problem of distance to challenge all moral thinkers irrespective of their theoretical commitments. Singer's challenge has somehow to be met, and this is what discussions of the problem of distance in contemporary analytic philosophy attempt to do. To solve the problem, we have to reject
or modify impartialism or partialism.

Abstract:

In this article I consider criticisms of the basic needs approach (BNA) made by capability theorists, and argue that BNA can meet them all. I conclude that BNA has been unfairlycriticised and too hastily displaced by the capability approach (CA). This raises a further question: whatshould be done? My hope is that defenders of BNA will be encouraged to revivetheir approach by these arguments, and that defenders of CA will be encouragedto reconsider and modify or withdraw their criticisms.