Diversity Reading List

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.

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.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Lugones' concept of world-travelling and playfulness compliments well the discussion in Jones' chapter on empathy. Both authors consider how identification can fail, but come to slightly different conclusions about how to facilitate empathy. These readings would thus work well when read together closely. Lugones' discussion on play also provides a springboard for not only discussing resistence to oppression, or arrogant perception, but also the embedded and problematic assumptions behind the notion of play that may be prescent in academic definitions. Indeed, if we understand play more along Lugones' lines, this may not only help us 'world travel' to meet other humans, but, perhaps, non-humans as well.

Comment (from this Blueprint): This article would be a good pairing to support the reading of James' "The Question on Personal Identity" (2002). In this article, Gonzalez-Arnal presents a compelling counter-example to James' argument that her theory should be preferred over psychological theories on personal identity given the role of embodiment on personal identity. According to James, mainstream thought experiments involving body swaps rarely discuss cases involving two bodies of different gender because they, intuitively, do not bring us to believe that Person A would survive a body swap with a Person B of different gender. Gonzalez-Arnal challenges James' argumentation by presenting the example of transsexuality by showing that their personal identity is preserved even though significant changes in their body take place.

Comment (from this Blueprint): Maitra is one of the first to put forward a proposal for a feminist account of mental content by offering a revision of Millikan's teleosemantic account that considers the role of the historical and societal context in the constitution of representational content. She offers a nuanced analysis of mainstream theories of mental content, including Putnam's and Burge's externalism and argues that those views should undertake some modifications before they can be adopted in a feminist framework: namely, their lack of consideration of the historical and societal context.

Comment: This text uses the case of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentaries to Aristotle’s logical treatises as a basis for making a philosophical argument about the distinction between conceptions of logic that focus on propositions, and those that focus on judgments. It is appropriate for students who already have some background in Ancient logic as well as contemporary philosophy of logic. Although the text requires some prior understanding of relevant concepts, it is clear and accessible, and would be appropriate for a course on the history of logic.

Comment: Suitable for a specialist class on logical pluralism (if focussed on ecumenical systems) or alethic modalities

Comment: A relatively light-touch and philosophically focussed introduction to ecumenical proof systems, i.e. sequent calculi that combine aspects of different logics. Suitable for discussion in a class on philosophy of logic class or on proof theory if more philosophically focussed. Also potentially usable for a class on logical pluralism.

Comment: An introduction to sentential and first-order logic with a mixed philosophical and computational focus; rigorous presentation of the formalism interspersed with brief philosophical reflections on concepts, practical exercises, and pointers at technical 'real-world' applications.

Comment: The paper is a good introduction to enactivism within the context of other situated approaches to cognition (i.e., the extended mind thesis, the thesis of embodied cognition, the thesis of embedded cognition). It can be used in an intermediate or advanced course in philosophy of mind or philosophy of cognitive science.