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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract: Dōgen’s ethics of nonhuman animals is grounded in wisdom of interdependent arising, which produces a sense of compassion for all beings, including nonhuman animals. While there are rules and precepts that prohibit the killing of living beings—human and nonhuman alike—the precepts are not unbreakable universal laws, but rather guidelines that promote the cultivation of the twin virtues of wisdom and compassion, which are the real ground of ethical conduct in Zen. Though all beings are part of the same karmic cycle of rebirth, human beings have a special soteriological status as thinking, moral beings, which means only we are capable of realizing enlightenment. This results in an ethic that is somewhat weaker than the strong animal rights view: while causing suffering to sentient beings is wrong, it may be done on those rare occasions when it promotes the awakening of human beings. This means that eating meat or using animals for medical testing might be justified, so long as there is no reasonable alternative available that would minimize suffering and maximize awakening more effectively. Even though skillful means might be used to justify violations of the precepts against killing, Dōgen argues that the only time a bad unintended consequence is justified is when the agent’s motive is pure and there is no better option. Zen prompts us to continually reevaluate the ways in which we both perceive and conceive the world. The purpose of a kōan is to discourage our everyday ways of thinking and push us to a higher level of understanding grounded in interdependent arising. Often, we choose to harm sentient beings, not because we have no other choice, but because we lack the imagination to create alternative solutions that minimize suffering to the greatest possible extent. The law of karma is always in effect: the infliction of wanton suffering upon sentient beings will become an impediment to one’s awakening.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: Neosentimentalism provides environmental ethics with a theory of value that might be particularly useful for solving many of the problems that have plagued the field since its early days. In particular, a neosentimentalist understanding of value offers us hope for making sense of (1) what intrinsic value might be and how we could know whether parts of the natural world have it; (2) the extent to which value is an essentially anthropocentric concept; and (3) how our understanding of value could be compatible with both a respectable naturalism and a robust normativity.
Comment: This reading is could be used well as a response to Rolston or Callicott's versions of environmental value. The article also covers a number of problems endemic to formal value theory (especially a neosentimentalist theory of the nature of value). It would work best in an upper level undergraduate course on value theory or environmental ethics.
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
‘Logical Realism’ is taken to mean many different things. I argue that if reality has a privileged structure, then a view I call metaphysical logical realism is true. The view says that, first, there is ‘ One True Logic ’ ; second, that the One True Logic is made true by the mind ‐ and ‐ language ‐ independent world; and third, that the mind ‐ and ‐ language ‐ independent world makes it the case that the One True Logic is better than any other logic at capturing the structure of reality. Along the way, I discuss a few alternatives, and clarify two distinct kinds of metaphysical logical realism.
Comment: The paper provides a simple, lucid argument for why many metaphysical views are committed to what the author calls metaphysical logical realism. For the purpose of discussion, it may be paired with an attempt to resist the commitment. More generally, it might be helpful as a survey of logical commitments of metaphysical views.
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Added by: Carl FoxAbstract: It is widely conceded by liberals that institutions alone are insufficient to ensure that citizens behave in the ways required for a liberal state to flourish, be stable, or function at all. A popular solution proposes cultivating virtues in order to secure the desired behaviours of citizens, where institutions alone would not suffice. A range of virtues are proposed to fill a variety of purported gaps in the liberal political order. Some appeal to virtues in order to secure state stability; Rawls, for instance, claims that ‘citizens must have a sense of justice and the political virtues that support political and social institutions’ in order to ensure an ‘enduring society’. For Galston, citizens must possess a range of virtues in order for the state to function, including the virtues of courage, independence, tolerance, willingness to engage in public discourse, and law-abidingness.
Comment: Challenges the relevance of debates about virtue for liberals concerned with stability and argues that they would be better advised to look to social norms for assistance. Raises some interesting questions for proponents of liberalism and does a nice job of envisioning the instrumental potential of social norms for political theorists. Very useful further reading for anyone interested in (or writing on) either stability or social norms.
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Added by: Alison Stone, Contributed by: Simon FoktIntroduction: The mind – body problem exposes the inconsistencies that arise when mind and body are conceived as ontologically distinct entities. Human experience clearly shows that our minds interact with our bodies. Philosophers who reject the identity of mind and body or mind and brain face the task of explaining these relations by illuminating the precise manner in which the mind moves the body and the body affects the mind. It is unsurprising, then, that the mind – body problem was first articulated as a response to René Descartes’ dualistic philosophy [...]
Comment: A very short piece that sets out Elisabeth's core criticisms of Descartes' mind/body dualism. Useful bibliography included. Can be used as part of a week's reading on Descartes, Cartesian dualism, and/or Elisabeth's responses to Descartes.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin CovingtonAbstract: This paper strengthens the theoretical ground of feminist analyses of anger by explaining how the angers of the oppressed are ways of knowing. Relying on insights created through the juxtaposition of Latina feminism and Zen Buddhism, I argue that these angers are special kinds of embodied perceptions that surface when there is a profound lack of fit between a particular bodily orientation and its framing world of sense. As openings to alternative sensibilities, these angers are transformative, liberatory, and deeply epistemological.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: The concept of beauty is itself still obscure to us; the power and the modus operandi of the beautiful is as mysterious, if not as terrible, to us as to Plato (unless indeed one allows Kant some credit here). But does it not have more to do with what we have chosen and valued as art through the ages of human production than individual sophistication, autonomy, originality, spontaneity, etc., in the artist? It.is not, after all, R. because Shakespeare is superior in these, or in political or practical wisdom, or in self-awareness, or in many-layered ambiguity, to, say, Dr. Johnson, that Shakespeare's poetry is memorable and the articulate and learned Doctor's is forgettable.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: In this paper I have come a very long and pedantic way round to the venerable old conclusion that the uniqueness demanded of a work of art is that consequent on its essentially being evaluated for itself and not for its instrumental potentialities; and have given an old problem of the possibility of rational aesthetic evaluation an answer at least as old as Kant's. But I hope that by taking the long way round I have raised a few of the complexities buried in our familiar talk of works of art and have thereby succeeded in laying a promising metaphysical ghost.
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Ian James Kidd, Corbin CovingtonAbstract: This book explores the epistemic side of oppression, focusing on racial and sexual oppression and their interconnections. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from interacting epistemically in fruitful ways-from listening to each other, learning from each other, and mutually enriching each other's perspectives. Medina's epistemology of resistance offers a contextualist theory of our complicity with epistemic injustices and a social connection model of shared responsibility for improving epistemic conditions of participation in social practices. Through the articulation of a new interactionism and polyphonic contextualism, the book develops a sustained argument about the role of the imagination in mediating social perceptions and interactions. It concludes that only through the cultivation of practices of resistance can we develop a social imagination that can help us become sensitive to the suffering of excluded and stigmatized subjects. Drawing on Feminist Standpoint Theory and Critical Race Theory, this book makes contributions to social epistemology and to recent discussions of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, epistemic responsibility, counter-performativity, and solidarity in the fight against racism and sexism.
Comment: A complex study in social, virtue, vice, and racial epistemology. A systematic study of gendered and radicalised epistemic injustices. It can support teaching on social, virtue, vice, and racial epistemology, and is best in a systematic study of gendered and radicalised epistemic injustices.
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Added by: Björn Freter, Contributed by: Eric de Araujo
Abstract: Many of us think that ordinary objects – such as tables and chairs – exist. We also think that ordinary objects have parts: my chair has a seat and some legs as parts, for example. But once we are committed to the thesis that ordinary objects are composed of parts, we then open ourselves up to a whole host of philosophical problems, most of which center on what exactly the composition relation is. Composition as Identity is the view that the composition relation is the identity relation. While such a view has some advantages, there are many arguments against it. In this essay, I will briefly canvass three different varieties of Composition as Identity, and suggest why one of them should be preferred over the others. Then I will outline several versions of the most common objection against CI. I will suggest how a CI theorist can respond to these charges by maintaining that some of the arguments are invalid.
Comment: This introduction to the Composition as Identity debate can either stand alone among a collection of topics in metaphysics, or as an entry into more readings. It presents a range of Composition as Identity positions and helpfully organises objections to the view. Note: there are two parts to this article and this is the first. This introduction to the Composition as Identity debate can either stand alone among a collection of topics in metaphysics, or as an entry into more readings. It presents a range of Composition as Identity positions and helpfully organises objections to the view. Note: there are two parts to this article and this is the first.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Introduction into Dōgen’s ethics of nonhuman animals based on the wisdom of interdependent arising producing a sense of compassion for all beings, including nonhuman animals.