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Added by: Emily PaulIntroduction: Philosophers who have written about implicit bias have claimed or implied that individuals are not responsible, and therefore not blameworthy, for their implicit biases, and that this is a function of the nature of implicit bias as implicit: below the radar of conscious reflection, out of the control of the deliberating agent, and not rationally revisable in the way many of our reflective beliefs are. I argue that close attention to the findings of empirical psychology, and to the conditions for blameworthiness, does not support these claims. I suggest that the arguments for the claim that individuals are not liable for blame are invalid, and that there is some reason to suppose that individuals are, at least sometimes, liable to blame for the extent to which they are influenced in behaviour and judgment by implicit biases. I also argue against the claim that it is counter-productive to see bias as something for which individuals are blameworthy; rather, understanding implicit bias as something for which we are liable to blame could be constructive.
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Added by: Emily PaulAbstract: Research programs in empirical psychology over the past few decades have led scholars to posit implicit biases. This is due to the development of innovative behavioural measures that have revealed aspects of our cognitions which may not be identified on self?report measures requiring individuals to reflect on and report their attitudes and beliefs. But what does it mean to characterise such biases as implicit? Can we satisfactorily articulate the grounds for identifying them as bias? And crucially, what sorts of cognitions are in fact being measured; what mental states or processes underpin such behavioural responses? In this paper, we outline some of the philosophical and empirical issues engaged when attempting to address these three questions. Our aim is to provide a constructive taxonomy of the issues, and how they interrelate. As we will see, any view about what implicit bias is may depend on a range of prior theoretical choices.
Comment: Perfect for the start of a unit/course on implicit bias, as this paper provides a clear overview of the phenomenon of implicit bias, the evidence for it, and ways to interpret it.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Thomas HodgsonAbstract: Racial epithets are derogatory expressions, understood to convey contempt toward their targets. But what do they actually mean, if anything? While the prevailing view is that epithets are to be explained pragmatically, I argue that a careful consideration of the data strongly supports a particular semantic theory. I call this view Combinatorial Externalism. CE holds that epithets express complex properties that are determined by the discriminatory practices and stereotypes of their corresponding racist institutions. Depending on the character of the institution, the complex semantic value can be composed of a variety of components. The account has significant implications on theoretical, as well as, practical dimensions, providing new arguments against radical contextualism, and for the exclusion of certain epithets from First Amendment speech protection
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, Contributed by: I Xuan ChongAbstract: The use of the character wang 忘 (forgetting) in the Zhuangzi 莊子 has been widely recognized in traditional and contemporary Chinese scholarship, but its meaning remains unclear. This article reviews some notable studies in Sinophone academia concerning the notion of wang in the Zhuangzi. The studies, though not necessarily focused on wang, shed light on different aspects of the concept, including its relation to self-cultivation, aesthetics, ethics, and ontology. While some scholars see wang as a form of elimination, others stress its relation to other concepts such as shi 適 (fitting). The relation of these two concepts, however, is not yet clear. There are also debates over what makes wang possible, with some linking it to dao 道 and some directing our attention to our daily experience. Despite the limited attention paid to wang to date, the studies reviewed show that it is a crucial aspect of Zhuangzian philosophy and deserves further study.
Comment: A state of the field report primarily covering Chinese publications on an important topic in the Zhuangzi. A useful overview for those who want to dig deeper into that topic. Prior konwledge of Zhuangzi's philosophy can be helpful.
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Added by: Adriana Clavel-VázquezAbstract: This article analyses the causes of the disparity in collective rights gained by indigenous and Afro-Latin groups in recent rounds of multicultural citizenship reform in Latin America. Instead of attributing the greater success of indians in winning collective rights to differences in population size, higher levels of indigenous group identity or higher levels of organisation of the indigenous movement, it is argued that the main cause of the disparity is the fact that collective rights are adjudicated on the basis of possessing a distinct group identity defined in cultural or ethnic terms. Indians are generally better positioned than most Afro-Latinos to claim ethnic group identities separate from the national culture and have therefore been more successful in winning collective rights. It is suggested that one of the potentially negative consequences of basing group rights on the assertion of cultural difference is that it might lead indigenous groups and Afro-Latinos to privilege issues of cultural recognition over questions of racial discrimination as bases for political mobilisation in the era of multicultural politics.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Given unjust social conditions faced by Afro-Latin communities in Latin America, it is important to examine the erasure of Afro-Latin identities from narratives about the constitution of mestizo national identities. While Indigenous identities are appropriated as partly constitutive of mestizo identity, Afro-Latin cultures are often regarded by mestizos as that which is Other. This results not only in the exoticization of Afro-Latinidad, but in the lack of available resources to acknowledge and address racial discrimination faced by Afro-Latin groups in many Latin American countries. Moreover, while Latin American cultures are often regarded as the result of Spanish and Indigenous mixing, it hasn’t been until recently that the African diaspora has been acknowledged as the third root of Latin American aesthetic practices.
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Added by: Anne-Marie McCallionPublisher’s Note:
All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.
Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.
For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.
Comment: bell hooks, is an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The focus of her writing is the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In this book, hooks explains how our everyday notions of that it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. In this chapter on Justice, hooks confronts the injustice of childhood by critically examining the lack of autonomy and respect often endured by children. She gracefully articulates the manner in which this injustice lays the groundwork for further distortions and injustices in the world.
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Added by: Rebecca BuxtonPublisher’s Note: In this classic study, cultural critic bell hooks examines how black women, from the seventeenth century to the present day, were and are oppressed by both white men and black men and by white women. Illustrating her analysis with moving personal accounts, Ain't I a Woman is deeply critical of the racism inherent in the thought of many middle-class white feminists who have failed to address issues of race and class. While acknowledging the conflict of loyalty to race or sex is still a dilemma, hooks challenges the view that race and gender are two separate phenomena, insisting that the struggles to end racism and sexism are inextricably intertwined.
Comment (from this Blueprint): This text discusses Black women's struggle against oppression and subjugation in America, focusing on white women's role in slavery. hooks argues that this history of slavery is directly linked to Black women's contemporary marginalization.
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Added by: Quentin Pharr and Clotilde TorregrossaPublisher’s Note: In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. Always concerned with the liberatory black struggle, hooks positions her writings on visual politics within the ever-present question of how art can be an empowering and revolutionary force within the black community.
Comment (from this Blueprint): How we "consume" and why we "consume" certain aesthetic objects, as well as value them, is under critical scrutiny in this selection from hooks. She is particularly worried about conceptions and the consumption of what is beautiful when both are heavily influenced by negative social environments, such as pre-established standards based on classist, sexist, or racist power structures. She is also concerned with pointing out that, when we abide by certain power structures in what we consider beautiful objects and worthy of consumption, we often miss out on a great deal of beautiful things which are right before our eyes in everyday circumstances. In light of her discussion, we would do well to think about what might be influencing our conceptions of what is beautiful and how and why we consume beauty as we do.
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Added by: Quentin Pharr and Clotilde TorregrossaPublisher’s Note: In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. Always concerned with the liberatory black struggle, hooks positions her writings on visual politics within the ever-present question of how art can be an empowering and revolutionary force within the black community.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Social circumstances often change how we interact with or consume different aesthetic objects. In this selection, hooks worries about types of consumption which are emotionally superficial and Eurocentric. Thinking of Basquiat in particular and black artists in general, she roots her aesthetic appreciation of them - her consumption, so to speak - in her emotional interaction with them through their artistic expressions. But, equally, she also roots it in an understanding of the social circumstances surrounding the production of their art - class, race, gender, etc. So, she is not only advocating and displaying a particular conception of aesthetic value, but also trying to show how her more expansive conception of such value ultimately allows for a greater appreciation of the works of Basquiat and other black artists who have had to traverse Eurocentric and white artworlds and who have tried to challenge such artworlds by making their own works unavailable for such consumption. Both her conceptions of aesthetic value and of worthwhile consumption are important for understanding how some forms of consumption are in competition with each other and why some of them are better and worse, depending on the artist and their social circumstances.
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Added by: Björn FreterAbstract: African ethics is primarily concerned with community and harmonious communal relationships. The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that, in stark contrast with Western moral attitudes and practices, there is no comparable objectification and exploitation of other-than-human animals and nature. This article investigates whether this claim is correct by examining the status of animals in religious and philosophical thought, as well as traditional cultural practices, in Africa. I argue that moral perceptions and attitudes on the African continent remain resolutely anthropocentric. Although values like ubuntu (humanness) or ukama (relationality) have been expanded to include nonhuman nature, animals are characteristically not seen to have any rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively “indirect.” I conclude by asking whether those who, following their own liberation, continue to exploit and oppress other creatures—simply because they can—are not thereby contributing to their own dehumanization.
Comment (from this Blueprint): An examination of the status of non-human animals in religious and philosophical African thought with a focus on the problem that animals are characteristically not seen to have any rights. An examination of the status of non-human animals in religious and philosophical African thought with a focus on the problem that animals are characteristically not seen to have any rights.
Comment: A great paper for a feminist philosophy, critical race theory, moral philosophy, applied ethics course or similar. Holroyd lays out 4 different arguments that we might NOT be blameworthy for harbouring implicit biases in premise-conclusion form, before arguing that they are invalid. Could e.g. break students into groups and ask each group to discuss a different argument and Holroyd's treatment of it.