Spencer, Quayshawn. A radical solution to the Race problem
2014, Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1025-1038
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Anonymous
Abstract: It has become customary among philosophers and biologists to claim that folk racial classification has no biological basis. This paper attempts to debunk that view. In this paper, I show that ‘race’, as used in current U.S. race talk, picks out a biologically real entity. I do this by, first, showing that ‘race’, in this use, is not a kind term, but a proper name for a set of human population groups. Next, using recent human genetic clustering results, I show that this set of human population groups is a partition of human populations that I call ‘the Blumenbach partition’.
Comment: This is a great paper to use for teaching metaphysics of raceSpener, Maja. Disagreement about cognitive phenomenology2011, In Tim Bayne and Michelle Montague (ed.), Cognitive Phenomenology. Oxford University Press. pp. 268.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: The debate concerning the phenomenology of thought is marked by severe disagreement about how best to characterize a given conscious thought on the basis of introspective reflecting upon it. In this paper I focus on the fact of this introspection-based disagreement - in particular, on its epistemic import for participants in the debate. How ought these philosophers respond when facing such radical disagreement about the deliverance of introspection? I argue that the fact of such disagreement itself should lead participants to be less confident - or even to suspend judgement - in their own introspection-based claims. If that is right, then to the extent that the debate about the phenomenology of thought is carried out by appeal to introspective evidence, this constitutes a serious epistemological concern. At the very least, if this is the epistemically appropriate response, non?trivial reliance of introspective evidence in the debate comes under pressure.Comment:Sreenivasan, Gopal. Justice, Inequality, and Health2009, E. N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy [electronic resource]
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Added by: Simon FoktContent: Sreenivasan asks: 'what makes a health inequality an injustice, when it is one? Do <em>health</em> inequalities have some significance in justice that differs from other important inequalities? Or is the injustice of an unjust inequality in health simply due to the application of general principles of equality and justice to the case of health?'Comment: This text offers a good introduction to the problem of justice in healthcare and social justice in general. The text is best used as required reading in medical ethics classes, and as further reading in moral and political philosophy classes focusing on justice.Sreenivasan, Gopal. A Human Right to Health? Some Inconclusive Scepticism2012, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 86 (1):239-265.
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Added by: Simon FoktAbstract: This paper offers four arguments against a moral human right to health, two denying that the right exists and two denying that it would be very useful (even if it did exist). One of my sceptical arguments is familiar, while the other is not.The unfamiliar argument is an argument from the nature of health. Given a realistic view of health production, a dilemma arises for the human right to health. Either a state's moral duty to preserve the health of its citizens is not justifiably aligned in relation to the causes of health or it does not correlate with the human right to health. It follows that no one holds a justified moral human right to health against the state.Education and herd immunity against infectious disease both illustrate this dilemma. In the former case, the state's moral duty correlates with the human right to health only if it demands too much from a cause of health; and in the latter, only if it demands nothing from a cause of health (that is, too little).Comment: Useful in teaching on distributive justice in medicine or medical ethics in general. Can also be used as further reading in political and moral philosophy modules on human rights.Sreenivasan, Gopal. Disunity of Virtue2009, Journal of Ethics 13 (2-2):195 - 212.
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Added by: Simon FoktAbstract: This paper argues against the unity of the virtues, while trying to salvage some of its attractive aspects. I focus on the strongest argument for the unity thesis, which begins from the premise that true virtue cannot lead its possessor morally astray. I suggest that this premise presupposes the possibility of completely insulating an agent’s set of virtues from any liability to moral error. I then distinguish three conditions that separately foreclose this possibility, concentrating on the proposition that there is more to morality than virtue alone—that is, not all moral considerations are ones to which some virtue is characteristically sensitive. If the virtues are not unified, the situationist critique of virtue ethics also turns out to be more difficult to establish than some have supposed.Comment: This paper offers a discussion of some strong objections against virtue ethics, and as such it is best used to support modules focusing on this neo-Aristotelian view. Further, it addresses problems which seem to follow from empirical research into virtues and character, which makes it particularly useful in teaching students who tend to confuse moral psychology and philosophy.Srinivasan, Amia. Are we luminous?2015, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: 90 (2): 294-319.
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Added by: Jie GaoAbstract: Since its appearance over a decade ago, Timothy Williamson's anti-luminosity argument has come under sustained attack. Defenders of the luminous overwhelmingly object to the argument's use of a certain margin-for-error premise. Williamson himself claims that the premise follows easily from a safety condition on knowledge together with his description of the thought experiment. But luminists argue that this is not so: the margin-for-error premise either requires an implausible interpretation of the safety requirement on knowledge, or it requires other equally implausible assumptions. In this paper I bolster the margin-for-error premise against these attacks by recasting Williamson's own two-part defence, the first part intended to work on the assumption that there is no constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic, and the second intended to work without this assumption. Pace various luminists, I argue that the appeals to safety needed for Williamson's two-part defence are plausible. I also argue that all that is needed to generate the margin-for-error premise from these safety conditions is an empirical assumption about the kinds of creatures we are: that is, creatures whose beliefs are structured by certain dispositions. By recasting the anti-luminosity argument in this way, we can understand what is really at stake in the debate about luminosity: that is, whether we are luminous.Comment: In this paper, Sirinivasan defends Williamson's anti-luminosity argument against a general criticism having to do with a certain margin-for-error premise. It is good for teaching upper-level undergraduate or Masters courses on topics of self-knowledge, epistemic externalism or luminosity.Srinivasan, Amia. Normativity without Cartesian Priviledge2015, Philosophical Issues: 25 (1): 273-299.
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Added by: Jie GaoSummary: This paper aims to explore the implication of rejecting Cartesianism for our relationship to the normative realm. It is argued that it implies that this relationship is more fraught than many would like to think. Without privileged access to our own minds, there are no norms that can invariably guide our actions, and no norms that are immune from blameless violation. This will come as bad news to those normative theorists who think that certain central normative notions - e.g. the ethical ought or epistemic justification - should be cashed out in terms of subjects' mental states precisely in order to generate norms that are action-guiding and immune from blameless vi- olation. Meanwhile Anti-Cartesianism might come as good news to those normative theorists who resist cashing out norms in terms of mental states. For Anti-Cartesnianism implies that no norms - however closely tied to the mental - can be perfectly action-guiding or totally immune from blameless violation. More generally, once we have accepted that our relationship to our own minds lacks the perfect intimacy promised by Cartesianism, we are, for better or worse, left with the view that the normative realm is suffused with ignorance and bad luck.Comment: This is a good paper for teachings on epistemic normativity, more specifically on normative externalism. Having pre-knowledge on epistemic internalism and extermalism would be helpful in understanding this paper, but not necessarily required.Srinivasan, Amia. Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?2018, London Review of Books, 40 (6): 5-10.
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Nadia MehdiAbstract: Srinivasan attempts to address the question of how we are able to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.Comment: This text is an insightful call to bring discussions of sexual consent back to a politics of desire. It would make a great addition to syllabi covering the philosophy of sex.Srinivasan, Amia. Feminism and Metaethics2016, in Mcpherson, Tristram and Plunkett, David (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge 2016
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Added by: Giada FratantonioAbstract: Feminism is first and foremost a political project: a project aimed at the liberation of women and the destruction of patriarchy. This project does not have a particular metaethics; there is no feminist consensus, for example, on the epistemology of moral belief or the metaphysics of moral truth. But the work of feminist philosophers - that is, philosophers who identify with the political project of feminism, and moreover see that political project as informing their philosophical work - raises significant metaethical questions: about the need to rehabilitate traditional moral philosophy, about the extent to which political and moral considerations can play a role in philosophical theorizing, and about the importance of rival metaethical conceptions for first-order political practice. I discuss some of the contributions that feminist philosophy makes to each of these questions in turn. I hope to call attention to the way in which feminist thought bears on traditional topics in metaethics (particularly moral epistemology and ethical methodology) but also to how feminist thought might inform metaethical practice itself.Comment: The author discusses some contributions that feminist philosophy can make to some questions on metaethics. Can be used for a course on feminism.Srinivasan, Amia. The Aptness of Anger2018, Journal of Political Philosophy, 26 (2):123-144
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Lizzy VenthamAbstract: This paper argues that anger has an important role in political life. By not recognising this, we risk neglecting groups for whom anger is appropriate, and who have never been allowed to be angry.Comment: This paper is a great conversation starter about the place of anger in political philosophy. It provides original arguments that can go against a lot of students' initial intuitions on the topic, so can be a great way to start discussion and debate. I'd use it on classes on politics, feminism, or applied ethics.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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