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Added by: Rossen Ventzislavov
Summary: Vergine's account of the formative years of performance art takes stock of the many innovative strategies artists developed for re-engaging the human body. One of the crucial dimensions of this reengagement is the positioning of one's body in physical proximity with others. This happens in art through the bodily negotiation of basic dichotomies such as nature/artifice, ethos/pathos, agency/abandon, publicity/privacy, mortality/immortality etc. Vergine sees objects, and the body's undifferentiated objecthood, as active participants in the performative communication and communion between artist and audience. These forms of togetherness stand or fall on the intensity of all parties' affective investment, but they are also equally affected by the level of intellectual mutuality an art work occasions. According to Vergine, the demand for intelligent analysis and deep understanding that performance art places on its audience is balanced out by the artists' bodily presence. For her the artist's body does not serve merely as a mechanical expedient. It also "contributes to the life of consciousness and memory in a psycho-physical parallelism of processes that assume meaning and relief only when they are connected."Vermeulen, Inga. Verbal Disputes and the Varieties of Verbalness2018, Erkenntnis 83(2): 331-348-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Ethan Landes
Abstract: Many philosophical disputes, most prominently disputes in ontology, have been suspected of being merely verbal and hence pointless. My goal in this paper is to offer an account of merely verbal disputes and to address the question of what is problematic with such disputes. I begin by arguing that extant accounts that focus on the semantics of the disputed statement S (Chalmers, Hirsch, Sider) do not capture the full range of cases as they might arise in philosophy. Moreover, these accounts bring in heavy theoretical machinery. I attempt to show that we can capture the full range of cases with an approach that is theoretically lightweight. This approach explains verbal disputes as a pragmatic phenomenon where parties use the same utterance type S with different speaker's meaning. Moreover, it provides an answer to the crucial question Jackson's (Erkenntnis 79:31-54, 2014) pragmatic account leaves, at best, highly implicit. Based on my account, we can distinguish between different ways in which disputes can be verbal and different extents to which they are defective. Distinguishing between these varieties of verbalness furthermore allows us to specify what kind of substantive issues remain to be discussed once the linguistic confusion is resolved.Comment: Discusses verbal disputes and problems with existing accounts of verbal disputes, ultimately arriving on an account of verbal disputes that rely on speaker meaning. Far more accessible than other papers on the topic, and includes a number of thought examples of people talking past each other. Useful for introduction to the topic, but requires some background in philosophy of language.
Vetter, Barbara. Dispositions without conditionals2014, Mind 123(489): 129-156.-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Abstract: Dispositions are modal properties. The standard conception of dispositions holds that each disposition is individuated by its stimulus condition(s) and its manifestation(s), and that their modality is best captured by some conditional construction that relates stimulus to manifestation as antecedent to consequent. In this paper Vetter proposes an alternative conception of dispositions: each disposition is individuated by its manifestation alone, and its modality is closest to that of possibility - a fragile vase, for instance, is one that can break easily. The view is expounded in some detail and defended against the major objections.Comment: This article serves as a complementary reading for the book Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality, or as a replacement for those who are only interested in Vetter's analysis of dispositions and not in her entire theory of potentialities. Recommendable for postgraduate courses in philosophy of language, metaphysics or philosophy of science.
Vetter, Barbara. Dispositional Essentialism and the Laws of Nature2012, In Alexander Bird, Brian Ellis & Howard Sankey (eds.), Properties, Powers, and Structures. Issues in the Metaphysics of Realism. Routledge.-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Summary: In this paper, Vetter looks at the argument for Dispositional Essentialism (DE) that has been put forward by A. Bird in his recent book Nature's Metaphysics. Bird's overall argument comes in two parts, one negative and one positive, which together are to establish DE as the best contender for a theory of properties and laws. Vetter argues that, even if all their particular steps go through, both parts of the argument have significant gaps. The negative argument, if successful, shows that at least one property has an essence, but not that any property has a dispositional essence. The positive argument, which aims to demonstrate the explanatory power of DE, fails to take account of the quantitative nature of the fundamental natural properties and laws. The paper finishes by suggesting a revision of DE's doctrine that might solve the latter problem, but yet remains to be spelled out.Comment: This paper explores in detail the metaphysics of dispositions. It is a good secondary reading for those who have already read Armstrong or Alexander Bird. Vetter writes in a very clear way, but a basic background in metaphysics might be needed to fully understand the paper. This reading is then more suitable for postgraduate courses in metaphysics or philosophy of science.
Vetter, Barbara. Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality2015, Oxford: Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Publisher's Note: This book develops and defends dispositionalism about modality: the view that metaphysical modality is a matter of the dispositions that objects have. Dispositionalism is an attractive view for actualists about modality, and for anyone who embraces an anti-Humean metaphysics of powers. This book shows in detail how such a view is to be formulated, which challenges it faces, and how they may be met. The metaphysics of potentiality is examined in detail to show that the view meets the three main challenges for a metaphysics of modality: (1) Extensional correctness: providing the right truth-values for statements of possibility and necessity; (2) formal adequacy: providing the right logic for metaphysical modality; and (3) semantic utility: providing a semantics that links ordinary modal language to the metaphysics of modality.Comment: The book develops the dispositionalist view in a way that takes account of contemporary developments in metaphysics, logic, and semantics. It can be used as a main reading in metaphysics and as further reading in many other fields. Excellent for anything from an introductory course in modal metaphysics to an advanced course. Chapters 1 - 3 are a particularly useful introduction to dispositionalist accounts of modality, criticisms of standard possible worlds accounts, and Vetter's particular potentialist account.
Villoro, Luis. The Major Moments of Indigenismo in Mexico2017, In Mexican Philosophy in the 20th Century: Essential Readings, Carlos Alberto Sanchez and Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr. (eds.). Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Adriana Clavel-VázquezAbstract:
The aim of Luis Villoro’s seminal book on Indigenism was not to incorporate Mexico’s indigenous population into the national culture, or offer an ethnographic account of indigenous peoples, or participate in indigenismo, an earlier state-sponsored effort to valorize Mexico’s indigenous population with varying degrees of success. Instead, Villoro wants to understand the Indigenist’s consciousness, particularly how the history of Mexican consciousness of the Indian resulted in the problematic twentieth-century movement of indigenismo. Villoro divides the history of Indigenism into three major momentos (moments), of which the second and third movement each have two etapas (stages). The “Conclusion,” included here, is a summary of these moments, which demonstrate how the Spanish, criollo, and mestizo consciousness of the Indian have unfolded in a Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—a historical process of distancing, appropriating, and evaluating the indigenous element of Mexican culture and society.Comment (from this Blueprint): In this text, Villoro aims at understanding and problematizing Indigenismo, a movement in 20th century Latin America that advocated for the integration of Indigenous cultures. In its last pages, Villoro’s analysis brings forward the main problem with many manifestations of Indigenismo: it is often less about addressing the marginalization of Indigenous peoples, and more about the construction of the mestizo identity, which, as discussed by Quijano, can only benefit a few. Villoro notes that in the process of Indigenismo, “the Indian is subjected, in his own reality, to a strange process. His Being plays and is transformed by its passing from one hand to another.” In light of this, it seems unclear that mestizo culture can fulfil the promise of reconciliation and justice. The cultural programme that follows from Indigenismo, therefore, seems in many cases more like a programme built on cultural appropriation than revalorization.
Vince, Rosa. Testimonial Smothering and Pornography2018, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 4(3)-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Rosa Vince
Abstract: This paper defends the claim that there are two previously underexplored ways in which pornography silences women. These ways that pornography silences are (1) the smothering of refusal and (2) the smothering of sexual assault reports, and they can be explained in part through Kristie Dotson’s account of “testimonial smothering.” Unlike the work of other writers in the pornography as silencing literature, my discussion of silenced refusal of sex deals with the cases where women have said yes to sex but would have said no if they had felt that they could have. I show that this, and cases where women do not report sexual assault, count as testimonial smothering through identifying rape myths as a species of “pernicious ignorance.” I make the connection to pornography in presenting evidence that pornography contributes to acceptance of rape myths. This takes us to my general conclusion: Dotson’s account of testimonial smothering gives us a way in which pornography contributes to the silencing of women, by silencing their refusal of sex and their reports of sexual assault.Comment: This paper can be used as a stand-alone argument for how some pornography might silence women, or can be viewed as part of the literature on silencing and pornography; as an alternative strategy to Rae Langton's approach, using Kristie Dotson's work instead of J L Austin's. It can also be used as an example of how Kristie Dotson's work on Testimonial Injustice has broad application.
Vogt, Evon Z.. Zinacanteco ‘Souls’1965, Man, 65: 33 - 35-
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Added by: M. Jimena Clavel Vázquez and Andrés Hernández VillarrealAbstract:
In this paper, Vogt describes the notion of the soul of the people from Zinacateco, Mexico, by drawing on Tzotzil concepts. He specifically focuses on two notions that can be assoacied with the soul, namely ch’ulel and chanul. He briefly discusses the social relevance of these notions.
Comment:
available in this Blueprint
Von Eckardt, Barbara. The representational theory of mind2012, In Keith Frankish & William Ramsey (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: It is argued that it is important for cognitive scientists to understand both the precise nature of RTM, and the challenges to it. The biggest foundational challenge is to develop an adequate naturalistic theory of how representational content is determined. Philosophers have proposed several ingenious theory-sketches of content determination but none accounts for the full range of semantic features mental representations arguably have. Another major challenge is the existence of non-representational competitor research programs. A likely future scenario is that we will be able to explain certain 'low-level' aspects of cognition without resort to representations but that representational hypotheses will still be needed to account for the intentionality-based features of cognition and 'representation hungry' higher-level processes.Comment:
Vredenburg, Kate. A Unificationist Defense of Revealed Preferences2019, Economics & Philosophy 36.1, 149-169-
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: Revealed preference approaches to modelling agents’ choices face two seemingly devastating explanatory objections. The no self-explanation objection imputes a problematic explanatory circularity to revealed preference approaches, while the causal explanation objection argues that, all things equal, a scientific theory should provide causal explanations, but revealed preference approaches decidedly do not. Both objections assume a view of explanation, the constraint-based view, that the revealed preference theorist ought to reject. Instead, the revealed preference theorist should adopt a unificationist account of explanation, allowing her to escape the two explanatory problems discussed in this paper.
Comment: An ingenious and clear defense of the revealed preference interpretation, probably the best one that's possible. A nice opportunity to discuss with students the intellectual gymnastics required in order to defend theoretical commitments of the contemporary economy.
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Vergine, Lea. The Body as Language. Body Art and Like Stories
2000, In: Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. Trans. Henry Martin. Milan: Skira Editore S.p.A.. 7-27.
Comment: This text offers a historical overview of our concept of the human body in the context of art. It can be useful in any class on body aesthetics, performance art, or dance.