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Dizadji-Bahmani, Foad, Frigg, Roman, Hartmann, Stephan. Confirmation and reduction: A bayesian account
2011, Synthese,79(2): 321-338.
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Abstract: Various scientific theories stand in a reductive relation to each other. In a recent article, the authors argue that a generalized version of the Nagel-Schaffner model (GNS) is the right account of this relation. In this article, they present a Bayesian analysis of how GNS impacts on confirmation. They formalize the relation between the reducing and the reduced theory before and after the reduction using Bayesian networks, and thereby show that, post-reduction, the two theories are confirmatory of each other. They ask when a purported reduction should be accepted on epistemic grounds. To do so, they compare the prior and posterior probabilities of the conjunction of both theories before and after the reduction and ask how well each is confirmed by the available evidence
Comment: This article is an interesting reading for advanced courses in philosophy of science or logic. It could serve as further reading for modules focused on Bayesian networks, reduction or confirmation. Previous knowledge of bayesianism is required for understanding the article. No previous knowledge of thermodynamics is needed.
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Dōgen. Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253)
2011, In James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis and John C. Maraldo (eds.) Japanese Philosophy. A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 141-162
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: In Japanese religious history, Dōgen (1200–1253) is revered as the founder of the Japanese school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism. Tradition says he was born of an aristocratic family, orphaned, and at the age of twelve joined the Tendai Buddhist monastic community on Mt Hiei in northeastern Kyoto. In search of an ideal teacher, he soon wandered off from the central community on the mountain and ended up in a small temple in eastern Kyoto, Kennin-ji.
Comment (from this Blueprint): Excerpts from Shōbōgenzō (Repository of the Eye for the Truth), the major philosophical work of Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Japanese school of Sōtō Zen Buddhism allowing to deepen his philosophical understanding of nature.
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Dogget,Tyler. Moral Vegetarianism
2018, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
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Added by: Björn Freter
Abstract: The topic of this entry is moral vegetarianism and the arguments for it. Strikingly, most contemporary arguments for moral vegetarianism start with premises about the wrongness of producing meat and move to conclusions about the wrongness of consuming it. They do not fasten on some intrinsic feature of meat and insist that consuming things with such a feature is wrong. They do not fasten on some effect of meat-eating on the eater and insist that producing such an effect is wrong. Rather, they assert that the production of meat is wrong and that consumption bears a certain relation to production and that bearing such a relation to wrongdoing is wrong. So this entry gives significant space to food production as well as the tricky business of connecting production to consumption.
Comment (from this Blueprint): A solid overview of the history and arguments of moral vegetarianism.
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Donaldson, Sue, Kymlicka, Will. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights
2011, Oxford University Press
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Added by: Björn Freter
Publisher’s Note: Zoopolis offers a new agenda for the theory and practice of animal rights. Most animal rights theory focuses on the intrinsic capacities or interests of animals, and the moral status and moral rights that these intrinsic characteristics give rise to. Zoopolis shifts the debate from the realm of moral theory and applied ethics to the realm of political theory, focusing on the relational obligations that arise from the varied ways that animals relate to human societies and institutions. Building on recent developments in the political theory of group-differentiated citizenship, Zoopolis introduces us to the genuine "political animal". It argues that different types of animals stand in different relationships to human political communities. Domesticated animals should be seen as full members of human-animal mixed communities, participating in the cooperative project of shared citizenship. Wilderness animals, by contrast, form their own sovereign communities entitled to protection against colonization, invasion, domination and other threats to self-determination. `Liminal' animals who are wild but live in the midst of human settlement (such as crows or raccoons) should be seen as "denizens", resident of our societies, but not fully included in rights and responsibilities of citizenship. To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights. But we inevitably and appropriately have very different relations with them, with different types of obligations. Humans and animals are inextricably bound in a complex web of relationships, and Zoopolis offers an original and profoundly affirmative vision of how to ground this complex web of relations on principles of justice and compassion.
Comment (from this Blueprint): An introduction to the groundbreaking theory of Zoopolis focussing on developing a political vision of human aninmals and non-human animals living together.
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Dotson, Kristie. Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing
2011, Hypatia 26 (2):236-257.
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Naomi Beecroft, Emily Dyson
Abstract: Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges. Ultimately, I illustrate that by focusing on the ways in which hearers fail to meet speaker dependency in a linguistic exchange, efforts can be made to demarcate the different types of silencing people face when attempting to testify from oppressed positions in society.
Comment: This text provides an alternative framework to epistemic injustice and focuses on the positionality of black women. It encourages thought about (certain kinds of) ignorance as specific harms to others. This would suit an undergraduate class who were looking at race, gender, and/or applied epistemologies.
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Dotson, Kristie. On the Costs of Socially Relevant Philosophy Papers: A Reflection
2019, Journal of Social Philosophy .
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington
Introduction: The noticeable uptake of the paper 'How Is This Paper Philosophy?' (Dotson 2012a) within professional philosophy has given me the occasion to reflect about the uptake of philosophy papers. This may shed light on producing socially relevant philosophy articles and their costs. The relative success of that paper is a huge surprise to me. What I mean by success is pretty straightforward and not particularly ambitious. I am counting success as whether one regularly runs into people who have read one's paper and cite it as having had an impact on their considered or ambient positions on the paper's content. That is, it has received some uptake in a populated domain of activity. What I take to be central to ques-tions of how an article becomes socially relevant are questions of uptake. Uptake, here, is understood broadly to refer to readership that takes one's stated positions seriously enough to adopt (or be influenced by) them in part or in whole. What I have found is that many people in academic philosophy, for example, have read 'How Is This Paper Philosophy?' Some folks pay serious attention to it.
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Dotson, Kristie. A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression
2012, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33 (1):24-47.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington
Abstract: In this paper, first and foremost, I aim to issue a caution. Specifically, I caution that when addressing and identifying forms of epistemic oppression one needs to endeavor not to perpetuate epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression, here, refers to epistemic exclusions afforded positions and communities that produce de? ciencies in social knowledge. An epistemic exclusion, in this analysis, is an infringement on the epistemic agency of knowers that reduces her or his ability to participate in a given epistemic community.2 Epistemic agency will concern the ability to utilize persuasively shared epistemic resources within a given epistemic community in order to participate in knowledge production and, if required, the revision of those same resources.3 A compromise to epistemic agency, when unwarranted, damages not only individual knowers but also the state of social knowledge and shared epistemic resources.
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Dotson, Kristie. Accumulating Epistemic Power
2018, Philosophical Topics 46 (1):129-154.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington
Abstract: On December 3, 2014, in a piece entitled 'White America's Scary Delusion: Why Its Sense of Black Humanity Is So Skewed,' Brittney Cooper criticizes attempts to deem Black rage at state-sanctioned violence against Black people 'unreasonable.' In this paper, I outline a problem with epistemology that Cooper highlights in order to explore whether beliefs can wrong. My overall claim is there are difficult-to-defeat arguments concerning the 'legitimacy' of police slayings against Black people that are indicative of problems with epistemology because of the epistemic power they accumulate toward resilient oblivion, which can have the effect of normalizing oppressive conditions. That is to say, if one takes the value of lessening oppression as a key feature of normative, epistemological conduct, then it can generate demands on epistemological orientations that, in turn, generate wrongs for beliefs and, more specifically, beliefs as wrongs.
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Dotson, Kristie. Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression
2014, Social Epistemology 28 (2):115-138.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington
Abstract: Epistemic oppression refers to persistent epistemic exclusion that hinders one's contribution to knowledge production. The tendency to shy away from using the term 'epistemic oppression' may follow from an assumption that epistemic forms of oppression are generally reducible to social and political forms of oppression. While I agree that many exclusions that compromise one's ability to contribute to the production of knowledge can be reducible to social and political forms of oppression, there still exists distinctly irreducible forms of epistemic oppression. In this paper, I claim that a major point of distinction between reducible and irreducible epistemic oppression is the major source of difficulty one faces in addressing each kind of oppression, i.e. epistemic power or features of epistemological systems. Distinguishing between reducible and irreducible forms of epistemic oppression can offer a better understanding of what is at stake in deploying the term and when such deployment is apt.
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Dotson, Kristie. How is this Paper Philosophy?
2013, Comparative Philosophy 3 (1):3-29.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin Covington
Abstract: This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according to a culture of praxis. Finally, I provide a comparative exercise using Graham Priest's definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde's observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective.
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