Diversity Reading List

Abstract: Philosophers have placed some or all works of art in nearly every available ontological category, with some considering them to be physical objects, others abstract structures, imaginary entities, action types or tokens, and so on. How can we decide which among these views to accept? I argue that the rules of use for sortal terms like 'painting' and 'symphony' establish what ontological sorts of thing we are referring to with those terms, so that we must use a form of conceptual analysis in adjudicating these debates. This has several interesting consequences, including that revisionary answers are suspect, that adequate answers may require broadening our systems of categories, and that certain questions about the ontology of art - including the basic question 'What is the ontological status of the work of art?'- are ill?formed and unanswerable.

Abstract: Recent surveys of the development of feminist ethics over the last three decades have emphasized that the exclusive and unitary focus on 'care' with which it is still sometimes identified has long been misleading. While paying tribute to the historic significance and continuing influence of Carol Gilligan's and Nel Noddings's pathbreaking work (1982; 1984), commentators such as Samantha Brennan, Marilyn Friedman, and Alison Jaggar point to 'the increasing connections between feminist ethics and mainstream moral theory' (Brennan 1999, 859), the 'number of diverse methodological strategies' adopted (Friedman 2000, 211), and the 'controversy and diversity' rather than 'unity' within feminism, marking 'the shift from asserting the radical otherness of feminist ethics to seeing feminist philosophers as making a diverse range of contributions to an ongoing [larger] tradition of ethical discussion' (Jaggar 2000, 452-53). Indeed, Samantha Brennan's 1999 Ethics survey article suggests that there is no 'one' feminist ethic, and that the distinctive features of a feminist approach are simply the perception of the wrongness of women's oppression, and the resulting construction and orientation of theory - based on women's moral experiences - to the goal of understanding and ending that oppression (1999, 860). Obviously, then, this minimalist definition will permit a very broad spectrum of perspectives. In this respect, feminist ethics has interestingly come to converge with feminist political philosophy, which, at least from the 'second wave' onward, also encompassed a wide variety of approaches whose common denominator was simply the goal of ending female subordination (Jaggar 1983; Tong 1998). In this paper, I want to focus on an ethical strategy best and most selfconsciously developed in feminist theory in the writings of Onora O'Neill (1987; 1993), but that can arguably be traced back, at least in implicit and schematic form, to Marxism and classical left theory, and that would certainly be congenial to many people working on race. (I have found it very useful in my own work: Mills 1997; Mills 1998.) I refer to the distinction between idealizing and non?idealizing approaches to ethical theory, and the endorsement of the latter. I will argue that this normative strategy has the virtue of being potentially universalist in its application - able to address many, if not all, of the concerns not only of women, but also of those, men as well as women, subordinated by class, race, and the underdevelopment of the 'South' - and reflecting the distinctive experience of the oppressed while avoiding particularism and relativism. Moreover, in certain respects it engages with mainstream ethics on what are nominally its own terms, thereby (at least in theory) making it somewhat harder to ignore and marginalize. Correspondingly, I will argue that the so?called ideal theory more dominant in mainstream ethics is in crucial respects obfuscatory, and can indeed be thought of as in part ideological, in the pejorative sense of a set of group ideas that reflect, and contribute to perpetuating, illicit group privilege. As O'Neill argues, and as I agree, the best way of realizing the ideal is through the recognition of the importance of theorizing the nonideal.

Introduction: In the late twentieth century, zombies began to play an important role in philosophical discussions about consciousness. But unlike the zombies of Hollywood, philosophical zombies are very much alive - or at least, they would be were they to exist. As philosophers use the term, a zombie is a creature that is microphysically identical to a human being - and thus produces behavior that is indistinguishable from that of a normal human being - but lacks any sort of consciousness in the phenomenal sense. Zombies behave as if they are in pain when you stick them with a pin, and they will report that they are in pain, but they don ' t experience any painful sensations.

Introduction: Physicalism - the claim that everything is physical - has been the dominant position in philosophy of mind since at least the middle of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, physicalism has long been accused of being unable to account satisfactorily for the qualitative or subjective aspect of experience, for example, the reddishness of one ' s visual experience of a ripe tomato or the painfulness of one ' s tactile experience of a sharp object. Many have charged that it is dif? cult to see how these aspects of experience could be accounted for in solely physical terms. Focusing speci? cally on the experi- ence that a bat has when using its sonar, Thomas Nagel formulated this charge in a particularly powerful way. His argument is designed to show that subjective facts about experience, which are essential to it, cannot be captured in the objective language of physicalism. Although most philoso- phers assume that the argument, if successful, would show that physicalism is false, Nagel himself is careful to claim only that we currently lack the conceptual resources to see how physicalism could be true.

Abstract: In developing a Black feminist praxis, standpoint theory has provided one important source of analytical guidance and intellectual legitimation for African-American women. Standpoint theory argues that group location in hierarchical power relations produces shared challenges for individuals in those groups. These common challenges can foster similar angles of vision leading to a group knowledge or standpoint that in turn can influence the group's political action. Stated differently, group standpoints are situated in unjust power relations, reflect those power relations, and help shape them. I suspect that one reason that the ideas of standpoint theory (in contrast to the vocabulary deployed by standpoint theorists, including the term standpoint theory itself ) resonate with African-American women's experiences lies in the resemblance of stand- point theory to the norm of racial solidarity. Created in response to institutionalized racism and associated with Black nationalist responses to such oppression (see, e.g., Franklin 1992; Van Deburg 1992), racial solidarity within Black civil society requires that African-Americans stick together at all costs. The civil rights and Black Power movements certainly demonstrated the effectiveness of Black politics grounded in racial solidarity. In the former, racial solidarity among African-Americans lay at the center of a multiracial civil rights effort. In the latter, racial solidarity was expressed primarily through all-Black organizations. Collectively, these movements delivered tangible politi- cal and economic gains for African-Americans as a group (but not for all members within the group). Differences could be expressed within the boundaries of Blackness but not across those same boundaries. In this sense, the notion of a Black women's standpoint gains meaning in the context of a shared Black consciousness dedicated to sustaining racial solidarity. Notions of racial solidarity and a shared Black women's standpoint both invoke explicitly political objectives. Just as adhering to racial solidar- ity was important for Black emancipation in the United States, so might a collective Black women's standpoint be seen as essential for Black feminist praxis. Since Black women, like African-Americans overall, are oppressed as a group, collective as com- pared to individualized strategies remain important. Much has happened since the 1970s. Depending on their placement in hierarchies of age, gender, economic class, region of the country, and sexuality, African-American women encounter new challenges associated with the new politics of containment in the United States. These changes require fresh ideas that analyze the complexities of contemporary lived Black experience and suggest adequate political responses to them. The intellectual climate currently housing Black feminist thought has also changed. In academic contexts influenced by postmodern rubrics of decentering, deconstruction, and difference, the norm of racial solidarity itself has come under increasing attack. Within Black cultural studies in particular, critiques now stress how racial solidarity has far too often been constructed on the bedrock of racial authenticity and essential- ism (see, e.g., Dyson 1993; West 1993; and Collins 1998c, 83), leading some to empha- size the pitfalls of unquestioned racial solidarity for African-American women (Grant 1982; Terrelonge 1984; Richie 1996). Academic feminism in North America takes aim at similar targets. Whereas Black academics question the utility of racial solidarity in addressing social issues of lived Black experience, feminist theorists increasingly criticize standpoint theory on theoretical grounds (Hekman 1997). Collectively, many Black and/or feminist academics question the assumptions that underlie solidarities of all sorts. This has great implication for Black feminist praxis generally, and a Black women's standpoint situated in unjust power relations in particular. Given these shifting patterns, the situated standpoints that Black women collectively construct, and even the question of whether African-American women self-define as a group, become vitally important. In historical contexts in which racial segregation more visibly organized geographic, symbolic, and political space assigned to African- Americans, the links between a group's common positionality in power relations, the shared experiences that accompanied this commonality, the mechanisms for con- structing group standpoints, and the significance of group standpoints for political activism were fairly straightforward. Under the changed conditions that accompany the new politics of containment, however, these links are neither clear nor assumed. Despite the historical significance of the ideas of standpoint theory to African- American women, questions remain concerning the efficacy of group-based identities of this sort for contemporary political struggles. In situations in which increasingly sophisticated practices, such as controlling populations through constant surveillance (Foucault 1979), as well as strategies of everyday racism (Essed 1991) and symbolic racism (Jhally and Lewis 1992), obscure the continued effects of institutionalized injus- tices of all sorts, political theories that seem to advocate pulling together and storming the factory gates can seem simplistic. Moreover, the decreasing effectiveness of an identity politics currently associated with standpoint theory raises questions of its continued relevance (see Collins 1998c, 44-76). Are group-based identities that emerge from standpoint theory and the politics they generate still empowering for African-American women? Do group-based identities such as those advocated by stand- point theory ultimately disempower African-American women because they unduly suppress differences and heterogeneity among Black women? Quite simply, in what ways, if any, does standpoint theory remain relevant for Black feminist thought?

Publisher's Note: Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been interpreted by scholars as comprising separate treatments of three uneasily connected topics: beauty, biology, and empirical knowledge. Rachel Zuckert's book interprets the Critique as a unified argument concerning all three domains. She argues that on Kant's view, human beings demonstrate a distinctive cognitive ability in appreciating beauty and understanding organic life: an ability to anticipate a whole that we do not completely understand according to preconceived categories. This ability is necessary, moreover, for human beings to gain knowledge of nature in its empirical character as it is, not as we might assume it to be. Her wide-ranging and original study will be valuable for readers in all areas of Kant's philosophy.

Abstract: In this paper I distinguish three degrees of epistemic egoism, each of which has an ethical analogue, and I argue that all three are incoherent. Since epistemic autonomy is frequently identified with one of these forms of epistemic egoism, it follows that epistemic autonomy as commonly understood is incoherent. I end with a brief discussion of the idea of moral autonomy and suggest that its component of epistemic autonomy in the realm of the moral is problematic.

Abstract: Proposes an analysis of the concept of understanding. Finds three important, relevant strands of thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, among which the most important one is that understanding involves representing the world nonpropositionally, e.g. through visualization or diagrams. Taking this to be the defining characteristic, proposes that understanding is a state of comprehending nonpropositional structures of reality, such as automobiles, pieces of music or art, the character of a person, or a causal nexus. Argues that virtue epistemology is better suited than traditional epistemology to help us develop a successful analysis of understanding thus conceived. For unlike the theories from which it departs, virtue epistemology takes the objects of valuable epistemic states to consist of both propositional and nonpropositional objects.

Publisher's Note: In this book Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of authority of Joseph Raz. These principles apply to authority in the moral and religious domains

Abstract: Plato claims that representational art is dangerous because of its deceptive nature. He thinks that those who indulge too much in imitation will eventually have problems differentiating between imitation and reality. Aristotle, on the other hand, believes that indulging oneself in imitation (specifically theatrical tragedy) is healthy if the experience produces a catharsis - which would help one function better in real life. There has been a long-standing debate between these two positions on representation, both of them still having different strengths even when applied to contemporary situations. Ancient theories often hold special value when they continue to help us understand current issues, but what would Plato make of an IMAX film? Would Aristotle claim the same kind of catharsis could result from virtual reality, as a tragedy presented on the stage in ancient Greece? In what follows, I will use the theories of Plato and Aristotle as a foundation, and then move on to describe the changing nature of representation in order to explain how different kinds of media can affect our understanding of representation and our responses to it. Plato and Aristotle introduced the difficult moral and epistemological questions that result from the differentiation between reality and mimesis, or representation. Although there are still problems in explaining our real reactions to represented events, one aspect of the problem has changed significantly in the 20thcentury: the media through which the fictions or representations are presented. The changing nature of the media of fictional discourse calls for a reexamination of the theory we employ in understanding these experiences. In order to understand what effect the changing nature of the media has on these experiences, I will explore two other topics that will help clarify both the problems and the solutions. First, the changing concepts of what count as 'mimetic' and what count as 'fictional' need to be clarified in order that we know the kinds of discourses with which we are dealing. The Greek term mimesis, however, needs to be unpacked into the current terminology to account for the different aspects of representation, narrative, and fiction. Second, I will provide a general explanation of how fiction affects its readers according to current aesthetic theory as compared to ancient theory. Having dealt with these preliminary concerns, I will then argue that the changing nature of the media of representation changes the explanations of our experiences of fiction, which have been accounted for by earlier theory. I will argue further that these responses may in fact be more dependent upon the quality of the narrative structure of the fiction than the mode or media through which it is presented.