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Conceptual Engineering in the Biological Image
Get PDFConceptual Engineering, and investigations into concepts generally, is becoming a focus of recent academic philosophy. The importance of this movement is upheld here, and I approach the conversation with a metaphysics of concept relations. I claim such relations between concepts feature properties expressible in the language of theoretical biology, particularly as presented by William Wimsatt. By synthesising the properties of robustness and entrenchment with themes in the conceptual engineering conversation, I introduce new concepts of my own and hope to show that a biology, or complexity orientation, can aid the conceptual engineer
What the West Owes Syrians
Get PDFIn What the West Owes Syrians, Diana Bashur explores another significant post-uprising reality, Syrian refugees and the costs involved in hosting them by Western countries. Here Bashur is seeking to draw our attention to an important, yet largely ignored, correlation between the profit incurred through arms sales by Western countries to countries that have provided support to the armed opposition and the costs involved in hosting Syrian refugees in the West. Bashur eloquently contrasts the extent to which the West was enthusiastic about the Arab Spring with the significant increase in arms sales to the region by EU and the US, 23% and 300% respectively. Bashur leaves us with the sobering probability that some European politicians “… may have opted for a tradeoff: making their taxpayers shoulder the short-term cost of hosting refugees in exchange for profits to the arms industry.
The Normativity Problem as a Serious Obstacle to Modelling Gender
Get PDFIn this paper, I explore Sally Haslanger’s (2000) proposed approach to modelling gender which she intends to overcome several problems for such a project. I specifically focus on what Haslanger calls the normativity problem, in which definitions meant to overcome oppression only reinforce oppressive norms. I argue that the normativity problem is a serious one for defining gender and that Haslanger does not successfully overcome it with her definitions of man and woman. In §§1 and 2, I offer background for and explain her account of the problem before offering my own formal reconstruction of it as what I call the normativity argument that (a) we ought not marginalise individuals in our defining of social categories, (b) definitions encouraging normative behaviour do this, and (c) any model of gender encourages such behaviour. In §3 I then give an account of her proposed definitions of man and woman along with her theoretical objections to the normativity argument—suggesting that only certain kinds of marginalisation are undesirable within the constraints of a particular feminist project and that her definitions do not encourage normative behaviour. I then offer my responses to her objections in §4, suggesting that her definitions are normative and do marginalise in a way incongruous even with her particular feminist project. Before concluding, I briefly discuss in §5 where my criticisms of Haslanger’s approach to defining gender fit into some existing criticisms, in order to give my position an even clearer shape. This paper concludes in §6 by sketching some possible ways forward in the philosophy of gender responding to this problem
The Art of Anthropology: The Potential of Art to Create Postmodern Anthropological Knowledge
Get PDFAnnabelle von Moltk
