What Even Is Gender?
What Even Is Gender?

Author: R. A. Briggs

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-30

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 1000881288

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Debates about gender are everywhere. Is it an inner identity, a biological fact, or an oppressive system? Should we respect it or resist it? What Even Is Gender? shifts the conversation in a fresh direction, arguing that these debates rest on a shared mistake: the idea that there is one thing called "gender" that both sides are arguing about. The authors distinguish a range of phenomena that established vocabulary often lumps together. This sheds light on the equivocations and false dichotomies of "gender" talk, and how they deny many of us the tools to make our needs, experiences, and concerns intelligible to others or even to ourselves. The authors develop a conceptual toolkit that helps alleviate the harms that result from the limitations of familiar approaches. They propose a pluralistic concept of "gender feels" that distinguishes among our experiences of diverse facets of gendered life. They develop a flexible approach to gender categories that reflects the value of self-determination. And they suggest that what we need is not one universal language of gender but an awareness of individual variation and a willingness to adjust to changing contexts and circumstances. A bold and thought-provoking approach to thinking about gender, What Even Is Gender? will be of great interest to those in philosophy, gender studies, sociology, and LGBTQIA+ studies.

Expression and Self-Knowledge
Expression and Self-Knowledge

Author: Dorit Bar-On

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-09-12

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1118908473

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Provides a timely and original contribution to the debate surrounding privileged self-knowledge Contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of mind continue to find puzzling the nature and source of privileged self-knowledge: the ordinary and effortless ‘first-person’ knowledge we have of our own sensations, moods, emotions, beliefs, desires, and hopes. In Expression and Self-Knowledge, Dorit Bar-On and Crispin Wright articulate their joint dissatisfaction with extant accounts of self-knowledge and engage in a sustained and substantial critical debate over the merits of an expressivist approach to the topic. The authors incorporate cutting-edge research while defending their own alternatives to existing approaches to so-called ‘first-person privilege’. Bar-On defends her neo-expressivist account, addressing the objection that neo-expressivism fails to provide an adequate epistemology of ordinary self-knowledge, and addresses new objections levelled by Wright. Wright then presents an alternative pluralist approach, and Bar-On argues in response that pluralism faces difficulties neo-expressivism avoids. Providing invaluable insights on a hotly debated topic in epistemology and philosophy of mind, Expression and Self-Knowledge: Presents an in-depth debate between two leading philosophers over the expressivist approach Offers novel developments and penetrating criticisms of the authors' respective views Features two different perspectives on the influential remarks on expression and self-knowledge found in Wittgenstein’s later writings Includes four jointly written chapters that offer a critical overview of prominent existing accounts, which provide a useful advanced introduction to the subject. Expression and Self-Knowledge is essential reading for epistemologists, philosophers of mind and language, psychologists with an interest in self-knowledge, and researchers and graduate students working in expression, expressivism, and self-knowledge.

Speaking My Mind
Speaking My Mind

Author: Dorit Bar-On

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2004-11-18

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0191532428

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Dorit Bar-On develops and defends a novel view of avowals and self-knowledge. Drawing on resources from the philosophy of language, the theory of action, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, she offers original and systematic answers to many long-standing questions concerning our ability to know our own minds. We are all very good at telling what states of mind we are in at a given moment. When it comes to our own present states of mind, what we say goes; an avowal such as "I'm feeling so anxious" or "I'm thinking about my next trip to Paris," it is typically supposed, tells it like it is. But why is that? Why should what I say about my present mental states carry so much more weight than what others say about them? Why should avowals be more immune to criticism and correction than other claims we make? And if avowals are not based on any evidence or observation, how could they possibly express our knowledge of our own present mental states? Bar-On proposes a Neo-Expressivist view according to which an avowal is an act through which a person directly expresses, rather than merely reports, the very mental condition that the avowal ascribes. She argues that this expressivist idea, coupled with an adequate characterization of expression and a proper separation of the semantics of avowals from their pragmatics and epistemology, explains the special status we assign to avowals. As against many expressivists and their critics, she maintains that such an expressivist explanation is consistent with a non-deflationary view of self-knowledge and a robust realism about mental states. The view that emerges preserves many insights of the most prominent contributors to the subject, while offering a new perspective on our special relationship to our own minds.

Privileged Access
Privileged Access

Author: Brie Gertler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 1351908715

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How do you grasp the contents of your mind - your desires, your fears, your sensations, your beliefs? We typically think that we are better able to discern our own mental states than others are. But is this correct? And if it is, what explains your special or 'privileged' access to your own states? Privileged Access is a comprehensive anthology of new and seminal essays, by leading philosophers, about the nature of self-knowledge. Most of the essays are new, including specially commissioned contributions from such prominent thinkers as Bermúdez, Dretske, Lycan, Sosa and others, but the anthology also includes reprints of classic articles by Boghossian, Shoemaker, Wright and others. The volume provides for an in-depth understanding of contemporary answers to key philosophical questions which have strongly influenced developments in epistemology, ontology, and the philosophy of mind since Descartes. Featuring an introductory chapter outlining the main currents of thought about self-knowledge, this comprehensive collection of cutting-edge philosophical work will prove an invaluable resource for students and researchers alike.

The Self and Self-Knowledge
The Self and Self-Knowledge

Author: Annalisa Coliva

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-04-19

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0191631264

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A team of leading experts investigate a range of philosophical issues to do with the self and self-knowledge. Self and Self-Knowledge focuses on two main problems: how to account for I-thoughts and the consequences that doing so would have for our notion of the self; and how to explain subjects' ability to know the kind of psychological states they enjoy, which characteristically issues in psychological self-ascriptions. The first section of the volume consists of essays that, by appealing to different considerations which range from the normative to the phenomenological, offer an assessment of the animalist conception of the self. The second section presents an examination as well as a defence of the new epistemic paradigm, largely associated with recent work by Christopher Peacocke, according to which knowledge of our own mental states and actions should be based on an awareness of them and of our attempts to bring them about. The last section explores a range of different perspectives—from neo-expressivism to constitutivism—in order to assess the view that self-knowledge is more robust than any other form of knowledge. While the contributors differ in their specific philosophical positions, they all share the view that careful philosophical analysis is needed before scientific research can be fruitfully brought to bear on the issues at hand. These thought-provoking essays provide such an analysis and greatly deepen our understanding of these central aspects of our mentality.

Mind, Meaning, and Knowledge
Mind, Meaning, and Knowledge

Author: Annalisa Coliva

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2012-09-27

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 0191654922

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This volume is a collective exploration of major themes in the work of Crispin Wright, one of today's leading philosophers. These newly commissioned papers are divided into four sections, preceded by a substantial Introduction, which places them in the context of the development of Wright's ideas. The distinguished contributors address issues such as the rule-following problem, knowledge of our meanings and minds, truth, realism, anti-realism and relativism, as well as the nature of perceptual justification, the cogency of arguments such as G. E. Moore's celebrated proof of an external world, and scepticism about the material world. Some papers explore the relationship of Wright's ideas with those of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose influence has always been a prominent aspect of Wright's philosophy. The essays collectively testify to the enormous interest and relevance of Wright's seminal contributions for present-day debates in areas as diverse as the philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology, and significantly advance research in these areas. The volume also contains Wright's substantial responses to his critics, which offer the most up-to-date versions of his ideas and a vigorous defence of his philosophy.

Meaning Without Representation
Meaning Without Representation

Author: Steven Gross

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0198722192

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Challenges the idea that representation of how the world is should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language. Examines deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language in expressing mental states, and the normative and the natural as they relate to issues of representation.

Living Together:
Living Together:

Author: Elisabeth Weber

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0823249921

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For Jacques Derrida, the notions and experiences of 'community, ' 'living, ' and 'together' never ceased to harbour radical, in fact infinite interrogations. In this volume, the paradoxes, impossibilities, and singular chances that haunt the necessity of 'living together' are evoked in Derrida's essay 'Avowing--The Impossible' around which the collection is gathered.

The Original Sceptics
The Original Sceptics

Author: Myles Burnyeat

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9780872203471

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This is a collection of five essays debating the nature and scope of ancient scepticism, and providing an introduction to the thought of the original sceptics. The book seeks to shed new light on how their thought relates to sceptical arguments in modern philosophy.