WHAT IS ANIMALISM?

One increasingly popular approach to personal identity is called ‘animalism.’ Unfortunately, it is unclear just what the doctrine says. In this paper, I criticise several different ways of stating animalism, and put forward one formulation that I find more promising.     

ON WHAT THERE IS

Abstract: This paper programmatically outlines a case for “nominalism”. If brown and colored are so related logically that being colored is nothing over and above being brown, then whatever “exists”other than concreta is nothing over and above concreta. Possibilities of rain and “universals” like the shape, circularity (= the logical possibility of being so shaped), lack “existence” in another sense. (“There are things that don't exist” shows that ‘there are’ is used even more broadly than ‘there exist’.) The univocity of ‘exist’ is disproved by “A prime number between 6 and 10 exists” being analytic despite the invalidity of ontological arguments.     

WHAT ASSERTION IS NOT

Philosophical Studies -     

WHAT IS A FEMINIST?

This article outlines the evaluation and stereotype of feminists, based on responses to closed-ended semantic differential traits as well as openended, projective responses to a hypothetical male or female feminist. Consistent across both methodologies, undergraduate respondents (Study 1: N = 210; Study 2: N = 135) viewed feminists as politically liberal, assertive/career oriented, and more likely to be heterosexual than lesbian. Most evaluations were neutral to slightly positive, with a few negative areas. However, feminists were seen in less positive terms than the typical woman and were described as much more assertive and politically liberal. Gender, race, birth cohort, gender of target, and feminist-attitude differences are presented. Despite the neutral to slightly positive evaluation, most respondents did not personally identify as feminists, possibly because they misperceive others' attitudes toward feminists as more negative than they actually are.     

WHAT IS TOKEN PHYSICALISM?

Abstract: This paper investigates the thesis of token physicalism by examining what kinds of particulars there are and what it is for such particulars to be physical. It concludes that there is no coherent thesis of token physicalism that is strictly stronger than substance physicalism and strictly weaker than property physicalism on one or another of its interpretations, and spells out the implications of this for the project of defining minimal physicalism. In the course of the discussion the paper offers interpretations of the views of Davidson and Fodor and argues for an asymmetry between the concepts of the mental and the physical.     

WHAT DO FEMINISTS BELIEVE?

When a woman says "I am a feminist" what does she mean? What do other people think she means? We asked 71 women to complete the Feminist Perspectives Scale (Henley, Meng, O'Brien, McCarthy, & Sockloskie, 1998) from their own perspective and from the perspective of a "typical feminist." Women who self-identified as feminists had stronger beliefs than those who did not on all feminist perspectives except cultural feminism. Both groups believed that a typical feminist held stronger radical, socialist, and cultural feminist beliefs than they themselves did, although the discrepancies were greater for nonfeminists. Nonfeminists viewed a typical feminist as endorsing stronger cultural feminist views than did feminists. Our results indicate that feminist self-identity is related to endorsement of feminist ideologies, and that both feminists and nonfeminists think that a typical feminist is more extreme than they are. The results also suggest that cultural feminism is a contested ideology; it is not endorsed by feminists, but is ascribed to them by nonfeminists