Mary Wollstonecraft's Feminist Critique of Property: On Becoming a Thief from Principle

The scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) is divided concerning her views on women's role in public life, property rights, and distribution of wealth. Her critique of inequality of wealth is undisputed, but is it a complaint only of inequality or does it strike more forcefully at the institution of property? The argument in this article is that Wollstonecraft's feminism is partly defined by a radical critique of property, intertwined with her conception of rights. Dissociating herself from the conceptualization of rights in terms of self‐ownership, she casts economic independence—a necessary political criterion for personal freedom—in terms of fair reward for work, not ownership. Her critique of property moves beyond issues of redistribution to a feminist appraisal of a property structure that turns people into either owners or owned, rights‐holders or things acquired. The main characters in Wollstonecraft's last novel—Maria, who is rich but has nothing, and Jemima, who steals as a matter of principle—illustrate the commodification of women in a society where even rights are regarded as possessions.     

Justification and Praxeological foundationalism 1

At least since Descartes the epistemological turn derived its impetus from the sceptical challenge to provide a justification for all knowledge claims. According to a foundational view, a claim to know something is justified only when the justification refers to ultimate grounds in the form of self‐supporting propositions. This paper's title suggests that justification may be seen from a different perspective, namely that of acting. Wittgenstein's examples show that the sceptic's maxim ‐ doubt everything ‐ breaks down because some beliefs and judgments have to be accepted unconditionally if one is to believe or judge something else. Wittgenstein concludes that the certainty we are looking for is to be found in the very nature of the language‐game.     

My body and other objects: The internal limits of self‐ownership

Common practices such as donating blood or selling hair assume rights of disposal over oneself that are similar to, if not indistinguishable from, property rights. However, a simple view of self‐ownership fails to capture relevant moral differences between parts of a person and other objects. In light of this, we require some account of the continuity in the form of ownership rights a person has over herself and other objects, which also acknowledges the normative differences between constitutive parts of a person, on the one hand, and external objects, on the other. This paper provides such an account by arguing that there are reasons internal to a general justification of property rights to limit the extent of powers included in ownership of different kinds of object, depending on how the person is situated in relation to them. Rejecting a typical Hohfeldian view of property as a univocal, gradable concept allows us to make space for a new approach to property and self‐ownership: one which can make sense of various uses of the body as property without entailing that our relation to those parts is exhaustively characterised by an ordinary property right.     

Psychiatric pain and deliberate suffering

In public opinion and in medical practice the suffering of psychiatric patients is often considered self‐induced. Freudian psychoanalysis embraced this notion but managed to reconcile it with the pleasure principle only by positing an instinctual craving for death, to which Freud reduced instances of deliberate and repetitive suffering. In a simultaneous but separate line of thought, he also reduced all habits, including self‐destructive ones, to masturbation and all inhibitions of constructive drives to inhibitions of masturbation. This article explores this seeming paradox.

The transition from a paranoid‐schizoid position to a depressive one begins with the dawning assumption of ownership of certain aspects of one's being, with the correlative attribution of other aspects to the world outside the self. Inevitable errors in this process create tensions that may be discharged by suffering, either by atonement or by assuming ownership of the pain that one's dependency might otherwise inflict on one's objects. Eros serves Thanatos to preserve self‐ownership. Pragmatically, owning one's fate can feel more important than enjoying it, a fact the author dubs the “Principle of Ownership”; and illustrates with a number of literary and clinical vignettes.

The idea that psychiatric suffering is self‐induced contributes to the stigma that so commonly attends it. Ironically, this same idea makes psychological treatment possible: if painful adjustments replace relationships, then new relationships may have the power to correct them.     

The Incentives Argument Revisited: A Millean Account of Copyright

The U.S. Constitution employs a utilitarian view in authorizing Congress to establish patents and copyrights. Let us refer to this way of justifying copyright as the Incentives Argument, or more extensively, the Incentives Argument for Intellectual Property Rights. While seemingly straightforward, the Incentives Argument has been widely criticized in philosophical literature on intellectual property. Scholars have come to prefer Neo‐Lockean labor‐desert accounts, grounding intellectual property rights in the author's natural ownership claims over his creations. Neo‐Lockean accounts are thought to avoid some of the problems classically associated with utilitarian arguments, such as vulnerability to empirical evidence and an inability to make sense of rights or duties morally prior to consequential considerations. Fortunately, many criticisms articulated by opponents of the Incentives Argument can be answered by a strategic retreat to the version of utilitarianism found in the work of John Stuart Mill. I argue that not only does a Millian account of the Incentives Argument prove less vulnerable to oft‐cited criticisms, but also allows for a more robust account of how the audience benefits from a proliferation of creative works. Mill's focus on the importance of critical self‐development allows for a deeper analysis of how creative works benefit members of the audience as individuals and as a community. Within a Millian framework, viewing the audience as mere passive consumers of media fails to take into account the impact of expressive acts on an individual's critical self‐development. Instead, one must see members of the audience as active participants in the creation of meaning and the common culture. Construing the community that receives creative works as an Active Audience alters the landscape of copyright, and the Incentives Argument, making balancing the desires of creators and the desires of audience members a key priority.     

Democratic Control of Information in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Carol Gould's article offers a powerful argument against the sufficiency of informed consent in an age of surveillance capitalism. In this review, I assess the three main claims that Gould makes in her article, namely that (1) democratic control is required by the all‐affected principle; (2) democratic control is a means of ensuring that surveillance corporations and governments track public, rather than merely private, interests; and (3) democratic control is constitutive of freedom as self‐development and self‐transformation.     

Tamir, Rawls and the Temple Mount

abstract What gives ethical and political validity to a state? This is to ask what a state is for and to provide a means to determine whether or not a constitution is just. In this paper I compare the account given by Tamir in Liberal Nationalism with that of Rawls, in order to clarify the decisive differences. Although both recognize the importance of particular associations and the moral imperative to be fair, Tamir places priority on the first and Rawls on the second. I explore their practical implications in regard to the ethical defensibility of Israel's self‐identification as a Jewish state and to conflicting nationalistic territorial claims for the Temple Mount (Haram esh‐Sharif) in Jerusalem. I suggest that if Tamir is correct in her analysis of nationalism, the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict is a problem that is without the sort of solution that is sought by those who are both interested parties and rational agents of good will.     

Is the Implicit Association Test a Valid and Valuable Measure of Implicit Consumer Social Cognition?

This article discusses the need for more satisfactory implicit measures in consumer psychology and assesses the theoretical foundations, validity, and value of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as a measure of implicit consumer social cognition. Study 1 demonstrates the IAT's sensitivity to explicit individual differences in brand attitudes, ownership, and usage frequency, and shows their correlations with lAT‐based measures of implicit brand attitudes and brand relationship strength. In Study 2, the contrast between explicit and implicit measures of attitude toward the ad for sportswear advertisements portraying African American (Black) and European American (White) athlete–spokespersons revealed different patterns of responses to explicit and implicit measures in Black and White respondents. These were explained in terms of self‐presentation biases and system justification theory. Overall, the results demonstrate that the IAT enhances our understanding of consumer responses, particularly when consumers are either unable or unwilling to identify the sources of influence on their behaviors or opinions.     

Experience and belief: Haack on the problem of empirical basis

In her recent discussion of the problem of the empirical basis, Susan Haack sets out to show that the solutions offered by the Popperian school are all inadequate. Her objectives, however, go well beyond the mere refutation of such‐claims. She also tries to explicate the contribution of experience to the justification of one's belief, thus adjudicating between founda‐tionalism and coherentism. She puts forward what she calls a ‘foundherentist’ account of the structure of justification which, she claims, retains the virtues of both foundationalism and coherentism while avoiding their vices. In this article I shall try to show that, in addition to failing to explicate the justificatory role of experience, her proposal is actually a version of coherentism and that a coherentist need not find her account of the contribution of experience to justification particularly objectionable.     

Nietzsche,Nature, Nurture

Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. He also claims, however, that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self‐contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of this paper, by contrast, is that, despite appearances, there is no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche's two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness (and our acknowledgement of our fatedness) emerges as integral to our capacity to become self‐creators. The paper also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche's doctrine of amor fati that actually – and perhaps uniquely – makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought.     

Glover on responsibility

In this note I argue that although Rorty's programme (Inquiry, Vol. 15, No. 4) to bring into focus the role that belief plays in self‐deception is a salutary one, her actual claims obscure that role. It is also contended that Rorty fails to de‐mythologize self‐deception, since her account is either paradox‐ridden or else describes a concept recognizably distinct from the concept of self‐deception.     

'NOLI ME TANGERE': WHY JOHN MEIER WON'T TOUCH THE RISEN LORD

John Meier distinguishes ‘the real Jesus’ from ‘the historical Jesus’. Meier claims that whatever happened to the real Jesus after his death, his resurrection cannot belong to the historical Jesus because that event is in principle not open to the observation of any observer. But why think that the resurrection is not observable in this way? Meier finds justification in Gerald O'Collins' view that although the resurrection of Jesus is a real event, it is not an event in space and time and hence should not be called historical, since a necessary condition of historical occurrences is that they are known to have happened in our space‐time continuum. Is this a good argument for the resurrection's being in principle excludable from the historical Jesus? A close examination of the argument reveals that it is not and that Meier's adoption of such a procedure contradicts Meier's own historical methodology.     

Customary Trade and the Complications of Consent

Global justice theorists have given much attention to corporations' purchases of state‐owned natural resources controlled by dictators. These resources, the common argument goes, belong to the people rather than to those who exercise effective political power. Dictators who rely on violence to secure their political power and who sell state‐owned natural resources without authorisation from their people, or from their people's elected delegates, are therefore violating their peoples' property rights. But many dictatorships also distribute natural resource revenue to the population, and stopping to purchase natural resources from them is therefore likely to produce relative deprivation for the people, even while increasing the chances of the people gaining control over their property. Given these circumstances, can corporations buying the people's natural resources from a distributive dictatorship appeal to the people's consent as justification for such purchases? I consider this question by inspecting three types of consent to which resource corporations might appeal. I show that, under the circumstances of natural resource trade with distributive dictatorships, none of these types of consent can obtain. Hence, resource corporations cannot appeal to popular consent to defend their transactions with distributive dictatorships.     

Luther on Unio Cum Christo

Although often neglected, Luther's concept of unio cum Christo in justification is a fruitful model for integrating faith and ethics. According to this model, the Christian is justified in union with Christ who is present in faith. Since Christ is the incarnation of God's self‐giving love, the Christian united with Christ will in turn love her neighbor. This model of integration reveals an intrinsic connection between faith and ethics. Justification concerns not only the dyad of self and God, but also the self's relations with other persons. For Luther, loving the neighbor completes justification. Nonetheless, in both Luther's writings and for the purposes of constructive ethics, unio cum Christo is best understood not as an exhaustive account of integration, but as a helpful model for illuminating certain theological commitments, especially the importance of neighbor love to the God‐relation.     

Self‐supporting Arguments*

Deductive and inductive logic confront this skeptical challenge: we can justify any logical principle only by means of an argument but we can acquire justification by means of an argument only if we are already justified in believing some logical principle. We could solve this problem if probative arguments do not require justified belief in their corresponding conditionals. For if not, then inferential justification would not require justified belief in any logical principle. So even arguments whose corresponding conditionals are epistemically dependent upon their conclusions—epistemically self‐supporting arguments—need not be viciously circular. R.B. Braithwaite and James Van Cleve use internalist and externalist versions of this strategy in their proposed solutions to the problem of induction. Unfortunately, their arguments for self‐support are unsound and any theory of inferential justification that does not require justified belief in the corresponding conditionals of justification‐affording arguments is unacceptably arbitrary. So self‐supporting arguments cannot be justification‐creating.     

The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self‐ and observer‐inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues

To what extent can individuals gain insight into their own or another person's implicit dispositions' We investigated whether self‐perceivers versus neutral observers can detect implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues contained in video feedback (cue validity) and whether these cues are in turn used as a valid basis for explicit dispositional inferences (cue utilization). Across three studies in the domains of extraversion and anxiety we consistently obtained reliable cue validity and cue utilization for neutral observers but not for self‐perceivers. An additional measure of state inferences in Study 3 showed that one reason for the lack of mediation in self‐perceivers is their reluctance to use their state inferences as a basis for more general trait inferences. We conclude that people have a ‘blind spot’ with respect to the nonverbal behavioural manifestations of their unconscious selves, even though neutral observers may readily detect and utilize this information for dispositional inferences. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

H. Richard Niebuhr's Reading of George Herbert Mead: Correcting,Completing, and Looking Ahead

In this essay, I reconstruct H. Richard Niebuhr's interpretation of George Herbert Mead's account of the social constitution of the self. Specifically, I correct Niebuhr's interpretation, because it mischaracterizes Mead's understanding of social constitution as more dialogical than ecological. I also argue that Niebuhr's interpretation needs completing because it fails to engage one of Mead's more significant notions, the I/me distinction within the self. By reconstructing Niebuhr's account of faith and responsibility as theologically self‐constitutive through Mead's I/me distinction, I demonstrate Niebuhr's deep yet unacknowledged agreement with Mead: the self is constituted by its participation in multiple communities, but responds to them creatively by enduring the moral perplexity of competing communal claims. I conclude by initiating a constructive account of conscience that follows from this agreement. Conscience is more ecological than dialogical because it regards our creative participation in multiple ecologies of social roles oriented by patterns of responsive relations.     

Assessing the Validity of Self Construal Scales

We disagree with Levine et al.'s (2003) conclusion that the 3 self construal scales currently in use have “severe” or “fatal” flaws. We argue that the results of Levine et al.'s meta‐analysis and priming studies do not raise problems with the validity of self construal scales, in part, because their results are compatible with theorizing about self construals. We also contend that Levine et al.'s measurement studies do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that there are problems with the validity of the scales (e.g., there may be multiple dimensions that form independent and interdependent self construals in second‐order factor analyses). We summarize other evidence for the construct validity of self construal scales which indicates that there are theoretically consistent findings across approximately 50 studies using the 3 scales. This would not be possible if there were major problems with the 2‐dimensional model of self construals or the scales used to measure them. We conclude that the 2‐dimensional model of self construals and the current scales are viable for use in future research.     

Reason and Emotion in the Ethics of Self‐Restraint

In this essay I argue that Reinhold Niebuhr's ethics of self‐restraint, though promising, is based on an incomplete and imprecise moral psychology. Although Niebuhr claims that reason cannot provide a sufficient grounding to motivate self‐restraint, he does not disclose which human capacity might serve this purpose. I suggest that we can address this oversight by strengthening Niebuhr's tentative embrace of David Hume, and by developing a concept of the emotions in order to explain how human beings can cultivate a stable inclination to self‐restraint. This project is informed by and in the service of feminist critiques of Niebuhr and social concerns.     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the Teacher Efficacy Scale for prospective teachers

Background. Research on teacher self‐efficacy has revealed substantive problems concerning the validity of instruments used to measure teacher self‐efficacy beliefs. Although claims about the influence of teachers' self‐efficacy beliefs on student achievement, success with curriculum innovation, and so on, may be true statements, one cannot make those claims on the basis of that body of evidence if the instruments are not valid measures of teachers' self‐efficacy beliefs. Aims. The purpose of this investigation is to employ the use of modern confirmatory factor‐analytic techniques to investigate the validity of the hypothesized dimensions of the Teacher Efficacy Scale ( Gibson & Dembo, 1984 ; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990 ). Sample. Participants for this investigation were 387 prospective teachers recruited from a university located in the south‐western region of the UA. Participants for Study 2 were 131 prospective elementary teachers recruited from the same university as in Study 1. Results. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) procedure was used to evaluate the goodness‐of‐fit for two theoretical models of the TES items. The proposed two‐ and three‐factor models of teacher self‐efficacy for prospective teachers were rejected. A re‐specified three‐factor model of the TES was then derived from theoretical and empirical considerations. The re‐specified model hypothesized three dimensions: self‐efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and external locus‐of‐causality. In Study 2, the re‐specified three‐factor measurement model was evaluated in a new sample. Results of the CFA procedure indicated satisfactory fit of the re‐specified model to the data; however, the results were not consistent with predictions derived from social learning theory. Conclusions. The results of this study call into question the use of the TES and the interpretation of a large body of literature purporting to study the relationship of teachers' self‐efficacy beliefs to important educational outcomes.