THE QUESTION OF BLACK PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy Born of Struggle is an ambitious undertaking. It is explicitly conceived, the editor explains, as "a guide to the ideas of modern Afro-American philosophers," and "a historical resource directory for their works."¹ An anthology of texts with bibliographical apparatus, the volume has an implicit hortatory purpose as well. In representing Afro-American philosophy as a "unidimensional text of divergent components"—concerned with the meaning of democracy and the human costs of "capitalism, colonial domination, and ontological designation by race"—the editor dignifies Afro-American philosophy conceptually, as a subject in its own right, calling in effect for its sustained historical treatment as such.²     

JOINING THE DISPUTATION: Taking Graham Seriously on Taking Chinese Thought Seriously

"…the understanding of Chinese philosophy depends …on philosophizing for oneself. Taking Chinese thought seriously is not simply a matter of acknowledging the rationality of some of it (and perhaps denying the name 'philosophy' to the rest), nor of discovering something valuable to oneself in the poetry of Lao-tzu ^a or the diagrams of the Yi. ^b Its study constantly involves one in important contemporary issues in moral philosophy, the philosophy and history of science, the deconstruction of established conceptual schemes, the problem of relating thought to linguistic structure, and correlative thinking to logic."¹
"To approach Chinese philosophy trusting to the dictionary and one's instinct for the language is to fail to take it altogether seriously, and the practice has been a perpetual drag on progress in discovering how much or how little that we call philosophyizing is actually there."²     

Why Basic Knowledge is Easy Knowledge

The problem of easy knowledge arises for theories that have what I call a "basic knowledge structure". S has basic knowledge of P just in case S knows P prior to knowing that the cognitive source of S's knowing P is reliable.¹ Our knowledge has a basic knowledge structure (BKS) just in case we have basic knowledge and we come to know our faculties are reliable on the basis of our basic knowledge. The problem I raised in "Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge"² (BKEK) is that once we allow for basic knowledge, we can come to know our faculties are reliable in ways that intuitively are too easy. This raises a serious doubt about whether we had the basic knowledge in the first place.
In "Easy Knowledge", Peter Markie argues that BKS theories do not face any problem concerning easy knowledge.³ I argued that the problem arises in two forms, and Markie takes issue with both. I will argue that Markie's defense of BKS theories fails.     

DOES THE THREAT OF AIDS CREATE DIFFICULTIES FOR LORD DEVLIN'S CRITICS?

Although over twenty years have passed since the Hart-Devlin exchange, the controversy over society's right to punish homosexuals remains alive, as is shown by recent concern over the spread of AIDS and the recent announcement of the Supreme Court that "majority sentiments about the morality of homosexuality" constitute an adequate justification for sodomy statutes under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment.¹ Lord Devlin's moral justification for punishing homosexual conduct seems to follow a similar line of reasoning. The one argument to which his critics have paid the most attention begins with the assertion that society consists of a seamless web of ideas and values, the content of which is determined by whether the ordinary, reasonable person is disgusted by a particular type of conduct.² Among the types of conduct that disgust the ordinary person, he continues, is homosexual conduct.³ Therefore, Devlin concludes, society may punish homosexual conduct, even if it is consensual.     

TERRORISM, SELF-DEFENSE, AND WHISTLEBLOWING

In a recent paper given at a Symposium on terrorism, Thomas Hill, Jr., discussed "Making Exceptions Without Abandoning the Principle: Or How a Kantian Might Think about Terrorism." His argument, however, after acknowledging that "terrorists of course often claim to have morally worthy ends and also means that are morally justified in the context," and further stating that "some such claims deserve a serious hearing,"¹ goes on to deal with the related question of
…what one may justifiably do in response to morally indefensible terrorism.²     

IT STICKS IN MY THROAT

In challenging the implications of my putative counter-example to Wittgenstein's claim that "It's on the tip of my tongue" (TT) is not the expression of an experience (cf. Philosophical Investigations , p.219)¹, Professor Slater writes²
… the obvious way in which to meet the threat to the adequacy of (b₁) [which is that the speaker should believe that he may be able to produce the missing word (fairly soon)] is to claim that the utterer of "It's on the tip of my tongue" must not merely believe that he may recall the word fairly soon, he must also believe, i.e., not rule out the possibility that, he may do so without any treatment , i.e., without being prompted by an external source such as cues, pills, or shock, (p.51)     

The Defense Mechanism Test predicts inadequate performance under stress

Perceptual defense reactions as tested by the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) correlated to specific performance criteria in parachutists and divers. In the parachute study ( N =34), 8 trainees were identified on the Reaction Formation variable of the DMT, and 6 were among the Ss ( N =8) who failed the performance test (χ²=15.14, phi =0.67, p <0.001). In the diver study ( N =45), performance was impaired by the nitrogen narcosis produced by the high partial pressure of nitrogen. Memory was significant reduced both when recall and learning were done under narcosis ( t (44)=4.08, p <0.01, and t (44)=4.90, p <0.01). The reduction on reasoning capacity proved insignificant, but using the median reduction as cut score, the Reaction Formation variable correlated significantly with the reduction (χ²=6.51, phi =0.39, p <0.02). Memory and learning effect/reasoning tests did not correlate to any of the DMT variables using the median as a cut score. Using the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Test (TMAS) as a moderator variable, a significant correlation between reduction on the reasoning test and the combined score high anxiety/high defense was obtained (χ²=15.23, phi = 0.83, p <0.001).     

TREATING WOMEN AS SEX-OBJECTS

In this paper we have two related aims. First, we aim to present an account of what it is to treat women as sex-objects.¹ Like other philosophical writers in the field, we hold that the central idea in an account of such treatment is the failure to treat women with proper respect in sexual behavior. This idea has been cashed out in terms of using,² and in terms of dehumanization or failure to accord equal rights to freedom and welfare.³ However, we believe that there is a central deficiency in most such philosophical accounts of treating women as sex-objects, namely, a failure to outline in any detail a theory of interpersonal norms so that one can grasp in more concrete terms what it is to avoid treating a woman as a sex-object. We aim to rectify this deficiency by presenting a model of interpersonal norms based on the work of the social psychologist Chris Argyris.⁴     

THE PERCEPTUAL THEORY OF PAIN: ANOTHER LOOK

The essential logical deficiency of the perceptual theory of pain, as I tried to show in my paper,¹ is that feeling pain cannot be perceiving anything. The conceptual framework that would make it possible for us to understand "feel" in this use to be a perception concept does not exist. The concept of a glimpse, which George Pitcher relies upon to supply this framework,²cannot begin to do so because it is a secondary perception concept entirely dependent upon that of seeing. This primary concept of visual perception is tied up with actions and supporting concepts like looking, glancing, gazing, glimpsing, watching, and the like. These are different ways in which one's visual perceiving may be characterized. Without the primary concept and the actions connected with it, there would be nothing to characterize. The word "feel" in contexts involving pain is not a perception concept and efforts to make it one are doomed to fail. The supporting actions and concepts do not exist.     

Moore's Problem with Iterated Belief

G.E. Moore's problem is to explain what is odd about sentences such as 'It is raining but I do not believe it'. This sentence is unbelievable whether read commissively as ' p & B ^{˜/sup> p ', or omissively as ' p} & ^{˜/sup> B p '. However, this symmetry is broken when the belief operator is iterated many times. Whereas the commissive ' p & BBBBBBBBBB˜} p ' preserves the oddity Moore first noted, ' p & ^˜BBBBBBBBBB p ' is believable and assertable. The usual explanations of what is odd about Moore's sentences use recursive rules. Hence they uniformly extend the prediction of oddity when the belief operator is iterated. My project is to show how the asymmetry of the iterated version can be respected.     

ALBERT EINSTEIN: THE METHODOLOGICAL UNITY UNDERLYING SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Strange is our situation here upon the earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.¹     

THE HUAI-NAN TZU ALTERATION

The most important philosophical influence on the creation of the Huai-nan Tzu was the Chuang Tzu. Charles Le Blanc's study of the Huai-nan Tzu ¹ identifies two hundred sixty nine cases of direct borrowing, i.e. "incomplete or full quotations," from it. He also isolates several theoretical themes developed in the Huai-nan Tzu that are supported by skillful editing of borrowed passages from the Chuang Tzu.     

THE KANTIAN ARGUMENT FOR CONSEQUENTIALISM

A critical examination of Parfit's attempt to reconcile Kantian contractualism with consequentialism, which disputes his contention that the contracting parties would lack decisive reasons to choose principles that ground prohibitions against harming of the sort to which non-consequentialists have been attracted. ¹     

EMPIRICAL REALISM AND OTHER MINDS

In apparent vogue, perhaps as a reaction against excesses on the part of certain Wittgensteinians, is the idea that the existence and nature of other people's mental lives are things known to us on broadly empirical grounds. A particularly unabashed version of this idea is to be found in Hilary Putnam's "Other Minds"¹. Therein Putnam defines empirical realism as the "position that the existence of the external world is supported by experience in much the way that any scientific theory is supported by observational data,"² His concern in this article is to defend, after entering some criticism of detail, Paul Ziff's attempt to show that the same general sort of position is the proper one to adopt with regard to the traditional problem of other minds. I wish to argue here that the empirical realist's solution to the problem of other minds offered by Ziff and defended by Putnam is wrong.     

SEARCHING FOR HOUSING AS A BATTERED WOMAN: DOES DISCRIMINATION AFFECT REPORTED AVAILABILITY OF A RENTAL UNIT?

Individual battered women have reported experiencing housing discrimination, but the extent of this problem has not been examined. This research used two experiments and a survey to determine if landlord discrimination could keep women from accessing rental units. In Study 1, a confederate asked 181 landlords about the availability of a rental unit in one of three living conditions (shelter, friends, no mention of current living conditions) and across two scenarios (does or does not have a child). Rental units were almost 10 times more likely to be available in the control condition compared to the shelter condition, χ²(1,  N  = 181) = 8.624,  p  = .003, and these results were not affected by whether or not the caller had a child, χ²(1,  N  = 181) = 0.214,  p  = .644. In Study 2, the confederate was employed and left a message on 92 landlords' answering machines in the same three living conditions. The hypothesized comparison between the shelter and the other two conditions combined was significant, χ²(1,  N  = 92) = 4.602,  p  = .032. Finally, in a telephone survey of 31 landlords, a substantial minority (23%) said they would not rent to a hypothetical battered woman. The results of our studies suggest that discrimination against battered women by landlords is a real problem that is likely contributing to the difficulties that women experience in finding safe and affordable long-term housing.     

LI CH'UN-FU'S THEORY OF HARMONIZATION OF THE THREE TEACHINGS

The importance of Li Ch'un-fu^a (or Li P'ing-shan) (1185–1231), a scholar-official of the Chin Dynasty, in the discussion of the relationship among the Three Teachings—Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism—has long been recognized by Japanese scholars such as Takao Giken, Tokiwa Dago, Nogami Shunjo and Kubota Ryoon about half a century ago, and more recently by Professor Jan Yun-hua in the West¹ While Li in the capacity of an harmonizer² of the Three Teachings has been alluded to by these scholars, his theory of harmonization has not been analysed nor has his position as an harmonizer been properly evaluated and appreciated. Up to now, Li Ch'un-fu has been better known as a defender of Buddhism and this for three reasons. First, Li was presented as such by Yeh-lu Ch'u-ts'ai^c (1189–1243), the one who propagated Li's major works after the latter's death³ Second, the Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsar ^d (A Complete Record of Buddhas and Patriarchs Through the Ages ), by its biased selection of quotations from the Ming-tao-chi shuo^e (Discussions of the "Plaints on Too" ), Li's masterpiece and the only major extant work, again casts Li in the role of a defender of Buddhism⁴ For some time, this material from the Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsai was the only easily accesible record of Li's writings and this succeeded in throwing scholars on a wrong trail. Third, the fact that Li was praised by Buddhists but ignored or belittled by Confucians contributed to the impression that he was a partisan of the Buddhists⁵.     

Self-Efficacy and Adherence to Exercise During and as a Follow-Up to Cardiac Rehabilitation

We examined self-efficacy (task, in-class, and barrier) and physical activity during transition from hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation. Participants ( N  = 50) completed measures of self-efficacy at the midpoint and end of the program. Cardiac rehabilitation adherence was monitored and physical activity assessed by telephone interview 6 and 12 weeks post-program. Mid-program barrier self-efficacy predicted adherence ( R ²_adj. = .15, p  < .05). Barrier self-efficacy at the end of the program predicted physical activity 6 weeks later ( R ² = .11, p  < .05). Task self-efficacy at the end of the program predicted home-based exercise at the 12-week follow-up ( R ² = .10, p  < .05). Results have implications for intervention efforts to ease transition from supervised to independent home-based exercise.