From the Editor I want to use this letter to address the women philosophy students at Macquarie University. It’s fitting: seven of the nine essays in this journal were written by women. And that reflects a smaller gender gap than the submissions. I don't have an explanation for this. So I’ll just say one thing: you switched it. You really did, the ratio here is almost exactly 80/20 and I checked the last journal and it’s almost exactly 20/80. That is extraordinary, and it makes me smile. It occurred to me a few days ago that chess is a great way to think about philosophy. You may have watched or perhaps will watch the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. I know it’s unusual to reference something like that in a letter like this, but I have a reason. Something very interesting just happened. That show is Netflix’s most-watched scripted limited series of all time, with over 60 million views to date. What made it so special? What made the character Beth so special? I found something by chance I think is important here. Sort of hidden. It’s not blink and you'll miss it; it’s watch the making of video on YouTube and you’ll miss it. I want you to see this. This is from the actress who played Beth: “She’s [Beth] so centered in how intelligent she is that she doesn’t necessarily think of herself as a woman first, and I do think that there is something to that because you’re experiencing the 60s through her in the way that she just automatically assumes that she is equal.” Doesn’t think of herself as a woman first...I had never heard of (and cannot find anywhere else) that concept. I think it’s important. I think 60 million people just saw an expression of that. I wonder if it is useful to keep that in mind as you move in a male dominated field. I think it might be, for some of you. Beth talks in the show about how she was initially drawn to the game: “It was the board I noticed first. It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it.” You are not woman first and philosophy student second. It's just you and the board. Play.
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Cogito Semester 1 2021 Editor & Journal Production: Marianne McAllister Reviewers Elia Dokos, Matthew Su, Jeremy Amin, Kramer Thompson, Luke Monks-Quinane Layout Rupam Bhatia Cover Artwork Matthew Su Photography Richard Heersmink Contributors: Ellen Konza, Matthew Su, Marianne McAllister, Jeremy Amin, Elia Dokos, Christopher Whyte, Samuel Jones, Katrina Woodforde, Nicholas Webb-Wagg, Greg Johnson, James Hoy, Thomas Keywood, Liam Johnson, Alexander McDonald Platonic Society Executives: President: John Goris Vice President: Nicolette Mellor Treasurer: Luke Monks-Quinane
Contents: Contemporary 4-12
What of the Women Without? A Critical Response to Haslanger’s Functional ‘Woman’ - Ellen Konza
12-17 Healthcare Workers’ Bid for Preferential Access to Scarce Resource in Pandemic Situations: How Distributive Justice Confronts This - Emily Gray 18-26 Bullying and the Regulative Mind: How a regulative conception of folk psychology can assist in understanding the social construction of bullying. - Ellen Konza
Cognition 28-33 To Extend Or Not To Extend: A Pragmatic Question Of Cognition - Wendy Higgins 34-40 Cognition In Context: Uprooting Anthropocentric Cognitive Science - Sophia Amini
Morality 42-44 Morality Without God: The Human Desire To Thrive And The Capacity For Empathy As The Source Of Moral Values - Wendy Higgins
Justice 46-48 Obligations, Justice and The Nation-State - Aidan Brown 49-51 The Moral Permissibility And Justice Of State Seizure Of Private Property - Aidan Brown
Art 53-55 Human Nature Art - Grace Saagi
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Contemporary
What of the Women Without? A Critical Response to Haslanger’s Functional ‘Woman’ Ellen Konza Introduction As a contribution to feminist philosophy, Sally Haslanger’s Resisting Reality (2012) provides a thought-provoking approach to thinking about the category of ‘women’. Haslanger seeks a practical influence in the struggle for gender equality, arguing that what is required to assist feminist efforts is an ameliorative conceptual repurposing. Accepting her own challenge, Haslanger frames gender as a form of stratified social class. Here an individual is defined as functioning as a woman when, on the basis of possessing or being presumed to possess markers of female sexual reproduction, the individual is positioned as socially subordinate and systemically oppressed compared to a man (Haslanger 2012, 228, 235). As a socio-political tool to highlight gender injustice, Haslanger aims for her ameliorative project to “not reinforce but … undermine the structures of sexual oppression” (2012, 228). The concern I raise in this paper however, is that Haslanger’s account of a functional woman is undesirably heteronormatively value-laden. The implication of the normative force of Haslanger’s definition is the complicit reinforcement of a patriarchy that maintains gender and sexual oppression through the essentialisation of the relationship between women and sexual reproduction. I will develop my position as follows. First, I will outline the problem of heteronormativity. This will include noting the need for those with feminist interests to concern themselves with the normative force of the relationship between heterosexuality and gender. I will then move to describe Haslanger’s account of the functional woman. Here I will suggest Haslanger’s definition be considered as a positive posi-
tioning of sexed features. An individual functions as a woman when subordinated and oppressed due to the social acknowledgement of their possession (real or imagined) of characteristics related to a female’s role in biological reproduction. While not wholly denying this analysis, I will argue that some individuals are socially oppressed as women who do not possess certain physical characteristics taken as indicative of female reproduction. This includes perceptions regarding primary and/or secondary sex organs, body shape, and facial features. I will posit that on this negative account of sexed features, an individual may be subordinated and oppressed as a certain type of woman, one whose body deviates from heterosexual norms regarding the reproductive role of females. My concluding claim will be that Haslanger’s account does not suitably incorporate the complexity of how sexed features are utilised (as both positive and negative possessions) in the structural subordination of women. As a result, Haslanger’s definition of the functional woman marginalizes those ‘women-without’, lacking consideration of how some woman are judged on their perceived lack of features attributable to the norms of heterosexuality. More critically however, as a feminist project of amelioration, the preferencing of the experiences of women whose bodies conform (either real or imagined) to heterosexual norms, does not provide a challenge to the prevailing heteronormative landscape. Instead, I suggest that by providing a lens through which women are only given consideration based upon their perceived possession of characteristics related to sexual reproduction, Haslanger’s account is complicit in reinforcing the heteronormative patriarchy. That is, Haslanger’s account replicates the essentialised connection between sex and gender, women
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reduced to their sexual reproductive biology. And this, to be blunt, is a position which is undesirably “hazardous” (Hird 2000, 358) for feminist aims of equality. Part One The Problem of Heteronormativity While commonplace in discussions of sex, sexuality and gender, heteronormativity remains a concept that invokes varying definitions, points of emphasis and concerns. As a descriptive term, heteronormative may be conceived as no more than the statistical notation of heterosexuality being the predominate sexuality (Lloyd 2013, 823). It is not this descriptive conception of heteronormative alone, however, that garners critical interest. Of prime concern is the impact of heteronormativity in both establishing and regulating the norms of gendered social relations and behaviour. On this ‘normative’ account, heterosexuality itself must be understood as comprising more than the categorisation of sexual activity between the male and female sexes. Heterosexuality is situated in society as the norm, ‘norm’ here comprising the prescriptive force of a regulatory social standard. Thus, heteronormativity dictates that the sexual relations between males and females are the ‘natural’ and desirable consequence of two (and only two) sexes, whose bodies differ in their sexed anatomy in order to facilitate sexual reproduction (Jackson 2006, 113, Schilt and Westbrook 2009, 442-443). Deviation from this prescription is met with general social disapproval and often with attempts to counteract nonconformity through various forms of intervention (Lloyd 2013, 823-824). As a result, heteronormativity can be said to create and maintain the ‘rules’ under which ‘appropriate’ sexual attraction and sexual interactions are to occur. Under the social umbrella of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich 1980), it is not surprising that heteronormativity has often been analysed by theorists in relation to the
preservation of a heterosexual/homosexual binary (Jackson 2006, 105). Within this binary homosexuality is regulated as deviant, social scripts prefaced on the privileging of heterosexuality creating and maintaining a fear of ‘Otherness’ (Fahs 2011). The result is the very culture and politics of society being shaped by the normative force of heterosexuality (Lloyd 2013, 823). As a consequence, with “heterosexual privilege [being] woven into the fabric of social life, pervasively and insidiously ordering everyday existence” (Jackson 2006, p108) what initiated in queer theory is revealed to be inclusive of the concerns of wider critical theorists, gender theorists and feminists alike. In recognising its pervasive influence, early theorists giving consideration to heteronormativity unveiled the contribution of heterosexuality to the maintenance of the gender hierarchy; the sexed bodies of males and females normatively tied to the gendered masculinising and privileging of men, and feminising and oppression of women (see Rich 1980, West and Zimmerman 1987, Butler 1990, Wittig 1992). The general conclusion was that “gendered assumptions [are] informed by heterosexual ones” (Jackson 2006, 114). This is evident for example in the way in which women are commonly framed in relation to their sexual attractiveness to men and roles as wives and mothers in heterosexual relationships and nuclear families (Jackson 2006, 114). On this understanding “institutionalized, normative heterosexuality regulates those kept within its boundaries as well as marginalizing and sanctioning those outside them” (Jackson 2006, 105, italics my own). Heteronormativity both constituting and regulating the gendered hierarchy of masculine domination and feminine submission (Lloyd 2013, 824). It is in this space, reflecting on the problem of heteronormativity and gender inequality, that I am drawn to analyse Haslanger’s account of the functional woman. Haslanger and the Functional Woman As a target of feminist theory, tackling the question of how ‘woman’ is best defined, remains a predominant yet fraught task. If feminism is ordinarily understood to be concerned with achieving gender equality of women to men, then it appears that the prime subject of feminism – women – requires qualification. A prime cause of anxiety
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and debate, however, is that any definition will be inherently normative. The linguistic act of defining the subject becoming a political act that determines who it is that is being represented and therefore who it is that is of concern. The alleged result is the privileging of some women and the marginalization of others (Butler 1990, 1-6) In response to this normativity problem, Haslanger claims that the solution is the development of critical projects which “explicitly embrace normative results” (2012, 228). Haslanger proposes that an analysis of gender and the defining of ‘woman’ can be useful acts to combat gender injustice. In such an ameliorative project, the very concepts of ‘gender’ and ‘woman’, themselves become tools. As tools, the concepts are reshaped and repurposed by asking “what work [do] we want these concepts to do for us…?” (Haslanger 2012, 224). This pragmatic approach is said to allow for a move beyond a description of ordinary concepts, to the creation of revisionary concepts that can have a real socio-political impact (Haslanger 2012, 225-6). It is within this framework of a critical ameliorative project that Haslanger defines gender as a type of social class, where social relations are related to social position. As a social class, Haslanger further characterises gender as being contingent and currently hierarchical; women occupying the subordinate and oppressed social position, and men the privileged. Thus, according to Haslanger (2012, 235), an individual S can be said to function as a woman in context C iff: (i) S is observed or imagined in C to have certain bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction; (ii) That S has these features marks S within the background ideology of C as someone who ought to occupy certain kinds of social position that are in fact subordinate (and so motivates and justifies S’s occupying such a position); and
(iii) The fact that S satisfies (i) and (ii) plays a role in S’s systematic subordination in C, that is, along some dimension, S’s social position in C is oppressive, and S’s satisfying (i) and (ii) plays a role in that dimension of subordination. Within this definition the context of culture and historical time periods accounts for variations in ideology and social relations, allowing for differences in the forms and extent of oppression experienced by the subordinate gender, while still retaining a commitment to a gendered social hierarchy. Furthermore, Haslanger (2012, 231) emphasises that the oppression of a woman, as a woman, occurs as part of a complex web of social relations, driven both through interpersonal interactions and societal structures. As a consequence of her analysis, Haslanger argues that an individual may be a ‘woman’ without ordinarily acting like a woman, feeling like a woman or possessing the actual physical characteristics of a biological female. As long as the individual is perceived to have the physical characteristics presumed to be evidence of a female’s role in sexual reproduction, and is oppressed as a result, then they are, by Haslanger’s definition, a woman (Haslanger 2012, 229). This is due to the analysis of gender as a social class being allegedly distinct from other approaches to defining gender which may concentrate on intrinsic sex characteristics (biological sex), psychological identity, traditional roles or ideal norms. Haslanger is also unapologetic in responding that indeed, on her definition, some females will not be characterised as women. This is because her critical feminist concern has the political aim of shedding light on those females who are oppressed as women. Haslanger’s states her goal is to ultimately witness the disappearance of all women under her definition, as oppressed individuals. Therefore, the current exclusion of some females from this category is not something Haslanger believes should be derided but rather encouraged (Haslanger 2012, 239-40). The Functional Woman and Sexual Reproduction What is clear from Haslanger’s definition of the ‘functional woman’, is that it hinges upon a
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relationship to sexual reproduction. That is, S is identified and marked for subordination through their possession (real or imagined) of physical characteristics taken as indicative of being sexually reproductively ‘female’. I propose this can be considered as an exclusively positive positioning of sexed features, in the sense that individual S, is said to function as a woman when identified (whether accurate or not) to have, rather than not have, bodily features related to biologically female sexual reproduction. What is less clear then, is how and why Haslanger has come to settle on this solely positive relationship between women and sexual reproduction as part of a critical feminist and “revisionary project” (Haslanger 2012, 223). In considering what it means to study ‘gender’, Haslanger (2012, 221) ponders the way in which during ordinary usage, gender (women and men) and sex (female and male) have become almost interchangeable. While noting that this ordinary usage differs from academic practice, and in turn wanting to differentiate her own analysis of ‘gender’ from ‘biological sex’, Haslanger also at times demonstrates her own sense of interchangeability. Her project is described as guided by the following concerns (Haslanger 2012, 226-7): “the need to identify and explain persistent inequalities between females and males… ; “ the need to be sensitive to both the similarities and differences among female and males”; “the need to track how gender…[is] implicated in a broad range of social phenomena”; and “the need for accounts of gender… that take seriously the agency of women…”. Furthermore, Haslanger (2012, 229) states that she “recognises that males and females do not only differ physically, but also systematically differ in their social positions”. Evident from this list of concerns, is a strong association by Haslanger between the concepts (biological) female/male and gender. This in turn, suggests Haslanger’s interest lies in an analysis of the oppression of individuals who possess female bodies as determined by biological sex and sexual reproduction. Presumably ordinary usage
has informed Haslanger’s project, and indeed Haslanger states that her project requires being “responsive to some aspects of ordinary usage (and to aspects of both the connotation and extension of the terms)” (2012, 224). Yet the power of a so-called revisionist definition lies in its stipulative nature, the question of ‘who a woman is?’ requiring more than turning to ordinary usage. Indeed, a revisionist analysis is intended to argue for what the concept ‘woman’ should mean, not just what it may have come to mean. In the next section, I demonstrate that as a stipulative and revisionist concept for feminist aims, Haslanger’s definition of the functional woman falters. Not only does it fail to represent the complex way in which the normative female reproductive body is utilised in the oppression of some women, but the maintenance of a positive positioning of sexed features in defining a woman, only continues to reinforce what could be termed the ‘ordinary’ patriarchy. Part Two Women and Heteronormativity Lori Watson is a philosopher who self-describes as wearing ‘masculine’ clothing, being nearly six feet tall, having broad shoulders, a ‘healthy’ frame and short hair. Lori Watson is not a man and does not identify as a man. Lori Watson was designated biologically female at birth and identifies as a woman (Watson 2016, 247-8). In writing about her social experiences, however, Watson states she has to “fight for recognition as a woman on a daily basis” (2016, 247). Social interactions have become for Watson a source of trepidation, frustration and humiliation. The simple act of going to the women’s bathroom regularly results in the raising of alarm, heated exchanges, and ridicule; and seeking medical attention for her female physiology has become an exercise in dealing with insinuations of gender delusion (Watson 2016). As Watson describes, the problem is that according to the dominant social view, her gender and body don’t match. The common cultural conception being that certain body parts can be allocated as either male or female, and furthermore, that an individual’s body ought to comprise of only either male or female parts (Andler 2017,
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888). Watson is visually perceived by others to not be in possession (whether correct or not) of the physical characteristics associated with being a female. More specifically it is likely observations regarding an alleged lack of breasts, lack of ‘feminine’ body shape, and lack ‘feminine’ facial features, that mark Watson as not possessing the functional ability of female sexual reproduction. I suggest that socially Watson is a ‘woman-without’, a woman without ‘feminine’ features, and her experiences exemplify the problem of heteronormativity.
when making judgements regarding a woman’s sexual orientation. In a series of studies Johnson et al (2007) found that both body motion and morphology were utilised by observers to judge the sexual orientation of an individual perceived to be a woman. Primarily, those individuals perceived to be women, yet who displayed gaits and WHR ratios considered gender atypical, were categorised by observers as homosexual. More explicitly, those women who lacked bodily characteristics justified through the heteronormative standards of a body type based on female sexual reproduction, were commonly identified as gay.
What is clear from Watson’s personal account is that “bodies matter to how we are socially interpreted” (Watson 2015). This too is captured in Haslanger’s conceptual analysis of a ‘woman’. But what Haslanger’s account fails to capture, and Watson’s experiences reveal, is that due to the complex way in which the bodies of women are interpreted and marked for treatment, the discrimination, oppression and subordination of women can occur both through the apparent positive possession or negative lack of possession of certain bodily features, as defined by norms of heterosexuality.
A response to this finding may be that the identification of a woman as gay, through a lack of possessing certain gendered features, is not itself a normative concern. Rather it is only an example of how interpretations of the body, including judgements of age and race, are utilised to socially categorise individuals. Unfortunately, many gay women (and gay men) throughout the world have suffered and continue to suffer physical and psychological violence, discrimination, and oppression. Therefore, not only are certain gendered bodily observations used to categorise sexual orientation, but those very observations are related to acts of prejudice. For example, Lick & Johnson (2014) found that participants categorized women as lesbians based on the evaluation of facial features deemed to be gender atypical. Those women perceived to be gay were also evaluated by the participants more negatively than those perceived to be heterosexual. This included utilising a choice of descriptors such as dishonest, cold, offensive, shocking, improper, indecent and unseemly. The authors concluded that the negative evaluation related to an assessment of unattractiveness, a prejudice arising because of normative bias against women who did not display the ‘feminine’ facial features expected of heterosexual women, instead being judged as ‘masculine’ (Lick and Johnson 2014, 1189-90).
Lesbians and Heteronormativity This account of the complex interplay between the norms of heterosexuality, the sexed possession of body features, and the social treatment of women is further demonstrated in research. Numerous studies have identified that observations of an individual’s body shape and body movements are important in perceptions of sex and gender (Johnson et al. 2007, 322). Differences in waist-to-hip (WHR) ratios between males and females is generally related to being due to a female’s role in bearing children. Thus, heteronormativity dictates that ‘women’ typically possess ‘hourglass’ rather than ‘tubular’ figures. In addition, an individual whose gait displays swaying hips is typified as a woman (Johnson et al. 2007, 322). These identifications may be characterised as perceptions regarding the positive possession of sexed features. Of further interest, however, is the social use of such features
It would appear then, that in at least some cases, certain gay women experience forms of subordination and oppression as a type of woman, one whose body conflicts with heteronormative notions of what a woman’s body should entail. Yet it could be argued, that as women, lesbians can also be accounted for under Haslanger’s conception of a woman. That is, lesbians are ordi-
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narily understood to be of the female sex. Indeed, as Hird (2000, 349) notes, lesbian scholarship itself has predominately held to an implicit connection between sex and gender, such that the idea of a lesbian with male genitalia seems incongruous. As a result, even if some lesbian women may experience discrimination based upon a lack of certain feminine features, they may arguably be considered, in at least some circumstances, to be subject to oppression as Haslanger’s functional woman. This I don’t wish to deny. Rather, what I believe it demonstrates is that the discrimination, prejudice, oppression and subordination that women face is multifaceted; woman subjected to instances of being socially marked based on both the positive and negative possession of sexed features, sometimes simultaneously. Transgender Women and Heteronormativity Transgender women provide a further interesting demonstration regarding the notion of oppression based on negative possession. In a paper responding to Haslanger’s analysis, Katharine Jenkins (2016) argues that the ameliorative definition of woman provided by Haslanger marginalizes certain transwomen. Jenkins reasons that a transwoman who does not physically present as a woman; or who presents as a woman but does not have their gender presentation respected; or who has their gender presentation respected but not because of their physical markers, would not count as a woman on Haslanger’s definition. It is clear however that transwomen as a group are severely oppressed. As Watson (2015) powerfully states: “Trans women are often socially marginalized, locked out of employment opportunities for gendered reasons, excluded from housing opportunities, lack basic protections for physical safety and bodily integrity, aggressed against for their perceived gender transgression, raped in order to be taught the meaning of womanhood and for who knows what other “reasons,” forced to sell their bodies for sex for sustenance, and murdered
for asserting their right to exist. That starts to sound a lot like being a woman in this world to me.” The question then is, if as Jenkins describes, many transwomen are not characterised as women on the presumed possession of female sex markers, yet are systemically oppressed and subordinated, then on what account are transwomen oppressed as women? For at least some transwomen, an answer may be revealed in research regarding their murders. In a review of media accounts of the murders of transwomen in the United States between 1990 and 2005, Schilt and Westbrook (2009) found that the dominant discourse by perpetrators, police and journalists involved ‘gender deception’, linked to the revelation of the victim possessing ‘male’ genitals. In most non-sexualised social interactions, the genitalia of individuals, including transwomen, are not actually visible. Rather the sex organs of an individual are assumed to ‘match’ their otherwise observed gender. In sexual encounters however, the ‘male-sexed’ bodies of some transwomen present a challenge to this assumption. Schilt and Westbrook (2009, 444) argue that as a result of allegations of a sex/gender ‘mismatch’, instances of violence against transwomen must not only be framed as a transgender issue, but also one of heterosexuality. This is because transwomen who possess male genitalia threaten the norm of heterosexuality which dictates that females and thus women are required to have vaginas and males/men to have penises. In certain cases, cisgender heterosexual men react with violence as a way of responding to a perceived threat to their heterosexuality; violence itself being coded as a demonstration of masculinity and thus a reinforcement of the offender’s heterosexuality (Schilt and Westbrook 2009, 458). While in these cases of violence against transwomen, it is the discovery of male genitalia that is the focus of the ordinary discourse (Schilt and Westbrook 2009, 456), I suggest that these occurrences can also be understood as the observation of a lack of female genitalia. The consequence of a heteronormative framework that situates males/men and females/women as a binary, one existing only in complimentary reference to the other, it that sex organs are equally positioned as
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existing in complimentary opposition to one another; norms requiring that the observation of a penis on an individual is also a signal of a lack of a vagina. Viewed in this way, the violent and oppressive experiences of at least some transgender women can be understood as the experiences of a certain type of woman – one whose body deviates from heterosexual norms regarding the possession of a vagina or indeed deviation from other physical characteristics taken as evidence of a female’s role in heterosexual reproduction. PART THREE Heteronormativity and Feminist Aims The analysis offered here of the social experiences of some gay and transgender women is not intended to be a definitive account of the various ways in which minority women experience discrimination and subordination. Nor is it to be taken as dismissive of the very real oppression of cisgender heterosexual women as part of a gendered social hierarchy. Instead, the experiences are offered as exemplars to demonstrate the complex and nuanced ways in which heteronormative models of the female body permeate social interactions. In particular, I have desired to draw attention to an alternative account of how heteronormative perceptions of the female body are ordinarily utilised in marking a woman for oppressive and subordinate treatment. As noted earlier, heteronormativity regulates those who live both within and outside of its normative borders (Jackson 2006, 105). In Haslanger’s account of the functional woman, the focus is on those individuals who are oppressed as a result of being perceived to possess physical features associated with a female’s role in sexual reproduction. These are the women within the borders. What I hope to have demonstrated is that at least some women’s experiences of discrimination, violence and oppression, stem from perceptions regarding their lack of possessing certain physical features associated with a heteronormative account of being a woman. These are the women outside the border, whose bodies challenge heteronormative accounts of the relationship between
sex, gender and sexuality. At a minimum then, Haslanger’s account of the functional woman fails in recognising the complex nature of how women are normatively judged through perception. Even if taken to be an explication of the ordinary way in which an individual functions as a woman in the world, Haslanger’s definition provides only a one-dimensional view. The consequence is that by failing to incorporate the complexity of how sexed features are utilised in the structural subordination of women, Haslanger’s analysis marginalizes certain women – inclusive of both at least some queer women and some cisgender, heterosexual women. In response it may be argued that the marginalizing of certain women is not necessarily a concern. Haslanger makes clear that on her definition, some prima facie women may not be characterised as women, specifically because they are not oppressed (Haslanger 2012, 239-40). Yet I believe I have shown that there do exist at least some women, who are oppressed, whose experience of oppression would not necessarily be captured by Haslanger’s analysis. For an account explicitly intended to provide direction for feminists, including the identifying of oppressed women, this is not a desirable result. More critically, in preferencing the experiences of women whose bodies conform (either real or imagined) to heterosexual norms, Haslanger’s analysis does not challenge the prevailing heteronormative patriarchy. As Jackson states, an “ameliorative analysis is not bound to comply with our ordinary understanding or use of a concept” (2006, 395). In providing an analysis founded upon the prerequisite of a woman being a female who is oppressed due to the possession of sexed physical features, Haslanger’s definition only serves to “re-essentialize biology” (Watson 2015). The reinforcement of a woman being defined by her role in sexual reproduction is a foundation of the patriarchy, where while at once facing accusations of not being ‘feminine enough’, or not being a ‘real woman’, minority women continue to be oppressed as women; women who challenge the norms of heterosexuality.
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Concluding Remarks In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler asks “What sense does it make to extend representation to subjects who are constructed through the exclusion of those who fail to conform to unspoken normative requirements of the subject?” (1990, 5). As a critical feminist project of amelioration, Haslanger has attempted to provide a definition of a ‘woman’ which can assist in the socio-political struggle for gender equality. Yet Haslanger’s analysis appears to typify the problem of Butler’s “unspoken normative requirements”; the norms of heterosexuality having laid the foundation for Haslanger of who is deserved of representation and who is not. On this charge however, Haslanger does not stand alone. Much of feminist theory continues to essentialise a relationship between ‘women’ and biology (Hird 2000, 358), in effect reinforcing a patriarchy built on a foundation of heteronormativity. Therefore, despite providing a thought-provoking conceptual analysis of what is means to be a ‘woman’, Haslanger’s account does not offer itself as the way forward in undermining the structures of women’s oppression, instead complicit in the reinforcement of a patriarchy that maintains gender and sexual oppression through the essentialisation of the relationship between women and sexual reproduction. References Andler, Matthew Salett. 2017. "Gender Identity and Exclusion: A Reply to Jenkins." Ethics 127 (July):883-895. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge. Fahs, Breanne. 2011. "Dreaded "Otherness": Heteronomative Patrolling in Women's Body Hair Rebellions." Gender & Socity 25 (4):451-472.
Haslanger, Sally. 2012. "Gender and Race - (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?" In Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, 221-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hird, Myra J. 2000. "Gender's Nature: Intersexuality, transsexualism and the 'sex'/'gender'binary." Feminist Theory 1(3):347-364. Jackson, Stevi. 2006. "Gender, sexuality and heterosexuality: The complexity (and limits) of heternormativity." Feminist Theory 7 (1):105-121. Jenkins, Katharine. 2016. "Amerlioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman." Ethics 126:394-421. Johnson, Kerri L., Simone Gill, Victoria Reichman, and Louis G. Tassinary. 2007. "Swagger, Sway, and Sexuality: Judging Sexual Orientation From Body Motion and Morphology." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93 (3):321-334. Lick, David J., and Kerri L. Johnson. 2014. "Perceptual Underpinnings of Antigay Prejudice: Negative Evaluations of Sexual Minority Women Arise on the BAsis of Gendered Facial Features." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40 (9):1178-1192. Lloyd, Moya. 2013. "Heteronormativity and/as Violence: The "Sexing"of Gwen Araujo." Hypatia 28 (4):818-834. Rich, A. 1980. "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Signs 5 (4):631-60. Schilt, Kristin, and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. "DOING GENDER, DOING HETERONORMATIVITY: "Gender
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Normals, " Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality." Gender and Society 23 (4):440-464. Watson, Lori. 2015. What Is a "Woman" Anyway. Logos.http://logosjournal.com/2015/what-is -a-woman-anyway/. Watson, Lori. 2016. "The Woman Question." Transgender Studies Quarterly 3 (1-2):246-253. West, Candace, and Don Zimmerman. 1987. "Doing Gender." Gender & Society 1 (2):125-51. Wittig, Monique. 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
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Healthcare Workers’ Bid for Preferential Access to Scarce Resource in Pandemic Situations: How Distributive Justice Confronts This Emily Gray A pandemic situation, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, unavoidably results in healthcare resources becoming scarce due to demand increase (White et al., 2009). Consequently, rationing occurs, and healthcare workers may request preferential access. Thus, to ensure just allocations, distributive justice approaches must guide rationing decisions. After defining crucial terms, I will sequentially explain the distributive justice approaches of instrumental value, luck egalitarianism and worst off. In light of the request of healthcare workers, I will show these distributive justice approaches apply through the preservation of mission-critical personnel principle (Pesik et al., 2001), the level playing field ideal (Lamont & Favor, 2017) and the life cycle principle respectively (Scheunemann & White, 2011). I shall then respond to the objections that applying instrumental value is too complicated during pandemics by arguing frontline healthcare workers are unquestionably indispensable to the multiplier effect (Persad et al., 2009). That luck egalitarianism compensation fails to apply to healthcare workers by showing a revision to ‘responsibility’ combats this (Albertsen & Thaysen, 2017). Lastly, that worst off ignores prognosis (Brock, 2001), by presenting the ‘investment refinement’ framework (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). As such, in a pandemic situation, if healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce resources, instrumental value grants this to achieve the multiplier effect through the preservation of mission-critical personnel principle; luck egalitarianism, through the level playing field ideal, grants preferential access for only infection prevention resources to rectify healthcare workers unequal disadvantage (greatest virus exposure); and worst off, through the life cycle principle, grants the request if healthcare
workers satisfy the population-wide preferential access criterion. Before undertaking my case, I will define justice, distributive justice, and rationing. Justice is recognised as the continuous and endless will to provide to each their due, which implies justice is composed of four features (individual claims, rightful demands, impartiality and agency), with individual claims being most important to understanding my argument (Miller, 2017). Individual claims advances that justice is concerned with the treatment of individuals and groups (such as healthcare workers), and is thus used to solve conflicting claims of what is due by determining what one is rightly entitled to (Miller, 2017). Consequently, distributive justice requires fair resource allocation outcomes for those individuals to which the resource is due, determined on the basis of a specified criterion (Miller, 2007). A form of allocation is rationing, which, in healthcare, occurs when medical resource distribution involves denying individuals potentially beneficial treatments by reason of scarcity, this being unavoidable during pandemics (Scheunemann & White, 2011). Having defined crucial terms, I will now argue my case. I will begin by elucidating the distributive justice approach of instrumental value before showing how it is applied if healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce pandemic resources. The instrumental value approach presents the paramount allocative consideration as an individual’s or group’s ability to perform a specific duty vital to maximising overall benefit (White et al., 2009). As such, this principle is a utilitarianism derivative as its allocation process aims to achieve maximal societal utility (Persad et
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al., 2009). This approach prioritises access to said people to ensure their duty is performed so subsequent maximal provision occurs, through a multiplier effect, for the whole population, thus attaining the greatest overall benefit (Pesik et al., 2001). Conversely, if said people are denied preferential access, they will be unable to perform their duty, ultimately leading to the duty’s cessation. As such, poor societal outcomes, and at most, only restricted overall benefit will ensue. Furthermore, instrumental value avoids intrinsic worth considerations as it recognises the equal moral worth of all people, even those without intrinsic value, by prioritising so to benefit society holistically (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). When considering a pandemic situation, if healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce resources, instrumental value grants this through the preservation of mission-critical personnel principle application (Pesik et al., 2001). The preservation of mission-critical personnel principle asserts that preserving the instrumental value of healthcare workers’ roles during a pandemic is critical to ensuring the mission of providing society a fair opportunity to receive life-saving care, thus creating a multiplier effect that produces maximal benefit, that is, most lives saved (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). Healthcare workers are to be granted, by national priority ranking policies, preferential scarce resource access to ensure the maintenance of their roles and a sufficient healthcare workforce, so many might live (Persad et al., 2009). Said policies, such as those by the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, assert that healthcare workers be triaged first for vaccines and care when infected, and have personal protective equipment (PPE) preferentially delivered to their places of work (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). If preferential access is not afforded, healthcare workers are highly likely to become casualties; their specialised role of administering life-saving resources would cease to exist, resulting in copious lost lives and restricted benefit stemming only from limited unassisted recoveries (Pesik et al., 2001). Thus, healthcare workers’ request for
preferential access to scarce resources during a pandemic is granted by instrumental value through national priority ranking policies that apply the preservation of mission-critical personnel principle to ensure healthcare workers roles are performed, catalyzing the multiplier effect. Using instrumental value is not immune to objections, it has been argued that its application is too complicated during pandemic situations which require quick decisions and action (Persad et al., 2009; White et al., 2009). Determining roles legitimately crucial to maximising lives saved through the multiplier effect requires lengthy, complex, and potentially degrading inquiries (White et al., 2009). However, when a role is undeniably and genuinely imperative to achieving the multiplier effect, and thus requires minimal, short considerations, then instrumental value should be used (Persad et al., 2009). Frontline healthcare workers who are specially trained to, and directly responsible for treating those infected, unquestionably meet the aforementioned criterion for preferential access, for without them, there would be little-to-no treatment and lives saved (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). Comparatively, a more complex investigation is needed to determine the instrumental value of all other healthcare roles in achieving the multiplier effect, as such, preferential access is not granted and they are given secondary access in line with society (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). Continuing with my case, luck egalitarianism asserts that no individuals or groups should be disadvantaged on the grounds of brute bad luck, but choice luck disadvantages are allowed by virtue that they are self-inflicted (Miller, 2017). Brute bad luck occurs when inequalities result from social arrangements or natural causes outside of one’s own autonomous capabilities (Arneson, 2011). Comparatively, inequalities from choice luck are those that result from personal responsibility, that is, the disadvantage was anticipated and could have been accepted or declined (Arneson, 2011). Under luck egalitarianism, equal allocation is recognised as the basis of distribution, but where there is brute bad luck, deviation from this basis is required to neutralise these inequalities with compensation (Miller, 2017). As such, this approach is both egalitarian and prioritarian in nature because resource distribution is
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initially equal, but allows departures to favour those worse-off, only to achieve equality amongst all. Healthcare workers experience significantly greater virus exposure and consequently unparalleled rates of infection during pandemics, so are considered disadvantaged compared to society (Albertsen & Thaysen, 2017; Rossow, 2015). As performing one’s duty is not an instance of choice luck, healthcare workers are not responsible for the choice to treat the infected during a pandemic as they are acting as required by their role (Arneson, 2011). Thus, healthcare workers unequal exposure is a brute bad luck inequality resulting from social arrangement (Arneson, 2011). When healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce resources during a pandemic, luck egalitarianism grants this only for medical PPE through the application of the level playing field ideal in national healthcare pandemic distribution policies (Lamont & Favor, 2017). The level playing field ideal, in the case of a pandemic, requires those healthcare workers unequally disadvantaged, in terms of virus exposure, receive compensation by preferential delivery of and access to scarce PPE resources. The exposure reduction afforded by PPE achieves a level playing field of virus exposure that is parallel with the broader population, and so the inequality experienced by healthcare workers is neutralised. However, providing compensation to healthcare workers under luck egalitarianism has been objected to on the grounds that their choice to provide care during a pandemicis exceeding their duty’s requirements because of the abnormally high exposure (Malm, 2008). This supererogatory performance indicates healthcare workers are responsible for this unequal exposure, thus compensatory action is unrequired, that is, the inequality is just for it stems from choice luck (Albertsen & Thaysen, 2017). Nevertheless, a revision to ‘responsibility’ overcomes this: one is responsible for their inequality when the disadvantage is created, whereas inequality is brute bad luck when the disadvantage is incurred (Albertsen & Thaysen, 2017).
Created inequality occurs when one's performance causes disadvantage to someone as opposed to no one (Thaysen & Albertsen, 2017). Incurred inequality occurs when one’s performance places disadvantage on themselves that would have otherwise been incurred by someone else (Thaysen & Albertsen, 2017). Thus, healthcare workers choice to perform their duty during a pandemic is an incurred inequality for many others would be infected if not for their performance, thus, their unequal virus exposure is brute bad luck and compensation is necessary (Albertsen & Thaysen, 2017). I will now present the distributive justice approach of worst off, before illustrating its application if healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce resources during a pandemic. Worst off is inherently prioritarian as it provides preferential resource access to those recognised as the worst off, that is, those who lack valuable good/s, not at the moment of resource distribution, but with respect to the duration of their lives (Persad et al., 2009; Scheunemann & White, 2011). Worst off, applied through the life cycle principle, recognises life years as the crucial valuable good, and so prioritises resource access to those who have experienced less life years, with the aim to ensure all have a fair opportunity to live through all life stages (Scheunemann & White, 2011). Further, this approach eliminates both intrinsic worth and social value considerations as preferential access is provided purely if an individual is worse off and avoids discrimination because all people age and all value progressing through life (White et al., 2009). In light of a pandemic situation, if healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce resources, worst off grants this provided healthcare workers meet the population-wide life cycle principle criterion. That is, during a pandemic, application of the life cycle principle sees health committees and departments, such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, produce policies requiring healthcare services triage care, treatment and cure, such as mechanical ventilators and vaccines, to infants/young children first (the worst off as they have lived less life years), and to old age last (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006; White et al., 2009). Thus, application of the life cycle principle separates
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HCWs from their role, and considers their triage placement for care, treatment and cure on the basis of their number of years lived, as is so for the broader population (Persad et al., 2009). Therefore, healthcare workers’ request for preferential access to scarce resources is met by worst off, only if the healthcare service where healthcare workers request priority access have no others worse off than them, that is, no younger patients. However, utilising worst off to distribute scarce healthcare resources has been objected to on the ground that it disregards recovery and post-treatment prognoses (Brock, 2001). Thus, distributions using the life cycle principle may lead to scarce resources becoming depleted by patients that do not recover or live a full life post-treatment simply because they are young. Thus, only minor benefits (i.e. restricted lives saved), are attained at high cost (resource exhaustion; Persad et al., 2009). Nonetheless, Emanuel and Wertheimer’s (2006) investment refinement framework overcomes this by not only prioritising certain lifespan gradations considered worst off, but also those with better prognoses, such that more life years lived may be saved so as to increase benefit for cost. Under this framework, those with less than two high risk commodities (HRC) are triaged over those aged six months to 64 years with two or more HRC, who are triaged over those older than 64 with two or more HRC (Emanuel & Wertheimer, 2006). To conclude, in a pandemic situation when healthcare workers request preferential access to scarce resources, I argued instrumental value grants this through the preservation of mission-critical personnel principle (Pesik et al., 2001) so healthcare workers roles are maintained to achieve maximal benefit (lives saved); luck egalitarianism, through level playing field ideal (Lamont, & Favor, 2017), grants preferential access only to PPE to neutralise healthcare workers unequal disadvantage (greatest virus exposure); and worst off, through the life cycle principle (Scheunemann, & White, 2011), grants the request if healthcare workers meet the population-wide preferential access crite-
rion (least years lived). By showing frontline healthcare workers are indispensable to the multiplier effect, I overcame the objection that instrumental value application is too complicated (Persad et al., 2009). In revising ‘responsibility’, I addressed the objection that luck egalitarianism compensation does not apply to healthcare workers (Albertsen, & Thaysen, 2017). Lastly, I overcame the objection that worst off ignores prognosis by presenting the investment refinement (Emanuel, & Wertheimer, 2006). When determining the appropriate approach, I propose that no distributive justice approach alone is sufficient to account for all the considerations required of a fair outcome, as shown by the need for the investment refinement framework (Persad et al., 2009). Rather, a multi-approach framework is needed that triages instrumental value (frontline healthcare workers), followed by worst-off (least life years lived) encompassing prognosis, with a luck egalitarianism preference within this to prioritise those experiencing socio-economic injustice to ensure equality. References Albertsen, A., & Thaysen, J. (2017). Distributive justice and the harm to medical professionals fighting epidemics. Journal of Medical Ethics, 43(12), 861-864. doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2017-104196 Arneson, R. J. (2011). Luck egalitarianism - A primer 1. In C. Knight & Z. Stemplowska (Eds.), Responsibility and Distributive Justice (pp. 25-50). Oxford University Press. Brock, D. (2001). Children's rights to health care. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 26(2), 163-177. doi: https://doi.org/10.1076/jmep.26.2.163.3027 Emanuel, E., & Wertheimer, A. (2006). Who should get influenza vaccine when not all can? Science, 312(5775), 854-855. doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1125347
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Lamont, J., & Favor, C. (2017). Distributive Justice. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2017 ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/ entries/justice-distributive/. Accessed 16 May 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.11-0622
Malm, H., May, T., Francis, L., Omer, S., Salmon, D., & Hood, R. (2008). Ethics, pandemics, and the duty to treat. The American Journal of Bioethics, 8(8), 4-19. doi: https:/doi.org/10.1080/15265160802317974
White, D. B., Katz, M. H., Luce, J. M., & Lo, B. (2009). Who should receive life support during a public health emergency? Using ethical principles to improve allocation decisions. Annals of Internal Medicine, 150(2), 132-138. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-150-2-200901 200-00011
Miller, D. (2017). Justice. In E. N. Zalta (Eds.) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2017 ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/ entries/justice/. Accessed 16 May 2020.
Thaysen, J., & Albertsen, A. (2017). When bad things happen to good people: Luck egalitarianism and costly rescues. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 16(1), 93-112. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X16666017
Persad, G., Wertheimer, A., & Emanuel, E. (2009). Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions. The Lancet, 373(9661), 423-431. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)601 37-9 Pesik, N., Keim, M., & Iserson, K. (2001). Terrorism and the ethics of emergency medical care. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 37(6), 642-646. https://doi.org/10.1067/mem.2001.114316 Rossow, C., Ivanitskaya, L., Fulton, L., & Fales, W. (2015). Healthcare workers' willingness to report to work during an influenza pandemic: A systematic literature review. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, 12(4), 823-843. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsem-2014-0115 Scheunemann, L., & White, D. (2011). The ethics and reality of rationing in medicine. Chest, 140(6), 1625-1632.
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Bullying and the Regulative Mind: How a regulative conception of folk psychology can assist in understanding the social construction of bullying. Ellen Konza: BA Philosophy, Master of Research, Philosophy (in progress) As a childhood experience, bullying is unfortunately all too common. Despite extensive agreement in the literature regarding the prevalence and impact of bullying, the reason(s) for bullying continues to be debated. In this essay I aim to demonstrate that analysing bullying through the lens of a regulative conception of folk psychology can assist in understanding the social construction of bullying. As a consequence, this regulative approach encourages a broader definition of bullying and the development of alternative strategies in combating bullying. This essay will comprise three parts. To begin, part one will outline school-aged bullying as a global problem, traditionally distinguished from other forms of violence or aggression as a pattern of behaviour involving an imbalance of power and an intent to harm. Part one will further provide a brief background of the existing debate regarding a traditional theory of mind (ToM) approach to understanding bullying. The common underlying concern with this approach is its reliance on an individualistic approach to social interaction. Instead I will argue for the need for an approach that enables the capture of the socially complex background against which bullying occurs. In part two, I will present a regulative account of folk psychology as offering unique insights into bullying. Here, the human mind will be conceived as primarily concerned with the formation and regulation of our mental states and behaviour according to socially shared and maintained sense-making norms. I will demonstrate how the ‘regulative mind’ model can be applied to understanding the nature of bullying with regards to the victim, bully and peer group. To achieve this, I will draw upon the noted
influence of social norms, social identity, labelling and stigma from within the existing literature on bullying. I will argue that together, these components provide evidence for bullying as at least partially arising from the influence of meaning-making and mind-shaping activities within a regulative folk psychology framework. In part three, I will reply to two possible concerns regarding a ‘regulative mind’ understanding of bullying: (i) a lack of focus on the bully’s intent to harm; and (ii) the normalisation of childhood bullying. Far from normalising bullying, I will argue that approaching bullying through the lens of a regulative mind fosters the development of unique anti-bullying strategies, including educating children and adolescents to develop a flexible and ethical approach to the negotiation of social norms. Part One Bullying - A Global Problem In a recent global report, bullying was identified as the most prevalent form of school violence across the world (UNESCO 2017). Exposure to bullying leads to a broad range of short and long-term physical and psychological health problems among children and adolescents; extreme circumstances leading to clinical depression, anxiety disorders, self-harm and suicide. (UNESCO 2017, 27-30). Of interest, the relationship between bullying and adverse symptoms exists across diverse cultures, a study by Due et al (2005) finding a consistent graded association between bullying and twelve different physical and psychological symptoms across 28 countries.
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Despite the well-documented prevalence and impact of bullying, understanding the nature of bullying, why it occurs, and how to prevent it, continues to be the subject of significant research and debate. Within the literature the following are elements commonly utilised to define bullying: a repeated pattern of behaviour rather than single event; a deliberate display of aggression with an intention to harm a victim; and an imbalance of power where the victim feels vulnerable and powerless to respond (UNESCO 2017, 8, Due et al. 2005, 128, Thornberg 2015, 310, Craig and Pepler 1997, 42, Gini 2006a, 52, Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham 1999, 120, Slee 1993, 47). Bullying can be further divided into two general types based on the method of implementation. Physical in nature, direct bullying comprises acts against a victim such as punching, kicking, and theft of property. Indirect bullying is relational in form, including acts such as name-calling, spreading of rumours, social isolation and exclusion (O'Connell, Pepler, and Craig 1999, 438, Gomez-Garibello and Talwar 2015, 552). Apparent from this general description is that bullying as a phenomenon is not limited to children and adolescents but can also affect adults. For the purposes of constraint in this essay however, bullying will primarily be in reference to child and adolescent bullying as more commonly perceived.
therefore, has been to theorise that if ToM underpins successful everyday social interactions, then children with poor ToM are at greater risk of involvement in bullying as a form of unsuccessful social interaction (Smith 2017, 2). This is because they do not possess the requisite skills to appropriately decode the mental states of others, leading to maladaptive social interactions and behaviour (Shakoor et al. 2012, 254, Renouf et al. 2010, 1110). The aggressive behaviour of bullies for example is claimed, at least in part, to result from the misinterpretation of social cues, with bullying behaviour employed as a way of responding to situations thought to be hostile. Furthermore, the bully lacks the perspective to empathise, being unable to appropriately understand the feelings of others and the impact their behaviour has on them. Children with poor ToM may also be victimized as a result of failing to appropriately react to other children’s emotions and intentions, being unable to negotiate conflicts and misunderstandings or assert themselves (Shakoor et al. 2012, 254). More recently however, the deficit ToM model, at least in relation to bullies, has been challenged by what may be termed the “skilled manipulators” model (Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham 1999, 117). Here it is theorised that at least some bullies, particularly those involved in relational forms of bullying, require a well-developed ToM, with the ability to grasp the mental states of others integral to the goal of manipulation (Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham 1999, 120-121).
Bullying and Theory of Mind
The empirical evidence in support of either the deficit ToM model or well-developed ToM model varies. A longitudinal study by Shakoor et al (2012) found that a poor ToM at age five, as assessed against standard ToM tasks, predicted becoming a victim, bully or bully-victim at age twelve, even when controlling for child-specific and family factors. Meanwhile, a 2017 review (Smith) of nine studies evaluating the relationship between ToM and bullying found a general tentative trend of bullies being associated positively with ToM and a tendency for victims to score lower on ToM tasks.
At its core, childhood bullying is a form of social interaction, albeit a negative one. As such, the concerns in understanding bullying relate to the more general concern of understanding how people interact and comprehend one another. One way of understanding social interaction is through the notion of a theory of mind (ToM). The classic form of ToM is that people attempt to explain and predict one another’s behaviour through the attribution and inference of mental states such as beliefs, desires, and emotions (Ronald and Happe 2005, 664, Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham 1999, 119). One approach in the bullying literature
As a result, I suggest that attempting to understand bullying through a lone theory-theory approach does not provide the desired clarity. This is not to suggest that ToM is to play no part in
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comprehending the nature of bullying. Rather, a classical ToM approach provides only an individualistic view of bullying, where the focus is a bully-victim dichotomy in which the skills of mental state attributions (or lack thereof) define the peer-to-peer interaction. Bullying however is a socially complex phenomenon, occurring against a wider backdrop of cultural and social norms and comprising a dynamic set of interactions that extends to the peer group as a whole (Burns et al. 2008, 1705). As a result, I propose that a more effective way to understand bullying is via an interpersonal and mind-making account of folk psychology. Part Two The Regulative Mind The regulative folk psychology account I draw upon doesn’t deny that humans possess the ability to attribute underlying mental states to one another for the purpose of explaining and predicting behaviour. It claims however, that the primary function of human folk psychology is to form and regulate our mental states and behavioural dispositions in response to cultural and socio-historical sense-making norms (McGeer 2015). This regulative, or similarly described mindshaping account (Zawidzki 2008), endorses a mind-making rather than mind-detecting or mind-reading view of folk psychology. On this account, social interaction becomes “an interpersonal norm-governed enterprise” (McGeer 2015, 261); self-regulation of one’s own thought and action tied to the active regulation of others’ thought and action, underpinned by a myriad of socially shared and maintained norms. Victims and the Regulative Mind An intriguing aspect of understanding bullying is why certain children and adolescents become victims while others do not. Numerous studies have found that children identify the reason a certain child is a victim of bullying is because they are ‘weird’, ‘odd’, or similarly described as not ‘fitting in’ (Thornberg 2015). Indeed Thornberg (2015) found
that bullying was often justified on the basis of the victim being “different”, with peers blaming the victim as being deserved of the treatment. This identification of difference has been found to stem from the perceived non-confirmatory of the victim to social norms within the school environment or peer sub-group (Thornberg 2011, Gini 2006a, Burns et al. 2008). This is evidenced in Besag’s study (cited in Thornberg 2011, 258) where girls’ insults towards a victim were found to be signalling the groups disapproval regarding the victim’s apparent breaking of the social rules and norms of the group. That is, the “group process created, manifested and maintained normative orders that imposed what was ‘normal’” (Thornberg 2015, 313), the victim becoming the target of bullying because they were seen to flout that normative order. Crucially, it was not attribution of propositional attitudes to the victims that the bullies utilised in determining differentness. It was the appearance, personality and outward behaviour of the victim that were the regular target of bullying attacks (Thornberg 2015, 313). This embodiment of differentness through direct perception of actions, appearance, clothing, and language etc, reflects the children involved as utilising a pluralistic approach to understanding others, including via person-specific and social-identity associations (Fiebich and Coltheart 2015). Another way of conceiving this is that the children were utilising stereotypes to predict behaviour and guide interactions (Andrews 2008). Further however, those stereotyped associations were assessed by the children against a set of defined social norms, triggering the labelling and stigma of deviance. The power of such attachment is that according to labelling and stigma theory, ‘deviant’ becomes the victims social identity, guiding not only the interactions of bullies with the victim but of other peers as well. Consequently, the victim becomes trapped, finding it almost impossible to change such a perception once it is established within the peer community (Thornberg 2011, 259). I propose that understanding the development and maintenance of victims as above, aligns with a regulative view of folk psychology. While some victims of bullying may indeed possess a poor
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ToM and this may contribute to or exacerbate the situation, a regulative view better accounts for the social construction of the victim – the result of children and adolescents continually observing, critiquing, and judging their peers against a shared set of norms. Further, the ‘regulative mind’ approach allows for cultural and socio-historical variability in bullying, a child who is a victim of bullying in one culture and peer group not always being a victim in another, the social norms of attitude and behaviour dependent upon the cultural context of the group (McGeer 2015, 266). A regulative folk psychological approach also explains the struggle that victims undertake in attempting to regulate their thought and action according to what they understand to be the requirement to be ‘normal’. Victims of bullying have been found through interviews to express a desire for social acceptance, grappling with reconciling their own identity as they see themselves and as others perceive them (Thornberg 2015). In a set of victim interviews conducted by Thornberg (2015, 316-318) victims expressed insight that they were bullied because others thought they were different. They stated they had engaged in efforts to change their social identity by attempting to adhere to what they perceived were the required norms, believing that ‘fitting in’ and being seen as ‘normal’ would resolve the bullying. Yet they also conceded that such efforts were often futile, the stigma of difference tainting perceptions and interactions both for themselves and others. This demonstrates that self-regulation of thought and action is of significant concern to children, children possessing an appreciation of the pervasive force of social norms governing their own disposition for change as influenced by social interactions with others.
li 2010, 113). The presence of peers is important when considering bullying as, at least in part, the result of the struggle for position in the social hierarchy. On this view, the bully is a child who utilises the act of bullying to obtain status, power and popularity and prevent a fall to the bottom of the social hierarchy (Thornberg 2011, 262-263). This is achieved through the creation and maintenance of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ group divide; the development of a cohesive ‘in’ social group providing the bully a social identity that benefits from favourable treatment by other in-group members. Creation and maintenance of the in-group however requires defining its difference from the out-group. Adherence to perceived or constructed norms become vital in not only prescribing accepted in-group behaviour but allocating others as part of the out-group and relegated to a lower position on the social hierarchy (Gini 2006a, 52-53).
Bullies and the Regulative Mind
This social identity theory of the bully (Gini 2006a) is supported by evidence that in addition to victims, bullies are also subject to labelling and reputational bias. A bully’s social identity is constructed through labels associated with status and power rather than difference. This may make it difficult for the bully to stop the bullying behaviour, aware of the social benefits that come with a reputation of being ‘tough’ or ‘important’ (Gini 2006a, 61-2, Burns et al. 2008, 1710). Of further importance is ethnographic evidence of the regulative force of self and role consistency. In a study by Burns et al (2008), students identified that once a bully had started bullying, the expectation of others was that they would continue. In the words of one student, “…if you bully a kid for like three weeks straight like everyday then you stop it you look a bit weird…” (Burns et al. 2008, 1712). This suggests that children comprehend the normative importance of their behaviour and social identity remaining consistent to others in the group; their mental states and subsequent actions shaped by their awareness of the need for role consistency and subsequent reinforcement received through social interactions (Burns et al. 2008, 1712).
Unlike an arguably traditional view of a bully as a lone individual with poor social relationships, studies have observed that 85% of bullying incidents comprise wider peer involvement (Gini 2006a, 52, Salmival-
Consideration of social positioning, social benefits, role-consistency and peer reinforcement results in a complex social construction of the bully. What appears clear however, is the importance of the normative expectations of self-regula-
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tion regarding the ability of the bully to shape her own thoughts and action in response to the social pressures and regulative force of the peer group. This mind-shaping construct is supported by Goffman’s model of social interaction, in which “…when people interact with others they not only perform but are an audience for their performances, as well” (Burns et al. 2008, 1712). In other words, not only is the bully attempting to convey to their peer group specific attributes in expectation of certain social benefits, but the bully continually employs a personal regulative assessment of what is expected of them within the context of their group. The Peer Group and the Regulative Mind A benefit of the regulative conception of folk psychology is that it can extend an understanding of bullying beyond just bullies and victims. Studies of bullying events have revealed the existence of further peer participant roles, including assistants of bullies, reinforces of bullies, outsiders, and defenders of the victim (Salmivalli 2010, 114). It has been found, however, that the role of individual children can shift, being more influenced by what their current peer group tend to do rather than their own past behaviour (Gini 2006b, 530). Children becoming assistants to or reinforcers of bullies, is more likely if their friends displayed similar behaviour. Peer pressure to conform has a significant influence in determining bullying involvement (Burns et al. 2008). On the other hand, Rigby and Johnson (cited in Salmivalli 2010, 530) found that children were more willing to attempt to intervene in an episode of bullying if they believed that their social network, including both friends and parents, expected them to. Burns et al (2008, 1712), in summarising the explanations for bullying provided by students, notes that the “students take into account issues of people, peers, and audience when defining the situation and deciding what action to take”. The result is the thoughts and actions of children and adolescents being shaped in line with maintenance of the status quo and expectations of their social network.
Maintenance of the status quo can, I propose, be thought to be reflective of the ‘regulative mind’, whereby beliefs, desires, and behavioural dispositions are self-ascribed as a result of being judged appropriate given the current situation (McGeer 2015, 270). This means the primary concern is not the detection and inference of mental states but adherence to being shaped and attempting to shape others for the purpose of making each other “easier to anticipate, control, and coordinate with” (Zawidzki 2008, 206). With regards to bullying, this results in behaviour that prioritises consistency of self as having normative value; inductive generalizations and the use of past behaviour a valuable strategy for social interaction (Andrews 2008, 18). Importantly however, consistency remains wedded to a specific context, enabling a shift in mental states and behavioural dispositions dependent upon the current context. Ultimately this exemplifies that “what we really care about is remaining comprehensible to one another” (McGeer 2015, 266), even when that comprehensibility takes the form of consistency in otherwise negative or undesirable bullying behaviour (Burns et al. 2008). Part Three Concern Regarding the Intentionality to Harm A foreseeable objection to a ‘regulative mind’ understanding of bullying, is that it ignores the intentional mental state of the bully to harm. If as earlier outlined, a core component of the definition of bullying is a deliberate display of aggression with an intent to harm, then a framework for understanding the nature of bullying seemingly requires an explanation of the role of intentional harm. Initially however, a regulative conception of folk psychology may appear to fail to hold a bully accountable for deliberately causing another harm, instead characterising the bully as someone whose behaviour manifests itself as part of group process that is beyond any one individual’s control. In response I suggest that viewing bullying through the lens of the ‘regulative mind’ is not intended to ignore or discard any intention by a bully to desire to cause harm. There is indeed evidence that at least some bullies gain enjoyment from bullying and that bullies can engage in moral
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disengagement, treating victims as unworthy of respect or humane treatment (Thornberg 2015, 315). I propose however, that focusing alone on an individual bully’s intent to harm does not necessarily provide useful methods for countering what is a phenomenon of unacceptable behaviour. The concern is that the bully, identified as someone intending to do harm to another, is cast as a child or adolescent who fails to understand or adhere to the normative moral order. The result is that the bully is pathologized as ‘not normal’, their behaviour contrasted with that of ‘normal’ students. The focus of intervention strategies may then be to individualise the problem of bullying with the aim of stopping the behaviour of individual ‘problem’ children (Davies 2011, 279). What the regulative conception of folk psychology suggests however is that “we human beings are deeply invested both practically and emotionally, in regulating one another’s thought and action…[and that] we…have a particularly rich practice of calling one another to account in the moral domain” (McGeer 2015, 271-272). If then, as I have argued, at least a proportion of bullying behaviour can be considered a regulative and mind-shaping response to the identification and maintenance of social norms, then a bully’s behaviour is better viewed as representing an engagement with the moral social order rather than rejection of it. In other words, instead of displaying a deficit regarding interest in social norms, bullies can be characterised as “over-zealous guardians of the moral order of the playground” (Davies 2011, 283). The intent to harm therefore can be viewed not as a problem stemming from aberrant behaviour of individual children but as arising from a ‘regulative mind’ that exists within a structure of social interactions that “generates the beliefs, the hatred, the certainty and the desire to punish” those that are ‘different’ (Davies 2011, 284). Concern Regarding the Normalisation of Bullying A concern stemming from characterising
bullies as participants in the moral order, is that it normalises or implicitly accepts bullying behaviour as an outcome of the way in which children and adolescents, as mind-shaping folk psychological agents, interact with one another. This apprehension may find evidence in the witnessing of statements such as bullying being a ‘natural part of childhood’ or that ‘don’t worry, they will grow out of it’. In defence, I make no claim that bullying is to be tolerated or accepted as part of normal childhood developments. Instead, what a ‘regulative mind’ approach enables is an emphasis on the influence of the wider social norms in which bullying occurs. While occurring within a certain peer group or sub-group, bullying also manifests itself within a broader social context. It is the influence of these embedded social norms, such as gender stereotypes, sexual orientation and ethnicity, that dominate the underlying causes of bullying (UNESCO 2017, 17). This suggests that bullying both aligns itself with and maintains the prevailing social norms of the wider society in which it exists. Identification of the presence of such social norms, gender stereotypes for example, is not however to endorse their existence. Indeed, norms may be “counterproductive at the communal level” (McGeer 2015, 266) and can lead to the unjust and ill-treatment of individuals. Bullying exemplifies this notion. The strict maintenance of pervasive social norms in the playground results in behaviour that while promoting the social bonding of some students through in-group identification, also creates ongoing and shifting social tensions and the harming of others. Consequences for Anti-Bullying Strategies Viewing bullying through the lens of the ‘regulative mind’ has significant consequences for anti-bullying strategies. To begin, the social construction of bullying emphasises the need for definitions of bullying to extend beyond a dichotomous relationship between a bully and a victim. Instead, definitions of bullying should include recognition of bullying as a “group process” (Salmivalli 2010, 117), occurring within a context of meaning-making interpersonal social interactions that are influenced by a set of shared sense-making norms. With this in mind it is not surprising that anti-bullying strategies which have
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attended primarily to the punishment and rectification of a bully’s behaviour have had mixed success (Sutton, Smith, and Swettenham 1999, 124). An alternative approach may be to concentrate on enhancing the theory of mind skills of the peer group as a whole. Appreciation and understanding of how bullying behaviour hurts others, makes victims feel etc., designed to encourage a shared sense of empathy amongst the group. A possible problem with this approach, however, is found in evidence that at least some bullies and associated peers do not possess any cognitive deficits in being able to recognise and attribute desirable moral emotions towards others (Gini 2006b, 536). Possession of appropriate moral cognitive processes may therefore not be the problem, but rather the action of moral disengagement. A disregard of another’s suffering may result from the belief that those in the ‘out-group’ are not deserving of empathy because ‘difference’ identification has placed them outside the realm of moral concern and thus deserved of bullying treatment. A more effective strategy may be to concentrate on education of the peer group regarding approaches to becoming a “well behaved folk psychological agent” (McGeer 2015, 271). Such a strategy would recognise that regulative folk psychological processes require practice and are continually open to improvement and fine-tuning. In this sense, children require ongoing regulative guidance in order to evolve a sense of personal responsibility and ethical reflexivity in relation to how they should engage in the regulation of oneself and others (Davies 2011). Cooperative rather than competitive group activities and the allocation of mentors as role models of responsibility and respect, are two such strategies that encompass the development of positive conceptions of interpersonal mindshaping. Furthermore, education that presents social norms as being “subject to ongoing negotiation” (McGeer 2015, 272) would circumvent a focus of the peer group on defending a fixed normative moral order, ‘difference’ becoming framed as a discus-
sion of diversity and representing freedom of self, rather than as an implicit, non-negotiable threat to the moral order. Conclusion In this essay I have shown that ethnographic research into bullying has provided qualitative evidence of the social construction of bullying through a range of meaning-making activities, including: the detection and maintenance of social norms; peer labelling and stigma of norm deviance; awareness of social identity and role consistency, and social hierarchical positioning. I have argued that the common foundation of these meaning-making activities is effectively understood through a regulative conception of folk psychology. This ‘regulative mind’ model is not defended as providing a sole explanation for what is a complex phenomenon, but rather is offered as part of a much-needed pluralistic understanding of bullying. The benefits of a regulative approach include expanding definitions of what bullying entails. Primarily, this requires acknowledgement that bullying occurs as part of a set of peer group interactions, where children and adolescents, as developing folk psychological agents, form and regulate their mental states and behavioural dispositions in response to a variety of shared sense-making norms. As a consequence, the ‘regulative mind’ approach promotes a concentration on the development of anti-bullying strategies that provide children and adolescents with the knowledge and skills to enter into appropriate methods of norm negotiation; anti-bullying interventions themselves becoming a significant mindshaping force for the installation of norms of responsibility and respect. References Andrews, Kristin. 2008. "It's in your nature: a pluralistic folk psychology." Synthese 165:13-29. Burns, Sharyn, Bruce Maycock, Donna Cross, and Graham Brown. 2008. "The Power of Peers: Why Some Students Bully Others to Conform." Qualitative Health Research 18 (12):1704-1716.
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Craig, Wendy M., and Debra J. Pepler. 1997. "Observations of Bullying and Victimization in the School Yard." Canadian Journal of School Psychology 13 (2):41-60. Davies, Bronwyn. 2011. "Bullies as Guardies of the Moral Order or an Ethic of Truths." Children & Society 25:278-286. Due, Pernille, Bjorn Holstein, John Lynch, Finn Diderichsen, Saoirse Nic Gabhain, Peter Scheidt, and Candace Currie. 2005. "Bullying and symptoms among school-aged children: international comparative cross sectional study in 28 countries." European Journal of Public Health 15 (2):128-132. Fiebich, Anika, and Max Coltheart. 2015. "Various Ways to Understand Other Minds: Towards a Plurastic Approach to the Explanation of Social Understanding." Mind & Language 30 (3):235-258. Gini, Gianluca. 2006a. "Bullying as a social process: The role of group membership in students' perception of inter-group aggression at school." Journal of School Psychology 44:51-65. Gini, Gianluca. 2006b. "Social Cognition and Moral Cognition in Bullying: What's Wrong?" Aggressive Behavior 32:528-539. Gomez-Garibello, Carlos, and Victoria Talwar. 2015. "Can you read my mind? Age as a moderator in the relationship between theory of mind and relational aggression." International Journal of Behavioral Development 39 (6):552-559. McGeer, Victoria. 2015. "Mind-making practices: the social
infrastructure of self-knowing agency and responsibility."Philosophical Explorations 18 (2):259-281. O'Connell, Paul, Debra Pepler, and Wendy Craig. 1999. "Peer involvement in bullying: insights and challenges for intervention." Journal of Adolescence 22 (437-452). Renouf, Annie, Mara Brendgen, Jean R. Seguin, Frank Vitaro, Michel Boivin, Ginette Dionne, Richard E. Tremblay, and Daniel Perusse. 2010. "Interactive Links Between Theory of Mind, Peer Victimization, and Reactive and Proactive Aggression." Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 38:1109-1123. Ronald, Angelica, and Francesca Happe. 2005. "Nice and Nasty Theory of Mind in Preschool Children: Nature and Nutre." Social Development 14 (4):664-684. Salmivalli, Christia. 2010. "Bullying and the peer group: A review." Aggression and Violent Behavior 15:112-120. Shakoor, Sania, Sara R. Jaffee, Lucy Bowes, Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, Penelope Andreou, Francesca Happe, Terrie E. Moffitt, and Louise Arseneault. 2012. "A prospective longitudinal study of children's theory of mind and adolescent involemet in bullying." Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 53 (3):254-261. Slee, Phillip T. 1993. "Bullying: A preliminary investigation of its nature and the effects of social cognition." Early Child Development and Care 87 (1):47-57. Smith, Peter K. 2017. "Bullying and Theory of Mind: A Review." Current Psychiatry Reviews 13 (1):1-6.
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Sutton, Jon, Peter K. Smith, and John Swettenham. 1999. "Bullying and 'Theory of Mind': A Critique of the 'Social Skills Deficit' View of Anti-Social Behaviour." Social Development 8 (1):117-127. Thornberg, Robert. 2011. "She's Weird! - The Social Construction of Bullying in School: A Review of Qualitative Research." Children & Society 25 (4):258-267. Thornberg, Robert. 2015. "School Bullying as a Collective Action: Stigma Processes and Identity Struggling." Children & Society 29:310-320. UNESCO. 2017. School Violence and Bullying - Global Status Report. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Zawidzki, Tadeusz W. 2008. "The function of folk psychology: mind reading or mind shaping." Philosophical Explorations 11 (3):193-210.
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Cognition
To Extend Or Not To Extend: A Pragmatic Question Of Cognition Wendy Higgins Introduction There is a debate within the study of human cognition over whether cognition is contained within the human brain or if it can extend into the environment. The extended cognition thesis claims that some human cognitive processes and states extend into the environment and are, in part, constituted by the environment (Menary, 2006, 2007a, 2007b; Sutton, 2010; Wilson & Foglia, 2015). Like theories of extended cognition, theories of embedded cognition emphasise the importance of the environment in human cognition. However, in embedded cognition, the relationship is one of scaffolding rather than constitution. In this essay I argue that embedded cognition and the concept of the environment as a scaffold to cognitive tasks can equally well explain our cognitive abilities without the need to make the stronger claim that our cognitive processes extend into the environment. In section 2, I describe the extended cognition thesis and consider some of the ways in which proponents of extended cognition attempt to theoretically establish the bounds of cognition. In section 3, I argue that embedded cognition can provide a satisfactory account of the role of the environment in cognition. In section 4, I discuss theoretical evidence to suggest that it is impossible to experimentally distinguish embedded from extended cognition theories, rendering the debate a matter of pragmatic consideration. Finally, in section 5, I survey some of the proposed practical implications of adopting the extended cognition thesis and argue that they are insufficient to recommend extended cognition over embedded cognition on pragmatic grounds. Extended cognition
Extended cognition is the theory that in certain instances when the human mind couples with the environment to complete a cognitive task, the environmental elements constitute part of the cognitive process and are thus part of cognition (Wilson & Foglia, 2015). This can be contrasted with environmental scaffolding, in which the environment supports cognition, but does not constitute a part of cognition. Proponents of extended cognition do not deny that environmental scaffolding occurs, however, they argue that there are also instances when the environment constitutes a part of a cognitive process rather than being a mere external support. In such cases, according to extended cognition theories such as Menary’s (2006, 2007a, 2007b) cognitive integration theory, the brain and the environment integrate into a hybrid cognitive system. This hybrid cognitive system, in which an external vehicle is a constituent of the cognitive process, is what differentiates cases of extended mind from scaffolding. Such hybrid cognitive systems enable us to perform cognitive tasks that would not be possible for our brains alone (Menary, 2007a). From the outset, proponents of extended cognition have faced the challenge of determining the bounds of cognition if it spans beyond the skull. Extended cognition, as originally presented by Clark and Chalmers (1998), included the parity principle. The parity principle states that if something outside the brain plays a role that we would consider cognitive if it happened inside the brain, then it should be considered cognitive. This criterion for delineating the extended mind has proved problematic and has been downplayed in more recent extended cognition theories (see Menary, 2007a; Sutton, 2010). The complementarity principle outlined by Sutton (2010) is representative of
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the shift in the focus of extended cognition that Suttons calls the second wave of extended cognition. According to the complementarity principle, what makes an element of the environment part of cognition is that it performs a complementary function as a constituent part of a cognitive system completing a cognitive task. While the parity principle only identifies environmental vehicles that perform processes that are equivalent to processes occurring within the brain, the complementarity principle encompasses external vehicles with characteristics and functions that differ from internal vehicles, creating new types of cognition that are not possible without the environment. Arguably, these are the more interesting and informative putative cases of extended cognition (Menary, 2007a; Sutton, 2010).
cles according to cognitive norms that we have learned through practice. This hybrid system transforms our cognitive abilities by enabling us to record, edit, and rearrange our ideas in a way that would not be possible in our head. Menary suggests that it demonstrates neural chauvinism to acknowledge the essential role that writing plays in our thinking without accepting writing as part of thinking. However, it is only chauvinistic if the external vehicles are in fact constituents of cognition, which has yet to be decisively established. What Menary implies is that the only way to satisfactorily acknowledge the role of the environment in cognition is to include it as part of cognition. Below I will describe how embedded cognition can also acknowledge the importance of the environment in cognition.
As outlined above, according to Menary (2006, 2007a) what makes an external vehicle part of cognition is that it is a constituent of a cognitive process. Menary (2006) outlines four theses that underpin cognitive integration theory. The manipulation thesis states that people manipulate the environment in order to complete cognitive tasks. The transformation thesis states that our cognitive capacities are altered because we learn how to manipulate the environment as part of cognition. The cognitive norms thesis states that cognitive integration involves learning cognitive norms that govern the manipulation of the environment, such as learning the norms for manipulating mathematical symbols. Finally, the hybrid mind thesis states that our brains and the environment form a hybrid system because cognition results from the integration of internal and external elements and processes. As discussed below, these theses are also consistent with embedded cognition with the exception of the hybrid mind thesis.
Like extended cognition theories, theories of embedded cognition emphasise the essential role that the environment, both physical and social, plays in our cognitive abilities (Wilson & Foglia, 2015). However, theories of embedded cognition propose that the environment scaffolds cognition rather than being a part of cognition. Sterelny (2010) argues that scaffolding is sufficient to explain the relationship between the human mind and the environment. He applies niche construction theory to cognition. Niche construction theory states that in addition to adapting to the environment in which they find themselves, organisms also adapt the environment to better suit their needs. Applied to cognition, humans alter their environment by creating information scaffolds that support cognition (Sterelny, 2010). Viewed as an informational scaffold, we can explore the ways in which writing facilitates and transforms out thinking without extending cognition into the written word. The symbols and devices of written language enable us to record and manipulate our ideas, making it possible to create verbal texts that are different from what we could compose in our heads.
Applying cognitive integration theory to writing, Menary (2007b) argues that writing is thinking. Writing can satisfy the four theses outlined above. When we write, Menary argues that we form a hybrid system that integrates neural processes and written vehicles. We manipulate the written vehi-
Embedded cognition
The view of writing as scaffolding is compatible with three of the four theses underlying Menary’s cognitive integration theory. Even as a scaffold, written symbols are governed by norms. The manipulation of words according to the learned norms can transforms our thinking abili-
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ties by scaffolding our thoughts. The main distinction between the two theories’ accounts of writing is a distinction between writing as part of a hybrid mind and writing as a scaffold to the mind. Put another way, it is a question of where cognition ends and the external environment begins. It is a boundary demarcation problem (Kaplan, 2012). As Baumgartner and Wilutzky (2017) suggest, the debate between embedded and extended cognition is at an impasse because the boundary of cognition depends on how cognition is defined, and each side of the debate provides a definition of cognition that is consistent with the theory they support. Without establishing a clear criterion for determining where cognition ends, the demarcation will remain arbitrary, resulting in a stalemate (Sterelny, 2010). One solution is to establish an empirical means of delineating the bounds of cognition (Baumgartner & Wilutzky, 2017; Kaplan, 2012). Below I provide an overview of the attempt to apply a mutual manipulability criterion to the demarcation problem. Delineating the bounds of cognition experimentally As outlined above, both extended and scaffolded theories of cognition can account for the role of the environment in cognition, and progress in the debate is hampered by the lack of a universally accepted definition of cognition. Kaplan (2012) suggests that the way to move the debate forward is to adopt a criterion of constituency that does not rely on the definition of cognition. The question of whether a part of the environment scaffolds cognition or is part of cognition is essentially a question of whether the relationship between the environment and the cognitive process is causal or constitutive. Kaplan argues that by applying the concept of mutual manipulability we can differentiate background causal influences (scaffolding) from constitutional relationships (extension), and resolve the debate without reference to the definition of cognition.
According to the mutual manipulability criterion, there will be a bidirectional relationship between constituents of a system and overall system performance, meaning that manipulating the overall system performance will alter constituent components and manipulating constituent components will alter overall system performance. In contrast, there will be a unidirectional relationship between external causal factors and a system, with the causal agent effecting change in the system while a change to system performance will not effect the external causal agent (van Eck & de Jong, 2016). Applying the mutual manipulability criterion to cognitive demarcation problem, Kaplan (2012) suggests that we can determine whether an environmental vehicle constitutes part of a cognitive process by establishing whether there is a bidirectional or unidirectional relationship between the vehicle and the overall system. Kaplan applies mutual manipulability criterion to a study by Ballard, Hayhoe, & Pelz (1995) looking at the relationship between saccadic eye movements and the ability to perform a block-copying task. In the experiment, the task was manipulated and the effect on saccadic eye movements was examined in a top-down paradigm. The control experiment, which suppressed saccadic eye movements and measured the effects on the overall task performance, provided the bottom-up evidence. Bidirectional effects were found with changes to the task influencing saccades and changes to saccades influencing task performance. Kaplan (2012) argues that according the mutual manipulability criterion, saccadic eye movements are constituents of the cognitive task, supporting the theory of extended cognition. While this seems like a promising approach to delineating the bounds of cognition, there are potential logical problems with using the mutual manipulability criterion to establish system boundaries, as outlined below. Van Eck and de Jong, (2016) and Baumgartner and Wilutzky (2017) identify a logical problem with applying mutual manipulability to demarcate the bounds of cognition. The concept of mutual manipulability as a means of differentiating constitution from background causal influences requires the ability to make surgical manipula-
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tions. A surgical manipulation is a manipulation that will change the overall system performance without influencing the system components and vice versa. However, within a system, surgical manipulations are not possible. An external manipulation will always result in changes to both the overall system performance and the components in an effect called ‘fat-handedness’ (van Eck & de Jong, 2016, p.19). If the manipulation itself influences both the overall system performance and the putative components, then it is not possible to experimentally differentiate between causal and constitutive relationships. The mutual manipulability criterion can rule out constituency if a surgical manipulation is found, but it cannot distinguish between causal and constituent relationships in cases where no surgical manipulation is found (Baumgartner & Wilutzky, 2017; van Eck and de Jong, 2016). Despite this setback, van Eck and de Jong (2016) still argue that the mutual manipulability criterion can be used to support extended cognition on a case by case basis. They claim that in cases where we find only fat-handed and no surgical causes, constitution is a better explanation because it can account for the absence of surgical causes. However, as the authors acknowledge, the failure to find a surgical cause does not guarantee that no surgical cause exists. Their argument in support of extended mind is tenuous, and unlikely to convince internalists. Without experimental evidence, proponents of extended mind must argue on pragmatic grounds. It is also worth noting that both Kaplan (2012) and van Eck and de Jong (2016) apply the mutual manipulability criterion to studies that look at the relationship between cognition and body movements (saccades and gestures, respectively) rather than elements of the external environment. While they are arguing in support of extended cognition, they are only extending cognition into the body rather than the external environment. Logical considerations aside, their arguments appear to support embodied rather than extended cognition. As Sterelny
(2010) points out, embodied cognition does not entail extended cognition. While embodied cognition does extend cognition beyond the bounds of the skull, it does not necessarily extend it into the external environment. Proponents of embedded cognition could accept embodied cognition and still reject extended cognition. Practical implications of extending the mind So far we have established that both embedded and extended theories of cognition can explain the relationship between human brains and the environment, and that there is currently no way to empirically distinguish between the two theories. This raises the question of whether there are any pragmatic or practical reasons for accepting the extended mind thesis. Proponents of extended cognition claim that the theory has strong practical implications, but on examination, the practical implications of extended cognition appear similar to those of embedded cognition. Kaplan (2012) argues that extended cognition will have a strong impact on the discipline of cognitive science because it displaces the assumption that cognition occurs in the brain, which is a central tenant of current cognitive science research. He argues that if extended mind theory is adopted by cognitive science, the extension of cognition into the environment will impact the content and methodology of cognitive science. However, embedded theories of cognition emphasise how environmental scaffolding transforms our cognitive capacities. If we accept cognition as environmentally scaffolded, then the imperative remains for the content and methodology of cognitive science to incorporate the environment rather than studying the brain in isolation. Van Eck and de Jong (2016) make a claim similar to Kaplan (2012) noting that that the distinction between scaffolded and extended cognition matters because it will impact the content and research methods employed in cognitive science. In support of this assertion, they cite Ludwig’s (2015, p. 364) statement that adopting an extended approach to cognition will lead researchers “to draw the line between cognitive and non-cognitive processes along differences that actually matter for their research.” Based on this, van Eck and de Jong argue that Sterelny’s (2010) claim that there
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is no explanatory difference between scaffolded and extended cognition is ‘misguided’ (van Eck & de Jong, 2016, p. 14). However, Ludwig (2015) also fails to provide an explicit explanation of the actual practical implications of adopting a theory of extended cognition over theories of embedded and scaffolded cognition. The argument for the implications of extended mind on the content and methods of cognitive science would be stronger if they were more explicitly laid out. Clark (2001, p. 154) argues that: “Much of what matters about human intelligence is hidden not in the brain, nor in the technology, but in the complex and iterated interactions and collaborations between the two.” This highlights an important point. It can be argued that cognitive science has focused too narrowly on the isolated functioning of the brain, and as Sutton (2010) rightly suggests, the study of cognition would benefit from a cross-disciplinary focus and approach. However, as embedded cognition also claims that the environment is necessary for some cognitive functions and that our interactions with the environment transform our cognitive abilities, the importance of cross-disciplinary approaches and the study of the interaction between the brain and the environment do not depend on the extension of cognition into the environment. The benefits of studying cognition in context and incorporating cross-disciplinary approaches are also integral to the study of cognition according to theories of embedded cognition. A final point to consider is the ethical implications of adopting extended cognition. Clark & Chalmers (1998) raise possible ethical implications with their oft-cited case of Otto and his notebook. If we consider Otto’s notebook to be part of his memory, then the theft or altering of his notebook would be an attack on his person. Similar concerns are raised in the case of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. If a person’s environment, including other people, is part of their memory capacity, then relocating a person or severing social connections removes part of their memory (Lindemann, 2009). However, whether we adopt an
embedded or extended theory of cognition, the practical outcome is the same. If the environment is necessary for a person’s cognitive functioning, and altering the environment negatively impacts on their ability to function, then altering their environment becomes an ethical issue whether cognition extends into the environment or is ‘merely’ scaffolded by it. Conclusion The environment is necessary for the completion of many human cognitive tasks. There is debate over whether the relationship between the human brain and the environment is one of scaffolding or whether cognition can extend into the environment. I have argued that embedded cognition and environmental scaffolding are sufficient to explain our cognitive abilities. There is currently no way to empirically differentiate between embedded and extended cognition, and the pragmatic value and practical implications of the two models overlap significantly. This paper does not intend to argue that extended cognition is false, but rather that there is insufficient evidence at this time to empirically differentiate it from embedded cognition, and that there are insufficient pragmatic and practical implications for choosing extended cognition over embedded cognition. Until we discover a way to empirically differentiate the two theories or establish clear pragmatic reasons to adopt the extended mind thesis, theories of embedded cognition remain sufficient for the study of human cognition. References Ballard, D., Hayhoe, M., & Pelz, J. (1995). Memory representations in natural tasks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7(1), 66–80. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.1995.7.1.66 Baumgartner, M., & Wilutzky, W. (2016). Is it possible to experimentally determine the extension of cognition? Philosophical Psychology, 30(8). https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2017.1355453 Clark, A. (2001). Mindware: An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science.
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Oxford: Oxford university press. Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7-19. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/58.1.7 Kaplan, D. M. (2012). How to demarcate the boundaries of cognition. Biology & Philosophy, 27(4), 545-570. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-012-9308-4 Kirchhoff, M. D. (2016). From mutual manipulation to cognitive extension: Challenges and implications. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(5), 863-878. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-016-9483-x Lindemann, H. (2009). Holding one another (well, wrongly, clumsily) in a time of dementia. Metaphilosophy, 40(3-4), 416-424. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2009.01592.x Ludwig, D. (2015). Extended cognition and the explosion of knowledge. Philosophical Psychology, 28(3), 355-368. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.867319
Sciences, 29(5), 621-632. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2007.01.005 Sterelny, K. (2010). Minds: extended or scaffolded? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 465-481. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-010-9174-y Sutton, J. (2010). Exograms and interdisciplinarity: History, the extended mind, and the civilizing process. In R. Menary (Ed.), The Extended Mind (189-225). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014038.003.0009 Van Eck, D., & de Jong, H. L. (2016). Mechanistic explanation, cognitive systems demarcation, and extended cognition. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 59, 11-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2016.05.002 Wilson, R. A., & Foglia, L. (2015). Embodied cognition. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
Menary, R. (2006). Attacking the bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 19(3), 329-344. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515080600690557 Menary, R. (2007a). Cognitive integration: Mind and cognition unbounded. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592889 Menary, R. (2007b). Writing as thinking. Language
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Cognition In Context: Uprooting Anthropocentric Cognitive Science Sophia Amini Introduction The foundations of Western cognitive science lie in an anthropocentric conceptualisation of the internal ‘mind’ that positions humans as agents of exceptional cognitive power, and as the central subject of investigation (Donato 2019). The embodied cognition thesis challenges the internalist idea of a skull-bound mind by emphasising the primacy of the body in evolutionary history and its co-evolution with cognitive structures (Foglia & Wilson 2013). Growing evidence of non-human animal cognition also challenges the foundations, stripping away this sense of exceptionalism by narrowing the domain of what is uniquely human. This led into the contemporary debate about the nature of non-human minds and the capacity of the researcher to recognise them conceptually and methodologically. In this essay I argue that an anthropocentric approach to cognitive science arbitrarily constricts the scope of the field, and advocate for an expansion that incorporates the more-than-human landscape. In section 1, I will describe the anthropocentric origins of the Western tradition as driven by culturally-specific ideas of human exceptionalism and internalism – the idea that cognition occurs entirely within the bounds of the skull. Highlighting the lack of universality of these foundations will provide grounds to re-situate humans as fundamentally biological beings – as animals subject to evolutionary processes. Section 2 will then provide an outline of two key aspects of the contemporary debate, addressing concerns about defining cognition, and whether anthropocentrism is avoidable at all. In section 3, I will demonstrate how a non-anthropocentric approach can enhance the embodied cognition program by exploring the example of language. This hybrid approach provides
greater possibilities for de-coupling the idea of a unique human-like cognition from hierarchical value judgements by exploring multispecies cognitive diversity as situated in varying evolutionary and functional contexts. To conclude, I will express the necessity of a humble and non-anthropocentric paradigm in cognitive science for reconceptualizing human relationships with non-humans in the context of the Anthropocene. As Donato (2019) does, I will acknowledge that my use of the term ‘non-human’ is a violent act of overgeneralisation of the diverse forms of life on Earth, and that it adheres to the dualistic frameworks I aim to criticise. Nonetheless, for readability’s sake I will continue to use ‘non-human animal’ as a descriptor that emphasises humanity’s place within the animal kingdom. On anthropocentric foundations The primacy of anthropocentrism in the Western tradition has been traced back to philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (Andrews 2016; Donato 2019). A distinction between humans and non-human animals was carved by the idea that humans are bestowed with a divine gift of rationality, and that this establishes the existential hierarchy that is ‘scala naturae’ – the Great Chain of Being (Donato 2019). This informed conventional ideas about man’s natural evolutionary superiority to primitive beasts which, despite being incorrect as all creatures are now understood to be equally evolved, continues to influence the language used in Western science (Shettleworth 2010). The Aristotelian definition of humans as the ‘rational animal’ set an oppositional dualism where non-humans were perceived of as lacking rationality (Andrews 2016). In a conceptual place of hierarchical inferiority
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and void of rationality, non-human animals are subjugated to a position outside the sphere of moral concern, valuable only for their instrumental use by humans rather than having inherent value (Donato 2019). Ideas of human exceptionalism were reinforced as Descartes established further dualisms – such as human/animal, mind/body, rational/non-rational, culture/nature, linguistic/non-linguistic (ibid.; Meijer 2019). The assumption created by these dualisms is therefore that non-human animals are lacking a mind, lacking rationality, lacking culture and lacking language. The definitions of these features are thus intensely limited – pre-determined as tied only to humans, and recognisable only by resemblance to its human-like expression. For example, Descartes asserted that language is a key pre-requisite for rational thought (Andrews 2016). Linguistic human speech, assumed to be located in and structuring rational thought in the mind, is then positioned as the ultimate benchmark for language. Other forms of language, especially embodied forms of language, become devalued if not unrecognisable (Meijer 2019). The hierarchical conceptualisation of life, human exceptionalism, and the oppositional value dualisms that carve a chasm between humans and non-human animals all derive from and constitute the anthropocentrism of the Western tradition. In acknowledging the foundations of Western cognitive science, I now emphasise that they are not universal, self-evident frameworks. Rather, they are culturally specific ideas that are socially constructed and reinforced through the restricted definitions they impose (Benvenuti 2016a; Donato 2019; Meijer 2019). Willard & McNamara (2019) describe a Fijian model of ‘self’ that is relational and sociocentric, as varying from the Western perception of a ‘self’ piloted and bound by an individual internal mind. The relational mind is rather located in the space between people. Ojalehto et al. (2017) also describe an alternate cultural model of the mind revealed by their study of the Indigenous Ngöbe people of Panama. While
Western understandings emphasise a cognitive-psychological idea of agency as an individual’s ability to create and process internal representations of the world, Ngöbe were found to consider agency as a capacity for dynamic interaction with others and the environment. This again promotes cognition as relational, which does not adhere to the Cartesian partitioning of an internal mind from an experiential body. It also does not emphasise human minds over others, allowing for non-human cognitive agency without the charge of inferiority. Herrmann et al. (2010) also suggest that anthropocentrism is not an innate perspective but acquired primarily by urban-raised children. They note that children that have more direct engagements with non-human nature may acquire a less anthropocentric way of reasoning about the world. Ultimately, the primacy of anthropocentrism in the Western tradition should not be assumed as universal, self-evident, nor inherently superior to other frameworks. It must be understood as a culturally specific value that presents a challenge to the expansion of science, as it limits the scope of what is studied and how findings are interpreted (Bang et al. 2018). In the next section, I will briefly outline how contemporary science has also undermined these foundational anthropocentric values and describe two aspects of the debate that challenges a non-anthropocentric approach. The contemporary debate In the contemporary scientific landscape, the Cartesian dualisms that underpin Western philosophy are blurred. The Darwinian foundations of modern biology emphasise a continuity, rather than division, between human and animal. On the basis of a shared evolutionary history, humans are re-situated as part of the animal kingdom rather than in some divinely elevated position ‘above’ it. This perhaps, as Midgely (1994, p.364) suggests, forces those who assume discontinuity a priori to prove it, and explain the basis of their assumption. Human rationality has also been questioned, as Benvenuti (2016a) notes, as evidence emerges of human cognition as largely unconscious, emotional, fragmented, and biased. She also asserts that, with the knowledge of evolutionary continuity, it is not rational to continue to assume animals do not “think, feel, intend, and communicate”, and
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similarly do not have some expression of personhood (Benvenuti 2016a, p.3). Growing evidence of a dynamic interplay between the mind, body, and environment inspired the development of the embodied cognition research paradigm (Foglia & Wilson 2013), which I will describe further in section 3. This contemporary scientific landscape shakes the foundations of the Western tradition; however, its influence remains embedded in cognitive science. Rowlands (2009), for example, describes a distinction between two potential definitions of cognition. The first is big ‘C’ Cognition, which refers to ‘higher-order’ processes such as decision-making and processing that is thought to occur distinctly from perception. The second is a more general definition of little ‘c’ cognition as inclusive of perception. The former adheres to the previously-described ideas of oppositional dualities between mind and body by suggesting perception – as part of the domain of the body and a known capacity of non-human animals – is merely input for the distinct human mind rather than an integrated aspect of cognition as a whole. In this essay, I use cognition in the broadest sense to accommodate for an integrated and embodied experience, as well as allow space for other potential forms of cognition that are not expressed in a human-like way. As Allen (2017) discusses, it could be argued here that a broad interpretation of cognition that is not clearly defined becomes overextended and unhelpful to the sciences. I argue in response that the current exclusion of potential non-human expressions of cognition and cognitive abilities leads to the ongoing modification and distortion of definitions in a way that maintains exclusion of non-human animals, and this is even more-so unhelpful. As Pepperberg (2016) observes, from studies of nonhumans emerged evidence of symbol use, phrase construction and understandings of categorisation and concepts. Yet, the bar kept being raised for what non-humans needed to do to demonstrate language, which “seemed to be defined as whatever it was that apes didn’t have”
(Pepperberg 2016, p.182). Through taking a non-anthropocentric approach, one can understand that using human-like language as a pre-defined basis for recognising language in non-human others is arbitrarily limiting. Entirely human-like language, by definition, is likely to be unique to humans. Exploring language as a cognitive ability, defined in its broadest sense, allows for the possibility of discovering it in the diverse – including non-human – forms it can be expressed. I thus take the stance of ‘relaxed but industrious pluralism’ about definitions of cognition and cognitive abilities, as advocated by Allen (2017), which allows for an expansion of the cognitive sciences scope of inquiry in a way that remains productive under an open-ended umbrella term. Another subject of debate is whether anthropocentrism is avoidable at all. Nagel (1974) provides an example to explain the deficiency of the human imagination in providing a true understanding of the subjective experience of being a non-human – a bat. By virtue of being human, the frame of reference of our imagination is inherently anthropocentric, so attempts to imagine a bat’s experience can result only in a picture of a human’s imagination of a bat’s experience. In this case, I do not think it is necessary to entirely remove the human element from our attempts to understand non-human others. Rather, it is necessary to de-centre the human such that the problematic elements of hierarchy, dualism, and superiority I outlined in section 1 are identified and removed. Pelizzon & Ricketts (2015) establish different possibilities for this ontological de-centring of the human while retaining a ‘normative anthropocentrism’ – which is to understand the limits of our inherently human perspective. They allow for a coexistence between frameworks of this latter form of anthropocentrism and of ecocentrism – a position within which all life and ecological processes are valued as entangled in interdependent relationships. Whether this shift away from an ontological anthropocentrism is possible is not in question. It has been established as a feature specific to the Western tradition, and alternate ontologies have been held by many non-Western peoples. Seeing non-human minds as ultimately inaccessible in meaningful ways is also a reflection of culturally-specific – not universal – values (Meijer 2019, p.71). Bang et al. (2018, p.8) provide a coherent framework of relational episte-
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mologies guided by Indigenous knowledge, which can be a valuable resource for emphasising the lateral rather than hierarchical understandings of non-human others. We therefore can be certain meaningful non-anthropocentric understandings of others are possible, as they have already been achieved. In establishing the historical and contemporary context of anthropocentrism, I lay the grounds for a non-anthropocentric approach to cognitive science that is achievable, sensitive to current research, and generative of new ideas. In what follows I will apply this approach in conjunction with the embodied cognition research program to explore the possibilities of human and non-human expressions of language. Non-anthropocentric embodied cognition-A hybrid approach to language As previously mentioned, the Cartesian oppositional value dualisms of the Western tradition linked language to cognition in a way that located language in an internal ‘mind’ that is isolated from, and more theoretically significant than, the body. The embodied cognition program elevates in value and reunites the body with the mind, creating an image of an interplay between mind, body, and environment that constitutes a cognitive agent (Foglia & Wilson 2013). It emphasises the primacy of the body in evolutionary history and the role of the environment in shaping an organism’s expression of abilities, grounding cognition not within the skull but throughout a dynamic, contextualised body. This approach allows for both further exploration of, for example, culture as a contextual element that shapes cognition (Fabry 2017; Bender 2020), and further exploration of the possible forms of cognition that emerge through the vast variety of non-human contextualised bodies. Language has also been considered a prerequisite to cognition, along with the presumption that animals lack language (Andrews 2016). Chomsky, for example, determined that syntax – the rules of structuring linguistic components and phrases – was a necessary element of language (ibid.). Rus-
sell & Townsend (2017) note it is widely hypothesised that core language components evolved only in hominins. They go on to say that there is emerging evidence that “animals can compose meaningful sequences by joining specific calls in rule-guided combinations” (Russell & Townsend 2017, p.R753). However, this is only considered as a ‘proto’ form of human syntax. The title “animal steps on the road to syntax” (ibid., p.R753), plays into the anthropocentric idea of a pathway of linear evolution from primitive, proto-forms of language towards the apex human-like form of vocalisations. Any alternate expression of language thus is assumed to be inferior and imperfect – not ‘real’ language. Slobodchikoff & Placer (2006) demonstrated that, in alarm calls less than a second in duration, Gunnison’s prairie dogs can communicate information about the colour, size, shape, direction, and speed of approaching predators. They also observe that these vocalisations may suggest duality – that smaller sound units can be combined in various ways to produce larger units. This also can suggest a coherent form of very rapidly communicated and processed information, which I would consider a sophisticated expression of vocalisation that does not require being identical to human language to be considered language itself. Additionally, recognising and elevating the role of the contextualised body through the embodied cognition lens allows a greater appreciation for more physical communicative expressions. As Meijer (2019) describes, presumptions of language exclusive to humans led to investigations of the capacity of non-human animals to adopt a human language, and a deficiency in non-human expression through this foreign, not-species-typical system reinforced the presumption of non-human inferiority. Meijer comments that “in language, we take up a position in the world of meanings where the body makes itself understood to external witnesses” (2019, p.68). This understanding expands the scope of language beyond human-like linguistic vocalisations. For example, Smith & Delgado (2015) acknowledge the communicative power of gestural signalling, posture, and locomotion in chimpanzees and bonobos. They also emphasise the role of the body as a vehicle for communication in humans, visible in sign languages, performance, and even in daily interactions. Furthermore, the
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communicative power of sharing knowledge by experience can be noted in parrots. In Bradbury & Balsby (2016), the authors suggest that due to their high mixed diet, parrot pairs frequently exchange between foraging flocks to be led to and accumulate broader knowledge of local food sources – or ‘foraging lore’. They note that parrots may be able to recognise individuals that are likely to lead them to new sources, and selectively switch groups to access that lore, which they later may be able to lead others to. This creates an image of knowledge being communicated in a cooperative way through experience rather than necessitating a vocalised description. Another example, highlighted by Benvenuti (2016b, p.45) is that of elephants communicating through stomping on the ground with their feet and listening to these vibrations through physiological connections between their foot pads and ears. This suggests that while speech may be a dominant form of language in humans, it is not the only one – and embodied communication should not be discounted as illegitimate or primitive. In making this argument, I emphasise that divergence from human speech should not devalue the sophisticated communicative capacities specific to the diverse forms of non-human contextualised bodies. I recognised shared linguistic components, the existence of which are consistent with an evolutionary continuity between humans and non-humans, but I emphasise that human-like language should not be determined as the apex cognitive capacity in a hierarchical sense. As I will discuss in the following concluding section, in the contemporary landscape it may even be necessary to adopt a non-anthropocentric approach. This is in order to both highlight persisting traces of the traditional Western values that limit cognitive science, and to de-centre the human to allow for greater appreciation of non-human others. Conclusion In this essay I have provided an overview of the historical context of the culturally specif-
ic tradition that underlies Western cognitive science, as well as some key aspects of the contemporary debate about non-anthropocentric approaches. I have argued that the dominant anthropocentric approach arbitrarily constricts the scope of the field in a way that is not sensitive to current research and advocated for an expansion of the field to incorporate the more-than-human landscape. I hoped to demonstrate that this is not only achievable but is a great asset to the sciences especially in partnership with an embodied cognition research program. The implications of challenging traditional ideas and transitioning to a non-anthropocentric approach reach further than academia. Our understandings of the cognitive capacities of non-human animals significantly inform ideas of an ethically appropriate way of interacting with them (Midgely 1994). For example, ideas of personhood are based on the continuity of an agent’s awareness and subjective experience, and beliefs about human exceptionalism resulted in our exclusion of all non-human animals from this domain (Benvenuti 2016b). The maintenance of anthropocentric worldviews has enabled an exploitative and destructive tradition that now sabotages the wellbeing of our own species through its contribution to dangers such as intense environmental degradation and climate change (Pelizzon & Ricketts 2015; Donato 2019). The contemporary era has been referred to as the Anthropocene, as it can be recognised by the dominance of human activities in impacting the global systems and forces that support life on Earth (Steffen et al. 2007). In this era, we can no longer maintain an oppositional divide between humans and nature as our interdependency and entanglement within the Earth’s systems becomes apparent. Cognitive science thus has a key role in reconceptualising this de-centred human and encouraging respectful, relational understandings of non-human others. Some theorists suggest the denial of cognitive capacities to non-human animals results from a reluctance to rethink their current instrumental usage (Chandrasekera 2016), or from a dissonance between accepting the intrinsic value of non-human others and being unable to act ethically towards them within current economic and social structures (Batavia 2020). Given the global threat imposed by human activities that are guided by the dominant anthropocentric framework, a shift towards a
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non-anthropocentric approach may be not just useful, but necessary. Incorporating non-human others into the cognitive sphere and appreciating the diverse forms in which cognitive capacities are expressed are vital steps in nurturing a gentler way of being in a multispecies world.
2016.048
References Allen, C. 2017. On (not) defining cognition. Synthese (2017): 4233-4249.
Fabry, R. E. 2017. Explaining enculturated cognition. In Davelaar, E., Gunzelmann, G., Howes, A. & Tenbrink, T. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society: 349–354. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society
Andrews, K. 2016. Animal Cognition. in Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016, Edition) Bang, M., Marin, A. & Medin, D. 2018. If Indigenous peoples stand with the sciences, will scientists stand with us? Daedalus 127(2): 148-159. Batavia, C. 2020. Is anthropocentrism really the problem? Animal Sentience 27(20) Bender, A. 2020. What early sapiens cognition can teach us: untangling cultural influences on human cognition across time. Frontiers in Psychology 11 (article 99): 1-6 Benvenuti, A. 2016a. Evolutionary continuity of personhood. Animal Sentience 10(13) Benvenuti, A. 2016b. Evolutionary continuity and personhood: legal and therapeutic implications of animal consciousness and human unconsciousness. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 48:43-49 Bradbury, J.W. & Balsby, T.J.S. 2016. The functions of vocal learning in parrots. Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology 70: 293-312. Chandrasekera P.C. 2016. From sentience to science: limits of anthropocentric cognition. Animal Sentience
Donato, J. 2019. Confronting western conceptions of non-human animal cognition. Master of Liberal Studies Theses. 89. Accessed via https://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls/89/
Foglia, L. & Wilson, R.A. 2013. Embodied cognition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 4(3): 319-325. Herrmann, P., Waxman, S.R. & Medin, D.L. 2010. Anthropocentrism is not the first step in children's reasoning about the natural world. PNAS 107 (22): 9979-9984. Meijer, E. 2019. When Animals Speak: Toward an Interspecies Democracy. NYU Press. 10.18574/nyu/9781479859351.001.0001. Midgley, M. 1994. Beastly beliefs. Nature 368: 363-364 Nagel, T. 1974. What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83(4): 435-450 Ojalehto, B.I., Medin, D.L. & Garcia, S.G. 2017. Grounding principles for inferring agency: two cultural perspectives. Cognitive Psychology 95: 50-78 Pelizzon, A. & Ricketts, A. 2015. Beyond anthropocentrism and back again: from ontological to normative anthropocentrism. The Australasian Journal of Natural Resources Law and Policy 18(2): 105-124. Pepperberg, I.M. 2016. Animal language studies: what happened? Psychonomic Bulletin &
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Review 24: 181-185 Rowlands, M. 2009. Extended cognition and the mark of the cognitive. Philosophical Psychology 22(1): 1-19. Russell, A.F. & Townsend, S.W. 2017. Communication: animal steps on the road to syntax. Current Biology 27 (15): R753-R755 Shettleworth, S. 2010. Clever animals and killjoy explanations in comparative psychology. Trends in Cognitive Science, 14(11): 477-81. Slobodchikoff, C.N. & Placer, J. 2006. Acoustic structures in the alarm calls of Gunnison's prairie dogs. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 119(5): 3153-3160 Smith, L.W. & Delgado, R.A. 2015. Body language: the interplay between positional behavior and gestural signaling in the genus Pan and its implications for language evolution. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157 (4): 592-602. Steffen, W., Crutzen, P.J. & McNeill, J.R. 2007. The Anthropocene: are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature. A Journal of the Human Environment. 36(8): 614-621 Willard, A.K. & McNamara, R.A. 2019. The minds of God(s) and humans: differences in mind perception in Fiji and North America. Cognitive Science 43(1): e12703 Wilson, R. A. & Foglia, L. 2015. Embodied Cognition. in Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition).
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Morality
Morality Without God: The Human Desire To Thrive And The Capacity For Empathy As The Source Of Moral Values Wendy Higgins Moral values are principles that outline how people should act toward each other by classifying behaviours as good (moral) or bad (immoral). While most people would agree that morals exist and influence our behaviour, there is debate over the origin of moral values and the reason for their efficacy. Theistic theories of morality such as divine command theory claim that it is metaphysically necessary that moral values derive their authority from God and that the motivation to behave morally results from the love and/or fear of God (Adams, 1979). This essay will argue that attributing morality to God is untenable. While the social institution of religion can support and engender moral behaviour, “[n]either the authority of moral values nor the motivation to act morally has anything to do with the existence of God.” Rather, the authority of moral values and our motivation to act morally derive from our desire to thrive and our capacity for empathy. One way to account for the authority of moral values is to attribute them to God. According to divine command theory it is metaphysically necessary that moral actions are the actions commanded by a loving God and immoral actions are all actions that are contrary to God’s commands (Adams, 1979). However, equating moral values with God’s will presents a number of challenges. Plato raises an issue known as the Euthyphro Dilemma, by querying whether an action is immoral because God wills it to be wrong, or whether God wills an action to be wrong because it is immoral. If God forbids an action because it is wrong, then the action is wrong independent of the existence of God, and morality does not require God. If the action becomes wrong because God forbids it, then morality appears arbitrary and poten-
tially incomplete (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2004). For example, when a previously unimagined action (such as cloning a life form or terminating an artificially intelligent being) arises, according to divine command theory, that action would exist in a state of moral limbo if any time passed between its initial conception and the moment God passed moral judgement on it. However, it seems counterintuitive that we would be unable to attribute moral value to the action prior to God’s judgement or that we would lack the capacity to evaluate God’s moral judgement, both of which require a faculty for morality separate from God. Our desire to thrive offers an alternative source for the authority of moral values. Philosophers from the early Greeks through to today have identified the human desire to seek out pleasure and avoid pain (Bentham, 1994; Epicurus, 1998). If we adopt an egoist perspective, we can say that the moral values that have authority will be those that best enable us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Hobbes social contract theory offers one such secular alternative to theistic theories of morality based on self-interest. Hobbes states that we humans live in a world with limited supplies to satisfy our basic needs, and because we cannot depend on the innate kindness of others or our own strength to guarantee access to supplies, it is in all of our best interests to adopt a quid pro quo code of behaviour that demands we treat each other with mutual respect rather than satisfying our own needs at any cost (Rachels, 1999). Thus, what gives moral values their authority according to Hobbes is their ability to maintain a society in which our personal interests are relatively protected. Not all secular theories of morality are
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based exclusively on self-interest. Moral values can also gain their authority from the human capacity for empathy. We all feel pain, and we have the ability to imagine the pain our actions can cause other people. We can use our empathy to evaluate actions, with immoral actions being those that cause harm to another person (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2004). It is arguably empathy that inspired Kant’s imperative that we never treat others ‘simply as a means but always at the same time as an end’ (Kant cited in O’Neill, 1993). Supporters of Hobbes might argue that our own desire not to be treated as an end provides sufficient authority to the moral value that every individual has inherent worth, however there are times when we experience an empathetic response to an action that conflicts with our rational, self-interested evaluation of the action. It is possible for humans to derive our moral values from both our desire to thrive and our capacity for empathy. Conflicts between the two sources of moral values may result in some of the moral dilemmas we face such as whether to kill one person in order to save many lives. Our desire to thrive and our capacity for empathy provide a plausible alternative to God as the source for the authority of moral values. However, Craig (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2004) argues that secular accounts of morality are insufficient because they fail to account for objective morality. Craig claims that if morality is relative, then rape and torturing a child must be morally neutral actions. Furthermore, anyone who is not “morally handicapped” knows that these actions are objectively wrong, thus objective morality must exist (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, p. 21). However, a near universal aversion to these actions does not entail the existence of objective morality, which Craig defines as a morality that exists separate from humans. Nor does a lack of objective morality make the actions morally neutral. As outlined above, our ability to empathise enables us to classify actions that will harm others as morally wrong. Since rape and torture cause pain, a nearly universal agreement that the
actions are morally wrong could be the result of our empathetic capacity rather than objective moral values. While our empathetic capacity can explain the apparent universality of certain moral values, secular theories of morality can also account for moral relativity. Cross cultural and historical studies show that moral values do in fact vary across cultures and time. Societies differ from each other and change over time. If moral values derive their authority from their ability to support a functioning society, then it is possible for moral values to differ across time and place. Wong (1993) suggests that what is universal about morality is not the specific behavioural limitations it imposes, but the functional role moral values play, namely, their ability to address interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts of interest. Moral relativism is inconsistent with divine command theories as an action must either be consistent with God’s commands or against God’s commands. Another concern raised by theists over secular accounts of morality is that people will have no motivation to behave morally without the love or fear of God to inspire them. In The Republic, Plato describes a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon over an invisibility ring that enables a person to do wrong with impunity. Glaucon argues that with such impunity anyone would commit immoral acts such as theft and murder if it benefitted them (Plato, 1993). While empathy would likely prevent some immoral actions, Glaucon’s argument does highlight the effectiveness of social sanctions in motivating moral behaviour. Accounts of moral authority based on the desire to thrive and empathy do not require an external motivator like God because they are intrinsically motivating. Rather than being arbitrarily commanded by God, they have been selected because they either support a functioning society or minimise harm to others. We want to behave according to moral values because doing so protects our personal interests and prevents us from feeling guilt or empathy for the pain of others. However, it is important to note that religion is not irrelevant for morality. Religious communities provide social structures that teach explicit moral values and expect their members to abide by them (Bloom, 2011). Studies have found that
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thinking about God can increase the socially desirable behaviour of a religious person (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). However, current research does not clearly differentiate whether the effect of religion on behaviour is due to a belief in God or community membership. Thomson (2015) conducted research demonstrating that prosocial behaviour also increases when a person thinks about their membership in a secular community. This suggests that community membership rather than religion itself supports prosocial behaviour. While moral values are often associated with God, ascribing the authority of moral values to God makes moral values arbitrary and potentially incomplete. The human desire to thrive and the human capacity for empathy are alternative sources for the authority of moral values. The moral values resulting from our desire to thrive and our empathetic natures are inherently motivating as the social and empathetic consequences from which they derive their authority also inspire individuals to comply with the moral values. This negates the need for a deity to enforce moral behaviour. While religions do teach moral values and can promote moral behaviour through their role as a social community, God is not requisite to the authority of moral values or the motivation of moral actions. References Adams, R. M. (1979). Divine command metaethics modified again. Journal of Religious Ethics, 7(1), 66. Bentham, J. (1994). The principle of utility. In P. Singer (Ed.), Ethics (pp. 306-312). New York: Oxford University Press.
Craig, W. L., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2004). God?: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. New York: Oxford University Press. Epicurus (1998). Epicurus, ‘Letter to Menoeceus’ and ‘Leading doctrines.’ In D. E. Copper (Ed.), Ethics: The classic readings (pp. 47-58). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 298-302. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.006 O’Neill, O. (1993). Kantian ethics. In P. Singer (Ed.), A companion to ethics (pp. 175 185). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Plato (1993). The ring of Gyges. In C. Sommers & F. Sommers (Eds.), Vice & virtue in everyday life: Introductory readings in ethics (pp. 445-450). Sydney: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Rachels, J. (1999). The idea of a social contract. In The elements of moral philosophy (3rd ed., pp. 143-161). Boston: McGraw-Hill College. Thomson, N. D. (2015). Priming social affiliation promotes morality – Regardless of religion. Personality and Individual Differences, 75(Supplement C), 195-200. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.022 Wong, D. (1993). Relativism. In P. Singer (Ed.), A Companion to Ethics (pp. 442 450). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Bloom, P. (2011). Religion, morality, evolution. Annual Review of Psychology, 63(1), 179-199. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100334
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Justice
Obligations, Justice and The Nation-State Aidan Brown If obligations we have to each other as a matter of justice are founded on a principle of the equal moral worth of all humans, these duties cannot reasonably be restricted by state borders to only those people who are citizens of the same states we are. Instead, as this essay will explain, justice requires us to extend our general obligations of justice to all people, regardless of their citizenship, in order to satisfy a principle of egalitarian distribution. This does not erase any special duties arising out of particular relationships to compatriots or those whose position in economic and social hierarchies is directly affected by our own; rather, these duties are underpinned by global distributive justice. Part 1 – Global Egalitarian Distributive Justice. The most intuitive reason that our membership of a certain nation state ought not grant us any special benefits or burdens, as a matter of justice, is because these are not deserved. In Ronald Dworkin’s essay on Equality of Resources (1981) he discusses the need for a just approach to resource distribution to be ambition-sensitive and endowment-insensitive. That is, differences in people’s positions due to brute luck (which they have no control over) are not deserved by those people in the same way that differences that come about as a result of active choices or options luck (when the risks of a certain gambit or lifestyle choice are known, and it is entered into freely) are (Ibid, 311). One core example of brute luck is the circumstances people are born into, as nobody has control over whether they are born into a particular social group or economic class. As membership of a particular state is almost invariably determined, at least initially, by whether someone is born there, or to parents who are members of that state, citizenship should rarely, if ever, be considered relevant in the determination of a
person’s just desserts. In John Rawls’ Law of Peoples (1999) he discusses the duties different peoples (collective groups of individuals with common culture, laws, institutions, interests etc. In this essay, the term is used interchangeably with ‘nations’) have to each other in order to achieve justice and order in the international realm. Despite his formulation of distribution of resources within a state being based on equal concern for all individuals, where any inequality can only be justified when it benefits even the least well-off (Rawls 1971, 302–3), in this discussion he asserts that the integrity of nations as collective units with the right to self-determination is enough that the duties different peoples have to each other are limited to principles of non-interference, fidelity to contractual agreements, etc. Of these, the only active duty to actively assist other peoples extends only to that assistance necessary to ensure the state can function and that the most basic needs of its population are being met (Rawls 1999, 106–12). ‘The levels of wealth and welfare among societies may vary … but adjusting those levels is not the object of the duty of assistance. Only burdened societies need help.’ (Ibid, 106) How rich a country is, Rawls asserts, is more a matter of how well its institutions function rather than how many resources the land has been endowed with and no other state has any obligation to do anything but ensure that every state has enough power over its own institutions that any outcome of its state functions can be considered the result of that people’s choice, rather than brute luck. We will address the truth of Rawls’ claims about the obligations that states have to each other, particularly in reference to his attribution of blame for a state’s lack of success to its own poor decisions, in Part 2. First though, I would direct attention to the fact that Rawls is only considering the duties of
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peoples to each other which overlooks the fact that, particularly in undemocratic societies, the individuals themselves, whose states’ apparent poor handling of resources has caused them suffering, have had no say themselves in how their society should be run and cannot, therefore, be held responsible or deserving of their poor living standards. Even if we take Rawls’ analysis of international relations to be correct, we cannot use it to justify giving the individuals outside our own state any less than that egalitarian distribution of global resources that equal moral concern for all people requires. Part 2 – Special Duties, Nationalism and National Responsibilities. I have argued, so far, that state borders alone do not invalidate our normal duties of justice towards people who live outside our own states. However, the nations we are part of are not totally irrelevant to the duties that we owe other people as a matter of justice. Nationalists claim that we have special moral duties to those people who are citizens of the same nation-state as we are (our compatriots) that take priority over any general moral duties (Miscevic 2018). States would then be justified in looking after their own to a greater extent than they look after others. I will argue, however, that these claims of special duties beyond general universal egalitarian concerns are actually stronger when it comes to the duties of wealthy nations to poorer ones, rather than to itself. The nationalist claim is not necessarily that we have no moral obligations to non-compatriots, or even that helping them is beyond the requirements of justice, simply that the shared sense of identity and purpose, as well as our participation in the same legal institutions, creates a stronger obligation of justice (Blake and Smith 2018). As David Miller (2007) puts it, when ‘individual members act they do so in the light of the support they are receiving from other members of the group’. This is similar to the reasoning of right institutionalists such as Rawls who believe that obligations of egalitarian justice only arise in intrastate contexts because, they
claim, such a system of distributive justice must be triggered by a common subjection to a coercive force (such as the laws of a state) meaning any imbalance in people’s position must be rectified (Blake and Smith 2018). This position is nicely summarised by Blake and Smith: “Co-citizens have their wills invoked as shared participants in the creation of distributively relevant public policy, and this invocation gives rise to egalitarianism.” (Ibid) Thomas Pogge (2010), however, demonstrates that these same extra factors that give rise to extra duties of egalitarian distribution of resources exist on an international level. He contends that the international institutions set up by the richer, more powerful nations actually serve to keep them to be rich at the expense of poorer states. The fact that there are global institutions that either directly or indirectly coerce, or at least leave open to exploitation, poorer and less stable states, even if they are rich in resources, creates a duty out of justice, for us to rectify this by redistributing resources and reforming these institutions in order to rectify the injustice that has been done through entrenching these states in poverty and political and economic instability. Indeed, it is a requirement of Miller’s nationalism that we hold nations collectively responsible for their actions, with the ongoing benefits of historical exploitation of other nations bringing about a collective duty to ensure they make reparations for those past injustices (Tan, 2008). However, while Miller considers this view to rule out any general principle of global egalitarian distributive justice, claiming it would contradict the self-determinative rights that give rise to state-responsibility, Kok‐Chor Tan (Ibid, 457–8.) points out that, in the same way our individual rights are constrained to an extent by principles of justice, so can our collective rights. This means, as long as there is only moderate scarcity of resources (as opposed to situations of extreme scarcity in which, Tan argues, rules of justice over self-preservation can fall away), global distributive justice is both compatible with, and can take priority over, nationalist concern for self-determination (Ibid, 458–9). In this sense, the contextual foundations for disparity between nations, both historical and that of contemporary institutions, represent an injustice that we are required to rectify in addition to our general duties of egalitarian distribution.
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Conclusion In this essay, I have endeavoured to show that the division of the world into nation-states should not affect the egalitarian duties we have to all people by virtue of their being humans. Instead of erasing this duty, the special obligations justice requires us to honour due to particular relational contexts, if anything, increases our duty to citizens of other nations. Reference Blake, Michael and Patrick Taylor Smith. 2015. “International distributive justice”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/spr2015/entries interntional-justice/
of resources” Philosophy & Public Affairs 10 (4): 283–345. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. London: Oxford University Press. Rawls, John. 1999. Law of Peoples. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Miller, David. 2007. National Responsibility and Global Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Pogge, Thomas. 2010. “The role of international law in reproducing mass poverty” in Samantha Besson, and John Tasioulas (eds). The Philosophy of International Law. New York, Oxford University Press, 492–514.
Brock, Gillian. 2017. “Global justice”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://pl to.stanford.edu/achives/spr2017 entries/justice-global/ Miscevic, Nenad. 2018. “Nationalism”, The Stanford Enc clopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.sta ford.edu/archives/sum2018 etries/nationalism/ Kleingeld, Pauline and Eric Brown. 2014. “Cosmopolitanism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives fall2014/entries/cosmopolitanism/ Tan, Kok‐Chor. 2008. “National responsibility, reparations and distributive justice” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 11 (4): 449–64. Dworkin, Ronald. 1981. “What is equality? Part 2: Equality
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The Moral Permissibility And Justice Of State Seizure Of Private Property Aidan Brown This essay will attempt to dissect Robert Nozick’s claim that government interference in the income earned through labour is akin to slavery. Through analysing both its internal coherence within Nozick’s philosophy of justice and how it successful it is as a refutation to John Rawls’ difference principle, I will attempt to highlight inconsistencies with the Kantian foundation both theorists ground their work in and, from there, provide a defence of Rawls’ difference principle from Nozick’s critique. Rawls’ Difference Principle To properly understand Nozick’s stance, we must first understand what it is he is responding to. Both Nozick’s and Rawls’ positions come from the same Kantian belief that every individual person has a moral right to exercise their autonomy (that is, to live by their own rules as far as those rules are conceived through reason). As such, it is essential that each individual person is regarded in a way that respects their capacity for reason; to not be treated as means to another’s ends but as ends in their own right. This leads Rawls to reject a utilitarian model of society which focusses only on the sum total of everyone’s utility (whether that is considered to be their wealth, happiness, pleasure or anything else), because such an ideal does not rule out, by necessity, the possibility of sacrificing the happiness of some for the greater happiness of others. In fact, if ever a situation arises where such a thing can be achieved, utilitarianism will generally require it. Rawls and Nozick, however, see forcing such a sacrifice to be an instance of treating some people as means, forcing them to suffer for the good of others and ignoring the individual liberties that should be afforded to all people as ends. Rawls concludes then, that a just society must only allow some classes of people to
have more or do better than others if that inequality will produce a positive outcome for even those who have the least in such a society. A just society, for Rawls, is one where the lowest standard is greater than the lowest standard in any other possible distribution of utility. The state, therefore, must work to have resources distributed according to this principle of maximising the minimum standard in order to be just. This is what he called the ‘difference principle’. Nozick’s Objection While Nozick, also a Kantian, has a similar distaste for utilitarianism’s concern for collective total utility rather than that of individuals, it is because of this that he rejects Rawls’ difference principle, considering any state interference in the distribution of property across society to be similarly abusing people’s individual property rights and treating them as means to an end. Nozick even refuses to use the term ‘distribution’ to describe how much property is held by different people within a society, preferring to refer to ‘holdings’ as he believes the former term implies that property has been given out by a central body in any just or unjust way. Instead, Nozick asserts that every individual has property rights over their selves and anything else that they come to hold through any one of three ‘just’ means. These are: acquisition of things that belong to nobody, fair transfer of justly held property, and rectification of previously justly held property that has been unjustly taken. What is important here is that he believes the only morally significant factor of someone’s holding of property is whether that the history of that person’s coming into possession involves any objectionable transfers or acquisitions. This contrasts with Rawls’ difference princi-
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ple which implies that there could be moral justification for the suspension of property rights over things so acquired in order to satisfy the difference principle. Nozick’s historical justification of property holdings puts him in contrast with Rawls who emphasises the arbitrariness of initial holdings of property (and even of natural talent, intelligence, strength etc.) and hence the lack of dessert of anyone who is born into circumstances where they have more holdings than others. With no just history to respect, a Rawlsian therefore needs not believe that state distribution of property (that is, the seizure from some owners and bestowal to others) requires any justification in a moral sense when that property has not been otherwise earned. Putting these conflicting ideas aside though, regardless of the issue of rights over external possessions, any Kantian liberal will find a moral imperative in allowing a person to realise their autonomy (although whether this should be considered a property right to one’s own person may well be more controversial) and this is where Nozick’s comparison of taxes on labour and slavery raises issue with what he calls ‘patterned’ systems of distributive justice. These are systems, like Rawls’ system of maximising the position of the minimum earner (a ‘maximin’ system as some have called it) that have a non-trivial desired pattern of distribution. Nozick explains that, through taking part of the income somebody has worked for away from them, the state is effectively ensuring that part of that time spent working did not earn them anything. Although he rejects the Lockean idea that one can come to have ownership of property by mixing one’s labour with it, Nozick believes that the arrangement created by income tax is one of such control by the state over an individual’s labour that it creates a relationship of part-ownership of the worker herself. If such an arrangement is necessary for all patterned distribution theories, as Nozick seems to believe it is, such systems must, according to him, be prepared to achieve their ends through forced labour, something that hardly satisfies Rawls’ Kantian respect for the invi-
olability of the individual’s autonomy. Is Taxation Even an Issue? Prior to determining the truth of Nozick’s comparison (and the consequences for the difference principle if it is accurate) we must consider whether such taxation is necessarily part of Rawls’ picture of a just society. In his Theory of Justice, Rawls makes suggestions as to how a state might create institutions that assure just distribution of property. Although he does describe income tax, he himself is hesitant to call for such a method of resource seizure in comparison to taxes on purchases ‘since it imposes a levy according to how much a person takes out of the common store of goods and not according to how much he contributes (assuming here that income is fairly earned)’. Stephen W Ball even posits that a distribution pattern that adheres to Rawls’ difference principle may not require any taking from the rich and giving to the poor: ‘[A] maximinimizing economic system does not take away (or redistribute) wealth from the wealthy … but rather prevents its accumulation, as well as the expectations [of accumulation] … which Nozick appears to assume.’ Indeed, Rawls describes other methods of organising an economic system in order to prevent wealth from accruing in such a way as to do detriment to those in the poorest position. Nozick’s taxation argument, however, extends even to situations of ‘there being a big social pot so that it’s not clear what’s coming from where and what’s going where’ and while building a system in that interferes with a wealthy person’s ‘justly acquired’ ability to earn more than they already have seems an even further stretch from ownership of that person, it would still interfere with the rights Nozick believes those individuals have in a way that limits their autonomy and so still counts, to a Nozickean, as partial ownership of those individuals. Is it Slavery? Should we Care? Herbert Hart confronts the obvious apparent difference in gravity between a lifetime of slavery or a few extra hours of unpaid work, asking if ‘taxing a man's earnings or income, which leaves him free to choose whether to work and to choose what work to do, [is] not altogether different in terms of the burden it imposes from forcing him to
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labour?’. Hart also makes the argument that Nozick’s view of people’s unvanquishable right to deal with their justly acquired property as they see fit, provided they respect the rights of others in a negative sense (that is, without interfering with them), excludes a positive responsibility to service the rights of others. Although Nozick argues that ‘a right to life is not a right to whatever one needs to live’ as ‘other people may have rights over those things’, Hart points out that Nozick maintains that people’s rights (presumably over both themselves and their holdings) should not be considered ends in themselves but side constraints on the behaviour of people otherwise pursuing their goals. This, Nozick argues, is because they are to be used as means to preserve the inviolability of those individuals; in order that people may live autonomous lives. What leads Nozick to conclude that we cannot justify any intervention by the state that would use the property justly acquired by an individual for any means without their consent, Hart sees as an appropriate enough differentiation between people’s property rights (as means) and the people themselves (as ends) to justify exactly that behaviour. People without the resources to live their own lives by their own rules have their very autonomy jeopardised by circumstances that could be rectified merely by taking from people whose holdings are surplus to the basic requirements of survival and comfort that are necessary for their autonomy. Admittedly, it may be presumptuous to imply that some people may not need these ‘surplus’ levels of wealth to achieve autonomy as it is their own goals they must pursue, and some may be more expensive than others, but surely it would be more just to ensure all individuals get at least enough to survive. It then lies with each person to use their reason to set their own goals, presumably with an understanding of the amount of surplus resources available to them. If a Kantian respect for the autonomous lives of individuals is the foundation upon which both Rawls and Nozick build their theories, surely it is Rawls’ that best enables this autonomy.
After all of that, Ball thinks it might be worth considering that Rawl’s theory of a just society isn’t necessarily one of morally unquestionable operations but perhaps one of prudential success and political stability. Recognising that Nozick’s issue with Rawl’s theory is in how it appears to exchange the permissible sacrifice endured by those with the least required to achieve the broad social ideal of the utilitarian, for the permissible sacrifice to be endured by the richest in a society to achieve another broad social ideal (the difference principle); Ball considers Rawls’ argument that even those in a maximin system who are required to give up (or are prevented from obtaining) the maximum amount available to them prior to state interference will still be happy with the arrangement knowing that they are in a better position than anyone else and that their system is stable as they have secured the economic cooperation of the lower classes. On Ball’s interpretation of Rawls’ Theory of Justice, the society is to be considered fair simply because all in it can see that their place in that society is reasonable. Where Nozick objects that the wealthy could not be happy with having less than they could, he is ignoring that, for stability to exist, the poorer classes, as the ones with the raw end of the deal compared to the wealthy, are the ones who must be pleased in order to cooperate economically and endure the inequality in the knowledge that things would be worse for them if they didn’t. In the end, it is difficult to find much in Nozick’s claim that does not struggle with its own Kantian moral foundations, let alone a clear and definite rebuttal of Rawls’ difference principle which I have shown seems to stick closer to the moral framework shared by the philosophers and to a possible, practicable solution. In both these senses, Nozick’s theory falls short.
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Art
Human Nature Art Grace Saagi Art and literature are useful tools in presenting philosophical perspectives through a stylised lens. Here, the word ‘art’ is taken to mean visual works created by people, such as paintings and films, and ‘literature’ refers to written works also created by people, within forms such as prose and poetry. Worth mentioning also is that ‘art’ and ‘literature’ are terms typically used to describe works with cultural longevity and significance. ‘Philosophy’ in this context means the overall study of human ideas, often specialised to a certain area, such as ethics or human nature. Art often reflects the values of its context, values that are often philosophical in nature. Literature is valuable in philosophy because it is more easily accessible for people who are not experts in philosophical ideas and can be used as tools to explore concepts and questions. However, some have argued that the devices and techniques of art and literature are incompatible with a philosophical perspective and that combining the two comes at the risk of sacrificing one or the other. Ultimately, I intend to argue that art and literature are incredibly useful and even necessary for exploring philosophical questions, particularly as they relate to human nature. Visual art, such as paintings and films often contain philosophical themes and are usually created from the philosophical perspective of their creator. These philosophical themes often inform the usage of certain artistic and cinematic techniques by their creator in order to express their perspective. One of the most famous artists with philosophical themes is the French post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Many of Cézanne’s works explicitly reject traditional artistic forms and techniques such as outlines and single-view perspectives in order to create a truly realistic picture. Cézanne’s work was the subject of the essay Cézanne’s Doubt by existentialist philoso-
pher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who wrote of the philosophical implications of Cézanne’s realism. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty argued that Cézanne was distinguished from other artists of his time because his art was truly realistic, bringing attention to the limitations of human senses and the flaws of human perception. Merleau-Ponty himself wrote frequently of the complicated relationship between the human mind and reality and once wrote that “true philosophy consists in re-learning to look at the world” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). This attitude towards the visual medium proves that philosophical value can be found within works of visual art if the attention is paid. While visual art typically describes paintings, single images, questions of philosophy are also often explored within films. Films tell stories, and these stories often explore questions of reality, of the self and of the relationships that we hold with people around us. Media such as the film The Matrix and the television series While You Were Sleeping explore the philosophical thought experiments of the experience machine and the trolley problem respectively, adding a layer of realism that allows laypeople to engage with philosophical arguments in a controlled space. In his essay on the relationship between cinema and philosophy, Nathan Anderson says that “to pursue and examine the meanings films express and the questions they raise is to enter into considerations that relate directly to philosophy” (Anderson, 2014). Through engaging with this media, viewers can question their own values and priorities in a way that mirrors the common questions of philosophy. Literature can explore philosophical questions in ways more easily digestible for laypeople, and can inspire emotion in its readers. This has resulted in an increasing wave of philosophically tinted literature, despite Plato’s adamance that the two should remain separate. In fact, philosophy and
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literature have only become more and more intertwined over time, particularly with literary and poetic waves such as the English Romantic poets and the French Existentialists. To a certain extent, literature cannot be written devoid of at least some philosophical merits, due to the far-reaching implications of much philosophical theory, which often covers popular themes of ethics, beauty and reality. This is now true to such a degree that it can be argued that “...since the end of the nineteenth century, the boundaries between literature and philosophy had dissolved” (E & K Fullbrook, 1998). In fact, each of these two fields can give us insight into the meaning of the other, in that a philosophical analysis of a literary text can often help better define the metaphysical aims of that text. This can be seen, for example, in Romantic poet John Keats’ works, which often utilised the philosophical theme of ontology as it relates to aestheticism. Sentiments such as this are especially apparent in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, which ends with an infamous and controversial final stanza, stating that “beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all” (Keats, 1819). This perspective is reminiscent of the philosophical writings of William Desmond, whose work often considers the dialectical relationship between beauty and reality, similar to Keats. The final stanza of this work attempts to resolve this dialectic, asserting that idealised beauty and earthly realities are, perhaps, not as much polar opposites as much as they are two sides of the same coin (Stambovsky, 1998). The value of philosophy in analysing literary texts is invaluable, as it often provides an illuminatory glimpse into the mindsets of authors and poets who create incomprehensible and strange works.
ple, distinguished between the two by writing that “the writer can guide you and, if he describes a hovel, make it seem the symbol of social injustice and provoke your indignation. The painter is mute. He presents you with a hovel, that's all” (Sartre, 1948 p27). Here, Sartre is arguing that what distinguishes a prose writer from an artist is the capacity to politicise a story and inspire emotion through implementing their own perspective into the work, whereas an artist is simply presenting a work of art on its own. It has also been argued that the integration of philosophy and literature is unnecessary, not due to the failings of art and literature, but out of the shortcomings of philosophy - “poetry is bastardized when it becomes permeable to prophecy or to doctrine” (Cioran, 1949 p18). Cioran, who is often termed as an ‘anti-philosopher’, contrasts with writers like Sartre because he believes that what he sees as unnecessary philosophising in fiction risks smothering the artistic merits of poetry, music, or other forms of art. Both writers are of the opinion that for some reason, philosophy and at least some forms of art are fundamentally at odds, and need to remain separate for the integrity of both. However, it is my belief that because of the reasons mentioned in earlier paragraphs, philosophy and art both benefit from integration with each other. Visual art is able to showcase philosophical themes in a way that is creative and revitalising to philosophy as a field, and prose and poetry are often assisted by a philosophy-based analysis. Many of the most famous works of philosophy, such as Sartre’s own No Exit and Voltaire’s Candide are fictional in nature, and many iconic works of fiction, such as Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Tolstoy’s War and Peace are widely considered to contain philosophical aspects. It is for these reasons that I believe that despite arguments to the contrary, philosophy only benefits from being combined with art and literature.
It has been argued that using prose and art to express philosophical perspectives can result in the dilution of the philosophical argument for the sake of literary features such as plot. Philosophers and artists alike have decried the integration of philosophical themes into art and literature, arguing that the two forms are not only stylistically, but fundamentally incompatible. The playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, for exam-
In conclusion, despite arguments to the contrary, philosophy remains an immutable facet of much of art and literature and provides immense cultural value to both when utilised as a tool of analysis. Visual art often contains subtly philosophical themes, such as themes of existentialism and reality in the works of the painter Cézanne, and the utilisation of thought experiments in films such as The Matrix. Written work is also assisted by a philosophical lens, as authors and poets like
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John Keats often write work that incorporates concepts of beauty and truth that benefit greatly from this type of analysis. Many, however, argue that philosophy is distinct from art and literature and that any attempts to coalesce the two forms misunderstands the value of each. Despite these assertions, I remain convinced that the combination of philosophy with art and literature can be used to gain a more nuanced understanding of literature and art created with philosophical intentions, only providing more value and meaning to both forms.
On-Line. Available at: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteStam.html [Accessed 10 May 2020]
Reference Anderson, N, 2014. Shadow Philosophy: Plato's cave and cinema. Academia. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/5857314/Shadow_Philosophy_Platos_Cave_and_Cinema Cioran, E.M. 1949. A Short History of Decay. Penguin Modern Classics Fullbrook, E and K, 1998. ‘Merleau-Ponty on Beauvoir's Literary-Philosophical Method’ Paideia Project On-Line. Available at:http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteFull.html [Accessed 10 May 2020] Keats, J, 1819. Ode On A Grecian Urn By John Keats | Poetry Foundation. [online] Poetry Foundation. Available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn [Accessed 31 May 2020]. Merleau-Ponty, M, 1945. Phenomenology Of Perception. London: Routledge. Sartre, J, 1948. "What Is Literature?" And Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press Stambovsky, P, 1998. ‘Keats and the Senses of Being: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (Stanza V).’ Paideia Project
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