Beliefs can be resistant to evidence. Nonetheless, the orthodox view in epistemology analyzes beliefs as evidence-responsive attitudes. I address this tension by deploying analytical tools on capacities and masking to show that the cognitive science of evidence-resistance supports rather than undermines the orthodox view. In doing so, I argue for the claim that belief requires the capacity for evidence-responsiveness. More precisely, if a subject believes that p, then they have the capacity to rationally respond to evidence bearing on p. (...) Because capacities for evidence-responsiveness are fallible and may be masked, beliefs can be held in the face of counter-evidence. Indeed, I will argue that our best science of belief supports the claim that evidence-resistant beliefs result from masks on evidence-responsiveness capacities. This account of belief not only allows for resistance to evidence, but provides us with a framework for describing and explaining actual cases of evidence-resistance. (shrink)

Imaginative resistance refers to a phenomenon in which people resist engaging in particular prompted imaginative activities. On one influential diagnosis of imaginative resistance, the systematic difficulties are due to these particular propositions’ discordance with real-world norms. This essay argues that this influential diagnosis is too simple. While imagination is indeed by default constrained by real-world norms during narrative engagement, it can be freed with the power of genre conventions and expectations.

We experience resistance when we are engaging with fictional works which present certain (for example, morally objectionable) claims. But in virtue of what properties do sentences trigger this ‘imaginative resistance’? I argue that while most accounts of imaginative resistance have looked for semantic properties in virtue of which sentences trigger it, this is unlikely to give us a coherent account, because imaginative resistance is a pragmatic phenomenon. It works in a way very similar to Paul Grice's (...) widely analysed ‘conversational implicature’. (shrink)

Readers of fictions sometimes resist taking certain kinds of claims to be true according to those fictions, even when they appear explicitly or follow from applying ordinary principles of interpretation. This "imaginative resistance" is often taken to be significant for a range of philosophical projects outside aesthetics, including giving us evidence about what is possible and what is impossible, as well as the limits of conceivability, or readers' normative commitments. I will argue that this phenomenon cannot do the theoretical (...) work that has been asked of it. Resistance to taking things to be fictional is often best explained by unfamiliarity with kinds of fictions than any representational, normative, or cognitive limits. With training and experience, any understandable proposition can be made fictional and be taken to be fictional by readers. This requires a new understanding both of imaginative resistance, and what it might be able to tell us about topics like conceivability or the bounds of possibility. (shrink)

In the past few decades, a growing number of philosophers have tried to explain the phenomenon of imaginative resistance, or why readers often resist the invitation of authors to imagine morally deviant fictional scenarios. In this paper, I critically assess a recent proposal to explain IR in terms of a failure of empathy, and present a novel explanation. I do so by drawing on Peter Goldie’s narrative account of empathic perspective-taking, which curiously has so far been neglected in the (...) IR-literature. I argue that, in some cases, IR is due to a partial confusion of two kinds of imaginative perspective-taking towards a fictional character: an internal, genuinely empathic, perspective-taking, on the one hand, and an external, crypto-empathic, stance that can be characterized as in-her-shoes-imagining, on the other. I argue that, in the cases at issue, IR is not so much a resistance to imagining but, rather, to empathically enacting an evildoer’s moral and phenomenal first-person perspective. I conclude by considering some more general lessons that follow from my account for what has recently been called sadistic empathy and point to an unresolved issue for future thinking about IR. (shrink)

What reasons stand in favor of (or against) violent resistance to oppression? I distinguish two kinds of normative reasons that bear relevantly in such a practical deliberation. I argue that in addition to reasons of impartial morality, victims’ personal projects and relationships may also provide reasons for (or against) violent resistance. Moreover, there is no guarantee that conflicts will not occur between such reasons. Thus, some acts of violent resistance may arise from situations of radical choice in (...) which impartial moral reasons and personal reasons pull the agent in opposite directions. Regardless of what we ultimately think agents facing such decisions ought to do all things considered, recognizing such conflicts is crucial for understanding the circumstances that give rise to violence and for better sympathizing with victims who are pushed to such extreme modes of resistance. (shrink)

Imaginative resistance refers to a phenomenon in which people resist engaging in particular prompted imaginative activities. Philosophers have primarily theorized about this phenomenon from the armchair. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of empirical methods for investigating imaginative resistance. We present two studies that help to establish the psychological reality of imaginative resistance, and to uncover one factor that is significant for explaining this phenomenon but low in psychological salience: genre. Furthermore, our studies have the methodological (...) upshot of showing how empirical tools can complement the predominant armchair approach to philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Some victims of sexual violence fight back, seriously harming their abusers as a way of taking power or exacting retribution. Although violence always raises moral questions, there is nevertheless something impressive about those whose actions succeed in posing a formidable challenge to their oppression. The aim of this paper is to offer two ways of thinking about the ethical value of such non-ideal acts of resistance. First, violent resistance may allow victims to maintain ground projects that are being (...) undermined by their abusers. Second, violent resistance may display what I call the virtue of audacious integrity - a willingness to take moral risks, that is, to act in ways that may arouse severe moral censure, in order to uphold one’s values. Both explanations illustrate that victims of sexual abuse may choose to engage in violent resistance for a variety of ethical reasons, including but not limited to paradigmatic moral considerations. (shrink)

In this chapter, we evaluate the politically generative dynamic of urban space. Notably, we put forward the notion of the ‘multiplier effect’ of the urban, referring to its ingrained tendency to multiply resistance to oppression and violence being exerted against subaltern groups and minorities and, in doing so, to turn this multiplied resistance into an active force of social change. We, therefore, look at the twofold valence of ‘resistance’: negative and affirmative. Resistance initially takes form as (...) a defensive response to oppression and violence. When this happens, the urban becomes the living platform for a multiplying dynamic of encounter and, potentially, of inter-group solidarity, thus laying the foundations for a cooperative – rather than competitive, as in neoliberal rationality, or inimical, as in national-populist reason – way of ‘being together’. After having developed this argument against the backdrop of the women’s movement in Tehran and the urban disobedience to anti-immigration policies in Italy, our chapter concludes by reflecting on the multiplier effect of urban resistance within the current context of national revanchism. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine some of the emotional dimensions of oppression under the heading of “emotional alienation.” If the experience of oppression is affectively attuned, then resisting oppression will likely involve dealing with these difficult, often painful, feelings. Resistance may require finding ways of pushing back against their potentially disempowering effects and developing other, more empowering, ways of feeling. Longlasting forms of social oppression have a strong hold in people’s sense of self. Resistance, then, requires self-transformation. If (...) emancipation requires undoing disempowering emotional patterns, then self-transformation will require “undoing” ourselves. How is this undoing tied to developing a new consciousness? How does developing a “radically altered consciousness” (Bartky 1990) involve radically changing our ways of feeling? In this paper, I will argue that emotional disalienation need not be thought of in terms of suppressing or excising disempowering emotional patterns. I will contend that narrative thinking, as a relational process, can play an effective role in the struggle towards emancipation. (shrink)

This essay proposes a new way to read José Martí's idea of "Nuestra América," one that focuses on the mode of the call for unity toward liberation and decoloniality. In particular, I offer the arguments for this Latin American unity that would define a collective form of resistance against our colonial past and present (Europe) and an imperialist future (USA). It can be argued that it is extremely difficult to translate the Cuban author's thought by itself to our contemporary (...) struggles, and that this notion runs the risk of being an outdated, naïve, and even detrimental reduction of a too complex racial reality. In this essay, I defend a way in which this notion is still relevant today by alluding to the mode of a decolonial return to one's own land in the works of Édouard Glissant and Gloria Anzaldúa. In these two authors I see elements of the criticism of a colonial rootedness and filiation, linking a decolonial attitude toward the land with a particular way of returning to it: one that challenges a mythical, pure territorial space, and also reimagines the temporality of the return by focusing on the present. With the help of this novel gesture of returning to the land, I argue that Martí's nuestra América voices a call for unity and independence that still has value beyond its undeniable shortcomings. (shrink)

The primary aim of this essay is to investigate modalities of resistance to sexual violence. It begins from the observation that the nature of what we understand ourselves to be resisting—that is, how we define the scope, content, and causes of sexual violence—will have profound implications for how we are able to resist. I critically engage one model of resistance to sexual violence: feminist philosophical scholarship on self-defense, highlighting several shortcomings in how the feminist self-defense discourse inadvertently frames (...) sexual violence. Holding these criticisms in mind, I expand the landscape of resistance to sexual violence by considering the new possibilities that empathy might offer. The work of two contemporary women of color feminists—Roxane Gay and Tarana Burke—launches further exploration of empathy’s alternative modes of resistance. By focusing on empathy between survivors of sexual violence, we can expand our understanding of the possibilities of resistance by redistributing and broadening our attention in three main ways: from action to affect and attitude, from a spatially and temporally limited event to something more expansive, and from the individual through the interpersonal to the structural. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with Derrida’s deconstructive reading of theories of performativity in order to analyse Max Weber’s sovereignty–legitimacy paradigm. First, I highlight an essential articulation between legitimacy and sovereign ipseity (understood, beyond the sole example of State sovereignty, as the autopositioned power-to-be-oneself). Second, I identify a more originary force of legitimation, which remains foreign to the order of performative ipseity because it is the condition for both its position and its deconstruction. This suggests an essential fallibility of the (...) performative, which implies a ‘mystical’ legitimacy and a paradoxical, divisible and self-differential representation of sovereignty. The structural differentiality of legitimacy and sovereignty signifies an irreducible coloniality of law and language, but also suggests the possibility of an unconditional resistance located in the radical interpretability of the law, beyond determined representations of powers, dominations, sovereignties or resistances. This reflection is triggered by a reading of Cynthia Weber’s theory of ‘performative states’, describing sovereignty under the form of an impossible ontology, which leads me to elaborate the notion of legitimation-to-come as a non-ontological ‘concept’: this notion of unconditional legitimacy, beyond sovereignty, binds beliefs and phantasms to the unpresentable force of the event. Pursuing the efforts of scholars such as Rob Walker and Cynthia Weber, I sketch the implications of this archi-performative legitimacy regarding the methodological protocols of International Relations and sociology, in view of elucidating the persistent ontological presuppositions of these disciplines. (shrink)

Amidst the intellectual and political tumult surrounding the genocide of the Palestinian people, this essay seeks to foreground and amplify a marginalised voice. We aim to intervene in ongoing debates within academia and the wider public in the Global North, which often fail to grasp the lived realities of the people in the Middle East, shaped for over half a century by twin forces of neocolonial warfare and despotism. We articulate a distinctly Middle Eastern perspective that is anchored in a (...) legacy of resistance against both Western neocolonial imperialism and ethno-religious despotism. From the outset, and in keeping with the ethical and political legacy of our revolutionary predecessors, we express our principled recognition of diverse and vital traditions of resistance across the Middle East and throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. Our intention is not to disavow other liberatory intellectual and political currents, but rather to amplify an overlooked voice from the Iranian Independent Left, which has withstood and opposed genocidal violence and oppression. -/- As we argue, the ongoing genocide in Palestine can only be fully understood when placed within the broader historical continuum of neocolonial mass violence and indigenous resistance across the Middle East over the past half-century. From this vantage point, we structure our discussion around three key lessons: First, the hegemonic conceptual framings of genocidal violence produce and perpetuate idealised images of victims and saviours. Second, these frameworks obscure the entanglement between neocolonial interventions and the root causes of genocidal warfare in the Middle East. Third, a critical step toward dismantling these hegemonic structures of violence lies in foregrounding the ethics and politics of indigenous liberatory movements throughout the region. (shrink)

The problem of imaginative resistance holds interest for aestheticians, literary theorists, ethicists, philosophers of mind, and epistemologists. We present a somewhat opinionated overview of the philosophical discussion to date. We begin by introducing the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. We then review existing responses to the problem, giving special attention to recent research directions. Finally, we consider the philosophical significance that imaginative resistance has—or, at least, is alleged to have—for issues in moral psychology, theories of cognitive architecture, and (...) modal epistemology. (shrink)

The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. However, there are (...) ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass, in his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, describes how his sociopolitical identity was scripted by the white other and how his spatiotemporal existence was likewise constrained through constant surveillance and disciplinary dispositifs. Even so, Douglass was able to assert his humanity through creative acts of resistance. In this essay, I highlight the ways in which Douglass refused to accept the other-imposed narrative, demonstrating with his life the truth of his being—a human being unwilling (...) to be classified as thing or property. As I engage selected passages and key events from Douglass's narrative, I likewise explore the ways in which the resistance tactics. (shrink)

Linda Martín Alcoff and others have emphasised that the discipline of philosophy suffers from a ‘demographic problem’. The persistence of this problem is partly the consequence of various forms of resistance to efforts to address the demographic problem. Such resistance is complex and takes many forms and could be responded to in different ways. In this paper, I argue that our attempts to explain and understand the phenomenon of resistance should use a kind of explanatory pluralism that, (...) following Quassim Cassam, I call multidimensionalism. I describe four general kinds of resistance and consider varying explanations, focusing on those focused on vices and social structures. I argue that vice-explanations and structural- explanations are both mutually consistent and mutually entailing. If so, there is no need to choose between vice explanations and structural explanations or any other kinds of explanation. We can and should be multidimensionalists: using many together is better. (shrink)

Inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research is essentially integrating a pluralism of perspectives to a more comprehensive solution or insight into the problem. Yet this article argues that with an “imperative of integration,” ITD approaches risk epistemic injustice or excluding some perspectives, for example, when those of non-academic stakeholders like indigenous groups or patients are marginalized or rejected. Three forms of epistemic injustice can be distinguished: contributory or participatory injustice, when some individuals or groups have no opportunity to adequately contribute to (...) the research project. Testimonial injustice is when their insights are not taken seriously, while hermeneutical injustice indicates a lack of the interpretive resources to support understanding of their perspective. In our first case study, responding to epistemic injustice, persons with autism or their caregivers exert epistemic resistance. Defending neurodiversity, they criticize the leading deficit model of autism, pathologizing autism instead of recognizing it as a form of diversity and adjusting research accordingly. Arguing for improved inclusion of autistic voices, their endogenous epistemic resistance seeks to reshape research agendas and methodologies from within. Different is what happens in our second case with “Buen Vivir,” a Latin American concept of sustainability grounded in indigenous worldviews. As these worldviews are fundamentally different from Western scientific paradigms, their exogenous epistemic resistance does not only challenge common sustainability research but also addresses the—still continuing—colonial history of disruption, violence and exploitation. We argue that ITD researchers should be more aware of the injustices that lead to endogenous and exogenous epistemic resistance and learn how to respond to these. These researchers do well in obtaining an attitude of epistemic humility and openness and engaging with two constructive strategies that we present here: dialogue and imagination. Dialogue can help to address in an equitable way the epistemological, etaphysical, and ethical assumptions that can make interdisciplinary integration challenging. Alternatively, the joint exercise of imagination may lead to the mental construction of novel realities that are not tainted by the epistemic injustices that led to the epistemic resistance. (shrink)

The discipline of academic philosophy suffers from serious problems of diversity and inclusion whose acknowledgement and amelioration are often resisted by members of our profession. In this paper, I distinguish four main modes of resistance—naiveté, conservatism, pride, and hostility—and describe how and why they manifest by using them as the basis for a typology of types of ‘resister’. This typology can hopefully be useful to those of us trying to counteract such resistance in ways sensitive to the different (...) motives and strategies that these resisters tend to employ. (shrink)

Arguments from divine hiddenness attempt to show that God, as understood by traditional Christianity, does not exist.Eleonore Stump has argued that, contrary to a key premise in such arguments, it is possible for God to have a personal relationship with human beings who do not believe that he exists. I describe Stump’s account of the will and describe its connection to her explanation of divine hiddenness. Specifically, I show that her account of the knowledge of persons cannot solve the problem (...) of divine hiddenness. I also argue that Stump’s account of the will commits her to the claim that lacking belief in God’s existence entails resistance to God’s grace. (shrink)

Can one refute Berkeleyan phenomenalism by arguing that sensory objects seem mind-independent, and that, according to Berkeley, experience is to be taken at face value? Relying on Mackie’s recent discussion of the issue, I argue, first, that phenomenalism cannot be straightforwardly refuted by relying on perceptual or bodily experience of mind-independence together with the truthfulness of experience. However, I maintain, second that phenomenalism can be indirectly refuted by appealing to the bodily experience of resistance. Such experience presents us with (...) the causal activity of the resisting physical object. If experience is truthful, as the phenomenalist has it, physical objects are causally active. But then their effects no longer depend on our perceiving them, on pain of overdetermination. (shrink)

In Remnants of Auschwitz , Giorgio Agamben argues that the hidden structure of subjectivity is shame. In shame, I am consigned to something that cannot be assumed, such that the very thing that makes me a subject also forces me to witness my own desubjectification. Agamben’s ontological account of shame is problematic insofar as it forecloses collective responsibility and collapses the distinction between shame and humiliation. By recontextualizing three of Agamben’s sources – Primo Levi, Robert Antelme and Maurice Blanchot – (...) I develop an alternative account of shame as the structure of intersubjectivity , and of a collective responsibility that is more fundamental than the subject itself. On this basis, I sketch the preliminary outline of a biopolitics of resistance rooted in the ethics of alterity. The intuition driving this approach is that life is never bare ; even in situations of extreme affliction there remains a relation to alterity which provides a starting point for resistance. (shrink)

What responsibilities do audiences have in engaging with artworks? Certain audience responses seem quite clear: for example, audiences should not vandalize or destroy artworks; they should not disrupt performances. This paper examines other kinds of resisting responses that audiences sometimes engage in, including petitioning the artist to change their works, altering copies of artworks, and creating new artworks in another artist’s fictional world. I argue for five claims: (1) while these actions can sometimes infringe on the rights of artists, the (...) rights of artists are not absolute; (2) the fact that such actions are based on mistaken interpretations of the artworks has no normative weight; (3) there can be reason to object to additions and alterations whose conception of the artwork is morally worse than the original (and so, there can be reason to support additions and alterations whose conception is morally better); (4) petitioning raises special moral problems; and, most important, (5) some of these actions are valuable because they involve creative and aesthetic activity. Those acts of audience resistance that are creative, morally improve on the original work, and that minimize the infringement of the artists’ rights are good, and should be encouraged. (shrink)

In its hegemonic definition, biopolitical governmentality is characterised by a seemingly infinite capacity of expansion, susceptible to colonise the landscape and timescape of the living present in the name of capitalistic productivity. The main trait of biopower is its normative, legal and political plasticity, allowing it to reappropriate critiques and resistances by appealing to bioethical efficacy and biological accuracy. Under these circumstances, how can we invent rebellious forms-of-life and alternative temporalities escaping biopolitical normativity? In this essay, I interrogate the theoretical (...) presuppositions of biopolitical rationality. I provide a deconstruction of the conceptual and temporal structures upholding the notion of biopolitics, in view of laying the ground for new forms of resistance. The articulation between life and power has a long philosophical history, which has been largely ignored by social theorists and political thinkers using biopolitics as an interpretative model. I re-inscribe this model within the tradition of critical materialism, by articulating Foucault’s ‘critical ontology’ to recent philosophical works on biological plasticity (Malabou). In these discourses, the logic of biopower depends on a representation of life – ‘the living’ – as living present. Biopower finds itself anchored in the authority of the present, that is to say, of being-as-presence (ontology); it sustains presentist definitions of life and materiality, be it under the form of a ‘plastic’ ontology. By drawing on Derrida’s notions of ‘spectrality’ and ‘life-death’ and Francesco Vitale’s work on ‘biodeconstruction’, I deconstruct these discourses on life and materiality and attempt to dissociate them from their ontological grounding, in order to suggest new paths of resistance to biopower. In particular, I follow the tracks of “the monster” in the work of Foucault, Derrida and Malabou. Foucault tells us that the monster is a singular figure, parasitic and subversive, beckoning a life beyond life, at once organic and non-organic, located at the limit between the normal and the exceptional, and exceeding the scope of biopolitical normativity in both theoretical and practical terms. It exists at the intersection of what Foucault names “the symbolics of blood” and “the analytics of sex”. As such, it materialises a self-transformative dimension of the living which remains, I argue, inadequate to Malabou’s representation of plasticity. The monstrous is a self-deconstructive motif calling for another biopolitical rationality, before or beyond ontological reductions or reconstructions. (shrink)

We propose to characterize imaginative resistance as the failure or unwillingness of the reader to take a fictional description of a deviant reality at face value. The goal of the paper is to explore how readers deal with such a breakdown of the default Face Value interpretation strategy. We posit two distinct interpretative ‘coping’ strategies which help the reader engage with the resistance-inducing fiction by attributing the offending content to one of the fictional characters. We present novel empirical (...) evidence that shows that actual readers use these strategies and we flesh out the exact workings of these strategies by integrating them into a general formal semantic framework for interpreting fiction. (shrink)

In this paper, we clarify, unpack, and ultimately resist what is perhaps the most prominent argument for the compatibility of free will and determinism: the epistemic argument for compatibilism. We focus on one such argument as articulated by David Lewis: (i) we know we are free, (ii) for all we know everything is predetermined, (iii) if we know we are free but for all we know everything is predetermined, then for all we know we are free but everything is predetermined, (...) (iv) if for all we know we are free but predetermined, then it is really possible that we are, so (v) compatibilism. We uncover how the crucial epistemic modality underlying (iv) must be understood, and contend that, understood this way, the libertarian can resist (iv). Importantly, however, resisting the argument does commit the libertarian to what has been called “flip-flopping”—but we argue that this is perfectly coherent. We conclude by articulating two crucially ways the libertarian can resist the argument, by saying that we can know that determinism is false "from the armchair". (shrink)

An important recent distinction in the empirical literature about self-control is between resisting and avoiding temptations. While we have evidence that avoiding temptations is the more efficient method of the two, philosophers have focused almost exclusively on resisting temptations. The aim of this paper is to examine what the ability to avoid temptations depends on and argue that it depends primarily on how fragmented one’s mind is: on the inconsistencies in one’s mental setup. The fragmentation of mind requires a significant (...) amount of mental effort to conceal from oneself and this leads to a weakened ability to resist temptations. (shrink)

When can you rationally resist misleading evidence? One influential answer appeals to the idea that knowledge can serve as a safeguarding instrument, which, if not allowing you to outright dismiss misleading evidence—as Kripke’s dogmatism paradox suggests—at least makes it more likely that your true beliefs rationally resist defeat (Williamson, 2000). I reject the idea, arguing that any such rational resistance is well accounted for by our beliefs, regardless of whether they amount to knowledge. By paying attention to how evidential (...) strength influences the resilience of rational belief, I offer an evidential account of rational resistance. I use the account to evaluate Harman’s solution to Kripke’s dogmatism paradox, highlighting the limits of the knowledge-based approach. (shrink)

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes (...) and consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

I attempt to adjudicate the disagreement between those who seek to reconceptualize disability as mere difference and their opponents. I do so by reviewing a central conviction motivating the resistance, concerning the relationship between disability and well-being. I argue that the conviction depends on further considerations about the costs and extent of change involved in accommodating individuals with a particular disability trait. I conclude by considering three pay-offs of this clarification.

In evolutionary medicine and other related fields, the concept of evolutionary mismatch is used to explain phenomena whereby traits reduce in adaptive value and eventually become maladaptive as the environment changes. This article argues that there is a similar problem of persistent adaptivity—what has been called the problem of evolutionary novelty—and it introduces the concept of mismatch resistance in order to explain phenomena whereby traits retain their adaptive value in novel environments that are radically different from the organisms’ environment (...) of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). The possible role of variability selection in the evolution of mismatch-resistant traits is discussed, and it is suggested that mismatch resistance provides a useful tool for making progress on certain issues related to evolutionary theory, such as the modularity debate, cases of adaptivity outside of organisms’ ancestral environment, and the viability of naturalism as an overarching philosophical framework for understanding the natural world. (shrink)

According to the biomedical model of medicine, the subject of the illness event is the pathology rather than the person diagnosed with the disease. In this view, a body-self becomes a ‘patient’ body-object that can be enrolled in a therapeutic protocol, investigated, assessed, and transformed. How can it be possible for cancer patients to make sense of the opposite dimensions of their body-self and their body-diseased-object? Could a creative embodied approach enable the coping with trauma tied to the experience of (...) illness? By applying a phenomenological approach and auto-ethnographic analysis to the experience of cancer, this visual exploration provides support for rethinking the cancer event through a performative perspective. This work previews images and video material collected over ten years of haematological treatments, video dance performances and physical explorations. This work displays how processes of healing can be set in motion by creative embodied practices, physical explorations and unexpected journeys. By resisting the biomedical model and allowing the emergence of new meanings, it illustrates how dance and performative practices offer ground for transformation. (shrink)

This paper rehabilitates the Stoic conception of blending from the ground up, by freeing the Stoic conception of body from three interpretive presuppositions. First, the twin hylomorphic presuppositions that where there is body there is matter, and that where there is reason or quality there is an incorporeal. Then, the atomistic presupposition that body is absolutely full and rigid, and the attendant notion that resistance (antitupia) must be ricochet. I argue that once we clear away these presuppositions about body, (...) the foundations of Stoic corporealism fall into place. Body is fundamental (not hylomorphic). The two fundamental principles (archai) are bodies: divine active reason (logos) and passive matter (hulē); and these two bodies are two, not matter and form all over again, nor actual and potential, but agent and patient. The independence of the two archai is no threat to the unity of the cosmos, however, because the Stoic theory of body allows for the complete coextension of the archai. The hylomorphic thinker rightly asks, what relation could be tighter than that of the wax and its shape? The Stoic replies: a causal relation, the interaction of agent and patient completely coextended in a through and through blend. (shrink)

What does it mean to intentionally not perform an action? Is it possible to not perform an action out of resistant intention? Is there sufficient language for talking about this kind of behavior in the social sciences? In this article, a nonnormative vocabulary of not doings including resistant intentional omissions is developed. Unlike concepts that describe official, overt, and public resistance, James Scott’s everyday resistance and Albert Hirschman’s exit have made it possible to talk about the resistant inactions (...) of agents in the social sciences. But in order to grasp the ordinariness of this kind of oppositional behavior, philosophy of intentional omissions is used. (shrink)

Many have attempted to justify certain acts of disruptive climate activism by appealing to, at least in part, their effectiveness. Accordingly, they help raise awareness, assure others that many will participate in the collective action, pressure politicians, call for change in governmental policies, and/or directly frustrate environmentally damaging industries. But what if the climate disaster is inevitable? What if climate protests and resistance are futile? Should this be the case, we cannot appeal to the instrumental value realized to justify (...) the costs (or even harm) imposed by activists, as those would be gratuitous costs (or harm). Nevertheless, we believe that futile climate activism can be justified as fitting protest, that is, as a form of fitting expression against serious disregard for the lives of others. Violent climate resistance can satisfy the conditions of correct directedness, type appropriateness, proportionality, and adequacy, and is thus called for in situations of futility. The conditions of fitting protest may have further implications for protests that aim to bring about political or social change. (shrink)

Resisting Political Dynasties Through a Balanced Government System -/- Introduction -/- Political dynasties have long been a challenge to democratic governance. In many countries, elections are dominated by powerful families who pass leadership positions from one generation to the next. This results in imbalances in governance, where public offices are treated as family assets rather than platforms for serving the people. While democracy is meant to provide equal opportunities for leadership, political dynasties often manipulate institutions, control resources, and weaken competition (...) to maintain power. -/- To resist the rise of political dynasties, a government system must have strong institutional safeguards, an informed electorate, and mechanisms that promote meritocracy. The universal law of balance in nature, as proposed by Angelito Malicse, can serve as a guiding principle in designing a fair and just political system. This essay explores different government structures that can effectively prevent dynastic rule and ensure that leadership is based on competence, integrity, and public service rather than family name. -/- 1. The Parliamentary System with Strong Party Discipline -/- A parliamentary system is one of the most effective ways to prevent political dynasties because it shifts power from individual politicians to political parties. In this system, the government is formed by the party (or coalition) that wins the most seats in the legislature, and the head of government (Prime Minister) is chosen from among elected representatives. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Power is distributed among parties rather than families, making it harder for a single family to dominate. -/- Political parties have internal mechanisms to replace leaders based on performance, not inheritance. -/- Elections are party-based rather than personality-based, reducing the influence of political families. -/- Example: In the United Kingdom, despite having influential political families, the party system ensures leadership is based on party performance rather than personal legacy. Leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair rose to power based on their abilities, not family connections. -/- 2. Strict Anti-Dynasty Laws and Constitutional Safeguards -/- Some democracies have explicit laws that prevent political dynasties by restricting family members from holding multiple government positions simultaneously or consecutively. These laws limit the concentration of power within a single family and promote fair competition. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Prevents family monopolies over government positions. -/- Encourages new leaders to emerge from different backgrounds. -/- Example: Indonesia has anti-dynasty laws that restrict close relatives of sitting officials from running in the same region. This has prevented some powerful families from dominating local elections. -/- 3. Meritocratic Bureaucracy: A Technocratic Approach -/- In a meritocratic government, key decision-making roles are filled based on skills, experience, and qualifications, rather than political connections. This prevents political families from placing unqualified relatives in influential positions. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Ensures that government officials are competent and qualified. -/- Reduces nepotism and favoritism in appointments. -/- Example: Singapore’s governance model emphasizes meritocracy, where political leaders and civil servants are selected based on their competence, education, and leadership abilities. As a result, Singapore has one of the most efficient and corruption-free governments in the world. -/- 4. Proportional Representation Electoral System -/- A proportional representation (PR) system ensures that seats in the legislature are distributed based on the percentage of votes a party receives, rather than a winner-takes-all system. This creates a more diverse and representative government. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Limits family control by ensuring that power is shared among multiple political parties. -/- Encourages coalition governments, making it harder for a single family to dominate. -/- Example: Germany and the Netherlands use proportional representation, ensuring that elections are issue-based rather than family-based. This system has prevented the emergence of strong political dynasties in these countries. -/- 5. Direct Democracy and Citizen Participation -/- Some countries implement direct democracy mechanisms, such as referendums, recall elections, and citizen assemblies, allowing the public to influence political decisions directly. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Reduces reliance on political elites and families to make decisions. -/- Allows citizens to remove corrupt or ineffective leaders before their term ends. -/- Example: Switzerland has a strong tradition of direct democracy, where citizens frequently vote on key policies. This prevents long-term family dominance in politics because power remains in the hands of the people. -/- 6. Decentralized Federalism to Distribute Power -/- A federal system divides power between national and regional governments, preventing a central ruling class from controlling the entire country. In a decentralized government, each region has a degree of self-governance, reducing the influence of political families at the national level. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Prevents concentration of power at the national level. -/- Encourages local leadership development, giving new leaders opportunities to emerge. -/- Example: The United States has a federal system where state governments operate independently. While political dynasties exist, their power is limited to certain regions rather than national dominance. -/- 7. Holistic Education Based on the Universal Law of Balance -/- One of the most powerful ways to resist political dynasties is through education. A properly designed holistic educational system can reprogram societal thinking, teaching voters to select leaders based on merit rather than blind loyalty to political families. -/- Why It Resists Dynasties: -/- Encourages voters to choose leaders based on competence rather than family ties. -/- Teaches the importance of balance in governance and why unchecked power leads to corruption. -/- Promotes critical thinking, ensuring that citizens are aware of the manipulation tactics used by dynastic politicians. -/- Example: Finland’s education system emphasizes critical thinking, civic responsibility, and political awareness, producing informed and independent-minded voters who are less likely to be influenced by political dynasties. -/- Conclusion: The Best System to Prevent Political Dynasties -/- The most effective way to resist political dynasties is through a combination of these systems: -/- 1. A parliamentary system that ensures leadership is party-driven rather than family-driven. -/- 2. Strict anti-dynasty laws that legally prevent family monopolies in government. -/- 3. A meritocratic bureaucracy that limits political appointments to qualified individuals. -/- 4. A proportional representation electoral system to ensure political diversity. -/- 5. A decentralized government where local leadership develops independently. -/- 6. A holistic education system based on the universal law of balance, empowering voters to make informed choices. -/- If properly implemented, these mechanisms can break the cycle of political dynasties and ensure that democracy remains fair, just, and balanced. By applying the universal law of balance in nature, governments can create a system where leadership is earned through merit and service, not inherited like a monarchy. The challenge now is for leaders, educators, and reformers to recognize these principles and push for systemic change. -/- . 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Intuitively, many people seem to hold that engaging in acts of virtual murder in videogames is morally permissible, whereas engaging in acts of virtual child molestation is morally impermissible. The Gamer’s Dilemma (Luck in Ethics Inf Technol 11:31–36, 2009) challenges these intuitions by arguing that it is unclear whether there is a morally relevant difference between these two types of virtual actions. There are two main responses in the literature to this dilemma. First, attempts to resolve the dilemma by defending (...) an account of the relevant moral differences between virtual murder and virtual child molestation. Second, attempts to dissolve the dilemma by undermining the intuitions that ground it. In this paper, we argue that a narrow version of the Gamer’s Dilemma seems to survive attempts to resolve or dissolve it away entirely, since neither approach seems to be able to solve the dilemma for all cases. We thus provide a contextually sensitive version of the dilemma that more accurately tracks onto the intuitions of gamers. However, we also argue that the intuitions that ground the narrow version of the Dilemma may not have a moral foundation, and we put forward alternative non-moral normative foundations that seem to better account for the remaining intuitive difference between the two types of virtual actions. We also respond to proposed solutions to the Gamer’s Dilemma in novel ways and set out areas for future empirical work in this area. (shrink)

One might gather from a reading of Lacan’s ouvre that he never advanced an explicit and systematic theory of resistance and defense, his early critique of IPA methods notwithstanding. Indeed, the combativeness of this critique may lead readers to think that any talk of defense analysis is non-Lacanian. Yet such an omission of a key psychic phenomenon presents a puzzle for clinicians and theorists alike, insofar as it disallows a reckoning with a real-life phenomenon. Taking as its focus Lacan’s (...) remarks in Seminars 1 and 2, this article pushes beyond Lacan’s critique of Ego Psychology, claiming that it is possible to establish a positive Lacanian theory of defenses and of defense analysis in the clinical context. To this end, the article offers a systematic and standardized reconstruction of a positive – distinctively Lacanian – view of what defenses are, where they come from, and how analysts should handle them. In so doing, it presents his startling claim that resistance itself was ultimately a red herring, an artificial problem occasioned by the analyst’s erred handling of the transindividual defenses speaking through the analysand. (shrink)

Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the ‘white gaze’ nearly crushed him. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks, he develops his historico-racial and epidermal racial schemata as correctives to Merleau-Ponty’s overly inclusive corporeal schema. Experientially aware of the reality of socially constructed (racialized) subjectivities, Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted ‘blackness’. Through a re-telling of his own experiences of racism, (...) Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the ‘white gaze’. In this essay I bring Fanon’s insights into conversation with Foucault’s discussion of panoptic surveillance. Although the internalization of the white narrative creates a situation in which external constraints are no longer needed, Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of ‘blackness’ and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Lastly, I discuss Fanon’s historically attuned ‘new humanism’, once again engaging Fanon and Foucault as dialogue partners. (shrink)

This case study documents an extended philosophical exchange that demonstrates the Core Belief Immunity mechanism in real-time. As Sergent (2025) documents, Core Belief Immunity refers to "the systematic tendency of adult human minds to quarantine information that threatens foundational beliefs about existence, identity, mortality, or social order" through automatic isolation rather than conscious resistance. The subject (designated "Subject AF" for anti-foundationalist) engaged for multiple hours with arguments challenging foundational beliefs about epistemology and the nature of certainty, exhibiting the characteristic (...) pattern of quarantine through serial objection cycling rather than direct engagement. (shrink)

Multi-agent systems often exhibit emergent behavior that appears coordinated, intelligent, and irreducible to the behavior of individual components. Yet quantifying the degree to which such systems form integrated wholes remains a major challenge. While Integrated Information Theory (IIT) was originally developed to explain consciousness, its core concept - measuring how much a system resists decomposition - has broader relevance for understanding informational integration in complex systems. However, the exact computation of IIT’s central quantity, Φ, is intractable for all but the (...) smallest networks. In this paper, we propose a scalable spectral approximation, Φspectral, which estimates system-level irreducibility by applying spectral graph theory to pairwise mutual information networks derived from time-series data. The Fiedler vector of the normalized Laplacian defines a minimal bipartition, across which we sum mutual information to estimate informational disintegration. We interpret this measure as a proxy for epistemic emergence (specifically the diachronic case)—capturing practical, observer-relative irreducibility without invoking ontological claims. We also explore the implications of this metric for measuring emergence and consciousness. We evaluate Φspectral across four classes of simulated systems: random, transitional, and synchronized oscillator networks, as well as a biologically inspired combinatorial threshold-linear network (CTLN) governed by graph-theoretic dynamics. Our results show that Φspectral is sensitive not merely to coordination, but to the emergence of structurally differentiated and functionally integrated behavior. In particular, it detects transient integration in transitional systems and reveals the collapse of complexity in fixed-point–convergent CTLNs. These findings suggest that Φspectral offers a principled and computationally efficient tool for analyzing irreducibility and emergence in distributed systems, with potential applications in AI safety, neural computation, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

In recent decades, global social movements have increasingly coalesced around the pursuit of recognition. This article scrutinizes an enduring and far-reaching popular movement in Iran sparked by the tragic death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini, which stands as a poignant embodiment of the collective quest for recognition across multiple dimensions. This article systematically addresses three pivotal inquiries. First, it meticulously traces the historical trajectory of issues involving the hijab within contemporary Iran, unearthing its origins as far back as the 1930s. Second, (...) it employs Axel Honneth's multifaceted theory of misrecognition to unveil the intricate layers of misrecognition closely linked with the hijab in Iran. This encompasses the coercive regulation of women's bodies, legal disparities, and societal pressures culminating in diminished self-esteem and the inflation of male self-confidence. Third, this article emphatically underscores the integral significance of recognition, redistribution, and representation, particularly in the context of marginalized groups within Iranian society. While originating as a protest against a mandatory wearing of the hijab, the "Woman, Life, Freedom " movement transcends the confines of this singular issue to include more extensive struggles encompassing women's rights, resistance to religious oppression, and the assertion of individual freedoms. This comprehensive and rigorously analyzed investigation furnishes nuanced insights into the intricate socio-political landscape of contemporary Iran, underscored by the irrefutable significance of recognition as a transformative and indispensable facet of the broader pursuit of social justice. (shrink)

With the advance of CRISPR technology, parents will be tempted to create superior offspring who are healthier, smarter, and stronger. In addition to the fact that many of these procedures are considered immoral for Catholics, they could change human nature in radical and possibly disastrous ways. This article focuses on the question of human perfectionism. First, by considering the relationship between human nature and technology, it analyzes whether such advances can improve human nature in addition to curing diseases. Next, it (...) looks at the moral and spiritual dimensions of perfection by analyzing the cardinal virtues. It argues that seeking perfection in the physical sense alone may not be prudent or wise and may produce greater injustices and weaken the human spirit in the long run. Understanding our true calling to perfection can help us resist the temptation of hubris to enhance the human race through technology. (shrink)

According to a prominent argument, citizens in unjust societies have a duty to resist injustice. The moral and political principles that ground the duty to obey the law in just or nearly just conditions, also ground the duty to resist in unjust conditions. This argument is often applied to a variety of unjust conditions. In this essay, I critically examine this argument, focusing on conditions involving institutionally entrenched and socially normalised injustice. In such conditions, the issue of citizens’ duties to (...) resist is complicated. I conclude by considering how my discussions may clarify a contemporary problem about engaging in resistance to aid potential migrants who have been turned away by states in accordance with widely accepted rules. (shrink)