Knowing Subjects

In Knowing Subjects, Barbara Simerka uses an emergent field of literary study" cognitive cultural studies"to delineate new ways of looking at early modern Spanish literature and to analyze cognition and social identity in Spain at the time. Simerka analyzes works by Cervantes and Grac -an, as well as picaresque novels and comedias. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, she brings together several strands of cognitive theory and details the synergies among neurological, anthropological, and psychological discoveries that provide new insights into human cognition.Her analysis draws on Theory of Mind, the cognitive activity that enables humans to predict what others will do, feel, think, and believe. Theory of Mind looks at how primates, including humans, conceptualize the thoughts and rationales behind other people's actions and use those insights to negotiate social relationships. This capacity is a necessary precursor to a wide variety of human interactions"both positive and negative"from projecting and empathizing to lying and cheating.Simerka applies this theory to texts involving courtship or social advancement, activities in which deception is most prevalent"and productive. In the process, she uncovers new insights into the comedia (especially the courtship drama) and several other genres of literature (including the honor narrative, the picaresque novel, and the courtesy manual). She studies the construction of gendered identity and patriarchal norms of cognition"contrasting the perspectives of canonical male writers with those of recently recovered female authors such as Mar -a de Zayas and Ana Caro. She examines the construction of social class, intellect, and honesty, and in a chapter on Don Quixote, cultural norms for leisure reading at the time. She shows how early modern Spanish literary forms reveal the relationship between an urbanizing culture, unstable subject positions and hierarchies, and social anxieties about cognition and cultural transformation.

In Knowing Science, Alexander Bird presents an epistemology of science that rejects empiricism and gives a central place to the concept of knowledge. Science aims at knowledge and progresses when it adds to the stock of knowledge. That knowledge is social knowing—it is known by the scientific community as a whole. Evidence is that from which knowledge can be obtained by inference. From this, it follows that evidence is knowledge, and is not limited to perception, nor to observation. Observation supplies evidence that is basic relative to a field of enquiry and can be highly non-perceptual. Theoretical knowledge is typically gained by inference to the only explanation, in which competing plausible hypotheses are falsified by the evidence. In cases where not all competing hypotheses are refuted, scientific hypotheses are not known but instead possess varying degrees of plausibility. Plausibilities in the light of the evidence are probabilities and link eliminative explanationism to Bayesian conditionalization. Bird argues that scientific realism and anti-realism as global metascientific claims should be rejected-the track record gives us only local metascientific claims.

Including contributions from an international list of renowned authors, this text seeks to address the controversial issue of difference in feminist philosophy, using approaches from both analytic and continental thinking.

Artificial Knowing challenges the masculine slant in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) view of the world. Alison Adam admirably fills the large gap in science and technology studies by showing us that gender bias is inscribed in AI-based computer systems. Her treatment of feminist epistemology, focusing on the ideas of the knowing subject, the nature of knowledge, rationality and language, are bound to make a significant and powerful contribution to AI studies. Drawing from theories by Donna Haraway and Sherry Turkle, and using tools of feminist epistemology, Adam provides a sustained critique of AI which interestingly re-enforces many of the traditional criticisms of the AI project. Artificial Knowing is an esential read for those interested in gender studies, science and technology studies, and philosophical debates in AI.

It is hard to think of an area of Christian theology that provides more scope for interdisciplinary conversation than the doctrine of creation. This doctrine not only invites reflection on an intellectual concept: it calls for contemplation of the endlessly complex, dynamic, and fascinating world that human being inhabit. But the possibilities for wide-ranging discussion are such that scholars sometimes end up talking past one another. Productive conversation requires mutual understanding of insights across disciplinary boundaries. Knowing Creation offers an essential resource for helping scholars from a range of fields to appreciate one another's concerns and perspectives. In so doing, it offers an important step forward in establishing a mutually-enriching dialogue that addresses, amongst others, the following key questions: Who is the God who creates? Why does God create? What is "creation"? What does it mean to recognize that a theology of creation speaks of a natural world that is subject to the observation of the natural sciences? What does it mean to talk about both a "natural" order and a "created" order? What are the major tensions that have arisen between the natural sciences and Christian thinking historically, and why? How can we move beyond such tensions to a positive and constructive conversation, while also avoiding facile notions such as a "god of the gaps"? Is it feasible for a natural scientist to maintain a belief in God's continuing creative activity? In what ways might a naturalistic understanding of the natural world be said to be limited? How can biblical studies, theology, philosophy, history, and science talk better together about these questions? At a time when the doctrine of creation - and even a mention of "creation" - has been disparaged due to its supposed associations with anti-scientific dogma, and theological offerings sometimes risk appearing a little more than reactionary exercises in naive apologetics, ill-informed by science or distinctly wary of engagement with it, it is more important than ever to offer a cross-disciplinary resource that can voice a positive account of a Christian theology of creation, and do so as a genuinely broad-ranging conversation about science and faith. Contributors to Knowing Creation include Marilyn McCord Adams, Denis Alexander, Susan Eastman, C. Stephen Evans, Peter van Inwagen, Christoph Schwobel, John H. Walton, Francis Watson, and more. X

Knowing Victims explores the theme of victimhood in contemporary feminism and politics. It focuses on popular and scholarly constructions of feminism as ‘victim feminism’ – an ideology of passive victimhood that denies women’s agency – and provides the first comprehensive analysis of the debate about this ideology which has unfolded among feminists since the 1980s. The book critically examines a movement away from the language of victimhood across a wide array of discourses, and the neoliberal replacement of the concept of structural oppression with the concept of personal responsibility. In derogating the notion of ‘victim,’ neoliberalism promotes a conception of victimization as subjective rather than social, a state of mind, rather than a worldly situation. Drawing upon Nietzsche, Lyotard, rape crisis feminism and feminist philosophy, Stringer situates feminist politicizations of rape, interpersonal violence, economic inequality and welfare reform as key sites of resistance to the victim-blaming logic of neoliberalism. She suggests that although recent feminist critiques of ‘victim feminism’ have critically diagnosed the anti-victim movement, they have not positively defended victim politics. Stringer argues that a conception of the victim as an agentic bearer of knowledge, and an understanding of resentment as a generative force for social change, provides a potent counter to the negative construction of victimhood characteristic of the neoliberal era. This accessible and insightful analysis of feminism, neoliberalism and the social construction of victimhood will be of great interest to researchers and students in the disciplines of gender and women’s studies, psychology, sociology, politics and philosophy.

"Real" knowing always involves a political dimension, Linda Martín Alcoff suggests. But this does not mean we need to give up realism or the possibility of truth. Recent work in continental philosophy insists on the influence that power and desire exert on knowing, whereas contemporary analytic philosophy largely ignores these political concerns in its accounts of justification and truth. Alcoff engages these traditionally conflicting approaches in a constructive dialogue, effectively spanning the analytic/continental divide.In provocative readings of major figures in the continental tradition, Alcoff shows that the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michel Foucault can help rectify key problems in coherence epistemology, such as the link between coherence and truth. She also argues that discussions about knowledge among continental philosophers can benefit from the work of analytic philosophers Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam on meaning and ontology. Alcoff makes a compelling case for the need to address truth as a metaphysical issue, in contrast to minimalist tendencies in Anglo-American philosophy and deconstructionism on the continent. Her work persuasively argues for coherentist epistemology as a more realistic reconfiguration of the ontology of truth.

Paperback reissue of one volume of the English Dominicans' Latin/English edition of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae.