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Showing posts from July, 2017

Sexual Harassment

26/07/2017 Sexual Harassment In Feminism Issues and Arguments Jennifer Saul points out that some writers, including feminist writers, argue that sexual harassment laws and regulations encourage men and women to think of women as being in need of protection from sexually offensive verbal behaviour that men would take in their stride. It would be better, these writers suggest, if feminists encouraged women to be strong and assertive. Saul thinks, however, that this is to misconceive the nature of sexual harassment laws, which in fact are applicable only to severe cases of offensive behaviour. In the USA , she says, two forms of sexual harassment are distinguished: first, there is quid pro quo sexual harassment, which occurs when a person in a position of authority demands sexual favours in return for hiring, promoting, or rewarding with good grades, or threatens, if refused, to hire someone else or to demote or mark down that person. Second, there is what is known as ho

What Does Understanding Consist in?

Monday, 10 July 2017 What Does Understanding Consist in? My aim in this paper is to address certain questions about intentionality in the form of understanding, the most important of which are the following. Is understanding an event or process, as when I say that I now understand or that I did understand but no longer do? If understanding can occur at a particular time, when we need not be manifesting it, then it must involve dispositions, so that we understand a rule, for instance, if we are disposed to follow it correctly. But should I say that my understanding consists in following the rule, or being thus disposed, or that it is in this way that I manifest my understanding, which itself is a mental state?  If understanding is a mental state, how is it connected with the overt behaviour by which it may be publicly manifested? Surely the one can occur without the other. Again, if there is such a mental state how is it connected, not with behaviour but with thoughts and mental