‘Let us imagine that God has made a miniature earth and sky’: Malebranche on the Body-Relativity of Visual Size

Malebranche holds that visual experience represents the size of objects relative to the perceiver's body and does not represent objects as having intrinsic or nonrelational spatial magnitudes. I argue that Malebranche's case for this body-relative thesis is more sophisticated than other commentators—most notably, Atherton and Simmons —have presented it. Malebranche's central argument relies on the possibility of perceptual variation with respect to size. He uses two thought experiments to show that perceivers of different sizes—namely, miniature people, giants, and typical human beings—can experience the very same objects as having radically different sizes. Malebranche argues that there is no principled reason to privilege one of these ways of experiencing size over the others and, more specifically, that all three kinds of perceivers experience size veridically. From the possibility of this kind of veridical perceptual variation, Malebranche infers that visual experience represents only body-relative size

Lynne Chamberlain Information Sheet

This information sheet for Lynne Chamberlain, owner of Spofford Station in Walla Walla, Washington, explains how she found her passion in wine while making frequent trips to Napa during her time studying education in Washington, D.C

A Bodily Sense of Self in Descartes and Malebranche

Although Descartes and Malebranche argue that we are immaterial thinking things, they also maintain that each of us stands in a unique experiential relation to a single human body, such that we feel as though this body belongs to us and is part of ourselves. This paper examines Descartes’s and Malebranche’s accounts of this feeling. They hold that our experience of being embodied is grounded in affective bodily sensations that feel good or bad: namely, sensations of pleasure and pain, hunger and thirst, and so on. These bodily sensations ground our experiential identification with the body because they represent the body’s needs and interests as though they were own, such that we experience an important aspect of our well-being as consisting in the preservation of the body. According to these Cartesians, then, we feel embodied in part because we experience ourselves as having a bodily good

Chatterbooks: creating a culture of reading for pleasure

Liz Chamberlain, from The Open University, shares the outcomes of a collaborative project focused on reading for pleasure through the creation of reading clubs, which involved four UK universities and The Reading Agency. In each university, small groups of student teachers decided to trial the Chatterbooks resources with their classes whilst on school placements. The lecturers expected to hear that the children had responded favourably to the ideas and texts talked about during the sessions, however, it was the impact on the student teachers that was the most striking

FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost

The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (“FOSTA”) rescinded legal immunity for websites that intentionally host user-generated advertisements for sex trafficking. However, Congress’s mechanism of choice to protect sex-trafficking victims has faced critique and backlash from advocates for those involved in commercial sex, who argue that FOSTA’s broad legislative language does far more to harm sex workers—a group distinct from sex-trafficking victims—than it does to end sex trafficking, chilling significant protected speech in the process. These critics posit that FOSTA’s results toward eradicating sex trafficking have been negligible and that its chief outcome has been to eliminate digital screening and security protections that consensual sex workers rely upon, thereby forcing the industry back into a far more dangerous street-based model. By eliminating protections for consensual sex workers, however, FOSTA endangers trafficking victims as well, and without online advertisements serving as a “smoking gun,” law enforcement has struggled to find trafficked individuals. This Note explores FOSTA’s effects on consensual sex workers in the United States from two angles. First, it analyzes how FOSTA’s chill on speech that advocates for sex workers’ health, safety, and right to work in their industry contributes to the law’s unconstitutional overbreadth. Second, it compares FOSTA’s practical effects that are in line with its stated goals with the harmful consequences the law has inflicted upon the sex work community and beyond. While this Note proposes amended language to improve FOSTA, it ultimately advocates for FOSTA’s repeal and suggests that if sex work were decriminalized and more pragmatic legislation were implemented to better inculpate traffickers, mitigate harm to trafficking survivors, and reduce future victimization, FOSTA’s stated goals could be realized

A review of Link Ethiopia's sponsorship programme: learning from small stories

This report highlights the small stories of nine participants who are part of Link Ethiopia’s sponsorship programme. Link Ethiopia has celebrated 20 years of work in Ethiopia, and it is dedicated to changing lives through education and increasing cultural awareness among young people in Ethiopia and the UK. There are currently over 200 students who are part of the programme that aims to provide resources to children and young people with the aim of reducing potential barriers to learning. The nine children and guardians featured in this report speak highly of the programme and value its contribution in supporting individual educational and career aspirations. The report discusses the children and young people’s perceptions of being part of the programme and the role of Link Ethiopia in supporting their educational ambitions, before outlining potential areas for improvement