Documentary cinema is intimately tied to historical memory. Not only does it seek to reconstruct historical narrative, but it often functions as an historical document itself. Moreover, the connection between the rhetoric of documentary film and historical truth pushes the documentary into overtly political alignments which influence its audience.This essay describes and dissects the history and rhetoric of documentary cinema, tracing its various modes of address from the earliest moments of cinematic representation through its uses for ethnographers, artists, governments, and (...) marginal political organizations in the present. The different uses of documentary result in a wide variety of formal strategies to persuade the audience of a film's truth. These strategies are based on a desire to enlist the audience in the process of historical reconstruction. The documentary film differentiates itself from narrative cinema by claiming its status as a truth-telling mode. However, as a filmic construction, it relies on cinematic semiosis to convince its audience of its validity and truth. By looking at the history of documentary address, this essay outlines the rhetoric of persuasion and evaluates its effectiveness.The documentary calls upon its audience to participate in historical remembering by presenting an intimate view of reality. Through cinematic devices such as montage, voice-over, intertitles, and long takes, documentary provokes its audience to new understandings about social, economic, political, and cultural differences and struggles. The films actively engage with their world; however, often viewers respond to the same devices motivating classic Hollywood narratives. Thus the genre reinforces dominant patterns of vision.Recent challenges to the emotional manipulations of documentary deconstruct its forms and conventions so that the films interrogate not only historical memory but their own investment in its recreation. Imaginative documentaries, such as Claude Lanzmann's hoah, foreground their partial and contingent qualities, pushing viewers to question cinematic representation and its place in historical memory. Moreover, they ask audiences to think about their place in the films' meanings as well as their responsibility to the past and its interpretations. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ergodic hypothesis in the context of Boltzmann’s late work in statistical mechanics, where Boltzmann lays the foundations for what is today known as the typicality account. I argue that, based on the concepts of stationarity (of the measure) and typicality (of the equilibrium state), the ergodic hypothesis, as an idealization, is a consequence rather than an assumption of Boltzmann’s account. More precisely, it can be shown that every system with a stationary measure and an equilibrium state (...) (be it a typical state with respect to the phase space or the time average) behaves essentially as if it were ergodic. I claim that Boltzmann was aware of this fact as it grounds both his notion of equilibrium, relating it to the thermodynamic notion of equilibrium, and his estimate of the fluctuation rates. (shrink)

Forty years on, G. A. Cohen’s reconstruction and defence of Marx’s theory of history is still widely, and justifiably, considered the best of its kind, and it remains unsurpassed in clarity, argumentation and textual support. This article presents an under-explored critique of the theory that arises once we recognize that it is meant to apply to the circumstances of women as well as men. The article argues that, when extended to women, the reconstructed theory’s predictions fail to materialize, its characterizations (...) of historical stages fall apart, and its functional explanations appear implausible. In addition, although the theory claims to be able to explain the emergence and diffusion of different ideologies by their effects on productive development, it cannot plausibly explain the presence of sexist ideologies despite their pervasive and profound impact across history. The article concludes by showing that these flaws highlight the many respects in which Cohen’s orthodox version of Marxism is a conservative ideology, and one that egalitarians in particular should view with suspicion. Once we analyse the different components of the theory, the idea of a right-wing Marxism no longer seems as odd as it sounds. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I Welfarist and Resourcist Egalitarianism II Resource Egalitarianism and Procreation III Equality of Fortune IV Procreation and the Appeal to Fairness V Internalizing the Effects of Procreation VI Tolerating Externalities Acknowledgement.

This article aims to contribute to a (post)extractivist aesthetics at a time of ontological shifts, meaning an aesthetics that focuses on the role of art in struggles for (post)extractivist worlds. First, it argues for a contextualized approach to the use of the extractivism framework and proposes that this framework is particularly productive for approaching the socio-environmental crisis due to the way it allows us to engage with the ontological basis of this crisis. The article then builds on empirical research conducted (...) in Argentina to develop the concept of prefigurative ontological design, one of the key functions, it is proposed, of artistic practice in anti- and post-extractivist movements. In this way, the article aims to expand our understanding of the potential of extractivism as a framework of analysis and contributes to the theorization of the relationship between art and extractivism through the lens of political ontology, offering new concepts for developing a (post)extractivist aesthetics. (shrink)

A large chorus of voices has grown around the claim that theistic belief is epistemically suspect since, as some cognitive scientists have hypothesized, such beliefs are a byproduct of cognitive mechanisms which evolved for rather different adaptive purposes. This paper begins with an overview of the pertinent cognitive science followed by a short discussion of some relevant epistemic concepts. Working from within a largely Williamsonian framework, we then present two different ways in which this research can be formulated into an (...) argument against theistic belief. We argue that neither version works. (shrink)

Individual decisions about how to exercise the legal right to procreative liberty may generate either positive or negative externalities. From within a resource egalitarian perspective, such as that of Ronald Dworkin, it can be argued that procreative justice is asymmetric in the following respect. Justice need not require that parents be subsidised if they produce a public good, yet its ideal achievement may require their activities be taxed if they threaten to produce a public bad.

The need to use green taxes to protect the environment is urgent, particularly because of climate change, and can be justified via sound deontological and consequence-based arguments. One very influential criticism of such taxes, however, claims that they disproportionately burden relatively poor individuals who tend to contribute to environmental problems far less than wealthier persons. Critics can also object that because of the link between economic inequality and environmental destruction it is preferable to adopt environmental measures that impede rather than (...) accelerate the growth of inequality. Defusing these criticisms, the article argues that various types of green fiscal reform can both avoid disproportionally burdening those who pollute least and reduce the economic inequalities that income taxes leave behind, and slow down the collectively self-defeating consumption arms race that currently besets so many affluent societies. Global progressive environmental taxation is also a possibility, and even easier to justify. (shrink)

This narrative scoping review examines ethical practice in educational and school psychology from a bioecological systems’ perspective. A search of four databases yielded 34 articles in the final narrative synthesis. Informed by Bronfenbrenner and Morris’ bioecological systems theory, the ethical experiences of educational and school psychologists were analyzed using the concepts of Process, Person, Context and Time. The complexity, intensity and frequency of ethical dilemmas are reviewed in Process. The demand, resource, and force characteristics impacting on psychologists as Person are (...) reviewed. Within Context, studies identified dilemmas that arose for psychologists across systems. In Time, issues including implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on psychologists’ ethical practice with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence are examined. This paper demonstrates the synergies and the interrelated influences on psychologists’ ethical practices arising from a systematic review of their experiences and their professional training needs. (shrink)

This paper is a response to H. Siegel’s “Arguing with Arguments” from a rhetorical perspective on argumentation. First I address Siegel’s concept of ‘argument in its abstract propositional sense’ and attempt to show that it is not at all an obvious object that should unquestionably be the privileged focus of argumentation theory. I then defend C. W. Tindale’s rhetorical perspective on argumentation against some of Siegel’s misreadings and also some of his legitimate disagreements regarding the relations between _persuasion_ and _rational_ (...) _justification_ and the way we should understand the source of argumentative normativity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Dangerous Sport of Social Climbing Not a Doe but a Roe The Belly of the Beast Notes.

Xenotransplantation is often deemed morally objectionable because of the costs it imposes on the organ donor and the risks it imposes on the recipient. For some, involving human–pig chimeras as donors makes the practice more objectionable or even abhorrent from the start. For others, by contrast, using such chimeras weakens recipient-based objections because it reduces the risk of organ rejection and malfunctioning, and cancels donor-based objections because the practice does not harm chimeras but instead gives them valuable lives they would (...) not otherwise have. The paper examines and eventually rejects the latter defense. It also discusses the additional risks of chimeric xenotourism in countries with less demanding procedural guidelines and reflects on two very different futures for humanity that may emerge from supporting or rejecting chimeric xenotransplantation. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice. Gramsci and Education demonstrates the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates. The essays are written by scholars located in different parts of the world, a number of whom are well known internationally for their contributions to Gramscian scholarship and/or educational research. The collection deals with a broad range (...) of topics, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society. (shrink)

Die aktuellen Geschehnisse zeigen, dass eine rasche und entschiedene Wende hin zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung unumgänglich ist, wenn wir uns und unseren Planeten retten wollen. Gerade Unternehmen können hier einen großen Beitrag leisten. Trotzdem kommen wir oft nicht ins Handeln oder es fehlen die Mitstreiter: innen im Unternehmen. Das essential stellt die wichtigsten Strategien für eine erfolgreiche Veränderung hin zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit vor und zeigt, wie Mitstreiter: innen für diese Transformation gewonnen werden. Es geht konkret der Frage nach, was wir (...) aus der Psychologie für die Nachhaltigkeitstransformation lernen können. So werden psychologische Theorien verständlich vorgestellt, inspirierende Fallbeispiele gezeigt und konkrete Impulse für die Umsetzung im eigenen Unternehmen (und privatem Umfeld) gegeben.Der Inhalt Nachhaltigkeitstransformation - eine psychologische Perspektive Der Einstellungs- und Verhaltenswandel - seine Möglichkeiten und Grenzen Gemeinsam ins Handeln kommen - Chancen, Risiken und neue Wege Die Rolle des Experimentierens - new ways of doing, thinking and organizing im Unternehmen ausprobieren Die Zielgruppen Nachhaltigkeits-Manager: innen und Verantwortliche in Unternehmen Alle, die sich für Veränderungen hin zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit interessieren Die AutorinProf.in Dr.in Paula Maria Bögel ist seit 2022 Professorin (W1) für Transformationsmanagement in ländlichen Räumen an der Universität Vechta und seit 2023 Gastprofessorin an der Universität Groningen. Sie beschäftigt sich vor allem mit den Akteuren in Nachhaltigkeitstransformationen und deren Verhalten. (shrink)

Social robots are an increasingly integral part of society, already appearing as customer service assistants, care-home helpers, teaching assistants and personal companions. This book argues that the wider inclusion of social robots in our society is having a revolutionary impact on some of our key intuitions regarding ethics, metaphysics and epistemology and, as such, will put pressure on many of our best theories. Social robots elicit an emotional and social response in humans that some have taken to be evidence that (...) robots deserve moral consideration. Others have argued that, as robots are only machines, we should avoid designing robots that encourage emotional engagement. The fictional dualism model provides a new way for us to view social robots and a new route for our continued relationship with them. When we engage with a social robot, we create a fictional overlay that has wants, needs and desires. Our emotional attachment to social robots is a natural continuation of our relationship to fiction: a life-enhancing and important connection, but not one that prompts moral consideration for the fictional entity. In this book, Paula Sweeney shows how the fictional dualism model of social robots differs from other popular models. In addition to providing a distinctive and ethically appropriate framework for emotional engagement without moral consideration, the model provides conditions for trusting social robots and, uniquely, allows us to individuate social robots as distinct persons, even in contexts in which they share a collective mind. (shrink)

This paper discusses Philippe Van Parijs’ claim that men’s lack of female longevity constitutes an injustice, whether this is caused by asocial factors or by gendered lifestyles. This response argues that, like others, such as John Kekes and Shlomi Segall, Van Parijs underestimates the resources of egalitarian liberalism to avoid this implication. One explanation treats individuals as liable for gendered life-shortening behavior, for example, when they value either life-shortening lifestyles or the choice between lifestyles, and one ca nnot say society (...) has not “done enough” for them. A second explanation claims a trait is not a relative advantage when it is systematically part of a package of traits that do not constitute a relative advantage. A third explanation claims a trait is not an advantage when its value to the trait bearer is conditional, and the relevant conditions are unlikely to be fulfilled. (shrink)

Introduction to special issue on justice and gender (in)equality in Law, Ethics and Philosophy.

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But persistent (...) gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary AnthropologyPeter J. RabinowitzThe Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology, by Wolfgang Iser; xix & 347 pp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, $55.00 cloth, $15.95 paper.Iser’s book argues that “the special character of literature is its production through a fusion” (p. xiii) of the fictive (“an act of boundary-crossing which, nonetheless, keeps in view what has been overstepped”) (pp. xiv-xv) (...) and the imaginary (“a featureless and inactive potential”) (p. xvii). As a consequence, he anchors his “different form of heuristics” (p. xiii) in two dense meditations on the history of these terms. The first, chapter 3, teases out the way “fiction” has been “thematized” in philosophical writings—with detailed explications, in particular, of the works of Bacon (who views fiction as an idol), Bentham (“who stands for a paradigm switch” [p. 112] in which fiction becomes “a mode of bridge-building” [p. 123]), Vaihinger (“fiction as a transparent posit” [p. 130]), and Nelson Goodman (who sees fictions in terms of worldmaking). The second, chapter 4, deliberates on the nature of the imaginary, with particular attention to Coleridge (who made “the last significant attempt” to treat imagination as a faculty [p. 186]), Sartre (for whom the imaginary is an act), and Cornelius Castoriadis (who has developed the notion of the “radical imaginary”).But while the book deals exhaustively with the twin terms of its main title, its relation to its subtitle is more vexed. Certainly, this book is not about anthropology in any conventional sense. Although Iser pays lip service to “culture-bound patternings” (p. 297), in fact his inquiry almost entirely ignores the pressures of particular cultural contexts; and to the extent that he deals with “the human condition,” he does so by universalizing from a narrow slice of the Western intellectual tradition. Nor, more surprisingly, is the book really very much concerned with literature. True, the second chapter—the most compelling—offers revealing insights into the literary fictionality of some specific instances of Renaissance pastoral; but it is significant that this analysis precedes, rather than follows from, Iser’s philosophical explorations. And while he returns, in his last chapters, to literature—specifically, to a notion of literature as play—this discussion is almost completely divorced from any engagement with actual literary texts. Glancing references to Tristram Shandy and Finnegans Wake, a slightly longer mention of Beckett’s Imaginary Dead Imagine: these serve as the springboards from which Iser makes sweeping transhistorical, crosscultural pronouncements about “the” text.The Fictive and the Imaginary makes heavy demands on its readers. Although Iser lashes out against “unwieldy structuralist terminology” (p. x), his own style is dense and abstract, and his basic terminology is muddled. For instance, he insists on the term “imaginary,” in contrast to such familiar terms as “imagination,” because it is “comparatively neutral” and “has not yet been permeated by [End Page 188] traditional associations” (p. 305)—yet his analysis often depends pivotally on treating “the imaginary” and “the imagination” as equivalents. Matters are made more difficult yet by Iser’s tendency to conflate two different tasks: elucidating the history of the discourse around the terms and finding the “true” nature of the fictive and the imaginary themselves.Then, too, as the summary above may suggest, the book has organizational quirks. Iser begins by insisting vigorously on a triad, replacing the distinction between fiction and reality with the three-pronged distinction of “the real, the fictive, and... the imaginary” (p. 1). But the definition of the real, oddly exiled to a footnote, is internally inconsistent (it refers simultaneously to “the empirical world” and to “the variety of discourses relevant to the author’s approach to the world”) (p. 305), and in any case, it is soon demoted to a minor character in the argument. Indeed, in the “Epilogue”—on mimesis and literary staging—the notions of the fictive and imaginary have vanished as well. One is left, then, with a clump of chapters that do not cohere into a single book, much less a unified argument. For all its scattered insights, The Fictive and the Imaginary does not meet the high standards set by... (shrink)

The animal entertainment industry includes different practices. Some consist in torturing an animal to death, as in bullfighting and countless other popular traditions, while others involve watching an animal in captivity, which can be another form of torture. Perhaps the most profitable practice is forcing very intelligent animals to perform the same routine several times daily in zoos and aquariums containing marine mammals, or in circuses containing terrestrial mammals. These businesses then present the animals in whatever way that makes the (...) practice appear less immoral, claim to have education and conservation as their mission, and present their entertainment businesses as altruistic charities. Disseminating their misleading discourse is unethical. (shrink)

The relationship between law and morality is a topic which receives special importance and attention, especially in "liberal democracies" in which the law is supposed to regulate highly pluralized and fragmented societies. Under conditions of plurality of values, many social forces and legal theories require a certain kind of neutrality from the legal system, a means of compatibility of the many "world views" and "moral systems" that are present within the same social space. Such a conciliating commitment sounds particularly relevant (...) in times of the doctrinal ubiquity of ideas such as "peace based on human rights". This was the title of the 28th World Congress of the IVR in Lisbon, with the special workshop "Law and Morals" on which this book is based. It is divided into four parts: "Law and Practical Reason", "Conceptual Approaches on Law and Morals", "Legal versus Moral Normativity", and "Morals and Legal Positivism". (shrink)

Le sens dépend-il de la sensibilité? De quelle manière ou en quel sens? La phénoménologie reconnaît au sens une part de sensibilité, contre la thèse de son autonomie. Le sens ne serait pas un phénomène de connaissance, ni un phénomène de langage, mais un phénomène sensible : un contenu de perception, propre au rapport que le corps sentant entretient au monde senti. Nos discours, nos actes et nos existences perdraient alors leur sens à mesure qu’ils s’autonomisent et se trouvent partiellement (...) privés de leur dimension sensible, corporelle et mondaine. Mais cette thèse ne s’impose pas d’un seul tenant dans l’histoire de la phénoménologie. De l’autonomie à la sensibilité et de la sensibilité à l’autonomie, l’analyse phénoménologique du sens implique chaque fois des régressions qui, en retour, ouvrent de nouvelles avancées. C’est ce mouvement que cet ouvrage se propose de retracer, de Husserl à la phénoménologie française, via les principales conceptions du sens qui s’y trouvent développées. (shrink)

Merit has very little to do with the increasing dominance of men in the modern Liberal Party. Yet Liberal women continue to defend it. Until now. ON MERIT explores this imbalance, its implications for the party's future, and how a pair of red shoes may spark a rebellion against the merit myth.

In this paper, I present two presumed alternative definitions of metavalidity for metainferences: Local and Global. I defend the latter, first, by arguing that it is not too weak with respect to metainference-cases, and that local metavalidity is in fact too strong with respect to types. Second, I show that although regarding metainference-schemas Local metavalidity is always stable, Global metavalidity is also stable when the language satisfies reasonable expressibility criteria.

Stigma taints individuals with a spoiled identity and loss of status or discrimination. This article is the first to examine the stigma attached to abortion and surrogacy and consider how law may stigmatize women for failing to conform to social expectations about maternal roles. Courts should consider evidence of stigma when evaluating laws regulating abortion or surrogacy to determine whether these laws are based on impermissible gender stereotyping.

La integración de la tecnología en el ámbito del derecho penal plantea desafíos significativos debido a la falta de regulación de la inteligencia artificial (IA), lo que podría comprometer los derechos fundamentales. Este estudio se centra en abordar estos desafíos y proponer soluciones mediante un análisis exhaustivo de la situación actual y las posibles implicaciones de la IA en el sistema jurídico penal. El objetivo principal de esta investigación es analizar los problemas, desafíos y oportunidades que surgen con la implementación (...) de la inteligencia artificial en el ámbito penal. Se busca identificar la necesidad de una regulación específica para la IA en el derecho penal, con el fin de proteger los derechos fundamentales de las personas y garantizar un sistema jurídico justo y equitativo. Para abordar esta problemática, se adoptó un enfoque metodológico cualitativo. Se llevó a cabo una revisión bibliográfica detallada para examinar los antecedentes, problemas y desafíos asociados con la IA en los sistemas jurídicos, especialmente en el ámbito penal. Además, se realizaron análisis de criterios y opiniones de expertos en derecho para obtener una comprensión más profunda de la situación y las posibles soluciones. Los resultados de este estudio revelan la necesidad urgente de establecer una normativa específica para regular la aplicación de la inteligencia artificial en el ámbito penal. Se destaca que la falta de regulación representa un riesgo significativo para los derechos fundamentales, especialmente en lo que respecta a la configuración de delitos con el apoyo de la IA. Además, se identifican diferentes dimensiones que deben abordarse en la regulación, incluyendo principios y reglas básicas del derecho, supervisión humana de los sistemas de IA y la promoción de la innovación responsable en este campo. Este artículo subraya la importancia de establecer una regulación efectiva para la inteligencia artificial en el ámbito penal. Esta regulación no solo protegerá los derechos fundamentales de las personas, sino que también promoverá un uso responsable y progresivo de la IA como una herramienta valiosa para los profesionales del derecho. Es crucial que la regulación sea integral y adaptable para garantizar un sistema jurídico justo y equitativo en la era digital. (shrink)

Can it be better or worse for a person to be than not to be, that is, can it be better or worse to exist than not to exist at all? This old 'existential question' has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy. There are roughly two reasons for this renewed interest. Firstly, traditional so-called “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counter-intuitive implications in regard to questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future, not yet existing people. Secondly, (...) it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can only be better than another if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. Melinda Roberts (2003) and Matthew Adler (2009) have defended an affirmative answer to the existential question using an assumption that one can asribe a zero level of wellbeing to a person in a world in which that person doesn't exist. Contrariwise, Derek Parfit (1984), John Broome (1999), and others have worried that if we take a person’s life to be better for her than non-existence, then we would have to conclude that it would have been worse for her if she did not exist, which is absurd: Nothing would have been worse or better for a person if she had not existed. The paper suggests that an affirmative answer to the existential question can avoid such absurdities: One can claim that, say, it is better for a person to exist than not to exist, without implying that it would have been worse for a person if she had not existed or that her level of wellbeing would then have been lower. (shrink)

There is growing evidence to support the claim that we react differently to robots than we do to other objects. In particular, we react differently to robots with which we have some form of social interaction. In this paper I critically assess the claim that, due to our tendency to become emotionally attached to social robots, permitting their harm may be damaging for society and as such we should consider introducing legislation to grant social robots rights and protect them from (...) harm. I conclude that there is little evidence to support this claim and that legislation in this area would restrict progress in areas of social care where social robots are a potentially valuable resource. (shrink)