The phenomenological attitude is essential for practising phenomenology. Many refer to wonder and wonderment as basic attitudes and ways of being present with and listening to phenomena. In this article a critical view is placed on the typically psychologically-loaded language and tonality that is used by phenomenological researchers in the human sciences in order to describe the wonder and openness they try to be a part of when doing phenomenology. With reference to the difference between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s views on (...) Socratic dialectics the author points to an ontological dimension in the phenomenology of wonder that cannot be reached by taking only an emotional-bodily-oriented approach (the psychological approach) or an aesthetical-intuitiveoriented approach (the late Heidegger poeticised philosophizing). Instead this dimension must be reached through a Socratic questioning and Community of Wonder. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

This book explores how a sense of wonder and the musicality of silence can be a rehumanizing force in education, health and welfare, countering overly anthropocentric and instrumental worldviews. Wonder - in an aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual sense - brings human beings in resonance with the world again.

Inspired by an ‘apophatic turn’ in theology, philosophy and art, and with insights from existential phenomenology, the article encourages us to step back as actors in order to let life or the phenomenon itself act upon us. This kind of apophatic thinking is not so far away from the thinking of the Norwegian philosopher Olav Eikeland when he describes “Insider and Praxis Action Research”. And yet, the apophatic potentials in his way of understanding action research are here elaborated by pointing (...) to three dimensions: the Knowledge, Being and Mystery dimensions in a praxis, and to the four ways of seeing praxis from within both a “gnoseology” and an “agnoselogy”. The latter being led by a deep sense of wonder followed by what Daoist’s call Wu Wei or “effortless actions”. (shrink)

This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing education and research project guided by three main intentions: (1) to create opportunities for phronesis in the classroom; (2) to develop new understandings about phronesis as it relates to nursing care generally and to caring for specific groups, like formerly incarcerated adults; and (3) to provide an opportunity for formerly incarcerated adults and graduate nursing students to participate in a dialectical conversation about ethical knowing. Gadamer's writings on practical philosophy, phronesis, and (...) the Socratic dialectic provide the philosophical foundation and framework for the project. The first phase in the project was a 4‐h class within a graduate‐level health promotion course during which 30 nursing students and three formerly incarcerated panelists engaged in a dialectic conversation about what it means to care for formerly incarcerated adults in a meaningful way. After the class, two focus groups were conducted, one with the students and one with the formerly incarcerated panelists. Findings articulated participants' prejudices and assumptions prior to the class, expanded sense of phronesis, and ability to consider nursing practice within a larger ethical framework. Panelists and students left the class with a deeper understanding of one another and expressed an openness towards continued dialectic conversations together. Use of the Socratic dialectic within nursing curricula reflects a current and critical trend in nursing education to bring non‐epistemologic forms of knowledge into the classroom. (shrink)

Eukaryotic mRNAs are monocistronic, and therefore mechanisms exist that coordinate the synthesis of multiprotein complexes in order to obtain proper stoichiometry at the appropriate intracellular locations. RNA‐binding proteins containing low‐complexity sequences are prone to generate liquid droplets via liquid‐liquid phase separation, and in this way create cytoplasmic assemblages of functionally related mRNAs. In a recent iCLIP study, we showed that the Drosophila RNA‐binding protein Imp, which exhibits a C‐terminal low‐complexity sequence, increases the formation of F‐actin by binding to 3′ untranslated (...) regions of mRNAs encoding components participating in F‐actin biogenesis. We hypothesize that phase transition is a mechanism the cell employs to increase the local mRNA concentration considerably, and in this way synchronize protein production in cytoplasmic territories, as discussed in the present review. (shrink)

As with most other areas of reproduction, surrogacy is highly regulated. But the legislation and policies on surrogacy are written in such ways that make large (and possibly mistaken) assumptions about the metaphysical relationship between the mother and the fetus – whether the fetus is a part of, or contained by, the mother. It is the purpose of this chapter to highlight these assumptions, and to demonstrate the impact that alternative metaphysical views can have on our conceptualization of surrogacy. With (...) that in mind, I recommend that our public policies on surrogacy be at least neutral or otherwise responsive to metaphysics rather than presupposing it, such that the regulation and legislation of surrogacy will be metaphysically informed. (shrink)

What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today. Throughout, the book invites (...) the reader to engage the sources and to develop an answer to the volume's basic question. (shrink)

Social reality is currently a hotly debated topic not only in social science, but also in philosophy and the other humanities. Finn Collin, in this concise guide, asks if social reality is created by the way social agents conceive of it? Is there a difference between the kind of existence attributed to social and to physical facts - do physical facts enjoy a more independent existence? To what extent is social reality a matter of social convention. Finn Collin (...) considers a number of traditional doctrines which support the constructivist position that social reality is generated by our 'interpretation' of it. He also examines the way social facts are contingent upon the meaning invested in them by social agents; the nature of social convention; the status of social facts as symbolic; the ways in which socially shared language is claimed to generate the reality described, as well as the limitations of some of the over-ambitious popular arguments for social constructivism. (shrink)

This collection of papers investigates the most recent debates about individualism and holism in the philosophy of social science. The debates revolve mainly around two issues: firstly, whether social phenomena exist sui generis and how they relate to individuals. This is the focus of discussions between ontological individualists and ontological holists. Secondly, to what extent social scientific explanations may and should, focus on individuals and social phenomena respectively. This issue is debated amongst methodological holists and methodological individualists. -/- In social (...) science and philosophy, both issues have been intensively discussed and new versions of the dispute have appeared just as new arguments have been advanced. At present, the individualism/holism debate is extremely lively and this book reflects the major positions and perspectives within the debate. This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate. -/- This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s. -/- . (shrink)

Present science policy discourse is focused on a broad concept of “techno-science” and emphasizes practical economic goals and gains. At the same time scientists are worried about the freedom of research and the autonomy of science. Half a century ago the difference between basic and applied science was widely taken for granted and autonomy was a value in high esteem. Most recent accounts of the history of science policy start abruptly from World War II, emphasize the Cold War context, and (...) neglect the pioneering role of the Soviet Union in forming todays “big science.” This paper claims that a closer look into the intellectual heritage from the early twentieth century will be helpful in navigating present issues of science policy. The “Lysenko affair” was a paradigmatic case in forming Cold War views on science and politics. (shrink)

Previous studies of auditory expectation have focused on the expectedness perceived by listeners retrospectively in response to events. In contrast, this research examines predictive uncertainty —a property of listeners' prospective state of expectation prior to the onset of an event. We examine the information-theoretic concept of Shannon entropy as a model of predictive uncertainty in music cognition. This is motivated by the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, which proposes that schematic expectations reflect probabilistic relationships between sensory events learned implicitly through exposure. Using (...) probability estimates from an unsupervised, variable-order Markov model, 12 melodic contexts high in entropy and 12 melodic contexts low in entropy were selected from two musical repertoires differing in structural complexity (simple and complex). Musicians and non-musicians listened to the stimuli and provided explicit judgments of perceived uncertainty (explicit uncertainty). We also examined an indirect measure of uncertainty computed as the entropy of expectedness distributions obtained using a classical probe-tone paradigm where listeners rated the perceived expectedness of the final note in a melodic sequence (inferred uncertainty). Finally, we simulate listeners' perception of expectedness and uncertainty using computational models of auditory expectation. A detailed model comparison indicates which model parameters maximize fit to the data and how they compare to existing models in the literature. The results show that listeners experience greater uncertainty in high-entropy musical contexts than low-entropy contexts. This effect is particularly apparent for inferred uncertainty and is stronger in musicians than non-musicians. Consistent with the Statistical Learning Hypothesis, the results suggest that increased domain-relevant training is associated with an increasingly accurate cognitive model of probabilistic structure in music. (shrink)

A 2017 Nature report was widely touted as hailing the arrival of the artificial womb. But the scientists involved claim their technology is merely an improvement in neonatal care. This raises an under-considered question: what differentiates neonatal incubation from artificial womb technology? Considering the nature of gestation—or metaphysics of pregnancy—(a) identifies more profound differences between fetuses and neonates/babies than their location (in or outside the maternal body) alone: fetuses and neonates have different physiological and physical characteristics; (b) characterizes birth as (...) a physiological, mereological and topological transformation as well as a (morally relevant) change of location; and (c) delivers a clear distinction between neonatal incubation and ectogestation: the former supports neonatal physiology; the latter preserves fetal physiology. This allows a detailed conceptual classification of ectogenetive and ectogestative technologies according to which the 2017 system is not just improved neonatal incubation, but genuine ectogestation. But it is not an artificial womb, which is a term that is better put to rest. The analysis reveals that any ethical discussion involving ectogestation must always involve considerations of possible risks to the mother as well as her autonomy and rights. It also adds a third and potentially important dimension to debates in reproductive ethics: the physiological transition from fetus/gestateling to baby/neonate. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem of Definition Problems of Interpretation Nature and Convention Transcendence Death and the Afterlife Problems of Evil Fatalism and Free Will? Divine Command Theory Piety and Divine Simplicity Works cited.

In this article we refine the design ofcontext shifting experiments, which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including ‘know’ and color adjectives like ‘green’, to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby overturning the absence of results reported in previous experimental studies (so‐callednull results), (ii) uncovers evidence (...) for a ‘truth bias' in favor of positive over negative sentences, and (iii) reveals previously unnoticed distinctions between the strength of the contextual effects displayed by scenarios involving knowledge ascriptions and scenarios concerning color and other miscellaneous scenarios. (shrink)

Among the results of recent investigation of epistemic intuitions by experimental philosophers is the finding that epistemic intuitions show cultural variability between subjects of Western, East Asian and Indian Sub-continent origins. In this paper I ask whether the finding of this variation is evidence of cross-cultural variation in the folk-epistemological competences that give rise to these intuitions—in particular whether there is evidence of variation in subjects’ explicit or implicit theories of knowledge. I argue that positing cross-cultural variation in subjects’ implicit (...) theories of knowledge is not the only possible explanation of the intuitions, and I suggest other explanations, including the hypothesis that each subject’s implicit theory of knowledge might contain a heterogeneous set of heuristics for ascribing knowledge. Variation in intuitions, then, might be the result of within-subject heterogeneity rather than across-subject heterogeneity. (shrink)

This important book examines how the growing field of cybernetic psychology - the study of the creative complexity of the mind - can be applied to a range of different realms, tapping into the unconscious potential within us all. Cybernetic psychology integrates theories from various schools of thought, bringing them together in one unified theory. First developed and described by Danish author and psychotherapist Ole Vedfelt. It can be used in therapeutic practice, in relation to learning and pedagogics, and as (...) a tool for better leadership. The 15 chapters within this volume apply the theory to these as well as other areas, including ecology, creativity, mindfulness and scientific enquiry itself. Insightful and wide-ranging, the book will appeal to psychotherapists and those working within mental health, as well as students and researchers across Education, Psychology and beyond. (shrink)

During the past decades, research collaboration between researchers from different disciplines has become more frequent. However, there is a need to look into the generic modalities and challenges. The article explores a series of potential obstructions to cross-disciplinary collaboration of methodological and epistemological nature. Furthermore, a number of contextual, inhibiting factors are outlined. As means of overcoming the obstacles, the importance of mutual knowledge, allocation of adequate time and conducive research management is emphasised. New teams may benefit from tutoring by (...) facilitators, who can help to make problem areas explicit and negotiate solutions. Owing to the training background of the author, most of the examples are drawn from the interface between biomedicine/natural science and applied medical anthropology. However, the issues raised basically apply to all sorts of cross-disciplinary research collaboration in various combinations. (shrink)

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

This is the first book dealing with the reception of Soren Kierkegaard in Japan. It may seem strange that the Danish philosopher, theologian and writer, who is renowned in the western world as individualist and the existentialist, has been read and studied in Japan since the turn of century. The aim of this study is to explain why the Japanese came to read Kierkegaard, how several religious and non-religious lines of reception developed, and why he is still of current interest (...) in postmodern Japan. (shrink)

This essay aims to outline in what ways Kierkegaard’s thinking of existence not only brings into view a concept of existence, but, more fundamentally, enables one to locate an opening to questioning anew the relation of thinking and existence. This thinking of existence does not seek to dissolve existence into knowledge but aims at intensifying the question of a thinking grounded not in the conclusion made in “an external relation between a knower and a non-knower” of which non-knowledge is the (...) negative determination of knowledge, but rather of a thinking grounded in existence. (shrink)

In revisiting Durkheim’s humanism in recent years, attention has been drawn to his theory of moral individualism and the usefulness of his argument that a reformed democratic capitalism can reconcile individual freedom with collective constraint. This article investigates Durkheim’s understanding of the relationship between the individual and society in greater detail, showing in the process that his thinking was ambiguous and inconsistent. Although he flirted with the notion that capitalist modernity might actively foster and legitimize destructive forms of individualism, his (...) default position was to attribute anti-social drives to a human nature set loose by weak or inadequate social norms, and then to idealize liberal humanism as the ethical remedy for this normative deficiency. The article argues that the inconsistencies in his thinking are significant, however, because they testify to the underlying contradiction between the logic of capitalism and the ideals of moral individualism, and to the difficulty of locating the moral individual in a morally irrational world. (shrink)

As moral injury is a still-emerging concept within the area of military mental health, prevalence estimates for moral injury and its precursor, potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs), remain unknown for many of the world’s militaries. The present study sought to estimate the prevalence of PMIEs in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), using data collected from CAF personnel deployed to Afghanistan, via logistic regressions controlling for relevant sociodemographic, military, and deployment characteristics. Analyses revealed that over 65% of CAF members reported exposure (...) to at least one event that would be considered a PMIE. The most commonly PMIEs individuals reported included seeing ill or injured women and children they were unable to help (48.4%), being unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants (43.6%), and finding themselves in a threatening situation where they were unable to respond due to the rules of engagement under which they were required to operate (35.4%). These findings provide support for both the presence of exposure to PMIEs in CAF members and the need for formal longitudinal data collection regarding PMIE exposure and moral injury development. (shrink)

Research has shown that specific individual values, such as green and environmental values, are important in motivating the decision to start a sustainable business. Beyond this finding, there is limited knowledge about why, how, and when such values become important and what this means for sustainable entrepreneurship engagement. We address this question abductively and conduct a multi-case study of 18 sustainable entrepreneurs and their fashion companies. Drawing on the self-activation and the impressionable years hypotheses, we identified three ways in which (...) sustainability-oriented values become activated and more important to individuals: (1) through informational stimuli, (2) through formative and life-changing experiences, and (3) through socialization. Further, we show that the entrepreneurs engaged in reflexive learning due to the value-activating experience, whereby they critically questioned their assumptions and actions. Together, one or more value activations and the involved reflexive learning contributed significantly to the decision to become a sustainable entrepreneur. With this novel explanation for why and how values become engaged in the first place, we contribute to the theory of (sustainable) entrepreneurship. Further, our research helps devise value-activating strategies for practitioners who want to help (prospective) entrepreneurs act more in line with their sustainability-oriented values and start a sustainable business. (shrink)

Don Ihde’s paper “Stretching the in-between: Embodiment and beyond” appears to me as a stimulating, topical text with a number of important arguments about human embodiment as a dynamic and epistemically relevant dimension to scientific knowledge production. But, indirectly, the text also raises some basic questions about how to describe the (current) scope of technoscientific knowledge, and the potentials of postphenomenology to deal with this complicated, multi-stable issue.

How has feminism changed in the UK since the 1960s? This was the question I set out to explore in my research on the British Women’s Liberation Movement, published as Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement. I found that the motivations and aspirations of activists today were similar to those reported by feminists of the Second Wave; but the methods and tactics were more professionalized and there was less of a focus on women-only space.

The traditional distinction between basic and applied science has been much criticized in recent decades. The criticism is based on a combination of historical and systematic epistemic argument. The present paper is mostly concerned with the historical aspect. I argue that the critics impose an understanding at odds with the way the distinction was understood by its supporters in debates on science education and science policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And I show how a distinction that refers to (...) difference on several epistemic and social dimensions makes good sense of representative historical cases. If this argument is tenable it suggests more continuity in the epistemology and politics of science than has been claimed by a new paradigm of science studies and politics during recent decades. (shrink)

Social reality is a key problem in the philosophy of social science. Outlining the major historical and contemporary issues raised by the social reality and social facts, this book has something to offer both philosophers and social scientists. To the former is shows how the well-worn topic of realism versus anti-realism assumes new and interestingly varied forms when social reality is substituted for physical reality. For the social scientist, the book offers conceptual clarification of key issues in recent social science (...) which are really philosophical issues. (shrink)

Surveys the leading debates over Arendt's work, including totalitarianism, the public sphere and the nature of political responsibility"--Cover p. [4].

ZusammenfassungAdipositas ist eine weltweite Herausforderung für die Gesundheitssysteme. In Zeiten des demografischen Wandels sind auch immer mehr ältere Menschen davon betroffen, was sowohl die Akut- als auch die Langzeitpflege vor erhebliche Herausforderungen stellt. Bislang fehlt eine detaillierte Analyse der vielfältigen Gruppe der über 65-Jährigen in diesem Bereich. Weder die Bedürfnisse der Pflegebedürftigen noch der Pflegekräfte und Einrichtungen werden beobachtet, analysiert oder systematisch bewertet. Darüber hinaus sind die ethischen Implikationen der professionellen Pflege von älteren Menschen mit Adipositas in Forschung und Politik (...) noch nicht diskutiert worden. Wir argumentieren, dass ein bedürfnisorientierter Ansatz angemessen ist, um diese ethische Komplexität anzugehen. Dafür sollte eine breite und umfassende Analyse der ethischen Aspekte aus einer interdisziplinären Perspektive erfolgen. Daher führen wir ein systematische Literaturrecherche (Scoping Review) und eine thematische Fallanalyse durch, um den aktuellen Stand der Forschung aus professionellen Pflegeeinrichtungen in europäischen und nordamerikanischen Institutionen zusammenzufassen. So gewinnen wir Einblicke in die direkten Erfahrungen von Leistungserbringern und adipösen Patient*innen im Pflegebereich. Wir kommen zu dem Schluss, dass auch in Deutschland ein erheblicher Forschungsbedarf an der Schnittstelle ethischer Herausforderungen von Langzeitpflege, Alter und Adipositas besteht. Aus der begrenzten Anzahl von (Fall‑)Studien, die sich finden lassen, geht eine Reihe von ethischen Bedenken hervor, die direkte Auswirkungen auf den Zugang, die Inanspruchnahme und die Qualität der Versorgung haben. Ein empirisch-ethischer Ansatz kann die künftige Forschung und Pflegepraxis im Bereich der Adipositas und der Altenpflege leiten. Schwerpunkte der zukünftigen Mixed-methods-Forschung sollten sein: die Bedürfnisse adipöser älterer Menschen und ihrer Pfleger*innen, Kriterien für die Abwägung von Bedürfnissen und Ressourcenallokation sowie praktische Lösungen für mehrfach stigmatisierte Menschen. (shrink)

We reflect upon quantification in biology in two ways. First, from a sensory scientific perspective, we address theories and methods for studying sensation, perception, and cognition. Sensory science concerns action of the human senses, which are not passive receivers but operate in an active and fundamental way for human beings in various social and environmental contexts. In the past one could only handle one-to-one relationships within a univariate framework. Today we have tools to capture complexity closer to real world situations. (...) Thus, the second perspective is rooted in multivariate thinking and modeling tools. Relying mainly on soft modeling-exploratory methods, such as partial least squares regression, we claim that quantification in sensory biology in the future should be met with a dialectic view that simultaneously exploits the two perspectives. (shrink)

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain. We start by examining (...) the various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “bodycentric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more "mindcentric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate— dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors— needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain (at least in part) why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes. (shrink)

A method of supervaluation for Kripke’s theory of truth is presented. It differs from Kripke’s own method in that it employs trees; results in a compositional semantics; assigns the intuitively correct truth values to the sentences of a particularly tricky example of Gupta’s; and – it is argued – is acceptable as an explication of the correspondence theory of truth.