Anthropology's approach to answering the question of the role of suffering in our lives is limited to empirical data and at best describes an individual's capability to endure it and make sense of it. Levinas was at odds to find meaning in suffering once it had exceeded certain proportions. Various cultures demonstrate greater and lesser capacities for integrating corporate suffering when it has crossed a significant threshold. What is the role of ritual and productive suffering in revealing meaning in suffering? (...) Some examples are drawn from the experiences of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. Drawing from Dr. Eleonore Stump's exploration of second-person narratives and relationships, a Christian philosophical-theological response is provided. (shrink)

Anthropology's approach to answering the question of the role of suffering in our lives is limited to empirical data and at best describes an individual's capability to endure it and make sense of it. Levinas was at odds to find meaning in suffering once it had exceeded certain proportions. Various cultures demonstrate greater and lesser capacities for integrating corporate suffering when it has crossed a significant threshold. What is the role of ritual and productive suffering in revealing meaning in suffering? (...) Some examples are drawn from the experiences of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. Drawing from Dr. Eleonore Stump's exploration of second-person narratives and relationships, a Christian philosophical-theological response is provided. (shrink)

Anthropology's approach to answering the question of the role of suffering in our lives is limited to empirical data and at best describes an individual's capability to endure it and make sense of it. Levinas was at odds to find meaning in suffering once it had exceeded certain proportions. Various cultures demonstrate greater and lesser capacities for integrating corporate suffering when it has crossed a significant threshold. What is the role of ritual and productive suffering in revealing meaning in suffering? (...) Some examples are drawn from the experiences of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. Drawing from Dr. Eleonore Stump's exploration of second-person narratives and relationships, a Christian philosophical-theological response is provided. (shrink)

In the context of long waiting time to access rehabilitation services, a large majority of settings use referral prioritization to help manage waiting lists. Prioritization practices vary greatly between settings and there is little consensus on how best to prioritize referrals. This paper describes the prioritization processes for physiotherapy services in Québec and its potential implications in terms of equity in access to services. This is a secondary analysis of a survey of outpatient physiotherapy departments (n=98; proportion of participation was (...) 99%) conducted in 2015 across publicly funded hospitals in Québec. In many settings, persons with acute orthopaedic conditions were prioritized while chronic conditions were given a lower priority. There were 72 different combinations of prioritization criteria used in outpatient physiotherapy departments. Variability was also observed in the type of personnel involved in the prioritization process, the number of priority levels used to rank the referrals and the source of information used to prioritize referrals. These results highlight potential issues regarding equity in access to physiotherapy services: the prioritization of persons with acute conditions to the detriment of those with chronic conditions, the lack of consensus on a fair prioritization process and the importance to adequately assess patients’ needs for treatment. Further research and interventions on prioritization criteria and processes are needed to ensure equitable access to physiotherapy services, especially in the public sector. (shrink)

In the context of long waiting time to access rehabilitation services, a large majority of settings use referral prioritization to help manage waiting lists. Prioritization practices vary greatly between settings and there is little consensus on how best to prioritize referrals. This paper describes the prioritization processes for physiotherapy services in Québec and its potential implications in terms of equity in access to services. This is a secondary analysis of a survey of outpatient physiotherapy departments conducted in 2015 across publicly (...) funded hospitals in Québec. In many settings, persons with acute orthopaedic conditions were prioritized while chronic conditions were given a lower priority. There were 72 different combinations of prioritization criteria used in outpatient physiotherapy departments. Variability was also observed in the type of personnel involved in the prioritization process, the number of priority levels used to rank the referrals and the source of information used to prioritize referrals. These results highlight potential issues regarding equity in access to physiotherapy services: the prioritization of persons with acute conditions to the detriment of those with chronic conditions, the lack of consensus on a fair prioritization process and the importance to adequately assess patients’ needs for treatment. Further research and interventions on prioritization criteria and processes are needed to ensure equitable access to physiotherapy services, especially in the public sector. (shrink)

Digital communication between a patient and their clinician offers the potential for improved patient care, particularly for young people with long term conditions who are at risk of service disengagement. However, its use raises a number of ethical questions which have not been explored in empirical studies. The objective of this study was to examine, from the patient and clinician perspective, the ethical implications of the use of digital clinical communication in the context of young people living with long-term conditions. (...) A total of 129 semi-structured interviews, 59 with young people and 70 with healthcare professionals, from 20 United Kingdom -based specialist clinics were conducted as part of the LYNC study. Transcripts from five sites were read by a core team to identify explicit and implicit ethical issues and develop descriptive ethical codes. Our subsequent thematic analysis was developed iteratively with reference to professional and ethical norms. Clinician participants saw digital clinical communication as potentially increasing patient empowerment and autonomy; improving trust between patient and healthcare professional; and reducing harm because of rapid access to clinical advice. However, they also described ethical challenges, including: difficulty with defining and maintaining boundaries of confidentiality; uncertainty regarding the level of consent required; and blurring of the limits of a clinician’s duty of care when unlimited access is possible. Paradoxically, the use of digital clinical communication can create dependence rather than promote autonomy in some patients. Patient participants varied in their understanding of, and concern about, confidentiality in the context of digital communication. An overarching theme emerging from the data was a shifting of the boundaries of the patient-clinician relationship and the professional duty of care in the context of use of clinical digital communication. The ethical implications of clinical digital communication are complex and go beyond concerns about confidentiality and consent. Any development of this form of communication should consider its impact on the patient-clinician-relationship, and include appropriate safeguards to ensure that professional ethical obligations are adhered to. (shrink)

Protein secretion is conventionally viewed as taking place by either of two cellular routes, a regulated pathway, involving external stimuli and secretory granules, and a presumptive ‘constitutive’ pathway, which does not involve hormonal or neuronal stimuli or the production of secretory granules. The evidence reviewed here strongly suggests that there are post‐synthesis rate‐limiting steps for many proteins released by the ‘constitutive’ pathway and, hence, that regulation in some sense is involved here too. The nature of these rate‐limiting determinants and events (...) is discussed. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Peter McGehee and the Erotics of Gay Self-RepresentationRaymond-Jean Frontain (bio)Novelist Peter McGehee was a beautiful man who—at the height of what Brad Gooch terms “the Golden Age of Promiscuity”—knew he was a beautiful man.1 Coming of age in the early 1970s when American gay men consciously set about refashioning their image, Peter’s dress was always striking, whether he was playing the slut or the dandy. Members of his close (...) circle of friends, dubbed “the Quinlan Family,” regularly twitted him for preening in the mirror, and one close friend reports that Peter could not pass a reflective surface without stopping to examine his image.2 Peter’s narcissism was further empowered by his talent as a photographer. He began taking pictures while in high school when his mother, an English teacher who advised both the school newspaper and yearbook, recruited him to serve as the staff photographer for both publications. And he continued taking photos—in particular, making self-portraits—until at least his early thirties (see Illustration 1).3 Click for larger view View full resolution1.Self-portrait by Peter McGehee. The hairstyle is identical to the one in the portrait that appears on the cover of the Stubblejumper Press edition of Beyond Happiness, suggesting that this photo was taken around 1985 when Peter was twenty-nine or thirty years old. Courtesy of the Estate of Peter McGehee.[End Page 115] Click for larger view View full resolution2.Self-portrait by Peter McGehee in mascara and woman’s top, circa 1981. Courtesy of Fiji Robinson.It should not come as a surprise that McGehee’s life and career are characterized by an ongoing and extraordinarily rich experimentation with modes of self-presentation. Peter was adept at making wacky collages that employ photographs and images culled from newspapers or magazines to serve as invitations, announcements to friends, and handbills for his performance activities. Under carefully controlled circumstances, Peter and his male friends donned female drag with Peter fashioning for himself a persona, “Princess Marie,” and signing himself as the same in letters to friends written in the royal first-person plural (see Illustration 2). When performing as the only male with two female partners in the Quinlan Sisters, a musical revue that he founded and for which he wrote the songs, he was generally identified in the program as “Marie Quinlan, the Sister with the Difference” (see Illustration 3).Peter experimented with personae even in his journals, where one might expect to find a less theatricalized self. Beginning in 1986, however, numerous entries are composed as letters that begin “Dear Winsome” (a word defined by the American Heritage College Dictionary as “charming, often in a childlike or naive way”—a manner that Peter liked to adopt), “Dear Winnie” (which is most likely a familiarization of the former), “Dear Timmy” (a name synonymous with naive wholesomeness for American baby boomers who were raised watching the television drama Lassie on Sunday evenings), and the matronly and delightfully dowdy “Dear Mrs. Hackensack.”4 Like Joe Orton, McGehee apparently even wrote letters to the local newspaper under a matronly female pseudonym in which he commented wryly on public matters that concerned him.5 [End Page 116] Click for larger view View full resolution3.Publicity photograph of Peter with Wendy Coad and Fiji Robinson as the Quinlan Sisters, circa 1982. Courtesy of Fiji Robinson.But clearly it was his fiction that offered McGehee the most satisfying opportunity for creative self-fashioning. It is the first rule of the creative writing class that a writer must write from, and of, what he knows if his writing is to have authority. But in his blurring of the line between fiction and autobiography Peter followed the lead established by Christopher Isherwood in The Berlin Stories (1935–39) and, more importantly, Christopher and His Kind (1976)—and pursued by Peter’s senior contemporaries Edmund White and Felice Picano—in which the autobiographer writes of himself in the third person in order to study himself with an almost brutal detachment, or in which the fictional protagonist is a barely disguised version of the writer’s self to the point of... (shrink)

The problem of reference is central to the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and epistemology yet it remains largely unresolved. Naming and Reference explains the reference of lexical terms, with particular emphasis placed on proper names, demonstrative pronouns and personal pronouns. It examines such specific issues as: how to account for the reference of names that are empty or speculative, which abound in science and philosophy, and how to account for intentional reference as in "he took Mary to be Jane." (...) Naming and Reference begins with a survey of the history of the subject within a philosophical and critical setting, from Locke, Brentano, Peirce, Frege, Russell, Strawson, Tarski, Carnap and Quine up to Kripke and Fodor. The rest of the book is devoted to an algorithmic theory of reference derived from Peirce's idea that signification is a three-way relationship involving a term, an object and an interpretant. The theory rounds out the causal notion of reference, while at the same time preserving Frege's distinction between sense and reference, and making a place for indexical terms. Through the use of various computer models, R. J. Nelson explores the meaning and reference of words to objects and the relationship of these phenomena to perception, belief and truth. The models used are parallel, connectionist computational models rather than the sequential models of mid-century artificial intelligence. The aim, in opposition to nativist and mental representation theories, is to account for the genesis of semantically interpretable symbols, not to assume them. (shrink)

After a short introduction, this article contains the text of a previously unpublished interview with Raymond Aron in which he discusses what he takes to be the significance and continuing importance, if any, of the French Revolution. In the course of the interview Aron discusses different interpretations of the Revolution. The interview took place in February 1983.

Marie-Therese d'Alverny devoted a large part of her research to discovering and describing manuscripts of scientific texts, especially those translated from Arabic. This volume contains those of d'Alverny's studies devoted to the Latin transmission of the works of other Greek and Arabic authors (Aristotle, Galen, Priscianus Lydus, al-Kindi, Albumasar, Algazel and Averroes), the authors responsible for this transmission (Scotus Eriugena, Raymond of Marseilles, Petrus Hispanus, Henri Bate of Malines and Pietro d'Abano), and some of the themes of the transmitted texts (...) (astrology and the planetary system of Herclides), as well as three articles summarizing the whole transmission process. (shrink)

This paper draws on the cultural-materialist paradigm articulated by Raymond Williams to offer a radical historicisation of identity and identity-politics in capitalist societies. A keywords analysis reveals surprisingly that identity, as it is elaborated in the familiar categories of personal and social identity, is a relatively novel concept in Western thought, politics and culture. The claim is not the standard one that people’s ‘identities’ became more important and apparent in advanced capitalist societies, but that identity itself came to operate as (...) a new and key mechanism for construing, shaping and narrating experiences of selfhood and grouphood in this period. From a cultural-materialist perspective, the emergence and evolution of this idea of identity can only be properly understood in relation to the social contexts of its use, namely, the new contexts of consumption of capitalist societies, and the development of new forms of group-based struggle from the 1960s. What the analysis shows is that it was the commercialisation and politicisation of older essentialist understandings of selfhood and grouphood in these contexts that has given rise to the concepts of personal and social identity as we know them today.By exploring the material conditions that have given rise to the contemporary powerful attachment to ‘identity’, this paper offers a new point of departure from which to pursue many issues of concern to critical theorists and radical activists today, including the conflict over identity politics in radical circles, the historical and social processes behind their development and at least partial co-option, and their relation to neoliberal political-economic formations today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:464 Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Claire Raymond and Sarah Corse A Distorting Mirror: Educational Trajectory After College Sexual Assault This article focuses on the broad and specific impacts of college sexual assault on student-survivors’ academic performance, academic trajectory, and their sense of self in relation to the university community. We frame this study with, and relate our findings to, the historic and (...) theoretical literatures that provide the context for this essay, including the large and burgeoning literature on the sexual assault of women college students and recent studies analyzing the role of fraternities in sexual assault, students’ fears and perceptions about college assault, bystander intervention training, and survivors’ grade-point averages after assault.1 Our study also builds on the history of feminist resistance to rape, feminist writings about rape, and campus activism against rape, with the 1. Cortney Franklin, Leana Allen Bouffard, and Travis C. Pratt, “Sexual Assault on the College Campus: Fraternity Affiliation, Male Peer Support, and Low Self-Control,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 39, no. 11 (2012): 1457– 80; Christine A. Gidycz, John R. McNamara, and Katie M. Edwards, “Women ’s Risk Perception and Sexual Victimization: A Review of the Literature,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 11, no. 5 (2006): 441–56; Jennifer Katz and Jessica Moore, “Bystander Education Training for Campus Sexual Assault Prevention: An Initial Meta-Analysis,” Violence and Victims 28, no. 6 (2013): 1054–67; Douglas W. Pryor and Marion R. Hughes, “Fear of Rape among College Women: A Social Psychological Analysis,” Violence and Victims 28, no. 3 (2013): 443–65; Carol E. Jordan, Jessica L. Combs, and Gregory T. Smith, “An Exploration of Sexual Victimization and Academic Performance among College Women,” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 15, no. 3 (2014): 191–200. Claire Raymond and Sarah Corse 465 goal of shedding light on one aspect of the problem. Groundbreaking (and in some cases controversial) works analyzing the cultures of rape, such as Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will and Peggy Sanday’s “The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape” (in which Sanday creates the concept of the rape-producing culture—a concept that is central to our argument in this essay), found immediate reception with feminist activists of the 1970s and early 1980s.2 Mary Koss’s work regarding the scope of rape in college settings is also foundational to our study of campus rape.3 Susan Estrich, Catharine MacKinnon, and other feminist theorists in the mid-1980s developed critical apparatuses to shift the understanding of rape, providing a feminist framework wherein rape is interpreted as violence committed against a woman—in opposition to the patriarchal argument that rape is caused by a woman’s actions or is the product of her distortion of events after the fact.4 Angela Davis and bell hooks were deeply influential in framing understandings of the racial and racist aspects of feminist discussions of rape, while legal scholar Sarah Deer has more recently broadened understandings of the racialized discourse of rape, and Lisa Wade has written on twenty-first century hookup culture and the ways that this social landscape promulgates rates of maleon -female rape that are significantly higher on college campuses than in the general population.5 2. Peggy Reeves Sanday, “The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape: A Cross-Cultural Study,” Journal of Social Issues 37, no. 4 (1981): 5–27; Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Penguin Books, 1976). 3. Mary P. Koss, Christine A. Gidycz, and Nadine Wisniewski, “The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55, no. 2 (1987): 162–70. 4. Susan Estrich, Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Duncan Chappell, Robley Geis, and Gilbert Geis, eds., Forcible Rape: The Crime, the Victim and the Offender (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). 5. Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist,” in her Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 172–201; bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984); Sarah Deer, The Beginning and End... (shrink)

This article draws on the cultural materialist paradigm articulated by Raymond Williams to offer a radical historicization of the idea of identity, with a view to clarifying and resolving some of the issues animating the ‘identity politics’ debates currently dividing left academia and activism. First, it offers clarity on the concept ‘identity politics’, demonstrating that we should reserve the term to refer only to politics that mobilize specifically and meaningfully around the concept of identity. Second, and in virtue of this, (...) it provides new insights into five central questions that have driven the identity politics debates: Do identity politics always tend towards essentialism?; Do identity politics inevitably promote a politics of recognition over redistribution?; Do identity politics inevitably create political cleavages rather than solidaristic forms of political action?; What is the relationship between ‘identity politics’ and ‘call-out culture’?; And, are the problems of identity politics resolved by reference to intersectionality? (shrink)

Abstract‘Raising aspirations’ for education among young people in low socioeconomic regions has become a widespread policy prescription for increasing human capital investment and economic competitiveness in so-called ‘knowledge economies’. However, policy tends not to address difficult social, cultural, economic and political conditions for aspiring, based in structural changes associated with globalization. Drawing conceptually on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, Arjun Appadurai and authors in the Funds of Knowledge tradition, this article theorizes two logics for aspiring that are recognizable (...) in research with young people and families: a doxic logic, grounded in populist–ideological mediations; and a habituated logic, grounded in biographic–historical legacies and embodied as habitus. A less tangible third ‘logic’ is also theorized: emergent senses of future potential, grounded in lived cultures, which hold possibility for imagining and pursuing alternative futures. The article offers a sociological framework for understanding aspirations as complex social–cultural phenomena, and for capacitating emergent and hopeful aspirations through school- and community-based research and dialogue. (shrink)

We motivate five constraints on theorizing about sensory experience. We then propose a novel form of naturalistic intentionalism that succeeds where other theories fail by satisfying all of these constraints. On the proposed theory, which we call structure matching tracking intentionalism, brains states track determinables. Internal structural features of those states select determinates of those determinables for presentation in experience. We argue that this theory is distinctively well-positioned to both explain internal-phenomenal structural correlations and accord external features a role in (...) fixing phenomenology. In addition, we use the theory to shed light on how one comes to experience “missing shades”. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an empirically-driven approach to the relationship between conceptual and non-conceptual representations. I begin by clarifying Wilfrid Sellars's distinction between a non-conceptual capacity to picture significant aspects of our world, and a capacity to stabilize semantic content in the form of conceptual representations that signify those aspects of the world that are relevant to our shared practices. I argue that this distinction helps to clarify the reason why cognition must be understood as embodied and situated. Drawing (...) on recent models of attention and valuation, I then argue that the human brain constructs a dynamic model of the world that it has encountered, encoding higher-level regularities in the form of linguistically structured representations. And I conclude by arguing that this approach to cognition provides a set of critical resources for understanding the situated nature of social cognition. (shrink)

While the balance between individual privacy and government monitoring or corporate surveillance has been a frequent topic across numerous disciplines, the issue of privacy within the family has been largely ignored in recent privacy debates. Yet privacy intrusions between parents and children or between adult partners or spouses can be just as profound as those found in the more “public spheres” of life. Popular access to increasingly sophisticated forms of electronic surveillance technologies has altered the dynamics of family relationships. Monitoring, (...) mediated and facilitated by practices of both covert and overt electronic surveillance, has changed the nature of privacy within the family. Parents are tracking children via GPS-enabled cell phone tracking software and are monitoring the Internet use of family members. Parents, siblings, and children are also posting information about their family members online, often without consent, and are creating social media profiles for others online. Prior scholarly work in philosophy and law has primarily addressed the privacy of children from third parties, usually commercial entities, and in the context of making medical decisions. Less attention has been directed at exploring a more general right of privacy of one family member against parents, siblings, children, or spouses. In this article, we do just that. We consider several moral rules that determine appropriate privacy boundaries within the family. More specifically, we will consider when overt or covert surveillance of a child, spouse, or partner by an adult family member is morally permitted. (shrink)

Given the importance of scientific research in shaping our perception of the world, and our senses of what policies will and won’t succeed in altering that world, it is of great practical, political, and moral importance that we carry out scientific research with integrity. The phenomenon of scientific fraud stands in the way of that, as scientists may knowingly enter claims they take to be false into the scientific literature, often knowingly doing so in defiance of norms they profess allegiance (...) to. In this chapter we take a look at some of the causes of scientific fraud, and how it might be manifested in large-scale research teams and situations of anonymous authorship. We find that such cases make trouble for what might seem like intuitive answers to the question “who should be held responsible for this fraud?”, and we argue that in such cases it would be better to hold the entire community responsible for seeing to it that there is less fraud. (shrink)

Treating mathematical science as a distinct cultural entity subject to environmental factors which influence its evolution, the author examines the creation and development of its major concepts since early times.

This chapter contains sections titled: Getting Out of the Gate Banking the Turn in Pursuit of Fairness Counting Down the Laps in Pursuit of Happiness The Bell Lap Notes.

The question of the ethical life is arguably one of the most compelling, and urgent, questions of our time. As Peter Singer, among others, has pointed out, almost 10 million children die each year due to poverty, some of whom would not die if the amount of aid that we now offer increases significantly. As Singer has also pointed out, the exploitation of human beings and other animals is a major ethical and practical concern. There can be little reasonable doubt (...) that pain and suffering abound, in the world today, due to many causes such as poverty, disease, environmental degradation and destruction and anthropocentrism among others, just as there can be little reasonable doubt that some of the pain and suffering is preventable. So, what does it mean to live ethically today? Does it mean taking the point of view of the universe, as Sidgwick put it, memorably, rather than a narrow anthropocentric or speciesist view? Does it mean living in accordance with duties or obligations, or in light of recognised virtues, or with the minimisation of pain and suffering primarily in mind? Does it entail a consideration of the interests of other species and a rejection of the principle of the sanctity of human life? Does it mean not eating animals when other healthy alternatives are available, especially when those animals have been treated in ways that are inconsistent with their interests, whatever they may be? Does it mean taking active steps to reduce poverty on our part on a day to day basis? Is ethics exhausted in some sense today? And if we could reach some consensus on these questions, what difference would the ethical life make? Some argue that speciesism and the exploitation of human beings and other animals might diminish; that pain and suffering, especially gratuitous pain and suffering, would decrease, or at the very least, not increase; or that we will become more aware of the limitations of things such as "the traditional ethic of the sanctity of life", as Singer calls it. Some argue that the ethical life is closely related to a life of relationships, reflection and deliberation, all of which deepen our understanding and enrich us personally. Others argue that the ethical life is closely related to our search for a meaningful life - that the ethical life can help us to find meaning in a world in which "meaning", defined broadly, can seem elusive, enigmatic or unsubstantial. These and related issues and questions are explored in this collection, which illustrates the relevance, vitality and dynamism of ethics today. (shrink)

This selection consists of extracts from writings of women concerned solely with the pursuit of abstract ideas, historically contextualized. The texts, for the most part, reflect issues widely debated in their contemporary societies. Extracts from lesser-known writers are also included, providing a diversity of arguments spanning four centuries and including some notable contemporary philosophers.

In the last two decades, philosophy of neuroscience has predominantly focused on explanation. Indeed, it has been argued that mechanistic models are the standards of explanatory success in neuroscience over, among other things, topological models. However, explanatory power is only one virtue of a scientific model. Another is its predictive power. Unfortunately, the notion of prediction has received comparatively little attention in the philosophy of neuroscience, in part because predictions seem disconnected from interventions. In contrast, we argue that topological predictions (...) can and do guide interventions in science, both inside and outside of neuroscience. Topological models allow researchers to predict many phenomena, including diseases, treatment outcomes, aging, and cognition, among others. Moreover, we argue that these predictions also offer strategies for useful interventions. Topology-based predictions play this role regardless of whether they do or can receive a mechanistic interpretation. We conclude by making a case for philosophers to focus on prediction in neuroscience in addition to explanation alone. (shrink)

Altruistic self-sacrifice is rare, supererogatory, and not to be expected of any rational agent; but, the possibility of giving up one's life for the common good has played an important role in moral theorizing. For example, Judith Jarvis Thomson (2008) has argued in a recent paper that intuitions about altruistic self-sacrifice suggest that something has gone wrong in philosophical debates over the trolley problem. We begin by showing that her arguments face a series of significant philosophical objections; however, our project (...) is as much constructive as critical. Building on Thomson's philosophical argument, we report the results of a study that was designed to examine commonsense intuitions about altruistic self-sacrifice. We find that a surprisingly high proportion of people judge that they should give up their lives to save a small number of unknown strangers. We also find that the willingness to engage in such altruistic self-sacrifice is predicted by a person's religious commitments. Finally, we show that folk-moral judgments are sensitive to agent-relative reasons in a way that diverges in important ways from Thomson's proposed intuitions about the trolley problem. With this in mind, we close with a discussion of the relative merits of folk intuitions and philosophical intuitions in constructing a viable moral theory. (shrink)

Multivariate pattern analysis, or MVPA, has become one of the most popular analytic methods in cognitive neuroscience. Since its inception, MVPA has been heralded as offering much more than regular univariate analyses, for—we are told—it not only can tell us which brain regions are engaged while processing particular stimuli, but also which patterns of neural activity represent the categories the stimuli are selected from. We disagree, and in the current paper we offer four conceptual challenges to the use of MVPA (...) to make claims about neural representation. Our view is that the use of MVPA to make claims about neural representation is problematic. (shrink)