This article argues that hope is of value in clinical ethics and that it can be important for clinicians to be sensitive to both the risks of false hope and the importance of retaining hope. However, this sensitivity requires an understanding of the complexity of hope and how it bears on different aspects of a well-functioning doctor-patient relationship. We discuss hopefulness and distinguish it from three different kinds of hope, or ‘hopes for’, and then relate (...) these distinctions back to differing accounts of autonomy. This analysis matters because it shows how an overly narrow view of the ethical obligations of a clinician to their patient, and autonomy, might lead to scenarios where patients regret the choices they make. (shrink)

I attempt first to disentangle three aspects of Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. There is the central distinction between principles of duty contrary to that which is contradictory in conception/consistent in conception but contradictory in will. There is also a distinction between essential and non-essential duties: those which cannot, or occasionally can, be passed over consistent with the requirements of morality. Finally, there is a distinction between duties that exhibit a scalar aspect – degrees of goodness or virtue (...) – and duties that do not. My aim is to show how these distinct considerations can be reconciled as aspects of a single distinction, and I conclude that the remarkable complexity of Kant’s perfect/imperfect distinction is actually a strength, rather than a weakness. (shrink)

I address the usefulness of thinking about a human right to subsistence within conceptions of human rights grounded in ordinary moral reasoning. I argue that that natural rights should be understood as rights in rem, with their dynamism constrained by the requirements of justification and their scope constrained by the distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. I then suggest that many of the most pressing demands which the moral significance of subsistence needs create are plausibly imperfect duties, and so cannot (...) correlate to a natural right to subsistence. This restricts the helpfulness of a human right to subsistence in our reasoning about what we owe to others. (shrink)

David Hume famously states, in his A Treatise of Human Nature, “that ’tis only from the selfishness and confin’d generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin”.1 This is Hume’s summary of the conditions under which the very idea of rules of justice makes practical sense, and he effectively repeats it in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.2 To put it briefly at the outset, Hume’s point is simply (...) this: if there was either a superabundance or drastic scarcity of resources, or if everyone were either completely and unfailingly virtuous or completely and unfailingly wicked, we would not need rules. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

It is sometimes held that modern institutionally-focussed conceptions of social justice are lacking in one essential respect: they ignore the importance of civic friendship or solidarity. It is also, typically simultaneously, held that Aristotle’s thought provides a fertile ground for elucidating an account of civic friendship. I argue, first, that Aristotle is no help on this score: he has no conception of distinctively civic friendship. I then go on to argue that the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is (...) more useful than talk of civic friendship in capturing the non-institutional demands of social justice. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the possibility of advancing a modern conception of social justice under neo-Aristotelian lights, focussing primarily on conceptions that assert a fundamental connection between social justice and eudaimonia. After some preliminary remarks on the extent to which a neo-Aristotelian account must stay close to Aristotle’s own, I focus on Martha Nussbaum’s sophisticated neo-Aristotelian approach, which I argue implausibly overworks the aspects of Aristotle’s thought it appeals to. I then outline the shape of a deeper and more (...) general, and as yet unanswered, problem facing neo-Aristotelian accounts: how to justify the claim that the point of a just society is to assist or enable its members to flourish. (shrink)

:Current debates about ideal theory and idealization in modern moral and political philosophy do not typically scrutinize the form of reflection itself. This is an unfortunate oversight: assumptions about the form of reflection shape the positions defended in those debates. I argue that the appropriate form of reflection on the nature and justification of standards of justice and morality is the form of practical reason. I further argue that the form of practical reason cannot support many of the idealizations typically (...) deployed in modern moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

It is commonly claimed, in the global justice literature, that global injustices are best characterised in terms of the violation or unfulfilment of human rights. I suggest that global justice theorists are overconfident on this point. For decolonising peoples, contemporary global injustice is likely to be characterised in terms drawn from local histories of injustice and the constellations of thick ethical concepts they contain. To make the point I describe how the Māori of New Zealand, who do not reject human (...) rights, typically make no reference to human rights in political argument. I argue that the Māori are reasonable to consider human rights talk to be ‘one thought too many’, and the considerations that make this so typically apply in other postcolonial contexts of political activity. (shrink)

ObjectiveHopelessness and depression are strongly associated with suicidality. Given that physical and psychological outcomes can be altered with hope, hope is a therapeutic goal of increasing importance in the treatment of brain tumor patients. Moreover, it is not yet understood which factors affect the perception of hope in brain tumor patients. In addition, it remains uncertain whether lower-grade brain tumor patients suffer less from psycho-oncological distress than higher-grade brain tumor patients.MethodsNeuro-oncological patients were examined perioperatively with the Distress (...) Thermometer and the Herth Hope Index. In addition, psychological comorbidities and an assessment of general psycho-oncological distress were recorded.ResultsSixty-six brain tumor patients were included. No differences between higher- and lower-grade brain tumor patients were observed for general psycho-oncological distress and hope. However, higher-grade brain tumor patients showed a significantly higher level of depression and more negative expectations regarding therapeutic success. The extent of depression correlated negatively with hope.ConclusionUnexpectedly, higher-grade brain tumor patients remained as hopeful as lower-grade brain tumor patients despite the devastating diagnosis, higher levels of depression, and a worse expectation of therapeutic success. Conversely, lower-grade brain tumor patients experience as much psycho-oncological distress as patients with a higher-grade brain tumor, underpinning the imperative need for comprehensive psycho-oncological screening. For all brain tumor patients, considering hope is important to avoid suicides resulting from hopelessness and depression. (shrink)

Although the therapeutic misconception (TM) has been well described over a period of approximately 20 years, there has been disagreement about its implications for informed consent to research. In this paper we review some of the history and debate over the ethical implications of TM but also bring a new perspective to those debates. Drawing upon our experience of working in the context of translational research for rare childhood diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, we consider the ethical and legal (...) implications of the TM for parental consent to research. In this situation, it is potentially the parent who is vulnerable to TM. In our analysis we not only consider the context of informed consent for research but also the wider environment in which the value of research is promoted, more broadly through the media but also more specifically through the communication strategies of patient organizations. All dissemination about developments in research for health runs the risk of portraying an overly optimistic view of the promise of biotechnological solutions and has the potential to encourage a ‘collective’ TM. In this paper we consider the challenge that TM presents to parents as well as explore the ethical and legal responsibilities of researchers to ensure an appropriately informed consent: compatible with a hopeful disposition of parents who consent for the their children whilst avoiding a blind and misleading optimism. (shrink)

In this article we study how reported speech markers are used as procedural resources in a laboratory based parapsychology experiment to investigate forms of anomalous communication, such as extrasensory perception. In particular, we focus on how specific activities in a key part of the experiment are mediated by the use of `you said' formulations which project that whatever is said next is a paraphrase or a verbatim report of what the recipient had said earlier. We identify two uses of reported (...) speech markers. First, they are used in utterances that initiate some form of repair, such as correction or clarification. Second, they cluster in sequential locations that mark, after a temporary suspension, the resumption of key activities in the experiment. In this we hope to contribute to the study of the institutional properties of reported speech. We conclude by discussing the ways in which broader cultural understandings of the inferential force of `you said' formulations inform their use in this institutional setting, and reflecting on the significance of these findings for parapsychological investigation of anomalous communication in this setting. (shrink)

In this article, my aim is to consider under what circumstances, and for what reasons, individuals may freely choose not to speak hatefully about others. Even if not threatened with legal sanction, why might they decide not to say something which they think they have good reason to say? My suggestion will be that there are various pro tanto reasons for individuals to restrain themselves from saying what they wanted to say. To be specific, I shall argue that such reasons (...) fall into three analytically distinct categories, which I shall describe as normative codes of civility, ethics and morality. Thus each of these codes may provide different sorts of reasons for not engaging in hate speech. My hope is that the results of this investigation may usefully inform a strategy which aims to combat such speech without resource to the law. (shrink)

Many recent studies on network technologies and cities share an alarmist view of the impact of technological or regulatory change in utility sectors on the social and spatial fabric of cities, pointing to growing discrimination and inequalities, alienation, enhanced social exclusion and urban “splintering” on a universal scale. A science and technology study perspective on these matters is helpful in moving beyond this “universal alarmism” by emphasizing the ambivalence inherent to all technologies, the significant potential of contestation of, and resistance, (...) to technology-supported forms of discrimination, and the deeply contingent nature of the process of appropriation of new technologies and, as a consequence, of the social “effects” of technologies. Adopting this perspective would mean actively searching for and exploring these context-dependent and often conflictive appropriation processes. For it is in these spaces that we might begin to identify urban technological politics that break free from an intellectually and politically disabling technological pessimism. (shrink)

Mountaineering is a dangerous activity. For many mountaineers, part of its very attraction is the risk, the thrill of danger. Yet mountaineers are often regarded as reckless or even irresponsible for risking their lives. In this paper, we offer a defence of risk-taking in mountaineering. Our discussion is organised around the fact that mountaineers and non-mountaineers often disagree about how risky mountaineering really is. We hope to cast some light on the nature of this disagreement – and to argue (...) that mountaineering may actually be worthwhile because of the risks it involves. Section 1 introduces the disagreement and, in doing so, separates out several different notions of risk. Sections 2–4 then consider some explanations of the disagreement, showing how a variety of phenomena can skew people's risk judgements. Section 5 then surveys some recent statistics, to see whether these illuminate how risky mountaineering is. In light of these considerations, however, we suggest that the disagreement is best framed not simply in terms of how risky mountaineering is but whether the risks it does involve are justified. The remainder of the paper, sections 6–9, argues that risk-taking in mountaineering often is justified – and, moreover, that mountaineering can itself be justified (in part) by and because of the risks it involves. (shrink)

- First book to describe what pain means in vulnerable or special groups of people - Clinical applications described in each chapter - Provides insight into the nature of pain experience across the lifespan -/- This book, the third and final volume in the Meaning of Pain series, describes what pain means to people with pain in “vulnerable” groups, and how meaning changes pain – and them – over time. -/- Immediate pain warns of harm or injury to the person (...) with pain. If pain persists over time, more complex meanings can become interwoven with this primitive meaning of threat. These cognitive meanings include thoughts and anxiety about the adverse consequences of pain. Such meanings can nourish existential sufferings, which are more about the person than the pain, such as loss, loneliness, or despair. -/- Although chronic pain can affect anyone, there are some groups of people for whom particular clinical support and understanding is urgently needed. This applies to “vulnerable” or “special” groups of people, and to the question of what pain means to them. These groups include children, women, older adults, veterans, addicts, people with mental health problems, homeless people, or people in rural or indigenous communities. Several chapters in the book focus on the lived experience of pain in vulnerable adults, including black older adults in the US, rural Nigerians, US veterans, and adults with acquired brain injury. The question of what pain experience could mean in the defenceless fetus, neonate, pre-term baby, and child, is examined in depth across three contributions. -/- This book series aspires to create a vocabulary on the “meanings of pain” and a clinical framework with which to use it. It is hoped that the series stimulates self-reflection about the role of meaning in optimal pain management. -/- Meanings of Pain is intended for people with pain, family members or caregivers of people with pain, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. Volume I was published in 2016; Volume II in 2019. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Singing Democracy:Music and Politics in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ThoughtJulia SimonComment? Tous les intervalles de mon Clavecin sont altérés?... Fi, le vilain instrument; ne m'en parlez plus.... Je veux chanter.—Anton Bemetzrieder, Leçons de ClavecinDemocratic theory of the eighteenth century, and particularly Rousseau's, is suffused with the idealism and lack of pragmatism that make it both immensely compelling and extraordinarily frustrating. Conceived under the decaying edifice of the absolute monarchy, it strives (...) toward perfection, offering theoretical formulations that often defy practical application. Yet this theory continues to inspire democratic practice and political debates even more than 200 years after its writing. In one passage of Du contrat social Rousseau asserts, "If there were a people of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. Such a perfect government is not suited to men."1 And yet the thrust of the work and the critical force of Rousseau's corpus encourage and challenge us to strive toward democracy, as impossible a goal as it may be for mere mortals.Alongside Rousseau's works in social and political theory lies another vast body of theoretical work in music. Rarely, if ever, are they read in tandem. Music in the eighteenth century suffers from many of the same difficulties that political theory does, especially the tendency toward a level of abstraction that defies practical application. Like the problem of democracy in the eighteenth century, music also presents the temptation of retreat into a world of abstract perfection based on mathematical certainty with little relation to practical reality. [End Page 433] Perhaps nowhere is the tension so acute between the ideal and the real in music as in the domain of tuning specifically, in keyboard tuning, and the question of tempering. So as in the political domain, there is a potentially wide gulf between music theory and music practice.If there is any hope of realizing democracy in the way that Rousseau understood it, an exploration of his music theory may provide the crucial bridge between theory and practice. Rousseau's theoretical work in music, and singing in particular, covers a number of distinct subject areas. First, his proposal for a new system of musical notation links directly to democratic impulses in his political and social theory. Second, the kinds of emotions that music stirs are related in Rousseau's thought to forms of expression that remain closer to their natural origins. Finally, Rousseau's preference for melody, as opposed to harmony, relates directly to his conception of the political sphere and specifically to the relationship between the general will and the workings of the body politic in a democracy. Unexpectedly, reading Rousseau's musical theory alongside his democratic theory produces a nuanced and moderate view of the social contract that deepens our understanding of the relationship between relative and absolute values in politics as well as in music and offers a model for practice.Musical Notation and DemocracyA distinctly democratic impulse motivates the Projet concernant de nouveaux signes pour la musique for Rousseau's revision of the musical notation system is designed to increase accessibility to music. With characteristic rhetoric Rousseau introduces his project for "simplifying" musical notation with a short, to-the-point paragraph: "This project tends to make music easier to write down, easier to learn and much less diffuse."2 Following this statement of purpose, Rousseau relates, in a contrasting rhetorical style—replete with specialized vocabulary—the current state of affairs in musical notation:This quantity of lines, keys, transpositions, of sharps, flats, naturals, of simple and complex measures, of whole-notes, half-notes, quarter-notes, eighth-notes, sixteenth-notes, thirty-second notes, of rests, half-rests, quarter-rests, eighth-rests, sixteenth-rests, etc. gives a quantity of signs and combinations from which result two principle inconveniences: the first, to occupy too great a volume, and the second to overload the memory of schoolchildren in such a way that the ear being formed and the organs having acquired all the necessary facility long before one is [End Page 434] capable of singing from a book, it follows that the difficulty is more in the observation of rules than in the execution of... (shrink)

In spite of the fact that many find Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of la mauvaise foi puzzling, unclear and troublesome, he remains a recurring figure in the debate about self-deception. Indeed, Sartre’s exposition of self-deception is as puzzling as it is original. The primary task of my paper will be to expose why this is the case and to thereby correct a recurrent misunderstanding of Sartre’s theory of consciousness. In the end, will we see that Sartre offers the following theory: self-deception (...) is to be accounted for by assuming that there are intrinsically self-deceptive epistemic states. The latter are self-deceptive in so far as they claim certainty while nevertheless being accompanied by an inbuilt and incorruptible awareness of being unwarranted. For Sartre, developing this rather peculiar account of self-deception, is, as we will see, not primarily intended as an end in itself. Rather, Sartre thereby hopes to illuminate the nature of self-awareness as epistemically super-secure, pre-reflexive, non-positional and “embryonic” knowledge that does not necessitate but can still ground epistemically super-secure reflexive knowledge, and that can replace Freud’s notion of unconscious knowledge. As an account of self-deception, Sartre’s suggestion, however, comes at a high price. Apart from the presuppositions Sartre makes in the theory of consciousness and intentionality, his account is deflationist with regard to local cases of self-deception. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 3-24 [Access article in PDF] Forlorn fortThe Left in trialogue Simon Jarvis Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Zizek. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left.London: Verso, 2000. These "Contemporary Dialogues on the Left" are both on the Left and partly worried about whether there is a future for the Left. Once, talk on the Left was largely concerned with the hope that (...) there might one day be a good end to the Left. If it now sometimes sounds worried about how to stop the Left's being brought to an end, that is partly because, as the prose for the Phronesis series candidly puts it, "Today, the left-wing project is in an even deeper crisis than it was ten years ago" [iv].One sign of hope is that the mantra "Left" of itself carries so little weight now even with those (of us) found there. It is a sign of hope that the meaning of that word is so unclear. The writers of these dialogues disagree about much. If we knew what they shared, we should know more about what in their view is the Left. By luck, what they do agree about is something striking and unusual. It is not a method, approach, or language for thinking. It is not any set of substantial theses about social experience, far less any set of proposals for altering it. It is rather an idea that is subtle, of uncertain meaning, full of political resonance, difficult in the extreme to keep hold of, and whose consequences are hard accurately to delimit. One of the contributors formulates it thus: "The universal is an empty place, a void which can be filled only by the particular, but which, through its very emptiness, produces a series of crucial effects in the structuration/destructuration of social relations" [L 58]. 1What is it for an empty place, a void, to produce a series of effects, a series of critical effects? A fair response to this question has to go a long way around. Each of these writers has come to think of "the universal" as a category both necessary and impossible. It is in the strict sense an aporetic word: we cannot do without it, yet cannot say what it "is." When it is asked, "who, we?" the question itself shows the difficulty. Insofar as the "we" of "the Left" understands itself as demanding justice for any individual or number of individuals, it finds itself appealing to an "us" that will exclude no—what, no sentient human being? Each of these writers will find lacking any theory of justice floated free into an ideal domain of rights. Yet each has seen, in quite different idioms, that it proves impossible utterly to delete all appeal to universality from political thinking. Each is trying to think new and true thoughts. Yet each understands that such thoughts are defined only through a relation to traditions of thinking with which they cannot but be entangled. The method of dialogue fosters a still more concentrated [End Page 3] complexity than that, already in-wrought, from which the authors began. In these circumstances, the long, slow route round, through intellectual history, recommends itself as a provisional method to a commentator. Triangulations Perhaps many readers start navigating this kind of book by noting the distancings. In this case, refusals to belong provide a rough means of orientation. If these maps are rough, however, they are an important part of the book's own method. The thinking of each contributor, for example, can in certain ways be understood as made possible by Hegel and Marx. Rarely, though, are Hegelian Marxists, or anyone associated with them, reasoned with here. The exceptions afford defining moments. Zizek's assertion that "one of the great and permanent results of the so-called 'Western Marxism' first formulated by the young Lukács is that the class-and-commodity structure of capitalism is not just a phenomenon limited to the particular 'domain' of economy, but the structuring principle that overdetermines the social totality, from politics to art and religion... (shrink)

This article concerns two of the last great metaphysical thinkers: Austin Farrer and Alfred North Whitehead. It also concerns a fundamental cosmological question: does the world point inexorably to God? Often, attempts to formulate and answer this question still stand firm on the Aristotelian categories of scholastic theology. Confronting these head-on, Farrer and Whitehead offered an antidote to Aristotle’s outdated metaphysics. They re-conceived being in active terms. This deployment of action-concepts was designed to overcome the logical and ontological inertia of (...) divine Ipseity and so heal the breach between God and Creation. By exploring the ways Farrer and Whitehead addressed these matters, I hope to remind readers of a fertile alternative to realist/anti-realist conflicts currently dominating philosophical theology. (shrink)

Young citizens are increasingly being invited to take part in participatory democracy meetings as joint decision-making has grown popular in public administration. The backbone of participatory democracy is that some authority is granted to the citizenry and by drawing on video data from a year-long participatory project, this conversation analytic study shows that the adolescents are instructed to a deontic role rooted in epistemics, benefactive considerations, as well as temporal aspects relating to future citizenship and hope. The institutional representatives (...) perform actions that determine how the adolescents should, in their turn, perform actions of influence. In this way, authority is ascribed through an ambivalent configuration in which compliance with the directives is supposed to establish a strengthened deontic position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Save Us From Being Saved:Girard's Critical SoteriologySimon J. Taylor (bio)One of the most striking things about the work of René Girard is that it is an overarching critique of what it is to be saved. The paradox that Girard presents us with is that "salvation" is something from which we must be saved. This combination of salvation as something that must be avoided and something we desperately need appears (...) to have the characteristic of a "double bind," about which Girard has written so much.1 Are we then, even within Girard's own thesis, bound to the mimetic doubling of need and revulsion that can end only in the expulsion or death of a common victim? It is this question that I hope to explore in this article.Girard's Critique Of SalvationTo set out Girard's critique of salvation, it is first necessary to see that what he has come to call the victimage mechanism ("mécanisme victimaire") is, in fact, salvation. Girard's thesis states that desire is mimetic, based on the imitation of another's desire. "Desire is always an imitation of another desire, desire for the same object, and therefore, an inexhaustible source of conflicts and rivalries" (Girard 1978, 39). As the rivalry produced by this desire intensifies, it spreads and produces conflict and violence on a large scale. On an unlimited scale, Girard identifies this with the Hobbesian "war of all against all."2 And it is at this point that the victimage mechanism kicks in. It is at this point that the identification of a scapegoat and the expulsion or killing of the scapegoat produce unity and restore peace. It is this, in Girard's originary scene, that leads to the simultaneous origins of society and religion. In restoring unity to the group, and hence founding the community, the victim becomes sacred, a god. This in itself is an indicator of the salvific power that the scapegoat effects in the community. In order that the violence, once diverted, should not break out again, two things are necessary: ritual, specifically sacrifice, and myth. Ritual reenacts the founding murder upon which society is based, enabling the [End Page 21] participants to transfer their violence to another victim. Myth is the story told by the persecutors about the events that led to the creation of their community, that is, the founding murder. Thus, religion "dehumanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor.... religion protects man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed" (Girard 1978, 134–35). Salvation has happened, and a cult arises to disburse the effects of this salvation.It is important that we take this account of religion with full seriousness and do not regard it simply as the prologue to Girard's later promotion, even rehabilitation, of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This is salvific: religion protects us from our own violence; it has mechanisms for bringing to an end outbreaks of that violence. Elsewhere Girard can speak of "the negative usefulness of religion as a social prop against anarchy and chaos" (Girard 1997, 162–63). This is salvation: violence is dealt with and human society can dwell in relative peace. Religion, on this account, is not "pie-in-the-sky," a transcendent deferral of gratification. It has real benefits to society today; it is attractive, elegant, and simple. What more could we want from religion?But Girard will not allow us to rest content with this account of religion. He is blunt when he declares that "most religions are based on a lie, which is the supposed guilt of the victim" (Girard 1993c, 32). Nietzsche wrote that "The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators' ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say,"3 and this is precisely the origin of Girard's critique of the salvation offered by religions based on scapegoating. Girard is attempting to let the sacrificial animal have its say. All too often, these... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The End of Argument: Knowledge and the InternetSimon Barker1. Fermat's last videoModern mathematics is nearly characterized by the use of rigorous proofs. This practice, the result of literally thousands of years of refinement, has brought to mathematics a clarity and reliability unmatched by any other science.(Jaffe and Quinn 1993, 1)The above passage illustrates how mathematicians have come to esteem rigorous argument as the most important feature of their subject. (...) In turn, the example of mathematics has, over a long period, made rigorous argument an ideal in many other areas of inquiry—from the sciences to theology. How interesting it is, then, that some mathematicians have begun to question that ideal. Gian-Carlo Rota, for example, has said that the axiomatic method of presentation in mathematics has now reached "the zenith of fanaticism" and that the identification of mathematics with this method "is having a corrosive effect on the way mathematics is viewed by scientists in other disciplines" (1997, 189). William Thurston has blamed the formality of contemporary mathematics for "the whole system of generally poor communication" within the subject. According to Thurston, ordinary conversation between mathematicians can often convey a new solution in a matter of minutes, whereas a formal proof delivered in a seminar will take an hour, and a written article may take several hours or even days to understand. In Thurston's view, this disparity arises precisely because conversationalists go far beyond formal mathematical language:They use gestures, they draw pictures and diagrams, they make sound effects and use body language. Communication is more likely to be two-way, so that people can concentrate on what needs the most attention. With these channels of communication, they are in a much better position to convey what's going on, not just in their logical and linguistic facilities, but in their other mental facilities as well. [End Page 154](Thurston 1994, 166)Sadly, however, mathematicians can only converse like this in private. To reach the rest of their audience, they have to publish in journals. Journal articles are limited to formal language and so must convey results more slowly. Formality, though less efficient, is more publishable.Yet there is hope. Another mathematician, Andrew Odlyzko, has suggested that the unfortunate limitations of printed journals can now be overcome with computers. Computers can allow mathematicians to distribute something more than the traditional style of printed proof. Odlyzko suggests an electronic scrapbook that would include a video of each author lecturing about their results (Odlyzko 1995, 90-91). Fermat's Last Video? The point is that if these suggestions come to pass, publication of mathematical results will no longer involve stripping away informal features and replacing them with formal language, as if rigorous argument was all that mattered. Instead, the informal features that help mathematicians to understand new results so quickly in ordinary conversation will be given equal air time. The ideal, for publication at least, will be less formal.Is this just a gimmick? Is it something that will go away, if we shut our eyes, leaving the centuries old ideal of formal proof intact? What I wish to discuss here are some of the reasons why mathematics, as well as other branches of knowledge, may adopt greater informality and may cease to idealise rigorous argument.2. From parents to premissesI will start by examining how and why rigorous, formal argument became an ideal in the first place. This is a long story, going back to the origins of Western literature; so I am forced to be brief.1 I will start with the matter of how argument became an ideal. The first thing we should recognise is that even in the West's earliest literary works—the Iliad and the Odyssey—there are plenty of rudimentary arguments, particularly in the speeches put into the mouths of the major characters. Nevertheless, for sustained or rigorous argument, we must look a little harder. Havelock has put forward the following passage as an example of unusual rigour in early literature (Havelock 1966b, 209). The passage is taken from the start of Hesiod's poem, Works and Days, a piece of wisdom literature almost as old as... (shrink)

This work is a Festschrift to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji, Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Umuahia, Nigeria. Its title draws from his Episcopal Coat of Arms - <I>Caritas et Veritas. The focus of this book is Moral Theology. It contains fifteen diverse essays which indicate the spread and nuances of contemporary moral theological reflections. Their contributors are from three continents - Africa, Europe and North America. Firstly, this publication pays tribute to the efforts of Bishop (...) Ugorji to inspire interest in Moral Theology in Nigeria and deepen its reflections. Secondly, it hopes to provide more resource materials for students and researchers in the field of Moral Theology and Theological Ethics in Nigeria and beyond. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a reconsideration of the complex concept of mimesis, as it is deployed in the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno, which, I argue, provides some interesting and original avenues through which we may interpret some of the infinitely engaging if enigmatic films of Andrei Tarkovsky. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first, I explore Adorno's development and usage of the concept of mimesis, as well as the latter's fall into disfavour since Habermas's (...) influential 'communicative turn'. In the second part, I undertake to read some of Tarkovsky's work in an Adornian vein, with the hope of reconfiguring mimesis as a valuable and fruitful concept in understanding the somatic and extra-discursive elements within communication. What I call Tarkovsky's 'mimetic method' can be seen to follow Adorno's epistemological principle of the 'preponderance of the object', while testifying to the mimetic potential of non-discursive communication. In so doing, Tarkovsky's filmic work - with Adorno's critical theory - refutes the purely linguistic/discursive grounds of Habermasian communication. This implicit refutation works on two levels. It enacts forms of mimetic construction, at the first level, and calls forth acts of interpretation and mimetic reception, at the second. I argue that these features are in need of greater attention and elaboration. The works of Adorno and Tarkovsky, in my view, provide useful grounds for challenging and enhancing existing understandings of aesthetic and philosophic communication, by more fully appreciating their interconnectedness and complementarity. (shrink)

This paper aims to make three contributions to decision theory. First there is the hope that it will help to re-establish the legitimacy of the problem, pace various recent analyses provided by Maitzen and Wilson, Slezak and Priest. Second, after pointing out that analyses of the problem have generally relied upon evidence that is conditional on the taking of one particular option, this paper argues that certain assumptions implicit in those analyses are subtly flawed. As a third contribution, the (...) piece aims to draw attention to an important similarity between Newcomb’s problem and the toxin puzzle. In short, both problems illustrate the fact that you can have a reason to intend to φ without having a reason to actually φ. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that nurses should be holists whilst at the same time accepting that ‘holism’ is a contentious concept. One of the problems for a supporter of holism is that of which holism -- an attempt to outline the version of holism advocated is made by identifying only two versions of holism: The Strong theory and the Pragmatic theory of holism. By introducing this device it is hoped to avoid, if only by stipulation, some of the (...) more sophisticated nuances of holism drawn by other commentators. However despite a most judicious use of Ockham's Razor some detailed groundwork remains. In the first part of this paper a simple example is used which aims to articulate what are arguably some of the central issues within the holism debate. These issues are then placed within a wider philosophical context. The second part of the paper will offer definitions of Strong and Pragmatic holism. Drawing on specific examples from the nursing context it will be argued that the Pragmatic theory of holism is the theory of holism most compatible with nursing theory and practice. The methods employed in this paper are philosophical. Since the questions considered are conceptual rather than empirical requiring a discursive approach, utilising thought experiments and case implication to explore the issues. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that nurses should be holists whilst at the same time accepting that ‘holism’ is a contentious concept. One of the problems for a supporter of holism is that of which holism -- an attempt to outline the version of holism advocated is made by identifying only two versions of holism: The Strong theory and the Pragmatic theory of holism. By introducing this device it is hoped to avoid, if only by stipulation, some of the (...) more sophisticated nuances of holism drawn by other commentators. However despite a most judicious use of Ockham's Razor some detailed groundwork remains. In the first part of this paper a simple example is used which aims to articulate what are arguably some of the central issues within the holism debate. These issues are then placed within a wider philosophical context. The second part of the paper will offer definitions of Strong and Pragmatic holism. Drawing on specific examples from the nursing context it will be argued that the Pragmatic theory of holism is the theory of holism most compatible with nursing theory and practice. The methods employed in this paper are philosophical. Since the questions considered are conceptual rather than empirical requiring a discursive approach, utilising thought experiments and case implication to explore the issues. (shrink)

We have decided that periodically we will invite a leading scholar to write a paper on a particular topic. This paper will be subject to responses from other leading scholars working in the same area. The hope is to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on an important issue which will be of interest to the readership and inspire some to submit further papers relevant to this discourse. In this way we aim to stimulate further cross-discipline dialogue. The first invited paper (...) is “From ‘ethics of the eye’ to ‘ethics of the hand’ by collaborative prototyping" by Ellen Christiansen. (shrink)

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2009. 320pp. pbk. $19.95 ISBN-13: 978-0816666119. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter expand an earlier study of “the video game industry as an aspect of an emerging postindustrial, post-Fordist capitalism” (xxix) to argue that videogames are “exemplary media of Empire” (xxix). Their notion of “Empire” is based on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000), which (...) characterizes the contemporary world order as a decentralized system of global economic, political, and economic power that transcends national boundaries. In the view of the authors, Hardt and Negri’s account sets itself apart from other analyses of international politics by offering a “comprehensive account of conditions of work, forms of subjectivity, and types of struggle in contemporary capital” (xx). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter thus divide Games of Empire into three sections to reflect each of these aspects of Empire ’s argument, seeing their work as the first account to explore “virtual games within a system of global ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle” (xxix). Books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Electronic Mediations series “explore the humanistic and social implications” of new technologies that spark “significant changes in society and culture, politics and economics, thinking and being.” That’s an abstract goal, and one that Games of Empire surely meets. Yet at times it can be difficult to understand exactly which specific intervention this book seeks to make. It is unclear whether the authors of Games of Empire see their work as an indictment of game scholars’ lack of attention to political economy, or whether it’s a work of political theory hoping to show that other disciplines should be paying more attention to the production and play of videogames. Because Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter don’t directly criticize previous political critiques of gaming—such as Edward Castronova’s exploration of the “porous membrane” allowing two-way traffic between virtual economies and those of the real world, or Alexander Galloway’s unraveling of control protocols in algorithmic design, or Ian Bogost’s idea of political procedural rhetoric—they sometimes leave the reader wondering how to situate the book in the broader discourse on games and politics, either separately or together. Thus, Games of Empire might best be seen as an introduction to the writings of Hardt and Negri for game players and designers, rather than as a text for communicating the basic concepts of game studies and design. It is neither a truly new theory of games or digital media, nor is it a new theory of Empire—and that’s not a criticism. It is instead an introduction to Empire through popular culture, as Zizek does for Lacan in Looking Awry . If one were teaching an introductory course on contemporary political theory, this book would offer obvious inroads into Negri and Hardt’s thinking for a number of reasons. Despite its radical ideological bent, the book isn’t off-putting to readers who don’t necessarily share the authors’ politics. It synthesizes complex ideas from difficult thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Guattari while integrating modifications and critiques of Empire theory itself. And although the book is dense, sometimes feeling longer than it actually is (just over 200 pages), Games of Empire maintains a breezy readability by tightly coupling core concepts of Empire theory to well-known games and widely-publicized conflicts within the videogame industry. The first section of the book focuses on immaterial labor, the accumulation of “cognitive capital,” and the global process of manufacturing videogame consoles. It is significant for the authors that videogames began as hacker experiments within research institutes of the military industrial complex, programmed on stolen time, before becoming a commodity (7). This is the first in a string of examples showing how creative dissidence and conflict fuel the continuing evolution of Empire’s control. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter explain that the videogame industry now constitutes an international production apparatus dominating both creative work in developed nations and manual labor in developing ones. Because game industries in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are predominately non-unionized, they serve as an exemplary system for analyzing how global capital exploits contemporary intellectual work—including an excellent analysis of the “EA Spouse” scandal of 2004. On the side of the consumer, the authors argue that rabid “console races” that drive the industry forward from a technological perspective serve to structure gamer identity and combat piracy; later in the book, these machines offer a window into the worlds of Congolese coltan mining and electronic waste (222-224). In the second section, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter move on to deep case studies of individual games to show how the most popular game genres embed imperial assumptions about conflict, exchange, and urban life. First they argue that military training games such as Full Spectrum Warrior —co-developed by university researchers, industry developers, and military contractors—contribute to the “banalization” of war, a subjective state wherein perpetual preparedness for war is accepted as a part of everyday life (100). Chapter five covers Michel Foucalt’s notion of “biopower,” the extension of capital accumulation to life itself. The authors argue that virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft , which take market capitalism as a given and force players into essentialist roles and racial antagonisms, are organized to maximize control and profit (often on the backs of virtual currency “farmers” in China and southeast Asia). Finally, they criticize the naïve assumption that humor and cynicism in the popular sandbox game franchise Grand Theft Auto offer any remedy to its racialized, violent content. Instead, such games indulge and normalize the fantasy of getting rich at any cost by keeping the realities of contemporary urban life and corporate greed at a safe distance (181). Part three of Games of Empire focuses on “games of multitude,” a preliminary attempt to escape from Empire’s order through alternate modes of videogame development and play. Multitude is defined dialectically, as “the engine and the enemy” of Empire (187). This is the most important, yet also most contradictory section of the text. It lays bare the process by which Empire and its media feed our creative and intellectual development to overabundance. At a certain point, the force of the multitude reaches such a level that it threatens the stability of Empire; however, instead of following Hardt and Negri’s utopian assumptions about the radical potential of the multitude, the authors here follow Paolo Virno’s warning that Empire is “very good at adopting apparently iconoclastic practices and utopian ideas as management techniques and revenue sources” (188). At every turn, advances in player configurative power provide new sources of revenue and advertising angles for the game industry. A disappointing shortcoming of these latter pages is the lack of truly new examples for radical resistance within game development. Instead, it turns out that the radical left seems satisfied with the same mild successes that the left-of-center also has celebrated: artist’s mods, virtual world activism, and critical counterplay within strategy- and wargames. Having been frequently cited by many authors before Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, this idea of subversion or resistance through play feels tired and unpersuasive. It is unclear if the authors believe it is possible to embrace game design itself as a way of pursuing what they call “exodus” from Empire, or if an all-too-fashionable subversion is the only workable strategy. While the book does explore how the earliest independent game studios were eventually subverted and incorporated into the game industry proper, it doesn’t affirm or critique more recent non-commercial, DIY game development projects such as Klik-of-the-Month Club and Ludum Dare. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s analysis of so-called “tactical games,” including the editorial works of La Molleindustria, leads to an even more ambivalent take on the contemporary design ecology. At the conclusion of his essay on “Countergaming,” Galloway asserts that avant-garde videogame artists “should create new grammars of action […] should create alternative algorithms” (Galloway 125). Yet Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter characterize works such as McDonald’s Video Game and Oiligarchy as didactic, suggesting that the role of radical political games might be “limited to that of agitprop” (199). They are concerned that games like those of Molleindustria rigidly structure the activities of their players in order to prove a point. Yet, despite their repeated assertion that the equation of greater interactivity with democratic digital liberation is flawed, the authors see potential in policy simulators that “allow players to edit or tweak” (202) their parameters in response to what Bogost has called simulation fever , the simultaneous drive toward and fear of simulation (Bogost 108). The possibility of practicing radical design is bucked, and early attempts at critical game development like those of Molleindustria’s seem to be relegated to the status of exceptions that prove the rule for player-centered exodus. Overall, there is one glaring question Games of Empire leaves unanswered: how exactly are videogames the “exemplary media” of Empire, and what are the implications of videogames being exemplary in this way? Presumably Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter want to avoid essentialist claims, so they’re not keen on following Wark’s desire to mark “the game’s difference from [legacy media] as something that speaks to changes in the overall structure of social and technical relations” (Wark 225). It is also unclear how the production apparatuses, labor standards, and subjectivizing processes involved in the creation and use of other any other kind of digital media would fail to justify their equally exemplary status. Even the book’s concluding paragraph holds that virtual games “are one molecular component of this undecidable collective mutation” (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 229) of intellect, labor, and daily life. In the end, the authors seem to back away from their focus on games as exemplary to bring their work in line with broader theories of the gradual digitization of the everyday, in line with Galloway and Manovich. Despite these flaws, there is an undeniable elegance to Games of Empire ’s contrasting of gaming’s overwhelmingly imperial content with its multitudinous form . And its ambivalence about the potential of independent or political game development might be seen by scholars of Empire as a strength rather than a weakness, an acceptance that every new expression of multitude offers another opportunity for the expansion of Empire. The book also functions as a strong, all-encompassing call to greater responsibility on the part of mainstream game developers to be more conscious of the ideologies they embed in their work, of the way their intellectual property is used and manipulated by those who employ them, and of the material impact their industry has on the world at large. For players it offers a toolbox of concepts for radical examinations of their own play activities, asking them to be more cognizant of the consequences of their consumption of digital media and the ways in which their virtual lives interface with the real. REFERENCES Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Castranova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games . Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. (shrink)

The topics of Anthropocene literature have a perceived global relevance that is greater than that of literature in any other period in history, and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, and Paulo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl show this clearly. These books hit common global registers, at once dealing with issues such as urbanization, corporate capitalism, and climate change as common concerns while vigorously valuing and affirming cultural heterogeneity. The topics of these novels virtually guarantee their position as (...) world literature. Sinha, Mistry, and Bacigalupi offer hope rather than doom-and-gloom on topics that are of pressing global concern. In the process, they reveal that Anthropocene fiction has, by its very topicality, a propensity to being world literature, whatever the greatness or weakness of its national origin. Theorizing about world literature thus needs to grapple more decisively than it has with what cli-fi and Anthropocene fiction offer. (shrink)

In this paper I ask whether either theology or religious practice actually contribute to ethical theory or ethical practice. I rehearse well-known Humean arguments that they do not. I then reflect on the idea from Professor O’Donovan’s paper that it is virtuous for us to entertain hopes for redemption or for fulfilment and suggest that a careful weighing of these words may indicate otherwise.

Peter Lamarque's splendid and informative book, The Philosphy of Literature , deserves a much fuller response than I can give in this brief note. It is brimful with insights into the nature of literature, and into the debates between philosophers interested in literature, and I cannot imagine anyone failing to learn from it. The question I propose to take up is by no means the most important that Lamarque raises, nor am I even certain that I can add anything useful (...) to his own discussion of it. Yet I find myself puzzled by it, and hope that it may repay further thought. (shrink)

This article begins with a review of the literature on the ethics of tax evasion and identifies the three main views that have emerged over the centuries, namely always ethical, sometimes ethical, and never or almost never ethical. It then reports on the results of a survey of HK and U.S. university business students who were asked to express their opinions on the 15 statements covering the three main views. The data are then analyzed to determine which of the three (...) viewpoints is dominant among the sample population. Although it was found that HK scores were significantly different from the U.S. scores, both HK and U.S. respondents were opposed to the view that tax evasion is always or almost always ethical. The strongest arguments justifying tax evasion were in cases where the government was corrupt, the tax system was unfair and unaffordable. The weakest arguments for justifying tax evasion were in cases where there was a selfish motive. The underlying cultural differences are further explored in hope of accounting for differing perceptions of ethics of tax evasion. Policy implications for increasing people’s awareness of ethics on tax evasion are also highlighted. (shrink)

Mountaineering is a dangerous activity. For many mountaineers, part of its very attraction is the risk, the thrill of danger. Yet mountaineers are often regarded as reckless or even irresponsible for risking their lives. In this paper, we offer a defence of risk-taking in mountaineering. Our discussion is organised around the fact that mountaineers and non-mountaineers often disagree about how risky mountaineering really is. We hope to cast some light on the nature of this disagreement – and to argue (...) that mountaineering may actually be worthwhile because of the risks it involves. Section 1 introduces the disagreement and, in doing so, separates out several different notions of risk. Sections 2–4 then consider some explanations of the disagreement, showing how a variety of phenomena can skew people's risk judgements. Section 5 then surveys some recent statistics, to see whether these illuminate how risky mountaineering is. In light of these considerations, however, we suggest that the disagreement is best framed not simply in terms of how risky mountaineering is but whether the risks it does involve are justified. The remainder of the paper, sections 6–9, argues that risk-taking in mountaineering often is justified – and, moreover, that mountaineering can itself be justified by and because of the risks it involves. (shrink)

Cryonics is a technique for freezing dead bodies at very low temperatures in the hope they will be revived at some time in the future when medical technology becomes available. At present, there are no known revival methods; however, the role of innovation in medical practice leads certain individuals to hypothesize that death will be reversible in the future. While cryonics might resonate with certain questionable contemporary Western cultural themes of death denial and neoliberalism its uptake remains minuscule. Several (...) reasons may be pertinent. First cryonics does not fit with existing western cultural views of death and medicine. Second, poor marketing, prohibitive cost, and the lack of involvement with the funerary industry may be significant factors impacting poor intake. Third, the cryonics discourse around ideas of ‘death’ constructs a barrier that prevents ‘outsiders’ from relating to the task of cryonicists. Fourth, the general public may have a poor understanding of this technology. Finally, there may be religious objections and cultural reductions due to the lack of ritual and thus no possibility of memorializing the dead, which impacts the human appeal of cryonics. (shrink)

Cryonics is the preservation of legally dead human bodies at the temperature of liquid nitrogen in the hope that future technologies will be able to revive them. In philosophical debates surrounding this practice, arguments often focus on prudential implications of cryopreservation, or moral arguments on a societal level. In this paper, we claim that this debate is incomplete, since it does not take into account a significant relational concern about cryonics. Specifically, we argue that attention should be paid to (...) the potential implications of cryopreservation for the mourning processes of surviving loved ones. Cryopreservation increases the likelihood of disruption of the practical and mental tasks involved in a successful mourning process, which can negatively impact survivors of the cryopreserved patient. To illustrate my argument, we will draw on a case study from the 2019 documentaryHope Frozen. We aim to introduce this concern, in order to gain a more complete view on the potential implications of cryopreservation. (shrink)

This essay responds to the helpful criticisms of Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering, which have been offered by Elselijn Kingma, Adam Oliver, Anna Alexandrova, Alex Voorhoeve, Erik Nord and James Wilson. I am extremely grateful to Jonathan Wolf and especially James Wilson for arranging a one-day conference on my book, Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering [Hausman, D.. Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press.], and for publishing this symposium. I am also grateful to the wonderful (...) six scholars who took the time to study my work and to offer perceptive and helpful criticisms. Without unduly trying the patience of readers, I cannot respond to all their remarks, but I hope that in what follows I have replied to the most important of their comments on the arguments and conclusions of Valuing Health. Before I begin these replies, a brief synopsis of Valuing Health may be helpful to the reader. (shrink)

To tackle the fast-moving challenges of our age, law and policymaking must become more flexible, evolutionary and agile. Thus, in this Essay we examine ‘crowdlaw’, namely how city councils at the local level and parliaments at the regional and national level are turning to technology to engage with citizens at every stage of the lawand policymaking process. Aswe hope to demonstrate, crowdlaw holds the promise of improving the quality and effectiveness of outcomes by enabling policymakers to interact with a (...) broader public using methods designed to serve the needs of both institutions and individuals. crowdlaw is less a prescription for more deliberation to ensure greater procedural legitimacy by having better inputs into lawmaking processes than a practical demand for more collaborative approaches to problem solving that yield better outputs, namely policies that achieve their intended aims. However, as we shall explore, the projects that most enhance the epistemic quality of lawmaking are those that are designed to meet the specific informational needs for that stage of problem solving. (shrink)

While it is impossible to transfigurephilosophical and Judaic thought of EmmanuelLevinas into a moral agenda for education orthe programmatic regularities of a pedagogicalmethodology, this paper argues for theimportance of his work for re-openingeducational questions. These questions engagethe problem of what it could mean to livehistorically, to live within an uprightattentiveness to traces of those who haveinhabited times and places other than one'sown. In this sense, I address the problem ofremembrance as a question of and for history,as a force of inhabitation, (...) as an inheritance weare obligated to live within, that intertwineswith our sense of limits and possibilities,hopes and fears, identities and distinctions.Substantively, this problem is manifest in howone attends to the experiences of others: howone reads, how one views, and how one listens,always historically specific normalizedpractices that in any given epoch are ingrainedin what it means to live in consort withothers, to live as though the lives of otherpeople mattered. The paper seeks to display thefecundity of the thought of Levinas forre-thinking such issues. (shrink)

RESUMEN El siglo XXI ha visto el auge de la "filosofia ambiental", preocupada por problematizar la crisis ecológica global. En esta bibliografia quedan relegados los aportes de Félix Guattari, uno de los primeros en desarrollar una filosofia ambiental en su obra Las tres ecologías. Este artículo propone analizar el centro problemático de esta obra pionera. Asi, se insiste en la importancia de volver al texto original; de revisar sus temas principales en cada dominio ecosófico ; y de sostener su vigencia (...) incluso a la luz de la actual filosofia ambiental. Además, en este análisis se consideran los aciertos y los desaciertos de sus apuestas y pronósticos: es notable que su incumplida esperanza práctica contrasta con su agudo diagnóstico teórico. Este texto arguye que esta obra no solo resiste bien el paso del tiempo, sino que además cumple con el propósito de clarificar la actual catástrofe planetaria. ABSTRACT The 21st century has seen the rise of "environmental philosophy", concerned with the problematization of the global ecological crisis. In this bibliography, the contributions of Felix Guattari remain relegated -even when he should be acknowledged as one of the first to develop an environmental philosophy in his work The Three Ecologies-. This article proposes an analysis of the problematic center of this pioneering work. Thus, it insists on the importance of returning to the original text; of revising its main topics in each ecosophical domain ; and of upholding its relevance even in the light of current environmental philosophy. Furthermore, in this analysis, the successes and flaws of its wagers and forecasts are considered: it is of note that its unfulfilled practical hope contrasts with its sharp theoretical diagnosis. The present text argues that this work not only passes the test of time, but also fulfills the purpose of clarifying the current planetary catastrophe. (shrink)

Research over the past half century has produced extensive evidence that observers cannot report or retain all of the details of their visual world from one moment to the next. During the past decade, a new set of studies has illustrated just how pervasive these limits are. For example, early evidence for the failure to detect changes to simple dot patterns (Phillips, 1974) and arrays of letters (Pashler, 1988) generalizes to more naturalistic displays such as photographs and motion pictures (e.g., (...) Levin & Simons, 1997; Rensink, O’Regan, & Clark, 1997; see Rensink, 2002 for a recent review). This failure to report changes (change blindness) can be induced in both simple and naturalistic displays, whenever the change co-occurs with a visual disruption such as an eye movement (Currie, McConkie, Carlson-Radvansky, & Irwin, 1995; Hollingworth, Schrock, & Henderson, 2001), image shift (Blackmore, Brelstaff, Nelson, & Troscianko, 1995), flashed blank screen (Rensink et al., 1997), blink (O’Regan, Deubel, Clark, & Rensink, 2000), transient (O’Regan, Rensink, & Clark, 1999; Rensink, O’Regan, & Clark, 2000), movie cut or pan (Levin & Simons, 1997; Simons, 1996), or an occlusion event (Levin, Simons, Angelone, & Chabris, 2002; Simons & Levin, 1998). Change blindness can also occur in the absence of a disruption, provided the change occurs gradually enough that it does not attract attention (Simons, Franconeri, & Reimer, 2000). -/- Failures of visual awareness have been induced in a number of ways. For example, observers often fail to report a visible but unexpected stimulus when attention is focused on some other object or event in the display (inattentional blindness). As for change blindness, inattentional blindness occurs for both simple (Mack & Rock, 1998; Most et al., 2001) and naturalistic stimuli (Simons & Chabris, 1999). Similarly, repeated instances of an item often go undetected when embedded in a rapid sequence (repetition blindness), a phenomenon that occurs for both words and pictures (Kanwisher, 1987; Kanwisher & Potter, 1990). Observers can also fail to detect a stimulus in a rapid stream of stimuli provided they had to perform an attention-demanding task shortly before the stimulus appeared (Shapiro, Arnell, & Raymond, 1997). The surprisingly large variety of conditions that induce failures of conscious perception reinforces the broad conclusion that we are often unaware of what would otherwise be fully-visible stimuli. -/- Along with an increased appreciation of the limitations of visual awareness has come a renewed interest in using these limitations to explore the nature of the representations and processes underlying our visual experience. Are these limitations due to failures of perception? Of attention? Of memory? What is preserved with and without awareness? -/- The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Vision provide examples of exciting new work on induced failures of visual awareness and the mechanisms that underlie them. For example, several papers examine whether observers are drawn to parts of a display by the stimulus features or whether top-down control or semantic comprehension influence search through a display. Others investigate the nature of and limits on the information that is preserved from one view to the next and how much information needs to be retained for effective perception and action. As guest editors, we hope that this special issue will illustrate how studying the relationship between visual awareness and visual representations can lead to important new insights into the nature of seeing. (shrink)

As systems based on opaque Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to flourish in diverse real-world applications, understanding these black box models has become paramount. In response, Explainable AI (XAI) has emerged as a field of research with practical and ethical benefits across various domains. This paper not only highlights the advancements in XAI and its application in real-world scenarios but also addresses the ongoing challenges within XAI, emphasizing the need for broader perspectives and collaborative efforts. We bring together experts from diverse (...) fields to identify open problems, striving to synchronize research agendas and accelerate XAI in practical applications. By fostering collaborative discussion and interdisciplinary cooperation, we aim to propel XAI forward, contributing to its continued success. Our goal is to put forward a comprehensive proposal for advancing XAI. To achieve this goal, we present a manifesto of 27 open problems categorized into nine categories. These challenges encapsulate the complexities and nuances of XAI and offer a road map for future research. For each problem, we provide promising research directions in the hope of harnessing the collective intelligence of interested stakeholders. (shrink)

This article grows out of the conviction that (some) films can philosophise. It looks to juxtapose the film Dogtooth and Wittgenstein's builders' example, such that they are seen as philosophising in similar ways over similar issues. Both strike me as probing the possibility—or denial—of a future with language. Using Stanley Cavell and Rush Rhees' responses to Wittgenstein's builders, I register the significance and meaning of themes from the film and Wittgenstein's work in a mutually enlightening way: language, games and breaking (...) free. This results in two different pictures of our hope of a future in and with language. (shrink)