Vitalism

I consider whether a vitalist axiology, widely accepted in the African philosophical tradition, especially amongst religionists, can make adequate sense of evil, understood as what is bad in itself for a human’s life. I provide an important reason for thinking that it cannot, which African philosophers of religion and ethicists have yet to address. The reason is that a vitalist approach to evil must construe it as the reduction or other lack of vitality, while some evil conditions, such as pain (...) from lung cancer or from torture, cannot be adequately understood in those terms. Some bad states consist of the presence of an undesirable condition, indeed one that can be worse than death (qua cessation of all vitality), and not merely the absence of a desirable condition such as vitality. After replying to some responses on behalf of vitalism, I conclude that it cannot account fully for why evil might be a problem for God’s existence or for how to understand the quality of human life. (shrink)

The eminent French biologist and historian of biology, François Jacob, once notoriously declared “On n’interroge plus la vie dans les laboratoires”: laboratory research no longer inquires into the notion of ‘Life’. Nowadays, as David Hull puts it, “both scientists and philosophers take ontological reduction for granted… Organisms are ‘nothing but’ atoms, and that is that.” In the mid-twentieth century, from the immediate post-war period to the late 1960s, French philosophers of science such as Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon (...) returned to Jacob’s statement with an odd kind of pathos: they were determined to reverse course. Not by imposing a different kind of research program in laboratories, but by an unusual combination of historical and philosophical inquiry into the foundations of the life sciences (particularly medicine, physiology and the cluster of activities that were termed ‘biology’ in the early 1800s). Even in as straightforwardly scholarly a work as La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (1955), Canguilhem speaks oddly of “defending vitalist biology,” and declares that Life cannot be grasped by logic (or at least, “la vie déconcerte la logique”). Was all this historical and philosophical work merely a reassertion of ‘mysterian’, magical vitalism? In order to answer this question we need to achieve some perspective on Canguilhem’s ‘vitalism’, notably with respect to its philosophical influences such as Kurt Goldstein. (shrink)

We have been accustomed at least since Kant and mainstream history of philosophy to distinguish between the ‘mechanical’ and the ‘teleological’; between a fully mechanistic, quantitative science of Nature exemplified by Newton and a teleological, qualitative approach to living beings ultimately expressed in the concept of ‘organism’ – a purposive entity, or at least an entity possessed of functions. The beauty of this distinction is that it seems to make intuitive sense and to map onto historical and conceptual constellations in (...) medicine, physiology and the related natural -philosophical discussions on the status of the body versus that of the machine. In this presentation I argue that the distinction between mechanism and teleology is imprecise and flawed, on the basis of a series of examples: the presence of ‘functional’ or ‘purposive’ features even in Cartesian physiology; work such as that of Richard Lower’s on animal respiration; the fact that the model of the ‘body-machine’ is not at all a mechanistic reduction of organismic properties to basic physical properties but on the contrary a way of emphasizing the uniqueness of organic life; and the concept of ‘animal economy’ in vitalist medical theory, which I present as a kind of ‘teleo-mechanistic’ concept of organism – neither mechanical nor teleological. (shrink)

Bergsonian philosophy is not generally regarded as a true philosophy of biology. Bergson’s rejection of Darwinism, his silence on incipient genetics, and his unfortunate comparison of the movement of the élan vital with the duration of consciousness led Bergson to be considered at best an outdated philosopher, at worst an enemy of science. However, if there is one thing that Bergson’s Creative Evolution grasped, and offered to biology, it is an understanding of the processual nature of evolution and of its (...) consequences to conceive a causality that considers the efficacy of time in evolution. The aim of this chapter is to reassess Bergson’s philosophy of evolution to demonstrate its relevance for contemporary biology. First, I will study the relevance of Bergson’s epistemological critique of the theories of evolution under debate in his time. Then, I will provide an analysis of the concept of élan vital that will show its topicality to address some of the problems of contemporary biology. Finally, I will indicate the lessons that can be drawn from the élan vital for thinking of the causality at work in evolution. My purpose in this chapter is not only to show that the Bergsonian philosophy of life is not completely outdated, but it is to revaluate its importance in the history of biology and the philosophy of biology, while exploring the contemporary extensions of Bergsonian insights. (shrink)

Este Trabalho discute ações transgressoras didático-pedagógicas ao processo neocolonial no ambiente educacional formal, com o olhar à formação inicial, continuada e a pedagogia no chão da escola, inerentes à superação dos preconceitos, sutis ou não, ao fenótipo negro. Inicialmente rastreou-se, indício das boas práticas didático-pedagógicas, por uma revisão literária, ao se relacionar formação inicial continuada e práticas transgressoras de auto identificação étnico racial no chão da escola, ancorada externamente pelas lutas por uma sociedade e educação antirracistas. Importou sistematizar o processo (...) de silenciamento do fenótipo negro, indutor de subjetividades negras ainda escravizadas, por vezes simbolicamente, nos ambientes educacionais. Além de práticas didático-pedagógicas transgressoras, ao longo do tempo que apresentaram ou têm potencial para atenuação ou superação, segundo a literatura revisada do epistemicídio, conforme a amostragem considerada nos processos de auto identificação inicial e as possíveis identificações mais sólidas no longo prazo detectadas naquelas produções científicas levantadas. As discussões são precedidas pelos alicerces materiais e simbólicos do racismo estrutural, seguidos pelas ações inerentes à formação inicial e continuada, e práticas pedagógicas transgressoras ao neocolonialismo e racismo estrutural. Destaca-se a importância em divulgar os fazeres pedagógicos libertadores para um aquilombamento frente ao neocolonialismo. (shrink)

In the first half of the twentieth century the harshest critics of Hans Driesch’s vitalistic theory depicted it as an animistic view driven by metaphysical moods, while others merely saw it as a barren hypothesis. In the last decades the heuristic value of vitalistic principles was nevertheless suggested. In this chapter I examine the epistemic role of Driesch’s critical vitalism in the progress of embryology. I first show that it did not contribute to falsify mechanical explanations of development such as (...) Wilhelm RouxRoux, Wilhelm’s mosaic theory and Driesch’s own embryonic induction model. However, Driesch’s argumentation for vitalism led to the final formulation of the most challenging developmental explanandum of the twentieth century: the harmonious-equipotential system (HES). I point out how major explanans like Charles M. ChildChild, Charles M.’s metabolic gradients, Hans SpemannSpemann, Hans’s induction fields and Lewis Wolpert’s positional information were conceived as promising answers to Driesch’s problem. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a fresh historical perspective on the debates on vitalism and holism in Germany by analyzing the work of the zoologist Hans Spemann (1869–1941) in the interwar period. Following up previous historical studies, it takes the controversial question about Spemann’s affinity to vitalistic approaches as a starting point. The focus is on Spemann’s holistic research style, and on the shifting meanings of Spemann’s concept of an organizer. It is argued that the organizer concept unfolded multiple layers (...) of meanings (biological, philosophical, and popular) during the 1920s and early 1930s. A detailed analysis of the metaphorical dynamics in Spemann’s writings sheds light on the subtle vitalistic connotations of his experimental work. How Spemann’s work was received by contemporary scientists and philosophers is analyzed briefly, and Spemann’s holism is explored in the broader historical context of the various issues about reductionism and holism and related methodological questions that were so prominently discussed not only in Germany in the 1920s. (shrink)

Today vitalism is widely dismissed as a metaphysical heresy. For instance, Brigandt and Love (Reductionism in biology. In: Zalta EN (ed) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, 2017) claimed that “the denial of physicalism by vitalism, the doctrine that biological systems are governed by forces that are not physico-chemical, is largely of historical interest” (p. 3). Perhaps the most “infamous” vitalist is the German biologist Hans Driesch. However, Driesch (In Rádl E (ed) Actes du Huitième Congrès International de Philosophie a Prague (...) 2–7 septembre 1934. Comité d’Organisation du Congrès, Prague, pp 10–30, 1936) himself very explicitly stated that his vitalism is “neither ‘mysticism’[…]nor ‘metaphysics’” (p. 27). So, in order to address the mismatch between the present conception of vitalism and his own, I seek to offer a historico-logical re-assessment of Driesch’s vitalism. From the historical point of view, I show that Driesch had provided long ignored theoretical reflections on the nature of entelechy (the central concept in his vitalism), especially those in relation to evolution and physics. From the logical point of view, following logical empiricists (Phillipp FrankFrank, Philipp and Rudolf CarnapCarnap, Rudolf), I indicate that Driesch’s vitalism should be rejected due to its lack of vital laws, at least with respect to current biology; it is an unestablished theory rather than a metaphysical heresy. Ironically, some current theoretical biologists have proposed similar theories (or principles and laws) of life, even though they (incoherently) reject Driesch’s vitalism. In the end, I briefly conclude that the failure of vitalism actually alludes to the fact that even today we understand very little about the nature of life (I mean, the pure concept/phenomenon of life!) (While I cannot elaborate here, it is of extremely importance not to conflate knowledge about the pure concept/phenomenon of life and knowledge about objects predicatable of life (Ben-Naim, manuscript, p. 281). For instance, it is common among philosophers of biology today to cite elementary knowledge in a particular biological discipline as offering a better understanding of life. Yet their promise fails to be delivered. At best, they are merely relying on knowledge about objects predicatable of life (in most cases, merely knowledge about complex organizations of matter: about heredity, reproduction, development, metabolism, etc); but such knowledge has not been shown of any relevance to the pure concept/phenomenon of life). (shrink)

I will argue for anti-racist training in federal and state funded programs. In order to do so, I will begin by discussing recent events occurring in the United States that have challenged such training. I will analyze criticisms of anti-racist programs, focusing particularly on those that began with the Trump administration and continue today. I will then consider what is happening in response and as a result of these criticisms, as well as make some suggestions for what should happen going (...) forward. (shrink)

This chapter surveys Ernst CassirerCassirer, Ernst’s responses to the vitalist and holist/organicist movements in biology during the early decades of the twentieth century. I argue that examination of the combination of CassirerCassirer, Ernst’s enthusiasm for holism, and rejection of vitalism, puts into relief many themes and preoccupations that are consistent across CassirerCassirer, Ernst’s philosophical career, and aids the interpretation of his philosophy of symbolic forms. I propose that it is useful to read the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic (...) Forms as a critical response to anti-rationalistic tendencies in the philosophy of Henri BergsonBergson, Henri, and other proponents of Lebensphilosophie. Hence the availability of holism, as a purportedly less obscure alternative to vitalism, suits this broader agenda. At the same time, CassirerCassirer, Ernst’s acceptance of holism depends on a commitment to the autonomy of biology which is at odds with the physicalism of the Vienna Circle, but consistent with HeideggerHeidegger, Martin’s favourable response to holism in comparison with vitalism. Yet, in the end we are left with an interpretative puzzle about how CassirerCassirer, Ernst proposes to avoid the encroachment of physicalism into theorising in the biological and human sciences while maintaining his view that progress in science is the result of increasing quantification. (shrink)

Racism against Black people, Indigenous and other racialized people continues to exist in healthcare and academic settings. Racism produces profound harm to racialized people. Strategies to address systemic racism must be implemented to bring about sustainable changes in healthcare and academic settings. This quality improvement initiative provides strategies to address systemic racism and discrimination against Black nurses and nursing students in Ontario, Canada. It is part of a broader initiative showcasing Black nurses in action to end racism and discrimination. We (...) have found that people who have experienced racism need healing, support and protection including trauma-related services to facilitate their healing. Implementing multi-level, multi-pronged interventions in workplaces will create healthy work environments for all members of society, especially Black nurses who are both clients/patients and providers of healthcare. (shrink)

In general, historians of science and historians of ideas do not focus on critical appraisals of scientific ideas such as vitalism and materialism from Catholic intellectuals in eastern and southeastern Europe, nor is there much comparative work available on how significant European ideas in the life sciences such as materialism and vitalism were understood and received outside of France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Insofar as such treatments are available, they focus on the contributions of nineteenth century vitalism and materialism (...) to later twentieth ideologies, as well as trace the interactions of vitalism and various intersections with the development of genetics and evolutionary biology see Mosse (The culture of Western Europe: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Westview Press, Boulder, 1988, Toward the final solution: a history of European racism. Howard Fertig Publisher, New York, 1978; Turda et al., Crafting humans: from genesis to eugenics and beyond. V&R Unipress, Goettingen, 2013). English and American eugenicists (such as William Caleb Saleeby), and scores of others underscored the importance of vitalism to the future science of “eugenics” (Saleeby, The progress of eugenics. Cassell, New York, 1914). Little has been written on materialism qua materialism or vitalism qua vitalism in eastern Europe.The Czech and Slovene cases are interesting for comparison insofar as both had national awakenings in the middle of the nineteenth century which were linguistic and scientific, while also being religious in nature (on the Czech case see David, Realism, tolerance, and liberalism in the Czech National awakening: legacies of the Bohemian reformation. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2010; on the Slovene case see Kann and David, Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526-1918. University of Washington Press, Washington, 2010). In the case of many Catholic writers writing in Moravia, there are not only slight noticeable differences in word-choice and constructionMaterialismVitalism but a greater influence of scholastic Latin, all the more so in the works of nineteenth century Czech priests and bishops.In this case, German, Latin and literary Czech coexisted in the same texts. Thus, the presence of these three languages throws caution on the work on the work of Michael GordinGordin, Michael, who argues that scientific language went from Latin to German to vernacular. In Czech, Slovenian and Croatian cases, all three coexisted quite happily until the First World War, with the decades from the 1840s to the 1880s being particularly suited to linguistic flexibility, where oftentimes writers would put in parentheses a Latin or German word to make the meaning clear to the audience. Note however that these multiple paraphrases were often polemical in the case of discussions of materialismMaterialism and vitalismVitalism.In Slovenia Čas (Time or The Times) ran from 1907 to 1942, running under the muscular editorship of Fr. Aleš Ušeničnik (1868–1952) devoted hundreds of pages often penned by Ušeničnik himself or his close collaborators to wide-ranging discussions of vitalismVitalism, materialismMaterialism and its implied social and societal consequences. Like their Czech counterparts Fr. Matěj ProcházkaProcházka, Matěj (1811–1889) and Fr. Antonín LenzLenz, AntonínLenz, AntonínMaterialismLenz, AntonínMechanismLenz, AntonínDynamism (1829–1901), materialismMaterialism was often conjoined with "pantheism" and immorality. In both the Czech and the Slovene cases, materialismMaterialism was viewed as a deep theological problem, as it made the Catholic account of the transformation of the Eucharistic sacrifice into the real presence untenable. In the Czech case, materialismMaterialism was often conjoined with “bestiality” (bestialnost) and radical politics, especially agrarianism, while in the case of Ušeničnik and Slovene writers, materialismMaterialism was conjoined with “parliamentarianism” and “democracy.” There is too an unexamined dialogue on vitalismVitalism, materialismMaterialism and pan-Slavism which needs to be explored.Writing in 1914 in a review of O bistvu življenja (Concerning the essence of lifeLives) by the controversial Croatian biologist Boris ZarnikZarnik, Boris) Ušeničnik underscored that vitalismVitalism was an speculative outlook because it left the field of positive science and entered the speculative realm of philosophy. Ušeničnik writes that it was “Too bad” that ZarnikZarnik, Boris “tackles” the question of vitalismVitalism, as his zoological opinions are interesting but his philosophy was not “successful”. Ušeničnik concluded that vitalismVitalism was a rather old idea, which belonged more to the realm of philosophy and Thomistic theology then biologyBiology. It nonetheless seemed to provide a solution for the particular characteristics of lifeLives, especially its individualityIndividuality. It was certainly preferable to all the dangers that materialismMaterialism presented. Likewise in the Czech case, Emmanuel Radl (1873–1942) spent much of his lifeLives extolling the virtues of vitalismVitalism, up until his death in home confinement during the Nazi Protectorate. VitalismVitalism too became bound up in the late nineteenth century rediscovery of early modern philosophy, which became an essential part of the development of new scientific consciousness and linguistic awareness right before the First World War in the Czech lands. Thus, by comparing the reception of these ideas together in two countries separated by ‘nationality’ but bounded by religion and active engagement with French and German ideas (especially DrieschDriesch, Hans), we can reconstruct not only receptions of vitalismVitalism and materialismMaterialism, but articulate their political and theological valances. (shrink)

Vitalism has spent most of the twentieth century, and part of the twenty-first, being perhaps the most misunderstood and reviled philosophy of life, with organicism being a close second (on the latter see (Martindale 2013), although some theorists seek to drive a wedge between the two in favor of a ‘reasonable’, less ‘metaphysical’ position often associated with organicism (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). As a number of the essays in this collection point out (see especially the contributions by Donohue and Moir) (...) vitalism has been conjoined to fascism and the Nazi horrors, and has been reduced to a series of ahistorical propositions. As both Moir and Donohue emphasize, such associations require more study, but at the same time are fundamentally misleading. Nonetheless, the traditional association of vitalism and fascism as well as vitalism and pseudoscience (or anti-science, as Shmidt underscores) has been remarkably pervasive, and still operates. (shrink)

O presente texto tem como propósito, primeiramente, prescrutar a gênese e a particularidade do racismo no modo de produção capitalista, para revelar a conexão íntima existente entre a ideologia do racismo e a ascendência do capital monopolista. Num segundo momento, pretende-se observar como o racismo se constitui como mecanismo fundamental para operar a divisão interna da classe trabalhadora, em que o capital constitui uma espécie de “aristocracia operária” para intensificar suas desumanizações contra os seres humanos racializados. Por fim, justifica-se o (...) protagonismo das táticas combativas do racismo no contexto da predominância do capital mais fetichizado plasmado na história. A pesquisa tem como fundamento a teoria marxiana e as contribuições contrapostas ao racismo desenvolvidas por autores como Eric Williams, René Depestre, Augusto Buonicore, Demétrio Magnoli e Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. (shrink)

Law and racism are intertwined, with legal tools bearing the potential to serve as instruments of oppression or equity. This Special Issue explores this dual nature of health law, with attention to policing in the context of mental health, schools, and substance use disorders; industry and the environment in the context of food advertising, tobacco regulation, worker safety, and environmental racism; health care and research in the context of infant mortality, bias in medical applications of AI, and diverse inclusion in (...) research; and anti-racist teaching and practice in the context of building an interprofessional curriculum and medical-legal partnerships. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the role of ancient Greek medicine and philosophy in Georges Canguilhem’s analysis of vitalism at the intersection of history and philosophy in his essay “Aspects of Vitalism” in light of larger questions about the historicity of “life” as a concept in the history and philosophy of science and contemporary biopolitical theory. Vitalism, for Canguilhem, is not a proper object of the history of science. But nor is it a philosophy that exists outside of historical time. (...) I show how Canguilhem embeds vitalism both historically and trans-historically by threading each of its three “aspects” in the essay through ancient Greece. Canguilhem distinguishes his own understanding of both life and vitalism from that of the “classical” vitalists of the eighteenth century by refusing to read ancient Greece as romantically naïve or pre-technological and instead locating a dialectic between vitalism and mechanism already in antiquity. I argue for a critical re-reading of Canguilhem’s own conjunction of vitalism and Hellenism that resists its figuration of ancient Greece as the place where the human qua species first comes to take itself as an object of knowledge. I instead propose reading ancient Greek medical and philosophical texts that are read and reread in debates about the nature of human life and the life of Nature over millennia as part of a milieu that shapes how contemporary thinkers theorize life in the interest of human flourishing. (shrink)

This foreword explores the history of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and its role in promoting access to care and antiracism.

This article aims to show how the changes to NEPA by the Trump Administration are an act of environmental racism, defined as “[i]ntentional or unintentional racial discrimination in environmental policy‐making, enforcement of regulations and laws, and targeting of communities for the disposal of toxic waste and siting of polluting industries.”.

This article examines the race-thinking and colonial reasoning circulating in two recent developments in Canadian law with respect to polygamous marriage: the Polygamy Reference that upheld the Criminal Code provision on polygamy and the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. This legislation introduced changes to Canada’s immigration regulations, which include the practice of polygamy as a basis for refusing foreign applicants and deporting foreign nationals. I address how insights from the field of evolutionary psychology were applied in the Polygamy (...) Reference and what discursive and material resonances they had in the Zero Tolerance Act. Drawing on the work of Sylvia Wynter, I situate these judicial and legal developments in relation to violence, within colonial formations of state power, and as forces supporting white supremacy through the continuing valorization of monogamy as a foundational aspect of social and sexual citizenship in Canada. (shrink)

The research aims to explore the changes of national identity among Chinese international students in the odd social context of the global pandemic. By conducting semi-structured interviews with 10 Chinese undergraduate and postgraduate students in a prestigious university located in London, UK, the study provides evidence of Western neo-racism against Chinese students and the rise of Chinese nationalism. More significantly, it is found that Western neo-racism and Chinese nationalism have a push and pull effect on the national identity enhancement of (...) Chinese international students. The participants revealed that bottom-up popular nationalism is more than a shadow of top-down state nationalism in China, and is more influential on students’ national identity formation. The research also discusses the implications of these findings, limitations and future research directions. (shrink)

According to the current scientific paradigm, what we call ‘life’, ‘mind’, and ‘consciousness’ are considered epiphenomenal occurrences, or emergent properties or functions of matter and energy. Science does not associate these with an inherent and distinct existence beyond a materialistic/energetic conception. ‘Life’ is a word pointing at cellular and multicellular processes forming organisms capable of specific functions and skills. ‘Mind’ is a cognitive ability emerging from a matrix of complex interactions of neuronal processes, while ‘consciousness’ is an even more elusive (...) concept, deemed a subjective epiphenomenon of brain activity. Historically, however, this has not always been the case, even in the scientific and academic context. Several prominent figures took vitalism seriously, while some schools of Western philosophical idealism and Eastern traditions promoted conceptions in which reality is reducible to mind or consciousness rather than matter. We will argue that current biological sciences did not falsify these alternative paradigms and that some forms of vitalism could be linked to some forms of idealism if we posit life and cognition as two distinct aspects of consciousness preeminent over matter. However, we will not argue in favor of vitalistic and idealistic conceptions. Rather, contrary to a physicalist doctrine, these were and remain coherent worldviews and cannot be ruled out by modern science. (shrink)

According to the current scientific paradigm, what we call ‘life’, ‘mind’, and ‘consciousness’ are considered epiphenomenal occurrences, or emergent properties or functions of matter and energy. Science does not associate these with an inherent and distinct existence beyond a materialistic/energetic conception. ‘Life’ is a word pointing at cellular and multicellular processes forming organisms capable of specific functions and skills. ‘Mind’ is a cognitive ability emerging from a matrix of complex interactions of neuronal processes, while ‘consciousness’ is an even more elusive (...) concept, deemed a subjective epiphenomenon of brain activity. Historically, however, this has not always been the case, even in the scientific and academic context. Several prominent figures took vitalism seriously, while some schools of Western philosophical idealism and Eastern traditions promoted conceptions in which reality is reducible to mind or consciousness rather than matter. We will argue that current biological sciences did not falsify these alternative paradigms and that some forms of vitalism could be linked to some forms of idealism if we posit life and cognition as two distinct aspects of consciousness preeminent over matter. However, we will not argue in favor of vitalistic and idealistic conceptions. Rather, contrary to a physicalist doctrine, these were and remain coherent worldviews and cannot be ruled out by modern science. (shrink)

Preemption is a substantial threat to achieving racial equity. Since 2011, states have increasingly preempted local governments from enacting policies that can improve health and reduce racial inequities such as increasing minimum wage and requiring paid leave.

As several commentators and researchers have noted since late spring 2020, COVID-19 has laid bare the connections between entrenched structurally generated inequalities on one hand, and on the other hand relatively high degrees of susceptibility to contracting COVID-19 on the part of economically marginalized population segments. Far from running along the tracks of race neutrality, studies have demonstrated that the pandemic is affecting Black people more than Whites in the U.S.A. and U.K., where reliable racially-disaggregated data are available. While the (...) situation in Canada seems to follow the same pattern, race-specific data on COVID-19 are hard to come by. At present, there is no federal mandate to collect race-based data on COVID-19, though, in Ontario, at the municipal level, the City of Toronto has been releasing such data. This paper examines the entanglements of race, immigration status and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada with particular emphasis on Black immigrants and non-immigrants in Toronto, using multiple forms of data pertaining to income, housing, immigration, employment and COVID-19 infections and deaths. Our findings show that the pandemic has had a disproportionate negative impact on Black people and other racialized people in Toronto and, indeed, Canada. (shrink)

Does vitalism inherently imply a specific politics, and if so, what is it? In this chapter, I aim to offer at least some possible answers to this question by examining historical and contemporary discussions around the politics of vitalism. In so doing, I offer an account of what vitalism is as a set of scientific and philosophical ideas about the nature of life and its status as an object of study. It is precisely because vitalism is concerned with the question (...) of life that it implies political considerations from the get-go. However, some of the more problematic political consequences of what has often been referred to (sometimes erroneously or confusedly) as vitalism stem, I argue, from the attribution of vital powers to the non-living. This infusion of vitality into everything may seem egalitarian in its apparent levelling out of differences between forests, objects, spirits, the dead, and whole societies. Yet if everything is living, then the specificity of the living, the living itself, disappears. Whatever equality may or may not be purchased from this perspective, then, I argue that it can no longer properly be called vitalist. (shrink)

In his 1966 John Danz lectures, Francis H. C. Crick decried vitalism in the life sciences. Why did he do this three decades after most historians and philosophers of science regarded vitalism as dead? This essay argues that, by advocating the reduction of biology to physics and chemistry Crick was: (a) attempting to imbue the life sciences with greater prestige, (b) paving the way for bioengineering and the reduction of consciousness to molecules, and (c) trying to root out religious sentiment (...) in the life sciences. In service of these goals, Crick deployed vitalism as a straw man enemy. His wave of so-called vitalists in the middle of the twentieth century in fact raised legitimate questions regarding the relationship of organisms to their DNA molecules that Crick was ill-equipped to answer. Moreover, most were not vitalists at all but advocates for what I term bioexceptionalism—an argument for the methodological utility of keeping biological pursuits within their own domains, distinct from physics and chemistry, regardless of the ontological status of living things. Nevertheless, Crick’s status as a “cross-worlds influencer” entrenched a philosophically-enervated reductionism in the life sciences for decades. (shrink)

Mikhail Bakhtin’s 1926 essay, “Contemporary Vitalism,” includes Bergson alongside Driesch in a short list of “the most published representatives of vitalism in Western Europe,” and, indeed, Bakhtin’s critique of Driesch is intended to undermine what he calls the “conceptual framework” of “contemporary vitalism” as a whole (The crisis of modernism: Bergson and the vitalist controversy. Eds. Frederick Burwick and Paul Douglass. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992, p 81). The conceptual framework that Driesch and Bergson are supposed to have shared (...) in common consists at bottom, for Bakhtin, in the ontological commitment to the autonomy of life, “its independence, its disconnectedness from physical-chemical phenomena” (81). This has long been understood as the defining mark of vitalism, at least in the mind of its critics: the contention that matter and the mechanical models that track it are insufficient to the reality of biological forms, and that the explanation of life therefore requires the postulation of a non-mechanical, possibly immaterial, uniquely vital principle, force, substance, or property. Recent scholarship has made considerable headway in complicating these pictures by attending to earlier and subtler forms of materialism, and by distinguishing between different types of vitalism and drawing out the heuristic or scientific utility of some of them (Wolfe, Eidos 14: 212–235, 2011, Antropol Exp 17(13): 215–224, 2017; cf. Wolfe and Normandin, Vitalism and the scientific image in post-enlightenment life science, 1800–2010. Springer, Dordrecht, 2013). The focus of some of this work has been on the critical revaluation of Driesch himself (Bognon et al., Kairos J Philos Sci 20(1): 113–140, 2018). Yet the status of Bergson’s commitment to the existence of a vital principle remains underdeveloped. In the midst of what some are calling a “Bergson renaissance,” I think that it calls for the same kind of critical reappraisal (Ansell-Pearson, Bergson: thinking beyond the human condition. Bloomsbury, New York, 2018: 1; cf. Lundy, Deleuze’s Bergsonism. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, p 5, 2018). The aim of this paper is to attempt the outline of an answer to that call. I begin with a brief summary of Driesch’s vitalism, then I reconstruct Bergson’s underappreciated critique of internal finality, or what Kant called inner purposiveness, and locate in it a subterranean criticism of vital principles of the Drieschian variety as well. Two consequences follow: first, if Bergson is to be considered a vitalist, it cannot be in the Drieschian sense and we are therefore wrong to associate the two; and second, if Bergson is to be considered a vitalist, then his vitalism has to be understood—somewhat counterintuitively, and certainly contra Driesch—on the basis of a principle external to the ostensible individuality of biological forms. (shrink)

In the eyes of the biologist Jacques Monod, Bergson is “the most illustrious promoter of a metaphysical vitalism” revolting against rationality. This interpretation, not exclusive to Monod, is often accompanied by the accusation that Bergson’s vitalism would be teleological, and maybe even mystical – this last idea being reinforced by the success that Bergson receives among the spiritualists. This understanding of Bergsonian philosophy led to his disrepute among scientists. Even today, despite the renewed interest in Bergson’s reflections on science, he (...) is not considered a philosopher of science. And the popular (textbook) opinion is still that his élan vital is a spiritual principle at the origin of all living things and even of all reality: Bergson is considered a vitalist using biology to develop a spiritualist metaphysics, which makes him acceptable to philosophers but not to scientists. Yet, Bergson’s position is ambiguous. Even though he criticises the intellectualist paradigm of science, which he claims is unable to comprehend the living, and proposes a form of vitalism, the philosophy of Creative Evolution may be regarded as a true philosophy of biology. However, some texts make the status of his vitalism problematic, such as The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, in which the élan vital is integrated into a reflection on the divine. The aim of this paper is to disentangle what, in Bergson, can or cannot be considered as a philosophy relevant to science, by trying to clarify the label ‘vitalist’ that has so commonly been assigned to him, often pejoratively. This will involve examining the link between his vitalism and the spiritualism he has been credited with. Contrary to Olivier Perru who has proposed an excellent analysis of Bergson’s vitalism but focusing only on Creative Evolution, I will study his different works, to show that Bergson’s position shifts according to the subjects under study: before Creative Evolution, Bergson develops a form of spiritualism; in Creative Evolution, he proposes a form of vitalism that may not be clearly related to his spiritualism; finally, I argue that, in The Two Sources, the distinction is not so clear and that his vitalism itself may indeed become spiritualist. His spiritualism transforms according to his works and the meaning of his vitalism changes in return. I hypothesise that Bergson is a vitalist-opportunist: there are several forms of vitalism Bergson, that have neither the same ontological status nor the same function, according to the purpose of the moment. This is not to say that Bergson changes his theory completely. (shrink)

Resumo: O racismo, enquanto problema estrutural e estruturante de nossa sociedade, afeta-nos cotidianamente, de formas muito profundas e nem sempre visíveis. A modernidade é frequentemente associada a suas conquistas de independência político-econômica, no território europeu, mas dificilmente é associada a seus atos nefastos, que são condições sine qua non para seu surgimento. São eles o engendramento do capitalismo, da colonização e, portanto, do racismo. O presente artigo tem por objetivo analisar os modos a partir dos quais o racismo se faz (...) presente, em nossa sociedade, enquanto Sul Global e herdeira do sistema escravista. Sendo esses modos muito diversos e impossíveis de serem tratados de maneira completa, foram definidos aqui três eixos principais para abordá-los: 1) a colonialidade como base da modernidade, 2) a precarização da força de trabalho no neoliberalismo e 3) as imagens paradigmáticas e aprisionadoras da mulher negra, na sociedade brasileira. Para dar conta dessa proposta, fez-se uma análise comparativa e dialógica de elementos específicos das obras de Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe e Lélia Gonzalez. Dessa forma, o trabalho pretende mostrar que todos esses eixos se relacionam de modo não ocasional, mas repetitivos e sistemáticos, em torno das categorias de capital, raça e objetificação sexual.: Racism, as a structural and structuring problem in our society, affects us daily in very profound and not always sought ways. Modernity is associated with its achievements of political and economic independence in European territory, but it is hardly associated with its nefarious acts, which are sine qua non for its emergence. They are the engine of capitalism, colonization, and therefore racism. This article aims to analyze the ways in which racism is present in our society, as the Global South and heir to the slave system. Since these modes are very diverse and impossible to be fully addressed, three main axes have been defined to address them: 1) coloniality as the basis of modernity, 2) precarious workforce in neoliberalism and 3) paradigmatic images and imprisonment of black women in Brazilian society. To account for this proposal, a comparative and dialogical analysis of specific elements of the works of Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe and Lélia Gonzalez was carried out. In this way, the work intends to show that all these axes are related in an occasional way, but repetitive and systematic around the categories of capital, race and sexual objectification. (shrink)

The paper investigates the phenomenon of vitalism through the lens of vital normativity as expounded by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Georges Canguilhem. I argue that the two authors independently developed complementary critiques of the mechanical-behaviourist conception of life sciences, which culminated in a surprisingly similar notion of life construed as a normative (polarized) activity, i.e., an activity that is not indifferent to its own conditions of possibility. Such an alternative conception of life has far-reaching consequences for the epistemology of life sciences, (...) for it requires it to reconsider not only its object of inquiry - the nature of (the relationship between) an organism and its environment -, but also, since scientists themselves are living beings, the nature of its epistemic practices. What I call the truth of (a specific variety of) vitalism is thus reflected not only in how life is cognized, but also in how life cognizes (itself). This last point is of particular philosophical importance, as it paves the way towards a more dynamic conception of reflection (tentatively called ouroboric thought), which takes seriously that we, as cognizers of life, at the same time live the lives of cognizers. (shrink)

Este artículo es resultado de una investigación exploratoria acerca del pensamiento y la escritura de Carlos Huayquiñir Rain, periodista autodidacta que escribió respecto del pueblo mapuche entre la década de 1930 y 1960. Tiene como propósito analizar dos tópicos centrales que emergen de la prosa de Huayquiñir dispuesta en la prensa mapuche de los años referidos. Por un lado, el llamado a la instrucción y la educación de la niñez y la juventud mapuche realizado por el autor; por otro, su (...) lucha contra el racismo manifiesto en la prensa, los políticos y las instituciones escolares. El artículo nace de una investigación realizada en la Hemeroteca de la Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, más el trabajo en archivos privados y espera contribuir al conocimiento refrente a este autor mapuche. (shrink)

The health system is, in particular ways, a microcosm of society and both reflects and contributes to its ills of racism, inequities, and disparities. As such, the house of medicine is obligated to...

Racism is a complex problem in the US that is institutionalized, personally mediated, and internalized. Within medical education the recognition and response to structural racism is be...

En este trabajo se intentan mostrar algunas tensiones entre el discurso de la conservación, el multiculturalismo y los prejuicios racistas, tomando como punto de referencia el caso de los Montes de María en el Caribe colombiano, donde han tenido lugar proyectos de cooperación a propósito de la biodiversidad y existen iniciativas locales para su conservación. Se describen tres niveles en los que pueden encontrarse los prejuicios racistas en el discurso de la conservación, y las tensiones que los caracterizan, asociadas tanto (...) a las ideas de resistencia y de comunidad, como a la necesidad de corrección de las prácticas por parte de quienes habitan los bosques. El propósito de estas reflexiones es cuestionar el discurso de la conservación y el multiculturalismo para ampliar las perspectivas frente a las apuestas por la conservación y las luchas étnico-campesinas que se llevan a cabo en la alta montaña de los Montes de María, similares seguramente a otros casos en América Latina. (shrink)

Berger and Miller offer a strong argument for how cultural competence in medical education reinforces the racial structures that it purports to address. As social scientists with expertise i...

This article explores the affective dimension of resilient epistemological systems. Specifically, I argue that responsible epistemic practice requires affective engagement with nondominant experiences. To begin, I outline Kristie Dotson's account of epistemological resilience whereby an epistemological system remains stable despite counterevidence or attempts to alter it. Then, I develop an account of affective numbness. As I argue, affective numbness can promote epistemological resilience in at least two ways. First, it can reinforce harmful stereotypes even after these stereotypes have been rationally (...) demystified. To illustrate, I examine the stereotype of Black criminality as it relates to false confessions. Second, it can encourage “epistemic appropriation”, which I demonstrate by examining the appropriation of “intersectionality” and #MeToo by white culture. Finally, I conclude that resisting harmful resilience requires affective resistance, or efforts that target numbness via different kinds of affective engagement. I consider Kantian “disinterestedness” as a candidate. (shrink)

La evangelización es el resultado de la unión entre la libertad de expresión y la libertad religiosa. Al buscar convencer sobre la veracidad de sus creencias, puede constituir discursos de odio religioso, fomentar la intolerancia, la hostilidad y la discriminación contra minorías históricas y socialmente estigmatizadas. Algunas obras publicadas por líderes católicos y evangélicos fueron objeto de juicios, acusadas de promover el odio religioso mediante la demonización de los Candomblés, de las Umbandas y del Espiritismo. Las mismas surgen de los (...) imaginarios para concretizarse luego en violencias físicas y morales. Las crecientes prácticas de intolerancia religiosa desafían la laicicidad del Estado, y es en este marco que nos cuestionamos, respecto de las religiones afro-brasileñas: cuáles son los argumentos constitucionales presentados por el Supremo Tribunal Federal para no reconocer ni responsabilizar el discurso evangelizador de los cristianos que se manifiesta como discurso de odio; por qué los criterios constitucionalmente reconocidos para caracterizar el discurso de odio racial no fueron aplicados de manera coherente e íntegra en el juicio sobre evangelización y discurso de odio religioso; bajo qué argumentos el discurso de odio contra las religiones de matrices africanas puede ser considerado racismo religioso; qué otras dimensiones presenta el racismo religioso en la sociedad brasileña; cómo se manifiesta el racismo religioso en tanto apropiación cultural y racismo ambiental. (shrink)

Medicine often views hospice care as “giving up,” which results in a reduced quality of end-of-life care for many patients. By integrating a theology of the Sabbath with modern medicine, hospice becomes a sacred and valuable way to honor the dying patient in a comprehensive and holistic way. A theology of Sabbath as “Sacredness in Time” can provide the foundation for a shift in understanding hospice as a legitimate care plan, which shifts the focus from controlling and manipulating space for (...) the body, to rest and enjoyment of time for the whole person. First, I explore vitalism and its negative effects on the institution of hospice. Second, I address the main misconceptions and biases surrounding hospice in order to establish hospice as an appropriate option for the terminally ill. Finally, I argue for a shift away from sacredness in space (as seen in vitalism) to sacredness in time. (shrink)

This paper discusses the possible use of functional magnetic-resonance imaging as potentially useful in jury selection. The author suggests that neuro-voir could provide greater impartiality of trials than the standard voir, while also preserving existing privacy protections for jurors. He predicts that ability to image and understand a wide range of brain activities, most notably bias-apprehension and lie detection, will render neuro-voir dire invaluable. However currently, such neuro-solutions remain preliminary.

Has science already answered the fundamental questions about the concepts of Life, Cosmos and Evolution? Has science not relegated these fundamental questions by following up on more immediate, “useful” and practical endeavors that ultimately ensure that the wheel of capitalism keeps spinning in its frantic search for material and economic progress? There is something terribly wrong with the current theory of evolution, understood as the Darwinian theory with its successive versions and extensions. The concept of natural selection, the cornerstone of (...) Darwinism, is logically inconsistent. This has been demonstrated in some of my latest academic publications. The entire conceptual framework of Darwinism is inadequate. Organisms do not compete with each other for the survival of the fittest. The fundamental relationship in Nature is not competition or confrontation, but interconnectivity, complementarity, and relational meaningfulness. A new theory of evolution is necessary to explain how it is possible that organisms as simple as bacteria, protozoa and diatoms could have generated organisms as complex as primates, and among them, the human being, a being capable of feeling and thinking, of suffering and enjoying, a being capable of having ideals and purposes. A theory that explains how it is possible that this being so complex, rich, and to some extent still unknown, has emerged from a single cell, an egg-cell, lacking all the capacities, riches and depths of human existence. Such a theory already exists. (shrink)