An epochal archaeology of the labor power that has been cultivated in the human body over the last two thousand years. If Marx's opus Capital provided the foundational account of the forces of production in all of their objective, machine formats, what happens when the concepts of political economy are applied not to dead labor, but to its living counterpart, the human subject? The result is Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt's History and Obstinacy, a groundbreaking archaeology of the (...) labor power that has been cultivated in the human body over the last two thousand years. Supplementing classical political economy with the insights of fields ranging from psychoanalysis and phenomenology to evolutionary anthropology and systems theory, History and Obstinacy reaches down into the deepest strata of unconscious thought, genetic memory, and cellular life to examine the complex ecology of expropriation and resistance. First published in German 1981, and never before translated into English, this epochal collaboration between Kluge and Negt has now been edited, expanded, and updated by the authors in response to global developments of the last decade to create an entirely new analysis of "the capitalism within us.". (shrink)

Les chaînes privées allemandes ne sont pas vraiment réputées pour le niveau élevé des débats qu'elles diffusent; la surprise est d'autant plus grande pour le zappeur qui, aux alentours de minuit, tombe sur ce genre de phrases : « La superstition économique est un peu comme l'éventail des vertus bourgeoises » ou « Les solutions se trouvent toujours dans la rue, dans le trafic. » Aucun doute : il s'agit d'une des émissions culturelles les plus remarquables - au sens plein (...) du mot - d'Alexander Kluge. Kluge a trouvé en Joseph Vogl un partenaire idéal pour sa technique d'interview si caractéristique. Le résultat de cette passion commune, ce sont plus de 40 interviews télévisuelles qui renouvellent le genre en profondeur. La digression, maniée avec un talent particulier, n'y est jamais gratuite. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.1 (2003) 51-52 [Access article in PDF] Congress Considers Incentives for Organ Procurement Alexander S. Curtis [Tables]During the 108th Congressional session, several bills pertaining to ethical incentives for organ donation likely will be introduced. In some cases, they will be similar to bills before the 107th Congress (see Table 1). Bills in both the House of Representatives and the Senate address the establishment (...) and maintenance of donor registries, financial reimbursements for medical and nonmedical expenses incurred by qualifying donors, the presentation of commemorative medals, and tax credits.A bill entitled "Gift of Life Congressional Medal Act" (introduced last year by Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) as Senate Bill 325), and its corresponding bill of the same title (passed in the House of Representatives last year as H.R. 708), would establish a congressional commemorative medal honoring "any organ donor, or the family or family member of any organ donor." The medal is to be designed and struck with "suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions" by the Secretary of the Treasury. The eligible donor or donor's family member would be presented with the medal by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This bill would establish qualifying donations as those of human kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, pancreases, or any other organ, but excludes corneas and eyes.Another bill, introduced by Representative Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) entitled "Organ Donation Improvement Act" (H.R. 624), would award grants or contracts to states, transplant centers, and qualified organ procurement organizations for the purpose of providing travel, subsistence, and incidental nonmedical expenses to individuals who make living donations. In order to receive reimbursement, the donating individuals must reside in states other than the states in which the intended recipients reside and the annual income of those receiving the organs cannot exceed $35,000. The bill also would appropriate $15,000,000 to make grants to states and public and nonprofit entities for the purpose of carrying out studies, public education demonstrations, and outreach activities "designed to increase the number of organ donors within the state." The bill would be effective from time of enactment through 2005. [End Page 51]Two other bills proposed within the House of Representatives in 2002 called for amendment to the Internal Revenue Code. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act (introduced as H.R. 1872 by Representative James Hansen (R-UT)) and the "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" (introduced as H.R. 2090 by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ)) present a refundable credit to individuals or to the estates of those who agree either to be living donors or to donate their organs upon death. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act" refunds $10,000 to the estates of eligible individuals "for the taxable year which includes the date of the individual's death." The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" offers a refund of $2,500 to qualified persons. Donations of kidneys, livers, pancreases, islet cells, lungs, and intestines are accepted, however several conditions restrict permissible donors. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act" requires that the legally competent individual's death not be due to a suicide and that the intention to donate was clearly declared. The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" prohibits donations from individuals who were killed with physician assistance, died as a result of a suicide, have been indicted or convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor offense, or are actively under criminal investigation for a possible felony offense. The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" also restricts procuring organs from unborn children or human fetuses and under circumstances in which the living donor would be subject to "unacceptable levels of medical risk of death or permanent debilitation." Alexander S. Curtis is a research assistant at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He received his bachelor's degree from Miami University.... (shrink)

Most of these eight essays on contemporary figures were given as lectures or speeches between 1990 and 1996. A piece on Ernst Cassirer’s humanistic legacy gives the collection its title, but the other subjects treated are far-ranging: Karl Jaspers on the clash of religious cultures, Georg Henrik von Wright’s noncognitive ethics, Gershom Scholem’s magisterial biography of the kabbalist Sabbatai Sevi, Karl-Otto Apel’s hermeneutics, Johann Baptist Metz on the Jewish element in Christianity, Michael Theunissen on the relation of negative theology to (...) social theory, and a review of the work of script writer and film director Alexander Kluge. Habermas unifies this panoply by his fascination with the transformation of the modern West’s key symbols through their confrontation with other cultures. Prime among these symbols are language and religious doctrines, especially Christian and Jewish. When he examines this general theme in particular cases, Habermas first presents an exposé of a thinker, then raises critical questions, and finally points out insights of enduring significance. One decided advantage of his method is its attention to clarity and organization. Probably because these essays were originally delivered orally, they never leave the reader in doubt as to what topics they will handle and when each is being taken up. (shrink)

"The fundamental ambiguity of the scholastic universes and all of their productions … lies in the fact that their apartness from the world of production is both a liberatory break and a disconnection, a potentially crippling separation." "Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations1" "The public sphere is in this scene what one might call the factory of politics—its site of production." "Alexander Kluge, “On Film and the Public Sphere”2"In political and cultural theory today, all roads seem to lead through (...) the public sphere. In an era of apparent political regression and economic decline, grand pronouncements of radical…. (shrink)

This book presents new findings that deal with different facets of the well-being of children and their relevance to the proper treatment of children. The well-being of children is considered against the background of a wide variety of legal, political, medical, educational and familial perspectives. The book addresses diverse issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives using a variety of methods. It has three major sections with the essays in each section loosely organized about a common general theme. The first (...) section focuses on issues concerning the relation between children’s well-being and autonomy or agency. The second section deals with child well-being insofar as the limits of parental authority are concerned. The third section has a more applied orientation and addresses a variety of public policy controversies involving the interpretation of children’s well-being. (shrink)

Fairness preferences fundamentally affect individual behavior and play an important role in shaping social and political institutions. However, people differ both with respect to what they view as fair and with respect to how much weight they attach to fairness considerations. In this article, we study the role of family background in explaining these heterogeneities in fairness preferences. In particular, we examine how socioeconomic background relates to fairness views and to how people make trade-offs between fairness and self-interest. To study (...) this, we conducted an economic experiment with a representative sample of 14- to 15-year-old and matched the experimental data to administrative data on parental income and education. The participants made two distributive choices in the experiment. The first choice was to distribute money between themselves and another participant in a situation where there was no difference in merit. The second choice was to distribute money between two other participants with unequal merits. Our main finding is that there is a systematic difference in fairness view between children from low-socioceconomic status families and the rest of the participants; more than 50 percent of the participants from low-SES families are egalitarians, whereas only about 20 percent in the rest of the sample hold this fairness view. In contrast, we find no significant difference in the weight attached to fairness between children from different socioeconomic groups. (shrink)

In The LEGO Movie, Vitruvius's notion of the "The Special" introduces what will be a central motif for the film. As it turns out, the one who finds this "Piece of Resistance" is not quite the hero he was expected to be. Emmet Brickowoski, a construction worker, will find this "Piece of Resistance". Throughout the film, others suggest to Emmet both implicitly and explicitly that he brings nothing of value to any particular individual or to society, and that (...) consequently he himself has no value. If one interpret The LEGO Movie as being driven by Emmet's quest for discovering his value, the real philosophical turning point in the film is not when Emmet's double‐decker couch permits the Master Builders to escape from the sinking submarine and they realize that Emmet's ideas actually are useful. Rather, it is when Emmet realizes their approval is irrelevant to his value. (shrink)

When young children confront a vast array of adults' testimonial claims, they should decide which testimony to endorse. If they are unable to immediately verify the content of testimonial assertions, children adopt or reject their informants' statements on the basis of forming trust in the sources of testimony. This kind of trust needs to be based on some underlying reasons. The rational choice theory, which currently dominates the social, cognitive, and psychological sciences, posits that trust should be formed on a (...) rational basis, as a result of probabilistic assessments and utility‐maximizing calculations. In this paper, the predictions stemming from the rational choice approach to trust are systematically compared with the empirical evidence from the field of developmental psychology on how children establish their trust in testimonial statements. The results of this comparison demonstrate an obvious inadequacy of the rational choice explanation of the emergence and development of children's testimonial trust, regardless of which form of trust rationality—weighting, threshold, or ordering—is examined. As none of the three forms of rationality of children's trust in testimony squares with the empirical data, this paper introduces a new version of trust rationality, adaptively rational trust. It explores the compatibility of the concept of adaptively rational trust with the recent empirical findings in the area of developmental psychology and addresses some avenues for future research on the rationality of testimonial trust. (shrink)

Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much m advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his act DEGREES from an impersonal point of view.... It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that while he (...) is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. Herbert S. (shrink)

This paper provides critical insights into the inclusion of sexual minorities in Flemish fictional TV shows aimed at children. Narratives including LGBT+ characters and non-normative gender performances have gained presence, and especially Nordic and Dutch productions have been acknowledged for their inclusive storytelling. Following up on this premise, our study analyzes five Flemish programs aimed at children aged six to twelve, which all include at least one character who identifies as LGBT+. Our analysis concludes that Flemish children’s productions show a (...) visible willingness to include diversified and inclusive storytelling. However, the assimilationist venture of minimizing the ‘otherness’ of non-heterosexual characters has led to a rather homogenous and normative portrayal of these characters. More stereotypical representations like frivolous singing hairdressers have now been replaced by rather heteronormative and gender-conforming characters. Not confining representations to either end of the spectrum are a necessity if Flemish children’s television wants its audience to understand the diversified range of sexual and gender identities. (shrink)

With Walter Benjamin's notion of the optical unconscious as its starting point, this monograph develops a theory of the acoustical unconscious that refers both to the broadening of acoustic apperception via radio and film, and to a particular mode.

How does age matter to moral responsibility and criminal liability? Almost no one thinks that a 3-year old is morally responsible for what she does. No one would think an 8-year old should be held criminally liable for engaging in illegal criminal action—even for something seriously harmful such as intentionally setting fire to a building or badly harming another child. Something else should happen, certainly, but not criminal prosecution and conviction and State punishment. And that’s true even if we might (...) start to think that the 8-year old can be morally responsible, or at least somewhat morally responsible, for what she does. Disagreement might start to enter in as the age increases. What do we think of a 12-year old? A 15-year old? A 17-year old? Gideon Yaffe’s excellent book, The Age of Culpability, is focused on the question of why children—for these purposes, all people under the chronological age of 18—should be given a break, legally speaking, and why this should be done categorically. Yaffe argues that the fact that no one under 18 is eligible to vote is a key part of the explanation. In this paper, I raise two objections to Yaffe’s account. In particular, I raise several questions about the details of Yaffe’s account regarding what it is to “have a say over the law” and the way in which this makes a difference to criminal culpability. (shrink)

The relevance of the research is due to the interest of modern science in the successful experience of comprehending social reality and of social forecasting in forms nontrivial for systematic rational thinking. T topic is especially important in the context of global instability, in which human civilization has been living for the last decades. The main question is the possible existence of a critical philosophy in terms of the ideological pressure of the Soviet period. The author substantiates the hypothesis that (...) children’s literature could be a form of free development of philosophical thinking, permissible in these circumstances. The research is of practical value to humanities scholars studying Soviet and post-Soviet period Russian culture, literature, philosophy, regardless of their theoretical and ideological orientations, since it examines the philosophical aspects in the works by the Soviet children’s writer Nikolai Nosov, author of trilogy about Dunno (rus. Neznajka), and not well-known abroad. The article justifies the opinion that Nosov’s creative heritage is underestimated both in Russian and foreign humanities and not sufficiently analyzed. Through the analysis of N. Nosov’s texts, undertaken by Russian and foreign scholars and publicists (among which L. Abdel-Rahim and L. Karawan deserve a special mention), implicit social and philosophical ideas are revealed, and the basic social forecasting is determined in relation to the society of ‘developed socialism’. Marxist philosophy had a significant impact on N. Nosov’s worldview; however, the writer is alien to the ideological blinders of the dominant forms of Soviet philosophy. Nosov’s Marxism in the form of popular ‘children’s’ discourse suddenly finds itself able to effectively implement critical and prognostic function of philosophy. Being decades ahead of Soviet ideologists and philosophers in this respect, N. Nosov convincingly showed the problem nature of ‘developed socialism’. An important diagnosis of this society and a forecast for its future is possible ‘breakdown’ of the historical process (despite scientific and technical achievements) due to the insufficient level of culture and consciousness, the immaturity of social relations. (shrink)

Previous research has established that goal tracking emerges early in the first year of life and rapidly becomes increasingly sophisticated. However, it has not yet been shown whether young children continue to update their representations of others’ goals over time. The current study investigates this by probing young children’s ability to differentiate between goal directed actions that have been halted because the goal was interrupted, and because the goal was abandoned. To test whether children are sensitive to this distinction, we (...) manipulated the experimenter’s reason for not completing a goal-directed action - his initial goal is either interrupted by an obstacle, or it is abandoned in favour of an alternative. We measure whether children’s helping behaviour is sensitive to the experimenter’s reason for not completing his goal-directed action by recording whether they complete the experimenter’s initial goal or the alternative goal. The results showed that children helped complete the experimenter’s initial goal significantly more often after this goal had been interrupted than after it had been abandoned. These results support the hypothesis that children continue to update their representations of others’ goals over time by the age of two, and specifically that they differentiate between abandoned and interrupted goals. (shrink)

The main purpose of our paper consists in establishing the idea that the negative consequences that result from child poverty can be mitigated if the government and social workers promote the resilience of poor children. We use Amartya Sen’s capability approach as an evaluative framework to argue for this thesis. By distinguishing different sources of vulnerability we assume that children are inherently vulnerable, because they are dependent and in need of care. Poor children are, however, even more vulnerable in specific (...) ways. Following Catriona Mackenzie, we call these vulnerability “pathogenic”; they are caused by social arrangements like institutional settings. We claim that at least some of those vulnerabilities can and should be diminished by promoting children’s resilience. We proceed in three steps. In the first part of the paper, we develop our concept of vulnerability and explain how child poverty renders children vulnerable to specific harms. Here we also introduce the capability approach by asking which capabilities children need for coping with this situation. In part two we argue that the concept of resilience helps us to understand why capabilities are relevant for coping with the adverse effects of child poverty. We claim that promoting the capabilities of children is a matter of justice, and that implementing resilience is, too. It is also highly important to see that promoting resilience is mainly a social matter, not a task the individual child has to fulfil on its own. Hence, we argue that children are entitled to gain those capabilities that promote their resilience against the adverse effects of poverty. In part three we discuss several difficulties of our account, such as the danger that children will be burdened with coping with the effects of poverty instead of society fighting poverty. (shrink)

For two million years, members of Homo sapiens (and the species from which it emerged) have shaped to their purpose almost everything they found in nature. Yet we are still reproducing by sex. This is a poor method of conceiving human beings, because it surrenders many of the future child’s characteristics to luck. Both parents and children are better off the more parents control their children’s genotypes. The emerging technologies that enable this do not reduce free will and will not (...) eliminate human characteristics (such as certain forms of “mental illness”) that are worth preserving; rather, they will match types of children to parents who can appreciate them. Technological reproduction, not reproduction by sex, should be regarded as truly human. It is the application of the power of thought to human reproduction, and, like the application of that power to external objects and to memes, it will enhance our capacities. (shrink)

Previous research has established that goal tracking emerges early in the first year of life and rapidly becomes increasingly sophisticated. However, it has not yet been shown whether young children continue to update their representations of others’ goals over time. The current study investigates this by probing young children’s (24-30 months old) ability to differentiate between goal directed actions that have been halted because the goal was interrupted, and because the goal was abandoned. To test whether children are sensitive to (...) this distinction, we manipulated the experimenter’s reason for not completing a goal-directed action - his initial goal is either interrupted by an obstacle, or it is abandoned in favour of an alternative. We measure whether children’s helping behaviour is sensitive to the experimenter’s reason for not completing his goal-directed action by recording whether they complete the experimenter’s initial goal or the alternative goal. The results showed that children (n = 24) helped complete the experimenter’s initial goal significantly more often after this goal had been interrupted than after it had been abandoned. These results support the hypothesis that children continue to update their representations of others’ goals over time by the age of two, and specifically that they differentiate between abandoned and interrupted goals. (shrink)

The growing support for voluntary active euthanasia is evident in the recently approved Dutch Law on Termination of Life on Request. Indeed, the debate over legalized VAE has increased in European countries, the United States, and many other nations over the last several years. The proponents of VAE argue that when a patient judges that the burdens of living outweigh the benefits, euthanasia can be justified. If some adults suffer to such an extent that VAE is justified, then one may (...) conclude that some children suffer to this extent as well. In an attempt to alleviate the suffering of extremely ill neonates, the University Medical Center Groningen developed a protocol for neonatal euthanasia. In this article, I first present the ethical justifications for VAE and discuss how these arguments relate to euthanizing ill neonates. I then argue that, even if one accepts the justification for VAE in adults, neonatal euthanasia cannot be supported, primarily because physicians and parents can never accurately assess the suffering of children. I argue that without the testament of the patient herself as to the nature and magnitude of her suffering, physicians can never accurately weigh the benefits and burdens of a child’s life, and therefore any such system would condemn to death some children whose suffering is not unbearable. I conclude that because the primary duty of physicians is to never harm their patients, neonatal euthanasia cannot be supported. (shrink)

Institutional and individual stigmatization represent major barriers that prevent children with disabilities from accessing education. It can be presumed that children with disabilities are labeled as such even in inclusive educational settings and that teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education and children with disabilities play a crucial role in this context. Against this background, the present study aims to apply and conceptualize the mixed-blessings model in the context of stigma-related reactions to children’s disability labels in inclusive education and shed light on (...) the causal attributions of teachers that underlie stigma-related attitudes toward children with various disabilities. A 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 online experiment examined the ways in which disability-specific causes and symptoms, the type of disability in question, the children’s sex, and efficacy cues regarding educational efforts affect future teachers’ attitudes toward and expectations of inclusive education as well as their social distance toward children with disabilities. The participants in this experiment were N = 605 German student and trainee teachers representing different types of teaching professions. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that, in particular, the cause attributed to the disability, the depicted type of disability and the probability of learning success led to changes in attitudes. Respondents’ teaching self-efficacy and their status as students or trainees emerged as moderators of the effect of pupils’ type of disability. As a result, teacher education and training as well as communication regarding pupils with disabilities require a high degree of sensitivity to disability-specific and efficacy-related cues to prevent professional or institutional stigmatization. (shrink)

Many have invoked the nihilism that is endemic of the age we call the anthropocene. Bernard Stiegler has articulated this sentiment by highlighting how anthropocene films are typically nihi listic, for example, Von Trier’s Melancholia. But if the age is characterized by a cultural pessi mism about the future of human kind, or again about its posthuman supersession, there is also a complementary symptom that corresponds to a strange optimism before the impasses of our age. This optimism, we find it (...) represented in another anthropocene film: Nolan’s Interstellar. This too is a film where the protagonists are faced with a world lacking a future, a world dying under the stresses caused by the human’s exploitation of nature. Here, instead of the mantra ‘Enjoy it while it lasts’, an opposing moral is repeated: ‘Don’t go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ In the film, Thomas’ poem is a tribute to prometheanism; the death of the earth will not mean the end of human life, it declares, the human will surpass all the limits of its ecosystem, the constraints of space time itself, and become pure hyperdimensional intelligence. The film echoes the superstitious optimism in the promise of technology we now find at the heart of contemporary movements such as accelerationism. This paper assesses the validity of this intrumentalization of optimism, drawing from Leibniz’s concept of compossibility and the cosmological anthropic principle. (shrink)

Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria aggressively foregrounds a term from the discourse of psychoanalysis, now a relic of twentieth-century philosophical and psychological thought, with which to negot...

In this article I examine Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1962 film Ivan’s Childhood. The film tells a story about a twelve-year old Russian boy, whose family was killed by the Germans at the onset of WWII. Orphaned and dispossessed, Ivan began to scout for the Soviet troops. Eventually, he was captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo. Using a wide gamut of mythopoetic “articulations,” in this film, Tarkovsky shows how Ivan’s victimization affected him beyond repair, leading to the erosion (...) of his child identity and the emergence of a traumatic duality. The film therefore is not only a poignant condemnation of the war, but a disclosure of the victim phenomenon carried out by mythopoetic means. In my analysis of Ivan’s Childhood, I approach this phenomenon by focusing on the effects of trauma on the child, with a special emphasis on dreaming. For my theoretic, I employ the phenomenology of the child. (shrink)

          Despite the fact that the strength of argument is clearly on the pro-life side—nobody except a handful of academics would question the grave wrongness of abortion were pregnancy never inconvenient—somehow ordinary intelligent people, like our students, often remain unconvinced. There are many reasons for this, of course. For instance, a number of students have had their children aborted while many know others who have had abortions, and one does not want (...) to condemn oneself or oneÂ’s friends. I am a philosopher, however, and so I will be interested in intellectual reasons, even though these subjective psychological ones are almost surely more important. Specifically, I will be interested in the fact that the ordinary person subscribes to a number of erroneous big-picture ethical beliefs, each of which, to a different degree, does something to block access to the pro-life arguments. I will not talk about all such erroneous beliefs and I would be grateful in the discussion for more examples.           I will talk about eight errors I have identified, largely through teaching. For each one, I will identify the error, show how it impacts the pro-life message and explain why it is tempting to most of us —there is, after all, something right about five of the errors. For each of these errors is one that we might ourselves be tempted by on occasion. I will then suggest some ways of refuting the error. In some cases, the mere identification of the error should do the trick, as these erroneous beliefs are often not explicitly identified by our interlocutors. My suggested refutations will not always be phrased in the way in which I would phrase them for didactic effectiveness: in this talk, I am mainly trying to convey ideas. (shrink)

BackgroundDecision-making in initiating life-sustaining health technology is complex and often conducted at time-critical junctures in clinical care. Many of these decisions have profound, often irreversible, consequences for the child and family, as well as potential benefits for functioning, health and quality of life. Yet little is known about what influences these decisions. A systematic review of reasoning identified the range of reasons clinicians give in the literature when initiating technology dependence in a child, and as a result helps determine the (...) range of influences on these decisions.MethodsMedline, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Web of Science, ASSIA and Global Health Library databases were searched to identify all reasons given for the initiation of technology dependence in a child. Each reason was coded as a broad and narrow reason type, and whether it supported or rejected technology dependence.Results53 relevant papers were retained from 1604 publications, containing 116 broad reason types and 383 narrow reason types. These were grouped into broad thematic categories: clinical factors, quality of life factors, moral imperatives and duty and personal values; and whether they supported, rejected or described the initiation of technology dependence. The majority were conceptual or discussion papers, less than a third were empirical studies. Most discussed neonates and focused on end-of-life care.ConclusionsThere is a lack of empirical studies on this topic, scant knowledge about the experience of older children and their families in particular; and little written on choices made outside ‘end-of-life’ care. This review provides a sound basis for empirical research into the important influences on a child’s potential technology dependence. (shrink)

The German filmmaker Alexander Kluge has long promoted cinema's relationship with the goals of human emancipation. Jean-Luc Godard and Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik also believe in cinema's ability to bring about what Theodor W. Adorno once called a "redeemed world." Situating the films of Godard, Tahimik, and Kluge within debates over social revolution, utopian ideals, and the unrealized potential of utopian thought and action, Christopher Pavsek showcases the strengths, weaknesses, and undeniable impact of their utopian visions on (...) film's political evolution. He discusses Godard's _Alphaville_ against _Germany Year 90 Nine-Zero_ and _JLG/JLG: Self-portrait in December _, and he conducts the first scholarly reading of _Film Socialisme_. He considers Tahimik's virtually unknown masterpiece, _I Am Furious Yellow_, along with _Perfumed Nightmare_ and _Turumba_ ; and he constructs a dialogue between Kluge's _Brutality in Stone_ and _Yesterday Girl_ and his later _The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time_ and _Fruits of Trust_. (shrink)

This unique book brings together international scholars from around the globe to examine how different feminist theories are being used in early childhood research, policy and pedagogy. The array of feminist discourses captured by the authors offer contextualised possibilities for disrupting dominant patriarchal beliefs and producing change. The authors address and challenge how early childhood experiences, institutions and practices produce gendered effects across and within diverse contexts and demonstrate how feminism(s) in action can be used to reconceptualise research methods, government (...) policy, children's learning, teaching practice and educational resources. In this way, the book contributes to creating new knowledge connections and community alliances in the global effort to end gender-based inequalities across local and global communities. (shrink)

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has led to heightened moral distress among healthcare providers. Despite evidence of gendered differences in experiences, there is limited feminist analysis of moral distress. Objectives: To identify types of moral distress among women healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic; to explore how feminist political economy might be integrated into the study of moral distress. Research Design: This research draws on interviews and focus groups, the transcripts of which were analyzed using framework analysis. Research Participants and Context: 88 (...) healthcare providers, based in British Columbia Canada, participated virtually. Ethical Considerations: The study received ethical approval from Simon Fraser University. Findings: Healthcare providers experienced moral dilemmas related to ability to provide quality and compassionate care while maintaining COVID-19 protocols. Moral constraints were exacerbated by staffing shortages and lack of access to PPE. Moral conflicts emerged when women tried to engage decision-makers to improve care, and moral uncertainty resulted from lack of clear and consistent information. At home, women experienced moral constraints related to inability to support children’s education and wellbeing. Moral conflicts related to lack of flexible work environments and moral dilemmas developed between unpaid care responsibilities and COVID-19 risks. Women healthcare providers resisted moral residue and structural constraints by organizing for better working conditions, childcare, and access to PPE, engaging mental health support and drawing on professional pride. Discussion: COVID-19 has led to new and heightened experiences of moral distress among HCP in response to both paid and unpaid care work. While many of the experiences of moral distress at work were not explicitly gendered, implicit gender norms structured moral events. Women HCP had to take it upon themselves to organize, seek out resources, and resist moral residue. Conclusion: A feminist political economy lens illuminates how women healthcare providers faced and resisted a double layering of moral distress during the pandemic. (shrink)

Background There is considerable variation in the functionality of bioethical services in different institutions and countries for children in hospital, despite new challenges due to increasing technology supports for children with serious illness and medical complexity. We aimed to understand how bioethics services address bioethical concerns that are increasingly encountered in paediatric intensive care. Methods A qualitative descriptive design was used to describe clinician’s perspectives on the functionality of clinical bioethics services for paediatric intensive care units. Clinicians who were members (...) of formal or informal clinical bioethics groups, or who were closely involved with the process of working through ethically challenging decisions, were interviewed. Interviews took place online. Resulting transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Results From 33 interviews, we identified four themes that described the functionality of bioethics services when a child requires technology to sustain life: striving for consensus; the importance of guidelines; a structure that facilitates a time-sensitive and relevant response; and strong leadership and teamwork. Conclusions Clinical bioethics services have the potential to expand their role due to the challenges brought by advancing medical technology and the increasing options it brings for treatment. Further work is needed to identify where and how bioethics services can evolve and adapt to fully address the needs of the decision-makers in PICU. (shrink)

Should arts education have a more significant place in our schools? An emphatic "Yes" comes from the editors and other contributors to this provocative volume. They build their case by drawing upon recent developments in cognitive theory and, in particular, upon contemporary thought regarding aesthetic knowing. They contend that aesthetic knowing constitutes a "special mode of cognition" and they see aesthetic learning as vital to intellectual growth and development. They argue that the arts should "constitute a foundational school subject." An (...) opening chapter reviews past practices in education in the arts, thus providing a needed historical context within which current thinking about aesthetic learning can be viewed. The following chapters elaborate on the idea and value of aesthetic knowing from various perspectives to buttress the case for its importance in education. Developmental issues are explored to deepen understanding of the nature of aesthetic growth. Studies reveal that children's art products have not changed over the years. But how has a cognitive perspective changed the way in which child art is interpreted? Can phases in general aesthetic development be identified? Or are such phases specific to each art form? What pedagogical issues arise in education in the arts? How are conceptual learnings important to the development of aesthetic understanding? Does the study of fine arts enrich the quality of life and shape human personality in positive ways. Given the long history of arts education as a peripheral matter in schools, is it now possible to envision a greater recognition of what study of the arts can accomplish by a proper focus on aesthetic knowing? These are some of the questions addressed in a volume that provides stimulating reading not only for arts educators but for all who are genuinely concerned about education. (shrink)

This article is designed to disclose the meaning of sacrifice as it is depicted in Andrey Tarkovsky’s film The Sacrifice. The film tells about a former classical actor named Alexander who in the face of the nuclear Apocalypse discovers his true calling – saving humanity from imminent destruction. In order to accomplish his calling, he has to sacrifice his “life”, exchanging it for peace that comes about as a reversal of time which happens in response to his (...) prayer to God as well as his intimate encounter with the local witch. The analysis of the film’s narrative imagery is carried out with Jacques Derrida whose essays on gift, name, and language demonstrate the uniqueness of the film maker’s vision of absolute duty and the call of conscience that restores the true faith in the soul of modern man at the time of the ultimate horror. (shrink)

In their thought-provoking paper, Legg and Hutter consider a certain abstrac- tion of an intelligent agent, and define a universal intelligence measure, which assigns every such agent a numerical intelligence rating. We will briefly summarize Legg and Hutter’s paper, and then give a tongue-in-cheek argument that if one’s goal is to become more intelligent by cultivating music appreciation, then it is bet- ter to use classical music (such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven) than to use more recent pop music. The (...) same argument could be adapted to other media: books beat films, card games beat first-person shooters, parables beat dissertations, etc. We leave it to the reader to decide whether this argument tells us something about classical music, something about Legg-Hutter intelligence, or something about both. (shrink)

A considerable body of research has documented the emergence of what appears to be instrumental helping behavior in early childhood. The current study tested the hypothesis that one basic psychological mechanism motivating this behavior is a preference for completing unfinished actions. To test this, a paradigm was implemented in which 2-year-olds (n = 34, 16 female/18 male, mostly White middle-class children) could continue an adult’s action when the adult no longer wanted to complete the action. The results showed that children (...) continued the adult’s actions more often when the goal had been abandoned than when it had been reached (OR = 2.37). This supports the hypothesis that apparent helping behavior in 2-year-olds is motivated by a preference for completing unfinished actions. (shrink)

A considerable body of research has documented the emergence of what appears to be instrumental helping behavior in early childhood. The current study tested the hypothesis that one basic psychological mechanism motivating this behavior is a preference for completing unfinished actions. To test this, a paradigm was implemented in which 2-year-olds (n = 34, 16 female/18 male, mostly White middle-class children) could continue an adult’s action when the adult no longer wanted to complete the action. The results showed that children (...) continued the adult’s actions more often when the goal had been abandoned than when it had been reached (OR = 2.37). This supports the hypothesis that apparent helping behavior in 2-year-olds is motivated by a preference for completing unfinished actions. (shrink)

Issue theme - Process:Music. At the beginning there was an encounter, accidental or not. In Zagreb, in the early 1960's, Orson Welles was shooting parts of The Trial based on the writing of Franz Kafka. A kind of rumor, a tale, was burned into the memory of a city that at the time feverishly invested itself into modernism. Among those newly founded institutions the Zagreb Music Biennale has played a significant role. Almost four decades later, in April 2009 the Process:Music (...) program within the 25th Music Biennale, has sought to take a step back, to orient itself in regard to the meeting that has brought together two major 20th century artists and a city, by mere coincidence or not. Six invited musicians and philosophers had not been given any strict specification whatsoever, just a formal indication in the guise of a rumor, gossip, hearsay or a tale to tackle an encounter that has materialized itself as a movie. Their interventions and new, additional, contributions in this issue of Frakcija Journal represent philosophical, musical and cinematic accounts inspired by and taken over by a tale, gossip, hearsay or a even a lie. Momentarily. By chance, or not. (shrink)

RESUMEN: El propósito del presente escrito es preguntarnos por el campo complejo que se abre en la confluencia de las trayectorias de Alexander Kluge y Theodor W. Adorno. Desarrollaremos, en primer lugar, algunos hitos históricos que permitan situarnos en el contexto de ese acercamiento. Luego, tomando como punto de partida el problema clave de la referencialidad de la imagen que, tanto para Kluge como para Adorno es central en las reflexiones sobre una estética propia del cine, abordaremos (...) cuatro temas que consideramos nos permiten repensar las relaciones de los dos teóricos: palabra e imagen, la idea de montaje, imagen y experiencia subjetiva y la cuestión de la recepción. ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to explore the complex convergence between the trajectories of Alexander Kluge and Theodor W. Adorno. In the first place, we develop some historical milestones that allow us to describe the context of this closeness. Then, taking as a starting point the key problem of the image referential -which for Kluge and Adorno is the main concern in the reflections on a particular aesthetics of film-, we will address four issues that let us rethink the relationship of the two of them: the idea of ​​montage, narrative and image, subjective experience and the matter of reception. (shrink)

We formalise a notion of dynamic rationality in terms of a logic of conditional beliefs on (doxastic) plausibility models. Similarly to other epistemic statements (e.g. negations of Moore sentences and of Muddy Children announcements), dynamic rationality changes its meaning after every act of learning, and it may become true after players learn it is false. Applying this to extensive games, we “simulate” the play of a game as a succession of dynamic updates of the original plausibility model: the epistemic situation (...) when a given node is reached can be thought of as the result of a joint act of learning (via public announcements) that the node is reached. We then use the notion of “stable belief”, i.e. belief that is preserved during the play of the game, in order to give an epistemic condition for backward induction: rationality and common knowledge of stable belief in rationality. This condition is weaker than Aumann’s and compatible with the implicit assumptions (the “epistemic openness of the future”) underlying Stalnaker’s criticism of Aumann’s proof. The “dynamic” nature of our concept of rationality explains why our condition avoids the apparent circularity of the “backward induction paradox”: it is consistent to (continue to) believe in a player’s rationality after updating with his irrationality. (shrink)

BackgroundUnderstanding representations of disease in various art genres provides insights into how patients and health care providers view the diseases. It can also be used to enhance patient care and stimulate patient self-management.MethodsThis paper reviews how cardiovascular diseases are represented in novels, films, and paintings: myocardial infarction, aneurysm, hypertension, stroke, heart transplantation, Marfan’s disease, congestive heart failure. Various search systems and definitions were used to help identify sources of representations of different cardiovascular diseases. The representations of the different diseases were (...) considered separately. The Common Sense Model was used a theoretical model to outline illness perceptions and self-management in the various identified novels, films, and paintings.ResultsMyocardial infarction followed by stroke were the most frequently detailed diseases in all three art genres. This reflects their higher prevalence. Representations ranged from biomedical details through to social and psychological consequences of the diseases.ConclusionsArtistic representations of cardiovascular diseases reflect cognitions, emotions, and images of prevalent disease. These representations shape views and behaviour of ill and healthy persons regarding heart diseases. As these representations are amenable to change, they deserve further research, which may be instrumental in improving the quality of life of persons struck by cardiovascular diseases. Changing illness perceptions appears to be a method to improve self-management and thereby quality of life in patients with various cardiovascular diseases. (shrink)

Executive function is essential to child development, with associated skills beginning to emerge in the first few years of life and continuing to develop into adolescence and adulthood. The prefrontal cortex, which follows a neurodevelopmental timeline similar to EF, plays an important role in the development of EF. However, limited research has examined prefrontal function in young children due to limitations of currently available neuroimaging techniques such as functional resonance magnetic imaging. The current study developed and applied a multimodal Go/NoGo (...) task to examine the EF component of inhibitory control in children 4–10 years of age. Cortical activity was measured using a non-invasive and child-friendly neuroimaging technique – functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Children’s response accuracy and reaction times were captured during the fNIRS session and compared with responses obtained using the standardized assessments from NIH Toolbox cognition battery. Results showed significant correlations between the behavioral measures during the fNIRS session and the standardized EF assessments, in line with our expectations. Results from fNIRS measures demonstrated a significant, age-independent effect of inhibitory control in the right PFC, and an age-dependent effect in the left orbitofrontal cortex, consistent with results in previous studies using fNIRS and fMRI. Thus, the new task designed for fNIRS was suitable for examining IC in young children, and results showed that fNIRS measures can reveal prefrontal IC function. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Discover the Unknown Chekhov in Your ESL ClassroomNinah Beliavsky (bio)I was born in Moscow, ate aladushki, and listened to my mother read Chekhov in Russian. Kashtanka, a tale about a young, ginger-colored pup who gets lost, made me cry. And when I read about the death of Ivan Dmitrich Kreepikov, in The Death of a Civil Servant, I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. The poor (...) civil servant was sitting and watching an opera in a theater when all of a sudden he sneezed and spattered an old gentlemen, General Shpitzalov, in front of him. Now, as Chekhov writes, sneezing is not prohibited to any one or in any place; peasants sneeze, and even the chiefs of police sneeze. But, you see, the poor civil servant, being very much rank-conscious, could no longer live with himself after committing such a misconduct. He apologized profusely and went home, and without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa, and... died.And what about Van'ka Zhukov, an orphan boy of nine apprenticed to a shoemaker who is being beaten and overworked. He writes a letter to his grandfather on Christmas Eve, begging him for the dear Lord's sake to take him away from his misery. After scratching his head and thinking for a moment, he dips his pen in ink and addresses his envelope: "The Village. To Grand Dad." He then dashes out into the street and pushes his precious letter through the opening of the postbox...The second part of my childhood I spent in Jerusalem; there I ate falafel with humus, was obsessed with perfecting the pronunciation of the Hebrew guttural "r," and read Miriam Yalan Shtekelis's children's poetry, which was filled with magical objects that laughed and cried. By the time I was in high school I was living in Milwaukee, eating fries and ice cream sundaes and reading O. Henry.The literature that one comes in contact with during childhood and young [End Page 101] adulthood is often deeply engraved on a person's psyche. It is similar to an adult craving sweets because of the psychological association with her childhood and a safe and protected environment. We tend to think back to the "good old days" because we find comfort in our past. Today, as an adult, a wife, and a mother, I often find refuge in my childhood memories. And, like most people, much of what I encounter and read today I tend to associate with my past. If I come across a story that I heard in my childhood, as I search for something new and amusing to give to my college English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students, I try to incorporate it into my curriculum. A few years ago I came across the story The Necklace by Guy de Mappassant and immediately recalled reading it in my adolescence. This story brought back the warm memories of home that I felt would be understood and identified with by my foreign students. Today, this story is one of my students' favorites. By using stories from my own past, I feel that I can bring to my class discussions a unique perspective—my own recollections and feelings and an interpretation not only academic in nature but also personal. Often, my international students will recall hearing or reading some of the same stories (that I bring to class) in their childhood, in their native tongues, and thus these stories will not seem out of context anymore because there will be a sense of connection.I teach ESL to college students—reading and writing at the intermediate and advanced levels. Aside from following the standard curriculum of using grammar and writing textbooks, I bring to my ESL classes music, opera, art, young adult novels by American writers, and short stories by both international and American writers. For instance, my students enjoy reading O. Henry's "The Christmas Present," "The Last Leaf," and "The Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen." These stories are about real people—just like my students—they are about everyday events, they are humorous and tragic in nature, and they have an unexpected twist... (shrink)

IntroductionChildhood maltreatment is a developmental risk factor and can negatively influence later psychological functioning, health, and development in the next generation. A comprehensive understanding of the biopsychosocial underpinnings of CM transmission would allow to identify protective factors that could disrupt the intergenerational CM risk cycle. This study examined the consequences of maternal CM and the effects of psychosocial and biological resilience factors on child attachment and stress-regulatory development using a prospective trans-disciplinary approach.MethodsMother-child dyads participated shortly after parturition, after 3 months, (...) and 12 months later. Mothers’ CM experiences were assessed at t0, attachment representation at t1 and psychosocial risk and social support were assessed at t1 and t2. At t2, dyads participated in the Strange Situation Procedure. Children’s attachmen status were classified as organized vs. disorganized, including their level of disorganized behavior, and heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were recorded as stress response measures of the autonomic nervous system. Maternal caregiving during SSP was assessed using the AMBIANCE scale. Child’s single nucleotide polymorphisms rs2254298 within the oxytocin receptor and rs2740210 of the oxytocin gene were genotyped using DNA isolated from cord blood.ResultsMaternal CM experiences were significantly associated with an unresolved attachment status, higher perceived stress and more psychological symptoms. These negative effects of CM were attenuated by social support. As expected, maternal unresolved attachment and child disorganized attachment were significantly associated. Maternal caregiving did not mediate the relationship between maternal and child attachment but influenced children’s HR and RSA response and disorganized behavior. Moreover, the rs2254298 genotype of the OXTR gene moderated the stress response of children from mothers with CM. Children carrying the rs2740210 risk allele of the OXT gene showed more disorganized behavior independent from maternal CM experiences.ConclusionWe replicated and extended existing CM and attachment models by co-examining maternal attachment, social support, and child genetic susceptibility on child attachment and cardiovascular stress regulation. The findings contribute to an extended understanding of risk and resilience factors and enable professionals to target adequate services to parents and children at risk. (shrink)

The ethics of advertising to children has been identified as one of the most important topics worthy of academic research in the marketing field. A fast growing advertising technique is product placement, and its use in children's films is becoming more and more common. The limited evidence existing suggests that product placements are especially potent in their effects upon children. Yet regulations regarding placements targeted at children are virtually non-existent, with advertising guidelines suggesting that it remains the prime responsibility (...) of the parents to provide guidance for children. This study measured the ethical evaluations of parents in the UK and Canada regarding product placements in children's films. After exposing parents to a four-type typology of product placements, results show that explicit placements of ethically charged products were perceived as the most unethical type of placements. Parents in the UK were more sensitive to the use of the technique and there was a significant difference in relativism between the two groups. Both sets of respondents would like to see more regulation on the use of placements, especially placements of alcohol, tobacco and fast foods. (shrink)

In 1982, cinemas around the world screened Sophie's Choice, a film starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, adapted from the book by William Styron. The film opens with Stingo, a young journalist from the South, who arrives in New York in 1947 and rents a room in Brooklyn. Stingo is drawn into a relationship with Sophie and Nathan, the couple who live upstairs. Sophie is a Polish concentration camp survivor; Nathan is the man who saved her when she (...) arrived in America. Nathan is charismatic, schizophrenic, and violent.In one of the film's flashbacks, a German soldier imposes a terrible choice on Sophie, a young mother who arrives at Auschwitz with other prisoners from Krakow. Sophie is ordered to choose which of her two children will be sent to the ovens, and which will live. (shrink)

The ethics of advertising to children has been identified as one of the most important topics worthy of academic research in the marketing field. A fast growing advertising technique is product placement, and its use in children's films is becoming more and more common. The limited evidence existing suggests that product placements are especially potent in their effects upon children. Yet regulations regarding placements targeted at children are virtually non-existent, with advertising guidelines suggesting that it remains the prime responsibility (...) of the parents to provide guidance for children. This study measured the ethical evaluations of parents in the UK and Canada regarding product placements in children's films. After exposing parents to a four-type typology of product placements, results show that explicit placements of ethically charged products were perceived as the most unethical type of placements. Parents in the UK were more sensitive to the use of the technique and there was a significant difference in relativism between the two groups. Both sets of respondents would like to see more regulation on the use of placements, especially placements of alcohol, tobacco and fast foods. (shrink)