Soccer has long been known as 'the beautiful game'. This multi-disciplinary volume explores soccer, soccer culture, and the representation of soccer in art, film, and literature, using the critical tools of aesthetics, poetics, and rhetoric. Including international contributions from scholars of philosophy, literary and cultural studies, linguistics, art history, and the creative arts, this book begins by investigating the relationship between beauty and soccer and asks what criteria should be used to judge the sport's aesthetic value. Covering topics as diverse (...) as humor, national identity, style, celebrity, and social media, its chapters examine the nature of fandom, the role of language, and the significance of soccer in contemporary popular culture. It also discusses what one might call the 'stylistics' of soccer, analyzing how players, fans, and commentators communicate on and off the pitch, in the press, on social media, and in wider public discourse. The Aesthetics, Poetics, and Rhetoric of Soccer makes for fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, culture, literature, philosophy, linguistics, and society. (shrink)

Feminists note an association of arguing with aggression and masculinity and question the necessity of this connection. Arguing also seems to some to identify a central method of philosophical reasoning, and gendered assumptions and standards would pose problems for the discipline. Can feminine modes of reasoning provide an alternative or supplement? Can overarching epistemological standards account for the benefits of different approaches to arguing? These are some of the prospects for argumentation inside and outside of philosophy that feminists consider. -/- (...) The further concern is that the academic study of argumentation – in philosophy and other disciplines – has failed to account for the type of reasoning needed for social justice movements. What resources for addressing these concerns can be found in informal logic and interdisciplinary argumentation theory? Since part of the perceived problem derives from assuming that arguing is a contest, are more collaborative epistemological frameworks better? Can regular politeness or civility hedge against undesirable tendencies of argumentation? Can “critical thinking” pedagogy involving argument educations answer the needs of social justice? (shrink)

The development of genomics has dramatically expanded the scope of genetic research, and collections of genetic biosamples have proliferated in countries with active genomics research programs. In this essay, we consider a particular kind of collection, national biobanks. National biobanks are often presented by advocates as an economic ‘‘resource’’ that will be used by both basic researchers and academic biologists, as well as by pharmaceutical diagnostic and clinical genomics companies. Although national biobanks have been the subject of intense interest in (...) recent social science literature, most prior work on this topic focuses either on bioethical issues related to biobanks, such as the question of informed consent, or on the possibilities for scientific citizenship that they make possible. We emphasize, by contrast, the economic aspect of biobanks, focusing specifically on the way in which national biobanks create biovalue. Our emphasis on the economic aspect of biobanks allows us to recognize the importance of what we call clinical labor—that is, the regularized, embodied work that members of the national population are expected to perform in their role as biobank participants—in the creation of biovalue through biobanks. Moreover, it allows us to understand how the technical way in which national biobanks link clinical labor to databases alters both medical and popular understandings of risk for common diseases and conditions. (shrink)

Much mainstream analytic epistemology is built around a sceptical treatment of modality which descends from Hume. The roots of this scepticism are argued to lie in Hume’s (nominalist) theory of perception, which is excavated, studied and compared with the very different (realist) theory of perception developed by Peirce. It is argued that Peirce’s theory not only enables a considerably more nuanced and effective epistemology, it also (unlike Hume’s theory) does justice to what happens when we appreciate a proof in mathematics.

Background South Africa is likely to be the first country in the world to host an adolescent HIV vaccine trial. Adolescents may be enrolled in late 2007. In the development and review of adolescent HIV vaccine trial protocols there are many complexities to consider, and much work to be done if these important trials are to become a reality. Discussion This article sets out essential requirements for the lawful conduct of adolescent research in South Africa including compliance with consent requirements, (...) child protection laws, and processes for the ethical and regulatory approval of research. Summary This article outlines likely complexities for researchers and research ethics committees, including determining that trial interventions meet current risk standards for child research. Explicit recommendations are made for role-players in other jurisdictions who may also be planning such trials. This article concludes with concrete steps for implementing these important trials in South Africa and other jurisdictions, including planning for consent processes; delineating privacy rights; compiling information necessary for ethics committees to assess risks to child participants; training trial site staff to recognize when disclosures trig mandatory reporting response; networking among relevant ethics commitees; and lobbying the National Regulatory Authority for guidance. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is a field of research that concentrates on the design, construction, and modification of new biomolecular parts and metabolic pathways using engineering techniques and computational models. By employing knowledge of operational pathways from engineering and mathematics such as circuits, oscillators, and digital logic gates, it uses these to understand, model, rewire, and reprogram biological networks and modules. Standard biological parts with known functions are catalogued in a number of registries (e.g. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Registry of Standard Biological (...) Parts). Biological parts can then be selected from the catalogue and assembled in a variety of combinations to construct a system or pathway in a microbe. Through the innovative re-engineering of biological circuits and the optimization of certain metabolic pathways, biological modules can be designed to reprogram organisms to produce products or behaviors. Synthetic biology is what is known as a “platform technology”. That is, it generates highly transferrable theoretical models, engineering principles, and know-how that can be applied to create potential products in a wide variety of industries. Proponents suggest that applications of synthetic biology may be able to provide scientific and engineered solutions to a multitude of worldwide problems from health to energy. Synthetic biology research has already been successful in constructing microbial products which promise to offer cheaper pharmaceuticals such as the antimalarial synthetic drug artemisinin, engineered microbes capable of cleaning up oil spills, and the engineering of biosensors that can detect the presence of high concentrations of arsenic in drinking water. One of the potential benefits of synthetic biology research is in its application to biofuel production. It is this application which is the focus of this entry. The term “biofuel” has referred generally to all liquid fuels that are sourced from plant or plant byproducts and are used for energy necessary for transportation vehicles (Thompson 2012). Biofuels that are produced using synthetic biological techniques re-engineer microbes into biofuel factories are a subset of these. (shrink)

The spillovers in knowledge among largely college-educated workers were among the key reasons for the impressive degree of economic growth and spread of entrepreneurship in the United States during the 1990s. Prior 'industrial policies' in the 1970s and 1980s did not advance growth because these were based on outmoded large manufacturing models. Zoltan Acs and Catherine Armington use a knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to explain new firm formation rates in regional economies during the 1990s period and beyond. The (...) fastest-growing regions are those that have the highest rates of new firm formation, and which are not dominated by large businesses. The authors of this text also find support for the thesis that knowledge spillovers move across industries and are not confined within a single industry. As a result, they suggest, regional policies to encourage and sustain growth should focus on entrepreneurship among other factors. (shrink)

In _African Somaesthetics: Cultures, Feminisms, Politics_, Catherine F. Botha brings together original research on the body in African cultures, interrogating the possible contribution of a somaesthetic approach in the context of colonization, decolonization, and globalization in Africa.

Leibniz beschreibt sein philosophisches Anliegen oft als Versuch, bestimmte Formen, die von den modernen Philosophen verbannt waren, wieder herzustellen. Dieser Aufsatz erörtert den historischen Gang dieser Verbannung und Leibniz' Bemühen um eine Rehabilitierung der Begriffe Natur, Form und Kraft, wobei er jedoch okkulte, “barbarische” und überflüssige Zutaten zur Naturphilosophie vermeidet.

I offer a Darwinian perspective on the existence of aesthetic interests, tastes, preferences, and productions. It is distinguished from the approaches of Denis Dutton and Geoffrey Miller, drawing instead on Richard O. Prum's notion of biotic artworlds. The relevance of neuroaesthetics to the philosophy of art is defended.

This paper probes theories of justice underpinning the concept of equity to deconstruct the term and ascertain how best to equitably support refugee and asylum-seeking youth in U.S. schools. Building upon theories posited by John Rawls, Michael Sandel, and Amartya Sen, the paper aims to extend beyond ideal theory into a theoretical framework of equity with operationalizing potential. Recognizing refugee and asylum-seeking youth as part of the U.S. social contract and therefore bound to government support, the paper represents that equitable (...) education for these young people in our globalized world is essential from both a human rights and economic perspective. Such equitable education will only be achieved when universal minimum standards are offered to everyone and made inclusive, so that all are invited to fully participate as culturally respected learners and knowledge producers in academic spaces. (shrink)

This unique volume takes readers behind the scenes for an "insider/outsider" view of education policymaking in action. Two state-level case studies of social studies curriculum reform and textbook policy illustrate how curriculum decision making becomes an arena in which battles are fought over national values and priorities. Written by a New York education professor and a California journalist, the text offers a rare blend of academic and journalistic voices. The "great speckled bird" is the authors' counter-symbol to the bald eagle--a (...) metaphor representing the racial-ethnic-cultural diversity that has characterized the U.S. since its beginnings and the multicultural reality of American society today. The text breaks new ground by focusing on the intersections of national debates and education policymaking. It situates the case studies within historical and contemporary cultural contexts--with particular attention to questions of power and knowledge control and how influence is exercised. By juxtaposing the contrasting cases of California and New York, the authors illustrate commonalities and differences in education policymaking goals and processes. By sharing stories of participants at and behind the scenes, policymaking comes alive rather than appearing to result from impersonal "forces" or "factors.". (shrink)

Hume's notion of conception is closer to Reid's than Reid realizes and may lie behind Hume's charge in the letter to Hugh Blair (1762) that Reid's philosophy "leads us back to innate ideas".

In a very general sense, hybrid can be understood to be any organism that is the product of two (or more) organisms where each parent belongs to a different kind. For example; the offspring from two or more parent organisms, each belonging to a separate species (or genera), is called a “hybrid”. “Hybridity” refers to the phenomenal character of being a hybrid. And “hybridization ” refers to both natural and artificial processes of generating hybrids. These processes include mechanisms of selective (...) cross-breeding and cross-fertilization of parents of different species for the purpose of producing hybrid offspring. In addition to these processes, “hybridization ” also refers to natural and artificial processes of whole genome duplication that result in the doubling or trebling of the sets of chromosomes of the organism. This entry provides an overview of the impact of hybridity on agriculture. It begins with an historical sketch that traces the early horticulturalists’ and naturalists’ investigations of hybrids. This starts with the observations of Thomas Fairchild and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; and leads to the explanation of its mechanism by Gregor Mendel, James Watson and Francis Crick, and Ernst Mayr; and the eventual manipulation of hybrids and hybridization by Barbara McClintock. Following this, the reader is introduced to a number of key terms and concepts in use within current research as well as highlighting diverse ethical concerns that center on hybridization. Recent research that attempts to ascertain the role of hybridization in adaptive change will be introduced. This will include research on the evolution of crop species, increased biodiversity, and the use of hybrids to manipulate phenotypically desirable traits in agricultural crops. The focus of the discussion is on a particularly significant type of naturally occurring hybridization, polyploidy hybridization. Polyploids are organisms which have more than two complete genomes in each cell. This kind of hybridization is ubiquitous among crop plants. The role of polyploidy in plant evolution and the affects of polyploidy on plants and animals will be reviewed. A critical discussion of its agricultural value in the production of fertile polyploid hybrids highlights key epistemological, ontological, and ethical issues. These are illuminated with reference to the distinct processes of artificial and natural hybridization. A survey of these different kinds of hybridization includes the ethical and economic impacts of hybridity on global nutrition, the environment, and considerations of some practical implications for the agricultural industry. Tracking the role of hybrids, the process of hybridization, and the current impacts of it for agriculture requires knowledge of the history of its early conceptualization, understanding, and use. This is the topic of the following section. (shrink)

Leibniz has often been described as holding to a kind of phenomenalism. Yet Leibniz did not have a single account of perception, or of the embodied mind, or of the monad, but a set of conflicting and mutually inconsistent accounts that preclude the possibility that there is any such thing as “Leibniz's System.” This difficulty raises problems of interpretation, since it is sometimes maintained that the principle of charity precludes the assignment of frankly inconsistent views to a philosopher. The essay (...) argues that we should not be misled by the intentionalist fallacy into looking for order within a text as opposed to order commentators can impose by making a philosopher's inconsistencies intelligible. (shrink)

Commentators on Machiavelli's Discourses have disagreed about whether he seeks to establish a new, more democratic form of republic, revive an imperial republic like Rome, or educate a new political elite, because they have not seen the logic that connects the three books. Machiavelli first argues that the internal liberty of Rome depended on arming her people. He then shows how a modern republic can avoid the destructive effects of Roman imperialism. Finally, he teaches his readers how to preserve a (...) republic better than the Romans. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que l'utilitarisme? Philosophie du bourgeois, philosophie de l'homo oeconomicus, dénoncée, entre autres, par Marx, Nietzsche et Foucault? Ou la seule philosophie morale de taille à concurrencer le kantisme et l'une des bases de l'éthique appliquée contemporaine? L'utilitarisme a cherché à constituer une morale purement rationnelle, critique des croyances religieuses et des conventions sociales. L'exemple le plus illustre est celui de la justice pénale. Bentham, dans des textes révolutionnaires, soutient, à la suite de Beccaria, que la peine doit être proportionnée (...) au tort commis par le coupable, non au besoin de vengeance de la victime et de la société. Dans le premier volume de cette Anthologie, Bentham et ses précurseurs, la filiation entre Bentham et les philosophes des Lumières est établie. De Shaftesbury et Hume à Beccaria et William Paley, on pourra prendre la mesure des continuités, mais aussi du génie du fondateur de ce radicalisme philosophique. Surtout, le lecteur aura accès aux textes majeurs de Bentham qui n'avaient jamais été traduits, en dehors du Panoptique et des Sophismes anarchiques écrits directement en français. On pourra ainsi apprécier combien l'utilitarisme a été et demeure un outil d'analyse et de critique de la morale ordinaire. (shrink)

A partir de réflexions qui mettent en perspective différentes approches philosophiques, cet ouvrage présente une vision prospective de la philosophie - vision pensée sous l'horizon de la philosophie grecque. La philosophie ne peut, semble t-il, se développer indépendamment de toute référence grecque, c'est-à-dire aussi de ce qui constitue son origine. L'enjeu est de tracer les contours d'une philosophie à venir à partir d'une réflexion sur une contribution possible ou nécessaire de la philosophie grecque. On s'interroge sur le sens, les significations (...) et la pertinence de la philosophie grecque aujourd'hui : y a-t-il une nécessité à revenir aux origines de la philosophie, à son premier moment grec? Quelle serait la nature d'une telle nécessité? En quoi la philosophie grecque pourrait-elle constituer une référence obligée et comment penser cette référence? Y a t-il une actualité de la philosophie grecque? Telles sont les différentes questions auxquelles les auteurs de ce livre ont tenté de répondre. (shrink)

Philosophers are generally somewhat wary of the hints of number mysticism in the reports about the beliefs and doctrines of the so-called Pythagoreans. It's not clear how much Pythagoras himself (as opposed to his later followers) indulged in speculation about numbers, or in more serious mathematics. But the Pythagoreans whom Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics had some elaborate stories to tell about how the universe could be explained in terms of numbers—not just its physics but perhaps morality too. Was this (...) just fanciful speculation? Is it muddled as a theory of causality, as Aristotle suggests? I shall try to rehabilitate the passion for numbers by linking it with the notions of harmony and proportion in other thinkers who have a higher credibility factor in the philosophical stakes, and by showing that the desire to reduce quality to quantity, and to discover an exact science that can explain human life and meaning, is a serious philosophical passion that doesn't easily go away. And, after all, why should it? (shrink)

This dissertation examines how the distinction between what is said and what is implicated should be applied to metaphorical language. I claim that metaphor has been incorrectly held to belong to the domain of pragmatics---what is implicated by an utterance---and I argue that metaphorical interpretations can and should be regarded as constituting what is said. ;The first two chapters develop the case against two implicature accounts of metaphor: Grice's account of metaphor as conversational implicature, and the relevance-theoretic account of metaphor (...) as 'loose talk' developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Two reasons to dispute these characterizations of metaphor as implicature are developed by examining dissimilarities between alleged metaphorical implicatures and more typical cases of implicature. The third chapter focuses on the notion of what is said in cases of literal language, and explores where and how the line between what is said and what is implicated should be drawn for several controversial cases. I argue for a view of such cases according to which considerable contextual variation is taken to fall within the realm of what is said. With this view of what is said in place, the final two chapters of the dissertation explore how a semantic account of metaphor might go. Two existing semantic accounts are examined, and difficulties with each are discussed. Finally, a characterization of metaphorical content is proposed, and an alternative semantic account is developed. (shrink)

La scénographie est le plus souvent considérée au théâtre dans sa dimension esthétique ou dans sa capacité à devenir un espace ludique. Or, à l’opéra, si ces deux dimensions restent importantes et se complexifient du fait des contraintes spécifiques du chant et des attentes du public, c’est la fonction dramaturgique qui passe au premier plan. La nécessité de donner le décor à l’avance pour qu’il soit construit dans les ateliers impose qu’il soit pensé avec la mise en scène, en même (...) temps qu’elle. Grâce à un exemple précis, nous montrerons comment le trio dramaturgie-scénographie et mise en scène fonctionne étroitement pour faire émerger le sens. C’est donc à cette voix dramaturgique du scénographe que nous nous intéresserons ici. (shrink)

We used a paper-based survey to explore dynamics of Local Food Networks for fish in the Icelandic Westfjords. Preference for local fish remains high, and fish consumption is largely embedded within a gift network, rather than typical commercial channels off ering costly, frozen, and non-local products. Individuals lacking personal connections to the fishing industry obtain fish from these commercial networks. LFNs for fish in rural Icelandic communities are therefore expressions of power dimensions that are symptomatic of the larger inequalities built (...) into the fisheries management system, designed for globalized food networks. The disconnect between large-scale production mechanisms and local consumption patterns highlights the lack of responsiveness of the fishing industry to local Icelandic consumers and demonstrates the impacts national political structures can have on LFNs. (shrink)

Hume uses the term 'idea' to refer to both mental acts and mental contents.

Shuhong Zheng's scrupulously researched book succeeds in putting two men from different cultures into fruitful and relevant conversation with each other.Comparative studies have many minefields to avoid, and Zheng navigates her way around them with her circumscribed methodology. Rather than comparing Christianity and Confucianism, and hence putting herself at risk for making unsustainable claims about either of these complex traditions, she concentrates on specific elements of the thought of two individuals, Zhu Xi and Meister Eckhart: their shared focus on the (...) power of the human intellect, and their work as commentators and speculative philosophers. In engaging their particularities, she produces a rigorous study... (shrink)

This book provides original descriptive accounts of two schools of thought in the philosophy of beauty: the 20th-century "Anti-Aesethetic" movement and the 21st-century "Beauty Revival" movement. It also includes a positive defence of beauty as a lived experience extrapolated from Beauty-Revival position. Beauty was traditionally understood in the broadest sense as a notion that engages our sense perception and embraces everything evoked by that perception, including mental products and affective states. This book constructs and places in parallel with one another (...) the Anti-Aesthetic and Beauty-Revival movements. In the author's view, Anti-Aestheticism is devoted to a decisive negation of beauty-denying its importance as a philosophical notion and its significance as a lived experience. It suggests that beauty is a merely sensual experience, which can be used, at best, as a distraction from justice and, at worst, as an instrument of evil. Alternatively, the Beauty-Revival movement advances arguments for beauty as an experience that extends primarily to sensual experience, but which also calls forth mental products and cognitive and affective states evoked by that experience. After reconstructing these two positions, the author elaborates on the notion of beauty as a lived experience through three key moments which occur in the process of our experiencing beautiful objects. These moments are (a) the conditions that constitute an experience of beauty, (b) the attitudinal features most likely to lead to the experience of beauty, and (c) the results of the experience of beauty. The Revival of Beauty will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, history of philosophy, and art history. (shrink)

This article explores some implications of the increasing reliance on clinical trials in contemporary health care, particularly health care payers’ efforts to use them in the so-called fourth hurdle decisions. How do these agencies manage medical uncertainty given the desire to produce clear guidelines for clinicians? Their solutions take account of trials in at least two ways, reflecting broader debates about the meaning of these medical experiments. Trials can be read as either ‘‘proofs of protocol’’—straightforward guides to action with individual (...) drugs in specific populations—or ‘‘proofs of principle’’— where extrapolation is made possible through an appeal to underlying biological mechanisms. These contrasting readings of trials are illustrated with reference to guidelines on heart disease prevention/cholesterol reduction using statins among the elderly in North America and the United Kingdom. Uncertainty in these cases does not lead to inertia but solutions use different fixed points to aid navigation, including both physiological principles and moral values. (shrink)

Eduardo Frei Montalva, co-founder of the Christian Democratic Party and President of Chile, represented for Jacques Maritain, French neo-Thomist philosopher, an example of prophetic leadership in contemporary times. According to Maritain, modem democracy could not survive without a profound spiritual revolution of political leadership--the "prophetic factor" of democracy--which he observed in Frei as a public official, senator, and ultimately the Presient of the Republic of Chile (1964-1970). Under his famed "Revolution in Liberty," Frei endeavored to meld socio-economic reforms with an (...) effort to build a more participatory democratic culture in his native land. Guided by Maritain's political philosophy, Frei's initiatives set into motion the possibility of a "third way" of politics in the Southern hemisphere. In the end, this revolution ended in political disappointment due to economic stagnation, social disruption, political infighting, and the impractical idealism of Christian democracy itself. (shrink)