It is argued that Kull’s approach to aesthetics complements a cognitive semiotic approach to culture. The concept of ‘ecological, semiotic fitting’ allows us to connect the three main concepts of beauty we encounter in discussions about the aesthetic, where the term beauty is, firstly, used to refer a positive experience in relation to what is perceived, or, secondly, to a positive experience in relation to an intentional action or, thirdly, to a positive experience in relation to a sense making process. (...) Kull makes a strong case for the ‘ecological, semiotic fitting’ being the common underlying structure of all three manifestations of the aesthetic. (shrink)

This book is about the interrelationship between nature, semiosis, metarepresentation and (self-)consciousness, and the role played by metarepresentation in ...

This volume contains a selection of essays presented at the international conference on Cultural Crises in Art and Literature, held in Groningen in November 2002, in a special session on the question of the autonomy of the arts. Do we witness, in western culture, the end of the autonomy of the arts as it has been conceptualized and institutionalized since the eighteenth century? Indeed, developments of quite a different nature seem to have contributed to a blurring of boundaries between art (...) and non-art, art and the market, art and politics or ethics, as well as between the arts themselves, and between 'high' and 'low' art. Although this volume does not pretend to map this complex process in its entirety - partly because it is impossible to step out of one's own history - it is meant as a contribution to the elucidation of the process itself, offering some challenging explanations as to the heat of the current debate. (shrink)

The comprehension of living organisms in all their complexity poses a major challenge to the biological sciences. Recently, systems biology has been proposed as a new candidate in the development of such a comprehension. The main objective of this paper is to address what systems biology is and how it is practised. To this end, the basic tools of a systems biological approach are explored and illustrated. In addition, it is questioned whether systems biology ‘revolutionizes’ molecular biology and ‘transcends’ its (...) assumed reductionism. The strength of this claim appears to depend on how molecular and systems biology are characterised and on how reductionism is interpreted. Doing credit to molecular biology and to methodological reductionism, it is argued that the distinction between molecular and systems biology is gradual rather than sharp. As such, the classical challenge in biology to manage, interpret and integrate biological data into functional wholes is further intensified by systems biology’s use of modelling and bioinformatics, and by its scale enlargement. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that semiotic cognition is a distinctive form of cognition, which must have evolved out of earlier forms of non-semiotic cognition. Semiotic cognition depends on the use of signs. Signs are understood in terms of a specific organization, or structure, of the cognitive process. Semiotic cognition is a unique form of cognition. Once this form of cognition was available to humans, the semiotic provided the ground structure for an evolutionary development that was no longer strictly Darwinian, (...) but followed its own — semiotic — logic. In the increasingly abstract ways in which the ubiquitous difference is dealt with, we discover this logic of cultural evolution, which determines the course of long term cultural change. (shrink)

In this paper, the process for firms to decide whether or not to invest in corporate social responsibility is treated from a real option perspective. We extend the Husted framework with an important extra parameter that allows us to understand the timing of CSR investment and explain why some companies drag their feet over CSR investments. Our model explicitly allows for the impact of the opportunity cost of delaying the CSR investment decision, providing firms with tools to determine the optimal (...) moment of exercising the CSR investment option. We illustrate our timing model through a case study and analyze governmental support strategies for CSR from a real options perspective. (shrink)

Report of the symposium 'Towards a Philosophy of Systems Biology' held at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (VUA), the Netherlands, from 2 to 3 June 2005.

At the provincial council elections of the 13th of december 1987 only one of the three traditional political families made a general progress, namely the socialists. Mainly in Wallonia the socialists improved their position seriously. In this part of the country they are the only and absolute winners of these provincial elections. The christian-democrats and the liberals were subject of a severe decline. Por the christian-democrats this decline was mainly situated in Flanders. The liberals had a serious decline in W (...) allonia, that couldn't be counterbalanced by the small progress they made in Flanders. The ecologists made progress, mostly in the Flemish part of the country and in Brussels. By the federalist parties the Volksunie had a loss of three provincial council seats in Flanders, but the seperatistic and extreme right party Vlaams Blok won two seats. The communists disappeared totally from the provincial councils in Belgium. The results of the provincial council elections had a similar profile as these of the House of Representatives and the Senate which where held at the same day. (shrink)

Dit boekt brengt negen opstellen samen van Gentse filosofen en godsdienstwetenschappers. Etienne Vermeersch, Freddy Mortier, Johan Braeckman met Stefaan Blancke, Rik Pinxten, Patrick Loobuyck, Balagangadhara Rao met Sarah Claerhout, Benjamin Biebuyck, Nel Grillaert, en Danny Praet leveren, elk vanuit hun eigen interesses en expertises, kritische bijdragen over de complexe relatie tussen christendom en filosofie: wijsgerige kritiek op het christendom en christelijk gebruik van de filosofie. Vanuit het ruimere perspectief van de interactie tussen wijsbegeerte, wereldbeeld en wetenschappen bestrijken de elf (...) auteurs de volledige periode van het vroege christendom tot het hedendaagse fundamentalisme. Het boek bevat zowel historische als theoretische benaderingen. Drie bijdragen hebben het werk en de impact van Nietzsche tot thema, drie bespreken verschillende aspecten van het fundamentalisme. Thema’s zoals het geloof in een hiernamaals, de relatie tussen christenen en niet-christenen, de impact van het christendom op het westerse wereldbeeld en de benadering van andere culturen, en de radicale kritiek van filosofen op het theïsme en de christelijke moraal maken van deze bundel een uitzonderlijk rijke collectie die lezers met diverse interesses zal aanspreken. (shrink)

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity recorded with extraoperative electrocorticography during cognitive tasks may be an alternative to ESM but until now has not proven of definitive clinical value. Considering their role in cognition, the alpha and beta bands could further (...) improve the identification of eloquent cortex. We compared gamma, alpha and beta activity, and their combinations for the identification of eloquent cortical areas defined by ESM. Ten patients with intractable focal epilepsy participated in a delayed-match-to-sample task, where syllable sounds were compared to visually presented letters. We used a generalized linear model approach to find the optimal weighting of each band for predicting ESM-defined categories and estimated the diagnostic ability by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Gamma activity increased more in eloquent than in non-eloquent areas, whereas alpha and beta power decreased more in eloquent areas. Diagnostic ability of each band was close to 0.7 for all bands but depended on multiple factors including the time period of the cognitive task, the location of the electrodes and the patient’s degree of attention to the stimulus. We show that diagnostic ability can be increased by 3–5% by combining gamma and alpha and by 7.5–11% when gamma and beta were combined. We then show how ECoG power modulation from cognitive testing can be used to map the probability of eloquence in individual patients and how this probability map can be used in clinical settings to optimize ESM planning. We conclude that the combination of gamma and beta power modulation during cognitive testing can contribute to the identification of eloquent areas prior to ESM in patients with refractory focal epilepsy. (shrink)

Together with the city council elections, the citizens of Antwerp elected on 8 October 2000 nine district councils. This new decentralised political level is primarily initiated to restore the confidence of the citizens in the city government. By analysing the results of the city and the district elections we try to find indications whether citizens feel closer to their new district governments or not. Apparently district elections resulted neither in a higher voter turn-out, nor in less blank votes. Nevertheless, there (...) is a significant correlation of voter turn-out and blank votes with population of the districts. And although the differences between the electoral results of the city elections and the district elections are not huge, a different political landscape comes more or less into existence in the several districts. Quite surprisingly the number of list votes is higher on the district elections than on the city elections, while we would have expected a higher number of preferential votes. Correctingfor incumbents and famous candidates on the lists, our initial expectations hold much better. Generally spoken, we can conclude that the district elections do not give much proof of a closer connection between the citizens and the city government. Nevertheless we find some important differences between the districts. (shrink)

Pastoral power and techniques of the self: Foucault and the asceticism of the Desert Fathers This article argues that Foucault would probably have wanted to discuss a number of subjects and texts which are now almost completely lacking: the novelistic texts known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and some hagiographical sources. The Christian views on sexuality were sometimes less ‘orthodox’ and more extreme than what Foucault presented, probably under the influence of Paul Veyne. The Life of Anthony by (...) Athanasius contains a passage which is not analyzed thoroughly in the volume as it was published but which is a key text for the development of Christian hermeneutics and pastoral power. (shrink)

At the provincial council elections of the 13th of October 1985 in Belgium two of the three traditional politie al families made a general progress, namely the socialists and the christian democrats. The liberals had a serious decline in Flanders, but for the greater part this was counterbalanced by the liberal progress in Wallonia. The ecologists also made progress, mostly in the Flemish part of the country. Beside the Flemish liberals, the big losers of these elections were the regional parties, (...) namely the Flemish nationalists and for sure the Walloon Rally who disappeared from the electoral scene. (shrink)

Via a historical reconstruction, this paper primarily demonstrates how the societal debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) gradually extended in terms of actors involved and concerns reflected. It is argued that the implementation of recombinant DNA technology out of the laboratory and into civil society entailed a “complex of concerns.” In this complex, distinctions between environmental, agricultural, socio-economic, and ethical issues proved to be blurred. This fueled the confusion between the wider debate on genetic modification and the risk assessment of (...) transgenic crops in the European Union. In this paper, the lasting skeptical and/or ambivalent attitude of Europeans towards agro-food biotechnology is interpreted as signaling an ongoing social request – and even a quest – for an evaluation of biotechnology with Sense and Sensibility. In this (re)quest, a broader-than-scientific dimension is sought for that allows addressing the GMO debate in a more “sensible” way, whilst making “sense” of the different stances taken in it. Here, the restyling of the European regulatory frame on transgenic agro-food products and of science communication models are discussed and taken to be indicative of the (re)quest to move from a merely scientific evaluation and risk-based policy towards a socially more robust evaluation that takes the “non-scientific” concerns at stake in the GMO debate seriously. (shrink)

I define serendipity as the art of making an unsought finding. And I propose an overview of my collection of serendipities, the largest yet assembled, chiefly in science and technology, but also in art, by giving a list of ‘serendipity patterns’. Although my list of ‘patterns’ is just a list and not a classification, it serves to introduce a new and possibly stimulating perspective on the old subject of serendipity. Knowledge of these ‘serendipity patterns’ might help in expecting also the (...) unexpected and in finding also the unsought. * I acknowledge A. D. de Groot, R. C. M. Noordam, B. P. van Heusden, T. Pinkster, C. J. van den Berg, T. A. F. Kuipers, A. Wegener Sleeswijk and my referee for their suggestions and I dedicate this article to T. A. van Kooten. Cases and studies of serendipidy are welcome. À propos: a travelling serendipity exhibition is available, also for ‘new democracies’: ‘Freedom of opportunity as developed by democracy is the best human reaction to divergent phenomena. We may, in fact, define ‘freedom’ as ‘the opportunity to profit from the unexpected.’ (Langmuir [1956]). (shrink)

The title of this collection of essays reflects the confusing complexity of the issues at stake. “Arts,” “Beyond Art,” and “Art”: what “art” are we talking about? In the introductory chapter, the editors follow, among others, the analyses of Arthur Danto and Pierre Bourdieu, concluding that “art,” as a series of canonical art works that reflect and legitimize the taste of an elite and defines the content of arts education, has come to an end. More specifically, the focus should change (...) from the qualities of works of art to the processes of imaginative consciousness and to other cognitive processes that give form to the “artistic” as a dimension of life. In his concluding essay, Barend van Heusden... (shrink)

The rhetorical view suggests that the goal of factual ar- gumentation in legal proceedings is to persuade the fact-finder about the facts under litigation. However, R does not capture our social expecta- tions: we want fact-finders to know the facts justifying their decisions, and persuasion does not necessarily lead to knowledge. I want to present an epistemic theory of argumenta- tion honoring our expectations. Un- der my account, factual argumenta- tion aims to transmit knowledge to the fact-finder.

While 4E approaches to cognition are increasingly introduced in educational contexts, little has been said about how 4E commitments can inform pedagogy aimed at fostering ethical competencies. Here, we evaluate a 4E-inspired ethics exercise that we developed at a technical university to enliven the moral imagination of engineering students. Our students participated in an interactive tinkering workshop, during which they materially redesigned a healthcare artifact. The aim of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, we wanted students to experience how material choices (...) at the levels of design and functionality can enable morally significant reimaginings of the affordances commonly associated with existing artifacts. We term this type of reimagining world-directed moral imagination. Secondly, through the design process, we wanted students to robustly place themselves in the lived embodied perspectives of (potential) users of their selected artifacts. We term this person-directed moral imagination. While student testimonies about the exercise indicate that both their world-directed and person-directed moral imagination were enlivened, we note that the fostering of robust person-directed moral imagination proved challenging. Using 4E insights, we diagnose this challenge and ask how it might be overcome. To this end, we engage extensively with a recent 4E-informed critique of person-directed moral imagination, raised by Clavel Vázquez and Clavel-Vázquez (2023). They argue that person-directed moral imagination is profoundly limited, if not fundamentally misguided, particularly when exercised in contexts marked by emphatic embodied situated difference between the imaginer and the imagined. Building upon insights from both the 4E field and testimonies from critical disability studies, we argue that, while their critique is valuable, it ultimately goes too far. We conclude that a 4E approach can take on board recent 4E warnings regarding the limits of person-directed moral imagination while contributing positively to the development of moral imagination in engineering ethics education. (shrink)

This paper challenges the two aims of Michael Cholbi’s Rational Will View (RWV) which are to (1) offer an account of why paternalism is presumptively or pro tanto wrong and (2) relate the relative wrongness of paternalistic interventions to the rational powers that such interventions target (Sections 1 and 2). Some of a paternalizee’s choices harm their future selves in ways that would be wrong if they were done to others. I claim this challenges Cholbi’s second aim (2) because the (...) cases his account deems particularly wrong turn out to be not to be as wrongful as expected (Section 3). When this second aim is challenged, it has knock-on effects on the capacity of the RWV to discern which cases of paternalism are generally more wrongful than others, which undermines Cholbi’s first aim (1). I consider responses on behalf of Cholbi’s view but conclude that the account is insufficient on its own to vindicate its two aims (Section 4). Finally, I draw on recent work that adopts ideas from the practical reasoning literature to help determine paternalism’s wrongness (Section 5). I argue this helps Cholbi’s view withstand my objections, but we must remain skeptical of why interceding with rational powers is particularly wrong. (shrink)

Abstract‘Social inclusion’ is the leading ideal in services and care for people with intellectual disabilities in most countries in the Global North. ‘Social inclusion’ can refer simply to full equal rights, but more often it is taken to mean something like ‘community participation’. This narrow version of social inclusion has become so ingrained that it virtually goes unchallenged. The presumption appears to be that there is a clear moral consensus that this narrow understanding of social inclusion is good. However, that (...) moral consensus is not clear in the case of people with profound intellectual and/or multiple disabilities (PIMD), who are not able to express their needs and preferences verbally. Moreover, social inclusion has proven to be difficult to conceptualize and implement for people with PIMD. Therefore, it becomes imperative to ask about the ethical rationale of the narrow understanding of social inclusion. For what reasons do we think social inclusion is good? And do those reasons also apply for people with PIMD? This article addresses these questions by providing an ethical analysis of the ideal of social inclusion for people with PIMD. It discusses four ethical arguments for social inclusion and probes their relevance for people with PIMD. The article argues that none of these arguments fully convince of the value of the narrow understanding of social inclusion for people with PIMD. It ends with advocating for an ethical space for imagining a good life for people with PIMD otherwise. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman’s attempt to analyse the expressiveness of artworks in semantic terms has been widely criticised. In this paper I try to show how the use of an adapted version of his concept of exemplification, as proposed by Mark Textor, can help to alleviate the worst problems with his theory of expression. More particularly I argue that the recognition of an intention, which is central to Textor’s account of exemplification, is also fundamental to our understanding of expressiveness in art. Moreover (...) I propose that the recognition of this intention depends on our interpretation of the artwork – an insight Goodman tried to capture with his assertion that our attributions of expressive properties to artworks function metaphorically. The realisation of the context-dependence of our expressive judgements about art and, hence, of the central role interpretation plays in these judgements, I contend, counts in favour of theories of expression like Goodman’s that focus on semantic concerns. (shrink)

Under review at Canadian Journal of Philosophy. This paper does five things: (1) It provides an analysis of meta-ethical Non-Realist Cognitivism. (2) It assesses two arguments in favour of the view which have been largely overlooked in analyses so far. (3) It argues that different proponents of the view offer crucially different strategies for vindicating moral objectivity without the metaphysical commitments of traditional non-naturalism. (4) Contrary to other commentators, it argues for the no-truthmaker interpretation of Parfit’s view. (5) It argues (...) that each version of Non-Realist Cognitivism is unlikely to be able to do the explanatory work that seemed to call for an ontologically committal non-naturalism. (shrink)

Bernard Williams argued that historical and philosophical inquiry were importantly linked in a number of ways. This introductory chapter distinguishes four different connections he identified between philosophy and history. (1) He believed that philosophy could not ignore its own history in the way that science can. (2) He thought that when engaging with philosophy’s history primarily to produce history, one still had to draw on philosophy. (3) Even doing history of philosophy philosophically, i.e. primarily to produce philosophy, required a keen (...) sense of how historically distant from us past philosophers were, on his view, because the point of reading them was to confront something different from the present. (4) He held that systematic philosophy itself needed to be done historically, engaging not necessarily with its own history, but with that of the concepts it sought to understand. The chapter closes with an overview of the volume’s structure and content. (shrink)

Gödel once offered an argument for the general reflection principle in set theory that took the form of an analogy with Leibniz' Monadology. I discuss the mathematical and philosophical background to Gödel's argument, reconstruct the proposed analogy in detail, and argue that it has no justificatory force.

Research shows that after layoffs, employees often report decreased commitment and performance which has been coined the survivor syndrome. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect remain underexplored. The purpose of the paper is to show that reduced organizational identification can serve as an explanation for the survivor syndrome. We conducted a laboratory experiment, in which participants work as a group of employees for another participant who acts as employer. In the course of the experiment, the employer decides whether one of (...) his or her employees should be laid off or not. Mediation analysis supports a social identity-based explanation for the emergence of the survivor syndrome: downsizing causes lower identification with the employer which in turn relates to lower performance of employees. (shrink)

What sort of epistemic positions are compatible with inquiries driven by interrogative attitudes like wonder and puzzlement? The ignorance norm provides a partial answer: interrogative attitudes directed at a particular question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer. But some are tempted to think that interrogative attitudes are incompatible with weaker positions like belief as well. This paper defends that the ignorance norm is exhaustive. All epistemic positions weaker than knowledge directed at the answer to a question are (...) compatible with having an interrogative attitude towards that question. We offer two arguments for this conclusion. The first is based on considerations about the role of hedging in inquiry. The second is conditional on considerations related to the aim of inquiry as a goal-directed activity. (shrink)

What do players of videogames mean when they say they want to shoot zombies? Surely they know that the zombies are not real, and that they cannot really shoot them, but only control a fictional character who does so. Some philosophers of fiction argue that we need the concept of imaginative desires to explain situations in which people feel desires towards fictional characters or desires that motivate pretend actions. Others claim that we can explain these situations without complicating human psychology (...) with a novel mental state. Within their debates, however, these scholars exclusively focus on non-interactive fictions and children’s games of make-believe. In this paper, I argue that our experience of immersive, interactive fictions like videogames gives us cause to reappraise the concept of imaginative desires. Moreover, I describe how i-desires are a useful conceptual tool within videogame development and can shed new light on apparently immoral in-game actions. (shrink)

The method of positron emission tomography illustrates the circular logic popular in subtractive neuroimaging and linear reductive cognitive psychology. Both require that strictly feed-forward, modular, cognitive components exist, before the fact, to justify the inference of particular components from images after the fact. Also, both require a "true" componential theory of cognition and laboratory tasks, before the fact, to guarantee reliable choices for subtractive contrasts. None of these possibilities are likely. Consequently, linear reductive analysis has failed to yield general, reliable, (...) componential accounts. (shrink)

ROBERT A. COOKE, CPA, has owned or co-owned three successful small businesses and is the author of six books, including Doing Business Tax-Free and How to Start Your Own S Corporation, Second Edition, both from Wiley.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has already caused large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and will continue to do so for manyyears after hostilities have ceased mainly because of the emissions linked to the rebuilding of destroyed or damaged housing, public buildings, infrastructure, factories, and the like. My aim in this paper is to discuss how in a time of climate emergency such emissions of war should impact the political morality of states initiating, continuing, and (...) ending war (through a just and enduring peace) as understood by just war theory (JWT). My point of departure is a study by Lennard de Klerk and six co-authors detailing the emissions of the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian war. (shrink)

Decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) have the potential to advance the conduct of clinical trials, but raise several ethical issues, including obtaining valid informed consent. The debate on the ethical issues resulting from digitalization is predominantly focused on direct risks relating to for example data protection, safety, and data quality. We submit however, that a broader view on ethical aspects of DCTs is needed to touch upon the new challenges that come with the DCT practice. Digitalization has impacts that go beyond (...) its direct purposes, by shaping behaviors, experiences, social relations, and values. We examine four elements of the informed consent procedure that are affected by DCTs, while taking these soft impacts of technologies into account: (i) informing participants and testing understanding, (ii) freedoms in relation to responsibilities and burdens, (iii) trust in participant-researcher relations, and (iv) impacts on the concept of privacy. Our analysis reveals that a broad view is key for optimal conduct of DCTs. In addition, it provides insight into the ethical impacts of DCTs on informed consent. Technologies such as DCTs potentially have profound impacts which are not immediately addressed by the existing regulatory frameworks, but nonetheless important to recognize. These findings can guide future practices of DCTs to foster the important values of clinical research in this novel approach for conducting clinical trials. (shrink)

The concept of Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) emphasises the comprehensive person-centred experience as essential to promoting living environments. SHAFE takes an interdisciplinary approach, conceptualising complete and multidisciplinary solutions for an inclusive society. From this approach, we promote participation, health, and well-being experiences by finding the best possible combinations of social, physical, and digital solutions in the community. This initiative emerged bottom-up in Europe from the dream and conviction that innovation can improve health equity, foster caring communities, and sustainable development. (...) Smart, adaptable, and inclusive solutions can promote and support independence and autonomy throughout the lifespan, regardless of age, gender, disabilities, cultural differences, and personal choices, as well as promote happier and fairer living places. The New European Bauhaus initiative gathers “beautiful, sustainable, and inclusive projects and ideas” to inspire a positive transformation around us. The New European Bauhaus 2024 Festival took place between 9-13 April. “Designing the perfect New European Bauhaus neighbourhood: New European Bauhaus meets SHAFE” was a Satellite Event of the Festival, held as an online workshop, organised by the SHAFE Foundation on April 9th, 2024. At the event, a group of 50 participants with a multidisciplinary background discussed how to meet the challenges of the European Garcia family to enable them to live in a perfect neighbourhood. The White Paper presents the findings of the participants with the New European Bauhaus inspiring projects and ideas to house the European Garcia family in their neighbourhood. The White Paper recommends developers, designers, planners, and policymakers to include person-centred design of social and physical environments and technologies. Although awareness of person-centred design is growing, many initiatives still hamper the inclusion of citizens or end-users throughout the development of products and services. (shrink)

Découvrir le yoga pour agir en profondeur sur la santé et le mental Mal de dos, stress, nervosité? Pratiquez le yoga! A la fois maîtrise et abandon, le yoga a une influence bénéfique sur le quotidien. Ce livre précis et approfondi vous en apprendra la base, des techniques de respiration aux secrets de la souplesse. Grâce à des explications claires et de nombreuses photos des postures, vous découvrirez les bienfaits de vraies séances, dont l'ordre et la durée sont détaillés. En (...) vous débarrassant de ces maux du monde moderne, le yoga vous aidera à retrouver le calme et la sérénité, la joie et le dynamisme. (shrink)

This article resurfaces an enslaved female whom we encounter, drowning, in the archive of the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie (MCC). To unfold a reading beyond the transcription of her commodified death, I investigate the five localities that conditioned her bodily inscription into history: the archive, the law, the ship, the ocean, and the womb. Traveling through these localities, I disclose, at once, the historical violence against black females through the transatlantic slave trade system and the excess black females proved to be (...) to this very system. Excessive thus, black female lineage provides an alternative to white, patriarchic systems of relation. (shrink)