Meta-ethical attempts to define concepts such as 'goodness', ‘right and wrong’, ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’, have proved largely futile, even over-ambitious. Morality, it is argued, should therefore be directed primarily at the reduction of suffering, principally because the latter is more easily recognisable and accords with an objective view and requirements of the human condition. All traditional and contemporary perspectives are without suitable criteria for evaluating moral dilemmas and without such guidance we face the potent threat of sliding to a (...) destructive moral nihilism. This book presents a possible set of defining characteristics for the foundation of future moral evaluations and engagements, taking into consideration that the historically maligned female gender may be better disposed to ethical leadership. (shrink)

A review of Elspeth Probyn. 2016, 'Eating the Ocean'. Durham: Duke University Press and Astrida Neimanis. 2017, 'Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology'. London: Bloomsbury.

Philosophers of biology typically pose questions about individuation by asking “what is an individual?” For example, we ask, “what is an individual species”, “what is an individual organism”, and “what is an individual gene?” In the first part of this chapter, I present my account of the gene concept and how it is used in investigative practices in order to motivate a more pragmatic approach. Instead of asking “what is a gene?”, I ask: “how do biologists individuate genes?”, “for what (...) purposes?”, and “do their practices of individuating genes serve these purposes?" In the second part of this chapter, I propose that we use this approach when analyzing concepts of organisms and biological individuals. Following philosophical pragmatism, I argue that we should abstain from attempts to situate individuation of Darwinian individuals or of holobionts in a philosophy of nature. Instead, we should analyze practices of individuating organisms in terms of three-place relations between the world, ideas, and human purposes and actions. I conclude with three lessons: an ontological, an epistemological, and a meta-philosophical lesson, which I suggest, apply to philosophy of science generally and to philosophy and metaphysics at large. (shrink)

"Annual General Meeting Members Lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (202), pp. 17.

Reading fiction for pleasurable is robustly correlated with improved cognitive attainment and other benefits. It is also in decline among young people in developed nations, in part because of competition from moving image fiction. We review existing research on the differences between reading/hearing verbal fiction and watching moving image fiction, as well as looking more broadly at research on image/text interactions and visual versus verbal processing. We conclude that verbal narrative generates more diverse responses than moving image narrative., We note (...) that reading and viewing narrative are different tasks, with different cognitive loads. Viewing moving image narrative mostly involves visual processing with some working memory engagement, whereas reading narrative involves verbal processing, visual imagery and personal memory (Xu et al 2005). but Attempts to compare the two by creating suggest that existing research is flawed by attempts to create equivalent stimuli and task demands face a number of challenges, and we discuss these difficulties in comparative approaches. We then investigate the possibility of identifying lower level processing mechanisms that might distinguish cognition of the two media, and propose a focus on internal scene construction and on working memory as foci for future research. Although many of the sources we draw on are focussed on English speaking participants in European or North American settings, we also cover material relating to speakers of Dutch, German, Hebrew and Japanese in their respective countries, and studies of a remote Turkish mountain community. (shrink)

To move from the realm of good intent to verifiable practice, ethics needs to be approached in the same way as any other desired outcome of the public relations process: that is, operationalized and evaluated at each stage of a public relations campaign. A pyramid model - the "ethics pyramid" - is useful for incorporating ethical reflection and evaluation processes into the standard structure of a typical public relations plan. Practitioners can use it to integrate and manage ethical intent, means, (...) and ends, by setting ethics objectives, considering the ethics of each campaign tactic, and reporting whether ethical outcomes have been attained. (shrink)

Verbal narratives provide incomplete information and can be very long, yet readers and hearers often effortlessly fill in the gaps and make connections across long stretches of text, sometimes even finding this immersive. How is this done? In the last few decades, event-indexing situation modeling and complementary accounts of narrative emotion have suggested answers. Despite this progress, comparisons between real-life perception and narrative experience might underplay the way narrative processing modifies our world model, as well as the role of the (...) emotions that do not relate to characters. I reframe narrative experience in predictive processing and neural networks, capturing continuity between fiction, perception, and states like dreaming and imagination, enabled by the flexible instantiation of concepts. In this framework, narrative experience is more clearly revealed as a creative experience that can share some of the phenomenology of dreams. (shrink)

Why is there a new explosion of interest in authentic ethnic foods and exotic cooking shows, where macho chefs promote sensual adventures in the kitchen? Why do we watch TV ads that promise more sex if we serve the right breakfast cereal? Why is the hunger strike such a potent political tool? Food inevitably engages questions of sensuality and power, of our connections to our bodies and to our world. Carnal Appetites brilliantly uses the lens of food and eating to (...) ask how we eat into culture, eat into identities, indeed eat into ourselves. Drawing on interviews, theory, and her own war with anorexia, Probyn argues that food is replacing sex in our imagination and experience of bodily pleasure. Our culinary cravings and habits express the turmoil in gender roles, in families, and even in the world economy, where famine coexists with plenty. Probyn explores these dark interconnections to forge a new visceral ethics rooted in the language of hunger and satiety, disgust and pleasure, gluttonyand restraint. From the fat pride movement and diet fads to genetically altered grain and colonial cannibalism, Carnal Appetites looks at what we eat to tell us who we are. (shrink)

Outside Belongings argues against a psychological depth model of identity--one in which individuals possess an intrinsic quality that guarantees authentic belonging. Instead, Probyn proposes a model of identity that takes into account the desires of individuals, and groups of individuals, to belong. The main ideas she considers--"the outside", "the surface", and "belonging"--allow her to articulate, in concrete terms, her precise concerns about sexuality and nationality.

BackgroundThough sobriety in young people is on the rise, students who drink little or no alcohol may experience social exclusion at University, impacting well-being. We aim to understand the social experiences of United Kingdom undergraduate students who drink little or no alcohol.MethodsA mixed-methods study using semi-structured, one-to-one interviews and the 24-Item Social Provisions Scale and Flourishing Scale with 15 undergraduate students who drink little or no alcohol. Descriptive statistics are presented for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative.ResultsEight main themes (...) and four subthemes were generated from thematic analysis summarised in two sections ‘views of drinkers from non-drinkers’ and ‘how peer pressure feels and how people deal with it.’ The initial transition to University represented a challenge, where participants struggled to find their ‘true’ friends. However, students generally had high levels of social provision, well-being and enjoyed close friendships with fewer casual acquaintances. All students experienced some kind of peer pressure and developed coping strategies when in social situations involving alcohol. Fear of missing out on the ‘typical’ University experience heightened self-imposed expectations to drink. Despite participants acknowledging their counter-normative behaviour, some felt they were subject to stigmatisation by drinkers, doubting their non-drinker status, causing feelings of exclusion or being ‘boring.’ Their desire to ‘be like everyone else’ exposed some insight into the negative stereotypes of sobriety, including frustration behind alcohol’s status elevation.ConclusionStudents adopt strategies to minimise peer pressure and to fit in. Future research should interrogate drinkers’ perceptions of their sober peers to deepen understanding, better break down ‘us and them,’ and mitigate future expectations within the University drinking culture. (shrink)

More official complaints about medical treatment in the UK relate to poor communications than to wrong diagnoses. This article, in considering the importance of communications training for clinicians, is structured into three sections. From use of a story that introduces the idea of miscommunication and trauma in the first section, the article moves, in the second, to a theorisation of trauma as a concept, addressing issues of intersubjectivity, the relationship between embodied and psychological being, and ethics. From this, the third (...) section engages directly with medical communications training, exemplifying a particular literary-studies approach to matters of communication. (shrink)

The successful study of film combines criticism, theory and practice. This book covers all three areas and guides the student towards an engaged form of creative expression and an active role as reviewer and critic. Beautifully presented, this ground-breaking text offers all students an integrated understanding of film criticism and production"--Provided by publisher.

____Outside Belongings__ argues against a psychological depth model of identity--one in which individuals possess an intrinsic quality that guarantees authentic belonging. Instead, Probyn proposes a model of identity that takes into account the desires of individuals, and groups of individuals, to belong. The main ideas she considers--"the outside", "the surface", and "belonging"--allow her to articulate, in concrete terms, her precise concerns about sexuality and nationality.

"The impetus for this collection derives from a set of seminars given by various guest speakers to the Advanced and Honours class in Jurisprudence in the University of Glasgow in the Session 1973-4. The contributors include persons engaged primarily in the disciplines of civil law, medieval history, modern history, moral philosophy, political economy, politics and private law as well as in that of jurisprudence itself. While on a diversity of topics, the essays have in common the fact that they attempt, (...) in varying degree, either to illustrate the relationship between legal theory and law as an existing institution or to place legal theories in a wider philosophical or historical context. The contributors wish to dedicate the collection to Sir Charles Wilson not only as a mark of esteem on his retiral as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow but also as a tribute to his own scholarship in the field of jurisprudence"--Preface. (shrink)

Citizenship of the European Union is a status that is held by every person who is a national of a member state of the Union. This chapter examines the history of Union citizenship, where it came from and how it developed over time. It then discusses the rights and duties of citizenship of the Union, explaining what they are and how they can be accessed. The chapter also looks at what citizenship of the Union means and where the issues are (...) regarding its relationship with nationality of the member states. Article 20(1) Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) contains the genesis and determination of the status of citizen of the European Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship. Finally, the chapter comments on some of the current political challenges for this citizenship. (shrink)

New media have changed the parameters of public relations, multiplying audiences and altering the nature of relationships. Practitioners’ ethics approaches have been slower to adapt, frequently proving inadequate to the changes. McLuhan’s theory of technological determinism predicts this lag in conceptualizing and adapting to technological evolution; with awareness of the problem, however, practitioners have an opportunity to consciously shift to using the potential of new media proactively for ethical guidance, rather than continuing to allow ethics processes to lag behind technological (...) capacity. -/- In 1967 Marshall McLuhan wrote, “When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past” (74). His words referred to the gap he observed between the potentially innovative functionality of new media, and the predominately traditionalist approaches to their use. While McLuhan’s comments are now more than 40 years old, and a host of newer technologies has evolved from those he described, his point remains strikingly germane: This chapter demonstrates that there is still a chasm between the potential and the utilization of new media, and explores the implications of that chasm for the specific context of new media and ethics in the field of public relations. (shrink)

Controversy about Lynn White’s thesis that medieval Christianity is to blame for our current environmental crisis has done little to challenge the basic structure of White’s argument and has taken little account of recent work done by medieval scholars. White’s ecotheological critics, in particular, have often failed to come to grips with White’s position. In this paper, I question White’s reading of history on both interpretative and factual grounds and argue that religious values cannot be treated independently of the political, (...) economic, and social conditions that sustain them. I conclude that medieval religious values were more complex than White suggests: rather than causing technological innovation, they more likely provided a justification for other activity taking place for other reasons. (shrink)

This article reintroduces notions of the experiential, lived body as crucial for teaching. It critiques some recent moves within women’s studies, and cultural studies more generally, to use ‘theory’ as a way of abstracting bodies from the classroom. Using the work of Silvan Tomkins on affects, and Deleuzian notions of the body, it argues for a more comprehensive account of the affects, politics and practices of pedagogy.

This article reintroduces notions of the experiential, lived body as crucial for teaching. It critiques some recent moves within women’s studies, and cultural studies more generally, to use ‘theory’ as a way of abstracting bodies from the classroom. Using the work of Silvan Tomkins on affects, and Deleuzian notions of the body, it argues for a more comprehensive account of the affects, politics and practices of pedagogy.

This article questions whether food is replacing sex as the ground of identity negotiation. Examining several food sites, and following Foucault's suggestive remarks about the Greek dietetic regimen, I argue that food can be seen as a line that intersects with sexuality. Rather than privileging either, an alternative ethics can be glimpsed in the doubling of food and sex.

This article examines the relation between the self and the concept of gender positions. It considers the possibility that young women with few resources for fashioning a strong sense of self use anorexia as a mode of negotiating societal strictures. It suggests that the institutional imprinting of a certain image and a certain kind of third-person observation imposed on the girls/patients/anorexics is just such an exercise of subjectification.

Drawing on examples of mainstream sport and the philosophy of the Gay Games, this article uses sporting bodies to rethink the links between sexuality, pride and shame. The contrast between the two highlights the ways in which the Gay Games downplays the dynamics of shame and competition in favour of its project of pride. Against the domestication of the body in some theories of embodiment, it is argued that shame may provide a productive ground for revitalizing the study of the (...) body in terms of affect, politics and ethics. (shrink)

This article argues against a conception of the body as providing a basis for truth claims within feminist discourse. Taking from Michèle Le Doeuff's theory of the work of the image within discourse, and Michel Foucault's "technologies of the self," it is argued that the doubledness of the body ("who am I? and who is she?") can be put to work to construct embodied enunicative positions within feminist theory.

Through an examination of a variety of cultural forms and texts, Sexy Bodies investigates the ways in which sexual bodies, sexual practices and sexualities are produced.Are bodies sexy? How? In what sorts of ways? Sexy Bodies investigates the production of sexual bodies and sexual practices, of sexualities which are dyke, bi, transracial, and even hetero. It celebrates lesbian and queer sexualities but also explores what runs underneath and within all sexualities, discovering what is fundamentally weird and strange about all bodies, (...) all carnalities.Looking at a pleasurable variety of cultural forms and texts, the contributors consider the particular charms of girls and horses, from National Velvet to Marnie; discuss figures of the lesbian body from vampires to tribades to tomboys; uncover 'virtual' lesbians in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson; track desire in the music of legendary Blues singers; and investigate the ever-scrutinised and celebrated body of Elizabeth Taylor. The collection includes two important pieces of fiction by Mary Fallon and Nicole Brossard. (shrink)

A leading ethicist offers a theological guide to thinking Christianly about the ordinary nature of everyday life.

In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aesthetics of creative activism, we canvas influential scholarship of political aesthetics to sculpt a broad typology of six interconnected mechanisms by which art might intervene in the world. We label these: Documentation, Disruption, Recognition, Participation, Imagination, and Beauty. Each has a compelling tradition of theory and application, augmented, extended, and sometimes challenged by the thirteen fresh and provocative contributions in the special issue. Yet, we ask, (...) if both politically minded artists and culturally minded activists are convinced of the power of art to provoke social change, and if we live a world that by almost all measures is now saturated with politically inclined, aesthetically informed practices, interfaces, objects, and texts, why does art not seem to be making a difference? Clearly, we need to think harder about the relationships between art and action, a task the articles assembled here call upon us to take seriously. (shrink)

This paper explores factors shaping perceptions of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) amongst a range of informed stakeholders, with a particular focus on their role in future social and political systems. We find considerable ambivalence regarding the role of climate targets and incumbent interests in relation to GGR. Our results suggest that GGR is symbolic of a fundamental debate - occurring not only between separate people, but sometimes within the minds of individuals themselves - over whether technological solutions represent a pragmatic (...) or an unethical strategy. We present the idea of a 'Monsanto effect', whereby an entirely separate debate taps into deeper narratives and becomes so pervasive that it spills over into a new topic area. Our findings have significant implications for extant and emergent climate policy as they suggest that, in addition to the considerable practical challenges facing large-scale GGR deployment, there is a deeper psychological challenge in that actors are themselves conflicted about the fundamental desirability of GGR. (shrink)

What should philosophers of science accomplish when they analyze scientific concepts and interpret scientific knowledge? What is concept analysis if it is not a description of the way scientists actually think? I investigate these questions by using Hans Reichenbach's account of the descriptive, critical, and advisory tasks of philosophy of science to examine Karola Stotz and Paul Griffiths' idea that poll-based methodologies can test philosophical analyses of scientific concepts. Using Reichenbach's account as a point of departure, I argue that philosophy (...) of science should identify and clarify epistemic virtues and describe scientific knowledge in relation to these virtues. The role of concept analysis is to articulate scientific concepts in ways that help reveal epistemic virtues and limitations of particular sciences. This means an analysis of the gene concept should help clarify the explanatory power and limitations of gene-based explanations, and should help account for the investigative utility and biases of gene-centered sciences. I argue that a philosophical analysis of gene concept that helps achieve these critical aims should not be rejected on the basis of poll-based studies even if such studies could show that professional biologists don't actually use gene terminology in precise ways corresponding to the philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Biologists studying complex causal systems typically identify some factors as causes and treat other factors as background conditions. For example, when geneticists explain biological phenomena, they often foreground genes and relegate the cellular milieu to the background. But factors in the milieu are as causally necessary as genes for the production of phenotypic traits, even traits at the molecular level such as amino acid sequences. Gene-centered biology has been criticized on the grounds that because there is parity among causes, the (...) “privileging” of genes reflects a reductionist bias, not an ontological difference. The idea that there is an ontological parity among causes is related to a philosophical puzzle identified by John Stuart Mill: what, other than our interests or biases, could possibly justify identifying some causes as the actual or operative ones, and other causes as mere background? The aim of this paper is to solve this conceptual puzzle and to explain why there is not an ontological parity among genes and the other factors. It turns out that solving this puzzle helps answer a seemingly unrelated philosophical question: what kind of causal generality matters in biology? (shrink)

Okasha claims at the outset of his book "Evolution and the Levels of Selection" (2006) that the Price equation lays bare the fundamentals underlying all selection phenomena. However, the thoroughness of his subsequent analysis of multi-level selection theories leads him to abandon his fundamentalist commitments. At critical points he invokes cost benefit analyses that sometimes favors the Price approach and sometimes the contextual approach, sometimes favors MLS1 and sometimes MLS2. And although he doesn’t acknowledge it, even the Price approach breaks (...) down into a family of alternative equations that parse the causes in different ways, none of which is uniquely correct and none of which achieves the ultimate isolation of effects due to what Okasha believes are the fundamental causes. I argue that his book provides good reason to re-conceive our understanding of evolutionary theorizing in terms of a toolbox view (developed here) and to stop subjecting the analyses of evolutionary concepts to a universalist standard. (shrink)

This paper investigates what molecular biology has done for our understanding of the gene. I base a new account of the gene concept of classical genetics on the classical dogma that gene differences cause phenotypic differences. Although contemporary biologists often think of genes in terms of this concept, molecular biology provides a second way to understand genes. I clarify this second way by articulating a molecular gene concept. This concept unifies our understanding of the molecular basis of a wide variety (...) of phenomena, including the phenomena that classical genetics explains in terms of gene differences causing phenotypic differences. (shrink)

1. This paper contributes to the broader debate about how elite school institutions manage to remain alert and responsive to changing education market conditions, locally and globally, by explicitl...

Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) reviewers often provide similar feedback across applications, which suggests that the problem lies in researcher awareness of key issues rather than novel, unsolvable challenges. If common problems can be addressed before lodgement by applicants referencing clear evidence-based supports (e.g., FAQs on common application shortcomings), it would improve efficiency for HREC members and expedite approvals. We aim to inform such supports by analysing the patterns in the most frequent feedback made by HREC members during review processes. (...) We collected every instance (N = 4,195) of feedback made on N = 197 ‘low-risk’ protocols by all HREC staff (N = 16) at one institution over the course of a full year (2019). Reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes (and content analysis to determine relative frequency) revealed that the top three themes are consistent with existing literature: Consent, Administrative, and Methodological concerns. However, we identified important new themes that are not captured in previous research, including ‘Risk to Researchers’, ‘Commercial benefit, scope and scale’, ‘Diversity’ (covering issues of cultural sensitivity, language and accessibility), as well as fair right to a complaints process. Our thorough exploration of information-rich primary data marks an important methodological improvement over previous studies and offers a theoretical contribution to understanding themes that have heretofore been overlooked in the ethics review process. By identifying the common challenges experienced in HREC review we can better inform tailored supports to applicants (by extension reducing workload burdens on HREC systems) and reduce their perceived barriers to engaging in challenging but meaningful research. (shrink)

Darwinians are realists about the force of selection, but there has been surprisingly little discussion about what form this realism should take. Arguments about the units of selection in general and genic selectionism in particular reveal two realist assumptions: (1) for any selection process, there is a uniquely correct identification of the operative selective forces and the level at which each impinges; and (2) selective forces must satisfy the Pareto-style requirement of probabilistic causation. I argue that both assumptions are false; (...) we must temper realism about the force of selection and revise the way we think about probabilistic causation. (shrink)