In a span of twenty years, two of the autocephalous churches of the Orthodox Christian world released documents addressing the social realities of contemporary life: the Russian Orthodox Church's Basis of the Social Concept (2000) and the Ecumenical Patriarch's For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (2020). This article offers a side-by-side comparison and analysis of the documents’ treatments of matters of birth and death, including childbirth, abortion, miscarriage, end-of-life care, euthanasia, suicide, and (...) a vision of a good death. Detailed comparison demonstrates remarkable accord between the two churches on many of these matters. Differences of omission and emphasis appear to be indicative of contrasting demographic and historical situations, with the exception of one, notable divergence between the churches, all of which are discussed. The striking degree and depth of consonance between the documents offers potential for cooperation and unity as the two churches negotiate their conflicts while also seeking to guide their flocks and offer Orthodox Christian witness in an increasingly desacralized world. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was a philosopher and novelist who wrote extensively on the themes of love, goodness, religion, and morality. In this article, we explore her notion of ‘moral vision’; the idea that morality is not just about how we act and make choices, but how we see the world in a much broader sense.

The article focuses on the temporal and epistemic economy connected to the transatlantic travels of the categorical triad of ‘race-class-gender’. It looks at conditions and forces that have fuelled the dynamics of the discourse on differences and inequality among women and analyses feminist discourse and its aporias as a particular environment for the travels of theories. Furthermore, it follows the changes the triad of ‘race-class-gender’ undergoes on its transatlantic route from the United States to a German-speaking context and it outlines (...) the theoretical challenges connected to an intersectional perspective that aims to overcome a theoretical stagnation that itself finds symptomatic expression in the ritual citing of ‘race-class-gender’. (shrink)

One of the key doctrines of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is his definition of truth as _adaequatio intellectus et rei_. The aim of this study is to make clear that the medieval doctrine presents the essential meaning of the term 'truth'. It also throws light on the much discussed continuity between medieval and modern thought.

This essay explores the development of Simone Weil's conception of obedience across religious, political, and ethical contexts. By bringing together these strands of Weil's thought, it aims to illuminate some important connections in her treatment of obedience throughout these diverse topics. The author argues that Weil's political treatment of obedience is deeply influenced by ideas in Christian thought, and that this account is situated within an understanding of obedience in the natural world which is itself ethically loaded. Hence it is (...) suggested that Weil's account of obedience has something to offer philosophy today: namely, a conception of obedience which recognises the practical and ethical need for obeying others, but which is distinct from the mere submission to power. (shrink)

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that (...) comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment. Contributors Sara Ahmed Jane Bennett Rosi Braidotti Pheng Cheah Rey Chow William E. Connolly Diana Coole Jason Edwards Samantha Frost Elizabeth Grosz Sonia Kruks Melissa A. Orlie. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) calls for medical practitioners to “integrate” our best available evidence into clinical practice. A significant amount of the literature on EBM takes this integration to be unproblematic, focusing on questions like how to interpret evidence and engage with patient values, rather than critically looking at how these features of EBM can be implemented together. Other authors have also commented on this gap in the literature, for example, identifying the lack of clarity about how patient preferences and evidence (...) from trials is supposed to be integrated in practice. In this paper, I look at this issue from an epistemological perspective, (looking at how different types of knowledge in EBM can be used to make sounds judgements). In particular, I introduce an epistemological issue for this integration problem, which I call the epistemic integration problem. This is essentially the problem of how we can use information that is both general (eg, about a population sample) and descriptive (eg, about what expected outcomes are) to reach clinical judgements that are individualized (applying to a particular patient) and normative (about what is best for their health). (shrink)

Delayed responses are a common phenomenon in experience sampling studies. Yet no consensus exists on whether they should be excluded from the analysis or what the threshold for exclusion should be. Delayed responses could introduce bias, but previous investigations of systematic differences between delayed and timely responses have offered unclear results. To investigate differences as a function of delay, we conducted secondary analyses of nine paper and pencil based experience sampling studies including 1,528 individuals with different clinical statuses. In all (...) participants, there were significant decreases in positive and increases in negative affect as a function of delay. In addition, delayed answers of participants without depression showed higher within-person variability and an initial strengthening in the relationships between contextual stress and affect. Participants with depression mostly showed the opposite pattern. Delayed responses seem qualitatively different from timely responses. Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these differences. (shrink)

La educación en línea forzada por la pandemia del 2020, puede ser un trampolín de oportunidades para la inclusión de personas con discapacidad visual gracias a las tecnologías de asistencia; o bien, las puede dejar fuera por el analfabetismo que existe en la sociedad con respecto a dónde encontrar y cómo usar dichas tecnologías de asistencia para favorecer la inclusión de este colectivo. Por ello, es de vital importancia implementar tecnologías de asistencia y metodologías didácticas innovadoras, que permitan aprendizajes significativos (...) y generen motivación en los estudiantes con discapacidad visual para participar de manera más proactiva. El juego y la formación aleatoria de equipos que permiten las plataformas potencializa la capacidad adaptativa de estos estudiantes en la comunidad educativa, al tiempo que se ejerce el derecho a la accesibilidad mediante la información en múltiples formatos de diseño universal para el aprendizaje. En este ensayo la autora, quien conduce una sala tiflotécnica en una universidad politécnica, discute el tipo de tecnologías digitales que coadyuvan a eliminar barreras al aprendizaje de personas con discapacidad visual, colectivo al que ella misma pertenece, con el propósito que se puedan generar el tipo de escenarios educativos que requieren. (shrink)

Cartesian scepticism poses the question of how we can justify our belief that other humans experience consciousness in the same way that we do. Wittgenstein’s response to this scepticism is one that does not seek to resolve the problem by providing a sound argument against the Cartesian sceptic. Rather, he provides a method of philosophical inquiry which enables us to move past this and continue our inquiry without the possibility of solipsism arising as a philosophical problem in the first place. (...) In this paper, I propose that Wittgenstein’s method of dismissing the Cartesian sceptic can also be applied to the problems posed by the ‘moral sceptic’, who denies the truth of all ethical or moral claims. I will argue that in the same way Wittgenstein’s focus on public language enables us to dismiss the traditional problem of other minds, a focus on public moral practices or language-games also enables us to dismiss the idea that moral claims are always ‘meaningless’, ‘false’ or ‘nonsensical’. On this account, the moral sceptic is misguided in much the same way as the solipsist who implicitly admits the existence of other minds in her practices. The moral sceptic who still engages in moral activities also implicitly admits the existence of meaningful moral positions. Wittgenstein’s dismissal of the Cartesian sceptic, as I understand it, can be broadly divided into two parts. The first part is an account of language acquisition. This part outlines how we might come to see other humans as conscious, thinking, feeling beings from a causal perspective. This suggests that we can arrive at an understanding of other minds as a primary perception itself - without needing to posit this perception as a kind of deductive or inductive hypothesis. Secondly, we can see how this relates to an epistemic model of language. This focuses on the role of language as something which consists of rule-governed activities, where the existence of other minds is embedded in our understanding of the world as a kind of grammatical rule, rather than an observational hypothesis. From both these arguments the Cartesian sceptic is,, irrelevant to some forms of philosophical inquiry. This is because the sceptic takes the existence of other minds to be a rational hypothesis/inference when it is not. I suggest that this approach can be applied to moral scepticism if we take certain normative claims as grammatical dispositions, rather than rational or metaphysical propositions. Hence, the moral sceptic who offers a rational or logical critique of these moral foundations is not necessarily saying anything relevant to our practices – the moral stances which they refute as rationally meaningless were never based on purely rational or logical hypotheses in the first place. (shrink)

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods (...) not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. (shrink)

Au cœur des interactions, les pronoms personnels tiennent une place déjà largement analysée en linguistique, particulièrement pour ce qui concerne les interactions numériques. C’est dans cette perspective que se situe cet article, qui a pour objet l’étude d’un chat de prévention au suicide, et plus particulièrement des interactions entre appelants en détresse et écoutants bénévoles. Notre étude s’attache à analyser la place singulière du pronom nous au sein de ce corpus, afin d’en saisir les particularités et les fonctions, dans le (...) contexte spécifique de la prévention au suicide ; dans cette optique, nous accordons une importance spécifique au nous de distanciation, dans une logique d’analyse de discours socialement située. (shrink)

I provide an account of the cognitive attitude of trust that explains the role trust plays in the planning of rational agents. Many authors have dismissed choosing to trust as either impossible or irrational; however, this fails to account for the role of trust in practical reasoning. A can have therapeutic, coping, or corrective reasons to trust B to ${\phi}$ , even in the absence of evidence that B will ${\phi}$ . One can choose to engage in therapeutic trust to (...) inspire trustworthiness, coping trust to simplify one’s planning, or corrective trust to avoid doing a testimonial injustice. To accommodate such types of trust, without accepting doxastic voluntarism, requires an account of the cognitive attitude of trust broader than belief alone. I argue that trust involves taking the proposition that someone will do something as a premise in one’s practical reasoning, which can be a matter of believing or accepting the proposition. I defend this account against objections that it (i) provides insufficient rational constraints on trust, (ii) conflates trust and pretense of trust, and (iii) cannot account for the rationality of back-up planning. (shrink)

Since antiquity, enlightened humanism has been developing the project of combining education through science with science measured by education, in cooperation of humanities and sciences. To the extent that this model is abandoned, it is questionable how the ever-increasing responsibility of scientists is to be perceived as a human one. A renewed humanism should set its measure in being-with and a freedom shared with human beings, things and nature. The university as a place of education would have to reflect on (...) and cultivate not dispositive knowledge, but the relationship of the subject matter to the transcendent alterity of a being and living other. (shrink)

Since anonymous agents can spread misinformation with impunity, many people advocate for greater accountability for internet speech. This paper provides a veritistic argument that accountability mechanisms can cause significant epistemic problems for internet encyclopedias and social media communities. I show that accountability mechanisms can undermine both the dissemination of true beliefs and the detection of error. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, I suggest alternative mechanisms for increasing the trustworthiness of internet communication.