The ever increasing ability of medical technology to reshape the human body in fundamental ways—from organ and tissue transplants to reconstructive surgery and prosthetics—is something now largely taken for granted. But for a philosopher, such interventions raise fundamental and fascinating questions about our sense of individual identity and its relationship to the physical body. Drawing on and engaging with philosophers from across the centuries, Jenny Slatman here develops a novel argument: that our own body always entails a strange dimension, (...) a strangeness that enables us to incorporate radical physical changes. (shrink)

The core idea of social constructivism in mathematics is that mathematical entities are social constructs that exist in virtue of social practices, similar to more familiar social entities like institutions and money. Julian C. Cole has presented an institutional version of social constructivism about mathematics based on John Searle’s theory of the construction of the social reality. In this paper, I consider what merits social constructivism has and examine how well Cole’s institutional account meets the challenge of accounting for the (...) characteristic features of mathematics, especially objectivity and applicability. I propose that in general social constructivism shows promise as an ontology of mathematics, because the view can agree with mathematical practice and it offers a way of understanding how mathematical entities can be real without conflicting with a scientific picture of reality. However, I argue that Cole’s specific theory does not provide an adequate social constructivist account of mathematics. His institutional account fails to sufficiently explain the objectivity and applicability of mathematics, because the explanations are weakened and limited by the three-level theoretical model underlying Cole’s account of the construction of mathematical reality and by the use of the Searlean institutional framework. The shortcomings of Cole’s theory give reason to suspect that the Searlean framework is not an optimal way to defend the view that mathematical reality is socially constructed. (shrink)

I develop a theory of counterfactuals about relative computability, i.e. counterfactuals such as 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then the halting problem would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is true, and 'If the validity problem were algorithmically decidable, then arithmetical truth would also be algorithmically decidable,' which is false. These counterfactuals are counterpossibles, i.e. they have metaphysically impossible antecedents. They thus pose a challenge to the orthodoxy about counterfactuals, which would treat them as uniformly true. What’s more, I (...) argue that these counterpossibles don’t just appear in the periphery of relative computability theory but instead they play an ineliminable role in the development of the theory. Finally, I present and discuss a model theory for these counterfactuals that is a straightforward extension of the familiar comparative similarity models. (shrink)

Philosophizing on Scars: Plea for a Material Turn in PhenomonologyIn this paper, I provide a philosophical reflection on the meaning of scars while drawing on phenomenological studies of the body. According to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the body as Leib or corps vécu functions as a transcendental condition for world disclosure. Because of this transcendental reasoning, phenomenological studies concerning embodiment often prioritize a form of embodied subjectivity that is virtually immaterial. Endowing meaning to one’s world by becoming engaged in actions and (...) projects is most successful when one’s body is ‘absent,’ ‘transparent,’ or, at least, if it is not in the center of one’s attention. This taken-for-granted nature can be disturbed by discomfort, disability, and disfigurement. Habituation to these kinds of disturbances aims at maintaining or restoring the body’s taken-for-grantedness. Successful restoration of this taken-for-grantedness is mostly understood in terms of incorporation. My analysis of the case of a woman who successfully habituated to her mastectomy scar demonstrates, however, that habituation to a perceptible scar can be understood only partly in terms of incorporation. Next to a decrease of explicit attention for the scar and the discomfort it produces, the scar should also stop being a sign that refers to something else than itself. This is only possible, I argue, by taking the body’s materiality seriously, rather than it being wiped out as a result of transcendental reasoning. (shrink)

The frequency and severity of natural disasters and extreme weather events are increasing, taking a dramatic economic and relational toll on the communities they strike. Given the critical role that entrepreneurship plays in a community’s viability, it is necessary to understand how small business owners respond to these events and move forward over time. This study explores the long-term dynamics and trajectory of individuals within the broader business community following a natural disaster, paying particular attention to the influence of social (...) identity. Results suggest that the community identity changes over the course of recovery and rebuilding, underscoring the need for a holistic approach so that intervening agencies can achieve the sustainable economic recovery desired. (shrink)

Veterinary medicine has undergone dramatic, rapid feminization while in many ways remaining gendered masculine. With women constituting approximately half of its practitioners and nearly 80 percent of students, veterinary medicine is the most feminized of the comparable health professions. Nevertheless, the culture of veterinary medicine glorifies stereotypically masculine actions and attitudes. This article examines how women veterinarians understand the gender dynamics within the profession. Our analysis reveals that the discursive strategies available to women sustain and justify the status quo, and (...) thus preserve hegemonic masculinity. Women use strategies previously used toward female tokens in nontraditional jobs, such as role encapsulation, and strategies previously used by male tokens in traditionally female jobs, such as distancing from the feminine. Through this discursive “gender work,” women help to maintain the institutionalized inequality and the masculine ethic of the profession. Veterinary medicine illustrates the importance of considering organizational context in studies of feminization. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the meaning of bodily integrity in disfiguring breast cancer. Bodily integrity is a normative principle precisely because it does not simply refer to actual physical or functional intactness. It rather indicates what should be regarded and respected as inviolable in vulnerable and damageable bodies. I will argue that this normative inviolability or wholeness can be based upon a person's embodied experience of wholeness. This phenomenological stance differs from the liberal view that identifies respect for integrity (...) with respect for autonomy (resulting in an invalidation of bodily integrity's proper normative meaning), as well as from the view that bodily integrity is based upon ideologies of wholeness (which runs the risk of being disadvantageous to women). I propose that bodily integrity involves a process of identification between the experience of one's body as “Leib” and the experience of one's body as “Körper.” If identification fails or is not possible, one's integrity is threatened. This idea of bodily integrity can support breast cancer patients and survivors in making decisions about possible corrective interventions. To implement this idea in oncology care, empirical-phenomenological research needs to establish how breast cancer patients express their embodied self-experiences. (shrink)

Does the real difference between non-consequentialist and consequentialist theories lie in their approach to value? Non-consequentialist theories are thought either to allow a different kind of value (namely, agent-relative value) or to advocate a different response to value ('honouring' rather than 'promoting'). One objection to this idea implies that all normative theories are describable as consequentialist. But then the distinction between honouring and promoting collapses into the distinction between relative and neutral value. A proper description of non-consequentialist theories can only (...) be achieved by including a distinction between temporal relativity and neutrality in addition to the distinction between agent-relativity and agent-neutrality. (shrink)

Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside, is destroying us. It wasn't built for people, it was built for profit. This is a book that tears open the seams of reality as we know it-the way we experience time itself-and rearranges it, reimagining a world not centered around work, the office clock, or the profit motive. Explaining how we got to the point where time became money, Odell offers us (...) new models to live by--inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological, and geological time--that make a more humane, more hopeful way of living seem possible. In this dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful reframing of time, Jenny Odell takes us on a journey through other temporal habitats. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days, alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding. The stretchy quality of waiting and desire, the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory, the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy, or the time it takes to heal from injuries--physical or emotional. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life, to imagine a life, identity, and source of meaning outside of the world of work and profit, and to understand that the trajectory of our lives--or the life of the planet--is not a foregone conclusion. In that sense, "saving" time-recovering its fundamentally irreducible and inventive nature-could also mean that time saves us. (shrink)

Boorse’s biostatistical theory states that diseases should be defined in ways that reflect disturbances of biological function and that are objective and value free. We use three examples from contemporary medicine that demonstrate the complex issues that arise when defining the boundaries of disease: polycystic ovary syndrome, chronic kidney disease, and myocardial infarction. We argue that the biostatistical theory fails to provide sufficient guidance on where the boundaries of disease should be drawn, contains ambiguities relating to choice of reference class, (...) and is out of step with medical processes for identifying disease boundaries. Although proponents of the biostatistical theory might regard these practical issues as irrelevant to the aim of providing a theoretical account of disease, we take them to indicate the need for a theoretical account that is adequate for current needs—including limiting new forms of medicalization that are driven by the identification of disease based on dysfunction. Our processes for determining the boundaries for disease need to recognize that there is no value-free method for making these decisions. (shrink)

This article proposes reconsideration of laws prohibiting paid surrogacy in Australia in light of increasing transnational commercial surrogacy. The social science evidence base concerning domestic surrogacy in developed economies demonstrates that payment alone cannot be used to differentiate “good” surrogacy arrangements from “bad” ones. Compensated domestic surrogacy and the introduction of professional intermediaries and mechanisms such as advertising are proposed as a feasible harm-minimisation approach. I contend that Australia can learn from commercial surrogacy practices elsewhere, without replicating them.

This article aims to respond to recent calls for more material accounts of cosmopolitanism by considering the way the cosmopolitan sensibilities of flexibility, adaptability, tolerance and openness to difference are literally embodied by a specific group of mobile subjects. Drawing on a study of round-the-world travellers and the 'body stories' they publish in their online travelogues, this article explores the various ways travellers embody cosmopolitanism through the concept of 'fit'. Fit refers both to the physical condition required for long-haul travel (...) and to the ability to blend in and adapt to a variety of geographical and cultural environments. By focusing on the way cosmopolitanism is literally embodied, the empirical account offered here draws attention to the notion that cosmopolitanism is not just an abstract, materially iterated orientation to the world as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the various meanings of embodiment from a patient’s perspective. Resorting to phenomenology of health and medicine, I take the idea of ‘lived experience’ as starting point. On the basis of an analysis of phenomenology’s call for bracketing the natural attitude and its reduction to the transcendental, I will explain, however, that in medical phenomenological literature ‘lived experience’ is commonly one-sidedly interpreted. In my paper, I clarify in what way the idea of ‘lived experience’ should be (...) revisited and, subsequently, what this reconsideration means for phenomenological research on embodiment in health and medicine. The insight that the body is a condition of possibility for world-disclosing yet, at the same time, itself conditioned by this world forces us to not only zoom in on the body’s subject-side, but also on its object-side. I argue that in order to render account for this double body ontology, phenomenology should include empirical sociological analyses as well. I thus argue in favor of the idea of a socio-phenomenology. Drawing on material from my own research project on embodied self-experiences after breast surgery, I show how this approach can be fruitful in interpreting the impact of disfigurements on a person’s embodied agency, or a person’s ‘I can’. (shrink)

Ryan, Jennie A current search of reliable internet sources gives the present number of recognised major world religions as somewhere between twenty two and twenty five. These religions have approximately 6.9 billion adherents. Recent meta-analysis of a range of surveys into non-belief in 'God' has reported that between 7% and 10% of the world's population identifies as non-theistic . Out of the top fifty countries with the largest percentage of self-professed atheists, , close to 80% are developed, democratic, mostly European (...) countries, with high standards of public healthcare and accessible food, water and housing. (shrink)

abstract Why do we routinely betray moral commitments that, in some sense, we authentically embrace? One explanation involves inattention: failure to attend to morally important aspects of our lives. Inattention ranges from an unmotivated lack of focus, or “simple” inattention, to more purposeful and wilful self‐deception. Self‐deception has received exhaustive and insightful treatment by philosophers and psychologists; what remains unexamined is the less complex, but more pervasive phenomenon of simple inattention. Since inattention is at least equally important in accounting for (...) our routine moral failures, this gap is an important one to fill. In this essay I examine moral dimensions of inattention: what makes it problematic, what vices it reflects, what duties we have to overcome it, and how we might try to do that. I argue that inattention obscures responsibilities to prevent harm, erodes autonomy, manifests a lack of virtue, and undermines integrity. For these reasons, we have obligations of attentiveness. I propose that we should attend (at least) to apparent violations of our moral values in which we are personally implicated, which we have power to affect, and to which we have been directed by clues that something is amiss. I end with practical suggestions for enhancing our attentiveness. (shrink)

(2001). Preconception Sex Selection: The Perspective of a Person of the Undesired Gender. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 37-38.

The Handbook examines 34 philosophical thinkers, both those commonly linked to process thinking, such as Whitehead, Bergson and James, and those that are not as often addressed from a process perspective such as Dilthey and Tarde. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work, and the potential contribution to organization and management research.

It has become increasingly clear that social learning and culture occur much more broadly, and in a wider variety of animal communities, than initially believed. Recent research has expanded the list to include insects, fishes, elephants, and cetaceans. Such diversity allows scientists to expand the scope of potential research questions, which can help form a more complete understanding of animal culture than any single species can provide on its own. It is crucial to understand how culture and social learning present (...) in different communities, as well as what influences community structure and culture may have on one another, so that the results across these different studies may most effectively inform one another. This review presents an overview of social learning in species across a spectrum of community structures, providing the necessary infrastructure to allow a comparison of studies that will help move the field of animal culture forward. (shrink)

"As a doctor, I make every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal, and life's inclination towards death begins as soon as the meridian is past."--C.G. Jung, commentary on The Secret of the Golden FlowerHere collected for the first time are Jung's views on death and immortality, his writings often coinciding with the death of the most (...) significant people in his life. The book shows many of the major themes running throughout the writings, including the relativity of space and time surrounding death, the link between transference and death, and the archetypes shared among the world's religions at the depths of the Self. The book includes selections from "On Resurrection," "The Soul and Death," "Concerning Rebirth," "Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead" from the Collected Works, "Letter to Pastor Pfafflin" from Letters, and "On Life after Death.". (shrink)

The Greek word eoikos can be translated in various ways. It can be used to describe similarity, plausibility or even suitability. This book explores the philosophical exploitation of its multiple meanings by three philosophers, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato. It offers new interpretations of the way that each employs the term to describe the status of their philosophy, tracing the development of this philosophical use of eoikos from the fallibilism of Xenophanes through the deceptive cosmology of Parmenides to Plato's Timaeus. The (...) central premise of the book is that, in reflecting on the eoikos status of their accounts, Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato are manipulating the contexts and connotations of the term as it has been used by their predecessors. By focusing on this continuity in the development of the philosophical use of eoikos, the book serves to enhance our understanding of the epistemology and methodology of Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's Timaeus. (shrink)

What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists is a picture book for schoolchildren published by UNESCO as part of its high-profile campaign on race. The 87-page, oblong, soft-cover booklet contains bold, semi-abstract, pared-down images accompanied by text, devised to make scientific concepts ‘more easily intelligible to the layman’. Produced by UNESCO’s Department of Mass Communication, the picture book represents the organization’s early-postwar confidence in the power of scientific knowledge as a social remedy and diplomatic tool. In keeping with a significant component (...) of the race campaign, What Is Race? presented genetics as the route to an enlightened, scientific, non-prejudiced understanding of race. This article seeks to explain the book’s management, aesthetics and framing in the context of postwar disciplinary and international politics. Viewing UNESCO’s race campaign as a high point for an internationalist ideology of mass education, this article also analyses the visual and literary arguments of What Is Race? and proposes that the enduring image of genetics as technical and neutral knowledge was in part shaped by UNESCO’s efforts to communicate scientific authority to an apparently ‘popular’ audience. (shrink)

This article argues that personal medical data should be made available for scientific research, by enabling and encouraging individuals to donate their medical records once deceased, similar to the way in which they can already donate organs or bodies. This research is part of a project on posthumous medical data donation developed by the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Ten arguments are provided to support the need to foster posthumous medical data donation. (...) Two major risks are also identified—harm to others, and lack of control over the use of data—which could follow from unregulated donation of medical data. The argument that record-based medical research should proceed without the need to secure informed consent is rejected, and instead a voluntary and participatory approach to using personal medical data should be followed. The analysis concludes by stressing the need to develop an ethical code for data donation to minimise the risks, and offers five foundational principles for ethical medical data donation suggested as a draft code. (shrink)

Published in 2001, Ethics and Reality presents a new collection of Jenny Teichman's most important essays across a wide spectrum of ethical issues. Teichman explores a range of human problems including: war and peace, tyranny and terrorism, sex and gender and life and death. Focusing particularly on philosophical scepticism and reality, Teichman argues that if scepticism is irrefutable then ethical reasoning has no connection with reality and what look like genuine human dilemmas must be purely imaginary. The essays in (...) the first part of this book are intended to show that scepticism can be rebutted; those in the second and third sections exemplify the application of moral reasoning to inescapable quandaries. (shrink)

This essay investigates the Zhuangzian theory of the self, which has long been the subject of a heated and controversial debate in Chinese intellectual history. According to an interpretation that has been quite prominent since the 1990s, the self in the Zhuangzi is a substantial, persisting self; it is a simple, basic object that is distinct from its properties. A substance, generally speaking, is an object or entity that has properties. Substance metaphysicians claim that substances, as primary units of reality, (...) are unchanging entities in themselves that bear changing properties over time.Some scholars, such as Kuang-ming Wu, Yi Wu, and Leo K. C. Cheung, believe that the self in... (shrink)

The aim of this thematic literature review is to explore nurses' perceptions of ethical issues in the care of older people. Electronic databases were searched from September 1997 to September 2007 using specific key words with tight inclusion criteria, which revealed 17 primary research reports. The data analysis involved repeated reading of the findings and sorting of those findings into four themes. These themes are: sources of ethical issues for nurses; differences in perceptions between nurses and patients/relatives; nurses' personal responses (...) to ethical issues; and the patient—nurse relationship. The findings reveal that ageism is one of the major sources of the ethical issues that arise for nurses caring for older people. Education and organizational change can combat ageist attitudes. Wider training is required in the care of older people, workplace skills, palliative care and pain management for older people. The demands of a changing global demography will necessitate further research in this field. (shrink)

James Frederick Ferrier James Frederick Ferrier was a mid-nineteenth-century Scottish metaphysician who developed the first post-Hegelian system of idealism in Britain. Unlike the British Idealists in the latter half of the nineteenth century, he was neither a Kantian nor a Hegelian. Instead, he largely develops his idealist metaphysics via his defense of Berkeley and … Continue reading Ferrier, James Frederick →.

The link between alcohol consumption and cancer is well established, but public awareness of the risk remains low. Mandated warning labels have been suggested as a way of ensuring “informed choice” about alcohol consumption. In this article we explore various ethical issues that may arise in connection with cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages; in particular we highlight the potentially questionable autonomy of alcohol consumption decisions and consider the implications if the autonomy of drinking behavior is substantially compromised. Our discussion (...) demonstrates the need for the various ethical issues to be considered and addressed in any decision to mandate cancer warning labels. (shrink)

Infants have been described as 'statistical learners' capable of extracting structure (such as words) from patterned input (such as language). Here, we investigated whether prior knowledge influences how infants track transitional probabilities in word segmentation tasks. Are infants biased by prior experience when engaging in sequential statistical learning? In a laboratory simulation of learning across time, we exposed 9- and 10-month-old infants to a list of either disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words, followed by a pause-free speech stream composed of a (...) different set of disyllabic or trisyllabic nonsense words. Listening times revealed successful segmentation of words from fluent speech only when words were uniformly disyllabic or trisyllabic throughout both phases of the experiment. Hearing trisyllabic words during the pre-exposure phase derailed infants' abilities to segment speech into disyllabic words, and vice versa. We conclude that prior knowledge about word length equips infants with perceptual expectations that facilitate efficient processing of subsequent language input. (shrink)

One famous debate in contemporary epistemology considers whether there is always one unique, epistemically rational way to respond to a given body of evidence. Generally speaking, answering “yes” to this question makes one a proponent of the Uniqueness thesis, while those who answer “no” are called “permissivists”. Another influential recent debate concerns whether non-truth-related factors can be the basis of epistemic justification, knowledge, or rational belief. Traditional theories answer “no”, and are therefore considered “purists”. However, more recently many theorists have (...) argued to the contrary, claiming that impurist factors, such as practical stakes, can sometimes encroach or even override truth-related considerations. This paper bridges the two debates by presenting and defending what I call “Impurist Permissivism”. I support Impurist Permissivism by showing how it can resist Roger White’s famous Argument from Arbitrariness (2005). (shrink)

I said at the beginning that some quantum leaps in our thinking would be required as we face up to the challenges and changes that health care delivery will and must undergo.It is not a matter of politics, it is a matter of pragmatism.It is a matter of reality and it's a matter of simply having to face up to what, may I say, has been glaringly obious for some time.I know that doctors come with a strong ethos in terms (...) of their commitment to their patient and that is as it should be, but governments are always going to be constrained by the amount of money that is available to spend in any one particular field of health service.Within the priorities that governments have, health versus education, versus welfare, versus debt, debates will continue to be had.One of the strengths of New Zealand's health services, with its contracting arrangements, is that it is able to respond flexibly to the priorities that the government sets for the health services it seeks to deliver to every person in New Zealand.I am very optimistic that over time this new model of funding of our New Zealand health services will see a fairer distribution of the health dollars available to meet the wide range of medical needs of New Zealanders.Health care delivery is changing rapidly around the world.If we are to keep up in the future we must be realistic now. The challenge is mine as Minister of Health. The challenge is yours as health professionals. The challenge is ours as a community. (shrink)