An examination of nervios among Mexican seasonal farm workers The purpose of this exploratory descriptive study was to examine a process model of the nervios experience of 30 Mexican seasonal farm workers. Focused interviews were conducted in Spanish to determine the workers’ perspectives on their experiences of nervios while residing in rural, southwest Ontario. Data for analysis originated from variables created to represent key themes that had emerged from open coding of the interviews. Simultaneous entry, multiple regression analyses revealed that (...) provocation, control salience, and cognitive sensory motor distress directly explained 67.2% of the variation in worker expressions of negative affectivity. The combination fear, feeling trapped, and giving in mediated the relationship of provocation, control salience and cognitive sensory motor distress to expressions of negative affectivity (R2 = 88.1%). Control salience and its dampening effect on other elements of the nervios experience, however, appeared to be key to whether subjects experienced negative reactions to being provoked or distressed. This evidence points to nervios being a powerful, holistic idiom of distress with at least six variables contributing to its affective negativity. This information is important to our understanding of how nervios unfolds and for accurate specification of a nervios model for clinical practice and research. It also sets the stage for improved therapeutic alliances with nervios sufferers, and social action to reduce factors that provoke nervios. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the work of Margaret Cavendish (1623‐73), Anne Conway (1631‐79), Damaris Cudworth Masham (1659‐1708), Mary Astell (1666‐1731), and Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679‐1749).

This paper is based on manuscripts found in the Archives du service historique de la marine, Vincennes, France. Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait visited England in 1790 with his colleague Daniel Lescallier , and was much impressed by England's superior naval organization. He was persuaded that the only way to defeat the old enemy was by invasion, and for several years he tried to convince Bonaparte of the necessity for action. Forfait dedicated himself to the planning and organization of an invasion (...) fleet which was never used. In the Appendix, documents are reproduced to illustrate military plans and Bonaparte's relationship with Forfait; others throw light on life in the French ports during this turbulent period of history. (shrink)

As more and more historians acknowledge the central signifcance of science and technology with that of modern society, the need for a good, general history of the achievements of the Scientific Revolution has grown. Scientific Culture and The Making of the Industrial West seeks to explain this historical process by looking at how and why scientific knowledge became such an integral part of the culture of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and how this in turn lead to the (...) Industrial Revolution. This comparative study not only looks at England, and its success, but follows through with the history of France, the Netherlands, and Germany. (shrink)

This paper is based on the discovery of illustrated reports by French engineers describing their visits to the British Isles between 1783 and 1790, a brief period of peace between France and England after the ending of the American War of Independence. The manuscript reports are in the library of the Paris École des ponts et chaussées, which began to send students to Britain in the 1780s, but the engineers studied were of mature years and already well qualified. Two (...) of them, in fact, were the marine engineers Forfait and Lescallier, who brought samples and materials back to France for testing and experiment. They all wrote in great detail of what they had seen, and this included the coastline, ports and arsenals as well as industry. The reports are significant for the wealth of information they contain, which would be of immense value to a hostile power. The reasons for their being in the Ponts et chaussées library are considered. We examine the origins of that school, the engineers who came, their careers, their particular expertise, why they came to Britain, and the reports of their findings. Tables of contents of these are provided in section 10, together with representative or especially meaningful exerpts. (shrink)

Jansen expresses concern as to the legal implications of both selective reduction of pregnancy and unsuccessful attempts at termination of pregnancy using mifepristone. This commentary examines the legality of both procedures and concludes that Jansen is over-optimistic in his belief that neither procedure is likely to fall foul of the criminal laws on induced abortion. By contrast his anxieties about civil liability arising from the subsequent live birth of a damaged infant are, it is suggested, unnecessarily pessimistic. Such an action (...) is most unlikely to succeed if brought by the infant herself and any claim on the part of the mother will normally be dependent on proof of negligence. The commentary focusses on the law in England with relevant references to other common law jurisdictions. (shrink)

The Francis Report into failures of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Hospital documented a series of ‘shocking’ systematic failings in healthcare that left patients routinely neglected, humiliated and in pain as the Trust focused on cutting costs and hitting government targets. At present, the criminal law in England plays a limited role in calling healthcare professionals to account for failures in care. Normally, only if a gross error leads to death will a doctor or nurse face the (...) prospect of prosecution. Doctors and nurses caring for patients under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 may however be prosecuted for wilful neglect of a patient. In the light of the Francis Report, this article considers whether the criminal offence of wilful neglect should be extended to a broader healthcare setting and not confined to mental healthcare. (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish is known for her personal allegiance to monarchy in England. This is reflected in her writings; as Hobbes did, she tended to criticize severely any attempt at rebellion and did not think England could become a republic. Yet it seems that Cavendish did have sympathy with some republican values, in particular, as Lisa Walters has argued, with the republican concept of freedom as nondomination. How can we explain this apparent inconsistency? I believe that the answer (...) lies in a lack of fit between the republican theories that were available to her and the values she accepted and according to which she was expected to live her life. (shrink)

Freemasonry was the most widespread form of secular association in eighteenth-century England, providing a model for other forms of urban sociability and a stimulus to music and the arts. Many members of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, for instance, were Freemasons, while historians such as Margaret Jacob have argued that Freemasonry was inspired by Whig Newtonianism and played an important role in European Enlightenment scientific education. This paper illustrates the importance of natural philosophy in Masonic (...) rhetoric and utilizes material from Masonic histories, lodge records and secondary works to demonstrate that scientific lectures were indeed given in some lodges. It contends, however, that there were other sources of inspiration for Freemasonry besides Newtonianism, such as antiquarianism, and that many other factors as well as the prevalence of Masonic lodges determined the geography of English scientific culture. Although the subject of Freemasonry and natural philosophy has great potential, as Jacob has demonstrated so well, much further work, especially in the form of prosopographical studies of provincial lodges, is required before the nature of the relationship between the two can be fully appreciated. (shrink)

Why would Sir Thomas More write a letter to Alice Alington under the name of Margaret More Roper? To answer that question, this essay examines the political and familial circumstances of the letter's composition, its artfully concealed design of forensic oratory, and use of indirect argument. A careful analysis of the letter's rhetorical strategy will reveal further that More crafted his defense of conscience with allusion to the question of counsel from Utopia, whether or not a philosopher should enter (...) into a king's service. In the Alington letter, from More's position as an imprisoned, former Chancellor of England, he revised civic humanism's call for political engagement into a powerful statement of defiance against King Henry VIII. (shrink)

The two extant Old English lives of the virgin-martyr St. Margaret of Antioch, in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library 303, reflect the specific interest in this saint that appears to have developed in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. More broadly, they are representative of the widely evident interest in this period in making hagiographical material available, in prose, to vernacular audiences. Although Ælfric played the leading part in that enterprise, (...) numerous translations and adaptations not by him also survive from late Anglo-Saxon England, presenting a wide range of approaches to inherited material. In that connection it should be noted that there is no mention of St. Margaret in the writings of Ælfric, nor does the passio of St. Margaret appear in the Latin legendary believed to have served as Ælfric's principal source for his saints' lives. (shrink)

In this article, I will be looking at the person and works of Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), an aristocrat and author whose philosophical texts and poetry defended the rational capacity of nonhuman animals. Generally, society in 17th-century England did not consider nonhuman animals to have any intelligence or emotional capacity and treated them accordingly. In her works, Cavendish sheds a light on these commonly accepted views, providing arguments against them and indicating their inconsistencies.

Our modern ideals about liberty were forged in the great political and philosophical debates of the 17th and 18th centuries, but we seldom hear about women's contributions to those debates. This paper examines the ideas of early modern English women – namely Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell, Mary Overton, ‘Eugenia’, Sarah Chapone and the civil war women petitioners – with respect to the classic political concepts of negative, positive and republican liberty. The author suggests that these writers' woman-centred concerns provide (...) a unique historical perspective on these much-discussed ideals of freedom from external interference, freedom as self-determination and freedom from domination. (shrink)

Vitalism has been given different definitions and diverse figures have been labelled as vitalists throughout the history of ideas. Concentrating on the seventeenth century, we find that scholars identify as vitalists authors who endorse notions that are in diametrical opposition with each other. I briefly present the ideas of dualist vitalists and monist vitalists and the philosophical and theological considerations informing their thought. In all these varied forms of vitalism the identifiable common motives are the essential irreducibility of life and (...) the universality of life. (shrink)

At a moment when the requirements of belief and unbelief were being negotiated in unexpected ways, transcendentalism allowed for a more creative approach to spiritual questions. Interrogating the movement's alleged atheistic underpinnings, David Faflik contends that transcendentalism reconstituted the religious sensibilities of 1830s and 1840s New England, producing a dynamic and complex array of beliefs and behaviors that cannot be categorized as either religious or nonreligious. Rather than "the latest form of infidelity," as one contemporary described it, adherents viewed (...) their unconventional and distinct spiritual practices as a modern religion. Transcendental Heresies draws on an expansive antebellum archive of period commentary and writings by transcendentalism's practitioners, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, and the women of transcendentalism's second and third waves. From Boston to Concord to the heady environs of Harvard, the species of unbelief they practiced multiplied the religious possibilities of the era, expressing misgivings about traditional notions of divinity, flouting religion's customary forms, and ultimately encouraging spiritual questioning. (shrink)

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But persistent (...) gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

The moral expertise of clinical ethicists is not a question of mastering codelike theories and lawlike principles. Rather, ethicists are architects of moral space within the health care setting, as well as mediators in the conversations taking place within that space.

To be truly reflective, moral thinking and moral philosophy must become aware of the contexts that bind our thinking about how to live. These essays show how to do this, and why it makes a difference.

Brain–computer interfaces are a form of technology that read a user’s neural signals to perform a task, often with the aim of inferring user intention. They demonstrate potential in a wide range of clinical, commercial, and personal applications. But BCIs are not always simple to operate, and even with training some BCI users do not operate their systems as intended. Many researchers have described this phenomenon as “BCI illiteracy,” and a body of research has emerged aiming to characterize, predict, and (...) solve this perceived problem. However, BCI illiteracy is an inadequate concept for explaining difficulty that users face in operating BCI systems. BCI illiteracy is a methodologically weak concept; furthermore, it relies on the flawed assumption that BCI users possess physiological or functional traits that prevent proficient performance during BCI use. Alternative concepts to BCI illiteracy may offer better outcomes for prospective users and may avoid the conceptual pitfalls that BCI illiteracy brings to the BCI research process. (shrink)

In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also illuminates the (...) continuities between early modern women's thought and the anti-dualism of more recent feminist thinkers. The result is a more gender-balanced account of early modern thought than has hitherto been available. Broad's clear and accessible exploration of this still-unfamiliar area will have a strong appeal to both students and scholars in the history of philosophy, women's studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. I explicate this alternative moral "epistemology," identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

It is widely accepted that only the victim of a wrong can forgive that wrong. Several philosophers have recently defended “third-party forgiveness,” the scenario in which A, who is not the victim of a wrong in any sense, forgives B for a wrong B did to C. Focusing on Glen Pettigrove's argument for third-party forgiveness, I will defend the victim's unique standing to forgive, by appealing to the fact that in forgiving, victims must absorb severe and inescapable costs of distinctive (...) kinds, a plight that third parties do not share. There are, nonetheless, significant, even essential, roles played by third parties in making forgiveness possible, reasonable, or valuable for victims of serious wrongs. I take a closer look at the links between victims, wrongdoers, resentment, and forgiveness in showing why the victim alone can forgive. (shrink)

: International instruments now defend a "right to the truth " for victims of political repression and violence and include truth telling about human rights violations as a kind of reparation as well as a form of redress. While truth telling about violations is obviously a condition of redress or repair for violations, it may not be clear how truth telling itself is a kind of reparations. By showing that concerted truth telling can satisfy four features of suitable reparations vehicles, (...) I defend the idea that politically implemented modes of truth telling to, for, and by those who are victims of gross violation and injustice may with good reason be counted as a kind of reparations. Understanding the doubly symbolic character of reparations, however, makes clearer why truth telling is unlikely to be sufficient reparation for serious wrongs and is likely to be sensitive to the larger context of reparative activity and its social, political, and historical background. (shrink)