'Ética, sustentabilidade e sociedade - desafios da nossa era' reúne estudos de diferentes áreas do conhecimento - Filosofia, Administração, Geografia - que tem em comum o foco nas questões éticas, como a corrupção no meio político e a crise ambiental planetária. Entre a violação à ética na política brasileira e o desafio de sobrevivência do planeta, variados temas são discutidos. Os pesquisadores também se defrontam com outras vertentes comportamentais, como as relacionadas ao ambiente e ao consumo sustentável.

The love of God -- Faith in God -- The presence of God -- The Word of God.

One of the fundamental questions raised by Ruchkin, Grafman, Cameron, and Berndt's (Ruchkin et al.'s) interpretation of no distinct specialized neural networks for short-term storage buffers and long-term memory systems, is that of the link between perception and memory processes. In this framework, we take the opportunity in this commentary to discuss a specific working memory task involving percept formation, temporary retention, auditory imagery, and the attention-based maintenance of information, that is, the verbal transformation effect.

Background The involvement of pregnant women in vaccine clinical trials presents unique challenges for the informed consent process. We explored the expectations and experiences of the pregnant women, spouses/partners, health workers and stakeholders of the consent process during a Group B Streptococcus maternal vaccine trial. Methods We interviewed 56 participants including pregnant women taking part in the trial, women not in the trial, health workers handling the trial procedures, spouses, and community stakeholders. We conducted 13 in-depth interviews and focus group (...) discussions with 23 women in the trial, in-depth interviews with 5 spouses, and 5 women not in the trial, key informant interviews with 5 health workers and 5 other stakeholders were undertaken. Results Decision-making by a pregnant woman to join a trial was done in consultation with spouse, parents, siblings, or trusted health workers. Written study information was appreciated by all but they suggested the use of audio and visual presentation to enhance understanding. Women stressed the need to ensure that their male partners received study information before their pregnant partners joined a clinical trial. Confidentiality in research was emphasised differently by individual participants; while some emphasised it for self, others were keen to protect their family members from being exposed, for allowing them to be involved in research. However, others wanted their community participation to be acknowledged. Conclusion We found that pregnant women make decisions to join a clinical trial after consulting with close family. Our findings suggest the need for an information strategy which informs not only the pregnant woman, but also her family about the research she is invited to engage in. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that schizophrenia may be a disease affecting the states of consciousness. The present study is aimed at investigating metamemory, i.e., the knowledge about one's own memory capabilities, in patients with schizophrenia. The accuracy of the Confidence level (CL) in the correctness of the answers provided during a recall phase, and the predictability of the Feeling of Knowing (FOK) when recall fails were measured using a task consisting of general information questions and assessing semantic memory. Nineteen outpatients (...) were paired with 19 control subjects with respect to age, sex, and education. Results showed that patients with schizophrenia exhibited an impaired semantic memory. CL ratings as well as CL and FOK accuracy were not significantly different in the schizophrenic and the control groups. However, FOK ratings were significantly reduced for the patient group, and discordant FOK judgments were also observed more frequently. Such results suggest that FOK judgments are impaired in patients with schizophrenia, which confirms that schizophrenia is an illness characterized by an impaired conscious awareness of one's own knowledge. (shrink)

Le Relais de Sceaux (clinique Dupré, Fondation santé des étudiants de France), qui reçoit des adolescents et jeunes adultes et leurs familles, est une porte d’entrée aux soins médico-psychologiques. À partir de 2013, l’ouverture de l’accueil aux 11-15 ans a bouleversé le fonctionnement de départ du Relais. À côté du dispositif d’accueil sans rendez-vous des 16-25 ans, un protocole spécifique adapté aux collégiens a été mis en place. Il s’appuie sur un contact téléphonique avec les parents préparant la première rencontre. (...) Via une situation clinique, les auteurs, psychologues et psychiatres exerçant au Relais de Sceaux, exposent les spécificités cliniques de collégiens pour lesquels la rencontre familiale est un préalable indispensable à l’instauration d’un soin psychique individualisé. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several chapters (...) discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

The acquisition of complex motor, cognitive, and social skills, like playing a musical instrument or mastering sports or a language, is generally associated with implicit skill learning . Although it is a general view that SL is most effective in childhood, and such skills are best acquired if learning starts early, this idea has rarely been tested by systematic empirical studies on the developmental pathways of SL from childhood to old age. In this paper, we challenge the view that (...) childhood and early school years are the prime time for skill learning by tracking age-related changes in performance in three different paradigms of SL. We collected data from participants between 7 and 87 years for a Serial Reaction Time Task testing the learning of motor sequences, an Artificial Grammar Learning task testing the extraction of regularities from auditory sequences, and Probabilistic Category Learning in the Weather Prediction task , a non-sequential categorization task. Results on all three tasks show that adolescence and adulthood are the most efficient periods for skill learning, since instead of becoming less and less effective with age, SL improves from childhood into adulthood and then later declines with aging. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper sheds light on the relation of mutual exclusion and implication that binds Derridean ethics with the figure of God. In rupture with existing scholarship that categorizes Derridean ethics as either radically atheistic or dialectically pertaining to the Judeo-Christian moral order, I put forward the argument that Derrida’s ethical thinking is best considered outside of the dialectics of a/theism. I demonstrate that, far from plainly disproving or falling within the bounds of existing religious discourses, Derrida inaugurates a new (...) way of relating to the absolute – whether it be named God, the infinitely other, or justice – beyond nihilism and idealism, atheism and theism, or more precisely between the two, in a space Derrida refers to as the space of spectrality. I thereby hope to finally do justice to the subtlety of Derridean ethics and foster the recognition that, twenty years after Derrida’s death, his ghosts can be of use in tackling some of the greatest ethical and political challenges of the twenty-first century, including the pursuit of peaceful pluralism in the context of rampant violence carried out in the name of God. (shrink)

How does Plato view his philosophical antecedents? Plato and his Predecessors considers how Plato represents his philosophical predecessors in a late quartet of dialogues: the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Politicus and the Philebus. Why is it that the sophist Protagoras, or the monist Parmenides, or the advocate of flux, Heraclitus, are so important in these dialogues? And why are they represented as such shadowy figures, barely present at their own refutations? The explanation, the author argues, is a complex one involving (...) both the reflective relation between Plato's dramatic technique and his philosophical purposes, and the very nature of his late philosophical views. For in these encounters with his predecessors we see Plato develop a new account of the principles of reason, against those who would deny them, and forge a fresh view of the best life - the life of the philosopher. (shrink)

In the first part of this essay I sum up the theoretical genesis and foundations of Márkus’s theory of culture as a theory of modernity. Central to the high culture of modernity, defined in terms of the future-oriented creation of the new, is the structure of authorship, work, and reception that pertains across the sciences, philosophy, the humanities, and the arts. In the second part I question the scope of the concept in relation to the arts and philosophy in the (...) present and point to the inconsistency internal to Márkus’s conception that manifests itself in his neglect of the Romantic tradition in philosophy from Schelling to Heidegger, despite the integral role that the opposition between Enlightenment and Romanticism plays in his theory of cultural modernity. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the (...) basis of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

In financial disputes involving research, the parties are traditionally individual researchers and their institutions, biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and other entities engaged in the commercial development of biomedical research. Occasionally, research subjects claim that researchers have misled them or misappropriated their biological materials to derive financial gain. The best known example is the case of Moore v. Regents of the University of California, decided in 1990.With new developments in genomics, large-scale repositories of tissue and other biological specimens are increasingly (...) important. Biobanks have been established by various researchers, commercial entities, health-care institutions, and even entire countries. Individuals who contribute specimens almost always retain no commercial interest in any resulting research and language to that effect is now customarily included in informed consent documents signed at the time the specimen is given. Suppose, however, that the research subjects actually collect the specimens themselves, recruit the researcher, and provide financial support for the research. (shrink)

Health institutions recommend that young infants be exclusively breastfed on demand, and it is widely held that parents who can breastfeed have an obligation to do so. This has been challenged in recent philosophical work, especially by Fiona Woollard. Woollard’s work critically engages with two distinct views of parental obligation that might ground such an obligation—based on maximal benefit and avoidance of significant harm—to reject an obligation to breastfeed. While agreeing with Woollard’s substantive conclusion, this paper (drawing on philosophical discussion (...) of the ‘right to rear’) argues that there are several more moderate views of parental obligation which might also be thought to ground parental obligation. We first show that an obligation to breastfeed might result not from a general obligation to maximally benefit one’s child, but from what we call ‘choice-specific’ obligations to maximise benefit within particular activities. We then develop this idea through two views of parental obligation—the Dual Interest view, and the Best Custodian view—to ground an obligation to exclusively breastfeed on demand, before showing how both these more moderate views fail. Finally, we argue that not only is there no general obligation to breastfeed children, but that it is often morally right not to do so. Since much advice from health institutions on this issue implies that exclusive breastfeeding on demand is the best option for all families, our argument drives the feeding debate forward by showing that this advice often misrepresents parents’ moral obligations in potentially harmful ways. (shrink)

This book offers a defence of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (...) (at least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focused on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. This book, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized. (shrink)

Thesis Eleven is honoured to be able to publish this text by our late friend and mentor Agnes Heller. It was secured in the period before her recent death, and is published now posthumously in her memory. Echoing her earlier text written as an Imaginary Preface to Arendt’s Totalitarianism, it responds to themes in the later text, The Life of the Mind. These were among the most eminent of the minds referred to later as Women in Dark Times. Their (...) connection was not only institutional, via the New School, but represented a deep and ongoing affinity and critical engagement in political and philosophical terms. The imaginary letter arcs around issues and questions indicated by Cicero, Kant, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, including matters of republicanism, rhetoric and the question of thinking. Best of all, it shows Agnes Heller at work, at her best: it shows her thinking. Like Arendt, she offers inspiration, provocation, through thinking. (shrink)

What are the driving forces of cultural macroevolution, the evolution of cultural traits that characterize societies or populations? This question has engaged anthropologists for more than a century, with little consensus regarding the answer. We develop and fit autologistic models, built upon both spatial and linguistic neighbor graphs, for 44 cultural traits of 172 societies in the Western North American Indian (WNAI) database. For each trait, we compare models including or excluding one or both neighbor graphs, and for the majority (...) of traits we find strong evidence in favor of a model which uses both spatial and linguistic neighbors to predict a trait’s distribution. Our results run counter to the assertion that cultural trait distributions can be explained largely by the transmission of traits from parent to daughter populations and are thus best analyzed with phylogenies. In contrast, we show that vertical and horizontal transmission pathways can be incorporated in a single model, that both transmission modes may indeed operate on the same trait, and that for most traits in the WNAI database, accounting for only one mode of transmission would result in a loss of information. (shrink)

If emotions provide reasons for action through their intentional content, as is often argued, where does this leave the role of the affective element of an emotion? Can it be more than a motivator and have significant bearing of its own on our emotional actions, as actions done for reasons? One way it can is through reinforcing other reasons that we might have, as Greenspan argues. Central to Greenspan’s account is the claim that the affective discomfort of an emotion, as (...) a fact about the agent’s state of being, provides an additional normative reason to act to alleviate the state. This, I argue, is not correct, nor is it the best way to understand emotions as reason-reinforcers. In this paper, I thus do two things: I provide an examination of how and why the affect of emotion could provide reasons to act to alleviate it and I propose that the real way emotions reinforce reasons is through the way they orient our attention onto things that matter, registering them as salient. (shrink)

Individuals of many animal species are said to have a personality. It has been shown that some individuals are bolder than other individuals of the same species, or more sociable or more aggressive. In this paper, we analyse what it means to say that an animal has a personality. We clarify what an animal personality is, that is, its ontology, and how different personality concepts relate to each other, and we examine how personality traits are identified in biological practice. Our (...) analysis shows that biologists often study specific personality traits, such as boldness, sociability or aggressiveness, rather than personalities in general. We claim that personality traits are best understood as dispositions and that they are operationally defined in terms of certain sets of behaviours, which are studied in specific experimental set-ups. Furthermore, we develop an integrative philosophical account that specifies and formalises three criteria for identifying personality traits, which are used in biological practice. For an individual animal to have a personality trait it must, first, behave differently than others. Second, these behavioural differences must be stable over a certain time, and third, they must be consistent in different contexts. (shrink)

Several decision rules, including the minimax regret rule, have been posited to suggest optimizing strategies for an individual when neither objective nor subjective probabilities can be associated to the various states of the world. These all share the shortcoming of focusing only on extreme outcomes. This paper suggests an alternative approach of ‘tempered regrets’ which may more closely replicate the decision process of individuals in those situations in which avoiding the worst outcome tempers the loss from not achieving the (...) class='Hi'>best outcome. The assumption of total ignorance of the probabilities associated with the various states is maintained. Applications and illustrations from standard neoclassical theory are discussed. (shrink)

Although in core business practice most leaders are aware of the fact that information needs to be acquired from a wide range of sources, decision makers in corporate enterprises seem to forget this and all they do, in most cases, is ask their consumers and potential customers in the course of planning their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities. There are only few companies where managers refer to ethical principles as an argument for social contribution and the connection between CSR and (...) sustainability is being rarely explored. This article is based on research (interviews and questionnaires), observations and continuous action research carried out by the Kurt Lewin Foundation. The study focuses on the communication of social responsibility since according to our experience in most cases companies undertake causes in order to improve their own image and for marketing reasons. This article concludes that the reason for difficulties in finding the best CSR solutions for enterprises and creating the commitment of their employees for the undertaken cause is that they do not think of CSR as a consequence of ethical core business process, but rather as a separate task they try to complete aiming at short-term results and maximum benefits. (shrink)

L'auteur se propose de faire l'histoire de la sexualité des Français de 1850 à 1950, en retrouvant la réalité des pratiques, « le vécu », oblitérés selon elle par l'analyse des discours sur la sexualité telle que l'a menée Michel Foucault. Elle cherche donc à retrouver une parole autonome et libre des « adeptes de l'amour physique », et pour ce faire, se tourne vers des sources où les personnes « ordinaires » ont quelques chances de faire entendre leur voix. (...) Elle choisit d'analyser les.. (shrink)

L'auteur se propose de faire l'histoire de la sexualité des Français de 1850 à 1950, en retrouvant la réalité des pratiques, « le vécu », oblitérés selon elle par l'analyse des discours sur la sexualité telle que l'a menée Michel Foucault. Elle cherche donc à retrouver une parole autonome et libre des « adeptes de l'amour physique », et pour ce faire, se tourne vers des sources où les personnes « ordinaires » ont quelques chances de faire entendre leur voix. (...) Elle choisit d'analyser les... (shrink)

L'auteur se propose de faire l'histoire de la sexualité des Français de 1850 à 1950, en retrouvant la réalité des pratiques, « le vécu », oblitérés selon elle par l'analyse des discours sur la sexualité telle que l'a menée Michel Foucault. Elle cherche donc à retrouver une parole autonome et libre des « adeptes de l'amour physique », et pour ce faire, se tourne vers des sources où les personnes « ordinaires » ont quelques chances de faire entendre leur voix. (...) Elle choisit d'analyser les... (shrink)

S'il est exact, comme l'indique la quatrième de couverture, que ce livre s'adresse en priorité aux enseignants de lettres en collège, aux professeurs des écoles, aux formateurs et aux étudiants d'IUFM, c'est surtout vrai pour la deuxième partie qui leur suggère quelques pistes d'utilisation didactique des résultats de l'enquête présentée dans la première partie. Celle-ci intéressera beaucoup plus largement les sociologues, anthropologues ou spécialistes du langage et de la communicatio...

An important theme in the philosophy of education community in recent years has been the way in which philosophy can be brought to illuminate and evaluate research findings from the landscape of policy and practice. Undoubtedly, some of these practices can be based on spurious evidence, yet have mostly been left unchallenged in both philosophical and educational circles. One of the newer practices creeping into schools is that of ‘No best friend’ policies. In some schools, this is interpreted as (...) suggesting that children should not have just one best friend but a group of good friends. In others, it is interpreted as suggesting that children should forgo having best friends altogether and be friends with everyone. What is common to both is that friendship is seen as somehow ‘dangerous’. This article offers a preliminary examination of what has been referred to as this ‘dark side’ of friendship. Whilst philosophers such as Patricia White have previously alluded to its existence, there has been little philosophical scrutiny in any broad terms elsewhere. I examine three common arguments commonly used to justify ‘No best friends’ practices: that children can be friends with everyone; that young children are developmentally incapable of ‘real’ friendship hence best friendship should be avoided until later age; that only good people can be good friends. I indicate why this unreflective adoption of practices matters so much and why we should be prepared to challenge these cases. I identify practices that we have good evidence to support as making a positive difference in this area. (shrink)

‘Contract cheating’ has recently emerged as a form of academic dishonesty. It involves students contracting out their coursework to writers in order to submit the purchased assignments as their own work, usually via the internet. This form of cheating involves epistemic and ethical problems that are continuous with older forms of cheating, but which it also casts in a new form. It is a concern to educators because it is very difficult to detect, because it is arguably more fraudulent than (...) some other forms of plagiarism, and because it appears to be connected to a range of systemic problems within modern higher education. This paper provides an overview of the information and literature thus far available on the topic, including its definition, the problems it involves, its causal factors, and the ways in which educators might respond. We argue that while contract cheating is a concern, some of the suggested responses are themselves problematic, and that best practice responses to the issue should avoid moral panic and remain focussed on supporting honest students and good academic practice. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine recent critiques of the debate about defining disease, which claim that its use of conceptual analysis embeds the problematic assumption that the concept is classically structured. These critiques suggest, instead, developing plural stipulative definitions. Although we substantially agree with these critiques, we resist their implication that no general definition of “disease” is possible. We offer an alternative, inductive argument that disease cannot be classically defined and that the best explanation for this is that the (...) concept is structured as a cluster. We further argue that we do not need to reject the possibility of defining the general concept “disease” to legitimate developing stipulative definitions of disease that are relative to particular purposes. A cluster definition of disease is compatible with contextually motivated definitions, which may be considered précisifications of the more general cluster concept. (shrink)

A COMPANION TO AESTHETICS This second edition of A Companion to Aesthetics examines questions that were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers, such as the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art, while also addressing a host of new issues prompted by recent developments in the arts and in philosophy, including coverage of non-Western art traditions and of everyday and environmental aesthetics. The volume also canvases debates regarding the nature of representation, the relation between art and (...) truth, and the criteria for interpretation, which are among the most hotly discussed topics in contemporary philosophy. In this extensively revised and updated edition, 168 alphabetically arranged articles provide comprehensive treatment of the main topics and writers in aesthetics. Major additions include historical overviews from the prehistoric to the present and a section on the individual arts. A Companion to Aesthetics will serve students of philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies - as well as the educated general reader - both as a work of reference and, with its many substantial essays, as a guide to the best thinking about the arts from the ancient Greeks to the dawn of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The author applies Albert Hirschman's "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" framework to the dilemmas faced by humanitarian aid workers in complex settings where local or international political and military realities may "taint" the purposes and uses of aid. She reviews the pro and con arguments surrounding the difficult choices of whether to go or not, whether to stay or leave and whether to speak out or remain silent in such circumstances. Because international humanitarians insert themselves into circumstances that are not their (...) own where they see there is need for a humanitarian response, the author suggests a fourth category of choice should be added to Hirschman's three - namely that of "engagement." This option involves entering and/or staying, coupled with a quiet, off-the-record voice intended to work with and try to change from within nefarious circumstances. Concluding that none of the four options is "pure" in that all have direct impacts on the welfare and likelihood of survival of suffering people, the author argues for making each decision on its own particular merits, weighing both the personal/moral and practical/political realities of that situation. She offers guides for how such decisions may best be made, relying on differences of analyses and opinion offered by colleagues to provide grounding for one's own difficult choice. (shrink)

Some of the world’s best-loved films can be used as springboards for examining enduring philosophical questions. _Philosophy Through Film_ provides guidance in how to watch films with an eye for their philosophical content, helping students become familiar with key topics in all of the major areas in Western philosophy, and helping them master the techniques of philosophical argumentation. The perfect size and scope for a first course in philosophy, _Philosophy Through Film_ assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy. It is (...) an excellent teaching resource and learning tool, introducing students to key topics and figures in philosophy through thematic chapters, each of which is linked to one or more "focus films" that illustrate a philosophical problem or topic. Revised and expanded, the Second Edition features a new chapter on political philosophy, an introductory chapter explaining how to watch films philosophically, an appendix with primary readings, and the addition of five new focus films. Films examined in depth include: _The Matrix_ _Vanilla Sky_ _Hilary and Jackie_ _Memento_ _I, Robot_ _Minority Report_ _Crimes and Misdemeanors_ _Antz_ _Equilibrium_ _The Seventh Seal_ _The Rapture_ _Leaving Las Vegas_. (shrink)

This article offers both a feminist and an ethnomethodological reanalysis of Harold Garfinkel's report on Agnes, the intersexed person he studied with several colleagues. Both reanalyses yield similar conclusions. Specifically, while it does illuminate the work of accomplishing gender, the report on Agnes simultaneously illustrates how gender operates as a powerful background expectancy among professional as well as “lay” sociologists.

The author applies Albert Hirschman's "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" framework to the dilemmas faced by humanitarian aid workers in complex settings where local or international political and military realities may "taint" the purposes and uses of aid. She reviews the pro and con arguments surrounding the difficult choices of whether to go or not, whether to stay or leave and whether to speak out or remain silent in such circumstances. Because international humanitarians insert themselves into circumstances that are not their (...) own where they see there is need for a humanitarian response, the author suggests a fourth category of choice should be added to Hirschman's three - namely that of "engagement." This option involves entering and/or staying, coupled with a quiet, off-the-record voice intended to work with and try to change from within nefarious circumstances. Concluding that none of the four options is "pure" in that all have direct impacts on the welfare and likelihood of survival of suffering people, the author argues for making each decision on its own particular merits, weighing both the personal/moral and practical/political realities of that situation. She offers guides for how such decisions may best be made, relying on differences of analyses and opinion offered by colleagues to provide grounding for one's own difficult choice. (shrink)

This paper examines potential ethical and legal issues arising during the research, develop- ment and clinical use of a proposed strategy in personalized medicine (PM): using human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived tissue cultures as predictive models of individ- ual patients to inform treatment decisions. We focus on epilepsy treatment as a likely early application of this strategy, for which early-stage stage research is underway. In relation to the research process, we examine issues associated with biological samples; data; health; vulnerable (...) populations; neural organoids; and what level of accuracy justifies using the iPSC-derived neural tissue system. In relation to clinical use, we examine potential uses in pre-natal screening, and effects on clinical decision-making. Although our focus is providing recommendations for researchers developing work in this area, we identify the novel issue of deciding on an acceptable accuracy level for the system. We also emphasize an issue thus far neglected in the ethics of PM: PM tends to represent treatment decisions as though they should be directed solely by biomedical information, but this in itself could be detri- mental to best personalizing treatment decisions in the clinic. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a new account of the philosophical motivations for Descartes’s theory of judgment. The theory needs explanation because the idea that judgment, or belief, is an operation of the will seems problematic at best, and Descartes does not make clear why he adopted what, at the time, was a novel view. I argue that attending to Descartes’s conception of the will as the active, free faculty of mind reveals that a general concern with responsibility motivates (...) his theory of judgment. My account avoids some unappealing features of the standard interpretation, renders the theory more plausible than many have suggested, and explains why his theory does not fall neatly into any current-day position on the issue of the control we have over belief. (shrink)

For many philosophers not automatically inclined to Platonism, the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objectshas provided the best (and perhaps only) evidence for mathematicalrealism. Recently, however, this argument has been subject to attack, most notably by Penelope Maddy (1992, 1997),on the grounds that its conclusions do not sit well with mathematical practice. I offer a diagnosis of what has gone wrong with the indispensability argument (I claim that mathematics is indispensable in the wrong way), and, taking my (...) cue from Mark Colyvan''s (1998) attempt to provide a Quinean account of unapplied mathematics as `recreational'', suggest that, if one approaches the problem from a Quinean naturalist starting point, one must conclude that all mathematics is recreational in this way. (shrink)

In the last decade, the UK Government has attempted to implement improved processes and procedures in modelling and analysis in response to the Laidlaw report of 2012 and the Macpherson review of 2013. The Laidlaw report was commissioned after failings during the Intercity West Coast Rail (ICWC) Franchise procurement exercise by the Department for Transport (DfT) that led to a legal challenge of the analytical models used within the exercise. The Macpherson review looked into the quality assurance of Government analytical (...) models in the context of the experience with the Intercity West Coast franchise competition. This paper examines what progress has been made in the 8 years since the Laidlaw report in model building and best practise in government and proposes several recommendations for ways forward. This paper also discusses the Lords Science and Technology Committees of June 2020 that analysed the failings in the modelling of COVID. Despite going on to influence policy, many of the same issues raised within the Laidlaw and Macpherson Reports were also present in the Lords Science and Technology Committee enquiry. We examine the technical and organisational challenges to progress in this area and make recommendations for a way forward. (shrink)

Patient’s duties are a topical but little researched area in nursing ethics. However, patient’s duties are closely connected to nursing practice in terms of autonomy, the best purpose of care and rethinking from the patient’s perspective. This article is a metasynthesis (N = 11 original articles) of patient’s duties, aimed to create a tentative model. In this article, a tentative model called ‘right-based duties of a patient’ was constructed. With its aid, a coherent structure of patient’s duties within different (...) roles and objects of a patient can be defined. In addition, the ethical basis, prerequisites, outcomes and risks of patient’s duties can be named. In conclusion, so-called right-based duties of a patient constitute the basic argument. Patient’s duties are not unambiguous for all patients, and the global perspective to duties has been challenged. However, due to both conceptual and practical reasons, rethinking of patient’s duties is needed. (shrink)

Measuring the rate at which the universe expands at a given time–the ‘Hubble constant’– has been a topic of controversy since the first measure of its expansion by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s. As early as the 1970s, Sandage and de Vaucouleurs have been arguing about the adequate methodology for such a measurement. Should astronomers focus only on their best indicators, e.g., the Cepheids, and improve the precision of this measurement based on a unique object to the best (...) possible? Or should they “spread the risks”, i.e., multiply the indicators and methodologies before averaging over their results? Is a robust agreement across several uncertain measures, as is currently argued to defend the existence of a ‘Hubble crisis’ more telling than a single 1% precision measurement? This controversy, I argue, stems from a misconception of what managing the uncertainties associated with such experimental measurements require. Astrophysical measurements, such as the measure of the Hubble constant, require a methodology that permits both to reduce the known uncertainties and to track the unknown unknowns. Based on the lessons drawn from the so-called Hubble crisis, I sketch a methodological guide for identifying, quantifying and reducing uncertainties in astrophysical measurements, hoping that such a guide can not only help to re-frame the current Hubble tension, but serve as a starting point for future fruitful discussions between astrophysicists, astronomers and philosophers. (shrink)

Admirers of Whitehead who know him best have suggested that Wordsworth had possibly a greater influence upon him than anyone except Plato. Nowhere apparently has Whitehead admitted such an influence, as he has that of Plato and Locke and that of William James, Bergson, and Alexander among traditional and contemporary philosophers But he had a predilection for poetry, and attributes to the great poets philosophical importance. They capture uniquely, he says, “a fragrance of experience”; and “… express deep intuitions (...) of mankind penetrating into what is universal in concrete fact.” As observers of nature both Wordsworth and Whitehead ascribed to animate and inanimate life a degree of feeling or satisfaction in the course of being and becoming. Like the poet, Whitehead must have found “joy in widest commonalty spread.” The multiplication table, he noted at one time, “… is no good to the realist. It shuts him up with Plato's ideas out of space and out of time” when “… like Wordsworth and the rest of us he wants to hear the throstle sing.”. (shrink)

The gender concept woman is central to feminism but has proven to be notoriously difficult to define. Some feminist philosophers, most notably Sally Haslanger, have recently argued for revisionary analyses of the concept where it is defined pragmatically for feminist political purposes. I argue against such analyses: pragmatically revising woman may not best serve feminist goals and doing so is unnecessary. Instead, focusing on certain intuitive uses of the term ‘woman’ enables feminist philosophers to make sense of it.

The indexical word “I” has traditionally been assumed to be an overt analogue to the concept of self, and the best model for understanding it. This approach, I argue, overlooks the essential role of cognitive phenomenology in the mastery of the concept of self. I suggest that a better model is to be found in a different kind of representation: phenomenal concepts or more generally phenomenally grounded concepts. I start with what I take to be the defining feature of (...) the concept of self, namely its “super-reflexivity”: to use this concept is not just to think of oneself, but to think of oneself as the thinker of the present thought. I call this familiar observation the “Thinker Intuition”. I review some shortcomings of the indexical model of the concept of self, which is the classical account of the Thinker Intuition. I go on to propose a different account, the “phenomenal model”, according to which the concept of self is a phenomenally grounded concept, anchored in a generic kind of cognitive phenomenolog... (shrink)

That each of us is unique is probably why I find drawing and painting the human form a constant challenge. Searching for that spirit within is what it's all about for me—whether best expressed through the tilt of the head, The curve of a wrist or through an expression in the eyes. For many years I have kept a sketch pad and pen, or charcoal, In a separate purse, just in case something or someone of interest might appeal to (...) me, To draw as I pass the time, In doctors' offices, airports and bus stations, places where I seem to be spending more of my time, waiting for my number to be called. It occurred to me these were ideal opportunities to people watch—opportunities for a moment in time to be captured, To be revealed—before he, she or they became conscious of being watched. If I feel that anyone is puzzled by my staring, or made uncomfortable by my intrusion, I wave a hand, turn the sketch toward them, and share what I am doing. Once, at the airport, I saw a toddler who had fallen sound asleep in his chair. I asked the father if I could sketch his son. He acquiesced, with one caveat: "Don't wake him up." After 15 minutes, simultaneously, I finished, The child woke up, And The announcement came over the PA system. Time to get in line. Trying to convey what seems to be special about a person—it takes awhile to see what I want to record. But in these sketches I look for what speaks to me, when I am not making an effort to get a likeness, and am led by JOY. It's so satisfying for me, and takes me into another kind of world. - Mary Cobb. (shrink)