How do the organization and presentation of large-scale social media images recondition the process by which visual knowledge, value, and meaning are made in contemporary conditions? Analyzing fundamental elements in the changing syntax of existing visual software ontology—the ways current social media platforms and aggregators organize and categorize social media images—this article relates how visual materials created within social media platforms manifest distinct modes of knowledge production and acquisition. First, I analyze the structure of social media images within data streams (...) as opposed to previous information organization in a structured database. While the database has no pre-defined notions of time and thus challenges traditional linear forms, the data stream re-emphasizes the linearity of a particular data sequence and activates a set of new relations to contemporary temporalities. Next, I show how these visual arrangements and temporal principles are manifested and discussed in three artworks: “Untitled” by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, The Clock by Christian Marclay, and Last Clock by Jussi Ängeslevä and Ross Cooper. By emphasizing the technical and poetic ways in which social media situate the present as a “thick” historical unit that embodies multiple and synchronous temporalities, this article illuminates some of the conditions, challenges, and tensions between former visual structures and current ones, and unfolds the cultural significations of contemporary big visual data. (shrink)

In The interpretation of dreams Freud famously claimed to have finally solved the riddle of dreams. Yet amidst all the heated debates and intense controversies that ensued in the wake of this groundbreaking work, one fundamental question has been entirely overlooked, namely: in what sense, exactly, are dreams analogous to riddles? It will be the burden of this paper to show that a critical investigation of this seemingly simple question reveals a fundamental and hereto unnoticed discrepancy between Freud's rhetoric on (...) his method of dream interpretation and its application in practice. More specifically, whereas Freud argues that the psychoanalytic method can effectively solve the riddles of dreams by uncovering their pre-existing solutions, careful examination reveals that dream interpretations of this kind are the product of a very different solving technique, one that proceeds along a retroactive timeline rather than a linear one. Drawing on Wittgenstein's distinction between two kinds of riddles and the manner in which they are solved, I expound on the nature of retroactive riddle-solving, thus generating a distinctly different picture of psychoanalytic dream interpretation than the one envisioned and advocated by Freud. (shrink)

PurposePrevious studies examining the relationship between health-related quality of life and speech perception ability in cochlear implant users have yielded variable results, due to a range of factors, such as a variety of different HRQoL questionnaires and CI speech testing materials in addition to CI configuration. In order to decrease inherent variability and better understand the relationship between these measures in CI users, we administered a commonly used clinical CI speech testing battery as well as two popular HRQoL questionnaires in (...) bimodal and bilateral CI users.MethodsThe Glasgow Benefit Inventory, a modified five-factor version of the GBI, and the Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire were administered to 25 CI users. Speech perception abilities were measured with the AzBio sentence test in several conditions.ResultsHigher performance scores on the GBI general subscore were related to greater binaural speech perception ability in noise. There were no other relationships between the GBI or NCIQ and speech perception ability under any condition. Scores on many of the GBI-5F factors were substantially skewed and asymmetrical; therefore, correlational analyses could not be applied. Across all participants, binaural speech perception scores were greater than first-ear CI only scores.ConclusionThe GBI general subscore was related to binaural speech perception, which is considered the everyday listening condition of bimodal and bilateral CI users, in noise; while the more CI-specific NCIQ did not relate to speech perception ability in any listening condition. Future research exploring the relationships between the GBI, GBI-5F, and NCIQ considering bimodal and bilateral CI configurations separately is warranted. (shrink)

Journal of Human Values, Volume 28, Issue 2, Page 115-128, May 2022. Is emotional labour a burden or a boon to service providers who have greater workplace spirituality? We test a moderated mediation model in which emotional exhaustion mediates the conjoint effect of WS and emotional labour on job satisfaction. Linking conservation of resources theory with the mechanism of ‘value congruence’ in person–environment fit theory, we theorize that spiritual values are a key factor in generating necessary resource gains for deep (...) acting due to the value fit of these two motivational vectors. As a boundary condition for use of the benefits of DA, WS can bridge the gap between theoretical assumptions concerning the benefits of DA and the lack of empirical evidence that DA mitigates emotional exhaustion. Concurrently, we challenge the perception of WS as universally beneficial to employees’ wellbeing by proposing that WS amplifies the detrimental effects of surface acting because the externalized and inauthentic nature of this type of emotional regulation transgresses basic spiritual values. Our hypotheses find support in a study of 196 Israeli service providers at inbound call centres. (shrink)

We give an example of two ordered structures $\mathcal {M},\mathcal {N}$ in the same language $\mathcal {L}$ with the same universe, the same order and admitting the same one-variable definable subsets such that $\mathcal {M}$ is a model of the common theory of o-minimal $\mathcal {L}$ -structures and $\mathcal {N}$ admits a definable, closed, bounded, and discrete subset and a definable injective self-mapping of that subset which is not surjective. This answers negatively two question by Schoutens; the first being whether (...) there is an axiomatization of the common theory of o-minimal structures in a given language by conditions on one-variable definable sets alone. The second being whether definable completeness and type completeness imply the pigeonhole principle. It also partially answers a question by Fornasiero asking whether definable completeness of an expansion of a real closed field implies the pigeonhole principle. (shrink)

Background: Editorial peer review is universally used but little studied. We examined the relationship between external reviewers' recommendations and the editorial outcome of manuscripts undergoing external peer-review at the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Methodology/Principal Findings: We examined reviewer recommendations and editors' decisions at JGIM between 2004 and 2008. For manuscripts undergoing peer review, we calculated chance-corrected agreement among reviewers on recommendations to reject versus accept or revise. Using mixed effects logistic regression models, we estimated intra-class correlation coefficients at the (...) reviewer and manuscript level. Finally, we examined the probability of rejection in relation to reviewer agreement and disagreement. The 2264 manuscripts sent for external review during the study period received 5881 reviews provided by 2916 reviewers; 28% of reviews recommended rejection. Chance corrected agreement on rejection among reviewers was 0.11. In mixed effects models adjusting for study year and manuscript type, the reviewer-level ICC was 0.23 and the manuscript-level ICC was 0.17. The editors' overall rejection rate was 48%: 88% when all reviewers for a manuscript agreed on rejection and 20% when all reviewers agreed that the manuscript should not be rejected. Conclusions/Significance: Reviewers at JGIM agreed on recommendations to reject vs. accept/revise at levels barely beyond chance, yet editors placed considerable weight on reviewers' recommendations. Efforts are needed to improve the reliability of the peer-review process while helping editors understand the limitations of reviewers' recommendations. © 2010 Kravitz et al. (shrink)

Distinguishability plays a major role in quantum and statistical physics. When particles are identical their wave function must be either symmetric or antisymmetric under permutations and the number of microscopic states, which determines entropy, is counted up to permutations. When the particles are distinguishable, wavefunctions have no symmetry and each permutation is a different microstate. This binary and discontinuous classification raises a few questions: one may wonder what happens if particles are almost identical, or when the property that distinguishes between (...) them is irrelevant to the physical interactions in a given system. Here I sketch a general answer to these questions. For any pair of non-identical particles there is a timescale, \, required for a measurement to resolve the differences between them. Below \, particles seem identical, above it - different, and the uncertainty principle provides a lower bound for \. Thermal systems admit a conjugate temperature scale, \. Above this temperature the system appears to equilibrate before it resolves the differences between particles, below this temperature the system identifies these differences before equilibration. As the physical differences between particles decline towards zero, \ and \. (shrink)

One Health, as an international movement and as a research methodology, aspires to cross boundaries between disciplines. However, One Health has also been viewed as “reductionist” due to its overemphasize on physicians-veterinarians cooperation and surveillance capacity enhancement, while limiting the involvement with socio-political preconditioning factors that shape the impact of diseases, and the ethical questions that eventually structure interventions. The current article draws on a qualitative study of Brucellosis control in Israel, to address the benefits of broadening the One Health (...) perspective to include ethical considerations and the socio-political aspects of health. Using in-depth-interviews, observations and document review, the article analyzes stakeholders’ knowledge (policy makers, practitioners and livestock owners) to understand Brucellosis control interventions in the Negev region of Israel. The analysis highlights four different types of boundaries: geographical, professional, disciplinary and participatory. The variety of boundaries going beyond disciplinary ones, are often neglected by traditional One Health discourses, however they provide clearer understanding regarding the role of the Israel and Palestine relations; enforcement activities and trust creation; and mechanisms of decision-making and public participation, in Brucellosis interventions. A broad One Health analysis that addresses ethical concerns and socio-political environments, as well as human and veterinary medicine, encourages re-framing of causes and solutions when dealing particularly with Brucellosis in the Negev, but more generally with zoonotic diseases, low-trust settings and inequitable distribution of power. The inclusion of historical, political and bioethical considerations of Public Health in One Health creates opportunities to increase the relevance of One Health and expand its scope as a novel scientific paradigm. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which predictive information technologies are used in the field of personalized medicine and the relations between this use and how patients and disease are perceived. This is examined in a qualitative case study of a personalized cancer clinical trial, where oncologists made clinical decisions for each patient based on drug matchings and efficacy predictions produced by bioinformatic technologies and algorithms. I focus on personalized practice itself, as a postgenomic phenomenon, rather than on epistemic, ethical (...) and institutional critiques. Personalized medicine aims to process molecular, clinical, environmental and social data into individually tailored decisions. In this case, however, the engagement of clinicians with data and digital artefacts that processed multiple information sources resulted in treatment choices that were paradoxically both immutable and uncertain. In contrast to the situatedness of the body in postgenomics, this practice subverted the personalized medical approach while decontextualizing both cancer and patients. (shrink)

Three thousand belligerents, mostly belonging to the military arm of Hamas, stormed Southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. Along with 3,000 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, these belligerents inva...

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 4 Seiten: 568-588.

Scientific medicine carries within it an inherent contradiction. On the one hand, given its general scientific inquiry into health and disease, their conditions, etiologies, and treatments, it makes a claim for universality. To justify this claim, at different times and in different places, scientific medicine has prioritized techniques such as the medical gaze and autopsies to assure its diagnoses; it has applied numerical methods in order to have a better grasp of diseases and their possible treatments; it has used laboratory (...) analyses in order to understand life at its molecular level; and more recently it has introduced Randomized Clinical Trials in order to generalize clinical treatments. On the other hand, contrary to its universalistic claims, scientific medicine sets up and reifies boundaries. It creates distinctions between the healthy and the sick and defines categories, such as gender and race, that have deep political and social meanings. (shrink)

In this essay, we analyze the case study of mass ringworm irradiation conducted in Israel during its first years of existence and its consequences. We analyzed the case study of ringworm irradiation in the framework of racial construction of illness and its treatment, showing the elasticity of race and ethnicity as medical and social categories.

The BiDil affair brought once again to the fore questions of race and medicine. As discussed in other essays in this collection, the emergence of BiDil as the first medication approved and marketed for treating specific racial groups raises important questions for medicine and society: How are race and ethnicity framing our understanding of health and illness? Should treatment decisions be based on the race and ethnicity of patients? Should we encourage the development of race-specific medical treatments in order to (...) reduce health disparities? Or is this approach dangerous, and can it lead to unwanted consequences including racial stigmatization? These questions are not new, and since the introduction of race as a scientific construct in the late-19th century, race has played an important part in the history of medicine, most notoriously during World War II and the Holocaust. Yet the identification of race medicine with Nazi science tends to obscure the vast use of race as a medical construct by a wide range of medical scientists and practitioners across the political spectrum. In many instances, racial minorities were preoccupied with race medicine in order to promote the health of their own communities. One such group was that of Jewish physicians. (shrink)

ArgumentWe examine the creation and functioning of the “Pasteur Institute in Palestine” focusing on the relationship between biological science, health policy, and the creation of a “new society” within the framework of Zionism. Similar to other bacteriological institutes founded by colonial powers, this laboratory was developed in response to public health needs. But it also had a political role. Dr. Leo Böhm, a Zionist physician, strived to establish his institution along the lines of the Zionist aspiration to develop a national (...) entity based on strong scientific foundations. Even though the institute enjoyed several fruitful years of operation, mainly during World War I, it achieved no lasting national or scientific importance in the country. Böhm failed to adapt to new ways of knowledge production, scientifically and socially. The case study of the “Pasteur Institute in Palestine” serves as a prism to view the role of the public health laboratory in the history of Palestine with its ongoing changes of scientific, organizational, and political context. (shrink)

AbstractWe propose an emerging conceptualization of “intervention hesitancy” to address a broad spectrum of hesitancy to disease prevention interventions among healthcare personnel (HCP) beyond vaccine hesitancy. To demonstrate this concept and its analytical benefits, we used a qualitative case-study methodology, identifying a “spectrum” of disease prevention interventions based on (1) the intervention’s effectiveness, (2) how the intervention is regulated among HCP in the Israeli healthcare system, and (3) uptake among HCP in the Israeli healthcare system. Our cases ultimately contribute to (...) a more nuanced conceptualization of hesitancy that HCP express towards disease prevention interventions. Our case interventions included the seasonal influenza vaccine, the Mantoux test, and the hepatitis B (HBV) vaccine. Influenza and HBV are vaccine-preventable diseases, though their respective vaccines vary significantly in effectiveness and uptake among HCP. The Mantoux test is a tuberculin skin test which provides a prevention benchmark for tuberculosis (TB), a non-vaccine preventable disease. We conducted semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders and analyzed them within Israeli and international policy context between 2016 and 2019, a period just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose the conceptualization of “intervention hesitancy”—beyond “vaccine hesitancy”—as “hesitancy towards a wide range of public health interventions, including but not limited to vaccines”. Results suggested that intervention hesitancy among HCP is rooted in weak trust in their employer, poor employment conditions, as well as mixed institutional guidelines and culture. Conceptualizing intervention hesitancy expands the ability of healthcare systems to understand the root of hesitancy and foster a supportive institutional culture and trust, cognizant of diverse disease prevention interventions beyond vaccination. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 8 Seiten: 89-105.

This essay focuses on the systematic role that the concept of “nature in God” plays in Kant’s philosophy, and on the way Fichte and Schelling have drawn on this concept in their respective philosophies. Having expounded Kant’s argument regarding “nature in God” and established Fichte’s and Schelling’s point of congruence, I argue that Schelling’s criticism of Fichte discloses an inherent inconsistency in the latter’s position. I ground my explanation on the difference between the claim that Fichte’s concept of nature is (...) “dead” – mistakenly ascribed to Schelling – and Schelling’s genuine claim, according to which Fichte’s concept of nature is “not even dead”. In the last section I concisely explain why this controversy between Fichte and Schelling is intertwined with Kant’s concept of Ding an sich. (shrink)

The term ‘miracle’ generally refers to events that are not explicable by natural causes alone. Kant’s notion of miracles is usually understood along these lines. However, Kant’s occupation with miracles should be understood in a practical context. Belief in miracles plays a constitutive role in Kant’s philosophy of religion concerning the need to strengthen the will both before and after departing from original evil. I demonstrate how my argument sheds new light on Kant’s claim that theoretical reason precludes the possibility (...) of material miracles. (shrink)

In his essay on theodicy, Kant explicitly claims that while the disproportion between crime and punishment poses a theodicean challenge concerning God’s justice, the suffering of the righteous is compatible with God’s justice [Gerechtigkeit], goodness [Gütigkeit], and holiness [Heiligkeit]. In light of this, Kant’s reason for addressing the book of Job in this context is puzzling. However, the location of Job’s story in the text reveals that Job’s suffering is rendered relevant only concerning the relation between two of God’s moral (...) attributes: goodness as subordinated to holiness, i.e., God’s benevolence [Güte]. Implications concern the difference between ‘authentic’ and ‘doctrinal’ theodicy. (shrink)

A series of attempts have been made to determine Kant’s exact position towards theodicy, and to understand whether it is a direct consequence of his critical philosophy or, rather, whether it is merely linked to some inner development within his critical philosophy. However, I argue that the question of Kant’s critical relation to theodicy has been misunderstood; and that in fact, Kant redefines the essence of the theodicean question anew. After introducing some major aspects of Kant‘s new conception of theodicy, (...) I show how understanding this conception is necessary for correctly analysing his specific arguments against theodicy. I demonstrate this point by examining Kant’s second argument against theodicy, in which he tackles the Leibnizian problem of ‘metaphysical evil’, and show why, in light of the above, interpretations thus far have failed to capture the essence of Kant’s claim in this regard. (shrink)

According to Kant’s dictum, morality leads inescapably to religion. Notably, this implies two unavoidable shifts: From ‘morality’ to the ‘religion of reason’ and from the ‘religion of reason’ to ‘positive religions’ (‘revelation’). I explain the grounds for each shift, focusing on the different kinds of necessity involved. I then analyze Fichte’s Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (1792), which mainly addresses the second shift, discussed only briefly by Kant. As I show, whereas for Kant revelation is conditioned by a prior free (...) determination of the will, for Fichte it obtains a primordial status. I explain how Fichte’s approach fills in the Kantian gap between the concept of God, which seems to exclude the possibility of revelation, and the unavoidable human need to assume such an occurrence. (shrink)

ArgumentTwo medical delegations, one from Palestine and one from the United States, were sent to detainment camps in Cyprus in the summer of 1947. The British Mandatory government had set up these camps in the summer of 1946 to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants into Palestine after World War II. The purpose of the medical delegations was to screen the camps' inhabitants and to propose a mental-health program for their life in Palestine. We examine the activities of these two (...) delegations within the context of their scientific interest in the psycho-pathology of displaced persons after World War II and as part of a broader project of mental hygiene. According to the delegations, the detainees would be a potential source of strength for building a new society if they adapted to life in Palestine. However, they would become a burden if they failed to be absorbed. At the same time, the medical delegations also saw the detainee camps as a potential “living laboratory” for scientific exploration. The case of the two medical delegations in Cyprus is also a story about constructing and transgressing medical borders. Apart from the obvious fact that this case study deals with movement of people, refugees as well as health-care workers, it is also about the transmission of knowledge and professions across the ocean. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper focuses on the Jewish nursing profession in Poland during the interwar period. We argue that the integration of Jewish women in medical activity under the AJDC (American Jewish Distribution Committee) and TOZ (Towarzystwa Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej [the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish People]) emerged in Poland less from the adoption of gender equality and more out of necessity. On the one hand, JDC and TOZ needed Jewish nurses and public health nurses to (...) carry out their health campaigns and build a public health infrastructure. On the other hand, a new generation of Jewish women needed job opportunities that would enable them to make a living and be independent. More broadly this case study shows that the implementation of American “reformative” ideals into the local Polish reality, including in the newly emerging public health field, involved adaptation, negotiation, and in some cases, resentment. (shrink)

Faith has many aspects. One of them is whether absolute logical proof for God’s existence is a prerequisite for the proper establishment and individual acceptance of a religious system. The treatment of this question, examined here in the Jewish context of Rabbi Prof. Eliezer Berkovits, has been strongly influenced in the modern era by the radical foundationalism and radical skepticism of Descartes, who rooted in the Western mind the notion that religion and religious issues are “all or nothing” questions. Cartesianism, (...) which surprisingly became the basis of modern secularism, was criticized by the classical American pragmatists. Peirce, James and Dewey all rejected the attempt to achieve infallible absolute knowledge, as well as the presumptuousness of establishing such a knowledge by means of casting Cartesian hyperbolic doubt. They advocated an alternative approach which was more holistic and humane. This paper lays out Descartes’s approach and the pragmatists’ critique. Despite the place that pragmatic considerations hold in Jewish tradition, some thinkers reject the relevance of these ideas. Yet Berkovits’s thought suggest a different path. He rejected Descartes’ radical skepticism and his radical foundationalism, in favor of a moderate foundationalism, which allows for a belief in God alongside constructive doubts. Similar to Peirce’s conception of the fixation of belief, Berkovits views local doubts (distinct from the hyperbolic doubt) as necessary for thought. Berkovits’s understanding of the biblical human-divine encounter, following Rosenzweig, Buber, and Heschel, is conceptualized here as “encounter theology”. Berkovits criticizes the propositionalist attempts to prove God’s existence logically, as well as the presumptuousness of basing religious belief on the teleological world-order. However, Berkovits’s conception of the ‘caring God’ is not provable, and thus defined as a pragmatic ‘postulate’. The article concludes by considering Berkovits’s “encounter theology”. In contrast to the approach described by Haym Soloveitchik, of halakhic stringency and lack of subjective experience of God’s face, Berkovits’s approach is dialogic through and through. (shrink)

This article presents Franz Rosenzweig’s concept of redemption as a vehicle for raising some important questions for confronting the contemporary movement of Transhumanism. The upshot of our discussion is located in the existential questions asked, following a philosophical comparison of Rosenzweig’s religious and philosophical commitment to human life in its most robust form, with Transhumanism’s scientistic vision. To do so, the article first discusses some techno-scientistic assumptions of Transhumanism, showing that it presumes what was once a core principle of German (...) Idealism, the identity of reason and being, against which Rosenzweig rebelled. Then, the article turns to examine Rosenzweig’s humanistic redemptive vision and its emphasis on the corporeal, the temporal, and the worldly. The conclusion makes explicit the ways in which Rosenzweig’s redemptive vision provides a contrasting model to the one set forth by Transhumanism. (shrink)

This article examines A.J. Heschel’s “Theology of pathos” in light of the critique Eliezer Berkovits raised against it. Heschel’s theology of pathos is the notion of God as the “most moved mover”, who cares deeply for humans, and thus highly influencing their prophetic motivation for human-social improvement. Berkovits, expressing the negative-transcendent theology of Maimonides, assessed that Heschel’s theology of pathos is not systematic, is anthropomorphic, and reflects a foreign Christian influence. However, when checking Berkovits’s own views as a thinker, it (...) turns out that he formulated some immanent theological notions that were overlapping those of Heschel, for example in attributing God the personal trait of caring. Surprisingly, most Heschel’s scholars did not consider this point. This riddle addressed here in two ways: (1) Psychological and Social, on which I understand Berkovits’s critique as a way of coping with his own religious perplexities, and in a wider sense, it is asserted that trans-denominational critique may be a discursive opportunity for mutual corrigibility. (2) Theological, since Heschel and Berkovits indeed faced a similar theological challenge, of rejecting any description of God as anthropomorphism. I thus offer a constructive theological argument for providing a justification to the immanent theologies of both Heschel and Berkovits. (shrink)