In what follows I distinguish «postmodern animism» from my preferred term «postmedia animism», which I propose is a better term to express a minor, virtual, contrarian art and media. In the time of planetary trauma, ecological devastation and collapse, this term will serve as a heuristic concept to trace the passage from pandemic, panic, catastrophe and crisis to the series pandemonium, delirium and the carnivalesque. My gambit is to invoke a rebellious and affirmative Yōkai imaginary (妖怪, ghost, phantom, strange apparition) (...) in order to contest passive forms of «transcendental narcissism» or «transcendental miserabilism».This we shall designate s an aesthetics of existence. In particular, I will analyse the relationship between natural disasters and politics within the Japanese imagination through reference to Namazu-e (鯰絵, woodblock prints depicting catfish), and their political effects in the aftermath of the earthquake of October 1855 (安政江戸地震, Ansei Edo Jishin) in the Edo period of Japanese history (FIG 1). My intention is to show that this historic art form, which grew out of trauma, demonstrates a fabulatory, dissensual and political aesthetics of resistance and creativity. It is an imaginary which appears conspicuously absent in our contemporary moment. (shrink)

Objective: Contemporary ethical accounts of the patient-provider relationship emphasise respect for patient autonomy and shared decision making. We sought to examine the relative influence of involvement in decisions, confidence and trust in providers, and treatment with respect and dignity on patients’ evaluations of their hospital care.Design: Cross-sectional survey.Setting: Fifty one hospitals in Massachusetts.Participants: Stratified random sample of adults discharged from a medical, surgical, or maternity hospitalisation between January and March, 1998. Twelve thousand six hundred and eighty survey recipients responded.Main outcome (...) measure: Respondent would definitely be willing to recommend the hospital to family and friends.Results: In a logistic regression analysis, treatment with respect and dignity 3.4, 99% confidence interval 2.8 to 4.2) and confidence and trust in providers were more strongly associated with willingness to recommend than having enough involvement in decisions . Courtesy and availability of staff , continuity and transition , attention to physical comfort , and coordination of care were also significantly associated with willingness to recommend.Conclusions: Confidence and trust in providers and treatment with respect and dignity are more closely associated with patients’ overall evaluations of their hospitals than adequate involvement in decisions. These findings challenge a narrow emphasis on patient autonomy and shared decision making, while arguing for increased attention to trust and respect in ethical models of health care. (shrink)

A recent commentary defends 1) the concept of 'brain arrest' to explain what brain death is, and 2) the concept that death occurs at 2–5 minutes after absent circulation. I suggest that both these claims are flawed. Brain arrest is said to threaten life, and lead to death by causing a secondary respiratory then cardiac arrest. It is further claimed that ventilation only interrupts this way that brain arrest leads to death. These statements imply that brain arrest is not death (...) itself. Brain death is a devastating state that leads to death when intensive care, which replaces some of the brain's vital functions such as breathing, is withdrawn and circulation stops resulting in irreversible loss of integration of the organism. Circulatory death is said to occur at 2–5 minutes after absent circulation because, in the context of DCD, the intent is to not attempt reversal of the absent circulation. No defense of this weak construal of irreversible loss of circulation is given. This means that paents in identical physiologic states are dead (in the DCD context) or alive (in the resuscitation context); the current state of death (at 2–5 minutes) is contingent on a future event (whether there will be resuscitation) suggesting backward causation; and the commonly used meaning of irreversible as 'not capable of being reversed' is abandoned. The literature supporting the claim that autoresuscitation does not occur in the context of no cardiopulmonary resuscitation is shown to be very limited. Several cases of autoresuscitation are summarized, suggesting that the claim that these cases are not applicable to the current debate may be premature. I suggest that brain dead and DCD donors are not dead; whether organs can be harvested before death from these patients whose prognosis is death should be debated urgently. (shrink)

This is the first book to undertake an applied postmedia and philosophical approach to the work of Felix Guattari. It provides a way to understand philosophically issues in contemporary technology, social life and consumer culture in Asia.

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

Classic statements of research ethics advise against permitting physician-investigators to obtain consent for research participation from patients with whom they have preexisting treatment relationships. Reluctance about “dual-role” consent reflects the view that distinct normative commitments govern physician–patient and investigator–participant relationships, and that blurring the research–care boundary could lead to ethical transgressions. However, several features of contemporary research demand reconsideration of the ethics of dual-role consent. Here, we examine three arguments advanced against dual-role consent: that it creates role conflict for the (...) physician-investigator; that it can compromise the voluntariness of the patient-participant’s consent; and that it promotes therapeutic misconceptions. Although these concerns have merit in some circumstances, they are not dispositive in all cases. Rather, their force—and the ethical acceptability of dual-role consent—varies with features of the particular study. As research participation more closely approximates usual care, it becomes increasingly acceptable, or even preferable, for physicians to seek consent for research from their own patients. It is time for a more nuanced approach to dual-role consent. (shrink)

Some patients who have been diagnosed as “dead by neurologic criteria” continue to exhibit certain brain functions, most commonly, neuroendocrine functions. This preservation of neurologic function after the diagnosis of “brain death” or “brainstem death” is an ongoing source of controversy and concern in the medical, bioethics, and legal literatures. Most obviously, if some brain function persists, then it is not the case that all functions of the entire brain have ceased and hence, declaring such a patient to be “dead” (...) would be a false positive, in any nation with so-called “whole brain death” laws. Furthermore, and perhaps more concerning, the preservation of any brain function necessarily entails the preservation of some amount of brain perfusion, thereby raising the concern as to whether additional areas of neural tissue may remain viable, including areas in the brainstem. These and other considerations cast significant doubt on the reliability of diagnosing either “brain death” or “brainstem death.”. (shrink)

Here presented are three singular, philosophical perspectives on the Delhi student protests which took place in 2019 and 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic. The writers hail from India, England...

The World Brain Death Project clarified many aspects of the diagnosis of brain death/death by neurologic criteria. Clearer descriptions than previously published were presented concerning the etiology, prerequisites, minimum clinical criteria, apnea testing targets, and indications for ancillary testing. Nevertheless, there remained many epistemic and metaphysical assertions that were either false, ad hoc, or confused. Epistemically, the project was not successful in explaining away remaining brain functions, complex reflexes as “spinal,” the risk and lack of utility of the apnea test, (...) the ignored and often present confounders of central endocrine dysfunction and high-cervical-spinal-cord injury, the limitations of ancillary tests, or the cases of reversibility of some findings of brain death/death by neurologic criteria. Metaphysically, the World Brain Death Project variously suggested different concepts of death that were not supported with argument. Concepts offered included simply restating the criterion of brain death/death by neurologic criteria; personhood, without recognizing it is a higher-brain concept; and emergent functions of the organism as a whole, without specifying what these might be, if not biologic anti-entropic integration that actually remains after brain death/death by neurologic criteria. The World Brain Death Project only offered confused metaphysical discussion, and gave no reason why the state they described as brain death/death by neurologic criteria should be considered death itself. The main epistemic and metaphysical problems with brain death/death by neurologic criteria remain untouched by the World Brain Death Project. (shrink)

Medical ethics assumes a clear boundary between clinical research and clinical medicine: one produces knowledge for the benefit of future patients, while the other provides optimal care to individuals right now. It also assumes that the two cannot be integrated without sacrificing the needs of the current patient to those of future patients. But integration could allow us to provide better care to everyone, now and in the future.

This paper examines the affective disorders plaguing many young people and the problem of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in particular. It aims to define the limits of the critique of British educationalist Sir Ken Robinson in terms of his philosophy of ‘creativity’ through a consideration of the ideas of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, especially the notions of ‘industrial temporal objects’ and stupidity. It makes the case for adopting elements of each distinct research paradigm as a prolegomena to forging a social critique (...) of capitalist-dominated, market-led educational institutions. The former, it will be seen, identifies some of the problems facing teachers in terms of the use and application of technology, the false divide between arts and the humanities, but falls short of explaining the root of the structural and psychic malaise in neo-liberal regimes regarding classroom breakdown in general. The latter, despite the apocalyptic tone of some his pronouncements provides an update and radicalization of Deleuze’s societies of control thesis in terms of what Stiegler designates ‘uncontrollable societies’. Stiegler, it will be seen, presents a critique of technology that is all the more pressing in an age in which the loss of expectation in the lives of young people can lead to a corresponding fall off or destruction in ‘deep attention’. I want to test the hyperbole of Stiegler’s assertion that young people today suffer from a ‘colossal’ attention deficit disorder of unprecedented scale and magnitude. (shrink)

We are living in and beyond two massive changes in the world, both of which must be addressed by education, the caretaker of memory. First is the geological era of the Anthropocene—a crisis...

My intention is to consider Bernard Stiegler’s concept of ‘journeys of knowledge’. Open Humanities Press, 2020) and to explore how one might rethink the knowledge-creating potentialities of information itself. This has become all the more apparent in the time of lockdowns, physical distancing during the pandemic but the primary purpose of the paper is to look at the distinction between knowledge/information and the role of the teacher in using technology pharmacologically to safeguard the savoirs and to stem the proletarianization of (...) knowledge or stupidity as such. The point is that the pandemic is bringing home the question of the role of the teacher, the role of the school and the necessity of the co-production and co-creation of knowledge. It seems essential to understand the concept of ‘journeys of knowledge’ in the time of the pandemic as students are left at home without a journey to voyage upon. As such, there is a lack of futurally-bound collective protentions, an absence of any vision projection into the future. What is there in the concept of ‘journeys of knowledge’ that demonstrates how to use the Internet in bifurcatory ways, to produce what Stiegler calls negentropic knowledge or new forms of knowledge, or what I want to designate as experiments with truth-telling. What does it mean to produce negentropic knowledge without the teacher to guide, curate and care? With the above in mind, and by writing out of the wound of thinking, it is by rethinking the concept of curation in a different way that it is hoped one can contribute to educational research to produce unheard-of bifurcations of knowledge, to invoke Deleuze’s sense of the incomprehensible and Stiegler’s sense of the impossible, the improbable and the incalculable in educational concerns, to pave a path out of the aporia of the present—a present which is without decision and epoch. (shrink)

This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I (...) then broaden their explanatory scope to include a number of forms of exploratory search. The paper has three main goals: to characterize the nature of the questioning attitudes, outlining their causal role and type of content; to argue that they are fundamental components of the mind, being widespread among animals and not constructed during ontogeny out of other attitudes; and to suggest that they explain a great deal more behavior than one might think. (shrink)

We propose a solution to the problem of logical omniscience in what we take to be its fundamental version: as concerning arbitrary agents and the knowledge attitude per se. Our logic of knowledge is a spin-off from a general theory of thick content, whereby the content of a sentence has two components: an intension, taking care of truth conditions; and a topic, taking care of subject matter. We present a list of plausible logical validities and invalidities for the logic of (...) knowledge per se for arbitrary agents, and isolate three explanatory factors for them: the topic-sensitivity of content; the fragmentation of knowledge states; the defeasibility of knowledge acquisition. We then present a novel dynamic epistemic logic that yields precisely the desired validities and invalidities, for which we provide expressivity and completeness results. We contrast this with related systems and address possible objections. (shrink)

At first glance a Russian anarchist’s revolutionary address to the youth of his day made in the late 19th century and the address to youth made by a contemporary French philosopher may appear to have little in common as their context and era are ostensibly very different. How would Petr Kropotkin’s address be understood in our time? Are Kropotkin’s concerns the same as those raised by Bernard Stiegler? Could Kropotkin speak of universal concerns, a sense of elevation and sublimation not (...) governed, undermined or circumvented by digital relations, calculation or algorithmic determination? I find a mutual concern with the coming into maturity of youth, but, I am concerned that as we are passing through an epochal and revolutionary transformation driven by digital and cognitive capitalism and in our toxic and crisis-ridden milieu, Kropotkin’s rhetoric would inevitably fall on deaf ears? Is his rhetoric on revolution anachronistic? How would his rhetoric be crafted for a youth seemingly indifferent to the plight of fellow brethren? Is it conceivable that the humanist-inflected prospects of youth so vaunted by Kropotkin have now been devastated by the inhuman and nihilistic tendencies of the so-called miscreant, ‘blank generation’ as described by Stiegler? True, while it is difficult to calibrate the vision of youth affirmed in Kropotkin with the fear of youth in Stiegler, and, despite differences in episteme, tradition and political orientation, both thinkers I think are concerned with the trials and tribulations of youth and both hold out the prospect of the not-yet of youth, of the coming into being of the maturity of youth, of Aufklärung. It is this shared focus I wish to examine further. (shrink)

The shift away from paternalistic decision-making and toward patient-centered, shared decision-making has stemmed from the recognition that in order to practice medicine ethically, health care professionals must take seriously the values and preferences of their patients. At the same time, there is growing recognition that minor and seemingly irrelevant features of how choices are presented can substantially influence the decisions people make. Behavioral economists have identified striking ways in which trivial differences in the presentation of options can powerfully and predictably (...) affect people's choices. Choice-affecting features of the decision environment that do not restrict the range of choices or significantly alter the incentives have come to be known as “nudges.” Although some have criticized conscious efforts to influence choice, we believe that clinical nudges may often be morally justified. The most straightforward justification for nudge interventions is that they help people bypass their cognitive limitations—for example, the tendency to choose the first option presented even when that option is not the best for them—thereby allowing people to make choices that best align with their rational preferences or deeply held values. However, we argue that this justification is problematic. We argue that, if physicians wish to use nudges to shape their patients’ choices, the justification for doing so must appeal to an ethical and professional standard, not to patients’ preferences. We demonstrate how a standard with which clinicians and bioethicists already are quite familiar—the best-interest standard—offers a robust justification for the use of nudges. (shrink)

French philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s teacher, the great Jacques Derrida, when speaking of the nature of the life of Aristotle, questioned the need for biography and anecdote. Philosophy excludes b...

In the midst of the recent Ebola outbreak, scientific developments involving infection challenge experiments on nonhuman primates (NHPs) sparked hope that successful treatments and vaccines may soon become available. Yet these studies pose a stark ethical quandary. On the one hand, they represent an important step in developing novel therapies and vaccines for Ebola and the Marburg virus, with the potential to save thousands of human lives and to protect whole communities from devastation; on the other hand, they intentionally expose (...) sophisticated animals to severe suffering and a high risk of death. Other studies that infect NHPs with a lethal disease in order to test interventions that may prove beneficial for humans pose the same ethical difficulty. Some advocates have argued that all research on primates should be phased out, and ethicists have questioned whether a moral justification of primate research is possible. A 2010 European Union directive banned virtually all research on great apes, and 2013 guidelines from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), based upon recommendations in an influential 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, eliminated most biomedical research with chimpanzees in the United States. But studies involving other NHPs face no comparable restrictions.Should research on NHPs other than great apes be subject to tighter restrictions than it currently is? In this article, we explore this general question in the context of one particular type of biomedical research: infection challenge studies. We advocate a presumptive prohibition on infection challenge experiments in NHPs, but we also argue that exceptions to this prohibition are permissible, subject to strict substantive and procedural safeguards, when necessary to avert substantial loss of human life or severe morbidity for a substantial number of people. (shrink)

In thinking the passage from the “all-human cerebrum” to what one might call the contemporary “all-too-human” cerebrum in neo-liberal societies and beyond to the “all-too-transhuman” cerebrum in the cybernetic society, in contrasting Wells’s idea of a new world order with the dystopia of the disordering un-world, in considering the prospects of a “world brain” faced with the realities of the “global mnemotechnical system”, in highlighting the differences between the global and authoritarian instrument of “control” in Wells and the descriptions of (...) the control society by Deleuze, and finally, in critiquing the “unifying of the general intelligence services of the world” in Wells and the capturing of the “general intellect”, this paper maps the contemporary prospects of the “world brain” against the backdrop of the worldweariness of the present. (shrink)

Narrative thinking -- Narrative thinking about one's past -- Grief : a case study -- Narrative thinking about one's future -- Self-forgiveness : a case study -- The narrative sense of self -- Narrative, truth, life, and fiction.

: Medical research is widely thought to have a fundamentally therapeutic orientation, in spite of the fact that clinical research is thought to be ethically distinct from medical care. We need an entirely new conception of clinical research ethics—one that looks to science instead of the doctor-patient relationship.

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology---especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism? In his classic study The Expanding Circle, Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but (...) has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philosophy and evolutionary psychology, he demonstrates that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone. Rather, it is our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. In a new afterword, Singer takes stock of his argument in light or recent research on the evolution of morality.--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Single-premise epistemic closure is the principle that: if one is in an evidential position to know that P where P entails Q, then one is in an evidential position to know that Q. In this paper, I defend the viability of opposition to closure. A key task for such an opponent is to precisely formulate a restricted closure principle that remains true to the motivations for abandoning unrestricted closure but does not endorse particularly egregious instances of closure violation. I focus (...) on two brands of epistemic theory that naturally incorporate closure restrictions. The first type holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant question. The second holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant topic. For each approach, I offer a formalization of a leading theory from the literature and use this formalization to evaluate the theory’s adequacy in terms of a precise set of desiderata. I conclude that neither theory succeeds in meeting these desiderata, casting doubt on the viability of the underlying approaches. Finally, I offer a novel variant of the topic-sensitive approach that fares better. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

The main goal of publicly funded biomedical research is to generate social value through the creation and application of knowledge that can improve the well-being of current and future people. Prioritising research with the greatest potential social value is crucial for good stewardship of limited public resources and ensuring ethical involvement of research participants. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), peer reviewers hold the expertise and responsibility for social value assessment and resulting prioritisation at the project level. However, previous (...) research has shown that peer reviewers place more emphasis on a study’s methods (‘Approach’) than on its potential social value (best approximated by the criterion of ‘Significance’). Lower weighting of Significance may be due to reviewers’ views on the relative importance of social value, their belief that social value is evaluated at other stages of the research priority-setting process or the lack of guidance on how to approach the challenging task of assessing expected social value. The NIH is currently revising its review criteria and how these criteria contribute to overall scores. To elevate the role of social value in priority setting, the agency should support empirical research on how peer reviewers approach the assessment of social value, provide more specific guidance for reviewing social value and experiment with alternative reviewer assignment strategies. These recommendations would help ensure that funding priorities align with the NIH’s mission and the obligation of taxpayer-funded research to contribute to the public good. (shrink)

Introduction These essays have been written over a period of about ten years and have already been published separately in various places. ...

Medical research is widely thought to have a fundamentally therapeutic orientation, in spite of the fact that clinical research is thought to be ethically distinct from medical care. We need an entirely new conception of clinical research ethics—one that looks to science instead of the doctor‐patient relationship.

Many believe that the ethical problems of donation after cardiocirculatory death (DCD) have been "worked out" and that it is unclear why DCD should be resisted. In this paper we will argue that DCD donors may not yet be dead, and therefore that organ donation during DCD may violate the dead donor rule. We first present a description of the process of DCD and the standard ethical rationale for the practice. We then present our concerns with DCD, including the following: (...) irreversibility of absent circulation has not occurred and the many attempts to claim it has have all failed; conflicts of interest at all steps in the DCD process, including the decision to withdraw life support before DCD, are simply unavoidable; potentially harmful premortem interventions to preserve organ utility are not justifiable, even with the help of the principle of double effect; claims that DCD conforms with the intent of the law and current accepted medical standards are misleading and inaccurate; and consensus statements by respected medical groups do not change these arguments due to their low quality including being plagued by conflict of interest. Moreover, some arguments in favor of DCD, while likely true, are "straw-man arguments," such as the great benefit of organ donation. The truth is that honesty and trustworthiness require that we face these problems instead of avoiding them. We believe that DCD is not ethically allowable because it abandons the dead donor rule, has unavoidable conflicts of interests, and implements premortem interventions which can hasten death. These important points have not been, but need to be fully disclosed to the public and incorporated into fully informed consent. These are tall orders, and require open public debate. Until this debate occurs, we call for a moratorium on the practice of DCD. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s "factory farms" and product-testing procedures—destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. (...) An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike. (shrink)

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page W3-W4.

Brain death has been accepted worldwide medically and legally as the biological state of death of the organism. Nevertheless, the literature has described persistent problems with this acceptance ever since brain death was described. Many of these problems are not widely known or properly understood by much of the medical community. Here we aim to clarify these issues, based on the two intractable problems in the brain death debates. First, the metaphysical problem: there is no reason that withstands critical scrutiny (...) to believe that BD is the state of biological death of the human organism. Second, the epistemic problem: there is no way currently to diagnose the state of BD, the irreversible loss of all brain functions, using clinical tests and ancillary tests, given potential confounders to testing. We discuss these problems and their main objections and conclude that these problems are intractable in that there has been no acceptable solution offered other than bare assertions of an ‘operational definition’ of death. We present possible ways to move forward that accept both the metaphysical problem - that BD is not biological death of the human organism - and the epistemic problem - that as currently diagnosed, BD is a devastating neurological state where recovery of sentience is very unlikely, but not a confirmed state of irreversible loss of all [critical] brain functions. We argue that the best solution is to abandon the dead donor rule, thus allowing vital organ donation from patients currently diagnosed as BD, assuming appropriate changes are made to the consent process and to laws about killing. (shrink)

This article proffers a critical reading of multiliteracy pedagogy and a materialism of the multimodal and machinic. A critical stance is taken against the mesmerising modes of representation that run rampant across our ocular territories. The article assesses the dangers of fetishizing technologies. To this end, Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) is read through a Guattarian theoretical prism to emphasise four chief points: (1) the role of the unconscious, (2) the role of affect (affectus in the Spinozian sense; contrary to feeling (...) which immobilises, affect moves us), (3) the apparent becoming cyborg of the human race and (4) the desire to desire repression. The author contends that while qualitative multiplicities play a central role for MLT, it is neither inconsistent nor contradictory to consider the role of the machinic in greater detail. It is argued that more research must be directed into the cartographic, ethological and noological mechanisms at work in plastic universes of reference (new technologies and the arts) which transform the virtual and transfigure the dynamic of affect. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 42-44.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced clinicians, policy-makers and the public to wrestle with stark choices about who should receive potentially life-saving interventions such as ventilators, ICU beds and dialysis machines if demand overwhelms capacity. Many allocation schemes face the question of whether to consider age. We offer two underdiscussed arguments for prioritising younger patients in allocation policies, which are grounded in prudence and fairness rather than purely in maximising benefits: prioritising one’s younger self for lifesaving treatments is prudent from an (...) individual perspective, and prioritising younger patients works to narrow health disparities by giving priority to patients at risk of dying earlier in life, who are more likely to be subject to systemic disadvantage. We then identify some confusions in recent arguments against considering age. (shrink)

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

Here several utopian/dystopian thought experiments are proffered to explore the contemporary sheer dread in thinking otherwise than the contemporary unworld as it is.1 With reference to the 2017 BBC drama Hard Sun and the cosmological horror of a world without a sun, what is demonstrated is the contemporary incapacity of thought to think beyond the utopos of the unworld as it is. Hard Sun, an essentially failed science-fiction TV series, is contrasted with the satirical optimism of Gabriel Tarde’s Underground Man, (...) published in 1905, in which a postapocalypse sunless utopia, and with it utopic forms of telluric life, is envisaged under the Earth. Shaping and guiding these considerations are the different... (shrink)

According to international scientific medical consensus, death is a biological, unidirectional, ontological state of an organism, the event that separates the process of dying from the process of disintegration. Death is not merely a social contrivance or a normative concept; it is a scientific reality. Using this paradigm, the international consensus is that, regardless of context, death is operationally defined as “the permanent loss of the capacity for consciousness and all brainstem function. This may result from permanent cessation of circulation (...) or catastrophic brain injury. In the context of death determination, ‘permanent’ refers to loss of function that cannot resume spontaneously and will not be restored through intervention.” The word “permanent” replaces “irreversible” (used in the United States’ 1980 Uniform Declaration of Death Act) in this new definition, arguably invented to allow donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) while still complying with the dead donor rule. I will show that this invention fails, for at least four reasons. (shrink)