The reflections that follow are written by Roisin Winston, Zoe Carletide, Naomi McLeod and Bahar Mustafa. These four young women outline their experience of feminism and in so doing suggest ways in which the Next Generation are thinking about ‘feminism’ and its relevance to their modern day lives. Topics discussed include sexuality, cultural differences, sex education, rape, and how the face of feminism is changing or needs to change. Thoughts range from a belief that the word ‘feminism’ has (...) too many negative connotations and thus it seems the term, and therefore the movement, is restricted by the glass ceiling which it aims to fight. Another view is that ‘Feminism,’ like any movement, will remain as relevant as it always has been until no person of any gender is coerced or compelled to act, think, feel or endure anything which has reductive gender inequality at its core. (shrink)

This response briefly argues that post-phenomenology has always cut across the transcendental-empirical divide and is able to cultivate a deep respect for technologies in their otherness, without denying their relation to humanity. It does this by revisiting Don Ihde’s genetic phenomenological variations and tracing its relation to Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenesis. Having set up the historical nature of objects, the second part of this paper will take up Yoni Van Den Eede’s call for a more speculative approach.

This chapter argues that our ambiguity toward renewable technologies arises from our understanding that the nature of the machine is somehow alien and external to us. Historically, we have thought of the machine as lacking cultural signification. As a result, the machine has been relegated to mere utility rather than having any axiological or human reality. Thinking of the machine as utterly other has exercised a certain xenophobia or misoneism as well as an uncritical technophilia. This ambiguity arises from our (...) acceptance that technology is based on the principle of conservation, a sameness underlying change that is traceable to Aristotle’s theory of causality with its implicit ontological distinction between natural and human made objects. To overcome such teleology, we need a different ontological ground on which to consider the concept of technology. Gilbert Simondon gives us such tools. His work is slowly surfacing with thinkers such as Bernard Stiegler and more recently in the English-speaking academy with thinkers such as Elizabeth Grosz and Andrew Feenberg. 1 This chapter will show how both Aristotle’s phenomenology of technology and Simondon’s ontogenesis can help to think though the challenges of renewable technologies associated with climate change. It will outline Aristotle’s phenomenology of technology and illustrate the intersection and departure of Simondon’s ontogenetic epistemology through his three-phase principle of individuation: elemental phase, individual phase, and ensemble phase. For Simondon all objects become whole (sunolos) though a process of individuation, which explains the coming into being and the existence of beings of all kinds. There are three phases: the elemental which is the spontaneous excess of being; individuation is the successive multistability of being where being splits becoming both the individual and the many; and finally the ensemble . (shrink)

Over its short history, the young field of “neuroethics” has enjoyed remarkable public support within neuroscience. For instance, since 2006 the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience has h...

In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous political and ethical responsibility, a responsibility too often ignored by programmers and computer scientists. This paper uses the work of Denis Schmidt and Jacques Taminiaux as important resources (...) for developing a Heideggerian response to this lack. (shrink)

PurposeMedical humanities is a field which implies collaborative work across disciplines although the degree to which this actually occurs is unknown. Our purpose was to determine the degree of joint work in medical humanities through analysis of authorship and acknowledgements in the two main medical humanities journals.MethodsObservational survey of authorship. We studied authorship data in all papers published in the two major general medical humanities journals between 2009 and 2018.ResultsTwo-thirds of papers had single authors, of whom a majority declared a (...) single disciplinary affiliation. The titles of 60.8% of papers explicitly suggested collaborative content of which 19.9% had multiple authors from more than one discipline ; of the remainder, almost half had a single, single-disciplinary author. One-third of papers referenced one or more people in the acknowledgements. Among papers whose titles suggested humanities or medical content only, authorship lists of 10.2% and 17.9% respectively demonstrated collaborative scholarship.ConclusionsDespite considerable involvement from both humanities and medical practitioners, there is still substantial scope for enhanced emphasis on collaborative seminars and exchanges in the medical humanities and editorial policies to promote transparency of the nature of collaborative work among disciplines. Journal editors and editorial boards should reflect on the opportunity to promote enhanced visibility of joint work in scholarship in the medical humanities through reflection and review of current editorial policies. (shrink)

: Most of the world now accepts the idea, first proposed four decades ago, that death means "brain death." But the idea has always been open to criticism because it doesn't square with all of our intuitions about death. In fact, none of the possible definitions of death quite works. Death, perhaps surprisingly, eludes definition, and "brain death" can be accepted only as a refinement of what is in fact a fuzzy concept.

The equipoise requirement in clinical research demands that, if patients are to be randomly assigned to one of two interventions in a clinical trial, there must be genuine doubt about which is better. This reflects the traditional view that physicians must never knowingly compromise the care of their patients, even for the sake of future patients. Equipoise has proven to be deeply problematic, especially in the Third World. Some recent critics have argued against equipoise on the grounds that clinical research (...) is fundamentally distinct from clinical care, and thus should be governed by different norms. I argue against this "difference position," and instead take issue with the traditional, exclusively patient-centered account of physicians' obligations that equipoise presupposes. In place of this traditional view, I propose a Kantian test for the reasonable partiality that physicians should show their patients, focusing on its application in clinical research and medical education. (shrink)

In her groundbreaking book, Epistemic Injustice, renowned moral philosopher and social epistemologist Miranda Fricker coined the term epistemic injustice to draw attention to the pervasive impact of epistemic oppression on marginalized social groups. Fricker’s account spurred a flurry of scholarship regarding the discriminatory impact of epistemic injustice and gave birth to a domain of philosophical inquiry that has extended far beyond the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy. In this interview, Fricker responds to questions posed by A. C. Nikolaidis and Winston (...) C. Thompson that address the ways in which epistemic injustice intersects with education as a human endeavour and social institution. In doing so, Fricker reflects on her motivations in writing her book more than fifteen years ago and explicitly addresses some of the most significant contributions of the concept of epistemic injustice as a tool for analysing issues in education. She also offers insights on the purpose of education, outlines educational manifestations of epistemic injustice, and discusses the virtues that educators must exhibit and inculcate in their students in order for epistemic justice to obtain. (shrink)

This collection of essays, written by an international group of scholars, provides a more critical and creative contemporary practice of “sustainability.” The book sets this practice free from its reductive interpretations and applies a more thoughtful environmental ethics to the current and emerging technologies that dominate our lives.

In this paper, Thompson engages the fact that educators perceive themselves to be faced with an apparent dilemma regarding racial identity education. On one hand, their political obligations may incline them to teach racial identity so as to avoid reifying the reality of a racialized system of power. On the other hand, honoring their epistemic obligations to accurately represent the realities of the world may incline them to teach racial identity in a less consequentialist manner, prioritising the goal that students (...) do not suffer hermeneutical injustices as they grapple with racial identities/consequences. Thompson argues that these seemingly opposed obligations can be united, by attending to their underlying claims. In closing, Thompson provides an example of an educational event that coheres with these conclusions. (shrink)

Most of the world now accepts the idea, first proposed four decades ago, that death means “brain death.” But the idea has always been open to criticism because it doesn't square with all of our intuitions about death. In fact, none of the possible definitions of death quite works. Death, perhaps surprisingly, eludes definition, and “brain death” can be accepted only as a refinement of what is in fact a fuzzy concept.

This article argues that by recognizing the fundamental relationship between praxical time and dwelling as a matrix of interweaving modes of being, society can subvert the potential reification of humanity by technology. This can only be achieved through a democratic process that involves participatory agents not only at the design level but also in the event of naming future innovations. By looking at the work of Alain Badiou, it is shown how a fusion of Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology and speculative ontology is (...) critical for the advancement of social theory, as revolutionary technologies become increasingly immersive. (shrink)

In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous political and ethical responsibility, a responsibility too often ignored by programmers and computer scientists. This paper uses the work of Denis Schmidt and Jacques Taminiaux as important resources (...) for developing a Heideggerian response to this lack. (shrink)

In this essay, Winston C. Thompson questions the rigidity of the boundary between ideal and nonideal theory, suggesting a porosity that allows elements of both to be brought to bear upon educational issues in singularly incisive ways. In the service of this goal, Thompson challenges and extends John Rawls's theory of justice as fairness, bringing it to bear upon education in our imperfect world. By showing that this representative work of ideal theory can be meaningfully supplemented and applied to (...) the nonideal fact of race, this essay suggests that recognition of nonideal circumstances and theorizing need not void ideal theory's value to philosophy of education. Instead, the field can engage both ideal and nonideal theory on previously unavailable questions and dimensions of educational justice toward productive ends. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The term “deep state” has enjoyed political prominence in recent years, especially in movements around former President Donald Trump. However, the term emerged in the activist milieu after the founding of Students for a Democratic Society, which sought to engender political realignment in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. Those on the far right who use the term to level accusations of conspiracy at supposed subversives in the administrative state are unwittingly drawing on a long-running but little-analyzed intellectual tradition. (...) In that tradition, conspiracy theories purport to unmask the real intentions of political actors in order to facilitate cooperation and recruitment across ideological and partisan divides. From the postwar period to the present, conspiracy theories, and the “deep state” vocabulary in particular, circulated freely across the left-right political divide. Authors and activists were attracted to these tropes and texts not merely because they appeared to reveal concrete truths about long-hidden elements of American political life, but also because their very ambiguity enabled them to be flexibly co-opted. Conspiracy theories allowed activists to mobilize around shared gaps in public knowledge about traumatic events like the assassination, activating public dissatisfaction with official explanations of those events. Their ambiguity, coupled with the seeming pervasiveness of conspiracy theorist tropes across political divides, appeared to activists seeking realignment of both the left and the right as a promising tactical opportunity to assert that they and their erstwhile enemies were actually engaged in a shared project. Activists thus came to see conspiracy theory not as the province of an exclusively left or right politics, but as an autonomous and contestable cultural space. This, in turn, led to cross-partisan encounters. (shrink)

Causal and counterfactual thoughts are bound together in Byrne's theory of human imagination. We think there are two issues in her theory that deserve clarification. First, Byrne describes which counterfactual possibilities we think of, but she leaves unexplained the mechanisms by which we generate these possibilities. Second, her exploration of and enablers gives two different predictions of which counterfactuals we think of in causal scenarios. On one account, we think of the counterfactuals which we have control over. On the other, (...) which counterfactuals we think of depends on whether something is a strong cause or an enabler. Although these two accounts sometimes give the same predictions, we present cases in which they differ, and we would like to see Byrne's theory provide a way of reconciling these differences. (shrink)

Since independence in 1922, the Irish economy has gone from being one of the poorest in Europe in the 1980s to double-figure growth rates in the 1990s, prompting comparisons with the “tiger” economies of the Pacific Rim. Opinions vary about the extent to which this growth is sustainable and whether it has alleviated poverty, increased inequality, or indeed done both. This article argues that the “Celtic tiger” in modern Ireland offers rich opportunities for multidisciplinary study of the construction of the (...) postcolonial image of “nation.”. (shrink)

Over ten years ago Professor A. E. Taylor pointed out that one of the most unfortunate effects of that philosophical conquest of England by Germany in the nineteenth century was the almost complete neglect of the great line of British moralists from Cumberland to Price. Little has been done since then to remedy this defect. There is a widespread study of Bishop Butler by students in our Universities, but as regards the other members of the series, there appear no signs (...) of a renaissance. The selections of Mr. Selby-Bigge are admirable, but they serve, as all selections from the authors of a period must, to focus attention on historical similarities, not to stimulate to an examination of individual philosophies. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals who feel psychologically safe believe it is safe to take interpersonal risks such as voicing concerns, asking questions and giving feedback. Psychological safety is a complex phenomenon which is influenced by organizational, team and individual level factors. However, it has primarily been assessed as a team-level phenomenon. This study focused on understanding healthcare professionals' individual experiences of psychological safety. We aim to gain a fuller understanding of the influence team leaders, interpersonal relationships and individual characteristics have on individuals' (...) psychological safety and their decisions to engage in voice or silence behavior. Thirty-four interviews were conducted with healthcare professionals from across five teams working within an acute, suburban hospital. Hybrid inductive-deductive thematic analysis focused on identifying themes which captured the complexities of individuals' varied experiences of psychological safety. The themes identified were: “Personal Characteristics,” “Past Experiences,” “Individual Perceptions of Being Valued,” and “Judged Appropriateness of Issues/Concerns.” These themes are explored within the context of motivating and inhibiting factors associated with the influence of leadership, interpersonal relationships and individual characteristics on experiences of psychological safety and voice behavior. These results extend existing theoretical frameworks guiding our understanding of psychological safety by accounting for the variation in individuals' experiences and studying these significant influences on voice behavior. Important considerations for the development of interventions to enhance psychological safety are discussed. (shrink)

In their thoughtful and rigorous article, Peterson and colleagues extend an account of supported decision-making that was originally developed for people with static cognitive impairments, t...

Winston evaluates strategies that have been used by international human rights nongovernmental organizations in attempts to influence the behavior of multinational corporations.

A taxonomy of part‐whole or meronymic relations is developed to explain the ordinary English‐speaker's use of the term “part of” and its cognates. The resulting classification yields six types of meronymic relations: 1. component‐integral object (pedal‐bike), 2. member‐collection (ship‐fleet), 3. portion‐mass (slice‐pie), 4. stuff‐object (steel‐car), 5. feature‐activity (paying‐shopping), and 6. place‐area (Everglades‐Florida). Meronymic relations ore further distinguished from other inclusion relations, such as spatial inclusion, and class inclusion, and from several other semantic relations: attribution, attachment, and ownership. This taxonomy is (...) then used to explain cases of apparent intransitivity in merological syllogisms, and standard form syllogisms whose premises express different inclusion relations. The data suggest that intransitivities arise due to equivocations between different types of semantic relations. These results are then explained by means of the relation element theory which accounts for the character and behavior of semantic relations in terms of more primitive relational elements. The inferential phenomena observed are then explained by means of a single principle of element matching. (shrink)