Sabina Alkire shows how Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's capability approach can be coherently---and practically---put to work in poverty reduction activities so that the voices and values of the poor matter. This provides economists, philosophers, theologians, and development practitioners with a way forward that addresses both theoretical and practical challenges.

While increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the relation between Foucault’s conception of critique and Kant’s, much controversy remains over whether Foucault’s most sustained early engagement with Kant, his dissertation on Kant’s Anthropology, should be read as a wholesale rejection of Kant’s views or as the source of Foucault’s late return to ethics and critique. In this paper, I propose a new reading of the dissertation, considering it alongside 1950s-era archival materials of which I advance the first (...) scholarly appraisal. I argue that Foucault manifests a fundamental ambivalence to Kantian anthropology, rejecting it in theoretical terms while embracing its practical (‘pragmatic’) conception of the subject. Furthermore, I take these texts to collectively evidence Foucault’s attempt to situate himself within the anthropological-critical tradition rather than extricating himself from it. If we interpret Foucault to reject this tradition’s appeal to an essentialized, theoretical conception of subjectivity, what remains of anthropology is its inherent practical reflexivity in structure. Thus, I situate Foucault’s conception of ethics as one’s relation to oneself in continuity with this tradition. (shrink)

This Editorial introduces the thematic series on 'Toward a New Psychiatry: Philosophical and Ethical Issues in Classification, Diagnosis and Care' http://www.biomedcentral.com/series/newpsychiatry.

This multilevel meta-analysis examines whether emotional intelligence can be enhanced through training and identifies training effects’ determinants. We identified 24 studies containing 28 samples aiming at increasing individual-level EI among healthy adults. The results revealed a significant moderate standardized mean change between pre- and post-measurement for the main effect of EI training, and a stable pre- to follow-up effect. Additionally, the type of EI model, dimensions of the four branch model, length, and type of publication turned out to be significant (...) moderators. The results suggest that EI trainings should be considered effective interventions. (shrink)

This paper discusses what it means and what it takes to integrate data in order to acquire new knowledge about biological entities and processes. Maureen O’Malley and Orkun Soyer have pointed to the scientific work involved in data integration as important and distinct from the work required by other forms of integration, such as methodological and explanatory integration, which have been more successful in captivating the attention of philosophers of science. Here I explore what data integration involves in more detail (...) and with a focus on the role of data-sharing tools, like online databases, in facilitating this process; and I point to the philosophical implications of focusing on data as a unit of analysis. I then analyse three cases of data integration in the field of plant science, each of which highlights a different mode of integration: inter-level integration, which involves data documenting different features of the same species, aims to acquire an interdisciplinary understanding of organisms as complex wholes and is exemplified by research on Arabidopsis thaliana; cross-species integration, which involves data acquired on different species, aims to understand plant biology in all its different manifestations and is exemplified by research on Miscanthus giganteus; and translational integration, which involves data acquired from sources within as well as outside academia, aims at the provision of interventions to improve human health and is exemplified by research on Phytophtora ramorum. Recognising the differences between these efforts sheds light on the dynamics and diverse outcomes of data dissemination and integrative research; and the relations between the social and institutional roles of science, the development of data-sharing infrastructures and the production of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The Opera of the National Theater in Belgrade was founded in 1920, but it is well known that opera performances were held long before its official opening. Despite the fact that this is the sole opera house in Belgrade, as well as the fact that it did not face any strong audience fluctuation, it is unusual that no one ever tried to investigate and profile its audience. During the last decades we were witnessing the popularization of the opera via various (...) medias, as well as development and extention of the music industry, which surely changed its social status. The aim of the investigation that is going to be presented is to discover if this social life of opera changed its audience and does it still consists of - according to stereotypes - elderly, high educated individuals of certain professions and high material standards, i.e. at which level the opera is present in the private and public sphere of their lives. Opera Narodnog pozorista u Beogradu osnovana je 1920. godine, ali je poznato da su operske predstave izvodjene i pre njenog zvanicnog osnivanja. Iako u radu nije nailazila na vecu fluktuaciju publike, a i dalje predstavlja jedinu opersku kucu u Beogradu, do sada nije bilo pokusaja da se naucno istrazi i profilise njena publika. Poslednjih decenija svedoci smo sve vece popularizacije operske muzike putem razlicitih medija, te razvijanjem i sirenjem muzicke industrije, sto dovodi i do promene njenog socijalnog statusa. Cilj ovog dela istrazivanja jeste da sazna da li je izmenjeni socijalni zivot opere izmenio i njenu publiku, da li nju - prema ustaljenim shvatanjima - i dalje pretezno cine visokoobrazovani, stariji pojedinci odredjenih zanimanja i visokog materijalnog standarda, odnosno koliko je opera zaista prisutna u privatnoj i javnoj sferi njihovih zivota. (shrink)

From the summer of 2015 onwards the high influx of migrants and its effects have dominated the public debate in Europe. At first this influx posed mainly an administrative challenge in host countries such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Yet the seemingly incessant flow of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, seeking refuge from war or economic deprivation, soon sparked a heated controversy on the possibility of integrating people from very different cultural and religious backgrounds into European societies. (...) Security concerns following the Paris attacks of November 2015 fuelled support for right-wing parties and extremist movements all over Europe. Meanwhile, one EU member state after another introduced restrictive policies contravening the open border policy introduced by the Schengen Agreement in their attempt to shift the administrative burden of handling the migrant crisis onto neighbouring states. The growing anxiety around questions of identity and security was compounded by growing concerns about the economy and welfare. In this essay I delineate the role played by public intellectuals in the debate about this crisis. Drawing on Richard Posner’s broad definition of a public intellectual as someone who writes knowledgeably about ideas for a popular audience on matters of public concern, I focus on how German public intellectuals debated the questions of national identity and the role of the nation-state in the EU migration crisis. (shrink)

This paper claims that Kant’s conception of culture provides a new means of understanding how the two parts of the Critique of Judgment fit together. Kant claims that culture is both the ‘ultimate purpose’ of nature and to be defined in terms of ‘art in general’ (of which the fine arts are a subtype). In the Critique of Teleological Judgment, culture, as the last empirically cognizable telos of nature, serves as the mediating link between nature and freedom, while in the (...) Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, the connection between art and morality passes through culture. In either case, Kant offers distinct, yet interdependent, arguments for how culture demonstrates the amenability of nature to its supersensible ground: the central question Kant claims in the Introduction that the work seeks to answer. Thus, not only does this account advance a concept essential to both parts of the work; it also demonstrates how the two parts can be conceived as complementary, with each supplementing the other to solve Kant’s central question. As such, understanding the Critique of Judgment in terms of culture enables us to see how the two parts of the work do not merely share points of similarity or common themes, but presuppose one another in order to understand how nature is amenable to freedom. (shrink)

Arabidopsis is currently the most popular and well-researched model organism in plant biology. This paper documents this plant's rise to scientific fame by focusing on two interrelated aspects of Arabidopsis research. One is the extent to which the material features of the plant have constrained research directions and enabled scientific achievements. The other is the crucial role played by the international community of Arabidopsis researchers in making it possible to grow, distribute and use plant specimen that embody these material features. (...) I argue that at least part of the explosive development of this research community is due to its successful standardisation and to the subsequent use of Arabidopsis specimen as material models of plants. I conclude that model organisms have a double identity as both samples of nature and artifacts representing nature. It is the resulting ambivalence in their representational value that makes them attractive research tools for biologists. (shrink)

Partiendo de los aportes de una serie de estudios que desde una perspectiva socio-histórica han indagado en el proceso de construcción social de la categoría de desocupado, el artículo analiza el modo en que la falta de trabajo en personas válidas es problematizada en la obra de Karl Marx. Sostenemos que, si bien no hay en los desarrollos del pensador alemán una conceptualización del desocupado en su sentido moderno, sus contribuciones a través del estudio de la sobrepoblación relativa y del (...) lumpenproletariado dejaron sentadas ciertas bases para la puesta en forma de dicha categoría social y de intervención pública casi medio siglo más tarde.El artículo se plantea como una introducción a la pregunta por el papel que jugaron los primeros socialistas marxistas argentinos en la introducción de una perspectiva novedosa de interpretación de la falta de ocupación, forjada en diálogo con las ideas marxistas en circulación en el contexto internacional y en abierta disputa con las percepciones de la época. (shrink)

The northern Mexican Ralámuli people consider plants to be their kin. First‐ and secondhand ethnographies bring forth fundamental issues that convey the possibility of communicating with plants. For example, the notion of an interconnected world has to do with roots, with threads, and with thought or nátali (consciousness, remembrance, ancestral memory), all of which embrace the life path. This path also refers to that used by healers, who in their dreams and through their chants communicate with sacred plants. This article (...) also deepens the understanding of textiles—originally made from vegetal fibers and considering that in Ralámuli origin stories the Earth was woven—and their iconography, which also appears in healing contexts, to see if there is a relationship between specific motifs and the information that, via dreams and chants, the plants are delivering. (shrink)

This groundbreaking, open access volume analyses and compares data practices across several fields through the analysis of specific cases of data journeys. It brings together leading scholars in the philosophy, history and social studies of science to achieve two goals: tracking the travel of data across different spaces, times and domains of research practice; and documenting how such journeys affect the use of data as evidence and the knowledge being produced. The volume captures the opportunities, challenges and concerns involved in (...) making data move from the sites in which they are originally produced to sites where they can be integrated with other data, analysed and re-used for a variety of purposes. The in-depth study of data journeys provides the necessary ground to examine disciplinary, geographical and historical differences and similarities in data management, processing and interpretation, thus identifying the key conditions of possibility for the widespread data sharing associated with Big and Open Data. The chapters are ordered in sections that broadly correspond to different stages of the journeys of data, from their generation to the legitimisation of their use for specific purposes. Additionally, the preface to the volume provides a variety of alternative “roadmaps” aimed to serve the different interests and entry points of readers; and the introduction provides a substantive overview of what data journeys can teach about the methods and epistemology of research. (shrink)

An influential strand in philosophy of science claims that scientific paradigms can be understood as relativized a priori frameworks. Here, Kant’s constitutive a priori principles are no longer held to establish conditions of possibility for knowledge which are unchanging and universally true, but are restricted only to a given scientific domain. Yet it is unclear how exactly a relativized a priori can be construed as both stable and dynamical, establishing foundations for current scientific claims while simultaneously making intelligible the transition (...) to a subsequent framework. In this article, I show that important resources for this problem have been overlooked in Kant’s theory of reflective judgement in the third Critique. I argue that Kant accorded the task of formulating new scientific laws to reflective judgement, which is charged with forming new ‘universals’ that guide the experience of nature. I show that this is the very task attributed to the relativized a priori: the constitution of a given conceptual framework, not of the conditions for object-reference as such. I conclude that Kant’s considered conception of science encompasses the operations of both reflective and determining judgement. Relativizations of the a priori should follow Kant’s lead. (shrink)

Is Big Data science a whole new way of doing research? And what difference does data quantity make to knowledge production strategies and their outputs? I argue that the novelty of Big Data science does not lie in the sheer quantity of data involved, but rather in the prominence and status acquired by data as commodity and recognised output, both within and outside of the scientific community and the methods, infrastructures, technologies, skills and knowledge developed to handle data. These developments (...) generate the impression that data-intensive research is a new mode of doing science, with its own epistemology and norms. To assess this claim, one needs to consider the ways in which data are actually disseminated and used to generate knowledge. Accordingly, this article reviews the development of sophisticated ways to disseminate, integrate and re-use data acquired on model organisms over the last three decades of work in experimental biology. I focus on online databases as prominent infrastructures set up to organise and interpret such data and examine the wealth and diversity of expertise, resources and conceptual scaffolding that such databases draw upon. This illuminates some of the conditions under which Big Data needs to be curated to support processes of discovery across biological subfields, which in turn highlights the difficulties caused by the lack of adequate curation for the vast majority of data in the life sciences. In closing, I reflect on the difference that data quantity is making to contemporary biology, the methodological and epistemic challenges of identifying and analysing data given these developments, and the opportunities and worries associated with Big Data discourse and methods. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of scientific data that makes sense of recent debates on data-driven and ‘big data’ research, while also building on the history of data production and use particularly within biology. In this view, ‘data’ is a relational category applied to research outputs that are taken, at specific moments of inquiry, to provide evidence for knowledge claims of interest to the researchers involved. They do not have truth-value in and of themselves, nor can they be seen as (...) straightforward representations of given phenomena. Rather, they are fungible objects defined by their portability and prospective usefulness as evidence. (shrink)

Sabina Lovibond invites her readers to see how the "practical reason view of ethics" can survive challenges from within philosophy and from the antirationalist postmodern critique of reason. She elaborates and defends a modern practical-reason view of ethics by focusing on virtue or ideal states of character that involve sensitivity to the objective reasons circumstances bring into play. At the heart of her argument is the Aristotelian idea of the formation of character through upbringing; these ancient ideas can be (...) made contemporary if one understands them in a naturalized way. She then explores the implications that arise from the naturalization of the classical view, weaving into her theory ideas of Jacques Derrida and J. L. Austin. The book also discusses two modes of resistance to an existing ethical culture--one committed to the critical employment of shared norms of rationality, the other aspiring to a more radical attitude, grounded in hostility to the "universal." Lovibond tries to determine what may be correct in this second, admittedly paradoxical, tendency. This is a timely and valuable effort to connect the most advanced forms of thinking in the analytic tradition and in the Continental tradition, and to extend our understanding of the intimacies and resistances between these two prominent strands of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with monumental art in Slovakia before and after the fall of Communism in 1989. Generally, art in public spaces is important, because it influences the knowledge and feelings the people who use this space have about the past and the present, and thus influences the shared social construction of who we are as a social group. In this article we concentrate on the period of Communism and the formal and iconographic aspects that were essential to art (...) at that time. We also look at the political use of art—the ways in which explicit and implicit meanings and ideas were communicated through art to the general public. We touch also on the present situation regarding the perception of “Communist art”. In the final section we discuss the state of affairs of the last twenty years of chaotic freedom in the post-socialist era. On the one hand, since there is no real cultural politics or conception for artworks in public spaces at the level of the state many artworks simply disappear, often without public discussion, and on the other hand, some actors use their political power to build monuments that promote their private political views. (shrink)

This article focuses onsarcasm, for which the definitions have often been loose and confusing, integrating it into the concept ofirony. My approach is based on a large corpus of examples taken from two contemporary television-series, which help identify the wide range of linguistic processes at the core of sarcastic utterances. I present a quantitative and descriptive analysis of the main processes found in two American television-series:House M.D.andThe Big Bang Theory. The results show the intricate meanings created in sarcasm through various (...) linguistic mechanisms, such as repetition, explicitation, metonymy, metaphor, shift of focus, reasoning, and rhetorical questions. This more holistic analysis, including a broad corpus of instances and a more detailed analysis of the examples, aims to fill the unexplored gaps in more classical analyses, emphasizing the complexities and implications that can be drawn in interaction. (shrink)

From the book To my mind the most striking development in ethical theory since the 1970s has been an attempt to reactivate the Platonic-Aristotelian ethical ...

Knowledge-making practices in biology are being strongly affected by the availability of data on an unprecedented scale, the insistence on systemic approaches and growing reliance on bioinformatics and digital infrastructures. What role does theory play within data-intensive science, and what does that tell us about scientific theories in general? To answer these questions, I focus on Open Biomedical Ontologies, digital classification tools that have become crucial to sharing results across research contexts in the biological and biomedical sciences, and argue that (...) they constitute an example of classificatory theory. This form of theorizing emerges from classification practices in conjunction with experimental know-how and expresses the knowledge underpinning the analysis and interpretation of data disseminated online. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch was one of the best-known philosophers and novelists of the post-war period. In this book, Sabina Lovibond explores the tangled issue of Murdoch's stance towards gender and feminism, drawing upon the evidence of her fiction, philosophy, and other public statements. As well as analysing Murdoch's own attitudes, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is also a critical enquiry into the way we picture intellectual, and especially philosophical, activity. Appealing to the idea of a 'social imaginary' within which Murdoch's (...) work is located, Lovibond examines the sense of incongruity or dissonance that may still affect our image of a woman philosopher, even where egalitarian views officially hold sway. The first thorough exploration of Murdoch and gender, Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy is a fresh contribution to debates in feminist philosophy and gender studies, and essential reading for anyone interested in Murdoch's literary and philosophical writing. (shrink)

Este texto tiene por objetivo investigar los orígenes del movimiento ideológico anarco-feminista en el Río de la Plata, examinando las circunstancias históricas que propiciaron su surgimiento y que lo caracterizaron. Analizando sus posturas y opiniones contenidas en su principal medio impreso de difusión: el periódico La Voz de la Mujer, las bases de su pensamiento crítico, libertario y emancipatorio respecto a la condición de la mujer, contenidos en su consigna: ni dios, ni patrón, ni marido. Así como sus repercusiones en (...) las transformaciones sociales que se gestaron a finales del siglo XIX.Palabras clave: Feminismo. Anarquismo. Río de la Plata. La Voz de la Mujer. AbstractThis text aims to investigate the origins of the anarcho-feminist ideological movement in the Río de la Plata, examining the historical circumstances that led to its emergence and characterized it. Analyzing their positions and opinions contained in their main print media: the newspaper La Voz de la Mujer, the bases of their critical, libertarian and emancipatory thinking regarding the condition of the women, contained in their slogan: neither god, nor boss, nor husband. As well as its repercussions in the social transformations that took place at the end of the 19th century.Keywords: Feminism. Anarchism. Río de la Plata. La Voz de la Mujer. (shrink)

Acknowledging that he cannot speak about the future of Theory without taking stock of its past, Rabaté starts by sketching its genealogy, particularly its ...

We propose an account of the subject’s cognition that allows for a full articulation of the phenomenon of ideology. We argue that ideology operates at the level of the a priori: it transcendentally conditions the intelligibility of thought and practice. But we draw from strands of post-Kantian philosophy of science and social philosophy in repudiating Kant’s view that the a priori is necessary and fixed. Instead, we argue, it is contingent, and therefore revisable. More precisely, it is conditioned materially: it (...) must be understood as an activity, continuous with and shaped by material social practice. We conclude with some remarks about the possibility of agency over one’s relativized, materially conditioned a priori; that is, over the possibility of critique. (shrink)

Community databases have become crucial to the collection, ordering and retrieval of data gathered on model organisms, as well as to the ways in which these data are interpreted and used across a range of research contexts. This paper analyses the impact of community databases on research practices in model organism biology by focusing on the history and current use of four community databases: FlyBase, Mouse Genome Informatics, WormBase and The Arabidopsis Information Resource. We discuss the standards used by the (...) curators of these databases for what counts as reliable evidence, acceptable terminology, appropriate experimental set-ups and adequate materials (e.g., specimens). On the one hand, these choices are informed by the collaborative research ethos characterising most model organism communities. On the other hand, the deployment of these standards in databases reinforces this ethos and gives it concrete and precise instantiations by shaping the skills, practices, values and background knowledge required of the database users. We conclude that the increasing reliance on community databases as vehicles to circulate data is having a major impact on how researchers conduct and communicate their research, which affects how they understand the biology of model organisms and its relation to the biology of other species. (shrink)

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit greatly by returning (...) to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)