Military service in general and combat service in particular can be physically and psychologically stressful. Previous studies have focused on risk propensity and risky behavior among soldiers. Yet knowledge is still lacking regarding the impact of type of army service on soldiers’ risk perceptions. The current study examines how type of army service and negative incidental emotions affect risk perceptions. Results of a survey conducted among 153 combat and non-combat Israeli soldiers indicate that respondents serving in combat units on average (...) have more pessimistic risk perceptions than non-combat soldiers. Yet no significant differences emerged between combat and non-combat respondents with respect to their levels of negative incidental emotions. Regression analyses suggest that higher levels of negative incidental emotions are correlated with pessimistic risk perceptions among all respondents, while higher levels of risk attitude are correlated with pessimistic risk perceptions among combat soldiers but not among non-combat soldiers. (shrink)

Informed consent is an essential step in helping patients be aware of consequences of their treatment decisions. With surgery, it is vitally important for patients to understand the risks and benefits of the procedure and decide accordingly. We explored whether a written IC form was provided to patients; whether they read and signed it; whether they communicated orally with the physician; whether these communications influenced patient decisions. Adult postsurgical patients in nine general hospitals of Italy’s Campania Region were interviewed via (...) a structured questionnaire between the second and seventh day after the surgery at the end of the first surgical follow up visit. Physicians who were independent from the surgical team administered the questionnaire. The written IC form was given to 84.5% of those interviewed. All recipients of the form signed it, either personally or through a delegate; however, 13.9% did not know/remember having done so; 51.8% said that they read it thoroughly. Of those who reported to have read it, 90.9% judged it to be clear. Of those receiving the written consent form, 52.0% had gotten it the day before the surgery at the earliest 41.1% received it some hours or immediately before the procedure. The written IC form was explained to 65.6% of the patients, and 93.9% of them received further oral information that deemed understandable. Most attention was given to the diagnosis and the type of surgical procedure, which was communicated respectively to 92.8 and 88.2% of the patients. Almost one in two patients believed that the information provided some emotional relief, while 23.2% experienced increased anxiety. Younger patients and patients with higher levels of education were more likely to read the written IC form. The written IC form is not sufficient in assuring patients and making them fully aware of choices they made for their health; pre-operative information that was delivered orally better served the patients’ needs. To improve the quality of communication we suggest enhancing physicians’ communication skills and for them to use structured conversation to ensure that individuals are completely informed before undergoing their procedures. (shrink)

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance...

Birds are not commonly admired for emotional expression, and when they are, the focus is typically on negative states; yet vocal behavior is considered a direct reflection of an individual’s emotional state. Given that over 4000 species of songbird produce learned, complex, context-specific vocalizations, we make the case that songbirds are conspicuously broadcasting distinct positive emotional states and that hearing songs can also induce positive states in other birds. Studies are reviewed that demonstrate that that the production of sexually motivated (...) song reflects an emotional state of anticipatory reward-seeking (i.e., mate-seeking), while outside the mating context song in gregarious flocks reflects a state of intrinsic reward. Studies are also reviewed that demonstrate that hearing song induces states of positive anticipation and reward. This review brings together numerous studies that highlight a potentially important role for the songbird nucleus accumbens, a region nearly synonymous with reward in mammals, in positive emotional states that underlie singing behavior and responses to song. It is proposed that the nucleus accumbens is part of an evolutionarily conserved circuitry that contributes context-dependently to positive emotional states that motivate and reward singing behavior and responses to song. Neural mechanisms that underlie basic emotions appear to be conserved and similar across vertebrates. Thus, these findings in songbirds have the potential to provide insights into interventions that can restore positive social interactions disrupted by mental health disorders in humans. (shrink)

Demonstrates the systematic connection between Kant's ethics and his philosophy of history.

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science is a comprehensive resource for feminist thinking about and in the sciences. Its 33 chapters were written exclusively for this Handbook by a group of leading international philosophers as well as scholars in gender studies, women’s studies, psychology, economics, and political science. The chapters of the Handbook are organized into four main parts: I. Hidden Figures and Historical Critique II. Theoretical Frameworks III. Key Concepts and Issues IV. Feminist Philosophy of Science in (...) Practice. The chapters in this extensive, fourth part examine the relevance of feminist philosophical thought for a range of scientific and professional disciplines, including biology and biomedical sciences; psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience; the social sciences; physics; and public policy. The Handbook gives a snapshot of the current state of feminist philosophy of science, allowing students and other newcomers to get up to speed quickly in the subfield and providing a handy reference for many different kinds of researchers. (shrink)

Socially Responsible Investment indices play a major role in the stock markets. A connection between doing good and doing well in business is implied. Leading indices, such as the Domini Social Index and others, exemplify the movement toward investing in socially responsible corporations. However, the question remains: Does the ratings-based methodology for assessing corporate social responsibility provide an incentive to firms excluded from SRI indices to invest in CSR? Not in its current format. The ratings-based methodology employed by SRI indices (...) in their selection processes excludes many corporations by creating limited-membership lists. This received ratings-based structure is yet to offer an incentive for most of the excluded corporations to invest in improving their levels of CSR. We, therefore, ask under what circumstances a ratings-based method for assessing CSR could provide an incentive to firms excluded from SRI indices to invest in CSR. In this article, we attempt to offer a theoretical reply to this question. We show that when all firms are publicly ranked according to SRI index parameters, such indices can indeed create a market incentive for increased investment by firms in improving their performance in the area of social responsibility. We further show that this incentive tapers off as the amount of investment required exceeds a certain point or if the amount of payback on that investment fails to reach a certain threshold. (shrink)

There is widespread and growing concern among U.S. consumers about the treatment of farmed animals, and consumers are consequently paying attention to food product labels that indicate humane production practices. However, labels vary in their standards for animal welfare, and prior research suggests that consumers are confused by welfare-related labels: many shoppers cannot differentiate between labels that indicate changes in the way animals are raised and those that do not. We administered a survey to 1,000 American grocery shoppers to better (...) understand the extent to which consumers purchase and pay more for food with certain labels based on an assumption of welfare improvement. Results showed that 86% of shoppers reported purchasing at least one product with the following labels in the last year: “cage or crate-free”, “free-range”, “pasture-raised”, “natural”, “organic”, “no hormone”, “no antibiotic”, “no rBST”, “humane”, “vegetarian-fed”, “grass-fed”, “farm-raised”. Of those who purchased one of the aforementioned labels, 89% did so because they thought the label indicated higher-welfare production practices, and 79% consciously paid more for the product with the label because they thought that the label indicated better-than-standard animal welfare. However, many of these labels lack uniform standards for the production practices they represent, and some labels represent production practices that do not influence animal welfare, thus the degree of the animal welfare impact of a given label is highly variable. These results indicate that labels need to clearly and accurately specify their animal welfare benefits to improve the consumers’ ability to purchase products that align with their expectations. (shrink)

Privacy is a sociocultural perception, depending on the dominant values of a society, sociocultural heritage, and contemporary technological developments. This article focuses on privacy perception among adolescents based on a European school survey (PRACTIS), and presents comparative results of an exploratory study conducted among over 1,428 adolescents in six countries. The results reveal that adolescents attribute high value to privacy and are prepared to actively oppose if an online corporation is challenging their personal interests. However, they tend to trade off (...) privacy for other perceived benefits. Adolescents’ privacy perception and data protection are affected by cultural diversity, age, gender, and most of all their various social network sites activities and their attitudes toward importance of sharing and controlling personal information. (shrink)

Is it ever rational to suspend judgment about whether a particular doxastic attitude of ours is rational? An agent who suspends about whether her attitude is rational has serious doubts that it is. These doubts place a special burden on the agent, namely, to justify maintaining her chosen attitude over others. A dilemma arises. Providing justification for maintaining the chosen attitude would commit the agent to considering the attitude rational—contrary to her suspension on the matter. Alternatively, in the absence of (...) such justification, the attitude would be arbitrary by the agent's own lights, and therefore irrational from the agent's own perspective. So, suspending about whether an attitude of ours is rational does not cohere with considering it rationally preferable to other attitudes, and leads to a more familiar form of epistemic akrasia otherwise. (shrink)

The psychopathological phenomenon of delusions of influence comprises variable disturbances of the self-environment-border leading to the feeling of external influence on thoughts, feelings, impulses or behaviors. Delusions of influence are a hallmark in psychotic illness, but nevertheless, attenuated forms can also appear in healthy individuals. Here we present a newly developed paradigm to induce and assess feelings of external influence during instructed imaginations in healthy individuals. In the current study, we asked 60 healthy individuals to visually imagine different objects. To (...) induce feelings of external influence, we applied one of three different physical setups, and informed the participants whether or not an external influence was attempted during the respective trial. The physical setup as well as the information given to the participants alone were able to modulate the feeling of external influence in all three interventions. The impact of information significantly exceeded the impact of the physical setup on the ratings of experienced external influence. Moreover, the response latency correlated with the estimated feeling of external influence. Additional analyses addressed the influence of the emotional content of imagined objects and examined the intensity and emotional valence of the imaginations. Further supplemental analyses correlated external influence estimation of the participants with other psychopathological measures. In conclusion, this study endorses a quantitative model of psychopathological characteristics, in this case feelings of external influence that can be induced by external cues. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the merit of bargaining theory, in its economic and ecological forms, as a model for understanding variation in the frequency of participation in cooperative fishing among men of Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia. Two determinants of bargaining power are considered: resource control and a bargainer’s utility gain for his expected share of the negotiated resource. Several hypotheses which relte cultural and life-course parameters to bargaining power are tested against data on the frequency of cooperative sail-fishing participation. (...) Consistent with predictions generated from bargaining theory, we show that (1) age is negatively correlated with cooperative fishing participation, (2) men of highranking clans and men with high levels of education fish less than men of low-ranking clans and less-educated men, (3) men with high expected utility gains from fishing returns fish more than men with low expected utility gains, (4) number of dependents is positively correlated with cooperative fishing participation, and (5) the number of young genetic offspring residing with a man is positively correlated with cooperative fishing participation, whereas the number of genetic offspring more than 13 years old who are residing with a man is negatively correlated with cooperative fishing participation. (shrink)

Healing Emotions is the record of an extraordinary series of encounters between the Dalai Lama and prominent Western psychologists, physicians, and meditation teachers that sheds new light on the mind-body connection. Edited by Pulitzer Prize nominee and best-selling author Daniel Goleman.

Philosophy East/West showcases new scholarship in the philosophy of education and contemplative studies, paying particular attention to the intersection of mindfulness, evidence-based science, and wisdom traditions. Moves beyond simplistic explanations of “Eastern” and “Western” to explore the complexity and diversity of various wisdom traditions Investigates the effect of mindfulness-based curricular interventions on current educational theory and practice Uses insights from important Western philosophers—including Heidegger, Levinas, and Foucault—to situate contemplative practice within contemporary educational theory Emphasizes the importance of transcultural and intercultural (...) approaches in the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Numerous studies have shown almost uniformly positive opinions among patients and physicians regarding theconceptof advance directives (either a healthcare proxy or living will). Several of these studies have also shown that the actual use of advance directives is significantly lower than this enthusiasm would suggest, but they have not explained the apparent discordance. Nor have researchers explained why members of minority groups are much less likely to complete advance directives than are white patients. In this study, we used a focus (...) group methodology to examine the ways in which diverse populations of patients view the medical, philosophical, and practical issues surrounding advance directives. We were motivated by the significantly lower prevalence of advance directives among African-American and Hispanic patients at one urban teaching hospital (18% for Caucasians, 4% for African-Americans, and 2% for Hispanics). Our premise was that African-American and Hispanic populations, who have had higher rates of morbidity and mortality across numerous disease categories, and historically have had limited access to care and opportunities to discuss health concerns, may be more suspicious about the right of autonomy that an advance directive is designed to ensure. (shrink)

Out from the Shadows showcases the work of 18 analytical feminists from a variety of traditional areas of philosophy: social and political philosophy, normative ethics, virtue theory, metaethics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The collection is unique both in its focus on analytical feminism and in its breadth across the subdisciplines within philosophy. The book highlights successful uses of concepts and approaches from traditional philosophy, and illustrates the contributions that feminist approaches have made and could make (...) to the analysis of issues in key areas of traditional philosophy, while also demonstrating that traditional philosophy ignores feminist insights and feminist critiques of traditional philosophy at its own peril. (shrink)

Global governance has become a topic of interest to many contemporary political theorists. Issues arising from the nature of global markets and multinational corporations can no longer be locally contained. These developments signal the decline of the nation state and therewith the end of the liberal moral and political theory that justified national institutions. The alternative possible orders appear bleak, including anarchy, hegemonic power or the most horrific of all specters, the liberty crushing “world state.” Kant’s cosmopolitan theory of justice (...) can provide a third way between nationalism and its bleak alternatives, providing a measureof global governance upheld by nations without recourse to a world state. My thesis is that a juridical society of states is necessarily founded upon cosmopolitan right having universal jurisdiction and that the implementation of the norms of hospitality underlying cosmopolitan right requires global institutions based upon democratic representation and accountability. (shrink)

This study drew on three theoretical perspectives – attribution theory, power, and role identity theory – to compare the job-related outcomes of sexual harassment from organizational insiders and organizational outsiders in a sample of UK police officers and police support staff. Results showed that sexual harassment from insiders was related to higher intentions to quit, over-performance demands, and lower job satisfaction, whereas sexual harassment from outsiders was not significantly related to any of the outcome variables investigated. We also examined two (...) moderator variables: equal opportunity support and confidence in grievance procedures. Consistent with our hypotheses, equal oppor- tunity support mitigated the effects of sexual harassment from supervisors on intent to quit and over-performance demands. Confidence in grievance procedures moderated the relationship between sexual harassment from supervisors and all outcome variables. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Expanded and up-to-date-the ultimate guide that explores meaning and philosophy of all six seasons of Lost Lost is more than just a popular television show; it's a complex examination of meaningful philosophical questions. What does good versus evil mean on the island? Is it a coincidence that characters John Locke and Desmond David Hume are named after actual philosophers? What is the ethics of responsibility for Jack? An action-adventure story with more than a touch of the metaphysical, Lost forces viewers (...) to ask difficult questions of themselves just as the story asks difficult questions of its characters. Ultimate Lost and Philosophy helps you explore the deeper meaning and philosophical questions hidden within every complex twist and turn in the historic show's entire six-season run. Includes every season of Lost, including 2010's final, highly anticipated season Connects events on the show to core philosophical issues such as truth, identity, and morality Explores a host of intriguing topics such as time travel, freedom, love, and loss For fans of Lost who are interested in what the show reveals about ourselves and the human condition, Ultimate Lost and Philosophy is an entertaining, informative, and enlightening resource. (shrink)

A father brings his six-year-old daughter and her older sister to their pediatrician to be evaluated for a history of cough, runny nose, and low-grade fever. In addition to signs of a cold, the girl's nasal bridge is quite swollen and bruised. When asked how her nose was injured, she shrugs, and her father's only conjecture is that she sleepwalks and might have bumped into something. The father sits impatiently and as questioning progresses becomes increasingly defensive, at one point angrily (...) declaring, “We don't beat our kids, if that's what you’re asking.” Further complicating the situation is information from nurses that this family is “on the brink” socially and financially, and that additional stress is likely “to blow this family apart.” A careful physical exam identifies no other injuries, and a thorough review reveals no evidence of prior suspicious injuries, frequent visits to the emergency room, or bleeding abnormalities. The evidence does not point to abuse as the most likely explanation for the injury, but it clearly is not ruled out. Should one report this family for suspected abuse? Is one required to report? (shrink)

This chapter accepts for the sake of argument Ronald Dworkin’s point that the only viable form of normative skepticism is internal, and develops an internal skeptical argument directed specifically at normative realism. There is a striking and puzzling coincidence between normative judgments that are true, and normative judgments that causal forces led us to believe—a practical/theoretical puzzle to which the constructivist view has a solution. Normative realists have no solution, but are driven to conclude that we are probably hopeless at (...) recognizing the independent normative truths they posit. Since this is an unacceptable conclusion, we must conclude that normative realism is false. Drawing on evolutionary considerations, it is explained why this internal skeptical argument does not carry over to our knowledge of objects in our manifest surroundings, and why the challenge does not depend on any assumption that the epistemology of the normative domain must be a causal one. (shrink)

In this paper we challenge the idea that valid consent is the golden standard by which a sexual encounter is deemed ethical. We begin by reviewing the recent public focus on consent as an ethical standard, and then argue for a standard that goes beyond legalistic and contractual foci. This is the standard of mutuality which extends beyond the assurance that all parties engaging in a sexual encounter are informed, autonomous, and otherwise capable of making a valid choice: one must (...) also encounter the other with care and loving attention. We develop this claim using Iris Murdoch’s concept of an attitude of “loving attention,” which differentiates our view from the duty of due diligence to ensure that each person is a willing participant in sex, that the rights of others have not been violated, as emphasized by Dougherty. We also address three objections to using mutuality as a measure of ethical sex, namely that it is patronizing, that it is a maximalist position that puts too great a burden on individuals and inhibits their freedom, and that it is an ideal rather than a requirement. We then look at three examples that test the construct of mutuality: the typical college hook-up, sex work, and anonymous sex through glory holes and similar set-ups. (shrink)

From the fundamental rights proclaimed in the American and French declarations of independence to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Hannah Arendt’s furious critiques, the definition of what it means to be human has been hotly debated. But the history of human rights—and their abuses—is also a richly illustrated one. Following this picture trail, _Human Rights In Camera_ takes an innovative approach by examining the visual images that have accompanied human rights struggles and the passionate responses people have (...) had to them. Sharon Sliwinski considers a series of historical events, including the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and the Holocaust, to illustrate that universal human rights have come to be imagined through aesthetic experience. The circulation of images of distant events, she argues, forms a virtual community between spectators and generates a sense of shared humanity. Joining a growing body of scholarship about the cultural forces at work in the construction of human rights, _Human Rights In Camera_ is a novel take on this potent political ideal. (shrink)

Contemporary realist theories of value claim to be compatible with natural science. In this paper, I call this claim into question by arguing that Darwinian considerations pose a dilemma for these theories. The main thrust of my argument is this. Evolutionary forces have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes. The challenge for realist theories of value is to explain the relation between these evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes, on the one hand, and the (...) independent evaluative truths that realism posits, on the other. Realism, I argue, can give no satisfactory account of this relation. On the one hand, the realist may claim that there is no relation between evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes and independent evaluative truths. But this claim leads to the implausible skeptical result that most of our evaluative judgements are off track due to the distorting pressure of Darwinian forces. The realist’s other option is to claim that there is a relation between evolutionary influences and independent evaluative truths, namely that natural selection favored ancestors who were able to grasp those truths. But this account, I argue, is unacceptable on scientific grounds. Either way, then, realist theories of value prove unable to accommodate the fact that Darwinian forces have deeply influenced the content of human values. After responding to three objections, the third of which leads me to argue against a realist understanding of the disvalue of pain, I conclude by sketching how antirealism is able to sidestep the dilemma I have presented. Antirealist theories of value are able to offer an alternative account of the relation between evolutionary forces and evaluative facts —
an account that allows us to reconcile our understanding of evaluative truth with our understanding of the many non-rational causes that have played a role in shaping our evaluative judgements. (shrink)

Societies evolve practices that reflect social norms of appropriateness in social interaction, for example when and to what extent one should respect the boundaries of another person’s private sphere. One such practice is what the sociologist Erving Goffman called civil inattention—the social norm of showing a proper amount of indifference to others—which functions as an almost unnoticed yet highly potent privacy-preserving mechanism. These practices can be disrupted by technologies that afford new forms of intrusions. In this paper, we show how (...) new networked technologies, such as facial recognition, challenge our ability to practice civil inattention. We argue for the need to revitalise, in academic and policy debates, the role of civil inattention and related practices in regulating behaviour in public space. Our analysis highlights the relational nature of privacy and the importance of social norms in accomplishing and preserving it. While our analysis goes some way in supporting current calls to ban FR technology, we also suggest that, pending a ban and in light of the power of norms to limit what is otherwise technically possible, cultivating new practices of civil inattention may help address the challenges raised by FR and other forms of digital surveillance in public. (shrink)

Background Healthcare professionals face a myriad of ethical challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. However, there is limited literature examining the ethical challenges faced by HCPs in low- and medium-income countries. The research was designed to explore the ethical challenges experienced by HCPs in a Malaysian hospital setting during the pandemic. Methods Semistructured interviews were conducted via video calls with 10 Malaysian HCPs across different clinical disciplines involved in managing patients diagnosed with COVID-19 infections. The calls were audio-recorded, transcribed (...) verbatim and checked. Thematic analysis with constant comparison across transcripts was carried out to identify categories and themes. Results Three main themes emerged. Firstly, there was deprioritisation of care for non-COVID-19 patients resulting from resource limitations. HCPs raised concerns that there was curtailed access to various healthcare services by non-COVID-19 patients. There was also a trade-off between protecting individual patient safety and public health interests. Secondly, patients were disempowered from decision-making; the decision to segregate suspected COVID-19 patients to high-risk areas without seeking patients’ approval may result in an increased risk of infection. Lastly, HCPs expressed internal conflicts when balancing the professional duty of care against concerns about contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to their family members. Conclusion The study highlighted ethical issues faced by HCPs in Malaysia during the pandemic. It underscores the need for clinical ethics consultation services in hospitals to navigate the various ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Communication is an integral part of nursing practice—with patients and their relatives, other nurses and members of the healthcare team, and ancillary staff. Through interaction with the ‘other’, language and silence creates and recreates social realities. Acceptance, rejection or modification of social realities depends on what is expressed and by whom. Narratives that are offered can tell of some experiences and not others. Some nurses choose to be silent while others are silenced. In nursing situations recognising and allowing silence to (...) speak is a challenging but uniquely personal experience that embraces reflection in and on experiences, practice and self as a person and a professional. If enabled and truly heard, silence can speak more loudly than the hubbub of daily practice, allowing us to collectively question and challenge inherent assumptions and biases as professionals, and as a profession. Through a microcosm of Newly Graduated Nurses' lived experiences of nursing situations and expressions of silence individuals' discomfort and private efforts to ascribe meaning to experiences are reflected on. Returning to silence is to return to a constant process of professional transformation that can enable ways of knowing and being that can reform our profession from within and enable us to cast off shackles that bind us to a shameful cultural underbelly. (shrink)

In this contribution, Sharon Todd moves beyond the bounds of what she calls “strong” instrumentalism (one that posits education in a mechanistic fashion and operates politically through a marrying of national educational policies with economic interests) and explores the intrinsic purpose of educational practice specifically through an aesthetic lens. Todd considers how two art projects by the feminist art collective Sisters Hope offer a way of theorizing instrumentalism in a “weak” sense — that is, an instrumentalism that sees pedagogical (...) practices not in terms of social function, but as that which gives form to specifically educational (not social or economic) ideas. She does this by drawing parallels between education and art as fields of practice, informed by notions of experience, relation, and formation/transformation. Drawing on John Dewey's aesthetics and Nicolas Bourriaud's relational aesthetics, Todd argues how these notions are central to an understanding of “weak” instrumentalism in education. (shrink)

Can a heritability value tell us something about the weight of genetic versus environmental causes that have acted in the development of a particular individual? Two possible questions arise. Q1: what portion of the phenotype of X is due to its genes and what portion to its environment? Q2: what portion of X’s phenotypic deviation from the mean is a result of its genetic deviation and what portion a result of its environmental deviation? An answer to Q1 provides the full (...) information about X’s development, while an answer to Q2 leaves out a large portion unexplained—that portion which corresponds to the phenotypic mean. Q1 is unanswerable, but I show it is nevertheless legitimate under certain quantitative genetics models. With regard to Q2, opinions in the philosophical and biological literature differ as to its legitimacy. I argue that not only is it legitimate, but in particular, under a few simplifying assumptions, it allows for a quantitative probabilistic answer: for normally distributed quantitative traits with no G-E correlation or statistical G × E interaction, we can assess the probability that X’s genes had a greater effect than its environment on its deviation from the mean population value. This probability is expressed as a function the heritability and the individual’s phenotypic value; we can also provide a quantitative probabilistic answer to Q2 for an arbitrary individual where the probability is a function only of heritability. (shrink)

In many ways set theory lies at the heart of modern mathematics, and it does powerful work both philosophical and mathematical – as a foundation for the subject. However, certain philosophical problems raise serious doubts about our acceptance of the axioms of set theory. In a detailed and original reassessment of these axioms, Sharon Berry uses a potentialist approach to develop a unified determinate conception of set-theoretic truth that vindicates many of our intuitive expectations regarding set theory. Berry further (...) defends her approach against a number of possible objections, and she shows how a notion of logical possibility that is useful in formulating Potentialist set theory connects in important ways with philosophy of language, metametaphysics and philosophy of science. Her book will appeal to readers with interests in the philosophy of set theory, modal logic, and the role of mathematics in the sciences. (shrink)

Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization breaks new ground by describing the global economy and its effects from the perspective of an integrated theology of "the earth as primary revelation" and the institutional powers of this world. It reaches the conclusion that hope lies in nonviolent resistance and ecological and social responsibility based on God's action in Jesus and in the triumph of God over the powers. This book describes today's interrelated social, economic, and ecological crises (...) and makes the case that we face a living hell on earth if we do not address them. It provides an overview of the global economic system and offers a comprehensive theological analysis of the network of primary institutions that make up what Walter Wink calls the "Domination System." It points readers in the direction of hope based on following the way of Jesus, who lived in nonviolent resistance to the powers of his day. This new, revised edition continues the powerful story of the original, extending the analysis of the global economy from the 2008 collapse and recession to its alleged recovery. It addresses the Obama administration's policies on economics, trade, and the environment, and provides further reflections on American foreign and military policy in this so-called New American Century. (shrink)

The Cross in the Midst of Creation asserts that the crucifixion is ongoing as institutional powers diminish human life and destroy creation, and that the resurrection is ongoing as faith overcomes despair and the Spirit equips people to follow Jesus and to struggle for a transformed world.