A qualitative analysis of societal silences, demonstrating how the unsaid directs social action and shapes individual and collective lives.

The nature of "silence" is something of a recurring theme of contemplative philosophies far and wide, but more often than not silence is relegated to being little more than a mere concept or worse, a completely social phenomenon that chalks the matter up as some negation of humanity's "linguistic" way of being. Silence, it would seem, is "nothing" of the sort, but the only way to determine whether or not that is the case would be to (...) contemplate exactly how silence ought to be considered, if, in fact, silence can be considered at all. In this article, I wrestle with the ontological reality of silence using Heidegger's treatment of the Nothing as a waymark, ultimately revealing the interrelatedness of presence and silence as conditions, and opening up possible avenues for new discussions related to meditative and contemplative practice. (shrink)

Nothing really matters. All the things that we do not do, have or become in our lives can be important in shaping self-identity. From jobs turned down to great loves lost, secrets kept and truths untold, people missed and souls unborn, we understand ourselves through other, unlived lives that are imaginatively possible. This book explores the realm of negative social phenomena - no-things, no-bodies, non-events and no-where places - that lies behind the mirror of experience. Taking a symbolic interactionist (...) perspective, the author argues that these objects are socially produced, emerging from and negotiated through our relationships with others. Nothing is interactively accomplished in two ways, through social acts of commission and omission. Existentialism and phenomenology encourage us to understand more deeply the subjective experience of nothing; this can be pursued through conscious meaning-making and reflexive self-awareness. The Social Life of Nothing is a thought-provoking book that will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, arts and humanities, but its message also resonates with the interested general reader. (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and (...) guided by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

This book investigates silence as a normal, ubiquitous and indispensable element of political thinking, theory, and language. It explores the diverse dimensions in which silences mould the different core features of the political-by summoning-up finality, by contributing to rendering support for communities or withholding it, by processing consent or dissent, by the manner in which it secures continuities or generates ruptures, and by its role in shaping national time, public memory and collective identity. Not least, silence is a (...) highly flexible power resource, both enabling and constraining major social practices, traditions, and currents. The emphasis of this study is primarily on the concealed, unintentional, and unrecognized ways through which silence pervades socio-political life, departing from the typical focus on intentional silencing and the dominance of logos. Instead, silence adopts the guises of the unspeakable, the ineffable, the inarticulable, and the unconceptualizable. En route, silence is juxtaposed with stillness, absence contrasted with lack, agency set against undetected conventions, and the veiled paired with the wondrous. Drawing extensively from historical, philosophical, anthropological, psychoanalytical, theological, linguistic, and literary viewpoints, the book demonstrates the common threads that connect silences to those different disciplines, alongside the features that pull them asunder. In extracting and decoding their political implications, it explores both academic literature and colloquial, everyday discourse. Selected case-studies elaborating the overall analysis include topics such as Buddhist nondualism, Locke's tacit consent, the submerging of historical narratives, state neutrality, Pinter's miscommunications and menace, and the separate ways ideologies integrate silence into their beliefs. (shrink)

This book explores how a sense of wonder and the musicality of silence can be a rehumanizing force in education, health and welfare, countering overly anthropocentric and instrumental worldviews. Wonder - in an aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual sense - brings human beings in resonance with the world again.

The presence of women in the philosophical scene of classical India is sporadic. The present paper focuses on an Upaniṣadic story highlighting the contribution of such a rare woman, namely the debate between Gārgī and Yājñavalkya at King Janaka’s court in chapter 3 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad. I offer a close reading of the debate, drawing on Śaṅkara’s commentary, with the intention of spotlighting Gārgī’s voice, a single female voice in an all-male arena. My analysis is supplemented with a quick visit (...) to Mahasweta Devi’s gut-wrenching story Draupadi. My silence-silencing argument is this: Silence holds a central place in classical Indian philosophy, as the story under discussion illustrates. It is an expression of a dramatic transformation in which the human person “recovers” his/her innermost essence, the ātman, no longer identifying with worldly aspects of her/his being. But according to Mahasweta Devi and Daya Krishna, each in her and his distinct context, this beatific silence can turn into an act of brutal silencing. This is to say that in the name of spiritual quest, the here and now, the social dimension, is often “forgotten”. The twist is that what is seen from one perspective as a benevolent silence is from another perspective, a symptom of blindness to the world one lives in. For Mahasweta and Daya Krishna one’s visit, or recurrent visits to “realms beyond” are empty unless they have ethical impact upon one’s return to the now and here. (shrink)

This paper builds upon Mary Kate McGowan’s analysis of the mechanisms of harm in conversations (McGowan 2004; 2009). McGowan describes how a speaker’s intervention might constitute harm by enacting what is permissible to do in the conversation thereafter. We expand McGowan’s analysis in two ways: first, we use her account to argue for the potential of interlocutor’s silence, not only speaker’s intervention, to enact harm; second, we introduce a new party into the picture: observers of the conversation. We propose (...) that not only interlocutors who contribute to harm through action, but also those who do so by omission are morally responsible for that harm. We focus on one aspect of conversations: introduction of presuppositions. We argue that when the presupposition is morally problematic (e.g., sexist, ableist, racist, homo-, trans- or xeno-phobic), interlocutors have a moral responsibility to block it. This responsibility comes in degrees, and, importantly, depends on whether the interlocutor’s speech capacity is diminished by the harmful presupposition (i.e. whether the interlocutor is being silenced). Unlike common approaches to harm in speech, which take the unit of analysis to be the speaker-interlocutor relationship, we take as unit of analysis the relationship between the pair speaker-interlocutor and an observer. Problematic presuppositions introduced in conversations can harm observers overhearing these conversations (as well society as a whole), and prevention of such harm motivates our proposal for attribution of responsibility to interlocutors. We proceed as follows. First we review the dynamics of presupposition introduction. Second, we briefly introduce McGowan’s analysis of conversational pragmatics, subscribing to her account that some conversational moves constitute a special type of harm related to oppression, and outline a taxonomy of the pathways through which harm can be inflicted upon observers and the society as a whole. In the third part we articulate our argument that in the cases of presupposition introduction considered here, interlocutors are not merely allowing harm, but actively doing it, and put forward our proposal for responsibility attribution. Finally, we address potential objections, and situate our proposal within a broader project to fight oppressive speech. (shrink)

For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, freedom functions as a foundational value for his entire political philosophy. Parallel to this emphasis is his deep and abiding condemnation of “slavery”, at least the slavery that he claims marked the social existence of his European contemporaries living under unrepresentative monarchical systems. However, the striking aspect of Rousseau's work is his virtually complete silence concerning the institution of chattel slavery of his day. Despite his ubiquitous condemnation of the “slavery” of his “civilized” contemporaries, Rousseau (...) wrote next to nothing about the actual enslavement of millions of people who pervaded the social landscape of the European–African–American triangle in the 18th century. In this paper, I trace out the various passages in Rousseau that could be seen as touching on the subject of contemporary slavery practices and show how very scant they were. I also discuss his views on the relation between climate, character, and persons' fitness for democratic forms of government (and hence freedom). I combine these points to draw particular lessons about the dangers of neglect and exclusion inherent in Rousseau's views of democratic freedom, suggesting how similar dangers lurk for contemporary visions of democracy inspired by his views. (shrink)

Awareness of science encouraged through events in 2017.

"This book should be read by all who are interested in discerning the ethical teaching of representative African-American leaders of the nineteenth century whose voices have been long silenced by racism's insidious effects." Peter J. Paris, Princeton Theological SeminaryLaunching his investigation from H. Richard Niebuhr's enormously influential THE RESPONSIBLE SELF, Darryl Trimiew seeks to clarify and expand the implications of morally responsible behavior. He offers a corrective to Niebuhr's notion of the "fitting response" by taking the view of the marginalized (...) seriously. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Circa 1630, the Dutch painter Pieter Jakobsz Codde, created a painting that shows little more than a young man sitting in a chair. Yet an in-depth examination of the person, the design of the space and the objects located in the room reveal that different aspects of disturbances and tensions have been integrated into the presentation and open a discourse on the imagery of melancholy and acedia. The paper shows by way of example that this is not an iconographic (...) gimmick but rather a challenge to differentiate and then decide between political as well as social meanings. Should the painting’ viewer decide between temperament and vice in the meaning of the representations, he or she determines at the same stroke the defining characteristics of the subject. For while the melancholy enjoyed social acceptance, acedia remained a vice to be avoided. Decisive in this: by acknowledging one’s competence to distinguish between the two states, the observer was able to prove his or her own personal good character traits. The image and the handling of the image thereby constitute a situation in which decision-making authority could be practiced and positive character traits could be solidified. (shrink)

Of silence, paradoxically, one can only speak. By virtue of the alliance that unites reason and language, the capacity to name and to address indeed obeys a certain desire to restrain excessive communication. Laughter, tears and silence are part of the expressive world: however, they attest to the impossible pitfall of words in the socializing function that we accord them. Of extreme sociality, of meaning that exceeds the bearable, the suitability and the commerce of ideas, the only thing (...) that rises to the surface of the perceptible is that emotional logic whose significations shatter every criterion of certitude and of truth on the real. Confronted with three forms of experience of the unspeakable, we ordinarily allow ourselves to lend credit to the spontaneity of the first two (laughter and tears), while the symbolic dimension of silence seems to derive from an invisible orchestration, from a rather simple calculation or from a more elaborate strategy. This difference in nature is essential, and no one would dream of equating what “can” not be said with what “should” not be said. Silence exists as a sort of constraint, interiorized at various levels of the personality, and thereby more social than psychological. Even the involuntary silence of the unknowing person can be codified: as a disciplined avowal or the politeness of the humble who neither tolerates nor imagines any escape from his embarrassment. If speech is born in the abandon of a burst of expressivity, in hilarity or in sobs, it expires in a law, no less severe than the one which endows phrases with semantic coherence. Such a rule thus manifests a universal character socially more affirmed than the multiple syntaxes that organize each linguistic patrimony. That muteness can also be subject to a particular form of apprenticeship shows how each process of socialization determines the price of the communicable and assigns a value to the unformulated. Without pretending to offer a strict typology of this phenomenon, I will distinguish five classes that are capable of comprising its collective aspects. (shrink)

The publication of the Bradley review in the United Kingdom is a watershed in the development of policy regarding the way that the Criminal Justice System responds to individuals with mental health problems. It then goes on to explore one aspect of that response: the role of the Appropriate Adult under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984).

As a continuation of this author’s previous cosmological neuroscience papers on the hypothesized Soul of Multiverse and its possible laws, the present work examined the social aspects of four of these laws. The following key aspects were recognized: (1) Knowing about the cosmic Law of Coexistence in Diversity can let our mind respect not only the endless diversity of human beings but also the cohesive force of space-time in which all are connected. This may help realizing the superiority of (...) cooperation for shared goals over competition for gaining by harming others. (2) Knowing about the cosmic Law of Truth in Complexity can ready our mind to confront the problems of societies with the understanding that these problems are much more complex than generally thought. This may help initiating the needed intellectual renaissance of the 21st century. (3) Knowing about the cosmic Law of Divine - Evil Asymmetry can make our mind appreciate the slight yet sufficient supremacy of divine over evil. This may help restoring faith in the eventual creation of a just society, where social justice is defined as an administrative mechanism providing the right conditions for every human being to accomplish his or her Conscience-led Mission throughout life, while allowing each of these accomplishments to be reciprocated with the gratitude it induced in the involved social systems, small or large, to let equal opportunities in life coexist with due diversity in welcomed, not abused, social recognitions. And (4) knowing about the cosmic Law of Lives to Transcend can empower our mind to build on these advances. This may help moving evolution towards the human species worthy of its origin and destination. (shrink)

The outputs of economic forecasting—predictions for national economic indicators such as GDP, unemployment rates and inflation—are all highly visible. The production of these forecasts is a much more private affair, however, typically being thought of as the work of individual forecasters or forecast teams using their economic model to produce a forecast that is then made public. This conception over-emphasises the individual and the technical whilst silencing the broader social context through which economic forecasters develop the expertise that is (...) essential for the credibility of their predictions. In particular, economic forecasts are given meaning and fine-tuned through the social and institutional networks that give forecasters access to the expertise of a heterogeneous mix of academics, policy-makers and business people. Within these broader groups, individual forecasters often create private forecast ‘clubs’, where subscribers have privileged access to the expertise of the economist, but where the forecasters also have privileged access to their clients’ own expert knowledge. In examining these aspects of the forecasters’ work I show that the visible and audible activities of modelling and forecasting are made possible and plausible by virtue of the modeller’s invisible interaction with a wider network.Keywords: Expertise; Economic forecasting; Periodic table of expertise; Judgement. (shrink)

Some 14 years ago, I published an article in which I identified a prime site for bioethicists to ply their trade: medical responses to requests for hormonal and surgical interventions aimed at facilitating transgendered people’s transition to their desired genders. Deep issues about the impact of biotechnologies and health care practices on central aspects of our conceptual system, I argued, were raised by how doctors understood and responded to people seeking medical assistance in changing their gender, and there were obviously (...) significant issues of regulation involved as well. Yet mainstream bioethics was conspicuous by its relative absence from the discussion. Here, I return to the matter and find that, while the conceptual issues are just as profound and their connection to health care practice and policy just as intimate, even as transgender issues have become much more socially visible, bioethical engagement with gender reassignment has increased only slightly. I set the little movement that has occurred against the backdrop of the situation as I saw it in 1998 and conclude, once again, by trying to make the bait for bioethicists inviting. (shrink)

The image of the Moor in Spanish literature reveals a paradox at the heart of Christian and Castilian hegemony in the period between the conquest of Nasrid Granada in 1492 and the expulsion of the Moriscos by Philip III in 1609.­­ Depictions fall between two extremes. On the “vilifying” side, Moors are hateful dogs, miserly, treacherous, lazy and overreaching. On the “idealizing” side, the men are noble, loyal, heroic, courtly—they even mirror the virtues that Christian knights aspire to—while the women (...) are endowed with singular beauty and discretion.Anti-Muslim diatribes are fairly common and predictable: they are flat and repetitive in their assertion of Old Christian superiority over every aspect of the lives of Muslims or crypto-Muslims. Any sign of cultural otherness is ridiculed; the conquering caste, insecure about its own lofty standards of limpieza de sangre , laughs away whatever trace of old Hispano-Arab splendor might remain in the Morisco. Or, conversely, the uneasy master recasts wretched Moriscos as ominous brethren of the Ottoman Turk.The truly vexed problem, however, consists in determining the meaning of idealized Moors in historiography, ballads, drama, and the novel. Roughly speaking, modern criticism divides into two camps in attempting to explain this curious phenomenon of literary infatuation with a cultural and religious minority subjected to growing popular hostility, Inquisitional hounding, and economic exploitation. I will call one camp “aestheticist” and the other “social.” Israel Burshatin, assistant professor of Spanish at Haverford College, is currently preparing a critical edition of Pedro del Corral’s Crónica sarracina. (shrink)

This article takes its point of departure in a stance found among practitioners – including teachers, preschool teachers, kindergarten pedagogues and other welfare professionals – in which theory is considered abstract and thus irrelevant to or unhelpful in their daily work. In exploring the backgrounds of this stance, I address the issue at two levels: one that focuses on the professional identities, cultural logics and communicative norms of kindergarten staff groups in their actual, contemporary context; and another that focuses on (...) aspects connected to the reception of Donald Schön’s concept of ‘the reflective practitioner’. The analytical and methodological perspectives in the article are informed by the anthropology of education; specifically, by focusing on meaning-making processes and their consequences. In my approach to the concept of the reflective practitioner, I use a Bourdieu-inspired perspective; here, the social actor’s practical sense and tacit knowledge are related to questions of power and other actors’ strategies for positioning themselves within a social space. In doing so, they produce professional identities, ideals of communication, and colleague relationships. Here, the point of departure is that questions concerning ‘reflective practitioners’ and ‘tacit knowledge’ cannot rely solely on theoretical arguments but should be empirically informed by studies of practices as they unfold in pedagogical institutions. This article analyses the field by investigating these concepts and examining the cultural logics that make such interpretations possible and meaningful. Furthermore, I point to a problematic aspect of Schön’s work with regard to his empirical basis, which demands a particular focus on the historical effect of ‘the reflective practitioner’ concept as a symbolic marker of identity in the cultural logic of the pedagogical field. I also address how this logic considers practice to be the exponent of all that is good, meaningful and correct. From my analysis, I develop the concept of ‘the reflective methodologists’ to describe a professional identity and practice that relies on the critical examination of specific actions instead of ‘tacit knowledge’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Latina/o Social Ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking, and: Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a PerspectiveKevin N. York-SimmonsLatina/o Social Ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric Moral Thinking Miguel A. de La Torre, Waco Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2010. 160 pp. $24.95.Racism and God-Talk: A Latino/a Perspective Rubén Rosario Rodríguez New York: New York University Press, 2008. 320 pp. $24.00Although Latina/o theologians have contributed much to Christian moral discourse in (...) recent decades, the impact of these contributions has too often remained limited to other Latina/os and those with particular interests in liberation theologies. Miguel de La Torre and Rubén Rosario Rodríguez build on the contributions of theologians before them while challenging the broader theological community to take notice of these rich and provocative works.In four concise chapters, Miguel de La Torre’s Latina/o Social Ethics delivers a forceful criticism of prominent thinkers in the field of Christian ethics and offers a creative reconstruction of ethics from a Latina/o perspective. De La Torre offers a critique of “Euroamerican” Christian ethicists whose works have greatly influenced contemporary Christian moral discourse. He addresses the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, Stanley Hauerwas, Anthony Campolo, Ron Sider, and Jim Wallis. De La Torre faults these theologians for the ways in which their moral thinking participates in the oppression and marginalization of Latina/os, either through their silence or through their endorsement of specific polices. De La Torre concludes that the legacy of cultural and economic privilege and the oppression of Latinas/os are so [End Page 199] deeply embedded in the Eurocentric thinking that has dominated the field of Christian ethics that it cannot be the foundation for Latino social ethics.De La Torre’s aim is to “move beyond” Eurocentric modes of thinking rather than dwell on critique. This eagerness to move forward to the creative and constructive aspects of Latina/o ethics, however, limits the forcefulness of his critique of Euroamerican ethicists. De La Torre’s reading of Euroamerican ethics—and even the application of that term—is highly selective, both in terms of the thinkers chosen and the writings examined. While De La Torre’s criticisms of these thinkers are generally insightful and serve to illustrate his basic criticism of Eurocentric ethics, these criticisms are limited in their depth of analysis. De La Torre is less concerned with the broader historical and theological considerations at work in these Euroamerican ethicists than with their failures to adequately address issues of concern to Latinas/os.The second half of Latina/o Social Ethics moves to his constructive, or “reconstructive,” project. De La Torre reviews central concepts in the methodology of Latina/o social ethics, including lo cotidiano, nepantla, la lucha, en conjunto, and acompañamiento. De La Torre’s explanation of these terms is brief and accessible. Moving beyond these concepts, the fourth chapter of Latina/o Social Ethics offers a creative approach to a liberative ethics that draws on Christian tradition as well as broader Hispanic cultural resources, including folk characters and themes of the trickster found in Afro-Caribbean religious traditions. De La Torre addresses the concern for how to imagine a Christian ethics with a role for the trickster, including identifying trickster characters and themes in the Bible. His “disruptive ethics” challenges the preference for order over justice that has characterized Eurocentric ethics, for which he provides helpful examples. De La Torre is clearly concerned with imperialism, immigration, and free trade, yet it is unclear what justice means in those contexts. Perhaps due to the powerlessness of marginalized Latina/os, criticisms of injustice weigh far more heavily than visions of justice.The concise length of this book broadens its appeal. Academics unfamiliar with some of the concepts and methodologies of Latina/o theologians will find this short introduction a useful starting point. This provocative book would also be a welcome addition to the classroom, either in part or in its entirety.In contrast to De La Torre’s short work, Rubén Rosario Rodríguez sets a broader and more ambitious task in his Racism and God-Talk. His project... (shrink)

הייתכן לדבר על השתיקה כשפה? במסע ארוך המשתרע על שבעה עשר פרקים מנסה המחבר להתמודד עם התפיסה המקובלת בימינו, לפיה השתיקה האנושית היא שפה פרטית, פנימית ואינטימית, כזו הנגישה רק לאדם כיחיד. תחילת המסע להתגברות על תפיסה זו מצוי בבחינה מחודשת של הרציונאליזם ואידיאל האינדיבידואליות המודרני בזיקה עם הגישה שלנו אל השתיקה האנושית. בעוד ששפת המילים מוגדרת כשפה המשקפת את העולם, המהווה תמונה של המציאות, שפת השתיקה מתוארת כשיקוף של הפרטי שרק היחיד ככזה יכול לגשת אליו. האומנם השתיקה היא שפה (...) פרטית? רגעים של שתיקה נחשפים במהלך הספר כחלק מהדיאלוג של האדם עם עצמו, עם הזולת ועם מכלול המציאות שמסביבו. ניתוח היחסים בין התחזקות האמונה המודרנית בפוטנציאל הרציונאליזם ו/או מדע האדם לבין תהליך הגדרת השתיקה כשפה פרטית עומד במרכז הדיון. האמונה בכוחן של המילים לשקף ולשלוט על המציאות כמו גם האמונה בכוחו של מדע האדם לתאר באופן אובייקטיבי/מדעי את האדם כסובייקט אנושי ניצבים למבחן מחודש. מטרת הדיון לאפשר לשפת השתיקה לחשוף עצמה כשפה שאיננה פרטית, כשפה של דיאלוג של האדם עם עולם החיים ו/או המציאות האנושית שהוא חלק בלתי נפרד ממנו. היחס של החברה לשפת השתיקה כמו גם יחסה לשפת המילים הוא שיקוף של יחסה לתפקידו של האדם החי בה. הגדרת השתיקה כשפה פרטית מהווה חלק מתהליך ההתעצמות ההיסטורי של ניכור האדם מעצמו ומעולם החיים שהוא חלק ממנו. שתי סוגיות מרכזיות השזורות זו בזו ושמופיעות לאורך כל פרקי הספר: סוגיית הניכור החברתי ובחינה מחדש של החלק של הרציונאליזם בהתעצמות תחושת הניכור של האדם המודרני. (shrink)

Since 2008 I have been closely following the conceptual/performance/video work of Daniel Peltz. Gently rendered through media installation, ethnographic, and performance strategies, Peltz’s work reverently and warmly engages the inner workings of social systems, leaving elegant rips and tears in any given socio/cultural quilt. He engages readymades (of social and media constructions) and uses what are identified as interruptionist/interventionist strategies to disrupt parts of an existing social system, thus allowing for something other to emerge. Like the stereoscope (...) that requires two identical images to create an illusion of a three-dimensional image, Peltz sometimes visualizes two separate elements to create an object or moment that requires space and depth to focus on its varied layers. They say your brain has to process and make meaningful sense out of all that visual information before it can accept the illusion. I say your brain has to do a similar thing when looking and seeing the divine, magical, and faithful (social) art making of Daniel Peltz. Daniel Peltz is Associate Professor of Film/Animation/Video at RISD. He divides his time between Rhode Island and Sweden and is currently at work on an exhibition at Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm opening February 2013 and a new project to be included in the IASKA: Spaced Biennial (Australia) in 2014. This interview took place on Skype and is part one of a two-part interview. Feliz Lucia Molina: Are you in Providence, RI? Daniel Peltz: I’m at my house in Providence. I’ve been back for six days teaching winter session at RISD and doing this workshop series—these investors’ drum circles with a group of wealth managers. a client of the firm, 2013, photo Shirin Adhami FLM: The wealth managers were all drumming together? DP: They were all drumming in response to the performance of their retirement portfolios. FLM: Is this part of the “Unrealized Gain/Loss” piece? DP: Yes, it’s part of a show I’m working on in Sweden. I can show you because it was just today. I’ll show you some of this. Lets see—share screen [click, click, click]. This is the room. I’ve been using the camera system that’s already installed in the conference rooms to record them. So the video is being recorded directly by the wealth management office’s tech staff. These are the people I worked with in the last workshop. This conference table is less wondrous. They’ve been learning to drum in response to their retirement portfolios. I started by bringing in my little bit of wealth for them to propose a management strategy, I came to the follow-up meeting with a counter proposal, which was this workshop. So they agreed to do this series of workshops instead of managing my wealth. FLM: Does everybody in the room manage your wealth? That’s kind of a lot of people. DP: That woman in the back there and Craig —they handle new client business. So when you come there with your wealth, they sit down with you and suggest to you how they would manage it. They’re very nice, responsible people. FLM: And where is this? DP: This is in Providence and the one I was showing you is in Waltham, where I was today. Then I’m going to Newport for the last one on Friday. So I will have done four of them. This is the group in Waltham that I just played with today. I played directly with the two groups in Providence and I’m working with an ethnomusicologist at Brown, Asha Tamarisa, who is facilitating the last two. She’s helped develop the workshop in terms of figuring out how to train a group to do this and thinking about the compositional challenges of working in response to retirement portfolio data. FLM: Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project. DP: I might even be able to play you a little of the audio I’ve also been working with a group of professional percussionists on what will become a quarterly public investors’ drum circle event. Their stuff was really nice, but I want you to hear what we sounded like in the workshops. They’ve all been recorded by the a/v system in the offices. We use a simple structure where the drummer investors interpret the sensation of gain or loss as embellishments to a base heartbeat rhythm. The group holds the heartbeat and, as each person experiences gain or loss, they embellish that rhythm. "Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project" FLM: Is the process all very spontaneous? DP: Its actually quite structured. We produce a custom stock ticker that shows the performance of their collective portfolios. In advance of the workshop each participant submits assets in their retirement portfolio. Then we make a stock ticker that shows the real-time performance of their assets so that they can respond to almost live data. FLM: Are they reading the stock ticker projected up on the screen in the room? Do people drum in correspondence to the visual live data of the performance of their assets? DP: Exactly. They’re looking at the stock ticker as opposed to each other, so it’s a slightly shifted drum circle. They’re looking at the ticker but they’re listening to each other—that’s what we’re practicing. For example, NVO—the price is 172.08 but it’s down -1.16 and as that moves across the screen, the person who’s retirement is invested in that asset starts to embellish when that arrow first appears, based on their experience of loss. They stop when it exits the screen and return to the heartbeat. You could have one ticker for each retirement portfolio, but the way the workshop is constructed is that we just isolate one asset from each person’s portfolio so that everyone in the group is represented in a single ticker. So they’re drumming and looking at the ticker, but they’re hearing each other experience gain and loss. We’ve removed direct visual engagement from the social structure of a drum circle but the oral engagement is still there. FLM: So they had their own sound interpretation of gain and loss? DP: Yeah and that part is quite spontaneous as you were saying. In some of the preparatory exercises we’ve been working to give the participants more strategies for interpreting the sensations of gain and loss. We’re trying to develop their capacity to embellish a heartbeat or base rhythm but I’m not invested in having a melodious result. I’m quite curious about what this kind of structure will result in without any desire for a particular result. FLM: For context, can you talk about the project you did a couple years ago in Bali, “Unrealized Gain/Loss” in relation to this current wealth management project? DP: The workshops I’ve been doing use a similar strategy to the other components in this project. It started in Indonesia on my sabbatical and I was really trying to understand where I was physically and where I was being on sabbatical—this kind of strange jubilee structure where every seventh year you’re supposed to renew your self. And it was around the time of the global financial crisis. I was on sabbatical for the global financial crisis. I remember watching my father, in particular, respond to the financial crisis by monitoring his retirement portfolio and trying to make sense of it. I realized on a visit to their home that he checked his retirement portfolio every single day and I was really struck by that because in some way our parents are mysteries to us as children, especially their moods. We know how important their moods are but we don’t know what governs them. And somehow it was like I’d figured it out, it’s the performance of the DOW! So I think there was something in that. Then I was in Indonesia and I had been drawn there by an interest in their highly ritualized Hindu culture, where so much of life is driven by a ceremonial calendar. I was interested in Bali as this predominantly Hindu pocket within a predominantly Islamic country and life there being organized by this ritual calendar functioning as a kind of resistance to the dominant global religion of free-market capitalism. So I started to explore that correlation between the ways in which this culture that I was living in was sort of “living for the afterlife” and this idea within certain segments of American society of “living for the afterwork life”. The idea that your wellbeing in the “afterwork life” is tied to forces that are unseen and largely beyond your control has strong similarities to many religious understandings of the universe. So I started to explore that and the crafts and materials that were around me were primarily Batik and percussion. Percussion is a huge part of daily life in Bali. These gamelan troupes were everywhere. And I also happened to be there for Nyepi, the day of silence, which is preceded by a very elaborate procession and construction of demonic statues. These were the things that were around me and I started studying Batik with one of the Batik artists there and also started a conversation with two master Batik artists, one who is American and her Indonesian husband. I developed these patterns that were based on symbols from the performance of my retirement portfolio and worked with the batik artists to produce two sarongs. d. peltz - 2012 In producing the designs, I treated the performance of my retirement portfolio since my arrival at RISD [7 years] as a significant interval and then I looked at the ways in which decisions are made within retirement portfolios as having an extension outwards from the individual assets that underlie the retirement portfolio, which are kind of like the base elements of the retirement world. Then there’s the allocation of your assets, which is a global way of understanding an individual according to typologies, which are often referred to in terms of risk—this notion of a ‘risk profile’. What type of ‘person’ you are is determined by your attitude towards risk, or potentiality, and I found that to be a really fascinating way of understanding the universe. I remember looking at the tabs in my retirement portfolio and finding this one for viewing ‘Unrealized Gain/Loss’ and that’s often how I work—is just going through the Cambridge Parking Code, for example, and finding this section of the code that was called ‘Crossing Non-Signalized Locations’ and just feeling “I can’t do any better than that,” you know? That’s what I was talking about in terms of ready-mades that exist in the social sphere. So I found that tab, actually, a long time ago, and I pulled it out of a journal when I was there [in Bali] working on these pieces and I wound up making these two sarongs and later on a series of porcelain vessels for holding one’s unrealized gains and losses. At the time, I knew that I wanted a performance to come out of them, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was inspired very much by this sort of thing: Pulls out a TIAA-CREF brochure with a man in a suit seated at a table. This guy is probably an actor, and [the brochure] says “TIAA-Cref announces “Individual counseling sessions at the Rhode Island School of Design. Individual counseling sessions at no additional cost to you. You can discuss your personal financial situation with an experienced TIAA consultant on a confidential basis. We are available to help you discuss how to achieve your financial goals by investing in financial solutions such as mutual funds, brokerage, life insurance, and annuities...etc....What retirement benefits best fits your situation?” Often I encounter this and I think O.K., this is one way to prepare for the after-work life and it seems inadequate to me. But, I also find it really inspiring. I really like the visual language of it. I kind of want to be that man. I’d like to see if I could maybe buy his clothes. FLM: What it is about the man on the brochure that interests you? DP: He’s offering personalized objective advice and a detailed evaluation of everything you need to know and do. Who wouldn’t want that? But he’s also something of a contemporary priest or priestess, mediating between the unseen all-powerful universe of global capitalism and the common worker. So I started off developing Unrealized Gain/Loss directly from the charts that represent the performance of my retirement portfolio. Then I came home and I wanted to use those. I had this word in my journal “unrealized gain/loss vessel.” I had this notion of vessels that would contain unrealized gains and losses. That felt really important to me that they would have somewhere to go. I had been thinking a lot about altars and making offerings—that somehow this really fickle, massive, difficult-to-comprehend-universe of the financial world—that somehow it might be nice if you could making an offering to it. [In Bali] they made such beautiful elaborate offerings. So I studied offering making as well with one of the women there and she taught me some of the standard forms created by folding leaves and the significance of the floral arrangements. I started working in clay and then moved to porcelain and I made these unrealized gain/loss vessels. I made a few of them, they have holes on either side that you can’t get your fingers in. But something can go in there and something can go out of there. It’s a nice size for putting on an altar. Then I got this commission from Artists in Context who was interested in my doing something for this project “Artists Perspectives for the Nation” project. I proposed initiating these investors’ drum circles as a new public performance form. I’m interested in bringing together those two symbols—the symbol of the djembe and the drum circle. unrealized gain/loss vessel - d.peltz - 2012 FLM: I can imagine the public digital stock ticker performing like a soft fleeting stream of information, a kind of (meaningless) illusory comfort blanket. DP: In some way you have to understand its relevance outside of the obvious, right? Because the obvious is illogical. Nobody is actually using that data to day trade, for example. People aren’t sitting there with their computers watching the market data in Times Square or setting up an outdoor office and being like “OK it’s up 3 points or it’s up 1.56, trade! Ok now buy, Ok now sell!” That would be a kind of a nice performance, actually. But actual day traders would want more up to date data than that. To understand what that data is doing is really important. And that’s something I’ve realized—that I’m interested in a particular kind of data visualization, which is not about what data can tell people, but what data can tell people who are visualizing it. For example, in the Cambridge Project “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations” I was interested in the 10,000 excuses archive of data recording five years worth of excuses for why people thought they shouldn’t have received their parking ticket. I was not interested in making that excuse wall so that the public could see and understand this data. Inevitably the data will be seen by others but I was really interested in what the action of visualizing the data told those who were visualizing it. The parking attendants themselves were writing those excuses on the wall—I was interested in what that kind action of writing the excuses on the wall told them about the data. Similarly, I’m interested in designing a way to allow people to pass this data from the unseen universe of the market, through their own bodies, which happens through the merging of the drum and the stock ticker. I’m interested in those two also as symbols; the drum as this symbol of the earth, the body and a pagan counterculture, and the stock ticker referring to the ethereal world of global markets—bringing those two together and making them dependent. I’m often drawn to conceptual propositions that I become invested in testing in a sincere way—at first they often they sound humorous to others, but I have to remember that there is humor in them. I don’t sit around and laugh about these things. I stop finding them funny at all. I’m interested in the proposition that we could know something about the after-work life by drumming in response to our retirement portfolio. So then I become really interested in how to craft that into a viable performance form for myself and others. FLM: The aspect of using sound in “Unrealized Gain/Loss” as a way of embodying the information to the asset holder is really intriguing—using sound as a means of embodying the asset data. Was sound a medium that made sense to use immediately or were you considering other means of attempting to embody it? DP: Well I do use other mediums within the project like textile, ceramic, and batik patterns. I was first drawn to the history of Batik patterns as a socio-economic stratification system and the vessels as a way of embodying or manifesting this data of unrealized gain and loss. My first approach was to work with meditation actually—a meditation workshop with my colleagues. I was going to offer this “Unrealized Gain/Loss” workshop where you would explore the sensations of gain and loss by adapting the way yogi-nidra brings you into contact with your physical surroundings and stretches your perception. FLM: At Naropa University there are/were business & compassion workshops—a sort of mash-up of business and compassion and how compassion could be incorporated into a business model. This process and engagement of “embodying data” also has to do with “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” you created at the DNC in Denver in 2008. DP: That kind of appropriation and instrumentalization of spiritual practice could be disturbing and thus compelling as a strategy. For various reasons, I’ve come to be drawn to both the form of a quarterly public performance and the established performance form of a drum circle. Its something I’ve seen myself do before, that is to mess up a really good functional social system like a drum circle or karaoke. I remember I was developing language for the karaoke project and started calling it “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” and one of my assistants on the project, who’s an incredible artist, said, “but don’t you think the future of karaoke is guitar hero?” and I realized that maybe he thought I was trying to improve the form. I’m just trying to get people to have this shifted embodied experience, I need to craft the performance context so that they can do that. In the case of the karaoke project, for example, what did I need in order to be able to do this [a person to stand up in front of a bar and deliver a karaoke speech]? I realized that the body is very vulnerable so I built a podium so that the speaker can feel secure enough to do this, otherwise you couldn’t get to this state achieved by passing these speeches through the body. Then I was, like, well you need to be able to practice the lyrics because you don’t know all the “songs” by heart, which became an insert to the massive track books carried by most karaoke VJs. And then sometimes the crowd in the bar isn’t there with me, so I needed to extract the voice of the crowd cheering from the original venue and I needed the local audience to cheer if they wanted to. I’m interested in both where the form succeeds and fails. In particular, one of the most interesting things is this auditory gap between the space where you are, the reduced scale of applause in your own little bar, and this grand scale of applause at the convention center where the speech was originally delivered. FLM: How did the concept of “Participatory Democracy Karaoke” come about and why did you use karaoke as a means of engaging what was happening at the DNC in 2008? DP: I was looking at a lot of different readymade media infrastructures within the city at the time. I was interested in the emergency broadcast systems and I developed a proposal to repurpose that system and karaoke became an important symbol because it was this populist form that was already engaged in exploring the sensation of celebrity but also visualizing the gap between ourselves and those with more power and influence. So it had this readymade capacity to play with power and celebrity and I felt like the Obama presidential campaign, the first one in particular, had some very curious overlaps with this culture of celebrity. Obama of course rose to power partly based on his oratory abilities and I was interested in how karaoke as a vehicle was so adept at offering people all that was left of authentic expression in a political speech. Managing a politician and constructing their identity is such a developed practice that it becomes, kind of automatically, a metaphor for the way that our own identities are constructed. Of course the Obama campaign was very hip and savvy and deploying this notion of grassroots. It was really pioneering in its use of social media and this deployment of notions of populism. I was interested at that time in the capacity of karaoke to track speech patterns, precise tempos of anyone’s delivery, and that to me was a way of thinking about what might be left of the authentic self. I was interested in karaoke’s capacity to extract that authentic component and offer it to others. So not just to stand up and be them, but to [literally] pass their speech patterns through your own body. A long time ago, it started to strike me as odd that one would make media at all. It struck me as a kind of un-contemporary way of going about making art in an age of media overflow. That logic extended into my thinking on delivery devices and installation as well. Why would one buy a screen or even set one up when there are so many out there? And the way in which these media displays function in karaoke bars and bars in general is very interesting to me. I’m drawn to this passive consumption of media where your primary social interaction is with the bartender or a few other individuals but these screens are around you and your attention is shifting back and forth between these spaces. So much political rhetoric is spoken to a half-listening audience. I was interested in what was happening in the slippage and that karaoke was a kind of slippage amplifier. So if you put people in a bar and they are delivering a Kucinich speech and Kucinich comes up on a screen then your getting a sound bite of Kucinich and an image of Kucinich and your friend is talking to you— FLM: A kind of magic takes place in that incongruency between sound and image and the karaoke participant who’s relaying the speech-text at the same time. DP: Exactly and there’s some kind of truth in that experience of reality. FLM: Yeah, there’s something uncanny about seeing the body close-up like that as though it can’t lie to you in that moment or context. It’s a weird moment of luminous clarity. The work you’ve done and all of what you’re saying about karaoke is so very interesting to me. Growing up, my dad and uncles sang karaoke a lot (and still do) and being first-generation Filipino American is a different cultural subtext entirely. I’m also seeing it from the position of witnessing family members who are carriers of these stories and songs. And seeing them cherish these Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley songs so much, I also see how their bodies are literal vessels of popular music that signifies something greater—it signifies their cultural and socioeconomic place in the world. The way that they cherish these American 1950s and 1960s pop songs is similar to having a certain kind of reverence for their spiritual faith or Catholicism. It’s a similar kind of care, focus, and attention exerted in karaoke and Catholicism—that these two structures and systems give something to focus on. Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Obama in Indiana — d. peltz — 2008 DP: Sure there something about the relationship we have to our candidate or the way we go about choosing a candidate, which is very similar to a deity or idol. I learned a lot about karaoke culture through this project. I’d never done karaoke. I’d never been interested in it as a form and then I travelled to Japan as part of the project when I made “Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Barack Obama in Indiana” and it was quite fascinating because my image of karaoke had always been this very public forum in a karaoke bar and then I discovered there’s this whole other world of karaoke where people even go on their own, they go and rent a room or cubicle and sing, or they go on a date—just the two of them go and sit in a room and do karaoke together. FLM: I’m interested in issues that take place within or as a result of specific karaoke culture(s). In the Philippines within the last several years there’s been occurring the “My Way Killings” phenomenon. Apparently baklas or gay men are employed by karaoke establishments to help “smooth over conflicts over karaoke singing”—these social forms of conduct, or lack thereof that arise out of the infrastructures of this social sport. In this one rural part of the Philippines there’s a village karaoke machine that the whole village shares—the Aeta indigenous people have an appointed “keeper” of the karaoke machine. I also see karaoke as a proxy to the confessional box in Catholicism where one goes to pour out their sins (minus the penance and redemption). The karaoke machine enables one to literally sing out whatever’s going on internally, but through highly saturated popular song lyrics. While karaoke is a public and social sport, it can also be a private one. Karaoke is a means of communion with each other. DP: Right, this preference for this kind of mediated communication. In Japan I was trying to organize people to work on this project and I was talking about throwing a party and they were like, well, we have to rent a karaoke machine because what else are we going to do? And I think its kind of serving that function of surrogacy—emotional surrogacy. FLM: And karaoke tools can be read as ritual tools—the magic mic that holds everything. There’s got to be some overlap at some point—between religious ceremony and devotion to the karaoke machine. DP: The way I designed the piece was so that it could slip right on top of the ready-made karaoke infrastructure. There was a flat-packed podium and it was made of a single sheet of plywood with no fasteners that slotted into itself. Those were sent out to a network of karaoke bars that I invited to become “karaoke convention centers.” The local VJs downloaded our custom-made, speech-extracted tracks that were designed to play on their existing equipment. In this sense the piece is a permanent installation. If you go to Denver today, some of the VJs still have the tracks in their library of offerings, the Ramones and Romney. It was this notion of re-purposing readymade infrastructure to create a distributable populist form. Obama was coming and the convention was in the Pepsi Center and 30,000 people were coming including 10,000 journalists. The impetus behind the larger art project that commissioned international artists to make works in Denver, was that local people weren’t going to have much access to this convention. It was like an invasion, the city was being descended upon, but if you lived a block away from the site, you had the same access as people in Zimbabwe&mash;30 second media bits excerpted from the speeches. So it seemed to me that the fundamental gesture was how do I take that signal, which was travelling out of the convention center, and create a local interruption? FLM: Is that what you mean by ‘intervention’? The term is frequently used to help describe your work. DP: It depends on the day. Around that karaoke project I had a conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko and he was proposing that maybe rather than intervention, we should consider the word interruption. Because intervention is kind of an overused term in the field of art and it has militaristic and therapeutic associations outside of the art context. Fundamentally, the idea of intervening speaks to the readymade social world as your primary material. So it’s basically suggesting a kind of subtractive process, which gets back to this question: what is the role of the contemporary media artist in a world that’s so saturated with media? You can’t work additively in a saturated field. If you want to make a visible mark you have to work subtractively. That’s what intervention is about to me, just another way of saying “to work subtractively.” FLM: So the interventions or interruptions aren’t necessarily adding or subtracting, but are they putting orange cones there? What are they doing exactly? DP: I think you’re right about that, they’re not really subtracting. They’re adding to the scope of possibility. I’ve been thinking (with this exhibition I’m mounting next month) about the work as explorations and expansions of social possibility. Maybe it’s more insertion. I started calling the pieces ‘insertions’ that I was making in Rejmyre—a small town in Sweden where I’ve been working for six years now. My favorite site to install there is the tourist bureau. I started calling the video pieces that I made for the tourist bureau, video insertions. This idea that you’re inserting something into the readymade media infrastructure of the world resonates with me. Insertion leverages a context, creating a possibility that the inserted object might be naturalized in the process — that someone can encounter my video in Rejmyre as tourist information. And then all of a sudden tourist information can include some American guy prostrating through town and it can include really bad relationship advice. Maybe insertion is a better word. tourist information – d. peltz 2009-present  . (shrink)

Raimo Tuomela’s we-mode groups are partly characterized by norms. Some norms may be characteristic of all we-mode groups like the norm restricting a member’s right to leave the group. Some think that this aspect of Tuomela’s theory has implausible ethical implications concerning the rights and autonomy of members in we-mode groups. That worry vanishes, I argue, on a plausible interpretation of Tuomela’s notion of social normativity and a reasonable precisification of the notion of autonomy in this context. On the (...) other hand, Tuomela’s general silence on the nature of moral normativity makes it unclear how his distinction between social and moral normativity should be drawn more precisely. Is this a difference in kind, or merely a difference in the scope or social basis of the norms in question? I find this worth exploring with the aid of resources available within a broadly Tuomelian framework. Like Jeremy Koons (2019), I believe that Tuomela’s framework could be used to refine Wilfrid Sellars theory of ethical judgments as expressions of we-intentions. My preferred interpretation of Tuomela differs from Koons’ though, and so does the resulting reconstruction of Sellars, which is more Humean than Kantian. (shrink)

From its inception in 1987 social epistemology has been divided into analytic and critical approaches, represented by Alvin I. Goldman and Steve Fuller, respectively. In this paper, the agendas and some basic ideas of ASE and CSE are compared and assessed by bringing into the discussion also other participants of the debates on the social aspects of scientific knowledge—among them Raimo Tuomela, Philip Kitcher and Helen Longino. The six topics to be analyzed include individual and collective epistemic agents; (...) the notion of scientific community; realism and constructivism; truth-seeking communities; epistemic and social values; science, experts, and democracy. (shrink)

The relevance of the study of the problem of Christian axiology is due to the growing interest in religion and the associated change in world outlook and values ​​in contemporary Ukrainian society. The study of religious values ​​is caused by the urgent problem of finding universal moral values ​​of social development and clarifying the content, structure and nature of their functioning. The scientific study of religious values ​​is also relevant because this problem is closely linked to the value aspects (...) of political life. Christian values ​​are one of the most important factors influencing the formation and development of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

Inspired by Ronald Giere’s cognitive approach to scientific models, Cognitive Structural Realism has presented a naturalist account of scientific representation. CSR characterises the structure of theories in terms of cognitive structures. These are informational structures embodied in the brains of scientists. CSR accounts for scientific representation in terms of the dynamical relationship between the organism and its environment. The proposal has been criticised on account of its negligence of social aspects of scientific practice. The present paper aims to chart (...) out a reply to the objection. It shows that cognitive structures do not need to be put inside the brains of single individuals. Cognitive structures are redefined as extended structures in distributed cognitive systems under Free Energy Principle. (shrink)

Nanotechnology is an important platform technology which will add new features like improved biocompatibility, smaller size, and more sophisticated electronics to neuro-implants improving their therapeutic potential. Especially in view of possible advantages for patients, research and development of nanotechnologically improved neuro implants is a moral obligation. However, the development of brain implants by itself touches many ethical, social and legal issues, which also apply in a specific way to devices enabled or improved by nanotechnology. For researchers developing nanotechnology such (...) issues are rather distant from their daily work in the lab, but as soon as they use their materials or devices in medical applications such as therapy of brain diseases they have to be aware of and deal with them. This paper is intended to raise sensitivity for the ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) involved in applying nanotechnology in brain implants or other devices by highlighting the short term problems of testing and clinical trials within the existing regulatory frameworks (A), the short and medium-term questions of risks in the application of the devices (B) and the long-term perspectives related to problems of enhancement (C). To identify and address such issues properly nanotechnologists should involve ethical, legal and social experts and regulatory bodies in their research as early as possible. This will help to remove pressure from regulatory bodies, to settle public concern and to prevent non-acceptable developments for the benefit of the patients. (shrink)

En la actualidad Cuba desarrolla un Programa de Atención Integral al Paciente con Úlcera de Pie Diabético mediante el uso del Heberprot-P, esencial para disminuir la amputación y la discapacidad. El trabajo tiene el objetivo de realizar un diagnóstico sobre la aplicación del Heberprot-P en el Servicio de Angiología del Hospital Provincial Universitario Manuel Ascunce Domenech de Camagüey. Se realizaron encuestas a pacientes para identificar necesidades sentidas relacionadas con el tratamiento y para las actitudes manifiestas, y se hicieron entrevistas al (...) personal médico y de enfermería. El diagnóstico permitió corroborar la necesaria investigación con enfoque social del servicio de salud escogido a nivel territorial. Destaca elevar el trabajo de captación de pacientes desde el nivel primario de salud para garantizar un mayor alcance del programa, así como la trascendencia del apoyo familiar y la relación profesional de la salud- paciente a fin de lograr la calidad requerida. At present Cuba is developing a program concerning the care of patient with ulcer of the diabetes foot by means of Heberprot-P essential to reduce the amputation and disability. The aim of this paper is to carry out a diagnosis about social aspects of the application of the Heberprot-P in the Angiology service at Manuel Ascunce Domenech Hospital in Camaguey. Some surveys were carry out to identify certain needs related with the treatment and the attitude shown and on the other hand some interview were made to the medical and nursing staff. The diagnosis allowed to verify the need of the research with social approach. The paper highlight how to incorporate patients from the primary health level, in order this program has a higher scope and the importance of the family support and the professional relationship to accomplish the quality required. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary field of neurorobotics looks to neuroscience to overcome the limitations of modern robotics technology, to robotics to advance our understanding of the neural system’s inner workings, and to information technology to develop tools that support those complementary endeavours. The development of these technologies is still at an early stage, which makes them an ideal candidate for proactive and anticipatory ethical reflection. This article explains the current state of neurorobotics development within the Human Brain Project, originating from a close (...) collaboration between the scientific and technical experts who drive neurorobotics innovation, and the humanities and social sciences scholars who provide contextualising and reflective capabilities. This article discusses some of the ethical issues which can reasonably be expected. On this basis, the article explores possible gaps identified within this collaborative, ethical reflection that calls for attention to ensure that the development of neurorobotics is ethically sound and socially acceptable and desirable. (shrink)

Particular social aspects of the nature of science, such as economics of, and entrepreneurship in science, are understudied in science education research. It is not surprising then that the practical applications, such as lesson resources and teaching materials, are scarce. The key aims of this article are to synthesize perspectives from the literature on economics of science, entrepreneurship, NOS, and science education in order to have a better understanding of how science works in society and illustrate how such a (...) synthesis can be incorporated in the practice of science education. The main objectives of this article are to argue for the role and inclusion of EOS and entrepreneurship in NOS and re-define entrepreneurship in the NOS context; explore the issues emerging in the “financial systems” of the Family Resemblance Approach to NOS and propose the inclusion of contemporary aspects of science, such as EOS and entrepreneurship, into NOS; conceptualize NOS, EOS, and entrepreneurship in a conceptual framework to explain how science works in the society; and transform the theoretical knowledge of how science operates in society into practical applications for science teaching and learning. The conceptual framework that we propose illustrates the links between State, Academia, Market and Industry. We suggest practical lesson activities to clarify how the theoretical discussions on the SAMI cycle framework can be useful and relevant for classroom practice. In this article, science refers to physics, chemistry, and biology. However, we also recommend an application of this framework to other sciences to reveal their social-institutional side. (shrink)

Some contemporary philosophers of action have contended that the intentions, decisions, and actions of collective social agency are reducible to those of the individuals involved. This contention is based on two assumptions: (1) that collective agency would require super-minds, and (2) that actions presuppose causes that move our bodies. The problem of how to account for collective action had not been regarded as a problem in the history of philosophy earlier.The explanation of why ancient Greek philosophers did not see (...) joint agency as a problem is not, as sometimes assumed, that they had no, or only a weak, sense of individuality. Nor is it because they simply overlooked the difference between individual and collective agency. It is, rather, as Aristotle’s conception of humans as ‘social’ or ‘political’ animals indicates, that the aims and ends of actions, and the means to bring them about by acting together, is the result of practice from early on. Without the acquisition of language and moral habituation humans would not become humans. There is, then, a shared understanding about common agency from infancy on. Individuals may disagree about some particular aim and action, and act only because it is a decision of the majority. But no super-minds are required to explain the communality of wishes. That Aristotle ignored the fact that all motion starts in individual bodies is explained by the difference between motions and actions: moves that are not determined by their ends are mere motions, not actions. So what moves an individual body can be the wish to bring about a joint action with another person or with a collective of persons. (shrink)

In moments of daring, some physical scientists consider problems of social inquiry, hoping naively that the methods of physical inquiry will provide them with special insight. In my own work on problems of industrial production where I am searching for “practical” means for optimizing production in some socially satisfactory sense, I find that the physical scientist cannot escape the responsibility for social inquiry. So far as I can understand the nature of this work, it requires for its fruitful (...) pursuit a methodology which leans heavily on the concepts of statistical control of Shewhart, of cybernetics of Wiener and of experimentalism of Singer, Churchman and Ackoff. (shrink)

My comments on Jacqueline Taylor's rich and interesting study1 will focus on a theme which I found particularly thought provoking: the discussion of Hume's treatment of pride. I think the topic of pride is central to the book's structure—closely integrated with the recurring consideration of what is distinctive in Hume's approach to the social significance of the passions.I am going to come at this theme indirectly—through consideration of the differences between Hume and Spinoza on the nature and significance of (...) pride. Taylor shows that Hume has made it possible for pride to be considered as a positive trait, perhaps even as a virtue. Spinoza's attitude to pride in the Ethics is, in contrast, quite negative. The... (shrink)

In the epistemological context of theory transferand scientific exchanges, the aim of this paper is to indicate the presence of Weberian categories and ideas on dependency theory formulated by Fernando Cardosoand Enzo Faletto. Here we see how the construction of this paradigm was based on some issues, concepts, approaches and orientations of the Weberian research program formulated by José Medina Echavarría to explain Latin American development. We will also consider the contexts of enunciation and reception theories, allowing us to talk (...) about the "sociological school" that was formed in the Social Planning Division of ILPES in mid-sixties, crucial for understanding the history of sociology in Latin America. En el contexto de la discusión epistemológica sobre el examen de las transferencias y los intercambios científicos de las teorías, el objetivo de este artículo es señalar la presencia de categorías e ideas weberianas en lateoría de la dependencia formulada por Fernando Cardoso y Enzo Faletto. Aquí veremos cómo la construcción de este paradigma se sustentó en algunos temas, conceptos, enfoques y orientaciones del programa de investigación weberiano formulado por José Medina Echavarría para explicar el desarrollo latinoamericano. También tendremos en cuenta los contextos de enunciación y de recepción de las teorías, lo que nos permitirá hablar de la "escuela sociológica" que se formó en la División de Planificación Social del ILPES a mitad de los años 60, decisiva para comprender la historia de la sociología en América Latina. (shrink)

After reading the essays of Mr. Ts'ai and Mr. Chu, I have a few immature opinions. Generally speaking, I feel that in dealing with the errors of their opponents, both Ts'ai I in his criticism of Huang Yüeh-mien and Chu Kuang-ch'ien in his criticism of Ts'ai I are quite accurate and convincing. However, in presenting their own arguments of what is right, both of them are on shaky ground and in error. That is because in one way or another, consciously (...) or unconsciously, they either deny the objective aspect of the existence of beauty or deny the social aspect of the existence of beauty . All of them consider the objective and the social aspects of beauty as being either this or that, as mutually exclusive and irreconcilable opposites. They think that if we acknowledge the social aspect of beauty, we then have to deny the objective aspect, the fact that the existence of beauty does not depend on the subjective conditions of a person ; or if we acknowledge the objective aspect, we have to deny the social aspect, the fact that the existence of beauty depends on the social life of human beings. But in fact it is not like that. On the one hand, beauty cannot be separated from human society; on the other hand, it can have an objective existence which is independent of man's subjective consciousness. It is this question that I shall discuss. (shrink)

Symptom Checker Applications (SCA) are mobile applications often designed for the end-user to assist with symptom assessment and self-triage. SCA are meant to provide the user with easily accessible information about their own health conditions. However, SCA raise questions regarding ethical, legal, and social aspects (ELSA), for example, regarding fair access to this new technology. The aim of this scoping review is to identify the ELSA of SCA in the scientific literature. A scoping review was conducted to identify the (...) ELSA of SCA. Ten databases (e.g., Web of Science and PubMed) were used. Studies on SCA that address ELSA, written in English or German, were included in the review. The ELSA of SCA were extracted and synthesized using qualitative content analysis. A total of 25,061 references were identified, of which 39 were included in the analysis. The identified aspects were allotted to three main categories: (1) Technology; (2) Individual Level; and (3) Healthcare system. The results show that there are controversial debates in the literature on the ethical and social challenges of SCA usage. Furthermore, the debates are characterised by a lack of a specific legal perspective and empirical data. The review provides an overview on the spectrum of ELSA regarding SCA. It offers guidance to stakeholders in the healthcare system, for example, patients, healthcare professionals, and insurance providers and could be used in future empirical research to investigate the perspectives of those affected, such as users. (shrink)