In the intricate tapestry of Iran’s geopolitical, cultural, and economic landscape, the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed profound changes. This essay delves into the multifaceted impact of the pandemic on Iranians’ lives, dissecting the specific nuances shaped by the complex biopolitical environment. We unravel the subtle imprints of COVID-19 on the biopolitical discourse, exploring how it intricately intertwines with daily life, social interactions, and the nation’s health system.

In psychiatry, pharmacological drugs play an important experimental role in attempts to identify the neurobiological causes of mental disorders. Besides being developed in applied contexts as potential treatments for patients with mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play a crucial role in research contexts as experimental instruments that facilitate the formulation and revision of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. This paper examines the various epistemic functions that pharmacological drugs serve in the discovery, refinement, testing, and elaboration of neurobiological theories of mental disorders. I (...) articulate this thesis with reference to the history of antipsychotic drugs and the evolution of the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia in the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that interventions with psychiatric patients through the medium of antipsychotic drugs provide researchers with information and evidence about the neurobiological causes of schizophrenia. This analysis highlights the importance of pharmacological drugs as research tools in the generation of psychiatric knowledge and the dynamic relationship between practical and theoretical contexts in psychiatry. (shrink)

This paper examines Ian Hacking's analysis of the looping effects of psychiatric classifications, focusing on his recent account of interactive and indifferent kinds. After explicating Hacking's distinction between 'interactive kinds' (human kinds) and 'indifferent kinds' (natural kinds), I argue that Hacking cannot claim that there are 'interactive and indifferent kinds,' given the way that he introduces the interactive-indifferent distinction. Hacking is also ambiguous on whether his notion of interactive and indifferent kinds is supposed to offer an account of classifications or (...) objects of classification. I argue that these conceptual difficulties show that Hacking's account of interactive and indifferent kinds cannot be based on - and should be clearly separated from - his distinction between interactive kinds and indifferent kinds. In clarifying Hacking's account, I argue that interactive and indifferent kinds should be regarded as objects of classification (i.e., kinds of people) that can be identified with reference to a law-like biological regularity and are aware of how they are classified. Schizophrenia and depression are discussed as examples. I subsequently offer reasons for resisting Hacking's claim that the objects of classification in the human sciences - as a result of looping effects - are 'moving targets'. (shrink)

Abstract Recently, some philosophers of psychiatry (viz., Rachel Cooper and Dominic Murphy) have analyzed the issue of psychiatric classification. This paper expands upon these analyses and seeks to demonstrate that a consideration of the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can provide a rich and informative philosophical perspective for critically examining the issue of psychiatric classification. This case is intended to demonstrate the importance of history for philosophy of psychiatry, and more generally, the potential benefits (...) of historically-informed approaches to philosophy of science. (shrink)

This paper explores Paul Feyerabend's (1924-1994) skeptical arguments for "anarchism" in his early writings between 1960 to 1975. Feyerabend's position is encapsulated by his well-known suggestion that the only principle for scientific method that can be defended under all circumstances is: "anything goes." I present Feyerabend's anarchism as a recommendation for pluralism that assumes a realist view of scientific theories. The aims of this paper are threefold: (1) to present a defensible view of Feyerabend's anarchism and its motivations, (2) to (...) articulate the minimal form of realism that such a view presupposes, and (3) to consider the implications and limitations of such a perspective in contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Daodejing (DDJ) is an ancient Chinese text traditionally taken as a representative Daoist classic expressing a distinctive philosophy from the Warring States Period (403–221 BCE). This essay explicates the ethical dimensions of the DDJ paying attention to issues related to war and peace. The discussion consists of four parts: (1) “naturalness” as an onto‐cosmological argument for a philosophy of harmony, balance, and peace; (2) war as a sign of the disruption of the natural pattern of things initiated by (...) the proliferation of desire; (3) defensive war and appropriate war conduct required when one has to be involved in warfare; and (4) the natural and spontaneous way of living that would prevent war from happening in the first place. This essay attempts to show that what makes the DDJ different from other military texts, or what is called the “art of war corpus” in China is that the discourse of war and warfare in the DDJ is presented via its unique understanding of peace at the personal and social levels. The DDJ is meant to be an inquiry into an effective method to prevent war from happening amid a world full of selfish interests and excessive desires. It proposes that peace is not only a condition in which there is freedom from war and overt violence, but a state of harmony that marks human life and its betterment. (shrink)

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hilary Putnam articulated a notion of relativized apriority that was motivated to address the problem of scientific change. This paper examines Putnam’s account in its historical context and in relation to contemporary views. I begin by locating Putnam’s analysis in the historical context of Quine’s rejection of apriority, presenting Putnam as a sympathetic commentator on Quine. Subsequently, I explicate Putnam’s positive account of apriority, focusing on his analysis of the history of physics and geometry. In (...) the remainder of the paper, I explore connections between Putnam’s account of relativized a priori principles and contemporary views. In particular, I situate Putnam’s account in relation to analyses advanced by Michael Friedman, David Stump, and William Wimsatt. From this comparison, I address issues concerning whether a priori scientific principles are appropriately characterized as “constitutive” or “entrenched”. I argue that these two features need to be clearly distinguished, and that only the constitutive function is essential to apriority. By way of conclusion, I explore the relationship between the constitutive function of a priori principles and entrenchment. (shrink)

This paper concerns the recent debate on the nature and motivations of the epistemological project advanced in Rudolf Carnap's (1891-1970) Aufbau. Much of this debate has been initiated by Michael Friedman and Alan Richardson who argue (against the received view of the Aufbau as a foundationalist defense of empiricism) that Carnap's epistemological project is located in the tradition of neo-Kantian epistemology. On this revisionist reading of the Aufbau, Carnap's project is not motivated to address traditional empiricist problems regarding the justification (...) of knowledge, but rather to show how objective knowledge is possible. A central aspect of the Aufbau that is neglected in the revisionists' analysis is the role of epistemic justification in Carnap's project. The aim of the present study is to argue that although the general epistemology in the Aufbau can be cast as neo-Kantian, Carnap's method of construction theory (or rational reconstruction) is formulated precisely as an empiricist method for the justification of conceptual knowledge. Construction theory radically redefines `empirical justification' into a formal-conventional notion, and is part of Carnap's more general agenda of redefining epistemology as a purely formal discipline. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of the conception of emotions in premodern, or more specifically, pre-Han Chinese philosophical traditions, ranging from the early-5th to the late-3rd centuries BCE. This era is known as the "Warring States period" in China and marked by the flourishing of a number of different schools of philosophers who advocated their visions of how society should be run. The author looks at wide-ranging views about the nature of emotions and their proper role in moral life (...) espoused by representative thinkers of the time. The approach taken by the author is based on a premise that what constitutes emotions as phenomena in the world is of primary importance to questions concerning the... (shrink)

Straipsnyje atskleidžiu tam tikrą pragmatizmo ir egzistencializmo suderinamumą tiesos sampratos aspektu. Siekdamas pagrįsti šį suartėjimą, tyrinėju Jameso pragmatinį metodą ir Nietzschės kritinį požiūrį į „valią tiesai“. Abu mąstytojai stoja prieš absoliučios, fiksuotos ir praktinių individo poreikių nepaisančios tiesos idėją. Atitinkamai, abu jie teigia, kad tiesa, suprantama ikiteoriškai, yra procesas, imanentiškas konkrečiai subjektų gyvenimo patirčiai. Pasitelkdamas pragmatinius ir egzistencialistinius svarstymus, aš kritiškai tyrinėju, kaip šie filosofai kvestionavo tiesą individo kaip veikėjo egzistencijos kontekste.

Traditionally, the consequences of employees' behavior (teleology) and the norms attributed to the behavior (deontology) have been two familiar determinants of ethical decision making (EDM). More recently, emotions have also gained considerable attention for their ability to affect EDM. Marketing ethics literature overlooks how emotions are related with norms and consequences. Hence, this study investigates how normative, consequentialist, and emotional factors interactively influence EDM in a sales ethics context. Using scenarios with a 2 × 2 between-groups factorial design, we collected (...) data online from 303 sales professionals. Then we used independent samples t tests and hierarchical regression models to analyze the hypothesized relationships. Results indicate that violation of and obedience to deontological norms stimulate negative and positive anticipated emotions, respectively, leading to stronger EDM. However, to a lesser extent, when violation of and obedience to deontological norms do not stimulate anticipated emotions, those emotions lead to weaker EDM. Moreover, consequences do not stimulate any anticipated emotions. Instead, consequences moderate the relationship between anticipated emotions and EDM. In addition, deontological and teleological evaluations mediate the relationship between anticipated emotions and EDM. These findings highlight the importance of considering the interplay between normative, consequentialist, and emotional factors in the formation of ethical judgments and intentions. The article discusses the implications of these results for sales professionals and organizations and suggests future research directions. (shrink)

Theories of the liberal tradition have relied on independence as a norm of personhood. Feminist theorists such as Eva Kittay in Love's Labor have been instrumental in critiquing normative independence. I explore the role of corporeal vulnerability in Kittay's account of personhood, developing a comparison to the role it plays in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Kittay's crucial contribution in Love's Labor is that once we acknowledge the facts of corporeal vulnerability, we must not only acknowledge but also affirm dependency in a (...) genuinely inclusive affirmation of personhood. While endorsing Kittay's “dependency critique,” I discover difficulties that beleaguer Kittay's development of new norms of personhood. I trace these to a dependency of Kittay's account on a crucial premise of the liberal model it resists. I argue that in order to affirm dependency in a manner that departs more thoroughly from the criticized aspects of liberal personhood, we must cease to position it in a dichotomy of power and vulnerability. I suggest that attending to the corporeality of vulnerability can aid us in developing the terms of a discourse affirming relational personhood while undermining that dichotomy. (shrink)

Subliminal perception (SP) is today considered a well-supported theory stating that perception can occur without conscious awareness and have a significant impact on later behaviour and thought. In this article, we first present and discuss different approaches to the study of SP. In doing this, we claim that most approaches are based on a dichotomic measure of awareness. Drawing upon recent advances and discussions in the study of introspection and phenomenological psychology, we argue for both the possibility and necessity of (...) using an elaborated measure of subjective states. In the second part of the article, we present findings where these considerations are implemented in an empirical study. The results and implications are discussed in detail, both with reference to SP, and in relation to the more general problem of using elaborate introspective reports as data in relation to studies of cognition. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper concerns Jean Piaget's (1896–1980) philosophy of science and, in particular, the picture of scientific development suggested by his theory of genetic epistemology. The aims of the paper are threefold: (1) to examine genetic epistemology as a theory concerning the growth of knowledge both in the individual and in science; (2) to explicate Piaget's view of ‘scientific progress’, which is grounded in his theory of equilibration; and (3) to juxtapose Piaget's notion of progress with Thomas Kuhn's (1922–1996). Issues of (...) scientific continuity, scientific realism and scientific rationality are discussed. It is argued that Piaget's view highlights weaknesses in Kuhn's ‘discontinuous’ picture of scientific change. (shrink)

Nurses are the closest healthcare providers to patients and emotional labor is the most invisible part of nursing work. However, the management of emotions to promote organizational goals and to ensure patient satisfaction may have both positive and negative impacts on nurses' working life. The purpose of this cross‐sectional, descriptive study was to examine the emotional labor behaviors of nurses and their opinions on emotional labor. Two hundred nineteen nurses working at public hospitals in Ankara between September and December 2018 (...) participated to this study. Data were collected using the sociodemographic characteristics form and “The Scale of Emotional Labor Behavior for Nurses.” Nurses had higher scores on the deep and sincere emotional acting subdimensions of the emotional labor scale than the surface acting subdimension. Findings suggest that nurses act deeply and intimately, instead of surface acting. Most of the nurses expressed that nurses were emotionally affected when caring for patients; however, nurses had to control their feelings toward patients and behave professionally to meet the expectations of their managers, which may lead to an implicit emotional dissonance. Based on the results of this study, we suggest to support nurses emotionally and to incorporate the topic of emotional labor into educational programs. (shrink)

The history of the development of Islam in Indonesia often fails because of the rejection of the local community. Therefore, it is necessary to make ethical efforts so that society can accept Islam. This research is an attempt to explain the Mantra by Sunan Kalijaga (after this referred to as SKM) as a medium for spreading Islam. This research uses a qualitative research paradigm. The primary data source is the spell text in Serat Kidungan ingkang Jangkep. Data analysis techniques use (...) content analysis techniques and hermeneutics. The results showed that SKM is a philosophical representation of Javanese mantras with the spirit of Islam. Mantras are not simple texts but rather acts of establishing the understanding of Islam through integrating literature and culture. Hindu-Islamic syncretism is wrapped in the symbolisation of the text. Word choice is not always of magical significance because the text is oriented towards the purpose of ‘the other’. Restructuring the relationship between text and symbols reflects a strategy for changing the nature and purpose of spells. In turn, SKM is a quality ritual language that has an essential role in the history of the Islamic movement in Java, Indonesia. Axiologically, SKM provides necessary educational knowledge about the ethics of proselytising without being hurt. Sunan Kalijaga combines literary, cultural, educational, and ethical values for religious purposes. An important implication of this research is that mantras can contribute to promoting the transdisciplinary aspects of religion in the international theological arena through mantra texts. Thus, SKM has an essential role in spirituality and science. Contribution: This article contributes to the HTS Theological Studies’s goal of promoting the transdisciplinary aspects of religious studies in the international theological arena on the study of mantra texts. (shrink)

Several defences, viewed in this study as specifications or 'offspring' of the 'parent' greater-good defence, have been formulated in response to the charge that Christianity is untenable because God's existence is incompatible with evil's existence. In this first book-length study of the parent defence, Stewart begins with careful definitions of the omni-attributes central to the dispute: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence. The parent defence is traced to tenets of theism and variant accounts of the defence considered. Plantinga's modal free-will defence and Hick's (...) and Yandell's soul-growth specifications are carefully analyzed and several difficulties resolved. An original formulation of a redemption specification and an original account of the origin of moral evil are offered. Stewart argues that the defences are rightly viewed as a family of defences falling under the greater-good heading, and that they comprise a complementary apologetic complex that refutes the claim of inconsistency. (shrink)

In this article, I examine Luhmann’s, Bunge’s and others’ views on emergence, and argue that Luhmann’s epistemological construal of emergence in terms of Totalausschluss (total exclusion) is both ontologically flawed and detrimental to an appropriate understanding of the distinctive features of social emergence. By contrast, Bunge’s rational emergentism, his CESM model, and Wimsatt’s characterization of emergence as nonaggregativity provide a useful framework to investigate emergence. While researchers in the field of social theory and sociology tend to regard Luhmann as the (...) sole representative of systems theory, the latter has been characterized by its diversity, and the writings of such systems theorists as Mario Bunge deserve more (critical) attention from social researchers than they receive at present. Finally, this article suggests that the perennial debate over methodological individualism and holism in social science may make real progress if such ambiguous terms as reduction and reductionism are elucidated before they are employed. (shrink)

Beginning in the 1970s and culminating in the first two decades of the 21st century, there has been a marked shift in the sciences from a predominantly reductionist and mechanistic approach to a broader and more holistic viewpoint. It goes without saying that such a shift in point of view will have significant implications, not only for the sciences but for our concepts of nature and of human beings. The present essay is an attempt to assess the significance of this (...) change in the focus of the sciences and to describe the nature of its components. Originally, it had a far more limited scope, that of comparing two of the parts of the new nonreductionist stance: brain plasticity and biological systems theory. Unfortunately, my understanding of one of these factors (systems theory) turned out to be incorrect, while the section on brain plasticity was incomplete. The result of this dual realization is an essay of far greater scope, taking in both new developments in the sciences far beyond that of plasticity, and reassessing the content and impact of systems theory, which is greater than I had thought. I will begin with a study of systems theory, dealing first with the unexpected mathematics which made its present status possible. Then I will deal with its history, which reaches back over a century. One of the confusions into which we are liable to fall is to fail to distinguish the old systems theory from the new. This is even more likely because the two versions of the theory have many features in common. (shrink)

Translations, whether in the form of text, illustration, or interpretive analysis, served knowledge-making in multiple ways. It offered a refuge, severed contexts, and concealed the various workers that created it. Over the course of the seventeenth century, European naturalists in Istanbul, such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658–1730), procured illustrations of Ottoman nature as fundamental resources to identify, collect, and compare indigenous plants and newly bred varieties. Despite maintaining an actual mediation for cross-cultural interactions, these sources of virtual communication remain largely (...) forgotten in modern scholarship. This article argues that this curious yet invisible corpus was not a nonagentive medium in an alienated leisure of a gentleman-scholar; instead, these illustrations were designed to call upon the viewer’s constant attention in self-motivated scientific labor. Such handy tools responded and contributed to early modern scholars’ modes of working, and in exchange they determined these sources’ own function, position, and visibility – either as a by-product or as a derivative. It is therefore only when integrated into the labor history of science that the degrees of invisibility pertaining to both Ottoman nature studies and self-directed labor can come into a granular view. (shrink)

Background: Financial conflict of interest in clinical research is an area of active debate. While data exist on the perspectives and roles of academic institutions, investigators, industry sponsors, and scientific journals, little is known about the perspectives of potential research participants.Methods: The authors surveyed potential research participants over the internet, using the Harris Interactive Chronic Illness Database. A potential research participant was defined by: self report of diagnosis by a health care professional and willingness to participate in clinical trials. Email (...) invitations were sent to 20 205 persons with coronary artery disease, breast cancer, or depression; a total of 6363 persons were screened; of these, 86% or 5478 met inclusion criteria and completed the survey. The outcome measures were respondents’ ratings on: importance of knowing conflict of interest information, whether its disclosure ought to be required, and its effect on willingness to participate—across seven widely discussed scenarios of financial conflicts of interest .Results: Majority responded that knowing conflict of interest information was “extremely” or “very” important; a larger majority felt financial conflicts of interest should be disclosed as part of informed consent . In all seven scenarios, a majority was still willing to participate but in some scenarios a sizable minority would be wary of participation. Respondents were more wary of individual than institutional conflicts of interest. Illness group and sociodemographic factors had modest effects and did not affect the main trends.Conclusions: The prevailing practice of non-disclosure of financial conflicts of interest in clinical research appears contrary to the values of potential research participants. (shrink)

Managers face an ethical dilemma in the allocation of scarce resources to corporate social responsibility because the underlying managerial incentives behind such CSR spending can range from pure altruism to complete financial orientation. Despite the importance of the managerial role in implementing CSR, prior studies generally have treated the role of managers as an exogenous factor. This study builds on recent studies on the managerial characteristics in studies on CSR by examining how managerial efficiency influences the outcomes of CSR. Using (...) a newly developed measure of managerial efficiency, we find that, on average, managerial efficiency is positively associated with a subsequent change in corporate social performance, although the association is weak in the level of total CSP. We find that efficient managers are more likely to engage in the product-related CSR that directly connects to corporate financial performance but are less likely to engage in environment-related CSR. We also find that CSP is positively associated with CFP with efficient managers. Our findings contribute to management and other stakeholders’ understanding of the association of CSR to its outcomes, CSP and/or CFP, which is hinged by the indispensable moderating role of managerial efficiency. (shrink)

The question of whether knowledge is definable in terms of belief, which has played an important role in epistemology for the last 50 years, is studied here in the framework of epistemic and doxastic logics. Three notions of definability are considered: explicit definability, implicit definability, and reducibility, where explicit definability is equivalent to the combination of implicit definability and reducibility. It is shown that if knowledge satisfies any set of axioms contained in S5, then it cannot be explicitly defined in (...) terms of belief. S5 knowledge can be implicitly defined by belief, but not reduced to it. On the other hand, S4.4 knowledge and weaker notions of knowledge cannot be implicitly defined by belief, but can be reduced to it by defining knowledge as true belief. It is also shown that S5 knowledge cannot be reduced to belief and justification, provided that there are no axioms that involve both belief and justification. (shrink)

The logical empiricists often appear as a foil for feminist theories. Their emphasis on the individualistic nature of knowledge and on the value-neutrality of science seems directly opposed to most feminist concerns. However, several recent works have highlighted aspects of Carnap's views that make him seem like much less of a straightforwardly positivist thinker. Certain of these aspects lend themselves to feminist concerns much more than the stereotypical picture would imply.

Should involuntarily childless people have the same opportunities to access parenthood as those who are not involuntarily childless? In the context of assisted reproductive technologies, affirmative answers to this question are often cashed out in terms of positive rights, including rights to third-party reproduction. In this paper, we critically explore the scope and extent to which any such right would hold up morally. Ultimately, we argue for a departure away from positive parental rights. Instead, we argue that the state has (...) an imperfect duty to benefit involuntarily childless people in relation to their parental aspirations. (shrink)

Uterus transplantation (UTx) is an experimental surgery likely to face the issue of organ shortage. In my article, I explore how this issue might be addressed by changing the prevailing practices around live uterus donor recruitment. Currently, women with children – often the mothers of recipients – tend to be overrepresented as donors. Yet, other potentially eligible groups who may have an interest in providing their uterus – such as transgender men, or cisgender women who do not wish to gestate (...) or to have children – tend to be excluded as potential donors. Moving forward, I recommend that donor inclusion criteria for UTx be broadened to be more inclusive of these latter groups. (shrink)

Vision scientists are interested in three diverse entities: physical stimuli, neural states, and consciously perceived colors, and in the mapping rules among the three. In this worldview, the three kinds of entities have coequal status, and views that attribute color exclusively to one or another of them, such as color realism, have no appeal.

While the problem of nihilism is derived from a particular historical and intellectual context in Western philosophy, i.e., the pantheism controversy in modern German philosophy and the ideas of Nietzsche, non-Western thinkers also engaged with it and developed responses to it. In this article, I am interested in analyzing Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938), a leading Muslim thinker (a Sufi) from India, engagement with the problem of nihilism and his response to it from a Sufi perspective. Arguing that the existing literature on (...) Iqbal fails to understand the deeper impact of Nietzsche’s ideas on Iqbal’s philosophy and the dramatic role “the problem of nihilism” played in causing changes in Iqbal’s philosophy, or on Iqbal’s intellectual development, in this article, I analyze how Iqbal’s encounter with the ideas of Nietzsche during his study period in Europe between 1905 and 1908 has introduced him to the problem of nihilism in its Nietzschean form, how this led Iqbal to a nihilistic mood/crisis from 1909 to 1913, and then how he later developed a response to nihilism by reconstructing the Sufi cosmology and by revaluating the Sufi values of the pantheistic/persian type of Sufism – the outcome of which is found in his philosophical poem Asrar-i-Khudî (1915). (shrink)

The modern conception of race is often thought by philosophers to have developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in response to a unique confluence of scientific, philosophical, and imperial forces; and in recent decades some impressive work has been done to excavate the details of its construction during this period. . . . I will argue, however, that an analysis of the visual images created by Europeans during the first half-century after 1492 reveals that the essential elements of the (...) late modern conception of race are put into place during that period. In brief, the tremendous social, economic, and political pressures that culminate in this comparatively brief moment yield the modern notion of "the savage." I will suggest that from its inception this notion is an inherently radicalized one, and that it is the nodal point for the more familiar eighteenth- and nineteenth-century understandings of non-European races. Moreover, I will argue that the modern notion of the savage is synthesized, not directly from the Noachic legends, but from images drawn, sometimes literally, on the margins of medieval understandings of humanity: powerful and deeply entrenched images of the Wild Man and the monstrous races. (shrink)

Humans can learn complex functional relationships between variables from small amounts of data. In doing so, they draw on prior expectations about the form of these relationships. In three experiments, we show that people learn to adjust these expectations through experience, learning about the likely forms of the functions they will encounter. Previous work has used Gaussian processes—a statistical framework that extends Bayesian nonparametric approaches to regression—to model human function learning. We build on this work, modeling the process of learning (...) to learn functions as a form of hierarchical Bayesian inference about the Gaussian process hyperparameters. (shrink)