Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 49-57, March‐April 2022.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are central to any educational system. The term started with the National Science Foundation as “SMET” and was changed to STEM at a later date due to phonetic reasons. The term was not widely used until Virginia Tech University began offering a “STEM education” degree in 2005 (Friedman 2005). The term STEM covers a broad spectrum of different disciplines. While, in general, STEM is used as an umbrella term for the natural sciences, engineering, (...) mathematics, and technology-related fields, there are some variations in its usage. For example, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) characterizes STEM as including chemistry, computers and information technology, engineering, geoscience, life sciences, mathematical sciences, physics and astronomy, psychology, social sciences, educational research, and STEM education (Gonzalez and Kuezi 2012). Whereas this approach considers the social sciences to be of central importance to STEM and the STEM workforce (Spalter-Roth 2004), in the United Kingdom, STEM is seen to include fields such as medicine, dentistry, and architecture but exclude the social sciences and education (United Kingdom, House of Lords, Science, and Technology, Committee 2012). (shrink)

Background: Expanded newborn screening generates incidental results, notably carrier results. Yet newborn screening programmes typically restrict parental choice regarding receipt of this non-health serving genetic information. Healthcare providers play a key role in educating families or caring for screened infants and have strong beliefs about the management of incidental results. Methods: To inform policy on disclosure of infant sickle cell disorder (SCD) carrier results, a mixed-methods study of healthcare providers was conducted in Ontario, Canada, to understand attitudes regarding result management (...) using a cross-sectional survey (N = 1615) and semistructured interviews (N = 42). Results: Agreement to reasons favouring disclosure of SCD carrier results was high (65.1%–92.7%) and to reasons opposing disclosure was low (4.1%–18.1%). Genetics professionals expressed less support for arguments favouring disclosure (35.3%–78.8%), and more agreement with arguments opposing disclosure (15.7%–51.9%). A slim majority of genetics professionals (51.9%) agreed that a reason to avoid disclosure was the importance of allowing the child to decide to receive results. Qualitatively, there was a perceived “duty” to disclose, that if the clinician possessed the information, the clinician could not withhold it. Discussion: While a majority of respondents perceived a duty to disclose the incidental results of newborn screening, the policy implications of these attitudes are not obvious. In particular, policy must balance descriptive ethics (ie, what providers believe) and normative ethics (ie, what duty-based principles oblige), address dissenting opinion and consider the relevance of moral principles grounded in clinical obligations for public health initiatives. (shrink)

Millions of children who were born during the first decade after the Islamic revolution in Iran are now reaching the age of marriage and childbearing. Short spacing between marriage and the birth of the first child has the potential to cause an excessive and costly increase in the growth of population in Iran. Research into the motivations for the birth of first child among newly married couples can create a knowledge base that will enable health centres to help these couples (...) make better decisions about the timing of their first pregnancy. Using a consecutive sampling technique and administering Miller’s Childbearing Questionnaire, data were gathered regarding the childbearing motivations and desires of 300 couples who had been referred to the Shiraz Health Center for premarital counselling. The Childbearing Questionnaire, with some minor modifications, was found to be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the childbearing motivations of newly married couples of Shiraz County, Fars Province, Iran. The utility of these findings for counselling in health centres is discussed. Based on the results, a longitudinal study is being designed that will allow the development of models for predicting the time of first pregnancy after marriage. (shrink)

This chapter describes the development of a workshop series focused on helping students develop research lab ethics guidelines. The workshop was developed through a National Science Foundation-funded project that situates ethics education within the research environment. Students in four departments at a private research university were recruited to join a Student Ethics Committee that collaboratively developed context-specific codes-of-ethics-based guidelines for their departments. These bottom-up developed guidelines were revised in an iterative process, including feedback from faculty, other graduate students, and the (...) original Student Ethics Committee. The goal of the workshops was to promote the cultivation of an ethical culture in experimental laboratories by integrating research stakeholders in a bottom-up approach to developing context-specific guidelines and to identify factors that students consider relevant to the ethical conduct of research. After describing the workshop series, this chapter presents a qualitative content analysis of the guidelines. The guidelines developed by the Student Ethics Committees reflect the current culture of experimental labs in these departments and the ethical issues that students think are important. The content of these guidelines and the ethical issues the students focused on contrast in some key ways with what ethical issues faculty who head research groups saw as paramount. The chapter describes the first two iterations of the ethics education workshop module, a qualitative analysis of the first draft of these guidelines, and finally reflects on future work in this area of in situ ethics education. (shrink)

A belief that high school students have the cognitive ability to analyze and assess moral choices and should be encouraged to do so but have rarely been helped to do so was the motivation for developing Exploring Bioethics, a six-module curriculum and teacher guide for grades nine through twelve on ethical issues in the life sciences. A multidisciplinary team of bioethicists, science educators, curriculum designers, scientists, and high school biology teachers worked together on the curriculum under a contract between the (...) National Institutes of Health and Education Development Center, a nonprofit research and development organization with a long history of innovation in science education. At the NIH, the Department of Bioethics within the Clinical Center and the Office of Science Education within the Office of the Director guided the project.Our overarching goal for Exploring Bioethics was to introduce students to bioethics as a field of inquiry and to enable them to develop ethical reasoning skills so they could move beyond “gut reactions” to more nuanced positions. (shrink)

Background It has been suggested that researchers are obliged to offer summary findings to research participants to demonstrate respect for persons, and that this may increase public trust in, and awareness of, the research enterprise. Yet little research explores researchers' attitudes and practices regarding the range of initiatives that might serve these ends. Methods Results of an international survey of 785 eligible authors of genetics research studies in autism or cystic fibrosis are reported. Results Of 343 researchers who completed the (...) survey (44% response rate), the majority agreed that their team should (i) inform participants of summary findings (90.7%) and (ii) ensure they gain an awareness of developments in the field (86.9%). Additionally, the majority reported that in practice, their team (i) informs participants of summary findings (69.4%) and (ii) provides other types of relevant non-results information (eg, state of science in the field, opportunities for research participation) (67.9%). Conclusion Researchers endorsed the obligation of communicating with research participants by providing summary findings and other research-related information in equal measure. In light of these findings, it is suggested that while the provision of summary results may contribute to efforts to discharge the obligation of respect for persons, it may be neither a necessary nor a sufficient means to this end. (shrink)

Student researchers encounter ethical issues daily, but little is known about their unique perspectives. This article presents the results of 30 qualitative semi-structured interviews exploring students’ views and experiences around ethical issues in research groups. During the interviews, students were asked to describe challenges and successes they have encountered in their lab, their conception of what counts as an “ethical issue in research,” and how they handle these issues when they arise. Against this background, the article discusses students’ conceptions of (...) ethical issues in research environments, the types of issues students reported facing, how these issues were ultimately resolved, and finally, the factors, internal qualities, and lessons learned that help students thrive in research environments, as well as some of the challenges students face – especially international students. Many of the ethical challenges interviewees discussed focused on interpersonal issues, highlighting the intense collaboration most graduate students have with their colleagues and supervisors. Findings from this study point to the need for targeted training programs for students and faculty supervisors focusing on building mentoring relationships and finding space in the lab where open communication can occur around ethical research practices. (shrink)

Primary progressive aphasia is a clinical syndrome in which patients progressively lose speech and language abilities. Three variants are recognized: logopenic, associated with phonology and/or short-term verbal memory deficits accompanied by left temporo-parietal atrophy; semantic, associated with semantic deficits and anterior temporal lobe atrophy; non-fluent associated with grammar and/or speech-motor deficits and inferior frontal gyrus atrophy. Here, we set out to investigate whether the three variants of PPA can be dissociated based on error patterns in a single language task. We (...) recruited 21 lvPPA, 28 svPPA, and 24 nfvPPA patients, together with 31 healthy controls, and analyzed their performance on an auditory noun-to-verb generation task, which requires auditory analysis of the input, access to and selection of relevant lexical and semantic knowledge, as well as preparation and execution of speech. Task accuracy differed across the three variants and controls, with lvPPA and nfvPPA having the lowest and highest accuracy, respectively. Critically, machine learning analysis of the different error types yielded above-chance classification of patients into their corresponding group. An analysis of the error types revealed clear variant-specific effects: lvPPA patients produced the highest percentage of “not-a-verb” responses and the highest number of semantically related nouns ; in contrast, svPPA patients produced the highest percentage of “unrelated verb” responses and the highest number of light verbs. Taken together, our findings indicate that error patterns in an auditory verb generation task are associated with the breakdown of different neurocognitive mechanisms across PPA variants. Specifically, they corroborate the link between temporo-parietal regions with lexical processing, as well as ATL with semantic processes. These findings illustrate how the analysis of pattern of responses can help PPA phenotyping and heighten diagnostic sensitivity, while providing insights on the neural correlates of different components of language. (shrink)

As an alternative to universalism and particularism, Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics proposes "intermedialities" as a new model of social relations and intercultural dialogue. The concept of "intermedialities" stresses the necessity of situating debates concerning social relations in the divergent contexts of new media and avant-garde artistic practices as well as feminist, political, and philosophical analyses.

Define z to be the smallest cardinality of a function f: X → Y with X. Y ⊆ 2ω such that there is no Borel function g ⊇ f. In this paper we prove that it is relatively consistent with ZFC to have b < z where b is, as usual, smallest cardinality of an unbounded family in ωω. This answers a question raised by Zapletal. We also show that it is relatively consistent with ZFC that there exists X ⊆ (...) 2ω such that the Borel order of X is bounded but there exists a relatively analytic subset of X which is not relatively coanalytic. This answers a question of Mauldin. (shrink)

Over the past several decades environmental ethics has grown markedly, normative ethics having provided essential grounding in assessing human treatment of the environment. Even a systematic approach, such as Paul Taylor’s, in a sense tells the environment how it is to be treated, whether that be Earth’s ecosystem or the universe itself. Can the environment, especially the ecosystem, as understood through the study of ecology, in turn offer normative and applied ethics any edification? The study of ecology has certainly increased (...) awareness of the fact that it is not possible for a moral agent within the ecosystem to step outside its intricate mesh of actions and events, of causes and effects. That is, absolutely everything that an agent can do can have some, often unforeseeable, outcome in the environment. An incompletely snuffed-out match tossed out a car window can cause a forest fire, which causes biome destruction, which causes x, y, and z. In sum, the ecosystem can edify ethics in terms of the scope of ethics, which remains an unsettled, if too-often ignored, matter. By such an inclusive view of moral scope, as derived in part from ecology and as presented here, the scope of moral behavior would include—whether or not adventitiously—every action an agent may do. By this view, moral scope is, in essence, unlimited. The article offers some ramifications of this view of moral scope. (shrink)

The burden of this theorem, stated informally, is that when a hypothesis h is maximally independent of the evidence — that is, it goes wholly beyond the evidence —, then the probability p(h, e) increases when the evidence e is weakened; and hence, the weaker is the evidence, the greater is the probabilistic support.

We consider effective versions of two classical theorems, the Lebesgue density theorem and the Denjoy–Young–Saks theorem. For the first, we show that a Martin-Löf random real z ∈ [0, 1] is Turing incomplete if and only if every effectively closed class.

For any subset $Z \subseteq {\mathbb {Q}}$, consider the set $S_Z$ of subfields $L\subseteq {\overline {\mathbb {Q}}}$ which contain a co-infinite subset $C \subseteq L$ that is universally definable in L such that $C \cap {\mathbb {Q}}=Z$. Placing a natural topology on the set ${\operatorname {Sub}({\overline {\mathbb {Q}}})}$ of subfields of ${\overline {\mathbb {Q}}}$, we show that if Z is not thin in ${\mathbb {Q}}$, then $S_Z$ is meager in ${\operatorname {Sub}({\overline {\mathbb {Q}}})}$. Here, thin and meager both mean “small”, (...) in terms of arithmetic geometry and topology, respectively. For example, this implies that only a meager set of fields L have the property that the ring of algebraic integers $\mathcal {O}_L$ is universally definable in L. The main tools are Hilbert’s Irreducibility Theorem and a new normal form theorem for existential definitions. The normal form theorem, which may be of independent interest, says roughly that every $\exists $-definable subset of an algebraic extension of ${\mathbb Q}$ is a finite union of single points and projections of hypersurfaces defined by absolutely irreducible polynomials. (shrink)

ARTHUR PRIOR BEQUEATHED US the perceptive advice that "it is always a useful exercise, when told that something was possible, that is, could have happened, to ask 'When was it possible?' 'When could it have happened?'" Illustrating his point by considering whether it was possible for God to have "launched Julius Caesar into being, or arranged his coming into being, at a different time and under different circumstances," Prior's reply was "I doubt it." What God certainly could have done was (...) to launch into being some man with precisely those properties that Caesar did subsequently have; but what He could not have done, says Prior, was to "launch Caesar" or "create Caesar" in any sense "in which, He having said 'Let there be a man, with properties X to Z,' and there then starting to be a man with those properties, one could intelligibly ask 'But was this the man you wanted?' or intelligibly say 'This--and no other--was the man God intended.'". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions PARMENIDES THE PROPHET~ The latest word on Parmenides comes from a recent and exhaustive study by Leonardo Tar~n. 1 Among other illuminating and novel interpretations, Tarhn argues that Parmenides was not, after all, guilty of the confusion between the existential and copulative senses of "to be," that he did not identify thinking with Being, and that he had no conception of atemporal reality.~ In these and (...) other respects Tar~n's volume makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Parmenides. One might judge, however, that Tars work is unusually insensitive to the religious element in Parmenides' poem, and in this respect his analysis seems to echo Reinhardt's unfortunate judgment which calls Parmenides "einen Denker, der keinen Wunsch kennt als Erkenntnis, keine Fessel ffihlt als Logik, den Gott und Geffihl gleichgiiltig lassen." s This inadequacy of TarAn's approach to Parmenides is evident in his treatment of the poem in general, and especially the prologue. The prologue to Parmenides' poem has always been a source of debate. After exploring and rejecting the allegorical interpretation of Sextus (the main source for the proem), Tar~n then systematically examines and rejects the modern interpretations which (among others) make it out to be a shamanistic rapture (Diels, Cornford), Orphic apocalypse (Burnet), religious revelation (Jaeger, Bowra), and mystical experience (Verdenius).4 TarAn judges that Parmenides did not intend his journey to be taken as a reality in any sense, largely on the grounds (1) that Parmenides speaks of his journey as a repeated experience. To take seriously the iterative expressions of the prologue (e.g. fr. 1, lines 1, 3, 8) is incompatible with interpretations which construe it to refer to a specific occasion.6 He supports the conclusion that the proem is nothing more than a literary device with the observations (2) that symbolic interpretations are incongruous with the fact that the goddess expounds her doctrine without symbols, and (3) that the appeal is to Logos, the rational, critical faculty; (4) that the goddess remains anonymous shows that she stands for no religious figure at all ("the 'revelation' is the truth discovered by Parmenides himself"); and (5) that Parmenides could hardly expect us to take seriously the reality of the goddess and other elements in the proem, the reality of which would be entirely incompatible with the thesis of the poem, viz. that reality is One and that all multiplicity and distinction is unreal. ~ z Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton, 1965). See my review of this work in The Classical Journal, LXII (1967),232ff. aParmenides und die Geschiehtc der griechischen Philosophic (Bonn, 1916),p. 256. 4TarGn,p. 17ft.Guthrie believes that Parmenides recognized an affinity between his search for truth, and his religious activity and mystical experience, and that he reflected this in his mystical-allegorical prologue (History of Greek Philosophy [Cambridge, 1965],II, 13). Guthrie was not, apparently, aware of Ta~n's work when he wrote his second volume; and on the matter of the prologue he favors the work of Mansfeld (Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschlichc Welt [Assen, 1964],chap. IV), and Bowra ("The Proem of Parmenides," Classical Philology, XXXII [1987],97ff). Tar~n, p. 30. * P. 30f. [67] 68 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY It is probably true that interpretations which find all sorts of religious elements in the proem (and the poem as a whole) go too far. On the other hand, Tar~n gives the impression that Parmenides was nothing more than a pedantic academician, and in this respect he tends to sin in the opposite direction. First, the possible religious significance of the prologue does not depend on its being taken to refer to a literal experience; but even if it did, it need not refer to a specific event; and even if that were so, it is a little forced to exclude a specific event in view of the iterative expressions which may be no more than a function of poetic style. As for his second charge, Tar~n seems unaware that the main part of the poem hardly lends itself to symbolic expression, and afortiori the prologue, with its symbolism, sets the religious mood for... (shrink)

The notation and terminology of this paper follow [2], and are dual to those of [6] and [7]. If L is a language in the narrow sense, Cn may be any consequence operation on sets of sentences of L that includes classical sentential logic. Henceforth when we talk of the language L we intend to include reference to some fixed, though unspecified, operation Cn. X is a deductive system if X = Cn(X). Sentences x, z that are logically equivalent with (...) respect to Cn – that is x ∈ Cn({z}) and z ∈ Cn({x}) – are identified. If X and Z are systems we often write X x instead of x ∈ X and Z X instead of X ⊆ Z. If X = Cn({x}) for some sentence x, X is (finitely) axiomatizable. The set theoretical intersection of X and Z has the logical force of disjunction, and is written X ∨ Z; Cn(X ∪ Z), the smallest system to include both X and Z, is written XZ. If K is a family of systems, [K] and [K] may be defined in an analogous way. The logically strongest system S is the set of all sentences of L; the weakest system T is defined as Cn(∅). The autocomplement Z of Z is defined to be the strongest system to complement T, namely the system [{Y : Y ∨ Z = T}]. More generally we may define X − Z as [{Y : X Y ∨ Z}]. In terms of this operation to remainder, Z is identical with T − Z. The class of all deductive systems forms a distributive lattice under the operations of concatenation and ∨; and indeed a Brouverian algebra (a relatively authocomplemented lattice with unit) under concatenation, ∨ – and T. (shrink)

For a ring R, Hilbert’s Tenth Problem $HTP$ is the set of polynomial equations over R, in several variables, with solutions in R. We view $HTP$ as an enumeration operator, mapping each set W of prime numbers to $HTP$, which is naturally viewed as a set of polynomials in $\mathbb {Z}[X_1,X_2,\ldots ]$. It is known that for almost all W, the jump $W'$ does not $1$ -reduce to $HTP$. In contrast, we show that every Turing degree contains a set W (...) for which such a $1$ -reduction does hold: these W are said to be HTP-complete. Continuing, we derive additional results regarding the impossibility that a decision procedure for $W'$ from $HTP$ can succeed uniformly on a set of measure $1$, and regarding the consequences for the boundary sets of the $HTP$ operator in case $\mathbb {Z}$ has an existential definition in $\mathbb {Q}$. (shrink)

The example can be generalized. Suppose that ϕ and ψ are suffi- ciently different functions of an independent variable t. We may show that whenever X’s predictions for ϕ and ψ lie (weakly) between Z’s predictions and T’s predictions (the true values), then there are other quantities, interdefinable with ϕ and ψ, that reverse the ordering.

This collection of five essays, dedicated to the memory of Robert Daniel Miller, deserves more notice than it has hitherto received. Each of the papers represents some one "facet" of Plato's thought, and most make a provocative, if not always convincing, contribution to their subjects.

Here we prove that if T and T′ are strongly minimal theories, where T′ satisfies a certain property related to triviality and T does not, and T′ is model complete, then there is no computable embedding of Mod(T) into Mod(T′). Using this, we answer a question from [4], showing that there is no computable embedding of VS into ZS, where VS is the class of infinite vector spaces over Q, and ZS is the class of models of Th(Z, S). Similarly, (...) we show that there is no computable embedding of ACF into ZS, where ACF is the class of algebraically closed fields of characteristic 0. (shrink)

David Miller v pracích Critical Rationalism a Out of Error se jako jeden z mála Popperových žáků snaží nejen o vysvětlení a obhájení Popperova kritického racionalismu, ale zároveň i o jeho další rozvinutí. Millerovo znovunastolení kritického racionalismu ovšem předpokládá, že k racionálnímu jednání není třeba žádných „dobrých důvodů“, ale jen argumentů. Uvedená stať se zaměřuje právě na tuto otázku existence tzv. „dobrých důvodů“ ve spojení s racionalitou a racionálním rozhodováním a ukazuje, že Millerův požadavek neexistence „dobrých důvodů“ je nejen (...) příliš radikální, ale i nepřijatelný z hlediska Popperova nebo Musgravova pojetí kritického racionalismu. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss selected rhetorical strategies applied by journalists during television interviews, as well as to consider whether they demonstrate the professional skills of journalists, or if they should be treated as examples of violating journalistic ethics and standards. The following three interviews have been analyzed in this paper: of Tomasz Lis (with Lech Wałęsa), Monika Olejnik (with Jacek Kurski) and Jacek Żakowski (with Leszek Miller). The author presents the rhetorical strategies used by the (...) journalists and concludes that – as strategies involving the prevention of interlocutors from speaking and presenting their views, misinterpretation of information and journalists’ malevolence – they should be considered incompatible with the ethics of journalism. (shrink)

In this provocative and original work, Slavoj Zizek takes a look at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock's Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish Joke, the author's acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society. Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political (...) significance of these fantasies of control. In so doing, The Sublime Object of Ideology represents a powerful contribution to a psychoanalytical theory of ideology, as well as offering persuasive interpretations of a number of contemporary cultural formations. -- Back cover. (shrink)

With his characteristic wit, Zizek addresses the burning question of how to reformulate a leftist project in an era of global capitalism and liberal-democratic ...

La longue histoire de l’Acropole d’Athènes est une vitrine fascinante de la façon dont un patrimoine ancien peut être transformé, d’un sanctuaire païen à un sanctuaire chrétien, à une forteresse islamique, à l’autel symbolique de la Grèce moderne. De plus, ce site a suscité l’admiration presque religieuse des chercheurs et, comme dans le cas des marbres d’Elgin, a été contesté à de nombreux égards. L’auteur du volume analysé, William St Clair, un spécialiste des marbres d’Elgin et de divers a...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evolution of the Society for the Advancement of American PhilosophyJames Campbelldespite my increasingly decrepit appearance, I can lay no claim to being one of the founders of SAAP. When I joined the Society in the mid-1970s, it was already a well-functioning organization—if a much smaller one than today. After a few years of attending meetings, I began to submit papers, and I first appeared on the program at (...) our sixth annual meeting at John Carroll University in 1979. (See Fig. 1, the complete program, below.) While I was not one of the founders of SAAP, I did know them all. Presiding at the early meetings were, in the order of their presidencies, such elders as John Lachs, John J. McDermott, Darnell Rucker, James Gouinlock, Beth J. Singer, Peter H. Hare, Sandra B. Rosenthal, Thelma Z. Lavine, Joseph Betz, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, and Andrew J. Reck. Serving in the background at the same time were such patron saints as Justus Buchler, Douglas Greenlee, Abraham Edel, Max Harold Fisch, Elizabeth Flower, Edward H. Madden, David L. Miller, Frank M. Oppenheim, Evelyn Shirk, John E. Smith, and H. S. Thayer. It was a good time to be coming to American Philosophy, under the guidance of a Society that respected the fundamentals of pluralism and "fallibilism."1IThe brief discussion of the evolution of SAAP that I offer here initially emphasizes what the Society has meant to me over nearly five decades.2 As I was entering graduate school in 1974, I was drawn by the American philosophical tradition. It was, as William James writes, my "dumb conviction" that the best answers were to be found in this philosophical direction and not in the others, and that my job was to pursue these answers.3 What I found in this tradition was a refuge from both the analytic style of philosophy then dominant in America, with what I saw as its obsession with truth4 and its [End Page 1] confusion of cleverness with wisdom, and the alternatives of the various continental traditions that, although they pursued wisdom, seemed to me to rely too strongly on the mysterious or the untranslatable. My own sense of the American philosophical tradition at the time was an amalgam of Puritanism, Deism, Transcendentalism, Pragmatism in its various forms, and a large dose of Columbia Naturalism. Through further study and especially through my interactions at SAAP meetings, I became more grounded in these approaches and more open to other strands within the tradition.5 For me, cooperative interaction with others was essential to further understanding. Just as for Josiah Royce, the secret was "the community."6Among the lessons that I drew from the American philosophical tradition were the following. I knew that it was necessary to resist the human tendency to believe that what works for me will work for everyone else. As George Santayana reminds us, all philosophy is "personal."7 Thus, certain thinkers and certain thoughts will benefit from their initial plausibility to us, and other thoughts and thinkers will be initially suspect. To counter this personal prejudice, we need to partake in careful, long-term study. On a related point, Ralph Waldo Emerson urges us to seek insight from others, to accept what he calls "provocation" while not accepting their answers.8 At the same time, we live among these other individuals, marry them, teach their children, and benefit from their contributions to our social existence. In other words, American Philosophy teaches us that people are social creatures—a point which both Emerson and James were wary of, but not blind to—and that our thinking should focus on the world of shared experience. As Benjamin Franklin writes, our efforts in "Philosophy" make sense only when our pursuit of wisdom is related to human well-being.9 This point is so important that we need to wonder how our efforts were ever allowed to narrow and separate from a broad sense of human welfare to focus upon supposedly more important minutiae. With John Dewey, I saw the job of philosophers to be helping individuals to understand and deal with their philosophical "problems" of living.10 And, perhaps more... (shrink)

Book synopsis: In this combative major new work, philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj Zizek looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past. Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism and Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution, he suggests that these were the 'right steps in the wrong direction.' On the revolutionary terror of Robespierre, Mao and the bolsheviks, Zizek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure and horror, there was a valuable core of idealism lost beneath the (...) bloodshed. A redemptive vision has been obscured by the soft, decentralized politics of the liberal-democratic consensus. Faced with the coming ecological crisis, Zizekk argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to past ideals is needed despite the risks. In the words of Samuel Beckett: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'. (shrink)

This collection reconsiders the notion of life and conceptualizes those forms of life which have been excluded from modern philosophy, such as post-Anthropocene life, the life of non-human animals and the life of inorganic objects"-- Provided by publisher.

The latest book by the Slovenian critic Slavoj Zizek takes the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the beginning of a dazzling inquiry into the realms of radical politics, philosophy, film (Hitchcock, Fight Club ), and psychoanalysis. Of Organs without Bodies Joan Copjec ( Imagine There's No Woman ) has written: "With all his ususal humor and invention, Zizek -- the acknowledged master of the 180 degree turn -- here takes a trip into "enemy" territory to deliver Deleuze of (...) a marvelously rebellious child, one that seriously challenges Deleuze's other progeny with a surprising but convincing bid for succession. Those who thought Deleuze's forward march into the future would follow a straight path are forced to rethink their stance. From now on all readings of Deleuze will have to take a detour through this important -- even necessary -- book." Eric Santner ( On the Psychopathology of Everyday Life ) describes Organs without Bodies as offering "an entirely new degree of conceptual clarity and political urgency. Through his deep engagement with the logic of Deleuze's project, Zizek opens up new possibilities of thought beyond the terms of the current political debates on globalization, democratization, war on terror. Once again, Zizek has produced an utterly timely and radically untimely meditation." Recently profiled in The New Yorker , and hailed by the Village Voice as "the giant of Ljubljana," Zizek is one of the most provocative and entertaining thinkers at work today. (shrink)