“The Will to Believe” defines the religious question as forced, living and momentous, but even in this article James asserts that more objective factors are involved. The competing religious hypotheses must both be equally coherent and correspond to experimental data to an equal degree. Otherwise the option is not a live one. “If I say to you ‘Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan’, it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive.” James, (...) WB, p. 3. Analogously, in A Pluralistic Universe James is at pains to convince the reader that his own religious hypothesis is just as “objective,” makes just as much sense, etc. as alternative possibilities: the “only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it [pluralistic pantheism] is a fully coordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block universe; but on the other hand, it may be a universe only strung along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that possibility I do insist.”William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909) p. 328.Here, once again, before the will to believe can be employed, the objective factors of competing hypotheses, their equal coherence and correspondence, must be brought out.When reconstructed, James' overall outlook has a “qausi Kuhnian” taint to it- though obvious differences remain. Much of what goes on in evaluating competing scientific hypotheses is either not forced, or not living, or not momentous, but rather “typical,” “dead,” and “avoidable,” in short very “normal.” But there are moments in the history of science where the decision between hypotheses might well be forced, living and momentous, and sometimes James comes close to recognizing this.Analogously, a good deal of what goes on in religion is not forced, not living or not momentous - in short it is all too “normal”. In The Varieties of Religious Experience for example, James proposes to ignore the institutional branch of the religious domain and to concentrate on personal and psychological factors, his reason being that the institutional aspect concentrates on the routine, the normal. “Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods.” James, VRE, p. 29. and again “The word ‘religion,’ as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to ‘organize’ themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word ‘religion’ nowadays, we think inevitably of some ‘church’ or other.” Clearly here religion has a normal, i.e. trivial side, just as does science. On the other hand, there are revolutionary moments in religion, such as that of choosing between theism and materialism in Pragmatism, or choosing among theism, monistic pantheism and pluralistic pantheism in A Pluralistic Universe. Such moments involve the will to believe and are clearly more personal than their counterparts in the domain of normal institutionalized religion. Going further, there are no doubt differences of degree between the will to believe decisions in science and the will to believe decisions in religion. These have been explicated in more specific terms by Ian Barbour in his article, “Paradigms in Science and Religion.” ...each of the ‘subjective’ features of science... is more evident in the case of religion: (1) the influence of interpretation on data, (2) the resistance of comprehensive theories of falsification, and (3) the absence of rules for choice among paradigms. Each of the corresponding ‘objective’ features of science is less evident in the case of religion: (1) the presence of common data on which disputants can agree, (2) the cumulative effect of evidence for or against a theory, and (3) the existence of criteria which are not paradigm-dependent. It is clear that in all three respects religion is a more ‘subjective’ enterprise than science. But in each case there is a difference of degree - not an absolute contrast between an ‘objective’ science and a ‘subjective’ religion. Ian Barbour, “Paradigms in Science and Religion,” in Paradigms and Revolutions, edited by Gary Gutting (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) pp. 242–43. Barbour correctly notes that the “...choice is not between religion and science, but between theism, pantheism, and naturalism, let us say, as each is expressed in a particular historical tradition. No basic beliefs are capable of demonstrable proof.”Ibid., p. 243. James sometimes comes close to recognizing this but his oscillation on the status of the everyday world of common sense, or the perceptual world, causes him not to see the issue clearly. When the animated world of the perceptual is taken as the all inclusive ‘really real,’ science is viewed as an abstract, second class citizen. But James offers what we would consider a more sophisticated and adequate perspective when he views the world of common sense, having become linguistified, as itself suspicious, and consequently views all three tiers - common sense, scholastic philosophy, and science - as “regional ontologies”, or “language games” in Wittgenstein's terminologySee Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), paragraph 7, paragraph 23. For the notion of “regional ontology” see Edmund Husserl, Ideas, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1962) p. 57ff; p. 158ff. - and opposes all three to a more primordial or prereflexive level. When James takes this second approach it is easier to see that the basic distinction he began to make in “The Will to Believe” was between the scientific and religious domain where the will to believe was to be employed, and the domain of “ordinary” religion and science. Finally this position anticipates his ultimate metaphysical outlook, viz. “pure experience” as approachable through language on a series of diverse regional levels, but nonetheless not completely describable within language. It is important to recall that in The Varieties of Religious Experience James distinguishes between the science of religions and what he calls living religion: [T] he science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. James, VRE, p. 489. The study of religion, in short is not the activity of religion; the latter is animated, personal, and, we would argue, necessitates a commitment in terms of the will to believe. Once again, however, James hesitates over offering the same two-fold delineation in other areas of science. On the one hand he tells the reader that “science-has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view.”Ibid., p. 491. On the other hand, he offers the following comment a few pages later on in a footnote: ...the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final opinion may, in short, in some manner now impossible to forsee, revert to the more personal style, just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitely triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be.Ibid., p. 501, Footnote. The burden of this paper has been to indicate that when James' two-fold outlook on perception and/or common sense is properly reconstructed, the raproachment between science and religion is not so “impossible to forsee.”. (shrink)

The “lone” clinical bioethicist working in a large, multisite hospital faces considerable challenges. While attempting to build ethics capacity and sustain a demanding range of responsibilities, he or she must also achieve an acceptable level of integration, sustainability, and accountability within a complex organisational structure. In an effort to address such inherent demands and to create a platform towards better evaluation and effectiveness, the Clinical Ethics Group at the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto is implementing the (...) Hub and Spokes Strategy at seven hospitals. The goal of the Hub and Spokes Strategy is to foster an ethical climate and strengthen ethics capacity broadly throughout healthcare settings as well as create models in clinical bioethics that are excellent and effective. (shrink)

Cohen’s (2023) mapping exercise of possible bioethical issues emerging from the use of ChatGPT in medicine provides an informative, useful, and thought-provoking trigger for discussions of AI ethic...

Big Data has been variously defined in the literature. In the main, definitions suggest that Big Data possess a suite of key traits: volume, velocity and variety, but also exhaustivity, resolution, indexicality, relationality, extensionality and scalability. However, these definitions lack ontological clarity, with the term acting as an amorphous, catch-all label for a wide selection of data. In this paper, we consider the question ‘what makes Big Data, Big Data?’, applying Kitchin’s taxonomy of seven Big Data traits to 26 datasets (...) drawn from seven domains, each of which is considered in the literature to constitute Big Data. The results demonstrate that only a handful of datasets possess all seven traits, and some do not possess either volume and/or variety. Instead, there are multiple forms of Big Data. Our analysis reveals that the key definitional boundary markers are the traits of velocity and exhaustivity. We contend that Big Data as an analytical category needs to be unpacked, with the genus of Big Data further delineated and its various species identified. It is only through such ontological work that we will gain conceptual clarity about what constitutes Big Data, formulate how best to make sense of it, and identify how it might be best used to make sense of the world. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to assess whether, and how, the attitudes towards business ethics of former South African business students have changed between the early 1990s and 2010. The study used the Attitudes Toward Business Ethics Questionnaire and applied a comparative analysis between leading business schools in South Africa. The findings of this study found a significant change in attitudes based on a set time frame, with a trend towards stronger opinions on business ethics and espoused values. Eleven (...) factors came out as fundamental, although they were less able to explain the variation in the attitudes than the previous study. A significant change in the rankings of variables was noted and indicated a shift in attitude toward a teleological moral philosophy as well as utilitarian motives. This shows a clear trend towards compliance-based ethics, which can be explained by the proliferation of business legislation and regulation in the wake of recent corporate governance failures and the subsequent global financial crisis. (shrink)

This book explores the diverse understandings of the archaeological record in both historical and contemporary perspective, while also serving as a guide to reassessing current views. Gavin Lucas argues that archaeological theory has become both too fragmented and disconnected from the particular nature of archaeological evidence. The book examines three ways of understanding the archaeological record - as historical sources, through formation theory, and as material culture - then reveals ways to connect these three domains through a reconsideration of (...) archaeological entities and archaeological practice. Ultimately, Lucas calls for a rethinking of the nature of the archaeological record and the kind of history and narratives written from it. (shrink)

'We will overcome it [and] I hope in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge, and those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any' Her Majesty The Queen The Coronavirus pandemic forced the great British people to dig to the very depths of their resolve. It was during this crisis, the gravest crisis the country has faced since the Second World (...) War, that members of the Greatest Generation - Tom Moore, Dame Vera Lynn, the Queen - proved vital reminders of the self-effacing stoicism required in times of emergency; to summon our 'Blitz spirit' and to 'Keep Calm and Carry On'. Taking twelve qualities of the wartime generation, including fellowship, courage and integrity, and drawing on personal interviews with over two hundred Second World War veterans - from SAS officers to London firewomen to Dame Vera herself - Guidance from the Greatest shows us how we can improve our individual character and our collective approach to life. Guidance from the Greatest reminds us of all that is great about Britain and shows how we can build upon that greatness for the future. (shrink)

This review sets out the central arguments of Onora O’Neill’s book Justice Across Boundaries: Whose Obligations? and argues that whilst she puts forward a variety of incisive criticisms of the international human rights movement she fails to present any positive argument for improving it. Ultimately the book is an exceptional piece of criticism that lacks any significant attempt to solve the many problems that O'Neill highlighted.

Conducting “difficult conversations” with patients and caregivers is one of the most difficult aspects of the medical profession. These conversations can involve communicating a terminal prognosis, advance care planning, or changing the goals of treatment. Although they are challenging, the need for these conversations is underwritten by the tenets of medical ethics. Unfortunately, medical professionals lack adequate training in communication skills and overestimate their abilities in conducting difficult conversations. I suggest that one way to improve that ability would be the (...) strategic use of pharmaceutical neuroenhancements. Pharmaceutically augmenting a professional’s capacity for recognizing masked emotional expressions might conduce to his or her development of open and responsive communication with patients and caregivers. I conclude by examining the limitations and objections to this use of a communication enhancement by illustrating that it would still require the development of, and indeed a greater emphasis on, communication skills in medical education and training. (shrink)

The detective story in which the investigator is an amateur without official standing is a peculiarly English genre. Perhaps the earliest example, telling of an investigation that was pursued unofficially by an individual who arrived on the scene after the crime, disagreed with the official stand, pursued his own investigation, and reported the results, is “The Life and Passion of Saint William the Martyr of Norwich,” which Thomas of Monmouth started in 1149/50 and completed in 1172/73. Book 1 of theLife, (...) apparently completed by 1150, is a flowing narrative of the events of William's life and of his death in 1144 as Thomas had reconstructed them. And although books 2–6, written in 1154/55, consist primarily of descriptions of the translations of William's body between 1150 and 1154 and of the miracles attributed to him, Thomas devoted the first part of book 2 to a lengthy defense of the truth of his reconstruction of the crime, a defense in which he carefully marshaled the evidence or arguments that had led him to his conclusions. The last book, book 7, which was only completed by 1173, describes the further miracles attributed to William between 1155 and 1173. (shrink)

BackgroundThe amount of research utilizing health information has increased dramatically over the last ten years. Many institutions have extensive biobank holdings collected over a number of years for clinical and teaching purposes, but are uncertain as to the proper circumstances in which to permit research uses of these samples. Research Ethics Boards (REBs) in Canada and elsewhere in the world are grappling with these issues, but lack clear guidance regarding their role in the creation of and access to registries and (...) biobanks.MethodsChairs of 34 REBS and/or REB Administrators affiliated with Faculties of Medicine in Canadian universities were interviewed. Interviews consisted of structured questions dealing with diabetes-related scenarios, with open-ended responses and probing for rationales. The two scenarios involved the development of a diabetes registry using clinical encounter data across several physicians' practices, and the addition of biological samples to the registry to create a biobank.ResultsThere was a wide range of responses given for the questions raised in the scenarios, indicating a lack of clarity about the role of REBs in registries and biobanks. With respect to the creation of a registry, a minority of sites felt that consent was not required for the information to be entered into the registry. Whether patient consent was required for information to be entered into the registry and the duration for which the consent would be operative differed across sites. With respect to the creation of a biobank linked to the registry, a majority of sites viewed biobank information as qualitatively different from other types of personal health information. All respondents agreed that patient consent was needed for blood samples to be placed in the biobank but the duration of consent again varied.ConclusionParticipants were more attuned to issues surrounding biobanks as compared to registries and demonstrated a higher level of concern regarding biobanks. As registries and biobanks expand, there is a need for critical analysis of suitable roles for REBs and subsequent guidance on these topics. The authors conclude by recommending REB participation in the creation of registries and biobanks and the eventual drafting of comprehensive legislation. (shrink)

This paper explores the embedding of data producing technologies in people's everyday lives and practices. It traces how repeated encounters with digital data operate to naturalise these entities, while often blindsiding their agentive properties and the ways they get implicated in processes of exploitation and governance. I propose and develop the notion of ‘data doxa’ to conceptualise the way in which digital data – and the devices and platforms that stage data – have come to be perceived in Western societies (...) as normal, necessary and enabling. The ‘data doxa’ concept also accentuates the enculturation of many individuals into a data sharing habitus which frames digital technologies in simplistic terms as panaceas for the problems associated with contemporary life, figures of progress and convenience, and mediums of knowledge, pleasure and identity. I suggest that three types of data-based relations contribute to the formation of this doxic sensibility: fetishisation, habit and enchantment. Each of these relations come to mediate public understandings of digital devices and the data they generate, obscuring the multifaceted nature and hidden depths of data and their propensity to double up as technologies of exposure and discipline. As a result of this situation, imaginative educational programs and revamped regulatory frameworks are urgently needed to inform individuals about the contribution of data to the leveraging of value and power in today's digital economies, but also to protect them from experiencing data-based harms. (shrink)

In this article I consider the uses of the concepts ‘society’ and ‘culture’ in various sociological and anthropological traditions, arguing that sociology needs to learn from the division between social anthropology and cultural anthropology. First I distinguish the social and the cultural sciences: the former use ‘society’ as leading concept and ‘culture’ as a subordinate concept; the latter do the contrary. I discuss the origins of the terms société and Kultur in the classical French and German traditions respectively, and their (...) subsequent uptake in Anglo-American sociology and anthropology, ‘society’ becoming the leading concept for sociology and social anthropology, ‘culture’ the leading concept for cultural anthropology. I contrast the sociology of culture with the cultural anthropological consideration of society. I next examine the terms for ‘society’ in the classical German tradition, especially Weber, pointing to interpretivism as a cultural theory of society. I then consider Weber’s Kultursoziologie, arguing that it is culture (Kultur) not society (Gesellschaft) that is the ultimate object of Weber’s sociology. I conclude that sociology needs to identify classical German sociology and its derivatives as cultural science not social science, and to make comprehensive adjustments to its methodological debates accordingly. The implications of this for the problem of sociology’s encounter with the natural world are noted. (shrink)

In this article, I criticize environmental sociology’s conventional diagnosis of its methodological situation and overly narrow definition of its field. I argue for a greater engagement with the natural science base and consideration of anthropological approaches. I start with conceptual analysis, identifying the human-environment relationship as a pro-active two-way interaction. I then present an outline of global environmental dynamics, highlighting the unequal size of human activities on geosphere and biosphere scale, and the role of the biosphere as manager of the (...) geosphere, this as context for the human population problem. Three types of environmental problems are next identified: urban-industrial, rural-agrarian, and high hazard exposure. These are seen as forming a continuum, with anthropogenic and natural factors synergizing at the centre. I comment on their geographic distribution, noting Europe’s limited and specific environmental experience. Lastly I attempt an overview without biological metaphors of the humanenvironment relationship through time, commenting on its inherent imbalances and how these might be diagnosed. I conclude that sociology’s bias to modernity and the West renders it inadequate to the global environmental question. A wider and deeper spacio-temporal consideration is needed, with the whole continuum of environmental problems considered. For this, environmental sociology should seek a synthesis with cultural anthropology centring on the anthropological concept of culture, an approach, I argue, that is accessible through the sociology of Max Weber. (shrink)

This article examines the discourses that are used by the British press to represent obesity in its coverage of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Obesity is understood to be a risk factor for COVID-19, with people with obesity being more likely to die from the virus. This study adopts a corpus-based approach to Critical Discourse Studies and utilises a novel approach to keyword analysis, based on comparing analysis corpora against two reference corpora in order to yield keywords that are, in this (...) case, characteristic compared to general coverage of both COVID-19 and obesity. It is argued that the context of the pandemic has produced a range of discourses around obesity that are more stigmatising than usual in both the tabloids and the broadsheets, with people with obesity being construed, for example, in especially fatalistic terms and as being responsible for the problems facing the country’s healthcare system. At the same time, the pandemic context also seems to have given rise to some more positive changes to press coverage of obesity, with race-related health disparities receiving more focus than usual and the right-leaning press being more likely to critique the Conservative Government than it usually is, resulting in an arguably more balanced style of reporting. (shrink)

This essay, and the special issue it introduces, sets out to reignite ethical interrogations of the theory and practice of Human Resource Management (HRM). To cultivate greater levels of boundary-spanning debate about the ethics of HRM, we develop a framework of four tenors for scholarly work: the ethical-declarative, the ethical-subjunctive, the ethical-ethnographic, the ethical-systemic. Each of these tenors denotes particular grounds for ethical critique and encourages scholars to consider the subjects and objects of their enquiry, the disciplinary scope of their (...) work and the limits to subsequent claims about ethics and HRM. We provisionally locate each of the papers comprising the special issue with regard to one, or more, of these tenors. (shrink)

Today’s bodies are akin to ‘walking sensor platforms’. Bodies either host, or are the subjects of, an array of sensing devices that act to convert bodily movements, actions and dynamics into circulative data. This article proposes the notions of ‘disembodied exhaust’ and ‘embodied exhaustion’ to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication. As the material body interfaces with networked sensor technologies and sensing infrastructures, it emits disembodied exhaust: gaseous flows of personal information that establish a representational data-proxy. It is this (...) networked actant that progressively structures how embodied subjects experience their daily lives. The significance of this symbiont medium in determining the outcome of interplays between networked individuals and audiences necessitates that it is carefully contrived. The article explores the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations. Drawing on examples that depict individuals engaging with their data-proxies, the article suggests that managing a virtual presence is analogous to a work relation, demanding diligence and investment. But it also shows how the data-proxy operates as a mode of affect that challenges conventional distinctions made between organic and inorganic bodies, agency and actancy, mortality and immortality, presence and absence. (shrink)

We give an overview of the practice of developing and using complex climate models, as seen from experiences in a major climate modelling center and through participation in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. We discuss the construction and calibration of models; their evaluation, especially through use of out-of-sample tests; and their exploitation in multi-model ensembles to identify biases and make predictions. We stress that adequacy or utility of climate models is best assessed via their skill against more naïve predictions. The (...) framework we use for making inferences about reality using simulations is naturally Bayesian, and has many points of contact with more familiar examples of scientific epistemology. While the use of complex simulations in science is a development that changes much in how science is done in practice, we argue that the concepts being applied fit very much into traditional practices of the scientific method, albeit those more often associated with laboratory work. (shrink)

Deep ethical interpretivism has been the standard view of the nature of sport in the philosophy of sport for the past seventeen years or so. On this account excellence assumes the role of the foundational, ethical goal that justice assumes in Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivist model of law. However, since excellence in sports is not an ethical value, and since it should not be regarded as an ultimate goal, the case for the traditional account fails. It should be replaced by the (...) shallow interpretivist model that I begin to sketch out and defend here. (shrink)

My aim is to show that the accounts of depiction offered by Christopher Peacocke and Robert Hopkins assume rather than explain one of the central features of depiction. This feature is pictorial realism. It is a constraint upon any adequate theory of depiction that it be able to explain pictorial realism; however, Peacocke and Hopkins seek to meet this constraint by employing the notion of resemblance. I raise three problems with Peacocke's account and point out an error in Hopkins's use (...) of solid angles (upon which his notion of resemblance rests). It is suggested that while these theories must be rejected, there are various non-resemblance theories, including that proposed by Gombrich, which might prove adequate. (shrink)

Carl Jung has always lain at the edge of sociology's consciousness, despite the existence of a long-established Freudian tradition. Yet, over the years, a small number of sociological writers have considered Jung; one or two Jungian writers have considered sociology. The range of perspectives is quite wide: Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Levi-Strauss, feminism, mass society, postmodernism. These scattered writings, however, have had little cumulative impact and inspired little debate. The authors seem often not to have known of each other, while the (...) sociological mainstream has remained unmoved or unaware. This is the situation that this book seeks to change. Jung and Sociological Theory brings together a selection of articles and excerpts in a single volume, together with some writings from anthropology, and seeks to begin the task of critical evaluation. Presented in three parts, the book covers anthropology, sociology and an appraisal of Jung and sociological theory. Gavin Walker explores the relationship between Jung and sociology, asking what the writers included here wanted from Jung, how we should locate Jung on the sociological landscape, and how this might link to anthropology. In conclusion he suggests that sociology's problem with Jung is less that he is difficult to place, than that he compels sociology to face some of its own inconsistencies and evasions. Jung and Sociological Theory will be of interest to all academics and students working in the fields of Jungian studies, analytical psychology and psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, feminism, comparative religion and the history of ideas. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: The Teleological Conception of the Practicable Good Human Function The Final Account of Human Good Conclusions Acknowledgments Notes References Further reading.

In this article I seek to relate the psychology of Carl Jung to sociological theory, specifically Weber. I first present an outline of Jungian psychology. I then seek to relate this as psychology to Weber’s interpretivism. I point to basic methodological compatibilities within a Kantian frame, from which emerge central concerns with the factors limiting rationality. These generate the conceptual frameworks for parallel enquiries into the development and fate of rationality in cultural history. Religion is a major theme here: contrasts (...) of eastern and western religion; the rise of prophetic religion and the disenchantment of modernity. Weber’s categories ‘ascetic’ and ‘mystic’ seem applicable to his own and Jung’s approaches and indeed temperaments, while a shared ironic view of rationality leads to similar visions of the disenchanted modern world. I conclude that Jung is sociologically coherent, but in an entirely different sense from Freud: rather than a constellation of family, socialization, ideology, social continuity, there is an analysis of cultural history against a background of adult normal psychology. I conclude that sociology should acknowledge Jung, but not in terms of over-arching theory. Rather Jungian insights might be used to orient new enquiries, and for reflexive analysis of sociology’s methodological debates. (shrink)

The debate around labour power, and particularly regarding its status as the ‘most peculiar’ of commodities, has been widely revisited in contemporary Marxist thought and critical theory. This concept, which has often resurfaced in works by Negri, Spivak, Virno and numerous other contemporary thinkers, has a long prehistory in the work of Marx and subsequent Marxist theorists, perhaps most importantly in the work of Uno Kōzō, arguably the most influential and widely known Marxist thinker in modern Japan. Uno’s work, and (...) particularly his major theoretical works of the 1950s, developed an entirelogicalanalysis of the peculiar position of the labour-power commodity within capital’s drive, noting that this site marks the place wherein capital’slogical interiorand itshistorical exteriorinterpenetrate each other, generating a volatile force of excess at the core of capital’s supposedly smooth and pure circuit-process. By developing around this point an extensive theoretical discussion of its dynamics ofimpossibilityorirrationality, centred on a term –muri– that he raises to the level of a concept, Uno formulates a series of original theses in methodology, on the concept of population, and particularly around the figures of thelogicaland thehistoricalin the critical analysis of capitalism. Focusing in particular on this ‘impossibility’ ormurithat is nevertheless constantly ‘passing through’ the capital-relation, this essay investigates the entire range of Uno’s analysis, revealing not only a crucial thread of theoretical inquiry that remains contemporary for us today, but also another set of possibilities linking the critique of political economy to the renewal of revolutionary politics. (shrink)

Everyday surveillance work is increasingly performed by non-human algorithms. These entities can be conceptualised as machinic flâneurs that engage in distanciated flânerie: subjecting urban flows to a dispassionate, calculative and expansive gaze. This paper provides some theoretical reflections on the nascent forms of algorithmic practice materialising in two Australian cities, and some of their implications for urban relations and social justice. It looks at the idealisation – and operational black boxing – of automated watching programs, before considering their impacts on (...) notions such as ‘the right to the city’ and ‘the right to the face’. It will argue that the turn to facial recognition software for the purposes of automating urban governance reconstitutes the meanings and phenomenology of the face. In particular, the fleshly and communicative physicality of the face is reduced to a measurable object that can be identified by a virtualised referent and then consequently tracked. Moreover, the asymmetrical and faceless nature of these machinic programs of recognition unsettles conventional notions of civil inattention and bodily sovereignty, and the prioritisation given to pattern recognition renders them amenable to ideas/ideals from phrenology and physiognomy. In this way, algorithmic governance may generate not only forms of facial vulnerability and estrangement, but also facial artifice, where individuals come to develop tacit and artful ways of de-facing and re-facing in order to subvert the processes of recognition which leverage these modes of biopower. Thus, the datafication of urban governance gives rise to a dynamic biopolitics of the face. (shrink)

This book argues that understandings and explanations of religion are always historically contingent.

ABSTRACTBernard Suits and other formalists endorse both the logical incompatibility thesis and the view that rule-breakings resulting in penalties can be a legitimate part of a game. This is what Fred D’Agostino calls ‘the problem of penalties’. In this paper, I reject both Suits’ and D’Agostino’s responses to the problem and argue instead that the solution is to abandon Suits’ view that the constitutive rules of all games are alike. Whereas the logical incompatibility thesis applies to games in which players’ (...) actions are perfectly controlled, it does not apply to sports. This insight not only justifies the rejection of formalism as a theory about the nature of sport but it also helps explain the greater normative complexity of sports, which in turn leads to the idea that in sports ‘cheating’ should be interpreted as a genus. (shrink)

BackgroundThere are numerous ethical challenges that can impact patients and families in the health care setting. This paper reports on the results of a study conducted with a panel of clinical bioethicists in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the purpose of which was to identify the top ethical challenges facing patients and their families in health care. A modified Delphi study was conducted with twelve clinical bioethicist members of the Clinical Ethics Group of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. The (...) panel was asked the question, what do you think are the top ten ethical challenges that Canadians may face in health care? The panel was asked to rank the top ten ethical challenges throughout the Delphi process and consensus was reached after three rounds.DiscussionThe top challenge ranked by the group was disagreement between patients/families and health care professionals about treatment decisions. The second highest ranked challenge was waiting lists. The third ranked challenge was access to needed resources for the aged, chronically ill, and mentally ill.SummaryAlthough many of the challenges listed by the panel have received significant public attention, there has been very little attention paid to the top ranked challenge. We propose several steps that can be taken to help address this key challenge. (shrink)

While Freud and Heidegger were antipathetic towards one another’s ideas, a number of commentators have argued that the Freud–Heidegger relation is actually quite complementary. This paper contributes to this position by engaging with the relationship through the mediation of their respective views on the ‘origins’ of sexuality; a topic that is implicit to Freudian psychoanalytic theory and which is often taken to be absent from Heidegger’s, with the consequence that it has been ignored when bringing them into conversation. Having shown (...) that in the 1928 lecture course The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Heidegger does in fact address the question of sexuality in relation to the neutrality of Dasein outlined in the previous year’s Being and Time, I bring Freud and Heidegger into conversation on the question of the ‘origins’ of sexuality to suggest that there is a strong affinity between the two on this issue, insofar as both argue against any form of sexual essentialism by depending upon a processual ontology and affirming an originary sexual indeterminateness, which in the case of Freud takes the form of an initial bisexuality and in the case of Heidegger an ontological sexual neutrality, before concluding that, while Freud’s initial bisexuality forecloses sexuality within a binary framework, Heidegger’s notion of an ontological sexual neutrality does not, and so goes furthest in laying the ground for a rethinking of sexuality in non-essentialist, non-binary terms. (shrink)