Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference (...) between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse--all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism. A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. Toward a Philosophy of the Act will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

The essays assembled here are all very early and differ in a number of ways from Bakhtin's previously published work.

Nursing, a scientific and practical discipline, faces continuing challenges of finding new direction in order to decipher its core values and develop current ethical codes for nursing practice. In 2009–10, 28 nurses were purposely selected and interviewed using a semi-structured format in focus groups and individually. Thematic Content Analysis helped explore the perception of Iranian nurses on ethical values in patient care. Seven major themes emerged: respect for dignity, professional integrity, professional commitment, developing human relationships, justice, honesty, and promoting individuals (...) and the nursing profession. Iranian nurses revealed a unique and culture-based set of ethical values. This study found that Iranian nurses place a greater emphasis on preserving the dignity of those accompanying the patient and in showing regard for patients' religious beliefs in a gender appropriate environment. (shrink)

This volume is a newly revised and updated edition of _Evolution and Consciousness_ (Brill, 2019) and provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the emerging concept of the evolution of consciousness. It presents an overarching model that moves us to a new level of meaning and understanding of our place in the world.

The number of discriminable colours is often assumed to be of the order of several million but the extent of detectable chromatic diversity present in individual natural scenes is an open question. Here, the aim was to estimate the number of discriminable colours seen in natural scenes. Hyperspectral data were obtained from a set of natural scenes over the range 400 - 720 nm at 10 nm intervals (Nascimento et al, 2002 Journal of the Optical Society of America A 19 (...) 1484 - 1490) and the representation of each scene in CIELAB space computed for all pixels of the image. The number of discriminable colours was estimated by counting the number of unit volumes in the three-dimensional volume defined by the scene when represented in CIELAB space. We found that the number of discriminable colours estimated in a scene could vary by an order of magnitude from scene to scene, but rarely exceeded 105, indicating a limited chromatic diversity. (shrink)

Albinism in Tanzania causes fierce health-related stigma. Little research has focused on the impact of stigma reduction strategies aiming to reduce albinism related stigma. Therefore, this research assessed the impact of two short video interventions among high school students in Tanzania on their attitude towards people with albinism: a contact intervention (n = 95) and an education intervention (n = 97). A mixed method design was used. Directly before and after the interventions impact was measured among all participants through the (...) Albinism Social Distance Scale for Adolescents (ASDS-A), knowledge items, and entertainment items. After these measurements focus group discussions were conducted, 16 in total (n = 80). Both interventions caused a significant increase in the levels of correct knowledge about albinism. The education intervention entailed a significant positive change in attitude measured through the ASDS-A, whereas the contact intervention did not have a significant effect. In terms of entertainment value, the respondents were more enthusiastic about the contact intervention. The study suggests that education interventions on their own can be a successful tool in decreasing albinism related stigma. Additionally, qualitative findings show many positive outcomes for the contact intervention. Therefore, we would recommend using a combination of these two interventions, which has also proved successful in the past. However, more research on the effect of a combination of the two strategies is recommended. (shrink)

Next SectionOne of the major concerns about surrogacy is the potential harm that may be inflicted upon the surrogate mother and the child after relinquishment. Even if one were to take the liberal view that surrogacy should be presumptively allowed on the basis of autonomy and/or compassion, evidence of harm must be taken seriously. In this paper I review the evidence from psychological studies on the effect that relinquishing a child has on the surrogate mother and while it appears that (...) many surrogates are able to cope with relinquishment, I argue that there are good reasons, grounded in empirical evidence, to support the view that the subsequent management of the relinquishment necessarily objectifies the surrogate mother. (shrink)

En este este estudio presentamos una investigación sobre la genealogía de la razón de Estado y del golpe de Estado, según Michel Foucault. La genealogía de la razón gubernamental se desarrolló paralelamente a la comprensión científica del mundo, en los siglos XVI e XVII, como una realidad gobernada por leyes propias de la naturaleza. La genealogía de la razón de Estado incorporó los elementos “científicos” de la razón gubernamental como técnicas utilitarias para gobernar convenientemente un Estado, más allá del voluntarismo (...) del arbitrio del poder soberano. Foucault muestra en sus análisis genealógicos que el golpe de Estado fue concebido, ya en el siglo XVII, como una técnica gubernamental conveniente con la razón de Estado, cuyas tres principales características son: la necesidad, la violencia y la teatralidad. Palabras clave: Razón gubernamental. Razón de Estado. Golpe de Estado. Michel Foucault. (shrink)

LET ME BEGIN this inquiry with the simple but fundamental fact that the flow of time, or passage, as it is also known, is given in experience, that it is as indubitable an aspect of our perception of the world as the sights and sounds that come in upon us, even though it is not the peculiar property of a special sense. Consider, by way of illustration, that I am now sitting at the desk in my study. This particular event (...) was not present at any earlier time, nor will it be present shortly as I become involved in other activities. The present, as I experience it, is regularly associated with later and later events. It does not hop about capriciously from here to a later time, to a previous time, and then to a much later time, or trace out some other such indiscriminate pattern; instead I find it always in association with the next moment, and as I look backward and inward, so to speak, I find that the prior moment was present and that this next-later moment is present. Quite often this condition is expressed by means of imagery. We are asked to envision either a moving present racing along a fixed track of moments or events from earlier to later, or alternatively a fixed present through which stream a series of moments or events, first the earlier and then the later ones. One is in truth hard-pressed to find references to passage which do not employ quasi-poetical tropes and metaphors, and while these do help in some sense to say what we mean, great caution is required when handling them because of their ready tendency to draw us away from the actual phenomenon requiring explanation. (shrink)

In the long 20th century, modern China experienced perhaps the world’s most radical and systematic secularization process and the decimation of traditional religious and ritual cultures. This article seeks to account for this experience by engaging with postcolonial theory, a body of discourse seldom found relevant to China Studies. The article attempts a two-pronged critique of both state secularization and some aspects of existing Postcolonial Studies/theory. It shows the many ways in which nationalist elites in modern China unwittingly absorbed Western (...) Orientalist discourse even as their words and actions were ostensibly anti-colonial, and much of the article examines the consequences of this native Orientalism upon Chinese religiosities. Finally, the article suggests that one cannot discuss governmentality in modern China without understanding how it is intertwined with a sovereign power that is both archaic and, at the same time, has experienced renewal and expansion in modernity. (shrink)

AN inquiry into the use of paradeigma in the Iliad must begin with Niobe. At 24. 602 Achilles introduces Niobe in order to encourage Priam to have some food. The dead body of the best of Priam's sons has now been placed on the wagon ready for its journey back to Troy. Achilles says , ‘Now let us eat. For even Niobe ate food, and she had lost twelve children. Apollo and Artemis killed them all; they lay nine days in (...) their blood and there was no one to bury them, because Zeus had turned the people into stone. On the tenth day the gods buried them. But she managed to eat some food, when she was tired of weeping. And now among the mountains, although turned into stone, she still broods over her sorrows. But come, let us also eat. You can weep for your son again later’. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed to a (...) belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”. (shrink)

The literature on ethical behavior has called for studies that investigate the interaction between individual and contextual factors. This study examined whether moral identity interacts with ethical culture to predict unethical behavior at work and whether implicit and explicit moral identity affects unethical behavior distinctively. Our sample consisted of 238 participants who took part in an experiment involving an in-basket exercise that measured unethical behavior. Ethical culture was manipulated via a cover letter from a fictitious company’s CEO, and moral identity (...) was measured through a self-report scale and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Findings indicate that implicit and explicit moral identity were negatively associated with unethical behavior and that organizational culture moderated the relationship between moral identity and unethical behavior. The results have theoretical and practical implications for understanding the interaction of predictors of unethical behavior by combining automatic and deliberate measures of moral identity with ethical culture. (shrink)

В работе исследованы современные проблемы постнеклассической науки: сборка субъектов, особенности сборки сборки религиозного субъекта, модернизации государства, отдельные субъекты негативной диалектики.