In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipulation of stem cells, the idea that genes carry predetermined molecular programs or blueprints is pervasive. Yet new scientific discoveries—such as rna transcripts of single genes that can lead to the production of different compounds from the same pieces of dna—challenge the concept of the gene alone as the dominant factor in biological development. Increasingly aware of the tension between certain empirical results (...) and interpretations of those results based on the orthodox view of genetic determinism, a growing number of scientists urge a rethinking of what a gene is and how it works. In this collection, a group of internationally renowned scientists present some prominent alternative approaches to understanding the role of dna in the construction and function of biological organisms. Contributors discuss alternatives to the programmatic view of dna, including the developmental systems approach, methodical culturalism, the molecular process concept of the gene, the hermeneutic theory of description, and process structuralist biology. None of the approaches cast doubt on the notion that dna is tremendously important to biological life on earth; rather, contributors examine different ideas of how dna should be represented, evaluated, and explained. Just as ideas about genetic codes have reached far beyond the realm of science, the reconceptualizations of genetic theory in this volume have broad implications for ethics, philosophy, and the social sciences. Contributors. Thomas Bürglin, Brian C. Goodwin, James Griesemer, Paul Griffiths, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Evelyn Fox Keller, Gerd B. Müller, Eva M. Neumann-Held, Stuart A. Newman, Susan Oyama, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Sahotra Sarkar, Jackie Leach Scully, Gerry Webster, Ulrich Wolf. (shrink)

_Abstract_: As many theoretical psychologists turn to the humanities to construct a psychological science that does not shortchange human subjectivity, many humanities scholars have turned to the sciences to bolster their declining standing in the academy. In juxtaposing these trends, I consider how epistemic and methodological wars in the humanities echo those that have plagued psychology and so call into question their use to remedy an allegedly scientistic “mainstream” psychology. By failing to grapple with this most relevant controversy, theoretical psychologists (...) may be jeopardizing their efforts to put a more human face on scientific psychology. _Keywords_: Epistemic Wars; Scientism; Humanities; Psychology; Psychological Humanities _I conflitti epistemici nelle scienze umanistiche e il loro impiego teorico contro il presunto scientismo della psicologia_ _Riassunto_: Molti teorici della psicologia si rivolgono alle discipline umanistiche per costruire una scienza psicologica che non sottovaluti la soggettività umana, mentre molti studiosi attivi nel campo delle discipline umanistiche si rivolgono alle scienze per puntellare la loro autorità all’interno dell’accademia. Nel porre a confronto queste due linee di tendenza mostrerò come i conflitti epistemici e metodologici all’interno delle discipline umanistiche riecheggino quelli che hanno gravato sulla psicologia. A partire da qui metterò in discussione il loro uso per fare da correttivo a una presunta psicologia dominante che sarebbe troppo “scientistica”. Sottraendosi alla trattazione di questo problema, che è di estrema importanza, i teorici della psicologia rischiano di compromettere i loro sforzi volti a dare un volto più umano alla psicologia scientifica. _Parole chiave_: Conflitti epistemici; Scientismo; Scienze umane; Psicologia; Psychological Humanities. (shrink)

How have spokespersons for the positive psychology movement presented the movement to the public and to the profession of psychology? Moreover, what are the consequences for psychology of that presentation? These questions inform my assessment of the "virtues" of positive psychology, which I interpret in two ways. First, there are the ways in which the movement implicitly presents itself as virtuous, not least by constituting itself as a corrective to "negative psychology." Second, there are the ways in which Martin Seligman, (...) in calling for a new and discrete scientific enterprise, promotes building "signature strengths" as routes to virtue and thus "authentic happiness." Alternative ways to conceptualize virtue and authenticity are considered, as are the epistemic problems that inhere in movements in general, and the positive psychology movement in particular. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Do mainstream psychologists think critically? And are the many critiques of the mainstream made by its critics “on target”? Answering both questions requires consensus about what critical thinking consists in, and there seems to be little consensus in sight. I begin by accepting Slife, Yanchar, and Reber's claim that “rigorous thinking” itself is insufficient for critical thinking in and about psychology, and I then consider various suggestions made by critics of the mainstream about thematic assumptions that should be included in (...) critical thinking about the mainstream. After identifying three areas of mainstream research in which some of these assumptions seem to have been challenged from within the mainstream, I conclude by considering how both critique and metacritique may be combined, repositioned, and/or recontextualized, to advance the important cause of critical thinking in and about psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Katherine Morrison charges that in my book, Back to Reality, I failed to make my case for the adoption of a modest realism in postmodern (narrative) therapy, because I failed to establish the motive behind that movement’s adoption of antirealism. In fact, in Back to Reality, I put forth several reasons for therapists of all stripes to favor a modest realism over antirealism, reasons which do not depend upon the motives of narrative therapists, whatever they may be.Katherine Morrison prétend que (...) dans mon livre Back to Reality, je ne parviens pas à établir le bien-fonde d’une position qui adopte un réalisme modeste en thérapie (narrative) postmoderne, parce que je n’etablis pas les motifs qui se cachent derrière l’adoption de l’antiréalisme par ce mouvement. En fait, dans Back to Reality, j’énonce plusieurs raisons pour lesquelles les thérapeutes de toutes écolesdevraient préférer un réalisme modeste à I'antiréalisme. Ces raisons ne dépendent pas des motifs des thérapeutes narratifs, quels qu’ils soient. (shrink)

Katherine Morrison charges that in my book, Back to Reality, I failed to make my case for the adoption of a modest realism in postmodern (narrative) therapy, because I failed to establish the motive behind that movement’s adoption of antirealism. In fact, in Back to Reality, I put forth several reasons for therapists of all stripes to favor a modest realism over antirealism, reasons which do not depend upon the motives of narrative therapists, whatever they may be.Katherine Morrison prétend que (...) dans mon livre Back to Reality, je ne parviens pas à établir le bien-fonde d’une position qui adopte un réalisme modeste en thérapie (narrative) postmoderne, parce que je n’etablis pas les motifs qui se cachent derrière l’adoption de l’antiréalisme par ce mouvement. En fait, dans Back to Reality, j’énonce plusieurs raisons pour lesquelles les thérapeutes de toutes écolesdevraient préférer un réalisme modeste à I'antiréalisme. Ces raisons ne dépendent pas des motifs des thérapeutes narratifs, quels qu’ils soient. (shrink)

The discourse of postmodernism proclaims with a unified voice the context-dependence or knower-dependence, the relativity or subjectivity, of all truth claims. But the discourse of postmodernism also proclaims universal truths upon which this antirealist epistemology itself rests. These constitute the very foundational claims that the postmodernist campaign, in all of its alleged antifoundationalism, strives to subvert. In this article, the author considers 3 universal truth claims of PM discourse. And because the antirealism that defines much of PM discourse is often (...) grounded in the doctrine of social constructionism , the 3 truth claims under consideration constitute the claims of SC itself, especially the claims of SC as it has been propounded within postmodern therapy circles. Each of the 3 claims is articulated, and then followed by a critique which asks whether the claim is not either simply a variant of the so-called modernist paradigm that is under attack, or the product of the very observational/empirical powers that PM doctrine seeks to erode in its anti-empiricist spirit. Particular attention is give to challenging the value, found within postmodern circles, of a pragmatic or utilitarian standard for acceptance of theory or discourse. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

A good number of therapists have tumed to the antirealism of postmodern theory in general, and postmodern literary theory in particular, to justify their antitheoretical preferences. Does this turn make sense? Given what drives the antitheoretical agenda - the aspiration to individualize therapeutic practice so as to optimize each client’s unique potential for change - the answer is no. More specifically, I argue that it is the composition (i.e., the completeness) of the theoretical system that guides therapeutic practice, rather than (...) the therapist’s epistemological leanings, that does have considerable bearing on the recalcitrant problem of individualizing practice, otherwise known as the nomothetic/idiographic problem.Bon nombre de thérapeutes se sont toumés vers I’antiréalisme de la théorie postmoderne, en particulier de la théorie littéraire postmoderne, pour justifier leurs positions antithéoriques. Qu’en est-il de ce choix? Si l’on considère le moteur de l’idéologie antithéorique - à savoir l’aspiration à individualiser la pratique thérapeutique afin d’optimiser le potentiel de changement propre à chaque patient - il faut admettre qu’elle ne tient pas. De façon plus spécifique, je soutiens que c’est la composition (c’est-à-dire la complétude) du système théorique qui guide la pratique thérapeutique, non pas les inclinations épistémologiques du thérapeute, lesquelles ont par ailleurs une incidence considérable sur le problème tenace de I’individualisation de la pratique, connu aussi en tant que problème nomothétique/idiographique. (shrink)

Katherine Morrison charges that in my book, Back to Reality, I failed to make my case for the adoption of a modest realism in postmodern (narrative) therapy, because I failed to establish the motive behind that movement’s adoption of antirealism. In fact, in Back to Reality, I put forth several reasons for therapists of all stripes to favor a modest realism over antirealism, reasons which do not depend upon the motives of narrative therapists, whatever they may be.Katherine Morrison prétend que (...) dans mon livre Back to Reality, je ne parviens pas à établir le bien-fonde d’une position qui adopte un réalisme modeste en thérapie (narrative) postmoderne, parce que je n’etablis pas les motifs qui se cachent derrière l’adoption de l’antiréalisme par ce mouvement. En fait, dans Back to Reality, j’énonce plusieurs raisons pour lesquelles les thérapeutes de toutes écolesdevraient préférer un réalisme modeste à I'antiréalisme. Ces raisons ne dépendent pas des motifs des thérapeutes narratifs, quels qu’ils soient. (shrink)

Rationality or reason, traditionally conceived as a universal, essential human faculty, is out of favor these days. Its defenders are few, compared to its many challengers. The challengers are not those who lament the decline of reason but rather those who express an egalitarian impulse, in their determination to refute universal, essential ideals of reason. These challengers are a diverse lot and sometimes prefer to speak instead of “rationalities” , or what Shweder called “divergent rationalities.” This paper considers the question (...) whether this trend toward divergent rationalities is itself reasonable. To answer this question, the paper begins with some standard definitions of rationality or reason, on the understanding that any such standard is what stands in question. This is followed by recent work of Evnine that demonstrates just how our personhood logically entails universal epistemic “dimensions,” some of which are normative, rational dimensions. Evidence that Nisbett and Shweder muster to challenge a universal rationality is then considered, ending with a defense of just that which is challenged. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

As one of the most important ethicists to emerge since the Second World War, Alan Gewirth continues to influence philosophical debates concerning morality. In this ground-breaking book, Gewirth's neo-Kantianism, and the communitarian problems discussed, form a dialogue on the foundation of moral theory. Themes of agent-centered constraints, the formal structure of theories, and the relationship between freedom and duty are examined along with such new perspectives as feminism, the Stoics, and Sartre. Gewirth offers a picture of the philosopher's theory and (...) its applications, providing a richer, more complete critical assessement than any which has occurred to date. (shrink)

How does thinking affect doing? There is a widely held view that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. Once you have acquired the ability to putt a golf ball, play an arpeggio on the piano, or parallel-park, reflecting on your actions leads to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis--that's what is widely believed. But is it true? After exploring some of the contemporary and historical manifestations of the idea, Barbara Gail (...) Montero develops a theory of expertise which emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action. She aims to dispel various myths about experts who proceed without any understanding of what guides their action, and she analyzes research in both philosophy and psychology that is taken to show that conscious control and explicit monitoring of one's movements impedes well practiced skills. Montero explores a wide range of real-life examples of optimal performance, in sports, the performing arts, healthcare, the military, and other fields, and draws from psychology, neuroscience, and literature to offer a refreshing and persuasive view of expertise, according to which expert action generally is and ought to be thoughtful, effortful, and reflective. (shrink)

The standard Kratzerian analysis of modal auxiliaries, such as ‘may’ and ‘can’, takes them to be univocal and context-sensitive. Our first aim is to argue for an alternative view, on which such expressions are polysemous. Our second aim is to thereby shed light on the distinction between semantic context-sensitivity and polysemy. To achieve these aims, we examine the mechanisms of polysemy and context-sensitivity and provide criteria with which they can be held apart. We apply the criteria to modal auxiliaries (...) and show that the default hypothesis should be that they are polysemous, and not merely context-sensitive. We then respond to arguments against modal ambiguity. Finally, we show why modal polysemy has significant philosophical implications. (shrink)

This essay develops its idiosyncrasy by concentrating primarily on the trend of body hacking. The practitioners, self-defined as body hackers, self-made cyborgs or grinders, work in different ways to develop functional and physiological modifications through the contributions of technology. Their goal is to develop by themselves an empirically man-technique fusion. These dynamic “scientific” subcultures are producing astonishing innovations. From pocket-sized kits that sample human DNA, microchip implants that keep tabs on our internal organs, blood sugar levels or moods, and even (...) 3D printers that produce tailored hip replacements, the technical innovations of the body hacking trend are beginning to filter into mainstream use, and the repertoire increases every day. These physical transformations with intersecting techniques actively challenge long-held normative beliefs about what bodies do, what they should look like and how they should behave. They provide an alternative discourse on man’s correlation with the world and its biocenosis. Sculpting oneself has become an existential data. Medical technoscience crystallizes the effectiveness of new powers over the organism. Scientific temptation to recreate and enhance the human according to its normative principles has brought up experimental practices that have become the edge of a radical activism operating in the core of western societies, which will be the theme of this paper. (shrink)

The phrase "natural kind term" has come into the linguistic and philosophical literature in connection with well-known work of Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1970, 1975a). I use that phrase here in the sense it has acquired from those and subseqnent works on related topics. This is not the transparent sense of the phrase. That is, if I am right in what follows there are words for kinds of things existing in nature which are not natural kind terms in the current (...) sense - e.g. planet, woman, and weed. I use the term "nondescriptional", following Salmon (1981), to mean "lacking a Fregean sense", where a Fregean sense is taken to be a property or group of properties semantically associated with an expression which determines its denotation. I hope that the term "nondescriptional" will be clarified in subsequent discussion, but perhaps a few words about it and its opposite, "descriptional", would be useful here. These terms (as Salmon notes (p.15, n. 11)) should be taken as technical terms. The idea is that descriptional words, of which bachelor is the overwhelmingly favorite example, express a semantic content, or sense, which is what mediates their denotation. Entities fall in their denotation in virtue of possessing the property or properties expressed as their sense. (It is not necessary, however, that this sense be as easily paraphrasable with descriptive synonyms as it is typically held to be in the case of bachelor, or even that it be paraphrasable at all.) In the case of nondescriptional words there is no Fregean sense to mediate the link between word and object. Hence such terms are described by what Salmon, following Kaplan, calls "the theory of direct reference". What it is that does associate such terms with their denotations is another question which will be touched on briefly at the end. I have several aims in this paper. The first is to defend a conservative position on nondescriptionality. I will argue that relatively few natural language words have this property. My other aims are primarily clarificatory. Among the issues I would like to clarify are those connected with the determination of this property and flae explanation of why it exists, its relationship with other properties such as rigid designation and essentiality, and its significance for lexical semantics. The organization of the paper is as follows. The first section identifies the position taken here on the question of which expressions are nondescriptional and provides a general defense of it. The second section is a critical examination of criteria associated with nondescriptionality. In the third section provide further defense for the conservative position, and in the fourth section we turn to related issues in lexical semantics. (shrink)

This paper proposes an approach to narrative deixis which offers a coherent analysis of the respective roles of proximal and distal deictic expressions. The paper starts by arguing that fictional narratives require an approach to deixis which modifies a number of broadly held assumptions, especially as regards the interaction between tense and other deictic forms. It then considers the widely discussed instance of the temporal adverb now in the context of Past Tense. The second part of the paper gives (...) special focus to demonstratives in narrative fiction, showing their role in temporal construals. It argues that both temporal and demonstrative expressions are primarily used to serve narrative viewpoint construction. Examples from several novels are then used to show how the proximal and distal choices of demonstratives, temporal adverbs and locative adverbs structure narrative viewpoint, including narrative representation of character experience. The paper concludes by proposing that in the context of fictional narratives the proximal/distal contrast is more relevant to meaning emergence than individual aspects of deixis, and that the construal of time can be achieved through the whole spectrum of deictic forms, not just tense and temporal adverbs such as now and then. (shrink)

Most literature about vaccine hesitancy has been focused on parental attitudes. Less attention has been devoted to both scientists and experts who raise criticism about immunization policies and intervene in the public debate. This consideration aims to balance the current emphasis in the literature on parents’ attitudes about vaccination, offering a complementary angle to reframe and widen the controversy. Focusing on scientists and experts, an unattended complex picture of multiple attitudes towards vaccines and vaccinations has been discovered through a qualitative (...) content analysis of texts related to the harsh public debate, held between March 2017 and November 2018, triggered by the legislative proposal of making ten vaccinations mandatory for children. Unlike oversemplications that misleading dichotomies reproduce, the analysis reveals nine different positions along the continuum of immunisation attitudes, ranging from radical acceptance of vaccinations to radical rejection, which constitute a fuzzy set. Consequently, a twofold reality emerges: on the surface, the conflict seems between pro-vaxxers versus hesitant, pro-choice and anti-vaxxers; beneath it is amid standardized versus a varieties of contextual and personalised approaches to health. (shrink)

It has been a commonplace from the beginnings of philosophical thought that what distinguishes humans from other species is the ability to reason; reason- ing is held to be an essential characteristic of the species and one that is unique to it. The essence condition requires that all humans possess at least the capacity for reasoning and that it be exercised in many of the ordinary cases of acquiring beliefs. And uniqueness entails that non-humans cannot reason, no matter how (...) much their behavior resembles that of humans. I think that a certain specific model of reasoning has been presupposed by proponents of these claims. And there are grounds to believe that this model is inaccurate in essential respects: if reasoning does correspond to it, then few human beliefs are acquired through reason. However, given a more accurate description of what goes on in normal human reasoning, it is no longer plausible to think that only humans reason. So either the essence or the uniqueness claim must be given up. In this paper I argue for the second option. (shrink)

One of the widely accepted and quite influential conclusions of modern Anglo-American philosophy is that there is no sharp distinction between analytic truths and statements that are true only [by] virtue of the facts; what had been called analytic truths in earlier work, it is alleged, are simply expressions of deeply held belief. This conclusion seems quite erroneous. There is no fact about the world that I could discover that would convince me that you persuaded John to go to (...) college even though he never intended or decided to go to college; nor is there any fact of experience even relevant to the judgment that you failed to persuade him if he never intended or decided to go to college. The relation between persuade] and intend] or decide][1] is one of conceptual structure, independent of experience--though experience is necessary to determine which labels a particular language uses for the concepts that enter into such relations. The philosophical debate over these matters has been misleading because it has focused on very simple examples, examples involving words that lack the relational structure of such terms as chase and persuade. Thus there is much debate over whether the statement "cats are animals" is a truth of meaning or of fact (if we discovered that what we call cats are really robots controlled by Martians, would the sentence "Cats are animals" now be considered false, or would we conclude that what we have called cats are not really cats?). In such cases a decision is not easy to reach, but in others it seems quite straightforward. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Innova dies nostros, sicut a principio:Novelty and Nostalgia in Thomas of Celano's First and Second Lives of St. FrancisBarbara Newman (bio)IntroductionIn his sixth-century compendium of hagiography, Gregory of Tours argued that one should always speak of the vita patrum or vita sanctorum in the singular. According to Pliny, he noted, grammarians did not believe the noun vita had a plural. More to the point, although "there is a diversity (...) of merits and virtues among [the saints], … the one life of the body sustains them all in this world."1 Just as the Church, the body of Christ, is one, so too the saints. Their project of imitatio Christi re-presents the one and only life of Christ for each new generation. As a literary genre, hagiography fleshes out this insight, for no other genre is so steeped in self-citation. Every vita is such a tissue of biblical verses that, to edit a saint's Life before Google, one had to know Scripture by heart or spend endless hours with a concordance. After the Bible, quotations from a few classic vitae were constantly recycled: Athanasius' Life of St. Antony, Sulpicius Severus' Life of St. Martin, Gregory the Great's Life of St. Benedict. With the passage of time, newer classics joined older ones to produce one vast, self-referential monument, incarnate in the Acta Sanctorum: Gregory's vita sanctorum multiplied ad infinitum. So deep did this tendency run that, when an obscure saint needed a vita to justify a cult, shameless hagiographers would plagiarize whole paragraphs, plundering stories and miracles from earlier vitae to serve their turn.2 [End Page 169]It is small wonder, then, that the hagiographic genre is so often characterized as "traditional" or "conservative." It is nostalgic, too, in the sense that each saint's words and deeds bring a glorious Golden Age back to life—most often the apostolic age or the time of the Desert Fathers, but sometimes the graced beginnings of a religious order. Such memorials enabled later generations to idealize their glorious founders. This tendency to exalt the new as a renovation of the old has deep roots in Christianity; even the evangelist Matthew systematically represents Jesus as a new Moses. In the same vein, it is not unusual to find a saint identified as a new Jacob or a second David. On the other hand, many saints' Lives make an insistent claim to newness, renovatio. For the saints were, and are, extraordinary—not merely good men and women, but radical figures whose words and deeds shocked those around them, beginning with their parents. Like Jesus, they had not only admirers, but detractors in plenty. If their publicists held them up as exemplars of virtue, theirs was no ordinary kind, for the heroic virtue that gave saints their charisma could look much like madness. Despite the precedents of earlier vitae, their ascetic feats and challenging behavior often struck observers as new and unheard-of. In hagiography, therefore, claims of novelty play a key role that balances the familiar topoi. Sometimes the newness of a saint's charism is cause for joyful celebration. Jesus, after all, had declared ecce nova facio omnia (Rev 21:5). But "novelties" also had to be handled with care, for they could easily be condemned as heresies or extreme practices deviating from the tradition of the elders.This tension between novelty and nostalgia emerges most clearly in the vitae of saints who founded genuinely new forms of religious life. In this paper I will explore the way it plays out in two early Lives of Francis of Assisi, perhaps the most popular saint of all time. After his death in 1226, Francis set a speed record for canonization—one that would be surpassed in the Middle Ages only by his disciple, St. Anthony of Padua, and by the Dominican martyr Peter of Verona.3 Aside from his charisma and the exponential growth of the Franciscan Order, the fast-track canonization is due to Pope Gregory IX, who as Cardinal Hugolino had been personally close to Francis and supported his movement. For the ceremony in July 1228, less than two years after the... (shrink)

This essay is aimed at those moral philosophers who recognize a certain category of negative moral rights, but refuse to recognize a similar category of positive moral rights. That category consists of moral rights normally held by human beings. Such rights may be called "natural moral rights." -/- My thesis is that if there is a natural negative right not to be killed, then -- contra Thomson, Nozick and others -- there must be at least one natural positive right, (...) which might be called a "right not to be allowed to die.". (shrink)

In various works, Mark Greenberg has positioned himself as an important critic of legal positivism. He has made a transcendental attack on a metaphysical position that some notable legal positivists have held -- namely, that law is ultimately grounded in social facts. He has pressed legal positivism at a point of perceived vulnerability – the failure of such positivists to develop and defend a compelling theory of legal content. Moreover, in his Moral Impact Theory of law, he preserves a (...) necessary connection between legal obligations and good reasons for action that is absent in legal positivism. This last point may seem particularly attractive, even to those with positivist sympathies. One of his arguments against legal positivism relies heavily on what he calls "the bindingness hypothesis"—namely, the claim that it is part of the “nature of law” that it is “supposed to operate” so as to “arrange matters” to “reliably ensure” that its legal obligations are genuinely, all-things-considered, binding. I argue that Greenberg’s defense of the bindingness hypothesis fails. I attack two other defenses he raises for the Moral Impact theory: the assertion that the Moral Impact Theory makes it easy to account for our concern with law, with the implication that legal positivism cannot so easily account for that concern; and the claim that his Moral Impact Theory fits appellate practice better than some views. I show that these the arguments for the Moral Impact Theory are inadequate. In response to Greenberg’s further argument that the Moral Impact Theory rescues the idea of legal obligation as genuine obligation, I argue that the Moral Impact Theory does so at a very steep price – one that is not worth paying. (shrink)

In 2005, seven European countries signed the so-called Prüm Treaty to increase transnational collaboration in combating international crime, terrorism and illegal immigration. Three years later, the Treaty was adopted into EU law. EU member countries were now obliged to have systems in place to allow authorities of other member states access to nationally held data on DNA, fingerprints, and vehicles by August 2011. In this paper, we discuss the conditions of possibility for the Prüm network to emerge, and argue (...) that rather than a linear ascent towards technological and political convergence and harmonisation, the story of Prüm is heterogeneous and halting. This is reflected also in the early stages of implementing the Prüm Decision which has proven to be more challenging than it was hoped by the drivers of the Prüm process. In this sense, the Prüm network sits uncomfortably with success stories of forensic science . Instead of telling a story of heroic science, the story of Prüm articulates the European dream: one in which goods, services, and people live and travel freely and securely. (shrink)

Aboriginal communities in Australia are exiles in their own country and are becoming prorgessively more like domestic refugees. As in the case of refugee camps they are not only subjects to constant harassment from agents of various Australian governmental organizations, but also by forces or representatives of the global market. Faced with globalization, Aborigines experience, hybrid articulations between modern technology and a nomadic lifestyle on a daily basis. Nevertheless, their local situation – which is the result of two centuries of (...) colonial history, remains dramatic. The hardship of their situation often culminates in violent and tragic events, as at Palm Island where riots broke out following the death of an Aborigine held in detention. Such events have the effect of polarizing relations between Australian society and Aboriginal communities. Why is it that Aborigines who remain with their communities and Aborigines who left both experience the same desolation today ? In order to answer this question – which concerns all the Indigenous people in Austrlia and beyond, it is necessary to employ the perspective of an anthropology of disaster survival, not in the sense of an aesthetic of misfortune and « bare life », but as an ethics of hope. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose some philosophical reflections arising from the encounter with a work of art, namely the Squatting Aphrodite, which is one of the Roman copies that is held in the same room as the Venus de Milo in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. From the description of this artwork and the effect it has on the spectator, I draw three main consequences: the conceptual difference between ordinary sensibility and everyday aesthetics; the criticism of aesthetic conformity, (...) and the political implications of adopting an ordinary perspective towards aesthetic experience. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose some philosophical reflections arising from the encounter with a work of art, namely the _Squatting Aphrodite_, which is one of the Roman copies that is held in the same room as the _Venus de Milo _in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. From the description of this artwork and the effect it has on the spectator, I draw three main consequences: the conceptual difference between ordinary sensibility and everyday aesthetics; the criticism of aesthetic conformity, (...) and the political implications of adopting an ordinary perspective towards aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Intellectual property rights present an increasingly important challenge to social ethicists. An analysis of ethical issues raised by TRIPS—the international agreement protecting intellectual property rights—can illuminate an insufficiently acknowledged shift in Catholic thought about property rights. Vatican statements on AIDS drugs are one example of how intellectual property policies can be held accountable to the "option for the poor" and the common good.

The ancient history of flamenco is pure hypothesis, partly owing to the “ Dark Ages “ which shrouded the folk expression of a large portion of Andalusia from soon after the victory of the Catholic Kings at Granada in 1492 until the emancipation laws of Charles III in 1783. Although flamenco as such is a product of the nineteenth century, the hypothesis may be taken right back to pre-Iberian days when there was a flourishing civilization in the south of Spain, (...) with its capital, Tartessos, more or less where Seville—or Cadiz—is now, perhaps the first Empire in the West. The Iberians inhabited the north and the east but the towns along the Andalusian coast were founded by Phoenicians from Tyre (Cadiz) and Phocaeans from Asia Minor (Málaga). During the Celtic invasions the south was held by Carthage until Andalusia finally became Roman as a result of the Punic wars. (shrink)

Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color is the outcome of a workshop, held in Leuven, Belgium, in May 2000.

Despite the popularity of teams in universities and modern organizations, they are often held back by dishonest actions, social loafing being one of them. Social loafers hide in the crowd and contribute less to the pooled effort of a team, which leads to an unfair division of work. While previous studies have mostly delved into the factors related to the task or the group in an attempt to explain social loafing, this study will instead focus on individual factors. Accordingly, (...) the aim is to investigate the determinants of social loafing attitudes, namely moral meaningfulness and mindfulness in a university setting. We further examine the relationship between attitudes and intentions and introduce the moderating role of motivation in the attitude–intention link. The findings from a sample of 319 business students reveal that both mindfulness and moral meaningfulness are negatively related to loafing attitudes, while attitudes positively predict social loafing intentions. In addition, we find that extrinsic motivation strengthens the relationship between social loafing attitudes and intentions. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is first to emphasize the proximity of the approaches of these two philosophers starting from their common critique of Husserlian subjectivism. By basing the phenomenality of the world on a sphere of immanence constituted by lived experience, Husserl accounts for appearing [l’apparaître] starting from a certain appearing [apparaissant] and thus falls into a form of circularity, the same one that is at work when the natural attitude makes appearing rest on an objective appearing. The aim (...) of these two authors is then to overcome this deeper and more secret version of the natural attitude by freeing the transcendence of the world from every form of objectivity and freeing the existence of the subject from every form of immanence. It is on this sole condition that the autonomy of the phenomenal field can be guaranteed. However, the dynamic approach to the subject in Patočka, which itself leads to a determination of the world as becoming, allows him to account for the chiasm that Merleau-Ponty put forward at the end of his life without managing to ground it, since he held to an insufficient characterization of existence in terms of flesh. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is first to emphasize the proximity of the approaches of these two philosophers starting from their common critique of Husserlian subjectivism. By basing the phenomenality of the world on a sphere of immanence constituted by lived experience, Husserl accounts for appearing [l’apparaître] starting from a certain appearing [apparaissant] and thus falls into a form of circularity, the same one that is at work when the natural attitude makes appearing rest on an objective appearing. The aim (...) of these two authors is then to overcome this deeper and more secret version of the natural attitude by freeing the transcendence of the world from every form of objectivity and freeing the existence of the subject from every form of immanence. It is on this sole condition that the autonomy of the phenomenal field can be guaranteed. However, the dynamic approach to the subject in Patočka, which itself leads to a determination of the world as becoming, allows him to account for the chiasm that Merleau-Ponty put forward at the end of his life without managing to ground it, since he held to an insufficient characterization of existence in terms of flesh. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophistics, Rhetorics, and Performance; or, How to Really Do Things with WordsBarbara CassinTranslated by Andrew Goffey"How to do things with words?" How can you really do things with nothing but words? It seems to me that sophistics is in a way the paradigm of discourse that does things with words. Doubtless it is not a "performative" in Austin's sense of the word, although Austin's sense varies considerably in extension (...) and intension. But it is for real a discourse that operates, that transforms or creates the world, and has what I call a "world effect."Making the connection with performativity is all the more tempting, as epideixis, the word that serves in Plato to designate sophist discourse, cannot be rendered better than by "performance," on condition that "performance" is also understood in the sense of contemporary aesthetics as a "happening," an "event," an improvisation that requires engagement (Gorgias is the inventor of discourse ex tempore, according to Philostratus)—something like an "exploit."1"Performative" is Austin's own invention, acclimated to French by Austin himself at a colloquium held at Royaumont (Austin 1962); thereafter it was immediately adopted and popularized by Émile Benveniste (1966). "Performance" is a much older term, which, after ceaseless borrowings to and fro between English and French, has seen its meaning shifted and extended accordingly. Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of English Language (Klein 1971) maintains that in English "performer" [End Page 349] was coined from Old French parfournir (from medieval Latin perfurnire) and/or parformer; in addition French borrowed the term at least three times, if the Dictionnaire culturel de la langue francaise (Rey 2005) is to be believed: in 1869, by analogy with the vocabulary of horse races to mean the "manner of developing a subject, of executing a work in public"; in 1953, to denote "individual result in the accomplishment of a task"; and in 1963, in the wake of Chomsky, to mean the opposite of "competence." In sum, the word is a fluid, bilingual term that bridges sport (performance in the sense of a record), technique (performance in the sense of the output of a machine), psychology (performance of a test), linguistics (performance/competence), and modern art (performance in the sense of happening).Let us start with the relationship between performance and performative. It is a way to interrogate the status of rhetorics, for which Austin, without naming it, reserves a somewhat unstable place between the "locutionary" on the one hand and the "illocutionary" or performative on the other, calling it the "perlocutionary" ("per" precisely as in "performative").2But it is not of Austin that I will speak. Austin is simply the contemporary frame of reference that informs us today: he "invented" the performative as such for us, by trying to isolate it. And he never hides the difficulty, the permeability, of his taxonomy. Just one citation is enough to show the difficulty. In the seventh lecture of the twelve that make up How to Do Things with Words (quite late then) he writes: "It is time [...] to make a fresh start on the problem. We want to reconsider more generally the senses in which to say something may be to do something, or in saying something we do something (and also perhaps to consider the different case in which by saying something we do something). Perhaps some clarification and definition may help us out of our tangle. For after all, 'doing something' is a very vague expression. When we issue any utterance whatsoever, are we not 'doing something'?" (1975, 91–92).In the framework of the generalized theory of speech acts, the difference between the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary has for a long time been in a "tangle". It is not so easy to differentiate between the three. All three are, precisely, "acts" of language, and without doubt the categories are at once abstract, slippery, and overlapping. The "locutionary" or "constative," a "normal" statement, is an utterance that "says something"; it is an "act of saying something" (1975, 100): "The cat is on the mat" has a meaning (both a "sense" and a "reference") and is susceptible of being either true or false. For... (shrink)

Background: Although attention to healthcare ethics in rural areas has increased, specific focus on rural palliative care is still largely under-studied and under-theorized. The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the values informing good palliative care from rural individuals' perspectives. Methods: We conducted a qualitative ethnographic study in four rural communities in Western Canada. Each community had a population of 10, 000 or less and was located at least a three hour travelling distance by car (...) from a specialist palliative care treatment centre. Data were collected over a 2-year period and included 95 interviews, 51 days of field work and 74 hours of direct participant observation where the researchers accompanied rural healthcare providers. Data were analyzed inductively to identify the most prevalent thematic values, and then coded using NVivo. Results: This study illuminated the core values of knowing and being known, being present and available, and community and mutuality that provide the foundation for ethically good rural palliative care. These values were congruent across the study communities and across the stakeholders involved in rural palliative care. Although these were highly prized values, each came with a corresponding ethical tension. Being known often resulted in a loss of privacy. Being available and present created a high degree of expectation and potential caregiver strain. The values of community and mutuality created entitlement issues, presenting daunting challenges for coordinated change. Conclusions: The values identified in this study offer the opportunity to better understand common ethical tensions that arise in rural healthcare and key differences between rural and urban palliative care. In particular, these values shed light on problematic health system and health policy changes. When initiatives violate deeply held values and hard won rural capacity to address the needs of their dying members is undermined, there are long lasting negative consequences. The social fabric of rural life is frayed. These findings offer one way to re-conceptualize healthcare decision making through consideration of critical values to support ethically good palliative care in rural settings. (shrink)

The positioning of theory in relation to educational practice has provoked much recent debate, with some arguing that educational theory constrains thinking in education, while others dismiss ‘theory’ out of hand as belonging to the world of the ‘academic’, abstracted from the ‘realities’ of the classroom. This paper views theory as necessarily implicated in all practices, but argues that depending on the theories embraced, and the understanding of theory itself, education can be understood in very different ways. Resisting the separation (...) of theory from practice, the paper takes up the call to consider the entanglement of theory with practice, or how theory matters. It takes formative assessment as a particularly fertile case for this discussion. Formative assessment has been considerably developed in schooling across different national education systems. Its aspiration is for assessment to support learning, rather than only to credentialise learning. Having first emerged as a concept when behaviourism held sway, it has been considered through different theoretical lenses. Drawing upon empirical studies of classroom assessment practices, the paper draws out the different ‘mattering’ implicated in the different languages of assessment used by practitioners, raising questions about the practices this produced. The paper concludes by asking if formative assessment could become ‘educational’ in a more radical sense, if opportunities to focus on the contingencies and politics of our meaning-making were sometimes taken up more openly and dialogically with students, as opposed to formative assessment sitting in a instrumental relationship to a given curriculum. (shrink)

Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) provide up to 80% of the direct care to older adults in long‐term care facilities. CNAs are perceived as being at the bottom of the hierarchy among healthcare professionals often negatively affecting their job satisfaction. However, many CNAs persevere in providing quality care and even reporting high levels of job satisfaction. The aim of the present investigation was to identify primary themes that may help CNAs make meaning of their chosen career; thus potentially partially explaining increases (...) in job satisfaction among this group. Focus groups were conducted with CNAs at three long‐term care facilities. Four themes emerged from the data: CNA work is good or special; CNA as relationship builder; CNA as expert; CNA as team member. These themes reflect the perceptions that these CNAs held in regard to themselves and their relationships to others in the work environment and, when present, can contribute to intrinsic job satisfaction. Our meaning‐making themes support the premise that CNAs do not passively accept the evaluations of others but instead actively frame identities that validate their importance to residents and the institution. (shrink)

Cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) can produce benefits at individual, organizational, sectoral and societal levels. In this article, we argue that the distribution of benefits depends in part on the cognitive frames held by partnership participants. Based on Selsky and Parker's (J Manage 31(6):849-873, 2005) review of CSSPs, we identify three analytic "platforms" for social partnerships — the resource-dependence platform, the social-issue platform, and the societal-sector platform. We situate platforms as prospective sensemaking devices that help project managers make sense of (...) partnerships by calling attention to certain desired features or downplaying other features. We describe the three platforms and contrast them on factors that influence social benefit, including orientation, learning, and power. We provide illustrations of each platform and demonstrate how the choice of platform is consequential for practice, such as how a partnership project gets started, evolves and produces social benefits. (shrink)

The joint effort by the U.S. government and the political elite of Puerto Rico to industrialize the island created increased demand for female labor and a decline in the number of jobs traditionally held by men. The authors examine whether women's labor force participation in the formal sector responds to improving opportunities for women, declining opportunities for men, or the household's changing opportunity structures. Specifically, they examine a woman's return to work after the birth of her first child as (...) the initial point of conflict between productive and reproductive work. The data used in these analyses are from the 1982 Puerto Rican Fertility and Family Planning Assessment, an islandwide, representative sample of never-married and ever-married women between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine. The authors estimate a series of nested logistic regression models to evaluate the influence of occupational expansion or contraction on the timing of return to work after the first birth. Their findings offer selective support for the idea that women's lives are affected primarily by the occurrence of growing labor demand for women's labor. (shrink)

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants (...) tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

Research, innovation, and progress in the life sciences are increasingly contingent on access to large quantities of data. This is one of the key premises behind the “open science” movement and the global calls for fostering the sharing of personal data, datasets, and research results. This paper reports on the outcomes of discussions by the panel “Open science, data sharing and solidarity: who benefits?” held at the 2021 Biennial conference of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social (...) Studies of Biology, and hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. (shrink)

Recent ideological positioning on the world stage has born a startling resemblance to a form of positioning within nursing theory – that of taking complex ideas, reducing them to a simplistic binary form, and uncritically adopting one half of that form. In some cases, this adoption of a binary position has led to a passionately held form of ‘othering’ that prohibits a healthy and critical engagement with ideas. As alluring as settling for the binary form may be – we (...) argue for holding binaries in tension as a catalyst for stimulating dialogue – reasoning and exploration of new ways of wrestling with the social and moral complexity of nursing. (shrink)

In recent years, policy?makers in England, Australia and other countries have called for measures to increase male recruitment to the teaching profession, particularly to the primary sector. This policy of targeted recruitment is predicated upon a number of unexamined assumptions about the benefits of matching teachers and pupils by gender. For example, it is held that the dearth of male ?role models? in schools continues to have an adverse effect on boys? academic motivation and engagement. Utilizing data from interviews (...) with more than 300 7? to 8?year?olds attending primary schools in the north?east and south?east of England, the paper sets out to scrutinize these claims. The findings revealed that the gender of teachers had little apparent effect on the academic motivation and engagement of either boys or girls. For the majority of the children, the gender of the teacher was largely immaterial. They valued teachers, whether men or women, who were consistent and even?handed and supportive of them as learners. (shrink)

Some psychologists have recently tried to develop new approaches to psychology incompatible with both natural-science views of the discipline and basic tenets of postmodernism. In her new book on psychology’s interpretative turn, Barbara Held refers to these thinkers as "middleground theorists" or MGTs. Most of the MGTs reject psychological laws, defend free choice and agency, stress the role of values in psychological inquiry, and argue for a hermeneutical methodology. Some reject scientific realism and embrace epistemological relativism. Both (...) class='Hi'>Held and I express doubts about some of these views. (shrink)

A major philosophical mind in his day, William Paley wrote in a lucid style that made complex ideas more accessible to a wide readership. This work, first published in 1785, was based on the lectures he gave on moral philosophy at Christ's College, Cambridge. Cited in parliamentary debates and remaining on the syllabus at Cambridge into the twentieth century, it stands as one of the most influential texts to emerge from the Enlightenment period in Britain. An orthodox theologian, grounding his (...) utilitarian ethics in strong religious faith, Paley held notably progressive views on issues of toleration and the slave trade. His perspicuity prompted one contemporary to remark that the book 'presents a subject which has always been considered as harsh and difficult, in the most agreeable and intelligible form … we sit down to be informed of our duty, and are surprised to meet with amusement'. (shrink)

Some of the series' finest lectures have been lost for many years, unavailable to the public in any form -- until now.