Procedure manuals and textually mediated deathThe procedure manual as a document represents the practice of nursing care. Analysis of such manuals allows us to explore discourses of nursing and the ways in which they frame nursing practice. A critical analysis of a hospital procedure manual using discourse analysis was undertaken. A specific excerpt concerning ‘Last offices’ is used as an example of the institutionalisation of organisational values and beliefs as these influence nursing care. ‘Last offices’ directs nursing practices related to (...) the death of a patient, and the laying out as preparation for the funeral director or coroner. The analysis shows that procedure manuals reproduce hegemonic ideologies of nursing. The analysis also shows how nursing practices are constituted by intersecting forces of differing locations such as the hospital as an organisation, the healthcare system and the wider society within which these function. (shrink)

The New Beginning Movement (NBM) (1971–1978) in Trinidad functioned as a voice of direct democracy and workers self-management through popular assemblies, and as a global coordinating council of a Pan-Caribbean International with linkages across the region, in Britain, the United States, and Canada. A crucial philosophical and strategic leaven in the 1970 Black Power Revolt led by Geddes Granger’s and Dave Darbeau’s National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) and the 1975 United Labour Front (ULF) in Trinidad, NBM aspired to interpret Afro-Trinidadians (...) and Indo-Trinidadians equally, and on their own autonomous terms, toward self-directed emancipation. Led by Bukka Rennie, Wally Look Lai, and Franklyn Harvey, NBM was inspired by C.L.R. James’s intellectual legacies. Through publications such as New Beginning, Caribbean Dialogue, and The Vanguard, these partisans advocated labor’s self-emancipation and critical perspectives on capitalism and state power, and exposed the limits of elite party politics and representative government. (shrink)

Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet, by Donal S. Lopez Jr. and Thupten Jinpa. Harvard University Press, 2017. 320 pp. Hb and e-book. £23.95. ISBN- 13: 9780674659704.

Attempts to look without preconception at the part of the text usually thought to contain Wittgenstein's main argument against the existence of a private language.

Quinze ans après avoir créé le site_ Chymistry of Isaac Newton_, qui a permis la mise en ligne de nombreux manuscrits alchimiques de Newton, avec leurs commentaires et la présentation d’expériences de chimie s’y rapportant, William Newman nous offre la synthèse de ses travaux sur la science alchimique de Newton. La découverte en 1936 des manuscrits alchimiques newtoniens lors d’une vente aux enchères à Londres ébranla la communauté des historiens des sciences, qui ne comprenaient pas comment ce mathématicien génial, inventeur (...) de la théorie de la gravitation universelle et de l’optique moderne, pouvait avoir été amené à consacrer une grande partie de sa vie à l’étude d’une alchimie alors considérée, le plus souvent, comme relevant de l’ésotérisme. L’auteur commence par repousser les principales explications présentées dans la seconde moitié du XX e siècle. Non, Newton n’avait pas trouvé dans les écrits alchimiques des doctrines confortant ses théories théologiques ; i... (shrink)

Jorge J. E. Gracia, was born in Cuba in 1942. At age 19, he escaped Cuba and arrived in the United States. In 2019, 58 years later, in a nation which, prior to his arrival in North America, had no major Latino cultural presence in higher education and philosophy, Gracia rose to hold the Samuel P. Capen Chair and State University of New York at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature. In this position, he became the leading figure (...) to institutionalize Latin American philosophy in the U.S. academy and an internationally-renowned scholar in medieval philosophy. Jorge J. E. Gracia died in the United States on July 13, 2021. In this paper the author shows that what properly explains the philosophical and adult-personal life of Gracia is the Thomistic principle of virtual quantity. He contends that the only way to understand Gracia’s personal and philosophical life is to grasp this life as one of an organizational psychologist pursuing perfect self-realization in action and understanding: someone chiefly interested in intellectually grasping precisely how organizational wholes (including his own psyche) become united and divided, and operate when so united and divided. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of the new paradigm in analytic philosophy for investigating the meaning of life, focusing on Meaning in Life as the definitive example. Metz relies upon intuition, and reflection upon recent analytic literature, to guide him to his ‘fundamentality theory’. He calls this a theory of ‘the meaning of life’, saying it may be ‘the holy grail’. I argue that Metz’s project is not addressed to the meaning of life, but a distinct issue about social meaning; (...) and that by neglecting and sidelining alternative approaches, his results are rendered provisional. I then argue that there are a number of equally legitimate senses of a ‘socially meaningful life’; that Metz’s exclusive and unjustified focus on only one radically diminishes the scope of his project; and that what remains is undermined by cultural specificity. Finally, I argue that the Kripkean semantics Metz adopts runs counter to his interests. (shrink)

This book review responds to George Lucas's Ethics and Cyber Warfare: The Quest for Responsible Security in an Age of Digital Warfare, laying out the structure of the work as well as highlighting areas of strength.

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 1, Page 93-106, March 2022.

The sociological study of knowledge infrastructures and classification has traditionally focused on the politics and practices of classifying things or people. However, actors’ work to escape dominant infrastructures and pre-established classification systems has received little attention. In response to this, this article argues that it is crucial to analyze, not only the practices and politics of classification, but also actors’ work to escape dominant classification systems. The article has two aims: First, to make a theoretical contribution to the study of (...) classification by proposing to pay analytical attention to practices of escaping classification, what the article dubs classification egress. This concept directs our attention not only to the practices and politics of classifying things, but also to how actors work to escape or resist classification systems in practice. Second, the article aims to increase our understanding of the history of quantified and statistical health surveillance. In this, the article investigates how actors in health surveillance assembled a knowledge infrastructure for surveilling, quantifying, and detecting unknown patterns of congenital malformations in the wake of the thalidomide disaster in the early 1960s. The empirical account centers on the actors’ work to detect congenital malformations and escape the dominant nosological classification of diseases, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), by replacing it with a procedural standard for reporting of symptoms. Thus, the article investigates how actors deal with the tension between the-already-known-and-classified and the unknown-unclassified-phenomenon in health surveillance practice. (shrink)

Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia examines the conditions facilitating democracy, women's rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. The book shows that Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have co-evolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging. Following 32 years of authoritarian rule, in 1998 this sprawling Southeast Asian country returned to electoral democracy. The achievement brought with it, however, an upsurge in both (...) the numbers and assertiveness of Islamist militias, as well as a sharp increase in violence against religious minorities. The resulting mobilizations have pitted the Muslim supporters of an Indonesian variety of inclusive citizenship against populist proponents of Islamist majoritarianism. Seen from this historical example, the book demonstrates that Muslim actors come to know and practice Islam in a manner, not determined in an unchanging way by scriptural commands, but in co-evolution with broader currents in politics, society, and citizen belonging. By exploring these questions in both an Indonesian and comparative context, this book offers important lessons on the challenge of democracy and inclusive citizenship in the Muslim-majority world. Well written and informative, this book will be suitable for adoption in university courses on Islam, Southeast Asian Politics, Indonesian and Asian Studies, as well as courses dealing with religion, democracy, and citizen belonging in multicultural societies around the world. The book will be of interest to the general reader with an interest in Islam, citizenship, and democracy. (shrink)

This chapter evaluates which approach within 4E cognition is in a better position to offer a research program and a scientific framework for the embodied and situated cognitive sciences that could outcompete cognitivism once and for all. The main thesis of this work is that ecological psychology is in a better position to develop that scientific framework. This is because enactivism can be defined as a philosophy of nature rather than a scientific framework with its own research program (following Gallagher, (...) 2017). This means that enaction did not develop its own scientific methods, models, and metrics for human in vivo experimentation, which are key aspects in order to offer a whole new scientifically feasible foundation of a new science of the mind from a purely embodied and situated perspective. Although I agree that a philosophy of nature is a necessary aspect for any general theory of cognition, it is not enough: we also need a research program and a scientific framework in order to establish a fully-fledged science of the mind. Ecological psychology, as I show in this work, includes a philosophy of nature and a research program, which makes it suitable to settle the foundations for a fully embodied and situated cognitive science. In conclusion, I think that everyone working on embodiment and situated cognition should follow the ecological lead. (shrink)

In several recent pieces, Daniel Dennett has advanced a line of reasoning purporting to show that we should reject the idea that there is a tenable distinction to be drawn between the manner in which we represent the way things are and the manner in which "blessedly simple" intentional systems like thermostats and frogs represent the way things are. Through a series of thought experiments, Dennett aims to show that philosophers of mind should abandon their preoccupation with "real meaning as (...) opposed to ersatz meaning, 'intrinsic' or 'original ' intentionality as opposed to derived intentionality. " In this paper, I lay out the case that Dennett builds against original intentionality, with the aim of showing that, once it has been properly clarified, the notion of original intentionality isn't nearly the myth that Dennett makes it out to be. (shrink)

Explaining the emergence of life is perhaps central and the most challenging question in modern science. Within this area of research, the emergence and evolution of the genetic code is supposed to be a critical transition in the evolution of modern organisms. The canonical genetic code is one of the most dominant aspects of life on this planet, and thus studying its origin is critical to understanding the evolution of life, including life’s emergence. In this sense it is possible to (...) view the ribosome as a digital-to-analogue information converter. Why the translation apparatus evolved, is one of the enduring mysteries of molecular biology. Assuming the hypothesis that during the emergence of life evolution had to first involve autocatalytic systems, which only subsequently acquired the capacity of genetic heredity, in the present article we discuss some aspects and causes of the possible emergence of digital, discrete information arising from analogue information realized in the intra- and inter-molecular interactions throughout molecular evolution. How such reverse translation was achieved at a molecular level is still unclear. The results of such debates and investigations might shift current biological paradigms and might also have a momentous significance for modern philosophy in understanding our place in the universe. (shrink)

After commending Moleski for his excellent study, I focus attention on three areas that merit further clarification: (a) that Polanyi’s quest for public recognition was legitimate and not the effcet of a runawayvanity, (b) that Kuhn’s straining to define his dependence upon Polanyi was blocked by the unspecifiability clouding the discovery process and by his (mistaken) notion that Polanyi appealed to ESP to explain the dynamics of· discovery, and (c) that Kuhn’s success in gaining public recognition for his paradigm (...) shift is understandable (just as is Polanyi’s relative failure). In the end, I list five areas wherein Kuhn’s accountl of scientific revolutions could be substantially improved by joining forces with Polanyi. (shrink)

The ethical origins of James's pragmatism -- Religion and the refinement of James's pragmatism -- The ethical republic -- Citizen James -- Legacies and prospects.

Moral Empowerment is a groundbreaking recommendation that education systems and students can benefit from a new approach in learning - the development of the students capacity to pursue their own intellectual and spiritual growth, as well as the students active engagement in the long-term transformation of their communities. This illuminating idea is carried out on the basis of two central premises that we live in an age of transition from humanitys childhood to its maturity, and that a fundamental characteristic of (...) this age is the growing consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Arbab explores the philosophical framework capable of guiding educational programs seeking the moral empowerment of students. Such efforts focus not only on the development of the students capacity to pursue their own intellectual and spiritual growth, but also on the students active engagement in the long-term transformation of their communities. (shrink)

Albert Einstein's Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God.

This text critically examines the methodologies and arguments that guide how Black theology specifically affirms Black Christology as the definitive paradigm for authentic Christianity. Significantly, the racialized character of Black theology immediately sets this discourse within the context of philosophy of race.