To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent—absent or, as in some domains of Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As a panglobal (...) fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself . . . international, transhistorical, transcultural."1 Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that culture may appear to us. As Barthes says, "narrative...is translatable without fundamental damage" in a way that a lyric poem or a philosophical discourse is not. · 1. Roland Barthes, "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives," Music, Image, Text, trans. Stephen Heath , p. 79.· 2. The words "narrative," "narration," "to narrate," and so on derive via the Latin gnārus and narro from the Sanskrit root gnâ . The same root yields γνωριμος : see Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque , under the entry for this word. My thanks to Ted Morris of Cornell, one of our greatest etymologists. Hayden White, professor in the program of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, The Greco-Roman Tradition, and Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. " The Narrativization of Real Events" appeared in the Summer 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. Critical Responses to the present essay include Louis O. Mink's "Everyman His or Her Own Annalist", and Marilyn Robinson Waldman's "The Otherwise Unnoteworthy Year 711: A Reply to Hayden White," both in the Summer 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 136-137 [Access article in PDF] John Watkins. Human Freedom after Darwin: A Critical Rationalist View. Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1999. Pp. xi + 348. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $24.95. John Watkins examines man's place in nature since Darwin. As a critical rationalist, using the methods of science, Watkins hopes to construct a world-view which challenges competing hypotheses and supports his own. He (...) recognizes that his view is, also, a candidate for critical rejection. All scientific views are, in principle, fallible. He divides his book into two parts: Naturalism and Freedom. [End Page 137]In evolutionary development, he accepts, as critically established, the sequence: matter before life, life before mind, and, no mind without a brain. Thus, naturalism is preferred beforesupernaturalism or divine intervention. These guides may support a continuous, steady evolutionaryprocess or discontinuity, mutations, and various stages of change. Darwin acceptedthe former and held physical changes were unaffected by consciousness. All change is, in principle,present from the beginning and unfolds over time. Darwin's view, then, is deterministic.Watkins challenges this position and argues for consciousness affecting physical change in new and unpredictable ways. It is herein that the possibility of animal and human freedom lies. Watkins gives examples of the actions of the hunter and hunted among animals, and of strategies developed by humans during crises, to support the view that there are novel and unpredictable actions by conscious beings. These actions can hardly be called predetermined in the nature of things. There is a huge difference between a general genetic structure for kinds of behavior and specific actions during crises (not that these are the only instances of freedom). At any rate, there is a reciprocal action between an individual and its environment and not merely a unilinear one.In Part II, Freedom, Watkins examines some classical, philosophical views of human freedom. He gives brief, but penetrating, analyses of Hobbes, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza. Either they account for human action in strictly physical terms that are causally deterministic or they turn to non-empirical sources that are not verifiable. Since the latter make no difference in our account of behavior, they are entities multiplied beyond necessity. Those who give a completely deterministic view—Hobbes, Hume, and Schopenhauer—offer no continuum between cause and chance. Chance turns out to depend upon our ignorance of causes; further examination would show it causally determined.Watkins seems most sympathetic to Spinoza's treatment. In his hard-headed naturalism, Spinoza rejects any non-natural or supernatural accounts of human behavior. He is a strict determinist where man's confrontation with nature is concerned. Human emotions are passive and react to our environment; they do not affect it. Human reason makes no difference, but in its capacity to contemplate eternal truths it offers a way out. Instead of reacting to nature, man may transcend it. This transcendence is the key to Spinoza's view of the intellectual love of God, and human freedom. Watkins criticizes this flight from man's place in nature and the limited use of reason. In this vein, Spinoza seems to abandon the confrontation of nature for a flight to eternal truths. For Watkins, however, reasons must be used in confronting nature. As we saw, he claims that reason may have an effect upon the environment that is novel and unpredictable. Human agency is a part of the evolutionary story. Human agency is not an either/or proposition. There are degrees of effectiveness in human response to nature.In his analysis of human freedom, Watkins turns to the works of Newton, Faraday, Einstein, and others. In studying the problems posed by the consideration of natural phenomena during their time, they showed intellectual perspicacity of the highest order. Faraday's unified field theory brought electrical and magnetic phenomena, previously thought to be disparate, together. Newton's laws of motion brought celestial and terrestrial mechanics under one theory. Einstein changed the way in which space, time, mass, energy, and light were conceived. In a real sense, they were... (shrink)

Several technological developments, such as self-service technologies and artificial intelligence, are disrupting the retailing industry by changing consumption and purchase habits and the overall retail experience. Although AI represents extraordinary opportunities for businesses, companies must avoid the dangers and risks associated with the adoption of such systems. Integrating perspectives from emerging research on AI, morality of machines, and norm activation, we examine how individuals morally behave toward AI agents and self-service machines. Across three studies, we demonstrate that consumers’ moral concerns (...) and behaviors differ when interacting with technologies versus humans. We show that moral intention is less likely to emerge for AI checkout and self-checkout machines compared with human checkout. In addition, moral intention decreases as people consider the machine less humanlike. We further document that the decline in morality is caused by less guilt displayed toward new technologies. The non-human nature of the interaction evokes a decreased feeling of guilt and ultimately reduces moral behavior. These findings offer insights into how technological developments influence consumer behaviors and provide guidance for businesses and retailers in understanding moral intentions related to the different types of interactions in a shopping environment. (shrink)

Specialists and primary care physicians play an integral role in treating the twin epidemics of pain and addiction. But inadequate access to specialists causes much of the treatment burden to fall on primary physicians. This article chronicles the differences between treatment contexts for both pain and addiction — in the specialty and primary care contexts — and derives a series of reforms that would empower primary care physicians and better leverage specialists.

Firms use algorithms to make important business decisions. To date, the algorithmic accountability literature has elided a fundamentally empirical question important to business ethics and management: Under what circumstances, if any, are algorithmic decision-making systems considered legitimate? The present study begins to answer this question. Using factorial vignette survey methodology, we explore the impact of decision importance, governance, outcomes, and data inputs on perceptions of the legitimacy of algorithmic decisions made by firms. We find that many of the procedural governance (...) mechanisms in practice today, such as notices and impact statements, do not lead to algorithmic decisions being perceived as more legitimate in general, and, consistent with legitimacy theory, that algorithmic decisions with good outcomes are perceived as more legitimate than bad outcomes. Yet, robust governance, such as offering an appeal process, can create a legitimacy dividend for decisions with bad outcomes. However, when arbitrary or morally dubious factors are used to make decisions, most legitimacy dividends are erased. In other words, companies cannot overcome the legitimacy penalty of using arbitrary or morally dubious factors, such as race or the day of the week, with a good outcome or an appeal process for individuals. These findings add new perspectives to both the literature on legitimacy and policy discussions on algorithmic decision-making in firms. (shrink)

Author note: Penny A. Weiss, Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, is the author of Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics. Marilyn Friedman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, is the author of What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory.

The application of neurostimulation techniques such as deep brain stimulation —often called a brain pacemaker for neurological conditions like Parkinson's disease —has generated “currents of hope.” Building on this hope, there is significant interest in applying neurostimulation to psychiatric disorders such as major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These emerging neurosurgical practices raise a number of important ethical and social questions in matters of resource allocation, informed consent for vulnerable populations, and commercialization of research.

If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the form of research and teaching assessments - they may not be aware how pervasive practices of 'accountability' are or of the diversity of political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon.

A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought -- ...

When people engage in conversation, they tailor their utterances to their conversational partners, whether these partners are other humans or computational systems. This tailoring, or adaptation to the partner takes place in all facets of human language use, and is based on a mental model or a user model of the conversational partner. Such adaptation has been shown to improve listeners' comprehension, their satisfaction with an interactive system, the efficiency with which they execute conversational tasks, and the likelihood of achieving (...) higher level goals such as changing the listener's beliefs and attitudes. We focus on one aspect of adaptation, namely the tailoring of the content of dialogue system utterances for the higher level processes of persuasion, argumentation and advice‐giving. Our hypothesis is that algorithms that adapt content for these processes, according to a user model, will improve the usability, efficiency, and effectiveness of dialogue systems. We describe a multimodal dialogue system and algorithms for adaptive content selection based on multi‐attribute decision theory. We demonstrate experimentally the improved efficacy of system responses through the use of user models to both tailor the content of system utterances and to manipulate their conciseness. (shrink)

To understand the radical potential of Heidegger’s model of practice, we need to acknowledge the role that temporality plays within it. Commentaries on Heidegger’s account of practical engagement, however, often leave the connection between purposiveness and temporality unexplored, a tendency that persists in the contemporary discourse generated by the interaction between the phenomenological tradition and certain approaches within cognitive science. Taking up a temporality-oriented reading that redresses this can, I want to argue here, reveal new illuminating sites for the intersection (...) between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, particularly between Heideggerian perspectives and what have become known as enactive approaches to the study of cognition. According to the latter, cognition is an inherently relational process through which the interaction of a living being and its environment generates meaning and, ultimately, a world of significance defined by the cogniser’s self-concern. I will suggest that this emphasis upon the inextricable intertwining of agent and world renders enactive models of cognition particularly congenial to a mutually enriching dialogue with Heidegger’s account of purposiveness, particularly if we read the latter in terms of the temporal framework that Being and Time offers us. (shrink)

Politics of Reality includes nine essays that examine sexism, the exploitation of women, the gay rights movement and other topics from a feminist perspective. -/- The essays "The Problem That Has No Name" and "A Note On Anger" have been translated into Spanish by Maria Lugones for circulation in la Asociacion Argentina de Mujeres en Filosofia.

Transforming our worldviews -- Transforming the fear of death -- Glimpses beyond death and the physical world -- Cosmologies of life, death, and beyond -- Science of the afterlife -- The practice of dying -- Grief as a doorway to transformation -- Dreaming and the transformation of death -- Transformative art -- Life, death, and the quantum soul -- Healing self and society.

(1997). Intentionality: An argument for transpersonal consciousness distant. World Futures: Vol. 48, The Concept of Collective Consiousness: Research Perspectives, pp. 115-126.

(2010). Approaches to behavior and classroom management: integrating discipline and care. Journal of Moral Education: Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 524-526. doi: 10.1080/03057240.2010.521408.

The purpose of this study was to look beyond the patient as the source of difficulty and to examine the context of care encounters for factors that contributed to the construction of difficulty in the nurse-patient encounter. The study explains the origins of difficulty in the nurse-patient encounter. This explanation broadens the thinking limits previously imposed by locating difficulty within the individual. Key elements of this explanation are: knowing the patient minimizes the likelihood of difficulty in the encounter; and families, (...) availability of supplies and equipment, who is working, and care space changes are contextual factors that contribute to the construction of difficulty in the nurse-patient encounter. Awareness of these findings has implications for the strategies nurses employ in difficult encounters. (shrink)

The problem of evil is one of the most discussed topics in the philosophy of religion. For some time, however, there has been a need for a collection of readings that adequately represents recent and ongoing writing on the topic. This volume fills that need, offering the most up-to-date collection of recent scholarship on the problem of evil. The distinguished contributors include J.L. Mackie, Nelson Pike, Roderick M. Chisholm, Terence Penelhum, Alvin Plantinga, William L. Rowe, Stephen J. Wykstra, John Hick, (...) and Diogenes Allen. Including an introductory essay and a selected bibliography, this comprehensive and completely up-to-date collection is an invaluable guide to current scholarship in this highly debated area of the philosophy of religion. Oxford Readings in Philosophy aims to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available. (shrink)

Kierkegaard is considered by many to be the father of existentialism because he is believed to have asserted that our interpretations of existence are the expression of absolutely free choices, or choices for which no rational criteria can be given. This paper argues that that view is false. It presents a sketch of Kierkegaard position on the nature of human rationality, and argues that according to Kierkegaard, there are rational criteria for choosing between competing interpretations of existence and that people (...) make such choices only with reference to these criteria. (shrink)

Atrial natriuretic peptides appear to elicit their actions in some target tissues by binding to a novel cell‐surface transmembrane protein which possesses both peptide binding and guanylate cyclase activities. Ligand binding stimulates enzyme activity to produce increased intracellular concentrations of cyclic GMP which, in turn, mediates the cell's physiological response.

This review emphasizes the worldwide and U.S. evolving population demographics and the need for the dental profession to exercise its professional and ethical duty to expand its traditional patient base to provide needed services.