This chapter is an overview of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's attempts to come to grips with religion during the philosophically eventful nineteenth century in the United States, and an attempt to determine whether she qualifies as an atheist.

When nature's energies communicate what human beings do not want to hear and when human beings experience the pressures of this communication as reality, they confront discursive practices from nature and in nature. The Peruvian myth of Cavillaca, although a cultural artifact, nevertheless expresses what human beings cannot change or mediate in nature; nature presents grades of reality larger than human constructions of the real.

Claudette Kulkarni explores lesbian experience from a Jungian and feminist perspective, through interviews with women who see themselves as lesbians or who are in a lesbian relationship. Although a feminist treatment of the subject challenges the heterosexism of Jungian theory, the author presents a link between theory and experience that is consistent with both approaches. She concludes that when a woman finds herself loving another woman she is often responding to a profound psychological instinct to act, in spite of (...) internal conflict or external opposition, and that this is a significant move in the service of personal and collective individuation and a movement toward achieving self-understanding. (shrink)

Dung’s abstract argumentation provides us with a general framework to deal with argumentation, non-monotonic reasoning and logic programming. For the extension-based semantics, one of the basic principles is I-maximality which is in particular related with the notion of skeptical justification. Another one is directionality which can be employed for the study of dynamics of argumentation. In this paper, we introduce two new extension-based semantics into Dung’s abstract argumentation, called grounded-like semantics and initial semantics which satisfy the I-maximality and directionality principles. (...) The initial semantics has many good properties and can be expected to play a central role in studying other extension-based semantics, such as admissible, complete and preferred semantics. (shrink)

Do the grand and intricate moral theories spun out by philosophers have much to do with the everyday ethical quandaries we grapple with? Just how do humans make ethical decisions anyway? With Claudette Jones, Nat Heiner, and Natash Kyburg.

Major depression is associated with a decrease of 1st person visual perspective in autobiographical memory, even after full remission. This study aimed to examine visual perspective in healthy never-depressed subjects presenting with either genetic or psychological vulnerability for depression. Sixty healthy participants performed the Autobiographical Memory Test with an assessment of visual perspective. Genetic vulnerability was defined by the presence of at least one S or LG allele of the polymorphism of the serotonin-transporter-linked promoter region . Psychological vulnerability was defined (...) by high scores of harm avoidance measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory. Life stress exposure, depressive mood, rumination, and familial history of depression were assessed through standardized procedures. Visual perspective for positive memories was independently predicted by both harm avoidance and a gene by environment interaction between the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and life stress exposure. Visual perspective and vulnerability for depression may share some biological bases. (shrink)

BackgroundSerious ethical problems have been anecdotally identified in the care of children with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), which may negatively impact their moral experiences, defined as their sense of fulfillment towards personal values and beliefs.Research aimsTo explore children’s actual and desired participation in discussions, decisions, and actions in an OI hospital setting and their community using art-making to facilitate their self-expression.Research designA focused ethnography was conducted using the moral experiences framework with data from key informant interviews; participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and (...) practice-based research (art-making) with 10 children with OI; and local documents.Participants and research contextThe study was conducted at a pediatric, orthopedic hospital.Ethical considerationsThis study was approved by McGill University Institutional Review Board.Findings/resultsChildren expressed desires to participate in their care, but sometimes lacked the necessary resources and encouragement from healthcare providers. Art-making facilitated children’s voice and participation in health-related discussions.ConclusionsHealthcare providers are recommended to consider the benefits of art-making and educational resources to reduce discrepancies between children’s actual and desired participation in care and promote positive moral experiences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Citation and Modernity: Derrida, Joyce, and BrechtHarvey L. HixCitation and Modernity: Derrida, Joyce, and Brecht, by Claudette Sartiliot; xiii & 173 pp. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, $15.95 paper.Claudette Sartiliot argues that “the traditional definition of citation” is “inadequate and outmoded” (p. 15). It no longer applies to modernist and postmodernist writers, for whom “quotation represents a definite break with the tradition as (...) well as a means of questioning the nature of the literary text” (p. 3). The traditional definition, derived from classical rhetoric, limits quotation to the purpose of illustration and ornament. In contrast, modernist and postmodernist citational practices, having abandoned the typographical separation of the quotation from the “main” text, question “the concept of text as an autonomous entity” and replace the idea of a book “by the more unbounded word discourse” (p. 20).To illustrate her point, Sartiliot appeals first to Derrida’s Glas, which “relies on citation to such an extent that it can serve as a paradigm for a theory of quotation” (p. 35). By juxtaposing two columns of text and by extensive quotation, Derrida (a) links quotation with violence and with sexual penetration, (b) stages “a game of appearance and disappearance” through which he evades the reader’s attempts to “pin him down” (p. 42), (c) reveals that words contain within themselves other words, (d) blurs boundaries between languages and disciplines, and (e) “demonstrates how meaning is generated through an aleatory scattering of semes” (p. 57).Sartiliot also attends to Joyce and Brecht, who achieve similar ends through their citational practices: “both have elevated ‘plagiarism’ to the level of originality” and both “have shown that writing is always and inevitably quoting” (p. 75). Because everything in Finnegans Wake is a quotation—even the characters—Joyce undercuts meaning: a text without boundaries cannot be ingested. Finnegans Wake is like quantum physics: “neither intimated that God was dead, but both confronted the world with a model of representation that intimated that ‘God played dice’” (p. 84).Brecht’s characters, like those of Finnegans Wake, are quotations rather than originals: “empty signifiers” whose very names are not their own, they challenge “the bourgeois myth of the identity and continuity of the subject” (p. 130). [End Page 367] As Copernicus removes humanity from the center of the universe and Marx removes humanity from the center of history, so Brecht removes humanity from the center of theatrical representation, revealing that “the subject as a fully present identity and entity” is delusory, and humanity is “a linguistic (and thus political) construct” (p. 124). In sum, by their citational practices Derrida, Joyce, and Brecht question “the notions of origin, closure, and authorship associated with the conception of the book” (p. 124).Citation and Modernity contains moments of insight. For instance, Sartiliot says of Finnegans Wake that “while Joyce was doing away with quotation marks in his own texts, he was forcing his critics to surround most of their critical terms with quotation marks, as a sore sign [sic] of their inability to find the right word to describe what he was doing” (p. 75). In other respects, however, her book is not satisfying. The most obvious problem is that her own citational practices contradict her thesis. After writers like Derrida, Joyce, and Brecht, she says, we can no longer return to traditional quotation based on classical rhetoric, yet her own quotation is strictly traditional: it illustrates and ornaments, and maintains a clear distinction between her own words and those belonging to someone else.There are other failures to live up to the book’s own standards. Sartiliot claims that the chief purpose of quotation is to attack the authority of the quoted father, to “subvert the notions of filiation and tradition” (p. 149) and “eclipse the precursor” (p. 8), yet her own book steadfastly upholds filiation and tradition. From the cover, which makes much of her having been a student of Derrida, to the pervasive jargon (totalization, hymen, logocentrism, dissemination, etc.), the book defers all too consistently to the authority of its father, and consequently fails to challenge its readers.Harvey L. HixKansas City Art InstituteCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Terms of service of on-line platforms too often contain clauses that are potentially unfair to the consumer. We present an experimental study where machine learning is employed to automatically detect such potentially unfair clauses. Results show that the proposed system could provide a valuable tool for lawyers and consumers alike.

Différents textes de Margaret Fuller et Elizabeth Cady Stanton, deux féministes américaines parfois oubliées de l’historiographie au profit notamment de Susan B. Anthony (dont le nom reste associé à l’amendement qui a accordé, aux États-Unis, le droit de vote aux femmes) ont récemment fait l’objet de traductions en français et d’une édition critique éclairante. Si la lecture parallèle de leurs textes fait apparaître des traits communs entre les deux militantes, parcours et convictions présent...

Différents textes de Margaret Fuller et Elizabeth Cady Stanton, deux féministes américaines parfois oubliées de l’historiographie au profit notamment de Susan B. Anthony (dont le nom reste associé à l’amendement qui a accordé, aux États-Unis, le droit de vote aux femmes) ont récemment fait l’objet de traductions en français et d’une édition critique éclairante. Si la lecture parallèle de leurs textes fait apparaître des traits communs entre les deux militantes, parcours et convictions présent...

Do the grand and intricate moral theories spun out by philosophers have much to do with the everyday ethical quandaries we grapple with? Just how do humans make ethical decisions anyway? With Claudette Jones, Nat Heiner, and Natash Kyburg.