In the beginning, there was Dava Sobel and Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time . Others followed, in a veritable flood which D. P. Miller recently dubbed the ‘Sobel Effect’. Academic historians of science have been concerned by this flood, partly because people other than them are making money out of ‘their’ subject, but also because of the ways it might affect the public perception of the history of science. (...) Like the scientists they study, historians fear that popularizers will distort in the process of simplifying. But, knowing how difficult it has been for scientists to control the popularization of their subject, historians may not expect a great deal more success. (shrink)

This study uses accounting professionals from an international setting to test the individualism and power distance cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede [Culture's Consequences 1980]. Six countries, which appropriately represented high and low values on the Hofstede dimensions, were chosen for the survey of ethical beliefs. Respondents from the six countries were requested to supply their agreement/disagreement with eight questionable behaviors associated with the work environment. Each of these behaviors contained an individualism and/or power distance cultural component for the responding accountants (...) to consider. The results of the cultural analysis indicated significance on five of the eight survey items. Results lend support for the presence of the individualism cultural element in the ethical responses of the accountants surveyed. (shrink)

This research presents findings from a study of gender-based differences in an ethical decision situation. The study focuses on gender as it relates to situational factors and accounting experience. The primary element of interest is how the gender of the actor (the person described in each vignette) influences the evaluation/assessment of the ethical/unethical decisions. While previous research has provided evidence of ethical differences relating to the gender of the responding subjects, limited evidence has been presented relating to situational issues that (...) may influence assessments of ethical decisions.This research uses four accounting environment vignettes to survey the responses of accountants and accounting students to the ethical/unethical nature of the actions that are taken. In addition, how likely the accountants believe they are to take the same actions is also surveyed. The subjects are a representative sample of practicing accountants in the U.S. and senior/graduate accounting majors at a state university in the southwestern United States. (shrink)

This study uses accounting professionals from an international setting to test the individualism and power distance cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede [Culture’s Consequences (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA) 1980]. Six countries, which appropriately represented high and low values on the Hofstede dimensions, were chosen for the survey of ethical beliefs. Respondents (n = 249) from the six countries were requested to supply their agreement/disagreement with eight questionable behaviors associated with the work environment. Each of these behaviors contained an individualism and/or (...) power distance cultural component for the responding accountants to consider. The results of the cultural analysis indicated significance on five of the eight survey items. Results lend support for the presence of the individualism cultural element in the ethical responses of the accountants surveyed. (shrink)

The interface between mental health services and the criminal justice system presents challenges both for professionals and patients. Both systems are stressed and inherently complex. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act is unusual being both an aspect of the Mental Health Act and a power of arrest. It has a long and controversial history related to concerns about who has been detained and how the section was applied. More recently, Section 136 has had a public profile stemming from the (...) use of police cells as places of safety for young, mentally disturbed individuals. This paper explores the current state of health of this piece of legislation. Specifically, we consider whether alternative approaches are more suitable for those individuals in crisis and/or distress who come into contact with the police. This requires careful thought as to the proper role of both health and criminal justice professionals who are daily grappling with an ethically contentious domain of multiagency work. (shrink)

This first full-length study of the Arabic reception of Plato's Timaeus considers the role of Galen of Pergamum in shaping medieval perceptions of the text as transgressing disciplinary norms. It argues that Galen appealed to the entangled cosmological scheme of the dialogue, where different relations connect the body, soul, and cosmos, to expand the boundaries of medicine in his pursuit for epistemic authority – the right to define and explain natural reality. Aileen Das situates Galen's work on disciplinary boundaries (...) in the context of medicine's ancient rivalry with philosophy, whose professionals were long seen as superior knowers of the cosmos vis-à-vis doctors. Her case studies show how Galen and four of the most important Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers in the Arabic Middle Ages creatively interpreted key doctrines from the Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy as well as their own intellectual identities. (shrink)

The algorithmic turn in photography raises the question of whether an algorithmically generated image is even a photograph at all. This paradox is abundant on India's urban streets, where the pedestrian or road user is met with giant photo saturated flex hoardings printed with political and community messages and photo-shopped portraits of gods, chief ministers and party workers. In this article, attention to photo-based political posters alongside art practices sharing common elements of digital capture and postproduction contextualizes a reading of (...) technologically produced visual landscapes in the South Indian city of Bangalore. Informed by Vilèm Flusser, the techno-materiality of hoardings are interpreted as visual practices whose reliance on Microsoft and Adobe softwares reveal more than the semiotic information that is ostensibly transmitted; in so doing the extent to which photography is a useful entry point for assessing the visuality in which we're currently living and how this gets locally inflected in the case of India is explored. (shrink)

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book (...) is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

This article investigates the textual strategies with which Maeve Murphy's Silent Grace addresses viewers in contemporary Northern Ireland. Borrowing Eric Santner's concept of `narrative fetishism', the analysis examines how the film's representation of the past obscures the historical realities experienced by female political prisoners in Armagh jail in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From this standpoint, its ethical relation to historical `truth' and responsibilities to its local audience are debated.

Paul of Aegina's Pragmateiais the only extant Greek medical text from antiquity that discusses the extraction of arrows and small missiles. In his book on surgery, Paul details how to extract arrows according to their properties and the parts of the body which they have wounded. He prefaces his instructions by describing how arrows differ in their material, figure, size, number, mode, and power. Paul's account of arrow varieties appears to reflect the environment of his medical practice, seventh-century Alexandria, for (...) he refers to Egyptian arrow types when listing the material composition and sizes of different arrows. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

The Descartes Dictionary is an accessible guide to the world of the seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences, and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Descartes' thought. The introduction provides a biographical sketch, a brief account of Descartes' philosophical works, and a summary of the current state of Cartesian studies, discussing trends in research over the past four decades. The A-Z entries include clear (...) definitions of the key terms used in Descartes' writings and detailed synopses of his works. Also included are entries noting philosophical influences, of both figures that influenced Descartes and those that he in turn influenced. For anyone reading or studying Descartes, rationalism, or modern philosophy more generally, this original resource provides a wealth of useful information, analysis, and criticism. Including clear explanations of often complex terminology, The Descartes Dictionary covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Descartes' philosophy. (shrink)

This title presents a comprehensive guide to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is an increasingly popular approach to qualitative inquiry taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students today.

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

This article suggests evidence for and reasons why prior acquisition may either facilitate or inhibit acquisition of a new construction. It investigates acquisition of the German passive and future constructions which contain a lexical verb with either the auxiliary sein “to be” or werden “to become”, and are related through these to potential supporting constructions. We predicted that a supported construction should be acquired earlier, faster, and unusually rapidly. An inhibited construction should show an extended depressed usage. We analyzed a (...) dense corpus of a German boy between 2;0 and 5;0. He acquired the sein- before the werden-passive. The former was supported by his prior acquisition of the sein copula, whereas the werden-passive itself supported one werden copula construction. He acquired the werden-future extremely slowly due to the hindrance of a semantically identical construction. These results fit with an emergentist approach in which apparently “sudden” acquisition is still due to gradual learning mechanisms. (shrink)

This essay gives more detailed content to the widespread view that the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) has changed the traditional role of parliamentary intention in statutory interpretation. It begins by outlining the various ways in which legislative intent has featured in traditional (pre-HRA) statutory interpretation. This is followed by an examination of the interpretive principles developed by the senior judiciary under the HRA case-law, focusing on the extent to which they seem to depart from traditional principles. It is argued (...) that although the traditional role of parliamentary intention is partly preserved post-HRA, the interpretive obligation under s 3(1) HRA nonetheless shifts the interpretive focus away from what Parliament originally intended in enacting the legislation under HRA scrutiny, towards fulfilling the overriding goal of achieving compatibility with Convention rights. The final sections of the essay attempt to provide an account of what is involved in this shift. (shrink)

In recent case-law under the Human Rights Act 1998, the senior judiciary have reiterated the view that their task under section 3(1) of the Act is one of ‘interpretation rather than legislation’. This article has two main aims. The first is to provide a general, theoretical analysis of the extent to which it is possible (if at all) to distinguish between interpretation and legislation. The second is to examine the judicial understanding of this distinction, as revealed through judgments in the (...) HRA case-law. (shrink)

A central principle of bioethics is “subject autonomy,” the acknowledgement of the primacy of the informed consent of the subject of research. Autonomy requires informed consent — the assurance that the research participant is informed about the possible risks and benefits of the research. In fact, informed consent is difficult when a single drug is being tested, although subjects have a baseline understanding of the testing of a pharmacological agent and the understanding that they can stop taking the drug if (...) there were an adverse event. However, informed consent is even less easily achieved in the modern arena of complex new molecular and cellular therapies. In this article, we argue that as science confronts new issues such as transplantation of stem cell products, which may live within the participant for the rest of their lives, researchers must carefully consider and constantly re-examine how they properly inform subjects considering participation trials of these novel therapeutic strategies.For example, the manufacture of a vial of a cell product that consists of a collection of growing cells is very different than the production of a vial of identical pills, which can be presumed to be identical. The scientific concepts on which these cellular approaches are based may seem alien and incomprehensible to a research subject, who thinks of a clinical trial as simply the selection and testing of the most efficacious pharmaceutical agent already proven to work in preclinical animal studies. The research subject would be wrong. (shrink)

ABSTRACTUsing a frame analysis approach this paper examines how The Irish Times and the Irish Independent portrayed public sector workers during Ireland's economic crisis. Using a sample of coverage from 2009 and 2010 it discusses the five media frames identified in this analysis, three of which were hegemonic and two of which were counter hegemonic. In this paper, I argue that coverage of the public sector by each newspaper was imbalanced and inaccurate. This paper also finds that both newspapers were (...) strong advocates of austerity cutbacks in the public service as a solution to Ireland's financial crisis, frequently representing this idea as ‘fact’ while simultaneously delegitimising those opposing this viewpoint. (shrink)

This paper considers the development and judicial application of the Public Sector Equality Duty now found in section 149 Equality Act 2010, previously in a variety of forms in the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. It identifies a number of emerging themes in the jurisprudence concerned, in particular, with the relationship between the PSED and Wednesbury review, the extent of the information-gathering obligation it imposes, the delegability of PSED decision-making and (...) the timing of PSED challenge. It then considers the uncertainties which remain including, in particular, the application of the duty to various categories of decision-making, and concludes by assessing the impact of the PSED on challenges to ‘cuts’ cases arising from the reductions to public sector funding, and on domestic equality jurisprudence. (shrink)

This article seeks a new way to conceptualise the ‘classic’ work in the history of science, and suggests that the use of publishing history might help avoid the antagonism which surrounded the literary canon wars. It concentrates on the widely acknowledged concept that the key to the classic work is the fact of its being read over a prolonged period of time. Continued reading implies that a work is able to remain relevant to later generations of readers, and, although some (...) of this depends upon the openness of the original text, much more depends on the actions of subsequent publishers and editors in repackaging the work for later audiences.This is illustrated through an examination of the long publishing history of William Paley’s Natural theology. Over the course of the century, Natural theology was read as a work of gentlemanly natural theology, as a work which could be used in a formal or informal education in science, and as a work of Christian apologetic. These transformations occurred because of the actions of the later publishers and editors who had to make the work suit the current interests of the literary marketplace. Comparisons are made to Constitution of man, Vestiges of the natural history of creation and Origin of species.Author Keywords: Classic; Canon; Publishing history; Natural theology; William Paley. (shrink)

We ordinarily suppose that there is a difference between having and failing to exercise a rational capacity on the one hand, and lacking a rational capacity altogether on the other. This is crucial for our allocations of responsibility. Someone who has but fails to exercise a capacity is responsible for their failure to exercise their capacity, whereas someone who lacks a capacity altogether is not. However, as Gary Watson pointed out in his seminal essay ’Skepticism about Weakness of Will’, the (...) idea of an unexercised capacity is much more difficult to make sense of than it initially appears. The aim of ’Rational Capacities’ is to provide the needed explication of this idea. (shrink)

WE must first state the subject of our inquiry and the faculty to which it belongs: its subject is demonstration and the faculty that carries it out demonstrative science.

Under the Human Rights Act, British courts are for the first time empowered to review primary legislation for compliance with a codified set of fundamental rights. In this book, Aileen Kavanagh argues that the HRA gives judges strong powers of constitutional review, similar to those exercised by the courts under an entrenched Bill of Rights. The aim of the book is to subject the leading case-law under the HRA to critical scrutiny, whilst remaining sensitive to the deeper constitutional, political (...) and theoretical questions which underpin it. Such questions include the idea of judicial deference, the constitutional status of the HRA, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the constitutional division of labour between Parliament and the courts. The book closes with a sustained defence of the legitimacy of constitutional review in a democracy, thus providing a powerful rejoinder to those who are sceptical about judicial power under the HRA. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite (...) the vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)

RésuméLe « Synopsis du Timée de Platon » de Galien, ouvrage clé pour l’étude du platonisme prémoderne, survit uniquement dans une édition dite « imparfaite » de 1951 qui présente pour la première fois le texte arabe survivant accompagné de sa traduction en latin. Les rédacteurs de la série « Plato Arabus » du Corpus Platonicum, à laquelle l’édition appartient, ont attribué les défauts de cette édition à la mort inopportune de Paul Kraus, qui l'a préparée, aidé par un autre (...) réfugié juif, Richard Walzer, pendant la période de la seconde guerre mondiale. Notre analyse de sources tirées d'archives démontrera que le travail sur ce volume était majoritairement celui de Kraus. Qui plus est, nous démontrons que Walzer et le rédacteur du Corpus Platonicum Raymond Klibansky ont marginalisé le travail de Kraus sur le projet dans l'optique d'avancer leurs propres carrières universitaires en tant que Juifs réfugiés en Grande-Bretagne. Nous allons également examiner la manière dont Walzer et Klibansky ont remanié le projet initial de Kraus – celui d'un corpus sémitique du platonisme – en un « Plato Arabus » plus étroit qui s'alignerait sur une étude du platonisme latin, projet qu'ils présumaient plus susceptible d'intéresser leurs mécènes britanniques. (shrink)

As his writings tend to prioritize the incorporeal over the corporeal, Plato seems an unlikely authority on medicine. He does not appear to have engaged in any systematic investigation of the body through direct examination of animal anatomy, like his pupil Aristotle. Notwithstanding Plato's apparent lack of interest in anatomical research, modern scholars view his dialogues as valuable witnesses for earlier and contemporary theories about the body. Famously, thePhaedrus(270c–e) mentions Hippocrates’ holistic approach to studying the body. Out of all his (...) dialogues, theTimaeusoffers the most extensive comments about the nature of the body and its functions. Many of its physiological ideas, however, seem to derive from earlier medical and philosophical authorities such as Alcmaeon of Croton (fifth century), Empedocles (fifth century) and Philistion of Locri (fourth century) rather than from Plato himself. (shrink)

This article offers the first edition and translation of two heretofore unpublished pharmacological treatises by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī, namely Fī ittikhādh māʾ al-jubn and Fī manāfiʿ māʾ al-jubn, which seem to have formed part of a lost volume on dairy products. As it demonstrates, al-Rāzī’s examination of whey is connected to his philosophical interest in the complex nature of simple substances such as milk. The article also highlights how these two treatises built on the Greek pharmacological tradition by incorporating ingredients (...) from Persia and India. (shrink)

This article explores stories related by perioperative nurses when asked to describe ethical judgements and subsequent actions that affected patient outcomes. A total of 214 patient care situations were analysed for moral actions taken and moral outcomes achieved in the perioperative arena. Content analysis of the patient care situations revealed a wide variety of ethical issues. Concerns about informed consent and quality of care were the most frequently identified issues. Respondents reported that 7% of patients underwent unwanted procedures and that (...) positive moral outcomes were achieved in 65% of situations. It is of concern that, despite the fact that more than two-thirds (69%) of the respondents reported undergoing ethics education, only 27% could relate a story of an ethical situation. (shrink)

This thoughtful new abridgment is enriched by the brilliant commentary which accompanies it. In it, Laurence Dickey argues that the _Wealth of Nations_ contains--and conceals--a great deal of how Smith actually thought a commercial society works. Guided by his conviction that the so-called Adam Smith Problem--the relationship between ethics and economics in Smith's thinking--is a core element in the argument of the work itself, Dickey's commentary focuses on the devices Smith uses to ground his economics in (...) broadly ethical and social categories. An unparalleled guide to an often difficult and perplexing work. (shrink)

A clearly written, authoritative introduction to Taylor's work.

What was once the factory is now the university. As deindustrialization spreads and the working class is decentralized, new means of social resistance and political activism need to be sought in what may be the last places where they are possible: the university and the art world. Gerald Raunig's new book analyzes the potential that cognitive and creative labor has in these two arenas to resist the new regimes of domination imposed by cognitive capitalism. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's concept of (...) "modulation" as the market-driven imperative for the constant transformation and reinvention of subjectivity, in Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, Raunig charts alternative horizons for resistance. Looking at recent social struggles including the university strikes in Europe, the Spanish ¡Democracia real YA! organization, the Arab revolts, and the Occupy movement, Raunig argues for a reassessment of the importance of cultural and knowledge production. The central role of the university, he asserts, is not as a factory of knowledge but as a place of creative disobedience. (shrink)

In mainstream analytic epistemology, Reformed theology has made its presence prominently felt in Reformed epistemology, the view of religious belief according to which religious beliefs can be properly basic and warranted when formed by the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis, an inborn capacity or faculty for belief in God that can be prompted to generate certain religious beliefs when presented with things (e.g., certain majestic aspects of creation). A major competitor to Reformed epistemology is Wittgensteinian quasi-fideism, a position drawn (...) from the epistemology of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, according to which some foundational religious commitments are not properly basic beliefs but some kind of apodictic, unshakeable certainties that form part of the structure of one’s rationality and worldview. I argue that the Reformed tradition has contained elements of quasi-fideism at least as far back as Calvin’s account of faith from the Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 3, chapter 2. (shrink)

In this "concise philosophy of the machine," Gerald Raunig provides a historical and critical backdrop to a concept proposed forty years ago by the French philosophers Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze: the machine, not as a technical device and apparatus, but as a social composition and concatenation. This conception of the machine as an arrangement of technical, bodily, intellectual, and social components subverts the opposition between man and machine, organism and mechanism, individual and community. Drawing from an unusual range of (...) films, literature, and performance--from the role of bicycles in Flann O'Brien's fiction to Vittorio de Sica's Neorealist film The Bicycle Thieves, and from Karl Marx's "Fragment on Machines" to the deus ex machina of Greek drama--Raunig arrives at an enhanced conception of the machine as a social movement, finding its most apt and concrete manifestation in the Euromayday movement, which since 2001 has become a transnational activist and discursive practice focused upon the precarious nature of labor and lives. (shrink)