James questions the validity of the very tentative statement made in the final sentence of our paper. Our claim concerned the proportion of twins in Britain in the 1990s that might have arisen through subfertility treatment and was linked to the suggestion that the natural twinning rate might still be in decline. If this were true, we, like James, would regard that prospect with concern.

As contribution to a recent debate (James, 1998; Murphy etal., 1997, 1998) the proportion of twins following ovulation induction (OI) or assisted conception (AC) in 1994 in Oxfordshire and West Berkshire was estimated, and by extrapolation the natural twinning rate in England and Wales was judged to have maintained a plateau phase since the 1970s. Similar figures for 1995 and 1996 from the same study, and hence a more stable local estimate, are now provided. The proportions, as before, were estimated (...) from women's responses to a questionnaire within a case[hyphen]control study, with ascertainment from general practitioners' records or hospital case[hyphen]notes for non[hyphen]responders or for those excluded from the study originally. In 1994, 1995 and 1996 the proportion of twins following OI/AC was overall 27% (24%, 30% and 27% respectively). Restriction to the 87% locally resident made no difference. The national crude twinning rate for those years was overall 13·3 per 1000 maternities (12·8, 13·6 and 13·4 respectively). (shrink)

Status anxiety, the constant concern about individuals’ position on the social ladder, negatively affects social cohesion, health, and wellbeing. Given previous findings showing that status anxiety is associated with economic inequality, we aimed in this research to test this association experimentally. A cross-sectional study was run in order to discard confounding effects of the relationship between perceived economic inequality and status anxiety, and to explore the mediating role of a competitive climate. Then we predicted that people assigned to a condition (...) of high inequality would perceive more status anxiety in their social context, and they would themselves report higher status anxiety. Thus, in an experimental study PEI was manipulated. In Study 1, PEI uniquely predicted status anxiety, and perceived competitiveness mediated the relationship. In Study 2 PEI increased perceived contextual status anxiety, a specific form of perceived competitiveness based on socioeconomic status. Moreover, preliminary evidence of an indirect effect was found from PEI to personal status anxiety, through perceived contextual status anxiety. These preliminary findings provide experimental evidence for the effects of economic inequality on status anxiety and the mechanism involved. Economic inequality makes people feel that they live in a society where they are constantly concerned and competing with each other for their SES. These results could have important implications as health and wellbeing could be promoted by reducing economic inequalities and the competitive and materialistic environments of our societies. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of person‐centred care (PCC) in nursing, there is no general agreement on the assumptions and the meaning of PCC. We sympathize with the work of others who rethink PCC towards relational, embedded, and temporal selfhood rather than individual personhood. Our perspective addresses criticism of humanist assumptions in PCC using critical posthumanism as a diffraction from dominant values We highlight the problematic realities that might be produced in healthcare, leading to some people being more likely to be disenfranchised (...) from healthcare than others. We point to the colonial, homo‐ and transphobic, racist, ableist, and ageist consequences of humanist traditions that have influenced the development of PCC. We describe the deep rooted conditions that structurally uphold inequality and undermine nursing practice that PCC reproduces. We advocate for the self‐determination of patients and emphasize that we support the fundamental mechanisms of PCC enabling patients' choice; however, without critical introspection, these are limited to a portion of humans. Last, we present limitations of our perspective based on our white*‐cisheteropatriarchy** positionality. We point to the fact that any reimagining of models such as PCC should be carefully done by listening, following, and ceding power to people with diversity dimensions*** and the lived experience or expertise that exists from diverse perspectives. We point towards Black, queer feminism, and critical disabilities studies to contextualize our point of critique with humanism and PCC to amplify equity for all people and communities. Theory and philosophy are useful to understand restrictive factors in healthcare delivery and to inform systematic strategies to improve the quality of care so as not to perpetuate the oppression of groups of people with diversity dimensions. *We purposely capitalize Black and use lower case for white to decentre whiteness and as an intentional act of antiracism (see White Homework a podcast series by Tori W. Douglas). **Cisheteropatriarchy describes people with intersecting identities of dominant social groups; cisgender is the gender identity that aligns with the gender you were assigned at birth, hetero means heterosexual, and patriarchy refers to structural systems of power based on maleness where women are often excluded and hold less power. ***With diversity dimensions, we refer to subjective lived experience and material realities of people that exist outside the ‘dominant minorities' of white‐cisheteropatriarchy, meaning groups of people in society who historically and currently hold more power and through this, structurally dominate the norms and possibilities of living for other people. (shrink)

With this paper, we walk out some central ideas about posthumanisms and the ways in which nursing is already deeply entangled with them. At the same time, we point to ways in which nursing might benefit from further entanglement with other ideas emerging from posthumanisms. We first offer up a brief history of posthumanisms, following multiple roots to several points of formation. We then turn to key flavors of posthuman thought to differentiate between them and clarify our collective understanding and (...) use of the terms. This includes considerations of the threads of transhumanism, critical posthumanism, feminist new materialism, and the speculative, affirmative ethics that arise from critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism. These ideas are fruitful for nursing, and already in action in many cases, which is the matter we occupy ourselves with in the final third of the paper. We consider the ways nursing is already posthuman—sometimes even critically so—and the speculative worldbuilding of nursing as praxis. We conclude with visions for a critical posthumanist nursing that attends to humans and other/more/nonhumans, situated and material and embodied and connected, in relation. (shrink)

In Descartes; A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967), I published a bibliography of works in English relating to Descartes. This is a Supplement to that bibliography and contains references to works in English that have appeared since 1966 through 1975 or that inadvertently were not included in the original bibliography. The Supplement is in three parts: (A) Translations and Reference Works, (B) Books, and (C) Articles. In (C), I have also included chapters (...) of books that can be read independently and that may be of interest to students of Descartes. There were of course borderline cases in which I had to decide whether an article contained enough material about Descartes to be included in the bibliography. On the whole, I believe I have followed a rather liberal policy in making these decisions. (shrink)

In the first premiss, how is the word 'different' used? If we are prepared to say that, in certain areas of discourse, the word 'different,' like the word 'same,' has two uses and that there are two senses of the word, there seem to be two ways of interpreting the first premiss. On the one hand, we can take the word 'different' to be used in the way in which it would be used if someone wished to point out that (...) the table that was in this room was replaced by another very similar table and, to point this out, said that the table that is here now is different from—or is a different table from—the one that was here a week ago. If in the first premiss we take the word 'different' to be used in this way, the premiss can be read: "Everything is numerically different from everything else." On the other hand, we can take the word 'different' to be used in the way in which it would be used if someone were to say, about two tables that were in front of him, that one is different from the other, and elaborate on his remark by saying that the one is a darker brown than the other. If we take the word 'different' to be used in this way, the first premiss can be read: "Everything is qualitatively different from everything else." Which of the two interpretations is correct? It seems that both are, for, although Mr. Blanshard purports to be discussing one argument, what he says in reply to Nagel's objections supports the second interpretation; whereas his statement of the argument at the outset supports the first interpretation. When he answers Nagel's objections, he considers the case of two "patches." A is a circular patch on the earth, and B a triangular patch on Mars. Maintaining against Nagel that A and B are internally related, the relation between A and B that he contends is internal is their difference in shape. And the argument that he seems to be defending here would have as its first premiss that everything differs qualitatively from every other thing. Yet, when he presents the argument on p. 229, he seems to have a different argument in mind. To show that two seemingly unrelated things are related, he says that a farmer in Iowa and a ballet dancer in Moscow are "different individuals," and the point that I take him to be making here is that, from the proposition that the farmer in Iowa and the dancer in Moscow are two individuals, it follows that the one is different from the other and hence that the two are related. This favors the first interpretation, viz., that in the first premiss the word 'different' is to be understood as in the remark that the table that is here now is different from—is a different table from—the table that was here a week ago. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CRUCIFIXION: ACCIDENT OR DESIGN? Sebastian Moore, O.S.B. Downside Abbey Lastyear I was visited by an old friend from my Liverpool days. Mike and I had worked together with the young of the parish, and one summer the two of us took a couple of boys camping in France, a trial of patience which made us known to each other at some depth. He was in fact a passionately convinced (...) Catholic, and very pastoral with it. We had many and long theological discussions. On his recent visit to Downside, I was showing him and some friends round our church, when, à propos ofquite what I don't remember, he made a remark about the Catholic cult of suffering, and said, "and it's all because ofthe crucifixion, isn't it? Why don't we recognize that the crucifixion was an accident?" I didn't react, because I was dumbfounded at what seemed to be the denial ofthe mystery ofthe cross by a friend who I had no reason to believe had stopped being a Catholic. And I'm sure he hasn't. He would certainly have told me ifhe had. It has taken me over a year to figure out what is going on here, and this would not have been possible without intensive study of the work of René Girard. The only alternative to saying that the crucifixion was an accident is to say that it was "ordained by God." It is only as ordained by God that this horrible event could be presented to people as a divine affirmation that suffering is to be sought and espoused. Also, it is only as ordained by God that the crucifixion can be thought of as "appeasing God" in some way. Both the moral and the dogmatic implication ofthe crucifixion—that suffering is a good thing, and that God required a victim—are grounded in the notion that God required the crucifixion ofhis Son. And it is because this idea is quite unacceptable, unworthy of God and ofthe human mind made in God's image, that my friend concludes that the crucifixion was not required by God, not written into the eternal scheme ofthings, but an accident. 156Sebastian Moore Once the problem is clarified in these terms, more and more instances come to mind, of rejection, by Christians and others, of the whole divine ordination ofthe cross. Gore Vidal refers to Christianity as "that lugubrious religion." Mary Hunt, a prominent American Catholic feminist, introduced a workshop with the statement, "we are not about naked guys nailed to crosses, blood all over the place!" Where divine ordering is accepted the special painfulness and darkness ofthe idea is noted. Anselm refers to the doctrine as the Narnia Chronicles, to commend the notion, by referring to a dark law written into the nature ofthings beyond our comprehension. The children's suggestion that Asian should simply not comply with the Snow Queen's requirement is rejected by Asian with a mysterious impatience—the children justhaven't grown up, like the romantics who, according to Matthew Arnold, "did not know enough." Again, during a day on "the roots of violence" that I led here yesterday there was much questioning about the role ofGod die Father in the crucifixion. The problem is crystallized in the famous cry from the cross, "Why have you forsaken me?" To my confessedly lame suggestion that Jesus was "only quoting a psalm," someone remarked, "to quote that psalm at thatjuncture and not mean it, is somewhatmisleading!" Again it's the same problem. How can God be understood as ordaining the crucifixion, compatibly with the notion of God as all-loving which Christianity of course affirms? Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who is 90% pro-Girard, in the other 10% wants to hold on to something he calls "the wrath of God." Thus the seeming necessity of having God require and ordain the crucifixion is the main crisis of Christian belief. The six-year-old Willie, in Thomas Klise's amazing novel, The Last Western, puts the problem with childlike directness. He keeps interrupting catechism class with, "Why did God kill Jesus?" and is shushed by Sister. I recall that Illtyd Trethowan said to... (shrink)

It has become a truism that we humans are genetically about 99% identical to chimpanzees. The origins of this assertion are clear: among early studies of DNA sequences, nucleotide identity between humans and chimpanzees was found to average around 98.9%.1 However, this figure is correct only with respect to regions of the genome that are shared between humans and chimpanzees. Often ignored are the many parts of their genomes that are not shared. Genomic rearrangements, including insertions, deletions, translocations and duplications, (...) have long been recognized as potentially important sources of novel genomic material2,3 and are known to account for major genomic differences between humans and chimpanzees.4 Further, such changes have been implicated in a number of genetic disorders, such as DiGeorge, Angelman/Prader‐Willi and Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth syndromes5. BioEssays 28: 335–338, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Volume 7 in Forschungen zur Pädagogik und Anthropologie. The emphasis on the human body as a key to an understanding of man and the world has been one of the defining characteristics of contemporary existentialism. The role of the human body as it is discussed by the two major French "Existentialists," Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, is discussed by Willi Maier in relation to the ethical and social views of the philosophy of each, and implications for the social sciences are (...) drawn by contrasting their descriptions of human corporeality. Well-founded yet sympathetic observations are made about the respective importance of the roles of human corporeality such that the position of Merleau-Ponty is seen not only as the more encompassing but also the more fruitful and less-problematic for adoption by social scientists as a solution to certain difficulties which plague them. This is a carefully critical yet empathetic and highly suggestive account of what may be considered the most fruitful contribution of these phenomenologists to philosophy and the "human" disciplines in general.—J. E. B. (shrink)

Berkeley's critique of abstract ideas in the Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge has provoked a great deal of commentary of various sorts. This anthology, first published in 1989, presents a selection of historically important and philosophically interesting discussions on Berkeley's theories.

Ethics in the anthropocene -- Atmospheric powers: climate change and moral incompetence -- Christian ethics and unprecedented problems -- Global ethics: moral pluralism and planetary problems -- Sustainability science and the ethics of wicked problems -- Toxic wombs and the ecology of justice -- Impoverishment and the economy of desire -- Intergenerational risk and the future of love -- Sustaining grace.

Exploring the subject of Jewish philosophy as a controversial construction site of the project of modernity, this book examines the implications of the different and often conflicting notions that drive the debate on the question of what ...

This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social power or, authority, (...) is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

Argues for the primacy of the phylogenetic system as the general reference system in biology. This book, first published in 1966, generated significant controversy and opened possibilities for evolutionary biology.

From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained (...) a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. (shrink)

Despite acknowledgment that performance failure among new salespeople is a prevalent issue for organizations, researchers do not fully understand the consequences of repetitive periods of failure on new salespeople’s unethical selling behaviors. Further, little is known about how a sales force’s reward structure and managerial attempts to intervene following failure affect new salespeople’s behavior. Combining an experiment with longitudinal growth models, we show that repetitive periods of failure increase unethical behaviors, and interventions intended to remind the salesperson to behave in (...) the customer’s best interests attenuate this effect under a non-contingent reward structure. However, counter to managerial assumptions, under a contingent reward structure these customer-oriented interventions actually backfire by amplifying the original relationship between repetitive failure and unethical behaviors. The results have potentially important managerial implications for those who manage new salespeople learning how to sell or during other failure-prone periods. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy is often treated as a closed system, without reference to how it was written or how Kant arrived at its familiar form, the critique. In fact, the style of the critique seems so artless that readers think of it as an unfortunate by-product—a style of stylelessness. In _Constituting Critique_, Willi Goetschel shows how this apparent gracelessness was deliberately achieved by Kant through a series of writing experiments. By providing an account of the process that culminated in his three (...) _Critiques_, this book offers a new perspective on Kant’s philosophical thought and practice. _Constituting Critique_ traces the stages in Kant’s development to reveal how he redefined philosophy as a critical task. Following the philosopher through the experiments of his early essays, Goetschel demonstrates how Kant tests, challenges, and transforms the philosophical essay in his pursuit of a new self-reflective literary genre. From these experiments, critique emerges as the philosophical form for the critical project of the Enlightenment. The imperatives of its transcendental style, Goetschel contends, not only constitute and inform the critical moment of Kant’s philosophical praxis, but also have an enduring place in post-Kantian philosophy and literature. By situating the _Critiques_ within the context of Kant’s early essays, this work will redirect the attention of Kant scholars to the origins of their form. It will also encourage contemporary critical theorists to reconsider their own practice through an engagement with its source in Kant. (shrink)