This article examines the connections among heuristics, the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that underlie theorizing, and substantive explanations in sociology. It develops and contrasts three heuristics: “doing as knowing” (DK), “categorizing as knowing” (CK), and “praxis as knowing” (PK). These are each composed of four dimensions: the theory of knowledge, the theory of reality, the theory of the growth of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge producers. The article then shows the importance of heuristics for empirical work by demonstrating how (...) they shape explanations in the sociological subfield of the historical sociology of knowledge. The essay draws two main conclusions: it argues that PK offers a more useful basis for developing explanations in sociology than either of the two alternatives (DK and CK) that currently shape substantive work; furthermore, it claims that the exposition of heuristic assumptions is an important task for sociology. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 5, Page 500-510, June 2022.

Amidst expanding interest in local food and agriculture, food banks and allied organizations across the United States have increasingly engaged in diverse gleaning, gardening, and farming activities. Some of these programs reinforce food banks’ traditional role in distributing surplus commodities, and most extend food banks’ reliance on middle class volunteers and charitable donations. But some gleaning and especially gardening and farming programs seek to build poor people’s and communities’ capacity to meet more of their own food needs, signaling new roles (...) for some food banks in promoting community food security and food justice. This article reports the results of a national survey and in-depth case studies of the ways in which food banks are engaging in and with local agriculture and how this influences food banks’ roles in community and regional food systems. The patterns it reveals reflect broader tensions in debates about hunger relief and food security. (shrink)

Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

BackgroundRadiotherapy is an essential component of cancer treatment, yet many countries do not have adequate capacity to serve all patients who would benefit from it. Allocation systems are needed to guide patient prioritization for radiotherapy in resource-limited contexts. These systems should be informed by allocation principles deemed relevant to stakeholders. This study explores the ethical dilemmas and views of decision-makers engaged in real-world prioritization of scarce radiotherapy resources at a cancer center in Rwanda in order to identify relevant principles.MethodsSemi-structured interviews (...) were conducted with a purposive sample of 22 oncology clinicians, program leaders, and clinical advisors. Interviews explored the factors considered by decision-makers when prioritizing patients for radiotherapy. The framework method of thematic analysis was used to characterize these factors. Bioethical analysis was then applied to determine their underlying normative principles.ResultsParticipants considered both clinical and non-clinical factors relevant to patient prioritization for radiotherapy. They widely agreed that disease curability should be the primary overarching driver of prioritization, with the goal of saving the most lives. However, they described tension between curability and competing factors including age, palliative benefit, and waiting time. They were divided about the role that non-clinical factors such as social value should play, and agreed that poverty should not be a barrier.ConclusionsMultiple competing principles create tension with the agreed upon overarching goal of maximizing lives saved, including another utilitarian approach of maximizing life-years saved as well as non-utilitarian principles, such as egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and deontology. Clinical guidelines for patient prioritization for radiotherapy can combine multiple principles into a single allocation system to a significant extent. However, conflicting views about the role that social factors should play, and the dynamic nature of resource availability, highlight the need for ongoing work to evaluate and refine priority setting systems based on stakeholder views. (shrink)

An important branch of environmental theory frames the climate crisis as a moral problem in need of a moral solution: human hubris is responsible for environmental degradation and must be atoned for through humility. Politically indeterminate, however, such argumentation is vulnerable to de-politicizing and mal-politicizing capture. In an effort to fend off the threat of either, this paper turns to the history of political thought and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who theorized the environment as both a moral and a political domain. (...) I examine how Rousseau understood the availability of republican self-rule to be contingent both on the natural environment and on the relationship we construct with it such that freedom, in his words, is not automatically ‘a fruit of every Clime.’ This is the case, he suggests, because of the environment’s intersection with political economy and political culture. At the same time, Rousseau contends, republican self-rule is also a moral practice; republican polities afford citizens a public means of achieving and exercising moral agency. Triangulating the relationship between polity, morality, and environment, Rousseau’s thought offers an integrative logic through which to imbue the environment with both moral and political salience, thereby circumventing the dangers of mere moralization alone. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce’s and Sigmund Freud’s theories may be used to interpret Jean Cocteau’s film La Belle et la Bête (1946). This film has a specific set of codes which connote its filmic language. Cocteau uses fetishistic objects as symbols and icons to reflect the psychological meaning of the film’s narrative. Peirce’s icons and symbols include the connection a person may make through the conventions and expressions of language a person links with the object or idea being observed. Peirce’s (...) semiotic theory functions as a theory of communication. His theory refocuses on culture. Freud’s theories can be linked with ideas produced by Peirce in forming sign relations with the interpretation of the film and the role of imagination in the film. Especially important are Freud’s ideas of repression, conscious and unconscious as they relate to Cocteau’s filmic narrative and the film’s main character Belle. (shrink)

Whilst previous observational studies have linked negative thought processes such as an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles with depression, the directionality of these associations and the potential role that these factors play in the transition to adulthood and parenthood has not yet been investigated. This study examined the association between locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression in young adulthood and whether parenthood moderated these associations. Using a UK prospective population-based birth (...) cohort study: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we examined the association between external locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence with odds of depression in 4,301 young adults using logistic regression models unadjusted and adjusted for potential confounding factors. Interaction terms were employed to examine whether parenthood moderated these associations. Over 20% of young adults in our sample were at or above the clinical threshold indicating probable depression. For each standard deviation increase in external locus of control in adolescence, there was a 19% higher odds of having probable depression in young adulthood, after adjusting for various confounding factors including baseline mood and different demographic and life events variables. Similarly, for each SD increase in negative cognitive styles in adolescence, there was a 29% higher odds of having probable depression in the adjusted model. We found little evidence that parenthood status moderated the relationship between external locus of control or negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression following adjustment for confounding factors. Effect estimates were comparable when performed in the complete case dataset. These findings suggest that having an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles in mid- to late adolescence is associated with an increased likelihood of probable depression in young adulthood. (shrink)

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics with contingent (...) creaturehood, it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

BackgroundThe increased risk of developing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in extremely preterm infants is well-documented. Better understanding of perinatal risk factors, particularly those that are modifiable, can inform prevention efforts.MethodsWe examined data from the Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborns (ELGAN) Study. Participants were screened for ADHD at age 10 with the Child Symptom Inventory-4 (N = 734) and assessed at age 15 with a structured diagnostic interview (MINI-KID) to evaluate for the diagnosis of ADHD (N = 575). We studied associations (...) of pre-pregnancy maternal body mass index (BMI), pregestational and/or gestational diabetes, maternal smoking during pregnancy (MSDP), and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) with 10-year and 15-year ADHD outcomes. Relative risks were calculated using Poisson regression models with robust error variance, adjusted for maternal age, maternal educational status, use of food stamps, public insurance status, marital status at birth, and family history of ADHD. We defined ADHD as a positive screen on the CSI-4 at age 10 and/or meeting DSM-5 criteria at age 15 on the MINI-KID. We evaluated the robustness of the associations to broadening or restricting the definition of ADHD. We limited the analysis to individuals with IQ ≥ 70 to decrease confounding by cognitive functioning. We evaluated interactions between maternal BMI and diabetes status. We assessed for mediation of risk increase by alterations in inflammatory or neurotrophic protein levels in the first week of life.ResultsElevated maternal BMI and maternal diabetes were each associated with a 55–65% increase in risk of ADHD, with evidence of both additive and multiplicative interactions between the two exposures. MSDP and HDP were not associated with the risk of ADHD outcomes. There was some evidence for association of ADHD outcomes with high levels of inflammatory proteins or moderate levels of neurotrophic proteins, but there was no evidence that these mediated the risk associated with maternal BMI or diabetes.ConclusionContrary to previous population-based studies, MSDP and HDP did not predict ADHD outcomes in this extremely preterm cohort, but elevated maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, maternal diabetes, and perinatal inflammatory markers were associated with increased risk of ADHD at age 10 and/or 15, with positive interaction between pre-pregnancy BMI and maternal diabetes. (shrink)

Paru dans la collection « Textes rares » des Presses universitaires de Rennes, cette réédition du roman de la communarde André Léo (Léodile Champseix, née Béra) a de quoi réjouir les spécialistes du xixe siècle et les historiennes des femmes et du genre. Vaste fresque d’un enfant du siècle – l’industriel Jean-Baptiste Brafort –, ce roman propose une critique sociale acerbe des rapports de classe et de genre sur fond des tensions sociales et politiques des premières décennies du siècle (...) jusqu’a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 561-575 [Access article in PDF] Claude de Seyssel's Translations of Ancient Historians Rebecca Boone Through his seven translations of ancient history Claude de Seyssel played a major role in transmitting knowledge about antiquity to the French. Despite this fact he has received little attention from scholars of the French Renaissance. Perhaps the problem is that Seyssel does not seem to (...) fit neatly into any category. He was neither French nor Italian but a Savoyard, not truly noble but the illegitimate son of a noble family, not truly a historian but a writer of history-based propaganda and a translator of histories. He began his career as a jurist, became a royal councillor, then a bishop, and in the end died as the Archbishop of Turin. Before his death Seyssel left numerous works, his most famous being a political treatise entitled La Monarchie de France, a work contemporaneous with The Prince by Machiavelli, with whom he shared a similar view of the political world. 1Much like Seyssel himself the genre of history translation has been rather neglected by scholars. A notable exception is a recent article by A.C. Dionisotti, which also examines the translations of Seyssel. The article's intention is to continue a project proposed by Arnaldo Momigliano, to collect evidence that "would help us to understand where and on what occasions and by what people books of history were written and read." 2 This essay attempts to continue this project by asking the following questions: Why did Seyssel undertake the translations? For whom were they intended? How did Seyssel conceive his task as translator? Finally, what can be inferred from his technique of translation? [End Page 561]First, the translations must be put in the context of Seyssel's life. The translations were a sideline in his busy career as royal councillor. One of many itinerant scholar-diplomats hired by the states of Europe at that time, Seyssel had been teaching law at the University of Turin when he was called into the service of France by the newly crowned Louis XII in 1498. Seyssel was of value to the court because of his reputation as a jurist as well as his connections with the court of Savoy, the state which held the mountain passes leading to Italy. This was especially important because the conquest of Milan was the main goal of Louis XII throughout his reign. Seyssel played an active role in the French occupational government in several Italian cities. Although Seyssel spent much of his time in Italy, he often followed the king around France or was in transit on diplomatic missions to England, to Flanders, and to the Swiss cantons.It is amazing that Seyssel even found the time to write, but by the end of his life, he had left an astounding variety of written works: legal commentaries, translations, works of propaganda for the French monarchy, a political treatise, and at the end of his life several religious tracts. Despite the copiousness of his written works, however, Seyssel remained outside the circle of writers at the French court. He had no connections either with Budé or with the Grands Rhetoriqueurs, such as Jean Lemaire de Belges, nor did he leave any friendly and eloquent correspondence to other humanists. If Seyssel lived during the budding years of the French renaissance, he showed few signs of appreciating it. As a Savoyard educated in Italy he probably thought of the French in the same way as did many Italians of his age: they were militarily powerful but culturally backward. 3Undoubtedly, Seyssel believed the translations would serve his own interests at court. They were a way to cultivate patronage and to enhance his prestige by building up a reputation as an important scholar. But evidence suggests that their main purpose was to prove to the king, to whom all but one of his translations were dedicated, his utility as a councillor. This was the argument of Paul [End Page 562] Chavy in his study of Seyssel's... (shrink)

This quarter’s issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal dives deeply into questions concerning who is the proper target of medical interventions, and under what circumstances. Mary Jean Walker and James Franklin’s article, “An Argument Against Drug Testing Welfare Recipients,” and Maggie Taylor’s “Too Close to the Knives: Children’s Rights, Parental Authority, and Best Interests in the Context of Elective Pediatric Surgeries” both ask hard questions about when medical interventions can be imposed without consent, purportedly in order to (...) secure non-medical, social benefits for their recipients. Lauren Freeman and Saray Ayala López’s “Sex Categorization in Medical Contexts: A Cautionary Tale,” questions who... (shrink)

Ce recueil de trente articles est le résultat d’une conférence organisée par l’Université de Paris IV et l’Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique à Paris en 2002 pour commémorer le bicentenaire de la création des lycées français. La lecture des actes, riches et variés par ailleurs, confirme cependant la faible place encore accordée aux problématiques concernant les femmes ou le genre dans l’histoire de l’éducation française. En effet, malgré la présence du mot lycéennes dans le titre, cel...

Flora Champy shows how Rousseau developed his political philosophy by reference to ancient examples, intertexts, and interlocutors. Her literary methodology involves close readings of published tex...

This article offers a philosophical reading of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels by bringing the tetralogy into conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. In addition to highlighting the striking similarities between Ferrante’s notion of smarginatura (‘dissolving margins’) and Sartre’s depiction of the existential sensation of nausea, this article argues that the two main characters of Ferrante’s tetralogy, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, respectively exemplify Sartre’s ontological categories of ‘being-for-oneself’ and ‘being-for-others’ in his phenomenological account of human existence. However, Ferrante—like Simone (...) de Beauvoir before her—goes beyond Sartre in her ability to offer an account of the imperfect existential freedom of women, who remain constrained in their pursuit of authenticity by social and cultural factors. Drawing on Ferrante’s assertion that readers ‘are both Elena and Lila’ as well as her recent claim that there are within her two kinds of writing (broadly equated to the ‘compliant’ Elena and ‘impetuous’ Lila), we establish Ferrante’s exploration of the ambivalent features of human subjectivity as a consummate philosophical and literary project. (shrink)

Bearing witness is a familiar if diversely employed concept. On the one hand, it concerns the accuracy and validity of practical affairs, for example in a court of law, at a wedding, or in a law office. On the other hand, the term can embody powerful religious, social, and/ or moral meaning, whether in bearing witness to historical trauma and human suffering, or in paying heed to everyday, seemingly ordinary aspects of nature and of human life. In this article, we (...) address the question of what renders a witness trustworthy. We characterize ethical and epistemic constituents of witnessing. We examine the work of several exemplary witnesses: W. G. Sebald, Saidiya Hartman, Jonathan Lear, Etty Hillesum, and John Berger alongside Jean Mohr. These sources help us think about the education of a person who aspires to bear witness, whether it be to traumatic events or to quotidian life in educational or other settings. We present criteria of trustworthiness that can support reflection on what we take to be the important place of bearing witness in educational inquiry and practice. (shrink)

L’intérêt que la revue Clio. Femmes, histoire, sociétés porte à l’histoire de l’éducation des filles justifie à lui seul la lecture du numéro spécial d’Histoire de l’éducation qui lui est consacré. L’hommage à l’historienne Françoise Mayeur qui ouvre le recueil est le fil d’Ariane des textes rassemblés. Après cet avant-propos et l’inventaire des travaux sur le sujet, les coordonnateurs du numéro ont opté pour un classement chronologique des thèmes étudiés. On recommandera d’abord à tout cherc...

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

In Showing Perseverance, beginning readers will learn about all the ways they can be strong in spite of difficulty. Vibrant, full-color photos and carefully leveled text engage young readers as they discover how they can build character by showing perseverance.

At its birth, a new scientific discipline is baptized with the names of the two parent disciplines, Science X and Science Y. Subsequently, usage tends to shorten this compound name by giving preference to one or the other of the constituting terms so that the new term is less disconcerting and novel. Take biophysics, for example. Is it more closely related to physics than to biology, or the other way round? Today this question seems naive but it did not appear (...) so a scarce thirty years ago, that is, at the beginning of the creative activity of the most, eminent scientists in the field of biophysics: it was then the subject of intense discussion. (shrink)

This book offers a unique insight into the long history of the housing crisis, focusing on the development of the politics of the property-owing democracy, the growth of housing finance, the history of property crashes, and the rise and fall of a different vision of housing policy, which enabled far more people to realize their right to housing.

In this paper we investigate the connection between forms of sustainability and masculinity through a study of everyday life in a Danish alternative slaughterhouse. In contrast to the predominant form of slaughterhouses today in Western contexts, the ‘alternative’ slaughterhouse is characterized as non-industrial in scale and articulating some form of a sustainability orientation. Acknowledging the variability of the term, we firstly explore how ‘sustainability’ is understood and practiced in this place. We then illuminate the situated manifestations of masculinities, which appear (...) predominantly- though not exclusively- hegemonic in nature. We next reflect on how the situated and particular sustainability of this site come to bear on a workplace long characterized as a masculinized site of, e.g., violence and repression, showing how the sustainability of the alternative slaughterhouse has potential to nourish alternative masculinities. We finally call for more attention at this nexus of sustainability and masculinities studies, to examine how the broad sustainability turn in food systems needs to be further examined in relation to what masculinities it perpetuates, as well as how a focus on masculinities may enhance our understanding of varying forms of sustainability, especially their potential for ecologically and socially just food systems. (shrink)

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin’s Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history’s most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker’s art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.

We routinely need to process the identity of many faces around us, and how the brain achieves this is still the subject of much research in cognitive neuroscience. To date, insights on face identity processing have come from both healthy and clinical populations. However, in order to directly compare results across and within participant groups, and across different studies, it is crucial that a standard task is utilised which includes different exemplars (for example, non-face stimuli along with faces), is memory-neutral, (...) and taps into identity recognition across orientation and across viewpoint change. The goal of this study was to test a previously behaviourally tested, optimised face and object identity matching design in a healthy control sample whilst being scanned using fMRI. Specifically, we investigated categorical, orientation, and category-specific orientation effects while participants were focused on identity processing of simultaneously presented exemplar stimuli. Alongside observing category and orientation specific effects in a distributed set of brain regions, we also saw an interaction between stimulus category and orientation in the bilateral fusiform gyrus and bilateral middle occipital gyrus. Generally these clusters showed the pattern of a heightened response to inverted, as opposed to upright faces; and to upright, as opposed to inverted shoes. These results are discussed in relation to previous studies and to potential future research within prosopagnosic individuals. (shrink)

Ch. G. Bardili (1761-1808) ist der Begrunder des rationalen Realismus mit dem Ziel eines von der Materialitat ausgehenden Gottesbeweises. Heute nur noch als von den Zeitgenossen fast einhellig abgelehnter Denker bekannt, bietet sein Schaffen in der enormen Spannbreite von Wissenschaftsreflexionen, Ethik, Philosophiegeschichte und Logik doch ein interessantes, facettenreiches und in seiner Radikalitat anregendes Gesamtkonzept. Dieses Werk erstmals in vollem Umfang zu erschliessen, das ganze System Bardilis in seiner Entwicklung und seinen Inhalten nachzuzeichnen sowie in seinen Grundzugen, die fur die Debatten (...) der Zeit, etwa mit Fichte, Schelling und Reinhold, bedeutsam sind, aufzuweisen, ist die Absicht des vorliegenden Bandes.'Bislang liegt uber Bardili keine nennenswerte Literatur vor. [.] Diese Lucke schliesst nun die vorgelegte Monographie, [.] um so ein Werk vorzustellen, das zwar heute weitgehend in den Hintergrund geruckt oder oft schlicht vergessen ist, das es gleichwohl - wie die Vf. uberzeugend zu zeigen vermag - verdient hat, wieder starkere Beachtung zu finden, weil es zu zentralen Fragestellungen, wie sie im Bereich der klassischen deutschen Philosophie wichtig und bestimmend geworden sind, eine haufig zweifellos eigenwillige, aber trotzdem wegen seines hohen Grades an Originalitat und seiner radikalen, wenn auch bisweilen exzentrisch anmutenden, Alternativstellung bedenkenswerte Anstosse bietet. [.] Insgesamt leistet die Vf. mit ihrer Monographie Hervorragendes und Vorbildliches: Sie zeichnet den Denkweg und das System Bardilis in ihrer Entwicklung und ihren Inhalten nach. Die wesentlichen Grundzuge, die sich fur die Debatten, Streitgesprache und [.] philosophischen Konstellationen der Zeit als so bedeutsam erwiesen, werden pragnant aufgewiesen und mit denkerisch hochster Souveranitat durchdrungen.' Dirk Cursgen, Philosophische Rundschau. (shrink)

Evolution was not discovered single-handedly, Rebecca Stott argues, contrary to what has become standard lore, but is an idea that emerged over many centuries, advanced by daring individuals across the globe who had the imagination to speculate on nature's extraordinary ways, and who had the courage to articulate such speculations at a time when to do so was often considered heresy.

In Being Responsible, beginning readers will learn about all the ways they can practice responsibility in their daily lives. Vibrant, full-color photos and carefully leveled text engage young readers as they discover how they can build character by being responsible.

Can films philosophize rather than simply represent philosophical ideas developed outside of the cinematic medium? Taking up this question crucial to the emergent field of film philosophy, this book argues that the films of the American avant-garde do "do" philosophy and illuminates the ethical and political stakes of their aesthetic interventions. The book traces the avant-garde's philosophy by developing a history and theory of its investment in dimensional, conceptual, and material in-betweens, clarifying how this cinema's reflections on the creation and (...) reception of images construct an ethics of perception itself, a responsibility to perpetuate thought in an enduring re-encounter with the world and with meaning's unfinished production. This entails the avant-garde's locating of cinema's-and thought's-ends or meanings in their means, and their advancement of an image of truth that is made rather than found that unites their films with the philosophies of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson who believed the "journey's end is found in every step of the road" (Cavell). Rectifying film-philosophy's neglect of the American avant-garde, the book demonstrates how rather than showing their interest in the revelation of authoritative truths, the avant-garde's interest in the re-encounter and review of the seen and known emerges from an American Transcendentalist tradition that opposes such notions. Sheehan reads the avant-garde's interest in the contingencies of spectatorial experience as also an extension of Pragmatism's commitment to replacing the authority of a priori knowledge with that of individual experience. She also shows how Emerson's influence on Friedrich Nietzsche connects the American avant-garde's philosophies to Deleuze's time-image, premised largely upon Nietzsche's "powers of the false.". (shrink)