There are several different ways in which chance affects evolutionary change. That all of these processes are called “random genetic drift” is in part a due to common elements across these different processes, but is also a product of historical borrowing of models and language across different levels of organization in the biological hierarchy. A history of the concept of drift will reveal the variety of contexts in which drift has played an explanatory role in biology, and will shed light (...) on some of the philosophical controversy surrounding whether drift is a cause of evolutionary change. (shrink)

The modern synthesis in evolutionary biology is taken to be that period in which a consensus developed among biologists about the major causes of evolution, a consensus that informed research in evolutionary biology for at least a half century. As such, it is a particularly fruitful period to consider when reflecting on the meaning and role of chance in evolutionary explanation. Biologists of this period make reference to “chance” and loose cognates of “chance,” such as: “random,” “contingent,” “accidental,” “haphazard,” or (...) “stochastic.” Of course, what an author might mean by “chance” in any specific context varies. -/- In the following, we first offer a historiographical note on the synthesis. Second, we introduce five ways in which synthesis authors spoke about chance. We do not take these to be an exhaustive taxonomy of all possible ways in which chance meaningfully figures in explanations in evolutionary biology. These are simply five common uses of the term by biologists at this period. They will serve to organize our summary of the collected references to chance and the analysis and discussion of the following questions: • What did synthesis authors understand by chance? • How did these authors see chance operating in evolution? • Did their appeals to chance increase or decrease over time during the synthesis? That is, was there a “hardening” of the synthesis, as Gould claimed (1983)? (shrink)

Fisher’s ‘fundamental theorem of natural selection’ is notoriously abstract, and, no less notoriously, many take it to be false. In this paper, I explicate the theorem, examine the role that it played in Fisher’s general project for biology, and analyze why it was so very fundamental for Fisher. I defend Ewens (1989) and Lessard (1997) in the view that the theorem is in fact a true theorem if, as Fisher claimed, ‘the terms employed’ are ‘used strictly as defined’ (1930, p. (...) 38). Finally, I explain the role that projects such as Fisher’s play in the progress of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Pleistocene Park is a large-scale science experiment in Arctic Siberia in the form of a future-oriented rewilding project with the goal of mitigating climate change. The park’s creators hypothesize that introducing large herbivores into the area will slow the thawing of permafrost. Using the approach of multispecies ethnography in attending to the nonhuman agencies at work in the project, I argue that the park differs from other rewilding projects, which are usually ecocentric, in emerging as a survivalist project with a (...) distinct anthropocentric bent. Even so, the park’s survivalist goal for humans coexists with ontologies based on collaboration and mutual aid between humans and nonhumans and between organic and inorganic matter, with extensive agency assigned to nonhuman others. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within the frame of the park’s various genealogies, I trace the project’s underlying assumptions in equal measure to the history of Russian science and to the park’s lead scientists’ experience of sociopolitical rupture following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a case study, Pleistocene Park is especially suited to exploring issues of time and temporality, apocalypticism and redemption, and extinction and eternity, in addition to particular visions of the natural and the human. (shrink)

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book examines the current state of elective placements of medical undergraduate students in developing countries and their impact on health care education at home. Drawing from a recent case study of volunteer deployment in Uganda, the authors provide an in-depth evaluation of the impacts on the students themselves and the learning outcomes associated with placements in low resource settings, as well as the impacts that these forms of student (...) mobility have on the host settings. In addition to reviewing the existing literature on elective placements, the authors outline a potential model for the future development of ethical elective placements. As the book concurs with an increasing international demand for elective placements, it will be of immediate interest to universities, intermediary organizations, students as consumers, and hosting organisations in low-resource settings. (shrink)

This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, psychology, neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy to explicate Merleau-Ponty’s unwritten ethics. Daly contends that though Merleau-Ponty never developed an ethics per se, there is significant textual evidence that clearly indicates he had the intention to do so. This book highlights the explicit references to ethics that he offers and proposes that these, allied to his ontological commitments, provide the basis for the development of an ethics. In this work Daly shows how Merleau-Ponty’s relational ontology, in (...) which the interdependence of self, other and world is affirmed, offers an entirely new approach to ethics. In contrast to the ‘top-down’ ethics of norms, obligations and prescriptions, Daly maintains that Merleau-Ponty’s ethics is a ‘bottom-up’ ethics which depends on direct insight into our own intersubjective natures, the ‘I’ within the ‘we’ and the ‘we’ within the ‘I’; insight into the real nature of our relation to others and the particularities of the given situation. Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity is an important contribution to the scholarship on the later Merleau-Ponty which will be of interest to graduate students and scholars. Daly offers informed readings of Merleau-Ponty’s texts and the overall approach is both scholarly and innovative. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe central hypothesis of this paper is that the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty offers significant philosophical groundwork for an ethics that honours key feminist commitments – embodiment, situatedness, diversity and the intrinsic sociality of subjectivity. Part I evaluates feminist criticisms of Merleau-Ponty. Part II defends the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s non-dualist ontology underwrites leading approaches in feminist ethics, notably Care Ethics and the Ethics of Vulnerability. Part III examines Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of embodied percipience, arguing that these offer a powerful critique of the (...) view from nowhere, a totalizing God’s-eye-view with pretensions to objectivity. By revealing the normative structure of perceptual gestalts in the intersubjective domain, he establishes the view from everywhere. Normativity is no longer deferred to higher authorities such as duty, utility or the valorized virtue, but through the perceptual gestalt it is returned to the perceiving embodied subject. This... (shrink)

Abstract: The notion of a self-pattern, as developed in the pattern theory of self, which holds that the self is best explained in terms of the kind of reality that pertains to a dynamical pattern, acknowledges the importance of neural dynamics, but also expands the account of self to extra-neural (embodied and enactive) dynamics. The pattern theory of self, however, has been criticized for failing to explicate the dynamical relations among elements of the self-pattern; as such, it seems to be (...) nothing more than a mere list of elements. We’ll argue that the dynamics of a self-pattern are reflected in three significant and interrelated ways that allow for investigation. First, a self-pattern is reflectively reiterated in its narrative component. Second, studies of psychiatric or neurological disorders can help us understand the precise nature of the dynamical relations in a self-pattern, and how they can fail. Third, referencing predictive processing accounts, neuroscience can also help to explicate the dynamical relations that constitute the self-pattern. (shrink)

This paper explores the issue whether feminism needs a metaphysical grounding, and if so, what form that might take to effectively take account of and support the socio-political demands of feminism; addressing these demands I further propose will also contribute to the resolution of other social concerns. Social constructionism is regularly invoked by feminists and other political activists who argue that social injustices are justified and sustained through hidden structures which oppress some while privileging others. Some feminists (Haslanger and Sveinsdóttir, (...) Feminist metaphysics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University, 2011) argue that the constructs appealed to in social constructivism are real but not metaphysically fundamental because they are contingent. And this is exactly the crux of the problem—is it possible to sustain an engaged feminist socio-political critique for which contingency is central (i.e., that things could be otherwise) and at the same time retain some kind of metaphysical grounding. Without metaphysical grounding it has been argued, the feminist project may be rendered nonsubstantive (Sider, Substantivity in feminist metaphysics. Philosophical Studies, 174(2017), 2467–2478, 2017). There has been much debate around this issue and Sider (as an exemplar of the points under contention) nuances the claims expressed in his earlier writings (Sider, Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011) and later presents a more qualified account (Sider, Substantivity in feminist metaphysics. Philosophical Studies, 174(2017), 2467–2478, 2017). Nonetheless, I propose the critiques and defences offered by the various parties continue to depend on certain erroneous assumptions and frameworks that are challengeable. I argue that fundamentality as presented in many of these current accounts, which are underpinned by the explicit or implicit ontologies of monism and dualism and argued for in purely rationalist terms which conceive of subjects as primarily reason-responding agents, reveal basic irresolvable problems. I propose that addressing these concerns will be possible through an enactivist account which, following phenomenology, advances an ontology of interdependence and reconceives the subject as first and foremost an organism immersed in a meaningful world as opposed to a primarily reason-responding agent. Enactivism is thus, I will argue, able to legitimize feminist socio-political critiques by offering a non-reductive grounding in which not only are contingency and fundamentality reconciled, but in which fundamentality is in fact defined by radical contingency. My paper proceeds in dialogue with feminists generally addressing this ‘metaphysical turn’ in feminism and specifically with Sally Haslanger and Mari Mikkola. (shrink)

BackgroundA growing number of studies show the potential of loyalty card data for use in health research. However, research into public perceptions of using this data is limited. This study aimed to investigate public attitudes towards donating loyalty card data for academic health research, and the safeguards the public would want to see implemented. The way in which participant attitudes varied according to whether loyalty card data would be used for either cancer or COVID-19 research was also examined.MethodsParticipants were recruited (...) via Prolific Academic to take part in semi-structured telephone interviews, with questions focused on data sharing related to either COVID-19 or ovarian/bowel cancer as the proposed health condition to be researched. Content analysis was used to identify sub-themes corresponding to the two a priori themes, attitudes and safeguards.ResultsParticipant attitudes were found to fall into two categories, either rational or emotional. Under rational, most participants were in favour of sharing loyalty card data. Support of health research was seen as an important reason to donate such data, with loyalty card logs being considered as already within the public domain. With increased understanding of research purpose, participants expressed higher willingness to donate data. Within the emotional category, participants shared fears about revealing location information and of third parties obtaining their data. With regards to safeguards, participants described the importance of anonymisation and the level of data detail; the control, convenience and choice they desired in sharing data; and the need for transparency and data security. The change in hypothetical purpose of the data sharing, from Covid-19 to cancer research, had no impact on participants’ decision to donate, although did affect their understanding of how loyalty card data could be used.ConclusionsBased on interviews with the public, this study contributes recommendations for those researchers and the wider policy community seeking to obtain loyalty card data for health research. Whilst participants were largely in favour of donating loyalty card data for academic health research, information, choice and appropriate safeguards are all exposed as prerequisites upon which decisions are made. (shrink)

This paper explores the ontological bases for ethical behaviour between human animals and non-human animals drawing on phenomenology and Buddhist philosophy. Alongside Singer and utilitarianism, I argue that ethical behaviour regarding animals is most effectively justified and motivated by considerations of sentience. Nonetheless, utilitarianism misses crucial aspects of sentience. Buddhist ethics is from the beginning focused on all sentient beings, not solely humans. This inclusivity, and refined interrogations of suffering, means it can furnish more nuanced understandings of sentience. For phenomenology, (...) sentience includes the capacities for self-awareness and, I will argue, a plural self-awareness; the ‘I’ belongs to a ‘we’, and the ‘we’ is constitutive of the ‘I’. This ‘primordial we’ provides the basis for rethinking the moral relations between human animals and non-human animals. I contend finally we thus have an ontological basis in ‘interanimality’ to explain why we most often do and should care about all sentient beings. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's reversibility thesis argues that self, other and world are inherently relational, interdependent at the level of ontology. What is at stake in the reversibility thesis is whether it overcomes skeptical objections in both assuring real communication and avoiding solipsism in assuring real difference; the Other must be a genuine, irreducible Other. It is objected that across the domains of reversibility, symmetry and reciprocity are not guaranteed. I argue that this is a non-problem; rather the potentialities for asymmetry and non (...) reciprocity in fact guarantee the irreducibility of the Other; reversibility needs to be appreciated as dialectical or aesthetic, not as a literal or ‘mechanistic’ reversal. A further criticism targets the viability of ontology itself, whether alterity is ever compatible with ontology. This paper considers these objections from two of Merleau-Ponty's contemporaries—Claude Lefort and Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas developed a philosophy which while intersecting with Merleau-Ponty's at important junctures, nonetheless arrived at an entirely different destination. I argue alongside Martin Dillon against the objections of Lefort, and alongside Dan Zahavi against the objections of Levinas. Both of these interpreters, I propose remain faithful to the core directions and spirit of Merleau-Ponty's endeavours without becoming diverted by the less significant inconsistencies. (shrink)

The arguments advanced in this paper are the following. Firstly, that just as Trevarthen’s three subjective/intersubjective levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary, mapped out different modes of access, so too response is similarly structured, from direct primordial responsiveness, to that informed by shared pragmatic concerns and narrative contexts, to that which demands the distantiation afforded by representation. Secondly, I propose that empathy is an essential mode of intentionality, integral to the primary level of subjectivity/intersubjectivity, which is crucial to our survival as (...) individuals and as a species. Further to this last point, I argue that empathy is not derived on the basis of intersubjectivity, nor does it merely disclose intersubjectivity, rather it is constitutive of intersubjectivity at the primary level. Empathy is a direct, irreducible intentionality separable in thought from the other primary intentional modes of perception, rationality, memory and imagination, but co-arising with these. In regard to the inter-personal level, the concrete relations with others, primary empathy is both the ground for the possibility of the secondary manifestations—pity, sympathy, perspective taking, etc., and motivates them. Thirdly, it is the movement in the core of subjectivity initially generated by shifting attention between the ‘I’ and ‘we’ perspectives and later ‘solidified’ through affect to become shifting identification, which opens up the intersubjective domain. So we can affirm that we are not only born into sociality but our sociality goes to the roots of our being as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have claimed. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S63-S65, March‐April 2022.

Arabian Drugs in Early Medieval Mediterranean Medicine. By Zohar Amar and Efraim Lev. Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv + 290, ills. $125, £80.

The surviving portion of the tenth-century Egyptian Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Tamīmī’s recently edited Ṭīb al-ʿarūs has several formulas relating to the dying and perfuming of textiles. Some refer to the use of carved molds to impress designs upon textiles. Tamīmī’s formulas treat in particular the application of gold leaf and perfumed dye pastes with blocks, but presuppose the technology of using blocks to apply designs to textiles and include a vocabulary of technical terms for the process. This textual evidence provides (...) additional context for surviving early medieval Islamic block-printed gilded textiles. The attestation of the use of blocks to decorate textiles is contemporary with the use of blocks to print Arabic amulet texts, known by the tenth century from extant specimens and some literary evidence. (shrink)

Islamic pharmacology included numerous plant-derived substances, especially from South and Southeast Asia, that were unfamiliar in ancient Greek and Roman times. The arrival of these new materia medica is commonly accepted to be a consequence of the expanding horizons of trade in the Islamic period. Closer examination, however, reveals that many of these substances are in fact attested in pre-Islamic times. In addition, the philological evidence of the names of these materia medica in Arabic frequently shows that their path into (...) the Near East occurred through Persian culture. These factors suggest that we must look to the pre-Islamic Sasanian period for the context of the arrival of many of the new so-called Islamic drugs. (shrink)

This paper addresses the persistent philosophical problem posed by the amoralist—one who eschews moral values—by drawing on complementary resources within phenomenology and care ethics. How is it that the amoralist can reject ethical injunctions that serve the general good and be unpersuaded by ethical intuitions that for most would require neither explanation nor justification? And more generally, what is the basis for ethical motivation? Why is it that we can care for others? What are the underpinning ontological structures that are (...) able to support an ethics of care? To respond to these questions, I draw on the work of Merleau-Ponty, focusing specifically on his analyses of perceptual attention. What is the nature and quality of perceptual attention that underwrite our capacities or incapacities for care? I proceed in dialogue with a range of philosophers attuned to the compelling nature of care, some who have also drawn on Merleau-Ponty and others who have examined the roots of an ethics of care inspired or incited by other thinkers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Reconciliation of Myth: Benjamin’s Homage to BachofenJoseph MaliIn the “Tiergarten,” the first chapter of his autobiographical work, Berlin Childhood Around Nineteen-Hundred, Benjamin recalls how, as a child, he experienced the paths, monuments, and people of the park as a “labyrinth” replete with all kinds of mythological figures. Entering the park like a second Theseus following his Ariadne along the thread of erotic sensations, he discovered therein the myth-realm (...) of the ancient gods as transfigured in the bourgeois decorations of the Second Reich, most visibly so in the aristocratic monuments of Friedrich Wilhelm and Queen Louise: “They towered up from their round pedestals among the flower beds as if spellbound by magic curves that a watercourse had inscribed before them in the sand.” 1 As he invoked these primal visions thirty years later, Benjamin realized that they prefigured “the features of what is to come,” that is, he recognized in his early experiential impressions the topical concerns that were to determine his life and works. He then understood that he had been finding signs of “the return of the ancient gods” everywhere:Under their sign the Old West of Berlin was transformed into the West of antiquity, whence the western winds come to the mariners, who navigate their boat with the Hesperidan apples slowly upward the Landwehrkanal, in order to cast anchor near the Herkules Bridge. And yet again, as in my childhood, the Hydra and the Nemean lion found a place in the wild bushes around the big star. 2This chapter may serve as the key to Benjamin’s entire life and works: it reveals what Benjamin himself would have called his “origins.” Benjamin conceived [End Page 165] of origin (Usprung) in genealogical rather than in biological terms, contending that it was not to be found in the moment of intuition but rather in that of recognition. “The term origin is not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance. Origin is an eddy in the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in the process of genesis.” 3 It occurs, Benjamin continues, when “an idea will constantly confront the historical world, until it is revealed fulfilled, in the totality of its history.” 4 And if, according to Benjamin (quoting Karl Kraus), “origin is the goal” of all philosophical and historical inquiries, then, in Benjamin’s own case, the “origin” must be found in that singular idea by which he had sought to illuminate his historical world. This was an idea which should be “revealed fulfilled, in the totality of its history” in his entire work. In order to find that idea we must concentrate, as it were, on the “eddies” of his life; that is, we must discern his particular current in the intellectual trends of the time and find out how and with what he emerged from it. What, then, were Benjamin’s “origins”? When and where did he recognize what his experiential impressions in the Tiergarten really meant?In his memorial biography, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, Gershom Scholem recounts some of the most important of these moments. One of them occurred between 16 and 18 June 1916, while Scholem was visiting Benjamin’s house in Seeshaupt near Munich. Scholem recalls their last and most memorable conversation on that occasion:During a discussion of whether Hegel had wished to deduce the world, we turned to mathematics, philosophy, and myth. Benjamin accepted myth alone as “the world.” He said he was still not sure what the purpose of philosophy was, as there was no need to discover “the meaning of the world”: it was already present in myth. Myth was everything; all else, including mathematics and philosophy, was only an obscuration [Verdunkelung], a glimmer [Schein] that had arisen within it. 5Reflecting on these words, Scholem notes that “Benjamin’s decided turn to the philosophic penetration of myth, which occupied him for so many years, beginning with his study of Hölderlin and probably for the rest of his life, was manifested here for the first... (shrink)

The growing practice of returning individual results to research participants has revealed a variety of interpretations of the multiple and sometimes conflicting duties that researchers may owe to participants. One particularly difficult question is the nature and extent of a researcher’s duty to facilitate a participant’s follow-up clinical care by placing research results in the participant’s medical record. The question is especially difficult in the context of genomic research. Some recent genomic research studies — enrolling patients as participants — boldly (...) address the question with protocols dictating that researchers place research results directly into study participants’ existing medical records, without participant consent. Such privileging of researcher judgment over participant choice may be motivated by a desire to discharge a duty that researchers perceive themselves as owing to participants. However, the underlying ethical, professional, legal, and regulatory duties that would compel or justify this action have not been fully explored. (shrink)

By bringing Hannah Arendt’s politics into dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics, this book develops an approach to the political that is relational, inclusive, and empowering.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 was passed to encourage patients to seek genetic testing that could improve health outcomes and provide opportunities for preventive measures. GINA protects individuals from discrimination based upon genetic information, but not upon manifested diseases and conditions. Because the manifestation of a disease establishes a threshold of protection for individuals under GINA, the definition of manifestation is crucial to understanding the scope of the bill. This paper examines the range of possible legal definitions of (...) disease manifestation and explores the historical struggle that courts have faced when trying to apply these different definitions. Specifically, the paper examines three frameworks that courts have used in the past to interpret the manifestation of a disease; “manifestation as apparent symptoms,”“manifestation as patient action,” and “manifestation as physician action.” We argue that the “manifestation as physician action” is the best framework to utilize in this law generally, but that the definition of manifestation should be read in the light most favorable to a plaintiff in order to achieve the underlying goals of GINA. (shrink)

Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 in order to remove a perceived barrier to clinical genetic testing. By banning health insurance companies and employers from discriminating against an individual based on his or her genetic information, legislators hoped that patients would be encouraged to seek genetic testing that could improve health outcomes and provide opportunities for preventive measures. Their explicit legislative goal was to fully protect the public from discrimination and allay their concerns about the potential for (...) discrimination, thereby allowing individuals to take advantage of genetic testing, technologies, research, and new therapies.However, GINA left a number of issues unresolved, most notably failing to define the concept of disease manifestation. GINA was structured such that it only provides protection against misuse of genetic information up until the point when an individual's disease has manifested. It protects an individual with a genetic predisposition for a disease, but not an individual actively suffering from that disease. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 14.1 (2006) 77-88 [Access article in PDF] Revealing the Habitual: The Teachings of Unconventional Piano-Playing Tuomas Mali Vantaa, Finland Playing Experiences as a Source of Knowledge As a pianist, I know piano-playing from the inside as something I am accustomed to doing. For me, as for every serious pianist, playing is an everyday activity that has become so habitual as to be inseparable (...) from myself. As I am absorbed in piano-playing, I become musical in a way that more or less makes me forget myself. In the tumult of playing there is no objectifying gaze, no clear distinction between subject and object, performer and music; there is just skilful coping with musical tasks and concerns.1 For an experienced pianist the centrality of the lived body is a commonplace: to know piano-playing is to know one's own body in and through playing as one cultivates a "pianistic" way of existing. This calls for daily training.2 Although it is not always this obvious, the lived body is important to all knowing. Through regular practicing and performing I know piano-playing in the same direct way as we all know the world in and through living "in" it as human bodies, in and through our everyday coping, our "dealings" in the world.3 Juha Varto, the Finnish phenomenologist, uses the word "inspective" to describe this way of knowing, in a sense that emphasizes active bodily being-in-the-world.4 [End Page 77]To reflect on piano-playing, in contrast, requires one to distance oneself from playing, to adopt a perspective that is not present in the playing itself. The relationship between the knower and the world is now different. Here, Varto uses the word "perspective" as an adjective to designate this way of knowing. He illuminates the difference between "inspective" and "perspective" knowing with the image of a burning stake: the spectators certainly know that the stake is hot and that it kills, but the smell of one's own burning flesh makes it clear and certain in a radically different way without intermediary thought.5 Reflection makes it possible to "observe" piano-playing, to see it "in perspective," as part of a larger, ordered, cultural reality, as part of a considered "view" or "theory." When devoting oneself to reflection, it is typical to characterize the activity of playing as objective, as something that lies outside the lived experience of the body. But—and this is often deliberately ignored—a view or a theory arrived at through observation is also irrevocably bound to the embodied existence of the observer, even if the view often seems to be more or less a product of thought alone.While the distinction between concerned coping ("inspective" knowing) and reflective viewing ("perspective" knowing) is important, it should be kept in mind that in human life they are always interwoven. There is no way to eliminate one of them, no way to choose only one or the other. Rather, we are constantly negotiating between the "inspective" and "perspective," dealing on the one hand with our situated bodily experience and on the other hand with our recognition of a larger cultural perspective.Historically, valued knowledge about music-making has often been framed around a conception of reflection as detached, disinterested inquiry which as pure contemplation, has nothing to do with the lived body of the knower. A particular discourse or a quest for definition has often served as starting points for research—starting points that seemingly rule out the relevance of bodily experiences. However, it seems to me that there is no way to cut the link between knowing and experiencing; differences on the level of the lived body are often crucial for knowledge. For example, the difference in the experiential basis often results in a gap between the knowledge of a "maker" and that of a "viewer." When music is known mostly through making it, knowledge gained through observation often seems to miss what is essential, to distort and misinterpret the musical practice. This gap, and... (shrink)

Categorization-based diagnosis, which endeavors to be consistent with the third-person, objective measures of science, is not always adequate with respect to problems concerning diagnostic accuracy, demarcation problems when there are comorbidities, well-documented problems of symptom amplification, and complications of stigmatization and looping effects. While psychiatric categories have proved useful and convenient for clinicians in identifying a recognizable constellation of symptoms typical for a particular disorder for the purposes of communication and eligibility for treatment regimes, the reification of these categories has (...) without doubt had negative consequences for the patient and also for the general understanding of psychiatric disorders. We argue that a complementary, integrated framework that focuses on descriptive symptom-based classifications (drawing on phenomenological interview methods and narrative) combined with a more comprehensive conception of the human subject (found in the pattern theory of self), can not only offer a solution to some of the vexed issues of psychiatric diagnosis but also support more efficacious therapeutic interventions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Can Be Fashionable? From Pugs to Poodle Skirts Do Masses Matter? Robinson Crusoe's Runway Do Experts Matter? Khaki Glory Do Intentions Matter? Accidental Chic Do Aesthetics Matter? Form Over Function Does Identity Matter? Tribal Colors Does Timing Matter? To Everything, There is a Season Conclusion: What Matters?

This book provides a rigorously researched, critically comparative introduction to yoga. Is this Yoga: Concepts, Histories, and the Complexities of Contemporary Practice recognizes the importance of contemporary understandings of yoga and, at the same time, provides historical context and complexity to modern and pre-modern definitions of yogic ideas and practices. Approaching yoga as a vast web of concepts, traditions, social interests, and embodied practices, it raises questions of knowledge, identity, and power across time and space, including the dynamics of "East" (...) and "West." The text is divided into three main sections: thematic concepts; histories; and topics in modern practice. This accessible guide is essential reading for undergraduate students approaching the topic for the first time as well as yoga teachers, teacher training programs, casual and devoted practitioners, and interested non-practitioners. (shrink)

This book explores a variety of conceptual and methodological questions about cancer and cancer research: Is cancer one disease, or many? If many, how many exactly? How is cancer classified? What does it mean, exactly, to say that cancer is “genetic,” or “familial”? What exactly are the causes of cancer, and how do scientists come to know about them? When do we have good reason to believe that this or that is a risk factor for cancer? How is cancer a (...) product or byproduct of multilevel evolution? Is cancer research unified? What sort of models, or theories, govern cancer research? This book takes a close look at these philosophical questions, by examining work in disciplines as diverse as cell and molecular biology, epidemiology, clinical medicine, and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This article traces the hidden race-religion constellation in Europe. The term “race-religion constellation” refers to the connection or co-constitution of the categories of race and “religion.” Specifically, the term “race-religion constellation” is used to refer to the practice of classifying people into races according to categories we now associate with the term “religion.” This calls for a consideration of European history and forms of racism in Europe, such as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. This article aims to provide an alternative non-secularized or (...) biological account of the origins of the socially constructed category of race in Europe. The alternative story begins in the sixteenth century, when the category of “religion” as a means for classifying peoples was both constructed and politicized. In tracing this alternative story, this article seeks to outline a framework for a critical philosophy of race focused on a European religion line that intersects with Du Bois's color line. (shrink)

"[Heidegger's] greatest work... essential for all collections." —Choice "... students of Heidegger will surely find this book indispensable." —Library Journal Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936-38 and first published in 1989 as Beiträge zur Philosophie, is Heidegger’s most ground-breaking work after the publication of Being and Time in 1927. If Being and Time is perceived as undermining modern metaphysics, Contributions undertakes to reshape the very project of thinking.

The overall aim of this paper is to defend the value of the arts as uniquely instructive regarding philosophical questions. Specifically, I aim to achieve two things: firstly, to show that through the phenomenological challenge to dualist and monist ontologies the key debate in aesthetics regarding subjective response and objective judgment is reconfigured and resolved. I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s analyses complement and complete Kant’s project. Secondly, I propose that through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological interrogations of the creative process the broader issue of (...) the viability of his relational nondualist ontology is defended against accusations that it has not gone beyond dualism or that it has collapsed into a monism. (shrink)

Biological diversity - or ‘biodiversity’ - is the degree of variation of life within an ecosystem. It is a relatively new topic of study but has grown enormously in recent years. Because of its interdisciplinary nature the very concept of biodiversity is the subject of debate amongst philosophers, biologists, geographers and environmentalists. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising twenty-three chapters by a team of (...) international contributors the _Handbook_ is divided into six parts: Historical and sociological contexts, focusing on the emergence of the term and early attempts to measure biodiversity _What is biodiversity? _How should biodiversity be defined? How can biodiversity include entities at the edge of its boundaries, including microbial diversity and genetically engineered organisms? _Why protect biodiversity? _What can traditional environmental ethics_ _contribute to biodiversity?_ _Topics covered include anthropocentrism, intrinsic value, and ethical controversies surrounding the economics of biodiversity _Measurement and methodology: _including decision-theory and conservation, the use of indicators for biodiversity, and the changing use of genetics in biodiversity conservation _Social contexts and global justice: _including conservation and community conflicts and biodiversity and cultural values _Biodiversity and other environmental values_: How does biodiversity relate to other values like ecological restoration or ecological sustainability? Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, environmental science and environmental studies, and conservation management, it will also be extremely useful to those studying biodiversity in subjects such as biology and geography. (shrink)