The changes created by platform-facilitated labor are considered fundamental challenges to the future of work. As more data accumulates on gender discrimination in online platforms, this Article explores how inequality is cultivated by platforms in the gig economy. Looking at technological architecture as organizational structure, this essay bridges a gap between three bodies of scholarship that have not yet been in conversation but considering them together is necessary if we are to think about gender equality in platform-facilitated labor. The first (...) concerns data driven discrimination, the second concerns the role of platform affordances and the third concerns organizational policies. These point to the gender inequality regime that platforms may enact. Thus, the Article theoretically contributes to unpacking platforms’ role in perpetuating and institutionalizing gender inequality. Finally, it offers some suggestions on the ways in which law, policy and technology can disrupt the institutionalization of gender inequality in platform-facilitated labor. (shrink)

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/Caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports. LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, (...) “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications. (shrink)

The phrase ‘To perish from absolute knowledge’ from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil runs like a red thread throughout Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche, spanning a period of 20 years in which Foucault continuously turned to Nietzsche as his main philosophical and methodological role model. Beginning with his first lectures on Nietzsche in the early 1950s, Foucault repeatedly alluded to this phrase as the key to Nietzsche’s philosophical critique which anticipated the philosophical shift to ontology in the 20th century. Drawing on (...) a host of unpublished essays from Foucault’s archive, it will be shown that this phrase holds the key to Foucault’s Nietzsche interpretation and explains his reliance on historicity as the transcendental basis for his critical project. The article will rely on Foucault’s dynamic analysis of this phrase to narrate the development of his historical methodology between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, and will argue for the continuity and coherence of Foucault’s critical project. (shrink)

One of the most important motifs within (medical) ethics is scarcity: where essential (health) resources are scarce, urgent ethical questions arise. Over the last decade, at least 250 papers addressing the allocation of scarce health resources have been published in the Journal of Medical Ethics alone.1 In the typical set-up, the authors introduce a situation of scarcity and then review and adjudicate the available or recommended courses of action, sometimes through the lens of a pet normative ethical theory. It is (...) much less common for (medical) ethicists to focus their enquiries on the origins of scarcity. Why aren’t there sufficient health resources to go around? Who caused the scarcity, and how should they be held responsible? These questions are also firmly within the remit of the discipline. Discussions of scarcity tend to circumvent these difficult questions by focussing on exceptional cases in Global North settings, where scarcity is relatively rare, and is sometimes defensible or insoluble. For example: it would be wasteful for a hospital to overstock expensive, bulky, energetically intensive, specialist equipment whose supply would only be challenged under the most extreme and unforeseen circumstances (eg, a pandemic), and there may never be sufficient usable donor organs to meet the demand for transplants. Much less attention is given to under-resourced settings, generally in the Global South, where scarcity is common, and is often both indefensible and soluble. The literature appears to favour what is ‘unusual’ and ‘interesting’ in some contexts, rather than what is commonplace, and by that fact more worrying, in others. This division of attention entrenches the idea that scarcity is a fixed feature of certain places and lives. Why do medical ethicists so often fight shy of these meta-questions? They are, of course, harder and messier. More work and greater care are needed to contextualise …. (shrink)

Philosopher of science Bruno Latour defines the image as “any sign, work of art, inscription or painting serving as a mediation to reach something else.” According to this definition, mediation could very well be a synonym for image. In this article, I would like to use Latour’s work to argue for the crucial role that images play in overcoming a certain modern worldview that has divided the world into ontological essences that separate subject and object, nature and culture. It is (...) precisely the erasure of the mediations, the images that connect these different forms of life together, that has led to the positing of the modern constitution of autonomous essences, cut off from the many agencies that give them life. Using the art installations of artist Tomas Saraceno, this article will show that it is precisely this mediating role of art that lends it such an interdisciplinary and phenomenological role in allowing the invisible webs connecting earth and sky, nature and culture, human and non-human, to be seen. (shrink)

The DNA of all species is constantly under threat from both endogenous and exogenous factors, which damage its chemical structure. Probably the most common lesion that arises in cellular DNA is the loss of a base to generate an abasic site, which is usually referred to as an apurinic or apyrimidinic (AP) site. Since these lesions are potentially both cytotoxic and mutagenic, cells of all organisms express dedicated repair enzymes, termed AP endonucleases, to counteract their damaging effects. Indeed, many organisms (...) consider it necessary to express two or more of these lesion‐specific endonucleases, underscoring the requirement that exists to remove AP sites for the maintenance of genome integrity and cell viability. Most AP endonucleases are very versatile enzymes, capable of performing numerous additional repair roles. In this article, we review the AP endonuclease class of repair enzymes, with emphasis on the evolutionary conservation of structural features, not only between prokaryotic and eukaryotic homologues, but also between these enzymes and the RNase H domain of one class of reverse transcriptase. (shrink)

RESUMO Este artigo apresenta e discute acontecimentos que emergiram no decorrer de uma pesquisa-intervenção com jovens, visando problematizar as contribuições para a formação ética, estética e política tanto dos pesquisadores como dos participantes. Oficinas estéticas mediadas por linguagens artístico-visuais consistiram no modus operandi da pesquisa-intervenção, sendo os acontecimentos relativos à oficina de graffiti o foco das análises aqui apresentadas. Participaram dessa oficina entre 20 a 25 jovens matriculados em uma escola pública municipal de Florianópolis/SC, com idades entre 13 e 16 (...) anos. As atividades foram coordenadas por bolsistas de IC e extensão, graduandos de psicologia, e um bolsista AT, grafiteiro. Os registros das atividades foram feitos via filmagens, fotografia e registros em diário de campo. As análises foram realizadas a partir de uma perspectiva dialógica, com foco na responsividade que conota as ações e pauta a condição alteritária da existência.ABSTRACT This paper presents and discusses events that emerged in the course of research involving an intervention conducted with youngsters. The objective was to discuss contributions to ethical, aesthetic and political formation of both the researchers and participants. Aesthetic workshops mediated by artistic-visual languages consisted of the modus operandi of the intervention research, and the events related to a graffiti workshop were the focus of this analysis. From 20 to 25 youngsters, aged between 13 to 16 years old and enrolled in a city public school in Florianópolis, SC, Brazil participated. The activities were coordinated by undergraduate research assistants, senior psychology students, and one graffiti artist who received a Technical Support scholarship. The activities were filmed, photographed and recorded in a field diary. The analyses were conducted from a dialogic perspective focusing on responsiveness that connotes the actions and grounds the otherness nature of existence. (shrink)

"La pensée du théoricien allemand Jürgen Habermas figure parmi les plus importantes théories sociales issues du xxe siècle : toutefois, à ce jour, elle n’a inspiré qu’un nombre restreint d’études portant spécifiquement sur leur articulation à l’éducation moderne et contemporaine. Cet ouvrage présente ainsi une analyse critique de la façon dont la théorie de l’agir communicationnel développée par Habermas s’arrime à une étude macro et microsociologique de l’éducation, soit une analyse de l’organisation politique, économique et idéologique des systèmes éducatifs occidentaux (...) depuis la modernité, puis une analyse intime et située des rouages de l’activité éducative entre l’enseignant et l’élève. Dès lors, comment réfléchir l’éducation passée et actuelle à l’aune de la pensée habermassienne, en profitant de ses apports tout en mettant en lumière les impasses qu’elle représente, notamment pour le développement du potentiel critique et communicationnel de l’enfant? Autrement dit, comment penser l’éducation contemporaine avec et contre Habermas?"--Résumé de l'éditeur. (shrink)

In order to explore some of the divergences within new materialism and elucidate their relationship to actor-network theory, this article will develop Latour’s theory of agency and then compare it to those new materialists who uphold a ‘flat ontology’ that includes technological tools and those who uphold an animate/inanimate distinction. In light of the ecological crisis called the Anthropocene, the dissolution of the animate/inanimate distinction will be defended in order to address both polar bears and glaciers, coral reefs and clown (...) fish. Though Latour himself has defended such a dissolution, his political proposals to address the ecological crisis revert back to the modern and dualist position he has himself critiqued for so long. Using the gains of actor-network theory, while differentiating a new materialist ecological politics from that of Latour, will be shown to be necessary in order to find a solution to the crisis of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Trata-se da tradução de uma peça teatral, em estilo Nô, do autor japonês Yukio Mishima (1925-1970).Originalmente publicada sob o título Yoroboshi, o texto ganha sua primeira versão em português brasileiro.

Este artigo intenciona compreender a dimensão discursiva das pinturas por meio da análise do discurso ancorada em Michel Foucault. Recorta-se a figura do espelho em pinturas canônicas com vistas a observar seu funcionamento discursivo enquanto elemento do enunciado artístico visual. Apresenta três partes: a primeira, que determina o lugar ocupado pelo discurso estético nos trabalhos de Michel Pêcheux e de Michel Foucault; a segunda, que se concentra na análise de três pinturas europeias, a saber, As meninas, de Velásquez; Um bar (...) em Folies-Bergère, de Manet; e As ligações perigosas, de Magritte; e a terceira parte, que discute a intersecção entre visualidade e interdiscursividade a partir (a) das reflexões de M. Foucault acerca do discurso estético e (b) da figura do espelho presente nessas pinturas. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 211-226, December 2021.

Os Discursos à Nação Alemã de Fichte foram considerados durante muito tempo uma importante contribuição para o desenvolvimento do nacionalismo alemão e do pensamento nacionalista em geral Todavia, embora os Discursos continuem sendo lidos como um prenúncio das aspirações nacionalistas alemãs, grande parte de seu contendo substantivo é hoje ignorado. Neste artigo, o Autor examina um aspecto deveras negligenciado dos Discursos, a saber, o “sistema de educação nacional” neles propostos e que merecem séria consideração pelo modo como Fichte concebe e (...) articula o papel e função da intelligentsia em busca de salvação nacional. Argumenta-se, de modo especial, que é através da exaltação da educação que Fichte legitima sua proposta de governo por uma elite erudita, um tipo de despotismo esclareci do. Mostra-se ainda que o escopo dos privilégios concedidos aos “eruditos” na reforma educacional de Fichte solapa seu potencial radicalmente igualitarista, e que sua proposta termina por mostrar-se incoerente e inconsistente em seus próprios termos, na medida em que os propósitos explícitos de seu sistema e os resultados prometidos invalidariam completamente, se levados a cabo, a reivindicação dos esclarecidos de governa, se não a necessidade de tais governantes. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 233-234, March 2022.

Panpsychism, the view that the material elements of the universe have mental properties, has until quite recently remained in the periphery of the philosophical mainstream due to its blatant contradiction of normative Cartesian dualities, which divided the world into mental properties and material properties, that are devoid of value and sentience. The recent geological shift to the Anthropocene Age, in which human culture can be found in pesticide resistant mosquitoes and the ozone heavens, has undermined the foundations of Cartesian dualism, (...) making panpsychism a credible alternative. Yet some panpsychists go too far by conflating all distinctions between living and nonliving, human and nonhuman, evolved and made entities. Using Whitehead's process philosophy, this article will defend panpsychism and develop the philosophical criteria of causation, relationality, unity and intentionality to differentiate between natural living forms, natural nonliving forms, and human artifacts. (shrink)

Though responses to the Anthropocene have largely come from the natural and social sciences, religious responses to the Anthropocene have also been gaining momentum and many scholars have been calling for a religious response to complement scientific responses to climate change. Yet because Genesis 1:28 does indeed tell human beings to 'subdue the earth' monotheistic religions have often been understood as complicit in the human exceptionalism that is thought to have created the conditions for the Anthropocene. In distinction to such (...) Biblical traditions, indigenous animistic cultures have typically respected all forms of life as 'persons' and such traditions have thus become a source of inspiration for ecological movements. After discussing contemporary Christian efforts to integrate the natural sciences and the environment into their responses to the Anthropocene, this article will turn to animism and seek to evaluate the risks and benefits that could ensue from a postmodern form of animism that could provide a necessary postsecular response to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem como intuito estabelecer um diálogo entre as críticas traçadas por Gottlob Frege e Charles Sanders Peirce ao psicologismo. Trata-se de um estudo que visa contribuir para a compreensão de temas caros para a filosofia da linguagem, como a natureza do pensamento e a construção do significado. Para tanto, apresentaremos, de maneira geral, o conceito de psicologismo e alguns argumentos levantados a seu favor. Feito isso, elencaremos duas críticas ditas antipsicologistas: começaremos, na segunda seção, com o posicionamento (...) de Frege tomado no todo de sua obra no intuito de pensar seus reflexos no texto Sobre o sentido e a referência. Na terceira seção, abordaremos, na filosofia de Peirce, como o antipsicologismo está pressuposto desde seus escritos iniciais até o desenvolvimento de sua semiótica. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

For many environmental philosophers, the dualisms intrinsic to Modernity that separate body from mind and nature from culture must be deconstructed in order to develop an inclusive ecology that might respond to the Anthropocene Age. In seeking alternatives to human exceptionalism and humans as exclusive owners of souls to the exclusion of other animals, many scholars have turned to Asian philosophies founded in presuppositions that are far more eco-centric. Focusing on Buddhism, this article will outline some eco-centric aspects of Buddhist (...) dogma, focusing on the idea of co-dependent origination and the Buddhist idea that all things are empty of inherent existence and are constituted through relationality. Then we will show how such Buddhist ideas have been used to develop an ecology that instead of abstracting itself from place, as modern theories are wont to do, seeks to develop an intrinsic relationship to place, and even to locate subjectivity there. This is the Japanese theory of Fudo, developed by twentieth century philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji, a theory that is able to move beyond the dualisms of Western ideology to provide a promising response to the Anthropocene Age. If the being of being human is co-determined and co-dependent upon its milieu and upon the community of others living in such a milieu, we should be focusing on finding ways to re-claim and re-value such milieu as constitutive of human development and flourishing. In this way, we can replace Western universals and intrinsic essence with ontological specificity and the shared inter-dependent experience of community. (shrink)

Philo of Alexandria is a forerunner of both the union of philosophy and theology and the biblical hermeneutics of the text at various levels of deepening. Heir of a long tradition had his thinking rejected in Judaism after a break in the first century AD with Greek culture, but remained as a reference of Patristics and all Christian thinking, having a perennial influence. The hermeneutics in Philo is studied, its option for Platonism, its allegorical method and what our author sought (...) to contemplate through this method. The union of Greek, Jewish and Christian cultures is approached, seeking to analyze the complex reality that emerged from this encounter and the mark it left in the Bible, the works of Philo and the authors who were influenced by him. (shrink)

Many scholars have understood the Anthropocene as confirming the patient work in the social sciences to deconstruct the nature/culture divide, for the human being is now present in the entire eco-system, from deet-resistant mosquitoes to the ozone hole in the heavens. Scholars like Bruno Latour have claimed that nature and culture have always been co-determined and thus that their separation was a case of modern bad faith with disastrous consequences. Because Latour blames this divide on the human exceptionalism that pitted (...) a human subject against a world of objects, and thus denied agency to other living and nonliving actants, the solution for Latour lies in recognizing their agency in an ‘enlarged democracy.’ Such scholarship has inspired many scholars to adopt a ‘flat ontology’ that treats all forms of agency, whether animate or inanimate, as equivalent and autonomous material forces. This article will elucidate Latour’s ‘democracy of things’ and explore the beneficial consequences for the Anthropocene of attributing autonomous agency to non-human actants, while at the same time discussing the negative repercussions of reifying the agency of technological tools as separate from human agency. Due to such widespread reification of technological agency, it will be shown that causal analysis that traces such agency back to its source in human political organization is required in order to adequately respond to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

BackgroundIt is commonly reported by editors that it has become harder to recruit reviewers for peer review and that this is because individuals are being asked to review too often and are experiencing reviewer fatigue. However, evidence supporting these arguments is largely anecdotal.Main bodyWe examine responses of individuals to review invitations for six journals in ecology and evolution. The proportion of invitations that lead to a submitted review has been decreasing steadily over 13 years (2003–2015) for four of the six (...) journals examined, with a cumulative effect that has been quite substantial (average decline from 56% of review invitations generating a review in 2003 to just 37% in 2015). The likelihood that an invitee agrees to review declines significantly with the number of invitations they receive in a year. However, the average number of invitations being sent to prospective reviewers and the proportion of individuals being invited more than once per year has not changed much over these 13 years, despite substantial increases in the total number of review invitations being sent by these journals—the reviewer base has expanded concomitant with this growth in review requests.ConclusionsThe proportion of review invitations that lead to a review being submitted has been declining steadily for four of the six journals examined here, but reviewer fatigue is not likely the primary explanation for this decline. (shrink)

Many political theorists believe that a state cannot be neutral when it comes to languages. Legislatures cannot avoid picking a language in which to conduct their business and teachers have to teach their pupils in a language. However, against that, some political liberals argue that liberal neutrality is consistent with the state endorsement of particular languages. Claims to the contrary, they say, are based on a misguided understanding of what neutrality is. I will argue that this line of argument fails, (...) for two reasons. First, the primary challenge to which political liberals should respond is not that of reconciling the promotion of languages with liberal neutrality but, rather, that of reconciling liberal neutrality with the fact that reasonable people disagree about the existence and nature of languages. Second, even if everyone accepted the existence of languages along essentialist lines, one should still doubt the possibility of state neutrality with respect to them, regardless of the conception of neutrality one prefers. The reason why is that human beings cannot care about or value languages so when a state promotes a particular language, it is not supporting the preferences of its citizens but, rather, acting on perfectionist or simply irrational grounds. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the conscience clause around abortion provision in England, Scotland and Wales is inadequate for two reasons. First, the patient and doctor are differently situated with respect to social power. Doctors occupy a position of significant moral and epistemic authority with respect to their patients, who are vulnerable and relatively disempowered. Doctors are rightly required to disclose their conscientious objection, but given the positioning of the patient and doctor, the act of doing so exploits the (...) authority of the medical establishment in asserting the legitimacy of a particular moral view. Second, the conscientious objector plays an unusual and self-defeating moral role. Since she must immediately refer the patient on to another doctor who does not hold a conscientious objection, she becomes complicit, via her necessary causal role, in the implementation of the procedure. This means that doctors are not able to prevent abortions, rather, they are required to ensure that they... (shrink)

The most benign rationale for sex selection is deemed to be “family balancing.” On this view, provided the sex distribution of an existing offspring group is “unbalanced,” one may legitimately use reproductive technologies to select the sex of the next child. I present four novel concerns with granting “family balancing” as a justification for sex selection: families or family subsets should not be subject to medicalization; sex selection for “family balancing” entrenches heteronormativity, inflicting harm in at least three specific ways; (...) the logic of affirmative action is appropriated; the moral mandate of reproductive autonomy is misused. I conclude that the harms caused by family balancing are sufficiently substantive to override any claim arising from a supposed right to sex selection as an instantiation of procreative autonomy. (shrink)

The U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) is critically reliant on staff from overseas, which means that a sizeable number of U.K. healthcare professionals have received their training at the cost of other states, whose populations are urgently in need of healthcare professionals. At the same time, while healthcare is widely seen as a primary good, many migrants are unable to access the NHS without charge, and anti‐immigration political trends are likely to further reduce that access. Both of these topics have (...) received close attention in the global health ethics literature. In this article, I make the novel move of suggesting that these two seemingly disparate issues should be folded into the same moral narrative. The ‘brain drain’ upon which the NHS and its users depend derives from the same gradient of wealth, security, and opportunity that produces migrants who require the NHS. I endorse moral cosmopolitanism as a lens for understanding patients' right to healthcare regardless of nationality or immigration status. I argue that the NHS in its current formulation effectively enacts a partial cosmopolitanism in its reliance on medical workers from abroad, but could more meaningfully instantiate that cosmopolitanism were it to offer the same healthcare to migrants as it does to citizens. (shrink)

The demand for informed consent in clinical medicine is usually justified on the basis that it promotes patient autonomy. In this article I argue that the most effective way to promote autonomy is to improve patient understanding in order to reduce the epistemic disparity between patient and medical professional. Informed consent therefore derives its moral value from its capacity to reduce inequalities of power as they derive from epistemic inequalities. So in order for a patient to have given informed consent, (...) she must understand the treatment. I take this to mean that she has sufficient knowledge of its causal mechanisms and has accepted the explanations in which the treatment is implicated. If this interpretation of informed consent is correct, it is unethical for medical professionals to offer or endorse ‘alternative medicine’ treatments, for which there is no known causal mechanism, for if they do, they may end up widening the epistemic disparity. In this way, informed consent may be understood as an effective way of ruling out particular treatments in order to improve patient autonomy and maintain trust in the medical profession. (shrink)

During the “age of austerity” the UK government has progressively limited free health services for “overseas visitors” on the grounds of fairness and frugality. This is despite the fact that the cost of the additional bureaucracy required by the new system and the public health consequences are expected to exceed the sums saved. In this article I explore the interaction between the discourses of austerity and xenophobia as they relate to migrants’ access to healthcare. By examining the available data and (...) adjudicating various moral arguments, I cast doubt on the claim that the current charging regulations are cost-effective and fair. I instead contend that if the UK is concerned with running a health service that is economically-sustainable and morally-defensible, it is critical that migrants are welcomed, both as staff and as patients. I conclude by arguing that xenophobia has precipitated changes to the health service which do not qualify as “austerity” in the way that is claimed, but rather deliberately produce a “hostile environment” for migrants, despite this very likely generating economic losses. (shrink)

Women are over-represented within alternative medicine, both as consumers and as service providers. In this paper, I show that the appeal of alternative medicine to women relates to the neglect of women’s health needs within scientific medicine. This is concerning because alternative medicine is severely limited in its therapeutic effects; therefore, those who choose alternative therapies are liable to experience inadequate healthcare. I argue that while many patients seek greater autonomy in alternative medicine, the absence of an evidence base and (...) plausible mechanisms of action leaves patients unable to realize meaningful autonomy. This seems morally troubling, especially given that the neglect of women’s needs within scientific medicine seems to contribute to preferences for alternative medicine. I conclude that the liberatory credentials of alternative medicine should be questioned and make recommendations to render scientific medicine better able to meet the needs of typical alternative medicine consumers. (shrink)

Neglected tropical diseases are defined operationally as diseases that prevail in “tropical” regions and are under‐researched, under‐funded, and under‐treated compared with their disease burden. By analysing the adjectives “tropical” and “neglected,” I expose and interrogate the discourses within which the term “neglected tropical disease” derives its meaning. First, I argue that the term “tropical” conjures the notion of “tropicality,” a form of Othering which erroneously explains the disease‐prevalence of “tropical” regions by reference to environmental determinism, rather than colonialism and neocolonialism. (...) Second, I examine the way in which this Othering enables the abjection of tropical regions and their peoples, leading to neglect. I recommend that the term “neglected tropical diseases” be more carefully contextualised within health scholarship, education, and policy. (shrink)

Following upon Bruno Latour’s famous injunction that ‘we have never been modern’, Graham Harvey has recently added that perhaps ‘we have always been animists.’ With the massive ecosystem destruction that is underway in the Anthropocene, this realization could represent a necessary paradigm shift to address anthropogenic climate change. If the expropriation and destruction intrinsic to the modern division between a world of cultural values attributed exclusively to humans and a world of inanimate matter devoid of value has become untenable, then (...) showing the illusory nature of this divide should open the way for a transvaluation of values capable of developing an animistic relational ontology to replace the dualisms of the Western paradigm. Developing the four traits typical of animistic cultures – personhood, relationality, location and ontological boundary crossing – a postmodern ‘machinic animism’ is defended as a new ecological paradigm for the Anthropocene. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that men should take primary responsibility for protecting against pregnancy. Male long-acting reversible contraceptives are currently in development, and, once approved, should be used as the standard method for avoiding pregnancy. Since women assume the risk of pregnancy when they engage in penis-in-vagina sex, men should do their utmost to ensure that their ejaculations are responsible, otherwise women shoulder a double burden of pregnancy risk plus contraceptive responsibility. Changing the expectations regarding responsibility for contraception would (...) render penis-in-vagina sex more equitable, and could lead to a shift in the discourse around abortion access. I describe the sex asymmetries of contraceptive responsibility and of pregnancy-related risk, and offer arguments in favour of men taking primary responsibility for contraception. My arguments centre on: analogies between contraception and vaccination, and unwanted pregnancy and disease; a veil-of-ignorance approach, in which I contend that if a person were not told their sex, they would find a society in which men were expected to acquire and use effective contraceptives the fairest arrangement for everyone. (shrink)

In his book Political Theology, Carl Schmitt compared the freedom of God over and beyond the laws of nature to sovereign power, understood as transcending the laws of the state. Philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued that such a Schmittian political theology undermines the possibility of democracy from within. Yet in this paper I would like to develop Derrida’s understanding of justice in order to show that it functions in a similar way to Schmitt’s understanding of sovereign power. Because justice is (...) always singular for Derrida, it transcends politics and is identified with a transcendent alterity beyond the iterability of the law. If Schmitt’s understanding of power as a State of Exception undermines democracy from within, by placing justice in a dimension beyond politics and the law, Derrida’s notion of justice also functions as a State of Exception and undermines the democratic project from without, depriving it of its performative power. (shrink)

In his book Political Theology, Carl Schmitt compared the freedom of God over and beyond the laws of nature to sovereign power, understood as transcending the laws of the state. Philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued that such a Schmittian political theology undermines the possibility of democracy from within. Yet in this paper I would like to develop Derrida’s understanding of justice in order to show that it functions in a similar way to Schmitt’s understanding of sovereign power. Because justice is (...) always singular for Derrida, it transcends politics and is identified with a transcendent alterity beyond the iterability of the law. If Schmitt’s understanding of power as a State of Exception undermines democracy from within, by placing justice in a dimension beyond politics and the law, Derrida’s notion of justice also functions as a State of Exception and undermines the democratic project from without, depriving it of its performative power. (shrink)

Este texto trata de apresentar a posição intelectual de Fernando Do Ó, militar, advogado e espírita que atuou em Santa Maria nas décadas de 1930 a 1960, sobre espiritismo. Essas discussões foram sustentadas na análise do Pierre Bourdieu sobre as disputas percebidas do campo religioso. Destacamos suas posições a partir do que foi publicado no jornal Diário do Interior de 1930 a 1937, assim, propomos uma reflexão, da escrita na imprensa local no sentido de demarcar identidade espírita diante da pluralidade (...) de práticas mediúnicas. (shrink)