Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst conservative politicians and journalists, there is a near-consensus amongst scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Like the hole in the ozone layer as described by Bruno Latour, global warming is a ‘hybrid’ natural-social-discursive phenomenon. And science fiction seems to occupy a critical location within this nature/culture nexus. This paper takes as its subject matter what Daniel Bloom dubs (...) ‘cli-fi’. It seeks to describe how a genre defined in relation to science finds itself obliged to produce fictional responses to problems actually thrown up by contemporary scientific research. It argues against the view that ‘catastrophic’ SF is best understood as a variant of the kind of ‘apocalyptic’ fiction inspired by the Christian Book of Revelation, or Apokalypsis, on the grounds that this tends to downplay the historical novelty of SF as a genre defined primarily in relation to modern science and technology. And it examines the narrative strategies pursued in both print and audio-visual SF texts that deal with anthropogenic climate change. (shrink)

From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology!

A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Humanism, Female Education, and Myth:Erasmus, Vives, and More's To CandidusA. D. CousinsWhen considering pleasure and chance as aspects of human experience, Thomas More sometimes gendered them female; that is to say, at times he represented them by drawing from the mythographies of Venus and of Fortune. But what did he suggest that actual women, as distinct from goddesses, were or should be or might become: what were his notions (...) of being a woman, of femaleness? Further, what did he suggest that women might contribute to the common weal? A useful way to start answering that question is to look at what More seems to have thought about educating women: in particular, women who were entering adult life—entering into what was agreed to be the major female role—by marrying for the first time and therefore newly taking upon themselves the management of a household. In one of his most ambitious Latin poems, as nowhere else, More wrote elaborately, concisely and problematically on the education of women who were in just those circumstances. My discussion attempts a repositioning of that poem, To Candidus: How to Choose A Wife A Poem in Iambic Dimeter Brachycatalectic (Versvs Iambici Dimetri Brachycatalectici ad Candidvm, Qvalis Vxor Deligenda). To make the attempt involves examining More's other Latin poems on women, as would be anticipated; however, I am mainly concerned here with affinities between To Candidus—then, to a lesser extent, some of More's associated Latin poems—and notions about female education that were or were to become part of the already long, and mostly male, debate about the nature of femaleness.1 To be [End Page 213] specific, I am chiefly concerned with affinities between More's poem and writings by Erasmus and by Vives on the education of prospective or of recent brides.Because the primary concern in my discussion is to clarify the relations between More's To Candidus and humanist notions on female education, especially notions put forward by two of More's humanist friends about young brides, I want initially to revisit the early modern debate on educating women, of course an important element of the wider debate about femaleness itself. One medieval and thence early modern idea on female education was that, in addition to what their mothers taught them, most women needed merely to receive religious and ethical instruction from their husbands, who would likewise instruct them in how to govern a household.2 After all, it was often pointed out, the household was women's natural domain: since, therefore, they would not normally engage with the world at large as would men—since, for example, they would not normally be educators, or writers, or politicians—women did not usually need the broad education appropriate to men.3 Assertion to the contrary was variously argued—and differences between or among those contrary assertions did not always depend on whether an author was male or female. In The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), a response to Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris and, perhaps unknowingly, also to Plutarch's The Virtues of Women, Christine de Pizan attempted to construct at once a refuge and a resource for [End Page 214] women, whom she recognized as having been misrepresented to themselves no less than to men throughout generations of misogynistic male fictions, ranging from satire to epic, from fable to history.4 Her City, in so far as it is a revisionist history of women, forms a textual space which does indeed offer a refuge as well as a resource, for Christine advocates that women, fulfilling their capabilities as women, aim at "cultivat[ing] virtue" and thereby gaining inclusion in the true, illustrious record of female achievement: membership of a textual community within which they will see themselves reflected and which is at one with the City of God.5 Inseparable from their seeking to do so, she emphasizes, will be their receiving education.6 Despite that emphasis—and despite her emphasizing that women are men's intellectual equals or, not infrequently, superiors—Christine nevertheless defends the concept that the domestic sphere and not the public is in general that "appropriate" to women.7... (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism (...) for a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)

The Jeffreys–Lindley paradox displays how the use of a \ value ) in a frequentist hypothesis test can lead to an inference that is radically different from that of a Bayesian hypothesis test in the form advocated by Harold Jeffreys in the 1930s and common today. The setting is the test of a well-specified null hypothesis versus a composite alternative. The \ value, as well as the ratio of the likelihood under the null hypothesis to the maximized likelihood under the (...) alternative, can strongly disfavor the null hypothesis, while the Bayesian posterior probability for the null hypothesis can be arbitrarily large. The academic statistics literature contains many impassioned comments on this paradox, yet there is no consensus either on its relevance to scientific communication or on its correct resolution. The paradox is quite relevant to frontier research in high energy physics. This paper is an attempt to explain the situation to both physicists and statisticians, in the hope that further progress can be made. (shrink)

L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante.--La dottrina d'Alberto Magno sull'Inchoatio formae.--Alberto Magno e san Tommaso.--La posizione di Alberto Magno di fronte all'averroismo.--L'anima umana secondo Sigieri.--Anima e corpo nel pensiero di san Tommaso.--L'aristotelismo della scolastica e i francescani.--Individualità e immortalità nell'averroismo e nel tomismo.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on care homes in the United Kingdom, particularly for those residents living with dementia. The impetus for this article comes from a recent review conducted by the authors. That review, a qualitative media analysis of news and academic articles published during the first few months of the outbreak, identified ethical care as a key theme warranting further investigation within the context of the crisis. To explore ethical care further, a set of salient (...) ethical values for delivering care to care home residents living with dementia during the pandemic was derived from a synthesis of relevant ethical standards, codes and philosophical approaches. The ethical values identified were caring, non-maleficence, beneficence, procedural justice, dignity in death and dying, well-being, safety, and personhood. Using these ethical values as a framework, alongside examples from contemporaneous media and academic sources, this article discusses the delivery of ethical care to care home residents with dementia within the context of COVID-19. The analysis identifies positive examples of ethical values displayed by care home staff, care sector organisations, healthcare professionals and third sector advocacy organisations. However, concerns relating to the death rates, dignity, safety, well-being and personhood – of residents and staff – are also evident. These shortcomings are attributable to negligent government strategy, which resulted in delayed guidance, lack of resources and Personal Protective Equipment, unclear data, and inconsistent testing. Consequently, this review demonstrates the ways in which care homes are underfunded, under resourced and undervalued. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

This article calls for a rethinking of critical sociology. Representing classical critical sociology, the Bourdieusian paradigm illustrated domination, but its negative foundation removed actors’ power, privileging sociological knowledge as capable of identifying (social) transcendental categories of thought. Latour’s constructivism challenged this privilege, giving actors the political power of aggregating collectives around their common concerns at the cost of emphasizing domination and critique. We propose a critical approach that evades a transcendental perspective reliant on pure negation, producing a more positive critical (...) sociology founded on processualist phenomenological and pragmatic perspectives, principally Merleau-Ponty and Dewey. Actors and researchers can collectively ruminate on their perspectives and concerns to challenge power structures and transform their worlds. At the center of this is the social-mien, a creative reimagination of habitus. A brief discussion of the protests and scholarship surrounding the Notre-Dame-des-Landes activists’ practice of democracy highlights the utility of the approach and serves as a model for future application. (shrink)

One of the most debated questions in psychology and cognitive science is the nature and the functioning of the mental processes involved in deductive reasoning. However, all existing theories refer to a specific deductive domain, like syllogistic, propositional or relational reasoning.Our goal is to unify the main types of deductive reasoning into a single set of basic procedures. In particular, we bring together the microtheories developed from a mental models perspective in a single theory, for which we provide a formal (...) foundation. We validate the theory through a computational model (UNICORE) which allows fine‐grained predictions of subjects' performance in different reasoning domains.The performance of the model is tested against the performance of experimental subjects—as reported in the relevant literature—in the three areas of syllogistic, relational and propositional reasoning. The computational model proves to be a satisfactory artificial subject, reproducing both correct and erroneous performance of the human subjects. Moreover, we introduce a developmental trend in the program, in order to simulate the performance of subjects of different ages, ranging from children (3–6) to adolescents (8–12) to adults (>21). The simulation model performs similarly to the subjects of different ages.Our conclusion is that the validity of the mental model approach is confirmed for the deductive reasoning domain, and that it is possible to devise a unique mechanism able to deal with the specific subareas. The proposed computational model (UNICORE) represents such a unifying structure. (shrink)

General-elimination harmony articulates Gentzen’s idea that the elimination-rules are justified if they infer from an assertion no more than can already be inferred from the grounds for making it. Dummett described the rules as not only harmonious but stable if the E-rules allow one to infer no more and no less than the I-rules justify. Pfenning and Davies call the rules locally complete if the E-rules are strong enough to allow one to infer the original judgement. A method is given (...) of generating harmonious general-elimination rules from a collection of I-rules. We show that the general-elimination rules satisfy Pfenning and Davies’ test for local completeness, but question whether that is enough to show that they are stable. Alternative conditions for stability are considered, including equivalence between the introduction- and elimination-meanings of a connective, and recovery of the grounds for assertion, finally generalizing the notion of local completeness to capture Dummett’s notion of stability satisfactorily. We show that the general-elimination rules meet the last of these conditions, and so are indeed not only harmonious but also stable. (shrink)

_Badiou and Politics_ offers a much-anticipated interpretation of the work of the influential French philosopher Alain Badiou. Countering ideas of the philosopher as a dogmatic, absolutist, or even mystical thinker enthralled by the force of the event as a radical break, Bruno Bosteels reveals Badiou’s deep and ongoing investment in the dialectic. Bosteels draws on all of Badiou’s writings, from the philosopher’s student days in the 1960s to the present, as well as on Badiou’s exchanges with other thinkers, from (...) his avowed “masters” Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, to interlocutors including Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, Daniel Bensaïd, Jacques Derrida, Ernesto Laclau, and Judith Butler. Bosteels tracks the philosopher’s political activities from the events of May 1968 through his embrace of Maoism and the work he has done since the 1980s, helping to mobilize France’s illegal immigrants or _sans-papiers_. Ultimately, Bosteels argues for understanding Badiou’s thought as a revival of dialectical materialism, and he illuminates the philosopher’s understanding of the task of theory: to define a conceptual space for thinking emancipatory politics in the present. (shrink)

Cette étude s’insère dans une recherche-action ethnométhodologique sur la vie des pères et de mères divorcés. Dans le groupe étudié, après le divorce, hommes et femmes ont connu un vécu parental différent, qui tient sans doute à une répartition différenciée des rôles pendant la vie conjugale. La co-parentalité subsiste après séparation, ce qui entraîne la persistance d’un lien et requiert la mise en place délicate d’une juste distance. Ce qui, corollairement, rend plus difficile le deuil de la relation conjugale, l’ex-conjoint (...) restant présent à travers les enfants. (shrink)

Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are explained (...) by logically simpler ones. For example, disjunctions are explained by their (true) disjuncts, while generalizations are explained by their (true) instances. This would seem as plausible in the case of mathematics as elsewhere. Also, it would seem to be something that the anti-realist approaches at issue would want to preserve. It will be argued, however, that these approaches cannot do this: they lead not merely to violations of the familiar principles relating logical and explanatory structure, but even to reversals of these. That is, there are cases where generalizations explain their instances, or disjunctions their disjuncts. (shrink)

O termo respeito é derivado do latim respectus, que corresponde ao uso substantivo do particípio passado do verbo respicere, cujo significado literal é "olhar para trás", "olhar de volta", "olhar novamente", "considerar" (do latim re "de novo" e spicere "olhar"). Derivações do termo latino respectus são encontradas tanto no francês antigo (sec. VIII-XIX), cujo termo respit significa "descansar", "repousar", quanto no inglês médio (sec. XI-XV), cujo termo respect aparece, assumindo a função de nome, no sentido de "relação ou referência a (...) uma coisa ou situação específica" e, na função de verbo, no sentido de "ser digno de consideração ou estima". Na linguagem comum, respeito é uma das palavras cotidianas que aparece em uma multiplicidade de contextos. De um modo mais amplo, poder-se-ia definir respeito como o reconhecimento do valor e da dignidade de algo, do qual decorre um conjunto de comportamentos e estados de ânimo como resposta. Em primeira instância, é importante observar que o conceito de respeito implica sempre uma relação, como no caso em que utilizamos a locução "a respeito de". O respeito leva em conta uma relação responsiva entre sujeito e objeto na qual o sujeito responde ao objeto devido ao reconhecimento de certas características nele. Como o termo latino nos sugere, essa relação envolve um "olhar de volta" que é, ao mesmo tempo, um "considerar", ou seja, trata-se de um certo tipo de apreciação do objeto baseada em elementos tais como a atenção, o julgamento, o conhecimento, a valorização e a deferência. Nesse sentido, respeitar é uma maneira particular de se apreender objeto, na qual uma atenção especial é requerida com o propósito de reconhecer o objeto, não segundo as distorções perpetradas pela nossa subjetividade, mas em sua própria dignidade. Embora o ato de respeitar tenha origem no sujeito, ele não diz respeito primariamente ao sujeito, mas, em vez disso, ao objeto, na medida em que envolve o reconhecimento de uma propriedade que o objeto reivindica para si. Este é o motivo pelo qual respeitar não é meramente uma questão discricionária, baseada em nosso querer e não querer, mas uma experiência [...]. (shrink)

pt. I. En tout temps, l'art comme figure du bonheur -- pt. II. La réinitialisation artistique de la culture -- pt. III. La réinitialisation des perceptions bienheureuses du monde.

Penser aux manières de penser : voici l'enjeu de cet ouvrage. En éducation et en formation, comme dans bien d'autres domaines concernant les sciences humaines et sociales, on admet qu'il existe différentes visions d'ensemble, différentes représentations du sujet d'étude. Le propos de cet ouvrage est d'amorcer un nouvel exercice, afin de s'interroger sur l'utilité de mettre en perspective les manières de penser et les manières d'agir. Des manières de penser sont sous-jacentes à toute forme d'éducation et de formation. Elles influencent (...) la production des théories, des méthodes, des pratiques. Enfin, réfléchir sur les manières de penser nous conduit aux alternatives épistémologiques sur lesquelles elles reposent. Des différences de fond étant ainsi mises en évidence, on devrait mieux comprendre les différences, tout aussi profondes, qui se présentent dans les démarches disciplinaires, aussi bien que dans les activités concrètes. Les auteurs auxquels on a fait appel, en privilégiant une participation à la fois pluridisciplinaire et internationale, ayant accepté l'enjeu proposé, montrent que les itinéraires peuvent être pluriels, et offrent un riche éventail de pistes possibles, engageant chacun différents points de vue, et mobilisant les sciences de l'éducation bien sûr, mais aussi l'anthropologie, la philosophie, la psychologie, la sociologie. (shrink)

É possível constatar, mesmo em uma leitura superficial, que Kant tem o propósito de empreender em seu opúsculo de 1795, À Paz Perpétua, uma defesa dos princípios normativos do direito em todas as esferas da vida pública. Isso se evidencia na tentativa de desenvolver uma teoria da paz erigida sobre uma teoria tríplice do direito público, dividida nos âmbitos do direito estatal, das gentes e cosmopolita. Mas, se a questão é, por um lado, adequar os princípios puros da doutrina do (...) direito à teoria da paz, por outro, o problema com o qual Kant tem de lidar é essencialmente histórico. Não se trata apenas de justificar, em um contexto abrangente, a normatividade dos princípios do direito, mas também de demonstrar a sua aplicabilidade. Por conseguinte, em seu empreendimento, Kant encontra-se diante do desafio de demonstrar a inconsistência da “expressão corrente”, com a qual teve que lidar antes, que diz que “isto pode ser correto na teoria, mas nada vale na prática”. Tal preocupação pode ser observada direta e indiretamente, em várias passagens, no decorrer do texto, explicitando-se ,sobretudo, na discussão apresentada no Suplemento Primeiro no qual a questão suscitada pelo problema da teoria e prática, acerca das condições de possibilidade de realização do ideal da paz, é discutida no contexto de sua filosofia da história e também no Apêndice I, no qual, através de uma reflexão sobre o consenso entre moral e política, o que se põe em questão é a possibilidade da concordância entre teoria e prática no contexto da filosofia e da prática política. Ocupar-me-ei nesse texto apenas em tratar da questão sob esse segundo aspecto, tentando destacar que a estratégia kantiana para superar o problema da teoria e prática, no âmbito da filosofia política, depende do desenvolvimento de uma “renovada” doutrina da prudência. Como observa Castillo1, “[p]ara provar que a teoria jurídica da paz se aplica na teoria e na prática ao mesmo tempo”, Kant “deve fazer um exame crítico do conceito de prudência do Estado”2 . Esta análise deve nos permitir concluir, em primeiro lugar, que, bem diferente da visão antes difundida de que a filosofia política de Kant é expressão de um moralismo “que é certamente sincero, mas basicamente ingênuo”3, o objetivo de Kant, na verdade, nunca foi o de se afastar da realidade concreta da política em nome de um ideal abstrato de virtude política. Sua preocupação foi, em vez disso, a de ajustar os co. (shrink)

German classicist's monumental study of the origins of European thought in Greek literature and philosophy. Brilliant, widely influential. Includes "Homer's View of Man," "The Olympian Gods," "The Rise of the Individual in the Early Greek Lyric," "Pindar's Hymn to Zeus," "Myth and Reality in Greek Tragedy," and "Aristophanes and Aesthetic Criticism.".