This article analyses research that has explored the potential of a focus on indeterminate bodies for decision making, policy and politics. Drawing on different ways of conceptualising indeterminacy in scientific and policy domains it describes the Loweswater Care Project, a participatory ‘knowledge collective’ that attempted to avoid converting the complexities of vital cyanobacterial bodies into a purely social or managerial set of questions around water quality. Through a commitment to opening out the nature of ‘things’, participants in this collective honed (...) new questions and avenues of inquiry around cyanobacteria and its relations. The Loweswater Care Project was a kind of ‘open’ in Haraway’s sense, where questions and demands are put to bodies, and to the apparatus that allows us to sense them, in ways that do not shy away from the probabilistic character of entities and their relations. The implications of generating indeterminacies in this setting are explored for environmental decision making, policy and politics. (shrink)

Photo ID 72893750 © Rawpixelimages|Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT Solidarity is a concept increasingly employed in bioethics whose application merits further clarity and explanation. Given how vital cooperation and community-level care are to mitigating communicable disease transmission, we use lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to reveal how solidarity is a useful descriptive and analytical tool for public health scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. Drawing upon an influential framework of solidarity that highlights how solidarity arises from the ground up, we reveal how structural forces can (...) impact the cultivation of solidarity from the top down, particularly through ensuring robust access to important social determinants of health. Public health institutions can support solidarity movements among individuals and communities by adopting a lens of social justice when considering public health priorities and, in turn, promote health equity. INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, scholars have invoked the concept of solidarity when assessing a wide range of topics in bioethics, from CRISPR-Cas9 technology to organ donation to structural racism.[1] However, the growing literature on solidarity has not fully examined the roles and responsibilities of institutions and governments in fostering solidarity, especially regarding public health measures that implicate entire populations. We argue that it remains unclear how public health institutions should engage with solidarity and how their engagement will affect public health and its ethics. We first take Prainsack and Buyx’ three-tiered framework as an analytical starting point.[2] We then explore how public health institutions can foster solidarity by carefully considering factors that may bolster it on an interpersonal, community, and national scale. We conclude that public health institutions should adopt a lens of social justice to promote solidarity at the interpersonal and community levels, thereby promoting equity in future public health efforts. BACKGROUND Calls for solidarity in bioethics raise longstanding normative questions about the nature and limits of our duties to one another and how to weigh autonomy over considerations of justice.[3] Though the term is diversely applied, Prainsack and Buyx propose a potentially unifying definition in the 2011 Nuffield Council report, “Solidarity: Reflections On An Emerging Concept in Bioethics.” The report defines solidarity as an activity involving “shared practices reflecting a collective commitment to carry financial, social, emotional, and or other ‘costs’ to assist others.” Their conceptualization also includes important features that distinguish solidarity from other values like empathy or altruism: solidarity emphasizes action rather than mere internal feeling and recognition of connection as motivation.[4] Bioethicists have since applied this conceptualization when analyzing issues in public and global health, given that population-level efforts need cooperation from individuals and communities. Prainsack and Buyx further note that solidarity is relevant in bioethics discourses about justice and equity, in support of providing aid to low- and middle-income countries, and as a value exemplified by European welfare states.[5] Other bioethicists have argued that promoting solidarity can contribute to community engagement, partnership with Tribal communities, and global health equity.[6] Most recently, scholars have applied solidarity as a lens to assess the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the pitfalls of national mitigation efforts and global disparities in disease outcomes.[7] I. Solidarity at Three Levels It seems impossible to foster solidarity in public health if we cannot identify it in general contexts. Prainsack and Buyx articulate three levels of solidarity: interpersonal solidarity, group solidarity, and legal or contractual codifications of solidarity.[8] They argue that each level inherently informs the one ‘above’ it in a unilateral direction. In other words, solidarity is fundamentally a bottom-up phenomenon. Solidarity among individuals influences group norms, which then have the potential to shape policy and institutional practice.[9] Within the Prainsack and Buyx framework, it would seem nonsensical to posit how solidarity might be expressed vertically or from the “top down.” It appears intuitively odd to imagine how a government entity might ‘be’ in solidarity with a person or group if solidarity requires some cognition about their condition per Prainsack and Buyx’ definition. Some have argued that solidarity does not seem like something that one can impose, as instances of it arise from agents recognizing and acting upon some bond rather than in response to a command. Indeed, people may be rightfully hesitant to engage in solidarity if the official messaging is overly paternalistic or coercive.[10] However, some authors have countered that governments can express solidarity through enacting structural and policy changes, though it is ambiguous how these actions are distinct from a justice-driven approach.[11] If a bottom-up approach is thus the most practical means of achieving policy that reflects solidarity, then it does not add much to public health. Institutions would be ineffective without the population’s initiation of the corresponding social norms. However, we find this conclusion overly pessimistic. Fostering a culture of solidarity to improve public health has potential merit. Prainsack and Buyx’ framework overlooks how public health actors can influence solidarity between individuals and across communities. To clarify, we agree with the view that solidarity is a bottom-up phenomenon. Solidarity may not be able to originate in a top-down fashion, but we suggest that public health institutions can take a more active role in providing the public with accurate information, promoting social justice, and intervening in the social determinants of health. II. The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Case Study Lessons learned from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic support our argument. The pandemic deepened socioeconomic disparities in the US and hindered access to vital resources such as food, housing, and healthcare.[12] Prainsack recently noted: “[n]ext to the immediate health effects of the virus, poverty and grave inequalities have been the root causes of human suffering during the pandemic.”[13] Prior to the pandemic, many rural and low-income populations lacked reliable access to the internet and devices like laptops or smartphones. This continued lack of access restricts the flow of information and prevents people from accessing telemedicine services.[14] Preexisting social, political, and health inequities worsened health outcomes among many marginalized racial and ethnic groups. It is well-documented that communities of color, including Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Latinx populations, had greater COVID-related mortality and morbidity due to the effects of structural racism.[15] Although federal US agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enacted laws that provided safety nets (e.g., the Federal Eviction Moratorium), the majority of such programs have ended, leaving many with little assistance and the threat of further hardship.[16] These disparities are relevant because Prainsack, Buyx, and others note that solidarity arises from agents recognizing and acting on some perceived attainable collective goal(s). Income inequality and disparate access to food, education, and health care may lead people to consider public health goals unattainable. This could limit the desire to work toward those goals collectively.[17] The existing literature on collective action theory supports this intuition. It emphasizes that structural conditions, such as an absence of perceived hope for social change among a group, can lead to low ‘group efficacy’ and little willingness to cooperate, both within and across socioeconomic strata.[18] The pandemic spurred countless messages from public health agencies. The messaging did not recognize or attend to the different material realities and circumstances of the US population. How can people feel comfortable getting vaccinated if they deeply distrust the government, including public health institutions? How can people remain motivated to wear masks and distance themselves if they cannot afford basic necessities and work jobs without adequate pay and leave policies? We ask these questions to illustrate how socioeconomic disparities can marginalize people if they feel ignored, apathetic, or resentful of those better off or those in power whom they perceive to “not be doing enough.” This marginalization precludes the formation of solidarity. There are instances when a population has disparate access to resources and social capital, but solidarity may still emerge from a shared goal or vision for the future. For example, a heterogeneous population living in the same town may come together to protest an environmental injustice that impacts their water supply with the common goal of securing access to safe drinking water. However, many populations in the US failed to recognize shared goals of this kind during the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant minority of the US population was reluctant to acknowledge the severity of COVID-19 infection and thus refused to participate in efforts to mitigate its spread. Even between groups who shared the goal of slowing COVID-19 transmission, the methods were widely debated. Approximately 20 percent of the adult population eligible for vaccination remains unvaccinated.[19] Governmental bodies responsible for disseminating information, coordinating the allocation of resources, and establishing guidelines have a large role in mediating these disagreements and intervening in socioeconomic conditions that impact people's ability and willingness to engage in solidarity. III. Solidarity, Social Justice, and the Role of Public Health Institutions Adopting a lens of social justice provides further insights into how public health actors impact solidarity. Powers and Faden argue that the “foundational moral justification for the social institution of public health is social justice.”[20] Their theory of social justice has two aims. First, it ensures that everyone has a sufficient amount of the six core elements of well-being and that public health institutions are responsible for “adopting policies and creating environments” where all can flourish.[21] Second, public health institutions should distribute resources meant to promote well-being and focus on the “needs of those who are the most disadvantaged.”[22] Public health institutions should enact policies that address injustice. In doing so, public health institutions can seed the opportunity to build solidarity from the bottom up. Equipping individuals and communities with resources will foster cooperation and adherence to policies that require solidarity, such as masking and vaccination. This is consistent with arguments illustrating how institutions such as Tribal governments promote the conditions needed for their group, and especially its most vulnerable members, to flourish.[23] Addressing social determinants of health with a social justice lens will create the circumstances under which more individuals and groups can find common causes and foster solidarity. In the long run, such efforts may result in the establishment of values and practices from the bottom up. There are societal and public health preconditions required before institutions can expect their audience to act in solidarity with one another. Through their great influence over information and resources, public institutions do have the power to impact what values are most widespread. Furthermore, public health may foster trust and hope, which are important psychosocial factors that influence collective action,[24] if policies increase access to resources that promote well-being. Messaging efficacy also depends on the context of public trust, education, and whether the institutions meet one’s basic needs. Disparate messaging across different public institutions may confuse or disillusion individuals. To apply our theory of solidarity to the decision to vaccinate, a policy would be to foster conditions that facilitate access to vaccines and information about vaccine efficacy instead of imposing a top-down mandate without first eliciting public trust. IV. Counterargument Some argue that discordant public health messaging, ineffective government, and inadequate social programs can also bring people together under pressure and foster solidarity. One may argue that the most powerful motivators towards solidarity are strife and disparity, as evidenced throughout history. During the pandemic alone, political struggle and personal hardship inspired solidarity in the US, from individual neighbors helping each other to mutual aid groups forming across communities. We thus do not claim that solidarity is possible only when our government programs and public health institutions are most effective. We instead point out that solidarity can be further hindered when people feel alienated, hopeless, and pitted against each other. CONCLUSION Many competing conceptualizations of solidarity persist in the bioethics literature, and Prainsack and Buyx offer one compelling framework that public health ethicists continue to draw upon.[25] However, their framework fails to acknowledge how public health institutions impact interpersonal and group solidarity. Public health institutions can foster solidarity through actions other than mere messaging, invoking catchphrases like “we are all in this together.” Efforts to address socioeconomic preconditions and alleviate health disparities can cultivate group solidarity. As we saw during the pandemic, cooperation and solidarity go hand-in-hand with disease mitigation efforts; solidarity has clear intrinsic value.[26] As this relationship becomes more apparent, we will continue to see attempts from public health institutions to foster or invoke solidarity. Therefore, public health institutions would be remiss to ignore their role in addressing the social determinants of health. Adopting a social justice lens when planning public health interventions will clarify and strengthen their role in facilitating solidarity. Ultimately, if health disparities continue to persist or widen, it is very hard to imagine how group solidarity can ever be achieved. The widescale adoption of many public health measures needed to promote health and well-being would be conducive to solidarity. - Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are the authors’ and do not represent the views of the NIH, DHHS, or the U.S. government. Funding Disclosure: This work was supported in part by the Intramural Program of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. - [1] John J Mulvihill et al., “Ethical Issues of CRISPR Technology and Gene Editing through the Lens of Solidarity,” British Medical Bulletin 122 (2017): 17–29, https://doi.org/10.1093/bmb/ldx002; Ben Saunders, “Altruism or Solidarity? The Motives for Organ Donation and Two Proposals,” Bioethics 26, no. 7 (September 2012): 376–81, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2012.01989.x; -Vanessa Y Hiratsuka, “SPECIAL REPORT: A Critical Moment in Bioethics: Reckoning with Anti-Black Racism through Intergenerational Dialogue A Call for Solidarity in Bioethics: Confronting Anti-Black Racism Together,” 2022, https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.1380. [2] Prainsack and Buyx, Solidarity: Reflections on an Emerging Concept in Bioethics London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2011; Prainsack and Buyx, “Solidarity in Contemporary Bioethics--towards a New Approach.” Bioethics 26, no. 7 (September 2012): 343–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-8519.2012.01987.X. [3] Bob Simpson, “A ‘We’ Problem for Bioethics and the Social Sciences: A Response to Barbara Prainsack,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 43, no. 1 (January 12, 2018): 45–55, https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735899. [4] Barbara Prainsack and Alena Buyx, Solidarity: Reflections on an Emerging Concept in Bioethics (London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2011). [5] Barbara Prainsack and Alena Buyx, “Solidarity in Contemporary Bioethics--towards a New Approach,” Bioethics 26, no. 7 (September 2012): 343–50, https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-8519.2012.01987.X. [6] Bridget Pratt, Phaik Yeong Cheah, and Vicki Marsh, “Solidarity and Community Engagement in Global Health Research,” The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB 20, no. 5 (May 3, 2020): 43–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1745930; Sara Chandros Hull, F. Leah Nez (Diné), and Juliana M. Blome, “Solidarity as an Aspirational Basis for Partnership with Tribal Communities,” The American Journal of Bioethics 21, no. 10 (October 3, 2021): 14–17, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1965258; Mbih J. Tosam et al., “Global Health Inequalities and the Need for Solidarity: A View from the Global South,” Developing World Bioethics 18, no. 3 (September 1, 2018): 241–49, https://doi.org/10.1111/DEWB.12182. [7] Peter West-Oram, “Solidarity Is for Other People: Identifying Derelictions of Solidarity in Responses to COVID-19,” Journal of Medical Ethics 47, no. 2 (February 1, 2021): 65–68, https://doi.org/10.1136/MEDETHICS-2020-106522; Barbara Prainsack, “Solidarity in Times of Pandemics,” Democratic Theory 7, no. 2 (December 1, 2020): 124–33, https://doi.org/10.3167/DT.2020.070215; F. Marijn Stok et al., “Social Inequality and Solidarity in Times of COVID-19,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18, no. 12 (June 2, 2021), https://doi.org/10.3390/IJERPH18126339; Ming Jui Yeh, “Solidarity in Pandemics, Mandatory Vaccination, and Public Health Ethics,” American Journal of Public Health 112, no. 2 (February 1, 2022): 255–61, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306578; Barbara Prainsack, “Beyond Vaccination Mandates: Solidarity and Freedom During COVID-19.,” Am J Public Health 112, no. 2 (February 1, 2022): 232–33, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306619. [8] Prainsack and Buyx, Solidarity: Reflections on an Emerging Concept in Bioethics London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2011; Prainsack and Buyx, “Solidarity in Contemporary Bioethics--towards a New Approach.” Bioethics 26, no. 7 (September 2012): 343–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-8519.2012.01987.X. [9] Prainsack and Buyx, Solidarity: Reflections on an Emerging Concept in Bioethics London: Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2011; Prainsack and Buyx, “Solidarity in Contemporary Bioethics--towards a New Approach.” Bioethics 26, no. 7 (September 2012): 343–50. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-8519.2012.01987.X. [10] Yeh, “Solidarity in Pandemics, Mandatory Vaccination, and Public Health Ethics”; Prainsack, “Beyond Vaccination Mandates: Solidarity and Freedom During COVID-19.” [11] Ho, Anita, and Iulia Dascalu. "Relational solidarity and COVID-19: an ethical approach to disrupt the global health disparity pathway." Global Bioethics 32, no. 1 (2021): 34-50; West-Oram, Peter. "Solidarity is for other people: identifying derelictions of solidarity in responses to COVID-19." Journal of Medical Ethics 47, no. 2 (2021): 65-68. [12] Monica Webb Hooper, Anna María Nápoles, and Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, “COVID-19 and Racial/Ethnic Disparities,” JAMA 323, no. 24 (June 23, 2020): 2466, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.8598. [13] Prainsack, Barbara. “Beyond Vaccination Mandates: Solidarity and Freedom During COVID-19.” Am J Public Health 112, no. 2 (February 1, 2022): 232–33. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306619. [14] Camille A Clare, “Telehealth and the Digital Divide as a Social Determinant of Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Network Modeling Analysis in Health Informatics and Bioinformatics 10 (2021): 26, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13721-021-00300-y. [15] Patrick Nana-Sinkam et al., “Health Disparities and Equity in the Era of COVID-19,” Journal of Clinical and Translational Science 5, no. 1 (March 16, 2021): e99, https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2021.23. [16] Kathryn M Leifheit et al., “Expiring Eviction Moratoriums and COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality,” American Journal of Epidemiology 190, no. 12 (December 1, 2021): 2503–10, https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwab196. [17] Barbara Prainsack, “Solidarity in Times of Pandemics,” Democratic Theory 7, no. 2 (December 1, 2020): 124–33, https://doi.org/10.3167/DT.2020.070215 [18] Maximilian Agostini and Martijn van Zomeren, “Toward a Comprehensive and Potentially Cross-Cultural Model of Why People Engage in Collective Action: A Quantitative Research Synthesis of Four Motivations and Structural Constraints.,” Psychological Bulletin 147, no. 7 (July 2021): 667–700, https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000256. [19] Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (HHS/CDC), “COVID Data Tracker,” 2023, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker. [20] Powers, Madison, and Ruth Faden. Social Justice: The Moral Foundation of Public Health and Health Policy. 1st editio. New York: Oxford Press, 2006, p. 9 and Chapter 4 [21] Powers and Faden, Social Justice: The Moral Foundation of Public Health and Health Policy; Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). [22] Powers, Madison, and Ruth Faden. Social Justice: The Moral Foundation of Public Health and Health Policy. 1st editio. New York: Oxford Press, 2006, p. 10 [23] Bobby Saunkeah et al., “Extending Research Protections to Tribal Communities,” The American Journal of Bioethics 21, no. 10 (October 3, 2021): 5–12, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1865477. [24] Agostini and van Zomeren, “Toward a Comprehensive and Potentially Cross-Cultural Model of Why People Engage in Collective Action: A Quantitative Research Synthesis of Four Motivations and Structural Constraints.” [25] Prainsack and Buyx, Solidarity: Reflections on an Emerging Concept in Bioethics. [26] Ruth Chadwick, “COVID‐19 and the Possibility of Solidarity,” Bioethics 34, no. 7 (September 8, 2020): 637–637, https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12813. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on learning outside the classroom (LOtC) in places such as in museums and art galleries, in forests, and by natural water courses; this has bec...

This paper consists of a detailed analysis of how the participants in a debate build their emotional position during the interaction and how such a position is strongly related to the conclusion they defend. In this case study, teenage Mexican, students, arguing about access to drinking water, display extensive discursive work on the emotional tonality given to the issue. Plantin’s methodological tools are adopted to follow two alternative emotional framings produced by disagreeing students, starting from a common, highly negative, thymic (...) tonality. Through the analysis of four parameters we describe how the emotional dimension of schematization is argumentatively relevant. In authentic discourse, it is impossible to separate emotion from reason. The conclusion section discusses the implications for the design of argumentation-based pedagogical activities. (shrink)

Two years ago, a nest box outside my window held a pair of Violet-Green Swallow. I counted six swallows fledge from the box and take their first flights in the July rain. Leaving the roof of the nest box, they flew in little loops out over the water, trying out their wings. I watched them from the dock, their bodies suspended in the air between the raindrops. This experience was the inspiration for what I call ‘nest-works’ – for poetic wilding (...) of all-too-human spaces. Nest-works began with an experimental panel for the 2021 College Art Association Conference, called ‘Co-Making this World’. The experimental session was modelled after the nest of a bird, a Black-Capped Chickadee. As this cavity-nester builds a home of disparate materials, the panel of artist-researchers built a session of disparate theories and practices, as we considered relationships with world-systems that are in the process of making (such as the nest of the chickadee). For Technoetic Arts, we weave a new nest-work of research material, as we consider new models for knowledge and creative production. This nest-work is an entanglement of short essays made by artists working with a common pattern, framing eco-poetics on collaborative and participatory processes with the non-human/more-than-human. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 71-79 [Access article in PDF] "Explosion" Greta Gaard I. In the beginning there was only water, and you were a part of it. Never mind what else you have heard. This was your first relationship, your connection to water. And the quality of this relationship, the character of your beliefs about water, shapes all relationships in your life. The way you do one (...) thing is the way you do everything. You cannot separate one relationship from another, treat this water with reverence, this water with waste. Because water returns. Water knows there are no separations. You too should know this, for water has been teaching you, from the beginning.Imagine a creek flowing through the length of your life, from your birth to your death. Yes, your death. Water precedes you, water survives you. Consider the silence of blue-ice glaciers, ancient in their solitude, melting. Each winter the snowfall thick and wet, fluffy, or crisp and dry. Each spring the snows melting, glaciers growing and melting. Water flows down pine needles and cedar bark, flows down rocks and fallen logs, flows through moss and soil and sand.The lake gathers rainfall, gathers snowmelt and the plenitude of creeks. The lake overflows, spills, falls, exuberance of fullness, joy in motion, streaming downhill now, swelling the creek bed where it has made this journey so many times before.You have never seen this creek, the hidden water that flows through your days and nights, from one season to the next. Without it you would not live. You rely on this unseen water to flow forever. It has flowed here [End Page 71] before you were born, before you stepped into its flow, and you imagine it will outlast you, outlast whatever you might do to this water. You believe it is limitless, unending. You know its persistent force has carved rocks because you can see them, see the way water flows through stone, leaving its imprint in kettles, in the basins of water where rocks circulate, in the interlaced fingers of water and stone embracing at the falls.Water becomes you. But Narcissus-like, you look at water and see only your self. You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to con-trol this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one. II. Imagine a family. Picture the elders first. How many do you see? Where are the children? The sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews and grandchildren? How many people are needed to form a family? Can you be a family of one?Look at it another way: is there a limit to the relations of family? Is there a certain number of people allowed in a family until a limit is reached? Do you say, "Families may only have ten people"? "The eleventh person will not be included." Or do you point to the basis of inclusion, the things that bind you, one to another, and say, "Yes, this person too"?How do you recognize a family?Do family members have to pulse with the same blood, or will love create a family where the blood... (shrink)

The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possible by this model in (...) the fields of urban planning, urban water systems, urban energy and transport systems, and urban food and nutrient systems. (shrink)

In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing (...) to fight-and die for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or by showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses. (shrink)

This much-anticipated work is a rich and insightful collection of essays that restores women and minorities to the arena of political theory and debate.

This article is about recent attempts by scholars, database practitioners, and curators to experiment in theoretically interesting ways with the conceptual design and the building of databases, archives, and other information systems. This article uses the term ‘‘archive’’ as an overarching category to include a diversity of technologies used to inventory objects and knowledge, to commit them to memory and for future use. The category of ‘‘archive’’ might include forms as diverse as the simple spreadsheet, the species inventory, the computerized (...) database, and the museum. Using this protean concept, this study suggests that we are currently witnessing a time where close convergences are occurring between social theory and archive construction. It identifies a ‘‘move’’ toward exposure of the guts of our archives and databases, toward exposing the contingencies, the framing, the reflexivity, and the politics embedded within them. Within this move, the study examines ways in which theories of performance and emergence have begun to influence the way that archives of different kinds are conceived and reflects on the role of Science and Technology Studies scholars in their construction. (shrink)

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those (...) pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data. (shrink)

This edited collection had its origins in a two-day conference held at the Tate Britain, organised collaboratively by research staff and students at Middlesex University and the London Consortium in order to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the publication of Edmund Burke's famous book on the sublime. The conference was funded by Middlesex University, the London Consortium and the Tate Britain's AHRC-funded "Sublime Object: Nature, Art and Language" research project. The conference set out to critically examine the legacy of the (...) sublime in contemporary art, culture and society and to assess the value and the dangers of this concept as it is articulated in current thought and practice. The book selected from and expanded on the papers delivered at the conference in order to pursue this goal further. It was broken into themed sections (each of which had an introduction), each exploring an different issue around contemporary uses of the sublime. The sections were: 1. Nature, Ecology and the Sublime; 2. The Sublime After Kant; 3. Capitalism, Terror, Art and the Sublime; 4. Baroque and Beyond: Art, Sex and the Sublime; 5. The Cinematic Sublime. The volume reflects the interdisiplinarity of the concept of the sublime today, and includes essays whose appraoches come from aesthetics and ethics, ecological and political thought, psychoanalysis, feminism, film studies, literary studies, art history and popular culture. It includes papers by internationally renowned authors from the UK, America and Europe alongside the new voices of younger academics. The contributors were: Jane Bennett (Johns Hopkins University), Mark Bould (University of the West of England), Eu Jin Chua (London Consortium), Gudrun Filipska (Middlesex University), Cornelia Klinger (Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna / University of Tübingen, Germany), Esther Leslie (Birkbeck), William McDonald (Middlesex Univeristy), Laura Mulvey (Birkbeck), Claire Pajaczkowska (Royal College of Art), Griselda Pollock (University of Leeds), Gene Ray (Geneva University of Art and Design), Bettina Reiber (Central St. Martins), Jan Rosiek (University of Copenhagen), Sherryl Vint (Brock University, Canada), and Luke White (Middlesex University). (shrink)

Two experiments examined similarities and differences in the effects of consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards on the active maintenance of goal-relevant information. Participants could gain high and low monetary rewards for performance on a word span task. The reward value was presented supraliminally or subliminally at different stages during the task. In Experiment 1, rewards were presented before participants processed the target words. Enhanced performance was found in response to higher rewards, regardless whether they were presented supraliminally or subliminally. In (...) Experiment 2, rewards were presented after participants processed the target words, i.e., during maintenance. Performance increased in response to relatively high rewards when they were presented subliminally, but decreased when they were presented supraliminally. We conclude that both consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards boost resources supporting the maintenance of task-relevant information. Conscious processing of rewards can, however, heavily interfere with an ongoing maintenance process and impair performance. (shrink)

This paper describes a method for analyzing a corpus of descriptions collected through micro-phenomenological interviews. This analysis aims at identifying the structure of the singular experiences which have been described, and in particular their diachronic structure, while unfolding generic experiential structures through an iterative approach. After summarizing the principles of the micro-phenomenological interview, and then describing the process of preparation of the verbatim, the article presents on the one hand, the principles and conceptual devices of the analysis method and on (...) the other hand several dimensions of the analysis process: the modes of structural unfolding of generic structures, the mutual guidance of the processes of structural and experiential unfolding, the tracking of analysis processes, and finally the assessment of analysis results. (shrink)

Over the last decade, legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Canada has accelerated. By and large, same-sex cohabitants are now recognised in the same manner as opposite-sex cohabitants, and same-sex marriage was legalised in 2005. Without diminishing the struggle that lesbians and gay men have endured to secure this somewhat revolutionary legal recognition, this article troubles its narrative of progress. In particular, we investigate the terms on which recent legal struggles have advanced, as well as the ways in which resistance (...) to the legal recognition has been expressed and dealt with. We argue that to the extent that feminist critiques of marriage, familial ideology, and the privatisation of economic responsibility are marginalised, conservative and heteronormative discourses on marriage and family are reinforced. Our case studies include two pivotal moments in the quest for legislative recognition of same-sex relationships: the Hearings of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on Bill C-23, The Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, in 2000 and the hearings on Same-Sex Marriage in 2003. We find that the debates operated within a narrow paradigm that bolstered many existing hierarchies and exacerbated conditions for those who are economically disadvantaged. (shrink)

Objectives The study uses a qualitative empirical method to define Health Research for Development. This project explores the perspectives of stakeholders in an international health research partnership operating in Ghana and Tanzania. Methods We conducted 52 key informant interviews with major stakeholders in an international multicenter partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and the global health nonprofit organisation PATH and its Malaria Vaccine Initiative program,. The respondents included teams from four clinical research centres and various collaborating partners. This paper analyses responses to the (...) question: What is Health Research for Development? Results Based on the stakeholders’ experience the respondents offered many ways of defining Health Research for Development. The responses fell into four broad themes: i) Equitable Partnerships; ii) System Sustainability; iii) Addressing Local Health Targets, and iv) Regional Commitment to Benefit Sharing. Conclusion Through defining Health Research for Development six key learning points were generated from the four result themes: 1) Ensure there is local research leadership working with the collaborative partnership, and local healthcare system, to align the project agenda and activities with local research and health priorities; 2) Know the country-specific context - map the social, health, legislative and political setting; 3) Define an explicit development component and plan of action in a research project; 4) Address the barriers and opportunities to sustain system capacity. 5) Support decentralised health system decision-making to facilitate the translation pathway; 6) Govern, monitor and evaluate the development components of health research partnerships. Overall, equity and unity between partners are required to deliver health research for development. (shrink)

Most areas of philosopher Edmund Husserl’s thought have been explored, but his views on logic, mathematics, and semantics have been largely ignored. These essays offer an alternative to discussions of the philosophy of contemporary mathematics. The book covers areas of disagreement between Husserl and Gottlob Frege, the father of analytical philosophy, and explores new perspectives seen in their work.

Automated Influence is the use of Artificial Intelligence to collect, integrate, and analyse people’s data in order to deliver targeted interventions that shape their behaviour. We consider three central objections against Automated Influence, focusing on privacy, exploitation, and manipulation, showing in each case how a structural version of that objection has more purchase than its interactional counterpart. By rejecting the interactional focus of “AI Ethics” in favour of a more structural, political philosophy of AI, we show that the real problem (...) with Automated Influence is the crisis of legitimacy that it precipitates. (shrink)

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant (...) or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

The Enkratic Principle enjoys something of a protected status as a requirement of rationality. I argue that this status is undeserved, at least in the epistemic domain. Compliance with the principle should not be thought of as a requirement of epistemic rationality, but rather as defeasible indication of epistemic blamelessness. To show this, I present the Puzzle of Inconsistent Requirements, and argue that the best way to solve it is to distinguish two kinds of epistemic evaluation – requirement evaluations and (...) appraisal evaluations. This allows us to solve the puzzle while accommodating traditional motivations for thinking of the Enkratic Principle as a requirement of rationality. (shrink)

Can we make mistakes about what rationality requires? A natural answer is that we can, since it is a platitude that rational belief does not require truth; it is possible for a belief to be rational and mistaken, and this holds for any subject matter at all. However, the platitude causes trouble when applied to rationality itself. The possibility of rational mistakes about what rationality requires generates a puzzle. When combined with two further plausible claims – the enkratic principle, and (...) the claim that rational requirements apply universally – we get the result that rationality generates inconsistent requirements. One popular and attractive solution to the puzzle denies that it is possible to make rational mistakes about what rationality requires. I show why (contra Titelbaum (2015b), and Littlejohn (2015)) this solution is doomed to fail. (shrink)

Advances in DNA sequencing technology open new possibilities for public health genomics, especially in the form of general population preventive genomic sequencing. Such screening programs would sit at the intersection of public health and preventive health care, and thereby at once invite and resist the use of clinical ethics and public health ethics frameworks. Despite their differences, these ethics frameworks traditionally share a central concern for individual rights. We examine two putative individual rights—the right not to know, and the child’s (...) right to an open future—frequently invoked in discussions of predictive genetic testing, in order to explore their potential contribution to evaluating this new practice. Ultimately, we conclude that traditional clinical and public health ethics frameworks, and these two rights in particular, should be complemented by a social justice perspective in order adequately to characterize the ethical dimensions of general population PGS programs. (shrink)

A familiar part of debates about supererogatory actions concerns the role that cost should play. Two camps have emerged: one claiming that extreme cost is a necessary condition for when an action is supererogatory, while the other denies that it should be part of our definition of supererogation. In this paper, I propose an alternative position. I argue that it is comparative cost that is central to the supererogatory and that it is needed to explain a feature that all accounts (...) agree is central to the very notion of supererogation: optionality. Perhaps because of this agreement on its importance, few attempts have been made to clarify and explain the notion of optionality. I argue that giving an account of the optionality of supererogatory requires drawing a line between doing the bare minimum permissible and going beyond the bare minimum and that this line ought to be drawn based on comparative cost of alternative permissible acts. Having outlined my account and motivated it, I discuss and reject two concerns that might be raised: firstly, that it is extreme cost, not comparative cost, that matters and, secondly, that in fact no cost is needed for an act to be supererogatory. (shrink)

This article examines the artistic potential of forms of image-making that involve registering the features of real objects using mind-independent processes. According to skeptics, these processes limit an agent’s intentional control over the features of the resultant “automatic images,” which in turn limits the artistic potential of the work, and the form as a whole. I argue that this is true only if intentional control is understood to mean that an agent produces the features of the work by their own (...) bodily movements alone. Not only is this an unrealistic standard to uphold, but I show that a definition of intentional control based on the skeptic’s position does not prohibit an agent from realizing the features of an image by means beyond their own actions. An agent can exercise intentional control over the features of an image if they successfully anticipate the effect that the remote consequences of their actions will have on these. This, I argue, entails that to exert intentional control over the features of an image is to exercise “creative agency,” which is a species of executive agency. Consequently, I defend the idea that the origin of automatic images in creative agency grounds their artistic significance. (shrink)

A recent article argued for the immorality of abortion regardless of personhood status by comparing the impairment caused by fetal alcohol syndrome to the impairment caused by abortion. I argue that two of the premises in this argument fail and that, as such, one cannot reasonably attribute moral harms to abortion on the basis of the moral harms caused by fetal alcohol syndrome. The impairment argument relies on an inconsistent instantiation, which undermines the claim that personhood is irrelevant, and it (...) does not fulfill its own ceteris paribus clause, which demands that no additional benefit be gained from abortion that would not be gained from causing fetal alcohol syndrome. (shrink)

It is a reasonable assumption that universal properties of natural languages are not accidental. They occur either because they are underwritten by genetic code, because they assist in language processing or language learning, or due to some combination of the two. In this paper we investigate one such language universal: the suffixing preference across the world’s languages, whereby inflections tend to be added to the end of words. A corpus analysis of child‐directed speech in English found that suffixes were more (...) accurate at cuing the grammatical category of the root word than were prefixes. An artificial language experiment found that there was a learning advantage for suffixes over prefixes in terms of grammatical categorization within an artificial language. The results are consistent with an account of language universals that originate in general purpose learning mechanisms. (shrink)

Challenging previous interpretations of Levinas that gloss over his use of the feminine or show how he overlooks questions raised by feminists, Claire Elise Katz explores the powerful and productive links between the feminine and religion in Levinas’s work. Rather than viewing the feminine as a metaphor with no significance for women or as a means to reinforce traditional stereotypes, Katz goes beyond questions of sexual difference to reach a more profound understanding of the role of the feminine in (...) Levinas’s conception of ethical responsibility. She combines feminist interpretations of Levinas with interpretations that focus on his Jewish writings to reveal that the feminine provides an important bridge between his philosophy and his Judaism. Katz’s reading of Levinas’s conception of the feminine against the backdrop of discussions of women of the Hebrew bible points to important shifts in contemporary philosophy toward the creation of life and care for the other. (shrink)

Within a context of rapid growth and diversification in higher degree research programs, there is increasing pressure for the results of doctoral research to be made public. Doctoral students are now being encouraged to publish not only after completion of the doctorate, but also during, and even as part of their research program. For many this is a new and challenging feature of their experience of doctoral education. _Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond_ is a timely and informative collection (...) of practical and theorised examples of innovative pedagogies that encourage doctoral student publishing. The authors give detailed accounts of their own pedagogical practices so that others may build on their experiences, including: a program of doctoral degree by publication; mentoring strategies to support student publishing; innovations within existing programs, including embedded publication pedagogies; co-editing a special issue of a scholarly journal with students; ‘publication brokering’, and writing groups and writing retreats. With contributions from global leading experts, this vital new book: explores broader issues pertaining to journal publication and the impacts on scholarly research and writing practices for students, supervisors and the academic publishing community takes up particular pedagogical problems and strategies, including curriculum and supervisory responses arising from the ‘push to publish’ documents explicit experiences and practical strategies that foster writing-for-publication during doctoral candidature. _Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond_ explores the challenges and rewards of supporting doctoral publishing and provides new ways to increase research publication outputs in a pedagogically sound way. It will be a valued resource for supervisors and their doctoral students, as well as for program coordinators and managers, academic developers, learning advisors, and others involved in doctoral education. (shrink)

There is now an increasing body of knowledge on creative practice-based doctorates especially in Australia and the United Kingdom. A particular focus in recent years has been on the written examinable component or exegesis, and a number of studies have provided important information about change and stability in the form and nature of the exegesis and its relationship to the creative project. However, we still know relatively little about the pedagogical practices that supervisors use to support these students’ development as (...) scholarly writers, nor of how supervisors view ‘writing’ in relation to the creative practice components of the degree endeavour. This paper draws on data from a recent study of supervision in creative practice higher research degrees and it highlights the transformative nature of writing for the development of creative practice research scholars in the context of competing discourses on research writing. In contrast to institutional silencing of writing, the study relates numerous examples of effective writing-rich supervisory pedagogies illustrating how successful supervisors work with their students to bring their creative projects into articulation. (shrink)

Disabled people frequently find themselves in situations where their quality of life and wellbeing is being measured or judged by others, whether in decisions about health care provision or assessments for social supports. Recent debates about wellbeing and how it might be assessed (through subjective and/or objective measures) have prompted a renewed focus on disabled people’s wellbeing because of its seemingly ‘anomalous’ nature; that is, whilst to external (objective) observers the wellbeing of disabled people appears poor, based on subjective assessments, (...) people with disabilities report a good quality of life. In this paper, I examine an article by the philosopher Dan Moller in which he seeks to explain this ‘disability paradox’. Despite agreeing with his analysis that there is more to what people value than happiness, his explanation reflects some of the difficulties presented in philosophical accounts which seek to understand the lives of disabled people: this includes an analysis which fails to problematise definitions of wellbeing and who has the ‘voice’ to do the defining; which negates the multiple identities and subject positions that disabled people occupy; and which lacks recognition of the social contexts which mediate disabled people’s lives. I suggest that there is a need to incorporate disabled people’s voices into research which deepens our empirical knowledge about the relationship between impairment and wellbeing, including the social circumstances that shape disabled people’s agency. (shrink)

The debate on the value of Boyer's minimally counter-intuitive theory continues to generate considerable theoretical and empirical attention. Although the theory offers an explanation as to why certain cultural texts and narratives are particularly well conveyed and transmitted, amidst society and over time, conflicting evidence remains for any mnemonic advantage of minimally counter-intuitive concepts. In an effort to reconcile these conflicting results, Barrett has made a comprehensive attempt in presenting a formal system for quantifying counter – intuitiveness including a distinction (...) between counter-intuitive and counter-schematic concepts. The present article uses this system to generate sentences containing different levels of counter-intuitiveness, and tests whether minimally counter-intuitive items show a mnemonic advantage over concepts which are more counter-intuitive or counter-schematic. Results indicate that MCI concepts hold a mnemonic advantage over counter-schematic and maximally counter-intuitive concepts but only for one-week delayed recall. Interference effects may have masked immediate recall effects. Yes-no recognition after one week delay showed almost 100% accuracy suggesting that availability of retrieval cues is the factor which determines the mnemonic advantage of MCI concepts. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Whiting’s (2021) account of rational belief and discuss some unresolved issues arising from its reliance on epistemic possibility and, by extension, perspective-relative aprioricity.

Block proposes that phenomenal experience overflows conscious access. In contrast, we propose that conscious access overflows overt report. We argue that a theory of phenomenal experience cannot discard subjective report and that Block's examples of phenomenal relate to two different types of perception. We propose that conscious access is more than simply readout of a pre-existing phenomenal experience.