Research necessarily entails the close interrelation of concepts and arguments, including solutions to a range of meta-questions, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Despite this, few detailed accounts currently exist that support researchers to develop their complex conceptual architectures, especially in critical realist spheres. Indeed, many published accounts often omit much of this ‘messiness’ that sits behind, yet is foundational to, research projects. Those accounts that do seek to portray how/why researchers have made decisions (e.g. about connections between research philosophy, methodology, (...) methods, theory and empirical evidence) tend to focus on one set of meta-questions, or occasionally on the relationships between two sets, at a time. Therefore, this paper presents a flexible framework – supported by specific examples from studies – that we hope will be useful in supporting researchers from all traditions, but especially critical realists, to carefully think through and develop more holistic connections in their conceptual architecture. (shrink)

Traditional health sciences (including nursing) paradigms, conceptual models, and theories have relied heavily upon notions of the ‘person’ or ‘patient’ that are deeply rooted in humanistic principles. Our intention here, as a collective academic assemblage, is to question taken‐for‐granted definitions and assumptions of the ‘person’ from a critical posthumanist perspective. To do so, the cinematic works of filmmaker David Cronenberg offer a radical perspective to revisit our understanding of the ‘person’ in nursing and beyond. Cronenberg's work explores bodily transformation and (...) mutation, with the body as a fragile and malleable vessel. Cronenberg's work allows us to interrogate the body in all its complexity, contingency, and hybridity and provides avenues of rupture within current understandings of ‘the person’. Reinventing the definition of what it means to be human, critical posthumanism offers opportunities to both critique humanist theories and build affirmative futurities. Also drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically, their concept of becoming, we propose a critical posthumanist alternative to the conceptualization of the person in the health sciences, that of the becoming‐mutant, so frequently explored in Cronenberg's films. Such a conceptualization permits the inclusion of various technological interventions of the contemporary subject: The postperson. This position offers the health science disciplines a radical reconceptualization of the conceptual and theoretical approaches, extending beyond those trapped within the quagmire of humanistic principles. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

Recently, focus groups and qualitative interviews with nurses who provide frontline care for persons living with HIV highlighted the contentiousness surrounding the seemingly innocuous activity of counselling clients about HIV‐status disclosure, hereafter disclosure counselling. These empirical studies highlighted that while some nurses felt they should instruct clients to disclose their HIV‐positive status if HIV transmission were possible, other nurses were equally adamant that such counselling was outside the nursing scope of practice. A review of these opposing perceptions about disclosure counselling, (...) including an examination of the empirical evidence which supports each point, revealed that the dichotomous arguments needed to be nuanced. The empirical evidence about serostatus disclosure neither supported nor refuted either of these assertions; rather, it substantiated parts of each. To create this understanding, both empirical and theoretical works are used. First, the results of empirical studies about serostatus disclosure, or lack thereof and HIV transmission is presented; as part of this, Marks and Crepaz's HIV disclosure and exposure framework is examined. Second, the work of Michel Foucault on disciplinary and pastoral power is drawn from. The outcome is a nuanced understanding about the interrelationships between disclosure counselling and nursing practice and a final interpretation about what this understanding means for public health practice. (shrink)

This essay examines Perth as portrayed through the lyrics of popular songs written by people who grew up in the city. These lyrics tend to reproduce the dominant myths about the city: that it is isolated, that it is self-satisfied, that little happens there. Perth became the focus of song lyrics during the late 1970s time of punk with titles such as ‘Arsehole of the Universe’ and ‘Perth Is a Culture Shock’. Even the Eurogliders’ 1984 hit, ‘Heaven Must Be There’, (...) is based on a rejection of life in Perth. However, Perth was also home to Dave Warner, whose songs in the 1970s and early 1980s offered vignettes, which is itself a title of one of Warner’s tracks, of the youthful, male suburban experience. The essay goes on to examine songs by the Triffids, Bob Evans, Sleepy Township and the Panda Band. (shrink)

What is the relationship between trying, desire, and desiring to try? Is it necessary to desire to do something in order to try to do it? Must Dave desire to quit smoking in order to try to quit? I shall defend the view that desiring to do A is necessary for trying to do A. First, Dave needs motivation to quit smoking and motivation comes in the form of desire. So it seems straightforward that when one tries to (...) do something A, one’s desire to do that thing A is one’s motivation. Second, when Dave throws out a pack of cigarettes, this may or may not be part of an attempt to quit smoking. It may be a political protest against R.J.R. Nabisco. Dave’s throwing out the cigarettes only counts as part of his attempt to quit smoking, if it is done for the right reason, out of the right motivation. Again, the right motivation seems to be the desire to quit smoking. Thus, the desire to do A appears to play important roles in the attempt to do A. At the very least, it helps to motivate, guide, and constitute the attempt as the attempt to do A. It is because Dave wants to quit smoking that his throwing out his cigarettes counts as part of his attempt to quit smoking, not as a political protest. (shrink)

Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

I have argued elsewhere that there are facts, and possibilities, that are not purely qualitative. In a second paper, however, I have argued that all possibilities are purely qualitative except insofar as they involve individuals that actually exist. In particular, I have argued that there are no thisnesses of nonactual individuals (where the thisness of x is the property of being x, or of being identical with x), and that there are no singular propositions about nonactual individuals (where a singular (...) proposition about an individual x is a proposition that involves or refers to x directly, perhaps by having x or the thisness of x as a constituent, and not merely by way of x's qualitative properties or relations to other individuals). I am also inclined to believe that there are not yet any thisnesses of individuals that will exist but do not yet, nor any singular propositions about future individuals--and, hence, that all possibilities are purely qualitative except insofar as they involve individuals that already do exist or have existed (counting timeless individuals, if any, as already existing). This thesis about the relation of time to thisness is the subject of the present paper, in which the conclusions of my previous papers will be presupposed. (shrink)

From nineteenth-century abolitionism to Black Lives Matter today, progressive social movements have been at the forefront of social change. Yet it is seldom recognized that such movements have not only engaged in political action but also posed crucial philosophical questions about the meaning of justice and about how the demands of justice can be met. -/- Michele Moody-Adams argues that anyone who is concerned with the theory or the practice of justice—or both—must ask what can be learned from social (...) movements. Drawing on a range of compelling examples, she explores what they have shown about the nature of justice as well as what it takes to create space for justice in the world. Moody-Adams considers progressive social movements as wellsprings of moral inquiry and as agents of social change, drawing out key philosophical and practical principles. Social justice demands humane regard for others, combining compassionate concern and robust respect. Successful movements have drawn on the transformative power of imagination, strengthening the motivation to pursue justice and to create the political institutions and social policies that can sustain it by inspiring political hope. -/- Making Space for Justice contends that the insights arising from social movements are critical to bridging the gap between discerning theory and effective practice—and should be transformative for political thought as well as for political activism. (shrink)

The idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings like us. We must believe that moral progress is possible and that it might have been realized in human experience, if we are to be confident that continued human action can have any morally constructive point. I discuss the implications of this truth for moral psychology. I also show that once we understand the complex nature and the complicated social sources of moral progress, we will appreciate why (...) we cannot construct a plausible comprehensive action-guiding theory of moral progress. Yet while the nature and sources of moral progress consistently thwart many theoretical hopes, the idea of moral progress is a plausible, critically important and morally constructive principle of historical interpretation. (shrink)

This paper shows that moral progress is a substantive and plausible idea. Moral progress in belief involves deepening our grasp of existing moral concepts, while moral progress in practices involves realizing deepened moral understandings in behavior or social institutions. Moral insights could not be assimilated or widely disseminated if they involved devising and applying totally new moral concepts. Thus, it is argued, moral failures of past societies cannot be explained by appeal to ignorance of new moral ideas, but must be (...) understood as resulting from refusals to subject social practices to critical scrutiny. Moral philosophy is not the main vehicle for disseminating morally progressive insights, though it has an important role in processes that lead to moral progress. Yet we have grounds for cautious optimism, since progressive moral insights can be disseminated and can, sometimes, have constructive social effects. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the academe was introduced to online education, which is complicated. The sudden shift of traditional face-to-face classes to digital learning impacted every student's self-efficacy and motivation towards their studies. This study investigates the relationship between the self-efficacy and academic motivation of the 304 freshmen college students from private higher education institutions in the Philippines. Based on the data gathered, the participants' level of self-efficacy (x̄ = 3.27) and academic motivation (x̄ = 5.93) is high. Further, (...) the statistical analysis concluded a relationship between self-efficacy and academic motivation (r=.002, at 0.05 level) among the graduating college students. Implications of the study were discussed, and recommendations for future research were suggested. (shrink)

Comprehensive historical understanding is also a central element of the information we need to be responsible moral agents. It is also a critical support of the morality that makes political cooperation possible, especially in any society shaped by a history of ethnic or racial injustice, colonialism, imperialism, or sectarian conflict. Efforts to censor the teaching of history that makes one uncomfortable are thus ethically as well as epistemically indefensible.

Monica Colvin-Adams,1 Nonyelum Harcourt,1 Robert LeDuc,2 Ganesh Raveendran,1 Yassir Sonbol,3 Robert Wilson,1 Daniel Duprez11Cardiovascular Division, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 2Division of Biostatistics University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 3Cardiovascular Division, St Luke's Hospital System, Sugar Land, TX, USAObjective: Arterial elasticity is a functional biomarker that has predictive value for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in nontransplant populations. There is little information regarding arterial elasticity in heart transplant recipients. This study aimed to characterize small and large artery elasticity in (...) heart transplant recipients in comparison with an asymptomatic population free of overt cardiovascular disease. A second goal was to identify demographic and clinical factors associated with arterial elasticity in this unique population.Methods: Arterial pulse waveform was registered noninvasively at the radial artery in 71 heart transplant recipients between 2008 and 2010. SAEs and LAEs were derived from diastolic pulse contour analysis. Comparisons were made to a healthy cohort of 1,808 participants selected from our prevention clinic database. Multiple regression analyses were performed to evaluate associations between risk factors and SAE and LAE within the heart transplant recipients.Results: LAE and SAE were significantly lower in heart transplant recipients than in the normal cohort. Female sex and history of ischemic cardiomyopathy were significantly associated with reduced LAE and SAE. Older age and the presence of moderate cardiac allograft vasculopathy were also significantly associated with reduced SAE. Transplant duration was associated with increased SAE.Conclusion: Heart transplants are associated with peripheral endothelial dysfunction and arterial stiffness, as demonstrated by a significant reduction in SAE and LAE when compared with a healthy population. Furthermore, cardiac allograft vasculopathy is associated with a significant reduction in SAE, suggesting a potential use in screening heart transplant recipients at risk for developing this complication.Keywords: heart transplant, endothelial function, arterial elasticity, cardiac allograft vasculopathy. (shrink)

The ideal, my friend, is the lifebuoy. Let's say one is taking a swim, floundering around, trying as hard as possible not to sink. One might try to swim in a safe direction despite contrary currents; the essential thing is to use a classic stroke according to recognized swimming principles...Some eccentrics who try to swim faster in order to get there, come what may, splash all over everybody and always end by drowning, involving I don't know how many other poor (...) souls who might have been able to continue splashing around tranquilly enough- in the soup. (Jean Anouilh). (shrink)

I Venture to take as the subject for our consideration the philosophical study of politics. However imperfect the treatment of such a subject, it seems to me opportune that attention should at this point of time be directed to the question. The study of politics is of increasing importance in the curricula of our universities and in general adult education. There is also the plain fact that we live in times when a deep unrest of spirit and a great variety (...) of experiment challenge ideas and institutions which have received wide acceptance. There has been, in short, a return to politics. It is well that we should consider afresh the value of the study and the methods by which it is studied. (shrink)

Eclipse of Grace offers original insights into the roots of modern theology by introducing systematic theologians and Christian ethicists to Hegel through a focus on three of his seminal texts: Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic, and Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Presents brilliant and original insights into Hegel’s significance for modern theology Argues that, theologically, Hegel has been misconstrued and that much more can be gained by focusing on the logic that he develops out of an engagement with (...) Christian doctrines Features an original structure organized as a set of commentaries on individual Hegel texts, and not just presenting overviews of his entire corpus Offers detailed engagement with Hegel’s texts rather than relying on generalizations about Hegelian philosophy Provides an illuminating, accessible and lucid account of the thinking of the major figures in modern German philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In _Beyond Animal Rights_, Josephine Donovan and Carol J. Adams introduced feminist "ethic of care" theory into philosophical discussions of the treatment of animals. In this new volume, seven essays from _Beyond Animal Rights_ are joined by nine new articles-most of which were written in response to that book-and a new introduction that situates feminist animal care theory within feminist theory and the larger debate over animal rights. Contributors critique theorists' reliance on natural rights doctrine and utilitarianism, which, they (...) suggest, have a masculine bias. They argue for ethical attentiveness and sympathy in our relationships with animals and propose a link between the continuing subjugation of women and the human domination of nature. Beginning with the earliest articulation of the idea in the mid-1980s and continuing to the theory's most recent revisions, this volume presents the most complete portrait of the evolution of the feminist-care tradition. (shrink)

This book is based on work on God and evil that Marilyn McCord Adams did over a period of more than a decade. In her acknowledgments Adams lists fourteen journal articles or book chapters, dating from 1986 to 1997, in which some of her key ideas were first introduced to readers. But the book is by no means a mere collection of previously published essays. As she observes, in the book most of these ideas “have undergone significant development, (...) transformation and recontextualization among new materials”. In addition, the book integrates them into a unified whole that highlights their coherence and displays connections among them. So even those who are very familiar with her earlier work on God and evil will profit from reading the book carefully. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What is Racism? Why is Racism Morally Wrong? What Constitutes Racism and When is it Morally Wrong? Must We Believe in the “Permanence of Racism?”.

Our amorous and erotic experiences do not simply bring us pleasure; they shape our very identities, our ways of relating to ourselves, each other and our shared world. This volume reflects on some of our most prevalent assumptions relating to identity, the body, monogamy, libido, sexual identity, seduction, fidelity, orgasm, and more.The book covers common conflicts and confusions and includes work by established scholars and innovative new thinkers. Philosophically challenging but highly readable, the volume is ideal for a wide range (...) of courses on love and sex, including those taught in philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

One of the strikingly iconoclastic features of actor-network theory is its juxtaposition of the claim to be a realist perspective with denials that supposedly natural phenomena existed before scientists “made them up.” This paper explains and criticizes such arguments in the work of Bruno Latour. By combining referent and reference in the concept of assemblages, Latour provides a superficially viable way to reconcile these apparently incompatible claims. This paper will argue, however, that this conflation of referent and reference leads Latour’s (...) ontology into difficulties that can only be resolved by abandoning it in favor of a more conventional—critical—realism. (shrink)

This paper aims to improve critical realism's understanding of emergence by discussing, first, what emergence is and how it works; second, the need for a compositional account of emergence; and third, the implications of emergence for causation. It goes on to argue that the theory of emergence leads to the recognition of certain hitherto neglected similarities between real causal powers and actual causation. (edited).