This paper discusses the idea of "pure experience" within the context of the Buddhist tradition and in connection with the notions of emptiness and dependent origination via a reading of Dale Wright's reading of 'Huangbo' in his 'Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism'. The purpose is to appropriate Wright's text in order to engender a response to Steven Katz's contextualist-constructivist thesis that there are no "pure" (i.e., unmediated) experiences. In light of the Mahayana claim that everything is empty of substance, i.e., (...) originates dependently through conditions, contingencies, and contexts, what does the "purity" of the Enlightenment experience mean for Chan/Zen Buddhism? (shrink)

A review of literature published a decade ago noted a significant increase in empirical papers across nine bioethics journals. This study provides an update on the presence of empirical papers in the same nine journals. It first evaluates whether the empirical trend is continuing as noted in the previous study, and second, how it is changing, that is, what are the characteristics of the empirical works published in these nine bioethics journals. A review of the same nine journals was conducted (...) for a 12-year period from 2004 to 2015. Data obtained was analysed descriptively and using a non-parametric Chi-square test. Of the total number of original papers published in the nine bioethics journals, 18.1% collected and analysed empirical data. Journal of Medical Ethics and Nursing Ethics led the empirical publications, accounting for 89.4% of all empirical papers. The former published significantly more quantitative papers than qualitative, whereas the latter published more qualitative papers. Our analysis reveals no significant difference between the proportion of empirical papers published in 2004–2009 and 2010–2015. However, the increasing empirical trend has continued in these journals with the proportion of empirical papers increasing from 14.9% in 2004 to 17.8% in 2015. This study presents the current state of affairs regarding empirical research published nine bioethics journals. In the quarter century of data that is available about the nine bioethics journals studied in two reviews, the proportion of empirical publications continues to increase, signifying a trend towards empirical research in bioethics. The growing volume is mainly attributable to two journals: Journal of Medical Ethics and Nursing Ethics. This descriptive study further maps the still developing field of empirical research in bioethics. Additional studies are needed to completely map the nature and extent of empirical research in bioethics to inform the ongoing debate about the value of empirical research for bioethics. (shrink)

We examine the ethical, social, and regulatory barriers that may hinder research on therapeutic potential of certain controversial controlled substances like marijuana, heroin, or ketamine. Hazards for individuals and society and potential adverse effects on communities may be good reasons for limiting access and justify careful monitoring of these substances. Overly strict regulations, fear of legal consequences, stigma associated with abuse and populations using illicit drugs, and lack of funding may, however, limit research on their considerable therapeutic potential. We review (...) the surprisingly sparse literature and address the particular ethical concerns pertinent to research with illicit and addictive substances, such as undue inducement, informed consent, therapeutic misconception, and risk to participants, researchers, and institutions. We consider the perspectives of key research stakeholders and explore whether they may be infected with bias. We conclude by proposing an empirical research agenda to provide an evidentiary basis for ethical reasoning. (shrink)

Mother-to-child transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency –Virus is a serious public health problem, contributing up to 90% of childhood HIV infections. In Tanzania, the prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission feature of the HIV programme was rolled out in 2000. The components of PMTCT include counselling and HIV testing directed at antenatal clinic attendees. It is through the process of Provider Initiated Counseling and Testing that counselling is offered participant confidentiality and voluntariness are upheld and valid consent obtained. The objective of the study was to (...) explore antenatal clinic attendees’ experiences of the concept of voluntariness vis- a- vis the implementation of prior counseling and subsequent testing for HIV under the PITC as part of their antenatal care. In-depth interviews were conducted with17 antenatal clinic attendees and 6 nursing officers working at the Muhimbili National Hospital antenatal clinic. The study data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Antenatal clinic attendees’ accounts suggested that counselling and testing for HIV during pregnancy was voluntary, and that knowledge of their HIV status led them to access appropriate treatment for both mother and her newborn baby. They reported feeling no pressure from nursing officers, and gave verbal consent to undergo the HIV test. However, some antenatal clinic attendees reported pressure from their partners to test for HIV. Healthcare providers were thus faced with a dilemma of disclosure/ nondisclosure when dealing with discordant couples. Antenatal clinic attendees at MNH undertook the PITC for HIV voluntarily. This was enhanced by their prior knowledge of HIV, the need to prevent mother- to- child transmission of HIV, and the effectiveness of the voluntary policy implemented by nursing officers. (shrink)

Assistive technology has great potential to contribute to health, functioning, and quality of life. To date, as exemplified in the Canadian context, variations and inequities in access to assistive technology are evident; the development of legislation, policies, and programs has not kept up with the increasing use of assistive technology. In this article, we apply ;Daniels’s (2008) theory of just health to argue that equitable access to assistive technology funding and services is necessary for justice. In doing so, we offer (...) theoretical guidance for the development of legislation, policies, and programs to guide such access in health and social services. (shrink)

: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to (...) the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (shrink)

"-Barbara Ehrenreich, Mother Jones "This book represents the expression of a particular feminist perspective made all the more compelling by Keller's evident commitment to and understanding of science.

In business and government, databases contain large quantities of digital transactional data (purchases made, services used, finances transferred, benefits received, licences acquired, borders crossed, tickets purchased). The data can be understood as ongoing and dynamic measurements of the activities and doings of people. In government, numerous database devices have been developed to connect such data across services to discover patterns and identify and evaluate the performance of individuals and populations. Under the UK’s New Labour government, the development of such devices (...) was part of a broader policy known as ‘joined-up thinking and government’. Analyses of this policy have typically understood joining up as an operation of adding together distributed data about subjects, which can then be used in the service of government surveillance, the database state or informational capitalism. But rather than such technical or managerialist analytics, I argue that topological analytics capture what these database devices enact and do: they materialize the ‘individuality’ of subjects in intensified, distributed and fluctuating ways and materialize and intensify a logic of what Deleuze describes as modulating controls. Through examples of UK New Labour social policy initiatives over the past decade, I argue that topological analytics can account for these as immanent rather than exceptional properties of database devices and, as such, part and parcel of a governmental logic and ontology of subjects. (shrink)

‘‘COGNITIVE ECOLOGY’’ is a fruitful model for Shakespearian studies, early modern literary and cultural history, and theatrical history more widely. Cognitive ecologies are the multidimensional contexts in which we remember, feel, think, sense, communicate, imagine, and act, often collaboratively, on the fly, and in rich ongoing interaction with our environments. Along with the anthropologist Edwin Hutchins,1 we use the term ‘‘cognitive ecology’’ to integrate a number of recent approaches to cultural cognition: we believe these approaches offer productive lines of engagement (...) with early modern literary and historical studies.2 The framework arises out of our work in extended mind and distributed cognition.3 The extended mind hypothesis arose from a post-connectionist philosophy of cognitive science. This approach was articulated in Andy Clark’s Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, and further developed by Susan Hurley and Mark Rowlands, among others.4 The distributed cognition approach arose independently, from work in cognitive anthropology, HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), the sociology of education and work, and science studies. The principles of distributed cognition were articulated in Hutchins’s ethnography of navigation, Cogni- tion in the Wild,5 and developed by theorists such as David Kirsh and Lucy Suchman.6 These models share an anti-individualist approach to cognition. In all these views, mental activities spread or smear across the boundaries of skull and skin to include parts of the social and material world. In remembering, decision making, and acting, whether individually or in small groups, our complex and structured activities involve many distinctive dimensions: neural, affective, kines-. (shrink)

Complex environmental problems require well-researched policies that integrate knowledge from both the natural and social sciences. Epistemic differences can impede interdisciplinary collaboration, as shown by debates between conservation biologists and anthropologists who are working to preserve biological diversity and support economic development in central Africa. Disciplinary differences with regard to 1) facts, 2) rigor, 3) causal explanation, and 4) research goals reinforce each other, such that early decisions about how to define concepts or which methods to adopt may tilt research (...) design and data interpretation toward one discipline’s epistemological framework. If one of the contributing fields imposes a solution to an epistemic problem, this sets the stage for what I call disciplinary capture. Avoiding disciplinary capture requires clear communication between collaborators, but beyond this it also requires that collaborators craft research questions and innovate research designs which are different from the inherited epistemological frameworks of contributing disciplines. (shrink)

Our focus in this article concerns Leibniz’s views on evil. Our goal is to examine which are the consequences of his conception of moral agency for the moral psychology of the genuinely evil person. For Leibniz, moral failure is an epistemic error since it involves some false practical judgement. Moral maxims may be represented in blind or symbolic cognitions, but then moral agents can misrepresent the evil consequences of their behaviour. Finally, we discuss Leibniz’s view on habits that may help (...) virtuous persons strive for perfection but also enable evil persons to continue sinning. (shrink)

This is an English translation of Waldenfels' German essay: Equality and inequality are basic elements of law, justice and politics. Equality integrates each of us into a common sphere by distributing rights, duties and chances among us. Equality turns into mere indifference as far as we get overintegrated into social orders. When differences are fading away experience loses its relief and individuals lose their face. Our critical reflections start from the inevitable paradox of making equal what is not equal. In (...) various ways they refer to Nietzsche’s concept of order, to Marx’s analysis of money, to Lévinas’s ethics of the Other, and to novelists like Dostoevsky and Musil. Our critique turns against two extremes, on the one hand against any sort of normalism fixed on functioning orders, on the other hand against any sort of anomalism dreaming of mere events and permanent ruptures. Responsive phenomenology shows how we are confronted with extraordinary events. Those deviate from the ordinary and transgress its borders, without leaving the normality of our everyday world behind. The process of equalizing moves between the ordinary and the extraordinary. What makes the difference and resists mere indifference are creative responses which are to be invented again and again. (shrink)

We develop the concept of ‘aesthetic practices’ to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education’s Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required so that data produced at dispersed sites can be brought into relation and (...) projected as populations in forms such as bar charts, heat maps and tables. Two examples of aesthetic practices are analysed based on ethnographic studies we have conducted on the production of data for the Hub and Warehouse: metadata and data cleaning. Metadata enables data to come into relation by containing and accounting for the differences between data. Data cleaning deals with the indeterminacies and absences of data and involves algorithms to determine what values data can obtain so they can be brought into relation. We attend to how both aesthetic practices involve normative decisions that make absent what exceeds them: embodied knowledge that cannot or has not been documented as well as data that cannot meet the forms required of data portals. While these aesthetic practices are necessary to sustain data portals as ‘sites of projection,’ we also bring critical attention to their performative effects for knowing, enacting and governing populations. (shrink)

That Cicero as a young didactic poet embraced the traditions of Hellenistic hexameter poetry is well recognized. Those traditions encompass various forms of wordplay, one of which is the acrostic. Cicero's engagement with this tradition, in the form of an unusual Greek-Latin acrostic at Aratea 317–20, prompts inquiry regarding both the use of the acrostic technique as textual commentary and Cicero's lifelong concerns regarding translation.

I recently took issue with Kathryn George's contention that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even assuming that Tom Regan's stringent thesis about the equal inherent value of humans and many sentient nonhumans is correct. I argued that both Regan and George are incorrect in claiming that his view would permit moral agents to kill and eat innocent, non-threatening rights holders. An unequal rights view, by contrast, would permit such actions if a moral agent's health or (...) life is at stake. I then argued that current nutritional research does not support Professor George's claim that some wealthy adult males (and many fewer wealthy women) are the only persons whose health does not require the consumption of nonhuman animals and their products. In her 1992 response to my critique, George did not address my moral argumentation. She concentrated her entire paper on a wholesale rejection of my discussion of nutrition. Although she now takes a somewhat more moderate position on who can safely contemplate strict vegetarianism, she still believes that most people are not in a position to follow such a diet. In my counter-reply, I argue that her rejection is based upon numerous distortions, omissions, and false charges of fallacy. She even devotes a substantial section of her paper to criticizing me for saying the opposite of what I actually wrote. As I did in my earlier paper, I cite current research, including George's own preferred source on the topic of vegetarianism, to support my view. I conclude that Professor George has still not shown that for most human beings it is dangerous to follow a diet that omits nonhuman animals and their products. Moral agents who take the rights of humansand nonhumans seriously will find vegetarianism well worth considering. (shrink)

Researchers have considered individual and organizational factors of ethical decision making. However, they have little interest in situational factors :101–125, 2013) which is surprising given the many situations sales persons face. We address this issue using two pilot qualitative studies successively and a 2 by 2 within-subject experiment with sales scenarios. Qualitative and quantitative data are obtained from front-line employees of the main French retail banks that serve low-income customers. We show that the recognition of an ethical issue differs depending (...) on the role behavior salespersons are engaged in and the nature of the conflict of interest they face. Moreover, the combined effect of these two situational characteristics is mediated by moral intensity. This study not only adds evidence on situational factors affecting ethical decision but also extends empirical research on sales ethics by revealing sales situations that are not considered in the empirical literature. The research implications of the findings are discussed along with the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The essay is a written version of a talk Nakamura Yūjirō gave at the College international de philosophie in Paris in 1983. In the talk Nakamura connects the issue of common sense in his own work to that of place in Nishida Kitarō and the creative imagination in Miki Kiyoshi. He presents this connection between the notions of common sense, imagination, and place as constituting one important thread in contemporary Japanese philosophy. He begins by discussing the significance of place (basho) (...) that is being rediscovered today in response to the shortcomings of the modern Western paradigm, and discusses it in its various senses, such as ontological ground or substratum, the body, symbolic space, and linguistic or discursive topos in ancient rhetoric. He then relates this issue to the philosophy of place Nishida developed in the late 1920s, and after providing an explication of Nishida’s theory, discusses it further in light of some linguistic and psychological theories. Nakamura goes on to discuss his own interest in the notion of common sense traceable to Aristotle and its connection to the rhetorical concept of topos, and Miki’s development of the notion of the imagination in the 1930s in response to Nishida’s theory. And in doing so he ties all three—common sense, place, and imagination—together as suggestive of an alternative to the modern Cartesian standpoint of the rational subject that has constituted the traditional paradigm of the modern West. (shrink)

Cet article rend compte des singularités du travail nocturne et de ses temporalités via le suivi d’un projet de « micro-sieste » au sein d’un service hospitalier, dans une visée d’amélioration des conditions de récupération des professionnels de jour comme de nuit. Il s’appuie sur une étude de cas dans un service de soins fonctionnant en 12 heures, mêlant observations (de nuit et de jour) et entretiens formels et informels. Si les professionnels de jour sont peu nombreux à pratiquer la (...) « micro-sieste » telle qu’elle est proposée, c’est notamment en raison de la difficulté à prendre un temps de pause du fait des exigences et de la densité du travail, _a fortiori_ en s’absentant du service. De nuit, c’est bien plutôt le risque qu’elle empiète sur les temps disponibles pour le collectif (entraide et socialisation) qui la freine. L’article montre comment les temporalités du nocturne, les pratiques de repos, les apprentissages et les valeurs qui y sont associés, engagent et entretiennent l... (shrink)

The practices of outstanding schools selected through the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence recognition program. Short articles describe the specific practices that led to excellence. Both Vol. 1: Elementary and Middle Schools and Vol. 2: Middle and Secondary Schools offer a rich resource of successful practices.

The practices of outstanding schools selected through the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence recognition program. Short articles describe the specific practices that led to excellence. Both Vol. 1: Elementary and Middle Schools and Vol. 2: Middle and Secondary Schools offer a rich resource of successful practices.

The practices of outstanding schools selected through the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence recognition program. Short articles describe the specific practices that led to excellence. Both Vol. 1: Elementary and Middle Schools and Vol. 2: Middle and Secondary Schools offer a rich resource of successful practices.

The map of Jerusalem, which appeared in 1320 in Marino Sanudo's book, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis, has no obvious precursor, though it draws on textual sources from the works of Josephus to the thirteenth-century description of the Holy Land by Burchard of Mt. Sion. Surrounded by an irregular polygon of walls, the city is mapped in a style similar to the other maps in the book, drawn by the sea-chart maker Pietro Vesconte. These maps emphasize the contemporary, physical reality of (...) an area, the Holy Land, often seen through a romantic veil. Sanudo's book was a plea for the revival of the crusading movement and a programme of practical suggestions for its success. Of special interest on the map is the depiction of the city's water resources, important to future Crusaders. (shrink)

The essays included here represent Fox Keller's attempts to integrate the insights of feminist theory with those of her contemporaries in the history and philosophy of science.

La philosophie contemporaine opère une critique radicale de la notion de subjectivité et ne voit dans l’humanisme qui lui est lié que le masque d’une volonté de puissance déguisée. La pensée de Gentile, bien que postérieure à Nietzsche et contemporaine de Husserl, continue de se réclamer de l’hégélianisme. Pourtant, si l’on va au-delà de son classicisme affiché, la pensée de Gentile constitue une forme de dépassement de la subjectivité de l’intérieur. En radicalisant au maximum le principe de la subjectivité, Gentile (...) va parvenir à penser un sujet qui s’identifie à l’advenir du monde. Nous percevons ce passage lorsque Gentile remplace la conception hégélienne de l’éternité de l’Esprit Absolu par la conception de l’actualité de la pensée dont l’activité devient le principe a priori de toute rationalité, évitant ainsi toute retombée dans l’objectivisme. De plus, Gentile conçoit l’activité spirituelle sous la forme d’une patiente historiographie qui loin de s’approprier le réel travaille à en dégager le sens. Ainsi, le travail de Gentile peut prendre place à coté de celui de Husserl, dans une même volonté de dégager le sens d’une expérience pure.Contemporary philosophy radically deconstructs the notion of subjectivity and exposes the humanism that grew out of as being a masq for the thirst for power that hides behind it. Although Gentile’s thought dates from later than Nietzsche, being contemporaneous with Husserl’s, it claims to have its roots in Hegel. Yet, beyond the classicism that it proclaims Gentile’s thought transends subjectivity from within. By carrying the principle of subjectivity to its utmost limit Gentile eventually conceives of a subject that identifies with the world-in-becoming. The decisive step consisted in the replacing the hegelian conception of eternity of the Absolute Spirit with the conception of the actuality of the mind, in whose activity he sees the a priori principle of rationality itself. Which makes a lapse into objectivism impossible. Besides, Gentile conceives the Mind’s activity to be a patient historiography, the aim of which is not to appropriate the real but to work out its meaning. Thus Gentile’s thought moves abreast of Husserl’s as both philosophers seek to work out the meaning of pure experience. (shrink)

John Evelyn (1620-1706) is best remembered for Sylva - his magnum opus - and his Diary . Alongside Pepys' diary, Evelyn's is as well known now as anything else written in their time. A connoisseur of architecture, painting, music, coins, and sermons, Evelyn was renowned for his practical knowledge on horticulture and arboriculture, and he was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. His Diary begins with an account of his early life and travels in (...) Europe. In addition to his own jottings of events, Evelyn drew on contemporary newspapers and pamphlets. (shrink)

En tant qu’être sensible, à la fois sentant et senti, le corps ne cesse d’interroger les philosophes sur le sens et les enjeux de cette sensibilité, par laquelle chacun est toujours déjà en relation avec le monde, avec les choses, avec les autres. La relation érotique pose de façon cruciale la question de l’unité du sensible : si l’union des corps n’est pas unité, mais séparation, cette unité est-elle pour autant impensable? Où la situer? Plus fondamentalement peut-on penser l’être sensible (...) du corps à partir d’une philosophie du sujet et de ses catégories (je/tu, moi/toi, le même/l’autre)? Ou faut-il adopter un point de vue plus large, celui de l’Être qui ouvre notre corps sensible à d’autres types de corporéité (artistique, politique, historique)? C’est l’occasion de croiser et de confronter les approches d’Emmanuel Lévinas et de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, pour tenter d’éclairer l’aventure à laquelle notre corps nous convie : et si le corps avait quelque chose à nous apprendre? Et s’il renouvelait la question du sens? (shrink)

Academic philosophy constructs theoretical resources for understanding society by refining reasoning tools, categorizing experience, studying what is valuable and why, and reflecting on knowledge itself. Public philosophy serves a social function by bringing philosophical methods, expertise, and insights to bear on concrete issues, in concrete situations, and in dialogue with actual stakeholders. Public philosophers rarely achieve the cultural prominence of public intellectuals and often have different and more local goals than the political influence typically ascribed to public intellectuals. The chapter (...) examines the specific activities and roles that philosophers play in various public contexts when they construct and evaluate arguments. These six strategies demonstrate the range of philosophy's public value. The strategies, or functions, are classification, criticism, translation, expansion, normativity, and reflection. Philosophers have different ways of engaging in public‐facing activities, and public philosophy can play different roles in an academic career. Public philosophy responds to the changing role of the university and academic research. (shrink)

The essay is a written version of a talk Nakamura Yūjirō gave at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris in 1983. In the talk Nakamura connects the issue of common sense in his own work to that of place in Nishida Kitarō and the creative imagination in Miki Kiyoshi. He presents this connection between the notions of common sense, imagination, and place as constituting one important thread in contemporary Japanese philosophy. He begins by discussing the significance of place (basho) (...) that is being rediscovered today in response to the shortcomings of the modern Western paradigm, and discusses it in its various senses, such as ontological ground or substratum, the body, symbolic space, and linguistic or discursive topos in ancient rhetoric. He then relates this issue to the philosophy of place Nishida developed in the late 1920s, and after providing an explication of Nishida’s theory, discusses it further in light of some linguistic and psychological theories. Nakamura goes on to discuss his own interest in the notion of common sense traceable to Aristotle and its connection to the rhetorical concept of topos, and Miki’s development of the notion of the imagination in the 1930s in response to Nishida’s theory. And in doing so he ties all three—common sense, place, and imagination—together as suggestive of an alternative to the modern Cartesian standpoint of the rational subject that has constituted the traditional paradigm of the modern West. (shrink)

Among Bryan Norton’s most influential contributions to environmental philosophy has been his analysis and evaluation of democratic processes for environmental decision-making. He examines actual cases of environmental decision-making in their legal, political, ethical and scientific contexts, and, with contextual constraints and goals in mind, he theorizes concerning what they accomplish and how they can be improved. Informed by the political theories of both John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas, Norton’s pragmatist approach holds that appropriate democratic decision procedures will generate broadly defensible (...) decisions. Thus, his view of environmental decision-making is based in—and requires—inclusive, democratic, empirical inquiry. While accepting these criteria, I examine how, in practice, it is difficult to identify when these conditions have been adequately met. I investigate the limitations of Norton’s proceduralist approach through a case study in community-based forest management in a New York State urban old-growth park. I argue that Norton’s procedural priorities are too rigid given the contextual constraints of local decision-making. While they are useful for guiding an ideal, high standards sense of the decision-making process, less rigid Deweyan considerations of social learning and community engagement often provide sufficient guidelines for evaluating success. (shrink)

The political integration of the European Union is fragile for many reasons, not least the reassertion of nationalism. That said, if we examine specific practices and infrastructures, a more complicated story emerges. We juxtapose the political fragility of the EU in relation to the ongoing formation of data infrastructures in official statistics that take part in postnational enactments of Europe’s populations and territories. We develop this argument by analyzing transformations in how European populations are enacted through new technological infrastructures that (...) seek to integrate national census data in “cubes” of cross-tabulated social topics and spatial “grids” of maps. In doing so, these infrastructures give meaning to what “is” Europe in ways that are both old and new. Through standardization and harmonization of social and geographical spaces, “old” geometries of organizing and mapping populations are deployed along with “new” topological arrangements that mix and fold categories of population. Furthermore, we consider how grids and cubes are generative of methodological topologies by closing the distances or differences between methods and making their data equivalent. By paying attention to these practices and infrastructures, we examine how they enable reconfiguring what is known and imagined as Europe and how it is governed. (shrink)

A recent logical anti-exceptionalist trend proposes that logical theories are revisable in the same manner as scientific theories, either on grounds of the method of theory selection or on what counts as evidence for this revision. Given this approximation of logic and science, the present essay analyzes the commitments of both these varieties and argues that, as it currently stands, this kind of anti-exceptionalism is committed to scientific realism, that is, to realism about some unobservable entities evoked in logical theories. (...) The essay argues that anti-exceptionalism cannot be separated into metaphysical and epistemological varieties, and proposed rather to label anti-exceptionalists views either broadly in terms of theory revision, or narrowly in terms of logic’s affinity with science. (shrink)

Kathryn Paxton George has recently argued that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even if Tom Regan is correct in arguing that humans and certain nonhuman animals are equally inherently valuable. She holds that Regan's liberty principle permits humans to kill and eat innocent others who have a right to life, provided that doing so prevents humans from being made worse off. George maintains that obstaining from meat and dairy products would in fact make most humans (...) worse off. I argue that Regan's liberty principle either contradicts his equal rights view or does not permit the slaughter of another for food. I show that a different view recognizing the moral rights of nonhumans but according them less value than normal adult humans, the unequal rights view, would permit such action if human survival or health depended upon it. However, it would also permit the slaughter of innocent humans in the same circumstances. Finally, I argue that current nutritional research does not support George's contention that most humans would suffer if they ceased eating other animals and their products. (shrink)

ArgumentCultivated by a number of writers and studied by psychologists, the phenomenon of déjà vu is an invention of the nineteenth century and is part of a broader exploration of how the mind experiences memory and time. Thus this typically benign mental aberration provides an entry-point into the mechanisms that preside over the regulation of the flow of consciousness. The theories of the mind developed recently by neuroscientists help us understand, meanwhile, why investigations into this mental “event” necessarily invoke concepts (...) of representation and narrative. In fact, our increasingly sophisticated models for processes of memory and perception depend on literary representations. This article relies on the paramnesiac writings of Gérard de Nerval, seen through the lens of Proust's analysis, to argue that a consideration of the aesthetic and representational features of déjà-vu can bring us closer to solving the epistemological challenges we face in studying this phenomenon.For Gregory T. Polletta. (shrink)

Environmental pragmatists are committed to analyzing questions of environmental policy. Bryan Norton's pragmatic critique of environmental decision-making shows how an implicit commitment to the fact/value distinction has hindered productive environmental action. Nonetheless, Norton, as well as the majority of environmental ethicists, have devoted more attention to theorizing value disagreements as a primary cause of controversy than to examining epistemic structures. A case study demonstrates why and how Norton's procedural account may be supplemented with sensitive attention to the construction of epistemic (...) authority in environmental disputes. I recommend supporting the development of local knowledges and just distributions of epistemic authority. (shrink)

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe the experience of enduring marriage in mid-life. The literature reveals a lack of research about contemporary mid-life marriage, reflecting only theoretical pieces and research studies on marital happiness, factors that make a marriage successful, and variables contributing to divorce. Noticeably absent are studies conducted from a phenomenological philosophical perspective. Questioning what enduring marriage involves for individuals in mid-life served to orient the researchers to the meaning of the experience. Seventeen volunteers participated (...) in twenty-six initial and follow-up interviews. Using van Manen's methodological structure of human science research, a composite description that reflects enduring marriage in mid-life emerged. Two essential themes that characterize the experience, The Threads that Bind Us and A Season of Change and seven sub-themes explicating these essential themes portray the partnership of enduring mid-life marriage. The themes that comprise the structure of the experience reflect its form as a relational, time-space, and corporeal phenomenon. The findings are described in detail using narrative description in order to offer a rich account of each theme, and the implications provide a direction for future research. (shrink)

In this article Kobayashi Toshiaki discusses the importance in all periods of Karatani’s oeuvre of the notion of an “exterior” that necessarily falls beyond the bounds of a system, together with the notion of “singularity” as that which cannot be contained within a “universal.” The existential dread vis-à-vis the uncanny other that Karatani in his early works of literary criticism had initially found to be the underlying tone in Sōseki’s works remained with Karatani himself throughout his career and is what (...) had drawn him closer to philosophy. This sense of the “exterior” to—or other than—the normality of consciousness and the meaningfulness of the world is then extended and applied as the “exterior to systems” in his analyses of logical, mathematical, and linguistic systems, in his reading of Marx’s discussion of capitalist economics, and most recently in his analysis of commodity exchange between communities. (shrink)

In the Philosophical Investigations §242, Wittgenstein asserts paradoxically that objectivity is not lost even though communication requires the interplay of agreement in definitions and agreement in judgments. Although Wittgenstein does not claim that objectivity is only determined by this interplay, the objective status of logic initially appears to have disappeared. Wittgenstein here foresees the criticism launched by Kripke that objectivity has been replaced by inter-subjectivity. However, he retorts that the only aspect of objectivity that has vanished is the illusion of (...) any access to an absolute truth independent of language-use. In a transcendental rotation reminiscent of Kant, Wittgenstein maintains that when the notion of a direct trajectory between human consciousness and truth is relinquished, objectivity of any kind relies on rules that language-use generates in the play of a language-game. Wittgenstein grounds objectivity in judgment, and thereby subjects logic to the possibility of communication. (shrink)