A non-universal Immediate Dominance Condition on identity deletion is proposed to explain the systematic differences between languages like Chinese and languages like English in their respective patterns of coordination, topicalization, dislocation, and relativization. By assuming that this condition holds for languages of the Chinese-type, but not for those of the English-type, it is possible to account for the well-formed coordinations of all languages by means of a single universal principle of coordination reduction, and it is possible to derive (...) the well-formed topicalizations, dislocations, and relative clause constructions of all languages by means of the same set of universal principles of Copying, Deletion, and Pronominalization. (shrink)

What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind—like art, empathy, or technology—fall apart under close inspection. Dominic Pettman argues that it is a mistake to define such rigid distinctions in the first place, and the most decisive “human error” may be the ingrained impulse to understand ourselves primarily in contrast to our other worldly companions. In _Human Error_, Pettman describes the three sides of the cybernetic triangle—human, animal, and (...) machine—as a rubric for understanding key figures, texts, and sites where our species-being is either reinforced or challenged by our relationship to our own narcissistic technologies. Consequently, species-being has become a matter of _specious_-being, in which the idea of humanity is not only a case of mistaken identity but indeed the mistake of identity. _Human Error_ boldly insists on the necessity of relinquishing our anthropomorphism but also on the extreme difficulty of doing so, given how deeply this attitude is bound with all our other most cherished beliefs about forms of life. (shrink)

I am grateful to the commentators for their thoughtful engagement with my paper.1 I am unable in this short response to reply to all of the important questions raised. Instead, I will focus on the practical application of identity-relative paternalism. Some commentators felt that this novel concept would yield implausible implications,2 others that it would have no impact because of uncertainty,3 or because existing ethical principles would yield the same conclusion.4 In the paper, I proposed the following principle: > Identity-relative (...) paternalistic intervention: Individuals should be prevented from doing to future selves (where there are weakened prudential unity relations between the current and future self) what it would be justified to prevent them from doing to others. What sorts of intervention might fit under this principle? Garstman et al give the example of living kidney donation.2 They imagined ‘Beth’, who altruistically decides to donate a kidney to a third party. Beth’s decision would mean that a future BethT2 would be deprived of a kidney, be at risk of immediate perioperative complications and would be at (somewhat) higher risk of long-term health complications including renal failure. But they argue that we would be justified in preventing someone from inflicting such harms on a third party (eg, we should stop someone from stealing a kidney). Hence, they claim that identity relative paternalism would rule …. (shrink)

The author of this paper is currently working on a pilot project with school children and individuals who are in their final years of their prison sentence. The project should offer a pragmatic alternative to the way humanism has established and defined our mode of expressions. Such modes effect our ways of deliberation and judgement when it comes to ethical issues. This paper will act both as a critique and provide, at the same time, a positive alternative to those who (...) are still being coerced into confessing an act they committed in a language in which they do not only not recognise themselves but risk, moreover, not being understood. The likelihood of this occurring stems from a fundamental disconnect, namely the fact that their way of communicating does not chime in with the expectations of the knowledgeable others whose formal speech registers betray deeply-ingrained oppressive humanist modes of discourse and ideologies which, having long been normalized are, to the former’s detriment, regrettably and routinely overlooked. The aim of this paper is to introduce my project in order to show the reader that many of the postmodern critiques of narrative and agent formation can be overcome by a cybernetic system of a new mode of writing, by means of which the intentions of the agent are fragmented and reconstructed immediately by a secondary, non-human agent – the software. I shall be making a case that this software will become vital to mediate human storytelling through non- human generation creating an enhanced understanding for both reader and writer. (shrink)

During the first UK wave of the pandemic, there were two areas of immediate ethical concern for the medical profession. The first was the possibility that life-saving resources could be overwhelmed. Early reports from hospitals in the Italian city of Bergamo suggested that ventilatory support might need rationing and emergency ‘battlefield’ triage was a real possibility.1 In the UK, several professional bodies, including the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Physicians rapidly developed guidance for doctors should triage (...) become a reality.2 The second issue was the acute shortage of personal protective equipment. Where doctors were unable to protect their patients – and themselves – from the risk of COVID-19, ethical challenges emerged. Ordinarily, doctors and patients do not present risks of significant harm to each other. To shift to a position where every patient – and every health professional – could potentially be a threat presented serious clinical and ethical challenges. To treat with inadequate PPE, so options for mitigating harms are radically reduced, deepens the challenges. Among the questions the BMA wrestled with was the extent of doctors’ duties to treat infected or potentially infected patients in the absence of effective PPE. The BMA was clear that despite obligations to treat, medicine is not a self-sacrificing profession: there were limits to the risk doctors could be required to expose themselves to.3 These issues no longer seem so pressing. In the UK at least, there is adequate PPE and with the second steep wave behind us, and significant numbers vaccinated, it is less likely that triage will be required in the UK. But as those concerns have receded so other ethical questions have arisen. Among them is a cluster of issues associated with what might be called COVID-19’s indirect harms. Understandably, in response to …. (shrink)

This paper discusses the economic impact and political consequences of ethical investing, with particular attention to the case of South Africa. The origins of ethical investing are examined, along with the institutions and strategies by which ethical investing operates today. Of immediate relevance to managers is a recent judicial decision upholding Baltimore's divestment ordinance. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the likely consequences of ethical investing for U.S. multinationals in Southern Africa.

Children dependent on life-prolonging medical technology are often subject to a constant background risk of sudden death or catastrophic complications. Such children can be cared for in hospital, in an intensive care environment with highly trained nurses and doctors able to deliver specialised, life-saving care immediately. However, remaining in hospital, when life expectancy is limited, can considered to be a harm in of itself. Discharge home offers the possibility for an improved quality of life for the child and their family (...) but comes with significant medical risks.When making decisions for children, two ethical models predominate, the promotion of the child’s best interests or the avoidance of harm. However, in some circumstances, particularly for children with life-limiting and/or life-threatening illness, all options may be associated with risk. There are no good options, only potentially harmful choices.In this paper, we explore decisions made by one family in such circumstances. We describe a model adopted from risk management programmes beyond medicine, which offers a potential framework for identifying risks to the child that are morally permissible. Some risks and harms to a child, not ordinarily permitted, may be acceptable when undertaken in the pursuit of a specified desired good, so long as they are as low as reasonably practicable. (shrink)

This book examines the dominant discourses in higher education. From the moment academics enter higher education, they are met with binaries such as teaching vs. research, quantitative vs. qualitative research, and constructivists vs. positivists. When embarking upon a teaching career in a university there are further binaries that immediately present themselves, with deep vs. surface learning probably being the most pervasive. Kinchin and Gravett contend that this presents a distorted view and contributes to the disconnect between the aims and observable (...) practice of higher education. Rather than celebrating difference, dominant discourses tend to seek similarities in an attempt to simplify and manage the environment, in what the authors perceive as a less than scholarly mode. In order to break down the barriers between 'structuralist' or 'traditional' academics and those who are more familiar with poststructuralist, critical perspectives, the authors explore the overlaps between these perspectives to offer a richer and more inclusive interrogation of the dominant discourses that pervade higher education. Offering methodological approaches to explore these perspectives, the authors bring together academics working in different parts of the university and examine the concept of a 'rich cartography', exploring how this can offer meaning within higher education research and practice. (shrink)

We explore the relationship between first language attrition and language dominance, defined here as the relative availability of each of a bilingual’s languages with respect to language processing. We assume that both processes might represent two stages of one and the same phenomenon (Köpke, 2018; Schmid & Köpke, 2017). While many researchers agree that language dominance changes repeatedly over the lifespan (e.g. Silva-Corvalan & Treffers-Daller, 2015), little is known about the precise time scales involved in dominance shifts (...) and attrition. We investigated such time scales in a longitudinal case study of pronominal subject production by a near-native L2-German (semi-null subject/topic-drop but non-pro-drop) and L1-Bulgarian (pro-drop) bilingual speaker with 15 years of residence in Germany. This speaker’s spontaneous speech showed a significantly higher rate of overt subjects (OS) in her L1 than the controls’ rates when tested in Germany. After a three-week L1 reexposure in Bulgaria, however, attrition effects disappeared and the OS rate fell within the monolinguals’ range (Genevska-Hanke, 2017). The findings of this first investigation were now compared to those of a second investigation five years later, involving data collection in both countries. The results show that after 15 years of immigration, no further attrition was attested and OS production remained monolingual-like for data collection in both language environments. The discussion focuses on the factors that are likely to explain these results. First, these show that attrition and language dominance are highly dependent on immediate language use context and change rapidly when the language environment is modified. Additionally, the data obtained after L1 reexposure illustrate that time scales involved in dominance shift or attrition are much shorter than previously thought. Second, the role of age of acquisition in attrition has repeatedly been acknowledged. The present study demonstrates that attrition of a highly entrenched L1 is a phenomenon affecting language processing only temporarily and that it is likely to regress quickly after reexposure or return to balanced L1 use. The discussion suggests that dominance shift and attrition probably involve similar mechanisms and are influenced by the same external factors, showing that both may be different steps of the same process. (shrink)

Th. W. Adorno’s aesthetics represents a comprehensive reflection on a number of important topics in aesthetic research. Among them is the issue of the aesthetic experience generated by the beauty of nature. In the perspective of Adorno’s theory, the experience of natural beauty is described as a quality that forms in an immanent relation to the historical and social reality of humans. In the first place, one can observe the fundamental dependence of natural beauty on the degree of social domination (...) of nature. By failing to reflect on this social mediation, the experience of natural beauty appears to be immediate and creates the deceptive fantasy of the primordial form of nature. At the same time, however, Adorno uncovers a positive potential in the experience of natural beauty – it lies in the ability to transcend a power-based subjectivity that reduces reality to the substrate of the domination. By means of the transcendence of subjectivity, the experience of natural beauty opens up the possibility to perceive and approach reality in the unreduced fullness of its qualities while also anticipating a reconciliation of man with nature in an allegorical way. The aim of my study is to describe the sketched aspects of the experience of natural beauty. (shrink)

For Herbert Marcuse, rationality today—amidst advanced capitalism and neoliberalism—is not confronted with an external irrational universal, as it was in the earlier period of liberalism. “General ‘harmony’” is converted into a goal that pacifies because it is technically feasible. Through the critique of everyday experiences, it is possible to distinguish between how individuals immediately appear in actual society and what is essential to society and humanity—by revealing the dependency on capital as a dehumanizing factor. Dependency remains hidden in the relations (...) between universals such as “capitalist society” and technical targets in the everyday lives of individuals. Only social movements that can decipher the rule of capitalism over everyday experiences have any chance of overcoming domination. (shrink)

Some modifications are suggested to recent (1985) generalised phrase-structure grammar which make the formalism more suitable to computational use, and at the same time provide a clear and elegant redefinition for parts of the formalism which are standardly complex and ill-defined. It is shown how the feature-instantiation principles can be represented as explicit rules in a format similar to metarules, and how a grammar of four parts, immediate-dominance rules, linear-precedence rules, metarules, and these new propagation rules, can be (...) used to produce the ordinary GPSG analyses of English. Methods of computational implementation are discussed, in particular it is suggested that the parts of the grammar are most conveniently interpreted as instructions as to how to produce a set of context-free phrase-structure rules which can be used with a simple left-corner parser. (shrink)

The dominant moral philosophy of nineteenth-century Britain was utilitarianism, beginning with Bentham and ending with Sidgwick. Though once overshadowed by his immediate predecessors in that tradition, Sidgwick is now regarded as a figure of great importance in the history of moral philosophy. Indeed his masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, has been described by John Rawls as the 'most philosophically profound' of the classical utilitarian works. In this volume a distinguished group of philosophers reassesses the full range of Sidgwick's work, (...) not simply his ethical theory, but also his contributions as a historian of philosophy, a political theorist, and a reformer. (shrink)

The dominant rule of economic evaluation within health care posits that resources are distributed in order to maximize health benefit. There are instances, however, where the public has demonstrated that they do not prefer such an allocation scheme, particularly in the context of life-saving interventions. Objectives Deviations from preferences of maximizing health benefit have important implications on both financial and distributive levels. This study sought to specify the circumstances in which respondent preferences are inconsistent with maximizing health benefit. Methods Ninety (...) respondents recruited from the London School of Economics and Political Science completed a questionnaire comprised of a series of paired profiles involving various combinations of life-saving or quality-of-life enhancing interventions. Results The results indicate that saving a life holds value beyond that captured by traditional health benefit measurement and that the value of saving a life is not consistent across ages. More specifically, the value of saving a life was age-dependent and markedly attenuated for older-age patients. Conclusions Many respondents were willing to overlook maximizing health benefit in order to rescue a life in immediate peril, and showed a diminished sense of moral imperative to rescue older-age patients. In light of difficulties related to the implementation of larger-scale policies incorporating Rule of Rescue concerns, the most realistic approaches will likely involve adopting smaller-scale policies that address issues such as do not resuscitate and living wills. Potential policy solutions such as age or monetary thresholds for life-saving interventions may be favoured in a research context; however, their overall social feasibility is questionable. (shrink)

The dominant approach to the study of dynamic preference is to generate preference change by manipulating aspects of decision-problem presentation (problem description, task procedure, contextual options). The predisposing approach instead manipulates the decision maker’s mental state while holding problem presentation constant. Three illustrative studies are outlined here. The first modified preferences for ambitious consumption by manipulating subjects’ consumption energy. The second modified preferences for immediate consumption by manipulating subjects’ hedonic resources. The third modified preferences for consumption itself by manipulating (...) subjects’ desire proneness. Whereas framing is thought to affect perception, predisposing apparently can affect tastes and so involves a special kind of preference dynamism. (shrink)

In _Democracy and Education_, John Dewey devotes a chapter to geography and history. McBride reveals that, until recently, he had not thought much about this chapter; geography and history were compulsory topics to be taught to children. In recent years, having read Katherine McKittrick’s _Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle_, McBride has been compelled to think more about geographies of dominance; the ways place, terrain, and geography are imbued with racialized and gendered and hierarchal values, which (...) conspire to create boundaries and exclusions. According to Dewey, learning about the geographies of place and histories of groups of people can enrich our connections to this place and its ecology, make the goals of our people more meaningful, and it can boost our inefficaciousness in our immediate surroundings. Failing this, the knowledge we gain from our elders becomes increasingly detached and meaningless. McBride suggests that Dewey suffered from a form of this estrangement (regarding the tacit racially-white Eurodescended coloniality of North America). McBride suggests that the vast majority of our society can conceive of no future world that is not dominated by Eurodescended peoples and thoroughly infused with their techno-industrial norms and values. If our accounts of the social milieu skirt past the dispossession of the first peoples or the enslavement of Afrodescended peoples or the debilitating effects of heteropatriarchy, then it would appear that we are not terribly critical about our past or our connection to place. It would suggest that we are resigned to (or comfortable within) the Eurodescended norms of this place, unable to see any viable alternatives. In the end, McBride suggests that we accept the Deweyan insight but supplement it with the critical study of geographies of domination and cartographies of struggle. (shrink)

The heuristic search processes like simple genetic algorithms help in achieving optimization but do not guarantee robustness so there is an immediate need of a machine learning technique that also promises robustness. Diploid genetic algorithms ensure consistent results and can therefore replace Simple genetic algorithms in applications such as test data generation and regression testing, where robustness is more important. However, there is a need to review the work that has been done so far in the field. It is (...) also important to analyse the applicability of the premise of the dominance techniques applied so far in order to implement the technique. The work presents a systematic review of diploid genetic algorithms, examines the premise of the dominance relation used in different works and discusses the future scope. The work also discusses the biological basis of evaluating dominance. The work is important as the future of machine learning relies on techniques that are robust as well as efficient. (shrink)

Many situations require the simultaneous processing of auditory and visual information, however, stimuli presented to one sensory modality can sometimes interfere with processing in a second sensory modality (i.e., modality dominance). The current study further investigated modality dominance by examining how task demands and bimodal presentation affect speeded auditory and visual discriminations. Participants in the current study had to quickly determine if two words, two pictures, or two word-picture pairings were the same or different, and we manipulated task (...) demands across three different conditions. In an immediate recognition task, there was only one second between the two stimuli/stimulus pairs and auditory dominance was found. Compared to the respective unimodal baselines, pairing pictures and words together slowed down visual responses and sped up auditory responses. Increasing the interstimulus interval to four seconds and blocking verbal rehearsal weakened auditory dominance effects, however, conflicting and redundant visual cues sped up auditory discriminations. Thus, simultaneously presenting pictures and words had different effects on auditory and visual processing, with bimodal presentation slowing down visual processing and speeding up auditory processing. These findings are consistent with a proposed mechanism underlying auditory dominance, which posits that auditory stimuli automatically grab attention and attenuate/delay visual processing. (shrink)

Despite a staggering body of research demonstrating sex differences in expressed emotion, very few theoretical models (evolutionary or non-evolutionary) offer a critical examination of the adaptive nature of such differences. From the perspective of a socio-relational framework, emotive behaviors evolved to promote the attraction and aversion of different types of relationships by advertising the two most parsimonious properties ofreciprocity potential, or perceived attractiveness as a prospective social partner. These are the individual's (a)perceived capacityor ability to provide expedient resources, or to (...) inflict immediate harm onto others, and their (b)perceived trustworthinessor probability of actually reciprocating altruism (Vigil 2007). Depending on the unique social demands and relational constraints that each sex evolved, individuals should be sensitive to advertise “capacity” and “trustworthiness” cues through selective displays of dominant versus submissive and masculine versus feminine emotive behaviors, respectively. In this article, I introduce the basic theoretical assumptions and hypotheses of the framework, and show how the models provide a solid scaffold with which to begin to interpret common sex differences in the emotional development literature. I conclude by describing how the framework can be used to predict condition-based and situation-based variation in affect and other forms of expressive behaviors. (shrink)

The years immediately after the final downfall of Napoleon Bonaparte could easily have been years of anti-climax in French science. In 1815, after two decades of undoubted greatness, the time, I feel, was ripe for decline. And decline might well have occurred if the traditions and the style of science as practised in France in the period of Napoleon's rule had been carried on unchanged by the disciples of the two great men who had dominated work in the physical sciences (...) for so many years. These men, of course, were the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet and the mathematician and physicist Pierre Simon Laplace. (shrink)

During meditation, consciousness/awareness is usually enhanced because of higher attention and concentration, which inter-dependently co-arise thru appropriate interactions between neural signals. Nāgārjuna rejects ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ in favor of co-dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda), and that is also why he rejects causality; the entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise. Causality is a major issue in metaphysical views. The goals of this article are as follows: (I)Which entities lack ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ and which ones inherently exist? (II) Do the entities (...) that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise and hence can we reject causality as in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy? (III) Do the entities that exist inherently cause entities that lack inherent existence? (IV) Do structure, function, experience, and environment cause each other? And (V)We critically analyze, extend, and examine Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of dependent co- origination in the extended Dual-Aspect Monism (eDAM) framework. Our analysis suggests that: (i) All conventional entities lack inherent existence. However, the dual-aspect unmanifested state of the primal entity (unified information field (UIF), emptiness, Śūnyatā, a neutral entity of Neutral Monism, or Brahman) inherently exists. The dual-aspect unmanifested state of UIF has (a) physical unified information field (PUIF, quantum vacuum, ‘zero- point field’/ZPF)as physical aspect and (b) unified potential consciousness information field (UPCIF) as the non-physical aspect. The subjective experiences (SEs) of objects and of the subject (self) are the excitations or modes of the UPCIF, so they are derived entities and hence they lack inherent existence. The dual-aspect unmanifested state of UIF/emptiness/Śūnyatā is fundamental and irreducible, and hence it inherently exists. (ii) The entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise, and hence causality for them can be rejected but instead conditions (such as efficient, percept-object, immediate, and dominant conditions) are necessary, as in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy. (iii) It is unclear that the dual-aspect primal entity UIF (Brahman/emptiness/Śūnyatā) that exists inherently cause entities that lack inherent existence. Most likely, all manifested entities inter-dependently co-arise thru natural laws built-in the UIF when necessary conditions for a manifested entity are satisfied thru interaction among relevant entities. (iv) It is unclear that structure, function, experience, and environment cause each other. A cause must, at the same time, be an effect of another cause. This implies that there is no first cause. Therefore, the structure, function, and experience inter-dependently co-arise thru co-evolution, co-development, sensorimotor co-tuning, and the interaction among relevant entities after the necessary conditions of manifestation of a specific entity are satisfied; and they are linked via conditions. (v) In the extended Dual-Aspect Monism (eDAM) framework, the physical aspect of a state of a manifested entity and that of the non-physical aspect (with functional, qualitative, cognitive, and experiential sub-aspects) of the same state of the same entity inseparably co-exist in each state of each entity at all levels. However, the degrees of manifestations of inseparable physical and non-physical aspects vary with the states, levels of entities, and contexts. Moreover, manifested entities lack inherent existence. In other words, the physical aspect and that of the non-physical aspect of manifested entities dependently co- arise, co-evolve, co-develop, and co-tuned for sensorimotor system appropriately depending on the levels of entities and contexts, which along with common “effective”information entail the inseparability of both aspects. In this sense, the symmetry between physical and non-physical aspects of a state of an entity (such as brain-mind system) is maintained, where the physical aspect (from third person perspective) does not cause the inseparable non-physical aspect (from first-person perspective) in living systems or vice- versa. (shrink)

The importance of male dominance in the scientific community is no strange to us all. Science, as a source of respected and influential information is a staunchly guarded male domain for millennia. What is specific for our time and place is the nervousness with which female presence is accepted. It is also the time of great changes in the axis of power, and the struggle for control is very aggressive. What is even more so in Serbia and Montenegro one (...) of the pieces of ruins of the late SFRJ, is that the dysfunction of the war and sanctions brought about more inequality than before. And science is a field of professional achievement with slow and uncertain rewards, vast investment of time, effort and funds, for a career that is beneficial more to vanity than to the bank account. Women are seen as frivolous when they devote a huge amount of work and other resources to self-improvement and personal achievement and not to the comfort of the immediate family. Osnazivanje zena i njihovo ravnopravno ucesce u drustvenom, ekonomskom politickom i kulturnom zivotu kao i eliminacija svih oblika porodicne ekonomske, politicke, obrazovne i svake druge rodne diskriminacije i nasilja nad zenama spada u milenijumske ciljeve Ujedinjenih nacija prihvacene od Evropske unije i preporucene vladama svih zemalja u formiranju njihove nacionalne strategije. (shrink)

One of the dominant themes structuring the trajectory of Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical work is his concern to think the event in a way that renders it intelligible, but that also respects the alterity and the uncanniness that are essential to it. In this paper I defend Lyotard's earlier understanding of the event, articulated most thoroughly in Discours, figure, from the criticisms of the later Lyotard, articulated most thoroughly in The Differend. More specifically, I attempt to demonstrate that the event, as (...) disruption of the stable system of signification, is given immediately with the signification that it disrupts. (shrink)

"The eye that gathers impressions is no longer the eye that sees a depiction on a surface it becomes a hand, the ray of light becomes a finger, and the imagination becomes a form of immediate touching."-Johann Gottfried Herder Long recognized as one of the most important eighteenth-century works on aesthetics and the visual arts, Johann Gottfried Herder's Plastik (Sculpture, 1778) has never before appeared in a complete English translation. In this landmark essay, Herder combines rationalist and empiricist thought (...) with a wide range of sources-from the classics to Norse legend, Shakespeare to the Bible-to illuminate the ways we experience sculpture. Standing on the fault line between classicism and romanticism, Herder draws most of his examples from classical sculpture, while nevertheless insisting on the historicity of art and of the senses themselves. Through a detailed analysis of the differences between painting and sculpture, he develops a powerful critique of the dominance of vision both in the appreciation of art and in our everyday apprehension of the world around us. One of the key articulations of the aesthetics of Sturm und Drang, Sculpture is also important as an anticipation of subsequent developments in art theory. Jason Gaiger's translation of Sculpture includes an extensive introduction to Herder's thought, explanatory notes, and illustrations of all the sculptures discussed in the text. (shrink)

Abstract:In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on January 12, 2010, the representative victim-survivor in multiple media sites appeared to the world in the face of the Haitian child-cum-orphan. This poignant image of loss and suffering lent urgency to a range of altruistic responses—or rather, paternalistic interventions—by white families in the U.S. I argue that in both narrative and practice, dominant constructions of normative (white) motherhood were exaggerated and made hypervisible, which propelled the actual lived experience of Haitian (...) mothers further into oblivion. In this article, I examine the discursive formations that produce Haitian women as “deviant black mothers” in transnational contexts. In similar ways, “the beggar mother” construct in the Dominican national media engenders powerful ideas about maternal neglect that link up with constructions of migrant illegality, criminality, and poverty. Drawing upon black and transnational feminist empirical analysis, I demonstrate how such discursive formations affectively circulate within transnational imaginaries and quotidian racial intimacies to effect forms of surveillance, objectification, and regulation of Haitian women and, by extension, their children who face an ever-greater risk of “statelessness.”. (shrink)

"Men living under the domination of catchwords live in a hell of their own making."The modern university, inspired by the German model envisioned by Wilhelm von Humboldt, is often considered an "ivory tower," since it seems to position itself outside of political and economic influences. By refusing any external impact on its freedom to organize research and teaching, it has the tendency to cut itself off from the rest of society. But it is this very freedom that nurtures the civic (...) model of social apprenticeship. Outside of immediate political or religious interests, outside of economic investments in the formation solely of elites, is the necessary Bildung: edification by the knowledge of individuals who can .. (shrink)

J.G. Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics is seldom read, despite the fact that it remains, after more than two centuries, one of the most original and insightful efforts at a systematic normative ethical theory on Kantian foundations. Part of the reason for its obscurity lies in the perceived implausibility of Fichte’s account of practical deliberation and of the authority of individual conscience. The view typically attributed to Fichte is a conjunction of four claims: that moral deliberation consists entirely in consultation (...) of one’s conscience; that conscience is a faculty that gives immediate epistemic access to substantive moral truths; that conformity with the verdict of conscience is the sole criterion of the moral worth of actions; and that an individual’s conscientious decision is therefore morally incorrigible. This set of views is indeed implausible; but Fichte in fact held none of them. Hegel was the first to attribute them to him and, incredibly, Hegel’s has remained for 200 years the dominant interpretation, even among scholars of Fichte. In this paper I explain how Fichte actually thought about practical deliberation and the role of conscience, and diagnose the sources of appeal of the Hegelian interpretation. (shrink)

In two experiments, subjects’ task was to decide whether a binocularly viewed target word was evaluatively good (e.g., fame, comedy, rescue) or bad (e.g., stress, detest, malaria) in meaning. Just prior to this target word, a priming word was presented to the nondominant eye, and masked by an immediately following presentation of a letter—fragment pattern to the dominant eye. (Masking effectiveness was demonstrated by subjects’ failure to discriminate the left vs. right position of a test series of words.) In Experiment (...) 1, which used evaluatively positive or negative words as priming stimuli, judgment latency for the evaluative decision task was facilitated by primes that agreed in evaluation with targets, and was retarded by primes that disagreed in evaluation with targets. This result demonstrated that the evaluative meaning of priming stimuli was processed under conditions that prevented subjects from detecting their presence. Primes in Experiment 2 were 2-word strings for which the evaluative meaning of individual words was orthogonal to the evaluative sentence meaning (e.g., the two evaluatively negative words, "enemy fails,“ make up an evaluatively positive sentence). Results of Experiment 2 indicated that masked priming effects were influenced by the evaluative meanings of individual words, but not by their sentence meanings. This result supported the conclusion that the processing of undetected, dichoptically masked words is limited to analyses that are not powerful enough to extract sentence meanings. (shrink)

Husserl desarrolla un enfoque genético que busca dar cuenta del origen de las formas lógico-categoriales a partir de las correspondientes preestructuraciones situadas en el nivel de la receptividad sensible. Para un enfoque de ese tipo, la explicación del origen de las modalidades del juicio, en general, y la negación, en particular, plantea peculiares desafíos. El presente trabajo discute el modo en el que Husserl trata la negación, en tanto forma básica de la modalidad, tanto en el enfoque estático de Ideen (...) I como en el enfoque genético de Erfahrung und Urteil. A fin de poner de relieve el al-cance histórico y sistemático de la concepción husserliana, se proporciona previamente una presentación general de su contexto polémico inmediato. Este viene dado por la oposición entre psicologismo y formalismo, dominante en la filosofía de la lógica alemana de fines del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX.Husserl develops a genetic approach that seeks to account for the origin of the logical-categorical forms starting from the corresponding pre-structures located at the level of sensitive receptivity. For such an approach, the explanation of the origin of the modalities of judgment, in general, and negation, in particular, poses peculiar challenges. This paper discusses how Husserl treats negation as a basic form of modality, both in the static approach of Ideen I and the genetic approach of Erfahrung und Urteil. Previously, in order to highlight the historical and systematic significance of the Husserlian conception, a general presentation of its immediate polemic context is offered, especially with reference to the opposition between psychologism and formalism, dominant in the German philosophy of logic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. (shrink)

The first weekly English newsbooks appeared in November 1641, on the eve of the civil war. Though they provoked animosity and fanned the flames of civil war, they have survived almost without interruption to the present day, transformed into the modern newspaper. The Invention of the Newspaper is the first detailed account of the origins and early development of the English newspaper, using a wealth of new evidence to show the causes of the first newsbooks, and their many and complex (...) roles in the turbulent society in which they participated.Newsbooks were widely read and exerted considerable influence not only over immediate perceptions of news, but also over subsequent histories of the seventeenth-century, extending even to the present day. Using and synthesising approaches from literary criticism, history, and the 'socoiology of texts', The Invention of the Newspaper shows how newsbooks transformed print culture, fed the public hunger for news, and in turn created a market for news periodical. Charting the newsbook's development as a form and a commercial enterprise, its literary qualities, and its relationship to other means of communication, The Invention of the Newspaper shows the newsbook's gradual and irresistible dominance of the market for information. (shrink)

"Central Works of Philosophy" is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's "Republic" to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together (...) these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. The period, 1900-60, which this volume covers, witnessed changes in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume begins with chapters on the key texts of the Cambridge philosophers, Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together marked the emergence of analytical philosophy. The Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the development of logical positivism in the 1930s and 1940s are represented by chapters on two fundamental works by Carnap and Ayer. William James' "Pragmatism," which formulated pragmatism's epistemology and made it known throughout the world represents in the volume the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists. Essays on Husserl's "The Idea of Phenomenology," Heidegger's "Being and Time," Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" cover the core texts of the hugely significant phenomenological movement. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and Ryle's "The Concept of the Mind" are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of science. Volume 4 covers the key works of philosophy written in the period 1900-60, which witnessed developments in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume includes chapters on central works by the Cambridge philosophers Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together contributed to the emergence of analytic philosophy. The ideas of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the logical positivism of the 1930s and 1940s are explored in chapters dealing with the works of Carnap and Ayer, and the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists are discussed in a chapter on William James' Pragmatism, which propagated pragmatism by presenting its central tenets in a clear and accessible form. Essays on Husserl's "The Idea of Phenomenology," Heidegger's "Being and Time," Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" cover the core texts of the continental European traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and Ryle's "The Concept of Mind" are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with a chapter on Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of scientific method in his seminal work, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery.". (shrink)

"Central Works of Philosophy" is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's "Republic" to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together (...) these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. The period, 1900-60, which this volume covers, witnessed changes in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume begins with chapters on the key texts of the Cambridge philosophers, Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together marked the emergence of analytical philosophy. The Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the development of logical positivism in the 1930s and 1940s are represented by chapters on two fundamental works by Carnap and Ayer. William James' "Pragmatism," which formulated pragmatism's epistemology and made it known throughout the world represents in the volume the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists. Essays on Husserl's "The Idea of Phenomenology," Heidegger's "Being and Time," Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" cover the core texts of the hugely significant phenomenological movement. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and Ryle's "The Concept of the Mind" are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of science. Volume 4 covers the key works of philosophy written in the period 1900-60, which witnessed developments in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume includes chapters on central works by the Cambridge philosophers Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together contributed to the emergence of analytic philosophy. The ideas of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the logical positivism of the 1930s and 1940s are explored in chapters dealing with the works of Carnap and Ayer, and the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists are discussed in a chapter on William James' Pragmatism, which propagated pragmatism by presenting its central tenets in a clear and accessible form. Essays on Husserl's "The Idea of Phenomenology," Heidegger's "Being and Time," Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" and Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" cover the core texts of the continental European traditions of phenomenology and existentialism. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" and Ryle's "The Concept of Mind" are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with a chapter on Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of scientific method in his seminal work, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery.". (shrink)

Central Works of Philosophy is a major multi-volume collection of essays on the core texts of the Western philosophical tradition. From Plato's Republic to the present day, the five volumes range over 2,500 years of philosophical writing covering the best, most representative, and most influential work of some of our greatest philosophers. Each essay has been specially commissioned and provides an overview of the work, clear and authoritative exposition of its central ideas, and an assessment of the work's importance. Together (...) these books provide an unrivaled companion for studying and reading philosophy, one that introduces the reader to the masterpieces of the western philosophical canon. The period, 1900-60, which this volume covers, witnessed changes in logical and linguistic analysis far beyond anything dreamt of in the previous history of the subject. The volume begins with chapters on the key texts of the Cambridge philosophers, Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein, which together marked the emergence of "analytical" philosophy. The Vienna Circle of the 1920s, and the development of logical positivism in the 1930s and 1940s are represented by chapters on two fundamental works by Carnap and Ayer. William James's Pragmatism, which formulated pragmatism's epistemology and made it known throughout the world represents in the volume the distinctive ideas of the American pragmatists. Essays on Husserl's The Idea of Phenomenology, Heidegger's Being and Time, Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception cover the core texts of the hugely significant phenomenological movement. Of the linguistic philosophy that dominated the English-speaking world in the immediate postwar years, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Ryle's The Concept of the Mind are discussed in turn. The volume concludes with Karl Popper's influential account of the nature of science.. (shrink)

Is a simple refinement of the way we are living sufficient to address the environmental crisis? Is a wise use stance in which we produce and consume 'smarter' enough? This work not only answers no to the above question, but argues that a new way of life is already emerging---an ecological way of life. The ecological way of life is centered conceptually upon the ethical ideas first formulated in various policy documents, namely, that we are responsible to future generations in (...) terms of sharing this planet. The obligation to future generations follows from the formation of a new kind of transgenerational community that differs significantly from both immediate descendants and the posterity models for such communities. The reference to future generations undercuts the traditional US-THEM distinction and opens up a future-to-come in opposition to a future-present. The 'otherness' of future generations is emphasized with the result that our task is one of living within a disciplined not-knowing. This transgenerational community formed around future generations provides a framework for the ecological way of life by providing the ethical context for such environmental obligations as the precautionary principle. ;Given that the reference to future generations undercuts the traditional motivation provided by an US-THEM distinction, the experiential dimension of the environmental movement comes to the fore. How can people be motivated to sacrifice for those that come after, especially as they are not immediately identified with an Us? I examine an existential arena I labeled as 'living in the woods'. This space is an over-determined space of exile from the dominate culture that not only allows for social critique, but through the rediscovery of 'natural' rhythms and the experience of the beauty of a particular, provides an embodied experience of biophilia and of the earth as the fragile and vulnerable home of future generations. Not everyone has to 'life in the woods', but these experiences and reflections do provide, much as religious life in the monastery, an intense and articulated paradigm of a way of life for others. ;Finally, this dissertation was written for an intelligent, lay audience. The interconnections among environmental policies, political dynamics, and ethical concerns are all examined. (shrink)

The study zeroed in on the perception of college students who are exposed to sights of poverty in their immediate environment. The student-participants were asked to provide their perception, understanding, and behaviour towards poverty using the photographs that they took on their own. In qualitative research practice, this methodology is called photo elicitation. It was revealed, among others, that the participants have shown negative perceptions about poverty. They strongly felt bad about each photograph that they took and what these (...) images portrayed. The participants visualized their community and thereby weaved analyses and opinions that encroached on various philosophical and sociological theories. There are four interrelated dominant images that were drawn: exteriority image, dirt-poor image, victim-blaming image, and hand-to-mouth image. (shrink)

While Good’s book forces us to recognize the caricatures of Hegel and idealism that have dominated Anglo-American thought, Dewey’s relationship with idealism in general and Hegel in particular remains complex. Good proposes that the main reason for Dewey’s rejection of idealism was World War I. I find this implausible. Good downplays the central influence of James on Dewey, first with the Principles and then with his radical empiricism. By his move to Columbia in 1905 and in his article of that (...) year, “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism,” Dewey had rejected all types of philosophy that equated reality with the object of knowledge, including idealism and Hegel. For Dewey, reality includes types of experiences that are not instances of knowing and that ideals, functionally understood, are possibilities, not actualities. (shrink)

This book redraws the intellectual map and sets the agenda in philosophy for the next fifty or so years. By making the theory of signs the dominant theme in Four Ages of Understanding, John Deely has produced a history of philosophy that is innovative, original, and complete. The first full-scale demonstration of the centrality of the theory of signs to the history of philosophy, Four Ages of Understanding provides a new vantage point from which to review and reinterpret the development (...) of intellectual culture at the threshold of "globalization". Deely examines the whole movement of past developments in the history of philosophy in relation to the emergence of contemporary semiotics as the defining moment of Postmodernism. Beginning traditionally with the Pre-Socratic thinkers of early Greece, Deely gives an account of the development of the notion of signs and of the general philosophical problems and themes which give that notion a context through four ages: Ancient philosophy, covering initial Greek thought; the Latin age, philosophy in European civilization from Augustine in the 4th century to Poinsot in the 17th; the Modern period, beginning with Descartes and Locke; and the Postmodern period, beginning with Charles Sanders Peirce and continuing to the present. Reading the complete history of philosophy in light of the theory of the sign allows Deely to address the work of thinkers never before included in a general history, and in particular to overcome the gap between Ockham and Descartes which has characterized the standard treatments heretofore. One of the essential features of the book is the way in which it shows how the theme of signs opens a perspective for seeing the Latin Age from its beginning with Augustine to the work of Poinsot as an indigenous development and organic unity under which all the standard themes of ontology and epistemology find a new resolution and place. A magisterial general history of philosophy, Deely's book provides both a strong background to semiotics and a theoretical unity between philosophy's history and its immediate future. With Four Ages of Understanding Deely sets a new agenda for philosophy as a discipline entering the 21st century. (shrink)

Written on the threshold of Thus Spoke Zarathustra during a highpoint of social, intellectual and psychic vibrancy, The Joyful Science is one of Nietzsche's thematically tighter books. Here he debuts and practices the art of amor fati, love of fate, to explore what is "species preserving" in relation to happiness (Book One); inspiration and the role of art as they keep us mentally fit for inhabiting a world dominated by science (Book Two); the challenges of living authentically and overcoming after (...) the death of God (Book Three); and the crescendo of life affirmation in which Nietzsche revealed the doctrine of eternal recurrence and previewed the figure of Zarathustra (Book Four). Invigorated and motivated by Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche in 1887 added a new preface, an appendix of poems, and Book Five, where he deepened the critique of science and displayed a more genealogical approach. This volume provides the first English translation of the Idylls from Messina and, more importantly, it includes the first English translation of the notebooks of 1881-1882, in which Nietzsche first formulated the eternal recurrence. Structurally and stylistically, The Joyful Science remains Nietzsche's most effective book of aphorisms, immediately after which he took on the voice and alter ego of Zarathustra in order to push beyond the boundaries of even the most liberating prose. (shrink)

"The documents gathered in this volume cut a winding path through the tumultuous final thirty-three months of Leibniz's life, from March 1714 to his death on 14 November 1716. The disputes with Newton and his followers over the discovery of the calculus and, later, over the issues in natural philosophy and theology that came to dominate Leibniz's correspondence with Samuel Clarke certainly loom large in the story of these years. But as the title of this volume is intended to convey, (...) the letters exchanged between Leibniz and Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Electoral Princess of Braunschweig-Luneburg and later Princess of Wales, also figure prominently in their telling, and I have included their complete extant correspondence from 1714 to 1716. These letters are of particular interest inasmuch as they provide valuable insights into how and why Leibniz's correspondence with Clarke arose, and why it developed as it did, with Caroline in the role of influential go-between; whence the title, The Leibniz-Caroline-Clarke Correspondence. But there is more; for these letters provide a window into the evolving personal relationship between Leibniz and Caroline. Much of the early correspondence between Leibniz and Caroline after her arrival in England is filled with thoughtful and engaging exchanges about philosophy, literature, and politics, about people Caroline was meeting in England, about those known by Leibniz far and wide, about the new royal family in England, headed by George I (Georg Ludwig of Braunschweig-Luneburg), as well as gossip about affairs of state in both England and Europe at large. Beyond the interest they hold for Leibniz scholars in particular, many of these exchanges should also be of interest to historians of early 18th-century England and Europe, and especially to those interested in the period immediately preceding and following the Hanoverian succession to the throne of England. But even quite early on in their correspondence Leibniz seemed to sense a threat to his relationship with Caroline, and a worrisome paranoia began to creep into some of his letters to her, letters in which he expressed concerns about her continuing allegiance to him now that she had been installed in England amongst his rivals. As the correspondence progressed, Leibniz's paranoia only deepened; but it was nevertheless prophetic of a tragic truth to come. For the letters exchanged between Leibniz and Caroline document the rather sad story of the slow but steady erosion of Caroline's loyalty to Leibniz after she departed Hanover on 12 October 1714 and landed in England at Margate in Kent on 22 October as the new Princess of Wales and future Queen of England. In 1727 the Scottish poet James Thomson penned A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, calling him "our philosophic sun," and it was by force of the political and cultural mass of this sun that Caroline was eventually, and inexorably, drawn into its orbit, and away from Leibniz". (shrink)

ArgumentIt seems theoretically convenient to construe knowledge practices in financial markets and organizations as “applied economics.” Alternatively or additionally, one might argue that practitioners draw on economic knowledge in order to systematically orient their actions towards profit-maximization; models, then, are understood as devices that make calculative rationality possible. However, empirical studies do not entirely confirm these theoretical positions: Practitioners’ actual calculations are often not “framed” by models; organizations and institutions influence the choice and adoption of models; and different professional groups (...) in financial markets have diverging attitudes towards model calculations. In order to account for this diversity, this article proposes the concept ofcultures of economic and financial expertise; the concept focuses on the patterns of knowledge practices and knowledge-related self-definitions of groups within financial organizations and markets; it also facilitates an analysis of the relations between and, more specifically, the hierarchies among different practices and identities. The article then goes on to explore the process of foreign exchange forecasting in a particular bank. The description immediately reveals that two groups are involved in this process: economists and analysts. These groups maintain quite different practices and self-descriptions in relation to models: While the economists in the bank use the models as organizational resources for consistent forecasting procedures and observe data with the help of simple model structures, analysts approach model forecasts from the perspective of critics: They see limits in the variable-centered, as opposed to a “thematic” approach and they disregard a model's imposed temporality. Nevertheless, analysts use model forecasts as anchors for developing their own “paths” and stories about possible future expectation changes in the markets. The specific division of labor between economists and analysts, and specifically the dominant role of analysts in the forecasting process, fit into a larger picture: The rise of institutional investors in the foreign exchange markets and their demand for genuine market knowledge for speculative investment projects has contributed to the rise and dominance of analysts’ culture. (shrink)

e medium and the revolution exclude each other, insofar as two kinds of violence, restlessly ghting for domination, collide. e ght is a ght for the ght itself. e violence of the medium can namely suppress the ght the revolution needs. e violence of this suppression of violence, the violence of nonviolence produces the psycho-somatic state of depression. In this depression the body is drawn together, onto itself. It does not experience anything anymore. e violence of »the ancient« directs itself (...) therefore only towards itself alone. us the immediate and its origin are veiled. e medium excludes them. e origin cannot return, it remains in absence. e violence of the revolution cannot awaken anymore. e absence of the revolution is the absent origin itself. (shrink)

This paper represents a case study interpretation of the political and media discourses in Romania referring to Islam and the threat of Muslim refugees. Using a selection of media narratives from the public debates that took shape immediately after the Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016, this study uses a critical discourse analysis approach as an interpretative tool to understanding how in Romania the opinion leaders, the political elites and the media are building an anti-Islam propaganda. By applying a textual (...) and ideological analysis of a selection of media discourses that refer to the terrorist attacks and the implicit threat of Islam, the author describes the dominant rhetorics of conflict between the West and the Muslim world. By elaborating a list of Islamophobic stereotypes used in the Romanian mainstream media and by discussing the negative narratives propagated in the public sphere, a case is made against the artificial growth of intolerant attitudes. The central argument of the author is that we are witnessing a generalized anti-Islam propaganda, where a specific religion and its followers are demonized by politicians, cultural figures and opinion leaders. This paper's conclusion is that in the Romanian media and the political discourses a form of unjustified Islamophobia is cultivated for ideological purposes. (shrink)

After the US Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, a number of states have immediately banned abortion. Pro-choice activists are responding by promoting medication abortions – a do-it-yourself form of abortion. Women can take pills at home to induce an abortion in the first few weeks of pregnancy. -/- The Biden Administration [1] has backed the abortion pill, too. Attorney-General Merrick B. Garland and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra both issued statements endorsing it. -/- “We stand ready (...) to work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care,” said the Attorney-General. “In particular, the F.D.A. has approved the use of the medication mifepristone. States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the F.D.A.’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.” -/- As the New York Times [1] has noted, this sets the scene for legal battles. The obvious one is: will anti-abortion states prosecute medication abortions? -/- But – based on experience in the United Kingdom - the use of the abortion pill could give pro-life doctors headaches as well. -/- In the past year, UK has witnessed the saga of two Catholic doctors who have been brought in front of the professional regulator, the General Medical Council, after accusations of professional misconduct. Their crime? They had supplied abortion pill reversal (APR) treatment to women. Accusations of this misconduct have been brought forward by pro-choice organisations [2]. -/- The problem is that some women might panic when they discover that they are pregnant or are pressured to make a rash decision. They obtain abortion pills, often without seeing a doctor faceto- face, and soon after taking the first pill, they regret their decision. -/- Is it too late for them to save their pregnancy? Not necessarily. -/- A treatment developed in the US works about half the time. It involves the woman taking progesterone after the first abortion pill to counteract the abortifacient action of the drug. -/- Seventy-three women in the UK are reported to have taken a full APR course, of whom, 38 – more than half — successfully remained pregnant. Admittedly, the procedure is controversial [3], with pro-choice writers denouncing it as unproven, unscientific, and unethical. This has triggered some healthcare practitioners and scholars to analyse the commitments of the pro-choice movement to APR. In a recently published paper in The New Bioethics [4], two colleagues, Dominic Whitehouse and Steven Bow, and I argue that those espousing a pro-choice worldview should actually support abortion pill reversal and that the current evidence indicates that they should actually be doing it. -/- While some pro-choice activists might be happy simply to expand women’s reproductive choices, some might also want to ensure that these choices are safe and effective at achieving the desired outcome, which in principle includes maintaining a pregnancy. -/- We then review the scientific evidence with respect to the ability of APR to halt an abortion, look at the potential impact of APR on mental health, as well as its procedural safety. While highlighting that gold-standard evidence is lacking, we note that APR is associated with about two times higher rate of embryo survival compared to not completing the full early medical abortion course, that there is large agreement in the literature that women who are ambiguous about abortion are at risk of poorer mental health outcomes after abortion (and argue that women who request APR fall into this category), and highlight that there is no evidence that APR is more dangerous than abandoning an initiated early medical abortion. -/- The latter fact is important, as the results of the only randomised-controlled trial of APR have been at times misrepresented in the media [5.6], creating the impression that APR is not safe while most of the adverse effects occurred in the study group that did not receive APR. As our paper argues, with respect to APR the two UK doctors were “champions of women’s choice and should be congratulated, not condemned, by pro-choice advocates”. -/- While the cases against the two doctors have now been dropped (and there have even been accusations against a member of one of these pro-choice organisations that they pressurised a patient into complaining about one of the doctors and twisted the patient’s experience of the treatment [7]), we argue that it is important to set-up systems to facilitate the future provision of APR to protect both patients and healthcare staff. -/- Our conclusion is that, while being open to any change in evidence, those espousing a pro-choice outlook should “support calls for an APR framework that will protect women and the healthcare professionals caring for them” “and certainly not oppose” APR. -/- The debate over abortion pill reversal will be heading to the United States soon. It is quite possible that it will be denounced as dangerous misinformation. It’s not. But pro-life defenders should be prepared to defend their ground. -/- This article was first published by Mercatornet. (shrink)

In December 1984 Angela Weir and Elizabeth Wilson, two founding members of Feminist Review, published an article assessing contemporary British feminism and its relationship to the left and to class struggle. They suggested that the women's movement in general, and socialist-feminism in particular, had lost its former political sharpness. The academic focus of socialist-feminism has proved more interested in theorizing the ideological basis of sexual difference than the economic contradictions of capitalism. Meanwhile the conditions of working-class and black women have (...) been deteriorating. In this situation, they argue, feminists can only serve the general interests of women through alliance with working-class movements and class struggle. Weir and Wilson represent a minority position within the British Communist Party (the CP), which argues that ‘feminism’ is now being used by sections of the left, in particular the dominant ‘Eurocommunist’ left in the CP, to justify their moves to the right, with an accompanying attack on traditional forms of trade union militancy. Beatrix Campbell, who is aligned to the dominant position within the CP, has been one target of Weir and Wilson's criticisms. In several articles from 1978 onwards, and in her book Wigan Pier Revisited, Beatrix Campbell has presented a very different analysis of women and the labour movement. She has criticized the trade union movement as a ‘men's movement’, in the sense that it has always represented the interests of men at the expense of women. And she has described the current split within the CP as one extending throughout the left between the politics of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’: traditional labour movement politics as against the politics of those who have rethought their socialism to take into account the analysis and importance of popular social movements – in particular feminism, the peace and anti-racist movements. In reply to this debate, Anne Phillips has argued that while women's position today must be analysed in the context of the capitalist crisis, it is not reducible to the dichotomy ‘class politics’ versus ‘popular alliance’. Michèle Barrett, in another reply to Weir and Wilson, has argued that they have presented a reductionist and economistic approach to women's oppression, which caricatures rather than clarifies much of the work in which socialist-feminists have been engaged. To air these differences between socialist-feminists over the question of feminism and class politics, and to see their implications for the women's movement and the left, Feminist Review has decided to bring together the main protagonists of this debate for a fuller, more open discussion. For this discussion Feminist Review drew up a number of questions which were put to the participants by Clara Connolly and Lynne Segal. (Michèle Barrett was present in a personal capacity.) They cover the recent background to socialist-feminist politics, the relationship of feminism to Marxism, the role of feminists in le ft political parties and the labour movement, the issue of racism and the prospects for the immediate future. The discussion was lengthy and what follows is an edited version of the transcript. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal Mind in its Early Years, 1876–1920:An IntroductionThomas W. StaleyAt its inception, and in the succeeding decades, the journal Mind was a publication of singular significance. Founded in 1876 by Alexander Bain, it was the first of its kind: the pioneering "philosophical journal" in the Anglophone world, to use Bain's own description.1 Close on the heels of Nature, the hugely successful periodical established seven years earlier to address (...) progress in the natural sciences, Mind would devote itself to another important domain of intellectual work in Britain and worldwide. At the time, science and philosophy were as yet poorly demarcated areas, and the primary ground on which this distinction was negotiated was the study of the human mind and its role in social phenomena.2 Especially under its first two editors, George Croom Robertson (serving from the foundation to 1891) and G. F. Stout (from 1892 until 1920), the journal bore witness to a wholesale transformation of scholarly activity regarding these subjects.The purview of Mind was advertised on its opening page by Croom Robertson.3 This introductory offering bears close scrutiny as an indication of how the journal would develop. Foremost, in his mission statement, Robertson elaborated his position in terms of a series of dichotomies that [End Page 259] Mind would bridge. As both an "organ for... original researches" and a "critical record," the journal would be an announcer for and a judge of new work on the phenomena of "subjective consciousness" as well as "objective" physiological operations. On the side of psychology, it would deal with such "natural" mental productions as language as well as the "abnormal mental phases" of insanity. It would treat the mental character of animals in addition to that of humans, employing a relative methodology encompassing "much of... Anthropology and all that is meant by Comparative Psychology." In its philosophical aspect, Mind would range from the theoretical ground of "ultimate questions" to applications in educational practice and "Logic, Aesthetics, and Ethics." It would deal with the historical background of philosophy and with "what is being done or left undone in the present day." While an obvious focus was expected on the intellectual community in Britain itself, attention would be granted to work "on the Continent and in America" and the reader was assured that "Mind will not be the organ of any philosophical school."Mind's masthead, formally unchanged until 1972, denominated it as a "Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Psychology" but Robertson's comments indicate that it would encompass far more than this phrase might immediately suggest. Explicitly at issue was a wide range of controversies then current in Britain. Late Victorian culture was characterized by a self-conscious examination of its own status and prospects. Especially vital concerns included the secularization of knowledge-making institutions4; shifts in the role of public social movements5; the reshaping of scholarship to accommodate new modes of inquiry, fostering in the process new relationships between literature and science6; and the morality of scientific practice7—all items of substantive interest for Mind and its founding editor. [End Page 260]As detailed in a pair of articles written for the journal's centennial in 1976, Mind under its first two editors gradually transformed into an exclusive forum for academic philosophy, shedding its aspirations to chronicle scientific psychology as well as its other broader goals for social reform.8 However, for a significant period, it continued to pursue the ambitious program of inquiry indicated on its very first page. In Robertson's introduction, Mind's territory was effectively defined to cover all of what was then known alternately as "moral philosophy" or "moral science." At the moment of the journal's foundation, this was a field undergoing wholesale transformation. An examination of the project of the new periodical provides a window into many important changes underway in intellectual activity at the time. That this project would be centered on problems of "mind" was hardly a surprise. The dominant orientation of British philosophy since the Enlightenment work of Locke and Hume had been directed toward issues of human society by way of an inquiry into individual mental operations. However, with... (shrink)

Peter Fitzpatrick’s writings prove once and for all that it is possible for a law professor to write in beautiful English. His work also proves once and for all that the dominating tradition of Anglo-American legal philosophy and of law teaching has been barking up the wrong tree: namely, that the philosopher and professional law teachers can understand justice as nested in empty forms, better known as rules, doctrines, principles, policies, and other standards. The more rigorous our analysis or decomposition (...) of the forms, we have believed, the more closely do we access the identity of laws. Justice has been assumed to be a matter of intellectually accessing such analysed forms. Fitzpatrick’s articles and books embody an implicit critique of the analytic view of law and of justice. My entry point into this critique is his preoccupation with Jacques Derrida’s theory of laws as universals and with Derrida’s theory of justice as an inaccessible immediacy or presence in context-specific or concrete experienced events. Each event is experienced in an official’s decision. Such a decision represents what Derrida, Fitzpatrick, and Hegel call ‘individuality’. -/- Derrida’s theory of law presents a conundrum. Derrida misses the possibility that law may exist by virtue of its content rather than its form. Derrida misses this possibility because, heavily influenced by Kant (in Derrida’s theory of law), Derrida associates law with universals. This is so because Kant (and Derrida) are preoccupied with the identity of what counts as a law (lois) rather than with a law’s legitimacy. A universal cannot exist unless it is legitimate, and it is legitimate, I claim, by virtue of its content. In his association of law with universals, Derrida presupposes that legal knowledge exists with reference to a territorial-like boundary. The forms are represented or signified by signs (signifiers) within a boundary of the ultimate form (the state, the nation, or humanity). This ultimate form as a universal, like the discrete rules or forms, lacks socially contingent content. A boundary separates knowable universals from the unknowable world on the exteriority of the boundary. The unknowable world is constituted by concrete events experienced in context-specific circumstances. In his legal theory Derrida hones in upon the decision as the experienced event. In a decision, one is present or immediate with the event. Derrida considers such immediacy as justice. The immediacy, however, can only be represented as a sign (sometimes called a signifier). The sign, in turn, represents an empty signified or form, according to Derrida. Because the immediacy remains a representation rather than a presentation of the experienced event, laws as universals cannot be just. The rupture between the inaccessible immediacy of a decision on the one hand and the represented empty forms on the other is critical to Derrida’s theory of law. -/- I claim that this rupture permeates Derrida’s writings about law because Derrida possesses a territorial-like sense of legal knowledge. I shall argue to this effect as follows. In the first section I shall explain the importance of Fitzpatrick’s exposure of the vacuity of the foundation of the system or structure of universals. In the second section I shall flesh out two elements of Derrida’s legal theory: law as form and the ipseity or concrete event that the form excludes from law. This takes me to the third section, where I shall elaborate how Derrida’s legal theory presupposes knowledge as territorial. I shall argue in the final section that this very sense of territorial knowledge prevents justice from accessing law and law from accessing justice. I conclude with the hint of a very different sense of law, one that draws from experiential knowledge in contradistinction to territorial knowledge. (shrink)

For your students, celebrating this day is a source of rare and pure joy. The only way we can be adequate to this occasion is to let the gratitude that we owe you become the fundamental mood suffusing everything from beginning to end. In keeping with a beautiful tradition, today on this celebratory occasion we offer you as our gift this slender volume of a few short essays. In no way could this ever be an adequate return for all that (...) you, our teacher, have lavished upon us, and awakened and nourished in us. In the coming days many will try to survey your work in philosophy and to evaluate its impact and effect on various scales. In so doing, they will bring to mind many things that we should not forget. However, that way of parceling out a person's intellectual impact and of calculating the influence of his writings fails to grasp the essential matter for which we owe you our thanks. That essential element will not be found by considering how fruitful your teaching career has been. Surely such effectiveness will continue to be the prerogative and good fortune of every professor as long as German university escapes the doom of getting turned into a mind-numbing trade school. No, the essence of your leadership consists in something else, namely that the content and style of your questioning immediately forces each of us into an intense, critical dialogue, and it demands that we always be ready to reverse or even abandon our position. There is no guarantee, of course, that any of us will find our way to the one thing that, so unpretentously, your work sought to lead us to: that releasement in which one is seasoned and ready for the problems.2 So too the works we present to you are mere witnesses to the fact that we wanted to follow your guidance, not proof that we succeeded in becoming your disciples.3 But there is one thing we will retain as a lasting possession: Each of us who had the privilege of following in your footsteps was confronted by you, our esteemed teacher, with the option either of becoming the steward of essential matters or of working against them. On this celebratory occasion, as we view your philosophical existence in this light, we also acquire secure points of reference for giving a true assessment of the value of your work in philosophy. Does it consist in the fact that some decades ago a new movement emerged in philosophy and gained influence among the then-dominant trends? Or that a new method was added to the list of previous ones? Or that long-forgotten problem-areas got reworked.. (shrink)

For a variety of reasons stemming from the domination of the rationalist stance in western civilization, it came to be felt that the immediate--whether in the form of the esthetic, the shock of existing or just "being there," direct encounter, or the thrill of the moment--is in need of being preserved inviolate from the forms of articulation. And the underlying assumption prompting such concern for the immediate was that articulation is somehow alien to Being in the sense that (...) passage from the immediate via signs and meanings inevitably distorts, impoverishes and, in some fundamental way, transforms it beyond recognition. The sense of impoverishment coupled with a cosmic sorrow in the face of such a loss has led to celebration of the immediate, a more or less desperate attempt to hold fast to what cannot be said or articulated. Much of the mindlessness manifested in modern life is to be traced back to this celebration of immediacy as such. (shrink)