Since the 1960s, shamanism has become one of the landmarks for a new way of life and a more respectful relationship of humans with nature in the Western world. Both researchers and practitioners regard the foundation of shamanism as being animism – an understanding of the connection of all living beings. The role of the community is highlighted in shamanism as the shaman is expected to work for his community. Shamanistic techniques vary according to the society or place where it (...) is practised. In the study of neo-shamanism in the post-modern world, autoethnographic research has been seen as necessary, especially in order to explore the experience of the shaman. In this article we ask what has changed in the perceptions of the community in the study of shamanism and how this change has influenced the position of the researcher. Our article reflects on the resolution of the diversity and sameness through autoethnography, where the researcher is located not only in the experience, but also in its interpretation – which highlights great challenges in contextualizing the study, in writing on the concepts concerned, and indeed in the entire research process. (shrink)

Given the plethora of research conducted in the field of spirituality and mysticism over the last 30 years, it is almost a superhuman feat to keep up with the explosion of information. Of necessity, in a limited article of this nature, it is possible to discuss only a few salient aspects of the spirituality and mysticism phenomenon and by so doing contribute to ongoing research in this important domain. Contemporary spiritualties encompass the whole range of human experience and new variants (...) are emerging; for example, the relatively recent Contemplative Studies, a cognate and close companion to Spirituality. Crossing inter-religious boundaries enhances studies in Mysticism; natural mysticism is clearly in the foreground; and breaking research in neurotheology sheds light on the nature of the ‘mystical mind’. Discussion of the value or otherwise of techniques and methods of the mystical journey continues unabated. Of great value for today’s frenetic, Internet-crazy world is the path of mystical silence. By contributing to a discussion of these issues, it is hoped that the threads of spirituality and mysticism will continue to share their colour in a world desperate for beauty and peace. (shrink)

Reflective processing is a joint social action that develops in interaction. Using conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this article focuses on self-reflective turns of talk in group counselling for adults at risk of type 2 diabetes. We show how reflective processing unfolds in patterns of interaction, wherein group members take an observing, evaluating or interpreting position towards their own actions and experiences. Self-reflective talk is neither exclusively dependent on counsellors’ actions nor limited to the niches the counselling programme structure offers. (...) Self-reflective talk is one method of generating joint reflective processing. Such talk makes a topic available for discussion by connecting details of counselling with individuals’ experiences and enabling sharing. Self-reflective talk thus serves as a way for group members to participate in constructing a lifestyle problem, to invite or provide sharing of experiences and to display their orientation to the institutional task at hand. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had far-reaching effects on public health around the world. Attempts to prevent the spread of the disease by quarantine have led to large-scale global socioeconomic disrup- tion. During the outbreak, public authorities and politicians have struggled with how to manage widespread ignorance regarding the virus. Drawing on insights from social epistemology and the emerging interdisciplinary field of ignorance studies, this article provides evidence that the temporality of non- knowing and its intersection with knowing is (...) a force that leads political decision-making during a crisis. Illuminating the epistemic analysis with statements given by the Finnish government to the media in decision- making documents and in press conferences, this paper proposes that a crisis situation, itself, seems to demand from political decision-makers dynamic action while simultaneously knowing little (‘non-knowing’) about the different fronts of tackling the pandemic. We conclude that non-knowing must be recognized explicitly as an enduring and central condition in deci- sion-making, which we call ‘epistemic humility.’. (shrink)

A humanoid robot named ‘Sophia’ has sparked controversy since it has been given citizenship and has done media performances all over the world. The company that made the robot, Hanson Robotics, has touted Sophia as the future of artificial intelligence. Robot scientists and philosophers have been more pessimistic about its capabilities, describing Sophia as a sophisticated puppet or chatbot. Looking behind the rhetoric about Sophia’s citizenship and intelligence and going beyond recent discussions on the moral status or legal personhood of (...) AI robots, we analyse the performativity of Sophia from the perspective of what we call ‘political choreography’: drawing on phenomenological approaches to performance-oriented philosophy of technology. This paper proposes to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography that boosts the rise of the social robot market, rather than a statement about robot citizenship or artificial intelligence. We argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were choreographed to advance specific political interests. We illustrate our philosophical discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, which helps us to explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle functions hand in hand with advancing the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors. Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the movement of robots, we also criticize the notion of ‘embodied intelligence’ used in the context of social robotics and AI. In this way, we put the discussions about the robot’s rights or citizenship in the context of AI politics and economics. (shrink)

Organizations are altering their office settings to non-territorial workspaces, where employees do not have assigned desks but are supposed to choose freely where they sit. In this context, the metaphor of the nomad appears to be an understandable way to position the employees of organizations within non-territorial workspaces. Drawing on the empirical data of a study of organizational change in a Nordic media company, this study applied the discursive resources from the field of institutional interaction in the analysis. This article (...) presents how the participants employed the same metaphor of the nomad as a rhetorical strategy to support and resist change, and suggests that the use of a particular discourse does not necessarily contribute to the desired outcomes. Furthermore, the study shows how constructing senses of legitimacy involves the use of the same metaphor to construct arguments and counter-arguments toward the change. (shrink)

Many experts have emphasised that chatbots are not sufficiently mature to be able to technically diagnose patient conditions or replace the judgements of health professionals. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has significantly increased the utilisation of health-oriented chatbots, for instance, as a conversational interface to answer questions, recommend care options, check symptoms and complete tasks such as booking appointments. In this paper, we take a proactive approach and consider how the emergence of task-oriented chatbots as partially automated consulting systems can influence (...) clinical practices and expert–client relationships. We suggest the need for new approaches in professional ethics as the large-scale deployment of artificial intelligence may revolutionise professional decision-making and client–expert interaction in healthcare organisations. We argue that the implementation of chatbots amplifies the project of rationality and automation in clinical practice and alters traditional decision-making practices based on epistemic probability and prudence. This article contributes to the discussion on the ethical challenges posed by chatbots from the perspective of healthcare professional ethics. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to discuss some possible connections between philosophical proposals about the social organisation of science and developments towards a greater democratisation of science policy. I suggest that there are important similarities between one approach to objectivity in philosophy of science—Helen Longino’s account of objectivity as freedom from individual biases achieved through interaction of a variety of perspectives—and some ideas about the epistemic benefits of wider representation of various groups’ perspectives in science policy, as analysed by (...) Mark Brown. Given these similarities, I suggest that they allow one to approach developments in science policy as if one of their aims were epistemic improvement that can be recommended on the basis of the philosophical account; analyses of political developments inspired by these ideas about the benefits of inclusive dialogue can then be used for understanding the possibility to implement a philosophical proposal for improving the objectivity of science in practice. Outlining this suggestion, I also discuss the possibility of important differences between the developments in the two spheres and show how the concern about the possible divergence of politically motivated and epistemically motivated changes may be mitigated. In order to substantiate further the suggestion I make, I discuss one example of a development where politically motivated and epistemically motivated changes converge in practice—the development of professional ethics in American archaeology as analysed by Alison Wylie. I suggest that analysing such specific developments and getting involved with them can be one of the tasks for philosophy of science. In the concluding part of the paper I discuss how this approach to philosophy of science is related to a number of arguments about a more politically relevant philosophy of science. (shrink)

In her analysis of the politics of biotechnology, Sheila Jasanoff argued that modern democracy cannot be understood without an analysis of the ways knowledge is created and used in society. She suggested calling these ways to “know things in common” civic epistemologies. Jasanoff thus approached knowledge as fundamentally social. The focus on the social nature of knowledge allows drawing parallels with some developments in philosophy of science. In the first part of the paper, I juxtapose Jasanoff’s account with the philosopher (...) Helen Longino’s approach. Longino argued that objectivity of scientific knowledge is made possible by the social nature of knowledge production. In the process of community-wide discussion, claims that are not intersubjectively acceptable are rejected and communally acceptable knowledge emerges. Longino called this knowledge-creating critical dialogue transformative. I suggest that Longino’s account can be seen as providing epistemological support for the civic epistemologies Jasanoff described. They are capable of producing knowledge in the normative philosophical sense of the word to the degree that they are able to support this transformative critical dialogue. In the second part of the paper, I explore in the light of Longino’s criteria for effective knowledge-productive dialogue one of the controversies in biotechnology policy that Jasanoff analysed. I suggest that Longino’s criteria allow identifying some fundamental obstacles for initiating and maintaining this kind of responsive critical dialogue and that the controversy can be seen as caused by inability to overcome these obstacles. In such a case, the controversy signals an epistemic failure as well as a failure of democratic policy. (shrink)

Tim Räz has presented what he takes to be a new objection to Stewart Shapiro's ante rem structuralism. Räz claims that ARS conflicts with mathematical practice. I will explain why this is similar to an old problem, posed originally by John Burgess in 1999 and Jukka Keränen in 2001, and show that Shapiro can use the solution to the original problem in Räz's case. Additionally, I will suggest that Räz's proposed treatment of the situation does not provide an argument for (...) the in re over the ante rem approach. (shrink)

According to conventional morality, either a business manager maximizes profits and compromises on morality, or sacrifices profits in order to remain moral. Woiceshyn explains why this is a false dichotomy and offers rational egoism as an alternative moral code to managers who want to be both profitable and moral.

In their 2018 paper, Carolina Adler, Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn, Thomas Breu, Urs Wiesmann, and Christian Pohl propose that transferability of knowledge across cases in transdisciplinary research should be thought of in terms of arguments by analogy. We aim to advance this discussion about transferability by examining it in the light of recent ideas about knowledge transfer, extrapolation, and external validity in the philosophy of science. We problematise Adler et al.’s proposal by identifying the ‘transdisciplinarian’s circle’, due to which even knowledge (...) that could be of use in other projects may be identified too late for efficient knowledge transfer to take place. We then suggest that Steel’s ideas on overcoming the ‘extrapolator’s circle’ can serve as a source of inspiration for addressing the issue of the transdisciplinarian’s circle. (shrink)

This essay critically considers the differences and complementarities between Emmanuel Levinas’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s respective accounts of ontology and ethics. A comparative reading reveals that while both insist upon a relational conceptualization of subjectivity, they base relationality on differing notions of alterity. The simultaneous proximity and distance between these two thinkers’ respective transphenomological quests yield critical force that enables a mutual critique, while opening up productive avenues for overcoming some of the problems inherent to their views.

There has been a particular emphasis on knowledge and competence as increasingly important resources for successful enterprises. This notion of knowledge is based on “positive knowledge” that knowing is merely a constructive, linear and accumulative process. We will introduce the notion of “negative knowledge” that involves “giving up” or “bracketing” knowledge in certain situations. When experts encounter something that is incompatible with their knowledge, they should be sensitive enough to recognise a new situation by suspending their action. In addition to (...) exploring the idea of “unlearning”, the paper introduces three other aspects of negative knowledge: “to know what we do not know”, “to know what not to do” and the value of failures. Negative knowledge seems to be possible, useful, and even necessary in expert organisations since old ways of thinking or knowing something often prevent us to see new potentials. (shrink)

This article examines how the interactive capabilities of companion robots, particularly their materiality and animate movements, appeal to human users and generate an image of aliveness. Building on Husserl’s phenomenological notion of a ‘double body’ and theories of emotions as affective responses, we develop a new understanding of the robots’ simulated aliveness. Analyzing empirical findings of a field study on the use of the robot Zora in care homes for older people, we suggest that the aliveness of companion robots is (...) the result of a combination of four aspects: 1) material ingredients, 2) morphology, 3) animate movements guided by software programs and human operators as in Wizard of Oz-settings and 4) anthropomorphising narratives created by their users to support the robot’s performance. We suggest that narratives on affective states, such as, sleepiness or becoming frightened attached to the robot trigger users’ empathic feelings, caring and tenderness toward the robot. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap’s logical pluralism is often held to be one in which corresponding connectives in different logics have different meanings. This paper presents an alternative view of Carnap’s position, in which connectives can and do share their meaning in some contexts. This re-interpretation depends crucially on extending Carnap’s linguistic framework system to include meta-linguistic frameworks, those frameworks which we use to talk about linguistic frameworks. I provide an example that shows how this is possible, and give some textual evidence that (...) Carnap would agree with this interpretation. Additionally, I show how this interpretation puts the Carnapian position much more in line with the position given in Shapiro than had been thought before. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher argued that the freedom to pursue one's version of the good life is the main aim of Mill's argument for freedom of expression. According to Kitcher, in certain scientific fields, political and epistemological asymmetries bias research toward conclusions that threaten this most important freedom of underprivileged groups. Accordingly, Kitcher claimed that there are Millian grounds for limiting freedom of inquiry in these fields to protect the freedom of the underprivileged. -/- I explore Kitcher's argument in light of the (...) interpretation Helen Longino gave to Mill's argument. She argued that free critical dialogue in the community allows bias to be overcome, through intersubjective criticism of hypotheses and the background assumptions that frame them. I suggest that Longino's approach allows for the identification of the fundamental problems of the research programs Kitcher targeted, and for the rejection of their claims to knowledge. Thus it is possible to address Kitcher's problem without limiting freedom of speech. (shrink)

We analyze a series of interviews with Estonian humanities researchers to explore topics related to the beginning of academic careers and the relationships with supervisors and mentors. We show how researchers strive to have meaningful relationships and produce what they consider quality research in the conditions of a system that is very strongly oriented towards internationalization and project-based funding, where their efforts are compromised by a lack of policies helping them establish a stable position in academia. Leaving researchers to face (...) these obstacles alone places a great burden on them and may lead to a loss of talent in academia. Identifying and addressing these issues is thus important for both the well-being of early career researchers and the future of academia. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the theory that there is more than one right logic. Logical instrumentalism is the view that a logic is a correct logic if it can be used to fruitfully pursue some deductive inquiry. Logical instrumentalism is a version of logical pluralism, since more than one logic can be used fruitfully. In this paper, I will show that a logical instrumentalist must accept linear logic as a correct logic, since linear logic is useful for studying natural language syntax. (...) I further show that this means that the logical instrumentalist must accept a wide range of connectives, in particular concatenation. I end by explaining why this is a feature rather than a bug. (shrink)

The paper analyses issues related to supervision and support of early career researchers in Estonian academia. We use nine focus groups interviews conducted in 2015 with representatives of social sciences in order to identify early career researchers’ needs with respect to support, frustrations they may experience, and resources they may have for addressing them. Our crucial contribution is the identification of wider support networks of peers and colleagues that may compensate, partially or even fully, for failures of official supervision. On (...) the basis of our analysis we argue that support for early career researchers should take into account the resources they already possess but also recognise the importance of wider academic culture, including funding and employment patterns, and the roles of supervisors and senior researchers in ensuring successful functioning of support networks. Through analysing the conditions for the development of early career researchers – producers of knowledge – our paper contributes to social epistemology understood as analysis of specific forms of social organisation of knowledge production. (shrink)

Jc Beall and Greg Restall (Logical Pluralism. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2006) propose a logical pluralism where the corresponding connectives in each logic mean the same thing. They contrast this with a Carnapian pluralism, where different logics have corresponding connectives which do not share meanings. I will show that due to the manner in which connectives are given their meaning by Beall and Restall, relevant negation and intuitionistic negation cannot mean the same thing. Thus, their pluralism is at least partly Carnapian, (...) as not all the logics involved can have their corresponding connectives share meanings. (shrink)

Restall :279–291, 2014) proposes a new, proof-theoretic, logical pluralism. This is in contrast to the model-theoretic pluralism he and Beall proposed in Beall and Restall :475–493, 2000) and in Beall and Restall. What I will show is that Restall has not described the conditions on being admissible to the proof-theoretic logical pluralism in such a way that relevance logic is one of the admissible logics. Though relevance logic is not hard to add formally, one critical component of Restall’s pluralism is (...) that the relevance logic that gets added must have connectives which mean the same thing as the connectives in the already admitted logic. This is what I will show is not possible. (shrink)

Controversy arose when a humanoid robot named “Sophia” was given citizenship and did performances all over the world. Why should some robots gain citizenship? Going beyond recent discussions in robot ethics and human–robot interaction, and drawing on phenomenological approaches to political philosophy, actor-network theory, and performance-oriented philosophy of technology, we propose to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography: we argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were politically choreographed to advance economic interests. (...) Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the performance and movement of robots and illustrating our discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, we explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle and robotic performance advanced the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the power-related infrastructural dynamic that actualises in the interrelations of big data collection and the bodily movement of urbanites in contemporary cities. By drawing from Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenologies of the body and combining them with recent theorisations on choreography, material media theory and critical technology studies, the authors address city dwellers’ embodied relations with mobile devices and ambient technologies as integral to the micro-, meso- and macro-level production of urban (...) infrastructures. By way of discussing the technologically mediated kinaesthesia and movement trajectories of lived bodies, the chapter develops a novel conceptualisation of urban choreography for exploring the mechanisms through which dwelling-in-the-city today functions in a globally extensive cybernetic feedback loop with profit-motivated and surveillant big data operations. (shrink)

We are logical pluralists who hold that the right logic is dependent on the domain of investigation; different logics for different mathematical theories. The purpose of this article is to explore the ramifications for our pluralism concerning normativity. Is there any normative role for logic, once we give up its universality? We discuss Florian Steingerger’s “Frege and Carnap on the Normativity of Logic” as a source for possible types of normativity, and then turn to our own proposal, which postulates that (...) various logics are constitutive for thought within particular practices, but none are constitutive for thought as such. (shrink)

Most people assume that the natural resources of a country belong to its people. Theorists of cosmopolitan resource justice have recently questioned this assumption, arguing that extensive rights of peoples over natural resources cannot be justified. In response, defences of peoples’ resource rights, grounded in the value of self-determination, have been tepid. This paper argues against both positions. It advances the distinct thesis that popular resource sovereignty is justified as the resource rights allocation that maximizes well-being. This consequentialist account provides (...) superior normative foundations for peoples’ resource rights. (shrink)

A major conceptual dynamic in all major religious traditions is the need for purification and transformation of the individual in order to effect integration and maturation of the personality in the divine. Although the means by which this purification takes place differs according to the cultural and religious configurations of any given tradition, nevertheless a recurring image is that of an inner and outer odyssey. A major example is the threefold path of John of the Cross, which presents a psycho-spiritual (...) journey by which 'divine osmosis' can be realised, passing through the 'dark night of the soul', and culminating in 'spiritual marriage'. Although not accepted by many theoreticians and practitioners of mysticism, nevertheless the value of the Sanjuanist schemata still holds sway in contemporary society. (shrink)

1 The question of expression is essential for artistic practices; it designates how a material is articulated through sculptural gestures, how a musical idea is shaped by the dancer’s movements, an...

Typically, a logic consists of a formal or informal language together with a deductive system and/or a model-theoretic semantics. The language is, or corresponds to, a part of a natural language like English or Greek. The deductive system is to capture, codify, or simply record which inferences are correct for the given language, and the semantics is to capture, codify, or record the meanings, or truth-conditions, or possible truth conditions, for at least part of the language.

Anna Leuschner argues that there is problematic circularity in Helen Longino's approach that postulates the existence of some shared norms as a necessary precondition for well-functioning pluralistic communities. As an alternative, Leuschner proposes to approach the establishing of more pluralistic communities through political means on a case-by-case basis, taking relevant epistemic and political factors into account. In this paper, I argue that there is an alternative understanding of norms that avoids circularity. I do so by drawing on Isabelle Peschard's discussion (...) of shared practice. I go on to show that norms, so understood, are important in the cases where a political decision may not alone be sufficient for establishing a successful community. Specifically, I discuss pluralistic communities that include laypersons in possession of relevant expertise as an example. (shrink)

According to Helen Longino, objectivity is necessarily social as it depends on critical interactions in com- munity. Justin Biddle argues that Longino’s account presupposes individuals that are completely open to any criticism; as such individuals are in principle able to criticise their beliefs on their own, Longino’s account is not really social. In the first part of my paper I argue that even for completely open individuals, criticism for maintaining objectivity is only possible in community. In the second part I (...) question Biddle’s interpretation of Longino’s conception of the individual. I conclude that objectivity as Longino describes it is necessarily social. (shrink)

There was a time when both Rudolf Carnap and Jc Beall were thought to be arch logical pluralists. Beall has since renounced his pluralistic views, but Carnap is still largely regarded as a pluralist. In this paper, I will show that there is good reason to think that Carnap is not a logical pluralist, at least in the way he is presented in the literature. Instead, I argue, he can be seen as a Beall-style logical monist at the meta-level, in (...) line with the views expressed in Beall (APHI 14:1–29, 2017 and NOUS 28:30–54, 2018). (shrink)

The paper discusses kinaesthetic empathy based on the German philosopher Edith Stein’s theory of empathy. Applying Stein’s study of empathy, this paper examines empathy as a particular form of the act of knowing. Instead of a mere emotion, empathy entails a re-living or a placing ourselves ‘inside’ another’s experience. We may grasp another’s living, moving body as another centre orientation of the world through our own kinaesthetic sense and body topography. Kinaesthetic empathy seems to have a partial capacity to make (...) sense of others’ experiential movements and reciprocally our own bodily movements. It makes possible to understand the non-verbal kinetic experiences through which we may acquire knowledge of the other’s bodily movements on the basis of our own body topography. There is recognition that we never reach the other’s primordial movement experience. (shrink)

This paper is motivated by the need to respond to the spread of influential misinformation and manufactured ignorance, which places pressure on the work of experts in various sectors. To meet this need, the paper discusses the conditions required for expert testimony to evolve a reconceptualisation of negative capability as a new form of epistemic humility. In this regard, professional knowledge formation is not considered to be separate from the institutional and social processes and values that uphold its production. Drawing (...) attention to the structural and relational aspects of ignorance, as opposed to the individualistic and internal aspects, we rely on the sociology of knowledge, the social epistemologies and the feminist epistemologies that have played a fundamental role in the development of the investigation of ignorance. First, we analyse the criteria for epistemic humility based on prior theoretical discussions concerning negative knowledge as a form of reflective practice. Then, we seek to determine what kinds of strategies, virtues and skills experts need to have so as to ‘manage ignorance’ in socially complex situations. Finally, we suggest the reformulation of negative expertise as a phronetic skill for navigating through situations of ignorance and uncertainty in an epistemically and socially responsible manner. (shrink)

The approach to expert communities and political representation of non-experts in Harry Collins and Robert Evans’ elective modernism reflects the conviction that experts are not representative of ordinary citizens. I use an analysis of aspects of representation and the argument from inductive risk to argue that experts can be seen as representative of non-experts, when we understand representation as resemblance based on shared social perspectives and acknowledge the inevitable involvement of such perspectives in decisions under inductive risk. This, in turn, (...) has implications for some of the proposals about practices and institutions made in elective modernism. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is showing an increasing interest in the social aspects and the social organisation of science—the ways social values and social interactions and structures play a role in the creation of knowledge and the ways this role should be taken into account in the organisation of science and science policy. My thesis explores a number of issues related to this theme. I argue that a prominent approach to the social organisation of science—Philip Kitcher’s well-ordered science—runs into a number (...) of problems. They undermine its philosophical plausibility and practical usefulness. I agree with Kitcher that arguments about the social organisation of science should recognise profound societal consequences of science. Kitcher argues that the appropriate organisation of science should therefore take into account laypersons’ values and needs when making decisions concerning research planning, evaluation and application. My criticisms show that this is not enough. Drawing on Helen Longino ideas, I argue that laypersons’ perspectives and knowledge may also be relevant when doing research. In order to show how more inclusive research practices may be possible, I discuss connections between philosophy of science and some developments in science policy, which has also recently shown considerable interest in democratic participation. I demonstrate how public participation experiments in science policy may sometimes be close enough to what the philosopher would recommend. Their analysis can thus be helpful for understanding how societal developments may provide opportunities for the involvement of laypersons in science and what factors may endanger its success. I conclude that a way to pursue a more socially relevant philosophy of science is to focus on the points of contact and possibilities of cooperation between philosophical proposals and these public participation initiatives. (shrink)

Although music and other forms of art can develop in diverse directions, they are linked to the genetic profiles of populations. Hearing music is a strong environmental trigger that serves as an excellent model to study the crosstalk between genes and the environment. We propose that the ability to enjoy and practice music requires musical aptitude, which is a common and innate trait facilitating the enjoyment and practice of music. The innate drive for music can only have arisen by exposure (...) to music, and it develops with motivation and training in musically rich environments. Recent genomic approaches have shown that the genes responsible for inner ear development, auditory pathways and neurocognitive processes may underlay musical aptitude. It is expected that genomic approaches can be applied to musical traits and will reveal new biological mechanisms that affect human evolution, brain function, and civilisation. (shrink)

The idea of the right to mobility has been fundamental to modern Western citizenship and is expressed in many legal and government documents. Although there is widespread acceptance regarding the importance of mobility in older adults, there have been few attempts to develop ethical and theoretical tools to portray mobility equalities in old age. This paper develops a novel conceptualisation of kinetic values focusing on older adults whose ability to move has been restricted for internal and external reasons. Informed by (...) the phenomenological theory of kinaesthesia, I suggest that kinetic values are related to four principal dimensions: self-motion, being-moved, co-motion, and forced movement. I assume that these dimensions can address the key dilemma of human dignity among older adults who suffer from losing their autonomy and agency through their mobility impairments and who are at risk of being confined to their homes. To concretise the formulation of kinetic values, I study movement as part of technological equipment and urban infrastructure to examine what kinds of kinetic values mobility services and assistive robots convey for older adults in smart urban environments. By bridging disciplines, the phenomenological approach provides a novel understanding of mobility and the interplay among assistive technologies, kinaesthesia, and urban technological infrastructure. The approach suggests that kinetic values should be interpreted more comprehensively so that kinaesthesia can become better identified as a positive life-promoting practice. (shrink)

In this article I respond to Heathcote’s “On the Exhaustion of Mathematical Entities by Structures”. I show that his ontic exhaustion issue is not a problem for ante rem structuralists. First, I show that it is unlikely that mathematical objects can occur across structures. Second, I show that the properties that Heathcote suggests are underdetermined by structuralism are not so underdetermined. Finally, I suggest that even if Heathcote’s ontic exhaustion issue if thought of as a problem of reference, the structuralist (...) has a readily available solution. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing held that Russell’s Doctrine of External Relations was incorrect. Interestingly, she also held that Bradley’s Doctrine of Internal Relations was problematic. In this paper, I’ll explain why she held this position, and develop what I will call the Doctrine of I/E relations, which will explain her middle ground. I start with a brief explanation of Russell’s Logical Atomism and his commitment to the Doctrine of External Relations. Then, to explain the Doctrine of I/E Relations, I take a brief (...) detour through Stebbing’s theory of directional analysis. This will allow us to conclude by presenting the new Doctrine. (shrink)