Western Kenya has been a labour-exporting region for over a century, with many households straddling both rural and urban contexts. While the spatial separation of migrants from their rural places of origin represented the first tangible metabolic rift within Kenyan agricultural production systems, that rift is being reshaped as rural families engage in new forms of interconnection with migrant members. These changes appear to be driven by the ongoing crisis of agrarian livelihoods and are supported by the advent of cellphone (...) communication and mobile money transfer technologies. Interviews and ethnographic data collected in a western Kenyan community and amongst its out-migrants reveal the role of cellphones in mediating social, financial, and knowledge flows within multilocational households. The increased ease of communicating and sending money is associated with less frequent physical movements between rural and urban settings, with commensurate disruptions in the acquisition and development of agro-ecological knowledge, and a shifting burden of agricultural labour. Gender relations are also put under further stress: migrant men remain involved in rural affairs but appear to be using cellphone technologies to reinvent their household roles, replacing previously social or labour contributions with financial ones and by asserting claims over the on-farm decision-making of rural households previously considered female-headed. (shrink)

This chapter argues that SNL tends, with some exceptions, away from the philosophical and satirical areas of the spectrum and more towards the smart‐assical, silly side. Moreover, just like SNL sketches, Aristophanes' plays often subjected contemporary figures, celebrities, and politicians to intense ridicule. The sketch provided SNL a way of criticizing its own network by allowing the writers and actors to adopt a different persona, thus creating a safe distance between critic and target. Setting aside how accurately the scenario sketched (...) at the outset depicts typical SNL performances, it should be noted that it does paint a fair picture of staged satire in Athens, Greece, circa. As in the case of Aristophanes, most of SNL's satirical qualities revolve around political debates, issues, and, most famously, figures. (shrink)

Timon is an ancient Greek skeptic fed up with dogmatic nonsense about the beginnings of the universe. One night, he dreams of a boisterous "Battle of Brains" between history's major religious and philosophical authorities. Highly satirical, IN THE BEGINNING depicts this battle in a clear and readable style, faithfully detailing each contender's cosmology, including wisecracks and barbs aimed at rival sages. Timon himself pulls no punches in attempting to resolve the debate, even bashing belief itself. A simple spectator, however, gets (...) to throw the last punch when he divulges "The Real Truth of Everything.". (shrink)

The temple schematics in the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), that is, New Jerusalem and Temple Scroll, has often been comparatively examined with the sanctuary structures in the Hebrew Bible (HB) (Ezk 40-48 and Num 2). Typically, in scholarship, the irreconcilable differences between all accounts (regarding the size, shape, name-gate ordering, etc.) is underscored, thus rendering a literary conundrum. This article argues that New Jerusalem and Temple Scroll drew from both Ezekiel 40-48 and Numbers 2 in different ways, purporting the sect(s)'s (...) theologies and ideologies which accords, further, with the life setting of the Qumran communities; the influence of Numbers in the DSS is underscored. These aspects include (1) the eastern orientation of sacred structures and the compound at Khirbet Qumran, (2) the precise locale of the communities at the Dead Sea vis-à-vis Ezekiel 47 and (3) the desert encampment configuration together with its militaristic overtones in Numbers, which corresponds to the DSS sect(s)'s apocalyptic expectations as indicated in the War Scroll. Consequently, the Qumran sect(s) truly saw itself as an alternative priesthood of the forthcoming restored temple of God, even as in the interim they functioned as an alternative sanctuary (4QFlor; 4QMMT; 1QS). The import of Numbers upon the DSS sect(s)'s temple ideologies and priestly theologies is, therefore, equivalent to that of Ezekiel. CONTRIBUTION: This article traces theological themes of temple and priestly ideologies between and among the Qumran literature and Hebrew Scriptures; both the respective library or canon and methodological approach are core to the historical thought's aim and scope of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What is Fantasy?Brian Laetz and Joshua J. JohnstonWizards, elves, dragons, and trolls—this is certainly the stuff of fantasy, populating the fictions of such giants as Tolkien, no less than the juvenilia of many aspiring writers. However, it is much easier to identify typical elements of fantasy, than it is to understand the category of fantasy itself. There can be little doubt that, in practice, the genre is pretty (...) well defined, concretely manifesting itself in the shelves reserved for it in video shops and bookstores. But stating why a work belongs on these shelves, rather than those in the near vicinity, such as horror and science fiction, or those more remote, like plain old fiction, presents a real challenge. Certainly, a mere few feet could separate fantasy from the other shelves, but the conceptual distance those feet represent appears great indeed. What, if anything, distinguishes this genre from other categories of mass art. In other words, what is fantasy?To begin, fantasy is a transmedia genre, since there are fantasy novels and movies, for instance, as is illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga and its recent cinematic adaptation. It is interesting to note that fantasy includes works from other media as well, such as paintings, which often accompany fantasy narratives, like Frank Frazetta's recognizable illustrations for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. Forms of entertainment are also affiliated with the genre, such as role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons, though one might balk at considering such things even forms of mass art? Nonetheless, despite the variety of media and entertainments associated with fantasy, [End Page 161] narratives occupy a fundamental place within the genre. For paintings, drawings, and the like are only recognizably fantastic given some narrative background that tells us what wizards, trolls, and dragons look like.1 Plausibly, it is what allows us to see that a drawing depicts an elf, for example, rather than a child with odd pointy ears. Thus, even if some works of fantasy are, strictly speaking, non-narrative, fantastic narratives remain fundamental, since these other works would not be classified as fantasy without them. This warrants initially setting aside things like fantasy games and paintings to focus on narratives. What, precisely, makes a narrative fantastic?First, fantastic narratives are essentially fictional. For regardless of how one ultimately understands the nature of fiction, the notion of true fantasy seems patently incoherent, quite unlike, say, true crime. And it must be stressed that this point should be compatible with any theory of fiction. Second, the sort of things that can make a work fantastic, like wizards and dragons, must be prominent in the work—they cannot be minor details. For example, had there been a two-minute scene in Spartacus in which someone cast a spell, the scene would have been fantastic, but ultimately the movie would not be classified any differently; you would still find it on the drama shelf. Moreover, this condition is not peculiar to fantasy.2 For instance, no one who has suffered through a Steven Seagal film would seriously classify it as romance or even action-romance, simply because it has a minor romantic subplot. Fantasy is no different from any other genre in this regard: whatever features define a genre must be prominent in a work in order for it to belong to the relevant genre. Third, the sort of content that can make a work fantastic must not solely be viewed as symbols for things that are not fantastic. In other words, these elements cannot just be taken as allegorical.3 This alone would seem to disqualify George Orwell's Animal Farm from the genre, since most read the intelligent animals as merely symbols portraying various factions in communist Russia. It should be noted that the actual intentions of the author probably matter little here. For example, even if scholars discovered that Tolkien merely intended the Middle Earth saga as an elaborate allegory, it would remain fantasy; few would be tempted to move the books to another shelf. Fourth, the relevant content must not solely be mocked or lampooned within the work.4 This is necessary... (shrink)

Through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States expanded its size by over 800,000 square miles. But neither President Thomas Jefferson nor Congress knew exactly what they had bought until 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned from their famous expedition. One of the most significant contributions of the Expedition was a better perception of the geography of the Northwest. Lewis and Clark prepared approximately 140 maps and filled in the main outlines of the previously blank map of (...) the northwestern United States. Robert I. Field has done much the same for the vast territory of U.S. health care regulation.On the front cover of Fields new book, Health Care Regulation in America: Complexity, Confrontation, and Compromise, is a picture of a giant three-dimensional labyrinth. Rarely is cover art so perfectly appropriate. (shrink)

Kassner contends that the violation of the basic human rights of the Rwandan Tutsis morally obliged the international community to intervene militarily to stop the genocide. This compelling argument, grounded in basic rights, runs counter to the accepted view on the moral nature of humanitarian intervention. It has profound implications for our understanding of the moral nature of humanitarian military intervention, global justice and the role moral principles should play in the practical deliberations of states. A new approach to (...) the intersection of human and sovereign rights that is of tremendous moral, political and legal importance to theorists working in international relations today Challenges the immutability of the right of non-intervention held by sovereign states, assessing when it becomes right for the international community to intervene militarily in order to avoid another Rwanda. (shrink)

Global justice is, at its core, about moral obligations to distant others. But which obligations ought to be included is a matter of considerable debate. In the discussion that follows I will explicate and challenge two objections to the inclusion of foundationally positive obligations in our account of global justice. The first objection is based on the proposition that negative obligations possess and positive obligations lack a property necessary for a moral demand to be a matter justice. The second objection (...) is that even the most trivial positive obligation becomes overly burdensome when applied to the global arena. And, though I do not offer any particular substantive account of positive obligations to distant others; I assess some of the implications that would arise were positive obligations to distant others to be included in our account of global justice. (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in this paper is (...) that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge—either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how). (shrink)

This book reveals and discusses the foundations of law and justice. Fifteen leading lawyers and philosophers of law, representing thirteen nations and fifteen different philosophical schools examine the value and purpose of law, and the nature and requirements of law and justice. Some of the world's most learned and provocative legal scholars address the ultimate questions of legal and social philosophy from all angles and the broadest possible perspective, with special reference to the work of Mortimer Newlin Stead Sellers, and (...) the republican, liberal, and analytical schools of legal thought. The conclusions reached here are not fully unanimous, congruent or conclusive, but they represent the pinnacle of legal scholarship as it exists today and furnish the necessary basis for any future study of law, justice, or the ultimate requirements of just, effective and legitimate law and society. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists about knowledge-how hold, contra Ryle, that knowing how to do something is just a kind of propositional knowledge. In a similar vein, traditional reductivists about understanding-why insist, in accordance with a tradition beginning with Aristotle, that the epistemic standing one attains when one understands why something is so is itself just a kind of propositional knowledge—viz., propositional knowledge of causes. A point that has been granted on both sides of these debates is that if these reductive proposals are (...) right, then knowledge-how and understanding-why should be susceptible to the same extent as knowledge-that is to being undermined by epistemic luck. This paper reports experimental results that test these luck-based predictions. Interestingly, these results suggest a striking positive correlation between self-reported philosophical expertise and attributions of knowledge-how, understanding-why and knowledge-that which run contrary to reductive proposals. We contextualize these results by showing how they align very well with a particular kind of overarching non-reductive proposal, one that two of the authors have defended elsewhere according to which knowledge-how and understanding-why, but not knowledge-that, essentially involve cognitive achievement. We conclude by situating the interpretive narrative advanced within contemporary discussions about the role of expertise in philosophical judgment. (shrink)

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in this paper is (...) that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge – either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how). (shrink)

We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, and (...) discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary folk understanding of morality involves a rejection of moral relativism and a belief in objective moral truths. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist intuitions when confronted with questions about individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions as they were confronted with questions about individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. In light of these data, the authors hypothesize (...) that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. [NOTE: This is a reprint of Sarkissian et al 2011]. (shrink)

Many have attempted to respond to arguments for the incompatibility of freedom with divine foreknowledge by claiming that God’s beliefs about the future are explained by what the world is like at that future time. We argue that this response adequately advances the discussion only if the theist is able to articulate a model of foreknowledge that is both clearly possible and compatible with freedom. We investigate various models the theist might articulate and argue that all of these models fail.

In both Plato and Thomas Aquinas, we find proposals to understand piety or religion as justice toward God/the gods. One issue with this proposal is what can be called the problem of human-divine reciprocity: Since justice would seem to require human beings to make a return for what they have received from God/the gods, how can this be done without implying God/the gods lack something that human beings can supply? I outline the account of piety/religion as justice toward the divine (...) in both Plato and Aquinas, noting how the reciprocity problem arises along the way. Then I defend a proposed solution drawn from Aquinas: that glory, or the manifestation of divine goodness, is what God seeks in pious human action, yet without implying any benefit to God thereby. (shrink)