Drowning has been the cause of over 2.5 million preventable deaths in the past decade. Despite the fact that the majority of drownings occur in open water, assessment of water safety competency typically occurs in swimming pools. The assessment of water safety competency in open water environments brings with it a few difficulties, but also promises tremendous benefits. The aim of this position paper is to discuss the benefits and caveats of conducting assessments in open water environments as opposed to (...) closed and controlled environments, and to provide recommendations for evidence-based practice. The first theoretical section discusses the effects of the environment and key variables on various factors of assessment. These discussions are linked to the two perspectives of representative learning design and information processing theory. The second section presents two pilot studies of relevance and provides practical implications for assessment of water safety competency. It seems that a combination of pool-based practice and open water education may be ideal in assessing aquatic skills competency. Assessment in open water presents clear benefits regarding validity, but often poses seemingly unsurmountable barriers, which providers may have reservations about in the absence of clear evidence. Hence this article provides a robust discussion about competency assessment and signals the practical importance of faithfully reproducing the environment in which skilled behavior is most relevant. (shrink)

A travers la vingtaine de textes qui composent cet ouvrage, portant sur des savoirs et des pratiques de l'Afrique noire, l'auteur fonde son analyse sur l'hypothèse suivante : un invariant, plus significatif que tous les autres, occupe le coeur de la pensée africaine. Ce signifié ultime, c'est l'homme. Penser l'humain : la part africaine est une investigation philosophique sur des objets aussi variés que les mythes et les cosmogonies ; la conception et l'organisation de l'espace-temps ; la nature et la (...) fonction du savoir ; l'idéologie et le pouvoir ; le sacré et le profane ; l'idée de nombre et les spéculations sur ses usages. La recherche d'une unité aux discours portant sur ces différents objets trouve sa justification dans un avant-propos intitulé "La part africaine", formulation d'une problématique dont l'auteur s'emploie à dissiper les ambiguïtés et les équivoques pour mieux en souligner l'intérêt. Une manière de rappeler que si la réflexion sur l'homme et sa place dans l'univers peut être considérée comme un trait commun à tous les hommes, de toutes les cultures, cet universel s'incarne dans des profils que sont ses différentes manifestations dans le particulier. Dire de manière quasi obsessionnelle, au détriment d'autres approches du réel, que sans l'homme il n'y a pas de signification du monde, constitue ce qu'Abdoulaye Elimane Kane croit être le fond de la pensée africaine. (shrink)

Hearing Double is an extended meditation on the jazz standard that brings together both musical analysis and philosophical analysis to offer a novel theory of musical works. Rather than focus on works of classical music, which has been the main focus of most Anglophone philosophy of music, Hearing Double focuses on "jazz standards" and attempts to theorize what makes them ontologically and historically specific and important. In this theory, standards are understood to emerge from networks of musical performances. Part I (...) describes the ontology of these musical networks by considering two musical processes, "replication" and "nomination," and their interaction. Part II discusses the historical conditions that encouraged standards to emerge. These conditions promoted an auditory culture where new songs were expected to circulate in ever-changing performances and arrangements. By weaving together ontological theory and auditory cultural history, Hearing Double challenges conventional understandings of the jazz repertoire, and opens up a new method for understanding the history, purpose, meaning, and aesthetics of jazz standards. (shrink)

When Ron Giere introduced perspectivism into philosophy of science, he provided a perspectivist analysis of both scientific instruments and scientific theorizing. Today, there is a burgeoning literature that extends Giere’s analysis of theorizing, with many philosophers examining the perspectivist approach to aspects of theorizing such as models, laws, explanations, and so on. However, relatively little attention has been paid to Giere’s analysis of instruments. In this article, I hope to fill this gap. I argue that the perspectivist analysis of instruments (...) should be rejected. First, I give a general account of the kind of instrumentation relevant to instrumental perspectivism, drawing on Cartwright’s notion of nomological machines, which forms the basis of my criticism of Giere’s argument for instrumental perspectivism. Next, I present the case against instrumental perspectivism. I argue that instrumental perspectivism is dependent on theoretical perspectivism in a way that robs it of philosophical significance, and that it introduces new puzzles while adding little to our understanding of instruments. (shrink)

Le vécu dont je tire ce récit est mon expérience d'homme vivant avec une maladie chronique, l'asthme, dont les périodes alternées, plus ou moins longues, de crise et de rémission me donnèrent envie d'extrapoler sur le thème plus large du plaisir et de la douleur, retenant déjà comme titre provisoire de mon ouvrage Le plaisir et l'ennui, ces deux termes visant une extension de l'analyse au-delà des seules questions de santé et de maladie, incluant par conséquent, leurs équivalents et synonymes (...) dans la vie individuelle et collective. Entre-temps, mes enfants qui n'ont connu que deux de leurs grands-parents, sur le tard, et presque rien de la vie au Fouta alors que nos références familiales et nos évocations quotidiennes en sont remplies ; qui m'ont vu entrer dans la vie active et m'engager politiquement sans en comprendre toujours les tenants et les aboutissants, revinrent plusieurs fois à la charge pour me suggérer d'écrire sur la famille, sur ma petite expérience d'enseignant et d'homme politique, sur les hommes et les femmes qui m'ont marqué et, surtout, sur la place que j'accorde à l'amitié, à la fraternité et à la solidarité, trois notions qu'ils m'ont entendu évoquer souvent et qui, à ce qu'il leur semblait, importent, aujourd'hui, plus aux yeux des jeunes qu'à ceux des adultes. (shrink)

​While it may appear that generative AI has mastered the mystery of the human mind and released its full power, The Emergence of Mind: Where Technology Ends and We Begin demonstrates the profound and fundamental limitations of the technology and its use as a model of human thinking. In response, the book offers an emergent model of the human mind rooted in our experiences as living, sentient, social and conscious beings. The text explores the nature of meaning in human cognition (...) and the critical importance of the experience of ideas. In so doing, it offers insights into the cultivation of specific generative capacities of the human mind. (shrink)

How can we register the participation of a range of elements, extending beyond the human subject, in the production of HIV events? In the context of proposals around biomedical prevention, there is a growing awareness of the need to find ways of responding to complexity, as everywhere new combinations of treatment, behavior, drugs, norms, meanings and devices are coming into encounter with one another, or are set to come into encounter with one another, with a range of unpredictable effects. In (...) this paper I consider the operation of various framing devices that attribute responsibility and causation with regard to HIV events. I propose that we need to sharpen our analytic focus on what these devices do, their performativity—that is, their full range of worldly implications and effects. My primary examples are the criminal law and the randomized control trial. I argue that these institutions operate as framing devices: They attribute responsibility for HIV events and externalize other elements and effects in the process. Drawing on recent work in science and technology studies as well as queer theory, I set out an analytic frame that marks out a new role for HIV social research. Attentiveness to the performative effects of these devices is crucial, I suggest, if we want better to address the global HIV epidemic. (shrink)

According to constructive empiricists, accepting a scientific theory involves belief only that it is true of the observable world, where observability is defined in terms of what is detectable by the unaided senses. On this view, scientific instruments are machines that generate new observable data, but this data need not be interpreted as providing access to a realm of phenomena beyond what is revealed by the senses. A recent challenge to the constructive empiricist account of instruments appeals to the extended (...) mind thesis, according to which cognitive processes are sometimes constituted not just by brain activity, but can extend into the rest of the body and the surrounding environment. If this is right, scientific instruments may, in the right circumstances, literally become part of our perceptual processes. In this article, I examine this extended perception argument, and I find that it fails for the vast majority of scientific instruments. Even if the extended mind thesis is accepted, the constructive empiricist can draw a line between observables and unobservables that makes very few concessions to the realist. (shrink)

This introduction outlines the importance that Hans-Georg Backhaus’s transcript of Adorno’s 1962 seminar on ‘Marx and the Basic Concepts of Sociological Theory’ has for shedding light on the relationship between Adorno’s critical theory and the critique of political economy. PartIsignals the importance of the seminar by assaying the Anglophone scholarship on Adorno. PartIIcontextualises the seminar in the development of his thought. PartsIIIandIVfocus on what the transcript tells us about Adorno’s interpretation of Marx and the importance this interpretation held for Adorno’s (...) critical social theory. PartVpoints to the influence this interpretation of the critique of political economy had on the formation of the New German Reading of Marx. (shrink)

Conversation-as-material is a language-based artistic research practice for attempting to speak from within the experience of collaborative artistic exploration, a linguistic practice attentive to the lived experience of aesthetic co-creation. The practice of conversation-as-material, which forms the basis of this article, has evolved through tentative exploration of the questions: How can the shared act of conversation bring into reflective awareness the live and lived, yet often hidden or undisclosed, experience of artistic practice and process, especially within collaboration? How can the (...) event of conversation be developed as an artistic research practice for attempting to give tangibility, whilst also remaining in fidelity, to the pre-reflective aspects of this lived experience? Considered less as a means for talking about, conversation-as-material may be understood as a practice for inviting immanent, inter-subjective modes of verbal-linguistic sense-making emerging through different voices enmeshed in live exchange. Conversation — from con- meaning ‘with, together’ and versare, ‘to turn, bend’; or else, from conversare — ‘to turn about, to turn about with’. Conversation-as-material has emerged as a practice of collaborative writing, which unfolds through the interplay of different voices ‘turning about’ together in conversation. In this sense, the practice can be differentiated from that of interview — for in the practice of conversation-as-material there is no researcher/researched dichotomy. Within the practice, an attempt is made to develop an approach to writing that finds expression first through verbal conversation, which is then subsequently distilled, even densified, towards poetic text. Conversation-as-material involves the gradual revelation of an artistic-poetic, perhaps even phenomenological, mode of emergent writing for speaking from the experience of collaborative co-creation, where linguistic content is not already known in advance, but rather emerges in and through the lived working-with of language. The practice of conversation-as-material thus comprises a quadripartite process of conversation, transcription, distillation, and presentation, where each part involves the activation of a particular aesthetic or poetic mode of attention, perhaps even a specific phenomenological attitude or disposition. (shrink)

Adorning the Country with Ruins -- The Western Baroque Landscape -- The Irish Tours -- Designing Picturesque Ireland -- Epilogue: Studies in a Point of View.

This article examines how the formation of markets in bottled water has relied on assembling a particular subject: the subject of hydration. The discourse of hydration is a conspicuous feature of efforts to market bottled water, allowing companies to appeal to scientifically framed principles and ideas of health in order to position the product as an essential component in self-health and healthy lifestyles. Alongside related principles, such as the ‘8 × 8 rule’, hydration has done much to establish new practices (...) of water drinking and consumption in which the consumer appears to be always at risk of dehydration and must engage in practices of ‘frequent sipping’. This article traces the emergence of the concept of hydration from its origins in exercise science and explores its circulation, contemporary uses and purchase. I argue that the appeal to biomedical languages and concepts found in the discourse of hydration connects with much broader ways of conceiving and acting upon the self that have become prevalent in contemporary society – what Rose and Novas call ‘biological citizenship’ – indicating how the ensemble of hydration participates in wider-ranging transformations in forms of rule. The story of hydration reveals how biomedical techniques of the self can be made to double up as ‘market devices’ by offering specific procedures for assessing the self and calculating the body’s needs. In order to grasp these developments, I position the health sciences, and health and fitness in particular, as a potent site of popular culture in which bodies learn to be affected by the procedures of scientific experiment. A critical grasp of this context is best enabled, I argue, by situating the producers and consumers of scientific principles and commercial products as embodied and looking at their interconnection in processes of emergence. Through these means, we can begin to develop a fully materialized account of the question: how have we become so thirsty? (shrink)

A short story exploring cloning and the Teletransporter Thought Experiment. Rather than abstract consideration, the focus is on the first-personal experience.

That remark, by a long forgotten critic, was meant as a rebuke for the painter who did not work from sketches. Jean Simeon Chardin's counter.

Most jurisdictions require that a mental capacity assessment be conducted using a functional model whose definition includes several abilities. In England and Wales and in increasing number of countries, the law requires a person be able to understand, to retain, to use or weigh relevant information and to communicate one’s decision. But interpreting and applying broad and vague criteria, such as the ability ‘to use or weigh’ to a diverse range of presentations is challenging. By examining actual court judgements of (...) capacity, we previously developed a descriptive typology of justifications used in the application of the Mental Capacity Act criteria. We here critically optimise this typology by showing how clear definitions—and thus boundaries—between the criteria can be achieved if the ‘understanding’ criterion is used narrowly and the multiple rationales that fall under the ability to ‘use or weigh’ are specifically enumerated in practice. Such a typology-aided practice, in theory, could make functional capacity assessments more transparent, accountable, reliable and valid. It may also help to create targeted supports for decision making by the vulnerable. We also discuss how the typology could evolve legally and scientifically, and how it lays the groundwork for clinical research on the abilities enumerated by the MCA. No data are available. This paper does not report any original data. (shrink)

This book critically reviews all principal contributions to the American animal rights debate by activists, campaigners, academics, and lawyers, while placing animal rights in context with other related and competing movements.

Focusing on the concepts and interactions of free will, moral responsibility, and determinism, this text represents the most up-to-date account of the four major positions in the free will debate. Four serious and well-known philosophers explore the opposing viewpoints of libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism The first half of the book contains each philosopher’s explanation of his particular view; the second half allows them to directly respond to each other’s arguments, in a lively and engaging conversation Offers the reader (...) a one of a kind, interactive discussion Forms part of the acclaimed Great Debates in Philosophy series. (shrink)

Robert Kane provides a critical overview of debates about free will of the past half century, relating this recent inquiry to the broader history of the free will issue and to vital currents of twentieth century thought. Kane also defends a traditional libertarian or incompatibilist view of free will, employing arguments that are both new to philosophy and that respond to contemporary developments in physics and biology, neuro science, and the cognitive and behavioral sciences.

The principal concern of this paper is to track the first wave of criticism directed against Deleuze's relation to Hegelianism as it has appeared in the English-speaking world. To this end, we assess the criticisms offered by Stephen Houlgate, Judith Butler, and Catherine Malabou, each of whom, in their respective ways, accuse Deleuze of misreading Hegel, claiming that his rejection of Hegelianism merely reinforces a secret or unacknowledged Hegelianism inherent in his own critique. Despite the brisk treatment Houlgate grants Deleuze, (...) his charges are by far the most serious, and hence it is to these that much of the discussion is dedicated; but the aim is to show how each of these claims concerning Deleuze's misreading of Hegel themselves involve a misreading of Deleuze. (shrink)

The popularity of Deleuze and Guattari is an undeniable precedent in current theoretical exchanges, and it could be stated without much contention that one's theoretical positioning must at some point deal with the salient conceptual offerings of Deleuze and Guattari, especially their double-opus, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus wherein a wealth of critique abounds. However, the significant trends concerning Deleuze and Guattari ‘scholarship’ may be jeopardised by the use of certain conceptual themes and methods in their work that are distorted (...) and employed by big business looking to secure their legacies of power by means of a control mechanism that looks to subjugate an entire world by means of ‘globalitarianism’. Our aim here will be to use McDonald's Corporation as an example of how the theoretical offerings of Deleuze and Guattari have been indirectly and hastily deployed for corporate ends, how these attempts are counter-Deleuzian, and to answer at least one of Žižek's criticisms against Deleuze. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 673-688.

Four Views on Free Will is a robust and careful debate about free will, how it interacts with determinism and indeterminism, and whether we have it or not. Providing the most up-to-date account of four major positions in the free will debate, the second edition of this classic text presents the opposing perspectives of renowned philosophers John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas. -/- Substantially revised throughout, this new volume contains eight in-depth chapters, almost entirely rewritten (...) for the new edition, in which the authors state their different positions on the debate, offer insights into how their views have evolved over the past fifteen years, respond to recent critical literature in the field, and interact and engage with each other in dialogue. In the first four chapters the authors defend their distinctive views about free will: libertarianism, compatibilism, hard incompatibilism, and revisionism. The subsequent four chapters consist of direct replies by each of the authors to the other three. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The judgments of conscientious and informed experts play a central role in two elements of clinical equipoise. The first, and most widely discussed, element involves ensuring that no participant in a randomized trial is allocated to a level of treatment that everyone agrees is substandard. The second, and less often discussed, element involves ensuring that trials are likely to generate social value by producing the information necessary to resolve a clinically meaningful uncertainty or disagreement about the relative merits of a (...) set of interventions. The distribution of judgments in expert communities can take many forms, each with important implications for whether a trial satisfies one or both elements of clinical equipoise. In this article we use a graphical approach to represent three ways in which expert community uncertainty can vary: by spread, modality, and skew. Understanding these different distributions of expert judgment has three important implications: it helps to make operational the requirement of social value, it shows that some conditions for initiating studies to promote social value diverge from common assumptions about clinical equipoise, and it has important implications for how trials should be designed and monitored, and what patients should be told during informed consent. (shrink)

While Adorno has tended to be read as a critic of the administered world and the consumer industry rather than a Marxist, Adorno and Marx establishes Adorno's negative dialectics as fundamental for understanding Marx's critique of political economy. This conception of the critique of political economy as a critical theory marks both a radical departure from traditional Marxist scholarship and from traditional readings of Adorno's work and warns against identifying Adorno with Marx or Marx with Adorno. Rather, it highlights the (...) intersection between Adorno's critical theory and Marx's critique of political economy that produces a critical theory of economic objectivity that moves beyond Marxian economics and Adornonian social theory. Adorno and Marx offers an ingenious account of critical social theory. Its subversion of the economic categories of political economy contributes to the cutting-edge of contemporary social theory and its critique of social practice. (shrink)

Collaborative research practices in the field of plant genetic resources must follow the principles of fairness and equity as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). In this context the concepts of fairness and equity generally refer to the substantive and procedural dimensions associated with sharing the benefits of this research. But neither term is clearly defined by these international treaties, and the meanings attributed to (...) the concepts vary among different societies. This paper looks at the question of how to account for the diversity among value systems when conducting research that implicates diverse stakeholders and respects the requirements of fairness and equity. We incorporated an auto-ethnography method developed as part of a multi-stakeholder network involved in research projects on plant genetic resources in West Africa. A theatrical device was used as a framework for testing the principles of fairness and equity, helping us to collectively identify feelings of injustice, and explore the conditions for making collaborative research practices more ethical in ways that respect the perspectives of different stakeholders. In an environment of extensive political and socio-cognitive inequality, this approach makes it possible to explain the criteria relating to interactional justice and expectations in terms of socio-political and socio-emotional benefits. It also invites us to consider the principles of fairness and equity in a framework of ethical competence that goes beyond international directives. (shrink)