ArgumentThis article explores the history of mummy unwrappings in the West, culminating in Margaret Murray's public unrolling of two mummies in Manchester in 1908. Mummy unwrappings as a practice have shifted often between public spectacles which displayed and objectified exotic artifacts, and scientific investigations which sought to reveal medical and historical information about ancient life. Although others have looked at Murray's work in the context of the history of mummy studies, I argue that her work should be viewed culturally (...) as poised between spectacle and science, drawing morbid public interest while also producing ground-breaking scientific work that continues to this day. Murray's main goal was to excite the interest of the public while at the same time educating them in the true history of ancient Egypt, while ascertaining new scientific information and contributing to the scholarly interpretations of ancient Egypt. (shrink)

Thomas Friedman’s best-selling The World is Flat has exerted much influence in the west by providing both an accessible analysis of globalisation and its economic and social effects, and a powerful cultural metaphor for globalisation. In this review, we more closely examine Friedman’s notion of the social contract, the moral centre of his hopeful vision of a globalised world. While Friedman’s social contract holds a more generous view of social and state obligation than his neoliberal economic analysis might otherwise (...) allow, his fallacious assumptions about education rest on poorly argued claims about the nature of human beings, the proper aims of schooling, and meanings of justice in a globalised world. (shrink)

Sixty years after the famous ‘Conférence des écrivains et artistes noirs at the Sorbonne’, and sixty years after Black-Label, the third collection of poetry by French Guianese Leon-Gontran Damas, the word “nègre” and “nigger” remain offensive words all too much used in postcolonial Europe today. Even after the short lived Obamamania, Damas’s poetry remains actual as it expresses the censorship all too many times endured by the lyrical voice who cannot speak out loud against those violent verbal, physical, and thus (...) psychological assaults. Consequently, his “mors dans la bouche”, or “bit in the mouth” is incoporated in his less wellknown work which testifies to the “mort dans l’âme”, it is the constant feeling of depression and blues lurking on the Black or coloured citizen of France and the West Indies. Standing in the shadow of the cofounders, and quite neglected by the leading Martinicans of the post-Négritude era, Damas nevertheless understood the urgency of transcontinental and transcultural solidarities in this battle and wrote against the dichotomies of race, class, and gender. Damas and James knew each other for over forty years. Damas read James’s novel, Minty Alley before they met in Paris when James was doing the research for The Black Jacobins, his landmark history of Tousssaint L’Ouverture and the revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Damas helped James with translations and discovering documents at the Bibliothèque Nationale. On one occasion, Damas brought James to the home of Robert Desnos. Both lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s when Damas was at Howard University and James taught at Federal City College/University of the District of Columbia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Lumps and Bumps”Kathleen Wallace (bio)Reason/Emotion Distinction in PhilosophyI would like to use Radden’s interesting exploration of the historical roots of a split between affect and thought as an occasion for reflecting on the distinction itself and some of the philosophical reasons for its appeal. There is a range of presuppositions in philosophical theories about knowledge, judgment, moral judgment and the like that have disposed us, at (...) least in the West, to accept a split between emotion or affect and reason or thought. At least in the modern tradition (from the seventeenth century on), judgment has been identified with “reason” and conceived of as the making of logical, evidential, “impartial,” or “legislative” inferences or the asserting and applying of universal principles and rules. 1 Feelings might provide content or data for reasoning but do not themselves judge.A brief review of recurrent assumptions about feelings will be indicative of possible rationales for their subordination to “reason.” Some of these assumptions are that feelings (1) are untransformable; (2) are incompatible with autonomy because they are not self-caused but are part of a deterministic causal chain; (3) are noncognitive; (4) are unreliable; (5) are demeaning because associated with the animal, sensual, or “natural” side of human nature; (6) have no moral content; and (7) have only an accidental relation to action and choice. 2In his thought Kant, who had such a strong influence on the development of Kraepelin’s theory, reflects several of these assumptions. Emotions are part of the sensible world and subject to the strict law of causality. The only exception to the deterministic view of emotion is the moral feeling of respect for the moral law. The feeling of respect “is not one received through an outside influence but is, rather, one that is self-produced by means of a rational concept.” 3Most of these accounts presuppose that feeling is a reactive or passive state or that it “expresses” or reveals an inner state over which one has no control. If feeling also tends to be viewed as noncognitive, then it has no value for knowledge. Given these assumptions, actions and judgments that are based on, motivated by, or formed with reference to feeling are viewed as suspect with regard to their objectivity.ImplicationsThe split between reason and emotion has had interesting consequences in the assessment of behaviors that are thought of as gendered. For example, moral deliberation that seems to be based on feeling or emotion is assessed as inferior to that which is allegedly based on reason, and the [End Page 17] former tends to be associated with women. For example, an “epistemic lean” of the moral commitment to care (Bartky 112) involves “a displacement of interest from my own reality to the reality of the other” (Noddings 14). 4 But if the perspective into which a female caregiver enters is one that is structured in terms of a presumed supremacy of the male, then a woman, through caregiving, could participate in her own social (and personal) demotion (Bartky 109). Yet she may thereby be caught in an interesting bind: “Tenderness requires compassion and forgiveness,... virtues under some circumstances and... excellences in a caregiver. But there are situations in which [such] virtues... can lead to moral blindness or outright complicity” (Bartky 112). Bartky cites the example of Teresa Stangl, wife of Fritz Stangl, Kommandant of Treblinka, who, although appalled by what she knew of her husband’s activity, supported him at home and never publicly challenged his moral outlook (Bartky 1990, 113). Thus a woman is caught in a doublebind. If she is “forgiving” and “tender,” she may be identified as “complicitous,” “unprincipled,” or morally “weak-willed,” but if she were to assert her [other] principles she would fail to be “virtuous” as a caregiver, her designated, but subordinate, moral role. 5 Thus, a traditional association of judgment with “reason” may support the inference that the affectively motivated person does not count as a moral agent, or is at best an inferior one.What this suggests is not only that a sharp split between reason and emotion or thought and affect may lead to a distorted understanding... (shrink)

In this extensively revised and updated edition, 168 alphabetically arranged articles provide comprehensive treatment of the main topics and writers in this area of aesthetics. Written by prominent scholars covering a wide-range of key topics in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Features revised and expanded entries from the first edition, as well as new chapters on recent developments in aesthetics and a larger number of essays on non-Western thought about art Unique to this edition are six overview essays on (...) the history of aesthetics in the West from antiquity to modern times. (shrink)

This brief and inexpensive paperback provides an introduction to some of the world's great philosophical traditions through original sources. It can be used as a supplement to a traditional western-oriented textbook, or it can stand-alone. Organized by culture (Africa, China, Japan, Native American, Latin America, Arabia, Persia, India, the West), each self-contained chapter is edited by an expert in the area. The editors' extensive introductions to the selections are designed for readers with no previous study of philosophy. Each chapter (...) also contains a pronunciation key, glossary, area map, and suggestions for further readings. An alternate table of contents is provided for world civilization courses. (shrink)

This is a collection of twelve essays, most of which have appeared before in diverse places. They cover a broad range of topics and are loosely connected by a recurring set of themes. These themes are best understood as attacks by Midgley on certain characteristics of the philosophical enterprise as it is currently practised in the West. The tendencies and principles she calls into question include individualism, scholasticism, realism, instrumentalist conceptions of rationality, anthropocentrism, reductionism, scientism, and mechanism.

In India, God can be female. The goddesses of Hinduism and Buddhism represent the largest extant collection of living goddesses anywhere on the planet. Feminists in the West often draw upon South Asian goddesses as theological resources in the contemporary rediscovery of the Goddess. Yet, these goddesses are products of a male supremacist society. What is the impact of powerful female deities--their images, projections, textuality, and history--on the social standing and psychological health of women? Do they empower women, or (...) serve the interests of patriarchal culture? Is the Goddess a Feminist? looks at the goddesses of South Asia to address these questions directly. Not a book about a single goddess or even about a variety of South Asian goddesses, the volume raises questions about images of deities as symbols and the ways in which they function. Contributors discuss contemporary Indian women who have embraced goddesses as spiritually and socially liberating, as well as the seeming contradictions between the power of Indian goddesses and the lives of Indian women. They also explore such topics as the element of male desire in the embodiment of female deities, the question of who speaks for the goddesses, and the politics and theology of Western feminist use of Hindu and Buddhist goddesses as models for their feminist reflections. (shrink)

Readers eager to acquire a basic familiarity with the history of philosophy but intimidated by the task will find in A Passion for Wisdom a lively, accessible, and highly enjoyable tour of the world's great ideas. Here, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins tell the story of philosophy's development with great clarity and refreshing wit. The authors begin with the most ancient religious beliefs of the east and west and bring us right up to the feminist and multicultural philosophies (...) of the present. Along the way, they highlight major philosophers, from Plato and the Buddha to William James and Simone de Beauvoir, and explore major categories, from metaphysics and ethics to politics and logic. The book is enlivened as well by telling anecdotes and sparkling quotations. Among many memorable observations, we're treated to Thomas Hobbes' assessment that life is "nasty, brutish, and short" and Hegel's description of Napoleon as "world history on horseback." Engaging, comprehensive, and delightfully written, A Passion for Wisdom is a splendid introduction to an intellectual tradition that reaches back over three thousand years. (shrink)

In this accessible and comprehensive work, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins cover the entire history of philosophy--ancient, medieval, and modern, from cultures both East and West--in its broader historical and cultural contexts. Major philosophers and movements are discussed along with less well-known but interesting figures. The authors examine the early Greek, Indic, and Chinese philosophers and the mythological traditions that preceded them, as well as the great religious philosophies, including Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Taoism. Easily understandable to students (...) without specialized knowledge of philosophy, A Short History of Philosophy demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our times, illuminating the impact of the revolutions wrought by science, industry, colonialism, and sectarian warfare; the two world wars and the Holocaust; and the responses of philosophy in the schools of existentialism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism. In addition, the authors provide their own twists and interpretations of events, resulting in a broad view of the nature of philosophy as an intellectual discipline and its sometimes odd and dramatic consequences. (shrink)

One model for creating artificial consciousness is replicating every fine detail of the brain on computers and setting the model in motion. Consciousness has been experimentally demonstrated to be a much more fragmented experience than we think it to be, perhaps we only need snippets of ourselves to feel conscious. Perhaps consciousness is nothing less and nothing more than story, and all we need do to continue to feel conscious is maintain identity through computer‐based narrative. Applied nanotechnology has generated uncountable (...) applications in electronics, pharmacology, and materials engineering. The best approach to life extension and consciousness expansion might lie in our own marvelously complex and entire bodies, meshed with and augmented by tiny bionan machines that become a part of us, rather than the opposite vision of humans migrating into a machine substrate. (shrink)

Other people's music -- Musical animals -- What's involved in sounding human? -- Cross-cultural understanding -- The music of language -- Musical synesthesia -- A song in your heart -- Comfort and joy -- Beyond ethnocentrism.

This book explores how shamanic Daoist practices help cultivate the skills of an elicitive peaceworker. Author Kathleen McGoey uses embodied writing to describe her direct experiences with qigong and other meditation forms, and to explain the creation of inner peace that ultimately extends far beyond the individual. A trans-rational understanding of peace weaves together transpersonal interpretations of intuition with ancient Daoist wisdom. By relating the outcomes of such approaches to real world conflict transformation, McGoey proposes a practical personal consciousness (...) that strives for harmony with our's and others' environments. (Series: Masters of Peace - Vol. 9). (shrink)

Palliative Care Nursing: Caring for Suffering Patients explores the concept of suffering as it relates to nursing practice. This text helps practicing nurses and students define and recognize various aspects of suffering across the lifespan and within various patient populations while providing guidance in alleviating suffering. In addition, it examines spiritual and ethical perspectives on suffering and discusses how witnessing suffering impacts nurses' ability to assume the professional role. Further, the authors discuss ways nurses as witnesses to suffering can optimize (...) their own coping skills and facilitate personal growth. Rich in case studies, pictures, and reflections on nursing practice and life experiences, Palliative Care Nursing: Caring for Suffering Patients delves into key topics such as how to identify when a patient is suffering, whether they are coping, sources of coping facades, what to do to ease suffering, and how to convey the extent of suffering to members of the health care team.Palliative Care Nursing: Caring for Suffering Patients helps practicing nurses and students define and recognize various aspects of suffering across the lifespan and within various patient populations while providing guidance in alleviating suffering. (shrink)

Teilhard's words divided into a "Book of Hours" of eight days, according to Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Dark.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introducing a Reconceptualized Professional Development Inspired by John Dewey Three Forms of Disciplinary Artistry Informed by Alain Badiou From Montage Method to Portfolio Expression Notes References.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divine by Alan P.F. SellKathy SquadritoAlan P.F. Sell. John Locke and the Eighteenth-Century Divine. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997. Pp. xi + 444. Cloth, $75.00.Professor Sell’s goal is to discern the impact of Locke’s thought upon the later divines; Sell’s scope is the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century. Most of the text is a detailed descriptive account of various scholars’ reactions (...) to Locke’s epistemology, metaphysics, and views concerning religion. Sell focuses on the question of the relative authority of scripture, reason and revelation. He contends that Locke’s epistemological and political positions are intimately bound up with his Christian faith, that as a conservative empiricist, Locke is “much more the rationalist than he has sometimes been painted” (48). The important question bequeathed by Locke to Christian apologetics is: “can the epistemological starting point be redeemed for Christian apologetic use or is it not viable at all?” (12). Sell addresses this question throughout the following chapters: “Ideas, Knowledge and Truth”; “Reason, Revelation, Faith and Scripture”; “Morality and Liberty”; “Toleration and Government”; and “Christian Doctrine”.Sell notes Locke’s roots in Calvinism, his appreciation of Arminian doctrine and his friendship with a number of prominent Latitudinarians. He argues that most criticisms of Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity are misguided. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Locke was charged with scepticism, deism, Socinianism and materialism. Sell presents the objections of numerous scholars, notably Bishop Stillingfleet, William Carroll, John Norris, Richard Bentley, Henry Lee, Richard Price, Bishop Berkeley, and Samuel Johnson. He also covers the views of Locke’s defenders, including Anthony Collins, Catharine Cockburn and Samuel Bold.The reader might be disappointed with Sell’s short presentation of an inordinate number of Lockean critics; there is little analysis or discussion of the merits of the particular objections cited. He does offer an analysis of the general charges against Locke, but rarely quotes Locke sufficiently to justify his conclusion that Locke was not a deist, sceptic, or materialist. Sell simply takes Locke’s word for it. This book is best taken as an excellent reference guide.Sell contends that in spite of Locke’s friendship with deists such as Collins, Locke’s Reasonableness of the Christian Religion was written to dissolve the deist prejudice against Christianity. He dismisses the charge of deism because: (1) Locke argues for revelation and against natural religion, (2) Locke’s God possesses the traditional attributes assigned to him (power, omniscience, providence), (3) Locke grounds morality not exclusively in natural law, as did deists, but in the gospel, (4) the anti-materialist thrust of Book IV, Chapter X of the Essay, and (5) Locke’s argument that there can be truths of revelation which are above reason. Sell concludes that the “main problem posed to Locke by the deists was that of guilt by association” (209), in other words Locke’s work was misused for political reasons.Sell considers the charge of Socinianism more serious than that of deism. Socinianism is defined by its denial of the Trinity, and by the claims that there cannot be an innate idea of God, that there is no original corruption deriving from Adam, that the wicked will not suffer eternal torments, and that some bodies are not raised at general resurrection. Despite Locke’s agreement with most Socinian claims, Sell claims that [End Page 631] Locke cannot be pinned down on the issue of the Trinity. There is no question, he says, that “the Locke of 1662 affirmed both the doctrine of the Trinity and the human divine nature of Christ, whilst recognizing that the human mind could not explain how these things could be so; there is no question that especially from the 1690’s onwards he was actively reviewing the matter; there is no hard evidence that he ever repudiated the doctrine.” (214)According to Stillingfleet, Locke’s sensationalism and his proposal that matter might be capable of thought undermine Christian faith. Sell does not find this charge convincing. He defends Locke’s distinction between “the man” and “the person,” stressing that Locke claims a high degree of probability that the... (shrink)

One of the reasons for the disappearance of beauty in the artistic ideology of the late twentieth century has been the seeming similarity of beauty to certain kinds of kitsch. Beauty has also been associated with flawlessness and with glamour. I will content that the flawless and the glamorous are actually categories of kitsch, and that the dominance of these images in marketing has contributed to our societal tendency to confuse them with beauty. The quests for flawlessness and glamour are (...) both self-sabotaging, a premise on which the marketing of beauty depends. These false paradigms of beauty have ob cured the fact that human beauty manifests an ideal of balance and health that is neither self-conscious nor a consequence of deliberate effort. I will defend the relevance of this ideal to beauty to our personal and cultural well-being. (shrink)

This paper aims at presenting a horizontal approach to the design of communication for joint action in human-robot interaction. According to this approach, social robotics must focus on different parameters of the whole joint action including context, the embedded situation and human psychological profile during the design and test process. Such an approach aims at complementing the standard building-block model that represents the state-of-the-art in robotic communication. Moreover, we provide some general ideas of how the model can facilitate the use (...) of available communicative strategies for creating more efficient culturally sustainable robots in contexts of joint action. (shrink)

Scientists depend on complex computational systems that are often ineliminably opaque, to the detriment of our ability to give scientific explanations and detect artifacts. Some philosophers have s...

A popular approach to defining fictive utterance says that, necessarily, it is intended to produce imagining. I shall argue that this is not falsified by the fact that some fictive utterances are intended to be believed, or are non-accidentally true. That this is so becomes apparent given a proper understanding of the relation of what one imagines to one's belief set. In light of this understanding, I shall then argue that being intended to produce imagining is sufficient for fictive utterance (...) as well. (shrink)

This volume examines the motives behind rejections of beauty often found within contemporary art practice, where much critically acclaimed art is deliberately ugly and alienating. It reflects on the nature and value of beauty, asking whether beauty still has a future in art and what role it can play in our lives generally. The volume discusses the possible “end of art,” what art is, and the relation between art and beauty beyond their historically Western horizons to include perspectives from Asia. (...) The individual chapters address a number of interrelated issues, including: art, beauty and the sacred; beauty as a source of joy and consolation; beauty as a bridge between the natural and the human; beauty and the human form; the role of curatorial practice in defining art; order and creativity; and the distinction between art and craft. The volume offers a valuable addition to cross-cultural dialogue and, in particular, to the sparse literature on art and beauty in comparative context. It demonstrates the relevance of the rich tradition of Asian aesthetics and the vibrant practices of contemporary art in Asia to Western discussions about the future of art and the role of beauty. (shrink)

The concept of a relational self has been prominent in feminism, communitarianism, narrative self theories, and social network theories, and has been important to theorizing about practical dimensions of selfhood. However, it has been largely ignored in traditional philosophical theories of personal identity, which have been dominated by psychological and animal theories of the self. This book offers a systematic treatment of the notion of the self as constituted by social, cultural, political, and biological relations. The author's account incorporates practical (...) concerns and addresses how a relational self has agency, autonomy, responsibility, and continuity through time in the face of change and impairments. This cumulative network model of the self incorporates concepts from work in the American pragmatist and naturalist tradition. The ultimate aim of the book is to bridge traditions that are often disconnected from one another--feminism, personal identity theory, and pragmatism--to develop a unified theory of the self. (shrink)

This entry considers the question “What is objectification?” After preliminary remarks about different methodological approaches, several possible answers, or groups of answers, are introduced, separated out in terms of broad themes. Each is situated in relation to historical and more contemporary authors. These themes are: objectification as instrumentalization; objectification as reduction to the body; objectification as negation of subjectivity or agency; objectification as naturalization. Objectification is considered in relation to both sexual and racial contexts. Finally, these themes are discussed in (...) relation to the wider category of “mind suppression,” and its relation to objectification in the familiar context of imagery. (shrink)

The tremendous recent growth of the women's movement as a political force has been accompanied by an event of equal import to the academic world--the development of the discipline of women's studies. Colleges across the nation are establishing programs in this area. Women's Studies is a classroom anthology designed for use in these newly-introduced courses.

Medical Professionals: Conflicts and Quandaries in Medical Practice offers a fresh approach to understanding the role-related conflicts and quandaries that pervade contemporary medical practice. While a focus on professional conflicts is not new in the literature, what is missing is a volume that delves into medical professionals' own experience of the conflicts and quandaries they face, often as a result of inhabiting multiple roles. The volume explores the ways in which these conflicts and quandaries are exacerbated by broader societal forces, (...) including changing scientific and technological paradigms, commercialization, and strengthened consumer movements, which simultaneously expand the scope of roles and responsibilities that medical professionals are expected to fulfill, and make it more difficult to do so. Several empirical chapters analyze data from qualitative interview studies with clinicians and other stakeholders. The studies highlight the burdens on clinicians who are expected to make informed and justified judgments and decisions in the midst of competing pressures; authors describe the methods that clinicians use to address the associated tensions within specific contexts. Two conceptual chapters follow and offer some innovative ways to think about the challenges facing medical professionals as they strive to make sense of the changing landscape within healthcare. The first reflects on the challenges to clinical practice in the midst of shifting and often competing definitions of disease and associated ideologies of care. The second reflects more broadly on the utility of value pluralism as a framework for conceptualizing and working through moral and professional quandaries. The book concludes with a chapter containing suggestions for how members of the medical profession might reframe their thinking about their roles, responsibilities, and decision-making in the midst of inevitable quandaries such as those presented here. This book will be of vital reading for academics, researchers, educators, postgraduate students, and interested health care practitioners and administrators. (shrink)

This article examines the complaint that arbitrary algorithmic decisions wrong those whom they affect. It makes three contributions. First, it provides an analysis of what arbitrariness means in this context. Second, it argues that arbitrariness is not of moral concern except when special circumstances apply. However, when the same algorithm or different algorithms based on the same data are used in multiple contexts, a person may be arbitrarily excluded from a broad range of opportunities. The third contribution is to explain (...) why this systemic exclusion is of moral concern and to offer a solution to address it. (shrink)

Feminist theory has enhanced and expanded the agency, influence, status and contributions of women throughout the globe. However, feminist critical analysis has not yet examined how the assumption that religion is natural, timeless, universal and omnipresent supports sexist and race based oppression. This book proposes radical new thinking about religion in order to better comprehend and confront the systematic disempowerment of women and marginalized groups. Utilising feminist and post-colonial analysis of access, equity and violence, contributors draw on recent critical theory (...) to collapse accepted boundaries between religion and secularity with the aim of understanding that religion is a technology of governance in its function, meaning and history. The volume includes case studies focusing on how the category of religion is deployed to perpetuate male hegemony and racist inequities in Australia, Mexico, the United States, Britain and Canada. This trenchant feminist critique and academic analysis will be of key interest to scholars and students of Religion, Sociology, Political Science and Gender Studies. (shrink)

La autora presenta una critica a la concepcion clasica de los sentidos asumida por la mayoria de autores naturalistas que pretenden explicar el contenido mental. Esta crítica se basa en datos neurobiologicos sobre los sentidos que apuntan a que estos no parecen describir caracteristicas objetivas del mundo, sino que actuan de forma ʼnarcisita', es decir, representan informacion en funcion de los intereses concretos del organismo.El articulo se encuentra también en: Bechtel, et al., Philosophy and the Neuroscience.