The dualism of nature/culture widely present within Western society at large is out of step with an increasingly urbanising world. Building on previous discussions of nature/culture duality, an integrative framework is presented that argues for the embracing of the 'mundane nature' found within human landscapes. As over half of the human population interacts with nature primarily within urban landscapes, increasing our awareness of such spaces is critical to understanding our ecological consciousness. The examples of a recent rooftop greening bylaw in (...) the city of Toronto and the social impacts of urban gardening are examined in this context. (shrink)

The creation of a sense of place has emerged as a goal of many community development initiatives. However, little thought has been given to the role of physical spaces in the shaping of possible senses of place. This article examines three Canadian examples of community sustainable development initiatives to demonstrate that sense of place can be shaped and constrained by the geographical and environmental features of the physical space a community occupies. This finding suggests that a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to community (...) sustainable development is unlikely to be successful; a community's sustainable development ethic will be informed by geography. However, there is some evidence that a strong individual sense of place shaped by local space may act as a barrier to the acceptance of new people and ideas. Conversely, a strong sense of place can result in mobilization for sustainable development initiatives. (shrink)

Americans have trillions of dollars invested in public and private companies, yet stock ownership is highly unequal: the wealthiest 1 percent of households possess 40 percent of all wealth, and there is a large and persistent racial wealth gap. What if innovations in distributed technologies allowed for democratic facilitation of new opportunities for wealth and a rebalancing of power within the capital markets? This article proposes using innovative financial technologies to create a “Public Investment Platform”—a public option for participation in (...) capital markets—and a “Public Investment Account” to universalize access to investment opportunities. Capital markets are currently governed by public policies that submerge the role of the public in structuring them and enable an inequitable accumulation of wealth. To democratize finance, new policies are required to democratize participation in investment. (shrink)

This article builds on the food sovereignty literature to ask pointed questions about the interplay of market forces and political liberalism. Specifically, we use cuisine as a lens to interrogate the assumption that multiculturalism is compatible with Indigenous food sovereignty. Because multicultural inclusion is the means by which Indigenous Peoples’ gastronomies are commodified and alienated, they experience not gastronomic multiculturalism but culinary colonialism. Accordingly, food sovereignty in colonial contexts must embrace both the active sharing and the mindful withholding of food (...) as political acts, and acknowledge that culinary culture is not simply a market commodity but also a politically-embedded process. In drawing together the threads of this argument, we advocate for a broadening of the discussion on Indigenous food sovereignty to include the resistance and resurgence enacted through gastronomy. (shrink)

Simple finite axiomatizations are given for versions of the modal logics K and K4 with non-contingency (or contingency) as the sole modal primitive. This answers two questions of I. L. Humberstone.

It is argued here that cognitive science currently neglects an important source of insight into the human mind: the effects created by magicians. Over the centuries, magicians have learned how to perform acts that are perceived as defying the laws of nature, and that induce a strong sense of wonder. This article argues that the time has come to examine the scientific bases behind such phenomena, and to create a science of magic linked to relevant areas of cognitive science. Concrete (...) examples are taken from three areas of magic: the ability to control attention, to distort perception, and to influence choice. It is shown how such knowledge can help develop new tools and indicate new avenues of research into human perception and cognition. (shrink)

Our incomplete understanding of carcinogenesis may be a significant reason why some cancer mortality rates are still increasing. This lack of understanding is likely due to a research approach that relies heavily on genetic comparison between cancerous and non‐cancerous tissues and cells, which has led to the identification of genes of cancer proliferation rather than differentiation. Recent observations showing that a tremendous degree of natural human genetic variation occurs are likely to lead to a shift in the basic paradigms of (...) cancer genetics, in that there is a need to consider both the nature of the genes involved, and the idea that not every genetic variation identified in these genes may be associated with carcinogenesis. Based on studies using LCM and micro‐genetic analyses, we propose that significant cancer initiating events may take place during the very early stages of development of cancer‐susceptible tissues and that using such techniques might greatly help us in our understanding of carcinogenesis. BioEssays 29:678–685, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. Some authors propose that actions are unconsciously initiated and awareness of intention is referred retrospectively to the action after it has been performed [e.g. Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 439–458]. This contrasts with the common impression that our intentions cause those actions. By combining a (...) stop signal paradigm and an intentional action paradigm we show that participants sometimes indicate to have intentionally initiated an action while reaction time data strongly suggest that they in fact failed to stop the action. In a second experiment we demonstrate that the number of trials in which participants misattributed their awareness of intention varied with the intentional involvement during action planning. Our data support the retrospective account of intentional action. Furthermore, we introduce an experimental approach that objectifies introspective judgments of awareness of intention. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to postphenomenology, an emerging school of thought in the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies, which addresses the relationships users develop with the devices they use.

Concerned with criticizing representational theories of knowledge by developing alternative concepts of knowing and communicating, Ian Angus and Lenore Langsdorf bring together eight essays that are united by a common theme: the convergence of philosophy and rhetoric. In the first chapter, Angus and Langsdorf illustrate the centrality of critical reasoning to the nature of questioning itself, arguing that human inquiry has entered a "new situation" where "the convictions and orientations that have traditionally marked the separation of rhetoric and philosophy—the (...) concern for truth and the focus on persuasion—have begun to converge on a new space that can be defined through the central term _discourse._"_ _In these essays, this convergence of rhetoric and philosophy is addressed as it presents itself to a variety of interests that transcend the traditional boundaries of these fields. The two editors, Raymie E. McKerrow, Michael J. Hyde and Craig R. Smith, James W. Hikins and Kenneth S. Zagacki, Calvin O. Schrag and David James Miller, and Richard L. Lanigan map this new space, recognizing that such mapping "simultaneously _constitutes _the territory mapped.". (shrink)

In this essay, I analyze pregnancy loss from a feminist phenomenological perspective. I draw upon relational accounts of personhood wherein a person's status and identity are formed through a lived history and the activity of “calling into personhood” a being a woman may seek to know or become. I draw upon the work of Simone de Beauvoir, who advances a feminist phenomenology that grounds the status and identity of women within embodied situations. Her important work sheds light on the varied (...) perceptions and processes that inform experiences of pregnancy and pregnancy loss. (shrink)

While widely acknowledged as the world's oldest profession, and often glamorized or demonized in the media, prostitution is a critical part of American culture and its economy, as well as a social problem in need of an updated public policy. In Prostitution Policy, Lenore Kuo combines feminist social research and legal studies to tackle issues raised by heterosexual prostitution in the U.S. Through the lens of feminist theory, Kuo examines the milieu of prostitutes and the role of prostitution in (...) contemporary society, and how the interplay of those two works itself out in practice. Moving beyond theoretical analysis of prostitution, Prostitution Policy turns to the complicated problem of formulating a reasonable legal policy that minimizes harm. Kuo discusss criminalization, legalization, and decriminalization as possible approaches, ultimately arguing for a unique form of decriminalization including detailed legal oversight and mandatory social services. (shrink)

The system obtained by adding full propositional quantification to S5 is known to be decidable, while that obtained by doing so for T is known to be recursively intertranslatable with full second-order logic. Recently it was shown that the system with two S5 operators and full propositional quantification is also recursively intertranslatable with second-order logic. This note establishes that the map assigning [1][2]p to \squarep provides a validity and satisfaction preserving translation between the T system and the double S5 system, (...) thus providing an easier proof of the recent result. (shrink)

Beads and other ‘body ornaments’ are very widespread components of the archaeological record of early modern humans (Homo sapiens). They appear first in the Middle Stone Age in Africa, and somewhat later in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia. The manufacture and use of ornaments is widely considered to be evidence for significant developments in human cognition. In our view, the appearance of these objects represents the interaction of evolved cognitive capacities with changing social and demographic conditions. Body ornamentation is (...) a medium or technology for communication, particularly of socially-relevant information. The widespread adoption of beads and other discrete objects as media for communication implies changes in the complexity and stability of social messages, as well as the scale of social networks. The relatively sudden appearance of beads in the Paleolithic archaeological record coincides with genetic and archaeological evidence for expansion of human populations. We argue that these changes reflect expanding scales of social interaction and more complex social landscapes resulting from unprecedentedly large and internally differentiated human populations. (shrink)

Ethical problems are addressed in various ways within countries in planning for and response to pandemic influenza. Here we report on a qualitative study, in which 46 policymakers in Malawi and Ghana were interviewed on how they identified and resolved ethical problems. The study results revealed that ethical problems involving conflicts of values and choices were raised in reference to the extent and role of resources and nature of public health interventions, including the extent and processes of decision making, reasoning, (...) and justification. There is a need for an ethical framework within pandemic preparedness plans to resolve and avert these problems. (shrink)

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)