This chapter talks about how two robot hosts of Westworld, Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay, are operating within what philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein calls “language games”. At the heart of the revolutionary nature of the language game is Wittgenstein's insistence on binding saying to saying what counts. The chapter enlists Wittgenstein's critique of the theory of an “ideal” language that could perfectly represent reality for the author's own critique of the “ideal” picture of narrative with in Westworld. This “ideal” is amplified (...) by glorified violence, the objectification of women, profoundly rigid and heteronormative gender roles, and an ineluctable longing for transcendence. On the smooth, slippery surface of the “ideal” narratives of the Westworld universe, Dolores and Maeve are losing traction. What they need is to get back to the rough ground; but first they will need to learn how to create their own new language games to get there. (shrink)

Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an approach to learning and teaching that aims to develop reasoning and judgement. Students learn to listen to and respect their peers' opinions, think creatively and work together to develop a deeper understanding of concepts central to their own lives and the subjects they are studying. With the teacher adopting the role of facilitator, a true community develops in which rich and meaningful dialogue results in enquiry of the highest order. Each chapter is written by (...) a leading P4C expert and provides an introduction to the relationship between P4C and the subject area, lesson stimuli and activities for extending and deepening students' thinking. The book includes: • guidance on how to embed P4C in curriculum subjects in a crowded and demanding secondary curriculum timetable • troubleshooting advice for the teacher-turned-facilitator • a companion website containing useful links, downloadable resources and material to display on your interactive whiteboard. Edited and collated by the UK's leading P4C organisation, this book introduces a rationale for using and adapting P4C in the secondary curriculum. (shrink)

This paper explores the application of ethic of care principles to research practice. It reflects on a research partnership between a voluntary-sector organisation (VSO) for older people and a university research centre (URC). The focus is a participatory research project on older people and well-being in which older volunteers were involved as co-researchers. The shared values of the VSO's culture of practice and the participatory approach of the university researchers have enabled joint research projects to be developed within an ethic (...) of care framework. The model sought to break down the barriers between expert and lay knowledge and encouraged the mutual recognition, sharing and validating of different areas of expertise. An ethic of care framework offers context-specific ways of understanding and responding to the ethical challenges of undertaking participatory research, and to the relational aspects of well-being identified by older people during the course of the work. (shrink)

This paper traces Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the development of the Greek polis as presented in A Short History of Ethics, After Virtue, and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. The paper argues for the centrality of Aristotle’s conception of politics as an architectonic art to this account. It explores the foundations of MacIntyre’s presentation of moral rationality in Homer and offers the poems of Hesiod as an aid to understanding MacIntyre’s view of the post-Homeric crisis in Greek ethics. Aristotle is then (...) invoked to show how MacIntyre represents the polis as a classical response to that crisis. (shrink)

Despite huge advances in education, knowledge and communication, it can often seem we are neither well-trained nor well-practiced in the art of clear thinking. Our powers of reasoning and argument are less confident that they should be, we frequently ignore evidence and we are all too often swayed by rhetoric rather than reason. But what can you do to think and argue better? First published in 1939 but unavailable for many years, Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is a classic (...) first-aid manual of how to think clearly and remains astonishingly fresh and insightful. Written against a background of the rise of dictatorships and the collapse of democracy in Europe, it is packed with useful tips and insights. Stebbing offers shrewd advice on how to think critically and clearly, how to spot illogical statements and slipshod thinking, and how to rely on reason rather than emotion. At a time when we are again faced with serious threats to democracy and freedom of thought, Stebbing's advice remains as urgent and important as ever. This Routledge edition of Thinking to Some Purpose includes a new Foreword by Nigel Warburton and a helpful Introduction by Peter West, who places Susan Stebbing's classic book in historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

This book is written by a philosopher for other philosophers and for that section of the reading public who buy in large quantities and, no doubt, devour with great earnestness the popular books written by scientists for their enlightenment. We common readers, to adapt a phrase from Samuel Johnson, are fitted neither to criticize physical theories not to decide what precisely are their implications. We are dependent upon the scientists for an exposition of those developments which - so we find (...) them proclaiming - have important and far-reaching consequences for philosophy. Unfortunately, however, our popular expositors do not always serve us very well. The two who are most widely read in this country are Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans. They are not always reliable guides. Their influence has been considerable upon the reading public, upon theologians, and upon preachers; they have even misled philosopher who should have known better. Accordingly, it has seemed to me to be worth while to examine in some detail the philosophical views that they have put forth and to criticize the grounds upon which these views are based. (shrink)

I will discuss some aspects of the concept of “point” in quantum gravity, using mainly the tool of noncommutative geometry. I will argue that at Planck’s distances the very concept of point may lose its meaning. I will then show how, using the spectral action and a high momenta expansion, the connections between points, as probed by boson propagators, vanish. This discussion follows closely.

This article explores the impact of structural and technological change on women's employment in the UK television industry. It looks at the challenges faced by women in working in what has become since the mid-1980s a largely freelance industry where short-term contracts, informal recruitment procedures and long, unpredictable work schedules mean that women find it increasingly difficult to combine a career and family. Through case studies of individual careers, of a women's magazine programme for S4C Digital and a survey of (...) women's credits on a selection of the newer channels (Sky One, UK Living and Channel 5), it argues that technological advances in digital transmission and production will not improve working conditions and opportunities for women's participation in all areas of the industry if they continue to replicate existing practice. (shrink)

Noncommutative geometries generalize standard smooth geometries, parametrizing the noncommutativity of dimensions with a fundamental quantity with the dimensions of area. The question arises then of whether the concept of a region smaller than the scale—and ultimately the concept of a point—makes sense in such a theory. We argue that it does not, in two interrelated ways. In the context of Connes’ spectral triple approach, we show that arbitrarily small regions are not definable in the formal sense. While in the scalar (...) field Moyal–Weyl approach, we show that they cannot be given an operational definition. We conclude that points do not exist in such geometries. We therefore investigate (a) the metaphysics of such a geometry, and (b) how the appearance of smooth manifold might be recovered as an approximation to a fundamental noncommutative geometry. (shrink)

El problema de la profunda desigualdad que la pandemia agudizó y visibilizó implica la búsqueda de políticas y propuestas educativas que alteren y transformen la gramática escolar, las concepciones sobre la enseñanza y los aprendizajes, las culturas institucionales, y que resignifiquen los sentidos de la escuela. Se plantea aquí que vivimos un momento histórico de inflexión, para reconstruir experiencias escolares que garanticen la ampliación y el ejercicio pleno del derecho a la educación.

First published in 1943, and revised for this 1952 edition, this book was intended for use by students of philosophy and as such traditional and modern developments in logic have been combined in a unified treatment. The author envisaged this volume as filling a gap for a simple, introductory text on formal logic, written from a modern point of view, unencumbered by traditional doctrine. This title provides a thorough introduction and grounding in the philosophy of logic, and was later revised (...) after the author’s death to correct a number of logical errors — making this edition the most complete version of the work. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934. This fourth edition originally published 1954., revised by C. W. K. Mundle. "It must be the desire of every reasonable person to know how to justify a contention which is of sufficient importance to be seriously questioned. The explicit formulation of the principles of sound reasoning is the concern of Logic". This book discusses the habit of sound reasoning which is acquired by consciously attending to the logical principles of sound reasoning, in order to apply them (...) to test the soundness of arguments. It isn't an introduction to logic but it encourages the practice of logic, of deciding whether reasons in argument are sound or unsound. Stress is laid upon the importance of considering language, which is a key instrument of our thinking and is imperfect. (shrink)

Originally published in 1914, this book examines the French Voluntarist school of philosophy and the key ways in which it differs from the Pragmatists. Stebbing argues that Voluntarism and Pragmatism both prove inadequate in their definition of truth, and suggests that an acknowledgment of the 'non-existential character of truth' is needed. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in philosophy.

A key challenge when learning language in naturalistic circumstances is to extract linguistic information from a continuous stream of speech. This study investigates the predictors of such implicit learning among adults exposed to a new language in a new modality. Sign-naïve participants were shown a 4-min weather forecast in Swedish Sign Language. Subsequently, we tested their ability to recognise 22 target sign forms that had been viewed in the forecast, amongst 44 distractor signs that had not been viewed. The target (...) items differed in their occurrence frequency in the forecast and in their degree of iconicity. The results revealed that both frequency and iconicity facilitated recognition of target signs cumulatively. The adult mechanism for language learning thus operates similarly on sign and spoken languages as regards frequency, but also exploits modality-salient properties, for example iconicity for sign languages. Individual differences in cognitive skills and language learning background did not predict recognition. The properties of the input thus influenced adults’ language learning abilities at first exposure more than individual differences. (shrink)

Background and Aims The prevalence of religious faith among doctors and its relationship with decision-making in end-of-life care is not well documented. The impact of ethnic differences on this is also poorly understood. This study compares ethnicity and religious faith in the medical and general UK populations, and reports on their associations with ethically controversial decisions taken when providing care to dying patients. Method A postal survey of 3733 UK medical practitioners, of whom 2923 reported on the care of their (...) last patient who died. Findings Specialists in care of the elderly were somewhat more likely to be Hindu or Muslim than other doctors; palliative care specialists were somewhat more likely to be Christian, religious and ‘white’ than others. Ethnicity was largely unrelated to rates of reporting ethically controversial decisions. Independently of speciality, doctors who described themselves as non-religious were more likely than others to report having given continuous deep sedation until death, having taken decisions they expected or partly intended to end life, and to have discussed these decisions with patients judged to have the capacity to participate in discussions. Speciality was independently related to wide variations in the reporting of decisions taken with some intent to end life, with doctors in ‘other hospital’ specialities being almost 10 times as likely to report this when compared with palliative medicine specialists, regardless of religious faith. Conclusions Greater acknowledgement of the relationship of doctors' values with clinical decision-making is advocated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:216 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sealing Cheng Pikachu’s Tears: Children’s Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong How do children experience the sudden onset of massive unrest, violence, and police brutality? It has been difficult even for many adults to process how Hong Kong—a cosmopolitan city known for its stability and low crime rate—descended overnight, on June 12, 2019, into tear gas and (...) violent confrontations. What began as a mass protest against amendments to a bill that would have facilitated the extradition of fugitives in Hong Kong to mainland China for trial turned into a protracted struggle for universal suffrage and investigations into police brutality. In the process, countless scenes of excessive police violence against protestors have challenged any dichotomous, black-and-white worldview of good cop/bad criminal; the geography and tempo of the city have been remade by protests, crackdowns, and transportation shutdowns; and social and familial tensions and divisions about the source of the violence have plagued the routines of everyday life. Children, like adults, have to find new ways of being and becoming in the city during this political upheaval. Their existential liminality, however, provides children with a unique perspective from which to sense, experience, and engage with the volatility around them. Careful listening allows children’s “small voices” to speak to “big issues.”1 1. Allison James, “Giving Voice to Children’s Voices: Practices and Problems, Pitfalls and Potentials,” American Anthropologist 109, no. 2 (2007): 261–72. Sealing Cheng 217 Unmooring children from “the restrictive and constricting frameworks of innocence and/or victimhood” with “incomplete moral and social personhood,” Karen Lury analyzed the child as a version of Berlant’s “infantile citizen,” whose “‘stubborn naïveté’ gives her/him enormous power to unsettle, expose, and reframe the machinery of national life.”2 I offer reflections below as an observer of the ways my children participate in their changing world as socio-moral beings. I write as a mother who searches for her own ethical anchor with and through my children in a collective project of engaging with our fears, hopes, and possibilities. “Will the Government Talk to Us?” I am a mother of two girls, ages six and nine. My daughters usually want to go swimming on Sundays, but since June 9, 2019, our family has instead spent many Sundays at marches and protests against the anti-extradition law and police brutality, reiterating the “five demands” of the movement. Our family has participated in protest marches before, but the prospect of walking in a crowd through the city streets for hours in the summer heat—rather than swimming in the pool—was highly unappealing to my kids. I had to explain to them why it was important. I said that if amendments to the Extradition Law passed, we could be accused of committing a crime under mainland Chinese laws, and we would lose our rights to do many of the things we had taken for granted. As an example, I explained that they would not be allowed to watch Winnie the Pooh again because President Xi did not like that people likened him to the cute bear. My daughters found it puzzling why anyone would object to such an innocuous comparison. I also said that if the law passed, we might no longer be free to say the words “8964” commemorating the June 4, 1989, Massacre on Tiananmen Square. (While these changes might not really happen, they speak to Hongkongers’ utter distrust of the judicial system in China.) I explained to my daughters that we needed to tell Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her government that we did not want this law passed. They agreed. 2. Karen Lury, “Children in an Open World: Mobility as Ontology in New Iranian and Turkish Cinema,” Feminist Theory 11, no. 3 (2010): 284; Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays of Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 29, quoted in Lury, “Children in an Open World,” 284–5. 218 Sealing Cheng When we joined our first anti-extradition march toward the government headquarters on June 9, we were among one million people who... (shrink)

Kim Longinotto is one of the UK's leading documentary directors whose body of work explores women's lives and their struggles for autonomy and human rights in a range of international cultural contexts. Her strategies interrogate the observationalist traditions of documentary cinema and visual anthropology to produce engaged and profoundly empathetic feminist films. She works in collaborative ways with her subjects, often with other directors, to represent the contradictions and multiple layers of their lives and political and social situations. This interview (...) focuses on Longinotto's approach to representing her subjects and using the medium of documentary as a form of witnessing. (shrink)

The sexually violated woman has become a salient symbol in feminist discourse, government policies, the media and transnational activism at this historical juncture. In this article, I seek to understand the conviction of anti-prostitution activists that all women in prostitution are victims (despite evidence to the contrary), and their simultaneous dismissal or condemnation of those women who identify as sex workers. The analysis identifies the centrality of victimhood to the affective logic of women activist leaders in the anti-prostitution movement, and (...) its embeddedness in discourses of suffering and redemption in Korean nationalist historiography. Sexual victimhood thus acquires the power to incite moral outrage, compel consensus and inhibit dissent. Sex workers further come to bear the historical and political burden of righting all that is wrong with the nation, making their elimination essential for the nation’s rescue. Critiques of capitalism and the state become footnotes and silences in this process. In effect, the victimhood of ‘prostituted women’ allows women activists to circulate effectively in the affective economy of the nation as well as in the global anti-trafficking campaign. The passionate activism of anti-prostitution women activists may say less about the state of prostitution than about the activists’ subjectivity as historical and global subjects, and the symbolic world that they locate themselves in. (shrink)

Drawing on the author's experience in devising a localized version of The Vagina Monologues in Hong Kong, this paper critically appraises the ‘global vaginahood’ in the globalization of The Vagina Monologues and the V-Day movement that reproduces a core-periphery relationship in the transnational women's movement. As a theatrical performance and a worldwide movement, these productions are remarkable for the manner in which they raise awareness about women's sexuality and violence against women in different parts of the world. Critical questions, however, (...) remain on the rhetoric of universalism and the ethnocentric methods of the global campaign, with US women's experiences and agenda defining those of women in other parts of the world. As a worldwide campaign, the V-Day movement reproduces a hierarchical model between the global North and South, with an emphasis on Western leadership rather than coalition between partners with different experiences, priorities, and strategies. The paper argues that feminists may develop more effective coalitions with local women by recognizing and identifying locally derived creative efforts to respond to issues that are pertinent to their lives. As such, the paper is a push for dialogues in the V-Day campaign and transnational women's movement in general. (shrink)

This comparative case analysis contrasts two nations – Viet Nam and The United States of America (U.S.) – in terms of processes each employed and results each achieved in respective response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a general theory of teaching to contrast the countries in terms of their approaches to COVID public health education. Viet Nam followed the recommendations of the theory. The U.S. did not. While our analysis does not and cannot prove educational theory acted as the (...) sole causal factor in realization of the disparate results in the countries, our case study does illustrate that the different approaches to public health education used by the countries may be counted among factors contributing to wide differences in the contrasting cases. The argument proceeds by 1) describing differences in relevant statistics between Viet Nam and the U.S., 2) outlining the theory of teaching we use to analyze differences in public health education in the two contexts, and 3) discussing successful implementation of the theory in Viet Nam and failure to implement in the U.S. Finally, we 4) dismiss competing explanations of differences between the countries and 5) offer considerations about how the U.S. may educate citizens away from turning the pandemic into a pan(en)demic. (shrink)

Commentators frequently point to the involvement of biomedicine and bio-science in the objectification and commodification of human body parts, and the consequent potential for violation of personal, social and community meanings. Through a study of UK media coverage of controversies associated with the removal of body parts and human materials from children, we argue that an exclusive emphasis on the role of medicine and the bio-sciences in the commodification of human materials ignores the important role played by commercially motivated mass (...) media organizations. Analysis of the language of news reports covering the period of the organ retention controversies in the UK reveals the ways in which the mass media contribute to the commodification of body parts by recruiting them for use in the manufacture of a media scandal. This is achieved through use of horror language, the fetishization of certain body parts, emphasis on the fragmentation of the body, and the use of a variety of rhetorical devices to convey enormity and massive scale. Media participation in the commodification of children's body parts has profound implications for practices and policies in relation to use of body parts, and has significantly influenced the governmental regulation of science and medicine. The role of mass media deserves fuller recognition by theorists of body commodification. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:While the literature on psychedelic medicine emphasizes the importance of set and setting alongside the quality of subjective drug effects for therapeutic efficacy, few scholars have explored the therapeutic frameworks that are used alongside psychedelics in the lab or in the clinic. Based on a narrative analysis of the treatment manual and post-session experience reports from a pilot study of psilocybin-assisted treatment for tobacco smoking cessation, this article examines how therapeutic frameworks interact with the psychedelic substance in ways that can (...) rapidly reshape participants' identity and sense of self. We identified multiple domains relating to identity shift that appear to serve as smoking cessation mechanisms during psilocybin sessions, each of which had an identifiable presence in the manualized treatment. As psychedelic medicine becomes mainstream, consensual and evidence-based approaches to psychedelic-assisted identity shift that respect patient autonomy and encourage empowerment should become areas of focus in the emergent field of psychedelic bioethics. (shrink)

Democracy, tolerance, fairness, trust, respect, conversation, self, society, individualism, collectivism, autonomy - these are the things that youth workers talk about. But, do they agree with each other on what these all mean? Or, should it matter? It is in the conversations that youth workers have with each other, and the meanings used to help young people in their lives that define these practitioners. But, if they are not precise in their arguments and do not begin questioning the assumptions behind (...) their ideas and language, youth workers risk leaving young people unable to reason, and - as a result - in danger of being taken in by rhetoric, slogans, false promises, and propaganda. This book shows how youth workers can explore the assumptions behind their work. It raises questions about the values they should hold in relating to each other, the nature of these relationships, and what it is to be a person in society. The book will help workers at all levels, encouraging a diversity of philosophical outlook and helping to understand the tensions that do arise in youth work. (shrink)

Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Atticus shows its author as living a life of deliberate withdrawal from politics. This paper compares that life to other models of political withdrawal in Greco-Roman thought and finds that it does not cohere very closely with any of them. Nepos, the paper proposes, deviates from these existing models in showing Atticus as avoiding politics not out of a desire to transcend human life, to reorder politics, or to create a substitute politics of his own, but (...) rather to live what the paper calls ‘social life.’ Atticus embraces human interdependence while rejecting the civic forms in which that interdependence was traditionally expressed in Greece and Rome. (shrink)

There is a death by suicide in the world every 40 seconds, and suicide is the second leading cause of death for 15–29-year-olds. Experts say that one of the best ways to prevent suicide is for those in distress to hear from people who care about them. Facebook is in a unique position—through its support for networks and friendships on the site—to help connect a person in these difficult situations with people who can support them. Connecting people with the resources (...) they need is part of Facebook’s ongoing efforts to help build a safe community inside and outside of Facebook. This article provides a brief overview of how Facebook’s work to develop suicide prevention tools started and evolved, and the ethical considerations which surfaced during the process in the form of concrete product decisions around the implementation of these tools. This article is structured into three sections. Section 1 reviews what has been done in this space and lists and briefly describes other suicide prevention apps and tools. Section 2 describes Facebook’s overall approach to suicide prevention. Here, we’ll delve first into how that approach originated and how it was influenced by the external community’s proactive interactions with Facebook, highlighting our unique position to help address the problem. Afterwards, we’ll explain how that approach evolved, describing its various stages and iterations: understanding, reactive reporting, queue prioritization, and proactive reporting. This section describes the tools and resources Facebook has developed for people who may be at risk. Particular attention is devoted to the use of ArtificiaI Intelligence and Machine Learning to detect posts or live videos where someone might be expressing thoughts of suicide. Section 3 will elaborate on the ethical questions addressed when developing our approach and when making concrete product decisions to implement our suicide prevention tools. In this last section, we’ll expound the competing values and interests that were at stake during the product development process, and how we reached ethical balances between them. (shrink)