In this article I think through Black feminism and queer theory to critically analyze toxicology. I focus on toxicology's conception of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, a class of toxicants that can cause epigenetic changes leading to inheritable health issues. I suggest that Black feminist interventions are particularly necessary for the study of toxicants because multiply marginalized populations are disproportionately more exposed to EDCs. The structural preconditions that generate this uneven, racialized, and sexualized toxic body-burden threaten to turn cultural constructions of race and (...) sex into biological realities. My discursive analysis of key scientific texts on toxicology, EDCs, and epigenetics underscores how Eurocentric biases and eugenic logics permeate and co-constitute biochemical matter. I further argue that these texts’ un/articulated norms regarding the human, sexual behavior, and evolutionary fitness undermine the usefulness of toxicological assessments for environmental justice. I close by urging scientist scholar-activists to reconceive the study of toxicants. A Black feminist approach to toxicity, I suggest, would not only situate chemical exposures in their sociopolitical contexts, but also radically revision what it means to be human. (shrink)

This article advocates employing John Stuart Mill's harm principle to set the boundary for unregulated free speech, and his Greatest Happiness Principle to regulate speech outside that boundary because it threatens unconsented-to harm. Supplementing the harm principle with an offense principle is unnecessary and undesirable if our conception of harm integrates recent empirical evidence unavailable to Mill. For example, current research uncovers the tangible harms individuals suffer directly from bigoted speech, as well as the indirect harms generated by the systemic (...) oppression and epistemic injustice that bigoted speech constructs and reinforces. Using Mill's ethical framework with an updated notion of harm, we can conclude that social coercion is not justified to restrict any harmless speech, no matter how offensive. Yet certain forms of speech, such as bigoted insults, are both harmful and fail to express a genuine opinion, and so do not deserve free speech protection. (shrink)

The simplest and most natural definition of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ leads us to the conclusion that we are all conspiracy theorists. Yet, I claim that most of us would not self-identify as such. In this paper I call this the problem of self-identification. Since virtually everyone emerges as a conspiracy theorist, the term is essentially theoretically fruitless. It would be like defining intelligence in a way that makes everyone intelligent. This raises the problem for theoretical fruitfulness, i.e. the problem (...) of how to define the concept in a theoretically fruitful way. I suggest that these problems are currently causing confusion in the literature and present us with a dilemma, the conspiracy definition dilemma. I will present an analysis of the literature and what are on my reconstruction the solutions on offer, and argue that none is satisfactory. Either a) the solution will solve the problem of self-identification or b) it will potentially provide a theoretical fruitful definition, but no account does both. (shrink)

The aftermath of the European refugee crisis can be said to have sparked a crisis of solidarity. Despite abundant demonstrations of solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers, what many saw as an exercise of their duty to help was made illegal. The critical term that emerged to refer to this conjuncture was “criminalization of solidarity”. In order to include this term in the academic debate, this article starts by disclosing the embedded claims present in its rhetorical usage. The article then (...) scrutinizes the design of the politics of criminalizing solidarity and its consequences. It argues that at least three aspects of the politics of criminalizing solidarity plausibly indicate the possibility that regulating the aid in question will produce and reinforce consequences for the EU that are not only unintended, but also damaging. This is because, first, what I refer to as the blending aspect might spread the perception of illegality among several types of immigrants; second, the moral aspect can discharge people from their duty to help foreigners by conditioning this duty to group membership and belonging; and third, the polarizing aspect might exacerbate the existing divide between citizens and immigrants currently causing conflicts and social fragmentation. (shrink)

El rejuvenecimiento de Esón, uno de los episodios del mito de Medea relatado por Ovidio, es una escena extensa, cuya representación visual fue escasamente difundida en la Antigüedad. Las primeras imágenes parecerían datar de mediados del siglo XV. Las representaciones visuales producidas desde entonces pueden clasificarse en dos grandes patrones: los manuscritos franceses y las ediciones venecianas de las Metamorfosis. El presente artículo analiza los modos en que fue representada esta escena desde esa fecha hasta principios del XVI. Su objetivo, (...) por un lado, es identificar tendencias generales, diferencias regionales y quiebres temporales; por el otro, postular algunos repertorios iconográficos que podrían haber inspirado los dos patrones antes mencionados. (shrink)

“¡No son 30 pesos son 30 años!” fue el nombre seleccionado para la primera intervención de visibilidad y solidaridad con el pueblo de Chile, que tuvo lugar el 1 de noviembre de 2019 en el patio central de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación (FaHCE, UNLP). La convocatoria estuvo a cargo de la Maestría en Historia y Memoria, la revista Aletheia, la Prosecretaría de Derechos Humanos (FaHCE), el Programa Interinstitucional de Estudios sobre Memorias, Migraciones, Exilios y Refugios (...) (PIEMMER) y el Equipo de Investigación “Del tercer gobierno peronista a la dictadura de 1976. La eliminación del tiempo bifronte. La ofensiva reaccionaria”. El título de la jornada alude a una consigna muy importante que se viralizó durante las primeras semanas y explica el motivo inicial del estallido que a continuación reponemos para contextualizar la emergencia de nuestras acciones. (shrink)

Cet article apporte une réflexion sur l’influence de la médicalisation de l’accouchement sur le lien mère-bébé, dans une époque où les violences obstétricales sont dénoncées et où les femmes aspirent à se réapproprier leur accouchement. L’analyse du discours maternel lors d’entretiens semi-directifs ainsi que les observations cliniques des relations selon le type d’accouchement ont permis d’observer que la majorité des vécus négatifs des mères concernant leur accouchement apparaissent lorsque celui-ci est plus médicalisé (péridurale, césarienne...). Les observations mère-bébé sont généralement congruentes (...) avec le vécu maternel. Les résultats soulignent l’importance de prendre davantage en considération les mères avant et après leur accouchement pour favoriser l’élaboration, mais aussi le repérage de parents souffrant dans leur parentalité. (shrink)

The teacher’s personality in general plays an important role in the educational process. It is often examined in relation to outcome factors on the teacher or student side, e.g. teaching effectiveness or student motivation. Physical education (PE) with its peculiarities and allocated educational mandate particularly demands the personality of the PE teacher. Research considering this group of teachers is sparse, diverse and hard to capture due to different personality understandings. Our review therefore aims at identifying and analyzing underlying personality understandings, (...) research questions and results of studies considering the personality of the PE teacher. We conducted a scoping review. After the screening and additional analyses process, 23 studies were included. Included references had to be empirical, published in German or English and explicitly examine the PE teacher’s personality as variable or mention it as outcome factor in school context. All studies are cross-sectional, 22 studies quantitative, one qualitative. Regarding personality understandings, 12 studies follow a trait psychological, six studies a vocational, one study an interpersonal personality understanding. Four studies’ personality understanding is not concretely determinable. Considering research questions, three studies aim at identifying the PE teacher’s personality in general and do e.g. not find considerable differences between the PE teacher’s and other teacher’s personality. Nine studies examine the relationship between the PE teacher’s personality and different correlates such as burnout, highlighting e.g. that female PE teachers’ burnout process is less homogeneous than males. Eleven studies examine the PE teacher’s personality from an external view and show e.g. that students of different age groups perceive the PE teacher’s personality differently. Our review offers possible practical implications. By e.g. knowing their personality structure – their inside –, PE teachers can play to their own strengths and make use of their individual personality configuration in order to teach authentically and successfully, i.e. transferring the inside to the outside. Due to partly questionable and fragmentary methodologies of the included studies, results have to be interpreted with caution. More studies considering the PE teacher’s personality following a broad personality understanding are needed to include potentially relevant factors for teaching and by this receive evident insights. (shrink)

The question of the rationality of conspiratorial belief ¬divides philosophers into mainly two camps. The particularists believe that each conspiracy theory ought to be examined on its own merits. The generalist, by contrast, argues that there is something inherently suspect about conspiracy theories that makes belief in them irrational. Recent empirical findings indicate that conspiratorial thinking is commonplace among ordinary people, which has naturally shifted attention to the particularists. Yet, even the particularist must agree that not all conspiracy belief is (...) rational, in which case she must explain what separates rational from non-rational conspiratorial thinking. In this paper, I contrast three strategies to this end: 1) the probabilistic objectivist, who assesses the objective probability of conspiracies; 2) the subjectivist, who rather focuses on the perspective of the believer, and typically views the decision to believe in a conspiracy as a problem of decision making under risk. Approaches 1) and 2) rely on assessments of the probability of conspiracy which, I argue, limits their applicability. Instead, I explore 3) viewing the problem facing the potential believer as a decision problem under uncertainty about probabilities. I argue, furthermore, that focusing solely on epistemic utilities fails to do justice to the particular character of conspiracy beliefs, which are not exclusively epistemically motivated, and I investigate the rationality of such beliefs under a number of standard decision rules. (shrink)

This introduction discusses some of the background assumptions and recent developments of the current refugee crisis. In this issue, the crisis is not viewed as a primarily European, Western or even Syrian, Afghan, or Iraqi crisis, but as a global crisis that raises complex ethical and political challenges for all humanity. The contributions to this thematic issue discuss a variety of questions relating to the rights and duties of different actors involved in the refugee crisis, and assess some of the (...) suggested responses to handling the crisis. (shrink)

Researchers have argued that believing in conspiracy theories is dangerous and harmful, both for the individual and the community. In the philosophical debate, the divide is between the generalists, who argue that conspiracy theories are prima facie problematic, and the particularists, who argue that since conspiracies do occur, we ought to take conspiracy theories seriously, and consider them on merit. Much of the empirical research has focused on correlations between conspiracy belief and personality traits, such as narcissism, illusory pattern perception, (...) and paranoia, in the spirit of a generalist account. However, there is also ample empirical evidence that conspiracy belief is widespread in the population at large, which would be surprising and in need of explanation if the generalists were correct. In sociology and political science studies have demonstrated the role of group motivation and social aspects of belief in conspiracies. There is currently lacking a unified account of what motivates conspiracy belief that can capture the different intuitions, if possible, in one framework. This is the lacuna I wish to address, by introducing a framework that incorporate the many dimensions of conspiracy theories. The framework identifies three motivating factors for endorsing a conspiracy theory: group cohesion, cognitive needs, and truth seeking. A fourth dimension is the isolation value, or the level of ‘knowledge-anomie’ that the conspiracy theory takes. Thus, the framework is able to capture more normal cognitive functions that drive conspiracy beliefs, such as adopting to the in-group’s beliefs and the quest for truth, but also the plausibly more abnormal ones. Conspiracy theories can be positioned in a three-dimensional space depending on the degree to which they exemplify each motivating factor and the extent they deviate from the ‘knowledge-norm’. I suggest that the generalist and the particularist have focused on different parts of this common three-dimensional space. I also indicate a relatively small area where I believe pathological conspiracy belief is to be positioned. Ultimately, it is an empirical question what part of the space (pathological or otherwise) conspiracy theories occupy. (shrink)

This book is a unique examination of qualitative research in the social sciences, raising and answering the question of why we do this kind of investigation. Rather than offering advice on how to conduct qualitative research, it explores the multiple roots of qualitative research – including phenomenology, hermeneutics and critical theory – in order to diagnose the current state of play and recommend an alternative. The diagnosis is that much qualitative research today continues to employ the mind-world dualism that is (...) typical of traditional experimental investigation. The recommendation is that we focus on constitution: the relationship of mutual formation between a form of life and its members. The basic tools of qualitative research – interviews, ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of discourse – are re-forged in order to articulate how our way of living makes us who we are, and so empower us to change this form of life. (shrink)

It is not clear that scholars, when they use the term ‘conspiracy theory’, are in fact interested in investigating the phenomenon of conspiracy theories and belief in them as such. I consider two perspectives found in the fast-growing literature on conspiracy theories: The Faux-pas View and The Neutral View. I argue that there is a difference in scholarly motivation, or at a very minimum a difference in the sustaining motivation for the research paradigms. What the motivations are is much too (...) complex to detail in this paper, and I only give a suggestion to possible ones to consider. However, I maintain that investigating the motivations for - and interest in conspiracy theory research will illuminate why there is disagreements on the definition and conceptualization of the term itself. I argue that our interest will inform our research project, and determine the conceptualization of the term ‘conspiracy theory’, which in turn taints our interpretation of the contemporary exploratory research on the subject. (shrink)

El 24 de marzo en Argentina es una fecha en la cual se realizan en todo el país marchas y actos encabezados por las organizaciones de derechos humanos en conmemoración de las víctimas de la última dictadura cívico-militar iniciada en 1976. Sin embargo, durante los años 2020 y 2021 esta fecha estuvo signada por diferentes condicionamientos dado el Covid-19. En contexto de ASPO y DISPO, ¿qué memorias se activaron y pusieron a circular esos días? ¿Qué soportes y herramientas fueron fundamentales? (...) ¿Cómo fueron esos paisajes visuales de la memoria? ¿Cómo se conjugaron el activismo offline y el activismo online? Estas son algunas de las preguntas que se irán desentrañando a lo largo del texto. A partir del análisis, se observa una (re)configuración en los modos de hacer memoria colectiva que implicó nuevos desafíos a la hora de pensar su defensa/disputa y transmisión. Asimismo, hubo una renovación de las estrategias visuales desde las materialidades y formas y desde los modos de circulación, a la vez que se sumaron voces y luchas del presente que reavivaron el sentido de los trabajos de memoria para visibilizar problemáticas actuales y ampliar derechos que consoliden la democracia. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers and political theorists who defend a more practical or realistic approach to the issue of global justice have challenged the purely theoretical approaches. Nevertheless, the debate can be regarded as excessively restricted to the discussion about policies and institutions neglecting the non-contingent dimensions of the problem. In principle, both positions, theoretical and practical, may be understood as diverging from each other. However, abstract and concrete demands of justice can also be complementary to each other. Thus, in this special (...) issue of Etikk i Praksis we propose to explore the points of convergence and divergence between the theoretical and the practical approaches to global justice. We encourage submissions: arguing for or against the theoretical approach; arguing for or against the practical approach; exploring or rejecting the possibility of convergence between them. (shrink)

Introducción al dosier: “La furia iconoclasta. A propósito de los usos públicos de monumentos en la historia reciente".

The stakes of the United States–China rivalry, as everyone knows, are enormous. But rarely do accounts of the transpacific relationship acknowledge its mirror-like nature. Commentary has focused on the singularity of China's rise, on the differences between the two countries, and on their each being historically exceptional—when in reality today the two have, as "peer competitors," become models for one another and increasingly alike. As Americans deny the implications of China's emulation of American ways, insisting the Chinese "dream their own (...) dream"; as Americans effectively tell Chinese "our spying is better than your spying"; and as China continues to expand into Africa much as Western powers did in the last... (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] of Art is an engaging collection of essays that covers a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from the philosophy of literature to neuro-aesthetics. Emerging sporadically over the course of 20 years, the stand-alone essays that comprise this volume display little evidence of a sustained, systematic thesis. But this is part of what constitutes the (...) book’s principal charm. Each chapter handles its respective subject with its own methodology, rhetorical mood and degree of rigour. Holt describes the thematic link among his essays as ‘the concept of meaning: what it means to make art, how the meanings we attach to artworks and interpretation shape our appreciation, the nature and value of aesthetic experience, and ultimately the definition of art itself’. It is questionable... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DESIRE FOR HAPPINESS AND THE COMMANDMENTS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER OF VER/TATIS SPLENDOR* LIVIO MELINA Pontijicio Istituto Giovanni Paolo II Rome, Italy ' ' THE DESIRE for happiness" and "the commandments " seem to constitute two irreducible alternatives, representing a contrariety that separates the classical conception of morality from the modern. The choice that Catholic post-Tridentine handbook theology made to remove the treatise on happiness from moral theology (...) and to focus on the commandments appears unavoidable, even to contemporary moral theology. The perspective of the desire for happiness, which is thought to bind the ethical imperative to an empirical element that is indeterminate, subjective, and, above all, self-interested, has been eliminated from the ambit of moral thinking as incapable of guaranteeing the absolute and unconditional character of morality. This has been achieved by means of a philosophical critique 1 that appears not to have lost currency and persuasiveness. Moreover, from a theological point of view, the perspective of the desire for happiness seems unwittingly to risk turning God, the end of all, into the means of"my" self-realization.2 Faithfulness to Biblical inspiration, rather than to an Aristotelian schema, seems necessarily to privilege the commandments as the original form of morality.3 ' Translated by Margaret Harper McCarthy. 1 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1981), 7-43. 2 Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Homo creatus est," in Homo creatus est, vol. 5 of Skizzen zur Theologie (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1986), 9-26. 3 Cf. G. Angelini, Il senso orientato al sapere: L'etica come questione teologica, in G. Colombo, ed., L'evidenza e lafede (Milan, 1988), 387-443, esp. 414-19. 341 342 LIVIO MELINA It is therefore surprising to note how the Encyclical Veritatis splendor, in its evocative rereading of the dialogue between Jesus and the young rich man (in Mt. 19:16-21), reintroduces the category of the "desire for happiness," cha~~cterizing it as proper content for moral inquiry. The Encyclical also, however, associates this perspective wjth that of the commandments when it cites the response of Jesus, who, after having invited the rich man to turn his gaze toward the One who alone is good, directs the young man to observe the Decalogue. This is not simply a juxtaposition of different and mutually incompatible perspectives. While it is not obliged to provide a theoretical and systematic justification, the papal document does solicit attempts to grasp the constitutive connections that would provide for an integration of these two categories; this is specifically the task of the moral theologian. Thus, when the Encyclical suggests that the question about happiness-as the question "about the full meaning of life," and as prior to the question "about rules to be followed"-is the "echo of a call from God who is the origin and end of man's life" (n. 7), it situates itself within the perspective of the renewal to which the Second Vatican Council called moral theology, which, in its theoretical exposition, will have the task of illustrating "the lofty vocation which the faithful have received in Christ, the only response fully capable of satisfying the desire of the human heart" (n. 7).4 This article intends to accept the invitation of the Encyclical and the Council by thematizing the relation between the desire for happiness and the commandments. Starting from the indications of the first chapter of Veritatis splendor, moral theology is called to establish this relation at a fundamental level. I shall develop my reflection on this theme in three stages. In the first place, I shall present an examination of the three terms at issue (desire, happiness, and commandments) with the intention of grasping the similarities and dissimilarities between them. In the second place I shall take up the global context within which Veritatis splendor situates the relation between these terms, and which is provided by the link between freedom and truth. 4 Cf. The Decree on Priestly Formation, Optatam totius, n. 16. DESIRE FOR HAPPINESS AND THE COMMANDMENTS 343 Finally, the specific theme of the first chapter of the Encyclical will be put into relief by displaying the novel points of departure of... (shrink)

“What purpose does your knowledge serve?” In her book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum states the difference between a democratic education for citizenship and an education for profit, and draws attention to the current education crisis caused by an overvaluation of the latter over the former. An education for democratic citizenship aims to develop three key abilities: critical thinking, the capacity to understand and to transcend parochial attachments, and empathy. An education for profit, however, requires (...) the training of specific skills in order to produce the economic growth of a certain group, company or country. While the first, in accordance to a Socratic education, focuses on the foundation of perennial structures of thought related to human dignity, the latter, following the sophistic model, simplifies these structures according to economic priorities. In this paper, I critically explore Nussbaum’s manifesto by reformulating two key arguments to show that: education must always aim at creating knowledge, and education must always be focused on the development of humanism as the greater goal, regardless of the emphasis on arts and humanities or on exact science. (shrink)

¿Deben tener derecho los estados democráticos liberales a excluir a los inmigrantes de su territorio? Este artículo cuestiona dos argumentos centrales a favor del control de las fronteras: (1) el derecho exclusivo del estado al asentamiento en un determinado territorio; y (2) el derecho exclusivo de los ciudadanos y residentes legales a la pertenencia a dicho estado. El artículo muestra que los estados contemporáneos no mantienen una vinculación inexorable a un trozo particular de tierra que les permita justificar el derecho (...) exclusivo de asentamiento y que los habitantes no pueden defender coherentemente su restricción unilateral al acceso a la pertenencia. Para terminar, el artículo desarrolla una visión alternativa de los derechos territoriales estatales. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim in determining who should be granted electoral rights at the state level, one negative and another positive. The negative part deconstructs the link between state-level political membership and citizenship and contests naturalization procedures. This approach argues that naturalization procedures, when coercively used as a necessary condition for accessing electoral rights at the state level, are both inconsistent with liberal democratic ideals and an inexcusable practice in liberal democratic states. The positive part of the paper (...) seeks to establish what – if not the acquisition of citizenship –could determine state-level political membership for non-citizens. In other words, it attempts to explain how and in what conditions non-citizens may become political members of a state without naturalizing. This approach considers the most prominent arguments that base state-level political membership on residency, i.e. residency as a legal status granted by the previous members of the community and residency as physical presence within a defined jurisdiction. It argues that, in a world of increasing human mobility across borders, while the former way of understanding residency might be too restrictive, the latter might be too banal to forge membership ties that form a political community. Domicile is the proposed alternative, introduced as a type of residency that is self-given and remains stable despite numerous changes of residency. Domicile is a legal term that indicates where a person officially registers her permanent home even when residing abroad. In sum, this is an argument against naturalization as the access door for electoral rights at the state level and in favor of defining membership in the political community based on domicile. (shrink)

El 29 de junio de 2011 se sancionó en Argentina la Ley Nacional 26.691 que declara Sitios de Memoria a los lugares que funcionaron como centros clandestinos de detención, tortura y exterminio (CCDTyE) o donde sucedieron hechos emblemáticos del accionar de la represión ilegal desarrollada durante el terrorismo de Estado ejercido en el país hasta el 10 de diciembre de 1983. Como autoridad de aplicación, la Secretaría de Derechos Humanos de la Nación a través de la Dirección Nacional de Sitios (...) de Memoria reglamentó la Ley en el 2014 y se comprometió a garantizar la preservación, señalización y difusión de los sitios, así como también su gestión, y la promoción y asistencia de proyectos de nuevos espacios de memoria. De esta forma, se consolidó el trabajo interjurisdiccional que se venía desarrollando desde la Red Federal de Sitios de Memoria, creada en el 2006 en la órbita del Archivo Nacional de la Memoria. (shrink)

La obra artística del Espacio de Cultura y Memoria el Rancho Urutaú se inscribe en los diversos modos en que el pasado de la espiral de violencia y el terrorismo de Estado de los años setenta del siglo XX en Argentina y sus consecuencias ha sido abordado. A lo largo de esta investigación, presentamos y analizamos las particularidades del caso que devienen de los hechos en su escala local: el trabajo de las memorias en la ciudad de Ensenada, provincia de (...) Buenos Aires. El objetivo general es conocer el proyecto "Mosaicos por la memoria" del grupo Rancho Urutaú (2010-2017) apuntando a los modos de representación de desaparecidos/as y asesinados ensenadenses. El proyecto se materializa a través de murales con técnica de mosaico, emplazados en los barrios a los que pertenecían los/as homenajeados/as. Estos murales, a escala urbana, privilegian representaciones figurativas que a partir de una narrativa humanitaria recuperan un perfil identitario que apela a aquello cotidiano, lúdico, y ameno de la vida de esas personas. Nuestra hipótesis central es que los murales emplazados adquieren la cualidad de lugares de memoria tanto para los integrantes del grupo como para los familiares y allegados de los homenajeados. En este sentido, la pregunta que guía esta investigación es ¿Cómo un espacio puede convertirse en un lugar de memoria? O bien ¿Qué significa y qué implica que un espacio se convierta en un lugar de memoria? (shrink)

Autism Spectrum Disorders have been defined as a group of developmental conditions that affect the capacity to interact with the physical and social environment, among others. A core feature of autism is the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviors that vary in complexity, form, and frequency throughout life history. These core features have traditionally been defined as impairments that interfere with communication competence. From an embodied approach, however, these actions could be seen as characteristic ways of interacting with the world. (...) In this sense, we take an enactive and embodied approach to cognition in which we conceive cognitive agents as sensorimotor systems whose perception-action occurs in terms of affordances. This framework provides an integrative view of autism considering affectivity, perception, action, exploration, and interaction within a complex and dynamic dimension. Following this, we propose different applications based on embodied, intercultural, and feminist epistemologies, to understand and participate with autistic and cognitively diverse populations. The change in theoretical and methodological paradigms within embodied cognitive science towards autism and other cognitive diversities and how they engage with the world can lead to more comprehensive, integrative, and bioethical approaches. (shrink)

This article discusses the emergence of a patenting culture in university science. Patenting culture is examined empirically in the context of the increasing commerciali zation of science, and theoretically within debates over scientific "credibility." The article explores the translation of academic credit into patents, and vice versa, and argues that this process raises new questions for our understanding of scientific recognition and of scientists' networks. In particular, the analysis suggests that scientists must move between two distinct social worlds to manage (...) the rewards that academic and patent cultures carry. (shrink)

For over 40 years, J. I. Packer's classic has been an important tool to help Christians around the world discover the wonder, the glory and the joy of knowing God. Explaining both who God is and how we can relate to him, this thought-provoking work seeks to transform and enrich the Christian understanding of God.

The present work has the object of investigating the relation between emotion and persuasion in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, not only by analyzing its lexical expressions, but also the emotional scenarios and the context in which they manifest. The Cyropaedia, usually considered as the epitome of Xenophon’s theory of leadership, shows us a crucial characteristic of Cyrus: his capacity of appealing to different emotions depending on the audience. This inquiry will allow us to trace the constitutive elements of a possible theory of (...) emotions in Xenophon, which we will see, differs partially from the Aristotelian treatment in the Rhetoric, but also from his historiographic predecessors, Herodotus and Thucydides. Xenophon's theory reveals a complexity that exceeds the mere appellation to emotions through speech as a means of persuasion and shows an intimate relation with the fourth century B.C. political and constitutional discourse. (shrink)

Arguments have appeared recently that call into question the significance of the highest good for Kant’s moral theory. In particular, Thomas Auxter has remarked that the highest good is “an extramoral addition to Kant’s theory, that is, one designed primarily to serve religious purposes the fulfillment of which are irrelevant to the actual operation of practical judgment and the choice of a course of conduct.” The ramifications of such criticisms are not restricted exclusively to Kantian scholarship, but express concern about (...) the relevance of psychological, religious, and eudaemonist concepts for a rational theory of obligation. Auxter’s specific critique is based on a distinction between two possible senses of the highest good: the first is introduced by Kant in the “Analytic” of the Critique of Practical Reason is the idea of the ectypal world, a moral order in which the ethical dictates of moral judgment harmonize with natural law; and the other, discussed in the “Dialectic” of the second Critique, presents an object of hope for the human will, the idea of a state of affairs in which virtue is rewarded with a proportionate amount of happiness. It is Auxter’s conclusion that neither of these interpretations has anything to contribute to the practical validity of Kant’s theory, as both require more of the individual moral agent or of humanity in general than can be reasonably expected of finite moral beings whose efforts are conditioned and limited by the physical world. Appealing to Kant’s premise that “impossibility implies no obligation,” Auxter points out that as a state in which the spatiotemporal existence of the moral agent is organized in harmony with the prescriptions of the moral will, the highest good as the ectypal world exceeds the physical capabilities of human beings. More often than not, natural phenomena and the laws that govern them are recalcitrant to our moral efforts, and so cannot be expected to conform to the concordance required by the ectypal ideal. Similarly, the highest good conceived as an otherworldly condition, in which virtue is redeemable for the appropriate amount of happiness, mandates the intervention of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity who knows the intelligible dispositions of moral agents and judges them accordingly. This obviously exceeds the moral capabilities of human agents. What cannot be accomplished cannot be commanded, and so Auxter claims that the highest good can in no way enter into Kant’s moral theory, which implies that since religious ideals have no prescriptive force, they have no relevance for an account of obligation. (shrink)