This article is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, it calls for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment – as practice and ethos – might offer in this space. Arguing that opportunities for collaboration between social scientists and neuroscientists need to be taken seriously, the article situates itself against existing conceptualizations of these dynamics, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each (...) insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge, or does not show how a more entangled field might be realized. The article links this absence to the ‘regime of the inter-’, an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their pre-existing separateness. The argument of the paper is thus twofold: (1) that, contra the ‘regime of the inter-’, it is no longer practicable to maintain a hygienic separation between sociocultural webs and neurobiological architecture; (2) that the cognitive neuroscientific experiment, as a space of epistemological and ontological excess, offers an opportunity to researchers, from all disciplines, to explore and register this realization. (shrink)

In recent years scholars have begun to question the usefulness of the category of ''religion'' to describe a distinctive form of human experience and behavior. In his last book, The Ideology of Religious Studies (OUP 2000), Timothy Fitzgerald argued that ''religion'' was not a private area of human existence that could be separated from the public realm and that the study of religion as such was thus impossibility. In this new book he examines a wide range of English-language texts (...) to show how religion became transformed from a very specific category indigenous to Christian culture into a universalist claim about human nature and society. These claims, he shows, are implied by and frequently explicit in theories and methods of comparative religion. But they are also tacitly reproduced throughout the humanities in the relatively indiscriminate use of ''religion'' as an a priori valid cross-cultural analytical concept, for example in historiography, sociology, and social anthropology. Fitzgerald seeks to link the argument about religion to the parallel formation of the ''non-religious'' and such dichotomies as church-state, sacred-profane, ecclesiastical-civil, spiritual-temporal, supernatural-natural, and irrational-rational. Part of his argument is that the category ''religion'' has a different logic compared to the category ''sacred,'' but the two have been consistently confused by major writers, including Durkheim and Eliade. Fitzgerald contends that ''religion'' imagined as a private belief in the supernatural was a necessary conceptual space for the simultaneous imagining of ''secular'' practices and institutions such as politics, economics, and the Nation State. The invention of ''religion'' as a universal type of experience, practice, and institution was partly the result of sacralizing new concepts of exchange, ownership, and labor practices, applying ''scientific'' rationality to human behavior, administering the colonies and classifying native institutions. In contrast, shows Fitzgerald, the sacred-profane dichotomy has a different logic of use. (shrink)

A perennial debate in the field of global ethics revolves around the possibility of a universalist ethics as well as arguments over the nature, and significance, of difference for moral deliberation. Decolonial literature, in particular, increasingly signifies a pluriverse – one with radical ontological and epistemological differences. This book examines the concept of the pluriverse alongside global ethics and the ethics of care in order to contemplate new ethical horizons for engaging across difference. Offering a challenge to the current state (...) of the field, this book argues for a rethinking of global ethics as it has been conceived thus far. (shrink)

This article is about the future of sociology, as transformations in the digital and biological sciences lay claim to the discipline’s jurisdictional hold over ‘the social’. Rather than analyse the specifics of these transformations, however, the focus of the article is on how a narrative of methodological crisis is sustained in sociology, and on how such a narrative conjures very particular disciplinary futures. Through a close reading of key texts, the article makes two claims: (1) that a surprisingly conventional urge (...) towards disciplinary reproduction often animates accounts of sociology’s crisis; (2) that, even more surprisingly, these same accounts are often haunted by a hidden metaphorical architecture centred on biology, vitality, vigour and life. The central gambit of the article is that, perhaps in spite of itself, this subterranean image of life actually hints at less reproductively conventional ways of understanding – and intervening in – sociology’s methodological ‘crisis’. Drawing, empirically, on the author’s recent work on urban stress and, theoretically, on Stefan Helmreich’s (2011, 2016) account of ‘limit biologies’, the articles ends with a call for a ‘limit sociology’ – a form of attention that could, similarly, expand rather than contract the present moment of transformation. At the heart of the article is a hope that thinking with such a limit may help sociologists to imagine a less deadening future than that on offer from a canonised discipline cathected by endless crisis-talk. (shrink)

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Digital technology has transformed the way that we visualise the natural world, the art we create and the stories we tell about our environments. Exploring contemporary digital art and literature through an ecocritical lens, Digital Vision and the Ecological Aesthetic (1968-2018) demonstrates the many ways in which critical ideas of the sublime, the pastoral and the picturesque have been renewed and shaped in (...) digital media, from electronic literature to music and the visual arts. The book goes on to explore the ecological implications of these new forms of cultural representation in the digital age and in so doing makes a profound contribution to our understanding of digital art practice in the 21st century. (shrink)

Albert of Saxony was one of the great logicians of the Middle Ages, on a par with William Ockham and John Buridan. The Twenty-Five Disputed Questions on Logic treat of central issues in logic, both then and now, such as the nature of meaning, of universals, of truth, and of tense and modality; and the quality and quantity of propositions, the role of negation, and the relations of contradiction and equivalence between them. Dr. Fitzgerald has studied Albert's work extensively, (...) and previously edited the Twenty-Five Disputed Questions from the original manuscripts. This translation makes available for the first time in English this careful and exemplary examination of logical notions by an outstanding medieval thinker.-Stephen Read, University of St. Andrews. (shrink)

This book provides international perspectives on the law of copyright in relation to three core themes - copyright and developing countries; the government and copyright; and technology and the future of copyright. The third theme includes an examination of the extent to which technology will dictate the development of the law, and a re-examination of the role of copyright in fostering innovation and creativity. As a critique, one chapter discusses how certain rights can create or reinforce social inequality under copyright (...) royalty systems. Underlying these themes is the role the law of copyright has in encouraging or impeding human flourishing. (shrink)

Quick reference guide includes illustrated explanations of the most common terms used in general math classes. Discusses how students can use manipulatives and basic math tools to improve their understanding. With measurement conversion tables, guides to geometric shapes, and more.

Modern medicine has produced many wonderful technological breakthroughs that have extended the limits of the frail human body. However, much of the focus of this medical research has been on the physical, often reducing the human being to a biological machine to be examined, understood, and controlled. This book begins by asking whether the modern medical milieu has overly objectified the body, unwittingly or not, and whether current studies in bioethics are up to the task of restoring a fuller understanding (...) of the human person. In response, various authors here suggest that a more theological/religious approach would be helpful, or perhaps even necessary. Presenting specific perspectives from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the book is divided into three parts: "Understanding the Body," "Respecting the Body," and "The Body at the End of Life." A panel of expert contributors—including philosophers, physicians, and theologians and scholars of religion— answer key questions such as: What is the relationship between body and soul? What are our obligations toward human bodies? How should medicine respond to suffering and death? The resulting text is an interdisciplinary treatise on how medicine can best function in our societies. Offering a new way to approach the medical humanities, this book will be of keen interest to any scholars with an interest in contemporary religious perspectives on medicine and the body. (shrink)

An overview of the philosophical and bioethics literature on conscientious refusals by health care professionals to provide abortion and contraceptive services.

We have seen important work on questions such as: whether there is a uniquely female approach to ethics, whether ethics should be par.

Throughout Supernatural, we watch the Winchesters resist, embrace, and redefine their roles in the family business, “saving people, hunting things.” These tensions echo a topic that philosophers have explored for thousands of years—free will. According to the existentialist philosopher Jean‐Paul Sartre, each person is in a constant state of shaping himself and his place in the world through free will. Dean is admirable in his ability to resist bad faith and act as captain for Team Free Will. In Supernatural, the (...) choices people make are impacted by their soul. Knowing that Sam could simply walk away from hunting to pursue a normal life shows Dean that they no longer share the same sense of moral responsibility. For good or for ill, Sam and Dean are responsible for their actions, which is better than you'd expect from an ex‐blood junkie and a high school dropout with six dollars in his pocket. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Scandalous Research in the Twentieth Century Basic Principles of Research Ethics Respect for Persons Beneficence Justice Conclusion.

A close look at the rhetoric in America's recent welfare‐reform debate has both surprising and important implications for political philosophy. Political philosophers typically presume that opponents of redistribution are motivated by considerations other than equality. Recent arguments for welfare reform, however, have been formulated in a manner consistent with most contemporary egalitarian theories. This result should make us question either the political relevance of egalitarian ideals or the adequacy of those theories of equality.

The history of Western Thought since the seventeenth Century leaves little doubt as to the practical validity of the method of natural investigation discovered by Galileo, interpreted by Descartes, and variously generalized by Newton and Einstein. The repercussions of its success on every level of human activity, religious, political, commercial, and educational have awakened the most diverse ánd even contradictory speculations as to the nature of this science and the objectives of the scientist. Often enough one gets the impression that (...) these speculations are founded on an arbitrary and unjustifiable conception of the nature of modern science; a conception formulated in terms of what one thinks or wishes to think science is from its effects upon the extra-scientific domain rather than in terms of a patient and critical penetration of its intrinsic structure. (shrink)