The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer to a general state of health and the orderly function of organs. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, normal broke out of scientific usage, becoming less precise and coming to mean a balanced condition to (...) be maintained and an ideal to be achieved. In Normality, Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens offer an intellectual and cultural history of what it means to be normal. They explore the history of how communities settle on any one definition of the norm, along the way analyzing a fascinating series of case studies in fields as remote as anatomy, statistics, criminal anthropology, sociology, and eugenics. Cryle and Stephens argue that since the idea of normality is so central to contemporary disability, gender, race, and sexuality studies, scholars in these fields must first have a better understanding of the context for normality. This pioneering book moves beyond binaries to explore for the first time what it does—and doesn’t—mean to be normal. (shrink)

Whereas several commentators have held that Kant’s argument for the postulate of private right fails insofar as it begs the question, I argue here that this criticism misses the mark. Critics have...

P J Crittenden; Thoughts about Locke's Thoughts about Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 149–160, https://doi.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate perceived stressors and coping behaviours in student nurses on a pre-registration programme of study. Stress in student nurses has been identified with decreased emotional well-being and poor academic achievement. The significance of stress and coping behaviours in students during training has implications for education and practice. Design/methodology/approach The present study recruited 87 pre-registration student nurses in a cross-sectional design. Bivariate and multivariate analyses assessed the differences in field and year of study (...) and the students’ perceived stress and coping behaviours. Findings The findings showed that stress is a significant issue in nurse training. Fifty-three per cent of the participants had levels higher than the mean. Interestingly, the present study found that high-perceived stress was associated with avoidance behaviours. The most common type of perceived stress and ranked by highest factor were from written assignments and a lack of professional skills and knowledge. Their peer group and everyday life activities were shown as potential ways of coping with stressors. Thus, it seems reasonable to focus support on decreasing avoidant and enhancing stress-reducing behaviours. Practical implications Psychological stress and coping behaviours must be considered together, as perceived stress is bound by the ability to ameliorate stress by managing helpful and unhelpful behaviours. Originality/value The findings may suggest that a potential benefit could come from the provision of helpful strategies such as peer group support and reduction of avoidant behaviours. Also, there seems to be a need for greater mental health literacy in dealing with stress during training. (shrink)

Moral values in healthcare range widely between interest groups and are principally subjective. Disagreements diminish dialogue and marginalize alternative viewpoints. Extremely premature births exemplify how discord becomes unproductive when conflicts of interest, cultural misunderstanding, constrained evidence review, and peculiar hierarchy compete without the balance of objective standards of reason. Accepting uncertainty, distributing risk fairly, and humbly acknowledging therapeutic limits are honorable traits, not relativism, and especially crucial in our world of constrained resources. We think dialogics engender a mutual understanding that: (...) i) transitions beliefs beyond bias, ii) moves conflict toward pragmatism (i.e., the truth of any position is verified by subsequent experience), and iii) recognizes value pluralism (i.e., human values are irreducibly diverse, conflicting, and ultimately incommensurable). This article provides a clear and useful Point-Counterpoint of extreme prematurity controversies, an objective neurodevelopmental outcomes table, and a dialogics exemplar to cultivate shared empathetic comprehension, not to create sides from which to choose. It is our goal to bridge the understanding gap within and between physicians and bioethicists. Dialogics accept competing relational interests as human nature, recognizing that ultimate solutions satisfactory to all are illusory, because every choice has downside. Nurturing a collective consciousness via dialogics and pragmatism is congenial to integrating objective evidence review and subjective moral-cultural sentiments, and is that rarest of ethical constructs, a means and an end. (shrink)

Westworld is a television series on HBO (2016–present), based on a movie of the same name by Michael Crichton. The plot of the show is wide-reaching. The first season shows us an adult theme park where android “hosts” serve the wealthy “guests.” Seasons two and three show the attempt of the hosts to escape this servitude, and then, in a twist, help humans do the same outside of the parks. This chapter links all three seasons of Westworld to theories of (...) colonization. First, it explores the types of colonialism as they pertain to Westworld. Then it looks at the various scopes of colonization in Westworld – the colonization of space, time, and psychic space. Next, it explores the psychology of colonizers and the colonized as it pertains to the show. Lastly, it explores possible forms of liberation from colonization that the show has to offer. (shrink)

"Resilience in the academic setting has been named as academic resilience and been defined as an increased probability of academic success despite stressful events and conditions" [Mitchell, 2021] p1474 based on the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS‐30) [Cassidy, 2016].

Ten years on and the debate about the foundations of judicial review continues. Two themes have remained constant throughout. The species of legislative intent have multiplied to include specific, general and constructive intent, and who knows what further ‘adjectival variants’ remain to be discovered. Those opposed to the common law model advance dire warnings of the dangers of ignoring their preferred adjectival version. In Allan's case my previous analytical criticism of constructive legislative intent, henceforth CLI, has provoked more extreme claims (...) and more intemperate language about the alleged consequences of adherence to the common law model. These are, as will be seen, wrong. They serve moreover to mask the problems with CLI. Allan claims repeatedly that I confuse literal and constructive legal intent in his reasoning. This is quite mistaken: I take issue with the very meaning and application of CLI. (shrink)

It is argued in this paper that sustainability is not a major concern of contemporary economic theory even though the roots of the concept dig deep into the development literature and into nineteenth century Classical economics (sections 1 and 2). Contemporary Neo-Classical economic theory is built upon utilitarian ethics and is not at all communitarian except to the extent that an economic theory of community can be built upon an utilitarian ethics (section 3). Contrary to what some NeoClassical economists argue, (...) it is possible to give a relatively precise definition of sustainable economic development. What has not been established yet is whether all alleged properties of sustainable economic development are non-contradictory. In other words, the economic growth literature has not provided us with an ideal model of sustainable development yet even though the latter's main characteristics are economic (section 4). Non-economists have great difficulty in accepting some of the economic methodology when applied to sustainability. The fault lies not in the economic methodology itself but rather in the assertion—made by some economists—that sustainability is only an economic problem (section S and 6). Economic-ecological sustainability should be the central and pragmatic concern for public policy even though it will necessarily have social implications. Widening sustainability to social and moral concerns can only hasten its demise as a practical ideology (section 7). (shrink)

The problem of punishment -- Punishment as crime prevention -- Can retributive punishment be justified? -- The mixed theory of punishment -- Retribution and revenge -- What is the purpose of retribution? -- Making sense of honor -- Is punishment justified?

Awe arises when one experiences something so extraordinary that it defies current understanding, prompting efforts to comprehend the initially incomprehensible. We situate awe within Dubourg and Baumard's framework for the prevalence and psychological underpinnings of imaginary worlds. We argue that imaginary worlds are powerful catalysts of awe, which, in turn, drive important individual and social outcomes.

The rivalry among the philosophical schools in India was not purely intellectual, but had far-reaching social implications. The rivalry between vedic and non-vedic schools had a socio-political dimension. This paper claims that commentaries of the source texts of schools on both sides played an important role in development of inter-darśana politics. This paper deals with some of the interpretative moves made by Vācaspatimiśra in his two famous commentaries: Sāṅkhyatattvakaumudī, the commentary on Sāṅkhyakārikā of Īśvarakṛṣṇa, and Nyāyavārtikatātparyaṭīkā, the commentary on Nyāyavārtika (...) of Udyotakara. The paper argues that some of Vācaspatimiśra’s interpretative moves in these commentaries can be called “political moves.” The paper shows how these interpretative moves deviate from the natural or unforced meanings of the texts. It argues that these deviations aim at strengthening the orthodox front of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Rybakov proved that the admissible rules of $\mathsf {IPC}$ are decidable. We give a proof of the same theorem, using the same core idea, but couched in the many notions that have been developed in the mean time. In particular, we illustrate how the argument can be interpreted as using refinements of the notions of exactness and extendibility.

In their article, Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) outline the conditions that they have identified as situations in which it is ethically permissible to use chemical restraints, defined as medicati...

The author clarifies the existential philosophy that is implicit in Kurt Goldstein's philosophy of organism (Goldstein, 1963; 1995). Situated in response to the growing trend that psychological phenomena are reducible to the nervous system, the author argues for the reverse: that the significance of nervous system activity can only be understood by viewing it as background to foreground performances. Like the organization of perception into meaningful figure-- ground Gestalts, the existential modes of embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality, and attunement are organized (...) together to accomplish foreground performances. It is only within this context that the activity of the nervous system may be understood as significant or insignificant. Speech is given as an example. The article concludes with a commentary on how the trend of reducing psychological phenomena to neurological phenomena has impaired our understanding of brain disorders and psychological disorders. (shrink)