Contemporary approaches to adolescent development are framed by positive youth development models. A key outcome of these models is that healthy and positively developing youth are more likely to contribute to their family, schools, and communities. However, little work on contribution and its antecedents has been conducted with youth of color. As high achieving youth of color often become leaders in their communities, it is important to consider malleable predictors of contribution within this population. Therefore, through a cross-sectional design, we (...) examined the relations between youth critical reflection, hopeful future expectations, and mentoring relationship quality and youth contribution in a sample of 177 youth of color (60% Black, 40% Latinx) attending an afterschool college preparation program at six sites around the U.S. Results indicated that youth critical reflection, hopeful future expectations, and mentoring relationship quality significantly predicted contribution. Exploratory analyses suggested that these relations were significant for Black youth but not Latinx youth. Implications of these findings for future scholarship are discussed. (shrink)

Introduction: Vulnerability is a poorly understood concept in research ethics, often aligned to autonomy and consent. A recent addition to the literature represents a taxonomy of vulnerability developed by Kipnis, but this refers to the conduct of clinical trials rather than qualitative research, which may raise different issues. Aim: To examine issues of vulnerability in cancer and palliative care research obtained through qualitative interviews. Method: Secondary analysis of qualitative data from 26 black Caribbean and 19 white British patients with advanced (...) cancer. Results: Four domains of vulnerability derived from Kipnis’s taxonomy were identified and included: (i) communicative vulnerability, represented by participants impaired in their ability to communicate because of distressing symptoms; (ii) institutional vulnerability, which referred to participants who existed under the authority of others—for example, in hospital; (iii) deferential vulnerability, which included participants who were subject to the informal authority or the independent interests of others; (iv) medical vulnerability, which referred to participants with distressing medical conditions; and (v) social vulnerability, which included participants considered to belong to an undervalued social group. Participants from both ethnic groups populated all these domains, but those who were black Caribbean were more present among the socially vulnerable. Conclusions: Current classifications of vulnerability require reinterpretation when applied to qualitative research at the end of life. We recommend that researchers and research ethics committees reconceptualise vulnerability using the domains identified in this study and consider the research context and interviewers’ skills. (shrink)

Voilà un ouvrage d’une grande originalité, si grande qu’un spécialiste aussi consommé de la biologie aristotélicienne que Pierre Pellegrin – qui préface le livre – peut écrire (p. 10) : « Mes années d’études ne me donnent pas plus de compétence que n’en a n’importe quel lecteur nouveau du corpus biologique aristotélicien pour apprécier un travail aussi neuf ». Quant à moi, je ne saurais mieux faire, pour en donner une première idée, que d’emprunter quelques phrases à cette préface : (...) « […] l.. (shrink)

Epistemologists frequently claim that the question “What should I believe?” demarcates the field of epistemology. This question is then compared to the question asked in ethics: “What should I do?” The question and the ensuing comparison, it is thought, specify both the content and the normativity at stake in epistemology. I argue that both of the assumptions embedded in this demarcation are problematic. By thinking of epistemology’s focal question in this light, first, we risk importing our assumptions about the epistemic (...) domain into our understanding of the nature and normativity of the belief state, and second, we come to have a false picture of the normativity that supposedly underlies the domain. In Chapter 1, “The Doxastic Account of the Epistemic”, I explore a range of views that assume there to be an essential connection between belief and truth. I look at views that treat all beliefs as attempts to believe the truth, views that consider belief’s biological function to be accurate representation, and views that hold that the very concept of belief is a normative concept. I go on to explore instrumentalist conceptions of belief’s truth connection and conduct an inquiry into the value of true belief. I conclude that neither the value of true belief nor an essential connection between belief and truth can explain epistemic normativity. In Chapter 2, “Evidential Exclusivity, Correctness, and the Nature of Belief” I note that epistemologists have recently argued that the best explanation for the apparent truth of a pair of claims - “Transparency” and “Exclusivity” – is that belief is subject to a standard of correctness such that a belief that p is correct if and only if p is true. I argue that the proposed explanation unduly privileges one part of belief’s full functional profile – its role in deliberation – and that a more complete consideration of belief’s role in cognition suggests an alternative explanation for Exclusivity and Transparency but denies belief’s standard of correctness. In Chapter 3, “Tradeoffs and Epistemic Value”, I look at a debate about whether epistemic norms are teleological. Though it’s standard to assume in keeping with teleology that certain goals or values explain the content of our norms, a collection of recent papers have aimed to show that this assumption can’t be correct because teleological norms countenance tradeoffs but epistemic norms don’t countenance tradeoffs. I note that the kind of non-teleological view that countenances no tradeoffs whatsoever is actually quite extreme and virtually unheard of in ethics. I go on to make the case that norms that license no tradeoffs can’t reasonably be taken to be grounded in value at all, and thus can’t be understood to give rise to necessary normativity. I conclude by suggesting that we broaden our conception of the epistemic domain to recognize teleological norms that provide recommendations for methods of inquiry or pursuit of significant truth or knowledge. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is one of James Prescott Joule’s scientific contributions: the laws of heat production by electric currents in conductors. In 1841, the 22 years old Joule published a paper with the title “On the heat evolved by metallic conductors of electricity, and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis” where he presented an experimental study of that phenomenon and proposed two laws that were allegedly supported by his trials. On closer inspection, both his laboratory work (...) and his inferences can be challenged. The emphasis of this article is an attempt to understand Joule’s experimental undertaking, its highpoints and shortcomings, by a detailed analysis of this specific episode and by studying the precedents of his work and subsequent advancements. It is possible to point out several serious deficiencies of that investigation, and Joule’s contemporaries, such as Edmond Becquerel and Heinrich Lenz, did criticize some of his flaws and undertook new experiments to provide a sound basis for those laws. Besides providing a historical examination of that specific episode, this article uses this case study to tackle some features of the nature of science that may contribute to scientific education. (shrink)

Philosophy Bites brings together the twenty-five best interviews from this hugely successful website.

Fields of enquiry. Rome Harré on What is social science -- Toby Miller on Cultural studies -- Lawrence Sherman on Criminology -- Jonathan Haidt on Moral psychology -- Robert J. Shiller on Behavioural economics -- Births, deaths and human population. Sarah Franklin on the Sociology of reproductive technology -- Ann Oakley on Women's experience of childbirth -- Sarah Harper on the Population challenge for the 21st century -- Steven Pinker on Violence and human nature -- Social science through different lenses. (...) Gregory Clark on Names -- Robin Dunbar on Dunbar numbers -- David Goldblatt on the Sociology of football -- Trevor Marchand on Craft -- Bruce Hood on the Supernatural -- Doreen Massey on Space -- Politics and social science. Craig Calhoun on Protest movements -- Danny Dorling on Inequality -- Kate Pickett on the Case for equality. (shrink)

Plato and the Power of Images addresses ways Plato has used images and the ways to understand their status as images, particularly how an image resembles what it represents and how to avoid mistaking that image for what it represents.

A French philosopher specializing in logic, E. Goblot is especially remembered today for his book, La Barrière et le Niveau, which, because it lays the groundwork for a theory of social distinction, has become a classic of sociology. Generally presented as a simple precursor which merely anticipates the more noteworthy work of P. Bourdieu, La Barrière et le Niveau is in fact a work mobilizing arguments which tap into the reality of a social class, the bourgeoisie, with which E. Goblot (...) is intimately familiar. By adopting a critical and reflexive posture, it is possible to appreciate the extent to which E. Goblot’s familial and professional experience contributed to framing the issues and the theses which he would develop regarding the French bourgeoisie’s social-distinction strategies in the fields of education, sociability, and morality. (shrink)

Derek Parfit (1942-2017) is the most famous philosopher you've likely never heard of. In 1984, Parfit published what was, and is still, hailed by many philosophers as a work of genius - one of the most cited works of philosophy since World War II, Reasons and Persons. At its core, he argued that we should be concerned less with our own interests and more with the common good. His book brims with brilliant argumentative detail and stunningly inventive thought experiments that (...) challenged contemporary views about what it means to be a person, why one should forego concern for oneself as an identity that persists over time, what it means to act on the basis of reasons, and what we owe to future generations. Parfit also - unfashionably at the time - believed in a kind of grand unified theory of morality, what he called theory x, a non-religious ethical theory wherein all the major moral theories were converging from different sides on the same mountaintop. Parfit has had an enormous influence not only on philosophy, but also beyond, particularly amongst those in the fields of climate ethics, poverty relief, and charitable giving. In this book, the first-full scale biography of Parfit, Dave Edmonds tells the story of the thinker that many philosophers consider the most important moral philosopher of the last century. Edmonds' rendering of the man in full skilfully illuminates the person behind the acclaimed philosopher. Despite Parfit's extraordinary mind, outward appearances suggest his was also an extraordinarily uneventful life - one largely spent in cloistered institutions from Eton to Oxford and one seemingly monomaniacally devoted to ideas. Edmonds' aim is to show how this son and grandson of missionaries went from a genial and outgoing history student to a captivating, yet monkish philosopher singularly devoted to saving morality. In doing so, Edmonds makes Parfit's profound, but often impenetrable, ideas accessible to a broad audience and gives life and body to the thoughts of a seemingly pure thinker that captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Cet ouvrage est écrit à quatre mains et porte sur la relation entre création artistique et sciences de la cognition. L'ouvrage propose deux approches de l'expérience esthétique. Une approche en troisième personne mobilisant des modèles propres aux systèmes dits auto-organisateurs issus de la biologie dédiée à la réception des œuvres d'art et une approche en première personne rendant compte par auto-analyse d'une pratique artistique vécue qui s'appuie également sur de tels systèmes, systèmes eux-mêmes liés (...) aux concepts d'émergence et de complexité". (shrink)

Twenty-seven of today's leading philosophers each introduce and explore ideas from one of history's greatest minds." -- Cover.

Dans un passage de Physique iii (7, 207b15-21), Aristote s’exprime d’une manière qui suppose valide l’implication suivante : « Si une grandeur peut être infinie en puissance, une telle grandeur peut aussi être infinie en acte ». Cette implication a intrigué les commentateurs tant anciens et médiévaux que modernes. Ces derniers se sont en général bornés à constater que l’implication n’est pas logiquement valide, sans expliquer comment et en quel sens Aristote avait pu la tenir pour telle. En rapprochant le (...) passage précité d’un autre passage de Physique iii (6, 206b16-27), le présent article en propose une interprétation qui semble lever toutes les difficultés. Au Moyen Age, le sens de l’implication a été très discuté, et l’interprétation proposée ici a été vue et soutenue par plusieurs commentateurs : on l’étudie chez quelques-uns de ceux-ci en situant leur position dans le cadre du débat médiéval sur la question, notamment en référence aux deux interprétations alors fameuses proposées par Averroès. (shrink)

This book explores the view that normative behaviour is part of a complex of social mechanisms, processes and narratives that are constantly shifting. From this perspective, norms are not a kind of self-contained social object or fact, but rather an interplay of many things that we label as norms when we 'take a snapshot' of them at a particular instant. Further, this book pursues the hypothesis that considering the dynamic aspects of these phenomena sheds new light on them. The sort (...) of issues that this perspective opens to exploration include: Of what is this complex we call a "social norm" composed of? How do new social norms emerge and what kind of circumstances might facilitate such an appearance? How context-specific are the norms and patterns of normative behaviour that arise? How do the cognitive and the social aspects of norms interact over time? How do expectations, beliefs and individual rationality interact with social norm complexes to effect behaviour? How does our social embeddedness relate to social constraint upon behaviour? How might the socio-cognitive complexes that we call norms be usefully researched? (shrink)

When first published twenty years ago, The Logic of Medicine presented a new way of thinking about clinical medicine as a scholarly discipline as well as a profession. Since then, advances in research and technology have revolutionized both the practice and theory of medicine. In this new, extensively rewritten edition, Dr. Murphy includes changes to show how these different areas of scholarship may affect details of "the logic of medicine" without compromising its fundamental coherence. New to this edition are discussions (...) of the challenge of the flood of new empirical data, new ideas in genetics, molecular biology, homeostasis, pathogenesis, cancer, aging, and Alzheimer's disease. Murphy also comments on such new theoretical topics as dynamic systems, chaos, and fractals and their impact on the burgeoning fields of philosophy and practice of medicine. Written with medical students in mind, the book includes a glossary, many new examples, and problems for solutions with comments on each. An entirely new chapter deals with modeling. Clinicians and researchers will also find the principles thought-provoking and illuminating. (shrink)

The productions of goods and the laws governing their exchange are no longer enough to account for the economic reality with regard to which the idea of crisis is generally invoked. The psychological, intellectual and moral motivations that support the activity of production are seen today as more and more decisive factors but ones that are evasive. Thus the stakes that would govern economic crises (but are they not something else?) must be sought on new ground, around mental incitements, ethical (...) references, networks of obligations that take the question of crisis beyond the economic domain, that would pose it in terms of civilizations. (shrink)

Games, festivals, folklore, a derivation of them, and artistic expression are manifestations of symbolic invention. To compare them is to bring out the differences in the order of the symbolic production and have, as a consequence, a differentiated perception of the way they function. It is also to put them into a perspective of filial relationship. In fact, a genealogy appears with the processes that regulate the passage from one to the other of these means of expression. Through the successive (...) dissipation of structural stabilizations that are in turn play, festival and folklore, a generative order of complexity is established of which art, with its dynamics open to all expressive invention, is the end result. Finally, it is to discover at the end of the process the literary text, conceived as a work of art, surrounded by expression and preceded by it, appearing from then on according to one of the precepts of the theory of the text, as a production “of society and history” and as issuing from the social phenomenon in its entirety. “I am not only undertaking a study of a sociology of games,” wrote Roger Caillois. “My idea is to lay the foundations for a sociology beginning with games.” We would say of a sociology in which we would be permitted to glimpse the achievement of the task of explaining the entire social phenomenon itself. (shrink)

On se souvient peut-être de la parution au début de l’année 2008 du livre de Sylvain Gougenheim, Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel – Les racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne (Le Seuil, Paris, 2008), des recensions laudatives dont cet ouvrage fit l’objet dans de grands quotidiens (le Monde, le Figaro), et de la polémique qui s’ensuivit. Cette polémique et l’ouvrage qui l’a suscitée semblent aujourd’hui déjà oubliés, les projecteurs de l’actualité, comme on dit, s’étant braqués sur d’autres obje..

At the moment of its decline, we clearly see that painting in oils developed an original poetics, and one that was all of a piece, throughout a renascent and modern West. From its birth and during a development lasting half a millennium we see it— in Florence, Bruges, Venice, Rome, Toledo, Nuremberg, Amsterdam and Paris—attentive to the sources of signification: languages, rites, myths, theater, tools, techniques and sciences and the urban context that wove them all together. In each case, for (...) one or the other of them, it brought a new relationship to the way of life and then left them to their social order of assimilation, keeping the initial contact for those who would be interested. It studded the West with centers of production that carried the practice and knowledge of art to their limits; engaged with the collective imagination, it punctuated history with decisive works, in which the desire to paint takes action and explains it. Marked by an impatience for change, oil painting revealed itself in a rapport with creativity akin to the other works of civilization. It is at the level of the bases of invention of the imaginary—which are in any expression the most profound structures—that the unfolding of oil painting is tightly bound. The establishment of modern national languages, the orderly rise, around a syntax and because of architecture, sculpture, music, song, tragedy, the systematic construction of scientific and technical expression, arose and grew quickly in importance in Western Europe during the same centuries as painting and with reciprocal correspondence. Dürer “who was the first to publish a treatise in which is collected all knowledge having to do with the expression of forms… wrote in his native tongue and in so doing was revealed as the creator of technical and scientific German.”. (shrink)