Many people appear to attach great value to sad music. But why? One way to gain insight into this question is to turn away from music and look instead at why people value sad conversations. In the case of conversations, the answer seems to be that expressing sadness creates a sense of genuine connection. We propose that sad music can also have this type of value. Listening to a sad song can give one a sense of genuine connection. We then (...) explore the nature of this value in two experimental studies. The results suggest a striking relationship between music and conversation. People see something distinctively musical in works that express precisely those emotions that they think most create connection within conversation. (shrink)

The “Protect, Respect, Remedy” Framework along with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is the current global standard regarding corporate conduct. This article analyses the UN Framework from the vantage point of labour rights in India by looking at the garment supply chain. It argues that it can do little to induce states and businesses to bring substantive improvements to working conditions in a largely informal economy like India. Without the state performing its duty to protect human (...) rights, the secondary responsibility of corporations can do very little in realising the rights of workers. Nonetheless, its tallest contribution is that it has given a platform for civil society to push for better conduct from all businesses and marks the beginning of a unified international business and human rights agenda. (shrink)

Effective doctor patient relationships are predicated on doctors' relational engagement and affective/holistic communication with the patients. On the contrary, the contemporary healthcare and patient-clinician communication are at odds with the desirable professional goals, often resulting in dehumanization and demoralization of patients. Besides denigrating the moral agency of a patient such apathetic interactions and unprofessional approach also affect the treatment and well-being of the sufferer. Foregrounding multifaceted doctor-patient relationships, graphic pathographies are a significant cultural resource which recreate the embodied moment of (...) clinical encounters as they also lay bare qualitative tensions between patient' illness experience with doctor's professional understanding of the same. Taking these cues, the present article drawing theoretical postulates of Rita Charon, Deborah Lupton, and Havi Carel close reads Peter Dunlap-Shohl's My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson's, Brian Fies' Mom's Cancer, and Stan Mack's Janet & Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss to investigate the nature of doctor-patient relationship vis-à-vis communication and the implications of bad doctoring/communicative practices on patient identity and emotions. Furthermore, the article also examines the aesthetic and functional role of comics in bringing into relief the graphically mediated doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

Comics has always had a critical engagement with socio-political and cultural issues and hence evolved into a medium with a subversive power to challenge the status quo. Staying true to the criticality of the medium, graphic medicine critiques the exploitative and unethical practices in the field of healthcare, thereby creating a critical consciousness in the reader. In close reading select graphic pathographies such as Gabby Schulz's Sick, Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs, Ellen Forney's Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo & Me and Marisa (...) Marchetto's Cancer Vixen, the present article delineates how graphic medicine interrogates the larger than life forces in the field of healthcare. Drawing specific instances from the aforementioned graphic texts, the essay demonstrates that graphic medicine scrutinizes the political economy of health under capitalism. In so doing, the article illustrates how the pharmaceutical corporations, insurance companies, medical technology, and healthcare corporations marketize and commoditize health in the neoliberal era. Finally, the article attempts to theorize how graphic pathographies, mediating subjective experiences, generate a new critical literacy through the conflation of the personal and the political in the verbovisual medium of comics. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is NBIC convergence (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science convergence). NBIC convergence is a recurring trope that is dominated by the paradigm of integration of the sciences. It is largely influenced by the considerations of social and economic impact, and it assumes positivism in the name of technological progress. The culture of NBIC convergence, including NBIC discourses, is ensconced on the borders between modernity/ postmodernity, ambition/restraint, unity/fragmentation, and rational intellect/creativity. Both the rhetoric of ambition (...) and visionary development, and its responding calls for some level of restraint and caution, make contrasting assumptions that, however unintentionally, further polarize the debate concerning NBIC technologies. Those engaged in producing the culture, including scientists, engineers, and ethicists of convergence, consider the ramifications of these technologies for subjectivity and identity in ways that do not fully account for the diversity of human experience, or the ambiguity of human nature. NBIC convergence, such as artificial intelligence, is a “projection of the normative self, unaware of its own specificity;” in other words, that converging technologies offer negligible insight into human corporeality or experience and, in their theoretical frameworks, are hardly conscious of the necessity of effectively mobilizing the diversity within society and of social existence in bringing about nanotechnology’s “maximum benefit to humanity,” and are part and parcel of creating a “nanoself,” bereft of uniqueness. (shrink)

Graphic medicine, an interdisciplinary field situated at the crossroads of comics and healthcare, operates as a medium through which the intricate nature of experiences with illness can be articulated, challenging orthodox medical dogmatism in an engaging and accessible way. Combining the affordances of comics and the narrative power of storytelling, graphic medicine elucidates the socio-cultural stigmatization of dementia influenced by a multitude of discourses. Diverging from existing discourses that depict individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as zombies, brain-dead, or empty shells, (...) graphic memoirs reconstruct these reductive notions and represent them as imaginative, productive, and perceptive. Taking these cues, the present paper close reads some sections of Dana Walrath’s (2016) Aliceheimer’s: Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass in order to demonstrate how graphic medicine reconceptualizes the preeminent hallucinatory experiences of her AD-afflicted mother, Alice, as visions. Walrath deploys collage art to epitomize Alice’s ordeal with AD. In particular, Walrath deploys thought-provoking fragments from Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, strategically to proximate Alice’s experiences with AD and tackle the problem of dementia and sociality. Additionally, the paper explores how the text fosters interdependence, respect, and trust to recognize and restore Alice’s personhood. The paper concludes by discussing how Aliceheimer’s operates as an alternative paradigm beyond the confines of biomedical and cultural models of dementia through the use of lexical puissance. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Assistive care technologies, developed to replace, support, or extend human capabilities and to address the surging demands of care, have been gaining prominence recently. The current trend summons a posthuman approach through decentering the privileged role of humans in several spaces of caregiving, such as hospitals and eldercare homes. The existence of these cutting-edge assistive technologies, exciting as they are, hints at a possible future when the distinction between humans and technology will be blurred, thus transforming care relations. However, these (...) technological advances carry equal promises and dangers. While care robots may reduce the burden of caregiving, they also threaten to minimize human contact with vulnerable populations. This critical assessment reviews technological advances in care and close-reads several single-panel cartoons to theorize the impact of technologies on caring relations. The article also examines the neoliberal underpinnings of such technologies and the moral dangers of their unreflective use. (shrink)

Ever since the extension systems based on Training and Visit (T&V) were started, first in Asia, and since 1981 in sub-Saharan Africa, there have been many writings about T&V. This article gives the various extension typologies possible, and places T&V in a broader perspective. The main message of the article is that the international institutions, donors and academia would, instead of spending their time and energy discussing what are essentially nonissues, serve the countries in the region much better by focusing (...) on areas where improvements should be made to their extension systems in order to enable them to tackle the future issues. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Datafication has allowed us to quantify every facet of the corona-virus pandemic. A significant quantity of data sets on infection and recovery rates, mortality, comorbidities, the intensity of symptoms, region-by-region statistics, vaccination, and virus variants, among other things, has been made publicly available. However, these data sets relentlessly reduce human beings to mere numbers and graph points. The present study employs a close reading of comic panels to demonstrate how graphic medicine uses data to critique, supplement, and expose its lacunae. (...) The article draws from graphic medical narratives and panels such as Andy Warner's "The Nib Bureau of Statistics" (2020), Sarah Firth's "State of Emergency" (2021), and Randall Munroe's "Statistics" (2020). Though data visualizations and comics are both graphical representations, their treatment of COVID-19-related issues is radically different. Graphic medicine "re-draws" data visualizations through imitation, subversion, and displacement to showcase multiple temporalities, marginal agencies, and the affective nature of human existence. Furthermore, the humanistic intervention of graphic medicine deftly reclaims individual lives and attendant stories in a world dominated by technologically mediated data. This essay does not dismiss the performative force of data; instead, it insists on humanizing and contextualizing a sensitive presentation of data to convey our entangled existence and collective states. (shrink)

Ever since the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, East Asians across the globe have been ostracized, othered, pathologized, and subjected to numerous anti-Asian hate crimes. Despite contemporary China’s rapid modernization, the country is still perceived as an Oriental and primitive site. Taking these cues, the current article aims to investigate the Sinophobic attitudes in the wake of COVID-19 through a detailed analysis of sequential comics and cartoons by artists of East Asian descent, such as Laura Gao and (...) Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom. Drawing theoretical insights from Alexandre White’s “epidemic orientalism” and Priscilla Wald’s “medicalized nativism,” this essay investigates how these chosen comics function as counternarratives through first-person storytelling. In so doing, these comics, while reinstating the dignity of East Asians, also challenge and resist the naturalized methods of seeing that justify violence and dehumanization. The article further argues that Sinophobia and anti-Asian hate crimes are motivated as much by the origins of COVID-19 in China as by the political, economic, and technological variables that have shaped modern China. (shrink)

In a heart-wrenching TEDx Beacon Street talk entitled "A Journey Through Infertility: Over Terror's Edge", Camille Preston narrates her traumatic journey through infertility. Although she is now the mother of a child, Preston's characterization of infertility as "over terror's edge" and as "a journey" finds a graphic expression in Paula Knight's The Facts of Life, Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs, and Phoebe Potts's Good Eggs. Unlike Preston, these authors do not give birth to a child; however, they authentically portray the tribulations (...) of infertility in their respective graphic memoirs. While Knight's memoir chronicles her traumatic experience of being an infertile woman in a society that... (shrink)

The conspicuous absence of personal articulations of miscarriage in mainstream discourses attests to the stigmatised nature of the experience. Notably, there exists a growing body of infertility comics which foreground the authors’ lived realities of miscarriage. In a close reading of select graphic memoirs such as Jenell Johnson’s Present/perfect, Paula Knight’s The Facts of Life, Phoebe Potts’ Good Eggs, and Diane Noomin’s Baby Talk, this article examines how the authors use comics to foreground their predicament. In so doing, the essay (...) argues that these narratives attempt to accord a cultural legitimacy to the hitherto silenced experiential realities of miscarriage. (shrink)

In a revealing TEDxKC talk entitled "How My Mind Came Back to Life—And No One Knew", Martin Pistorius, author of Ghost Boy, shares his harrowing experience of living in a vegetative state with a locked-in syndrome for two long years. When his consciousness returned, Pistorius reflects on how he was unable to communicate the news of his recovery. Using his augmented and alternative communication device, Pistorius observes, "Your personality appears to vanish into a heavy fog and all of your emotions (...) and desires are constricted, stifled and muted within you. … It's a very dark place to find yourself because in a sense, you have vanished."Pistorius's speech is a commentary on voice and identity, and... (shrink)

The incredible achievements of modern scientific theories lead most of us to embrace scientific realism: the view that our best theories offer us at least roughly accurate descriptions of otherwise inaccessible parts of the world like genes, atoms, and the big bang. In Exceeding Our Grasp, Stanford argues that careful attention to the history of scientific investigation invites a challenge to this view that is not well represented in contemporary debates about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The historical record (...) of scientific inquiry, Stanford suggests, is characterized by what he calls the problem of unconceived alternatives. Past scientists have routinely failed even to conceive of alternatives to their own theories and lines of theoretical investigation, alternatives that were both well-confirmed by the evidence available at the time and sufficiently serious as to be ultimately accepted by later scientific communities. Stanford supports this claim with a detailed investigation of the mid-to-late 19th century theories of inheritance and generation proposed in turn by Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. He goes on to argue that this historical pattern strongly suggests that there are equally well-confirmed and scientifically serious alternatives to our own best theories that remain currently unconceived. Moreover, this challenge is more serious than those rooted in either the so-called pessimistic induction or the underdetermination of theories by evidence, in part because existing realist responses to these latter challenges offer no relief from the problem of unconceived alternatives itself. Stanford concludes by investigating what positive account of the spectacularly successful edifice of modern theoretical science remains open to us if we accept that our best scientific theories are powerful conceptual tools for accomplishing our practical goals, but abandon the view that the descriptions of the world around us that they offer are therefore even probably or approximately true. (shrink)

The place of the emotions among the passions -- The analytic of the emotions I -- The analytic of the emotions II -- The dialectic of the emotions -- Pride, arrogance, and humility -- Shame, embarrassment, and guilt -- Envy -- Jealousy -- Anger -- Love -- Friendship -- Sympathy and empathy.

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)

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)

By the time of his death in 2006, Sir Peter Strawson was regarded as one of the world's most distinguished philosophers. Unavailable for many years,_ Scepticism and Naturalism_ is a profound reflection on two classic philosophical problems by a philosopher at the pinnacle of his career. Based on his acclaimed Woodbridge lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1983, Strawson begins with a discussion of scepticism, which he defines as questioning the adequacy of our grounds for holding various beliefs. He then (...) draws deftly on Hume and Wittgenstein to argue that we must distinguish between 'hard', scientific naturalism; or 'soft', humanistic naturalism. In the remaining chapters the author takes up several issues in which sceptical doubts play an important role, in particular the nature of transcendental arguments and including the objectivity of moral philosophy, the mental and the physical, and the existence of abstract entities. _Scepticism and Naturalism_ is essential reading for those seeking an introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most important and original philosophers. This reissue includes a substantial new foreword by Quassim Cassam and a fascinating intellectual autobiography by Strawson, which together form an excellent introduction to his life and work. (shrink)

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cognitive Modelling presents a new approach to cognition that challenges long-held views. It systematically develops a broad-based framework to model cognition, which is mathematically equivalent to the emerging 'quantum-like modelling' of the human mind. The book argues that a satisfactory physical and philosophical basis of such an approach is missing, a particular issue being the application of quantization to the mind for which there is no empirical evidence as yet. In response to this issue, the book (...) adopts a COM (classical optical modelling) approach, broad-based but mathematically equivalent to quantum-like modelling while avoiding its problematic features. It presents a philosophically informed and empirically motivated mathematical model of cognition, mainly concerning decision making processes. It also deals with applications to different areas of the social sciences. It will be of interest to scholars and research students interested in the mathematical modelling of cognition and decision making, and also interdisciplinary researchers interested in broader issues of cognition. (shrink)

This study concerns the ideas of one particular philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose views of time, intuition, and creativity have had a significant impact on art, literature, and the humanities, both in his time and in our own. Although it is generally recognized that Bergson's ideas have significantly impacted the arts and the humanities, it has not been recognized how they have also had a creative influence on the sciences as well. Nor has it been realized that this was one of (...) his most basic contentions. Bergson's conception of intuition--his fundamental insight into reality--was not limited to fugitive insights into human existence. By realizing previously unsuspected possibilities for research and discovery, his endeavors were also meant to make possible new advances in the sciences. If it enabled his cousin by marriage, Marcel Proust, to explore human memory in depth, it also inspired psychologists like Daniel Schachter to use Bergson's ideas to make real contributions to contemporary memory science. If his notion of creative evolution brought many thinkers to a belief in human creative freedom, it brought others (notably Alexis Carrel and Pierre Lecomte de Noüy) to a scientific study of biological time. Among his successful speculations was the theory of the Big Bang cosmology. 'Getting Bergson Straight' shows many points at which Bergson's ideas anticipated future developments in the sciences. This was seen clearly by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis de Broglie who viewed Bergson's physics as presaging quantum physics. Thus, the text is well situated for arts, humanities, social science, and natural science classrooms studying creative thinking and/or intellectual history. (shrink)

Profoundly important ethical and political controversies turn on the question of whether biological life is an essential aspect of a human person, or only an extrinsic instrument. Lee and George argue that human beings are physical, animal organisms - albeit essentially rational and free - and examine the implications of this understanding of human beings for some of the most controversial issues in contemporary ethics and politics. The authors argue that human beings are animal organisms and that their personal identity (...) across time consists in the persistence of the animal organisms they are; they also argue that human beings are essentially rational and free and that there is a radical difference between human beings and other animals; criticize hedonism and hedonistic drug-taking; present detailed defenses of the prolife positions on abortion and euthanasia; and defend the traditional moral position on marriage and sexual acts. (shrink)

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

This article serves as a demonstration of how certain models of literary analysis, used to theorize and analyze fiction and narrative, can also be applied to scientific communication in such a manner as to promote the accessibility of science to the general public and a greater awareness of the methodology used in making scientific discovery. The approach of this article is based on the assumption that the principles of structuralism and semiotics can provide plausible explanations for the divide between the (...) reception of science and literature. We provide a semiotic analysis of a scientific article that has had significant impact in the field of molecular biology with profound medical implications. Furthermore, we show how the structural and semiotic characteristics of literary texts are also evident in the scientific papers, and we address how these characteristics can be applied to scientific prose in order to propose a model of scientific communication that reaches the public. By applying this theoretical framework to the analysis of both scientific and literary communication, we establish parallels between primary scientific texts and literary prose. (shrink)

This practical and essential text, co-authored by an engineer and an ethicist, covers ethical dilemmas that any engineer might encounter on the job, emphasizing the responsibility of a practicing engineer to act in an ethical manner. To illustrate the complexities involved, the authors present characters who encounter situations that test the engineering code of ethics. The dialogue between the characters highlights different perspectives of each dilemma. As they proceed through the book, students see how the code of ethics can help (...) in decision making, as well as the implications of various decisions. The philosophical theory that supports the ethical situations encountered is presented as boxed material following each section. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

This volume presents twenty-two uncollected philosophical essays by Sir Peter Strawson, one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. The essays (two of them previously unpublished) are drawn from seven decades of work, from 1949 to 2003. They span the broad range of Strawson's work: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, ethical theory, and history of philosophy, along with metaphilosophical reflections and intellectual autobiography.

The conflict in Gaza and Israel that ignited on October 7, 2023 signals a catastrophic breakdown in the possibility of ethical dialogue in the region. The actions on both sides have revealed a dissolution of ethical restraints, with unimaginably cruel attacks on civilians, murder of children, destruction of health facilities, and denial of basic needs such as water, food, and shelter. There is a need both to understand the nature of the ethical singularity represented by this conflict and what, if (...) any, options are available to allow the reconstruction of communication between the warring parties. This article seeks to address these tasks by analysing the conflict as inherently an ethical one, in the sense that it exposes a rupture in the fabric of communicative relationships that has evolved systematically out of the deep cultural structures from which all protagonists have emerged. Drawing on the work of Levinas, Habermas, Arendt, and others, and referring to the specific circumstances in the region, it examines the ethical sources of the crisis and tries to identify conditions for its resolution. The possibility of reconciliation—that is, of refiguring relationships to open up a space for dialogue to create pathways to heal the ruptures—is examined. The dark legacy of the Holocaust is identified as an abiding cultural vulnerability for both societies. It is concluded, however, that the rich history of partnerships and collaborations between Jews and Palestinians provides a robust infrastructure on the basis of which a sustainable peace might be built, providing a much-needed source of hope. (shrink)

In worlds that lack life, there is no value. For all that, there is no mystery about 'the existence of values in a world of facts'. The world does not consist of facts, rather true descriptions of the world consist of statements of fact. It is as much a fact concerning the world that there are things that are of value to living things, that human beings value things and possess valuable characteristics, perform valuable deeds, stand in valuable relationships to (...) others, as it is a fact that there is life on earth. (shrink)

A critical note on Christopher Bartel and Jack M. C. Kwong, ‘Pluralism, Eliminativism, and the Definition of Art’, Estetika 58 (2021): 100–113. Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word ‘art’ in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead (...) us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word ‘art’, if one wants it, but only in a loose, conversational sense. The upshot of pluralism is that talk of art in general cannot be asked to do theoretical and philosophical work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Burma’s Healthcare Under Fire: My Experience as an Exiled Medical ProfessionalP. P. KyawI used to work as a medical doctor in a less developed state than many big cities in Burma1 that experienced prolonged civil wars and current similar atrocities decades before the urban areas of the country experienced them. Before everything started, I was responsible for the medical management of the most vulnerable communities and had been struggling (...) with pandemic-related medical activities. Those were the happiest years of my life. I was with one of the best international organizations, where every effort I made was directly delivered to the patients with no unnecessary paperwork. The system was efficient, my colleagues were supportive, and I had a good work-life balance. I supported my family and whoever needed temporary financial support, played music weekly, met good friends who I hung out with every weekend, and [End Page 164] found hobbies like gardening and crocheting. I was content and happy. I even postponed my plans to get registered as a doctor in the Western world.Before moving to this beautiful ethnic state in 2019, I previously worked as a government medical doctor in Yangon, the capital. As much as I loved working in those civilian hospitals, I could not support myself with a monthly pay of $100-$150 USD. It was a hard decision to leave the service because it meant I could not pursue the medical specialty that I had always longed for and had to leave like-minded supportive colleagues. In Myanmar, unless you are a civil servant, you cannot pursue further clinical specialties. However, after leaving the government’s service to work in humanitarian medical assistance in hard-to-reach areas of Burma, I learned that life is still beautiful outside my comfort zone, until February 2021 when the coup began. Democratically elected members of the country’s ruling party were overthrown by the military, which then bestowed power in a military junta.I expected the election prior to the coup in November 2020 to be an uphill battle for Burma, but nothing more. I was still in denial when I first heard the news from one of the town’s NGO staff. The person had to travel on a motorbike to inform everyone that the junta had staged the coup. No telephone or internet was working at that time. My colleagues and I cried in our office, saying, “We are so young, and the future is still ahead. I don’t think this is going to last long. Maybe it will be over in a few days or, at most, a few weeks.” Once the peaceful protests started nationwide, my friends and I provided medical cover for the protesters, initially for minor medical problems such as low sugar, low blood pressure, injuries from accidental minor slips and falls, etc. Never in my life had I imagined that I would be taking care of bullet wounds and people injured by live rounds. While learning about gunshot wounds in forensic medicine, I thought, “Oh, this is not going to be very useful because Burma is not America, and I am not going there.” Then suddenly, it became too real and more useful than I would’ve liked it to be.I always think back to one especially bloody day when many people in the town were shot with live rounds. We assisted many patients. Usually, we would go around with the protest groups until they were over in the late afternoon. The protesters were always peaceful. There were no riots, no harmful acts, or vandalism. Only when the protesters were cruelly dispersed with tear gas, high-pressure pumps, rubber bullets, and live rounds (to the head) did they decide to defend themselves while still making their voices heard. The only defenses people had to counteract the live rounds were things like metal covers, firecrackers, and slingshots.One afternoon in March 2021, my team and I took an early break for lunch—unaware that some people would lose their lives that afternoon. We followed the local protests through Facebook Live while having lunch and started to hear firecracker sounds. A few seconds later, we knew... (shrink)

Originally published in 1957, The Uniqueness of the Individual is a collection of 9 essays published from the ten years preceding publication. The essays deal with some of the central problems of biology. These are among the questions put and answered from the standpoint of modern experimental biology. What is ageing and how is it measured? What theories have been held to account for it, and with what success? Did ageing evolve, and if so how? Is Lamarckism and adequate explanation (...) of evolutionary process? Does evolution sometimes go wrong? Do human beings evolve in a way peculiar to themselves? Other essays touch upon the problems of scientific method and of growth and transformation. This book will be of interest to natural historians, evolutionists and anthropologists. (shrink)

The experimental study of the emotions as pursued by LeDoux and Damasio is argued to be flawed as a consequence of the inadequate conceptual framework inherited from the work of William James. This paper clarifes the conceptual structures necessary for any discussion of the emotions. Emotions are distinguished from appetites and other non-emotional feelings, as well as from agitations and moods. Emotional perturbations are distinguished from emotional attitudes and motives. The causes of an emotion are differentiated from the objects of (...) an emotion, and the objects of an emotion are distinguished into formal and material ones. The links between emotions and reasons for the emotion, for associated beliefs and for action are explored, as well as the connection between emotion and care or concern, and between emotion and fantasy. The behavioural criteria for the ascription of an emotion are clarified. In the light of this conceptual network, Damasio’s theory of the emotions is subjected to critical scrutiny and found wanting. (shrink)

Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.