The purpose of this document is to outline why and how universities must both transform and mobilise to avert the worst impacts of the global crises faced by humanity. The first section addresses the justification for transformation and how academia can and must transform. In the second section, the document highlights the need for a peaceful mobilisation of student and staff bodies to make effective the transformation advocated for. The document then outlines a blueprint as to action that must be (...) taken in order to initiate the required transformation and mobilisation. (2020). (shrink)

How do gym-goers who are normally not inclined to resort to appearance- and performance-enhancing drugs (APEDs) progressively normalize their use? Based on data collected through a year and a half of participant observation in a gym and thirty semi-directive interviews with practitioners with varying profiles in French-speaking Switzerland, this article examines the evolution of practitioners’ relations with APED use by articulating various levels of analysis. Associated with social vulnerabilities, the progressive normalization of APED use is concomitant with the “conversion” to (...) bodybuilding. Our results show the extent to which and under what conditions interactions within the layout of gyms can influence practices. From refusal to normalization, our results suggest that APEDs and the associated beliefs coincide with career stages, which we aim to bring to light here. (shrink)

Weak states and ineffective economic policies are assumed to mediate the constraints of the world system and to prevent upward mobility among peripheral countries. This article tests the effects of state strength and economic policy on world system mobility in the period 1970–85 on a sample of 162 countries. World system role and mobility were operationalized using role equivalence based network measures. Countries with effective neoorthodox policies experience significantly higher mobility, even after controlling for economic performance, as do countries with (...) states that have high despotic capacity. No effect, direct or indirect, was found for infrastructural state capacity. (shrink)

Cet article est l’occasion de rappeler que le numérique, outil de communication aux avantages économiques indéniables, est également un facteur de risques pour les libertés individuelles. Devenu incontournable, le développement du numérique exige une recherche perpétuelle d’équilibre entre attraits économiques et préservation des libertés individuelles. Le lecteur est invité à suivre le point de vue d’un avocat exerçant en droit du numérique, observateur de l’oscillation entre progression des outils numériques enrichis par l’intelligence artificielle et respect des principes qui gouvernent toute (...) société démocratique. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

In a voting context, when the preferences of voters are described by linear orderings over a finite set of alternatives, the Maximin rule orders the alternatives according to their minimal rank in the voters’ preferences. It is equivalent to the Fallback bargaining process described by Brams and Kilgour (Group Decision and Negotiation 10:287–316, 2001). This article proposes a characterization of the Maximin rule as a social welfare function (SWF) based upon five conditions: Neutrality, Duplication, Unanimity, Top Invariance, and Weak Separability. (...) In a similar way, we obtain a characterization for the Maximax SWF by using Bottom Invariance instead of Top Invariance. Then, these results are compared to the axiomatic characterizations of two famous scoring rules, the Plurality rule and the Antiplurality rule. (shrink)

With the increased acceptance of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) within society, new research reflects deeper folk health histories beyond formal medical spaces. The contested relationships between formal and informal medicine have deep provenance and as scientific medicine began to professionalise in the 19th century, lay health knowledges were simultaneously absorbed and disempowered (Porter 1997). In particular, the ‘medical gaze’ and the responses of informal medicine to this gaze were framed around themes of power, regulation, authenticity and narrative reputation. These (...) responses were emplaced and mobile; enacted within multiple settings by multiple agents and structures over time. The work is drawn from secondary material from Ireland, which identify more indigenous narratives of health and act as potential sources for medical humanities. While assumptions have been made as to the place of folk-medicine being essentially rural, evidence will be presented which shows a more complex network of health beliefs and practices. The narratives of informal practice and folk-medicine drawn from evidence from Ireland point to more fluid and hybrid relations with formal medicine and suggest that the complementary nature of the two models reflected wider cultural debates and models of belief (Del Casino Jnr., Health & Place 10:59-73, 2004). (shrink)

The recent philosophy of Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, represents an attempt to solve the traditional puzzles in the foundations of quantum theory by denying the objective reality of the quantum state. Einstein had hoped to remove the spectre of nonlocality in the theory by also assigning an epistemic status to the quantum state, but his version of this doctrine was recently proved to be inconsistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics. In this essay, I present plausibility arguments, old and new, (...) for the reality of the quantum state, and expose what I think are weaknesses in QBism as a philosophy of science. (shrink)

Curricular design that addresses residency physician competencies in communication skills and professionalism remains a challenge. Graphic Medicine uses comics, a medium combining text and images, to communicate healthcare concepts. Narrative Medicine, in undergraduate medical education, has limited reported usage in Graduate Medical Education. Given the time constraints and intensity of GME, we hypothesized that comics as a form of narrative medicine would be an efficient medium to engage residents.The authors created a novel curriculum to promote effective communication and professionalism, focusing (...) on empathy, compassion and cultural competency. A four-week curriculum was delivered in a neurology residency program. Excerpts from non-fiction graphic memoirs about neurological conditions were read, discussed, and paired with prompt-driven drawing exercises. Qualitative surveys were used to assess acceptability of comics, usefulness of comics to convey patient illness experience, and perception of patient needs for physician-patient communication.Ninety-seven percent of residents reported the sessions were a good use of their time. Residents identified new symptoms of neurologic disorders, articulated patient communication needs, and expressed increased empathy after participation. Residents participated in drawing exercises, but these were not formally analyzed. Graphic medicine is a well received format that may build communication skills and increase empathy. (shrink)

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange (...) that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity. (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle examines the nature of happiness, which he defines as a specially good kind of life. He considers the nature of practical reasoning, friendship, and the role and importance of the moral virtues in the best life. This new edition features a revised translation and valuable new introduction and notes.

This paper examines the general prospects for conceptual role expressivism, expressivist theories that embrace conceptual role semantics. It has two main aims. The first aim is to provide a general characterisation of the view. The second aim is to raise a challenge for the general view. The challenge is to explain why normative concepts are not a species of defective concepts, where defective concepts are those that cannot meaningfully embed and participate in genuine inference. After rejecting existing attempts to answer (...) the challenge, I propose an alternative solution. However, the solution leaves conceptual role expressivism a far less distinctive and interesting position than its proponents claim. I conclude that we should be sceptical about how much expressivists gain by appealing to conceptual role semantics. (shrink)

:This article considers recent ethical topics relating to medical AI. After a general discussion of recent medical AI innovations, and a more analytic look at related ethical issues such as data privacy, physician dependency on poorly understood AI helpware, bias in data used to create algorithms post-GDPR, and changes to the patient–physician relationship, the article examines the issue of so-called robot doctors. Whereas the so-called democratization of healthcare due to health wearables and increased access to medical information might suggest a (...) positive shift in the patient-physician relationship, the physician’s ‘need to care’ might be irreplaceable, and robot healthcare workers might be seen as contributing to dehumanized healthcare practices. (shrink)

Background and aims: Recent investigations have highlighted the value of neuropsychological testing for the assessment and screening of Alcohol-Related Brain Damage. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the suitability of the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination and the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status for this purpose. Methods: Comparing 28 participants with ARBD and 30 alcohol-dependent participants without ARBD we calculated Area Under the Curve statistics, sensitivity and specificity values, base-rate adjusted predictive values, and likelihood ratios for (...) both tests. Results: High levels of screening accuracy were found for the total scores of both the ACE-III and RBANS at multiple cut-off points. Removing participants with a history of polysubstance from the samples improved the diagnostic capabilities of the RBANS substantially, while only minor improvements to the ACE-III’s accuracy were observed. Conclusions: Overall, both the ACE-III and RBANS are suitable tools for ARBD screening within an alcohol-dependent population, though the RBANS is the superior of the two. Clinicians using these tools for ARBD screening should be cautious of false-positive outcomes and should therefore combine them with other assessment methods and more detailed neuropsychological testing before reaching diagnostic decisions. (shrink)

Four Testaments brings together four foundational texts from world religions--the Tao Te Ching, Dhammapada, Analects of Confucius, and Bhagavad Gita--inviting readers to experience them in full, to explore possible points of connection and divergence, and to better understand people who practice these traditions.

The purpose of this article is to outline a Kantian form of cosmopolitan law and the jurisprudence involved in the creation of a cosmopolitan constitution. This article explores and discusses Kantian cosmopolitan law, the idea of cosmopolitan right, the laws of hospitality and a Kantian approach to constitutional cosmopolitanism. In doing so, the article argues beyond Kant's discussion of constitutionalism, suggesting that a written constitution not only articulates many of Kant's cosmopolitan concerns, but also provides a reasonable ethical foundation for (...) an international society. Throughout this discussion, more particular aspects of Kant's legal conception of cosmopolitanism are examined, focusing on the possibility of an ethical cosmopolitan order based on jurisprudence, the necessity of a minimal consensus bound by constitutional provisions, and the corresponding legal obligations maintained by cosmopolitan law. (shrink)

Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, a dubious (...) dualism. Folk psychology structures our daily lives and has proven fruitful in the study of mind and ethics, while decision theory is pervasive in various disciplines, including the quantitative social sciences, especially economics, and philosophy. My interest is in accounting for folk psychology with decision theory -- in particular, for believe and wanting, which decision theory omits. Many have attempted this task for belief. (The Lockean Thesis says that there is such an account.) I take up the parallel task for wanting, which has received far less attention. I propose necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in terms of decision theory, for when you're truly said to want; I give an analogue of the Lockean Thesis for wanting. My account is an alternative to orthodox accounts that link wanting to preference (e.g. Stalnaker (1984), Lewis (1986)), which I argue are false. I argue further that want ascriptions are context-sensitive. My account explains this context-sensitivity, makes sense of conflicting desires, and accommodates phenomena that motivate traditional theses on which 'want' has multiple senses (e.g. all-things-considered vs. pro tanto). (shrink)

The Abbé Sieyès is usually portrayed as a thoroughly modern thinker and a critic of the nostalgic Classical Republicanism of some of his contemporaries, in favour of a “modern republicanism”, founded upon the division of labour and commercial sociability in a nation composed of equal labourers and producers. But Sieyès’s unpublished manuscripts suggest he, in fact, regarded modern labourers as unskilled “Machines du Travail”, dulled by work and incapable of exercising the duties of citizenship, a critique grounded in a critical (...) account of commercial society as compared to the ideal republican polity. Where most scholars regard this as either a simple contradiction or a passing juvenile nostalgia, this paper argues that, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sieyès consistently sought to counteract the degrading effects of the inequalities generated by commercial society and the division of labour. It was on this basis that Sieyès sought to construct a new political system which would reconcile participatory politics with representative government, enabling all citizens to enjoy a life of Active Citizenship. Based on these insights, this paper reinterprets Sieyès’s political project as an attempt to reconcile the classical conception of citizenship with the demands of a commercial society. (shrink)

International Political Theory focuses on the point where two fields of study meet - International Relations and Political Theory. It takes from the former a central concern with the 'international' broadly defined; from the latter it takes a broadly normative identity. IPT studies the 'ought' questions that have been ignored or side-lined by the modern study of International Relations and the 'international' dimension that Political Theory has in the past neglected. A central proposition of IPT is that the 'domestic' and (...) the 'international' cannot be treated as self-contained spheres, although this does not preclude states and the states-system from being regarded by some practitioners of IPT as central points of reference. This Handbook provides an authoritative account of the issues, debates, and perspectives in the field, guided by two basic questions concerning its purposes and methods of inquiry. First, how does IPT connect with real world politics? In particular, how does it engage with real world problems, and position itself in relation to the practices of real world politics? And second, following on from this, what is the relationship between IPT and empirical research in international relations? This Handbook showcases the distinctive and valuable contribution of normative inquiry not just for its own sake but also in addressing real world problems. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smith of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by a distinguished pair of specialists in their respective fields. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of the original Reus-Smit and Snidal The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by a pair of scholars drawn from alternative perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions. (shrink)

As the number of computational models of eye-movement control in reading increases, so too will their coverage and complexity. This will make their comparison and testing increasingly challenging. We argue here that there is a need to develop a methodology for constructing and evaluating such models, and outline aspects of a possible methodology.

In her Behavioral and Brain Sciences target article, Greenfield (1991) proposed that early in a child's development Broca's area may serve the dual function of coordinating object assembly and organizing the production of structured utterances. As development progresses, the upper and lower regions of Broca's area become increasingly specialized for motor coordination and speech, respectively. This commentary presents a connectionist simulation of aspects of this proposal. The results of the simulation confirm the main thrust of Greenfield's argument and suggest that (...) an important impetus for the developmental differentiation in Broca's area may be the increasing complexity of the computational demands made upon it. (shrink)

Plato argues that four political arts—politics, kingship, slaveholding, and household-management—are the same. His argument, which prompted Aristotle’s reply in Politics I, has been universally panned. The problem is that the argument clearly identifies household-management with slaveholding, and household-management with politics, but does not fully identify kingship with any of the others. I consider and reject three ways of saving the argument, and argue for a fourth. On my view, Plato assumes that politics is identical with kingship, just as he does (...) elsewhere, but he begs no questions because the point of his argument is to identify the public arts of politics and kingship with the private arts of household-management and slaveholding. He does this successfully by answering three reasons why one might distinguish the private from the public arts. His argument leaves room for Aristotle to propose other reasons. One of them—involving differences among men and women and slaves—is unfortunate, but another is more promising. The Aristotelian can assume that political expertise is a matter of know-how gathered by experience of the particular actions which differ in the public and private arts. But Plato might well be right to reject this, and to insist that the essential difference between the expert and non-expert—the dividing line between good and bad rule—is not in experience but in their grasp of their goals. (shrink)

For Plato and Aristotle, arete (traditionally translated as "virtue") was the essential object of human admiration and striving, and even the key to happiness. Their work continues to inspire reflection on fundamental questions of ethics and politics today, as the fourteen new essays collected here demonstrate. -/- Contributors: Lidia Palumbo, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Ryan M. Brown, Jay R. Elliott, Guilherme Domingues da Motta, Federico Casella, Jonathan A. Buttaci, George Harvey, Mark Ralkowski, Gary S. Beck, Paula Gottlieb, Giulio di Basilio, Audrey L. (...) Anton, and Elena Bartolini. (shrink)