1. On 30th July 2021, the historian of philosophy Michael Alexander Stewart, ‘Sandy’ for colleagues and friends, died peacefully, leaving unfinished the redaction of a volume in which he intended t...

This article presents a sociological analysis of the changing role of women in the Catholic church over the past twenty years. The theoretical framework is drawn from The Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Data are derived from the documents of Vatican II, the revised Code of Canon Law, research from 1965 to the present, and exploratory interviews with Catholic women recently appointed as church administrators. The article concludes with a discussion of future prospects regarding the (...) new social reality for Catholic women. (shrink)

The recent Minnesota case of In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes illustrates an emerging class of cases where a dispute between a family proxy and a hospital over “medical futility” requires legal resolution. The case was further complicated by the patient’s spouse who fraudulently claimed to be the patient’s designated health care proxy and who misrepresented the patient’s previously expressed treatment preferences. Barnes demonstrates the degree of significant administrative and institutional support to the health care team, ethics consultants, and (...) futility committees that is required when a futility dispute escalates to the need for judicial resolution. An institutional futility policy, especially one that is endorsed by other regional medical centers and organizations, is an important foundation for a hospital that seeks judicial support in a dispute over medical futility in end of life care. (shrink)

The commitment to evidence-based practice in clinical psychology requires scientific investigation of the effects of treatment and mechanisms of change. Empirical evidence suggests that mindfulness-based treatments provide clinically meaningful improvement for people suffering from many important problems, including depression, anxiety, pain, and stress. However, the processes of change that produce these beneficial outcomes are not entirely clear. Central questions include whether mindfulness training leads to increases in the general tendency to respond mindfully to the experiences of daily life, and if (...) so, whether these changes are responsible for the improvements in mental health that are often observed. Answering these questions requires methods for assessing mindfulness. Several tools for this purpose are now available and early evidence suggests that they are useful and informative, despite shortcomings that require additional work. This paper summarizes the rationale for mindfulness questionnaires, the methods used to construct them, and research findings on their utility. Challenges related to maintaining consistency with Buddhist conceptions of mindfulness while applying psychological research methods to the study of its assessment are discussed. (shrink)

Las traducciones al inglés de la obra de Karl Jaspers no han sido hasta el momento uniformes en su elección de la terminología técnica. Esta interpretación especializada de la Introducción de Jaspers a su obra seminal "The Great Philosophers" ("Los Grandes Filósofos", nota de la traductora) se mantiene fiel al texto original en alemán tanto como es posible, protegiendo sus expresiones idiomáticas culturales, la estructura compleja de la oración y los matices particulares, con la condición de que la claridad de (...) la comunicación se conserve. Los contenidos sustanciales y la significación de este texto, cuyo principal tema es la grandeza, se bosquejan aquí. La comunicación con los grandes filósofos puede aportar una visión de su pensamiento, haciendo posible el trascender hacia una posible Existenz auténtica. (shrink)

Futility disputes are increasing and courts are slowly abandoning their historical reluctance to engage these contentious issues, particularly when confronted with inappropriate surrogate demands for aggressive treatment. Use of the judicial system to resolve futility disputes inevitably brings media attention and requires clinicians, hospitals, and families to debate these deep moral conflicts in the public eye. A recent case in Minnesota, In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes, explores this emerging trend and the complex responsibilities of clinicians and hospital administrators (...) seeking to replace an unfaithful surrogate demanding aggressive therapy. Use of the courts requires the coordinated commitment of significant institutional resources, management of intense media scrutiny and individual and organizational courage to enter the unpredictable world of litigation. Given the dearth of legislative guidance on medical futility, individual clinicians and institutions will continue to bear the difficult responsibility for resolution of individual futility disputes. The Barnes case illustrates how one institution successfully used the judicial system to replace an unfaithful surrogate, cease the provision of inappropriate aggressive care, and stimulate a community dialogue about appropriate care at the end of life. (shrink)

Translations of Karl Jaspers' work into the English language have so far not been uniform in their choice of technical terminology. This scholarly renditionof Jaspers' ´Introduction´ to his seminal work "The Great Philosophers" stays to theoriginal German text as true possible by upholding its idiomatic cultural expressions, complex sentence structure, and nuanced particularities provided that clarity of communication can be maintained. The substantive contents and the significance of this text, whose principal topic is greatness, are outlined here. Communication with the (...) great philosophers can bring insight into their thought and can enable humans to transcend toward possible authentic Existenz. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to critically explore the understanding, the goals and the meaning of education in the philosophy of education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his educational novel Emile: or On Education [Emile ou De l’éducation] (1762) he depicts his account of the natural education. Rousseau argues that all humans share one and the same development process which is independent of their social background. He regards education as an active process of perfection which is curiosity-driven and intrinsic to (...) each child. Rousseau’s educational goals are autarky, happiness and freedom. (shrink)

In the ´Introduction´ to "The Great Philosophers" Karl Jaspers explores the criteria for recognizing human greatness in general and in philosphers in particular. He comments on the historical process related to the selection and grouping of great philosophers. Jaspers acknowledges the questionable aspect of greatness, yet he affirms that such distinction is indispensable. The 1957 English translation by Ralph Mannheim and Hannah Arendt of Jaspers' Die Grossen Philosophen and all its subsequent editions did not include this Introduction. The translation offered (...) here redresses this omission and is the first ever published English translation of Jaspers' extended Introduction. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

The study considers the topic of linguistic register by examining how schoolchildren, adolescents, and adults vary the texts that they construct across the dimensions of modality and genre . Although register variation is presumably universal, it is realized in language-specific ways, and so our analysis focuses on Israeli Hebrew, a language that evolved under peculiar socio-historical circumstances. An original procedure for characterizing register — as low, neutral, or high — was applied to four text types produced by the same speaker-writers. (...) We found that across all age groups, “neutral“ items constituted the bulk of the material, and that the lexicon accounted for some 80% of variation. Developmentally, we found that acquisition of fully flexible register variation continues beyond adolescence. Finally, we observed that text types range on a cline from everyday colloquial usage in oral narratives to more formal, high-level language in written expository essays. These results are discussed in light of their implications for the nature of register variation, later language development, and the sociolinguistics of contemporary Hebrew. (shrink)

“Teleosemantics and Pushmi-Pullyu Representations” (call it “TP-PR,” this journal 2014 79.3, 545–566) argues that core teleosemantics, particularly as defined in Millikan (Language, thought and other biological categories, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1984, J Philos 86(6):281–297, 1989, White queen psychology and other essays for Alice, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993, Philosophical perspectives, Ridgeview Publishing, Alascadero, 1996, Varieties of meaning, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004–2008), seems to imply that all descriptive representations are at the same time directive and that directives are at the same time (...) descriptive, hence that all representations are pushmi-pullyu representations. A pushmi-pullyu representation is at once indicative and imperative, telling both what the case is and what to do about it. The usefulness at all of the notion of a pushmi-pullyu representation is then questioned. I have recently found several new papers, dissertations, discussions, in which TP-PR is treated as definitive. However, the conclusions of TP-PR rest on misunderstandings of my position, so although the date is late, clarification seems still to be in order. I will indicate a few significant corrections that need to be made to TP-PR’s description of my position (originally called “biosemantics”) and explain central features of biosemantics that are omitted in TP-PR’s description of basic teleosemantics and which are incompatible with the main argument and conclusions of TP-PR. I will try to clarify and explain the value of the notion of a pushmi-pullyu representation. (shrink)

The concept of the three domains of reality is widely used in empirical critical realist research. However, there has been little scrutiny of how the domains are conceptualized and what they contribute to critical realism and how they should be applied in empirical research. This paper involves four arguments. First, Tom Fryer and Cristián Navarrete argue that the three domains of reality are redundant, confusing, and unsupported by Bhaskar’s theorizing. Second, Dave Elder-Vass argues that the three domains schema embodies a (...) distinction between the actual and the non-actual real. Regardless of whether we call them domains we need to retain this distinction. Third, Tobin Nellhaus argues that there are several reasons to uphold the three domains, but ‘the empirical’ is flawed and must be enfolded within a more encompassing theory. Fourth, Ruth Groff argues that the metaphor of ontological stratification is a problem when readers take it literally, often misconstruing the actual metaphysical content that it is meant to capture. (shrink)

Correctly understood, teleosemantics is the claim that “representation” is a function term. Things are called “representations” if they have a certain kind of function or telos and perform it in a certain kind of way. This claim is supported with a discussion and proposals about the function of a representation and of how representations perform that function. These proposals have been retrieved by putting together current descriptions from the literature on neural representations with earlier explorations of the features common to (...) most things we are inclined to call representations as these were assessed in Millikan. Of interest is the degree to which these independent sources converge. I conclude that there is no need to employ any new or technical sense of the term “representation” for it to play an important role in neuroscience. (shrink)

This is a comparison of graduate students attitudes in Spain and the United States on the issue of universal versus relativist ethics. The findings show agreement on fundamental universal values across cultures but differences in responses to behavioral ethics within the context of entrepreneurial dilemmas.

Pervasive though it is in modern life, the concept of self‐esteem is often viewed with distrust. This paper departs from an idea that was recently aired by Richard Smith: that we might be better off without this concept. The meaning of self‐esteem is explored within four ‘homes’: the self‐help industry, social science, therapy and education. It is suggested that the first two use a ‘simple’ concept of self‐esteem that indeed we are better off without. This concept eliminates the distinction between (...) truthfulness and delusion, and relies on a chimera of quantifiability. The much richer concept of situated self‐esteem is explored, and it is argued that low self‐esteem in children should command the attention of educators. Teachers should address this through education and communication, and reject the idea of boosting self‐esteem through a content‐free curriculum. (shrink)

Heidegger argues that modern technology is quantifiably different from all earlier periods because of a shift in ethos from in situ craftwork to globalised production and storage at the behest of consumerism. He argues that this shift in technology has fundamentally shaped our epistemology, and it is almost impossible to comprehend anything outside the technological enframing of knowledge. The exception is when something breaks down, and the fault ‘shows up’ in fresh ways. Stiegler has several important addendums to Heidegger’s thesis. (...) Firstly, that Heidegger fails to fully appreciate the early Greek myth of Prometheus, and the technological depth that fire offers all human societies. Secondly, the fall, or failure, which is doubled in the myth of Prometheus, and shows up in epistemology accordingly. Thirdly the acceleration of technology since the onset of Information Technology, and the way this is disorientating our Being. I argue the fall in both Heidegger and early Stiegler has encaptured their imagination. In later work, Stiegler argues that acceleration is fused with algorithmic pretensions, that are distorting and undermining the creative political imaginary, and making it difficult to revalue the values that underpin the nihilist Anthropocene. The overcoming of the Anthropocene engages politics, economics, power, physics, and ecology. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for investment, (...) I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

Delving deeper into LEGO's products and marketing provides an important perspective on the development of the Research Institute set and LEGO's attempt to engage women in science. LEGO's own research shows that boys tend to build in a more linear fashion by replicating what is inside the box whereas girls prefer a more personal approach, to create their own story and to imagine themselves living inside the things they build. Sociologists have looked at every stage of children's development, and found (...) that parents treat babies differently as soon as the sex of the child is known. Language‐focused skills such as reading and writing are gendered feminine and thought of as girls' subjects, whereas science and physical education are considered masculine and treated as boys' subjects. Encouraging women to take up science and science‐related careers might not just be morally good, or good for women, but also important for the progress of science itself. (shrink)

In attempting to derive irreversible macroscopic thermodynamics from reversible microscopic dynamics, Boltzmann inadvertently smuggled in a premise that assumed the very irreversibility he was trying to prove: ‘molecular chaos.’ The program of ‘Einselection’ within Everettian approaches faces a similar ‘Loschmidt’s Paradox’: the universe, according to the Everettian picture, is a closed system obeying only unitary dynamics, and it therefore contains no distinguishable environmental subsystems with the necessary ‘phase randomness’ to effect einselection of a pointer observable. The theoretically unjustified assumption of (...) distinguishable environmental subsystems is the hidden premise that makes the derivation of einselection circular. In effect, it presupposes the ‘emergent’ structures from the beginning. Thus the problem of basis ambiguity remains unsolved in Everettian interpretations. (shrink)

The fourth edition of this bestselling title is designed to help you think critically and thoughtfully about ethical decisions you'll face in practice-in any health care discipline. Utilizing a unique 6-step decision making process designed by the author, this multi-disciplinary text provides an expert framework for making effective choices that lead to a professional and caring response to patients and clients.

It is argued that quantum theory is best understood as requiring an ontological duality of res extensa and res potentia, where the latter is understood per Heisenberg’s original proposal, and the former is roughly equivalent to Descartes’ ‘extended substance.’ However, this is not a dualism of mutually exclusive substances in the classical Cartesian sense, and therefore does not inherit the infamous ‘mind-body’ problem. Rather, res potentia and res extensa are proposed as mutually implicative ontological extants that serve to explain the (...) key conceptual challenges of quantum theory; in particular, nonlocality, entanglement, null measurements, and wave function collapse. It is shown that a natural account of these quantum perplexities emerges, along with a need to reassess our usual ontological commitments involving the nature of space and time. (shrink)

This paper takes a sideways look at the controversial topic of educational assessment, raising the question: what place should the success/failure distinction have in an effective and humane educational system? Though the experience of failure may undermine the self-esteem that is conducive to learning, its possibility is clearly important educationally. Instead of asking whether teachers should be truthful about children’s achievements or dishonestly promote their self-esteem, we need to recognise a certain logical indeterminacy about what young children can do. Given (...) this, it is reasonable to presume in favour of many of their capacities rather than against them, for this is how children develop the confidence to act. This includes the confidence to fail as well as the confidence to succeed. It is argued that both are crucial for learning. (shrink)

Understanding climate change is becoming an urgent requirement for those in education. The normative values of education have long been closely aligned with the global, modernised world. The industrial model has underpinned the hidden and overt curriculum. Increasingly though, a new eco-centric orientation to economics, technology, and social organisation is beginning to shape up the post-carbon world. Unless education is up to date with the issues of climate change, the estate of education will be unable to meet its task of (...) knowledge transfer. This paper covers the basic science and ethical policy debates, and begins to outline the questions that will necessarily entangle education as we orientate ourselves to the new world that is upon us. (shrink)

A recent ontological modification of Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation, called “Possibilist Transactional Interpretation” or PTI, is extended to the relativistic domain. The present interpretation clarifies the concept of ‘absorption,’ which plays a crucial role in TI. In particular, in the relativistic domain, coupling amplitudes between fields are interpreted as amplitudes for the generation of confirmation waves by a potential absorber in response to offer waves, whereas in the nonrelativistic context CW are taken as generated with certainty. It is pointed out that (...) solving the measurement problem requires venturing into the relativistic domain in which emissions and absorptions take place; nonrelativistic quantum mechanics only applies to quanta considered as ‘already in existence’, and therefore cannot fully account for the phenomenon of measurement, in which quanta are tied to sources and sinks. (shrink)

Happiness is a large idea. It looms enticingly before us when we are young, delivers verdicts on our lives when we are old, and seems to inform a responsible engagement with children. The question is raised: do we want this idea? I explore a distinction between rich and poor conceptions of happiness, suggesting that many sceptical arguments are directed against the latter. If happiness is to receive its teleological due, recognised in rather the way Aristotle saw it, as a final (...) end that crucially lacks specificity, it must be richly conceived without denying the significance of unhappiness or despair. I suggest that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is ‘completed’ in a distinctively Aristotelian sense by authors like George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Substantial excerpts are discussed to show how ideas like ‘making others happy’ may be richly conceived. By treating literary examples (poetically articulated, sensually received) as ineliminable reference points in our thinking, we open up a new way of imagining relationships in education. We attend communally, conversationally and often argumentatively to the dramas of human life. This, I argue, is how we grapple with large ideas and bring about ethical learning. (shrink)

: Because an influenza pandemic would create the most serious hardships for those who already face most serious hardships, countries should take special measures to mitigate the effect of a pandemic on existing social inequalities. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that anybody is thinking about that.

A large literature has grown up around the proposed use of 'weak measurements' to allegedly provide information about hidden ontological features of quantum systems. This paper attempts to clarify the fact that 'weak measurements' are simply strong measurements on one member of an entangled pair, and that all such measurements thus effect complete disentanglement of the pair. The only thing 'weak' about them is that the correlation established via the entanglement does not correspond to eigenstates of the 'weakly measured observable' (...) for the component system that is subject to the weak measurement. It is observed that complete disentanglement always occurs, whether post-­‐selection is performed before or after the pointer detection. Assertions in the literature that weak measurements leave a system negligibly disturbed are therefore inaccurate, and claims based on those assertions need to be critically reassessed. (shrink)

Paradigm intensional contexts result from the unmarked use of referential expressions as “self‐signs”, signs that refer to themselves as tokens, types, or members of Sellarsian “dot‐quoted” kinds. Self‐signing (but unquoted) linguistic expressions are more difficult to recognize than non‐linguistic self‐signs such as the color of a felt pen's casing that represents the color of ink inside. I will discuss non‐linguistic self‐signing, then examine self‐signing in quotation, in “said that …” contexts and in “believes that … ” contexts. The phenomenon of (...) intensionality may reduce to a kind of equivocation, a matter of notation rather than a necessary feature of language. (shrink)