At this historical moment, few terms are as charged and powerful as the omnipresent term environment. It has become a strategic tool for politics and theories alike, crossed the borders of the disciplines of biology and ecology, and left the manifold field of environmentalism. This article explores the first steps on this path of expansion, in which the term becomes an argumentative resource and achieves a plausibility that transforms it into a universal tool. It is not self-evident to describe ubiquitous (...) media, cinematic spaces, or augmented realities as environments. To understand how the term gained this plausibility, it is necessary to distinguish it from two other terms: the French milieu and the German Umwelt. When these three terms substitute one another and are used as translations, they lose their historical specificity and depth, and three different theoretical and philosophical traditions merge into indifference. Consequently, a conceptual history of the term environment and its relation to milieu and Umwelt—as well as terms such as medium, atmosphere, ambiance, and climate—can help us to understand the potentials and dangers of the term’s plausibility. In this sense, the article argues for a new perspective on epistemologies of surrounding that relate that which surrounds to that which is surrounded. (shrink)

The author investigates the notion of linguistic meaning in gender research. She approaches this basic problem by drawing upon two very different conceptions of language and meaning: that of the logician Gottlob Frege and that of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Motivated by the controversial response the Anglo-American sex/gender debate received within the German context, the author focuses on the connection between this epistemological controversy among feminists and two discursive traditions of linguistic meaning , to show how philosophy of language (...) can contribute to current feminist debates. (shrink)

A ubiquitous argument against mental-state accounts of well-being is based on the notion that mental states like happiness and satisfaction simply cannot be measured. The purpose of this paper is to articulate and to assess this “argument from measurability.” My main thesis is that the argument fails: on the most charitable interpretation, it relies on the false proposition that measurement requires the existence of an observable ordering satisfying conditions like transitivity. The failure of the argument from measurability, however, does not (...) translate into a defense of mental-state accounts as accounts of well-being or of measures of happiness and satisfaction as measures of well-being. Indeed, I argue, the ubiquity of the argument from measurability may have obscured other, very real problems associated with mental-state accounts of well-being – above all, that happiness and satisfaction fail to track well-being – and with measures of happiness and satisfaction – above all, the tendency toward reification. I conclude that the central problem associated with the measurement of, e.g., happiness as a subjectively experienced mental state is not that it is too hard to measure, but rather that it is too easy to measure. (shrink)

Although black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized. Physicists in different fields conceive of and reason about them in radi- cally different, and often conflicting, ways. All those ways, however, seem sound in the relevant contexts. After examining and comparing many of the definitions used in practice, I consider the problems that the lack of a universally accepted (...) definition leads to, and discuss whether one is in fact needed for progress in the physics of black holes. I conclude that, within reasonable bounds, the profusion of different definitions is in fact a virtue, making the investigation of black holes possible and fruitful in all the many different kinds of problems about them that physicists consider, although one must take care in trying to translate results between fields. (shrink)

How could the paradigm shift towards enactive embodied cognitive science have implications for society and politics? Translating insights form enactive embodied cognitive science into ways of dealing with real-life issues is an important challenge. This paper focuses of the urgent societal issue of social cohesion, which is crucial in our increasingly segregated and polarized Western societies. We use Rietveld’s philosophical Skilled Intentionality Framework and work by the multidisciplinary studio RAAAF to extend Lambros Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory to the social domain. (...) How could a landscape of social affordances generate change in the behavioral patterns of people from different socio-cultural backgrounds? RAAAF is currently imagining and planning an ambitious intervention in the public domain that could really change existing socio-cultural practices and aims to contribute to social cohesion. An animation film it made introduces a landscape of social affordances. We will present and discuss this Trusted Strangers animation film, which is a thinking model for new public domain all over the world. Tha animation film visualizes how a well-designed landscape of social affordances could invite all sorts of interactions between people from different socio-cultural backgrounds. (shrink)

Ernst Mach’s philosophical ideas were warmly received in America, which already had a pragmatist tradition close to Machian empiricism and budding schools of philosophy, psychology, and physics more or free of the neo-Kantian influences which were a strong academic competitor to the spread of empiricism in Europe. The founding pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce and William James engaged directly with Mach and Paul Carus, the editor of the Monist and publisher of the Open Court press actively translated and published Mach’s works (...) for the American public. A generation later when members of the Vienna Circle sought Academic posts in elite American universities, the ground was well prepared for their arrival as Holton and Stadler have described. Beneath the surface however, the American reaction to Mach was not one of naïve admiration but fairly staunch criticism, which Mach himself appreciated and welcomed. Peirce was highly critical of Mach’s mechanics in a review and Peirce famously described Mach’s empiricism as akin to riding a horse to death. In some ways, Peirce himself had anticipated aspects of Mach’s views on mind and body, a surprising discovery I made recently. Even Carus, who declared himself an admirer, was highly critical of Mach’s theory of economy of thought. James, too, who admired Mach greatly, had major disagreements with Mach on so-called sensations of innervation in psychology, and although’s James’ own radical empiricist essays owed much to Mach’s neutral monist ideas in the Analysis, James broke away from what he saw as Mach’s excessive physical reductionism, rejecting the monism about nature that was Mach’s trademark. In short Mach’s ideas acted as a stimulus to American thinkers, but they had their own tradition and they were able to resist his authority and contribute in reverse to Mach’s own refinement of his positions. (shrink)

Antibiotic resistance is widely recognized as a major threat to public health and healthcare systems worldwide. Recent research suggests that pollution from antibiotics manufacturing is an important driver of resistance development. Using Sweden as an example, this article considers how industrial antibiotic pollution might be addressed by public actors who are in a position to influence the distribution and use of antibiotics in high-income countries with publicly funded health systems. We identify a number of opportunities for these actors to incentivize (...) industry to increase sustainability in antibiotics production. However, we also show that each alternative would create tensions with other significant policy goals, necessitating trade-offs. Since justifiable trade-offs require ethical consideration, we identify and explore the main underlying normative issues, namely, the weighing of local versus global health interests, the weighing of present versus future health interests, and the role of individualistic constraints on the pursuit of collective goals. Based on this analysis, we conclude that the actors have weighty principled reasons for prioritizing the goal of addressing pollution, but that translating this stance into concrete policy requires accommodating significant pragmatic challenges. (shrink)

Distribution of responsibility is one of the main focus areas in discussions about climate change ethics. Most of these discussions deal with the distribution of responsibility for climate change mitigation at the international level. The aim of this paper is to investigate if and how these principles can be used to inform the search for a fair distribution of responsibility for climate change adaptation on the local level. We found that the most influential distribution principles on the international level were (...) in turn built on one or more of seven basic principles: (P1) equal shares, (P2) desert, (P3) beneficiary pays, (P4) ability, (P5) self-help, (P6) limited responsibility for the worst off, and (P7) status quo preservation. It was found that all the basic principles, but P1, P3, and P7, are to some extent translatable to local climate adaptation. Two major problems hamper their usefulness on the local level: (1) several categories of agents need to take on responsibility; and (2) emissions do not work as a base for all principles. P4, P5, and P6 are applicable to local adaptation without changes. P4 is of particular importance as it seems to solve the first problem. P2 is applicable only if the second problem is solved, which can be achieved by using risk of harm instead of emissions as the basis for desert. (shrink)

Can appealing to children’s rights help to solve the non-identity problem in cases of procreation? A number of philosophers have answered affirmatively, arguing that even if children cannot be harmed by being born into disadvantaged conditions, they may nevertheless be wronged if those conditions fail to meet a minimal standard of decency to which all children are putatively entitled. This paper defends the tenability of this view by outlining and responding to five prominent objections that have been raised against (...) it in the contemporary literature: the identifiability objection; the non-existence objection; the waiving of rights objection, the lack of legitimate complaint objection; and the unfairness objection. (shrink)

Although black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized. Physicists in different fields conceive of and reason about them in radically different, and often conflicting, ways. All those ways, however, seem sound in the relevant contexts. After examining and comparing many of the definitions used in practice, I consider the problems that the lack of a universally accepted definition (...) leads to, and discuss whether one is in fact needed for progress in the physics of black holes. I conclude that, within reasonable bounds, the profusion of different definitions is in fact a virtue, making the investigation of black holes possible and fruitful in all the many different kinds of problems about them that physicists consider, although one must take care in trying to translate results between fields. (shrink)

There exist a variety of biological variations known as intersex conditions or disorders of sex development, which cause a per­son’s sex as male or female to be uncertain at birth. In the past several decades, cosmetic surgery aimed at “normalizing” the infant’s body has become an increasingly controversial treatment for an infant with an IC or DSD. While ICs and DSDs are not addressed directly by Catholic moral teaching, the Catholic Tradition has a number of tools that can undergird a (...) Catholic response to the suffering of people with ICs and DSDs and support improved medical, pastoral, and spiritual care for them and their families. (shrink)

Six palimpsest folios – or, to be accurate, three bifolios – of the Verona manuscript, Biblioteca Capitolare XL, contain fragments of a Latin translation of Euclid's Elements: fols. 331v–r and 326v–r, 341r–v and 338r–v, 336r–v and 343r–v. The folios are dated to around a.d. 500, and the text is written in capital script in two columns. Unfortunately the folios have suffered severe damage from various chemical substances, which were used by nineteenth-century scholars in attempts to retrieve the underlying text. Nevertheless, (...) an edition of the fragments finally appeared in 1964 by M. Geymonat. (shrink)

William Bateson has long occupied a controversial role in the history of biology at the turn of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bateson has been situated as the British translator of Mendel or as the outspoken antagonist of W. F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson's biometrics program. Less has been made of Bateson's transition from embryologist to advocate for discontinuous variation, and the precise role of British and American influences in that transition, in the years leading up (...) to the publication of his massive Materials for the Study of Variation. In this paper, I first attempt to trace Bateson's development in his early career before turning to search for the development of the moniker "anti-Darwinist" that has been attached to Bateson in well-known histories of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis. (shrink)

This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by (...) environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. (shrink)

According to major Latin dictionaries, the word radius is attested as a terminus technicus for the geometrical concept ‘radius’ in Cicero’s Timaeus 17. In this study, however, it is argued that there is good reason to believe that Cicero did not use the word in this sense, but in a metaphorical expression in which radius mainly carries the well-attested sense of ‘rod ’: paribus radiis attingi literally = ‘to be touched by equal rods’, that is to say, ‘to be equidistant’. (...) The first and only convincing attestation of radius in the sense of ‘radius ’ in ancient Latin literature is found in Calcidius’ Commentary on the Timaeus 59. It is suggested that Calcidius was influenced by Cicero’s translation and consequently adopted the word radius; however, its technical sense of ‘radius’ was coined, deliberately or not, by Calcidius himself. As there are no other convincing attestations of this sense of the word in ancient Latin, not even in geometrical texts, it is suggested that the word radius never became a commonly accepted terminus technicus for radius in antiquity. (shrink)

Recent evidence indicates that inhibition of protein translation may be a common pathogenic mechanism for peripheral neuropathy associated with mutant tRNA synthetases (aaRSs). aaRSs are enzymes that ligate amino acids to their cognate tRNA, thus catalyzing the first step of translation. Dominant mutations in five distinct aaRSs cause Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth (CMT) peripheral neuropathy, characterized by length‐dependent degeneration of peripheral motor and sensory axons. Surprisingly, loss of aminoacylation activity is not required for mutant aaRSs to cause CMT. Rather, at least for some (...) mutations, a toxic‐gain‐of‐function mechanism underlies CMT‐aaRS. Interestingly, several mutations in two distinct aaRSs were recently shown to inhibit global protein translation in Drosophila models of CMT‐aaRS, by a mechanism independent of aminoacylation, suggesting inhibition of translation as a common pathogenic mechanism. Future research aimed at elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying the translation defect induced by CMT‐mutant aaRSs should provide novel insight into the molecular pathogenesis of these incurable diseases. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillard _Fatal Strategies_ Translated by Philip Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski Edited by Jim Fleming London: Pluto Press, 1999 ISBN 0-7453-1453-8 191 pp.

Ethical philosophy was born in the gyms of Athens. This book returns a body of abstract thought to its original context, to understand how training for the body sparked training for the mind. We will use archaeology to reconstruct the reality of ancient athletics and literary texts to critique philosophers’ idealized versions of this reality. We will explore a cluster of questions about the nature of happiness (eudaimonia), the role of human excellence (arete) in this life and what forms (...) of training (askesis) may help up secure these goals. Along the way, we will join philosophers in attempting to define individual types of excellence: courage, moderation, justice, wisdom. We will think about the role of friendship and erotic love in a well lived life, and we will evaluate concepts of mental “health” and strategies for spiritual “exercise”. While our society tends to separate the body and the mind, recent work in Positive Psychology is reaffirming many insights of Greek philosophy through modern empirical study. If Philosophy at the Gym sounds like a contradiction, then that’s where its value lies: it invites readers to wrestle with central questions of ancient ethics, while providing toeholds in the current science of purpose, mindset and flow. This introduction to Greek ethics will be useful for those starting or about to start college or anyone else looking for a framework to think about what they want out of life and what they’re doing about it. (shrink)

The BBC is an exemplary institution in the government of culture. In the context of the neo-liberalism of the 1990s it became also a key experimental site for the development of a new culture of government, one in which notions of markets, efficiency, accountability and audit were translated into the public sector. The focus of this paper is an analysis, based on ethnographic research, of the BBC's culture of markets, accountability and audit in the mid to late nineties. Indebted in (...) part to the Foucauldian concern with the relations between forms of political rationality and specific technologies of government, the paper charts the substance and the anti-creative effects of these techniques. But it stresses also their contestability and negotiability, how they evoke ambivalance and coexist with diverse forms of resistance. In particular, through the case of the BBC, the paper sketches the contours of a sociology of reflexivity based on a more differentiated account of reflexivity than is found in the speculative, often normatively-directed writings of Beck, Giddens and Lash. It points to the layering of reflexivities in and around the contemporary BBC, and to the competing and antagonistic reflexivities that may inhabit any social space. (shrink)

In this note we show that Friedman's syntactic translation for intuitionistic logical systems can be carried over to Martin-Löf's type theory, inlcuding universes provided some restrictions are made. Using this translation we show that the theory is closed under a higher type version of Markov's rule.

The present work is an attempt to analyse critically Plato's views on mind and body and more particularly on the mind-body relationship within the wider setting of Plato's metaphysics. We seek to achieve this by a philosophical examination"-of the dialogues on the basis of a generally accepted order. Strictly speaking "soul" ought perhaps to be substituted for "mind" in the above. But it seems to be in terms of "mind" that modern philosophers deal with and refer to the problem that (...) Plato tackled in terms of psyche, and as it is part of the motivation for dealing with Plato's treatment that it is of importance for the modern debate, it has been felt necessary to stress the rough identity* of the problem in the title of the book. Below this superordinate level we try to keep "mind" as a translation typically of nous and "soul" as a translation of psyche. (shrink)

Thomas More’s 281 epigrams form a diverse and seemingly haphazard collection of occasional and programmatic pieces written in a variety of meters on diverse topics. Since most of More’s papers disappeared in the years immediately following his death, it is difficult and perhaps impossible to reconstruct on the basis of external evidence the rationale behind the selection and distribution of his epigrams. Despite this challenge, internal evidence provides some clues. Nearly half of the epigrams are translations of Greek originals. Some (...) of these Greek originals serve as the basis for sequences of epigrams, one of which is the “Lame Beggars Sequence.” Through a process of iterative amplificatio, More progressively cultivates eloquence as he extends the meaning of his original to encompass moral and political themes. In turn, he develops the theme into original compositions before producing a final translation that encompasses both the literal and moral senses of the original Greek. (shrink)

A thoroughly annotated and complete modern English translation and normalization of More’s correspondence has been needed for a long time. Many new letters have been uncovered in the 75 years since the publication of Elizabeth Roger’s still-indispensable edition, and intervening scholarship has prompted the reevaluation of important details of chronology and authorship. This article details the story of the work begun by a team of German scholars working under Hubertus Schulte-Herbrüggen in the 1980s towards bringing a new edition to fruition (...) and offers introductions, notes, and translations to the so-called Utopia correspondence between Henry VIII and his ambassadors in the Low Countries as a sample of recently-renewed efforts to bring out a new edition of More’s correspondence. (shrink)

William Bateson (1861-1926) has long occupied a controversial role in the history of biology at the turn of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bateson has been situated as the British translator of Mendel or as the outspoken antagonist of W. F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson's biometrics program. Less has been made of Bateson's transition from embryologist to advocate for discontinuous variation, and the precise role of British and American influences in that transition, in the years leading (...) up to the publication of his massive Materials for the Study of Variation (1894). In this paper, I first attempt to trace Bateson's development in his early career before turning to search for the development of the moniker "anti-Darwinist" that has been attached to Bateson in well-known histories of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis. (shrink)

Dan Callahan never tired of probing the fundamental ethical question that Socrates asked, “How should we live?” The investigation animated him. He asked, Can we, for a moment, set aside our preoccupation with better health and a longer life and think together about what we want those things for? Can we explore what a good life consists in? It turned out there was no better alibi for asking that fundamental question than taking up the seemingly more manageable ones that were (...) arising in the context of emerging medicine, science, and technology. When one asked about who should be born, or how we should die, or how we should prioritize investments in the myriad institutions that help to promote human well‐being, the question concerning what we mean by a good life was always and palpably present. (shrink)

As the title of the article suggests, “The Burqa Ban”: Legal Precursors for Denmark, American Experiences and Experiments, and Philosophical and Critical Examinations, the authors embark on a factually investigative as well as a reflective response. More precisely, they use The 2018 Danish “Burqa Ban”: Joining a European Trend and Sending a National Message (published as a concurrent but separate article in this issue of INTERNATIONAL STUDIES JOURNAL) as a platform for further analysis and discussion of different perspectives. These include (...) case-law at the international level while focusing attention on recent rulings and judicial reasoning by the ECtHR and the ECJ; critical thought-experiments in religion, morality, human rights, and the democratic public space; a contextualized account of burqa-wearing interventions by federal and state governments and, moreover, various courts in the United States; and philosophical commentary and, in some instances, criticism of the Danish and/or European (French, etc.) approach. The different contributions have different aims. The section on case-law at the international level reports on those central judgments that, in effect, helped to pave the path for the Kingdom of Denmark’s burqa ban. Concerning the concurring judges at the ECtHR, the opinions served to uphold a preexisting ban and to grant a wide margin of appreciation to the national authorities, thereby limiting the Court’s own review. -/- As regards to the ECJ, the legality of company rules that contain a policy of neutrality for the workplace was examined, with a similar outcome. The authors who discuss religion, morality, human rights and the democratic public space are endeavoring to, respectively, appeal to ethics as a testing stone for law and to both challenge and address several forms of “expressivist worry” in connection with face veils. In doing so, the authors ask a number of thought-provoking questions that hopefully will inspire public policymakers to careful analysis. While the section that is devoted to American perspectives highlights a comprehensive survey of political and legal responses to, in particular, full-face veils like the burqa, the relevant author also incorporates public perceptions and, in the course of examining these, draws a parallel to “the fate” of the hoodie. The constitutionality of burqa-wearing in America, so it also appears, is partially an open question, but differentiating between religious, political, or personal reasons is a de jure premise. Given that the Danish legislators who drafted law L 219 to ban burqa-wearing in public places rely on a reference to political Islam, they relegate religious and personal reasons to the private domain, thereby also adopting secularism as a premise. This is explored in the last author response of the article, more precisely, in an account of the underlying materialism that, in turn, is applied to Muslim women. If policymakers and legislators engaged in Thinking Things Through exercises, they could, as a minimum, avoid law-making strategies that are not in the spirit of the theory they themselves invoke, albeit tacitly. While the aim of, as it were, arresting culturally self-contradicting legislators is unique for the section in question, all the authors who contribute to the joint research project have one end-goal in common, namely to inform about important perspectives while at the same time opening up for parameters for (more) fruitful, constructive and (if need be) critical debate in the future. With this in mind, four recommendations are presented by the research director for the project. Legally, politically, socially and culturally, conflict-resolution should not translate the relationship between rulers and the ruled into a separation ideology, an instance of controllers versus the controlled. All things being equal, that is the objective limit for a democratic society. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in healthcare have immense potential to improve the care of patients. While there are some emerging practices surro...

Adults and children spontaneously produce gestures while they speak, and such gestures appear to support and expand on the information communicated by the verbal channel. Little research, however, has been carried out to examine the role played by gesture in the listener's representation of accumulating information. Do listeners attend to the gestures that accompany narrative speech? In what kinds of relationships between gesture and speech do listeners attend to the gestural channel? If listeners do attend to information received in gesture, (...) how is this information represented— is it 'tagged' as originating in the gestural channel? In this article research is described that addresses these questions. Results show that listeners do attend to information conveyed in gesture, when that information supplements or even contradicts the information conveyed by speech. And information received via gesture is available for retelling in speech. These results are taken to demonstrate that gesture is not taken by the listener to be epiphenomenal to the act of speaking, or a simple manual translation of speech. But they also suggest that the information conveyed in a discourse may be represented in a manner that is neither gesture nor language, although accessible to both channels. (shrink)

Several lines of evidence suggest that children born via Cesarean section are at greater risk for adverse health outcomes including allergies, asthma and obesity. Vaginal seeding is a medical procedure in which infants born by C-section are swabbed immediately after birth with vaginal secretions from the mother. This procedure has been proposed as a way to transfer the mother's vaginal microbiome to the child, thereby restoring the natural exposure that occurs during vaginal birth that is interrupted in the (...) case of babies born via C-section. Preliminary evidence indicates partial restoration of microbes. However, there is insufficient evidence to determine the health benefits of the procedure. Several studies, including trial, are currently underway. At the same time, in the clinic setting, doctors are increasingly being asked to by expectant mothers to have their babies seeded. This article reports on the current research on this procedure and the issues it raises for regulators, researchers, physicians, and patients. (shrink)

Infertility constitutes an essential source of stress in the individual and couple’s life. The Infertility-Related Stress Scale is of clinical interest for exploring infertility-related stress affecting the intrapersonal and interpersonal domains of infertile individuals’ lives. In the present study, the IRSS was translated into Brazilian–Portuguese, and its factor structure, reliability, and relations to sociodemographic and infertility-related characteristics and depression were examined. A sample of 553 Brazilian infertile individuals completed the Brazilian–Portuguese IRSS, and a subsample of 222 participants also completed the (...) BDI-II. A sample of 526 Italian infertile individuals was used to test for the IRSS measurement invariance across Brazil and Italy. Results of exploratory structural equation modeling indicated that a bifactor solution best represented the structure underlying the IRSS-BP. Both the general and the two specific intrapersonal and interpersonal IRSS-BP factors showed satisfactory levels of composite reliability. The bifactor ESEM solution replicated well across countries. As evidence of relations to other variables, female gender, a longer duration of infertility, and higher depression were associated with higher scores in global and domain-specific infertility-related stress. The findings offer initial evidence of validity and reliability of the IRSS-BP, which could be used by fertility clinic staff to rapidly identify patients who need support to deal with the stressful impact of infertility in the intrapersonal and interpersonal life domains, as recommended by international guidelines for routine psychosocial care in infertility settings. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aimed to translate the negative and positive items of the Psychological Consequences Questionnaire into German, to adapt this version to the context of screening for cirrhosis and fibrosis of the liver, and to test its psychometric properties.Materials and methodsThe three subscales were translated into German using a forward-backward translation method. Furthermore, we adapted the wording to the context of liver diseases. In sum, the PCQ comprises twelve negative items and ten positive items. We tested the acceptability, distribution properties, (...) internal consistency, scale structure, and the convergent validity using an analysis sample of 443 patients who were screened for cirrhosis or fibrosis of the liver.ResultsWe found low non-response and non-unique answer rates on the PCQ items in general. However, positive items had higher non-response rates. All items showed strong floor effects. McDonald’s Omega was high for both the negative and the positive PCQ scale, as well as for the total PCQ scale. Confirmatory factor analysis could reproduce the three dimensions that the PCQ intends to measure. However, it suggests not summing up a total PCQ score and instead treat the subscales separately considering a higher order overall construct. Convergent validity with the short form of the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was acceptable.ConclusionOverall, our study results report a successful adaptation of the German PCQ with good performance in terms of acceptability, internal consistency, scale structure, and convergent validity. Floor-effects limit the content validity of the PCQ, which needs to be addressed in future research. However, the German version of the PCQ is a useful measurement for both negative and positive screening consequences - even in a non-cancer setting. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 6, September 2019, Page 668-670.

The truth of a myth, your Honor, is not its words but its patterns.Why would a novel want to undermine its own words? Surely, literature is made of words, and any ambitious novel would want to wear its words proudly, declaiming their truth as well as their beauty. Yet we know that novels produced in smaller languages, which possess fewer publishers and fewer readers, have needed to make their words accessible, both to distant audiences and to translators in dominant languages. (...) And some works in dominant languages, when they are produced in spaces far from the centers of publishing, have likewise had to retract idiomatic phrases, alter references to regional languages, and provide glossaries. But why would a.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“A Child Has Been Born unto Us”Arendt on BirthAdriana CavareroTranslated by Silvia Guslandi and Cosette BruhnsIn The Human Condition, at the end of the dense chapter on action, Hannah Arendt reiterates that action, that is, the political faculty for excellence, “is ontologically rooted” in the fact of natality, “like an ever-present reminder that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in (...) order to begin” (Arendt 1998, 246).1 To reinforce this argument, Arendt compares action to miracles, and makes an interesting and, as we will see, somewhat perplexing reference to the Bible:[The miracle] is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored altogether.…It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their “glad tidings”: “A child has been born unto us.”(HC, 247)The citation is suggestive, but incorrect. In the Gospels, which do announce with true joy the birth of the child, the phrase as it is quoted here does not exist. It appears instead in Isaiah (9:6), translated into English both as “For to us a child is borne,” and, in the version of the King James Bible from which Arendt is plausibly drawing, as “For unto us a child is born.” The error, if indeed it is an error, is thus twofold (see Young-Ah Gottlieb 2003, 136ff.), since [End Page 12] both the passage referenced and the words cited are incorrect. That Arendt frequently cites from memory, and that the citations tend to be bibliographically incorrect, is known to her interpreters, but in this case the error ends up being quite significant. As is well known, the prophetic text carries a strong Messianic burden, and such a burden would trouble significantly the thesis that Arendt is here illustrating; the Gospels’ message creates instead fewer obstacles to her strategy of framing the meaning of birth within the mundane horizon that in her vocabulary takes the names of “world” or “worldliness.” Since “‘to live’ and to ‘be among men’” mean the same thing (HC, 7), the child, every newborn, that is, every human being that makes its entrance in the world, is not, according to the Arendtian vision, born to us, coming from elsewhere, but appears among us here. The scenario of birth, like that of action, whatever be the holy text that mentions or exemplarily validates them, is, for Arendt, a radically mundane scenario that does not call into question any transcendence or religious instance of salvation.Jewish, secular, and classically trained in Greek and Latin, Arendt, who had little familiarity with the Jewish language and tradition, met Christian thought primarily through Saint Augustine, to whom she dedicated her doctoral thesis (Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, published in Berlin in 1929 and then in English in 1996 as Love and Saint Augustine), and who remained a constant point of reference throughout her work. A phrase from Augustine—initium ut esset homo creatus est—present in the thesis, appears, in fact, in Arendt’s later texts, including The Human Condition, indeed with obsessive repetitiveness in reference to the category of birth.2 In her monumental work The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, a full seven years prior to The Human Condition, Arendt already writes: “Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. Initium ut esset homo creatus est, ‘that a beginning be made, man was created’, said Augustine. This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man” (Arendt 1973, 479). On the philosophically anomalous theme of birth, the contributions of the Christian tradition that Arendt does appreciate are predominantly two: the “glad tidings” that herald the coming of the child, and Augustine’s comments on the narrative of Creation.Natality, Birth, and the Human Condition of... (shrink)

Knowledge Lost is brilliant, breathtaking, pathbreaking, and exhilarating. Most works of early modern intellectual history have studied “first-rate theorists”, the most successful or influential in...

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fix...

We clarify the role of the Born rule in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics by deriving it from Bohr's doctrine of classical concepts, translated into the following mathematical statement: a quantum system described by a noncommutative C*-algebra of observables is empirically accessible only through associated commutative C*-algebras. The Born probabilities emerge as the relative frequencies of outcomes in long runs of measurements on a quantum system; it is not necessary to adopt the frequency interpretation of single-case probabilities (...) (which will be the subject of a sequel paper). Our derivation of the Born rule uses ideas from a program begun by Finkelstein (1965) and Hartle (1968), intending to remove the Born rule as a separate postulate of quantum mechanics. Mathematically speaking, our approach refines previous elaborations of this program - notably the one due to Farhi, Goldstone, and Gutmann (1989) as completed by Van Wesep (2006) - in replacing infinite tensor products of Hilbert spaces by continuous fields of C*-algebras. In combination with our interpretational context, this technical improvement circumvents valid criticisms that earlier derivations of the Born rule have provoked, especially to the effect that such derivations were mathematically flawed as well as circular. Furthermore, instead of relying on the controversial eigenvector-eigenvalue link in quantum theory, our derivation just assumes that pure states in classical physics have the usual interpretation as truthmakers that assign sharp values to observables. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg has presented an objection to divine command theory (DCT) alleging that DCT has the troubling implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations. Matthew Flannagan has replied to Wielenberg’s argument. Here, I defend the view that, despite Flannagan’s reply, the psychopath objection presents a serious problem for the versions of DCT defended by its most prominent contemporary advocates — Robert Adams, C. Stephen Evans, and William Lane Craig.

One can (for the most part) formulate a model of a classical system in either the Lagrangian or the Hamiltonian framework. Though it is often thought that those two formulations are equivalent in all important ways, this is not true: the underlying geometrical structures one uses to formulate each theory are not isomorphic. This raises the question of whether one of the two is a more natural framework for the representation of classical systems. In the event, the answer is yes: (...) I state and sketch proofs of two technical results—inspired by simple physical arguments about the generic properties of classical systems—to the effect that, in a precise sense, classical systems evince exactly the geometric structure Lagrangian mechanics provides for the representation of systems, and none provided by Hamiltonian. The argument not only clarifies the conceptual structure of the two systems of mechanics, but also their relations to each other and their respective mechanisms for representing physical systems. It also shows why naïvely structural approaches to the representational content of physical theories cannot work. [Lagrange] grasped that he had gained a method of stating dynamical truths in a way, which is perfectly indifferent to the particular methods of measurement employed in fixing the positions of the various parts of the system. Accordingly, he went on to deduce equations of motion, which are equally applicable whatever quantitative measurements have been made, provided that they are adequate to fix positions. The beauty and almost divine simplicity of these equations is such that these formulae are worthy to rank with those mysterious symbols which in ancient times were held directly to indicate the Supreme Reason at the base of all things. (Whitehead [1948], p. 63)1. Introduction2.Classical Systems3. The Possible Interactions of a Classical System and the Structure of Its Space of States4. Classical Systems Are Lagrangian5. Classical Systems Are Not Hamiltonian6. How Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Mechanics Represent Classical Systems7. The Conceptual Structure of Classical Mechanics. (shrink)

In Consequentialism Reconsidered, Carlson strives to find a plausible formulation of the structural part of consequentialism. Key notions are analyzed, such as outcomes, alternatives and performability. Carlson argues that consequentialism should be understood as a maximizing rather than a satisficing theory, and as temporally neutral rather than future oriented. He also shows that certain moral theories cannot be reformulated as consequentialist theories. The relevant alternatives for an agent in a situation are taken to comprise all actions that they can perform (...) in the situation. The defense of this idea necessitates certain modifications to the standard consequentialist criteria of obligatoriness, rightness and wrongness. The problem of whether agents should adapt their actions to their own future actions is also addressed. Further, a conditional analysis of performability is suggested, and it is argued that particular actions should in this connection be regarded as `abstract' rather than `concrete'. The final chapter sketches a consequentialist theory for collective agents. (shrink)

Socrates (469-399 BC) is one of history's most enigmatic figures. Our knowledge of him comes to us second-hand, primarily from the philosopher Plato, who was Socrates' most gifted student, and from the historian and sometime-philosopher Xenophon, who counted himself as a member of Socrates' inner circle of friends. We also hear of Socrates in one comic play produced during his lifetime (Aristophanes' Clouds) and in passing from the philosopher Aristotle, a student of Plato. Socrates is a figure of enduring interest. (...) He is often considered the father of Western Philosophy, yet the four most famous accounts we have of him present a contradictory, confusing picture. Just who was Socrates? A brilliant philosopher, at times confounding and infuriating, morally serious and yet ironic; the ever-worldly man, sometime mystic, and uncommon martyr depicted by Plato? Or did Plato conflate Socrates' views with his own startling genius, as Aristotle suggests? Was So rates instead the less impressive, more mundane man whose commonsense impressed the laconic Xenophon? Or was Socrates the charlatan, the long-winded phony of Aristophanes' play? The Socratic works of Diogenes Laertius (3rd century AD), Libanius (AD 314 -- c. 393), Maximus of 'Tyre (2nd century AD), and Apuleius (born c. AD 125) add important dimensions to the portrait of Socrates: Diogenes Laertius' Life of Socrates emphasizes Socrates' deep ethical nature and his extraordinary personality; Libanius' Apology of Socrates is based on sources now lost to us; Maximus of Tyre's Whether Socrates Did the Right Thing When He Did Not Defend Himself makes the star ling claim (against testimony of Plato and Xenophon) that Socrates never spoke athis own trial; from Apuleius' On the God of Socrates we hear at length of Socrates' infamous daimonion: the "divine sign" only mentioned elsewhere, the sign that warned Socrates against certain courses of action. In short, from these four texts we are reintroduced to Socrates, and new wrinkles are added to an already intriguing historical figure. (shrink)

There are several theses in political science that are usually explicitly called ‘laws’. Other theses are generally thought of as laws, but often without being explicitly labelled as such. Still other claims are well-supported and arguably interesting, while no one would be tempted to call them laws. This situation raises philosophical questions: which theses deserve to be called laws and which not? And how should we decide about this? In this paper we develop and motivate a strategy for thinking about (...) laws in political science which integrates two core concepts: spatio-temporal stability and social mechanisms. The proposed strategy is a set of guidelines that political scientists can use to reflect on and argue about specific cases within their discipline, not a clear-cut demarcation criterion. We defend and motivate this strategy and apply it to two cases (one with respect to state repression, one about parliamentary elections). After we have developed and motivated our strategy for political science, we show that our proposal is relevant for other disciplines in the social sciences. We explain how our views fit into critical realism and embed them in the debate on laws in general philosophy of science and in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

In Shaping Our Selves, Erik Parens offers both a personal history of bioethics and a cleverly clarifying lens to train on disputes in bioethics about emerging technologies. The question for readers is whether this lens, as useful as it is, leaves too much outside our field of vision. Parens, born in 1957, comes from the first wave of bioethics scholars—those of us who still mostly happened into bioethics as a field, before it was sufficiently well-established to be identified (...) as a career pathway. Bioethics enjoys a fascinating diversity of origin stories, and Parens’s is no exception. He began his studies at the University of Chicago’s pan-disciplinary Committee on Social Thought, one of a handful.. (shrink)