This book consists of seven chapters containing multiple questions of the global socially epistemological situation in science and higher education. Despite the progress of techno-sciences, we are facing blind flaws in leading systems of knowledge and perception. The global era, in a paradox way, connects the new knowledge of economics, postpolitics, postdemocracy, and biopolitical regulation of live and unpresentable forms of the global geo-located violence. Techno-optimism and techno-dictatorship in the twenty-first century coincide with the ideology of market, biopolitics of mandatory (...) satisfaction, religious revivalism, and collapse of higher education. In order for sciences to recover, it is necessary to make a globally epistemological and moral turn toward the truth. The book shows that, when joint desires of the new economics of knowledge and technology erase epistemology (in a way to assign definitions of knowledge and rules and practices of the public usage of the mind), then the time for epistemology is on its way"--https://www.intechopen.com/books/epistemology-and-transformation-of-knowledge-in-global-age, accessed 06/07/2020. (shrink)

Teams are considered to be extremely complex dynamic entities that suffer at the hand of constant evolution of their structure to meet and adapt to the varying situational demands they come face-to-face with (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). Agencies, industries, and government institutions are currently placing greater attention to the adaption of team dynamics and teamwork as they are important to key organizational outcomes. As greater attention is being placed on the maturation of team dynamics, the incorporation of efficient methodological tools (...) to understand how teams are being measured over time becomes critical. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present a review of relevant academic articles detailing the science behind methodological tools and general approaches to study team dynamics over time. We provide an overview of the methodological tools used to understand team dynamics with accordance to specific temporal elements. Drawing from Kozloski, Gully, Nason, and Smith (1999) process model of team development, we highlight relevant emergent team constructs within each stage. As well, for each stage, we discuss the what and how to measure team dynamics. Our analyses bring to light relevant, novel and complex approaches being used by researchers to examine specific constructs within different team developmental phases (e.g., agent-based simulations, computational modeling) and the importance of transitioning from a single source methodology approach. Implications and future research are also discussed. (shrink)

We study those relational structures S with the property that each partition of S contains a block isomorphic to S. We show that the Fraïsse limits of parametric classes K. have property ; over a binary language, every countable structure in K satisfying along with a condition on 1-extensions must be isomorphic to this limit.

Did the world change on September 11, 2001? For those who live outside of New York or Washington, life's familiar pace persists and families and jobs resume their routines. Yet everything seems different because of the dramatic disturbance in our sense of what our world means and how we exist within it. In A Delicate Balance , philosopher Trudy Govier writes that it is because our feelings and attitudes have altered so fundamentally that our world has changed. Govier believes that (...) there are ethical challenges we cannot ignore. From Plato and Aristotle on courage to Kant on revenge, to 20th Century philosopher John Rawls’s views on justice, Govier mines the world of philosophy to reflect on terrorism. Govier argues that moral complexities such as victimhood, evil, power and revenge, if properly understood, can provide a basis for hope– not despair. Govier walks the reader through this shift, challenging us to construct a new sense of the world and our place within it. (shrink)

In 1960, a relatively new ‘syndrome’ began appearing with growing frequency in psychiatric hospitals and in doctors’ offices. Eventually termed ‘delicate self-cutting’, this new model for typical self-mutilative behavior was developed in conjunction with a description of the ‘typical’ self-mutilator: young (adolescent to just post-adolescent), female, and almost always attractive. This article contends that, despite recent efforts to change the nature of research on self-mutilation, the myth of a typical mutilator, developed from a particular historical bias, continues to work in (...) popular and medical discourses on the subject. I will begin with a detailed discussion of the medical discourse in an effort to ask how the myth was made. Noting that the female body, here, is singled out as pathological at a time when, specifically in the USA, the emergent Women’s Movement was beginning to contest certain gender lines, I would like to examine how the medical discourse and material bodies interrelate and interact with each other and with the cultural narratives around them. Finally, I end with examples from the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted, as well as other recent popular and medical accounts, to illustrate not only the perpetuation of the myth of the ‘typical’ self-mutilator but also the inability or refusal to recognize the biased nature of the medical discourse in the instance on self-mutilation. (shrink)

This article argues that Hume's brief essay, "Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion," offers resources for three claims: (1) Delicate taste correlates with self-sufficiency and thus with a particularly Humean form of Magnanimity -- greatness of mind; (2) Delicate taste improves the capacity for profound friendships, characterized by mutual admiration and true compassion; and (3) magnanimity and compassion are thus not necessarily in tension with one another and may even proceed from and support harmony of character. These claims, in (...) turn, provide reasons to take seriously Hume's view that moral character depends, in part, on aesthetic character. (shrink)

Pessimists about aesthetic testimony argue that it is inappropriate to rely on other people’s aesthetic judgments in forming our own aesthetic beliefs. Some suggest that such reliance violates an epistemic norm, others that it violates a non-epistemic norm. In making their case, pessimists offer several arguments. They also put forward cases meant to elicit pessimist intuitions. In this paper, I claim that none of the main pessimist arguments succeeds against a plausible version of optimism, that is, the view that reliance (...) on testimony in aesthetic matters is appropriate. However, I suggest also that pessimist intuitions have a certain pull that optimists must account for. My second task is to explain the force of pessimist intuitions by shedding new light on their source. (shrink)

In Sappho's two-line fragment 115V, an unidentified speaker addresses a lucky bridegroom, wondering how best to describe him; the answer follows immediately:τίῳ σ᾿, ὦ φίλε γάμβρε, καλῶς ἐικάσδω;ὄρπακι βραδίνῳ σε μάλιστ᾿ ἐικάσδω.Dear bridegroom, to what do I best compare you?I compare you most of all to a delicate branch.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach to natural scientific research has unmistakable parallels to phenomenology. These parallels are clear enough to allow one to say confidently that Goethe's delicate empiricism is indeed a phenomenology of nature. This paper examines how Goethe's criticisms of Newton anticipated Husserl's announcement of the crisis of the modern sciences, and it describes how Goethe, at a critical juncture in cultural history, addressed this emerging crisis through a scientific method that is virtually identical to the method of (...) contemporary empirical-phenomenological research in the human sciences. Goethe's practice of science shares with phenomenology a participatory, morally-responsive, and holistic approach to the description of dynamic life-world phenomena. Delicate empiricism has its own version of the phenomenological epoché, and, like Husserl's technique of imaginative variation, it strives to disclose the essential or archetypal structure of the phenomenon through the endowment of human imagination. However, a close reading of Goethe suggests that the tendency amongst some scholars to distinguish phenomenology as human science from the natural sciences is actually a costly error which unwittingly falls prey to implicit Cartesian assumptions. Goethe, however, manages to avoid these problems by performing from the first a phenomenology of nature's sensibility. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to use the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin to reveal new insights into the role and impact of social media in health-care settings. Design/methodology/approach With the help of Bakhtin’s constructs of dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia and carnival, the power and influences of the social media phenomenon in health-care settings, are explored. Findings It is apparent from the in-depth analysis conducted that there is a delicate balance between the need to increase dialogue and the need to safeguard public health, (...) in the use of social media for health-related communication. Bakhtin‘s constructs elucidate this delicate balance and highlight the need for health-care providers that use social media to find the right balance between these competing communicational priorities. Originality/value This paper advances a nascent theoretical approach to social media research. By applying Bakhtinian ideas to consumer health informatics, this paper has the potential to open a new approach to theorizing the role of social software in health-care settings. Stakeholders in digital health will find this paper useful, as it opens up dialogue to further discuss the role of social media in health care. (shrink)

Identity has often been approached by asking questions about it in interviews. However, speakers sometimes reject, resist or modify category membership because of the sensitive inferential and interactional issues invoked. This article aims to provide a systematic analysis of category-eliciting question–answer sequences from a large corpus of Syrian interview data concerning several identities. Using conversation and membership categorisation analysis, four Q-A sequences are identified: minimal confirmation of questions seeking the hearably demographic fact of membership; modifying membership claims in response to (...) factual-type questions by rejecting some not other category-bound attributes; characterising membership as fact and nominating an alternative identity in response to questions about feelings; and, in response to questions seeking confirmation of a category implicated through the prior talk, warranting the denial of membership. The analysis therefore highlights a paradox: asking direct questions about category membership is used to generate talk about the topic of identity that would be difficult to collect otherwise, but this may in turn provide for a reluctance to self-identify, thus making identity a delicate business. (shrink)

For over a century it has been believed that Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates set out for the Amazon in 1848 with the aim of “solving the problem of the origin of species”. Yet this enticing story is based on only one sentence. Bates claimed in the preface to his 1863 book that Wallace stated this was the aim of their expedition in an 1847 letter. Bates gave a quotation from the letter. But Wallace himself never endorsed or (...) repeated this story. Many writers have acknowledged that this letter still survives. Yet the wording is different from that quoted by Bates and the letter says nothing of an expedition. It is argued that the sentence given by Bates is not a genuine quotation from this or any other Wallace letter but was modified by Bates to promote his own reputation. More significantly, this leads to the conclusion that there was a very sudden and dramatic shift in the way species were thought of and discussed after Darwin’s Origin of species appeared. Something called “the problem of the origin of species” never occurred before Darwin’s book but exploded in frequency immediately after it. A profound change in how species origins were discussed happened which no one seemed to notice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.1 (2004) 223-225 [Access article in PDF] Devoirs et Délices d'une vie de passeur: Entretiens avec Catherine Portevin, by Tzvetan Todorov; 395 pp. Paris: Les Éditions du Seuil, 2002, €22. Caveat lector. Let the reader beware: this is no leisurely, nostalgic stroll by another Parisian intellectual now ruminating and pontificating over issues and events outside his competence. True to his vocation as ferryman (passeur), Todorov guides (...) the reader over the vast expanses of historical, ideological, and intensely personal terrain that he has explored as an émigré of Bulgaria, a brilliant Structuralist, French citizen, father, spouse, and son caring for his aged father. The resulting mosaic composes a narrative itinerary rich in intellectual history.The exceptional range of Todorov's experience and research affords him a unique perspective. Having first lived and studied under Stalinism, he distinguished himself as a Parisian literary scholar stressing the primacy of the linguistic. Now internationally renowned, his books cover a broad spectrum of human experience, including the Holocaust, WWII, totalitarianism, the ethics of memory, the role and function of the intellectual, race and culture, ethnocentrism and conquest, and, most recently, human identity and a new humanism. Having immersed himself in numerous contexts, Todorov has acquired extensive firsthand knowledge from within. He is nevertheless adept at standing back and assessing them from without, revealing idiosyncrasies and limitations. His uncompromising scrutiny bows to no ideological a priori, nor spares any sacred cow.Some pronouncements will ruffle feathers in a number of intellectual aviaries. He values literature, for example, above philosophy, science, and the social sciences as a source of not only beauty, but meaning and truth. Contrary to the tendency to view literature as an arbitrary construction used to further an agenda of socio-economic domination and political repression, he contends that literary texts can best enrich our vision of the world and our personal sensibilities. Stressing art's essential humanity while challenging the obsession with science and technology, Todorov views language as neither estranged from reality nor subjugated by politics. Hence the impossibility of isolating literature from ethics and existence: writers legitimately seek to come to terms with the human condition, communicating experiences and sensibilities we would otherwise ignore. [End Page 223]Criticism, contends Todorov, should accordingly plunge back into the work's context or thought, as does Bénichou in studying French Classicism, or Joseph Frank in analyzing Dostoyevsky, or else it should explore anthropological perspectives, as does René Girard. Todorov's focus remains squarely on the literary work, not on the genius of theory: we have more to learn from texts of all ages than from contemporary critics who embed them in systems, reducing them to mere examples of theory.Beyond the "ethnocentrism" (p. 124) that he sees in the tendency to approach literary works through current preoccupations, Todorov delivers a severe verdict on the Marxist intellectuals so prominent throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s: "... the thirty years (1945-1975) that were so glorious for the French economy [were] disastrous for political thought. Ideologically, these are years of stagnation and of an intellectual straight jacket in which all discourse was judged by the measure of Marxist-Leninist dogma" (pp. 144-45, translation mine). Todorov thus deplores such irresponsibility: all while enjoying the many material comforts and civil freedoms of a free-market, democratic society, "bobos" (bourgeois bohèmes) advocated the instauration of a totalitarian regime whose economic failures and political repression Todorov had known only too well. Their actions thus were not in keeping with their discourse, for they made no effort to seriously weigh the concrete results of their ideology.Like Tony Judt, who voices similar criticisms in Past Imperfect and The Burden of Responsibility, Todorov prefers Raymond Aron's intellectual rigor and Camus's humane moderation to Sartre's knee-jerk radicalism and futile gesticulations. Given Todorov's experience and erudition, such criticisms can neither be brushed aside nor attributed to being a rear-guard action. He moreover distributes incisive criticisms to the Right, to the Left, and even to the Center. But... (shrink)

Testimony about episodes of artistic creativity often describes a puzzling combination of deliberate and involuntary elements. For example, Vincent Van Gogh wrote that it was possible for him to make an especially expressive picture, or as he put it, something with “feeling” in it, because the picture had already spontaneously taken form in his mind before he started drawing. He added, however, that if there was something worthwhile in the picture, this was “not by accident but because of real intention (...) and purpose.” Reflection on such testimony and on his own experience as a poet led Paul Valéry to conclude that artistic creation always involves a combination of “conscious acts” and “spontaneous formation”; only their relative proportion varies. If this point is granted, the outstanding and notoriously difficult problem is to understand how such different elements combine in the creative process. In other words, how is inspiration, or the work of the muse, related to the artist’s deliberations, plans, rational choices, and intentional actions? In what follows I shall develop a conjecture that falls within the conceptual space defined by two extreme theses--the popular, inspirationist idea that artistic creativity is a sudden, involuntary, and ultimately inexplicable event, and the dubious, rationalistic counterthesis, which characterizes artistic creation as a principled, deliberate selection from amongst an array of previously known options, each of which is associated with an expected quantity of artistic value. In my first section I discuss Henri Poincaré’s reflections on creativity in his 1908 essay, “L’Invention mathématique.” Although some of Poincaré’s ideas have been restated and elaborated upon in the literature on creativity, I contend that his most important claims still merit a closer look. Taking Poincairé’s general model as my point of departure, I sketch a new conjecture about artistic creativity in section 2; I also discuss a kindred proposal by Jon Elster. In section 3 I further illustrate and explain this conjecture with reference to Virginia Woolf’s artistic breakthrough in the writing of Jacob’s Room. In my final section I take up and respond to objections that may be raised against these claims about artistic creativity. (shrink)

The passing on of information to GPs by genito-urinary doctors is to be encouraged but is not always possible and ultimately the patient's wishes and confidentiality must be respected if sexually transmitted diseases and HIV infection are to be controlled. Infected health-care workers should seek counselling and medical support and clear guidelines from professional organisations which are in existence. However, they will only do so if strict confidentiality is maintained and assurance about future employment can be given.

The paper involves an attempt to draw out the implications of a ‘moderate materialism’ for the understanding of mental illness. The argument of the paper is that once a moderate materialism which navigates carefully between the poles of (materialist) reductionism and dualism has been unpacked, the relations between the manifestations, bases, aetiologies and treatments of mental illnesses emerge as being considerably more complex than is often allowed for. Specifically, the conceptual tools required within a moderate materialist position about the mind (...) allow us to expose potential fallacies in thinking about the nature of mental illnesses, in inferences drawn from these ‘natures’ to ideal modes of treatment, and in inferences drawn from treatment response. It is concluded that moderate materialism undermines the oversimplifications which tend to cloud ‘biophysical versus psychosocial’ debates in the field of psychopathology, in part because psychological change is physiological change, and because physiological change and/or intervention need not ‘cure’ by removing a physiological cause. (shrink)

Common sense, affirmed Ferrier, can neither be set aside nor taken for granted by philosophy. Rather, it must be converted into philosophy, and this "by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without addition, and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible forms". In the period under discussion, the early nineteenth century, the attempt to elucidate the phenomena of mind and their linguistic moulds (...) came under the title of 'mental science' or 'analysis'. More specifically, the process envisaged for this science was inductive, what Dugald Stewart would call a dual operation of analysis and synthesis or Cabanis the method of decomposition and recomposition. Agreement on the use of such a procedure for the philosophy of mind or on the details of the technique employed was never unanimous: in the case of the latter, it had first to be established whether the 'scientist' was dealing at the outset with 'simple' or 'compound' phenomena and whether he was to proceed from the known to the unknown or vice versa. Beneath this controversy lay the roots of an earlier separation between the 'analysis of nature' and the 'analytic of imagination'. Michel Foucault, whose distinction this is, argues that these two directions of analysis begin to converge towards the end of the eighteenth century. But the moment of convergence, being fraught with difficulties for those at the intersection, is less than happy. This uneasiness of mind accounts, moreover, for the strain of conversion in 'Common Sense' philosophy. Nevertheless, where the struggles at the juncture are most intense, there is a commensurate heightening of philosophical awareness. Faintly visible in the first inquiries of Thomas Brown into causality and volition, it reaches a crescendo in his more mature reflections on memory and attention, the nature of consciousness and reflection itself. Emerging with this apprehension, and giving it depth, is Brown's sensitivity to the feelings of selfhood and his belief in the recovery, however imaginary, of the individual's past. That sense of an order to be captured and restored, combined with a recognition of the affections which, more often, reap the havoc of human nature, create in his writings the sort of excitement associated not with the resolution of dilemmas, but with a prolonged, agonizing and continual tension. The subsequent discussion moves towards as it is moved by that realization. (shrink)

This paper argues for an inflationary and capacity-relative understanding of human enhancement technology. In doing so it echoes the approach followed by Buchanan. Particular emphasis is placed on the point that capacities themselves are relative to demands placed on the organism by its environment. In the case of human beings, this environment is to a very large extent institutionally structured. On the basis of the inflationary and capacity-relative concept of enhancement, I argue that the subject of enhancement must be understood (...) in terms of a bundle of capacities that is both extended and ecological. This consequence of the inflationary enhancement concept has some surprising upshots, namely that the subject itself must be considered as a technological enhancement and not a ‘platform’ or subjectum upon which the enhancement enterprise builds. This conclusion clashes, I argue, with some of the presuppositions of liberal philosophy, which starts by assuming a reflective subje.. (shrink)

The discovery of dietetics -- Philosophy of the nature of man -- Therapy of body and soul -- The philosophical legacy of On regimen.