A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those who cultivate it.

"Hume's History of Great Britain, published in the middle of the eighteenth century, remained the standard work for well over a century. It is a masterpeice, even if its author is now better known for A treatise on human nature. Grounded on an almost sociological view of the 'progress of society', Hume's is perhaps the most European of all the classic narrative histories of Britain. Moreover it embraces far more than the merely political, and it was Adam Smith who (...) pointed out that Hume was the first historian to deduce political effects from commercial and industrial causes. The volume, covering the years 1603-49, was the first to be written and was published as a self-contained entity. Hume's own view was that it was 'by far the best', because the subject admitted of 'greater nicety of reasoning and more acute distinctions'"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

New Threats to Freedom In the twentieth century, free people faced a number of mortal threats,ranging from despotism, fascism, and communism to the looming menace of global terrorism. While the struggle against some of these overt dangers continues, some insidious new threats seem to have slipped past our intellectual defenses. These often unchallenged threats are quietly eroding our hard-won freedoms and, in some cases, are widely accepted as beneficial. In New Threats to Freedom, editor and author Adam Bellow has (...) assembled an all-star lineup of innovative thinkers to challenge these insidious new threats. Some leap into already raging debates on issues such as Sharia law in the West, the rise of transnationalism, and the regulatory state. Others turn their attention to less obvious threats, such as the dogma of fairness, the failed promises of the blogosphere, and the triumph of behavioral psychology. These threats are very real and very urgent, yet this collection avoids projecting an air of doom and gloom. Rather, it provides a blueprint for intellectual resistance so that modern defenders of liberty may better understand their enemies, more effectively fight to preserve the meaning of freedom, and more surely carry its light to a new generation. What are the new threats to freedom? when has authority not claimed, when imposing trammels and curbs on liberty, that it does so for a wider good and a greater happiness?” —Christopher Hitchens “The regulatory state amounts to a regressive tax that penalizes small independent producers and protects the status quo.” —Max Borders “Europe tends to favor stability over democracy, America democracy over stability.” —Daniel Hannan “The value of free expression is perceived to be at odds with goals that were considered ‘more important,’ like inclusiveness, diversity, nondiscrimination, and tolerance.” —Greg Lukianoff “The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be.” —Robert D. Kaplan “That old bugbear of postwar sociology—the mob-self—is now a reality. In a participatory/popularity culture, the freedom to think and act for ourselves becomes harder and harder to achieve.” —Lee Siegel “As traditional marriage declines, the ranks of single women are growing, and increasingly these women are substituting the security of a husband with the security of the state.” —Jessica Gavora “Ending the freedom to fail is a mean-spirited attack on the freedom to succeed.” —Michael Goodwin “The only solution to the new threats to American press freedom lies in organized resistance.” —Katherine Mangu-Ward “The new behaviorism isn’t interested in protecting people’s freedom to choose; on the contrary, its core principle is the idea that only by allowing an expert elite to limit choice can individuals learn to break their bad habits.” —Christine Rosen “There’s a world of Travis Bickles out there, and they’re not driving cabs. They’re reading blogs.” —Ron Rosenbaum “The first amendment ensures not that speech will be fair, but that it will be free. It cannot be both.” —David Mamet Join the conversation about these issues at www.newthreatstofreedom.com. (shrink)

The ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ has fostered a steadily growing academic industry since Duncan Forbes and Hugh Trevor-Roper put the subject on the map in the 1960s. David Hume and Adam Smith have from the start been widely considered as its leading thinkers, and their thoughts on politics have attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Two new publications invite readers to reflect on the state of the art in Scottish Enlightenment studies in general, and especially Hume (...) and Smith scholarship. Christopher Berry’s Essays on Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment collects many of Berry’s pathbreaking essays from a career spanning over 40 years. The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen is astonishingly the first book-length treatment of the private and philosophical friendship between Hume and Smith. Both publications reflect how much Scottish Enlightenment studies have expanded since the 1960s, and the sustained interest in Hume and Smith to boot. At the same time, they also raise questions about the future of the field and what remains to be done. (shrink)

The distribution of voting rights in the UK is an artefact of history rather than a product of clear legal or philosophical principles. Consequently, some resident aliens have the right to vote in all UK elections; others can vote in local elections but are excluded from national elections; still others are excluded from all elections. In England and Wales alone, roughly 2.3 million immigrants are excluded from voting in national elections. This exclusion is inconsistent with the founding principle of democracy (...) and distorts political discourse. What if all immigrants could vote in national elections? We estimate that up to ninety-five parliamentary seats could have been won by a different party in the 2015 general election. More substantially, enfranchising all immigrants would require re-drawing UK constituency boundaries. The new electoral map would increase the relative power of urban constituencies and would incentivise some political entrepreneurs and parties to temper anti-immigration rhetoric. (shrink)

Brette contends that the neural coding metaphor is an invalid basis for theories of what the brain does. Here, we argue that it is an insufficient guide for building an artificial intelligence that learns to accomplish short- and long-term goals in a complex, changing environment.

The benefits of AI technologies in archival preservation are well recognised, though questions remain about their integration into existing processes. AI also shows promise for enhancing user experience and discovery in accessing born-digital materials. However, a limited understanding of the diverse methodological needs surrounding born-digital access risks the creation of one-size-fits-all solutions that suit certain approaches and research questions better than others. This article reviews current efforts in born-digital access and applies the Garbage Can Model from organisation theory to conceptualise (...) the challenge of developing AI-based tools for multiple user types, highlighting the iterative and often decentralised nature of multi-stakeholder decision-making. We address this challenge by creating four born-digital archival user types—the aggregator, the synthesiser, the fact finder, and the narrator—each with distinct motivations and research approaches. Finally, we identify some new opportunities for stakeholders to inform how AI-based tools can be developed to better meet the variety of methodological needs that exist in relation to born-digital archives. (shrink)

This study explores experiences of ex-incels—men who have withdrawn from incel communities—through eleven qualitative interviews analysed using R.W. Connell’s hegemonic masculinity (HM) framework. Findings reveal some ex-incels adopt flexible masculinities, while others struggle with prescriptive norms perpetuated by the anti-feminist ‘manosphere’. Findings spotlight identity reconstructions, where men both reject and remain influenced by rigid archetypes, performing hybrid masculinities. This study deepens understanding of incel ideology, its impact on identity, and interplay between inceldom and masculinities via contributing to hybrid masculinities theorising. (...) Insights presents applications for gender theory and inform further research on HM’s influence within unique cultural contexts. (shrink)

As the functional capabilities of high-tech medical products converge, supplying organizations seek new opportunities to differentiate their offerings. Embracing product sustainability-related differentiators provides just such an opportunity. This study examines the challenge organizations face when attempting to understand how customers perceive environmental and social dimensions of sustainability by exploring and defining both dimensions on the basis of a review of extant literature and focus group research with a leading supplier of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning equipment. The study encompasses seven (...) hospitals and one private imaging center in the Netherlands and identifies five social aspects that cover 11 indicators. The authors conduct 22 customer perception interviews with key decision-making stakeholders involved in purchasing MRI scanning equipment. Respondents find environmental and social sustainability dimensions personally relevant but professionally secondary to cost, performance, and ability to use the equipment in their organizations' physical infrastructure. Finally, incorporating a product's environmental and social credentials within the marketing of MRI scanning equipment enhances the perception of the product offering in decisionmaking stakeholders' minds and provides a means of differentiation. (shrink)

The Samenleving and Bedrijf (S&B) network of Dutch organizations seeks to embed corporate social responsibility (CSR) within business practices but faces challenges with regard to how to do so across various organizational practices, processes, and policies. The integration of CSR demands cultural change driven by senior management and other change agents, who push CSR principles throughout the organization. This study examines the change processes that S&B member organizations have initiated, with a particular focus on the role of high potentials—those persons (...) who have been selected for the fast track into senior management. Interviews with nine S&B organizations document their levels of CSR integration and implementation, the role of senior managers, and the effects of high potentials’ competencies on the realignment process. High potentials have the ability and opportunity to act as CSR change agents, but organizations’ expectations of their purposes as future senior managers prevented them from doing so. In the existing organizational cultures, leadership focused on economic success, and the CSR implementation process had just initiated. Therefore, a measure of CSR embeddedness might refer to the performance measurement and expectations of high potentials as potential CSR change agents. (shrink)

Our sense of entitlement influences our interactions and attitudes in a range of specific relational contexts, one of them being aging parents’ relationships with their adult children. This study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Sense of Relational Entitlement—aging parents toward their offspring, an 11-item questionnaire that assesses aging people’s sense of relational entitlement toward their children, and examine the associations of its subscales with related personality and mental health constructs. One thousand and six participants, aged 65–99, with (...) at least one child, completed the SRE-ao, Brief Symptom Inventory, Loneliness Scale, and General Belongingness scale. The SRE-ao demonstrated good construct structure using confirmatory factor analysis. Both SRE-ao subscales were significantly and positively associated with anxiety, depression, somatization and sense of loneliness and negatively with sense of belonging. When all variables were entered into a regression model, age, anxiety, and low sense of belonging, but not sense of loneliness, positively predicted both restricted and inflated sense of entitlement. Somatization negatively predicted inflated sense of entitlement. The SRE-ao is a reliable and valid scale that can be used in clinical practice and research to enhance our understanding of parent–child relationships throughout the lifespan. (shrink)

How should deontological theories that prohibit actions of type K — such as intentionally killing an innocent person — deal with cases of uncertainty as to whether a particular action is of type K? Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, who raise this problem in their paper "Absolutist Moral Theories and Uncertainty" (2006), focus on a case where a skier is about to cause the death of ten innocent people — we don’t know for sure whether on purpose or not — (...) by causing an avalanche; and we can only save the people by shooting the skier. One possible deontological attitude towards such uncertainty is what Jackson and Smith call the threshold view, according to which whether or not the deontological constraint applies depends on our degree of (justified) certainty meets a given threshold. Jackson and Smith argue against the threshold view that it leads to implausible paradoxical moral dilemmas in a special kind of case. In this response, we show that the threshold view can avoid these implausible moral dilemmas, as long as the relevant deontological constraint is grounded in individualistic patient-based considerations, such as what an individual person is entitled to object to. (shrink)

The article focuses on Burke’s engagement with India and the Impeachment of Warren Hastings. It attempts to trace the way in which Burke, in his rhetoric on India, uses the sentimentalist vocabulary of the Scottish Enlightenment and, more particularly, the concept of sympathy. Burke, it is suggested, passes from a Humean to a Smithian understanding of sympathy, giving however, at every stage of this development, his own turn and character to the concept. Overall, Burke’s writings on (...) India reveal quite advanced for his time political reflexes and oblige us to reconsider the stereotypic image of Burke as an icon of conservatism. (shrink)

Consistent with the planning–control model, recent fMRI data reveal that the inferior parietal lobe, the frontal lobes, and the basal ganglia are involved in motor planning. Inconsistent with the planning–control model, however, recent behavioral data reveal a spatial repulsion effect, indicating that the visual context surrounding the target can sometimes influence the on-line control of goal-directed action.

This letter responds to letters by Garson Leder and by Harrison Lee in the same issue, September‐October 2024, of the Hastings Center Report.

Local knowledges of farmers often remain marginalized in wider agricultural development interventions. Scholars, practitioners and non-profit organisations have stressed the importance of including farmers as veritable experts in their own right, and of recognising their knowledge. Yet these calls for epistemic pluralism have often focused on the interaction between academic knowledge and local knowledge, while the interaction amongst different local knowledges has received less attention. In this ethnographic study, we attempt to unravel dynamics amongst local knowledges by studying interactions amongst (...) migrant and autochthonous farmers in Forikrom, Ghana. We show that migrant and autochthonous farmers form distinct epistemic communities as these farmers pursue different agricultural and epistemic aims. Epistemic diversity becomes most apparent regarding agricultural techniques and certain yam varieties. However, epistemic homogenisation threatens this diversity. For instance, indigenous yam varieties are being displaced in the community in favour of shorter maturing varieties. We provide insights into the ruling relations that guide the choices that migrant farmers make and how this leads to processes of epistemic homogenisation. These drivers include the land tenure system, economic imperatives and labour relations, socio-cultural norms, agricultural policy and local politics. Furthermore, we explore how a community-based “boundary” organisation in Forikrom, the Abrono Organic Farming Project (ABOFAP), counters such homogenisation by mediating pluralistic approaches. (shrink)

This book explores Dostoevsky as a political thinker from his religious and philosophical foundation to nineteenth-century European politics and how themes that he had examined are still relevant for us today.

Human rights organizations have grown exponentially across the globe, particularly in the global South, and the term human rights is now common parlance among politicians and civil society activists. While debates about human rights are waged in elite circles, what do publics in the global South think about human rights ideas and the organizations that promote them? -/- Drawing on large-scale public opinion surveys and interviews with human rights practitioners in India, Mexico, Morocco, and Nigeria, Taking Root finds that most (...) people are in fact broadly supportive of human rights discourse, trust local human rights groups, and do not view human rights as a tool of foreign powers. However, this general public support isn't grounded in strong commitments of public engagement, money, or local ties to the human rights sector. Publics in the global South do donate to charitable causes and organizations but rarely give to local rights groups, and these organizations must instead seek aid from foreign sources. -/- As the most informative and comprehensive account of public perceptions of human rights available across several regions of the world, Taking Root challenges a number of accepted truths held by human rights supporters and skeptics alike. (shrink)

This book has two principle aims. The first is to criticize moral relativism by criticizing the claim that there are deep and rationally intractable moral disagreements. The second is to develop an account of morality and moral inquiry that allows for moral objectivity of a sort that relativists would deny, without modeling moral inquiry on scientific inquiry.

Two definitions of algorithm, their uses, and their implied models of computing in society, are reviewed. The first, termed the structural programming definition, aligns more with usage in computer science, and as the name suggests, the intellectual project of structured programming. The second, termed the systemic definition, is more informal and emerges from ethnographic observations of discussions of software in both professional and everyday settings. Specific examples of locating algorithms within modern codebases are shared, as well as code directly impacting (...) social and ethical concerns. The structural distinction between algorithms and social concerns is explained as mirroring the engineering construct of algorithms and data structures. It is proposed that, rather than this separation being an attempt to enforce a professional boundary and evade social responsibility, it is a crucial technical distinction within code which makes it clearer and more transparent. The power structures reinforced by the broader, cultural interpretations of algorithm are reconsidered, along with what it would mean for software to have an inclusive design culture. (shrink)

This article introduces the Human Rights Perception Polls - surveys of publics in multiple countries - and describes statistical associations between measures of socio-economic status - income, education, internet use, and urban residence - and exposure to the term, "human rights," as well as personal contact with self identified "human rights workers." We look at our national survey data from Colombia and Mexico, and regional survey data from India (Mumbai and its rural environs) and Morocco (Rabat, Casablanca, and their rural (...) environs). (shrink)

This paper analyses how the so-called metallist theory of money gave way to functionalism in early modernity. Theoretical metallism held that something, in order to perform the role of money, must bear some intrinsic value. Functionalism, on the contrary, endorsed a social ontology of money claiming that anything could perform that role as long as it was accepted as a means of payment. The paper argues that the early modern discovery of the so-called quantity theory of money played a key (...) role in this transition, since this was the idea to question the inherent valueproofness of commodity money for the first time in history. According to our claim, commodity money was gradually replaced by fiat currencies after the former was no longer was regarded as more valueproof than the latter, and this theoretical struggle is clearly documented by Hume’s and Smith’s respective remarks on the subject. (shrink)

In the current essay, Kevin Burke and Adam Greteman challenge this thing called love by looking at how we might instead “like” in education. Within education, multiculturalism can be viewed as a way of loving, or learning to love, diversity and, as such, learning to love the self; this tendency is notably apparent in the recent rise of concern expressed about student self-esteem. According to the authors, however, critical research on multiculturalism demonstrates how, in loving diversity, multicultural discourses (...) limn the possibilities for subjects to come into being and be liked for their differences. Drawing on James Alison's On Being Liked, Burke and Greteman reframe the problem of relating in education instead through the language of liking. How does the shift from loving to liking — either our students, our teachers, or ourselves — create different social dynamics and ethical paradigms? In engaging this question, Burke and Greteman offer an alternative model of liking that is based on the practice of cruising. (shrink)

DAVID CROW and JAMES RON look at how global publics view the relationship between human rights organizations and the U.S. government. They argue that ordinary people across various world regions do not perceive human rights groups as “handmaidens” of U.S. foreign policy.

We argue that animalism is the only materialist account of personal identity that can account for the autonomy that we typically think of ourselves as possessing. All the rival materialist theories suffer from a moral version of the problem of too many thinkers when they posit a human person that overlaps a numerically distinct human animal. The different persistence conditions of overlapping thinkers will lead them to have interests that conflict, which in many cases prevents them both from autonomously forming (...) and acting on the same intentions. These problems are exacerbated by problems of self-reference plaguing the overlapping thinkers. We contend that the impossibility of simultaneous autonomous action by animals and persons provides a reason to favor animalism over Neo-Lockeanism, Four-Dimensionalism, Constitution theory, and brain-size views of the person. We anticipate and reject arguments that the autonomy of the person and the animal can be shown to be compatible by relying upon either the Parfitian thesis that identity isn’t what matters or claiming that animals acquire the interests of the person they constitute. (shrink)

In this paper the author explores the relationship between his research and his personal development. The author is part of a community of scholars at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies that is passionate about translating faith and knowledge into practical action in culture and society. His work therefore has broader relevance. The paper highlights the need for recognising multiple identities and ‘inter-disciplines’ involved in research which can then lead to the development of the community as whole. The main question (...) it seeks to intentionally address is: What kind of person-in-community am I becoming through research? (shrink)

Although pioneering studies using statistical methods in geographical data analysis were published in the 1930s, it was only in the 1960s that their increasing use in human geography led to a claim that a ‘quantitative revolution’ had taken place. The widespread use of quantitative methods from then on was associated with changes in both disciplinary philosophy and substantive focus. The first decades of the ‘revolution’ saw quantitative analyses focused on the search for spatial order of a geometric form within an, (...) often implicit, logical positivist framework. In the first of three reviews of the use of quantitative methods in human geography, this progress report uncovers their origin with regard to the underlying philosophy, the focus on spatial order, and the nature of the methods deployed. Subsequent reports will outline the changes in all three that occurred in later decades and will chart the contemporary situation. (shrink)

Although pioneering studies using statistical methods in geographical data analysis were published in the 1930s, it was only in the 1960s that their increasing use in human geography led to a claim that a ‘quantitative revolution’ had taken place. The widespread use of quantitative methods from then on was associated with changes in both disciplinary philosophy and substantive focus. The first decades of the ‘revolution’ saw quantitative analyses focused on the search for spatial order of a geometric form within an, (...) often implicit, logical positivist framework. In the first of three reviews of the use of quantitative methods in human geography, this progress report uncovers their origin with regard to the underlying philosophy, the focus on spatial order, and the nature of the methods deployed. Subsequent reports will outline the changes in all three that occurred in later decades and will chart the contemporary situation. (shrink)

_The Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Healthcare Ethics Consultants_ instructs clinical ethics consultants to preserve their professional integrity by “not engaging in activities that involve giving an ethical justification or stamp of approval to practices they believe are inconsistent with agreed-upon standards” (ASBH, 2014, p. 2). This instruction reflects a larger model of how to address value uncertainty and moral conflict in healthcare, and it brings up some intriguing and as yet unanswered questions—ones that the drafters of the (...) _Code_, and the profession more broadly, should seek to address in upcoming revisions. The objective of this article is to raise these questions as a way of urging greater clarification of the _Code’s_ overall approach to professional integrity, its meaning, and implications. (shrink)

Local human rights organizations (LHROs) are crucial allies in international efforts to promote human rights. Without support from organized civil society, efforts by transnational human rights reformers would have little effect. Despite their importance, we have little systematic information on the correlates of public trust in LHROs. To fill this gap, we conducted key informant interviews with 233 human rights workers from sixty countries, and then administered a new Human Rights Perceptions Poll to representative public samples in Mexico (n = (...) 2,400), Morocco (n = 1,100), India (n = 1,680), and Colombia (n = 1,699). Our data reveal that popular trust in local rights groups is consistently associated with greater respondent familiarity with the rights discourse, actors, and organizations, along with greater skepticism toward state institutions and agents. The evidence fails to provide consistent, strong support for other commonly held expectations, however, including those about the effects of foreign funding, socioeconomic status, and transnational connections. (shrink)

Addressing fake news requires a multidisciplinary effort The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed. Below, we discuss extant social and computer science research regarding belief in fake news and the mechanisms by which it spreads. Fake news has a long (...) history, but we focus on unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation. Beyond selected references in the text, suggested further reading can be found in the supplementary materials. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Shift work is a fixture of our 24-hour economy, with approximately 18 per cent of workers in the USA engaging in shift work, many overnight. Since shift work has been linked to an increased risk for an array of serious maladies, including cardiometabolic disorders and cancer, and is done disproportionately by the poor and by minorities, shift work is a highly prevalent economic and occupational health disparity. Here we draw primarily on the state of science around shift work and breast (...) cancer to argue that shift work represents a public health threat serious enough to warrant a precautionary stance. We use the precautionary principle to advance our case and view it as a moral compass for shift work research, empowering public health to cast shift work within the domain of health disparities deserving action despite scientific uncertainty. With the precautionary principle, we call for a deliberative decision-making process and formation of a broad shift work research collaboration to protect the health of many millions who work at night. (shrink)