Tekst stanowi próbę rozwiązania dwóch problemów. Po pierwsze, jak istota przejawia się w indywiduum, w rzeczy konkretnej, nie dającej się zdefiniować? I po drugie, jak zweryfikować definicję? Jest to problem prawdy, wobec którego można zastosować metodę przyswajania abstrakcji - wznoszenia się od abstrakcji do konkretu. Metodę tę wykorzystywał K. Marks. W artykule dowodzi się, że metoda ta nie traci na swojej heurystycznej sile nawet wówczas, gdy zastosuje się ją do analizy współczesnego kapitalizmu symbolicznego. Nie stosując tej wyjaśniającej mocy abstrakcji, intelektualiści (...) stają się ideologami rozrywającymi jedność tego, co realne i tego, co idealne, waloryzującymi drugi element wspomnianej jedności. Swiat ich idei nijak się ma do aktualnej praktyki społecznej, dlatego dominuje w niej niezrozumiany symbol - fetysz. W społeczeństwie jest on tajemniczą podstawą problemów człowieka z samym sobą. Stąd jego zrozumienie i realne przywrócenie należnego mu w społeczeństwie miejsca umożliwi człowiekowi drogę powrotną do samego siebie. (shrink)

W systemie filozoficznym Jana Szkota Eriugeny wszystko, co istnieje, to natura złożona z bytów i niebytów. Poznawalne dla ludzkiego intelektu części natury to byty, natomiast niepoznawalne części natury to niebyty. Bytem jest zmysłowa część natury ludzkiej oraz rzeczywistość materialnych form. Dla ludzkiego intelektu Niebytem jest Bóg oraz ustanowione przez Niego prymordialne przyczyny i materia. Bóg stworzył wszystko z niczego w ludzkiej naturze. Nierozumny wybór człowieka doprowadził do upadku ludzkiej natury i stworzenia, które z doskonałości przeszło do istnienia w świecie doczesnym. (...) Syn Boży – Bóg-Logos stał się człowiekiem, który dokonał odkupienia ludzkości. W ostatecznych czasach rzeczywistość materialna zostanie zniesiona i stworzenie w ludzkiej naturze dostąpi powszechnego powrotu do pierwotnej doskonałości. Ludzkie intelekty dokonają własnego – ostatecznego sądu i wybrani skierują się ku Stwórcy. Następnie dojdzie do przebóstwienia wybranych – zjednoczenia stworzenia ze Stwórcą bez zmieszania natur, bez zniesienia fundamentalnych różnic ontologicznych oraz bez panteizmu, który w tej koncepcji jest wykluczony. Przebóstwieni będą kontemplować Boga, co oznacza, że będą wiecznie poznawać Niepoznawalnego. Wydaje się, że nawet dla ludzi zgłębiających załomy filozoficznej wiedzy o Bogu w XXI wieku ta szczęśliwa wizja przebóstwienia, które będzie nieustannym procesem poznawania Niepoznawalnego, może być atrakcyjna. (shrink)

Poza niepewnością co do tego, jaki jest świat, można być także niepewnym swojego przestrzennego lub czasowgo położenia w świecie. Celem artykułu jest postawienie problemu wynikającego z połączenia tych dwóch rodzajów niepewności, a następnie rozwiązanie go i wyciągnięcie dwóch lekcji z tego rozwiązania.

There are two fundamental computably enumerable sets associated with any Kolmogorov complexity measure. These are the set of non-random strings and the overgraph. This paper investigates the computational power of these sets. It follows work done by Kummer, Muchnik and Positselsky, and Allender and co-authors. Muchnik and Positselsky asked whether there exists an optimal monotone machine whose overgraph is not tt-complete. This paper answers this question in the negative by proving that the overgraph of any optimal monotone machine, or any (...) optimal process machine, is tt-complete. The monotone results are shown for both descriptional complexity Km and KM, the complexity measure derived from algorithmic probability. A distinction is drawn between two definitions of process machines that exist in the literature. For one class of process machines, designated strict process machines, it is shown that there is a universal machine whose set of non-random strings is not tt-complete. (shrink)

In an economy that increasingly trades in electronic information products, the copy assumes a new reversibility, as a figure at once valued for its rapid exchangeability and vilified for of its associations with counterfeit and fraud. The incorporation of confidence measures into the design of electronic information products is symptomatic of a primary crisis of belief installed within empiricist epistemologies, of which anti-circumvention technologies and knock-off economies are merely the incorrigible children. The aesthetic strategies practiced by Albert Oehlen and N.E. (...) Thing Co., which mirror the information hiding techniques employed by steganography software and technologies of trust as well as the circumvention tactics employed to defeat them, register an emergent preoccupation in contemporary visual culture with structures of belief. They also disclose a Humean attention to processes of devivification, which figures in these artists’ work as an effect of the multiplication of the same. The trope of the ‘false bottom’ deployed in the 1930s novels of British artist and author Wyndham Lewis serves as intertext in this genealogical investigation of the politics of circumvention. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest wykazanie związku pomiędzy ponowoczesnością i totalitaryzmami oraz wychowaniem człowieka. Przyjętym założeniem jest istnienie zróżnicowanej ontycznie rzeczywistości, której integralną częścią jest życie człowieka, pomiędzy różnymi porządkami istnienia: immanentnym i transcendentnym, w obliczu którego człowiek staje się tym, kim może i być powinien. Na podstawie analizy rozważań francuskiej myślicielki Chantal Delsol można sądzić, że wobec przesłoniętej transcendencji – zarówno w minionych totalitaryzmach, jak i współcześnie – człowiek wskutek absolutyzacji inherentnych kryteriów prawomocności tego, co immanentne, zostaje zredukowany do swoich uwarunkowań (...) biopsychospołecznych. W konsekwencji świat staje się polem do eksperymentów społecznych, dokonywanych za pomocą terroru, bądź bardziej subtelnych środków inżynierii społecznej. Wychowanie jawi się wówczas jako ochrona człowieka przed totalitarnym potencjałem ludzkiego zbiorowego istnienia, a zatem także przed nim samym. --------------------- Zgłoszono: 04/03/2022. Zrecenzowano: 08/04/2022. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 12/05/2022. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s treatment of death has a great deal in common with Heidegger’s notion of “authentic Being-towards-death.” Most importantly, both thinkers argue that an individual’s death, rather than simply annihilating an individual’s life, meaningfully impacts this life while it is still being lived. Heidegger, like Kierkegaard before him, provides an anti-Epicurean account in which life and death are co-present. Despite this kinship, there have been numerous efforts from both the Kierkegaardian camp and from Heidegger himself to distinguish sharply the one from (...) the other. While Heidegger makes several somewhat condescending comments about Kierkegaard’s endeavors, many Kierkegaardians are wary of associating him too closely with Heidegger. After a brief description of their largely shared philosophy of death, I would like to consider what I take to be the most significant complaint from each side and suggest a more nuanced understanding of their relationship. (shrink)

Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...) a distinctive quality as pervading a round area out there in external space. Let us call it “sensible redness” to highlight the fact that the representation of this property is necessarily connected with the sensory character of the experience. Is this property, sensible redness, really co-instantiated with roundness out there in the space before you? (shrink)

Most of what we know about teaching comes from research among people living in large, politically and economically stratified societies with formal education systems and highly specialized roles with a global market economy. In this paper, we review and synthesize research on teaching among contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. The hunter-gatherer lifeway is the oldest humanity has known and is more representative of the circumstances under which teaching evolved and was utilized most often throughout human history. Research among contemporary hunter-gatherers also illustrates (...) a complex pattern of teaching that is both consistent with and distinct from teaching in other small- and large-scale societies with different subsistence practices and cultural forms. In particular, we find that the cultural emphasis on individual autonomy and socio-political egalitarianism among hunter-gatherers differently shapes how teaching occurs. For example, teaching clearly exists among hunter-gatherers and appears in many forms, including institutionalized instruction in valued cultural and technical skills. However, teaching tends to be less common in hunter-gatherer societies because people live in small, intimate egalitarian, groups that support each other’s learning in a variety of ways without teaching. Furthermore, foundational cultural schemas of autonomy and egalitarianism impact the nature of teaching. For example, adults and older children limit their interventions, permitting autonomous learning, and, when they occur, teaching episodes are generally brief, subtle, indirect, and situated in a present activity. We discuss the implications of this research in terms of discussions of the evolution of human cognition and the co-evolution of teaching and culture through the process of cultural niche construction. (shrink)

The symmetries of a physical theory are often associated with two things: conservation laws and representational redundancies. But how can a physical theory's symmetries give rise to interesting conservation laws, if symmetries are transformations that correspond to no genuine physical difference? In this article, I argue for a disambiguation in the notion of symmetry. The central distinction is between what I call "analytic" and "synthetic" symmetries, so called because of an analogy with analytic and synthetic propositions. "Analytic" symmetries are the (...) turning of idle wheels in a theory's formalism, and correspond to no physical change; "synthetic" symmetries cover all the rest. I argue that analytic symmetries are distinguished because they act as fixed points or constraints in any interpretation of a theory, and as such are akin to Poincaré's conventions or Reichenbach's 'axioms of co-ordination', or 'relativized constitutive a priori principles'. (shrink)

Gorges Sorel to francusko-włoski myśliciel znany jako twórca teorii współczesnej mitologii politycznej. W Polsce Sorel jest postrzegany tylko jako myśliciel marksistowski. Rzeczywistość jest jednak bardziej skomplikowana. Sorel był nieortodoksyjnym myślicielem marksistowskim, a w ostatniej epoce swego życia skonstruował polityczną mitologię rewolucji od lewicy po prawicę. Sorela równie dobrze można uznać za współpracownika komunistów i syndykalistów we Włoszech co nacjonalistów i monarchistów we Francji. Jego mieszanka idei komunistycznych i nacjonalistycznych jest podstawą faszystowskiego ruchu Benito Mussoliniego.

The phenomenon of ‘canalization’ ‐ the genetic capacity to buffer developmental pathways against mutational or environmental perturbations ‐ was first characterized in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Despite enormous subsequent progress in understanding the nature of the genetic material and the molecular basis of gene expression, there have been few attempts to interpret the classical work on canalization in molecular genetic terms. Some recent findings, however, bear on one form of canalization, ‘genetic canalization’, the stabilization of development against mutational (...) effects. These data indicate that co‐expressed paralogous genes can function as mutual ‘back‐up’ elements in developmental processes. Paralogues, however, are far from the only basis of canalization: other genetic sources can be readily envisaged and some of these are described here. The evolutionary questions about genetic canalization and the mechanistic questions about developmental instability that still need to be addressed are also briefly discussed. (shrink)

Research has demonstrated large differences in the degree to which direct and indirect measures predict each other and variables including behavioural approach and attentional bias. We investigated whether individual differences in the co-variance of “implicit” and “explicit” spider fear exist, and whether this covariation exerts an effect on spider fear-related outcomes. One hundred and thirty-two undergraduate students completed direct and indirect measures of spider fear/avoidance, self-report questionnaires of psychopathology, an attentional bias task, and a proxy Behavioural Approach Task. TwoStep cluster (...) analysis using implicit and explicit spider fear as criterion variables resulted in three clusters: low explicit/low implicit; average explicit/high implicit; and high explicit/low implicit. Clusters with higher explicit fear demonstrated greater disgust propensity and sensitivity and less willingness to approach a spider. No differences between clusters emerged on anticipatory approach anxiety or attentional bias. We discuss results in terms of dual-systems and cognitive–behavioural models of fear. (shrink)

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

W systemie filozoficznym Jana Szkota Eriugeny Niestworzona Natura Stwarzająca to Bóg, który jest Stwórcą wszystkiego. Istota Bożej Natury jest transcendentna i niepoznawalna. Bóg objawia się ludzkiej naturze poprzez dzieło stworzenia i tekst biblijny. Analiza stworzenia pozwala wnioskować o Stwórcy, że istnieje, że żyje i że jest Mądrością. Te trzy wnioski wskazują, że jeden Bóg istnieje jako troistość, w której Ojciec jest Istotą Bożej Natury, Syn jest Mądrością, a Duch Święty jest życiem. Powyższe wnioskowanie potwierdza również egzegeza biblijna. Bóg zaprasza człowieka (...) do poszukiwania prawdy. Ludzka natura jest odbiciem Niestworzonej Natury Stwarzającej, ponieważ człowiek został stworzony na obraz i podobieństwo Boga, o czym świadczy nieśmiertelna dusza i co potwierdza biblijna egzegeza. Struktura ludzkiej duszy jest obrazem Boga i człowiek może na podstawie analizy własnej duszy dojść do przekonania, że Bóg istnieje, oraz że w swej Istocie jest niepoznawalny. Sam przez się istnieje tylko Bóg, a całość stworzenia istnieje tylko dlatego, że Bóg podtrzymuje wszystko w istnieniu. Nie istnieje wśród stworzenia intelekt zdolny poznać Boga, lecz mimo tego historia świata zgromadziła różne zapisy dotyczące Boga, które wynikają z potrzeb ludzkiej natury oraz z konieczności niemilczenia chrześcijaństwa o Stwórcy. Dla ludzkich potrzeb określa się Boga, wskazując na różne atrybuty i czynności. System filozoficzny Eriugeny wskazuje, że powierzenie słowu ludzkiemu tajemnic Boga jest wielkim wysiłkiem, lecz jest to praca pożyteczna, ponieważ może zbliżać ludzi do Boga, co w każdej epoce jest ważne i słuszne. ----------------------------------------- Zgłoszono: 27/06/2023. Zrecenzowano: 20/02/2024. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 10/06/2024. (shrink)

Following a series of national protests in support of an increase in the federal minimum wage, many fast food workers faced retaliation by their employers when they returned to work; schedules were changed, wages and hours were reduced, and some employees were terminated. These retaliatory actions resulted in a number of complaints being filed with the National Labor Relations Board alleging violations of the National Labor Relations Act. Several of the complaints were found to have merit and, additionally, in several (...) instances both the immediate employer, the franchisee, and the corporate organization of which it was a part, the franchisor, were named as co‐defendants. This ruling—that franchisors like McDonald’s USA—could be held jointly responsible for the labor violations of independent franchisees reversed a long‐standing precedent, whereby franchisees were regarded as independent contractors solely responsible for day‐to‐day labor practices, including compliance with federal and state labor statutes. Critics of the ruling argue that it will open the door to unionization and may well spell the end of the service‐sponsor franchising format. Supporters of the NLRB argue that the ruling is just and reflects new “industrial realities” in retail labor markets. Further, a case can be made that the NLRB’s position represents a step in the direction of the restoration of more equitable balance of power between labor and management. (shrink)

We reflect on our experience co-teaching a medical humanities elective, “Pandemics and Plagues,” which was offered to undergraduates during the Spring 2021 semester, and discuss student reactions to studying epidemic disease from multidisciplinary medical humanities perspectives while living through the world Covid-19 pandemic. The course incorporated basic microbiology and epidemiology into discussions of how epidemics from the Black Death to HIV/AIDS have been portrayed in history, literature, art, music, and journalism. Students self-assessed their learning gains and offered their insights using (...) the SALG, describing how the course enhanced their understanding of the current pandemic. In class discussions and written assignments, students paid particular attention to issues of social justice, political context, and connections between past pandemics and Covid-19. Student responses indicate enhanced understanding of the scientific and medical aspects of epidemics and also increased appreciation of the insights to be gained from the medical humanities. We discuss co-teaching the class during a real-time, twenty-four-hour-news-cycle pandemic, and the ways in which that experience underlines the value of a “critical medical humanities” approach for undergraduates. (shrink)

Opisywana w Rozważaniach dotyczących rozumu ludzkiego Johna Locke’a (1634–1704) rozumność wznosi się od indywidualnych doświadczeń do rozumu pojmowanego nie tylko jako predyspozycja pojedynczych ludzi, ale jako wyznacznik ludzkiej natury, gwarantujący obiektywność wiedzy, bezstronność kodeksów moralnych, wyznaczone rozumem granice tego, co można wiedzieć w kwestiach religijnych. Różnica pomiędzy rozumnością a bezrozumnością okazuje się jednak nieostra. Rozumność jest stopniowalna, a jej obrzeża zamieszkują nie tylko dzieci, których rozum ma się dopiero rozwinąć, ale także idioci, szaleńcy i dzicy. Przedmiotem niniejszej monografii jest analiza (...) przedstawionej przez Locke’a historii ludzkiego rozumu, jego wyłanianie się, rozkwit i spełnienie w powszechnie dostępnej wiedzy oraz w kwestiach praktycznych – doktrynie politycznej, etyce i religii. (shrink)

Artykuł poświęcony jest jednej z najbardziej wieloznacznych powieści Stanisława Lema — Pamiętnikowi znalezionemu w wannie. Świat bohatera Pamiętnika, pozbawiony łączności z tym, co zewnętrzne, zawiera się w umyśle postaci. Samoidentyfikacja wiążąca się nierozerwalnie z odosobnieniem, jest paradoksalnie niemożliwa do osiągnięcia w labiryncie korytarzy budowli. „Ja” bohatera, dążące do „bycia sobą”, nie może zdobyć pełni tożsamości, ponieważ niezdolne pozostaje do dookreślenia siebie w relacji do struktur Gmachu.

This paper addresses the role of global migration and the nature of national borders within the co-constitution of class and race. We begin with Marx’s critique of the value-form – a critique that rests upon a distinction between the ‘essence’ of social reality and its immediate appearances. The paper elaborates how Marx’s understanding of the emergence of a society based upon generalised commodity production leads to a certain conception of the ‘political state’ and citizenship – and thus borders and national (...) belonging. This reveals the distinctive territorial forms of capitalism vis-à-vis those found in pre-capitalist societies, and moves us away from transhistorical conceptions of borders and the nation-state. In the second half, the paper turns to look at what this conception of borders and migration might mean concretely for how we think about the co-constitution of race and class today. Here the focus is on three crucial aspects of the contemporary world market: (1) the relationship between the cross-border movements of labour and processes of class formation, (2) migration and the determination of the value of labour-power, and (3) coercive and unfree labour. (shrink)

I investigate whether heuristics similar to those studied by Gigerenzer and his co-authors can apply to the problem of finding a suitable heuristic for a given problem. I argue that not only can heuristics of a very similar kind apply but they have the added advantage that they need not incorporate specific trade-off parameters for balancing the different desiderata of a good decision-procedure.

The relationship between understanding other natural minds, often labeled ‘mindreading,’ and putative understanding of the supernatural is a critical one for the dialogue centering on the cognitive science of religion . A basic tenet of much of CSR is that cognitive mechanisms that typically operate in the ‘natural’ domain are co-opted so as to generate representations of the extra-natural. The most important mechanisms invoked are, arguably, the ones that detect agency, represent actions, predicate beliefs and desires of others, and track (...) social hierarchies, coalitions, and exchanges. In this essay, I show that where one lands on the interdisciplinary debate over the nature of mindreading has a significant impact on parts of CSR that invoke social cognition. I focus my essay on the case of CSR explanations of religious experiences in terms of a hyperactive agency detective device. (shrink)

Powstanie łódzkie, to najważniejszy epizod walki zbrojnej podczas rewolucji 1905 roku, mający miejsce w Królestwie Polskim. Było ono konsekwencją narastających od początku XX wieku napięć społeczno-ekonomicznych w Rosji. Miało charakter spontanicznego zrywu robotników, stanowiąc zarazem kulminację wcześniejszych starć, do których dochodziło na łódzkich ulicach. Wydarzenia te relacjonowane były w prasie o zasięgu zarówno lokalnym, jak i ponad zaborami oraz międzynarodowym. Szczególne miejsce relacjom z jego przebiegu przypadło dwóm – ideologicznie opozycyjnym – pismom, relacjonującym (jako miejscowe) wybuch i losy powstania oraz (...) jego uczestników _in statu nascendii_. Były to: zorientowany prawicowo „Rozwój” oraz postrzegany jako ośrodek myśli lewicowej „Goniec Łódzki”. Oba pisma – przy zróżnicowanej strategii opisywania powstania – były też, co nie jest bez znaczenia, gazetami codziennymi, mogącymi reagować na wydarzenia (w odróżnieniu od tygodników) w sposób natychmiastowy. Celem szkicu jest analiza sposobów, jakimi – w realiach funkcjonowania cenzury – ówczesna polskojęzyczna prasa łódzka informowała o wydarzeniach rozgrywających się _in statu nascendii_. Punktem wyjścia było założenie dominującej roli prasy codziennej w ukazywaniu losów łódzkiej rewolucji. W tym celu wykorzystano metodę filologiczną, wspomaganą krytyką retoryczną. Lektura różnych genologicznie tekstów, poświęconych czerwcowemu powstaniu, uświadamia rolę, jaką w opisie wypadków odegrały: język ezopowy oraz nacisk na szczegół, zastępujący całościowy opis, w myśl zasady _pars pro toto_. Wyniki analizy omawianych przekazów pozwalają na pogłębienie wiedzy na temat tekstowego obrazu opisywanych wydarzeń. (shrink)

Oświecenia nie byłoby bez zwrotu w stronę rozumu, a ten nie jest żadną ideą, lecz własnością nader pospolitą – już sto lat wcześniej René Descartes powiadał, że nikt nie uskarża się na jego brak. Osiemnastowieczni filozofowie bodajże po raz pierwszy problematyzują owo nikt, pytając o rozum dzieci, „dzikich”, sawantów, geniuszy, wynalazców, szaleńców, ba – kobiet (dziewczynek, dziewcząt), aktualnych i przyszłych matek „rodu ludzkiego”, a nie tylko o „rozum ludzki”. Ma on zresztą wiele postaci – common sense, zdrowy rozum (rozsądek), „chłopski (...) rozum”, rozum praktyczny, czysty, spekulatywny itd., a także granicę, którą jest utrata rozumu lub zmysłów. Zawsze jednak objawia się wśród ludzi, pośród ludzkich spraw, bez względu na to, czy aktualnie należymy do jakiejś wspólnoty, czy – jak w pewnym momencie Robinson Crusoe albo Denis Diderot – zostaliśmy z niej czasowo wyłączeni. Epoka rozumu, jak zwykło się w skrócie charakteryzować „optymistyczne” Oświecenie, dostrzegała i eksponowała jego faktyczność i jednostkowość – rozum jest zawsze i tylko czyjąśdyspozycją – nie tracąc przy tym z oczu innej jego niezbywalnej cechy: powszechności. Wszystko może nas dzielić – pochodzenie, język, religia, płeć, zamożność, zdrowie, wykształcenie czy upodobania, lecz taki sam i ten sam jest mój i twój rozum. Tom prezentuje wyniki badań nad filozofią Oświecenia prowadzonych w wielu ośrodkach naukowych w kraju. Tym, co łączy wszystkie pomieszczone w nim teksty, jest zwrócenie uwagi na oświeceniowe rozumienie społecznej natury człowieka. Autorzy przedstawiają jej różne aspekty: od funkcjonowania instytucji służących prowadzeniu i upowszechnianiu badań naukowych, przez osiemnastowieczne projekty edukacyjne, kształtowanie się ówczesnych gustów estetycznych i znaczenie przykładane do języków narodowych, aż po społeczny wymiar medycyny. Prace te nie tylko ukazują, jak bardzo złożony jest obraz Oświecenia, ale też przypominają, że depozytariuszami opiewanego w tej epoce rozumu jesteśmy my – poszczególni ludzie, a jego funkcjonowanie wymaga istnienia rozmaitych łączących nas więzi. (shrink)

Museums might seem to be the enemy of metabolism: mausoleums that preserve collections and their knowledge-producing potential, out of time. We argue that museums are in fact intensely metabolic: in their attempts to manipulate the life course and temporalities of objects they proliferate metabolic processes, limits, and potentials. We suggest that looking at the museum in this way can help articulate pressing practical as well as theoretical issues: storage rooms are “constipated,” as traditional practices of disposal cannot keep pace with (...) rapidly growing collections from an over-productive present. The paper consists of three main sections. First, we follow imaginations of the museum as preserver, contrasting these with more recent descriptions of the museum as metabolism, and highlighting the intimate relationship between the two. We describe the material and metaphorical ways in which objects and their meanings are transformed within a “museum metabolism,” and suggest that cultivating such transformations might help to imagine new approaches to problems of proliferation and disposal. This leads us to The Living Room, a workshop and installation at Medical Museion in Copenhagen, where we encourage fringe objects destined for disposal to metabolize, entangled with living heritage eaters such as fungi and worms. Following Ian Bogost, this is a piece of “metabolic carpentry”; a thinking machine that explores ontology by practicing it. In the third main section, we reflect on this approach, and on how materially producing metabolic paradoxes might open new avenues for thinking about their concrete consequences, within an ethos of hospitality. We conclude by arguing for the creative potential of metabolism to link objects, organisms, and environments, emphasizing exchanges between transformation and stability at co-constituting interfaces. (shrink)

ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students’ engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that Interactive engagement, demonstrated by co‐generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to Constructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of Active or Passive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5‐year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers’ understanding of ICAP after (...) completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers’ classroom implementation, (d) modes of students’ enacted behaviors, and (e) students’ learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing Constructive and Interactive activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of Constructive than Active activities. We discuss reasons for teachers’ overall difficulty in designing and eliciting Interactive engagement. (shrink)

We respond to a Letter to the Editor regarding "Principlism and contemporary ethical considerations for providers of transgender health care." We address criticisms by Castle & Klein (2024) of blatant fatphobia related to the ethical elements concerning BMI restrictions for gender-affirming surgery. Our response corrects several mischaracterizations of the article and clarifies our position. My co-authors and I remain focused on advocating for patient-centered, ethically sound, evidence-based, and equitable healthcare policies.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Funding Utopia: Utopian Studies and the Discourse of Academic ExcellenceAdam Stock (bio)As an academic field, there is in some important ways nothing special about utopian studies. Granted, our object of inquiry may look beyond the present toward what Ruth Levitas terms the Imaginary Reconstruction of Society, but we are still workers in what Darren Webb calls the “corporate-imperial” university.1 Webb argues that within the university we can at best (...) protect “bolt holes, breathing spaces, and places of refuge” that can function as “fleeting, transitory, small-scale experiences of utopian possibility.” As academics, our greater value to utopian politics therefore involves using our “knowledge and resources... in the service of a collaborative process of memory- and story-making, pulling together disparate inchoate dreams and yearnings in order to generate a utopian vision that can help inform, guide, and mobilize long-term collective action for systemic change.”2 Such work uses resources and the products of labor within the academy in the service of ends beyond and at times against it. In other words, utopianism within the academy is necessarily complicit in the academy’s constitutive material relations, but it can also be oppositional in intellectual and—more importantly—activist senses to the academy’s ideological form. In other words, whether or not a given [End Page 517] project in the field of utopian studies is politically utopian does not depend on its material basis (i.e., how it is funded) so much as its content, in the senses of both the work that it does and the ways in which it captures and mobilizes available resources. Hence it is possible to imagine both regressive and emancipatory research projects in our field that capture or co-opt additional resources, including both internal and external funding. It is, however, a mark of emancipatory projects that they will use these resources to the ends Webb describes.Implicit in Webb’s argument is an acceptance that politically useful utopian work should be socially engaged beyond the confines of the university campus. However, engaging in utopian politics from within inegalitarian university structures (via what is institutionally termed “outreach” and “engagement” work) should be pursued with caution. Even researchers and educators acting in good faith can easily end up exploiting or causing damage to social movements, support groups and activists. Good allyship and effective support cannot be reduced to institutional mechanisms like ethics committee compliance or equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) initiatives, even when these go beyond “lip service” to become meaningful acts.3 For projects involving external collaborators with a connection to the sort of “long-term, collective action” Webb describes, research design must walk a tightrope between being supportive of utopian politics beyond the university and responding to instrumental pressures within it.Here I suggest as an academic field utopian studies is at least a little special as it mediates dialectically between theory and practice at one level while developing a conceptual framework of the dialectic between theory and practice at another. Within what Richter et al term “the paradox of universities as colonizing and liberatory spaces for community engagement and activism” the utopian method is well placed to ask questions about how we engage with the given conditions of the academy, including competitive research funding grants.4 I begin below with a discussion of the relationship of theory and academic work to the social with reference to utopian theory and then apply this to questions about our wider complicity within a discursive regime I term “academic excellence.” I argue this regime is central to the “prestige economy” upon which some of the structural inequalities of our sector are based. I conclude by suggesting that working within the constraints of the given while remaining orientated toward utopian politics in an ethical manner requires close attention to how we navigate the relationship between utopian theory and political practice. [End Page 518]Theory, Praxis, PracticeIn the final chapter of his recent monograph Becoming Utopian, Tom Moylan forms a cogent argument about the praxis of utopian-oriented politics with reference to Saul Alinsky’s community organizing and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed.5 The writings of both figures are grounded in... (shrink)

First published in 1969, this volume presents a survey of the contemporary national education system in Latin American countries. Laurence Gale describes the uneven provision of schools for different sections of the community and the problems which arise with the racial, cultural and geographical difficulties. He examines the main features in education throughout Latin America, areas of co-operation and agreement and differences of policy and provision.

By the standard of popular approval, the South African state has no legitimacy, since only whites are enfranchised and blacks are being denationalized. This institutionalized politicization of ethnicity increasingly erodes the efficiency of private and state institutions alike. Enforced ethnic identities without representative leadership undermine proposed liberal arrangements of negotiated power-sharing as well as the government policy of cooptation. In the absence of political democracy, politicized labor relations substitute for restricted mobilization elsewhere. There are three basic responses to this legitimation (...) crisis of the South African state: 1) the radical left response of revolutionary reversal of power 2) the reformist business response of co-optation and 3) the technocratic government response of further political separation with increased economic collaboration. (shrink)

Competing theories on the semantics of group pejorative terms (also known as‘slurs’)comprise both advocates and opponents to the Identity Thesis (IT), according to whichthese terms and their neutral counterparts do not differ in semantic value. In the oppo-nents’camp, Christopher Hom has offered an argument based on substitution of slurs andneutral counterparts that both supports his semanticist approach and cast doubts on all IT-based approaches to slurs. We aim to point to a dilemma triggered by this argument based on evidence showing (...) that substitution of some words (including but not restricted to slurs)for non-problematically co-referential pairs may fail to preserve truth-values in some linguistics contexts. (shrink)

The U.S. agricultural sector relies heavily on agricultural migrant workers, and Florida has a history of (im)migrant labor. However, this system is historically rooted in colonization, and its systems of oppression remain. Currently, migrant workers operate in various systems of oppression, including social, health, and environmental inequities, all of which have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature regarding decoloniality, muted group theory, and decolonial intersectionality has a strong history of uncovering how multiple oppressions overlap for vulnerable and marginalized (...) groups in the US. We draw on this literature to ask: 1) how can examining participants’ stories through decolonial intersectionality help explore structural and institutional racism and the dominance of muting? and 2) how can participants recount how they resist oppression and/or unmute in telling their stories? To answer these questions, literary portraits were co-created with farmworkers and community liaisons about participants’ experiences. The authors used decoloniality, muted group theory, and decolonial intersectionality to analyze participants’ creative non-fiction stories. Farmworkers recounted through their stories that they were often devalued, had their humanity questioned, and negotiated their survival, especially during COVID-19. However, they were able to resist the oppressions of coloniality through their families, faith, pride, and love. Recommendations include using storytelling techniques to align with farmworkers’ wants in research as well as assist in communicating about issues regarding health and safety. Non-profit organizations, centers of faith, and universities can assist in serving the needs of agricultural migrant workers related to childcare, food security, and worksite and home safety issues. (shrink)

La autoetnografía es un enfoque de investigación y escritura que busca describir y analizar sistemáticamente la experiencia personal con el fin de comprender la experiencia cultural. Esta aproximación desafía las formas canónicas de hacer investigación y de representar a los otros, a la vez que considera a la investigación como un acto político, socialmente justo y socialmente consciente. Para hacer y escribir autoetnografía, el investigador aplica los principios de la autobiografía y de la etnografía. Así, como método, la autoetnografía es, (...) a la vez, proceso y producto. (shrink)

Keywords are essential to the searchability and therefore discoverability of museum and archival collections in the modern world. Without them, the collection management systems (CMS) and online collections these cultural organisations rely on to record, organise, and make their collections accessible, do not operate efficiently. However, generating these keywords manually is time consuming for these already resource strapped organisations. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), could hold the key to generating, even automating, this key data (...) and as such be considered a co-creative add-on. This study contributes to the literature by introducing the use of Meta’s open-source LLM, Llama, to generate keywords from curator/archivist written descriptions of museum and archival collection items. Our findings suggest that these technologies add significant value compared to current manual methods for keyword generation. In particular, we find that through using carefully crafted prompts, successful keyword augmentations could be established making museum and archival collections much more accessible to wider and more diverse audiences. However, the results also showed that generative AI has biases (e.g., hallucinations, over generalisations, outdated language), though the frequency of occurrence was not as high as general perception may insist. Hence, we also discuss mitigation strategies to address these and how cultural institutions can recognise the risks and errors while getting the most from the systems. Finally, we discuss options to achieve structured results which allow easier ingestion of data back into CMS. Ultimately, LLMs hold significant potential to enhance accessibility to museum and archival collections, yet they are not without imperfection as we extensively discuss. (shrink)

Niniejszy esej stanowi piąty rozdział tomu The Realm of Spirit kończącego cykl The Realms of Being. Podstawą przekładu jest pierwsze wydanie dzieła: George Santayana, The Realms of Being (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., Toronto: The Macmillan Company, 1940), 67–89. -/- This essay is the fifth chapter of The Realm of Spirit volume concluding The Realms of Being series. The translation is based on the first edition of the work: George Santayana, The Realms of Being (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., Toronto: (...) The Macmillan Company, 1940), 67-89. (shrink)

Many people lack autonomy because they work jobs that deny them significant and meaningful control over what they do. The negative impact of this can be ameliorated, to a degree, by the relationships that people often form with co-workers: that is, workplace sociability can itself enhance workers’ autonomy while also helping them tolerate heteronomous work by making it more bearable. In addition, workplace sociability is also a potential resource for advancing the cause of working people’s autonomy, acting as a basis (...) for developing forms of workplace solidarity which workers can then use, through strike action and other forms of militant activity, to improve their working conditions. In this paper, we identify the tension between, on the one hand, the ameliorative andtherapeuticvalue of workplace sociability and, on the other, sociability’s potentialinstrumentalrole in expanding workers’ autonomy. We argue that developing workplace sociability into more purposive forms of solidarity involves putting at risk those other functions performed by such sociability. If expanding their autonomy is something workers have reason to care about, navigating the varied and complex functions performed by workplace sociability is thus an important dimension of workplace organizing. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMetaphors frequently link negative affect with darkness and associations of this type have been established in several experimental paradigms. Given the ubiquity and strength of these associations, people who prefer dark to light may be more prone to negative emotional experiences and symptoms. A five study investigation couches these ideas in a new theoretical framework and then examines them. Across studies, 1 in 4 people preferred the perceptual concept of dark over the perceptual concept of light. These dark-preferring people scored (...) higher in neuroticism and experienced greater depressive feelings in daily life. Moreover, dark preferences shared a robust relationship with depressive symptoms as well as generalised anxiety symptoms. The results provide novel insights into negative affectivity and extend conceptual metaphor theory in a way that is capable of making individual difference predictions. (shrink)

Chronic pain is associated with high levels of mental health issues and alterations in cognitive processing. Cognitive-behavioral models illustrate the role of memory alterations in the development and maintenance of chronic pain as well as in mental health disorders which frequently co-occur with chronic pain. This study aims to expand our understanding of specific cognitive mechanisms underlying chronic pain which may in turn shed light on cognitive processes underlying pain-related psychological distress. Individuals who reported a history of chronic pain and (...) individuals who reported no history of chronic pain were recruited from MTurk to complete an online survey including standardized measures of anxiety and depression and two sentence completion tasks that assessed autobiographical memory and future thinking specificity and content. Chi square analyses revealed that participants who endorsed experiencing chronic pain were significantly more likely to recall at least one painful and negative event and to imagine at least one anticipated painful event in their future. Two ANCOVAs were performed to examine the degree to which chronic pain endorsement influenced specificity in memory and future imagining. Individuals with a history of chronic pain and higher levels of depression symptom severity generated autobiographical memories with significantly less specificity; whereas, individuals with a history of chronic pain also generated future autobiographical events with significantly less specificity. In addition, individuals with a history of chronic pain were more likely to generate episodes related to pain when asked to recall the past or imagine the future. Further research is needed to improve our understanding of the etiology of autobiographical memory and future thinking specificity and content in the pathogenesis of mental health conditions in the context of chronic pain. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on the disciplinary contours of contemporary sociology, and social science more generally, in the age of ‘big and broad’ social data. Our aim is to suggest how sociology and social sciences may respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by this ‘data deluge’ in ways that are innovative yet sensitive to the social and ethical life of data and methods. We begin by reviewing relevant contemporary methodological debates and consider how they relate to the emergence (...) of big and broad social data as a product, reflexive artefact and organizational feature of emerging global digital society. We then explore the challenges and opportunities afforded to social science through the widespread adoption of a new generation of distributed, digital technologies and the gathering momentum of the open data movement, grounding our observations in the work of the Collaborative Online Social Media ObServatory project. In conclusion, we argue that these challenges and opportunities motivate a renewed interest in the programme for a ‘public sociology’, characterized by the co-production of social scientific knowledge involving a broad range of actors and publics. (shrink)