Anita Chari revives the concept of reification from Marx and the Frankfurt School to spotlight the resistance to neoliberal capitalism now forming at the level of political economy and at the more sensate, experiential level of subjective transformation. Reading art by Oliver Ressler, Zanny Begg, Claire Fontaine, Jason Lazarus, and Mika Rottenberg, as well as the politics of Occupy Wall Street, Chari identifies practices through which artists and activists have challenged neoliberalism's social and political logics, exposing its inherent tensions (...) and contradictions. (shrink)

'Anita L. Allen breaks new ground...A stunning indictment of women's status in contemporary society, her book provides vital original scholarly research and insight.' |s-NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WOMEN.

How do I know whether there are any minds beside my own? This problem of other minds in philosophy raises questions which are at the heart of all philosophical investigations--how it is that we know, what is in the mind, and whether we can be certain about any of our beliefs. In this book, Anita Avramides begins with a historical overview of the problem from the Ancient Skeptics to Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, Reid, and Wittgenstein. The second part of (...) the book investigates the views of influential contemporary philosophers such as Strawson, Davidson, Nagel and Searle. (shrink)

Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top management support to (...) the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

The Gricean account of language is at the center of much current work in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. Anita Avramides maintains that Grice's paradigm can be used to defend very different conceptions of mind and of meaning. In this clearly argued book she describes Grice's analysis of meaning and proposes two interpretations of it, one reductive and one nonreductive. Much current work in cognitive science assumes that the content of words and thoughts can be (...) explained in naturalistic terms. A leading idea (advanced mainly by Stephen Schiffer and Brian Loar) is that the naturalistic account of content will proceed in two stages: a reduction of the semantic features of word; to the contents of propositional attitudes and then a reduction of the latter to physical or functional notions. The appeal of Grice's work on meaning to this two stage reductionist strategy is that Gricean definitions seem to provide the only way of reducing the semantic to the psychological, a reduction that is required for a naturalistic account of intentionality. While Avramides defends the method of analysis as one suited to the concept of meaning, she rejects a reductive interpretation of the analysis. She argues that any attempt to reduce the semantic to the psychological leads to a mistaken conception of mind. She exposes the assumptions behind the reductive interpretation and offers fresh and original arguments for the antireductionist position. Against the reductive Gricean she defends the idea that there is a deep epistemological symmetry between semantic and propositional attitude notions, a result of which is that semantically characterized linguistic behavior is central to our concept of belief. Anita Avramides is Lecturer in Philosophy at The Queens College, The University of Oxfor. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

This article engages Axel Honneth’s recent work on Georg Lukács’ concept of reification in order to formulate a politically relevant and historically specific critique of capitalism that is applicable to theorizing contemporary democratic practice. I argue that Honneth’s attempt to reorient the critique of reification within the terms of a theory of recognition has done so at the cost of sacrificing the core of the concept, which forged a connection between the socio-political analysis of capitalist domination and an analysis of (...) the unengaged, spectatorial stance of human beings toward the world, showing how they together impede emancipatory social transformation. In order to accomplish the unfinished task of rendering the critique of reification applicable to contemporary critical theory, I seek to synthesize the advantages of Honneth’s approach, which focuses on the normative aspects of the critique of reification, with Lukács’ emphasis on the practical, political-economic dimensions of reification and the historically specific pathologies of the capitalist social form. (shrink)

The essays in this volume present versions of feminism that are explicitly liberal, or versions of liberalism that are explicitly feminist. By bringing together some of the most respected and well-known scholars in mainstream political philosophy today, Amy R. Baehr challenges the reader to reconsider the dominant view that liberalism and feminism are 'incompatible.'.

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Davidson aims to explain how it is that we come by knowledge of the world, our own minds and other minds, and to show that knowledge of other minds is the more fundamental. A community of minds is the basis of all knowledge and provides the measure of all things. Davidson believes that understanding this will provide a reply to the skeptic. I argue that while Davidson's work may provide a reply to a new skeptical problem, it is not clear (...) how it engages with traditional skeptical problems. In order to better understand Davidson's work in connection with the latter, I suggest that we look to the writing of Wittgenstein. I also suggest that when Davidson writes of knowledge, he is not thinking along traditional lines. Finally, I suggest that, while there exist inferential and perceptual models of our knowledge of another mind, Davidson's work offers yet another model. (shrink)

Die Isländersagas sind seit jeher Schwerpunkt altnordistischer Forschung. Aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive ist ihren zahlreichen, oft minutiösen Beschreibungen von Kleidung bislang aber wenig Beachtung geschenkt worden. Vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Bekleidung der Figuren im Hinblick auf soziale, geschlechtliche und emotionale Konstellationen innerhalb des Erzählkontexts.

Introduction -- The self-interest based contractarian response to the skeptic -- A feminist ethics response to the skeptic -- Deformed desires -- Self-interest versus morality -- The amoralist -- The motive skeptic -- The interdependency thesis.

There is wide agreement among scholars in research policy that the position of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in interdisciplinary research is not as good as it should be. Academics give many reasons why SSH fields should become more active collaborators in interdisciplinarity, including the capacity within these disciplines to introduce new research questions and to make interdisciplinary research more ethically and societally grounded. This article assesses the conditions attached to 127 recent funding programmes for interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary research. (...) The findings indicate that the exclusion of SSH from interdisciplinary fields is an ongoing problem in research funding. Furthermore, when given funding, SSH disciplines are less likely to be given the opportunity to connect their research questions and targets solely to the advancement of knowledge. These priorities increase the likelihood of SSH disciplines contributing to multidisciplinary research rather than focusing on interdisciplinarity with knowledge integration. (shrink)

Background: Nursing care is rapidly evolving due to the advanced technological and medical development, and also due to an increased focus on standardization and the logic of production, permeating today’s hospital cultures. Nursing is rooted in a holistic approach with an ethical obligation to maintain and respect the individual’s dignity and integrity. However, working within time limits and heavy workload leads to burnout and ethical insensitivity among nurses, and may challenge nurses’ options to act on the basis of ethical and (...) moral grounds in the individual care situation. Aim: The aim of this study is to describe and discuss ethical dilemmas described and experienced by nurses in clinical practice today. Method: The study was performed as a literature review following the matrix method allowing to synthesize literature across methodological approaches. A literature search was performed, including relevant studies published between 2011 and 2016. A total of 15 articles were included and analyzed focusing on their description of ethical dilemmas. Ethical consideration: We have considered and respected ethical conduct when performing a literature review, respecting authorship and referencing sources. Results: The analysis revealed three themes, relating to important aspects of nursing practice, such as the nurse–patient relationship, organizational structures, and collaboration with colleagues. The findings are summarized in the following three themes: (1) balancing harm and care, (2) work overload affecting quality, and (3) navigating in disagreement. Ethically difficult situations are evident across settings and in very diverse environments from neonatal care to caring for the older people. Organizational structures and being caught in-between professional values, standardization, and busyness was evident, revealing the complexity of nursing practice and the diversity of ethical dilemmas, concerns, and distress experienced by clinical nurses. Conclusion: Nursing practice is challenged by organizational structures and the development of the health care system, inhibiting nurses’ professional decision-making and forcing them to compromise basic nursing values. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In 1730, shortly before his death, the Paris anatomist Joseph‐Guichard Duverney wrote his will, leaving his anatomical specimens to the Académie des Sciences, of which he was a member. But the will was disputed by Pierre Chirac, supervisor of the Jardin du Roi where Duverney, as professor of anatomy, had performed most of the dissections that produced the specimens. The ensuing debate between Chirac and René‐Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, arguing for the Académie, reveals the tensions surrounding both the concept (...) of intellectual property in this period and the collective enterprise in natural philosophy. The differing roles and audiences of the Académie and the Jardin were central to this debate. In addition, this essay explores the origins and significance of the anatomical specimens themselves and their changing role in instruction and display, as well as the transition from the cabinet of curiosities to the natural history museum. (shrink)

Accountability protects public health and safety, facilitates law enforcement, and enhances national security, but it is much more than a bureaucratic concern for corporations, public administrators, and the criminal justice system. In Why Privacy Isn't Everything, Anita L. Allen provides a highly original treatment of neglected issues affecting the intimacies of everyday life, and freshly examines how a preeminent liberal society accommodates the competing demands of vital privacy and vital accountability for personal matters. Thus, "None of your business!" is (...) at times the wrong thing to say, as much of what appears to be self-regarding conduct has implications for others that should have some bearing on how a person chooses to act. (shrink)

In traditional linguistic accounts of context, one thinks of the immediate features of a speech situation, that is, a situation in which an expression is uttered. Thus, features such as time, location, speaker, hearer and preceding discourse are all parts of context. But context is a wider and more transcendental notion than what these accounts imply. For one thing, context is a relational concept relating social actions and their surroundings, relating social actions, relating individual actors and their surroundings, and relating (...) the set of individual actors and their social actions to their surroundings. (shrink)

While disability has emerged as a major theme in academic and political discourses, a perusal of many bioethics textbooks reveals that most editors and philosophers still do not consider disability to be central to developing either critical perspective or social conscience in addressing the core questions in bioethics. This essay explores how disability issues are typically portrayed in bioethics textbooks by looking at the examples of genetic testing and medically assisted death. It explains how incorporation of disability perspectives helps to (...) provide students with opportunities for a fuller understanding of many concepts that are central to moral and political philosophy, such as equality, justice, the good life, moral agency, and autonomy. (shrink)

Malebranche affirmed the existence of the material world on the grounds of faith rather than reason. Religious dogma demanded the existence of the material world and Malebranche, the priest, acquiesced. Reason found the existence of the material world doubtful and, indeed, unnecessary. The existence of a material world different from and apart from minds conflicts with the proof of the economy of God's nature which Malebranche offered. Further, in inquiring into the probable nature of the material world Malebranche never successfully (...) avoided the conclusion that apart from a mind the material world is nothing. Malebranche thus came close to proving that the assumption of a material world is unnecessary even for theology, but the explicit statement of such a conclusion would have been too open a break with the church for a faithful member. Surely, however, the weight of Malebranche's reasoning and its implications for immaterialism would not be lost on one already interested in arguments against materialism. Berkeley's interest was such and Luce has shown that Berkeley read Malebranche carefully. Malebranche was the only thinker clearly inclining toward immaterialism whom Berkeley read. Is Malebranche, then, not the source of Berkeley's immaterialism? (shrink)

It is generally accepted that the therapeutic relationship between professionals and patients is one of trust. Nonetheless, some patient groups carry certain social vulnerabilities that can be exacerbated when they extend trust to health-care professionals. In exploring the epistemic and ethical implications of expert status, this paper examines how calls to trust may increase epistemic oppression and perpetuate the vulnerability of people with impairments. It critically evaluates the processes through which epistemic communities are formed or determined, and examines the institutional (...) structure and power relations that contribute to or sustain such self-affirming ideological communities. It also argues for a two-way collaborative approach between professionals and people with impairments that recognizes the role of local knowledge in enhancing professionals’ own understanding of their theoretical framework and promoting responsive practices and policies. (shrink)

For decades a debate has played out in the literature about who bioethicists are, what they do, whether they can be considered professionals qua bioethicists, and, if so, what professional responsibilities they are called to uphold. Health care ethics consultants are bioethicists who work in health care settings. They have been seeking guidance documents that speak to their special relationships/duties toward those they serve. By approving a Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Health Care Ethics Consultants, the American Society (...) for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) has moved the professionalization debate forward in a significant way. This first code of ethics focuses on individuals who provide health care ethics consultation (HCEC) in clinical settings. The evolution of the code's development, implications for the field of HCEC and bioethics, and considerations for future directions are presented here. (shrink)

The overall aim of the article is to unpack some of the layers of motivation that inform and shape the relationship between technology and education. This aim is motivated by the need for a more nuanced perspective on the complex relationship between technology and education. The discussion of technology and education would be utilised as springboard to provide a platform for elaborating on the complex nature of technology as medium, its broader impact on society and the kind of life it (...) creates. The article names a few of the external and internal imperatives for the integration of technology into education. The first part of the title refers to the name of a film about an unmanned, runaway train with serious consequences for the environment and humanity at large. The idea is to relate the pervasive, self-enforcing nature and role of technology with the theme of the film, a force that seems to be unstoppable. It is argued that the integration of technology into education cannot be reflected in isolation from an understanding of the complex nature of technology and the broader functioning of technology in other spheres of life. The socio-economic embeddedness of technology is unpacked by discussing the mediatisation theory, technological development as a revolution and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The final section describes the need for and possible processes to sharpen the focus on ethics in digital age. (shrink)

In 1668 Robert Hooke recognised the utility of a barometer which could foretell storms at sea, but neither he nor his contemporaries in Britain or elsewhere in Europe succeeded in constructing such an instrument which would work reliably on a moving ship. Theorists and instrument makers, including Hooke, Amontons, De Luc, Passement, Magellan and Blondeau proposed novel forms of tube, but at the time it was not possible to work glass to the suggested shape. The competition between France and England (...) was won by Edward Nairne, who devised the constricted-tube barometer for Captain Cook's second voyage of 1772-75. Nairne barometers were soon taken on other British exploring voyages, but French ships were slow to follow the pattern, possibly in consequence of naval disruption following the Revolution. The earliest Nairne examples were adapted from the domestic barometer, with the tube mounted on a flat back, but within the lifetime of Nairne & Blunt marine barometers adopted the form common for most of the nineteenth century, with the tube enclosed within a square or round-section wooden frame. (shrink)

New technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation, are currently touted as, not only giving us a better picture of the structure of the brain, but also a better understanding of our thinking. As Alan Snyder demonstrates when he claims his aim is to understand the ‘architecture of thought’ by investigating the brain. Against this backdrop, I will argue that new technologies present a worrying extension of mathematical natural science into the domain of human affairs. Extrapolating (...) upon Heidegger, I will put forward that neuroscientific experiments force thinking to conform to the mathematical conception of nature, rather than reveal something about the ‘true’ nature of our thinking. In a time when the expansion of mathematical natural science threatens to reduce every domain to that which is quantifiable, I will conclude by suggesting that the responsibility of the philosopher is to question the presuppositions of modern science and psychology.Nuevas tecnologías como la imagen de resonancia magnética funcional y la estimulación magnética transcranial se consideran presumiblemente capaces de darnos no solo una mejor imagen de nuestro cerebro, sino también una mejor comprensión de nuestro pensamiento, tal como demuestra Alan Snyder cuando afirma que su objetivo es entender la “arquitectura del pensamiento” mediante la investigación del cerebro. Contra este marco general, argumentaré que las nuevas tecnologías nos presentan una preocupante extensión de la ciencia natural matemática al dominio de los asuntos humanos. Extrapolando a partir de Heidegger, propondré que los experimentos neurocientíficos fuerzan al pensamiento a conformarse a la concepción matemática de la naturaleza en vez de revelar algo sobre la verdadera naturaleza de nuestro pensamiento. Nos encontramos en un momento en que o la expansión de la ciencia natural matemática amenaza con reducir todos los dominios a lo que es cuantificable. Concluiré sugiriendo que la responsabilidad del filósofo es cuestionar los presupuestos de la ciencia moderna y de la psicología. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing of philosophical puzzles concerns other minds. How do you know there are any? Yes, you're surrounded by living organisms that look and behave much as you do. They even say they have minds. But do they? Perhaps other humans are mindless zombies: like you on the outside, but lacking any inner conscious life, including emotions, thoughts, experiences and even pain. What grounds do you possess for supposing that other humans aren't zombies? Perhaps less than you (...) think. Anita Avramides tackles this fascinating question. (shrink)

The privacy of the dead is an interesting area of concern for bioethicists. There is a legal doctrine that the dead can't have privacy rights, but also a body of contrary law ascribing privacy rights to the deceased and kin in relation to the deceased. As women's abortion privacy is under assault by American courts and legislatures, the implications of ascribing privacy rights to embryos and fetuses is more important than ever. Caution is called for in this domain.

Ethics consultation has become an integral part of the fabric of U.S. health care delivery. This article summarizes the second edition of the Core Competencies for Health Care Ethics Consultation report of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. The core knowledge and skills competencies identified in the first edition of Core Competencies have been adopted by various ethics consultation services and education programs, providing evidence of their endorsement as health care ethics consultation (HCEC) standards. This revised report was prompted (...) by thinking in the field that has evolved since the original report. Patients, family members, and health care providers who encounter ethical questions or concerns that ethics consultants could help address deserve access to efficient, effective, and accountable HCEC services. All individuals providing such services should be held to the standards of competence and quality described in the revised report. (shrink)

The formal theory of rational choice as grounded in desire-satisfaction cannot account for the problem of such deformed desires as women's slavish desires. Traditional “informed desire” tests impose conditions of rationality, such as full information and absence of psychoses, but do not exclude deformed desires. I offer a Kantian-inspired addendum to these tests, according to which the very features of deformed desires render them irrational to adopt for an agent who appreciates her equal worth.

This paper rejects two main arguments for absolving the deferential wife and victims of deprived circumstances from responsibility or hlame for their servility: for Susan Wolf, circumstances can determine their reasons and acts, and for Sarah Buss, circumstances can give them excusing reasons for their acts. The paper argues that circumstances can give them justifying reasons to act in ways defending their intrin-sic worth when their acts can be legitimately interpreted as a protest against an attempt to degrade their intrinsic (...) value. (shrink)