Clinical research is a necessity if effective and safe treatments are to be developed. However, this may well include the need for research that is best described as ‘invasive’ in that it may be associated with some discomfort or inconvenience. Limitations in the undertaking of invasive research involving people with intellectual disabilities (ID) are perhaps related to anxieties within the academic community and among ethics committees; however, the consequence of this neglect is that innovative treatments specific to people with ID (...) may not be developed. Such concerns are likely to continue while there is limited published knowledge regarding the actual experiences of people with ID who have participated in invasive clinical research. As part of a pilot study trialling the novel use of a surgically inserted device to curb overeating in people with Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) we have investigated the experience of research through semistructured qualitative interviews involving three participants and their carers. Thematic analysis revealed that the adults with PWS and their family carers rated their participation positively, seeing it as a rewarding and enriching experience. This brief report discusses findings from our interview data in order to highlight strategies which may ensure that research is acceptable to participants, meets the necessary ethical standards and is able to achieve the aims set out by the researchers. To our knowledge, this is the first study to record experiences directly from people with PWS and their carers regarding their involvement in invasive clinical research. (shrink)

The lateralized ERP N2pc component has been shown to be an effective marker of attentional object selection when elicited in a visual search task, specifically reflecting the selection of a target item among distractors. Moreover, when targets are known in advance, the visual search process is guided by representations of target features held in working memory at the time of search, thus guiding attention to objects with target-matching features. Previous studies have shown that manipulating working memory availability via concurrent tasks (...) or within task manipulations influences visual search performance and the N2pc. Other studies have indicated that visual vs. spatial working memory manipulations have differential contributions to visual search. To investigate this the current study assesses participants' visual and spatial working memory ability independent of the visual search task to determine whether such individual differences in working memory affect task performance and the N2pc. Participants completed a visual search task to elicit the N2pc and separate visual working memory and spatial working memory assessments. Greater SPWM, but not VWM, ability is correlated with and predicts higher visual search accuracy and greater N2pc amplitudes. Neither VWM nor SPWM was related to N2pc latency. These results provide additional support to prior behavioral and neural visual search findings that spatial WM availability, whether as an ability of the participant's processing system or based on task demands, plays an important role in efficient visual search. (shrink)

This book offers a rich collection of voices from diverse settings and illustrates ways in which lectio divina as a contemplative practice can transform teaching and learning. Drawing on holistic education and embodied learning, lectio divina empowers teachers and roots students in their own meaning making.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) focuses on specific community needs, and produces results that directly address those needs. Although conducting ethical CBPR is critical to its success, few academic programs include this training in their curricula. This article describes the development and evaluation of an online training course designed to increase the use of CBPR in mental health disciplines. Developed using a participatory approach involving a community of experts, this course challenges traditional research by introducing a collaborative process meant to encourage (...) increased participation by special populations and narrow the parity gap in effective mental health treatment and services delivery. (shrink)

This article summarizes a virtual live‐streamed panel event that occurred in August 2020 and was cosponsored by the International Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS) and the University of California, Irvine's Center for Nursing Philosophy. The event consisted of a series of three self‐contained panel discussions focusing on the past, present and future of IPONS and was moderated by the current Chair of IPONS, Catherine Green. The first panel discussion explored the history of IPONS and the journal Nursing Philosophy. The (...) second panel involved a reflection on the challenges of doing nursing philosophy in a research‐intensive context of a Canadian university and the history and current movements in nursing philosophy in the Nordic countries. The final panel involved presentations on the future potential for philosophy in/and for nursing, the critical connections between nursing philosophy and nursing theory, dismantling racism in nursing and the potential for process philosophy to help explore nursing's unique efficacy in creating possibilities for health. The panels were followed by a lively Q&A session with participants, of which there were 252 registrants from across the globe. The event underscored the wide and diverse interests of nurses in philosophical discussion and the need for more virtual events and other connective modalities bringing nurses together to discuss and analyze the value and potential of philosophy to better understand and advance nursing theory and practice. (shrink)

This is a unique, groundbreaking study in the history of philosophy, combining leading men and women philosophers across 2600 years of Western philosophy, covering key foundational topics, including epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Introductory essays, primary source readings, and commentaries comprise each chapter to offer a rich and accessible introduction to and evaluation of these vital philosophical contributions. A helpful appendix canvasses an extraordinary number of women philosophers throughout history for further discovery and study.

Abstract In this paper I undertake an in-depth examination of an oft mentioned but rarely expounded upon state: suspended judgment. While traditional epistemology is sometimes characterized as presenting a “yes or no” picture of its central attitudes, in fact many of these epistemologists want to say that there is a third option: subjects can also suspend judgment. Discussions of suspension are mostly brief and have been less than clear on a number of issues, in particular whether this third option should (...) be thought of as an attitude or not. In this paper I argue that suspended judgment is (or at least involves) a genuine attitude. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9753-y Authors Jane Friedman, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UJ UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Examines the theories of Plato, Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman concerning the education of women.

In November 1996, Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva began a correspondence exploring the subject of the sacred. In this collection of those letters Catherine Clément approaches the topic from an anthropologist's point of view while Julia Kristeva responds from a psychoanalytic perspective. Their correspondence leads them to a controversial and fundamental question: is there anything sacred that can at the same time be considered strictly feminine? The two voices of the book work in tandem, fleshing out ideas and (...) blending together into a melody of experience. The result is a dialogue that delves into the mysteries of belief -- the relationship between faith and sexuality, the body and the senses -- which, Clément and Kristeva argue, women feel with special intensity. Although their discourse is not necessarily about theology, the authors consider the role of women and femininity in the religions of the world, from Christianity and Judaism to Confucianism and African animism. They are the first to admit that what they have undertaken is "as impossible to accomplish as it is fascinating." Nevertheless, their wide-ranging and exhilarating dialogue succeeds in raising questions that are perhaps more important to ask than to answer. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and The VirusMary-Jane Rubenstein (bio)I. PunitheologyThe explanations started pouring in even before the virus attained “pandemic” status in March of 2020: we were being punished. According to a vocal subset of Evangelical pastors and ultra-Orthodox rabbis, the death-dealing virus was divine retribution for the sins of (who else?) LGBT-identified people and their allies, who aggressively violated what the pastors and rabbis (...) called “the order of nature.”1 Meanwhile, their left-leaning counterparts argued that the sin in question wasn’t so much sexual as ecological: in the words of one Roman Catholic commentator, the coronavirus was God’s punishment for “our unfettered domination attitude toward nature.”2At the same time, an equally vocal throng of secular environmentalists called the virus nature’s own punishment for our manifold violations against her—in particular, the extractivism, pollution, alleged overpopulation, deforestation, carbon emissions, and industrial slaughterhouses that allowed the zoonotic strain to break out among humans in the first place.3 Depending on whom [End Page 5] you ask, then, the disaster we’ve come to encapsulate as COVID-19 is either godly or natural retribution for our manifold sins against “nature.”Although these sacred and secular punitheologies are not equivalent, they bear striking similarities to one another thanks to the monotheistic heritage of the concept of “nature” itself. As we will see, whether it is invoked by pastors, politicians, activists, or scientists, “nature” in the Western-descended world is presented as singular, nonwhite, and feminine; morally normative; and prone to abuse. Nature is often capitalized, often maternalized, and reliably distinguished either from a disembodied male God, a universalized “humanity,” or both. Nature, in short, carries immense ideological freight. Specifically, it installs and polices the work of what Kelly Brown Douglas calls “theo-ideology”: a “sacred legitimation” for a social order that seeks to present itself as unquestionable.4 And “nature” does this unparalleled ideological work thanks to the freedom it keeps promising from ideology: “your” way of being might be constructed, distorted, historical, subjective, contingent, artificial, cultural, or indeed sinful, but “ours” is natural—which is to say universally, even transcendently, true.Whether it comes from the mouths of angry clerics or righteous ecologists, then, the call to get right with nature is a call to adhere to one or another self-concealing social arrangement—to a set of interests and values whose power derives from its seeming so “natural.” For this reason, many contemporary thinkers recommend abandoning the term altogether. Donna Haraway suggests we try the non-binary and carefully pluralized “naturecultures”; Bruno Latour proposes “critical zones,” and Timothy Morton pivots to ecological practice which, he insists, can only function if we let go of the romantic delusion of “nature.”5Regardless of nature’s conceptual integrity, it is important to attend to the term in order to account for its rhetorical force and ubiquity—for the polyphibious presence of “nature” within the left and right-wings of science, religion, and politics alike. In this article, I will decode some of the recent, theologically [End Page 6] retributive appeals to nature within early, informal, literary responses to the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. In the process, I hope to unearth some of the mythic norms of race and gender that this concept both entrenches and conceals in the American imagination. Finally, I will ask what happens when we start messing with these categories, beginning with the mirroring chasms between humans and nature, and nature and God. How might we start to think pantheologically about this unrelenting pandemic, and why would anybody want to?II. Sins against NatureAs Catherine Keller noticed as early as April 2020, American pundits across the political spectrum immediately attributed COVID-19 to the relentless justice of an angry God.6 It is perhaps America’s favorite theological maneuver: explaining natural and social disasters as the product of divine vengeance. From Jonathan Edwards’s spider to Fred Phelps’s funeral protests, American preachers and political commentators have got a long-standing knack for putting the fear of God into a suffering nation. (Even my home insurance policy washes its hands of... (shrink)

In her final fragmentary novel Sanditon, Jane Austen develops a theme that pervades her work from her juvenilia onward: illness, and in particular, illness imagined, invented, or self-inflicted. While the “invention of odd complaints” is characteristically a token of folly or weakness throughout her writing, in this last work imagined illness is also both a symbol and a cause of how selves and societies degenerate. In the shifting world of Sanditon, hypochondria is the lubricant for a society bent on (...) turning health into a commodity. As a result, people’s rationality and their moral character come under attack. Catherine Belling’s recent subtle study, A Condition of Doubt: The Meanings of Hypochondria, unveils hypochondria’s discursive and cultural character. Running sharply against the tenor of Austen’s treatment, however, she argues in defense of the rationality of hypochondriacs; the notion that the condition may involve morally significant defects is not entertained; any connection to the commercialization of health care is muted. Here, I contrast Austen’s morally and epistemically negative rendering of her hypochondriacal characters in Sanditon with Belling’s efforts to create a sympathetic understanding of people with hypochondria. I will argue that, despite time gaps and genre differences, joint consideration of these texts can help bioethicists better appreciate how medicine can intensify, pathologize, and exploit anxieties about illness and death, thus adding to the challenges of living well in the face of mortality and morbidity. (shrink)

Jane Austen and the powers of description. Disciplines of description -- Reading ignorance into sense -- Elizabeth Bennet, the Socrates of descriptive reason -- Frank and impertinent: paradiastolic descriptions -- An excursus on Richard Rorty and Lady Catherine -- Fanny's garden thoughts -- Reasoning by description -- Coda: "Part hawk, part man" -- The apprehension of power and life. The cook and the count: a psychological anthropology of tyranny -- Is power coercive? -- A parable of action and (...) event -- The afflictions of life: Montale's poetic description of flux -- What is a life? -- A concluding postscript. (shrink)

This article examines the conflicting representations of plasticity and epigenetics in the work of philosopher Catherine Malabou and evolutionary theorists Mary Jane West-Eberhard and Eva Jablonka. In order to speak of a new biological ‘paradigm’ and to attribute values of novelty or inventiveness to life itself, Malabou has to suppress the unsettled debates within the life sciences. The aporias of evolutionary narrative and causality reveal a necessary differentiality and textuality that belongs neither to life nor science itself, but (...) leaves a haunting remanence within every corpus. New materialism resists this necessity of life-science, which calls for a deconstructive reading. (shrink)

Selon certains philosophes, espérer serait au mieux une consolation, et il conviendrait de l’abandonner au profit d’une sérénité plus forte que les malheurs. Mais dénoncer la vanité de tout espoir est-il si sage? Comment comprendre que, même dans des situations terribles, l’espoir déserte rarement tout à fait le cœur humain? Pourquoi cette insistance de l’espoir à surprendre jusqu’aux partisans d’une lucidité qui le récuse? Espérer, c’est discerner au cœur du tragique et de la tentation du désespoir, ce qui peut nous (...) y soustraire. C’est aussi résister à la pensée que la nécessité régit ce qui advient. L’espoir n’est ni une compensation ni une consolation. Plus profondément, il espère une réparation du présent. Surtout, il atteste surtout une ouverture de la finitude humaine sur ce qui l’excède. Espérer, c’est s’avancer vers ce qu’on ne voit pas et ce qu’on ne prévoit pas mais qui, déjà, nous affecte. Dans le cadre biblique, l’espoir se fonde sur une promesse qui ne concerne pas uniquement l’avenir humain et le sens de l’histoire. Il ouvre une perspective eschatologique relative à un monde qu’aucun œil n’a vu. La question « as-tu espéré? » nous sera d’ailleurs posée après notre mort, selon le Talmud. Espérer apparaît alors comme une vertu des plus exigeantes. (shrink)

La spiritualité présente différents aspects selon les cultures et les individus. La vie spirituelle, composante de la vie psychique, est souvent étayée sur des constructions philosophiques et religieuses. Elle peut garder un lien plus ou moins serré avec la sensorialité et la motricité. Elle peut aussi être soutenue par une expérience affective vécue comme une issue du sacré. L'expérience du Sacré - car c'est avant tout une expérience - est le fruit d'un mouvement dynamique qui défait, pour un temps, l'organisation (...) topique habituelle. Ce mouvement apparaît comme une constante. Cette expérience, qui n'est pas réservée au domaine religieux, est le fait de certaines formes d'organisation mentale. L'hypothèse de Freud, qui, un an avant sa mort, faisait référence au Sacré en l'assimilant au domaine du Ça, trouve ici sa confirmation. Elle ouvre vers des interrogations sur la réorganisation, qui fait suite à ces expériences, chez certains êtres, hors du commun par la qualité de leurs sublimations. (shrink)

Since Princess Diana's car crash in 1997, media interest in the crash as an event needing explanation has proliferated. The purpose of this collection is to subject texts or films, within which crashes figure, to well-defined cultural study.

A. C. Graham's Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Sciences (1978) is the only Western-language translation of the obscure and textually corrupt chapters of the Mozi that purportedly constitute the foundations of ancient Chinese logic. Graham's presentation and interpretation of this difficult material has been largely accepted by scholars. This article questions the soundness of Graham's reconstruction of these chapters (the so-called "Neo-Mohist Canons"). Upon close examination, problems are revealed in both the structure and the content of the framework Graham uses (...) to interpret the Canons. Without a more reliable framework for interpreting the text, it seems best to remain skeptical about claims that the Canons represent evidence for the study of logic in early China. (shrink)

This book encourages readers to acknowledge humanity's contribution to the environmental crisis, proposing a way forward by exploring the power of ordinary people to bring about large-scale cultural change. Is it possible for humankind to change its ways and shed the belief that the planet is ours to do with as we like? Internationally acclaimed philosopher of education Jane Roland Martin argues that "humancentrism" is a learned affair, and what is learned can be unlearned. Turning to the past to (...) see how large-scale cultural change has occurred, she discovers a pattern in the achievements of such historical luminaries as Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks and Greta Thunberg that we too can follow. Drawing on history, philosophy, and literature as well as the natural and social sciences and hoping to mobilize readers to effective action, Martin employs an accessible and powerful rhetoric, with each chapter beginning with a scene from history written in dialogue form. This book calls on young and old to avert a looming tragedy of Aristotelian proportions--the demise of the "Mother Nature" that made it possible for our species to flourish. Thoroughly interdisciplinary in its approach, it will appeal to students and teachers as well as general readers interested in environmental studies, philosophy, and education. (shrink)

An unlikely-and entirely unforgettable-tale of a most unusual friendship between Flora, an elephant calf stolen from her African home, and David, the circus impresario and magician, who adopts, trains, and ultimately liberates her in a tale freely inspired by actual events.

The parietal cortex is divided into two major functional regions: the anterior parietal cortex that includes primary somatosensory cortex, and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) that includes the rest of the parietal lobe. The PPC contains multiple representations of space. In Dijkerman & de Haan's (D&dH's) model, higher spatial representations are separate from PPC functions. This model should be developed further so that the functions of the somatosensory system are integrated with specific functions within the PPC and higher spatial representations. (...) Through this further specification of the model, one can make better predictions regarding functional interactions between somatosensory and visual systems. (shrink)

The target article is focused on locating the popularity of imaginary worlds in our adaptations for exploration. This commentary touches on developmental influences, vicarious enjoyment, the challenging of societal mores, plot, and whether men and women are drawn to the same features in the same ways.

Several recent papers dealing with Plato's position on the imperfection of the phenomenal world draw heavily on the differences between two kinds of predicates in order to show the following: In the middle dialogues, Plato posits Forms only as referents of what the writers call incomplete predicates. He does not posit Forms as referents for complete predicates. When interpreters ignore the differences between these kinds of predicates, they ascribe too radical a view regarding the imperfection of the phenomenal world to (...) the middle dialogues. The ontology of these dialogues includes sensible particulars which retain their identity over time even though they are continually changing in some respect or other. (shrink)

This article responds to philosophers and literary critics who espouse concepts about an endemic postsecularity in western nations that encroach across the globe. Postsecularity accounts for the resurgence of a religious consciousness in the face of challenges to secularity in the forms of accommodating minority religions; the yearning for spiritual expression as an antidote to capitalist materialism; and posthuman concerns about the engineering of biological human identities, artificial intelligence, and anthropogenic climate crises. Poetry, with its non-verbal cues, can both animate (...) and also reach beyond the purely rational discourses of philosophy. Accordingly, poems by T.S. Eliot, Stevie Smith, and Carol Ann Duffy span a century of thought and literary evocations of the interstices and crossovers of theocentric belief and unbelief. They illuminate the postsecular elements of partial faith, spiritual plurality, and resacralization. These elements disrupt binary polarizations of atheism and faith. (shrink)

Recent work in naturalised epistemology has focused almost exclusively on the intersection of cognitive psychology and theory of knowledge; work from sociolinguistics is just now beginning to gain ground. At the same time, feminist epistemologies have striven to articulate the precise paths of connectedness and relatedness that gynocentric theory standardly postulates as being characteristic of female ways of knowing. This paper attempts to articulate the intersection of sociolinguistically naturalised epistemology and feminist theory of knowledge. A model of gynocentrically centred justification (...) is presented, and it is concluded that the intersection of these areas is a rich and rewarding one. (shrink)

Lauréat en 2011 du Prix Frankel d’histoire contemporaine de la Bibliothèque de Vienne, Love in the Time of Communism de Josie McLellan constitue l’un des travaux les plus innovateurs de l’historiographie actuelle sur l’Allemagne post-1945 comme sur la révolution sexuelle. En étudiant la transformation et les limites des mœurs sexuelles de l’Allemagne de l’Est dans les années 1970 et 1980, Josie McLellan traduit les problématiques actuelles des liens entre la famille, la sphère privée et la co...