Implicit biases involve associations outside conscious awareness that lead to a negative evaluation of a person on the basis of irrelevant characteristics such as race or gender. This review examines the evidence that healthcare professionals display implicit biases towards patients. PubMed, PsychINFO, PsychARTICLE and CINAHL were searched for peer-reviewed articles published between 1st March 2003 and 31st March 2013. Two reviewers assessed the eligibility of the identified papers based on precise content and quality criteria. The references of eligible papers were (...) examined to identify further eligible studies. Forty two articles were identified as eligible. Seventeen used an implicit measure, to test the biases of healthcare professionals. Twenty five articles employed a between-subjects design, using vignettes to examine the influence of patient characteristics on healthcare professionals’ attitudes, diagnoses, and treatment decisions. The second method was included although it does not isolate implicit attitudes because it is recognised by psychologists who specialise in implicit cognition as a way of detecting the possible presence of implicit bias. Twenty seven studies examined racial/ethnic biases; ten other biases were investigated, including gender, age and weight. Thirty five articles found evidence of implicit bias in healthcare professionals; all the studies that investigated correlations found a significant positive relationship between level of implicit bias and lower quality of care. The evidence indicates that healthcare professionals exhibit the same levels of implicit bias as the wider population. The interactions between multiple patient characteristics and between healthcare professional and patient characteristics reveal the complexity of the phenomenon of implicit bias and its influence on clinician-patient interaction. The most convincing studies from our review are those that combine the IAT and a method measuring the quality of treatment in the actual world. Correlational evidence indicates that biases are likely to influence diagnosis and treatment decisions and levels of care in some circumstances and need to be further investigated. Our review also indicates that there may sometimes be a gap between the norm of impartiality and the extent to which it is embraced by healthcare professionals for some of the tested characteristics. Our findings highlight the need for the healthcare profession to address the role of implicit biases in disparities in healthcare. More research in actual care settings and a greater homogeneity in methods employed to test implicit biases in healthcare is needed. (shrink)

Ethical issues arise in the world’s first population-level treatment of severe lead poisoning caused by small-scale mining for gold in rural Nigeria. Emergency medical intervention and environmental cleanup have reduced the mortality in children younger than 5 years from lead poisoning from over 40 to 2.5 per cent leaving little evidence of the harms caused by lead poisoning. In the absence of obvious sequelae, family adherence to long-term intensive therapy to remove accumulated lead reservoirs in children wanes and some community (...) miners challenge safer mining interventions to prevent recontamination of the environment with lead. This letter raises questions regarding community versus individual rights in public health interventions and patient autonomy. (shrink)

This article explores the propensity of Iliadic landscape similes to encourage reflections on human fragility. Landscape in the similes is usually interpreted as a medium which conveys a consistent symbolic value (for example storms as the hostility of nature); however, landscape is often a more flexible medium. By offering close readings of three Iliadic similes (winter torrents at 4.452–6, snowfall at 12.279–89 and clear night at 8.555–9), this article argues that landscape allowed the poet to frame the main narrative in (...) various ways, both helping the listener to imagine described events and interrupting the listener's immersion in the main narrative. While many have analysed how similes offer analogies to the main narrative, the ways in which the same simile can also disrupt and reframe the narrative are less understood. This article observes that shifts in narrative space and time played a key role in changing the perspective of the listener. Taking a broadly phenomenological approach, it proposes that embodied descriptions of space, which recreate the experience of the moving body in landscape, invite the listener to consider the temporal scale of the natural world. By looking at how landscape in select similes shifts the listener's spatial and temporal experience, this article argues that landscape contributes to the wider Iliadic theme of human fragility. In particular, it identifies the potential for landscape similes to minimize the scale of human experience, question the possibility of human agency, and reveal the limitations of human perspectives and knowledge. (shrink)

Cognitively engaging physical activity has been suggested to have superior effects on cognition compared to PA with low cognitive demands; however, there have been few studies directly comparing these different types of activities. The aim of this study is to compare the cognitive effects of a combined physically and cognitively engaging bout of PA to a physical or cognitive activity alone in children. Children were randomized in pairs to one of three 20-min conditions: a cognitive sedentary activity; a non-cognitively engaging (...) PA; and a cognitively engaging PA. Executive function was assessed using a modified Eriksen flanker task immediately before and 10–15 min following the experimental condition. Children ages 6–8 years were included in the study. A repeated measures ANOVA found no significant difference between groups with respect to scores on the flanker task. The results do not support the hypotheses that a cognitively engaging bout of PA enhances cognitive performance over non-cognitively engaging PA or sedentary activities. Possible explanations for our findings include overexertion during the acute bout of PA and depletion of positive affect prior to performing the post-intervention EF tasks. (shrink)

Background Implicit biases are present in the general population and among professionals in various domains, where they can lead to discrimination. Many interventions are used to reduce implicit bias. However, uncertainties remain as to their effectiveness. -/- Methods We conducted a systematic review by searching ERIC, PUBMED and PSYCHINFO for peer-reviewed studies conducted on adults between May 2005 and April 2015, testing interventions designed to reduce implicit bias, with results measured using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) or sufficiently similar methods. (...) -/- Results 30 articles were identified as eligible. Some techniques, such as engaging with others’ perspective, appear unfruitful, at least in short term implicit bias reduction, while other techniques, such as exposure to counterstereotypical exemplars, are more promising. Robust data is lacking for many of these interventions. -/- Conclusions Caution is thus advised when it comes to programs aiming at reducing biases. This does not weaken the case for implementing widespread structural and institutional changes that are multiply justified. (shrink)

Awareness growth—coming to entertain propositions of which one was previously unaware—is a crucial aspect of epistemic thriving. And yet, it is widely believed that orthodox Bayesianism cannot accommodate this phenomenon, since that would require employing supposedly defective catch-all propositions. Orthodox Bayesianism, it is concluded, must be amended. In this paper, I show that this argument fails, and that, on the contrary, the orthodox version of Bayesianism is particularly well-suited to accommodate awareness growth. For it entails what I call the refinement (...) view, which allows us to capture that awareness growth consists in the increase of one’s capacity of discernment. (shrink)

In this short note we prove that a definable set X over is superstable only if.

Qu'elle soit entendue comme état de désordre social ou qu'elle soit pensée comme ordre social sans Etat, l'anarchie reste difficilement appréhendée par les juristes autrement que par l'exclusion. Droit et anarchie seraient incompatibles, car le droit impliquerait nécessairement l'autorité (dont l'Etat moderne constitue la forme ultime, par la monopolisation du pouvoir de contrainte) que l'anarchie supprime. Aussi, l'étude de l'anarchie n'aurait plus grand chose à révéler au juriste, et sa marginalisation intellectuelle ne devrait pas surprendre. Pourtant, est-il vraiment satisfaisant de (...) cantonner la question de l'anarchie à l'histoire des idées politiques, alors que l'enjeu du débat touche les fondements mêmes de l'ordre juridique? C'est cette question complexe des rapports entre le droit et l'anarchie que cet ouvrage - qui regroupe les actes d'une journée d'étude organisée par l'Institut d'études de droit public de la faculté jean Monnet de l'Université Paris Sud - se propose d'investir à nouveau. (shrink)

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Ahead of Print. Despite the growing interest of academia in public outreach, little is known about what university students, among who are future researchers, take away from their academic education in terms of research dissemination opportunities. In this study, we analyzed social science students’ discourses on creative dissemination practices in relation to standardized dissemination practices. Our findings reveal that student’s conceptions of creative research dissemination are diverse and influenced by varying perceptions of knowledge, the (...) public, and creativity. Discourses on CRD are also strongly linked with values such as innovation and impact on society, but the concrete meaning of these values often remains undefined. We propose rethinking the academic context at the educational level so it offers a platform for multimodal formats of research dissemination. This would require encouraging students to take a stance toward how they envision a progressive academic future. (shrink)

This paper begins with a recognition that questions of climate change, environmental degradation, and our relations to the natural world are increasingly significant and requiring of a response not only as philosophers of education but also as citizens of the planet. As such the paper explores five of the key journals in philosophy of education in order to identify the extent, range, and content of current discussions related to the environment. It then organizes and summaries the articles that were located (...) while seeking to identify the extent, possibilities, and limitations of current discussions relating to the environment in the philosophy of education community. The hope is that ultimately this work is an invitation to anyone, regardless of tradition, orientation, and expertise, to contribute to the expansion and deepening of both theory and practice in the face of this most serious of challenges. (shrink)

Although the philosophical systems of G. W. Leibniz and David Lewis both feature possible worlds, the ways in which their systems are similar and dissimilar are ultimately surprising. At first glance, Leibniz’s modal metaphysics might strike us as one of the most contemporarily relevant aspects of his system. But I clarify in this paper major interpretive problems that result from understanding Leibniz’s system in terms of contemporary views (like Lewis’s, for instance). Specifically, I argue that Leibniz rejects the inference that (...) if something is possible, it therefore occurs in some possible world. This discussion highlights how Leibniz’s account of individual substance (with his strict notion of identity) constrains his modal theorizing and produces fatalistic threats. I then make an unexpected connection between Leibniz’s and Lewis’s systems by showing that Leibniz’s treatment of fatalism bears similarities to the response Lewis gives to the fatalist when considering the paradoxes of time travel. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Foucault and Western confessional writings, this book challenges the transhistorical and commonsense views of confession as an innate impulse resulting in the psychological liberation of the confessing subject. Instead, confessional desire is argued to be contingent and constraining, and alternatives to confessional subjectivity are explored.

In response to two trenchant objections, radical subjective Bayesianism has been widely rejected. In this paper, I seek, if not to rehabilitate subjectivism, at least to show its critic what is attractive about the position. I argue that what is at stake in the subjectivism/anti-subjectivism debate is not, as is commonly thought, which norms of rationality are true, but rather, the conception of rationality that we adopt: there is an alternative approach to the widespread telic approach to rationality, which I (...) call the poric approach, on which subjectivism is an attractive position. I then argue that the poric approach—and therefore subjectivism—cannot be easily dismissed. (shrink)

Bioethics scholarship considering the possibility of gestating an embryo to full term in an artificial womb (ectogenesis) often overstates the capacities of current technologies and underestimates the barriers to the development of full ectogenesis. Moreover, this debate causes harm by (1) neglecting more immediate problems in the development of artificial wombs, (2) treating abortion as a “problem with a technological solution,” bolstering anti-abortion rhetoric, and (3) presuming the stability of women’s reproductive rights. The ectogenesis conversation must consider anticipated uses of (...) the technology (neonatal intensive care) and acknowledge the immediate context (recognizing abortion as essential healthcare and existing reproductive inequities). (shrink)

In 2017 and 2018 [Name of research project] organized two transnational youth resistance art workshops. These workshops addressed online social justice issues and placed emphasis on pushing back against technology-facilitated violence and surveillance in networked spaces. Our engagement with these workshops raised three dilemmas associated with these sorts of resistive social justice art projects. This article explores these dilemmas, which include how to enable the production of digital art in a manner that is attentive to intersectional issues of digital literacy (...) and access; artistic appropriations of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful speech and their relation to cultural appropriation; and defamation, privacy, copyright and trademark considerations relating to artistic appropriations. In addressing these dilemmas, examples of regulatory frameworks shaping resistance opportunities and social justice initiatives are highlighted, along with suggestions for addressing these dilemmas for those who may wish to facilitate or engage in youth resistance art workshops in future. (shrink)

This is the first volume to apply insights from the material turn in philosophy to the study of play and games. At a time of renewed interest in analogue gaming, as scholars are looking beyond the digital and virtual for the first time since the inception of game studies in the 1990s, Material Game Studies not only supports the importance of the turn to the analogue, but proposes a materiality of play more broadly. Recognizing the entanglement of physical materiality with (...) cultural meaning, the authors in this volume apply a range of theoretical approaches, from material eco-criticism to animal studies, to examine games and play as existing within worlds of matter. Different chapters focus on the material properties of board, card and role-playing games, how they are designed and made, how they are touched and played with, and how they connect with other human and nonhuman things. Bringing together international scholars, Material Game Studies defines a new field of material game studies and demonstrates how it is a valuable addition to wider debates about the material turn and the place of embodied humans in a material world. (shrink)

L’anticipation est généralement conçue comme un phénomène qui, d’un point de vue temporel et logique, est antérieur à une action ou une situation donnée. Dans cet article, nous proposons d’interroger cette conception en nous intéressant en détail à ce que l’anticipation fait à l’action qu’elle anticipe. En détail c’est-à-dire, très littéralement, en observant dans des situations d’interactions ordinaires les effets que peut produire le fait d’anticiper une action. En l’occurrence, dans des situations d’apprentissage entre hommes et chiens comme celles que (...) nous examinons, anticiper une action en l’évaluant avant qu’elle n’ait eu lieu contribue en grande part à la configurer. Cette avancée nous conduit à développer une vision proprement pragmatiste de l’action, conçue comme un procès façonné de manière émergente et collaborative par l’ensemble des participants qui l’accomplissent. (shrink)

Katie Steele and H. Orri Stefánsson argue that, to reflect an agent’s limited awareness, the algebra of propositions on which that agent’s credences are defined should be relativised to their awareness state. I argue that this produces insurmountable difficulties. But the project of relativising the agent’s algebra to reflect their partial perspective need not be abandoned: the algebra can be relativised, not to the agent’s awareness state, but to what we might call their subjective modality.

AbstractMichel Foucault is well known as a theorist of power who provided forceful critiques of institutions of confinement such as the psychiatric asylum and the prison. Although the invention of factory farms and industrial slaughterhouses, like prisons and psychiatric hospitals, can be considered emblematic moments in a history of modernity, and although the modern farm is an institution of confinement comparable to the prison, Foucault never addressed these institutions, the politics of animal agriculture, or power relationships between humans and other (...) animals more generally. The few times that Foucault discussed animality or human–animal relations, animals and animality remained metaphors for humans and human experiences. Despite Foucault's failure to analyze human–nonhuman animal relations, a significant body of Critical Animal Studies literature has mobilized Foucault's work over the last decade. In particular, a number of scholars have taken up Foucault's writings to consider how relations between humans and nonhuman animals in agriculture might be conceptualized as instances of sovereign power, biopower, disciplinary power, and pastoral power, as well as why we may not think that these are power relations at all. This essay provides an overview of Foucault's accounts of power and of the Foucauldian scholarship that applies these accounts to human–nonhuman animal relations in animal agriculture. (shrink)

Race and Gender in the Classroom explores the paradoxes of education, race, and gender, as Laurie Cooper Stoll follows eighteen teachers carrying out their roles as educators in an era of “post-racial” and “post-gendered” politics.

Much of the history of Western ethical thought has revolved around debates about what constitutes a good life, and claims that a good life is achievable only by certain human beings. In Feminist Philosophies of Life, feminist, new materialist, posthumanist, and ecofeminist philosophers challenge this tendency, approaching the question of life from alternative perspectives. Signalling the importance of distinctively feminist reflections on matters of shared concern, Feminist Philosophies of Life not only exposes the propensity of discourses to normalize and exclude (...) differently abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, it also asks questions about how life is constituted and understood without limiting itself to the human. A collection of articles that focuses on life as an organizing principle for ontology, ethics, and politics, chapters of this study respond to feminist thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Judith Butler, Adriana Cavarero, Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Søren Kierkegaard. Divided into three parts, the book debates the question of life in and against the emerging school of new feminist materialism, provides feminist phenomenological and existentialist accounts of life, and focuses on lives marked by a particular precarity such as disability or incarceration, as well as life in the face of a changing climate. Calling for a broader account of lived experience, Feminist Philosophies of Life contains persuasive, original, and diverse analyses that address some of the most crucial feminist issues. Contributors include Christine Daigle, Shannon Dea, Lindsay Eales, Elizabeth Grosz, Lisa Guenther, Lynne Huffer, Ada Jaarsma, Stephanie Jenkins, Ladelle McWhorter, Jane Barter Moulaison, Astrida Neimanis, Danielle Peers, Stephen Seely, Hasana Sharp, Chloë Taylor, Florentien Verhage, Rachel Loewen Walker, and Cynthia Willett. (shrink)

Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice explores the intersections of the carceral in projects of oppression, while at the same time providing intellectual, pragmatic, and undetermined paths toward abolition. Prison abolition is at once about the institution of the prison, and a broad, intersectional political project calling for the end of the social structured by settler colonialism, anti-black racism, and related oppressions. Beyond this, prison abolition is a constructive project that imagines and strives for a transformed world in which justice (...) is not equated with punishment, and accountability is not equated with caging. Composed of sixteen chapters by an international team of scholars and activists, with a Foreword by Perry Zurn and an Afterword by Justin Piché, the book is divided into four themes: - Prisons and Racism - Prisons and Settler Colonialism - Anti-Carceral Feminisms - Multispecies Carceralities. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, activists, and scholars working in the areas of Critical Prison Studies, Critical Criminology, Native Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Black Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Critical Animal Studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as, Feminist Legal Studies, Animal Law, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, and Transnational Feminisms. (shrink)

Leibniz analyzes contingency in terms of a range of different notions: hypothetical necessity, per se contingency, infinite analysis, possible free decrees of God, and moral necessity. These have been interpreted as attempts to retreat from the neccesitarian view he adopts in his early work, but I defend the view that Leibniz’s commitment to necessitarianism—the claim that all truths are necessary—is an important and unwavering feature of his system. The core of Leibniz’s modal theory is the thesis that the denial of (...) a necessary truth is contradictory. Leibniz thinks that if we take all necessary truths into account, including the nature of God, God’s understanding of essences, and his will to do what is best, then all things considered all truths are necessarily true. All truths are necessarily true because the denial of any truth contradicts some necessary feature of God. Instead of understanding Leibniz’s subsequent theories of contingency as abandoning necessitarianism, I treat them as attempts to account for distinctions his interlocutors draw. Rather than eschew all talk of contingency, Leibniz offers and liberally invokes proxies for this notion. I trace the development of Leibniz’s various accounts of contingency from his early to mature work in order to illustrate that they are best understood in a necessitarian framework. I develop versions of his various accounts of contingency, including per se contingency and hypothetical necessity (Chapter 1), infinite analysis and possible free decrees of God (Chapter 2), and moral necessity (Chapter 3). The outcome of my project is a systematic treatment of Leibniz’s surrogate or proxy theories of contingency within his necessitarian framework. It also establishes the character of Leibnizian possible worlds, which are key for the grounding of contingent truths in the goodness of God’s will. Instead of representing all logical space, possible worlds represent alternative plans for God’s world creation, and are thus constrained by metaphysical principles informed by God’s nature. (shrink)

While many periods of history are popularly known by their 'great men',the Enlightenment stands out for the prominence of its 'great groups'. This volume assemblesleading scholars using data-driven scholarship to study the networks that madethe Enlightenment possible, and contributed to creating a new sense of Europeanidentity. From Voltaire's correspondence with Catherine the Great, to AdamSmith's travels on the European continent, mediated and unmediatedcommunication networks were the lifeline of the Enlightenment. What is particularly notable about theEnlightenment is how these different networks (...) were central to theirparticipants' identity. One could nottake part in the Enlightenment on one's own. Although some older historical studies highlightthe importance of social networks in the Enlightenment, data-driven approachesallow for a more comprehensive and granular understanding of the many differenttypes of networks that formed the intellectual and cultural infrastructure ofthe Enlightenment throughout Europe. The recent influx of metadata from thecorrespondences of major Enlightenment figures now allows scholars to studythese networks at both the micro and macro levels, and to explore the worlds ofthe philosophes and the "nodes" intheir networks in rich detail. It is at this intersection of Enlightenmenthistoriography, data capture, and social network analysis that the essayscollected in this volume all fall, taking advantage of new data sources,configurations, and modes of analysis to deepen our understanding of howEnlightenment sociability worked, who it included, and what it meant forparticipants. (shrink)

Youth is a critical period in the development of maladaptive eating behaviors. Previous systematic reviews suggest the etiological significance of parent-child relationships for the onset of disordered eating in youth, but less is known about the role of parenting styles. This rapid scoping review aimed to identify whether research supports the role of parenting styles in the development of disordered eating symptoms among youths. Sixteen studies, retrieved from three databases, met the inclusion criteria: original studies, published in English, examined the (...) effect of parenting styles on cognitive and behavioral disordered eating outcomes, among young people up to 18 years of age. Studies supported an association between various youth disordered eating symptoms such as unhealthy weight control behaviors, and experiences of adverse parenting styles characterized by high levels of control and low levels of responsiveness. Associations between adverse parenting styles and youth disordered eating were frequently indirect and differed depending on the sex of the parent and offspring. Synthesis of findings was limited due to variation in the operationalization and measurement of parenting styles, family context and disordered eating across studies. Longitudinal and standardized research is required to better understand the dynamic associations between parenting styles and youth disordered eating. Implications for family-based care in clinical practice are discussed. (shrink)

Theoretical perspectives on non-suicidal self-injury have long underscored the affective regulating properties of NSSI. Less attention has been given to the processes through which individuals choose to engage in NSSI, specifically, to regulate their distress. In the present study, we tested one theoretical model in which recent stressful experiences facilitates NSSI through emotional reactivity. Further, we tested whether the indirect link between stressful experiences and NSSI was moderated by several NSSI specific risk factors. Given the widespread prevalence of NSSI among (...) community-based samples of adolescents and emerging adults, we surveyed 1,125 emerging adults in first-year university at a large academic institution. Participants completed an online survey three times, reporting on their recent stressful experiences in university, emotional reactivity, NSSI, as well as three NSSI specific risk factors. As expected, path analysis revealed that there was a significant indirect effect of recent stressful experiences on NSSI engagement, through emotional reactivity. However, this effect was maintained across moderator analyses. These novel findings underscore the salient role of proximally occurring stressors in the prediction of NSSI among emerging adults in university, and can inform developing theoretical perspectives on NSSI. (shrink)

Les deux dernières décennies ont été marquées dans les pays occidentaux par d’importants changements culturels dans les domaines de la sexualité et de la parenté. En France, les évolutions législatives telles que le vote du pacte civil de solidarité (pacs) en 1999 et l’ouverture du mariage aux individus de même sexe en 2013, ainsi que les polémiques et les mouvements d’opposition qu’elles ont suscités, témoignent des profondes mutations à l’œuvre dans nos systèmes de parenté et nos modes de c...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy's Role in Psychopathology Back to Jaspers and an Appeal to Grow PracticalThe author reports no conflicts of interest.In "Philosophy's role in theorizing psychopathology," Gibson presents a defense of the continued relevance of philosophy to psychopathology, and a non-exhaustive framework for the role of philosophy in this domain (Gibson, 2024). I find it hard to disagree that psychopathology is soaked in philosophy from its origins, and that to try (...) and dry it out would be both unwise and impossible.In this commentary, I go back to Karl Jaspers' account of the role of philosophy in his General Psychopathology. In doing so, I do not find that Gibson adds anything new, but instead gives us a well-illustrated reminder that philosophy "is operative within every living science" (Jaspers, 1997, p. 770).Situated Psychopathological TheorizingGibson addresses a broad 'we' who might be engaged with psychopathological theorizing. This seems to encompass three main settings, from which examples are drawn.1. Everyday and regulative social practices (ordinary and legal setting).2. Empirically driven disciplines which work with psychopathological constructs (academic setting).3. Psychiatry and psychotherapy (clinical setting).In my view, it is a mistake not to map the terrain where psychopathological theorizing is situated. In each setting psychopathological theorizing has its own set of aims and constraints. In the ordinary setting, the aim might be to know whether to blame a loved one for their action. In the legal setting it might be to decide whether treatment or punishment is appropriate. In the clinical setting, the aim is usually a therapeutic assessment, and moral stance taking is often best kept at bay. In the academic setting, we might want to ensure our concepts are reliable and valid, opening them up to investigation using objective scientific methods. [End Page 13]Beyond what can be said in the most general terms, the role of philosophy will look different in these different situations.Understanding Is Not (Just) a Philosophical ToolUnderstanding is a mode of knowing that is concerned with the particular, rather than the general, and accessed inter-relationally, relying on tacit knowledge and empathetic imagination. Gibson introduces the concept as an elementary form of social intuition, used in ordinary life to make sense of social relations and other people's behaviors and reactions. I agree with Gibson, drawing on Strawson, that Understanding is a mode of knowledge that involves the subject of enquiry as a participant (Strawson, 1982). There is a moral imperative to take this stance, which drives us to value the expansion of what we are able to understand of other people's mental states. This at least partly motivates the agenda when we theorize about psychopathology.At times throughout his argument, Gibson seems to be arguing for the role of Understanding in psychopathological theorizing, in place of his explicit aim of arguing for the role of philosophy. However it is not at all clear that this replacement can be made. Accepting the picture drawn, Understanding is not any more the expertise or domain of the philosopher than the author, police officer, or sociologist. We are surely not meant to take Understanding as a uniquely philosophical tool, but rather a mode of knowing available to all social agents, integral to social reasoning in ordinary life and in the human studies.What philosophy can distinctively do is point to and defend the existence of forms of intersubjective and tacit knowledge within human studies such as psychopathology. For Jaspers, Understanding can be a scientific tool, albeit one that reminds us that knowledge in psychopathology is not all of one kind. One role for philosophy therefore is to help us to "distinguish the different modes of knowing," so that we might "order knowledge into a comprehensive whole" (Jaspers, 1997, p. 769). This is akin to the 'synthetic' role that Gibson proposes.Philosophy and ScienceJaspers defines scientific knowledge broadly as knowledge with "general validity, convincing insights (which can be proved), clarity of method, and the possibility for a meaningful discussion" (Jaspers, 1997, p. 768).We do not get such a definition from Gibson, but in the sections of... (shrink)

This article shares lessons-learned by the Center for Values in International Development (C4V) over nearly five years. It notes entrenched resistance by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) of any definition of ‘ethics’ beyond legal and regulatory compliance with government financial, procurement, and programming standards. Among practitioner organizations and firms, incorporation of international development ethics is generally viewed as naïve, out of touch with the highly competitive development ‘market’, and hence unnecessary. The article ends with a call to action (...) to coordinate and create mechanisms, provide funding and forums, and significantly improve collaboration between international development ethicists in academic circles, with international development and humanitarian response practitioners. (shrink)

In a 1983 interview, Michel Foucault contrasts our contemporary interest in sexual identity with the ancient Greek preoccupation with diet, arguing that sex has replaced food as the privileged medium of self-constitution in the modern West. In the same interview, Foucault argues that modern liberation movements should return to the ancient model of ethics, of which diet was a prime example, as aesthetics or self-transformative practice. In this paper I take up Foucault's argument with respect to the Animal Liberation Movement (...) and the dietetics of ethical vegetarianism. Contra Foucault, I suggest that diet has not been replaced by sexuality in the modern West, and that food choices, along with and intertwined with sexuality, continue to function as practices of self-constitution in both disciplinary and aesthetic fashions. I then consider the implications of this argument for the Animal Liberation Movement, exploring ways in which it might (and to some degree already does) take on aesthetic rather than moral strategies in order to pursue what Foucault once described as “an ethics of acts and their pleasures which would be able to take into account the pleasure of the other.”. (shrink)