Semiotic objections to markets urge us not to place a good on the market because of the message that doing so would send. Brennan and Jaworski reject them on the grounds that either the contingent semiotics of a market can be changed or the weakness of semiotic reasons allows them to be ignored. The scope of their argument neglects the impure semiotic objections that claim that the message a market sends causes, constitutes, or involves a nonsemiotic wrong. These are the (...) most compelling class of semiotic objections and are the kind actually advanced in the literature. Rather than focusing on the necessity or contingency of a market's semiotics, we should instead attend to a semiotic objection's most important feature: its purity or impurity. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction: Baker on the Private Language Argument Strawson's and Malcolms Interpretations of the Beetle Story Pitcher's, Cook's, and Donagan's Interpretations of the Beetle Story Cohen's Repudiation of the Beetle Story Hacker's and Baker's Interpretations of the Beetle Story.

The model of memory as a store, from which records can be retrieved, is taken for granted by many contemporary researchers. On this view, memories are stored by memory traces, which represent the original event and provide a causal link between that episode and one's ability to remember it. I argue that this seemingly plausible model leads to an unacceptable conception of the relationship between mind and brain, and that a non‐representational, connectionist, model offers a promising alternative. I also offer (...) a new reading of Wittgenstein's paradoxical remarks about thought and brain processes: as a critique of the cognitivist thesis that information stored in the brain has a linguistic structure and a particular location. On this reading, Wittgenstein's criticism foreshadows some of the most promising contemporary work on connectionist models of neural functioning. (shrink)

This paper uses a semiotic, performative theory of language and post-colonial theory to argue that nursing's representations of ‘multiculturalism’ need to be grounded in a theory of whiteness, an historicized understanding of how ethnic/cultural differences come to be represented in the ways they are and informed by Foucault's notions of power/knowledge. Using nursing education and ‘cultural compentency’ as examples, the paper draws on a range of literatures to suggest more critical and politically productive ways of approaching difference from within nursing's (...) largely white interpretive framework. (shrink)

Whose values should count – those of patients or the general public – when adopting the quality-adjusted life year framework for healthcare decision making is a long-standing debate. Specific disciplines, such as economics, are not wedded to a particular side of the debate, and arguments for and against the use of patient values have been discussed at length in the literature. In 2012, Sinclair proposed an approach, grounded within patient preference theory, which sought to avoid a perceived unfair discrimination against (...) people with disabilities when using values from the general public. Key assumptions about general public values that beget this line of thinking were that ‘disabled states always tally with lower quality of life’, and the use of standardised instruments means that ‘you are forced into a fixed view of disability as a lower value state’. Drawing on recent contributions to the health economics literature, we contend that such assumptions are not inherent to the incorporation of general public values for the estimation of QALYs. In practice, whether health states of people with disabilities are of ‘lower value’ is, to some extent, a reflection of the health state descriptions that members of the public are asked to value. (shrink)

The alliance of discursivity with neurosis on the one hand, and an exploration of new conditions of discourse on the other, conditions now self consciously denoted as 'West', gives notice of a certain disillusionment I feel with my culturally received, monotheistic valourization of the power of 'word-ing', and my sense that the problem is not discourse per se, but the way my understanding of it is, or has been, too stuck within its own cultural self enclosure, within the compound of (...) its own cultural grammar, one might say. In taking up these issues within the context of a conference convened to consider "Fragmentation and the Desire for Order/Unity" play off each other relationally, or symbiotically but how so inevitably and incidentally in the West that play-off has a neurotic tail-chasing character that is inspired precisely by Desire. My remarks, therefore, about the possibilities of new conditions of discourse for the West, turn most profoundly on a problematizing of Desire itself. (shrink)

This article explores a possible tension in Augustine’s thought between his response to the misconduct of clergy, which stressed swift discipline, and his anti-Donatist theology of sacraments, which emphasized the efficacy of sacraments apart from the moral worthiness of the clergy. I identify five principles that Augustine followed in his handling of clerical misconduct: 1) Decisive action that usually resulted in removal of the offenders from ministry; 2) concern for the rights of the victim over clerical privilege; 3) a just (...) hearing for the accused clergyman; 4) concern for transparency in all proceedings; 5) personal accountability of the bishop for the behavior of his clergy. I conclude by noting several aspects of Augustine’s anti-Donatist ecclesiology and sacramental theology that help to resolve the apparent tension. (shrink)

The ability to gain knowledge from text in widely different subject matter areas is key to academic success and lifelong leaming. The process of attaining critical understanding of ideas in text requires a robust repertoire of leaming or study strategies, metacognitive knowledge for regulating their use, and willingness to apply them. Although much is known about the basic design of leaming environments to develop higher-order thinking skills and motivation to learn, educators have, in general, not changed their practices to reflect (...) new knowledge. The lack of procedures that are easy for teachers to administer and provide results that teachers may use in their classrooms for assessment of complex cognitive skill development is a major obstacle to widespread adoption of new approaches. This paper describes a new technology, referred to as HyLighter, and a pedagogically sound implementation of this technology, referred to as the Interaclive Annotation Model. This approach suggests a promising direction for improving the quality of instruction and promoting active reading (i.e., an approach to the development of leaming ability that combines reading with critical thinking and a range of learning-to-Iearn skills) for students in higher education across academic disciplines. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 96-98.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

Although the importance of spirituality is increasingly recognized in clinical medicine, spirituality is rarely mentioned in the practice, literature, or training programs of global health. To understand the role of spirituality in global health practice and identify factors that influence and limit its expression, I initiated conversations and informal interviews with more than 300 global health leaders, students, and practitioners during 2010-2014. Four spiritual themes or challenges emerged: compassion at a distance; dichotomous thinking; conspiracy of silence; and compulsion to save (...) the world. Practitioners expressed strong interest in bringing spirituality more fully into global health discourse, which could help the field realize its potential. (shrink)

The "standard account" of Wittgenstein’s relations with the Vienna Circle is that the early Wittgenstein was a principal source and inspiration for the Circle’s positivistic and scientific philosophy, while the later Wittgenstein was deeply opposed to the logical empiricist project of articulating a "scientific conception of the world." However, this telegraphic summary is at best only half-true and at worst deeply misleading. For it prevents us appreciating the fluidity and protean character of their philosophical dialogue. In retrospectively attributing clear-cut positions (...) to Wittgenstein and his interlocutors, it is very easy to read back our current understanding of familiar distinctions into a time when those terms were used in a much more open-ended way. The paper aims to to provide a broader perspective on this debate, starting from the protagonists’ understanding of their respective positions. Too often, the programmatic statements about the nature of their work that are repeated in manifestoes, introductions, and elementary textbooks have occupied center stage in the subsequent secondary literature. Consequently, I focus on a detailed examination of a turning point in their relationship. That turning point is Wittgenstein's charge, in the summer of 1932, that a recently published paper of Carnap's, "Physicalistic Language as the Universal Language of Science", made such extensive and unacknowledged use of Wittgenstein's own ideas that Wittgenstein would, as he put it in a letter to Schlick, "soon be in a situation where my own work shall be considered merely as a reheated version or plagiarism of Carnap’s." While the leading parties in this dispute shared a basic commitment to the primacy of physicalistic language, and the view that all significant languages are translatable, there was a remarkable lack of mutual understanding between them, and deep disagreement about the nature of the doctrines they disputed. Three quarters of a century later, we are so much more conscious of the differences that separated them than the points on which they agreed that it takes an effort of historical reconstruction to appreciate why Wittgenstein once feared that his own work would be regarded as a pale shadow of Carnap’s. (shrink)

The essay begins by briefly reviewing the complex history of the collaborative long-distance editing work that led to the publication of Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933 (Cambridge UP, 2016). It then turns to a discussion of the rationale for the innovative editorial policies we ultimately developed and implemented, and some of the broader methodological issues that they raise.

In 1929, Wittgenstein made use of river imagery to convey the supposedly inexpressible thesis that all is in flux. However, he rejects this extreme thesis in manuscripts from the early 1930s and drafts of the Philosophical Investigations, affirming that one can step twice into the same river. His later discussion of the “stream of life” involves a return, in certain respects, to the river analogy, albeit in a very different key. Examining Wittgenstein’s changing use of this image casts light on (...) the continuities and discontinuities in the development of his philosophy. Wittgenstein’s argument that a private definition is impossible because ostension always depends on a “technique of use”, and his rejection of a positive theory of mind is clarified by examining some unusually explicit notes for a public lecture on private language. This material shows how the treatment of training and practice in the opening sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the basis for the subsequent discussion of both rule-following and privacy. (shrink)

Religious pluralism in healthcare means that conflicts regarding appropriate treatment can occur because of convictions of patients and healthcare workers alike. This contribution argues for a presumption in favour of respect for religious belief on the basis that such convictions are judgements of conscience, and respect for conscience is core to what it means to respect human dignity. The human person is a subject in relation to all that is. Human dignity refers to the worth of human persons as members (...) of the species with capacities of reason and free choice that enable the realisation of dignity as self-worth through morally good behaviour. Conscience is both a feature of inherent dignity and necessary for acquiring dignity as self-worth. Conscience enables a person to identify objective values and disvalues for human flourishing, the rational capacity to reason about the relative importance of these values and the right way to achieve them and the judgement of the good end and the right means. Human persons are bound to follow their conscience because this is their subjective relationship to objective truth. Religious convictions are decisions of conscience because they are subjective judgements about objective truth. The presumption of respect for religious belief is limited by the normative dimension of human dignity such that a person's beliefs may be overridden if they objectively violate inherent dignity or morally legitimate acquired dignity. (shrink)