The phenomenon of technological hazards, whose existence is only revealed many years after they were initially produced, shows that the question of our responsibilities toward future generations is of urgent importance. However, the nature of technological societies means that they are caught in a condition of structural irresponsibility: the tools they use to know the future cannot encompass the temporal reach of their actions. This article explores how dominant legal and moral concepts are equally deficient for helping us understand what (...) future-oriented responsibility requires. An alternative understanding of responsibility is needed, one which can be developed from phenomenological and feminist concepts of care. Care, by opening up for us an understanding of the diversity of values that are constitutive of a worthwhile life, also connects us to the future as the future of care. As such, it provides us with ethical resources that can guide us in the face of uncertainty. (shrink)

The articles in this special issue of Environmental Values have a shared significance. In one way or another, all of them reflect contemporary concerns about issues of trust, risk, uncertainty, and the cultural shaping of science.These are matters of mounting significance for the politics of the environment in countries like Britain, and indeed for politics more generally, as we have seen in a succession of recent controversies. The Brent Spar oil platform farrago, the hugely costly BSE-CJD upsets, the continuing uproars (...) around genetically modified plants and foods ­ central in all of these have been challenges to the political authority of official patterns of scientifically-backed reassurance, concerning the impacts of deep and open-ended trajectories of technological transformation.To understand what is likely to be at stake in such matters for the politics of industrial democracies in the 21st century, there is now an urgent need to develop richer pictures than those currently dominant, of the cultural and epistemological architecture on which our regulatory institutions have been coming to rely. The contributions to this special issue can be pictured as building blocks in such a process.The present article offers a complementary perspective ­ one grounded in a degree of more hands-on personal experience of related matters. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

This paper explores the characteristics of debilitating versus beneficial intersubjective engagements, by discussing the role of sin in the relational constitution of the self in Paul’s letter to the romans. Paul narrates ”sin’ as both a destructive holding environment and an interpersonal agent in a lethal embrace with human beings. The system of self-in-relation-to-sin is transactional, competitive, unidirectional, and domineering, operating implicitly within an economy of lack. Conversely, Paul’s account in romans of the divine action that moves persons into a (...) new identity of self-in-relationship demonstrates genuinely second-personal qualities: it is loving, non-transactional, non- competitive, mutual, and constitutive of personal agency. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nature and Altering It, and: Keeping God’s Earth: The Global Environment in Biblical PerspectiveJohn SniegockiNature and Altering It Allen Verhey Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 150 pp. $15.00.Keeping God’s Earth: The Global Environment in Biblical Perspective Edited by Noah Toly and Daniel Block Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2010. 300 pp. $25.00.Both of the books under review focus on how Christians should relate to the rest of (...) God’s creation. The first book, Nature and Altering It, is based on Allen Verhey’s 2008 Jellema Lectures at Calvin College. It is a rather brief book, which retains much of the lecture style. The purpose of the book is to explore how Christians should relate to the natural world. In the opening chapter, Verhey provides sixteen different definitions of “nature,” opting himself for a definition of nature as “everything but God” (12). Verhey further contends that any definition of nature is necessarily embedded in a broader vision or myth. In the second chapter he explores and critiques some of the dominant myths of our time, such as the “Baconian myth,” the “myth of the project of liberal society,” and the “myth of the project of capitalism.” These myths, he argues, together contribute to an instrumental view of nature, the priority of short-term economic interests, and a rather blind faith in science-technology and unlimited economic growth.In contrast to these and other myths and their harmful social and ecological consequences, Verhey stresses the importance of the “myth of the Christian Scriptures” (12). Among the central biblical themes he highlights are the distinction between God and creation and the prohibition of all forms of idolatry, including idolatry of science and technology, of economic growth, or of nature itself. Verhey also emphasizes the goodness of creation, creation’s promised future eschatological perfection, God’s deep concern for the poor and marginalized, and the vocation of humans to image God’s care for the world. “We image God,” Verhey states, “in self-giving, in practices of caring for and affirming the existence of the other, including the non-human other” (86–87).While focusing especially on the importance of narrative and storytelling, arguing that “the biggest danger for the Christian community is forgetfulness” [End Page 220] (120), Verhey also stresses the need for prophecy, wisdom, analysis, and policy work. Each should be shaped by the Christian narrative and give rise to actions that “already give some little token” of the fullness of shalom that is God’s promised future for humanity and creation (121). Among the specific ecological actions that Verhey recommends are planting a garden, living simply, prioritizing energy efficiency, and working for policy changes that will foster ecological sustainability.The volume Keeping God’s Earth, edited by Noah Toly and Daniel Block, explores from an evangelical Christian perspective the same basic question of how humans are to properly relate to God’s creation. The book begins with a chapter titled “Eschatology and Environmental Ethics,” followed by four paired sets of chapters exploring the topics of cities, biodiversity, water, and climate change. The first essay of each pair provides a factual overview of the topic. The second explores biblical theology relevant to the topic. The book concludes with an essay on environmental ethics and an afterword exploring the theme of Christ as “Gardener-King.”The four chapters that present factual overviews of ecological problems are very helpful, providing important background information upon which informed theological and ethical reflection depends. The chapter by renowned climatologist Sir John Houghton on global climate change is especially useful, highlighting the urgency of rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and explaining why taking a “wait and see” attitude should be understood as morally irresponsible. “The truth is,” asserts Houghton, “that our global environment is deteriorating at an alarming rate, and unless we admit our destructive behaviors and seek more sustainable responses... our children’s children will have very little hope for a future” (189). Acknowledging such dire realities, David Gushee, in the book’s concluding chapter on ecological ethics, stresses that attention to ecology can be properly seen as the most pressing moral challenge that humanity faces. Ecological... (shrink)

With Hegel’s observations in his Lectures on Aesthetics, on the difference between the epic poetry of the ancients and the novel as the dominant literary form of the present, we are at the center of these meditations. The great epic poems of antiquity, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, for instance, or Virgil’s Aeneid, reflect not only the minds of certain poets; they are, at the same time, as are all great literary works, recognizable as the product of an age; and the (...) age of Homer, the age of epic poetry, Hegel characterizes as a “fundamentally poetic state of the world,” that is a world in which poetry is not merely written, but, as it were, lived. The active intervention and participation of gods in the lives of mortals; groves and springs and hills as the habitats of nymphs and fauns; the poetic comprehension of what is, was at that time not a matter of the poetic imagination at work in the minds of a few chosen individuals, of artists whose successors, much later in history, more often than not lamented their separation from their contemporary surroundings, but was “natural,” a matter of fact, of ways of thinking and feeling shared by the whole community. It is not absurd to say that in such a world our distinctions between imagination and fact were of little importance, if not unknown. It is this that led the young Nietzsche to accuse the first great analytical rationalist of Greece, Socrates, the indefatigable questioner, of having destroyed mythology, of having helped to bring about the end of tragedy, indeed, of Greek art. (shrink)

Despite the fact that psychedelics were proscribed from medical research half a century ago, recent, early-phase trials on psychedelics have suggested that they bring novel benefits to patients in the treatment of several mental and substance use disorders. When beneficial, the psychedelic experience is characterized by features unlike those of other psychiatric and medical treatments. These include senses of losing self-importance, ineffable knowledge, feelings of unity and connection with others and encountering ‘deep’ reality or God. In addition to symptom relief, (...) psychedelic experiences often lead to significant changes in a patient’s personality and worldview. Focusing on the case of psilocybin, we argue that the peculiar features of psychedelics pose certain novel risks, which warrant an enhanced informed consent process–one that is more comprehensive than what may be typical for other psychiatric medications. We highlight key issues that should be focused on during the consent process and suggest discussion prompts for enhanced consent in psychedelic psychiatry. Finally, we respond to potential objections before concluding with a discussion of ethical considerations that will arise as psychedelics proceed from highly controlled research environments into mainstream clinical psychiatry. (shrink)

Klugman et al. (2018) describe how new medical devices track treatment adherence more accurately than a clinician relying on his or her patient’s self-report. For example, these devices promise to...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Platonist philosophers of Late Antiquity, from Plotinus (third century) to the sixth-century schools in Athens and Alexandria, neglected the political dimension of their Platonic heritage in their concentration on an otherworldly life. Dominic O'Meara presents a revelatory reappraisal of these thinkers, arguing that their otherworldliness involved rather than excluded political ideas, and he reconstructs for the first time a coherent political philosophy of Late Platonism.

Perception of a property (e.g. a colour, a shape, a size) can enable thought about the property, while at the same time misleading the subject as to what the property is like. This long-overlooked claim parallels a more familiar observation concerning perception-based thought about objects, namely that perception can enable a subject to think about an object while at the same time misleading her as to what the object is like. I defend the overlooked claim, and then use it to (...) generate a challenge for a standard way of thinking about the relationship between visual experience and rational belief formation. Put informally, that view holds that just as we can mislead others by saying something false, illusory experience misleads by misrepresenting how things stand in the world. I argue that we ought to abandon this view in favour of some radical alternative account of the relationship between visual experience and rational belief formation. (shrink)

Our recent article begins by describing a new technique for creating human–animal chimeras. This technique—known as interspecies blastocyst complementation—may enable us to generate human organs inside of human–pig chimeras (and/or other kinds of chimeric animals). One central concern about farming human–pig chimeras for their organs is that their moral status would be uncertain and potentially significant. Our article is partly, but not only, about such concerns. At the heart of our paper are two broader questions. First, how should we treat (...) beings of uncertain moral status? And second, do our reasons for thinking that human–pig chimeras have uncertain moral status also provide reason to think regular, non-chimeric pigs have uncertain moral status? We thank Mike King, Christian Munthe, David Resnik, Per Sandin and Rob Streiffer for their commentaries on our paper, each of which serves to clarify the ethical issues at play. In this response, we want to respond to one criticism, acknowledge the force of several others, and point towards some philosophical work that remains to be done. First, the criticism. Resnik questions the parallel we draw between human–pig chimeras and regular pigs. In the case of regular pigs, there is currently a social consensus (or near consensus) that it is morally acceptable to farm pigs for food. For Resnik, this consensus imposes a special burden on those who wish to argue against it; ‘one needs substantial evidence that the majority view is wrong’.1 Since an equivalent consensus does not exist in relation to human–pig chimeras, one might think that moral uncertainty concerns have less force (or require greater support) in the context of meat production than human–animal chimera research. We do not think the social consensus in favour …. (shrink)

Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical humanities and digital humanities before it, overcomes traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Like its predecessors, energy humanities highlights the essential contribution that the insights and methods of the human sciences can make to areas of study and analysis once thought best left to the natural sciences. This isn't a case of the humanities simply helping their cross-campus colleagues to learn the mechanics of communication so (...) that they might better articulate their ideas. Rather, these fields of scholarship are ones that demonstrate how the scale and complexity of the issues being explored demand insights and approaches that transcend old school disciplinary boundaries. Energy Humanities : A Reader offers a carefully curated selection of the best and most influential work in energy humanities that has appeared over the past decade. To stay true to the diverse work that makes up this emergent field, selections range from anthropology and geography to philosophy, history, and cultural studies to recent energy-focused interventions in art and literature. The three readers all agree that this is an important, ground-breaking collection of work"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Will the ecological crises of our time be resolved using the same form of thought that has brought them about? Are technological prowess and political power the proper tools to address them? Is there not a deeper connection between our ecological crises and our human, social, political, economic, and ethical crises? This book argues that the popular approaches to ecological, bioethical, and other human crises are not working because they fail to examine the problem in its full depth. This depth (...) escapes us because we have abandoned true metaphysical reflection on the whole and substituted it unknowingly for a series of inadequate alternatives. Both the technocratic paradigm that views all of nature mechanistically and its antagonists--the eco-philosophies that argue for the realities of intrinsic value, relationality, and beauty--carry partial truths but are insufficient. This book presents a more radical alternative, rooted in the classical tradition yet fresh and vibrant. The metaphysics of gift, based in the giftedness of existence shared by all, offers a deeper and more satisfying vision of all things that can transform our relationship with nature and touches every aspect of human life: social, political, economic, technical, and ethical"-- Back cover. (shrink)

Children with complex medical conditions including those with severe intellectual disability are living longer. For some, support with medical technology such as Long-Term Ventilation can prolong their lives further. Such technological supports can have significant implications for the child and her family and consume considerable resources though they can also offer real benefits. Sometimes clinicians question whether children with very severe cognitive impairments should have their life prolonged by technology, though they would be prepared to provide the same treatment in (...) equivalent cases without cognitive disability. We describe and analyse four ways in which this view might be justified. Although it could be claimed that children with severe cognitive disability have lives that are not worth living, in most cases this view can and should be rejected. However, the burdens of life-prolonging technology may outweigh the benefits of such treatment either in the present or in the future. Consequently it might not be in their interests to provide such technology, or to ensure that it is provided as part of a time-limited trial. We also consider circumstances where medical technology could offer modest benefits to an individual, but resources are scarce. In the face of resource imitation, treatment may be prioritised to children who stand to benefit the most. This may in some circumstances, justify selectively withholding treatment from some medically complex children. (shrink)

Our awareness of the boundedness of the spatial sensory field—a paradigmatic structural feature of visual experience—possesses a distinctive epistemic role. Properly understood, this result undermines a widely assumed picture of how visual experience permits us to learn about the world. This paper defends an alternative picture in which visual experience provides at least two kinds of non-inferential justification for beliefs about the external world. Accommodating this justification in turn requires recognising a new way for visual experience to encode information about (...) the world. Reflection upon the epistemic contribution of sensory experience's structural features thus forces us to revise our understanding of how perception, cognition, and the world fit together. (shrink)

Access to education for undocumented migrant children in South Africa remains a significant challenge. While the difficulties related to their inability to access education within the country have been highlighted elsewhere, there remains a lack of clarity on an approach to how this basic human right can be achieved. In this conceptual paper, we draw on the distinction between equality and equity, and describe the various ways in which education has been conceptualised in the South African Constitution – which in (...) part contributes to the existing confusion on education for various groups, including undocumented migrant children. In this paper, we critically reflects on the need to develop an integrated approach for creating a platform that allows all undocumented migrant children access to education in South Africa. We argue that an integrated approach – which entails ways through which access to education can be delivered through the lens of equity – will enhance the right to education for undocumented migrant children in South Africa. We conclude that the South African government must urgently consider this integrated approach to enable access to education for undocumented migrant children, so that they can achieve their full educational potential. (shrink)

Animalism, the view that human persons are human animals in the most straightforward, non-derivative sense, is typically taken to conflict with the intuition that a human person would follow her functioning cerebrum were it to be transplanted into another living human body. Some animalists, however, have recently called into question the incompatibility between animalism and this “Transplant Intuition,” arguing that a human animal would be relocated with her transplanted cerebrum. In this paper, we consider the prospects for this cerebrum transplant-compatible (...) variant of animalism, which we call “Transplanimalism.” After presenting its account of three related thought experiments, and outlining its key advantages over Standard Animalism, we raise two concerns for Transplanimalism. First, we argue that Transplanimalism, like other closest-continuer accounts of the human person, encounters difficulties with symmetrical fission cases. Second, we introduce a new thought experiment that pushes Transplanimalism into surprisingly counterintuitive results. As a result of these concerns, we conclude that, despite its attractiveness, animalists should not endorse Transplanimalism. (shrink)

The study investigated postgraduate students’ knowledge of plagiarism, forms of plagiarism they commit, the reasons they commit plagiarism and actions taken against postgraduate students who plagiarise at Mzuzu University in Malawi. The study adopted a mixed methods approach. The quantitative data were collected by distributing questionnaires to postgraduate students and academic staff whereas qualitative data were collected by conducting follow-up interviews with some academics, an assistant registrar and assistant librarian. The study found that despite students reporting that they had a (...) conceptual understanding of plagiarism, the majority of them reported that they had intentionally and unintentionally committed plagiarism, mainly due to pressure for good grades (86.7%), laziness and poor time management (84.9%), and lack of good academic writing skills (84.9%). The study also established that prevalent forms of plagiarism admitted (by students) and reported (by academic staff) to have been committed included lack of proper acknowledgement after paraphrasing (69.8%), summarising (64.1%) and using quotation marks (56.6%). The study further found that the common sanctions applied by academics include giving a warning and asking the student to re-write the plagiarised work. The study recommends that Mzuzu University should carry out awareness campaigns about the negative effects of plagiarism, targeting postgraduate students; and should introduce advanced academic writing skills training for postgraduate students. (shrink)

Knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, Plato suggests, is important in organizing a human community which aims at happiness. This book investigates this theme in Plato's later works, the Timaeus, Statesman, and Laws. Dominic J. O'Meara proposes fresh readings of these texts, starting from the religious festivals and technical and artistic skills in the context of which Plato elaborates his cosmological and political theories, for example the Greek architect's use of models as applied by Plato in describing the (...) making of the world. O'Meara gives an account of the model of which Plato's world is an image; of the mathematics used in producing the world; and of the relation between the cosmic model and the political science and legislation involved in designing a model state in the Laws. Non-specialist scholars and students will be able to access and profit from the book. (shrink)

The recent legal dispute about medical treatment for a 19-year-old patient, Sudiksha Thirumalesh, (known initially by the Court of Protection as ‘ST’) in A NHS Trust versus ST & Ors (2023) raised several challenging ethical issues. While Sudiksha’s case bears similarities to other high-profile cases in England and Wales, there are key differences. Crucially, Sudiksha herself was part of the disagreement. She was alert, communicative and sought to advocate for herself. Furthermore, this case was framed in the courts as pivoting (...) not on considerations of best interests but on a determination of decisional capacity. Sudiksha was deemed to lack capacity because she did not believe her doctors’ view of her prognosis.While the legal questions in the case were central to a recent Court of Appeal decision (which overturned the original finding), in this commentary, we focus on the ethical questions therein. We start by describing Sudiksha’s court case and the initial judgment. We then offer an ethical analysis of the relationship between false beliefs, values and the ‘capacity’ to make decisions, arguing for a need for particular care when judging patients to lack capacity based purely on ‘false and fixed beliefs’. After briefly noting the legal basis for the appeal finding, we offer ethical implications for future cases. Although it appears that Sudiksha had decision-making capacity, this did not settle the ethical question of whether health professionals were obliged to continue treatment that they believed to have no prospect of success. (shrink)

Everybody assumes (1) that musical performances are sonic events and (2) that their expressive properties are sonic properties. This paper discusses recent findings in the psychology of music perception that show that visual information combines with auditory information in the perception of musical expression. The findings show at the very least that arguments are needed for (1) and (2). If music expresses what we think it does, then its expressive properties may be visual as well as sonic; and if its (...) expressive properties are purely sonic, then music expresses less than we think it does. And if the expressive properties of music are visual as well as sonic, then music is not what we think it is—it is not purely sonic. (shrink)

This chapter introduces and motivates the Null View about standard causally matching hallucinations. The Null View holds that these hallucinations fail to present any objects or sensible qualities, despite being dead ringers for perceptions of ordinary objects and their qualities. Motivation for the Null View comes from a neglected observation about perception-based thought, namely that perception can permit perception-based thought about a sensible quality even while misleading a subject about that quality. The chapter's other contribution is defensive. Most reject the (...) Null View on phenomenological or epistemic grounds. These objections to the Null View are sharpened and then undermined. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell was neither the first nor the last philosopher to engage in serious theorizing about propositions. But his work between 1903, when he published The Principles of Mathematics, and 1919, when his final lectures on logical atomism were published, remains among the most important on the subject. And its importance is not merely historical. Russell’s rapidly evolving treatment of propositions during this period was driven by his engagement with – and discovery of – puzzles that either continue to shape (...) contemporary theorizing about propositions, or ought to do so. Russell’s creative responses to these puzzles also laid the foundation for many later accounts (most obviously, contemporary ‘Russellian’ accounts of propositions). In this entry we provide an opinionated overview of Russell’s influential treatment of propositions, with a focus on the evolution of his views from 1903 to 1919. A growing secondary literature is dedicated to Russell’s changing views during this period, and their often complex or opaque motivations. We do not intervene overmuch in this ongoing scholarly discussion. Instead, our aim is to trace some of the central motivations for Russell’s evolving views, and highlight the extent to which these motivations remain relevant to contemporary theorizing about propositions. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unusually challenging and dangerous workplace conditions for key workers. This has prompted calls for key workers to receive a variety of special benefits over and above their normal pay. Here, we consider whether two such benefits are justified: a no-fault compensation scheme for harm caused by an epidemic and hazard pay for the risks and burdens of working during an epidemic. Both forms of benefit are often made available to members of the armed forces for (...) the harms, risks and burdens that come with military service. We argue from analogy that these benefits also ought to be provided to key workers during an epidemic because, like the military, key workers face unavoidable harms, risks and burdens in providing essential public good. The amount of compensation should be proportional to the harm suffered and the amount of hazard pay should be proportional to the risk and burden endured. Therefore, key workers should receive the same amount of compensation and hazard pay as the military where the harms, risks and burdens are equivalent. In the UK, a form of no-fault compensation has recently been made available to the surviving families of key workers who suffer fatal COVID-19 infections. According to our argument, however, it is insufficient because it offers less to key workers than is made available to the families of armed services personnel killed on duty. (shrink)

Many common human traits are believed to be a composite reflection of multiple genetic and non‐genetic factors and the genetic contribution is consequently often difficult to characterise. Recent advances suggest that subtle variation in the regulation of gene expression may contribute to complex human traits. In two reports,1,2 Cheung and colleagues scale up human genetics analysis to an impressive level in a genome‐wide search for the regulators of gene expression. They perform linkage analysis on expression profiles for over 3,500 genes (...) and then employ the HapMap resource3 to take positive findings through to association studies at the genome‐wide level. This work gives new insights into the complexities of gene regulation and the plausibility of genome‐wide study design. BioEssays 28: 968–972, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spontaneity, Savaging, and Praise in Pindar's Sixth PaeanAnne Pippin BurnettThe fragments of Pindar's Sixth Paean—almost all of the opening strophe survives, as well as sixty consecutive lines of mythic narrative1—add up to a complex song that celebrates gracious gods even as its cult cry greets a destructive epiphany. Critical discussion has nonetheless limited itself to two narrow questions: the nature of the song's ceremonial occasion (who sings, and has (...) something gone wrong?), and the relation of its mythic episode to that of Nemean 7 (how is this Neoptolemus tale more offensive than the one told in the epinician?).2 Since these are the established "problems," I shall let them dictate a double approach to what is meant to be a more engaged reading of this Delphic song.First, the actualities of the occasion. Because the opening lines of Paean 6 describe the singers3 as rescuers come in a time of need, most scholars believe that there was something irregular about its performance. The song begins in this way:(1–18)By Olympian Zeus I beg you,mantic golden Pytho, with Aphrodite and the Graces4receive me, songful prophet of the Muses,5at this sacred season,for by Castalia's bronze–fenced springI heard an orphaned sound deprivedof dancing men, and so I cameto guard your citizens from insufficiencyand to defend the honors that are mine. [End Page 494] Obedient to my heart, like child to cherished mother, Ientered Apollo's grove, thisnursery of feasts and crowns where Delphic maidsin throngs sing Leto's sonand strike their feet upon the ground,close to the shady omphalos of Earth.These lines have inspired extended discussion because they seem to report an extraordinary event—the unexpected appearance of a chorus. Who are these singers, scholars ask, and why do they burst, à l'improviste, into a sacred place that is somehow benighted? Wilamowitz supposed that, the usual festival chorus of Delphians having for some reason failed to materialize, Pindar now comes with a group of his own to save the day,6 and this emergency theory, in one form or another, has dominated subsequent discussion. Scholars ask whether the members of this pinch–hitting chorus are locals, Thebans, or perhaps, asWilamowitz supposed, visiting Aeginetans? And they wonder about the exact nature of the crisis. Has a commissioned poem failed to arrive, so that Pindar simply trained the expectant dancers in a last–minute substitute song? Or is it a chorus that has gone missing, one that never got trained or was not dispatched, as it should have been, from abroad? These questions are put and answered in various ways, but all who have written about this song agree almost to a man that its opening speaks for a poet7 who actually rescues a threatened festival by training and bringing [End Page 495] a surprise chorus as an unexpected gift to Delphi.8 I prefer to argue, on the contrary, that this self–portrait of a chorus that hastens to a performance spot is not a bit of Pindaric autobiography but an elegant example of a favorite choral convention, the "arrival fiction."9 The problems of occasion, even that of the dancers' identity, all shift or disappear when the "emergency" of these opening lines is understood as a poetic contrivance.Spontaneity was a professed ideal in the Greek world, and those who performed in any realm simply because they were trained to do so were paradoxically expected to be disorderly and inharmonious (, P. O. 2.86).10 Best celebrations and most truthful praise would come from hearts and minds immediately moved to celebrate and praise, and yet according to Greek festival practice these activities also demanded a multiplicity of participants if they were to have their greatest effect. Ideally, then, a community would give thanks or attempt placation through a group of singing and dancing individuals, each following his own impulsive response to a festive stimulus, all performing with limbs and voices in perfect unison. This was the model offered by the very first singing of a Delphic paean, when all the sailors followed Apollo... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Philosophy of GardensRonald MooreA Philosophy of Gardens, by David E. Cooper. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 173 pp., $35.00 cloth.It is very likely that more people devote more aesthetic attention to gardens and their contents than they do to any other set of objects in the art world or in natural environments. Despite this, however, there has been very little philosophical writing devoted specifically to the aesthetics (...) of the garden experience. Mara Miller (The Garden as an Art, 1993) and Stephanie Ross (What Gardens Mean, 1998) have written important studies of gardens from the philosophical point of view. John Dixon Hunt has written several philosophically informed studies from the historical point of view (The Figure [End Page 120] in the Landscape: Poetry, Painting, and Gardening during the Eighteenth Century, 1976; Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture, 1992; Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination, 1600-1750, 1996). But apart from this valuable handful of discussions, the subject area has received scant scholarly attention. David Cooper's new book, A Philosophy of Gardens, is a very welcome addition to this underscrutinized field of inquiry.Cooper makes it clear at the outset that he does not aim to answer the questions regarding gardens that have attracted most philosophical attention to date, questions like "How do we define 'garden'?" "What are the standards of comparative aesthetic garden quality?" and "Should gardens be regarded as chiefly works of art or as products of nature?" Such questions are both important and quite predicable in the context of late-twentieth-century Anglo-American philosophy. Cooper aims to redirect attention to what he calls the deeper question of the significance of gardens, a question that turns out ultimately to be about the way in which gardens represent a serious contribution to "the good life." The good life, as he speaks of it, is neither la dolce vita nor the life of strict moral virtue. Rather, it is something approximating Aristotelian eudaimonia, a life in which inculcated capacities and strengths of character lead to informed and appropriate ways of acting, feeling, and evaluating.This is an attractive and unconventional project, one that spills over from aesthetics into ethics, philosophical anthropology, and (ultimately) theology. The clever argument that Cooper develops makes the project intriguing and informative, even in a few areas where its conclusions are not altogether convincing. Key to Cooper's distinctive approach is his insistence on regarding gardens not merely as focal objects of aesthetic regard and appreciation but also, and more importantly, as settings in which people engage in a range of distinctive, virtue-inducing practices. Some of these practices (for example, planting, cultivating, and pruning) foster personal virtues by requiring the submission to the discipline of caring and informed superintendence. Others (for example, conducting garden parties, swimming in a garden pool, indulging in solitary reverie) foster both personal and communal virtues by locating human pursuits in a setting that itself exemplifies vitality, change, and thriving. Cooper insists that it is only through the infusion of human activity in working cooperatively with nature to create them and then in dwelling in them appreciatively that gardens reveal their true meaning.The proper notion of garden meaning, Cooper argues, does not conform to either of the two canons of appreciation that have dominated discussion to date—the art model and the nature model. The art model fails because, in its effort to align the appreciation of gardens with that of landscape painting and other familiar aesthetic artifacts, it neglects gardens' fundamental condition as places where living, growing things call upon us to tend them and cooperate in their vitality. The nature model fails because gardens are unlike meadows and mountains in that they are—to some extent—contrived by humans and imbued with purpose by them. Moreover, Cooper argues, the distinctive meaning of gardens cannot be captured by combining (or "factorizing") the two models, that is, by regarding gardens as mixed phenomena of art-and-nature. This is because there is nothing in the two, taken separately, that can account for what is peculiar to our experience of garden aesthetics when they... (shrink)

Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences during the first (...) semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

Dear Editor, -/- We are pleased to report that we have recently published an article in a well-established bioethics journal where we briefly review the evidence surrounding abortion pill reversal (APR) and argue that those who identify with the pro-choice standpoint should support APR provision (indeed, the ex-CEO of BPAS, Ann Furedi, has agreed in principle with this conclusion of ours in one of her tweets). We also hope that our article will serve as a record in the peer-reviewed and (...) indexed literature of the struggles our fellow CMA UK members have gone through to support women who eventually decided to keep their pregnancies, and the tribulations they had to endure from their colleagues in the medical establishment. It is perhaps somewhat symbolic that our paper has been published in a special issue dedicated to the ‘feminist ethics of care’ as APR and the sacrifice of our colleagues shows what care for women should really look like.(1) -/- We have made sure to spread the word about this as well. One of us has given an interview to Irish pro-life group Protect Life (still to be published) and we have submitted a post to a pro-life collaborative that also awaits publication. Finally, we have also published a post about this paper and current developments in the USA in a well-established bioethics news site, which has been republished in various online outlets.(2) -/- We believe that this promotion of APR is vital, as recent statements from both the UK and the USA indicate that the pressure against APR might grow. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have published a post entitled ‘Facts Are Important: Medication Abortion "Reversal" Is Not Supported by Science’.(3) Similarly, the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, together with other bodies (including the British Society of Abortion Care Providers) have posted a position statement stating that there is no reputable evidence for using progesterone in APR.(4) One truly wonders why these organisations are pushing this narrative despite the weight of the evidence available being in favour of APR and their organisations’ professed support for women’s choice. (shrink)

This article argues for epistemic decolonization by developing a relational model of knowledge, which we locate within indigenous knowledges. We live in a time of ongoing global, epistemic coloniality, embedded in and shaped by colonial ideas and practices. Epistemological decolonization requires taking nondominant knowledges and their epistemes seriously to open up the possibility of interrogating and dismantling the hegemony of the Western knowledge tradition. We here ask two related questions: What are the decolonial affordances of indigenous knowledges? And how do (...) these compare to other contemporary critiques of epistemic coloniality, specifically those mounted by posthumanism? In answer, we develop three definitional senses of relational with reference to indigenous knowledges. First, we define indigenous knowledges in relation to Western knowledge, with which they share a dialectical origin at the moment of colonial contact. Second, indigenous knowledges are relational in their ontological and axiological orientations. Third, relationality in indigenous knowledge suggests a trialectic space, rather than a dialectic space. We argue for the necessity of an anticolonial framework, which assigns priority to indigenous people’s perceptions and ways of knowing for theorizing recurring colonial relations and their (imperialistic) manifestations in producing and reproducing knowledge. (shrink)

Medical cannabis is widely available in the USA and legalisation is likely to expand. Despite the increased accessibility and use of medical cannabis, physicians have significant knowledge gaps regarding evidence of clinical benefits and potential harms. We argue that primary care providers have an ethical obligation to develop competency to provide cannabis to appropriate patients. Furthermore, specific ethical considerations should guide the recommendation of medical cannabis. In many cases, these ethical considerations are extensions of well-established principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, (...) which indicate that providers should recommend cannabis only for conditions that have the strongest evidence base. Additionally, the contested status of cannabis in American culture raises specific issues related to shared decision-making and patient education, as well as continuing clinical education. (shrink)

We propose a solution concept for games that are played among players with present-biased preferences that are possibly naive about their own, or about their opponent’s future time inconsistency. Our perception-perfect outcome essentially requires each player to take an action consistent with the subgame perfect equilibrium, given her perceptions concerning future types, and under the assumption that other present and future players have the same perceptions. Applications include a common pool problem and Rubinstein bargaining. When players are naive about their (...) own time inconsistency and sophisticated about their opponent’s, the common pool problem is exacerbated, and Rubinstein bargaining breaks down completely. (shrink)

Road traffic carnages are global concerns and seemingly on the rise in Ghana. Several risk factors have been studied as associated with road traffic fatalities. However, inadequate road traffic fatality data and inconsistent probability outcomes for RTF remain major challenges. The objective of this study was to illustrate and estimate probability models that can predict road traffic fatalities. We relied on 66,159 recorded casualties who were involved in road traffic accidents in Ghana from 2015 to 2019. Three generalized linear models, (...) namely, logistic regression, probit regression, and linear probability model, were used for the analysis. We found that gender and age groups have significant effects in predicting the probability of road traffic fatality for all three models. Through a likelihood ratio test, however, it was determined that the logit regression model produced consistent probabilities of traffic fatalities which are very close to the actual probability values across the age groups and gender, compared to the other two models. Thus, we recommend intensified campaign for the use of seat belts in vehicles, targeted at the aged and male users of road transport, to reduce the possibility of death in any RTA. (shrink)

Chris Armstrong argues that attempts at justifying special claims over natural resources generally take one of two forms: arguments from improvement and arguments from attachment. We argue that Armstrong fails to establish that the distinction between natural resources and improved resources has no normative significance. He succeeds only in showing that ‘improvers’ are not necessarily entitled to the full exchange value of the improvement. It can still be argued that the value of natural and improved resources should be distributed on (...) different grounds, but that the value of improvements should be conceived differently. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in the image of Iceland created for international tourism. It argues that at the beginning of the 21st century the more traditional spotlight on the country’s natural attractions was altered, giving an additional, new focus on the nation’s beautiful, and apparently sexually promiscuous, women. Such a development deserves further comment for a variety of reasons. First, an examination of the importance of women to Iceland’s national marketing, especially their depiction visually, underlines the need to reconsider the (...) substantial role of gender and imagery representation in tourism studies, two themes that have been underexamined by scholars working in the discipline. Second, as a Nordic nation with a reputation for gender equality, this focus on women as sexual objects readily available for male tourist consumption raises a serious contradiction. Last but not least, the use of sexually alluring female images by a developed nation has intriguing implications for postcolonial scholars interested in representations of ‘the Other’. While shying away from implying that ideologies of ‘race’ are not important to discussions of international sex tourism, this article suggests that gender should be considered an equally important contributing factor in such analyses. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses different kinds of data documents, including data sets, data studies, data papers and data journals. It provides descriptive and bibliometric data on different kinds of data documents and discusses the theoretical and philosophical problems by classifying documents according to the DIKW model (data documents, information documents, knowl­edge documents and wisdom documents). Data documents are, on the one hand, an established category today, even with its own data citation index (DCI). On the other hand, data documents (...) have blurred boundaries in relation to other kinds of documents and seem sometimes to be understood from the problematic philosophical assumption that a datum can be understood as “a single, fixed truth, valid for everyone, everywhere, at all times”. (shrink)

Dominic McIver Lopes’ Four Arts of Photography and Diarmuid Costello’s On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry examine the state of the art in analytic philosophy of photography and present a new approach to the study of the medium. As opposed to the orthodox and prevalent view, which emphasizes its epistemic capacities, the new theory reconsiders the nature of photography, and redirects focus towards the aesthetic potential of the medium. This symposium comprises two papers that critically examine central questions addressed in (...) the two books, with responses by the two authors in defence of their respective positions. (shrink)

The conceptualisation of schooling is often based on “ideal children” in “ideal situations.” However, in determining the level of participation for children who are considered vulnerable in schooling, it is important to understand the lived experiences of these children. In this study, migrant children (particularly undocumented ones) in South Africa are the focus, and their lived experiences were considered through reflections from their parents and teachers. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, and analysed using a constant comparative method of qualitative (...) analysis within a grounded theory approach. The study found that challenges affecting migrant children’s schooling include the lack of documentation, language barriers, issues of transition and adaptation (discrimination), and the inability to access further education. Strategies were identified to address the challenges, including schools liaising with the Department of Home Affairs, implementing cultural diversity programmes within the school, and through deliberate inclusive programmes. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Bengali philosopher K. C. Bhattacharyya proposed a new theory of rasa, or aesthetic emotion, according to which aesthetic emotions are feelings that have other feelings as their intentional objects. This paper articulates how Bhattacharyya’s theory offers a novel solution to the puzzle of how it is both possible and rational to enjoy the kind of negative emotions that are inspired by tragic and sorrowful tales. The new solution is distinct from the conversion and compensation views that (...) dominate the existing literature, and it derives its significance from how it ties aesthetic experience to self-awareness. (shrink)

Abstract:While the American pragmatist C. S. Peirce and the twelfth-century Confucian thinker Zhu Xi 朱熹 lived and worked in radically different contexts, there are nevertheless striking parallels in their view of inquiry. Both appeal to the fundamental nature of reality in order to draw conclusions about the way in which inquiry can be a component of the path toward moral perfection. Yet they prominently diverge in their account not only of the fundamental nature of reality, but also of the way (...) in which we have epistemic access to it. These connections between metaphysical fundamentality or structure and epistemology, it is proposed, have the potential to illuminate current debates in metaphysics. Contemporary approaches that appeal either to grounding relations or to joint-carving ideology in characterizing metaphysical structure, it is proposed, implicitly rest on distinct sets of epistemological presuppositions that resemble the respective views of Zhu Xi or Peirce. (shrink)