I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention to (...) the way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world. (shrink)

University of Keele, England This article analyzes the strategies and means by which universalist claims about human nature become successful in science. Of specific interest are the conditions under which claims of this sort are taken to be inherently superior to those which are particularistic or context-specific (a hierarchy of values which we term "universality bias"). We trace the birth of universalists claims in neglected fields, their growth through methodological agreements and the use of invisible referents, and their roots in (...) multiple audiences with different evaluation criteria. Our analysis complements philosophical and political critiques of theories about human nature and demonstrates the historical specificity of universalist claims. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Recent clinical trials of psychedelic drugs aim to treat a range of psychiatric conditions in adults. MDMA and psilocybin administered with psychotherapy have received FDA designation as "breakthrough therapies" for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD) respectively. Given the potential benefit for minors burdened with many of the same disorders, calls to expand experimentation to minors are inevitable. This essay examines psychedelic research conducted on children from 1959 to 1974, highlighting methodological and ethical flaws. It provides ethics and (...) policy recommendations for psychedelics research involving children and adolescents, including recognizing that the psychedelic experience is an ineffable one that makes informed proxy consent for parents, guardians, and others especially challenging. Psychedelic experiences are associated with novel benefits and risks, such as significant personality changes, shifts in fundamental values, and possible re-exposure to traumatic memories. These effects may alter the process of personality development in minors. Recommendations for ethically sound psychedelics research in minors include strict adherence to eligibility criteria, including a comprehensive family and individual psychiatric, substance use, and trauma history. An age-appropriate assent process that includes considerations related to the use of therapeutic touch should be developed. In addition, oversight by data safety monitoring boards and patient and family advocates, coupled with the adoption of pharmacoequity best practices, will help to ensure safety and fairness of psychedelics research in children. (shrink)

This paper offers a narrative approach to understanding the process of clinical reasoning in complex cases involving medical uncertainty, moral ambiguity, and futility. We describe a clinical encounter in which the pediatric health care team experienced a great deal of conflict and distrust as a result of an ineffective process of interpretation and communication. We propose a systematic method for analyzing the technical, ethical, behavioral, and existential dimensions of the clinical reasoning process, and introduce the Clinical Reasoning Discussion Tool—a dialogical (...) and interpretive device aimed at improving communication, understanding, empathy, and moral deliberation in the clinical setting. (shrink)

In order to benefit from the advantages of localist coding, neural models that feature winner-take-all representations at the top level of a network hierarchy must still solve the computational problems inherent in distributed representations at the lower levels.

A renewed focus on the role of interpersonal relationships in the cultivation of religious sensibilities is emerging in the study of religion. Matthew Ryan Robinson addresses this question in his study of Friedrich Schleiermacher's notion of "free sociability." In Schleiermacher's ethics, the human person is formed in and consists of intimate, tightly interconnecting relationships with others. Schleiermacher describes this sociability as a natural tendency prompted by experiences of physical and existential limitation that lead one to look to others to (...) complete one's experience. But this experience of incompleteness and orientation to "the completion of humanity" also constitute the fundamental structure of religion in Schleiermacher's theory of religion as orientation to "the universe and the relationship of humanity to it." Thus, Schleiermacher not only presents sociability as basic to human nature, but also as inherently religious - and, potentially, redemptive. What making such a claim means and the implications it raises are central considerations of this study of Schleiermacher's ethics, theory of religion and ecclesiology. (shrink)

Sigmund Freuds kritikere Frank J. Sulloway, Jeffrey M. Masson og Adolf Grünbaum og argumenterne mod deres kritik.

We examine the problem of deducing the geodesic motion of test particles from Einstein's vacuum field equations and its extension to include gravitational radiation reaction. In the latter case we obtain an equation of motion for a particle which incorporates radiation reaction of the electrodynamical type, but due to shearing radiation, together with a mass-loss formula of the Bondi-Sachs type.

We derive, from the Einstein-Maxwell field equations, the Lorentz equations of motion with radiation reaction for a charged mass particle moving in a background gravitational and electromagnetic field by utilizing a line element for the background space-time in a coordinate system specially adapted to the world line of the particle. The particle is introduced via perturbations of the background space-time (and electromagnetic field) which are singular only on the source world line.

Um dos grandes problemas postos pelo tema dos direitos humanos à filosofia é, entre outros, o de sua fundamentação filosófica. No pano de fundo deste debate, surgem questões específicas: como se pode fundamentar/justificar filosoficamente a exigência de reconhecimento aos direitos humanos? Neste estudo, procuro abordar, de modo direto, o núcleo argumentativo sobre o qual está estruturada da proposta de Höffe. Para ele, os direitos humanos têm uma profunda relação com a noção de justiça. O conceito de justiça, na sua concepção, (...) deve ser entendido fundamentalmente como troca. Embora o conceito pareça demasiado simples, ele oferece uma série de dificuldades no que se refere à sua fundamentação. (shrink)

Los nuevos roles de participación ciudadana, vienen de parte de otros sujetos y actores sociales que en nada se vinculan u originan con los protagonismos institucionales que caracterizaron hasta hacemuy poco la actividad política en los países latinoamericanos. Estos han sido desplazados por completo, en lamedida que su fracaso reveló el fracaso de la democracia representativa para legitimar los poderes gubernamentales, cuando en su efecto no logró los cambios que se prometían a través de las vías de la constitucionalidad y (...) el discurso ideológico. Las nuevas prácticas políticas que se insertan en el campo de la participación política son ahora mucho más directas con respecto a los sectores marginados, y la forma en la que éstos se han hecho presentes a través de las protestas y cualquier tipo de desobediencia civil en el espacio público, logrando enfrentar al Estado con los reclamos de quienes siendo la mayoría no han dejado de sufrir la explotación y alineación económica y política. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

The provision of aid in war zones can be fraught with political difficulties and may itself foster inequalities, as it is rare to be allowed access to civilians on both sides of a conflict. Over the past decade, a United Nations brokered agreement has allowed Operation Lifeline Sudan , a UN “umbrella” organisation, to provide the diplomatic cover and operational support to allow long term humanitarian and emergency food aid to both the government and the rebel sides in the long-running (...) south Sudanese civil war. Over the years, the destruction of infrastructure in the country has meant that the provision of basic health care has been seriously hampered. Operation Lifeline Sudan has coordinated the work of most of the non-governmental organisations , working in this part of Africa. Each NGO has had responsibility for a particular area of the country and has worked closely with the local Sudanese authorities on either side of the conflict, conforming to strict codes of conduct or “ground rules”, based on neutrality. Operation Lifeline Sudan has provided an air-bridge for emergency relief supplies in regions where road access is impossible, either because of landmines, or simply because the roads do not exist. The war continues, however, and the underlying causes of war—economic exploitation, marginalisation of communities, lack of political representation, and systematic violence and abuse remain unsolved. The warring factions have brought some OLS operations in south Sudan to a standstill recently, for certain political reasons that could have compromised the neutrality of the OLS-coordinated humanitarian aid schemes. It would appear that the only resolution to the country's problems are external political pressure to get the respective combatants to negotiate and, less probably, an undertaking by countries of the developed world not to continue to supply arms. Nevertheless, OLS may serve as a model for how medical aid can be delivered in an even-handed way to the populations of countries where there is civil war, irrespective of where they may live. (shrink)