There is growing evidence that a sense of meaning in life may emerge, in part, from the social relationships that people maintain. But it is not clear how the relationship between social ties and a sense of meaning might arise. The purpose of this study is to see if meaning in life is associated with three socially focused virtues: compassion, forgiveness of others, and providing social support to others. In the process, an effort is made to see if these social (...) virtues arise from social relationships in religious institutions. Two main findings emerge from a recent nationwide survey. First, people who are more compassionate, more forgiving, and who help others more often have a stronger sense of meaning in life. Second, individuals who receive more spiritual support from fellow church members are more likely to adopt these social virtues. The theoretical basis of these relationships is discussed. (shrink)

An interview with Gail Weiss concerning her interests and influences, especially the body and embodiment.

Every year medical researchers make contact with a large number of cancer survivors with the aim of evaluating cancer treatment. For this reason we decided to investigate how Swedish cancer survivors perceived their participation in research studies focusing on the long-term consequences of being a survivor of gynaecological or urinary bladder cancer. Data were collected by means of two study-specific postal questionnaires, both consisting of questions covering physical symptoms, well-being and the experience of being a cancer survivor. Both questionnaires also (...) included questions evaluating the participants’ experience of being research subjects. The questionnaires were developed in close co-operation with cancer survivors. The study population consisted of 1068 cancer survivors. Of these, 95% (n=1003) reported that they thought the study was valuable and 54% (n=559) that they had been positively affected by participating. Four per cent (n=39) expressed that they had been negatively affected by their participation in the study. The vast majority of the cancer survivors thought that participating in their particular study was valuable. (shrink)

Plato on Knowledge and Forms brings together a set of connected essays by Gail Fine, in her main area of research since the late 1970s: Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. She discusses central issues in Plato's metaphysics and epistemology, issues concerning the nature and extent of knowledge, and its relation to perception, sensibles, and forms; and issues concerning the nature of forms, such as whether they are universals or particulars, separate or immanent, and whether they are causes. A specially written (...) introduction draws together the themes of the volume, which will reward the attention of anyone interested in Plato or in ancient metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

The Peri ide^on is the only work in which Aristotle systematically sets out and criticizes arguments for the existence of Platonic forms. Gail Fine presents the first full-length treatment in English of this important but neglected work. She asks how, and how well, Aristotle understands Plato's theory of forms, and why and with what justification he favors an alternative metaphysical scheme. She examines the significance of the Peri ide^on for some central questions about Plato's theory of forms--whether, for example, (...) there are forms corresponding to every property or only to some, and if only to some, then to which ones; whether forms are universals, particulars or both; and whether they are meanings, properties or both. Fine also provides a general discussion of Plato's theory of forms, and of our evidence about the Peri ide^on and its date, scope, and aims. While she pays careful attention to the details of the text, she also relates it to contemporary philosophical concerns. The book will be valuable for anyone interested in metaphysics ancient or modern. (shrink)

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)

The idea that teachers love children is often taken for granted in education. Rarely is the idea of love itself examined. Bringing together the work of educators, curriculum theorists and clinical psychoanalysts, and drawing upon autobiographical and narrative case studies, this groundbreaking collection examines the collision of love and learning, including the ways in which such intersections are provoked, repressed and denied. Contributors turn to psychoanalysis to explore questions of love in all of its varying permutations - ambivalence, sexuality, hatred, (...) desire, projection, and loss - in order to demonstrate how the social ramifications of such work is critical to the ways teachers are currently being prepared for life in the classroom. (shrink)

Ability and achievement are not traits: they are relations. Mistaking traits for relations has a history even in science (our understanding of gravity). This mistake is possibly responsible for the lackluster performance of the results of our educational research when we have tried to use it to inform policy. It is particularly troublesome for interventions that target “children at risk.” The paper provides a quasi-formal outline of achievement as a relation and it then uses the outline to explain some problematic (...) research findings. (shrink)

The Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri developed a distinctive Marxist approach of critical analysis, which has prompted extensive responses. The reception of his work in the United States in the 1970s and 80s – the intervention of Fredric Jameson, especially – forms an important moment of historiographical mutation, in which the status of Tafuri’s politics holds an intriguing place: it was eviscerated in the very act of its affirmation. At stake is not simply the problems attending the transatlantic migration of (...) a body of architectural theory, but also a question lying at the heart of Tafuri’s analysis: the problems of achieving social reforms, above all, in ‘working-class housing’. The difficulties encountered by projects to improve accommodation – from Weimar Germany and Red Vienna in the 1920s to the programmes of postwar Italy – provide the concrete material for Tafuri’s analysis while remaining a significant blind-spot within most of the commentary. Tafuri is here reappraised in the light of the political debates over the ‘neorealist architecture’ of the 1950s and the reform-policies of the Italian centre-Left in the early 1960s. Proceeding as if this formative moment never happened, Tafuri’s critics often engage in debates which confuse his critique of the building projects with political despair, and which appeal to enclave-building despite Tafuri’s explicit questioning of such strategies. (shrink)

There are three major weaknesses with Glenberg 's theory. The first is that his theory makes assumptions about internal representations that cannot be adequately tested. The second is that he tries to accommodate data from three disparate domains: mental models, linguistics, and memory. The third is that he makes light of advances in cognitive neuroscience.

This editorial critically engages with the understanding of openness by attending to how notions of presence and absence come bundled together as part of efforts to make open. This is particularly evident in contemporary discourse around data production, dissemination, and use. We highlight how the preoccupations with making data present can be usefully analyzed and understood by tracing the related concerns around what is missing, unavailable, or invisible, which unvaryingly but often implicitly accompany debates about data and openness.

This article explores the development of a novel biomedical research organism, and its potential to remake the species and spaces of translational medicine. The humanized mouse is a complex experimental object in which mice, rendered immunodeficient through genetic alteration, are engrafted with human stem cells in the hope of reconstituting a human immune system for biomedical research and drug testing. These chimeric organisms have yet to garner the same commentary from social scientists as other human–animal hybrid forms. Yet, they are (...) rapidly being positioned as central to translational medicine in immunological research and pharmaceutical development. This article explores the complex relations between species and spaces they seek to enact. Humanizing mice simultaneously moves these animal forms towards the intimate geographies of corporeal equivalence with humans and the expansive geographies of translational research. These multiple trajectories are achieved by the way humanized mice function as both uncertain ‘epistemic things’ and as expansive ‘collaborative things’, articulating mouse genetics with other research, notably stem cell science. In the context of post-genomics, their indeterminacy is critical to their collaborative value; their expansive potential follows as much from their biological openness as from specific expectations. Yet, these new research organisms have both accumulative and disruptive capacities, for there are patterns of interference between these trajectories, remaking boundaries between experimental practices and clinical contexts. (shrink)

This article considers some of the ways in which ‘the black woman’ as both representation and embodied, sentient being is rendered visible and invisible, and to link these to the multiple and competing ways in which she is ‘present’. The issues are engaged through three distinct but overlapping conceptualisations of ‘presence’. ‘Presence’ as conceived (and highly contested) in performance studies; ‘presence’ as conceived and worked with in psychoanalysis; and ‘presence’ as decolonising political praxis among Indigenous communities. I use these conceptualisations (...) of presence to consider the various ways in which the black woman as figure and as embodied/sentient subject has been made present/absent in different discursive registers. I also explore what is foreclosed and how this is itself linked to legacies of colonial ‘worlding’. I end with consideration of alternative modes of black women's presence and how this offers a resource for new modes of sociality. (shrink)

J’ai souvent l’impression que dans les domaines tels que les études platoniciennes où l’on ne fait que réfléchir sur les textes anciens qui ont déjà attiré un nombre immense de générations de lecteurs posant les mêmes questions, ce ne sont pas tant les idées ou les hypothèses qui déterminent la qualité d’une approche que la manière dont elles sont exprimées. La recherche du Socrate historique, la volonté de prouver qu’on peut le trouver dans les textes des socratiques si différents les (...) uns de... (shrink)

Confidentiality is a cornerstone of the physician-patient relationship. Breaches of confidentiality in the context of genetic testing are of particular concern for a number of reasons. First, genetic testing reveals information not only about a particular patient, but also about his or her family members. Second,genetic testing can label healthy people as “at risk,” subjecting them to possible stigmatization or discrimination by third parties. Third, as genetic testing becomes more widespread and is incorporated into primary care, breaches of confidentiality might (...) inadvertently occur more frequently because primary care providers may not be trained to understand the uniqueness of genetic information. Until now, genetic services have been provided primarily by medical geneticists and genetic counselors. However, with the proliferation of new genetic presymptomatic and carrier tests, primary care physicians are going to become increasingly involved in genetic testing. Currently, little is known about physicians’ attitudes toward disclosure of confidential genetic information to third parties. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Confessions of a Poisoner, Written by HerselfGail K. Hart (bio)Confessions of a Poisoner, Written by Herself. Translated and introduced by Raleigh Whitinger and Diana Spokiene. New York: MLA, 2009. xliii + 196 pp. $12.95.Confessions of a Poisoner is an epistolary, autobiographical novel, first published anonymously in German as Bekenntnisse einer Giftmischerin in 1803. Lurid accounts of sex, incest, murder, and other crimes contributed to its status as a (...) sensational document in its day, especially in light of the illicit activities of the Countess Charlotte Ursinus, who was arrested and prosecuted for multiple poisonings allegedly committed between 1779 and 1803. Readers were eager for details of the countess's affairs and crimes, and the novel can indeed be read as an account, perhaps her account, of a very busy life of iniquity.The book is extremely engaging, and absorbing because our autobiographical narrator has unusually acute insight into human affairs and human character. From early youth, she finds pleasure in the art of seeming and she is proud of the skill with which she reads those who have something to offer her. Indeed the book could double as a seminar in social manipulation as the narrator negotiates her culture's obstacles to women's self-fulfillment. One is often reminded of George Lillo's murderous Millwood from The London Merchant, who in 1731 made the observation:It is a general maxim among the knowing part of mankind that a woman without virtue, like a man without honor or honesty, is capable of any action, though never [End Page 68] so vile. And yet what pains will they not take, what arts not use, to seduce us from our innocence and make us contemptible and wicked, even in their own opinions?(I:3)The narrator of Poisoner, though she might agree with Millwood, sees her part in the vile actions as both determined and chosen. The early steps of corruption were abetted by passion (incited with some calculation by early lovers) but also by the education she received, which she describes as being more masculine than feminine. Her father's failure to guide and restrain her thirst for knowledge has apparently left her with the ambitions of a conquerer and the social duties of an aristocratic woman—and, as Countess Orsina would have it, where men use daggers, women use poison. Yet she also accepts responsibility for all that she has done, quite convinced that most of it was wrong. The moral philosophy of the piece is somewhat peculiar, but she strives in the space of the one long letter that makes up the book to give an honest account of her duplicitous deeds.This intriguing life story also has significant scholarly value, and the editors/translators, Raleigh Whitinger and Diana Spokiene, have appended an excellent introduction that examines the poisoner's confessions as a document of its time. Our narrator is both wise and well-educated, and she discourses frequently on contemporary literature and philosophy, inserting herself into a variety of cultural debates. For example, her opinions on the value of Richardson's novels for the education and protection of young woman—that Richardson's ideals of virtue are delusional and therefore dangerous—run counter to prevailing wisdom on what young ladies should read. Her struggles with Kant and critical philosophy, which, she claims, diminished her pulchritude, are also instructive. Additionally, the editors make a very convincing case for the authorship of Friederike Helene Unger, whose husband was the publisher, and whose other works bear certain strong resemblances to the prose and the ideas of Poisoner.All of this excitement and knowledge comes to us in a supremely lucid and readable translation. I rarely read fiction in translation without being regularly reminded in some way of the translator. One sees an odd word, puzzles out a sentence and thinks about how one might have done that differently—and one gets distracted. That is not the case with this text, and this is especially surprising because the original German is that "of an era both culturally and historically distant" (xxvii). Whitinger and Spokiene have done a superb job of resurrecting a forgotten German text, embedding it in... (shrink)

Starting in early childhood, children are socialized to be honest. However, they are also expected to avoid telling the truth in sensitive situations if doing so could be seen as inappropriate or impolite. Across two studies (total N = 358), the reasoning of 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children in such a scenario was investigated by manipulating whether the information in question would be helpful to the recipient. The studies used a reverse rouge paradigm, in which a confederate with a highly salient (...) red mark on her nose asked children whether she looked okay prior to having her picture taken. In Study 1, children tended to tell the truth only if they were able to observe that the mark was temporary and the confederate did not know it was there. In Study 2, children tended to tell the truth only if they were able to observe that the mark could be concealed with makeup. These findings show that for children as young as age 3, decisions about whether to tell the truth are influenced by the likelihood that the information would be helpful to the recipient. (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)

SummaryThis study seeks to investigate what influences intelligence in early childhood. The Singapore Cohort Study of the Risk Factors of Myopia is used to assess determinants of childhood IQ and changes in IQ. This longitudinal data set, collected in 1999, includes a wealth of demographic, socioeconomic and prenatal characteristics. The richness of the data allows various econometric approaches to be employed, including the use of ordered and multinomial logit analysis. Mother's education is found to be a consistent and key determinant (...) of childhood IQ. Father's education and school quality are found to be key drivers for increasing IQ levels above the average sample movement. (shrink)