According to some recent critics, philosophy has not progressed over the course of its history because it has not exhibited any substantial increase in the stock of human wisdom. I reject this pessimistic conclusion by arguing that such criticisms employ a conception of progress drawn from the sciences which is inapplicable to a humanistic discipline such as philosophy. Philosophy should not be understood as the accumulation of epistemic goods in a manner analogous to the natural sciences. I (...) argue that the progressiveness of philosophy consists, if anything, in its capacity to provoke and sustain critical reflections upon the ideas and practices which shape and guide human life. (shrink)

Public philosophy is typically conceived as philosophical engagement with contemporary social and political issues in the public sphere. I argue that public philosophy should also aim to engage with existential issues that arise from the human condition. In other words, we should engage in “humane philosophy.” In the first section I fill out and show the attractions of this humane conception of philosophy by contrasting it with a rival scientistic conception. In the second section I demonstrate (...) how the practice of humane philosophy is important for engaging with contemporary social and political issues and how it offers the best path for religious engagement with these issues. Contra John Rawls and other liberal political philosophers, I argue that public engagement with controversial issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering requires engaging competing existential stances and I show how this can be done. (shrink)

Any society can have its own worthy place in the history of human civilization, if human problem in it becomes a core, a base of politics and world outlook, economy and culture, morality and science and all main goals of social practice are re-comprehended on this base. In public theory human problem has an important place. For a long time function of philosophy was in elucidation of nature and essence of a man and his attitude to the world. In (...) theory of a man methodological problem about specific features of a man as an object and subject of cognition is starting. Peculiarity of a man as an object of cognition is in complex interweaving of various sides: biological, psychological, and social. Peculiarity of a man as a subject of cognition is expressed in regular increase of his potential intellectual resources. (shrink)

In the Confucian tradition, sages are moral reference points. They may serve as models against which we measure our own behaviours, and help us imagine how we can improve the quality of our moral lives. This defining feature of Confucian philosophy has persisted though the subsequent development of the tradition to the present. Yet, little has been said about the important epistemological issues that underlie the Confucian modelling process. In order to uphold sages as moral reference points, people need (...) to recognize sages as sages and to deem the ways in which their lives embody virtue as desirable. This paper draws on a form of knowing, namely, knowing-as, to illuminate the process of learning from sages in the Confucian tradition. It will also help us better understand the process of modelling more generally. (shrink)

Health Humanities draws upon the multiple and expanding fields of enquiry that link health and social care disciplines with the arts and humanities. It aims to encourage innovation and novel cross-disciplinary explorations of how the arts and humanities can inform and transform healthcare, health and wellbeing among researchers, practitioners and the public. It foregrounds a range of scholarship and innovative practice in this field. Through the development of critique and critical theory, it enables readers to question not (...) only current practice in medical and health humanities but also foundational assumptions of healthcare, health and wellbeing. Suitable for students and scholars working in this exciting interdisciplinary field, this book sets out the context for an emergent and innovative field. (shrink)

The digital humanities have developed in concert with online systems that increase the accessibility and speed of learning. Whereas previously students were immersed in the fluidity of campus life, they have become suspended and drawn-into various streams and currents of digital pedagogy, which articulate new forms of epistemological movement, often operating at speeds outside the lived time and rhythm of human thought. When assessing learning technologies, we have to consider the degree to which they complement the rhythms immanent to (...) human thought, knowledge, investigation, and experimentation.In this paper, we examine learning from a humanities perspective, arguing that reading, writing, and thinking are ways of learning underscored by various genres of movement that segue with or diverge from the movements inherent to digital technologies, especially those deployed in learning systems. Using the work of thinkers such as John Dewey and Michel Serres, we examine the importance of movement in dialogue, where to truly learn involves embedding oneself in the flow of thought, accepting the flexibility of concepts, and aligning oneself with a community of thinkers. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the complex relations between aesthetics and phenomenology as they show themselves within the core locus of their interplay—the realm of the visible and the invisible. To do so, the paper examines a specific case study, a Rembrandt painting—A Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)—through which the discussion illuminates the interconnected and inseparable relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the visible and the invisible. The reading addresses both dimensions of the visible: the (...) essential intersubjective aspect of life and its complex visual representation in art. To achieve this, the paper first explores Merleau-Ponty’s late aesthetic ontology—a phenomenology that perceives the aesthetic realm, particularly the visible domain, as originating from human corporeal existence, thereby redefining the act of seeing and the concepts of the visible and the invisible; I show the manner in which invisible elements permeate our visual experience in the Rembrandt painting and in seeing as such. The paper also reveals the unique ontological role of painting and the painter in unveiling the aesthetic world, and in guiding the philosopher toward a vision that true philosophy—phenomenology—must embrace. The paper concludes by rethinking the significance of aesthetics, and especially, the arts, to phenomenological thought, and the necessity of phenomenology to aesthetic thought. (shrink)

In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on Richard Rorty, the author attempts to identify what he calls “the heart of Rortyism.” Beginning with Rorty's query, as an undergraduate, about “what, if anything, philosophy is good for,” Višňovský associates this question, as Rorty did throughout his career, with the question of the meaning of human life. On the basis of this association—the association of a seriously, consistently pursued metaphilosophy with a defense of humanity against all comers, including theology (...) and science—Rorty moved methodically through the arguments of the “Linguistic Turn” analysts, the pragmatists, the antirepresentationalists, and postmodernists until he achieved an anti-absolutist, antiauthoritarian humanism all his own. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of texts - from philosophical ethology to classical texts, and from continental philosophy to literature - Cimatti creates a dialogue with Flaubert, Derrida, Temple Grandin, Heidegger as well as Malaparte and Landolfi explores what human animality looks like, with a particular focus on the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Over the past forty years, the health humanities, previously called the medical humanities, has emerged as one of the most exciting fields for interdisciplinary scholarship, advancing humanistic inquiry into bioethics, human rights, health care, and the uses of technology. It has also helped inspire medical practitioners to engage in deeper reflection about the human elements of their practice. In _Health Humanities Reader_, editors Therese Jones, Delese Wear, and Lester D. Friedman have assembled fifty-four leading scholars, educators, artists, (...) and clinicians to survey the rich body of work that has already emerged from the field—and to imagine fresh approaches to the health humanities in these original essays. The collection’s contributors reflect the extraordinary diversity of the field, including scholars from the disciplines of disability studies, history, literature, nursing, religion, narrative medicine, philosophy, bioethics, medicine, and the social sciences. With warmth and humor, critical acumen and ethical insight, _Health Humanities Reader_ truly humanizes the field of medicine. Its accessible language and broad scope offers something for everyone from the experienced medical professional to a reader interested in health and illness. (shrink)

This essay indicates how theology of a certain sort may contribute to the “human humanities” as Willem B. Drees understands them, but also that there is no single entirely satisfactory solution to the question of how to give due attention to the intensely self‐involving character of plural religions. The best we can do is to undertake theology, religious studies, and philosophy of religion in proximity to one another. This helps to maintain the sense that, in the humanities (...) generally and the study of religion specifically, we not only develop comparative and disciplined reflections that aspire to a measure of neutrality, but also invite persons to undertake inherently self‐involving and reflexive inquiries, including theological ones. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility for a means of bringing about novelty which does not rely on kairological philosophies based on an event. In contrast to both common sense and contemporary philosophical understandings of the term where for novelty to arise there must be some break in the repetition of the structure, this paper argues that it is possible for novelty to come about through small-scale experimentation. This is done by relying on the philosophical notion of ‘economy’ in order to (...) understand how we think about the world. In this regard, our thinking about the world depends upon acknowledging certain possibilities at the expense of others. History can then be seen as the distribution of emphasis which allows for these past possibilities and the future potentiality they may hold. Novelty, defined here as a rereading of history, is precisely the disruption of these possibilities and a challenge to the memory of the system. The conclusion to this paper argues that experimentation is an important means by which we can bring novelty into the world. (shrink)

Let me begin with what may seem a very minor point, but one which I think reveals something about how many philosophers today conceive of their subject. During the past few decades, there has been an increasing tendency for references in philosophy books and articles to be formatted in the ‘author and date’ style (‘see Fodor (1996)’, ‘see Smith (2001)’.) A neat and economical reference system, you may think; and it certainly saves space, albeit inconveniencing readers by forcing them (...) to flip back to the end of the chapter or book to find the title of the work being referred to. But what has made this system so popular among philosophers? A factor which I suspect exerts a strong subconscious attraction for many people is that it makes a philosophy article look very like a piece of scientific research. For if one asks where the ‘author-date’ system originated, the answer is clear: it comes from the science journals. And in that context, the choice of referencing system has a very definite rationale. In the progress-driven world of science, priority is everything, and it's vitally important for a career that a researcher is able to proclaim his work as breaking new ground. Bloggs (2005) developed a technique for cloning a certain virus; Coggs (2006) showed how certain bits of viral DNA could be spliced; and now Dobbs (2007) draws on both techniques to develop the building blocks of a new vaccine. The idea is that our knowledge-base is enhanced, month by month and year by year, in small incremental steps (perhaps with occasional major breakthroughs); and in the catalogue of advances, the date tagged to each name signals when progress was made, and by whom. (shrink)

In this insightful set of essays, the concept of the psychological humanities is defined and explored. A clear rationale is provided for its necessity in the study and understanding of the individual and identity in a discipline that is largely occupied by empirical studies that report aggregated data and its analysis. Contributors to this volume are leading scholars in theoretical psychology who believe that psychology must be about persons and their lives. In these essays, they draw from a variety (...) of disciplines that include art, literature, life writing, and history to make a case for the psychological humanities. A final chapter provides a critical commentary on the value of the psychological humanities. It is argued that psychology must draw on the knowledge and practices of the humanities, as well as the sciences and social sciences, in order to attain a greater understanding of personhood. This book is aimed at upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of psychology, particularly theoretical psychology, philosophy of the mind, and those from a humanities background interested in exploring the concept of the psychological humanities. (shrink)

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the Philosophical relationship between humanities and technology. It will be explained that most disciplines in humanities are Janus-faced: they are part science/knowledge and part technology. The thesis of the paper is that the relationship between the technological aspect of humanities and other technologies is positive and synergetic, while the relationship between their scientific aspect and technologies is almost entirely critical and negative. The argument of the paper (...) is not that the scientific aspect of humanities has nothing positive to offer to the development of technologies, but rather to clarify the nature of this assistance. It is also hoped that the paper’s analysis could help to explain how the scientific aspect of humanities can partake in the process of rationalisation of the development of technology. (shrink)

Mark Freeman's inspiring account of the burgeoning field of the psychological humanities presents a clear and compelling vision of what the discipline of psychology might become. Engaging and accessible, this bold, provocative book is destined to spark significant discussion and debate in audiences including advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and professionals in the field of psychology with interests in theoretical and philosophical psychology.

This book examines the relevance of François Laruelle’s innovative notion of non-standard philosophy to critical and constructive discourses in the humanities, bringing together essays from prominent Anglophone scholars of Laruelle’s work and includes a contribution from Laurelle himself.

The present paper highlights the urgency for a revitalization of the field of bioethics. The authors have identified the “malaise” present in contemporary bioethics, and they claim that it has become a boring way to approach medicine and life sciences instead of challenging them. Starting from a brief explanation of the origin of bioethics, this paper analyzes the main issues at the core of its malaise, i.e., its depersonalization and extreme specialization which exclude of a holistic view of the patient. (...) Clinical ethics, an applied branch of bioethics, provides a prime example of a bioethical discipline that operates in real-world contexts, and it contrasts with the more theoretical nature of traditional bioethical frameworks. Thus, the inherent multidisciplinary nature of clinical ethics offers an opportunity to a way of connecting the hard and soft sciences, and, ultimately, of transcending this distinction in the medical humanities. The cure of the malaise of bioethics proposed in this article comes from the medical humanities, specifically from the applied humanities perspective, which offers a comprehensive approach to current world issues, including the fast evolution of technologies with applications to the health field. (shrink)

We often think of people as falling into one of two very different kinds: people who are into science, math, and engineering, or people who are into history, philosophy, and literature. This book takes readers behind the scenes to show them the unexpected unity underlying efforts to understand our experiences.

The border-crossing nature of science is well recognised, and has long been a focus of policy-makers with an interest in governing this space. The international aspect of the humanities is less clearly understood, and the extent to which it has been a focus of policy is similarly not well conceptualised. UNESCO’s efforts in this area provide a useful corpus of texts through which international humanities policy can be explored. Drawing on Theodor Adorno’s negative dialectics, this paper considers what (...) UNESCO’s attempts at developing international humanities policy have to say about the ontological status of the humanities, and of policy itself. In setting out an ontology of policy, it generates a concept of ‘world humanities’ as a means of reconstituting the humanities its own specific mode of inquiry and form of knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 415-431 [Access article in PDF] The Humanities at Home with Themselves Mark Bauerlein The Crafty Reader, by Robert Scholes; 272 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, $24.95. WHEN I STARTED GRADUATE SCHOOL in English in the early Eight ies, a typical thing happened. Those few students with a background in philosophy drifted together, shared influences, and developed a hierarchy of (...) critical works. A few pushed analytic philosophy and pragmatism, but overall Continental theory took first place, especially Derrida. "Structure, Sign, and Play" and "White Mythology," de Man's "Rhetoric of Temporality," Shoshana Felman's "Turning the Screw of Interpretation," and other weighty essays had the status of cutting-edge wisdom, and the hostility deconstruction drew from traditionalists and Marxists in the department only sharpened our commitment. Having no other professional standing, we savored the stigma, the roguishness. It complemented our poverty, and eased our transition from hot-shot undergraduates to first-year, prequalifying Ph.D aspirants. In the evenings, after instructing freshmen in comma splices, we gathered to trade Nietszchean epigrams and mock professors who looked befuddled at the mention of a priori and aporia.Other students found us insufferable, and doubtless we were, but not in a partisan way. We panned each other just as hard as we did the uninformed. This was UCLA, not Yale or Johns Hopkins, and personalities mattered less than arguments. If in discussion I backed a point with [End Page 415] "As Derrida says...," someone always answered, "So what?" We frowned on arguments from authority. Popularizations such as Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction earned our scorn. They were one step up from Cliff's Notes, packed with servile observations like "Jean Baudrillard wants to take us further, into a world where everything is so textualized that there is no space left for the real." We preferred to understand deconstruction through laborious readings of Being and Time and Beyond Good and Evil, not in watery effusions about textuality or the mechanical pairing of binary oppositions. The latter we placed among the scribes, those well-intentioned professionals canny enough to recognize the broad import of deconstruction, but not acute enough to discern the real meaning of différance or the radical disclosure of the ontic-ontological difference. The genius of philosophy, we thought, lay in plumbing the fundamental habits of cognition, like Hegel breaking down sense certainty and Heidegger questioning the determination of Being as substance. Exegesis of other texts was a lesser activity, though we acknowledged exceptions such as Starobinski's book on Rousseau and Kojève's lectures on The Phenomenology of Spirit.Lower in our rankings were the quasi-Leftist attacks just emerging, such as Frank Lentricchia's Criticism and Social Change, which cast theorists as mandarin functionaries treating interpretation as an apolitical game. They filled the page with spiteful terms like "the mask of pure reason" and righteous declarations like "it is wrong to claim that you are above politics," spurning argument for the rhetoric of the reformer. We diagnosed them as puny reactions to the Reagan Revolution, carried out on the irrelevant ground of literary theory. Philosophically, Lentricchia was a hack, and we rejected the imputation that theory nullified activism and justified the status quo. Not that we thought theory bred activism. We just considered them separate activities, and saw no determinate connection between hermeneutical stance and party affiliation. However, we accepted the elitist charge. How could ambitious academics avoid elitism? It wasn't hard for graduate students struggling on $900 a month to see that populist attitudes didn't suit the tenured Ivy Leaguer. Professors were paid by exclusive institutions to teach poetry, to write letters for the best and brightest, to run recondite journals and jet to prestigious symposia. We wanted to join them, but not with phony expressions of social injustice that targeted theory as the problem.Allied with the political attacks on theory, and esteemed even lower, were critiques of the humanities as a bastion of high culture. Polemics [End Page 416] such as Andrew Ross's No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture treated... (shrink)

오늘날 통상적으로 철학은 인문학으로 분류되고 있다. 그리고 철학은 소위 말하는 인문학 위기의 중심에 있다고들 한다. 그러나 과연 철학을 인문학으로만 볼 수 있는지 우리는 되물어 볼 필요가 있다. 왜냐하면 철학이 발전해 온 과정을 살펴보면 철학은 사실 자연과학의 뿌리였다는 점을 쉽게 확인할 있기 때문이다. 따라서 철학을 인문학으로만 분류하는 것은 철학에 대한 오해의 소치다. 요즘 학계에서 중요한 화두로 떠오르고 있는 ‘융복합’은 인문학과 자연과학을 아우르는 통합적 지식과 학문을 추구하는 개념이다. 그런데 철학이 전성기를 누렸던 시기는 언제나 학문들 간의 활발한 교류와 상호발전이 이루어졌었다는 점을 상기할 필요가 (...) 있다. 그럼에도 ‘융복합’을 외치면서도 철학의 중요성을 소홀히 여기거나, ‘융복합’이라는 개념이 마치 새로운 학문연구방법인 것처럼 주장하는 것은 자신의 뿌리를 망각한 채 정체성을 찾으려는 노력과 같다. 철학은 ‘인간과 세계에 대한 참된 인식을 추구하는 인간 정신의 지적 활동’이다. 이와 같은 맥락에서 철학 속에는 이미 인문학적 요소와 자연과학적 요소가 담겨 있으며, 성공적인 철학교육이야말로 진정한 의미에서 융복합 교육이라는 점을 이 글에서 밝히고자 한다. (shrink)

Von Diltheys Konzeption der Geisteswissenschaften als dem philosophischen Bezugspunkt für Literatur und Geistesgeschichte aus zeigen sich Gesichtspunkte, die für aktuelle Fragestellungen wieder interessant sein können. In Diltheys erstem Entwurf stand die Absetzung der Geisteswissenschaften von der Naturwissenschaft im Mittelpunkt. Man kann die Unterschiede, die er hervorhebt, auch als positive Beschreibung der geisteswissenschaftlichen Arbeit auffassen: Geisteswissenschaften sind danach in ihrer Bestimmung auf naturwissenschaftliche Fragestellungen bezogen und für sie offen. Im Unterschied zur Methode der Naturwissenschaft stellen sie aber eine Vielzahl von Vorgehensweisen (...) dar, die im praktischen Leben einer Gesellschaft wurzeln. In diesem Zusammenhang kann man für heutige ›Humanities‹ zum Beispiel Diltheys Hinweise auf ›Verfahren‹ aufnehmen, die der ›Methode‹ in einem praxeologischen Sinne zugrunde liegen und vorausgehen. (shrink)

The author considers the Digital Humanities as a tendency towards a constructive synthesis of computer technology and humanitarian science in the context of their claim to make a paradigm shift in the humanities. As part of this review, the author raises a question about the role of interactive multimedia tools in the humanities, and tried to evaluate the novelty and content that scientific and educational projects receive with their help. The author develops and justifies the principle of (...) systematization of Digital Humanities projects, based on the priority of distinguishing projects by the nature of the relationship between their humanitarian and computer (technological) components. Considering both the actual digital projects and the academic publications devoted to them in the context of their systematization, the author observes that many projects are largely experimental in nature due to the use of ever new multimedia tools, so it is premature to talk about a meaningful transformation of humanitarian science. Focusing on the issue of a successful synthesis of digital technologies and the humanities, the author notes that new technological tools (multimedia, AI or neural networks, etc) allow raising new questions, updating additional objects of research and creating new methods. However, new tools do not always set the completeness of the new content, only supplementing it, and the acquired interactivity does not always directly work for scientific character. In this case, we face with the reverse situation, when the claims of technologically determined disciplines to be scientific are intertwined with the claims of disciplinary science to manufacturability. As a result, the author concludes that the direction of Digital Humanities is significantly influenced by technoscience with its dissolution of the boundaries between fundamental and applied research and the desire for new technologies that transform the processes under study, which makes McLuhan’s concept especially relevant. (shrink)

Roberto Marchesini presents a timely proposal within post-human philosophy in order to overcome the centuries-long separation between human beings, non-human animals and technology. This book highlights the inspiring nature of the relationship with non-human beings - what Marchesini calls "Epiphany" - and how its enhancement can open new existential dimensions. Technology is also reinterpreted, no longer as a performative tool, but as a virus that infiltrates the human dimension and changes its predicates. Technopoietic events are not just the product (...) of human intelligence, but they arise from an epiphany (a becoming alterity), thus positioning technology well within the ontological and somatic dimension of human beings. This book lays the foundations for a new and non-anthropocentric Humanism, which is able to recognize the essential role that non-human alterities have had throughout our history. (shrink)

Contemporary technology in the form of electronically managed interactive telecommunications is compatible with the goals and values of the humanities. For Marx, machine-work tended toward being mechanically routine, repetitive, deskilled, and trivialized. In the case of discourse, the same criticism has been made of computerized communication. Immediacy is not authorial presence, but the experience of textuality that is maximized by participation in interactive communication. Bulletin board technology inverts the relationship between the degree of communicative interaction and the number of (...) communicants. It is both mass communication and individualized participation. From the point of view of a theory of discourse, the bulletin board system is unique in that the ratio between the number of participants and the individualized nature of the interaction is directly proportional. One person's voice does not inhibit or repress the voice of another. It is the technological embodiment of the ideal speech situation of Habermas which allows for the maximum of democratic participation and which, by allowing everyone to have a voice, allows for the greatest amount of dissensus and dialectic. (shrink)

Andrew Steane reconfigures the public understanding of science, by drawing on a deep knowledge of physics and by bringing in mainstream philosophy of science. Science is a beautiful, multi-lingual network of ideas; it is not a ladder in which ideas at one level make those at another level redundant. In view of this, we can judge that the natural world is not so much a machine as a meeting-place. In particular, people can only be correctly understood by meeting with (...) them at the level of their entire personhood, in a reciprocal, respectful engagement as one person to another. Steane shows that Darwinian evolution does not overturn this but rather is the process whereby such truths came to be discovered and expressed in the world. From here the argument moves towards other aspects of human life. Our sense of value requires from us a response which is not altogether the same as following logical argument. This points us towards what religion in its good forms can express. A reply to a major argument of David Hume, and a related one of Richard Dawkins, is given. The book finishes with some brief chapters setting religion in the context of all human capacities, and showing, in fresh language, what theistic religious response is, or can be, in the modern world. (shrink)

Using fictionalized case studies this series follows four patients through the medical process, from onset through Diagnosis, Treatment and PrognosisVolume 1: Symptom. Examines the idea of 'symptom' as a route to understanding the structure of clinical practice -- Volume 2: Diagnosis. Explores the meaning of 'diagnosis' as a complex, culturally mediated interaction between individuals, scientific discoveries, social negotiation and historical change. -- Volume 3: Treatment. Considers the concept of treatment as an active process which produces an outcome, be it effective, (...) inappropriate or inadequate. Enlightening reading. -- Volume 4: Prognosis. Contemplates the challenge of the prognosis, attempting to make sense of life and death. Considers, through personal and professional perspectives, the role of the medical profession in guiding patient experience.--. (shrink)

By 'positivism' its contemporary critics mean either (a) the comte-Mill views of science, Or (b) methodological naturalism, Or (c) phenomenalism and/or instrumentalism. However, Most philosophers of science are positivists on some of these criteria and antipositivists otherwise. For example, (b) may be combined with the rejection of (c), E.G., Popper; neo-Wittgensteinians, E.G., Wright, Toulmin, Kuhn, Winch, Like nineteenth century neo-Kantians and conventionalists hold instrumentalist views of language, Theories and explanation; 'positive economics' may be either instrumentalist, E.G., Friedman, Or realist; instrumentalism, (...) Contrary to popper's account, Occurs with any admixture of realism and has pioneered anti-Inductivism, Hypotheticism and theoretical pluralism. (shrink)

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social (...) sciences. Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies. (shrink)

In Toward a Pragmatist Philosophy of the Humanities (Pihlström 2022) Sami Pihlström argues that the humanities are truth-aiming and knowledge-producing. Reductive ontological and narrow epistemological views, and “post-truth” views in the humanities, have devalued their cognitive contributions as knowledge-producing research programs. Pihlström argues that a pragmatic approach to knowledge in a Peircean vein suggests a broader ontological and epistemological framework that avoids the Scylla a...

The importance of humanities in the medical curriculum is increasingly recognized. For example, in the United Kingdom, The General Medical Council, which is an independent body established under the Medical Act 1858 and responsible, among other things, for fostering good medical practice and promoting high standards of medical education, in its publication Tomorrow’s Doctors, encouraged inclusion of humanities in the medical curriculum. Literature, arts, poetry, and philosophy are thought to foster the doctors’ ability to “communicate with patients, (...) to penetrate more deeply into the patient’s wider narrative, and to seek more diverse ways of promoting well being and reducing the impact of illness or disability.”. (shrink)

"This volume in Religion and Public Life, a series on religion and public affairs, provides a wide-ranging forum for differing views on religious and ethical considerations. The contributions address the decline of social capital-those patterns of behavior which are conducive to self-governance and the spirit of self-reliance-and its relation to the demise of the civic-humanist tradition in American education. The unifying theme, is that classical studies do not merely result in individual mastery over a particular technique or body of knowledge, (...) but also link the individual to the polity and even to the whole of the cosmic order. At the same time, American republicanism, in its exaltation of the common man from the Jeffersonian agrarian soldier to the apotheosis of Lincoln tempers the classical ideal into something less exalted, if more democratic. The effects on the contemporary state of the liberal arts curriculum are demonstrated in articles critical of the market-model university. Two essays explore the historical and philosophical significance of the discipline of rhetoric, that has suffered under the hegemony of rationalistic philosophy. A concluding contribution, invokes Giambattista Vico as an eloquent defender of the humanities. Humanities and Civic Life includes: "Rome, Florence, and Philadelphia: Using the History of the Humanities to Renew Our Civic Life" by Robert E. Proctor; "The Dark Fields of the Republic: The Persistence of Republican Thought in American History" by David Brown; "Unleashing the Humanities" by Robert Weisbuch; "Liberal Arts: Listening to Faculty" by Dennis O'Brien; "Historical Consciousness in Antiquity" by Paul Gottfried; "Taking the Measure of Relativism and the Civic Virtue of Rhetoric" by Gabriel R. Ricci; "The River: A Vichian Dialogue on Humanistic Education" by Randall E. Auxier."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The sociocultural landscape of contemporaneity can be represented as a porous inhomogeneous space consisting of border zones. These zones, understood by P. Galison as “local coordination of beliefs and actions,” can be deployed due to already existing conditions, for example, a project may arise at a university. However, such zones do not create sustainable social configurations and infrastructures associated with new areas of knowledge. In this article, we expand the concept of trading zones and call them zones requiring local ontologies (...) that arise on the border between different knowledge and imagination systems and, in turn, require their own infrastructure. This approach supports the view on humanities not as “pre-packaged” knowledge, but as special “technique” forming local ontologies. For a humanities-as-technique to emerge, it is necessary that two or more systems of knowledge coincide in time and form an intermediate zone, on the basis of which some local ontology can unfold. Thus, for example, when combining contemporary philosophy and contemporary mathematics, new images of knowledge emerge. Humanities-as-technique are considered as the basis for the establishment of trading zones, which are understood as local ontologies. We also propose a system of concepts that can be used to describe and construct these trading zones on the territory of the humanities in a techno-oriented cultural environment. (shrink)

Bioethics and humanities (inclusive of medical ethics, health care ethics, environmental ethics, research ethics, philosophy and medicine, literature and medicine, and so on) seems like one field; yet colleagues come from different academic disciplines with distinct languages, methods, traditions, core curriculum and competency examinations. The author marks six related "framework" features that unite and make it one distinct field. It is a commitment to (1) work systematically on some of the momentous and well-defined sets of problems about the (...) human condition that drive our field (such as death and dying, disability, confidentiality, professionalism, informed consent, abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, personhood, health-care resource allocation and environmental ethics, as well as the impact of new technologies, including genetic and reproductive); (2) use interdisciplinary approaches to unravel them; (3) employ cases and practical reasoning to understand problems and solve answers; (4) apply teaching methods and goals associated with John Dewey to make students better problem-solvers; (5) find morally justifiable solutions to the problems driving our field; and (6) seek interdisciplinary and collaborative scholarship, service or teaching. (shrink)

The Twentieth European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care was held in Helsinki, Finland, in August 2006 and highlighted the theme “Medicine, Philosophy and the Humanities.” The four papers in this thematic section are developed from presentations made at that conference.They are the work of physicians and philosophers and present fundamentally philosophical reflections on the medical humanities. The authors show that philosophy offers both a substantial way of humanizing the theory and practice of (...) medicine and a way to orchestrate the contributions of all the medical humanities. (shrink)

The humanities- in their conceptual and intellectual specificity, disciplinary rigor, and ethical, social, and political potential- are very much in need of defense and rearticulation in our time, particularly from a perspective that moves beyond the political and philosophical reductions of identity politics. Leaving aside polemics, Flynn asserts that discourses in the humanities will find real ethical-political purchase when they engage with the material events in art, literature, and social life that call for humanistic reflection.

The relationship between philosophy and the community has become relevant again. It has been the government itself, in the form of public science agencies, which has turned to philosophy and the humanities for help, rather than vice versa. Since 1990, US federal science agencies * agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation * have steadily increased their support of social science and humanities research. This support is all the more striking (...) in that it has happened at a time when federal support for direct humanities research, through the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, has declined. The times demand a corollary to the field of science policy. Just as science policy seeks to offer a systematic evaluation of how science contribute to decision making, humanities policy can methodically investigate how the humanities can better contribute to policy making and how it can help science and technology take better account of societal values. (shrink)

This essay's central concern is the need for a new, practical dimension in the humanities, emphasizing their constructive rather than purely scholarly aspects. An analysis is offered of various types of inventions in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, art, and literature, such as new disciplines, genres, cultural practices, and intellectual movements. An invention is not the production of a given work, however great, but rather a principle or technique that can be applied to the production of many works (...) by others. Following Francis Bacon's call for the invention of new arts and sciences, the essay outlines new disciplines: technohumanities, which would study humans as a part of the technosphere; pathohumanities, which would investigate the self-destructive mechanisms of civilization; and scriptorics, which would focus on Homo scriptor, who has survived “the death of the author.” A research and educational program, uniting major fields of the humanities, is proposed: PILLAR would be a transdisciplinary strategy complementary to STEM, integrating scholarship and inventorship. (shrink)