Stephen Barber _Artaud: The Screaming Body_ London: Creation Books, 1999 ISBN 1840680091 126 pp.

Although researchers generally take great care to ensure that human subjects do not suffer very serious harms from their involvement in research, the situation is different for nonhuman animal subjects. Significant progress has been made in reducing unnecessary animal suffering in research, yet researchers still inflict severe pain and distress on tens of thousands of animals every year for scientific purposes. Some bioethicists, scientists, and animal welfare advocates argue for placing an upper limit on the suffering researchers may impose on (...) animal subjects, with rare exceptions for research that promises critical social benefits. In this article, I argue against such an upper limit on harm on the grounds that researchers often can compensate animal subjects for their suffering, even severe and long-lasting suffering. If animal subjects receive adequate compensation for the harms they suffer, then there is no general limit on how much suffering researchers may impose on them for scientific purposes. (shrink)

Parental Obligations and Bioethics: The Duties of a Creator collects and supplements Bernard G. Prusak’s work on the ethics of procreation and parenthood, and applies his unique theoretical approach to related issues in bioethics and social philosophy. In this review, I’ll first summarize what I take to be the argumentative core of the book, and then offer a brief critical assessment.

This paper examines the use of scalar adjectives in two contexts that have played a role in discussions of the subjective/objective distinction: ?faultless disagreement? discourses and the nonfinite complement position of the subjective attitude verb find. I argue that the pattern of distribution and interpretation of scalar adjectives in these contexts provides evidence for two sources for subjectivity, which are distinguished from each other in that one affects the grammatical properties of a predicate and one does not. The first kind, (...) which licenses appearance in the complement position of find, is based in the lexical semantics of predicates that encode qualitative assessments. The second kind, which gives rise to faultless disagreement effects, arises from uncertainty about the dimensions of evaluation that are involved in fixing the extension of a predicate in a context of utterance. (shrink)

In this article, we posit that a cross-scale perspective is valuable for studies of organizational resilience. Existing research in our field primarily focuses on the resilience of organizations, that is, the factors that enhance or detract from an organization’s viability in the face of threat. While this organization level focus makes important contributions to theory, organizational resilience is also intrinsically dependent upon the resilience of broader social-ecological systems in which the firm is embedded. Moreover, long-term organizational resilience cannot be well (...) managed without an understanding of the feedback effects across nested systems. For instance, a narrow focus on optimizing organizational resilience from one firm’s perspective may come at the expense of social-ecological functioning and ultimately undermine managers’ efforts at long-term organizational survival. We suggest that insights from natural science may help organizational scholars to examine cross-scale resilience and conceptualize organizational actions within and across temporal and spatial dynamics. We develop propositions taking a complex adaptive systems perspective to identify issues related to focal scale, slow variables and feedback, and diversity and redundancy. We illustrate our theoretical argument using an example of Unilever and palm oil production in Borneo. (shrink)

Suicide is a complex act whose meanings, while sometimes tragic, vary widely. This chapter surveys the ethical landscape surrounding algorithmic methods of suicide prevention especially as it pertains to social media activity and to the moderation of online suicide communities. We begin with a typology of suicide, distinguishing between varied goals in which suicide may factor as a means. Suicides should be understood as an act with varied eliciting desires, meanings, consequences, and ethics. Further,while many suicides may be grounded on (...) irrational desire, we argue that a desire to suicide may nonetheless be rational in some cases. We then offer a survey of the attempts by social media corporations to create suicide prediction algorithms and launch interventions aimed at preventing suicide as well as an overview of the current ethical debate. We argue that the values embedded within algorithmic suicide prevention nudges are “thick” in a substantive sense and deserving of scrutiny. Given that debates about the rationality, meaning, and permissibility of suicide are common and subject to intracultural and cross-cultural differences, we maintain that the task of suicide prediction is ill-suited to algorithmic approaches. Despite an algorithm’s ability to quantify a complex phenomenon like suicide risk and its appearance of objectivity, any suicide prediction algorithm is thoroughly subjective and involves moral judgments all the way down. Any such algorithm would necessarily impose a normative stance on suicide onto its user base that is subject to reasonable intra and cross-cultural disagreement. (shrink)

“Karl Marx may have discovered profit, but I discovered political profit.” Carl Schmitt's only half-joking remark plays with a persistent problem for political theory since Hegel — the often perplexing similarity of ideological positions on the left and the right. German intellectual history in this century presents an unusually complicated example of such “convergence” in the reception of Schmitt's work by the Frankfurt School. The controversy surrounding Schmitt is not so much about the quality and depth of his work as (...) about its political consequences. An uncomfortable question for intellectual history in general, the case of Schmitt is most problematic for the German left. (shrink)

I defend a view of the structure of visual property-awareness by considering the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. I argue that visual property-awareness is a three-place relation between a subject, a property, and a manner of presentation. Manners of presentation mediate our visual awareness of properties without being objects of visual awareness themselves. I provide criteria of identity for manners ofpresentation, and I argue that our ignorance of their intrinsic nature does not compromise the viability of a theory that employs them. (...) In closing, I argue that the proposed manners of presentation are consistent with key direct-realist claims about the structure of visual awareness. (shrink)

While artificial womb technology is currently being studied for the purpose of improving neonatal care, I contend that this technology ought to be pursued as a means to address the unprecedented rate of unintended pregnancies. But ectogenesis, alongside other emerging reproductive technologies, is problematic insofar as it threatens to disrupt the natural link between procreation and parenthood that is normally thought to generate rights and responsibilities for biological parents. I argue that there remains only one potentially viable account of parenthood: (...) the voluntarist account, which construes parental rights as robust moral obligations that must be voluntarily undertaken. The problem is that this account mistakenly presumes a patriarchal divide between procreation and parenthood. I propose a reframing of procreation and parenthood from a feminist perspective that recognises gestational motherhood as involving robust moral obligations that ought to be voluntarily undertaken. If this were the case, all gestational mothers would be, by definition, willing mothers. To make this happen I argue that ectogenesis technology must be a widely available reproductive option. (shrink)

Those of us who have experienced the joy and terror of the intensive formation of a philosophical community of inquiry over an extended period, understand intuitively that it is a process of development which has certain characteristic structures and patterns. These can be glossed in a number of ways, all of which will be metaphors, if only because any given moment within the life of the COI is an instant of vertiginous freedom.

In recent decades, increased attention has been given to the place of the victim within criminal justice systems. Advocates have called for recognition and participation for victims of crime, and widespread political support throughout common law jurisdictions has resulted in a number of reforms. While some have proven uncontroversial, the question of victim input into sentencing decisions has emerged as a highly contentious issue within scholarship. Scholars have been concerned with the potentially corrupting influence of victims’ private preferences and dispositions (...) on otherwise principled public decision-making. Exacerbating these concerns has been conceptual and normative ambiguity regarding the relationship of victims to public sentencing processes. Such questions relate to the proper relationship between individuals and public decision-making, and are thus usefully dealt with through political theory and the lens of citizenship. The present article applies deliberative democratic theory and argues that it accounts for scholars’ concerns while also providing direction through conceptual and normative clarity, reconciling in theoretical terms victim input with a public sentencing process. Moreover, it also argues that the framework highlights ways in which victims can make active contributions to processes of public deliberation by introducing novel perspectives and information, thereby enhancing the quality of sentencing decisions. Lastly, the article anticipates potential objections regarding the capacity of victims to meet civic standards in practice, pointing to a growing body of empirical research which suggests victims’ potential and emphasizes the importance of being attentive to questions of procedural design to realize it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe problem of child labor is worse in Myanmar than nearly anywhere else in the world. Moreover, unlike in many other countries where this practice occurs, in Myanmar, child labor is conduc...

This introduction to one of the liveliest and most popular fields in philosophy is written specifically for a beginning readership with no background in philosophy or science. Step-by-step analyses of the key arguments are provided and the philosophical heart of the issues is revealed without recourse to jargon, maths, or logical formulas. The book introduces Einstein's revolutionary ideas in a clear and simple way, along with the concepts and arguments of philosophers, both ancient and modern that have proved of lasting (...) value. Specifically, the theories of the ancient Greek philosophers, Zeno, Euclid and Parmenides are considered alongside the ideas of Newton, Leibniz and Kant as well as the giants of twentieth-century physics, Einstein and Lorentz. The problems at the heart of the philosophy of space and time, such as change, motion, infinity, shape, and inflation, are examined and the seismic impact made by relativity theory and quantum theory is assessed in the light of the latest research. The writing is lucid and entertaining, allowing a beginning readership to grasp some difficult concepts while offering the more experienced reader a succinct and illuminating presentation of the state of the debate. "Space, Time and Einstein" shows the reader the excitement of scientific discovery and the beauty of theory in the search for answers to these fundamental questions. (shrink)

Because Bertrand Russell adopted much of the logical symbolism of Peano, because Russell always had a high regard for the great Italian mathematician, and because Russell held the logicist thesis so strongly, many English-speaking mathematicians have been led to classify Peano as a logicist, or at least as a forerunner of the logicist school. An attempt is made here to deny this by showing that Peano's primary interest was in axiomatics, that he never used the mathematical logic developed by him (...) for the reduction of mathematical concepts to logical concepts, and that, instead, he denied the validity of such a reduction. (shrink)

This paper traces the changing status of the school as a counter culture in the anthropological and historical literature, in particular from the moment when compulsory mass schooling assumed the function of ideological state apparatus in the post-revolutionary 19th century West. It then focuses attention on what may be called the New School, which could be said to represent an evolved, postmodern embodiment of the social archetype of the school as interruption of the status quo. It emerged in the form (...) of schools initially associated with Romanticism and with socialist libertarian or ‘anarchist’ impulses, and moved, if temporarily, into the educational mainstream in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the left sector of the Progressive Education movement, proliferated in the 1960s and 70s in various school reform movements, and is a constant presence today in the theory and practice of those schools that identify themselves as ‘democratic’. It is based on principles of adult–child dialogue and direct democratic practice. Examples that we have of the New School tend to be characterised by material and activity environments that value variety, emergence, choice, emotional safety, self-initiation and self-organisation; that are multi-sensorial and polysymbolic; and that are organised on the principles associated with mastery learning, social learning theory and play theory—that is, moderate complexity and optimal cognitive arousal as exemplary conditions for learning. (shrink)

This article examines the current state of foreign language education in Japanese universities as illustrative of the troubling conditions facing the liberal arts in a globalized neoliberal milieu. The utopian ideal in education has always insinuated, at the least, a pedagogy that inspires personal agency, creative investment, challenge to power and social change. This imagining of incalculable futures, however, has been undermined by the seemingly inevitable and confluent forces of a networked world, represented most forcefully by the socioeconomic reductionism of (...) neoliberal globalism. In the context of contemporary Japanese higher education, these forces are joined by Japan’s uniquely ambivalent relationship with the ‘outside’ world, and manifested in the rigid conceptualizations that motivate deeply problematic government and institutional initiatives for the ‘globalization’ of higher education. Within the frame of Bernard Stiegler’s work on transindividuation (ps... (shrink)

This paper argues that children as members of a perennial psychoclass represent one potential vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. I argue from Herbert Marcuse’s prophetic invocation of a “new sensibility,” which is characterized by an increase in instinctual revulsion towards violence, domination and exploitation and, correspondingly, a greater sensitivity to all forms of life. As the embodiment of (...) a form of philosophical “post-animism” or hylozoism, it represents the evolutionary shift that, it could be argued, our species requires for survival at this historical moment. I suggest that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” I argue for a form, or archetype of schooling first articulated in ancient Greece called skholé, a space that functions, according to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, as a “meeting place,” a “form of gathering and action” dedicated to inquiry, and not to the production of calculated, preordained outcomes—a space removed from the world of production, and characterized by a form of temporality associated with childhood: aion, or “timeless time,” as opposed to kronos, or linear time. Skholé is dedicated to emergence and cultural reconstruction, which follows from an educative relationship between adults and children based on understanding the latter as bearers of the “novel,” and on a faith in the “reorganizing potentialities” of childhood impulse, or interest—that is, on natality as a fundamental principle of cultural evolution. (shrink)

"AGM members lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 13.

The mental health of young people is a growing public health concern. With socio-emotional difficulties in youth often resulting in psychiatric disorders later in life and most with mental health conditions rather stabilizing in time, it is essential to support healthy socio-emotional development. With a comprehensive definition of mental health, since emotion regulation plays a critical role in prevention, it becomes imperative to better understand how children effectively manage their emotions from an early age. Determining effective use of ER skills (...) relies on adequate measurements. Typical methods of data collection in children present consistent shortcomings. This review addresses research findings considering the suitability of the late positive potential measured through electroencephalogram as a neural indicator of ER in children and youth. There is growing evidence, as reported in this review, that indicates that the late positive potential may be a reliable neural indicator of children's cognitive reappraisal abilities more specifically. Results generally suggest that the late positive potential amplitudes are sensitive to directed reappraisal in children. However, given the scant research, questions remain regarding developmental trends, methodology, interindividual variability, reappraisal of various stimuli, and how the late positive potential may relate to more traditional measures of ER. Directions for future research are provided, which are expected to address unanswered research questions and fill literature gaps. Taken together, the findings reviewed indicate that the late positive potential is generally sensitive to directed cognitive reappraisal in children and that there is promise of establishing this neural marker as an indicator of ER. (shrink)

This article is a call to feminist science and technology studies to engage with debates about the intersectionality of gender with race and class in analyses of women’s relationships with their computers - these debates are well established in the broader field of gender studies, but comparatively absent from studies of gender and technology. Furthermore, in order to understand women’s many and varied technological relationships, it is necessary to explore the diverse ways in which individual women experience their gender, race (...) and class in their relationships with their PCs. The article draws on the stories told by 14 working-class women from ethnic minority communities about the introduction of networked computers in their homes, to argue that we need to account for women’s subjective experiences of the identity intersections that take place in the face of the machine. (shrink)

Placebos are much discussed in both the medical and philosophy of medicine literatures. Once narrowly defined as inert “sugar pills,”, they now are now most often taken to be “treatments that appear similar to experimental treatments, but that lack their characteristic components”. In addition to their use in the control groups of many clinical trials, placebos are also now widely recognized by medical practitioners to be powerful therapies in themselves, often outperforming conventional drug therapies in these studies.Given this, I find (...) Haller’s book, which is divided into six chapters, “Evidence Based Medicine,” “Postmodernist Medicine,” “The Powerful Placebo,” “Politics of... (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I revisit arguments for and against various theses concerning higher-order knowledge in order to fully gauge their impact on the principles of positive and negative introspection. I argue that the expression “knowing that one knows” has at least two salient understandings: the more common one, labelled “transparentist”, validates the principle of positive introspection, while the other which is less common, labelled “agrippean”, supports some of the arguments against this principle.

In recent decades, historians of the Arab conquest have increasingly turned away from positivist reconstructions of the events of the Arab conquest. Through thematic analysis of conquest narratives, scholars have illustrated how the early Islamic community articulated its identity. Byzantine narratives of the Arab conquest have generally not been considered from this perspective. This paper takes the long view of the Arab conquest illustrating how centuries of Byzantine writers and chroniclers articulated and rearticulated this memory, as their identity shifted along (...) with their political and diplomatic relationships. (shrink)