Early Christian writers defined idolatry around the monotheistic distinction between proper worship of the creator and vain worship of the creature, which they had inherited from Hellenistic Judaism. Despite the remarkable consensus about the validity of this theological analysis, the medieval synthesis was under severe strain throughout the early modern period, mainly because of the concept's extended range of application in the new contexts of religious controversy. In all these cases, deciding what practices constituted idolatry was open to debate. By (...) the eighteenth century, libertine writers could retain the concept of superstition at the expense of that of idolatry, which Voltaire (himself an anti-Christian deist) denounced as meaningless. (shrink)

India and its religion played an important role in the assault on Christian orthodoxy during the late Enlightenment. However, the late-seventeenth century transition from antiquarian apologetics to libertinism is harder to explain, and yet historically more crucial. This chapter maps this process with particular reference to the interpretation of the remarkable range of materials concerning Hinduism that appeared in the illustrated encyclopedia of world religions Cérémonies et coutumes de tots les peuples du monde. Its editor, Jean-Fréderic Bernard, went well beyond (...) the mere task of compilation and publication, and his interpretative choices, colored by a rationalist form of Deism, often departed from the differing agendas present in his sources. On the basis of considering these differences, this chapter seeks to elucidate how exactly the shift from comparative antiquarian apologetics to a comparative libertine anthropology of religion took place and analyzes its implications for the religious culture of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

This timely intervention into the debate about the legacy of the Enlightenment highlights both the plurality and the continuing relevance of Enlightened cosmopolitanism to contemporary global concerns, linking cultural history with the history of ideas and politics, in a global perspective.

Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, based on a Cambridge dissertation, is a reaction to two related trends in recent writing about early modern European travel literature, both ultimately deriving from the “Orientalist” model presented in the work of Edward Said on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These are the trend that views travelers' accounts as more revelatory of European concerns than of the reality of the non‐European societies they wrote about and the trend that analyzes these texts using the (...) techniques of literary criticism and scholarship rather than those of historical investigation. Joan‐Pau Rubiés argues, by contrast, that the texts were the product of a genuine, although sometimes distorted, cultural encounter between Europeans and others; the argument relies on a case study of European writing about south India, particularly the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagara. The south Indian literature is less well known than that produced by early modern travelers to larger states such as China and the Ottoman Empire. Even in examining accounts of India itself, the Muslim Mughals of north India get more attention. Rubiés's task is complicated by the fact that there are so many mysteries in Vijayanagara history. The book will sometimes be heavy going for those unacquainted with south Indian history and culture.Rather than beginning with the Portuguese invasion of the Indian Ocean at the end of the fifteenth century, Rubiés starts with Marco Polo and discusses fifteenth‐century Italian accounts. This emphasizes the continuity between the late Middle Ages, when Europeans arrived as travelers or merchants, and the early modern period, when Europeans were associated with an imperial project. The bulk of Rubiés's analysis is devoted to a group of texts produced by sixteenth‐century Italian and Portuguese travelers. These travelers and missionaries in south India are less well known in the English historical literature than are their British and French equivalents, and Rubiés has unearthed some fascinating characters. Rubiés defends the accuracy, perceptiveness, and open‐mindedness of the Western observers from charges of ethnocentrism. Since so much contemporary scholarly knowledge of early modern Vijayanagara is derived from these Western travelers' accounts, lauding them for their accuracy involves an obvious problem of circularity, which Rubiés attempts to evade by asserting the accounts' consistency with recently obtained archaeological data.By contrast with the Latin Christian writers whose perceptive readings of Vijayanagara's culture Rubiés lauds, the Muslim writers of north India who wrote about Vijayanagara come off very poorly. Rubiés finds them, despite some insights, mostly unable to break from the paradigm of “holy war,” a permanent structural conflict between Muslims and idolators, to perceive Vijayanagara as it was. In this case it is the Orientals who are the Orientalists.The European writers employed two distinct sets of categories for the analysis of Vijayanagara, one historical, in which Vijayanagara was analyzed in terms of its conformation to an ideal of “civilization,” and one religious, in which it was negatively evaluated as “idolatrous.” Rubiés claims that these travelers' accounts had major effects on the culture of Europe itself, in which the historical discourse expanded and partially incorporated the religious discourse. In a way reminiscent of traditional European intellectual historians such as Paul Hazard, Rubiés finds travel literature, with its interest in human diversity, to be a root of the Enlightenment. His case against the applicability of the Orientalist paradigm is convincing.Although it is, unfortunately, priced beyond the reach of most scholars, this book will be of interest to students of the origins of ethnography and anthropology. Cambridge University Press and the author deserve praise for producing a book with proper bottom‐of‐the‐page footnotes, a full bibliography, and a fine index. (shrink)

Holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, function as distinct biological entities anatomically, metabolically, immunologically, and developmentally. Symbionts can be transmitted from parent to offspring by a variety of vertical and horizontal methods. Holobionts can be considered levels of selection in evolution because they are well-defined interactors, replicators/reproducers, and manifestors of adaptation. An initial mathematical model is presented to help understand how holobionts evolve. The model offered combines the processes of horizontal symbiont transfer, within-host symbiont proliferation, vertical symbiont (...) transmission, and holobiont selection. The model offers equations for the population dynamics and evolution of holobionts whose hologenomes differ in gene copy number, not in allelic or loci identity. The model may readily be extended to include variation among holobionts in the gene identities of both symbionts and host. (shrink)

In the last three decades, considerable theoretical and empirical research has been undertaken on the topic of moral distress among health professionals. Understood as a psychological and emotional response to the experience of moral wrongdoing, there is evidence to suggest that—if unaddressed—it contributes to staff demoralization, desensitization and burnout and, ultimately, to lower standards of patient safety and quality of care. However, more recently, the concept of moral distress has been subjected to important criticisms. Specifically, some authors argue that the (...) standard account of moral distress elucidated by Jameton :542–551, 1984) does not refer to a discrete phenomenon and/or that it is not sufficiently broad and that this makes measuring its prevalence among health professionals, and other groups of workers, difficult if not impossible. In this paper, we defend the standard account of moral distress. We understand it as a concept that draws attention to the social, political and contextual determinants of moral agency and brings the emotional landscape of the moral realm to the fore. Given the increasing pressure on health professionals worldwide to meet efficiency, financial and corporate targets and reported adverse effects of these for the quality and safety of patient care, we believe that further empirical research that deploys the standard account moral distress is timely and important. (shrink)

The best framework for moral and political thought is the one that creates the best climate for good political judgments. I argue that universalistic theories of justice fall short in this regard because they cannot distinguish idealization from abstraction. After describing how an ethic of care guides judgments, I suggest the practical effects that make this approach preferable. The ethic of care includes more aspects of human life in making political judgments.

When (if ever) may a professional deceive a client for the client's own good? Under what conditions (if any) is whistle-blowing morally required? These are just some of the questions that scholars as diverse as Michael D. Bayles, Thomas Nagel, Sissela Bok, Jessica Mitford, and Peter A. French confront in this stimulating anthology. Organized around philosophical issues such as the moral foundations of professional ethics, models of the professional-client relationship, deception, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, professional dissent, and professional virtue, (...) the volume illuminates the complex ethical issues that arise in journalism, law, health care, counselling, education, engineering, business, politics, and social science research. A variety of pedagogical aids--including clear introductions to and study questions for each set of readings, concrete cases designed to focus discussion, and an appendix on preparing cases and position papers--makes the text invaluable for both students and teachers of professional ethics. (shrink)

A holobiont is a composite organism consisting of a host together with its microbiome, such as a coral with its zooxanthellae. To explain the often intimate integration between hosts and their microbiomes, some investigators contend that selection operates on holobionts as a unit and view the microbiome’s genes as extending the host’s nuclear genome to jointly comprise a hologenome. Because vertical transmission of microbiomes is uncommon, other investigators contend that holobiont selection cannot be effective because a holobiont’s microbiome is an (...) acquired condition rather than an inherited trait. This disagreement invites a simple mathematical model to see how holobiont selection might operate and to assess its plausibility as an evolutionary force. This paper presents two variants of such a model. In one variant, juvenile hosts obtain microbiomes from their parents (vertical transmission). In the other variant, microbiomes of juvenile hosts are assembled from source pools containing the combined microbiomes of all parents (horizontal transmission). According to both variants, holobiont selection indeed causes evolutionary change in holobiont traits. Therefore, holobiont selection is plausibly an effective evolutionary force with either mode of microbiome transmission. The modeling employs two distinct concepts of inheritance, depending on the mode of microbiome transmission: collective inheritance whereby juveniles inherit a sample of the collected genomes from all parents, as contrasted with lineal inheritance whereby juveniles inherit the genomes from only their own parents. A distinction between collective and lineal inheritance also features in theories of multilevel selection. (shrink)

"Speciesism: 'A failure, in attitude or practice, to accord any nonhuman being equal consideration and respect'"--From the book's cover.

The authors developed this textbook in response to an increasing interest in ethics, and a growing number of courses on this topic that are now being offered in educational leadership programs. It is designed to fill a gap in instructional materials for teaching the ethics component of the knowledge base that has been established for the profession. The text has several purposes: First, it demonstrates the application of different ethical paradigms (the ethics of justice, care, critique, and the profession) through (...) discussion and analysis of real-life moral dilemmas that educational leaders face in their schools and communities. Second, it addresses some of the practical, pedagogical, and curricular issues related to the teaching of ethics for educational leaders. Third, it emphasizes the importance of ethics instruction from a variety of theoretical approaches. Finally, it provides a process that instructors might follow to develop their own ethics unit or course. * Part I provides an overview of why ethics is so important, especially for today's educational leaders, and describes a multiparadigm approach essential to practitioners as they grapple with ethical dilemmas. * Part II deals with the dilemmas themselves. Ethical dilemmas written by the authors' graduate students bring readers face-to-face with the kinds of dilemmas faced by practicing administrators in urban, suburban, and rural settings in an era full of complexities and contradictions. * Part III focuses on pedagogy and provides teaching notes for the instructor. The authors discuss the importance of self-reflection on the part of both instructors and students, and model how they thought through their own personal and professional ethical codes as well as reflected upon the critical incidents in their lives that shaped their teaching and frequently determined what they privileged in class. (shrink)

Universalistic claims about the nature of justice are presumed to require larger commitments from a global perspective than partialist claims. This essay departs from standard partialist accounts by anchoring partialist claims in a different account of the nature of responsibility. In contrast to substantive responsibility, which is akin to an obligation and derived from principles, relational responsibilities grow out of relationships and their complex intertwining. While such accounts of responsibility are less clear cut, they will prove in the long run (...) to be more valuable in thinking about global ethics. I illustrate this point by considering the moral issue surrounding abandoned relationships. The approach offered here—partiality that rests upon relational responsibilities—makes the responsibilities owed by those in higher income countries towards lower income countries much richer and more complex than is usually presumed. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine the applicability of Buddhist practices in today’s workplaces. The findings were supported by interviews with Buddhist masters and Buddhist business practitioners, as well as literature review, through phenomenological analysis. As a means of presenting the main reasons why Buddhist practices should be considered in contemporary workplaces, a SWOT analysis is presented. In this analysis, a number of strengths for using Buddhist practices in workplaces are listed such as pro-scientific, greater personal responsibility, and (...) healthy detachment, while potential weaknesses such as non-harming, equanimity, and no competition are also reviewed. Both the strengths and the weaknesses could be listed in reverse if applied to a different extent. Among the opportunities were issues such as re-educating the world of business, enhancing personal ownership and a healthier society, while the threats comprised issues such as creating different imbalances, disinterest, and stationary development. (shrink)

Community ecology entered the 1970s with the belief that niche theory would supply a general theory of community structure. The lack of wide-spread empirical support for niche theory led to a focus on models specific to classes of communities such as lakes, intertidal communities, and forests. Today, the needs of conservation biology for metrics of “ecological health” that can be applied across types of communities prompts a renewed interest in the possibility of general theory for community ecology. Disputes about the (...) existence of general patterns in community structure trace at least to the 1920s and continue today almost unchanged in concept, although now expressed through mathematical modeling. Yet, a new framework emerged in the 1980s from findings that community composition and structure depend as much on the processes that bring species to the boundaries of a community as by processes internal to a community, such as species interactions and co-evolution. This perspective, termed “supply-side ecology”, argued that community ecology was to be viewed as an “organic earth science” more than as a biological science. The absence of a general theory of the earth would then imply a corresponding absence of any general theory for the communities on the earth, and imply that the logical structure of theoretical community ecology would consist of an atlas of models special to place and geologic time. Nonetheless, a general theory of community ecology is possible similar in form to the general theory for evolution if the processes that bring species to the boundary of a community are analogized to mutation, and the processes that act on the species that arrive at a community are analogized to selection. All communities then share some version of this common narrative, permitting general theorems to be developed pertaining to all ecological communities. Still, the desirability of a general theory of community ecology is debatable because the existence of a general theory suppresses diversity of thought even as it allows generalizations to be derived. The pros and cons of a general theory need further discussion. (shrink)

Frege is celebrated as an arch-Platonist and arch-realist. He is renowned for claiming that truths of arithmetic are eternally true and independent of us, our judgments and our thoughts; that there is a third realm containing nonphysical objects that are not ideas. Until recently, there were few attempts to explicate these renowned claims, for most philosophers thought the clarity of Frege's prose rendered explication unnecessary. But the last ten years have seen the publication of several revisionist interpretations of Frege's writings (...) — interpretations on which these claims receive a very different reading. In Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge attempts to undermine this trend. Burge argues that Frege is the very Platonist most have thought him — that revisionist interpretations of Frege's Platonism, mine among them, run afoul of the words on Frege's pages. This paper is a response to Burge's criticisms. I argue that my interpretation is more faithful than Burge's to Frege's texts. (shrink)

The popular view of non-directive genetic counseling limits the counselor's role to providing information to clients and assisting families in making decisions in a morally neutral fashion. This view of non-directive genetic counseling is shown to be incomplete. A fuller understanding of what it means to respect autonomy shows that merely respecting client choices does not exhaust the duty. Moreover, the genetic counselor/client relationship should also be governed by the counselor's commitment to the principle of beneficience. When non-directive counseling is (...) reexamined in light of both these principles, it becomes clear that there are cases in which counselors should attempt to persuade clients to reconsider their decisions. Such attempts are consistent with non-directive counseling because, while respecting the clients' decision-making authority, they insure that clients act with full knowledge of the moral consequences of their decisions. (shrink)

What personal truths reside in biological ties that are absent in adoptive ties? And why do we think adoptive and biological ties are essentially different when it comes to understanding who we are? At a time when interest in DNA and ancestry is exploding, Frances Latchford questions the idea that knowing one's bio-genealogy is integral to personal identity or a sense of family and belonging. Upending our established values and beliefs about what makes a family, Steeped in Blood examines the (...) social and political devaluation of adoptive ties. It takes readers on an intellectual journey through accepted wisdom about adoption, twins, kinship, and incest, and challenges our naturalistic and individualistic assumptions about identity and the biological ties that bind us, sometimes violently, to our families. Latchford exposes how our desire for bio-genealogical knowledge, understood as it is by family and adoption experts, pathologizes adoptees by posing the biological tie as a necessary condition for normal identity formation. Rejecting the idea that a love of the self-same is fundamental to family bonds, her book is a reaction to the wounds families suffer whenever they dare to revel in their difference. A rejoinder to rhetoric that defines adoptees, adoptive kin, and their family intimacies as inferior and inauthentic, Steeped in Blood's view through the lens of critical adoption studies decentres our cultural obsession with the biological family imaginary and makes real the possibility of being family in the absence of blood. (shrink)

This article briefly outlines some of the key problems with the way in which the moral realm has traditionally been understood and analysed. I propose two alternative views of what is morally interesting and applicable to nursing practice and I indicate that instability has its upsides. I begin with a moral tale – a 'Good Samaritan' story – which raises fairly usual questions about the nature of morality but also the more philosophically fundamental question about the relationship between subjectivity and (...) moral agency. I then consider this relationship from the perspectives of two twentieth century philosophers: Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Foucault. Levinas' basic point is that the experience of ethical subjectivity is made possible through others: the demand to respond to the existence of others is the basic social structure that precedes individual freedom. If Levinas posits intersubjectivity as a fundamental or primitive feature of the moral realm, Foucault poses an even more basic question: how have moral subjects and relations of obligation been constituted? The aim of ethical inquiry, for Foucault, is to describe the network of discourses, institutions, relations, and practices through which certain kinds of subjects are constituted and constitute themselves, e.g. as a kind of person who can act morally. Finally, I consider some recent research in philosophy of nursing which illustrates how Levinasian and/or Foucauldian perspectives can deepen understanding of nurses' moral practices, specifically, the work of Norwegian public health nurses, Canadian pediatric nurses, and Irish midwives. I suggest that in spite of the instability of morality in general and the particular ethical challenges that face nurses, there are grounds for hope and possible strategies for living in unstable times. (shrink)

Does Frege have a metatheory for his logic? There is an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which he does. Frege introduces and discusses his new logic in natural language; he argues, in response to criticisms of Begriffsschrift, that his logic is superior to Boole's by discussing formal features of both systems. In so far as the enterprise of using natural language to introduce, discuss, and argue about features of a formal system is metatheoretic, there can be no doubt: Frege has (...) a metatheory. There is also an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which Frege does not have a metatheory for his logic. The model theoretic semantics with which we are familiar today are a post-Fregean development. The question I address in this paper is, does Frege have a metatheory in the following sense: do his justifications of his basic laws and rules of inference employ, or even require, ineliminable use of a truth predicate and metalinguistic variables? My answer is ‘no’ on both counts. I argue that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth predicate or metalinguistic variables in his justifications of his basic laws and rules of inference. Quine's famous explanation of the need for semantic ascent simply does not apply to Frege's logic. The purpose of the discussions that are typically understood as constituting Frege's metatheory is, rather, elucidatory. And once we see what the aim of these particular elucidations is, we can explain Frege's otherwise puzzling eschewal of the truth predicate in his discussions of the justification of the laws and rules of inference. (shrink)

Why the narrative self? -- Contemporary interest in narrative theory -- Is the self real or illusory? -- Dennett's brand of naturalism -- The heterophenomenological method (HM) -- Consciousness and the self -- The naturalist narrative self -- Puzzle cases -- The HM and the narrative self -- The limitations of Dennett's account -- The limits of language -- Epistemological fragility -- Ontological fragility -- Naturalism and phenomenology -- Confronting naturalism -- Phenomenology and hermeneutics -- The detour of interpretation -- (...) Reflexivity -- The problem of personal identity -- The number of selves, identity relations and truth -- The capable self and its narrative identity -- Narrative identity and aristotelian muthos -- Narrative recounting of human lives -- LPSE-identity and literary puzzle cases -- Certainty, knowledge and attestation -- Narrative attestation -- Fact and fiction -- Narrative attestation -- The limitations of Ricoeur's account -- Selective appeals to literary and psychoanalytic discourses -- Focus on the self-examining self -- The ontological status of the narrative self -- The epistemological status of the narrative self -- The practical self -- Why the narrative self? (shrink)

Aim: The aim of this review is to examine the ways in which the concept of moral distress has been delineated and deployed in the argument-based nursing ethics literature. It adds to what we already know about moral distress from reviews of the qualitative and quantitative research. Data sources: CINAHL, PubMed, Web of Knowledge, EMBASE, Academic Search Complete, PsycInfo, Philosophers’ Index and Socindex. Review methods: A total of 20 argument-based articles published between January 1984 and December 2013 were analysed. Results: (...) We found that like the empirical literature, most authors in this review draw on Jameton’s original definition and describe moral distress in psychological–emotional–physiological terms. They also agree that moral distress is linked to the presence of some kind of constraint on nurses’ moral agency, and that it is best understood as a two-staged process that can intensify over time. There is also consensus that moral distress has an important normative meaning, although different views concerning the normative meaning of moral distress are expressed. Finally, the authors generally agree that moral distress arises from a number of different sources and that it (mostly) affects negatively on nurses’ personal and professional lives and, ultimately, harms patients. However, despite this consensus, many authors take issue with the way in which moral distress is conceptualized and operationalized. Moreover, while some worry that identifying nurses as a group of health professionals whose voices are ignored or marginalized might disempower nurses and encourage them to avoid their moral responsibilities, others take situations involving moral distress as indicative of more fundamental, structural inequities at the heart of contemporary healthcare provision. Conclusion: We conclude that research on moral distress in nursing is timely and important because it highlights the specifically moral labour of nurses. However, we suggest that significant concerns about the conceptual fuzziness and operationalization of moral distress also flag the need to proceed with caution. (shrink)

The ArgumentIt has long been apparent that in the nineteenth century, mathematics in France and England developed along different lines. The differences, which might well be labelled stylistic, are most easy to see on the foundational level. At first this may seem surprising because it is such a fundamental area, but, upon reflection, it is to be expected. Ultimately discussions about the foundations of mathematics turn on views about what mathematics is, and this is a question which is answered by (...) a variety of different groups including mathematicians, students, curricular planners, parents, etc. Mathematical practice rests on some kind of mixture of the answers to this fundamental question which come from these diverse groups. Comparing the cultural matrices which supported mathematics in France and Britain in the first decades of the nineteenth century sheds light on the real though often subtle differences in the ways the subject was pursued in the two countries. (shrink)

Why did Frege look for the foundations of arithmetic in logic? Robin Jeshion has argued against several proposed answers, mine among them, and offered one of her own. In response, I argue that (i) Jeshion's own interpretation does not work: it is unsupported by the text and fails to answer the question; (ii) while it is not my view that Frege is motivated solely by philosophical concerns, his motivation cannot be divorced from his belief that foundations for science must show (...) whether its truths are analytic or synthetic, a priori or a posteriori; (iii) it must (for Frege) be evident from the content of a primitive truth to which of these categories the truth belongs. (shrink)

In April 2004 the Irish Government commissioned Judge Maureen Harding Clark to compile a report to ascertain the rate of caesarean hysterectomies at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Republic of Ireland. The report came about as a result of complaints by midwives into questionable practices that were mainly (but not solely) attributed to one particular obstetrician. In this article we examine the findings of this Report through a feminist lens in order to explore what a feminist reading of (...) the Report and the events that led to the inquiry will bring to light. We consider how sex and gender feature in the Lourdes case, draw attention to the deeply gendered asymmetries of power and privilege that existed between the men and women at the centre of this inquiry, and explore the impact such asymmetries had on this particular situation. (shrink)

This article analyses the forms of dividuation workers undergo when they are linked to technologies, such as algorithms or artificial intelligence. It examines functionalities and operations deployed by certain types of Talent Management software and apps—UKG, Tribepad, Afiniti, RetailNext and Textio. Specifically, it analyses how talented workers materialise in relation to the profiles and the statistical models generated by such artificial intelligence machines. It argues that these operate as a nooscope that allows the transindividual plane to be quantified through a (...) process known as dividuation. Finally, by way of conclusion, the notion of the dividual is presented as the logic that characterises the human–machine relationship in the case of artificial intelligence and as the horizon of what Felix Guattari called “machinic capitalism”. (shrink)