Regulations implemented by World Athletics (WA) require female athletes with differences of sexual development to suppress their blood testosterone levels in order to participate in certain women’s sporting competitions. These regulations have been justified by reference to fairness. In this paper, we reconstruct WA’s understanding of fairness, which requires a “level playing field” where no athlete should have a significant performance advantage based on factors other than talent, dedication, and hard work over an average athlete in their category. We demonstrate (...) that by placing regulations only on testosterone levels, while ignoring physical as well as socioeconomic advantages, WA consistently fails to meet its own definition of fairness. We then discuss several ways in which this definition could be met. Our analysis shows that a categorical system, in which athletes are divided into categories based on properties leading to significant performance advantages, is best suited for meeting WA’s definition of fairness. (shrink)

Following François Laruelle's nonstandard philosophy and the work of Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Luce Irigaray, and Rosi Braidotti, Katerina Kolozova reclaims the relevance of categories traditionally rendered "unthinkable" by postmodern feminist philosophies, such as "the real," "the one," "the limit," and "finality," thus critically repositioning poststructuralist feminist philosophy and gender/queer studies. Poststructuralist (feminist) theory sees the subject as a purely linguistic category, as _always alread_y multiple, as _always already_ nonfixed and fluctuating, as limitless discursivity, and as constitutively detached from (...) the instance of the real. This reconceptualization is based on the exclusion of and dichotomous opposition to notions of the real, the one (unity and continuity), and the stable. The non-philosophical reading of postructuralist philosophy engenders new forms of universalisms for global debate and action, expressed in a language the world can understand. It also liberates theory from ideological paralysis, recasting the real as an immediately experienced human condition determined by gender, race, and social and economic circumstance. (shrink)

The past decade has seen extensive research carried out on the systematic causes of research misconduct. Simultaneously, less attention has been paid to the variation in academic misconduct between research fields, as most empirical studies focus on one particular discipline. We propose that academic discipline is one of several systematic factors that might contribute to academic misbehavior. Drawing on a neo-institutional approach, we argue that in the developing countries, the norm of textual originality has not drawn equal support across different (...) research fields depending on its level of internationalization. Using plagiarism detection software, we analyzed 2,405 doctoral dissertations randomly selected from all dissertations defended in Russia between 2007 and 2015. We measured the globalization of each academic discipline by calculating the share of publications indexed in the global citation database in relation to overall output. Our results showed that, with an average share of detected borrowings of over 19%, the incidence of plagiarism in Russia is remarkably higher than in Western countries. Overall, disciplines closely follow the pattern of higher globalization associated with a lower percentage of borrowed text. We also found that plagiarism is less prevalent at research-oriented institutions supporting global ethical standards. Our findings suggest that it might be misleading to measure the prevalence of academic misconduct in developing countries without paying attention to variations at the disciplinary level. (shrink)

The book explores the themes of a) “radical concepts” in politics (inspired by François Laruelle’s “non-Marxism” and “non-philosophy,” developed in accordance with Badiouan and Žižekian “realism”); b) politically relevant and applicable epistemologies of “Thought’s Correlating with the Real” (Laruelle), inspired by Laruelle, Badiou and Žižek and c) the possibility of hybridization of the epistemic stance of “radical concept” with the politics of grief and “identification with the suffering itself” proposed by Judith Butler. Radical concepts, the political vision and the theory (...) based on them, are always already succumbing to the “Lived” (Laruelle), to the singularity of the Event (Badiou), to the encounter with the “kernel of the Real” (Žižek) conditioning a political horizon and the grand and small political narratives taking place within it. The thesis of the book is that the instances of the “lived,” the “event” or the “Real” can be inherently inter-connected by virtue of the category of the “experience” which is an instance of the sheer lived, the bare being subjected to an occurrence which is always already an instance of trauma. The mere subjection to certain” taking place,” the passion (in the etymological sense derived from the Latin verb pati or in the Spinozian sense) which is category beyond the psychological notions of feeling, rational (or irrational) thought, i.e., an ontological category referring to our relation with the “Out-There” which always already happens to us, is that to which the radical (political) concept succumbs to as the ultimate authority rather than to a doctrine, a system of thought, to the “philosophy’s auto-mirroring” (Laruelle). Political revolt or the revolutionary stance stems from precisely this bare experiential, the sheer lived and thus, from the Real of the conatus of staying-in-life. Paradoxically the survivalist stance, the principle of self-preservation is also the revolutionary stance which is by definition destabilizing and destructive. Bodily resistance to subjection (i.e., to discipline) and the continuity of the Self in-the-Real is the source of resistance. The Real of grief and mourning, the identification with the purely experiential stance of the suffering itself is the foundation of a “radical concept” of political solidarity, which by virtue of its being grounded in the Real, i.e., in the Lived, provides the possibility of acting in a revolutionary way. But it is also a form of human universality or political universality, which yet again is not historic universality but rather purely categorical. Other concepts that can be called radical, concepts which are minimally transcendental (Laruelle) and are, therefore, of revolutionary potential are also violence, mourning, labor (work) and gender (the trauma introduced by the linguistic determination as a “he” or a “she”), life, death, animal. Yet, the main focus of the book is the exploration of the lived of vulnerability, trauma and the conatus of life as the determination in the last instance of the revolutionary (political) stance. Clearly, the revolutions and the revolutionary stance this book advocates, or rather, whose potentiality it explores, are not necessarily historical revolutions produced by the intentionality to create politico-historic change. They are not this necessarily. Yet again they are such possibly. Still all purely (on the formal level) revolutionary stance tends to introduce universal change, radically change the political horizon and to reverse the politically unthinkable into a thinkable by elevating it to the level of a universal political truth. (shrink)

_Interprets Kant's conception of enlightenment within the broader philosophical project of his critique of reason._.

Alternative set theory was created by the Czech mathematician Petr Vopěnka in 1979 as an alternative to Cantor’s set theory. Vopěnka criticised Cantor’s approach for its loss of correspondence with the real world. Alternative set theory can be partially axiomatised and regarded as a nonstandard theory of natural numbers. However, its intention is much wider. It attempts to retain a correspondence between mathematical notions and phenomena of the natural world. Through infinity, Vopěnka grasps the phenomena of vagueness. Infinite sets are (...) defined as sets containing proper semisets, i.e. vague parts of sets limited by the horizon. The new interpretation extends the field of applicability of mathematics and simultaneously indicates its limits. Compared to strict finitism and other attempts at a reduction of the infinite to the finite Vopěnka’s theory reverses the process: he models the finite in the infinite. (shrink)

The opposition between the climactic thought of René Descartes and that of Blaise Pascal, although not very explicitly expressed at the time, is considered to be some kind of dispute between “reason and the heart.” An attempt at the relativization of these compartmentalizing poles brings the author of the study to a starting point that is common to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Pascal’s Pensées (Thoughts): the act of skepticism and radical doubt. Despite the differences in their skeptical pathways (...) and their goals, the roots of the “systems” of thought of both philosophers grow from this act. The paper attempts to outline how the role of doubt can shape the problem of human knowledge, both on a general level and on the level of the highest, concrete knowledge of Divine Existence. (shrink)

The concept of professionalism is embedded into all aspects of nursing education and practice yet is rarely critically interrogated in nursing scholarship. This paper describes how professionalism in nursing is based on whiteness. When actualized, this oppressive construct homogenizes individuals' identities to assist nurses in building and wielding power against each other and against patients, and results in dehumanization and disconnection. Foregrounding an ethic of authenticity as a practice of resistance against white professionalism offers an alternative possibility for how nursing (...) could be taught, practiced and theorized. As such a practice must begin with oneself, the authors outline a reflexive process from which to begin this work. (shrink)

Stoicism is one of the richest and most influential intellectual traditions of antiquity. Leading scholars here contribute new studies of a set of topics which are the focus of current research in this area. They combine careful analytical attention to the original texts with historical sensitivity and philosophical acuity, to provide the basis for a better understanding of Stoic ethics, political theory, logic, and physics.

While the emancipatory efforts of the Czech national revival culminated at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century, manifestations of national feeling in the 17th century Czech Lands were rather rare. The article focuses on the concept of nationality as it was treated by scholars from the monastic orders such as the German provincial of the Czech Franciscan province, Bernhard Sannig (1637–1704), or the Czech Jesuit Bohuslav Balbín (1621–1688), whose views are briefly compared with those of the (...) most significant representative of the Czech Protestant emigration – Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670). By the means of analysis and comparison of several texts, the article investigates how the concept of nationality was gradually rationalized and moralized through the ethical categories of vice and virtue. These reflections on nation, nationality, and patriotism and their moral assessment demonstrate that their authors anticipated some elements of the later formulated doctrine of the natural law of nations, which theoretically justified the demands of the Czech national revival and formed the basis for the concept of Czech history. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose that DNA‐binding anti‐cancer drugs work more via chromatin disruption than DNA damage. Success of long‐awaited drugs targeting cancer‐specific drivers is limited by the heterogeneity of tumors. Therefore, chemotherapy acting via universal targets (e.g., DNA) is still the mainstream treatment for cancer. Nevertheless, the problem with targeting DNA is insufficient efficacy due to high toxicity. I propose that this problem stems from the presumption that DNA damage is critical for the anti‐cancer activity of these drugs. DNA (...) in cells exists as chromatin, and many DNA‐targeting drugs alter chromatin structure by destabilizing nucleosomes and inducing histone eviction from chromatin. This effect has been largely ignored because DNA damage is seen as the major reason for anti‐cancer activity. I discuss how DNA‐binding molecules destabilize chromatin, why this effect is more toxic to tumoral than normal cells, and why cells die as a result of chromatin destabilization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Grieving the Loss of What Medicine Was Supposed to BeKaterina V. LiongI attended a conference this year. The timing was less than ideal because it was held the weekend before the Internal Medicine clerkship exam. But as with all things, especially during medical school, there is never a "right time" to be doing anything. It was fortunate that I attended the conference anyway because I met an incredible doctor (...) there. She had given a talk called "The Myth of Physician Wellness," and somewhere in our lengthy discussion, she asked me this:"Have you ever considered that since entering medical school, you've never been able to stop and really grieve the loss of what you thought medicine would be?"I am writing this in the downtime during my surgery rotation, regretting that I didn't wait until I got home to fully feel the feelings of writing this because I cannot cry here in front of others. At the same time, I feel guilty spending time writing at all; I should instead be doing UWorld practice questions for my upcoming exam. I can feel it in my body, the feeling of being plugged up—I have allowed tears to leak out too many times this year.The first time was in Internal Medicine, after seeing an elderly patient with a terminal rectal cancer that was so far along you could see it grossly. The bulging mass was so obvious during the patient's digital rectal exam that the senior resident was able to take off his still-clean gloves mere seconds after putting them on. The patient had come in for abdominal pain and difficulty defacating; the [End Page E20] only management he'd been able to receive for his known cancer was multiple hospitalizations in the last few months for emergency blood transfusions when his Hemoglobin level, indicating blood loss from the cancer, got too low. As I was taught to do, I gave a summary statement: "So you're here because you had a primary care appointment for a regular checkup, but they wouldn't see you because they didn't take your insurance? And they sent you to the county hospital, but even though they take uninsured patients, you are technically insured, just under a terrible plan … so they transferred you here. Is that right?" Unfortunately, the man's sí of affirmation was enough to make me lose composure, and I had to step out to let the resident finish the interview.After that, all it takes recently for the tears to well up is for an attending to pull me aside for feedback and ask, "How is third year going for you?" or even "What do you feel you've done well?"I almost wonder if holding in tears is like constipation. In medical school, we learn that sometimes what we think is diarrhea in patients is actually constipation—the stool is so impacted that the only thing that can leak past the plug is liquid. We see the leakage and first interpret that as diarrhea. I have to wonder if people interpret the same about me—emotional lability? Or is my inability to prevent the tears from leaking out simply a product of all the plugging up I have been doing all along? My inability to properly grieve the loss of what medicine was going to be? Maybe the first step in processing that loss is identifying it:I thought medicine meant caring for patients. Why am I going through 7+ years of training if insurance companies are allowed to undermine us so easily?I thought medicine meant connecting with patients. Why am I spending 30 minutes seeing my patients and 2 hours writing notes?I thought medicine meant leadership. Why are others bypassing two-thirds of my time in training and ending up with almost the same job … but the only "leadership" left is that their liability falls on physicians?I thought one must be well to take care of others. Why are students working all day and studying all night, residents too overworked to take a lunch break, and attendings made to work while visibly sick and diaphoretic?I thought... (shrink)

Thought experiments being central to contemporary philosophy and science, the following questions were asked in recent literature. What is their definition? Are they heuristic devices, arguments, paradoxes? Are they comparable to real experiments? Do intuition and conceivability intervene? Equally imaginative thought experiments are found in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance texts. Paying attention to prime historical examples of thought experiments, we show that historical perspectives help answer these general questions.

In the context of contemporary media-philosophy discussions, the article is focusing on a theory of mediation we can find in Flussers texts. With his concept of a “change of paradigms” Flusser describes the dilemmas of the theoretical reflections regarding contemporary media culture: the evolution of media and these media’s theories question basic metaphysical concepts - objectivity, reality, the material and their symbols, things, rationality etc. Today the focus is on mediation, the forms of knowledge, perception and communication. With his theories (...) of a hierarchy of codes, writing and image, and society as a network, Flusser suggests theoretical models that could help to provide answers to questions of today’s cultural, communication, social and technical processes, and to their interaction. (shrink)

The growing consumerism has its opponents. Among these are environmental activists within the freegan subculture. The goal of the study is to describe how freegans construct and practice non-consumerism. The qualitative research on the freegan subculture was conducted in Brno, the Czech Republic. Two main categories were identified. Each category is conceptualized as a “picture of non-consumerism”, showing how freegans construct and practice non-consumerism. “Individual modesty” is an inward non-consumerist strategy, aimed at the individual life careers of the subculture members, (...) while “agents of social change” is an outward strategy, aimed at the general public and endeavouring to reduce consumerism in society. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of hope in the epistemology and psychology of Immanuel Kant and Johann Christoph Hoffbauer (1766-1827). The decisive question is how according to Kant hope can impair the objectivity of judgements about future and what are the positive and negative effects of this impairment. While for Kant hope is not essentially considered as an affect, he admits that it could transform into an affect and in this way it can impair the mood and its cognitive faculties (...) negatively. In my paper I examine this argumentations of Kant and their reception in the psychology and psychopathology of Hoffbauer, where hope as affect is even considered as a cause of madness and where Hoffbauer seems to suggest that the clinical state of madness can be effect of inappropriate use of the cognitive faculties of the soul. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of hope in the epistemology and psychology of Immanuel Kant and Johann Christoph Hoffbauer (1766-1827). The decisive question is how according to Kant hope can impair the objectivity of judgements about future and what are the positive and negative effects of this impairment. While for Kant hope is not essentially considered as an affect, he admits that it could transform into an affect and in this way it can impair the mood and its cognitive faculties (...) negatively. In my paper I examine this argumentations of Kant and their reception in the psychology and psychopathology of Hoffbauer, where hope as affect is even considered as a cause of madness and where Hoffbauer seems to suggest that the clinical state of madness can be effect of inappropriate use of the cognitive faculties of the soul. (shrink)

In this paper the authors seek to contribute to a new ontology of an embodied, desiring subject through an exploration of their own subjectivities and of the ways in which subjectivities are produced and transformed through affective attachments to place. Using the method of collective biography (Davies, Gannon 2006) and drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of desire and territorialization they examine their affective responses and attachments to place: Australia and the Czech Republic. As a point of departure for their (...) analysis, the authors ask: What does it mean to be homesick for a place which is not one’s home? What does it mean to desire a place? What of the other place is inscribed in the body? In asking this, the authors show the extent to which place is a zone of immanence in which a continual play of de- and re-territorialization occurs. (shrink)

Purpose – Tabletop online role-playing games enable active learning appropriate for different ages and learner capabilities. They have also been implemented in computer and engineering ethics courses. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents the experience of implementing role-playing in several courses embedded in Web 2.0 environment, with an intention to confront complex and sometimes mutually conflicting concepts, and integrate them into a whole. Findings – Typical examples introducing two basic scenarios representing individual and collaborative (...) learning scripts are presented together with the detailed analysis how the games were performed, the effort to participate in, and to maintain them. Particular attention is paid to student feedback. Originality/value – The paper concludes with the basic findings of the effects of role-playing in current learning computer ethics and social responsibilities courses, and recommendations for future implementation of similar asynchronous learning online activities in order to increase their academic value and prepare students for their forthcoming professional integration. (shrink)

The potential of surveillance practices to undermine the presumption of innocence is a growing concern amongst critics of surveillance. This paper attempts to assess the impact of surveillance on the presumption of innocence. It defends an account of the presumption of innocence as a protection against wrongful criminalisation against alternatives, and considers both the ways in which surveillance might undermine that protection and the—hitherto overlooked—ways in which it might promote it. It draws on empirical work on the causes of erroneous (...) convictions to suggest that surveillance can be used in ways that prevent innocent people being erroneously charged and convicted with crimes, by providing a source of exculpatory evidence for use in police investigations. It is argued that surveillance practices do not necessarily undermine the presumption of innocence but can be reformed in ways that both reduce the risk that they will cause wrongful criminalisation and increase their power to protect those already under suspicion. (shrink)

Building on discussions originating in post-humanism, the non-philosophy of François Laruelle, and the science of 'species being of humanity' stemming from Marx's critique of philosophy, Katerina Kolozova proposes a radical consideration of capitalism's economic exploitation of life. This book uses François Laruelle's work to think through questions of 'practical ethics' and bring the abstract tools of Laruelle's non-philosophy into conversation with other critical methods in the humanities. Kolozova centres the question of the animal at the very heart of what (...) it means for us as human beings to think and act in the world, and the mistreatment of animality that underpins the logic of capitalism. (shrink)

This paper examines the relevance and importance of the large number of examples which Aristotle uses in his "Prior Analytics." In the first part of the paper three preliminary issues are raised: First, it investigates what counts as an example in Aristotle's syllogistic, and especially whether only examples expressed in concrete terms should be considered as examples or maybe also propositions and arguments with letters of the alphabet. The second issue concerns the kinds of examples Aristotle actually uses from everyday (...) life as well as from various scientific and philosophical forms of discourse; among these, it seems that biological examples, rather than mathematical ones, have a predominant place. Finally, I discuss what Aristotle himself has to say about the use of examples, and in particular about the similarity between the use of an example and the use of induction. The second part of the paper focusses on the functions of Aristotle's logical examples. It is of course obvious that some of the examples in the Prior Analytics are used to illustrate, and thus to clarify, a definition, a logical rule, a type of argument. However, I think that Aristotle's logical examples have another function, which is philosophically more interesting, namely as integral parts of the procedure of proving something. To support this claim, I analyse three passages from the "Prior Analytics" in which examples are used either in order to prove that something is not the case, i.e. as counter-examples, or in order to prove positively that it is possible for something to be the case. At the end, I argue that for such uses of examples Aristotle uses the notion of 'ekthesis', which seems to have a wider sense than usually suggested; that is to say, it is used to refer to any proof by means of an example, and not only for the procedure which Aristotle uses to reduce imperfect to perfect syllogisms. (shrink)

Despite its historical focus on aberrant behavior, sexology barely dealt with sexual deviants in 1950s Czechoslovakia. Rather, sexologists treated only isolated instances of deviance. The rare cases that went to court appeared mostly because they hindered work or harmed the national economy. Two decades later, however, the situation was markedly different. Hundreds of men were labeled as sexual delinquents and sentenced for treatment in special sexological wards at psychiatric hospitals. They endangered society, so it was claimed, by being unwilling or (...) unable to conform to the family norm. The mode of subjection shifted from work to family. I analyse this change by using the tools of Gil Eyal’s sociology of expertise (2013), which focuses on shifts in institutional matrices that bring forth new groups of agents creating new expert networks. I argue that sexology became profoundly institutionalized in the early 1970s, which brought the discipline closer to psychiatry and forensic science. New inpatient facilities were opened that could admit sentenced sexual deviants. Also, demographic changes accelerated in the 1960s, especially skyrocketing divorce rates and plummeting birth rates, which made it imperative for the government to focus on cementing the family. After the failed attempts of the Prague Spring in 1968, the new pro-Soviet government of communist Czechoslovakia did just that. During the time dubbed as ‘normalization’ by the new elites, anyone who strayed from the family norm was suspected of deviance. (shrink)

This article discusses findings of a qualitative study on strategies of othering observed in anti-immigrant discourse, by analysing selected examples from the UK and Polish media, together with data collected from interviews with migrants. The purpose is to identify discursive strategies of othering, which aim to categorise, denigrate, oppress and ultimately reject the stigmatised or racialised ‘other’. We do not offer a systematic comparison of the data from the UK and Poland; instead, we are interested in what is common in (...) the discursive practices of these two countries/contexts. In using newspaper together with interview data, we are combining representation and experience in identifying not only strategies of othering, but also how these are perceived by and affect the othered individuals. The paper uses the following data: 40 newspaper articles – 20 from the UK and 20 from Poland, and 19 interviews – 12 from Poland and 7 from the UK. The analysis that follows identifies five shared strategies of othering: a) Stereotyping; b) Whiteness as the norm; c) Racialisation; d) Objectification; e) Wrongly Ascribed Ethnicity. We conclude with the research limitations and outlining possible next stages, such as working with a larger corpus, investigating frequency, or including other media genres. (shrink)

There is no single ancient Greek word in the surviving fragments and testimonies of Hellenistic philosophy that is directly translatable by the term ‘intuition’. But if we are in search of intuitions in the context of Hellenistic epistemology, it could be said that both the Stoics and the sceptics made use of them in their philosophical debates; for intuitions seem to be closely connected with the formation of conceptions, which were abundantly used by all Hellenistic philosophers. It is important to (...) understand, though, that the Stoics’ and the sceptics’ attitude towards the epistemic status of intuitions would greatly differ: The Stoics would explain intuitions by invoking a rational capacity of human beings, which based on experience would put them in touch with the reality of things, so that their intuitions could be thought of as somehow rationally admissible. The sceptics, on the other hand, would suggest that intuitions guide our everyday life merely on the basis of our previous experiences, and thus their intuitions could be regarded as empirically justified, although they would not guarantee any access to how things actually are. (shrink)

L’article examine trois types de temporalités patrimoniales. Le premier définit l’unité d’une salle muséale comme espace d’exposition cohérent et interroge la coexistence des objets dans son enceinte, en prenant comme exemple la salle 501 du Louvre. En se focalisant sur les objets-palimpsestes et l’art composite, il laisse ainsi entrevoir le mélange entre art latin et art byzantin, les remplois et les circulations de styles, que cette salle met en avant. Le second type évoque les interactions entre exposition permanente et exposition (...) temporaire et, plus particulièrement, la manière dont deux mosaïques byzantines rares, qui sont exposées dans la salle 501 de manière inadéquate, retrouvent une certaine visibilité grâce à un événement inattendu : la guerre en Ukraine et une opération d’urgence. Le troisième type concerne les manières évolutives d’exposer l’art byzantin au sein du musée du Louvre. Le but est de mieux situer le projet de la création d’un nouveau département patrimonial a... (shrink)

Phenotypic plasticity is a crucial feature of aggressive cancer, providing the means for cancer progression. Stochastic changes in tumor cell transcriptional programs increase the chances of survival under any condition. I hypothesize that unstable chromatin permits stochastic transitions between transcriptional programs in aggressive cancers and supports non‐genetic heterogeneity of tumor cells as a basis for their adaptability. I present a mechanistic model for unstable chromatin which includes destabilized nucleosomes, mobile chromatin fibers and random enhancer‐promoter contacts, resulting in stochastic transcription. I (...) suggest potential markers for “unsettled” chromatin in tumors associated with poor prognosis. Although many of the characteristics of unstable chromatin have been described, they were mostly used to explain changes in the transcription of individual genes. I discuss approaches to evaluate the role of unstable chromatin in non‐genetic tumor cell heterogeneity and suggest using the degree of chromatin instability and transcriptional noise in tumor cells to predict cancer aggressiveness. (shrink)