This book offers both the theoretical background behind the minority effect, teachers' personal experiences as they experienced being a minority, and their analyses and insights for teaching diverse learners. This book uses real-life experiences of diverse people to illustrate that, if not understood and addressed, situational minorities at school or work are unlikely to perform at their highest potentials.

Letheby’s book is an engaging and crystal-clear exploration of the philosophical issues raised by the use of psychedelic drugs. In this paper, we focus on the epistemological issues Letheby examines in chapter 8 and argue that his analysis requires an agency-first approach to epistemic evaluation. On an agency-first approach, epistemic evaluation is about identifying the skills agents needs to acquire in order to pursue and fulfil their epistemic goals.

Lisa Bortolotti argues that some irrational beliefs are epistemically innocent and deliver significant epistemic benefits that could not be easily attained otherwise. While the benefits of the irrational belief may not outweigh the costs, epistemic innocence helps to clarify the epistemic and psychological effects of irrational beliefs on agency.

Cahill addresses the ethics of sexuality, marriage, parenthood and family from a feminist Christian standpoint. She wants to reaffirm the traditional unity of sex, love and parenthood, not as an absolute norm, but a guiding framework. The book also develops the significance of New Testament models of community and of moral formation, to argue that the human values associated with sex and family should be embodied in a context of concern for society's poor and marginalized. Roman Catholicism receives special but (...) not exclusive attention. (shrink)

. The concept of bodily health is problematic for mechanists like Descartes, as it seems that they need to appeal to something extrinsic to a machine, i.e., its purpose, to determine whether the machine is working well or badly, and so healthy or unhealthy. I take issue with this claim. By drawing on the history of medicine, I suggest that in the seventeenth century there was space for a non-teleological account of health. I further argue that mechanists can and did (...) appeal to structural integrity, as a non-teleological notion of form, to ground the norms required for ascriptions of health. (shrink)

: he commercialization of biotechnology, especially research and development by transnational pharmaceutical companies, is already excessive and is increasingly dangerous to distributive justice, human rights, and access of marginal populations to basic human goods. Focusing on gene patenting, this article employs the work of Margaret Jane Radin and others to argue that gene patenting ought to be more highly regulated and that it ought to be regulated with international participation and in view of concerns about solidarity and the common good. (...) The mode of argument called for on this issue is more pragmatic than logical, emphasizing persuasion based on evidence about the reality and effects of control of genetic research by profit-driven biotech companies. (shrink)

Sex offenders are sometimes offered or required to undergo pharmacological interventions intended to diminish their sex drive (anti-libidinal interventions or ALIs). In this paper, we argue that much of the debate regarding the moral permissibility of ALIs has been founded on an inaccurate assumption regarding their intended purpose—namely, that ALIs are intended solely to realise medical purposes, not correctional goals. This assumption has made it plausible to assert that ALIs may only permissibly be administered to offenders with their valid consent, (...) in line with the approach taken to most other interventions with a medical aim. However, we argue that, contrary to this assumption, the state's intention in relation to at least some ALIs is, at least in part, to achieve correctional objectives. We evaluate two legal regimes for ALI provision—section 645 of the California Penal Code and the mental health regime in England and Wales. In each case, we identify the state's implicit purpose in imposing ALIs and argue that the Californian and English regimes both serve as counterexamples to the view that ALIs are intended solely for medical purposes. While the moral implications of our argument are not straightforward, it raises the question whether consent is required for permissible imposition of ALIs, and more generally, whether the moral permissibility of crime-preventing interventions using medical means should be assessed against the standards of medical ethics or against those of criminal justice ethics. (shrink)

ArgumentThis essay considers the work of projection and the hand of the projectionist as important components of the social space of the cinema as it comes into being in the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. I bring the concept of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the place of the body as an entity that applies itself to the world “like a hand to an instrument” into a discussion of the pre-cinematic projector as an instrument that we can interpret (...) as evidence of the experience of the work of the projectionist in the spirit of film theory and media archaeology, moving work on instrumentation in a different direction from the analysis of the work of the black box in laboratory studies. Projection is described as a psychological as well as a mechanical process. It is suggested that we interpret the projector not simply in its activity as it projects films, but in its movement from site to site and in the workings of the hand of its operator behind the scenes. This account suggests a different perspective on the cinematic turn of the nineteenth century, a concept typically approached through the study of the image, the look, the camera, and the screen. (shrink)

Based upon flyers and advertisements for the contraceptive pill from 1961 until 2005, this paper discusses the ways in which the drug and its female users were represented in the marketing of two West European countries, France and the German Federal Republic. As my analysis suggests, national differences are only discernible in the marketing until the end of the 1970s. In West Germany, the pill was depicted from early on as a contraceptive, whereas, due to the restrictive legal situation, in (...) France the pill was marketed as a multi-purpose drug. Nevertheless, the sources in both countries emphasized the safety of the drug. Likewise the representations of women changed from the notion of the married mother to a more diverse image, including young, modern and active women. From the early 1980s on, French and German materials conformed to one another. Now more classification systems were developed, emphasizing the differences between types of pills and types of women. Lifestyle, leisure and fun became increasingly central topics. Correspondingly, the female user was often portrayed in a sexualized way and represented as an active consumer with individual needs and wishes. (shrink)

Education-migration, or the multi-step recruitment and retention of international students as immigrants, is an increasingly important component of both higher education and so-called highly-skilled migration. This is particularly true in Canada, a country portrayed as a model for highly-skilled migration and supportive of international student mobility. However, education-migration remains under-analyzed from a social justice perspective. Using a mobility justice framework, this paper considers COVID-19’s impact on Canada’s education-migration system at four scales: individuals, education institutions, state immigration regimes, and planetary geoecologies. (...) It identifies ethical tensions inherent to Canada’s education-migration from a systems-level and suggests that a multi-scalar approach to social justice can both usefully complexify discussions and introduce unsettling paradoxes. It also stresses that the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reimagine rather than return. (shrink)

This descriptive case study explores how on cohort of 17 White elementary preservice teachers examined counter-narratives of racism and Whiteness in selected documentary films using a historical inquiry approach. Findings indicate that by joining documentary film and historical inquiry in elementary social studies education, teacher educators can foster preservice teachers' engagement with perspective recognition while developing historical content knowledge. This study also documents White preservice teachers' acceptance of racism and resistance towards unpacking their White privilege and racism as status quo. (...) Implications for using this approach with preservice teachers and the dilemma of White avoidance in social studies education are discussed. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s Institution Course Notes to clarify Patrick Wolfe’s claim that, for settler colonialism, “invasion is a structure, not an event.” I also engage critically with colonial assumptions in Merleau-Ponty’s own work, including his Eurocentric response to questions such as: “[I]s there a field of world history or universal history? Is there an intended accomplishment? A closure on itself? A true society?” In this essay, I ask different questions – with Merleau-Ponty, against him, and beyond (...) him. I neither defend Merleau-Ponty against his own worst self nor disown him as “bad” philosophical kin. Rather, I learn what I can from Merleau-Ponty for a critical phenomenology of settler colonialism and for amplifying movements to transform and abolish settler colonial structures at the level of thought, being, and politics. (shrink)

While Roman Catholic feminist ethicists typically endorse moral realism and crosscultural standards of justice, they also have been influenced by the postmodern interrogation of abstract reason and moral universalism. As theologians writing after the Second Vatican Council, they are increasingly sensitive to the communal and ecclesial dimensions of morality and of Christian ethics, and to the integral relation of Christian faith and ethics. This essay will consider two approaches to Catholic feminist ethics that differ in the relative weight they give (...) to constructive work for social justice, or to the grounding of ethics in prayer and mysticism. Using critical feminist reappropriations of the theology and ethics of Aquinas as examples, this essay will argue that the two approaches are overlapping and interdependent. (shrink)

Analysing ten interviews with women diagnosed with and treated for congenital absence of the vagina, this article theorises the notion of ideal (hetero)relational normality. It explores how women in my case study negotiate, relate to and challenge this notion and examines the normative and bodily work for which it calls. The article specifically underscores the corporeal dimension of (hetero)relational normality. I argue that this notion of normality shapes the bodies of the women through medical interventions, while concurrently being reinforced through (...) the corporeal shapings that the women undergo. These corporeal shapings consolidate enacted norms concerning heterosexuality and form understandings of female and male bodies. The analysis also reveals how these women nevertheless find ways to re-negotiate and question the notion of ideal (hetero)relational normality and its intertwinement with medical practice. The article contributes both to the critical examination of genital surgery and to feminist discussions of how to critically examine heterosexuality without rejecting it. Furthermore, it provides a deeper understanding of how medical interventions designed to create a vagina, or dilate a vagina considered ‘too small’, are made meaningful by the women affected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Is Deviated Transcendency? Woolf's The Waves as a Textbook CaseSimon De Keukelaere (bio)The Waves, more than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, conveys the complexities of human experience.—Kate FlintHumankind—according to mimetic theory—is not (as Marx thought) homo economicus but rather homo religiosus. Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque, Girard's first essay (1961), evocatively opens with a saying by Max Scheler: "L'homme possède ou un Dieu ou une idole" (Man (...) has either a God or an idol). If we may believe Girard, the Enlightenment profoundly misunderstood human beings because it naively assumed that doing away with "ancient superstitions" would fully liberate them: "denial of God does not eliminate transcendency but diverts it from the au-delà to the endeçà " (Girard 1965, 59).What has all this to do with Virginia Woolf's secular art? René Girard's "transcendance déviée," the diverted or deviated transcendency––which we may also want to term idolatry––is beautifully and transparently depicted in one of Woolf's most enigmatic and experimental novels. In The Waves, the portrayal of human desire as mimetic, imitated, is so crystal clear that––once noticed—it can hardly be overlooked any longer. Perhaps even more interesting for mimetic theory is the fact that Woolf (just as Proust did before her) brings into play the language of the sacred when rendering the mimetic nature of human longing. Neither of these two aspects of The Waves (the obsessively mimetic nature of desire and the use of the religious metaphor) have been fully unraveled by Woolf's critics.The purpose of this article is to make obvious the value of Virginia Woolf's (poetic) language for mimetic scholars and to show how deviated transcendency can be made visible and (above all) intelligible through great secular literature. The study of literature is vital to the humanities, not for some frivolous, outdated reasons, but because great literature can, sometimes [End Page 195] more effectively than many erudite studies, convey the complexities of human experience.It would no doubt be unjustifiable to foist Girard's mimetic thesis on Woolf's novel without clear support from the text, but I believe The Waves provides such backing. The outline of the present article is as follows. I first argue that the characters in Woolf's novel really are interdividuals rather than individuals, since mimetic desire plays an important role in them. I subsequently focus on a typically metaphysical illusion that goes along with mimetic desire, that is, the apparent self-sufficiency or divine autonomy of the Other. Then I show how the religious metaphor is consistently linked with the first-mentioned issue and that a form of distorted mysticism is to be recognized throughout the novel. Finally I examine how in The Waves deviated transcendency is depicted as a road toward Death in exactly the same way as Girard does in his Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque (1961).The Interdividual and Her Mimetic DesireMimetic theory is deeply involved with the problem of selfhood, the paradoxical nature of subjectivity. According to René Girard we are not individuals but interdividuals. The ambiguous nature of the Self is a recurrent theme in Woolf's novels too, and especially in The Waves, it seems. As Lisa Marie Lucenti remarks: "Many critics seem to agree that subjectivity, for Woolf, is no simple matter, but they disagree on the significance, expression and forms of its intricacies. The most productive theories for reading Woolf are those which allow for a large measure of variation and ambiguity both between and within individual subjects" (1998, 34). The problematic nature of the Self challenges the critic, since the very concept of character is turned into a conundrum, rather than a useful instrument with which to analyze the novel. To speak of separated characters, of individuals (in-divisus) with regard to The Waves is particularly difficult. So, for example, at the end of the novel Bernard (one of the six "voices" or "characters" whose lives are recounted) states: "I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am—Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs... (shrink)

The core concept of ‘the human’ that anchors so many humanities disciplines – history, literature, art history, philosophy, religion, anthropology, political theory, and others – issues from a very particular modern European definition of Man ‘over-represented’ as the human. The history of modernity and of modern disciplinary knowledge formations are, in this sense, a history of modern European forms monopolizing the definition of the human and placing other variations at a distance from the human. This article is an interdisciplinary research (...) that decenters Man-as-human as the subject/object of inquiry, and proposes a relational analytic that reframes established orthodoxies of area, geography, history and temporality. It also involves new readings of traditional archives, finding alternative repositories and practices of knowledge and collection to radically redistribute our ways of understanding the meaning of the human. (shrink)

This research study used descriptive phenomenological methods to investigate and document the lived experience of altruism as described by moral exemplars. Six moral exemplars wrote descriptions of situations in which they engaged in spontaneous altruism. Altruism was defined for the purpose of this study as a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another's welfare . These descriptions were then expanded and clarified through follow up interviews. The results of this descriptive phenomenological analysis produced two structures: the structure of (...) the lived experience of altruism as described by moral exemplars, and the structure of the lived experience of helping as described by moral exemplars. The differences between these two structures suggest that altruistically motivated pro-social behavior is more committed, extensive and effective than egoistically motivated helping, and results in a higher level of concern for the long-term well-being of the individuals helped. Although differentiated by primary motivations, altruistic or egoistic, both structures identify the motivating factors of empathy, personal historical life experiences, moral values, and personal identity as essential to the experience of assisting another individual in need. (shrink)

Historians and biologists identify the debate between mechanists and vitalists over the nature of life itself with the arguments of Driesch, Loeb, and other prominent voices. But what if the conversation was broader and the consequences deeper for the field? Following the suspicions of Joseph Needham in the 1930s and Francis Crick in the 1960s, we deployed tools of the digital humanities to an old problem in the history of biology. We analyzed over 31,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers and learned that (...) bioexceptionalism participated in a robust discursive landscape throughout subfields of the life sciences, occupied even by otherwise unknown biologists. (shrink)

Much modern scholarship on Delphic oracles has revolved around the question of authenticity, where authenticity implies it is a fact that there was a consultation of the Delphic oracle, that a response was given and that the account of these events reports the occasion of the consultation and the response verbatim. This article challenges the usefulness and validity of this definition on two grounds. First, there is ample evidence that most Delphic oracles circulated orally for at least a generation before (...) being recorded in writing. Therefore, Delphic oracles should be examined through what we know about orality from Homeric studies. Second, all six hundred or so oracles attributed to Delphi are fulfilled. This observation suggests that Delphic tales are religious testimonia and should be read for what they tell us about the beliefs, though not necessarily the facts and details, of the communities who circulated them. This article, then, both provides an alternate definition of authenticity that takes into account the oral transmission of these tales by communities of believers and comments on the nature of the historical evidence these tales provide. (shrink)

Individuals often describe objects in their world in terms of perceptual dimensions that span a variety of modalities; the visual (e.g., brightness: dark–bright), the auditory (e.g., loudness: quiet–loud), the gustatory (e.g., taste: sour–sweet), the tactile (e.g., hardness: soft vs. hard) and the kinaesthetic (e.g., speed: slow–fast). We ask whether individuals use perceptual dimensions to differentiate emotions from one another. Participants in two studies (one where respondents reported on abstract emotion concepts and a second where they reported on specific emotion episodes) (...) rated the extent to which features anchoring 29 perceptual dimensions (e.g., temperature, texture and taste) are associated with 8 emotions (anger, fear, sadness, guilt, contentment, gratitude, pride and excitement). Results revealed that in both studies perceptual dimensions differentiate positive from negative emotions and high arousal from low arousal emotions. They also differentiate among emotions that are similar in arousal and valence (e.g., high arousal negative emotions such as anger and fear). Specific features that anchor particular perceptual dimensions (e.g., hot vs. cold) are also differentially associated with emotions. (shrink)

I explore some early modern philosophical thought about the relation of beauty and wisdom, a theme first expressed in Plato's Symposium. The thinkers I consider most centrally are two women, Lucrezia Marinella and Mary Astell, though I also consider the writers Aphra Behn and Sarah Scott. While women in particular might have a special interest in appropriating the Platonic image of the ladder of desire, this ought not to be conceived as a 'women's issue'. Rather, I suggest, this strand of (...) thought is connected with a central philosophical question of the early modern period, the nature of thought and consciousness. J'étudie ici quelques réflexions philosophiques de l'âge moderne portant sur la relation entre beauté et sagesse, thème d'abord développé dans Le Banquet de Platon. Les penseurs auxquels je m'intéresse principalement sont Lucrecia Marinella et Mary Astell, même si je m'appuie aussi sur les écrivaines Aphra Behn et Sarah Scott. Bien que les femmes en particulier puissent avoir un intérêt spécifique à s'approprier l'image platonicienne de l'échelle désir, cela n'autorise pas à concevoir cette question comme un « problème de femmes ». Je suggère, au contraire, que ce courant de pensée est relié à une question philosophique centrale à l'époque moderne, celle de la nature de la pensée et de la conscience. (shrink)

In ‘L'Animal que donc je suis’, Derrida analyzes the paradoxical use of discourses on shame and original sin to justify the human domination of other animals. In the absence of any absolute criterion for distinguishing between humans and other animals, human faultiness becomes a sign of our exclusive capacity for self-consciousness, freedom and awareness of mortality. While Derrida's argument is compelling, he neglects to explore the connection between the human domination of animals and the male domination of women. Throughout ‘L'Animal’, (...) Derrida equivocates between ‘man’ and ‘humanity,’ and between the biblical figures of Ish and Adam. In so doing, he repeats a gesture that he himself has insightfully criticized in other philosophers, such as Levinas. By articulating the distinctions that Derrida elides, I suggest a way of reading Genesis which avoids this difficulty, but also continues Derrida's project. (shrink)

I present and evaluate the prospects of the biosemantic program, understood as a philosophical attempt to explain the mind’s origins by appealing to something that non-minded organisms and minded organisms have in common: representational capacity. I develop an analogy with ancient attempts to account for the origins of change, clarify the biosemantic program’s aims and methods, and then distinguish two importantly different forms of objection, a priori and a posteriori. I defend the biosemantic program from a priori objections on the (...) grounds that the standard of explanation presupposed by them is inappropriate and leads to absurdities if consistently applied. Once the way is cleared of a priori objections, the success of biosemantics turns on the strength of a posteriori objections, that is, on the program’s empirical adequacy. Here, its prospects are less clear, but I offer reasons, by analogy with chemical combination and other everyday phenomena, to think that minded beings and their representational capacities might well have their origin and explanation in non-minded beings. An evolutionary origin and explanation of mind is plausible, at least as far as naturalistic accounts and explanations go. (shrink)

Movement of leukocytes from peripheral blood into tissues, also called leukocyte extravasation, is absolutely essential for immunity in higher organisms. Over the past decade, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in white blood cell extravasation during both normal immune surveillance and the generation of protective immune responses has taken a great leap forward with the discovery of the chemokine gene superfamily. Chemokines are low-molecular-weight cytokines whose major collective biological activity appears to be that of chemotaxis of both specific and (...) overlapping subsets of leukocytes. They are therefore likely to play a critical role in the directed movement of leukocytes from the bloodstream into tissue. These molecules are almost exclusively secreted and act as extracellular messengers for the immune system. However, emerging data also show that various members of the chemokine gene superfamily exert other biological effects outside the immune system. All nucleated cells and all tissues examined to date are capable of expressing at least some chemokines, and it seems likely therefore that by the time all the chemokines are identified, and all their biological functions elucidated, we will find that, as a family, these molecules perform an extracellular messenger role in all tissues and systems of the body. BioEssays 1999;21:17–28. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

An understanding of autonomy has important significance in North American health care. Although a respect for autonomy is necessary to protect the self-determination and agency of birthing women in hospital settings, I suggest that enactments of autonomy that are independent of relationships offer only an incomplete interpretation of such a vital concept. In this article I explore an understanding of autonomy situated within the context of a relational birthing narrative. In so doing, autonomy becomes conceptualized as contextual and concrete, giving (...) rise to an embodied view of the birthing woman. (shrink)

While the Internet has emerged as a significant resource for women negotiating the questions and circumstances that arise during conception, pregnancy and childbirth, it remains unclear what role the Internet plays in challenging the current biomedical paradigm and empowering women to make meaningful choices. This article explores how women use the Internet to manage their pregnancies and mediate their doctor–patient relationships, particularly examining the role of social class and personal health history in shaping such Internet use. Drawing from in-depth interviews (...) with white middle-class mothers, the findings show that rather than using technology to resist the dominant biomedical paradigm, most women turned to online resources that affirmed mainstream medical authority and continued to rely on their doctors. By providing the means to confirm normalcy and take control in their reproductive experiences, the Internet enables socially privileged women to more fully perform the informed patient role in order to demonstrate their competence as mothers. (shrink)

In responding to Anderson, Tobin, and Mills, I focus on questions about non-ideal theory, normative individualism, and standpoint theory. In particular, I ask whether feminist theorizing can be "liberal" and yet not embody the problematic forms of abstraction and individualism described in "Challenging Liberalism". Ultimately, I call for methods of theorizing that illuminate and challenge oppressive social hierarchies.

Language is the original technological prosthesis mediating all transfer of human cognition. The relationships between language, communication and cognition have long been the subject of scientific, philosophic and linguistic inquiry. However, it is through contemporary advancements in neuroscience that we now have unprecedented access to the inner workings of the human brain. Particularly, consumer grade neural scanning technologies like the Muse headset allow non-scientists to view, manipulate and draw conclusions from data generated by their own neural processes. Hence, artists Minka (...) Stoyanova and Lisa Park SoYoung have created an artistic experimental system that utilizes these technologies to address the possibility of communication beyond the confines of linguistic signification. Performing Hypo-Linguistics uses Muse brain sensors to create an abstract audio-visual communication system and feedback loop. Through the visualization and sonification of their respective brain data, these artists perform communication that is both outside of conscious control and beyond sign-based systems of linguistic representation. In this article, we discuss the philosophic and scientific groundwork that supports the creation of this system; our processes of sonification and visualization of the Muse-generated brain data (including the modes by which we actively avoided signification and expected technological aesthetics of data representation); and the outcomes of the performances or the realized interaction between the performers. As deep-learning algorithms become increasingly able to teach computers to mimic human language, it becomes ever more apparent that language is not, in fact, the purview of the human, but only one technological mode invented to facilitate the transfer of information. As with all systems of communication, noise is introduced in this process of transfer. This artistic research seeks to highlight that reality while considering the potentials for alternative forms of technologically mediated communication beyond linguistic signification and below the level of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper we construct an extension, ℒ, of Anderson and Belnap's relevance logic R that is classical in the sense that it contains p&p → q as a theorem, and we prove that ℒ is pretabular in the sense that while it does not have a finite characteristic matrix, every proper normal extension of it does. We end the paper by commenting on the possibility of finding other classical relevance logics that are also pretabular.