Embodied knowledge in chronic illness and injury When people experience chronic illness or serious injury, changes occur not just within their physical bodies but also in their embodiments, that is, how they view the world through their bodies. For such patients, dualistic (mind–body) notions of the body as object and the mind as subject can devalue experiences that are necessary for healing and for managing everyday problems related to their illness or injury. Nurses need to be able to guide people (...) with illness or injury to new levels of wellness, but may lack appropriate theoretical conceptualizations. Philosophies that underlie embodied knowledge — in particular, philosophies of Merleau‐Ponty and Polanyi — were explored yielding two new ways to understand the body. The body as ‘silent partner’ fosters an appreciation of the body's own subjectivity that can be enhanced in nursing care through sensitivity, listening, and creative coaching. Nurses can assist their patients to identify new and positive understandings of what their bodies mean to them after bodily changes. The body as ‘informant’ holds much promise for solving some of the everyday problems that people with chronic illness or injury experience. By using phenomenological and other naturalistic methods, researchers and patients can find clues to solving such problems, clues that are known through daily living but hidden beneath conscious awareness. As a result, some of the practical know‐how of the body as ‘informant’ can be transformed into testable nursing interventions. (shrink)

In Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo, the text describes its main character as witty, brave, and resourceful. The drawings of the story’s main character which accompany this text, however, present a unique kind of harm that only becomes clear when the work is read as a collection of single-panel comics rather than an illustrated book. In this chapter, I show what happens when we read drawings in books as textless comics, and, based on how things turn out from this reading, (...) motivate why we have some substantive reason to read both Little Black Sambo and other books with drawings-as-comics. (shrink)

Water famine. -- The only possibility. -- The three gift, author.

The Cratylus begins with a paradox; it ends with a paradox; and it has a paradox in between. But this disturbing characteristic of the dialogue has been overshadowed, not to say ignored, in the literature. For commentators have seen it as their task to discover exactly what theory of language Plato himself, despite his declared perplexity, intends to adopt as he rejects the alternatives of Hermogenes and Cratylus. A common view, then, has been to suppose that the πορίαι of the (...) dialogue are mere camouflage for the hidden dogma, whatever that may be. A favoured candidate, of course, has been the theory of transcendent forms, in some preliminary version. As a consequence, the dialogue has often been seen as a precursor to the great metaphysical works of Plato's middle period such as the Phaedo or the Republic. Not so, I shall argue. My case is that this dialogue centres upon a series of paradoxes which are both powerful and unsettling. Their final effect is to attack the theory of forms, not to defend it. They are, I suggest, genuine proposals of philosophical difficulty, rather than mere artifice to disguise an idealist truth. As such, they belong, and may clearly be seen to belong, with works of the critical period which subject the theory of forms to scrutiny. Thus the πορίαι of the Cratylus have their counterparts in the Parmenides, the Theaetetus and the Sophist. I propose, then, that the dialogue was written during the late, critical period of Plato's philosophical activity. (shrink)

This article revisits the account of magnanimity offered by Thomas Aquinas, in his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle and especially in his Summa Theologiae. Recent scholarship has viewed Aquinas' magnanimity as essentially Aristotle's, complemented by the addition of charity and humility to the classical moral horizon. By contrast, I read Aquinas as offering a subtle yet far-reaching critique of important aspects of Aristotelian magnanimity, a critique with roots in Aquinas' theology, yet also comprising a significant philosophic reappraisal of (...) Aristotle's account of human excellence. Against contentions that Aquinas' ethical revisionism is antithetical to civic common sense, the requirements of statesmanship, and the rational foundations of social science, I argue that Aquinas' theory is politically salutary and theoretically enlightening. Moreover, I suggest that recent dissident reflection on twentieth-century totalitarian experience underscores both the humanity and the nobility of a humility-informed magnanimity, such as that advocated by Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

For a little more than a decade, professional organizations and healthcare institutions have attempted to develop guidelines and policies to deal with seemingly intractable conflicts that arise between clinicians and patients (or their proxies) over appropriate use of aggressive life-sustaining therapies in the face of low expectations of medical benefit. This article suggests that, although such efforts at conflict resolution are commendable on many levels, inadequate attention has been given to their potential negative effects upon particular groups of patients/proxies. Based (...) on the well-documented tendency among many African Americans to prefer more aggressive end-of-life medical interventions, it is proposed that the use of institutional policy to break decision making impasse in cases for which aggressive treatment is deemed "medically inappropriate" will fall disproportionately on that group. Finally, it is suggested that the development and application of institutional conflict-resolution policies should be evaluated in the context of historical and current experiences of marginalization and disempowerment, lest such policies exacerbate that experience. (shrink)

In the study of gender and society, science is a strategic analytic research site—because of the hierarchical nature of gendered relations, generally, and the hierarchy of science, particularly. Academic science, especially, is crucial to, and revealing of, status in science and society. This article focuses on three questions: What is the status of women in scientific careers and the role of graduate education in these careers? What are the implications for the analysis of gender? Where can we intervene, and how? (...) In addressing these questions, the arguments concentrate on the social and organizational context of science and its relationship to gender and status. (shrink)

Why did the plan of using zombie manufacture as a means of studying consciousness ever seem plausible? Why does it impress so many people today? The immediate reason surely lies in fascination with the Turing Test -- the suggestion that computer programs would be proved to be conscious if they managed to carry on conversations in a way that made them seem conscious to a naive observer.

Ornaments are the most common and ubiquitous art form of the Late Pleistocene. This fact suggests a common, fundamental function somewhat different to other kinds of Paleolithic art. While the capacity for artistic expression could be considerably older than the record of preserved art would suggest, beads signal a novel development in the efficiency and flexibility of visual communication technology. The Upper Paleolithic was a period of considerable regional differentiation in material culture, yet there is remarkable consistency in the dominant (...) shapes and sizes of Paleolithic beads over more than 25,000 years and across vast areas, even though they were made from diverse materials and, in the case of mollusc shells, diverse taxonomic families. Cultural and linguistic continuity cannot explain the meta-pattern. The evidence indicates that widespread adoption of beads of redundant form was not only about local and subregional communication of personal identity or group affinity, but also an expansion in the geographic scale of social networks. The conformity of the beads grew spontaneously and in a self-organizing manner from individuals’ interest in tapping into the network as a means for spreading social and environmental risk. (shrink)

Corporate engagements with pressing environmental challenges focus on expanding the role of the market, seeking opportunities for growth and developing technologies to manage better environmental resources. Such approaches have proved ineffective. I suggest that a lack of meaningful response to ecological degradation and climate change is inevitable within a capitalist system underpinned by a logics of appropriation and an instrumental rationality that views the planet as a means to achieve economic ends. For ecofeminism, these logics are promulgated through sets of (...) hierarchical and interrelated dualisms which define the human in opposition to the realm of “nature”. This has led to the resilience of ecosystems, social reciprocity and care being unvalued or undervalued. An ecofeminist, care-sensitive ethics is proposed that focuses on the interconnections between human and nonhuman nature and on affective engagements with the living world. A practical morality is developed that sees the self not as atomized nor as self-optimizing, but as a self in relationship. Such an ethics is necessary to motivate action to contest capitalism’s binary thinking, evident within corporate environmentalism, which has re-made the web of life in ways that are not conducive to planetary flourishing. (shrink)

The fairness of agricultural markets is frequently invoked, especially by farmers. But fairness is difficult to define and measure. In this paper we link fairness and power with the concept of constrained choice to develop a framework for assessing fairness in agricultural markets. We use network exchange theory to define power from the dependencies that exist in agricultural networks. The structure of agricultural networks and the options that agricultural producers have to participate in agricultural networks affect the degree to which (...) they are dependent on others within the network. Dependency, in turn, affects the choices that agricultural producers have. We consider both the number and nature of these choices. We argue that constraining or limiting choices—both in number and type—violates principles of justice. Importantly, network exchange theory provides a method for assessing constraints in choices and, hence, the fairness of agricultural markets. Such an assessment could potentially lead to new policies that safeguard the liberties of marketplace participants. We present a brief case to illustrate how this framework can inform on the fairness of agricultural markets and conclude with considerations of what this means for policy, particularly in the arena of anti-trust. (shrink)

Not all public art is bad art, but when public art is bad, it tends to be bad in an identifiable way. In this paper, I develop a Waltonian theory of the category of public art, according to which public art standardly is both accessible to the public and minimally site-specific. When a work lacks the standard features of the category to which it belongs, appreciators tend to perceive the work as aesthetically flawed. I then compare and contrast cases of (...) successful and unsuccessful public art to show that accessibility and site-specificity are features which tend to preclude the other. It is difficult, although hardly impossible, for a site-specific work to remain accessible, and difficult for an accessible work to engage adequately with the site on which it is situated. As a result, while not all public art is bad, the features peculiar to public work encourage a latent tendency toward badness. (shrink)

Paper edition (0768-3), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, legal commentators and bioethicists asked whether other constitutional rights were on the chopping block (Coh...

This chapter, which examines the unity shared between what appear to be conflicting modes of natural investigation, an often neglected aspect of the history of British natural philosophy, also discusses the views of Francis Bacon on observation and experiment and describes his system of the sciences. It looks at aspects of Bacon's program for natural philosophy that made critics set the divide Baconian natural philosophy and the mathematical sciences of the seventeenth century. The chapter furthermore highlights the role of the (...) Baconian system of the sciences in the acceptance of Isaac Newton's Principia mathematica. (shrink)

Calls to decolonise the university and revise what we research and teach is a challenge that ought to be taken up by those working in African philosophy and philosophy in Africa, more generally. Often, the thought is that such decolonisation will involve a complete subversion, destruction or deconstruction of colonial attitudes, processes and concepts. A more moderate proposal for decolonisation of philosophy can be found, however, which is Kwasi Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonisation. In this paper, I defend the project (...) from two categories of objection, what I call the decolonisation and methodology objections. I argue that the objections are misdirected and unfair because they fail to recognise the theoretical backing of Wiredu’s wider work. The critical reflection central to Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonisation can be a genuinely helpful and viable route to take when tackling the challenges of decolonising philosophy. (shrink)

When I first became acquainted with the thought of the American philoso pher Josiah Royce, two factors particularly intrigued me. The first was Royce's claim that the notion of community was his main metaphysical tenet; the second was his close association with the two American pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Regarding the first factor, I was struck by the fact that a philosopher who died in 1916 should emphasize a topic of such contemporary significance not only in philosophy (...) but in so many other vital fields as well (sociology, psychology, politics, theology - to name only a few). Regarding the second, I was curious as to whether the pragmatism of Peirce and James might have influenced Royce during the course of their professional and personal contacts. Similarly, I wondered whether the idealism of Royce might have affected the thought of Peirce and James. To have appeased my curiosity in regard to all three thinkers, however, would have required (at least) three books. As a start I have now appeased it in regard to one. In researching the writings of Royce I found my way to the Houghton Library and to the Archives of Harvard University at Cambridge, Massa chusetts, where the unpublished manuscripts of Royce are preserved. (No editing job has yet been done on this bulk of material, though such would certainly be a welcome contribution to American philosophy. (shrink)

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) serves as a framework to teach individuals methods to speak up when they witness actions that are contrary to their professional and personal values. This essay illustrates how GVV serves as a catalyst to advance both research and teaching activities.