Milner and Goodale have advanced a justly influential theory of the structure of the human visual system. In broad outline, Milner and Goodale hold that the ventral neural pathway is associated with recognition and experiential awareness, and with a kind of indirect control of action. And they hold that, by contrast, the dorsal neural stream is associated with the non-conscious, direct control of visually informed action. Most of the relevant empirical research has focused on the visual control of close-in, “personal (...) space,” reaching and/or grasping. While their view has not escaped controversy and debate, we think that Milner and Goodale have a compelling story to tell about the visual guidance of such close in, “personal space” action. However, the question of whether their scheme applies to behavior with visually specified targets that are outside of the space accessible by simply reaching and grasping is largely unstudied. And it should be studied, since this is the arena of much human behavior. We provide good reason to think that the Milner and Goodale scheme may well not apply to important classes of mid-range, ‘action space’ behavior. But the matter is in the end to be decided in the lab. We describe a research program to do this. (shrink)

Many efforts to establish concepts and theories of the middle range have sought to find an appropriate balance between theoretical abstraction and the desire to remain faithful to the empirical complexity of phenomenon. As with other forms of expertise, those analyzing socio-technical life face acute tensions in attempting to reconcile the general and the specific in a manner which is regarded as credible. Through a consideration of the self-referential implications of STS critiques of traditional notions of science as well (...) as attempts to establish rules for the acceptability of coercive force, this article develops a sense of what is at stake in attempts by actors and analysts to grasp the general and the specific together. Instead of seeking to identify a point of resolution for the two, it advocates and exemplifies the need to attend to the dilemmas associated with the movement between the general and the specific. The middle range concept of “disposal strategies” is offered both as an aid to the study of socio-technical life and as an example of attending to the movement between the general and specific. (shrink)

Recent developmental models assume a higher tendency to take risks in mid-adolescence, while the empirical evidence for this assumption is rather mixed. Most of the studies applied quite different tasks to measure risk-taking behavior and used a narrow age range. The main goal of the present study was to examine risk-taking behavior in four task settings, the Treasure Hunting Task (THT) in a gain and a loss domain, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and the STOPLIGHT task. These task (...) settings differ in affective task moderators, like descriptive vs. experienced outcomes, anticipation of gains vs. losses, static vs. dynamic risk presentation and time pressure vs. no-time pressure and were applied in a sample of 187 participants from age 9 to 18. Beneath age trends, we were interested in their association with individual differences in approach behavior, venturesomeness, impulsivity and empathy above age, gender and fluid intelligence. Our findings revealed that risk-taking behavior is only low to moderately correlated between the four task contexts, suggesting that they capture different aspects of risk-taking behavior. Accordingly, a mid-adolescent peak in risk-propensity was only found under time pressure in the STOPLIGHT that was associated with higher impulsivity and empathy. In contrast, risky decisions decreased with increasing age in task settings, in which losses were anticipated (THT Loss), and this was associated with higher cognitive abilities. We found no age differences when gains were anticipated, neither in a static (THT Gain) nor in a dynamic task setting (BART). These findings clearly suggest the need to consider affective task moderators, as well as individual differences in temperament and cognitive abilities, in actual models about adolescent development. (shrink)

The subject of this research is the reflection of Russian realities of the mid XVIII century in cultural sphere. The article touches upon the problem of cross-cultural communication between Russia and France in the XVIII century: the theme of “French presence” in the Russian art and theater culture of the first half and the middle of the XVIII century. The acquired results elucidate the characteristic features of the relations between French and Russian people during this period. The research was conducted (...) with consideration of the unity of internal and external, subjective and objective factors within the framework of the cultural-historical process. The conclusions were made leaning on the analysis of the entire range of sources use and existing research traditions. The article reveals the contribution of the French representatives of art and culture while their stay in Russia, as well as describes the forms and manifestations of their activity that in prospect affected the image of Russia. The author believes that working at the Russian Court, the French representatives imposed the vision of their country on Russia, transforming the Russian images in the French spirit. The presented materials are valuable for the study of cross-cultural communication between Russia and France in the XVIII century. This article is important and relevant in the conditions of constantly developing cultural dialogue and determination of the new vectors of cooperation between the countries. (shrink)

SummaryAnthropometric differences between the two Koreas are of considerable public and scientific interest given the unique socio-political status of North Korea and the fact that the nations share the same genetic ancestry. This study provides new biosocial evidence on these differences by analysing mid-upper arm circumference as a human welfare indicator. This is the first study to compare the nutritional status of adults surveyed inside North Korea with South Koreans. The MUAC measurements of 2793 North Korean women obtained through a (...) household survey conducted in 2002 were compared with those of 1428 South Korean women surveyed around 2003. Comparative analysis was conducted by plotting centiles and calculating mean differences in MUAC by age. This paper finds that the MUAC of the South Koreans was on average 2.8 cm greater than that of their North Korean peers, with MUAC gaps ranging from 1.6 cm to 3.9 cm and becoming more pronounced with age. This research confirms previous studies on height and weight in the two Germanies and in the two Koreas that have shown that biosocial performance is worse in socialist economies as compared with free-market regimes. (shrink)

Records of certain Government Departments known to have purchased scientific instruments from designated suppliers over long periods are potentially important sources of information on both instruments and their makers. The Office of Ordnance was one such Department. Investigation of its financial and administrative records has shown that the appointment ‘Mathematical Instrument Maker to his Majesty's Office of Ordnance’ brought the holder a substantial trade in instruments for drawing, surveying, and military purposes. Detailed entries in the Bill Books enable not only (...) types, quantities, and prices of instruments supplied to be determined, but also the purposes for which they were required. In many cases the actual users of the instruments are named, with their locations in Great Britain and overseas.The records of the Office of Ordnance are extensive, covering the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century in over ten thousand volumes or bundles. This paper provides an introduction to what is available, and examines in particular the period 1748–1772 when George Adams senior was Mathematical Instrument Maker to this Office. It is shown that during this period Adams supplied over 1500 instruments, ranging from drawing pens to theodolites, detailed in 148 bills amounting to a total value of £2425. Some other well-known instrument makers, such as Thomas Wright, Benjamin Cole & Son, and Jesse Ramsden, were also occasional suppliers of instruments in the same period, while from 1765 onwards the records include bills for instruments purchased by the Office of Ordnance for the Royal Observatory from makers such as Dollond and Bird. The total number of instrument makers' bills located and examined in the period searched, including the 148 by Adams, was 166. In addition, though not within the scope of this paper it was observed that the records contain numerous bills by William Deane before, and by Jeremiah Sisson after, the period of Adams' appointment respectively. (shrink)

Neo-Confucianism was a vast intellectual movement that was launched in Song China and that continued to exert great influence in the countries of East Asia, including Japan, Korean and even Vietnam. By the mid-Ming period in China, it found itself in the midst of a major intellectual transformation, undergoing its most lively philosophical effervescence since its formative stage. My dissertation explores the Neo-Confucian discourse of this time. ;Methodologically, I have attempted to overcome various limitations in existing scholarship, which tends to (...) be devoted to individual thinkers, and sought to provide a wide-ranging contextual treatment of various currents of thought during this period. Also, to explicate what Neo-Confucianism meant to its practitioners, I explore in depth a cardinal philosophical assumption of Neo-Confucianism that was particularly important in mid-Ming Neo-Confucian discourse: the unity between self and world. Without this philosophical underpinning which allows an individual moral agent to contain within himself the whole world, the Neo-Confucian project, which upholds personal morality as the main fulcrum of social well-being, cannot be theoretically sustained. ;By combining these approaches of history and philosophy, I offer a new lens for understanding each of the remarkable thinkers that emerged at that time---Chen Xianzhang , Hu Juren , Zhan Ruoshui , Luo Qinshun , Wang Tingxiang , and Wang Yangming . My account of each thinker seeks to prove that each thinker's philosophy can best be understood as varying responses to the crisis of the moral self in the mid-Ming. In general, mid-Ming thinkers enriched Neo-Confucian thought in the sense that they managed to articulate new conceptual modes by which to recuperate the moral self. ;Although mid-Ming thinkers' philosophical gymnastics represented their endeavor to save Neo-Confucianism, their philosophies, taken together, reveal certain features of the general intellectual milieu at that time. That is, intellectuals contested the idea of the unity of the world---the assumption that made it possible to conceive the individual self as more than an isolated ego. With this shift in the way in which individuals thought about themselves, Neo-Confucianism found itself not just in transformation but also in crisis. (shrink)

Taken from a published report on wound ballistics research during World War II, Figure 1 depicts the abdomen of a cat that has been shaved, anesthetized, marked with a grid, and shot. The individual squares are frames, the caption says, “ from a high speed motion picture of a cat’s abdomen, showing the volume changes and movements caused by a 6/32nd inch steel sphere.” We can recognize in this image the conventions of scientific inscription. The technologies are sophisticated, quantitative, impressive. (...) The image speaks for itself. Or does it? What exactly is happening when an anesthetized cat with a shaved abdomen painted with a grid gets shot, in a laboratory, and when that event is hyper-documented in high speed photographs, and deployed in a range of texts as evidence? And what do these human creations — these highly quantified experimental wounds — tell us about the culture and practice of twentieth-century science? (shrink)

L’histoire européenne s’est construite sur des mariages entre familles souveraines européennes. Pourtant, ce modèle n’est pas universel : de l’autre côté de la Méditerranée, l’Empire ottoman proposa un autre modèle d’unions matrimoniales royales, qui étonnait les voyageurs occidentaux : les sultans ottomans ne prenaient pas d’épouses de noble lignée ; ils cessèrent même progressivement de prendre des épouses tout court, pour leur préférer des concubines esclaves. Leurs filles mêmes, plutôt que d’être mariées “selon leur rang”, étaient données à des “esclaves”. (...) C’est le pragmatisme politique des Ottomans, ainsi que leur constante volonté d’afficher leur supériorité lignagère, qui explique l’apparition de ce modèle à la fin du xve siècle. L’objectif de l’article est de mettre en perspectives les ressorts politiques d’une telle transformation des règles matrimoniales dynastiques et d’en expliciter les conséquences. (shrink)

Sustainable management of natural resources by farmers is under increasing public scrutiny. In Australia, the case of water unsustainably used and stored by agricultural businesses has gained attention with communities in catchments potentially deprived of water and placed at downstream risk. Yet, sustainable water management institutional policy mechanisms remain disjointed around the country. The study reported here applies a strategic response typology to a survey of 404 farmers in four different institutional environments in Australia to explore their responses to institutional (...) pressures. Findings demonstrate a convergence in typologies that relate to farmers organising each other and communities influencing and networking for the benefit of agricultural resource management thereby questioning the traditional continuum of resistance. Furthermore, the mid-range typology ‘avoidance’ emerges as a highly problematic typology for sustainable water management policymakers especially those in weaker institutional environments where there is a need to develop policy instruments that retain farmer water management decision-making power and encourage networks. The paper also extends the strategic response typology to enable understanding of how gender and location affect strategic responses to institutional pressures. Findings provide insight for policy design in times of increasing catastrophic flood and drought conditions exacerbated by poor water management practice. (shrink)

Paradigm debates have been featured in the nursing literature for over four decades. There are at least two opposing paradigms specific to nursing that have remained central in these debates. Advocates of the unitary perspective (or simultaneity paradigm) consider their theories to be more philosophically advanced and contemporary alternatives when compared to the older more traditional ideas characteristic of models they describe as originating from the totality paradigm. In the context of these debates, I focus on some theoretical positions embedded (...) in the unitary perspective, noting their limitations with respect to integrating the individual and social mandates of nursing; nurses are responsible not only for individual health‐related needs, but also for the health of the collective. I explore two hypotheses that may explain the powers of endurance of the unitary perspective. Paley, who outlines the origins of nurses' ‘slave morality’, inspires the first hypothesis. The second hypothesis speaks to the location of nursing knowledge development in the context of liberal ideology. In this work, I outline key conceptualizations of the unitary perspective in order to clearly illustrate the limitations of the unitary perspective for nurses' social mandate. Then, I explore how slave morality and liberal ideological assumptions might both work to sustain the unitary perspective. A paradigm for nursing must have utility in addressing both the health‐related needs of individuals, and for addressing the health of the collective. To this end, I advance suggestions in three areas: first, to transform nurses' slave morality to more honest and noble aspirations; second, to examine liberal ideological premises; and third, to end paradigm debate by resituating elements of the unitary perspective to the level of mid‐range theory, where it could be most effective for research and practice with specific populations. (shrink)

The family of a child with cancer - changes within the family system This study aimed to describe the functioning of families of children with cancer. A semistructured questionnaire was used to interview 116 parents from 58 such families. Changes occurring within the family system from the parents' perspective have been determined and recorded. Most of the changes turned out to be directed at internal relationships within families. Families with much self-orientation have been shown to be prone to transforming into (...) hermetic systems. Polish version of FACES-III was applied to map families as balanced, mid-range or unbalanced. Results of the study underline the importance of illness duration for functioning of the family. Cancer persisted for the shortest time in balanced families, slightly longer in mid-range and the longest in unbalanced families. The difference between balanced and unbalanced families was significant. (shrink)

Faces are complex stimuli that can be described via intuitive facial features like the eyes, nose, and mouth, “configural” features like the distances between facial landmarks, and features that correspond to computations performed in the early visual system (e.g. oriented edges). With regard to this latter category of descriptors, adult face recognition relies disproportionately on information in specific spatial frequency and orientation bands: Many recognition tasks are performed more accurately when adults have access to mid-range spatial frequencies (8-16 cycles/face) (...) and horizontal orientations (Dakin & Watt, 2009). In the current study, we examined how this information bias develops in middle childhood. We recruited children between the ages of 5-10 years old to participate in a simple categorization task that required them to label images according to whether they depicted a face or a house. Critically, children were presented with face and house images comprised either of primarily horizontal orientation energy, primarily vertical orientation energy, or both horizontal and vertical orientation energy. We predicted that any bias favoring horizontal information over vertical should be more evident in faces than in houses, and also that older children would be more likely to show such a bias than younger children. We designed our categorization task to be sufficiently easy that children would perform at near-ceiling accuracy levels, but with variation in response times that would reflect how they rely on different orientations as a function of age and object category. We found that horizontal bias for face detection (but not house detection) correlated significantly with age, suggesting an emergent category-specific bias for horizontal orientation energy that develops during middle childhood. These results thus suggest that the tuning of high-level recognition to specific low-level visual features takes take place over several years of visual development. (shrink)

This study investigated the social factors associated with body-shape preferences for females and males as perceived by Arab women living in Qatar, and correlated the current weight status of women studied with these preferences. The subjects were 535 non-pregnant Arab women aged 20–67 years, who attended heath centres in Doha City, the capital of the State of Qatar. Illustrations of male and female body shapes ranging from very thin to very obese using the 9-figure Silhouettes scale were shown to women, (...) and they were asked to select their preferred figure. Body mass index (BMI) was used to determine the weight status of women studied. Age, educational level and employment status were found to be significantly associated with ideal body-shape preference for both males and females, whereas marital status and current weight status had no significant association. In general, the Arab women studied selected a more mid-range of body fatness for males than for females. It is concluded that attention should be given to sociocultural factors, such as body-shape preferences, in any programmes to promote ideal body weight for the public. (shrink)

In this study, we use a mixed methods research design to investigate how national cultural forces may impede or enhance the positive impact of females’ economic and political empowerment on increasing gender diversity of corporate boards. Using both a longitudinal correlation-based methodology and a configurational approach with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, we integrate theoretical mechanisms from gender schema and institutional theories to develop a mid-range theory about how female empowerment and national culture shape gender diversity on corporate boards around (...) the world. With our configurational approach, we conceptually and empirically model the complexity that is associated with the simultaneous interdependencies, both complementary and substitutive ones, between female empowerment processes and various cultural dimensions. Our findings contribute unique insights to research focused on board gender diversity as well as provide information for firm decision makers and policymakers about possible solutions for addressing the continuing issue of the underrepresentation of women on corporate boards. (shrink)

Focusing on clothing and adornment (dress), this worldwide cross-cultural comparison asks why people in some societies appear to dress in uniform or standardized ways, whereas in other societies individuals display considerable variability in dress. The broader research question is why some societies have more within-group variation than others. Hypotheses are tested on 80 societies drawn from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). The central hypotheses consider the impact of general societal tightness or looseness, degree of egalitarianism as well as other aspects (...) of societal complexity, and the role of resource stress on dress standardization. Exploratory methods identify four latent constructs of dress from newly coded variables, one latent construct for tightness/looseness, and one latent construct for resource stress. As expected, (1) increased societal tightness was positively related to increased standardization and rules regarding dress and (2) increased resource stress is generally related to more standardization of dress and rules regarding adornment. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, the predictors of tightness–looseness differ from the predictors of dress. Most importantly, resource stress negatively predicts tightness but positively predicts three of the latent dress constructs. The relationship between dress standardization and societal complexity may be curvilinear, with mid-range societies having more standardization. Although some of the theorized relationships are supported (including that standardization of dress is predicted by societal tightness and more resource stress), at the end of paper we discuss some puzzling findings, speculate about possible explanations, and suggest further lines of research. (shrink)

To date researchers planning experiments have always lived by the mantra that 'using equal sample sizes gives the best results' and although unequal groups are also used in experimentation, it is not the preferred method of many and indeed actively discouraged in literature. However, during live study planning there are other considerations that we must take into account such as availability of study participants, statistical power and, indeed, the cost of the study. These can all make allocating equal sample sizes (...) difficult, and sometimes near impossible. This, some might say, means that the study would not adhere to rigorous statistical standard (Rosenbaum and Rubin, 1985). However, here we present evidence that, not only is this a false assumption, but that we may actually gain more power in the study by actually using unequal groups. Here, data from a Sepsis Biomarker study is used, in which the aim is to predict, by biomarker level and presence, whether the patient would go on to develop sepsis. It was found that larger control groups may give more power to studies looking for an effect in the mid range but not for large or small effects. This study shows merit in the hypothesis that more power can be achieved when a larger control group is used. Published by the Ministry of Defence at dstl - Reference DSTLTR92592 P2PP2R-2016-02-23T13:39:45. (shrink)

Some feminists have seen sex role theory as limited, even dangerous; others see it as useful mid-range theory. This article sheds light on this debate through an examination of the discourse of the men's liberation movement of the 1970s. Men's liberation leaders grappled with the paradox of simultaneously acknowledging men's institutional privileges and the costs of masculinity to men. The language of sex roles was the currency through which they negotiated this paradox. By the late 1970s, men's liberation had (...) disappeared. The conservative and moderate wings of men's liberation became an anti-feminist men's rights movement, facilitated by the language of sex roles. The progressive wing of men's liberation abandoned sex role language and formed a profeminist movement premised on a language of gender relations and power. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of this case for debates about sex role theory, and urges the study of contemporary organizations whose discourse is based on the language of sex roles. (shrink)

Exploration of the fundamental motivations for attributing moral responsibility to various kinds of collectives serves as the basis for understanding the meaning of such attributions. Such attributions have a mid-range, limited justification. The analysis has broad implications for a wide variety of writings on aspects of collective moral responsibility, revealing serious deficiencies of any theory of corporate moral personhood.

While for decades nursing has advocated for theory‐informed practice, more recent attention has tended to focus on mid‐range theory rather than the earlier focus on developing grand theory to encompass all of nursing practice. However, there has been continued interest in the holistic nursing community on grand theory and, in particular, on Integral Theory. Although Integral Theory's four‐quadrant (AQAL) perspective is familiar in nursing, little is known about how it is being used by nurses in direct practice. The purpose (...) of this interpretive descriptive study was to provide a practice‐based perspective on Ken Wilber's Integral Theory in professional nursing practice. The following research question was investigated: How does Integral Theory assist nurses in describing and understanding their professional work? Nurses participating in this study used Integral Theory as a map or heuristic that gave structure to an inquiry process in professional nursing practice and in nursing education in a manner that was holonic, multiperspectival, and self‐reflective. Challenges constraining nurses’ use of Integral Theory included its intricacy, as well as contextual factors in practice environments. Implications for nursing practice and education for the use of Integral Theory's meta‐framework are described. (shrink)

Fractal patterns offer one way to represent the rough complexity of the natural world. Whilst they dominate many of our visual experiences in nature, little large-scale perceptual research has been done to explore how we respond aesthetically to these patterns. Previous research (Taylor et al., 2011) suggests that the fractal patterns with mid-range fractal dimensions have universal aesthetic appeal. Perceptual and aesthetic responses to visual complexity have been more varied with findings suggesting both linear (Forsythe et al., 2011) and (...) curvilinear (Berlyne, 1970) relationships. Individual differences have been found to account for many of the differences we see in aesthetic responses but some, such as culture, have received little attention within the fractal and complexity research fields. This 2-study paper aims to test preference responses to fractal dimension and visual complexity, using a large cohort (N=443) of participants from around the world to allow universality claims to be tested. It explores the extent to which age, culture and gender can predict our preferences for fractally complex patterns. Following exploratory analysis that found strong correlations between fractal dimension and visual complexity, a series of linear mixed-effect models were implemented to explore if each of the individual variables could predict preference. The first tested a linear complexity model (likelihood of selecting the more complex image from the pair of images) and the second a mid-range fractal dimension model (likelihood of selecting an image within mid-range). Results show that individual differences can reliably predict preferences for complexity across culture, gender and age. However, in fitting with current findings the mid-range models show greater consistency in preference not mediated by gender, age or culture. This paper supports the established theory that the mid-range fractal patterns appear to be a universal construct underlying preference but also highlights the fragility of universal claims by demonstrating individual differences in preference for the interrelated concept of visual complexity. This highlights a current stalemate in the field of empirical aesthetics. (shrink)

In spite of its infinite expectation value, the St. Petersburg game is not only a gamble without supply in the real world, but also one without demand at apparently very reasonable asking prices. We offer a rationalizing explanation of why the St. Petersburg bargain is unattractive on both sides (to both house and player) in the mid-range of prices (finite but upwards of about $4). Our analysis – featuring (1) the already-established fact that the average of finite ensembles of (...) the St. Petersburg game grows with ensemble size but is unbounded, and (2) our own simulation data showing that the debt-to-entry fee ratio rises exponentially – explains why both house and player are quite rational in abstaining from the St. Petersburg game. The house will be unavoidably (and intentionally) exposed to very large ensembles (with very high averages, and so very costly to them), while contrariwise even the well-heeled player is not sufficiently capitalized (as our simulation data reveals) to be able to capture the potential gains from large-ensemble play. (Smaller ensembles, meanwhile, enjoy low means, as others have shown, and so are not worth paying more than $4 to play, even if a merchant were to offer them at such low prices per trial.) Both sides are consequently rational in abstaining from entry into the St. Petersburg market in the mid-range of asking prices. We utilize the concept of capitalization vis-à-vis a gamble to make this case. Classical analyses of this question have paid insufficient attention to the question of the propriety of using expected values to assess the St. Petersburg gamble. And extant analyses have not noted the average-maximum-debt-before-breaking-even figures, and so are incomplete. (shrink)

A study of the organization of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) rituals in time and space illuminates a postulated mechanism on shifting focus in action parsing, from mid-ranged actions to finer movements (gestures). Performance of OCD rituals also involves high concentration rather than the automated, less attended performance of rituals in normal and stereotyped behaviors in animals and humans. (Published Online February 8 2007).

This new book takes an innovative and novel approach to the study of jurisprudence. Drawing together a range of specialists, making original contributions, it provides a summary, analysis, and critique of basic themes in, and major contributions to, the study of jurisprudence. The book explores issues and ideas in jurisprudence in a way that integrates them with legal study more broadly, avoiding the tendency in recent years for the subject to become overly inward-looking, specialist and technical, leaving students and (...) the subject adrift. It picks up mid-range concepts such as rights, sovereignty, and adjudication and charts their interrelation and uses in law and legal theory. The approach taken to the subject is an interdisciplinary one, and involves making linkages with contemporary issues in political and social theory, such as the changing role of the state, forms of dispute resolution and the courts. It also addresses topics not normally covered, or covered only indirectly in other jurisprudence textbooks, such as globalisation and legal culture. Its coverage is therefore broad and links legal, political, philosophical, and social analysis. (shrink)

From mid-2020 until early 2023, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a series of essays that, when summed up, represents a valediction for English and American literary studies as practiced during the last half century. Some of the Chronicle authors, enjoying the privilege of tenure, speak for the profession as it was in healthier times. Others, representing a younger generation of scholars, hold on to unstable teaching positions. All are disconsolate.The essays, collected on the Chronicle website, look back to those (...) earlier times to seek the reasons for today's dreary situation. In dirgelike recitations, external causes are named and excoriated: the drying up of state funding, the growth of administrative personnel at the cost of faculty positions, the reluctance of debt-ridden students to concentrate on studies not leading to jobs, and the general parental and public resistance to anything considered effete. But at least one contributor to the series, Michael Clune of Case Western Reserve University, will not permit his fellow teachers to escape whipping: “Our fuzziness about what we do raises in the minds of our publics the not unreasonable assumption that we don't know what we're doing. The crisis in the humanities requires that we be open and honest about our discipline's rationales.”What does such a call to action mean? Does Clune ask for more exacting curricular control, more agreement as to pedagogical mission, a greater consensus about certifiable merit in professional advancement? About specific alterations to the system, he is not forthcoming, and this generalization applies to most of the other contributors as well: the prognosis is clear but the cure beyond anyone's reach. Why? To propose radical changes to the humane disciplines, even when most necessary, invites deep resistance. If professors are largely political liberals, they are also pedagogical archconservatives. Clune is nevertheless right in asking fellow professors for candor about what they are doing. The one strategy that cannot work is rehearsing their woes in public. Nor can a focus on the theoretical skirmishes in which they entangle themselves create the kind of consumer demand—student demand—that is needed. Unless they can collectively devise (or recover) intellectual attractions to draw in a new generation of students and fill lecture halls and seminar seats with them, humanists will be even further shunted to the sidelines.Another essayist, herself determined to get matters straightened out and thereby save the discipline, imagines her colleagues uniting to establish a stricter definition of what they collectively should do. Hannah Walser of the Harvard Society of Fellows believes that professors teaching literary works have been all too satisfied with the wasteful art of praising or derogating the performance or rhetorical brilliance of their colleagues: “In literary studies’ more affirmative modes, elaborate assurances of our colleagues’ competence—those more-a-comment-than-a-questions that praise a talk as beautiful, brilliant, powerful, and so on—end up standing in for actual arguments about the rightness or wrongness of a claim.” Literary works do not function as truth-telling “claims,” however, but as imaginative creations entertaining both truth and falsehood, the “real” as well as the “unreal.” In order to read those creations, and to share those readings with others, teachers must agree on the empirical terms, the evidentiary tools, to use. Walser rightly wants everyone to play the same game with the same rules. Only then can teachers come to terms with literary objects whose ultimate value is determined by something direct and visceral—aesthetic pleasure. But while Walser is right to call for procedural agreement, such a call will not, by itself, entice students to return to the classroom.In another essay, Katie Kadue looks back nostalgically to a time when, in its modest way, the world of literary studies had “stars,” when the English Institute featured brilliant personages at well-attended meetings, when jobs were plentiful and seminal books about theoretical issues were everywhere discussed. To Kadue, a young scholar, such moments seem all the more dazzling and attractive by virtue of their absence today. Were “stars” again to capture collective attention, a sign would be given that the humanities could recover its health and make literary study attractive to students again.Hence the Chronicle publication concludes with portraits of two humanists, Sianne Ngai and Mark McGurl, who have gained some recognition and acclaim. Perhaps, as the Chronicle suggests, with them a new constellation of stars is coming into view.Ngai is the author of three impressive and widely discussed monographs, the most recent being Theory of the Gimmick (2020), which, with a complexity uniquely its own, asks the reader to study the mixed attraction and repulsion produced by the intrusion of a “gimmick”—something in a text that draws attention to itself and exposes the inner workings of the text. When we encounter a gimmick in a text, it provokes both suspicion and pleasure: “When we say something is a gimmick, we mean it is overrated and deceptive, that you would have to be a sucker to fall for it. Yet gimmicks exert a strange hold on us. As with a magic show, we can enjoy the gimmick even while we know we are being tricked.” Other gimmicks—arousing “small” or “minor” affects—have been overlooked or dismissed in conventional literary discourse. Ngai, entranced by them, also argues that, beyond suspicion, pleasure, and annoyance, gimmicks have the power to reveal deep cultural, economic, and political forces shaped by contemporary capitalism.Ngai's strategy is ingenious and idiosyncratic. Its apparent strength is that it can explain everything—literary, economic, political, and cultural—that comes within its range. But its very originality renders it inoperable by anyone, be it student or teacher, other than its inventor. Like Marshall McLuhan, Hugh Kenner, Leslie Fiedler, and Stanley Fish before her—each of them working with a home-grown methodology—Ngai herself is her theory. Her inimitability prevents her theoretical procedures from becoming a generally shared answer to the classroom problems of literary study.McGurl, a sociologist of textual production, readership, and consumption, is more conventional than Ngai. He is certainly more omnivorous. He is interested in everything out there for the reader or listener to acquire, high or low, bad or good, by way of book, podcast, recording, or any other means or genre. His recent book Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon shows how the company “has created the psychological and temporal conditions that not only alter how fiction is bought, sold, distributed, and read, but also how it is produced.” Might it be possible—and attractive—for teachers and students to follow and extend procedures like those of McGurl? An immense panorama of verbal matter might thereby await classroom after classroom. With much to read and much to hear, professors and students could examine and evaluate data aplenty. Might classrooms and seminar rooms once again be filled, this time by sociologists of literature? Professor Clune's query—“Why should students listen to me? What claim do I have on the public?”—could then be answered: We and you hereby claim everything written as our province; we, a new generation of humanists, will thus have work enough.Alas, for universities and colleges to make such a move—to resolve that literary study should embrace all of writing—would be to forfeit the one inestimably valuable form of intellectual capital now and forever readily available to them: that unique body of works known as literature: poetry, drama, fiction. Some professors appear to believe that this capital asset is wanting, depleted as a source, and therefore impotent to generate exciting scholarly work or teaching—which is why, for the last four or so decades, “theory” in its many varieties has proved so seductive. But theoretical discourse, derivative and secondary, proves vapid without the fiction, poetry, and drama from which it derived and on which it survives. Recognizing the rare power to be found in the works themselves and nowhere else, it is to those works that teachers must somehow return. Only then will there be compelling reason to hope that students will follow. (shrink)

A substantial body of empirical evidence shows that individuals overweight extreme events and act in conflict with the expected utility theory. These findings were the primary motivation behind the development of a rank-dependent utility theory for choice under uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that some simple empirical rules of thumb for choice under uncertainty are consistent with the rank-dependent utility theory.

In the mid-eighteenth century David Hume argued that successful prediction tells us nothing about the truth of the predicting theory. But physical theory routinely predicts the values of observable magnitudes within very small ranges of error. The chance of this sort of predictive success without a true theory suggests that Hume's argument is flawed. However, Colin Howson argues that there is no flaw and examines the implications of this disturbing conclusion; he also offers a solution to one of the central (...) problems of Western philosophy, the problem of induction. (shrink)

At the mid-point of the twentieth century, many philosophers in the English-speaking world regarded political and moral philosophy as all but moribund. Thinkers influenced by logical positivism believe that ethical statements are merely disguised expressions of individual emotion lacking propositional force, or that the conditions for the validation of ethical statements could not be specified, or that their content, however humanly meaningful, is inexpressible. Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy presents thirty-four articles written by research scholars numerous fields-philosophy, political theory, medicine, (...) law, biology, economics, ecology and sociology-treating a broad range of topics in practical philosophy. The Institute for Philosophy and Public Affairs has been home for these ideas, pioneering a distinctive method of conducting inquiry into the moral dimensions of public life, and contributing to public discussion and deliberation. Members of the Institute reject the idea that public philosophy means reaching into the philosopher's tool-kit and "applying" prefabricated theories to particular problems. They set in motion a dialogue between the distinctive moral features of practical problems and the more general moral theories or considerations that seem most likely to elucidate these problems. The volume is divided into five areas: "Politics, Civic Life, and Moral Education"; "Diversity, Identity, and Equal Opportunity"; "Human Rights, Development Ethics, and International Justice"; "Biotechnology, Genetic Research, and Health Policy"; and "Natural Environment, Human Communities." Philosophical Dimensions of Public Policy presents empirical data and philosophical arguments with the intention of informing public policy and public deliberation. Scholars as well as graduate and undergraduate students are certain to find it useful to their research work. Verna V. Gehring is editor at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. She serves as editor of Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, reviewer of ethics manuscripts for Oxford University Press, and moderator for the Aspen Institute. William A. Galston is director at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland. He is a political theorist who both studies and participates in American politics and domestic policy. Galston is the author of nearly one hundred articles on moral and political theory, American politics, and public policy, and the author of five books, including Liberal Purposes. (shrink)

This wide-ranging book examines the new dynamics of corporate social responsibility and the impact they have had on the transformation of business corporations. Written by an international group of distinguished experts in management and organization studies, economics and sociology, the book leads one to theoretically and practically rethink CSR, a movement that has developed into a strong and rich institutional domain since the mid 1990s. Through 14 chapters, the book shows the complexity, diversity and progression of the institutional work performed (...) by a large number of individual and organizational actors in specialized networks to develop this strategic field. Central to this book are: the core issues associated with the field of CSR; recent advances in the development, dissemination and implementation of public and private standards of social responsibility; the pressing challenges of developing sustainable strategies of value creation in the face of global warming and underdevelopment; and finally, examples of how CSR has been implemented and institutionalized within business organizations with special attention to the role played by a variety of social actors in organizational change. Conceived as a movement, corporate social responsibility spearheads a transformation project challenging traditional and outmoded forms of corporate governance that frequently pose troublesome ethical issues. From this standpoint, Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Change will serve as a reference point for academics, researchers, managers and practitioners. (shrink)

Sociology originated in the mid-nineteenth century from a new confidence in the power of science to explain the world on a mathematical foundation. Both mathematics and sociology transformed over the ensuing century, inverting the hierarchical relationship from sociology as a mathematics-based science of complex human configurations to mathematics as a complex science based on social institutions. That is, where sociology began as the hard case for mathematics, it became possible to see mathematics as the hard case for sociology. In this (...) light, we examine a number of motivations and provocations for the sociology of mathematics, from language and social cognition to Marxist and materialist skepticism of ideology, and sample the evidence and arguments brought to bear on the sociology of mathematics at a range of scales. (shrink)

Studying a broad range of sources from the late-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, the authors of this collection of articles analyze historical models of the relationship between order and disorder that the political and intellectual upheavals of the Renaissance brought about.

Thomas Aquinas was one of the most significant Christian thinkers of the middle ages and ranks among the greatest philosophers and theologians of all time. In the mid-thirteenth century, as a teacher at the University of Paris, Aquinas presided over public university-wide debates on questions that could be put forward by anyone about anything. The Quodlibetal Questions are Aquinas's edited records of these debates. Unlike his other disputed questions, which are limited to a few specific topics such as evil or (...) divine power, Aquinas's Quodlibetal Questions contain his treatment of hundreds of questions on a wide range of topics—from ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion to dogmatic theology, sacramental theology, moral theology, eschatology, and much more. And, unlike his other disputed questions, none of the questions treated in his Quodlibetal Questions were of Aquinas's own choosing—they were all posed for him to answer by those who attended the public debates. As such, this volume provides a window onto the concerns of students, teachers, and other interested parties in and around the university at that time. For the same reason it contains some of Aquinas's fullest, and in certain cases his only, treatments of philosophical and theological questions that have maintained their interest throughout the centuries. (shrink)

This study draws upon naturalistic ethnographic data to expand current understandings regarding the socio-communicative capabilities and challenges of children with autism spectrum disorders in mid-childhood. Affording a view of the children’s spontaneous interactions within naturally occurring family and community settings, the study explores a range of discursive resources utilized by the children to accomplish socially reciprocal positive politeness practices in tandem with others. Emphasizing contextualized deployment of politeness forms in interaction, the practice-based conception developed here construes positive politeness as (...) a discursive process encompassing both socio-cultural and interpersonal knowledge/skills; and contributes to a perspective in which social and communicative realms are conceptualized as integrated domains of functioning. (shrink)

The normative notion of fittingness figures saliently in the work of a number of ethical theorists writing in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries and has in recent years regained prominence, occupying an important place in the theoretical tool kits of a range of contemporary writers. Yet the notion remains strikingly undertheorized. This article offers a (partial) remedy. I proceed by canvassing a number of attempts to analyze the fittingness relation in other terms, arguing that none is fully adequate. (...) In explaining why various analyses of fittingness fail, I draw into relief certain of the relation’s constitutive features and spotlight some of its interesting and important connections to various other properties. Along the way, I highlight the relation’s relevance to a number of ongoing debates in normative and metanormative philosophy. I conclude by indicating some directions for further research. (shrink)

In this far-ranging series of essays on selected philosophers and a variety of social and philosophical issues, Quinton, the president of Trinity College, Oxford, shows that at least some college presidents can be intelligent, urbane, witty, and wise. Written between the late sixties and the mid-seventies, these perceptive essays reflect some of the preoccupations of that time, but also manage to embrace a wide spectrum of issues that are philosophical in the broad sense that Quinton espouses. Both in his “Preface” (...) and throughout his essays, Quinton shows himself to have been immune to the enclosed, autonomous, and blatantly unhistorical style of philosophy in the two decades leading up to the mid-seventies when the social and political turmoil in Europe and the United States woke many from their analytical reverie. (shrink)

A cognitive-developmental theory of synaesthesias - those subjective states fusing separate perceptual modalities - is supported by research indicating their neocortical basis and first appearance as part of the semantic learning of words, letters, numbers, and time in the early grade school years. It contrasts with models of a primitive, anomalous holdover from an earlier neural hyperconnectivity, widely assumed in recent neuroscience approaches. Classical synaesthesias, occurring most vividly in high 'fantasy proneness' children, as well as the more normative and less (...) stereotyped 'synaesthetic meanings' of mid childhood, would later be internalized as the imagistic side of Vygotsky's 'inner speech' - then introspectable as the typically diffuse felt sense of semantic significance. A synaesthetically structured felt meaning becomes the matrix for the development of metaphoric understanding in later childhood. The further exteriorized development of the full range of synaesthesias in adults high in imaginative absorption and creativity becomes central to the arts, culture, and meditative states of consciousness. This approach overlaps with that of Ramachandran on synaesthesia as a window to the evolution of language and metaphor, but separates the human capacity for cross- modal translation, as the root of all symbol formation, from the full range of synaesthesias that would be its later mid childhood differentiation and adds in the wider adult potential for higher developments of this normally implicit synaesthetic consciousness. (shrink)

Patients and family members (N = 671) were surveyed in five Mid-Atlantic U.S. hospitals to ascertain the number and kinds of ethical concerns they are presently experiencing or have previously experienced while being sick or receiving medical care. Seventy percent of participants had at least one (range 0–14) type of ethical concern or question. The most commonly experienced concerns pertained to being unsure how to plan ahead or complete an advance directive (29.4%), being unsure whether someone in the family (...) was able to make their own decisions (29.2%), deciding about limiting life-sustaining treatments (28.6%), wondering about disclosing personal medical information to others in the family (26.4%) and not being sure whether to undergo treatment because of cost (26.2%). Most were interested to some degree in getting help from ethics consultants in the future (76.6%). Given this prevalence, common concerns might usefully be addressed systematically, rather than exclusively on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Vuh to the Present ed. by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. FoustBernardo R. Vargas (bio)The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Vuh to the Present. Edited by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021. Pp. 480. Paperback $46.75, isbn 978-1-4742-9626-7.Philosophy in the United States continues to be among the least diverse disciplines in the humanities, dominated (...) statistically by white males, with the next largest group being white female philosophers.1 This lack of diversity affects how we define philosophy and who counts as a philosopher. As the editors of The Philosophies of America Reader, Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust, put it, "Just as history has fashioned and popularized distorted accounts of the 'discovery' of America, it has done the same in its presentation of American Philosophy" (p. xv). This exemplary collection of essays from across the Americas allows the readers and instructors to reimagine what we construe as philosophy and who we imagine an American philosopher to be.The editors offer diverse essays covering an impressive timeframe, ranging from the Popol Vuh, whose oral tradition from Guatemala predates Spanish colonization and was recorded in the mid-1500s, to contemporary philosophers such as Gregory Pappas. The collection excels in offering texts that typical philosophy anthologies are unlikely to include, which the editors call "unusual suspects" that have been historically marginalized, while also maintaining more familiar or "classical" figures (pp. xv–xvi). These "unusual suspects" include women, Latinx, American Indigenous, Black, and Caribbean thinkers.The Philosophies of America Reader offers various resources to enhance the student and instructor's experience. The book is structured into four themes: (1) Selfhood and Identity, (2) Knowing and Learning, (3) Aesthetics and Spirituality, and (5) Violence and Peace. The editors design these themes to fit the traditionally understood areas of philosophy of metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. Even if the instructor's course description does not specifically target American Philosophy, these thematic categories are valuable for th ose who wish to incorporate a more diverse reading list. For example, these essays could easily apply to courses such as Critical Philosophy of Race, Introduction to Philosophy, or Introduction to Ethics. Each thematic section also features a "For Further Reading" segment, which includes selected secondary sources to broaden research or substitute texts. In addition, the editors provide a detailed [End Page 1] syllabus example, including a Course Description and Outline of the Course for a bi-weekly class, which is neatly divided into a 16-week reading schedule. They also include instructive sections such as a Note to the Teacher to aid in thinking through how to interact with the unfamiliar texts and a Note to the Student to guide their disposition and readings.Moreover, the text presents introductory essays for each thematic section. These essays provide an overview of the content and delve into the author's positionality, such as their geography, context, motivations for writing, race, ethnicity, and native tongue. The introductions are philosophically robust yet accessible to new philosophy students and are not filled with unnecessary philosophical jargon.Due to its large scope of thinkers, this text offers a vibrant opportunity to dialogue with philosophers who share or differ in their perspectives across the major thematic categories. The editors emphasize that although this is not a history of thought, the texts present lineages of progression, elaboration, and disagreement intended to guide instructors in connecting the texts with their students (p. xx). Furthermore, this allows the reader and the instructor to avoid isolating their discourse to a particular time, geography, gender, or race and ethnicity. In addition to the biographical and contextual information given in the introductions, a small yet helpful detail is a timeline of the selections that further contextualizes the readings.I wish to underscore two key clusters of essays amidst the vast array of 50 readings related to Asian-American and Mexican-American discourse for the instructor's consideration, particularly those teaching in the United States. These two large population groups deserve consideration as enrollment rates for Asian Americans and Hispanics (of whom Mexicans are the largest population... (shrink)

The case of highland Yemen up to around the middle of the twentieth century involves a history different from most Muslim societies in that, from 1919, the Yemeni state was independent. The problem I address concerns the utility of thinking about the highland property regime in this era in relation to the categories of "private" and "public." What sort of antecedents existed, at the level of property relations, for later commercial transformations that would culminate in such things as Pizza Hut (...) franchises? In Yemen, the polity of the period was a type of Islamic state, one based on the shari`a in ideology and in application and headed by a classical form of jurist-leader, a figure known as an imam. Prior to the twentieth century, this Yemeni form of a shari`a-based Islamic polity had a thousand year history in the highlands. Shari`a courts had exclusive competence as state tribunals, and judges, trained on old-style law books, heard the full gamut of litigation. By contrast, colonial changes in other Muslim societies typically entailed a sharp alteration and restriction of the sphere of the shari`a, often limiting application to the domain of "family law" alone. At the same time, the highlands had yet to commence the other great and, elsewhere, ongoing modern transformation of the shari`a, codification and legislation, which would not begin in Yemen until after the Revolution of 1962.Highland society at mid-century was agrarian, based primarily on settled plow cultivation, and the associated property regime was almost exclusively "private." In Yemen, the "private" property regime centered conceptually on milk, a category of individual ownership of immoveable property, and on the concept of mal, a commercial commodity. As a form of private, landed property, milk involved rights that could be acquired, alienated and inherited, and the associated agricultural production was based on lease contracts between landlords and sharecroppers. Pious endowments were the basis for one of the great Muslim "public" institutions, which supported mosques, schools, water systems, etc. Another fundamental "public" institution was an extension of the "private" commercial notion of mal into the state institution of the 'House of Mal,' or Treasury. Other key "public" institutions were the imamate itself, a form of Islamic state, and the shari`a court. This shari`a system can be thought of in terms of three levels of legal texts. At the highest level, shari`a doctrine, the jurisprudence of the period, constituted an ideology of the property regime. The doctrine provided models for both the range of substantive undertakings and for court processes, but the relationship of these models to the property relations and to litigation on the ground is a key question. At the lowest level, the routine documents of ongoing, uncontested practice proliferated. These included ordinary sale documents, leases, marriage contracts, endowment instruments, wills and estate inheritance instruments. Between high doctrine and low instruments were the records of shari`a court judgments, records in which the conflicts and contradictions of the property system were expressed, argued and ruled upon. In certain problem areas of the law, the ruling imams's personal doctrinal "choices" were designed to guide court judges in their rulings. (shrink)

This book investigates the scope and significance of Stanley Cavell’s lifelong and lasting contribution to aesthetic understanding. Focusing on various strands of the rich body of Cavell’s philosophical work, the authors explore connections between his wide-ranging writings on literature, music, film, opera, autobiography, Wittgenstein, and Austin to contemporary currents in aesthetic thinking. Most centrally, the writings brought together here from an international team of senior, mid-career, and emerging scholars, explore the illuminating power of Cavell’s work for our deeper and richer (...) comprehension of the intricate relations between aesthetic and ethical understanding. The chapters show what aesthetic understanding consists of, how such understanding might be articulated in the tradition of Cavell following Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and why this mode of human understanding is particularly important. At a time of quickening interest in Cavell and the tradition of which he is a central part and present-day leading exponent, this book offers insight into the deepest contributions of a major American philosopher and the profound role that aesthetic experience can play in the humane understanding of persons, society, and culture. (shrink)

In the mid-1960s and 1970s the field of business ethics saw a basic shift in emphasis from personal responsibility to corporate responsibility. While the notion of corporate responsibility has come to be a dominant concept in the field of business ethics since that time, it is a contested concept that admits of a range of conceptions. A concern underlying this paper is that many of these conceptions are less adequate than they might be. This paper has two overlapping goals. (...) First, it seeks to elaborate a more adequate conception of corporate responsibility by drawing upon critical theory to distinguish three different normative realms (viz., legitimacy, morality and ethics). Second, the paper attempts to indicate from a critical theory perspective the nature of corporate responsibilities in each of these realms. The paper begins with a short introduction to German critical theory and an explanation of the different normative realms. The following three sections elaborate in turn the responsibilities of corporations in each on the three normative realms. Finally, the conclusion attempts to indicate some of the advantages of a critical theory conception of corporate responsibility. (shrink)

This article challenges claims that the Japanese neologism shūkyō lacked an established nature prior to the twentieth century and had little to do with experiences of the urban masses. It accordingly problematizes the term as a largely legal concept, highlighting historical newspapers as underutilized sources that offer insight into Meiji popular discourse and attendant conceptualizations of “religion.” This article endorses a shift in both our chronological understanding of shūkyō’s conceptual history as well as its sociocultural mobility. By expanding the milieu (...) understood as being familiar with debates on a range of “religious” issues, this article thereby offers a counter-narrative in which regular use of shūkyō begins to clearly emerge from the mid-1880s, exponentially increasing with the following decades. (shrink)

This lecture examines Alexander Pope's depictions of passion and sentiment in a range of early writings, including his ‘Prologue’ to Addison's Cato, Eloisa to Abelard and An Essay on Man. It then shows how often Pope belittled his own forays into affectivity and relates that tendency to a wider interest in ‘sceptical perspectivism’. The presence of the latter is traced in other works such as John Gay's Trivia, Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees and the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury's (...) Characteristics, all of which – the last especially – are invoked to explain the dialogic methods employed in Pope's Rape of the Lock and his Dunciad Variorum. Finally, the argument suggests that, despite suffering a loss of self-confidence in the mid-1730s, Pope was able to recover his satirical idiom precisely by fusing his passionate and dialogic concerns in the Epilogue to the Satires of 1738. (shrink)

This volume aimed to highlight narrative identities of European cities or city neighbourhoods that have been overlooked, such as mid-sized cities. These cities are neither small towns nor metropolises, cities that are now unveiling their appeal or specificity. The present special issue thus covers a range of representations of cities. The articles investigate more systematically how different texts deal with various cities from different experiential and fictional perspectives. The issue covers the geographical scope across Europe, from east to west (...) or vice versa, as well as a range of different works of national literature(s), but with a clear emphasis on mid-sized European cities that have until now been deemed as lesser-known, secondary, peripheral, ‘other’ cities that are in the focus of the research of the COST project Writing Urban Places. New Narratives of the European City, within which this journal issue is being published. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the topic of the book and the core questions that drive it. The idea that becoming virtuous involves acquiring the likeness of another, or imitating a model or exemplar, is deeply at home in literature on character and moral education. The idea that God might constitute such a model seems far less so. Yet it has a long history in a range of religious and philosophical traditions. In ancient philosophy, it is associated strongly with Plato, but (...) it also played a central role among many other philosophical schools. It also occupied an important place in the Islamic ethical tradition, which this book will explore taking Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālīas its leading figure. (shrink)

The purpose of this contemporary history study is to analyse nursing strategy documents produced by NHS Trusts in England in the period 2009–2013, through a process of discourse analysis. In 2013 the Francis Report on the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was published. The Report highlighted the full range of organisational failures in a Trust that valued financial efficiency over patient care. The analysis that followed, however, dwelt heavily on the failings of the nurses. Nursing strategy documents at that time (...) served to set the future direction for NHS Trusts, prescribing specific value frameworks for each nursing workforce. However, the values chosen frequently conflicted with each other pitting nursing values against a managerial trope. It is argued that documents provided a response to wider NHS concerns and high-profile failures in care, particularly the Francis Report, paying lip service to staff engagement whilst maintaining a corporate focus. Nursing values were placed firmly within a managerialist discourse, one that has needed to be re-evaluated in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Wider implications of the research suggest discussion of value conflict may be beneficial within nursing education and a truly local approach to strategy creation would potentially promote staff buy-in to strategy documents. (shrink)

The Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem. The collection includes work by pragmatism's founders, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as seminal writings by mid-twentieth-century pragmatists such as Sidney Hook, C. I. Lewis, Nelson Goodman, Rudolf Carnap, Wilfrid Sellars, and W.V.O. Quine. This reader also includes the most important (...) work in contemporary pragmatism by philosophers like Susan Haack, Cornel West, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Cheryl Misak, and Robert Brandom. Each selection is a stand-alone piece--not an excerpt or book chapter--and each is presented fully unabridged. The Pragmatism Reader challenges the notion that pragmatism fell into a midcentury decline and was dormant until the advent of "neopragmatism" in the 1980s. This comprehensive anthology reveals a rich and highly influential tradition running unbroken through twentieth-century philosophy and continuing today. It shows how American pragmatist philosophers have contributed to leading philosophical debates about truth, meaning, knowledge, experience, belief, existence, justification, and freedom. Covers pragmatist philosophy from its origins to today Features key writings by the leading pragmatist thinkers Demonstrates the continuity and enduring influence of pragmatism Challenges prevailing notions about pragmatism Includes only stand-alone pieces, completely unabridged Reflects the full range of pragmatist themes, arguments, concerns, and commitments. (shrink)

A theme like “town and science” invites to comparative analysis, and suggests questions like these: Is the urban context a particularly fertile soil for the development of scientific thinking? Or rather the contrary? Is it fertile or barren under specific circumstances? Or does it favour a particular kind of scientific activity?General answers to such questions can hardly be found; still, they may provide case studies with a guiding perspective. Case studies, on the other hand, may lead to better understanding of (...) the implications of the general questions if not to answers. In the following I therefore try to read the emergence of Mesopotamian mathematics into the context of the “urban revolution” and the rise of states (c. 3300 to c. 2300 B.C.).Mesopotamian city states appeared in the late fourth millennium B.C., and were eventually absorbed in larger territorial states a thousand years later. Contemporary with the incipient state formation was the creation of a script and of genuine, coherent mathematics. Both were based on earlier accounting techniques, both were used by Temple officials for administrative purposes, and both were marked decisively by this application. At the same time, both presuppose modes of thought which are not produced directly by their application but only as mediated by a school system.In the mid‐third millennium, an autonomous scribal profession appears for the first time. At the same time emerge the first literary texts and the first “pure” mathematical problems (i.e., problems not directed at or following the pattern of genuine application). It seems as if the scribes, as soon as they were emancipated as a craft, tried out the range of their professional tools.Neither the use of writing for literary purposes nor the possibility to use numbers for “higher” computation were forgotten when the city states were absorbed in larger social systems. Both, however, were subsumed by the interest of the new territorial state, the former as a means to propagate royal ideology, the latter in the royal administration.The final section of the article compares this early Mesopotamian development with other instances of the “urban revolution” and with the development of scientific thought in the Ancient Greek city state and in the context of Medieval city communes. (shrink)

I am concerned in this paper with a range of phenomena, which, in the first four sections of the paper, I shall suggest by some examples. In the last three sections, I try to connect the topic thus indicated with the thought of Stanley Cavell. First example: a poem of Ted Hughes’s, from the mid-50s, called “Six Young Men.” […] What Hughes gives us is a case of what I want to call the difficulty of reality. That is a (...) phrase of John Updike’s, which I want to pick up for the phenomena with which I am concerned, experiences in which we take something in reality to be resistant to our thinking it, or possibly to be painful in its inexplicability, difficult in that way, or perhaps awesome and astonishing in its inexplicability. We take things so. And the things we take so may simply not, to others, present the kind of difficulty – of being hard or impossible or agonizing to get one’s mind round. (shrink)