This article explores forms of haptic sociality in interspecies interaction. Data examined are taken from a corpus of equine assisted therapy sessions, in Finland and France. During these sessions, therapists invite clients to pay close attention to the horse’s behavioral displays of comfort or discomfort and to react accordingly. In this way, the horse is regarded as a living, sentient creature, whose body has haptic and kinesthetic properties, resulting in socialization practices that cultivate forms of care. The study discusses Merleau-Ponty’s (...) concept of “esthesiologic body”, in light of analytical instances, draws on contemporary re-examinations of phenomenological notions (such as intersubjectivity and intercorporeality) by ethnomethodologists and analysts of social interaction, and proposes to respecify them in the particular context of human–animal interactions. The argument is inspired by a conversation analytic approach, sensitive to the orderly character of social actions. Two formats, displaying diverse ways in which participants interact with the horse as an _esthesiologic_ body, are examined in detail. The analysis shows the fundamental role played by touch and haptic practices in the practical accomplishment of intercorporeality. (shrink)

L’anticipation est généralement conçue comme un phénomène qui, d’un point de vue temporel et logique, est antérieur à une action ou une situation donnée. Dans cet article, nous proposons d’interroger cette conception en nous intéressant en détail à ce que l’anticipation fait à l’action qu’elle anticipe. En détail c’est-à-dire, très littéralement, en observant dans des situations d’interactions ordinaires les effets que peut produire le fait d’anticiper une action. En l’occurrence, dans des situations d’apprentissage entre hommes et chiens comme celles que (...) nous examinons, anticiper une action en l’évaluant avant qu’elle n’ait eu lieu contribue en grande part à la configurer. Cette avancée nous conduit à développer une vision proprement pragmatiste de l’action, conçue comme un procès façonné de manière émergente et collaborative par l’ensemble des participants qui l’accomplissent. (shrink)

I examine Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s adaptation of Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World in the comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I interpret philosophical aspects of Cavendish’s fictional landscape, including her vitalist materialism and naturalized talking animals, as they appear in series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, rendered through 3-D images and corresponding 3-D glasses worn by readers. Through this world adaptation, Moore and O’Neill onboard themes of naturalness, experimentation, technology-aided perceptual processes, and travel to intersecting worlds to enhance (...) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s commentary on the formative influence of fiction on authors and audiences. (shrink)

Implicit biases involve associations outside conscious awareness that lead to a negative evaluation of a person on the basis of irrelevant characteristics such as race or gender. This review examines the evidence that healthcare professionals display implicit biases towards patients. PubMed, PsychINFO, PsychARTICLE and CINAHL were searched for peer-reviewed articles published between 1st March 2003 and 31st March 2013. Two reviewers assessed the eligibility of the identified papers based on precise content and quality criteria. The references of eligible papers were (...) examined to identify further eligible studies. Forty two articles were identified as eligible. Seventeen used an implicit measure, to test the biases of healthcare professionals. Twenty five articles employed a between-subjects design, using vignettes to examine the influence of patient characteristics on healthcare professionals’ attitudes, diagnoses, and treatment decisions. The second method was included although it does not isolate implicit attitudes because it is recognised by psychologists who specialise in implicit cognition as a way of detecting the possible presence of implicit bias. Twenty seven studies examined racial/ethnic biases; ten other biases were investigated, including gender, age and weight. Thirty five articles found evidence of implicit bias in healthcare professionals; all the studies that investigated correlations found a significant positive relationship between level of implicit bias and lower quality of care. The evidence indicates that healthcare professionals exhibit the same levels of implicit bias as the wider population. The interactions between multiple patient characteristics and between healthcare professional and patient characteristics reveal the complexity of the phenomenon of implicit bias and its influence on clinician-patient interaction. The most convincing studies from our review are those that combine the IAT and a method measuring the quality of treatment in the actual world. Correlational evidence indicates that biases are likely to influence diagnosis and treatment decisions and levels of care in some circumstances and need to be further investigated. Our review also indicates that there may sometimes be a gap between the norm of impartiality and the extent to which it is embraced by healthcare professionals for some of the tested characteristics. Our findings highlight the need for the healthcare profession to address the role of implicit biases in disparities in healthcare. More research in actual care settings and a greater homogeneity in methods employed to test implicit biases in healthcare is needed. (shrink)

Au cours de la guerre froide, les organisations internationales, notamment celles du système de l’ONU, sont des tribunes instrumentalisées par les deux superpuissances pour se mettre en valeur. C’est le cas de l’UNESCO. Le discours de la cosmonaute soviétique Valentina Terechkova en 1966 est la première prise de parole d’une femme soviétique dans cette enceinte. Terechkova, qui a été la première femme au monde à effectuer, en 1963, un vol dans l’espace, utilise la tribune de l’UNESCO pour introduire des enjeux (...) de genre dans le cadre des relations internationales marquées par le contexte de guerre froide. Au-delà des rapports de force entre États marqués par la bipolarisation du monde, elle tente d’exprimer des arguments à prétention universaliste en faveur des droits des femmes et du développement, tout en produisant un discours à rhétorique typiquement soviétique. (shrink)

There have been many reports of medical students performing pelvic exams on anaesthetised patients without the necessary consent being provided or even sought. These cases have led to an ongoing discussion regarding the need to ensure informed consent has been secured and furthermore, how it might be best obtained. We consider the importance of informed consent, the potential harm to both the patient and medical student risked by the suboptimal consent process, as well as alternatives to teaching pelvic examinations within (...) medical school. The subsequent discussion focuses on whether medical students should perform pelvic examinations on anaesthetised patients without personally ensuring that they have given their explicit consent. Whilst we question the need to conduct pelvic examinations on anaesthetised patients in any circumstance, we argue that medical students should not perform such exams without personally securing the patients informed consent. (shrink)

Awareness growth—coming to entertain propositions of which one was previously unaware—is a crucial aspect of epistemic thriving. And yet, it is widely believed that orthodox Bayesianism cannot accommodate this phenomenon, since that would require employing supposedly defective catch-all propositions. Orthodox Bayesianism, it is concluded, must be amended. In this paper, I show that this argument fails, and that, on the contrary, the orthodox version of Bayesianism is particularly well-suited to accommodate awareness growth. For it entails what I call the refinement (...) view, which allows us to capture that awareness growth consists in the increase of one’s capacity of discernment. (shrink)

Qu'elle soit entendue comme état de désordre social ou qu'elle soit pensée comme ordre social sans Etat, l'anarchie reste difficilement appréhendée par les juristes autrement que par l'exclusion. Droit et anarchie seraient incompatibles, car le droit impliquerait nécessairement l'autorité (dont l'Etat moderne constitue la forme ultime, par la monopolisation du pouvoir de contrainte) que l'anarchie supprime. Aussi, l'étude de l'anarchie n'aurait plus grand chose à révéler au juriste, et sa marginalisation intellectuelle ne devrait pas surprendre. Pourtant, est-il vraiment satisfaisant de (...) cantonner la question de l'anarchie à l'histoire des idées politiques, alors que l'enjeu du débat touche les fondements mêmes de l'ordre juridique? C'est cette question complexe des rapports entre le droit et l'anarchie que cet ouvrage - qui regroupe les actes d'une journée d'étude organisée par l'Institut d'études de droit public de la faculté jean Monnet de l'Université Paris Sud - se propose d'investir à nouveau. (shrink)

Theoretical perspectives on non-suicidal self-injury have long underscored the affective regulating properties of NSSI. Less attention has been given to the processes through which individuals choose to engage in NSSI, specifically, to regulate their distress. In the present study, we tested one theoretical model in which recent stressful experiences facilitates NSSI through emotional reactivity. Further, we tested whether the indirect link between stressful experiences and NSSI was moderated by several NSSI specific risk factors. Given the widespread prevalence of NSSI among (...) community-based samples of adolescents and emerging adults, we surveyed 1,125 emerging adults in first-year university at a large academic institution. Participants completed an online survey three times, reporting on their recent stressful experiences in university, emotional reactivity, NSSI, as well as three NSSI specific risk factors. As expected, path analysis revealed that there was a significant indirect effect of recent stressful experiences on NSSI engagement, through emotional reactivity. However, this effect was maintained across moderator analyses. These novel findings underscore the salient role of proximally occurring stressors in the prediction of NSSI among emerging adults in university, and can inform developing theoretical perspectives on NSSI. (shrink)

Animal Studies Journal 2021 10: Introduction: Critical Animal Studies Perspectives on Covid-19.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals is the first fully comprehensive reference volume to examine the intersections of gender studies and critical animal studies, and is an essential reference for students in Gender Studies, Sexuality Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Geography and Environmental Studies.

Background Implicit biases are present in the general population and among professionals in various domains, where they can lead to discrimination. Many interventions are used to reduce implicit bias. However, uncertainties remain as to their effectiveness. -/- Methods We conducted a systematic review by searching ERIC, PUBMED and PSYCHINFO for peer-reviewed studies conducted on adults between May 2005 and April 2015, testing interventions designed to reduce implicit bias, with results measured using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) or sufficiently similar methods. (...) -/- Results 30 articles were identified as eligible. Some techniques, such as engaging with others’ perspective, appear unfruitful, at least in short term implicit bias reduction, while other techniques, such as exposure to counterstereotypical exemplars, are more promising. Robust data is lacking for many of these interventions. -/- Conclusions Caution is thus advised when it comes to programs aiming at reducing biases. This does not weaken the case for implementing widespread structural and institutional changes that are multiply justified. (shrink)

Ethical issues arise in the world’s first population-level treatment of severe lead poisoning caused by small-scale mining for gold in rural Nigeria. Emergency medical intervention and environmental cleanup have reduced the mortality in children younger than 5 years from lead poisoning from over 40 to 2.5 per cent leaving little evidence of the harms caused by lead poisoning. In the absence of obvious sequelae, family adherence to long-term intensive therapy to remove accumulated lead reservoirs in children wanes and some community (...) miners challenge safer mining interventions to prevent recontamination of the environment with lead. This letter raises questions regarding community versus individual rights in public health interventions and patient autonomy. (shrink)

This article shares lessons-learned by the Center for Values in International Development (C4V) over nearly five years. It notes entrenched resistance by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) of any definition of ‘ethics’ beyond legal and regulatory compliance with government financial, procurement, and programming standards. Among practitioner organizations and firms, incorporation of international development ethics is generally viewed as naïve, out of touch with the highly competitive development ‘market’, and hence unnecessary. The article ends with a call to action (...) to coordinate and create mechanisms, provide funding and forums, and significantly improve collaboration between international development ethicists in academic circles, with international development and humanitarian response practitioners. (shrink)

This paper begins with a recognition that questions of climate change, environmental degradation, and our relations to the natural world are increasingly significant and requiring of a response not only as philosophers of education but also as citizens of the planet. As such the paper explores five of the key journals in philosophy of education in order to identify the extent, range, and content of current discussions related to the environment. It then organizes and summaries the articles that were located (...) while seeking to identify the extent, possibilities, and limitations of current discussions relating to the environment in the philosophy of education community. The hope is that ultimately this work is an invitation to anyone, regardless of tradition, orientation, and expertise, to contribute to the expansion and deepening of both theory and practice in the face of this most serious of challenges. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnoses are increasingly seen as viable categories around which self and social identities might be drawn. This introduces a new pressure on the “boundary problem” for psychiatry: when members of the public request diagnoses to affirm their self-identities how should we draw the line between mental disorder and normality? If psychiatrists have the authority to recognize and diagnose mental disorder, how can roles as diagnosers and gate-keepers be balanced in a post-stigma era of mental health care? Focusing on the (...) disorder identified would-be patient who would not attract the diagnosis they seek were they not to seek it, this essay explores what it means to have an identity bound to a psychiatric diagnosis and considers a framework for psychiatrists to negotiate clinical encounters that involve the seeking of identity affirming diagnoses. (shrink)

Cet article propose le repérage et l’analyse de trois manières distinctes de conceptualiser la prière dans les travaux de sciences humaines et sociales qui la prennent pour objet à compter de la publication de l’essai de Marcel Mauss (1909). Ces trois conceptualisations de prière mises en débat dès le XXe siècle sont déterminées par une variation des stratégies discursives et des rapports au théologico-religieux. Normalisée, la prière est définie selon sa forme jugée idéale. Enchantée, elle est mise au service des (...) théories de l’homo religiosus. Désenchantée, elle est ramenée à une construction socio-psychologique. En relevant les intérêts comme les limites analytiques de chacune de ces options théoriques, l’objectif est de faire apparaître leur complémentarité afin d’esquisser les traits d’une nouvelle manière possible d’étudier la prière. (shrink)

This is the first volume to apply insights from the material turn in philosophy to the study of play and games. At a time of renewed interest in analogue gaming, as scholars are looking beyond the digital and virtual for the first time since the inception of game studies in the 1990s, Material Game Studies not only supports the importance of the turn to the analogue, but proposes a materiality of play more broadly. Recognizing the entanglement of physical materiality with (...) cultural meaning, the authors in this volume apply a range of theoretical approaches, from material eco-criticism to animal studies, to examine games and play as existing within worlds of matter. Different chapters focus on the material properties of board, card and role-playing games, how they are designed and made, how they are touched and played with, and how they connect with other human and nonhuman things. Bringing together international scholars, Material Game Studies defines a new field of material game studies and demonstrates how it is a valuable addition to wider debates about the material turn and the place of embodied humans in a material world. (shrink)

Multimodal prehabilitation is increasingly recognized as an important component of the pre-operative pathway in oncology. It aims to optimize physical and psychological health through delivery of a series of tailored interventions including exercise, nutrition, and psychological support. At the core of this prescription is a need for considerable health behavior change, to ensure that patients are engaged with and adhere to these interventions and experience the associated benefits. To date the prehabilitation literature has focused on testing the efficacy of devised (...) exercise and nutritional interventions with a primary focus on physiological and mechanistic outcomes with little consideration for the role of behavioral science, supporting individual behavior change or optimizing patient engagement. Changing health behavior is complex and to maximize success, prehabilitation programs should draw on latest insights from the field of behavioral science. Behavioral science offers extensive knowledge on theories and models of health behavior change to further advance intervention effectiveness. Similarly, interventions developed with a person-centered approach, taking into consideration individual needs and preferences will increase engagement. In this article, we will provide an overview of the extent to which the existing prehabilitation literature incorporates behavioral science, as well as studies that have explored patient's attitudes toward prehabilitation. We will go on to describe and critique ongoing trials in a variety of contexts within oncology prehabilitation and discuss how current scientific knowledge may be enhanced from a behavioral science perspective. We will also consider the role of “surgery schools” and detail practical recommendations that can be embedded in existing or emerging clinical settings. (shrink)

There has long been interest in why languages are shaped the way they are, and in the relationship between sign language and gesture. In sign languages, entity classifiers are handshapes that encode how objects move, how they are located relative to one another, and how multiple objects of the same type are distributed in space. Previous studies have shown that hearing adults who are asked to use only manual gestures to describe how objects move in space will use gestures that (...) bear some similarities to classifiers. We investigated how accurately hearing adults, who had been learning British Sign Language for 1–3 years, produce and comprehend classifiers in locative and distributive constructions. In a production task, learners of BSL knew that they could use their hands to represent objects, but they had difficulty choosing the same, conventionalized, handshapes as native signers. They were, however, highly accurate at encoding location and orientation information. Learners therefore show the same pattern found in sign-naïve gesturers. In contrast, handshape, orientation, and location were comprehended with equal accuracy, and testing a group of sign-naïve adults showed that they too were able to understand classifiers with higher than chance accuracy. We conclude that adult learners of BSL bring their visuo-spatial knowledge and gestural abilities to the tasks of understanding and producing constructions that contain entity classifiers. We speculate that investigating the time course of adult sign language acquisition might shed light on how gesture became conventionalized during the genesis of sign languages. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Foucault and Western confessional writings, this book challenges the transhistorical and commonsense views of confession as an innate impulse resulting in the psychological liberation of the confessing subject. Instead, confessional desire is argued to be contingent and constraining, and alternatives to confessional subjectivity are explored.

Bioethics scholarship considering the possibility of gestating an embryo to full term in an artificial womb (ectogenesis) often overstates the capacities of current technologies and underestimates the barriers to the development of full ectogenesis. Moreover, this debate causes harm by (1) neglecting more immediate problems in the development of artificial wombs, (2) treating abortion as a “problem with a technological solution,” bolstering anti-abortion rhetoric, and (3) presuming the stability of women’s reproductive rights. The ectogenesis conversation must consider anticipated uses of (...) the technology (neonatal intensive care) and acknowledge the immediate context (recognizing abortion as essential healthcare and existing reproductive inequities). (shrink)

In response to two trenchant objections, radical subjective Bayesianism has been widely rejected. In this paper, I seek, if not to rehabilitate subjectivism, at least to show its critic what is attractive about the position. I argue that what is at stake in the subjectivism/anti-subjectivism debate is not, as is commonly thought, which norms of rationality are true, but rather, the conception of rationality that we adopt: there is an alternative approach to the widespread telic approach to rationality, which I (...) call the poric approach, on which subjectivism is an attractive position. I then argue that the poric approach—and therefore subjectivism—cannot be easily dismissed. (shrink)

This commentary argues the case for developmental psychopathology in understanding social learning. Informed by work on “epistemic disruption,” we have described difficulties with social learning associated with many forms of psychopathology. Epistemic disruption manifests in an inability to move between innovation and conformity, and arises from poor mentalizing, which generates difficulties in identifying social cues that trigger the correct stance.

This paper explores the phenomenon of being ill (in cases of serious, chronic and terminal illnesses) both in its subjective and intersubjective dimensions. My main contention is that the philosophical tools of phenomenology uncover the framework for understanding the lived experience of the ill person as they privilege the first-person account of illness. It is through this that the essence of things and phenomena surrounding the body-in-illness are unveiled, as opposed to the medical world’s perspective, a third-person account of diseases. (...) A phenomenology of illness underscores that illness is a substantial parcel of human existence that alters the ill person’s experience of the body, intersubjective relations with the other, and relation with the world entirely. This essay is constituted of four major sections dabbling with a phenomenological account of the experience of the lived body, the body-in-illness, the intersubjective dimension of the body-in-illness, and a note on health. (shrink)

Ratnayake's interesting paper challenges two claims, that cognitive distortions in depression involve epistemic issues; and that cognitive behavioral therapy can rectify those epistemic issues. We are going to discuss both claims here and offer some reasons not to underestimate the epistemic relevance of CBT. First, there may be epistemic issues underlying cognitive distortions in depression that CBT can effectively address, including blind acceptance of negative automatic thoughts and insensitivity to evidence. But, even if CBT were primarily in the business of (...) enhancing utility as opposed to validity, this would have significant, though indirect, epistemic benefits.All human agents, whether they have a... (shrink)

Katie Steele and H. Orri Stefánsson argue that, to reflect an agent’s limited awareness, the algebra of propositions on which that agent’s credences are defined should be relativised to their awareness state. I argue that this produces insurmountable difficulties. But the project of relativising the agent’s algebra to reflect their partial perspective need not be abandoned: the algebra can be relativised, not to the agent’s awareness state, but to what we might call their subjective modality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy's Role in Psychopathology Back to Jaspers and an Appeal to Grow PracticalThe author reports no conflicts of interest.In "Philosophy's role in theorizing psychopathology," Gibson presents a defense of the continued relevance of philosophy to psychopathology, and a non-exhaustive framework for the role of philosophy in this domain (Gibson, 2024). I find it hard to disagree that psychopathology is soaked in philosophy from its origins, and that to try (...) and dry it out would be both unwise and impossible.In this commentary, I go back to Karl Jaspers' account of the role of philosophy in his General Psychopathology. In doing so, I do not find that Gibson adds anything new, but instead gives us a well-illustrated reminder that philosophy "is operative within every living science" (Jaspers, 1997, p. 770).Situated Psychopathological TheorizingGibson addresses a broad 'we' who might be engaged with psychopathological theorizing. This seems to encompass three main settings, from which examples are drawn.1. Everyday and regulative social practices (ordinary and legal setting).2. Empirically driven disciplines which work with psychopathological constructs (academic setting).3. Psychiatry and psychotherapy (clinical setting).In my view, it is a mistake not to map the terrain where psychopathological theorizing is situated. In each setting psychopathological theorizing has its own set of aims and constraints. In the ordinary setting, the aim might be to know whether to blame a loved one for their action. In the legal setting it might be to decide whether treatment or punishment is appropriate. In the clinical setting, the aim is usually a therapeutic assessment, and moral stance taking is often best kept at bay. In the academic setting, we might want to ensure our concepts are reliable and valid, opening them up to investigation using objective scientific methods. [End Page 13]Beyond what can be said in the most general terms, the role of philosophy will look different in these different situations.Understanding Is Not (Just) a Philosophical ToolUnderstanding is a mode of knowing that is concerned with the particular, rather than the general, and accessed inter-relationally, relying on tacit knowledge and empathetic imagination. Gibson introduces the concept as an elementary form of social intuition, used in ordinary life to make sense of social relations and other people's behaviors and reactions. I agree with Gibson, drawing on Strawson, that Understanding is a mode of knowledge that involves the subject of enquiry as a participant (Strawson, 1982). There is a moral imperative to take this stance, which drives us to value the expansion of what we are able to understand of other people's mental states. This at least partly motivates the agenda when we theorize about psychopathology.At times throughout his argument, Gibson seems to be arguing for the role of Understanding in psychopathological theorizing, in place of his explicit aim of arguing for the role of philosophy. However it is not at all clear that this replacement can be made. Accepting the picture drawn, Understanding is not any more the expertise or domain of the philosopher than the author, police officer, or sociologist. We are surely not meant to take Understanding as a uniquely philosophical tool, but rather a mode of knowing available to all social agents, integral to social reasoning in ordinary life and in the human studies.What philosophy can distinctively do is point to and defend the existence of forms of intersubjective and tacit knowledge within human studies such as psychopathology. For Jaspers, Understanding can be a scientific tool, albeit one that reminds us that knowledge in psychopathology is not all of one kind. One role for philosophy therefore is to help us to "distinguish the different modes of knowing," so that we might "order knowledge into a comprehensive whole" (Jaspers, 1997, p. 769). This is akin to the 'synthetic' role that Gibson proposes.Philosophy and ScienceJaspers defines scientific knowledge broadly as knowledge with "general validity, convincing insights (which can be proved), clarity of method, and the possibility for a meaningful discussion" (Jaspers, 1997, p. 768).We do not get such a definition from Gibson, but in the sections of... (shrink)

Although sexual harassment in the workplace is illegal, it often goes unreported. This study employs causal evidence to evaluate one deterrent to reporting: bias against women known to be sexual harassment targets. I theorize about the form this bias takes and test the argument with a national survey experiment run in five waves from October 2017 to February 2018, where participants were asked to propose employment outcomes for an employee with one of four harassment experiences. Participants were less likely to (...) recommend a woman for promotion if she self-reported sexual harassment relative to otherwise identical women who experienced nonsexual harassment or whose sexual harassment was reported by a coworker. The woman who self-reported sexual harassment experienced normative discrimination: that is, the promotion bias was significantly mediated by perceptions that she was less moral, warm, and socially skilled than the woman whose coworker reported her sexual harassment. These results indicate that women may hesitate to report sexual harassment because they rightly perceive that doing so could cause them to experience bias. Yet they also suggest that bias can be avoided if a bystander reports the harassment. Finally, exploratory analyses suggest that in the wake of #MeToo this bias may be fading. (shrink)

In a 1983 interview, Michel Foucault contrasts our contemporary interest in sexual identity with the ancient Greek preoccupation with diet, arguing that sex has replaced food as the privileged medium of self-constitution in the modern West. In the same interview, Foucault argues that modern liberation movements should return to the ancient model of ethics, of which diet was a prime example, as aesthetics or self-transformative practice. In this paper I take up Foucault's argument with respect to the Animal Liberation Movement (...) and the dietetics of ethical vegetarianism. Contra Foucault, I suggest that diet has not been replaced by sexuality in the modern West, and that food choices, along with and intertwined with sexuality, continue to function as practices of self-constitution in both disciplinary and aesthetic fashions. I then consider the implications of this argument for the Animal Liberation Movement, exploring ways in which it might (and to some degree already does) take on aesthetic rather than moral strategies in order to pursue what Foucault once described as “an ethics of acts and their pleasures which would be able to take into account the pleasure of the other.”. (shrink)

In this short note we prove that a definable set X over is superstable only if.

Although the philosophical systems of G. W. Leibniz and David Lewis both feature possible worlds, the ways in which their systems are similar and dissimilar are ultimately surprising. At first glance, Leibniz’s modal metaphysics might strike us as one of the most contemporarily relevant aspects of his system. But I clarify in this paper major interpretive problems that result from understanding Leibniz’s system in terms of contemporary views (like Lewis’s, for instance). Specifically, I argue that Leibniz rejects the inference that (...) if something is possible, it therefore occurs in some possible world. This discussion highlights how Leibniz’s account of individual substance (with his strict notion of identity) constrains his modal theorizing and produces fatalistic threats. I then make an unexpected connection between Leibniz’s and Lewis’s systems by showing that Leibniz’s treatment of fatalism bears similarities to the response Lewis gives to the fatalist when considering the paradoxes of time travel. (shrink)

Cognitively engaging physical activity has been suggested to have superior effects on cognition compared to PA with low cognitive demands; however, there have been few studies directly comparing these different types of activities. The aim of this study is to compare the cognitive effects of a combined physically and cognitively engaging bout of PA to a physical or cognitive activity alone in children. Children were randomized in pairs to one of three 20-min conditions: a cognitive sedentary activity; a non-cognitively engaging (...) PA; and a cognitively engaging PA. Executive function was assessed using a modified Eriksen flanker task immediately before and 10–15 min following the experimental condition. Children ages 6–8 years were included in the study. A repeated measures ANOVA found no significant difference between groups with respect to scores on the flanker task. The results do not support the hypotheses that a cognitively engaging bout of PA enhances cognitive performance over non-cognitively engaging PA or sedentary activities. Possible explanations for our findings include overexertion during the acute bout of PA and depletion of positive affect prior to performing the post-intervention EF tasks. (shrink)

Efforts to promote gender equality often encourage changes to interpersonal interactions as a way of undermining gender hierarchy. Such programs are premised on the idea that the gender system can be “undone” when individuals behave in ways that challenge prevailing gender norms. However, scholars know little about whether and under what conditions real changes to the gender system can result from changed behaviors. We use the context of a gender sensitization program in the Democratic Republic of Congo to examine prospects (...) for transformative change at the interactional level of the gender system. Over nine months, we observed significant changes in men’s quotidian practices. Further, we identified a new commitment among many men to a more equal division of household labor. However, participants consistently undermined the transformative potential of these behavioral changes through their dedication to maintaining control over the objective, process, and meaning of change, resisting conceptions of equality that challenged the gender system. Because quotidian changes left gender hierarchy intact, they appear unlikely to destabilize the logics that legitimate women’s subordination. (shrink)