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)

In this wide-ranging interview Berth Danermark discusses several things. First, his route into realism via community activism, an interest in the theory and practice of Marx and Engels and the philosophy of Mario Bunge, and inspiration drawn from Herman Hesse. Second, the formation of the Nordic Network for Critical Realism and realism's enduring foothold in Scandinavia. Third, the career trajectory that took him from research on urban planning to the formation of the Swedish Institute for Disability Research (SIDR). He discusses (...) how the well-known introduction to critical realism and applied social science, Explaining Society, came to be written, some misconceptions regarding critical realism and methods, the challenges involved in undertaking disability research and the development of and influences for his work of concepts such as interdisciplinarity and critical methodological pluralism, as well as issues related to transdisciplinary research and professional collaboration. The interview concludes with some advice for researchers. (shrink)

Many women professionals traverse settings beyond the office in their work, but research on women professionals rarely follows them out of the office. Using a large, archived data set of focus groups with sales professionals, the authors ask how work in out-of-the-office settings affects women’s careers. The authors distinguish between two types of settings. In “heterosocial” settings, interaction rules are traditionally and normatively gendered; women and men are understood by others as heterosexually linked pairs, women become targets of gossip, and (...) some women report sexual advances and sexual harassment. In “homosocial” settings such as golf courses and strip clubs, women’s disadvantage takes the form of exclusion. (shrink)

Increasingly, the role of health research in improving the discrepancies in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in developed countries is being recognised. Along with this comes the recognition that health research must be conducted in a manner that is culturally appropriate and ethically sound. Two key documents have been produced in Australia, known as The Road Map and The Guidelines, to provide theoretical and philosophical direction to the ethics of Indigenous health research. These documents identify research themes considered (...) critical to improving the health of the nation’s Indigenous peoples. They also provide values that, from an Indigenous perspective, are foundational to an ethical research process. This paper examines these research themes and values within the context of a current longitudinal birth cohort study of Indigenous infants and children in south-west Sydney: the Gudaga Study. Considerable time and effort have been invested in being true to the values stated in these documents: reciprocity; respect; equality; responsibility; survival and protection; and spirit and integrity. We have learnt that it is vital to be true to these values when conducting Indigenous health research—to quite literally “walk the talk”. (shrink)

This introduction summarizes the main contributions of this special issue titled “Quiet Politics and the Power of Business: New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics.” The four articles in the issue use and extend Culpepper’s influential concept of “quiet politics” according to which business is able to shape policies and regulations when issues are of low salience to the public and politicians. The issue takes Culpepper’s analysis further in ways that respond to the rise of noisy politics over the (...) last few years, often associated with new strident forms of left- and right-wing populism. Three contributions are made. First, the articles show that salience is not an inherent property of a policy area but is socially constructed. Second, a variety of strategies are described that business uses when trying to keep politics quiet. Third, strategies are affected by the structure of business, which varies across types of capitalism. Future research can use these insights to extend our understanding of the limits, strategies, and dynamics of quiet politics across political economies. (shrink)

Once the preserve of philosophy and theology, what Weber called `the problem of theodicy' - the problem of reconciling normative ideals with the reality in which we live - recurs in the social sciences in the secular form of `sociodicy'. Within a functionalist framework, sociodicies have offered legitimizing rationalizations of social adversities, inequalities and injustice, but seldom address the existential meaning and ethical implications of human affliction and suffering in social life. We suggest that an apparent indifference to these questions (...) in social theory reflects a deeper tension between modernity's millennial expectations of moral progress and the escalating history of violence, exploitation and suffering in the modern world. The task of sociodicy, we argue, should be reconstructed as a critique of the decivilizing implications of this tension, not just to document the consequences of suffering on people's lives, but in order to reassess the experience of modernity at the end of one of the most disturbed and violent centuries the world has known. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die philosophische und psychologische Literatur zum Begriff der Dankbarkeit bis ins Jahr 2013. Geprüft werden die in beiden Wissenschaften veröffentlichten Arbeiten vor allem hinsichtlich ihrer begrifflichen Grundlagen und der ethischen Bewertung von Dankbarkeit, etwa als Pflicht, Tugend oder Supererogation. Die Analyse zeigt, dass jeweils mit einer Reihe untereinander unvereinbarer Begriffsverständnisse gearbeitet wird, sodass die Debatte von einem komplexen Netzwerk sich überschneidender und überkreuzender Begriffe geprägt ist. Der Beitrag endet mit Vorschlägen für die weitere Forschung. (...) Psychologen wird empfohlen, ihre Konzeptionen von Dankbarkeit präziser zu fassen und zu begründen sowie Bottom-up-Studien zum alltagspraktischen Begriff der Dankbarkeit durchzuführen. Philosophen sollten dagegen der in den Sozialwissenschaften durchgeführten Bottom-up-Arbeit mehr Beachtung schenken. (shrink)

After yeast cells commit to the cell cycle in a process called START, genes required for DNA synthesis are expressed in late G1. Periodicity is mediated by a hexameric sequence, known as a MCB element, present in all DNA synthesis gene promoters. A complex that specifically binds MCBs has been identified. One polypeptide in the MCB complex is Swi6, a transcription factor that together with Swi4 also binds G1 cyclin promoters and participates in a positive feedback loop at START. The (...) finding that Swi6 is directly involved in both START and DNA synthesis gene control suggest a model in which Swi6, activated through its participation in START, serves as the central transcription factor in coordinating late G1 gene expression. The mechanism may be conserved in all eukaryotic cells. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The IAB Presidential Address was delivered by Alexander Capron to the internationally gathered audience at the Closing Ceremony of the 8th World Congress of Bioethics, Beijing on 9th August 2006.

Bibliografie met commentaar per rubriek: feminisme/vrouwenbeweging, werkomstandigheden, gezondheidszorg, geweld/criminaliteit, recht/politiek, literatuur/kunst, sociaal-psychologische perspectieven etc.

Emil Fackenheim’s life work was to call upon the world at large—and on philosophers, Christians, Jews, and Germans in particular—to confront the Holocaust as an unprecedented assault on the Jewish people, Judaism, and all humanity. In this memoir, to which he was making final revisions at the time of his death, Fackenheim looks back on his life, at the profound and painful circumstances that shaped him as a philosopher and a committed Jewish thinker. Interned for three months in the Sachsenhausen (...) concentration camp after Kristallnacht, Fackenheim was released and escaped to Scotland and then to Canada, where he lived in a refugee internment camp before eventually becoming a congregational rabbi and then, for thirty-five years, a professor of philosophy. He recalls here what it meant to be a German Jew in North America, the desperate need to respond to the crisis in Europe and to cope with its overwhelming implications for Jewish identity and community. His second great turning point came in 1967, as he saw Jews threatened with another Holocaust, this time in Israel. This crisis led him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ultimately back to Germany, where he continued to grapple with the question, How can the Jewish faith—and the Christian faith—exist after the Holocaust? “An ‘epoch-making’ autobiography.”—Arnold Ages, _Jewish Tribune_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Egg Takes Flight: The Once and Future Life of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission*Alexander Morgan Capron (bio)Attempting to describe the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) is comparable to the surreal feat performed by the artist in a famous painting by René Magritte. The artist (Magritte himself) sits with his back to the viewer, a palette in his left hand. The brush in his right hand is raised (...) to a canvas, blank except for a bird in flight that he is in the process of painting. The artist is looking to his left at a tabletop, bare except for a single, plain egg.Having held its second formal meeting in mid-January, NBAC is certainly still embryonic, its future mysterious within its shell. Yet answers to four major questions that will determine not just what kind of bird the Commission turns out to be but the heights to which it will fly should be evident by April or May 1997. First, will the White House take the sort of interest in NBAC that is needed if it is to succeed? Second, will the Commission’s term be extended beyond October 1997—and will the decision come early enough to allow it to start soon on projects that will take more than a single year to complete? Third, will the Commission take a broad view of the issues it addresses, reexamining widely accepted assumptions and going back to basic premises, or will it respond primarily in bureaucratic terms, guided by its charter’s focus on improving the policies and practices of federal departments and agencies? Fourth, will the Commission move beyond its initially mandated topics—the rights and welfare of human research subjects and the management and use of genetic information—and become what its name promises, the nation’s advisory body on the full range of bioethical issues that arise in the organization and management of health services and research?The Origins of the Egg: NBAC’s PredecessorsThe creation of a national bioethics commission has been demanded for years, at the least since its most recent predecessor, the Biomedical Ethics [End Page 63] Advisory Committee (BEAC) finally expired in 1990. BEAC’s statutory authority lapsed after the hapless committee had spent several years itself like an in vitro embryo in a vat of liquid nitrogen. BEAC’s opponents in Congress froze its appropriation and forbad it to meet until the Biomedical Ethics Board of six senators and six representatives to which it was supposed to report resolved the chaos resulting from the Board members’ ideological differences and personal distrust; this never occurred, and the Board proved unable even to choose its chairman. 1 BEAC, which met only twice, had laid preliminary plans to study the issues raised by the new genetics, but the politics of abortion—which had greatly complicated and slowed the Board’s naming of the BEAC members—was strong enough to interfere even with the topic of genetics, on which the difference among committee members actually gave no sign of dividing on pro-life/pro-choice grounds.The disappearance of BEAC left the nation without a mechanism for “public bioethics,” and several efforts were undertaken in the early 1990s to generate a new commission that could carry on in the tradition of the two previous, successful bioethics commissions. (The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research operated under a Congressional mandate in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1974 to 1978, and the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which had been authorized by Congress in 1978, actually operated as an independent body with government-wide purview from January 1980 to March 1983.) The Institute of Medicine established a committee to assess the mechanisms available not only to the federal government but also to states, professional bodies, and the public for deliberating about and resolving ethical issues stemming from developments in biomedicine (Bulger, Bobby, and Fineberg 1995). In September 1992, Senators Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR), Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), and Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) requested that the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) evaluate the... (shrink)

Michael L. Morgan is Emeritus Chancellor Professor at Indiana University and the Grafstein Visiting Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has written extensively on ancient Greek philosophy, modern Jewish philosophy, and post-Holocaust theology and ethics.

During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. (...) This book will be of interest to economists and science studies scholars. But it also aims at a wider readership in the public intellectual sphere, building on the current interest in all things economic and on the recent failure of the so-called economic model, which has shaped our beliefs and the world we live in. (shrink)

In this installment of the Faculty Authors Series, Vance Morgan (Philosophy, Providence College) discusses his newest book, "Freelance Christianity: Philosophy, Faith, and the Real World.".

This letter responds to letters by Garson Leder and by Harrison Lee in the same issue, September‐October 2024, of the Hastings Center Report.