The present study focused on this particular situation in which doctoral candidates become anxious, impatient, and disappointed while experiencing a prolonged delay in processing their dissertation during and after the submission. The researchers tend to explore doctoral candidates’ storied experiences they had while confronting such procedural barriers and delays. We undertook a narrative mode of inquiry to explore the events and storied experiences through interviewing doctoral candidates from public universities in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. Nine doctoral candidates were selected (...) through snowball sampling with the criterion of including those participants who were waiting for their external reviews at least for more than 1 year. From the narratives, the emergent themes include supervisors’ mutual relationships, the pressure of paper publication, lack of administrative support, external evaluation and follow-up and stress of delayed evaluation. The study has implications for relaxing procedural formalities during and after submission of a doctoral dissertation to facilitate students in the timely attainment of their doctoral degrees. (shrink)

This article examines how the so-called disembodied criminal subject is given structure and form through the law of homicide and assault. By analysing how the body is materialised through the criminal law’s enactment of death and injury, this article suggests that the biological positioning of these harms of violence as uncontroversial, natural, and universal conditions of being ‘human’ cannot fully appreciate what makes violence wrongful for us, as embodied entities. Absent a theory of the body, and a consideration of corporeality, (...) the criminal law risks marginalising, or altogether eliding, experiences of violence that do not align with its paradigmatic vision of what bodies can and must do when suffering its effects. Here I consider how the bionic body disrupts the criminal law’s understanding of human violence by being a body that is both organic and inorganic, and capable of experiencing and performing violence in unexpected ways. I propose that a criminal law that is more receptive to the changing, technologically mediated conditions of human existence would be one that takes the corporeal dimensions of violence more seriously and, as an extension of this, adopts an embodied, embedded, and relational understanding of human vulnerability to violence. (shrink)

It is usually held that representative government is not strictly democratic, since it does not allow the people themselves to directly make decisions. But here, taking as her guide Thomas Paine’s subversive view that “Athens, by representation, would have surpassed her own democracy,” Nadia Urbinati challenges this accepted wisdom, arguing that political representation deserves to be regarded as a fully legitimate mode of democratic decision making—and not just a pragmatic second choice when direct democracy is not possible. As Urbinati (...) shows, the idea that representation is incompatible with democracy stems from our modern concept of sovereignty, which identifies politics with a decision maker’s direct physical presence and the immediate act of the will. She goes on to contend that a democratic theory of representation can and should go beyond these identifications. Political representation, she demonstrates, is ultimately grounded in a continuum of influence and power created by political judgment, as well as the way presence through ideas and speech links society with representative institutions. Deftly integrating the ideas of such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Paine, and the Marquis de Condorcet with her own, Urbinati constructs a thought-provoking alternative vision of democracy. (shrink)

Redirecting attention to Mill as a political thinker, Nadia Urbinati argues that this claim misrepresents Mill's thinking.

The practice of Islamic veiling has over the last ten years emerged into a popular site of investigation. Different researchers have focused on the various significations of this bodily practice, both in its gendered dimensions, its identity components, its empowering potentials, as a satorial practice or as part of a broader economy of bodily practices which shape pious dispositions in accordance with the Islamic tradition. Lesser, however, has this been the case for the practice of not veiling or unveiling. If (...) and when attention is accorded to the latter, it is often grasped as a product of integration or an effect secular governmentality, but only rarely as a bodily practice. Drawing on narratives of second generation secular and religious Maghrebi Muslims in Belgium, this paper pursues this second perspective by examining to which extent not-veiling can be understood as a technique of the self (Foucault) that is functional to shaping a liberal (Musilm) subject. While a first part of this article will unpack the ethical substance of such discursive interrogations and point to the ways in which they are intertwined with the enactment of a liberal self, the second part will examine the embodied contours of this problematization, which appeared through the labour upon one's affect and bodily dispositions that this refusal of the hijab, or the act of unveiling, implies. (shrink)

This study explores the doctrine of the latency of forms in the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on Albert the Great’s elaboration through his theory of inchoatio formarum. The doctrine, whose origins date back to Anaxagoras and was further developed in the Arabic philosophical tradition, posits that matter contains all the manifest qualities of substances, though in a latent form. Albert reworks this doctrine, correcting the immanentist and paradoxical implications attributed to Anaxagoras’ error, and proposes an interpretation in which (...) matter, while potentially active, receives the perfection of forms from an external causal principle. The study highlights how Albert’s inchoatio formarum provides a response to the doctrine of the latency of forms and fits into the broader medieval debate on the relationship between matter and forms, both in philosophical and theological contexts. The discussion also examines the commentators of Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the connection with Augustine’s doctrine of rationes seminales. Lastly, Albert’s contribution to the debate on Augustine’s rationes seminales and his interaction with the Thomist tradition and other 15th-century authors are analyzed. (shrink)

Letters by the author, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami, written to his wife during 1946-47, on Islamic ethics; includes a chronology of events that took place in India immediately before and after partition.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 553-554, July 2012.

Background In nursing homes, residents’ relatives represent important sources of support for nurses. However, in the heightened stress of emergency situations, interaction between nurses and relatives can raise ethical challenges. Research objectives The present analysis aimed at elaborating a typology of nurses’ experience of ethical support and challenges in their interaction with relatives in emergency situations. Research design Thirty-three semi-structured interviews and six focus groups were conducted with nurses from different nursing homes in Germany. Data were analysed according to Mayring’s (...) method of qualitative content analysis. Participants and research context Participants were licensed nurses working in nursing homes. Ethical considerations Ethical approval was granted by Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences (02.07.2020) and the Ethics Committee of Hannover Medical School (Nr. 8866_BO_K_2020; 27.01.2020). Interviewees were anonymised and focus group were pseudonymised during transcription. All participants provided written consent. Findings/results In emergency situations, relatives can represent important sources of support for nurses. However, they may also give rise to different challenges, relating to four ethical conflicts: (1) the challenge of meeting the information needs of relatives while providing appropriate care to all residents; (2) the challenge of managing relatives’ demands for hospitalisation when hospitalisation is not deemed necessary by nurses; (3) the challenge of managing relatives’ demands for lifesaving treatment when such treatment contradicts the will of the resident; and (4) the challenge of attempting to initiate hospitalisation when relatives oppose this course of action. Several external factors make these conflicts especially challenging for nurses: fear of legal consequences, a low staffing ratio, and a lack of qualified nursing staff. Conclusions Conflict between nurses and relatives typically revolves around hospitalisation and the initiation of lifesaving treatment. Whether nurses perceive interaction with relatives as supportive or conflictual essentially depends on the quality of the relationship, which may be negatively influenced by a number of external factors. (shrink)

Time, precarious lives and memories and multiple narrations related to crossing borders constitute the key meanings of a series of contemporary pieces of works produced by migrant artists and writers. Through an analysis of some of their works, this article focuses on some spatio-temporal images, actions and metaphors related to movement. Then it questions the exploration of narratives in visual arts, especially the relationship between imaginary fiction and reality stories. Theatre may become the very place where contemporary tales of migrant (...) people are translated, told, performed. The very meaningful notion of hospitality becomes a theatrical practice in one of the most relevant spectacles of the Théâtre du Soleil, Le Dernier Caravansérail. Another aspect of this creative hospitality — Leïla Sebbar’s Mes Algéries en France — concerns the interweaving of memories belonging to opposite sides of divided countries, after the colonial wars. This work of collection, transcription, translation from one to another gives an example of writing as a repairing work but also of revelation of unknown connections. (shrink)

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced its intent to strengthen enforcement of legal protections for health care providers' conscience rights. It proposed regulations that would give the DHHS Office of Civil Rights greater authority to ensure that recipients of federal funding comply with federal conscience laws. This recent development creates an opportunity for scholars and policy‐makers to revisit the perennial debate about whether and how law should protect health care providers' rights of conscience. Arguments (...) about who should be protected, what actions should be protected, and whether there should be any limitations on the exercise of conscience rights have brought us no closer to a resolution. However, there is one remaining avenue for analysis that has, surprisingly, received very little attention—the question of how providers are protected, and from what consequences. Existing U.S. conscience laws immunize health care providers from a wide range of adverse consequences—including civil liability, criminal prosecution, administrative penalties, adverse action by employers, and discrimination by private actors, among others. However, academic and public policy debates rarely acknowledge the breadth of these protections. It is essential to disentangle this network of possible protections. (shrink)

This paper investigates the formation and propagation of wavefunction `branches' through the process of entanglement with the environment. While this process is a consequence of unitary dynamics, and hence significant to many if not all approaches to quantum theory, it plays a central role in many recent articulations of the Everett or `many worlds' interpretation. A highly idealized model of a locally interacting system and environment is described, and investigated in several situations in which branching occurs, including those involving Bell (...) inequality violating correlations; we illustrate how any non-locality is compatible with the locality of the dynamics. Although branching is particularly important for many worlds quantum theory, we take a neutral stance here, simply tracing out the consequences of a unitary dynamics. The overall goals are to provide a simple concrete realization of the quantum physics of branch formation, and especially to emphasise the compatibility of branching with relativity; the paper is intended to illuminate matters both for foundational work, and for the application of quantum theory to non-isolated systems. (shrink)

This essay reclaims a political proceduralist vision of democracy as the best normative defense of democracy in contemporary politics. We distinguish this vision from three main approaches that are representative in the current academic debate: the epistemic conception of democracy as a process of truth seeking; the populist defense of democracy as a mobilizing politics that defies procedures; and the classical minimalist or Schumpeterian definition of democracy as a competitive method for selecting leaders.

The human genome is commonly regarded as a ‘natural’ connection between all human beings, as it has been handed down to us by our predecessors. As such, it is believed to represent common heritage of humanity, e.g. a resource of outstanding value that should be the object of special protection and international concern. Some critics argue that germline manipulation would disrupt this natural heritage and that we have a duty to preserve the integrity of the human germline. However, a closer (...) look reveals that the concept of common heritage of humanity does not necessarily imply the impermissibility of germline manipulation. If it is restricted to the prevention of severe diseases, germline manipulation does not represent a threat to the unity and identity of the human species, even though this would create a new form of relationship between human beings, namely that between a designer and a genetically designed person. (shrink)

Recent work has shown that preschool-aged children and adults understand freedom of choice regardless of culture, but that adults across cultures differ in perceiving social obligations as constraints on action. To investigate the development of these cultural differences and universalities, we interviewed school-aged children (4–11) in Nepal and the United States regarding beliefs about people's freedom of choice and constraint to follow preferences, perform impossible acts, and break social obligations. Children across cultures and ages universally endorsed the choice to follow (...) preferences but not to perform impossible acts. Age and culture effects also emerged: Young children in both cultures viewed social obligations as constraints on action, but American children did so less as they aged. These findings suggest that while basic notions of free choice are universal, recognitions of social obligations as constraints on action may be culturally learned. (shrink)

Le décryptage du génome humain autorise désormais une manipulation du vivant humain. Mû par un souci de perfection, l'homme exploite aujourd'hui ce qui participe à son essence même, son génome. La diversité intraspécifique humaine s'en trouve perturbée, la vulnérabilité génétique augmentée. Le droit se trouve donc investi d'un rôle : préserver la nature humaine. Dès lors, faut-il penser d'autres voies pour prémunir notre humanité contre les risques d'une manipulation irréfléchie de notre génome.

Mitotic entry and exit are switch‐like transitions that are driven by the activation and inactivation of Cdk1 and mitotic cyclins. This simple on/off reaction turns out to be a complex interplay of various reversible reactions, feedback loops, and thresholds that involve both the direct regulators of Cdk1 and its counteracting phosphatases. In this review, we summarize the interplay of the major components of the system and discuss how they work together to generate robustness, bistability, and irreversibility. We propose that it (...) may be beneficial to regard the entry and exit reactions as two separate reversible switches that are distinguished by differences in the state of phosphatase activity, mitotic proteolysis, and a dramatic rearrangement of cellular components after nuclear envelope breakdown, and discuss how the major Cdk1 activity thresholds could be determined for these transitions. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, and use it to locate and examine dispositions in a larger constellation of related concepts, exploring their dynamic relationship within the social context, and their construction, manifestation, and function in relation to classroom mathematics practices. I describe the main characteristics of habitus that account for its invisible effects: its embodiment, its deep and pre-reflective internalization as schemata, orientation, and taste that are learned and yet unthought, and are (...) subsumed by our practices, which we understand as something that “goes without saying.” I also propose that, similarly to Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic habitus, a math habitus is made up of a complex intertwining of collective and individual histories that turn into “nature,” which structure all individual and collective action and inform mathematical classroom practice. I suggest that individual math dispositions may be liable to reconstruction through the reconstruction of the collective math habitus, which follows from opening spaces for dialogue, problematization and reconstruction of the unthought categories of the doxa. This requires that students acquire new concrete and symbolic means with which to challenge their current sense of mathematics as a discipline, and mathematical practice tout court. Finally, I argue that community of inquiry, employed as a pedagogical model, provides an avenue for both: for opening those spaces for reflective dialogical inquiry into concepts and questions whose meanings and references have so far been taken for granted, and for acquiring critical thinking and dialogical skills and dispositions that are a necessary means for participating in such reflective inquiry that offers significant promise for reconstructing individual and collective habitus in school settings. (shrink)

Kennedy discusses, through dialogue, old concepts in philosophy with children regarding the finite and infinite parts of the Earth and galaxy.

Сучасна філософія тяжіє до осмислення людської дійсності у дедалі ширших міждисциплінарних контекстах. Спочатку традиційні, а віднедавна й інтернет-медіа та інформаційні технології опинилися у полі зору філософів та стали джерелом для переосмислення чималої кількості так званих вічних філософських запитань. Серед них зокрема і найширші, як-от усвідомлення меж реального та розуміння, які саме явища й речі з тих, що конституюють людське, можна вважати реальними. Цю статтю присвячено дослідженню одного з понять, що є ключовим для осмислення реальності, – поняттю віртуальності. Авторка висвітлює його (...) витоки, особливості і специфіку вжитку в сучасному філософському дискурсі. Зокрема, показано конотації віртуального з усіма трьома часовими вимірами: минулим, теперішнім та майбутнім. Наголошено, що поняття віртуального спочатку було «перевідкрите» Жилем Дельозом, а потім пережило ще низку сутнісних змін у філософії ХХ–ХХІ століть. Тож віртуальне розглянуто як контрагент реального. Зокрема, у статті приділено увагу різноманітним конотаціям між поняттями віртуальності, реальності та фактичності. Крім того, розкрито моральні аспекти віртуальності – як у трансцендентному, так і в іманентному сенсі. Висвітлено підґрунтя для нерозрізнюваності «реального» та «віртуального». Зроблено висновок про те, що в ситуації так званої підміни реальності різноманіття конотацій поняття віртуальності може бути використане для перевідкриття вже самого поняття реальності. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung bemüht sich um eine Klärung des Verhältnisses von Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft. Zum einen treten die Wissenschaften bereits ihrem Begriffe nach mit dem Anspruch auf eine besondere Qualität des von ihnen zur Verfügung gestellten Wissens auf. Soll es sich hierbei nicht um ein leeres Versprechen handeln, muss sich zeigen lassen, inwiefern sich die Wissenschaften von anderen Wissensformen wie eben dem Alltagswissen abheben. Die Klärung dieses Verhältnisses stellt also implizit eine Bestimmung der besonderen Qualität der Wissenschaften dar - eine (...) der Hauptaufgaben der Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Zum anderen muss auch der Verlässlichkeit unseres Alltagswissens Genüge getan werden. Das lebensweltliche Wissen ermöglicht uns eine mehr als hinreichende Orientierung im Alltag, so dass eine Degradierung desselben zu einer Ansammlung von bloßen Scheingebilden nur eine unzureichende Analyse darstellt. Da sich prinzipiell drei unterschiedliche Gewichtungen des genannten Verhältnisses denken lassen - die erste optiert zu Gunsten der Wissenschaften, die zweite favorisiert die lebensweltlichen Erfahrungsformen, die dritte will beiden Erkenntnisformen zu ihrem jeweiligen Recht verhelfen -, werden diese nacheinander diskutiert und gegeneinander abgewogen. (shrink)