We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis of 162 responses by ten extractives-sector firms over a period of 14 years. The firms were responding to accusations of human rights impacts documented by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. We use Garrett et al.’s :507–520, 1989) framework of neutralization techniques consisting of denial, justification, concession and excuse to examine the responses. During our QCA, we (...) observed emerging themes around self-promotion and evasive tactics. We contribute to existing literature by proposing ‘evasion’ as a novel neutralization technique, particularly in circumstances of corporate responses to accusations of wrongdoing. We argue that evasion occurs when firms refuse to engage in the debate brought forward in an accusation. In addition, we enrich our understanding of neutralization techniques by proposing subneutralization techniques in our analysis to diverge from that of other studies. We conclude by discussing the implications of the predominance of corporate narcissism and evasive neutralization techniques to the business and human rights movement and other international corporate responsibility standards. (shrink)

This article analyses the ethics of how community engagement and dialogue as applied by a mining corporation in Chile led to erosion of the community’s psychological freedom despite being aligned with best practice. This article details how a mining company squeezed the psychological freedom of the community in order to obtain an agreement between the period of 2000 and 2016. The findings focus particularly on a 9-month period between 2015 and 2016 when the company undertook intense community engagement. The article (...) identifies six corporate action phases undertaken which curtailed the community’s psychological freedom as paying off local leaders; challenging via courts of law; co-opting community lawyers; prohibiting a key debate during dialogue; and remaining silent after failing to honour its own self-imposed rule. The findings label the company’s community engagement as contradictory; while it conducted transitional and transformational engagement in formal spaces, it also engaged in unethical strategies in the informal spaces of community engagement. The result was overall community consent and an even more fragmented community. This article finds that when it limits the psychological freedom of participants, who are already divided as a group, corporate–community engagement can be viewed as ethically problematic. Based on analysis of the literature and an empirical case analysis, this article contributes a test for assessing the ethics of CCE. (shrink)

This important and comprehensive work of 18th-century Islamic religious thought written in Arabic by a pre-eminent South Asian scholar provides an extensive and detailed picture of Muslim theology and interpretive strategies on the eve of the modern period.

Using the political corporate social responsibility lens of parentalism, this paper investigates the more subtle and less-visible interactional dynamics and strategies of power, resistance and justification that manifest between a multi-stakeholder-governed foundation and victims of a mining corporation’s dam collapse. The Renova Foundation was established to provide remedy through a deliberative approach to hundreds of thousands of victims from Brazil’s worst socio-environmental disaster—the collapse of Samarco Mining Corporation’s Fundão tailings dam. Data were collected from a combination of fieldwork and archival (...) analysis to assess the perceptions of victims, their defenders and foundation executives. The findings reveal 12 dialectical tensions from Renova’s attempts to remedy the victim’s injustices. The case analysis contributes through proposing a dialectical process model of stakeholder resistance and subversion to parentalist PCSR. The case reveals the pivotal use of time via the act of stalling as a strategic resource to exhaust victims and reach settlements. Furthermore, organizations justify their parentalism by blaming delays on the bureaucracy and shared responsibility of multi-stakeholder deliberation. Ultimately, I contend that victims must have an equal voice in the outcome of their remediation and that businesses responsible for causing harm should not decide these matters. (shrink)

Medical and public health professionals recommend wearing face masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus disease of 2019. While the majority of people in the United States support wearing face masks as an effective tool to combat COVID-19, a smaller percentage declared the recommendation by public health agencies as a government imposition and an infringement on personal liberty. Social media play a significant role in amplifying public health issues, whereby a minority against the imposition can speak loudly, perhaps using (...) tactics of verbal aggression taking the form of toxic language. We investigated the role that toxicity plays in the online discourse around wearing face masks. Overall, we found tweets including anti-mask hashtags were significantly more likely to use toxic language, while tweets with pro-mask hashtags were somewhat less toxic with the exception of #WearADamnMask. We conclude that the tensions between these two positions raise doubt and uncertainty around the issue, which make it difficult for health communicators to break through the clutter in order to combat the infodemic. Public health agencies and other governmental institutions should monitor toxicity trends on social media in order to better ascertain prevailing sentiment toward their recommendations and then apply these data-driven insights to refine and adapt their risk communication messaging toward mask wearing, vaccine uptake, and other interventions. (shrink)

This book offers a critical re-appraisal of what is perhaps Merleau-Ponty’s most widely read text, the Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception. Although open and enigmatic text, the Preface is still often used to introduce phenomenology in general and Merleau-Ponty’s work specifically to students, scholars in disciplines other than philosophy, and art practitioners. Taking advantage of the fact that many of his course notes have been posthumously published in the last few decades, this book situates the Preface to the Phenomenology (...) of Perception in the context of Merleau-Ponty's later work and shows how it contains many of the threads on which Merleau-Ponty would later pull. In doing so, the book chapters elaborate key themes in the Preface: “Phenomenology and its Paradoxes,” “Phenomenology and its Method,” “Phenomenology and its Incompletion,” “Phenomenology and Non-Phenomenology." Readers will learn about the radicality of Merleau-Ponty’s early articulation of phenomenology, how much it already suggests the profound transformation of phenomenology usually associated with his more mature work. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany academic authors, policy makers, NGOs, and corporations have focused on top-down human rights global norm-making, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. What is often missing are contextual and substantive analyses that interrogate rights mobilization and linkages between voluntary transnational rules and domestic governance. Deploying a socio-legal approach and using a combination of longitudinal field and archival data, this article investigates how a local, indigenous community in Northern Chile mobilized their rights over a period (...) of almost two decades. We found that rights mobilization was largely shaped by tensions between the different logics of legality and the business organization. In our case, the UNGP implementation process has been ineffective in giving rightsholders access to genuine remedy. On the contrary, it has led to weakened rights mobilization, dividing the local community. We conclude that greater attention to rights mobilization and domestic governance dynamics should be given in the business and human rights debate. (shrink)

Comprehension and recall of informed consent was assessed after the study closure in the parents/guardians of a birth cohort of children participating in an intensive three-year diarrhoeal surveillance. A structured questionnaire was administered by field workers who had not participated in the study's follow-up protocol. Of 368 respondents, 329 (89.4 per cent) stated that the study was adequately explained during enrolment, but only 159 (43.2 per cent) could recall that it was on diarrhoea. Nearly half (45.9 per cent) of the (...) respondents stated that they would not have participated if free medical treatment was not provided, although the free medical clinic was not offered at enrolment. Spousal approval (82.9 per cent) was the most important factor in the decision to participate. In the multivariate analysis, maternal education was associated with increased awareness about the disease under study: mothers without any formal education had the lowest awareness (OR = 3.47, 95 per cent CI = 1.60–7.51). Despite a high compliance with the study protocol, retention of understanding about the research study was low over a long period of time. Although the local government provides free healthcare in the study area, respondents cited free healthcare as an important reason for participation, highlighting the need for true health equity before meaningful informed consent can be obtained. (shrink)

A hallmark of skilled motor performance is behavioral flexibility – i.e., experts can not only produce a movement pattern to reliably achieve a given task goal, but also possess the ability to change that movement pattern to fit a new context. In this perspective article, we briefly highlight the factors that are critical to understanding behavioral flexibility, and its connection to movement variability, stability, and learning. We then address how practice strategies should be developed from a motor learning standpoint to (...) enhance behavioral flexibility. Finally, we highlight some important future avenues of work that are needed to advance our understanding of behavioral flexibility. We use examples from sport as a context to highlight these issues, especially in regard to elite performance and development. (shrink)

Basic income and basic capital are two common ideas for redesigning distribution. Basic income provides people with a regular income from government. Basic capital provides people with a lump-sum grant. An important part of scholarly debate concentrates on the merits of basic income versus basic capital. This paper claims that these debates are too narrow. First, current debates overlook the way that a chief inspiration for both ideas, Thomas Paine, wanted basic capital and basic income to be complements not substitutes. (...) Second, it is more instructive to compare basic capital or basic income with a wider set of alternatives than with each other. Widening the debates would benefit the discussion of a basic capital or basic income. (shrink)

Pt. 1. Purva paksha (examination of my opponents' positions) -- pt. 2. Uttara paksha (my response).

Introduction -- Matisse in slow motion -- Art and natural being -- Proust and the significant event -- Reversibility between the arts -- Concluding remarks.

BackgroundStudies on different methods to supplement the traditional informed consent process have generated conflicting results. This study was designed to evaluate whether participants who received group counseling prior to administration of informed consent understood the key components of the study and the consent better than those who received individual counseling, based on the hypothesis that group counseling would foster discussion among potential participants and enhance their understanding of the informed consent.MethodsParents of children participating in a trial of nutritional supplementation were (...) randomized to receive either group counseling or individual counseling prior to administration of the informed consent. To assess the participant's comprehension, a structured questionnaire was administered approximately 48-72 hours afterwards by interviewers who were blinded to the allocation group of the respondents.ResultsA total of 128 parents were recruited and follow up was established with 118 (90.2%) for the study. All respondents were aware of their child's participation in a research study and the details of sample collection. However, their understanding of study purpose, randomization and withdrawal was poor. There was no difference in comprehension of key elements of the informed consent between the intervention and control arm.ConclusionsThe results suggest that the group counseling might not influence the overall comprehension of the informed consent process. Further research is required to devise better ways of improving participants' understanding of randomization in clinical trials.Trial RegistrationClinical Trial Registry - India (CTRI): CTRI/2009/091/000612. (shrink)

Believing that p, assuming that p, and imagining that p involve regarding p as true—or, as we shall call it, accepting p. What distinguishes belief from the other modes of acceptance? We claim that conceiving of an attitude as a belief, rather than an assumption or an instance of imagining, entails conceiving of it as an acceptance that is regulated for truth, while also applying to it the standard of being correct if and only if it is true. We argue (...) that the second half of this claim, according to which the concept of belief includes a standard of correctness, is required to explain the fact that the deliberative question whether to believe that p is transparent to the question whether p. This argument raises various questions. Is there such a thing as deliberating whether to believe? Is the transparency of the deliberative question whether to believe that p the same as the transparency of the factual question whether I do believe that p? We will begin by answering these questions and then turn to a series of possible objections to our argument. (shrink)

Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...) it is good (in whichever sense of good one likes, moral, prudential, aesthetic, allthings-considered, etc.) to believe the truth with respect to p. But there is no such gap between the two questions within the first-personal deliberative perspective; the question whether to believe that p seems to collapse into the question whether p is true. (shrink)

This paper concerns a basic ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology between the reversibility of flesh and its écart. Where the former suggests continuity between the sensing and the sensible, the latter suggests their separation. It is difficult to know from reading The Visible and the Invisible which is to be prioritized or how one is to be read alongside the other. I argue that such a relation comes to light by thinking through the negation that is, for Merleau-Ponty, always constellated with (...) being. This becomes more explicitly an ontology of differentiation or difference itself which does not prioritize identity. Such an ontology is, I argue, prefigured in Merleau-Ponty’s work on passivity and its symbolic formation. The idea is that the dynamic between negation and being and of symbolic formation happens at the level of, or even in, the body. The final section is thus a consideration of “the implex,” a term Merleau-Ponty borrows from Paul Valéry along with “chiasm.”. (shrink)

When we deliberate whether to believe some proposition, we feel immediately compelled to look for evidence of its truth. Philosophers have labelled this feature of doxastic deliberation 'transparency'. I argue that resolving the disagreement in the ethics of belief between evidentialists and pragmatists turns on the correct explanation of transparency. My hypothesis is that it reflects a conceptual truth about belief: a belief that p is correct if and only if p. This normative truth entails that only evidence can be (...) a reason for belief. Although evidentialism does not follow directly from the mere psychological truth that we cannot believe for non-evidential reasons, it does follow directly from the normative conceptual truth about belief which explains why we cannot do so. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty states in his Institution and Passivity lectures that he wants to "consider criticism itself as a symbolic form" as opposed to doing "a philosophy of symbolic form." This statement seems counterintuitive for Merleau-Ponty, who has been called "the philosopher of the sensible." In this book, Kaushik investigates this question, arguing that Merleau-Ponty has raised the stakes of his ontology such that it is no longer a matter of finding a solution to the difference between "the real and the fictive" (...) but rather, of constellating and matrixing them. This ontological matrix amounts to a psychoanalysis of the philosophy of identity. Kaushik argues that philosophies of reflection, in which reflection seeks to coincide with its origins, are in fact uncritical because they miss the form of differentiation that limits them. His analyses of the matrices between space-imagination, light-dark, awake-asleep, repression-expression, etc., subvert these philosophies and reveal the symbolic form in terms of its lack of precise origin or destination. Drawing from recently published course materials of Merleau-Ponty's, and attentive to his reliance on literary phrases for phenomenological insights, Kaushik brings out the living force of Merleau-Ponty's thought and develops his radical insight of the primacy of the symbolic form, even in an ontology that claims to be about the sensible and its elements. (shrink)

Rumour has been part of collective human life for centuries. Communities deal with anxiety and make sense of the unknowable by mixing apprehensions with what is already known to them. With modernity, and in line with studies on a range of social phenomena, there have been efforts to develop a science on rumour. Most of these studies deal with rumour at the propositional level, such that the rumouring or rumour-rebutting subject invariably belongs to one of the two sides of the (...) ‘true–false’ divide. Similar categories are followed in the study of rumour in social media, where the nodes in a rumour chain are, however, less hierarchical, and where images are increasingly used for persuasion. This paper, following a value-oriented approach, argues that the science on rumour has objectivized the problem, and has suggested instrumental solutions like enhancing the digital literacy of social media users. Whereas a value position should ideally attempt to efface the dilemma of the rumouring/rumour-rebutting subject, and locate rumours within the larger socio-political and historical context of a society. (shrink)

Author's interviews with twenty contemporary philosophical masters of different spiritual backgrounds predominantly Indic to quest for seeking philosophical concepts and spiritual life.

Covid-19 has sparked calls for a universal basic income as a way of coping with a demand shock caused by the pandemic. Temporary income payments have been part of the emergency response to the pandemic. This paper questions the effectiveness of temporary payments as a way to raise demand. Some observers claim that vouchers are better targeted at sectors hit hard by Covid-19 as people may have a tendency to save than spend from temporary payments. There may be a stronger (...) case for permanent rather than temporary payments if the aim is to boost demand in the economy. (shrink)

In a Working Note to The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty uses the fine phraseology of an “architectonic past” and a “mythical time” to describe Proust’s remembrances of things past. This paper first considers how this architectonic past sheds light on Merleau-Ponty’s ontology, and second how this results in a mythical time, which is an originary encounter with this past. Paying also attention to Merleau-Ponty’s final, completed reflections on “Swann’s Way,” Volume One of Remembrances of Things Past, I suggest that (...) by exposing the inner-connection between the two senses of time, Proust is highly significant for Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of “reversibility”. Proustian remembrances are used by Merleau-Ponty not to expose an inwardness, but something that is withdrawn and behind the sensible. The way in which these remembrances operate in myth time bespeaks of a memorial dimension of the past of being itself. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between Merleau-Ponty's lectures on institution and his lectures on passivity. I argue that the relationship depends on Merleau-Ponty's internal critique of institution as outlined in Husserl's ouevre. That is, institution is not only human institution, which rests on temporality and time-consciousness, but also animal, biological and even virological, which rests on a certain, non-euclidian space of the body. Merleau-Ponty's focus in the course is animal institution: animal morphology, menstruation, puberty, etc. These are what tie institution (...) and passivity together, and especially the passivity that Merleau-Ponty calls the "symbolic matrix," the touchstone of which is the "implex." While the paper discusses, Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl and the consequent understanding of a passivity in institution, it opens the possibility that the virological may be yet another kind of passivity that has instituted a new trajectory in human institution. This is highlighted in the very word "pandemic.". (shrink)

This paper begins by pointing to an obvious difficulty in Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy: undoing the decisive separation between linguistic connotation and the denotated, undoing the decisive separation between linguistic meaning and the sensible world. This difficulty demands that we understand how the sensible and the symbolic have a sort of spontaneous relation. How can this be? The history of this problem is then traced back to Husserl, and in particular to his The Origin of Geometry. For Husserl, ‘abstract geometry’ is (...) understood to be a self-constituting field that cuts itself off from a ‘pre-geometry.’ The latter sort of geometry has to do with a symbolic and phantasy consciousness that makes differences in an otherwise uniform sensible plenum. Merleau-Ponty is at odds with the idea of an abstract geometry that constitutes its own field. His phenomenology would have this abstract geometry reduced to pre-geometry, and this pre-geometry further reduced to the sensible, which is then not uniform at all. The problem becomes more precisely how the separations of the sensible and the differences between things are already symbolic.The paper suggests that a way to think through Merleau-Ponty’s problem can be found in a January 1960 Working Note to The Visible and the Invisible called “The Invisible, the negative, vertical Being.” This note, with its references to “joints and members” and “disjunction and dis-membering” is very likely a reference to, and correction of, Heidegger’s 1943 essay on Heraclitus. The point for Merleau-Ponty seems to be a radicalization of the Heraclitean coinstantiation of opposites. His reading allows him to resist understanding the sensible as a self-identity and replace it instead with disarticulation, disintegration, or even perhaps disruption. To show this very disruption is, the paper finally argues, to show the sensible with its phantasmagorical character. Finally, by way of conclusion, the paper takes a turn to sculpture precisely to discuss how we might grasp a sensible that is not uniform but always being shaped and differentiated; and how the symbolic is exactly in, enjambed with, this spacing apart. Ce texte commence par signaler une difficulté évidente dans l’oeuvre tardive de Merleau-Ponty : défaire la séparation décisive entre la connotation linguistique et la dénotation, défaire la séparation décisive entre la signification linguistique et le monde sensible. Cette difficulté requiert de comprendre comment le sensible et le symbolique se trouvent dans une sorte de relation spontanée. Comment cela se fait-il? L’histoire de ce problème remonte à Husserl et à son Origine de la géométrie. Pour Husserl, la « géométrie abstraite » est comprise comme un champ qui se constitue lui-même et qui se détache d’une « pré-géométrie ». Cette dernière sorte de géométrie est liée à une conscience symbolique et imaginative qui fait des différences dans un espace sensible autrement uniforme. Merleau-Ponty n’est pas favorable à l’idée d’une géométrie abstraite qui constitue son propre champ. Sa phénoménologie vise à réduire la géométrie abstraite à la pré-géométrie, et cette dernière au sensible, qui dès lors n’est plus du tout uniforme. Le problème consiste alors à montrer comment les séparations du sensible et les différences entre les choses sont toujours déjà symboliques.La contribution ici suggère qu’une solution peut être trouvée dans la note de travail du Visible et l’invisible de janvier 1960, intitulée « L’Invisible, le négatif, l’Être vertical ». Cette note, qui parle de « jointure et membrure » et de « dis-jonction et dé-membrement », est sans doute une référence à, et une correction l’essai de Heidegger de 1943 sur Héraclite. Le propos de Merleau-Ponty semble être une radicalisation de la co-instantiation héraclitéenne des opposés. Son interprétation lui permet de résister à la conception du sensible comme identité à soi et de la remplacer par la désarticulation, la désintégration ou même peut-être le bouleversement (disruption). Le fait de montrer ce bouleversement consiste précisément à montrer le sensible avec son caractère fantasmatique. Finalement, en guise de conclusion, le texte se tourne vers la sculpture pour discuter une notion du sensible comme étant non uniforme mais toujours déjà formé et différencié, et une notion de symbolique comme étant exactement dans cet espacement. Questo testo inizia portando l’attenzione su un evidente problema nella filosofia dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty: annullare la separazione decisiva tra connotazione linguistica e ciò che viene denotato, annullare la separazione decisiva tra significato linguistico e mondo sensibile. Questo problema richiede una comprensione della relazione spontanea tra sensibile e simbolico. Come ciò è possibile? La storia di questo problema risale fino ad Husserl, ed in particolare al suo L’origine della geometria. Per Husserl, la ‘geometria astratta’ è da concepire come un campo che si costituisce da sé, distaccandosi da una ‘pre-geometria’. L’ultima tipologia di geometria ha a che fare con una coscienza simbolica e immaginativa, che crea delle differenze in un altrimenti uniforme plenum sensibile. Merleau-Ponty non concorda con l’idea di una geometria astratta che costituisca il proprio campo. La sua fenomenologia intende piuttosto riportare la geometria astratta alla pre-geometria, e quest’ultima al sensibile, che quindi è tutto fuorché uniforme. Il problema diventa allora, più precisamente, come mostrare che le separazioni del sensibile e delle differenze tra le cose siano già simboliche. Questo testo suggerisce che una soluzione per pensare questo problema in Merleau-Ponty possa essere trovata in una nota di lavoro al Visibile e l’invisibile del gennaio 1960, intitolata “L’invisibile, il negativo, l’essere verticale”. Questa nota, con i suoi riferimenti a “spazio topologico e il tempo di congiunzione e di membratura”, e ancora “di dis-giunzione e dis-membramento”, è molto probabilmente un riferimento, ed insieme una correzione, al saggio di Heidegger su Eraclito del 1943. Il punto, per Merleau-Ponty, sembra essere una radicalizzazione del concetto eracliteo di compresenza degli opposti. La sua lettura gli permette di resistere alla comprensione del sensibile come un’auto-identità, per rimpiazzarla invece con una disarticolazione, disintegrazione, o perfino interruzione. Mostrare quest’interruzione è, come argomentiamo in questo testo, mostrare il sensibile con il suo carattere fantasmagorico. Infine, tirando le conclusioni, questo testo si rivolge alla scultura, per discutere come sia possibile afferrare un sensibile che non sia uniforme, ma sempre in-formato e in differenziazione, e come la simbolica sia sempre in – e intrecciata con – questa spaziatura, questa distanziazione. (shrink)

This paper considers the move from passivity to a generative passivity in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. In The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty calls this generative passivity a “secondary passivity” and in his passivity lectures he describes it as “passivity without passivism.” The paper argues that this secondary passivity must be understood in terms of an écart within the phenomena. That is, in terms of a separation and distance which is matrixed and configured within what appears. This is the basis for Merleau-Ponty’s (...) statement in his passivity lectures that “the touchstone of a theory of passivity,” is a “notion of oneiric symbolism,” and why for him passivity is intimately connected to a “primordial symbol.” If the symbolic is so associated with passivity, the symbolic also does not concern origins but is both the ontological limit and divergence in phenomena. This association forces Merleau-Ponty to consider what it means for phenomenological reflection retrace its steps back to an initial event of expression and even whether phenomenology is ultimately served by description. Finally, this paper considers Merleau-Ponty’s attitude toward the literary usages of language as a means of doing a phenomenology of the secondary passivity. (shrink)

It is common for philosophers to claim that doxastic voluntarism, the view that an agent can form beliefs voluntarily, is false, and therefore that agents do not have the kind of control over their beliefs required for a straightforward application of deontological concepts such as obligation or duty in the domain of epistemology. The role that the denial of doxastic voluntarism plays in an argument to the effect that agents do not have obligations with respect to belief is simply this.

Why can't deliberation conclude in an intention except by considering whether to perform the intended action? I argue that the answer to this question entails that reasons for intention are determined by reasons for action. Understanding this feature of practical deliberation thus allows us to solve the toxin puzzle.

Current formal dialectical models postulate normative rules that enable discussants to conduct dialogical interactions without committing fallacies. Though the rules for conducting a dialogue are supposed to apply to interactions between actual arguers, they are without exception theoretically motivated. This creates a gap between model and reality, because dialogue participants typically leave important content-related elements implicit. Therefore, analysts cannot readily relate normative rules to actual debates in ways that will be empirically confirmable. This paper details a new, data-driven method for (...) describing discussants’ actual reply structures, wherein corpus studies serve to acknowledge the complexity of natural argumentation. Rather than refer exclusively to propositional content as an indicator of arguing pro/contra a given claim, the proposed approach to dialogue structure tracks the sequence of dialogical moves itself. This arguably improves the applicability of theoretical dialectical models to empirical data, and thus advances the study of dialogue systems. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is widely recognized as one of the major figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The recent publication of his lecture courses and posthumous working notes has opened new avenues for both the interpretation of his thought and philosophy in general. These works confirm that, with a surprising premonition, Merleau-Ponty addressed many of the issues that concern philosophy today. With the benefit of this fuller picture of his thought, Merleau-Ponty and Contemporary Philosophy undertakes an assessment of the philosopher's relevance for contemporary (...) thinking. Covering a diverse range of topics, including ontology, epistemology, anthropology, embodiment, animality, politics, language, aesthetics, and art, the editors gather representative voices from North America and Europe, including both Merleau-Ponty specialists and thinkers who have come to the philosopher's work through their own thematic interest. (shrink)

This paper examines the ways Merleau-Ponty and Nancy think about light, a central theme in Western philosophy closely tied with form and intelligibility. The first section of this paper points out that each thinker replaces the “highest moment of light,” where it is relieved of its weight and materiality, with darkness, where light instead emerges from some apophantic depth indissociable from the material. The second section of this paper gives a critique of darkness in Nancy from Merleau-Ponty’s perspective. According to (...) the latter’s view, Nancy’s claim that darkness is distinct from the structures of intentionality and instead has to do with a presentation of the inappropriable fact of things would be untenable. The difference between the thinkers relates to how each thinks about negation after their very similar critiques of light and form. Still, I argue, the same critique of presentation in Nancy ought to also be applied to Merleau-Ponty, or at least to the usual way he is thought to favour the sensible instead of intelligibility. In the third section of this paper I consider one of Merleau-Ponty’s phrases, “there is no painting before painting,” a statement I take to be about how explicit formal structures, and thus also light and line, comes from a sensible register that does not lack variation and is not totally “deformed,” to use Nancy’s word that describes the homogeneity of a sensible field. Cet essai examine les différentes façons qu’ont Merleau-Ponty et Nancy de penser la lumière, un thème central de la philosophie occidentale, et qui est étroitement lié avec les idées de forme et d’intelligibilité. La première section montre que les deux penseurs remplacent le « plus haut moment de la lumière », qui est sans poids ni matérialité, par l’obscurité, si bien que la lumière émerge d’une profondeur apophantique indissociable de la matérialité. La deuxième section propose un critique de l’obscurité chez Nancy d’une perspective merleau-pontienne. Pour Merleau-Ponty, l’affirmation de Nancy selon laquelle l’obscurité se distingue des structures de l’intentionalité et a plutôt affaire à la présentation du fait inappropriable de la chose serait tout à fait intenable. La différence entre les deux penseurs concerne la façon dont chacun pense la négation à partir d’une critique similaire de la lumière et de la forme. J’avance pourtant que la même critique de la présentation chez Nancy devrait aussi être appliquée à Merleau-Ponty, ou du moins à la façon dont il est habituellement vu comme préférant le sensible contre l’intelligible. Dans la troisième section, j’évalue la phrase de Merleau-Ponty, « la peinture n’existe pas avant la peinture », phrase qui selon moi concerne la façon dont les structures formelles explicites, et donc la forme et la ligne, proviennent d’un registre sensible qui n’est pas sans variations et donc pas totalement « déformé », pour utiliser le mot que Nancy emploie pour décrire l’homogénéité du champ sensible.Questo articolo prende in esame i modi in cui Merleau-Ponty e Nancy riflettono sulla luce, un tema centrale nella filosofia occidentale e strettamente connesso a quelli della forma e dell’intelligibilità. La prima sezione dell’articolo mostra come entrambi i pensatori sostituiscano “il più alto momento della luce”, che la libera dal suo peso e dalla sua materialità, con l’oscurità, in cui invece la luce emerge da una profondità apofantica indissociabile dalla sfera materiale. La seconda sezione offre una critica del concetto di oscurità in Nancy dal punto di vista di Merleau-Ponty. Secondo una prospettiva merleau-pontiana, la tesi di Nancy che l’oscurità sia distinta dalle strutture dell’intenzionalità e sia invece connessa a una presentazione dell’aspetto inappropriabile delle cose sarebbe insostenibile. La differenza tra i due pensatori riguarda il modo in cui ciascuno di essi elabora l’idea di negazione, a partire da due analisi della luce e della forma molto simili. Tuttavia, come cerco di mostrare, la stessa obiezione all’idea di presentazione in Nancy dovrebbe essere applicata anche a Merleau-Ponty, o quantomeno al modo in cui di norma si ritiene egli prediliga il sensibile piuttosto che l’intelligibile. Nella terza sezione, prendo in esame una frase di Merleau-Ponty, “non c’è pittura prima della pittura”, che a mio avviso si riferisce a come le strutture formali esplicite, e dunque anche la luce e la linea, provengano da un registro sensibile che non è privo di variazioni e che non è totalmente “deformato”, per impiegare un termine di Nancy che descrive l’omogeneità di un campo sensibile. (shrink)

Infertile women in the developing world face an additional layer of vulnerability compared to their counterparts in the developed world due to social, cultural, political, and socioeconomic factors that truly render their infertility a disability. After exploring how infertility in the developing world fits the World Health Organization’s biopsychosocial model of disability, we will argue that feminists and disability rights proponents should jointly articulate and advocate for change.

Background: Healthcare providers who are accountable for patient care safety and quality but who are not empowered to actualize them experience moral distress. Interventions to mitigate moral distress in the healthcare organization are needed. Objective: To evaluate the effect on moral distress and clinician empowerment of an established, health-system-wide intervention, Moral Distress Consultation. Methods: A quasi-experimental, mixed methods study using pre/post surveys, structured interviews, and evaluation of consult themes was used. Consults were requested by staff when moral distress was present. (...) The purpose of consultation is to identify the causes of moral distress, barriers to action, and strategies to improve the situation. Intervention participants were those who attended a moral distress consult. Control participants were staff surveyed prior to the consult. Interviews were conducted after the consult with willing participants and unit managers. Moral distress was measured using the Moral Distress Thermometer. Empowerment was measured using the Global Empowerment Scale. Results: Twenty-one consults were conducted. Analysis included 116 intervention and 30 control surveys, and 11 interviews. A small but significant decrease was found among intervention participants, especially intensive care staff. Empowerment was unchanged. Interview themes support the consult service as an effective mode for open discussion of difficult circumstances and an important aspect of a healthy work environment. Conclusions: Moral distress consultation is an organization-wide mechanism for addressing moral distress. Consultation does not resolve moral distress but helps staff identify strategies to improve the situation. Further studies including follow up may elucidate consultation effectiveness. (shrink)