Worries about scientific objectivity seem never-ending. Social critics and philosophers of science have argued that invocations of objectivity are often little more than attempts to boost the status of a claim, while calls for value neutrality may be used to suppress otherwise valid dissenting positions. Objectivity is used sometimes to advance democratic agendas, at other times to block them; sometimes for increasing the growth of knowledge, at others to resist it. Sandra Harding is not ready to throw out objectivity (...) quite yet. For all of its problems, she contends that objectivity is too powerful a concept simply to abandon. In Objectivity and Diversity, Harding calls for a science that is both more epistemically adequate and socially just, a science that would ask: How are the lives of the most economically and politically vulnerable groups affected by a particular piece of research? Do they have a say in whether and how the research is done? Should empirically reliable systems of indigenous knowledge count as "real science"? Ultimately, Harding argues for a shift from the ideal of a neutral, disinterested science to one that prizes fairness and responsibility. (shrink)

The "Darwinian revolution" remains an acceptable phrase to describe the change in thought brought about by the theory of evolution, provided that the revolution is seen as occurring over an extended period of time. The decades from the 1790s through the 1850s are at the focus of this article. Emphasis is placed on the issue of species extinction and on generational shifts in opinion.

Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

Appearing in the feminist social science literature from its beginnings are a series of questions about methodology. In this collection, Sandra Harding interrogates some of the classic essays from the last fifteen years in order to explore the basic and troubling questions about science and social experience, gender, and politics.

SummaryPhilosophic questions about the adequacy of our prevailing Western conceptions of rationality have emerged from the growing recognition that one cannot simply “add women” as objects of knowledge to the existing bodies of our social and natural knowledge. Recent research in psychology and in moral development theory suggests that our understandings of the rationality of human activity are distorted and obscured by systematically identifying as universally desireable, as Human goals, conceptions of the self, others, and the appropriate relationships between the (...) two which are distinctively masculine. The essay suggests some implications of these research findings for the ways philosophers think about “the problems of philosophy”, moral theory, the role of formality and abstractness, and the “rational reconstructions” of the history of science.RésuméDes questions philosophiques se sont posées, a propos de ľadéquation de nos conceptions occidentales courantes de la rationalité, du fait de la reconnaissance qu'on ne peut pas simplement ajouter les femmes comme objets de connaissance aux corpus existants de notre connais‐sance sociale et naturelle. Des recherches récentes en psychologie et en théorie du développement moral suggèrent que notre comprèhension de la rationalité de ľactivité humaine est déformee et obscurcie par une identification systématique, comme universellement désirables, comme buts de ľhumanité, des conceptions de soi, des autres et des relations entre les deux qui sont distincte‐ment masculines. Cet essai suggère quelques applications de ces resultats de recherche quant à la maniere dont les philosophes pensent les problèmes de la philosophies la morale, le rôle du formel et de ľabstrait et les reconstuctions rationnelles de ľhistoire de la science.ZusammenfassungPhilosophische Fragen ïber die Angemessenheit unserer vorherrschenden Auffassungen von Rationalität im Westen sind durch die wachsende Einsicht entstanden, dass man nicht einfach Frauen als Objekte dem bestehenden Korpus unserer Sozial‐ und Naturwissenschaften hinzufügen kann. Neuere Forschungen in Psychologie und Theorien der moralischen Entwicklung legen nahe, dass unser Verstandnis der Rationalität von menschlichen Handlungen dadurch verzerrl und verdunkelt wird, dass systematische Auffassungen vom Selbst, den andern und den unter ihnen angebrachten Beziehungen als allgemein wünschbare Ziele anerkannt werden, die spezi‐fisch männlich sind. Es werden einige Implikationen dieser Forschungen t'iir die Art, wie Philoso‐phen über die Probleme der Philosophie denken, aufgezeigt – u.a. in bezug auf die Theorie der Moral, die Rolle der Formalisierung und Abstraktion, und die rationalen Rekonstruktionen der Geschichte der Wissenschaft. (shrink)

For well over a hundred years, commentators have examined the importance of the famous ‘neglected alternative’ (NA) objection to transcendental idealism. By contrast, very little attention has been paid to what the NA objection means for a later philosophical system of the 19th century that was highly indebted to Kant, namely, that of Arthur Schopenhauer. I seek to redress this lacuna in Schopenhauer scholarship and argue first that Schopenhauer acknowledged NA ( avant la lettre ) and took it seriously. Second, (...) I evaluate the arguments he gave against NA and in favor of the exclusive subjectivity of space and time, and thus for the thesis that the thing in itself is aspatiotemporal. Finally, I consider the threat posed by NA for Schopenhauer's thought in general. This investigation ultimately yields a clearer understanding of the basis upon which Schopenhauer founded his metaphysics, and how he attempted to provide a more self-consistent version of transcendental idealism. These topics have not been sufficiently appreciated by commentators to date. (shrink)

This essay is a critical review of Sandra Harding's The Science Question in Feminism. Her text constitutes a monumental effort to capture an overview of recent feminist critique of science and to develop a feminist dialectical and materialist conception of the history of masculinist science. In this analysis of Harding's work, the organizing categories as well as the main assumptions of the text are reconstructed for closer examination within the context of modern feminist critique of science and feminist theory (...) in general. Although a postive review of Harding's text is presented, questions are raised concerning the adequacy of socialist feminist assumptions for such a project, the limitations of Harding's theorization of gender, and the appropriateness of "postmodernism" as a final category of residence. (shrink)

On considère souvent, à la suite des ouvrages classiques de J. Bouveresse, que Wittgenstein veut opérer un rejet ou une critique de la subjectivité. Il semble cependant que les derniers textes de Wittgenstein consacrés à la philosophie de la psychologie permettent de modifier partiellement ce point de vue, et défaire place à une conception spécifique de la subjectivité, redéfinissant un sujet dépsychologisé voire désubjectivé, qui n'est plus le point sans étendue du Tractatus, ni le sujet métaphysique, ni le sujet de (...) la psychologie, mais simplement une voix ordinaire. Wittgenstein's later work is often held by critics in France, following e.g. Jacques Bouveresse's insights, to be operating a criticism of both interiority and subjectivity. A reading of Wittgenstein's later writings on the philosophy of psychology might somehow change such a point of view, and redefine a specific view — as a de-psychologized species — of subjectivity in Wittgenstein's writing, thus redefining the wittgensteinian subject in terms of an ordinary voice. (shrink)

The objective of this investigation is to initiate the development of a design-specific methodology for synaesthetic research, which will provide insight into synaesthesia from a designer's point of view. In addition, it aims to explore the possible advantages that the awareness of the phenomenon may have, specifically in the field of design education. The following question will be addressed: Can transdisciplinary studies of visual communication and neuropsychology help designers explore different practical approaches and theoretical views about synaesthesia?

In both the phenomenological ontology of Martin Heidegger and the pragmatism of Charles Peirce, the rejection of the Kantian phenomenal/noumenal distinction leads to a rejection of the alternatives of realism or idealism as well. In their respective denials of such an existential or ontological gap between appearance or phenomena and the ontologically real, they each establish a fundamental intentional unity between man and world which cannot be understood within the framework of realism or of idealism and which reveals deeply rooted (...) affinities between the two positions. (shrink)

This article focuses on the Chinese traditional culture, specifically Confucian philosophy, and analyses four core concepts of Confucianism which include ‘ren’, ‘Jun zi’, ‘Tian ming’, and ‘Xiao ti’. Based on these core concepts, this study explores how social attitudes in China toward people with disabilities are formed and influenced by Confucian philosophy, and how they impact the education of people with disabilities. It suggests that the related social attitudes of sympathy, rights awareness, and criteria of success, especially school performance in (...) this case, can have both positive and negative impacts on inclusive education for children with disabilities. Strategies are suggested for encouraging attitude change, when appropriate, in order to facilitate special education and inclusion and how to do so in a manner that is culturally respectful of the core belie... (shrink)

Patients suffering from the behavioral variant of Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD-b) often exaggerate their abilities. Are those errors in judgment limited to domains in which patients under-perform, or do FTD-b patients overestimate their abilities in other domains? Is overconfidence in FTD-b patients domain-specific or domain-general? To address this question, we asked patients at early stages of FTD-b to judge their performance in two domains (attention, perception) in which they exhibit relatively spared abilities. In both domains, FTD-b patients overestimated their performance relative (...) to patients with Dementia of Alzheimer Type (DAT) and healthy elderly subjects. Results are consistent with a domaingeneral deficit in metacognitive judgment. We discuss these findings in relation to “regression to the mean” accounts of overconfidence and the role of emotions in metacognitive judgments. (shrink)

Lois Shepherd's book If That Ever Happens to Me: Making Life and Death Decisions after Terri Schiavo demonstrates a great appreciation for the unresolved conflicts over end-of-life care revealed by the Schiavo case. Through detailed analysis, this book debunks the claim that the controversy defied an established consensus concerning the appropriateness of withdrawing medically administered nutrition and hydration. Arguments that settled legal standards provided a stalwart framework for that consensus failed to appreciate the variations and limitations of those norms. Shepherd (...) challenges the notion that we professionals—doctors, lawyers, judges, and bioethicists—had authoritatively resolved the moral and social .. (shrink)

L ’ auteur reprend la question du scepticisme, dont Wittgenstein affirme, dans le Tractatus logico-Philosophicus (s ’ adressant plus précisément au solipsisme), qu ’ il ne peut se dire. Il faut alors se demander de quel type de non-sens il s ’ agit, et comprendre en quoi il « veut dire » quelque chose, dès lors que le non-sens est reconnu comme radical (comme ne pouvant absolument pas être pensé). L ’ auteur, afin de mettre en évidence la valeur de (...) ce non-sens, réexamine les rapports du solipsisme et du scepticisme, et montre que pour Wittgenstein le solipsisme est le mythe fondateur du scepticisme, et celui-ci, la traduction théorique d ’ un problème pratique – notre tendance à éviter le contact avec la réalité. (shrink)

This paper explores what we can call the paradox of corporate citizenship, that is, it explores the paradoxical dark underbelly created by strategic success in corporations and their efforts to implement voluntary corporate social responsibility initiatives to demonstrate their good corporate citizenship. In this exploration, we will look at the tensions of corporate citizenship and responsibility that are created not when there are crises, scandals, or misdeeds, but when the very success of the company’s strategy is itself the source of (...) concern. (shrink)

Hobbes’s science of politics rests on a dual analysis of human beings: humans as complex material bodies in a network of mechanical forces, prone to passions and irrationality; and humans as subjects of right and obligation, morally exhortable by appeal to the standards of reason. The science of politics proposes an absolutist model of politics. If this proposal is not to be idle utopianism, the enduring functioning of the model needs to be compatible with the materialist analysis of human behaviour. (...) In this paper, I argue that Hobbes's attempts to render his science of politics compatible with his materialism are only partly successful; a fuller compatibility is achieved in the political writings of Spinoza. -/- Published with reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 221-224. Reprinted as: Sandra Field (2015), 'Hobbes and human irrationality', in T. Nardin (ed.) Rationality in Politics and its Limits, Abingdon: Routledge, 31-44. With reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 45-48. (shrink)

Los desafíos de la Ética Ambiental en un mundo superpoblado, no buscan abogar forzosamente por un mayor control restrictivo de la natalidad, sino más bien por un autocontrol consciente del actual daño holístico. Se torna sustancial sondear la precaución que se ha de tener relativa al equilibrio en la adecuación entre el aumento de individuos que se podría conservar indefinidamente en el medio ambiente, de aquel que generaría un daño mayor. El que esta última tendencia autodestructiva haya llevado a la (...) humanidad a seguir un camino muy similar al recorrido por otras especies antes de su correspondiente colapso, lleva a pensar que como especie no hemos sido capaz de dimensionar la incidencia del especieísmo en el desarrollo interno de la creciente demográfica humana, ni menos aún de comprender la lección que nos dejaron otros seres vivos que se reprodujeron más allá de lo que el ecosistema pudo asimilar, generando las secuelas devastadoras que hoy se pueden conocer y lamentar. (shrink)

Por ser Schopenhauer un pensador que aboga expresar sensu stricto la misma conclusión racional que se hallaría sensu allegorico en algunas sabidurías de oriente que acaban en la mística, nos valdremos de su cosmovisión para luego de reflexionar sobre el camino de la negación de la voluntad de vivir, no abandonarlo, sino señalar desde éste una vía aplicada a la problemática socioambiental global mediante un vuelco crítico, impulsado por una conciencia que reintegra pacífica y activamente al renunciante de la voluntad (...) en el acontecer mundial, buscando tender hacia un horizonte socioambiental que afirme el no daño holístico sin terminar en la nada concebida como nihil privativum. (shrink)

El problema de la destrucción antropogénica de la naturaleza vincula en lo fundamental las nociones de “Antropoceno” y “ecocidio”. Este no solo implica un crimen contra la biodiversidad, sino también una forma de autodestrucción ambiental que involucra al ser humano. Una humanidad que en su desarrollo ha construido la historia y legado simbólicos avances sobre la base de la degradación del entorno es agente de esa naturaleza a la cual se enfrenta, así como (por extensión) el microcosmos incide en el (...) macrocosmos en que está inserto sin encontrarse fuera ni ser independiente de él. El objetivo de este artículo es explicar cómo, gracias a la comprensión de la naturaleza y a la naturaleza misma en cuanto razón, es posible sondear a profundidad, desde el complejo global autodestructivo, la necesidad de una ecosuicidología. Para ello, presento el sentido y el significado filosófico del término. (shrink)

Agricultural commercialization as a mechanism to alleviate rural poverty raises concerns about small land-holders, non-adopters, and inequity in the distribution of benefits within transforming economies. Farm gross margins were calculated to assess the economic status and impact of cash cropping on the economic well-being of agrarian households in the Mid-hills of Nepal. On an individual crop basis, tomatoes and potatoes were the most profitable. On a per farm basis, 50 of the households with positive farm gross margins grew at least (...) one vegetable crop, while only 25 of households with negative farm gross margins included vegetable crops in their rotation. Farmers have been hesitant to produce primarily for the market given the rudimentary infrastructure and high variability in prices. Farmers reported selling more crops, but when corrected for inflation, gross revenues declined over time. The costs and benefits of developing markets have been unevenly distributed with small holders unable to capitalize on market opportunities, and wealthier farmers engaging in input intensive cash cropping. Farms growing vegetables had an average gross margin of US$137 per year compared to US$12 per year for farms growing only staple crops. However, the area under production is small, and while vegetable production is likely to continue increasing, sensitivity analysis and scenarios suggest high variability and limited short-term impact on poverty alleviation. (shrink)

O cerne desta obra se ancora em reflexões acerca da proliferação de novas doenças vinculadas a condutas cotidianas. Tal situação está diretamente relacionada à participação da indústria farmacêutica na produção de novos fármacos para doenças antes impensadas, revelando problemas éticos e políticos relevantes para a Saúde Coletiva. O tema central, Medicalização da Vida, é ainda desdobrado em discussões éticas sobre a relação pesquisa e indústria farmacêutica; políticas públicas de saúde e educação; desafios dos Comitês de Ética em Pesquisa e, por (...) fim, nos desafios éticos para a consolidação do Sistema Único de Saúde. O livro reúne uma coletânea de textos que apresentam pluralidade de perspectivas teóricas referentes a essa problemática, tendo como eixo norteador o olhar ético sobre problemas cotidianos, o qual enriquece o debate e permite ampliar a compreensão desta temática absolutamente atual. (shrink)

In vertebrate and invertebrate nonmuscle myosins, light‐ and heavy‐chain phosphorylation regulate myosin assembly into filaments, and interaction with actin. Vertebrate non‐muscle myosins can exist in vitro in three main states, either ‘folded’ (assembly‐blocked) or ‘extended’ (assembly‐competent) monomers, and filaments. Light‐chain phosphorylation regulates the ‘dynamic equilibrium’ between these states. The ability of the myosin to undergo changes in conformation and state of assembly may be an important mechanism in regulating the organization of the cytoskeleton and cell motility.

There is a striking difference, however, between the ways female and male modernists define and describe literal or figurative costumes. Balancing self against mask, true garment against false costume, Yeats articulates a perception of himself and his place in society that most other male modernists share, even those who experiment more radically with costume as metaphor. But female modernists like Woolf, together with their post-modernist heirs, imagine costumes of the mind with much greater irony and ambiguity, in part because women's (...) clothing is more closely connected with the pressures and oppressions of gender and in part because women have far more to gain from the identification of costume with self or gender. Because clothing powerfully defines sex roles, both overt and covert fantasies of transvestism are often associated with the intensified clothes consciousness expressed by these writers. But although such imagery is crucially important in works by Joyce, Lawrence, and Eliot on the one hand, and in works by Barnes, Woolf, and H. D. on the other, it functions very differently for male modernists from the way it operates for female modernists.Sandra M. Gilbert, professor of English at the University of California at Davis, is the author of Acts of Attention: The Poems of D.H. Lawrence and In the Fourth World; the coauthor, with Susan Gubar, of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, and its sequel, No Man's Land: The Woman Writer and the Twentieth-Century Literary Imagination. (shrink)