This article examines the content and appraisals of youth ministry leader goals. Responses to an open-ended survey question by 378 leaders primarily working in the United States who held significant responsibility for the discipleship of high school-aged young people in their ministries were coded, resulting in 29 categories of goals. Participants named goals associated with service, relationships in general, relationships with God, biblical/gospel knowledge, and discipleship most frequently. Leaders rated each goal according to factors that contribute to goal achievement and (...) well-being. Appraisals of goal difficulty (“this goal involves challenge”), clarity (“this goal is well-defined”), satisfaction with progress (“this goal is moving forward satisfactorily”), and support (“other leaders and congregants encourage the pursuit of this goal”) varied significantly across goals. Of note, participants rated discipleship and partnerships with parents/families as progressing the least satisfactorily and as some of the most difficult goals. By contrast, participants rated service goals as some of the least difficult and most clear. The content and appraisals of these goals bear implications for both the psychological study of goals and strivings and for ministry practice. (shrink)

Recently many have argued that agents must sometimes have credences that are imprecise, represented by a set of probability measures. But opponents claim that fans of imprecise credences cannot provide a decision theory that protects agents who follow it from foregoing sure money. In particular, agents with imprecise credences appear doomed to act irrationally in diachronic cases, where they are called to make decisions at earlier and later times. I respond to this claim on behalf of imprecise credence fans. Once (...) we appreciate the complexity of our intuitions about rational decision making, we can see that diachronic cases are in fact evidence for the essential claims motivating imprecise credence models. I argue that our decision theory for imprecise agents should mirror our decision theory for agents in moral dilemmas, and I develop permissive norms that explain our intuitions about both sorts of agents. (shrink)

My commentary focuses on Khalidi's defense of episodic memory as a cognitive kind. His argument relies on merging two distinct accounts of episodic memory—the phenomenal and the etiological. I suggest that Khalidi's framework can be used to carve the contemporary memory literature differently. On this view, the phenomenal account supports constructive episodic simulation as a cognitive kind, the etiological account supports event memory as a cognitive kind, and episodic memory ceases to be. The question for Khalidi is, then, how to (...) evaluate this alternative proposal—and more broadly how to adjudicate between competing and overlapping accounts of cognitive kinds. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for investment, (...) I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

This study shows how, in its overall ability to shed light on the vexing complexity of human being, Maimonides’ discourse on matter—treated via metaphors or seen as itself a metaphor—emerges as a venerable guide, pointing the careful reader to the most important truths about perfected humanity within the Guide of the Perplexed. After examining and harmonizing Maimonides’ dual metaphors of matter (matter as the married harlot and the woman of valor) in this way, I show how metaphor as a literary (...) form is itself an illustration of matter’s positive role in the life of the soul. Following upon this consideration of the importance of metaphorical discourse, I end by briefly suggesting how the metaphysics of matter may itself quite generally be characterized as a kind of metaphor. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of epistemic contextualism that accounts for the ordinary judgements and theoretical principles that motivate pragmatic encroachment. Adopting this contextualist view, we can avoid the counterintuitive consequences of pragmatic encroachment, while still preserving its attractive applications.

Jurgen De Wispelaere and Lindsay Stirton point out that basic income must be designed in light of the features of the society in which the policy is to be implemented. Yet, in Canada, scholars and politicians have neglected one crucial aspect of the context in which basic income stands to be implemented – namely, a settler-colonial one. In a settler-colonial context, we must consider the compatibility of such a policy proposal with the worldviews of Indigenous peoples who continue to assert, (...) apply, and revitalize their laws on this land. As such, in this paper, I consider the compatibility of a basic income with Anishinaabe worldview and legality. Ultimately, I find that while dominant justifications for basic income are not compatible with Anishinaabe worldview, the implementation of the policy may nonetheless support the urgent imperative of Indigenous law revitalization. (shrink)

The difficulty of making reliable interpretation from a dense cloud of unreliable correlations means that the grounds for making a testable or brain-based, theory of intelligence remain very shaky. We briefly discuss the conceptual and methodological problems that arise and suggest one possible alternative interpretation of the data.

At a crucial moment in Euripides’ Andromache, the title character throws her hands around a statue of the goddess Thetis and laments the losses that have brought her to a point of desperation and despair. When Thetis appears at the end of the play, she answers Andromache’s pleas and grants her a renewed life of marriage and motherhood. Yet in her embrace of the statue, Andromache momentarily embodies an alternative impulse: a longing to merge with the stony form of the (...) goddess and to cease from the patterns of nuptial mobility and sexual reproduction that have defined her life thus far. In this article, I argue that we should understand this embrace as “queer”—as a moment of intimate contact between mortal woman and immortal goddess that deeply unsettles the models of sexual and reproductive order that dominate Greek art and literature. While the play ends by redirecting Andromache toward the propagation of the Trojan line, the queer potential of that crucial embrace is taken up by Thetis herself, who re-scripts her own marriage to Peleus in a way that both inverts gendered patterns of movement and rejects the valorization of female fertility. Euripides’ Andromache thus concludes with the restoration of mortal sexual and reproductive order, yet through Andromache’s encounter with Thetis, it also gestures to the queer and startling freedom of a barren future. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn 1651, Alexander Ross published an attack on Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Bacon's Natural History and William Harvey's De generatione. Ross's work, Arcana Microcosmi, defended Aristotelian natural philosophy against the ‘new philosophy’ that figures like Bacon, Harvey and Browne represented. Though Ross's attacks on these authors make up no more than half of the treatise’s contents, the book’s paratextual materials emphasise scientific debate. While Ross's authorial approach advocates reading exclusively ancient authorities for the sake of glossing and transmitting their knowledge (...) to a wider public, in order to argue against the new philosophy Ross must engage with its textual production. Furthermore, his works advertise their focus on Bacon, Harvey and Browne, which would have attracted a readership drawn to new scientific approaches to knowledge formation. Ross's polemic represents an effort to model his devotion to ancient authority while also generating a reading public that would resist the new approach to reading that the new philosophy proposed. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 1 Seiten: 31-58.

Contexte : Dans les systèmes de santé universitaires complexes, les projets d’amélioration de la qualité (AQ) destinés à améliorer les soins et l’apprentissage prolifèrent, mais il existe des différences considérables quant à la manière dont ces projets sont supervisés sur le plan éthique, voire même s’ils le sont. À la suite d’un volume élevé de projets soumis à l’un de nos comités d’éthique de la recherche (CER), mais considérés comme n’étant pas de la recherche et donc non éligibles à un (...) examen, des questions ont commencé à se poser au sein de notre organisation sur la manière dont les dimensions éthiques des projets d’AQ pourraient être évaluées et sur les approbations institutionnelles qui pourraient être nécessaires pour garantir la conformité avec les normes émergentes. Méthodes : Une enquête environnementale à méthodes mixtes a conduit à une analyse quantitative rétrospective des projets d’AQ de notre organisation, associée à des consultations qualitatives approfondies avec le personnel, les médecins et les apprenants de l’ensemble de notre réseau de santé. Les exemptions de CER ont été analysées à l’aide de diagrammes d’exécution afin d’évaluer les volumes de base des projets d’AQ, et des analyses thématiques ont été menées sur les notes de terrain de 133 consultations avec les parties prenantes. Résultats : Au cours d’une période de 34 mois, 117 lettres d’exemption du CER ont été émises pour des projets d’AQ. Les consultations ont mis en évidence la nécessité d’un processus d’évaluation éthique clairement défini pour les projets d’AQ, de structures de gouvernance appropriées et de possibilités d’identifier et d’atténuer les risques. Les personnes interrogées ont également évoqué l’impératif éthique de mener des initiatives d’AQ. Le présent document explique comment ces thèmes ont contribué à l’élaboration et à la mise en place de notre comité d’examen de l’amélioration de la qualité (CEAQ). Conclusion : Depuis 2020, plus de 840 projets ont été examinés par notre CEAQ, dans le but d’atténuer les risques pour les patients, le personnel et les équipes de projet d’AQ dans l’ensemble de l’UHN. (shrink)

Hobbes was an unusual Christian, and one that recognized the potential power of the Christian story to strengthen commonwealths. This chapter discusses the account of Christianity found in Leviathan, which was designed to replace contemporary versions with one that would promote stability and obedience within the state. Hobbes’s religious ideas, like his political philosophy, began from his understanding of human beings; he insisted that religious belief was natural to humans, stemmed from anxiety, and needed to be coordinated by a sovereign (...) to prevent strife. For Hobbes, Christianity was a particularly effective remedy for such anxiety, at least when interpreted along correct lines. The theology developed by Hobbes was original, but it probably drew on ideas circulating among his Anglican acquaintances; indeed in Leviathan we see these ideas being used for a very different purpose. As Hobbes’s acquaintances realized, at the center of Hobbes’s project in Leviathan lay an extremely heterodox theology which could enhance the state while destroying the independent authority of the Church. (shrink)

Die Jahre 1808-1810 sind für Friedrich Schleiermacher sowohl privat als auch beruflich und politisch von besonderer Bedeutung: Er heiratet 1809 die junge Witwe Henriette von Willich, wirkt an der Konzeption der Berliner Universität und ihren ersten Berufungen mit und übernimmt leitende Funktion in der preußischen Schulreform. Der Kommentarband zur den Briefbänden 10 und 11 der historisch-kritischen Briefausgabe Friedrich Schleiermachers bietet neben einem Stellenkommentar zu den Briefen 1808-1810 eine Einführung in die Korrespondenz mit Informationen zu den Korrespondenzpartnern dieser Jahre sowie eine (...) Chronologie mit den wichtigsten privaten und beruflichen Ereignissen aus Schleiermachers Leben. Für jede Briefpartnerin und jeden Briefpartner wird, sofern überliefert, jeweils ein Handschriftenbeispiel als Faksimile wiedergegeben. Ein Register führt neben den Personen- und Ortsnamen auch Werke und Bibelstellen an. (shrink)

Although it is commonplace for political scientists to draw upon historical thinkers and the ‘great books’ of the past, the practice of using historical works as reference points for contemporary issues remains under-investigated. To address this practice, this article is positioned at the crossroads of social science and intellectual history. By examining the relationship of political economists Elinor and Vincent Ostrom with Alexis de Tocqueville, the article demonstrates some of the potential risks incurred by social scientists drawing on historical thinkers. (...) After exploring the similarities between the Ostroms and Tocqueville, it identifies three key pitfalls of the Ostroms’ ‘Tocquevillian’ rhetoric. These pitfalls result in obscuring meaning and overlooking philosophical insights, both of which detract from the Ostroms’ project. Insights from the field of intellectual history are offered. A final section presents a key example of Vincent Ostrom overlooking Tocqueville's thought where Tocqueville's insights were directly applicable to his work. The article parses political science's relationship with the past and offers a critique that is applicable beyond Tocqueville and the Ostroms. (shrink)

Identifying links between human personality and attributed robot personality is a relatively new area of human–robot interaction. In this paper we report on an exploratory study that investigates human and robot personality traits as part of a human–robot interaction trial. The trials took place in a simulated living-room scenario involving 28 participants and a human-sized robot of mechanical appearance. Participants interacted with the robot in two task scenarios relevant to a ‘robot in the home’ context. It was found that participants’ (...) evaluations of their own personality traits are related to their evaluations of the robot’s personality traits. The statistical analysis of questionnaire data yields several statistically significant results: Participants do not tend to assign their personality traits to match the robots’, For individual personality traits, participants rated themselves as having stronger personality characteristics compared to the robot, Specific significant correlations were found between participants’ and robot personality traits, and Significant group differences for participant gender, age and technological background are highlighted. The results are discussed in light of developing personalized robot companions. (shrink)

Using qualitative data, this article investigates women’s experiences in fantasy sports, a context that offers the potential for transformations in the gendered order of traditionally masculinized athletic environments by blurring the distinctions between real and virtual, combining active production and passive consumption, and allowing men and women to play side-by-side. We find, however, women often describe fantasy sports as a male/masculine space in which they are highly visible and have their ability to compete like men questioned, largely because of gendered (...) assumptions regarding sports knowledge. Women’s attitudes and behaviors frequently reproduce traditional gender dynamics, although women also engage in behaviors and assert definitions of themselves that are potentially transformative—implicitly and explicitly pushing the boundaries of what females are expected to be and accomplish in sport. Often, however, they simultaneously reproduce and resist men’s dominance and women’s marginalization, exercising “mediated agency” by using men to improve their fantasy sports experience and play or “conflicted agency” by reinforcing or accepting gender stereotypes about women while using those stereotypes to their advantage or positioning themselves as atypical women to whom the stereotypes do not apply. (shrink)

Many transhumanists see their respective movement as being rooted in ancient ethical thought. However, this alleged connection between the contemporary transhumanist doctrine and the ethical theory of antiquity has come under attack. In this paper, we defend this connection by pointing out a key similarity between the two intellectual traditions. Both traditions are committed to the “radical transformation thesis”: ancient ethical theory holds that we should assimilate ourselves to the gods as far as possible, and transhumanists hold that we should (...) enhance ourselves beyond the physical and intellectual parameters of being human so as to become posthuman. By considering the two views in tandem, we develop an account of the assimilation directive that is palatable to contemporary readers and provide a view of posthumanism worth wanting. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of philosophical exemplars, focusing on two uncommon but valuable figures: Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion, and the plumber-as-philosopher described by Mary Midgley. These figures highlight philosophical activity as benefitting from a wide variety of heterogenous sources, styles, and models, and suggest that philosophy be understood as a response to lived needs. The paper concludes with some suggestions for ways in which these exemplars might be relevant for contemporary issues in the academy.

In attempting to influence the moral views of others, activists sometimes employ pictures as tools of moral persuasion. In such cases, a viewer is confronted with an actual instance of the practice whose morality is at issue and invited to draw a general moral conclusion in response. This paper explores some of the philosophical issues that arise in connection with the use of pictures as tools of moral persuasion, with special attention to the roles of acquaintance and conversion in the (...) moral domain. Against concerns that relying on pictures will tend to bias or distort one’s moral judgment, the paper offers a qualified defense of the use of pictures. It then considers some implications for (i) the characterization of wide reflective equilibrium, (ii) the concept of a moral expert, and (iii) our attitudes towards our moral convictions. (shrink)

Am 22. April 2024 war Immanuel Kants 300. Geburtstag. Sein Werk ist bis heute zentraler Bestandteil der Philosophie überhaupt und insbesondere auch der politischen Philosophie, der Rechtsphilosophie und der Sozialphilosophie. 2024 ist zudem das 240. Jubiläum von Kants wirkmächtigem Essay „Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?“ (1784). Aufklärung, so schreibt Kant darin, beinhaltet die Aufdeckung und Befreiung von der Macht politischer, sozialer und religiöser „Vormünder“[1], die die aufklärerischen Subjekte in ihrem moralischen Recht auf gleiche und freie Co-Autorschaft im „Reich der (...) Zwecke“[2] einschränken. Kants Aufklärungsbegriff gehört auch heute zu einem der bedeutendsten Schlüsselbegriffe in der zeitgenössischen Philosophie, etwa in der Frage nach der dritten oder neuen Aufklärung (Hilary Putnam, Michael Hampe, Corine Pelluchon). Dass Kants Aufklärungsverständnis auch eine zentrale Rolle in der zeitgenössischen, zentral diskutierten, neorepublikanischen Debatte um Nicht-Beherrschung (Philip Pettit) spielen könnte, wird derzeit eher weniger gesehen, auch wenn Kant in dieser Debatte natürlich präsent ist (Rainer Forst, Dorothea Gädeke, Tamara Jugov, Peter Niesen, Arthur Ripstein, Laura Valentini). Der Schwerpunkt der Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie nimmt Kants Jubiläumsjahr nun zum Anlass, um Schlaglichter auf Kants kritisch konstruktives Verständnis von Aufklärung zu werfen, es kritisch zu hinterfragen und seine Relevanz für Gegenwart und Zukunft herauszuarbeiten. Die Einleitung unternimmt dies mit Hinblick auf das Verhältnis von Aufklärung, Willkürherrschaft und Toleranz. [1] WA, 8, 35. [2] G, 4, 433. (shrink)

Public and academic discourse about big data and digital technologies in agriculture present polarizing visions of the future of food, but it is still unclear whether and to what degree farmers are taking up the narratives of proponents or critics. Building on the sociotechnical imaginaries literature, we characterize and analyze farmer imaginaries about digital agricultural technologies. We present the findings from a survey of farmers in Canada (n = 1000). To study imaginaries, the survey uses both affective image analysis and (...) an original scale with a spectrum of possible scenarios for ten key aspects of agri-food futures (e.g., labour shortages, robotics and automation, food security, and sustainability). Canadian farmers’ imaginaries simultaneously include both negative and positive views. Respondents have extremely positive top-of-mind affective associations to digital agricultural technologies. However, overall, respondents are only very mildly optimistic when anticipating the future impacts of digital agricultural technologies at the farm-level and have more pessimistic views on how these tools will impact the agriculture sector more broadly. Our analysis reveals three core narratives in the farmer sociotechnical imaginary about digital agricultural technologies: (1) a feeling of ‘winner takes all’ and exacerbating power imbalances and disparity, (2) a belief that these tools are essential to grow more food on less land with fewer environmental impacts, and (3) faith that farmers and robots can work in harmony. This research contributes to the growing global body of scholarship on farmer experiences with data and digital technologies with a new way of studying sociotechnical imaginaries. (shrink)

The f-word -- Are you a spiritual rebel? -- A unicorn among sheep -- Taking out the sacred trash -- Redefining spirituality -- Spiritual moments -- Week 1: being -- Mindful Monday -- Talking Tuesday -- Wonder-filled Wednesday -- Trekking Thursday -- Fearless Friday -- Seva Saturday -- Sangha Sunday -- Week 2: deepening -- Week 3: expanding -- Rebel with (a lot of) clues -- Revealing higher purpose -- The rebel and the saint -- Reflections and ahas -- G-word (...) alternatives for sacred pondering -- Sacred shout-outs -- About the author. (shrink)

This essay explores the enlightenment story of Abbess Mugai Nyodai (無外如大, 1223–1298), one of the most famous and influential Zen Masters of her time, as a recommendation for a piece to use for introducing students to (Zen) Buddhist philosophy. Because this is a story that features women, as both students and teachers, a story that was intended for pedagogical purposes with a wide-ranging lay audience, and because it is densely packed with rich philosophical material yet at the same time short (...) and easily readable, I argue that it ought to be considered for use in Introduction to Philosophy or Introduction to Asian Philosophy courses, providing a variety of examples of how one might work through the text with students. (shrink)

This encyclopedia consists of short pieces on specific topics. My contribution concerns the nature of thought and its implications for the status of social sciences.