_Film Studies: An International Review_ Issue 1, Spring 1999 ISBN 1900755288.

on The Films of Wim Wenders by Kolker & Beicken.

I apply some of Gash’s interpretation of radical constructivism to an analogous critique of naïve realism in contemporary philosophy of education. It explores the significant potential in ….

The Pursuit of Existentialism explores how Existentialism has survived and how its key themes and concerns remain integral to continental philosophy today. The Pursuit of Existentialism places the creation of Existentialism - in the work of Sartre, Camus and Beauvoir - in its historical context, assessing how it drew on the work of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The book then goes on to focus on the complex heritage of post-Sartrean thinking from Heidegger to today. Theorists and schools covered include: Heidegger's infamous (...) critique of existentialism; (the dissident surrealists÷ from Bataille to Blanchot; feminist thinking from Arendt to Kristeva; postmodernist theorising from Baudrillard and Lyotard; psychoanalytic thinking from Lacan and Zizek; and deconstructive and political philosophy from Derrida and Badiou. (shrink)

One of the most focused research programs in the science-religion dialogue that has taken place up to the present is the series of volumes published jointly by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Originating with the encouragement of Pope John Paul II, this series has produced seven volumes focusing on how divine action can be understood in light of contemporary science. A retrospective volume published in 2008, Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of (...) Challenge and Progress, contains articles reviewing the series as a whole. In this article I analyze the series as a whole as well as some of the pivotal problems discussed throughout the series, such as the zero-sum game, scientific “traction,” falsifiability in theories of divine action, and locating special divine action in the physical world. (shrink)

Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life. _The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution_ presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in (...) part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility. In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally assumed that the difference between active and passive movement could be explained by the presence or absence of an intention in the mind of the agent. This assumption has led to the neglect of many interesting active behaviors that do not depend on intentions, including the "mindless" actions of humans and the activities of non-human animals. In this book Jones offers a broad account of agency that unifies these cases. The book addresses a range of questions, (...) including: When are movements properly attributed to whole agents, rather than to their parts? What does it mean for an agent to guide its action? What distinguishes agents from other complex systems? What is the relationship between action and adaptive behavior? And why might the study of living systems be the key to understanding agency? This book makes an important contribution to current philosophical debate on the nature and origins of agency. It defines action as a uniquely biological process and recasts human intentional action as a specialized case of a broader and more common phenomenon than has been previously assumed. Uniting findings from philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, biology, computer science, complexity theory and ethology, this book will be of interest to students and scholars working in these areas. (shrink)

Background Nurses in acute care are frequently involved in ethical decision making and experience a higher prevalence of ethical conflicts and dilemmas. Nurses in underresourced rural acute care settings also are likely to face unique ethical challenges. However, rarely have the particular contexts of these experiences in rural acute care settings been researched. A culture of silence and fear in small towns has made exploring these issues difficult. Objectives To explore registered nurses’ experiences of ethical issues and ethical decision making (...) in rural acute care hospitals in northern Ontario, Canada. Research design Guided by an interpretive descriptive approach, data were collected by two nurse researchers using in-depth, individual, and semistructured telephone interviews. Data were managed with NVivo v.11 and analyzed using inductive, comparative, thematic analyses. Participants and research context The participants were eight registered nurses working in two acute care hospitals in northern Ontario. Ethical considerations Ethical protocols were followed in accordance with ethics approval from the researchers’ university and the hospitals. Findings Results identified four themes that culminated in the development of a quadruple helix ethical decision-making framework of power, trust, care, and fear. Discussion and conclusion The participants described complex ethical conflicts and dilemmas in acute care settings that were influenced by the context of working and living in small rural communities in northern Ontario. Nurses described navigating ethics in practice using a tension-based approach to ethical decision making, needing to carry these issues silently and often having no resolution to ethical challenges. These findings have important implications for nursing education, research, and practice. Nurses need safe spaces, formal ethics support, and improved access to resources. Additional ethics education and training specific to the unique contexts of rural settings are needed. (shrink)

Previous research employing Jungian psychological type theory has both demonstrated that Church of England inherited congregations have problems engaging thinking types and suggested that fresh expressions of church have failed to address that problem. Three previous studies, however, have reported higher proportions of thinking types attending cathedral carol services. The present study was designed to check that finding on a larger sample. The Francis Psychological Type Scales were completed by 941 participants at the afternoon Carol Services held in Liverpool Cathedral (...) on Christmas Eve 2019, and the data compared with the profile of 3304 participants within 140 inherited congregations. The present study also found a higher proportion of thinking types among the participants at these carol services. These findings suggest that cathedral carol services may be functioning as fresh expressions of church in a significant way. Further research is needed to explore whether other cathedral services may function in similar ways.CONTRIBUTION: Situated within the science of congregation studies, rooted in psychological type theory and drawing on data from 941 participants at the afternoon Carol Services held in Liverpool Cathedral on Christmas Eve 2019, this study confirms that cathedral carol services at Christmas are more successful than either inherited church or fresh expressions of church in reaching thinking types. (shrink)

In this article, focusing on the building blocks of art with its concomitant role and meaning, we commence with a brief evolutionary overview of the origin of land vertebrates, which culminated in the rise of our species as we view it. We then review three iconic phases of human evolution, colloquially designated as the Neanderthals, the San and the Cro-Magnons, as manifested by their artistic endeavours. We are well aware that the Cro-Magnons are currently regarded as not sufficiently distinct from (...) modern Homo sapiens to be separately designated. Therefore, the terms ‘anatomically modern humans’ or ‘early modern humans’ are suggested for these inhabitants of the Upper Palaeolithic as they shared an anatomical resemblance with us but still lacked the full complement of behavioural attributes that typify ourselves. This particular selection was chosen because these groups have partially overlapped historically, yet each represents a distinctive approach to the artistic impulse. Subsequently, we consider more contemporary developments regarding human art intertwined with our interpretation of art’s role and meaning. Then, we briefly discuss a broader account of the evolution of art in which these three phases are firmly based and through which our understanding of and engagement with the evolutionary development of these stages are elucidated and complemented. In conclusion, particular views about language and the role and meaning of art are confirmed. Particular views about language and the role and meaning of art are endorsed and supplemented by an extensive body of relevant literature.Contribution: This article explores the evolution of art and its accompanying role and meaning in an intersectional and interdisciplinary manner that fits well with the intention of this unique collection on the building blocks of our past, present and future and with the nature of this journal and our ongoing engagement with HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. (shrink)

Although virtually all comparative research about risk perception focuses on which hazards are of concern to people in different culture groups, much can be gained by focusing on predictors of levels of risk perception in various countries and places. In this case, we examine standard and novel predictors of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site) and volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted more than 450 interviews (...) with questions about how people feel at the time (after the disaster) regarding what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations for the future. We explore how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on how strongly people perceive natural hazards in relationship with demographic, well-being, and social network factors. Generally, our research indicates that levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard are similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, these contexts produced different predictors of risk perception—in other words, there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site. Generally, current stress was related to perception of past danger of an event in the Mexican sites, but not in Ecuador; network variables were mainly important for perception of past danger (rather than future or present danger), although specific network correlates varied from site to site across the countries. (shrink)

In 163 Galen gave an anatomy lesson in Rome before an audience that included ‘Demetrius of Alexandria, a friend of Favorinus, who was every day speakingin public on themes proposed to him, in the style and manner of Favorinus’.

Résumé Dans cet entretien, la politologue et militante féministe décoloniale Françoise Vergès met en lumière le rôle du féminisme civilisationnel dans les luttes subversives menées par les féminismes décoloniaux du Sud pour mettre en échec le capitalisme racial, l’impérialisme, le (néo)colonialisme et le patriarcat. Vergès revient sur ses positions dans A Decolonial Feminism et place le problème « qui nettoie le monde? » aux fondements du capitalisme racialisé et sexué : l’incapacité à dépasser ce problème garantit l’échec de toute révolution (...) visant à donner naissance à un monde nouveau, décolonisé. (shrink)

Military physicians are often perceived to be in a position of ‘dual loyalty’ because they have responsibilities towards their patients but also towards their employer, the military institution. Further, they have to ascribe to and are bound by two distinct codes of ethics, each with its own set of values and duties, that could at first glance be considered to be very different or even incompatible. How, then, can military physicians reconcile these two codes of ethics and their distinct professional/institutional (...) values, and assume their responsibilities towards both their patients and the military institution? To clarify this situation, and to show how such a reconciliation might be possible, we compared the history and content of two national professional codes of ethics: the Defence Ethics of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association. Interestingly, even if the medical code is more focused on duties and responsibility while the military code is more focused on core values and is supported by a comprehensive ethical training program, they also have many elements in common. Further, both are based on the same core values of loyalty and integrity, and they are broad in scope but are relatively flexible in application. While there are still important sources of tension between and limits within these two codes of ethics, there are fewer differences than may appear at first glance because the core values and principles of military and medical ethics are not so different. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 8, August 2024, Page 116-118.

While the British Empire conventionally is recognized as a source of research subjects and objects in anthropology, and a site where anthropological expertise might inform public administration, the settler-colonial affiliations and experiences of many leading physical anthropologists could also directly shape theories of human variation, both physical and cultural. Antipodean anthropologists like Grafton Elliot Smith were pre-adapted to diffusionist models that explained cultural achievement in terms of the migration, contact and mixing of peoples. Trained in comparative methods, these fractious cosmopolitans (...) also favoured a dynamic human biology, often emphasizing the heterogeneity and environmental plasticity of body form and function, and viewing fixed, static racial typologies and hierarchies sceptically. By following leading representatives of empire anatomy and physical anthropology, such as Elliot Smith and Frederic Wood Jones, around the globe, it is possible to recover the colonial entanglements and biases of interwar British anthropology, moving beyond a simple inventory of imperial sources, and crediting human biology and social anthropology not just as colonial sciences but as the sciences of itinerant colonials. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to show how some elements were applied in a project of empirical investigation of the denominated style of qualitative investigation called grounded theory. This denomination talks about to that the construction of theory is based on the empirical data that sustain it, following a procedure of inductive analysis.El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar cómo fueron aplicados en un proyecto de investigación concreto algunos elementos del estilo de investigación cualitativa denominado "teoría fundamentada" . Esta (...) denominación se refiere a que la construcción de teoría está basada en los datos empíricos que la sustentan, siguiendo un procedimiento de análisis inductivo. (shrink)

Otto Neugebauer’s early academic career was marked by a series of transitions. His interests shifted from physics to mathematics, and finally to the history of ancient mathematics and exact sciences. Yet even from his early years in Graz, Neugebauer was strongly attracted to the mathematical culture of Göttingen. When he arrived there in 1922, he quickly established a strong personal friendship with Richard Courant, the newly appointed Director of the Mathematics Institute. Neugebauer and Courant worked together closely up until 1933, (...) when the Nazi government decimated the Göttingen scientific community. In this essay, Neugebauer’s historical work and his vision for a new approach to the study of the exact sciences are viewed through the prism of these events. By so doing, one can easily appreciate how Neugebauer’s scholarship reflects the ideals he and Courant shared as leading representatives of the Göttingen mathematical tradition. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 317-331, September 2022.

The Starz series Black Sails, while serving as a prequel to Treasure Island and thus providing intriguing backstories for such characters as James Flint, Billy Bones, and (of course) Long John Silver, portrays a realistic account of early eighteenth century pirate life in the Caribbean. In doing so, the show conveys intriguing insights into and applications of social contract theory reasoning, and both explicitly and implicitly asks questions about how those applications, especially as they pertain to the nature of government, (...) democracy, equality, tolerance, and justice, help us understand our own society more fully. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought IIDavid Cunning and Seth JonesMichael Moriarty. Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xviii + 430. Cloth, $125.00.This book is the second of two volumes on a myriad of issues surrounding the early modern distinction between the embodied self and the immaterial self that is one of its components. One of (...) the theses of the book is that, although canonical philosophers like Descartes and Malebranche hold that it is in some sense the latter that is our true self, and although they expend a significant amount of their corpus trying to help us to touch base with it, they also offer well-developed and insightful views about our embodiment and about what we are to do as embodied beings. Another thesis of the book is that, even if early modern philosophers tend to think that we have unimpeded and transparent access to our psychological states after we have done enough reflection to keep our embodiment from restricting the view, a concomitant position in the period is that we otherwise have very little self-knowledge. A related thesis is that important elements of the psychoanalytic tradition of Freud and Lacan can be traced back to philosophers like Descartes and Malebranche and to the investigations that they inspire in their contemporaries and successors. The book is ambitious and is an extremely interesting and important contribution.Descartes holds that as a result of the bad habits of childhood we come to misrepresent external bodies as having qualities like color, smell, taste, and sound. Building on the work of volume one, Moriarty (5, 335–36, 372–73, 243–44) reminds us that Descartes also holds that we come to misrepresent our minds as in part tangible and corporeal (the Second Meditation, Second Replies) and that the Cartesian project of clarifying ideas is not restricted to the ideas of natural science. Indeed, Moriarty could also cite Descartes’s remark that there are circumstances in which we might report that we are thinking of our selves when in fact we are only thinking of our bodies (Principles of Philosophy I:12). Descartes seems to allow that if we are not sufficiently reflective and observant, our thinking is not transparent to us, and if so he is leaving open the view that we can mischaracterize our own psychological states. Descartes does not speak explicitly to this kind of mischaracterization, but in later writings (especially Passions of the Soul and the letters to Princess Elizabeth) he does speak to the importance of clearly defining the passions and distinguishing them, and to the importance of knowing the relationships between brain traces and particular passions so that we can understand our motivations and get a better handle on them (315). Moriarty then brings to the table a number of figures who develop these positions. In Nicole, we find the view that, from the first-person perspective, it can be very difficult to distinguish acting from charity and acting from self-love, and that we have a considerable interest in identifying ourselves as acting from the former (219–24). In La Rochefoucauld, we find the view that friendship is often a matter of wanting to see a certain image of ourselves reflected in and confirmed by others and that true friendship is very rare (243). We might focus on figures like Nicole insofar as they engage the more traditional questions of metaphysics and epistemology, but issues of embodiment and self-knowledge were also front and center in the early modern period, and the contributions of Nicole, Lamy, La Rochefoucauld, and Senault (just to name just a few) are enormous.Another strength of the book is that it highlights the systematic nature of early modern work on self-knowledge. For example, Moriarty not only considers the empirical psychology of thinkers like Nicole and Lamy, but also shows how their results are grounded in fully articulated views of habit, language, and imagination (361–63, 371–74). Of course, these views are Cartesian as well.The book also has some potential problems. Some philosophers might worry that it is a stretch... (shrink)