Who should decide? In When Doctors Say No, philosopher and bioethicist Rubin examines this controversial issue.

This volume presents an exploration of the intersection between the work of Michel Foucault and feminist theory, focusing on Foucault's theories of sex/body, identity/subject, and power/politics. Like the other books in this series, this volume seeks to bring a feminist perspective to bear on the interpretation of a major figure in the philosophical canon. In the case of Michel Foucault, however, this aim is somewhat ironic because Foucault sees his work as disrupting that very canon. Since feminists see their work (...) as similarly disruptive, Foucault and feminism would seem to find much common ground, but, as the contributors to this collection reveal, the matter is not so simple. Foucault, like many feminists, is centrally concerned with questions related to sexuality and the body. This concern has led both Foucault and feminists to challenge the founding concept of the modernist philosophical canon: the disembodied transcendental subject. For both Foucault and feminists, this subject must be deconstructed and a new concept of identity articulated. The exciting possibilities of a Foucaultian approach to issues of the subject and identity, especially as they relate to sex and the body, are detailed in several of the essays collected here. Despite these possibilities, however, Foucault's approach has raised serious questions about an equally crucial area of feminist thought-politics. Some feminist critics of Foucault have argued that his deconstruction of the concept "woman" also deconstructs the possibility of a feminist politics. Several essays explore the implications of this deconstruction for feminist politics and suggest that a Foucaultian feminist politics is not viable. Overall, this collection illustrates the range of interest Foucault's thought has generated among feminist thinkers and both the advantages and liabilities of his approach for the development of feminist theory and politics. Contributors are Nancy Fraser, Nancy Hartsock, Judith Butler, Ellen L. McCallum, Linda Alcoff, Honi Haber, Jana Sawicki, Jon Simons, Monique Deveaux, Moya Lloyd, Amy Allen, and Terry Aladjem. (shrink)

A beneficial effect of gesture on learning has been demonstrated in multiple domains, including mathematics, science, and foreign language vocabulary. However, because gesture is known to co-vary with other non-verbal behaviors, including eye gaze and prosody along with face, lip, and body movements, it is possible the beneficial effect of gesture is instead attributable to these other behaviors. We used a computer-generated animated pedagogical agent to control both verbal and non-verbal behavior. Children viewed lessons on mathematical equivalence in which an (...) avatar either gestured or did not gesture, while eye gaze, head position, and lip movements remained identical across gesture conditions. Children who observed the gesturing avatar learned more, and they solved problems more quickly. Moreover, those children who learned were more likely to transfer and generalize their knowledge. These findings provide converging evidence that gesture facilitates math learning, and they reveal the potential for using technology to study non-verbal behavior in controlled experiments. (shrink)

At the end of Section III of “Freedom and Resentment,” just after he has drawn our attention to the reactive attitudes, P. F. Strawson remarks, “The object of these commonplaces is to try to keep before our minds something it is easy to forget when we are engaged in philosophy, especially in our cool, contemporary style, viz., what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary inter-personal relationships, ranging from the most intimate to the most casual.” It is striking, (...) then, that the proponent of so thoroughly naturalistic an account of moral responsibility seems himself largely to ignore the fact that moral agents do not spring into existence ab initio. The adult moral agent, who is the central character of normative theory and of accounts of moral responsibility, was once a child. Our juvenile selves get a mention in Strawson’s paper, but only as examples of creatures who are paradigmatically not responsible or who inhabit “a borderline, penumbral area ” with respect to responsibility. Thus it remains a mystery, on Strawson’s account, how we become the morally responsible creatures he takes us to be. (shrink)

Les publications sur le thème de l’histoire de la jeunesse française au xxe siècle sont aujourd’hui nombreuses. Les premières s’intéressaient aux jeunes intellectuels, aux mouvements de jeunesse durant la période d’entre-deux-guerres, et à la jeunesse sous le régime de Vichy, tandis que les plus récentes se sont penchées sur les années après 1945, et plus particulièrement sur les Trente Glorieuses et les années soixante. Ces ouvrages expliquent comment la jeunesse française est devenue la cib...

Suppose it is 2025 and being a technophile, you purchase brain enhancements as they become readily available. First, you add a mobile internet connection to your retina, then, you enhance your working memory by adding neural circuitry. You are now officially a cyborg. Now skip ahead to 2040. Through nanotechnological therapies and enhancements you are able to extend your lifespan, and as the years progress, you continue to accumulate more far-reaching enhancements. By 2060, after several small but cumulatively profound alterations, (...) you are a “posthuman.” To quote philosopher Nick Bostrom, posthumans are possible future beings, “whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards” (Bostrom 2003c). At this point, your intelligence is enhanced not just in terms of speed of mental processing; you are now able to make rich connections that you were not able to make before. Unenhanced humans, or “naturals,” seem to you to be intellectually disabled—you have little in common with them—but as a transhumanist, you are supportive of their right to not enhance (Bostrom 2003c; Garreau 2005; Kurzweil 2005). (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 247-279.

Les milliers de milliards de dollars injectés pour renflouer les institutions financières pèseront sur les économies intérieures pour les années à venir. Mais les interventions massives des États ont-elles signé la fin du modèle néolibéral ? Au plan idéologique, les créations de richesse mirifiques de la haute finance ont été son principal instrument de légitimation. On a senti, et pas seulement à gauche, que le paradigme néolibéral ne sortirait pas indemne de la crise, qui pouvait même porter un coup fatal (...) à l’hégémonie américaine. L’humiliation des géants de Wall Street semblait indiquer que le monde se trouvait au seuil d’une nouvelle ère. Entre-temps, le système financier a été stabilisé sans qu’aucun de ses problèmes de fond n’ait été résolu. Malgré le déferlement d’analyses consacrées à la crise, sa portée historique reste obscure. À quoi la crise de septembre 2008 a-t-elle mis fin ? À quoi n’a-t-elle pas mis fin ? (shrink)

The everyday experience of someone, or something, getting in one’s face reveals a depth that is the difference between a world that is intrusive and a world that is respectful. This depth, I argue, should be conceived, not in feet and inches, but in terms of violation and honor. I explore three factors that contribute to this depth’s emergence. First, I examine our body’s capacity, at the level of sense experience, for giving the world a figure/ground structure; this structure insures (...) that most of the world we are in constant contact with, nonetheless, keeps its distance as background. I demonstrate the importance of this figure/ground structure to the depth of our world by considering the experience of people with autism; for those with autism, this structure seems to be, if not entirely missing, at least substantially less robust than our own. Next, I examine our body’s ability, at the level of more personal experience, to handle the world; our handling of the world, which rests on the acquisition of specific skills, transforms things that could easily assault us into the usually motionless objects we tend to take for granted. I demonstrate the importance of these skills to the depth of our world by considering the experience of Gregg Mozgalla; until recently, Mozgalla, who has cerebral palsy, could only lurch, rather than walk, through the world. Finally, I draw on the work of the artist Mierle Ukeles to examine the maintenance work that other people, at a broader social level, perform; other’s maintenance work keeps in good condition a world that, by falling into bad condition, could easily intrude on us. (shrink)

How can an art practice based upon lens imaging help us to question landscape as a pictorial category fixed in space and time? This article proposes that we practise landscape as an ongoing process that always surpasses human spatial and temporal framing while enfolding the activity of the human within it. Starting with reference to a specific geographic, geological and environmental site, the article tracks a process of situated making using the smartphone camera as the fulcrum of a performative activity.

ABSTRACTAlthough attention bias toward threat has been associated with Social Anxiety Disorder, concerns regarding the ability of current measures to detect change in AB following treatm...

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 173-237.

situation is one in which all are in great peril and someone must be sacrificed lest all perish. In such situations, it is permissible to do things which would be considered wrong under less drastic circumstances. Proponents of animal rights such as Tom Regan agree that in such circumstances it may be necessary to sacrifice a dog in order to save human life. Is such an admission consistent with calling for the abolition of all scientific research on animals? That is, (...) is scientific research a ‘lifeboat’? The analogy is tempting but flawed. The demand for abolition of animal research is not marred by consistency on this score. Keywords: abolition, animal research, animal rights, lifeboat cases, Tom Regan CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Although leader role expectations appear to have become relatively more compatible with stereotypically feminine attributes like empathy, women continue to be highly underrepresented in leadership roles. We posit that one reason for this disparity is that, whereas stereotypically feminine traits are appreciated as nice “add-ons” for leaders, it is stereotypically masculine attributes that are valued as the defining qualities of the leader role, especially by men (who are often the gatekeepers to these roles). We assessed men’s and women’s idea of (...) a great leader with a focus on gendered attributes in two studies using different methodologies. In Study 1, we employed a novel paradigm in which participants were asked to design their “ideal leader” to examine the potential trade-off between leadership characteristics that were more stereotypically masculine (i.e., agency) and feminine (i.e., communality). Results showed that communality was valued in leaders only after meeting the more stereotypically masculine requirements of the role (i.e., competence and assertiveness), and that men in particular preferred leaders who were more competent (vs. communal), whereas women desired leaders who kept negative stereotypically masculine traits in check (e.g., arrogance). In Study 2, we conducted an experiment to examine men’s and women’s beliefs about the traits that would be important to help them personally succeed in a randomly assigned leader (vs. assistant) role, allowing us to draw a causal link between roles and trait importance. We found that both men and women viewed agentic traits as more important than communal traits to be a successful leader. Together, both studies make a valuable contribution to the social psychological literature on gender stereotyping and bias against female leaders and may illuminate the continued scarcity of women at the very top of organizations, broadly construed. (shrink)

Background Ensuring individual free and informed decision‐making for research participation is challenging. It is thought that preliminarily informing communities through ‘community sensitization’ procedures may improve individual decision‐making. This study set out to assess the relevance of community sensitization for individual decision‐making in research participation in rural Gambia. Methods This anthropological mixed‐methods study triangulated qualitative methods and quantitative survey methods in the context of an observational study and a clinical trial on malaria carried out by the Medical Research Council Unit Gambia. (...) Results/discussion Although 38.7% of the respondents were present during sensitization sessions, 91.1% of the respondents were inclined to participate in the trial when surveyed after the sensitization and prior to the informed consent process. This difference can be explained by the informal transmission of information within the community after the community sensitization, expectations such as the benefits of participation based on previous research experiences, and the positive reputation of the research institute. Commonly mentioned barriers to participation were blood sampling and the potential disapproval of the household head. Conclusion Community sensitization is effective in providing first‐hand, reliable information to communities as the information is cascaded to those who could not attend the sessions. However, further research is needed to assess how the informal spread of information further shapes people's expectations, how the process engages with existing social relations and hierarchies (e.g. local political power structures; permissions of heads of households) and how this influences or changes individual consent. (shrink)

The latest Gallup poll (Gallup and Newport 1991) shows that about a third of Americans believe in telepathy and about a quarter claim to have experienced it themselves. Rather fewer have experienced clairvoyance or psychokinesis (PK), but still the numbers are very high and have not been decreasing over the years. Previous surveys have found similar results and also that the most common reason for belief in the paranormal is personal experience (Palmer 1979; Blackmore 1984).

Responsibilities of the data monitoring committee and motivating illustrations -- Composition of a data monitoring committee -- Independence of the data monitoring committee : avoiding conflicts of interest -- Confidentiality issues relating to the data monitoring committee -- Data monitoring committee meetings -- Data monitoring committee interactions with other trial components or related groups -- Statistical, philosophical and ethical issues in data monitoring -- Determining when a data monitoring committee is needed -- Regulatory considerations for the operation of data monitoring (...) committees -- Legal considerations for DMCs. (shrink)

The contributors consider the ethical issues surrounding the use of psychological approaches to bring about change in human well-being. They raise many profound and disturbing questions that will stimulate debate in this important area.

Narratives of Egypt and the Ancient Near East: Literary and Linguistic Approaches. Edited by Fredrik Hagen; John Johnston; Wendy Monkhouse; Kathryn Piquette; John Tait; and Martin Worthington. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, vol. 189. Louvain: Peeters, 2011. Pp. xxxvi + 558. €89.