In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Empire Writes Back, With A VengeanceDenis DuttonOne of the more uplifting aspects of the turn toward theory in recent years has been the growth of postcolonial cultural studies. Postcolonial studies are in actuality constituted by counterdiscoursive, decolonizing practices which acknowledge the recognition of minority discourses, deconstructing hegemonic texts and imperialist metanarratives, opposing unduly overprivileging Western canonical paradigms of “literature,” and—well, you know what I mean. As Benita Parry (...) so lucidly explains, “The labor of producing a counter-discourse displacing imperialism’s dominative system of knowledge rests with those engaged in developing a critique from outside its cultural hegemony.” And what an awesome labor it is. The noted postcolonial theorist Georg M. Gugelberger sums things up by saying (I’m not inventing this) “postcolonialism can be conceptualized as the last bulwark against an encroaching total capitalism.”But what of the struggling masses of oppressed peoples whose interests and cultural sensitivities are so caringly looked after by practitioners of postcolonial studies? How do they feel about the fact that the only thing standing between them and “total capitalism” is resistance being mounted in a comparative literature department in Idaho, or someplace? This is a question seldom asked, let alone answered. Fortunately, new light has been thrown on the matter with the arrival of a booklet at this journal. Indian History from Above and Below, by Rukun Advani, is published by Ram Advani, probably a member of the family, in Lucknow. It is dedicated to “all Bengali intellectuals and those whose dollar salaries rise in proportion with obscurity and jargon.” Advani notes in his preface that although Bengali intellectuals talk torrents in their native tongue, when they [End Page 198] disseminate their thoughts abroad, they translate into a “clogged, colonial, unfluid flow,” with footnotes such as: “Derrida; ibid.; see my recent essay on the modes and moods of Foucault in JPS, III.iii, 3–333; on Lacan, see Lacan, On Lacan; Barthes, how many times a day do you have one in summer; idem., do you really?; differentiated peasantry; undifferentiated peasantry; for a feminist, though partially anthropologized, hermeneutic-critical discourse on the post-colonial subversive dimensions of the undifferentiated middle peasant in Midnapore district in June 1959, see the provocative controversy between Ranajit da and Amiya da in Gayatri di, ed., Gendered, Gendered, O Most Gendered: Epistemology and the Male Menopause in Bengal between June 1959 and July 1959 (Oxford University Press, forty years later).”The first of the booklet’s two essays, “Indian History from Below: a Swiftian Consideration,” discusses a neglected but “important arena of subaltern existence, namely the history of belching, wind-breaking and defecation.” Just to name these three functions posits “a bourgeois hierarchy of disgust with what Marx, in one of his most decisively Derridesque reflections, termed ‘The Asiatic Commode of Production.’” Beginning with the Foucauldian notion of “the peasant’s overdetermined relative autonomy from the olfactory,” Advani describes “the Barthesian notion of the impossibility of critical transcendence by the historian into either the symbiotic acculturation of the pastness, and indeed the presentness, of the present-subject, or indeed the even greater epistemological and hermeneutic problems posed by attempting a recreation of the ontological presuppositions of the peasant.” Much of this is elaborated in the classic essay by Professor Lavatri Lavatory Spewhack, “The Post-Colonial Lavatory and Its Radical Implications for Nomenclaturing Among Gendered and Subalternized Third World Expatriate-Marxist-Feminists in the First and Second Worlds: A Derivative Discourse Decoded.”The debt that Rukun Advani owes to Professor Spewhack is clear from the sheer number of his references to books and articles by her. These include, on the subject of toileting, Master Disgusted, Native Disgusting: a Perspective on Peasants from 250,000 Dollars per Annum, “On the Symbolic Hegemony of Subsection Numbers in a Gendered and Subalternized Post-Colonial Context: A Derivative Discourse Decoded” (in The Phenomenology of Praxis and the Praxis of Phenomenology in a Postmodern Residential Colony), “The Violence of Steam and the Episteme of Violence: Foucault’s Views on Hot Air Balloons” (in Obscurata), and even parts of her autobiography: The Larger than Life of Lavatri Lavatory [End Page 199] Spewhack (chapter titled “My Collected Phonecalls and Faxes”). While some... (shrink)

Despite the many meanings of the term "myth" and the diversity of its definitions, "it is usually assumed that a myth is a story, an invention, a fantasy" [2, p. 13], that is, an inadequate reflection of reality. Myths arise when there is either a deficit of information or a surplus, when someone is interested in concealing the truth and replacing it with falsehood. Anything can be the object of a myth, from the neighbor's salary to the future of an (...) individual country, but usually it is something important for the bulk of society. Social structures, not only secret but also fully "open" ones such as science, can be overgrown with myths. (shrink)

If social relations often require the choice of a cooperative solution to a prisoners' dilemma, we must ask how people generally solve the games. Three possible devices are that those who choose non-cooperative strategies get a bad reputation and so learn to be cooperative, that people are taught by parents that non-cooperators have unhappy lives, or that an official can be paid a salary to make the cooperative choice. By analyzing erotic love and marriage, and why people try to do (...) their jobs, it is suggested that these devices result in people often solving prisoners' dilemma games without being conscious of them. How then do these structures that 'have the function' of solving prisoners' dilemmas get created and maintain themselves? It is suggested that Deweyan consciousness, existing only when structural strains or unsolved games create personal problems, is adequate to explain many such functional structures. (shrink)

As a leading measure of journal quality, acceptance rates of journals can influence faculty recruitment, salary, tenure and promotion decisions; subscription decisions; and authors’ intention to submit manuscripts. Recent literature from both the Communication and Hospitality Management disciplines suggests that there are wide differences in the formulas used by editors to calculate acceptance rates. Because differing methods of acceptance rate calculation potentially impact significant decisions, a universally accepted and applied standard could be developed. A normative standard, grounded in a specific (...) core ethical principle, is generally preferable to a nonfoundational approach. Two primary approaches to the study of ethics have prevailed through time, teleological ethics with a focus on consequences as represented by Mill’s Utilitarian ideals and deontological ethics with a focus on duty as represented by Kant’s Categorical Imperative. This analysis applies these two ethical frameworks, utility and duty, to the journal editors’ dilemma of finding a common, normative method to calculate acceptance rates. (shrink)

In 2001, Betty Dukes, then a 54‐year‐old African American, filed suit against her employer, Wal‐Mart, alleging that she had been the victim of gender discrimination. Ms. Dukes alleged that Wal‐Mart, the nation's largest private employer, routinely paid women less than men for comparable work and arbitrarily favored men over women in promotion decisions. In 2004, a U.S. District Court entered an order granting class certification, potentially extending the retailer's financial liability to thousands of current and past Wal‐Mart employees. At that (...) time, the Wal‐Mart suit was the largest class action lawsuit ever approved in the United States. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court's ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia cited Wal‐Mart's long‐standing explicit gender‐neutral employment policy and the decentralized manner in which local managers have discretion to adjust salaries and recommend applicants for promotion—factors that led the majority to question “the glue” binding the class together. Proponents of the Court's decision hailed the ruling as a victory for business and a step in the direction of needed legal reform. Critics viewed the decision as another in a series of defeats for minority interests by a pro‐business, ideologically divided Court. Did the Court get it right, or is this yet another example of might defeating right? (shrink)

Are federal prosecutions of non-federal officials for corruption likely to improve non-federal government? This essay suggests that such prosecutions can undermine the distinctive style of democracy at the state and local level, an effect that can be harmful to democracy in America overall. This conclusion rests on a larger argument about the different nature of federal and non-federal democracy in the United States. To insure that each official maintains impartial loyalty to values defined by a single, popularly accountable policymaker, the (...) federal system of bureaucratic populism strictly separates the officials’ public and private interests, through various devices such as civil service protection for executive officials, Article III life tenure, and fixed salary for federal judges, specialized training for federal officers, and conflict-of-interest rules that bar federal officers from acting when their judgment could be compromised by private interests. By contrast, participatory populism rejects this separation of the public and private spheres, instead mixing professional and lay decision-making by using thousands of part-time, under-paid executive and legislative officers who are expected to have substantial private interests in the communities that they represent. The essay argues that each style of democracy has mutually exclusive advantages and disadvantages. However, enforcement of federal anticorruption law against non-federal democracies can undermine their system of mingled private and public interests, reducing the degree to which such governments can provide laypersons with opportunities for political activity. As an illustration of the overextension of federal criminal law, I examine the First Circuit’s interpretation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1346, the federal mail fraud statute in United States v. Sawyer. Sawyer comes dangerously close to declaring that any undisclosed state or local officer’s conflict of interest constitutes a violation of § 1346 when it involves the U.S. mails. I argue that this view of § 1346 is an error. Participatory populism requires that private and public tasks be closely mingled in ways that bureaucratic populism forbids. Undoubtedly, this mixture of public and private creates a risk that public office will be used for private gain. However, it also avoids some of the bureaucratic sclerosis and lack of lay participation that can be endemic to the more centralized federal tradition. In conclusion, I suggest that federal prosecutors ought to content themselves with using § 1346 to enforce already-existing state criminal conflict-of-interest rules, for the sake of preserving a place in our federal regime for participatory populism. (shrink)

BackgroundMoral distress is one of the most important problems that nurses face in their care of patients. Various studies have reported the frequency and severity of moral distress in nurses. However, to date, a comprehensive study that shows the results of these research across the world was not found, therefore due to the importance of this issue, its role in the health of nurses and patients, and the lack of general statistics about it worldwide, the present study was conducted to (...) determine the frequency and severity of moral distress in nurses through a systematic review and meta-analysis.MethodsIn this review study, searching national and international databases of SID, MagIran, IranMedex, IranDoc, Google Scholar, Embase, ScienceDirect, Scopus, CINHAL, PubMed, and Web of Science between 2005 and February 2020 were extracted. The random-effects model was used for analysis, and the heterogeneity of studies with the I2 index was investigated. Data were analyzed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis.ResultsThe frequency of moral distress in 9 articles with a sample size of 1576 persons was 1.7 ± 0.5 from, in 13 articles with a sample size of 1870 persons, 3.07 ± 0.1 from, in 6 articles with a sample size of 1316 persons, 3.2 ± 0.29 from, in 18 articles with a sample size of 1959 persons, 4.6 ± 0.518 from and in 35 articles with a sample size of 3718 persons, 81.1 ± 4.6 from, and the severity of moral distress in 4 articles with a sample size of 1116 persons, 1.7 ± 0.37 from, in 5 articles with a sample size of 1282 persons, 2.6 ± 0.28 from, in 5 articles with a sample size of 944 persons, 3.9 ± 0.63 from and in 8 articles with a sample size of 901 persons was 82.3 ± 5.4.ConclusionThe results of this study showed that the frequency and severity of moral distress in nurses are high and are a serious problem in nurses. Therefore, policymakers in this field should consider its role in the health of nurses and patients. (shrink)

Purpose. The knowledge influence analysis on the formation process of new anthropological images of man in the contexts of scientific achievements and innovative technologies is the basis of this study. It involves the solution of the following tasks: 1) explication of the ontological content of knowledge in the anthropo-cultural senses of the epoch; 2) analysis of the knowledge influence on the process of forming a new type of man; 3) characteristics of the modern anthropological situation in the context of digital (...) culture; 4) substantiation of interrelation of phatic communication with post-truth society in the dimensions of anthropo-social transformations of the present. Theoretical basis. Ontological content of knowledge determines the anthropo-cultural context of the epoch by forming a system of intellectual, value, social meanings of human life. The assertion of new anthropological types of man is caused by the changes in social and cultural space in the context of the growing influence of achievements in scientific knowledge and technology. Digital revolution as the process of expanding the possibilities of informational-digital reality, the substitution of knowledge for information gives rise to Homo digitalis – the digital man. He focuses on phatic communication, which in its intellectual meaninglessness is commensurate with the anthropological dimensions of post-truth society. Originality. It is substantiated that Homo digitalis is the result of a complex set of heterogeneous effects of scientific knowledge, which in modern post-truth conditions appears as different communicative practices. A condition for the formation of a new anthropological type of man in the perspective of scientific and technological progress is the affirmation of ethical wisdom. Conclusions. Knowledge in the process of evolution of socio-cultural life acquires constitutive significance for the process of formation of anthropological situations that manifest themselves in new images of man. Today, he is commensurate with the demands of digital culture, in which human life practices are increasingly becoming information and digital clusters embedded in the reality of a post-truth society. The means of overcoming the passivity of digital man is the formation of a new anthropological type based on a rethinking of the value system. (shrink)

We present a novel variant of decision making based on the mathematical theory of separable Hilbert spaces. This mathematical structure captures the effect of superposition of composite prospects, including many incorporated intentions, which allows us to describe a variety of interesting fallacies and anomalies that have been reported to particularize the decision making of real human beings. The theory characterizes entangled decision making, non-commutativity of subsequent decisions, and intention interference. We demonstrate how the violation of the Savage’s sure-thing principle, known (...) as the disjunction effect, can be explained quantitatively as a result of the interference of intentions, when making decisions under uncertainty. The disjunction effects, observed in experiments, are accurately predicted using a theorem on interference alternation that we derive, which connects aversion-to-uncertainty to the appearance of negative interference terms suppressing the probability of actions. The conjunction fallacy is also explained by the presence of the interference terms. A series of experiments are analyzed and shown to be in excellent agreement with a priori evaluation of interference effects. The conjunction fallacy is also shown to be a sufficient condition for the disjunction effect, and novel experiments testing the combined interplay between the two effects are suggested. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:David Hume and the Danish Debate about Freedom of the Press in the 1770sJohn Christian LaursenWhen the reception history of David Hume’s political writings is written, there will have to be some discussion of their fate in “peripheral” countries like Denmark. Hume’s “Of Liberty of the Press” was translated into Danish as early as 1771. It is not widely known that Denmark was the first country officially to declare (...) freedom of the press and that a lively debate broke out once such freedom was declared. Hume’s essay was put to work in that debate. The story of this translation provides insights into the influence of Hume’s ideas in peripheral countries in Europe, and of Denmark in continental European ideas. Among other things, here we have an example of Hume’s work used in a concrete propaganda battle.The Danish translation of Hume’s essay was published as the last of three supplemental essays in a 31-page pamphlet entitled Mr. F. A. de Voltaire’s Letter to His Majesty the King of Denmark concerning freedom of the press in his states, together with some essays of relevant content. 1 A copy can be found at the Royal Library in Copenhagen in volume twenty of the forty-five bound volumes of pamphlets and booklets from 1770 to 1773 which make up Luxdorph’s Collection of Press Freedom Writings. 2 These pamphlets, in German, French, and (mostly) Danish, were collected at the time by Bolle Willum Luxdorph, a Danish man of letters and court counselor. [End Page 167]The occasion for Voltaire’s letter and our pamphlet was King Christian VII’s declaration of freedom of the press in his territories (the Kingdoms of Norway and Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein) on 4 September 1770. It was in the form of a Cabinet Order to his Danish Chancellery, in the following words:We are fully convinced that it is as harmful to the impartial search for truth as it is to the discovery of obsolete errors and prejudices, if upright patriots, zealous for the common good and what is genuinely best for their fellow citizens, because they are frightened by reputation, orders, and preconceived opinions, are hindered from being free to write according to their insight, conscience, and conviction, attacking abuses and uncovering prejudices. And thus in this regard, after ripe consideration, we have decided to permit in our kingdoms and lands in general an unlimited freedom of the press of such a form, that from now on no one shall be required and obliged to submit books and writings that he wants to bring to the press to the previously required censorship and approval, and thus to submit them to the control of those who have undertaken the business until now of inspecting them; so have we graciously revealed and made known this our will concerning our kingdoms to our Danish Chancellery. Given at Friedrichsberg, the 4 September 1770. Christian. 3The foregoing cabinet order was largely the idea of Johann Friedrich Struensee, court physician and soon to be Prime Minister for Christian VII. 4 Less than ten years earlier, two periodicals he was involved with when he lived in Danish Altona had been suppressed, 5 and when he came to power by a series of accidents, one of his first acts was to arrange for the king to declare freedom of the press. [End Page 168]Response to this declaration was immediate. In Denmark it led to a flurry of pamphlets on a myriad of topics, including the high cost of living and the salaries of ministers, 6 monopolies and trade issues (vol. III), coinage (vol. IV), civil servants, the public debt, the agricultural economy (vol. V), the abolition of tenant farmers’ work obligations (vol. VI), the Iceland trade (vol. VII), marriage law, breweries (vol. VIII), banks, lotteries (vol. IX), soldiers’ and sailors’ pay (vol. X), the Norwegian economy (vol. XI), the universities and academies (vol. XII), the power of women (vol. XIII), irreligion and impiety (vol. XIV), prophecies of doom (vol. XV), fables, allegories and libels (vols. XVI–XVIII), and the eternity of hell (vol. XIX).Many pamphlets discussed press freedom... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Veterans Affairs National Center for Clinical EthicsJames L. Bernat (bio)The veterans health administration is the largest health care system in the United States and, indeed, is larger that the health care system of many foreign countries. In February 1991 the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) in Washington, D.C. awarded a contract to the clinical ethics group at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont to (...) establish the V.A. National Center for Clinical Ethics. In this article I describe the organizational context, mission, operation, and future direction of the Center, which William A. Nelson, Ph.D., and I co-direct.The Veterans Health AdministrationThe Department of Veterans Affairs operates 171 hospitals providing services ranging from primary, secondary, and tertiary medical care to psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and nursing homes. The V.A. also provides outpatient services at all hospitals and at dozens of free-standing outpatent clinics. V.A. medical centers employ over 14,000 physicians and serve approximately 4.5 million veteran patients (Hollingsworth and Bondy 1990; Mirvis 1990).The V.A. serves an important educational function, providing training sites for medical students, postgraduate physicians, and trainees in other health-related fields. Approximately 78 percent of V.A. medical centers are affiliated with medical schools. Over one-third of all American medical students and over 40 percent of interns and residents spend a portion of their training in V.A. medical centers. More than 100,000 students in all health-related fields train in V.A. facilities annually (Hollingsworth and Bondy 1990).Research is another mission of the V.A. Many academic physicians and scientists derive their research and salary funding from V.A contracts and awards. The V.A. Research Career Development Program provides the means for many medical school faculty members to achieve successful careers as scientists and clinical investigators. Although research accounts for only slightly more than 1 percent of the V.A. medical budget, two V.A. researchers have been awarded the Nobel Prize (Hollingsworth and Bondy 1990). [End Page 385]In comparison to other medical care settings, the average V.A. patient is likely to be older, poorer, male, less well-educated, more chronically ill, and more expensive to care for. Many patients first patronize the V.A. system after they have been bankrupted by the costs of a major illness. Unlike young, healthy patients ideally favored by health maintenance organizations, these patients immediately require large expenditures for hospitalizations, medications, and other treatments. Additional burdens have been placed on V.A. facilities by a record of chronic federal underfunding over the past decade, despite expanded patient censuses at every facility.Bioethical issues arise in V.A. facilities with great frequency for several reasons. Older and poorer patients are often sicker, have fewer home-support resources, and have completed fewer advance directives for health care. Chronic operational underfunding requires explicit health care rationing systemwide. Academic physicians within the V.A. system have multiple professional duties that have the potential for conflict. Although their primary duty is to their patients, they also must serve the federal government and their medical school academic supervisors. The practice of medical care rationing pits the physician's professional duty to his patient against his duty to the system (Mirvis 1990).The V.A. has responded to these bioethical demands with several initiatives. Hospital ethics advisory committees have been developed in nearly every V.A. medical center. The V.A. National Bioethics Committee has been empaneled to encourage uniform policies across the V.A. system concerning bioethical issues. Most recently, funds were provided for the V.A. National Center for Clinical Ethics.Functions of the National Center for Clinical Ethics (NCCE)The NCCE has a fourfold mission: 1) to enhance the quality of clinical ethics programs at all 171 V.A. medical centers nationwide; 2) to staff the V.A. National Bioethics Committee; 3) to assist administrators and planners in the V.A. Central Office on policy development concerning bioethical issues; and 4) to study, organize, and coordinate clinical, educational, and research bioethics programs throughout the system.Enhancing the quality of clinical ethics programs at V.A. medical centers is largely an... (shrink)

The first four selections in this issue are devoted to the question of the future of science in Russia. A. V. Iurevich and I. P. Tsapenko outline the depressed state of Russian science today and the tendencies that, unless checked, will bring about its complete collapse. The precipitous decline in government financing of research has not been offset by support from international foundations or private business in Russia. The salaries of scientists are among the lowest in the economy—below the official (...) subsistence level. In the last ten years the ranks of scientists have been reduced by half: some researchers are unemployed, others have gone into commerce or politics, and others have emigrated. Those who remain in the research institutes are often underemployed, lack up-to-date literature and equipment, and have few opportunities to publish their results. It is not surprising that scientific productivity measured by the number of discoveries and inventions has fallen drastically. The government ignores this situation because the scientific community lacks political influence. The public at large is too preoccupied with economic and political matters to give any thought to science or feel any sympathy for the scientists. The authors predict that if the trends of the last decade continue, Russia will be reduced to a source of raw materials, a country without science, advanced technology, higher education, and intellectual leadership. A strong science policy is urgently needed. (shrink)

Silʹnee cheloveka -- Nishcheta filosofii -- Vlastʹ Rossii -- Pisatelʹ i literatura -- Nashe polozhenie -- Staret︠s︡ Tavrion -- Edinstvo very -- Rodosskai︠a︡ deklarat︠s︡ii︠a︡ -- Vera i kulʹtura -- Ėstetika Lʹva Tolstogo -- Puteshestvie v budushchee -- Neskolʹko obʺi︠a︡sneniĭ.

В сборнике представлены очерки, герои которых - художники, философы, священнослужители, ученые, император Индии, французская крестьянка, Учитель Гималайского Братства и другие - сыграли немаловажную роль в земном творчестве Космической эволюции. Для широкого круга читателей.

The idea of the common good has been a signature feature of Catholic social teaching and so of modern Catholic engagement in public affairs. It has recently been suggested that the notion is now obsolete due to changes in the culture and politics of the West. In keeping with this suggestion, some argue that Catholics should abandon it in favor of an appeal based on lower intermediate goods in a manner more related to Augustine’s engagement with the largely pagan culture (...) of his time than to Aquinas’s categories tailored to an integrally Christian society. I argue that such a solution misreads aspects of the tradition and of the present political and cultural situation and I suggest some alternative grounds on which Catholic engagement with contemporary public life should proceed and that thinking again about the common good is a necessary part of such engagement. (shrink)

The development of the social sciences needs to rely on precise methods. The nomological model of explanation adopted in the natural sciences is ill-suited for the social sciences. An algorithmic model of society can be a promising solution to existing problems. In its most general form, an algorithm is a generally understood prescription for what actions to perform and in what order to achieve the desired result. Any algorithm can be represented as a set of rules of the form «If (...) A, do D to get P». People are the bearers of this kind of rules that apply in different areas of their activities. The rules are subject to change based on personal and collective experience. There is a special mathematical discipline that studies the laws of evolution of such rules. This discipline is called genetic programming. Contrary to the threatening name, the algorithmic model does not imply the deprivation of a person’s right to free choice, but it needs this right as a necessary condition for the evolution of social algorithms. These algorithms allow us to give a non-causal, but law-like explanation of many well-known social phenomena, as well as to effectively model the future, which is critically important today. A retrospective look at the evolution of social algorithms shows that the current global crisis of human society is associated with the approach to the point of singularity in their evolution. This is due to the fact that there is no need for direct human participation in the implementation of social algorithms, which is reflected in a fundamental change in the sphere of employment and less need for further development of the sciences. (shrink)