Criticism of sex differences in mathematical ability and sex roles in sociobiology and the pernicious influence of these ideas on education.

The extremely well-known holiday television special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is deconstructed to expose an underlying philosophical paradigm towards people, especially children, with disabilities that is mechanistic and utilitarian. This paradigm includes a static and over-determined view of any disability a person may have, and can be erroneously supported by a philosophy of “radical freedom.” Examples of this philosophy of disability as applied to the K-12 realm of special education are also provided, showing how the lessons learned from the (...) children’s movie are mirrored in the static conceptualization of the notion of disability in the general society and educational system. (shrink)

Art and Abstract Objects presents a lively philosophical exchange between the philosophy of art and the core areas of philosophy. The standard way of thinking about non-repeatable (single-instance) artworks such as paintings, drawings, and non-cast sculpture is that they are concrete (i.e., material, causally efficacious, located in space and time). Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is currently located in Paris. Richard Serra's Tilted Arc is 73 tonnes of solid steel. Johannes Vermeer's The Concert was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. Michaelangelo's (...) David was attacked with a hammer in 1991. By contrast, the standard way of thinking about repeatable (multiple-instance) artworks such as novels, poems, plays, operas, films, symphonies is that they must be abstract (i.e., immaterial, causally inert, outside space-time): consider the current location of Melville's Moby Dick, the weight of Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium", or how one might go about stealing Puccini's La Boheme or vandalizing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9. Although novels, poems, and symphonies may appear radically unlike stock abstract objects such as numbers, sets, and propositions, most philosophers of art think that for the basic intuitions, practices, and conventions surrounding such works to be preserved, repeatable artworks must be abstracta. -/- This volume examines how philosophical enquiry into art might itself productively inform or be productively informed by enquiry into abstracta taking place within not just metaphysics but also the philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind and language. While the contributors chiefly focus on the relationship between philosophy of art and contemporary metaphysics with respect to the overlap issue of abstracta, they provide a methodological blueprint from which scholars working both within and beyond philosophy of art can begin building responsible, mutually informative, and productive relationships between their respective fields. (shrink)

The evolution of Euler diagrams is examined from Euler's original system through the modifications made by Venn and Peirce. It is shown that these modifications were motivated by an attempt to increase the expressivity of the diagrams, but that a side effect of these modifications was a loss of the visual clarity of Euler's original system. Euler's original system is reconstructed from a modern, logical point of view. Formal semantics and rules of inference are provided for this reconstruction of Euler's (...) system, and basic logical properties are proved. (shrink)

A formal system is studied having both sentences and diagrams as well-formed representations. Proofs in the system allow inference back and forth between sentences and diagrams, as well as between diagrams and diagrams, and between sentences and sentences. This sort of heterogeneous system is of interest because external representations other than linguistic ones occur commonly in actual reasoning in conjunction with language. Syntax, semantics, and rules of inference for the system are given and it is shown to be sound and (...) complete. (shrink)

A logical system is studied whose well-formed representations consist of diagrams rather than formulas. The system, due to Shin [2, 3], is shown to be complete by an argument concerning maximally consistent sets of diagrams. The argument is complicated by the lack of a straight forward counterpart of atomic formulas for diagrams, and by the lack of a counterpart of negation for most diagrams.

This paper describes a way of creating and maintaining a `dynamic encyclopedia', i.e., an encyclopedia whose entries can be improved and updated on a continual basis without requiring the production of an entire new edition. Such an encyclopedia is therefore responsive to new developments and new research. We discuss our implementation of a dynamic encyclopedia and the problems that we had to solve along the way. We also discuss ways of automating the administration of the encyclopedia.

Volume 1. Hinayāna. Den tidlige indiske buddhisme. Volume 2. Mahāyāna. Den senere indiske buddhisme. Christian Lindtner, 1998, Copenhagen, Spektrum/forum Publishers, Vol. 1: 228 pp., ISBN 87 7763 170 6; Vol. 2: 256 pp., ISBN 87 7763 174 9.

There is a growing trend toward recognizing that moral obligation is centrally grounded in accountability. This, however, may seem to offer another argument, perhaps in the footsteps of Kant, that other animals have no moral standing. Accountability seems to be grounded in some kind of authoritative demands and, as Stephen Darwall puts it, “second-personal address.” Other animals are not competent in such practices, so they may seem to be left out of the domain of obligation. I argue that demand-accountability-based obligation (...) is consistent with robust moral standing for other animals. Our accountability could be based on demands made by the moral community at large, which would put other animals on equal footing with moral agents in terms of how obligations might apply to them. Further, I argue that the most plausible model of demand-accountability-based obligation would have such a community-centered structure and would support other animals having moral standing. (shrink)

This book is a defense of political liberalism as a feminist liberalism. A novel and restrictive account of public reason is defended. Then it is argued that political liberalism's core commitments restrict reasonable conceptions of justice to those that secure genuine, substantive equality for women and other marginalized groups.

Zeitgeist Literature is offered here as a term with great potential as a conceptual tool for analyzing literature that responds to the moment in which it was written. Such literature chronicles the social and political life of the current moment, its trends and moods, and the mysterious forces that dictate tastes, manners, feelings, and actions of the collective.

Roots are good to think with indeed most of us use them as a metaphor every day. A root can signify the hiddenness of our beginnings, or, in its bifurcating structure, the various possibilities in the life of an individual or a collective. This book looks at rootedness as a metaphor for the genealogical origins of people and their attachment to place and how this metaphor transformed so rapidly in twentieth-century Europe. Christy Wampole s case study is France, with (...) its contradictory legacies of Enlightenment universalism, anti-Semitism, and colonialism. At one time, French nationalist rhetoric portrayed the Jews as unrooted and thus unrighteous people. After the two world wars, the root metaphor figured in the new French philosophy (notably Deleuze and Guattari). And recently, Caribbean thinkers in Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique have debated whether their roots were in Africa, France, the Caribbean, or in some pan-national network that could not be identified on a map. Walpole argues that while the metaphor was perhaps once useful in the establishment of communities and identities, that usefulness has expired. The longer we remain attached to the figure of rootedness, the more discord it sows. Giving up on the metaphor of rootedness, Wampole urges, allows us to see at last that we are in fact unbound by the land we inhabit.". (shrink)

In the paper, titled ‘Choosing death in unjust conditions: hope, autonomy and harm reduction,’ Wiebe and Mullin argue that people living in unjust social conditions are sufficiently autonomous to request medical assistance in dying (MAiD). The ethical issue is that some people may request MAiD primarily because of unjust social conditions, not their illness, disease, disability or decline in capability. It is easily agreed that people living in unjust social conditions can be autonomous. Nevertheless, Wiebe and Mullin fail to appreciate (...) that autonomy is only a necessary condition for MAiD. In addition to autonomy, one must decide that providing assisted dying to a patient because they are living in unjust social conditions is ethical. Central to making this ethical decision is the principle of non-maleficence, famously articulated as ‘do no harm.’ The authors admit that performing MAiD in response to unjust social circumstances is harmful, but they justify this harmful action by appealing to the principle of harm reduction. A fundamental flaw of their approach is that it relies on the legislative definition of intolerable suffering, which is based on circular reasoning and given that 99.2% of patients that have applied for MAiD satisfied this criterion, it is essentially equivalent to no standard/criterion. Canadian society is struggling with the ethical implications of its permissive MAiD programme, and, fundamental to this debate, will be determining the proper balance between autonomy and non-maleficence for people living in unjust social conditions. (shrink)

"To what extent can legal decisions be objective and fair, and how far does government depend on the law for its legitimacy? This concise analytical book examines the theory of both individual and political justice, concluding that many modern legal philosophers have undermined the prestige of the law by exaggerated claims in its defence. This is a basic book in jurisprudence"--Jacket.

This target article focuses on dynamics that arise in three typical ethically complex cases in which psychiatric consultations are requested by physicians: a dying patient refuses life-prolonging treatment, an uncooperative patient demands to be allowed to go outside and smoke, and an angry patient demands to be admitted to the hospital. The discussion canvasses what is at stake morally and clinically in each of these cases and explores clinician–patient interactions, dynamics in relationships between consulting physicians and consultant psychiatrists, patient transference, (...) and physician countertransference. The article defines legalism and countertransference and argues that an ethically and clinically important consequence of these phenomena for patients is distortion of clinicians' perceptions of patients' decisions and vulnerabilities. The discussion also describes how legalism and countertransference adversely affect how clinicians treat their psychiatrist colleagues. Finally, the article suggests how the effects of legalism and countertransference can be mitigated. (shrink)

Este artículo examina una etapa poco explorada de la historia del afiche chileno y que coincide cronológicamente con la denominada edad dorada del cartelismo europeo. Interesa descubrir indicios de influencia del trabajo del francés Jules Chéret en afiches originales o en aquellos reproducidos en las revistas ilustradas locales, en el contexto del nacimiento del afiche artístico en el país.

Is a feminist political liberalism possible? Political liberalism’s regard for a wide range of comprehensive doctrines as reasonable makes some feminists skeptical of its ability to address sex inequality. Indeed, some feminists claim that political liberalism maintains its position as a political liberalism at the expense of securing substantive equality for women. We claim that political liberalism’s core commitments actually restrict all reasonable political conceptions of justice to those that secure genuine substantive equality for all, including women and other marginalized (...) groups. In particular, we argue that political liberalism’s criterion of reciprocity limits reasonable political conceptions of justice to those that eliminate social conditions of domination and subordination relevant to reasonable democratic deliberation among equal citizens and that the criterion of reciprocity requires the social conditions necessary for recognition respect among persons as equal citizens. As a result, we maintain that the criterion of reciprocity limits reasonable political conceptions of justice to those that provide genuine equality for women along various dimensions of social life central to equal citizenship. (shrink)

There are several important conceptual issues and questions about the practice of healthcare ethics that can, and should, inform the development of any practice standards. This paper provides a relatively short overview of seven of these issues, with the invitation for further critical reflection and examination of their relevance to and implications for practice standards. The seven issues described include: diversity (from the perspective of training and experience); moral expertise and authority/influence; being an insider or outsider; flexibility and adaptability (for (...) local contexts of practice); the relative weighting of procedural and normative aspects of ethics practice; making mistakes or errors; and conflicts of interest in practice. (shrink)

Generating group interaction is a necessary part of teaching philosophy, but there are many obstacles to creating it in a traditional classroom. We propose that philosophy courses can be improved by turning to hybrid models that integrate classroom discussion with online message boards, or forums. Using anecdotes and a comprehensive survey, we argue that using forums helps instructors overcome time constraints in the classroom, helps some students overcome anxiety over contributing, improves discussion, reduces the need to review, and gives instructors (...) a better view of how their students encounter philosophy. We also provide examples of how to use forums and forum assignments. (shrink)

The idea of public reason is central to political liberalism's aim to provide an account of the possibility of a just and stable democratic society comprised of free and equal citizens who nonetheless are deeply divided over fundamental values. This commitment to the idea of public reason reflects the normative core of political liberalism which is rooted in the principle of democratic legitimacy and the idea of reciprocity among citizens. Yet both critics and defenders of political liberalism disagree over whether (...) or not the idea of public reason permits citizens to appeal to their comprehensive conceptions of the good in public deliberation over matters of basic justice. Our aim in this paper is to provide a defense of an exclusive idea of public reason, and at the same time we aim to dispel the underlying concerns of two prominent criticisms of the idea of public reason—the concern of alienation from the political process, as expressed by religiously oriented critics, and the concern over women's equality, as expressed by feminist critics. We argue that inclusive accounts of the idea of public reason are not consistent with political liberalism's core commitments. Further, we claim, inclusive accounts of the idea of public reason deepen feminist concerns. We think that, properly understood, an exclusive account of the idea of public reason can address feminist concerns about political liberalism and avoid alienating (reasonable) religious persons in an unacceptable way. Thus, we conclude that an exclusive account of the idea of public reason is our best hope for reconciliation. (shrink)

Philosopher Kings? The Adjudication of Conflicting Human Rights and Social Values, by George C. Christie, examines the attempts by courts to sort out conflicts involving freedom of expression, including religious expression, on the one hand, and rights to privacy and other important social values on the other. It approaches the subject from a comparative perspective, using principally cases decided by European and United States courts. A significant part of this book analyzes conflicts between freedom of expression and the right to (...) privacy. In a world in which, freedom of expression and privacy are said to be of equal value, the book explores whether it is possible to develop, through case-by-case adjudication, a legal regime which can give clear direction as to what expression is or is not permitted. Otherwise, if such a regime proves impossible, in the guise of recognizing the equal value of expression and privacy, privacy may become de facto the preferred value. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When hope is discussed in bioethics’ literature, it is most often in the context of ‘false hopes’ and/or how to maintain hope while breaking bad news to patients. Little or no time is generally devoted to the description of hope that supports these analyses. In this paper, I present a detailed description of hope, one designed primarily for the healthcare context. Noting that hope is an emotional attitude, four key aspects are explored. In particular, the function of imagination in (...) hope is discussed in depth. Through an examination of the relationship between hope and vulnerability, I demonstrate how adequately describing hope can broaden the normative inquiry into the role of hope in healthcare. Three ways in which persons with hope can be vulnerable are illustrated, and the challenge of how healthcare providers can attend in moral ways to the hopes of patients is identified. (shrink)

In their article “The Rise of Citizen Science in Health and Biomedical Research,” Wiggins and Wilbanks (2019) present a new typology for understanding the complex landscape of health and biomedical...

Background Citizen science is increasingly prevalent in the biomedical sciences, including the field of human genomics. Genomic citizen science initiatives present new opportunities to engage individuals in scientific discovery, but they also are provoking new questions regarding who owns the outputs of the research, including intangible ideas and discoveries and tangible writings, tools, technologies, and products. The legal and ethical claims of participants to research outputs become stronger—and also more likely to conflict with those of institution-based researchers and other stakeholders—as (...) participants become more involved, quantitatively and qualitatively, in the research process. It is not yet known, however, how genomic citizen science initiatives are managing the interests of their participants in accessing and controlling research outputs in practice. To help fill this gap, we conducted an in-depth review of relevant policies and practices of U.S.-based genomic citizen science initiatives. Methods We queried the peer-reviewed literature and grey literature to identify 22 genomic citizen science initiatives that satisfied six inclusion criteria. A data collection form was used to capture initiative features, policies, and practices relevant to participants’ access to and control over research outputs. Results This analysis revealed that the genomic citizen science landscape is diverse and includes many initiatives that do not have institutional affiliations. Two trends that are in apparent tension were identified: commercialization and operationalization of a philosophy of openness. While most initiatives supported participants’ access to research outputs, including datasets and published findings, none supported participants’ control over results via intellectual property, licensing, or commercialization rights. However, several initiatives disclaimed their own rights to profit from outputs. Conclusions There are opportunities for citizen science initiatives to incorporate more features that support participants’ access to and control over research outputs, consistent with their specific objectives, operations, and technical capabilities. (shrink)

This groundbreaking book is the first to provide a critical overview of the relationship between contemporary ceramics and curatorial practice in museum culture. Ceramic objects form a major part of museum collections, with connections to anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines that engage with the cultural and social history of humankind. In recent years museums have provided the impetus for cutting-edge artistic practice, either as a response to particular collections, or as part of exhibitions. But the question of how museums have (...) staged contemporary ceramics and how ceramic artists respond to museum collections has not been the subject of published research to date. This book examines how ceramic artists have, over the last decade, begun to animate museum collections in new ways, and reflects on the impact that these new initiatives have had in the broad context of visual culture. Ceramics in the Expanded Field is the culmination of a three-year AHRC funded project, and reflects its major findings. It brings together leading international voices in the field of ceramics, research undertaken throughout the project and papers delivered at the concluding conference. By examining the benefits and constraints of interventions and the dialogue between ceramics and museological practice, this book will bring focus to an area of museology that has not yet been theorized, and will contribute to policy debates and art practice. (shrink)

Social cooperation based on reciprocity is the cornerstone of many theories of justice. However, what is central to social cooperation based on reciprocity? How does basing social cooperation on reciprocity structure and constrain theories of justice? In this paper, I consider what is central to reciprocity. I argue that the purpose of reciprocal exchange among persons is important for determining the appropriateness of reciprocal exchanges and that sustaining mutually advantageous relations is not always the point or the only point of (...) reciprocity. This has important implications for theorizing about justice. I show this by outlining two conceptions of justice as reciprocity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When hope is discussed in bioethics’ literature, it is most often in the context of ‘false hopes’ and/or how to maintain hope while breaking bad news to patients. Little or no time is generally devoted to the description of hope that supports these analyses. In this paper, I present a detailed description of hope, one designed primarily for the healthcare context. Noting that hope is an emotional attitude, four key aspects are explored. In particular, the function of imagination in (...) hope is discussed in depth. Through an examination of the relationship between hope and vulnerability, I demonstrate how adequately describing hope can broaden the normative inquiry into the role of hope in healthcare. Three ways in which persons with hope can be vulnerable are illustrated, and the challenge of how healthcare providers can attend in moral ways to the hopes of patients is identified. (shrink)

Can we maintain that purple seems composed of red and blue without giving up the impenetrability of the red and blue parts that compose it? Brentano thinks we can. Purple, according to him, is a chessboard of red and blue tiles which, although individually too small to be perceived, are together indistinctly perceived within the purple. After a presentation of Brentano’s solution, we raise two objections to it. First, Brentano’s solution commits him to unperceivable intentional objects (the chessboard’s tiles). Second, (...) his chessboard account fails in the end to explain the phenomenal spatial continuity of compound colours. We then sketch an alternative account, which, while holding fast to the phenomenal compoundedness of the purple and to the impenetrability of component colours, avoids introducing inaccessible intentional objects and compromising on the continuity of the purple. According to our proposal, instead of being indistinctly perceived spatial parts of the purple, red and blue are distinctly perceived non- spatial parts of it. (shrink)