La pandemia COVID-19 ha planteado retos, donde las TIC se ha convertido en una necesidad básica para la humanidad, en este contexto se cuestionó las capacidades de los docentes para hacer frente a los cambios. Tiene una metodología mixta pre- experimental, participaron 49 docentes y se aplicó cuestionario, rubrica y Pre Test/Post Test, con valores 0.890; 0.91, 0.97 de Cronbach. Los hallazgos demostraron que las dimensiones, comunicación, creación de contenidos, resultaron muy altas, mientras que la dimensión seguridad y solución de (...) problemas resultaron ser buenas. La investigación obtuvo resultados significativos para el desarrollo de las competencias digitales de los docentes de Piura. (shrink)

Being compassionate and empathic while making rational decisions is expected from healthcare workers across different contexts. But the daily challenges that these workers face, aggravated by the recent COVID-19 crisis, can give rise to compassion and decision fatigue, which affects not only their ability to meet these expectations but has a significant negative impact on their wellbeing. Hence, it is vital to identify factors associated to their exhaustion. Here, we sought to describe levels of compassion and decision fatigue during the (...) pandemic, and to identify factors related to these forms of exhaustion. We collected data using self-reported questionnaires to measure compassion fatigue, decision fatigue, and grit in five intervals from April to November, 2020 (N = 856). Our results showed a negative correlation between grit and compassion and decision fatigue. We also found that under the circumstances studied grit tends to be higher in technicians, nurses, other professionals (psychologists, social workers), and workers at the Emergency Room (ER), and lower in general practitioners. Compassion fatigue tend to be higher for technicians, whereas decision fatigue was lower for specialists, general practitioners, and technicians, and higher for those working at private hospitals. (shrink)

Polo‐like kinase 1 (PLK1) is a serine/threonine kinase that plays multiple and essential roles during the cell division cycle. Its inhibition in cultured cells leads to severe mitotic aberrancies and cell death. Whereas previous reports suggested that Plk1 depletion in mice leads to a non‐mitotic arrest in early embryos, we show here that the bi‐allelic Plk1 depletion in mice certainly results in embryonic lethality due to extensive mitotic aberrations at the morula stage, including multi‐ and mono‐polar spindles, impaired chromosome segregation (...) and cytokinesis failure. In addition, the conditional depletion of Plk1 during mid‐gestation leads also to severe mitotic aberrancies. Our data also confirms that Plk1 is completely dispensable for mitotic entry in vivo. On the other hand, Plk1 haploinsufficient mice are viable, and Plk1‐heterozygous fibroblasts do not harbor any cell cycle alterations. Plk1 is overexpressed in many human tumors, suggesting a therapeutic benefit of inhibiting Plk1, and specific small‐molecule inhibitors for this kinase are now being evaluated in clinical trials. Therefore, the different Plk1 mouse models here presented are a valuable tool to reexamine the relevance of the mitotic kinase Plk1 during mammalian development and animal physiology. (shrink)

Why do learners fail to seek help, when doing so would be beneficial? Principles of rational decision suggest that seeking help is not an optimal action if its costs are greater than its expected b...

The umbrella-term ‘executive functions’ includes various domain-general, goal-directed cognitive abilities responsible for behavioral self-regulation. The influential unity and diversity model of EF posits the existence of three correlated yet separable executive domains: inhibition, shifting and updating. These domains may be influenced by factors such as socioeconomic status and culture, possibly due to the way EF tasks are devised and to biased choice of stimuli, focusing on first-world testees. Here, we propose a FREE test battery that includes two open-access tasks for (...) each of the three abovementioned executive domains to allow latent variables to be obtained. The tasks were selected from those that have been shown to be representative of each domain, that are not copyrighted and do not require special hardware/software to be administered. These tasks were adapted for use in populations with varying SES/schooling levels by simplifying tasks/instructions and using easily recognized stimuli such as pictures. Items are answered verbally and tasks are self-paced to minimize interference from individual differences in psychomotor and perceptual speed, to better isolate executive from other cognitive abilities. We tested these tasks on 146 early adolescents of both sexes and varying SES, because this is the age group in which the executive domains of interest become distinguishable and in order to confirm that SES effects were minimized. Performance was determined by Rate Correct Scores, which consider speed-accuracy trade-offs. Scores were sensitive to the expected improvement in performance with age and rarely/inconsistently affected by sex and SES, as expected, with no floor or ceiling effects, or skewed distribution, thus suggesting their adequacy for diverse populations in these respects. Using structural equation modeling, evidence based on internal structure was obtained by replicating the three correlated-factor solution proposed by the authors of the model. We conclude that the FREE test battery, which is open access and described in detail, holds promise as a tool for research that can be adapted for a wide range of populations, as well as altered and/or complemented in coming studies. (shrink)

While experience often affords important knowledge and insight that is difficult to garner through observation or testimony alone, it also has the potential to generate conflicts of interest and unrepresentative perspectives. We call this tension the paradox of experience. In this paper, we first outline appeals to experience made in debates about access to unproven medical products and disability bioethics, as examples of how experience claims arise in bioethics and some of the challenges raised by these claims. We then motivate (...) the idea that experience can be an asset by appealing to themes in feminist and moral epistemology, distinguishing between epistemic and justice-based appeals. Next, we explain the concern that experience may be a liability by appealing to empirical work on cognitive biases and theoretical work about the problem of partial representation. We conclude with preliminary recommendations for addressing the paradox and offer several questions for future discussion. (shrink)

What does it take for a subject to experience a personal memory as being her own? According to Fernández’ (2019) model of endorsement, this particular phenomenal quality of our memories, their “sense of mineness”, can be explained in terms of the experience of the mnemonic content as veridical. In this article, I criticize this model for two reasons: (a) the evidence that is used by Fernández to ground his theoretical proposal is dubious; and more importantly, (b) the endorsement (...) model does not accommodate many non-pathological everyday memories that preserve their sense of mineness, but whose veridicality is explicitly denied, suspected, not automatically endorsed, or neither denied nor endorsed. Finally, I sketch two alternative explanations: one also problematic, the other one more promising, and present some normative advantages of the latter. This also displays the undesirability of the endorsement model from a normative perspective. (shrink)

Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816), militar, viajero ilustrado, y, sobre todo, precursor de la independencia latinoamericana, ha sido objeto de numerosos estudios biográficos centrados fundamentalmente en su vida azarosa y aventurera. Sin embargo, su periplo intelectual ha sido investigado en un grado mucho menor, sobre todo en lo que se refiere a su meditación constitucional. El presente artículo tiene como fin, precisamente el de estudiar la relación de su pensamiento con la actuación política que le condujofinalmente a convertirse en Generalísimo (...) de la república de Venezuela en el año 1812, llegando a concentrar poderes excepcionales para hacer frente a la metrópoli española. De resultas de tal investigación puede concluirse que Miranda hizo una lectura de diversos autores ilustrados conocidos en Europa y el Nuevo Mundo, pero que también extrajo distintas reflexiones de su propia experiencia política por haber tomado parte en las dos grandes revoluciones del siglo XVIII. (shrink)

Se habla de las traducciones de Aristóteles y Pseudo-Aristóteles en tierras gallegas o realizados por gallegos en la Edad Media; así como los problemas inherentes a toda operación de traducción en cualquier época y circunstancia. Nos centramos en Pedro Gallego, representante de la 3º generación de los traductores de la corte toledana de Alfonso X el Sabio, de quien fue amigo y confesor, aunque afincado en Murcia y obispo titular de la recién recuperada sede de Cartagena. Y pormenorizamos las distintas (...) secuencias en el traslado de una de las obras capitales de Aristóteles, que tanto interesó a los árabes, del árabe al latín, el Liber de animalibus, compendio de diversos trabajos naturalistas y de biología, que traduce nuestro autor natural de Ortigueira (mariña lucense). (shrink)

Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it (...) uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing ideas about the self. Phantasmagoria also tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women--scientists and philosophers--who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics. Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times. (shrink)

The philosophical nature of the two versions of paraphrasing the Gorgias’ treatise On Non-Being — the skeptical version by Sextus Empiricus and the peripatetic version by an anonymous author — are discussed. The paper gives a comparative analysis of the arguments upheld by the informants enunciating Gorgias’ thoughts, demonstrates the range of philosophical problems, which Gorgias considered, judging by the reports of his speech, and shows how both versions add to and clarify each other in terms of philosophical issues. The (...) work provides insights as to how Gorgias modernizes and transforms the initial attitudes of Parmenides, shifting the reasoning plan: from how thought can be directed to an object and the qualities of this object to how thought can be directed to the non-existent. Accordingly, the problems of intentionality in the Gorgias’ teaching are considered as well as the privileged status of any of mental states, the nature of word or speech as an autonomous way to develop knowledge about external objects, the issue of meaning as a reference, and inter-subjectivity in cognition. A conclusion is reached that giving preference to one of the paraphrasing versions impoverishes our understanding of the Gorgias’ teaching considerably, while the joint analysis of both versions demonstrates the engagement of the sophistic issues raised by Gorgias, in the philosophical and, particularly, the epistemological paradigm of the ancient as well as modern philosophy. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental designs are insufficient to differentiate between hypothesized perceptual learning mechanisms and reveal their possible interplay. We propose a relatively underutilized way of studying potential categorical effects on perception, and we test the predictions of different perceptual (...) learning models using a two‐dimensional, interleaved categorization‐plus‐reconstruction task. We find evidence that the human visual system adapts its encodings to the feature structure of the environment, uses categorical expectations for robust reconstruction, allocates encoding resources with respect to categorization utility, and adapts to prevent miscategorizations. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical. I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our (...) lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

Moral intensity theory is used to explain how characteristics of moral issues affect ethical decision-making. According to moral intensity theory, individuals and firms will make more ethical decisions when moral intensity is present, such as greater negative consequences, including harm to customers. However, evidence suggests this does not always happen in crisis situations. For example, Fisher Price waited until 30 babies died before recalling its Rock’n Play Sleeper in 2019. In this article, the concept of immoral entrenchment is introduced to (...) address how crises affect the expected firm responses to morally intense ethical issues. Immoral entrenchment suggests that firms experience threat-rigidity responses to crises that lead to collective moral disengagement. Immoral entrenchment results in firms’ denial of responsibility and unethical behavior, instead of ethical behavior, in the face of highly negative consequences. The study in this article tests immoral entrenchment in the context of the speed to recall 843 consumer products. Supplemental qualitative evidence illustrates the collective moral disengagement dimension of immoral entrenchment. Contributing to the literature on ethics and crisis, the findings demonstrate that crises can generate immoral entrenchment in firms, which reverses the expected ethical response of those firms to issues with high moral intensity. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political (...) significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

She was to a degree the tool of her husband. However, despite the fact she was under his influence to a degree she cannot escape if the Bank took all reasonable steps to ensure that she had appreciated and understood what she was signing. It may be that Mrs Wright-Bailey did not have an adequate comprehension of the nature of the charge... [E]ven if she did not, the Bank did take all reasonable steps.

There are two kinds of forgiveness that appear as radically different from one another: one presents forgiveness as essentially earned through remorseful apology; the other presents it as fundamentally non-earned—a gift. The first, which I label Moral Justice Forgiveness, adopts a stance of moral demand and conditionality; the second, which I label Gifted Forgiveness, adopts a stance of non-demand and un-conditionality. Each is real; yet how can two such different responses to wrongdoing be of one and the same kind? This (...) paper explains how, by showing that the basic role each plays in moral-social life is the same; and that one is conceptually and therefore historically prior to the other. The result is pluralism, with each kind of forgiveness represented as distinctive in both its psychology and its normativity; and yet an ordered pluralism—with Moral Justice Forgiveness revealed as the root kind, and Gifted Forgiveness a culturally contingent iteration. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

Canguilhem’s contemporary relevance lies in how he critiques the relation between knowledge and life that underlies Kantian rationality. The latter’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment represent life in the form of an exception: life is simultaneously included and excluded from understanding. Canguilhem’s critique can be grouped into three main strands of argument. First, his reference to concepts as preserved problems breaks with Kant’s idea of concepts regarding the living as a ‘unification of the manifold’. Second, Canguilhem’s vital (...) normativity represents life as the potential to resist normative orders that judge the living, relegating Kant’s ‘lawfulness of the contingent’ to a ‘mediocre regularity’. Third, Canguilhem’s introduction of the environment as a ‘category of contemporary thought’ decentres the living/knowing subject and introduces contingency. His idea of the ‘knowledge of life’ leads to the conclusion that life is the condition of possibility of rationality, rather than rationality’s ‘blind spot’. (shrink)

Autoscopic phenomena are complex experiences that include the visual illusory reduplication of one’s own body. From a phenomenological point of view, we can distinguish three conditions: autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experiences. The dysfunctional pattern involves multisensory disintegration of personal and extrapersonal space perception. The etiology, generally either neurological or psychiatric, is different. Also, the hallucination of Self and own body image is present during dreams and differs according to sleep stage. Specifically, the representation of the Self in REM dreams (...) is frequently similar to the perception of Self in wakefulness, whereas in NREM dreams, a greater polymorphism of Self and own body representation is observed. The parallels between autoscopic phenomena in pathological cases and the Self-hallucination in dreams will be discussed to further the understanding of the particular states of self awareness, especially the complex integration of different memory sources in Self and body representation. (shrink)

The concept of ‘the Canadian identity’ is a topic which has received much attention in recent decades, stimulating discussions on the topic of what makes a Canadian a Canadian? Today, being Canadian might suggest a love of hockey and poutine. However, a century ago, being “Canadian” was an emphasis on adapting or conforming to British norms. This paper will focus on one important theme in debates around ‘Canadianization’, specifically its reflection over time in the domestic structure of the early Ukrainian (...) settlers. Canadian identity studies can especially benefit from this trace of identity formation, by its application to a broader, multi-ethnical context. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

We offer a new account of the role of values in theory choice that captures a temporal dimension to the values themselves. We argue that non-epistemic values sometimes serve as “inquiry tickets,” justifying scientists’ pursuit of certain questions in the short run, while the answers to those questions mitigate transient underdetermination in the long run. Our account of inquiry tickets shows that the role of non-epistemic values need not be restricted to belief or acceptance in order to be relevant to (...) hypothesis choice: the relevance of non-epistemic values to a particular cognitive attitude with respect to h vary over time. (shrink)

Taking on topics from pornography and prostitution to female genital mutilation, from womens magazines and marriage to sexual violence, contributors in this collection argue that the kind of liberal feminism currently rising to prominence does little to challenge the status quo.

It seems natural to think that emotional experiences associated with a memory of a past event are new and present emotional states triggered by the remembered event. This common conception has nonetheless been challenged at the beginning of the 20th century by intellectuals who considered that emotions can be encoded and retrieved, and that emotional aspects linked to memories of the personal past need not necessary to be new emotional responses caused by the act of recollection. They called this specific (...) kind of memories “affective memories” and defended their existence. My aim here is to expound the historical background of this debate as well as the characterization and development of the notion of affective memory since its first inception. I aim to show that although the debate was left unresolved and the term disappeared from academy around 1930, many of the characterizations of the nature of emotions and memory done by the advocates of affective memory have reappeared in the scientific agenda and been further developed during the last decades. (shrink)

Drawing from a multi-sourced data corpus gathered from high-net-worth social media influencers, this article explores how these individuals reconcile ethicality and living a luxury lifestyle through the enactment of three types of personas on Instagram: Ambassador of ‘True’ Luxury, Altruist, and ‘Good’ Role Model. By applying the concepts of taste regimes and social moral licensing, we find that HNW social media influencers conspicuously enact and display ethicality, thereby retaining legitimacy in the field of luxury consumption. As these individuals are highly (...) influential, they could leave a potentially significant mark on public discourse and, consequently, on their audiences’ construction of ethically responsible luxury consumption. In this vein, this article offers significant managerial insights into professional influencers and discusses ethical managerial practices to ensure ethical collaborations between influencers and managers. (shrink)

During the course of this article, we examine the use of membership categorisation practices by a high-profile celebrity public social media account that has been understood to generate interest, attention and controversy across the UK media ecology. We utilise a data set of harvested tweets gathered from a high-profile public ‘celebrity antagonist’ in order to systematically identify types of antagonistic formulation that have generated different levels of interest within the social media community and beyond. Drawing from classic ethnomethodological studies of (...) banner headlines and other means of generating public interest and ‘making sense’, we respecify high-profile antagonistic tweets as category formulations that exhibit particular and regular membership category features that are reflexively bound to potential antagonistic readings, interest and controversy. In conclusion, we consider how such formulations may be understood to represent resources that constitute ignition points within antagonistic flows of communication and information that can be metaphorically understood as ‘digital wildfires’. (shrink)

What, if anything, do the ‘square’ protests and ‘occupy’ movements of 2011 bring to contemporary democratic theory? And how can we, as political theorists, analyse their discourse and do justice to it? We address these questions through an analysis of the Greek and Spanish protest movements of the spring and summer of 2011, the so-called aganaktismenoi and indignados. We trace the centrality of the critique of representation and politics as usual as well as the ideas about horizontality and autonomy in (...) the protesters’ discourse. These ideas are not only important to their critique of the contemporary liberal democratic regimes in the two countries, but also important to the way in which the protesters organise themselves. Nonetheless, as we shall argue, the protesters are caught within a tension between horizontality and verticality, between autonomy and hegemony, or between moving beyond representation and accepting representational structures. Given this tension, we examine how the protesters negotiate it in three key areas: politics, representation and organisation. Drawing on Jacques Rancière, we further argue that the protesters can be seen as making a claim to equal voice. This is what Rancière refers to as politics proper, and the question is then whether such a politics is possible without falling back into traditional forms of politics. (shrink)

We gain information from collective, often institutional bodies all the time—from the publications of committees, news teams, or research groups, from web sites such as Wikipedia, and so on—but do these bodies ever function as genuine group testifiers as opposed to mere group sources of information? In putting the question this way I invoke a distinction made, if briefly, by Edward Craig, which I believe to be of deep significance in thinking about the distinctiveness of the speech act of testimony. (...) The distinction is that between somebody’s functioning as a ‘good informant’ and their functioning merely as a ‘source of information’. The difference between these has, as he remarks, a crucial ethical aspect: What I have in mind is the special flavour of situations in which human beings treat each other as subjects with a common purpose, rather than as objects from which services, in this case true belief, can be extracted. In this paper I shall try to bring out the distinctive nature of the role of good informant in a way that helps to clarify what is at stake in asking whether there can be group testimony in the sense of genuinely collective testimony—that is to say, where the group testifier is a collective and not merely a sum of individuals testifying in one or another form of aggregated chorus. (shrink)

In many areas of the social and behavioral sciences, the nature of the experiments and theories that best capture the underlying constructs are themselves areas of active inquiry. Integrative experiment design risks being prematurely exploitative, hindering exploration of experimental paradigms and of diverse theoretical accounts for target phenomena.