Explores the teaching and learning of issues relating to the impact of science in society. This title offers practical guidance in devising learning goals and suitable learning and assessment strategies. It helps teachers to provide students with the skills and understanding needed to address these multi-faceted issues.

Importance Informed consent is essential to ethical, rigorous research and is important to recruitment and retention in cancer trials.Objective To examine cancer clinical trial (CCT) participants’ perceptions of informed consent processes and variations in perceptions by cancer type.Design and Setting and Participants Cross-sectional survey from mixed-methods study at National Cancer Institute–designated Northeast comprehensive cancer center. Open-ended and forced-choice items addressed: (1) enrollment and informed consent experiences and (2) decision-making processes, including risk-benefit assessment. Eligibility: CCT participant with gastro-intestinal or genitourinary, hematologic-lymphatic (...) malignancies, lung cancer, and breast or gynecological cancer (N = 334).Main Outcome Measures Percentages satisfied with consent process and information provided; and assessing participation’s perceptions of risks/benefits. Multivariable logistic or ordinal regression examined differences by cancer type.Results Most patient-participants felt well informed by the consent process (more than 90% overall and by cancer type) and. most (87.4%) reported that the consent form provided all the information they wanted, although nearly half (44.8%) reported that they read the form somewhat carefully or less. More than half (57.9%) said that talking to research staff (i.e., the consent process) had a greater impact on participation decisions than reading the consent form (2.1%). A third (31.1%) were very sure of joining in research studies before the informed consent process (almost half of lung cancer patients did—47.1%). Most patients personally assessed the risks and benefits before consenting. However, trust in physicians played an important role in the decision to enroll in CCT.Conclusions and Relevance Cancer patients rely less on written features of the informed consent process than on information obtained from the research staff and their own physicians. Research should focus on information and communication strategies that support informed consent from referring physicians, researchers, and others to improve patient risk-benefit assessment and decision-making. (shrink)

Hisashi Nasu, Lester Embree, George Psathas, and Ilja Srubar (eds.), Alfred Schutz and His Intellectual Partners; Sandra P. Thomas and Howard R. Pollio, Listening to Patients, A Phenomenological Approach to Nursing Research and Practice; Matthew Ratcliffe, Rethinking Commonsense Psychology: A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation.

Hisashi Nasu, Lester Embree, George Psathas, and Ilja Srubar (eds.), Alfred Schutz and His Intellectual Partners; Sandra P. Thomas and Howard R. Pollio, Listening to Patients, A Phenomenological Approach to Nursing Research and Practice; Matthew Ratcliffe, Rethinking Commonsense Psychology: A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation.

This chapter offers a phenomenological account of impaired agency in depression. It begins by briefly considering some first-person descriptions of how depression affects the ability to act, which point to an altered "experience of free will." Although it is often assumed that we have such an experience, it is far from clear what it consists of. The chapter argues that this lack of clarity is symptomatic of looking in the wrong place. Drawing on themes in Sartre's Being and Nothingness, it (...) is suggested that the sense of freedom associated with action is not-first and foremost-an episodic "quale" or "feeling" that is experienced as internal to the agent. Rather, it is embedded in the experienced world; my freedom appears in the guise of my surroundings. This makes better sense of what people with depression consistently describe-a diminished ability to act that is inextricable from a transformation of the experienced world. In addition to illuminating an aspect of the experience of depression, the chapter aims to illustrate something more general: how phenomenology and psychiatry can interact in a fruitful way. (shrink)

This paper sets out a phenomenological account of what it is to feel unable to continue as oneself. I distinguish the feeling that a particular identity has become unsustainable from a sense that the world has ceased to offer the kinds of possibilities required to sustain any such identity. In feeling unable to continue as oneself, possibilities may remain for carrying on in practically meaningful ways but not as who one is or was. I reflect on the kinds of self (...) and feeling involved in such experiences, emphasizing the essential openness of self-experience to transformative possibilities and the dynamic structure of feeling. To illustrate and further develop my approach, I turn to experiences of grief. (shrink)

The paper analyses the impact of the discovery of the division of infusoria on eighteenth century microscopical iconography. In Autumn 1765, when reproducing the antispontaneist experiments of Lazzaro Spallanzani, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799) discovered a new method of generation of the animalcules of the infusions, namely their division. Drawing a dividing animalcule raised particular problems, notably the question of how to depict the time sequence of a microscopical creature. Although Saussure's journal of microscopical experiments remained unpublished, the discovery was soon (...) diffused and acknowledged by the European naturalists who began to repeat the observations and quickly faced iconographic problems similar to those experienced by Saussure. Indeed, linearity, used to picture time, is a construction, and, notably for public images, scholars had to contend with the conventions of drawers and engravers. The analysis of microscopical iconographic material of the period 1740-1786 shows that during this period, certain naturalists invented new solutions for depicting time, but diffusion of their innovations was not immediate. Nevertheless, in regards to the illustration of microscopical creatures, it is between 1765 and 1776 that the use of linearity was established as a solution enabling an audience to read an iconographic time process as a text. (shrink)

Historians of science have long believed that Abraham Trembley’s celebrity and impact were attributable chiefly to the incredible regenerative phenomena demonstrated by the polyp, which he discovered in 1744, and to the new experimental method he devised to investigate them. This essay shows that experimental method alone cannot account for Trembley’s success and influence; nor are the marvels of the polyp sufficient to explain its scientific and cultural impact. Experimental method was but one element in a new conception of the (...) laboratory that called for both experimental and para‐experimental skills whose public availability depended on a new style of communication. The strategy of generosity that led Trembley to dispatch polyps everywhere enabled experimental naturalist laboratories to spread throughout Europe, and the free circulation of living objects for scientific research led practitioners to establish an experimental field distinct from mechanical physics. Scholars reacted to the marvels of the polyp by strengthening the boundaries between the public and academic spheres and, in consequence, opened a space for new standards in both scientific work and the production of celebrity.… comme l’Auteur de l’Histoire des Polypes, il a passé de plein vol à l’immortalité.—Julien Offrey de La Mettrie … comme l’Auteur de l’Histoire des Polypes, il a passé de plein vol à l’immortalité.—Julien Offrey de La Mettrie. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: grief is, by definition, a response to a death; grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are unconvincing, (...) we sketch a positive case for a conception of grief that is not specific to bereavement, by noting some features that grief following bereavement shares with other experiences of loss. (shrink)

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

This book offers a defence of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (at (...) least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focused on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. This book, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized. (shrink)

Classical logic has proved inadequate in various areas of computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, philosopy and linguistics. This is an introduction to extensions of first-order logic, based on the principle that many-sorted logic (MSL) provides a unifying framework in which to place, for example, second-order logic, type theory, modal and dynamic logics and MSL itself. The aim is two fold: only one theorem-prover is needed; proofs of the metaproperties of the different existing calculi can be avoided by borrowing them from (...) MSL. To make the book accessible to readers from different disciplines, whilst maintaining precision, the author has supplied detailed step-by-step proofs, avoiding difficult arguments, and continually motivating the material with examples. Consequently this can be used as a reference, for self-teaching or for first-year graduate courses. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of what an evolutionary account of intentional states should look like. I suggest that many accounts rest on the assumption that, so far as intentionality is concerned, differences between animal species should be understood solely in terms of comparative sophistication. I argue that this assumption is misguided. Such accounts ignore an important biological distinction between functional and anatomical characterisations and seek to explain comparative differences that are symptomatic of functional divergence by appealing solely (...) to a cognitive analogue of anatomical complexity. This results in accounts that are fundamentally incomplete or beside the point. (shrink)

Entre tradiciones y procesos de transformación, asistimos a una poética del pensar del poema extenso en las Antillas hispanas. Desde la “décima”, venida de Europa, se desarrolla una creatividad lingüística por medio de una apertura pragmática, en estrecha relación con la particularidad colonial: entre mito del progreso y mito de la edad de oro. Para entender la inventiva caribeña, recordamos la práctica del Neobarroco, elaborado a base de las confluencias de lo heterogéneo. Vemos como a través de una heteroglosia discursiva, (...) el poema extenso se asienta en este espacio cultural que son las islas antillanas y subrayamos su papel actual en el relato de historias mínimas que alimentan por otro cariz la historia universal. (shrink)

InWisdom, Information and Wonder, Mary Midgley tackles the question at the root of our civilization: What is knowledge for?

This chapter first distinguishes between originality and creativity. True originality is rare, whether in art, science, or LEGO, because to be truly original means to have done something that no one has ever done before, and that no one could have anticipated. Most LEGO creations will not meet that condition, for with the exception of serious hobbyists who undertake massive builds, most players who make original creations are making creations that are commonplace. Painting or remolding or placing stickers on the (...) bricks counts against the spirit of LEGO creation. The chapter then discusses The LEGO Movie embodies the paradox that presents three conflicting models of creative LEGO play, illustrated by the Master Builders, Finn's father, and Emmet. The movie's creators were deliberately playing around with conflicting popular conceptions of creativity: creativity as madness, creativity as thinking outside the box, and creativity as vision. (shrink)

Plato famously promised to complement the Sophist and the Statesman with another work on a third sort of expert, the philosopher--but we do not have this final dialogue. Mary Louise Gill argues that Plato promised the Philosopher, but did not write it, in order to stimulate his audience and encourage his readers to work out, for themselves, the portrait it would have contained. The Sophist and Statesman are themselves members of a larger series starting with the Theaetetus, Plato's investigation (...) of knowledge, and the whole series relies on the Parmenides, the second part of which presents a philosophical exercise, introduced as the first step in a larger philosophical program. Gill contends that the dialogues leading up to the missing Philosopher, though they reach some substantive conclusions, are philosophical exercises of various sorts designed to train students in dialectic, the philosopher's method; and that a second version of the Parmenides exercise, closely patterned on it, spans parts of the Theaetetus and Sophist and brings the philosopher into view. This is the exercise about being, the subject-matter studied by Plato's philosopher. Plato hides the pieces of the puzzle and its solution in plain sight, forcing his students (and modern readers) to dig out the pieces and reconstruct the project. Gill reveals how, in finding the philosopher through the exercise, the student becomes a philosopher by mastering his methods. She shows that the target of Plato's exercise is internally related to its pedagogical purpose. (shrink)

What are the driving forces of cultural macroevolution, the evolution of cultural traits that characterize societies or populations? This question has engaged anthropologists for more than a century, with little consensus regarding the answer. We develop and fit autologistic models, built upon both spatial and linguistic neighbor graphs, for 44 cultural traits of 172 societies in the Western North American Indian (WNAI) database. For each trait, we compare models including or excluding one or both neighbor graphs, and for the majority (...) of traits we find strong evidence in favor of a model which uses both spatial and linguistic neighbors to predict a trait’s distribution. Our results run counter to the assertion that cultural trait distributions can be explained largely by the transmission of traits from parent to daughter populations and are thus best analyzed with phylogenies. In contrast, we show that vertical and horizontal transmission pathways can be incorporated in a single model, that both transmission modes may indeed operate on the same trait, and that for most traits in the WNAI database, accounting for only one mode of transmission would result in a loss of information. (shrink)

How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto (...) Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order. The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change. (shrink)

Fundamental principles : the nature of the dispute -- Types of euthanasia -- Psychiatric assisted suicide -- Neonates -- Incompetent adults -- Human life is sacred -- The slippery slope -- Medical views -- Four methods of easing death and their effect on doctors -- Looking further ahead.

"Charming, interesting, thought-provoking and a great read." Rosalind Hursthouse The daughter of a pacifist rector who answered "No!" when his congregation asked him "Is everything in the bible true?", perhaps Mary Midgley was destined to become a philosopher. Yet few would have thought this inquisitive, untidy, nature-loving child would become "one of the sharpest critical pens in the west." This is her remarkable story. Probably the only philosopher to have been in Vienna on the eve of its invasion by (...) Nazi Germany in 1938 and dance in Trafalgar Square on VE day seven year later, she studied philosophy at Oxford in the same year as Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot, all of whom became close friends. Midgley tells us in vivid and humorous fashion how they cut a swathe through the arid landscape of 1950s British philosophy, writing and arguing - often with each other - about the grand themes of character, beauty and the meaning of rudeness while the spectral figure of Ludwig Wittgenstein hovered in the background. She also charts the highs and lows of philosophy and academia in Britain. On joining the Reading philosophy department on £400 a year in 1949, she doubled its staff complement. But her many years at Newcastle University - where Mike Brearley, who later captained England at cricket, also used to teach - were rewarded with the closure of the philosophy department in the 1980s. The mother of three children, her journey is also one of a woman who in the 1950s and 1960s was fighting to combine a professional career with raising a family. In startling contrast to many of the academic stars of her generation, we learn that Midgley nearly became a novelist and started writing philosophy only when in her fifties, suggesting that Minerva's owl really does fly at dusk. Plainly told like her philosophy, this is an elegiac and moving account of friendships found and lost, bitter philosophical battles and of a profound love of teaching all too rarely acknowledged today. (shrink)

A leader in the modern commentary on ethics and philosophy, Mary Warnock casts a critical eye over her life and times.

This is a truly groundbreaking work that examines today’s notions of folk psychology. Bringing together disciplines as various as cognitive science and anthropology, the authors analyze and question key assumptions about the nature, scope and function of folk psychology.

This paper criticizes Langton's speech act account of MacKinnon's claim about (the subordinating force of) pornography and offers a different account of how speech might enact harmful norms and thus constitute harm.

Emotions and bodily feelings -- Existential feelings -- The phenomenology of touch -- Body and world -- Feeling and belief in the Capgras delusion -- Feelings of deadness and depersonalization -- Existential feeling in schizophrenia -- What William James really said -- Stance, feeling, and belief -- Pathologies of existential feeling.