Abstract:This article looks at what anarchism has to offer in debates concerning health and healthcare. I present the case that anarchism’s interest in supporting the poor, sick, and marginalized, and rejection of state and corporate power, places it in a good position to offer creative ways to address health problems. I maintain that anarchistic values of autonomy, responsibility, solidarity, and community are central to this endeavor. Rather than presenting a case that follows one particular anarchist theory, my main goal is (...) to raise issues and initiate debate in this underresearched field in mainstream bioethics. (shrink)

This book describes specific, well-know controversies in the genetic modification debate and connects them to deeper philosophical issues in philosophy of technology. It contributes to the current, far-reaching deliberations about the future of food, agriculture and society. Controversies over so-called Genetically Modified Organisms regularly appear in the press. The biotechnology debate has settled into a long-term philosophical dispute. The discussion goes much deeper than the initial empirical questions about whether or not GM food and crops are safe for human consumption (...) or pose environmental harms that dominated news reports. In fact, the implications of this debate extend beyond the sphere of food and agriculture to encompass the general role of science and technology in society. The GM controversy provides an occasion to explore important issues in philosophy of technology. Researchers, teachers and students interested in agricultural biotechnology, philosophy of technology and the future of food and agriculture will find this exploration timely and thought provoking. (shrink)

Background Psychological practitioners often seek to directly change the form or frequency of clients' maladaptive perfectionist thoughts, because such thoughts predict future depression. Indirect strategies, such as self-compassion interventions, that seek to change clients' relationships to difficult thoughts, rather than trying to change the thoughts directly could be just as effective. This study aimed to investigate whether self-compassion moderated, or weakened, the relationship between high perfectionism and high depression symptoms in both adolescence and adulthood. Methods The present study utilised anonymous (...) self-report questionnaires to assess maladaptive perfectionism, depression, and self-compassion across two samples covering much of the life-span. Questionnaires were administered in a high school setting for the adolescent sample, and advertised through university and widely online to attract a convenience sample of adults. Results Moderation analyses revealed that self-compassion reduced the strength of relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and depression in our adolescent Study 1 and our adult study 2. Limitations Cross-sectional self-reported data restricts the application of causal conclusions and also relies on accurate self-awareness and willingness to respond to questionnaire openly. Conclusions The replication of this finding in two samples and across different age-appropriate measures suggests that self-compassion does moderate the link between perfectionism and depression. Self-compassion interventions may be a useful way to undermine the effects of maladaptive perfectionism, but future experimental or intervention research is needed to fully assess this important possibility. (shrink)

A sense of agency over wilful actions is thought to be dependent on the level of choice and the nature of the outcome. In a preregistered study, we manipulated choice and valence of outcome to assess the relationship between SoA across the depression and psychosis continuum. Participants completed a Libet Clock task, in which they had either a free or forced choice to press one of two buttons and received either a rewarding or punishing outcome. Participants also completed questionnaires on (...) depressive and psychosis-like traits. Rewarding outcomes increased intentional binding. The evidence favoured no effect of choice on average, but this was influenced by inter-individual differences. Individuals reporting more depressive traits had less of a difference in intentional binding between free and forced choice conditions. We show that implicit SoA is sensitive to outcome valence and the effect of choice differs across the depression continuum. (shrink)

Computers, the internet, and the larger communications network of which it is a part, provide an informational structure within which many of us spend a large part of our working day and a significant part of our leisure. We are, during those periods, “infonauts in cyberspace,” using the internet to get information from places near and remote, and acting in various ways through the internet to have an effect on computers and people in those places. This cyberspace revolution is changing (...) the human condition in fundamental ways. These changes have the potential to reduce differences between disabled and nondisabled individuals. As infonauts, none of us receives the information we need directly from our senses, nor do we produce the effects we intend directly by use of our limbs. We all depend on technology to aid our senses and magnify and transform the effects of our movements. Neither the blind person nor the quadriplegic nor the sighted mobile employee can access the latest government regulations or send instructions to colleagues in distant places without the help of the internet. The difference between.. (shrink)

In his earlier essay in aesthetics--after lengthily disposing of a number of Aristotelian-Thomist distinctions between the speculative order and the practical order, between the "useful" arts and the "fine" arts, and so on--M. Maritain, in the most interesting passages of Art and Scholasticism, concerned himself with this astonishing "growth of self-consciousness" in the modern artist. And what chiefly occupied him was the thought that, in submitting to the idea of making art out of the idea of art, the artist might (...) become so fascinated with technique and so estranged from the existential world of nature and the universe of man that he should forget that, unlike God, he cannot create ex nihilo. He wanted, then, to confront him with the futility of claiming any kind of aseity for his art, for pure art, he said, "involves nothing, the subject being completely whittled away. I call that a sin of idealism in relation to the matter of art: pushed to the extreme, a perfect building, with nothing to build." The idea of making poetry out of the idea of poetry or painting out of the idea of painting can, in other words, never yield anything but sterility, since the kind of "metaphysical vastness" that characterizes greatness in the arts has always been a result of vital transactions between the creative Self and the universes of Being. And for the poet or the painter to seek to allay the kind of "eucharistic passion" that arises at the very center of the artistic process is for him to run the risk of suicide, since it is for him to isolate his art from everything that is not "its own peculiar rules of operation." There is one long and wonderful sentence in which the lesson is summed up, as M. Maritain says that he would remind modern art that. (shrink)

Twelve scholars in religion and the humanities present Christian interpretations of tragedy in literature, including works by Nietzsche, Kafka, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Milton and others.

The novels and plays of such writers an Camus, Sartre, and Beckett plunged us into the existentialist experience--of nostalgia and anguish, of alienation and extremity. Now Nathan A. Scott, Jr., a leading interpreter of the literature of existentialism, reveals the literary origins and the philosophical and theological roots of this important movement. In perceptive biographies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, and Buber, he shows how their thoughts were shaped by the events of their lives and their relationships to others; then (...) he traces the development of the philosophy of existentialism by these revolutionary thinkers. Dr. Scott gives us a clear and even encouraging understanding of existentialism as that type of philosophic and poetic vision which insists on the dignity and uniqueness of the human presence, and which represents the most important contribution of the twentieth century to the humanistic tradition. So, too, the works of the existentialist writers are a major contribution to modern literature.--From publisher description. (shrink)

In this landmark work of economic sociology, Lucien Karpik introduces the theory and practical tools needed to analyze markets for singularities. Singularities are goods and services that cannot be studied by standard methods because they are multidimensional, incommensurable, and of uncertain quality. Examples include movies, novels, music, artwork, fine wine, lawyers, and doctors. Valuing the Unique provides a theoretical framework to explain this important class of products and markets that for so long have eluded neoclassical economics. With this innovative theory--called (...) the economics of singularities--Karpik shows that, because of the uncertainty and the highly subjective valuation of singularities, these markets are necessarily equipped with what he calls "judgment devices"--such as labels, brands, guides, critics, and rankings--which provide consumers with the credible knowledge needed to make reasonable choices. He explains why these markets are characterized by the primacy of competition by qualities over competition by prices, and he identifies the conditions under which singularities are constructed or are in danger of losing their uniqueness. After demonstrating how combinations of the numerous and multiform judgment devices can be used to identify different market models, Karpik applies his analytical tools to the functioning of a large number of actual markets, including fine wines, movies, luxury goods, pop music, and legal services. (shrink)