Behavioral momentum theory has evolved within the realm of operant conditioning. The thought-provoking momentum metaphor equates the strength of an operant response with its resistance to change and preference (i.e., choice) for that response over other available responses. Whereas baseline response rate (velocity in the metaphor) is assumed to be largely influenced by the response-reinforcer contingency, resistance to change and preference are assumed to reflect an intervening variable called behavioral mass, which is determined primarily by the stimulus-reinforcer relationship. This invites (...) the question of how well the momentum metaphor applies to the stimulus-reinforcer relationships of traditional Pavlovian paradigms. Presumably, a correspondence exists between behavioral mass and the notion of associative strength in the associative learning literature. Although response rate has little meaning in the trialwise structure of classical (i.e., Pavlovian) conditioning, response probability or magnitude might be regarded metaphorically as velocity. Momentum theory suggests that resistance to change (e.g., extinction) is a better indicator of associative strength than is response probability or magnitude. Therefore, variables that strengthen Pavlovian learning should influence resistance to extinction of conditioned responding in a similar manner. Moreover, it is important to assess momentum theory outside of strictly operant paradigms, particularly because in clinical settings many common disorders (e.g., phobias) and their therapies (e.g., cue exposure) are thought to be classically conditioned. (shrink)

Homosexual aversion therapy enjoyed two brief but intense periods of clinical experimentation: between 1950 and 1962 in Czechoslovakia, and between 1962 and 1975 in the British Commonwealth. The specific context of its emergence was the geopolitical polarization of the Cold War and a parallel polarization within psychological medicine between Pavlovian and Freudian paradigms. In 1949, the Pavlovian paradigm became the guiding doctrine in the Communist bloc, characterized by a psychophysiological or materialist understanding of mental illness. It was (...) taken up by therapists in Western countries who were critical of psychoanalysis and sought more ‘scientific’ diagnostic and therapeutic methods that focused on empirical evidence and treating actual symptoms. However, their attitude towards homosexuality often played a decisive role in how they used aversion therapy. Whereas Czechoslovakian researchers cautioned readers about low success rates and agitated for homosexual law reform in 1961, most of their anglophone counterparts selectively ignored or misrepresented the results of ‘the Prague experiment’, instead celebrating single-case ‘success’ stories in their effort to correct ‘abnormal’ sexual orientation. In histories of queer sexuality and its pathologization, the behaviourist paradigm remains almost entirely unmapped. This article provides the most detailed study to date of aversion therapy literature from both sides of the East/West border. In doing so, it contributes to the project not only of ‘decentring Western sexualities’, but of decentring Western sexological knowledge. Given its Pavlovian origins, the history of homosexual aversion therapy can be fully understood only in the context of Cold War transnational sexological knowledge exchange. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the resistance to extinction obtained in evaluative conditioning (EC) studies implies that EC is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning (Baeyens, Eelen, & Crombez, 1995 Baeyens, F, Eelen, P, and Crombez, G, (1995a). Pavlovian associations are forever: On classical conditioning and extinction, Journal of Psychophysiology 9 ((1995a)), pp. 127–141.[Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]a) or whether it is the result of an nonassociative artefact (Field & Davey, 1997 Field, AP, and Davey, (...) GCL, (1997). Conceptual conditioning: Evidence for an artifactual account of evaluative learning, Learning and Motivation 25 ((1997)), pp. 446–464.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1998 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1998). Evaluative conditioning: Arti‐fact or ‐fiction?‐ A reply to Baeyens, De Houwer, Vansteenwegen, and Eelen (1998), Learning and Motivation 29 ((1998)), pp. 475–491.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar], 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). Both experiments included between‐subjects control groups in addition to standard within‐subjects control conditions. In Experiment 1, only verbal ratings were measured in order to evaluate the effect of postacquisition CS‐only exposures on EC whereas in Experiment 2, verbal ratings and postextinction priming effects were measured. The results showed that the EC effects are demonstrable in a between‐subjects design and that the extinction procedure did not have any influence on the acquired evaluative value of CSs regardless of whether the verbal ratings or the priming effects were used as dependent variables. The present results provide evidence that EC is resistant to extinction and suggest an interpretation of EC as a qualitatively distinct form of associative learning. (shrink)

Fulcher and Hammerl's (2001) important exploration of the role of contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning (EC) raises a lot of issues for discussion: (1) what boundaries, if any, exist between EC and affective learning paradigms?; (2) if EC does occur without awareness does this mean it is nonpropositional learning?; (3) is EC driven by stimulus-response (S-R), rather than stimulus-stimulus (S-S), associations and if so should it then surprise us that contingency awareness is not important?; and (4) if S-R associations are (...) at the heart of EC, should we automatically assume EC is part of a different learning mechanism to autonomic Pavlovian conditioning (Field, 2000a, 2000b)? This article, after a critical review of Fulcher and Hammerl's work, discusses these issues with reference to what can be realistically inferred about the mechanisms underlying EC. (shrink)

This is the first book-length project to examine the relationship between blackness, queerness, and hip hop. Using aesthetics as its organizing lens, Hip Hop Heresies attends to the ways that hip hop cultural production in New York City from the 1970s through the first fifteen years of the 21st century produced hip hop cultural products (film, visual art, and music) that offer "queer articulations" of race, gender, and sexuality that are contrary to hegemonic ideas and representations of those categories in (...) hip hop production, as well as in writing about hip hop culture. (shrink)

According to the traditional nomological-deductive methodology of physics and chemistry [Hempel and Oppenheim, 1948], explaining a phenomenon means subsuming it under a law. Logic becomes then the glue of explanation and laws the primary explainers. Thus, the scientific study of a system would consist in the development of a logically sound model of it, once the relevant observables (state variables) are identified and the general laws governing their change (expressed as differential equations, state transition rules, maximization/minimization principles,. . . ) (...) are well determined, together with the initial or boundary conditions for each particular case. Often this also involves making a set of assumptions about the elementary components of the system (e.g., their structural and dynamic properties) and modes of local interaction. In this framework, predictability becomes the main goal and that is why research is carried out through the construction of accurate mathematical models. Thus, physics and chemistry have made most progress so far by focusing on systems that, either due to their intrinsic properties or to the conditions in which they are investigated, allow for very strong simplifying assumptions, under which, nevertheless, those highly idealized models of reality are deemed to be in good correspondence with reality itself. Despite the enormous success that this methodology has had, the study of living and cognitive phenomena had to follow a very different road, because these phenomena are produced by systems whose underlying material structure and organization do not permit such crude approximations. Seen from the perspective of physics or chemistry, biological and cognitive systems are made of an enormous number of parts or elements interacting in non-linear and selective ways, which makes very difficult their tractability through mathematical models. In addition, many of those interacting elements are hierarchically organized, in a way that the “macroscopic” (observable) parts behave according to rules that cannot be, in practice, derived from simple principles at the level of their “microscopic” dynamics.. (shrink)

Most economists are committed to some version of egoism. After distinguishing among the various sorts of egoistic claims, l cite the empirical literature against psychological egoism and show that attempts to account for this data make these economists' previous empirical claims tautological. Moreover, the assumption of egoism has undesirable consequences, especially for students; if people believe that others behave egoistically, they are more likely to behave egoistically themselves. As an alternative to egoism I recommend the commitment model of Robert Frank. (...) The equivalent of egoism at the organizational level is that business firms seek (should seek) to maximize profits. I present arguments to show that a conscious attempt by managers to maximize profits is likely to fail. A committed altruism is more likely to raise profits. I suggest that a firm should take as its primary purpose providing meaningful work for employees. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its (...) embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

The book is a translation of the Sophist with a running commentary. Three main points are argued: the dialogue does not present positive doctrine but has the structure of a reductio ad absurdum, Plato's point is to criticize the metaphysics of Parmenides. By failing to account for resemblance, Eleaticism implies an inadequate theory of relations, which makes impossible any understanding of "essence." Consequently, Eleaticism can be taken as the philosophical underpinning for the antithesis of philosophy, lending legitimacy to sophistry, the (...) criticism constitutes an indirect argument for the theory of forms. ;The method of division employed in the Sophist does not proceed "along natural joints" as called for in the Phaedrus, nor can it, since the Eleatic logic that underlies the method used in the Sophist allows for no intermediate in the strict opposition of 'being' and 'not-being.' The only definitions that can be made on this basis are negative definitions. This leads to an inability to account for images on Eleatic terms, providing a refuge for the sophist--he cannot be a maker of deceptive images if there are no images and no falsity. However, the modification of the Eleatic rejection of not-being is incomplete and insufficient. ;The arguments allow only for relations of identity and difference or whole and part, excluding any account of resemblance, the basis for any theory of participation. On these grounds, not-being is defined in terms of difference, affording an incomplete explanation of false statement, while abandoning the initial problem of images. Moreover, the concluding argument directly implies the reduction of 'being' to the newly introduced definition of 'not-being.' The ending turns back to the beginning: the sophist has an art that is no art, and definitions can only be definitions in terms of difference, negative definitions allowing no adequate account of images and no essences. The dialogue ends in a subtle aporia pointing to the failure to acknowledge that to say images both are and are not indicates an order of ontological dependence. (shrink)

Cooperation is vital to our survival and progress. Evolutionary game theory offers a lens to understand the structures and incentives that enable cooperation to be a successful strategy. As artificial intelligence agents become integral to human systems, the dynamics of cooperation take on unprecedented significance. The convergence of human-agent teaming, contract theory, and decentralized frameworks like Web3—grounded in transparency, accountability, and trust—offers a foundation for fostering cooperation by establishing enforceable rules and incentives for humans and AI agents. We conceptualize Incentivized (...) Symbiosis as a social contract between humans and AI, inspired by Web3 principles and encoded in blockchain technology, to define and enforce rules, incentives, and consequences for both parties. By exploring this paradigm, we aim to catalyze new research at the intersection of systems thinking in AI, Web3, and society, fostering innovative pathways for cooperative human-agent coevolution. (shrink)

Simon’s notion of bounded rationality is deeply intertwined with his activity as a cognitive psychologist and founder of so-called cognitivism, a mainstream approach in cognitive psychology until the 1980s. Cognitivism, understood as ‘symbolic information processing,’ provided the first cognitive psychology foundation to bounded rationality. Has bounded rationality since then fully followed the development of cognitive psychology beyond symbolic information processing in the post-Simonian era? To answer this question, this paper focuses on Simon’s opposition during the 1990s to a new view (...) of cognition called situated cognition, which has since put into question the entire view in cognitive psychology of humans as symbolic information processors. This paper then reads the cognitivism/situated cognition debate through the lens of current bounded rationality research in economics, in order to inquire into whether it has tackled the issues in that controversy; to envisage possible new foundations for a cognitive psychology-based bounded rationality. (shrink)

The imminent deployment of autonomous vehicles requires algorithms capable of making moral decisions in relevant traffic situations. Some scholars in the ethics of autonomous vehicles hope to align such intelligent systems with human moral judgment. For this purpose, studies like the Moral Machine Experiment have collected data about human decision-making in trolley-like traffic dilemmas. This paper first argues that the trolley dilemma is an inadequate experimental paradigm for investigating traffic moral judgments because it does not include agents’ character-based considerations (...) and is incapable of facilitating the investigation of low-stakes mundane traffic scenarios. In light of the limitations of the trolley paradigm, this paper presents an alternative experimental framework that addresses these issues. The proposed solution combines the creation of mundane traffic moral scenarios using virtual reality and the Agent-Deed-Consequences (ADC) model of moral judgment as a moral-psychological framework. This paradigm shift potentially increases the ecological validity of future studies by providing more realism and incorporating character considerations into traffic actions. (shrink)

The model of language can relatively concretely reveal the mechanism of the epistemology, which is extended by the ontology that takes “person” as the unit. It unveils an intuitable dimension to represent the epistemolog’s paradigm and limitations. Deriving from the inherent relation between epistemology and ontology, the retrospection of the epistemology’s ontological origin can be actualized by locating or grasping the epistemological first person’s ontological essence. Hence, the illusional and frail essence of the ontology behind this epistemology would be (...) uncovered. “Person” is not a stable unit in the ontological world, since the application of this unit stimulates the development of the operating style of the epistemology which relies on the supplement of paradox. After this study that intends to get the epistemological and ontological truth of the current using nominative, the new era of one or more unknown but solid epistemology and its ontology will be gradually recognized. Furthermore, the circumstance of past and current philosophical study is going to be changed. (shrink)

In this paper I chart the origins of modern day “biopedagogy” through an analysis of two historically specific figures of abnormality: the nervous child and the degenerate. These two figures form the positive and negative surfaces of biopolitics in education, sustained and articulated through the category of immunization. By analyzing the relation between the medical discourse of immunity and the practice of pedagogy, I will reveal how biopedagogy is predicated on a dialectical reversal of life into death and thus unsustainable (...) for furthering social democracy. In conclusion, I begin to search for an affirmative notion of biopolitical education that is no longer predicated on the dialectics of immunization. For help in this project, I briefly suggest that a theory of natality helps to disentangle the promise of life from its negation in the form of educational eugenics and mental hygiene. (shrink)

Moving into the Ecumenical Future identifies some necessary "foundations" of any paradigm for Ecumenical Ethics. It emphasizes the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the teaching and example of Jesus, biblical foundations, and pastoral relationships in developing paradigms for Ecumenical Ethics. The book suggests that virtue ethics is an important paradigm that includes these elements. The text explores how the Faith and Order "Tool," Receptive Ecumenism, Differentiated Consensus, Internal Polarities, and Spiritual Discernment can be used to move toward moral (...) consensus. The author calls for a national or international task force to explore these foundations in greater depth. (shrink)

Sustainability discourse offers a plethora of perspectives on the type of change needed to ensure a just development within planetary boundaries, and how that change could come about. Calls for radical transformations nonetheless underline the need to examine prevalent discursive structures in society, including challenging the ‘ideology of growth’, in order to formulate new and transformative policy approaches. Based on empirical insights as to how different actors – including grassroots, planners, officials and politicians – in Sweden perceive the transformations needed (...) to reach sustainability goals, this paper explores how narratives of change reproduce, make use of or show cracks in the eco-modern sustainability paradigm. (shrink)

This paper explores the rise of agential materialism in humanities and science and its influence on technological progress, proposing ‘softness’ as a paradigm for designing increasingly ‘agentised’ technologies. Soft technologies – defined by plastic embodiments, self-organisation, and multi-scalar material design – challenge hegemonic visions of machines as rigid, unfeeling, and subordinate to human control. Case studies in soft and biohybrid robotics, wetware computing, and nanotechnology demonstrate how emerging soft technologies embody unprecedented forms of artificial agency and outline future possibilities (...) for embodied intelligence. A paradigm shift towards softness fosters ‘micro-sustainability’, embedding self-contained, regenerative energy and resource management at the material scale. By complicating the separation of nature and artifact and the hierarchical relationship of humans and technologies, the paradigm of softness contributes to a broader ‘ecology of technology’, offering pathways for sustainable innovation in the face of global ecological challenges. (shrink)

In debates about criteria for human death, several camps have emerged, the main two focusing on either loss of the "organism as a whole" (the mainstream view) or loss of consciousness or "personhood." Controversies also rage over the proper definition of "irreversible" in criteria for death. The situation is reminiscent of the proverbial blind men palpating an elephant; each describes the creature according to the part he can touch. Similarly, each camp grasps some aspect of the complex reality of death. (...) The personhood camp, in contrast to the mainstream "organism" camp, recognizes that a human organism can still be a biological living whole even without brain function. The mainstream camp, in contrast to the personhood camp, recognizes that a person can be permanently, even irreversibly unconscious, and still be a living person so long as his/her body is alive. The author proposes that hylomorphic dualism incorporates both these key insights. But to complete the picture of the entire "death elephant," a fundamental paradigm shift is needed to make sense of other seemingly conflicting insights. The author proposes a "semantic bisection" of the concept of death, analogous to the traditional distinction at the beginning of life between "conception" and "birth." To avoid the semantic baggage associated with the term "death," the two new death-related concepts are referred to as "passing away" (or "deceased") and "deanimation," corresponding, respectively, to sociolegal ceasing-to-be (mirror image of birth) and ontological/theological ceasing-to-be of the bodily organism (mirror image of conception). Regarding criteria, the distinguishing feature is whether the cessation of function is permanent (passing away) or irreversible (deanimation). If the "dead donor rule" were renamed the "deceased donor rule" (both acronyms felicitously being "DDR"), the ethics of organ transplantation from non–heart-beating donors could, in principle, be validly governed by the DDR, even though the donors are not yet ontologically "deanimated." Thus, the paradigm shift satisfies both those who insist on maintaining the DDR and those who claim that it has all along been receiving only lip service and should be explicitly loosened to include those who are "as good as dead." Even so, a number of practical caveats remain to be worked out for non–heart-beating protocols. (shrink)

Modern philosophy recognizes two major ethical theories: deontology, which encourages adherence to rules and fulfillment of duties or obligations; and consequentialism, which evaluates morally significant actions strictly on the basis of their actual or anticipated outcomes. Both involve the systematic application of universal abstract principles, reflecting the culturally dominant paradigm of technical rationality. Professional societies promulgate codes of ethics with which engineers are expected to comply, while courts and the public generally assign liability to engineers primarily in accordance with (...) the results of their work, whether intended or unintended. A third option, prominent in ancient philosophy, has reemerged recently: virtue ethics, which recognizes that sensitivity to context and practical judgment are indispensable in particular concrete situations, and therefore rightly focuses on the person who acts, rather than the action itself. Beneficial character traits—i.e., virtues—are identified within a specific social practice in light of the internal goods that are unique to it. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for implementing virtue ethics within engineering. (shrink)

This essay discusses the use of analogies drawn from the Holocaust in cultural representations and critical scholarship on dementia. The paper starts with a discussion of references to the death camp in cultural narratives about dementia, specifically Annie Ernaux’s account of her mother’s dementia in I Remain in Darkness. It goes on to develop a critique of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s work on biopolitics and “bare life,” focusing specifically on the linguistic foundations of his thinking. This underpins a consideration of (...) the limitations of his philosophy and ontologically derived notions of weakness and passivity in imagining life with dementia as a potential site of agency or as the locus for transformative ideas about care, community, and non-instrumentalist conceptions of human value. (shrink)

Geneticization is a broad term referring to several related processes such as a spreading tendency to use a genetic model of disease explanation, a growing influence of genetics in medical practice, and the slow changing of individual and societal attitudes towards reproduction, prevention and control of disease. These processes can be demonstrated in medical literature on preventive genetic screening and counselling programs for β-thalassaemia in Cyprus, the United Kingdom and Canada. The preventive possibilities of the new genetic and diagnostic technologies (...) have been quickly understood and advocated by health professionals, and their educational strategies have created a web of social control, in marked contrast to the alleged voluntary decision-making process and free choice. Genetic diagnostic technologies have led to considerable changes in control and management of β-thalassaemia, and have generated a number of unresolved incongruities. (shrink)

For some evolutionary psychology is merely a field of inquiry, but for others it is a robust paradigm involving specific theories about the nature and evolution of the human mind. Proponents of this paradigm claim to have made several important discoveries regarding the evolved architecture of the mind. Highly publicized discoveries include a cheater-detection module, a psychological sex difference in jealousy, and motivational mechanisms underlying parental love and its lapses, which purportedly result in child maltreatment. In this article, (...) I argue that the empirical evidence for these ‘discoveries’ is inconclusive, at best. I suggest that, as the reigning paradigm in evolutionary psychology has produced questionable results, the evolutionary study of human psychology is still in need of a guiding paradigm. (shrink)

Two experiments were run to demonstrate the presence of a partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) and a partial punishment effect (PPE) 4 weeks after training in a 1-trial/day procedure. In the PREE paradigm, two groups of animals were trained to run a straight alley for food reward; one group was rewarded on every trial (CRF), whereas the other was rewarded on only 50% of the trials (PRF). In the test phase, extinction, no reward was present on any trial. Four (...) weeks after the end of acquisition, and subsequent to 7 days of CRF retraining, PRF animals showed greater resistance to extinction than did their CRF controls. The PPE paradigm resembled the PREE paradigm in all aspects, except that mild electric foot shock, together with the food reward, was used instead of nonreward on 50% of the acquisition trials. In the test phase, all animals were shocked and given a food reward on every trial. Four weeks after the end of acquisition and retraining, the animals with previous experience of shock in acquisition showed greater resistance to punishment than did their controls. (shrink)

This paper attempts to bridge business ethics to corporate social responsibility including the social and environmental dimensions. The objective of the paper is to suggest a conceptual methodology with which ethics of corporate environmental management tools can be considered. The method includes two stages that are required for a shift away from the current dominant unsustainable paradigm and toward a more sustainable paradigm. The first stage is paradigmatic, metaphoric and normative. The second stage is a practical stage, which (...) in turn, is analytic, descriptive and positive. The method is applied to common industrial metabolism tools of ecological footprints (EF), environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) and industrial ecology (IE). The application shows that all three tools can be used in business ethics, in particular, when the first stage of the method is applied to their use. (shrink)

Agamben’s notion of the ‘paradigm’ has far-reaching implications for educational thinking, curriculum design and pedagogical conduct. In his approach, examples—or paradigms—deeply engage our powers of analogy, enabling us to discern previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of classification. In this way we come to envision novel groupings, new patterns of connection—that nonetheless do not simply reassemble those singular objects into yet another rigidly fixed set or class. Agamben sees this sort of ‘paradigmatic understanding’ as (...) our richest source of intelligibility. For Agamben the paradigm is ultimately about learning to see again, starting not with already perfectly known and categorized objects (or ideas), but rather with a fresh experience of one individual object and the analogical relations it may have to others, and to novel groupings that may arise. The paradigm is a method, a way in which educators might respond to a wide range of educational challenges. For a paradigmatic relation suspends while exposing, deactivates while revealing, complicates while clarifying. But articulating the enigmatic paradigmatic relation between example and class is far more than a method. It is epistemological (a way of knowing and conception of knowledge), ethical (a fostering of freedom from presupposed categories and reified principles) and ontological (a type of being that exposes the potential of knowing and communicating—their intelligibility and communicability). In these qualities, paradigms exhibit to educators a free, a new use of singularities. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the special issue on Responsible innovation (RI). The special issue presents five philosophical analyses into the foundational concepts and assumptions of RI. This paper explores the common themes that emerge across these five analyses by mapping them onto the ontological and axiological dimensions of the newly emerging RI paradigm. This way, we are able to articulate the (known) shortcomings of RI as well as the possible way forward suggested by the authors to remedy them.

While in the recent years violations of asylum-seeker rights have been increasingly documented in EU Member States, the crisis at the EU-Belarus border has opened up a whole new chapter in this area. In response to the perceived migrant instrumentalisation by the Belarusian regime, several Member States—Latvia, Lithuania and Poland—have openly introduced long-term, far-reaching and blanket legislative measures that severely restricted the right to seek asylum and formalised pushbacks—contrary to their obligations under EU law and international refugee and human rights (...) law. This paper approaches the topic from a comparative socio-legal perspective. Apart from a legal analysis of the Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish domestic measures, it is based on interviews with non-EU nationals affected, as well as NGO representatives, volunteers and legal practitioners who have been providing legal and humanitarian assistance to people crossing from Belarus. The paper, first, offers an overview of Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish responses to the events at the border and looks at how the relevant measures affect the non-EU nationals involved. Second, it engages with the migrant instrumentalisation paradigm, relied on by the governments to derogate from EU and international legal framework, and explores the EU-level response to the crisis. This study argues that EU’s border with Belarus has de facto become an exclusion zone where protection seekers are deprived of their right to claim asylum and continuously exposed to various types of inhuman and degrading treatment. It also demonstrates that the migrant instrumentalisation concept is problematic on multiple levels and does not correspond to the realities on the ground. (shrink)

Inspired by the vision of care in Vincent van Gogh's depiction of the parable of the Good Samaritan, this article offers a paradigm for inhabiting compassion. Compassion is understood in this article as a moral emotion that is also a pathocentric virtue. This definition creates a dynamic view of compassion as a desire to alleviate the suffering of others, the capacity to act on behalf of others and a commitment to sustain engagement with the suffering other. To weave this (...) vision of compassion as a habitus rather than a theoretical construct, the article develops three phases of compassion: seeing, companioning and sighing. This framework deepens and augments a pastoral theological paradigm of compassion with the aim of inculcating an inhabited compassion in caregivers and the communities in which they participate. (shrink)

Sex chromosomes can differ between species as a result of evolutionary turnover, a process that can be driven by evolution of the sex determination pathway. Canonical models of sex chromosome turnover hypothesize that a new master sex determining gene causes an autosome to become a sex chromosome or an XY chromosome pair to switch to a ZW pair (or vice versa). Here, a novel paradigm for the evolution of sex determination and sex chromosomes is presented, in which there is (...) an evolutionary transition in the master sex determiner, but the X chromosome remains unchanged. There are three documented examples of the novel paradigm, and it is hypothesized that a similar process could happen in a ZW sex chromosome system. Three other taxa are also identified where the novel paradigm may have occurred, and how it could be distinguished from canonical trajectories in these and additional taxa is also described. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the paradigm of lived body (as it is developed in the works of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Zaner) provides important insights into the experience of illness. In particular it is noted that, as embodied persons, we experience illness primarily as a disruption of lived body rather than as a dysfunction of biological body. An account is given of the manner in which such fundamental features of embodiment as bodily intentionality, primary meaning, contextural organization, body image, gestural (...) display, lived spatiality and temporality, are disrupted in illness causing a concurrent disorganization of the patient's self and world. The paradigm of lived body has important applications for medical practice. It provides a fuller account of illness than does the prevailing reductionist Cartesian paradigm of body, more directly addresses the existential predicament of illness, and orients the clinical focus around the personhood of the patient. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction A Brief History of Developmental Explanations of Phenotypic Evolution Research Questions of Evo‐Devo Unifying Themes of the Conceptual Basis of Evo‐Devo Conclusion: A Mechanistic Theory of Evo‐Devo Challenges the Modern Synthesis Postscript: Counterpoint References.

This article explores the existential conditions for a transition towards socioeconomic degrowth through an analysis of a paradigm shift between two extreme polarities of socio-ecological positioning: the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) and the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). It is suggested that the transition from one to the other – understood as the first collective step towards degrowth – requires a transformation in the way we, in western capitalist society, define ourselves in relation to nature. This identity transformation (...) corresponds with the reconnection between humans and nature that ecopsychology has been calling for since its emergence in the 1970s. However, according to recent empirical studies in existential psychology, such a transformation contains potentially disquieting aspects, since it implies recognising and accepting the idea of our own mortality. Staging a dialogue between ecopsychology and critical degrowth theories, this article argues that the necessary transition towards degrowth requires new ways of dealing with these existential fears – namely, confronting them in a ‘reflexive’ rather than ‘defensive’ way – so as to develop relationships with nature that respect the limits of the biosphere. (shrink)

This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still (...) evident in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments. (shrink)