Old age and visions of the future are inherently bound with one another, and the realms of dystopian fiction provide scope for a gerontological focus within contemporary literature. A theme that is now being revisited in speculative fiction, this paper aims to assess the role of the elderly within Margaret Atwood's dystopian tales, specifically looking at the role of gerontology in her collection of short stories Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales (2014). I argue that Atwood utilises the dystopian (...) narrative in order to address broader social issues that stem from immobility and declining virility. Focussing on Atwood's feminist politics and representations of the elderly woman in the dystopian narrative, this paper proposes that older women in Atwood's fiction seek to move beyond the asexual, immobile and matronly gerontological stereotype that is often portrayed in literature. Instead, the elderly, and in particular elder women, adapt to their environment, often becoming figures of their community. They are aware of sexual desires and look to move within and beyond societal constraints, utilising the realms of cyberspace in order to forge their own identity. The role of the elderly in a distinctly dystopian narrative allows for a new Utopian strategy to be constructed. (shrink)

The Aging Self and the Aging Society Ethical issues involving the elderly have recently come to the fore. This should come as no surprise: Since the turn of the century, there has been an eightfold in crease in the number of Americans over the age of sixty five, and almost a tripling of their proportion to the general population. Those over the age of eighty-five- the fastest growing group in the country-are twenty one more times as numerous as in 1900. (...) Demographers expect this trend to accelerate into the twenty-first century. The aging of society casts into vivid relief a num ber of deep and troubling questions. On the one hand, as individuals, we grapple with the immediate experience of aging and mortality and seek to find in it philosophical or ethical significance. We also wonder what responsi bilities we bear toward aging family members and what expectations of others our plans for old age can reasona bly include. On the other hand, as a community, we must decide: What special role, if any, do older persons occupy in our society? What constitutes a just distribution of medical resources between generations? And, How can institutions that serve the old foster imperiled values, such as autonomy, self-respect, and dignity? Only recently have we begun to explore these themes, yet already a rich and fruitful literature has grown up around them. (shrink)

Gerontology together with its subfields, such as social gerontology, geragogy, educational gerontology, political gerontology, environmental gerontology, and financial gerontology, is still a relatively new academic discipline that is currently intensively developing, expanding research fields and combining various theoretical and practical perspectives. The interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and multidisciplinarity of research on ageing and old age, despite its vast thematic, methodological and theoretical diversity, have a common denominator, which is the focus of research work on improving the quality of life of older people. (...) It is the concern for the components of quality of life such as welfare and well-being as well as focus on learning about phenomena conditioning successful ageing that has become motivators and premises hidden or visible in many texts included in the Research Topic “Perspectives and Theories of Social Innovation for Ageing Population.” The Research Topic that we are presenting to our readers is unique not only because of its size but above all because of its novelty and social involvement, visible in the content of individual chapters. The presented collection includes 17 articles prepared in total by 76 authors from the following countries: China, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two journals were combined with this Research Topic: “Frontiers in Public Health” and “Frontiers in Sociology.” The presented Research Topic contains seven types of articles covering: two community case studies, eight original research articles, two perspective articles, one hypothesis and theory paper, one policy and practice review, one methods article, and two book reviews. The rationale to start work on this set of texts was the desire to continue and deepen the research analyses of the editors of this set, which concern the development of social innovations for the ageing population as well as changes of public policy on ageing. This Research Topic deals with topics covering issues such as social learning, intergenerational transmission, senior entrepreneurship, creative content creation by older adults, care services, raising the independence of older people in their living environments, dementia challenges, the image of the older generation in local social policies, new trends in qualitative research on old age, strategies for dealing with chronic diseases, the use of digital tools in health education, the silver economy/longevity economy, age-friendly environments, the diversity of structures and social services, preparation for old age, and food safety. The wide variety of submitted texts shows several selected and, according to the authors, current challenges that contemporary seniors have to face. The articles comprising this Research Topic are organized according to five themes. (shrink)

_Existential and Spiritual Issues in Death Attitudes_ provides: an in-depth examination of death attitudes, existentialism, and spirituality and their relationships; a review of the major theoretical models; clinical applications of these models to issues such as infertility, bereavement, anxiety, and suicide; and an introduction to meaning management theory and how it can be applied to grief counseling. In this new volume, death is treated both as a threat to meaning and as an opportunity to create meaning. The first section introduces (...) theory and methodology to connect the latest empirical research on death attitudes to the philosophical/psychological existential and spirituality literature. Part II presents the latest empirical research on subjects such as end-of-life decisions and living with HIV. The final section considers therapeutic applications to issues including suicide, infertility, bereavement, and anxiety. The concluding chapter highlights the book’s common themes and provides questions to encourage further investigation of the most critical topics. Psychologists, counselors, social workers, physicians, nurses, and religious leaders, as well as academics in the fields of psychology, gerontology, philosophy, religion, counseling, social work, sociology, and medicine will value this new resource. Main points summarize important ideas of each chapter, making it an appropriate text in courses on death and dying and/or and spirituality. Its clinical applications will appeal to practicing professionals. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on the phenomenologies of aging explores the relative philosophical neglect of aging as a distinct topic. It critiques the naturalistic reduction of aging, which frames it primarily as decline, and examines the ethico-political implications of this perspective. In order to contextualize the possibilities of forming a new sustained philosophical debate on aging, we describe the earlier advances made in the field by notably Simone de Beauvoir’s work and the developments in critical gerontology, aging studies (...) and the anthropology of aging and the life course. The introduction then programmatically states the need for a revitalized philosophical discourse on aging, suggesting that phenomenological inquiry can reveal the ontological complexities of intergenerational relationships and shared existence. Finally, we briefly introduce the contributions to this special issue by drawing forward the themes of corporeal temporality, generationality and the problem of sharing the world across generations. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to describe how registered nurses in nursing homes ensure legal security, good and safe nursing care and uphold the dignity of nursing home residents with severe dementia without violating residents’ integrity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 charge nurses in a county in central Sweden. The transcribed interviews were examined using manifest and latent content analyses. The manifest analysis identified actual local routines involving coercive treatment and registered nurses’ descriptions of complications and alternative (...) measures. The latent analysis resulted in three themes describing nursing strategies: one with coercive treatment, one with coercive treatment under specific circumstances and one to prevent coercive treatment. Interpretations of legal terms regarding coercive treatment and inadequate gerontological nursing training and understaffing seem to preserve the use of coercive treatment. (shrink)

A scoping review was conducted to explore the metaphors and related expressions older adults use to describe extremely stressful events that may lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Complex PTSD (CPTSD), Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD), or Adjustment Disorder (AjD). Relevant databases from psychology, gerontology, and related fields were searched. In addition, relevant references found in included papers were considered. Inclusion criteria were: qualitative study, sample of older adults (age 65+), and focus on maladaptive rather than adaptive psychological aspects. Eleven studies (...) focusing on PTSD, 5 on CPTSD, 13 on PGD, and 10 on AjD were included. Metaphors and other expressions related to extremely stressful events were then extracted and analyzed. Multiple linguistic expressions to describe extremely stressful events and stress-related symptoms were identified. Metaphors and related expressions often referred to the body and the theme of moving on with one’s life. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence and algorithms are increasingly able to replace human workers in cognitively sophisticated tasks, including ones related to justice. Many governments and international organizations are discussing policies related to the application of algorithmic judges in courts. In this paper, we investigate the public perceptions of algorithmic judges. Across two experiments (N = 1,822), and an internal meta-analysis (N = 3,039), our results show that even though court users acknowledge several advantages of algorithms (i.e., cost and speed), they trust human (...) judges more and have greater intentions to go to the court when a human (vs. an algorithmic) judge adjudicates. Additionally, we demonstrate that the extent that individuals trust algorithmic and human judges depends on the nature of the case: trust for algorithmic judges is especially low when legal cases involve emotional complexities (vs. technically complex or uncomplicated cases). (shrink)

This article focuses on the emergence and development of gerontology in communist Bulgaria, looking at the interplay of various circumstances: scientific and political, national and international. We ask if an apparently ideologically neutral field of knowledge such as gerontology may have had some intrinsic qualities imbued by the regimes of knowledge production under a communist regime. More specifically, we ask to what extent and in which ways the production of such specialized, putatively universal knowledge could be ideologically driven and/or politically (...) controlled. To this end, we unpack the ideological, political, institutional, and epistemic circumstances that may have affected the emergence, the institutionalization, and the paradigm of Bulgarian gerontology. We focus in on the social actors, both individuals and organizations, and the roles they played in the process, as well as on international networking and the uses of international contacts and agendas. (shrink)

This paper is about a substitution-failure in attitude ascriptions, but not the one you think. A standard view about the semantic shape of ‘that’-clause attitude ascriptions is that they are fundamentally relational. The attitude verb expresses a binary relation whose extension, if not empty, is a collection of pairs each of which consists in an individual and a proposition, while the ‘that’-clause is a term for a proposition. One interesting problem this view faces is that, within the scope of many (...) attitude verbs, ‘that’-clauses are not interchange able with certain other terms which stand for the same propositions as the clauses are supposed to. For example, (1a) below may be true, but (1c) is probably not: (1) a. Holmes {fears/suspects} that Moriarty has returned. b. That Moriarty has returned is the proposition that Moriarty has re turned. c. Holmes {fears/suspects} the proposition that Moriarty has returned. For only the exceptionally timorous fear propositions, and, excluding contexts in which we speak of a ‘suspect premise’, only the unusually paranoid suspect them. The truth-conditional change eVected by substituting propositional descrip tion for ‘that’- clause illustrated in (1) occurs with a wide range of attitude verbs. If you understand that the window of opportunity is closing, perhaps you should act before it is too late, but if you mere-. (shrink)

The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified "facts." What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our (...) standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that borders on dissociation from reality. And as long as we lack the ability to make our situation intelligible, all of the "data" in the world will make no difference.;From the Introduction. (shrink)

New and distinctive approaches to five central topics in musical aesthetics are provided in this outstanding book. The topics are: understanding, representation, expression, performance and profundity.

Financial gerontology can be defined as investigating relations between finances and aging. Authors such as Neal E. Cutler, Kouhei Komamura, Davis W. Gregg, Shinya Kajitani, Kei Sakata, and Colin McKenzie affirm that financial literacy is an effect of aging with concern about the issue of finances, as well as stating that it is the effect of longevity and aging on economies or the financial resilience of older people.

The publication of Angelova A. «Religious Gerontology: trends and prospects in the realities of an aging society» is devoted to the history of the emergence, development and also to the elucidation of the subject matter of the latest interdisciplinary section of religious studies. The main problems of religious gerontology are defined and classified, its perspective theoretical and applied directions are designated. The importance of actively popularizing the findings of western gerontologists on the issues of spirituality, religiosity and aging was underscored. (...) The need for such studies on domestic soil is declared, as it can positively influence the difficult gerontological situation that has established in Ukraine. (shrink)

This essay is meant to shed light on a discourse that spans centuries and includes different voices. To be aware of such trans-textual resonances can add a level of historical understanding to the reading of philosophical texts. Specifically, we intend to demonstrate how the notion of the ineffable Dao 道, prominently expressed in the Daodejing 道德經, informs a long discourse on incongruent names in distinction to a mainstream paradigm that demands congruity between names and what they designate. Thereby, we trace (...) the development of the idea of the ineffable Dao quite differently from modern mystical interpretations. We show how, in an early Chinese context, it first gives rise to a sociopolitical critique of the incongruity underlying socially constructed names in the Zhuangzi 莊子, then to a discourse on the incongruity between moral virtues and names in Xuanxue 玄學 philosophy, and eventually to Sengzhao’s 僧肇 claim that a perceived congruence of names with things does not entail actual congruence between names and reality. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 132-149, June 2022. An influential strand within Science and Technology Studies rejects the idea that science produces representations referring to objects or processes that exist independently of it. This radical ‘turn’ has been framed as ‘constructionist’, ‘nominalist’, and more recently as ‘ontological’. Its central argument is that science constructs or enacts rather than represents. Since most practitioners of science believe that it involves representation, an implication of the radical turn must (...) be that ‘representation’ is a folk concept; perhaps even a myth or an ideology. This paper explores this anti-representationalism and its implications for the relationship between STS and mainstream social science, in part through drawing parallels with ethnomethodology. (shrink)

What are the objects of knowledge, belief, probability, apriority or analyticity? For at least some of these properties, it seems plausible that the objects are sentences, or sentence-like entities. However, results from mathematical logic indicate that sentential properties are subject to severe formal limitations. After surveying these results, I argue that they are more problematic than often assumed, that they can be avoided by taking the objects of the relevant property to be coarse-grained (“sets of worlds”) propositions, and that all (...) this has little to do with the choice between operators and predicates. (shrink)

After an introduction to set the stage, we consider some variations on the reasoning behind Curry's Paradox arising against the background of classical propositional logic and of BCI logic and one of its extensions, in the latter case treating the "paradoxicality" as a matter of nonconservative extension rather than outright inconsistency. A question about the relation of this extension and a differently described (though possibly identical) logic intermediate between BCI and BCK is raised in a final section, which closes with (...) a handful of questions left unanswered by our discussion. (shrink)

Publication d'un miroir à boîte, provenant d'une tombe fortuitement découverte à Lamia en 1983. Le type du miroir et l'étude iconographique et comparative de la représentation en relief du couvercle se rapportant à une scène dionysiaque mettent en évidence son caractère attique, ainsi que sa datation aux environs du dernier quart du ive s. av. J.-C. Les éléments iconographiques analysés ici sont rapprochés de parallèles provenant tant de la sculpture et de la céramique que des terres cuites et des bronzes. (...) On constate que certains types et motifs de cette nouvelle représentation remontent à la dernière phase du ν s. av. J.-C, ce qui prouve, une fois encore, l'importance de l'influence du langage artistique de cette période sur les arts mineurs en général, et sur l'évolution de la toreutique en particulier. Ainsi sont mis en lumière des rapports étroits entre l'imagerie du ive s. avancé et celle des dernières décennies du ve s., phénomène qui va se poursuivre par la suite avec des variations. Les questions de la composition et de la signification de la scène sont brièvement traitées. (shrink)

An exclusive disjunction is true when exactly one of the disjuncts is true. In the case of the familiar binary exclusive disjunction, we have a formula occurring as the first disjunct and a formula occurring as the second disjunct, so, if what we have is two formula-tokens of the same formula-type—one formula occurring twice over, that is—the question arises as to whether, when that formula is true, to count the case as one in which exactly one of the disjuncts is (...) true, counting by type, or as a case in which two disjuncts are true, counting by token. The latter is the standard answer: counting by tokens. James McCawley once suggested that, when the exclusively disjunctive construction in natural language is at issue, the construction should be treated as involving a multigrade connective whose semantic treatment is sensitive to the set of disjuncts rather than the corresponding multiset. Without any commitment as to whether there actually is such a construction, and conceding that for obvious pragmatic reasons such ‘repeated disjunct’ cases would be at best highly marginal, we note that for the binary case, this requires a nonstandard answer—count by type rather than by token—to the earlier question, and thus, an idempotent exclusive disjunction connective. Section 2 explores that idea and Section 3, a further idempotent variant for which it is the propositions expressed by the disjuncts, rather than the disjuncts themselves, that get counted once only in the case of repetitions. Sections 1 and 4 respectively set the stage for these investigations and conclude the discussion. More detailed considerations of points arising from the discussion but otherwise in danger of interrupting the flow are deferred to a ‘Longer Notes’ appendix at the end. (shrink)

Why study notations, diagrams, or more broadly the variety of nonverbal “representations” or “signs” that are used in mathematical practice? This chapter maps out recent work on the topic by distinguishing three main philosophical motivations for doing so. First, some work (like that on diagrammatic reasoning) studies signs to recover norms of informal or historical mathematical practices that would get lost if the particular signs that these practices rely on were translated away; work in this vein has the potential to (...) broaden our view of the specific normativity of mathematics beyond logical proof. Second, some work focuses on signs to highlight the open-ended and “nonrigorous” aspects of mathematical practice, and the role of these aspects in the historical development of mathematics. The third motivation is based on the following observation: the reason differences in signs matter in mathematics is that humans are finite agents, with cognitive and computational limitations. Accordingly, studying signs can be a way to study how human computational constraints shape the mathematics that we do, and to tackle the topic of mathematical understanding. (shrink)

Gerontologists have proposed different concepts for ageing well such as ‘successful ageing’, ‘active ageing’, and ‘healthy ageing’. These conceptions are primarily focused on maintaining health and preventing disease. But they also raise the questions: what is a good life in old age and how can it be achieved? While medical in origin, these concepts and strategies for ageing well also contain ethical advice for individuals and societies on how to act regarding ageing and old age. This connection between gerontology and (...) ethics is overlooked by both schools of thought. We thus develop this research programme for a systematic geroethics in four steps. First, we analyze ‘successful ageing’ as put forward by Rowe and Kahn as a paradigmatic example of a gerontological conception of ageing well. Then, in a second step, we move from criticisms within gerontology to an ethical perspective; in particular, we want to clarify the problem of the claim of universal validity of conceptions of the good life. In a third constructive step, we explain how the ‘capabilities approach’ could be applied in this context as a normative foundation for the implicit normative assumptions of gerontological conceptions of ageing well, such as a particular choice of functionings, the ethical relevance of human agency, and the resulting claims of individuals towards society. Finally, using a concept developed by the German philosopher Ursula Wolf, we systematically develop the different aspects of the connection between ageing well and the theory of the good life in their full complexity and show their interconnectedness. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on sociological and gerontological approaches to ageing, creativity, and differences between “third age” and “fourth age.” Discussed theories include the modernization theory of ageing, the political economy of ageing theory, and main assumptions of the critical gerontology.

This paper discusses how growth and aging became interrelated phenomena with the creation of gerontology in the United States. I first show that the relation of growth to senescence, which had hardly attracted scientific attention before the twentieth century, started to be investigated by several experimental scientists around the 1900s. Subsequently, research on the connection between the two phenomena entered a new domain through the birth of gerontology as a scientific field comprised of various disciplines, many of which addressed growth. (...) Due to gerontologists’ efforts, the association between aging and growth became stronger and more multifaceted within the discursive and organizational matrix constituting the new science, leading to a broader definition of senescence with an ambiguous connection to chronological age. Furthermore, as gerontologists borrowed the cultural agendas as well as research methods from studies of growth, aging began to be defined as a phenomenon that could be actively controlled and managed in both social arenas and laboratory environments. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to raise the question of aging as an ontological question. In critical dialogue with Heidegger’s exploration of the question of being, the first half of the paper argues that fundamental ontology, due to the way it relies on a methodological operationalization of the ontological difference, will remain blind to the ontological generativity of the differences that aging makes. I introduce the term gerontological difference as a name for this kind of difference. The second (...) half of the paper explores the quasi-transcendental play of gerontological difference. Drawing on Foucault, Guenther and Agamben, I suggest that this play might be described in archaeological terms by tracing _the historical a priori_ in which age distinctions are operationalized biopolitically. Drawing on Derrida and Nancy, I argue that this archaeological view of the quasi-transcendental play of gerontological difference must be supplemented with a view of aging as material _différance_. According to this understanding of the quasi-transcendental play of gerontological difference, aging is an ontologically generative event that organizes intercorporeal tangles of coexistence and opens emergent fields of possible experience. (shrink)

The philosopher Lev Shestov aimed to establish a new free way of thinking, which manifested itself as a struggle against the delusion that we have a rational grasp of the necessary truths on matters that are of the greatest importance to us, such as the questions of life and death. Philosophy, as the Russian philosopher understood it, is not pure thinking, but ‘some kind of inner doing, inner regeneration, or second birth’ (Shestov in Lektsii po Istorii Grecheskoi Filosofii [Lectures on (...) the history of Greek philosophy], YMCA-PRESS, Moscow, 2001, p. 53). Having adopted the notion of the ‘regeneration of one’s convictions’ from Dostoevsky’s vocabulary in his earlier works, Shestov developed the idea of ‘awakening’ further in his mature thought, in which the motif of ‘awakening’ comprised one of the main ideas of his philosophy: the fight for the individual’s right to freedom and to creative transformation at a time when she is in despair or on the brink of death. In this article, I analyse Shestov’s idea of ‘awakening’ as one of the key tropes and developmental characteristics of his philosophical vision. In particular, I argue that, having stemmed from Shestov’s earlier interpretations of Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Plotinus, in his later writings, the notion of ‘awakening’—the possibility of a fundamental, inner transformation of one’s worldview (probuzhdenie, pererozhdenie)—marked the beginning of a new salvific mode in his writing. (shrink)

Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind, or a mind-like quality. Contrary to the common view that panpsychism is a fringe or 'absurd' theory of mind, it in fact has a long and noble tradition within western philosophy. In the forms of animism and polytheism, panpsychism was the dominant view for most if not all of the pre-historical era. In the early years of western thought it was widely accepted though not often explicitly argued for. The emergence (...) of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology subverted it for a number of centuries, but it made a comeback with early Renaissance naturalist philosophers of the sixteenth century. Though still a minority view, it grew steadily in support through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reaching a zenith in the late 1800s and early 1900s. With the advent of logical positivism and linguistic/analytic philosophy, panpsychism was once again driven down to a relatively low status. In the past few years, however, panpsychism has once more become the topic of serious philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

The paper is guided by three goals. First, it shows that the methodological standpoint of classical Husserlian phenomenology provides us with reliable tools to resist the grand narratives that proliferate during times of war. Second, it demonstrates that phenomenology provides much-needed methodological support for hermeneutically-oriented reflections on war. Third, it shows how the gruesome reality of World War One introduced a practical turn in Husserl’s phenomenology by forcing Husserl to rethink the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics. Tracing the development of (...) phenomenological metaphysics in Husserl’s Fichte lectures, Kaizo articles and private correspondence, the paper shows that, in response to war, Husserl deliberately chose not to engage in straightforward reflections on war, but instead to write about the prospects of peace. Reflections on cultural renewal necessitated him to rethink phenomenology as practical philosophy. The entanglement of praxis and theoria in Husserlian phenomenology relies upon the establishment of a metaphysically-grounded conceptual bond that ties reason to love and faith, which in its own turn suggests that a human being is not merely animal rationale, but also animal amans and animal religiosum. Ultimately, the possibility of cultural renewal relies upon a metaphysical broadening of Husserl’s conception of philosophy as rigorous sciences. (shrink)

Since the early 1970s, Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le Don, translated into English as The Gift in 1954, has been a standard reference in the social science and bioethical literature on the use of human body parts and substances for medical and research purposes. At that time, three social scientists—political scientist Richard Titmuss in the United Kingdom and sociologist Renée C. Fox working with historian Judith Swazey in the United States—had the idea of using this concept to highlight the fundamental (...) structure of the biomedical practices they were studying, respectively, blood donation, and hemodialysis and organ transplantation. The fact that these first applications of Mauss’s essay should emerge in English- rather than in French-speaking countries raises the question of what the translation of the essay, and notably of the word don as gift, may have to do with this fact. Reading Mauss in translation undoubtedly inspired a seminal approach to interpreting medical and research practices based on bodily giving. This article posits that something may have also been lost: a much broader concept of giving with unquestionable links to the Durkheimian concept of solidarity, which Mauss conceptualizes not only as an obligation but also as a liberty to give. (shrink)