In this article, the author presents some of the counterpoints between historical developments and feminist studies in Puerto Rico since the 1970s, elaborating on the most recurrent topics. She includes a brief historical overview of Puerto Rico and the trends in women's status, feminism, and feminist studies in the Island. Next, she provides a brief summary of general theoretical and methodological issues. Then she discusses research on specific topics, including the intersections of gender, nation, race, class, and sexuality; women's employment (...) and poverty; family structures and relations; sexual and reproductive rights; and current issues such as the relationship between feminism and the state and the context of globalization. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the weaknesses of development strategies which have been applied in Puerto Rico. The process of industrialization by invitation, referred to as Operation Bootstrap, was instituted by the United States of America by the end of the 1940s. This involved tax incentives and subsidies for companies and was dependent on industrial peace and low wages in labor-intensive, low-wage industries, especially those of textile and clothing. Naturally, women's labor was encouraged as a result of the lower cost, (...) as well as assumed dexterity, of the female in such areas. While these new activity areas for women also allowed other benefits in the form of legislation and increased social services, the inherent problems of rapid, labor-intensive industrialization also led to displacement and increased underemployment and impoverization of female headed families from the 1960s onwards. The paper explores some of the changes in gender relations which resulted from these policies and looks at the challenges which the feminist movement in Puerto Rico has made, particularly with regard to state processes to bring about beneficial changes in the economic, legal, political and social status of women in Puerto Rico. (shrink)

Error is a neglected epistemological category in the history of science. This neglect has been driven by the commonsense idea that its elimination is a general good, which often renders it invisible or at least not worth noticing. At the end of the sixteenth century across Europe, medicine increasingly focused on “popular errors,” a genre where learned doctors addressed potential patients to disperse false belief about treatments. By the mid-seventeenth century, investigations into popular error informed the working methodology of natural (...) philosophers, rather than just physicians. In 1646, Thomas Browne published Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a large volume on popular error. Despite Browne’s formal training as a physician, this work examined only a few medical errors and instead aspired to be an encyclopedia of error. Pseudodoxia Epidemica was highly popular, running to six editions, and was known by the Fellows of the Royal Society. Influenced by Browne, alongside Bacon’s theory of the idols, natural philosophic practice in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century developed a focus on error that revised traditional attention to the discovery of knowledge. Fellows such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke proposed new ways to secure truth under the far-reaching influence of Bacon’s refutations of “natural human reason” distorted by false idols, of syllogistic logic, and of “theories,” his label for traditional philosophical systems that bias thought toward falsity. In three parts, this article traces the progression in early modern scientific approaches to handling error, and especially medical error – from physicians’ efforts to identify and eradicate it through collaborative effort, to the striking tension in Browne’s work between seeking to eliminate error while also showing a marked tolerance for it, to the Royal Society’s Baconian objective of instrumentalizing error to find truth. Error emerges as its own epistemic category that serves as a driving force toward knowledge production. (shrink)

This book is a series of original strategies that teacher educators, teacher candidates and practicing teachers can use to think critically about issues of equity, diversity, opportunity, and social justice in urban education.

In 2014, a large archive of hacked nude photos of female celebrities was released on 4chan and organized and discussed primarily on Reddit. This paper explores the ethical implications of this celebrity nude photo leak within a frame of gendered privacy violations. I analyze a selection of a mass capture of 5143 posts and 94,602 comments from /thefappening subreddit, as well as editorials written by female celebrities, feminists, and journalists. Redditors justify the photo leak by arguing the subjects are privileged (...) because they are celebrities; that the celebrities are at fault for failing to appropriately protect their information; and that the only person ethically responsible for the leak is the hacker. The popular press primarily took a feminist perspective, linking the photo leak to institutionalized sexism and misogyny. I argue that the Reddit participants frame the privacy violations within a context of geek masculinity, in which references to masturbation and pornography and casually misogynist language are used to signify a normative masculine self. Privacy violations are de-emphasized when the victims are women and gender or feminist concerns are rejected. Entitlement to viewing women’s bodies and male sexual desire are prioritized over ethical concerns over privacy violations. The paper contributes to understanding how privacy violations are normatively gendered and reinforced by gender inequality. (shrink)

Ideals (or ideal values) help people to navigate in social life. They indicate at a very fundamental level what people are concerned about, what they strive for, and what they want to be affiliated with. Transferring this to a leader-follower analysis, our first study (n = 306) confirms that followers' identification and satisfaction with their leaders are stronger, the more leaders match followers' ideal leader values. Study 2 (n = 244) extends the perspective by introducing the novel concept of counterideals (...) (i. e., how an ideal leader should not be) as a second, non-redundant point of reference. Results confirm that a leader's match on ideal and on counter-ideal values have independent effects in that both explain unique variance in followers' identification and satisfaction with their leader. Study 3 (n = 136) replicates the previous results in an experimental scenario study and provides evidence for the proposed causal direction of the underlying process. We conclude that counter-ideal values might be an additional point of reference that people use to triangulate targets above and beyond ideal values and discuss the implications of our findings for value research and management. (shrink)

Food images are useful stimuli for the study of cognitive processes as well as eating behavior. To enhance rigor and reproducibility in task-based research, it is advantageous to have stimulus sets that are publicly available and well characterized. Food Folio by Columbia Center for Eating Disorders is a publicly available set of 138 images of Western food items. The set was developed for the study of eating disorders, particularly for use in tasks that capture eating behavior characteristic of these illnesses. (...) It contains foods that are typically eaten, as well as those typically avoided, by individuals with eating disorders. Each image has now been rated across 17 different attributes by a large general United States population sample via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Ratings included subjective attributes as well as estimates of nutrient content. Each participant rated a subset of stimulus set food items on all 17 dimensions. Additional description of the image set is provided in terms of physical image information and accurate nutritional information. Correlations between subjective ratings were calculated and an exploratory factor analysis and exploratory cluster analysis completed. Outcomes of the factor analysis suggested foods may be described along three latent factors of healthiness, tastiness, and umami taste; the cluster analysis highlighted five distinct clusters of foods varying on these same dimensions. Descriptive outcomes indicated that the stimulus set includes a range of foods that vary along multiple dimensions and thus is likely to be useful in addressing various research questions surrounding eating behavior and cognition in healthy populations, as well as in those with eating disorders. The provision of comprehensive descriptive information allows for stimulus selection that is optimized for a given research question and promotes strong inference. (shrink)

Obtaining consent for medical treatment in older adults raises a number of complex challenges. Despite being required by ethics and the law, consent for medical treatment is not always validly sought in this population. The dynamic nature of capacity, particularly in individuals who have dementia or other cognitive impairments, adds complexity to obtaining consent. Further challenges arise in ensuring that older people comprehend the medical treatment information provided and that consent is not vitiated by coercion or undue influence. Existing mechanisms (...) to address issues surrounding consent for older adults only address incapacity and raise further challenges. As the ageing population increases, these issues are likely to become more profound, thus action is required to address these challenges. Raising awareness, more education, engaging with people with dementia, and conducting further research would assist in beginning to overcome these challenges. (shrink)

For too long the questions of how we treat animals and how we treat our fellow human beings have been considered separately. But the contours of the current animal crisis make it clear – the harms we are inflicting on the nonhuman world have devastating impacts on humans: zoonotic diseases caused by habitat destruction and animal exploitation have brought human life to a standstill; mass production of animals for food is poisoning the ground and contributing to catastrophic climate change. Animal (...) Crisis responds to this fractured relationship between human beings and animals by exploring the complex social and political contexts in which animals are harmed, revealing the connections between our callous and cruel attitudes to the animal world and those same attitudes towards vulnerable human groups. Marking a stark contrast to traditional theories in animal ethics, Alice Crary and Lori Gruen argue that there can be no animal liberation without human emancipation. Borrowing from critical social theory and ecofeminism, they build a framework for understanding and combatting the structural forces that shape and enable the diminishment of some for the advantage of a few, isolating critical resources that are crucial for animal and human emancipatory struggles alike. (shrink)

The concept of “health”, in Nietzsche’s philosophy, is not opposed to that of disease but incorporates it within itself. The paper aims to show how being in “good health” has, according to Nietzsche, a physiological significance that is intimately connected to aesthetics. Richard Wagner’s music is the iconic example of how rhythm from medicine can become poison and lead a body to décadence. Even in some patients with neurological diseases, musical rhythm can function as medicine, which does not work equally (...) for everyone but according to individual, embodied laws. (shrink)

Introduction by Ralph McInerny The essays in this volume, indebted in great part to Jacques Maritain and to other Neo-Thomists, represent a contribution to an understanding of beauty and the arts within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. As such they constitute a different voice in present-day discussions on beauty and aesthetics, a voice which nonetheless shares with many of its contemporaries concern over questions such as the relationship between beauty and morality, public funding of the arts and their educational role, objective and (...) universal standards of what is beautiful. In the tradition in which the contributors of this volume reflect, beauty manifests itself in the order of the universe, an order that provides human reason with a window onto the transcendent. For Aristotle and Aquinas the natural order grounds both art and morality, and yet it is this very order which has been called into question by modern science and philosophy. Instead of pointing us to a suprahuman order, the beautiful then points to the order of human freedom and creativity. Reflection on the beautiful since the modern philosopher Immanuel Kant has thus often taken a subjectivistic turn. Because of the importance of beauty and art in human existence, in man's education and life as a moral and political being, an alternative should be sought to any reduction of the beautiful to a purely subjective experience or cultural construct. The Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, in dialogue with modern and contemporary conceptions of the beautiful, provides us with just that alternative, and thus the essays herein represent a decisive step in the "journey for Thomistic aesthetics." THE CONTRIBUTORS: In addition to the editor, the contributors to the volume are: Brian J. Braman, Matthew Cuddeback, Christopher M. Cullen, S.J., Patrick Downey, Desmond J. FitzGerald, Donald Haggerty, Wayne H. Harter, Jeanne M. Heffernan, Thomas S. Hibbs, Gregory J. Kerr, Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Daniel McInerny, Ralph McInerny, James P. Mesa, John F. Morris, Ralph Nelson, Katherine Anne Osenga, Carrie Rehak, Stephen Schloesser, S.J., Francis Slade, John G. Trapani, Jr., and Henk E. S. Woldring. ABOUT THE EDITOR: Alice Ramos is associate professor of philosophy at St. John's University. (shrink)

Introduction: Advantageous effects of biological motion detection, a low-perceptual mechanism that allows the rapid recognition and understanding of spatiotemporal characteristics of movement via salient kinematics information, can be amplified when combined with motor imagery, i.e., the mental simulation of motor acts. According to Jeannerod’s neurostimulation theory, asynchronous firing and reduction of mu and beta rhythm oscillations, referred to as suppression over the sensorimotor area, are sensitive to both MI and action observation of BM. Yet, not many studies investigated the use (...) of BM stimuli using combined AO-MI tasks. In this study, we assessed the neural response in the form of event-related synchronization and desynchronization patterns following the observation of point-light-walkers and concordant MI, as compared to MI alone.Methods: Twenty right-handed healthy participants accomplished the experimental task by observing BM stimuli and subsequently performing the same movement using kinesthetic MI. We recorded an electroencephalogram with 32 channels and performed time-frequency analysis on alpha and beta frequency bands during the MI task. A two-way repeated-measures ANOVA was performed to test statistical significance among conditions and electrodes of interest.Results: The results revealed significant ERD/S patterns in the alpha frequency band between conditions and electrode positions. Post hoc comparisons showed significant differences between condition 1 and condition 3 over the left primary motor cortex. For the beta band, a significantly less difference in ERD patterns was detected only between condition 3 and condition 4.Discussion: Our results confirmed that the observation of BM combined with MI elicits a neural suppression, although just in the case of jumping. This is in line with previous findings of AO and MI eliciting a neural suppression for simulated whole-body movements. In the last years, increasing evidence started to support the integration of AOMI training as an adjuvant neurorehabilitation tool in Parkinson’s disease.Conclusion: We concluded that using BM stimuli in AOMI training could be promising, as it promotes attention to kinematic features and imitative motor learning. (shrink)

G e moore and ludwig wittgenstein were very different teachers, both because of their differing views on the nature and aims of philosophical investigation, and because of the differences in the way they thought, their educational backgrounds, and the kind of persons they were. this paper records experiences of the two philosophers as teachers and as personalities, and indicates the features of their teaching which stemmed from their views and from their personalities.

Comme son titre l’indique, cet ouvrage collectif, dirigé et présenté par Karen Hagemann et Jean H. Quataert, s’adresse en premier lieu aux historien-ne-s travaillant sur l’Allemagne des xixe et xxe siècles, et dont la majorité se trouvent aux États-Unis et en Allemagne. Son lectorat devrait pourtant s’avérer beaucoup plus vaste, car le livre offre aussi une précieuse somme de connaissances et de réflexions à tout-e historien-ne s’intéressant aux récentes évolutions de l’historiographie occide...

These notes of G. E. Moore's lectures for the three terms of 1934-1935 were compiled by Alice Ambrose, then Student of Newnham College, and Margaret Macdonald, then Fellow of Girton College. The lectures cover a wealth of interrelated topics, and provide instances of the analyses which made Moore «the father of the analytic school.» Since his analyses of such concepts as material objects, sense data, and truth rest on the ordinary use of expressions for these concepts, «ordinary language» philosophers (...) found in him their champion. Moore examines the views of Broad, Russell, F. P. Ramsey, W. E. Johnson, and John Wisdom. (shrink)

The concept of transformative experience (TE) has been widely explored by several disciplines from philosophy to neurobiology, and in different domains, from the spiritual to the educational one. This attitude has engendered heterogeneous models to explain this phenomenon. However, a consistent and clear understanding of this construct remains elusive. The aim of this work is to provide an initial comprehensive interdisciplinary, cross-domain, up-to-date, and integrated overview on the concept of TEs. Firstly, all the models and theories on TEs were reviewed (...) to extract and analyze TEs’ main components emerging from different disciplines. Then, this preliminary analysis was integrated with an in-depth examination of redundancies and particularities across domains and disciplines, to provide an integrated theoretical framework of TEs and a preliminary interdisciplinary operational definition of TEs. This examination, in turn, can help organize current research and theories, thus providing suggestions for operationalizing TEs as well as encouraging new interdisciplinary research endeavors. (shrink)

Verifica-se atualmente grande quantidade de pessoas envolvidas de alguma forma com o uso prejudicial de álcool e outras drogas, o que representa um desafio para a saúde pública e para os profissionais. Este artigo tem como objetivo investigar a organização dos Centros de Atenção Psicossociais Álcool..

Este estudio examina la influencia de la tradición neoplatónica en el pensamientode Santo Tomás con respecto a la causalidad de la bondad divina. El axioma “bonum est diffusivum sui,” atribuido en general al Pseudo-Dionisio, será puesto de relieve e interpretado en el sentido de la causalidad final.

We propose here an analysis of the Apiano's de Alexandria report about the relation between Caio Graco and the equestrian order in the end of the century II B.C. Apiano wrote his Civil Wars on the end of his life, during the reign of Marco Aurélio, in a time of internal peace, stability and expansion. In his report, Apiano shows friendliness for the reformist project of Caio Graco, and does an analysis about the transfer of power in the courts to (...) the members of the equestrian order, did by an younger Graco in the end of Roman Republic. (shrink)

Este artigo se divide em duas partes. Na primeira seção, após a introdução, mapeamos as diversas ocorrências de “phýsis” ao longo das Hipotiposes Pirrônicas de Sexto Empírico, dividindo-as em 5 categorias: “natureza” como o real, em posição à “aparência”; o “natural” como aquilo que parece próprio, pertencente a algo ou alguém; a “Natureza”, como uma dimensão criadora e regente; o “natural” em oposição ao “antinatural”; a “natureza dos homens”. A forma como esses diversos usos aparecem na obra é invariavelmente crítica, (...) como elementos da argumentação contra os dogmáticos, especialmente os estoicos. Na segunda parte do trabalho, entretanto, mostramos como a “phýsis” aparece também de maneira positiva no início das Hipotiposes com a função de guia para a vida, como parte da resposta à célebre objeção da apraxía. Além disso, defendemos a hipótese de que a “natureza”, da perspectiva de Sexto, não se opõe nem ultrapassa as convenções e os costumes; pelo contrário, a natureza é o que é reconhecido por todos e é mesmo determinada pelas convenções e pelos costumes. (shrink)

O artigo discute algumas considerações a respeito dos conceitos de vulnerabilidade e proteção, quando relacionados à prática e à pesquisa em psicologia. Estabelece ligações entre conceitos clássicos, principalmente na área da filosofia e demais ciências humanas, como ética, moral e educação e as circunstâncias cotidianas e contemporâneas, como o acesso facilitado às informações, o incentivo à formação de recursos humanos na área da pesquisa e o desenvolvimento tecnológico das últimas décadas. Ao fim, sinalizam-se alternativas práticas e possíveis para operacionalizar a (...) manutenção da pesquisa no contexto da vulnerabilidade e, ao mesmo tempo, para garantir o cumprimento das recomendações éticas vigentes. (shrink)

Introduction: Screen-based and mobile technology has grown at an unprecedented rate. However, little is understood about whether increased screen-use affects executive functioning, the range of mental processes that aid goal attainment and facilitate the selection of appropriate behaviors. To examine this, a systematic review was conducted.Method: This systematic review is reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement. A comprehensive literature search was conducted using Web of Science, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Scopus databases to identify (...) articles published between 2007 and March 2020, examining the use of mobile technologies on aspects of EF in healthy adults aged 18–35 years. In total 6079 articles were screened by title, and 39 screened by full text. Eight eligible papers were identified for inclusion. Our methods were pre-registered on the PROSPERO international prospective register of systematic reviews.Results: A total of 438 participants were included across the eight studies. Five of the eight studies examined more than one EF. Five studies measured inhibition, and four studies measured decision-making. Smartphone use was negatively associated with inhibition and decision-making. Working memory performance was found to be improved by increased time engaging in video games and by refraining from smartphone use prior to bedtime. Quality assessments indicated high risk of methodological biases across the studies and a low quality of evidence for determining the relationship between technology use and executive functioning.Conclusions: This review highlights the scarcity of the literature in this area. It presents a call for rigorous and objective research to further our understanding of the impact of mobile technology on different aspects of executive function. (shrink)

Project MUSE - Journal of the History of Philosophy - Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination Project MUSE Journals Journal of the History of Philosophy Volume 46, Number 2, April 2008 Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination Journal of the History of Philosophy Volume 46, Number 2, April 2008 E-ISSN: 1538-4586 Print ISSN: 0022-5053 DOI: 10.1353/hph.0.0014 Reviewed by Alice SowaalSan Francisco State University Patricia Springborg. Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom from Domination. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. (...) Pp. xix + 372. Cloth, $80.00. Scholars have recently begun to expand research in early modern philosophy to include “minor” figures, especially those who contributed to the foundations of the scientific revolution. Simultaneously and separately, other scholars have begun examination of the female figures of the period. Prominent here are Eileen O’Neill’s series of articles, Jacqueline Broad’s Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century , and Sarah Hutton’s Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher . Patricia Springborg, a political scientist, now contributes to this literature with Mary Astell: Theorist of.. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The paper addresses the work of Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska, who resorts to military equipment as artistic materials and to destruction as an artistic method. In the first section, I contextualize Kulikovska’s performative sculpture within art history, claiming that it can be regarded as Destruction Art. In the second section, I turn to Catherine Malabou’s concept of “destructive plasticity” as a philosophical tool of an aesthetics of war, which offers a sound theoretical framework to further understand the implications of Kulikovska’s (...) artistic activity. In the third section, I focus on the main material adopted by Kulikovska, ballistic soap, showing how the artist materially deconstructs inherited dichotomies that keep informing our understanding of wars. By considering the artistic practice of a feminist artist (M. Kulikovska) through the lens of feminist scholarship (K. Stiles, C. Malabou, J. Butler), the paper investigates the relations between war and the arts from a situated perspective. (shrink)

A presente proposta busca sistematizar a importância da valorização do docente através do período extraclasse, prevista pela Lei do Piso Salarial Profissional Nacional docente (PSPN), observando a proposta de formação continuada, e, também, formação permanente, desenvolvida no Centro de Formação Carolina Garcia (CFCG), localizado no município de Macaé/RJ. A discussão aprofundada por meio da monografia de pedagogia da extinta Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Macaé – FAFIMA, tem como base os relatos apresentados nos questionários semiestruturados respondido pelas coordenadoras (...) do local, no ano de 2019. Nesse sentido, buscamos perceber o processo de elaboração da proposta do CFCG, que marca todo um movimento de formação pioneira em diálogo com o PSPN. Concluímos ao longo da pesquisa, que existem várias experiências que priorizam o fazer docente em diálogo com o período extraclasse, mas historicamente o CFCG propõe a ampliação do conhecimento de dentro da profissão e do seu entorno. (shrink)

In this work, I explored the complex relationship between psychological awe and the philosophical concept of the sublime. While psychology has often considered awe as a positive emotion distinct from the negative variant of the sublime, philosophical discourse has suggested an inherent historical and aesthetic connection between the two phenomena. I aimed to provide a preliminary contribution towards solving this puzzle, by relying on empirical findings from psychology and drawing from philosophical theories of Longinus, Kant, Schopenhauer and Hegel. I suggested (...) a conceptualization of awe as a potential cultural evolution of the sublime, thus highlighting an overlap of key dimensions, such as vastness, self-transcendence, and alteration of sense of time. Moreover, I outlined practical insights and guidelines for eliciting awe in everyday life. Finally, the transformative nature of awe was explored by integrating psychological and philosophical perspectives, thus enabling a broader understanding of complex emotions and how they can influence human experience and wellbeing. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa trazer diferentes olhares sobre a concepção de aprendizagem, a partir de encontros produzidos num espaço de formação de professores. Com a temática da Invenção de Virgínia Kastrup, ensaiamos outros modos de pensar o aprender, deixando de ser concebido exclusivamente como resolução de problemas, para modos que envolvam o compartilhamento de experiências de problematização, abertura, ética e produção de diferença.

Things are not the same when, even remaining the same, they are placed on the right or on the left, above or below, in front or behind. In the concrete space of our daily experience, in the space of myths and religions, we are not confronted with a neutral, homogeneous, infinite and isotropic spatiality, indifferent to directions. On the contrary, the possibility of a meaningful movement in space, rooted in my own body and in its praxis (as Kant shows in (...) his pre-critical and critical essays devoted to the space regions and to orientation), is assigned to the three main axes (above/below, right/left, front/behind) and their correspondent differences. The same applies for the space of images and pictures. The present issue of “Aisthesis” aims at exploring how the articulations above/below, right/left, front/behind produce a difference – syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and symbolic – in the iconic domain, and at investigating what theoretical models can be employed in order to understand such difference. (shrink)

This article approaches different moments of Nietzsche’s cause for the abolition of castigation, identifying a turn from determinist arguments towards a new point of view we have been calling necessitarianism. The idea is that this change is an answer to the realization that value attribution is inevitable, and a new elaboration on the origins of morals, when the philosopher detaches from utilitarian concepts, with consequences for his moral psychology and theory of value. This change is operated by the political vocabulary (...) introduced by the concept of will to power. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is a growing interest in using cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) with people who have Asperger syndrome and comorbid mental health problems.AimsTo examine whether modified group CBT for clinically significant anxiety in an Asperger syndrome population is feasible and likely to be efficacious.MethodUsing a randomised assessor-blind trial, 52 individuals with Asperger syndrome were randomised into a treatment arm or a waiting-list control arm. After 24 weeks, those in the waiting-list control arm received treatment, while those initially randomised to treatment were followed (...) up for 24 weeks.ResultsThe conversion rate for this trial was high (1.6:1), while attrition was 13%. After 24 weeks, there was no significant difference between those randomised to the treatment arm compared with those randomised to the waiting-list control arm on the primary outcome measure, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety.ConclusionsTrials of psychological therapies with this population are feasible. Larger definitive trials are now needed. (shrink)

An investigation of some of the most contentious debates of our time, Galileo's Middle Finger describes Alice Dreger's experiences on the front lines of scientific controversy, where for two decades she has worked as an advocate for victims of unethical research while also defending the right of scientists to pursue challenging research into human identities. Dreger's own attempts to reconcile academic freedom with the pursuit of justice grew out of her research into the treatment of people born intersex (formerly (...) called hermaphrodites). The shocking history of surgical mutilation and ethical abuses conducted in the name of "normalizing" intersex children moved her to become a patient rights' activist. By bringing evidence to physicians and the public, she helped change the medical system. But even as she worked to correct these injustices, Dreger began to witness how some fellow liberal activists, motivated by identity politics, were employing lies and personal attacks to silence scientists whose data revealed inconvenient truths. Troubled, she traveled around the country digging up sources and interviewing the targets of these politically motivated campaigns. Among the subjects she covers in the book are the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, falsely accused in a bestselling book of committing genocide against a South American tribe; the psychologist Michael Bailey, accused of abusing transgender women; and the evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, accused of fomenting rightwing ideas about human nature. Galileo's Middle Finger describes Dreger's long and harrowing journey back and forth between the two camps for which she felt equal empathy: social justice warriors and researchers determined to put truth before politics. (shrink)

Resumo Este artigo examina brevemente algumas tentativas de reconstruir o que seria a contrapartida “positiva” da crítica de Nietzsche à moralidade, ou seja, o tipo de engajamento normativo que fundamentaria seu ataque à moral. Essas reconstruções têm atribuído a Nietzsche diferentes compromissos normativos, de modo que ele está próximo ora de um esteticismo, ora de algum tipo de utilitarismo, ora de uma ética das virtudes. Destacamos alguns pontos que são relevantes para a filosofia de Nietzsche e que parecem estar em (...) dissonância com tais reconstruções. Estes pontos referem-se às concepções nietzschianas de perspectivismo, egoísmo, liberdade, Rausch e seu autodeclarado “imoralismo”. O objetivo é avaliar em que medida essas reconstruções são capazes de capturar o que há de singular no que Nietzsche tem a nos dizer sobre ética e normatividade prática sem descuidar de certos compromissos essenciais de sua filosofia.This article discusses some attempts of reconstructing the “positive” counterpart of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, that is, attempts of answering the question of what would be a properly Nietzschean ethics or normativity, which is supposed to ground his attacks on morals. Such reconstructions have attributed different normative commitments to Nietzsche, so that his positive views on ethics might be described either as a form of aestheticism or as a heterodox version of utilitarianism or even as a variety of virtue ethics. We point out some features of the Nietzschean philosophy that seem to be relevant though not consonant with such reconstructions, points related to his conceptions of perspectivism, egoism, freedom and Rausch as well as his self-proclaimed “immoralism”, in order to assess the appropriateness of such reconstructions to capture Nietzsche’s positive views on ethics and practical normativity. (shrink)

With his fight against the sea monster Medusa, Perseus embodies for Warburg the “world-directed energy”. Warburg's “energetic aesthetics” could be interpreted then as nothing but another version of the hypertrophic, despotic subject Ferraris has often written about. We will show it that is not the case by considering the relationship that Warburg draws between Perseus and Hamlet.