In this paper, we describe how critical data designers have created projects that ‘push back’ against the eclipse of environmental problems by dominant orders: the pioneering pollution database Scorecard, released by the US NGO Environmental Defense Fund in 1997; the US Environmental Protection Agency’s EnviroAtlas that brings together numerous data sets and provides tools for valuing ecosystem services; and the Houston Clean Air Network’s maps of real-time ozone levels in Houston. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, we analyse how critical (...) data designers turn scientific data and findings into claims and visualisations that are meaningful in contemporary political terms. The skills of critical data designers cross scales and domains; they must identify problems calling for public consideration, and then locate, access, link, and create visualisations of data relevant to the problem. We conclude by describing hazards ahead in work to leverage Big Data to understand and address environmental problems. Critical data designers need to understand what counts as a societal problem in a particular context, what doesn’t, what is seen as connected and not, what is seen as ethically charged, and what is exonerated and discounted. Such recognition is produced through interpretive, ‘close reading’ of the historical moment in which they operate. (shrink)

For a few decades now there has been a minor gigantomachia going on in the study of ancient skepticism, especially as regards the interpretation of Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonianism. Or perhaps, since Burnyeat and others bring out big guns like Hume as allies for their position, it could be better characterized as an ongoing attempted patricide, which, of course, also has a long and well-established tradition in ancient thought. If the ‘mainstream’ interpretation regards Sextus, and thereby a whole strain of (...) skepticism, as having as part of his project the radical undermining of belief, then the father-killers in this episode of the story have their hero in Michael Frede. It is Frede who is responsible for the latest attempt at defending Sextus, and thus the possibility of a coherent skepticism, from the charge that it is ultimately self-refuting insofar as it would finally reduce its practitioner to the condition of absolute stasis. The only real skeptic, so the charge goes, would be some form of inanimate object. This problem has dogged skepticism since its inception. Witness the perhaps apocryphal or even malicious stories about Pyrrho attempting to withhold judgment about any and every impression as his more practical—though strangely ambivalent regarding their master’s teachings—followers kept him from the rather embarrassing end that various passing vehicles, etc., would have provided. Frede has attempted to show that the skeptical position as it is put forward by someone like Sextus is almost the exact reverse of this interpretation. It is the skeptic who is most willing to engage the world as it is presented to us and the first to resist attempts to ‘pull back the veil’ in order to reveal this world as it ‘actually’ is, with all the attendant revisions to our ethics, politics, etc. that this would entail. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the close link between technology and death in the philosophical writings of Lewis Mumford. Mumford famously argued that throughout the history of western civilization we find intertwined two competing forms of technics; the democratic biotechnic form and the authoritarian monotechnic form. The former technics were said to be strongly compatible with an organic form of life while the latter were said to be allied to a mechanical power complex. What is perhaps less (...) well known is the extent to which Mumford characterizes the authoritarian technical form as being a technics of death. This article will argue that the connection between death and technics is a key theme in Mumford’s philosophy of technology. In addition to elaborating this theme and detailing how it informs Mumford’s other positions on the nature of technology, this article will also argue that Mumford’s theory of a technics of death bears witness, both implicitly and explicitly, to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the death instinct. Freud’s account of the death instinct will be outlined briefly and its influence on Mumford’s writings will be explained. Death, in Mumford’s technological writings, has a generally negative function and serves to warn humanity of the perilous course that its technological civilization is set upon. However it also has a positive function in that it encourages man to transcend its biological existence in acts of creativity and purpose. Death, in this positive sense, serves the purpose of life whereas, in the negative sense, it hinders it. The role of death, in both aspects, will be explored and related to Mumford’s overall perspective on technics and life. It is argued that Mumford’s philosophy of technology cannot be fully understood without an awareness of his views on death and its role in the life of technological society. (shrink)

Objective: To assess the opinions and practice patterns of obstetrician-gynaecologists on acceptance and use of free drug samples and other incentive items from pharmaceutical representatives.Methods: A questionnaire was mailed in March 2003 to 397 members of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who participate in the Collaborative Ambulatory Research Network.Results: The response rate was 55%. Most respondents thought it proper to accept drug samples , an informational lunch , an anatomical model or a well-paid consultantship from pharmaceutical representatives. A (...) third of the respondents thought that their own decision to prescribe a drug would probably be influenced by accepting drug samples. Respondents were more likely to think the average doctor’s prescribing would be influenced by acceptance of the items than theirs would be . Respondents who distributed drug samples to patients indicated doing so because of patients’ financial need and for their convenience and less so as a result of knowledge of the efficacy of the sample product . A third of respondents agreed that interactions with industry should be more strictly regulated.Conclusion: Obstetrician-gynaecologists largely indicated that they would act in accordance with what they think is proper regarding accepting incentive items from pharmaceutical representatives. Although accepting free drug samples was considered to be appropriate more often than any other item, samples were most commonly judged to be influential on prescribing practices. The widely accepted practice of receiving and distributing free drug samples needs to be examined more carefully. (shrink)

Philosophy and literature are natural allies--philosophy supplying perennial themes raised anew from one generation to the next, literature providing vivid illustrations of the meaning and poignancy of abstract thought. Illuminates basic philosophical concepts through literary worksThis unique text introduces students to philosophy through the medium of great literature. The book is divided into seven parts, each devoted to the illumination of a basic philosophical concept-such as Knowledge, Truth, Personal Identity, Ethics, and justice through the use of literary selections from Sophocles (...) (Oedipus the King), James Joyce (Araby), Kafka (The Metamorphosis), and John Dos Passos (The House of Morgan), among many others. The editors have given special attention to choosing the right combination of literary piece and philosophical issue to ensure that the story or play lend itself to philosophical scrutiny. Selections of the best philosophical writingsThe questions raised by these selections are then explored further through some of the best philosophical writings available, including the writings of Aristotle, William James, Plato, Locke, John Stuart. Mill, and many other classic philosophers, as well as contemporary pieces from Richard Rorty, Peter Unger, John Rawls, John Hick, and others. In each chapter, the editors have attempted to include the clearest presentation of a particular point of view, sometimes going back to an earlier article not generally found in other current texts. Throughout, they have made an effort to balance the analytic tradition with hermeneutics and feminist philosophy. Excellent introduction for studentsEvery chapter is introduced with an essay by the editors that provides a unifying thread through the various philosophical and literary pieces that follow. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and suggestions for further study. The result is a volume that will provide students with a valuable tool for illuminating timeless, as well as contemporary issues, and an introduction to philosophy that they will remember and to which they can return over and over again. (shrink)

Subjects have various ways of thinking about themselves. Here are three examples: a subject can think of herself under an appropriate description (the hiker), d.

The ongoing generation of expectations is fundamental to listeners’ experience of music, but research into types of statistical information that listeners extract from musical melodies has tended to emphasize transition probabilities and n‐grams, with limited consideration given to other types of statistical learning that may be relevant. Temporal associations between scale degrees represent a different type of information present in musical melodies that can be learned from musical corpora using expectation networks, a computationally simple method based on activation and decay. (...) Expectation networks infer the expectation of encountering one scale degree followed in the near (but not necessarily immediate) future by another given scale degree, with previous work suggesting that scale degree associations learned by expectation networks better predict listener ratings of pitch similarity than transition probabilities. The current work outlines how these learned scale degree associations can be combined to predict melodic continuations and tests the resulting predictions on a dataset of listener responses to a musical cloze task previously used to compare two other models of melodic expectation, a variable‐order Markov model (IDyOM) and Temperley's music‐theoretically motivated model. Under multinomial logistic regression, all three models explain significant unique variance in human melodic expectations, with coefficient estimates highest for expectation networks. These results suggest that generalized scale degree associations informed by both adjacent and nonadjacent relationships between melodic notes influence listeners’ melodic predictions above and beyond n‐gram context, highlighting the need to consider a broader range of statistical learning processes that may underlie listeners’ expectations for upcoming musical events. (shrink)

Comparative pride—that is, pride in how one compares to others in some respect—is often thought to be warranted. In this paper, I argue that this common position is mistaken. The paper begins with an analysis of how things seem when a person feels pride. Pride, I claim, presents some aspect of the self with which one identifies as being worthy. Moreover, in some cases, it presents this aspect of the self as something one is responsible for. I then go on (...) to argue that when the focus of one's pride is comparative, things are never as pride makes them seem. The core problem is that if the performance in which one takes pride is really valuable, the fact that it is superior to the performance of others does nothing to contribute to that value. I conclude with a discussion of why so many are inclined to validate comparative pride and a response to those who claim that comparisons are essential to pride because they must be used to set standards of excellence. (shrink)

Are non-indexical action rationalizations necessarily incomplete because of a missing indexical component? Bermúdez argues that they are. Two things make the argument unpersuasive. First, it assumes that all action rationalizations involve attitudes that are about the agent. Second, it assumes that the attitudes expressible using ‘I’ are themselves indexical. Each is an assumption that believers in complete but non-indexical action rationalizations can and do reject. Surprisingly though, a more effective argument can be obtained by switching focus from indexical attitudes about (...) agents to indexical attitudes about times. The debate about the de se and the de nunc has much less in common than is standardly assumed. It is the de nunc not the de se which provides the knock-down case for essential indexicality. (shrink)

Why are de se mental states essential? What exactly is their de se-ness needed to do? I argue that it is needed to fend off accidentalness. If certain beliefs – for example, nociceptive, proprioceptive or introspective beliefs – were not de se, then any truth they achieved would be too accidental for the subject to count as knowing. If certain intentions – intentions that are in play whenever we intentionally do anything – were not de se, then any satisfaction they (...) achieved would be too accidental for the subject to count as intentionally acting. How states hook on to their referent is relevant in a systematic but underexplored way to whether they non-accidentally achieve their aim – truth in the case of beliefs, satisfaction in the case of intentions. In the relevant cases, the way of hooking on to a referent needed to avoid being accidental is the way a de se state hooks on to its referent. (shrink)

How cautious should regulators be? A standard answer is consequentialist: regulators should be just cautious enough to maximize expected social value. This paper charts the prospects of a nonconsequentialist - and more precautionary - alternative. More specifically, it argues that a contractualism focused on ex ante consent can motivate the following regulatory criterion: regulators should permit a socially beneficial risky activity only if no one can be expected to be made worse off by it. Broadly speaking, there are two strategies (...) regulators can use to help risky activities satisfy this criterion: regulators can mandate strict safety standards that protect those who would otherwise stand to lose, and they can require that some of the benefits of the activity be redirected to them. In developing these themes, the paper aims to provide a theoretical grounding for those who oppose using risk-cost-benefit analysis as the primary regulatory standard, and in particular, for advocates of the precautionary principle. (shrink)

This paper uses a problematic passage at Phaedo 69a–c as a case study to explore the advantages we can gain by reading Plato in his cultural context. Socrates argues that the common conception of courage is strange: people fear death, but endure it because they are afraid of greater evils. They are thus brave through fear. He proposes that we should not exchange greater pleasures, pains, and fears for lesser, like coins, but that there is the only correct coin, for (...) which we must exchange all these things: wisdom (phronēsis). Commentators have been puzzled by the precise nature of the exchange envisaged here, sometimes labelling the coinage metaphor as inept, sometimes describing this stretch of argument as “religious” and thus not to be taken seriously. The body of the paper looks at (1) the connection between money and somatic materialism, (2) the incommensurability in Plato of financial and ethical orders, (3) financial metaphors outside Plato that connect coinage with ethics, (4) intrinsic and use values in ancient coinage, and (5) Athenian laws on coinage, weights, and measures that reflect anxiety about debased coins in the fifth and early fourth centuries. It sees the Phaedo passage as the product of a sociopolitical climate which facilitated the consideration of coinage as an embodiment of a value system and which connected counterfeit or debased currency with debased ethical types. Athenians in the early fourth century were much concerned with issues of commensurability between different currencies and with problems of debasement and counterfeiting; understanding this makes Socrates’ use of coinage metaphors less puzzling. Both the metaphor of coinage and the other metaphors in this passage of the Phaedo (painting and initiation) engage with ideas of purity, genuineness, and deception. Taken as a group, these metaphors cover a large area of contemporary popular culture and are used to illustrate a disjunction between popular and philosophical ways of looking at value. (shrink)

The Jewish philosopher and educator Martin Buber (1878–1965) is considered one of the twentieth century’s greatest contributors to the philosophy of religion and is also recognized as the pre-eminent scholar of Hasidism. He has also attracted considerable attention as a philosopher of education. However, most commentaries on this aspect of his work have focussed on the implications of his philosophy for formal education and for the education of the child. Given that much of Buber’s philosophy is based on dialogue, on (...) community and on mutuality, it is puzzling that relatively little has been written on the implications of Buber’s thought for the theory and practice of non-formal adult education. The article provides a discussion of the philosophy underpinning this aspect of Martin Buber’s life and work, and its implications for adult non-formal education. (shrink)

Developmental coordination is vital in the temporally coordinated appearance of cell types within the precise spatial architecture of the vertebrate brain and this, combined with the rich interplay between the developing brain and its target organs, is a biological problem of monumental complexity. An example is the genesis and subsequent integration of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus and the pituitary. Two recent papers(1,2) use the developing hypothalamo‐pituitary axis in order to gather a deeper understanding of these integrative mechanisms. In addition, they show (...) that a sub‐family of homeodomain factors, the POU‐domain proteins, play a critical role in coordinating the respective ontogenies of the hypothalamus and the pituitary. (shrink)

In this article I offer an account of normative thought inspired by Plato's proposal in the Theaetetus that judgement is ‘speech spoken … silently.’ After arguing that force conventionalism is the speech act theory best suited for modeling dialogic inner speech, I close the article by sketching the picture of normative thought that results. Though I defend a particular theory of normative speech elsewhere, the core insights of this article can be used by other theorists as well. The arguments offered (...) here also serve as an important step forward for the more general program of using social speech to better understand thought. (shrink)

I examine Beauvoir's moral assessment of Romantic Love in The Second Sex. I first set out Beauvoir's central philosophical assumptions concerning the nature and situations of women, setting the framework for her analysis of the intersubjective dynamic which constitutes the phenomenology of romantic loving. In this process four double-bind paradoxes are generated which can lead, ultimately, to servility in the woman who loves. In a separate analysis, I ask whether it is wrong for a woman to aspire to and/or choose (...) this form of servitude. I distinguish two kinds of considerations: (1) those having to do with the intrinsic moral nature of the commitment or decision, and (2) those based on considerations of harm: first, to the woman who loves; second, to the loved Other; third to the nature of the relationship; and fourth, to society in general. (shrink)

Induction of c‐fos expression occurs following treatment of diverse cell types with agents that trigger mitogenesis, differentiation or membrane depolarization. We suggest that c‐fos may be regarded as a marker for a set of rapidly induced genes (termed cellular immediate‐early genes) whose function is to couple extracellular stimulation to long‐term responses. In the brain, these genes may contribute to the adaptive alterations involved in neuronal plasticity.

(1985). Chance, Skill, and Sport: A Critical Comment. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 62-63. doi: 10.1080/00948705.1985.9714429.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the concept of community (Gemeinschaft) was associated with an ideal society or polity; a host of figures conceived of redemption as the creation and development of community. In this paper, I briefly discuss how this ideal was appropriated by Martin Buber and how genuine community came to mean, for him, a society organized in terms of a collection of I-Thou oriented relationships. I then consider how the same ideal might help us to (...) understand the social and historical ideal which Franz Rosenzweig takes to be the redemptive ideal of Judaism and the Jewish people. (shrink)

Robert Stern has argued that Levinas is a kind of command theorist and that, for this reason, Løgstrup can be understood to have provided an argument against Levinas. In this paper, I discuss Levinas’s use of the vocabulary of demand, order, and command in the light of Jewish philosophical accounts of such notions in the work of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emil Fackenheim. These accounts revise the traditional Jewish idea of command and I show that Levinas’s use of this (...) vocabulary is also revisionary. I show that in light of this tradition of discussion, Levinas’s use is not susceptible to the interpretation Stern proposes and thus that the Løgstrup-style argument cannot be used against Levinas. (shrink)

This study analyzes interview data from 37 science and engineering faculty involved in university-industry relations. Faculty are particularly concerned about how these relations affect their work with graduate students. Our analysis is guided by ritual exchange theory and network theory. First, we explore the ways faculty define and redefine what makes industrial or corporate research appropriate or inappropriate for training graduates. Second, we examine difficulties and tensions faculty face when they work with students on industrial or corporate projects. These difficulties (...) and tensions center on intellectual property and we look at how faculty negotiate with industry over restrictions on publication of graduate student and faculty research results, on faculty and graduate student involvement in start-up companies, and on faculty and graduate student ownership of intellectual property. (shrink)

Some recent version of mysticism -- Empty epiphanies in modernist and postmodernist theory -- The gender of human togetherness -- Histories of modern selfhood -- Meister Eckhart's anthropology -- Becoming God in fourteenth-century Europe -- The makings of the modern self -- Taking leave of Sigmund Freud -- Everyday acknowledgments.

... of them in the MORAL PHILOSOPHER. ...

This paper has two aims. The first concerns the question of whether there is any essential involvement of perspectival thought in intentional agency. I defend the view that the answer is ‘no’ for one kind of perspectival thought, and ‘yes’ for a different kind. Agency does not depend on de se thought, but it does depend on de nunc thought. The second aim of the paper is to defend a claim about the significance of this de se–de nunc contrast as (...) a case study. I argue that the contrast is best explained by a picture on which different kinds of perspectival thought are seen as islands. On this picture, an account of the conceptual role of one kind of perspectival thought won’t settle much about any other kind of perspectival thought. The picture is proposed as a replacement for the standard picture, on which perspectival thought is seen as a natural cognitive kind. (shrink)

Recently, we reported that melanoma risk in redheads is linked not only to pale skin, but also to the synthesis of the pigment – called pheomelanin – that gives red hair its color. We demonstrated that pheomelanin synthesis is associated with increased oxidative stress in the skin, yet we have not uncovered the chemical pathway between the molecule pheomelanin and the DNA damage that drives melanoma formation. Here, we hypothesize two possible pathways. On one hand, pheomelanin might generate reactive oxygen (...) species (ROS) that directly or indirectly cause oxidative DNA damage. On the other hand, pheomelanin synthesis might consume cellular antioxidant stores and make the cell nucleus more vulnerable to other endogenous ROS. Uncovering the mechanistic pathway between pheomelanin and oxidative DNA damage will be an important step in developing strategies to lower melanoma risk in redheads. (shrink)

This paper articulates a developmental model for how individuals relate to religious difference. We begin by reviewing scholarly work on multicultural competencies and initial research on religious diversity. To provide a framework for our model, we explore the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and its relationship to research within the psychology of religion. The review closes by examining and critiquing a preliminary model of interreligious sensitivity. From this multi-faceted review, we propose a developmental model of interreligious competence and suggest key (...) psychological capacities that undergird the model. Two case studies ground the theory before we explore future directions for research. Throughout, we consider the philosophical issues of alterity that shape encounters with religious diversity. By developing this model of interreligious competence, this article aims to provide a framework to help psychologists and other human service professionals become more effective in their interactions across religious difference. (shrink)