The diagnostic moment is a moment replete with drama. As Suzanne Fleischmann has written, hearing the announcement of a serious diagnosis draws an indelible line to demarcate before and after, which will be evermore imposed on an individual’s narrative construction of her life story. We can imagine this moment, considering with apprehension the “what if?” as we attend our doctor’s appointments for the verdict on what ails us. Belief in its transformative power is impressive. That we can imagine it is (...) not surprising, as it is represented so widely in various creative work. In this paper, I turn to the presence of the diagnostic moment in fiction. I love to read. This... (shrink)

It would be hard to imagine medical care without diagnosis, so pivotal is it to how Western medicine is practiced. Diagnosis is one of medicine’s principle tools, bringing with it as it does an explanation for what ails the sick person, an idea of what the treatment options might be, a prognosis, and much more. It assigns responsibility for illness, within medicine and outside. It will determine which specialty or sub-specialty can take care of which disorders. It also explains causation, (...) pointing the finger variably at the patient for what she ought to have done, or to the gene for what one can do little about. Diagnosis structures and explains relationships as it provides the impetus for the sick.. (shrink)

Classification shapes medicine and guides its practice. As clinicians classify symptoms and illnesses, they trigger a range of actions and consequences. The assignment of particular disease labels is linked to both therapeutic and social responses. However, the classifications of medicine, natural though they may seem, contain significant social content, and are arrived at via a number of cultural framing devices (Aronowitz 2008). This article will explore the social intent and construction of classification and their embodiment in medical diagnosis.Effective classification recognizes (...) difference as well as similarity. By classifying, we are putting items together that have more in common with one another than they .. (shrink)

Disease-mongering, or the medicalisation of aspects of daily life in an attempt to generate commercial profit for a party other than the person whose complaint is medicalised, is a newly recognized and legitimate source of concern for both consumers and deliverers of health care. The interest brought to this area by the academy has the potential to acknowledge and address the consequences of the practice. However, before disease-mongering can establish itself firmly as an area of scholarly concern, researchers must understand (...) that the critique is not just about identifying commercial intent, but also about naming the mechanism through which discourses of health, cure and self-management are positioned. In this paper, I argue that a critical reflection on the construction of disease concepts and the mongering of their cure must include discussions of the foundations of health and the clinical encounter. I identify a number of pivotal issues within these themes that should be explored in order to ensure an unambiguous and productive discussion of disease-mongering and its correlates. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This illustrated essay describes the graphic diagnosis memoir as a form of illness narrative that uses a different way of telling stories than standard prose. A cartoon is broken into sequenced segments that ask the reader to jump across the gaps between the panels at the same time as they bridge the images and text assembled in each panel. To be successful in presenting a graphic story, the artist must be able to express an idea, but also must be able (...) to project, or imagine, how readers will be able link ideas, images, and words. The cartoon diagnosis story makes the diagnosis relevant and visible. It does so by recognizing what reader and artist share, then adding, between the spaces, what separates them. (shrink)

When we first started thinking about this Special Issue in our home country of New Zealand, we had little sense of what the future might hold. Emerging from a very strict lockdown—where one of us found herself in an isolated rural community, unable to return home, and the other was confined to a small suburban space with a dog, two children under the age of five, and a husband, and both of us with doubts as to what our jobs would (...) look like when we were "released"—our minds were strictly focused on the pandemic and its immediate impact on our day-to-day lives.At the same time, in the unfamiliar context of isolation, we connected with a colleague from Edinburgh, Michael Kelly—someone Annemarie knew from sabbatical... (shrink)

Die Welt ist alles, was wir in unseren naturwissenschaftlichen Theorien beschreiben konnen so eine weit verbreitete Uberzeugung, die seit den Tagen des Positivismus unser Weltbild bestimmt. Aber reicht das tatsachlich schon aus? Wer sich am Ideal der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis orientiert, neigt dazu, viele nicht-begriffliche Erfahrungsformen zu unterschlagen, die uns aus dem Alltag vertraut sind: Symbolsysteme wie Musik, Literatur oder Bilder, Instanzen der unmittelbaren Erfahrung wie Anschauung, Wahrnehmung oder Gefuhl und den Bereich des praktischen Konnens. In der Regel sind wir nicht (...) in der Lage, den Gehalt dieser Phanomene vollstandig begrifflich wiederzugeben. Dennoch ist das weite Feld des Nichtbegrifflichen eine unverzichtbare Voraussetzung unserer Satze und Gedanken: Ohne Kunst, Wahrnehmung und Handeln gibt es kein Denken, keine Wissenschaft, keine Philosophie. Der Band geht der Vielfalt des Nicht-Begrifflichen in asthetischen, symboltheoretischen und semantischen Untersuchungen nach. Aus ihnen ergibt sich ein umfassender systematischer Uberblick uber eines der spannendsten und offensten Problemfelder der aktuellen philosophischen Debatte. Mit Beitragen von: Andreas Bartels, Uwe Baumann, Volker Beeh, Gottfried Boehm, Olaf Breidbach, Joachim Bromand, Gottfried Gabriel, Markus Gabriel, Ernest Wolf Gazo, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Jurgen Goldstein, Jens Halfwassen, Thomas Soren Hoffmann, Wolfgang Harms, Jochen Horisch, Peter Janich, Guilherme F. R. Kisteumacher, Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz, Imi Knoebel, Theo Kobusch, Klaus-M. Kodalle, Sibylle Kramer, Guido Kreis, Wolfgang Kubin, Sonke Lorenz, Antonio Cota Marcal, Aliasghar Mosleh, Theodoros Penolidis, Dominik Perler, Hans-Joachim Pieper, Andrzej Przylebski, Birgit Sandkaulen, Matthias Schmoeckel, Oswald Schwemmer, Josef Simon, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Dieter Teichert, Kai Vogeley, Gottfried Willems und Gereon Wolters". (shrink)

Die Welt ist alles, was wir in unseren naturwissenschaftlichen Theorien beschreiben können – so eine weit verbreitete Überzeugung, die seit den Tagen des Positivismus unser Weltbild bestimmt. Aber reicht das tatsächlich schon aus? Wer sich am Ideal der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis orientiert, neigt dazu, viele nicht-begriffliche Erfahrungsformen zu unterschlagen, die uns aus dem Alltag vertraut sind: Symbolsysteme wie Musik, Literatur oder Bilder, Instanzen der unmittelbaren Erfahrung wie Anschauung, Wahrnehmung oder Gefühl und den Bereich des praktischen Könnens. In der Regel sind wir (...) nicht in der Lage, den Gehalt dieser Phänomene vollständig begrifflich wiederzugeben. Dennoch ist das weite Feld des Nichtbegrifflichen eine unverzichtbare Voraussetzung unserer Sätze und Gedanken: Ohne Kunst, Wahrnehmung und Handeln gibt es kein Denken, keine Wissenschaft, keine Philosophie. Der Band geht der Vielfalt des Nicht-Begrifflichen in ästhetischen, symboltheoretischen und semantischen Untersuchungen nach. Aus ihnen ergibt sich ein umfassender systematischer Überblick über eines der spannendsten und offensten Problemfelder der aktuellen philosophischen Debatte. Mit Beiträgen von: Andreas Bartels, Uwe Baumann, Volker Beeh, Gottfried Boehm, Olaf Breidbach, Joachim Bromand, Gottfried Gabriel, Markus Gabriel, Ernest Wolf Gazo, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Jürgen Goldstein, Jens Halfwassen, Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Wolfgang Harms, Jochen Hörisch, Peter Janich, Guilherme F. R. Kisteumacher, Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz, Imi Knoebel, Theo Kobusch, Klaus-M. Kodalle, Sibylle Krämer, Guido Kreis, Wolfgang Kubin, Sönke Lorenz, Antonio Cota Marçal, Aliasghar Mosleh, Theodoros Penolidis, Dominik Perler, Hans-Joachim Pieper, Andrzej Przylebski, Birgit Sandkaulen, Matthias Schmoeckel, Oswald Schwemmer, Josef Simon, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Dieter Teichert, Kai Vogeley, Gottfried Willems und Gereon Wolters. (shrink)

Schrödinger’s first proposal for the interpretation of quantum mechanics was based on a postulate relating the wave function on configuration space to charge density in physical space. Schrödinger apparently later thought that his proposal was empirically wrong. We argue here that this is not the case, at least for a very similar proposal with charge density replaced by mass density. We argue that when analyzed carefully, this theory is seen to be an empirically adequate many-worlds theory and not an empirically (...) inadequate theory describing a single world. Moreover, this formulation—Schrödinger’s first quantum theory—can be regarded as a formulation of the many-worlds view of quantum mechanics that is ontologically clearer than Everett’s. (shrink)

Biofeedback mechanisms (a) between individuals, (b) between the individual and the society structures which shape individual cognitions, and (c) within the individual genetic biochemical circulation, may explain the diversity of trustworthiness potential and the option of mutual trust for every individual in any given society.

Neuroconstructivism, Vol. 1: How the Brain Constructs Cognition implies that brain functioning depends on biofeedback and ecological trajectories. Using the building blocks of Boolean algebra known as logic gates and models of distributed control systems, I suggest that levels of regulatory states are responsible for optimal, pathological, and developmental processes. I include the impact of regulatory and nonregulatory functions on structural development.

The rise of blockchain as a techno-solution in the development sector underscores the critical imbalances of data power under ‘computational capitalism’. This article will consider the political economy of techno-solutionist and blockchain discourses in the developing world, using as its object of study blockchain projects in Pacific Island nations. Backed by US State Department soft power initiatives such as Tech Camp, these projects inculcate tech-driven notions of economic and political development, or ICT4D, while opening up new terrains for data accumulation (...) and platform control. Blockchain developers in search of proof of concept have found the development sector a fecund space for tech experimentation as they leverage a desire for tech-development and exploit regulatory weakness. The material implications of blockchain projects and discourse have been to create governance solutions which bypass the developing world state as a largely corrupting intermediary. In the Pacific, this has meant blockchain supply-chain management systems, proprietary financial innovation in humanitarian relief and an Asian Development Bank project to manage indigenous Fijian lands exclusively on the blockchain. In all these instances, discourses of solutionism, innovation and data empowerment have been deployed in aid of blockchain cartographies of control. (shrink)

Foreword by Oliver Sacks Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) was already an established neuropsychologist when he emigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1930s. This book, his magnum opus and widely regarded as a modern classic in psychology and biology, grew out of his dissatisfaction with traditional natural science techniques for analyzing living beings. It offers a broad introduction to the sources and ranges of application of the "holistic" or "organismic" research program that has since become a standard part (...) of biological thought. Goldstein was especially concerned with the breakdown of organization and the failure of central controls that take place in catastrophic responses to situations such as physical or mental illness. But he was equally attuned to the amazing powers of the organism to readjust to such catastrophic losses, if only by withdrawal to a more limited range that it could manage by a redistribution of its reduced energies, thus reclaiming as much wholeness as new circumstances allowed. Goldstein's theses in The Organism have had an important impact on philosophical and psychological thought throughout the twentieth century, as evidenced in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Canguilhem, Ernst Cassirer, and Ludwig Binswanger. (shrink)

Recent studies of scientific interaction based on agent-based models suggest that a crucial factor conducive to efficient inquiry is what Zollman has dubbed ‘transient diversity’. It signifies a process in which a community engages in parallel exploration of rivaling theories lasting sufficiently long for the community to identify the best theory and to converge on it. But what exactly generates transient diversity? And is transient diversity a decisive factor when it comes to the efficiency of inquiry? In this paper we (...) examine the impact of different conditions on the efficiency of inquiry, as well as the relation between diversity and efficiency. This includes certain diversity-generating mechanisms previously proposed in the literature, as well as some factors that have so far been neglected. This study is obtained via an argumentation-based ABM. Our results suggest that cautious decision-making does not always have a significant impact on the efficiency of inquiry while different evaluations underlying theory-choice and different social networks do. Moreover, we find a correlation between diversity and a successful performance of agents only under specific conditions, which indicates that transient diversity is sometimes not the primary factor responsible for efficiency. Altogether, when comparing our results to those obtained by structurally different ABMs based on Zollman’s work, the impact of specific factors on efficiency of inquiry, as well as the role of transient diversity in achieving efficiency, appear to be highly dependent on the underlying model. (shrink)

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 109 of Psychological Review. Due to circumstances that were beyond the control of the authors, the studies reported in "Models of Ecological Rationality: The Recognition Heuristic," by Daniel G. Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer overlap with studies reported in "The Recognition Heuristic: How Ignorance Makes Us Smart," by the same authors and with studies reported in "Inference From Ignorance: The Recognition Heuristic". In addition, Figure 3 in the Psychological Review (...) article was originally published in the book chapter and should have carried a note saying that it was used by permission of Oxford University Press.] One view of heuristics is that they are imperfect versions of optimal statistical procedures considered too complicated for ordinary minds to carry out. In contrast, the authors consider heuristics to be adaptive strategies that evolved in tandem with fundamental psychological mechanisms. The recognition heuristic, arguably the most frugal of all heuristics, makes inferences from patterns of missing knowledge. This heuristic exploits a fundamental adaptation of many organisms: the vast, sensitive, and reliable capacity for recognition. The authors specify the conditions under which the recognition heuristic is successful and when it leads to the counter-intuitive less-is-more effect in which less knowledge is better than more for making accurate inferences. (shrink)

Much of the time, human beings seem to rely on habits. Habits are learned behaviours directly elicited by context cues, and insensitive to short-term changes in goals: therefore they are sometimes irrational. But even where habitual responses are rational, it can seem as if they are nevertheless not done for reasons. For, on a common understanding of habitual behaviour, agents’ intentions do not play any role in the coming about of such responses. This paper discusses under what conditions we can (...) say that habitual responses are, after all, done for reasons. We show how the idea that habitual behaviour cannot be understood as ‘acting for reasons’ stems from a widely but often implicitly held theoretical framework: the causal theory of action. We then propose an alternative, Anscombean understanding of intentional action, which can account for habitual responses being done for reasons. (shrink)

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Boltzmann explained how irreversible macroscopic laws, in particular the second law of thermodynamics, originate in the time-reversible laws of microscopic physics. Boltzmann’s analysis, the essence of which I shall review here, is basically correct. The most famous criticisms of Boltzmann’s later work on the subject have little merit. Most twentieth century innovations – such as the identification of the state of a physical system with a probability distribution on its phase space, (...) of its thermodynamic entropy with the Gibbs entropy of , and the invocation of the notions of ergodicity and mixing for the justification of the foundations of statistical mechanics – are thoroughly misguided. (shrink)

In his 1963 response to an open letter from eight white religious leaders chastising his involvement in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. explained that civil rights activists’ blatant breaking of some laws while obeying others was the result of two types of laws: just laws and unjust laws. Civil rights activists believed they had a legal responsibility to obey just laws and a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Today, new civil rights struggles continue to challenge unjust laws that shred (...) the fabric of democracy that America espouses. Drawing upon both the Civil Rights Movement and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives, this article argues that unjust laws and practices must be broken and challenged before a just society is established. It identifies four ethical strategies for social activism: collective work and responsibility, strategic timing and economic disconnection, political mobilization, and faithful perseverance. (shrink)

Book Information Nature's Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology. Edited by Allen Colin, Bekoff Mark and Lauder George. MIT Press. Cambridge. 1998. Pp. vi + 597. Paperback, US$31.50.

In Treatise 1.4.2, David Hume seeks to explain how we come to believe in the external existence of bodies. He offers a complicated psychological account, where the imagination operates on the raw data of the senses to produce the ‘vulgar’ belief in the continued existence of the very things we sense. On behalf of philosophers, he presents a perceptual relativity argument that purports to show that the vulgar belief is false. I argue that scholars have failed to appreciate Hume's peculiar (...) formulation of the perceptual relativity argument and its relation to his psychological account of the vulgar belief. On my interpretation, in order to account for all the premises that Hume explicitly offers, the argument is best interpreted as beginning with a reductio that opposes the effects of the senses and the imagination in the vulgar belief. Thus Hume can be interpreted as identifying an ‘antinomy’ in the habits of the vulgar mind that produce belief in bodies. (shrink)

This paper presents a direction for narrative ethics based on ethical ideas found in the works of Michel Foucault. Narrative ethics is understood here at the meta-level of cultural discourse to see how the moral subject is constituted by the discursive practices that structure the contemporary debate on reproductive technologies. At this level it becomes meta-narrative-ethics. After a theoretical discussion, this paper uses two literary narratives representing the polarized views in the debate to show how the moral subject may be (...) compelled to relate to its self. Ethics is redefined as Foucauldian rapport à soi, and ethical analysis, at this meta-level, shows how the moral self is intimately connected to cultural discourse. (shrink)

Obwohl die Substitutionsbehandlung nachweislich den Gesundheitszustand opiatabhängiger Patienten verbessern und die Beschaffungskriminalität reduzieren kann, bestehen enge gesetzliche Regelungen, die die Therapiefreiheit der behandelnden Ärzte stark begrenzen: So werden durch das Betäubungsmittelgesetz und die zugehörigen Verordnungen nicht nur das Behandlungsziel (Abstinenz) sondern auch notwendige Therapiebausteine definiert, die darauf ausgerichtet sind, die Therapietreue des Patienten zu kontrollieren. Deutsche Ärzte, die die strengen Auflagen nicht strikt befolgten, wurden zu Gefängnisstrafen verurteilt. Wie der Artikel zeigt, fördern die bestehenden Gesetze eine „kontrollierende“ statt einer motivierenden (...) ärztlichen Behandlung, ohne wichtige Ziele, wie den Schutz der Allgemeinheit vor einer illegalen Verbreitung illegaler Opioide, vollständig zu erreichen. Zusammenfassend zeigt der Artikel, dass eine stärker am Wohl der Patienten ausgerichtete Substitutionsbehandlung (einschließlich notwendiger Kontrolluntersuchungen) mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit auch die Öffentlichkeit wirksamer vor den potenziellen Gefahren einer illegalen Verbreitung von gefährlichen Opioiden schützt als die Befolgung abstrakter, restriktiver gesetzlichen Normen. (shrink)

The election of Barack Obama corresponding with the dramatic implosion of the neo-liberal world order of finance, represents a dramatic return of history as attempts are made to forge the new consensus of global capitalism. The financial crisis has come to represent the culmination of Third Way neo-liberalism with Obama signifying the commodity logic and emancipatory potential of the new spirit of capitalism. Obama’s biography has allowed for a self-confident re-articulation of American imperial power, while fetishizing a civil society notion (...) of transformation that has eclipsed the anti-capitalist left. Resistance to Obama’s vision of a reconciled America, leading the moral correction of capitalism, has come in the form of a right wing populist campaign of delegitimization. The Tea Party populists speak to the return of the political and the ontological necessity of antagonism as they present themselves as the only radical alternative to actually existing neo-liberalism. (shrink)

I will contrast the two main approaches to the foundations of statistical mechanics: the individualist approach and the ensemblist approach. I will indicate the virtues of each, and argue that the conflict between them is perhaps not as great as often imagined.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bibliography of Resources by and about André E. Hellegers*Compiled by Doris Mueller Goldstein (bio)This bibliography is derived from the holdings of the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature and the BIOETHICSLINE© database (both of which are at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and supported by the National Library of Medicine); the archives of Lauinger Library, Georgetown University; the Medline databases of the National Library of Medicine; the WorldCat (...) database of OCLC, Dublin, Ohio, and selected Internet sites.Primarily comprised of writings by Dr. Hellegers, the list also includes interviews and media programs in which he participated, as well as writings about him that were written following his death. The arrangement within each section is by date. The 231 authored pieces reflect the transition from Dr. Hellegers’s early career as a researcher in fetal physiology at Johns Hopkins Medical School, where he published his first research report at the age of 29, to the early years of the Kennedy Institute, where he produced so many provocative columns on bioethical issues that influenced the growth of the field.Due to the diversity of sources and the 40-year time span covered, there are some variations in bibliographic style. Time and availability constraints precluded verifying all of the citations with the original documents. Any additions or corrections should be submitted to the compiler.Works Authored by André E. HellegersNo Date Ethical Issues in Sterilization of the Retarded. Unpublished paper.1956Vitamin B12 Serum Level and Pregnancy. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 4: 440+, 1956. [With Bacon F. Chow and Kunio Okuda] [End Page 89]1957Vitamin B12 Absorption in Pregnancy and in the Newborn. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 5: 327+, 1957. [With Bacon F. Chow, Robert E. L. Nesbitt, Kunio Okuda, and David W. Smith]1958The Effects of Acute Hypoxia on the Osmotic Pressure of the Plasma. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology 43: 197+, 1958. [With Donald H. Barron, Frederick C. Battaglia, and Giacomo Meschia]Studies on the Absorption of Vitamin B12 in Human Pregnancy with Especial Reference to the Effect of D-Sorbitol. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 76: 91+, 1958. [With Bacon F. Chow, Harry Prystowsky, and Vernon Wong]1959The Alveolar PCO2 and PO2 in Pregnant and Nonpregnant Women at Altitude. Proceedings of the Society for Clinical Investigation 38: 1010+, 1959. [With Donald Barron, William Huckabee, Giacomo Meschia, James Metcalfe, and Harry Prystowsky]A Comparison of the Oxygen Dissociation Curves of the Bloods of Maternal and Fetal Goats at Various pHs. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology 44: 215–21, July 1959. [With Donald Barron, Giacomo Meschia, Harry Prystowsky, and A. Stark Wolkoff]Fetal Blood Studies. XII. On the Relationship Between the Position of the Oxygen Dissociation Curve of Human Fetal Blood and Adult Fetal Hemoglobin. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 77: 585+, 1959. [With Paul D. Bruns, Julian Cotter, and Harry Prystowsky]Fetal Blood Studies. XIV. A Comparative Study of the Oxygen Dissociation Curve of Nonpregnant, Pregnant and Fetal Human Blood. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 78: 489–93, September 1959. [With Paul D. Bruns and Harry Prystowsky]Fetal Blood Studies. XVI. On the Changes in Total Osmotic Pressure and Sodium and Potassium Concentration of Amniotic Fluid During the Course of Human Gestation. Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics 109: 509–12, October 1959. [With Frederick Battaglia, Paul D. Bruns, Harry Prystowsky, and Clayton Smisson]Further Observations on the Metabolism of Vitamin B12 in Human Pregnancy. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 77: 1+, 1959. [With Bacon F. Chow, Harry Prystowsky, Bruno Ranke, and Elma Ranke]The Oxygen Dissociation Curves of the Bloods of Adult and Fetal Llamas. Federation Proceedings 18, 1959. [With Donald Barron, William Huckabee, Giacomo Meschia, James Metcalfe, and Harry Prystowsky] [End Page 90]Transfer of Oxygen Across the Sheep Placenta at High Altitude. Federation Proceedings 18, 1959. [With Donald Barron, William Huckabee, Giacomo Meschia, and Harry Prystowsky]Uterine Blood Flow and Metabolism in Pregnant Sheep at High Altitude. Federation Proceedings 18, 1959. [With Donald Barron, William Huckabee, Giacomo Meschia, James Metcalfe, and Harry Prystowsky]Uterine Blood Flow and Metabolism in Unanesthetized Pregnant Sheep. Federation Proceedings 18, 1959. [With Donald Barron, William Huckabee, Giacomo... (shrink)

Bohmian mechanics, which is also called the de Broglie-Bohm theory, the pilot-wave model, and the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics, is a version of quantum theory discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927 and rediscovered by David Bohm in 1952. It is the simplest example of what is often called a hidden variables interpretation of quantum mechanics. In Bohmian mechanics a system of particles is described in part by its wave function, evolving, as usual, according to Schrödinger's equation. However, the (...) wave function provides only a partial description of the system. This description is completed by the specification of the actual positions of the particles. The latter evolve according to the.. (shrink)

This is an article about bodily pleasures, words and some of the relations between them. It is a turn in a conversation between the author (‘me’) and Marilyn Strathern (‘Strathern’). It talks theory, but not in general. Instead, this theory gets situated in traditions; specified; in relation to concerns; and exemplified with stories to do with the term lekker. This article is in English, but lekker is not an English term. It is Dutch. The stories come from long-term field work (...) in various sites and situations close to home for the author, who is also Dutch. They were driven by a concern with fostering bodily pleasures in contexts such as nursing homes and dieting practices where nutrients and calories are granted more importance. The difficulties of translating lekker (tasty? pleasant? delicious? fun? nice?) are used as a set of intellectual resources. In contrast to Strathern, the author insists on the fleshy particularities of the practices where lekker is spoken. Along with Strathern, the author seeks to escape nature/culture divides. Inspired by Strathern, the author follows lekker around merographically – that is, along iterative trails and between sites and situations that are connected, but only partially so. In homage to Strathern, finally, the author plays with the question of who the collective subject of anthropological theory – we – might be, and who belongs to the others that form its object – they. (shrink)

What attitude does someone manifesting implicit bias really have? According to the default representationalist picture, implicit bias involves having conflicting attitudes (explicit versus implicit) with respect to the topic at hand. In opposition to this orthodoxy, dispositionalists argue that attitudes should be understood as higher-level dispositional features of the person as a whole. Following this metaphysical view, the discordance characteristic of implicit bias shows that someone’s attitude regarding the topic at hand is not-fully-manifested or ‘in-between’. However, so far few representationalists (...) have been convinced by dispositionalist arguments, largely because dispositionalism cannot provide explanations in terms of underlying processes. We argue that if dispositionalism wants to be a genuine contender, it should make clear what it has to offer in terms of understanding of implicit bias. As a concrete proposal, we combine dispositionalist metaphysics with the idea that our normative practices of attitude ascription partly determine what it means to have an attitude. We show that such regulative dispositionalism can account for two prominent normative features of implicit bias. We conclude by suggesting that in order to engage in a meaningful debate with representationalism, dispositionalists might have to put the question ‘what counts as a good explanation?’ back on the table. (shrink)