Introduction IT is generally agreed that Charles Sanders Peirce was one of America's greatest philosophers, yet even today there is little agreement as to ...

Human development takes place in a social context. Two pervasive sources of social information are faces and hands. Here, we provide the first report of the visual frequency of faces and hands in the everyday scenes available to infants. These scenes were collected by having infants wear head cameras during unconstrained everyday activities. Our corpus of 143 hours of infant-perspective scenes, collected from 34 infants aged 1 month to 2 years, was sampled for analysis at 1/5 Hz. The major finding (...) from this corpus is that the faces and hands of social partners are not equally available throughout the first two years of life. Instead, there is an earlier period of dense face input and a later period of dense hand input. At all ages, hands in these scenes were primarily in contact with objects and the spatio-temporal co-occurrence of hands and faces was greater than expected by chance. The orderliness of the shift from faces to hands suggests a principled transition in the contents of visual experiences and is discussed in terms of the role of developmental gates on the timing and statistics of visual experiences. (shrink)

An intellectual biography of the American philosopher C. I. Lewis.

Dealing with the nature of historical knowledge, this book is concerned with both philosophical and historical questions. It involves considerations as various as statistical hypothesis testing, componential analysis and the problem of the Synoptic Gospels. --.

The “headscarf affair,” Muslim girls wearing veils to school, has generated a storm of controversy in France. This study uses the headscarf affair to explore Muslim immigrant women's views of their place in French society and reveals that even those who disagree with French public opinion often invoke arguments that are more French than North African. Interviews with 41 North African women show that younger, well-educated women defend the headscarf as a matter of personal liberty and cultural expression. Older, poorly (...) educated women either defend or reject the veil but never discuss the issue of secularism. In dismissing the veil, they rely on a different understanding of Muslim womanhood. A third group opposes the veil, arguing that the goal of school is integration. Respondents' answers are interpreted according to structural factors and cultural repertoires, both North African and French. (shrink)

Addresses historical skepticism by presenting histories as testable theories of the past.

The desire to maintain current beliefs can lead individuals to evaluate contrary evidence more critically than consistent evidence. We test whether priming individuals’ scientific reasoning...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the linkages and relationships between the officially prescribed school ethos and that which emerges from social interaction. Qualitative data drawn from one Grant-Maintained-Integrated and one Catholic primary school in Northern Ireland show how school ethos, defined as the observed practices and interactions of school members, often departs considerably from school ethos defined as those values and beliefs which the school officially supports. On the basis of the data it is argued that much (...) of what we understand of school ethos is superficial and contradictory. With this in mind the paper concludes by presenting a new angle on ethos which, when taken in conjunction with the other perspectives, further enhances our understanding of how schools work. (shrink)

The articles in this issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy explore emerging technologies, medical innovations, and shifting moral norms, expanding present discussions around topics in bioethics both old and new. Some question whether novel definitions of death and harm change the moral permissibility of killing, particularly at the hands of a physician. Others question how increased or decreased abilities affect responsibility and achievement. Another illustrates how rhetorical appeals to character have been used to justify otherwise morally illicit actions (...) within the clinic. Together, these articles shed new light on topics in the field of bioethics. (shrink)

This multidisciplinary book brings together a series of critical engagements regarding the notion of ethical practice. As a whole, the book explores the question of how the current neo-liberal socio-political moment, and its relationship to the historical legacies of colonialism, white settlement, and racism, informs and shapes our practices, pedagogies, and understanding of encounters in diverse settings. Drawing largely on the work of Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality, each chapter in this book takes up a particular encounter (...) and unravels the elements that created these meetings in specific times and spaces. Sites of encounters included in this volume range from the classroom to social work practice and from literary to media interactions, and take place both within Canada and internationally. Paramount to the discussions is a consideration of how relations of power and legacies of oppression shape self and others, and draw boundaries between bodies within an encounter. From a social justice perspective, Unravelling Encounters exposes the political conditions that configure our meetings with one another, and inquires into what it means to care, to respond, and to imagine oneself as an ethical subject. (shrink)

This chapter gives an overview and analysis of the consequences and localized effects of the period of endemic war between the Ottomans and Safavids along an extended front in eastern Anatolia over the thirteen years between 1578 and 1590. It assesses how the creation of a new militarised zone where large and very resource-demanding garrisons, constituting a key element of Ottoman military strategy, contributed to the stability or otherwise of the frontier regions in the post-war period. In particular, it evaluates (...) the impact of Ottoman military investment, deployment of resources and local cost-sharing and manpower provision arrangements on social relations, both in cities where the major garrisons were situated and in the surrounding countryside whose resources contributed to their maintenance. (shrink)

Detailed and in-depth investigation of the important but often unappreciated work done by science technicians, in this case in the context of paleontology.

How do children acquire beliefs from testimony? In this chapter, we discuss children's trust in testimony, their sensitivity to and use of defeaters, and their appeals to positive reasons for trusting what other people tell them. Empirical evidence shows that, from an early age, children have a tendency to trust testimony. However, this tendency to trust is accompanied by sensitivity to cues that suggest unreliability, including inaccuracy of the message and characteristics of the speaker. Not only are children sensitive to (...) evidence of unreliability, but they are also sensitive to the positive reasons a speaker may have for the reliability of their testimony. This evidence is discussed in relation to reductivist and non-reductivist viewpoints. (shrink)

Background Over the last decade, the return of results (ROR) in precision medicine research (PMR) has become increasingly routine. Calls for individual rights to research results have extended the “duty to report” from clinically useful genetic information to traits and ancestry results. ROR has thus been reframed as inherently beneficial to research participants, without a needed focus on who benefits and how. This paper addresses this gap, particularly in the context of PMR aimed at increasing participant diversity, by providing investigator (...) and researcher perspectives on and questions about the assumed value of ROR in PMR.Methods Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of investigators and researchers across federally funded PMR studies in three national consortia, as well as observations of study activities, focused on how PM researchers conceptualize diversity and implement inclusive practices across research stages, including navigating ROR.Results Interviewees (1) validated the value of ROR as a benefit of PMR, while others (2) questioned the benefit of clinically actionable results to individuals in the absence of sufficient resources for translating findings into health care for diverse and disadvantaged populations; (3) expressed uncertainties in applying the presumed value of ROR as a benefit for non-clinical results; and (4) and debated when the promise of the value of ROR may undermine trust in PMR, and divert efforts to return value beyond ROR.Conclusions Conceptualizations of diversity and inclusion among PM researchers and investigators raise unique ethical questions where unexamined assumptions of the value of ROR inform study recruitment efforts to enroll minoritized and under-represented populations. A lack of consideration for resources and infrastructure necessary to translate ROR into actionable information may hinder trustworthy community-research relationships. Thus, we argue for a more intentional interrogation of ROR practices as an offer of benefit and for whom. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are well aware that theories are underdetermined by data. But what about the data? Scientific data are selected and processed representations or pieces of nature. What is useless context and what is valuable specimen, as well as how specimens are processed for study, are not obvious or predetermined givens. Instead, they are decisions made by scientists and other research workers, such as technicians, that produce different outcomes for the data. Vertebrate fossils provide a revealing case of this (...) data-processing, because they are embedded in rock that often matches the fossils’ color and texture, requiring an expert eye to judge where the fossil/context interface is. Fossil preparators then permanently define this interface by chiseling away the material they identify as rock. As a result, fossil specimens can emerge in multiple possible forms depending on the preparator’s judgment, skill, and chosen tools. A prepared fossil then is not yet data but potential data, following Leonelli’s relational framework in which data are defined as evidence that scientists have used to support a proposed theory. This paper draws on ethnographic evidence to assess how scientists overcome this underdetermination of specimens, as potential data, in addition to the underdetermination of theories and of data, to successfully construct specimen-based knowledge. Among other strategies, paleontology maintains a division of labor between data-makers and theory-makers. This distinction serves to justify the omission of preparators’ nonstandard, individualized techniques from scientific publications. This separation has benefits for both scientists and technicians; however, it restricts knowledge production by preventing scientists from understanding how the pieces of nature they study were processed into researchable specimens. (shrink)

The real issues in the debate over whether historical explanations conform to the covering-law model concern not only history but human nature, human action, and human freedom. Modifications of the coveringlaw model are possible which may remove some of the objections to it. Human behavior is rule-governed. Rules are made by human agents and learned by human actors. Cultural rules alone do not explain behavior and cannot be used as "covering" generalizations. But when they are combined with appropriate deviance data (...) to yield conformity statements, these statements can be used as explanatory generalizations - with a certain amount of leeway and the understanding that such rules can be changed or eliminated. These generalizations, such as those found in anthropology, perform the function of general laws in history. (shrink)

Over the past decade, Canadian media coverage of street sex work has steadily increased. The majority of this interest pertains to graphic violence against street sex workers, most notably from Vancouver, British Columbia. In this article, the authors analyze newspaper coverage that appeared in western Canadian publications between 2006 and 2009. In theorizing the violence both depicted and perpetrated by newspapers, the authors propose an analytic framework capable of attending to the process of othering in all of its complexity. To (...) this end, the authors supplement a Foucauldian analysis of abjection by considering the work of Judith Butler along with Julia Kristeva's conceptualization of abjection. Using excerpts from western Canadian newspapers, the authors illustrate how the media's discursive practices function as triggers for the process of cultural abjection by inscribing street sex workers with images of defilement. The authors argue that newspaper coverage of street sex workers reinforces the inviolability of normalized life by constantly reiterating the horror reserved for abjected bodies. (shrink)

PurposeThe ability to hear ourselves speak has been shown to play an important role in the development and maintenance of fluent and coherent speech. Despite this, little is known about the developing speech motor control system throughout childhood, in particular if and how vocal and articulatory control may differ throughout development. A scoping review was undertaken to identify and describe the full range of studies investigating responses to frequency altered auditory feedback in pediatric populations and their contributions to our understanding (...) of the development of auditory feedback control and sensorimotor learning in childhood and adolescence.MethodRelevant studies were identified through a comprehensive search strategy of six academic databases for studies that included real-time perturbation of frequency in auditory input, an analysis of immediate effects on speech, and participants aged 18 years or younger.ResultsTwenty-three articles met inclusion criteria. Across studies, there was a wide variety of designs, outcomes and measures used. Manipulations included fundamental frequency, formant frequency, frequency centroid of fricatives, and both fundamental and formant frequencies. Study designs included contrasts across childhood, between children and adults, and between typical, pediatric clinical and adult populations. Measures primarily explored acoustic properties of speech responses. Some studies additionally examined the association of these acoustic responses with clinical measures, and neural measures using electrophysiology and magnetic resonance imaging.ConclusionFindings indicated that children above 4 years generally compensated in the opposite direction of the manipulation, however, in several cases not as effectively as adults. Overall, results varied greatly due to the broad range of manipulations and designs used, making generalization challenging. Differences found between age groups in the features of the compensatory vocal responses, latency of responses, vocal variability and perceptual abilities, suggest that maturational changes may be occurring in the speech motor control system, affecting the extent to which auditory feedback is used to modify internal sensorimotor representations. Varied findings suggest vocal control develops prior to articulatory control. Future studies with multiple outcome measures, manipulations, and more expansive age ranges are needed to elucidate findings. (shrink)

Introduction -- Early days -- Basics -- Social evolution -- Veblen's new theory -- The critique continued -- Veblen's theory of business -- The Great War -- Revolution.

Globally, one in eight people lacks access to potable water; more people die from unsafe drinking water than from all forms of violence, including war. A substantial body of research documents that the privatization of water – led by global financial institutions working in collusion with governments and corporations – does not lead to more people gaining access to safe water. In fact, the opposite is true: privatization leads to both higher cost and lower quality water. For the past century, (...) the dominant focus of transnational organizing has been “from the West to the rest,” and the frequent attention to movements in the global North has led to the neglect of transnational linkages between movements. Drawing on fieldwork conducted on three right to water movements that span three continents, this paper examines effortsto reclaim the water commons,and how struggles have been driven by grassroots movements demanding that democracy, transparency, and the human right to water are prioritized over corporate profit. As feminist scholars have pointed out, the “standpoint” offered by marginalized actors offers important insights into the operation of systems of power and the strategies of survival and resistance that less powerful actors adopt in order to survive and thrive. This paper explores how transnational movements around water and other basic rights engage with and learn from each other. (shrink)

New technologies can upset scientific workplaces’ established practices and social order. Scientists may therefore prefer preserving skilled manual work and the social status quo to revolutionary technological change. For example, digital imaging of rock-encased fossils is a valuable way for scientists to “see” a specimen without traditional rock removal. However, interviews in vertebrate paleontology laboratories reveal workers’ skepticism toward computed tomography imaging. Scientists criticize replacing physical fossils with digital images because, they say, images are more subjective than the “real thing.” (...) I argue that these scientists are also implicitly supporting rock-removal technicians, who are skilled and trusted experts whose work would be made obsolete by widespread implementation of CT scanning. Scientists’ view of CT as a sometimes useful tool rather than a universal new approach to accessing fossils preserves the laboratory community’s social structure. Specifically, by privileging “real” specimens and trusted specimen-processing technicians over images and imaging experts, scientists preserve the lab community’s division of labor and skill, hierarchy between scientists and technicians, and these groups’ identity and mutual trust. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Modal Logic, Intension, and Meaning Knowledge, the Given, and the a priori Values and Morality.

BackgroundReturning neuroimaging incidental findings may create a challenge to research participants’ health literacy skills as they must interpret and make appropriate healthcare decisions based on complex radiology jargon. Disclosing IF can therefore present difficulties for participants, research institutions and the healthcare system. The purpose of this study was to identify the extent of the health literacy challenges encountered when returning neuroimaging IF. We report on findings from a retrospective survey and focus group sessions with major stakeholders involved in disclosing IF.MethodsWe (...) surveyed participants who had received a radiology report from a research study and conducted focus groups with participants, parents of child participants, Institutional Review Board members, investigators and physicians. Qualitative thematic analyses were conducted using standard group-coding procedures and descriptive summaries of health literacy scores and radiology report outcomes are examined.ResultsAlthough participants reported high health literacy skills, 67 % did not seek medical care when recommended to do so; and many participants in the focus groups disclosed they could not understand the findings described in their report. Despite their lack of understanding, participants desire to have information about their radiology results, and the investigators feel ethically inclined to return findings.ConclusionsThe language in clinically useful radiology reports can create a challenge for participants’ health literacy skills and has the potential to negatively impact the healthcare system and investigators conducting imaging research. Radiology reports need accompanying resources that explain findings in lay language, which can help reduce the challenge caused by the need to communicate incidental findings. (shrink)

Expert nurses, as described by the work of Patricia Benner, are at the peak of clinical nursing practice and vitally important in ensuring the best possible patient care and clinical outcomes. The development of Benner's theory and its relationship with the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition provides context for understanding the progression necessary for expert development. Contemporary healthcare challenges present implications to the development of advancing levels of nursing practice. Engagement has been identified as critical to achieving expert practice. I (...) propose the incorporation of the philosophical framework of self‐appropriation from Benard Lonergan as a strategy to develop internal engagement in nurses to facilitate expert practice. I outline the synergy between Benner's theory and the work of Lonergan, which provide overlap and opportunity to overcome barriers to developing expert nursing practice. In the challenging climate of healthcare, there is an obligation to promote engagement and facilitate expert nurse development, necessary for patient outcomes as well as clinical role models, preceptors, and leaders to guide future nurses. (shrink)

This paper defines and analyzes the processes of “othering” as they manifest in the practice and praxis of nursing education. Othering is bound up in the establishment and reinforcement of norms, and shores up power inequities that negatively impact faculty, students, and patients. While previous analyses have addressed othering in nursing more broadly, this paper adds a consideration of the multiple processes of othering that operate within the context of nursing education spaces. Cases from recent nursing education literature are interpreted (...) through the frameworks of exclusionary, inclusionary, and structural othering, and provide specific illustrations of the concepts described. The paper concludes by arguing for an application of norm‐critical pedagogical practice to counteract, disrupt and dismantle othering processes within nursing education. (shrink)

A research community must share assumptions, such as about accepted knowledge, appropriate research practices, and good evidence. However, community members also hold some divergent assumptions, which they—and we, as analysts of science—tend to overlook. Communities with different assumed values, knowledge, and goals must negotiate to achieve compromises that make their conflicting goals complementary. This negotiation guards against the extremes of each group’s desired outcomes, which, if achieved, would make other groups’ goals impossible. I argue that this diversity, as a form (...) of value pluralism, regularly influences scientific practice and can make scientific evidence and knowledge more useful and more reliable. As an example, I examine vertebrate paleontology laboratories, which house a variety of workers with different training and priorities, particularly about the meaning of time. Specifically, scientists want to study fully prepared fossils immediately, conservators want to preserve fossils for future use, and preparators mediate between the other groups’ conflicting goals. After all, one cannot study a fossil encased in rock, and one cannot remove that rock without removing information from that specimen. In response, these coworkers articulate their assumptions in everyday deliberations about how scientific evidence should be made and used. I argue that this exchange of assumptions is crucial for a research community to achieve mutually beneficial compromises that benefit current and future knowledge construction. (shrink)

Across the globe, our work and social lives are increasingly integrated with Information and Communication Technologies, yet massive disparities in the values, uses and benefits of ICT exist. New methods are needed to shed light on unique and integrative concepts of ICT across cultures. This paper explores the use of visual methods to facilitate critical engagement with ICT—defined as situational awareness, reflexive ICT practice and power and control over ICT. This definition of critical ICT engagement is informed by a cultural (...) identity lens, and intends to improve participatory methods in ICT for Development and community technology design and application. Our notion of critical ICT engagement is developed through an analysis of three case studies, each employing visual methods to shed light on concepts and practices of ICT cross-culturally. This paper makes three contributions to the ICT4D literature. First, it establishes a cultural identity lens to chart out cultural differences between researchers and participants, and to develop situational awareness of ICT in context. Second, it defines the conceptual domain of reflexive ICT practice and establishes the key role of researchers in facilitating it. Third, it argues for the need to support participants to develop capacity to engage critically with ICT as a means to influence social and organizational structures. This paper offers a way for researchers and practitioners to engage with cultural issues in community-based research and design using visual methodologies. (shrink)

The disciplines of ethics, science, and the law often conflict when it comes to determining the limits and boundaries of embryo research. Under current Australian law and regulations, and in various other jurisdictions, research conducted on the embryo in vitro is permitted up until day fourteen, after which, the embryo must be destroyed. Reproductive technology and associated research is rapidly advancing at a rate that contests current societal and ethical limits surrounding the treatment of the embryo. This has brought about (...) the question of the adequacy of the fourteen-day rule and whether it is necessary for it be reconsidered and reformed. This paper will highlight some of the tensions that exist in ethics, science, and the law in relation to the extension of the rule. It will be concluded that any move to extend the rule must be accompanied by close consultation with the public as the ultimate stakeholders in how the future of reproductive technology is created, constructed, and contested. (shrink)