This book is a vibrant investigation on a deeply human subconscious desire: the desire for omnipresence, or in a nutshell, the desire to be here, there, and everywhere at the same time. After all, why is it not enough just to be in the offline ordinariness of the here and now? To answer this question, Camila Mozzini-Alister does the crossing of two seemingly distant universes: mediation and meditation. Throughout a vigorous archaeology of the relationship between screen and (...) mind allied with an engaging first-person narrative, the author raises awareness of the risks of becoming addicted to social media and obsessed by meditation. This brings forth a vital question: what are the limits for the desire to be more than a body? (shrink)

O presente escrito busca, a partir da sensação de luto descrita por um rapaz frente à desativação do perfil em rede social de sua companheira, esmiuçar o território das materialidades corpóreas, dos vínculos e dos comuns em jogo nas atuais comunicações mediadas digitalmente. Como é possível que nos afetemos por presenças que não mais se restringem ao toque da pele? A partir desta questão, pretende-se acompanhar cartograficamente algumas pistas que possam visibilizar dos processos de produção de afetos que perpassam as (...) contemporâneas estratégias de comunicação mediadas tecnologicamente. (shrink)

In Born to Wonder, Alister McGrath, a prolific Oxford scholar, scientist, and theologian, explores the deepest mystery at the heart of life itself. Life is a gift. We never asked to be born. Yet here we are, living in this strange world of space and time, trying to work out what it's all about before the darkness closes in and extinguishes us. We are adrift on a misty, grey sea of ignorance, seeking a sun-kissed island of certainty, on which (...) we might hope to find clear answers to our deepest and most poignant questions. What is the point of life? Why are we here? And what is it about us that makes us want to ask these questions? As far as we know, we're the only species on earth that asks these questions, and dares to hope that we might find an answer. It seems that we are born to wonder, not merely to exist. From time to time, all of us find ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of awe or mystery, often when confronted with the beauty of nature, whether it is a mountain stream or the vast expanse of ocean waters. That is when we see a flicker of a grander vision of reality, perhaps lying beyond the horizons of our experience. It is as if, for only a moment, a veil is removed, and we catch a half-glimpsed sight of a promised land, waiting to be mapped and explored. This sense of wonder fuels much of humanity's creativity and its search for understanding. (shrink)

In this book, Camila Loew analyzes four women's testimonial literary writings on the Holocaust to examine and question some of the tenets of the fields of Holocaust studies, gender studies, and testimony. Through a close reading of the works of Charlotte Delbo, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Ruth Klüger, and Marguerite Duras, Loew foregrounds these authors' search for a written form to engage with their experiences of the extreme. Although each chapter contains its individual focus and features, the book possesses a unity (...) in intention, concerns, and consequences. In the theoretical introduction that unites the four chapters, Loew eschews essentialism and revises the emergence of the field of Women and Holocaust studies from the early 1980s on, and signals some of its shortcomings. In response, and in accordance with a recent turn in various disciplines of the Humanities, Loew highlights the ethical dimension of testimony and its responsible commitment to the other. In dealing with the texts as literary testimonies—a complex genre, between literature and history—, testimony is freed from the obligation to respond to the requirements of factual truth, and becomes a privileged form to voice the traumatic event, and to symbolically explore the role of excess. (shrink)

I argue that whether abortions are morally permissible depends on whether the fetus has a right to life, the only point of disagreement between the possible theories on this question--the Extreme Conservative, the Middle, and the Extreme Liberal--concerns the relevant temporal proximity to, or degree of probability of actualizing, some selected potential, there is in principle no non-arbitrary way of resolving this disagreement, and hence the problem of abortion is a pseudo-problem inasmuch as it is not theoretically capable of being (...) solved, and legislators should, in the light of this, act as if the Extreme Liberal Theory were true. (shrink)

Existe uma reconhecida proximidade entre os materialistas franceses do século XVIII que teria se mostrado tanto em investigações sobre a natureza quanto à moral e organização pública. Porém, as divergências entre eles podem desencadear um entendimento muito diferente sobre como se considera uma sociedade. Por isso é necessário analisar no detalhe tais divergências para determinar seu ponto nevrálgico. O presente artigo dedica-se à investigação das críticas feitas por Diderot à Helvétius, reunidas em Réfutations d’Helvétius. Para tanto, centra-se na distinta concepção (...) da natureza da sensibilidade humana e sua importância para o desenvolvimento humano no que concerne à educação e a moral. (shrink)

Real Life in China at the Height of the Empire: Revealed by the Ghosts of Ji Xiaolan. Translated by DavId E. Pollard. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2014. Pp. xl + 334. $45.

It is commonly understood that over-arching transcendental values (TVs) play a major role in directly influencing individual and group behaviours, including those relating to the environment. This paper challenges this approach, by arguing that there is good evidence to indicate that personal contexts – rather than TVs – inform many decisions that individuals need to make. As such, the paper argues that individuals use their TVs as a guide to forming contextual values, in a way that TVs only influence daily (...) behaviours indirectly. In order to review the potential utility of these arguments, we offer a secondary analysis of the International Social Survey Programme. The results indicate that contexts can influence behaviours independently of the set of (transcendental) values that people may hold. (shrink)

A bold new approach to combatting the inherent corruption of representative democracy This provocative book reveals how the majority of modern liberal democracies have become increasingly oligarchic, suffering from a form of structural political decay first conceptualized by ancient philosophers. Systemic Corruption argues that the problem cannot be blamed on the actions of corrupt politicians but is built into the very fabric of our representative systems. Camila Vergara provides a compelling and original genealogy of political corruption from ancient to (...) modern thought, and shows how representative democracy was designed to protect the interests of the already rich and powerful to the detriment of the majority. Unable to contain the unrelenting force of oligarchy, especially after experimenting with neoliberal policies, most democracies have been corrupted into oligarchic democracies. Vergara explains how to reverse this corrupting trajectory by establishing a new counterpower strong enough to control the ruling elites. Building on the anti-oligarchic institutional innovations proposed by plebeian philosophers, she rethinks the republic as a mixed order in which popular power is institutionalized to check the power of oligarchy. Vergara demonstrates how a plebeian republic would establish a network of local assemblies with the power to push for reform from the grassroots, independent of political parties and representative government. Drawing on neglected insights from Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicolas de Condorcet, Rosa Luxemburg, and Hannah Arendt, Systemic Corruption proposes to reverse the decay of democracy with the establishment of anti-oligarchic institutions through which common people can collectively resist the domination of the few. (shrink)

There are 12 different Mental Health Acts in Canada, all of which provide for the involuntary confinement of the mentally disordered to protect both them from themselves and others from them. The Acts differ in many ways, but three issues stand out above all: involuntary admission criteria, the right to refuse treatment, and who has the authority to authorize treatment. I first describe how the MHAs differ on these issues. I then take up the methodological question of how to select (...) or construct a MHA from the many, all of which have something to be said for them. Finally, I apply this test to the three main issues in dispute and identify which solutions would be in an ideal MHA. My aim in this last is not to settle the issues but to engage with them and so deepen our understanding of what is at stake. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that some examples of what we label ‘algorithmic bias’ would be better understood as cases of institutional bias. Even when individual algorithms appear unobjectionable, they may produce biased outcomes given the way that they are embedded in the background structure of our social world. Therefore, the problematic outcomes associated with the use of algorithmic systems cannot be understood or accounted for without a kind of structural account. Understanding algorithmic bias as institutional bias in particular (as (...) opposed to other structural accounts) has at least two important upshots. First, I argue that the existence of bias that is intrinsic to certain institutions (whether algorithmic or not) suggests that at least in some cases, the algorithms now substituting as pieces of institutional norms or rules are not “fixable” in the relevant sense, because the institutions they help make up are not fixable. Second, I argue that in other cases, changing the algorithms being used within our institutions (rather than getting rid of them entirely) is essential to changing the background structural conditions of our society. (shrink)

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the criminal law prohibiting physician assisted death in Canada. In 2016, Parliament passed legislation to allow what it called ‘medical assistance in dying.’ The authors first describe the arguments the Court used to strike down the law, and then argue that MAID as legalized in Bill C-14 is based on principles that are incompatible with a free and democratic society, prohibits assistance in dying that should be permitted, and makes access to (...) medically-assisted death unnecessarily difficult. They then propose a version of MAID legislation that gives proponents and opponents of MAID everything they can legitimately want, contend that it is the only way to legalize MAID that is compatible with a free and democratic society, and conclude that it is the way to legalize MAID in Canada and other similarly free and democratic societies. (shrink)

Two of the most poignant decisions in pediatrics concern disagreements between physicians and families over imperiled newborns. When can the family demand more life-sustaining treatment than physicians want to provide? When can it properly ask for less? The author looks at these questions from the point of view of decision theory, and first argues that insofar as the family acts in the child’s best interest, its choices cannot be constrained, and that the maximax and minimax strategies are equally in the (...) child’s best interest. He then proposes a guideline according to which the family can demand LST if it is physiologically possible to preserve a life the child can be expected to welcome, and refuse such treatment if it causes suffering that is “more than can be borne” even if an uncompromised life is expected to emerge. (shrink)

In any healthcare system in which demand exceeds supply—which means any typical public healthcare system—patients cannot always get the care they want or need when they want or need it. It is also unrealistic to suppose that it will ever be otherwise. There have been such advances in medicine and growth in the population that even if we forgot about all other goods such as education, roads, social services, and so forth and put the entire budget into healthcare, there would (...) still be a gap between supply and demand. Moreover, even if we could by that expedient make them match and had eyes only for health, we still should not. For it is now understood that healthcare is the least important determinant of health, lining up well behind poverty and social status. But if suboptimal care is to be our destiny, we must plan how it is to be delivered. (shrink)

"This book presents results from a four-year project addressing the central question: What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse ...

This article first points out that attempts to establish the fo u ndations of an existent ial psycho a nalysis are always pre s e nt in Sartre’s philosophy. After pre s e nt i ng philosophies that are inc o r p o rated and re c reated in the process of giving shape to the project of existent ial psycho a nalysis, it gives examples of how this psycho a nalysis should be. At end, the article suggests in (...) what way Sartre’s criticism to Fre ud ian psycho a nalysis can today ins p i re cont e m p o rary Brazilian psychoanalytical thinking. (shrink)

O artigo analisa os muito mal vistos comentários de Wittgenstein sobre o teorema de Gödel. Não se pretende defender estes comentários, nem atribuir a Wittgenstein algo que ele não disse. De fato, não nos seria possível desconsiderar o que é textual visando fornecer uma interpretação mais palatável das posições de um autor. Nosso objetivo consiste meramente em clarificar as posições realmente mantidas por Wittgenstein sobre o tema, atribuindo, o tanto quanto possível, alguma razoabilidade as mesmas no que diz respeito à (...) economia geral das suas observações sobre a matemática. (shrink)

The present article inquires into the uses of Medea’s tragedy as a representation of political sedition in the XVII century, especially in Hobbes’ works who introduces the myth with few variations three times in his work. We are interested in the semantic shifts in the use of a tragedy that, for multiple reasons –to which we will later return– works as an epochal catalyzer of the political and moral dangers with which regicide is symbolically burdened. This constant role, identifiable in (...) the versions of Euripides, Seneca, and Corneille, combines differently -through history- the pairing of seduction and sedition that we try to reconstruct as a convergent element of the tragic vision of politics that runs through Hobbes work. Finally, we explore how classic tragedy is used by Bramhall in his debate with Hobbes, highlighting the connection between tragic and heretical readings of the philosopher. (shrink)

Throughout its great history, the feminist movement has thought the different facets of the repressive apparatus of the State, as a political problem and as part of its strategy of struggle and survival. In different contexts, antipunitivism —that is, the political response to the philosophy of punishment as the way to act to social issues— has emerged as a crucial element in the diatribes of antisystemic feminisms. However, we could not claim that there is something like a structuring and structured (...) tradition of antipunitivist feminism. Rather, what we observe is a set of concerns and political approaches of some feminisms to the strategies of punishment, in the moments in which the logics of patriarchal domination intersect with the gender-generic selectivity of the repressive apparatuses of the States. In the present work we would like to make the effort to deliberate the interaction between these approaches in order to enunciate what elements would compose an antipunitivist feminism. (shrink)

Food for Thought seeks to enlighten people about their power as individuals to shape industry and society starting from the food they eat. The reader is invited to question who is really benefiting from our present food system through a detailed science-based analysis of food production and consumption. Perussello discusses how the production and consumption of animal products go well beyond the blatant violence against non-human animals: she posits that animal agriculture is procuring a world of disease, unhappiness, injustice, and (...) environmental depletion. Our author then presents an accessible, science-based analysis of animal food production from the perspective of Food Process Engineering. She then provides insightful discussions on the health, ecological, social, and spiritual implications of our diet. This information is supported by powerful photographs taken by Animal Equality's undercover investigators in animal farms worldwide. The author elaborates on the relationship between microbial pathogens (including Covid-19), antibiotic resistance, and the consumption of animal products, rendering Food for Thought a timely reading. The book also unveils myths on "humane" and "sustainable" animal foods, such as organic milk, grass-fed meat, and cage- free eggs, demonstrating how animal agriculture is the antithesis of compassion and sustainability, regardless of farm size, production system, and geographical region. Food for Thought is ultimately an invitation to a regenerated society. This book will help vegetarians and omnivores align their actions with their values and live a happier, more fulfilling life. The unprecedented views on food production offered by this compelling reading will also empower vegans in communicating with their non-vegan peers about the importance of following a plant-based living. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida ha propuesto entender el perdón como lo imperdonable: para que el perdón sea puro, su objeto debe ser lo imperdonable. Plantea, además, que no debe haber ninguna condición para que el perdón sea otorgado. Se busca mostrar que esta pureza debe ser sacrificada, ya que, para que una víc..

Elective ventilation (EV) is ventilation applied, not in the interest of patients, but in order to secure transplantable organs. It carries with it a small risk that patients who would otherwise have died will survive in a persistent vegetative state. Is EV ever justifiable? We argue: (1) The only thing which can justify exposing patients to risk not taken for their benefit is their consent, and we cannot rely on implied consent or third party consent in the case of EV. (...) Thus, absent explicit consent of patients, EV is not justifiable. (2) It is not clear that explicit consent should be sought, or where it is offered honoured, given the potential EV has for deterring organ donors and causing stress to staff and families. (shrink)

Alister McGrath has written to great acclaim on both Richard Dawkins and C. S. Lewis. Here he brings these two intriguing and well-known writers into a conversation. They could hardly have more different perspectives! Engaging with their views is a brilliant way of sharpening up our own thinking on the meaning of life.

Is it possible to provide a theory of truth that is capable of distinguishing the semantic status of paradoxical sentences from that of other ungrounded sentences without bringing meta-linguistic resources into play? We explore an account that extends Kripke's theory of truth with two primitive operators, one standing for the notion of paradoxicality and the other for the notion of hypodoxicality. Our results are mixed. While the paradoxicality operator behaves nicely, a number of restrictions need to be imposed to accommodate (...) the hypodoxicality operator. (shrink)

In this book, the second in the Heart of Christian Faith series, Alister E. McGrath provides an exploration of how we can best understand God using analogies, illustrations, and stories. This short, accessible guide also provides a pastoral and spiritual consideration of the difference that our belief in God makes to the way in which we think about ourselves and our world. With future volumes to examine other core Christian principles, McGrath’s new series will define “mere Chrisitianity” to a (...) new generation for many years to come. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo reflexiona sobre las políticas de la memoria que deberían desarrollarse en sociedades donde han ocurrido masivas violaciones de derechos humanos, y cuyos procesos se guían por los principios normativos de la justicia transicional. Se analizan primero los conceptos de memoria e historia, y la forma como el Holocausto trans formó sus tareas en el siglo XX; luego se examinan dos modelos de responsabilidad propuestos por Iris Marion Young, y se propone cómo usarlos en la justicia transicional. Finalmente, (...) se explican las tareas de la política de la memoria en estos contextos. ABSTRACT The article carries out a reflection on the politics of memory that should be developed in societies where massive human rights violations have occurred and whose pro cesses are being guided by the normative principles of transitional justice. It starts out by analyzing the concepts of memory and history and the manner in which the Holocaust transformed their tasks in the 20th century. Ten it goes on to examine two models of responsibility proposed by Iris Marion Young, and suggests how to use them in transitional justice. Finally, the article explains the tasks of the politics of memory in these contexts. (shrink)

Feminisms in the second half of the twentieth century were reshaped by the efforts to end violence against women. Feminist activists in national and international settings invented concepts to refer to previously unquestioned societal practices as oppressive to women and changed the world by naming them. In this article, I engage with the concepts of femicide/feminicidio : the murder of women for gender reasons. I follow the history of this concept and its incursion into the broader political and public sphere (...) in Latin America. Focusing on the Mexican case, I show how the study of national feminist histories is relevant to the history of women’s activism in the international arena. This article contributes to the history of concepts by showing the linguistic distinctions and connections of feminist concepts in different sociocultural environments. Overall, this research argues in favor of studying feminist concepts with Latin American perspectives to articulate the complexity of the world today. (shrink)

Based on a survey and content analysis of 462 peer-reviewed academic articles over the period 1990–2014, this article reviews theories related to the external drivers of corporate social responsibility and the internal drivers of CSR that have been utilized to explain CSR. The article discusses the main tenets of the principal theoretical perspectives and their application in CSR research. Going beyond previous reviews that have largely failed to investigate theory applications in CSR scholarship, this article stresses the importance of theory-driven (...) explanations of CSR and the complementarity of different theories. The article demonstrates that the current mainstream theorizing of CSR is dominated by theories related to the external drivers of CSR and is less developed with regard to the internal dynamics. The article outlines several productive avenues for future research: the need for multi-theory studies and more research at multiple levels of analysis, particularly at the individual level of analysis. It suggests that CSR scholarship can benefit from combining theoretical insights from a range of established theoretical lenses such as institutional theory and RBV, and can gain new insights from theoretical lenses such as Austrian economics and micro-level psychological theories. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.