Background Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) sparks debate in several countries, some of which allow or plan to allow MAiD where a mental disorder is the sole underlying medical condition (MAiD-MD). Since MAiD-MD is becoming permissible in a growing number of jurisdictions, there is a need to better understand the moral concerns related to this option. Gaining a better understanding of the moral concerns at stake is a first step towards identifying ways of addressing them so that MAiD-MD can be (...) successfully introduced and implemented, where legislations allow it. Methods Thus, this article aims (1) to better understand the moral concerns regarding MAiD-MD, and (2) to identify potential solutions to promote stakeholders’ well-being. A qualitative thematic review was undertaken, which used systematic keyword-driven search and thematic analysis of content. Seventy-four publications met the inclusion criteria. Results Various moral concerns and proposed solutions were identified and are related to how MAiD-MD is introduced in 5 contexts: (1) Societal context, (2) Healthcare system, (3) Continuum of care, (4) Discussions on the option of MAiD-MD, (5) MAiD-MD practices. We propose this classification of the identified moral concerns because it helps to better understand the various facets of discomfort experienced with MAiD-MD. In so doing, it also directs the various actions to be taken to alleviate these discomforts and promote the well-being of stakeholders. Conclusion The assessment of MAiD-MD applications, which is part of the context of MAiD-MD practices, emerges as the most widespread source of concern. Addressing the moral concerns arising in the five contexts identified could help ease concerns regarding the assessment of MAiD-MD. (shrink)

Some theories of personal identity allow some variation in what it takes for a person to survive from context to context; and sometimes this is determined by the desires of person-stages or the practices of communities.This leads to problems for decision making in contexts where what is chosen will affect personal identity.‘Temporal Phase Pluralism’ solves such problems by allowing that there can be a plurality of persons constituted by a sequence of person stages. This illuminates difficult decision making problems when (...) persons have to choose between different life-altering choices. (shrink)

If, as many suppose, pornography changes people, a question arises as to how.1 One answer to this question offers a grand and noble vision. Inspired by the idea that pornography is speech, and inspired by a certain liberal ideal about the point of speech in political life, some theorists say that pornography contributes to that liberal ideal: pornography, even at its most violent and misogynistic, and even at its most harmful, is political speech that aims to express certain views about (...) the good life, 2aims to persuade its consumers of a certain political point of view—and to some extent succeeds in persuading them. Ronald Dworkin suggests that the pornographer contributes to the ‘moral environment, by expressing his political or social convictions or tastes or prejudices informally’, that pornography ‘seeks to deliver’ a ‘message’ , that it reflects the ‘opinion’ that ‘women are submissive, or enjoy being dominated, or should be treated as if they did’, that it is comparable to speech ‘advocating that women occupy inferior roles’.3 Pornography on this view is political speech that aims to persuade its listeners of the truth of certain ideas about women, and of course ‘the government must leave to the people the evaluation of ideas’.4 Another answer offers a vision that is not grand and noble, but thoroughly reductive. Pornography is not politically persuasive speech, but speech that works by a process of psychological conditioning. This view seems common enough in the social science literature. Consider, for example, this description of an early experiment, from a time that pre-dates contemporary political debate. (shrink)

It is widely held that our beliefs can be epistemically faultless despite being morally flawed. Theories of moral encroachment challenge this, holding that moral considerations bear on the epistemic status of our attitudes. According to attitude-based theories of moral encroachment, morality encroaches upon the epistemic standing of our attitudes on the grounds that we can morally injure others with our epistemic practices. In this paper, I aim to show that current attitude-based theories have asymmetric mechanisms: moral features only make it (...) harder for attitudes to secure epistemic merits. I argue that, if attitudes can incur moral injury, failure to form attitudes can too. To make sense of this, I contend, attitude-based accounts require symmetric mechanisms, allowing that moral considerations make it both harder and easier for attitudes to attain epistemic merits. I maintain that, once we recognize this, attitude-based encroachment views must soon concede that they sometimes demand we believe against the evidence. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest that there is a need to examine what is meant by “context” in Social Psychology and present an example of how to place identity in its social and institutional context. Taking the case of British naturalisation, the process whereby migrants become citizens, we show that the identity of naturalised citizens is defined by common-sense ideas about Britishness and by immigration policies. An analysis of policy documents on “earned citizenship” and interviews with naturalised citizens shows that (...) the distinction between “elite” and “non-elite” migrants is evident in both the “reified” sphere of policy and the “common sense” sphere of everyday identity construction. While social representations embedded in lay experience construct ethno-cultural similarity and difference, immigration policies engage in an institutionalised positioning process by determining migrants' rights of mobility. These spheres of knowledge and practice are not disconnected as these two levels of “managing otherness” overlap—it is the poorer, less skilled migrants, originating outside the West who epitomise difference (within a consensual sphere) and have less freedom of mobility (within a reified sphere). We show that the context of identity should be understood as simultaneously psychological and political. (shrink)

It has been well documented that children perceive robots as social, mental, and moral others. Studies on child-robot interaction may encourage this perception of robots, first, by using a Wizard of Oz set-up and, second, by having robots engage in self-description. However, much remains unknown about the effects of transparent teleoperation and self-description on children’s perception of, and relationship formation with a robot. To address this research gap initially, we conducted an experimental study with a 2 × 2 between-subject design (...) in which 168 children aged 7–10 interacted with a Nao robot once. Transparency about the teleoperation procedure decreased children’s perceptions of the robot’s autonomy and anthropomorphism. Self-description reduced the degree to which children perceived the robot as being similar to themselves. Transparent teleoperation and self-description affected neither children’s perceptions of the robot’s animacy and social presence nor their closeness to and trust in the robot. (shrink)

This study assesses the retractions of scientific articles in engineering journals indexed on the Web of Science from 1945 to 2015. The data set was built based on documents containing the keywords retracted, retraction, withdrawal, or redress. We used database exploration techniques, including Structured Query Language and analysis of variance, for data analysis. We analyzed 238 retractions published by 117 journals. The most common reason for retraction was unethical research, and higher impact factors journals tended to publish more retractions. In (...) conclusion, most of the analyzed retractions were the result of unethical research and were retracted by editors. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain why, while Charles Darwin was well recognized as a scientific leader of his time, Claude Bernard never really regarded Darwinism as a scientific theory. The lukewarm reception of Darwin at the Académie des Sciences of Paris and his nomination to a chair only after 8 years contrasts with his prominence, and Bernard’s attitude towards Darwin’s theory of species evolution belongs to this French context. Yet we argue that Bernard rejects the scientific value (...) of Darwinian principles mainly for epistemological reasons. Like Darwin, Bernard was interested in hereditary processes, and planned to conduct experiments on these processes that could lead to species transformation. But the potential creation of new forms of life would not vindicate Darwinism since biologists can only explain the origin of morphotypes and morphological laws by the means of untestable analogies. Because it can be the object neither of experiments nor of any empirical observation, phylogeny remains out of science’s scope. Around 1878 Bernard foresaw a new general physiology based on the study of protoplasm, which he saw as the agent of all basic living phenomena. We will analyze why Bernard regarded Darwinism as part of metaphysics, yet still referred to Darwinians in his latter works in 1878. Basically, the absence of a scientific reception of Darwinism in Bernard's work should not obscure its philosophical reception, which highlights the main principles of Bernard’s epistemology. (shrink)

This article aims to deepen and extend theoretical understanding of mobility by exploring some of the mechanisms by which it operates. It introduces the concept and practices of ‘tacking’ as a frame for examining the creative processes of navigation and improvisation through which people approach and reflect on the irregularities and uncertainties of their everyday rounds, enacted or otherwise narrated as spatial biography – lives conceived in mobile-spatial terms. ‘Tacking’ also travels beyond this frame of reference, i.e. it is ‘good (...) to think with’ across different substantive contexts of social interaction. Tacking suggests ongoing adjustment and modification that respond to shifting circumstances and may create new facts on the ground, which elicit further adjustments. (shrink)

Caroline Franks Davis provides a clear, sensitive, and carefully argued assessment of the value of religious experiences as evidence for religious beliefs. Much more than an 'argument from religious experience', the inquiry systematically addresses underlying philosophical issues such as the role of interpretation in experience, the function of models and metaphors in religious language, and the way perceptual experiences in general are used as evidence for claims about the world. The author examines several arguments from religious experience and, using (...) contemporary and classic sources from the world religions, gives an account of the different types of experience. To meet sceptical challenges to religious experience, she draws extenisvely on psychological and sociological as well as philosophical and religious literature, probing deeply into the questions whether religious experiences are merely a matter of interpretation, whether there is irreducible conflict among religious experiences, and whether psychological and other reductionist explanations of religious experience are satisfactory. She concludes that religious experiences, like most experiences, are most effective as evidence within a cumulative style of argument which combines evidence from a wide range of sources. (shrink)

Résumé Le principe de précaution engage les rapports entre la connaissance, les risques et l’action ; appréhendé d’un point de vue simultanément éthique et politique, il pose également un défi aux institutions et au public pour ce qui est de sa mobilisation dans le débat et de sa mise en œuvre dans l’action, en tant que principe possédant une portée générale. L’article propose une description des problèmes spécifiques que comporte, à cet égard, le choix des interprétations. Cette description conduit à (...) une appréciation positive du nouveau rôle dévolu aux démarches participatives dans la discussion des enjeux éthiques et des risques acceptables. (shrink)

We address how listeners perceive temporal regularity in music performances, which are rich in temporal irregularities. A computational model is described in which a small system of internal self‐sustained oscillations, operating at different periods with specific phase and period relations, entrains to the rhythms of music performances. Based on temporal expectancies embodied by the oscillations, the model predicts the categorization of temporally changing event intervals into discrete metrical categories, as well as the perceptual salience of deviations from these categories. The (...) model's predictions are tested in two experiments using piano performances of the same music with different phrase structure interpretations (Experiment 1) or different melodic interpretations (Experiment 2). The model successfully tracked temporal regularity amidst the temporal fluctuations found in the performances. The model's sensitivity to performed deviations from its temporal expectations compared favorably with the performers' structural (phrasal and melodic) intentions. Furthermore, the model tracked normal performances (with increased temporal variability) better than performances in which temporal fluctuations associated with individual voices were removed (with decreased variability). The small, systematic temporal irregularities characteristic of human performances (chord asynchronies) improved tracking, but randomly generated temporal irregularities did not. These findings suggest that perception of temporal regularity in complex musical sequences is based on temporal expectancies that adapt in response to temporally fluctuating input. (shrink)

The term “race,” and the concept it refers to, namely genetically different human populations in the world, is one of the most intellectually and emotionally charged in society, and in science as well. This article focuses on how human beings recognize individual faces of their own versus another “racial group,” and the term “face race” is used in the context of visual recognition, as traditionally done in the scientific literature. The article reviews the well-known phenomenon that people have greater difficulty (...) distinguishing and recognizing individual faces from a different human population, or “race,” than their own. Experience-based holistic accounts encompass and extend most other proposals, such as a more densely clustered organization of other-race faces in an internal face-space centered on a “norm,” and it leads to a number of interesting predictions about the processing of same race and other-race faces. (shrink)

Background: Neonatal nurse practitioners have become the frontline staff exposed to a myriad of ethical issues that arise in the day-to-day environment of the neonatal intensive care unit. However, ethics competency at the time of graduation and after years of practice has not been described. Research aim: To examine the ethics knowledge base of neonatal nurse practitioners as this knowledge relates to decision making in the neonatal intensive care unit and to determine whether this knowledge is reflected in attitudes toward (...) ethical dilemmas in the neonatal intensive care unit. Research design: This was a prospective cohort study that examined decision making at the threshold of viability, life-sustaining therapies for sick neonates, and a ranking of the five most impactful ethical issues. Participants and research context: All 47 neonatal nurse practitioners who had an active license in the State of Mississippi were contacted via e-mail. Surveys were completed online using Survey Monkey software. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the University of Mississippi Medical Center Institutional Review Board (IRB; #2015-0189). Findings: Of the neonatal nurse practitioners who completed the survey, 87.5% stated that their religious practices affected their ethical decision making and 76% felt that decisions regarding life-sustaining treatment for a neonate should not involve consultation with the hospital’s legal team or risk management. Only 11% indicated that the consent process involved patient understanding of possible procedures. Participating in the continuation or escalation of care for infants at the threshold of viability was the top ethical issue encountered by neonatal nurse practitioners. Discussion: Our findings reflect deficiencies in the neonatal nurse practitioner knowledge base concerning ethical decision making, informed consent/permission, and the continuation/escalation of care. Conclusion: In addition to continuing education highlighting ethics concepts, exploring the influence of religion in making decisions and knowing the most prominent dilemmas faced by neonatal nurse practitioners in the neonatal intensive care unit may lead to insights into potential solutions. (shrink)

Este artigo aborda as motivações para a docência e os desafios enfrentados por licenciandos em psicologia. A metodologia utilizada foi a abordagem qualitativa, e o instrumento de coleta de dados questionário online com questões abertas e fechadas. Participaram do estudo, onze estudantes de cursos de licenciatura em psicologia de quatro instituições universitárias das regiões sul e sudeste do Brasil. Os resultados demonstraram que a escolha pela licenciatura se deu, sobretudo, pelo interesse e curiosidade na área da educação, apropriação dos saberes (...) pedagógicos, ampliação do mercado de trabalho, bem como as possibilidades de atuação profissional. As dificuldades apontadas revelaram: a falta de informações sobre as especificidades do curso de licenciatura e da atuação do professor de psicologia e a ausência de docentes com saberes pedagógicos para atuar na licenciatura em psicologia. Embora seja considerada formação complementar entre os estudantes, observou-se possibilidades de um ensino-aprendizagem de psicologia engajada e inventiva. (shrink)

Mozi (墨子, c. 470 BCE – c. 391 BCE) is a prominent figure in Chinese civilization and an influential ancient thinker of his time. Universal love (兼愛, jian'ai) is an integral part of his thought, with the belief that all actions should be rooted in the idea of care without distinction. It serves as a cornerstone for his ethical and political principles, emphasizing a focus on the betterment of society as a whole. Mozi's views on the structural problem in human (...) predispositions towards partiality inclinations are also discussed. This paper also presents the role of analogy in the development of philosophy in China and how Mohism played a key role in establishing rigorous standards of evidence, logical reasoning, and argumentation that had a lasting impact on Chinese thought. (shrink)

This Correspondence argues in response to Coolsaet et al. (2024) that there is an important role to play for stance-independent justice discussions that are not tied to specific social, political or critical perspectives. These can be valuable for climate research audiences, but also as a basis upon which to critically debate and research injustices.

The majority of food in the US is distributed through global/national supply chains that exclude locally-produced goods. This situation offers opportunities to increase local food production and consumption and is influenced by constraints that limit the scale of these activities. We conducted a study to assess perspectives of producers and consumers engaged in food systems of a major Midwestern city. We examined producers’ willingness to include/increase cultivation of local foods and consumers’ interest in purchasing/increasing local foods. We used focus groups (...) of producers (two groups of conventional farmers, four local food producers) and consumers (three conventional market participants, two locavores) to pose questions about production/consumption of local foods. We transcribed discussions verbatim and examined text to identify themes, using separate affinity diagrams for producers and consumers. We found producers and consumers are influenced by the _status quo_ and real and perceived barriers to local foods. We also learned participants believed increasing production and consumption of local foods would benefit their community and creating better infrastructure could enhance efforts to scale up local food systems. Focus group participants also indicated support from external champions/programs could support expansion of local foods. We learned that diversifying local food production was viewed as a way to support local community, increase access to healthy foods and reduce environmental impacts of conventional production. Our research indicates that encouraging producers and consumers in local food systems will be more successful when support for the local community is emphasized. (shrink)

IntroductionConcussion is a growing public health concern. No uniformly established therapy exists; neurofeedback studies report treatment value. We use infralow frequency neuromodulation to remediate disabling neurological symptoms caused by traumatic brain injury and noted improved outcomes with a novel concussion protocol. Postconcussion symptoms and persistent postconcussion symptoms are designated timelines for protracted neurological complaints following TBI. We performed a retrospective study to explore effectiveness of ILF in PCS/PPCS and investigated the value of using this concussion protocol.MethodPatients with PCS/PPCS seen for (...) their first neurology office visit or received their first neurofeedback session between 1 August 2018 and 31 January 2021 were entered. Outcomes were compared following treatment as usual vs. TAU with ILF neurotherapy. The study cohort was limited to PPCS patients; the TAU+ILF group was restricted further to PPCS patients receiving at least 10 neurotherapy sessions. Within the TAU+ILF group, comparisons were made between those who trained at least 10 sessions using concussion protocol and those who trained for at least 10 sessions of ILF regardless of protocol.ResultsAmong our resultant PPCS cohort leading persistent neurological complaints were headache, memory impairment, and brain fog. PPCS patients in TAU+ILF+CP demonstrated greater net and percent improvement of symptoms compared to PPCS subjects in TAU. PPCS patients in TAU+ILF-CP trended toward significant symptom improvements compared to TAU, and TAU+ILF+CP trended toward greater efficacy than TAU+ILF-CP.ConclusionPPCS patients who received TAU+ILF+CP demonstrated significantly greater improvement as a group when compared to TAU. When used as an integrative modality to treatment as usual in managing patients with PPCS, ILF neuromodulation with use of concussion protocol provided significant symptom improvements. (shrink)

Epigenetics reveals the biological mechanisms underlying the reproduction and even the transmission of social inequalities in health. It also emphasizes the complexity of factors involved in the development of some diseases. This complexity raises new difficulties for theories of justice. Is the equal opportunities theory the most appropriate to solve these difficulties? I demonstrate that epigenetics requires a multifactor model of justice—one that is grounded on principles of fairness, impartiality, and environmental and intergenerational justice. Depending on the point of view (...) assumed (i.e., individual, population-based, or intergenerational), the relevant principle of justice is different. (shrink)

This study investigated the beliefs that formed teachers’ intentions to integrate STEM content into their social studies instruction. Participants were 60 elementary, middle, and high school in-service teachers who attended a summer history workshop on Abraham Lincoln. Data were collected by qualitative and quantitative instruments. Beliefs about likely outcomes of integrating STEM, and beliefs about persons who would approve, or disapprove, of STEM integration were elicited from teachers, and content analyzed. The resulting outcome and normative beliefs were used as stems (...) for items in the quantitative instrument. Quantitative data were analyzed primarily by correlation and multiple regression. This study found that attitude toward the behavior, integrating STEM, was formed by 15 outcome beliefs, subjective norm was formed by five normative beliefs, and that attitude and norm predicted behavioral intention. The theory we used enabled us to calculate the numerical contribution of each of the beliefs that were important in forming teachers’ intentions. The results have implications for theory, research, and practice in social studies education. In the realm of practice, these implications are for the initial preparation of, and the subsequent professional development of social studies teachers, both at the elementary and secondary levels. (shrink)

Si en droit public comme en droit privé, l’ordre public limite la liberté contractuelle et fonde des atteintes à la stabilité des relations contractuelles, sa force impérative apparaît aujourd’hui tempérée par la sécurité juridique et par les exigences du service public. Mais il s’agit en réalité de la confrontation de plusieurs éléments de l’ordre public, en raison de la place croissante accordée dans l’ordre social à des valeurs liées à l’institutionnalisation de la paix sociale.

Background: Conducting video-research in birth settings raises challenges for ethics review boards to view birthing women and research-midwives as capable, autonomous decision-makers. Aim: This study aimed to gain an understanding of how the ethical approval process was experienced and to chronicle the perceived risks and benefits. Research design: The Birth Unit Design project was a 2012 Australian ethnographic study that used video recording to investigate the physical design features in the hospital birthing space that might influence both verbal and non-verbal (...) communication and the experiences of childbearing women, midwives and supporters. Participants and research context: Six women, 11 midwives and 11 childbirth supporters were filmed during the women’s labours in hospital birth units and interviewed 6 weeks later. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by an Australian Health Research Ethics Committee after a protracted process of negotiation. Findings: The ethics committee was influenced by a traditional view of research as based on scientific experiments resulting in a poor understanding of video-ethnographic research, a paradigmatic view of the politics and practicalities of modern childbirth processes, a desire to protect institutions from litigation, and what we perceived as a paternalistic approach towards protecting participants, one that was at odds with our aim to facilitate situations in which women could make flexible, autonomous decisions about how they might engage with the research process. Discussion: The perceived need for protection was overly burdensome and against the wishes of the participants themselves; ultimately, this limited the capacity of the study to improve care for women and babies. Conclusion: Recommendations are offered for those involved in ethical approval processes for qualitative research in childbirth settings. The complexity of issues within childbirth settings, as in most modern healthcare settings, should be analysed using a variety of research approaches, beyond efficacy-style randomised controlled trials, to expand and improve practice-based results. (shrink)

The nature of architecture Building Architecture and Religion The sense of the past Following the example of antiquity.

At first sight, classical architecture, with its continuous revivals and reworking of the forms of Greek and Roman building, would appear to offer a privileged field in which to apply Warburg's central notion of the survival of classical forms and his view of art history's unfolding as a process of remembrance. Yet Warburg himself did not write on architecture. The topic has also largely vanished from the pages of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, though in the past (...) the journal has been the venue for influential publications on classical architecture. By comparing two Warburg circle publications from 1949 — Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower's British Art and the Mediterranean World and Wittkower's Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism — this article shows that architectural history of this kind, developed in the context of the Warburg Institute, is connected not only to Aby Warburg's ideas on Nachleben der Antike and Mnemosyne, but also to the organization and holdings of the Warburg Institute Library. Working in the Warburg Library gives architectural historians the intellectual space to think about architecture in terms of design issues, but moreover as an actor shaping society and culture. This article concludes that Warburg's thought offers important, and thus far hardly explored, starting points for new investigations of the built classical heritage. (shrink)

Background Thirst and dry mouth are common symptoms in terminally ill patients. In their day-to-day practice, palliative care physicians regularly encounter ethical dilemmas, especially regarding artificial hydration. Few studies have focused on thirst and the ethical dilemmas palliative care physicians encounter in relation to this, leading to a knowledge gap in this area. Aim The aim of this study was to explore palliative care physicians’ experiences of ethical challenges in relation to thirst in terminally ill patients. Methods A qualitative interview (...) study with an inductive approach was conducted. Sixteen physicians working in four different specialised palliative care units and one geriatric care unit in different hospitals in Sweden were interviewed. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed with a reflexive thematic analysis. Results When presented with an ethical challenge relating to thirst, physicians attempted to balance benefits and harms while emphasizing respect for the patient’s autonomy. The ethical challenges in this study were: Starting, continuing or discontinuing drips; lack of evidence and traditions create doubt; and lack of interest and time may result in patient suffering. Conclusions All physicians in this study reported that “Starting, continuing or discontinuing drips” was the main ethical challenge they encountered, where some were so accustomed to the decision that they had a standard answer ready to offer patients and families. Physicians reported that drips were a symbol of thirst quenching, life and survival but were not necessary in end-of-life care. Others questioned the traditions regarding thirst and emphasised drips in particular. (shrink)

Caroline Torra-Mattenklott ; Inhaltsverzeichnis ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- PVA 2002.25.

This study aimed to outline the profile of retractions of scientific articles on COVID-19 published in journals indexed in the Scopus database between 2020 and 2021. To analyze the data, we used a bibliometric technique, with the Bibliometrix package in the R-Studio software, and descriptive statistics. Twenty-nine retractions were analyzed, and we found that the most common reasons for retraction were related to ethical issues and that 68.97% of authors have previously retracted articles. We concluded that there appears to have (...) been a change in the publication policies of journals, which resulted in an increase in scientific retractions related to COVID-19 during the study period. (shrink)

Discute-se a interface entre discursos poéticos e proféticos e a área de atuação de seus respectivos especialistas, na Grécia arcaica, a partir de uma análise de certas passagens dos poemas Teogonia e Trabalhos e dias de Hesíodo. O enfoque é a afirmação, na Teogonia , que a consagração do poeta pelas Musas, ou seja, sua união com uma realidade sagrada, lhe permite celebrar o futuro. A afirmação é discutida através da interpretação de passagens em Trabalhos e dias.

Spatial Turns brings together essays that apply a spatial analysis to German literature and other media and engages with specifically German theorizations of ...

This book explores the textual traditions that authorize the history, legitimacy, and authenticity of today's physical posture practice. The volume focuses on why and how yoga communities have adopted various texts they consider sacred or spiritually meaningful. Among the texts discussed are Yogananda's Autobiography, Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, the Bhagavad Gita, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and the YoginīTantra. Famous thinkers referred to include Aurobindo, Yogananda, Osho-Rajneesh, Sogyal Rimpoche, Charles Johnston, and Howard Thurman.Offering a starting (...) point, the ten essays address the nature, selection, and function of various ancient and contemporary texts read in contemporary yoga settings. The attention centers on how and why texts are read, and for whom they are read. As yoga is practiced in ashrams, yoga studios, gyms, meeting rooms, and even private living rooms, scholarly approaches to investigate the connections between yoga and texts are necessarily diverse. The volume aims to inspire further scholarship on the many ways in which various texts are sacralized in yoga communities, and on the reading strategies that are used to interpret them. The collection demonstrates that these issues deserve to be an important part of contemporary yoga studies. The anthology will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Yoga Studies, and Asian Studies, as well as those studying sacred texts. (shrink)