Overview -- Why social workers earn less than accountants : pay equity -- Can you have a job and a life? -- Can a woman do a man's job? -- You want to see my what? : sexual harassment -- Nine to five : not just a movie--the right to organize -- Working other than nine to five : part-time and temporary jobs -- What this nation really thinks of motherhood : welfare reform -- Revaluing women's work outside of work (...) -- How you can help get there. (shrink)

When reflecting on the nature of skilled action, it is easy to fall into familiar dichotomies such that one construes the flexibility and intelligence of skill at the level of intentional states while characterizing the automatic motor processes that constitute motor skill execution as learned but fixed, invariant, bottom-up, brute-causal responses. In this essay, I will argue that this picture of skilled, automatic, motor processes is overly simplistic. Specifically, I will argue that an adequate account of the learned motor routines (...) that constitute embodied skills cannot be given in a purely bottom-up, brute-causal fashion. Rather, motor control is intelligent all the way down. To establish this, I will first review two recent accounts of skill, Stanley and Krakauer and Papineau, which characterize the automatic motor control responsible for the fine-grained movements constitutive of motor skill as brute, low-level phenomena. I will then isolate five key features that should apply to skilled motor control, if these accounts are correct. Together, the accounts posit that motor control is: ballistic, invariant, independent of general action trajectories, Insensitive to semantic content, and independent of personal-level intentions. In the final section of this paper, I will appeal to optimal control theory for empirical evidence to challenge the commitment to skilled action as qualified by the above features. (shrink)

The annual volume of ethics consultations (ECs) has been a topic of interest in the bioethics literature, in part because of its presumed relationship to quality. To better understand factors associated with EC volume, we used multiple linear regression to model the number of case consultations performed in the last year based on a national survey. We found that hospital bed size, academic affiliation, and urban/rural location were all associated with EC volume, but were not the primary drivers. Instead, these (...) variables affected EC volume through three other variables, all of which relate to ethics staffing: the percentage of case consultations performed by a single individual; whether the survey respondent’s main role at the hospital contained the word “ethics”; and especially, the number of full-time ethics program staff. We conclude that EC is an example of supply-sensitive care, and further research is needed to determine the optimal level of EC activity. (shrink)

Although affective facial pictures are widely used in emotion research, standardised affective stimuli sets are rather scarce, and the existing sets have several limitations. We therefore conducted a validation study of 490 pictures of human facial expressions from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database (KDEF). Pictures were evaluated on emotional content and were rated on an intensity and arousal scale. Results indicate that the database contains a valid set of affective facial pictures. Hit rates, intensity, and arousal of the 20 (...) best KDEF pictures for each basic emotion are provided in an appendix. (shrink)

Virtue ethicists often appeal to practical skill as a way of understanding the nature of virtue. An important commitment of a skill account of virtue is that virtue is learned through practice and not through study, memorization, or reflection alone. In what follows, I will argue that virtue ethicists have only given us half the story. In particular, in focusing on outputs, or on the right actions or responses to moral situations, virtue ethicists have overlooked a crucial facet of virtue: (...) namely, that through practice, virtuous agents develop a cache of perceptual skills that allow them to attend to, detect, and identify the relevant features of a perceptual array, the selection of which is central to recognizing and categorizing a situation as a moral situation of a particular type. In order to support this claim, I will appeal to empirical studies of motor expertise, which show that an expert's capacity to attend to and recognize relevant perceptual inputs differs in important respects from the layperson's. Specifically, I will argue that performing the right action in the right circumstances improves an agent's ability to attend to and identify the morally relevant features of a moral situation. (shrink)

In the past 20 years or so, the psychological research on imitation has flourished. However, our working definition of imitation has not adequately adapted in order to reflect this research. The closest that we've come to a revamped conception of imitation comes from the work of Michael Tomasello. Despite its numerous virtues, Tomasello's definition is in need of at least two significant amendments, if it is to reflect the current state of knowledge. Accordingly, it is our goal in this paper (...) to reformulate Tomasello's definition of imitation in order to account for both the latest empirical findings and the conceptual considerations that follow from them. Specifically, we argue that a satisfactory definition of imitation ought to be formulated as follows: imitation is the reproduction of an observed behavior where the agent imitating recognizes the behavior of the demonstrator as goal-directed and has some particular interest in or concern for replicating the precise technique performed by the aut.. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are cases of explanatory induction in mathematics. To do so, I first introduce the notion of explanatory definition in the context of mathematical explanation. A large part of the paper is dedicated to introducing and analyzing this notion of explanatory definition and the role it plays in mathematics. After doing so, I discuss a particular inductive definition in advanced mathematics—CW\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${ CW}$$\end{document}-complexes—and argue that it is (...) explanatory. With this, we see that there are cases of explanatory induction. (shrink)

I argue for the usefulness of the evolutionary kind of biological individual.

Walt Disney’s movie, The Pagemaster (1994) begins on a dark and stormy night, with a young boy stumbling into an immense, gothic-styled library for refuge from the rain. Once inside, he is soon carried away by a tumultuous river of coloured paints, transformed into an animated characterization of himself, and thrust into an animated world of literature, where he battles Captain Hook, flees Moby Dick, and participates in other classic tales of adventure, horror, and fantasy. -/- Adults might understand the (...) film as a fanciful description of how they feel when reading a lively book. Although they would probably not imagine themselves tagging along with the animated characters like a 4th musketeer, they might very well claim that they enter a fiction through the viewpoint of one or more of the characters, experiencing, imaginatively, mental images of the sights, sounds, smells, and movements that the character would experience. Under this description, the reader would be forming multi- modal images that would correspond directly to what the literary characters are doing, thinking, and experiencing. When a fictional hero whips out his sword and slashes a rope in half, the reader might form a visual image of the hero’s determined face, an auditory image of the sound of the whizzing sword, and a motor image of an extended arm movement. I call such an imitative participation, by use of mental images in any modality, a simulation. -/- I suggest that this imitative experiencing of a fiction through the production of multi-modal imagery - a simulation - is not the only way in which readers might engage a literary text. In this paper I explore the hypothesis that readers might use their own bodily processes - those of the somato-viscero-motor system (SVM) for a non-imitative activity that I call a reinterpretation and that the reinterpretation might make a distinctive contribution to the reading process. As an example of a simulation and a reinterpretation, take the SVM experience of the reader’s breathing. A simulation would occur if the text describes a character who is taking deep breaths of air and the reader creates a mental image representing the experience of breathing. In this case, the reader’s mental image of breathing would stand for a property of the literary work - the fictional experience of breathing. -/- By contrast to the simulation, a reinterpretation would occur if the text describes a character who is gazing at long, wispy clouds that extend outward from a horizon and the reader uses his own experience of breathing to stand for the visual sense of looking at a long, continuous expanse of filmy white: the reader’s actual breathing would stand for a property of the literary work - the fictional experience of seeing. Breathing is not the same as seeing. This should help clarify the following definition. -/- I hypothesize that a reinterpretation occurs when the reader becomes aware of some component of the SVM system and reinterprets it as a property of the literary work that is not the same as that particular SVM process. The SVM experience is projected into the literary work. (shrink)

This commentary responds to the suggestion that we can humanize online university education through the design decisions we make about it. It offers several reasons why the suggestion may be unrealistic, given that choice in online course design is increasingly narrowed by the prevalence of relatively powerless part-time instructors, student preference for convenient online offerings, and the use of learning management systems. However, if our design decisions are constrained, it becomes all the more important that we engage in critical conversations (...) about what we gain and lose when technology is used to automate or mediate university education. (shrink)

The author examines the social construction of racial-ethnic identity and expectations for alliances based on identity in two feminist organizations. She considers the conditions in which assumed alliances work and fail, finding that race played a different role in the search for friendship and political connection among white women and among women of color. Women of color saw racial alliances as crucial in settings dominated by whites and often felt betrayed when alliances failed. White women did not speak of their (...) connections with one another as racial alliances, nor did they express betrayal when they failed. When assumed alliances failed, women were often surprised by unanticipated cross-racial connections. Such connections provided insight to the politically constructed nature of all alliances, even those based on identities. These insights, created in and through the differences between these activists, represent the opportunity for chosen alliances, what June Jordan calls “partnerships for change.”. (shrink)

... parmi les meilleurs raisonneurs et les plus profonds metaphysiciens de son siecle." This prophecy of Rousseau's has been only partially fulfilled. ...

An ethical matrix is a method—or tool—for carrying out an ethical assessment of technology and policy options. This paper describes the ethical matrix method and applies it to the example of GM rape seed. It is argued that added public legitimacy is achieved when the matrix method is used in a participatory process.

“What is the basis of political legitimacy?” This question is one that lies at the foundation of any political theory, for the answer to it will determine virtually all subsequent questions relating to the relationship between man and the state. However, intricately related to this question is another, perhaps equally fundamental if not more so than this concerning the basis of political legitimacy. John Locke, for instance, in his The Second Treatise of Government, entertained the subject “What is political or (...) civil society” before proceeding to probe the origins of that political society. Indeed, Locke places a definition of the nature of political power at the very outset of his Treatise, contending, in a definition that has not been improved upon by subsequent theoreticians of the natural rights persuasion, that. (shrink)

In a period of decreasing aid budgets and increasing private sector engagement in the Global South, Inclusive Business-referring to a business model that integrates marginalized people in the company’s value chain as suppliers, distributors, retailers, or customers to the mutual benefit of both the company and the community has become a preferred development strategy. However so far the impacts of inclusive business models on the livelihoods of these ‘marginalized people’ have remained elusive. With this paper I aim to contribute to (...) a better understanding of the impacts perceived by the communities. Starting from the idea that the rural landscape is socially differentiated, I scrutinize the impact of inclusive business models on the ground at the level of the farmer communities in two very different settings: the savannah of North-Ghana and the green valleys on the slope of Mount Kenya in East Kenya. The findings indicate that diverse groups in the communities are impacted differently by inclusive business models. Both companies catalyse trajectories that in the long term might have negative repercussions on the livelihoods of smallholders. These long-term, or unintended, impacts are obfuscated in frameworks used to assess inclusive business models. Inclusive business models can only be a partial answer in overcoming poverty and food insecurity. (shrink)

Satirical news is often characterized as a hybrid genre that consists of three important communicative functions: it is (1) humoristic, (2) informative, and (3) evaluative. The Humoristic Metaphors in Satirical News (HMSN) typology demonstrates that metaphors can be utilized by satirists to express this hybridity by consisting of a combination of one or more of satire’s core communicative functions. Nevertheless, the underlying principles through which metaphors are capable of humorously explaining and/or criticizing current affairs are less clear. To broaden our (...) understanding of how metaphorical humor is used in satirical news to fulfill these functions, we integrate the HMSN typology with the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The GTVH assumes that all verbal humor must draw from six interdependent Knowledge Resources (KRs). Through a content analysis of metaphorical humor used across various American satirical news shows, we investigated how these KRs are used to fulfill satire’s core communicative functions across the various metaphorical sub-types of the HSMN typology. We found that: (1) some KRs can help fulfill the communicative function(s) of metaphorical jokes, while (2) some KRs constrain the options available for the expression of certain communicative function(s) or other KRs. (shrink)

Friendship alters the moral demands and ideals that we live with. In this dissertation I examine precisely how those ideals must change if they are to accommodate the realities of friendship. I begin by surveying Aristotle, Kant, and Montaigne, and showing that each of those writers had useful insights into the way in which we reconceptualize the self when we become close friends with another person. I suggest that Kant and Montaigne were both right that we tend to merge our (...) identities with our friends. I then argue that if we value this sense of unity with our friends, certain changes must be made to common normative concepts. In particular, I argue that paternalistic intervention is more justified between friends than between strangers, because such intervention presupposes that the two individuals have a kind of shared autonomy. This presupposition is only true for friends, not for strangers. ;I further argue that the concept of respect must be reshaped if it is to be useful between friends. Kant noted that respect is a concept which distances people from one another, and such distance is not always appropriate between friends. I suggest that the notion of respect can be restructured so that it does not require distance and separation. Finally, I suggest that self-respect must also be restructured if the self is shared. (shrink)

Substantial form is a pivotal topic in the Metaphysics. While being is the subject of the entire work, ousiai are the primary cases of being. Among ousiai, individual material things are the ones directly available for examination. Substantial form is the chief determinant of such things. Aristotle assures us, moreover, that an understanding of this type of form will carry us forward, eventually, to an understanding of the formal being which exists totally apart from matter and change--the necessary reality somewhat (...) inadequately discerned by Plato. (shrink)

Often distinguished by their characteristic five-petalled rosette emblems, objects dedicated to the Rasūlid sultans of Yemen in Egypt or Syria have long been identified as a distinct corpus in histories of Islamic art. Whether treated singly or as a group, these objects have usually been positioned in the periphery of discussions about Mamlūk luxury arts or cited briefly as evidence of diplomatic relations between the Mamlūk and Rasūlid leadership. Perhaps reflecting a general marginalization of South Arabia in the historiographic traditions (...) of Islamic art scholarship, narratives centered on the imperial Mamlūk enterprise tend to overshadow both the Rasūlid context for these objects and the complexities of their global material histories. This essay explores these two themes together, drawing broadly on visual culture connected with the Rasūlid court to analyze a selection of case studies. It reviews art historical literature on the Rasūlid-Mamlūk corpus as reflected in European and North American scholarship, outlines the various modalities by which this material exchange is understood to have taken place, explores the setting for Rasūlid patronage and collection of such objects, and examines their material afterlives. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the question of sexual difference, taking into account important shifts in feminist thought, post-humanist theories, and queer studies. The contributors offer new and refreshing insights into the complex question of sexual difference from a post-feminist perspective, and how it is reformulated in various related areas of study, such as ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, biology, technology, and mass-media.

The focus of this note is the simile attached to Menelaus’ wound in Iliad 4 and its Virgilian transformation in Aeneid 12. My goal is to flesh out and specify the sense of the Homeric simile; as the parentheses in my title suggest, I call upon Virgil chiefly as a fellow-interpreter. Since an important part of my argument is that the simile only takes on its full significance when considered in its narrative context, I begin by setting the scene.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin LiteratureEllen OliensisAndrew Laird. Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin Literature. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. xx + 358 pp. Cloth, $85.Prospective readers should not be put off by the title of this ambitious book. Though "speech presentation" (the use of direct discourse [DD], free indirect discourse [FID], etc.) may seem a (...) rather narrow and technical topic, Laird makes a persuasive case for its manifold significance. And while he foregrounds "Latin literature," Laird ranges freely across centuries and genres, drawing on texts as diverse as the Hittite SongofUllikummi, Sannazaro's DepartuVirginis, and a 1994 story in the DailyTelegraph. The result is a thoughtful and engaging study from which readers of very different interests and stripes will be able to profit. Three chapters on the theory of narrative representation and speech presentation are followed by another three exploring representational strategies in (mostly Latin) historiography, epic, and the novel; a final chapter treats the speeches of divine messengers in epic as "allegories of representation." The book is framed by a brief introduction and conclusion, the latter capped by a suggestive coda pointing to the multiple lines of research, across various disciplines, which might be opened up by a more scrupulous consideration of speech presentation.In the introduction, Laird outlines the benefits, practical and theoretical, of focusing on speech presentation: "First, [speech presentation] can throw light on the themes and stylistic features of particular texts. Second, functions of speech [End Page 596] presentation bear on broader concerns including form and content, representation, genre, ideology, and intertextuality" (xv). These claims are amply justified in the ensuing chapters. Laird's theoretical orientation generates an abundance of local insights. He suggests that Tacitus' contrasting introductions to the speeches of Calgacus and Agricola--the distancing locutusfertur versus the confident itadisseruit (Agr. 29.4, 33.1)--help differentiate barbarian from Roman by implying "that Agricola's oration possesses a greater ontological stature than Calgacus'" (126); that Encolpius' exploitation of what Laird dubs "angled narration of dialogue" (reserving DD for his interlocutors' speech and ID for his own) produces the effect of narratorial transparency in the Cena (217-20); that the use of direct discourse for Mercury's message and indirect for Fama's in Aeneid 4 "enhances the essential contrast between the nature of the two messengers" (272). In one of his boldest discussions (192-205), Laird reviews the unanswered speeches in the Aeneid and concludes that Virgil's epic is far more rigid than previous epics in associating speech with authority and dutiful silence with subordination (Laird interestingly contrasts Homeric epic, which proclaims this hierarchy but doesn't practice it with anything like Virgil's consistency); Laird goes on to speculate that this strong linkage of speech with authority also applies to Virgil's own epic discourse, which (like Aeneas' narration in books 2 and 3) is delivered to readers who are silent or even silenced.Occasionally, the marriage of theory and interpretation founders. For example, Laird's account of the multiple literary echoes in Encolpius's seaside soliloquy (Satyricon 81.1-82.1, discussed at 221-24) shows little trace of the theoretical self-consciousness displayed in his earlier remarks on the ideological character of intertextuality and its proximity to speech presentation. And the argument that the opening sequence of the Aeneid is designed to entice the reader into Virgil's "realist" fiction (157-64) rests on some unconvincing claims (e.g., that Aeneas' first speech "begins with a prayer" addressed to "the gods, or even the poem's audience" [162], and that Juno's first soliloquy has "the poem's audience or readers" as "her first addressees" [164]). Elsewhere, Laird suggests that Aeneas' parenthetical eloquaransileam? (Aen. 3.39) "could be FID conveying his own doubt and hesitation at the time of the incident he is describing" (182-83); but surely the question makes sense only if it is attached, not to the narrated past (where the relevant question would be "shall I keep pulling on this uncanny tree?") but to the present of narration.Although Laird, an astute reader, has much to teach us about... (shrink)

This essay is prompted, in part, by a spate of alarmist articles in the media over the past several years concerning what journalists have called "the creativity crisis,"2 articles claiming, in other words, that American creativity is in decline. A corresponding call has arisen to seek remedies and determine how creativity might be fostered in the lives of children so as to stem the tide of this (alleged) decline. While taking these dramatic concerns and pronouncements cum grano salis, this article (...) responds, nevertheless, by extracting a set of themes drawn from the childhoods of three individuals whose remarkable contributions to the disparate fields of science, classical music, and visual art are beyond.. (shrink)

Shifting Burdens explores the process and features of mental patient deinstitutionalization as it occurred in America in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper examines the disillusionments American society had with mental institutions, such as faltering standards of care, staff failures, and inadequate treatment options. These issues resulted in the movement towards deinstitutionalization, resulting in the burden of care for displaced mental patients being shifted onto community homes and patients families. Shifting Burdens challenges the notion that deinstitutionalization at the time was (...) a successful endeavour, as the question of care for mental patients continues to exist today. (shrink)