Today, DIY -- do-it-yourself -- describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways and to repurpose corporate content in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and "critical making" that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting (...) and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on "doing" and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. _Contributors_Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl. (shrink)

How social media and DIY communities have enabled new forms of political participation that emphasize doing and making rather than passive consumption. Today, DIY—do-it-yourself—describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways and to repurpose corporate content in order to offer political counternarratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and “critical making” that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists (...) in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making. They discuss DIY and design and how citizens can unlock the black box of technological infrastructures to engage and innovate open and participatory critical making. And they explore DIY and media, describing activists' efforts to remake and reimagine media and the public sphere. As these chapters make clear, DIY is characterized by its emphasis on “doing” and making rather than passive consumption. DIY citizens assume active roles as interventionists, makers, hackers, modders, and tinkerers, in pursuit of new forms of engaged and participatory democracy. Contributors Mike Ananny, Chris Atton, Alexandra Bal, Megan Boler, Catherine Burwell, Red Chidgey, Andrew Clement, Negin Dahya, Suzanne de Castell, Carl DiSalvo, Kevin Driscoll, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Joseph Ferenbok, Stephanie Fisher, Miki Foster, Stephen Gilbert, Henry Jenkins, Jennifer Jenson, Yasmin B. Kafai, Ann Light, Steve Mann, Joel McKim, Brenda McPhail, Owen McSwiney, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Graham Meikle, Emily Rose Michaud, Kate Milberry, Michael Murphy, Jason Nolan, Kate Orton-Johnson, Kylie A. Peppler, David J. Phillips, Karen Pollock, Matt Ratto, Ian Reilly, Rosa Reitsamer, Mandy Rose, Daniela K. Rosner, Yukari Seko, Karen Louise Smith, Lana Swartz, Alex Tichine, Jennette Weber, Elke Zobl. (shrink)

Neither the existence of God nor the nature of God is apparent or obvious. If God exists, why is it not entirely clear to everyone that this is so? How can theists explain God's hiddenness, and how plausible are their explanations? God, if God exists, is an omnipotent, morally good, omnipresent being, than whom none greater can be conceived. Surely it is well within the abilities of God to let God's existence and nature be known to us. Why isn't the (...) existence and nature of our Heavenly Father as apparent as, say, the existence of our various earthly fathers? (shrink)

This study looks at two central religious issues--the religious ambiguity of the world and the diversity of faiths--and probes their implications for religious beliefs. Author Robert McKim offers a self-critical, open, and tentative approach to beliefs about religious matters.

These essays critically reassess the widely accepted view that statistical methods of analysis can, and do, yield causal understanding of social phenomena. They emphasize the historical, philosophical and conceptual perspectives that underlie and inform current methodological controversies.

you use it. These two assumptions, which I believe to be false, are based on a more fundamental assumption, that the rule governing the reference of an indexical remains constant from use to use. Contemporary theories hold that the reference of an indexical varies from use to (relevantly different) use, but that the reference-fixing rule of use is You can search..

If the goods of mystery outweigh the goods of clarity, there is some reason to doubt that any particular good of clarity, such as more people adopting theism here and now, is very important. Theists should acknowledge that it is unlikely that it is part of the goal of human life that we should here and now hold theistic beliefs. If any goods that are essential for human flourishing were dependent on our believing here and now in God's existence, then (...) – if God exists – God would not remain hidden from human beings. For, if God exists, it would be easy for us to be provided with more evidence for the existence of God than we currently have. (shrink)

One common justification for the pursuit of profit by business firms within a market economy is that profit is not an end in itself but a means to more efficiently produce and allocate resources. Profit, in short, is a mechanism that serves the market’s purpose of producing Pareto superior outcomes for society. This discussion examines whether such a justification, if correct, requires business managers to remain attentive to how their firm’s operation impacts the market’s purpose. In particular, it is argued (...) that the value of efficiency, despite views to the contrary, cannot be fully separated from the planning and intentions of business managers as long as those managers direct their firms in an ethically responsible fashion. This position is inspired by, and serves as a supportive clarification of Joseph Heath’s so-called “market failures approach” to business ethics. (shrink)

Lockdowns and related policies of behavioral and economic restriction introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are criticized, drawing on three sets of ideas and arguments that are organized in accordance with the likely degree of controversy associated with their guiding assumptions. The first set of arguments makes use of cost–benefit reasoning within a broadly utilitarian framework, emphasizing uncertainty, the role of worst-case scenarios, and the need to consider at least the medium term as well as immediate effects. The second (...) draws on assumptions about the political value of basic liberties. The third draws on ideas about the roles of different stages within human life. (shrink)

Phenomenology is the general study of the structure of experience, from thought and perception, to self-consciousness, bodily-awareness, and emotion. It is both a fundamental area of philosophy and a major methodological approach within the human sciences. Experiencing Phenomenology is an outstanding introduction to phenomenology. Approaching fundamental phenomenological questions from a critical, systematic perspective whilst paying careful attention to classic phenomenological texts, the book possesses a clarity and breadth that will be welcomed by students coming to the subject for the first (...) time. Accessibly written, each chapter relates classic phenomenological discussions to contemporary issues and debates in philosophy. The following key topics are introduced and explained: the methodological foundations of phenomenology intentionality as the ‘mark of the mental’ and the problem of non-existent objects perceptual experience, including our awareness of things, properties, and events the experience of body, self, and others imaginative and emotional experience detailed discussions of classical phenomenological texts, including: Brentano's _Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint _ Husserl's _Logical Investigations_, _Cartesian Meditations, _and On_ the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time _ Heidegger’s _History of The Concept of Time,_ and _Being and Time _ Stein's _On the Problem of Empathy _ Sartre's _Transcendence of the Ego_, _Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions,_ and _The Imaginary _ Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Also included is a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, making this book an ideal starting point for anyone new to the study of phenomenology, not only in Philosophy but related disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, some of today's most eminent political scientists and philosophers address the ethics of nationalism. Rather than focusing on descriptive and prescriptive themes or policy issues, this volume focuses on the deeper moral issues that must be addressed if a policy prescription is to be well grounded.

In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambi-guity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argument’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?

Using ethnographic data gathered at a mandated, community-based drug treatment program for women offenders, this article analyzes how gendered notions of the self and of autonomy shape penal governance. This study examines how psychological models of women's deviance, racialized visions of motherhood, and therapeutic techniques of the self come into tension with expectations of responsible, autonomous citizenship. The program prioritized therapeutic ways of governing its clients over those that emphasized economic self-reliance, rational decision making, and normalizing gender. This is because (...) staff attributed criminal and addictive behaviors to women's inadequate self-understanding and lack of emotional autonomy in personal relations. Staff discouraged women's motherhood and paid labor because they saw these external obligations as a threat to women's autonomous selfhood. This research complicates claims that contemporary forms of penal treatment manage offenders through rational incentives and personal responsibility by pointing to the ways that subject formation is a gendered process. (shrink)

Knowledge of the responsibilities of engineers is the foundation for answering ethical questions about the work of engineers. This paper defines the responsibilities of engineers by considering what constitutes the nature of engineering as a particular form of activity. Specifically, this paper focuses on the ethical responsibilities of engineers qua engineers. Such responsibilities refer to the duties acquired in virtue of being a member of a group. We examine the practice of engineering, drawing on the idea of practices developed by (...) philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and show how the idea of a practice is important for identifying and justifying the responsibilities of engineers. To demonstrate the contribution that knowledge of the responsibilities of engineers makes to engineering ethics, a case study from structural engineering is discussed. The discussion of the failure of the Sleipner A Platform off the coast of Norway in 1991 demonstrates how the responsibilities of engineers can be derived from knowledge of the nature of engineering and its context. (shrink)

The exercise of identifying lessons in the aftermath of a major public health emergency is of immense importance for the improvement of global public health emergency preparedness and response. Despite the persistence of the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa, it seems that the Ebola ‘lessons learned’ exercise is now in full swing. On our assessment, a significant shortcoming plagues recent articulations of lessons learned, particularly among those emerging from organizational reflections. In this article we argue that, despite not (...) being recognized as such, the vast majority of lessons proffered in this literature should be understood as ethical lessons stemming from moral failures, and that any improvements in future global public health emergency preparedness and response are in large part dependent on acknowledging this fact and adjusting priorities, policies and practices accordingly such that they align with values that better ensure these moral failures are not repeated and that new moral failures do not arise. We cannot continue to fiddle at the margins without critically reflecting on our repeated moral failings and committing ourselves to a set of values that engenders an approach to global public health emergencies that embodies a sense of solidarity and global justice. (shrink)

I examine, and defend, the idea that human experience is religiously ambiguous. Necessary conditions for there to be ambiguity of any sort are presented. The sort of ambiguity that (it is later argued) is exhibited in the area of religion is clarified in a series of stages. Then the case is made for the application of this notion of ambiguity in the case of religion.

Inevitably, much of this reply will concern points on which I disagree with one or other of the commentators. I should start, therefore, by saying that I am delighted to find that their thinking is in many ways similar to my own, and that a serious attempt is under way to clarify the concept of information in biology.

BackgroundImplementation science research, especially when using participatory and co-design approaches, raises unique challenges for research ethics committees. Such challenges may be poorly addressed by approval and governance mechanisms that were developed for more traditional research approaches such as randomised controlled trials.DiscussionImplementation science commonly involves the partnership of researchers and stakeholders, attempting to understand and encourage uptake of completed or piloted research. A co-creation approach involves collaboration between researchers and end users from the onset, in question framing, research design and delivery, (...) and influencing strategy, with implementation and broader dissemination strategies part of its design from gestation. A defining feature of co-creation is its emergent and adaptive nature, making detailed pre-specification of interventions and outcome measures impossible. This methodology sits oddly with ethics committee protocols that require precise pre-definition of interventions, mode of delivery, outcome measurements, and the role of study participants. But the strict requirements of ethics committees were developed for a purpose – to protect participants from harm and help ensure the rigour and transparency of studies. We propose some guiding principles to help square this circle. First, ethics committees should acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of research approaches, both formally and informally ; without active support, their members may not understand or value participatory designs. Second, ground rules should be established for co-design applications and communicated to committee members and stakeholders. Third, the benefits of power-sharing should be recognised and credit given to measures likely to support this important goal, especially in research with vulnerable communities. Co-design is considered best practice, for example, in research involving indigenous peoples in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Parmenides: The Road to Reality A New Verse Translation RICHARD MCKIM introduction i. In the history of Presocratic Greek philosophy, the poetry of Parmenides seems to loom up suddenly out of the blue like a spectral mountain peak. Depicting a vision of ultimate reality that transcends the sensory world, his towering verse manifesto revolutionized both how philosophers thought and what they thought about, with profound repercussions that still (...) reverberate today. Parmenides has not, however, been well served by his English translators. He wrote poetry and yet is almost always translated into prose. His poem describes a divinely inspired revelation and yet is persistently translated as if it were an exercise in deductive logic. His Greek can be strange and difficult but is never unintelligible, which is more than can be said for the Anglo-gibberish his translators too often force him to speak. Too many subscribe to the misguided notion that a “literal” translation, as close as possible to word-forword, best represents the original. In fact, the painful English that results, so far from being faithful to the Greek, actually betrays it, creating the obscurities it purports to reflect. Parmenides ’ reputation for being hard to understand is largely his translators’ fault, not his. I’ve undertaken to make amends by translating his poem as a poem, in a loose English approximation of the same meter. My goal is to capture some of what gets lost in prose—to mirror, however dimly, the vital role of poetic form in shaping Parmenides’ vision. The demands of meter make literal translation impossible—not at all a bad thing— while paradoxically freeing the translator to be more faitharion 27.2 fall 2019 ful. I’ve tried to use this freedom to demonstrate that Parmenides is not the obscurantist would-be logician of so many other translations but a philosopher who thinks in poetry, and whose thought is as clear and accessible as it is astonishing. ii. parmenides was a citizen of Elea, a Greek colonial town on the west coast of the ankle of Italy’s boot. Born around 515 BCE, he was an older contemporary of Socrates, who was born in 470 (according to Plato, the two men met when Parmenides was sixty-five). Several other so-called Presocratics were active even later—Democritus for one was Socrates’ junior by a decade. But the label is still useful: while Socrates reoriented philosophy toward moral values and politics, the later Presocratics maintained their predecessors’ focus on physics and cosmology. Their project was to account for the physical workings of the universe—its origins, its elements, and the forces or laws that govern its behavior— without falling back on the gods of traditional myth. But Parmenides splits their story in two. Before him, Presocratics took the reality of the sensory world for granted— a world of multiplicity and variety, motion and change, becoming and passing away. Parmenides radically rejected this assumption. The sensory world, he declared, is an illusion. What really exists is what he calls “being,” whose true nature can be perceived only by the mind. And by clearly perceiving what being must be like, the mind perceives that it can’t be anything like the world as our senses perceive it. Being is the exact opposite of the sensory world in every respect. It is timeless, motionless, changeless and imperishable, an eternal and indivisible One. After Parmenides, the reality of the sensory world needed defending. Subsequent Presocratics had to explain, at a minimum, how it could circumvent his ban on multiplicity and motion. Most notably, he provoked Leucippus and Democri106 parmenides: the road to reality tus into developing their theory of atomism—that the universe consists entirely of atoms in a void. Atoms are microscopic Parmenidean beings insofar as they’re indivisible, indestructible and immutable, but they can be infinite in number, they can move, collide and combine, thanks to the roominess of the infinite void, defined as the absence of being. Never mind that Parmenides ruled out the existence of such an absence—by inspiring atomism, he became, in his otherworldly way, the unwitting godfather of modern physics. As for metaphysics, it may be debatable whether he arrived at the idea... (shrink)

Humeans hold that actions are movements of an agent's body that are suitably caused by a desire that things be a certain way and a belief on the agent's behalf that something she can just do, namely perform a movement of her body of the kind to be explained, has some suitable chance of making things that way (Davidson 1963). Movements of the body that are caused in some other way aren't actions, but are rather things that merely happen to (...) agents. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 35, Issue 8, Page 779-786, October 2021.

Mark Greenberg has suggested that there is a ‘standard picture’ of how law works, according to which the contribution that a legal text makes to the content of the law is constituted by the meaning...

abstract Trusting agents characteristically anticipate beneficial outcomes, under conditions of uncertainty, in their engagement with others. However, debates about trust incorporate different interpretations of risk, uncertainty, calculation, affect, morality and motivation in explaining when trust is appropriate and how it operates. This article argues that discussions about trust have produced a concept without coherent boundaries and with little operational value. Two paradigms are identified, which distinguish the characteristics of trust and confidence. It is argued that a reliance on confidence in (...) human affairs makes trust redundant and that this has undesirable moral consequences. Discussion is illustrated by the UK Government's ‘modernisation’ policy in health and social care, which privileges confidence in systems over trust in moral agents. (shrink)

Što je manje ograničenja s kojima se susrećemo u umjetničkom stvaranju, to je veća naša umjetnička sloboda; kako tehnologija napreduje i pruža nam sve više opcija i sve veću kreativnu fleksibilnost, tako naša umjetnička sloboda cvjeta. Tako glasi narodna mudrost o ovom fenomenu. No je li ta mudrost doista mudra? Mnogi umjetnici i teoretičari umjetnosti smatraju da nije; za Stravinskog, “[š]to više ograničenja namećemo, to se više oslobađamo lanaca koji sputavaju duh”. U radu razmatram ortodoksno gledište i ovu alternativnu perspektivu (...) kroz analizu ograničenja koja proizlaze iz fizičkih, psiholoških i tehnoloških čimbenika, kao i iz heterogene skupine rutinskih praksi koje nazivamo "konvencijama". Kako bih produbio analizu, oslanjam se na perspektivu "rješavanja problema" u umjetničkoj kreativnosti, ispitujući međudjelovanje između izuma i konvencija u umjetnosti, koristeći različite primjere iz filma i rock glazbe. Prema teoriji Jona Elstera, problemi s kojima se umjetnici suočavaju proizlaze iz mješavine izabranih, nametnutih i izmišljenih ograničenja; prema teoriji Davida Bordwella, ti se problemi mogu riješiti replikacijom, revizijom, sintezom ili odbacivanjem postojećih rješenja. Zaključujem da ni pučka teorija, ni alternativna teorija nisu točne; umjesto toga, postoji "idealna zona" umjetničke kreativnosti smještena između onemogućujućeg viška opcija i sputavajuće oskudice istih. Tvrdim da Stravinskijeva protu-teorija umjetničke kreativnosti, iako nije doslovno istinita, djeluje kao "sretna neistina" – epistemološki vrijedna pretjerana korekcija. (shrink)

Spinoza's Ethics is rarely read as a work of political theory. Its formidable geometric structure and its author's commitment to a kind of metaphysical determinism do not seem promising materials from which to fashion a theory of democratic self-government. Yet impressions can mislead. A close reading of the Ethics reveals it to be an impassioned, deeply political book. Its aim is not only to liberate the individualfrom false beliefs and systems of power but also to enable us to act in (...) concert as members of a democratic community. Above all, the work represents a celebration of individuality and the joys of life in all its plenitude. The Ethics provides Spinoza's clearest answer to the question "What is a free people (libera multitudo)? " only briefly alluded to at the end of his unfinished Political Treatise. (shrink)

I begin by examining John Hick’s view of the status of the claims of the major world religions about what he calls “the Real,” in particular his view of the status of the theistic claim that the Real is personal, and of the nontheistic claim that the Real is not personalI distinguish Moderate Pluralism, the view that different conceptions of the Real are conceptions of the same thing, from Radical Pluralism, the view that different conceptions all accurately describe the Real. (...) Although there is a bit of uncertainty about this, Hick seems to espouse a version of Moderate Pluralism, a version which I call Noumenal Pluralism. Moderate Pluralism is a coherent view, but Radical Pluralism is not coherent, and the standatd defenses of it ate not convincing. However, the view that the Real has more than one nature, a view which preserves much of Radical Pluralism, seems to be coherent. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 731-745, December 2021.

This volume provides an updated examination of the role that moral and political philosophy can play in addressing problems in business ethics. The essays contained within its pages represent the work of new scholars and address a wide array of foundational issues such as distributive justice within firms, human rights, ethical challenges of international business, the role of virtue in business management, entrepreneurship and the relationship of markets and market actors with democratic institutions.