The Book of Tobit is replete with various instances of ‘othering’ that hold the potential for alienation and a variety of strong emotions. For example, Tobit ‘others’ Anna by insisting that she had stolen a goat, whereas she had not. Following a Jungian paradigm, this paper reads the various ‘otherings’ inherent in the interrelationships between the characters as reflections of the main character’s relationship with himself. In so doing, it analyses these relationships through Jung’s concepts of Eros/Logos and anima/animus to (...) determine the nature of Tobit’s ‘self-othering’ and its effect on those around him. It is concluded, among others, that Tobit’s multiple ‘self-otherings’ and his ‘othering’ of ‘other’ characters are because of his suppression of his anima-Eros function that has, in turn, given rise to a dominant animus-Logos. (shrink)

In this article we explore and contrast the uses and gratifications of the internet for blind/visually impaired and deaf/hearing impaired individuals. The uses and gratifications approach integrates the different issues that surround disabled persons’ internet use into one rich and coherent framework which allows a better understanding of the relationship between benefits obtained from internet use, underlying needs and the barriers that create gaps between gratifications sought and obtained. Based on 21 in-depth interviews, our study shows that both visually and (...) hearing impaired individuals use the internet mostly for gathering information and for communicating with friends and family; meeting new people online was not a priority need. To a great extent these internet uses are driven by the underlying need for independence and active agency. Although our visually and hearing impaired informants share this need, the two groups differ in the gratifications obtained from the internet due to different barriers that hinder their use. (shrink)

Feminist scholars advocate the adoption of distinctive values in research. While this constitutes a coherent alternative to the more frequently cited cognitive or scientific values, they cannot be taken to supplant those more orthodox values. Instead, each set might better be understood as a local epistemology guiding research answerable to different cognitive goals. Feminist scholars advocate the adoption of distinctive values in research. While this constitutes a coherent alternative to the more frequently cited cognitive or scientific values, they cannot be (...) taken to supplant those more orthodox values. Instead, each set might better be understood as a local epistemology guiding research answerable to different cognitive goals. (shrink)

I define ‘philosophical scepticism’ as the view that philosophers do not and cannot know many of the substantive philosophical claims that they make or implicitly assume. I argue for philosophical scepticism via the ‘methodology challenge’ and the ‘disagreement challenge’. I claim that the right response to philosophical scepticism is to abandon the view that philosophy aims at knowledge, and (borrowing from David Lewis) to replace it with a more modest aim: that of finding ‘equilibria’ that ‘can withstand examination’. Finally, I (...) consider what our attitude to our own philosophical theses should be. (shrink)

Letting denote ‘would’ counterfactual conditionals like If I had looked in my pocket, I would have found a penny and letting denote ‘might’ counterfactual conditionals like If I had looked in my pocket, I might have found a penny,David Lewis’s thesis regarding the connection between these two types of conditionals is that.

Introduction.--Fragmenta: Aristaios. Aresas (Aisara). Boutheros. Brontinos. Ekphantos. Euryphamos. Eurytos. Hipparchos. Kleinias. Lysis. Onatas. Sthenidas.--Index fontium.

What happens when a gallery space dedicated to exhibiting European art is interrupted by introducing African art objects? This essay reviews a temporary exhibition that introduced works of art from Africa, the property of Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum, into the exhibition space of the Bode Museum, whose collection consists of European art objects from the Classical to the Baroque periods. I offer a reading that is quite different than the curators’, proposing art museums as institutions where philosophies are expressed in the (...) form of art objects. (shrink)

exactly as the essay appears in Skepticism. It's pretty close, though. In the version that appears in the book, page references to other essays in Skepticism refer to page numbers in the book, while below page references are, for the most part, to the original place of publication of the essays referred to. Also, I below make one correction (in red) of a factual error..

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are (...) often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence. (shrink)

Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only _a posteriori_--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke’s views about the existence and scope of the necessary _a posteriori_ to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the necessary _a posteriori_; but they rarely attempt to provide any (...) semantic arguments for this extension, or engage with the critical work being done by philosophers of language. This collection brings authors on both sides together in one volume, thus helping the reader to see the connections between views in philosophy of language on the one hand and the metaphysics of science on the other. The result is a book that will have a significant impact on the debate about essentialism, encouraging essentialists to engage with debates about the semantic presuppositions that underpin their position, and, encouraging philosophers of language to engage with the metaphysical presuppositions enshrined in Kripkean semantics. (shrink)

My topic is Alvin Plantinga’s ’solution’ to one of the many forms that the problem of evil takes: the modal abstract form. This form of the problem is abstract in that it does not deal with the amounts or kinds of evil which exist, but only with the fact that there is some evil or other. And it is modal in that it concerns the compossibility of the following propositions, not any evidential relation between them: God is omnipotent, omniscient, and (...) wholly goodand There is evil in the world. (shrink)

(2001). INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE. Ethics & Behavior: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1-1.

Infants are unable to make their own decisions or express their own wishes about medical procedures and treatments. They rely on surrogates to make decisions for them. Who should be the decision-maker when an infant’s biological parents are also minors? In this paper, we analyse a case in which the biological mother is a child. The central questions raised by the case are whether minor parents should make medical decisions on behalf of an infant, and if so, what are the (...) limits to this decision-making authority? In particular, can they refuse treatment that might be considered best for the infant? We examine different ethical arguments to underpin parental decision-making authority; we argue that provided that minor parents are capable of fulfilling their parental duties, they should have a right to make medical decisions for their infant. We then examine the ethical limits to minor parents’ decision-making authority for their children. We argue that the restricted authority that teenagers are granted to make medical decisions for themselves looks very similar to the restricted autonomy of all parents. That is, they are permitted to make choices, but not harmful choices. Like all parents, minor parents must not abuse or neglect their children and must also promote their welfare. They have a moral right to make medical decisions for their infants within the same ‘zone of parental discretion’ that applies to adult parents. We conclude that adult and minor parents should have comparable decision-making authority for their infants. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present a new distributed interactive career decision-making framework in which person and context together determine the development of a sustainable career. We build upon recent theories from two disciplines: decision theory and career theory. Our new conceptual framework incorporates distributed stakeholders into the career decision-making process and suggests that individuals make decisions through a system of distributed agency, in which they interact with their context to make each career decision, at varying levels of (...) participation, from proactive to reactive. We focus on two key career decision-making drivers originating from the person, and two key drivers from the career context. This manuscript challenges the individual-driven approach to career development, and instead proposes that a process of distributed career decision-making takes place between each person and the various stakeholders, both individual and institutional, that also drive their career. Career seekers and counselors can use this framework to supplement an individual-focused approach and incorporate the role of distributed decision-makers in sustaining an individual’s career. Empirical research is needed to explore and test the applicability of the framework to career decisions in practice. (shrink)

The author analyzes the interrelations of the concepts of symbol, sign, image, and consciousness. She establishes connections between the theories of Mamardashvili and his colleagues and those of the French semioticians Derrida and Deleuze.

The preceding two sections have considered, respectively, the discreditation of psychological belief, and of propositional belief, which begins with the claim that a belief possessed by some person is non-epistemically explicable and ends with the claim that that person is unreasonable or that that belief is (probably) false. Obviously, only certain strategies of discreditation were discussed, and those only partially. But if the examples of discrediting strategies were representative, and the remarks made about them were correct, what, if anything, follows?It (...) seems clear that the sheer fact that a person's belief is non-epistemically explicable entails very little if anything about the person's reasonability in holding it or the probable falsehood of the belief in question. Nor does the fact that a basic belief is held without reason or grounds seem to speak against the rationality of its believer - not at least with respect to the sort of propositions we called structural. It does not follow that one cannot rationally assess competing structural beliefs - that is another, and given the present argument an entirely open, question. It does seem correct that the more restrictive axioms of the ethics of properly held basic beliefs are ill-suited to deal responsibly with the acceptance of structural propositions. And at least some religious propositions - God exists among them - seem to me to be of that sort. Of course, that raises the question of what, exactly, a structural proposition is - which, again, is another topic.If the argument of this essay is correct, the shift from considering whether some particular (and perhaps idiosyncratic) person is reasonable in accepting some proposition, in cases where this is an interesting and debateable matter, to whether (on the whole) this proposition is one that can be accepted without rendering oneself unreasonable, seems to be an issue usually not capable of rational resolution without engaging in some sort of direct assessment of the proposition believed, and the strategy of trying to escape this by considering whether a person's acceptance of that proposition can be non-epistemically explained seems, on the whole, not a profitable enterprise. Further, often, at least, it can be countered in one or another of the ways we considered in the preceding two sections. So I am inclined to view the attempt to settle interesting debates about whether a person is reasonable in accepting a proposition by arguing that his acceptance is non-epistemically explicable as, on the whole, a failure.If anything, things are worse, so far as I can see, for attempts to argue from the fact that a person's belief is non-epistemically explicable to the conclusion that it is probably false. For, again, this argument has force only if the fact that this person's acceptance of it is non-epistemically explicable is not idiosyncratic, and this is establishable, often at least, only by appealing to the results of a direct assessment of the proposition believed (or by offering a judgment on this matter without benefit of any assessment, which of course is worthless). Nor, of course, is the nonepistemic explicability of a person's belief that P sufficient to discredit the person, let alone P, and the sorts of properties that are often alleged to accompany non-epistemically explicable beliefs seem either in fact not to accompany them, or to accompany only a basically irrelevant and uninteresting sub-set of them, or not to be such as to make falsehood of the propositions whose belief they accompany probable.A final comment These remarks, at best, scratch the surface of a difficult and complex topic. It is a topic on which, so far as I am aware, not a great deal has been written. My hope is that what I have said here may stimulate sufficient interest in the topic for others to provide a further exploration of the issues that I have here only been able to highlight. (shrink)

This article builds theory at the intersection of ecological sustainability and strategic management literature—specifically, in relation to dynamic capabilities literature. By combining industrial organization economics–based, resource-based, and dynamic capability–based views, it is possible to develop a better understanding of the strategies that businesses may follow, depending on their managers’ assumptions about ecological sustainability. To develop innovative strategies for ecological sustainability, the dynamic capabilities framework needs to be extended. In particular, the sensing–seizing–maintaining competitiveness framework should operate not only within the boundaries (...) of a business ecosystem but in relation to global biophysical ecosystems; in addition, two more dynamic capabilities should be added, namely, remapping and reaping. This framework can explicate core managerial beliefs about ecological sustainability. Finally, this approach offers opportunities for managers and academics to identify, categorize, and exploit business strategies for ecological sustainability. (shrink)

The interactions between literature and science and between literature and psychoanalysis have been among the most thriving areas for interdisciplinary study in recent years. Work in these 'open fields' has taught us to recognize the interdependence of different cultures of knowledge and experience, revealing the multiple ways in which science, literature, and psychoanalysis have been mutually enabling and defining, as well as corrective and contestatory of each other. Inspired by Gillian Beer's path-breaking work on literature and science, this volume presents (...) fourteen new essays by leading American and British writers. They focus on the evolutionary sciences in the nineteeth-century; the early years of psychoanalysis, from Freud to Ella Freeman Sharpe; and the modern development of the physical sciences. Drawing on recent debates within the history of science, psychoanalytic literary criticism, intellectual history, and gender studies, the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the formation of knowledge. Among its recurrent themes are: curiosity and epistemology; 'growth', 'maturity', and 'coming of age' as structuring metaphors ; taxonomy; sleep and dreaming and elusive knowledge; the physiology of truth; and the gender politics of scientific theory and practice. The essays also reflect Beer's extensive influence as a literary critic, with close readings of works by Charlotte Brontë, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Edith Ayrton Zangwill, Charlotte Haldane, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Karin Boye. (shrink)