Evidence‐based interventions have been developed and used to prevent HIV infections among black men who have sex with men (MSM) in Canada and the United States; however, the degree to which interventions address racism and other interlocking oppressions that influence HIV vulnerability is not well known. We utilize integrative antiracism to guide a review of HIV prevention intervention studies with black MSM and to determine how racism and religious oppression are addressed in the current intervention evidence base. We searched CINAHL, (...) PsychInfo, MEDLINE and the CDC compendium of evidence‐based HIV prevention interventions and identified seventeen interventions. Three interventions targeted black MSM, yet only one intervention addressed racism, religious oppression, cultural assets and religious assets. Most interventions' samples included low numbers of black MSM. More research is needed on interventions that address racism and religious oppression on HIV vulnerability among black MSM. Future research should focus on explicating mechanisms by which multiple oppressions impact HIV vulnerability. We recommend the development and integration of social justice tools for nursing practice that aid in addressing the impacts of racism and other oppressions on HIV vulnerability of black MSM. (shrink)

When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics advisement (OEA). We tell this narrative through the prism of time, (...) describing the evolution of ethical issues and trends as the pandemic unfolded. We delineate three phases: anticipation and preparation, crisis management, and reflection and adjustment. The first phase focused predominantly on ways to address impending resource shortages and to plan for remote ethics consultation, and CECs focused on code status discussions with surrogates. The second phase was characterized by the dramatic convergence of a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients, a growing scarcity of resources, and the reassignment/ redeployment of staff outside their specialty areas. The third phase was characterized by the recognition that while the worst of the crisis was waning, its medium- and long-term consequences continued to pose immense challenges. We note that there were times during the crisis that serving in the role of clinical ethics consultant created a sense of dis-ease as novel as the coronavirus itself. In retrospect we learned that our activities far exceeded the familiar terrain of clinical ethics consultation and extended into other spheres of organizational life in novel ways that were unanticipated before this pandemic. To that end, we defined and categorized a middle level of ethics consultation, which we have termed service practice communication intervention (SPCI). This is an underappreciated dimension of the work that ethics consult services are capable of in times of crisis. We believe that the pandemic has revealed the many enduring ways that ethics consultation services can more robustly contribute to the ethical life of their institutions moving forward. (shrink)

Knowledge of eukaryotic life cycles and associated genome dynamics stems largely from research on animals, plants, and a small number of “model” (i.e., easily cultivable) lineages. This skewed sampling results in an underappreciation of the variability among the many microeukaryotic lineages, which represent the bulk of eukaryotic biodiversity. The range of complex nuclear transformations that exists within lineages of microbial eukaryotes challenges the textbook understanding of genome and nuclear cycles. Here, we look in‐depth at Foraminifera, an ancient (∼600 million‐year‐old) lineage (...) widely studied as proxies in paleoceanography and environmental biomonitoring. We demonstrate that Foraminifera challenge the “rules” of life cycles developed largely from studies of plants and animals. To this end, we synthesize data on foraminiferal life cycles, focusing on extensive endoreplication within individuals (i.e., single cells), the unusual nuclear process calledZerfall, and the separation of germline and somatic function into distinct nuclei (i.e., heterokaryosis). These processes highlight complexities within lineages and expand our understanding of the dynamics of eukaryotic genomes. (shrink)

The exact sectarian affiliation of Shahrastānī has long been a matter of serious debate. Was he possibly an adherent of the Ismaili cause? Considerable recent scholarship purports to establish a connection. The evidence consists of some off-handed remarks by his own contemporaries; what he himself has to say about the Ismailis in his Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal; and finally, a set of doctrines or analytical categories he uses in his later writings that were later adopted by Nizari Ismailis. However, an impartial (...) look at the evidence does not support the claim that Shahrastānī was himself in any significant way an Ismaili. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil (2015) have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’ (2015, 675), specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge (2015, 674). This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent work (...) in virtue epistemology (e.g., Tiberius and Walker 1998; Roberts and Wood 2007; Tanesini 2016), their interpretation of the data supports the thesis that searching the internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) – one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the internet might actually foster (in certain circumstances) virtuous intellectual humility. (shrink)

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu and Frank Keil (2015) have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head”’ (2015, 675), specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge (2015, 674). This chapter has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of recent work (...) in virtue epistemology (e.g., Tiberius and Walker 1998; Roberts and Wood 2007; Tanesini 2016), their interpretation of the data supports the thesis that searching the internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) – one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the internet might actually foster (in certain circumstances) virtuous intellectual humility. (shrink)

Command and Creation: A Shiʿi Cosmological Treatise. A Persian Edition and English Translation of Muḥammad al-Shahrastānī’s Majlis-i maktūb. Edited and translated by Daryoush Mohammad Poor. London: I. B. Tauris, in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2021. Pp. xvi + 135 (Eng.), 84 (Pers.).

Recent calls to address racism in bioethics reflect a sense of urgency to mitigate the lethal effects of a lack of action. While the field was catalyzed largely in response to pivotal events deeply rooted in racism and other structures of oppression embedded in research and health care, it has failed to center racial justice in its scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice, and neglected to integrate anti-racism as a central consideration. Academic bioethics programs play a key role in determining the (...) field’s norms and practices, including methodologies, funding priorities, and professional networks that bear on equity, inclusion, and epistemic justice. This article describes recommendations from the Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Task Force commissioned by the Association of Bioethics Program Directors to prioritize and strengthen anti-racist practices in bioethics programmatic endeavors and to evaluate and develop specific goals to advance REDI. (shrink)

Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context. By Carol Meyers.Wives, Harlots and Concubines. By Alice L. Laffey.Jonah. A Psycho‐Religious Approach to the Prophet. By Andre LaCocque and Pierre‐Emmanuel Lacocque.The Temptation and the Passion: The Markan Soteriology, Second Edition. By Ernest Best.Theios Aner and the Markan Miracle Traditions: A Critique of the ‘Theios Aner’Concept as an Interpretative Background of the Miracle Traditions used by Mark. By Barry Blackburn.The Shepherd Discourse of John 10 and its Context: Studies by Members of the Johannine (...) Writings Seminar. Edited with introduction by Johannes Beutler, S.J., and Robert T. Fortna.The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Harold W. Attridge, edited by Helmut Koester.Structure and Message of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By Albert Vanhoye, translated by James Swetnam.Religious Pluralism and Unbelief: Studies Critical and Comparative. Edited by Ian Hamnett.7he Uniqueness of Christ in the 7heocentric Model of the Christian Theology of World Religions: An Elaboration and Evaluation of the Position ofJohn Hick. By Gregory H. Carruthers.The Jewish Roots of Christian Liturgy. Edited by Eugene J. Fisher.Women, Religion and Sexuuliry: Studies on the Impact of Religious Teachings on Women. Edited by Jeanne Becher.In Whose Image? God and Gender. By Jann Aldredge Clanton.Women Towards Priesthood: Ministerial Politics and Feminist Praxis. By Jacqueline Field‐Bibb.Afrer Eve: Women, Theology and the Christian Tradition. Edited by J. Martin Soskice.Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian. By Thomas F. Torrance.Theology und Dialogue: Essay in Conversation with George Lindbeck. Edited by Bruce D. Marshall.From Theology to Social Theory: Juan Luis Segundo and the Theology of Liberation. By Marsha Aileen Hewitt.Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution. By Paul E. Sigmund.Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic. By Hans Kung.Marxism, Moralig and Social Justice. By R. G. Peffer.The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists. By Peter P. Nicholson.The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott. By Paul Franco.Divine Action. By Keith Ward.Free Willand the Christian Faith. By W. S. Anglin.Tracrurian Semantics: Finding Sense in Wirrgetisrein's ‘Tractatus’. By Peter Carruthers.The Metaphyics of the ‘Tracratus’. By Peter Carruthers.Realism with a Human Face. By Hilary Putnam.Explanation and its Limits. Edited by Dudley Knowles.Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage. By Lee H. Yearly.Hobbes. By Richard Tuck.Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kant's Critical Philosophy. By Richard L. Velkley.Reason in Religion: The Foundarions of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. By Walter Jaeschke.International Kierkegaard Commentary, VoL 13: The Corsair Affair. Edited by Robert L. Perkins.Ssren Kierkegaard: ‘Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses’. Edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.Lonergan Workshop, Volume 6. Edited by Fred Lawrence.Holy City, Holy Places: Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century. By P. W. L. Walker.Politics, Poetics and Hermeneutics in Milton s Prose. Edited by David Loewenstein and James Grantham Turner.Beauty and Holiness: The Dialogue between Aesthetics and Religion. By James Alfred Martin.Science Deified & Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture. Volume 2: From the Earl? Modern Age through the Romantic Era ca. 1640 to ca. 1820. By Richard Olson.The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land, 1895‐1925. By Sergio I. Minerbi.The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious Movements Contemporary Society. By Bryan Wilson.Confessor between East and West: A Portrait of Ukrainian Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. By Jaroslav Pelikan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tale of Three Zoras:Barbara Johnson and Black Women WritersHortense J. Spillers (bio)Talking about Zora Neale Hurston is like approaching the Sphinx—so much riddle, so many faces, and all of it occurring on fairly high holy ground since Alice Walker's remarkable discovery a couple of decades ago.1 But Barbara Johnson's criticism cracks the code on Her Majesty and brings the sign vehicle—"Zora Neale Hurston"—to the table of juxtapositions (...) and comparisons. There is the iconic Hurston, whose positioning between the Harlem Renaissance2 and the post-World War II writers gives her a priority of status that marks the woman artist's entry into literary modernism. The latter, in its variety of contexts and alignments, opened the way to certain experimental forms for these writers and might not have been completed as a systematic gesture before the late sixties and early seventies, when this generation of practitioners was free to create antiheroic figures and to probe the limits of representability. In short, with Zora Neale Hurston a window is pried open, a breeze blows through, and by the time of Toni Morrison's Beloved, an opening has become a prospect, a landscape of vistas of possibility. We can think of Hurston, then, as an enabler, who was not particularly encouraged by the literary politics of her age, from first to last; whether by the "maledom" of Harlem Renaissance avenues to reward and achievement, or by the paradigm shift of race politics in the 1950s,3 Hurston seems to have been equipped with the uncanny ability to create a kind of chaos, to behave outside the parameters of fashion, and to create dimensions of the mythical about her as she modeled versions of self.In her role as classically trained anthropologist and folklorist, Hurston is considered today one of the major theoreticians of black culture.4 Her collections of lore, a [End Page 94] motherlode of a southern-centered orality,5 of the countryside, are fruitfully poised against the displaced metaphysical traditions of discourse that we especially associate with figures like Alain Locke and W. E. B. DuBois.6 As it now appears, the oppositional currents that run between the Hurstonian and the DuBoisian figurations have yet to be reconciled: the latter is text-based, and the former exceeds the abiding centrality of the word. Barbara Johnson argues in A World of Difference that Hurston "tried to explain the difference between a reified 'art' and a living culture in which distinctions between spectator and spectacle, rehearsal and performance, experience and representation are not fixed" [159]. For Hurston, folklore was "'the arts of the people before they find out that there is such a thing as art.'" For Hurston, unlike DuBois, for example, black culture was not a project in the modality of Bildung, or the Hegelian notion, but, rather, a repertoire of gestures that might be said to belong to a second skin—the kinetic thing that is done or said.From our current perspective, what Hurston called "folklore" and what offered the occasion for the ethnographic foray might be given other names, though renaming these acts and gestures of the everyday does not make it any easier to reconcile the conceptual split in black culture theory between textuality and orality, or between "urban" and "countryside." But all of these locutions have been essentially eviscerated by radical changes in the availability and transmission of consumer goods that have rendered US local and indigenous cultures virtually indistinguishable from Jackson, Mississippi to Boston, Massachusetts. Take any interstate network across the land, east to west, or north to south: between McDonald's and the food/gas mart, scattered along ten- to twenty-mile sequences of roadway, one is quite astonished at the sameness and homogeneity of motifs that have translated particularity into an item of commerce and exchange. At one time, the critics were calling this outcome the postmodern flow, but my own hunch is that this apparent repetition and replication of the same are riddled with a variety of timbres and accents, still, that the Hurston ear was so sharp to articulate and define six decades ago. And in that intricate choreography between the life... (shrink)

Aristotle’s views on the choiceworthiness of friends might seem both internally inconsistent and objectionably instrumentalizing. On the one hand, Aristotle maintains that perfect friends or virtue friends are choiceworthy and lovable for their own sake, and not merely for the sake of further ends. On the other hand, in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9, Aristotle appears somehow to account for the choiceworthiness of such friends by reference to their utility as sources of a virtuous agent’s robust self-awareness. I examine Aristotle’s views on (...) the utility and choiceworthiness of friends, and offer a novel reading of Nicomachean Ethics IX.9. On this reading, Aristotle accepts a version of instrumental conditionalism about final value, that is, the thesis that goods (including friends) can be choiceworthy for their own sake (i.e., possess final or end value) at least partly on account of their instrumental properties. In articulating what sort of instrumental conditionalism it is reasonable to attribute to Aristotle, I argue that Aristotle appeals to the utility of perfect friends as part of a broadly material causal account of why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. On this reading, perfect friends are not choiceworthy for the sake of their utility in eliciting self-awareness; rather, their choiceworthiness for their own sake is (at least partly) realized in, or constituted by, their conduciveness to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness. This reading, I argue, frees Aristotle from the charge of inconsistency: Aristotle can appeal to the conduciveness of perfect friends to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness as a way of explaining why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. (shrink)

The Mundane World Hypothesis (mwh) says that we have material bodies, we have brains located inside our bodies, we have sense organs which process visual information, the direct cause of our perceptual judgments is typically macroscopic material objects, and we live in a material world. Skeptics using underdetermination arguments arguemwhhas no more epistemic merit than some skeptical competitor, e.g., that we are in the Matrix. Since such competitor hypotheses are equipollent, we are not justified in believingmwh. This paper takes the (...) underdetermination skeptic’s premises to a more radical conclusion: skeptical dogmatism, which is the view thatmwhis probably false based on the idea that there are many equipollent competitors tomwh. (shrink)

Birds, beasts, and creeping things swarm throughout the Bible's pages. Despite their prevalence, most biblical scholars have viewed them merely as metaphors, passive objects, or background embellishment to the human experience. This collection seeks to move beyond this traditional view of biblical animals by engaging the growing interdisciplinary field of animal studies. Contributors Peter Joshua Atkins, Jared Beverly, William P. Brown, Margaret Cohen, Jacob R. Evers, Michael J. Gilmour, William "Chip" Gruen, Dong Hyeon Jeong, Brian Fiu Kolia, Anne Létourneau, Robert (...) R. MacKay, Suzanna R. Millar, Timothy J. Sandoval, Robert Paul Seesengood, Ken Stone, Brian James Tipton, Arthur W. Walker-Jones, and Jaime L. Waters showcase the breadth and depth of inquiry that animal studies can foster in biblical studies as well as what animal studies can gain from a more rigorous engagement with biblical texts. Together the essays offer an animal hermeneutic that supports the flourishing of all creatures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRINITY AND CREATION IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS DAVID A. WALKER* St. Francis' Church Nottingham, England Preface IT IS BY NO MEANS fortuitous that, in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas's treatise concerning 'the procession of divine persons ' is succeeded immediately by the treatise concerning ' the coming forth of creatures from God '. If both the freedom of the creative act and the full consubstantiality (...) of the divine persons are to be safeguarded, then, for St. Thomas, these two types of ' procession ' must be distinguished at all costs. But although distinct, they are also related in St. Thomas's thought. It is with this fundamental relation that we shall be primarily concerned here. Therefore, the question we shall seek to explore in this study concerns the way in which St. Thomas's doctrine of the Trinity determines, informs and impinges upon his theological understanding of the created order. Creation: The ' One God, and the ' Triune God, St. Thomas's celebrated identification of essence and existence in God has important significance for St. Thomas's doctrine of creation. God, according to St. Thomas, is Creator in virtue of his nature or essence-although, of course, this fact in no way undermines the sovereign freedom and contingency of the creative act. Because it is God's nature simply to be, all being or existence outside God is ultimately traceable back to God as its source *The Rev. Dr. David A. Walker was Team Vicar of St. Francis', Clifton, Nottingham at the time of his death in 1989. This paper was given to The Thomist on his behalf by Dr. Brian Marshall of Westminster College, Oxford. 443 444 DAVID A. WALKER and first cause. Therefore, to speak of God as Creator is to speak of God's essence in operation: " Hence creation is God's action by reason of his existence, which is his very nature... " 1 The trinitarian significance of this association of creative activity primarily with the divine essence is far reaching. In so far as the divine essence is common to, and identical in, the persons of the Trinity, St. Thomas can maintain that "creative action is not peculiar to any one Person, but is common to the whole Trinity." 2 Creation, therefore, is an act in which the triune God acts as the one God; in which a trinitarian unity of operation corresponds to a trinitarian unity of being. Consequently, the creative act primarily "has to do with the unity of nature, but not with the distinction of persons." 3 However, as we shall subsequently show, this is not St. Thomas's final word on the matter. In the light of this, it is possible to discern in the theology of St. Thomas a fairly clear distinction between truths pertaining to the unity of the divine essence and truths pertaining to the trinity of divine persons. This, indeed, is the basis for the distinction between the ' one God ' (de Deo uno) and the ' triune God' (de Deo trin:o) which operates in his thought. Indeed, this distinction is evident even in the structural arrangement of the Summa Theologiae itself. This distinction is paralleled and determined by the distinction between divine truths accessible to reason and truths accessible to man exclusively through revelation and faith, i.e., between 'natural' and 'revealed' theology. These two distinctions, furthermore, are paralleled by, and culminate in, a third distinction, namely that between nature and grace. But although there is a definite parallel between these three distinctions, it is only an approximate one and must not be construed as if it were an exact correspondence, i.e., as if the truths 1 la, Q.45, a.6. All quotations from the Summa are from Summa Theologiae, Latin text and English translation, Blackfriars edition, gen. ed. Thomas Gilby, 61 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964-81). 2 Ibid. s la, Q.32, a.1. THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 445 pertaining to the one God were exhaustively co-extensive with the spheres of reason and nature, or those relating to the triune God with faith and grace. The fact that reason and nature do not exhaust the realm of truth concerning the one God the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 91-95 [Access article in PDF] From: A Symposium on Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture Jeffrey Walker For who does not know, except them, that the art of using letters is fixed and unchanging, so that we always use the same letters for the same purposes, but in the art of discourse the case is entirely the reverse? —Isocrates, Against the SophistsThe essays composing this (...) issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric are based on papers that originally were presented at a symposium on "Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture," sponsored by the Emory University Center for Teaching and Curriculum, Department of English, and Hightower Fund, in March 2001. The ostensible purpose of the symposium was to consider the double nature and status of rhetoric: on one hand, a hermeneutic/theoretical discipline with applications across the humanities (in the analysis of texts, events, culture, argumentative practices, ideologies, and so forth); and, on the other hand, a practical "art of discourse," a techne, whose central or distinctive application is the training of skilled writers and speakers. The former tends to be emphasized in contemporary rhetorical studies, while the latter is the most familiar (though not necessarily essential) characteristic of "classical" or ancient rhetoric. Likewise, we can connect these two orientations, respectively, with rhetorical cultural studies and with the teaching of writing, speaking, and communication in general. While the natural assumption is that these two orientations are mutually supporting, that is not always or necessarily the case. One can argue that the first pulls in the direction of "philosophy" (however that may be defined), while the second pulls in the direction of sheer technique—and at one time or another, each has been [End Page 91] open to criticism for its lack of attention to the other: philosophers are ineffective rhetoricians, and cannot intervene in the public sphere; orators are superficial thinkers, and practice an irresponsible, demagogic art of manipulation and domination. This tension goes all the way back to the first critiques of the sophists, and plays out through the entire history of rhetoric. The symposium's speakers, then, were asked to reflect, in any way that seemed suitable to them, on either or both aspects of rhetoric's double nature, and/or the relationships between them.A symposium, inevitably, as a rhetorical event, always takes its own somewhat unpredictable trajectory, as papers are produced and presented, and as the ensuing discussion unfolds. And the four essays presented here—Steven Mailloux on Frederick Douglass and the nineteenth-century American debate over slavery; Susan Wells on "double consciousness" in S. Weir Mitchell's account of the case of Mary Reynolds and W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk; James L. Kastely on the discontinuity between the "philosophical" and "technical" halves of Plato's Phaedrus;and Richard Doyle on the strange intersection between the emergence of LSD and the evolution of biotechnological understandings of DNA—are all revisions and expansions of the original presentations, reflecting the contingencies of their invention and reinvention. Nevertheless, the original motives of the symposium are still in evidence.As different as these essays are, it can be said that one or two underlying themes run through them, and provide a reply to the original topic proposed for the symposium. Perhaps the keynote is what Mailloux describes as "rhetorical paths of thought": that is, the "migration" and "evolution" of topoi, figures, lines of arguments, bits of narratives, and rhetorical traditions themselves (or fragments of them?) "from one community to another... [and] from one cultural moment to the next," as Frederick Douglass takes in the rhetorical traditions, practices, tropes and arguments exemplified in the Columbian Orator, as well as Aristotle's arguments on slavery, and as they become enabling parts of his own rhetorical repertoire in the debate on abolition. In Wells's essay, this appears as the "refunctioning" or reworking of topoi, as the notion of "double consciousness" is adapted as part of a "new logic of scientific authority" in Mitchell's account of "split personality," and also as a way of understanding and performing public discourse and identity in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:WomanistAlice Walker1. From womanish. (Opp. of "girlish," i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, "You acting womanish," i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered "good" for one. Interested in grown-up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. (...) Interchangeable with another black folk expression: "You trying to be grown." Responsible. In charge. Serious.2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility (values tears as a natural counter-balance of laughter) and women's strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in: "Mamma, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?" Ans.: "Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented." Traditionally capable, as in: "Mamma, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me." Reply: "It wouldn't be the first time." 3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless. 4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. [End Page 45]FootnotesFrom Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, 1st ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), xi; reprinted in Katie Cannon, Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (New York: Continuum, 1995), 22; reprinted in Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Mining the Motherlode: Methods in Womanist Ethics (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2006); reprinted in Alice Walker, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness: Meditations (New York: New Press; Distributed by W. W. Norton, 2006).Copyright © 2012 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

The notion of Socratic Note Taking is introduced to enhance students’ learning from assigned readings. SNT features students asking questions and answering their own questions while doing the readings. To test the effectiveness of SNT, half the students from two sections of a philosophy course were assigned SNT on alternating weeks. Quizzes each week alternated between the two classes as either high or low stakes in a counterbalanced format. The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 within-participants factorial. On (...) ten-point quizzes, SNT made an average difference of 1.22 points. Furthermore, the results indicate that SNT is particularly effective with weaker students, e.g., we found a nearly three-point increase on ten-point quizzes for the weakest students. (shrink)

Background: Nonhuman animals are regularly enhanced genomically with CRISPR and other gene editing tools as scientists aim at better models for biomedical research, more tractable agricultural animals, or animals that are otherwise well suited to a defined purpose. This study investigated how genome editors and policymakers perceived ethical or policy benefits and drawbacks for animal enhancement and how perceived benefits and drawbacks are alike, or differ from, those for human genome editing. Methods: We identified scientists through relevant literature searches as (...) well as conference presentations. Policymakers were identified through rosters of genome editing oversight groups (e.g., International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, World Health Organization) or efforts aimed at influencing policy (e.g., deliberative democracy groups). Interviews covered participants’ views on ethical differences between interventions affecting somatic or germline cells and distinctions between using gene editing for disease treatment, prevention, and enhancement purposes. Results: Of the 92 participants interviewed, 81 were genome editing scientists, and 33 were policymakers, with 22 interviewees being both scientists and policymakers. Multiple areas were identified in which the ethical implications of genomic enhancements for nonhuman animals differ from those for human animals including with respect to experiential welfare; germline edits; environmental sustainability; and justice. Conclusions: Overall, respondents viewed that animal enhancement is unburdened by the ethical complexities of human enhancement. These views may be related to participant perceptions of animals’ lesser moral status and because germline editing in animals is common practice. (shrink)

In order to understand the various strands of general equilibrium theory, why it has taken the forms that it has since the time of Léon Walras, and to appreciate fully a view of the state of general equilibrium theorising, it is essential to understand Walras's work and examine its influence. The first section of this book accordingly examines the foundations of Walras's work. These include his philosophical and methodological approach to economic modelling, his views on human nature, and the basic (...) components of his general equilibrium models. The second section examines how the influence of his ideas has been manifested in the theorising of his successors, surveying the models of theorists such as H. L. Moore, Vilfredo Pareto, Knut Wicksell, Gustav Cassel, Abraham Wald, John von Neumann, J. R. Hicks, Kenneth Arrow, and Gerard Debreu. The treatment also examines models of many types in which Walras's influence is explicitly acknowledged. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the orthodox view of the significance of Platonic value problems. According to this view, such problems are among the central questions of epistemology, and answering them is essential for justifying the status of epistemology as a major branch of philosophical enquiry. I challenge this view by identifying an assumption on which Platonic value problems are based – the value assumption – and considering how this assumption might be resisted. After articulating a line of thought that (...) supports the assumption, I highlight one way of undermining it, which is to deny that we desire knowledge and not just (e.g.) true belief because we prefer knowledge to true belief. I then consider an attempt to undermine the value assumption in this way, inspired by Bernard Williams. I contend that Williams's argument fails, but also that seeing why it fails is instructive for future attempts to resist the value assumption. (shrink)

This paper presents a longue durée account of the discursive emergence of ‘the market'. It seeks to develop understanding of the ‘crisis system' by showing that the crises of the present have their origins earlier than some critical realist scholars have suggested and can be better understood by the theorization of the generative mechanisms that emerged from the economic and political chaos of the early 1600s. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to show that in the context of the emergence (...) of capitalism in England, these generative mechanisms resulted in the meaning of the word ‘market’ slipping loose of the geo-spatial semiotic bounds by which it had commonly been delineated – i.e. as a physical space in a town or city where goods were bartered or sold – and being re-semioticised to refer to abstract space where all acts of capitalist economic exchange, including those impacting upon the natural world, take place. (shrink)

Evidence for instances of astrophysical 'fine tuning' (or 'coincidences') is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...) Eddingtonian numerology and teleology on the other, may help clarify arguably the most significant issue in the philosophy of cosmology. (shrink)

In this article, we outline a simple and intuitively appealing procedure to derive default priors. The main idea is to regard the choice of such a prior as a formal Bayesian decision problem. We also discuss Jeffreys prior and more generally the reference prior of Bernardo (J R Stat Soc B 41:113–147, 1979) from this standpoint.

This article, forthcoming in the international legal philosophy journal Ratio Juris, responds to an article by Francis J. Beckwith arguing that the consistent application of liberal principles requires that same-sex marriage not be recognised in civil law. This response demonstrates that Beckwith’s article contains a series of interpretative and substantive flaws that render his argument unsuccessful. These relate to a misinterpretation of core liberal principles and a sidestepping of the matter of undue bias against same-sex partners. In correcting these flaws (...) I tentatively propose a ‘Voltarian argument’ in favour of same-sex civil marriage for those citizens with moral qualms about same-sex relationships derived from their reasonable comprehensive doctrine. (shrink)

Partant de la rythmanalyse de Lefebvre, j’examine l’énergétique et la constitution spatio-temporelle du rythme et la manière dont cela met en évidence l’enchevêtrement polyrythmique des flux d’énergie dans la vie quotidienne, ainsi que la relation entre la techno-énergie « artificielle » des systèmes énergétiques et les échanges énergétiques « naturels » des mouvements planétaires, des systèmes écologiques et du fonctionnement des organismes (y compris humains). Je développe une compréhension thermodynamique et matérialiste de l’énergie et du rythme, afin de présenter un (...) certain nombre de propositions et d’explorer les implications pour la poursuite de stratégies de transformation à faible intensité de carbone à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur des systèmes d’énergie. (shrink)

Evidence for instances of astrophysical ‘fine tuning’ (or ‘coincidences’) is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...) Eddingtonian numerology and teleology on the other, may help clarify arguably the most significant issue in the philosophy of cosmology. (shrink)

In a recent study of astrophysical “fine-tunings” (or “coincidences”), Robert Klee critically assesses the support that such astrophysical evidence might be thought to lend to the design argument (i.e., the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). Klee argues that a proper assessment indicates that the universe is not as “fine-tuned” as advertised by proponents of the design arguments. We argue (i) that Klee’s assessment of the data is, to a certain extent, problematic; and (ii) even if (...) Klee’s assessment of the data is correct, it provides a necessary but not a sufficient response to the design argument. However, an adequate skeptical rejoinder to the design argument can be made by appealing to the anthropic principle. (shrink)

The current major models of coexistence of species on the same resources are briefly summarized. It is then shown that analysis of supposedly competitive systems in terms of the physical four dimensions of phase-space is sufficient to understand the causes for coexistence and for competitive exclusion. Thus, the multiple dimensions of niche theory are reduced to factors which define the magnitudes of the phase-spatial system, in particular the boundaries of population spaces and of periods of activity. Excluding possible cooperative interaction (...) between consumers, it appears that coexistence of species on thesame kind of limiting resource is possible only in cases of compartmentalization either in space, or in time, of resource consumption, i.e. if each consumer species disposes of a separate resource supply. Three criteria were found to be decisive for successful compartmentalization (i.e. for coexistence): 1. the vector of the resource flow; 2. relative mobility between consumers and resource units; 3. dependence or independence of resource flow on previous consumption. The traditional terminology of niche theory and of competition theory in general proved to be inadequate for analytical treatment of problems of coexistence. (shrink)