Because the traditional Inuit way of life was a successful adaptation to the harshest environment in which humans reside, their religion is of considerable importance in understanding the potentialities of culture and is often cited in general studies of comparative religion. Yet prior to the work of Daniel Merkur, there have been no monograph-length studies of Inuit religion, and journal articles have been few and far between. In part, this is due to the immense difficulty of the task. The (...) considerable ethnographic material is of varying, often poor quality with regard to Inuit religion, and there are virtually no recordings of relevant material in the various dialects of the Inuit language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Feminism and World ReligionsJordan PaperFeminism and World Religions. Edited by Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. x + 333.The editors of Feminism and World Religions, Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young, both at McGill University, have been editing anthologies, as well as an [End Page 118] annual journal, on the subject of "women and religion" in its various (...) modes and variations, for a number of years. This new iteration is particularly specific to its avowed topic and a valuable addition to the genre. In-depth contributions were solicited for the "Religions of the Book" and for South and East Asian religions. As with any anthology, no matter how well planned, individual treatments will invariably reflect the differences in the interests and methodologies of the various authors. All of the treatments here, however, do focus on history and ideology. All were ostensibly written by insiders, although what this actually means varies from tradition to tradition.Katherine Young has contributed an excellent, analytical introduction to both the topics of the book and the individual chapters. She has also authored an in-depth "Postscript" (thirty-four pages) concerning a number of contemporary issues relevant to the volume's theme and the issue of "insiders." She addresses such problems as "the politics of identity," "the proper sphere for feminism," "the tension between revolution and reform," and the "polarization between men and women."I will begin with the chapters on the Religions of the Book, although this does not accord with the order in the anthology. "Feminism in Judaism," by Ellen M. Umansky, is possibly the most succinct introduction available from the last two decades to the extraordinary number of changes, as well as the lack of change, in some varieties of this religion. The contribution by the well-known Rosemary Radford Ruether, "Feminism in World Christianity," briefly traces the roots of Christian feminism from the time of the New Testament and then surveys developments in the United States and feminist theology in Europe, moving on to what many such surveys ignore: the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. "Feminism in Islam" by Riffat Hassan focuses on the nature of androcentrism in Islam. She juxtaposes the Hadith literature against the Qur'ān, and finds that the negative attitudes toward women are not in the Qur'ān but are based on a questionable interpretation of a few Hadith statements. She analyzes three basic theological assumptions and finds all wanting: the issue of woman's creation, the issue of woman's "guilt" in the "Fall" episode, and the issue of the purpose of woman's existence. She concludes with a fascinating comparison of the issue of women's sexuality as found in the Qur'ān and in the history of Islam.South Asia is dealt with in two very different approaches. Vasudha Narayanan's "Brimming with Bhakti, Embodiments of Shakti: Devotees, Deities, Performers, Reformers, and Other Women of Power in the Hindu Tradition," is a full (fifty-three pages) and engaging exposition of the subject from a variety of perspectives as delineated in the chapter's title. It is a lucid and comprehensive analysis of a most complex issue; indeed, she begins with a survey of the problem of identifying "Hinduism" in and of itself. Rita M. Gross, in her "Strategies for a Feminist Revalorization of Buddhism," quite properly, given her own cultural milieu, speaks not of Buddhism in Asia, but of how Buddhism can be in the West. She argues here, as she has in a relatively recent book, Buddhism after Patriarchy, that the androcentrism, even aspects of misogyny, that is found in the development of Buddhism, does not follow from essential Buddhist ideology, and it need not be continued in the present. [End Page 119]The remaining two chapters, on China, are more problematic than the preceding ones. The two authors of "Feminism and/in Taoism," Karen Laughlin and Eva Wong, are both connected with the International Taoist Tai Chi Society, which can be perceived as far removed from the continuing aspects of Daoist religion on both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Their focus is on the classical texts of Daoist... (shrink)

One of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, Søren Kierkegaard often expressed himself through pseudonyms and disguises. Taken from his personal writings, these private reflections reveal the development of his own thought and personality, from his time as a young student to the deep later internal conflict that formed the basis for his masterpiece of duality Either/Or and beyond. Expressing his beliefs with a freedom not seen in works he published during his lifetime, Kierkegaard here rejects for the first (...) time his father's conventional Christianity and forges the revolutionary idea of the "leap of faith" required for true religious belief. A combination of theoretical argument, vivid natural description and sharply honed wit, the Papers and Journals reveal to the full the passionate integrity of his lifelong efforts "to find a truth which is truth for me." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. (shrink)

This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according (...) to a culture of praxis. Finally, I provide a comparative exercise using Graham Priest’s definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde’s observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective. (shrink)

Michael Nahm’s report in this issue of the JSE deftly presents many of the scholarly offenses perpetrated by Alejandro Parra. Some of those not mentioned had to do with Parra’s submissions to the JSE, and I feel it’s important to add those to the record. JSE published a retraction notice earlier this year (Volume 35, Issue 1) and provided examples of Parra’s plagiarism. Moreover, the Journal rejected another paper in which we found substantial plagiarism. But Parra’s boldest effort (...) was his submission, under his own name, of a paper by an Argentinian author, Anna Conforte—in fact, a paper Parra published in his own newsletter. But Parra never indicated that the paper was written by someone else. Several people independently and carefully compared the English submission to the original Spanish. All agreed that Parra apparently simply auto-translated the paper to clumsy English and presented it as his own work. (shrink)

This paper examines medical writing in Karl Philipp Moritz’ Journal of Empirical Psychology by looking at the alterations Moritz made to his sources. It shows how he rearranged the data in order to introduce a new type of text into psychology: the case or case study. He did so by altering the main parts of a report that had been published a few years earlier. In rewriting the report, Moritz introduced not only a new type of text but (...) also a style of reasoning; i.e. the casuistic form of thinking that became more widely acknowledged only later in the course of experiential psychology. The paper thus links writing techniques in psychology to the rise of a type of text and a new style of reasoning. (shrink)

Driven by interests in workforce planning and patient safety, a growing body of literature has begun to identify the reality and the prevalence of missed nursing care, also specified as care left undone, rationed care or unfinished care. Empirical studies and conceptual considerations have focused on structural issues such as staffing, as well as on outcome issues – missed care/unfinished care. Philosophical and ethical aspects of unfinished care are largely unexplored. Thus, while internationally studies highlight instances of covert rationing/missed care/care (...) left undone – suggesting that nurses, in certain contexts, are actively engaged in rationing care – in terms of the nursing and nursing ethics literature, there appears to be a dearth of explicit decision-making frameworks within which to consider rationing of nursing care. In reality, the assumption of policy makers and health service managers is that nurses will continue to provide full care – despite reducing staffing levels and increased patient turnover, dependency and complexity of care. Often, it would appear that rationing/missed care/nursing care left undone is a direct response to overwhelming demands on the nursing resource in specific contexts. A discussion of resource allocation and rationing in nursing therefore seems timely. The aim of this discussion paper is to consider the ethical dimension of issues of resource allocation and rationing as they relate to nursing care and the distribution of the nursing resource. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the examination of political discussion carried out in the journal „Prúdy“ in the decades preceding and following the World war I. The aim of the examination is to indicate the fundamental topic of the discussion. According to the author it was the problematic of conservatism, which had been discussed in the referential frame of the Slovak nationalism as a part of the cultural conflict, taking place between various groups of the national elite. The Slovak (...) political thinking remained for a long time marked by a cultural „schism“ between modernism and traditionalism. The discussion in the journal „Prúdy“ is therefore an important source for those, who are interested in the manners and conceptions of Slovak political modernism. (shrink)

In this article I begin by discussing the persistent problem of relations between educational inequality and the attainment gap in schools. Because benefits accruing from an education are substantial, the ‘gap’ leads to large disparities in the quality of life many young people can expect to experience in the future. Curriculum knowledge has been a focus for debate in England in relation to educational equality for over 40 years. Given the contestation surrounding views about curriculum knowledge and equality I consider (...) the thinking of two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, and their work on justice, to trouble the curriculum framework and discourse of knowledge promoted through the policy text of The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper (2010) and later associated policy reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum in England. The Schools White Paper aims to make the curriculum more challenging to students by introducing tight controls in terms of the assessment framework and curriculum knowledge. I argue that, when considered through Derrida's perspective on language and meaning and Levinas' view on the ethical responsibility for the other, the reforms present obstacles to the search for a just curriculum. I look to the work of Sharon Todd and Paul Standish for a re-imagination of curriculum as or through relations in the light of Derrida's and Levinas' philosophies. (shrink)

The type in taxonomy is not meant to be a particularly typical specimen, but simply a reference specimen suited to serve as a 'name bearer' whenever doubt arises concerning the identity of a species. The minimum requirement is that the specimen reflects some differentiating characteristics of the species. In analogy, only such individuals should be made the type of an ideological system as adhere to the principal ideologies of that system. Only such an evolutionist could serve as type for Darwinism (...) who on the whole accepts gradual evolution and, as the major moving force in evolution, natural selection. It is very questionable whether the type-method would be of any use where highly heterogeneous, open, or rapidly evolving systems are involved. When the meaning of a system is changing it is less confusing to redefine it than to coin a new term for each change. (shrink)

Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country’s borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that (...) the panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus. (shrink)

Scientific articles exemplify standard functional units constraining argumentative structures. Severe space limitations demand every paragraph and illustration contribute to establishing the paper's claims. Philosophical testing and confirmation models should take into account each paragraph, table, and illustration. Hypothetico-Deductive, Bayesian Inductive, and Inference-to-the-Best-Explanation models do not, garbling the logic of papers. Micro-analysis of the fundamental paper in plate tectonics reveals an argumentative structure commonplace in science but ignored by standard philosophical accounts that cannot be dismissed as mere rhetorical embellishment. (...) Papers with illustrations often display a second argumentative structure differing from the text's. Constraints on adequate testing and confirmation analyses are adduced. "Experiments are about the assembly of persuasive arguments, ones that will stand up in court.... The task at hand is to capture the building-up of a persuasive argument about the world even in the absence of the logician's certainty." --Galison, How Experiments End, 277. (shrink)

Mr. Sharp's resolution of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox is, in my opinion, the right one. However, the resolution does not in my opinion show that “God's in his heaven; all's right with the world.” This is in no way a criticism of Sharp; rather, it is inevitable that any resolution of this paradox, dealing as it does with the quantum mechanical concept of “measurement”, must tangle with some of the real difficulties which are lurking in the notion. The purpose of these (...) comments is to use Mr. Sharp's remarks as a basis for bringing out one of the serious conceptual difficulties connected with measurement. (shrink)

Journal of the History of Biology provides a fifty-year long record for examining the evolution of the history of biology as a scholarly discipline. In this paper, we present a new dataset and preliminary quantitative analysis of the thematic content of JHB from the perspectives of geography, organisms, and thematic fields. The geographic diversity of authors whose work appears in JHB has increased steadily since 1968, but the geographic coverage of the content of JHB articles remains strongly lopsided (...) toward the United States, United Kingdom, and western Europe and has diversified much less dramatically over time. The taxonomic diversity of organisms discussed in JHB increased steadily between 1968 and the late 1990s but declined in later years, mirroring broader patterns of diversification previously reported in the biomedical research literature. Finally, we used a combination of topic modeling and nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques to develop a model of multi-article fields within JHB. We found evidence for directional changes in the representation of fields on multiple scales. The diversity of JHB with regard to the representation of thematic fields has increased overall, with most of that diversification occurring in recent years. Drawing on the dataset generated in the course of this analysis, as well as web services in the emerging digital history and philosophy of science ecosystem, we have developed an interactive web platform for exploring the content of JHB, and we provide a brief overview of the platform in this article. As a whole, the data and analyses presented here provide a starting-place for further critical reflection on the evolution of the history of biology over the past half-century. (shrink)

Films depicting educational relationships typically emphasize personal connections between students and teachers over the educational goals that such relations facilitate. In doing so, these films raise the question of how teachers stand in relation to their institutional roles in such a way as to inspire students’ desires for knowledge. In this paper, in order to examine the influence of institutional roles in defining teacher–student relationships, we analyze “The Paper Chase,” a film in which teacher and student have no (...) personal connection but in which the drama of student desire is nonetheless clearly featured. Drawing from Plato’s erotics, in which the soul is shaped by desire for that which it lacks, and from Jacques Lacan’s theories of desire and transference, we argue that “The Paper Chase” portrays educational desire as rooted in the differential of authority between teacher and student. (shrink)

I am in basic agreement with Professor Bowie’s position as outlined in his paper. Thus, my comments will consist mainly of caveats and qualifications, some of which I imagine Professor Bowie might have made himself had our format allowed more time for elaboration.

The debate on responsibility for health takes place within political philosophy and in policy setting. It is increasingly relevant in the context of rationing scarce resources as a substantial, and growing, proportion of diseases in high-income countries is attributable to lifestyle. Until now, empirical studies of medical professionals' attitudes towards personal responsibility for health as a component of prioritisation have been lacking. This paper explores to what extent Norwegian physicians find personal responsibility for health relevant in prioritisation and what (...) type of risk behaviour they consider relevant in such decisions. The proportion who agree that it should count varies from 17.1% to 26.9%. Higher age and being male is positively correlated with acceptance. The doctors are more willing to consider substance use in priority setting decisions than choices on food and exercise. The findings reveal that a sizeable proportion have beliefs that conflict with the norms stated in the Norwegian Patient Act. It may be possible that the implementation of legal regulations can be hindered by the opposing attitudes among doctors. A further debate on the role personal responsibility should play in priority setting seems warranted. However, given the deep controversies about the concept of health responsibility and its application, it would be wise to proceed with caution.Design Nationally representative cross-sectional study. Setting Panel-data. Participants 1072 respondents, response rate 65%. (shrink)

This paper examines a broad range of ethical perspectives and principles relevant to the analysis of issues raised by the science of climate change and explores their implications. A second and companion paper extends this analysis to the contribution of ethics, economics and politics in understanding policy towards climate change. These tasks must start with the science which tells us that this is a problem of risk management on an immense scale. Risks on this scale take us far (...) outside the familiar policy questions and standard, largely marginal, techniques commonly used by economists; this is a subject that requires the full breadth and depth of what economics has to offer and a much more thoughtful view of ethics than economists usually bring to bear. Different philosophical approaches bring different perspectives on understanding and policy, yet they generally point to the case for strong action to manage climate change. (shrink)

The recovery model has been put forward as a rival to the biomedical model in mental healthcare. It has also been invoked in debate about public policy for individual and community mental health and the broader goal of social inclusion. But this broader use threatens its status as a genuine model, distinct from others such as the biomedical model. This paper sets out to articulate, although not to defend, a distinct recovery model based on the idea that mental health (...) is an essentially normative or evaluative notion. It also aims to show that, supposing this suggestion were to be followed, the norms informing our notion of recovery would be more appropriately construed as eudaimonic than as hedonic in character. (shrink)

Edition and study of P.Vindob. A.Ch. 36616, a literary paper fragment from 3rd/9th-century Egypt. The fragment contains a tradition that depicts ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) performing a four-rakʿa prayer and reciting a special supplication on the 15th of the month of Rajab. The tradition is only known from noncanonical Shīʿī ḥadīth collections. Situating it in a broader historical context, the paper provides a glimpse on the Shīʿī presence in Egypt as well as the sanctity of the (...) month of Rajab in Sunnī and Shīʿī literatures. This tradition, in conclusion, presents an early evidence for the observances of the month of Rajab in general and the middle of the month in particular in the local Shīʿī community in pre-Fatimid Egypt. (shrink)

The paper gives an overview of the main stages of the development of «The Siberian Journal of Philosophy». It is shown how the journal is permanently linked with the history of the Philosophy Faculty of Novosibirsk State University. The role of Academician Yu. L. Ershov in the development of professional philosophical education at NSU is revealed and explained. The Summer Philosophical Schools held by the Faculty and the Siberian Philosophical Seminar’s are noted as a main factors that (...) formed the philosophical community around the NSU. Today, the journal acts as an organizer of interaction within the professional community and represents the face of the university in the media space of Russian philosophy. The author believes that for twenty years the journal has earned authority and has become a notable phenomenon in the life of the philosophical community not only in Siberia, but throughout the country. (shrink)

This commentary on John Symons’ and Jack Horner’s paper, besides sharing its main argument, challenges the authors’ statement that there is no effective method to evaluate software-intensive systems as a distinguishing feature of software intensive science. It is underlined here how analogous methodological limitations characterise the evaluations of empirical systems in non-software intensive sciences. The authors’ claim that formal methods establish the correctness of computational models rather than of the represented programme is here compared with the empirical adequacy problem (...) typifying the model-based reasoning approach in physics, and the remark that testing all the paths of a software-intensive system is unfeasible is related to the enumerative induction problem in the justification of empirical law-like hypotheses in non-software intensive sciences. (shrink)

First, a comment on a pessimistic note: Salmon says we can't be sure there is any such thing as inductive inference: in demanding that some explanations have the form of correct inductive inferences, “we may be laying down a requirement which cannot be fulfilled.” To doubt that we can fulfill that requirement is to doubt that we can formalize inductive logic. It may be true, but why begin the fight by throwing in the sponge? It is also true that there (...) are difficulties involved in formalizing acceptance rules for inductive conclusions, but these difficulties may be overcome. It is false to claim that we ‘cannot claim to know exactly’ what these acceptance rules are. Only two years ago I did just that. It was true that my claim was shown to be erroneous a year later, but that fate can befall almost any worthwhile claim. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the note-taking experiences of university students using paper-based and paperless resources. By means of a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the note-taking experiences of 18 students from an international program at a university in Belgium were examined throughout a semester. In order to document these students’ practices with paper-based and paperless resources, four data collection methods were used: in-depth interviews observations focus group discussions and document analysis of students’ lecture notes. The results (...) showed that students experience note-taking as a complex phenomenon in which lived body, lived human relations, lived space and lived time come into play, and in which they try to find a balance between multiple engagements, between autonomy and authority, between attention and distraction, and between being original and mirroring others. This struggle for balance occurs irrespective of which medium they choose to use. These results provide an in-depth view of the phenomenon, and also highlight the complexity of the note-taking experience. (shrink)