The core idea of social constructivism in mathematics is that mathematical entities are social constructs that exist in virtue of social practices, similar to more familiar social entities like institutions and money. Julian C. Cole has presented an institutional version of social constructivism about mathematics based on John Searle’s theory of the construction of the social reality. In this paper, I consider what merits social constructivism has and examine how well Cole’s institutional account meets the challenge of accounting for the (...) characteristic features of mathematics, especially objectivity and applicability. I propose that in general social constructivism shows promise as an ontology of mathematics, because the view can agree with mathematical practice and it offers a way of understanding how mathematical entities can be real without conflicting with a scientific picture of reality. However, I argue that Cole’s specific theory does not provide an adequate social constructivist account of mathematics. His institutional account fails to sufficiently explain the objectivity and applicability of mathematics, because the explanations are weakened and limited by the three-level theoretical model underlying Cole’s account of the construction of mathematical reality and by the use of the Searlean institutional framework. The shortcomings of Cole’s theory give reason to suspect that the Searlean framework is not an optimal way to defend the view that mathematical reality is socially constructed. (shrink)

The ever increasing ability of medical technology to reshape the human body in fundamental ways—from organ and tissue transplants to reconstructive surgery and prosthetics—is something now largely taken for granted. But for a philosopher, such interventions raise fundamental and fascinating questions about our sense of individual identity and its relationship to the physical body. Drawing on and engaging with philosophers from across the centuries, Jenny Slatman here develops a novel argument: that our own body always entails a strange dimension, (...) a strangeness that enables us to incorporate radical physical changes. (shrink)

La question qui anime tout ce travail est de savoir comment la philosophie peut se rendre digne du retour aux choses memes. Chez Merleau-Ponty, ce retour implique, de prime abord, une critique vigoureuse de la pensee representative. La phenomenologie merleau-pontienne nous enseigne que la perception, ou plus precisement l'aisthesis, precede le domaine de la representation. C'est donc a l'aisthesis que la phenomenologie doit remonter. Et c'est la tout l'interet d'une ontologie de la peinture qui se demarque profondement d'une ontologie de (...) la representation. Or, l'etude de Jenny Slatman montre clairement que ce retour aux choses memes ne s'acheve pas simplement dans une philosophie de l'art. En effet, l'auteur developpe la these, a travers une lecture rigoureuse de l'oeuvre de Merleau-Ponty, selon laquelle le retour aux choses memes resulte en une transformation de l'expression philosophique. Comparable a une oeuvre d'art, l'oeuvre ou l'expression de la philosophie ne devrait pas s'enfermer dans des concepts figes. Mais grace a la force de la metaphore, le discours philosophique peut rester a jamais ouvert et en mouvement perpetuel. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

The social model of disability gives us the tools not only to challenge the discrimination and prejudice we face, but also to articulate the personal experience of impairment. Recognition of difference is therefore a key part of the assertion of our common humanity and of an ethics of care that promotes our human rights.

Giorgio Agamben, a philosopher both celebrated and reviled, is among the prominent voices in contemporary Italian thought today. His work, which touches upon fields as diverse as aesthetics and biopolitics, is often understood within a framework of Aristotelian potentiality. With this incisive critique, Doussan identifies a different tendency in the philosopher's work, an engagement with the problem of time that is inextricably bound up with language and visuality. Founded in his early writings on metaphysics and continuing to his present occupation (...) with inoperativity, Time, Language and Visuality in Agamben's Philosophy forges an original path through Agamben's extensive commentary on the linguistic and the visual to illuminate the recurrent temporal theme of capture and evasion the cat-and-mouse game that bears the foundational violence of not just representation but concept-formation itself. In the process, Doussan both reveals its limit and establishes a ground for future engagements. (shrink)

Drawing both on cultural-historical activity theory and on a dialogical approach to discourse, this article expands a method of analysis developed by Engeström & Sannino to capture discursive manifestations of contradictions in an activity system. The data consist of recorded meetings of an interprofessional team working with persons living with both a mental handicap and psychiatric disorders. The mission of this team is to coordinate socio-educative and psychiatric work. A sequence taken from one of these meetings was submitted to a (...) step-by-step discourse analysis and examined how the participants negotiated and managed the obstacles met with in their daily work. The analysis showed how an initial obstacle presented as a conflict was gradually turned into a critical conflict and finally into a dilemma between two rules: professional confidentiality and transparency towards the patient. It showed how the participants collectively coped with this dilemma, and came to define it as a problem related to work organisation, and not only to interpersonal relationships. The study shows the importance of discourse processes in collaborative work and in fostering professional learning and focus upon discourse processes through which team members deal with obstacles in their daily work and to provide a fine-grained analysis of systemic contradictions. (shrink)

Phenomenology of illness and abnormality Habitually, illness or disease is considered as something abnormal. Therefore, the distinction between health/illness is often conflated with the distinction normal/abnormal. Inspired by Kurt Goldstein’s work, Merleau-Ponty makes clear, however, that abnormality does not automatically coincide with pathology. It is also interesting to note that Merleau-Ponty nowhere uses the term “abnormal” to indicate the opposite of the normal person. Similar to Georges Canguilhem he uses the pair “the normal (person)” (le normal) – “the sick person”, (...) “the pathological” (le malade, le pathologique). As Goldstein and Canguilhem make more explicit than Merleau-Ponty, the abnormal person or “deviant” is very often not sick. Instead of approaching physical symptoms from an external or statistical view (which might lead to the conclusion that something is abnormal), they claim that sickness should be defined by the patient’s own lived experience. Merleau-Ponty shares this view, but for different reasons. Goldstein and Canghuilhem, both trained clinicians, believe that patients’ own experiences should be central in clinical practice instead of objectifying measurements and tests. For Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenologist, objective physical features have no place within his phenomenology of lived bodily experience. Bracketing positivist scientific insights, phenomenology also excludes biomedical statistics from its analysis. If we assume that abnormality is a result from a comparison with what is statistically seen as normal, this means that a phenomenology of abnormal embodiment might seem a contradiction in terms. In this paper, however, I would like to show that abnormal embodiment can also be approached from a phenomenological perspective. While drawing on some ideas by Hacking on the history of statistical reasoning, I demonstrate how the statistics of abnormality directly interconnects with lived experience. Hacking explains how the descriptive “average” or “mean” has become the normative “normal”. Because our world is in many ways determined by averages, it is an illusion to think that phenomenology can just bracket statistics. The one who appears physically as abnormal can, comparable to the one who is ill, experience that his or her embodied possibilities to deal with the world dwindle. What I show in this article is that even though a clear distinction can be made between illness and abnormality, both can be accompanied by a reduction or disruption of the “I can”. (shrink)

The frequency and severity of natural disasters and extreme weather events are increasing, taking a dramatic economic and relational toll on the communities they strike. Given the critical role that entrepreneurship plays in a community’s viability, it is necessary to understand how small business owners respond to these events and move forward over time. This study explores the long-term dynamics and trajectory of individuals within the broader business community following a natural disaster, paying particular attention to the influence of social (...) identity. Results suggest that the community identity changes over the course of recovery and rebuilding, underscoring the need for a holistic approach so that intervening agencies can achieve the sustainable economic recovery desired. (shrink)

In the last few years, justice has emerged as a matter of concern for the contemporary constitution of technoscience. Increasingly, both practicing scientists and engineers and scholars of science and technology cite justice as an organizing theme of their work. In this essay, I consider why “science and justice” might be arising now. I then ask after the opportunities, but also the dangers, of this formation. By way of example, I explore the openings and exclusions created by the recent conjugation (...) of science and justice in the field of personal genomics. Finally, I conclude with reflections on what other forms “science and justice” might take, and what might be gained or lost in fostering them. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractSocial learning and culture occur in a wide variety of animal species and across many different types of community structures. In article number 1900060, Jenny A. Allen present an overview of social learning in species across a spectrum of community structures, providing the necessary infrastructure to allow a comparison of studies that will help move the field of animal culture forward. Art designer: Emma Hilton.

In this essay, I argue that to create a genomics that offers more gifts than weights, central attention must be paid to questions of justice. This will require expanding bioethical imaginations so that they grasp and can respond to questions of structural inequity. It will necessitate building novel coalitions and collaborations that turn the attention of bioethical governance away from narrow individual questions such as, “Do I consent?” and toward the broader collective question, is this just? What kind of lives (...) and collectivities are made possible? What rights and principles should govern them? The essay ends with one example of this novel coalition building arising from the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It draws lessons from this effort to build new alliances that bridge the social sciences and natural sciences, arts and engineering, to create new kinds of training and thinking that create a genomics that more adequately responds to fundamental questions of justice. (shrink)

Boorse’s biostatistical theory states that diseases should be defined in ways that reflect disturbances of biological function and that are objective and value free. We use three examples from contemporary medicine that demonstrate the complex issues that arise when defining the boundaries of disease: polycystic ovary syndrome, chronic kidney disease, and myocardial infarction. We argue that the biostatistical theory fails to provide sufficient guidance on where the boundaries of disease should be drawn, contains ambiguities relating to choice of reference class, (...) and is out of step with medical processes for identifying disease boundaries. Although proponents of the biostatistical theory might regard these practical issues as irrelevant to the aim of providing a theoretical account of disease, we take them to indicate the need for a theoretical account that is adequate for current needs—including limiting new forms of medicalization that are driven by the identification of disease based on dysfunction. Our processes for determining the boundaries for disease need to recognize that there is no value-free method for making these decisions. (shrink)

What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists (1952) is a picture book for schoolchildren published by UNESCO as part of its high-profile campaign on race. The 87-page, oblong, soft-cover booklet contains bold, semi-abstract, pared-down images accompanied by text, devised (so it declared) to make scientific concepts ‘more easily intelligible to the layman’. Produced by UNESCO’s Department of Mass Communication, the picture book represents the organization’s early-postwar confidence in the power of scientific knowledge as a social remedy and diplomatic tool. In keeping (...) with a significant component of the race campaign, What Is Race? presented genetics as the route to an enlightened, scientific, non-prejudiced understanding of race. This article seeks to explain the book’s management, aesthetics and framing in the context of postwar disciplinary and international politics. Viewing UNESCO’s race campaign as a high point for an internationalist ideology of mass education, this article also analyses the visual and literary arguments of What Is Race? and proposes that the enduring image of genetics as technical and neutral knowledge was in part shaped by UNESCO’s efforts to communicate scientific authority to an apparently ‘popular’ audience. (shrink)

Introduction -- Time and matter: temporality, embodied subjectivity and film phenomenology -- Knowing and nothing: Chris Marker, subjective temporalities and vocalic bodies in the future tense -- Agnès Varda's Trinket box: subjective relationality, affect and temporalised space -- Burlesque gestures and bodily attention: phenomenologies of the ephemeral in Chantal Akerman -- Threatened corporealities: thinking with the films of Philippe Grandrieux -- Conclusion: rethinking cinematic subjectivity and beyond.

Assessing psychophysiological responses of emotion regulation is a cost-efficient way to quantify emotion regulation and to complement subjective report that may be biased. Previous studies have revealed inconsistent results complicating a sound interpretation of these findings. In the present study, we summarized the existing literature through a systematic search of articles. Meta-analyses were used to evaluate effect sizes of instructed downregulation strategies on common autonomic (electrodermal, respiratory, cardiovascular, and pupillometric) and electromyographic (corrugator activity, emotion-modulated startle) measures. Moderator analyses were conducted, (...) with moderators including study design, emotion induction, control instruction and trial duration. We identified k = 78 studies each contributing multiple sub-samples and performed 23 meta-analyses for combinations of emotion regulation strategy and psychophysiological measure. Overall, results showed that effects of reappraisal and suppression on autonomic measures were highly inconsistent across studies with rather small mean effect sizes. Electromyography (startle and corrugator activity) showed medium effect sizes that were consistent across studies. Our findings highlight the diversity as well as the low level of standardization and comparability of research in this area. Significant moderation of effects by study design, trial duration, and control condition emphasizes the need for better standardization of methods. In addition, the small mean effect sizes resulting from our analyses on autonomic measures should be interpreted with caution. Findings corroborate the importance of multi-channel approaches. (shrink)

Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside, is destroying us. It wasn't built for people, it was built for profit. This is a book that tears open the seams of reality as we know it-the way we experience time itself-and rearranges it, reimagining a world not centered around work, the office clock, or the profit motive. Explaining how we got to the point where time became money, Odell offers us (...) new models to live by--inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological, and geological time--that make a more humane, more hopeful way of living seem possible. In this dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful reframing of time, Jenny Odell takes us on a journey through other temporal habitats. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days, alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding. The stretchy quality of waiting and desire, the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory, the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy, or the time it takes to heal from injuries--physical or emotional. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life, to imagine a life, identity, and source of meaning outside of the world of work and profit, and to understand that the trajectory of our lives--or the life of the planet--is not a foregone conclusion. In that sense, "saving" time-recovering its fundamentally irreducible and inventive nature-could also mean that time saves us. (shrink)

This article explores the metaphorical models English speakers employ in their understanding of transgenderism. Transgender is the term ascribed to those who have begun or completed a change in their sex characteristics from male to female or female to male. Using both qualitative and quantitative measures, I examine an archive of narrative data and a transition-specific corpus to show how spoken and written narrative support a spatially based representation of gender identity and transition. Two robust models are revealed in the (...) data, each carrying a set of suppositions consequential to how speakers understand their lived experience. I show how metaphor-evoking trigger lexemes relate to each model and can be used jointly to demonstrate conceptual salience. This investigation should be seen as part of an ever-growing body of research directed at revealing the unconscious assumptions, which organize speakers’ comprehension of complex topics with political relevance (cf. Charteris-Black, 2004; Lakoff, 2002,.. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of whether predictions of wrongdoing are relevant to our moral obligations. After giving an analysis of 'won't' claims, the question is separated into two different issues: firstly, whether predictions of wrongdoing affect our objective moral obligations, and secondly, whether self-prediction of wrongdoing can be legitimately used in moral deliberation. I argue for an affirmative answer to both questions, although there are conditions that must be met for self-prediction to be appropriate in deliberation. The discussion illuminates (...) an interesting and significant tension between agency and prediction. (shrink)

Veterinary medicine has undergone dramatic, rapid feminization while in many ways remaining gendered masculine. With women constituting approximately half of its practitioners and nearly 80 percent of students, veterinary medicine is the most feminized of the comparable health professions. Nevertheless, the culture of veterinary medicine glorifies stereotypically masculine actions and attitudes. This article examines how women veterinarians understand the gender dynamics within the profession. Our analysis reveals that the discursive strategies available to women sustain and justify the status quo, and (...) thus preserve hegemonic masculinity. Women use strategies previously used toward female tokens in nontraditional jobs, such as role encapsulation, and strategies previously used by male tokens in traditionally female jobs, such as distancing from the feminine. Through this discursive “gender work,” women help to maintain the institutionalized inequality and the masculine ethic of the profession. Veterinary medicine illustrates the importance of considering organizational context in studies of feminization. (shrink)

It has become increasingly clear that social learning and culture occur much more broadly, and in a wider variety of animal communities, than initially believed. Recent research has expanded the list to include insects, fishes, elephants, and cetaceans. Such diversity allows scientists to expand the scope of potential research questions, which can help form a more complete understanding of animal culture than any single species can provide on its own. It is crucial to understand how culture and social learning present (...) in different communities, as well as what influences community structure and culture may have on one another, so that the results across these different studies may most effectively inform one another. This review presents an overview of social learning in species across a spectrum of community structures, providing the necessary infrastructure to allow a comparison of studies that will help move the field of animal culture forward. (shrink)

In this paper I look at attempts to develop forms of consequentialism which do not have a feature considered problematic in Direct Consequentialist theories (that is, those consequentialist theories that apply the criterion of rightness directly in the evaluation of any set of options). The problematic feature in question (which I refer to as ‘evaluative conflict’) is the possibility that, for example, a right motive might lead an agent to perform a wrong act. Theories aiming to avoid this phenomenon must (...) argue that causal relationship entails motives and acts (for example) having the same moral status. I argue that attempts to ensure such ‘evaluative consistency’ are themselves deeply problematic, and that we must therefore accept evaluative conflict. (shrink)

This Handbook presents key ideas of philosophers and social theorists whose ideas inform process approaches to organization studies. Each chapter addresses the background and context of this thinker, their work (with a focus on the processual elements), and the potential contribution to organization and management research.

Stuart, Jennie This is not intended to be a discussion about humanist art, its place in the history of art or a detailed coverage of work which might be described as such. I am not qualified to do so. However, I believe, it is a field which could be explored further by Australian Humanists.

The article argues on behalf of a neglected tradition of feminist engagement with orthodox Christian theological themes, which deserves recognition as an aspect of feminist theology. As a preface to this argument, the heritage and current vibrancy of feminist liberation theology as a struggle for justice is first affirmed, then Christian theological currents are mapped by means of crosscutting coordinates. Evidence of feminist engagement across this theological map, and of the map operating within feminist theology, is presented to show that (...) feminist theology exceeds its mainstream identity as a liberation theology, and to reject the notion of liberation theology as a successor theology. The core of the article begins with Woodhead's neo-orthodox critique of feminist theology and responds in two ways: by identifying an existing feminist engagement with orthodoxy which is ignored by Woodhead; and by reading the texts she criticizes as imaginative revisitings of core Christian themes. The creative potential of imaginative revisiting of orthodox themes is further explored, concluding with a parable of the prodigal daughter. (shrink)

Although thoughts of an approaching apocalypse may have occurred to Christians in western Europe as the end of the first Christian millennium neared, the inhabitants of Iceland—a country far removed from the Continent and almost halfway to the New World—wrestled with an entirely different problem: whether or not to become Christians. The way in which Icelanders deliberated the issue and made their momentous decision in the year 1000 deserves a commemoration of its own along with celebrations of the second millennium (...) of the Christian era. (shrink)

Around the world, unhealthy diets are a leading cause of disease. Shifting population diets in a healthier direction will require downstream policy interventions. This means changing the composition of the processed food supply, particularly reducing salt, sugar and fat. Mandatory nutrient limits imposed by government are one way of achieving this. However, they have been criticized as a particularly intrusive regulatory option, interfering with both free markets and free choices. At the same time, voluntary industry reformulation has become an intervention (...) favoured by national governments, the World Health Organization and the food industry. This article uses a comparison of the two interventions—which share a common public health goal, albeit achieved through different regulatory means—as a basis to evaluate the ethical charges against mandatory nutrient limits. It makes three main findings: that both affect free dietary choice in very similar ways; that dominant public health ethics frameworks are not well equipped to compare mandatory and voluntary forms of regulation; and that food governance is inherently multisectoral, involving markets, governments and the public. Taking these findings into account, the article calls for a more nuanced ethical evaluation of food reformulation policies. (shrink)

The B case jumps ahead several years and outlines the turnaround efforts SBM undertook to address its grave missteps: shifting to a consumer-oriented, integrity-focused management style; providing greater transparency and communication; and establishing a corporate ethics committee and a Snow Brands Code of Conduct. In June 2002, after much consideration and reflection on Snow Brand’s issues (as outlined in the A case), Hiwasa joined its new board as its sole outside director, serving as the impetus for the changes the company (...) made. Her appointment indicated SBM was indeed serious about reform and revitalization. (shrink)