BackgroundNational guidelines require programmes use subjective assessments of social support when determining transplant suitability, despite limited evidence linking it to outcomes. We examined how transplant providers weigh the importance of social support for kidney transplantation compared with other factors, and variation by clinical role and personal beliefs.MethodsThe National survey of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the Society of Transplant Social Work in 2016. Using a discrete choice approach, respondents compared two hypothetical patient profiles and selected one for transplantation. (...) Conditional logistic regression estimated the relative importance of each factor; results were stratified by clinical role and beliefs.ResultsFive hundred and eighy-four transplant providers completed the survey. Social support was the second most influential factor among transplant providers. Providers were most likely to choose a candidate who had social support, always adhered to a medical regimen, and had a 15 years life expectancy with transplant. Psychosocial providers were more influenced by adherence and quality of life compared with medical/surgical providers, who were more influenced by candidates' life expectancy with transplant. For providers concerned with avoiding organ waste, social support was the most influential factor, while it was the least influential for clinicians concerned with fairness.ConclusionsSocial support is highly influential in listing decisions and may exacerbate transplant disparities. Providers’ beliefs and reliance on social support in determining suitability vary considerably, raising concerns about transparency and justice. (shrink)

The paper draws a parallel between natural language symbols and the symbolic mode in living systems. The inextricability of symbols and the dynamics with which they are functionally related shows that much of their structuring is due to dynamics and self-organization. It is also stressed that important factors that determine the shape of language structure lie outside individual mind/brains and they draw on time-scales quite different from those of phenomenological experience. Analysis of language into units and subsystems is thus not (...) straightforward, since they show functionality on many levels and many time-scales. Finally it is recognized that, as a specific and specialized system of inter-individual coordination, natural language is many hierarchical levels away form simpler forms of information transmission in biological systems. (shrink)

Timeless Radcliffe: A Review of Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic - Tomasz Fisiak Yeats’s Genres and Tensions: A Review of Charles I. Armstrong’s Reframing Yeats: Genre, Allusion and History - Wit Pietrzak Review of Anna Pochmara’s The Making of the New Negro: Black Authorship, Masculinity, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance - Antoni Górny “Artful Exaggeration” - Krzysztof Majer Interviews Bill Gaston Transcultural Theatre in the UK - Uilleam Blacker Talks to Joanna Kosmalska.

The author presents a model of moral responsibility based on the actual sequence and the notion of reason-responsiveness, and draws an analogy between this model and Robert Nozick’s model of knowledge based on the actual sequence. In addition, the concept of semicompatibilism is introduced and explained.

In recent years, countries have begun to establish ministries of transitional justice as part of political transitions from authoritarianism to democracy or from conflict to peace. This may reflect a broader historical trend in the administration of TJ, which has evolved from isolated offices within a particular ministry to ad hoc cross-ministry coordinating bodies to the establishment of dedicated ministries. The reasons for the establishment of specific ministries to pursue TJ, what we call ministerialization, have not attracted scholarly attention. This (...) article explores the causes and likely consequences of this development. In particular, it applies international relations, comparative politics, and public policy theories to explain the phenomenon. Contrary to some TJ literature that is concerned about hegemonic transnational discourse, international actors have played little to no role in shaping how TJ is bureaucratically managed. Rather, based upon fieldwork in Solomon Islands and Tunisia, the article concludes that ministerialization has been the result of domestic policy entrepreneurship. For TJ ministries to become a norm, however, more transnational actors will need to be convinced of the benefits of such an institutional arrangement. (shrink)

In this issue, our contributors demonstrate how art in the city, art “about” the city, art compared to the city, can bring to attention the insidious forces underlying every city’s gleaming, wide-awake veneer.

In addition to the traditional personnel and human resource management (HRM), there is a need for a new approach to personnel management, which we will call Human Capital Management (HCM). HCM emphasises an alignment between the individual and the organization and in our view offers the challenge and the key to successful management in the future.

During an initial palliative care assessment, a dying man discloses that he had killed several people whilst a young man. The junior doctor, to whom he revealed his story, consulted with senior palliative care colleagues. It was agreed that legal advice would be sought on the issue of breaching the man’s confidentiality. Two legal opinions conflicted with each other. A decision was made by the clinical team not to inform the police.In this article the junior doctor, the palliative medicine specialist, (...) a medical ethicist, and a lawyer consider the case from their various perspectives. (shrink)

The article presents partial results of nationwide research devoted to teaching ethics. It discusses the place of ethics in the Polish education system and the development trends visible since its introduction (1991). When it comes to legislature, acts and ordinances of the Minister of National Education were analyzed. Next to legal acts also judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal, regulating the principles of teaching and assessing the subject of ethics, were discussed. An important aspect of these regulations, due to their practical (...) consequences, is the positioning of ethics as an alternative to the religious education. Statistical data were also analyzed, allowing for a nationwide assessment of the development of interest in the ethics as a subject of school teaching – an increase in the number of schools in which the subject of ethics is taught (depending on the stage of education and the type of school), as well as an increase in the number of full-time equivalent for ethics teachers. The last-mentioned increase, although significant since 2014, is nevertheless small in absolute numbers; ethics still remains a niche subject. Over the years, one can observe an improvement in its status and an increase in social demand. However, the current definition of ethics as an optional subject means that the level of participation still remains low. (shrink)

Children’s linguistic and social skills develop through play with siblings, but there is little research into sibling interaction using naturally occurring data. This conversation analytic case study presents an evidence-based account of how an older sibling responds to verbal challenges from her younger sibling during free play at home. The older sibling employs prosodic, rhetorical and linguistic devices to deflect challenges while avoiding conflict. She does this by acknowledging the grounds of the challenge, before invoking privileged information or epistemic differences (...) to reject it. Structurally, the older sibling inserts extended digressions which obfuscate challenges by engaging the challenger and switching topic. These phenomena blur the traditional accept/reject response dichotomy. The findings provide insight into the complexity of a 5-/6-year-old’s challenge-defence strategies and highlight the importance of face preservation and mitigation of disagreement. We propose that the ability to respond to challenges while maintaining intersubjectivity is a component of communicative competence. (shrink)

Background Despite the bourgeoning of digital tools for bioethics research, education, and engagement, little research has empirically investigated the impact of interactive visualizations as a way to translate ethical frameworks and guidelines. To date, most frameworks take the format of text-only documents that outline and offer ethical guidance on specific contexts. This study’s goal was to determine whether an interactive-visual format supports frameworks in transferring ethical knowledge by improving learning, deliberation, and user experience.Methods An experimental comparative study was conducted with (...) a pre-, mid-, and post-test design using the online survey platform Qualtrics. Participants were university based early-stage health researchers who were randomly assigned to either the control condition (text-only document) or the experimental condition (interactive-visual). The primary outcome variables were learning, (measured using a questionnaire), deliberation (using cases studies) and user experience (measured using the SED/UD Scale). Analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics and mixed-effects linear regression.Results Of the 80 participants, 44 (55%) used the text-only document and 36 (45%) used the interactive-visual. Results of the knowledge-test scores showed a statistically significant difference between participants’ post-test scores, indicating that the interactive-visual format better supported understanding, acquisition, and application of the framework’s knowledge. Findings from the case studies showed both formats supported ethical deliberation. Results further indicated the interactive-visual provided an overall better episodic and remembered user experience compared with the text-only document.Conclusions Our findings show that ethical frameworks formatted with interactive and visual qualities provide a more pleasing user experience and are effective formats for ethics learning and deliberation. These findings have implications for practitioners developing and deploying ethical frameworks and guidelines (e.g., in educational or employee-onboarding settings), in that the knowledge generated can lead to more effective dissemination practices of normative guidelines and health data ethics concepts. (shrink)

Everyone knows what is feels like to be in pain. Scraped knees, toothaches, migraines, giving birth, cancer, heart attacks, and heartaches: pain permeates our entire lives. We also witness other people - loved ones - suffering, and we 'feel with' them. It is easy to assume this is the end of the story: 'pain-is-pain-is-pain', and that is all there is to say. But it is not. In fact, the way in which people respond to what they describe as 'painful' has (...) changed considerably over time. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, people believed that pain served a specific (and positive) function - it was a message from God or Nature; it would perfect the spirit. 'Suffer in this life and you wouldn't suffer in the next one'. Submission to pain was required. Nothing could be more removed from twentieth and twenty-first century understandings, where pain is regarded as an unremitting evil to be 'fought'. Focusing on the English-speaking world, this book tells the story of pain since the eighteenth century, addressing fundamental questions about the experience and nature of suffering over the last three centuries. How have those in pain interpreted their suffering - and how have these interpretations changed over time? How have people learnt to conduct themselves when suffering? How do friends and family react? And what about medical professionals: should they immerse themselves in the suffering person or is the best response a kind of professional detachment? (shrink)

Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering, and demographic forecasting raise new questions that strain the categories and assumptions of traditional ethical theories. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound problems of the limits of ethics and the nature of value.

Muslims are a marginal minority in Poland, but research shows that they are often subject to negative perceptions and hostility from the majority. Orientalist stereotypes about Islam and the people associated with it are widespread and often reproduced in the media. Research from North America and the European Court of Human Rights suggests that such prejudices can affect the adjudication of cases involving Muslims. It may be presumed that Poland is no exception to that, and this assumption was the starting (...) point for our empirical study. To date, there have been no studies on the perception of Muslims and Islam in the Polish legal system. This article presents the results of a qualitative thematic analysis of 57 judicial opinions issued by the common courts in Poland and published online, in which Islam or being Muslim was mentioned. The cases were categorised and texts of the judicial opinions closely analysed (with computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software) to identify recurring themes. The findings of this first exploratory study show that stereotypical representations and the “‘Othering” of Muslims do indeed occur in Polish courts, with some judges repeating Orientalist tropes that have become normalised in Polish society. (shrink)

An ICQ Message Board Session as Discourse: A Case Study Even though the scope of literature on online communication expands fast, very little attention seems to be paid to instant messengers-programmes providing for one to one communication in real time. It is quite surprising, since such programmes create conditions closest to face to face communication. The similarities and differences between computer-mediated and face to face interaction should be the most apparent in instant messenger mediated communication. The present paper focuses on (...) this type of internet communication. The data sample is a transcript of an online conversation that took place within one day. It is analysed within the framework of Conversation Analysis with regard to turn-taking and the occurrence of discourse markers. Also, attention is paid to the use of minimal responses. Although, as might be expected, face to face and computer-mediated interaction share many features with respect to the above criteria, there arise a few interesting differences. (shrink)

Mentalization is a process of social cognition that involves making inferences about one’s own behavior and the behavior of other people on the basis of unobservable mental states. Particularly in psychodynamic approaches, mentalization is conceptualized in the context of activation of internal representation of emotional relationship. In this study, we checked whether mentalization constitutes a predictor of relational satisfaction in the context of one’s own and the partner’s specific attachment. The research sample was composed of 32 heterosexual couples living together (...) for at least two years. Three tools were applied: the Mental State Task, Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures, and the Relationship Assessment Scale. The results indicate a strong negative effect of one’s own attachment anxiety and avoidance, and a strong effect of the partner’s attachment anxiety on the relationship satisfaction for both men and women. In women, the incremental validity of mentalization in predicting satisfaction in the relationship beyond the attachment of their partners has been observed. The results are discussed in the context of the intrapsychic and interpersonal aspects of mentalization and attachment. (shrink)

English for specific purposes has been conceptualized by its leading scholars, like Hutchinson and Waters or Dudley-Evans and St. John, as a multi-stage process, where the ESP practitioner fulfils a variety of roles, including that of learner needs researcher, course designer, language instructor, learning assessor, and course evaluator. The performance of these roles requires considerable knowledge of a linguistic, socio-cultural and pedagogical nature, necessary to inform the teacher’s cognitive processes, par- ticularly those involved in course decision making. The necessary professional (...) knowledge of the ESP teacher, which is gained through professional school- ing, teacher training, and teaching experience, comprises both relevant theo- retical concepts and performance skills. It di- rectly impacts on all stages of the ESP process, namely the planning, design, teaching, assessment and evaluation of a course, largely determining its quality. The present paper focuses on ESP teacher cognition, especially those cognitions that are involved in course design, informing the teacher’s choices of course parameters and instructional practices. Elaborating on the concepts developed by language cognition scholars, like Shulman, Andrews, and Borg, the author tries to outline the in- ternal structure of ESP teacher cognition and describe the function of each subordinate knowledge base. The paper also presents the preliminary results of a small-scale exploratory study into the professional cognition of 13 teachers of Legal and Business English employed at the University of Warsaw. (shrink)

The question of whether AI systems such as robots can or should be afforded moral agency or patiency is not one amenable either to discovery or simple reasoning, because we as societies constantly reconstruct our artefacts, including our ethical systems. Consequently, the place of AI systems in society is a matter of normative, not descriptive ethics. Here I start from a functionalist assumption, that ethics is the set of behaviour that maintains a society. This assumption allows me to exploit the (...) theoretical biology of sociality and autonomy to explain our moral intuitions. From this grounding I extend to consider possible ethics for maintaining either human- or of artefact-centred societies. I conclude that while constructing AI systems as either moral agents or patients is possible, neither is desirable. In particular, I argue that we are unlikely to construct a coherent ethics in which it it is ethical to afford AI moral subjectivity. We are therefore obliged not to build AI we are obliged to. (shrink)

Reigning regulatory frameworks for biomedical research impose on researchers and research ethics committees an obligation to protect research participants from risks that are unnecessary, disproportionate to potential research benefits, and non-minimized. Where the research has no potential to produce results of direct benefit to the subjects and the subjects are unable to give consent, these requirements are strengthened by an additional condition, that risks should not exceed a certain minimal threshold. In this article, I address the question of whether there (...) should be limits of permissible risks in non-therapeutic research involving competent and healthy subjects. Some commentators argue that competent and informed individuals should have a right to participate even in extremely risky research and that research ethics committees should never reject studies because they are too dangerous. To use David Shaw's expression, competent volunteers should have ‘a right to participate in high-risk research’. I argue that this idea is ill-founded, as it does not take into account the social mission and complex collaborative nature of research practice as well as the inequity of power between researchers and subjects. Imposition of limits on permissible risks for healthy volunteers is justified by the need to protect research enterprise and the need to protect the weaker party, namely the subjects. Also, I suggest that the best way to set boundaries on research risks is to leave the judgment of risk acceptability to research ethics committees. (shrink)

Conferring legal personhood on purely synthetic entities is a very real legal possibility, one under consideration presently by the European Union. We show here that such legislative action would be morally unnecessary and legally troublesome. While AI legal personhood may have some emotional or economic appeal, so do many superficially desirable hazards against which the law protects us. We review the utility and history of legal fictions of personhood, discussing salient precedents where such fictions resulted in abuse or incoherence. We (...) conclude that difficulties in holding “electronic persons” accountable when they violate the rights of others outweigh the highly precarious moral interests that AI legal personhood might protect. (shrink)

Paying research subjects for their participation in biomedical studies is an increasingly common and acceptable practice. Nevertheless, it continues to raise numerous conceptual, ethical, and pract...

An imagined retrospective of apocalyptic art.

According to the paradigm view in linguistics and philosophical semantics, it is lexical semantics plus the principle of compositionality that allows us to compute the meaning of an arbitrary sentence. The job of LS is to assign meaning to individual expressions, whereas PC says how to combine these individual meanings into larger ones. In this paper I argue that the pair LS + PC fails to account for the discourse-relevant meaning of normative ‘ought’. If my hypothesis is tenable, then the (...) failure of LS + CS extends to normative language in general. The reason I offer that this is so is that semantics for normative language is, in an important respect, a substantive semantics. The ‘substantive’ in question means that the meaning of normative vocabulary in use is driven by metanormative views associated with a particular normative concept. SS rejects the model LS + CS and replaces it with a discourse-relevant semantics built around an interactional principle that ascribes to a particular surface syntactical form of ‘ought’ sentences a logical form that represents its discourse-salient normative content. In the paper I shall sketch how SS works and why it is worth serious consideration. (shrink)

The article seeks to analyze the portrayal of the Jews in two plays from the Chester mystery cycle: “Trial and Flagellation” and “The Passion.” The analysis acknowledges that the cycle is a mixture of, and a dialogue between, the universal standpoint emerging from the presentation of the biblical story of humankind and a contemporary perspective, pertaining to the reality of the viewers. Therefore, while pointing to the unique formal and structural uniformity of the cycle, which strengthens the idea of continuity (...) between the Old and the New Covenant and the role of the Israelites in the history of salvation, it also recognizes the potential of the plays to engage in the current stereotypes. The article examines how the Gospel account of Christ’s trial and death is modified through presenting the Jews as torturers, whitewashing the non-Jewish characters, and placing special emphasis on the question of Jewish ignorance. It is demonstrated how different theological and popular stances concerning the Jewish people are merged and reconciled in the Chester representation of the passion of Christ and it is argued that the plays in question retell the biblical story in such a way that the justification for the expulsion of the Jews from England could be derived from it. (shrink)

A blueprint for social change showing how we can reverse the destructive attitudes that threaten our world.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2012! Contemporary picturebooks open up spaces for philosophical dialogues between people of all ages. As works of art, picturebooks offer unique opportunities to explore ideas and to create meaning collaboratively. This book considers censorship of certain well-known picturebooks, challenging the assumptions on which this censorship is based. Through a lively exploration of children's responses to these same picturebooks the authors paint a way of working philosophically based on respectful listening and creative and authentic interactions, rather (...) than scripted lessons. This dialogical process challenges much current practice in education. The authors propose that a courageous and critical practice of listening is central to the facilitation of mutually educative dialogue. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of education studies, philosophy of education, literacy teaching and learning, children's literature, childhood and pedagogy. (shrink)

Background:Data representing people’s behaviour, attitudes, feelings and relationships are increasingly being harvested from social media platforms and re-used for research purposes. This can be ethically problematic, even where such data exist in the public domain. We set out to explore how the academic community is addressing these challenges by analysing a national corpus of research ethics guidelines and published studies in one interdisciplinary research area.Methods:Ethics guidelines published by Research Councils UK, its seven-member councils and guidelines cited within these were reviewed. (...) Guidelines referring to social media were classified according to published typologies of social media research uses and ethical considerations for social media mining. Using health research as an exemplar, PubMed was searched to identify studies using social media data, which were assessed according to their coverage of ethical considerations and guidelines.Results:Of the 13 guidelines published or recom... (shrink)

This innovative book explores one of the most important concepts in contemporary cultural debates: the sublime. Joanna Zylinska looks at the consequences of feminism and its rethinking of sexual differences, and how it has led to the sublime tradition. She argues that what is generally considered aesthetics can now be more productive thought of in terms of ethics instead. Looking at a range of diverse discourses—Orlan's carnal art, philosophies of the everyday, the French feminism of Cixous and Irigaray, and (...) the gender theory of Judith Butler—Zylinska intertwines the boundaries of cultural theory and textual practice to produce an ethics of the feminine sublime. (shrink)

Absolute velocities in Newtonian mechanics are commonly regarded as unmeasurable. Roberts (Br J Philos Sci 59(2):143–168, 2008) provides a justification for this thesis which appeals to the observational indistinguishability of boost-related models of Newtonian mechanics. Middleton and Murgueitio Ramírez (Australas J Philos, 2020) criticise his argumentation by pointing out that his analysis of the notion of measurement is too restrictive, and that, under a weaker analysis (based on counterfactuals), absolute velocities are measurable. Jacobs (Australas J Philos, 2020) opposes their view, (...) arguing that, on a properly formulated counterfactual-based account of measurement, absolute velocities are unmeasurable. However, in his argument, observational indistinguishability plays no role, even though, intuitively, it is very relevant for the issue of (un)measurability. This paper’s aim is to bring observational indistinguishability back to this discussion. I build upon the observation that there is an analogy between possible views on knowledge and justification on the one hand, and on measurement on the other. In particular, I explore the distinction between externalist and internalist approaches. Counterfactual-based accounts are all externalist, whereas the observational indistinguishability of boost-related models becomes relevant if we are interested in an internalist concept of measurement. (shrink)

This paper targets an orphan topic in research ethics, namely the so called principle of the primacy of the human being, which states that the interests of the human subject should always take precedence over the interests of science and society. Although the principle occupies the central position in the majority of international ethical and legal standards for biomedical research, it has been commented in the literature mainly in passing. With a few notable exceptions, there is little in-depth discussion about (...) the meaning and role of the principle. Several authors note that the principle is vogue, ambiguous and apparently conflicting with the accepted practice of conducting non-beneficial research on individuals unable to give consent. There are opinions that it is just “a vacuous figure of speech” and should be abandoned. This paper argues that the primacy principle is far from being “a vacuous figure of speech”, rather it should be seen as a threefold concept: a fundamental interpretative rule, a procedural rule, and a substantive rule aimed at protecting research subjects from instrumental treatment and unacceptable risks. This interpretation tracks back to the principle regulatory and normative origins in the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, but also acknowledges changes in research ethics and practice, which took place at the turn on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Thus, the proposed reading of the principle is not only original, but also historically grounded and normatively fruitful. It provides a fresh and ethically rich perspective on extensively debated, but still controversial problem of an upper limit of permissible risks in non-beneficial studies. (shrink)

FADYL JK and NICHOLLS DA. Nursing Inquiry 2013; 20: 23–29 Foucault, the subject and the research interview: a critique of methodsResearch interviews are a widely used method in qualitative health research and have been adapted to suit a range of methodologies. Just as it is valuable that new approaches are explored, it is also important to continue to examine their appropriate use. In this article, we question the suitability of research interviews for ‘history of the present’ studies informed by the (...) work of Michel Foucault – a form of qualitative research that is being increasingly employed in the analysis of healthcare systems and processes. We argue that several aspects of research interviewing produce philosophical and methodological complications that can interfere with achieving the aims of the analysis in this type of study. The article comprises an introduction to these tensions and examination of them in relation to key aspects of a Foucauldian philosophical position, and discussion of where this might position researchers when it comes to designing a study. (shrink)

This paper draws on the philosophy of Karl Popper to present a descriptive evolutionary epistemology that offers philosophical solutions to the following related problems: ‘What happens when learning takes place?’ and ‘What happens in human learning?’ It provides a detailed analysis of how learning takes place without any direct transfer of information from the environment to the learner, and it significantly extends the author's earlier published work on this topic. She proposes that learning should be construed as a special case (...) of ‘problem solving’ and as a fundamentally critical and creative process in which learning organisms develop ‘expectations’ that are not purely an outcome of genetic inheritance or random mutation. Human learning is then characterised with reference to: objectified knowledge; descriptive and argumentative language; theoretical problems; the search for error and specific limitation. If the author's evolutionary analysis of learning is valid, it would suggest that we should, if we wish to promote learning, be wary of corralling children and older students in environments that inhibit autonomous activity, that discourage criticality and creativity and generally limit opportunities for trial and error‐elimination. But education institutions, particularly those for older children and adolescents, are very often environments of this constraining kind. Traditionally, educationists have vastly underestimated the human potential for imaginative criticism—because in general they have not recognised the extent to which it lies at the heart of what humans, including the youngest children, do in order to succeed at even the most basic tasks. (shrink)

This issue profiles various attempts, both successful and fraught, to engage the divide between asceticism and opulence, between materialism and poverty.

This study explored the effect of kinesthetic motor imagery training on reaching-to-grasp movement supplemented by a virtual environment in a patient with congenital bilateral transverse upper-limb deficiency. Based on a theoretical assumption, it is possible to conduct such training in this patient. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether cortical activity related to motor imagery of reaching and motor imagery of grasping of the right upper limb was changed by computer-aided imagery training in a patient who was born (...) without upper limbs compared to a healthy control subject, as characterized by multi-channel electroencephalography signals recorded before and 4, 8, and 12 weeks after CAIT. The main task during CAIT was to kinesthetically imagine the execution of reaching-to-grasp movements without any muscle activation, supplemented by computer visualization of movements provided by a special headset. Our experiment showed that CAIT can be conducted in the patient with higher vividness of imagery for reaching than grasping tasks. Our results confirm that CAIT can change brain activation patterns in areas related to motor planning and the execution of reaching and grasping movements, and that the effect was more pronounced in the patient than in the healthy control subject. The results show that CAIT has a different effect on the cortical activity related to the motor imagery of a reaching task than on the cortical activity related to the motor imagery of a grasping task. The change observed in the activation patterns could indicate CAIT-induced neuroplasticity, which could potentially be useful in rehabilitation or brain-computer interface purposes for such patients, especially before and after transplantation. This study was part of a registered experiment. (shrink)

Rather than focus on effects, the isolatable and measureable outcomes of events and interventions, the papers assembled here offer different perspectives on the affective dimension of the meaning and politics of human/non-human relations. The authors begin by drawing attention to the constructed discontinuity between humans and non-humans, and to the kinds of knowledge and socialities that this discontinuity sustains, including those underpinned by nature-culture, subject-object, body-mind, individual-society polarities. The articles presented track human/non-human relations through different domains, including: humans/non-humans in history (...) and animal welfare science (Fudge and Buller); the relationship between the way we live, the effects on our natural environment and contested knowledges about ‘nature’ (Whatmore); choreographies of everyday life and everyday science practices with non-human animals such as horses, meerkats, mice, and wolves (Latimer, Candea, Davies, Despret). Each paper also goes on to offer different perspectives on the human/non-human not just as division, or even as an asymmetrical relation, but as relations that are mutually affective, however invisible and inexpressible in the domain of science. Thus the collection contributes to new epistemologies/ontologies that undercut the usual ordering of relations and their dichotomies, particularly in that dominant domain of contemporary culture that we call science. Indeed, in their impetus to capture ‘affect’, the collection goes beyond the usual turn towards a more inclusive ontology, and contributes to the radical shift in the epistemology and philosophy of science’s terms of engagement. (shrink)