The scientific community, we hold, often provides society with knowledge—that the HIV virus causes AIDS, that anthropogenic climate change is underway, that the MMR vaccine is safe. Some deny that we have this knowledge, however, and work to undermine it in others. It has been common to refer to such agents as “denialists”. At first glance, then, denialism appears to be a form of skepticism. But while we know that various denialist strategies for suppressing belief are generally effective, little is (...) known about which strategies are most effective. We see this as an important first step toward their remediation. This paper leverages the approximate comparison to various forms of philosophical skepticism to design an experimental test of the efficacy of four broad strategies of denial at suppressing belief in specific scientific claims. Our results suggest that assertive strategies are more effective at suppressing belief than questioning strategies. (shrink)

Science communication via testimony requires a certain level of trust. But in the context of ideologically-entangled scientific issues, trust is in short supply—particularly when the issues are politically ‘entangled’. In such cases, cultural values are better predictors than scientific literacy for whether agents trust the publicly-directed claims of the scientific community. In this paper, we argue that a common way of thinking about scientific literacy—as knowledge of particular scientific facts or concepts—ought to give way to a second-order understanding of science (...) as a process as a more important notion for the public’s trust of science. (shrink)

It is often alleged that Cantor’s views about how the set theoretic universe as a whole should be considered are fundamentally unclear. In this article we argue that Cantor’s views on this subject, at least up until around 1896, are relatively clear, coherent, and interesting. We then go on to argue that Cantor’s views about the set theoretic universe as a whole have implications for theology that have hitherto not been sufficiently recognised. However, the theological implications in question, at least (...) as articulated here, would not have satisfied Cantor himself. (shrink)

Globally, there are calls to increase physical activity levels in relatively sedentary populations, including via physical activity programmes, often targeted at those body-selves deemed at risk of ‘sedentariness’. Despite the salience of sensory pleasures and displeasures in engagement with (and abandonment of) these programmes, the sensory, embodied experiences of participation remain under-researched. Here, we draw on findings from a two-year ethnographic study of a national programme in Wales, which used the aesthetic attractions of ‘natural’ outdoor environments to encourage and sustain (...) physical activity. Employing insights from phenomenological sociology, we explore the programme participants’ (n=146) lived experiences, analysed via a phenomenological lens, cohering around a panoply of sensory pleasures and displeasures, and somatic learning that is shaped and reshaped by weather encounters. (shrink)

In critical care medicine, teaching and mentoring practices are extremely important in regard to attracting and retaining young trainees and faculty in this important subspecialty that has a scarcity of needed personnel in the USA. To this end, we argue that Foucault’s Technologies of the Self is critical background reading when endeavoring to effect the positive transformation of faculty into effective teachers and mentors.

The bioeconomy is becoming increasingly prominent in policy and scholarly literature, but critical examination of the concept is lacking. We argue that the bioeconomy should be understood as a political project, not simply or primarily as a technoscientific or economic one. We use a conceptual framework derived from the work of Karl Polanyi to elucidate the politically performative nature of the bioeconomy through an analysis of an influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development initiative, The Bioeconomy to 2030. We argue (...) that this initiative is a response to some of the most acute challenges facing the current neoliberal-capitalist accumulation regime, which seeks to protect and extend that regime, through both what it occludes and what it promotes. Rather than taking the bioeconomy as a description of some subset of economic activity, we regard it as a promissory construct that is meant to induce and facilitate some actions while deterring others; most explicitly, it is meant to bring about a particular set of political–institutional changes that will shape the parameters of possible future action. The bioeconomy concept highlights the potential dangers of failing to situate ethnographic examinations of horizontal micro-relations within a political–economic macro-context that enables and constrains. Scholarly work in science and technology studies and elsewhere that does not recognize the wider politics of the bioeconomy risks unintentionally contributing to the legitimation of this political project. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine the major philosophical standpoints regarding subsentential speech acts such as “Nice dress”, “Under the table”, or “Where?”. The opponents of this category argue either that apparent subsentential speech acts are ellipses or that they are not full-fledged speech acts. The defenders of subsentential speech acts argue that even though they are not sentences in the syntactic or the semantic sense, they can be used to perform a speech act. I argue in defence of subsentential (...) speech acts and propose to analyze them using Recanati’s moderate relativism. (shrink)

One of the most widely applied techniques used to examine associative memory errors is the Deese-Roediger- McDermott paradigm. The aim of the present studies was to demonstrate a Polish version of the DRM paradigm and to test the characteristics of memory illusions evoked by this procedure for both recall and recognition. A normative study was conducted to prepare Polish stimuli material sharing similar characteristics as the lists in the English language version. Subsequently, the lists were applied to examine the effect (...) of prior recall on recognition, as well as the influence of retention interval on recall. The results revealed that the Polish version of the DRM paradigm induced a robust effect of false recall and recognition. Moreover, it was revealed that immediate recall of a single list led to a higher rate of both correct and false recall and that prior recall positively influenced recognition, leading to a higher rate of hits. (shrink)

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)

W artykule krytycznie omawiam główne stanowiska filozoficzne dotyczące domniemanych niezdaniowych aktów mowy, takich jak „Ładna sukienka”, „Pod stołem”, „Gdzie?” itp. Filozofów zajmujących się takimi wypowiedziami można podzielić na dwie grupy: tych, którzy uważają, że albo są one zakamuflowanymi wypowiedziami zdaniowymi, albo nie są pełnoprawnymi aktami mowy, oraz tych, którzy uznają, że chociaż nie są to zdania ani w sensie syntaktycznym, ani w sensie semantycznym, to jednak można za ich pomocą dokonać aktu mowy. Opowiadam się za twierdzącą odpowiedzią na tytułowe pytanie (...) i proponuję analizę takich aktów w ramach relatywizmu umiarkowanego Recanatiego. Dziękuję anonimowym recenzentom „Studiów Semiotycznych”, których krytyczne uwagi pozwoliły mi ulepszyć tekst. (shrink)

Qualitative description of movements can be very important for representation and reasoning about dynamic systems which are complex in structure or whenever numerical data are incomplete or inaccessible. For this reason, we present a hybrid approach based on the combination of qualitative reasoning, quantitative data and logical methods. In this article, we introduce a new propositional dynamic logic QM for representation and reasoning with relative movements of objects. In this way, we can infer additional information about movements by using axioms (...) and the logic apparatus. We present a sound and complete deduction system in dual tableaux style for the logic QM. The system can be used for verification of validity of formulas of the logic in question. (shrink)

Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is a community-based participatory action research project in Ontario devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of "cultural empowerment." To ensure that the knowledge generated in the project is shared and used, the research collaborative places a heavy emphasis on communicating with stakeholder groups. This paper provides an overview of a communications policy designed to facilitate such sharing and use. It describes the development and key (...) features of the policy, focusing on the broad issues of principles, authorship and acknowledgment, and planning and procedures. (shrink)

Although there are many theories of justice, one crucial feature of those that are most widely accepted is that they lay down principles that determine the allocation of rights and obligations in society. They do not eliminate conflicts of interest between different groups but, by specifying such principles, they are designed to enable conflicting interests to be resolved in a peaceful and harmonious manner. But insofar as future generations cannot be said to have any rights, their interests cannot be protected (...) within the framework of any theory of intergenerational justice. This chapter discusses the general relationship between ‘rights’ and ‘justice’, and the obstacles to any theory of intergenerational justice. (shrink)

A Professor of Medical Ethics and a theatre director, also mother and daughter, talk about health, illness, suffering, performance and practice. Using the lenses of ethical and performance theory, they explore what it means to be a patient, a spectator and a practitioner and cover many plays, texts and productions: Samuel Beckett’s Not I and All That Fall, Sarah Kane’s Crave, Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree, Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk, Annie Ryan’s adaptation of Eimear McBride’s novel A Girl Is a Half-Formed (...) Thing, Duncan MacMillan’s People, Place and Things and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. These were selected because first we have seen, studied or worked with each and they have continued to inspire us. Second, they offer rich and revealing insights into the ways in which meaning is/are both negotiated and contested in relation to health and illness. It is the iterative negotiation of meaning that, it is argued, is the essence of narrative practice, be it in medicine or in the theatre. The difference and divergence of perception, response and interpretation to dramatic performance can test relationships, be they professional, creative or familial. Yet, the capacity to understand, and embrace, disagreement and uncertainty is vital; fundamental to a flourishing life. For it is by recognising our part in creating narratives, broken and otherwise, that we can begin to recognise the necessary interactionism and humanity of both medicine and theatre. (shrink)

: Research done in recent years shows that Virtual Reality can be an effective tool for distracting attention from pain. The purpose of this study was to test how the complexity of Virtual Environment influences the experienced intensity of thermal pain stimuli. A within-subjects design experiment was conducted, using cold pressor test for pain stimulation. Research was done on 31 students of Wroclaw Universities. Participants played games created for the purpose of the study, using head mounted displays and movement sensors. (...) Two Virtual Environments differing in the level of complexity and non-VR control condition were used. The order of all conditions was counterbalanced. Participants reported significantly lower pain intensity after playing the high complexity game, compared to the low complexity game. There were also significant differences between non-VR control condition and high complexity game, but not between non-VR and low complexity game. The pain tolerance was significantly higher in both VR conditions comparing to non-VR conditions. However, no significant differences between VE’s were found in pain tolerance ratings. Results of this study provide preliminary evidence that game complexity can be related to pain experience during VR interventions. (shrink)

We explore and critically reflect on the process of science and engineering research assistant skill development both within laboratory-based research teams and, when no team is present, within the faculty supervisor-research assistant interactions. Using a performance-based measure of research skill development, we identify research assistants who, over the course of an academic year of service as a researcher, markedly developed, modestly developed, or failed to develop their research skills. Interviews with these research assistants and their faculty supervisors, seen through the (...) lens of cognitive apprenticeship, provide insight into this variation. We found that within the contours of supervisory relationships and research teams, research skill development is indelibly shaped, for better or worse, by supervisor influence and abundant trial-and-error. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 277-287.

The article concerns the wartime history of Peru and examines both topdown and bottom-up practices of accounting for the internal conflict of 1980–2000, which were initiated in the background of the warfare. The aim of the article is to discuss the connections I observed between the phenomena referred to in the title: return migrations of the inhabitants of the central-southern province, their search for the victims of forced disappearances, as well as the exhumation challenges emerging since the beginning of the (...) war. In other words, the text constitutes an attempt to contextualise the above-mentioned issues given competing versions of memory about political violence in the Andes, with particular focus on their top-down determinants in the Fujimorism era. (shrink)

Shortcomings in the target article preclude adequate tests of developmental/attachment and strategic pluralism theories. Methodological problems include comparing college student attitudes with societal level indicators that may not reflect life conditions of college students. We show, through two principal components analyses, that multiple tests of the theories reduce to only two findings that cannot be interpreted as solid support for evolutionary hypotheses.

The first goal of this study was to validate the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI) and the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) through checking their relation to the transitivity axiom. The second goal was to test the relation between decision strategies and cognitive style as well as the relation between decision strategies and the transitivity of preferences. The following characteristics of strategies were investigated: requirements for trade-offs, maximization vs. satisficing and option-wise vs. attribute-wise information processing. Respondents were given choices between two multi-attribute options. (...) The options were designed so that the choice indicated which strategy was applied. Both the REI-R and the CRT were found to be good predictors of the transitivity of preferences. Respondents who applied compensatory strategies and the maximization criterion scored highly on the REI-R and in the CRT, whereas those who applied the satisficing rule scored highly on the REI-R but not in the CRT. Attribute-wise information processing was related to low scores in both measurements. Option-wise information processing led to a high transitivity of preferences. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to validate the Polish adaptation of the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire, which measures the degree of self-determination in risk behaviour changes. The study comprised 219 patients, beginning to undergo treatment. The Global Motivation Scale was used to test a convergent validity. The confirmatory factor analysis did not support the theoretical four-factor model, thus an exploratory analysis was conducted to determine an optimal model across risk behaviours. The adopted two-factor model matched original TSRQ subscales: autonomous motivation (...) and external regulation. The internal consistency of factors ranging from.78 to.89. Structural equation modeling revealed the impact of global motivation on contextual motivation, limited to the equivalent type of regulation. The action aimed at supporting patient’s autonomy should consider the particular behaviour and the global motivation as a resource in disease. (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)

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)

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)

In this article, we discuss epistemological limitations relating to the use of ethnoracial categories in biomedical research as devised by the Office of Management and Budget’s institutional guidelines. We argue that the obligation to use ethnoracial categories in genomics research should be abandoned. First, we outline how conceptual imprecision in the definition of ethnoracial categories can generate epistemic uncertainty in medical research and practice. Second, we focus on the use of ethnoracial categories in medical genetics, particularly genomics-based precision medicine, where (...) ethnoracial identity is understood as a proxy for medically relevant differences among individuals. Notably, extensive criticisms have been made already against the genetic interpretation of races, but, nonetheless, the concept of race remains a key element of contemporary genomics. This motivates us to explore possible reasons why such criticisms may have been ineffective in redirecting attention to other (non-race-based) ways of controlling for human variability. We contend that popular arguments against the idea that human races have a genetic basis, though convincing in many respects, are not sufficient to exclude the pragmatic use of race and ethnicity as proxies for genetic variability related to complex phenotypes. Finally, we provide two further arguments to support the idea that ethnoracial categories are unlikely to provide meaningful insights into medical genetics, which implies that even the interpretation of race as a useful tool to stratify disease risk is unwarranted. (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.

Heidegger and ethics is a contentious conjunction of terms. Martin Heidegger himself rejected the notion of ethics, while his endorsement of Nazism is widely seen as unethical. This major new study examines the complex and controversial issues involved in bringing them together. By working backwards through his work, from his 1964 claim that philosophy has been completed to _Being and Time_, his first major work, Joanna Hodge questions Heidegger's denial that his enquires were concerned with ethics. She discovers a (...) form of ethics in Heidegger's thinking which elucidates his important distinction between metaphysics and philosophy. Against many contemporary views, she proposes therefore that ethics can be retrieved and questions the relation between ethics and metaphysics that Heidegger had made so pervasive. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the processes of racialisation on the example of biomedical research. We argue that applying the concept of racialisation in biomedical research can be much more precise, informative and suitable than currently used categories, such as race and ethnicity. For this purpose, we construct a model of the different processes affecting and co-shaping the racialisation of an individual, and consider these in relation to biomedical research, particularly to studies on hypertension. We finish with a discussion on (...) the potential application of our proposition to institutional guidelines on the use of racial categories in biomedical research. (shrink)

In this article, we analyse how researchers use the categories of race and ethnicity with reference to genetics and genomics. We show that there is still considerable conceptual “messiness” (despite the wide-ranging and popular debate on the subject) when it comes to the use of ethnoracial categories in genetics and genomics that among other things makes it difficult to properly compare and interpret research using ethnoracial categories, as well as draw conclusions from them. Finally, we briefly reconstruct some of the (...) biases of reductionism to which geneticists (as well as other researchers referring to genetic methods and explanations) are particularly exposed to, and we analyse the problem in the context of the biologization of ethnoracial categories. Our work constitutes a novel, in-depth contribution to the debate about reporting race and ethnicity in biomedical and health research. First, we reconstruct the theoretical background assumptions about racial ontology which researchers implicitly presume in their studies with the aid of a sample of recent papers published in medical journals about COVID-19. Secondly, we use the typology of the biases of reductionism to the problem of biologization of ethnoracial categories with reference to genetics and genomics. (shrink)