:This article explores some implications of the concept of transformative change for the debate about human enhancement. A transformative change is understood to be one that significantly alters the value an individual places on his or her experiences or achievements. The clearest examples of transformative change come from science fiction, but the concept can be illuminatingly applied to the enhancement debate. We argue that it helps to expose a threat from too much enhancement to many of the things that make (...) human lives valuable. Among the things threated by enhancement are our relationships with other human beings. The potential to lose these relationships provides a compelling reason for almost all humans to reject too much enhancement. (shrink)

This paper looks at the impact of the Business & Society Course on student's attitude towards and awareness of both ethical and illegal behavior. Business students were surveyed on the first and last day of the semesters on 11 ethical and legal scenarios. The population included three sections of the Business and Society course and three sections of other business courses as a control group. Though generalizability is limited, the courses show some potential to positively impact student's attitudes.Currently, ethics is (...) of great concern at business schools in this country. Accreditation standards of both the AACSB and ACBSP both require an ethical component to a business curriculum as a condition of accreditation. A majority of business schools at both the undergraduate and graduate level have required or at least elective courses in ethics. (shrink)

This book sets out to identify the nature and implications of a proper understanding of pluralism in a original and illuminating way. Isaiah Berlin believed that a recognition of pluralism is vital to a free, decent and civilised society. By looking below at the often neglected foundations of Berlin’s celebrated account of moral pluralism, Lyons reveals the more philosophically profound aspects of his undogmatic and humanistic liberal vision. He achieves this by comparing Berlin’s core ideas with those of several of (...) his most distinguished philosophical contemporaries, an exercise which yields not only a deeper grasp of Berlin and several major twentieth-century thinkers, principally A. J. Ayer, J. L. Austin, P. F. Strawson, Bernard Williams and Quentin Skinner, but, more broadly, a keener appreciation of the power of history and philosophy to help us make sense of our predicament. (shrink)

The ancient Stoics repeatedly stressed the monolithic comprehensiveness of their philosophy, and this book is the only one to provide a holistic grasp of their attempt to synthesize the whole of the human condition into a unified view. Originally published in 1962, _An Essay on the Unity of Stoic Philosophy_ was far ahead of its time. Now a pivotal text, it lays out the core ideas of Stoicism and their interconnection against the backdrop of Aristotelian philosophy, providing a coherent understanding (...) of the many—and sometimes divergent—philosophies the Stoics formulated. At once penetrating and lucid, Johnny Christensen’s book is brought back into print in a second edition for a new audience. (shrink)

Novices face a problem when it comes to forming true beliefs about controversial issues that they cannot assess themselves: Who are the trustworthy experts? Elizabeth Anderson offers a set of criteria intended to allow novices to form reliable assessments of expert trustworthiness. All they need to assess experts is a high-school education and access to the internet. In this paper, I argue that novices face a much harder time using her criteria effectively than we would expect or hope. This problem (...) is amplified when novices hold the wrong opinions. Such novices need her criteria the most and are the least likely to use them correctly. Such novices lack knowledge necessary for using the criteria accurately, and are likely to resist correction of their wrong opinions due to cognitive biases. After providing reasons to be skeptical of the effectiveness of her criteria, I propose some supplemental criteria to increase their effectiveness: metacognitive reliability conditions aimed at getting novices to assess themselves in the way that they assess experts. Although these additional criteria show promise, we should be reserved in our optimism. (shrink)

In an effort to build on the current knowledge of ethical behaviour in Asia this paper proposes to replicate existing ethical research and to investigate specific questions relating to intra-cultural differences in Hong Kong. Four major conclusions were derived from this descriptive empirical study. A statistically significant correlation exists between age and ethical beliefs, with older employees less likely to express agreement to an unethical action than younger employees. In contrast to many previous studies no statistically significant differences in ethical (...) beliefs were found in relation to gender, level in the organisation, company size, and whether the respondent worked in a multinational or local company. Significant differences in responses to ethical dilemmas were identified between local and expatriate personnel with expatriate respondents indicating a lower level of agreement to unethical actions. For local respondents, of Hong Kong origin, there was no significant correlation between level of education, religiosity, years of business experience, functional origin and their ethical responses. (shrink)

Trust is critical for social life, and yet it is alarmingly fragile. It is easily damaged and difficult to repair. Philosophers studying trust have often noted that basic kind of trust needs to be in place in order for social life to be possible. Although philosophers have suggested that basic trust must exist, they have not tried to describe in explicit terms what this basic trust looks like, or how it comes to be. In this article I will identify and (...) describe a basic form of trust that I call recognition trust. It is a latent expectation we have in others to respect our moral status as persons. By conceptualizing recognition trust, I can explain why trust is not just a useful tool for social cooperation: having our personhood recognized is necessary for living a minimally decent human life, and trust is a necessary element of recognition. First, I motivate the need for conceptualizing a basic form of trust by looking at cases of moral injury and our inherent vulnerability. Such injuries involve the betrayal of an expectation we have in others to recognize us as persons with moral status. Second, I dig deeper into this basic human need of recognition that is thwarted in moral injuries. I argue that fulfilling this basic need requires a particular kind of trust that others will not morally injure us. Third, I give shape to recognition trust by describing its core features, showing why it is a candidate for basic trust. Finally, I defend my concept of recognition trust against a pair of objections. (shrink)

Ancient Stoics repeatedly stressed the monolithic unity of their philosophy. In this ground breaking "essay" Johnny Christensen takes their claim at face value: "It is a presupposition of the present essay that Stoic philosophy is a coherent and consistent system of thought", he says, and "The Stoic Philosopher is a man caught by the quest for unity. If this life is to make sense, all of it must be taken into account and somehow justified. Therefore Reality must be rational, (...) not random, and organically one". In four concise sections, Christensen lays out the core ideas of Stoicism and their interconnection, never losing himself in details. The exposition is philosophically penetrating and lucid at the same time. Originally published in 1962, when it was far too modern for its time, this small but exceedingly generous study constitutes the most holistic grasp of Stoicism to date. Offering a deep appreciation of, and insightful meditation on, Stoicism, this study is required reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing anti-feminist, conservative movement across many parts of the world known as the anti-gender movement. This movement has been especially strong in Central Eastern Europe, where anti-gender actors have framed ‘gender’ as a static, foreign concept imported from ‘the West’ and destructive to ‘traditional’ societies. Utilising a postcolonial feminist approach, I examine the concept of ‘gender’ in Czechia, drawing attention to the role played by Czech academics, activists and policymakers in negotiating the use (...) of the term ‘gender’. This article traces the history of the term from the 1990s when ‘gender’ was first introduced to a Czech academic audience, through public seminars and lectures hosted by the Prague Gender Studies Centre, to the present-day inclusion of gender mainstreaming discourse in Czech policy documents. I reveal that ‘gender’ is not a timeless, clearly defined, fixed term wholly imported from ‘the West’ but rather a concept with a variable and complicated history. Thus, this crucial term, first developed in Anglo-academia, is not uncontested or uncritically accepted, contrary to the claims made by anti-gender actors. The findings presented in this article hold implications critical to transnational feminist dialogue and activism during the current period of growing global anti-feminist sentiment. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est de présenter quelques considérations sur les relations temporelles, stratigraphiques et épistémologiques entre la surface archéologique (et les matériels céramiques collectés pendant les prospections) et les niveaux souterrains (avec leur potentiel informatif). Il ne s’agit pas donc d’une étude archéologique spécifique ou de la discussion d’un problème méthodologique. Mais plutôt d’une réflexion sur les contradictions implicites à certaines approches archéologiques : la lecture linéaire du temps et des évolutions, l’application de notions typiquement occidentales (bien qu’utiles) (...) à des contextes non-occidentaux, ainsi que l’absence d’intérêt archéologique pour la culture matérielle actuelle (sur la surface). La temporalité traditionnelle et linéaire (fondée sur la notion d’une Grande Fracture entre passé et présent, antiquité et « modernité »), est strictement liée aux postulats d’un évolutionnisme linéaire d’empreinte coloniale et crée des apories archéologiques qui peuvent être dépassées par l’adoption d’une temporalité non-linéaire et « aplatie ». Des exemples archéologiques sont brièvement présentés pour montrer le caractère souvent non linéaire des transformations techniques et culturelles et comment la culture matérielle du présent peut être approchée par des méthodes strictement archéologiques. (shrink)

As we approach the end of the twentieth century, humanity is facing a crisis in definition and ways of thinking across the boundaries of identity, politics, and culture. This paper briefly addresses unusual forums and forms for expressing the anxiety surrounding change and the ability to analyze it, forms linked to the media and its intensive focus on particular “human interest” stories, but also to the uncertainty that a lack of precedent for thinking creates. One of the questions that most (...) interests me is how the malaise of society and the malaise of political change is expressed through the debates around maternity, birth, and the custody of children, how socio-political problems are made intelligible through dramatization of individual struggle involving family relations. What is compelling is the way in which certain stories followed by the media gravitate around facts that speak of what we do not know. Recent advances in reproductive technologies have put into question the belief (whether implicit or explicit) that biology, as a teleological process, can hold cultural chaos in abeyance. The doors have been opened wide as the definition and status of mother, father, and child have all been deeply questioned. Yet at the very moment when the so-called nuclear family is endangered, it is the extraordinarily powerful metaphor of the family that rings insistently in social and political discourse. There is a sense that the threat to the family signals a disintegration of order, leaving the contemporary sense of self bereft of a discourse that can represent universal order. (shrink)

Luigi Ferrajoli ha propuesto la llamada Constitución de la Tierra para enfrentar los graves problemas globales de nuestra época. Según Ferrajoli, su propuesta sigue las ideas cosmopolitas kantianas y contempla crear la Federación de la Tierra, que sería la federación de pueblos de Kant. Este escrito muestra tres asuntos que emergen de tal proyecto normativo y lo debilitan. Estos tres puntos se entrelazan de manera problemática con las ideas jurídicas de Kant. Primero, se argumenta que la Federación de la Tierra (...) tiene una naturaleza normativa diferente de la federación de pueblos y se acerca más al modelo del Estado mundial del que Kant desconfió. Segundo, se sostiene que la inclusión del principio democrático en la Constitución de la Tierra no garantiza de manera suficiente la protección frente a las tendencias despóticas de algunos miembros de la Federación de la Tierra y, tercero, que el concepto de estado de naturaleza que emplea Ferrajoli no se ajusta a la realidad normativa global. (shrink)

Kant hace uso de la idea de un contrato originario para legitimar el Estado y el Derecho, el cual, sin embargo, no muestra las razones o motivos para el establecimiento de ambos. Se afirma que, para saber cuáles son estas razones, se debe analizar el concepto de estado natural. Este concepto no se l..

In recent years leading figures in a variety of fields - political, financial, medical, and organizational - have become acutely aware of the need to effectively incorporate aspects of risk into their decision-making. This book addresses a wide range of contemporary issues in decision research, such as how individuals deal with uncertainty and complexity, gender-based differences in decision-making, what determines decision performance and why people choose risky activities. The book presents results from academic research carried out over the last twenty (...) years. A common theme is the study of decisions made in horserace betting markets, a research medium which offers a rich insight into decision-making in general and one which enjoys particular methodological advantages over laboratory-based simulations. This set of naturalistic studies explores the variety of individual motivations for betting, how people perceive and respond to the presence of uncertainty, the challenges of complex and turbulent information and the use of heuristics as a response, how decision-making performance is affected by structural or process-related features of the decision environment, and how men and women differ in their decision behaviour. The authors’ interesting and novel findings offer a richer understanding of the psychological and economic underpinnings of betting behaviour which should inform practitioners, policymakers and regulators in an industry which is undergoing unprecedented global growth. The book is also relevant to courses covering subject areas such as financial markets, decision-making and behavioural finance. (shrink)

Religion moves into the realm of the rational the moment when specific and specified texts are generated, reproduced and disseminated according to Weber. As such, the capacity to generate, reproduce and disseminate concepts from texts is shown to be consequential. In Weber’s work, the presence of women is not overt. Scholarship has explored how women are positioned in religious texts, but comparatively little scholarship has engaged with how they generate, reproduce and disseminate texts. This article interrogates the position of women (...) in relation to a religious textual generation, reproduction and dissemination within an Islamic tradition. Ethnographic data from a Deobandi-aligned education institution or madrasa was drawn on. Data were analysed with regard to how the texts used in the institution of Islamic learning are generated, reproduced and disseminated and the position of women in this regard. Contribution: Findings illustrated that women are key disseminators of particular forms of Islamic (religious) texts. As such, there are opportunities for women to generate and reproduce their own meaning of the texts. The article enhanced scholarship with regard to how women are able to maintain, extend and expand theologies. In this way, it demonstrated how women might be empowered to do so. (shrink)

We investigated the cognitive structure of emotions in Indonesia and The Netherlands in a series of three studies. Sets of 120 emotion terms were selected based on local ratings of prototypicality for "emotion". With similarity sortings a three-dimensional (evaluation, arousal, dominance) and a four-cluster (positive emotion, sadness, fear, anger) structure was found in each group. Of 50 pairs of translation-equivalent terms, 42 pairs were also found to be cognitively equivalent. With these equivalent terms a good fit of a common cognitive (...) emotion structure was demonstrated in both countries. In a fourth and final study, the location of two social emotions, "shame" and "guilt", in the common structure was found to be closer to "fear" and somewhat further away from "anger" in Indonesia than in the Netherlands. (shrink)

Persuasive design draws on our basic psychological makeup to build products that make our engagement with them habitual. It uses variable rewards, creates Fear of Missing Out, and leverages social approval to incrementally increase and maintain user engagement. Social media and networking platforms, video games, and slot machines are all examples of persuasive technologies. Recent attention has focused on the dangers of PD: It can deceptively prod users into forming habits that help the company’s bottom line but not the user’s (...) wellbeing. But PD is not inherently immoral. We can take advantage of our psychological biases to make beneficial changes in ways that enhance our agency rather than limit it. Knowing that a tool is persuasively designed is a consideration in favor of using it when we are trying to break bad habits, such as smoking. How are we to conceptually distinguish between ethical and unethical uses of PD? In this paper, I argue that unethical uses of PD betray or erode our trust. Annette Baier offers a moral test for trust: If gaining knowledge about what other parties do with our trust in them would lead us to stop trusting, then that trusting relationship is immoral. I apply this test to the case of PD. Using trust as a litmus test for ferreting out unethical PD has several advantages, one of which is that it reveals how the harm of unethical PD extends beyond the individual to her wider social network. I close the paper by investigating these cascading effects. (shrink)

This paper discusses a challenge to normative ethics motivated by experimental philosophy. Experimental philosophers object to the perceived “armchair” or a priori nature of philosophy, claiming it should rather be empirical or naturalistic. The paper investigates the application of this claim to normative ethics. Dubbing the application of the experimental philosophers’ contention to normative ethics “the Armchair Claim,” I distinguish descriptive and normative versions of this challenge, and consider their merits as comments on the method of normative ethics (descriptive versions), (...) and as comments on how normative ethics should be done (normative versions). Characterizing normative ethics as essentially involving the use of the method of reflective equilibrium, I show how the versions of the Armchair Claim that I distinguish either misconstrue normative ethics, or are committed to metaethical views that are controversial. To bring home the latter point, I contrast two meta-ethical positions, and show how, on one such view, naturalism, the descriptive version could be correct, whereas on another, intuitionism, it would be false. The normative version, in turn, is consistent with naturalism, but begs the question against the intuitionist since she argues that normative ethics cannot be empirical. The upshot is that a conclusive assessment of the Armchair Claim will have to await the resolution of disputed issues in meta-ethics. However, normative ethicists can get on with their work since reflective equilibrium is unaffected by such debates. (shrink)

Emotional intelligence can be comprehensively redefined based on the componential emotion approach. The componential emotion approach defines emotions as processes that are elicited by goal-relevant situations and that consist of an interplay between appraisals, action tendencies, bodily reactions, expressions, and feelings. Within the componential emotion approach, emotional intelligence can be redefined as the ability (a) to identify emotions based on information from one or more of the five emotion components, (b) to understand emotions in terms of the likely appraisals, action (...) tendencies, bodily reactions, expressions, and feelings that are elicited by goal-relevant situations, and (c) to know how to regulate emotions by modifying one or more of these five components. (shrink)

A promising development in the philosophy of causation analyzes actual causation using structural equation models, i.e., “causal models”. This paper carefully considers what it means for an interpreted model to be accurate of its target situation. These considerations show, first, that our existing understanding of accuracy is inadequate. Further, and more controversially, they show that any causal model analysis is committed to a kind of relativism – a view whereby causation is a three-part relation holding between a cause, an effect, (...) and something else. In particular, insofar as a causal model analysis construes causation mind-and-language independently, it must treat causation as relative to a specification of background possibilities – i.e., a ‘modal profile.’ Or, so I argue. (shrink)

Safe stair negotiation is an everyday task that children with developmental coordination disorder are commonly thought to struggle with. Yet, there is currently a paucity of research supporting these claims. We investigated the visuomotor control strategies underpinning stair negotiation in children with and without DCD by measuring kinematics, gaze behavior and state anxiety as they ascended and descended a staircase. A questionnaire was administered to determine parents' confidence in their child's ability to safely navigate stairs and their child's fall history. (...) Kinematics were measured using three-dimensional motion capture, whilst gaze was measured using mobile eye-tracking equipment. The parents of DCD children reported significantly lower confidence in their child's ability to maintain balance on the stairs and significantly more stair-related falls in the previous year compared to the parents of typically developing children. During both stair ascent and stair descent, the children with DCD took longer to ascend/descend the staircase and displayed greater handrail use, reflecting a more cautious stair negotiation strategy. No differences were observed between groups in their margin of stability, but the DCD children exhibited significantly greater variability in their foot-clearances over the step edge, which may increase the risk of a fall. For stair descent only, the DCD children reported significantly higher levels of state anxiety than the TD children and looked significantly further along the staircase during the initial entry phase, suggesting an anxiety-related response that may bias gaze toward the planning of future stepping actions over the accurate execution of an ongoing step. Taken together, our findings provide the first quantifiable evidence that safe stair negotiation is a significant challenge for children with DCD, and that this challenge is reflected by marked differences in their visuomotor control strategies and state anxiety levels. Whilst it is currently unclear whether these differences are contributing to the frequency of stair-related falls in children with DCD, our findings pave the way for future research to answer these important questions. (shrink)

As a reaction to the dominant effect and interpretive authority of the digital, Data Loam combines radical approaches based on positions taken in the international practice of contemporary art. Previously: insistence on indexicality and the instrumental reduction of knowledge. Instead: a new metric that requires play, curiosity, experiment, and risk. As an urgent response to the continually growing flood of information that libraries, search engines, and cultural institutions are exposed to, the authors develop approaches that suggest and permit sensual logic, (...) causal permeability, and new forms of man–machine interaction. Data Loam focuses on the future of knowledge systems in texts about artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and cryptoeconomics – as a means of counteracting end-of-the-world fears. (shrink)

Are the sources of a combatant's knowledge in war morally relevant? This article argues that privacy is relevant to just war theory in that it draws attention to privacy harms associated with the conduct of war. Since we cannot assume that information is made available to combatants in a morally neutral manner, we must therefore interrogate the relationship between privacy harms and the acts that they enable in war. Here, I argue that there is ample evidence that we cannot discount (...) the analysis of privacy harms in war, and that analysis of such harms requires us to examine social goods. I develop this point to demonstrate the problems that this poses for aspects of revisionist just war theory; namely, reductivism and individualism. In order to evaluate the moral consequences of privacy harms in war, we must understand the unilateral and adversarial character of balancing privacy harms against social goods in the context of war, which, in turn, requires that we consider social goods and social institutions as objects of moral evaluation. Further, concepts drawn from privacy scholarship, such as Helen Nissenbaum's concept of contextual integrity, enable us to identify a range of moral problems associated with contemporary war that deserve further attention from just war theorists. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethical implications of healthcare resource allocation during the first wave of COVID-19 in Italy, from 21 February to 31 May 2020, with a focus on the utilitarian principles that prioritized age-based resource allocation. By comparing this approach to an ontological personalist bioethics framework, the study aims to offer a more equitable strategy for healthcare allocation applicable to any pandemic. Data from governmental reports, healthcare policies, and ethical guidelines were analyzed, revealing that Italy’s utilitarian method led to (...) significant ethical concerns, particularly regarding age discrimination. In contrast, the ontological personalist approach emphasizes the dignity and intrinsic worth of each individual, irrespective of age or health condition. The findings demonstrate that this personalist framework fosters a more balanced and fair allocation of resources, respecting human dignity and offering a universally applicable alternative to age-based prioritization. Ultimately, the study suggests that integrating ontological personalist principles into healthcare policies could enhance ethical decision-making in future pandemics, ensuring that resource allocation practices align more closely with human rights and individual dignity. (shrink)

This website is a supplement to Peter D. McDonald’s book The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences, which was first published by Oxford University Press in February 2009. It is intended for anyone curious to know more about the subject and for those interested in doing further research into the vast topic of apartheid censorship.

In this paper I identify a distinctive kind of gaslighting: communicative gaslighting. Communicative gaslighters intentionally misrepresent the communicative properties of an utterance—their own or their target’s—in a way which functions to undermine the target’s confidence in her abilities as a communicator. I argue that we can gaslight people as both speakers and hearers, and about (among other properties) the locutionary, perlocutionary, and illocutionary dimensions of utterances. Communicative gaslighting is concerning because not only does it undermine targets’ communicative agency, but also (...) it can contribute to a general decay of communicative conventions. (shrink)

El artículo de Bunge The concept of a problem, que pertenece a una serie de entregas más amplias titulada Inverse problems publicada en el primer volumen de Scientia in verba Magazine, concluye interesantemente la tesis de esta forma: «The problematics of a field is the set of ideas and procedures that, far from being above criticism, raise problems worth being investigated. The degree of maturity of a discipline may be estimated by the state of its problematics. A discipline with more (...) problems than achievements is immature, while one without problems is either embryonic or already spent. For example, accounting hardly raises any research problems, while quantum physics keeps sparking off interesting controversies. A practical spinoff of the preceding is this: those who need a voluminous to get or keep a job should work on unproblematic subjects, while those who look for intellectual stimulation should work on problematic». Aunque estoy de acuerdo por mucho con el uso de las fórmulas y el diagnóstico, sobre todo con respecto al vacío de literatura filosófica sobre el concepto de “problema” como tal y la necesidad de clarificación cuando consideramos las condiciones generales del concepto y las variedades de uso a través de varios campos, debo apartarme de algunos enunciados cuya severidad y precisión me hacen dudar de cualquier utilidad general en el texto como un todo. Me propongo por lo tanto hacer algunos ajustes cuando considere que es necesario, en el uso de las fórmulas, no obstante su novedad y buen lenguaje a ser explotados y revisados en el futuro. (shrink)

For caregivers of minimally communicative individuals, providing support in the absence of clearly meaningful responses is ethically fraught. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from caregivers of individuals who are minimally communicative, including persons with advanced dementia and individuals in disorders of consciousness. Our analysis led to two central claims: (1) Personhood is a threshold concept that is situated, relational, and dynamic and (2) in circumstances in which personhood is difficult to judge, caregivers can “fill the gap” to (...) reach the threshold through a repertoire of strategies. Because personhood is in part an attribution from others, a situational loss of personhood does not preclude restoration, nor does it eliminate moral status. (shrink)

In the United States, combat veterans are overwhelmingly male. It was not until 2013 that the ban preventing women from serving in combat was removed by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and not until 2016 that women could choose to enlist in Army Ranger School or become a Navy SEAL. Currently, only 6 percent of the veteran population in the United States is female. Why, then, choose combat trauma to show the ways in which our understanding of PTSD is problematically (...) sexist? Why argue that combat trauma is a feminist issue when there are types of trauma that impact women more directly?Combat trauma has proven to be difficult to understand and to... (shrink)

J. M. Bernstein argues that to capture the depths of the harm of torture, we need to do away with the idea that we possess intrinsic and inviolable worth. If personhood is inviolable, then torture can inflict only apparent harm on our standing as persons. Bernstein claims that torture is a paradigm of moral injury because it causes what he calls “devastation”: The victim experiences an actual degradation of his or her personhood. Bernstein argues that our value is given to (...) us through mutual recognition and hence can be lost. In this paper, I argue that if our human value can be lost, then it first must be built up. If it must be built up, then the question of our status before the building begins must be answered. Bernstein faces a problem of human beings who fall outside relations of mutual recognition and hence are valueless. His best option for answering this problem is to point to the centrality of the body in his account of recognition, but doing so reveals a notion of intrinsic worth implicit in his account. I call for a revision of Bernstein's account that can hold on to devastation without eschewing intrinsic worth. (shrink)