This Article explores how managerial prerogative shapes disputes over employment classification and reveals a neglected but prominent feature in legal arguments about platform worker rights—the disputed relevance of a platform’s intellectual property rights. In classification disputes, instead of denying that it has a right to control how others perform services for it, the company often concedes its employer-like authority but offers an alternative rationale: managerial prerogative. The company argues, and judges often agree, that its labor control is not the exercise (...) of employer authority but instead reflects a prerogative of enterprise ownership, like a right to protect property and determine product lines. Thus, managerial prerogative both explains labor control and exempts that control from the statutory duties that would otherwise attach under the legal tests. Platform companies appear to have taken notice of such cases and designed their work relationships around property-based rationales. For instance, Uber uses a software “license” in which drivers agree to Uber’s authority as a condition for accessing the app. The license depicts the terms upon which drivers must affirmatively cooperate with Uber to produce transportation as simply the negative duties not to interfere with Uber’s intellectual property. The Article concludes that we must reject appeals to managerial prerogative in employment classification disputes. To assume that a property-based rationale for labor control is inconsistent with employment is to misunderstand the legal basis of employment and the purpose of statutory labor law. The appeals also rely on dubious economic assumptions and conflate property rights with agreements about the use of property. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, questions have been raised about the impact of face masks on communication in classroom settings. However, it is unclear to what extent visual obstruction of the speaker’s mouth or changes to the acoustic signal lead to speech processing difficulties, and whether these effects can be mitigated by semantic predictability, i.e., the availability of contextual information. The present study investigated the acoustic and visual effects of face masks on speech intelligibility and processing speed under varying semantic predictability. (...) Twenty-six children and twenty-six adults performed an internet-based cued shadowing task, in which they had to repeat aloud the last word of sentences presented in audio-visual format. The results showed that children and adults made more mistakes and responded more slowly when listening to face mask speech compared to speech produced without a face mask. Adults were only significantly affected by face mask speech when both the acoustic and the visual signal were degraded. While acoustic mask effects were similar for children, removal of visual speech cues through the face mask affected children to a lesser degree. However, high semantic predictability reduced audio-visual mask effects, leading to full compensation of the acoustically degraded mask speech in the adult group. Even though children did not fully compensate for face mask speech with high semantic predictability, overall, they still profited from semantic cues in all conditions. Therefore, in classroom settings, strategies that increase contextual information such as building on students’ prior knowledge, using keywords, and providing visual aids, are likely to help overcome any adverse face mask effects. (shrink)

A case has been made by various authors that the normative and processual notion of personhood found in African philosophy is discriminatory: it has been labelled as sexist, ableist and anti-queer. Within the anti-queer critique, one area that has not been specifically addressed in the literature is whether this notion of personhood is biased against people who identify as non-binary with respect to gender. This includes people who are gender fluid and gender neutral, among others. In this article, we argue (...) that the binary conception of gender is deeply connected to a colonial agenda, and does not accurately fit extra-colonial gender conceptions. Through an analysis of extra-colonial language and logic, read together with the flexibility inherent in the processual notion of personhood (on our reading), we argue that binaries do not sit comfortably with extra-colonial African thinking, and as such, processual and normative personhood can be understood in a way that embraces non-binary individuals. Further, the standards for achieving personhood are set by and achieved within the community, so a community which recognises and celebrates non-binary individuals can set up a framework for them to achieve personhood. Accordingly, normative personhood in African thought is found not to exclude those of non-binary gender. This reading saves the normative approach from some of the critiques levelled against it, as well as: i) enhancing consistency in an African world view; ii) strengthening the decolonial agenda; and iii) showing normative personhood to be fairer and more inclusive. (shrink)

Prior to any research data collection a proposal outlining methods and protocols is required to undergo ethical scrutiny. The issues surrounding a research ethics review process within sport and exercise science departments are not dissimilar to other subject areas. In particular, the ethical review process may be unclear to the researcher and can either present a difficult and time-consuming challenge or be merely perceived as a tick-box exercise. The aim of this study was to explore and compare research ethics processes (...) and decisions within sport and exercise science departments and institutions across the UK. Participants were asked to provide decisions and justification of those decisions on ten typical sports and exercise science proposals. Results found that all respondents cited evidence of informed consent and subject information sheets, detailed methodology and data protection procedures as highly important across all scenarios. Additionally it was found that similar processes occur regarding research ethical scrutiny and similar decisions are made at the departmental level. However, confidence fluctuates for individuals when reviewing in non-specialist subject areas and qualitative data collected calls for more research ethics training. (shrink)

This article explores the emergence of leadership during implementation of a water saving initiative in the rural community surrounding Barren Box Swamp in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia. Qualitative data analysis indicated that the system elements affecting the type of leadership to emerge included the extent to which the groups were engaged in the process, the level of access to resources, and the level of investment in the outcomes of the project. Although these results reinforced key aspects of complex problem-solving (...) through collaboration, they demonstrated varying degrees and types of both engagement and leadership within the case community. Given the current finding that these varying elements can coincide within one system, this case suggests that each community’s characteristics, resources and context will determine the optimal combination of leadership style and level of collaboration needed to facilitate sustainable community development. (shrink)

Pour les Dormeuses et les Méditateurs, l’anachronisme est placé au centre de leur discours artistique et de leur pratique vitale. En s’habillant en Grecs et en vivant en communauté à la périphérie de la ville, ils tentent d’incarner leur vision idéalisée de l’Antiquité. Par leur absence de fidélité historique, ils ouvraient également un espace d’expérimentation sociale. Ce texte soulève donc la possibilité d’utiliser l’anachronisme comme outil pour débloquer l’imagination politique et imaginer de nouveaux horizons collectifs.

Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus sharpened the claim that happiness requires external goods as well as virtue, a claim prominently denied by the Stoics. Their position that virtue is sufficient for happiness requires revision of the content of happiness and adjustment of our attitudes to premature death and many other matters. The strain put on our concept of happiness is, however, greatly alleviated by the Stoic theory of preferred indifferents, which allows things other than virtue to have value of a different kind, (...) as the material on which virtuous activity is exercised. (shrink)

Recently, scholars have looked more closely at the philosophical importance of the imaginative and literary aspects of Plato's writing, and have begun to appreciate the methods of ancient philosophers and commentators who studied Plato. This study brings together leading philosophical and literary scholars to investigate these new-old approaches.

Philip Kitcher’s account of scientific realism in 'The Advancement of Science' (AS) differs from his account in 'Science, Truth and Democracy' (STD). We demonstrate that (1) contrary to appearance, Kitcher in AS proposes a so-called Kantian realism that is accompanied not by a correspondence theory, but by a hybrid conception of truth. (2) Also, we point out that Kitcher does not pertain to the “promiscuous realism” proposed in STD stringently, but falls back on his Kantian realism of AS at points. (...) Here, we question Kitcher’s claim that his promiscuous-realist conception stems initially from commonsensical be-liefs. (shrink)

The Heart of School Leadership focuses on 50 areas that school leaders need to think about in order to nurture a cohesive school community.

Bryan Hall is dean of the College of Contemporary Liberal Studies and Professor of Liberal Arts at Regis University, USA. An Ethical Guidebook to the Zombie Apocalypse, his first foray into fiction...

M and N, the last two books of the Metaphysics, are Aristotle's only sustained venture into the philosophy of mathematics. In them, he criticizes Plato's theories and suggests alternatives of his own. This commentary concentrates on the continuing philosophical interest of these books rather than on scholarly controversies, and will provide a clear introduction for students, including those without Greek, to an unjustly neglected part of Aristotle's work. This paperback edition replaces the outstandingly successful hardback. 'Dr Annas's translation is clear, (...) readable, and accurate...an enjoyable volume, stimulating both as intellectual history and as philosophical argument.' Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Edited by one of the most renowned scholars in the field, Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader is a unique and accessible introduction to the richness of ancient philosophy. Featuring a topical--as opposed to chronological--organization, this text introduces students to the wide range of approaches and traditions in ancient philosophy. In each section Annas presents the ancient debates on a particular philosophical topic, drawing on a greater diversity of ancient sources than a chronological approach allows. The book is divided (...) into six sections: Fate and Freedom; Reason and Emotion; Knowledge, Belief, and Skepticism; Metaphysical Questions; How Should You Live?; and Society and the State. Annas includes a generous selection of the works of Plato and Aristotle, as well as those of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. She also includes selections from less familiar philosophers and from authors in whose works philosophical issues arise, such as poets, medical writers, historians, and Jewish and Christian writers. The volume features biographical sketches of the philosophers, a timeline, and short discussions of the major movements in ancient philosophy. An excellent text for courses in ancient philosophy and history of philosophy, Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader will also be of interest to scholars and general readers. (shrink)

Particular visions of urban development are often codified in multi-year resource management policies. These policies, and the negotiations leading to them, are based in specific problem frames and narratives with long legacies. As conditions change and knowledge improves, there is often a need to revisit how problems, opportunities, and development pathways were defined historically, and to consider the viability of alternative pathways for development. In this article, we examine the case of agriculture near Metropolitan Phoenix, in the Central Arizona region, (...) to highlight how frames and narratives embedded in policy can reinforce particular development pathways, even as information, conditions, and values evolve. Using expert interviews and secondary data, we document alternative frames and narratives that may offer different pathways for development and sustainability in the region. By highlighting alternative narratives, we demonstrate the uncertainties and limitations associated with all narratives about development pathways, and explore the possibilities that narrative shifts can alter future outcomes. (shrink)

Discussions of the object as a key to understanding central aspects of modern and contemporary art. Artists increasingly refer to "post-object-based" work while theorists engage with material artifacts in culture. A focus on "object-based" learning treats objects as vectors for dialogue across disciplines. Virtual imaging enables the object to be abstracted or circumvented, while immaterial forms of labor challenge materialist theories. This anthology surveys such reappraisals of what constitutes the "objectness" of production, with art as its focus. Among the topics (...) it examines are the relation of the object to subjectivity; distinctions between objects and things; the significance of the object's transition from inert mass to tool or artifact; and the meanings of the everyday in the found object, repetition in the replicated or multiple object, loss in the absent object, and abjection in the formless or degraded object. It also explores artistic positions that are anti-object; theories of the experimental, liminal or mental object; and the role of objects in performance. The object becomes a prism through which to reread contemporary art and better understand its recent past. Artists surveyed include Georges Adéagbo, Art in Ruins, Iain Baxter, Louise Bourgeois, Pavel Büchler, Lygia Clark, Claude Closky, Brian Collier, Jimmie Durham, Fischli & Weiss, Luca Frei, Meschac Gaba, Isa Genzken, Gruppe Geflecht, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, John Latham, Antje Majewski, Gustav Metzger, Cady Noland, Gabriel Orozco, Adrian Piper, Falke Pisano, Eva Rothschild, Aura Satz, Kenneth Snelson, Hito Steyerl, Josef Strau, Alina Szapocznikow, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Erwin Wurm Writers include Homi K. Bhabha, Jack Burnham, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Lynne Cooke, Gillo Dorfles, Jean Fisher, Ferreira Gullar, Charles Harrison, Paulo Herkenhoff, Julia Kristeva, Bruno Latour, Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, Jean-François Lyotard, Lev Manovich, Ursula Meyer, Bruno Munari, Georges Perec, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Dieter Roelstraete, Howard Singerman, Nancy Spector, Marcus Steinweg, Anne Wagner, Gérard Wajcman, Slavoj Zizek. (shrink)

Antiochus’ is a hybrid theory, seeking convergence between Aristotelian and Stoic accounts of nature. He aims to retain the Stoic developmental account of virtue as the culmination of a natural progression, but tries to make the result more intuitive, arguably not successfully.

Justice is a virtue of both character and institutions. Epicurus treats these separately but, it is argued, consistently. The Stoic theory of natural law arguably depoliticizes institutional questions, treating politics as merely one concern of an individual among others. Aristotle deals with both issues of justice separately; later Aristotelians, influenced by the Stoics, have little to say about institutions.

Ethics, is referred to as a concern to act rightly and to live a good life, is pervasive in Plato's work, and so we find Plato's ethical thinking throughout the dialogues. The article discusses the idea of ethics as propounded by Plato. Why does Plato take most people to be drastically wrong about goodness but not about happiness? The answer here lies in the notion of happiness, which is how we have hitherto rendered eudaimonia. Plato's ethical thought is, then, structured (...) by a broad eudaimonist assumption. His main concern is to challenge the views most people have about goodness, for it is here that they go disastrously wrong in trying to live happy lives. Most people think that virtue is a minor good, or even an impediment to living a happy life. Plato considers this to be utterly incorrect; it is only by being virtuous that we can hope to be happy. (shrink)

There is a developed debate from Aristotle through the Stoics to Aristotelian hybrid theories found in Antiochus and Arius Didymus: should other‐concern be seen as a developed form of self‐concern, thus giving us a single source for both, or should self‐concern and other‐concern be seen as having distinct sources and development? The Stoic tradition also gives other‐concern wider scope, extending it to all rational humans rather than privileging groups like the city‐state.

Kentucky and West Virginia are among the states most severely affected by opioid poisonings and deaths. The legislatures of both states have enacted a broad range of bills intended to address related issues. We present an overview of legislation enacted in 2017 and 2018, along with an approach to analysis of practitioner response to one type of legislation.

Every project in digital and computational history of science starts with the collection of data. Depending on the research project, the subject of study, and other factors, data can comprise a variety of different types, including full texts, images, audio, video, and bibliographic metadata. Publications and project reports generally describe their results and the methods and algorithms employed, but few discuss the challenges of the initial data collection process or how it fits into the overall research data life cycle. This (...) essay discusses a concrete research data life cycle and takes a look at the difficulties it involves. It also explores the strategies and challenges of data collection and the question of the comparability of datasets. (shrink)

This art-science-interaction article focuses on moral implications of a recent science announcement. Against the background of literary and cultural theories, it compares a YouTube story with narratives employed in fictional stories.

Current academic philosophy is being challenged from several angles. Subdisciplinary specialisations often make it challenging to articulate philosophy’s relevance for the societal questions of our day. Additionally, the success of the ‘scientific method’ puts pressure on philosophers to articulate their methods and specify how these can be successful. How does philosophical progress come about? What can philosophy contribute to our understanding of today’s world? Moreover, can it also contribute to resolving urgent societal challenges, such as anthropogenic climate change? This edited (...) volume evaluates the place of philosophy in the age of science. It addresses three related sub-themes: philosophical progress, philosophical method and philosophy’s societal relevance. Fourteen authors engage with these sub-themes, focusing on the topics of their philosophical expertise, such as the philosophy of religion, evolutionary ethics and the nature of free will. In doing so, they explore their methods of enquiry, and look at how progress in their research comes about. (shrink)

Despite the fact that US presidential candidates commonly position themselves as Washington outsiders, this broadly populist positioning has thus far been significantly undertheorized. On the one hand, scholars of political representation have explored how politicians connect with political audiences; on the other, populism research has focused on the construction, mainstreaming and appeal of populist performances. A detailed theorization of the paradoxical performative operation by which self-styled political outsiders come to be more effective in connecting with political audiences than accomplished politicians (...) has yet to be undertaken. This article explores the performativity of outsider positioning, paying particular attention to its effect on perceptions of legitimacy. The article investigates legitimacy as a complex and paradoxical performative phenomenon that involves multiple competing sources of agency. The case is made that, by discouraging the perception of the political system as a unified whole, populist-style performances by mainstream politicians undermine institutional legitimacy. In a way that is at odds at odds with the cooperative demands inherent in the US federal government, these performances encourage the perception that the self-styled outsider is engaged in a strictly competitive zero-sum game with the institutional structure and its representatives. (shrink)

Policy-makers involved in cybersecurity governance should pay close attention to the ‘generative metaphors’ they use to describe and understand new technologies. Generative metaphors structure our understanding of policy problems by imposing mental models of both the problem and possible solutions. As a result, they can also constrain ethical reasoning about new technologies, by uncritically carrying over assumptions about moral roles and obligations from an existing domain. The discussion of global governance of cybersecurity problems has to date been dominated by the (...) metaphor of ‘cyber war’. In this paper, I argue that this metaphor diminishes possibilities for international collaboration in this area by limiting states to reactive policies of naming and shaming rather than proactive actions to address systemic features of cyberspace. We suggest that alternative metaphors—such as health, ecosystem, and architecture—can help expose the dominance of the war metaphor and provide a more collaborative and conceptually accurate frame for negotiations. (shrink)

This essay argues that the logical significance of most natural language expressions is indefinitely elastic. This, it is argued, undermines the idea that the meaning of a word is an item for which it stands, and puts pressure on the methods of conceptual analysis and theoretical elucidation that require context-invariant stable application conditions. Furthermore, it is argued that the insistence that such semantic content is needed which—impervious to local pragmatic concerns—remains stable and available for reasoning, gets things back to front. (...) For in order to determine the correct inflection of any given use of an expression, its inferential relations—in the context of an utterance—must already be discerned. The lack of contextually independent content, however, presents no mystery about language use. For the ability to understand what is said is explained not only by shared practices and common interests, but also by the capacity for interlocutors to ask questions and explain what they mean. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza algunos aspectos relevantes de los movimientos sociales latinoamericanos. Para explicar en qué consisten y cómo resuelven el problema de la organización política se estudia, siguiendo a Zibechi, algunos movimientos de dos países: Brasil y Bolivia. En el primero, en los años 80 surgieron unos movimientos sociales rurales muy fuertes que han perdido parte de su papel político durante los años del gobierno progresista del Partido de los trabajadores. En el segundo, aparecieron en las mismas fechas movimientos sociales (...) urbanos que transformaron un país que se había propuesto realizar desde el gobierno una reforma político-económica antiliberal. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a true polymath: he made substantial contributions to a host of different fields. Within the philosophy of mind, his chief innovations include his rejection of the Cartesian doctrines that all mental states are conscious and that non-human animals lack souls as well as sensation.

This paper traces back on a personal tone a provocative evocation of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The author considers existentialism as a laboratory of existence that influenced a generation's manner of living and writing and made one's existential desires into historical and political acts. Its most representative mode of expression, literature, was as an indicator of the presence of the private throughout the public world and time. In this view, de Beauvoir's presence is approached both from the perspective (...) of her understanding of the female, and from the particular kind of couple she formed with Sartre. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium has been considered a paradigm method involving intuitions. Some philosophers have recently claimed that it is trivial and can even accommodate the sort of scepticism about the reliability of intuitions advocated by experimental philosophers. I discuss several ways in which reflective equilibrium could be thought of as trivial and argue that it is inconsistent with scepticism about the reliability of intuitions.

This volume contains papers by a group of leading experts on Aristotle and the later Aristotelian tradition of Neoplatonism. The discussion ranges from Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides, the most important pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, to Neoplatonic and medieval use of Aristotle, for which Aristotle himself set guidelines in his discussions of his predecessors. Traces of these guidelines can be seen in the work of Plotinus, and that of the later Greek commentators on Aristotle. The study of these commentators, and the recognition (...) of the philosophical interest and importance of the ideas which they expressed in their commentaries, is an exciting new development in ancient philosophy to which this book makes a unique and distinguished contribution. (shrink)

Aristotle’s notoriously difficult Metaphysics Ζ, which investigates substance, has been the subject of intense debate in the past twenty years. Myles Burnyeat’s Map of Metaphysics Zeta is a ground-breaking intervention in that discussion. Burnyeat examines the overall shape of Ζ, particularly the signposts that structure the argument and link it to the larger project of First Philosophy in Metaphysics, as well as to the Organon. On his approach, to understand what Ζ says, we must first attend to how the issues (...) are addressed and why they are addressed in that way. The result is a book that challenges cherished assumptions and forces the rethinking of Ζ from several new perspectives. (shrink)