This paper argues for analyzing the systematic invisibility of persons living with disabilities by temporalizing their oppression within a framework of “productive time,” which I posit as a normative sense of time by which cultural products and practices appear within capitalist economies. I argue that productive time is employed in cultural evaluations of actions that render persons with disabilities as “non-productive agents” who cannot partake in historical processes. My hope is that a theory of productive time will assist social justice (...) efforts in analyzing the oppression of particular minority groups by identifying and combating harmful social values. (shrink)

While cochlear implantation is now considered routine in many parts of the world, the debate over how to ethically implement this technology continues. One’s stance on implantation often hinges on one’s understanding of deafness. On one end of the spectrum are those who see cochlear implants as a much needed cure for an otherwise intractable disability. On the other end of the spectrum are those who view the Deaf as members of a thriving culture and see the cochlear implant as (...) an attempt to eliminate this culture. Rather than take a stance in this debate, we will argue that the informed consent process for cochlear implantation must include access to Deaf perspectives. Deaf individuals know best what it is like to be a member of the Deaf community; the reasonable person would put significant weight on the testimony of Deaf individuals when considering whether to undergo cochlear implantation. The reasonable person standard determines what information careproviders must present as part of the informed consent process; thus, informed consent for cochlear implantation requires access to the testimony of Deaf individuals. (shrink)

À partir de l’analyse des agendas du directeur de cabinet d’un ministre en poste dans les années 1970, il s’agit dans cet article d’analyser comment la position de directeur de cabinet est occupée au quotidien et sur le plan des pratiques. Ces agendas seront tout d’abord exploités statistiquement et qualitativement afin de saisir comment l’occupation d’un tel rôle charnière nécessite d’arbitrer entre les différentes temporalités des activités administratives, politiques et médiatiques. Sous la Ve République, le directeur de cabinet occupe, en (...) effet, une place singulière dans la division du travail en cabinet ministériel. Courroie de transmission entre plusieurs scènes sociales, il est le point focal sur lequel se réfractent les tensions propres à plusieurs sphères du travail administratif et politique. À partir d’un comptage du nombre de réunions ou de personnes rencontrées, il sera analysé quelle proportion du temps de travail est effectivement consacrée à chacune des relations de « clientèle » que le directeur de cabinet est obligé de tisser avec ces interlocuteurs très différents. Quel temps le directeur de cabinet passe-t-il dans les pas de son ministre ou dans le ministère? Il sera aussi possible d’appréhender si la répartition du temps entre ces différentes attentes est stable ou non sur la durée du mandat d’un ministre et à l’approche des élections. (shrink)

States began passing legislation mandating the collection of genetic material from certain convicted offenders in 1988. By 1998, all 50 states had passed laws allowing DNA databases for convicted sexual offenders, and some states collected DNA from all those convicted of a felony. A survey of 416 persons in Maryland revealed wide support for the inclusion of convicted violent offenders (89%) in DNA databases, in sync with most states’ policies. Between two thirds and three quarters of respondents also supported expanding (...) DNA databases to include those suspected of a violent offense, any convicted felon, as well as all convicted offenders, minor and major. Support for collecting the DNA of those suspected of any crime and for all newborns was considerably less (44% to 45%). Although a comprehensive database is most effective for solving and deterring crimes, vigorously enforced protections against abuse of this technology must be in place. (shrink)

It has been claimed that Adam Smith, like David Hume, has a ‘reflective endorsement’ account of the authority of morality. On such a view, our moral faculties and notions are justified insofar as they pass reflective scrutiny. But Smith's moral philosophy, unlike Hume's, is also peppered with references to God, to divine law, and to our being ‘set up’ in a specific way so as to best attain what is good and useful for us. This language suggests that there (...) is another strategy available for accounting for the authority of morality, one that would align Smith with teleological accounts of human nature and theological accounts of morality. The authority of Smith's impartial spectator would, on such an account, be derivative – it would be derived from the supreme authority of God. Such a view poses a serious challenge for contemporary interpreters of Smith who seek to read him as an empiricist, naturalist, and sentimentalist moral philosopher. This paper examines the textual evidence for this view, focusing on the role of the explicitly religious language found in a key section of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. I argue that this language should neither be interpreted as merely ornamental, nor as providing a theological justification of morality. Rather, it is part of Smith's illustration of the psychological influence of religious beliefs, especially the beliefs in an all-seeing judge and in a just afterlife where all human actions will be accounted for and appropriately rewarded or punished. (shrink)

This essay engages Drucilla Cornell's thinking about ethical feminism, dignity, and intergenerational responsibility in the wake of her passing in December 2022.

continent. 1.2 (2011): 141-144. This January, while preparing a new course, Robert Seydel was struck and killed by an unexpected heart attack. He was a critically under-appreciated artist and one of the most beloved and admired professors at Hampshire College. At the time of his passing, Seydel was on the brink of a major artistic and career milestone. His Book of Ruth was being prepared for publication by Siglio Press. His publisher describes the book as: “an alchemical assemblage that composes (...) the life of his alter ego, Ruth Greisman— spinster, Sunday painter, and friend to Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Through collages, drawings, and journal entries from Ruth’s imagined life, Seydel invokes her interior world in novelistic rhythms.” This convergence of his professional triumph with the tragedy of his death makes now a particularly appropriate time to think about Robert Seydel and his work. This feature contains a selection of excerpts from Book of Ruth (courtesy of Siglio Press) alongside a pair of texts remembering him and giving critical and biographical insights into his art and his person. These texts, from a former student and a colleague respectively, were originally prepared for Seydel's memorial at Hampshire College and have since been revised for publication in continent. For more information on Book of Ruth, please visit the book's page at the Siglio Press website. —Ben Segal draughty R. * Lauren van Haaften-Schick 2011 “The most apt way to order Smithson's library is with the conjunction 'and'; science and religion; modernism and mass culture; what is present and what is missing.” —Alexander Alberro, 248 Robert Seydel's classes on collage and collecting immersed his students in a curious world of cabinets, oddities, exhaustive archives and obscure histories, explored always with critical rigor and a sincere eye for wonder. His office was a compendium of the ancient, mythic, potential and unworldy, where seemingly unrelated references were endlessly pulled, piled and fused in an ecstatic dance of hyper-annotation. The small room and all its contents overflowed with notes tucked in every margin and corner. Books coated the walls like a switchboard, anxious and humming, waiting for infinite links to be activated. William Blake's books of Job and Urizen summoned Greek mythology and the animal as metaphor, leading to 19th century cryptozoology and the cave paintings at Lascaux, Gaston Bachelard's description of the bird in his garden and Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon . Tracking archetypes and following tangential threads, new revelations and ancient narratives were compiled and ordered to form a new text, a bibliography as assemblage, portrait and poem. Robert's library—one of his many collections—is a portrait, an “artifact, collage of time, a token and remnant” (Seydel, 2007) He is humming with it still. The imagination of this room—of Robert—breathes through the pages of Book of Ruth, as every decision and detail unfolds to a cosmos. Allegory, invention, personal and art histories are entangled and leveled, rendering lived, perceived and absorbed experiences indistinguishable. Anonymous scraps discovered on the street or studio floor, careful clippings and drawn figures are chosen and animated through serendipitous destruction and whimsical, delicate positioning. A precise vocabulary of characters and terms erupts and collapses as personas and passers-by wave and whisper, “Every figure reveals aspects of the total form, which is open and green” (Seydel, 2007). The initials R.S. repeat, a nod to Robert's true family tree and further complicating identification. Robt, Robert's sometimes alter-ego, appears in myriad forms as a trickster “half-wit,” mercurial and skittish, or soft and worn thin. Saul is a solemn tinkerer, parsing the world and sometimes blind. Ruth, the speaker of the book, records and translates all, her voice wavering between poetic verse and a cryptic half-speech as complex as it is sparse. The rhythm of frayed edges sets time - the weight of the world and the lightness of paper. Robert wrote of his process, “Material is essential; scuffings carry history, which wanders throughout” (Seydel, 2007). Collectors, assemblers, sway between careful movements of selection and placement as they pull from the found world, mediating calculated and unconscious association to form a lexicon of gestures, symbols and allusion, the “artifacts of a life... the refuse and rejecta of days” (Seydel, 2007). These assembled fragments shift and chatter, at home in their homelessness, actors performing in their own lives, populating an invented world of similar orphans. Such accumulated, severed parts carry the injury of their cutting and retain the evidence of their source, binding loss to creation in a symbiosis of trauma and repair. Mourning and remembrance are deeply embedded in the histories and acts of such practices. Grievance, acceptance, and the fragility of life are conveyed in the 18th century allegorical arrangements of fetal specimens by Frederik Ruysch. A certain melancholy reverence colors Joseph Cornell's intimately tactile assemblages rendering the universe tangible in miniature, or made in devotion to unrequited loves. Preserved in stasis, these ghosts and idols are kept in a purgatory where fact and fiction, past and present are irrelevant distinctions. Catalogued and contained, the subject of loss is transferred to an artifact. Every thread, scrap and letter may be glued, gathered and placed in a museum, a tomb, a box, a page, ripe and open for possession. Holding on to grief and reveling in disrepair, we opt to be haunted. Forever unbalanced and in flux, the sublime of collage is its resolve to irresolution. For Robert, “Art, as creation and as sign of primary Imagination, is not objects but a state, a kind of fluid” (Seydel, 2007) Reflecting on his work, life, and death, I am drawn to my library and the myriad titles acquired through his inspiration. There is Daniel Spoerri's An Anecdoted Topography of Chance , Susan Stewart's On Longing , various Borges, Barthes, Perec, and especially Life: A User's Manual , which concludes that the perfect puzzle will have no solution. I think of the drawers of miscellaneous swallowed objects at the Mutter Museum, Ray Johnson coding the every day in riddles, Wallace Berman twisting tongues, and Susan Hiller laying every detail to bear. Collectors and makers working in endless cycles of observation, ingestion and display. Every gesture informs and is defined by others, every space is shaped by that which surrounds and fills it, the knot has an inner logic, the gigantic is not so different from the miniature, there is a world in every detail, and “All art is collage” (Seydel, 2011) These thoughts have molded my life, my art, and all the minutia that keep the two so profoundly intertwined; There is no difference between life and what we do with our time. “I write my life. I make me up.” What a gift to share this secret way of knowing the world, and to leave this knowledge for us to do with what we please. “Art begins in admiration” (Seydel, 2011) Lauren van Haaften-Schick is a curator, writer and artist based in New York. Upcoming curatorial projects include "Cancelled" at the Center for Book Arts, and "The Spirit of the Signal" at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York. Recent activities include the workshops "Market, Alternative" and "Alternative Art Economies" at Trade School and Momenta Art, and the e-flux Time/Store, New York. She is the founding director of two arts spaces in Northampton, MA and Philadelphia, PA. She received a BA in Art History and Studio Art from Hampshire college in 2006. Sura Levine on Robert Seydel If early on in his time at Hampshire College I was officially his “mentor,” Robert Seydel quickly became one of my great teachers. Over the years we talked about everything, from art, music, collage, and poetry, to campus politics, this latter far too often. It was always a sublime pleasure, if all too rarely done, to enter his apartment to look at his work in progress, to peruse his bookshelves where, inevitably, there were always new treats to examine. And, while he was working on his Book of Ruth , I was given the opportunity over the course of many meals at the Korean and other restaurants, to talk with him about image and poem ordering. To see how he thought through each comma, each juxtaposition across the gutters of the Book, was to watch a brilliant curator at work. Each day, I walk past his wonderful collaged portrait of Ruth, purchased, after much haggling, as a birthday present, a couple of years ago. And each day, I think how lucky I am to have known Robert as he produced this magnum opus. One of my greatest pleasures in 24 years at the College was to teach “The Collector” with Robert. One of my greatest regrets is that the magic we created together in the classroom will not, and cannot, be duplicated. Its various incarnations, its utter intelligence and magic, were all so deeply Robert’s. His was a mind that put poetry, philosophy, history of science, and history together with art, and art together with music. His intellect and eye were unparalleled. He introduced us to so many artists. He shared his fascination with the cabinets of curiosity of Aldrovandi, of Seba, and Peter the Great’s collection of fetal anomalies, as well as the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. Robert knew them all and so many more. He was a walking encyclopedia, his home a great archive. Arcane knowledge, perhaps, but oh so important for another of Robert’s heroes, the mid-20th century Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, whose name he invariably mispronounced as “Broadthayers.” In speaking his name, Robert would always look in my direction in a panic, and then he go on and maul it. I absolutely loved his various mispronunciations of French names and terms! “The Collector” was always filled with talented young artists, art historians, philosophers and writers who all came to understand the wondrous obsessions of the figure of the collector. Students in this course created dazzling projects each term. He always moved while looking and speaking. He read deeply, and commented on everyone’s work with wonderful generosity. Robert always found something to praise even in the least developed of projects. Robert inspired and mentored all of his students into making work that far exceeded their expectations—and ours. For those of you who were lucky enough to have been touched by or to have had an evaluation written by Robert, savor it, keep it, reread it, and share it. He loved working with you all; it is somehow fitting that he died while prepping yet another new course. Robert, it’s almost impossible to speak of you in the past tense, even though you left us a month ago. No doubt, if you knew about our gatherings and celebrations of you, you would be embarrassed that we are making a fuss over you; you always placed the focus on others rather than on yourself. This trait is exactly why so many people miss you now. We’re here to love you publicly as we all did privately for the eleven years you were among us. Robert, my very dear friend, you were an extraordinary artist—you were my brother of choice. My heart broke when yours did. I miss you profoundly. —Sura Levine, February 26, 2011 Sura Levine is a professor of art history at Hampshire College. Her field of specialty is 19th century Belgian and French art, particularly realism and impressionism. Having worked in museums for a number of years both prior to coming to the College, and, as guest curator and co-author of exhibition catalogues, she became particularly interested in the history of museum and trends in collecting. It was because of their shared interests that she and Robert Seydel developed their course, The Collector, which they co-taught for many years. (shrink)

In this article I draw on Lauren Berlant's notion of ‘cruel optimism’ to identify and untangle how the prevailing sense of ‘optimism’ in education works against our common hope or collective striving for what is educational in education. In particular, I discuss how the ‘cruel optimism’ that invites individuals to constantly innovate and improve themselves through ever more learning leads ultimately to a sense of ‘presentism’, ‘privation’ and ‘loneliness’, which comes to threaten the role that education plays in sustaining (...) and forging a common world. Proposing that education is where the concern with ‘passing-on’ properly takes place, I discuss how education can tend to and pine towards something larger and more durable than the individual acquisition of knowledge and skills that serve immediate transient interests. As an exemplar of a place of ‘passing-on’, I ask us to consider how education invites us to affirm the ‘living-on’ of the question of what it might mean to live together after all: to forge, sustain and pledge something of significance in common amidst what is constantly passing away. In this sense, I seek to gesture to the possibility of hope within education: a sensibility and affirmation for ‘passing-on’ and ‘sur-vivance’. Such a hope might help to address the cruel depravity and isolation affecting our time that is caught up in the ‘learnification of education’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act by Can Laurens LöweThomas M. Osborne Jr.Can Laurens Löwe. Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 225. Hardback, $99.99.This book is about the way in which Thomas Aquinas understands the human act to be composed of form and matter. It provides a fresh reading of many central texts from Thomas and (...) addresses philosophical concerns that are relevant to the contemporary literature. Although Löwe is not clear about this point, Thomas does not use in this context the terms 'formal' and 'material' in the strictest sense, as when he describes the soul as the form of the body, but in different extended senses, as when he says that charity is the form of the other virtues because it gives them a new character (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 23, art. 8).Löwe focuses on choice, which he considers to be antecedent to the human act, and the commanded or exterior act, which he considers to be the entire human act. This focus simplifies his account, since in one and only one text—the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae—does Thomas appear to give as many as twelve acts that are stages or phases of a complete human act. Thomas devotes special attention to three acts of the will concerning the end, namely simple willing, intention, and enjoyment; and three acts of the will concerning the means, namely consent, choice, and use; and two intellectual acts, namely deliberation and command. Four other possible phases or stages are mentioned in passing, such as the judgment of choice. According to the standard interpretation, a human [End Page 152] act such as almsgiving might consist of intending to help an indigent person, deliberating about whether to give food or money, making a judgment of choice about the best means of helping (such as giving money), choosing to give the money, and then commanding the will's use of certain other powers, such as the movement of the hands and feet. In his other writings, Thomas mentions only some of these stages, and he often mentions only simple willing, deliberation, and choice. Scholars disagree over the number and importance of the acts or parts of acts discussed in the Prima Secundae and how to integrate them with what Thomas says in other texts. Löwe argues that the human act is what Thomas describes as the act's execution; he claims that this act has the intellect's command for its extrinsic form, the will's use for its intrinsic form, and the commanded act for its matter.This book has three parts. Part 1 provides a general account of the author's view that choice explains the act's freedom even if it is not part of the resulting act. In part 2, Löwe gives a novel account of Thomas's claim that the judgment of the intellect gives form to the act of choice. He draws on the distinction that Thomists make (although Thomas is less clear) between the composition of terms, or the enunciative proposition, and the judgement, or judicative proposition. For instance, the statement 'carrots are orange' as an enunciative proposition might be entertained as doubtful or likely, or placed in a conditional statement. However, someone might assent to this same composition by judging that it is true. Löwe's account is confusing on this point, as he describes as "judgment" what his Thomists describe as the enunciative proposition, which is the composition of terms (38–41). Terminological difficulties aside, Löwe draws on what he sees as the related distinction between the content of a judgment and the attitude toward the judgment, using this distinction to describe the freedom of the judgment that precedes choice. The intellect composes different precepts and then assents to one of them. According to Löwe, Thomas thinks that the agent's ability to choose between different goods is reduced to the intellect's ability to assent to the content of one precept and not the content of another according to a kind of second-order... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:216 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sealing Cheng Pikachu’s Tears: Children’s Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong How do children experience the sudden onset of massive unrest, violence, and police brutality? It has been difficult even for many adults to process how Hong Kong—a cosmopolitan city known for its stability and low crime rate—descended overnight, on June 12, 2019, into tear gas and (...) violent confrontations. What began as a mass protest against amendments to a bill that would have facilitated the extradition of fugitives in Hong Kong to mainland China for trial turned into a protracted struggle for universal suffrage and investigations into police brutality. In the process, countless scenes of excessive police violence against protestors have challenged any dichotomous, black-and-white worldview of good cop/bad criminal; the geography and tempo of the city have been remade by protests, crackdowns, and transportation shutdowns; and social and familial tensions and divisions about the source of the violence have plagued the routines of everyday life. Children, like adults, have to find new ways of being and becoming in the city during this political upheaval. Their existential liminality, however, provides children with a unique perspective from which to sense, experience, and engage with the volatility around them. Careful listening allows children’s “small voices” to speak to “big issues.”1 1. Allison James, “Giving Voice to Children’s Voices: Practices and Problems, Pitfalls and Potentials,” American Anthropologist 109, no. 2 (2007): 261–72. Sealing Cheng 217 Unmooring children from “the restrictive and constricting frameworks of innocence and/or victimhood” with “incomplete moral and social personhood,” Karen Lury analyzed the child as a version of Berlant’s “infantile citizen,” whose “‘stubborn naïveté’ gives her/him enormous power to unsettle, expose, and reframe the machinery of national life.”2 I offer reflections below as an observer of the ways my children participate in their changing world as socio-moral beings. I write as a mother who searches for her own ethical anchor with and through my children in a collective project of engaging with our fears, hopes, and possibilities. “Will the Government Talk to Us?” I am a mother of two girls, ages six and nine. My daughters usually want to go swimming on Sundays, but since June 9, 2019, our family has instead spent many Sundays at marches and protests against the anti-extradition law and police brutality, reiterating the “five demands” of the movement. Our family has participated in protest marches before, but the prospect of walking in a crowd through the city streets for hours in the summer heat—rather than swimming in the pool—was highly unappealing to my kids. I had to explain to them why it was important. I said that if amendments to the Extradition Law passed, we could be accused of committing a crime under mainland Chinese laws, and we would lose our rights to do many of the things we had taken for granted. As an example, I explained that they would not be allowed to watch Winnie the Pooh again because President Xi did not like that people likened him to the cute bear. My daughters found it puzzling why anyone would object to such an innocuous comparison. I also said that if the law passed, we might no longer be free to say the words “8964” commemorating the June 4, 1989, Massacre on Tiananmen Square. (While these changes might not really happen, they speak to Hongkongers’ utter distrust of the judicial system in China.) I explained to my daughters that we needed to tell Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her government that we did not want this law passed. They agreed. 2. Karen Lury, “Children in an Open World: Mobility as Ontology in New Iranian and Turkish Cinema,” Feminist Theory 11, no. 3 (2010): 284; Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays of Sex and Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 29, quoted in Lury, “Children in an Open World,” 284–5. 218 Sealing Cheng When we joined our first anti-extradition march toward the government headquarters on June 9, we were among one million people who... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Microaggressions in Medicine:Narratives, Trauma, and SilenceElizabeth Lanphier (bio)Lauren Freeman and Heather Stewart (2024) have written a richly researched and argued, while also highly engaging and accessible, book with Microaggressions in Medicine. They argue for why microaggressions are best understood on a harm-based account and situate this view within timely examples from a range of healthcare experiences. In their view, focusing on the harms produced by microaggressions shifts the (...) locus of concern from the agent committing a microaggression to the agent receiving it, and it enables an attribution of a microaggression regardless of an agent's intent or even awareness.Freeman and Stewart leave the reader with an expanded understanding of what microaggressions are and how they function. They also offer concrete and actionable suggestions for how healthcare environments and healthcare providers can work to prevent patients from receiving microaggressions in clinical care. Thinking alongside this book, I raise three points intended to further a conversation. The first is about narrative medicine as an additional resource. The second is the possibility for trauma-informed care to address background structural conditions that were beyond the book's scope. The third is to briefly inquire about whether this harm-based account could characterize certain cases of individual and institutional silence as a microaggression.1. Narrative medicineFreeman and Stewart situate their book within the philosophical literature on epistemic injustice, social justice, and feminist theory. So, it is not necessarily surprising that they only mention "narrative medicine," a term coined by Rita Charon (2001) about twenty-five years ago, in passing. They do cite core narrative medicine literature, including Sayantani DasGupta's (2008) account of "narrative humility," Arthur Frank's (1995) book The Wounded Storyteller, and a paper on listening to patient stories (Goldie 2011) in their recommendations and resources for mitigating microaggressions. When they do reference narrative [End Page 163] medicine, it is to suggest that "attending to the identities of patients ought to be more widely recognized as constitutive of good care" (Freeman and Stewart 2024, 182). But beyond illustrating the caring capacities of compassionate and skilled clinicians, narrative medicine offers a potential roadmap for how to get there.What I have elsewhere called a "technical definition of narrative medicine" (Lanphier 2021, 2024) is the narrative medicine methodology of close reading and reflective writing intended to produce three aims: attention (to texts or story), representation (trying to see the perspective of a story), and affiliation (partnering with a story's teller in a solidaristic way). This technical understanding of narrative medicine provides a method for developing skills of "ethical listening" and "medical humility" that Freeman and Stewart recommend. It also affords a structured form of training and practice that institutions can support to better enable healthcare workers to implement individual and environmental correctives to address microaggressions.Although narrative medicine is a resource poised to counter and respond to the very kinds of failures of listening, epistemic injustices, and quick assumptions with which Freeman and Stewart are concerned, narrative practices are not necessarily a fix for epistemic failures or bias. They also run their own risks, including narrative presumptions (Lanphier and Anani 2019), or narrative neglect (Saulnier 2020). Moreover, while the potential exists to scale narrative medicine through structured learning opportunities and broader institutional support, it primarily remains a tool for individual edification and enactment, not systems change.2. Trauma-informed careFreeman and Stewart (2024) describe how "microaggressions occur at the individual level and can be perpetrated by individuals, environments, or institutions" but that "ultimately, they are manifestations or symptoms of structural-level problems. Regardless of the level on which they occur, microaggressions always happen against the backdrop of social and structural oppression" (12). As other commentators point out, the authors recommend correctives primarily at individual and environmental levels (i.e., changing individual behaviors, making small modifications to clinical environments). Freeman and Stewart understand the limits of this scope, saying, "[W]e are well aware that such individual-level fixes can only ever take us so far and that they alone will never dismantle the oppressive structures themselves" (13). It is reasonable to identify achievable individual actions for the "unjust meantime" (Jaggar 2019) concurrent with social and structural... (shrink)

When applied in the health sector, AI-based applications raise not only ethical but legal and safety concerns, where algorithms trained on data from majority populations can generate less accurate or reliable results for minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

Russell articulates compelling reasons that bioethicists and health care professionals should take individual responsibility for deconstructing structural injustices in healthcare through in...

Many drugs used in paediatric medicine are off-label. There is a rising call for the use of adaptive clinical trial designs in responding to the need for safe and effective drugs given their potential to offer efficiency and cost-effective benefits compared with traditional clinical trials. ADs have a strong appeal in paediatric clinical trials given the small number of available participants, limited understanding of age-related variability and the desire to limit exposure to futile or unsafe interventions. Although the ethical value (...) of adaptive trials has increasingly come under scrutiny, there is a paucity of literature on the ethical dilemmas that may be associated with paediatric adaptive designs. This paper highlights some of these ethical concerns around safety, scientific/social value and caregiver/guardian comprehension of the trial design. Against this background, the paper develops a non-static conceptual lens for understanding PADs. It shows that ADs are epistemically open and reduce some of the knowledge-associated uncertainties inherent in clinical trials as well as fast-track the time to draw conclusions about the value of evaluated drugs/treatments. On this note, the authors argue that PADs are ethically justifiable given they have multiple layers of safety, exposing enrolled children to lesser potential risks, create social/scientific value generally and for paediatric populations in particular, specifically foster the flourishing of paediatric populations and can significantly improve paediatric trial efficiency when properly designed and implemented. However, because PADs are relatively new and their regulatory, ethical and logistical characteristics are yet to be clarified in some jurisdictions, the cooperation of various public and private stakeholders is required to ensure that the interests of children, their caregivers and parents/guardians are best served while exposing paediatric research subjects to the most minimal of risks when they are enrolled in paediatric trials that use ADs. Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. Not applicable. (shrink)

Emerging research has highlighted the utility of measuring individual differences in decision-making competence (DMC), showing that consistently following normatively rational principles is associated with positive psychosocial and health behaviors. From another level of analysis, functional theories of personality suggest that broad trait dimensions represent variation in underlying self-regulatory systems, providing a mechanistic account for robust associations between traits and similar life outcomes. Yet, the degree to which broad dispositional personality dimensions predict global tendencies to respond rationally is less understood. In (...) a large online community sample (N = 804), we tested the associations between HEXACO personality dimensions, a 6-factor structural trait model, and a subset of DMC indicators (Applying Decision Rules, Resistance to Framing, Recognizing Social Norms, and Consistency in Risk Perception). Additionally, we examined gender differences across the DMC, first considering the potential for measurement non-invariance across groups for the DMC. We observed partial measurement invariance between men and women; only the Applying Decision Rules scale showed evidence of differential functioning across groups. Controlling for these differences, analyses revealed that higher Conscientiousness, Honesty/Humility, and Openness were associated with higher DMC scores. In contrast, Emotionality and Extraversion demonstrated gender-specific associations. Speci... (shrink)

Research about the Olympic Games has primarily focused on preparing athletes for competition. Less attention has been paid to the post-Olympic-phase and athlete well-being during this time. This study explored Australian Olympic athletes’ experiences following the conclusion of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, including the factors that may have contributed to or challenged their well-being during this time. Eighteen athletes participated in semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis revealed that when Olympic performance appraisal met prior expectations, when athletes planned for a (...) return to work or study, and when support from a variety of sources was readily available, this positively influenced athletes’ well-being during the POP. When these factors were not in place, more challenging post-Games experiences were present, and well-being was compromised. The findings contribute to the broader literature on elite athlete well-being and at an applied level, may be used to inform targeted programs that focus on supporting athletes after an Olympic campaign. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDepression is associated with increased emotional response to stress. This is especially the case during the developmental period of adolescence. Cognitive reappraisal is an effective emotion regulation strategy that has been shown to reduce the impact of emotional response on psychopathology. However, less is known about whether cognitive reappraisal impacts the relationship between depressive symptoms and emotional responses, and whether its effects are specific to emotional reactivity or emotional recovery. The current study examined whether cognitive reappraisal moderated the relationship between (...) depressive symptoms and trait or state measures of emotional reactivity and recovery. A community sample of 127 adolescents, at an age of risk for depression, completed self-report measures of trait emotional responding and depressive symptoms. In addition, they completed an in vivo social stress task and were assessed on state emotional reactivity and recove... (shrink)

Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specific natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations. It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery. We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels affected (...) recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery was manipulated along with counterintutiveness. High imagery items were recalled significantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the findings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled significantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Thus, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery effects on recall. (shrink)

Physicians anecdotally report inquiring about incarcerated patients’ crimes and their length of sentence, which has potential implications for the quality of care these patients receive. However, there is minimal research on how a physician’s awareness of their patient’s crimes/length of sentence impacts physician behaviours and attitudes. We performed regression modelling on a 27-question survey to analyse physician attitudes and behaviours towards incarcerated patients. We found that, although most physicians did not usually try to learn of their patients’ crimes, they often (...) became aware of them. We observed associations between awareness of a patient’s crime and poor physician disposition towards their patients and between physicians’ poor dispositions and lower reported quality of care. These associations suggest that awareness of a patient’s crime may reduce quality of care by negatively impacting physicians’ dispositions towards their patients. Future quantitative and qualitative studies, for example, involving physician interviews and direct patient outcome assessments, are needed to confirm these findings and further uncover and address hurdles incarcerated patients face in seeking medical care. (shrink)

O envelhecimento populacional é uma preocupação mundial e exige medidas de prevenção de saúde a serem adotadas com a maior brevidade possível. Esse processo é, muitas vezes, acompanhado pelo declínio das habilidades cognitivas, como a memória e as funções executivas. O objetivo do presente estudo é ..

In this paper, I identify a form of epistemic insensitivity that occurs when someone fails to make proper use of the epistemic tools at their disposal in order to bring their beliefs in line with epistemically relevant evidence that is available to them. I call this kind of insensitivity agential insensitivity because it stems from the epistemic behavior of an individual agent. Agential insensitivity can manifest as a failure to either attend to relevant and available evidence, or appropriately interpret evidence (...) that is attended to. The concept of agential insensitivity allows us to conceptualize the kind of not-knowing involved in forms of ignorance that are cultivated and maintained by individual agents, especially when this ignorance is enabled or encouraged by social structures. I use the skepticism about racial disparities in policing practices that is displayed by many white Americans as a lens for exploring this connection. Understanding agential insensitivity thus provides insight into both social and epistemic phenomena. (shrink)

Dispositional ascriptions do not entail the counterfactuals we might expect, as interfering factors may be poised to prevent the disposition from manifesting in its very stimulus conditions. Such factors are commonly called finks and masks. It is thought, however, that finks and masks cannot be intrinsic to the disposition bearer; if an intrinsic property of the object would prevent a particular response in certain conditions, the object fails to have the corresponding disposition. I argue that we should accept intrinsic finks (...) and masks if we think there are finks and masks at all, and also if we maintain that paradigmatic dispositions are intrinsic. This last point is particularly problematic for the claim that there cannot be intrinsic finks and masks, for if paradigmatic dispositions are not intrinsic then the central argument for the impossibility of intrinsic finks and masks is undermined. (shrink)

While previous methodological studies have suggested that coding is a useful technique for analyzing qualitative data, there is a stark lack of discussion about the incongruities that inevitably arise as researchers accomplish the actual work of coding. This article explores the complexities of the coding process, and how incongruities get resolved as researchers accomplish the practical work of coding. Three primary themes emerged from this study: <creating agreement>, <maintaining the integrity of the codes>, and <completing the work>. These three activities (...) are grounded in the naturally evolving work of coding, and are rendered visible through an ethnomethodological investigation into this work. (shrink)

COVID-19 lockdown presented a novel opportunity to study the experiences of people attempting to maintain friendships in the context of worldwide, government-enforced physical distancing and lockdown. Here we report on an experiential, idiographic qualitative project with a purposive sample of Scottish students. Data was collected via one-to-one on-line interviews with nine student participants. Data was transcribed and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Analysis highlighted three group-level experiential themes and associated subthemes. Participants’ shared experiences of maintaining friendships were reflected in a (...) dynamic process by which ‘changes to communication’ were associated with experiences of ‘effort and balance’ across friendships. Participants reported becoming particularly aware of the psychological processes involved in maintaining friendships, in turn, this was associated with ‘reflection and growth.’ These experiential findings resonate well with several longstanding classic theories; however, they also speak to the particularities of the context in which the study was conducted. They suggest the need for a pandemic psychology that moves beyond the typical focus on the direct impacts of infectious disease to address the wider psychosocial impacts with equal vigor. (shrink)

The ability to reason and problem‐solve in novel situations, as measured by the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), is highly predictive of both cognitive task performance and real‐world outcomes. Here we provide evidence that RAPM performance depends on the ability to reallocate attention in response to self‐generated feedback about progress. We propose that such an ability is underpinned by the basal ganglia nuclei, which are critically tied to both reward processing and cognitive control. This hypothesis was implemented in a neurocomputational (...) model of the RAPM task, which was used to derive novel predictions at the behavioral and neural levels. These predictions were then verified in one neuroimaging and two behavioral experiments. Furthermore, an effective connectivity analysis of the neuroimaging data confirmed a role for the basal ganglia in modulating attention. Taken together, these results suggest that individual differences in a neural circuit related to reward processing underpin human fluid reasoning abilities. (shrink)

Lack of guidance and regulation for authorizing medical cannabis for conditions involving the health and neurodevelopment of children is ethically problematic as it promulgates access inequities, risk-benefit inconsistencies, and inadequate consent mechanisms. In two virtual sessions using participatory action research and consensus-building methods, we obtained perspectives of stakeholders on ethics and medical cannabis for children and youth. The sessions focused on the scientific and regulatory landscape of medical cannabis, surrogate decision-making and assent, and the social and political culture of medical (...) cannabis. We found that evidence-gathering and data dissemination, pressures on clinical relationships, and the lack of integration of culturally diverse perspectives and Indigenous knowledges were key areas of concern. Participants emphasized the importance of utilizing adaptive study designs, highlighted the importance of trust-building between clinicians, patients and caregivers, and discussed barriers including historical and ongoing stigmatization of medical cannabis. We conclude that continued public consultation and strength-based research that integrate diverse perspectives are critical steps forward. (shrink)

In the last two decades few topics in philosophy of science have received as much attention as mechanistic explanation. A significant motivation for these accounts is that scientists frequently use the term “mechanism” in their explanations of biological phenomena. While scientists appeal to a variety of causal concepts in their explanations, many philosophers argue or assume that all of these concepts are well understood with the single notion of mechanism. This reveals a significant problem with mainstream mechanistic accounts– although philosophers (...) use the term “mechanism” interchangeably with other causal concepts, this is not something that scientists always do. This paper analyses two causal concepts in biology–the notions of “mechanism” and “pathway”–and how they figure in biological explanation. I argue that these concepts have unique features, that they are associated with distinct strategies of causal investigation, and that they figure in importantly different types of explanation. (shrink)

Damon Tweedy is a psychiatrist, lawyer, and writer. He's also Black. While in his first year as a medical student at Duke University, one of his professors approached him in the classroom and asked why the light bulb in the room hadn't been changed, as requested. Tweedy realized that his professor assumed he was a maintenance worker, not a student. Tweedy never took up this incident with the professor, nor did the professor ever apologize. Tweedy recounts that his best "revenge" (...) would be to excel in the class, which he ultimately did. At the end of the semester, upon learning that Tweedy received the second highest grade of over one hundred students, this professor invited him to work as a research assistant in his... (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Corporate social responsibility has been hailed as a new means to address gender inequality, particularly by facilitating women’s empowerment. Women are frequently and forcefully positioned as saviours of economies or communities and proponents of sustainability. Using vignettes drawn from a CSR women’s empowerment programme in Ghana, this conceptual article explores unexpected programme outcomes enacted by women managers and farmers. It is argued that a feminist Foucauldian reading of power as relational and productive can help explain this since those involved are (...) engaged in ongoing processes of resistance and self-making. This raises questions about the assumptions made about women and what is it that such CSR programmes aim to empower them ‘from’ or ‘to.’ Empowerment, when viewed as an ethic of care for the self, is better understood as a self-directed process, rather than a corporate-led strategy. This has implications for how we can imagine the achievement of gender equality through CSR. (shrink)

Gadamer's Dialectical Hermeneutics affirms the continuity between Gadamer's interest in Plato and his hermeneutics by focusing on the role of dialectic for Gadamer's own conception of understanding. Highlighting the productive and on-going nature of the dialectical tension at the heart of hermeneutics clarifies the roles that truth, good, practice, theory, and dialogue play in Gadamer's thought and emphasizes his desire to recover the practical nature of philosophy.

Despite sustained philosophical attention, no theory of humor claims general acceptance. Drawing on the resources provided by intentional systems theory, this article first outlines an approach to investigating humor based on the idea of a comic stance, then sketches the Dismissal Theory of Humor that has resulted from pursuing that approach. According to the DTH, humor manifests in cases where the future-directed significance of anticipatory failures is dismissed. Mirth, on this view, is the reward people get for declining to update (...) predictive representational schemata in ways that maximize their future-oriented value. The theory aims to provide a plausible account of the role of humor in human mental and social life, but it also aims to be empirically vulnerable, and to generate testable predictions about how the comic stance may actually be undergirded by cognitive architectures. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore disciplinary variation in valuation practices by comparing the way research groups accumulate credibility across four epistemic cultures. Our analysis is based on case studies of four high-performing research groups representing very different epistemic cultures in humanities, social sciences, geosciences and mathematics. In each case we interviewed about ten researchers, analyzed relevant documents and observed a couple of meetings. In all four cases we found a cyclical process of accumulating credibility. At the same time, we found (...) significant differences in the manifestation of the six main resources that are part of the cycle, the mechanisms of conversion between these resources, the overall structure and the average speed of the credibility cycle. The different ways in which the groups use data and produce arguments affect the whole cycle of accumulating credibility. In some cultures, journal publications are the main source of recognition, but in others one can earn significant amounts of recognition for conference contributions or service to the academic community. Moreover, the collaboration practices in the respective fields strongly influence the connection between arguments and publications. In cultures where teams of researchers collaboratively produce arguments, it is more strongly embedded in the process of writing publications. We conclude that the credibility cycle can only be used as an analytical tool to explain the behavior of researchers or research groups when taking differences across epistemic cultures into account. (shrink)

While there is now considerable anxiety about whether the psychological theory presupposed by virtue ethics is empirically sustainable, analogous issues have received little attention in the virtue epistemology literature. This paper argues that virtue epistemology encounters challenges reminiscent of those recently encountered by virtue ethics: just as seemingly trivial variation in context provokes unsettling variation in patterns of moral behavior, trivial variation in context elicits unsettling variation in patterns of cognitive functioning. Insofar as reliability is a condition on epistemic virtue, (...) we have reason to doubt that human beings possess the cognitive materials required for epistemic virtue, and thereby reason to think that virtue epistemology is threatened by skepticism. We conclude that while virtue epistemology has resources for addressing this challenge, exploiting these resources forces tradeoffs between empirical and normative adequacy. (shrink)

Abstract:Contemporary music education leaders suggest ambiguous definitions of "diversity," often assuming it both unquestionably good and compatible with equity. The purpose of this inquiry is to explore the assumptions underlying such discourse. First, I use the legal history of diversity in education to examine the American National Association for Music Education's statements on equity, access, inclusivity, and diversity. Second, drawing on Thomas Green's educational systems framework, I analyze the political strength of arguments surrounding diversity and equity. Third, considering instances when (...) white parents deem diversity "best" for their children, I investigate the advantages and limitations of what Natasha Warikoo calls the "diversity bargain." While not condoning unbridled self-interest, I posit how music educators might use parents' self-interest to support more ethical practices. Designed to benefit all students, diversity initiatives conflict with efforts aimed at equity. Music education diversity and equity rhetoric rely on either a troubling misreading of a politically strong state rationale or on the weak political positions of societal interests or educational goods valuable for their own sake. Rather than focusing on diverse content, teachers and students might experiment with how artistic expressions enable the exchange of individuals' stories and insights. The music education profession might also provide attention to equity apart from diversity. (shrink)