Background: Conducting video-research in birth settings raises challenges for ethics review boards to view birthing women and research-midwives as capable, autonomous decision-makers. Aim: This study aimed to gain an understanding of how the ethical approval process was experienced and to chronicle the perceived risks and benefits. Research design: The Birth Unit Design project was a 2012 Australian ethnographic study that used video recording to investigate the physical design features in the hospital birthing space that might influence both verbal and non-verbal (...) communication and the experiences of childbearing women, midwives and supporters. Participants and research context: Six women, 11 midwives and 11 childbirth supporters were filmed during the women’s labours in hospital birth units and interviewed 6 weeks later. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by an Australian Health Research Ethics Committee after a protracted process of negotiation. Findings: The ethics committee was influenced by a traditional view of research as based on scientific experiments resulting in a poor understanding of video-ethnographic research, a paradigmatic view of the politics and practicalities of modern childbirth processes, a desire to protect institutions from litigation, and what we perceived as a paternalistic approach towards protecting participants, one that was at odds with our aim to facilitate situations in which women could make flexible, autonomous decisions about how they might engage with the research process. Discussion: The perceived need for protection was overly burdensome and against the wishes of the participants themselves; ultimately, this limited the capacity of the study to improve care for women and babies. Conclusion: Recommendations are offered for those involved in ethical approval processes for qualitative research in childbirth settings. The complexity of issues within childbirth settings, as in most modern healthcare settings, should be analysed using a variety of research approaches, beyond efficacy-style randomised controlled trials, to expand and improve practice-based results. (shrink)

Trust is one of the big buzzwords in debates about the shaping of society, democracy, and emerging technologies. For example, one prominent idea put forward by the High‐Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence appointed by the European Commission is that artificial intelligence should be trustworthy. In this essay, we explore the notion of trust and argue that both proponents and critics of trustworthy AI have flawed pictures of the nature of trust. We develop an approach to understanding trust in AI (...) that does not conceive of trust merely as an accelerator for societal acceptance of AI technologies. Instead, we argue, trust is granted through leaps of faith. For this reason, trust remains precarious, fragile, and resistant to promotion through formulaic approaches. We also highlight the significance of distrust in societal deliberation, as it is relevant to trust in various and intricate ways. Among the fruitful aspects of distrust is that it enables individuals to forgo technology if desired, to constrain its power, and to exercise meaningful human control. (shrink)

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending. Frame-shifting is semantic reanalysis in which existing elements in the contextual representation are reorganized into a new frame. Conceptual blending is a set of cognitive operations for combining partial cognitive models. By addressing linguistic phenomena often ignored in traditional meaning research, Coulson explains how (...) processes of cross-domain mapping, frame-shifting, and conceptual blending enhance the explanatory adequacy of traditional frame-based systems for natural language processing. The focus is on how the constructive processes speakers use to assemble, link, and adapt simple cognitive models underlie a broad range of productive language behavior. (shrink)

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or leaps into, an interpretation which in some sense has to be temporarily affirmed or adopted in order to be either absorbed and integrated, or overcome and rejected. I (...) illustrate this process through a retrieval of the concept of submission in pedagogy, particularly with reference to submission in Eastern traditions, as well as pre-modern Christian thought. These other traditions are introduced to contrast with the modern liberal Western perspective in which the role of submission has been almost entirely lost. (shrink)

The notions of failure and denial are co-constitutive of both “global” theory and social order. Though these concepts have been used to evoke an array of metaphors and images to under­stand the condition of international relations as a knowledge production site and in rela­tion to other social sciences, they have not been deemed pivotal for much theorizing of world politics’ events, including the “success” of a sovereign state, or the subjects and knowledge production of decolonial realities. The article critically assesses (...) how the term failure is used by IR’s scholarly community as signifier and analogy and what it signifies and analogizes. It grapples with Bruno Latour’s “The Immense Cry Channeled” by Pope Francis and ‘“Love your Monsters.’” It concludes with a discussion of the ethics of critical theory and its empha­sis on critique. I problematize its critical moves to lodge racializations in the enslaved and colonized body and body politic of ‘failed’ states, and the normative projects it bolsters. I also point to its broader social and political implications, including its acknowledging of certain publics at the expense of others and its death limits in times of terror and the Anthropocene. I finally argue for a ‘global’ decolonizing social analysis that in an Fanonian sense, is a “real leap” as it introduces “invention into existence” by rupturing evolutionary trajectories and linear temporalities (i.e., pure immanence, or transcendentalism). (shrink)

Keith Holyoak and Paul Thagard provide a unified, comprehensive account of the diverse operations and applications of analogy, including problem solving, ...

The framework of plateaus, dips, and leaps shines light on periods when individuals may be inventing new methods of skilled performance. We begin with a review of the role performance plateaus have played in experimental psychology, human–computer interaction, and cognitive science. We then reanalyze two classic studies of individual performance to show plateaus and dips which resulted in performance leaps. For a third study, we show how the statistical methods of Changepoint Analysis plus a few simple heuristics may direct our (...) focus to periods of performance change for individuals. For the researcher, dips become the marker of exploration where performance suffers as new methods are invented and tested. Leaps mark the implementation of a successful new method and an incremental jump above the path plotted by smooth and steady log–log performance increments. The methods developed during these dips and leaps are the key to surpassing one's teachers and acquiring extreme expertise. (shrink)

This paper traces Leibniz’s use of his neologism, “transcreation.” Leibniz coins the term in his 1676 discussions of motion, using it to identify a certain type of leap that is essential to motion. But Leibniz quickly dispensed with this theory of motion, arguing instead that “nature never acts by leaps,” and the term “transcreation” fell out of use. However, Leibniz surprisingly revived the term in 1709 in his discussion of the generation of rational beings. By contrasting the way Leibniz (...) uses the term in his theory of motion with his use of the term in the generation of rational beings, we will see that Leibniz’s arguments against leaps early in his career are less forceful against the leaps purportedly involved in the generation of minds. Nevertheless, the “transcreation” of minds does not necessary entail a discontinuity in the “chain of being.”. (shrink)

This article deals with scientific advice to the public where the relevant science is subject to public attention and uncertainty of knowledge. It focuses on a tension in the management and presentation of scientific uncertainty between the uncertain nature of science and the expectation that scientific advisers will provide clear public guidance. In the first part of the paper the tension is illustrated by the presentation of results from a recent interview study with nutrition scientists in Denmark. According to the (...) study, nutrition scientists feel their roles as ‘‘public advisers’’ and ‘‘scientists’’ differ in that the former involves an expectation that they will provide unambiguous advice of the kind that might relegate scientific uncertainty to the background. In the second, more general, part of the paper we provide a normative analysis of different strategies of dealing with the tension. The analysis is structured around the extremes of either total concealment or full openness regarding scientific uncertainty. The result of analysis is that scientific advisers should not simply ‘‘feed’’ scientific conclusions to the public. They should rather attempt to promote the ability and willingness of the public to assess and scrutinize scientific knowledge by displaying uncertainties in the scientific basis of advice. On the other hand, scientific advisers must accommodate the public’s need for guidance. Such guidance should be restricted by careful consideration of what it is relevant for the public to know in order to evaluate scientific advice in practical terms. (shrink)

Everyday reasoning requires more evidence than raw data alone can provide. We explore the idea that people can go beyond this data by reasoning about how the data was sampled. This idea is investigated through an examination of premise non‐monotonicity, in which adding premises to a category‐based argument weakens rather than strengthens it. Relevance theories explain this phenomenon in terms of people's sensitivity to the relationships among premise items. We show that a Bayesian model of category‐based induction taking premise sampling (...) assumptions and category similarity into account complements such theories and yields two important predictions: First, that sensitivity to premise relationships can be violated by inducing a weak sampling assumption; and second, that premise monotonicity should be restored as a result. We test these predictions with an experiment that manipulates people's assumptions in this regard, showing that people draw qualitatively different conclusions in each case. (shrink)

Everyday reasoning requires more evidence than raw data alone can provide. We explore the idea that people can go beyond this data by reasoning about how the data was sampled. This idea is investigated through an examination of premise non-monotonicity, in which adding premises to a category-based argument weakens rather than strengthens it. Relevance theories explain this phenomenon in terms of people's sensitivity to the relationships among premise items. We show that a Bayesian model of category-based induction taking premise sampling (...) assumptions and category similarity into account complements such theories and yields two important predictions: First, that sensitivity to premise relationships can be violated by inducing a weak sampling assumption; and second, that premise monotonicity should be restored as a result. We test these predictions with an experiment that manipulates people's assumptions in this regard, showing that people draw qualitatively different conclusions in each case. (shrink)

How do laws resemble rules of games, moral rules, personal rules, rules found in religious teachings, school rules, and so on? Are laws rules at all? Are they all made by human beings? And if so how should we go about interpreting them? How are they organized into systems, and what does it mean for these systems to have 'constitutions'? Should everyone want to live under a system of law? Is there a special kind of 'legal justice'? Does it consist (...) simply in applying the law of the system? And how does it relate to the ideal of 'the rule of law'?These and other classic questions in the philosophy of law form the subject-matter of Law as a Leap of Faith. In this book John Gardner collects, revisits, and supplements fifteen years of celebrated writings on general questions about law and legal systems - writings in which he attempts, without loss of philosophical finesse or insight, to cut through some of the technicalities with which the subject has become encrusted in the late twentieth century. Taking his agenda broadly from H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law, Gardner shows how the key ideas in that work live on, and how they have been and can still be improved in modest ways to meet important criticisms - in some cases by concession, in some cases by circumvention, and in some cases by restatement. In the process Gardner engages with key ideas of other modern giants of the subject including Kelsen, Holmes, Raz, and Dworkin. Most importantly he presents the main elements of his own unique and refreshingly direct way of thinking about law, brought together in one place for the first time. (shrink)

This paper argues that both a limited doxastic voluntarism and anti-evidentialism are consistent with the views that the aim of belief is truth or knowledge and that this aim plays an important role in norm-setting for beliefs. More cautiously, it argues that limited doxastic voluntarism is (or would be) a useful capacity for agents concerned with truth tracking to possess, and that having it would confer some straightforward benefits of both an epistemic and non-epistemic variety to an agent concerned with (...) truth tracking. (shrink)

This is my reply to five extended critical assessments of my book Law as a Leap of Faith, appearing together in a symposium issue of Law and Philosophy. The critics are Kevin Toh, Luís Duarte d’Almeida and James Edwards, Fábio Perin Shecaira, Cristina Redondo, and Matthew Smith. The topics include H.L.A. Hart’s philosophical legacy, the moral claims of law, the nature of legal reasoning, the doctrine of legal positivism, and the possibility of alienation from law.

Søren Kierkegaard and John Henry Newman have starkly opposed formulations of the relation between faith and reason. In this essay I focus on a possible convergence in their respective understandings of the transition to religious belief or faith, as embodied in metaphors they use for a qualitative transition. I explore the ways in which attention to the legitimate dimension of discontinuity highlighted by the Climacan metaphor of the 'leap' can illuminate Newman 's use of the metaphor of a 'polygon (...) inscribed in a circle', as well as the ways in which Newman 's metaphor can illuminate the dimension of continuity operative in the Climacan appreciation of qualitative transition. (shrink)

Following an introductory examination of possible reasons why past researchers have overlooked Kierkegaard’s debt to Kant, two specific areas of influence are documented and analyzed: the ideality of ethics, and the notion of faith as a leap. Closing remarks suggest that there are other areas as yet undocumented.

Postmodern theory is used to consider literacy instruction with and without an electronic whiteboard to investigate what it means to move beyond using technology to replicate older models of classroom structure that may be historically situated but that also limit or at least, do not support engagement in ways that may be possible through use of new technologies. Using postmodern theory in this regard is a way in which to consider again the thoughts and practices that tend to construct identities (...) and ideologies in ways that work against true engagement in literacy tasks, lead to subjection and demonstration of acquiescence in place of engagement that leads to participation and critical engagement. Critical engagement as opposed to gaining and maintaining student attention to task are considered in this paper. Thinking about use of the electronic whiteboard from a postmodern perspective cautions us about careful use of this technology to avoid sending messages to students about them and their role in literacy development, the classroom, and in society. (shrink)

Infinity exists as a concept but has no existence in actuality. For infinity to have existence in actuality either time or space have to already be infinite. Unless something is already infinite, the only way to become infinite is by an 'infinity leap' in an infinitely small moment, and this is not possible. Neither does infinitely small have an existence since anything larger than zero is not infinitely small. Therefore infinity has no existence in actuality.

Law as a leap of faith -- Legal positivism : 5 1/2 myths -- Some types of law -- Can there be a written constitution? -- How law claims, what law claims -- Nearly natural law -- The legality of law -- The supposed formality of the rule of law -- Hart on legality, justice, and morality -- The virtue of justice and the character of law -- Law in general.

This article attempts to link the notion of absolute ego as the ultimate subjectivity of consciousness in continental tradition with a phenomenology of Mathematical Continuum as this term is generally established following Cantor’s pioneering ideas on the properties and cardinalities of sets. My motivation stems mainly from the inherent ambiguities underlying the nature and properties of this fundamental mathematical notion which, in my view, cannot be resolved in principle by the analytical means of any formal language not even by the (...) addition of any new axioms to a consistent first-order axiomatical system such as the Zermelo-Fraenkel Set Theory. In this phenomenologically motivated approach I deal, to some extent, with the undecidability of a fundamental statement about the cardinality of Continuum inside ZFC theory, namely the Continuum Hypothesis, and also with the underlying root of Gödel’s first incompleteness result.Este artigo procura conectar a noção de ego absoluto enquanto subjetividade última da consciência na tradição continental com a fenomenologia da matemática do contínuo tal como este termo foi estabelecido seguindo as idéias pioneiras de Cantor sobre as propriedades e cardinalidade de conjuntos. Minha motivação deriva basicamente das ambigüidades subjacentes à natureza e propriedades desta noção matemática fundamental as quais, no meu entender, não podem, em princípio, ser resolvidas pelos meios analíticos de qualquer linguagem formal e nem mesmo pela adição de novos axiomas a um sistema axiomático consistente de primeira ordem como a teoria de conjuntos de Zermelo Fraenkel . Neste tratamento fenomenológica-mente motivado eu lido em certa medida com a indecidibilidade de uma tese fundamental sobre a cardinalidade do contínuo em ZFC, a saber, a Hipótese do Contínuo, e também com aquilo que está na base do primeiro resultado de incompletude de Gödel. (shrink)

David Bourget has raised some conceptual and technical objections to my development of von Neumann’s treatment of the Copenhagen idea that the purely physical process described by the Schrödinger equation must be supplemented by a psychophysical process called the choice of the experiment by Bohr and Process 1 by von Neumann. I answer here each of Bourget’s objections.

ABSTRACTThis article examines Heidegger's assessment of negativity and finitude in the late 1930s and his enlargement of these issues in the name of a leap from one type of philosophy, one type of beginning, to a wholly other beginning. The guiding concerns of this article are negativity, finitude and the leap, and how these overlapping concerns coalesce around Heidegger's attempts to move towards a wholly other type of philosophy; in fact, one which no longer understands itself to be (...) philosophy at all. The article concludes with a discussion of the role of death, sacrifice, and mourning in Heidegger's thought in the 1930s. (shrink)

Heidegger’s 1936 notes titled “Running Notes on Being and Time” (“Laufende Anmerkungen zu Sein und Zeit”) are impatient, even irritable reactions that characterize both major and minor moments in Being and Time as “superficial” (GA82 60), “inadequate” (GA82 36), “ridiculous” (GA82 123), or “wholly off track and erroneous” (GA82 52). Among the many thoughts in the “Running Notes,” one theme emerges as paramount: what was presented in Being and Time as a phenomenology of Dasein—understood as the human way of being—should (...) instead be conceived as projecting a new possibility for humanity, a possibility into which we are invited to “leap” to initiate a new epoch. (shrink)

I discuss the quantum mechanical theory of consciousness and freewill offered by Stapp (1993, 1995, 2000, 2004). First I show that decoherence-based arguments do not work against this theory. Then discuss a number of problems with the theory: Stapp's separate accounts of consciousness and freewill are incompatible, the interpretations of QM they are tied to are questionable, the Zeno effect could not enable freewill as he suggests because weakness of will would then be ubiquitous, and the holism of measurement in (...) QM is not a good explanation of the unity of consciousness for essentially the same reason that local interactions may seem incapable of accounting for it. (shrink)

How we can rethink our lives and reality to remove our filters and realize the wholeness that is inherent in ourselves and in our world.

Non-heterosexual men have long existed on the social and cultural margins. Gay and bisexual male characters in literature, too, have done so for many generations. This essay explores the construction of gay masculinity in the short story “Brokeback Mountain” in relation to the “imaginative leap” that its author, Annie Proulx, undertook in order to conceptualize and represent this noteworthy form of marginalized otherness. It demonstrates that, despite the story’s various refreshing elements, “Brokeback Mountain” ultimately relies far too extensively on (...) the logic of melodrama when telling the tale of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who fall in love in 1963 and continue their sexual relationship over the course of two decades. As a result, this story ends up positioning its two queer protagonists as enemies of the patriarchal social order and the larger society within which it so comfortably exists, implicitly perpetuating both heterosexism and homophobia as it does its cultural work. (shrink)

We review the findings of Cho et al.(1) on the crystal structure of a p53 tumor suppressor‐DNA complex. The core DNA binding domain of p53 folds into a structure termed a β‐sandwich, which organizes two loops and a loop‐sheet‐helix structure on one surface of p53 to interact with the consensus DNA recognition sequence of p53. These structures help to explain the functions of wild‐type p53 and the effects of tumor‐associated mutations on p53 DNA binding, transactivation and suppression of cellular proliferation.

Heidegger’s accounts of Dasein’s dual nature as both individual and social in Being and Time have been a longstanding source of confusion and controversy in the literature. Many critics have been keen to identify contradictions between Heidegger’s positive account of the social nature of everyday Dasein and the putatively solipsistic account of authentic Dasein which comes later. This paper focuses on Heidegger’s brief attempts to sketch the outlines for the notion of something like authentic intersubjectivity. In doing so we will (...) see where the temptation arises to read Heidegger as having failed to remain consistent but also how Heidegger himself is responsible for some of the confusion here. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare aspects of Heidegger’s and Dewey’s thoughts and argue that such a comparison is educationally promising. I make this argument primarily by comparing their understandings of art, which show striking similarities. Both Dewey and Heidegger, indeed, framed art as a favorite noetic experience; both conceived of art as something that not only completes thinking but that is even necessary for thinking to happen. Both philosophers conceived of art as a means of enlarging experience, thereby overcoming the (...) hallmark of Cartesian epistemology, namely, the subject/object distinction. I wish to also argue that, through the lens of art, we can reframe and better understand some aspects of their... (shrink)