In this interview, Margaret A. Simons describes her path to philosophy and existentialism, her struggles in the male-dominated field in the 1960s and 1970s, and her political activism in the civil rights and women’s liberation movements. She also discusses her encounters with Simone de Beauvoir and Beauvoir’s refusal to own her philosophical originality, suggesting that Beauvoir may have adopted a more conventional narrative of a female intellectual to circumvent the public’s resistance to her radical ideas in the 1950s.

Colette Audry pointed to a mystery in observing that during the 1930s Simone de Beauvoir had not been concerned with the “woman question” and that her friend must have encountered a “serious obstacle” that “made her change her mind” and write The Second Sex. Unfortunately, Beauvoir obscured the genesis of her most important work. Using evidence uncovered by her biographers about her relationship with Sartre, and digging more deeply into their posthumously published letters and diaries, this paper uncovers a series (...) of events that together tell a likely story of Beauvoir’s feminist turning point. (shrink)

What is the mind? How does it work? How does it influence behavior? Some psychologists hope to answer such questions in terms of concepts drawn from computer science and artificial intelligence. They test their theories by modeling mental processes in computers. This book shows how computer models are used to study many psychological phenomena--including vision, language, reasoning, and learning. It also shows that computer modeling involves differing theoretical approaches. Computational psychologists disagree about some basic questions. For instance, should the mind (...) be modeled by digital computers, or by parallel-processing systems more like brains? Do computer programs consist of meaningless patterns, or do they embody (and explain) genuine meaning? (shrink)

An essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind, "The Creative Mind" has been updated to include recent developments in artificial ...

This paper examines the promise of science and its role in shaping research policy. The promise of science is characterized by expectations of science, which are embedded in promissory discourses that envision futures made possible through advances in promising science. Through a single case study of the origins of Genome Canada, the research was guided by the question: How did expectations of genomics shape the creation of Genome Canada? A conceptualization of discursive power and expectations of genomics storylines provide the (...) theoretical and analytical basis for an in-depth examination of the ideational effects and material impacts on research policy decisions over three years that culminated in the creation of Genome Canada. Expectations of genomics storylines functioned in a complex interplay of discursive practices and dynamics among diverse policy actors within a genomics discourse-coalition to produce a range of ideational and material impacts. The expectations of genomics storylines produced powerful genomics subject-positions from which policy actors perceived their interests, identities and preferences and gained agency, which led to various material impacts, such as mobilizing support and funding, coordinating activities and transforming Canada’s research policy framework. With the increasing importance of research policy to a range of broader policy priorities underpinned by expectations that science will resolve societal challenges and contribute to socio-economic benefits, this paper sheds light on how complex research policy decisions are made; it further contributes to understanding the role of promissory discourses in shaping those decisions. (shrink)

Developing a boundary-crossing ethics by paying attention to our stories, myths, and moral intuition.

Teaching chemistry remains a profoundly challenging activity. This paper arises from reflection on the challenges of creating meaningful assessments. Herein a simple framework to assist in making more visible the different kinds of knowledge required for mastery of chemistry is described. Building from a realist foundation the purpose of this paper is to lay the intellectual scaffolding for the framework. By situating the framework theoretically, it is intended to highlight the value of engaging with philosophy for the project of knowledge (...) building in chemistry. Use of this framework has laid bare some significant limitations to the ways in which organic chemistry has been assessed. Making the visible to students aids in their engagement with knowledge and for a small minority has developed their understanding of science more generally. The framework provides a simple, easily usable tool for the evaluation of chemistry assessments. (shrink)

Language does not simply symbolize a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possible the existence or the appearance of that situation or object for it is a part of the mechanism whereby that situation or object is created. (Mead 1934, p. 78).

As part of Delmar's Core Introductory Nursing Textbook Series, this text examines the issues that are at the very heart of today's health care delivery system. By examining theories, models, and principles that served as guides for ethically sound behavior, the text flows from the personal level, to the professional, and finally to the global domain. Discussion of pricipled behavior on the personal level includes values clarification, moral development, and a discussion of how this behavior affects a nurse's everyday life. (...) The section related to prefessional and legal issues in nursing includes discussion of autonomy, authority, accountability, codes of practice, scholarship issues, and practice issues related to health care providers, systems within which nurses work, technology, and patient self-determination. There is an examination of global issues that affect nursing, including political, economic, social, gender, transcultural, and spiritual issues. Acknowledging changing trends in the health care field, this book is offered as a tool for student nurses to use in the process of learning to make sound choices and act in principled ways. (shrink)

In this paper, the practice of chemistry is viewed in terms of the interaction of three elements – the physical world (at the molecular level), the conceptual world (the canon of chemistry) and the social world (the community of chemists). This interaction, which is based on critical realist ideas such as, for example, the transitive and intransitive dimensions of reality, affords a clear distinction between the practice of chemistry as science and the practice of chemistry as technology. It also shows (...) the significance of the particularity of the chemist in the practice of chemistry. Finally, it allows a coherent philosophical foundation for chemistry research and chemistry education. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection of classical and contemporary readings provides a clear and comprehensive guide to the many hotly-debated philosophical issues at the heart of artificial intelligence.

Feminist philosophy seems to conflict with traditional philosophical methodology. For example, some uses of the concept of gender by feminist philosophers seem to commit the genetic fallacy. I argue that use of the concept of gender need not commit the genetic fallacy, but that the concept of gender is problematic on other grounds.

New technologies are changing our lives radically and quickly. New biotechnologies are moving to commercial uses faster than government regulators or private citizens can monitor. This tension manifests itself in the current debates over xenotransplantation technologies in medicine. The possibility of removing cells, tissues, and organs from animals and transplanting them into human beings is startling and unnerving. Natural immunesystem barriers between species, and even between individuals within a species, are formidable. Typically, transplantation results in violent rejection and death of (...) the grafted organ. But despite the natural barriers to transplantation, xenotransplantation aims specifically to overcome them.In this paper, I will discuss applications of xenograft technology, which raises clinical risks, ethical concerns, and policy issues. I conclude with a set of specific recommendations. As a recent letter to the journal Nature puts it, there is a “split between those who want to get it right, and those who want to get it right now.” No one knows what all the risks, benefits, and unintended consequences of xenotransplantation will be. (shrink)

Nowhere in this nation is the return of tuberculosis more visible or more pronounced than in New York City. Fueled by poverty, homelessness and AIDS, tuberculosis has again reached epidemic proportions. New York City is at the forefront of the battle against this advancing disease. For this reason, and because the dynamics at work in New York City are a microcosm of those same forces at work in the larger society, what transpires here often foreshadows the direction that other urban (...) centers will take. It is in this context that our New York experience provides a valuable framework for learning and for action. (shrink)

This brief response aims to contextualize and reflect further on James Gustafson's new essay regarding “participation” in relation to God, nature, and human beings. In it I attempt to address Gustafson's innovative method and the difference it makes for interpreting some of his previous work. For the first time Gustafson's direct mode of access to the meaning and implications of human participation is through his own experience. I argue that he breaks new ground with what might be called descriptive experiential (...) analysis, moving forward yet harking back to longtime central themes regarding knowledge of God, moral discernment, theocentrism and anthropocentrism, relationalism and unity. (shrink)

Our physical ecosystem is not indestructible and we have obligations to hold it in trust for future generations. The same is true of our metaphysical ecosystem - the values, principles, attitudes, beliefs, and shared stories on which we have founded our society. In Bird on an Ethics Wire, Margaret Somerville explores the values needed to maintain a world that reasonable people would want to live in and pass on to their descendants. Somerville addresses the conflicts between people who espouse (...) "progressive" values and those who uphold "traditional" ones by casting her attention on the debates surrounding "birth" and "death" and shows how words are often used as weapons. She proposes that we should seek to experience amazement, wonder, and awe to enrich our lives and help us to find meaning. Such experiences, Somerville believes, can change how we see the world and live our lives, and affect the decisions we make, especially regarding values and ethics. They can help us to cope with physical or existential suffering, and ultimately put us in touch with the sacred - in either its secular or religious form - which protects what we must not destroy. Experiencing amazement, wonder, and awe, Somerville concludes, can also generate hope, without which our spirit dies. Both individuals and societies need hope, a sense of connection to the future, if the world is to make the best decisions about values in the battles that constitute the current culture wars. (shrink)

If the Trade Descriptions Act were applied to academic labels, cognitive scientists would be in trouble. For what they do is much wider than the name suggests—and wider, too, than most philosophers assume. They give you more for your money than you may have expected.

The applications of Artificial Intelligence lie all around us; in our homes, schools and offices, in our cinemas, in art galleries and - not least - on the Internet. The results of Artificial Intelligence have been invaluable to biologists, psychologists, and linguists in helping to understand the processes of memory, learning, and language from a fresh angle.As a concept, Artificial Intelligence has fuelled and sharpened the philosophical debates concerning the nature of the mind, intelligence, and the uniqueness of human beings. (...) Margaret A. Boden reviews the philosophical and technological challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence, considering whether programs could ever be really intelligent, creative or even conscious, and shows how the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence has helped us to appreciate how human and animal minds are possible. (shrink)

Dating from her years as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, this is the 1926-27 diary of the teenager who would become the famous French philosopher, author, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Written years before her first meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, these diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and offer critical insights into her early philosophy and literary works. Presented here for the first time in translation and fully annotated, the diary is completed by essays from Barbara Klaw (...) and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical, and literary significance. The volume represents an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir’s independent thinking and influence on the world. (shrink)

This book offers an historical and critical guide to the concepts of the post-modern and the post-industrial. It brings admirable clarity and thoroughness to a discussion of the many different uses made of the term post-modern across a number of different disciplines (including literature, architecture, art history, philosophy, anthropology and geography). It also analyses the concept of the post-industrial society to which the concept of the post-modern has often been related. Dr Rose discusses the work of many theorists in the (...) area, including Hassan, Lyotard, Jameson and the architectural historian Charles Jencks, and also looks at analyses and uses of the concepts of the post-modern and post-industrial by Frampton, Portoghesi, Peter Fuller and others. (shrink)