This volume presents vernacular knowledge as a realm of discourses and beliefs that challenge institutional authorities and official truths. It draws attention to various genres as expressions of alternative knowledge in relation to authority, including traditional and personal experience narratives, life stories, ditties, and jokes. These are transmitted through a wide range of vehicles of expression including online, face to face, social media, forums, networks, and conferences, which are shared and shaped communally but individually articulated and actualised. Vernacular knowledge and (...) vernacular authority also underpin a variety of material culture, rituals and other practices. The volume covers various realms of the supernatural, such as ghosts, saints, spirits, magic, energy lines, and divinations. However, it also discusses beliefs that do not involve the supernatural such as conspiracy theories, politically and ideologically determined creeds, stereotypes and other cases where beliefs appear as socially compelling ideas and challenge prevailing received wisdom. Vernacular religion is examined not only in relation to institutional religion but also to secularism, state sponsored atheism, scientific rationalism and official medicine. Vernacular Knowledge proceeds from the premise that in contrast to institutionally established discourses with monological voicing, the expressive field of vernacular is always heteroglot; it eludes regulation and supervision. (shrink)

This discussion paper considers how seldom recognised theories influence clinical ethics committees. A companion paper examined four major theories in social science: positivism, interpretivism, critical theory and functionalism, which can encourage legalistic ethics theories or practical living bioethics, which aims for theory–practice congruence. This paper develops the legalistic or living bioethics themes by relating the four theories to clinical ethics committee members’ reported aims and practices and approaches towards efficiency, power, intimidation, justice, equality and children’s interests and rights. Different approaches (...) to framing ethical questions are also considered. Being aware of the four theories’ influence can help when seeking to understand and possibly change clinical ethics committee routines. The paper is not a research report but is informed by a recent study in two London paediatric cardiac units. Forty-five practitioners and related experts were interviewed, including eight members of ethics committees, about the work of informing, preparing and supporting families during the extended process of consent to children’s elective heart surgery. The mosaic of multidisciplinary teamwork is reported in a series of papers about each profession, including this one on bioethics and law and clinical ethics committees’ influence on clinical practice. The qualitative social research was funded by the British Heart Foundation, in order that more may be known about the perioperative views and needs of all concerned. Questions included how disputes can be avoided, how high ethical standards and respectful cooperation between staff and families can be encouraged, and how minors’ consent or refusal may be respected, with the support of clinical ethics committees. (shrink)

Although Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 2) was perhaps the first person to consider the part-whole relationship to be a proper subject matter for philosophic inquiry, the Polish logician Stanislow Lesniewski [15] is generally given credit for the first formal treatment of the subject matter in his Mereology.1 Woodger [30] and Tarski [24] made use of a specific adaptation of Lesniewski's work as a basis for a formal theory of physical things and their parts. The term 'calculus of individuals' was (...) introduced by Leonard and Goodman [14] in their presentation of a system very similar to Tarski's adaptation of Lesniewski's Mereology. Contemporaneously with Lesniewski's development of his Mereology, Whitehead [27] and [28] was developing a theory of extensive abstraction based on the two-place predicate, 'x extends over y\ which is the converse of 'x is a part of y\ This system, according to Russell [22], was to have been the fourth volume of their Pήncipia Mathematica, the never-published volume on geometry. Both Lesniewski [15] and Tarski [25] have recognized the similarities between Whitehead's early work and Lesniewski's Mereology. Between the publication of Whitehead's early work and the publication of Process and Reality [29], Theodore de Laguna [7] published a suggestive alternative basis for Whitehead's theory. This led Whitehead, in Process and Reality, to publish a revised form of his theory based on the two-place predicate, 'x is extensionally connected with y\ It is the purpose of this paper to present a calculus of individuals based on this new Whiteheadian primitive predicate. (shrink)

This study investigates how one important accounting professional authority—CPA Canada—discusses accounting ethics and exhorts its members to think about ethics-related issues. To do this, we rely on empirical evidence of the types of arguments used by CPA Canada to describe what they consider acceptable moral justifications in a variety of practical situations that accountants may encounter. We argue that the articles contained in the profession’s primary publication for all members, CPA Magazine, offer a wealth of such evidence. We analyze 237 (...) articles about accounting ethics that were published in CPA Magazine from January 2000 to December 2017, and find evidence of moral pluralism. Six categories of justifications dominate: private commitments, utility, perfectionist ends, general duties, and specific obligations, plus self-interest. Of these categories, the specific obligations logic is the most widely used. We offer a tentative explanation, and discuss the implications of our findings for a better grasp of the complexities of accountants’ practical conflicts and a rethink of the ongoing tension between professionalism and commercialism. (shrink)

In the current trend of the market society towards an injunction aimed at all citizens to « Be creative, » an injunction which reveals that the individual is being reconfigured as the entrepreneur of his or her own « talent r or « creativity, » this article studies the evolution of the notion of creativity through rite practice of installations. How is the montage of a project exhibition itself an act of cooperative creation? An appropriation of public space? Hone can (...) one outwit or subvert the imperative to furnish content to the culture market ? (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide some acquaintance with the exegetical history of ἐξαίφνης inside the Platonic Tradition, from Plato to Marsilio Ficino, by way of Middle Platonism and Greek Neoplatonism. (Since this is only a draft, several modifications should be made later, notably in order to improve the English.) Some part has been presented in Los Angeles: “Damascius’ Theodicy: Psychic Input of Disorder and Evil into the World”, 16th Annual ISNS (International Society for Neoplatonic Studies) Conference, Loyola (...) Marymount University, 14th June 2018. (shrink)

The question of ontological foundation has undergone a noteworthy revival in recent years: metaphysicians today quarrel about how exactly to understand the asymmetrical and hyperintensional relationship of grounding. One of the reasons for this revival is that the old quantificationalist meta-ontology inherited from Quine has been effectively criticised by leading philosophers favourable to a meta-ontology, the aim of which is to come to know “which facts/items ground (constitute the base of) which other facts/items”, thus to examine the relation of ontological (...) dependence between beings (e.g. chemical properties depend on physical properties, the economic situation on the behaviour of individuals etc.), i.e. to explore the hierarchical structure of reality. I shall not discuss here the relationship of grounding in itself, but make some historical-formal remarks on the properties of the ultimate ontological foundational item itself and its aporetic nature. To do so I explore various more or less exotic philosophical ecosystems in the following order: Heidegger (Seyn), Plato (ἕν), Wáng Bi (道, dào). On the way I shall propose a new interpretation both of certain hypotheses in the Parmenides and of the nature of the opposition between Wáng Bì and Guō Xiàng in regard to the logical grammar of the expression “nothing (無, wú)” (transl. J. Dudley). (shrink)

The development of symbolic logic is often presented in terms of a cumulative story of consecutive innovations that led to what is known as modern logic. This narrative hides the difficulties that this new logic faced at first, which shaped its history. Indeed, negative reactions to the emergence of the new logic in the second half of the nineteenth century were numerous and we study here one case, namely logic at Oxford, where one finds Lewis Carroll, a mathematical teacher who (...) promoted symbolic logic, and John Cook Wilson, the Wykeham Professor of Logic who notoriously opposed it. An analysis of their disputes on the topic of logical symbolism shows that their opposition was not as sharp as it might look at first, as Cook Wilson was not so much opposed to the « symbolic » character of logic, but the intrusion of mathematics and what he perceived to be the futility of some of its problems, for logicians and philosophers alike. (shrink)

To create an ecologically literate, motivated, and engaged citizenry, environmental education must help students develop practical wisdom. We discuss three elements of teaching central to this task: first, greater emphasis on contextualized knowledge, grounded in particular places and cases; second, multi-modal learning that engages students as whole persons both cognitively and affectively; and third, stronger connections between knowing and doing, or between knowledge and responsibility. We illustrate these elements through our experience teaching field-based environmental studies courses, but also emphasize ways (...) in which practical environmental education can be effectively incorporated into campus-based classes. (shrink)

The focus on this contribution is on the ‘late-learners’ digression. In Sph. 251a8-c6, the Eleatic Stranger briefly discusses the view of some ‘young and old late-learners’ who hold that, from a logico-metaphysical point of view, unlike ‘a man is a man’ or ‘a good is good’, the statement ‘a man is good’ is neither a well-formed nor a grammatical sentence. Usually, modern commentators devote little energy to interpreting this passage since they are content to note that it suffices to discriminate (...) identity and predication to avoid the sophism. The aim of this paper is to show that the position of the ‘late-learners’ is in fact more subtle than it seems, since it is widely open to many readings, and that the chosen reading of the digression has a direct impact on the general interpretation of the rest of the dialogue (communication of kinds, semantic distinction between names and verbs, etc.). To this end, the view of the ‘late-learners’ will be compared with a similar position discussed in a quite different philosophical ecosystem: the White-Horse Paradox forged by Gōngsūn Lóng, a dialectician of the ‘School of Names’. This paradox states that the sentence ‘a white horse is not a horse’ is true. Many readings of the White-Horse Paradox have been offered: some of these readings are the same as those suggested for the ‘late-learners’ view, but others are absent from the scholarly literature, although they provide interesting insights into the interpretation of Sph. 251a8-c6. (shrink)

In this short paper we analyse some paradoxical aspects of France’s Foucauldian heritage: while several French scholars claim the COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of what Foucault called biopolitics, popular reaction instead suggests a biopolitical failure on the part of the government; One of these failures concerns the government’s inability to produce reliable biostatistical data, especially regarding health inequalities in relation to COVID-19. We interrogate whether Foucaldianism contributed, in the past as well today, towards a certain myopia in France (...) regarding biostatistics and its relation to social inequalities in health. One might ask whether this very data could provide an appropriate response to the Foucauldian question: What kind of governance of life is the pandemic revealing to us? (shrink)

Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. Plato: Moral and Political Ideals by Adela Marion Adam, first printed in 1913, deals with the main substance of Plato's philosophy of ethics and politics, set within the context of (...) his intellectual debt to Socrates. (shrink)

En logique mathématique, on doit distinguer entre une conception « axiomatique »de la logique, qui fut celle de Frege, Russell et Hilbert, et une conception plus « pragmatique »en termes d’actes de preuves, que l’on retrouve dans les systèmes de déduction naturelle de Gentzen. Des parallèles sont esquissés entre la conception de l’inférence et de la logique dans le Tractatus Logico-philosophicus de Wittgenstein et celle de Gentzen. Ce cadre permet en outre de jeter un regard neuf sur l’argument de Wittgenstein (...) sur « suivre une règle ». (shrink)

After sketching an argument for radical anti-realism that does not appeal to human limitations but polynomial-time computability in its definition of feasibility, I revisit an argument by Wittgenstein on the surveyability of proofs, and then examine the consequences of its application to the notion of canonical proof in contemporary proof-theoretical-semantics.

René Girard’s breakthrough consists in uncovering the mechanism of violence, namely the mimesis and rivalry it permits. Yet, mimetic violence still leaves the very origin of evil and murder unquestioned. Here Lévinas plays a decisive role: the call to murder only becomes possible as one of the versions of the call of the face, the call of the other. This is what Girard should have taken up in order to clarify his final allusions to a “good mimesis”—this other, properly Christic, (...) possibility of the call of the face. (shrink)

Question - Dans Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, vous concluiez par la « destitution » de la métaphysique, ainsi laissée enfin à elle-même, et vous en appeliez à une autre « instance », un autre ‘ordre’, pour définir la tâche d'élaborer une doctrine de la charité, d'en retracer l'histoire, selon la règle d'une historicité absolument indépendante de l'historialité. Les deux protagonistes emblématiques de cet ouvrage permettaient de comprendre la nature du « saut » ainsi requis et d'instituer la rupture. (...) Le mouvement général de Réduction et donation est le même, mais cette fois une case reste vide. Il ne s'agit point, en effet, dans ce dernier ouvrage, de ‘jouer’ quant à la réduction, Heidegger contre Husserl; cette confrontation n'intervient qu'en un premier moment, puisqu'aussi bien Husserl élargit déjà la réduction. Reste que, s'il est légitime de distinguer et d'opposer dans un horizon phénoménologique commun la réduction transcendantale de Husserl à la réduction au « phénomène d'être » de Heidegger, le passage à la troisième réduction - tel que vous le proposez - reste beaucoup plus problématique, sauf à jouer d'une certaine équivocité du terme même de « donation », celle-là même qui conduit de la Selbstgegebenheit à la constellation du Geben, de la Gabe et du es gibt. (shrink)

Emerging parallel to long-standing, academic and policy inquiries on personal responsibility for health is the empirical assessment of lay persons’ views. Yet, previous studies rarely explored personal responsibility for health among lay persons as dynamic societal values. We sought to explore lay persons’ views on personal responsibility for health using the Fairness Dialogues, a method for lay persons to deliberate equity issues in health and health care through a small group dialogue using a hypothetical scenario. We conducted two 2-h Fairness (...) Dialogues sessions (n = 15 in total) in Nova Scotia, Canada. We analyzed data using thematic analysis. Our analysis showed that personal choice played an important role in participants’ thinking about health. Underlying the concept of personal choice was considerations of freedom and societal debt. In participants’ minds, personal and social responsibilities co-existed and they were unwilling to determine health care priority based on personal responsibility. The Fairness Dialogues is a promising deliberative method to explore lay persons’ views as dynamic values to be developed through group dialogues as opposed to static, already-formed values waiting to be elicited. (shrink)

This article investigates journalists? attitudes regarding the interface between the craft's commitment to detached observation when covering the news and the perhaps equally compelling drive to assist other human beings in need at the scene of a life?threatening newsworthy incident. Also examined is the journalistic attitude toward the propriety of incorporating relevant ?good Samaritan?; provisions in existing codes of ethics and policy statements as exceptions to the primary goal of detached observation. While journalists generally are in agreement that they have (...) a responsibility to help others in need, these same journalists are reluctant to see provisions codifying this position included in written codes of ethics. It is suggested, however, that a properly written clause outlining appropriate journalist intervention in life?saving acts would be beneficial, and a model provision is proposed. (shrink)

This work contributes to recent transdisciplinary efforts to view the Haitian slave revolt (1791–1804) as the historical inspiration for Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. Reconstructions offered by contemporary postcolonial scholars argue that the Haitian revolt was chronicled in Minerva as Hegel raced to finish his Phenomenology. Benhabib recently recognized the Hegel-Haiti thesis as entailing the sort of inclusive dialogical learning process necessary to validate subaltern experiences. The thesis has also drawn its share of sceptical scrutiny as Badiou claims that it risks forcing (...) an unnecessary moral dissymmetry, neglects objectionable features of enslavement and imposes a mismatch between apolitical subject and revolutionary. In reply, we appeal to the pioneering work of Tavares to show that the asymmetrical construction of classification schemes for persons of mixed-racial statuses accords with decades of documented literary exchanges between Hegel and Gregoire. We then turn to the work of James on the role of mixed-race merchants in the testimonial accounts of late 18th century French historians to show that European literate publics were well aware of the extremely coercive forms of commodified labour found in Saint-Domingue. We then invoke the archival work of Du Bois on French, British and American parliamentary proceedings that show the provisional colonial identities ascribed to Caribbean subjects did not hinder their self-conscious exercise of political agency. Viewing Hegel in terms of the historiographic records of the racial ontologies of early modern transatlantic literary exchanges helps explain how he adapted these tropes concerning mixed-race subjects in a manner that better explains many of the anomalous features of the dialectic. However, conferring the Haitian revolution its proper world-historical warrant as inspiration for his infamous master-slave dialectic need not lead us to overlook Hegel’s complicity with many of the epistemic and ontological flaws of colonial tropes held in early modern transatlantic print. (shrink)

The paper argues that historic events in the western Irish town of Sligo were more substantial in shaping Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) than previously thought. Biographers of Stoker have credited his mother, Charlotte Thornley Stoker, for influencing her son’s gothic imagination during his childhood by sharing tales of the Sligo cholera epidemic she had witnessed in 1832. While Charlotte Stoker’s written account of Sligo’s epidemic Experiences of the Cholera in Ireland (1873) influenced Bram Stoker, it is argued that as (...) a voracious library researcher he is likely to have cross-referenced it with other historical accounts. Furthermore, by viewing the text of Dracula through the lens of Charlotte Stoker’s account and the historical reportage of the epidemic, clear parallels emerge. Ultimately, the striking similarities between Sligo’s cholera are marshaled to argue that Count Dracula may be read as the personification of Sligo’s cholera. (shrink)

On September 30th I attended a talk by Ian Hacking, the renowned philosopher of science. The topic, “The Tree of Knowledge,” was irresistible for someone like myself whose main interest is in sociocultural evolution. I was rewarded with a dazzling display of erudition about stylized trees drawn through history and across civilizations. Hacking generously credited the many experts he had consulted to amass this treasure. This was consistent with his preference for “collaborating disciplines” over interdisciplinarity.

Often scholars who call themselves social scientists have not meant by the term science the sort of activity which has generally concerned those calling themselves natural scientists. In the latter sense very little of what has been called “social science” can also be called scientific. The term “social science” as used here refers primarily to the studies which have gone under such titles as Politics, Sociology, Anthropology, Social and Clinical Psychology, and Economics. To some degree much of what will here (...) be said does not apply with equal justice to the field of Economics. It has a more highly developed system of general abstractions and considerably more precise techniques of analysis than have generally characterized the other social sciences. The difference, however, is one of degree not kind. Many of the difficulties mentioned below certainly plague the field of Economics as well as the others. (shrink)

Après avoir présenté les grandes lignes de la réflexion phénoménologique de Wittgenstein en 1929 et son abandon de Vidée d'un langage phénoménologique, je montre qu'il fait face à un dilemme à propos de la notion de règle. Si on regarde l'expression symbolique d'une règle sous le mode physicaliste, on ne peut pas voir le lien entre celle-ci et ses applications. Comment peut-elle, de par elle-même, servir de guide à nos actions ? Il faut une intention, une interprétation, ce qui fait (...) de la règle un objet phénoménologique. L'abandon du langage phénoménologique doit cependant forcer Wittgenstein à reconnaître qu'une règle en tant qu'objet phénoménologique ne peut pas être comparée à ou être utilisée pour déclencher une action qui se déroule dans le monde physique. Je montre que c'est en tentant de sortir de ce dilemme que Wittgenstein en viendra aux conceptions exposées dans ses remarques sur « suivre une règle ». J'examine en dernier lieu quelques conséquences de cette interprétation sur celle de la philosophie des mathématiques de Wittgenstein.After presenting a broad sketch of Wittgenstein's phenomenology; in 1929, and of his abandonment of the idea of a phenomenological language, it is shown that the notion of a rule left him with a dilemma, if the symbolical expression of a rule is understood in a physicalist mode, one cannot see the link between it and its applications. How could it, of itself guide our actions? One needs an intention or interpretation, thus turning the rule into a phenomeno/ogica I object. The abandonment ofthe p he nojne no logical language must have foiled Wittgenstein to recognize that a rule, qua phenomenological object, cannot be compared to or used to trigger an action in the physical world. It is then shown how Wittgenstein reached, while trying to solve this dilemma, the conception of rules presented in the remarks on 'following a rule". Lastly, some of the consequences of this new reading on the interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics are examined. (shrink)

Musical prodigies reach exceptionally high levels of achievement before adolescence. Despite longstanding interest and fascination in musical prodigies, little is known about their psychological profile. Here we assess to what extent practice, intelligence, and personality make musical prodigies a distinct category of musician. Nineteen former or current musical prodigies were compared to 35 musicians with either an early or late start but similar amount of musical training, and 16 non-musicians. All completed a Wechsler IQ test, the Big Five Inventory, the (...) Autism Spectrum Quotient, the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire, the Dispositional Flow Scale, and a detailed history of their lifetime music practice. None of the psychological traits distinguished musical prodigies from control musicians or non-musicians except their propensity to report flow during practice. The other aspects that differentiated musical prodigies from their peers were the intensity of their practice before adolescence, and the source of their motivation when they began to play. Thus practice, by itself, does not make a prodigy. The results are compatible with multifactorial models of expertise, with prodigies lying at the high end of the continuum. In summary, prodigies are expected to present brain predispositions facilitating their success in learning an instrument, which could be amplified by their early and intense practice happening at a moment when brain plasticity is heightened. (shrink)