Stroke is one of the most common causes of acquired disability, leaving numerous adults with cognitive and motor impairments, and affecting patients’ capability to live independently. Virtual Reality (VR) based methods for stroke rehabilitation have mainly focused on motor rehabilitation but there is increasing interest toward the integration of cognitive training for providing more effective solutions. Here we investigate the feasibility for stroke recovery of a virtual cognitive-motor task, the Reh@Task, which combines adapted arm reaching, and attention and memory training. (...) 24 participants in the chronic stage of stroke, with cognitive and motor deficits, were allocated to one of two groups (VR, Control). Both groups were enrolled in conventional occupational therapy, which mostly involves motor training. Additionally, the VR group underwent training with the Reh@Task and the control group performed time-matched conventional occupational therapy. Motor and cognitive competences were assessed at baseline, end of treatment (1 month) and at a 1-month follow-up through the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Single Letter Cancelation, Digit Cancelation, Bells Test, Fugl-Meyer Assessment Test, Chedoke Arm and Hand Activity Inventory, Modified Ashworth Scale, and Barthel Index. Our results show that both groups improved in motor function over time, but the Reh@Task group displayed significantly higher between-group outcomes in the arm subpart of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment Test. Improvements in cognitive function were significant and similar in both groups. Overall, these results are supportive of the viability of VR tools that combine motor and cognitive training, such as the Reh@Task. Trial Registration: This trial was not registered because it is a small clinical study that addresses the feasibility of a prototype device. (shrink)

The computational genomics community has come increasingly to rely on the methodology of creating annotations of scientific literature using terms from controlled structured vocabularies such as the Gene Ontology (GO). We here address the question of what such annotations signify and of how they are created by working biologists. Our goal is to promote a better understanding of how the results of experiments are captured in annotations in the hope that this will lead to better representations of biological reality through (...) both the annotation process and ontology development, and in more informed use of the GO resources by experimental scientists. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a slow but steady increase in the number of postdoctoral scholars employed in faculties of education. In this article, seven postdoctoral scholars who worked in the same Ca...

Public health law research reveals significant complexities underlying the use of law as an effective tool to improve health outcomes across populations. The challenges of applying public health law in practice are no easier. Attorneys, public health officials, and diverse partners in the public and private sectors collaborate on the front lines to forge pathways to advance population health through law. Meeting this objective amidst competing interests requires strong practice skills to shift through sensitive and sometimes urgent calls for action (...) to address known threats to the health of individuals and the community. It also necessitates objective, timely information and national and regional legal support. (shrink)

Through cultural transmission, repeated learning by new individuals transforms cultural information, which tends to become increasingly compressible . Existing diffusion chain studies include in their design two processes that could be responsible for this tendency: learning and reproducing . This paper manipulates the presence of learning in a simple iterated drawing design experiment. We find that learning seems to be the causal factor behind the increase in compressibility observed in the transmitted information, while reproducing is a source of random heritable (...) innovations. Only a theory invoking these two aspects of cultural learning will be able to explain human culture's fundamental balance between stability and innovation. (shrink)

The results in this paper are in a context of abstract elementary classes identified by Shelah and Villaveces in which the amalgamation property is not assumed. The long-term goal is to solve Shelah’s Categoricity Conjecture in this context. Here we tackle a problem of Shelah and Villaveces by proving that in their context, the uniqueness of limit models follows from categoricity under the assumption that the subclass of amalgamation bases is closed under unions of bounded, -increasing chains.

To date, COVID-19 has spread across the world, changing our way of life and forcing us to wear face masks. This report demonstrates that face masks influence the human ability to infer emotions by observing facial configurations. Specifically, a mask obstructing a face limits the ability of people of all ages to infer emotions expressed by facial features, but the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old. These findings are (...) of essential importance, as they suggest that we live in a time that may potentially affect the development of social and emotion reasoning, and young children’s future social abilities should be monitored to assess the true impact of the use of masks. (shrink)

The term ‘vitalism’ is most readily associated with a series of debates among 18th- and 19th-century biologists, and broadly with the claim that the explanation of living phenomena is not compatible with, or is not exhausted by, the principles of basic sciences like physics and chemistry. Scientists and philosophers have continued to address vitalism - mostly in order to reject it - well into the second half of the 20th century, in connection with classic concepts such as mechanism, reductionism, emergence, (...) complexity and artificial intelligence, and in connection with approaches such as information theory and cybernetics. This article problematizes and transforms the claim that vitalism is obsolete by evaluating it diachronically, in the spirit of the historian and philosopher of medicine, Georges Canguilhem. It discusses the contrast between classical vitalism and Canguilhem’s own claim that vitalism is ‘an imperative rather than a method and more of an ethical system, perhaps, than a theory’. At the same time, it argues (against postmodern and post-humanist critics) that Canguilhem’s position cannot be reduced to a ‘polemical vitalism’ devoid of compromising references to reality or ontology. In relation to contemporary forms of engagement between social theory and biotechnoscience, Canguilhem’s vitalism continues to provide the critical corrective that is proper to its ‘vitality’. (shrink)

The employment of mythological language and imagery by an Epicurean poet - an adherent of a system not only materialist, but overtly hostile to myth and poetry - is highly paradoxical. This apparent contradiction has often been ascribed to a conflict in the poet between reason and intellect, or to a desire to enliven his philosophical material with mythological digressions. This book attempts to provide a more positive assessment of Lucretius' aims and methodology by considering the poet's attitude to myth, (...) and the role which it plays in the De Rerum Natura, against the background of earlier and contemporary views. The author suggests that Lucretius was not only aware of the tension between his two roles as philosopher and poet, but attempted to resolve it by developing his own, Epicurean poetic, together with a bold and innovative theory of the origins and meaning of myth. (shrink)

As a neonatal neurologist, I serve families facing tragic decisions in which they must balance trade-offs between death and life with profound disability. I often find myself in complex discussions about future outcome, in which families sort through in real-time what information they value most in making such a choice. Will he laugh? Will he be in pain? Will he know how much he’s loved? In this month’s feature article, Brick et al share the results of an online survey aimed (...) at assessing public views on when a life is not worth living, in an effort to inform ongoing legal and clinical debates about withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for children. These findings raise important questions about how we define and measure outcomes that matter to parents as they make these tragic decisions. It is challenging to interpret these findings in the absence of context of how decision-making for infants occurs in real-time. The nature of this study and its objective required that cases be substantially simplified. As the authors acknowledge, the prognoses and function of the children involved in these cases were often deeply contested. Prognostic uncertainty is common for children with significant …. (shrink)

Influential theories on moral judgments propose that they rely either on emotions or on innate moral principles. In contrast, the mental model theory postulates that moral judgments rely on reasoning, either intuition or deliberation. The theory allows for the possibility that intuitions lead to utilitarian judgments. This paper reports two experiments involving fifth-grade children, adolescents, and adults; the results revealed that children reason intuitively to resolve moral dilemmas in which action and inaction lead to different outcomes. In particular, the results (...) showed female children to be more utilitarian than female adults in resolving classical moral dilemmas: they preferred an action that achieved a good outcome for a greater number of people. Within the mental model theory’s framework there is no reason to expect that females and males differ in their ability to reason, but at the moment the results for females cannot be generalized to males who were not properly represented in the adults groups of the two experiments. The result revealing that (female) children are more utilitarian than (female) adults, which is hard to explain via many current theories, was predicted by the mental model theory. (shrink)

Gadamer's Ethics of Play examines the ethical dimensions of understanding by focusing on the concept of dialogical "play" in Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method. The book is accessible to an undergraduate audience, while also being relevant to ongoing debates among Gadamer scholars.

This article offers a new understanding of populism. The argument unfolds as follows: first, the populist literature is reviewed and two main approaches are identified: ontic and logic-oriented, the more important of which is the Schmitt-Laclau logic of enmity. While the authors broadly agree with Laclau’s criticism of ontic approaches, they endorse neither his ontological understanding of enmity, nor his claim that populism is politics, and enmity is the logic of populism. Next, the origins of populism are located in a (...) paradox at the heart of democracy. Democracy defines itself as a community of inclusion, yet exclusion is constitutive of inclusion, including therefore democratic inclusion. Then is discussed what the authors believe to be the true logic of populism: resentment. Unlike enmity, which functions in Laclau’s populist theory as an ontology of non-identity, resentment operates within a rivalrous framework, which presupposes identification between the parts and refers to a set of normative commitments. Finally, the article concludes by presenting an understanding of populism as a specific logic of political action. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative analysis of experimental fetal surgery and fetal tissue research. The author argues that fetuses are positioned differently across each set of practices, with significant implications for actors in these domains. By empirically charting the ways in which humanity is or is not attributed to fetal work objects, the author's argument challenges contemporary debates in science studies that tend to conceptualize human and nonhuman in dualistic terms. This analysis instead shows the heterogeneous attribution of these categories, (...) as well as the spaces, margins, and positions, which constitute them as distinct. (shrink)

A serious problem confronting discourses on recognition is that of showing equal respect for citizens’ diverse cultural identities whilst at the same time attending to feminist concerns. This article focuses on the complex issues emerging from the recent legislation prohibiting the Muslim veil in French state schools. I respond to these problems by defending two conditions of a postcolonial and feminist approach to the politics of recognition. This approach should be, first, transformative, in the sense of widening its conception of (...) core values through an engagement with cultural difference. Second, it should be critical in its orientation to practices affecting women adversely within any social group. An integration of these concerns is proposed in terms of ‘affective citizenship’. This approach supports the different components of women’s autonomous functioning, through a universalistic commitment to the creative expression of their hybrid identities. (shrink)

By moving beyond the overly emphasized image of a “fusion of horizons” and focusing on Gadamer’s concept of “play,” this paper aims to rehabilitate the dynamic and multi-vocal character of understanding as Gadamer conceives it, and to argue that “difference” is the life-blood of understanding against the recurring charge that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is fundamentally antagonistic to otherness.

The European Union faced high risks from personal data proliferation to individuals’ privacy. Legislation has emerged that seeks to articulate all interests at stake, balancing the need for data flow from EU countries with protecting personal data: the General Data Protection Regulation. One of the mechanisms established by this new law to strengthen the individual’s control over their data is the so-called “right to be forgotten”, the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of records. In gender transition, this (...) right represents a powerful form of control over personal data, especially health data that may reveal a gender with which they do not identify and reject. Therefore, it is pertinent to discern whether the right to have personal data deleted—in particular, health data—is ethically acceptable in gender transition. Towards addressing the ethical dimensions of the right to be forgotten in this case, this study presents relevant concepts, briefly outlines history, ethics and law of records considering the evolution from paper to electronic format, the main aspects of identity construction and gender identity, and explores the relationship between privacy, data protection/information control and identity projection. Also, it discusses in gender transition the relation between “the right to self-determination”, “the right to delete”, and “the right to identity and individuality”. Conclusions on the ethical admissibility of the ‘right to be forgotten’ to control gender-affirming information are presented. (shrink)

Employee social network strategies play a key role in firm strategies and organizational performance. Currently, scholars underestimate the contributions of employee social strategies in firm strategies. Little is known how informal employee social networks, group entitativity and competition could shape and direct firm strategies and organizational performance. The article examines social network theory and strategic management’s content, process and open schools of thought to propose a new interpretation for managing firm strategies. More specifically, the author examines alternate causal paths, underlying (...) processes and structures as mechanisms in employee social network strategies within a theoretical framework. The article proposes 4 theoretically driven propositions and makes two contributions. First, the article contributes to organizational behavior literature by focusing on the literature gap in network dynamics and competitive actions through employee social networks. Second, although there is immense literature on positive and negative employee competition in business, the article makes a contribution to the strategic management literature by moving beyond formalized structures and roles within an organization to focus on the multilevel informal workplace social interactions and processes that impact strategizing activities. Overall, the article extends strategy research in relation to how employee social networks operate through competition and group entitativity in firm strategies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’ in philosophy of science appears simple at first but contains interesting complexities. Paul Hoyningen-Huene has catalogued some of these complexities and suggested that the core usefulness of the ‘context distinction’ is in distinguishing between descriptive and normative perspectives. Here, I expand on Hoyningen-Huene’s project by tracing the label ‘context of discovery and context of justification’ to its origin. I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, Hans Reichenbach’s initial context distinction from (...) 1938 does not easily map onto Hoyningen-Huene’s distinction between descriptive and normative perspectives on science. However, this is not a reason to reject Hoyningen-Huene’s simplified context distinction, nor do I recommend returning to Reichenbach’s initial proposal. It is, however, further reason to believe that the context distinction does not have a single, easily understood meaning. Along the way, I revisit Reichenbach’s version of ‘rational reconstruction’ and highlight its usefulness as a tool for philosophy in general. (shrink)

Cheryl Hall has argued that framing of climate change must acknowledge the sacrifices needed to reach a sustainable future. This paper builds on that argument. Although it is important to acknowledge the value of what must be sacrificed, this paper argues that current frames about the environment falsely portray humans and the environment as in a zero-sum game, and in doing so ask people to give up the wrong things. This could undermine the public’s trust in environmentalism, and might even (...) create a backlash against action on climate change. I propose we need alternative framing that portrays humans as a keystone species, and highlights positive human activity. (shrink)

We examine change across U.S. cohorts born between 1920 and 2000 in their probability of having had sex with same-sex partners in the last year and since age 18. Using data from the 1988–2018 General Social Surveys, we explore how trends differ by gender, race, and class background. We find steep increases across birth cohorts in the proportion of women who have had sex with both men and women since age 18, whereas increases for men are less steep. We suggest (...) that the trends reflect an increasingly accepting social climate, and that women’s steeper trend is rooted in a long-term asymmetry in gender change, in which nonconformity to gender norms is more acceptable for women than men. We also find evidence that, among men, the increase in having had sex with both men and women was steeper for black than for white men, and for men of lower socioeconomic status; we speculate that the rise of mass incarceration among less privileged men may have influenced this trend. (shrink)

Introduction Previous research has explored euthanasia’s ethical dimensions, primarily focusing on general practice and, to a lesser extent, psychiatry, mainly from the viewpoints of physicians and nurses. However, a gap exists in understanding the comprehensive value-based perspectives of other professionals involved in both somatic and psychiatric euthanasia. This paper aims to analyze the interplay among legal, medical, and ethical factors to clarify how foundational values shape the ethical discourse surrounding euthanasia in both somatic and psychiatric contexts. It seeks to explore (...) these dynamics among all healthcare professionals and volunteers in Belgium. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 Dutch-speaking healthcare workers who had encountered patients requesting euthanasia for psychiatric conditions, in Belgium, from August 2019 to August 2020. Qualitative thematic analysis was applied to the interview transcripts. Findings Participants identified three pivotal values and virtues: religious values, professional values, and fundamental medical values encompassing autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence, linked to compassion, quality care, and justice. These values interwove across four tiers: the patient, the patient’s inner circle, the medical realm, and society at large. Irrespective of their euthanasia stance, participants generally displayed a blend of ethical values across these tiers. Their euthanasia perspective was primarily shaped by value interpretation, significance allocation to key components, and tier weighting. Explicit mention of varying ethical values, potentially indicating distinct stances in favor of or against euthanasia, was infrequent. Conclusion The study underscores ethical discourse’s central role in navigating euthanasia’s intricate landscape. Fostering inclusive dialogue, bridging diverse values, supports informed decision-making, nurturing justice, and empathy. Tailored end-of-life healthcare in psychiatry is essential, acknowledging all involved actors’ needs. The study calls for interdisciplinary research to comprehensively grasp euthanasia’s multifaceted dimensions, and guiding policy evolution. While contextualized in Belgium, the implications extend to the broader euthanasia discourse, suggesting avenues for further inquiry and cross-cultural exploration. (shrink)

This text, touching on the problem of the ontology of the image from a political-theological perspective, focuses on Reiner Schürmann’s philosophical reading of the pictorial art of Louis Comtois. While placing it in the context of post-World War II modernism, he nevertheless underlines its special spiritual quality that, far from any theorization of messianic abstractionism or any affirmation of artistic sovereignty, shows all the anarchic simplicity of painting. It is a form of modernity still to be imagined but one that (...) is already in some way active in the unpredictable meeting of matter and light, which Comtois’s pictorial act and Schürmann’s thought contemplate in the inseparable connection between history and immortality. (shrink)

Resumen: Actualmente el término genealogía se encuentra bastante extendido en las ciencias sociales como una metodología empleada para explicar problemas contemporáneos. Con todo, la genealogía, en tanto forma de conocimiento, se emplea de maneras disímiles. Filósofos contemporáneos como Bernard Williams y Edward Craig han abordado distintas perspectivas genealógicas, caracterizando las cualidades y posibilidades que ofrece cada una e identificando así dos tipos: lo que denominan genealogías reales y genealogías imaginarias o ficcionales. En este artículo argumento que dicha clasificación es problemática (...) pues, el término genealogía sustancialmente hace referencia a algo que no puede ser imaginario o ficcional. La forma de conocer del genealogista se basa en la recolección de trozos de historia real que permitirán mirar el objeto estudiado desde una nueva perspectiva, por lo tanto, hablar de genealogías imaginarias o ficcionales resulta contradictorio.: Currently the term genealogy is widespread in the social sciences as a methodology used to explain contemporary problems. However, genealogy, as a form of knowledge, is used in different ways. Contemporary philosophers such as Bernard Williams and Edward Craig have addressed different genealogical perspectives, characterizing the qualities and possibilities offered by each and identifying two types: what they call real genealogies and imaginary or fictional genealogies. In this article I argue that such a classification is problematic, because the term genealogy substantially refers to something that cannot be imaginary or fictional. The genealogist’s way of knowing is based on recollecting pieces of real history that will allow him or her to look at the subject matter from a new perspective; therefore, to speak of imaginary or fictional genealogies is contradictory. (shrink)

Inspired by the Studies on authoritarian personality and based on contemporary research on authoritarianism in Brazil, we will analyze the construction of the idol aura surrounding former president Bolsonaro, which allowed the far right to be elected and remain in power until the last elections in 2022. We see his rise as mostly due to the digital violence that largely benefited his campaign and was directed against the block of left-wing candidates. So as to clarify this issue, we will revisit (...) the sociohistorical and psycho-political fundamentals of the antidemocratic and ethnocentric behaviors spurred by that leadership that became idolized. We will also outline an emancipatory, antiracist, culturally relevant and decolonial education, as a way to provide what Adorno regarded as being the antidote to the reemergence of a regressive barbarism. In the case of Brazil, barbarism refers to the remnants of the slave system implemented in the country for three and a half centuries, whose destructive potential was awakened under Bolsonaro’s government, given the latent antidemocratic and authoritarian tendencies in our society. (shrink)

The Argonauts combines high theory and the everyday. It does this by combining lofty thought, the quotidian, close attention to words and ideas and stray thoughts, and desire. It does this through form, the way it blends and refuses genre, the way it skips from one thought or story to another, and making them connect by virtue of contiguity. The Argonauts refuses form in a way that parallels how Maggie's and Harry's bodies and identities refuse gender taxonomy. It also refuses (...) genre, referred to variously as theory, memoir, and autotheory. While it queers form and family, it also queers feelings. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the notion of truth is so closely linked to the notion of justification that it is not possible to access the truth, even with the best reasons upon which a justification is supported. -/- I’ll show that the notions of truth and reality can only be inferred from our experience of the world, in which our social practices can be verified or disproved, and if our hypotheses are accepted or refuted. I maintain that we (...) can only access realities which we constitute in relation to one of several possible conceptual frameworks. These conceptual frameworks are not transcendental entities nor are they established definitively, they are social constructs. This means that the conceptual frameworks are constituted by the social practices of the subjects. We understand that social practices are institutionalized groups of actions undertaken by members of a community and directed toward the consecution of an end. These actions presuppose that the beliefs, norms and values are shared by members of an epistemic community. Olivé (1999: 135-42). -/- This article begins by presenting Rorty’s counter-proposal for the notion of truth, in relation to which I put forward the principal theses of onto-epistemological pluralism. Subsequently, I develop the idea of inter-subjective contextual justification and I show that this posture, although it does depend on specific conditions for justification, is not arbitrary. -/- I demonstrate the relevance of onto-epistemological pluralism and the need to adequately substantiate our beliefs and decision making, by presenting the case of parents guided by a notion of ´post-truth´ who decide not to vaccinate their children against measles based on insufficiently justified subjective reasons. A fact that is having serious harmful consequences to health, particularly among young children. (shrink)

Starting from a brief history of how Nietzsche was considered and used as an argumentative piece in animalistic literature, this study focuses on seeking an understanding of the contributions that Nietzsche's philosophy can make to the field of critical studies of animality, an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the study of animals, their ways of being and living on the planet, their links with the rest of reality, and their rights.

In this paper we discuss whether the thesis of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, from an interpretation, could be read in keys of onto-epistemological pluralism. For this, we begin by exposing Nietzsche’s questioning of the notion of rational truth, as well as the universalist and transcendental positions linked to this concept. In the second section we expose some of the main theses of American pragmatism and show that perspectivism is not close to this current of thought. Finally, we present the proposal of ontological (...) and epistemological pluralism and we refer to why Nietzsche’s perspectivism could be articulated with this position and why not. (shrink)

In this paper, we are going to address job satisfaction and perceived self-efficacy within the context of residential child-care. A joint report from the European Foundation for the Improvement on Living and Working Conditions and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work revealed that managers in the field of health and education were the most concerned about the psychosocial risk of their employees, although concern is not automatically translated into tools to face the risk and to manage it. (...) So, measuring and improving employees’ job satisfaction and self-efficacy can be an important means for organizations to prevent the outcomes of psychosocial risk, and supporting high quality performance of workers. But profound changes are affecting the nature of work at large, and specifically social educator’s in the field of residential care with minors. Globalization, radical technological and communication developments, as well as the pressure to frame care as a commodity, are quickly changing procedures and praxis at work, and even the meaning of job itself. All these changes are highly demanding for this category of professionals, as much as the fact that the organizational setting is vanishing as a resource to sustain their professional attitudes and behaviours. Under these circumstances, job satisfaction and self-efficacy can be hard to experience, and isolating their precursors is essential to develop healthy and effective work environments. This paper means to highlight the process of supporting self-efficacy and job satisfaction in the educational work in residential youth care that is still underrepresented in research. It presents data emerging from two studies, study 1 involving 268 educators and study 2 involving 472 educators belonging to different Italian residential child-care services. Study 1 consists of a quantitative study including the following measures: attachment style, job satisfaction, work-related self-efficacy, and length of service. Study 2 consist of a qualitative exploration deepening the sources of educators’ work-satisfaction. Quantitative data support the identification of attachment style and length of service as antecedents of work-related self-efficacy. Qualitative data show the importance of relational issues in shaping the educators’ satisfaction at work. (shrink)

There has been a recent resurgence of what Betsy Hartmann dubbed “the greening of hate” (blaming immigrants for environmental issues in the US). When immigrants move to the U.S., the argument goes, their CO2 emissions increase, thereby making climate change worse. Using migration from the Lower 48 to Alaska as a model, I illustrate how this anti-immigration argument has more traction than it is generally given credit for, and might be more convincing in a different situation. Nonetheless, it is not (...) convincing given the current pattern of climate emissions and prevailing justice considerations. Climate matters; how we treat each other matters, too. (shrink)

By Focusing on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s magnum opus Truth and Method, this paper aims to show how understanding itself — including the understanding of artworks, texts, tradition, and living speech — can be understood as a kind of game or dialogical play-process which requires crucial ethical conditions to be met if it is going to succeed. Success, in terms of the communication of meaning, requires that the players (or interlocutors) commit to a genuine participation with each other in which they “open” (...) themselves to each other’s “claims to truth,” take each other seriously, listen, respond and question, and stand prepared to risk their old prejudices, learn from each other, and be transformed in the process. (shrink)

Biennials – periodic, independent and international exhibitions surveying trends in visual art – have with startling speed become key nodes in linking production, distribution and consumption of contemporary art. Cultural production and consumption have been typically separated in research, neglecting phenomena, like biennials, sitting in between. Biennials have become, however, key sites of both the production of art’s discourse and where that discourse translates into practices of display and contexts of appreciation. They are, this article argues, key sites of art’s (...) symbolic production. Symbolic production is what makes a work, an artist, or even a genre visible and relevant, providing its sense in a system of classifications and, in an exhibition like a biennial, literally giving it a place in the scene. This article proposes a cultural analysis of biennials, focusing on the Venice Biennale, founded in 1895 and the first of the genre, through which we can trace biennials’ rise and transformations. (shrink)

Within now prolific debates surrounding the compatibility of feminism and multiculturalism in liberal societies, the need arises for a normative conception of women’s self-determination that does not violate the self-understandings or values of women of different backgrounds and forms of life. With reference to the recent British debate about forced marriage, this article proposes an innovative approach to this problem in terms of the idea of ‘plural autonomy’. While the capacity for autonomy is plural, in the sense of varying across (...) cultures, autonomy in any world-view involves a capacity to ‘endorse’ one’s decisions in certain crucial spheres of life. Non-endorsement, coercion or force occurs if one risks being alienated from the (cultural) goods and relationships that structure one’s capacity to act in the world. This approach counsels more caution than prominent liberal approaches with respect to negotiating the contested boundary between freedom and force in a diverse society. (shrink)

This article examines debates about political forgiveness in liberal, pluralist societies. Although the concept of forgiveness is not usually taken up by liberals, I outline a plausible conception by exploring two recent approaches. The first, ‘unattached articulation’, concept requires no real emotional change on the forgiver’s part, but rather a form of civic restraint. In contrast, the second version highlights a strong form of empathy for perpetrators. In spite of their advantages, each concept proves too extreme. The problems are revealed (...) by focusing on the case of the Harkis, who fought for the French during the Algerian war. Often still marginalised in French society, their case helps to highlight the conceivability of a ‘middle-ground’ or moderate concept of political forgiveness. Its core rests on the forgiver’s care for the social world. While this concept brings considerable challenges also, and is not inevitable in any particular case, it entails a more plausible combination of emotional and rational shifts in the forgiver’s world-view. Although the article does not recommend forgiveness by any person or group, it observes, recalling Arendt’s idea of amor mundi or ‘love of the world’, that political forgiveness may sustain a viable connection between diverse citizens’ public and non-public lives. (shrink)

Aristotle posits that time, as defined by the “number of motion in respect of before and after” (_Physics_ IV 11.219b1-2), is an inherent property of motion itself rather than a prerequisite. This implies the possibility of identifying time-independent properties of natural motions. One such critical feature, crucial to understanding the basic meaning of time, is the presence of an inherent order of before and after within motion, regardless of time. The concept of a non-temporal before and after within motion is (...) now accepted or seriously considered in scholarly discussions. However, it remains one of the most confusing and difficult issues in the interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of time. How can we conceive of motion apart from time? Moreover, how does Aristotle seemingly take this aspect for granted? In order to address these issues, I propose to combine philosophical inquiry with grammatical and mathematical reflections. I will examine the analysis of motion alongside the verbs used to describe it, with a keen focus on aspect. Hence I will draw connections between the relationship of motion and time and that of physical and mathematical objects. (shrink)

This article discusses the polemics of Wāṣil of Damascus at the Byzantine court in a hitherto unstudied Aljamiado manuscript copied by Moriscos, or Muslims converted to Christianity in Early Modern Iberia. This debate, which unfolded in the first centuries of the expansion of Islam, has so far been studied on the basis of a single Arabic manuscript. The present contribution adds to the discussion the Aljamiado materials and a number of relevant Arabic sources. It reassesses the character of Wāṣil, his (...) involvement in Byzantine politics and iconoclastic controversies, and his identification with the early theologian Wāṣil b. ʿAṭāʾ (d. 2nd/8th c.). The historical data in Ibn ʿAsākir’s Taʾrīḫ (6th/12th c.) and the role of Wāṣil as the true hero of the story also justify the need for a detailed and extensive analysis of the Muslim readings of the text. The unique Morisco account will be discussed alongside the new evidence, paying attention to the uses of this narrative and its adaptation in the passage from East to West. The practices of retelling tie with the examination of how the original triumphalist story and the key issues of the early Eastern Muslim-Christian debates acquired meaning in the face of the expansion of Iberian Christian society that ended with the expulsion of the Jews and, ultimately, the Moriscos. Taken together, the evidence attests to the preservation of this polemics over the centuries in Muslim circles and its dissemination sometimes in contexts far removed from the original, such as the Muslim West. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the theoretical contributions of Axel Honneth, particularly in his works, The Struggle for Recognition and Reification, aiming at diving deep into the debate on the contemporary ideological expressions and their incidence in the process of subjective constitution in teenage years. This particular interest springs from the need to interweave the concepts of reification, forgetfulness and recognition within a fruitful theoretical field in order to interpret a project work called Hip-Hop: cultures and identities, developed with teenagers (...) in a public school in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. From our point of view, the concepts of reification and forgetfulness are fundamental to identify how the conservative ideological expressions are present in the imaginary of adolescents in the contemporary world. Although rereading the concepts of reification and forgetfulness, as proposed by the author, is regarded as essential for understanding the ideological expressions that are based on and guided by consumption. However, even though we acknowledge Honneth's efforts toward moving forward with the concept of reification, it is crucial to emphasize the mediation concept Lukács explored in his work, History and Class Consciousness, so as to elucidate how the forgetfulness of the primary recognition relations is processed. (shrink)

Historians have recently paid increasing attention to the role of the disputation in Italian universities and humanist circles. By contrast, the role of disputations as forms of entertainment at fifteenth-century Italian courts has been somewhat overlooked. In this article, the Milanese "scientific duel" described in Luca Pacioli's De divina proportione is taken as a vantage point for the study of the dynamics of scientific patronage and social advancement as reflected in Renaissance courtly disputes. Pacioli names Leonardo da Vinci as one (...) of the participants in the Milanese dispute. In this paper I argue that Leonardo's Paragone and Pacioli's De divina proportione are likewise the outcome of the Milanese "scientific duel." By challenging the traditional hierarchy of the arts, they both exemplify the dynamics of social and intellectual promotion of mathematicians and artists in the privileged setting of Renaissance courts, where courtly patronage could subvert the traditional disciplinary rankings. (shrink)

With a focus on appearance and racialised perceptions of skin colour, this paper discusses the differences between being and feeling acceptable, pretty or ugly and the possibility of such displacement (from being to feeling or vice versa), as a way to understand what beauty does in people’s lives. The paper explores the fragility of beauty in relation to the visibility of the body in specific racialised contexts. It investigates the claim that beauty can be considered a feeling that emphasises processes (...) (what beauty does) rather than contents (what beauty is). Drawing from life stories with Mexican women, I examine their concerns about visibility, temporality and appearance as expressions of racist practices and ideas, within a context where the racial project of mestizaje (racial mixture) is in operation. Beauty matters as it makes evident the pervasiveness of racism in the everyday. The lived experience of beauty, in its displacement and fragility, as a feeling and as resource, can also point to some of the strategies to resist, cope and get on. (shrink)

James Tully's account of a ?post?imperial constitutionalism?, in his book Strange Multiplicity, wrongly rejects the ideal of impartiality in modern political theory. Pace Tully, this paper argues for a conception of impartiality called ?justice as provisionality?. This is demonstrated by explaining the concept of a ?contrastive hard case?. These cases, exemplified both by indigenous peoples? struggles for recognition and ?traditional? justifications for violence against women, centrally involve conflicts over the cultural interpretation of value. The paper argues that the just adjudication (...) of these cases depends on understanding two different senses of the term ?provisionality?. These demonstrate that the post?imperial state can give impartial reasons for the rights of parties to ?contrastive? claims in a way that integrates the concerns of both feminists and cultural pluralists. The two senses of provisionality are: first, that consequent upon historical injustice, the post?imperial state should recognize the legitimacy of citizens? partial reasons for their actions and practices; and hence, should recognise that the domain of public, impartial reason is always provisional and incomplete. Second, our capacities for reason are dependent on public and nonpublic provision, protection and care. This is because diverse inequalities and injustices could prevent vulnerable people, in some cases women, from acting according to reasons at all. (shrink)

Amid now extensive debates about cosmopolitanism in political theory, this article explores the implications of Axel Honneth’s recognition theory for issues in international justice, not least the dire situation of poverty in the world. In contrast with a purely resource-distributive approach, the essay turns particularly to Honneth’s recent revival of the Lukácsian concept of reification as a process of self-distancing from the elementary humanity of others. Specifically, Honneth re-formulates reification as a failure of an elementary or ‘antecedent’ form of recognition. (...) From the perspective of his theory, reification connotes the forgetfulness of others’ fundamental humanity. While Honneth takes such forgetfulness to become most readily apparent in dramatic violations such as the Holocaust, the article interprets his theory to explain, and eventually to challenge, the passive acceptance by many of dire material injustices. The article develops the implications of this challenge by interpreting from Honneth’s framework a duty to question international policies which tend to reify and objectify the least well off in the world, whilst remaining cognizant of the limits of de-reification to the more extensive, meaningful alleviation of poverty globally. (shrink)

The current situation of climate change at a global level clearly requires policy changes at local levels. Global efforts to reach a consensus regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions have so far been focused on developing Climate-Friendly Technologies (CFTs). The problem is that in order for these efforts to have an actual impact at a global level we need to be concerned with more than just promotion and info-dissemination on the already existing CFTs, but also with costs, implementation and (...) the international intellectual property and trade system necessary for this strategy to work. Currently, almost 80% of all patent applications belong to OECD countries like Japan, US, Germany, South Korea, Great Britain and France. The obligations climate change imposes on developing countries represent a technological shift that depends on Technology Transfer (TT) and implementation of IP laws. The current IP framework, especially patent law, copyright and trade secrets produces another kind of obligations. The main question is if the conjunction of these two sets of obligations (rules) is fair from a global justice point of view. Also, it is questionable whether this conjunction helps developing countries to produce their own CFTs. When discussing the demands of global justice one cannot skip the very important distinction Pogge makes between negative and positive obligations. In the context of global warming and the measures that the world’s states ought to take to prevent it, there seems to lie another conjunction between the positive obligation of preserving the natural environment that we all share and a negative obligation of allowing the less developed countries to help us all do so. Because one cannot impose regulations that cannot be put into practice, it is more and more obvious that a new framework of action and development needs to be drawn in the field of TT of CFTs. (shrink)