This article examines CURE Children’s Hospital of Uganda (CURE), a faith-based pediatric neurosurgery hospital in Sub-Saharan Africa, as a unique nexus of Western biomedical and holistic-spiritual healthcare in their philosophy, staff motivation, and delivery. Offering the concept of a healing narrative, the essential core of their practice is captured, I suggest, in the articulation and practice of a healing narrative of human flourishing, and we might productively think of the ethics of their clinical approach as premised on being with the (...) patient, understood as mutual vulnerability and attending to suffering, and being for the patient, understood as advocating joy within and beyond the clinic. Extrapolating from this case study, the ideas being with and being for might be added to our clinical ethical practices and lexicon as we think through alternatives to a fragmented, compartmentalized biomedical care. (shrink)

The first part of this paper contends that argumentation is central and essential to Aristotle's Rhetoric, and recounts a number of arguments in support of that view, particularly the recognition that deliberative rhetoric or the rhetoric of counsel is the primary concern of Aristotle's work. The second part of the paper reviews the work that follows in this present volume to show that the other writers' views fit in perfectly with this thesis.

The impact of our desires and preferences upon our ordinary, everyday beliefs is well-documented [Gilovich, T. . How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: The Free Press.]. The influence of such motivational factors on delusions, which are instances of pathological misbelief, has tended however to be neglected by certain prevailing models of delusion formation and maintenance. This paper explores a distinction between two general classes of theoretical explanation for delusions; the motivational (...) and the deficit. Motivational approaches view delusions as extreme instances of self-deception; as defensive attempts to relieve pain and distress. Deficit approaches, in contrast, view delusions as the consequence of defects in the normal functioning of belief mechanisms, underpinned by neuroanatomical or neurophysiological abnormalities. It is argued that although there are good reasons to be sceptical of motivational theories , recent experiments confirm that motives are important causal forces where delusions are concerned. It is therefore concluded that the most comprehensive account of delusions will involve a theoretical unification of both motivational and deficit approaches. (shrink)

DNA sequencers, Twitter, MRIs, Facebook, particle accelerators, Google Books, radio telescopes, Tumblr: what do these things have in common? According to the evangelists of “data science,” all of these are instruments for observing reality at unprecedentedly large scales and fine granularities. This perspective ignores the social reality of these very different technological systems, ignoring how they are made, how they work, and what they mean in favor of an exclusive focus on what they generate: Big Data. But no data, big (...) or small, can be interpreted without an understanding of the process that generated them. Statistical data science is applicable to systems that have been designed as scientific instruments, but is likely to lead to confusion when applied to systems that have not. In those cases, a historical inquiry is preferable. (shrink)

Scientific research is almost always conducted by communities of scientists of varying size and complexity. Such communities are effective, in part, because they divide their cognitive labor: not every scientist works on the same project. Philip Kitcher and Michael Strevens have pioneered efforts to understand this division of cognitive labor by proposing models of how scientists make decisions about which project to work on. For such models to be useful, they must be simple enough for us to understand their dynamics, (...) but faithful enough to reality that we can use them to analyze real scientific communities. To satisfy the first requirement, we must employ idealizations to simplify the model. The second requirement demands that these idealizations not be so extreme that we lose the ability to describe real-world phenomena. This paper investigates the status of the assumptions that Kitcher and Strevens make in their models, by first inquiring whether they are reasonable representations of reality, and then by checking the models' robustness against weakenings of these assumptions. To do this, we first argue against the reality of the assumptions, and then develop a series of agent-based simulations to systematically test their effects on model outcomes. We find that the models are not robust against weakenings of these idealizations. In fact we find that under certain conditions, this can lead to the model predicting outcomes that are qualitatively opposite of the original model outcomes. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, concern that there could be a shortage of ventilators raised the possibility of rationing care. Denying patients life-saving care captures our moral imagination, prompting the demand for a defensible framework of ethical principles for determining who will live and who will die. Behind the moral dilemma posed by the shortage of a particular medical good lies a broad moral geography encompassing important and often unarticulated societal values, as well as assumptions about (...) the nature and purpose of health care and the consequences of long-standing choices about health care as a social good. This article explores what COVID-19 has exposed concerning values and choices around health care in the United States. Employing the lens of Catholic Social Thought, it argues for an approach to rationing that is grounded in respect for human dignity, committed to distributing social goods in light of the common good, and self-conscious about the construction of vulnerability to illness and death. (shrink)

The project is to traverse with quite novel questions, and as though with new eyes, the enormous, distant, and so well hidden land of morality—of morality that has actually existed, actually been lived.This essay offers a contribution to the consilience of the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences in accord with naturalism (in a spirit closer to Slingerland 2008 than Wilson 1998). Human beings have a shared nature produced by evolutionary history and modified by culture, where 'culture' refers to "information (...) capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission" (Richerson and Boyd 2005, p. 5). .. (shrink)

Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), previously called apotemnophilia, is an extremely rare condition where sufferers desire the amputation of a healthy limb because of distress associated with its presence. This paper reviews the medical and philosophical literature on BIID. It proposes an evidenced based and ethically informed approach to its management. Amputation of a healthy limb is an ethically defensible treatment option in BIID and should be offered in some circumstances, but only after clarification of the diagnosis and consideration of (...) other treatment options. (shrink)

Moby-Dick has long served as an index of contemporary events and changing paradigms. Yet despite its long and varied history of interpretation, an analysis of the novel’s reception history demonstrates a striking unanimity of purpose. In nearly every instance, Ahab’s excesses and inhumanities are identified and prohibited in the name of ensuring that the novel can aid in the work of furthering the aesthetic education of man. In the process, the artwork’s integrity, achievement and essential irreducibility are subordinated to the (...) demand that artworks provide essential moral instruction. The present essay reconstructs this common task through a close reading of the novel’s reception history, tracking its development from the time of Melville’s contemporaries to more recent debates between Donald E. Pease and William V. Spanos. Through Theodor W. Adorno’s work on aesthetics and society, this critical reinterpretation of Moby-Dick tries to better understand the “wicked book” its author first recognized, and for whose infernal birth he felt, in his own words, “as spotless as the lamb.”. (shrink)

In reaction to a particularly scathing review of his Practice in Christianity, Kierkegaard postulated what he called a ‘preacher-machine.’ As we will see, the preacher-machine is only one type of character-machine, for, in Practice in Christianity, there are five other such machines. Starting up these character-machines will allow for an analysis of the repulsion of the God-man, Christ himself. This repulsion is important because Kierkegaard claims that it is the condition for the emergence of faith. After discussing repulsion, Kierkegaard will (...) locate a singular mistake of Christendom, which will allow him to offer his remedy to this problem. In doing so, I will claim, Kierkegaard makes a particularly forceful claim about the true status of Christianity. We begin by attempting an articulation of a definition of monstrosity before setting the scene of these six machines. (shrink)

Ludwig Feuerbach's work is often too easily dovetailed with the works of Hegel and Marx and therefore read teleologically as an intermediary step between the two “major” figures. By re-interpreting Feuerbach more as a system critic than as a system builder, this article attempts to elucidate his relationships to the other two. It will also point up the gendered articulation of his critiques of religion and philosophy. The article will show how Feuerbach's use of gender, though remaining fixed within a (...) predictably hierarchical binary, is more than simply symptomatic of its context and offers significant resources for critical re-readings of nineteenth-century German philosophy. (shrink)

Scholars have extensively debated the family’s place within liberalism, generally, and specific attention and critique has been given to the family in Rawls’ work. What has received less focus are the requirements of parents in a Rawlsian polity and, further, what those requirements might imply for the one case where states explicitly regulate the process of becoming parents: adoption. This paper seeks to discover what might be required of parents, adoptive or otherwise, in a Rawlsian social contract state. Second, it (...) considers adoptive parent selection in light of these requirements as well as Rawls’ arguments regarding merit and fair equality of opportunity. Finally, it considers what such a merit-based selection of adoptive parents implies for the disputed rights of same-sex couples to adopt children. Further, because the question of merit in this case will hinge upon what it means to be a “fit parent,” it also draws upon relevant empirical social science studies regarding gay and lesbian parents. The paper, then, evaluates both the theoretical and empirical validity of generalized claims that same-sex couples are less fit to be parents than are heterosexual couples. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 638-642, October 2011.

A sociological revision of Aron Gurwitsch provides a helpful layered theory of conscious experience as a four-domain structure: _the theme_, _the thematic field_, _the halo_, and _the social horizon_. The social horizon—the totality of the social world that is unknown, vaguely known, taken for granted, or ignored by the subject despite objectively influencing the thoughts and actions of the subject—, helps conceptualize how everyday human–computer interaction (HCI) can obscure social structures. Two examples illustrate the usefulness of this framework: (1) illuminating (...) new forms of social control known as “surveillance capitalism” that influence the other domains of consciousness despite being invisible to the subject and (2) explaining how computer use tends to “hide” the ecological impacts of digital-technological systems from the attention of subjects. A sociological four-domain theory of consciousness supplements ethnomethodological HCI research by preserving the field’s long-standing focus on micro-level interactions and user experience while simultaneously drawing attention to a “commonsense ignorance of social structure”—in this case, the invisibility of the social structures behind personal computer use. Social structure can be reproduced even when actors are unaware of engaging in its reproduction. (shrink)

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 202-218, June 2022.

In 1939, scholars associated with the pro-Nazi Thüringian German Christian movement founded a research institute dedicated to the task of removing the legacy of Judaism from Christianity. The mission of the Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life was to render Christianity acceptable within the antisemitic and militarized climate of National Socialism. This task required purging Christian theology of Jewish influence, a feature evident in the Institute's version of the New Testament titled The Message (...) of God. This publication aimed to transform the religious experience of ordinary German believers and would eventually sell over 200,000 copies. This article examines material in this text as it relates to the Sermon on the Mount and concludes that, despite the apparent incongruity between Nazi ideology and New Testament ethics, the editors of the so-called ‘Nazi Bible’ believed their task to be guided by Christian ethical principles. (shrink)

Many non-Indigenous people assume that secularism—the belief that religion and politics are and should be different spheres of life—is foreign to Native American experience. This partly explains why the topic of Native conversions in early New England has always been so controversial, since conversion implies the differentiation of religion from politics. Be that as it may, history shows that Indigenous peoples are well acquainted with secularism and have been debating it within their communities for centuries. This essay demonstrates proof of (...) concept for a history of Indigenous secularism via a case study of Samson Occom, whose vision of Indigenous self-determination was informed by secularist ideas about sovereignty and conversion. It also offers a critique of scholarly romanticizations of Indigenous peoples' primordially “holistic” a-secularism. This romanticization is the product of a secular-colonial ideology which presupposes the otherness of Indigenous peoples when it comes to differentiating between religion and politics. (shrink)

Abortion jurisprudence in the United States has been criticized by many for allowing the destruction of millions of lives. What many may not know is that the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion in all fifty states was very similar to another Supreme Court decision, namely, Dred Scott v. Sanford. The parallels between these two cases are astounding, revealing how dehumanization, while a very old idea, is almost always achieved through the same means. A legal analysis of Roe v. Wade, (...) and subsequently Planned Parenthood v. Casey, shows that these cases are both morally and legally unjustified. Just like Dred Scott, Roe, by dehumanizing a specific group of individuals, is a case which does not belong in the American legal system. (shrink)

Assume for the sake of argument that doing philosophy is intrinsically valuable, where “doing philosophy” refers to the practice of forging arguments for and against the truth of theses in the domains of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so on. The practice of the history of philosophy is devoted instead to discovering arguments for and against the truth of “authorial” propositions, that is, propositions that state the belief of some historical figure about a philosophical proposition. I explore arguments for thinking that (...) doing history of philosophy is valuable—specifically, valuable in such a way that its value does not reduce to the value of doing philosophy. Most such arguments proffered by historians of philosophy fail, as I show. I then offer a proposal about what makes doing history of philosophy uniquely valuable, but it is one that many historians will not find agreeable. (shrink)

Reid's unusual primary/secondary quality distinction is drawn along epistemic lines. Reid takes an epistemic turn because of Locke's failure to draw a metaphysical distinction. Secondary qualities differ from primary qualities in virtue of the fact that we acquire notions of secondary qualities via the mediation of sensations. Primary qualities require no such mediation. In one respect, the analysis I set out renders qualities relative to agents. I address whether Reid advocates a dispositional theory of secondary qualities, whether the phenomenology of (...) color underlying Reid's theory is tenable, and whether Reid's distinction coheres well with his theory of perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

_Forest Family_ highlights the importance of old-growth forests to Australian art, community, culture, history, and politics. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

The importance of witnessing broken narratives and somehow writing or representing these is matched by the challenges associated with trying to do this within a context of normativity and expected academic practice. We have to be convincing in our work, both in terms of rigour and dependability but also in terms of the way we make sense of the stories we are told. In this essay, I examine the narrative of John, a 63-year-old British man diagnosed with autism. I explore (...) how, by interrupting John’s narrative in search of the story I wanted and anticipated, I was disrupting his attempts to understand, form and reform his experiences within the interview setting. I argue we have a commitment to ignore the ‘rules’ of interviews and narrative in order to open up space for people to explore and make sense of their experiences beyond the tyranny of our research questions. (shrink)

“Busyness” like many concepts trades on contrast. The most obvious contrast is with “real work” and ‘really working.” “Busy work” is usually pretend work; we try to look as though we are achieving something but all we are doing is shuffling the paper on our desks, polishing the inlet manifold rather than diagnosing the fault about to destroy the engine, marching our soldiers up to the top of the hill and marching them down again rather than engaging the enemy. All (...) the same, being “busy” is often said to be a good thing: the Puritan hymn writer Isaac Watts celebrated “the little busy bee” for improving the shining hour. For creatures other than the bee, busy may be a good thing to be but not usually the best thing: a midfield soccer player who is “busy” is useful, but a player of equal skill who is “economical” is better. My theme is that our attitude to “real work” is deeply ambiguous; on the one side, work is a curse, the labour to which we are doomed as a result of the Fall; its side-effect of enforcing upon us a necessary discipline and self-discipline is small consolation. On the other side, work is the expression of distinctive human powers and aspirations; work brings imagination into the world as well as drudgery. We imagine a world that does not exist but might, and then we set about creating it. The Fall was a happy Fall, and the need to labour was the first step in teaching the human species how to make the most of its potentialities. (shrink)

St. Augustine.--Boethius.--Abelard.--St. Thomas of Aquin.--The origins in Greece.--The neo-scholastic revival.

How does anthoethnography contribute to the development of understandings of aesthetic experiences of wild plants and wildflower tourism? As exemplified by the quintessentially aesthetic industry of wildflower tourism, the culture of flora represents diverse engagements between people and plants. Such complex engagements offer further avenues for research. The critical methodology of anthoethnography has been one such approach to circumscribing the values, practices and rhetoric of wildflower tourism. Interviews have revealed perceptual phenomena such as the orchid and everlasting effects as two (...) counterpoised examples of the differences between visual aesthetic values occurring in the region. For appreciators such as Tinker, botanical science substantiates visual experience by showing the functional role of plants within habitats. However, the taxonomic eye is not the only judge of the value and significance of flowering plants. As underscored by Nannup, Aboriginal perspectives offer complex cultural modes of engagement and rich directions for wildflower tourism based in bodily experience. An anthoethnographic approach produces accounts of the spectrum of human perceptions of wildflowers in order to proffer potential directions for wildflower tourism of the future. Through a participatory aesthetics of flora in contemporary Australian landscapes, appreciative interactions with plants will occur not only through visual values, but also through the smell, taste, sound, or feel of plants and how one moves through communities of flora. Scientific knowledge can amplify visual and embodied modes. However, as an anthoethnographic lens has shown, wildflower tourism in the Southwest is weighted towards visual experience. Indeed, the history and contemporary practices of wildflower tourism encode ocular values that can posit a separation between post‐colonial cultures and native flora. A promising direction is towards participatory relationships beyond the aestheticisation of the surface qualities of flora and beyond the ‘conquest of the world as picture’. In an era of rapid species loss, wildflower tourism will increasingly embrace concepts of conservation, Aboriginal knowledges and the recognition of spiritual heritages, and the appreciation of plants beyond their visual impact. The expression of human sensory capacities for plants joined to an ethos of botanical conservation, drawing from scientific thought, can better ensure the longevity of flowers through the evolution of the culture of flora in the region. (shrink)