Within recent years, we have witnessed an alarming increase in so-called school-shootings, where one or more students enter their school and purposely start shooting other students or staff. Earlier, the phenomenon was primarily American, but lately school-shootings have also been seen in Canada, Europe, and Australia. School-shootings have become an increasing problem and the phenomenon calls for more thorough investigation. In this article, we analyse the actions of teachers, more specifically the ones where teachers give their lives to save students. (...) This unselfish act is analysed in the light of Jacques Derrida’s ethical discussions around ‘the gift of death’, and is displayed as an absolute responsibility. Moreover, the sacrificial actions displayed by teachers are viewed as acts of primitive leadership, which take us back to the romanticism and heroism of leadership. Unlike the everyday management of organisations, crises call for extraordinary leadership; for sacrifice and responsibility. (shrink)

Approaches to business ethics can be roughly divided into two streams: ‹codes of behavior’ and ‹forms of subjectification’, with code-oriented approaches clearly dominating the field. Through an elaboration of poststructuralist approaches to moral philosophy, this paper questions the emphasis on codes of behaviour and, thus, the conceptions of the moral and responsible subject that are inherent in rule-based approaches. As a consequence of this critique, the concept of a practice-based ‹ethics of responsiveness’ in which ethics is never final but rather (...) always ‹to come’, is investigated. In such an approach the ethical self is understood as being continuously constituted within power/knowledge relations. Following this line, we ask how one can become a responsible subject while also acknowledging certain limits of full responsibility. We thereby explore responsibility as a considered but unconditional openness in response to the other. (shrink)

Those who find their work meaningful often need to be more committed. Over-commitment, in turn, frequently results in stress, personal conflicts, and burnout. Such over-commitment, in other words, leads to employees needing to take more care of themselves. This paper considers the prospects for meaningful self-care in the context of working time reduction. For this, we consider the case of the four-day workweek, asking employees of such organizations to explain how they make meaning out of their newly found time off. (...) Conceptually, we rely upon the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his analysis of the care of the self. On its basis, we coded five self-care practices: (1) rest and recuperation, (2) professional and personal development, (3) domestic work, (4) balancing work, and (5) additional work. We conclude by highlighting the theoretical and practical implications of work reduction for the analytical, ethical, and practical pursuit of meaningful work. (shrink)

How does modern writing in French grapple with the present absence and absent presence of lost loved ones? How might it challenge and critique the relegation of certain deaths to the realm of the unmournable? What might this reveal about the role of the literary in the French and francophone world and shifting conceptions of the nation state? Essays from the Revolution to the present day explore these questions from a variety of perspectives, bringing out the ways in which mourning (...) blurs the boundaries between the personal and the historical, the aesthetic and the ethical, the self and the other, and ultimately reasserting its truly critical resonance as a concept. (shrink)

This book brings together the stories of biographers, novelists, scholars, and artists as they have written about the journeys (some literal, some figurative) they have made to their subjects. Contributors include Elizabeth Wood, J.J. Wilson, Leah Glasser, Jane Lazarre, and Alice Walker.

The paper examines changing media representations of Jacinda Ardern, former Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister, from the global broadcaster, BBC News Online, across three key milestones in the politician’s career: her appointment, re-election and resignation. Our socio-semantic analysis of this representation demonstrates how the media intersect her professional identity with age, gender, social class, and later, her identity as a mother. Whilst earlier coverage of Ardern’s career praises her successfully reconciling these aspects of her personal, social and professional identities, later (...) coverage implies that ‘having it all’ was never really possible longer term. We argue that the visibility of this discourse, and the focus on intersectional aspects of Ardern’s personal and social identities, leads to her resignation being positively evaluated as her ‘finally’ succumbing and committing to the ‘natural’ inevitabilities of heterosexual family life. The article considers what such representation means for Ardern and women politicians and leaders more broadly, and contextualises these findings in relation to existing research on media representations of women in politics and leadership. Finally, we also consider the value of a more longitudinal approach to tracking the cumulative effects of the representation of social actors and groups. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior (...) was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions. (shrink)

Worldwide populations are aging with economic development as a result of public health initiatives and advances in therapeutic discoveries. Since 1850, life expectancy has advanced by 1 year for every four. Accompanying this change is the rapid development of anti‐aging science. There are three schools of thought in the field of aging science. One perspective is the life course approach, which considers that aging is a good and natural process to be embraced as a necessary and positive aspect of life, (...) where the aim is to improve the quality of existing lifespan and “compress” morbidity. Another view is that aging is undesirable, and that rejuvenation and indeed immortality are possible since the biological basis of aging is understood, and therefore, strategies are possible for engineering negligible senescence. Finally, a hybrid approach is that life span can be extended by anti‐aging medicines but with uncertain effects on health. While these advances offer much promise, the ethical perspectives are seldom discussed in cross‐disciplinary settings. This article discusses some of the key ethical issues arising from recent advances in biogerontology. (shrink)

When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations--that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative (...) approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment--not just their brains--to behave intelligently. Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain--or indeed having a brain at all--she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain's evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments. Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world. (shrink)

This comment addresses opportunities for understanding the social functions of emotion by taking a developmental perspective. I agree that understanding emotions and their development will meaningf...

Many countries currently invest in technologies and data infrastructures to foster precision medicine (PM), which is hoped to better tailor disease treatment and prevention to individual patients. But who can expect to benefit from PM? The answer depends not only on scientific developments but also on the willingness to address the problem of structural injustice. One important step is to confront the problem of underrepresentation of certain populations in PM cohorts via improved research inclusivity. Yet, we argue that the perspective (...) needs to be broadened because the (in)equitable effects of PM are also strongly contingent on wider structural factors and prioritization of healthcare strategies and resources. When (and before) implementing PM, it is crucial to attend to how the organisation of healthcare systems influences who will benefit, as well as whether PM may present challenges for a solidaristic sharing of costs and risks. We discuss these issues through a comparative lens of healthcare models and PM-initiatives in the United States, Austria, and Denmark. The analysis draws attention to how PM hinges on—and simultaneously affects—access to healthcare services, public trust in data handling, and prioritization of healthcare resources. Finally, we provide suggestions for how to mitigate foreseeable negative effects. (shrink)

Whatever the answer to Molyneux's question is, it is certainly not obvious that the answer is ‘yes’. In contrast, it seems clear that we should answer affirmatively a temporal variation on Molyneux's question, introduced by Gareth Evans. I offer a phenomenological explanation of this asymmetry in our responses to the two questions. This explanation appeals to the modality-specific spatial structure of perceptual experience and its amodal temporal structure. On this explanation, there are differences in the perception of spatial properties in (...) different modalities, but these differences do not stand in the way of the objectivity of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Background Families whose child has unexplained intellectual or developmental differences often hope that a genetic diagnosis will lower barriers to community-based therapeutic and support services. However, there is little known about efforts to mobilize genetic information outside the clinic or how socioeconomic disadvantage shapes and constrains outcomes.Methods We conducted an ethnographic study with predominantly socioeconomically disadvantaged families enrolled in a multi-year genomics research study, including clinic observations and in-depth interviews in English and Spanish at multiple time points. Coding and thematic (...) development were used to collaboratively interpret fieldnotes and transcripts.Results Thirty-two families participated. Themes included familial expectations that a genetic diagnosis could be translated into information, understanding, and assistance to improve the quality of a child’s day-to-day life. After sequencing, however, genetic information was not readily converted into improved access to services beyond the clinic, with families often struggling to use a genetic diagnosis to advocate for their child.Conclusion Families’ ability to use a genetic diagnosis as an effective advocacy tool beyond the clinic was limited by the knowledge and resources available to them, and by the eligibility criteria used by therapeutic service providers’ – which focused on clinical diagnosis and functional criteria more than etiologic information. All families undertaking genomic testing, particularly those who are disadvantaged, need additional support to understand the limits and potential benefits of genetic information beyond the clinic. (shrink)

Philosophers who have written on modesty have largely agreed that it is a virtue, and that it therefore has an important psychological component. Mere modest behavior, it is often argued, is actually false modesty if it is generated by the wrong kind of mental state. The philosophical debate about modesty has largely focused on the question of which kind of mental state—cognitive, motivational, or evaluative—best captures the virtue of modesty. We therefore conducted a series of experiments to see which philosophical (...) account matches the folk concept of modesty. Surprisingly, we found that the folk concept is primarily behavioral. This leads us to argue that modesty may not be a virtue, but that if it is none of the extant philosophical accounts have properly explained why. (shrink)

In his late reflections on values and forms of life from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl develops the concept of personal value and argues that these values open two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human individuals while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of care. In order to get at the core of the concept, I will explicate Husserl’s discussion of personal (...) values of love by distinguishing between five related features. I demonstrate that values of love (1) are rooted in egoic depts and define who we are as persons, (2) differ from objective values in being absolute and non-comparative, (3) ground vocational lives as organizing principles, (4) are endlessly self-disclosing and self-intensifying, and (5) establish transitive relations of care between human beings. On the basis of my five-partite distinction, I argue that Husserl’s concepts of love and value of love reveal the dynamic character of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The first truly multidisciplinary text of its kind, this book offers an original analysis of the current state of linguistic pragmatics. Cummings argues that no study of pragmatics can reasonably neglect the historical and contemporary influences on this.

Implementing a postcolonial feminist perspective in nursing research related to non‐Western populationsIn this article, I argue that implementing a postcolonial feminist perspective in nursing research transcends the limitations of modern cultural theories in exploring the health problems of non‐Western populations. Providing nursing care in pluralist countries like Canada remains a challenge for nurses. First, nurses must reflect on their ethnic background and stereotypes that may impinge on the understanding of cultural differences. Second, dominant health ideologies that underpin nurses’ everyday practice (...) and the structural barriers that may constrain the utilization of public healthcare services by non‐Western populations must be further examined. Postcolonial feminism is aimed at addressing health inequities stemming from social discriminative practices. I will draw on extant literature and data of an ongoing ethnography exploring the Haitian caregivers’ ways of caring for ageing relatives at home to unveil how the larger social and cultural world has an impact on caregivers’ everyday lives. Marginalized locations represent privileged sites from which health problems, intersecting with power, race, gender, and social classes, can be addressed. Postcolonial feminism provides the analytic lens to look at the impact of these factors in shaping health experiences. It also suggests redirecting nursing cultural research and practice to achieve social justice in the healthcare system. (shrink)

As embodied theories of cognition are increasingly formalized and tested, care must be taken to make informed assumptions regarding the nature of concepts and representations. In this study, we outline three reasons why one cannot, in effect, represent the same concept twice. First, online perception affects offline representation: Current representational content depends on how ongoing demands direct attention to modality-specific systems. Second, language is a fundamental facilitator of offline representation: Bootstrapping and shortcuts within the computationally cheaper linguistic system continuously modify (...) representational content. Third, time itself is a source of representational change: As the content of underlying concepts shifts with the accumulation of direct and vicarious experience, so too does the content of representations that draw upon these concepts. We discuss the ramifications of these principles for research into both human and synthetic cognitive systems. (shrink)

Biotechnology's promises has been widely recognized as a major enterprise accelerating the commodification of the biological. After the 9/11 events and the subsequent anthrax letters, biotechnologies have additionally been described as contributing to the construction of biosecurity risks. This paper proposes to investigate the collaboration between the FBI and the DIYbio network as a case study illustrating the productive entanglement of biological risks and promises. To do so, the paper explores the social construction of risks and promises associated with the (...) vision of distributed biotechnologies as enacted in this collaboration. We argue that the FBI needs to police the DIYbio network in order to disseminate a specific notion of bioterrorist risk, while, in a counter-intuitive manner, the DIYbio network benefits from being policed by the FBI as it helps them disseminate their socio-technological vision. If the entanglement of technoscientific risks and promises is a well established finding of the STS literature, our case study suggests that such entanglement now additionally comprises the sphere of biosecurity and the promises of a distributed biotechnology available to everyone. (shrink)

Free will, if such there be, involves free choosing: the ability to mentally choose an outcome, where the outcome is 'free' in being, in some substantive sense, up to the agent of the choice. As such, it is clear that the questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-a-vis other mental events as well as physical events. Nonetheless, the free will and (...) mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining how the free will and mental causation debates bear on one another. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type may be efficacious, qua the types of event they are---qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative---given their apparent causal irrelevancy for effects of the type in question; here we generalize what Horgan 1989 identifies as "the problem of mental quausation" (S1). We then build on this result to identify fruitful parallels between hard determinism and eliminative physicalism (S2) and soft determinism and non-reductive physicalism (S3). (shrink)

Shepherd defends an account of the universe founded on two causal principles: that effects necessarily have causes, and that like causes have like effects. Folding mind into the class of natural phenomena governed by these principles, Shepherd naturalizes the mind, but in doing so she sets herself the challenge of explaining how, within a deterministic universe, agents can be necessary causes of their own actions. With special attention to Shepherd’s resistance to materialism and to any reduction of the mental, the (...) paper argues that we can read Shepherd as leveraging her original theory of causation to develop a distinctive compatibilist view of the psychology of intention, one that makes agents the necessary causal sources of their own actions. Published on 2022-10-28 10:36:44. (shrink)

This article looks at some of the chance discoveries and elegant ideas that were borne out through the availability of archived tissue samples. It then discusses some of the planned changes to the method and purpose of tissue storage and collection. The changes are in the form of new types of tissue bank, or biobank as they are conceived. These banks are part of a trend to move towards a preventative approach to public health rather than the current costly interventionist (...) model. This approach is not without its problems and it is these that threaten the unfettered continuation of the tissue archive. The sophistication of new research tools can uncover information about individuals that may have a detrimental effect on their well-being in various ways. The article analyses these possibilities in the context of how health care might develop. (shrink)

“Why are millions of dollars worth of orders being left unpaid?”. With tweets like this questioning brands’ policies, activists advocating for sustainable fashion re-discuss material starting points that are assumed by fashion brands, who argue that they are sustainable because they care about their workers’ conditions. This paper argues that activists use tweets to open _subdiscussions on material starting points_ to engage citizens and consumers, re-discussing factual _data_ that brands take for granted, such as the fact that they provide fair (...) conditions for their garment workers. Activists justify their opening of subdiscussions, often through an argumentative pattern that includes an argument based on the _locus from effects to cause_. They argue that if there are negative effects, the brand cannot claim to care about the conditions of its workers. In discussing how subdiscussions are used by fashion activists, this paper also introduces a conceptualization of Twitter argumentation as a discussion that is not isolated, but is part of a polylogical argumentation that takes place in different venues. For this reason, the argumentation used in tweets is reconstructed as a response to a fashion brand’s communication campaigns around sustainability, which extend beyond the confines of Twitter. As an empirical illustration, this paper is based on the campaign targeting fashion retailer Primark; the dataset includes the brand’s website as well as activists’ tweets. (shrink)

Bodily awareness is a kind of perceptual awareness of the body that we do not usually count as a sense. I argue that that there is an overlooked agential difference between bodily awareness and perception in the five familiar senses: a difference in what is involved in perceptual activity in sight, hearing, touch taste and smell on the one hand, and bodily awareness on the other.

Many biologists appeal to the so-called Krogh principle when justifying their choice of experimental organisms. The principle states that “for a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied”. Despite its popularity, the principle is often critiqued for implying unwarranted generalizations from optimal models. We argue that the Krogh principle should be interpreted in relation to the historical and scientific contexts in which it has (...) been developed and used. We interpret the Krogh Principle as a heuristic, i.e., as a recommendation to approach biological problems through organisms where a specific trait or physiological mechanism is expected to be most distinctively displayed or most experimentally accessible. We designate these organisms “Krogh organisms.” We clarify the differences between uses of model organisms and non-standard Krogh organisms. Among these is the use of Krogh organisms as “negative models” in biomedical research, where organisms are chosen for their dissimilarity to human physiology. Importantly, the representational scope of Krogh organisms and the generalizability of their characteristics are not fixed or assumed but explored through experimental studies. Research on Krogh organisms is steeped in the comparative method characteristic of zoology and comparative physiology, in which studies of biological variation produce insights into general physiological constraints. Accordingly, we conclude that the Krogh principle exemplifies the advantages of studying biological variation as a strategy to produce generalizable insights. (shrink)

Patient-derived xenografts are currently promoted as new translational models in precision oncology. PDXs are immunodeficient mice with human tumors that are used as surrogate models to represent specific types of cancer. By accounting for the genetic heterogeneity of cancer tumors, PDXs are hoped to provide more clinically relevant results in preclinical research. Further, in the function of so-called “mouse avatars”, PDXs are hoped to allow for patient-specific drug testing in real-time. This paper examines the circulation of knowledge and bodily material (...) across the species boundary of human and personalized mouse model, historically as well as in contemporary practices. PDXs raise interesting questions about the relation between animal model and human patient, and about the capacity of hybrid or interspecies models to close existing translational gaps. We highlight that the translational potential of PDXs not only depends on representational matching of model and target, but also on temporal alignment between model development and practical uses. Aside from the importance of ensuring temporal stability of human tumors in a murine body, the mouse avatar concept rests on the possibility of aligning the temporal horizons of the clinic and the lab. We examine strategies to address temporal challenges, including cryopreservation and biobanking, as well as attempts to speed up translation through modification and use of faster developing organisms. We discuss how featured model virtues change with precision oncology, and contend that temporality is a model feature that deserves more philosophical attention. (shrink)

Concerns with the use of engineering approaches in biology have recently been raised. I examine two related challenges to biological research that I call the synchronic and diachronic underdetermination problem. The former refers to challenges associated with the inference of design principles underlying system capacities when the synchronic relations between lower-level processes and higher-level systems capacities are degenerate. The diachronic underdetermination problem regards the problem of reverse engineering a system where the non-linear relations between system capacities and lower-level mechanisms are (...) changing over time. Braun and Marom argue that recent insights to biological complexity leave the aim of reverse engineering hopeless - in principle as well as in practice. While I support their call for systemic approaches to capture the dynamic nature of living systems, I take issue with the conflation of reverse engineering with naïve reductionism. I clarify how the notion of design principles can be more broadly conceived and argue that reverse engineering is compatible with a dynamic view of organisms. It may even help to facilitate an integrated account that bridges the gap between mechanistic and systems approaches. (shrink)

Daryl Pullman provides a valuable comparison between the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) rates in Canada and California, illuminating the factors that appear to be pushing Canada down a slippery...

Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific compound (...) phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface The essays in this special issue on Indigenous Feminisms in Settler Contexts engage feminist politics from multiple Indigenous geographies, histories, and standpoints. What emerges is a panoramic view of Indigenous feminist scholarship’s conceptual, linguistic, and artistic activism at this moment in time. We learn of praxis aimed at reclaiming Indigenous languages and ecological perspectives and the varied modes of resistance, survivance, and persistence. We also unpack the complex (...) racial/gender politics of colonial encounters in contexts where white women cared intimately for Indigenous children, or where they helped to recover Indigenous oral traditions, and we note how modes of help can also reproduce imperial power relations. Some essays, art works, and poems extend the geographic ambit of critiques of settler colonialism beyond American contexts: they deploy feminist rubrics to critique the continuing violent settlement of Palestine and Kashmir to demonstrate that the occupation of “marginal” places is constitutive of state-​ society relations; others describe how Australian Aboriginal and Sámi artists engage the question of Indigenous visibility. In different ways, they each show how staying in place, against all odds, can be radical. Our first two articles examine the politics of praxis. Michelle M. Jacob, Virginia R. Beavert, Regan Anderson, Leilani Sabzalian, and Joana Jansen analyze Indigenous feminist praxis surrounding Ichishkíin Indigenous language education. The “artivism” of Sámi artists Maxida 284Preface and Timimie Märak, which expresses concern for land and water rights, gender and sexuality, and Indigenous rights in Northern Europe takes center stage in Kyle Bladow’s essay. The next three articles interrogate historical records shaping Indigenous lives in northern Canada, southwest Pacific, and southwestern United States and Mexico. Val Marie Johnson examines how white women staff members’ intimate care relations at residential schools for Inuvialuit, Inuinnait, and Iñupiat peoples in Canada were bound up with the latter’s dispossession. Carolyn J. Eichner recounts the encounter between the Indigenous Kanak people and Louise Michel, a feminist and participant in the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871 who was banished to New Caledonia for seven years; Eichner argues that although Michel was staunchly anti-imperialist, her liberatory political project bore the temporal logics of colonization. Drawing on examples of Nahua reconfigurations of Christian scripture, Kenna Neitch proposes the language of “persistence” as a heuristic for avoiding the reactive, relational connotations that can pervade scholarly usages of “resistance” rhetoric. Next, our review essay by Jennifer McLerran describes recent Indigenous feminist scholarship that recasts the concept of sovereignty. Our News and Views piece focuses on modalities of occupation in the context of Kashmir: Nosheen Ali, Mona Bhan, Sahana Ghosh, Hafsa Kanjwal, Zunaira Komal, Deepti Misri, Shruti Mukherjee, Nishant Upadhyay, Saiba Varma, and Ather Zia argue that occupation is foundational to the making and reproduction of nationstates, and not exceptional to state power. The varied forms of resistance to occupation are examined by Sara Ihmoud in her article about how a group of Palestinian women, the Murabitat al-Haram, agitate for religious freedom simply by “staying in place.” Rabab Abdulhadi comments on shifts in contemporary settler colonial discourse in Israel, noting the increasingly overt and unapologetic deployment of highly sexualized and gendered images. Marina Tyquiengco examines the art of Australian Aboriginal artist Fiona Foley, specifically her Black Velvet series. Art and myth are also fused in Shantell Powell’s textual and visual rendering of Inuit memory. This issue features a range of poetry on topics such as language loss, human-land relationships, and sexual violence, written by Katherine Agyemaa Agard, Kei Kaimana, and Kai Minosh Pyle, and curated by our creative writing editor, Alexis Pauline Gumbs. In “Átaw Iwá Ichishkíin Sínwit: The Importance of Ichishkíin Language in Advancing Indigenous Feminist Education,” Michelle M. Jacob, Preface 285 Virginia R. Beavert, Regan Anderson, Leilani Sabzalian, and Joana Jansen examine Indigenous feminist praxis surrounding Ichishkíin-language education. They critique how Western education systems inflict pernicious forms of violence within Native communities, engaging in practices of linguistic genocide and alienating Indigenous peoples from their homelands. In response, Native peoples, along with non-Native allies, are engaging in educational and political activism to reclaim and revitalize Indigenous languages and ecological perspectives. In examining the foundational teaching of Ichishk... (shrink)

This paper throws some light on the nature of argumentation, its use and advantages, within the setting of doctor–patient interaction. It claims that argumentation can be used by doctors to offer patients reasons that work as ontological conditions for enhancing the decision making process, as well as to preserve the institutional nature of their relationship with patients. In support of these claims, selected arguments from real-life interactions are presented in the second part of the paper, and analysed by means of (...) a model of argumentation borrowed from classical rhetoric, and refined according to the modern orientation of the pragma-dialectic approach. (shrink)

lt is now commonplace in fallacy inquiry for many of the traditional informal fallacies to be viewed as reasonable or nonfallacious modes of argument. Central to this evaluative shift has been the attempt to examine traditional fallacies within their wider contexts of use. However, this pragmatic turn in fallacy evaluation is still in its infancy. The true potential of a contextual approach in the evaluation of the fallacies is yet to be explored. I examine how, in the context of scientific (...) inquiry, certain traditional fallacies function by conferring epistemic gains upon inquiry. Specifically, I argue that these fallacies facilitate the progression of inquiry, particularly in the initial stages ofinquiry when the epistemic context is one of uncertainty. The conception of these fallacies that emerges is that of heuristics of reasoning in contexts of epistemic uncertainty. (shrink)

The cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is an area that continues to provoke intense theoretical debate among pragmatists. That utterance interpretation involves some type of mind-reading or theory of mind (ToM) is indisputable. However, theorists are divided on the exact nature of this ToM-based mechanism. In this paper, it is argued that the only type of ToM-based mechanism that can adequately represent the cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is one which reflects the rational, intentional, holistic character of interpretation. Such a (...) ToM-based mechanism is supported on conceptual and empirical grounds. Empirical support for this view derives from the study of children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Specifically, three types of clinical case are considered. In the first case, evidence is advanced which indicates that individuals with pragmatic disorders exhibit deficits in reasoning and the use of inferences. These deficits compromise the ability of children and adults with pragmatic disorders to comply with the rational dimension of utterance interpretation. In the second case, evidence is presented which suggests that subjects with pragmatic disorders struggle with the intentional dimension of utterance interpretation. This dimension extends beyond the recognition of communicative intentions to include the attribution of a range of cognitive and affective mental states that play a role in utterance interpretation. In the third case, evidence is presented that children and adults with pragmatic disorders struggle with the holistic character of utterance interpretation. This serves to distort the contexts in which utterances are processed for their implicated meanings. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the role of theorizing in relation to utterance interpretation. (shrink)

The public must make assessments of a range of health-related issues. However, these assessments require scientific know-ledge which is often lacking or ineffectively utilized by the public. Lay people must use whatever cognitive resources are at their disposal to come to judgement on these issues. It will be contended that a group of arguments—so-called informal fallacies—are a valuable cognitive resource in this regard. These arguments serve as cognitive heuristics which facilitate reasoning when knowledge is limited or beyond the grasp of (...) reasoners. The results of an investigation into the use of these arguments by the public are reported. (shrink)

The link between alcohol consumption and cancer is well established, but public awareness of the risk remains low. Mandated warning labels have been suggested as a way of ensuring “informed choice” about alcohol consumption. In this article we explore various ethical issues that may arise in connection with cancer warning labels on alcoholic beverages; in particular we highlight the potentially questionable autonomy of alcohol consumption decisions and consider the implications if the autonomy of drinking behavior is substantially compromised. Our discussion (...) demonstrates the need for the various ethical issues to be considered and addressed in any decision to mandate cancer warning labels. (shrink)