Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy, and Freedom collects twenty-five of Hook's most incisive essays in political philosophy, written throughout his lengthy career. Clustered into five main sections, the essays discuss pragmatism and naturalism, Marx and Marxism, democratic theory, democratic practice, and the defense of a free society.

The New Transnational Activism shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the (...) opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book. (shrink)

After a mild indoctrination into the Christian faith, at the age of 15 I discovered myself to be a non-believer: the idea of an invisible, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God suddenly seemed simply unbelievable. Years later I decided to re-examine the question. Perhaps I had missed something. This in turn led to a fascination with God questions and religious belief, but a re-confirmation of my earlier discovery: the traditional Christian concept of God was not only unbelievable, but incoherent and morally muddled. (...) But further reflection has yielded a qualifying conclusion: God—or rather gods, many gods—do exist but as ideas, tremendously powerful ideas that shape our reality. The crucial concern is that these be good ideas, which has not always been the case. (shrink)

Sponsored by the Argentine Association for the Progress of Sciences, Ciencia e Investigación magazine released its first issue in 1945. In order to circulate the discoveries in the areas of medical and natural sciences, and to instruct on scientific thought, the magazine was introduced as a knowledge disseminating one and attempted to address a general audience. However, during its first publication decade the CEI editors faced two challenges related to scientific communication. On the one hand, they exhibited the conflicts implied (...) in research writing and the typical conditions of the language of science. On the other, they manifested their interest to bestow a discursive style on the magazine which, although simple and oriented to a wide audience, would not corrupt scientific veracity. This paper follows the French approach to discourse analysis, whose purpose is the simultaneous and reciprocal study of the verbal and the socio-institutional dimension of discourses, and analyses the sociolinguistic representations of the language of science and of its dissemination formulated in CEI between 1945-1955, a period - besides - complex for the scientific development in Argentina, characterized by state interventionism in different institutions. To this aim, editorials and articles that address the aforementioned problems have been selected and examined. The results exhibit the discursive complexities of scientific dissemination in an environment unaware of this practice and, consequently, the difficulty of determining a reader profile for the magazine. In general terms, they reveal the importance of the reflection on the language for the development and communication of science. (shrink)

We create value for ourselves by making sacrifices. In Sacrifice and Value, Sidney Axinn presents the role of sacrifice in the work of many figures in the history of Philosophy. A novel feature is the attention given to Kant's use of sacrifice, and the way this changes the usual view of the Categorical Imperative, and Kant's concept of value.

Development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa propose to alleviate hunger in rural areas by introducing new agricultural practices and technologies, yet there is limited empirical evidence of how an agricultural intervention can lead farming households to transition to food security. Research on food security pathways considers agricultural interventions that increase farmers’ income to be particularly effective for reducing food insecurity. Consistent with this stance, Malawian agricultural policy aims to address hunger by encouraging smallholder farmers to intensify and commercialize maize production. This (...) paper explores if smallholders’ market and livelihood orientations do indeed lead them to favor an income pathway to food security. Qualitative analysis of 60 smallholder farmer interviews in Malawi found that, upon achieving improvements in production yields and diversity, rather than commercialize, many farmers re-organized their production and consumption to reduce market dependency. Farmers deployed this strategy to increase their food security, explaining that the choice to self-provision food and farming inputs was both an expression of farming identity and a lived understanding of their marginal position in commodity markets. The author finds that, in failing to consider how production relations affect food access, scholarship inadequately theorizes farm-level food security transitions and reproduces discursive framings of hunger. Food sovereignty narratives more accurately captured what mattered for Malawian smallholders’ food security, suggesting that engagement with this concept could improve scientific understandings of food security transitions. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is that people in Northeast Brazil refuse to let a good person who helped them during his (or her) lifetime die. They do this through several of the religious traditions practiced in the region. Beings, human and other, now in another plane of reality established in modern thinking, cross the conceptual divide and return through mediums or other intermediaries to heal the living. We examine two religious traditions, “folk” or “popular” Catholicism and Kardecist‐Spiritism, focusing on (...) the spirit of Argeu Hebster, a medical doctor who lived in the municipality of Marangaupe in the state of Ceará until his death in 1977. The return of the doctor is told in stories told to the authors while doing ethnography that provide the data used in analyzing the enchanted worlds of the two religions. (shrink)

Philosophy and human conduct.--Moral freedom in a determined world.--The ethical theory of John Dewey.--The new failure of nerve.--Religion and the intellectuals.--An open letter to Sidney Hook: a defense of religious faith, by E. van den Haag.--Modern knowledge and the concept of God.--Two types of existentialist religion and ethics.--The quest for "being."--Naturalism and first principles.--Nature and the human spirit.--Scientific knowledge and philosophical "knowledge."--Materialism and idealism.--Are religious dogmas cognitive?

Health care reform that includes universal coverage could lower a major barrier to care for people of color and ethnic minorities—the inability to pay for care. But universal coverage alone, even with comparable fee-for-service payment or appropriately risk-adjusted capitated reimbursement, will not eradicate the racial and ethnic inequities in health care delivery. Restrictive admissions practices, geographic inaccessibility, culture, racial stereotypes, and the failure to employ minority health care professionals will still create barriers to minority health care. In addition to universal (...) financing, health care reform should include new civil rights legislation to address and reduce these noneconomic barriers to minority health care. (shrink)

This paper studies an economy whose agents perceive their consumption possibilities subjectively, and whose preferences are defined on what they subjectively experience, rather than on those alternatives that are objectively present. The model of agents' perceptions is based on intuitionistic logic. Roughly, this means that agents reason constructively: a solution to a problem exists only if there is a construction by which the problem can be solved. The theorems that can be proved determine how an agent perceives a set of (...) alternatives. A dual model relates perceived alternatives to a shared language, which the agents use in trading. So perceptions relate objective alternatives to an agent's subjective view of them, and reporting dually relates an agent's subjective world to a shared language. It turns out that an appropriately modified notion of competitive equilibrium always exists. However, in contrast with standard results in economic theory, competitive equilibrium need not be efficient. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación de corte cualitativo realizada los años 2007 y 2008 en Santiago de Chile, la que tuvo como uno de sus objetivos el describir y comprender las condiciones y la experiencia de trabajo de un grupo de hombres y mujeres de bajo nivel ocupacional empleados en la sala de venta de una gran cadena nacional de supermercados. A partir de la presentación y discusión de estos hallazgos se busca contribuir a una mejor comprensión (...) de los profundos procesos de flexibilización y modernización experimentados por el sector del retail en Chile en las últimas décadas, especialmente en lo que respecta al impacto de los mismos en la experiencia de trabajo de los sujetos empleados en dicho sector. Se espera de este modo arrojar luces desde una perspectiva psicosocial sobre los aspectos laborales de los cambios en el mundo del retail, los que han tendido a quedar invisibilizados ante los enfoques que han enfatizado las dimensiones económicas, o culturales y de consumo, de dichas transformaciones. (shrink)

A just culture is a culture of trust, learning and accountability. It is particularly important when an incident has occurred; when something has gone wrong. How do you respond to the people involved? What do you do to minimize the negative impact, and maximize learning? This third edition of Sidney Dekker's extremely successful Just Culture offers new material on restorative justice and ideas about why your people may be breaking rules. Supported by extensive case material, you will learn about (...) safety reporting and honest disclosure, about retributive just culture and about the criminalization of human error. Some suspect a just culture means letting people off the hook. Yet they believe they need to remain able to hold people accountable for undesirable performance. In this new edition, Dekker asks you to look at 'accountability' in different ways. One is by asking which rule was broken, who did it, whether that behavior crossed some line, and what the appropriate consequences should be. In this retributive sense, an 'account' is something you get people to pay, or settle. But who will draw that line? And is the process fair? Another way to approach accountability after an incident is to ask who was hurt. To ask what their needs are. And to explore whose obligation it is to meet those needs. People involved in causing the incident may well want to participate in meeting those needs. In this restorative sense, an 'account' is something you get people to tell, and others to listen to. Learn to look at accountability in different ways and your impact on restoring trust, learning and a sense of humanity in your organization could be enormous. (shrink)

Virtual reality (VR) is the computer simulation of a three‐dimensional environment that a person can interact with using special electronic equipment, such as a headset with an integrated display. Often coupled with VR, exergames are video games that involve physical exercise. Little is known regarding the chronic effects of exergaming through VR chon cognitive functions. Eleven young participants were enrolled in this crossover exploratory study. They had to follow two trainings of 5 consecutive days, 15 min per day, interspaced by (...) a 1‐month washout period. Trainings were performed in a random order: (1) a video training using shadow boxing fitness videos (SBV) and (2) a VR training using a three‐dimensional game where the aim is to cut moving cubes with a sword in each hand. Before and after each training period, a battery of cognitive tests was performed to assess executive functions, such as attention (change blindness), reaction time, response inhibition (go/no‐go, Stroop task), or flexibility (trail making test). Fine motor skills were also evaluated through a Fitt's task. No effect of the SBV training was observed on any of the cognitive functions tested. On the contrary, a significant increased performance in selective attention and observation tests was found after VR training, as well as in inhibitory processes (Stroop and go/no‐go). Other performances were unaffected by either VR or SBV training. The present study argues that VR exergaming is a promising tool to promote cognitive enhancement but targets specific functions according to the type of interface/game that is used. (shrink)