Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading (...) linguists, sociologists and anthropologists working across a range of European and Asian languages to document some of the ways in which speakers manage the moral domain of knowledge in conversation. The volume demonstrates that if we are to understand how speakers manage issues of agreement, affiliation and alignment - something clearly at the heart of human sociality - we must understand the social norms surrounding epistemic access, primacy and responsibilities. (shrink)

Care left undone, interchangeably referred to as missed care, unfinished nursing care and task incompletion, is pervasive in contemporary healthcare systems. Care left undone can result in adverse outcomes for the patient, nurse and organization. The rhetoric that surrounds care left undone infers it is a contemporary nursing phenomenon; however, a seventeenth‐century Spanish nursing treatise, Instruccion de Enfermeros (Instructions for Nurses), challenges this assumption. Instruccion de Enfermeros was an instructional guide that was written for members of the Congregation of Bernardino (...) de Obregon who worked as nurses at the Madrid General Hospital. The treatise provides a historical commentary on the daily roles, responsibilities and working conditions of the Obregonian nurses. Its content and context suggest the Obregonian nursing resource was consistently time poor due to a confluence of internal and external stressors. Consequently, the Obregonians were under considerable role strain resulting in inferior patient care. This article explores the antecedents of care left undone through a historical lens using exemplars from the 1625 edition of Instruccion de Enfermeros. Factors contributing to care left undone in Obregonian nursing will then be examined to offer insights into the similarities between what a nurse suffered 400 years ago and what exists in contemporary nursing practice. (shrink)

Philospher, mathematician, and general man of science, Alfred North Whitehead was a polymath whose interests and generous sympathies encompassed entire worlds.

For ages, natural disasters, war and disease have been part of life, sharing themes of not only adversity, fear and death, but also hope. The year 2020 brought a new threat in the form of coronavirus disease 2019, which challenged what humankind understood of all they knew and believed. The significant difference today is the role of the media in sharing news and opinions on this disease that threatens not only lives, but also spiritual well-being. In this study, we focus (...) on people’s religious views on the origin and meaning of this invisible threat to establish how this pandemic impacts on people’s belief systems. The 20th century was marked by a shift whereby actions and events are intellectualised to rationalise cause and effect, and the philosophical theodicies are regarded to limit our critical reasoning. This study, however, shows that COVID-19 reactivates this debate in that it surpasses logic and rational thinking. Data are collected by means of comments, discussions and opinions shared on numerous social media platforms. During times of adversity, the same rhetorical ‘who’ and ‘why’ questions are asked and in this regard, theodicy as a philosophical framework informs this study. Applying a narrative inquiry, data are interpreted and three themes are identified, namely COVID-19 is an act God, COVID-19 has nothing to do with God and God remains in control amidst a devastating pandemic. The sample for this study is random and the medium used allows for representativity in terms of age group, gender, race, religious affiliation of South Africa, but not limited to this country.Contribution: This article provides insight into renewed debates on religious views on pandemics and suffering in the context of COVID-19. It contributes to an understanding of different perceptions on the origin of this disease, how people make sense and find meaning in being part of a global discourse. (shrink)

In the past 40 years there have been a number of significant developments across the fields of educational administration and history. In this volume, the authors have selected a number of key issues to illustrate and trace these changes. The seven articles by leading scholars in the field offer an analysis of contemporary educational administration, history and policy debates and how this has impacted on teachers, leaders, schools and the education sector. This book offers readers a valuable insight into continuing (...) and contemporary debates in the field and the authors offer a refreshing interpretation of these debates. This book provides a rich analysis from a range of theoretical, methodological perspectives and highlights the extent to which these debates remain a contemporary concern. This book was published as a special issue of the _Journal of Educational Administration and History_. (shrink)

Sometimes, it seems as if scientists know everything about the world. They've recorded the songs of humpback whales, dug up the bones of dinosaurs, and tracked the storms of Jupiter. But the child scientist in What Will I Discover? knows there is so much more to explore. Do different trees speak different languages to one another through their tangled rainforest roots? Do faraway suns have planets like ours, with air and oceans and land? How do ideas pop into our heads, (...) and where do our questions come from? (shrink)

Resumo Neste artigo, defender-se-á uma interpretação do filme A Time to Kill, como sendo uma narrativa cinematográfica falível, mesmo sem a presença de um narrador. Neste texto, assume-se, que uma narrativa falível resulta de um defeito estético e ético do filme. Deste modo, a estrutura estética do filme representa a intenção do realizador em contar a sua versão da história, influenciando assim o seu significado e efeito empático. Com o evoluir da narrativa cinematográfica, as regras de inferência tornam-se cada vez (...) mais complexas. Ainda assim, a convenção cinematográfica estabelece um contexto e define limites identificadores para a sua interpretação. Uma história mal contada inibe a reconstrução imaginativa do espectador, no que diz respeito às motivações das personagens e da causalidade narrativa. Portanto, a qualidade narrativa é essencial para o raciocínio narrativo e empatia estética. Se a narrativa oferece uma compreensão do mundo e de outras pessoas, que de outra forma seriam inacessíveis, e se a forma ou o estilo da narrativa determinam a sua eficácia, então, as formas assumidas pelas nossas histórias têm consequências epistemológicas. Palavras-chave : estética, ética, identificação, narrativa falível, narrativa, raçaIn this paper, I argue for an interpretation of A Time to Kill as an unreliable, yet narrator-less, cinematic narrative. In my view, unreliable narration is an aesthetic and ethical flaw of the film rather than of the narrator. Thus, the film’s aesthetic structure represents the director’s storytelling intentions, and influences its meaning and empathic affect. As cinematic narrative evolves, rules of inference become increasingly complex. Still, filmic convention establishes a context and sets identifiable boundaries for interpretation. A poorly told story inhibits the viewer’s imaginative reconstruction of narrative causation and characters’ motives. Thus, narrative quality is essential to narrative reasoning and aesthetic empathy. If narrative provides an understanding of the world and other people that is otherwise inaccessible, and if the form or style of narrative determines its effectiveness, then the forms our stories take have epistemological consequences. Keywords : aesthetics, ethics, identification, narrative, race, unreliable narrative. (shrink)

The genomes of vertebrates, flies, and nematodes contain highly conserved noncoding elements (CNEs). CNEs cluster around genes that regulate development, and where tested, they can act as transcriptional enhancers. Within an animal group CNEs are the most conserved sequences but between groups they are normally diverged beyond recognition. Alternative CNEs are, however, associated with an overlapping set of genes that control development in all animals. Here, we discuss the evidence that CNEs are part of the core gene regulatory networks (GRNs) (...) that specify alternative animal body plans. The major animal groups arose >550 million years ago. We propose that the cis‐regulatory inputs identified by CNEs arose during the “re‐wiring” of regulatory interactions that occurred during early animal evolution. Consequently, different animal groups, with different core GRNs, contain alternative sets of CNEs. Due to the subsequent stability of animal body plans, these core regulatory sequences have been evolving in parallel under strong purifying selection in different animal groups. (shrink)

This study compares 20 subjects, in each of three different settings, with serious psychotic disorder who hear voices, and compares their voice-hearing experience. We find that while there is much that is similar, there are notable differences in the kinds of voices that people seem to experience. In a California sample, people were more likely to describe their voices as intrusive unreal thoughts; in the South Indian sample, they were more likely to describe them as providing useful guidance; and in (...) our West African sample, they were more likely to describe them as morally good and causally powerful. What we think we may be observing is that people who fall ill with serious psychotic disorder pay selective attention to a constant stream of many different auditory and quasi-auditory events because of different “cultural invitations”—variations in ways of thinking about minds, persons, spirits and so forth. Such a process is consistent with processes described in the cognitive psychology and psychiatric anthropology literature, but not yet described or understood with respect to cultural variations in auditory hallucinations. We call this process “social kindling.”. (shrink)

Whitehead's magnum opus is as important as it is difficult. It is the only work in which his metaphysical ideas are stated systematically and completely, and his metaphysics are the heart of his philosophical system as a whole. Sherburne has rearranged the text in a way designed to lead the student logically and coherently through the intricacies of the system without losing the vigor of Whitehead's often brilliant prose. "The Key renders Process and Reality pedagogically accessible for the (...) first time."-- Journal of Religion. (shrink)

When bodies are conceived as permeable fields our physical forms become inseparable from each other and the world from which they manifest. The extension of one’s subjectivity to include cosmological divinities emphasizes the many other bodies which, in some cultural contexts, may overlap and unite with the world. In this article I explore how narratives of a Tibetan Buddhist high-lama’s death and trajectory of lives contain complex formulations of Tibetan theories of embodiment. An ethnographic attendance to biographical writings and teachings (...) at the time of his funerary ceremonies reveals not only how trikaya, or the notion of three bodies, coheres in Tibetan conceptual frameworks, but also how the articulation of these bodies affects new ways to intersubjectively engage with the deceased. (shrink)

Beginning in September of 1924, Alfred North Whitehead presented a regular course of 85 lectures which concluded in May of 1925. These represent the first ever philosophy lectures he gave and capture him working out the philosophical implications of the remarkable turns physics had taken in his lifetime. This volume finally recreates these lectures by transcribing notes by W.P. Bell, W.E. Hocking and Louise Heath taken at the time - many of which have only recently been discovered and including (...) hundreds of sketches of Whitehead's blackboard diagrams. This is a unique insight into the evolution of Whitehead's thought during the months when he was drafting his seminal work, Science and the Modern World. (shrink)

What way forward for the contemporary university? Critical University traverses fields in critical theory, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and the philosophy of education to focus and provoke further discussion of the university in crisis.

Cognitive theories of emotion propose that the interpretation of emotion-eliciting situations crucially shapes affective responses. Implicit or automatic biases in these interpretations may hinder emotion regulation and thereby increase risk for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative interpretation bias training using ambiguous social scenarios. After the completion of the training, a stress task was administered and changes in positive and negative affect and self-esteem were assessed. The results (...) demonstrate that the interpretation bias training was successful in that participants exhibited a tendency to interpret novel scenarios in accordance with their training condition. Importantly, the positive training condition also had a protective effect on self-esteem. Participants in this condition did not exhibit a decrease in self-esteem after the stress task, whereas participants in the negative condition did. These results demonstrate that implicit cognitive biases can be trained and that this training affects self-esteem. Implications of these findings for research on psychopathology and emotion regulation are discussed. (shrink)

Following decades of maltreatment of women in obstetric care, professional respect for maternal autonomy in obstetric decision making and care have become codified in global and national professional ethical guidelines. Yet, using the example of birth after cesarean, identifiable threats to maternal autonomy in obstetrics continue. This paper focuses on how current scientific knowledge and obstetric practice patterns factor into restricted maternal autonomy as evidenced in three representative maternal accounts obtained prior and subsequent to birth after cesarean. Short- and long-term (...) remedies to improve the current state of restricted maternal autonomy in clinical practice surrounding decision making on birth after cesarean are provided. (shrink)

We consider what genealogical links, kinship and sociality are promised through the marketing of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Using a mixed method of formal analysis of Facebook's algorithmic architectures and textual analysis of twenty-eight adverts for egg donation drawn from the Facebook Ad Library, we analyse the ways in which the figure of the ‘fertile woman’ is constituted both within the text and at the level of Facebook's targeted advertising systems. We critically examine the ways in which ART clinics address (...) those women whose eggs they wish to harvest and exchange, in combination with the ways in which Facebook's architecture identifies, and sorts those women deemed of ‘relevance’ to the commercial ART industry. We find that women variously appear in these adverts as empowered consumers, generous girlfriends, potential mothers and essentialised bodies who provide free-floating eggs. The genealogical and fertility possibility offered through ART is represented with banal ambiguity wherein potentially disruptive forms of biogenetic relatedness and arrangements of kinship are derisked by an overarching narrative of simplicity and sameness which excludes men, messy genealogies and explicitly queer forms of kinship. This rationalisation is supported by the simplicity and certainty of the Facebook targeted advertising algorithm which produces a coherent audience and interpellates users as fertile subjects whose choices are both biologically determined and only available through clinical intervention. (shrink)

In this essay, I seek the roots of social justice in the writings of Simone Weil and Emmanuel Levinas as such roots relate to nourishment. Both thinkers have a rigorous demand embedded in their ethics, a demand that tries to appeal to man as an emotional, sympathetic, rational, and embodied being.For Levinas, it is the actual face of the Other that calls me to my ethical duty; for Weil, the bellow of protestors marching the picket line. Neither relies upon theory (...) from which to base the ethical demand. This essay argues that alongside both we find a saintly ethic of excess, although this excess takes different forms. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science.

How do we refer to people in everyday conversation? No matter the language or culture, we must choose from a range of options: full name ('Robert Smith'), reduced name ('Bob'), description ('tall guy'), kin term ('my son') etc. Our choices reflect how we know that person in context, and allow us to take a particular perspective on them. This book brings together a team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists to show that there is more to person reference than meets (...) the eye. Drawing on video-recorded, everyday interactions in nine languages, it examines the fascinating ways in which we exploit person reference for social and cultural purposes, and reveals the underlying principles of person reference across cultures from the Americas to Asia to the South Pacific. Combining rich ethnographic detail with cross-linguistic generalizations, it will be welcomed by researchers and graduate students interested in the relationship between language and culture. (shrink)

Process and Reality, Whitehead’s magnum opus, is one of the major philosophical works of the modern world, and an extensive body of secondary literature has developed around it. Yet surely no significant philosophical book has appeared in the last two centuries in nearly so deplorable a condition as has this one, with its many hundreds of errors and with over three hundred discrepancies between the American and the English editions, which appeared in different formats with divergent paginations. The work (...) itself is highly technical and far from easy to understand, and in many passages the errors in those editions were such as to compound the difficulties. The need for a corrected edition has been keenly felt for many decades. (shrink)

An essential overview of the science behind stereotypes: from why our brains form them to how recognizing them can help us be less biased.From the time we're babies, our brains constantly sort and label the world around us --- a skill that's crucial for our survival. But, as adolescents are all too aware, there's a tremendous downside: when we do this to groups of people it can cause great harm. Here's a comprehensive introduction to the science behind stereotypes that will (...) help young people make sense of why we classify people, and how we can change our thinking. It covers the history of identifying stereotypes, secret biases in our brains, and how stereotypes affect our sense of self. Most importantly, it covers current research into how science can help us overcome our biases, offering hope for a future where stereotypes are less prevalent and the world is more fair for everyone.Written by award-winning author Tanya Lloyd Kyi, this timely and hopeful book addresses the issues of discrimination, racism, sexism, ableism and homophobia and offers concrete suggestions on how to make change. It uses scientific inquiry and loads of relatable and interesting examples to explore these uncomfortable topics in age-appropriate and engaging ways. Chapters, sidebars and colorful illustrations break the text into manageable chunks. Besides the many ways this book could be used to inspire frank and in-depth discussions on the importance of addressing stereotypes and bias, it also links to many science and social studies curriculum topics. Backmatter includes an extensive list of sources, suggestions for further reading and an index. (shrink)