This chapter presents the text of a lecture on John Donne's poetry given at the British Academy's 2009 Chatterton Lecture on History. This text analyses the claims made in H.J.C. Grierson's The Poems of John Donne that John Donne is a manuscript poet for the twentieth century and a poet of, and for, the new university discipline of English. It argues that subsequent understandings of Donne and his works, in manuscript and print, and by different audiences, are necessary elements of (...) the poet we read today. (shrink)

This edited collection of papers seeks to celebrate the scope and accomplishment of Margaret Archer’s work, distilling her theoretical and empirical contributions into four sections, capturing the essence and trajectory of her work over almost four decades. Long fascinated with the problem of structure and agency, Archer’s work has constituted a decades long engagement with this perennial issue of social thought. Through an initial empirical study and two expansive trilogies, Archer has developed an explanatory framework that comes to grips with (...) the complexity of social processes at different levels of analysis over time. _The Morphogenetic Approach_ and, later, her work on the _Internal Conversation_, together, provide a detailed account of the interrelated processes by which structure, agency and culture come to take the forms they do. However in spite of the deep interconnections which unify her body of work, it is rarely treated as a coherent whole. Though its range and depth has been widely acknowledged, it nonetheless has an unclear place within the cannon of sociological theory. The proposed collection seeks to address this relative neglect through collating a selection of papers, spanning Archer’s career, which collectively elucidate both the development of her thought and the value which can be found in it as a systematic whole. It seeks to illustrate the empirical origins of her later ideas in her early work on the sociology of education, as well as foregrounding the diverse range of influences which have conditioned her intellectual trajectory: the systems theory of Walter Buckley, the functionalist Marxism of David Lockwood, the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar and, more recently, her engagement with American pragmatism and the Italian school of relational sociology. (shrink)

Are democratic ideals better served by elections or sortition? Is the ideal national legislature one that is elected, chosen by lot, or some combination thereof? To answer these questions properly, it is necessary to perform a careful, balanced, and systematic comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each. To do so, this article uses foundational democratic values—political equality, popular control, deliberative nature, and competency—as measuring sticks. On the basis of these values a purely elected legislature is compared with a purely (...) sortition one, on the assumption that each has the full decision-making powers normally possessed by national legislatures. This big picture will provide a clearer view of the strengths and weaknesses of the respective systems and their trade-offs, as well as the open questions that remain. (shrink)

There is an overlooked similarity between three classic accounts of the conditions of object experience from three distinct disciplines. Sociology: the “inversion” that accompanies discovery in the natural sciences, as local causes of effects are reattributed to an observed object. Psychology: the “externalization” that accompanies mastery of a visual–tactile sensory substitution interface, as tactile sensations of the proximal interface are transformed into vision-like experience of a distal object. Biology: the “projection” that brings forth an animal’s Umwelt, as impressions on its (...) body’s sensory surfaces are reconfigured into perception of an external object. This similarity between the effects of scientific practice and interface-use on the one hand, and of sensorimotor interaction on the other, becomes intelligible once we accept that skillful engagement with instruments and interfaces constitutes a socio-material augmentation of our basic perceptual capacity. This enactive interpretation stands in contrast to anti-realism about science associated with constructivist interpretations of these three phenomena, which are motivated by viewing them as the internal mental construction of the experienced object. Instead, it favors a participatory realism: the sensorimotor basis of perceptual experience loops not only through our body, but also through the external world. This allows us to conceive of object experience in relational terms, i.e., as one or more subjects directly engaging with the world. Consequently, we can appreciate scientific observation in its full complexity: it is a socio-materially augmented process of becoming acquainted with the observed object that—like tool-use and perceiving more generally—is irreducibly self, other-, and world-involving. (shrink)

Since 1989, widely circulating statistics on gay teen suicide in the United States have acted as catalysts for institutional reforms, scientific research, and the creation of an identity category “gay youth.” While one figure has been replicated scientifically, these numbers originated not from a scientific research study but as risk estimates developed by a social worker and published in a government document. Many people within the public took up these original numbers, attributing their author the status of scientific researcher. In (...) effect, the numbers became “black boxed,” often traveling without citation. Drawing on Ian Hacking’s “dynamic nominalist” perspective, this article utilizes interviews with the author of these statistics and other key claimants, along with textual analysis, to trace the origins, uptake, and effects of these figures. While making vital policy contributions, the numbers have led to some ironic consequences including the fostering of gay youth identification with suicide as a potential correlate of their identity and the potential antigay redeployment of decontextualized numbers. They have also led to a reaction in the form of “resilience” narratives. (shrink)

The construct of flexibility has been a focus for research and theory for over 100 years. However, flexibility has not been consistently or adequately defined, leading to obstacles in the interpretation of past research and progress toward enhanced theory. We present a model of socioemotional flexibility—and its counterpart rigidity—at three time scales using dynamic systems modeling. At the real-time scale (micro), moment-to-moment fluctuations in affect are identified as dynamic flexibility. At the next higher meso-time scale, adaptive adjustments to changes in (...) context are characterized as reactive flexibility. At the macro scale is flexibility that occurs across months or years, reflecting flexibility due to developmental or life transitions. Implications of the model and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The bay was sunlit and filled with boats, many of them just returned from early-dawn trips to the open sea. Fish that a few hours before had been swimming in the water now lay on the boat decks with glassy eyes, wounded mouths, bloodstained scales. The fishermen, well-to-do sportsmen, were weighing the fish and boasting about their catches. As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, (...) all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right. Herman had repeatedly pledged to become a vegetarian, but Yadwiga wouldn't hear of it. They had starved enough in the village and later in the camp. They hadn't come to rich America to starve again. The neighbors had taught her that ritual slaughter and Kashruth were the roots of Judaism. It was meritorious for the hen to be taken to the ritual slaugheterer, who had recited a benediction before cutting its throat (from Enemies, A Love Story. (shrink)

We continue [4] and study sets in generic extensions by the Magidor forcing and by the Prikry forcing with non-normal ultrafilters.

The hypothesis of extended cognition holds that mental states and processes need not be wholly contained within biological confines. Yet the theory is plausible, and informative, only when it can set principled outer limits upon cognitive extension: it should not permit unrestricted expansion of the mental into the material environment. I argue that true cognitive extension occurs only when the subject takes responsibility for the contribution made by a non-neural resource, in a manner that can be illuminated by appeal to (...) theoretical resources from contemporary virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Contemporary global politics poses urgent challenges – from humanitarian, migratory and environmental problems to economic, religious and military conflicts – that strain not only existing political systems and resources, but also the frameworks and concepts of political thinking. The standard cosmopolitan response is to invoke a sense of global community, governed by such principles as human rights or humanitarianism, free or fair trade, global equality, multiculturalism, or extra-national democracy. Yet, the contours, grounds and implications of such a global community remain (...) notoriously controversial, and it risks abstracting precisely from the particular and conflictual character of the challenges which global politics poses. The contributions to this collection undertake to develop a more fruitful cosmopolitan response to global political challenges, one that roots cosmopolitanism in the particularity and conflict of global politics itself. They argue that this ‘contestatory’ cosmopolitanism must be dialectical, agonistic and democratic: that is, its concepts and principles must be developed immanently and critically out of prevailing normative resources; they must reflect and acknowledge their antagonistic roots; and they must be the result of participatory and self-determining publics. In elaborating this alternative, the contributions also return to neglected cosmopolitan theorists like Hegel, Adorno, Arendt, Camus, Derrida, and Mouffe, and reconsider mainstream figures such as Kant and Habermas. This book was originally published as a special edition of _Critical Horizons. _. (shrink)

In Greg Bear’s critically acclaimed science fiction novel Darwin’s Radio, the activation of an endogenous retrovirus (SHEVA), ironically located in a “noncoding region” of the human genome, causes extreme symptoms in women worldwide, including miscarriages. In the United States, a task force is assembled to control the pandemic crisis and to find out how SHEVA operates at the genomic level. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes manifest that SHEVA is too complex to decode in this way and, moreover, that (...) it is not a disease at all. Biologist Kay Lang speculates that SHEVA is triggered by signals from the environment, and that newborn SHEVA children will be a new variation or species of Man. In this essay I analyze Bear’s literary experiment with science along Deleuze and Guattari’s important, but largely overlooked, concepts of State science and nomad science. Bear’s novel gives narrative form to nomad-scientific ideas about life, notably Lynn Margulis’s theory of endosymbiogenesis, which holds that a species’ DNA is an assemblage of many genomes acquired in symbiotic relations. The import of Bear’s informed speculations, I argue, is not crass prediction but a nomadic vision of life as always already different (impure, infected) and in becoming—a counterpoint to the image of the double helix as the bedrock of human identity. Darwin’s Radio is a key example of how fiction can be an excellent partner for science, technology, and society, analyzing and intervening in debates about life and laying bare epistemological and biopolitical tensions of technoscience. (shrink)

A distinction has been drawn between basic conversation analysis and applied CA. Applied CA has become especially beneficial for informing areas of practice such as health, social care and education, and is an accepted form of research evidence in the scientific rhetoric. There are different ways of undertaking applied CA, with different foci and goals. In this article, we articulate one way of conducting applied CA, that is especially pertinent for practitioners working in different fields. We conceptualise this as Reflective (...) Interventionist CA. We argue that this approach to applied CA is important because of its emphasis on the reflective stance that is valuable to an understanding of research data, its commitment to collaboration with practitioners, and its inductive style. In this paper, we outline the core premises and benefits of this approach and offer empirical examples to support our argument. To conclude, we consider the implications for evidence-based practice. (shrink)

This chapter seeks to provide an understanding of philosophical ethics sufficient for reading other chapters and for appreciating the relevance of philosophical investigations for epidemiologic ethics. Some central concepts and methods of biomedical ethics are explained. In the section on Social Morality and Professional Morality, several questions about the nature of morality and moral responsibility are discussed. In the Section on Problems and Methods in Moral Philosophy, several problems and methods in moral philosophy are discussed, and, in the final section, (...) some ethical theories of importance for biomedical ethics are investigated. (shrink)

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition holds that the mind need not be constrained within biological boundaries. However, conditions must be provided to set a principled outer limit on cognitive extension, or implausibly many cases will be implicated. I argue that, for the case of extended beliefs at least, such conditions must pay attention to a mental state's causal history, in addition to its current functional poise. Extended resources can house an individual's beliefs, I propose, only if she has taken responsibility (...) for their sources in a suitable way. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIlya Somin's Democracy and Political Ignorance uses a by-now familiar rational-choice lens with which to explain and analyze Americans’ widespread political ignorance. Unlike some scholars who tout rational choice on purely predictive or heuristic grounds, Somin claims that it also offers a more accurate description of reality, in this case better explaining the findings of empirical public-opinion research. In this essay, I compare Somin's central concept of rational ignorance and the related concept of “rational irrationality” with the earlier explanatory approach (...) taken by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in his classic study, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. While Schumpeter developed his description of the mass democratic citizenry over 70 years ago—prior to any of the significant empirical studies of American public opinion—its broad approach remains at least as persuasive as Somin's. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives brings together contributions from scholars in a number of fields including many who have worked closely with Agamben in order to argue that Agambens thought is vital to the future directions of research in the humanities and social sciences. The book is divided into three sections, each coalescing around a different perspective. Contributions in the first section examine the potential for Agambens thought to impact upon future legal scholarship. Papers draw upon wide ranging (...) issues such as legal oaths, legal reasoning and Hegels Philosophy of Right. The second section focuses on political perspectives that include references to Marx, Žižek and Agambens concept of the messianic. The third section considers philosophical perspectives on Agambens thought, and draws upon art theory, Franz Kafka, and the thought of Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin and Emmanuel Levinas. All three sections, however, address the potential of Agambens thought by re-focusing attention away from his critiques of Western politics and towards his scheme for a political future. As such the book maintains that Agamben is an important and thoroughly original figure, who has articulated a vision of politics, and of community, that is both achievable and worth recognising. (shrink)

This book explores how the figure of the slave has been used to construct ideas of freedom in Western political and legal philosophy. The figure of the slave has supported philosophical and legal defences of colonialism, coloniality and the supremacy of the white subject. Yet for Giorgio Agamben, the slave stands (almost counterintuitively) as an exemplar of a potential form of future positive political existence. Developing this line of thought, the book reads key thinkers Agamben engages with in his thought (...) and writings - including Aristotle, Saint Paul and G W F Hegel - and draws on decolonial theory to argue that the lives of people who were enslaved and unfree, and their actions and gestures, can point towards a paradigmatic form of political belonging. By reading Agamben in a decolonial direction, we can imagine alternative forms of agency, recognition and subjectivity, which can challenge the necropolitical world of racial capitalism in which we live. This study will appeal to scholars, researchers and graduate students with an interest in the thought of Giorgio Agamben, radical politics, legal and political philosophy and decolonial theory. (shrink)

There are concerns that the socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19, including unemployment and financial insecurity, are having adverse effects on the mental wellbeing of the population. One group particularly vulnerable to socioeconomic adversity during this period are those employed freelance within the cultural industry. Many workers in the sector were already subject to income instability, erratic work schedules and a lack of economic security before the pandemic, and it is possible that COVID-19 may exacerbate pre-existing economic precarity. Through interviews with 20 (...) freelancers working within the performing arts, visual arts, and film and television industries, this article explores the impact of the pandemic on their working lives. Findings suggest the pandemic is affecting the psychological wellbeing of freelancers through employment loss, financial instability and work dissonance, and illustrates the need for urgent economic and psychosocial support for those employed within the cultural sector. (shrink)

Time and resource constraints, combined with competing priorities, mean that research prioritization is a critical ethical consideration in pandemics and emergencies, given the increased need for relevant research findings to address health needs, and the multiple adverse ways that emergencies can impact capacities to conduct research. At international, national and local levels, careful consideration is needed of which research topics should be prioritized and on what grounds. This needs to take into account the ethically significant considerations that should inform prioritization; (...) existing frameworks to guide prioritization decisions; and the consequences associated with prioritizing or de-prioritizing research. The need to prioritize research that is directly responsive to the pandemic may generate debate about which types of research should be prioritised, and within fields of research, which studies should be continued, paused, or re-oriented. In determining which research proposals may have the greatest likelihood of reducing urgent epidemic health burdens, both the nature and distribution of such burdens are key considerations. Epidemics and pandemics typically disproportionately affect the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in society, highlighting the necessity of inclusive and responsive approaches, which evaluate not just which research approaches have the greatest potential public health benefit, but also the likelihood that they will help address inequities. Key questions also arise when determining if current studies should be de-escalated or stopped, particularly when this may result in highly compromised results. It is also important to consider what obligations arise for research communities (including funders) to pledge to taking the outcomes of research prioritisation processes into account. The case studies in this chapter prompt consideration of how qualitative research into the impacts of isolation should be prioritised, and whether and how research prioritization measures should be responsive to widespread use of traditional medicine and off-label use of medications. The cases also highlight issues that research teams may face as research priorities are re-evaluated in pandemics, including whether and how to redesign proposed research in response to the logistical challenges posed by the pandemic and evolving pandemic research priorities. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics. By Dan W. Brock.

This article develops a new way of understanding the integration of emotions in practical life and the practical appraisal of emotions, drawing on insights from both J-P. Sartre and R. G. Collingwo...

The polarized organization of epithelial cells is expressed in many ways including the morphology of the cell surface or cytocortex, the molecular composition of membrane domains and the distribution of cytoplasmic organelles. The differentiation of mouse trophectoderm is described with particular attention given to the maturation of the endocytic system in an attempt to define how the complex assembly of an epithelium may be generated.

This article applies and defends an intertextual approach to Heraclitus B51 DK, the ‘bow-lyre fragment’. It argues that the fragment alludes to the climactic scene of the Odyssey in which the hero strings the bow and is likened to an expert lyre-player. It then explores some implications of this point for our understanding of the significance of the fragment, of the sixth-century reception of the Odyssey and of Parmenides’ reception of Heraclitus.

This essay endeavours to follow my reading of the argument in Bernard Lonergan’s quite brief discussion of the above topic, to be found in Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan 15 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1999), as §28 (pages 156-162). Apart from minor changes in notation, etc., and some greater detail in the use of mathematical arguments, there is little that is novel in what is offered. It merely reflects what I found helpful, and (...) the augmentations I needed, in my own attempts to grasp Lonergan’s arguments. The essential point made by Lonergan is that the cyclical variations in the ratio under discussion are treated as signals of what is happening in the economy. It is because these in practice are often misinterpreted (primarily because of misleading underlying theory rather than as a result of malevolent greed) that the ongoing ‘pure cycle’ becomes corrupted into the boom and bust of the ‘trade cycle’. (shrink)

For all its apparent debate bioethical discourse is in fact very narrow. The discussion that occurs is typically within limited parameters, rarely fundamental. Nor does it accommodate divergent perspectives with ease. The reason lies in its ideology and the political and economic perspectives that ideology promotes. Here the ideology of bioethics' fundamental axioms is critiqued as arbitrary and exclusive rather than necessary and inclusive. The result unpacks the ideological and political underpinnings of bioethical thinking and suggests new avenues for a (...) broader debate over fundamentals, and a different approach to bioethical debate. (shrink)

Instead of impeding access to essential medicines in developing countries, the essay explores why and how patents can serve as a source of funding for the much needed access to medicine. Instead of a weakening of patents, prolonged protection periods are suggested in circumstances where there is widespread lack of access. The revenues from extended patents are seen as a source of funding for drug donations to the least developed countries.

Exploring the rich range of meanings that Shakespeare finds in the natural world, this book fuses ecocritical approaches to Renaissance literature with recent thinking about the significance of religion in Shakespeare's plays. MacFaul offers a clear introduction to some of the key problems in Renaissance natural philosophy and their relationship to Reformation theology, with individual chapters focusing on the role of animals in Shakespeare's universe, the representation of rural life, and the way in which humans' consumption of natural materials transforms (...) their destinies. These discussions enable powerful new readings of Shakespeare's plays, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, and the history plays. Proposing that Shakespeare's representation of the relationship between man and nature anticipated that of the Romantics, this volume will interest scholars of Shakespeare studies, Renaissance drama and literature, and ecocritical studies of Shakespeare. (shrink)