Narratives have allowed us to show the limits of positivism in humanistic disciplines and to challenge dominant presuppositions. A recent development in feminist philosophy, epistemic injustice describes the ways in which marginalized peoples are unfairly deprived of the ability to participate in society's knowledge‐ and meaning‐making practices. Marginalized groups can respond with their own ways of thinking, speaking, acting, and organizing, thus resisting an oppressive status quo. Much like an economic monopoly, a “hermeneutical monopoly” exists where people are forced, both (...) by coercion and by lack of alternatives, to consume and use the dominant hermeneutical resources. The chapter describes an overlooked problem in the context of mass incarceration and thus to point to the need for a solution. The problem is the hermeneutical injustice and hermeneutical marginalization of prisoners, which is not adequately addressed by scholars who simply attend to the narratives of the oppressed. (shrink)

A variant of realizability for Heyting arithmetic which validates Church’s thesis with uniqueness condition, but not the general form of Church’s thesis, was introduced by Lifschitz (Proc Am Math Soc 73:101–106, 1979). A Lifschitz counterpart to Kleene’s realizability for functions (in Baire space) was developed by van Oosten (J Symb Log 55:805–821, 1990). In that paper he also extended Lifschitz’ realizability to second order arithmetic. The objective here is to extend it to full intuitionistic Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, IZF. The machinery (...) would also work for extensions of IZF with large set axioms. In addition to separating Church’s thesis with uniqueness condition from its general form in intuitionistic set theory, we also obtain several interesting corollaries. The interpretation repudiates a weak form of countable choice, ACω,ω, asserting that a countable family of inhabited sets of natural numbers has a choice function. ACω,ω is validated by ordinary Kleene realizability and is of course provable in ZF. On the other hand, a pivotal consequence of ACω,ω, namely that the sets of Cauchy reals and Dedekind reals are isomorphic, remains valid in this interpretation. Another interesting aspect of this realizability is that it validates the lesser limited principle of omniscience. (shrink)

In our era of rapid, breathless change, we need concepts of human education that promise sustainability, along with a corresponding architecture of learning. The pursuit of knowledge has always been regarded as a key to a better life – both individually and collectively –, and the social value of learning is reflected most vividly in the environments where it takes place. What kind of architecture do we need for a holistic concept of education that anticipates future developments? And how can (...) the built environment support the transformation of accumulated knowledge into lived experience and embodied wisdom? Answers to such questions have often found meaningful expression in the typology of the library – and continue to do so today. This book addresses vital questions of education, human epistemics, knowledge, and their architectural settings from diverse disciplinary perspectives. (shrink)

This academic text features articles regarding paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims. It logically examines the claims of astrology; psychic ability; alternative medicine and health claims; after-death communication; cryptozoology; and faith healing, all from a skeptical perspective. Paranormal Claims is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening articles about pseudoscience and extraordinary claims that often reveal logical, scientific explanations, or an outright scam. These articles, steeped in skepticism, teach critical thinking when approaching courses in psychology, sociology, philosophy, education, or science.

Chronic pain is one of the most disabling medical conditions globally, yet, to date, we lack a satisfying theoretical framework for research and clinical practice. Over the prior decades, several frameworks have been presented with biopsychosocial models as the most promising. However, in translation to clinical practice, these models are often applied in an overly reductionist manner, leaving much to be desired. In particular, they often fail to characterize the complexities and dynamics of the lived experience of chronic pain. Recently, (...) an enactive, affordance-based approach has been proposed, opening up new ways to view chronic pain. This model characterizes how the persistence of pain alters a person’s field of affordances: the unfolding set of action possibilities that a person perceives as available to them. The affordance-based model provides a promising perspective on chronic pain as it allows for a systematic investigation of the interactive relation between patients and their environment, including characteristic alterations in the experience of their bodies and the space they inhabit. To help bridge the gap from philosophy to clinical practice, we unpack in this paper the core concepts of an affordance-based approach to chronic pain and their clinical implications, highlighting aspects that have so far received insufficient attention. We do so with an analogy to playing video games, as we consider such comparative illustration a useful tool to convey the complex concepts in an affordance-based model and further explore central aspects of the lived experience of chronic pain. (shrink)

"The chief thesis I have to maintain", Bertrand Russell once wrote, "is the legitimacy of analysis". His reputation as the founder of the analytic tradition, secure for many decades, has come under some attack recently from the emphasis placed by Michael Dummett and others on the role played by Gottlob Frege. This collection of new essays from distinguished philosophers and Russell scholars explores Russell's own unique and enduringly important contribution to shaping the concerns and the methods of contemporary analytical (...) philosophers. It includes both general discussions of the nature of analytical philosophy and minutely detailed analyses of Russell's own arguments, and covers the whole range of Russell's famously varied output. (shrink)

We examined how the cultural dimension of universalism–particularism influences managers’ attitudes toward relational favoritism. Paradoxically, we found in a survey study that Brazilian and Chinese managers perceived more negative consequences of relational favoritism than did American managers—even though the Brazilians and the Chinese perceived stronger particularistic cultural norms in their countries than Americans did in the United States. We attribute this pattern of results to “cultural reflexivity”—the ability of people from transforming economies to be culturally self-critical during a period of (...) dramatic societal change. This pattern of results also emerged in a scenario study in which we asked these same Brazilian, Chinese, and American participants to assess managerial succession decisions made by a General Manager. We varied the scenarios so that the promoted manager was either a colleague with no pre-existing relation with the GM or a colleague who was a relative, a close friend, from the same town, or from the same school. Consistent with the results of the survey study, we found that perceived cultural norms of particularism were negatively related to perceptions of fairness. In other words, Brazilians and Chinese, even while living in more particularistic cultures, were more harsh in judging relational favoritism. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of these paradoxical relationships. (shrink)

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and games set a new domain in understanding people’s motivations in gaming, behavioral implications of game play, game adaptation to player preferences and needs for increased engaging experiences in the context of HCI serious games (HCI-SGs). When the latter relate with people’s health status, they can become a part of their daily life as assistive health status monitoring/enhancement systems. Co-designing HCI-SGs can be seen as a combination of art and science that involves a meticulous collaborative process. The (...) design elements in assistive HCI-SGs for Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients, in particular, are explored in the present work. Within this context, the Game-Based Learning (GBL) design framework is adopted here and its main game-design parameters are explored for the Exergames, Dietarygames, Emotional games, Handwriting games, and Voice games design, drawn from the PD-related i-PROGNOSIS Personalized Game Suite (PGS) (www.i-prognosis.eu) holistic approach. Two main data sources were involved in the study. In particular, the first one includes qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, involving 10 PD patients and four clinicians in the co-creation process of the game design, whereas the second one relates with data from an online questionnaire addressed by 104 participants spanning the whole related spectrum, i.e., PD patients, physicians, software/game developers. Linear regression analysis was employed to identify an adapted GBL framework with the most significant game-design parameters, which efficiently predict the transferability of the PGS beneficial effect to real-life, addressing functional PD symptoms. The findings of this work can assist HCI-SG designers for designing PD-related HCI-SGs, as the most significant game-design factors were identified, in terms of adding value to the role of HCI-SGs in increasing PD patients’ quality of life, optimizing the interaction with personalized HCI-SGs and, hence, fostering a collaborative human-computer symbiosis. (shrink)

This collection of essays by acclaimed philosophers explores Bertrand Russell's influence on one of the dominant philosophical approaches of this century. Michael Dummett argues that analytical philosophy began with Gottlob Frege's analysis of numbers. Frege had begun by inquiring about the nature of number, but found it more fruitful to ask instead about the meanings of sentences containing number words. Russell was to exploit this method systematically. I reflect on the essays of Charles R. Pigden, David Lewis as an (...) exponent of a variant of Russell's position: the good is what we are ideally disposed to desire to desire, and Greenspan's suggestion that Russell adopted some element of the Marxist theory on morals. (shrink)

We compared study characteristics of randomized controlled trials funded by industry (N=697) to those not funded by industry (N=835). RCTs published in high-impact journals are more likely to be blinded, more likely to include a placebo, and more likely to post trial results on ClinicalTrials.gov. Our findings emphasize the importance of evaluating the quality of an RCT based on its methodological rigor, not its funder type.

The paper develops a view of interpretative cultural practice as a complex system of dynamically changing constituents which stand in definite relations to one another. These constituents are the Object of Interpretation (O), Result of Interpretation or interpretation itself (I), the Process of interpretation (P) and the interpreting Subject (S). It is argued that if such a view as this is adapted, ‘singularism’ as a norm for cultural practices necessarily gives way to ‘multiplism’. Singularism and multiplism are terms used by (...) Michael Krausz in Rightness and Reasons (1993). Krausz also talks of certain interpretative practices as imputational, in the sense that the object of interpretation changes, is ‘imputed upon’ during the course of the practice. This paper contends that all cultural practices are imputalional, for each such practice leaves its effect on the object. Not only does practice affect the object, but it affects the subject too The evolution of the subject, the self, through imputational interpretative cultural practices is explored as a major element in the making of a human individual. (shrink)

MICHAEL Ruse aims to describe what scientists actually do in their research and how they arrive at their theories — a mixed bag of false starts, fallacious reasoning, the cultivation of followers, the marketing of ideas and so on. His approach, evolutionary naturalism, rejects the traditional distinction between the normative and the descriptive analysis of science. For him the path of discovery to, say, Darwin's theory of natural selection makes a difference to the theory itself, whereas for the normative (...) analyst it is just history. Normative analysts (who probably include most readers of Nature) would say that the logical structure of the theory, its truth or falsity and its relevance to the objective problem can all be assessed independently of the route of discovery. I defend the normative analysis of scientific method against philosophical naturalism. I defend the role of objective standards and logical rules of argumentation. (shrink)

Half a century after Michael Polanyi conceptualised ‘the tacit component’ in personal knowing, management studies has reinvented ‘tacit knowledge’—albeit in ways that squander the advantages of Polanyi’s insights and ignore his faith in ‘spiritual reality’. While tacit knowing challenged the absurdities of sheer objectivity, expressed in a ‘perfect language’, it fused rational knowing, based on personal experience, with mystical speculation about an un-experienced ‘external reality’. Faith alone saved Polanyi’s model from solipsism. But Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism provides scope (...) to rethink personal tacit knowing with regard to ‘other people’ and the intersubjectively viable construction of ‘experiential reality’. By separating tacit knowing from Polanyi’s metaphysical realism and drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’, it is possible to conceptualise ‘imagined institutions’ as the tacit dimension of power that shapes human interaction. Whereas Douglass North claimed institutions could be reduced to rules, imagined institutions are known in ways we cannot tell. (shrink)

Since its discovery in 1912, X-ray crystallography has become a most useful tool in physics, chemistry, material science, mineralogy, metallurgy, and even in the biological sciences. In 1914, Max von Laue was awarded the Nobel Prize “for the discovery of X-ray diffraction by crystals,” followed by the 1915 Nobel Prize to William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg “for their services in analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays.” And these early Nobel prizes marked only the beginning of X-ray (...) crystallography as one of the most fruitful methods in the history of modern science. A 100 years after Laue’s Nobel Prize and 50 years after another Nobel Prize to Dorothy Hodgkin “for her determination by X-ray technique of the structures of important biochemical substances,” the UN proclaimed 2014 the International Year of Crystallography. “In all, 45 scientists have been awarded over the past century for work that is either directly or indirectly related to crystallo .. (shrink)

Ray Kurzweil and others have posited that the confluence of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and genetic engineering will soon produce posthuman beings that will far surpass us in power and intelligence. Just as black holes constitute a ldquo;singularityrdquo; from which no information can escape, posthumans will constitute a ldquo;singularity:rdquo; whose aims and capacities lie beyond our ken. I argue that technological posthumanists, whether wittingly or unwittingly, draw upon the long-standing Christian discourse of ldquo;theosis,rdquo; according to which humans are capable of (...) being God or god-like. From St. Paul and Luther to Hegel and Kurzweil, the idea of human self-deification plays a prominent role. Hegel in particular emphasizes that God becomes wholly actualized only in the process by which humanity achieves absolute consciousness. Kurzweil agrees that God becomes fully actual only through historical processes that illuminate and thus transform the entire universe. The difference is that for Kurzweil and many other posthumanists, our offspringmdash;the posthumansmdash;will carry out this extraordinary process. What will happen to Home sapiens in the meantime is a daunting question. (shrink)

Ray Monk and Anthony Palmer, (eds) Bertrand Russell and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1996; pp. xvi + 383; Hans-Johann Glock, (ed.) The Rise of Analytic Philosophy, Blackwell, 1997; pp. xiv + 95; Matthias Schirn, (ed.) Frege: Importance and Legacy, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1996; pp. x + 466; Stuart G. Shanker, (ed.) Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the Twentieth Century, Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IX, Routledge, 1996; pp. xxxviii + 461; John Blackmore, (ed.) (...) Ludwig Boltzmann: His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900-1906, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1995; pp. xvi + 266. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's views are the fruit of the method of "phenomenological description," in part taken over from Husserl. This consists of describing our "original" experience of the world without assuming the truth or validity of any statements we may know about it. Unlike the Cartesian method it does not mean that we should suppose false those statements we know are true, but rather that we should "put these in brackets," or "suspend" their rel- evance, consider them as void of ontological implications. (...) For only if we succeed in doing so, the theory runs, will our description be "pure" or "presuppositionless," free of prejudice with respect to the nature of that which we are trying to describe. In doing the phenomenology of perception, then, we must deliberately discount all that we may chance to know about the "how" or the "why" of perception. In describing our "original" experience of the world, we must not let ourselves be influenced by any empirical or philosophical theory of perception, any hypotheses concerning its nature, causes, or physiological or other underlying processes involved. To cite a concrete example, in describing our perception of some visible scene we must discount anything we may chance to know about light rays impinging upon the retina, etc. Failure to do so might lead to a description not of that which we do see, but that which, given the retinal image, we ought to see, i.e., that portion of the visual scene, light rays from which, impinge upon our retina, and not the visual scene itself. Here, then, is one of the reasons for which we must go through a process of "phenomenological reduction" with respect to our knowledge of the world. But it is not the only reason. In fact the interdict goes further. We are not even entitled to use the usual categories of everyday or scientific descriptive discourse. Nor should we use the language of sense data, or that of the introspectionists. For both of these "presuppose" the validity of some at any rate of its categories. Both rest in the last resort on some theory regarding the nature of the "objective" world, or of our experience of it. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a reclusive and enigmatic philosopher, writing his most significant work off campus in remote locations. He also held a chair in the Philosophy Department at Cambridge, and is one of the university’s most recognized even if, as Ray Monk says, ‘reluctant professors’ of philosophy. Paradoxically, although Wittgenstein often showed contempt for the atmosphere at Cambridge and for academic philosophy in particular, it is hard to conceive of him making his significant contributions without considerable support from his academic (...) colleagues, his research fellowship and later teaching career at Cambridge. It is this conflicted relationship we explore, between the revolutionary thinker and his base within an educational institution. Starting from a brief biographical sketch of Wittgenstein’s academic life at Cambridge, including his involvement as a student and faculty member in the Moral Sciences Club, we look at how he reconceived the role of philosophy throughout this... (shrink)

Taking as point of departure the porousness (grammatically and otherwise) of cruising’s participants with the scene in which cruising takes place, this article thinks alongside aspects of _Cruising Utopia’s_ investment, via Ernst Bloch, in landscape. It considers in particular the complex aliveness of atmosphere, the unpredictability of its relational hydraulic, as it plays out across some of the texts informing Muñoz’s account of queer collectivity. Putting the atmospheric effects and affects of Eileen Myles, Frank O’Hara, and Ray Johnson into conversation (...) with Henry David Thoreau’s journal helps us identify a moving affinity between Muñoz’s and Leo Bersani’s overlapping investments in the queerness of landscape as ascesis, one that opens onto those aspects of quickening shimmer understood by Roland Barthes in terms of The Neutral. (shrink)

Long considered an allegory about the depredations of Western imperialism, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1897) can also be understood as a fable about the deleterious effects of advanced industrial capitalism. Wells associates the invading Martians with exploitative “vampiric” capitalists. Inventors of technologically sophisticated industrial and war machines, the Martians work twenty-four hours a day, pausing only to feed on the blood of their earthly subjects. Suggestively, Wells borrows Adam Smith’s famous phrase to describe the destructive Martian (...) Heat-Ray as “an invisible hand.” Curiously, however, the alien invaders share a collective consciousness (via telepathy), and thus can also be figured as ruthless authoritarian central planners of a dystopian socialist workers’ state that evolved out of a prior capitalist phase of economic history. The fantastic invasion of the Martians ultimately ends in disaster: they succumb to earthly bacteria against which they have developed no natural immunity. The stunning conclusion of the novel reveals a profound tension within Wells’s thought: as a utopian socialist (Wells became a Fabian in 1903), he endorses a fully “rational” centrally planned top-down order, but as a follower of Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Wells also affirms the power of an evolutionary (emergent) order to disrupt rationally designed social organizations; such spontaneous orders paradoxically prove the more influential and potentially the more beneficial shaper of the human future. Drawing on Wells’s early non-fiction utopian works, Anticipations (1901) and A Modern Utopia (1905), the economic writings of Adam Smith, F. A. Hayek, and Vernon Smith, and the scientific works of Darwin, as well as the literary criticism of Paul Cantor, this essay explores Wells’s contradictory representations of capitalism and socialism, with a particular focus on the problem of emergent order and the dangers of what Hayek calls “the fatal conceit” of scientistic or constructivist central planning. (shrink)

This article examines the role of photography in the scientific discovery of cosmic radiation and antimatter, showing how a visual medium designed to react to photons was successfully coopted to detect invisible particles and antiparticles through traces left by their collision, so-called annihilation events. The continuous presence of cosmic radiation means that every photograph is always already a double image, carrying both a visible surface formed by photons and a latent image carrying traces of cosmic rays, the latter ‘image’ continuing (...) in its perpetual state of ‘development’. It is the physical irregularity of the photograph exposed to the continuous and uniform shower of cosmic radiation that leads Doser to speculate on image formation not through an external referent but through the internal manipulation of the material substrate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Daring and Disappointing Dreams of Transhumanism's Secular EschatologyMichael Baggot L.C.IntroductionAlthough it is a largely secular movement, contemporary transhumanism borrows heavily from both Christian orthodoxy and heresies to construct a vision for human happiness. This article traces the roots of transhumanism's soteriology and eschatology and then examines the underlying anthropological problems that drive the hoped-for salvation through digital immortality. Unfortunately, the admirable desire to extend life sacrifices an appreciation (...) for the integral harmony of the human person's animal and spiritual dimensions. Since human actions manifest the person's intrinsic corporeality, attempts to detach the human personality from the body through digitalization would produce replicas of the dead without achieving true immortality. The surprising quasi-religious thrust of contemporary transhumanism's secular eschatology presents an opportunity to rediscover the Catholic patrimony's reflection on authentic divinization through the transhumanizing effects of divine grace. The article thus concludes with a Thomistic theosis-centered reorientation of secular transhumanism's eschatological aspirations for immanent immortality toward true human flourishing. [End Page 841]The Secular Eschatology of Contemporary TranshumanismThe leading transhumanist philosopher, Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom, thinks that his movement will provide real solutions to the perennial problems of humanity that traditional religions have tried and failed to address:While not a religion, transhumanism might serve a few of the same functions that people have traditionally sought in religion. It offers a sense of direction and purpose and suggests a vision that humans can achieve something greater than our present condition. Unlike most religious believers, however, transhumanists seek to make their dreams come true in this world, by relying not on supernatural powers or divine intervention but on rational thinking and empiricism, through continued scientific, technological, economic, and human development.1Yet, for all its protests against antiquated creeds, secular transhumanism frequently tends toward quasi-religious expressions. For instance, Meghan O'Gieblyn finds striking parallels between the evangelical and transhumanist worldviews she has embraced and abandoned during her life.2 Her writing explores her harrowing transition from Christian fundamentalism to trans-humanism and her eventual disillusionment with the techno-movement. Bible school had taught her about the various epochs of salvation history and her position within the "dispensation of grace" that marked the final preparation for the longed-for "millennial kingdom." As an adult, she spurned the false promises of organized religion and sought a more rational organization for her life. Later, a book recommendation plunged her into the thought of Google guru Ray Kurzweil and his narrative of evolutionary eras pointing toward an imminent "singularity" in which intelligent machines would emerge from an informational explosion. Such advanced robots would bring digital immortality through mind uploads and a nanotech new earth [End Page 842] that would put Eden to shame. Through his projects, Kurzweil purports to continue the Enlightenment tradition of empirical science and rational rigor. Similarly, many transhumanists tend to follow their Enlightenment predecessors in chiding traditional religion for obscurantist opposition to scientific progress. Nonetheless, O'Gieblyn discovered that the very movement that pretends to supplant the superstitions of the old-time religion is itself "a secular outgrowth of Christian eschatology."3The Christian-trained author could not help but detect familiar religious themes in the technocentric movement. Before it spread through the offices of Silicon Valley, the term "transhuman" first appeared in Henry Francis Carey's 1814 version of Dante's Paradiso, where the poet pilgrim recognizes that not even his own genius can describe the joy of risen life when he writes, "words may not tell of that transhuman change."4 Recent efforts to substitute supernatural resurrection with technological advancement find antecedents in the thirteenth-century friar Roger Bacon's quest for an elixir of life. Later, the nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox philosopher Nikolai Fedorov claims humans should use technology to control Darwin's unguided evolutionary process. Similarly, the twentieth-century Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin predicted a global machine network that would merge consciousnesses worldwide and prompt the Omega Point of transphysical union with the divine.The Eugenicist Julian Huxley strips such notions of their religious trappings to present a secular transhumanist project that will "overcome limitations…to arrive at... (shrink)