This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology and queer theory and tackle questions such as: how can we define queer death studies as a research field? How can queer death studies problematize and rethink the life-death binary? Which notions and hermeneutic tools could be borrowed from other disciplines in order to better (...) define queer death studies? The present article includes the following contributions: – MacCormack P., What does queer death studies mean?; – Radomska M., On queering death studies; – Lykke N., Death as vibrancy; – Hillerup Hansen I., What concreteness will do to resolve the uncertain; – Olson P., Queer objectivity as a response to denials of death; – Manganas N., The queer lack of a chthonic instinct. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that one can articulate a historically attuned and analytically rich model for understanding jazz in its various inflections. That is, on the one hand, such a model permits us to affirm jazz as a historically conditioned, dynamic hybridity. On the other hand, to acknowledge jazz’s open and multiple character in no way negates our ability to identify discernible features of various styles and aesthetic traditions. Additionally, my model affirms the sociopolitical, legal (Jim Crow and copyright (...) laws), and economic structures that shaped jazz. Consequently, my articulation of bebop as an inflection of Afromodernism highlights the sociopolitical, and highly racialized context in which this music was created. Without a recognition of the sociopolitical import of bebop, one’s understanding of the music is impoverished, as one fails to grasp the strategic uses to which the music and discourses about the music were put. (shrink)

The Standard View of personal identity says that someone who exists now can exist at another time only if there is continuity of her mental contents or capacities. But no person is psychologically continuous with a fetus, for a fetus, at least early in its career, has no mental features at all. So the Standard View entails that no person was ever a fetus--contrary to the popular assumption that an unthinking fetus is a potential person. It is also mysterious what (...) does ordinarily happen to a human fetus, if it does not come to be a person. Although an extremely complex variant of the Standard View may allow one to persist without psychological continuity before one becomes a person but not afterwards, a far simpler solution is to accept a radically non-psychological account of our identity. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how (...) to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I address both of these concerns in filling out the account. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of Martha Nussbaum’s description of the capability approach, and offers an alternative. I will argue that Nussbaum’s characterization of the capability approach is flawed, in two ways. First, she unduly limits the capability to two strands of work, thereby ignoring important other capabilitarian scholarship. Second, she argues that there are five essential elements that all capability theories meet; yet upon closer analysis three of them are not really essential to the capability approach. I also offer (...) an alternative description of the capability approach, which is called the cartwheel view of the capability approach. This view is at the same time radically multidisciplinary yet also contains a foundationally robust core among its various usages, and is therefore much better able to make the case that the capability approach can be developed in a very wide range of more specific normative theories. Finally, the cartwheel view is used to argue against Nussbaum's claim that all capabilitarian political theory needs to be politically liberal. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes — and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide a principled (...) solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples, including to a debate concerning the ‘causal democracy’ of organismal development, with an anti-democratic (though not a gene-centric) moral. (shrink)

It is widely held that every person is a person essentially, where being a person is having special mental properties such as intelligence and self-consciousness. It follows that nothing can acquire or lose these properties. The paper argues that this rules out all familiar psychological-continuity views of personal identity over time. It also faces grave difficulties in accounting for the mental powers of human beings who are not intelligent and self-conscious, such as foetuses and those with dementia.

A number of philosophers argue that because of its history of systematic disagreement, philosophy has made little to no epistemic progress – especially in comparison to the hard sciences. One argument for this conclusion contends that the best explanation for systematic disagreement in philosophy is that at least some, potentially all, philosophers are unreliable. Since we do not know who is reliable, we have reason to conclude that we ourselves are probably unreliable. Evidence of one’s potential unreliability in a domain (...) purportedly defeats any first-order support one has for any judgments in that domain. This paper defends philosophy. First, accepting that science is rightfully treated as the benchmark of epistemic progress, I contend that a proper conception of epistemic progress highlights that philosophy and science are relevantly similar in terms of such progress. Secondly, even granting that systematic disagreement is a mark of unreliability and that it does characterize philosophy, this paper further argues that evidence of unreliability is insufficient for meta-level, domain-wide, defeat of philosophical judgments more generally. (shrink)

Transhumanists want to free us from the constraints imposed by our humanity by means of “uploading”: extracting information from the brain, transferring it to a computer, and using it to create a purely electronic person there. That is supposed to move us from our human bodies to computers. This presupposes that a human being could literally move to a computer by a mere transfer of information. The chapter questions this assumption, then asks whether the procedure might be just as good, (...) as far as our interests go, even if it could not move us to a computer. (shrink)

One big question in biology is what life is, but another is how life divides into living things. This is the problem of biological individuality. Proposed statements of the problem have been vague and incomplete. And proposed theories of biological individuality are not detailed enough to solve the problem even if they are correct. The root of these troubles is that their authors have not recognized the metaphysical claims presupposed in their statement of the problem. Making these claims explicit will (...) enable us to see better what the problem is and what form a solution to it would need to have. (shrink)

The fields of gender and social movements have traditionally consisted of separate literatures. Recently, however, a number of scholars have begun a fruitful exploration of the ways in which gender shapes political protest. This study adds three things to this ongoing discussion. First, the authors offer a systematic typology of the various ways in which movements are gendered and apply that typology to a wide variety of movements, including those that do not center on gender issues in any obvious way. (...) Second, the authors discuss the process by which movements become gendered. In doing so, they go beyond current scholarship by bringing “others” squarely into the gendered analysis. The article concludes by speculating about the outcomes of these processes and suggests that movements that draw on feminine stereotypes face a double bind that hampers their success. Illustrations come from movements in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. (shrink)

In special cases of partial twinning, two heads, each supporting a more-orless normal human mental life, emerge from a single torso. It is often argued that there must be two people in such a case, even if there is only one biological organism. That would pose a problem for ‘animalism’, the view that people are organisms. The paper argues that it is very hard to say what sort of non-organisms the people in such cases would be. Reflection on partial twinning (...) is no more comfortable for those who think we’re not organisms than for those who think we are. We may have to accept that a single person could have two separate mental lives. (shrink)

Here we present what we believe is a novel account of what languages are, along with an axiomatically rich representation of languages and language-related data that is based on this account. We propose an account of languages as aggregates of dispositions distributed across aggregates of persons, and in doing so we address linguistic competences and the processes that realize them. This paves the way for representing additional types of language-related entities. Like demographic data of other sorts, data about languages may (...) be of use to researchers in a number of areas, including biomedical research. Data on the languages used in clinical encounters are typically included in medical records, and capture an important factor in patient-provider interactions. Like many types of patient and demographic data, data on a person’s preferred and primary languages are organized in different ways by different systems. This can be a barrier to data integration. We believe that a robust framework for representing language in general and preferred and primary language in particular – which has been lacking in ontologies thus far – can promote more successful integration of language-related data from disparate data sources. (shrink)

This paper attempts to answer two questions: What is epistemic agency? And what are the motivations for having this concept? In response to the first question, it is argued that epistemic agency is the agency one has over one’s belief-forming practices, or doxastic dispositions, which can directly affect the way one forms a belief and indirectly affect the beliefs one forms. In response to the second question, it is suggested that the above conception of epistemic agency is either implicitly endorsed (...) by those theorists sympathetic to epistemic normativity or, at minimum, this conception can make sense of the legitimacy of the normative notions applicable to how and what one should believe. It is further contended that belief formation in some respects is a skill that can be intentionally developed and refined. Accepting this contention and the existence of certain epistemic norms provide inconclusive yet good reasons to endorse this concept. Recent challenges to this concept by Hillary Kornblith and Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij are also considered. (shrink)

The translational research community, in general, and the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) community, in particular, share the vision of repurposing EHRs for research that will improve the quality of clinical practice. Many members of these communities are also aware that electronic health records (EHRs) suffer limitations of data becoming poorly structured, biased, and unusable out of original context. This creates obstacles to the continuity of care, utility, quality improvement, and translational research. Analogous limitations to sharing objective data in (...) other areas of the natural sciences have been successfully overcome by developing and using common ontologies. This White Paper presents the authors’ rationale for the use of ontologies with computable semantics for the improvement of clinical data quality and EHR usability formulated for researchers with a stake in clinical and translational science and who are advocates for the use of information technology in medicine but at the same time are concerned by current major shortfalls. This White Paper outlines pitfalls, opportunities, and solutions and recommends increased investment in research and development of ontologies with computable semantics for a new generation of EHRs. (shrink)

Mike Olson and I have co-edited a collection of essays devoted to Georg Forster and more broadly to the significance of natural history as a shaping factor for philosophers during the German Enlightenment. Our thanks to Carl Niekirk for the invitation to curate this special section of the Lessing Yearbook (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2024), pp. 73-176. This is our introduction to the collection.

Forcing occurs when a magician influences the audience's decisions without their awareness. To investigate the mechanisms behind this effect, we examined several stimulus and personality predictors. In Study 1, a magician flipped through a deck of playing cards while participants were asked to choose one. Although the magician could influence the choice almost every time (98%), relatively few (9%) noticed this influence. In Study 2, participants observed rapid series of cards on a computer, with one target card shown longer than (...) the rest. We expected people would tend to choose this card without noticing that it was shown longest. Both stimulus and personality factors predicted the choice of card, depending on whether the influence was noticed. These results show that combining real-world and laboratory research can be a powerful way to study magic and can provide new methods to study the feeling of free will. (shrink)

This chapter explains Franz Brentano's metaethical theory and how it purports to deal with such difficulties. Brentano explains correctness in emotions by analogy with correctness in judgements. For a judgement to be correct is for it to concord with a judgement made by someone who judges with self-evidence (Evidenz). Self-evident judgements are guaranteed to be correct, and they are based either on "inner perception" or on presentations of objects that are rejected apodictically. Brentano's metaethical theory concerns first and foremost the (...) psychology of valuing and of moral judgement. Brentano is clearly a cognitivist about evaluative and moral judgement; such judgements are judgements about the correctness of feelings, and judgements are cognitive acts. However, one aspect of his position that seems congenial to contemporary expressivism. This has to do with expressivist treatments of disagreement. Brentano's views seem akin to the kind of foundationalist intuitionism that is traditionally associated with non-naturalism. (shrink)

In this research clipping, we present aspects of the audio-visual research Aquilomba Filomove carried out as collaborative action research by the Research Group Filomove: Philosophy, Arts and Latin América Aesthetics in 2018, together with Maria de Tie and the Comunidade Quilombola de Souza, in Chapada of Araripe, Municipality of Porteiras in the south of Ceará, Brazil. The coconut as an intertwined dance, tambourine touch and singing show the body techniques, rhythmic cells and compositional strategies that were part of the reconstruction (...) process of Afro-descendant manifestations, producing spaces of identification for the group. We guide action research towards the critical-reflective rescue of Latin American African American material and immaterial cultural heritage. -/- Neste recorte de pesquisa, apresentamos aspectos da pesquisa audiovisual Aquilomba FiloMove: O processo de re(criar) a tradição na trajetória da Mestra Maria de Tie e a Comunidade Quilombola de Souza realizada como pesquisa ação colaborativa pelo Grupo de Pesquisa FiloMove: Filosofias, Artes e Estéticas da América Latina em 2018, em conjunto com Maria de Tie e a Comunidade Quilombola de Souza, na Chapada de Araripe, Município de Porteiras, no sul do Ceará. O coco, dança entrelaçada, toque do pandeiro e canto, mostra técnicas corporais, células rítmicas e estratégias composicionais que fizeram parte do processo de reconstrução das manifestações afrodescendentes, produzindo espaços de identificação e reconhecimento para o grupo. Orientamos a pesquisa-ação para o resgate crítico-reflexivo do patrimônio cultural material e imaterial afro latino americano. (shrink)

Exposome research is put forward as a major tool for solving the nature-versus-nurture debate because the exposome is said to represent “the nature of nurture.” Against this influential idea, we argue that the adoption of the nature-versus-nurture debate into the exposome research program is a mistake that needs to be undone to allow for a proper bioethical assessment of exposome research. We first argue that this adoption is originally based on an equivocation between the traditional nature-versus-nurture debate and a debate (...) about disease prediction/etiology. Second, due to this mistake, exposome research is pushed to adopt a limited conception of agential control that is harmful to one's thinking about the good that exposome research can do for human health and wellbeing. To fully excise the nature-versus-nurture debate from exposome research, we argue that exposome researchers and bioethicists need to think about the exposome afresh from the perspective of actionability. We define the concept of actionability and related concepts and show how these can be used to analyze the ethical aspects of the exposome. In particular, we focus on refuting the popular “gun analogy” in exposome research, returning results to study participants and risk-taking in the context of a well-lived life. (shrink)

This paper—written for nonspecialist readers—asks whether life after death is in any sense possible given the apparent fact that after we die our remains decay to the point where only randomly scattered atoms remain. The paper argues that this is possible only if our remains are not in fact dispersed in this way, and discusses how that might be the case. -/- 1. Life After Death -- 2. Total Destruction -- 3. The Soul -- 4. Body-Snatching -- 5. Radical Resurrection (...) -- 6. Irreversibility -- 7. Atomic Reassembly -- 8. The Transporter -- 9. Replicas and Originals -- 10. Survival and Causal Connections. (shrink)

In this essay I want to offer an analysis of the structure of the fictional emotions that we have reading novels. I shall start with a presentation of the structure of emotions in general and their relation to aesthetic fiction. Afterwards, I shall offer a critical review of the current positions on fictional emotions. The aim of this section is to question the presuppositions that dominate the current debate on fictional emotions in particular and on emotions in general. Finally, I (...) shall develop my own account on this issue. The thesis that I am going to defend is that fictional emotions possess doxastic and practical rationality and that they are full fledged emotional experiences the reality of which we should not doubt, even though they show some peculiarities. Key Words: Fictional emotion, quasi-emotion, doxastic rationality, practical rationality, assumption. (shrink)

Dans cet article, j’analyse trois logiques normatives qui peuvent fonder les politiques éducatives en portant une attention particulière aux questions liées aux spécificités des sexes. Ces trois modèles éducatifs sont la théorie du capital humain, le discours du droit et l’approche des potentialités. D’abord, je décris cinq rôles que l’éducation peut jouer. Ensuite, j’analyse les trois modèles pouvant fonder les politiques éducatives. La théorie du capital humain pose un certain nombre de problèmes parce qu’elle s’avère économiciste, fragmentée et essentiellement instrumentaliste. (...) Le discours du droit et l’approche des potentialités sont en principe des modèles multidimensionnels et inclusifs et peuvent par le fait même tenir compte des rôles intrinsèques et non éco- nomicistes de l’éducation. Toutefois, selon la manière dont quelqu’un satisfait aux exigences spécifiques des cadres théoriques du droit et des potentialités, ceux-ci peuvent également présenter des difficultés. Je termine cet article en soutenant que la visée intrinsèque des politiques éducatives devrait être d’augmenter les potentialités des individus et que nous devrions employer les discours du droit de façon stratégique, c’est-à-dire lorsqu’il est probable qu’ils amènent les gens à réaliser leurs potentialités. (shrink)

Advances in immunotherapy pave the way for vaccines that target not only infections, but also unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. A nicotine vaccine that eliminates the pleasure associated with smoking could potentially be used to prevent children from adopting this addictive and dangerous behavior. This paper offers an ethical analysis of such vaccines. We argue that it would be permissible for parents to give their child a nicotine vaccine if the following conditions are met: (1) the vaccine is expected to (...) result in a net benefit to each individual vaccinated, (2) the expected harms from the side effects of the vaccine are lower than the non-voluntary harms of smoking, and (3) there are no less manipulative methods available that are as effective at preventing smoking initiation. Finally, we show how the framework developed here could be used to analyze the ethics of other chemical interventions designed to modify children’s behavior. (shrink)

Locates, discusses, and explains the transition between Nietzsche's middle and late periods represented by the first four books of _The Gay Science_.

Some adaptationist explanations are regarded as maximally solid and others fanciful just-so stories. Just-so stories are explanations based on very little evidence. Lack of evidence leads to circular-sounding reasoning: “this trait was shaped by selection in unseen ancestral populations and this selection must have occurred because the trait is present.” Well-supported adaptationist explanations include evidence that is not only abundant but selected from comparative, populational, and optimality perspectives, the three adaptationist subdisciplines. Each subdiscipline obtains its broad relevance in evolutionary biology (...) via assumptions that can only be tested with the methods of the other subdisciplines. However, even in the best-supported explanations, assumptions regarding variation, heritability, and fitness in unseen ancestral populations are always present. These assumptions are accepted given how well they would explain the data if they were true. This means that some degree of “circularity” is present in all evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary explanation corresponds not to a deductive structure, as biologists usually assert, but instead to ones such as abduction or induction. With these structures in mind, we show the way to a healthier view of “circularity” in evolutionary biology, and why integration across the comparative, populational, and optimality approaches is necessary. (shrink)

According to metaphysical tensism, there is an objective, albeit ever changing, present moment corresponding to our phenomenal experiences :635–642, 2013). One of the principle objections to metaphysical tensism has been Einstein’s argument from special relativity, which says that given that the speed of light is constant, there is no absolute simultaneity defined in terms of observations of light rays . In a recent paper, Brogaard and Marlow :635–642, 2013) argue that this objection fails. We argue that Brogaard and Marlow’s argument (...) fails to show that special relativity does not pose a threat to metaphysical tensism. (shrink)

There is ample justification for having analogical material in standardized tests for graduate school admission, perhaps especially for law school. We think that formal-analogy questions should compare different scenarios whose structure is the same in terms of the number of objects and the formal properties of their relations. The paper deals with this narrower question of how legitimately to have formal analogy test items, and the broader question of what constitutes a formal analogy in general.

Objective: to evaluate CANLPH score and systemic immune inflammation index (SII) in patients with symptomatic rheumatic mitral stenosis (MS) undergoing percutaneous mitral balloon valvuloplasty (PMBV). -/- Methods: 62 patients who underwent PMBV in our clinic between 2018 and 2021 were included retrospectively. The patients were divided into 2 groups according to echo score. The CANLPH score was calculated from the cut-off values of C-reactive protein to albumin ratio (CAR), neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to hemoglobin ratio (PHR), determined (...) with the Youden index and SII by the formula platelet x neutrophil/lymphocyte. P <0.05 was considered statistically significant. -/- Results: The mean age of the patients was 44.5±10.4 years (40 female, 64.5%). The mean values of SII and CANLPH scores were higher in the Echo score >8 group (p <0.001, both). The mean mitral gradient before and after PMBV was 12.6±5.7mm Hg and 5.0±2.4 mm Hg, and the mean valve area was 1.12±0.27 cm2 and 1.85±0.29 cm2. A statistically significant and negative correlation was observed between the gradient decrease after the procedure and the CANLPH score and SII (r=-0.426, p=0.001 and r=-0.418, p=0.001, respectively). In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, it was concluded that the ability of CANPLH score to predict the higher Echo scores was noninferior to SII with an area under curve (AUC:0.820 (0.701-0.906) and AUC:0.786 (0.664-0.880), z statistics 0.576 and p=0.564. -/- Conclusion: SII and CANLPH scores are correlated with Echo score. A significant negative relationship was found with both biomarkers and gradient decrease after the PMBV. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Geiger’s realist and Wollheim’s projectionist accounts on expressive properties and expressive perception by considering them within the larger contexts from which they emerged, by using as far as possible a common language and by focusing on the questions of the nature of expressive properties and of how we grasp them. My aim is to show that it is possible to put into dialogue phenomenological and Anglo-American aesthetics and that this dialogue might lead (...) to new insights about how we engage with art. (shrink)

"Nothing Better Than Death" is a comprehensive analysis of the near-death experiences profiled on my website at www.near-death.com. This book provides complete NDE testimonials, summaries of various NDEs, NDE research conclusions, a question and answer section, an analysis of NDEs and Christian doctrines, famous quotations about life and death, a NDE bibliography, book notes, a list of NDE resources on the Internet, and a list of NDE support groups associated with IANDS.org - the International Association for Near-Death Studies. -/- The (...) unusual title of this book, "Nothing Better Than Death," was inspired by NDE experiencer Dr. Dianne Morrissey who once said, "If I lived a billion years more, in my body or yours, there's not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as being dead. Nothing." -/- Having read every NDE book I could get my hands on, I didn't want to create just another NDE book. My motivation was to give readers a large variety of information about NDEs challenging both the seasoned NDE enthusiast as well as the novice. This book gives readers the means to understand the NDE phenomenon from the perspective of a large number of some of the most profound NDEs ever documented. My hope is that you will enjoy this book, my labor of love, and that you will be truly blessed by the heavenly insights within it. (shrink)

The aim of this collection is to create a curated set of key German source texts from the eighteenth-century life sciences devoted to theories of generation, heredity, and race. The criteria for inclusion stem from our sense that there is an argument to be made for connecting three domains of inquiry that have heretofore remained mostly distinct in both their presentation and scholarly analysis: i) life science debates regarding generation and embryogenesis, ii) emerging philosophical and anthropological theories regarding the nature (...) of racial typology, and iii) the role of empire in supplying the ethnographic materials in use as evidence for the various investigations and theories being proposed. The Key Texts volume thus has three sections. The first section is devoted to selections from theorists working to create an account of the processes guiding generation and embryogenetic development. Given that at the time there were few ways to definitively prove that babies received contributions from both parents in their creation, mixed-race children became increasingly valuable sources of evidence for those insisting on joint inheritance. Although this sets up the second section of the volume—since one can trace a clear facet of racial biometric science out of this original set of enquiries—the bulk of section two is devoted to the many different accounts created at the time to understand and delineate racial differences. The third section is focused on ‘race and empire’ in order to situate the scientific texts of the previous sections in their socio-historical context. By including these pieces, it is our aim to remind readers that scientific curiosity over the nature and origin of racial diversity did not develop in a vacuum but indeed existed in full knowledge of the exploitation and dispossession of human beings. The ‘materials’ for this research program were in many cases either directly taken from black and brown human beings caught up in Europe’s colonial projects or were provided by the data gathered during large-scale voyages of exploration. The material basis of this type of research was rarely reflected upon by any of the theorists in sections one and two of the volume, a fact that has led many historians of science to focus on these theories without attention to the socio-historical context; we are deliberately trying to avoid this and indeed to deepen our own readers’ appreciation of the fact. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between technological profile, digital literacy, and self-efficacy among teachers in blended learning. The study utilized the descriptive-correlational design. The participants involved 35 teachers selected via purposive sampling from urban schools in Maasin City implementing printed and online teaching modalities. Standardized tools assessed teachers’ digital technology profile, literacy, and self-efficacy. Significant findings revealed that teachers have easy access to digital technology, are somewhat familiar with technological concepts, often utilize ICT-based technologies, and perceive usage purposes as necessary. (...) Teachers’ digital literacy and self-efficacy are at the average level. Correlation analysis established a significant and strong relationship between the technological profile of teachers and their digital literacy. Digital literacy also significantly and strongly correlated with self-efficacy. This study concluded that the technological profile of teachers influences their digital literacy level. Teachers with high digital literacy skills increase their self-efficacy in technology integration. The blended learning approach constitutes teachers’ digital literacy and self-efficacy as critical players of effectiveness. (shrink)

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic threat, the Department of Education (DepEd) established the Basic Education - Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP) to allow students to continue their education and teachers to conduct instruction in a safe working and learning environment. As a result, DepEd implemented the distance learning approach, including Modular Distance Learning (MDL), for the School Year 2020-2021. This paper investigated the practices, challenges, and coping mechanisms of teachers and students involved in the implementation of the MDL in Schools (...) Division of Laoag City. This qualitative research utilized semi-structured interview guide to collect data from 20 teachers and 20 learners from elementary, junior high and senior high schools. Using the phenomenological study, data were analyzed and organized into themes. The study's major themes revealed that teachers and students began familiarizing themselves with the features of MDL but encountered challenges such as printing, distribution, and retrieval of modules, as well as monitoring of student progress on the part of the teacher and answering overloaded activities on the part of the students. They claimed, however, that they have unique coping mechanisms in dealing with the identified challenges by resolving issues independently and seeking help from family and colleagues. Finally, the Modular Distance Learning Adoption Framework (MDLAF) was developed and validated for teachers and students to effectively adopt MDL. The researchers recommended that relevant scaffolding such as capacity building, counseling and instructional support be provided to both teachers and students to effectively adopt different learning modalities such as MDL. (shrink)

If, as argued in some simulationist accounts, empathy aims at grasping the phenomenal richness of the other’s experience and resonating with it, it is difficult to explain our empathy with emotions that we have never experienced ourselves. According to a long philosophical tradition, imagination is constrained by experience. We have to be acquainted with the qualitative feel of the other’s experience in order to imagine it. A critical view of simulationist accounts would claim that if we cannot imagine how the (...) other feels because we are not acquainted with it, empathy cannot take place. Contrary to such criticism, this paper takes a moderately optimistic view of the simulationist claim. It develops a model to explain how we imagine the other’s emotions by drawing on phenomenal concepts, affective memories, and imaginative scaffoldings. I argue that this model can explain how we empathize with the other’s emotions regardless of whether these are familiar or novel to us. However, in the latter case, the imagined phenomenal quality is not identical but probably only similar to the other’s emotion. This similarity suffices for us to speak about empathy. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass, in his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, describes how his sociopolitical identity was scripted by the white other and how his spatiotemporal existence was likewise constrained through constant surveillance and disciplinary dispositifs. Even so, Douglass was able to assert his humanity through creative acts of resistance. In this essay, I highlight the ways in which Douglass refused to accept the other-imposed narrative, demonstrating with his life the truth of his being—a human being unwilling to (...) be classified as thing or property. As I engage selected passages and key events from Douglass's narrative, I likewise explore the ways in which the resistance tactics. (shrink)

Socioeconomic status refers to the family's social and economic standing in society. It is measured by combining an individual or group's economic and social position, which is often based on income, education, and occupation. It significantly affects academic performance and even one's health status. The pandemic changed the educational system, causing a huge transition from traditional learning methods to online learning. This shift resulted in confusion, burden, and difficulty among students from different walks of life. This study was conducted to (...) determine the academic stress on online learning among nursing students in relation to their economic status and their ability to access technology. The study utilized a quantitative-correlational method aided by a standard questionnaire. Two hundred thirty-six University of Bohol nursing students enrolled in the second semester of SY 2021–2022 were included in the study by random selection. Data revealed a significant correlation between economic status and the level of stress related to academic expectations and a significant correlation between economic status and access to technology after being subjected to the Spearman rho test of correlation. However, no significant correlation was found between access to technology and the respondents' level of academic stress. (shrink)

Problematic perceptions about race damage our society. These attitudes can seem impossible to overcome, but philosophers Dr Jennifer Mensch, at Western Sydney University in Australia, and Dr Michael Olson, at Marquette University in the US, beg to differ. They are compiling a collection of 18th-century philosophical and scientific texts that helped shape the way people saw race across the Western world, and were used to justify colonisation. They believe that by exposing these historical roots of racism, opportunities to improve (...) societal attitudes to race will become easier to identify. -/- This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). (shrink)

Foucault’s later writings continue his analyses of subject-formation but now with a view to foregrounding an active subject capable of self-transformation via ascetical and other self-imposed disciplinary practices. In my essay, I engage Foucault’s studies of ancient Greco-Roman and Christian technologies of the self with a two-fold purpose in view. First, I bring to the fore additional continuities either downplayed or overlooked by Foucault’s analysis between Greco-Roman transformative practices including self-writing, correspondence, and the hupomnemata and Christian ascetical and epistolary practices. (...) Second, I add exegetical support to recent arguments denying Foucault’s advocacy for the death of the subject per se. In fact, my analyses show that Foucault’s ethico-aesthetic turn and its corresponding concern with self-transformation and self-(re)constitution via ascetical practices assumes a subject with rational and volitional capacities. Without these capacities, the art of living Foucault describes is not possible. (shrink)

Our thesis is that reasoning plays a greater—or at least a different—role in understanding oral discourse such as lectures and speeches than it does in understanding comparatively long written discourse. For example, both reading and listening involve framing hypotheses about the direction the discourse is headed. But since a reader can skip around to check and revise hypotheses, the reader’s stake in initially getting it right is not as great as the listener’s, who runs the risk of getting hopelessly lost. (...) We also consider how representing the content of discourse and dealing with its pragmatic logic differs in reading and listening. (shrink)

Layunin ng pag-aaral na mailahad at matukoy ang kahalagahan ng sikolohiya, implikasyon, at mga danas at lakbayin ng “Sunod” sa pangkat ng Biga at mga karatig tribo nito sa Tabuk City, Kalinga. Ang nasabing pananaliksik ay sumailalim sa Kuwalitatibo at Deskriptibong pag-aaral na nilapatan ng Sikolohiyang pagdulog, Sosyolohiya, at Etnograpiya, tinalakay ang mga kulturang kinagisnan ng isang pangkat. Mga piling “Pangat” o pinuno at matatanda sa pangkat Biga ang mga kalahok sa pananaliksik na nagbigay ng kani-kanilang mga karunungan, karanasan at (...) lakbayin sa pagdalumat ng “Sunod” sa buhay. Ang resulta ng pag-aaral sa mga Ibiga at mga karatig tribo ay may maayos na ugnayan at mapayapang pamumuhay. Malakas ang tungkulin ng pamilya sa pagbibigay ng disiplina at pagtutulungan sa bawat miyebro. Lumitaw rin na hindi kailangang magkadugo ang maituturing na “sunod” kundi lahat ng katribo at mga karatig tribo. Dahil dito ay naiiwasan ang mga di-kanais- nais na kaganapan o mga kaguluhan sa pagitan ng bawat isa. Matatag na kanilang sinusunod ang kahalagahan ng relasyong “sunod” sa bawat araw ng kanilang pakikibaka sa buhay. Napatunayan din na malakas ang kapangyarihan ng mg “Pangat” o “Tribal elders” at ibang matatanda sa pagpapanatili ng kaayusan. (shrink)

The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine critically and discuss the role of imagination in science and religion, with particular emphasis on its possible epistemic, creative, and meaning-making functions. In order to answer my research questions, I apply theories and concepts from contemporary philosophy of mind on scientific and religious practices. This framework allows me to explore the mental state of imagination, not as an isolated phenomenon but, rather, as one of many mental states that co-exist and interplay (...) in our cogntive architecture. Based on the philosophical discourse of philosophy of mind, four types of imagination are indentified and conceptualized: sensory, propositional, experiential, and creative imagination. These categories are then employed on five phenomena that can be found in scientific and religious environments: metaphors, models, thought experiments, aspect perception, and - in the religious case - rituals. In relation to the concept of religious "seeing" I consider how imaginings may influence visionary experiences and visualization, and compare these phenomena with cases of scientific visualization and eureka experiences. In regard to scientific and religious models, a distinction is made between, on the one hand, two notions of truth and, on the other hand, truth-independent meaning-making. In light of these categories, I differentiate between, and critically discuss, the use of imagination in doxastic, non-doxastic and fictionalist accounts. In light of this investigation, I formulate and defend the position of interactivism, which acknowledges a constant interplay between different attitudes and mental states. In my examination of rituals and scientific and religious thought experiments, special attention is given to the mental capacity to recreate the experiences that are entailed in an imagined scenario. At the end of the investigation, I consider the possible impact that my study might have on how we view science and religion as well as the dialogue bewteen these two fields. (shrink)