Dismantling the Self/Other Dichotomy in Science: Towards a Feminist Model of the Immune System

Despite the development of a vast body of literature pertaining to feminism and science, examples of how feminist phifosophies might be applied to scientific theories and practice have been limited. Moreover, most scientists remain unfamiliar with how feminism pertains to their work. Using the example of the immune system, this paper applies three feminist epistemologies feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernismtoassess competingchims of immune function within a feminist context.     

Trust and Involvement as Higher-Order Factors of General Attitudes Towards Politics. Testing a Structural Model Across 26 Democracies

Interindividual differences in how people think and feel about politics have been investigated for decades. However, the great number of attitudinal concepts that has been developed to describe these differences is likely to distract from their conceptual overlap and dimensional structure. In addition, not much is known about the cross-cultural invariance of their interrelation. We propose that attitudes towards politics can be structured by two broad higher-order factors, a factor of general political involvement and a factor of general political trust. In two studies (N₁ = 767; N₂ = 29,018), including representative samples from 26 democracies, we first conduct several confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to show that the higher-order model is a well-fitting and parsimonious alternative to a baseline model without higher-order factors in most samples. Second, we present evidence from multigroup CFA that the overall patterns of factor loadings are the same across all 26 countries. We interpret this structural equivalence across different democracies as support for the assumption that general political involvement and general political trust reflect basic orientations towards politics that are based on (1) demands of democratic political systems and (2) universal principles in human trait structure.     

Philosophy as Therapy: Towards a Conceptual Model

Abstract

The idea of philosophy as a kind of therapy, though by no means standard, has been present in metaphilosophical reflection since antiquity. Diverse versions of it were also discussed and applied by more recent authors such as Wittgenstein, Hadot and Foucault. In order to develop an explicit, general and systematic model of therapeutic philosophy a relatively broad and well-structured account provided by Martha Nussbaum is subjected to analysis. The results obtained, subsequently, form a basis for a new model constructed around the set of notions intrinsically connected with any, philosophical, psychological, or medical, form of therapy. The conceptual framework of: disease and its symptoms, the health ideal, the process of treatment with its techniques, therapeutic theory, physician, patient, and the physician-patient relationship is constructed and investigated in the context of its possible metaphilosophical use. An illustrative application of this scheme to philosophical therapy developed by Stoicism is, then, discussed. Finally, the issue of the therapeutic metaphilosophy's scope as well as the problem of therapeutic philosophy's specificity and integrity are briefly indicated.     

The New Age: Towards a Market Model

The problem of how the New Age may be defined is widely acknowledged among commentators. It is hard to delineate and does not fit easily into existing analytical categories. This paper will review how scholars have conceptualised the movement. It will discuss the problems inherent in attempting to specify its constituents, fix its limits, and characterise its organisational forms. The later sections advances the argument that some of its most distinctive characteristics may be accounted for by acknowledging the market dynamics at play in New Age milieux. It is proposed that the diffuse overall shape of the movement is the result of determinate commercial institutional arrangements.     

Metatheoretical Structuralism: a General Program for Analyzing Science

In spite of the ‘experimental turn’ now fashionable in the philosophy of science, the question of the structure and identity criteria of scientific theories continues to be a central issue for the philosophical analysis of empirical science. We need a precise metatheory of empirical theories to deal with this issue. Metatheoretical structuralism appears to offer the most adequate approach in this sense so far. First, some basic intuitions about what empirical theories are, and how they are structured, are laid out. Then, the main notions used by metatheoretical structuralism to analyze theories are explained, and they are illustrated by applying them to an example of a simple physical theory. Finally, it is argued that the picture of the structure and identity of empirical theories coming out of structuralistic analysis adequately corresponds to the basic intuitions stated at the beginning.     

Createativity and Mood: Towards a Model of Cognitive Mediation

Empirical and biographical evidence reveals that the highly creative are more likely to experience mental health problems; most commonly depression and particularly within artistic fields. Cognitive theories of creative thinking suggest that artistic creativity may be associated with a divergent style of thinking, which is distinguished by specific differences with respect to logical appraisal skills. As similar patterns of appraisal are frequently found in those experiencing depression, it is suggested that appraisal may be a mediating feature between creativity and affect. This hypothesis is tested in the present study. Creativity, cognitive appraisal patterns and mood were measured in 104 undergraduate students (N = 36 art and 68 science) by standardised assessments. In keeping with predictions, art students were found to be more creative, experienced lower mood, and displayed greater degrees of distortion and bias in their appraisals.     

Retribution and Restoration as General Orientations Towards Justice

We proposed two distinct understandings of what justice means to victims and what its restoration entails that are reflected in individual‐level justice orientations. Individuals with a retributive orientation conceptualize justice as the unilateral imposition of just deserts against the offender. In contrast, individuals with a restorative orientation conceptualize justice as achieving a renewed consensus about the shared values violated by the offence. Three studies showed differential relations between these two justice orientations and various individual‐level values/ideologies and predicted unique variance in preferences for concrete justice‐restoring interventions, judicial processes and abstract justice restoration goals. The pattern of results lends validity to the understanding of justice as two distinct conceptualizations, a distinction that provides much needed explanation for divergent preferences for injustice responses. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards a new image of science: Science teaching and non-analytical philosophy of science

This paper describes an attempt to develop a pedagogy for teaching philosophy in science rather than a philosophy of science to be taught in the Bulgarian educational system.