Side-Stepping Normativity: Selected Short Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner discusses Sylvia Townsend Warner's highly innovative narrative style, which does not conform to conventional modernist or postmodernist standards, and explores how Warner's short stories shift to off-centre positions. Side-Stepping Normativity further outlines the way in which Warner constantly challenges the categories we apply to classify our surroundings and analyses how Warner succeeds in creating queer, that is, non-heteronormative as well strange and peculiar stories without explicitly opposing the so-called norms of her time. In this, Side-Stepping Normativity joins a vibrant conversation in queer studies which revolves around the question how critics can approach literary texts from a non-antagonistic position. Rather than focussing on the role of the critic, however, this thesis shows that Warner's texts have long achieved what queer theorists seek to achieve on an analytical level.
Christine M. Korsgaard has had a profound influence on moral philosophy over the past forty years. Through her writing and teaching she has developed a distinctive, rigorous, and historically informed way of thinking about ethics, agency, and the normative dimension of human life more generally. The twelve original essays in this volume are written in her honor on the occasion of her retirement from teaching. They engage questions that recur in her work: Why are we obligated to do what morality demands? What features of our nature make us subject to moral obligation? What does it mean to be autonomous and responsible for what we do? What do we owe to nonhuman animals? Contributors include Stephen Darwall, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Barbara Herman, Richard Moran, Japa Pallikkathayil, Faviola Rivera-Castro, T.M. Scanlon, Tamar Schapiro, Sharon Street, David Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, and David Velleman. These essays shed light on Korsgaard's own views while staking out provocative new positions on the topics that feature centrally in her own work.
What does talk of meaning mean? All thinking consists in natural happenings in the brain. Talk of meaning though, has resisted interpretation in terms of anything that is clearly natural, such as linguistic dispositions. This, Kripke's Wittgenstein suggests, is because the concept of meaning is normative, on the 'ought' side of Hume's divide between is and ought. Allan Gibbard's previous books Wise Choices, Apt Feelings and Thinking How to Live treated normative discourse as a natural phenomenon, but not as describing the world naturalistically. His theory is a form of expressivism for normative concepts, holding, roughly, that normative statements express states of planning. This new book integrates his expressivism for normative language with a theory of how the meaning of meaning could be normative. The result applies to itself: metaethics expands to address key topics in the philosophy of language, topics which in turn include core parts of metaethics. An upshot is to lessen the contrast between expressivism and nonnaturalism: in their strongest forms, the two converge in all their theses. Still, they differ in the explanations they give. Nonnaturalists' explanations mystify, whereas expressivists render normative thinking intelligible as something to expect from beings like us, complexly social products of natural selection who talk with each other.
Functional Testing in Human Performance offers clinicians the first-ever compilation of information on clinical and data-based functional testing for sport, exercise, and occupational settings. This unique text serves as a primary resource for accurate assessment of individuals' functional abilities in order to develop program prescriptions to enhance their performance. Functional Testing in Human Performance is a comprehensive learning tool for novices and an essential reference for advanced clinicians. The text defines the role of function in physical performance and how it can be appropriately tested. Especially helpful for novices, the text explains testing criteria, testing terms relevant to research, and selecting the most appropriate test and testing sequence. Common testing mistakes are also presented as well as pitfalls to avoid when testing. The text also includes case studies that illustrate a variety of situations--including testing for a client recovering from a lower-extremity injury, discussing preseason testing for a large group of athletes, and presenting the study of a client in an occupational setting. These cases include detailed statistical analysis and normative data, offering clinicians the opportunity to consider the application of functional testing and implementation strategies adaptable to their specific practice setting. After laying a foundation, the text progresses to detailed testing procedures for discrete physical parameters and specific regions of the body. Tests are organized from least to most complex, and each test is presented in a step-by-step manner outlining the purpose of the test, equipment needed, testing procedure and recommendations for performing the test, interpretation of results, and the data to suggest normative values, reliability, and validity for each test. This formatting facilitates quick reference to testing information for on-the-spot use, whether in the clinic, athletic training room, gym, or job site. Throughout the text, the functional tests are accompanied by photos for visual clarity. To enhance understanding, a companion DVD features live-action demonstrations of 40 of the most advanced tests. Icons on those test pages indicate they are modeled on the DVD. In addition, the DVD may be loaded onto a computer to offer convenient print-on-demand access to reproducible forms for recording data from selected tests. Functional Testing in Human Performance offers a unique and comprehensive reference for assessment of physical activities in sport, recreation, work, and daily living. By presenting the theory and detailing the practice, this text assists clinicians in understanding and incorporating functional testing to identify their patients' or clients' limitations and enhance their performance, rehabilitation, and daily functioning.
Wolfgang Spohn presents the first full account of the dynamic laws of belief, by means of ranking theory. This book is his long-awaited presentation of ranking theory and its ramifications. He motivates and introduces the basic notion of a ranking function, which recognises degrees of belief and at the same time accounts for belief simpliciter. He provides a measurement theory for ranking functions, accounts for auto-epistemology in ranking-theoretic terms, and explicates the basic notion of a (deductive or non-deductive) reason. The rich philosophical applications of Spohn's theory include: a new account of lawlikeness, an account of ceteris paribus laws, a new perspective on dispositions, a rich and detailed theory of deterministic causation, an understanding of natural modalities as an objectification of epistemic modalities, an account of the experiential basis of belief—and thus a restructuring of the debate on foundationalism and coherentism (and externalism and contextualism)—and, finally, a revival of fundamental a priori principles of reason fathoming the basics of empiricism and the relation between reason and truth, and concluding in a proof of a weak principle of causality. All this is accompanied by thorough comparative discussions, on a general level as well as within each topic, and in particular with respect to probability theory.
Mennonite Women in Canada traces the complex social history and multiple identities of Canadian Mennonite women over 200 years. Marlene Epp explores women’s roles, as prescribed and as lived, within the contexts of immigration and settlement, household and family, church and organizational life, work and education, and in response to social trends and events. The combined histories of Mennonite women offer a rich and fascinating study of how women actively participate in ordering their lives within ethno-religious communities.
Addressed to the growing concerns about norms and values in policy assessment, this study develops a methodology for the political evaluation of public policy. It is designed to move policy evaluation beyond its current emphasis on efficient achievement of goals, focusing instead on the assessment of the acceptability of the goals themselves, emplo
Exploring contemporary juridical theories regarding the normative position of INGOs vis-à-vis the subjects of international law, this book engages in a thorough contextual-historical and interdisciplinary evaluation of the potential to generate solutions for the exercise of unregulated authority outside the state-system.
Though the publication of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions seemed to herald the advent of a unified study of the history and philosophy of science, it is a hard fact that history of science and philosophy of science have increasingly grown apart. Recently, however, there has been a series of workshops on both sides of the Atlantic (called '&HPS') intended to bring historians and philosophers of science together to discuss new integrative approaches. This is therefore an especially appropriate time to explore the problems with and prospects for integrating history and philosophy of science. The original essays in this volume, all from specialists in the history of science or philosophy of science, offer such an exploration from a wide variety of perspectives. The volume combines general reflections on the current state of history and philosophy of science with studies of the relation between the two disciplines in specific historical and scientific cases.
