Carnap\u27s Scientific Humanism

Scientific humanism is the formula by which Rudolf Carnap positions science as the best tool for improving life. Science allows us to maximize the rational character of human decisions on the basis of meta-values that include epistemic values and values for rational decision making. These values are politically neutral in that they are not tied to any partisan political position, but deeply political because they allow us to avoid irrational reasoning and to make the right use of science for our political and moral decisions. Maximizing rationality does not mean, for Carnap, that we must think and calculate before every action. Rather, the overall noncognitive character of values and decisions leads to a decisionist momentum, which means that we must find the right balance, both personally and politically, between sharp thinking and following our attitudes, because science is a signpost, not a leader, in life. Carnap’s views are rooted in the intellectual currents of early twentieth-century Central Europe, including Max Weber’s scientific value-neutrality, the German Life Reform and Youth Movement, Lebensphilosophie, the decisionism of the 1920s, and the empiriocriticist branch of Austrian social democracy

White/Right Shakespeare: Whiteness in the Field of Early Modern Studies

This review essay considers whiteness in Shakespeare and early modern studies through five books: David Sterling Brown’s Shakespeare’s White Others; Miles Grier’s Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery; Farah Karim-Cooper’s The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race; White People in Shakespeare: Essays on Race, Culture and the Elite, edited by Arthur L. Little, Jr; and Ian Smith’s Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

Joseph Gamble. Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023.

This review considers Joseph Gamble\u27s Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity

Defying the “Illiberal” Gig Economy: Coping Strategies of Freelance Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates

How do low-skilled migrant workers navigate restrictive gig economies in illiberal host states of the Global South? Despite the growing gig economy, scholars have yet to examine the linkage between the politics of the gig economy and migrant resilience in illiberal host states in the Global South. Using a single case study of freelance Filipina domestic workers in the UAE (N = 20), I argue that, despite facing legal and economic risks (penalties), freelance migrant workers have produced an informal freelancing visa system to contest the formal and hierarchical segmentation of the gig economy via three diverse strategies: co-optation, tapping and brokering. These evasive social coping strategies mirror their collective resistance against structural labour exploitation and reinforce their autonomous role in the social (re)production of community solidarity within informal gig economies. Overall, this study contributes to empirical and theoretical discourse on the politics of illiberal migration management and the gig economy by featuring female migrant freelancers’ complex social agency within illiberal gig economies in the Global South

Jody Enders, ed. and trans. Trial by Farce: A Dozen Medieval French Comedies in English for the Modern Stage. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023.

This review considers Jody Enders\u27s translation and edition Trial by Farce: A Dozen Medieval French Comedies in English for the Modern Stage

Joseph Mansky. Libels and Theater in Shakespeare’s England: Publics, Politics, Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

This review considers Joseph Mansky\u27s Libels and Theater in Shakespeare’s England: Publics, Politics, Performance

Evidence and Cause in Nineteenth-Century Naturalized Kantianism: : Helmholtz, Lange, and Quine’s Argumentative Strategies

This paper argues that W. V. O. Quine’s twentieth-century evidential and proximal theory of meaning and belief, developed in opposition to Donald Davidson, employs argumentation strategies strikingly similar to those of Hermann von Helmholtz and Friedrich Albert Lange in their nineteenth-century efforts to naturalize Kant’s epistemology. Contrary to Jim Hopkins’s interpretation, which links Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious predictive inferences with Davidson’s causal theory of action and truth-conditional semantics (2018), this paper contends that Quine’s epistemic externalism, rooted in a naturalized account of evidentiality and proximality, aligns more closely with Helmholtz and Lange’s psychophysiological theory of meaning

Assessing the Impact of Approval of Mifegymiso on Abortion Access and Care in Canada

Approval of Mifegymiso (mifepristone and misoprostol) by Health Canada in 2015 provided a more effective non-invasive option for medical abortions in Canada and aligned Canada with the 60 other countries that had been safely utilizing the drug combination for decades. Initial approval included a number of stipulations and restrictions that were later lifted, paving the way for the drug to be offered via telemedicine under the supervision of a clinician. The approval was anticipated to increase access to abortion services, especially for those in remote and rural areas who may not have been close by to a facility where an abortion procedure could be offered. Public polling shows approval for medication abortion has remained high, especially in the wake of attacks on reproductive health in the United States. Since Health Canada approval and its marketing, the drug is now universally available across Canada with provincial health systems covering the cost for anyone with a valid health card and prescription. Thirty-two percent of abortions in Canada utilize the drug combination. Celopharma remains the only manufacturer in Canada and there have been delays in commercial release and a handful of shortages due to manufacturing issues. L’autorisation du Mifegymiso (mifépristone et misoprostol) par Santé Canada en 2015 a permis d’offrir une option non-invasive plus efficace pour les avortements médicamenteux au Canada et a aligné le Canada sur les 60 autres pays qui utilisaient cette combinaison de médicaments en toute sécurité depuis des décennies. L’autorisation comprenait initialement un certain nombre de conditions et de restrictions qui ont ensuite été levées, ouvrant la voie à la prescription du médicament par télémédecine sous la supervision d’un clinicien. Cette autorisation devrait permettre d’améliorer l’accès aux services d’avortement, en particulier pour les personnes vivant dans des zones reculées et rurales qui n’avaient peut-être pas accès à un établissement proposant des procédures d’avortement. Les sondages d’opinion montrent que le soutien à l’avortement médicamenteux reste élevé, en particulier à la suite des attaques contre la santé reproductive aux États-Unis. Depuis son autorisation par Santé Canada et sa commercialisation, le médicament est désormais disponible partout au Canada et pris en charge par les systèmes de santé provinciaux pour toute personne disposant d’une carte de santé et d’une ordonnance valide. Trente-deux pourcent des avortements au Canada utilisent cette combinaison de médicaments. Celopharma demeure le seul fabricant au Canada et la mise sur le marché a pris du retard et a connu quelques pénuries en raison de problèmes de fabrication