As educators, writers and public intellectuals, many of us share a sense of responsibility for reflecting on the worlds in which we live, with a view to transforming them for the common good, towar...

Psychology's tendency to focus on confirmatory analyses before ensuring constructs are clearly defined and accurately measured is exacerbating the generalizability crisis. Our growing use of digital behaviors as predictors has revealed the fragility of subjective measures and the latent constructs they scaffold. However, new technologies can provide opportunities to improve conceptualizations, theories, and measurement practices.

Our amorous and erotic experiences do not simply bring us pleasure; they shape our very identities, our ways of relating to ourselves, each other and our shared world. This volume reflects on some of our most prevalent assumptions relating to identity, the body, monogamy, libido, sexual identity, seduction, fidelity, orgasm, and more.The book covers common conflicts and confusions and includes work by established scholars and innovative new thinkers. Philosophically challenging but highly readable, the volume is ideal for a wide range (...) of courses on love and sex, including those taught in philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

[Under contract with CUP, in preparation] What is a mind? Is it possible for a computer or other machine to have a mind? And how would we know? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these timely questions. Its central idea is that mental states (thoughts, beliefs, desires) are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we should be seen as merely speaking “as if” humans (and perhaps other creatures or even artifacts) had such states, in order to make (...) sense of their behavior. -/- This book is unique in presenting and defending three versions of mental fictionalism in a single volume (prefix-semantical mental fictionalism, pretense mental fictionalism, and affective storyism). The authors are three of the world’s most prominent proponents (respectively) of each variety: T. Parent (Nazarbayev University), Adam Toon (University of Exeter), and Tamás Demeter (Corvinus University of Budapest). The book essentially pits these different varieties of mental fictionalism against each other, allowing the reader to size them up. In the process, fresh perspectives are offered on foundational matters in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of mental states and folk psychology, as well as hot topics such as embodied cognition, animal cognition, consciousness, and AI. -/- UPDATE: The chapter on prefix-semantical mental fictionalism is available upon request; write to nontology "at" gmail. (shrink)

This essay examines the work of Ewa Lipska, who, since the publication of her first book in 1967, has been among the most acclaimed of recent Polish poets but less well known in the West than Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, or Adam Zagajewski. She is a philosophical poet, making frequent reference to the tradition of the Frankfurt School, in order to ironize the Enlightenment, Marxism, and Critical Theory, but also in order to assess the dangers of globalization. The focus (...) of the analysis is Lipska’s volume 1999, the linchpin of a poetic project that engages centuries of social systems (political, economic, scientific, technological, artistic) and their vocabularies in order to examine the viability of human knowledge and the motivations underlying its creation. (shrink)

We argue that Madole & Harden's distinction between shallow versus deep genetic causes can bring some clarity to causal claims arising from genome-wide association studies (GWASs). However, the authors argue that GWAS only finds shallow genetic causes, making GWAS commensurate with the environmental studies they hope to supplant. We also assess whether their distinction applies best to explanations or causes.

Antonio Gramsci is today the most translated Italian theorist. His theory has been used extensively in English language publications in cultural studies and international relations. This article examines the use, abuse and fruitful additions to Gramsci of Stuart Hall, Edward Saïd, Ranajit Guha, Robert Cox, Stephen Gill and Adam Morton. Its object is to examine their fidelity to what the mainstream Italian philology of Gramsci has written about his concepts and their order.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 131-136 [Access article in PDF] Language, Logic, and Recovery:A Commentary on van Staden Paul Falzer and Larry Davidson Keywords: analytic philosophy, experience, Frege, ordinary language, psychosis, psychotherapy. VAN STADEN'S PAPER, "Linguistic Markers of Recovery," takes on a formidable task. As he explains it, findings from a previously conducted empirical study suggest that recovery from a psychiatric condition can be predicted by certain (...) patterns of first person pronoun usage. His current paper explains how these patterns follow the mathematical logic of Gottlob Frege. van Staden's attempt to systematize the link between language and treatment outcome shows promise. We want to support his effort by raising a few caveats about the application of foundational systems in psychiatry and psychology, particularly the advisability of employing a logical system to explain recovery from mental illness. Along the way, we will be identifying related issues that the author may elect to take up in his future work.van Staden's proposal is inspired by Frege's logical system, but the paper is, at the very least, an innovative adaptation. There are various points where we are left to wonder just how much of this proposal is really Frege's. Nevertheless, the genesis of van Staden's ideas is so dependent that one would expect a fuller account of Frege's pivotal role in the development of modern logic, how his work precipitated what is known commonly as the linguistic turn, and why a logical system that was so well received when first articulated was eclipsed so quickly by Russell's Principia (1963) and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. (1981) These issues can be addressed separately and perhaps they should, because lacking an account of how Frege's philosophy developed and evolved makes the presentation appear somewhat sketchy and incomplete.Frege is portrayed in philosophical lore as the founder of modern logic and a pioneer of the movement that later became known as analytic philosophy. Dummett (1991) regards Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic (1968) as analytical philosophy's first work (p. 111). According to Quine (1955), "All modern logic owes an incalculable debt to Frege. If anyone can be singled out as the founder of mathematical logic, it is by all odds he" (p. 158). Rorty (1967) notes that analytic philosophy's tack of construing philosophical questions as turning on language use and construction challenges the entire tradition, from Parmenides forward. However, the challenge reaches fruition not in Frege, but in works of Moore, Wittgenstein, and Austin. Rather than [End Page 131] sharing the limelight with the great analytic philosophers, Frege has become somewhat of a peripheral figure, whose contribution is usually portrayed as transitional. In some respects, analytic philosophy was moving against Frege's, and later, Russell's logical systems as it was concomitantly countering the various strands of idealism expounded principally by Bradley and McTaggart (see Hacker 1996, 5-12). Almost from the outset, Fregean logic was caught in a cross fire, and the author is obligated to tell us why we should be attending to the pristine version and not the more fully developed approaches that came soon after.Such a justification undoubtedly would begin with the dictum most central to Frege's philosophical thought, that propositions are primary. For Kemp (1998), this declaration carries two interrelated implications: Logical propositions are the real bearers of truth and falsity, and reasoning is a movement from one judgment to another (see p. 218). Frege posits that propositions are independent of mind, grammar, and language use. Knowledge and cognition are embodied in, but do not predicate, judgment. Frege adamantly rejects the notion that philosophical concepts are grounded in psychological phenomena, such as perception, sense impression, and some traditional accounts of meaning. This is the doctrine known as psychologism, and Frege abjures the suggestion that psychology can contain the sciences or adjudicate their findings (Frege 1956; for a discussion of this doctrine, see Notturno 1989; Davidson 1988; Davidson and Cosgrove 1991). The dictum that propositions are primary dispels the commonly held idea that reasoning begins with perception and proceeds... (shrink)

Aim: Explore nurses’ values and perceptions regarding the practice of medical aid in dying. Background: Medical aid in dying is becoming increasing legal in the United States. The laws and American Nurses Association documents limit nursing involvement in this practice. Nurses’ values regarding this controversial topic are poorly understood. Methodology: Cross-sectional electronic survey design sent to nurse members of the American Nurses Association. Inductive thematic content analysis was applied to open-ended comments. Ethical Considerations: Approved by the institutional review board (#191046). (...) Participants: 1213 nurses provided 3639 open-ended comments. More than 80% of participants self-identified as white 58% held a graduate degree; and half were of Christian faith. Results: Values ranged on a continuum expressed through four themes: “Honoring Patient Autonomy without Judgment,” “Honoring with Limitations,” “Not until...,” and “Adamantly against.” Some felt it was a duty to honor the patients’ wishes, set aside own beliefs, and respect patients’ choices often with a spiritual connotation. Nurses held concerns about the process, policy, potential psychological harm, legal risk, and the need to learn more about MAID. Nurse who were adamantly against MAID associated the practice with murder/suicide and against religious beliefs. Disparate values were expressed about changing the MAID legislation to allow patient support with taking MAID medications and allowing MAID via advance directive. Conclusions: Nurses desire more education on MAID. There is not one universally held position on the nurse’s role during MAID. Healthcare policy/standards need to accommodate the wide variation in nurses’ values. Implications: Nurses desire education regarding their role in MAID. Nurses are encouraged to participate in policy discussions as the practice becomes increasingly legal. Managers need to expect that nurses, patients, and families will need psychological support to participate in MAID. Careful construction of policy/standards is needed to minimize conflict, moral distress, and psychological harm amongst nurses. Further research is needed. (shrink)

Davidson used parataxis for three purposes: to give an account of the truth conditions of indirect speech reports, to give a theory of quotation, and to account for mood. This chapter critically investigates Davidson's use of parataxis and investigates some developments of his views in the hands of neo‐Davidsonians.

We argue that any strong version of a knowledge condition on intentional action, the practical knowledge principle, on which knowledge of what I am doing (under some description: call it A-ing) is necessary for that A-ing to qualify as an intentional action, is false. Our argument involves a new kind of case, one that centers the agent’s control appropriately and thus improves upon Davidson’s well-known carbon copier case. After discussing this case, offering an initial argument against the knowledge condition, (...) and discussing recent treatments that cover nearby ground, we consider several objections. One we consider at some length maintains that although contemplative knowledge may be disconnected from intentional action, specifically practical knowledge of the sort Anscombe elucidated escapes our argument. We demonstrate that this is not so. Our argument illuminates an important truth, often overlooked in discussions of the knowledge-intentional action relationship: intentional action and knowledge have different levels of permissiveness regarding failure in similar circumstances. (shrink)

I discuss the connections between rationality and intentional action, emphasising that different kinds of action are rational an intentional in different ways.

The paper’s principal claim to originality lies in its deployment of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’ in thinking the ‘resingularization’ of photography in the context of new media ecologies and the promise of what Guattari calls a ‘post-media era’. The paper itself constitutes a refrain and is structured according to the three moments of any refraining. Firstly, a refrain is a spatio-temporalization, a way of marking out space, keeping time and assembling and activating subjectivity. At its most rudimentary, (...) it is the establishment of a momentary centre, a point of order amidst chaos. We can conceive this in terms of the originary ‘cut’ of the photographic flash which – as in a familiar trope in horror films in which the flash of a camera guides the protagonist through a menacing darkness – illuminates one’s milieu, the spot on which one stands, and dispels the evils which gather on all sides. This flash is a singularity which, in rupturing darkness, does not merely constitute a representative image but is, as Guattari might say, a ‘vector of subjectivation’. Secondly, the refrain circumscribes a territory, a circle of control, ethos, interiority or home. Our media are architecture, part of the congealing and hardening of territory. Here emerges an ‘incorporeal Universe’ which signs itself ‘Photography’. We approach photographic territorialization principally in terms of genre. Photographic genres are refrains become clichés, habits, fictions which uncritically sustain and abet the ravages of capitalistic subjectivity. Adhering, photographically, to these affective algorithms – creatively reacting in the belief that There Is No Alternative – is to generatively maintain the existence of a virtually stable territory. It is this territory that, we insist, requires estrangement through the amplification of its moments of uncertainty. The third moment of the refrain is precisely the exacerbation of its instability, its transformation into a ‘music’ which is the cracking open of the territory to the world and its opening out onto futurity and alterity. We conceive this in two ways. On the one hand, the opening of the photographic refrain can be understood in terms of the ontology of mediation. Rather than a freezing of the moment, the photographic image is in and of the middle, medial – that is, it constitutes an event of interruptive time, the construction of an interval which is excessive and untimely. Here, we heed recent calls for a new ethics of photographic practice which understands and takes responsibility for the process of mediation ‘from within the process itself’. On the other hand, the opening of the photographic refrain can be understood in connection with the subjective pluralism which is the excess of the social. We are plural, polyphonic subjects, comprising affective communities which exist in relation to a ‘constellation of Universes’, at the intersection of refrains which variously harness anti-chaotic forces and can be resingularized and opened onto the forces of the future. Along lines intimated by Guattari, we commend the collective reappropriation and resingularization of photography in order to escape its impasse, to reflexively trigger ‘an existential agglomeration’. Mediation itself offers the promise of a ‘post-media era’ in which we liberate the creativity and virtuality of media in order to ‘bifurcate existence’, realizing the possibility of new constellations of Universes and an autopoiesis of subjectivity. Tapping into such excess requires a pedagogy of excess, too. For us, to respond ethically to the new powers of mediation means respecifying photography as a collective endeavour, beyond the principles of ‘self expression’ and ‘independence’ which have long dominated photography education. It also means going beyond the conventions of genre and ‘socially-engaged’ practice, not simply through the usual judgement and denunciation of territory but through its falsification. As we see it, photography’s ‘fabulatory function’ is to both make perceptible and betray the ‘working forces’ of territorial refrains, to both activate and ‘fail to satisfy’ them. Indeed, it is in this sense that photography might become a transversal tool with which to think the artistic and social simultaneously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 334-345 [Access article in PDF] Philosophy After Joyce:Derrida and Davidson Reed Way Dasenbrock A GOOD DEAL OF ATTENTION has been paid to James Joyce's influence on literature. Few novelists in the twentieth century have escaped Joyce's influence one way or another, and Robert Martin Adams has even dedicated a book, AfterJoyce, 1 to the proposition that the history of prose fiction is most (...) properly divided into two eras, before and after Joyce. One suspects that Joyce would have appreciated Adams's quasi-blasphemous periodizing.My focus here is Joyce's influence on a different intellectual and cultural realm, philosophy. Joyce's impact on philosophy clearly has not been of the same magnitude. Joyce is not one of those rare figures who have spanned fields or been as important an influence in another field as in his own, unlike Nietzsche, say, or a figure of concern to us here, Jacques Derrida. Joyce's impact on philosophy, thus, is not epoch-changing or field-changing in the way his impact on literature is. Wittgenstein and Heidegger are the two philosophers in the twentieth century whose work have comparably been assessed as epoch-changing. It is worth noting that both men are close contemporaries of Joyce: Wittgenstein, in particular, with his multilingual, Austro-Hungarian, and pan-European character, orientation towards the arts, defiance of so many philosophical conventions, and self-awareness of language, offers a fascinating parallel with Joyce, a parallel already explored to [End Page 334] some extent in the literature. If Joyce, Stravinsky, Picasso, and Le Corbusier, for example, can be said to exemplify modernist literature, music, painting, and architecture, then Wittgenstein is the exemplification of modernist philosophy. But Modernism, or at least so we are told, is out of fashion and out of date, yet Joyce remains our contemporary in ways many of his fellow modernists may not. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in his continuing presence in contemporary philosophy.The conventional way of writing the history of philosophy in the twentieth century is to divide it into two camps, one oriented towards mathematics, science and logical analysis, a school of philosophy called the analytic or Anglo-American school, the other oriented towards literature and culture and an engagement with the history of philosophy, called the Continental school. That there are a number of problems with this way of mapping the field is by now widely accepted, but no one has successfully replaced this division with anything generally seen to be more adequate, so we continue to use the terms, if as Derrida might say "under erasure." If contemporary analytic philosophy has a single leading figure, I would assign that position to Donald Davidson; continental philosophy has distinct German and French variants, but clearly foremost on the French side is Jacques Derrida. One of the factors leading to our awareness that this bipolar model of the history of twentieth-century philosophy doesn't work very well has been a body of work pointing out a number of similarities between the work of these two philosophers. 2 But what hasn't been pointed out is that both philosophers are interested in Joyce. Thus, the work of Joyce is one of the places the two currents of philosophy merge or at least come into contact. In my opinion, neither Derrida nor Davidson is or deserves to be a crucial figure in Joyce criticism, but looking at their interest in Joyce allows us to trace a neglected chapter in Joyce's influence on the culture and thought of our time and to assess the similarities and differences between the work of these two philosophers.Derrida's work on Joyce includes two essays on Joyce, one an address to the 1984 Joyce Symposium in Frankfurt, "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear say yes in Joyce," 3 an essay which Margot Norris included in A Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses (in abridged form) as one of five exemplary or representative pieces of theoretical approaches to Ulysses (representing deconstruction, of course), and an earlier essay on Finnegans Wake, "Two Words for Joyce... (shrink)

Behavior genetics is a controversial science. For decades, scholars have sought to understand the role of heredity in human behavior and life-course outcomes. Recently, technological advances and the rapid expansion of genomic databases have facilitated the discovery of genes associated with human phenotypes such as educational attainment and substance use disorders. To maximize the potential of this flourishing science, and to minimize potential harms, careful analysis of what it would mean for genes to be causes of human behavior is needed. (...) In this paper, we advance a framework for identifying instances of genetic causes, interpreting those causal relationships, and applying them to advance causal knowledge more generally in the social sciences. Central to thinking about genes as causes is counterfactual reasoning, the cornerstone of causal thinking in statistics, medicine, and philosophy. We argue that within-family genetic effects represent the product of a counterfactual comparison in the same way as average treatment effects (ATEs) from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Both ATEs from RCTs and within-family genetic effects are shallow causes: They operate within intricate causal systems (non-unitary), produce heterogeneous effects across individuals (non-uniform), and are not mechanistically informative (non-explanatory). Despite these limitations, shallow causal knowledge can be used to improve understanding of the etiology of human behavior and to explore sources of heterogeneity and fade-out in treatment effects. (shrink)

Repr. as Essay 14 in Davidson, Donald, _Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation_, 2nd ed. Oxford, UK (Clarendon, 2001). 215-226.

Organizations interested in employee ethics compliance face the problem of conflict between employee and organizational ethical standards. Socializing new employees is one way of assuring compliance. Important for longer term employees as well as new ones, however, is making those standards visible and then operable in the daily life of an organization. This study, conducted in one large organization, found that, depending on organizational level, awareness of an organization's ethical standards is predicted by managerial adherence to and organizational compliance with (...) those standards and/or discussions with peers. Regardless of level, organizational commitment was predicted most strongly by managerial adherence to organizational standards. These findings have theoretical implications for the fields of business ethics, organizational identity and organizational socialization and practical implications for the implementation of ethics policies. (shrink)

It is claimed that Kuipers' approach to explanation opens the possibility for a further refinement of his own refined HD method for the evaluation of theories. One severe problem for the HD method, refined or not, is theory-ladeness. Given that experimental results are theory-laden, the comparative evaluation of alternative hypotheses is always relative to background knowledge. This difficulty can be avoided by supplementing HD considerations with the principle of inference to the best explanation. The authors sketch a program for doing (...) this. The general idea plays on some similarities between Kuipers' account of explanation and Lipton's. The former, however, is considered more flexible than the latter, which makes it even more attractive for the purpose under consideration. (shrink)

Twentieth-century thought appears as a collective project aimed at dismantling metaphysical hierarchies in all their relays across the fields of human culture. Central to this project has been the...

This article develops a media philosophical framework for addressing the intersection of epigenetics and complex dynamical systems in theoretical biology. In particular, it argues that the theoretical humanities need to think critically about the computability of epigenomic regulation, as well as speculatively about the possibility of an epigenomics beyond complexity. The fact that such a conceptual framework does not exist suggests not only a failure to engage with the mathematics of complexity, but also a failure to engage with its history. (...) Both epigenetics and the application of complex dynamical systems to biology originate in the mid-twentieth-century work of Conrad Hal Waddington. The article demonstrates how this genealogy of epigenetic complexity reveals the need for a speculative conception of epigenomic mediation beyond mathematical complexity. Using Whitehead’s philosophy as a conceptual anchor, the “epimedial landscape” serves as a first pass at a media philosophical revision of the complex dynamical systems view of the epigenetic landscape. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The Samenleving and Bedrijf (S&B) network of Dutch organizations seeks to embed corporate social responsibility (CSR) within business practices but faces challenges with regard to how to do so across various organizational practices, processes, and policies. The integration of CSR demands cultural change driven by senior management and other change agents, who push CSR principles throughout the organization. This study examines the change processes that S&B member organizations have initiated, with a particular focus on the role of high potentials—those persons (...) who have been selected for the fast track into senior management. Interviews with nine S&B organizations document their levels of CSR integration and implementation, the role of senior managers, and the effects of high potentials’ competencies on the realignment process. High potentials have the ability and opportunity to act as CSR change agents, but organizations’ expectations of their purposes as future senior managers prevented them from doing so. In the existing organizational cultures, leadership focused on economic success, and the CSR implementation process had just initiated. Therefore, a measure of CSR embeddedness might refer to the performance measurement and expectations of high potentials as potential CSR change agents. (shrink)

Philosophers are increasingly coming to recognize the importance of Freudian theory for the understanding of the mind. The picture Freud presents of the mind's growth and organization holds implications not just for such perennial questions as the relation of mind and body, the nature of memory and personal identity, the interplay of cognitive and affective processes in reasoning and acting, but also for the very way in which these questions are conceived and an interpretation of the mind is sought. This (...) volume of essays, by some of today's leading philosophers, explores all these topics, as well as the methods, results and status of the theory itself, while two 'classical' discussions by Wittgenstein and Sartre are also included. A number of the contributions – those by Donald Davidson, W. D. Hart, Jim Hopkins, Adam Morton, David Pears and Richard Wollheim – have not been published before, and a very useful bibliography is provided. It is an anthology that will be vital to anyone interested in Freudian theory and, more generally, in philosophical psychology. (shrink)

In a letter to Franz Overbeck from 1883 Nietzsche confessed that the more he read the German philosopher Gustav Teichmüller the more he realized »how poorly« he understood Plato and »how much Zarathustra Platonizes«. This is a striking admission from a thinker who defined his own philosophy as »inverted Platonism« and it has yet to be adequately explained. This article examines what Nietzsche may have meant by the verb »to Platonize« by drawing an explicit connection to Teichmüller's controversial views on (...) Platonic psychology. Two possible meanings of the verb are put forth, a weak and a strong meaning and a case in defense of the latter is made. In the strong sense of the word »to Platonize« meant that the Overman was a mythos in the Platonic sense, in that it made Nietzsche's much more recondite »Bundle Theory« of the self accessible to the average reader, but it did not correspond to a view of the self which Nietzsche espoused in his own voice. (shrink)

In these essays, we are concerned with virtue in journalism and the media but are mindful of the tension between the commercial foundations of publishing and broadcasting, on the one hand, and journalism's democratic obligations on the other. Adam outlines, first, a moral vision of journalism focusing on individualistic concepts of authorship and craft. Next, Craft attempts to bridge individual and organizational concerns by examining the obligations of organizations to the individuals working within them. Finally, Cohen discusses the importance (...) of resisting the powerful corporate logic that pervades the news media in the United States and calls on journalists to be courageous. (shrink)

We analyse the reception of Niklas Luhmanns social metatheory in Slovenian social. The first part outlines the intellectual climate that prevailed in the decade before the post-socialist transition. The decline of the previously dominant Marxist ideology created space for other social theories. Luhmanns ideas were the most prominent among social macro theories in the initial phase. The second part describes variations in the reception of his ideas. The initial affirmative approach was upgraded by a number of more selective and critical (...) approaches. The third part shows that, although his ideas are no longer quite so prominent, his work is both well recognized and firmly embedded in Slovenian social thought. (shrink)