All ethnographies, perhaps, contain some mystery: of how humans understand each other, or the way that words and glances, observations and encounters are turned into insights about what it means to be human at a given moment in history. But Sareeta Amrute’s Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin begins with a proper mystery, a person who has disappeared, and this literally missing body adroitly stages the subsequent exploration of IT workers’ missing bodies in scholarship on cognitive labor. (...) -/- Global software and service is often thought of as “immaterial,” a traffic of ideas in which effort is a matter of the mind, rather than a muscled arm. Without collapsing cognitive and manual labor, Amrute argues that both are nonetheless embodied ––and formidably marked by social difference, in particular post-genomic notions of race, and class. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has wide-ranging implications for the field of professional psychology. As clinical practice has rapidly adapted to ensure continuity of care, doctoral students have encountered unique opportunities for ethics-related competency development across practicum training settings. This article discusses the relevant American Psychological Association Ethics Code standards and additional ethical considerations facing trainees as they navigate their foundational clinical experiences and develop as professional psychologists in light of a pandemic.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and some prenatal screening programmes have been criticized for being 'eugenic'. This paper aims to analyse this criticism and to evaluate one of the main ethical arguments lying behind it. It starts with a discussion of the meaning of the term 'eugenics' and of some relevant distinctions: for example, that between objections to eugenic ends and objections to certain means of achieving them. Next, a particular argument against using preimplantation genetic diagnosis to 'screen out' disability is considered, (...) one based on the Equal Value Principle, which says that we should value disability and non-disability equally. It is argued that present practice and policy probably do violate the Equal Value Principle, but that this principle is itself unsound. (shrink)

Which is better: a guarantee of a modest amount of moral value, or a tiny probability of arbitrarily large value? To prefer the latter seems fanatical. But, as I argue, avoiding such fanaticism brings severe problems. To do so, we must decline intuitively attractive trade-offs; rank structurally identical pairs of lotteries inconsistently, or else admit absurd sensitivity to tiny probability differences; have rankings depend on remote, unaffected events ; and often neglect to rank lotteries as we already know we would (...) if we learned more. Compared to these implications, fanaticism is highly plausible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"I'd Love to go Off the Grid and Never Come Back"AlishaDisclaimers. The author has chosen to disclose only her first name. All other names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.I have been a nurse for 18 years. I have dealt with death. I have performed CPR, closed eyes, called families, and bagged bodies. I have taken decedents to the morgue. I knew what I (...) signed up for when I became a nurse, but nothing prepared me for the 2020–2022 pandemic years, and the havoc wreaked on my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. I was then in a managerial position. Patients' accounts of tragedy and families' sorrow, confusion, denial, anger, regret, and fear came across my desk daily at the hospital, nightly to my phone, and over the weekend while at home. In March of 2020, I took responsibility for managing the hospital's morgue, an experience that proved to me that death is no respecter of man.The morgue had the capacity to hold five decedents. It was my responsibility to ensure that we had space for the decedents that were coming in droves. Though our hospital was hit disproportionally by COVID-19, we were unable to secure a refrigerated truck for the overages. Instead, we had to transfer our overflow across town to another hospital no matter the time of day or night. The funeral homes were overwhelmed and could not meet the mass demands, which caused major delays in picking up decedents from the hospital. Most funeral homes took them in body bags straight to the crematory or the cemetery for burial. Many would not open the bags to confirm identities. Instead, they trusted the information I wrote on the [End Page 77] bag in black marker and information on the ID tag attached to the zipper.As the deaths increased and more transfers were made, my social work supervisor Audi and I could barely keep track of the decedents—let alone which families we had reached. We created a process and checklist that had to be signed off before any transfers were made. My director, who supported us, encouraged me to train others to help. However, I felt an intense duty to own this process because of how easy it could be to misidentify someone. Families were losing loved ones daily. They could not be by their side as they took their last breath. The next contact the family had was picking up the decedent's ashes or burying a closed casket. I refused to be responsible for causing additional suffering by losing a loved one's remains. When I made the decision to control the process, I never dreamed I would do this job for three years, nor did I realize the trauma it would cause.One day, a lady named Pam asked us if she could see her mother in the morgue. "Of course not!" I thought. We were not opening body bags for any reason. When I spoke with Pam, she explained that her son had been shot and killed and that her mother witnessed his death. Pam's mother suffered a fatal heart attack after witnessing her grandson's murder."Ma'am, give me a moment," I said. I reviewed the decedent's chart to verify the information and considered what to do. After discussing Pam's request with Audi and my director, we decided to make an exception for this extenuating circumstance and allow Pam to see her mother. Audi and I viewed the decedent to ensure she was presentable. I closed her eyes and cleaned her. When I closed her eyes, a little fluid came out. When we brought Pam in, she noticed and wiped away her mother's "tears," lovingly looking at her. When walking Pam to the front door, she told us about her other son, who had also passed away recently. Remember, we were not supposed to touch anyone at that time "out of an abundance of caution," but with her heart-wrenching situation, we hugged Pam anyway.By the end of April 2020, Audi and I had monitored nearly 100 deaths, coordinating with funeral homes to... (shrink)

For aggregative theories of moral value, it is a challenge to rank worlds that each contain infinitely many valuable events. And, although there are several existing proposals for doing so, few provide a cardinal measure of each world's value. This raises the even greater challenge of ranking lotteries over such worlds—without a cardinal value for each world, we cannot apply expected value theory. How then can we compare such lotteries? To date, we have just one method for doing so (proposed (...) separately by Arntzenius, Bostrom, and Meacham), which is to compare the prospects for value at each individual location, and to then represent and compare lotteries by their expected values at each of those locations. But, as I show here, this approach violates several key principles of decision theory and generates some implausible verdicts. I propose an alternative—one which delivers plausible rankings of lotteries, which is implied by a plausible collection of axioms, and which can be applied alongside almost any ranking of infinite worlds. (shrink)

An ethics primer for nurses and nursing students that advances a vision for a holistic Christian notion of health and explores what Christian faith means, on a practical level, for the practice of nursing.

When is it permissible to allow a newborn infant to die on the basis of their future quality of life? The prevailing official view is that treatment may be withdrawn only if the burdens in an infant's future life outweigh the benefits. In this paper I outline and defend an alternative view. On the Threshold View, treatment may be withdrawn from infants if their future well-being is below a threshold that is close to, but above the zero-point of well-being. I (...) present four arguments in favor of the Threshold View, and identify and respond to several counterarguments. I conclude that it is justifiable in some circumstances for parents and doctors to decide to allow an infant to die even though the infant's life would be worth living. The Threshold View provides a justification for treatment decisions that is more consistent, more robust, and potentially more practical than the standard view. (shrink)

_Bodies for Sale: Ethics and Exploitation in the Human Body Trade _explores the philosophical and practical issues raised by activities such as surrogacy and organ trafficking. Stephen Wilkinson asks what is it that makes some commercial uses of the body controversial, whether the arguments against commercial exploitation stand up, and whether legislation outlawing such practices is really justified. In Part One Wilkinson explains and analyses some of the notoriously slippery concepts used in the body commodification debate, including exploitation, (...) harm and consent. In Part Two he focuses on three controversial issues outlining contemporary regulation and investigating both the moral issues and the arguments for legal prohibition. (shrink)

End-of-life decision-making is controversial. There are different views about when it is appropriate to limit life-sustaining treatment, and about what palliative options are permissible. One approach to decisions of this nature sees consensus as crucial. Decisions to limit treatment are made only if all or a majority of caregivers agree. We argue, however, that it is a mistake to require professional consensus in end-of-life decisions. In the first part of the article we explore practical, ethical, and legal factors that support (...) agreement. We analyse subjective and objective accounts of moral reasoning: accord is neither necessary nor sufficient for decisions. We propose an alternative norm for decisions – that of ‘professional dissensus’. In the final part of the article we address the role of agreement in end-of-life policy. Such guidelines can ethically be based on dissensus rather than consensus. Disagreement is not always a bad thing. (shrink)

The current position on the deceased’s consent and the family’s consent to organ and tissue donation from the dead is a double veto—each has the power to withhold and override the other’s desire to donate. This paper raises, and to some extent answers, questions about the coherence of the double veto. It can be coherently defended in two ways: if it has the best effects and if the deceased has only negative rights of veto. Whether the double veto has better (...) effects than other policies requires empirical investigation, which is not undertaken here. As for rights, the paper shows that it is entirely possible that individuals have a negative right of veto but no positive right to compel acceptance of their offers. Thus if intensivists and transplant teams turn down the deceased’s offer, they do not thereby violate the deceased’s right. This leaves it open whether non-rights based reasons—such as avoiding bad publicity or distress —require intensivists and transplant teams to turn down or accept the deceased’s offer. This, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. The current position may or may not be wrong, but it is at least coherent. (shrink)

Transplantation is a medically successful and cost-effective way to treat people whose organs have failed--but not enough organs are available to meet demand. T. M. Wilkinson explores the major ethical problems raised by policies for acquiring organs. Key topics include the rights of the dead, the role of the family, and the sale of organs.

Predictive processing accounts of neural function view the brain as a kind of prediction machine that forms models of its environment in order to anticipate the upcoming stream of sensory stimulation. These models are then continuously updated in light of incoming error signals. Predictive processing has offered a powerful new perspective on cognition, action, and perception. In this chapter we apply the insights from predictive processing to the study of emotions. The upshot is a picture of emotion as inseparable from (...) perception and cognition, and a key feature of the embodied mind. (shrink)

Can it be rational to be risk-averse? It seems plausible that the answer is yes—that normative decision theory should accommodate risk aversion. But there is a seemingly compelling class of arguments against our most promising methods of doing so. These long-run arguments point out that, in practice, each decision an agent makes is just one in a very long sequence of such decisions. Given this form of dynamic choice situation, and the (Strong) Law of Large Numbers, they conclude that those (...) theories which accommodate risk aversion end up delivering the same verdicts as risk-neutral theories in nearly all practical cases. If so, why not just accept a simpler, risk-neutral theory? The resulting practical verdicts seem to be much the same. In this paper, I show that these arguments do not in fact condemn those risk-aversion-accommodating theories. Risk aversion can indeed survive the long run. (shrink)

Ouvrage philosophique sur ce qu'est le Monde, et non sur ce qu'il convient d'y faire.".

I argue for an overlooked distinction between perceptual presence and volumetric content, and flesh it out in terms of predictive processing. Within the predictive processing framework we can distinguish between agent-active and object-active expectations. The former expectations account for perceptual presence, while the latter account for volumetric content. I then support this position with reference to how experiences of presence are created by virtual reality technologies, and end by reflecting on what this means for the relationship between sensorimotor enactivism and (...) predictive processing. (shrink)

One of the most contentious ethical issues in the neonatal intensive care unit is the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from infants who may otherwise survive. In practice, one of the most important factors influencing this decision is the prediction that the infant will be severely intellectually disabled. Most professional guidelines suggest that decisions should be made on the basis of the best interests of the infant. It is, however, not clear how intellectual disability affects those interests. Why should intellectual disability (...) be more important than physical disability to the future interests of an infant? Is it discriminatory to base decisions on this? This paper will try to unravel the above questions. It seems that if intellectual disability does affect the best interests of the child it must do so in one of three ways. These possibilities will be discussed as well as the major challenges to the notion that intellectual disability should have a role in such decisions. The best interests of the child can be affected by severe or profound intellectual disability. It is, though, not as clear-cut as some might expect. (shrink)

Aggregative moral theories face a series of devastating problems when we apply them in a physically realistic setting. According to current physics, our universe is likely _infinitely large_, and will contain infinitely many morally valuable events. But standard aggregative theories are ill-equipped to compare outcomes containing infinite total value so, applied in a realistic setting, they cannot compare any outcomes a real-world agent must ever choose between. This problem has been discussed extensively, and non-standard aggregative theories proposed to overcome it. (...) This paper addresses a further problem of similar severity. Physics tells us that, in our universe, how remotely in time an event occurs is _relative_. But our most promising aggregative theories, designed to compare outcomes containing infinitely many valuable events, are sensitive to how remote in time those events are. As I show, the evaluations of those theories are then relative too. But this is absurd; evaluations of outcomes must be absolute. So we must reject such theories. Is this objection fatal for all aggregative theories, at least in a relativistic universe like ours? I demonstrate here that, by further modifying these theories to fit with the physics, we can overcome it. (shrink)

In bioethical discussions of preimplantation genetic diagnosis and prenatal screening, accusations of eugenics are commonplace, as are counter-claims that talk of eugenics is misleading and unhelpful. This paper asks whether “eugenics talk”, in this context, is legitimate and useful or something to be avoided. It also looks at the extent to which this linguistic question can be answered without first answering relevant substantive moral questions. Its main conclusion is that the best and most non-partisan argument for avoiding eugenics talk is (...) the Autonomy Argument. According to this, eugenics talk per se is not wrong, but there is something wrong with using its emotive power as a means of circumventing people’s critical–rational faculties. The Autonomy Argument does not, however, tell against eugenics talk when such language is used to shock people into critical–rational thought. These conclusions do not depend on unique features of eugenics: similar considerations apply to emotive language throughout bioethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Fictionalist Psychiatry?Sam Wilkinson, PhD (bio)I am deeply sympathetic to what Giulio Ongaro (2024a, 2024b, 2024c) writes in these three excellent interlocking papers. I will argue that there is a slightly more efficient way of approaching these issues. It involves adopting fictionalism rather than externalism (although fictionalism can accommodate externalist insights). Fictionalism is something that Ongaro briefly, and approvingly, mentions, in the final paper, but there is (...) an implicit realism in the initial approach. I am not sure there is much disagreement, however, and perhaps we end up in the same place, having approached from different starting points. The fictionalist approach is largely compatible with all of the substantive things Ongaro wants to say, but is, strictly speaking, in tension with the most natural interpretation of externalism, namely, construed as a form of descriptivism and realism (two notions I unpack later).Externalism, Evaluativism, and Social IntegrationA major theme of the first paper is that mainstream internalist Western psychiatry is bad at integrating the social dimension of mental illness. I agree. Furthermore, recent externalistic (enactive and predictive processing) approaches, while better, are still lacking in that they collapse the “social” into the “psychosocial.” Again, I agree. But my diagnosis (excuse the pun) is slightly different. The social dimension of illness concerns in large part the evaluative nature of illness, not the need to descriptively, causally capture a complex, objectively real phenomenon called “illness.”Having said this, in integrating this evaluative social dimension, we need to tread carefully lest we fail to meet the “demarcation challenge” (Murphy, 2008). This concerns the challenge of demarcating different kinds of problem. Humans have always had problems, for which they have needed help, accommodation, allowances made, and so on, but how do you distinguish mental health problems, from other kinds of problems? How do you distinguish money woes, or marital strife, both of which certainly cause unhappiness, or even psychological states that look like psychiatric symptoms (e.g., anxiety, low mood), from properly mental health problems?The biomedical “internalist” says: Easy! Either there is something objectively wrong with you, or there is not. However, notice that this is exactly [End Page 337] what externalists can say too, to the extent that they are trying to describe and define disorder in value-free terms. The only difference is that the internalist will talk about what is wrong within the biological boundaries of the organism, whereas the externalist will go beyond that.Externalism about a particular phenomenon, if it is to be a non-trivial position, needs to be sensitive to the distinction between cause and constitution (or what Adams & Azaiwa [2001] call “coupling-constitution confusion”). We see this in externalism about the mind in general. In the Extended Mind Hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers 1998), the claim is not that Otto’s notebook causally contributes to Otto’s mind (his belief about where MOMA is). Nobody would deny that. The interesting claim is that the notebook is constitutive of his belief: it is literally part of his mind. Similarly, nobody is denying that external (e.g., social) factors cause mental health problems, the question is: Do they constitute those problems? Externalism takes this question seriously and answers in the affirmative, at least in some cases. But the articulation of this has to be nuanced.Suppose I have crippling anxiety over financial concerns. Anxiety can be a mental health problem, but if, in this case, you transferring money into my bank account makes my anxiety disappear, then one might think this is not a mental health problem. It is a money problem. Or is it? Enter fictionalism (Wilkinson, 2022).Fictionalism is the view that calling someone mentally ill is not describing them as having a particular property, but involves something like engaging in a fiction, a fiction that has been constructed in order to encourage certain courses of action. According to fictionalism, given the facts, there is a lot of wiggle room about how we are to think of, and respond to, people’s problems.To borrow some insights from meta-ethics, when we examine normative discourse (one canonical domain being ethics) we can ask: what does the discourse do? And what... (shrink)

In this paper, I will present and advocate a view about what we are doing when we attribute delusion, namely, say that someone is delusional. It is an “expressivist” view, roughly analogous to expressivism in meta-ethics. Just as meta-ethical expressivism accounts for certain key features of moral discourse, so does this expressivism account for certain key features of delusion attribution. And just as meta-ethical expressivism undermines factualism about moral properties, so does this expressivism, if correct, show that certain attempts to (...) objectively define delusion are misguided. I proceed as follows. I start by examining different attempts at defining delusion, separating broadly psychiatric attempts from epistemic ones. I then present a change of approach, according to which we question whether the term “delusion” is in the business of (merely) describing reality. I then support this proposal, first, by borrowing standard lines of argument from meta-ethics (including ontological reluctance, intrinsic motivation, and deep disagreement) but also, by inference to the best explanation of some the features we see when we try to theorise about delusion (namely that it is hard to define, and that our delusion attributions are elicited by a plurality of norms). (shrink)

Mitochondrial replacement techniques have the potential to allow prospective parents who are at risk of passing on debilitating or even life-threatening mitochondrial disorders to have healthy children to whom they are genetically related. Ethical concerns have however been raised about these techniques. This article focuses on one aspect of the ethical debate, the question of whether there is any moral difference between the two types of MRT proposed: Pronuclear Transfer and Maternal Spindle Transfer. It examines how questions of identity impact (...) on the ethical evaluation of each technique and argues that there is an important difference between the two. PNT, it is argued, is a form of therapy based on embryo modification while MST is, instead, an instance of selective reproduction. The article's main ethical conclusion is that, in some circumstances, there is a stronger obligation to use PNT than MST. (shrink)

James H. Wilkinson - Hegel and Aristotle - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 550-551 Book Review Hegel and Aristotle Alfredo Ferrarin. Hegel and Aristotle. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxii + 442. Cloth, $64.95. This is an important book which should be read by anyone interested in either of the two philosophers. Ferrarin demonstrates that the structure and detail of Hegel's executed project owe more to Aristotle than to (...) Kant or any other philosopher. He also shows that Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle is profound and worth careful study, even if it is in some ways mistaken. With the exception of the Poetics and Aesthetics, Ferrarin discusses all the relevant primary texts, and he.. (shrink)

Veganic agriculture, often described as farming that is free of synthetic and animal-based inputs, represents an alternative to chemical-based industrial agriculture and the prevailing alternative, organic agriculture, respectively. Despite the promise of veganic methods in diverse realms such as food safety, environmental sustainability, and animal liberation, it has a small literature base. This article draws primarily on interviews conducted in 2018 with 25 veganic farmers from 19 farms in the United States to establish some baseline empirical research on this farming (...) community. Its qualitative perspectives illuminate farmer perceptions of and experiences with veganic growing, including definitions, knowledge acquisition, values, and challenges. Results highlight a lack of agreement about the meaning of veganic agriculture in terms of allowable inputs and scope. Participants have drawn on a wide array of veganic and non-veganic resources to ascend their veganic production learning curves, also relying on experimentation and trial-and-error. Their farming is motivated by a diversity of real and perceived benefits, most notably consistency with veganism, food safety advantages, and plant and soil health benefits. Veganic product sourcing and the dearth of veganic agriculture-specific resources present considerable challenges to farmers. The article briefly discusses possibilities for developing veganic agriculture in the United States, such as through a US-based certification system and farmers’ associations, based on considerations of the trajectory of the US organic farming movement and veganic developments in Europe. Finally, the article suggests the importance of expanded research into soil health and fertility in plant-based systems to support practicing and potential veganic farmers. (shrink)

To what extent should parents be allowed to use reproductive technologies to determine the characteristics of their future children? Is there something morally wrong with choosing what their sex will be, or with trying to 'screen out' as much disease and disability as possible before birth? Stephen Wilkinson offers answers to such questions.

Heuser and colleagues' survey of obstetricians provides a valuable insight into the current management of severe fetal anomalies in the United States. Their survey reveals two striking features - that counselling for these anomalies is far from neutral, and that there is significant variability between clinicians in their approach to management. In this commentary I outline the reasons to be concerned about both of these. Directiveness in counselling arguably represents a form of paternalism, and the evident variability in practice is (...) likely the result of physician personal values. However, Heuser's survey may, by shining a light on practice, provide an important step towards a more consistent approach. (shrink)

This paper addresses a potential contradiction between the two primary philosophical traditions that inform Gibsonian ecological psychology: the phenomenological and pragmatist traditions. These two traditions exhibit potentially contradictory intuitions about the epistemic role of direct perception. This epistemic role of direct perception was famously problematized by Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given (1956; 1997), and we draw on it here to serve as a test case for the Gibsonian synthesis of phenomenology and pragmatism. While ecological psychology’s emphasis on (...) the firstperson perspective of organisms shares in the legacy of the phenomenological tradition, it also tends to assume direct experience as a given, something basic and foundational to knowledge. Pragmatism, on the other hand, is generally suspicious of experience as a foundational given. We argue that Gibson’s successful synthesis of these two traditions is also what makes his theory of affordances less susceptible to the myth of the given than some phenomenological approaches to perception. Namely, on the Gibsonian account of perception is always part of an action-perception cycle that takes place in and through embodied action and therefore no one act of perception functions as an epistemic given. (shrink)

Death and grief in the ancient world -- Predictions and disability in Rome.

In the case that triggered this round-table discussion there are three separate factors that contribute to moral uncertainty.1 First, the infant, baby T, is extremely premature with suspected brain injury and potentially poor prognosis. Second, the gestational mother is critically unwell herself and her outlook is guarded. Third, as linked commentaries make clear, the legal status of the intended parents is complex and ambiguous.2 3 Any of these factors on their own would be enough to generate ethical complexity and distress (...) in the neonatal intensive care unit. The combination of the three is likely to be highly stressful for all concerned.4 Commentaries on the case emphasise the complex legal questions and the potential need to involve the court. One resource that is not mentioned is the potential value of clinical ethics input in such a case. This is complementary to the need for legal advice. Its aim would be to help think through the specifically ethical, rather than legal questions. There are several things that I would aim to clarify if chairing a clinical ethics discussion on the case. First, it may be useful to draw on the concept of the …. (shrink)

The experiences described in the VIP transcripts are incredibly varied and yet frequently explicitly labelled by participants as "voices." How can we make sense of this? If we reflect carefully on uses of the word "voice", we see that it can express at least two entirely different concepts, which pick out categorically different phenomena. One concept picks out a speech sound (e.g. "This synthesizer has a "voice" setting"). Another concept picks out a specific agent (e.g. "I hear two voices: one (...) is a ten year-old boy…"). This chapter explores how these two concepts are related to one another in the context of voice-hearing. (shrink)

Aggregative moral theories face a series of devastating problems when we apply them in a physically realistic setting. According to current physics, our universe is likely _infinitely large_, and will contain infinitely many morally valuable events. But standard aggregative theories are ill-equipped to compare outcomes containing infinite total value. So, applied in a realistic setting, they cannot compare any outcomes a real-world agent must ever choose between. This problem has been discussed extensively, and non-standard aggregative theories proposed to overcome it. (...) This paper addresses a further problem of similar severity. Physics tells us that, in our universe, how remotely in time an event occurs is _relative_. But our most promising aggregative theories, designed to compare outcomes containing infinitely many valuable events, are sensitive to how remote in time those events are. As I show, the evaluations of those theories are then relative too. But this is absurd; evaluations of outcomes must be absolute! So we must reject such theories. Is this objection fatal for all aggregative theories, at least in a relativistic universe like ours? I demonstrate here that, by further modifying these theories to fit with the physics, we can overcome it. (shrink)

Nishida analyses the relations of the ethical and aesthetic areas of life not in terms of types of concept or object but in terms of two types of consciousness. He holds that aesthetic and moral consciousness are radically different in kind, and both different from religious consciousness. Moral consciousness is the most superficial of the three, since it presupposes a duality not present in reality itself. Aesthetic consciousness has a tendency to unity, but is intermittent.

The films The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers, and Drive, were all dismissed for their depthlessness. This article argues that we need to explore the depths and variety of their engagement with surface in order to fully appreciate what these films are trying to say. The article proposes that these films in fact employ three different “strategies” of surface engagement, in and through their aesthetics; The Bling Ring relies on a sense of “skimming”, Spring Breakers engages ideas of “drifting”, while Drive (...) promotes a sense of “gliding” or “coasting”. Analysis of these strategies of surface aesthetics reveals that the films make dialectic categories of depth and surface, sign and meaning, form and content, indistinguishable, and it is precisely in doing so that they offer complex critique on the crimes they display, and the state of our current hyper-mediated and networked world. These films are not only about the stories they tell but abo... (shrink)