What determines if the first interaction between strangers will be a pleasant experience? We conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which the perceived quality of an interaction is influenced by conversation content and context, and we document the physiological changes that are likely to play a role in establishing rapport. Females who did not know each other met in pairs and conducted a gossip- or creativity task, either face-to-face or online. The conversation content had no effect on the (...) quality of online interactions. However in the face-to-face condition gossip was associated with better interaction quality. Tonic electrodermal activity steadily declined throughout the interaction, while phasic electrodermal activity first peaked and then returned to baseline. Neither were related to perceived interaction quality. Heart rate variability dropped at first but then remained stable. A smaller drop in HRV drop corresponded to higher ratings of rapport and liking. Together these results suggest that gossip can improve the quality of a face-to-face interaction between strangers, and support the conjecture that parasympathetic activity is a marker of human openness to social engagement. (shrink)

In this adventurous contribution to the project of combining philosophy and biology to understand the mind, Carolyn Price investigates what it means to say that mental states--like thoughts, wishes, and perceptual experiences--are about things in the natural world. Her insight into this deep philosophical problem offers a novel teleological account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. Along the way she defends her view from recent objections to teleological theories and indicates how (...) it might be applied to notable problems in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

My main objective in this article will be to compare Heidegger’s description of the way we perceive our environment in everyday coping – which is based on the concept of equipment (Zeug) – and James Gibson’s theory of affordance perception. More precisely, I will discuss whether equipment and affordance can be equated. In contrast to some interpretations, I will defend that they cannot: equipment and affordances refer to different ontological kinds and the perceptual or cognitive processes that are implied in (...) each case have nothing in common. In addition, I will defend that distinguishing equipment and affordances is a key step towards a more comprehensive account of the way we perceive and deal with the possibilities offered by our environment, and that Heidegger’s and Gibson’s accounts, far from being mutually exclusive, complement each other. Some work has however to be done in order to articulate them in a coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)

The power of new medical technologies, the cultural authority of physicians, and the gendered power dynamics of many patient-physician relationships can all inhibit women's reproductive freedom. Often these factors interfere with women's ability to trust themselves to choose and act in ways that are consistent with their own goals and values. In this book Carolyn McLeod introduces to the reproductive ethics literature the idea that in reproductive health care women's self-trust can be undermined in ways that threaten their autonomy. (...) Understanding the importance of self-trust for autonomy, McLeod argues, is crucial to understanding the limits on women's reproductive freedom. -/- McLeod brings feminist insights in philosophical moral psychology to reproductive ethics, and to health-care ethics more broadly. She identifies the social environments in which self-trust is formed and encouraged. She also shows how women's experiences of reproductive health care can enrich our understanding of self-trust and autonomy as philosophical concepts. The book's theoretical components are grounded in women's concrete experiences. The cases discussed, which involve miscarriage, infertility treatment, and prenatal diagnosis, show that what many women feel toward themselves in reproductive contexts is analogous to what we feel toward others when we trust or distrust them. -/- McLeod also discusses what health-care providers can do to minimize the barriers to women's self-trust in reproductive health care, and why they have a duty to do so as part of their larger duty to respect patient autonomy. (shrink)

For Husserl, kinaesthetic capability is a key piece of the process of perception. By ensuring the junction between the actual and the potential, it allows the exhibition of an object that is always more than what appears. Kinaesthetic capability preserves the transcendence of the object by preventing the phenomenon from being confined to pure actuality. This idea, however, poses significant challenges when one questions the nature of the possibilities that are at stake here. Especially, the perceived seems to enjoy a (...) kind of emancipation from these capabilities as they actually are. How can one justify that the structures of the perceived world are the intentional correlate of the kinaesthetic skills of the subject if such structures continue to regulate the sense of the appearing objects when those skills are neutralized? We will see that only a genetic perspective, assuming the intrinsically historical character of the subject, provides a satisfactory answer to this question, and that this perspective leads to placing into question the actualist position that Husserl sometimes tends to adopt. (shrink)

In humans over 15% of X‐linked genes have been shown to ‘escape’ from X‐chromosome inactivation (XCI): they continue to be expressed to some extent from the inactive X chromosome. Mono‐allelic expression is anticipated within a cell for genes subject to XCI, but random XCI usually results in expression of both alleles in a cell population. Using a study of allelic expression from cultured lymphoblasts and fibroblasts, many of which showed substantial skewing of XCI, we recently reported that the expression of (...) genes lies on a contiunuum between those that are subject to inactivation, and those that escape. We now review allelic expression studies from mouse, and discuss the variability in escape seen in both humans and mice in genic expression levels, between X chromosomes and between tissues. We also discuss current knowledge of the heterochromatic features, DNA elements and three‐dimensional topology of the inactive X that contribute to the balance of expression from the otherwise inactive X chromosome. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this narrow-focused text is to argue against the claim that the appresentation of unperceived features of objects that is implied in perceptual intentionality presupposes a reference to perceptions other subjects could have of these objects. This claim, as it has been defended by Dan Zahavi, rests upon an erroneous supposition about the modal status of the perceptual possibilities to which the perceived object refers, which shall not be interpreted as effectively realizable but as mere de jure possibilities, (...) perceptions that could have been realized in principle, but that are maybe beyond one’s reach considering one’s concrete factual powers and opportunities. Horizontal intentionality is better accounted for in terms of perceptions that one could have had because of one’s embodied character and the always open possibility of occupying another position with respect to the object. This modal ubiquity which is inherent to one’s being-in-space is what supports the field of de jure possibil... (shrink)

Whatever approach one favors, the relationships between the most abstract and disembodied sense of beauty and the physical, erotic sense are clearly harder to sever than many philosophers have previously realized. The soul may be glad to forget its connection with the body, as Santayana put it, but that gladness indicates that the connection is there to be forgotten in the first place. And often it is not so much forgotten as reshaped and transfigured. Such transformations are explored here with (...) excursions into the place of beauty in art; into the queering of beauty in the exemplars of beautiful artworks; into explorations of the marginal and exotic that allure while defying conventional models; into the literal carving of facial features for cosmetic and artistic purposes that both conform to and challenges norms of appearance. In such different contexts these authors dramatize the various ways that beauty can function in relation to personal desires, artistic values, and social authority. Here we can discover beauty not only as a quality and a value, but also as a project and a practice that drives our lives from both within and without--internal standards, external expectations, and ambivalence meeting in provocative disputation. (shrink)

The ordinary space is continuously cluttered with bodies and constantly, when we move, we must maneuver, push and shove, walk around, make space. The awareness of having to operate in a limited space, where the places are always already occupied, is sustained by a special mode of appearing of ordinary space: the occupancy field. A phenomenological analysis of the occupancy field demonstrates that: the format in which space presents itself in ordinary perception is marked by our awareness of occupying space (...) with our body and having to squeeze it somewhere each time we move; bodies and space are co-dependent on an intentional level: ordinary space has, by a sense of vacuum, a mode of appearing which is indissociable from the phenomenological structure of bodies; the presentation of space is dependent on an anticipation of possibilities: it is because the situation is considered from the opportunities and constraints on the possible set up by our body that a space presents itself to us. We could not experience space if our perceptual apparatus took a mere snapshot of the current states of aff airs, if through it we had only access to the state in which the environment is at time t. To experience space means fundamentally to be ahead of one’s time, consider the present not from the future, but from the possible. (shrink)

De 1958 à 1968, le cardinal L.-J. Suenens a mené un long combat pour obtenir un changement d’attitude de l’Église catholique au sujet de la contraception. L’ouverture de ses archives conciliaires permet actuellement de découvrir les moyens qu’il a utilisés et les manoeuvres qu’il a entreprises pour arriver à ses fins. Il a fait appel à des médecins , à des théologiens et à des philosophes provenant surtout de l’Université catholique de Louvain, ainsi qu’à des évêques amis . Comme membre (...) de la commission de coordination du concile, chargé du texte de Gaudium et Spes, il a veillé à ce que le chapitre sur le mariage reste ouvert à un développement de la doctrine. Courageusement, à de multiples reprises, il a tenté – mais sans résultat – de convaincre le pape Paul VI. Après la publication en 1968 de l’encyclique Humanae Vitae, il a réussi à faire publier une Déclaration de l’épiscopat belge, afin de libérer les consciences et de canaliser la contestation. (shrink)

A summary of the philosophical literature on trust.

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping malls, theme parks (...) and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution. (shrink)

The authors of these essays--including Judith Butler, Elizabeth Weed, and Rosi Braidotti--shed new light on the relationship of Irigaray to many of the philosophers she has "romanced," from Aristotle to Deleuze.

Re-thinking the political workings of habit and habituation, this article suggests, is vital to understanding the logics and possibilities of social change today. Any endeavour to explore habit’s affirmative potential, however, must confront its legacies as a colonialist, imperialist and capitalist technology. As a means to explore what it is that differentiates contemporary neoliberal modes of governing through habit from more critical approaches, this article compares contemporary ‘nudge’ theory and policy, as espoused by the behavioural economist Richard Thaler and the (...) legal scholar Cass Sunstein, with the pragmatist philosophies of habit offered by John Dewey, William James and Shannon Sullivan. While nudge advocates focus on how policy-makers and corporate leaders can intervene in the ‘choice architectures’ that surround us to outsmart or bypass problematic human tendencies, I argue, pragmatist philosophers appreciate the necessity of collective efforts to develop new and flexible forms of habituation in order to engender more enduring and democratic forms of social transformation. (shrink)

Attention is essential to the life of the mind, a central topic in cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology. Traditional debates in philosophy stand to benefit from greater understanding of the phenomenon, whether on the nature of the self, the foundation of knowledge, the natural basis of consciousness, or the origins of action and responsibility. This book is at the crossroads of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, offering a new theoretical stance on the concept of attention and how it intersects (...) with other functions of the mind, such as perception, consciousness, and action. It presents attention as directed by a subject, essential for perception, but not consciousness or action. By taking seriously the existence of a subject it stands against current trends in philosophy and cognitive science. This book offers an account of the subject and its role in attention that will both help motivate a subject-centered account and avoid some of the common criticisms regarding its existence. It engages with work by many philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, including Block, Campbell, Dickie, Husserl, James, Koch, Mack and Rock, Merleau-Ponty, Treisman, and Wu. (shrink)

Traditionally, the bodily senses of smell, taste, and touch have been designated ‘nonaesthetic’ senses and their objects considered unsuited to be fashioned into works of fine art. Recent innovations in the art world, however, have introduced scents, tastes, and tactile qualities into gallery exhibits, movements that, at least superficially, appear parallel to philosophical revaluations of the senses. This paper investigates the aesthetic scope of the five external senses, addressing some standard arguments about the limits of the ‘lower’ senses. I defend (...) the artistic scope of the bodily senses by appealing to cross-modal perception and to the sensuous aspects of appreciative emotional responses to art. (shrink)

Though there are many factors that contribute to the perceived legitimacy of business ethics education, this research focuses on one factor that is given great attention both formally and informally in many business schools: student satisfaction with the course. To understand the nature of student satisfaction, the authors draw from multiple theories with central claims relating expectations with satisfaction. The authors then compare student expectations of business ethics courses with instructor objectives and discover that business ethics courses are not necessarily (...) designed to meet student expectations. The authors speculate that this general mismatch between student expectations and instructor objectives has material consequences. As one example, the authors analyze student evaluations from three business schools and identify a “business ethics course effect”: a negative association between business ethics courses and student evaluations. The authors discuss the implications for business ethics education of a situation where pedagogical objectives and market prescriptions point in different directions. (shrink)

Fundamental terms in the field of ecology are ambiguous, with multiple meanings associated with them. While this could lead to confusion, discord, or even tests that violate core assumptions of a given theory or model, this ambiguity could also be a feature that allows for new knowledge creation through the interconnected nature of concepts. We approached this debate from a quantitative perspective, and investigated the cost of ambiguity related to definitions of ecological units in ecology related to the general term (...) “community.” We did a meta-analysis of tests associated with two bodies of literature, Hubbell’s unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography and Diamond’s assembly rules, that rely on a specific ecological unit that assumes that species are existing within a local area and that they have overlapping resource needs. We predicted that if ambiguous terminology is widespread, then researchers will have tested them with many different ecological units, that in addition some of these ecological units will violate the core assumptions of the theory, and finally that the overall level of support for a theory will be stronger if appropriate ecological units were used. We found that indeed multiple different ecological units were used in the literature to test both theories, with 65 percent appropriate ecological units for neutral theory tests, and only 6 percent for assembly rule tests. Finally, there was some evidence that the support for a theory depended on whether appropriate ecological units were used for neutral tests, but there was not enough data for the assembly rule tests. These results thus show that ambiguous terminology in ecology is having measurable effects on research and is not of solely philosophical concern. We advocate that authors be explicit in their writing and outline core assumptions of theories, that researchers apply these consistently in their tests, and that readers be attentive to what is written and cognizant of their potential biases. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce que l’espace? Pourquoi y a-t-il de l’espace plutôt que rien? La physique prétend aujourd’hui répondre à ces questions en se passant de toute référence à l’espace phénoménal du sujet, et donc en totale rupture avec son sens phénoménologique. Nous tiendrons que cette élusion, pour tradi­tionnelle qu’elle soit dans les sciences de la Nature, condamne par avance toute tentative d’explication de l’espace. Et nous montrerons que l’espace que nous construisons comme à notre insu dans la perception est de part en (...) part struc­turé par un rapport au possible, la spatialisation consistant dans son principe à se rendre intelligible les étants en représentant dans la structuration même du monde les possibilités dont nous disposons. (shrink)