The Disney movie Frozen is the fifth highest grossing movie of all time. In order to better understand this phenomenon and to hypothesize as to why the movie resonated so strongly with audiences, we have interpreted the movie using psychodynamic theory. We pay particular attention to the themes of puberty, adolescence and sibling relationships and discuss examples of ego defenses that are employed by the lead character in relation to these concepts.

We investigate expansions of Heyting algebras in possession of a unary term describing the filters that correspond to congruences. Hasimoto proved that Heyting algebras equipped with finitely many normal operators have such a term, generalising a standard construction on finite-type boolean algebras with operators. We utilise Hasimoto’s technique, extending the existence condition to a larger class of EHAs and some classes of double-Heyting algebras. Such a term allows us to characterise varieties with equationally definable principal congruences using a single equation. (...) Moreover, in the presence of a dual pseudocomplement operation, discriminator varieties are characterised by a pair of equations. We also prove that a variety of dually pseudocomplemented EHAs with a normal filter term is semisimple if and only if it is a discriminator variety. This generalises two known results, one by Kowalski and Kracht for finite-type varieties of BAOs, and the other by the present author for dually pseudocomplemented Heyting algebras without additional operations. (shrink)

The relationship between intelligent systems and their environment is at the forefront of research in cognitive science. The Unexplained Intellect: Complexity, Time, and the Metaphysics of Embodied Thought shows how computational complexity theory and analytic metaphysics can together illuminate long-standing questions about the importance of that relationship. It argues that the most basic facts about a mind cannot just be facts about mental states, but must include facts about the dynamic, interactive mental occurrences that take place when a creature encounters (...) its environment. In a discussion that is organised into four clear parts, Christopher Mole begins by examining the mathematics of computational complexity, arguing that the results from complexity theory create a puzzle about how human intelligence could possibly be explained. Mole then uses the tools of analytic metaphysics to draw a distinction between mental states and dynamic mental entities, and shows that, in order to answer the complexity-theoretic puzzle, dynamic entities must be understood to be among the most basic of mental phenomena. The picture of the mind that emerges has important implications for our understanding of intelligence, of action, and of the mind’s relationship to the passage of time. The Unexplained Intellect is the first book to bring insights from the mathematics of computational complexity to bear in an enquiry into the metaphysics of the mind. It will be essential reading for scholars and researchers in the philosophy of mind and psychology, for cognitive scientists, and for those interested in the philosophical importance of complexity. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Feeble Versions Robust Versions The Body View Who's Who? The Soul View The Reincarnation View Is There an Afterlife? Might I Live On?

The first comprehensive collection of the work of Richard Rorty, The Rorty Reader brings together the influential American philosopher’s essential essays from over four decades of writings. Offers a comprehensive introduction to Richard Rorty's life and body of work Brings key essays published across many volumes and journals into one collection, including selections from his final volume of philosophical papers, Philosophy as Cultural Politics ) Contains the previously unpublished essay, “Redemption from Egotism” Includes in-depth interviews, and several revealing autobiographical pieces (...) Represents the fullest portrait available today on Rorty’s relationship with American pragmatism and the trajectory of his thought. (shrink)

The recent translation of Emmanuel Levinas’s essay On Escape complicates our view of his relationship to Hegel, and reopens the ontological question of escape. The impetus for Levinas’s essay was National Socialism’s effort to reduce subjectivity to being qua biologistic. To resist this, Levinas enlists idealism as an ally. He affirms the idealist subject’s effort to escape being, but denies that it makes good its escape. I challenge this denial by comparing Levinas’s phenomenology of escape with Hegel’s phenomenology of unhappy (...) consciousness, paying special attention to the themes of shame and the will to escape. The similarity between treatments leads me to suggest that the urge to escape emerges at least as early as medieval Christianity, thus predating the historical predicament of mid-1930s European Jewry. I conclude by interpreting space travel and the posthuman figure of the cyborg as signs that escape continues asan object of human aspiration. (shrink)

"Presents an account of the ways scientists and others have perceived life and living processes from the times of the early Greek philosophers to the twentieth century ... The book follows out several major themes in the history of biological thought. How is it possible to harmonise atomism and organism? What has happened to the concept of the soul which played so important a part in early biologies? To what extent does our technology influence our understanding of the living process? (...) These and other questions are seen as instances of a major movement in the history of biological thought: a movement from an Aristotelian to a Cartesian vision of the nature of life"--From publisher description. (shrink)

Eugenic thinking divides people into groups according to real or perceived genetic traits, identifies some groups as unwanted, and then promotes the elimination of the unwanted groups. Some American medical professionals are pursuing a eugenic agenda that pressures and misleads parents to abort unborn children with Down syndrome. These counselors have a strong, unwar­ranted bias that influences parents’ decisions significantly. The use of prenatal genetic testing and in vitro fertilization increases the number of deaths of unborn children with Down syndrome. (...) The widespread practice of identifying and aborting children with Down syndrome is properly called eugenics. (shrink)

Reincarnation and Biology:. Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Ian Stevenson. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger, 1997. volumes. 1192 pp. $195.00 (cloth).

Søren Kierkegaard is well known for his claim that human life is marked by three existential spheres — the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. In Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence, Christopher B. Barnett argues that Kierkegaard's theory provides a key interpretative lens through which to evaluate the songwriting of Bob Dylan.

The arguments of Lefèvre for extensive Plautine rewriting at the end of the Mercator are here reinforced. The theory of an allusion to the Teucer legend is rejected. The question of how Plautus’ Greek model ended is left open.

Millikan proposes that there are mapping functions through which spoken sentences represent reality. Such mappings seem to depend on thoughts that words express and on concepts as components of such thoughts, but such concepts would conflict with Millikan's other claims about concepts and language.

Ben Taskar Dan Klein Michael Collins Computer Science Dept. Computer Science Dept. CS and AI Lab Stanford University Stanford University.

_Career-spanning selections from the writings of William Desmond._.

The systematic examination of the relationship between brain and behavior is generally considered to have begun in 1861 with Broca's description of a patient with a specific language deficit associated with a circumscribed lesion of the left frontal cortex. This observation was taken to show that there was a specific region in the brain concerned with language which was relatively independent of other regions concerned with other abilities. In the next decade a number of other patients were described with various (...) circumscribed deficits. Wernicke described aphasic patients who, in contrast to Broca's patients, were better at speech production than they were in understanding speech. Harlow described the case of Phineas Gage, who showed little sign of loss in his intellectual abilities but suffered a disastrous change in personality after bilateral damage to his frontal cortex. The aim of many of these early neuropsychologists was to associate particular psychological functions with specific brain regions by detailed study of neurological cases. (shrink)

This essay argues that Montaigne draws on elements of both the Academic and Pyrrhonian skeptical traditions, but that the fundamental desire for self-knowledge that initially led him to appreciate the insights of the ancient skeptics ultimately leads him beyond them. What lies at the heart of Montaigne’s skepticism is neither an epistemological position nor the experience of doubt, but rather the determination to philosophize self-consciously.

In this paper we assess the adequacy of the idea of community as an ideal-typical model against which real organisations and their management might be critically evaluated. Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on practices suggests that some forms of work activity require something more than contractual relationships within organisations: if he is right then perhaps we should acknowledge the importance of some notion of community at work. However, among the criticisms of the community approach are that it ignores issues of power and (...) the inevitable existence in organisations of interest groups based on different values and pursuing different objectives. It can also be seen as ineluctably managerialist and hence incapable of producing a coherent and sustainable account of organisational life. Is ‘community’ just a strategy of social, political or organisational control? Does it assume a particular discourse of political subjectivity, to do with the nature of subjects who exist in communities? We assess the extent to which the idea of community at work is fatally damaged by these objections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical Anecdotes: A Painful Lack of WoundsChristopher Bailey (bio)Keywordsdepression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), evolution, fight-or-flight, veteran (treatment of)Colin came to me complaining of depression, which started after he got back from Iraq in 2005. Although he had served in the National Guard, he volunteered absolutely nothing about his time in Iraq as we spoke, instead focusing on other factors, like problems at his job and a family history of (...) depression.Colin's depression seemed serious but not severe. He had been functioning fairly well at work and was not suicidal, although his home life had begun to suffer. As the interview proceeded, I myself fell into Colin's blind spot, all but forgetting his tour of duty as I forged ahead with my list of questions. My avoidance was conscious at first, a deliberate reluctance to come across as one more morbidly curious onlooker recklessly inflaming the wounds of war.When Colin complained of irritability, however, and being kept awake by sinister, shadowy “flashes” at night, I knew I had to ask about Iraq. He was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, I decided, and was thus trying to avoid the very memories that were haunting and hunting him. And for fear of retraumatizing him (if not suffering second-hand trauma myself), I had colluded in his denial.So when I finally got around to asking about Iraq, I fully expected to hear horror stories, half-articulated perhaps, but all the more grisly for the graininess of their images. Instead, Colin surprised me. He had not experienced anything he considered traumatic. No bombs, bloodshed, or shattered bodies. And in fact, he felt like a “wimp” for having been assigned to a noncombat detail where he missed what might have been his last, best chance “to be a hero.”Most of us would consider this a good thing, but in Colin's case, it had left him feeling somehow uninitiated, like he had not done his part or proven his manhood. Contrary to my assumption, it was the lack of trauma that seemed to trigger his depression upon returning from Iraq. In a relatively safe homeland, rife with middle-class comforts and lacking all but metaphorical rites of passage, perhaps we all feel this way at some level.I pointed out to Colin that people have been dying everywhere in Iraq and under all different circumstances, not just combat. From my stateside perspective, just being there is brave. Although I meant to honor him, he seemed to take my offering as more evidence of his failure, reassuring me that nothing he did could ever compare with the unspeakable horrors endured by veterans of Viet Nam and World War II.Now, as a civilian, he questions whether or not he would respond with sufficient ferocity if, say, he had to defend his family against an attacker. Although powerfully built, Colin (to his credit) has never been a brawler or a bully. Nonetheless, [End Page 223] I have no doubt he could do whatever it took to protect his family. What concerns me more is the opposite: That in trying to prove himself, he might unwittingly put himself and his family in harm's way, if not hurt someone who was never really a threat to begin with.With a new family member, I too feel the burden of hypervigilance. But although terrorists, serial killers, and gangs grab headlines, activating our visceral alarm systems, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a sedentary lifestyle still exacts a higher death toll among white American men, like Colin and myself. Although the effect of inertia on the body has been discussed extensively, its impact on mental health has received relatively little attention. Maybe for a creature who evolved on the African savannah, competing over territory and trying not to get eaten, the absence of a visceral challenge can be as debilitating as too much of one.Colin seemed receptive to my concerns, which I took to be a good sign. Although insecure men are quick to fear emasculation, Colin did not seem to be the least bit threatened when I suggested a course... (shrink)