Fleming, Daniel J; Ryan, Thomas Three recent phrases of Pope Francis warrant attention and guide this article. First, there is his call for 'witnesses of God's love' in his tribute to modern martyrs. The second is 'the pedagogy of grace' and the work of the Spirit explained in 'Amoris Laetitia'. Third, from the same document, we find his discussion of accompaniment in the process of moral discernment within the church. With these as guideposts and drawing on recent studies in (...) moral philosophy and psychology, this article unfolds in five steps: setting the scene; witness in relation to moral understanding and intersubjectivity; intersubjectivity and conscience; a pedagogy of grace: Holy Spirit and nonbelievers; and a pedagogy of grace in relation to moral development. (shrink)

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

This paper explores how accountability might make otherwise obscure and inaccessible algorithms available for governance. The potential import and difficulty of accountability is made clear in the compelling narrative reproduced across recent popular and academic reports. Through this narrative we are told that algorithms trap us and control our lives, undermine our privacy, have power and an independent agential impact, at the same time as being inaccessible, reducing our opportunities for critical engagement. The paper suggests that STS sensibilities can provide (...) a basis for scrutinizing the terms of the compelling narrative, disturbing the notion that algorithms have a single, essential characteristic and a predictable power or agency. In place of taking for granted the terms of the compelling narrative, ethnomethodological work on sense-making accounts is drawn together with more conventional approaches to accountability focused on openness and transparency. The paper uses empirical material from a study of the development of an “ethical,” “smart” algorithmic videosurveillance system. The paper introduces the “ethical” algorithmic surveillance system, the approach to accountability developed, and some of the challenges of attempting algorithmic accountability in action. The paper concludes with reflections on future questions of algorithms and accountability. (shrink)

Explores the impact of expert witnessing on the integrity of forensic scientific information. Complaints on the behavior of expert witnesses; Factors stimulating the susceptibility of experts to abandon their scientific integrity; Implications of the reliance of expert witnesses on ethics codes.

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues—which grew out of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks—are an exchange between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: Daniel Barenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, and Edward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentator on the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said a Palestinian-American; they are also close friends. As they range across music, literature, and society, they open up many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of (...) place; music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozart and Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; and the need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the Middle East—something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab and Israeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful and spontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosic collaboration. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position (...) for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures. (shrink)

For years, tour guide Daniel Lum has brought visitors as well as his children out to the remote corners of Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost cities in the world, to witness polar bears and walrus on the dark, sandy beaches. Over time, snapping pictures for tourists and shooting photographs of his own, he has been a first-hand witness to the profound environmental changes taking place as his homeland shifts and disappears before his eyes. As arguments over climate change (...) rage in more temperate locales, Nuvuk, the Northernmost is a poignant snapshot of life in a town where these changes are impossible to overlook. Lum's vivid photographs of wildlife, such as whales, polar bears, and birds, offer rare close-ups of animals few ever see. In addition, Lum provides vivid descriptions and pictures of daily life in and around Barrow, offering a compelling insider's introduction to living on the tip of the world. With Lum as a capable guide, Nuvuk, the Northernmost is a chance to see a rare world before it changes forever. (shrink)

Within a variety of contemplative traditions, non-dual-oriented practices were developed to evoke an experiential shift into a mode of experiencing in which the cognitive structures of self-other and subject–object subside. These practices serve to de-reify the enactment of an observing witness which is usually experienced as separate from the objects of awareness. While several contemplative traditions, such as Zen, Mahāmudrā, Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta emphasize the importance of such a non-dual insight for the cultivation of genuine wellbeing, only very few (...) attempts in contemplative science have turned toward the study of non-dual-oriented practices. This article starts from a recently developed theoretical cognitive science framework that models the requirements of a temporary experiential shift into a mode of experiencing free from cognitive subject–object structure. This model inspired by the enactive approach contributes theoretically grounded hypotheses for the much-needed rigorous study of non-dual practices and non-dual experiences. To do so, three steps are taken: first, common elements of non-dual-oriented practices are outlined. Second, the main ideas of enactive cognitive science are presented including a principled theoretical model of what is required for a shift to a pure non-dual experience, that is, an experiential mode that is unbound by subject–object duality. Third, this synthesized theoretical model of the requirements for the recognition of the non-dual is then compared with a specific non-dual style of meditation practice, namely,Mahāmudrāpractice from Tibetan Buddhism. This third step represents a heuristic for evaluating the external coherence of the presented model. With this, the aim is to point toward a principled enactive view of non-dual meditative practice. In drawing the implications of the presented model, this article ends with an outlook toward next steps for further developing a research agenda that may fully address the concrete elements of non-dual practices. (shrink)

In this book the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben looks closely at the literature of the survivors of Auschwitz, probing the philosophical and ethical questions raised by their testimony."In its form, this book is a kind of perpetual commentary on testimony. It did not seem possible to proceed otherwise. At a certain point, it became clear that testimony contained at its core an essential lacuna; in other words, the survivors bore witness to something it is impossible to bear witness to. As (...) a consequence, commenting on survivors' testimony necessarily meant interrogating this lacuna or, more precisely, attempting to listen to it. Listening to something absent did not prove fruitless work for this author. Above all, it made it necessary to clear away almost all the doctrines that, since Auschwitz, have been advanced in the name of ethics."--Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

One of the world’s leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments. Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, (...) and free will. With patience and wit, Dennett deftly deploys his thinking tools to gain traction on these thorny issues while offering readers insight into how and why each tool was built. Alongside well-known favorites like Occam’s Razor and reductio ad absurdum lie thrilling descriptions of Dennett’s own creations: Trapped in the Robot Control Room, Beware of the Prime Mammal, and The Wandering Two-Bitser. Ranging across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, computer science, and physics, Dennett’s tools embrace in equal measure light-heartedness and accessibility as they welcome uninitiated and seasoned readers alike. As always, his goal remains to teach you how to "think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions." A sweeping work of intellectual seriousness that’s also studded with impish delights, Intuition Pumps offers intrepid thinkers—in all walks of life—delicious opportunities to explore their pet ideas with new powers. (shrink)

There is an ancient Christian tradition of a ‘good and holy death’. That tradition has largely been forgotten in the medicalization of death, which regards death solely as an enemy to be defeated at all costs. This paper examines the tradition of a holy death through the lens of Margaret Edson's play W;t, with particular attention paid to the use of John Donne's poetry in the play. The paper then uses theologian Allen Verhey's writings on the Christian art of dying (...) as a means to understand the play in a Christian context, with special attention paid to the way in which it portrays Vivian Bearing, the play's protagonist, as a victim as much as a beneficiary of modern medicine. (shrink)

We live in a time of human paradoxes. Scientific knowledge has reached a level of sophistication that permits understanding of the most arcane phenomena and yet religious fundamentalism dominates in many parts of the world. We witness the emergence of a civil, liberal constitutionalism in many regions of the world and yet ethnic violence threatens.

Il est toujours tentant de diviser l'histoire de la recherche en époques, surtout lorsqu'un groupe ou une tendance s'en fait le repère avec la « troi­sième quête », fût-ce au prix de pratiques exégétiques et de présupposés méthodologiques pour le moins discutables . Divers modèles et figures du Christ surgissent de cette quête multi­forme Jésus philosophe cynique itinérant, sapiential, homme de l'Esprit, prophète de la restauration d'Israêl, militant du changement social...), ce qui ne suffit pourtant pas à jeter le soupçon (...) sur tous les auteurs ou sur la totalité de leurs travaux dont certains, par leur connaissance du milieu juif contemporain et des mouvements histori­ques, éclairent singulièrement le contexte politique dans lequel s'inscrit le destin du Christ. Témoignant d'une « relative cohérence », la « troisième quête », par l'usage des sources , la question de l'eschatologie et la valorisation de la judéité de Jésus, ravive la question de l'enjeu théologiquement fort de la quête du Jésus historique.It is always temping to divide historical research into periods, especially when a group or a tendency makes the division with a “ third quest », even at the price of exegetical practices and methodological presuppositions at the least debatable . Diverse models and figures of Christ arise from this multiform quest . This does not suffice, however, to throw suspicion on all the authors or on all theïr works , some of whom, by their knowledge of the contemporaneous Jewish milieu and historical movements hed singular light on the political context in which the destiny of Christ was written. Giving witness to a “relative coherenc”, the « third quest “ by using sources , the question of eschatology, and the valorization of the jewishness of Jesus, gives new life to the question of the strong theological stakes involved with the quest of the historical Jesus. (shrink)

Modern technology offers the ability to prolong life by supporting physiologic processes in dying patients who would have succumbed more peacefully to their illnesses in the past. We prolong life, but witness the pain and suffering that our interventions cause. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, the process of making end-of-life decisions is inherently difficult and emotionally trying. The caregiver, family member or friend is faced with making heart-wrenching decisions for loved ones where the line between support and cruelty may feel (...) blurred.This is the nature of ethical dilemmas that arise when core ethical principles collide, necessitating the establishment of the primacy of one over the other. It is... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper offers an opportunity to ponder the way the Catholic Church and its methods of information control reshaped, and paradoxically even enabled, the dissemination and practice of science in early modern Italy. Focusing on the activities of Newtonian scholars operating in Rome in the First half of the eighteenth century – especially the Celestine monk Celestino Galiani and prelate Francesco Bianchini – I will argue that major contributions to the spread of Newtonianism in Italy came from individuals operating within (...) the Church, acting more-or-less independently from the Church’s oversight. These scholars realized they were witnessing an inexorable transition and that the medieval scholastic cosmology and physics could not survive. In order to rescue the Church – and to avoid further embarrassment, especially after the Galileo Affair – renewal was needed. Counterintuitively, the dissemination of Italian Newtonianism was largely a Catholic effort. (shrink)

Regarding police procedures with alcohol-intoxicated witnesses, Swedish police officers have previously reported inconsistent and subjective decisions when interviewing these potentially vulnerable witnesses. Most officers have also highlighted the need for national policy guidelines aiding in conducting investigative interviews with intoxicated witnesses. The aims of the two studies presented here were to investigate whether police officers’ inconsistent interview decisions are attributable to a lack of research-based knowledge; their decision to interview, as well as their perceptions of the witnesses’ credibility could be (...) influenced by scientific research; and police officers decision-making and perceptions of witness credibility are biased by pre-existing social norms. In two separate randomized online experiments, police professionals and recruits watched a recorded fictive witness interview to which they were asked to rate the probability of interviewing the witness, the witness’ credibility, and to estimate the witness’ level of intoxication. Results showed that interview probability and perceived witness credibility were affected by witness intoxication level. While it cannot be stated definitely from the present research, these findings provided indications that police officers and recruits lacked research-based knowledge. Results also showed that interview probability, but not perceptions of credibility, was influenced by a research-based message. In line with research, interview probability for the most intoxicated witness increased after reading the message. Unexpectedly, neither interview probability nor witness credibility was affected by social norms. The current findings added to the legal psychology literature by showing that a breath alcohol concentration as low as.04% was enough for police officers and recruits to consider intoxicated witnesses less credible than sober witnesses. Findings also indicated that, despite the lower credibility assessment, police may have some understanding that these witnesses can be interviewed at low intoxication levels. However, this willingness to interview intoxicated witnesses ceased at a BrAC lower than the levels where research has found intoxicated witnesses as reliable as sober witnesses. Future directions for research and policy development as well as theoretical and practical implications of the present findings are discussed. (shrink)

The 1980s witnessed a dramatic increase in hostile takeovers in the United States. Proponents argue that well- planned mergers enhance the value of the firm and the value of the firm to society. Critics typically argue that undesired takeovers ultimately harm society due to external costs not borne by the acquiring firm. To be socially responsible, the manager must consider the effects of the merger/acquisition on all stakeholders. Different traditional ethical frameworks for decision making are proposed and reviewed. A model (...) is proposed. (shrink)

We are all, I take it, unshakably sure that we are each in a special position to report, or to know, or to witness or experience a set of something-or-others we may call, as neutrally as possible, elements of our own conscious experience. In short, we all believe in the doctrine of privileged access, however much we disagree or are uncertain about what we mean by privilege and access. Yet trying to make sense of this well-entrenched and highly intuitive doctrine (...) is a frustrating and tantalizing job, nor does denying the doctrine root and branch sit any more comfortably. There is a curious evanescence and incompleteness to philosophical accounts of privileged access, and I suspect the difficulty lies in the larger strategy philosophers have often quite reasonably adopted: they have set out to compose accounts of privileged access that are intuitive throughout, when in fact the only hope of giving any coherent account of any form of privileged access requires radical surgery on our intuitions, requires defending an initially counter-intuitive thesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AphorismsDaniel LiebertOne man alone is too much for one man alone.—Antonio Porchia1Inspired by the Antonio Porchia quotation above, I have put aside aphorisms as varieties of "wit and word" games for a while to explore the question, "Can the writing of aphorisms be a profoundly serious activity of the inner life?" I hope to capture that "too-much-ness" of a man alone. We are all of us such intrinsically lovely, (...) overwhelmed creatures.It is too late too soon.Once I wasn't, but never again will I not have been.An ugly city is an ugly idea about man.A small boy prays to the God of small boys.There is only truth—what else could there be?The end of the poem is the oldest part of the poem.Even this pellet of mouse dung is a fated thing.Not even a handhold; a breathhold in this world is all.Here evokes infinite elsewheres. [End Page 463] I will die where I was born—in medias res.To have had a destiny—how I would have loved that!My secrets have secrets from me.I don't want what I need—I hate what I need.Daniel LiebertSt. Louis, MissouriFootnotes1. Antonio Porchia, "Voices," trans. Gonzalo Melchor, unpublished manuscript, 2008.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The constant threats to scientific progress are complacency and the diminished capacity for self-criticism. There have been great advances in our understanding of the functional anatomy of the nervous system, advances that stand in vivid contrast to our understanding of the moral, aesthetic and political dimensions of human life. The contrast is so great as to encourage the belief that these dimensions are found beyond the ambit of scientific explanation. How pathetic, then, to witness strident and smug attacks on those (...) who have reached this plausible and profound conclusion. (shrink)

Soon after modern spiritualism announced itself with the “Rochester knockings” of 1848, tables took on a new and controversial life. No longer were they content to live out their days impassively upholding dishes and glasses and silverware, vases, papers and books, bibelots, elbows, or weary heads. They were changed: they began to move. Tables all over the United States and then in England, France, and other countries commenced rapping, knocking, tilting, turning, tapping, dancing, levitating, and even “thrilling”—though this last was (...) uncommon. So Mrs. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan said in her discussion of Daniel Dunglas Home, probably the most famous nineteenth-century medium:It is only in Mr. Home’s presence that I have witnessed that very curious appearance, or process, the thrilling of the table. This takes place for some seconds, perhaps more, before it rises from the floor. The last time I witnessed this phenomenon, an acute surgeon present said that this thrilling, the genuineness of which was unmistakable, was exactly like what takes place in that affection of the muscles called subsultus tendinum.2And the tables did still more. Their actions were a language; and so they came to symbolize “the ‘movement,’ as it has been called,”3 of modern spiritualism. Spirits had chosen the table as an organ of speech.Tables were customarily viewed as objects of economics, aesthetics, utility, diversion, tradition, even theology . Now, though, as Professor De Morgan jokes, “London and Paris were running after tables in a new sense.”4 Tables had become a different kind of thing. Whatever one might think about reports of spiritual communications, the conception of tables had changed. They had become moral objects. 2. C. D. [Mrs. Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan], From Matter to Spirit. The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations, with a preface by A. B. [Augustus De Morgan] , p. 27. Daniel Cottom is an associate professor of English at the University of Florida. His most recent books are Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History, and Literary Representation and Text and Culture: The Politics of Interpretation . This essay is adapted from a work in progress on spiritualism and surrealism. (shrink)

Although it may seem like a truism to assert that biology is the science that studies organisms, during the second half of the twentieth century the organism category disappeared from biological theory. Over the past decade, however, biology has begun to witness the return of the organism as a fundamental explanatory concept. There are three major causes: (a) the realization that the Modern Synthesis does not provide a fully satisfactory understanding of evolution; (b) the growing awareness of the limits of (...) reductionism in molecular biology; and (c) the renewed interest in the nature of life as a genuine scientific problem. This essay examines these recent developments and considers the new epistemological roles being played by the organism in each of them. It also reflects on what the present resurgence of the organism means for the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Historically, parents looking for guidance turned to a small cadre of trusted individuals such as grandparents and pediatricians. In the Internet era, this paradigm has shifted. With a few keystrokes, anxious parents have access to a seemingly endless array of opinions from faceless sources with unknown agendas. For some parents, this can cause more uncertainty, and for the parents of a child with a medical condition, navigating this information can be overwhelming. In this modern paradigm, the pediatrician's duty has also (...) become more complex, especially with the shift from paternalism to patient autonomy in medical decision-making. It is within this context that Alan Fleischman's book, Pediatric Ethics: Protecting the Interests of Children, should be examined. A pediatrician and neonatologist, Fleischman has witnessed this evolution over more than five decades of practice. As a clinical and academic bioethicist, he has also witnessed a transformation in the field of bioethics, with shifting perspectives on areas such as research ethics and medical decision-making. Because of his rich experience and deep understanding of the past and present of ethical issues in pediatrics, Fleischman approaches this subject with a perspective that warrants attention and thoughtful consideration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the AnthropoceneDanielle SandsIn a 2011 lecture addressing ecological crisis, sociologist Bruno Latour advanced James Lovelock’s Gaia model as a way of re-conceptualizing nature in an Anthropocene or “postnatural” (Latour 2011, 9) world.1 For Latour, Gaia, a mythological goddess reinvented by Lovelock as a scientific metaphor, embodies the collision between discourses, “this mix up of science and politics” (Latour 2011, 8), which the Anthropocene represents. (...) In its deviation from benevolent images of Mother Nature, Gaia provides an alternative account of the human relationship with the natural world, one that implies that our response to the Anthropocene crisis should not derive from a solely scientific framework. Latour seizes upon the image of Gaia with fervor, celebrating “her” not only as an assemblage of different discourses, but, in “her” disunity and non-sovereignty, as an alternative political paradigm. Of less political interest for Latour is the gendering of Gaia; like Lovelock before him, Latour regards the feminizing of Gaia as an affective metaphorical device and not a political issue.2It is hard not to view Latour’s “Gaia politics” (Latour 2004, 5) as part of a broader tendency to revivify conservative frameworks in the face of crisis, here a crisis of a hitherto unknown scale.3 As Claire Colebrook wryly notes of post-apocalyptic narratives: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world […] than it is to think outside the structuring fantasies of gender.” Where Latour stops short—just—of endorsing what Colebrook calls “an active male heroism driven by a female fragility that appears to hold the promise of the future” [End Page 287] (Colebrook 2014 v.2, 150), his restraint does not extend to all advocates of Gaia-led theories. Witness, for example, Eileen Crist’s feverish call to arms: “[T]his is our moment. It is the moment to face the root of the terrible trouble we have unleashed for the biosphere and for ourselves: our expansionism, arrogance, and domination within the biosphere. In acts of beauty, and without fear, this is our moment to put Gaia first” (Crist 2010, 330). In Crist’s hands, Gaia—and the Anthropocene framework that is presupposed but here disavowed—not only offers an alibi for apocalyptic language and discredited narratives, but more importantly, unwittingly endorses the very worldview—uncritical, narcissistic, and heavily gendered—that it purports to replace.4The Anthropocene compels us to question the literal and metaphorical place of the human. In projecting human maternity onto the earth, the figure of Gaia and that of Mother Earth before her restrict thought to an immobile narcissism. In this article, I shall first address the way in which a purportedly progressive feminized figure of Gaia actually absents woman, denying female agency in favor of male sovereignty. I shall frame this discussion both within ecofeminist debates and in light of recent Anthropocene rhetoric. Secondly, I shall contextualize Gaia within the broader problem of figuring the female, asking whether an Anthropocene framework necessarily inclines us toward the replication of gender stereotypes.Gendering Gaia and the Woman-Nature ConnectionA clear aim of James Lovelock’s adoption of the name Gaia as a metaphor for “the living planet” earth (Lovelock 1988, 19) was to stimulate humans to accept their previously neglected environmental responsibilities. By according Gaia an identity, one that chimed both with ancient narratives and 1970s sensibilities, Lovelock invited humans to acknowledge that there was a living victim of their environmental misdemeanors. For Lovelock, speaking of the earth as Gaia counters proprietorial conceptions stemming from the damaging notion of human stewardship and undermines the notion of earth as a passive or inert object upon which human agents act. Assessing Lovelock’s approach, Mary Midgley asks: “Was it necessary to use language that apparently personified the earth?” (Midgley 2007, 8) and concludes affirmatively, asserting that the concept of a mechanistic universe is so deeply ingrained in human thought that Lovelock needed to name the earth in order to facilitate such an imaginative leap.By framing the earth as female, Lovelock capitalized on age-old tensions in the concept of the female: Gaia is nurturing but ruthless, fragile... (shrink)

Memory conformity may occur when a person’s belief in another’s memory report outweighs their belief in their own. Witnesses might be less likely to believe and therefore take on false information from intoxicated co-witnesses, due to the common belief that alcohol impairs memory performance. This paper presents an online study in which participants watched a video of a mock crime taking place outside a pub that included a witness either visibly consuming wine or a soft drink. Participants then read a (...) statement from the witness that varied in the number of false details it contained before being asked to recall the crime. We found that the intoxicated witness was regarded as significantly less credible, but participants were not less likely to report misinformation from them. This suggests that intoxication status impacts one’s perception of how credible a source is, but not one’s ability to reject false suggestions from this source. Our findings reinforce the importance of minimizing co-witness discussion prior to interview, and not to assume that people automatically discount information provided by intoxicated co-witnesses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Oedipus Smart?Charles B. DanielsWhat does it amount to, to ask whether Oedipus is smart, intelligent, clever? I take this to mean that he is quicker than most to gain understanding about difficult matters. Now, does Sophocles in Oedipus Rex portray Oedipus to be an intelligent, clever man?The Yes AnswerA "yes" answer to the title question may rest upon three grounds:Y1. Everyone in the play, including Oedipus himself and (...) the citizens of Thebes who have been his subjects for some 15 to 20 years, everyone, that is, save Teiresias, thinks that Oedipus is intelligent.Y2. In both legend and Sophocles' play, the only person smart enough to solve the Sphinx's riddle is Oedipus. Everyone in the play, as well as in the play's audiences, knows that Oedipus has solved the Sphinx's riddle. This is a major reason why everyone in the play, again excepting Teiresias, believes Oedipus to have a first-class mind. Oedipus is renown for this deed and thought by his subjects to be very clever in doing of it.Y3. John P. Carroll, in his interesting study of the extraordinary number of questions posed by Oedipus in Oedipus Rex (one in each nine lines of text uttered by him), concludes, "King Oedipus was endowed at birth with the heritage of the 'riddler's mind,' which by constant use throughout the course of his life he sharpened and brought to greater [End Page 562] perfection than it ever had had in his parents." 1 Oedipus is clever because he has a "riddler's mind": he asks lots of questions.Y1, Y2, and Y3, I believe, constitute the sole evidential textual base for the "yes" response to the title question. 2The No AnswerThe "no" answer, the view that Oedipus is not clever, rests upon four grounds:N1. The first consists of events from Oedipus' past that took place prior to the opening scene of the play and hence do not occur on stage. These are disclosed as the play progresses and its characters relate in dialogue what they believe to have taken place. We discover that Oedipus has lived his entire adult life with unresolved doubts about who his parents are. Worse yet, at the very beginning of his adult life, his inquiry at the Delphic Oracle met with terrible, enigmatic pronouncements that raised the ante on these doubts and made the tenor of his whole subsequent life up to the present worrisome to say the least. We learn of six questions of high moment to Oedipus—questions that touch him as profoundly as did the Sphinx's riddle, "What walks on two, three, and four legs?"—questions which he continues to be aware of and yet has not resolved, or in some cases even probed. A truly clever person, one with a "riddler's mind," would have done so. But the mature Oedipus we meet at the beginning of the play has yet to puzzle out correct answers to the questions:1. Where did the scars on my feet come from?2. Who are my real parents, Polybus and Merope, or some other couple?3. How can I best avoid doing the terrible things the Oracle foretells I shall do—killing my father and marrying my mother—given I am not sure who my father and mother really are?4. Is this old man who has just forced me off the road and arrogantly swatted me from his passing carriage my father?5. Who killed the king whose throne I have just been given?6. Is this widow I am about to marry my mother?The Oedipus we see at the beginning of the play is a man who has solved the riddle of the Sphinx, but has not solved a single one of these six questions from his own past life, which, it turns out, are easily of comparable importance to him. [End Page 563]N2. Another source of evidence in support of a "no" answer consists of failures on Oedipus' part to evince a quick wit concerning two puzzles that arise in the dramatic present among the events we see unfold on stage:7. The riddles... (shrink)

Is the expression “unconscious phenomena” a contradiction in terms? Do psychoanalytic discoveries compel phenomenology to adapt its methods in treating inapparent phenomena? What role does the body play in the manifestation of such phenomena? In this paper, I approach these questions (1) from within the clinical context of a post-traumatic somatization and (2) by spelling out the implications of Heidegger’s critique of Freudian psychoanalysis in the Zollikon Seminars. Drawing new critical attention to Freud’s earliest theories and methods, developed in the (...) context of the investigation into hysteria, I argue that some of his fundamental insights may be read as following basic phenomenological intuitions. Following Heidegger’s reconfiguration of the field of phenomenology, the inapparent (“that which does not show itself as itself”) may be seen as taking center stage as the exhaustive model for phenomena as such. Placing particular emphasis on a set of Heidegger’s critical notions – “semblance” [Schein],” “understanding”, “motive” [Beweggrund] and “bodying-forth” [Leiben] — I argue that somatization could be conceptualized phenomenologically as a “bodying-forth” [Leiben] of an incapacity to understand or be understood, and that a similar mis-understanding may also befall practitioners who struggle to witness trauma, thus becoming the clinician’s own symptom. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel appeals to the idea of an “intellectual intuition” in his Encyclopedia Psychology and that this appeal has important ramifications for the received view of Hegel’s mature philosophy. Hegel did not, in my view, break with Schelling over intellectual intuition in as decisive a way as has been claimed. Establishing this greater coftgntinuity between Hegel and Schelling will, I hope, bolster a minority opinion in the literature and highlight a critical yet underappreciated aspect of Hegel’s philosophical method. (...) To wit, Hegel was a consummate reviser and, as his dealings with intellectual intuition demonstrate, revamped rather than rejected certain of his predecessors’ doctrines. (shrink)

This paper discusses so-called post-trial access to drugs for patients who participated in clinical trials in Brazil. Brazil is currently a relevant country for the pharmaceutical industry due to the dimensions of its actual and potential market. As a consequence, the number of pharmaceutical trials has been rising. It is the largest market for pharmaceutical companies in Latin America, the 8th biggest in the world and second only to China among the so-called BRICS’s emerging countries. The demand for pharmaceutical products (...) in the country has been increasing by double digits over the last few years, reaching 20% in 2008. Not surprisingly, we are also witnessing a steady increase in the number of applications by national and international pharmaceutical companies before ethical research authorities for authorization to perform clinical trials of drugs. (shrink)

Since the 1990s we witness a rise in public apologies. Are we living in the `Age of Apology¿? Interesting research questions can be raised about the opportunity, the form, the meaning, the effectiveness and the ethical implications of public apologies. Are they not merely a clever and easy device to escape real and tangible responsibility for mistakes or wrong done? Are they not at risk to become well-rehearsed rituals that claim to express regret but, in fact, avoid doing so? In (...) a joint interdisciplinary effort, the contributors to this book, combining findings from their specific fields of research (legal, religious, political, linguistic, marketing and communication studies), attempt to articulate this tension between ritual and sincere regret, between the discourse and the content of apologies, between excuses that pretend and regret that seeks reconciliation. Daniël Cuypers: Professor of Labour Law and Discrimination Law at the University of Antwerp, Daniel Janssen: Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and international guest Professor at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, Jacques Haers: Academic Director University Centre Saint Ignatius Antwerpen and Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Barbara Segaert: Scientific Coordinator, University Centre Saint Ignatius Antwerpen. (shrink)

Microcosme de la société, espace symbolique où se nouent des rapports humains et sociaux fondamentaux, lieu de mémoire, l'hôpital public a vu ses fonctions se transformer au fil du temps. Successivement lieu d'accueil, maison d'enfermement, « machine à guérir », pivot de l'action sanitaire, il est aujourd'hui à la fois une administration et une entreprise de soins. Cependant, sous la pression de quelques évolutions sociales fondamentales, l'hôpital ne serait-il pas en train de s'ouvrir progressivement sur l'extérieur, de se transformer de (...) « citadelle » du service public de santé en « espace public » aux vertus culturelles et solidaires. Parmi ces évolutions, le développement d'initiatives solidaires en milieu hospitalier, telles que l'organisation de solidarités de proximité en partenariat avec le « dehors », paraît jouer un rôle essentiel.Hospitals are microcosms of society, symbolic places where basic human and social relationships are formed and places of memory and as such have witnessed great changes to their functions over the years. In turn they have been places of welcome, places of confinement, “healing machines”, the mainspring of health policies and nowadays seem to be both government-run institutions and healthcare businesses however contradictory that may sometimes appear. However, the pressure of a few basic social shifts seems to have led hospitals to gradually open up to the outside world, turning themselves from publich health system strongholds into “spaces open to the public” with culturally supportive values. Among these shifts in society, the development of support initiatives in the hospital environment such as local community-based solidarity projects run in partnership with “the outside world” seems to be playing an important role. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a growing concern that terminally illpatients are needlessly suffering in the dying process. This has ledto demands that physicians become more attentive in the assessment ofsuffering and that they treat their patients as `whole persons.'' Forthe most part, these demands have not fallen on deaf ears. It is nowwidely accepted that the relief of suffering is one of the fundamentalgoals of medicine. Without question this is a positive development.However, while the importance of treating suffering has generally (...) beenacknowledged, insufficient attention has been paid to the question ofwhether different types of terminal suffering require differnt responsesfrom health care professionals. In this paper we introduce a distinctionbetween two types of suffering likely to be present at the end of life,and we argue that physicians must distinguish between these types if theyare to respond appropriately to the suffering of their terminally illpatients. After introducing this distinction and explaining its basis,we further argue that the distinction informs a (novel) principle ofproportionality, one that should guide physicians in balancing theircompeting obligations in responding to terminal suffering. As weexplain, this principle is justified by reference to the intereststerminally ill patients have in restoration, as well as in therelief of suffering, at the end of life. (shrink)

All modern critics have read verses 128–36 of Pseudo-Scymnus’ iambic Periodos to Nicomedes (c.133–110/109 b.c.e.) as a description of the personal autopsies of the author. However, close analysis of both the literary dynamics of the poem and the syntax of the lacunose text that precedes this passage shows that this cannot be the case. This article proposes that Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.350–260 b.c.e.) is a superior candidate for the referent of these lines, and offers a coherent approach to emending the (...) manifestly corrupt text. This reinterpretation makes better sense of the extant text of the Periodos, and allows these verses to be read as a second-century witness to Timaeus’ autoptic prowess. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to (re)introduce D. P. Chattopadhyaya (1931–2022, henceforth DPC), one of the key-players in the field of contemporary Indian philosophy, his main books, his community-building activities, and his unique life-story. A modern Rājar ṣ i, DPC was both a philosopher and a statesman who served both as a minister in the Indian government in the 1970s and as the governor of Rajasthan in the early 1990s. The Śvetāśvatara Upani ṣ ad narrates the famous story of (...) two birds sitting on a single branch, one eating a fig, the other watching-witnessing. DPC’s life-story and writings show that the two birds could be one and the same, namely that action and reflection, or engagement and the detachment needed for reflection, do not necessarily exclude one another but can in fact complement and contribute to one another. Relying primarily on DPC’s chapter “A Short Intellectual Autobiography of D. P. Chattopadhyaya,” written by him in 1999, but not forgetting the next decade of his writing-life, this essay focuses on DPC’s contribution in the fields of phenomenology, philosophy of science and mind, and socio-political philosophy, and on his pivotal role in the ongoing attempt to decolonize knowledge towards the fulfillment of the ideal of Svaraj in Ideas, “independent thinking.” DPC is further depicted in the present essay as a comparative philosopher without borders, drawing on materials from different traditions of thinking, and committed to interdisciplinarity, traveling freely between disciplines, languages, eras, and life-experiences. (shrink)

The essay analyses the development of Joseph de Maistre’s ideas on war and peace. Commonly seen as advocating militarism and bloodshed, Maistre’s insights and propositions on the nature of war are in fact highly modern and original. As a witness to the European upheaval of 1792-1815, Maistre emphasizes the indeterminacy and unpredictability of modern war, and its irreducibility to a science or a doctrine. In order to regulate and restrain warfare, Maistre argues, it is necessary to cultivate public opinion, an (...) elusive and difficult process which can only be sustained by informal cultural institutions. The essay also examines the legacy of Maistre’s ideas on war and peace in political thought. (shrink)

In this chapter I consider a common refrain among critics of digital platforms: big tech "exploits" us. It gives voice to a shared sense that technology firms are somehow mistreating people—taking advantage of us, extracting from us—in a way that other data-driven harms, such as surveillance and algorithmic bias, fail to capture. Exploring several targets of this charge—gig work, algorithmic pricing, and surveillance advertising—I ask: What does exploitation entail, exactly, and how do platforms perpetrate it? Is exploitation in the platform (...) economy a new kind of exploitation, or are these old problems dressed up as new ones? What would a theory of digital exploitation add to our understanding of the platform age? First, I define exploitation and argue that critics are justified in describing many platform practices as wrongfully exploitative. Next, I focus on platforms themselves—both as businesses and technologies—in order to understand what is and isn’t new about the kinds of exploitation we are witnessing. In some cases, digital platforms perpetuate familiar forms of exploitation by extending the ability of exploiters to reach and control exploitees. In other cases, they enable new exploitative arrangements by creating or exposing vulnerabilities that powerful actors couldn't previously leverage. On the whole, I argue, the language of exploitation helps express forms of injustice overlooked or only partially captured by dominant concerns about, e.g., surveillance, discrimination, and related platform abuses, and it provides valuable conceptual and normative resources for challenging efforts by platforms to obscure or legitimate them. (shrink)

The astounding flourishing of fashion we have witnessed for the past centuries would not have been possible without a range of specifically modern phenomena like capitalism, the rise of an ambitious middle-class, the growth and diversification of mass-communication, and the Industrial Revolution. However, there is yet another interesting link between the two as they both have a common ‘condition of possibility’, that makes them interconnected. In this paper I will argue that such a condition is what I loosely call a (...) ‘will to novelty’. Following some of Herbert Blumer’s suggestions, I will argue that the quest for renewal remains probably the best explanation of all possible candidates in explaining the incessant change of fashion (one of such candidates being Simmel’s famous class-differentiation analysis). My claim is that such a pursuit of renewal is undertaken for the sake of renewal itself, and this is a key aspect that connects fashion with modernity, namely an aesthetic concept of modernity, which I will outline, in the footsteps of Michel Foucault and Matei Călinescu, as a quest for novelty and change. Unlike the bourgeois modernity or the scientific one, the aesthetic modernity does not innovate for the sake of profit or truth respectively, but for the sake of innovation itself. Like fashion, the aesthetic modernity is an expression of the ‘will to novelty’. (shrink)

At the climax of Ender's Game, we see Ender exhausted and at wit's end. Sorting out the mess of who is actually responsible for what is difficult–we feel conflicted about the whole thing, just as Ender does. In this chapter, Aristotle helps us make sense of responsibility and voluntary action and considers whether a person can be responsible for something that he or she did not cause. It looks at why we should care about whether a fictional character is responsible (...) and consider an alternative notion of responsibility that explains Ender's post‐xenocide actions as Speaker for the Dead. The chapter first establishes what moral responsibility is and then contrasts moral responsibility with causal responsibility. He is not to blame for the destruction of the buggers, he does what he can to try to make things right. (shrink)

True to its title, this is a book with a plot. True to its subtitle, it is also a tightly focussed scholarly monograph, one which will undoubtedly serve as an authoritative reference work in its field for many years to come and which deserves to be read by anyone interested in the history of German philosophy “after Kant.” As readers of The Owl of Minerva are well aware, recent decades have witnessed an explosive revival of interest in classical German philosophy. (...) Kant and Hegel studies now constitute full-scale cottage industries, and even long-neglected figures like Fichte and Schelling have recently become objects of new interest. What has remained lacking is any general appreciation or even awareness of the quite specific philosophical milieu out of which the “giants” of post-Kantian philosophy arose. Beyond a familiarity with Kant’s Critiques, contemporary readers, especially English language readers, have remained almost entirely ignorant of the theoretical context within which the great systematic works of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel first appeared. Nor has this ignorance been unexpected or inexcusable, since it concerns an unusually confused and confusing period in the history of philosophy and since the obscure texts involved have seldom been reprinted and almost never translated. (shrink)

Giving Voice To Values (GVV) serves as a framework to teach individuals methods to speak up when they witness actions that are contrary to their professional and personal values. This essay illustrates how GVV serves as a catalyst to advance both research and teaching activities.

Arthur C. Danto is unique among philosophers for the breadth of his philosophical mind, his eloquent writing style, and the generous spirit embodied in all his work. Any collection of essays on his philosophy has to engage him on all these levels, because this is how he has always engaged the world, as a philosopher and person. In this volume, renowned philosophers and art historians revisit Danto's theories of art, action, and history, and the depth of his innovation as a (...) philosopher of culture. Essays explore the importance of Danto's philosophy and criticism for the contemporary art world, along with his theories of perception, action, historical knowledge, and, most importantly for Danto himself, the conceptual connections among these topics. Danto himself continues the conversation by adding his own commentary to each essay, extending the debate with characteristic insight, graciousness, and wit. Contributors include Frank Ankersmit, Hans Belting, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Immerwahr, Daniel Herwitz, and Michael Kelly, testifying to the far-reaching effects of Danto's thought. Danto brought to philosophy the artist's unfettered imagination, and his ideas about postmodern culture are virtual road maps of the present art world. This volume pays tribute to both Danto's brilliant capacity to move between philosophy and contemporary culture and his pathbreaking achievements in philosophy, art history, and art criticism. (shrink)

Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, both in the analytic and continental traditions, metaphysics was deemed to be passé. The last few decades, however, have witnessed a remarkable growth of interest among analytic philosophers in various traditional metaphysical topics, such as modality, truth, causality, etc. which resulted in the emergence of various forms of analytic metaphysics. The new forms of metaphysics differ from its traditional forms mostly in their methodology and in the range of proposed solutions to particular (...) problems. Besides these and other differences, however, there are also many similarities and there are even some who intentionally develop traditional metaphysical themes using the contemporary analytical methods. All these developments call for detailed exploration, which is the general goal of the present publication Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. The publication is the fruit of the conference which took place in Prague in 2010 and which had for its aim to bring together those willing to explore relations between the traditional and contemporary concerns, both from among the leading analytic philosophers working in metaphysics and the historians of philosophy devoted to the study of the metaphysical tradition. The specific focus of the conference was a re-examination of topics such as categories, metaphysical structure, substance and accident, existence, modalities, and predication. (shrink)

Unfortunately for us, it is only the first half-year of his "System in Lectures" that Santayana wished to retain; to wit, the part dealing fully with the "Order of Knowledge"--although there is some overlapping into the "Order of Nature" as is evidenced externally by the list of assigned reading. There is, however, in this mutilated note-book, a "Preface" in which first the use of the general title "Metaphysics" is indicated, and then the complex sub-title, distinguishing the two "orders," is more (...) fully explained. So all together we are hardly at a complete loss as to the themes of the lectures that composed the second half-year. (shrink)

Le cadre de cet article est double : d’une part, il s’agit de se prononcer sur le traitement historico-critique du miracle auquel procède J. P. Meier et d’autre part de présenter comment l’analyse narrative aborde les récits de miracle. En d’autres termes : comment le miracle résiste-t-il à l’épreuve du feu et comment le récit de miracle s’expose-t-il au regard du lecteur ?L’enquête historique de Meier fait conclure avec une haute vraisemblance à une activité thaumaturgique de Jésus de Nazareth, mais (...) ses résultats factuels sont modestes ; cette déception tient à la nature même du miracle, qui relève du signifié plutôt que du signifiant de la pratique de Jésus, l’historien se fixant sur le signifiant. La démarche narratologique a montré comment le récit qualifiait de miracles, à l’intention du lecteur, les gestes de Jésus ; dire « miracle » est donc un effet du texte, qui relaie la parole du témoin.This article has a double framework: to comment upon the historico-critical handling of miracle undertaken by J.P. Meier and to elucidate how narrative analysis approaches miracle tales. In other words: how does miracle resist the trial of fire and how does the miracle tale appear to the reader ?Meier’s historical inquiry leads to regarding as highly likely a thaumaturgical activity on the part of Jesus of Nazareth, but its factual results remain modest. This disappointment is due to the very nature of miracle which is bound to the signified rather than the signifying of Jesus praxis, with the historian concentrating on the signifying. The narratological approach has shown how the tale qualified, for the reader, Jesus’ acts as miracles; saying ‘miracle’ is thus an effect of the text, which takes up the word of the witness. (shrink)