In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:La séduction de la fiction by Jean-François VernayDiana MistreanuVernay, Jean-François. La séduction de la fiction. Hermann, 2019. 214pp.Published in Hermann’s prestigious “Savoirs Lettres” book series founded by Michel Foucault, Jean-François Vernay’s latest work is a compelling neurophenomenology of literary fiction. This makes it a valuable contribution to the burgeoning field of cognitive literary studies pioneered in Anglo-Saxon research in the late 1970s, but which French academia, with a (...) few notable exceptions such as Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Pierre-Louis Patoine, Alexandre Gefen, Catherine Grall, or Françoise Lavocat, is still largely reluctant to embrace. The author is a lecturer in Australian studies at the Global Institute in Sydney, and he is a bilingual literary scholar whose recent research explores the complex interface between fiction and human cognition.Vernay’s book starts by restating a narratological cliché: in the words of Paul Valéry, stories accompany humans from the cradle to the tomb, as monsters, pirates, fairies, and other fantastic creatures fascinate children’s minds from the first years of their lives (7). A truism follows this cliché: the origin of any story is the human brain (16), as the author reminds us by underlining the bio-anthropological origins of fiction in pages that cite the works of Umberto Eco and Nancy Huston (the writer who coined the notion of “espèce fabulatrice,” “the tale-teller species” [2008]), and that echo the research of scholars such as Mark Turner (1996) and Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1999). Indeed, oral and written stories are not only created, but also interpreted by human minds, triggering states and emotions that range from extreme boredom to excitement and inviting identification with fictional characters. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of the interaction between the human mind and brain and one of its most sophisticated products, namely fiction, are largely still understudied in the field of literature. Placing fiction under the sign of seduction (8) – which allows us to read between the lines an homage to Roland Barthes, the theorist of the “plaisir du texte” referenced later in the book (85-86) – Vernay defines works of fiction as catalysts of a sensori-affective experience [End Page 151] that engages almost all our senses and arouses emotions (“le vecteur d’une expérience sensori-affective qui sollicite la quasi-totalité de nos sens et suscite des émois” [19]). Characterized by the interdisciplinarity that forms the core of cognitive approaches to fiction, Vernay’s study investigates the literary phenomenon in its complexity, asking not only how fiction seduces us, but also why it sometimes fails to do so. Drawing on state-of-the-art research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, the book manages to eschew over-simplified or reductionist analyses. Our engagement with and consumption of literary fiction is thus analyzed by discussing marketing strategies and editorial choices, the activity of reading as a solitary pleasure versus a professional obligation, as well as the interplay between society, politics, and educational curricula. The author answers his multi-layered research question in nine different chapters, each of them exploring one facet of the relationship between literature and the human mind.The first chapter, “Émois livresques,” highlights the marketing value of books, as well as their status as objects of consumption, in the capitalistic sense of the word. Books are presented here as the targets of our desire, since in financial terms, the notion of reader, the author reminds us, is a mere euphemism for that of consumer (20-22). As we are entering the era of what Yves Citton, often quoted in this essay, calls “cognitive capitalism,” a system in which society is conceptualized as a set of machines that process information (21), fictional literature, along with the arts, is devalued. To counterbalance this trend, Vernay explains, the book industry has to adopt effective strategies that create a desire for consumption. Thus, this chapter addresses the editorial and marketing techniques designed to attract our attention and trigger our impulse to buy and read. From the smell and color of books to the blurb and the careful mention of literary prizes, no detail is overlooked or considered redundant.After addressing the... (shrink)

Resumen: Propongo una crítica a la noción de serialidad en la comprensión del concepto de tiempo en el contexto de los estudios cartesianos. En el debate entre los defensores del tiempo continuo y quienes defienden un tiempo discreto, sostengo que ninguna de estas posiciones tiene en cuenta que la serialidad se enmarca en una noción de tiempo que se concibe como divisible y numerable y que no pertenece intrínsecamente a la naturaleza de la experiencia temporal del cogito. Mi propuesta consiste (...) en comenzar a desarrollar la caracterización de dicho tiempo experiencial y cogitativo.: My aim is to criticize the notion of seriality embedded in the understanding of time within the framework of Cartesian studies. I hold that neither those who defend that time is continuous nor those who think that it is discrete take into account the fact that seriality is rooted in a conception of time conceived as divisible and numerable that does not belong intrinsically to the nature of the experience of time of the cogito. I propose to advance towards a characterization of such experiential and cogitative time. (shrink)

This paper explores how University as social entity has great potential to confront epistemic injustices by expanding epistemic capabilities. To do this, we primarily follow the contributions of scholars such as Miranda Fricker and José Medina. The epistemic capabilities and epistemic injustice nexus will be explored via two empirical cases: the first one is an experience developed in Lagos using participatory video; the second is a service learning pedagogical strategy for final year undergraduate students conducted at Universidad de Ibagué. The (...) Lagos experience shows how participatory action-research methodologies could promote epistemic capabilities and functioning, making it possible for the participants to generate interpretive materials to speak of their own realities. However, this experience is too limited to address testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. The Colombian experience is a remarkable experience that is building epistemic capabilities among students and other local participants. However, there is a hermeneutical and structural injustice that tends to give more value to disciplinary and codified knowledge at the expense of experiential and tacit knowledge. (shrink)

El presente artículo desarrolla una reflexión acerca de los ideales de belleza femenina promovidos por el mercado y los mass-media, dando cuenta de datos estadísticos e informes periodísticos de los trastornos que generan, en términos de mortalidad y morbilidad en la población femeninaLa primera parte del análisis responde, desde una perspectiva psicológica, a la pregunta ¿cómo se constituye como sujeto una mujer? La segunda parte aborda desde una perspectiva sociocultural la pregunta ¿cómo debe ser una mujer?, desde la premisa de (...) que las prácticas de educación y moldeamiento del cuerpo tienen sentido en la modernidad como una forma de control social. Finalmente se busca, desde una perspectiva política, señalar cómo el “boom” de la estética corporal es un mecanismo de dominación principalmente dirigido a la mujer, al cual las políticas públicas y la legislación no logran dar respuesta, manteniendo a éstas en un lugar pasivo como sujeto y actor político. (shrink)

Resumen En el presente trabajo se investigan los alcances y las consecuencias que se desprenden de utilizar a Heidegger en el campo de la filosofía de la medicina. Con este fin, la investigación se divide en los siguientes puntos: 1) se explicitará en qué puede consistir una “antropologización” del pensamiento heideggeriano; 2) se ofrecerá una descripción general respecto de las teorías de la salud y enfermedad más significativas y actuales en el campo de la teoría de la medicina; 3) nos (...) detendremos en el análisis relacionado con el problema de la enfermedad desde una perspectiva heideggeriana, para finalmente, 4) ofrecer algunas reflexiones críticas en relación con el análisis ofrecido.In this contribution we investigate the scope and consequences that arise from applying Heidegger in the field of philosophy of medicine. For this purpose, the paper is divided in the following points: First, we will make explicit the meaning of an “anthropologization” of Heidegger's thought. Second, an overview of the most significant contemporary theories of health and disease in the field of theory of medicine will be offered. Third, we will interpret the meaning of disease from a Heideggerian perspective. Finally, 4) we will offer some critical reflections offered in relation to the analysis. (shrink)

In emergency contexts, leaders’ ability to develop others’ trust in them is critical to leadership effectiveness. By integrating functional leadership and team process theories, we argue that democratic and autocratic leadership can create trust in the leader depending on the performance phase of the action team. We further argue that action and transition phases produce different task demands for leadership behavior to enhance trust in the leader, and different leader characteristics mediate these effects. The results of a scenario experiment and (...) field survey among firefighters revealed that autocratic rather than democratic leadership elevates trust in the leader during the action phase by increasing leader ability. In contrast, democratic rather than autocratic leadership enhances trust in the leader during the transition phase by elevating leader benevolence. These findings highlight the importance of leader characteristics in emergencies, demonstrating the value of mixing autocratic and democratic leadership behaviors across different team performance phases to build trust in the leader. (shrink)

Clinical exchange: one model to achieve culturally sensitive care This paper reports on a clinical exchange programme that formed part of a pre‐registration European nursing degree run by three collaborating institutions in England, Holland and Spain. The course included: common and shared learning including two summer schools; and the development of a second language before the students went on a three‐month clinical placement in one of the other base institutions’ clinical environments. The aim of the course was to enable students (...) to become culturally sensitive carers. This was achieved by developing a programme based on transcultural nursing principles in theory and practice. Data were gathered by interview, focus groups, and questionnaires from 79 exchange students, fostering the strategies of illuminative evaluation. The paper examines: how the aims of the course were met; the factors that inhibited the attainment of certain goals; and how the acquisition of a second language influenced the students’ learning about nursing. A model is presented to illustrate the process of transformative learning from the exchange experience. (shrink)

Peter Zachar. A Metaphysics of Psychopathology. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Press, 2014. 274 pp.

A critical analysis of Diana Fuss's Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference and Elizabeth Grosz's Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists.

In Unruly Words, Diana Raffman advances a new theory of vagueness which, unlike previous accounts, is genuinely semantic while preserving bivalence. According to this new approach, called the multiple range theory, vagueness consists essentially in a term's being applicable in multiple arbitrarily different, but equally competent, ways, even when contextual factors are fixed.

Diana Tietjens Meyers examines the political underpinnings of psychoanalytic feminism, analyzing the relation between the nature of the self and the structure of good societies. She argues that impartial reason--the approach to moral reflection which has dominated 20th-century Anglo-American philosophy--is inadequate for addressing real world injustices. ____Subjection and Subjectivity__ is central to feminist thought across a wide range of disciplines.

Higher-order vagueness is widely thought to be a feature of vague predicates that any adequate theory of vagueness must accommodate. It takes a variety of forms. Perhaps the most familiar is the supposed existence, or at least possibility, of higher-order borderline cases—borderline borderline cases, borderline borderline borderline cases, and so forth. A second form of higherorder vagueness, what I will call ‘prescriptive’ higher-order vagueness, is thought to characterize complex predicates constructed from vague predicates by attaching operators having to do with (...) the predicates’ proper application. For example, the predicates ‘mandates application of “old”’ and ‘can competently be called “old”’ are prescriptively higher-order vague. Higher-order vagueness appears in other guises as well,1 but these two have been of particular interest to philosophers and will be my target here. I want to expose some misconceptions about them. If I am right, higher-order vagueness is less prevalent, and less important theoretically, than is usually supposed.2 In what follows I am going to assume that vagueness is a semantic feature of natural language. For the most part I won’t discuss epistemic or pragmatic views, and I will say nothing about so-called metaphysical vagueness. (shrink)

In this brief and powerful book, Diana Fuss takes on the debate of pure essence versus social construct, engaging with the work of Luce Irigaray and Monique ...

The question of what it means to be human has never before been more difficult and more contested. The human, with a complicated social history that his rarely been examined, remains entrenched in traditional Enlightenment thinking. Human, All Too Human considers how we might radicalize our notion of the human. Can the human be thought outside humanism? Any rethinking of the human places us immediately inside an ever-widening field of contrasting labels: animate and inanimate, natural and artificial, living and dead, (...) organic and mechanistic. These and other boundary confusions at the frontier of the human are the subject of this volume, as each essay takes up one of three disputed border identities: animals, things or children. Human, All Too Human examines how we explain our interest in anthropomorphism and our fascination with species categorizations. Essays explore what we mean by "things" and how the integrity of the human may already be compromised by them. The nine essays in this volume all attempt to rethink the category of the human, challenging some of our most cherished cultural classifications. By inviting us to place the traditions subject of knowledge in the unsettling position of object, these writers interrogate the boundary distinctions that, until now, have exempted the human from the vigilant analysis it so urgently requires. Contributors: Nancy Armstrong, Rey Chow, Drucilla Cornell, Diana Fuss, Marjorie Garber, Barbara Johnson, Cora Kaplan, James Kincaid, Harriet Ritvo, David Willis. (shrink)

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that (...) comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment. Contributors Sara Ahmed Jane Bennett Rosi Braidotti Pheng Cheah Rey Chow William E. Connolly Diana Coole Jason Edwards Samantha Frost Elizabeth Grosz Sonia Kruks Melissa A. Orlie. (shrink)

This paper develops the treatment of vague predicates begun in my "Vagueness Without Paradox" (Philosophical Review 103, 1 [1994]). In particular, I show how my account of vague words dissolves an "eternal" version of the sorites paradox, i.e., a version in which the paradox is generated independently of any particular run of judgments of the items in a sorites series. In so doing I refine the notion of an internal contest, introduced in the earlier paper, and draw a distinction within (...) the class of internal contexts between contexts of judgment and contexts of consideration. (shrink)

In Thomas Metzinger, Conscious Experience, Schoningh Verlag. 1995. [ online ].

It is widely supposed that one family of sorites paradoxes, perhaps the most perplexing versions of the puzzle, owe at least in part to the nontransitivity of perceptual indiscriminability. To a first approximation, perceptual indiscriminability is the relationship obtaining among objects (stimuli) that appear identical in some perceptual respect—for example hue, or pitch, or texture. Indiscriminable objects look the same, or sound the same, or feel the same. Received wisdom has it that there are or could be series of objects (...) _o__1…_o__n in which _o_₁ and _o_₂ are indiscriminable, _o_₂ and _o_3 are indiscriminable, etc., and _o_n-1 and_ o_n are indiscriminable, but _o_1 and _o_n are discriminably different. For example, there could be a series of colored patches so ordered that each patch looks the same in hue as its immediate neighbors but the whole progresses from a clear case of red to a clear case of orange. On the assumption that an observational word like ‘red’ applies to both if to either of a pair of perceptually indiscriminable items, the absurd conclusion of the sorites comes into view. Crispin Wright explains. (shrink)

¡PRESENTE! investigates the many answers to a seemingly simple question: What does it mean to be present? Performance studies scholar Diana Taylor answers that question by offering an expansive explication of presence as both ethical command and performative knowledge production. Taking the histories of state violence, colonialism, and imperialism as her starting point, Taylor situates being ¡Presente! as an embodied and performed practice of standing alongside those harmed by historical and ongoing violence. Noting that Present/e is simultaneously single and (...) plural in English and Spanish, and drawing on Jean Luc Nancy's formulation of being singular plural, Taylor asks how presence is imbricated in questions of subject formation and collectivity. She begins with reframing the racialization of Latin Americans as a coming into presence through colonial conquest-a presence not as subjects but as subjugated objects-and asks what was made absent through this racialized process. For Taylor, the epistemicide of Indigenous, Native, and African ways of knowing stands at the center of this process of presence and absence. To counter this ongoing epistemicide, Taylor situates ¡Presente! as a performative and decolonial mode of knowledge production that decenters European Enlightenment traditions and seriously takes up Native, Indigenous, and African ways of knowledge and temporality. Grounded in performance studies, this book links knowledge to action as a doing practice, or what Taylor calls a "peripatetic strategy" that emphasis movement in learning. This book offers an expansive theory of ¡Presente! in various locations and situations: the original colonial conquest of Columbus and the Spanish; the May 1968 student protests; a study in Zapatistan autonomy; the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa; queer histories of Mexico; and the former torture centers of the Pinochet dictatorship. Throughout these varied locations, Taylor weaves a methodology, theory, and practice of ¡Presente!. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of performance studies, Latin American studies, American studies, critical ethnic studies, colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial studies, and queer theory. (shrink)

Meyers examines the question of personal autonomy. She observes the effects of childrearing practices and sexual biases, and reflects upon the results in women. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The sixth IPCC report states that a proper conception of climate justice that can address the complexity of the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change as a whole requires considering not only one but rather three dimensions of justice today: redistributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. In this article, my focus is on exploring the latter dimension, drawing special attention to climate policies addressing cultural-identity issues. In the first section, I illustrate how climate policies can be connected to discriminatory practices against minority (...) cultures and their identities. To do so, I take the struggles of Black movements against environmental racism and the struggles of Indigenous peoples against a colonialist cultural heritage as case studies. In the second section, I look into the most advanced normative model to address the dimension of recognition, its advantages, and how it addresses the so-called ‘institutionalization of cultural patterns’ in climate policies: the Nancy Fraser model. Finally, in the third section, I investigate an aspect that remains open. It concerns the matter of how to use institutional authority to ‘deinstitutionalize’ non-ecological cultural patterns, while respecting pluralism and avoiding falling into the risks of institutional paternalism. (shrink)

In this article, I revisit the work of the French political philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A colleague of Sartre's until their quarrel, he sought to combine existentialism, Marxism and phenomenology. I begin by considering why Merleau-Ponty thought it was important, in confronting the problems of the present, to reconsider past ideas as well as political regimes. I also develop his distinctive methodology of dialectical engagement, his view of politics as a strategic field of forces, and his insistence that philosophy and political (...) action are severed at our peril. In order to illustrate and flesh out all these claims, I return to Merleau-Ponty's treatment of the communist question, placing it within a broader context of his antipathy towards modern rationalism: something he found exemplified by liberal as well as communist regimes. In the course of the discussion, I consider Merleau-Ponty's critiques of Kant, Hegel and Marx as well as his ideas about political agency. However, I also allude at key points in my argument to the relevance of his thinking for our contemporary international situation. (shrink)

Tras la salida de este mundo del gran pensador Pablo Posada Varela, se produce una rasgadura del tejido comunitario en el que nos encontrábamos. Es nuestra misión buscar el hilo del entramado que creó para contribuir a finalizar su obra, o al menos, intentarlo. A pesar de que muchos le negaron el reconocimiento, superó a sus maestros, Ortega y Gasset y Richir, con creces. Su pensamiento, inspirado por ellos, logró alcanzar un nuevo nivel que ha contribuido, en gran parte, a (...) revitalizar la fenomenología, tanto en español, como en francés. Su tesis doctoral tenía principio, pero, Pablo sabía que era una mera marca en el camino del pensamiento, no había final para dicha investigación. Lástima que nos haya abandonado tan pronto y no nos guíe más, aunque siempre nos quedarán sus textos y el recuerdo de su presencia en este mundo. En nuestra última conversación, prometí hacer una interpretación de su filosofía. Sirva esta presente aportación, marcada y enturbiada por los sentimientos de tristeza y rapidez, como tributo a su pensamiento y amistad, así como cumplimiento de dicha promesa. Descansa en paz, querido amigo. (shrink)

What does it mean to become utopian? In the midst of a global pandemic, civil unrest, and the effects of climate change, this question is more relevant than ever. While Tom Moylan agrees with Fredric Jameson that there has been a "weakening of utopian muscularity", in his magnus opus Becoming Utopian: The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation, he endeavors to remedy this problem, as each chapter advances his core belief in utopianism. A common thread woven throughout the book is (...) that utopianism is predicated on a rupture with the current socioeconomic, cultural, and political systems and that it is a process centered on a "not yet existent reality"... (shrink)

Philosophers of music (and also music theorists) have recognized for a long time that research in the sciences, especially psychology, might have import for their own work. (Langer 1941 and Meyer 1956 are good examples.) However, while scientists had been interested in music as a subject of research (e.g., Helmholtz 1912, Seashore 1938), the discipline known as psychology of music, or more broadly cognitive science of music, came into its own only around 1980 with the publication of several landmark works. (...) Among the most important of these were The Psychol- ogy of Music (1980), a collection of papers edited by the psychologist Diana Deutsch, and A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983) by music theorist and composer Fred Lerdahl and linguist Ray Jackendoff. These works and others made possible the first attempts to apply scientific research to philosophical issues concerning music (e.g., Raffman 1993, DeBellis 1995). Since the 1980’s, of course, a great deal of research has been done in cognitive science, philosophy, and music. For philosophers, there are perhaps three topics with respect to which findings in the cognitive sciences are most likely to be germane—the nature of musical understanding, the role of emotions or feelings in music, and the evaluation of musical works. This brief overview will describe some of the scientific research that has been done on these topics, and then indicate how it might be philosophically significant. (shrink)

Diana Lobel takes readers on a journey across Eastern and Western philosophical and religious traditions to discover a beauty and purpose at the heart of reality that makes life worth living. Guided by the ideas of ancient thinkers and the insight of the philosophical historian Pierre Hadot, _The Quest for God and the Good_ treats philosophy not as an abstract, theoretical discipline, but as a living experience. For centuries, human beings have struggled to know why we are here, whether (...) a higher being or dimension exists, and whether our existence is fundamentally good. Above all, we want to know whether the search for God and the good will bring happiness. Following in the path of the ancient philosophers, Lobel directly connects conceptions of God or an Absolute with notions of the good, illuminating diverse classical texts and thinkers. She explores the Bible and the work of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Maimonides, al-Farabi, and al-Ghazali. She reads the _Tao Te Ching_, _I Ching_, _Bhagavad Gita_, and _Upanishads_, as well as the texts of Theravada, Mahayana, and Zen Buddhism, and traces the repercussions of these works in the modern thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. While each of these texts and thinkers sets forth a distinct and unique vision, all maintain that human beings find fulfillment in their contact with beauty and purpose. Rather than arriving at one universal definition of God or the good, Lobel demonstrates the aesthetic value of multiple visions presented by many thinkers across cultures. _The Quest for God and the Good_ sets forth a path of investigation and discovery culminating in intellectual and spiritual communion. (shrink)

McKinley, Diana; Webber, Ruth This paper is an ecclesial study of the baptismal response of twenty-three Catholics between the ages of twenty-one and forty-one, from six Catholic dioceses across Australia. The study was undertaken between 2008 and 2010. The purpose of the study was to investigate how committed Catholics from Generation X (born 1961-1975) and Generation Y (born 1976-1990) came to faith, and why they continued to practise their Catholic faith, despite falling Mass attendance generally. An unexpected result of (...) the study was the strong link made by the participants between their identity as a person and their baptismal call as a Catholic. It became evident that there were four distinct but interacting aspects of how they saw their identity as Catholics. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding. Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of (...) concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. (shrink)