Does the practice of psychology make a significant and positive contribution to human welfare and the struggle for a good society? This book presents a reinvigorating look at psychology and its societal purpose, offering a bold new philosophical foundation from which professionals in the field can deeply examine their work.

ABSTARCT When people go shopping, they enter a building. But the shop cannot be identified with the building, because it would remain the same shop if it moved to another building or if it became an e-store. Daniel Korman [2019] uses these two observations to argue that establishments are immaterial objects. However, all that follows is that establishments are not buildings. I argue that establishments are organisations or corporate agents that are constituted by people. This entails that they are material (...) objects. Korman’s observations can be accommodated in terms of the further observation that corporate agents can but need not own or rent buildings. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Some stage setting on the value of understanding words and plans Agreement and shared understandings Davidson's challenge to representation Are we confusing semantics and pragmatics? Why we need possible worlds Voyages through logical space How to finesse the issue in analytic ontology The need for centered worlds Getting information from sentences with centered content Saying things a new now that centering is in the story Where to now?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crisis of Meaning in Sartor Resartus—Thomas Carlyle's Pioneering Work in Articulating and Addressing the Existential ConfrontationFrank Martelawhat i call an "existential confrontation" is the encounter with the possibility that human life is absurd: created for no purpose and devoid of any lasting value or meaning. It is "the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding" that William James (Will to Believe 173) examines, described by Todd May (...) (xi) as "the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the Universe to yield it to us." This confrontation with the existential void and the potential absurdity of human existence is often not just an intellectual dilemma, but felt as a deep personal crisis accompanied by melancholia, angst, nausea, or even suicidal thoughts. Young William James confessed in a letter to a friend that "all last winter" he "was on the continual verge of suicide" (quoted in Gunnarsson), writing later that "too much questioning" leads "to the edge of the slope" wherein lies "nightmare or suicidal view of life" (James, "Is Life Worth Living?" 6). Similarly, Leo Tolstoy (54) reports how his inability to identify a lasting meaning of life drove him to a "state of lunacy" where "the best I could do was to hang myself."Despite a few earlier allusions—most famously the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaiming that "all is vanity and a striving after wind," and Shakespeare's Macbeth lamenting that life is "a tale told by an idiot … signifying nothing"—the existential confrontation is predominantly a modern phenomenon (Martela, A Wonderful Life). The modern history of descriptions of existential confrontations start at the turn of the nineteenth century, and includes Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Camus's Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, and T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land.There are many responses that the confrontation with the existential void has generated. Sartre embraced the lack of values imposed from outside and [End Page 80] emphasized human freedom. Human beings are "cast into this world … condemned to be free" without any "luminous realm of values" providing "justification or excuse," as Sartre famously summarized in "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (29). Other responses range from Søren Kierkegaard's leap of faith and William James's will to believe to Albert Camus's happiness from absurdity.While some of the responses end up finding a new way of connecting with God and faith, and others are explicitly atheistic, embracing the "death of God," a common thread in most responses is an acknowledgment of the situatedness of human experience and an emphasis placed on human subjectivity and the opportunity to live one's life more authentically. While existentialism, broadly conceived, is often seen as the central philosophical tradition dealing with the existential void, the confrontation was very much alive in the United States as well, visible in both literature and philosophy. As already alluded, William James had an existential confrontation in his youth, writing about the topic in "Is Life Worth Living" and other essays in Will to Believe. There has also been much back-and-forth between Europe and the United States around these themes, with the influences crossing the Atlantic on many occasions. For example, William James cites Thomas Carlyle in Will to Believe, while Sartre cites William James in Nausea, when discussing themes related to the existential confrontation. Similarly, Emerson inspired Nietzsche who inspired Josiah Royce. Typically, the histories tracing the early encounters with the existential confrontation acknowledge Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky as key nineteenth-century predecessors to Existentialism, as all faced directly the question of the meaning of life and the dreadful possibility that life might not have any meaning or value to it.However, there is a key author usually not mentioned in these histories, despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in introducing existentialist themes to the English-speaking audience, coining the phrase "meaning of life" in the English language. Thus, in writing the prehistory of Existentialism, we need to examine Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus, which has been described by literary historians as "one of... (shrink)

Kochen has suggested an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which he denies that wavepackets ever collapse, while affirming that measurements have definite results. In this paper I attempt to show that his interpretation is untenable. I then suggest ways in which to construct similar, but more satisfactory, hidden variable interpretations.

The article addresses the issue of rationing health care services, a topic currently being hotly debated in many countries. The author argues that the aspect of causal responsibility ought to play a decisive role in the allocation of limited medical resources. Starting out from Ronald Dworkin's distinction between option luck and brute luck, the appropriate and meaningful uses of the term causal responsibility are clarified first. A discussion of the conditions which might justify giving lower priority to patients whose illnesses (...) are the result of unhealthy behavior, like e.g. alcohol abuse, follows. Causal responsibility is then viewed in the context of private health insurance and the club model of organ donation. It is argued that individuals themselves are basically responsible for their decisions regarding insurance coverage and membership in organ donors' clubs. Causal responsibility is shown to be a more suitable criterion for rationing scarce medical resources than other criteria which might alternatively be considered, such as patients' age. (shrink)

Combining moral philosophy, political philosophy, political theory, and international relations, this book explores the possibility of using normative international relations as a realistic resolution to the problem of domination of, and discrimination against, minorities, specifically or especially migrants on the African continent.

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? The Second Convivialist Manifesto has presented a short diagnosis of the current crises and sketches of a possible and desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis, but preserving a viable world also requires passion. It is thus urgent to show what people would gain from a shift to a post-neoliberal and post-growth convivialist future. This volume includes a theoretical debate on convivialism which reflects dystopias and (...) shows the multiple and major obstacles that convivialism will have to face. Mainly, however, the contributors to this volume create sketches of a convivial future and collect accounts of another future world which is attractive for as many as possible. (shrink)

One of the most important lesson to be learned from the corona pandemic might be, that it makes a difference which normativity sets the norms for our way of living. It makes no small difference to the life of humans and society, whether this normativity is prophylactic or pedagogical. Disease, insecurity and death are faithful companions of the pandemic; and prophylactic reason rules in times of such critical occurences. In such times it might occur that pedagogy so to speak falls (...) into the hands of prophylaxis, thus turning pedagogy into a handmaid of prophylaxis. The essay problematizes this through non-simultaneous specula principum rooted in the ancient art of medicine and living. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis review essay attempts to understand the book under review against the background of Jameson's previous writings. Failing to do so would invite misunderstanding since there are few contemporary theorists whose writing forms so much of a unity. Jameson's book can be divided into three parts. The first and most important part deals with dialectics, the second with politics, and the third with philosophy of history. In the first part Jameson argues that dialectics best captures our relationship to the sociocultural (...) and historical world we are living in. The second part makes clear that Jameson is not prepared to water down his own Marxist politics in order to spare the liberal sensibilities of his political opponents. In the third part Jameson develops his own philosophy of history, mainly in a dialogue with Ricoeur. Dialectics is his main weapon in his discussion with Ricoeur, and it becomes clear that the Spinozism of dialectics allows for a better understanding of history and of historical writing than does Ricoeur's phenomenological approach. The book is an impressive testimony to the powers of dialectical thought and to its indispensability for a proper grasp of historical writing. (shrink)

Considerations of social justice pertain to universities with respect to reserved spaces for applicants from disadvantaged groups, targeted hiring, differential student fees or faculty workloads and salaries, and similarly contested matters. This paper displaces debates over what constitutes just allocation of university resources from those over theories of justice in general to those about alternative visions of the proper goal of universities. To this end, educational and democratic theories of John Dewey are drawn on as an alternative to elitist conceptions (...) and the implications of these competing viewpoints for specific justice-related issues are explicated. (shrink)

Gerechtigkeit ist ein zentraler Wert in Politik und Gesellschaft. Trotzdem ist sie im Hinblick auf ihren Gehalt und ihre Reichweite höchst umstritten. Die Autorinnen und Autoren diskutieren grundlegend ethische und konkret praktische Fragen der Gerechtigkeit in Bezug auf Gesundheitswesen, Medizin, Pflegebeziehungen und Biotechnologien. Wie sieht eine gerechte Verteilung knapper Ressourcen in der Gesundheitsversorgung aus? Was sind die ethischen Grundlagen und worauf zielt eine gerechte Verteilung von Gesundheitsleistungen? Welche besonderen Problemstellungen zur Frage der Gerechtigkeit ergeben sich im Verlauf eines menschlichen Lebens? (...) In welchem Verhältnis stehen Gerechtigkeitsfragen zu anderen Themen der Medizin-, Bio- und Pflegeethik? (shrink)

Central to the thought of C.B. Macpherson are his critique of the culture of ‘possessive individualism’ and his defence of liberal-democratic socialism. Resurgence of interest in his works is in reaction to the rise of neoliberalism and efforts to find an alternative to societies dominated by capitalist markets. Macpherson’s theories are explained and applied to 21st century challenges.

Recently, philosophers have been carrying out a certain amount of soul searching. In this context, the term “professionalism” gets thrown around. The thought is that too much of what we philosophers do looks inward at the work of colleagues instead of outwards at the issues. Sometimes it can seem that it is more important for one's career to demonstrates that one is on top of the literature rather than on top of the problems the literature is addressing. There is, however, (...) a kind of professionalism that we should applaud. It consists of being sufficiently on top of a range of different areas of philosophical inquiry to see key connections between different areas. Although progress in the sense of convergence in doctrines is nothing for philosophers to write home about, I think we are making progress in seeing connections. (shrink)

The political agreements concluded in the summer of 1981 between the main majority and opposition parties constitute a turning point in the development of Spanish regionalism. Whereas previously autonomy statutes were awarded to historic regions with strong social and cultural identities, we have now a situation where a considerable degree of self-government is also made possible for all other regions. This decision shifted the focus more to socio-economic development, thereby stimulating expectations of improvement based on regional political efforts as well (...) as on national solidarity and state assistance. The recently adopted statute of Andalucia illustrates excellently this new orientation. In this contribution an analysis is made of the institutional instruments available for regional self-government. The conclusions are quite positive with regard to the devolution of powers provided in the constitution and the different statutes. Nevertheless Spain is not evolving into a federal state system. As a more appropriate description we prefer Perez Moreno's characterisation of the existing intergovernmental relations as «autonomias integradas». (shrink)

We draw some metaphysical conclusions about colour and belief from some epistemological commonplaces. It turns out that this requires us to challenge orthodoxy on the causal efficacy of mental properties and to rewrite the standard argument against dualism, but in a way which is good news for functionalists about the mind.

I will apply a technique employed by Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri in Logica demonstrative to concisely prove the invalidity of moods of the First Figure of the Theory of the Assertoric Syllogism without appealing to facts outside logic.

American organizational theorists have not taken up the call to apply Bourdieu’s approach in all of its richness in part because, for better or worse, evidentiary traditions render untenable the kind of sweeping analysis that makes Bourdieu’s classics compelling. Yet many of the insights found in Bourdieu are being pursued piecemeal, in distinct paradigmatic projects that explore the character of fields, the emergence of organizational habitus, and the changing forms of capital that are key to the control of modern organizations. (...) A number of these programs build on the same sociological classics that Bourdieu built his own theory on. These share the same lineage, even if they were not directly influenced by Bourdieu. (shrink)

A groundbreaking exploration of Heidegger and embodiment, from which a radical ethical perspective emerges.

Monkeys and apes, inhabiting variable environments and subjected to K-selection, exhibit cultural behavior transmitted horizontally and vertically, like cetaceans. Behaviors enhancing better health and nutrition, predator avoidance, or mate selection, can affect differential reproduction.Furthermore, dominance hierarchies and social status not only affect the transmission and acceptance of new behaviors but they may also affect genetic inheritance.