Pozdně středověký filosof Walter Burley (cca 1275–1344) chápal myšlení jako určitý druh změny, konkrétně jako trpnost, přičemž každý tzv. akt myšlení má podle něho tři hlavní složky: myslící intelekt, pojem a myšlenou věc. Tato studie si dává za cíl prozkoumat, jak Burley pohlížel ve vztahu k myšlení zejména na poslední dvě z těchto složek. První část se pokusí odpovědět na otázku, jakým způsobem dochází ke vzniku pojmů. Druhá část se zaměří na problematiku intencionality našeho myšlení, tj. na otázku, jakým způsobem (...) je podle Burleyho možné říci, že je naše myšlení o nějaké věci. (shrink)

While philosophical questions about health and disease have attracted much attention in recent decades, and while opinions are divided on most issues, influential accounts seem to embrace negativism about health, according to which health is the absence of disease. Some subscribe to unrestricted negativism, which claims that negativism applies not only to the concepts of health and disease as used by healthcare professionals but also to the lay concept that underpins everyday thinking. Whether people conceptualize health in this manner has (...) implications for medical care and public health, and so we set out to examine this claim in two studies. Participants were asked to assess and compare the health states of two people presented in two vignettes. We found that both lay people and medical students conceptualize health as something more than the absence of disease. We argue that our findings highlight a need to rethink unrestricted negativism and indicate a need to rethink the way the debate has traditionally focused on disease. (shrink)

Recent criticisms of medicine converge on fundamental questions about the aim of medicine. The main task of this paper is to propose an account of the aim of medicine. Discussing and rejecting the initially plausible proposal according to which medicine is pathocentric, the paper presents and defends the Autonomy Thesis, which holds that medicine is not pathocentric, but sanocentric, aiming to promote health with the final aim to enhance autonomy. The paper closes by considering the objection that the Autonomy Thesis (...) is overly permissive and allows many highly controversial procedures as legitimate parts of medicine. (shrink)

Debates about the genuine disease status of controversial diseases rely on intuitions about a range of factors. Adopting tools from experimental philosophy, this paper explores some of the factors that influence judgments about whether low sexual desire should be considered a disease and whether it should be medically treated. Drawing in part on some assumptions underpinning a divide in the literature between viewing low sexual desire as a genuine disease and seeing it as improperly medicalized, we investigate whether health and (...) disease judgments are affected by factors such as an individual’s gender, the cause of the low desire, whether the desire is high or low, and both personal and societal valuations of the condition. Our main findings indicate that (a) the cause of a condition influences whether it is judged a disorder, (b) how the individual values the condition influences whether the condition is seen as a proper target of medical intervention, and (c) perceived dysfunction influences judgments regarding health, disorder classification, medicalization, and medical intervention. Our findings help further illuminate the intricate interplay of factors that influence judgments about health and disease in controversial conditions. (shrink)

In this paper we engage in a reciprocal analysis of situated cognition and the notion of ‘meshed architecture’ as found in performance studies (Christensen, Sutton & McIlwain 2016). We argue that the model of meshed architecture can operate as a tool that enables us to better understand the notion of situated cognition. Reciprocally, by means of this new understanding of situation we develop a richer conception of meshed architecture. This enriched notion of a meshed architecture includes affect and bottom-up, non-automatic, (...) intrinsic control aspects of body-schematic processes and intelligent habits, on a vertical axis, as well as extended, ecological and worldly (material, normative, social, cultural) constraints and affordances on a horizontal axis. This gives us a very productive way to think about how various elements come together in skilled action and performance, but also a detailed way to characterize situated cognition. (shrink)

How do people understand the concepts of mental health and disorder? The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of several factors on people’s judgments about whether a condition constitutes a mental disorder or a healthy state. Specifically, this study examines the impact of the source of the condition, its outcome, individual valuation (i.e., the value the individual attaches to the condition), and group valuation (i.e., the value the relevant group attaches to the condition). While we find that (...) people’s health and disorder judgments are driven by perceived dysfunction, we also find that health and disorder judgments are impacted differently by these factors. Health judgements are impacted by outcome and individual valuation, and disorder judgments are impacted by condition source. These results suggest that the folk concept of mental health is positive (i.e., mental health is more than the absence of mental disorder) and normativist (i.e., value judgments play a significant role in determining whether a condition counts as healthy), while the concept of mental disorder aligns with a naturalist perspective, at least to the extent that dysfunction plays an important role in categorizing a condition as a disorder. However, our finding that people’s dysfunction judgments are influenced by individual valuation and outcomes poses a strong challenge to naturalist accounts. To provide access to our supplementary data, an appendix has been included. (shrink)

Motivated by a recent trend that advocates a reassessment of the aim of medical science and clinical practice, this paper investigates the epistemic aims of biomedical research. Drawing on contemporary discussions in epistemology and the philosophy of science, along with a recent study on scurvy, this paper (1) explores the concept of understanding as the aim of scientific inquiry and (2) establishes a framework that will guide the examination of its forms in biomedical research. Using the case of Tuberculosis (TB), (...) (3) it is argued that grasping a mechanistic explanation is crucial for reaching a threshold of understanding at which we may speak of an objectual, biomedical understanding of TB. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD (Taylor 2022), we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argue instead that the irrationality of OCD is located in the emotions that are (...) characteristic of OCD, such as anxiety or fear. In particular, we propose to understand the irrationality of OCD as a matter of harboring recalcitrant emotions. We argue that this account not only solves the puzzle about insight, but also makes better sense of how OCD sufferers experience and describe their condition and helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of compulsive behavior. (shrink)

The exhibition is proposing a different reading of the legal text, reading against the grain of pre-conceived structures in order to re-chart the system of our relations with ourselves and with various communities; both territorial communities as well as those constructed ad hoc, based not on blood or territorial ties, but on shared values and beliefs. The exhibition raises the question of how the law literally produces us: both as individuals and as citizens, establishing a framework of our presence in (...) public space as well - its legality or illegality. It also questions the different meanings of a 'civil body', a 'legal thing', or a 'legal slave'. How do legal rituals and narratives influence and shape our existence? Exhibition: Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin, Germany (09.03. - 07.05.2017). (shrink)

In this paper, we first review recent arguments about the direct perception of the intentions and emotions of others, emphasizing the role of embodied interaction. We then consider a possible objection to the direct perception hypothesis from social psychology, related to phenomena like ‘dehumanization’ and ‘implicit racial bias’, which manifest themselves on a basic bodily level. On the background of such data, one might object that social perception cannot be direct since it depends on and can in fact be interrupted (...) by a set of cultural beliefs. We argue, however, that far from threatening the idea of direct perception, these findings clearly contradict the idea of hardwired theory of mind modules. More generally, we suggest that in order to further the understanding of social cognition we must take seriously insights about in-group and out-group distinctions and related phenomena, all of which are currently neglected in the mainstream social cognition literature. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical material from social psychology, ‘situationism’ argues that the astonishing susceptibility of moral behaviour to situational influences undermines certain conceptions of character. The related, albeit more limited, thesis proposed in this paper, ‘embodied situationism’, engages a larger number of empirical sources from different fields of study and sheds light on the mechanisms responsible for particular, seemingly puzzling, situational judgments and behaviours. It is demonstrated that the empirical material supports the claims of ES and that ES is immune to (...) some important objections against situationism. (shrink)

There is an obscure but recurring strain of Edmund Husserl’s theological ideas, simultaneously bearing on the question of the historicity of philosophy, which spans the entirety of Husserl’s oeuvre and has yet evaded closer scholarly attention. My paper combines the textual study of the passages in question with a survey of Husserl’s biography and a meticulous reconstruction of the relevant cultural-historical backgrounds—ranging from professional exegesis to general cultural-historical phenomena and to historical speculations by one of Husserl’s family friends and colleagues (...) at the University of Halle—in order to obtain a useful concrete cross-section of the interconnected debates on Husserl’s views—and their possible phenomenological ramifications—on the history of religion, respectively the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The paper reports results of the very first survey-based study on the prevalence, frequency and nature of ethical or other non-medical difficulties faced by Polish physicians in their everyday clinical practice. The study involved 521 physicians of various medical specialties, practicing mainly in inpatient healthcare. The study showed that the majority of Polish physicians encounter ethical and other non-medical difficulties in making clinical decisions. However, they confront such difficulties less frequently than their foreign peers. Moreover, Polish doctors indicate different circumstances (...) as a source of the experienced problems. The difficulties most often reported relate to (i) patients (or their proxies) requests for medically non-indicated interventions; (ii) problems with communication with patients (or their proxies) due to the patients’ negative attitude, unwillingness to cooperate, or aggression; and (iii) various difficulties with obtaining informed consent. Polish physicians report difficulties associated with disagreements among care givers or scarcity of resources less frequently than doctors from other countries. The study’s findings provide support for the thesis that a significant portion of Polish physicians still follow a traditional, paternalistic, and hierarchical model of healthcare practice. Instead of promoting patient’s empowerment, engagement, and rights, they often consider these ideas as a threat to physicians’ professional authority and autonomy. The study leads to the conclusion that due to insufficient training in medical ethics, communication skills, and medical law, many Polish physicians lack the knowledge and competence necessary to adequately respond to challenges posed by modern healthcare practice. (shrink)

Psychotic and prodromal states are characterized by distortions of intersubjectivity, and a number of psychopathologists see in the concrete I-You frame of the clinical encounter the manifestation of such impairment. Rümke has coined the term of ‘praecox-feeling’, designated to describe a feeling of unease emanating in the interviewer that reflects the detachment of the patient and the failure of an ‘affective exchange.’ While the reliability of the praecox-feeling as a diagnostic tool has since been established, the explanation and theoretical framing (...) of the phenomena is still lacking. By drawing on enactivist approaches to social cognition, the paper will attempt to provide such an explanation. This is relevant, since such an explanation could contribute to a more precise understanding of the phenomena in question and possibly add to our knowledge regarding the link between experiential vulnerability to psychosis and disturbed I-Thou intersubjectivity. (shrink)

A structured collection of tools for engineering resilience and a research approach to improve the resilience of a power grid are described in this paper. The collection is organized by a two-dimensional array formed from typologies of power grid components and business processes. These two dimensions provide physical and operational outlooks, respectively, for a power grid. The approach for resilience research is based on building a simulation model of a power grid which utilizes a resilience assessment equation to assess baseline (...) resilience to a hazards’ profile, then iteratively selects a subset of tools from the collection, and introduces these as interventions in the power grid simulation model. Calculating the difference in resilience associated with each subset supports multicriteria decision-making to find the most convenient subset of interventions for a power grid and hazards’ profile. Resilience is an emergent quality of a power grid system, and therefore resilience research and interventions must be system-driven. This paper outlines further research required prior to the practical application of this approach. (shrink)

Maximilian de Gaynesford has argued against the standard view that the reference of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ is determined by a rule linking the referent to some feature of the context of use. In this paper, we argue that de Gaynesford's arguments are inconclusive. Our main aim, however, is to formulate a novel version of the reference rule for ‘I’. We argue that this version can deal with several problematic cases. Our strategy involves analysing the so-called agent of the context (...) as the person responsible for a particular speech act. From this analysis, we exclude a particular class of uses of ‘I’, uses that we believe are best understood as demonstrative. (shrink)

Amid criticism of medicine's scientific rigor and patient care, this book offers a philosophical examination of the nature and aims of medicine, and new perspectives on how these challenges can be addressed. It offers input for rethinking the agenda of medical research, healthcare delivery, and the education of healthcare personnel.

Husserl has undoubtedly considered himself being influenced by Brentano, but his conflicts with the orthodox core of the School of Brentano raise the question whether his adherence to Brentano suffices to adequately grasp the context of his early philosophy. I investigate the biographical details of Husserl’s studies in Vienna to uncover hitherto unknown ties between Husserl and Austrian philosophers outside the School of Brentano. Already during his secondary school studies in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Husserl was exposed to the philosophy textbooks (...) of Gustav Adolf Lindner; and archival records of the University of Vienna show that he had extensively attended philosophy courses held by other philosophers, especially by Robert Zimmermann. Both Lindner and Zimmermann proposed Herbartian philosophies, and what makes Zimmermann especially interesting is that he had once been a close personal disciple of Bernard Bolzano. I use an unpublished lecture transcript, written by a fellow student of Husserl, to investigate the controversial issue of Zimmermann’s possible transmission of Bolzano’s ideas. While a direct transmission seems improbable, my investigation uncovers a plethora of Herbartian influences, which are interesting on their own terms and have not only furnished Husserl with important parts of his descriptive psychological toolbox but have also helped him navigate the Brentano-School’s debate on intentionality. (shrink)

While many profound philosophical questions arise about psychopaths, I wish to draw attention to two limitations in current debates. First, philosophers mainly deal with offender and forensic populations neglecting so-called ‘successful’ psychopaths. Second, philosophers mainly focus on the issue of empathy and responsibility, while relatively little attention is paid to volitional aspects. I address these two limitations together and argue that ‘successful’ psychopaths are volitionally constrained. In order to grasp and explore this deficiency, I argue in favour of a more (...) refined and fine-grained understanding of identifications. (shrink)

Based on the findings about the importance of social support network in the success of treatment and long term recovery, this article will provide an insight of the successful elements in addiction individual and group counseling interaction through which addicts manage to overcome the denial of addiction, to accept the recovery program, to go through the stages of recovery, and to identify appropriate research methods for understanding the phenomenon of interaction in recovery from addictions. This exploratory study will attempt to (...) identify an innovative perspective of the aspects pertaining to the recovery from addiction which are susceptible to be disclosed primarily by using methods inspired by the analysis of interactions. The method used in research is qualitative focus group with addictions counsellors and people in recovery, working in a counseling center. Using the application of ELAN software to annotate and transcribe interactions from the video and audio recordings, it will situate the research on addiction and recovery from addiction in the larger field of investigations on communication processes in human interactions in various cultural, social and professional contexts. (shrink)

Respiratory rhythms sustain biological life, governing the homeostatic exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Until recently, however, the influence of breathing on the brain has largely been overlooked. Yet new evidence demonstrates that the act of breathing exerts a substantive, rhythmic influence on perception, emotion, and cognition, largely through the direct modulation of neural oscillations. Here, we synthesize these findings to motivate a new predictive coding model of respiratory brain coupling, in which breathing rhythmically modulates both local and global neural (...) gain, to optimize cognitive and affective processing. Our model further explains how respiratory rhythms interact with the topology of the functional connectome, and we highlight key implications for the computational psychiatry of disordered respiratory and interoceptive inference. (shrink)

Body checking, characterized by the repeated visual or physical inspection of particular parts of one’s own body (e.g. thighs, waist, or upper arms) is one of the most prominent behaviors associated with eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN). In this paper, we explore the explanatory potential of the Recalcitrant Fear Model of AN (RFM) in relation to body checking. We argue that RFM, when combined with certain plausible auxiliary hypotheses about the cognitive and epistemic roles of emotions, is able to (...) explain key characteristics of body checking, including how body checking behavior becomes habitual and compulsive. (shrink)

_Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology_ offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the (...) primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory. (shrink)

In the Logical Investigations Husserl announced a critique of Lotze’s epistemology, but it was never included in the printed text. The aim of my paper is to investigate the remnant of Husserl’s planned text with special emphasis on the question of whether it goes beyond the obvious aspects of Husserl’s indebtedness to Lotze. Using Husserl’s student notes, excerpts, and book annotations, I refine the dating of Husserl’s encounter with Lotze and separate the various layers of influence. I argue that Husserl’s (...) acquaintance with Lotze’s epistemology forms a separate layer of influence, and that this layer cannot antedate the middle of the decade before the Logical Investigation. Husserl’s investigation of Lotze’s epistemology constitutes the most interesting aspect of the unpublished text that underlies the missing chapter from the Logical Investigations. I show that the most relevant influence of Lotze’s epistemology on Husserl lies in Lotze’s idea of the formal and real significance of logical laws. Although Husserl negatively evaluated Lotze’s epistemological problem both in the planned chapter and in other printed parts of the Logical Investigations, the problem repeatedly surfaced during Husserl’s Göttingen period. Finally, I use an unpublished student transcript to reconstruct Husserl’s SS 1912 seminar on Lotze’s epistemology. I argue that the deeper dimension of Lotze’s epistemological problem (and Husserl’s rejection of it) lies in the way that it highlights the epistemological function of phenomenology. (shrink)

Despite attending Husserl’s classes, participating in the discussions of the Göttingen phenomenological circle, and writing prolifically on phenomenology, Eugen Enyvvari seems to have been virtually ignored by phenomenological scholarship. I use an array of unpublished sources and a survey of his juvenilia to reconstruct Enyvvari’s biography and intellectual formation, including his confrontation with Melchior Palagyi’s critique of Husserl and Bolzano. Based on both his reports and records from the Göttingen University Archives, I attempt to establish the influences to which he (...) could have been exposed in Göttingen. I rely on a careful micro-analysis of the development of Husserl’s notion of noematical meaning at the time of Enyvvari’s stay in Göttingen in order to asses Enyvvari’s specific contribution to phenomenology and his significance from the point of view of the general historiography of phenomenology. (shrink)

Proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism hold that manipulation scope (how many agents are manipulated) and manipulation type (whether the manipulator intends that an agent perform a particular action) do not impact judgments about free will and moral responsibility. Many opponents of manipulation arguments agree that manipulation scope has no impact but hold that manipulation type does. Recent work by Latham and Tierney (2022, 2023) found that people's judgments were sensitive to manipulation scope: people judged that an agent was less (...) free and responsible when a manipulation was existential (impacting at least one but not all agents) than when the manipulation was universal (impacting every agent). This study examines people's judgements about existential and universal manipulation cases that involve both intentional and non‐intentional outcomes. We found that manipulation scope also affects people's free will and responsibility judgments in manipulation cases involving both intentional and non‐intentional outcomes. Interestingly, we also found that manipulation type influences the effect that manipulation scope has on people's free will judgments but not their moral responsibility judgments, which indicates that people's free will and responsibility judgments can come apart. This puts pressure on the prevalent assumption that judgments about free will and moral responsibility are conceptually bound together. (shrink)

This Article is a response to thoughtful commentaries by Jennifer Radden (2013) and Louis A. Sass and Elizabeth Pienkos (2013) on my paper, which investigates the continuity between melancholia and depression. In the following, I address the challenges presented by the commentators and attempt to clarify and deepen my position. In my paper, I have explored the history of melancholia and depression with special emphasis on the question of their possible continuity—with the knowledge that any such attempt inevitably brings with (...) it a whole cluster of theoretical challenges. Therefore, I tried to remain modest in my conclusions, but I also wanted to contribute to the debate by showing that there might be .. (shrink)

Nation Branding is broadly conceived of as an apolitical marketing strategy that targets external markets to establish and communicate a specific image of national identity. However, in this article it is argued that Nation Branding displays characteristics that make it constructive to analyse in terms of an implicit cultural policy. The main point is that Nation Branding is essentially an inner-oriented, cultural- political measure that targets the citizens of the national state, characterized by conservative, transformative and transferring political agendas. On (...) the background of an analysis of these characteristics, it will be argued that Nation Branding may work in a self-defeating manner and endanger democratic processes. (shrink)

In this paper, I will attempt to follow Winnicott's thoughts on the intrinsic connection between symbolic play and the way we understand other minds. Phenomenological, conceptual and empirical difficulties in the account will be presented and taken into consideration. Winnicott's account proves to be a fruitful guide into the issue and can help us clarify impaired symbolic play in autism.