Utilizing the definition of phenomenology originally presented by Edith Stein, it is possible to understand Viktor Frankl's existential psychotherapy as falling well within the phenomenological movement. In this article, Frankl's approach to treatment, which utilizes an induced phenomenological struggle, is examined in detail around its relationship with time. Clinical material is presented to illustrate the described treatment approach.

Digital games have matured substantially as a narrative medium in the last decade. However, there is still much work to be done to more fully understand the poetics of story-based-games. Game narrative remains an important issue with significant cultural, economic and scholarly implications. In this article, we undertake a critical analysis of the design of narrative within Mass Effect 2: a game whose narrative is highly regarded in both scholarly and vernacular communities. We follow the classic humanities methodology of “close-reading”: (...) the detailed observation, deconstruction, and analysis of a text. Our close-reading employs a critical framework from our previous work to isolate and highlight the central narrative design parameters within digital games. This framework is grounded in the scholarly discourse around games and narrative, and has been tested and revised in the process of close-reading and analyzing contemporary games. The narrative design parameters we examine are character, storyworld, narrativized interface, emotion, and plot coherence. Our analysis uses these parameters to explicate a series of design decisions for the effective creation of narrative experience in Mass Effect 2, and by extension, for game narratives in general. We also expand our previous methodology through a focused “edge-case” strategy for exploring the limits of character, action, and story in the game. Finally, we position our analysis of Mass Effect 2 within contemporary discourses of “bounded agency”, and explore how the game negotiates the tension between player-expression, and narrative inevitability to create opportunities for sophisticated narrative poetics including tragedy and sacrifice. (shrink)

Microdevelopment is the process of change in abilities, knowledge and understanding during short time-spans. This book presents a new process-orientated view of development and learning based on recent innovations in psychology research. Instead of characterising abilities at different ages, researchers investigate processes of development and learning that evolve through time and explain what enables progress in them. Four themes are highlighted: variability, mechanisms that create transitions to higher levels of knowledge, interrelations between changes in the short-term scale of microdevelopment and (...) the crucial effect of context. Learning and development are analysed in and out of school, in the individual's activities and through social interaction, in relation to simple and complex problems and in everyday behaviour and novel tasks. With contributions from the foremost researchers in the field Microdevelopment will be essential reading for all interested in cognitive and developmental science. (shrink)

A rich collection of critical essays, authored by philosophers and practicing artists, examining Deleuze and Guattari's engagement with a broad range of art forms.

This is the definitive collection of the ethical work of the great Oxford moral philosopher H. A. Prichard. Prichard is famous for his ethical intuitionism: he argued that moral obligation cannot be reduced to anything else, but is perceived by direct intuition. The essays previously included in the posthumous collection Moral Obligation are now augmented by a selection of previously unpublished writings from Prichard's manuscripts, allowing for the first time a full view of his distinctive contribution to moral philosophy, at (...) just the time when intuitionism is enjoying a revival of interest. (shrink)

Although recent government initiatives have drawn attention to the importance of listening to young people, attempts to pay attention to their views about their education experience are rare. Drawing on two studies of disaffected and disadvantaged pupils, this article analyses what can be learned from taking their views into account.

The demanding frontier life of My Ántonia or Little House on the Prairie may be long gone, but the idyllic small town still exists as a cherished icon of American community life. Yet sprawl and urban density, rather than small towns and farms, are the predominant features of our modern society, agribusiness and other commercial forces have rapidly taken over family farms and ranches, and even the open spaces we think of as natural retreats only retain the barest façade of (...) their former frontier austerity. The fading communities, social upheaval, and enduring heritage of the Northern Plains are the subject of Jim Dow’s Marking the Land, a stirring photographic tribute to the complex and unyielding landscape of North Dakota. Jim Dow began making pilgrimages to this remote territory in 1981 and, with a commission from the North Dakota Museum of Art, he took photographs of the passing human presence on the land. The simple, stolid pieces of architecture carved out against the Dakota skies—whether the local schoolhouse, car wash, prison, homes, hunting lodge, or churches—evoke in their spare lines and weather-battered frames the stoic and toughened spirit of the people within their walls. Folk art is also an integral part of the landscape in Dow’s visual study, and he examines the subtle evolution of local craftsmanship from homemade sculptures, murals, and carvings to carefully crafted pieces aimed at tourists. Anchoring all of these explorations is the raw and striking landscape of the North Dakota plains. Marking the Land is a moving reflection by a leading American photographer on the state of the Northern Plains today, forcing us all to rethink our conceptions of America’s forgotten frontier. (shrink)

As engineers propose constructing humanlike automata, the question arises as to whether such machines merit human rights. The issue warrants serious and rigorous examination, although it has not yet cohered into a conversation. To put it into a sure direction, this paper proposes phrasing it in terms of whether humans are morally obligated to extend to maximally humanlike automata full human rights, or those set forth in common international rights documents. This paper’s approach is to consider the ontology of humans (...) and of automata and whether ontological difference between them, that pertains to the very bases of human rights, affects the latter’s claims to full human rights. Considering common bases of human rights, can these bases tell us whether a certain ontological distinction of humans from automata—or a de facto distinction about humans tacitly acknowledged by full-rights-recognizing societies—makes a difference in whether humans are morally obligated to assign these entities full rights? Human rights to security also arise. The conclusion is that humans need not be under any moral obligation to confer full human rights on automata. The paper’s ultimate point is not to close the discussion with this ontological cap but to set a solid moral and legal groundwork for opening it up tout court. (shrink)

Abstract The ethics of technology use has tended to arise from the theory of the role of technology in human life and society and thus introduces a bias into moral assessment of such use. I propose a dialectical method of morally assessing a technology use without such a preset notion. Instead the assumption is that the moral agent is as responsible for use of a technology as for any other moral action of the agent, that is, the individual’s use of (...) a technology is a moral action that can be morally assessed. I apply this outlook to automobile use, weighing its moral pros and cons, such as in terms of autonomy, environmental degradation, land use, health hazards, and other moral drawbacks arising from the technology’s use or non-use. Although the conclusion leaves the final moral assessment undecided, the method points to a way fairly to assess morally the use of technologies in terms of human betterment and environmental and health concerns, minimizing biases from assumptions of the role or nature of technologies. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9320-8 Authors Lantz Miller, CUNY, New York, NY, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

Machamer, Darden, and Craver argue that causal explanations explain effects by describing the operations of the mechanisms which produce them. One of this paper’s aims is to take advantage of neglected resources of Mechanism to rethink the traditional idea that actual or counterfactual natural regularities are essential to the distinction between causal and non-causal co-occurrences, and that generalizations describing natural regularities are essential components of causal explanations. I think that causal productivity and regularity are by no means the same thing, (...) and that the Regularists are mistaken about the roles generalizations play in causal explanation. Humean, logical empiricist, and other Regularist accounts of causal explanation have had the unfortunate effect of distracting philosophers’ from important non-explanatory scientific uses of laws and lesser generalizations which purport to describe natural regularities. My second aim is to characterize some of these uses, illustrating them with examples from neuroscientific research. (shrink)

Some public health behavioral intervention research studies involve deception. A methodological imperative to minimize bias can be in conflict with the ethical principle of informed consent. As a case study, we examine the specific forms of deception used in three online randomized controlled trials evaluating brief alcohol interventions. We elaborate our own decision making about the use of deception in these trials, and present our ongoing findings and uncertainties. We discuss the value of the approach of pragmatism for examining these (...) kinds of ethical issues that can arise in research on public health interventions. (shrink)

This new book from Michael Hauskeller explores the currently marketed or projected sex/love products that exhibit some trait of so-called “posthumanistic” theory or design. These products are so designated because of their intention to fuse high technologies, including robotics and computing, with the human user. The author offers several arguments for why the theory behind these products leads to inconsistencies. The book uses a unique approach to philosophical argument by enmeshing the argument’s major points in a concomitant discussion of pieces (...) from world literature pertaining to posthumanism. The method is compelling, heightened by great world authorial insights that rarely find their way into philosophy and shores up some strong argumentative points. Yet some of the argument still needs more elucidating. (shrink)

Donald Davidson finds folk-psychological explanations anomalous due to the open-ended and constitutive conception of rationality which they employ, and yet monist because they invoke an ontology of only physical events. An eliminative materialist who thinks that the beliefs and desires of folk-psychology are mere pre-scientific fictions cannot accept these claims, but he could accept anomalous monism construed as an analysis, merely, of the ideological and ontological presumptions of folk-psychology. Of course, eliminative materialism is itself only a guess, a marker for (...) material explanations we do not have, but it is made plausible by, inter alia, whatever difficulties we have in interpreting intentional folk-explanations realistically. And surely anomalous monism does require further explanation if it is to be accepted realistically and not dismissed as an analysis of a folk-idiom which is to be construed instrumentally at best. Some further explanation is needed of how beliefs, desires, etc. can form rational patterns which have ‘no echo in physical theory’ and yet those beliefs, desires etc. be physical events. To this end I propose to graft on to anomalous monism a modest version of functionalism. (shrink)

This paper suggests and discusses an answer to the following question: What distinguishes causal from non-causal or coincidental co-occurrences? The answer derives from Elizabeth Anscombe’s idea that causality is a highly abstract concept whose meaning derives from our understanding of specific causally productive activities, and from her rejection of the assumption that causality can be informatively understood in terms of actual or counterfactual regularities.Keywords: Elizabeth Anscombe; Causality; Explanation; Inhibition.

Currently, some philosophers and technicians propose to change the fundamental constitution of Homo sapiens, as by significantly altering the genome, implanting microchips in the brain, and pursuing related techniques. Among these proposals are aspirations to guide humanity’s evolution into new species. Some philosophers have countered that such species alteration is unethical and have proposed international policies to protect species integrity; yet, it remains unclear on what basis such right to species integrity would rest. An answer may come from an unexpected (...) angle of rights issues: Some cultures have indicated that they want no part of our technological culture, preferring to retain their practices. Yet, rights documents do not explicitly establish that any individual has a right to species integrity. Careful interpretation of rights documents nonetheless reveals that such a right to species integrity is implicit. Interpreting these so as to reveal this needed right is also necessary to retain the foundations of rights documents and institutions. Further, acknowledging a right of species integrity could mean, because of practicalities, a limit to the freedom of proponents to implement proposals to manipulate the species. (shrink)

A critique is made of Bernard Rollin''s examination of the ethics of cloning adult mammalian cells. The primary concern is less to propound an anticloning or procloning position than to call for full exploration of the ethical complexities before a rush to judgment is made. Indeed, the ethical examination in question rushes toward an ethical position in such a way that does not appear consistent with Rollin''s usual methodology. By extending this methodology – which entails full weighing of benefits and (...) costs – it becomes apparent that there are real potential risks to this type of cloning in both animals and humans, besides the possible benefits, and that the scientific, political, philosophical, and broader academic communities should explore these risks and benefits extensively. Rollin''s usual methodological call for hesitation before risks would translate into hesitation before the ethical risks of adult mammalian cell cloning instead of his paper''s curiously laissez-faire stance. (shrink)

Rationality has been philosophers’ concern stretching back to ancient times. But just what is rationality? In trying to answer this question, we find rationality more complex than supposed. That supposition has not been insufficiently investigated. This work aspires to bring together the facets of this peculiar phenomenon, rationality. It is both more complex than presumed and yet more accessible than many may have feared. One argument concedes the common assumption that those interested in rationality need only rely on intuitions about (...) this phenomenon. Yet, even moderate research reveals the concept’s profound fuzziness. This book’s systematic approach should make this puzzle much less obscure. By the end, rationality and its critics provide more luminous light than has long been missing. (shrink)

Philosophers, scientists, and other researchers have increasingly characterized humanity as having reached an epistemic and technical stage at which “we can control our own evolution.” Moral–philosophical analysis of this outlook reveals some problems, beginning with the vagueness of “we.” At least four glosses on “we” in the proposition “we, humanity, control our evolution” can be made: “we” is the bundle of all living humans, a leader guiding the combined species, each individual acting severally, or some mixture of these three involving (...) a market interpretation of future evolutionary processes. While all of these glosses have difficulties under philosophical analysis, how we as a species handle our fate via technical developments is all-important. I propose our role herein should be understood as other than controllers of our evolution. (shrink)

Using Jim Woodward's Counterfactual Dependency account as an example, I argue that causal claims about indeterministic systems cannot be satisfactorily analysed as including counterfactual conditionals among their truth conditions because the counterfactuals such accounts must appeal to need not have truth values. Where this happens, counterfactual analyses transform true causal claims into expressions which are not true.

"We become what we love," states Jim Garrison in Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching. This provocative book represents a major new interpretation of Dewey's education philosophy. It is also an examination of what motivates us to teach and to learn, and begins with the idea of education of eros (i.e., passionate desire)-"the supreme aim of education" as the author puts it-and how that desire results in a practical philosophy that guides us in recognizing what (...) is essentially good or valuable. Garrison weaves these threads of ancient wisdom into a critical analysis of John Dewey's writings that reveal an implicit theory of eros in reasoning, and the central importance of educating eros to seek "the Good." Chapters: Plato's Symposium: Eros, the Beautiful, and the Good • Care, Sympathy, and Community in Classroom Teaching: Feminist Reflections on the Expansive Self • Play-Doh, Poetry, and "Ethereal Things" • The Aesthetic Context of Inquiry and the Teachable Moment • The Education of Eros: Critical and Creative Value Appraisal • Teaching and the Logic of Moral Perception This book can be used in graduate courses in foundations, teacher education, philosophy of education, qualitative research, arts and education, language and literacy, and women and education. Jim Garrison is Professor of Philosophy of Education at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. He is pastpresident of the John Dewey Society and a winner of the Society's Outstanding Achievement Award. (shrink)

Many mental phenomena involve thinking about people who do not exist. Imagined characters appear in planning, dreams, fantasizing, imaginary companions, bereavement hallucinations, auditory verbal hallucinations, and as characters created in fictional narratives by authors. Sometimes these imagined persons are felt to be completely under our control, as when one fantasizes about having a great time at a party. Other times, characters feel as though they are outside of our conscious control. Dream characters, for example, are experienced by dreamers as autonomous (...) entities, and often do things that frighten and surprise dreamers. Some imagined persons, such as characters in fiction, start off under conscious control of the author, but over time, can appear to gain an illusion of independent agency. I propose an explanation for different autonomy attributions: characters are by default non-autonomous, unless their personalities are well-practiced. Characters become autonomous because modeling their thinking has become automatized, like many other well-practiced activities. (shrink)

While in recent years new charters and government actions have boosted the collective and individual rights enjoyed by “Fourth-World” indigenous peoples such as the Inuit, another set of indigenous peoples has not experienced such protection: “self-delimiting” peoples. Their rights go largely unprotected because of deliberate ambiguities in the word “indigenous”; because these peoples generally avoid all contact with the larger society, and so are unknown by it and have no voice in it; and because charters and institutions generally require validation (...) of an indigenous people as bona fide—such as a history of contact and of evident land occupation—in order for the group to enjoy full rights protections. Both practice and theory may militate against the extension of full protection. This paper argues that theory, institutions building upon it, and practice realizable from theory and institutions must be reconsidered in terms of the particular circumstances and needs of these peoples if their rights are to be fully respected and maintained. Clear, special protection for these peoples’ rights to their culture must be established. (shrink)

In this essay, Jim Garrison explores the emerging scholarship establishing a Hegelian continuity in John Dewey’s thought from his earliest publications to the work published in the last decade of his life. The primary goals of this study are, first, to introduce this new scholarship to philosophers of education and, second, to extend this analysis to new domains, including Dewey’s theory of inquiry, universals, and creative action. Ultimately, Garrison’s analysis also refutes the traditional account that claims that William James converted (...) Dewey from Hegelian idealism, after which Charles Sanders Peirce inspired him to rebuild his instrumentalism along radically different lines. (shrink)

After years of activism and scholarship concerning patriarchal social structures, many contemporary societies have made substantial progress in women’s rights. The shortfall, and the work ahead, is well known. Even in societies where the most progress has been achieved, males continue to dominate at key levels of power. Yet, essentialism appears to be widely, although not yet entirely, discounted. In helping to illuminate the social ontology of patriarchy and thereby helping to defuse its injustice, scholars have made proposals of patriarchy’s (...) origins; however, these appear not to be optimally consistent with historical and prehistorical facts. This article offers a different account of patriarchy, arguing that this one can not only explain how such a social condition originated and why it persists, but also point to what may be necessary to do in order to undo it. While I do not contend this ontology of patriarchy is the best possible, it provides a good example of the many issues at stake which an account of patriarchy must explain and points to how we should seek the best ontology as a way of both understanding contemporary societies and suggesting how to rectify a long-standing injustice. (shrink)

This book collects the work of leading scholars on Alain Badiou and G.W.F. Hegel, creating a dialogue between, and a critical appraisal of, these two central figures in European philosophy.

There is a vast amount of evidence across countries that the use of health care services (including hospitalizations, physician services, and clinical preventive services) is positively associated with income, education and other markers of socioeconomic position. In some analyses, lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with greater physician and hospital use, although it appears that these findings are primarily driven by higher rates of poor health status or medical need in socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. Three general sets of explanations have been (...) investigated to explain SES differences in health care use: (1) financial access or affordability differences (e.g. the poor use fewer services because they have fewer financial means); (2) knowledge, attitudinal and cultural differences in seeking care (e.g. the poor use fewer services because they value and/or understand the benefits of health care less than other people); and (3) health care system factors (e.g. the poor use fewer services because of ways in which the health care system is organized). The empirical evidence from a number of countries suggests that health care system variables, especially non-financial components of access, offer the greatest explanatory power regarding SES differences in utilization. The policy implications of such findings are important, for they suggests that providing universal coverage or offering free health services to the poor is not a panacea for reducing social inequalities in health care utilization. Research across countries also suggests that, although SES differences in the use of health care services may contribute to some portion of observed SES disparities in health status, the contribution here is likely to be small. Social inequalities in health status are driven by myriad factors other than access to and use of personal health services. (shrink)

Which types of group-typing amounts to racism? The answer seemingly has to do with deeper physical or cultural traits over which an agent has no deliberate control but which are formative of the agent. In this article, I look to the cultural or ethnic bases of division of humans into races, albeit of a specific type: a basis that sees humanity climbing in a certain, presumably improving, direction. Those ethnicities that appear not to opt for this climb are commonly presumed (...) – if tacitly – inferior. This outlook is so common, particularly in industrial, governmental, economic-developmental, academic and other intellectual and influential, high-profile institutional settings, it is hard to descry. This article aims to bring this racism, referred to as ‘pan-institutional’ because it extends from local to national and international institutions, into fuller light. The article argues that prominent pan-institutions, including government, academia and industry, work together to propagate this racism, even while these institutions aver they are spreading benevolence to less fortunate cultures, in the cause of cultural, economic and social globalization. In this way, these pan-institutions follow precisely in step with earlier colonialism and missionarism. The article ethically assesses this covert racist pan-institutional movement, reveals the quandaries that many indigenous cultures, especially foragers, face as this movement encroaches on them, and analyses how it is best understood as a refurbishing of colonialism in the name of benevolence. The argument ends by describing how such benevolent globalization builds upon misanthropy and it analyses the moral implications and why this most covert and widespread movement is, like more visible and standard racisms, wrong-headed, unethical, fatal, misanthropist and perhaps self-hating. (shrink)

Common philosophical discussions concerning the ethics of human interaction with the biosphere and universe have been significantly informed by certain presuppositions: nature is conquerable; human cultural and social progress is somewhat like a thing, beyond human control, and is inevitable and benevolent; and Homo sapiens is the superior life-form. Although arguments, such as whether humans should conquer nature, founded upon these presuppositions have sometimes been challenged, each of these three presuppositions wants direct analysis. The three have become so ingrained in (...) professional and everyday discourse that they have mythic proportions, as though beyond question. Because of the weightiness of the relevant philosophical issues, they merit overt analysis. Although they are independent and may be analyzed separately, this article treats them as whole, as they often work together in arguments. After finding substantial problems, the article suggests alternative ways of building sustainable presuppositions in similar territory. (shrink)

Why do so many—including philosophers—care about equality? Mere envy? This book investigates how Homo sapiens developed, thrived in, and nurtured a certain social condition that happened to abet our continual survival. Empirical evidence points to a natural, possibly inborn, sense that humans live most humanly as equals: No one told them what to do; no one had significantly more goods. Humans evolved in such a condition of social equality and autonomy. This condition of individual autonomy in turn shaped our species (...) and led humans to demand social equality to this day. All changed when groups stopped roving for food, settled down, and cultivated land. Some individuals started storing goods clandestinely, gaining wealth and power. Inequality set in and, ever since, a struggle between haves and have-nots. People strive to reestablish some degree of equality, philosophical theories notwithstanding. This book’s empirical theory of equality’s ontology explains why humans over the millennia strive for equality and help assess whether theories of equality, if implemented in policy, could accommodate this need. Equality is essentially bound up with autonomy, liberty and justice. Any political theory neglecting these interconnections may fall short of its goals. While industrial societies will unlikely implement the book’s theory, at the least it can illuminate common theories of equality and where they fly or fail. (shrink)

This essay uses Györgi Buzsáki's use of EEG data to draw conclusions about brain function as an example to show that investigators sometimes draw conclusions from noisy data by analyzing the noise rather than by extracting a signal from it. The example makes vivid some important differences between McAllister's, Woodward's, and my ideas about how data are interpreted.

Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience Online (...) ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1. (shrink)

The aspiration for volitional evolution, or human evolution directed by humans themselves,has increased in philosophical, scientific, technical, and commercial literature. The prospect of shaping the very being who is the consumer of all other innovations offers great commercial potential, one to which all other innovations would in effect be subservient. Actually an amalgam of projected technical/commercial developments, this prospective innovation has practical and ethical ramifications. However, because it is often discussed in a scientific way (specifically that of evolutionary theory), it (...) first calls for examination in terms of common scientific approaches to evolution. Yet, as evolutionary-theory controversies point up, evolution may be considered as neither a directed nor a directable process – a problem for the ontology of volitional evolution. One challenge for theories and programs aiming to implement the proposed innovation is then whether it is theoretically coherent. While I offer responses to the challenge in the form of objections, these in turn remain problematic. Two central issues of responsible innovation arise: (1) If this prospect were feasible, would it be responsible to implement it, and (2) if it is not even theoretically coherent, is it responsible for innovators, even this early-on, to keep promoting it as if it were? (shrink)

The main concepts of the free energy (FE) neuroscience developed by Karl Friston and colleagues parallel those of Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology. In Hobson et al. ( 2014 ) these include an innate virtual reality generator that produces the fictive prior beliefs that Freud described as the primary process. This enables Friston's account to encompass a unified treatment—a complexity theory—of the role of virtual reality in both dreaming and mental disorder. In both accounts the brain operates to minimize (...) FE aroused by sensory impingements—including interoceptive impingements that report compliance with biological imperatives—and constructs a representation/model of the causes of impingement that enables this minimization. In Friston's account (variational) FE equals complexity minus accuracy, and is minimized by increasing accuracy and decreasing complexity. Roughly the brain (or model) increases accuracy together with complexity in waking. This is mediated by consciousness-creating active inference—by which it explains sensory impingements in terms of perceptual experiences of their causes. In sleep it reduces complexity by processes that include both synaptic pruning and consciousness/virtual reality/dreaming in REM. The consciousness-creating active inference that effects complexity-reduction in REM dreaming must operate on FE-arousing data distinct from sensory impingement. The most relevant source is remembered arousals of emotion, both recent and remote, as processed in SWS and REM on “active systems” accounts of memory consolidation/reconsolidation. Freud describes these remembered arousals as condensed in the dreamwork for use in the conscious contents of dreams, and similar condensation can be seen in symptoms. Complexity partly reflects emotional conflict and trauma. This indicates that dreams and symptoms are both produced to reduce complexity in the form of potentially adverse (traumatic or conflicting) arousals of amygdala-related emotions. Mental disorder is thus caused by computational complexity together with mechanisms like synaptic pruning that have evolved for complexity-reduction; and important features of disorder can be understood in these terms. Details of the consilience among Freudian, systems consolidation, and complexity-reduction accounts appear clearly in the analysis of a single fragment of a dream, indicating also how complexity reduction proceeds by a process resembling Bayesian model selection. (shrink)

Camus considered the most crucial philosophical problem to be that of suicide—whether to discontinue your existence by endingit. Alternatively, a most crucial philosophical problem may be procreation—whether to continue human existence by making new humans. The topic has spurred an increasing amount of debate over the past decade, with marked diversion with Anscomb’s comment that it makes no moral sense to inquire whether one should reproduce. One might as well ask why digest food or why should the wind blow. This (...) article reviews some of the most recent literature on this topic, which shows little resemblance to Anscomb’s remark. (shrink)

Over the past several decades environmental ethics has grown markedly, normative ethics having provided essential grounding in assessing human treatment of the environment. Even a systematic approach, such as Paul Taylor’s, in a sense tells the environment how it is to be treated, whether that be Earth’s ecosystem or the universe itself. Can the environment, especially the ecosystem, as understood through the study of ecology, in turn offer normative and applied ethics any edification? The study of ecology has certainly increased (...) awareness of the fact that it is not possible for a moral agent within the ecosystem to step outside its intricate mesh of actions and events, of causes and effects. That is, absolutely everything that an agent can do can have some, often unforeseeable, outcome in the environment. An incompletely snuffed-out match tossed out a car window can cause a forest fire, which causes biome destruction, which causes x, y, and z. In sum, the ecosystem can edify ethics in terms of the scope of ethics, which remains an unsettled, if too-often ignored, matter. By such an inclusive view of moral scope, as derived in part from ecology and as presented here, the scope of moral behavior would include—whether or not adventitiously—every action an agent may do. By this view, moral scope is, in essence, unlimited. The article offers some ramifications of this view of moral scope. (shrink)