Temporal concepts are fundamental constructs of human cognition, but the trajectory of how these concepts emerge and develop is not clear. Evidence of children’s temporal concept development comes from cognitive developmental and psycholinguistic studies. This paper reviews the linguistic factors (i.e., temporal language production and comprehension) and cognitive processes (i.e., temporal judgment and temporal reasoning) involved in children’s temporal conceptualization. The relationship between children’s ability to express time in language and the ability to reason about time, and the challenges and (...) difficulties raised by the interaction between cognitive and linguistic components are discussed. Finally, we propose ways to reconcile controversies from different research perspectives and present several avenues for future research to better understand the development of temporal concepts. (shrink)

Searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience.

Sometimes we make a decision about an action we will undertake later and form an intention, but our judgment of what it is best to do undergoes a temporary shift when the time for action comes round. What makes it rational not to give in to temptation? Many contemporary solutions privilege diachronic rationality; in some “rational non-reconsideration” (RNR) accounts once the agent forms an intention, it is rational not to reconsider. This leads to other puzzles: how can someone be motivated (...) to follow a plan that is contrary to their current judgment? How can it be rational to form a plan to resist if we can predict that our judgment will shift? I show how these puzzles can be solved in a framework where there are multiple units of agency, distinguishing between the judgments of the timeslice and those of the person over time, and allowing that the timeslice can “self identify”, taking the person over time as the relevant unit of agency and doing intrapersonal team reasoning (with a different causal role for intentions than RNR accounts). On my account, resisting temptation is compatible with synchronic rationality, so synchronic and diachronic rationality are aligned. However, either resisting or succumbing to temptation can be instrumentally rational, depending on the unit of agency that is identified with. In order to show why we ought to resist temptation, we need to draw on a non-instrumental rationale. I sketch possible routes for doing this. (shrink)

Mainstream epistemologists don’t tend to discuss feminist epistemologies. They often don’t mention them in introductory courses or textbooks, and they almost invariably don’t take themselves to work on them. This is probably due to a suspicion that ‘feminist’ epistemologies are clouded by political motivations. In this paper I will argue two things. First, that this suspicion is misguided – a number of ‘mainstream’ epistemologists (specifically, hinge epistemologists), are in fact doing work which is entirely compatible with feminist epistemologies, and the (...) ‘extra ingredient’ required to turn a hinge epistemology into a feminist epistemology needn’t involve political motivations. And second, that bringing feminist epistemologies into the mainstream can benefit hinge epistemologies – by adding the extra ingredient which turns a hinge epistemology into a feminist epistemology, hinge epistemologists increase the motivations they can appeal to in support of their responses to scepticism. (shrink)

The diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder (BPD) has come under increasing criticism in recent years. In this paper, we analyze the role and impact of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice, in relation to the diagnosis of BPD. We first offer a critical sociological and historical account, detailing and expanding a range of arguments that BPD is problematic nosologically. We then turn to explore the epistemic injustices that can result from a BPD diagnosis, showing how they can lead to experiences (...) of testimonial injustice which impede patient engagement in meaning-making activities, thereby undermining standard therapeutic goals. We conclude by showing how our arguments bolster ongoing efforts to replace the diagnostic category of BPD with alternatives such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. (shrink)

Questions about when to limit unhelpful treatments are often raised in general medicine but are less commonly considered in psychiatry. Here we describe a survey of U.S. psychiatrists intended to characterize their attitudes about the management of suicidal ideation in patients with severely treatment-refractory illness. Respondents (n = 212) received one of two cases describing a patient with suicidal ideation due to either borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder. Both patients were described as receiving all guideline-based and plausible emerging (...) treatments. Respondents rated the expected helpfulness and likelihood of recommending each of four types of intervention: hospitalization, additional medication changes, additional neurostimulation, and additional psychotherapy. Across both cases, most respondents said they were likely to provide each intervention, except for additional neurostimulation in borderline personality disorder, while fewer thought each intervention would be helpful. Substantial minorities of respondents indicated that they would provide an intervention they did not think was likely to be helpful. Our results suggest that while most psychiatrists recognize the possibility that some patients are unlikely to be helped by available treatments, many would continue to offer such treatments. (shrink)

This research examines the ethical orientations of students (ethical idealism, ethical relativism and Machiavellianism) towards their attitude to plagiarize. It also examines the moderating effect of religious orientation on the relationship of the independent variables toward students’ attitude towards plagiarism. Data was collected from 160 business diploma and undergraduate students from a local private college and a local public university in Malaysia. Results from the hierarchical regression analysis showed that ethical relativism and Machiavellianism had a positive relationship with students’ attitude (...) towards plagiarism whilst ethical idealism was negatively related to students’ attitude towards plagiarism. Religious orientation was found to have no moderating effect on the relationship between the three independent variables: ethical idealism, ethical relativism and Machiavellianism and the dependent variable, students’ attitude towards plagiarism. (shrink)

Universities and other research institutions are increasingly providing additional training in research integrity to improve the quality and reliability of research. Various training courses have been developed, with diverse learning goals and content. Despite the importance of training that focuses on moral character and professional virtues, there remains a lack of training that adopts a virtue ethics approach. To address this, we, a European Commission-funded consortium, have designed a train-the-trainer programme for research integrity. The programme is based on (1) virtue (...) ethics, (2) the ethos of science, (3) learning by doing and (4) learner-centred teaching. The blended learning programme combines e-learning modules with participatory group sessions. Trainers are taught how to guide researchers through a series of structured exercises for fostering reflection on scientific virtues, and how to promote understanding and application of the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Trainers are provided with adaptable tools and resources that can be used and combined in different ways. The programme implementation began in Spring 2020 and 470 trainers have participated to date. When trainers were asked to grade – between 0 (very bad) and 10 (excellent) – the e-learning modules and the participatory exercises, 60% scored a grade 8 or higher (median = 8, IQR = 2) for the e-learning modules, whereas 80% scored a grade 8 or higher (median = 9, IQR = 1) for the participatory exercises. A majority felt that the training helped them as a trainer to learn about ways to organise and teach a research integrity course (82%) and would recommend the interactive exercises to others (92%). Trainers have educated over 3300 researchers in Europe using our virtue-based approach. The VIRT2UE train-the-trainer programme fosters research integrity by providing trainers with exercises and tools which enable them to stimulate the development of good researchers across Europe. (shrink)

This article outlines various philosophical conceptions of gender. I first explain two basic approaches: first, that gender is a social role or status that is imposed on individuals by third‐person institutional structures; and secondly, that gender is a matter of first‐person identifications, behaviors or choices. Next, I examine the notion of gender essentialism. Is gender is feature of persons that is essential to an individual being the person she is? Is there a “kind essence” or “group essence” that individuals have (...) to instantiate in order to be members of gender groups? Finally, I explain the related debate over the unification of gender categories. Realists argue that explaining group membership requires that we posit a universal, for instance, a single property “womanness” that all members of the group “women” share. Nominalists argue that weaker devices such as linguistic categorization or resemblance are adequate to unify individuals with different characteristics into the group. For nominalists, diversity within groups does not entail that groups are a myth. (shrink)

I would like to show here that Varela, besides being a scientist and a Buddhist practitioner, also has the stature of a philosopher. In order to do so, I chose to illuminate his thought in the light of a concept that he did not use much, at least at the beginning, but which constitutes the cornerstone of his philosophy. It is the concept of surprise. I will show first how surprise is at the core of what I call his 'Valence' (...) article; time, affect, and intersubjectivity being the main coordinates of surprise. Then I will prove how the structural concepts of autopoiesis, enaction, and co-generativity are all supported by surprise as a dynamic model. In parallel, I will indicate how some seemingly side concepts (I call 'operative'), such as creation, novelty, unpredictibility, openness, and otherness, are actually key candidates for demonstrating the relevance of Varela as a philosopher of surprise....the nature of the self is precisely its non-findability. There is nothing to grasp that would make persons and phenomena what they are (Sanscrit: anatman; Tibetan: bdag med gnyis)... The usual translation of anatman is 'non-self', or 'emptiness of self'. However, this is again too close to the original Buddhist language... For the practitioner, anatman is manifest, experienced as superabundant: it is a nonknowledge that holds a host of surprises. (Varela, 2000/2017, p. 134). (shrink)

Les phénoménologies historiques et contemporaines ont analysé la sexualité (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty), l’expérience de l’erôs et du féminin (Levinas), le phénomène de l’érotisme (Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion) en prétendant rendre compte de la structure générale de cette expérience. Toutefois, ils adoptent implicitement, « normalement » le point de vue du sujet masculin et, qui plus est, le plus souvent, celui d’une hétérosexualité dite « normale ». Et ce, sans procéder à un examen critique de c...

I won’t here sketch out completely the contentions of all phenomenologists about the question of Europe, what would rather refer to a book-project. By taking over some of the statements, I will rather try to situate Max Scheler’s original contention, while showing, to begin with, how he concurs with some aspects of Husserl’s pionneer-conception, but also strongly disagree on some others. As a second step, the map of the contentions of the different phenomenologists on Europe will allow to draw a (...) fairly enough dividing line between euro-centrists or europeo-centrists on the one side and, on the other side, the promotors of an alternative Europe, of an « alter-Europe », of a euro-excentrism, or again, in more contemporary terms, of a « globalisation » or an « alter-mondialism ». Max Scheler is clearly on this latter side of the line, as we will see. But this dividing line becomes still more complex and generates other distinctions, according to the « valence » that is attributed to Europe, positive (its opening future) or negative (its foreseen decline), or, in other terms, if it is its metaphysical meaning (principle, idea, essence, value) that is underlined, or its social, legal, economic and political historicisation. With such a multifactorial configuration in mind, I will seek to place the author of Politisch-pädagogische Schriften and, namely, of « L’idée de paix et le pacifisme » on the chessboard of Europe. (shrink)

Cardiophenomenology aims at refining the neuro-phenomenological approach created by F. Varela as a new paradigm, jointly based on Husserl’s a priori dynamics of the living present and an experiment on anticipatory time-dynamics of visual motor perception. In order to do so, we will situate the paradigm of neurophenomenology at the cardio-vascular level, focusing on the emotional dynamics of lived experience and thus refining the dialogue, more precisely, the generative mutual constraints between first- and third-person analysis. In this article we present (...) the theoretical hypothesis of cardiophenomenology, which places the bodily-emotional heartsystem at its core, as an intrinsic part of the cognitive system. The latter therefore needs to be enlarged in order to include an enactive embodied cardiac-affective dimension. Here we present five main arguments for the necessary inclusion of the bodily-emotional heartsystem in the cognitive system: first, two pragmatic operational arguments, then three theoretical ones. A direct methodological-pragmatic consequence is the actual operativity of the generative mutual constraints based on an experiential -experimental continuity of the embodied cardiac-affective fold inherent in the subject. (shrink)

La religion, cette névrose obsessionnelle universelle de l’humanité Freud, L’avenir d’une illusion (1927) Introduction « Sartre est … le théologien le plus important dont dispose la tradition philosophique de l’Occident ». C’est le philosophe et théologien Christos Yannaras qui s’exprime. Provocation? Plutôt : vertu de l’athéisme de l’auteur de L’être et le néant qui, bel héritier de Nietzsche et de Heidegger, produit un diagnostic au scalpel de la posture religieuse molle du piétisme du X...

Culture clashes -- Ontology, copyright, and artistic practice -- The myth of unoriginality -- Authorship, power, and responsibility -- Toward an ontology of authored works -- The rights of authors -- The rights of others -- Appropriation and transformation -- Afterword.

For the most part, attention occurs as a theme adjacent to much more topical and innovatingly operating acts: first, the intentional act, which represents a destitution of the abstract opposition between subject and object and which paves the way for a detailed analysis of our perceptive horizontal subjective life; second, the reductive act, specified in a psycho-phenomenological sense as a reflective conversion of the way I am looking at things; third, the genetic method understood as a genealogy of logic based (...) on our experiential affective pre-discursive world-life. In this respect, here are some of the leading questions of my investigation: What are the differences and the proximities between these methods and attentional activity? Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this secondary part played by attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology as opposed to psychology (for which attention is a central theme), and what does it mean for the impossibility of phenomenology to freeing itself completely from psychology? (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of the emergence of “problematic of alien sexuality.” I first locate discourses about “alien sexuality,” and the so-called anchor baby in particular, within other national discourses surrounding maternity, the fetus, and citizenship. I analyze the ways that national political discourses surrounding “anchor babies” and “alien maternity” construct the “problematic of alien sexuality,” thus constituting the “alien” subject as always-already perverse. I suggest that this production of a sexually deviant and threatening “alien” subject functions (...) in the normative dichotomy that places the sexually pure citizen on the one hand, and the perverse anticitizen on the other, in what I call “backwards uncitizening.” My analysis of this process shows that the perverse “alien” subject, as constituted in significant part by nonjuridical normalizing mechanisms of biopower, resists the juridical discourse that is supposed to determine it. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three sections. The first presents some examples of the killing/letting die distinction. The second draws a further distinction between what I call negative and positive cases of acting or refraining. Here I argue that the moral significance of the acting/refraining distinction is different for positive and for negative cases. In the third section I apply the above distinction to euthanasia, and argue that mercy killing should be regarded as analogous to positive rather than negative cases. (...) On the basis of this, I then support active rather than passive euthanasia. (shrink)

Porter son attention sur l'attention, voilà l'urgence de notre humanisation contemporaine. Les sciences l'ont compris, qui depuis plus d'un siècle multiplient les travaux en psychologie et en neurosciences sur cette fonction complexe et globale qui forme un réseau intégré transversal où jouent mémoire, perception, veille, émotion et décision ; les techniques méditatives ont aussi leur rôle à jouer, s'adressant moins à notre intellect, comme les sciences, qu'à l'attitude fondamentale face à la vie. Elles nous proposent une clé en matière de (...) pratique de la présence à soi. Devant l'impact croissant des sciences et la visibilité actuelle des techniques méditatives, quel rôle jouera la phénoménologie? Contrairement aux autres approches philosophiques, elle possède ce plus de tenir en un regard ouvert sur le monde : par son retour à l'expérience, elle fait alliance avec la visée expérimentale des sciences et, par sa méthode de suspension, elle entre en contact avec une quête contemplative qui est prise de recul. Elle joue ainsi un rôle-charnière pour repenser l'attention en en faisant une expérience d'ouverture au monde davantage qu'un état mental interne. La phénoménologie apporte quelque chose d'inédit : une éthique de l'attention, qui réforme celle-ci en " vigilance ". (shrink)

International law has recently recognized that sexual atrocities can be acts of genocide. This precedent was pioneered through a landmark lawsuit in New York against Radovan Karadžić, head of the Bosnian Serbs (Kadic v. Karadzic, 1993–2000), a case in which I played a central role. I argue that we may situate this development philosophically in relation to Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. She aims to secure a better understanding of genocide than was achieved (...) at the Nuremberg Trials (1945) and at the Eichmann trial (1961). Arendt claims that these trials were limited by formalism because they applied familiar paradigms onto these new experiences in a manner that obscured what was distinctive about them and that demanded original thinking and a new paradigm. Nuremberg obscured genocide by miscasting it as a traditional “war crime,” a problem that the Jerusalem court exposed butcould have better clarified. Through a first-hand account, I show how we too had to secure a new paradigm by treating the facts on their own terms and coining the crime as “genocidal rape.” We had to wrest this paradigm from a prevailing approach that also formally applied the category of “war crimes” onto these experiences in a way that obscured them and interfered with justice. (shrink)

Background: Individuals with psychopathic traits demonstrate an attenuated emotional response to aversive stimuli. However, recent evidence suggests heterogeneity in emotional reactivity among individuals with psychopathic or callous-unemotional (CU) traits, the emotional detachment dimension of psychopathy. We hypothesize that primary variants of psychopathy will respond with blunted affect to negatively valenced stimuli, whereas individuals marked with histories of childhood trauma/maltreatment exposure, known as secondary variants, will display heightened emotional reactivity. To test this hypothesis, the present study examined fear-potentiated startle between psychopathy (...) variants while viewing aversive, pleasant, and neutral scenes. Method: 238 incarcerated adolescent (M age = 16.8, SD = 1.11 years) boys completed a picture-startle paradigm and self-report questionnaires assessing CU traits, antisocial-aggressive behavior, and maltreatment. Results: Latent profile analyses identified four classes; primary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, low maltreatment; n = 46), secondary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, high maltreatment; n = 42), and two nonpsychopathic groups differentiated on maltreatment experience (n = 148). Findings from an ANOVA comparing identified groups on startle amplitude difference scores (i.e., aversive-neutral) suggested a main effect for group, F(3,196)=8.91, p<.001, η2 = .12. Primary variants of juvenile psychopathy displayed reduced startle potentiation to aversive images (threat and victim scenes), whereas secondary variants distinguished by high levels of childhood maltreatment did not. Conclusions: Findings add to a rapidly growing body of literature supporting the possibility of multiple developmental pathways to psychopathy (i.e., equifinality), and extend it by finding support for divergent potential biomarkers between primary and secondary psychopathy variants. (shrink)

How can phenomenology describe an object as "the political"? The article endeavours to show how it is possible to apprehend such a theme from a _transcendental<D> perspective. After going through the methodic difficulties of the Cartesian way, which involves an egology intersubjectively extended to the monadology, the essay analyzes the non-Cartesian ways. Indeed, both of them pave the way for a political based on a plural structure. The way through the life-world as well as the way through psychology succeed in (...) depicting the political, either as living sociality or as the play between ethical co-attitudes. In each case, the reduction operates in a specific manner, either as a pure Cartesian bracketing, as a retrocession to social originality or as a nonparticipating in the world-interests. Nevertheless, only the way through psychology reaches the political at a strict transcendental level, whereas the way through the life-world always runs the risk of falling back. (shrink)

Given its transcendental impulse, Husserl's analysis of the lived body has been considered by many phenomenologists and by most Husserl scholars as unable to account for our everyday intimate relationship with our own embodied self and with other embodied selves. Contrary to such a widespread contention, the author sets out to show that Husserl's phenomenology contains unknown descriptive resources which provide a detailed account of our individual and communitarian lived body at a transcendental level proper.

In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt aims to secure a more adequate understanding of the new crime of genocide so that it can be prosecuted in a manner that better serves justice. She criticizes the Nuremberg Trials and, to a lesser extent, the Jerusalem trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for miscasting this unprecedented crime in terms of familiar concepts and thereby obscuring it. Arendt claims that this atrocity, instead, demanded original thinking (...) that emanated from a closer grappling with these new experiences. I argue that her criticism reflects Heideggerian phenomenology. This approach questions absolute concepts from a position more consciously planted in the world, which Heidegger considers the source of original thinking. However, Arendt extends this approach to the domain of ethics and law and confronts genocide instead of aligning with those who perpetrated it. (shrink)

Kantian autonomy is often thought to be independent of time and place, but J. B. Schneewind in his landmark study, The Invention of Autonomy, has shown that there is much to be learned by setting Kant's moral philosophy in the context of the history of modern moral philosophy. The distinguished authors in the collection continue Schneewind's project by relating Kant's work to the historical context of his predecessors and to the empirical context of human agency. This will be a valuable (...) resource for professionals and advanced students in philosophy, the history of ideas, and the history of political thought. (shrink)

The upper time limit on growing embryos in culture for research could be revised, following a new recommendation by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the regulator of embryo research and fertility treatments in the UK. The recommendation was agreed at a meeting of the HFEA Authority, as part of wider discussions about modernising fertility law in the UK.1 Under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (as amended), embryos which have been donated or created for research may be (...) grown in culture for up to 14 days or until the appearance of the primitive streak (whichever occurs sooner).2 This rule is widely replicated in other jurisdictions which permit the use of embryos in research.3 When this rule was adopted nearly 35 years ago, there was no prospect of sustaining embryos in vitro for more than a few days, and until recently, it has not posed a significant barrier to research.4 However, pressure to review the limit has grown following the publication of two studies in 2016 which demonstrated the technical feasibility of growing embryos to and potentially beyond the 14-day-limit.5 6 Proponents of changing the limit point to possible benefits of allowing …. (shrink)

Summary Marie Curie directed a research laboratory from 1906 to 1934. Several studies have already described its operation, as well as its importance in the field of radioactivity. This article hopes to show, not how the laboratory was unique, but rather how it was integrated into the French University movement at the start of the 20th century. The goal is to resituate the Curie laboratory in the context of the history of higher scientific education in France. This study presents a (...) global overview of all the researchers of the Curie laboratory before focusing in particular upon its female researchers. In fact, the strong presence of women in this laboratory has often been noted. Did Marie Curie favour applications from women? What were the criteria she used to select her collaborators? New sources and biographical research now allow us to highlight the women who spent time at the Curie laboratory. Where did they come from? What were their social and geographic origins? What future did they have after the laboratory? Were they, like their director, able to reconcile research career and family life? Through them we will question the still persistent image of the female researcher devoted to science. (shrink)

This paper investigates the interpretation of Corporate Social Responsibility found in reports by corporations. Data was collected from websites of Canadiancorporations figuring in the S&P/TSX 60 stock market index. Following some simple descriptions of the reports, three brief analyses are conducted. First the structure of the reports is analyzed. Then word use is investigated. Finally the use of pictures in the reports is analyzed.