Sally Gadow influenced our work when we first began exploring the meaning of nursing philosophically. In this article, we discuss two major themes of Gadow's work that have influenced us: existential advocacy and treating the body objectively without reducing the patient to the moral status of an object. Our treatment of these issues is appreciative but not uncritical. We argue that existential advocacy makes an important contribution to the meaning of nursing but that it cannot be its essential meaning. We (...) contend that Gadow, by making self‐direction the essence of care, tends to diminish the intersubjective nature of care. Then we show how Gadow recovers the intersubjective nature of care by disclosing how nurses and patients both become subjects in personal relationships, even when tending to the body objectively. We show how hermeneutic phenomenology, which we favour, can contribute to Gadow's existential phenomenology by using examples from nursing practice to disclose the meaning of nursing. Gadow's major contribution to our work has been in the ways her work has evoked creative thought from us concerning the meaning of nursing. (shrink)

The fundamental problem on which Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels–Austin Group have focused can be stated briefly as follows. Our observations indicate that there is an arrow of time in our experience of the world (e.g., decay of unstable radioactive atoms like uranium, or the mixing of cream in coffee). Most of the fundamental equations of physics are time reversible, however, presenting an apparent conflict between our theoretical descriptions and experimental observations. Many have thought that the observed arrow of time (...) was either an artifact of our observations or due to very special initial conditions. An alternative approach, followed by the Brussels–Austin Group, is to consider the observed direction of time to be a basic physical phenomenon due to the dynamics of physical systems. This essay focuses mainly on recent developments in the Brussels–Austin Group after the mid-1980s. The fundamental concerns are the same as in their earlier approaches (subdynamics, similarity transformations), but the contemporary approach utilizes rigged Hilbert space (whereas the older approaches used Hilbert space). While the emphasis on nonequilibrium statistical mechanics remains the same, their more recent approach addresses the physical features of large Poincare systems, nonlinear dynamics and the mathematical tools necessary to analyze them. (shrink)

Why should a thought experiment, an experiment that only exists in people's minds, alter our fundamental beliefs about reality? After all, isn't reasoning from the imaginary to the real a sign of psychosis? A historical survey of how thought experiments have shaped our physical laws might lead one to believe that it's not the case that the laws of physics lie - it's that they don't even pretend to tell the truth. My aim in this paper is to defend an (...) account of thought experiments that fits smoothly into our understanding of the historical trajectory of actual thought experiments and that explains how any rational person could allow an imagined, unrealized (or unrealizable) situation to change their conception of the universe. (shrink)

Contextual emergence was originally proposed as an inter-level relation between different levels of description to describe an epistemic notion of emergence in physics. Here, we discuss the ontic extension of this relation to different domains or levels of physical reality using the properties of temperature and molecular shape as detailed case studies. We emphasize the concepts of stability conditions and multiple realizability as key features of contextual emergence. Some broader implications contextual emergence has for the foundations of physics and cognitive (...) and neural sciences are given in the concluding discussion. Relevant facts about algebras of observables are found in the appendices along with an abstract definition of Kubo-Martin-Schwinger states. (shrink)

The original article unfortunately contains error in footnote 2 due to its double entry and interchanged figures 1 and 2.

This book explores whether physics points to a reductive or an emergent structure of the world and proposes a physics-motivated conception of emergence that leaves behind many of the problematic intuitions shaping the philosophical conceptions. Examining several detailed case studies reveals results that point to stability conditions playing a crucial though underappreciated role in the physics of emergence. This contextual emergence has thought-provoking consequences for physics and beyond.

A much discussed argument in the philosophy of mind against non-reductive physicalism leads to the conclusion that all genuine causes involved in mental phenomena must be reductive physical causes. The latter ostensibly exclude any other causes from having genuine effects in human thought and behaviour. Jaegwon Kim has been the chief exponent of this line of argument, calling it variously the causal exclusion argument or the supervenience argument against non-reductive physicalism. I will analyse this argument and show that some of (...) its key assumptions are unwarranted. Two assumptions on which I will particularly focus are the causal closure of the physical and the prohibition against causal overdetermination when multiple sufficient causes are involved in some effect. The upshot will be that rather than lower-level physical causes always excluding or pre-empting possible mental causes, context plays a key role in determining what kinds of causation are at work in human behaviour and how those causes cooperate. (shrink)

By making plausible the Diversity Thesis (different people have systematically different and incompatible packages of epistemic intuitions), experimental epistemology raises the specter of the shifting-sands problem: the evidence base for epistemology contains systematic inconsistencies. In response to this problem, some philosophers deny the Diversity Thesis, while others flirt with denying the Evidence Thesis (in normal circumstances, the epistemic intuition that p is prima facie evidence that p is true). We propose to accept both theses. The trick to living with the (...) shifting-sands problem is to expand epistemology’s evidential base so as to include scientific evidence. This evidence can provide principled grounds on which to decide between incompatible intuitions. The idea of resolving inconsistencies in an evidential base by adding more independent lines of evidence is commonplace in science. And in philosophy, it is simplyWide Reflective Equilibrium.We contend that the idea that epistemology would depend crucially on scientific evidence seems radical because many traditional epistemologists practice reflective equilibrium that is WINO, Wide In Name Only. We suggest five different lines of scientific evidence that can be, and have been, used in support of non-WINO epistemological theories. (shrink)

Through photographs we preserve the past, and looking for the past is the very job of the archaeologist. But what are we looking at in an archaeological photograph? Archaeological photography is often largely deserted, to be scanned with a forensic gaze, towards finding evidence of what once took place. At the same time, photographs of excavated sites and artefacts have revealed stunning ancient works, shot as works of art. In Photography and Archaeology, Frederick Bohrer examines some of history’s most famous (...) archaeological excavations, as well as lesser-known and previously unpublished finds, from the Mediterranean, Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas, and the ways these sites have been represented in photographs. Bohrer shows how the development of photography in the nineteenth century made archaeology available to a much wider audience, and he discusses how these images revealed the material traces of the past, as well as their meaning and use today. Spanning the dual histories of both photography and archaeology, the book makes evident how what we know of the archaeological past has always been related to how it has been photographically represented and circulated: in scholarly papers, popular accounts, scientific archives, museum catalogues and numerous other formats. Bohrer concludes that such images possess contending, if not mutually exclusive, properties. While photography seems to guarantee documentary objectivity, at the same time it also fundamentally alters the archaeological object, transforming it into a work of art. Along the way, he discusses archaeological examples and images by photographers including Maxime du Camp, Francis Frith, John Beazley Greene, Ernst Herzfeld and others, to more contemporary photographers such as Aaron Levin, Roger Wood and Marilyn Bridges. Beautifully illustrated with fine archaeological images, many published here for the first time, Photography and Archaeologywill be of interest to archaeologists, art historians and photographers, as well as anyone concerned with, or captivated by, archaeology’s ongoing engagement with the past. (shrink)

James Tully and others have argued recently that the theory of property Locke defends in the Second Treatise was designed to justify European settlement on the lands of North American Natives. If this view becomes generally accepted, and Tuck suggests it will be, doubts may arise about the impartiality of Lockean property theories. Locke, as is well established and documented again by Tully, had huge vested interests in the European settlement of North America and possibly in the enslavement of Native (...) Peoples. Doubts about Locke may reflect on all rights theories of property and thus bring into question ‘one of the major political philosophies of the modem world’ (Tully, ‘Rediscovering America,’ 165). Raising these doubts is part of Tully's declared intention (Tully, ‘Rediscovering America,’ 166). His article tries to show that the Native systems of property and government which Locke defines away as illegitimate are in fact interesting and potentially beneficial alternatives to Lockean individual rights theories. (shrink)

An examination of determinism in the context of chaotic dynamics.

This paper examines whether or not senior corporate executives are morally responsible for disasters which result from corporate activities. The discussion is limited to the case in which the information needed to prevent the disaster is present within the corporation, but fails to reach senior executives. The failure of information to reach executives is usually a result of negative information blockage, a phenomenon caused by the differing roles of constraints and goals within corporations. Executives should be held professionally responsible not (...) only for trying to prevent negative information blockage, but for succeeding. It is concluded that executives are professionally responsible for fulfilling their moral obligation to prevent disasters. (shrink)

Wading into the thicket of science, naturalism, and theism in the context of psychology can seem quite daunting. One prerequisite for avoiding confusions and missteps is to properly distinguishing two forms of naturalism that are logically independent of each other: metaphysical and methodological. Once this underbrush is cleared away, interesting and important questions about psychology’s compatibility with theism, the psychological study of religion and other topics can be fruitfully engaged. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Two problems have long been confused with each other: the gravitational redshift as discussed by the equivalence principle; and the Doppler shift observed by a detector which moves with constant proper acceleration away from a stationary source. We here distinguish these two problems and give for the first time a solution of the former which is ‘exact’ within the context of the equivalence principle in a sense discussed in the paper. The equivalence principle leads to transformations between flat spacetimes. These (...) are analyzed, and a generalized Lorentz transformation is proposed which covers transformations from inertial to uniformly accelerated frames of reference. (shrink)

The essays in Ethics and Capitalism address the question of ensuring ethical and just societies within a capitalist system without sacrificing productivity.

Alasdair MacIntyre described the late modern West as driven by two moral values: efficiency and effectiveness. Regardless of whether you accept MacIntyre's overarching story, it seems clear that efficiency and effectiveness have achieved a zenith in institutional health care structures, such that these two aspects of care become the final arbiters of what counts as “good” care. At the very least, they are dominant in many clinical contexts and act as the interpretative lens for the judgments of successful health care (...) managers. The drive of efficiency can also be seen in “lean” management methods (originally imported from the automotive manufacturing industry) increasingly deployed in the intensive care unit. This drive gives us pause. The high stress of the ICU is exacerbated by the enormous complexity of technological interventions designed to maintain physiological functioning as the body heals, as well as the ever‐present concerns related to cost, effectiveness, and efficiency. The ICU, therefore, provides an illustrative view of the challenges facing clinicians, as well as resource managers, in terms of delivering care. In short, the goal of technocratic efficiency often ends up at odds with humane purposes. To better understand these contemporary health care dynamics, we conducted a limited series of focus group discussions and interviews with residents experienced in the challenges of delivering care in the ICU environment. In what follows, we highlight some narrative observations drawn from these focus groups. We found a recurrent and disconcerting refrain among our informants that has not been adequately described or addressed in the literature: technocratic management techniques have crept into and bifurcated clinical care strategies in the ICU. Specifically, we highlight the influence of concerns around efficiency and effectiveness and the ways in which these foci have contributed to a bifurcation in care in the ICU along two trajectories: either compassionate care or curative care. (shrink)

The fundamental problem on which Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels-Austin Group have focused can be stated briefly as follows. Our observations indicate that there is an arrow of time in our experience of the world (e.g., decay of unstable radioactive atoms like Uranium, or the mixing of cream in coffee). Most of the fundamental equations of physics are time reversible, however, presenting an apparent conflict between our theoretical descriptions and experimental observations. Many have thought that the observed arrow of time (...) was either an artifact of our observations or due to very special initial conditions. An alternative approach, followed by the Brussels-Austin Group, is to consider the observed direction of time to be a basic physical phenomenon and to develop a mathematical formalism that can describe this direction as being due to the dynamics of physical systems. In part I of this essay, I review and assess an attempt to carry out an approach that received much of their attention from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. In part II, I will discuss their more recent approach using rigged Hilbert spaces. (shrink)

Volume 1, The Development of the Personality, investigates the extent to which analytical psychology draws on concepts found in German classical aesthetics. It aims to place analytical psychology in the German-speaking tradition of Goethe and Schiller, with which Jung was well acquainted. The second volume builds on the previous one to show how German classicism, specifically the classical aesthetics associated with Goethe and Schiller known as Weimar classicism, was a major influence on psychoanalysis and analytical psychology alike. --From publisher's description.

This article commemorates Jean Baudrillard’s career with an account of the consistency of his interventionist logic, the subtlety of his styles of argument and the prescience of his observations. It provides an account of Baudrillard’s sustained engagement with the intensification of simulation that has increasingly codified trends in communications, technology politics, the social, the psychological and economics in the name of functionality. The consistency of Baudrillard’s arguments belies the many superficial judgements made about them, which were anyway often knowingly encouraged (...) by Baudrillard’s rhetorical strategies. (shrink)

On Indic philosophy, classical literature, and modern Indian philosophers; contributed articles, with introductions to the contributors.

In an essay on Nietzsche's view of morality written in 1891, Eduard von Hartmann suggested that Nietzsche's most important contribution to philosophy was in the sphere of ethics; at the same time, he drew attention to the affinity between Nietzsche's ideas and the philosophy of Max Stirner. Hartmann's remarks open up Nietzsche's philosophy to examination in terms of a radically materialist framework. Nietzsche sees the ethics of asceticism, and hence Christianity, as a consequence of metaphysical dualism , a stance which (...) enables him to advance a positive, because physiologically based, sexual ethics. His philosophy proposes a profound and instrinsic relationship between the sexual and the aesthetic. This article shows how an appreciation of the radical materialism advanced by Nietzsche serves as evidence of the relevance of his philosophy to contemporary concerns and debates in ethics, and explores Nietzsche's ethical programme to develop ‘a more Goethean attitude toward sensuality’. (shrink)

Oxford , Cambridge, MA : Blackwell, 1996.

The word 'archaic' derives from the Greek arkhaios, which in turn is related to the word archē, meaning 'principle', 'origin', or 'cause'; the notion of ecstasy, or ekstasis, implies standing outside or beyond oneself, a self-transcendence. How these two concepts are articulated and co-implicated constitutes the core question underlying this edited collection, which examines both the present day and antiquity in order to trace the insistent presence of the ecstatic amid the archaic. Presented in three parts, the contributors to this (...) diverse book take the concept of the archaic in an entirely new direction. Part I, 'Ecstasy and the psychological', covers topics including Jung, Freud, ancient psychotherapy, desire, and theatre. Part II, 'Ecstatic-archaic history', considers Ludwig Klages, Orestes and Dionysus. Finally, Part III, 'Ancient ecstatic in other worlds', examines Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms and Enki at Eridu. The collection offers a distinctive contextualisation of the dimension of the archaic in relation to the ecstatic experience. The Ecstatic and the Archaic will appeal to readers interested in the relationship between ancient and postmodern worlds, and in how the past manifests itself in the present. It will be of great interest to academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, classical religions and the history of ideas, as well as practitioners of analytical psychology and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

The paper presents and critiques some important philosophical and educational arguments that are used to support the practice of personal self-disclosure in the classroom, both in group settings and in the form of autobiographical journals. It argues that there are important reasons for valuing privacy even when self-disclosures occur in an environment of perfect trust and caring; that to understand the importance of privacy primarily in terms of trust, or the absence of trust, is to risk overlooking the less apparent, (...) yet more subtle, threats which ‘sympathy’ and ‘caring’ can pose to self-disclosers. (shrink)

In this article we outline the ways in which questions of language have both revealed problems with conceptions of knowledge and suggested constructive ways of addressing those problems. Having examined the limitations of instrumental notions of language, we outline some alternatives, especially those developed from the middle of the 19th and throughout the 20th century. We locate forceful and influential philosophical interventions in the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger and foundational revisions in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and his (...) structuralist inheritors. We also chart the parallel path of literary theory from Mallarmé through Blanchot and poststructuralism to deconstruction. We conclude, after making some observations about the politicization of language in the works of feminist and postcolonial theorists, with some remarks about how the question of language helps to problematize global knowledge. (shrink)

"The Marriage Translation" argues that a Benjaminian account of translation can shed new light on the ways in which contemporary practices of queer alliance transform, and are transformed by, legal and political discourse. In a constellation of readings—of arguments for the French pacs, of Benjamin's essays on translation, and on Goethe's Elective Affinities, as well as of two photos of the illegal weddings celebrated in San Francisco and in Bègles, France—the article emphasizes the ways social contexts are sometimes reinvigorated and (...) at other times ignored by the demand for certain forms of legal recognition. (shrink)

The title of this volume—published in the series “Lisbon Philosophical Studies” devoted to “uses of language in interdisciplinary fields”—is potentially misleading, because its subject is, rather than linguistic morphology, the Morphologie associated with the German poet, playwright, and thinker, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. For Goethe, morphology is a science dedicated to the observation and description of everything that “is handled by chance and occasionally in other [sciences]”, and hence, it is intended to serve as a complement to any number of disciplines: (...) philosophy, art history, mathematics, cognitive science, linguistics, history, demography, computer science, and architecture . All these disciplines are, in one way or another, represented in this collection of papers, which arises from a project carried out at the IFL at the New University of Lisbon, the EHESS (School for Advanc .. (shrink)