This chapter contains sections titled: Ways of Failing to Do Something Refraining Omitting Negative Acts: Inaction as Action? References.

It is usually taken for granted that the necessary and sufficient conditions for refraining are with respect to mental or behavioral states of agents. Let us call such accounts internalist conceptions of refraining. In this paper, I argue that internalist conditions are insufficient for refraining; and so internalist conceptions of refraining are inadequate. I conclude that a proper account of refraining must contain an externalist condition – i.e., a condition that makes reference to an agent's (...) environment. (shrink)

This article discusses the relations between the artistic, theoretical and psychoanalytic work of Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. It is particularly concerned with the claims her work makes on behalf of the feminine. After considering her conceptualization of feminine subjectivity and a feminine symbolic space, an extensive discussion of her art is given. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, her art’s creative encounter with this feminine symbolic space is viewed in terms of a matrixial refrain. This refrain is seen as (...) producing a variety of feminine times which provide the basis for what could be called existential ethic in the feminine. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to prove that in every stit semantic structure that contains a busy choice sequence, neither does doing imply refraining from refraining from doing, nor does refraining from refraining from doing imply doing.

The paper’s principal claim to originality lies in its deployment of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the ‘refrain’ in thinking the ‘resingularization’ of photography in the context of new media ecologies and the promise of what Guattari calls a ‘post-media era’. The paper itself constitutes a refrain and is structured according to the three moments of any refraining. Firstly, a refrain is a spatio-temporalization, a way of marking out space, keeping time and assembling and activating subjectivity. At its most (...) rudimentary, it is the establishment of a momentary centre, a point of order amidst chaos. We can conceive this in terms of the originary ‘cut’ of the photographic flash which – as in a familiar trope in horror films in which the flash of a camera guides the protagonist through a menacing darkness – illuminates one’s milieu, the spot on which one stands, and dispels the evils which gather on all sides. This flash is a singularity which, in rupturing darkness, does not merely constitute a representative image but is, as Guattari might say, a ‘vector of subjectivation’. Secondly, the refrain circumscribes a territory, a circle of control, ethos, interiority or home. Our media are architecture, part of the congealing and hardening of territory. Here emerges an ‘incorporeal Universe’ which signs itself ‘Photography’. We approach photographic territorialization principally in terms of genre. Photographic genres are refrains become clichés, habits, fictions which uncritically sustain and abet the ravages of capitalistic subjectivity. Adhering, photographically, to these affective algorithms – creatively reacting in the belief that There Is No Alternative – is to generatively maintain the existence of a virtually stable territory. It is this territory that, we insist, requires estrangement through the amplification of its moments of uncertainty. The third moment of the refrain is precisely the exacerbation of its instability, its transformation into a ‘music’ which is the cracking open of the territory to the world and its opening out onto futurity and alterity. We conceive this in two ways. On the one hand, the opening of the photographic refrain can be understood in terms of the ontology of mediation. Rather than a freezing of the moment, the photographic image is in and of the middle, medial – that is, it constitutes an event of interruptive time, the construction of an interval which is excessive and untimely. Here, we heed recent calls for a new ethics of photographic practice which understands and takes responsibility for the process of mediation ‘from within the process itself’. On the other hand, the opening of the photographic refrain can be understood in connection with the subjective pluralism which is the excess of the social. We are plural, polyphonic subjects, comprising affective communities which exist in relation to a ‘constellation of Universes’, at the intersection of refrains which variously harness anti-chaotic forces and can be resingularized and opened onto the forces of the future. Along lines intimated by Guattari, we commend the collective reappropriation and resingularization of photography in order to escape its impasse, to reflexively trigger ‘an existential agglomeration’. Mediation itself offers the promise of a ‘post-media era’ in which we liberate the creativity and virtuality of media in order to ‘bifurcate existence’, realizing the possibility of new constellations of Universes and an autopoiesis of subjectivity. Tapping into such excess requires a pedagogy of excess, too. For us, to respond ethically to the new powers of mediation means respecifying photography as a collective endeavour, beyond the principles of ‘self expression’ and ‘independence’ which have long dominated photography education. It also means going beyond the conventions of genre and ‘socially-engaged’ practice, not simply through the usual judgement and denunciation of territory but through its falsification. As we see it, photography’s ‘fabulatory function’ is to both make perceptible and betray the ‘working forces’ of territorial refrains, to both activate and ‘fail to satisfy’ them. Indeed, it is in this sense that photography might become a transversal tool with which to think the artistic and social simultaneously. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Ted Toadvine’s article “Gestalts and Refrains: On the Musical Structure of Nature,” in Environmental Philosophy 2.2 (2005). We propose a more generous interpretation of Naess’s gestalt ontology, one that we believe mitigates Toadvine’s criticisms. Gestalt ontology and refrain ontology offer two different yet compatible ontologies for environmental philosophers searching for viable alternatives to scientific reductionism. Encouraging many ontologies also encourages a rich philosophical pluralism.

A structure is described that can serve as a foundation for a semantics for a modal agentive construction such as sees to it that Q ([ stit: Q]). The primitives are Tree,,Instant, Agent, choice. Eleven simple postulates governing this structure are set forth and motivated. Tree and encode a picture of branching time consisting of moments gathered into maximal chains called histories. Instant imposes a time-like ordering. Agent consists of agents, and choice assigns to each agent and each moment in (...) Tree a set of possible choices, where each possible choice is a set of histories. All of these ingredients are referred to in the semantics suggested for [ stit: Q]. The most complex part of the discussion is the motivation for the definition of what it means for a typically non-terminating chain of moments jointly to witness the truth of [ stit: Q] at a moment.The paper begins with an informal account of the Refref conjecture, which says that the only way to refrain from refraining from seeing to something is to see to it. The paper ends with a consideration of an argument of Prior's that in a certain sense contemplation and action are inconsistent. (shrink)

Although various factors have been studied for their influence on consumers’ ethical judgments, the role of incidental emotions has received relatively less attention. Recent research in consumer behavior has focused on studying the effect of specific incidental emotions on various aspects of consumer decision making. This paper investigates the effect of two negative, incidental emotional states of anger and fear on ethical judgment in a consumer context using a passive unethical behavior scenario. The paper presents two experimental studies. Study 1 (...) focuses on the interaction of moral intensity and incidental emotion state in predicting the ethical judgment while study 2 investigates the underlying causal mechanism behind the process, using a mediation analysis. The results reveal a significant interaction between moral intensity and incidental emotion. Specifically, individuals in the state of incidental fear exhibit higher levels of ethical judgment as the moral intensity increases as compared to individuals in the state of incidental anger. Further, perceived control is found to mediate the relationship between emotional state and ethical judgment under higher moral intensity condition. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present some results instit theory, a theory of agency proposed by N. Belnap and M. Perloff. We will establish a correspondence between the numbers ofstit modalities and the complexity degrees ofbusy choice sequences in semantic structures, and consequently, a correspondence between the number of modes of actions/inactions instit theory and the complexity degrees ofbusy choice sequences in semantic structures.

Introduction -- Prelude: a paradox of the ineffable. Schopenhauer's deep copy ; The Platonic solutions ; Four dialectical responses (after Nietzsche) -- Bloch's tone. The tone ; The natural klang ; The expressive tone ; Bloch's magic rattle ; The tone's inner ineffability ; The event-forms ; A dialectical account of music history ; Utopian musical speech -- Adorno's musical fracture. Adorno's tone ; Adorno's conception of history ; The tendenz des materials ; Music's language-like ineffability ; The immanent critique (...) ; The paradox of Mahler's vernacular ; The curve of inconsistency -- Interlude: Wittgenstein's silence -- Jankelevitch's inconsistency. Bergson and the inconsistency of time ; The aporetic source of fidelity ; Charm ; Cosmic silence ; Unwoven dialectics -- Deleuze and Guattari's rhythm. Deleuze's rhythm ; The rhythm of sense ; A structuralist quadrivium ; The rhythm of life ; Sonorous co-extensions -- Conclusion: a paradox of the vernacular. (shrink)

Western philosophy and culture have often posited a structural homology between music and nature. In a contemporary version of this association, deep ecologist Arne Naess proposes that the basic units of reality are hierarchically nested gestalts of a fundamentally relational character. I argue that Naess’s gestalt model fails to account for non-holistic or non-sensical experiences and for creative change in nature. I then suggest the concept of the “refrain”developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as the basis for an alternative (...) musical model of nature that avoids these limitations. (shrink)

By melodic landscape, this paper points to natural milieus such as mountains whose motifs are caught up in contrapuntal relations. With Merleau-Ponty, the structure of the world is a symphony, and the production of life which implicates both organism and environment as unfurling of Umwelt is ‘a melody that sings itself’. For the Chinese culture, mountains have been deemed virtuous in Confucianism, immortal by Daoists, and spiritual for a Buddhist to reach a substrate level of pure stream of a-subjective consciousness. (...) A Chinese painter-poet within the ‘mountain-water’ genre would consider mountains as performance of events, a concert of vibration of light, shape and sound, movement and rest. Insofar as art is to create energy transfer, Chinese artists of mountains aim at concerting with nature as organised by rhythms and conspecifics, unfolding contrapuntal melodies with all kinds of counterpoints. As Deleuze and Guattari's notion of refrains are the three forces or tempos of chaos, earth and world confronting/converging one another, this paper endeavours to find out, first, how Deleuze and Guattari's geological, organic and alloplastic stratifications can be put alongside mountains, animals, plants and arts, and second, how this notion can contribute to our new appreciation of the way Chinese mountains in arts can give out music. (shrink)

In this chapter I provide resources for assessing the charge that post-secondary students are self-censoring. The argument is advanced in three broad steps. First, I argue that both a duality at the heart of the concept of self-censorship and the term’s negative lay connotation should incline us to limit the charge of self-censorship to a specific subset of its typical extension. I argue that in general we ought to use the neutral term “refrainment from speech,” reserving the more normatively charged (...) “self-censorship” for cases of bad refrainment. In the second step of the argument, I seek to narrow down what counts as bad refrainment by mapping broad categories of possible reasons for and consequences of refrainment from speech. I argue that in general refrainment from speech is only bad if it is for bad (or what I will later term vicious) reasons or has pernicious consequences. When considering pernicious consequences, I argue that we should be concerned in particular about systems that perpetuate the coercive silencing of marginalized voices. I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work to describe two means by which marginalized voices are systemically silenced: testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering. After considering these types of silencing, I circle back to the post-secondary context to assess whether there is cause for concern if, as some reports suggests, US college students are refraining from speech within the educational context. (shrink)

In a profile in the November, 2012 issue of the magazine Architect, activist-architect Raphael Sperry, a founder of the group Architects Planners & Designers for Social Responsibility discussed his petition to amend the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to include a prohibition on “the design of spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 This issue is both serious and timely. It deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. The purpose of this letter is to provide the (...) the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action Mr. Sperry advocates. After review and consideration, we are persuaded that Mr. Sperry’s proposal does merit action by the AIA. (shrink)

Focusing on the history of prehistoric archaeology in the 20th century, this papers shows (1) that statistical multidimensional analyses were carried out by a new kind of actors who challenged the previous common language shared by prehistorians. This fundamental change was important, considering that (2) language is a fundamental point for the epistemology of archaeology. However, a comparison of multidimensional analyses applications over time shall make clear that (3) the differences are mostly a generational matter: the transmission processes between them (...) will be addressed. (shrink)

It is commonplace that negative duties are more stringent than positive duties. it is also commonplace that this distinction requires defense, in particular against those who regard it as a mere apology for the privileges of the wealthy and secure. i conclude, though real, the distinction between negative and positive duties is not as deep as some philosophers have supposed--that it makes best sense in terms of a deeper distinction between the intended and the foreseen consequences of our actions.

Readers familiar with Harry Frankfurt’s argument that we do not need leeway-liberty (or the power to bring about alternative possible actions or intentions) to be morally responsible will probably also know that the most famous and popular response on behalf of leeway-libertarianism remains a dilemma posed in similar forms by David Widerker, Robert Kane, and Carl Ginet: either the agent retains significant residual leeway in Frankfurt-style cases, or these cases beg the question by presupposing causal determinism. In the last few (...) years, there have been several different attempts to defend Frankfurtian critiques of PAP in response this dilemma. In a novel approach, Derk Pereboom and Michael McKenna present cases in which all deliberatively relevant or “robust” alternatives are blocked, but the agent’s act or decision is not determined. Pereboom and McKenna argue that any plausible leeway-condition on responsibility must characterize the required alternatives as robust in two ways: being voluntary performances and having a practical relevance accessible to the agent’s mind. I agree with the requirement of robustness, and argue that we can build this notion into a complex concept of agent-possibility, or “agentive-can.” However, I argue that both McKenna’s and Pereboom’s conceptions of robustness are too demanding: they exclude alternatives that are intuitively relevant. Moreover, I argue that the alternative of refraining from deciding, or voluntarily failing to decide, is robust in the right sense. In agreement with a tradition running from Ockham back through Scotus to Aquinas, I argue that this robust alternative is necessary for responsibility. If the Frankfurt-controller eliminates it, then the agent’s responsibility is undermined. In particular, I argue that Pereboom’s tax evasion cases do not refute this leeway-condition on moral responsibility. (shrink)

This paper describes how an innocent venture outside the confines of academia to update my nursing skills completely changed the focus of my research. I was deeply involved in the theoretical development of my thesis, which I thought was a feminist exploration of the meaning of health for mid‐life women. I was immersed in feminist theory and was exploring the work of the French Feminists. I had written comprehensive draft chapters about nursing, women's bodies and science. While I was absorbed (...) in my theoretical exploration I decided to venture back into practice to improve my nursing skills. I am still unsure why I chose to do this; however, in hindsight, my theoretical exploration was inexorably pushing me in that direction. While my conscious thinking was focused on my stated topic, my subconscious (my intuition) turned me towards another. Being confronted with the reality of nursing practice through working with staff nurses in a gynaecological ward caused a major disjunction in every aspect of my research: the topic, my methodology and the setting, and the experience challenged my feelings about nurses and nursing. This inevitably led to a dramatic and fundamental change in my research. (shrink)

We recently argued that—contrary to what we call the dominant view— physicians ought to avoid engaging patients on religious grounds.1 The six responses to our article present an array of concerns and have provided us with the opportunity to consider further aspects of our view. While we cannot reply to all the relevant issues, our aim here is to reply to the most significant concerns. Against our Public Reason Argument, Nick Colgrove maintains that physicians are not relevantly akin to public (...) officials and should therefore not be constrained by public reasons. Colgrove does not take issue with the idea that it may be reasonable for public officials to justify their policymaking according to public reasons because their policies affect a diverse population. But since ‘the [medical] decision being made is not binding for other patients,’ physicians need not be constrained by public reasons.2 Colgrove’s criticism hinges on the claim that deliberation ought to be constrained by public reason only if the outcome of such deliberation is a policy or a rule that a diverse group of people must follow (ie, to which they are bound). We disagree with this claim. We do not believe, nor did we argue, that this is a necessary condition for when we are morally required to cite public reasons. Instead we believe that three facts together provide sufficient reason for why physicians should generally be constrained by public reasons: physicians are directly and indirectly paid by the state via Medicare and Medicaid; physicians allocate public resources; and physicians are regulated by the state. Colgrove takes particular issue with our ‘Dr Chatterjee case’, which is meant to illustrate why citing religious reasons is inappropriate. And our explanation for why we find this case jarring …. (shrink)

A reply to certain points by p j fitzgerald, Arising out of the author's paper "whatever the consequences".

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 32-33, July 2012.

In this paper, I investigate the prospects for using the distinction between rejection and denial to resolve Saul Kripke’s puzzle about belief. One puzzle Kripke presents in A Puzzle About Belief poses what would have seemed a fairly straightforward question about the beliefs of the bilingual Pierre, who is disposed to sincerely and reflectively assent to the French sentence Londres est jolie, but not to the English sentence London is pretty, both of which he understands perfectly well. The question to (...) be answered is whether Pierre believes that London is pretty, and Kripke argues, of each answer, that it is unacceptable. On my proposal, either answer to the question is to be rejected, but neither answer is to be denied, using the resource of partially-defined predicates. After demonstrating how this serves as a solution to the puzzle, I illustrate some philosophical motivations—independent of Kripke’s puzzle —for adopting a view on which belief is a partially defined predicate. I conclude that there are decent prospects for the proposed response to Kripke’s puzzle. (shrink)

We can see from the analysis set out here that the two accounts that were the focus of consideration are complementary to one another. It has been my contention that a problem like specifying a concept such as ‘refrain’ is highly complex. One part of it is the problem of determining the relation between the action (or event) and the result. Another part of the problem is that of describing the event itself; what kind of an event is it? These (...) two projects are related and so it is clear that the results must be consistent. However, it is equally clear that the definition which is useful for one project is not the same as that which is helpful for another. The point is that it should not be assumed that an account that initially looks incompatible with one's own must be refuted. It is sometimes better to consider what is needed for a complete account, and whether many different approaches may contribute pieces to the puzzle.We have here one puzzle piece: an analysis of refraining. It should not be assumed that we have thereby completed the puzzle of omission, but omission can be approached the same way; that is, by coordinating parallel projects.Accordingly, the first benefit of the present analysis is that it sets up an approach which is modular in nature. It allows for parallel projects to be pursued separately and coordinated. This kind of approach is sorely needed in this area to counter unproductive dispute.To see how such an approach can be applied to further problems profitably consider the following persistent controversy. Many philosophers are at odds over the importance of the notion of duty, or more informally, reasonable expectation in the understanding of refraining. A number of them (e.g., Hart and Honore, John Casey, and Phillipa Foot) hold that the determining feature for the ascription of responsibility to an agent for not doing something to prevent a harm (say, a death) is the presence of a duty or reasonable expectation that the agent do something about the situation. For example, John Casey holds, “If a man does not do x, we cannot properly say that his not doing x is the cause of some result y, unless in the normal course of events he could have been expected to do x.” Casey, Actions and Consequences (1978).Other philosophers object that a person can cause a result by refraining from (causally) preventing it, and that such an event can be explained without any reference to duty. These two views appear to conflict, but in fact they are both right (but both incomplete). The reason that the above statements are generally thought to constitute a disagreement is that ‘refrain’ is generally taken as the fundamental term of analysis for omissions. Thus, if Casey says, “If a man does not do x...” he is taken to mean “...if a man refrains from doing x...” But he need not mean that. He may mean to say only that the man failed to do x. See my analysis in “Contemplating Failure,” supra note 10. Failing to do something can be, and ordinarily is, thought of as stronger than simple nonaction. But it is much weaker than refraining. For one thing, it has no awareness requirement. Thus, an account like Casey's can explain the ascription of responsibility and the presence of an omission where Green's account (or the account offered here) cannot, and vice versa. Casey's view can explain why we hold (or at least that we hold) responsible the night watchman who forgets to check one of the windows, the bookkeeper who (accidentally) omits an entry in the accounts, or the private duty nurse who fails to prevent a death by falling asleep on the job. No refraining is present in any of these cases. Consequently, any thesis based on refraining alone cannot explain them. But in many cases refraining is precisely what is important, and Green (and others of the same persuasion) are correct to point out that no reference to duty is necessarily required to account for these cases. Analysis based on refraining best explains intentional or conscious omission. Analysis based on duty or reasonable expectation is the only way to explain unconscious omission. More often than not, both elements are present. A complete account of omission needs both. So here again, the better way to view these putatively competing accounts is as parallel projects which work toward a common, but complex end. The approach taken here allows for this kind of much needed coordination. The second benefit of the present analysis is that it clarifies and focuses on the significance of the mental element of refraining. Refraining is conscious omission. Consciousness and omission are its distinguishing features. The effects of seeing the concept this way are pervasive. Here is one example. If I refrain from reporting my full income to the IRS, I have committed fraud, and punitive or even criminal sanctions may be reasonable. If I fail to report my full income through ignorance or mistake (say, I misunderstood the instructions) correcting the error and requiring payment is reasonable, but certainly criminal sanction is not. This oversimplifies the distinction, but it illustrates the focus of my pursuit.With regard to positive actions, law and philosophy have long recognized this important distinction as manifested in the difference between negligence and intentional tort, or manslaughter and murder. Due (I think) to the extraordinary flexibility of language and the weakness and variability of social conventions regarding omissions, this distinction has not been clearly articulated. I think such an analysis is worth pursuing. The present account is one step in that pursuit. (shrink)

In a recent article, Xiaofei Liu seeks to defend, from the standpoint of consequentialism, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: DDA. While there are various conceptions of DDA, Liu understands it as the view that it is more difficult to justify doing harm than allowing harm. Liu argues that a typical harm doing involves the production of one more evil and one less good than a typical harm allowing. Thus, prima facie, it takes a greater amount of good to justify (...) doing a certain harm than it does to justify allowing that same harm. In this reply, I argue that Liu fails to show, from within a consequentialist framework, that there is an asymmetry between the evils produced by doing and allowing harm. I conclude with some brief remarks on what may establish such an asymmetry. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAlthough previous studies have examined killing as an outcome-oriented measure, few have explored non-killing as a socially organized process. Using letters written by soldiers, police offi...