Prefrontal cortex is dysregulated in women with restricting anorexia nervosa . It is not known whether appetitive non-conscious stimuli bias cognitive responses in those with RAN. Thirteen women with RAN and 20 healthy controls completed a dorsolateral PFC working memory task and an anterior cingulate cortex conflict task, while masked subliminal food, aversive and neutral images were presented. During the DLPFC task, accuracy was higher in the RAN compared to the HC group, but superior performance was compromised when subliminal food (...) stimuli were presented: errors positively correlated with self-reported trait anxiety in the RAN group. These effects were not observed in the ACC task. Appetitive activation is intact and anxiogenic in women with RAN, and non-consciously interacts with working memory processes associated with the DLPFC. This interaction mechanism may underlie cognitive inhibition of appetitive processes that are anxiety inducing, in people with AN. (shrink)

This paper explores the ambiguity in Rudolph Otto's discussion of the mysterium tremendum in order to address a broader set of difficulties in The Idea of the Holy (1917). In doing so, I outline two common criticisms of Otto's position. The first attacks Otto for not providing a secure transition from the numinous experience of terror to the holy experience of faith. The second attacks Otto for upholding a kind of theistic dualism, which seemingly puts his thought at odds with (...) mysticism. Rather than reconstruct Otto's argument in favour of theism, I maintain that numinous experience, while still a form of otherness or alterity, is best characterized as the breakdown of subject-object dualism. I further suggest that this breakdown is best understood in non-theistic terms. For examples of the latter, I briefly turn to Jean-Luc Marion's notion of saturated phenomena. (shrink)

The following text is the first ever translation into English of a writing by German phenomenologist Hermann Schmitz (*1928). In it, Schmitz outlines and defends a non-mentalistic view of emotions as phenomena in interpersonal space in conjunction with a theory of the felt body’s constitutive involvement in human experience. In the first part of the text, Schmitz gives an overview covering some central pieces of his theory as developed, for the most part, in his massive System of Philosophy, published in (...) German in a series of volumes between 1964 and 1980. Schmitz’s System is centred on the claim that the contemporary view of the human subject is the result of a consequential historical process: A reductionist and ‘introjectionist’ objectification of lived experience culminating in the ‘invention’ of the mind (or ‘soul’) as a private, inner realm of subjective experience and in a corresponding ‘grinding down’ of the world of lived experienced to a meagre, value-neutral ‘objective reality’. To counter this intellectualist trend, Schmitz puts to use his approach to phenomenology with the aim of regaining a sensibility for the nuanced realities of lived experience—hoping to make up for what was lost during the development of Western intellectual culture. Since both this text and the overall style of Schmitz’s philosophising are in several ways unusual for a contemporary readership, a brief introduction is provided by philosophers Jan Slaby and Rudolf Owen Müllan, the latter of whom translated Schmitz’s text into English. The introduction emphasises aspects of Schmitz’s philosophy that are likely to be of relevance to contemporary scholars of phenomenological philosophy and to its potential applications in science and society. (shrink)

Owen Barfield--philosopher, author, poet, and critic--was a founding member of the Inklings, the private Oxford society that included the leading literary figures C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Lewis, who was greatly affected by Barfield during their long friendship, wrote of their many heated debates: "I think he changed me a good deal more than I him." Simon Blaxland-de Lange's biography (the first to be published on Owen Barfield) was written with the active cooperation of Barfield himself (...) who, before his death in 1997, gave numerous interviews to the author and shared many of his papers and manuscripts. The fruit of this collaboration is a book that penetrates deeply into the life and thought of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century. It studies two pf Barfield's influences--the Romantic poet Coleridge and the philosopher Rudolf Steiner--and elaborates on his profound personal connection with C.S. Lewis. This biography also features a sketch in his own words (based on interviews with the author), describing Barfield's strong relationship with North America and his two professions as lawyer and writer. This updated edition features important new material, including Owen Barfield's own "Psychography" (1948) and four pages of color plates. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers of science have explored categorical equivalence as a promising criterion for when two theories are equivalent. On the one hand, philosophers have presented several examples of theories whose relationships seem to be clarified using these categorical methods. On the other hand, philosophers and logicians have studied the relationships, particularly in the first order case, between categorical equivalence and other notions of equivalence of theories, including definitional equivalence and generalized definitional equivalence. In this article, I will express (...) some skepticism about categorical equivalence as a criterion of physical equivalence, both on technical grounds and conceptual ones. I will argue that “category structure” likely does not capture the structure of a theory, and discuss some recent work in light of this claim. (shrink)

In The Philosophical Criticism, Alois Riehl developed a realistic interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism based on his theory of space and time. In doing so, more than 100 years ago, he formulated an interpretation of the relation between the thing in itself and appearances that is discussed in current research as the metaphysical „dual aspect“ interpretation, although it is rarely attributed to Riehl. To reconstruct Riehl’s position, the research results of comparative studies on Moritz Schlick are systematically extended and applied (...) to the current debate on Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In their recent book, Oreskes and Conway ([ 2010 ]) describe the ‘tobacco strategy’, which was used by the tobacco industry to influence policymakers regarding the health risks of tobacco products. The strategy involved two parts, consisting of (i) promoting and sharing independent research supporting the industry’s preferred position and (ii) funding additional research, but selectively publishing the results. We introduce a model of the tobacco strategy, and use it to argue that both prongs of the strategy can be extremely (...) effective—even when policymakers rationally update on all evidence available to them. As we elaborate, this model helps illustrate the conditions under which the tobacco strategy is particularly successful. In addition, we show how journalists engaged in ‘fair’ reporting can inadvertently mimic the effects of industry on public belief. 1Introduction 2Epistemic Network Models 3Selective Sharing 4Biased Production 5Journalists as Unwitting Propagandists 6Conclusion Appendix. (shrink)

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1746-1752.