Horner, Robyn; Tucker, Steven Theology is a required study for persons seeking accreditation to teach Religious Education in Catholic schools in Victoria. In this context it is distinguished from Religious Education, not only in the senses that to undertake Theology is neither to undertake Religious Education nor to study the aims and processes of Religious Education, but also in the sense that Religious Education studies are mandated alongside the study of Theology for those seeking accreditation, and further, in (...) the sense that the provision of Theology in a Catholic university is subject to distinct ecclesial oversight. (shrink)

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual visiting technologies were rapidly integrated into the care offered by intensive care units (ICUs) in the UK and across the globe. Today, these technologies offer a necessary adjunct to in-person visits for those with ICU access limited by geography, work/caregiving commitments, or frailty. However, few empirical studies explore the ethical issues associated with virtual visiting. This study aimed to explore the anticipated or unanticipated ethical issues raised by using virtual visiting in the ICU, such (...) that healthcare professionals can be informed about how to carry out virtual visits ethically, safely and productively. Methods We used a descriptive exploratory qualitative research approach recruiting a convenience sample of newly-graduated junior doctors facilitating ICU virtual visits in a tertiary academic centre. Eight newly graduated junior doctors, seven female and one male, aged 23–27, participated in semi-structured interviews. We analysed transcripts using an inductive coding approach. Results Five overarching themes emerged. Two of the themes namely, ‘fulfilling a moral instinct to connect families’ and ‘promoting autonomy’, arose from participants’ descriptions of how virtual visits aligned with healthcare standards and practices they considered ethical. Three further themes, ‘preserving dignity and privacy’, ‘managing emotional distress’, and ‘providing equitable access’ to virtual visiting technologies, highlight how virtual visits might exacerbate ethical issues related to family communications. Conclusion Virtual visiting may potentially both ameliorate and exacerbate aspects of ethical healthcare delivery for ICU patients and family members. ICU team members should consider unique ethical considerations related to using virtual visiting. We recommend virtual communications skills training for staff and advocate for the use of easily accessible educational resources for families who wish to visit critically unwell patients remotely. (shrink)

In Democracy and the Claims of Nature, the leading thinkers in the fields of environmental, political, and social theory come together to discuss the tensions and sympathies of democratic ideals and environmental values. The prominent contributors reflect upon where we stand in our understanding of the relationship between democracy and the claims of nature. Democracy and the Claims of Nature bridges the gap between the often competing ideals of the two fields, leading to a greater understanding of each for the (...) other. (shrink)

In Free Will and Luck, Mele presents a case of an agent Ernie, whose zygote was intentionally designed so that Ernie A-s in 30 years, bringing about a certain event E. Mele uses this case of original design to outline the zygote argument against compatibilism. In this paper I criticize the zygote argument. Unlike other compatibilists who have responded to the zygote argument, I contend that it is open to the compatibilist to accept premise one, that Ernie does not act (...) freely and is not morally responsible for anything he does. I argue that compatibilists should deny premise two. Diana’s effective intention to create Ernie’s zygote such that Ernie A-s in 30 years and her intervention to bring about his A-ing mark a significant difference between Ernie and normal agents in a deterministic universe with regard to how their zygotes were created that affects whether those agents act freely and are morally responsible for so acting. (shrink)

After reviewing factors implicated in the generation of delusional beliefs, we conclude that whilst a perceptual aberration coupled with a particular type of attri‐butional bias may be necessary to explain the specific thematic content of a bizarre delusion, neither of these factors, whether in isolation or in combination, is sufficient to explain the presence of delusional beliefs. In contrast to bias models (theories which explain delusion formation in terms of extremes of normal reasoning biases), we advocate a deficit model of (...) delusion formation–that is, delusions arise when the normal cognitive system which people use to generate, evaluate, and then adopt beliefs is damaged. Mere bias we think inadequate to explain bizarre delusions which defy commonsense and persist despite overwhelming rational counter‐argument. In particular, we propose that two deficits must be present in the normal cognitive system to explain bizarre delusions: (1) there must be some damage to sensory and/or attentional‐orient‐ing mechanisms which causes an aberrant perception–this explains the bizarre content of the causal hypothesis generated to explain what is happening; and (2) there must also be a failure of normal belief evaluation–this explains why a hypothesis, implausible in the light of general commonsense, is adopted as belief. This latter deficit occurs, we suggest, when an individual is incapable of suspending the natural favoured status of direct first‐person evidence in order to critically evaluate hypotheses, given equal pri‐ority whether based on direct or indirect sources of information. In contrast, delusions with ‘ordinary’ content may arise when a single deficit of normal belief evaluation occurs in the context of an extreme (but normal) attentional bias, thus causing failure to critically evaluate hypotheses based on misperceptions and misintrepretations of ambiguous (but ordinary) first‐person experience. (shrink)

The pandemic has been the most vivid agent of change that many of us have known. But it has not changed everything: plenty of the institutions, norms, and practices that sustain racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and cisheteropatriarchy have either weathered the storm of the crisis or been nourished by its effects. And yet enough has changed for us to see that the pandemic has profoundly recontextualised those structures and systems of violence, bringing us into a fresh negotiation with, for example, (...) the question of how we discuss and imagine freedom. Responding in part to this unexpected provocation, activist-scholars Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson forged a collaboration from the lockdown of 2020, corresponding by letter to create their forthcoming book, Rehearsals for Living, due to be published by Haymarket Books (US) and Knopf (Canada) in 2022. In this interview, we asked them to explain the epistolary form of the book and expand on the concept of “rehearsal”, before inviting them to reflect on a series of issues that animate our current crises: the politics of recognition; the notion of apocalypse; ways to disrupt linear temporalities; practises of reciprocity against proprietary logics; the gendered violence of state apparatuses; and worldbuilding as a method of resistance. In their expansive answers, Robyn and Leanne draw on their experiences as organisers and educators, commenting on anticolonial struggles, the Movement for Black Lives, and the rise of abolition discourse. Stressing the need to build a multiplicity of shared homespaces in the face of racial/colonial capitalism and organized abandonment, they challenge us to rethink the predicaments and possibilities of the present, enabling us to imagine futures liberated of extractivist, carceral governance – “planting more liberatory futures in the present”, as Robyn puts it. The task of sowing those seeds is a collective praxis of rewriting the narratives that constitute us, refusing to hear that nothing can change and insisting that everything must. (shrink)

Proper linear models are those in which predictor variables are given weights such that the resulting linear composite optimally predicts some criterion of interest; examples of proper linear models are standard regression analysis, discriminant function analysis, and ridge regression analysis. Research summarized in P. Meehl's book on clinical vs statistical prediction and research stimulated in part by that book indicate that when a numerical criterion variable is to be predicted from numerical predictor variables, proper linear models outperform clinical intuition. Improper (...) linear models are those in which the weights of the predictor variables are obtained by some nonoptimal method. The present article presents evidence that even such improper linear models are superior to clinical intuition when predicting a numerical criterion from numerical predictors. In fact, unit weighting is quite robust for making such predictions. The application of unit weights to decide what bullet the Denver Police Department should use is described; some technical, psychological, and ethical resistances to using linear models in making social decisions are considered; and arguments that could weaken these resistances are presented. (shrink)

v. 1. Tucker's life and writings -- v. 2. Essays on various subjects of taste, morals, and national policy -- v. 3. A voyage to the moon -- v. 4. Essays, moral and metaphysical.

Open-minded people should endorse dogmatism because of its explanatory power. Dogmatism holds that, in the absence of defeaters, a seeming that P necessarily provides non-inferential justification for P. I show that dogmatism provides an intuitive explanation of four issues concerning non-inferential justification. It is particularly impressive that dogmatism can explain these issues because prominent epistemologists have argued that it can’t address at least two of them. Prominent epistemologists also object that dogmatism is absurdly permissive because it allows a seeming to (...) provide justification even if the seeming was caused in some apparently inappropriate way. I conclude by disarming this objection. (shrink)

Abstract:In recent years, the field of animal rights has increasingly focused on trying to change the legal status of animals from things to rights-bearing legal persons. This has most prominently been seen in the work of Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). The NhRP has initiated various habeas corpus proceedings on behalf of certain animals who it argues are entitled the status of legal persons and the fundamental right to bodily liberty. The NhRP appeals to existing principles of (...) common law. It argues that its animal clients are 'practically autonomous,' which, it asserts, is sufficient for them to be entitled to the status of legal persons and to the fundamental right to bodily liberty. Herein, the author argues that whilst Wise and the NhRP have garnered a significant amount of mainstream attention in the animal rights field, less mainstream attention has been paid to understanding how our treatment of some groups of humans and all animals are connected, and how having a deeper understanding of this could assist in producing better strategies for legal change. In this article, the author considers the status quo treatment of animals by reference to the concept of dualistic thinking and explores how the status quo is underpinned by anthropocentrism. In light of these observations, the author critiques the work of Steven Wise and the NhRP by considering how this approach perpetuates the same anthropocentric ideals that underpin the status quo treatment of animals. The author ultimately advocates for an intersectional approach to seeking legal reform and discusses what legal change might look like if an intersectional approach is adopted. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Marion is one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our time: a formidable authority on Descartes and a major scholar in the philosophy of religion. This book presents a concise, accessible, and engaging introduction to the theology of Jean-Luc Marion. Described as one of the leading thinkers of his generation, Marion's take on the postmodern is richly enhanced by his expertise in patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy. In this first introduction to Marion's thought, Robyn Horner (...) provides the essential background to Marion's work, as well as analysing the most significant themes for contemporary theology. This book serves as an ideal starting point for students of theology and philosophy, as well as for those seeking to further their knowledge of cutting-edge thinking in contemporary theology. (shrink)

Dawes points out the fallacy in many commonly held beliefs in therapy and takes issue with many current treatment methods.

Professionals often believe that they must “exercise judgment” in making decisions critical to other people’s lives. The relative superiority of statistical prediction rules to intuitive judgment for combining incomparable sources of information to predict important human outcomes leads us to question this personal input belief. Some professionals hence use SPR’s to “educate” intuitive judgment, rather than replace it. In psychology in particular, such amalgamation is not justified. If a well‐validated SPR that is superior to professional judgment exists in a relevant (...) decision making context, professionals should use it, totally absenting themselves from the prediction. (shrink)

As illustrated by research Koehler himself cites (Dawes et al. 1993), the purpose of experiments is to choose between contrasting explanations of past observations – rather than to seek statistical generalizations about the prevalence of effects. True external validity results not from sampling various problems that are representative of “real world” decision making, but from reproducing an effect in the laboratory with minimal contamination (including from real world factors).

The authors argue that an understanding of human agency based on Spinoza's views can resolve the apparent conflict between the demands of happiness and the dictates of morality without damaging the unique values associated with the moral form of life espoused by Kant.

Can we ever justly critique the norms and practices of another culture? When activists or policy-makers decide that one culture’s traditional practice is harmful and needs to be eradicated, does it matter whether they are members of that culture? Given the history of imperialism, many argue that any critique of another culture’s practices must be internal. Others argue that we can appeal to a universal standard of human well-being to determine whether or not a particular practice is legitimate or whether (...) it should be eradicated. In this paper, I use the FGC eradication campaigns of the 1980s to show that the internal/external divide is complicated by the inter-connectedness of these debates on the international level. As the line blurs between internal and external criticism and interventions, new questions emerge about the representativeness of global institutions. (shrink)

In Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza propose an account of moral responsibility according to which an agent is morally responsible for an action just when that action is the product of her own moderately reasons-responsive mechanism, where reasons-responsiveness is explained in terms of the mechanism’s regular reasons-receptivity and weak reasons-reactivity. In a review of Fischer and Ravizza’s book Mele contends that their weakly reasons-reactivity condition is inadequate, constructing a case in which, (...) according to their theory, an extreme agoraphobic is morally responsible for his staying in his home. In this paper I modify Fischer and Ravizza’s account of moral responsibility in light of Mele’s problematic example, suggesting a refinement of their weakly reasons-reactivity requirement via a distinction between weakly sufficient reasons and strongly sufficient reasons. (shrink)

_Thoughts and Utterances_ is the first sustained investigation of two distinctions which are fundamental to all theories of utterance understanding: the semantics/pragmatics distinction and the distinction between what is explicitly communicated and what is implicitly communicated.

Belief and credal commitment sometimes seem to make less and less sense in the West. A kind of 'cultural amnesia' has taken hold, where formal religious adherence begins to seem almost unthinkable. This is especially so for the idea of divine revelation. Robyn Horner argues this means we need to re-evaluate how theology proceeds, focusing not so much on beliefs but on experience. Exploring ways in which the experiential might open human beings up to divine possibility, the author turns (...) to phenomenology because it seeks to examine unrestrictedly what is given through involved encounter. Bringing phenomenology and poststructuralism together, Horner develops the idea of revelation as an 'event' wherein God interrupts and exceeds human experience, affecting and transforming it. This striking concept, named but largely unexplored by theology, articulates a notion of supernatural revelation which now starts to appear both coherent and plausible. (shrink)

Medical interventions are usually categorized as “invasive” when they involve piercing the skin or inserting an object into the body. Beyond this standard definition, however, there is little discussion of the concept of invasiveness in the medical literature, despite evidence that the term is used in ways that do not reflect the standard definition of medical invasiveness. We interviewed psychiatrists, patients with depression, and members of the public without depression to better understand their views on the invasiveness of several psychiatric (...) electroceutical interventions (treatments that involve electrical or magnetic stimulation of the brain) for the treatment of depression. Our study shows that people recognize several kinds of invasiveness: physical, emotional, and lifestyle. In addition, several characteristics of therapies influence how invasive they are perceived to be; these include the perceived capacity of an intervention to result in harm; how localized the effects of the intervention are; the amount of control retained by the person receiving the intervention; how permanent its effects are perceived as being; and how familiar it seemed to participants. Our findings contribute to a small literature on the concept of invasiveness, which emphasizes that categorizing an intervention as invasive, or as noninvasive, evokes a variety of other normative considerations, including the potential harm it poses and how it compares to other potential therapies. It may also draw attention away from other salient features of the intervention. (shrink)

Hegel's "highway of despair," introduced in his _Phenomenology of Spirit_, represents the tortured path traveled by "natural consciousness" on its way to freedom. Despair, the passionate residue of Hegelian critique, also indicates fugitive opportunities for freedom and preserves the principle of hope against all hope. Analyzing the works of an eclectic cast of thinkers, Robyn Marasco considers the dynamism of despair as a critical passion, reckoning with the forms of historical life forged along Hegel's highway. _The Highway of Despair_ (...) follows Theodor Adorno, Georges Bataille, and Frantz Fanon as they each read, resist, and reconfigure a strand of thought in Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_. Confronting the twentieth-century collapse of a certain revolutionary dialectic, these thinkers struggle to revalue critical philosophy and recast Left Hegelianism within the contexts of genocidal racism, world war, and colonial domination. Each thinker also re-centers the role of passion in critique. Arguing against more recent trends in critical theory that promise an escape from despair, Marasco shows how passion frustrates the resolutions of reason and faith. Embracing the extremism of what Marx, in the spirit of Hegel, called the "ruthless critique of everything existing," she affirms the contemporary purchase of radical critical theory, resulting in a passionate approach to political thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the dominant contemporary accounts of forgiving do not capture what forgiving most centrally is. I spend the first parts of the paper trying to elucidate what it is that these accounts miss about forgiving, and to explain why I think they miss it. I spend the latter parts of the paper suggesting an alternative, which I call “the charity account.” This account draws much of its theoretical framing from the work of Thomas Aquinas, presenting (...) forgiving as something importantly volitional and essentially loving. (shrink)

Human behavioral ecology (HBE) began as an attempt to explain human economic, reproductive, and social behavior using neodarwinian theory in concert with theory from ecology and economics, and ethnographic methods. HBE has addressed subsistence decision-making, cooperation, life history trade-offs, parental investment, mate choice, and marriage strategies among hunter-gatherers, herders, peasants, and wage earners in rural and urban settings throughout the world. Despite our rich insights into human behavior, HBE has very rarely been used as a tool to help the people (...) with whom we work. This article introduces a special issue of Human Nature which explores the application of HBE to significant world issues through the design and critique of public policy and international development projects. The articles by Tucker, Shenk, Leonetti et al., and Neil were presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in Washington, D.C., in December 2005, in the first organized session of the nascent Evolutionary Anthropology Section (EAS). We conclude this introduction by summarizing some theoretical challenges to applying HBE, and ways in which evolutionary anthropologists can contribute to solving tough world issues. (shrink)

John Tucker; IX—Rules Automata and Mathematics, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 161–180, https://doi.org/10.1093.

Does inferential justification require the subject to be aware that her premises support her conclusion? Externalists tend to answer “no” and internalists tend to answer “yes”. In fact, internalists often hold the strong higher-level requirement that an argument justifies its conclusion only if the subject justifiably believes that her premises support her conclusion. I argue for a middle ground. Against most externalists, I argue that inferential justification requires that one be aware that her premises support her conclusion. Against many internalists, (...) I argue that this higher-level awareness needn’t be doxastic or justified. I also argue that the required higher-level awareness needn’t be caused in some appropriate way, e.g. by a reliable or properly functioning faculty. I suspect that this weaker higher-level requirement is overlooked because, at first glance, it seems absurd to allow nondoxastic, unjustified, and unreliably-caused higher-level awareness to contribute to inferential justification. One of the central goals of this paper is to explain how such weak awareness can make an essential contribution to inferential justification. (shrink)

In this paper we make the case for the emergence of novel kind of bias with the use of algorithmic decision-making systems. We argue that the distinctive generative process of feature creation, characteristic of machine learning (ML), contorts feature parameters in ways that can lead to emerging feature spaces that encode novel algorithmic bias involving already marginalized groups. We term this bias _assembled bias._ Moreover, assembled biases are distinct from the much-discussed algorithmic bias, both in source (training data versus feature (...) creation) and in content (mimics of extant societal bias versus reconfigured categories). As such, this problem is distinct from issues arising from bias-encoding training feature sets or proxy features. Assembled bias is not epistemically transparent in source or content. Hence, when these ML models are used as a basis for decision-making in social contexts, algorithmic fairness concerns are compounded. (shrink)

What I hope to achieve in this paper is some rather deeper understanding of the semantic and pragmatic properties of utterances which are said to involve the phenomenon of metalinguistic negation[FN1]. According to Laurence Horn, who has been primarily responsible for drawing our attention to it, this is a special non-truthfunctional use of the negation operator, which can be glossed as 'I object to U' where U is a linguistic utterance. This is to be distinguished from descriptive truthfunctional negation which (...) operates over a proposition. (shrink)

A review of the literature indicates that linear models are frequently used in situations in which decisions are made on the basis of multiple codable inputs. These models are sometimes used normatively to aid the decision maker, as a contrast with the decision maker in the clinical vs statistical controversy, to represent the decision maker "paramorphically" and to "bootstrap" the decision maker by replacing him with his representation. Examination of the contexts in which linear models have been successfully employed indicates (...) that the contexts have the following structural characteristics in common: each input variable has a conditionally monotone relationship with the output; there is error of measurement; and deviations from optimal weighting do not make much practical difference. These characteristics ensure the success of linear models, which are so appropriate in such contexts that random linear models may perform quite well. 4 examples involving the prediction of such codable output variables as GPA and psychiatric diagnosis are analyzed in detail. In all 4 examples, random linear models yield predictions that are superior to those of human judges. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to challenge libertarian accounts of free will. It is argued that there is an irreconcilable tension between the way in which philosophers motivate the incompatibilist ability to do otherwise and the way in which they formally express it. Potential incompatibilist responses in the face of this tension are canvassed, and it is argued that each response is problematic. It is not claimed that incompatibilist accounts in general are incoherent, but rather that any incompatibilist account (...) that requires that an agent have alternative possibilities at the point of a free action fails. (shrink)

In the current socio‐political climate pedagogies consistent with rationalism are in the ascendancy. One way to challenge the purchase of rationalism within educational discourse and practice is through the body, or by re‐thinking the nature of mind‐body relations. While the orientation of this paper is ultimately phenomenological, it takes as its point of departure recent feminist scholarship, which is demonstrating that attending to physiology can provide insight into the complexity of mind‐body relations. Elizabeth Wilson's account of the role of the (...) gut in psychological processes suggests a far less hierarchical relation between brain and body than rationalism allows. Such insights are also supported by recent phenomenological inquiries into cognition and the body. My question is, what implications do these insights have for how the nature of embodiment is understood, and, by extension, learning? This paper explores how informal, non‐cognitive modes of knowing, or of engaging with the world, inform learning in higher education contexts. More specifically, it raises the question of what role non‐cognitive modes of engagement, such as sensibility, have in augmenting, enabling or delimiting the learning process. (shrink)

Drawing on 38 in-depth, qualitative interviews, this article explores how people working in the equality sector in England and Wales view and use the current law around sex and gender, and how they imagine law’s future, particularly potential decertification, where the state would withdraw from certifying and regulating a person’s sex/gender. Whilst situated in the bureaucratic strand of the literature, the paper also contributes to wider legal consciousness studies. This literature has generally focused on people’s relationships to law in terms (...) of domination, alienation and game-playing. Drawing on idioms and the language of touch, the paper unpacks the way in which equality actors talked about law not as remote or alienating, but as close and familiar; not as oppressive, but as “precious” and hard-won. Some also regarded law as a place of safety in unsafe times. These proposed ‘attached to law’ and ‘protective of law’ strands of consciousness enrich and extend Ewick and Silbey’s classic ‘before the law’ narrative. The findings are also useful for critical legal and feminist scholarship. Combined with the equality sector’s pragmatic and tactical use of law to problem-solve, this close and protective orientation towards law reproduces its hegemony. The paper concludes by exploring a recurrent refrain that, in relation to decertification, “we’re not there yet” and that gender equality would need to be achieved before decertification would “fly”. (shrink)

This article addresses debates around the fate of antiquated symbols of colonial domination in postcolonial societies. The handling of apartheid material culture still generates controversy more than 15 years after the country’s first democratic elections. Built in 1949 to commemorate the Great Trek into the interior of the country, the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria has stood as the embodiment of Afrikaner nationalism and mythology. A number of factors prevented the demolition of the site, including the spirit of national reconciliation. In (...) order to remain relevant and to secure state funding, staff members at the Voortrekker Monument have attempted to map onto the original exclusionary imagery a more inclusive narrative that hinges on the protection of ‘minority rights’ to cultural preservation. This case study sheds light on the way political transitions create openings for the interrogation of colonial monuments – whether they should be destroyed, revised or left untouched – and the development of a postcolonial memorial landscape. (shrink)

Jeffrey P. Bishop argues that contemporary understandings of the good death are predicated on conscious choice. This focus on rational conscious choice as the primary criterion has troubling implications for how we evaluate the death of children, whose capacity for autonomy is unclear. In this essay, I will explore ways in which the death of children creates silences, arising most notably from our ideas about the good death. In contrast, I will argue for a different model of a good death (...) that is predicated on intersubjectivity, shared meaning-making, and presence, and which finds its foundation in Christian eschatology, which is not an escape from the present; rather, all our present actions find meaning in God. Our completeness must always and can only be found in God, and understood this way, children can die a good death. (shrink)

Mutations in the C. elegans maternal-effect gene clk-1 are highly pleiotropic, affecting the duration of diverse developmental and behavioral processes. They result in an average slowing of embryonic and post-embryonic development, adult rhythmic behaviors, reproduction, and aging.(1) CLK-1 is a highly conserved mitochondrial protein,(2,3) but even severe clk-1 mutations affect mitochondrial respiration only slightly.(3) Here, we review the evidence supporting the regulatory role of clk-1 in physiological timing. We also discuss possible models for the action of CLK-1, in particular, one (...) proposing that CLK-1 is involved in the coordination of mitochondrial and nuclear function. BioEssays 22:48–56, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This study focuses on the question of individualism in the works of Marcel Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre, particularly with regard to the issue of ethical and political selfhood. If there is to be a fruitful interaction between descriptive narrative ethics and proscriptive ethical theory, the role of the literary imagination needs to be reassessed. The resurging interest in redefining the humanist project begs the question of why exponents of individual liberty and group authority remain firmly opposed to one another. Therefore (...) the analysis begins with a consideration of Sartre's failure to produce a formal system of ethics consistent with his early ontology. Sartre's account of subjectivity is framed within recent reevaluations of ethical individualism in the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas in order to demonstrate that Sartrean existentialism is ethically flawed. It is therefore argued that it is his theory of subjectivity which precludes an existentialist-Marxist alliance--the alliance itself deriving promise from a refinement of the existential position. In posing the question of whether Proust defines a theory of the self or elucidates one of an infinite number of individual paths to an authentic self-relation, I reveal that his emphasis on 'la vie interieure' is not excessive or idealistic individualism but rather ethico-political sobriety. According to Sartre, the novelist's sole purpose should be to present, without any form of edification which could translate to proselytism, the passions and actions of the characters. However, his emphasis on action neglects certain aspects of authorial intervention. When Proust's narrator, through the intricate exploration of his own self-relation, invites the reader to embark on the same journey of self-transformation, the novel becomes a site for experimental selfhood. By addressing these issues, I illuminate the difficulties Sartre faced in attempting to unite a Marxist ethos with the primacy of the individual as well as challenge Richard Rorty's characterization of Proust's literary project as a "purely private act of self-creation.". (shrink)

A cognitive-scientific approach to the pragmatic interpretive ability is presented, according to which it is seen as a specific cognitive system dedicated to the interpretation of ostensive stimuli, that is, verbal utterances and other overtly communicative acts. This approach calls for a dual construal of semantics. The semantics which interfaces with the pragmatic interpretive system is not a matter of truth-conditional content, but of whatever components of meaning are encoded by the language system. This linguistically provided meaning functions as evidence (...) that guides and constrains the addressee’s pragmatic inferential processes whose goal is the recovery of the speaker’s intended meaning. Speakers communicate thoughts —that is, fully propositional entities—and it is these that are the proper domain of a truth-conditional semantics. (shrink)