Over the last decade, legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Canada has accelerated. By and large, same-sex cohabitants are now recognised in the same manner as opposite-sex cohabitants, and same-sex marriage was legalised in 2005. Without diminishing the struggle that lesbians and gay men have endured to secure this somewhat revolutionary legal recognition, this article troubles its narrative of progress. In particular, we investigate the terms on which recent legal struggles have advanced, as well as the ways in which resistance (...) to the legal recognition has been expressed and dealt with. We argue that to the extent that feminist critiques of marriage, familial ideology, and the privatisation of economic responsibility are marginalised, conservative and heteronormative discourses on marriage and family are reinforced. Our case studies include two pivotal moments in the quest for legislative recognition of same-sex relationships: the Hearings of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on Bill C-23, The Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, in 2000 and the hearings on Same-Sex Marriage in 2003. We find that the debates operated within a narrow paradigm that bolstered many existing hierarchies and exacerbated conditions for those who are economically disadvantaged. (shrink)

Based on recent insight into the thalamocortical system and its role in perception and conscious experience, a unified pathophysiological framework for hallucinations in neurological and psychiatric conditions is proposed, which integrates previously unrelated neurobiological and psychological findings. Gamma-frequency rhythms of discharge activity from thalamic and cortical neurons are facilitated by cholinergic arousal and resonate in networks of thalamocortical circuits, thereby transiently forming assemblies of coherent gamma oscillations under constraints of afferent sensory input and prefrontal attentional mechanisms. If perception is based (...) on synchronisation of intrinsic gamma activity in the thalamocortical system, then sensory input to specific thalamic nuclei may merely play a constraining role. Hallucinations can be regarded as underconstrained perceptions that arise when the impact of sensory input on activation of thalamocortical circuits and synchronisation of thalamocortical gamma activity is reduced. In conditions that are accompanied by hallucinations, factors such as cortical hyperexcitability, cortical attentional mechanisms, hyperarousal, increased noise in specific thalamic nuclei, and random sensory input to specific thalamic nuclei may, to a varying degree, contribute to underconstrained activation of thalamocortical circuits. The reticular thalamic nucleus plays an important role in suppressing random activity of relay cells in specific thalamic nuclei, and its dysfunction may be implicated in the biological vulnerability to hallucinations in schizophrenia. Combined with general activation during cholinergic arousal, this leads to excessive disinhibition in specific thalamic nuclei, which may allow cortical attentional mechanisms to recruit thalamic relay cells into resonant assemblies of gamma oscillations, regardless of their actual sensory input, thereby producing an underconstrained perceptual experience. Key Words: Charles Bonnet syndrome; gamma oscillations; hallucinations; late paraphrenia; Lewy body dementia; perception; schizophrenia; thalamocortical system. (shrink)

The commentators provide a wealth of additional neurobiological data that ought to be integrated in a comprehensive model. This response article, however, focuses on clarification of conceptual queries, thereby outlining the proposed theory of hallucinations more sharply, discussing its relationship with schizophrenia, and explaining why underconstrained thalamocortical activation may well be a candidate mechanism responsible for acute schizophrenic symptoms other than hallucinations.

Research using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) has consistently shown that English‐learning children aged 2 can associate transitive argument structure with causal events. However, studies using the same methodology investigating 2‐year‐old children’s knowledge of the conjoined agent intransitive and semantic role assignment have reported inconsistent findings. The aim of the present study was to establish at what age English‐learning children have verb‐general knowledge of both transitive and intransitive argument structure using a new method: the forced‐choice pointing paradigm. The results (...) suggest that young 2‐year‐olds can associate transitive structures with causal (or externally caused) events and can use transitive structure to assign agent and patient roles correctly. However, the children were unable to associate the conjoined agent intransitive with noncausal events until aged 3;4. The results confirm the pattern from previous IPLP studies and indicate that children may develop the ability to comprehend different aspects of argument structure at different ages. The implications for theories of language acquisition and the nature of the language acquisition mechanism are discussed. (shrink)

This article considers children’s status in society and how this may be elevated with a view to imagining a possible future. Children’s status is such that the structures and systems under which they live diminish their agency. In so doing, their opportunity to contribute to the shaping of what appears to be an uncertain future is limited. The article proposes that looking towards children as saviours of our tomorrows is misguided and that a healthier view is to recognise the networked (...) nature of children, which recognises children’s humanity and sees them as connected to the world in which and of which they are a part. By accepting the networked nature of children, adults may come to think and behave differently towards children, beginning to see themselves and children as ‘one among many’. This perspective allows for compassion, a notion that supports our living together. This article proposes that Philosophy with Children may offer an approach to engaging in community and dialogue that allows us to think our way to a future that is epistemically inclusive. Ultimately, engaging with children as potential knowers demands that we are more overtly political in the ways in which we engage with Philosophy with Children. (shrink)

Les trajectoires d’entrée dans la vie adulte sont parsemées d’événements, de périodes de crise, de carrefours biographiques devant lesquels les jeunes sont amenés à réagir, à faire des choix et à opérer parfois un changement brutal dans leur parcours. Dans ces moments de crise, de basculement et de réalisation de l’improbable, se révèlent des enjeux et des logiques de choix qui resteraient invisibles dans le cours tranquille des choses.À partir d’une enquête qualitative longitudinale auprès d’un panel de jeunes, je propose (...) ici une tentative d’exploration de la notion de bifurcation. Les récits et les argumentaires développés permettent d’identifier les « ingrédients » mobilisés dans la prise de décision. Sont parcourus là divers registres structurels, contextuels, relationnels et individuels, ainsi que des temporalités diverses en interaction. C’est peut-être justement leur conjonction qui autorise cette « rupture » de l’ordre social attendu.The trajectories of entry into adulthood are cluttered with events, periods of crisis, life crossroads to which young people have to face up, to make choices and sometimes operate radical changes in the course of their lives. In these moments of crisis, upheavals and unexpected turning points, new stakes and logics of orientation appear, which would have remained unseen in a quieter course of things.Working from a qualitative longitudinal survey of a panel of young people, this paper offers an attempt to explore the notion of bifurcation. The life stories and the arguments these young people developed allow to identify the components of choice-making. Various structural, topical, relational and individual registers have been identified, along with various interacting temporalities. It is their conjunction that is likely to make possible a breaking up of the expected social order. (shrink)

This short paper is based on a presentation delivered by four young people from Sunderland Children Services—Amy, Claire, Jordan and Glen (supported by Grace Roddam, Young People's Training and Development Mentor, and Dave Laverick, Workforce Development Consultant)—at the ‘Learning Professional Wisdom: Courage and Compassion’ Ethics and Social Welfare conference, which took place on 15 May 2009 at St Mary's College, Durham University, UK. The conference was organized by the newly formed Ethics and Social Welfare network, with support (...) from the Social Work and Policy Subject Centre (SWAP), Durham University and Ethics & Social Welfare journal. The conference focused on the contested nature of ‘moral character’ in professional education, whether this can be learnt and developed and how it links with judgements about ‘suitability for practice’. The four young people, drawing on their specific experiences of the looked after system, provided a valuable contribution which will assist understanding of what is meant by the term ‘ethical practitioner’ and the values and attributes they believe practitioners should have in order to fulfil their ethical obligations. (shrink)

Fifty-five 4-year-old children took part in a study focused on children's accounts of the situations that caused happiness, anger, sadness and fear in themselves, their friends, and their mothers. Themes, agents, and adequacy of accounts were studied at two time points. Interpersonal causes of anger and happiness were cited by many children; confusion about causes of anger and sadness was not evident, although the notion of loss and controllability as factors distinguishing causes of anger versus sadness found some support. Accounts (...) for self, friend, and mother differed considerably, suggesting emotion understanding could usefully be considered in relation to specific relationships. Analysis of individual differences showed that children who scored high on deception, emotion understanding, and false belief tasks at 47 months gave more adequate and differentiated accounts of mothers' and friends' emotions seven months later. Implications for our views of children's close relationships are discussed. (shrink)

Early Childhood Curriculum addresses current approaches to curriculum for infants, toddlers and young children, ages birth to eight. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the curriculum issues that student teachers and emerging practitioners will face and equips them with the decision-making tools that will ultimately enhance and promote young children's learning. The text proposes a cultural historical framework to explore diverse approaches to early years education, drawing on research and examples of practice across a range of international contexts. (...) It offers a clear focus on domain areas of the curriculum - the arts, health and wellbeing, literacy and language, science and maths, and information and communication technology - so that teachers are able to gain a breadth of understanding and effectively plan, design and implement curriculum strategy. (shrink)

This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the study of generics and pursues the enterprise of the influential Generic Book edited by Gregory Carlson and Jeffry Pelletier, which was published in 1995. Genericity is a key notion in the study of human cognition as it reveals our capacity to organize our perceived reality into classes and to describe regularities. The generic can be expressed at the level of a word or phrase (ie the potato in The Irish economy became dependent (...) upon the potato) or an entire sentence (eg in John smokes a cigar after dinner, the generic aspect is a property of the expression, rather than any single word or phrase within it). This book gathers new work from senior and young researchers to reconsider the notion of genericity, examining the distinct contributions made by the determiner phrase (eg the notions of kind/individual) and the verbal predicate (eg the notions of permanency, disposition, ability, habituality, and plurality). Finally, in connection with the whole sentence, the analytic/synthetic distinction is discussed as well as the notion of normality. The book will appeal to both students and scholars in linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

Young women’s identities are an issue of public and academic interest across a number of western nations at the present time. This book explores how young women attending an elite school for girls understand and construct ‘empowerment’. It investigates the extent to which, and the ways in which, their constructions of empowerment and identity work to overturn, or resist, key regulations and normative expectations for girls in post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultural contexts. The book provides a succinct overview of feminist (...) theorisations of normative femininities in young women’s lives in western cultural contexts. It includes familiar sexist discourses such as sexual double standards, as well as more recent commentary about the regulation of young women’s subjectivities in neoliberal, post-feminist, hyper-sexualised cultures. Drawing on ethnographic research in the context of an elite girls’ secondary school, the author explores how empowerment for young women is constructed and understood across a range of textual practices. From visual representations of young women in school promotional material, to students’ constructions of popular celebrities, the question of how girls’ resistance to normative femininities begins to develop is examined. This rich empirical work makes a unique contribution to the study of elite schooling within the sociology of education, drawing on important insights from the field of critical girlhood studies, and posing a challenge to popular feminist notions about media literacy, young women and empowerment. It will be of interest to scholars and postgraduates in the areas of gender studies, sociology, education, youth studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

In June 2016, Texas A&M University hosted its inaugural philosophy camp for teens. In this article, we address how running a philosophy camp for pre-college students can have a positive impact on both the campers and the staff, which included philosophy faculty, graduate students (Philosophy and English), and undergraduates. We designed the week-long (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.) philosophy camp with three aims: to introduce pre-college students to philosophical thinking and dialogue; to develop an intellectual community among the campers; (...) and to provide a space in which young people could engage as equal partners in a series of spirited philosophical discussions. Drawing chiefly from our local community, we enrolled a diverse group of campers. We organized the week around themes that we thought would be of particular interest to pre-college students while also providing a broad view of the discipline. What we did not anticipate was the intense friendships that were formed, based on a shared love of philosophical ideas. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the moral panics around hyperactive children, the construction of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, and the lure of Ritalin in turning kids identified as at risk into successful, productive individuals. Through a historicization of the child as a psychiatric subject, we try to demonstrate Ritalin's part in the uneven development of modern trends towards the pathologization of everyday life, a developing continuum between normality and abnormality, and an emphasis on the malleability of children and the importance of (...) environment in their upbringing. We conclude that Ritalin is a part of modernity's project of turning people into individuals—in this case, a kind of US transcendence fantasy—which, along with discourses and institutions, promises to transform young subjects and biocosmetically alter their futures. (shrink)

Children's cooperation with peers undergoes substantial developmental changes between 3 and 10 years of age. Here we stipulate that young children's initial fearfulness of peers' behaviour develops into older children's fearfulness of peers' evaluations of their own behaviour. Cooperation may constitute an adaptive environment in which the expressions of fear and self-conscious emotions regulate the quality of children's peer relationships.

Feminist scholars have long been concerned with privileged women’s activism and engagement with feminist politics and how acts of resistance from privileged subjects might best be understood. In the current moment, we are seeing a reinvigoration of interest in feminist activism particularly from young women, but not necessarily focusing on young women who are positioned as privileged. Simultaneously, there is attention in the sociology of elite schooling to the question of social justice politics in privileged spaces. In this (...) article, we contribute to both of these scholarly conversations by reporting on the feminist activism of three young women attending an elite school in Australia. We argue that these young women’s activism/feminist politics need to be understood as a complex entanglement of resistance and reproduction with regard to gender, race and class, and that drawing on recent theorisations influenced by post-humanism in feminist educational research produces fresh insights into researching gender/race/class reproduction by young women in elite educational settings. (shrink)

The Young Women’s Group in Manchester is a ‘young women’s peer health project, run by and for young lesbian and bisexual women’, which runs an allotment as one of its activities. At a time when interest in allotments and gardening appears to be on the increase, the existence of yet another community allotment may seem unremarkable. Yet we suggest that this queer allotment poses challenges for conventional theorisations of allotments, as well as for understandings of public and (...) private. In this article we explore how the allotment project might be understood to be intensely engaged in ‘growing intimate publics’, or what we term ‘privatepublics’. These are paradoxical intimacies, privatepublic spaces which are not necessarily made possible in the usual private sphere of domestic homes. Here we focus on the work involved in materialising the allotment, which we understand as a queer privatepublic ‘natureculture’ (Haraway, 2008) which appears as an ‘everyday utopia’ (Cooper, 2014). (shrink)

Le problème de l’identité personnelle est une préoccupation essentielle des philosophes modernes depuis que la conscience est mise en scène philosophiquement. Cependant parmi eux il n’y en a pas beaucoup qui considèrent la mémoire comme le fondement de l’identité humaine, bien qu’aujourd’hui, et grâce aux neurosciences, on sache pourtant qu’elle joue un rôle capital. D’une manière générale, les empiristes s’y intéressent davantage que les rationnalistes. Ceux‐ci ayant comme idéal normatif les systèmes mathématiques ne pensent pas qu’elle puisse contribuer à élargir (...) nos connaissances du monde. C’est ce qui explique que le système des idées claires et distinctes chez Descartes, s’établit directement par la conscience présente. De son côté, l’empiriste sceptique Hume, bien qu’il ait souligné l’importance de la mémoire dans notre personnalité, n’a pas pu mettre en pleine lumière sa nature et son fonctionnement. L’esprit considéré comme l’ensemble des perceptions et des idées est loin de constituer l’identité de l’homme normal. On voit dans les théoriesbergsoniennes de la durée et de la mémoire une toute autre perspective qui fonde l’identité personnelle sur l’équilibre mental de la conscience présente et de l’inconscient, c’est‐à‐dire du moi superficiel et du moi profond. (shrink)

This article ethnographically considers the experiences of Australian young people who were born deaf and who hear and listen through cochlear implants to explore the intersection between the sensory body, lived experience and technology. The article draws on phenomenology to examine how experiences of deafness are productive in analysing articulations of embodiment and the meanings embedded in a body that is valued as both deaf and hearing. Leaving aside binary conceptions of deaf versus hearing, and understandings of the cochlear (...) implant as a remedy for sensory deficits, we instead make a case for nuanced understandings of the device and embodied experiences through technology. This analysis identifies how a cochlear implanted body navigates connections to the world and to others in turning on and off engagement. We contend that the device has an intrinsic value for recipients through enabling their access to hearing while not removing their experiences of deafness. (shrink)

On the young bride’s shoulder is a mauve bite mark: the outline of a mouth, a double arch,teeth marks, open jaws, lips raised up over hard enamel. Not the barely open lips of a kisson the skin; open, rather, as for a kiss on the mouth, but this time penetrating the skin: abristling kiss with the teeth bared, extreme – at the limit of the kiss, or beyond. A cruelkiss: a kiss of flesh . A young couple kisses (...) in a plane: the beginning ofthe film. Later we will see this icon, not knowing when it was imprinted, like a tattoo or abranding with the red hot iron of some ancient justice.What is a kiss? This is the question posed by Claire Denis’s film. Or rather: what isfucking?2It has long been accepted and repeated that kissing is a kind of devouring. Itbelongs to a core of imagery and metaphor that includes fairy tales , the fascination with cannibalism, the symbolism of Christian communion andthat of the lacerations of Dionysos, Osiris or Acteon, together with ghouls, striges andvampires, werewolves, incubi and succubi. This entire carnivorous breed is concealedwithin the film. It is recalled in its entirety, evoked by the gesture of Coré, the sick woman, standing on a bank, filmed from a low angle raising her coat aboveher shoulders to bring to mind for a moment the silhouette of Murnau’s Nosferatu.The vampire’s true formula is only revealed when one says ‘the kiss of the vampire’.That is what is at stake here, allowing for the fact that we are no longer in the era ofvampire stories: the kiss as vampire.It is not a question of any particular kiss, but rather that the kiss, in itself, opens on to the bite, and the taste of blood. And consequently it is a question of another wellknown coupling, that of Eros and Thanatos: not in a dialectic of opposites, but in a mutualexcitation and exasperation, each asking the other to go further, to go all the way to theend, to get completely lost. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS353 Sainte Claire en Rouergue: viii centenaire de sainte Claire. Conférences du Colloque de Millau (29 septembre-3 octobre 1993). Ed. "Les amis de sainte Claire aujourd'hui." Millau: Maury, 1994. 220 pp. During the eighth centenary of the birth of St. Clare, many symposiums were planned in France: Millau, Béziers, Montpellier, Perpignan and Paris. Sainte Claire en Rouergue presents most of the conferences from the (...) symposium of Millau, September 29 to October 3, 1993. This symposium celebrated the Franciscan presence in the region of Rouergue, France, during the last eight hundred years as well as the history and spirituality of St. Clare. Although the presentations were focused on a clearer history of the Poor Clares, they provided much information about the First Order as well as the Third Order Franciscan women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book presented a clear overview of the Franciscan foundations, devastations, and their re-establishment after the French Revolution and the disappearance of many communities. The first section highlighted the person of Saint Clare and her historical moment. The various articles provided an interesting review of many different dimensions: of Ladies in history in the 11th to the 13th century (Pernoud), the new religious structure begun by Clare (Dejour), her spirituality (Fabre) and the living of the Gospel by Francis and Clare (Dutheil). The direction of the symposium was not only to the past glories of Clare, but examined her place in social communication today (Gritti) and gave practical suggestions so as to concretize her spirituality and her influence in the future of Franciscan life (Miniou, Mercadier, Ghirard). The second section of the book focused on the history of the Franciscan presence in southwestern France. Information was gathered from many sources about the various branches of Franciscan life in Rouergue: Friars Minor, Coletans, Capuchins, Recollects, Cordeliers, Cordelières, Damianites, Minorettes, and Urbanists. The symposium presented different backgrounds and aspects of Franciscan life in Rouergue using archives, iconography, descriptions of artifacts and images, charts and maps. A more detailed 354BOOK REVIEWS description of these various communities was given through the use of obituaries, personal and communal histories, photographs, and listing of dowries. The three Poor Clare communities of Rouergue were: Millau (founded in 1291); Granayrac-(1326-1677) moved to Villefranche-deRouergue (1677-1792); and Mur-de-Barrez (founded in 1653). Villefranche began as a rural contemplative monastery, but later moved to the city where they taught young girls and allowed elderly women to live with them. Through the stormy history of the Calvinist revolt and the French Revolution, the Poor Clare communities were dispersed more than once, but they are re-established in Millau and Mur-deBarrez today. Besides the political struggles, the Poor Clares of Millau had a long history of religious controversy and intrigue as well as glory. Presentations are also given on the Annunciationists, another branch of the Poor Clares founded by Jeanne of France and the Franciscan, Gabriel-Maria. These women came to Rodez in 1519. Third Order religious congregations were the first to return to Rouergue after the dispersion of the French Revolution. Saint Claire en Rouergue, well researched, adds another helpful fragment to the multi-faceted history of the followers of Francis and Clare. Monasîère Ste.ClaireSR. PACELLI MILLANE, O.S.C. Valleyfield, Quebec Antoine Faivre. Access To Western Esotericism. Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1994.? + 369 pp. $19.95. "These two volumes of unequal length, originally published in French" (p. x), provide the reader with a rich (if often haphazard) analysis of a difficult, complex subject. Even the term "esotericism" is difficult to define, and is often confused or identified with occultism. Faivre wisely restricts his study to western esotericism, whose focus, he argues, is "essentially on the... (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the greatest writers and German philosophers of the nineteenth century. His work influenced figures as diverse as Wagner, Freud and Nietzsche. Best known as a pessimist, he was one of the few philosophers read and admired by Wittgenstein. In this comprehensive introduction, Julian Young covers all the main aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Schopenhauer's life and work, he introduces the central aspects of his metaphysics fundamental to understanding his work as (...) a whole: his philosophical idealism and debt to the philosophy of Kant; his attempt to answer the question of what the world is; his account of science; and in particular his idea that 'will' is the essence of all things. Julian Young then introduces and assesses Schopenhauer's aesthetics, which occupy a central place in his philosophy. He carefully examines Schopenhauer's theories of the sublime, artistic genius and music, before assessing his ethics of compassion, his arguments for pessimism and his account of 'salvation'. In the final chapter, he considers Schopenhauer's legacy and his influence on the thought of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, making this an ideal starting point for those coming to Schopenhauer for the first time. (shrink)

In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing (...) to fight-and die for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or by showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses. (shrink)

This essay takes a transhistorical leap to connect the philosophy of Thomas Reid to the dramatic presentation of ethical choices in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Juxtaposing the two figures reveals an underlying moral ontology common to both. This shared ontology is remarkably nuanced, ultimately affirming moral liberty whilst decisively registering the fallibility of the ‘moral faculty.’ The final section asks whether the degree of comparability warrants any further speculation, revisiting the question of a ‘common humanity.’.

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those of Matthew Calarco and other scholars, I (...) aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Belgian data from the PIDOP project show that boys are more involved than girls in illegal political actions, namely the production of graffiti and other acts of “incivility”. These activities must be considered in both groups as complementary to conventional political and social participation and not as their opposite. The main explanatory factor is the level of the perceived efficaciousness of such actions. The lack of trust in institutions and the level of awareness of societal discrimination play no significant explanatory (...) role. In males, the involvement level in these activities depends on feelings of personal discrimination and on the lack of freedom concerning individual choice, confirming the theory of societal vulnerability and Honneth’s theory of recognition. This level also increases along with increasing opportunities to make acquaintances and have fun in the neighbourhood. In females, this involvement is explained by the distance with regard to pro-sociality level. (shrink)

Bringing together Deleuze, Blanchot, and Foucault, this book provides a detailed and original exploration of the ideas that influenced Deleuze's thought leading up to and throughout his cinema volumes and, as a result, proposes a new definition of art. Examining Blanchot's suggestion that art and dream are "outside" of power, as imagination has neither reality nor truth, and Foucault's theory that power forms knowledge by valuing life, Eugene Brent Young relates these to both Deleuze's philosophy of time and his (...) work with Guattari on art. In doing so, he uses case studies from literature and popular film, including Kafka's Castle, Villeneuve's Arrival, and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Providing important new insights for those working in literary and cinematic studies, this book advances a new definition of art as that which reverses the realities and truths of power to express obscure ideas and values beyond both our exterior and interior worlds. (shrink)

Abstract: Groundwork is lain for answering questions as to how to situate Husserl’s theory of functions in relation to Frege’s. I examine Husserl’s ideas about analyticity and mathematics, logic and mathematics, formalization, calculating with concepts and propositions, the foundations of arithmetic, extensions to show that, although he knew, studied and lauded Frege’s ideas about functions and concepts, each man approached the issues from different angles. Seduced by the siren of transcendental phenomenology Husserl did not pursue the issues, implications, and consequences (...) of his ideas about functions. I ask whether so doing could provide new insight into, or even solutions to, the problems involving functions that beset Frege, Russell and have beset their successors. (shrink)

This chapter uses Marx’s credit theory in Comments on James Mill and Freire’s theory of the banking model of education from Pedagogy of the Oppressed to argue that the confluence of massive student debt and structures of “banking” pedagogy in contemporary American higher education places many university students in a unique position of dehumanization. The material limitations brought about by the loan are compounded by the social limitations of a resulting push toward productivity in education. Students with loan debt are (...) driven in the direction of business and pre-professional majors and away from the humanities and other fields which would facilitate students’ abilities to critically question the dehumanizing aspects of their situation. (shrink)

ArgumentNeuroscience research has created multiple versions of the human brain. The “social brain” is one version and it is the subject of this paper. Most image-based research in the field of social neuroscience is task-driven: the brain is asked to respond to a cognitive (perceptual) stimulus. The tasks are derived from theories, operational models, and back-stories now circulating in social neuroscience. The social brain comes with a distinctive back-story, an evolutionary history organized around three, interconnected themes: mind-reading, empathy, and the (...) emergence of self-consciousness. This paper focuses on how empathy has been incorporated into the social brain and redefined via parallel research streams, employing a shared, imaging technology. The concluding section describes how these developments can be understood as signaling the emergence of a new version of human nature and the unconscious. My argument is not that empathy in the social brain is a myth, but rather that it is served by a myth consonant with the canons of science. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl was one of the very first to experience the direct impact of challenging problems in set theory and his phenomenology first began to take shape while he was struggling to solve such problems. Here I study three difficulties associated with Frege's use of sets that Husserl explicitly addressed: reference to non-existent, impossible, imaginary objects; the introduction of extensions; and 'Russell's paradox'.I do so within the context of Husserl's struggle to overcome the shortcomings of set theory and to develop (...) his own theory of manifolds. I define certain issues involved and discuss how Husserl's theory of manifolds might confront them. In so doing I hope to help bring Husserl's theories about sets and manifolds out of the realm of abstract theorizing and prompt further exploration of uncharted philosophical territory rich in philosophical implications. (shrink)

... mean abstract. From my point of view, it means reflexive, something which turns back on itself: a discourse which turns back on itself is by virtue of ...

This book, the first comprehensive study in English of Heidegger's philosophy of art, starts in the mid-1930s with Heidegger's discussion of the Greek temple and his Hegelian declaration that a great artwork gathers together an entire culture in affirmative celebration of its foundational 'truth', and that, by this criterion, art in modernity is 'dead'. His subsequent work on Hölderlin, whom he later identified as the decisive influence on his mature philosophy, led him into a passionate engagement with the art of (...) Rilke, Ce;zanne, Klee and Zen Buddhism, liberating him not only from the overly restrictive conception of art of the mid-1930s but also from the disastrous politics of the period. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the anglophone world, Young establishes a new account of Heidegger's philosophy of art and shows that his famous essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is its beginning, not its end. (shrink)

Twentieth-century developments in quantum physics, together with an emerging science of consciousness, have created the need for a new cosmology, or model of the universe. The theory of process contained in THE REFLEXIVE UNIVERSE places consciousness within the context of contemporary science. One of the central themes of this extraordinary work is that each successive organization of matter, from fundamental particles in physics to living organisms, expresses a particular stage in the evolution of mind. Starting with the photon, the basic (...) unit of light, and moving through atomic physics, molecular chemistry, the morphology of plants and animals and finally to levels of human evolution, Young develops his theory in vivid step-by-step detail. Consciousness, in his point of view, is not isolated from the material universe. It exists in a continuum, one in which physical and nonphysical realms can be linked and the teachings of mythology and religion can be integrated. To order: FAX: 415-883-9280; e-mail: [email protected]; or write: Anodos Foundation, c/o Publishers Services, P.O. Box 2510, Novato, CA 94948. Visa and MasterCard only. Trade STOP orders 40% plus postage. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s interest in tragedy continues throughout his work. And yet scholarship on Nietzsche’s account of tragedy has focused almost exclusively on his first book, The Birth of Tragedy – a work which is in many ways discontinuous with his more mature philosophical views. In this paper, I aim to illuminate Nietzsche’s post-Birth of Tragedy views on tragedy by setting them in the context of a particular historical conversation. Ever since Plato banished the tragic poets from the kallipolis, various philosophers have (...) attempted to respond to his challenge to offer a ‘defense of poetry’. What Nietzsche offers, I argue, is a distinctive form of response to Plato’s challenge. I show how Nietzsche takes seriously Plato’s worries, and even ends up in partial agreement with him: tragedy is not (unqualifiedly) valuable; it can be spiritually dangerous. Key to Nietzsche’s account is a distinction he draws between two types of tragic audience. For the ‘lower types’, tragedy is – as Plato feared – dangerous. For the ‘higher types’, however, tragedy can act as a regenerative force. Finally, I discuss a distinctive form of value that tragedy makes available to a modern audience: tragedy can act as a stimulus towards the process of the revaluation of values. (shrink)