What should knowledge first theorists say about the value of knowledge? In this paper I approach this issue by arguing for a single ‘modest knowledge first claim’ about the value of knowledge. This is that the special value of knowledge isn’t merely instrumental value relative to true belief. I show that MKF is inconsistent with the version of the Platonic stability theory that Williamson defends in Knowledge and its Limits. I then argue in favour of MKF by arguing that Williamson’s (...) stability theory fails for reasons that plausibly generalise to any theory of the value of knowledge that is inconsistent with MKF. Crucial to this argument is a putative adequacy condition on philosophical theories of the value of knowledge: that, in order to fully explain the special value of knowledge, a theory must identify respects in which knowledge is more valuable than true belief that give enquirers adequate reason for preferring knowledge to true belief. I conclude by suggesting that this adequacy condition is the source of a more general dilemma for proponents of philosophical theories of the value of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the orthodox view of the significance of Platonic value problems. According to this view, such problems are among the central questions of epistemology, and answering them is essential for justifying the status of epistemology as a major branch of philosophical enquiry. I challenge this view by identifying an assumption on which Platonic value problems are based – the value assumption – and considering how this assumption might be resisted. After articulating a line of thought that (...) supports the assumption, I highlight one way of undermining it, which is to deny that we desire knowledge and not just (e.g.) true belief because we prefer knowledge to true belief. I then consider an attempt to undermine the value assumption in this way, inspired by Bernard Williams. I contend that Williams's argument fails, but also that seeing why it fails is instructive for future attempts to resist the value assumption. (shrink)

Lucretius' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. In this book Barnaby Taylor offers an in-depth reconstruction of core features of Epicurean linguistic theory, and a new understanding of Lucretius' linguistic innovation and creativity.

Psychiatry has witnessed a new wave of approaches to clinical phenotyping and the study of psychopathology, including the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria, clinical staging, network approaches, the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, and the general psychopathology factor, as well as a revival of interest in phenomenological psychopathology. The question naturally emerges as to what the relationship between these new approaches is – are they mutually exclusive, competing approaches, or can they be integrated in some way and used (...) to enrich each other? In this opinion piece, we propose a possible integration between clinical staging and phenomenological psychopathology. Domains identified in phenomenological psychopathology, such as selfhood, embodiment, affectivity, etc., can be overlaid on clinical stages in order to enrich and deepen the phenotypes captured in clinical staging (‘high resolution’ clinical phenotypes). This approach may be useful both ideographically and nomothetically, in that it could complement diagnosis, enrich clinical formulation, and inform treatment of individual patients, as well as help guide aetiological, prediction, and treatment research. The overlaying of phenomenological domains on clinical stages may require that these domains are reformulated in dimensional rather than categorial terms. This integrative project requires assessment tools, some of which are already available, that are sensitive and thorough enough to pick up on the range of relevant psychopathology. The proposed approach offers opportunities for mutual enrichment: clinical staging may be enriched by introducing greater depth to phenotypes; phenomenological psychopathology may be enriched by introducing stages of severity and disorder progression to phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

Lucretius' primary didactic aim in De Rerum Natura is to teach his readers to interpret the world around them in such a way as to avoid the formation of false beliefs. The price of failure is extremely high. Someone who possesses false beliefs is liable to experience fear, and so will not be able to attain the state of tranquillity that, for Epicureans, constitutes the moral end. Equipping readers with sufficient knowledge always to form true beliefs about the phenomena they (...) encounter thus serves no less a purpose than the enabling of their future happiness. This paper is concerned with how Lucretian intertextuality contributes to this primary didactic aim. For reasons to be explained below, I will focus on Lucretian engagement with the texts of Greek and Roman drama. I will show that allusions to drama in DRN, rather than functioning simply as ‘honey on the rim of the cup’, make a direct contribution to Lucretius' ethical project, teaching readers how to respond rationally to the full variety of their cultural experience. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes is not a reductionist about life, but dissolves or eliminates the category entirely. This is surprising both because he repeatedly refers to the life of humans, animals, and plants and because he appears to rely on the category of life to construct his physiology and medicine. Various attempts have been made in the scholarship to attribute a principled concept of life to Descartes. Most recently, Detlefsen has argued that Descartes “is a reductionist with respect to explanation (...) of life phenomena but not an eliminativist with respect to life itself”. I show that all these attempts either result in arbitrariness or force Descartes's wider philosophical project into incoherence. I argue that Descartes's ontological commitments make a principled concept of life impossible, that he does not need such a concept, and that his project ends up more coherent without one. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes explains physiology in terms of whole systems, and not in terms of the size, shape and motion of tiny corpuscles (corpuscular mechanics). It is a standard, entrenched view that Descartes’ proper means of explanation in the natural world is through strict reduction to corpuscular mechanics. This view is bolstered by a handful of corpuscular–mechanical explanations in Descartes’ physics, which have been taken to be representative of his treatment of all natural phenomena. However, Descartes’ explanations of the (...) ‘principal parts’ of physiology do not follow the corpuscular–mechanical pattern. Des Chene has identified systems in Descartes’ account of physiology, but takes them ultimately to reduce down to the corpuscle level. I argue that they do not. Rather, Descartes maintains entire systems, with components selected from multiple levels of organization, in order to construct more complete explanations than corpuscular mechanics alone would allow. (shrink)

Eye-tracking techniques were used to measure men’s attention to back-posed and front-posed images of women varying in waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Irrespective of body pose, men rated images with a 0.7 WHR as most attractive. For back-posed images, initial visual fixations (occurring within 200 milliseconds of commencement of the eye-tracking session) most frequently involved the midriff. Numbers of fixations and dwell times throughout each of the five-second viewing sessions were greatest for the midriff and buttocks. By contrast, visual attention to front-posed (...) images (first fixations, numbers of fixations, and dwell times) mainly involved the breasts, with attention shifting more to the midriff of images with a higher WHR. This report is the first to compare men’s eye-tracking responses to back-posed and front-posed images of the female body. Results show the importance of the female midriff and of WHR upon men’s attractiveness judgments, especially when viewing back-posed images. (shrink)

At the outset of The Democracy of Suffering, Canadian philosopher Todd Dufresne suggests that we should stop worrying about the indifference of those ignoring the environmental plight of the world...

The data-driven approach to psychiatric science leverages large volumes of patient data to construct machine learning models with the goal of optimizing clinical decision making. Advocates claim that this methodology is well-placed to deliver transformative improvements to psychiatric science. I argue that talk of a data-driven revolution in psychiatry is premature. Transformative improvements, cashed out in terms of better patient outcomes, cannot be achieved without addressing patient understanding. That is, how patients understand their own mental illnesses. I conceptualize understanding as (...) the possession of adaptive mental constructs through which experience is mediated. I suggest that this notion of understanding serves as a bottleneck which any prospective approach to psychiatry must address to be efficacious. Subsequently I argue that, though the data-driven approach is undoubtedly powerful, it does not have a straightforward means of unblocking the bottleneck of understanding. I suggest that the data-driven approach must be supplemented with significant theoretical progress if it is to transform psychiatry. (shrink)

Fifteen original essays open up a novel area of inquiry: the distinctively ethical dimensions of women's experiences of and in aging. Contributors distinguished in the fields of feminist ethics and the ethics of aging explore assumptions, experiences, practices, and public policies that affect women's well-being and dignity in later life. The book brings to the study of women's aging a reflective dimension missing from the empirical work that has predominated to date. Ethical studies of aging have so far failed to (...) emphasize gender. And feminist ethics has neglected older women, even when emphasizing other dimensions of 'difference.' Finally work on aging in all fields has focused on the elderly, while this volume sees aging as an extended process of negotiating personal and social change. (shrink)

At various points in his work on physiology and medicine, Descartes refers to a “principle of life.” The exact term changes—sometimes, it is the “principle of movement and life”, sometimes the “principle underlying all [the] functions” of the body —but the message seems consistent: the phenomena of living bodies are the product of a single, underlying principle. That principle is generally taken to be cardiac heat.1 The literature has, quite reasonably, taken this message at face value. Thus, Shapiro: “Descartes insists (...) again and again that the human body is properly to be described as a machine whose workings are […] driven by the heat in the heart that... (shrink)

_Philosophy and the Maternal Body_ gives a new voice to the mother and the maternal body which have often been viewed as silent within philosophy. Michelle Boulous Walker clearly shows how some male theorists have appropriated maternity, and suggests new ways of articulating the maternal body and women's experience of pregnancy and motherhood.

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

Only by the method of free-association could Sigmund Freud have demonstrated how human consciousness is formed by the repression of thoughts and feelings that we consider dangerous. Yet today most therapists ignore this truth about our psychic life. This book offers a critique of the many brands of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that have forgotten Freud's revolutionary discovery. Barnaby B. Barratt offers a fresh and compelling vision of the structure and function of the human psyche, building on the pioneering (...) work of theorists such as André Green and Jean Laplanche, as well as contemporary deconstruction, feminism, and liberation philosophy. He explores how ‘drive’ or desire operates dynamically between our biological body and our mental representations of ourselves, of others, and of the world we inhabit. This dynamic vision not only demonstrates how the only authentic freedom from our internal imprisonments comes through free-associative praxis, it also shows the extent to which other models of psychoanalysis tend to stray disastrously from Freud's original and revolutionary insights. This is a vision that understands the central issues that imprison our psychic lives - the way in which the reflections of consciousness are based on the repression of our innermost desires, the way in which our erotic vitality is so often repudiated, and the way in which our socialization oppressively stifles our human spirit. Radical Psychoanalysis restores to the discipline of psychoanalysis the revolutionary impetus that has so often been lost. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, mental health practitioners and students and academics with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Rooted in the ancient holistic disciplines or energy sciences, and becoming established in the work of early psychodynamic pioneers, this new discipline, with the current growth of its bodymind methodologies, draws from phenomenological philosophies, depth psychologies, and from the latest neuroscience. This unique text explores both the remarkable history and the contemporary burgeoning of somatic psychology, and addresses the theoretical challenges that must be met if it is to realize its impressive potential. --Book Jacket.

Descartes is usually taken to be a strict reductionist, and he frequently describes his work in reductionist terms. This dissertation, however, makes the case that he is a nonreductionist in certain areas of his philosophy and natural philosophy. This might seem like simple inconsistency, or a mismatch between Descartes's ambitions and his achievements. I argue that here it is more than that: nonreductionism is compatible with his wider commitments, and allowing for irreducibles increases the explanatory power of his system. Moreover, (...) Descartes depends on nonreductionist knowledge and on irreducibles in order to maintain his epistemology and metaphysics. That is, there is more in the Cartesian world than mind, matter, and God. (shrink)

The paper examines a single, apparently simple argument for the existence of incompatibilities between the virtues as traits of character. This argument appeals not to empirical truths about human psychology or human nature but to the possibility of conflict between the exercise of different virtues in action. There are, for example, situations in which we can exercise the virtue of truthfulness only at the expense of not exercising the virtue of tact, as when we are asked a question to which (...) the straightforward answer will pain our questioner. The person who in these situations would give a straightforward answer possesses the virtue of truthfulness to a higher degree than the person who would respond more evasively, whereas the latter person possesses the virtue of tact to a higher degree than the former. But since the two responses are mutually exclusive, it follows that the degree to which we possess the virtue of truthfulness must, at least in some measure, correlate inversely with the degree to which we possess the virtue of tact. And similarly for many other pairs of virtues. My paper focusses on the two cardinal assumptions of this argument, viz., (i) that sometimes the exercise of one virtue can conflict with the exercise of another, and (ii) that the degree to which a person possesses a virtue correlates directly with the extent of its exercise, and defends both assumptions against a variety of objections which allege that, in different ways, they are insensitive to the complexity of the virtues. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the human perspective is not fully reducible – that is, that something would indeed be lost in the absence of the human perspective. It shows that epistemic subjectivity itself is an irreducible, ineliminable feature of the human standpoint. Subjectivity goes along with substantiality, and to be an epistemic subject is to be a substance with a mind. In E2p13, Spinoza identifies the mind's object with the body, thereby specifying where the multiplicity of epistemic subjects comes from (...) – how, that is, individual epistemic subjects are identified and differentiated. The chapter looks at how the three kinds of knowledge relate to the notions of epistemic subjectivity. These include: imaginative knowledge; reason, or knowledge from common notions; and intuitive knowledge. Imaginative knowledge works straightforwardly on the model of having ideas in the thick sense. (shrink)

How do we know our mental life, and how is our mental life altered by our efforts to know it better? Originally published in 1984, this title attempts an epistemological and ontological discourse concerning the understanding of human mental processes, and it aims toward a definitive thesis on the dialectics of knowing and being in this work of psychological understanding. What this work reconfronts are questions pertaining to all psychology and to all human sciences. Yet much of its focus is (...) on the understanding of unconscious mental contents, on the question of knowing and being in Freud¿s psychology. (shrink)

_Philosophy and the Maternal Body_ gives a new voice to the mother and the maternal body which have often been viewed as silent within philosophy. Michelle Boulous Walker clearly shows how some male theorists have appropriated maternity, and suggests new ways of articulating the maternal body and women's experience of pregnancy and motherhood.

This paper addresses the relation between Luce Irigaray’s work and politics by asking what it means to read her work locally, in place. The philosophical work of Indigenous scholar, Mary Graham, on the law of obligation, serves to ground such a local reading presenting, simultaneously, a case for a uniquely Australian philosophy. By way of suggesting possible connections between the work of Irigaray and Graham, the paper places Graham’s work on obligation alongside Irigaray’s work on the importance of a symbolic (...) re-distribution of value suggested in her philosophy of horizontal transcendence. Such a reading encourages us to consider what it means to engage work, such as Irigaray’s, in a here and now that differs from the European context of her writing. (shrink)

Literate Experience argues for the existence of certain shared patterns of intellectual association in the English seventeenth century, patterns that follow the outlines of Bacon’s project of epistemological reform. Bacon’s project offered a theory of how knowing as a private act could be transformed into a public one, an act related to the creation and maintenance of public authority. The question thus becomes, how did thinkers in the period reimagine civil society as a polity of knowledge? This study traces out (...) a variety of answers to that question, ranging from the Royal Society’s communal rhetoric to the work of four literary writers who, in a variety of ways, problematize the notion that political society exists as a community of shared knowledge. (shrink)

According to the author, psychoanalytic theory and practice – which discloses ‘the interminable falsity of the human subject’s belief in the mastery of its own mental life’ – is in part responsible for the coming of the postmodern era. In this title, originally published in 1993, Barratt examines the role of psychoanalysis in what he sees as the crisis of modernism, shows why the modernist position – what he calls the ‘modern episteme’ – is failing, and proposes that psychoanalysis should (...) redefine itself as a postmodern method. In Barratt’s innovative account of psychoanalysis, which focuses on the significance of the free-associative process, Freud’s discovery of the repressed unconscious leads to a claim that is basic to postmodern ideas: ‘that all thinking and speaking, the production and reproduction of psychic reality, is inherently dynamic, polysemous, and contradictorious.’ He argues that subsequent attempts to ‘normalize and systematize’ psychoanalysis are reactionary and antipsychoanalytic efforts to salvage the modern episteme that psychoanalysis itself calls into question. (shrink)

_The Freudian Exodus_ redefines the traumatic experience that Freud argued was the origin of Judaic monotheism, the murder of Moses. Focusing on the Babylonian Exile, the study explores a series of topics understood as the aftershocks of that cultural trauma.

The discipline of affective neuroscience is concerned with the underlying neural substrates of emotion and mood. This review presents an historical overview of the pioneering work in affective neuroscience of James and Lange, Cannon and Bard, and Hess, Papez, and MacLean before summarizing the current state of research on the brain regions identified by these seminal researchers. We also discuss the more recent strides made in the field of affective neuroscience. A final section considers different hypothetical organizations of affective neuroanatomy (...) and highlights future directions for the discipline. (shrink)

A familiar theme in Greek philosophy, largely due to the influence of Plato's Cratylus, linguistic naturalism constitutes a major but under-studied area of Roman linguistic thought. Indeed, it holds significance not only for the history of linguistics but also for philosophy, stylistics, rhetoric and more. The chapters in this volume deal with a range of naturalist theories in a variety of authors including Cicero, Varro, Nigidius Figulus, Posidonius, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The result is a complex and multi-faceted picture of (...) how language and nature were believed to interrelate in the classical Roman world. (shrink)

The suppression of sexuality is culturally widespread, and women’s sexual promiscuity, activity, and enjoyment are almost always judged and punished more harshly than men’s. It remains disputed, however, to what end people suppress sexuality, and who benefits from the suppression of female sexuality. Different theories predict that women in general, men in general, women’s intimate partners, or parents benefit most. Here we use the lies women and men tell—or imagine telling—about their sexual histories as an indirect measure of who is (...) most involved in the suppression of sexuality. We asked men and women what they would reply if asked questions by their mother, father, current partner, attractive confederate, and various same- or opposite-sex friends and colleagues about their number of previous sex partners, age at first romantic kiss, age at first consensual sex, and cheating on a previous partner or spouse. By comparing the size and direction of the lies that subjects told, we tested competing predictions of several cultural and evolutionary theories concerning why female sexuality is suppressed and who is driving its suppression. We found that men and women told larger and more frequent lies to their parents, with women telling the largest and most frequent lies of all to their fathers. Additionally, the majority of lies by both men and women were in sexually conservative directions. Our findings suggest that mothers, and especially fathers, restrict female sexuality. (shrink)

InFam.13.1 Cicero, visiting Athens en route to Cilicia in the summer of 51b.c., writes to C. Memmius L.f., praetor in 58 but by the time of Cicero's communication an exile in Athens after the shambolic consular elections for 53; Memmius was absent from Athens in Mytilene, hence the need for Cicero to write to him. This letter, along withAtt.5.11.6 and 19.3, is our focus in the argument that follows, but, to summarize the situation in the very broadest terms, Cicero's concern (...) in it is with Memmius’ intentions regarding a plot of land in Athens occupied by a house of Epicurus, and with the objections to Memmius’ plans that had been raised with Cicero by the scholarch of the Epicurean community in Athens, Patro. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of how virtue epistemology can accommodate knowledge acquired through testimony and extended cognition. Section 1 articulates the characteristic claim of virtue epistemology, and introduces the issues discussed in the paper. Section 2 details a related pair of objections to VE: that it is unable to accommodate cases of knowledge through testimony and extended cognition. Section 3 reviews two different virtue epistemologies and their responses to these objections presented in Greco :1–26, 2012). Considerations are presented for (...) why both of these accounts and responses are inadequate. Because of this, I suggest that it is unlikely that an analysis of the attribution relation will provide an adequate response to the objections. Section 4 advocates for a revised VE and a different way of dealing with the objections, which accommodates how agents are sometimes epistemically dependent on external sources. The central claim, for which a novel argument is presented, is that in some cases of knowledge the success is attributable to the abilities of an information system of which the knower is a part. This requires an important revision to traditional VE, but the characteristic claim of VE still holds true–every instance of knowledge is an instance of success attributable to ability. Thus, VE’s solutions to problems concerning the nature and value of knowledge are secured. (shrink)

The phenomenology of the creative process has been a neglected area of creativity research. The current study investigated the phenomenology of artistic creativity through semi-structured interviews with 11 artists. The findings consisted of 19 interlinked constituents, with 3 dynamics operating within these constituents: an intuition-analysis dynamic, a union-division dynamic, and a freedom-constraint dynamic. The findings are discussed in relation to the issues of creativity and spirituality, intuition and analysis, the creative synthesis, affective components, and flow. The findings display considerable overlap (...) with previous research into the phenomenology of the artistic creative process, yet place particular emphasis on the shift in sense of self associated with creative experience and the energising effect of a synthesis of disparate elements. (shrink)

James Bohman’s account of what might be involved in thinking about ‘democracy across borders,’ and specifically of what might be involved in thinking about a potential shift from dêmos to dêmoi, compels both affirmation and resistance. His account is both elegant and sharply focussed: positive attributes that nevertheless affirm a very particular understanding of elegance, and a precise focus that manages to evade many considerations that might be considered important by people seeking to think about democracies and their futures in (...) many different situations. (Published: 5 February 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010, pp. 21-36. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i1.4851. (shrink)

“The world of life which is comprised of the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere”: this definition of the biosphere is not complete since it does not express the determining influence of living organisms on its composition, on its structure and on the processes of its continuing evolution. The part of living matter in the biosphere is relatively small (about 0.25%), but this part has a considerable influence on its structure.The biosphere should be considered as the universal source of all (...) food products without exception. Mankind's ability to feed itself depends on the productivity of this biosphere in the first place. Moreover, its condition determines not only the quantity but also the quality of nourishment. The problem is a critical one today because of the increasing pollution of the biosphere by products poured into it by various human activities. (shrink)

Current literature suggests that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can affect consumers’ attitudes towards an organization and is regarded as a driver for reputation-building and fostering sustained consumer patronage. Although prior research has addressed the direct influence of CSR on consumer responses, this research examined the mediating influence of consumer’s perceived organizational motives within an NGO setting. Given the heightened public attention surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, data were collected from consumers of the Games to assess their perceptions of the (...) International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) socially responsible initiatives. We hypothesized that consumers of the Games were likely to cognitively elaborate on CSR messages by way of three specific attribution effects derived from the literature. The results show that, contingent on CSR awareness, consumers responded positively to social efforts judged to be values-driven and stakeholder-driven; and a negative response was seen for efforts judged to be strategic. These attribution effects influenced various types of patronage and perceived organizational reputation. (shrink)