This article is concerned with how we make decisions based on how problems are presented to us and the effect that the framing of the problem might have on our choices. Current philosophical and psychological accounts of the framing effect in experiments such as the Asian Disease Problem concern reference points and domains. We question the importance of reference points and domains. Instead, we adopt a linguistic perspective focussing on the role of the evaluative polarity evoked by the words - (...) negativeand positive - used to describe the options in the decision problem. We show that the evaluative polarity of the different wordings in the ADP better explain participants’ behaviour than reference points and domains. We propose two models in which the values given to evaluative polarity words directly influence the strength of framing. The results indicate that linguistic considerations regarding evaluative polarity have to be considered in relation to the ADP. The account resembles Fuzzy-Trace-Theory but allows for thestrength of evaluative polarity to directly affect behaviour. In the discussion, we also assess how evaluative polarity relates to negation, antonyms and the communicative frame within which the choices are presented. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ethical implications of racism and some of the various costs associated with racism occurring at the institutional level. We argue that, in many ways, the laws, social structures, and institutions in Western society have operated to perpetuate the continuation of historical legacies of racial inequities with or without the intention of individuals and groups in society. By merely maintaining existing structures, laws, and social norms, society can impose social, economic, and health costs on racial minorities that (...) impinge on their well-being and human dignity. Based on a review of multidisciplinary research on racism, particularly focusing on healthcare, we demonstrate how institutional racism leads to social and economic inequalities in society. By positing institutional racism as the inherent cause of avoidable disparities in healthcare, this paper draws attention to the ethical significance of racism, which remains a relatively neglected issue in bioethics research. (shrink)

In this paper I want to do the following things. First I want to show that in the part of the Theaetetus where the relationship between knowledge and perception is examined, the concept of knowledge that is in question is very clearly characterized. We are left in no doubt as to what is to count as knowing. Secondly I want to unravel in some detail the case that Socrates puts on Protagoras’ behalf where he draws on what Protagoras actually wrote (...) (151 E-152C); as opposed to what he may have taught secretly to his pupils (152C-160D). Thirdly I wish to argue that if we let the dialogue speak for itself, it is manifest that this case put up on Protagoras’ behalf at 151 E-152C is not overthrown; it is not even shaken. (shrink)

In this paper I want to do the following things. First I want to show that in the part of the Theaetetus where the relationship between knowledge and perception is examined, the concept of knowledge that is in question is very clearly characterized. We are left in no doubt as to what is to count as knowing. Secondly I want to unravel in some detail the case that Socrates puts on Protagoras’ behalf where he draws on what Protagoras actually wrote (...) ; as opposed to what he may have taught secretly to his pupils. Thirdly I wish to argue that if we let the dialogue speak for itself, it is manifest that this case put up on Protagoras’ behalf at 151 E-152C is not overthrown; it is not even shaken.In that part of the dialogue where the question is under examination whether or not knowledge and perception are the same, Socrates uses an idealized concept of knowledge. That is, he restricts the use of the word by setting down what he will consider to be the essential characteristics of knowledge, the sufficient and necessary conditions of its being instantiated. An excellent piece of philosophical procedure. (shrink)

It is not quite as easy to see that there is in fact no formula of this modal language having the same truth conditions (in terms of S5 Kripke semantics) as (1). This was rst conjectured by Allen Hazen2 and later proved by Harold Hodes3. We present a simple direct proof of this result and discuss some consequences for the logical analysis of ordinary modal discourse.

Because anticipated and retrospective regret play important roles in practical deliberation and motivation, better understanding them can illuminate the contours of human agency. However, the possibility of self-ignorance and the fact that we change over time can make regret—especially anticipatory regret—not only a poor predictor of where the agent will be in the future but also an unreliable indicator of where the agent stands. Granting these, this paper examines the way in which prospective and, particularly, retrospective regret can nevertheless yield (...) important insight into the sorts of creatures we are, both generally and individually. The experience of retrospective regret can show a person she values something in a way she did not know or that she is (or was) a different person than she had thought, insights which can factor into forward-looking, or prospective, deliberation. Such instances of revelatory regret reveal something to the agent about herself as agent. I examine two cases of agential self-ignorance. In the first, the experience of regret reveals what the agent values, not only to others but even to the agent himself. In the second, the agent anticipates experiencing regret for an action but does not experience the regret, suggesting that the agent did not value the rejected alternative in the way she thought. Anticipatory regret is forward-looking and can play an important role in practical deliberation. But insofar as anticipatory regret flows from one’s imperfect judgment and prospection about oneself, retrospective regret can be an important corrective in helping the agent understand her own standpoint. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ethical implications of racism and some of the various costs associated with racism occurring at the institutional level. We argue that, in many ways, the laws, social structures, and institutions in Western society have operated to perpetuate the continuation of historical legacies of racial inequities with or without the intention of individuals and groups in society. By merely maintaining existing structures, laws, and social norms, society can impose social, economic, and health costs on racial minorities that (...) impinge on their well-being and human dignity. Based on a review of multidisciplinary research on racism, particularly focusing on healthcare, we demonstrate how institutional racism leads to social and economic inequalities in society. By positing institutional racism as the inherent cause of avoidable disparities in healthcare, this paper draws attention to the ethical significance of racism, which remains a relatively neglected issue in bioethics research. (shrink)

The present book is intended to help students overcome difficulties by presenting Jaspers' thoughts in comparatively clear and straightforward fashion. While it denies that philosophy is "practical" in any cheap and obvious sense, it follows Jaspers in attempting to avoid the otiose and emphasize the relevance of philosophy to matters of ultimate concern. Those who wish a more theoretical and systematic presentation may well call to mind that, as Heidegger's followers express it, Jaspers, like Kierkegaard- and to some extent Sartre- (...) quite deliberately spurned the "ontological" in favor of the "ontic.". (shrink)

T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) was not only an active protagonist in the religious and scientific upheaval that followed the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution but also a harbinger of the sociobiological debates about the implications of evolution that are now going on. His seminal lecture Evolution and Ethics, reprinted here with its introductory Prolegomena, argues that the human psyche is at war with itself, that humans are alienated in a cosmos that has no special reference to their needs, and (...) that moral societies are of necessity in conflict with the natural conditions of their existence. Seen in the light of current understanding of the mechanisms of evolution, these claims remain as controversial today as they were when Huxley proposed them. In this volume George Williams, one of the best-known evolutionary biologists of our time, asserts that recent biological ideas and data justify a more extreme condemnation of the "cosmic process" than Huxley advocated and more extreme denial that the forces that got us here are capable of maintaining a viable world. James Paradis, an expert in Victorian studies, has written an introduction that sets the celebrated lecture in the context of cultural history, revealing it to be an impressive synthesis of Victorian thinking, as well as a challenge to eighteenth-century assumptions about the harmony of of nature. With Huxley's lecture as a focal point, the three parts of this book unite philosophy and science in a shared quest that recalls their common origins as systems of knowledge. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The focus of much sensory language research has been on vocabulary and codability, not how language is used in communication of sensory perceptions. We make a case for discourse-oriented research about sensory language as an alternative to the prevailing vocabulary orientation. To consider the language of sound in authentic textual data, we presented participants with 20 everyday sounds of unknown sources and asked them to describe the sounds in as much detail as possible, as if describing them to someone who (...) could not hear them. We explored how the participants use language to describe these sounds. Do they describe their listening experiences (stressful), sound properties (intermittent beeping), and/or the events that caused the sounds (eating an apple)? The results show that out of these three soundscape elements, events are the most frequent and most indispensable element. We let the results from the study illustrate the need for more discursive data in studies of sensory language and argue that there is no designated language of sound. Our study highlights that in order to account for sensory language use, we need an analytical framework that accommodates discursive language in a non-trivial way beyond stable couplings between individual words and meanings. (shrink)

In this ethnography of Full Contact, a San Francisco Bay Area boxing gym, I use Bourdieu’s theory of practice to illustrate how ‘rules of the game’ shape people’s perceptions, interactions and positions (capital). First, I show how the unwritten, unspoken rules of boxing as a field (its doxa) impact readings of bodies and bodily capital, readings that then have an impact on micro-level interactions and hierarchies at Full Contact. Second, I show the micro-level consequences of hysteresis – delays in the (...) realignment of habitus and field that result from change at the field level – on social interactions and hierarchies. Gender is at the core of my analysis, for it is both a fundamental part of my and others’ habitus, and a symbolic trait of significance in the hypermasculine doxa of boxing as a field. (shrink)

Since the era of deinstitutionalisation, many clinical approaches have emerged to enable the care and treatment of people suffering from mental illness. In recent years, the use of coercive approaches in the community (e.g., outpatient commitment or community treatment orders) has also increased internationally. Although nurses' role regarding these coercive approaches is central and significant, few empirical and theoretical writings have tackled this controversial nursing practice. The purpose of this paper is to analyse coercive nursing care through the lens of (...) French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of ‘societies of control’. Taking up Michel Foucault's work on disciplinary power, Deleuze explores how the move from the striated spaces of closed institutions to the smooth spaces of societies of control took place since the middle of the 20th century. According to Deleuze, the overall objective of ‘societies of control’ is no longer simply to govern deviant behaviour in closed environments (e.g., psychiatric hospitals and prisons) but to ensure a regime of unrelentless surveillance in the open spaces of our communities. (shrink)

Loïc Wacquant’s article ‘Homines in Extremis’ outlines five propositions about habitus that support a broader and richer use of Bourdieu’s famous concept. His article was a response to a new edited volume by Sanchez and Spencer under the title Fighting Scholars. In this article, I support Wacquant’s argument, but suggest that he undersells habitus as a topic of and tool for inquiry. I point to previous conversations about habitus and suggest that we may learn more about social phenomena by engaging (...) the relational aspects of habitus and the social aspects of the incorporation of habitus. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of lexical meaning, broadly along the lines of Cognitive Semantics (Langacker 1987a). Within the proposed model, all aspects of meaning are to be explained in terms of properties of ontologies in conceptual space, i.e. properties of content ontologies and schematic ontologies and construals which are imposed on the conceptual structures on the occasion of use. It is through the operations of construals on ontological structures that different readings of lexical expressions (...) arise. Lexical meanings are dynamic and sensitive to contextual demands, rather than fixed and stable. In a dynamic, usage-based model like this, polysemy and multiple readings emerge as a natural consequence of the human ability to think flexibly. Another more specific purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the usefulness of ontologies in linguistic research in general and semantic modelling in particular. (shrink)

In his newly updated version of The Anatomy of a Constitutional Law Case, Alan F. Westin provides a documentary portrait of historically important constitutional law case, 'Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, ' from its rise in a bargaining dispute in the steel industry during 1952 to the aftermath of its decision by the United States Supreme Court. Westin has added to his classic book additional materials and personal commentaries collected since the work was first published. The new information (...) covers what went on within the Truman administration, what went on within the Supreme Court when analyzing and resolving issues that come before it. Westin includes selections from transcripts, briefs and other official proceedings, adds notes describing each phase of the constitutional process, and a section of commentary and questions relating this case to others. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to shed light on how experiences of sensory perceptions in the domains of vision, smell, taste, and touch are recast into text and discourse in the genre of wine reviews. Because of the alleged paucity of sensory vocabularies, in particular in the olfactory domain, it is of particular interest to investigate what resources language has to offer in order to describe those experiences. We show that the main resources are, on the one hand, words (...) evoking properties that are applicable cross-modally and properties of objects that range over more than one domain, and on the other, vivid imagery that compares the characteristics of the wine with people, buildings, animals, and the hustle and bustle of market places and other events. The second goal is to account for the construals of the meanings of the expressions used in the recontextualization into written discourse in the light of their apparent flexibility across the descriptions of the sensory experiences. In contrast to a large body of the literature on sensory meanings in language, we argue that the descriptors of properties such as sharp, soft, lemon, and cherry used to describe a wine's qualities across the sensory domains are not polysemous synesthetic metaphors, but monosemous synesthetic metonymizations, more precisely zone activations. With regard to the imagery used, the construals represented cover both similes, metaphorizations and metonymizations proper. (shrink)

What does social justice require in contemporary societies? What are the requirements of social democracy? Who and where are the individuals and groups that can carry forward agendas for progressive social transformation? What are we to make of the so-called new social movements of the last thirty years? Is identity politics compatible with egalitarianism? Can cultural misrecognition and economic maldistribution be fought simultaneously? What of the heritage of Western Marxism is alive and dead? And how is current critical social theory (...) to approach these and other questions? Much of the most productive work done in recent social theory has revolved around such issues, in particular, around those concerning the relationship between the politics of recognition and the politics of distribution. After the intense theoretical focus over the last fifteen years or so on the issues of recognition politics—multiculturalism, multi-nationalism, identity politics, group-differentiated rights, the accommodation of difference, and so on—some social theorists have worried that attention has been diverted from important issues of distributive equality—systematic impoverishment, increasing material inequality, ‘structural’ unemployment, the growth of oligarchic power, global economic segmentation, and so on. While some critics seem to have adopted a blunt ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line of criticism,1 others have attempted to develop an overarching, integrative theoretical framework adequate to the diverse issues concerning both economic and cultural justice. For example, Axel Honneth proposes that a suitably developed and normatively robust theory of intersubjective recognition can adequately integrate an analysis of apparently diverse contemporary struggles: those for a just division of labor and hence, a fair distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as those for a culture free of identity-deforming disrespect and denigration. (shrink)

Since Mueller’s 1958 article calling Hegelian dialectics a “legend,” it has been fashionable to deny that Hegel used thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectics. But in truth, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit has 28 dialectics hidden on four outline levels, and The Philosophy of History has 10 more on three outline levels. In Phenomenology’s macrodialectic, Hegel’s nonsupernatural Spirit–all reality, everything in the universe, including man and artificial objects–advances from unconscious + union (thesis) to conscious + separation (antithesis) to a synthesis of conscious (from the antithesis) (...) + union (from the thesis). Previous interpretations of Phenomenology have missed this dialectic: they have assumed that Spirit’s journey begins with consciousness, whereas the journey actually begins in the primordial state of nature, before man arrives and provides Spirit with its Mind (the collective mind of man). Mind then misperceives itself as a multitude of separate alien “objects”–things other than itself. The macrodialectic and all other dialectics are based on Christianity’s Johannine separation-and-return mythology; all Hegelian dialectics separate from a concept in the thesis, going to that something’s opposite (antithesis), and then return to the thesis concept. Thus, in Hegel’s master-and-slave dialectic (God = master, man = slave), man advances from potential + freedom to actual + bondage (religiosity) to actual + freedom (atheism). Only Marx and Tillich understood Hegelian dialectics. Marx’s basic dialectic (one of four) saw history separating from and returning to Communism, going from communal ownership + poverty (primitive communism, or gens) to private ownership + wealth (slavery, feudalism, capitalism) to communal ownership + wealth (final communism). Tillich’s basic dialectic (one of many) separates from and returns to God, advancing from Yes to God + Yes to supernaturalism (theism) to No to God + No to supernaturalism (atheism) to Yes to God + No to supernaturalism (humanism: humanity is the nonsupernatural “God above the God of theism”). (shrink)

A key philosophical feature of Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is its use of fantasy to inspire a “recovery” of the actual or, in other words, a reawakening to the beauty of nature and the many possible ways of living in healthier ecological relation to the world. Though none of these ways is perfectly achieved, this pluralistic view is demonstrated in the various lifeways of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Ents. All of the positive (...) relationships embodied in the films—to trees, mountains, horses, and vegetable gardens—involve loving care and attention, receiving nourishment and livelihood without instrumentalization, or reducing nature to mere resource. The films also vividly display a variety of ugly and destructive ways of using the land to accrue power and wealth. These noxious ways, specifically because they actively destroy the lands that they use, always need more. They will thus eventually annihilate the beautiful ways of being if they are not actively resisted. Some of those who would rather be tending their own trees, gardens, or horses or even wandering in the wild forests must therefore turn their attention to struggle and resistance instead. This is a struggle full of grief, and at times even verging on despair, but it is marked by the refusal to give up hope. Indeed, what Jackson and Tolkien have to say about hope is as important in responding to the ecological crisis as anything they have to say about nature, inasmuch as they help to remind us that even in our own times, “there is still hope.”. (shrink)

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

ABSTRACTUsing authentic textual data from written personal narratives, we investigate how individuals with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Tourette Syndrome mediate their emotive and sensory experiences through language. Our study reveals that experiential comparisons of different kinds feature prominently as means of conveying such experiences. We identify a number of meaning domains that are recruited in correspondences between sources and targets, including motion and force, and detail how sensory modalities, bodily sensations, and emotions are exploited to evoke (...) emotive/sensory responses in readers. We conclude that comparative construal is a significant communicative strategy precisely because it elicits familiar situational meanings capable of evoking vicarious experiences in readers. By considering texts from actual uses of language in natural situations, our research sheds new light on how emotive/sensory... (shrink)

"Not only one of the best but also the most comprehensive treatment of Stoicism written in this century." --Times Literary Supplement.

L'oeuvre de Pinel a donné lieu à des évaluations tout à fait contradictoires : certains, comme Pierre Pichot, Kavka, Zilboorg et Gladys Swain ont estimé, en effet, que Pinel n’avait pas été sensible à l'influence de la psychologie « sensualiste » et « associationniste »; Pichot et Zilboorg pour en conclure que ce que souhaitait Pinel, c'était en fait une psychiatrie sans psychologie ; Kavka et Swain pour en déduire l’opposé. Mon intention est de montrer brièvement : l) que dans (...) l’esprit de l'Idéologie il n’y a pas fondamentalement de contradiction entre le physiologisme organiciste et la psychologie associationniste , ce qui explique la coexistence du traitement médical et du traitement moral chez Pinel dans le traitement des maladies mentales, y compris la folie raisonnante ; 2) que l’influence de Condillac sur Pinel est beaucoup plus grande qu’on ne le croit généralement ; et 3) que Pinel a décidément bien peu à voir avec la psychanalyse.Pinel's works have been evaluated in completely contradictory ways : some, like Pierre Pichot, Kavka, Zilboorg and Gladys Swain have indeed considered that Pinel was not sensitive to the influence of "sensualist" and "associationist" psychology. Pichot and Zilboorg conclude from this that what Pinel was hoping for was in fact psychiatry without psychology. Kavka and Swain deduce the opposite. 1) intended to show, briefly : I) that in the minds of the ideologists there is fundamentally no contradiction between organicist physiologism and association nist psychology , which explains the coexistence of medical treatment and moral treatment of mental illness, including mania without delirium, in Pinel's work ; 2) that Condillac's influence on Pinel is much greater than is generally believed ; and 3) that Pinel has really very little to do with psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Study objectives The emergency department (ED) provides an arena for patient enrolment into a variety of research studies even for non-critically ill patients. Given the types of illness, time constraints and sense of urgency that exists in the ED environment, concern exists about whether research subjects in the ED can provide full consent for participation. We sought to identify enrolled research subjects' perspectives on the informed consent process for research conducted in the ED. Methods This was a prospective, observational study (...) of ED subjects, 18 years or older, who had been approached to participate in research in the ED and who were judged to have decision-making capacity. Exclusions were critical illness and refusal to participate. Subjective were followed up within 1 week after enrolling using structured phone interviews by trained interviewers. Results During the study period, 229 eligible patients were approached to participate in both a target study and this study. Of these, 66% (150/229) agreed to participate in this study, at least to the extent of allowing us access to their demographic data. The study participant group was similar in terms of gender to this particular ED's patient population but had significantly more African-Americans and persons older than 45. Conclusion Despite rigorous time constraints and rapid throughput times, the majority of subjects who consented to research participation in the ED felt that they were sufficiently informed and had adequate time to decide to participate. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In the current study, we investigated the question of whether automatic interference effects found in the dot-perspective task (Samson, Apperly, Braithwaite, Andrews, & Bodley Scott, 2010) are the product of domain-specific perspective-taking processes or of domain-general “submentalizing” processes (Heyes, 2014). Previous attempts to address this question have done so by implementing inanimate (...) controls, such as arrows, as stimuli. The rationale for this is that submentalizing processes that respond to directionality should be engaged by such stimuli, whereas domain-specific perspective-taking mechanisms, if they exist, should not. These previous attempts have been limited, however, by the implied intentionality of the stimuli they have used (e.g. arrows), which may have invited participants to imbue them with perspectival agency. Drawing inspiration from “novel entity” paradigms from infant gaze-following research, we designed a version of the dot-perspective task that allowed us to precisely control whether a central stimulus was viewed as animate or inanimate. Across four experiments, we found no evidence that automatic “perspective-taking” effects in the dot-perspective task are modulated by beliefs about the animacy of the central stimulus. Our results also suggest that these effects may be due to the task-switching elements of the dot-perspective paradigm, rather than automatic directional orienting. Together, these results indicate that neither the perspective-taking nor the standard submentalizing interpretations of the dot-perspective task are fully correct. (shrink)

Dans les débats contemporains sur la justice, la vulnérabilité est porteuse d’un puissant contenu normatif et pratique. Elle offre des descriptions riches des expériences humaines prenant en considération des relations complexes et ambivalentes qui sont tues sous la seule norme de l’individualisme libéral. Il ne s’agit pas de rejeter l’importance d’une vie autonome, mais de repenser les cadres normatifs qui lui donnent un sens et de revoir les moyens de l’atteindre. La vulnérabilité, bien qu’elle se manifeste comme un idéal normatif (...) fort, révélateur de changements conceptuels et pratiques, n’est toutefois pas un concept univoque. Les chapitres qui composent cet ouvrage illustrent la diversité des significations et des contextes de vie auxquels renvoie la vulnérabilité. Faut-il s’en surprendre? Non, si l’on prend en compte que son usage comme idée phare de la théorie politique est encore récent, et qu’à ce titre sa signification et sa pratique sont encore l’objet de débats. (shrink)