Among all their sensations, agents need to distinguish between those caused by themselves and those caused by external causes. The ability to infer agency is particularly challenging under conditions of uncertainty. Within the predictive processing framework, this should happen through active control of prediction error that closes the action-perception loop. Here we use a novel, temporally-sensitive, behavioural proxy for prediction error to show that it is minimised most quickly when volatility is high and when participants report agency, regardless of the (...) accuracy of the judgement. We demonstrate broad effects of uncertainty on accuracy of agency judgements, movement, policy selection, and hypothesis switching. Measuring autism traits, we find differences in policy selection, sensitivity to uncertainty and hypothesis switching despite no difference in overall accuracy. (shrink)

I argue that we need to distinguish between three concepts of actual causation: total, path-changing, and contributing actual causation. I provide two lines of argument in support of this account. First, I address three thought experiments that have been troublesome for unified accounts of actual causation, and I show that my account provides a better explanation of corresponding causal intuitions. Second, I provide a functional argument: if we assume that a key purpose of causal concepts is to guide agency, we (...) are better off making a distinction between three concepts of actual causation. (shrink)

Hobbs (2010) introduced ‘clause-internal coherence’ (CIC) to describe inferences in, e.g., ‘A jogger was hit by a car,’ where the jogging is understood to have led to the car-hitting. Cohen & Kehler (2021) argue that well-known pragmatic tools cannot account for CIC, motivating an enrichment account familiar from discourse coherence research. An outstanding question is how to compositionally derive CIC from coherence relations. This paper takes strides in answering this question. It first provides experimental support for the existence of CIC (...) via offline evidence that attributive (non-)deverbal adjectives can trigger the same causal inferences within clauses that their predicative counterparts can trigger across clauses, albeit more weakly. To explain the experimental results, we use tools in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), which allows us to show that causal inferences can be derived in various ways, depending on whether deverbal adjectives are used attributively or predicatively. If the former, they are presupposition triggers and the coherence relations Elaboration/Continuation compete with Background; if the latter, Explanation/Result compete with Background. These different competitions -- cashed out in terms of interaction between default axioms -- correlate with the difference in the relative salience of the causal inferences. (shrink)

_Philosophical Delusion and its Therapy_ provides new foundations and methods for the revolutionary project of philosophical therapy pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The book vindicates this currently much-discussed project by reconstructing the genesis of important philosophical problems: With the help of concepts adapted from cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, the book analyses how philosophical reflection is shaped by pictures and metaphors we are not aware of employing and are prone to misapply. Through innovative case-studies on the genesis of classical problems about (...) the mind and perception, and on thinkers including Locke, Berkeley and Ayer, the book demonstrates how such autonomous habits of thought systematically generate unsound intuitions and philosophical delusions, whose clash with reality, or among each other, gives rise to ill-motivated but maddening problems. The book re-examines models of therapeutic philosophy, due to Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, and develops an approach that may let us overcome philosophical delusions and the problems they engender. In this way, the book explains where and why therapy in called for in philosophy, and develops techniques to carry it out. (shrink)

As the prevalence of conflict and fragility continue to rise around the world, research is increasingly heralded as a solution. However, current ethical guidelines for working in areas suffering from institutional and social fragility, insecurity or violent conflict have been heavily critiqued as highly abstract; focussed only on data collection; detached from the realities of academia in the Global South; and potentially extractive. This article seeks to respond to that assessment by spotlighting some of the most prevalent challenges researchers face (...) in the pursuit of ethical working practices. It explores the material and epistemic injustices that often shape and underpin research structures and relationships in these contexts. The paper draws on the authors’ experiences of research in conflict-affected and fragile contexts over the last fifteen years and on workshop discussions with researchers based in fragile and conflict-affected contexts conducted in Amman, Bogotá and Dhaka in 2019-2020. The paper works from the premise that achieving ethical research in fragile spaces is not dependent solely on activity at the site of research, but also on decisions made across the entire ecosystem of a research project. It therefore interrogates the full research landscape, from funding models, to research design, to dissemination plans and ethical gatekeeping. The paper critically reflects on inequities in the processes of knowledge production about conflict and fragility and the key ethical challenges that researchers encounter. It highlights the need for further guidance, support and accountability to ensure ethical research practices. (shrink)

Aristotle maintains that defining nous requires first defining its activity, which requires first having considered its objects, intelligible beings. This chapter is about the nature of these objects: what about them makes them intelligible? My principal proposals will be that what makes them intelligible is that they are separate or unmixed, and that because, insofar as they are intelligible, they are, in their essence, activity. I am not unaware that this makes it sound as though Aristotle takes intelligibility to consist (...) in some kind of nous. But he himself virtually says as much, when he claims that nous is the form of its objects (lit. εἶδος εἰδῶν); besides it is a result he is committed to by the doctrines that nous is intelligible and that there is something that intelligible objects all are in common; for the alternative, as he himself says, is to suppose that nous “will have something mixed-in, which makes it intelligible just like the rest.” The challenge, then, is not to steer clear of this result, but to make sense of it. My proposal will be that the key lies in realizing that and why Aristotle thinks intelligibility is a creature of nous. (shrink)

Aristotle's thesis in "Physics" I 8 is that a certain old and familiar problem about coming to be can only be solved with the help of the new account of the "principles" he has developed in "Physics" I 7. This is a strong thesis and the literature on the chapter does not quite do it justice; specifically, as things now stand we are left wondering why Aristotle should have found this problem so compelling in the first place. In this paper (...) I develop an interpretation which (I hope) will help to remedy this. I believe that Aristotle's problem about coming to be depends on a certain principle to the effect that "nothing can become what it already is" (it is this that is supposed to explain why τὸ ὄν cannot come to be ἐξ ὄντος -- cf. 191a30). The main innovation of the interpretation developed here is its suggestion that we understand this principle as a principle about kinds. So understood, the principle does not make the comparatively trivial point that nothing can become any individual it already is, but rather the more powerful and substantive point that nothing can become any kind of thing it already is. I argue that this is a point which Aristotle himself accepts and that this is why the problem about coming to be raises serious difficulties for him. I also discuss Aristotle's proposed solutions to this problem, explaining how each draws on his new account of the principles and why each is required for any full resolution of the difficulties the problem raises. In this way I hope to show how the interpretation developed here does justice to the very strong thesis with which Aristotle begins "Physics" I 8. I conclude briefly and somewhat speculatively with a suggestion as to why Aristotle might accept the principle on which I have suggested the problem turns. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects of employing a functional approach in order to improve our concept of actual causation. Claims of actual causation play an important role for a variety of purposes. In particular, they are relevant for identifying suitable targets for intervention, and they are relevant for our practices of ascribing responsibility. I argue that this gives rise to the challenge of purpose. The challenge of purpose arises when different goals demand adjustments of the concept that pull in opposing (...) directions. More specifically, I argue that a common distinction between certain kinds of preempted and preempting factors is difficult to motivate from an interventionist viewpoint. This indicates that an appropriately revised concept of actual causation would not distinguish between these two kinds of factors. From the viewpoint of retributivist responsibility, however, the distinction between preempted and preempting factors sometimes is important, which indicates that the distinction should be retained. (shrink)

How does experimental philosophy address philosophical questions and problems? That is: What projects does experimental philosophy pursue? What is their philosophical relevance? And what empirical methods do they employ? Answers to these questions will reveal how experimental philosophy can contribute to the longstanding ambition of placing philosophy on the ‘secure path of a science’, as Kant put it. We argue that experimental philosophy has introduced a new methodological perspective – a ‘meta-philosophical naturalism’ that addresses philosophical questions about a phenomenon by (...) empirically investigating how people think about this phenomenon. This chapter asks how this novel perspective can be successfully implemented: How can the empirical investigation of how people think about something address genuinely philosophical problems? And what methods – and, specifically, what methods beyond the questionnaire – can this investigation employ? We first review core projects of experimental philosophy and raise the question of their philosophical relevance. For ambitious answers, we turn to experimental philosophy’s most direct historical precursor, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and discuss empirical implementations of two of its research programmes that use experimental methods from psycholinguistics and corpus methods from the digital humanities. (shrink)

Aristotle introduces Physics I as an inquiry into principles; in this paper I ask where he argues for the position he reaches in I 7. Many hold that his definitive argument is found in the first half of I 7 itself; I argue that this view is mistaken: the considerations raised there do not form the basis of any self-standing argument for Aristotle's doctrine of principles, but rather play a subordinate role in a larger argument begun in earnest in I (...) 5. This larger argument stalls in I 6, which ends in aporta; I argue that the problem lies in the fact that Aristotle's reasoning in I 6 thoroughly undermines his reasoning in I 5 (on which I 6 is ostensibly supposed to build). I further argue that the materials necessary for resolving this problem, and thereby allowing the argument begun in I 5 to reach its proper conclusion, are supplied by the thesis that organizes the first half of I 7. Along the way I offer some remarks about Aristotle's doctrine of principles, arguing that it is about the principles of natural substance (as opposed to coming to be or change). I also offer some remarks about the thesis which organizes the first half of I 7.1 argue negatively that it is not anything like a preliminary statement of Aristotle's doctrine of principles. I argue positively that it reflects Aristotle's idea that there are two distinct kinds of effect change has upon things (one constructive, the other destructive). One of these effects lies behind Aristotle's reasoning in I 5, the other comes to the fore in 16; the achievement of the first half of I 7 is to reconcile these seemingly competing conceptions by finding a place for them both in a unified account of coming to be and its subjects. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell's work is distinctive not only in its importance to philosophy but also for its remarkable interdisciplinary range. Cavell is read avidly by students of film, photography, painting, and music, but especially by students of literature, for whom Cavell offers major readings of Thoreau, Emerson, Shakespeare, and others. In this first book-length study of Cavell's writings, Michael Fischer examines Cavell's relevance to the controversies surrounding poststructuralist literary theory, particularly works by Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, (...) and Stanley Fish. Throughout his study, Fischer focuses on skepticism, a central concern of Cavell's multifaceted work. Cavell, following J. L. Austin and Wittgenstein, does not refute the radical epistemological questioning of Descartes, Hume, and others, but rather characterizes skepticism as a significant human possibility or temptation. As presented by Fischer, Cavell's accounts of both external-world and other-minds skepticism share significant affinities with deconstruction, a connection overlooked by contemporary literary theorists. Fischer follows Cavell's lead in examining how different genres address the problems raised by skepticism and goes on to show how Cavell draws on American and English romanticism in fashioning a response to it. He concludes by analyzing Cavell's remarks about current critical theory, focusing on Cavell's uneasiness with some of the conclusions reached by its practitioners. Fischer shows that Cavell's insights, grounded in powerful analyses of Descartes, Hume, and Wittgenstein, permit a fresh view of Derrida, Miller, de Man, and Fish. The result is not only a revealing characterization of deconstruction but a much-needed and insightful introduction to Cavell's rich but difficult oeuvre. (shrink)

Introduction: "meaning in life and death : our stories" -- John Martin Fischer and Anthony B rueckner, "Why is death bad?", Philosophical studies, vol. 50, no. 2 (September 1986) -- "Death, badness, and the impossibility of experience," Journal of ethics -- John Martin Fischer and Daniel Speak, "Death and the psychological conception of personal identity," Midwest studies in philosophy, vol. 24 -- "Earlier birth and later death : symmetry through thick and thin," Richard Feldman, Kris McDaniel, Jason R. (...) Raibley, eds., The good, the right, life and death (Aldershot : Ashgate Publishing, 2006) -- "Why immortality is not so bad," International journal of philosophical studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (September 1994) -- John Martin Fischer and Ruth Curl, "Philosophical models of immortality in science fiction," in George Slusser et. al., eds., Immortal engines : life extension and immortality in science fiction and fantasy (Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, 1996) -- "Epicureanism about death and immortality," Journal of ethics, vol. 10, no. 4 -- "Stories," Midwest studies in philosophy, vol. 20 -- "Free will, death, and immortality : the role of narrative," Philosophical papers (Special issue : meaning in life) volume 34, number 3, November 2005 -- "Stories and the meaning of life," revised and expanded version of "A reply to Pereboom, Zimmerman, and Smith," part of a book symposium on John Martin Fischer, my way : essays on moral responsibility, philosophical books, vol. 47, no. 3. (shrink)

Anxiety disorders are one of the most prevalent mental disorders globally, and 63% of those diagnoses are of women. Although widely acknowledged across health disciplines and news and social media outlets, the majority of attention has left assumptions underlying women's anxiety in the twenty-first century unquestioned. Drawing on my own experiences of anxiety, I will the explore both concept and diagnosis in the Western world. Reflecting on my own experiences through a critical feminist lens, I will investigate the construction of (...) anxiety as mental disorder in the context of neoliberal late-stage capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and biomedical psychiatry. Tracing the postpositivistic foundations of anxiety, as well as the historical and ongoing medicalization and pathologization of women, I will critically consider the sociopolitical implications of constructing anxiety as biomedical disorder. Assumptions underlying mental health will be explored within the context of the construction, experience, and operationalization of gender and the way gender intersects with diverse positionalities, power, knowledge, and neoliberal governance. Weaving the voices of women poets with the biomedical language of disorder, this critical-realist inquiry will explore my anxiety as it relates to the epidemic levels of anxiety among other women, and the late-stage capitalist world within which anxiety flourishes. (shrink)

Musical life became disrupted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many musicians and venues turned to online alternatives, such as livestreaming. In this study, three livestreamed concerts were organized to examine separate, yet interconnected concepts—agency, presence, and social context—to ascertain which components of livestreamed concerts facilitate social connectedness. Hierarchical Bayesian modeling was conducted on 83 complete responses to examine the effects of the manipulations on feelings of social connectedness with the artist and the audience. Results showed that in concert (...) 1, where half of the participants were allowed to vote for the final song to be played, this option did not result in the experience of more agency. Instead, if their preferred song was played (regardless of voting ability) participants experienced greater connectedness to the artist. In concert 2, participants who attended the concert with virtual reality headsets experienced greater feelings of physical presence, as well as greater feelings of connectedness with the artist, than those that viewed a normal YouTube livestream. In concert 3, attendance through Zoom led to greater experience of social presence, but predicted less connectedness with the artist, compared to a normal YouTube livestream. Crucially, a greater negative impact of COVID-19 (e.g., loneliness) predicted feelings of connectedness with the artist, possibly because participants fulfilled their social needs with this parasocial interaction. Examining data from all concerts suggested that physical presence was a predictor of connectedness with both the artist and the audience, while social presence only predicted connectedness with the audience. Correlational analyses revealed that reductions in loneliness and isolation were associated with feelings of shared agency, physical and social presence, and connectedness to the audience. Overall, the findings suggest that in order to reduce feelings of loneliness and increase connectedness, concert organizers and musicians could tune elements of their livestreams to facilitate feelings of physical and social presence. (shrink)

Over the past twenty-five years, thirty-seven states and the US Congress have passed mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) parity laws to secure nondiscriminatory insurance coverage for MH/SUD services in the private health insurance market and through certain public insurance programs. However, in the intervening years, litigation has been brought by numerous parties alleging violations of insurance parity. We examine the critical issues underlying these legal challenges as a framework for understanding the areas in which parity enforcement is lacking, (...) as well as ongoing areas of ambiguity in the interpretation of these laws. We identified all private litigation involving federal and state parity laws and extracted themes from a final sample of thirty-seven lawsuits. The primary substantive topics at issue include the scope of services guaranteed by parity laws, coverage of certain habilitative therapies such as applied behavioral analysis for autism spectrum disorders, credentialing standards for MH/SUD providers, determinations regarding the medical necessity of MH/SUD services, and the application of nonquantitative treatment limitations under the 2008 federal parity law. Ongoing efforts to achieve nondiscriminatory insurance coverage for MH/SUDs should attend to the major issues subject to private legal action as important areas for facilitating and monitoring insurer compliance. (shrink)

Decolonizing the Body explores the traumatic physical and emotional effects of colonization and systemic racism on the body and mind. Written by a woman of color for women of color, it offers body-centered somatic practices to free women from internalized oppression, so they can reclaim confidence, dignity, and self-worth.

A wide range of countries decided to go into lockdown to contain the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic of 2020, a setting separating people and restricting their movements. We investigated how musicians dealt with this sudden restriction in mobility. Responses of 234 people were collected. The majority of respondents (95%) resided in Belgium or the Netherlands. Results indicated a decrease of 79% of live music making in social settings during lockdown compared with before lockdown. In contrast, an increase of 264% was (...) demonstrated for online joint music making. However, results showed that most respondents were largely or even completely unaccustomed with specialized platforms for online joint music making (e.g., JamKazam, Jamulus). Respondents reported to mostly use well-known video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Skype when playing together virtually. However, when such video-conferencing platforms were used, they were often not employed for synchronized playing and were generally reported to insufficiently deal with latency issues. Furthermore, respondents depending on music making as their main source of income explored online real-time methods significantly more than those relying on other income sources. Results also demonstrated an increase of 93% in the use of alternative remote joint music-making methods (e.g., recording parts separately and subsequently circulating these digital recordings). All in all, results of this study provide a more in-depth view on joint music making during the first weeks of lockdown induced by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and demonstrate users’ perceptions of performance and usability of online real-time platforms as well as alternative methods for musical interaction. (shrink)

The authors of the feature article argue against implied consent in all episiotomy cases, but allow that opt-out consent might be appropriate in limited circumstances.1 However, they do not indicate how clinicians should assess whether the pregnant person is capable of consenting in this way during an obstetric emergency. This commentary will focus on how capacity should be determined during these circumstances, suggest next steps for clinicians if capacity is deemed uncertain or absent, and discuss the appropriate role for opt-out (...) consent in labour. Previous studies investigating the extent to which pregnant persons retain decision-making capacity during labour have shown poor recall, a component of capacity, about consent processes during obstetric emergency procedures in 14%–49% of cases.1 2 As the feature article acknowledges, this does not mean that pregnant persons should be assumed to lack decision-making capacity during labour. Although pain, labour intensity, exhaustion and medications can make consenting processes during labour more difficult and it is possible that these factors will result in the impaired ability of the pregnant person to make informed and voluntary decisions about treatment options, this possibility of impaired capacity should not be taken as the expected outcome nor should it be used as an excuse to skip consenting procedures.1 2 The default to treat labouring patients as able to make their own decisions still stands, although signs that a person lacks …. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel account of nature and genesis of some philosophical problems, which vindicates a new approach to an arguably central and extensive class of such problems: The paper develops the Wittgensteinian notion of ‘philosophical pictures’ with the help of some notions adapted from metaphor research in cognitive linguistics and from work on unintentional analogical reasoning in cognitive psychology. The paper shows that adherence to such pictures systematically leads to the formulation of unwarranted claims, ill-motivated problems, and pointless (...) theories. To do so, the paper proceeds from a case-study on a lastingly influential development in early modern philosophy: the adoption of the doctrine of secondary qualities, and its principal consequences. The findings motivate a new approach to an arguably extensive and important class of philosophical problems: to the problems we raise in the grip of philosophical pictures. (shrink)

Kelsey Lucyk analyzes how the media and the institution of sport have entrenched certain ideals about masculinity meanwhile reinforcing homophobic attitudes towards gender roles in sports. This article focusses primarily on analyzing Canadian sports and makes use of the concept of muscular Christianity to explain hegemonic masculinity as found in the Canadian institution of sport.

Abstract:There is a storied history of Native and Indigenous feminisms on Turtle Island (North America). We are fortunate that many of those stories birthed from an ancestral tradition of storytelling and survivance were captured in the canonical feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color. In celebration and commemoration of 40 years since This Bridge was first published we visit with three of the books original Native and Indigenous contributors–Chrystos, Max Wolf Valerio, and Jo Carrillo–to (...) recount old as well as new stories as they explore what Native and Indigenous feminisms mean to them and their continued work for Indigenous visibility. The conversation provides a unique intergenerational vision for conceptualizing contemporary Native and Indigenous feminisms all the while building upon the legacy and path set forth by amazing Native and Indigenous women trailblazers. (shrink)

Although the seasons have been a perennial theme in literature and art, their significance for philosophy and environmental theory has remained largely unexplored. This pioneering book demonstrates the ways in which inquiry into the seasons reveals new and illuminating perspectives for philosophy, environmental thought, anthropology, cultural studies, aesthetics, poetics, and literary criticism. The Seasons opens up new avenues for research in these fields and provides a valuable resource for teachers and students of the environmental humanities. The innovative essays herein address (...) a wide range of seasonal cultures and geographies, from the traditional Western model of the four seasons––spring, summer, fall, and winter––to the Indigenous seasons of Australia and the Arctic. Exemplifying the crucial importance of interdisciplinary research, The Seasons makes a compelling case for the relevance of the seasons to our daily lives, scientific understanding, diverse cultural practices, and politics. (shrink)

Many autistic behaviours can rightly be classified as adaptive, but why these behaviours differ from adaptive neurotypical behaviours in the same environment requires explanation. I argue that predictive processing accounts best explain why autistic people engage different adaptive responses to the environment and, further, account for evidence left unexplained by the social motivation theory.

I revisit my article, “Why Immortality Is Not So Bad,” in which I argued that Bernard Williams’s thesis that immortality would necessarily be boring for any human being is false. Here I point out various ways in which Williams’s treatment of the issues has tilted and distorted the subsequent debates.

Kant war uberzeugt, dass er das "Wissen aufheben" musste, "um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen". Wie sich der philosophisch begrundete "Vernunftglaube" aber zum Offenbarungsglauben verhalt, ist eine Frage, die bis heute Nachdenkens bedarf. Der Band vergegenwartigt Uberlegungen von der Stoa bis in unsere Zeit. Er verdeutlicht: Wo Philosophie die Fragen der Religion vergisst oder missachtet, verliert sie Rang und Tiefe. Wo religioser Glaube die Beziehung zum philosophischen Fragen vernachlassigt, wird er verlieren und scheitern. Wo jedoch etwas philosophisch gedachtes Absolutes die (...) Beziehung zur Geschichtlichkeit des menschlichen Lebens aus dem Blick verliert und die faktische Absolutheit im Geschichtlichen nicht zu verstehen versucht, verliert die Philosophie ihre Kernaufgaben aus dem Blick. (shrink)

There isn’t one conversation about animal ethics. Instead, there are several important ones that are scattered across many disciplines. This volume both surveys the field of animal ethics and draws professional philosophers, graduate students, and undergraduates more deeply into the discussions that are happening outside of philosophy departments. To that end, the volume contains more nonphilosophers than philosophers, explicitly inviting scholars from other fields—such as animal science, ecology, economics, psychology, law, environmental science, and applied biology, among others—to bring their own (...) disciplinary resources to bear on matters that affect animals. -/- The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics is composed of 44 chapters, all appearing in print here for the first time, and organized into the following six sections: -/- I. Thinking About Animals -/- II. Animal Agriculture and Hunting -/- III. Animal Research and Genetic Engineering -/- IV. Companion Animals -/- V. Wild Animals: Conservation, Management, and Ethics -/- VI. Animal Activism -/- The chapters are brief, and they have been written in a way that is accessible to serious undergraduate students, regardless of their field of study. The volume covers everything from animal cognition to the state of current fisheries, from genetic modification to intersection animal activism. It is a resource designed for anyone interested in the moral issues that emerge from human interactions with animals. (shrink)

“Excited Delirium Syndrome” (ExDS) is a controversial diagnosis. The supposed syndrome is sometimes considered to be a potential cause of death. However, it has been argued that its sole purpose is to cover up excessive police violence because it is mainly used to explain deaths of individuals in custody. In this paper, we examine the epistemic conditions giving rise to the controversial diagnosis by discussing the relation between causal hypotheses, evidence, and data in forensic medicine. We argue that the practitioners’ (...) social context affects causal inquiry through background assumptions that enter inquiry at multiple stages. This analysis serves to better understand the wide usage of the controversial diagnosis of ExDS. (shrink)

The HRAF databases, eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology, each containing large corpora of curated text subject-indexed at the paragraph-level by anthropologists, were designed to facilitate rapid retrieval of information. The texts describe social and cultural life in past and present societies around the world. As of the spring of 2018, eHRAF contains almost three million indexed “paragraph” units from over 8000 documents describing over 400 societies and archaeological traditions. This chapter first discusses concrete problems of scale resulting from large (...) numbers of complex elements retrieved by any given search. Second, we discuss potential and partial solutions that resolve these problems to advance research, whether based on specific hypotheses, classification or identifying and evaluating embedded patterns of relationships. Third, we discuss new kinds of research possibilities that can be further advanced, have not yet been successfully attempted, or have not even been considered using anthropological data because of scale and complexity of achieving a result. (shrink)

This paper addresses a dichotomy in the attitudes of some clinicians and bioethicists regarding whether there is a moral difference between deactivating a cardiac pacemaker in a highly dependent patient at the end of life, as opposed to standard cases of withdrawal of treatment. Although many clinicians hold that there is a difference, some bioethicists maintain that the two sorts of cases are morally equivalent. The author explores one potential morally significant point of difference between pacemakers and certain other life-sustaining (...) treatments: specifically, that the former are biofixtures, which become part of the patient in a way that the latter do not. The concept of the pacemaker as biofixture grants pacemakers a unique moral status that gives reason to treat a pacemaker the same as other parts of the patient that are necessary to sustain life. The author employs this biofixture analysis to affirm the intuition that deactivating a pacemaker in a highly dependent patient at the end of life is, in moral terms, more analogous to active euthanasia than it is to standard cases of withdrawal of treatment. The paper concludes with consideration of potential implications for further implantable medical technologies, such as ventricular assist devices and total artificial hearts. (shrink)

Life-saving health resources like organs for transplant and experimental medications are persistently scarce. How ought we, morally speaking, to ration these resources? Many hold that, in any morally acceptable allocation scheme, the young should to some extent be prioritized over the old. Govind Persad, Alan Wertheimer and Ezekiel Emanuel propose a multi-principle allocation scheme called the Complete Lives System, according to which persons roughly between 15 and 40 years old get priority over younger children and older adults, other things being (...) equal. They defend this ‘modified youngest first’ principle in part by appealing to the greater social investment that has been made in 15-year-olds than in younger children. Ruth Tallman has proposed a distinctive defense of modified youngest first, one that appeals not at all to social investment. We find this defense wanting. Tallman’s argument depends on the idea, which we try to show to be implausible, that allocations should maximize the number of people in the midst of a possibly complete life who actually complete their lives. Moreover, Tallman does not justify the priority modified youngest first gives 15-year-olds over, for example, 5-year-olds. Tallman fails to dispel a serious shortcoming with modified youngest first: its fundamental unfairness to pre-adolescents. (shrink)

Erkennen wir die Welt so, wie sie wirklich ist oder konstruieren wir die Wirklichkeit, in der wir leben? Der einführende Artikel vom Herausgeber und der Beitrag von E. von Glasersfeld wollen zeigen, dass diese Streitfrage sich durch die ganze abendländische Philosophiegeschichte zieht. In dem Sammelband wird der Streit auf der Grundlage alter und neuer Argumente noch einmal ausgefochten. Stützen sich die einen auf die wissenschaftliche Erforschung unseres Gehirns und unserer kognitiven Fähigkeiten, um ihre These der Nichterkennbarkeit einer von uns unabhängig (...) existierenden Welt zu untermauern, so meinen die anderen, diese Argumentation sei zirkulär, ja, habe der radikale Konstruktivismus recht, so sei er widersprüchlich und damit falsch. Hinter dem konstruktivistischen Paradigma verberge sich zudem letztlich ein naiver Naturalismus, der glaubt, mit Hilfe wissenschaftlicher Forschungen allein erkenntnistheoretische Aussagen machen zu können, so die Argumentation von H.J. Wendel. Hingegen sind es vor allem Literatur- und Sozialwissenschaftler, die in etwas abgewandelter Form den Konstruktivismus durchaus als wissenschaftliches Paradigma akzeptieren. So verteidigt Wolfgang Frindte einen Sozialen Konstruktivismus, der die Auffassung vertritt, wir erzeugten unsere Wirklichkeit zusammen im Diskurs. S.J. Schmidt geht davon aus, dass soziale Systeme über Wirklichkeitsmodelle verfügen, die in der gesellschaftlichen Evolution über die Konstitution und Thematisierung für essentiell gehaltener Unterscheidungen entstehen. Verschiedene Beiträge beziehen sich explizit auf die Theorie von Humberto Maturana. Busse, Locker und Nüse erörtern in ihren Aufsätzen besonders die Problematik, die sich aus dem Konzept der Autopoiese und der daraus resultierenden Geschlossenheit des zentralen Nervensystems ergeben. O. Breidbach nimmt auf die biologische Forschung Bezug und zieht den es noch viel zu verfrüht ist, um auf dem heutigen Kenntnisstand bereits Aussagen über unsere Erkenntnisfähigkeit zu machen. Einige Beiträge befassen sich mehr mit den praktischen Auswirkungen konstruktivistischer Annahmen z.B. in der Familientherapie (Stierlin) oder in der Lerntheorie (Simon). Von Interesse sind auch die Beiträge von Hans Geisslinger, die beschreiben, wie sich unsere Wirklichkeit mit Hilfe einiger weniger Parameter verändern lässt. (shrink)

My intention in writing this article is to illustrate how I engage with the process of orienting to the meaning of pedagogy by inquiring into several moments in my life where I am able to fully experience its um. I begin this phenomenological inquiry by plunging into my experience on a teeter-totter as a young child, and use the sense of ups and downs as a metaphor for the tensions of weight and weightlessness, comfort and challenge that characterize the pedagogical (...) world. I then attempt to gain a more perceptual understanding of pedagogy by narrowing in on the suspended moment, which becomes a metaphor for the pedagogical moments of support, vulnerability, and opening that emanate from this tension. In these particular moments, I am able to dwell in the spaces in-between my everyday ups and downs and become existentially conscious and pedagogically connected to the world around me. By metaphorically connecting each of these moments to my teeter-totter experience, I illustrate how embracing the tensions of life and allowing myself to dwell in a suspended moment, deepens my perceptual understanding of pedagogy and influences my current pedagogical practice as a new teacher and master’s student. (shrink)

Goal-directed spatial decision making video games combine spatial mapping, memory, and reward; all of which can involve hippocampal excitation through suppression of an inhibitory neurotransmitter, γ-aminobutyric acid. In this study, GABA was measured before and after 30 min of video game play within a voxel around the hippocampus. It was predicted that all participants would experience a decrease in GABA during gaming as a result of in-game rewards; and, those who were most competitive with the goal-directed spatial decision making game (...) would display lower hippocampal GABA concentrations after gaming. Those who were not competitive, because they were too skilled or not skilled enough, would demonstrate higher hippocampal GABA concentrations after gaming. While there were no significant differences in hippocampal GABA before and after gaming for gamers and non-gamers alike, there was a significant quadratic regression between performance on a spatial working memory task and post-gaming hippocampal GABA concentrations. (shrink)