Lloyd Wells' four examples of loss of self challenge both philosophers and clinicians to ponder just what it is that has been lost in such cases. If a self has been lost, who lost it? And how can personal identity be so insecure that it can be lost in so many different ways? Empiricist thinkers, both Western and Eastern, have questioned the very existence of a self; much recent thought about the nature of the self has converged on notions that (...) it is not a substantial reality, but a narrative, the product of the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives so that we can knit together our experiences into a continuous plot. Owen Flanagan and Valerie Hardcastle have already brought one version of this theory to bear on one of Wells' cases and James Phillips explores the capacity of narrative theory to account for each of these cases in an accompanying essay. In this essay, I challenge the adequacy of narrative theories of the self in general and their application to these particular cases. The details of Wells' cases highlight the limitations of narrative theories to discursive, secondary process thought by directing attention to the richer and more expressively forceful resources of metaphor and nondiscursive forms of symbolism. Narrative unity or continuity is no guarantee against experiences of the loss of self. The monological character of narrative masks the sociality of the self, the ways in which each individual self is constituted and threatened by interactions with other selves. I argue for the power of drama, opera, music, dance, and spatial forms of symbolism to cope with the diversity of what Flanagan has dubbed the multiplex self, (Flanagan 1994) especially when narrative fails. Language and narrative certainly play a crucial role in human self-consciousness. But human imagination and art command other resources as well and a theory that acknowledges their contributions can accept and incorporate the insights of narrative theories without confining itself to the limitations of story telling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mourning or MelancholiaJ. Melvin Woody (bio)Keywords“objective correlative”, depression, grief, cognitive-affective dissonanceIn a celebrated and controversial critical essay, T.S. Eliot faults Shakespeare's Hamlet on the grounds that the playwright has not provided sufficient “objective correlative” for the moods of his melancholy Dane. For lack of the “complete adequacy of the external to the emotion” that he finds in Shakespeare's other tragedies, Eliot judges that “the play is almost (...) certainly an artistic failure” (Eliot 1921, 101, 98). Dr. Bailey's explanation of Colin's melancholy provokes parallel critical reflections. When his initial expectation that he will discover the cause of depression in traumatic battle experiences in Iraq proves groundless, he finds that cause, instead, in the very absence of traumatic experiences. I cannot but wonder whether the lack of opportunity to prove heroic provides an adequate objective correlative for Colin's mood.To be sure, persistent sadness cannot be regarded as pathological if adequate reasons for sadness also persist. There lies the difference between mourning and melancholia. As Freud remarks at the outset of his comparison of the two, “although grief involves grave departures from the normal attitudes to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a morbid condition and hand the mourner over to medical treatment.” Even though the mourner displays almost all the same symptoms as melancholia, where there is a recognizable objective correlative, we look upon any interference “as inadvisable or even harmful... because we know so well how to explain it... this attitude does not seem to us pathological” (Freud 1963, 165). Neither the absence of battlefield trauma nor the lack of heroic opportunities seems sufficient occasion for Colin's sadness. But (perhaps) that very explanatory insufficiency justifies regarding his plight as pathological, as a case of melancholia rather than mourning and therefore as warranting psychiatric interference. Insofar as that is true, the self-criticisms engendered by his trauma-free stint in Iraq might best be regarded as an effect rather than cause of his depression. Freud found this sort of “fall in self esteem” that “finds utterance in self reproaches and self revilings” to be the singular feature that distinguishes melancholia from mourning.” In the clinical picture of melancholia, dissatisfaction with the self on moral grounds is far the most outstanding feature” (Freud 1963, 167, 169).Anyone who has dealt with depression will recognize such feelings as standard symptoms. The DSM- IV cites “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt” as one of the defining criteria of a major depressive episode and “low self esteem” as a diagnostic criterion of dysthymic disorder.Freud speculated that the melancholic's attacks upon himself actually aim at an abandoned but internalized love object. But he acknowledged [End Page 245] that his speculation was based on “a small number of cases the psychogenic nature of which was indisputable,” and that some cases of melancholia suggest more somatic causes. Recent psychiatry has veered sharply toward somatic causes and cures, although the psychogenic nature of depression associated with traumatic stress is generally acknowledged. But in the absence of trauma and stress, as in Colin's case, a somatic account seems more plausible than supposing that the depression is triggered by that very absence.The contrast between somatic and psychological sources of depression threatens to prove distracting, however. We are not faced with a simple either/or here, and however we sort out the genetic, environmental, somatic, and psychological sources of depression in any given case, the depression itself is always a profoundly incarnate experience. Moreover, what seems of especial pertinence to this case, the loss of self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness and guilt seem to prevail regardless of the particular balance of causes of the depression and can, therefore, be regarded as characteristic symptoms rather than explanatory causes of the mood. And the blackness of melancholy typically extends well beyond such negative self-judgments to cast a shadow on the depressive's whole world and future.Epistemology and pathology converge in the clinical diagnosis of depression. Depression seems pathological insofar as it seems unreasonable in light of the circumstances as we apprehend them. Of course, the person who is depressed... (shrink)

To be free is to escape all limitations and obstacles—or so we think at first. But if we probe further, we discover that freedom embraces its own necessities, a set of conditions without which it could not exist. _Freedom's Embrace_ explores these necessities of freedom. J. Melvin Woody surveys competing conceptions of freedom and traces debates about the nature and reality of freedom to confusions about knowledge, humanity, and nature that are rooted in some of the most fundamental (...) assumptions of modern Western thought. The preemption of freedom as an exclusively human privilege with all nature relegated to mechanical necessity is a fatal error that renders both humanity and nature equally unintelligible. What distinguishes human beings from other animals is not freedom but the use of symbols, which vastly extends the range of available options and enables us to envision freedom as an ideal by which customary institutions and norms may be judged and transformed. By carefully surveying its necessary conditions and limitations, Woody reconciles the salient competing conceptions of freedom and weaves them together into a richer and broader theory that resolves old controversies and opens the way toward an ethics of freedom that can meet the challenges of relativism and nihilism that arise from recognizing the historicity and malleability of culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 155-157 [Access article in PDF] Dispensing With the Dynamic Conscious J. Melvin Woody FREUD'S THEORY OF UNCONSCIOUS mental processes depends upon an extremely narrow conception of consciousness. O'Brien and Jureidini rightly focus attention on the limitations of that conception and argue that it is time to dispense with the resultant conception of the unconscious. Of course, scientists often give narrower, technical (...) meanings to ordinary words like matter and space, but in the midst of all the recently revived psychological and philosophical debates about the nature and existence of consciousness, the persistence of Freud's way of distinguishing the two can only breed confusion. Attempts to shore up or defend the dynamic unconscious of psychoanalytic theory by appeal to discussions of unconscious rules and processes in cognitive psychology attests to the potential for confusion thus spawned. In an early issue of this journal, James Phillips and I charted the differences between the neurophysiologic, cognitive, and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious (1995). Like O'Brien and Jureidini, we concluded that the evidence of a cognitive unconscious does not support the postulation of a dynamic unconscious. O'Brien and Jureidini go further in arguing that the two are incompatible. Elsewhere, I have argued that the Freudian unconscious is a hermeneutic myth, the result of a misunderstanding of the nature of interpretation (2003). Because I am in substantial agreement with them and already on record with arguments convergent with theirs on both these fronts, I will focus here on the source of confusion in the dynamic conception of consciousness and on their illuminating exploration of its limitations.Toward the end of his 1915 essay, "The Unconscious," Freud explains that the difference between conscious and unconscious thought hinges on the role of language: What we could permissibly call the conscious idea of the object can now be split up into the idea of the word (verbal idea) and the idea of the thing (concrete idea)... It strikes us all at once that now we know what is the difference between a conscious and an unconscious idea. The two are not, as we supposed, different records of the same content situate in different parts of the mind, nor yet different functional states of cathexis in the same part; but the conscious idea comprises the concrete idea plus the verbal idea corresponding to it, whilst the unconscious idea is that of the thing alone.... Now too, we are in a position to state precisely what it is that repression denies to the rejected idea in the transference neuroses—namely, translation of the idea into words which are to remain attached to the object. The idea which is not put into words or the mental act which has not received hyper-cathexis then remains in the unconscious in a state of repression. (pp. 201-202) This restriction of consciousness to verbal thought processes is not simply an innocent stipulative definition. It has perniciously misleading implications. For one thing, as Antonio Damasio points out in The Feeling of What Happens, it means that all other animals are unconscious for want of any language. Damasio recalls that when he asked what produces consciousness while he was a medical student, [End Page 155] Curiously, I always got the same answer; language did it. I was told that creatures without language were limited to their uncognizant existence but not we fortunate humans because language made us know... The answer sounded too easy, far too simple for something which I then imagined unconquerably complex, and also quite implausible, given what I saw when I went to the zoo. (Damasio 1999, 107) As Damasio notes, the trouble with explaining consciousness as a function of language is not just that it denies awareness of experience to all other animals, thus perpetuating the Cartesian view of animals as automatons, but that for all its complexities, language is far too simple to encompass the full complex range of conscious experience. O'Brien and Jureidini do well to highlight how much of our conscious experience never finds linguistic expression, indeed, how much experience seems to... (shrink)

One must freely admit that there is here a sort of circle from which, so it seems, there is no way of escape. In order the order of efficient causes, we assume that we are free so that we may think of ourselves as subject to moral laws in the order of ends. And we think of ourselves as subject to these laws because we have attributed to ourselves freedom of the will. Freedom and self-legislation of the will are both (...) autonomy and are hence reciprocal concepts.Post-traumatic stress disorder stems from an overwhelming experience of complete helplessness. The traumatized victim has utterly lost all sense of agency. He or she may well dissociate from that helpless, passive self and become... (shrink)

A critical commentary on Hegel’s entire system built around the structure of the Encyclopedia would be a welcome addition to the English literature. Findlay’s Hegel: A Re-Examination provides a synoptic overview of Hegel’s philosophy, but its scope does not permit close attention to Hegel’s argument. At first glance, Inwood’s Hegel seems to address the need for a more detailed commentary. In a hefty volume of over 500 pages, which was written for Routledge & Kegan Paul’s series on “The Arguments of (...) the Philosophers,” Inwood sets out to tackle Hegel’s system as a whole. (shrink)

As rector of the Gymnasium at Nuremburg between 1808 and 1811, Hegel attempted to introduce his young students to his system of philosophy in courses spread over three years. Karl Rosenkranz edited Hegel’s course notes and published the results under the title, Philosophische Propaedeutic in his 1840 edition of Hegel’s collected works. English translations of portions of the Propaedeutic by W. T. Harris were published in the 1860’s in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy and have since appeared in Jacob Loewenberg’s (...) Hegel Selections. A. V. Miller has now reworked and completed Harris’s translation on the basis of subsequent, somewhat expanded German editions. The editors introduce the volume with a helpful account of Hegel’s pedagogical practice and his thoughts about how to introduce philosophy to young students of high school age. They have wisely ignored the chronological ordering of the most recent German edition. Instead, they present the courses in the order in which Hegel taught them, hoping thereby to provide a short, but comprehensive introduction to Hegel’s system in the very form and format he employed himself. (shrink)

_The Undiscovered Dewey_ explores the profound influence of evolution and its corresponding ideas of contingency and uncertainty on John Dewey's philosophy of action, particularly its argument that inquiry proceeds from the uncertainty of human activity. Dewey separated the meaningfulness of inquiry from a larger metaphysical story concerning the certainty of human progress. He then connected this thread to the way in which our reflective capacities aid us in improving our lives. Dewey therefore launched a new understanding of the modern self (...) that encouraged intervention in social and natural environments but which nonetheless demanded courage and humility because of the intimate relationship between action and uncertainty. Melvin L. Rogers explicitly connects Dewey's theory of inquiry to his religious, moral, and political philosophy. He argues that, contrary to common belief, Dewey sought a place for religious commitment within a democratic society sensitive to modern pluralism. Against those who regard Dewey as indifferent to moral conflict, Rogers points to Dewey's appreciation for the incommensurability of our ethical commitments. His deep respect for modern pluralism, argues Rogers, led Dewey to articulate a negotiation between experts and the public so that power did not lapse into domination. Exhibiting an abiding faith in the reflective and contestable character of inquiry, Dewey strongly engaged with the complexity of our religious, moral, and political lives. (shrink)

GIRL IN MUSEUM: It restates the negativeness of the universe, the hideous lonely emptiness of existence, nothingness, the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void, with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

The main thesis of this dissertation is that John Dewey's conception of philosophy began and culminated with his concern about the problem of truth. It is asserted here that Dewey's mature conception of philosophy and his notion of truth may be quite profitable for resolving some of our more recent contemporary philosophical problems. To clarify his mature thoughts about philosophy and truth, this study surveys the stages of Dewey's development during his long life-time of ninety-three years. ;Using a general approach, (...) I trace the historical progression of his thinking and try to show the relevance of his conceptions of philosophy and truth to our contemporary problems. In doing so, I attempt to elucidate the terminological difficulties that he encountered with language while trying to communicate his own concept of philosophy and his notion of truth. Moreover, I examine criteria that may be used to judge Dewey's work in the field of philosophy in the Western tradition. Under the headings of Early, Middle and Later years, I provide a triadic survey of his life-work, focusing on his academic and religious views. My reflections try to provide information concerning the biological, semiotic, and psycholinguistic basis of his perspective, as it eventually evolved into a form of pragmatic naturalism. ;In concluding, I highlight Dewey's belief that the business of philosophy should deal with cultural problems. Focusing on the implications of his matured position, I try to show the importance of his perspective for solving some critical issues of our own time. A careful examination of his logic indicates that open-minded and honest communication must be the keystone to understanding his view. Therefore, I endeavor to illustrate the value of Dewey's mature concept of philosophy and his notion of truth for addressing some of our pressing problems in a practical manner. (shrink)

We wish here to consider the theory of a population or system made up of individuals whose number and size change with time. As usual, the description of these changes will be referred to as the kinetics, whereas the description of the special circumstances under which unchanging conditions subsist will be called the statics of the population. A third category, the conditions for a steady state, i.e., when the variables inside the system do not change, but linked variables outside do, (...) will be described by what we shall call the rheostatics of the system. All three, statics, rheostatics, and kinetics are subdivisions of the general dynamics of the system. (shrink)

The new economy is characterized in the developing world by open capital markets and coordinated international regulation - neither of which existed in the colonial period.

The long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis fascicularis) is a non-human primate species that is native to Singapore. From mid-2020, the Nanyang Technological University campus witnessed a sharp increase in the number of human–macaque encounters. In this article, we will first identify a set of technological tools that we have developed to guide decision- and policy-making on the wildlife management front and mitigate human–macaque conflict. Thereafter, we will describe how we applied these tools to the activity log cataloguing the macaque activity on (...) campus and offer an analysis of the trends in macaque behaviour that may be shared with members of the public and affected residents. Among the results that will be discussed are the following: a significant decline in the number of macaque sightings at Student Residences over the weekend, a majority of the reported macaque sightings occurring in the early evening, no significant difference in the damage and proximity scores over time, and a trend in observed macaque activity at critical sleep-relevant time intervals and areas on campus. We hope that our approach will promote, through an improved and data-driven understanding of macaque behavioural trends, technology-assisted decision-making and a more harmonious co-existence between humans and macaques on campus and in Singapore. Last but not least, we anticipate further extensions of our approach with respect to other forms of wildlife. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to both discuss commands as a species of speech act and to discuss commands within the broader framework of how they are used and ...

The long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis fascicularis) is a non-human primate species that is native to Singapore. From mid-2020, the Nanyang Technological University campus witnessed a sharp increase in the number of human–macaque encounters. In this article, we will first identify a set of technological tools that we have developed to guide decision- and policy-making on the wildlife management front and mitigate human–macaque conflict. Thereafter, we will describe how we applied these tools to the activity log cataloguing the macaque activity on (...) campus and offer an analysis of the trends in macaque behaviour that may be shared with members of the public and affected residents. Among the results that will be discussed are the following: a significant decline in the number of macaque sightings at Student Residences over the weekend, a majority of the reported macaque sightings occurring in the early evening, no significant difference in the damage and proximity scores over time, and a trend in observed macaque activity at critical sleep-relevant time intervals and areas on campus. We hope that our approach will promote, through an improved and data-driven understanding of macaque behavioural trends, technology-assisted decision-making and a more harmonious co-existence between humans and macaques on campus and in Singapore. Last but not least, we anticipate further extensions of our approach with respect to other forms of wildlife. (shrink)

Guiding you through the topics that shape aesthetics, this introduction explores the truth, meaning, taste, aesthetic merit and the role of perception. Each chapter offers a wealth of examples from Asia, including Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Tan Tai Yong, Kueh Appreciation Day and dragon kiln pottery. They deal with controversies and address central questions, such as: When are artworks considered dangerous? Why does Socrates recommend the banishment of the poets? What are the problems and challenges (...) posed by forgery? Here is a creative and accessible introduction that inspires a love for art and aesthetics. (shrink)

This is a thorough treatment of first-order modal logic. The book covers such issues as quantification, equality (including a treatment of Frege's morning star/evening star puzzle), the notion of existence, non-rigid constants and function symbols, predicate abstraction, the distinction between nonexistence and nondesignation, and definite descriptions, borrowing from both Fregean and Russellian paradigms.

How might we philosophize about the metaverse? It is traditionally held that the four main branches of philosophy are metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. In this article, I shall demonstrate how virtual walt-fictionalism, a particular version of virtual irrealism, is able to offer a straightforward, internally consistent, and powerful response about the metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology (ethics) of the metaverse. I will first characterize the metaverse in terms of a reality-virtuality (RV) continuum and distinguish between virtual realism and virtual irrealism, (...) before elaborating on the explanatory power and potential of virtual walt-fictionalism relative to the metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology (ethics) of the metaverse. (shrink)

(2003). Starting with the Indians: A response to Scott Pratt's Native Pragmatism. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 237-245.

This book contains new essays in honor of Melvin J. Lerner, a pioneer in the psychological study of justice. The contributors to this volume are internationally renowned scholars from psychology, business, and law. They examine the role of justice motivation in a wide variety of contexts, including workplace violence, affirmative action programs, helping or harming innocent victims and how people react to their own fate. Contributors explore fundamental issues such as whether people's interest in justice is motivated by self-interest (...) or a genuine concern for the welfare of others, when and why people feel a need to punish transgressors, how a concern for justice emerges during the development of societies and individuals, and the relation of justice motivation to moral motivation. How an understanding of justice motivation can contribute to the amelioration of major social problems is also examined. (shrink)

"This book offers a prophetic vision of art in a digital future.

In this paper, I will identify two problems of trust in an AI-relevant context: a theoretical problem and a practical one. I will identify and address a number of skeptical challenges to an AI-relevant theory of trust. In addition, I will identify what I shall term the ‘scope challenge’, which I take to hold for any AI-relevant theory of trust that purports to be representationally adequate to the multifarious forms of trust and AI. Thereafter, I will suggest how trust-engineering, a (...) position that is intermediate between the modified pure rational-choice account and an account that gives rise to trustworthy AI, might allow us to address the practical problem of trust, before identifying and critically evaluating two candidate trust-engineering approaches. (shrink)

Mahadevan proposes that we are at the cusp of imagination science, one of whose primary concerns will be the design of imagination machines. Programs have been written that are capable of generating jokes, producing line-drawings that have been exhibited at such galleries as the Tate, composing music in several styles reminiscent of such greats as Vivaldi and Mozart, proving geometry theorems, and inducing quantitative laws from empirical data. In recent years, Dartmouth has been hosting Turing Tests in creativity in three (...) categories: short stories, sonnets, and dance music DJ sets. In this post, I will provide a brief and non-exhaustive survey of some plausible responses to these imagination machines and the related prospects for our understanding of the imagination. (shrink)

Could translation be fully automated? We must first acknowledge the complexity, ambiguity, and diversity of natural languages. These aspects of natural languages, when combined with a particular dilemma known as the computational dilemma, appear to imply that the machine translator faces certain obstacles that a human translator has already managed to overcome. At the same time, science has not yet solved the problem of how human brains process natural languages and how human beings come to acquire natural language understanding. We (...) will then distinguish between the task of translation and the responsibility of the translator. Thereafter, we will conduct a survey of the methods of machine translation (viz. RBMT, SMT, NMT, foundation models or large language models). These methods will then be critically evaluated both in general and relative to Bar-Hillel’s hypothesis about the impossibility of fully automatic, high-quality machine translation (F ahqmt ). Some concluding remarks will be made about the scope, prospects, and limits of machine translation. (shrink)