Nietzsche's controversial will to power thesis is convincingly rehabilitated in this compelling book. Tsarina Doyle presents a fresh interpretation of his account of nature and value, which sees him defy the dominant conception of nature in the Enlightenment and overturn Hume's distinction between facts and values. Doyle argues that Nietzsche challenges Hume indirectly through critical engagement with Kant's idealism, and that in so doing and despite some wrong turns, he establishes the possibility of objective value in response (...) to nihilism and the causal efficacy of consciousness as a necessary condition of human autonomy. Her book will be important for scholars of Nietzsche's metaphysics, and of the history of philosophy and science more generally. (shrink)

A unique and controversial study of Nietzsche's philosophy in relation to Kantian methodologies.

This paper examines how Nietzsche’s view of the mind and its relationship to nature informs his account of human agency. In particular, it focuses on his approach to the causal efficacy of conscious mental states. By examining the Leibnizean and Kantian background to this approach, I contend that Nietzsche proposes a naturalist but non-eliminativist account of mind, central to which is his anti-Cartesian denial that consciousness is intrinsic to the mental. However, Nietzsche ultimately oscillates between two accounts: the first, which (...) I call the ‘enchantment thesis,’ sacrifices the extrinsicality of consciousness but secures the causal efficacy of conscious mental states, whilst the second avoids enchanting nature, securing the extrinsicality of consciousness but sacrificing its causal efficacy. I argue that it is possible to reconstruct his arguments to combine elements of the conflicting accounts and to successfully hold together his anti-Cartesian account of mind with the possibility of autonomous human action. (shrink)

This thesis examines Nietzsche's philosophy as a response to Kant. I show that Kant, as interpreted by Nietzsche, dissociates epistemology and metaphysics. According to Nietzsche, the consequence of this dissociation is the collapse of Kant's transcendental epistemology into a sceptical idealism, which disables the making of positive metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. I argue that Nietzsche overcomes the dissociation of epistemology and metaphysics by rejecting Kant's distinction between constitutive, empirical knowledge and regulative, metaphysical belief. Furthermore, I show that (...) Nietzsche rejects, what he considers to be, Kant's formalistic constitutive epistemology in favour of a regulative and interest-directed account of knowledge. I argue that Nietzsche adopts an internal realist epistemology that stipulates that our epistemic claims must be justified from within our perspectival practices of justification but that such claims must be subject to a realist constraint. Moreover, I propose that Nietzsche is justified, from within these epistemic parameters, in putting forward metaphysical claims about the nature of reality. The thesis is structured in four chapters. Chapter one examines Nietzsche's appropriation of Kant. Chapter two takes up the issue of Nietzsche's perspectivism in the context of his concerns with the issues of justification and truth. The penultimate chapter examines the emergence of Nietzsche's internal realism in his early writings. Finally, chapter four examines Nietzsche's will to power thesis where I contend that the metaphysics of the will to power is both facilitated by and compatible with his perspectivism. (shrink)

This article is a critical response to Justin Remhof’s Nietzsche as Metaphysician. It contends that Remhof runs the question of whether Nietzsche is a metaphysician too closely with the related but separate question of what type of metaphysician he is. It is argued that Remhof is correct in claiming that Nietzsche is a metaphysician and that his metaphysics informs his wider philosophy. However, Remhof’s view that Nietzsche is a metaphysical constructivist is subject to criticism.

This essay examines the manner in which Hume challenges the cognitivist and realist intuitions informing our ordinary experience of value by identifying values with mind-dependent feelings and by separating facts from values. However, through a process of interpretive rehearsal of Hume’s arguments in the first two parts of the paper we find that they come under increasing internal strain, which points, contrary to his initial argument about the irreducibly phenomenal aspects of value experience, to the motivational role of reason and (...) to the identification of values, not with mind-dependent feelings, but with dispositional properties of objects. The third and final part of the paper will offer a systematic reconstruction of his arguments with a view to suggesting one possible – descriptivist – alternative to Hume’s initial challenges, which can serve to satisfy the emerging cognitivist and realist needs of his arguments. (shrink)

Abstract:It has become increasingly common to either dismiss Nietzsche's will to power thesis as a thesis about the nature of reality or else to interpret it as promoting antiessentialism. The latter tendency is evident in the recent ontic structural realist interpretation of Nietzsche. According to the latter view, Nietzsche proposes a constitutively relational ontology that he takes to be supported by natural science and which, it is argued, is now supported by contemporary quantum physics. The author argues, against the antiessentialist (...) trend generally and the ontic structuralist realist interpretation in particular, that Nietzsche's will to power is a causal essentialist thesis that offers a metaphysics of causal powers that, although relational by virtue of being directed to produce effects, are also intrinsically constituted. The author argues that Nietzsche's causal essentialism, contrary to the ontic structural realist interpretation, emerges from his criticism of, rather than support for, the capacity of natural science to capture real causal power. Nonetheless, in contrast to both Nietzsche's view that science lacks the resources to support an appeal to intrinsic natures to secure real causal power and the ontic structural realist's claim that contemporary physics rules it out, the author argues that a particular wave function realist interpretation of quantum mechanics gives Nietzsche precisely what he wants by highlighting the causal significance of intrinsic natures of the wave function in configuration space. The article concludes that, contrary to his own expectations, Nietzsche's causal essentialism is scientifically vindicated. (shrink)

This paper examines Nietzsche’s views on truth and knowledge in the context of both his rejectionof the Kantian thing-in-itself and his perspectivism. It is argued that Nietzsche’s principalcontention with the thing-in-itself centers round the dissociation of truth and justification. Thepaper argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism, understood as an epistemic thesis, sows the seeds forthe overcoming of this sceptical dissociation.

This paper examines Nietzsche’s views on truth and knowledge in the context of both his rejection of the Kantian thing-in-itself and his perspectivism. It is argued that Nietzsche’s principal contention with the thing-in-itself centres round the dissociation of truth and justification. The paper argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism, understood as an epistemic thesis, sows the seeds for the overcoming of this sceptical dissociation.

(2013). Nietzsche, Value and Objectivity. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 41-63. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2012.746268.

This paper aims to reconcile the phenomenology and metaphysics of value by proposing a cognitivist and metaphysically committed account of evaluation and value inspired, in part, by the phenomenological arguments of J. N. Findlay in relation to value. By the phenomenology of value I mean the affective—commendatory—character of evaluations such as when I describe something as good or bad, worthwhile or not worthwhile. Whilst this—subjective—aspect of evaluation is largely uncontested, there is much disagreement about the cognitive and metaphysical status of (...) our evaluations. The disagreement centers round two problems, which I call the intentionality problem and the metaphysical problem, respectively. These problems address whether evaluative feelings refer beyond themselves to objects and, if they do, about the character of the object to which they are directed. By drawing on and reconstructing an argument by Findlay, I argue that the affective character of evaluative experience has an intentional structure that takes the form of a judgement that is merited, or not, by its object. However, unlike Findlay, I offer a metaphysically-laden account of the distinction between evaluation and value by arguing that value properties are mind-independent dispositions that are realized in human cognitively-structured affectivity. (shrink)

This paper aims to reconcile the phenomenology and metaphysics of value by proposing a cognitivist and metaphysically committed account of evaluation and value inspired, in part, by the phenomenological arguments of J. N. Findlay in relation to value. By the phenomenology of value I mean the affective—commendatory—character of evaluations such as when I describe something as good or bad, worthwhile or not worthwhile. Whilst this—subjective—aspect of evaluation is largely uncontested, there is much disagreement about the cognitive and metaphysical status of (...) our evaluations. The disagreement centers round two problems, which I call the intentionality problem and the metaphysical problem, respectively. These problems address whether evaluative feelings refer beyond themselves to objects and, if they do, about the character of the object to which they are directed. By drawing on and reconstructing an argument by Findlay, I argue that the affective character of evaluative experience has an intentional structure that takes the form of a judgement that is merited, or not, by its object. However, unlike Findlay, I offer a metaphysically-laden account of the distinction between evaluation and value by arguing that value properties are mind-independent dispositions that are realized in human cognitively-structured affectivity. (shrink)

This article addresses the Kantian background to Nietzsche's metaphysics. Focusing on the issues of causality and force, I argue that Nietzsche's will to power thesis emerges in response to Kant's approach to the question of causality. I contend that Nietzsche sides with Kant, contrary to Schopenhauer, in his identification of force with efficient causality, indicating his approval of Kant's restriction of the objective applicability of the concept of causality to the phenomenal sphere. However, Nietzsche contends that Kant fails to fully (...) execute his project due to his retention of the thing-in-itself as the realm in which the inner determinations of things reside. I argue that Nietzsche makes it his task to complete the Kantian project by reconciling force with its disinherited inner determinations at the level of phenomena rather than things-in-themselves. (shrink)

Tsarina Doyle’s bold new effort to interpret Nietzsche as a metaphysician will be of interest to readers concerned with his views on metaphysics, metaethics, and the philosophy of mind. Doyle argues that Nietzsche proposes the metaphysics of the will to power in response to the problem of nihilism, which emerges via the recognition of the unjustifiability of a traditional presupposition about our values—namely, that they are objective and meaningful in virtue of “corresponding to value properties instantiated in (...) a mind-independent and non-empirical world”. According to Doyle, Nietzsche’s will to power thesis combats the problem of nihilism by underwriting values that are objective and mind-independent insofar... (shrink)

Review of Tsarnia Doyle, Nietzsche's Metaphysics of the Will to Power: The Possibility of Value.

Background: Moral distress is an important and well-studied phenomenon among nurses and other healthcare providers, yet the conceptualization of parental moral distress remains unclear. Objective: The objective of this dimensional analysis was to describe the nature of family moral distress in serious pediatric illness. Design and methods: A dimensional analysis of articles retrieved from a librarian-assisted systematic review of Scopus, CINAHL, and PsychInfo was conducted, focusing on how children, parents, other family members, and healthcare providers describe parental moral distress, both (...) explicitly through writings on parental moral experience and implicitly through writings on parental involvement in distressing aspects of the child’s serious illness. Ethical considerations: To promote child and family best interest and minimize harm, a nuanced understanding of the moral, existential, emotional, and spiritual impact of serious pediatric illness is needed. The cases used in this dimensional analysis come from the first author’s IRB approved study at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and subsequent published studies; or have been adapted from the literature and the authors’ clinical experiences. Findings: Three dimensions emerged from the literature surrounding parent moral distress: an intrapersonal dimension, an interpersonal dimension, and a spiritual/existential dimension. The overarching theme is that parents experience relational solace and distress because of the impact of their child’s illness on relationships with themselves, their children, family, healthcare providers, their surrounding communities, and society. Discussion: Elucidating this concept can help nurses and other professionals understand, mitigate, or eliminate antecedents to parental moral distress. We discuss how this model can facilitate future empirical and conceptual bioethics research, as well as inform the manner in which healthcare providers engage, collaborate with, and care for families during serious pediatric illness. Conclusion: Parent moral distress is an important and complex phenomenon that requires further theoretical and empirical investigation. We provide an integrated definition and dimensional schematic model that may serve as a starting point for future research and dialogue. (shrink)

We defend public anonymity in the light of the threat posed by digital technology. Once people could reasonably assume that they were fairly anonymous when they left the house. They neither drove nor walked around with GPS devices; they paid their highway tolls in cash; they seldom bought on credit; and no cameras marked their strolls in the park or their walks down the street. Times have changed. We begin with a brief discussion of the concept of anonymity. We then (...) argue that public anonymity helps promote privacy in public. Next, we argue that public anonymity is worth protecting insofar as it promotes autonomy. After that we attempt to show how digital technology threatens public anonymity in the context of CCTV and GPS devices. We argue for a significant scaling back of public surveillance. We close with some thoughts on what we take to be the gratuitous costs imposed on those who would attempt to preserve their anonymity in public. (shrink)

This essay provides a subtly new reading of Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs through a re-examination of one of its key terms: noirceur, or ‘blackness’. Whi...

Recent estimates indicate that over 40,000 children die annually in the United States and a majority have life-limiting conditions. Children at end of life require extensive healthcare resources, including multiple hospital readmissions and emergency room visits. Yet, many children still suffer from symptoms at end of life—including fatigue, pain, dyspnea, and anxiety—with less than 10% of these children utilizing hospice care services. A critical barrier to pediatric hospice use was the original federal regulations associated with the hospice care that required (...) a diagnosis of 6 months to live and the discontinuation of all curative treatments. The Concurrent Care Provision of the United States’ Affordable Care Act eliminated the need to forgo curative therapies in order to enroll in hospice for children in Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program. Concurrent care for children can help mitigate the tension families experience in choosing between essential forms of care, as well as contribute to improved end-of-life outcomes for the child and possibly bereavement outcomes for the family. Understanding concurrent care for children from a social justice perspective has important advocacy and research implications for hospice and palliative care clinicians providing care for children and their families. We apply Powers and Faden’s theory of social justice “as the moral foundation of public health and health policy” to the provision of concurrent care to children near end of life and families in the United States. The goals of applying this theory are to explore additional insights and perspectives into concurrent care policy may provide and to assess the usefulness of this theory when applied to end-of-life health policy. We argue that concurrent care policy is socially just since it has potential to promote well-being in vulnerable children and families and can limit the inequity children at end-of-life experience in access to high-quality hospice care. (shrink)

Decisions about whether or not to become a parent are significant parts of normative human development. Many studies have shown that married different-sex couples are expected to become parents, and that many social pressures enforce this norm. For same-sex couples, however, much less is known about social norms surrounding parenthood within marriage. This study examined injunctive norms and descriptive norms for the pursuit of parenthood as a function of age, gender, and sexual orientation. Participants in an internet survey included 1020 (...) cisgender people from across the United States Findings showed that norms, especially descriptive norms, for the pursuit of parenthood for heterosexual people were much stronger than those for lesbian women and gay men, and that norms for lesbian women were stronger than those for gay men. These differences were more pronounced for older, heterosexual, and male participants. However, lesbian and gay participants, especially gay men, reported that lesbian and gay people ought to become parents to the same extent as heterosexual people. Overall, the results indicated that, regardless of sexual orientation, adults report that lesbian and gay married people ought to become parents, but that they expect only a minority of these couples will pursue parenthood. This research provided a glimpse into how Americans are envisioning family formation among same-sex couples today. (shrink)

_This practical and forward-focused book presents a framework that uses social infrastructure to produce effective and inclusive professional development options in education._ Although technology has increased our capacity for social networking both in the digital space and face-to-face, Kira J. Baker-Doyle contends that most professional development opportunities for educators are still fundamentally asocial. She calls for the adoption of humanizing network practices to create meaningful continuing education experiences that leverage the collective knowledge, expertise, and social capital of educators to (...) spark educational change. Baker-Doyle shows how the critical network literacy (CNL) framework overlays critical theory, multiliteracies theory, and social network theory in a way that encourages critical reflection and collaboration among participants. She draws from sources including empirical studies of teacher educators and teacher activists, meta-analytical studies of social network research in education, and professional experience with collective organizing efforts, to detail the many benefits of cultivating CNL in educational spaces. Baker-Doyle provides evidence of how the framework’s practices and protocols can increase transparency, improve representation, and incorporate affirming and restorative discourse. Her work demonstrates how CNL helps create environments that honor teachers’ social identities, their social networks, and the broader social context in which they work. This thought-provoking book is filled with exercises that reinforce social competencies, questions that prompt dialogue and understanding, and real-world examples that underscore the framework's relevance to key educational practices. The generous guidance offered in _Critical Network Literacy_ can be used as a launching point to promote innovation and leadership in teaching. (shrink)

Annotation Scholars of medieval scholastic philosophy as well as those who study semiotics will appreciate this side-by-side translation, with introduction, by Doyle (Saint Louis U.) of a late 16th-early 17th century Jesuit text. The text (its name is taken from the U. of Coimbra, in Portugal, where the authors taught) contains commentaries on Aristotle, as part of a course in philosophy, particularly logic. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Psychedelic or ecodelic medicines (e.g., psilocybin, ayahuasca, iboga) for the care and treatment of addiction, post‐traumatic stress disorder, cancer, cluster headaches, anxiety, and depression have surged to the forefront of discussions about mental health in the US, leading to the emergence of well‐capitalized biotech companies offering multimillion‐dollar IPOs. Venture capital website Pitchbook reports “continuing investor interest and growing acceptance of what until recently was seen as a fringe area of medicine.” As scholars, activists, and practitioners who have been healed by (...) these medicines and applaud the recent wave of decriminalization after a long, strange trip of mass incarceration and widespread dangerous misinformation, we look forward to a culture that makes these medicines available in a safe and affordable way that respects the lineages of the knowledges that are essentially and not accidentally bundled with these plants—Indigenous and counterculture wisdoms for whom these medicines were never “fringe,” but always foundational. In place of corporadelia's pursuit of standardization, we emphasize the care and wisdom of the Indigenous and countercultural teachings—traditions that have made psychedelics available to the emerging corporate/research partnership in the first place. These knowledge traditions offer foils to the ongoing translation of university peer‐reviewed research into market copy, technical articles, and IPOs, and the concomitant emergence of psychedelic pundits. In particular, we examine instances where prominent researchers have overstated the findings of existing clinical trials in public‐facing representations of the field. We argue that these corporate priorities and tactics are being aided by a new wave of psychedelic “thought leaders” who seek to delegitimize non‐hierarchical approaches to knowledge production and community support within a psychedelic commons. While prominent psychedelic psychiatrists and behaviorists are focused on rooting out and transforming individual habits of mind, we argue that there is another, latent potential for psychedelics to draw attention to—and transform—the invisible, hegemonic infrastructures and ideologies that subtly naturalize and perpetuate deeply unequal societies. (shrink)

T he Question of punishment and its justification has been a major preoccupation in recent philosophy of law. The reasons for this growing concern are not difficult to discover. Both philosophers and jurists have become increasingly sceptical of traditional theories of legal punishment. Each of these inherited theories was designed to establish criteria for the recognition and appraisal of punishment as a legal institution. However, alternative theories emphasised different and often conflicting criteria. Some theories emphasised moral desert and retribution, while (...) others appealed to the social utilities of punishment. Failure to reconcile these diverse philosophical viewpoints, through sustained debate over two centuries, has been a major source of intellectual dissatisfaction. (shrink)

Howard S. Cohen and Michael Feldberg, Power and Restraint: The Moral Dimension of Police Work, New York Praeger, 1991; xvii + 166 pp.

All non-nuclear-weapon states are morally and legally obliged by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons. These obligations cannot be overridden for reasons of mere prudence. Only (i) material breaches of the treaty and/or a corresponding; (ii) ‘fundamental change in circumstances’ (rebus sic stantibus) that undermines the integrity of the NPT may override states parties’ legal nonproliferation duties. More than the violations of the NPT by ‘rogue’ states like North Korea or Iran, I argue that the (...) failure of the de jure nuclear-weapon powers since 2001 to uphold their informal and some formal NPT commitments suggests the possibility of material breach and/or institutional subversion. If NPT subversion were to occur, the non-nuclear-weapon states’ collective responsibility to avoid complicity in that subversion leads them to choose between (a) individually seeking nuclear weapons capability for state security; or, more preferably, (b) a publicly announced and collective withdrawal from the NPT that simultaneously refuses to pursue the nuclear weapons option. (shrink)

The author extends theory on the relationship between workplace spirituality and business ethics by integrating the "yamas" from yoga, a venerable Eastern spiritual tradition, with existing literature. The yamas are five practices for harmonizing and deepening social connections that can be applied in the workplace. A theoretical framework is developed and two sets of propositions are forwarded. One set emanates from the yamas and another one conjectures relationships between spirituality and business ethics surfaced by the application of these spiritual practices (...) from yoga. (shrink)