There is, I shall assume, such a thing as moral evil (more on which below). My question is whether is also such a thing as non-moral evil, and in particular whether there are such things as aesthetic evil and epistemic evil. More exactly, my question is whether there is such a thing as moral evil but not such a thing as non-moral evil, in some sense that reveals something special about the moral, as opposed to such would-be non-moral domains as (...) the aesthetic and the epistemic. The philosophical issue at stake here is that of the nature of these different normative domains, and the nature and extent of their difference. (shrink)

Can understanding be transmitted by testimony, in the same sense that propositional knowledge can be transmitted by testimony? Some contemporary philosophers – call them testimonial understanding pessimists – say No, and others – call them testimonial understanding optimists – say Yes. In this chapter I will articulate testimonial understanding pessimism (§1) and consider some arguments for it (§2).

More has been said about the Hart-Fuller debate than can be considered healthy or productive even within the precious world of jurisprudential scholarship – too much philosophising about how law has revelled in its own abstractness and narrowness. But the mission of this book is distinctly and determinedly different – it is not to rework these already-rehashed ideas, but to reject them entirely. Rather than add to the massive jurisprudential literature that has been generated by all and sundry, the book (...) criticises and abandons the project that Hart and Fuller set in motion. It contends that the turn that was taken in 1957 has led down a series of cul-de-sacs, blind alleys, and dead-ends to nowhere useful or illuminating. It is more than past time to leave their debate behind and strike out in an entirely new and more promising direction. The book insists that not only law, but also all theorising about law, is political in all its derivations, dimensions, and directions. (shrink)

This book provides the reader with a detailed and captivating account of the story where, for the first time, physicists ventured into proposing a new force of nature beyond the four known ones - the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, and gravitation - based entirely on the reanalysis of existing experimental data. Back in 1986, Ephraim Fischbach, Sam Aronson, Carrick Talmadge and their collaborators proposed a modification of Newton's Law of universal gravitation. Underlying this proposal were three tantalizing pieces of (...) evidence: 1) an energy dependence of the CP (particle-antiparticle and reflection symmetry) parameters, 2) differences between the measurements of G, the universal gravitational constant, in laboratories and in mineshafts, and 3) a reanalysis of the Eötvos experiment, which had previously been used to show that the gravitational mass of an object and its inertia mass were equal to approximately one part in a billion. The reanalysis revealed that, contrary to Galileo's position, the force of gravity was in fact very slightly different for different substances. The resulting Fifth Force hypothesis included this composition dependence and also added a small distance dependence to the inverse-square gravitational force. Over the next four years numerous experiments were performed to test the hypothesis. By 1990 there was overwhelming evidence that the Fifth Force, as initially proposed, did not exist. This book discusses how the Fifth Force hypothesis came to be proposed and how it went on to become a showcase of discovery, pursuit and justification in modern physics, prior to its demise. In this new and significantly expanded edition, the material from the first edition is complemented by two essays, one containing Fischbach's personal reminiscences of the proposal, and a second on the ongoing history and impact of the Fifth Force hypothesis from 1990 to the present. <. (shrink)

As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory (...) like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia. (shrink)

Jörn Rüsen is the preeminent German practitioner of "historics," or theory of historiography. Unlike his closest American counterpart, Hayden White, Rüsen places particular emphasis on the historical discipline. The emphasis is embodied in Rüsen's notion of the "disciplinary matrix" of historiography, which embraces five "factors": the cognitive interest of human beings in having an orientation in time; theories or "leading views" concerning the experiences of the past; empirical research methods; forms of representation; and the function of offering orientation to society. (...) Rüsen's account of the disciplinary matrix will remind some readers of the "hermeneutic circle." But Rüsen is far closer to Jürgen Habermas than to Martin Heidegger or Hans-Georg Gadamer, for, like Habermas, he emphasizes the authoritative role of universal rational science.The essay argues that Rüsen's notion of the disciplinary matrix is an important contribution to the understanding of historiography. Combined with his parallel conception of differing "paradigms" of historiography, it helps us to make sense of the history of historiography, and is useful for analyzing and commenting on present-day historiography. The essay also argues for a greater degree of pluralism than seems assumed in Rüsen's view. It suggests that in an age of diversity the rhetorical conception of "topic"--which provides questions to be asked rather than answers--is of special use, and it reinterprets Rüsen's disciplinary matrix in a topical direction. Rüsen rightly suggests that historics has a unifying function. The essay suggests that, given social diversity, only such reflective theory can unite the varied body of historiography. This is one of the reasons why historiographical theory is important now. (shrink)

In this chapter, Ayn Rand's new concept of morality is contrasted with familiar concepts according to which morality is an imposition on an individual that demands that he forgo his own interests as a sacrifice, whether to other people or to God. This chapter explores Rand's view that man's life is the standard of value and looks at each value that John Galt describes as supreme and ruling and, then, at the range of other values that Rand thinks man's life. (...) In discussing the supreme and ruling values, the chapter considers the three virtues that correspond to them: rationality, productiveness, and pride. It also looks at the four remaining virtues Rand identifies such as independence, integrity, honesty, and justice. Rand's conception of justice and the facts it recognizes is powerfully illustrated in Atlas Shrugged. Finally, the chapter examines Rand's view of heroism, which is closely connected with her ethics. (shrink)

A number of scholars have suggested that Milgram’s laboratory studies of obedience offer an incisive analysis of the behavior of the Holocaust perpetrators. The present paper rejects that position. The contrasts between the two events, at every level of analysis, are striking: In Milgram’s research, innocent peers were harmed in the context of science; in the Holocaust, rabidly hated, subhuman enemies were murdered in the context of ‘war’. With regard to underlying psychological mechanisms, the evidence questioning the relevance of Milgram’s (...) research is equally compelling: obedience pressures had little role in the Holocaust. Most of the Nazi perpetrators showed no remorse or moral distress over the murders and perhaps most critically, virtually all of the killers knew that they could choose not to participate in the killings. (shrink)

Early emotional attachment, the development of the right brain, and the relational origins of the unconscious mind -- Modern attachment theory -- Early interpersonal neurobiological assessment of attachment and autistic spectrum disorders -- All our sons: the developmental neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk -- Early right brain regulation and the relational origins of emotional wellbeing -- The development of the right brain across the life span: what's love got to do with it? -- Playing on the right side (...) of the brain. an interview with allan n. schore in the American journal of play -- Index. (shrink)

Consciousness is explored as a living stream of lucid experience composed of the essence of the moments of our lives. Grounded in Ken Wilber's model, consciousness is explained from many points of view: its historical evolution, its growth in the individual, its mystical dimensions, and the meaning of enlightenment"--Provided by publisher.

The first volume to offer a comprehensive scholarly treatment of Rand's entire corpus (including her novels, her philosophical essays, and her analysis of the events of her times), this Companion provides vital orientation and context for scholars and educated readers grappling with a controversial and understudied thinker whose enduring influence on American (and world) culture is increasingly recognized. The first publication to provide an in-depth scholarly treatment ranging over the whole of Rand's corpus. Provides informed contextual analysis for scholars in (...) a variety of disciplines. Presents original research on unpublished material and drafts from the Rand archives in California. Features insightful and fair-minded interpretations of Rand's controversial positions. (shrink)

In these three Tanner lectures, distinguished ethical theorist Allan Gibbard explores the nature of normative thought and the bases of ethics. In the first lecture he explores the role of intuitions in moral thinking and offers a way of thinking about the intuitive method of moral inquiry that both places this activity within the natural world and makes sense of it as an indispensable part of our lives as planners. In the second and third lectures he takes up the (...) kind of substantive ethical inquiry he has described in the first lecture, asking how we might live together on terms that none of us could reasonably reject. Since working at cross purposes loses fruits that might stem from cooperation, he argues, any consistent ethos that meets this test would be, in a crucial way, utilitarian. It would reconcile our individual aims to establish, in Kant's phrase, a "kingdom of ends." The volume also contains an introduction by Barry Stroud, the volume editor, critiques by Michael Bratman (Stanford University), John Broome (Oxford University), and F. M. Kamm (Harvard University), and Gibbard's responses. (shrink)

The badness of having conflicting emotions is a familiar theme in academic ethics, clinical psychology, and commercial self-help, where emotional harmony is often put forward as an ideal. Many philosophers give emotional harmony pride of place in their theories of practical reason.1 Here we offer a defense of a particular species of emotional conflict, namely, ambivalence. We articulate an conception of ambivalence, on which ambivalence is unresolved inconsistent desire (§1) and present a case of appropriate ambivalence (§2), before considering two (...) alternative defenses of emotional conflict (§3). We then argue that inconsistent desires can be fitting (§4) and that it can be reasonable not to resolve inconsistent desires (§5), before considering an objection (§6) and concluding the discussion (§7). (shrink)

In this research, we examine the relationship between employee psychological entitlement and employee willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior. We hypothesize that a high level of PE—the belief that one should receive desirable treatment irrespective of whether it is deserved—will increase the prevalence of this particular type of unethical behavior. We argue that, driven by self-interest and the desire to look good in the eyes of others, highly entitled employees may be more willing to engage in UPB when their (...) personal goals are aligned with those of their organizations. Support for this proposition was found in Study 1, which demonstrates that organizational identification accentuates the link between PE and the willingness to engage in UPB. Study 2 builds on these findings by examining a number of mediating variables that shed light on why PE leads to a greater willingness among employees to engage in UPB. Furthermore, we explored the differential effects of PE on UPB compared to counterproductive work behavior. We found support for our moderated mediation model, which shows that status striving and moral disengagement fully mediate the link between PE and UPB. PE was also linked to CWB and was fully mediated by perceptions of organizational justice and moral disengagement. (shrink)

This book is about the idea that goodness is the correctness condition for desire, in the same way that truth is the correctness condition for belief. Allan Hazlett argues that, given this similarity between desire and belief, desires, like beliefs, can both amount to knowledge and be justified or unjustified.

This book is a contribution to the existing body of philosophical and theological thought. It is a personal account, not a historical or chronological one. The approach taken reflects the metamorphosis from a classical to a contemporary view of theology. The book is an excellent teaching tool, one, which faithfully reflects the word of God. It stresses that through personal engagement with the Spirit of God one may begin to understand religious experience, thereby enabling one's personal faith conviction. The primary (...) purpose of theological study is spiritual growth, while intellectual understanding is of secondary importance. The deepening of theological understanding, it appears, has been achieved, not by ecclesiastical officials, but by faithful individuals sometimes even in opposition to official interpretation. Furthermore, the author says, individuals need to accept their co-responsibility and co-creative relationships with that which is divine. A viable future Church, he says, must relinquish its hold on sovereignty and centralization and institute a decision-making procedure through the principle of subsidiarity. An incursion into the Modernist movement clarifies new interpretations within theological thinking illuminating the potential for development in the future Church. This book passes as not only an informative guide to reflection on interpretation of truth but serves as a must-read for any serious student of theology, which compels the reader to examine his or her own life in the search for truth -- Publisher description. (shrink)

ArgumentNeuroscience research has created multiple versions of the human brain. The “social brain” is one version and it is the subject of this paper. Most image-based research in the field of social neuroscience is task-driven: the brain is asked to respond to a cognitive stimulus. The tasks are derived from theories, operational models, and back-stories now circulating in social neuroscience. The social brain comes with a distinctive back-story, an evolutionary history organized around three, interconnected themes: mind-reading, empathy, and the emergence (...) of self-consciousness. This paper focuses on how empathy has been incorporated into the social brain and redefined via parallel research streams, employing a shared, imaging technology. The concluding section describes how these developments can be understood as signaling the emergence of a new version of human nature and the unconscious. My argument is not that empathy in the social brain is a myth, but rather that it is served by a myth consonant with the canons of science. (shrink)

Mary Somerville (1780-1872), after whom Somerville College Oxford was named, was the first woman scientist to win an international reputation entirely in her own right, rather than through association with a scientific brother or father. She was active in astronomy, one of the most demanding areas of science of the day, and flourished in the unique British tradition of Grand Amateurs, who paid their own way and were not affiliated with any academic institution. Mary Somerville was to science what Jane (...) Austen was to literature and Frances Trollope to travel writing. Allan Chapman's vivid account brings to light the story of an exceptional woman, whose achievements in a field dominated by men deserve to be very widely known. (shrink)

This chapter discusses a pair of interrelated theses that are hallmarks of Objectivism: the benevolent universe premise and the heroic view of man. These theses are dramatic consequences of the defining essentials of the philosophy, and they are central to the sense of life conveyed by Ayn Rand's novels. The benevolent universe premise permeates all her novels, and much of her non‐fiction, but it seems that she first conceptualized this view under this name sometime in the 1940s. The benevolent universe (...) premise is what Rand calls a metaphysical value‐judgment. It is metaphysical in that it answers a question about the nature of the universe. The chapter briefly describes the heroic view of man, looking not at the content of Rand's view of heroism, but at how this view of heroism colored her view of humanity and of specific human beings. (shrink)

The title of this book refers to a particular construction of the world that brooks no uncertainty: 'things are the way I believe them to be'.

ArgumentThroughout his career as a writer, Sigmund Freud maintained an interest in the evolutionary origins of the human mind and its neurotic and psychotic disorders. In common with many writers then and now, he believed that the evolutionary past is conserved in the mind and the brain. Today the “evolutionary Freud” is nearly forgotten. Even among Freudians, he is regarded to be a red herring, relevant only to the extent that he diverts attention from the enduring achievements of the authentic (...) Freud. There are three ways to explain these attitudes. First, the evolutionary Freud's key work is the “Overview of the Transference Neurosis”. But it was published at an inopportune moment, forty years after the author's death, during the so-called “Freud wars.” Second, Freud eventually lost interest in the “Overview” and the prospect of a comprehensive evolutionary theory of psychopathology. The publication of The Ego and the Id, introducing Freud's structural theory of the psyche, marked the point of no return. Finally, Freud's evolutionary theory is simply not credible. It is based on just-so stories and a thoroughly discredited evolutionary mechanism, Lamarckian use-inheritance. Explanations one and two are probably correct but also uninteresting. Explanation number three assumes that there is a fundamental difference between Freud's evolutionary narratives and the evolutionary accounts of psychopathology that currently circulate in psychiatry and mainstream journals. The assumption is mistaken but worth investigating. (shrink)

In 1975, Colwyn Trevarthen first presented his groundbreaking explorations into the early origins of human intersubjectivity. His influential model dictates that, during intimate and playful spontaneous face-to-face protoconversations, the emotions of both the 2–3-month-old infant and mother are nonverbally communicated, perceived, mutually regulated, and intersubjectively shared. This primordial basic interpersonal interaction is expressed in synchronized rhythmic-turn-taking transactions that promote the intercoordination and awareness of positive brain states in both. In this work, I offer an interpersonal neurobiological model of Trevarthen’s intersubjective (...) protoconversations as rapid, reciprocal, bidirectional visual-facial, auditory-prosodic, and tactile-gestural right brain-to-right brain implicit nonverbal communications between the psychobiologically attuned mother and the developing infant. These co-constructed positive emotional interactions facilitate the experience-dependent maturation of the infant’s right brain, which is in an early critical period of growth. I then address the central role of interpersonal synchrony in intersubjectivity, expressed in a mutual alignment or coupling between the minds and bodies of the mother and infant in face-to-face protoconversations, as well as how these right brain-to-right brain emotional transmissions generate bioenergetic positively charged interbrain synchrony within the dyad. Following this, I offer recent brain laterality research on the essential functions of the right temporoparietal junction, a central node of the social brain, in face-to-face nonverbal communications. In the next section, I describe the ongoing development of the protoconversation over the 1st year and beyond, and the co-creation of a fundamental energy-dependent, growth-promoting social emotional matrix that facilitates the emergence of the highly adaptive human functions of mutual play and mutual love. In the final section, I discuss the clinical applications of this interpersonal neurobiological model of intersubjectivity, which has a long history in the psychotherapy literature. Toward that end, I offer very recent paradigm-shifting hyperscanning research that simultaneously measures both the patient and therapist during a psychotherapeutic interaction. Using the Trevarthen’s two-person intersubjective model, this research demonstrates changes in both brains of the therapeutic dyad and the critical role of nonverbal communications in an emotionally-focused psychotherapy session. These studies specifically document interbrain synchronization between the right temporoparietal junction of the patient and the right temporoparietal junction of the clinician, a right brain-to-right brain nonverbal communication system in the co-constructed therapeutic alliance. Lastly, I discuss the relationship between the affect communicating functions of the intersubjective motivational system and the affect regulating functions of the attachment motivational system. (shrink)

Allan Hazlett challenges the philosophical assumption of the value of true belief. He critiques the view that true belief is better for us than false belief, and the view that truth is "the aim of belief". An alternative picture is provided, on which the fact that some people love truth is all there is to "the value of true belief".

In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior.

This paper concerns would-be necessary connections between doxastic attitudes about the epistemic statuses of your doxastic attitudes, or ‘higher-order epistemic attitudes’, and the epistemic statuses of those doxastic attitudes. I will argue that, in some situations, it can be reasonable for a person to believe p and to suspend judgment about whether believing p is reasonable for her. This will set the stage for an account of the virtue of intellectual humility, on which humility is a matter of your higher-order (...) epistemic attitudes. Recent discussions in the epistemology of disagreement have assumed that the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns whether you ought to change your doxastic attitude towards p. My conclusion here suggests an alternative approach, on which the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns the proper doxastic attitude to adopt concerning the epistemic status of your doxastic attitude towards p.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

In this book, the author presents an interpretation of four thinkers: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. In an attempt to place these thinkers within the wider context of the crisis-oriented modernism and postmodernism that have been the source of much of what is most original and creative in twentieth-century art and thought.