This paper aims to analyze a type of epistemic injustice in the field of criminal procedural law. The central research question is: can reverse onus in criminal trial lead to epistemic injustice? To address this question, the text will be divided into three parts. First, we examine the concept of epistemic injustice and its various modalities. Second, we present the conditions under criminal trials in an epistemic setting. We characterize the criminal trial in an epistemological key. Finally, in third place, (...) we present why a change in the institutional design (the burden of proof) leads to epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta un análisis, a partir del pensador pragmatista John Dewey, en torno a cómo los principales enemigos de la democracia son la defensa de la verdad absoluta y, por ende, la legitimación de una guía autoritaria. Para tal fin, se muestra cómo la democracia no sólo es un régimen político sino una forma de vida, que se soporta en el debate público de los puntos de vista como expresión de la experiencia individual y del sentido auténtico de la (...) inteligencia libre; pero también del adecuado flujo de la información y del funcionamiento de las instituciones encargadas de la educación. Así, el rescate de la individualidad como nota constitutiva de la democracia queda justificado en la medida que, es condición para enriquecer la variedad de perspectivas sobre el mundo y lograr el florecimiento humano. (shrink)

Este articulo presenta una compresion fenomenologica de la ciudad, problematizando dos enfoques teoricos utiles para lograr una descripcion esclarecedora, sobre todo, en su version contemporanea. Se exploraran tesis en las que se habla de un habitat humano donde reinan la desatencion cortes, el cooperativismo competitivo y las relaciones instrumentales, resultado del desarrollo biotico sublimado en la organizacion social y la cultura; en razon de esto, la ciudad sera entendida como un producto de la naturaleza humana o, si se quiere, como (...) la maxima expresión de lo humano en tanto ser natural-cultural. Por otro lado, esta una comprension de la ciudad como un gran zoologico humano donde conviven: el individualismo, la ansiedad, el aburrimiento, el estres, la represion y la tension; razon por la cual los urbanitas se hallan, cada vez mas, en constante peligro de enloquecer. Al analizar ambas perspectivas, la ciudad se revela como un campo de interacciones del animal humano, caracterizadas por la cruenta competitividad, las relaciones fragmentadas, egoistas, intermitentes, microscopicas, fugaces y liquidas, basadas en la heterogeneidad, la hibridacion y el juego de mascaras en diversos micro-eventos, pero tambien en la estructuracion de una serie de pautas que garantizan minimos de convivencia entre un conglomerado de desconocidos que luchan cada uno por sobrevivir y hacer pervivir sus representaciones de la realidad. (shrink)

La epistemología evolucionista de Karl Popper se convierte en una interesante integración dinámica entre los conceptos darwinianos de “supervivencia del más apto” y el de “selección natural”, con la compresión epistemológica de la ciencia y su despliegue metodológico. A partir de dicha tesis no sólo pretende Popper explicar la obtención del conocimiento común, sino el proceso de depuración del conocimiento científico. De esta manera, la propuesta popperiana de analizar el proceso metodológico de selección de teorías, a la luz de la (...) tesis darwiniana en términos de competencia y resistencia, se convierte en presupuesto fundamental para la explicación de la capacidad probatoria dada por vía de la falsación o la contrastación de las teorías con la experiencia. A la manera de un organismo esforzándose en el proceso de adaptación al ambiente, se debe conseguir que las teorías se adapten cada vez mejor a la explicación de los hechos, de tal forma que logren arrojar más luces en la comprensión de los fenómenos. Ahora bien, dicha posición biológico-epistemológica contrasta con la perspectiva metafísica que demuestra tener Popper de la verdad, en tanto que no sólo la considera en su sentido objetivo sino que la plantea como un ideal real, aunque paradójicamente inalcanzable. (shrink)

La posmodernidad se caracteriza por la desaparición de la idea de una acionalidad central de la historia, por un rechazo al universalismo moderno, poniéndose de manifiesto en cambio una eclosión de racionalidades ‘locales’ –minorías étnicas, sexuales, religiosas, culturales o estéticas las cuales aparecen como un rechazo a la idea de que sólo existe una forma de humanidad verdaderamente digna de realizarse; a este fenómeno de microgrupos emergiendo en todos los campos se le conoce como neotribalismo. Así pues, la figura que (...) aparece como representativa de la posmodernidad no es la de Apolo (la de un orden universal), sino la de Dionisio (un constante juego ético-estético dado en lo contingente), el cual puede ser afiliado a la imagen del puer aeternus (el joven/niño eterno), contraria a la del adulto serio, racional, productor y reproductor (propia del siglo XIX), que, dejando de lado las calificaciones de tipo moral, normativo y con tan sólo calificar de cool la realidad, anula las pretensiones absolutistas universalistas. (shrink)

This work explores the concept of urban guerrilla, which was promoted and innovated by National Liberation Movement – Tupamaros, in Uruguay. After a thorough review of the “David Cámpora” Archive of Armed Struggle –located at the University of the Republic– and in–depth interviews with prominent Tupamaro members, this article analyzes the evolution of this particular revolutionary project. These pages address issues such as the factors that influenced the adoption of the urban guerrilla approach and the consequences and demands, internal (...) and external, that accompanied it. It also presents the influences, tensions and contradictions that have arisen regarding the use of violence, the dispute against the State or the adaptation to circumstances that have changed drastically in less than a decade – from a quality of democracy unparalleled in the region, to a dictatorial regime of military imprint. All of the above, without losing sight of the exceptional geopolitical dimension that the Latin American continent went through, and especially the Southern Cone, in the 60s and 70s of the last 20th century. (shrink)

This Collision examines photographs of Santiago Sierra’s “Line” installations, discovering in these works a unique formulation of the tension between the social and formal aspects of contemporary art. Developing the philosophical implications of this formulation, this essay connects divergent trajectories embodied by the work (i.e. trajectories initiated by the material elements of the works, the body and the line) to divergent trajectories in contemporary aesthetic theory (i.e. the trajectory that emphasises the socio-political possibilities of artistic representation versus the trajectory (...) that emphasises a distinction between the formal aspects of art and the political effects of art). Developing the socio-political approach, I draw on recent work by Claire Bishop who, emphasizing the distinction between consensus and antagonism, argues that Sierra’s work enacts a democratic politics more rigorous than that of “relational art.” Developing a specifically aesthetic understanding of Sierra’s installations, I understand the works in relation to the constructivist interrogation of the nature of the line. Drawing in part on the philosophies of Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, I suggest that, whereas a social aesthetic tends to limit art to a didactic function, a geometric aesthetic enables a more rigorously materialist experience of the work without reducing the potential political force of the work. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. This Collision examines photographs of Santiago Sierra’s “Line” installations, discovering in these works a unique formulation of the tension between the social and formal aspects of contemporary art. Developing the philosophical implications of this formulation, this essay connects divergent trajectories embodied by the work (i.e. trajectories initiated by the material elements of the works, the body and the line) to divergent trajectories in contemporary aesthetic theory (...) (i.e. the trajectory that emphasises the socio-political possibilities of artistic representation versus the trajectory that emphasises a distinction between the formal aspects of art and the political effects of art). Developing the socio-political approach, I draw on recent work by Claire Bishop who, emphasizing the distinction between consensus and antagonism, argues that Sierra’s work enacts a democratic politics more rigorous than that of “relational art.” Developing a specifically aesthetic understanding of Sierra’s installations, I understand the works in relation to the constructivist interrogation of the nature of the line. Drawing in part on the philosophies of Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, I suggest that, whereas a social aesthetic tends to limit art to a didactic function, a geometric aesthetic enables a more rigorously materialist experience of the work without reducing the potential political force of the work. (shrink)

This paper examines potential differences in land use between Q'eqchí Maya and Ladino farmers in a remote agricultural frontier in northern Petén, Guatemala. The research site, the Sierra de Lacandón National Park, is a core conservation zone of Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. In recent years, much has been written about the dramatic process of colonization and deforestation in Petén, Guatemala's largest and northernmost department. Since the early 1980s a rapid rural transformation has occurred where once remote forested regions have (...) been colonized by small farmers, and lands have been converted to maize fields and cattle pastures. Consequently, less than half of the original forest cover in the department remains. Although approximately half of Petén's rural settlers have been Q'eqchí Maya, their land use, and its subsequent impact on Petenero forests, has been little studied. Results suggest that despite heterogeneous land use systems in migrant origin areas, given similar physical and socio-economic conditions following settlement in this remote frontier, Q'eqchí and Ladino farmer land use is remarkably similar. Only a modest land use difference appears to exist between the two groups: Q'eqchí Maya appear to have more extensive swidden maize rotations while Ladinos dedicate more land to pasture. (shrink)

Genghis Khan is supposed to have said, “Man’s highest joy is victory: to conquer one’s enemies, to hunt them down, to deprive them of their possessions, to make their loved ones weep, and to bed their wives and daughters.” Today, no ruler would dare utter such sentiments, and what the Khan called man’s highest joy would now be condemned everywhere as crimes against humanity and “grave breaches”—lawyerspeak for the most serious war crimes. Nevertheless, the U.S. killed more civilians in a (...) few minutes at Hiroshima than the Golden Horde did in its ruthless conquest of China; and the last ten years alone have witnessed civil wars and genocides of nearly incomprehensible cruelty and atrocity. Whether we think of General Mladic handing out candy to Muslim children in Srebenica shortly after ordering thousands of their fathers and brothers shot, or doped-up child soldiers in Sierra Leone chopping the arms off other children, or Saddam Hussein gassing Kurdish villagers, we confront the perplexing phenomenon that the past half-century has combined an incredible outpouring of humanitarian laws, treaties, and declarations with levels of wartime criminality that may exceed those in the Thirty Years’ War. Any light that philosophers might shed on this grotesque disconnect between moral ideals and reality would be welcome. So would more focused inquiry on the moral basis of international humanitarian law, or on the distribution of blame among politicians, perpetrators, planners, and passive supporters of mass atrocities. (shrink)

Our true home is wilderness, even the world of everyday.—Henry G. Bugbee, Jr.Henry Bugbee was Born in New York City in 1915. This may not seem the most fortuitous birthplace for an interpreter of the wild rivers of Montana, but we might also remember that John Muir, interpreter of the High Sierras, was born in Scotland. Perhaps the movement west is an important prelude for such a vocation. Bugbee studied philosophy at Princeton and then at Berkeley, but before he could (...) finish his graduate work, he was called for naval service in the Pacific. The time at sea was a formative wilderness experience, on which his writing draws heavily. Returning from sea, he finished his PhD and took a teaching position at Harvard. Not .. (shrink)

Much of the sustained attention on pandemic preparedness has focused on the ethical justification for plans for the “crisis” phase of a surge when, despite augmentation efforts, the demand for life...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thinking with Heidegger:Rethinking Environmental Theory and PracticeKevin Michael DeLuca (bio)Environmentalism is tired. It is a movement both institutionalized and insipid. The vast majority of Americans claim to be environmentalists while buying ever more SUVs, leaf-blowers, and uncountable plastic consumer goods. Indeed, environmentalism itself has become just another practice of consumerism, a matter of buying Audubon memberships, Ansel Adams calendars, and 'biodegradable' plastic bags with one's Sierra Club credit (...) card. As a practice of everyday life, environmentalism has devolved into another lifestyle choice.On the political front, carbon-copy blow-dried presidential candidates proclaim their allegiance to the environment, an allegiance that is more a sign of fealty to opinion polls than a concern with environmental issues. In the world of real-politic, environmental regulations are gutted as corporations write legislation for the politicians they have bought. Outspent and outmaneuvered, mainstream environmental groups preach at the altar of broken promises about the potential of lobbying and insider access while awaiting the blandishments of the next candidate. As [End Page 67] a political practice, mainstream environmentalism has degenerated into a marginal special-interest group.On the intellectual front, a confusing array of reform environmentalists, deep ecologists, social ecologists, ecofeminists, wilderness advocates, social justice activists, social constructionists, and Christian ecologists offer a cacophony of competing paradigms and programs while exchanging charges and countercharges of wrong-headedness and infidelity. If on the level of practice an exhausted environmentalism has achieved both institutionalism and irrelevance, intellectually environmentalism has reached several stasis points. This is crucial, for at a level that is unusual for social movements, environmentalism has always highlighted the importance of how we think about the environment, that ideas of nature are powerful because practices follow from ideas. In other words, how we think about nature guides how we act toward nature. In the midst of this melee I want to suggest we reconsider the work of Martin Heidegger.I want to think Heidegger in distress: in the distress of machination; in the distress of the technological enframing of the earth; in the distress of the environmental crisis. In rejecting a Heideggerian hermeneutics, a piety to textual exegesis, I hope to stress Heidegger in order to stress environmental theory. With few exceptions,1 two insufficient responses typify the reception of Heidegger in environmental thinking. One is to champion Heidegger as some proto-environmentalist. Certainly, quotes from such works as Being and Time, Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, "The Question Concerning Technology," "Building Dwelling Thinking," and "The Age of the World Picture" inspire such a reading. Such readings, however, present a simplified Heidegger. For example, a poor reading of an essay such as "The Question Concerning Technology" produces the conclusion that Heidegger was anti-technology.2 These misreadings are not merely accidental but a result of the goal of the citation. The challenge of Heidegger is not engaged to develop environmental theory; rather, Heidegger is cited to lend some borrowed legitimacy to the fledgling enterprise. The most prominent example of this move occurs in Devall and Sessions' Deep Ecology, wherein Heidegger joins a potpourri of thinkers, including Dogen, Job, St. Francis of Assisi, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Thoreau, Chief Seattle, Herman Melville, John Muir, Aldous Huxley, Gandhi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Aldo Leopold, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Stanley Diamond, and [End Page 68] David Brower from a host of traditions, including Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Native American thought, Romanticism, and ecological science (1985, 79–108). The result is confusion, at best.On the other hand, in a second response Heidegger serves as a kind of bogeyman, a Nazi used to tar the more radical environmental groups. The syllogism is simple and simplistic: Deep Ecologists are bio/ecocentric; Deep Ecologists quote Heidegger; Heidegger was a Nazi; Therefore, Deep Ecologists are Nazis/fascists. (To push this thinking to its logical extreme, then, all nonanthropocentric thinking is fascist.) Both responses may be useful for polemics but serve to prevent a possibly productive exploration of Heidegger for the engagement of the difficult problems that have stumped environmentalism on multiple levels.Violating HeideggerAs a prefatory word, even a cursory glance at Heidegger's work reveals him to be a thinker who... (shrink)

This is an introduction to the structure of sentences in human languages. It assumes no prior knowledge of linguistic theory and little of elementary grammar. It will suit students coming to syntactic theory for the first time either as graduates or undergraduates. It will also be useful for those in fields such as computational science, artificial intelligence, or cognitive psychology who need a sound knowledge of current syntactic theory.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thinking with Heidegger:Rethinking Environmental Theory and PracticeKevin Michael DeLuca (bio)Environmentalism is tired. It is a movement both institutionalized and insipid. The vast majority of Americans claim to be environmentalists while buying ever more SUVs, leaf-blowers, and uncountable plastic consumer goods. Indeed, environmentalism itself has become just another practice of consumerism, a matter of buying Audubon memberships, Ansel Adams calendars, and 'biodegradable' plastic bags with one's Sierra Club credit (...) card. As a practice of everyday life, environmentalism has devolved into another lifestyle choice.On the political front, carbon-copy blow-dried presidential candidates proclaim their allegiance to the environment, an allegiance that is more a sign of fealty to opinion polls than a concern with environmental issues. In the world of real-politic, environmental regulations are gutted as corporations write legislation for the politicians they have bought. Outspent and outmaneuvered, mainstream environmental groups preach at the altar of broken promises about the potential of lobbying and insider access while awaiting the blandishments of the next candidate. As [End Page 67] a political practice, mainstream environmentalism has degenerated into a marginal special-interest group.On the intellectual front, a confusing array of reform environmentalists, deep ecologists, social ecologists, ecofeminists, wilderness advocates, social justice activists, social constructionists, and Christian ecologists offer a cacophony of competing paradigms and programs while exchanging charges and countercharges of wrong-headedness and infidelity. If on the level of practice an exhausted environmentalism has achieved both institutionalism and irrelevance, intellectually environmentalism has reached several stasis points. This is crucial, for at a level that is unusual for social movements, environmentalism has always highlighted the importance of how we think about the environment, that ideas of nature are powerful because practices follow from ideas. In other words, how we think about nature guides how we act toward nature. In the midst of this melee I want to suggest we reconsider the work of Martin Heidegger.I want to think Heidegger in distress: in the distress of machination; in the distress of the technological enframing of the earth; in the distress of the environmental crisis. In rejecting a Heideggerian hermeneutics, a piety to textual exegesis, I hope to stress Heidegger in order to stress environmental theory. With few exceptions,1 two insufficient responses typify the reception of Heidegger in environmental thinking. One is to champion Heidegger as some proto-environmentalist. Certainly, quotes from such works as Being and Time, Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning, "The Question Concerning Technology," "Building Dwelling Thinking," and "The Age of the World Picture" inspire such a reading. Such readings, however, present a simplified Heidegger. For example, a poor reading of an essay such as "The Question Concerning Technology" produces the conclusion that Heidegger was anti-technology.2 These misreadings are not merely accidental but a result of the goal of the citation. The challenge of Heidegger is not engaged to develop environmental theory; rather, Heidegger is cited to lend some borrowed legitimacy to the fledgling enterprise. The most prominent example of this move occurs in Devall and Sessions' Deep Ecology, wherein Heidegger joins a potpourri of thinkers, including Dogen, Job, St. Francis of Assisi, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Thoreau, Chief Seattle, Herman Melville, John Muir, Aldous Huxley, Gandhi, Rainer Maria Rilke, Aldo Leopold, Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Stanley Diamond, and [End Page 68] David Brower from a host of traditions, including Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Native American thought, Romanticism, and ecological science (1985, 79–108). The result is confusion, at best.On the other hand, in a second response Heidegger serves as a kind of bogeyman, a Nazi used to tar the more radical environmental groups. The syllogism is simple and simplistic: Deep Ecologists are bio/ecocentric; Deep Ecologists quote Heidegger; Heidegger was a Nazi; Therefore, Deep Ecologists are Nazis/fascists. (To push this thinking to its logical extreme, then, all nonanthropocentric thinking is fascist.) Both responses may be useful for polemics but serve to prevent a possibly productive exploration of Heidegger for the engagement of the difficult problems that have stumped environmentalism on multiple levels.Violating HeideggerAs a prefatory word, even a cursory glance at Heidegger's work reveals him to be a thinker who... (shrink)

Individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) display diverse deficits in social, cognitive and behavioral functioning. To date, there has been mixed findings on the profile of executive function deficits for high-functioning adults (IQ >70) with ASD. A conceptual distinction is commonly made between “cold” and “hot” executive functions. Cold executive functions refer to mechanistic higher-order cognitive operations (e.g., working memory), whereas hot executive functions entail cognitive abilities supported by emotional awareness and social perception (e.g., social cognition). This study aimed to (...) determine the independence of deficits in hot and cold executive functions for high-functioning adults with ASD. Forty-two adults with ASD (64% male, aged 18-66 years) and 40 age and gender matched controls were administered The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT; emotion recognition and social inference), Letter Number Sequencing (working memory) and Hayling Sentence Completion Test (response initiation and suppression). Between-group analyses identified that the ASD group performed significantly worse than matched controls on all measures of cold and hot executive functions (d =.54-1.5). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that the ASD sample performed more poorly on emotion recognition and social inference tasks than matched controls after controlling for cold executive functions and employment status. The findings also indicated that the ability to recognise emotions and make social inferences was supported by working memory and response initiation and suppression processes. Overall, this study supports the distinction between hot and cold executive function impairments for adults with ASD. Moreover, it advances understanding of higher-order impairments underlying social interaction difficulties for this population which, in turn, may assist with diagnosis and inform intervention programs. (shrink)

This book uncovers the lost history of Christianity's encounters with Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. David Albertson skillfully examines ancient and medieval theologians, particularly Thierry of Chartres and Nicholas of Cusa, who successfully reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory. David Albertson challenges modern assumptions about the complex relationship between religion and science.

David Wiggins; XV*—Weakness of Will Commensurability, and the Objects of Deliberation and Desire, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1.

I take issue with several themes in Ted Toadvine’s lively paper, “Limits of the Flesh,” suggesting that he has significantly misread many of the arguments in The Spell of the Sensuous. I first engage his contention that I disparage reflection and denigrate the written word. Then I take up the assertion that I exclude the symbolic dimension of experience from my account, and indeed that I seek to eliminate the symbolic from our interactions with others. Finally, I refute his claim (...) that my ecophenomenological stance leaves no room for resistance, contradiction, and alterity—elements that are, in fact, central to my understanding of ethics. My reply leads directly into a discussion of one of the crucial concerns of my work: the manner in which the very style of our discourse—our way of wielding words—tacitly works to either enhance, or to stifle, the solidarity between the human community and the more-than-human earth. (shrink)

Tarzian and ASBH Core Competencies Update Task Force (2013) say that making ethics consultation accountable means examining the abilities and qualifications of health care ethics consultants (HCECs...

Humans possess great capacity for behavioral and cultural change, but our ability to manage change is still limited. This article has two major objectives: first, to sketch a basic science of intentional change centered on evolution; second, to provide examples of intentional behavioral and cultural change from the applied behavioral sciences, which are largely unknown to the basic sciences community.All species have evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity that enable them to respond adaptively to their environments. Some mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity (...) count as evolutionary processes in their own right. The human capacity for symbolic thought provides an inheritance system having the same kind of combinatorial diversity as does genetic recombination and antibody formation. Taking these propositions seriously allows an integration of major traditions within the basic behavioral sciences, such as behaviorism, social constructivism, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology, which are often isolated and even conceptualized as opposed to one another.The applied behavioral sciences include well-validated examples of successfully managing behavioral and cultural change at scales ranging from individuals to small groups to large populations. However, these examples are largely unknown beyond their disciplinary boundaries, for lack of a unifying theoretical framework. Viewed from an evolutionary perspective, they are examples of managing evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity, including open-ended processes of variation and selection.Once the many branches of the basic and applied behavioral sciences become conceptually unified, we are closer to a science of intentional change than one might think. (shrink)

We present a conceptual framework on the experience of time and provide a coherent basis on which to base further inquiries into qualitative approaches concerning time experience. We propose two Time-Layers and two Time-Formats forming four Time-Domains. Micro-Flow and Micro-Structure represent the implicit phenomenal basis, from which the explicit experiences of Macro-Flow and Macro-Structure emerge. Complementary to this theoretical proposal, we present empirical results from qualitative content analysis obtained from 25 healthy participants. The data essentially corroborate the theoretical proposal. With (...) respect to Flow, the phenomenally accessible time experience appeared as a continuous passage reaching from the past through the present into the future. With respect to Structure, the individual present was embedded in the individual biography, emerging from past experiences and comprising individual plans and goals. New or changing plans and goals were being integrated into the existing present, thus forming a new present. The future appeared as changeable within the present, by means from the past, and therefore as a space of potential opportunities. Exemplarily, we discuss these results in relation to previous empirical findings on deviant experiences of time in Autism Spectrum Disorder that is presumably characterized by a breakdown of Flow and concomitant compensatory repetition resulting in an overly structured time. Finally, we speculate about possible implications of these findings both for psychopathological and neuroscientific research. (shrink)

Psychologists take two propositions for granted. Specifically, empirical verification of predictions derived from a theory support that the theory is more likely to be true and support that additional predictions derived from the theory have an increased probability of being sustained if subjected to empirical testing. In contrast, I argue that both propositions depend strongly on whether auxiliary assumptions are taken into account. When auxiliary assumptions are not taken into account, the first proposition is valid but the second is not. (...) When auxiliary assumptions are taken into account, the first proposition is not valid, and the second proposition encounters additional problems. I use Venn diagrams and Bayesian principles to demonstrate these conclusions. (shrink)

In their comprehensive article, Bayefsky and Berkman outline a framework for limiting access to certain types of fetal genetic information through professional self-regulation. Given the rap...

In Debating Climate Ethics, Stephen Gardiner and I offer our views on how ethics or theories of justice more generally apply to climate change and possibly help inform climate change policy. It is...

We usually withhold attributions of moral responsibility when a person acts on preferences that are induced without her consent by other people by means of conditioning, post-hypnotic suggestion, neurological fiddling and similar techniques. However, this is not generally the case when a person induces preferences in herself by the process of character building. However, the distinction between non-responsibility and responsibility for preferences does not map neatly onto the distinction between psychological induction by other and by self. Sometimes responsibility-grounding freedom of (...) action and autonomy of will re compromised when a person induces preferences in herself by adaptive preference-formation, the mechanism that sets up the cry of “sour grapes.” They can also be compromised when a person intentionally undertakes a strategy of self-abnegating resignation to oppressive necessity. It remains unclear, nonetheless, how the unfreedom and heteronomy of preferences calibrated to the merely feasible contrasts with the freedom and autonomy of planned preferences-changes guided by the person’s own values in projects of character building. (shrink)

According to the somatic mutation theory (SMT), cancer begins with a genetic change in a single cell that passes it on to its progeny, thereby generating a clone of malignant cells. It is strongly supported by observations of leukemias that bear specific chromosome translocations, such as Burkitt's lymphoma, in which a translocation activates the c‐myc gene, and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), in which the Philadelphia chromosome causes production of the BCR‐ABL oncoprotein. Although the SMT has been modified and extended to (...) encompass tumor suppressor genes, epigenetic inheritance, and tumor progression through accumulation of further mutations, perhaps the strongest validation comes from the successful treatment of certain malignancies with drugs that directly target the product of the mutant gene.magnified imageDavid Vaux is at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, Melbourne, Australia. (shrink)

I argue that the metaphysical import of the Aharonov-Bohm effect has been overstated: correctly understood, it does not require either rejection of gauge invariance or any novel form of nonlocality. The conclusion that it does require one or the other follows from a failure to keep track, in the analysis, of the complex scalar field to which the magnetic vector potential is coupled. Once this is recognised, the way is clear to a local account of the ontology of electrodynamics ; (...) I sketch a possible such account. (shrink)

In _Thinking After Heidegger_, David Wood takes up the challenge posed by Heidegger - that after the end of philosophy we need to learn to _think_. But what if we read Heidegger with the same respectful irreverence that he brought to reading the Greeks, Kant, Hegel, Husserl and the others? For Wood, it is Derrida's engagements with Heidegger that set the standard here – enacting a repetition through transformation and displacement. But Wood is not content to crown the new (...) king. Instead he sets up a many-sided conversation between Heidegger, Hegel, Adorno, Nietzsche, Blanchot, Kierkegaard, Derrida and others. Derrida and deconstruction are first critically addressed and then drawn into the fundamental project of philosophical renewal, or renewal _as_ philosophy. The book begins by rewriting Heidegger's inaugural lecture, 'What is Metaphysics?' and ends with an extended analysis of the performativity of his extraordinary _Beitrage_. _Thinking after Heidegger_ will be a valuable text for scholars and students of contemporary philosophy, literature and cultural studies. (shrink)

Michael Hand argues that at least some moral standards can be robustly justified and that because of this educators can legitimately cultivate subscription to t.

The bulk of this volume consists of a somewhat revised version of the Axel Hägerström Lectures given in Uppsala, Sweden in 1991. It also contains previously published papers on the relevance of philosophy of language to ethics and the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. The latter, in particular, deserves comment, but space considerations force me to devote my attention to the Hägerström Lectures, entitled “A Taxonomy of Ethical Theories.”.

_The Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Healthcare Ethics Consultants_ instructs clinical ethics consultants to preserve their professional integrity by “not engaging in activities that involve giving an ethical justification or stamp of approval to practices they believe are inconsistent with agreed-upon standards” (ASBH, 2014, p. 2). This instruction reflects a larger model of how to address value uncertainty and moral conflict in healthcare, and it brings up some intriguing and as yet unanswered questions—ones that the drafters of the (...) _Code_, and the profession more broadly, should seek to address in upcoming revisions. The objective of this article is to raise these questions as a way of urging greater clarification of the _Code’s_ overall approach to professional integrity, its meaning, and implications. (shrink)

The early 20th-century French sociologist and philosopher Gabriel Tarde was an important critic of Durkheim's ontology of the social. Tarde developed a microsociological and ontological critique of the philosophical problems of resemblance and of variation underlying Durkheim's comparative sociology. Recently, thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour and Éric Alliez have begun to revisit Tarde and to develop a theme of the significance of Tarde's thought as a harbinger of postmodern theory. This article examines Tarde's theories in the light of (...) this new reception. It is shown that Tarde draws heavily from Leibniz's theory of the quantitative continuity of qualitative singulars in order to critique Durkheim's statistics-based social realism. While some key limitations of Tarde's critique are exposed, it is argued that Tarde finds a way to remain faithful to statistical sociology as a project even while calling radically into question the qualitative unity of the social. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 2008, given by David Wiggins, a British philosopher.

O autor reexamina a crítica de Derrida à fenomenologia de Husserl de forma a mostrar como a sua coerência estrutural emerge não tanto de uma redução a uma doutrina particular, mas antes das exigências de uma concepção unitária, especificamente impostas pelas determinações epistemológicas e metafísicas da presença. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Desconstrução. Derrida. Fenomenologia. Husserl. Presença. Significado. ABSTRACT – The author reexamines Derrida’s critique of Husserl’s phenomenology, so as to show how its structural coherency arises not so much from the reduction to (...) a particular doctrine, but rather from the demands of a unitary conception, specifically from the demands imposed by the epistemological and metaphysical determinations of presence. KEY WORDS – Deconstruction. Derrida. Husserl. Meaning. Phenomenology. Presence. (shrink)

Modern humans spend much of their time deploying a very rarefied form of intelligence, manipulating abstract symbols while their muscled body is mostly inert. Other animals, in a constant and largely unmediated relation with their earthly surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies. This kind of distributed sentience, this intelligence in the limbs, is especially keen in the case of birds of flight. Unlike most creatures of the ground, who must traverse an opaque surface of only two-plus dimensions as (...) we make our way through the world, a soaring bird continually adjusts minute muscles in its wings to navigate an omnidimensional plenum of currents and interference patterns that alter from moment to moment. Flight itself may usefully be considered as a kind of thinking—as a sort of gliding within the mind. Moreover, since birds are commonly the most mobile inhabitants of any woodland, able to fly over and scan numerous events occurring on the ground, their varied utterances provide a crucial source of information for many other animals. This paper, written as a philosophic essay, explores avian cognition from a phenomenological standpoint. It then reflects upon the vocalizations of birds—noting the major role that such avian calls, cries, and songs have played in the development of human culture. (shrink)