This paper notes the re-ignited controversy surrounding the publication of a new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, suggesting that the early work of Michel Foucault can explain why the mere diagnosis of or criteria for mental illness remains a heated flashpoint. In particular, it argues that Foucault articulates a common issue within the philosophical foundations of psychiatry and psychology that the paper terms the ‘subjectivity problem.’ It observes, using Foucault’s work, that these disciplines treat not (...) just simple objects but complex subjects that are capable of interacting with that labelling and who are shaped by it. Drawing on the related work of Ian Hacking on kind-making as world-making, the article fleshes out why the subjectivity problem remains persistent within psychiatry and psychology as forms of knowledge, preventing them from operating as many commentators might desire them to – as pure and objective sciences. Finally, the paper reflects on the relationship of psychiatry and psychology as forms of knowledge, the manner in which they constitute their objects, and how this might shape the biopolitical episteme in which we find ourselves today. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the contested concept of Bildung, with its roots in the late 18th century, remains of interest in the postmodern era, even if there is also certainly a debate about it having had its day. In the specific discussion about Bildung and democracy, I suggest that Dewey's reconstructed concept of experience has several points in common with a more recent understanding of Bildung, at the same time as it can provide insight into how democracy can (...) be understood within the field of Bildung. In brief, in this article I suggest that if we wish to discuss democracy and Bildung, Dewey's notion of experience might offer a bridge between the two concepts, as well as an understanding of subjectivity, learning, and communication as a whole. Finally, I argue that communication is a necessary part of both democracy and Bildung—not because of certain human similarities, but because of the similarities in some of the problems which we humans encounter, and which we think are worth reflecting upon. (shrink)

Bodily pain and distress come in many forms. They can well up from within at times of serious illness, but the body can also be subjected to harsh treatment from outside. The medical system is often cold and depersonalized, and much worse are conditions experienced by prisoners in our age of mass incarceration, and by animals trapped in our factory farms. In this pioneering book, Drew Leder offers bold new ways to rethink how we create and treat distress, clearing (...) the way for more humane social practices. Leder draws on literary examples, clinical and philosophical sources, his medical training, and his own struggle with chronic pain. He levies a challenge to the capitalist and Cartesian models that rule modern medicine. Similarly, he looks at the root paradigms of our penitentiary and factory farm systems and the way these produce distressed bodies, asking how such institutions can be reformed. Writing with coauthors ranging from a prominent cardiologist to long-term inmates, he explores alternative environments that can better humanize—even spiritualize—the way we treat one another, offering a very different vision of medical, criminal justice, and food systems. Ultimately Leder proposes not just new answers to important bioethical questions but new ways of questioning accepted concepts and practices. (shrink)

We are even less aware of our internal organs and the physiological processes that keep us alive. In this fascinating work, Drew Leder examines all the ways in which the body is absent—forgotten, alien, uncontrollable, obscured.

Pain is far more than an aversive sensation. Chronic pain, in particular, involves the sufferer in a complex experience filled with ambiguity and paradox. The tensions thereby established, the unknowns, pressures, and oscillations, form a significant part of the painfulness of pain. This paper uses a phenomenological method to examine nine such paradoxes. For example, pain can be both immediate sensation and mediated by complex interpretations. It is a certainty for the experiencer, yet highly uncertain in character. It pulls one (...) to the present but also projects one outward to a feared or desired future. Chronic pain can seem located in the body and/or mind; interior to the self, or an alien other; confined to a particular point and/or radiating everywhere. Such fundamental paradoxes, existential and epistemological, can challenge those living with long-term pain. (shrink)

Why is it that some instances of disagreement appear to be so intractable? And what is the appropriate way to handle such disagreements, especially concerning matters about which there are important practical and political needs for us to come to a consensus? In this paper, I consider an explanation of the apparent intractability of deep disagreement offered by hinge epistemology. According to this explanation, at least some deep disagreements are rationally unresolvable because they concern ‘hinge’ commitments that are unresponsive to (...) rational considerations. This explanation, if correct, seems to have troubling implications for how we should respond to deep disagreement. If my position on a topic is not responsive to rational considerations, then what choice have I but to dogmatically hold to that position, and simply dismiss the views of those with whom I disagree? I address this problem by identifying an attitude of intellectual humility that is appropriate to have towards one's hinge commitments, and suggest that this attitude provides the basis for a non-rational, constructive way to resolve deep disagreement. (shrink)

I argue that clinical medicine can best be understood not as a purified science but as a hermeneutical enterprise: that is, as involved with the interpretation of texts. The literary critic reading a novel, the judge asked to apply a law, must arrive at a coherent reading of their respective texts. Similarly, the physician interprets the text of the ill person: clinical signs and symptoms are read to ferret out their meaning, the underlying disease. However, I suggest that the hermeneutics (...) of medicine is rendered uniquely complex by its wide variety of textual forms. I discuss four in turn: the experiential text of illness as lived out by the patient; the narrative text constituted during history-taking; the physical text of the patient's body as objectively examined; the instrumental text constructed by diagnostic technologies. I further suggest that certain flaws in modern medicine arise from its refusal of a hermeneutic self-understanding. In seeking to escape all interpretive subjectivity, medicine has threatened to expunge its primary subject — the living, experiencing patient. (shrink)

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific (...) communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

We clarify options for conceptualizing equity, or what we refer to as justice, in resource allocation. We do this by systematically differentiating, expounding, and then illustrating eight different substantive principles of justice. In doing this, we compare different meanings that can be attributed to “need” and “the capacity to benefit”. Our comparison is sharpened by two analytical tools. First, quantification helps to clarify the divergent consequences of allocations commended by competing principles. Second, a diagrammatic approach developed by economists Culyer and (...) Wagstaff offers a visual and conceptual aid. Of the eight principles we illustrate, only two treat as relevant both a person’s initial health state and a person’s CTB per resource unit expended: allocate resources so as to most closely equalize final health states and allocate resources so as to equally restore health states to population norms. These allocative principles ought to be preferred to the alternatives if one deems relevant both a person’s initial health state and a person’s CTB per resource unit expended. Finally, we examine some possibilities for conceptualizing benefits as relative to how badly off someone is, extending Parfit’s thought on Prioritarianism. Questions arise as to how much intervention effects accruing to the worse off count for more and how this changes with improving health. We explicate some recent efforts to answer these questions, including in Dutch and British government circles. These efforts can be viewed as efforts to operationalize need as an allocative principle. Each effort seeks to maximize in the aggregate quanta of effect that are differentially valued in favor of the worst off. In this respect, each effort constitutes one type of Prioritarianism, which Parfit failed to differentiate from other types. (shrink)

Very few thinkers have traveled the heretical path that François Laruelle walks between philosophy and non-philosophy. For Laruelle, the future of philosophy is problematic, but a mutation of its functions is possible. Up until now, philosophy has merely been a utopia concerned with the past and only provided the services of its conservation. We must introduce a rigorous and nonimaginary practice of a utopia in action, a philo-fiction—a close relative to science fiction. From here we can see the double meaning (...) of the watchword, a tabula rasa of the future. This new destination is imposed by a specifically human messianism, an eschatology within the limits of the Man-in-person as antihumanist ultimatum addressed to the History of Philosophy. This book elucidates some of the fundamental problems of non-philosophy and takes on its detractors. (shrink)

Drew A. Hyland, one of Continental philosophy's keenest interpreters of Plato, takes up the question of beauty in three Platonic dialogues, the Hippias Major, Symposium, and Phaedrus. What Plato meant by beauty is not easily characterized, and Hyland's close readings show that Plato ultimately gives up on the possibility of a definition. Plato's failure, however, tells us something important about beauty—that it cannot be reduced to logos. Exploring questions surrounding love, memory, and ideal form, Hyland draws out the connections (...) between beauty, the possibility of philosophy, and philosophical living. This new reading of Plato provides a serious investigation into the meaning of beauty and places it at the very heart of philosophy. (shrink)

In this important book, Drew Khlentzos explains the antirealist argument from a realist perspective. He defends naturalistic realism against the antirealist challenge, and he considers the consequences of his defense for our understanding of realism and truth. Khlentzos argues that the naturalistic realist view that the world exists independently of the mind must take into consideration what he calls the representation problem: if the naturalistic realist view is true, how can mental representation of the world be explained? He examines (...) this major antirealist challenge in detail and shows that many realists have dismissed it because they have not understood its nature. He sees it as a philosophical puzzle: the antirealist challenge, if sound, does not prove that there are no objects that exist independently of the mind, but that there is no rational basis for thinking that there are; we have good reason to believe in the naturalistic view, but (given the antirealist arguments) we have no way of knowing how it could be true. Khlentzos surveys the antirealist arguments of Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, and Crispin Wright and suggests a realist answer. He argues for a radically nonepistemic conception of truth, and against pragmatist, intuitionist, verificationist, and pluralist alternatives. He examines and rejects some current versions of physicalism and functionalism, and offers an original version of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

Certain restrictions on public funding for assisted reproductive technology (ART) are articulated and defended by recourse to a distinction between medical infertility and social infertility. We propose that underlying the prioritization of medical infertility is a vision of medicine whose proper role is to restore but not to improve upon nature. We go on to mark moral responses that speak of investments many continue to make in nature as properly an object of reverence and gratitude and therein (sometimes) a source (...) of moral guidance. We draw on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in arguing for the plausibility of an appeal to nature in opposition to the charge that it must contain a logical fallacy. We also invite consideration of the moral plausibility of some appeal to nature. Finally, we examine what follows in the case of ART. Should medicine respect as natural limits that should not be overcome: the need for a man and a woman in reproduction; menopause; and even declining fertility with age? We must first ask ourselves to what degree we should defer to nature in the conduct of medicine, at least in the particular if not the general case. This will involve also asking ourselves what we think is natural and in what instances and spirit might we defy nature. Divergent opinions and policies concerning who should receive ART treatment and public funding are more easily understood in view of the centrality, complexity and fundamental nature of these questions. (shrink)

Much previous work in artificial intelligence has neglected representing time in all its complexity. In particular, it has neglected continuous change and the indeterminacy of the future. To rectify this, I have developed a first‐order temporal logic, in which it is possible to name and prove things about facts, events, plans, and world histories. In particular, the logic provides analyses of causality, continuous change in quantities, the persistence of facts (the frame problem), and the relationship between tasks and actions. It (...) may be possible to implement a temporal‐inference machine based on this logic, which keeps track of several “maps” of a time line, one per possible history. (shrink)

This is the first volume to systematically explore the range of contemporary thought concerning the body and draw out its crucial implications for medicine.

In this important book, Drew Khlentzos explains the antirealist argument from a realist perspective. He defends naturalistic realism against the antirealist challenge, and he considers the consequences of his defense for our understanding of realism and truth. Khlentzos argues that the naturalistic realist view that the world exists independently of the mind must take into consideration what he calls the representation problem: if the naturalistic realist view is true, how can mental representation of the world be explained?He examines this (...) major antirealist challenge in detail and shows that many realists have dismissed it because they have not understood its nature. He sees it as a philosophical puzzle: the antirealist challenge, if sound, does not prove that there are no objects that exist independently of the mind, but that there is no rational basis for thinking that there are; we have good reason to believe in the naturalistic view, but we have no way of knowing how it could be true. Khlentzos surveys the antirealist arguments of Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, and Crispin Wright and suggests a realist answer. He argues for a radically nonepistemic conception of truth, and against pragmatist, intuitionist, verificationist, and pluralist alternatives. He examines and rejects some current versions of physicalism and functionalism, and offers an original version of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

In this article, we use the basic concepts of Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy on democracy and education as analytical tools for exploring the democratic potential of a transnational education policy within the contemporary European risk discourse. A Deweyan reading of main policy documents, starting with the 2000 Lisbon Strategy, allows for critical discussion of some of the basic assumptions and consequences of the EU-advocated transnational education policy. The data sources include 28 EU policy documents from 2000 to 2014. The analysis shows (...) that in addition to a prevailing “human capital” discourse, there is potential for a communicative “democratic discourse” that promotes social cohesion. The democratic discourse underlines the full and free communication between different groups as the only way to promote and ensure the conditions for social cohesion. In this crisis of nearby wars, terror attacks and refugees in Europe, economy and competition are not viable concepts for seeking solutions. We argue that a shift to a language adapted to the real crisis and the fear of future crises in Europe is needed. We argue that a language that understands social efficiency, communication and a moral interest in the way Dewey outlined the concepts in Democracy and Education corresponds to the strong need to maintain and strengthen a democratic education and a democratic way of living for all. (shrink)

Literary education exposes students to unpredictable critical moments in their encounters with a text. Drawing on Dewey’s transactional realism and actor-network theory, this theoretical and conceptual study explores the performativity of things and materials as they shape reading and teaching bodies. This transactional performativity extends beyond the physical positioning of the body to the power relations enacted in text situations. The conceptual rationale is illustrated by a story about a reading chair in a detention home for detained young men—an environment (...) where power issues come to a head. The story illustrates a theoretical discussion of what might be characterized as performing ‘the critical’ in reading and how potentialities for students’ experiences are created in text situations by the different components involved. The purpose of the article is to explore the potentialities of performing critical aspects of reading to challenge, to transform, and to encourage resistance. (shrink)

Hypotheses regarding the selective pressures driving the threefold increase in the size of the hominid brain since Homo habilis include climatic conditions, ecological demands, and social competition. We provide a multivariate analysis that enables the simultaneous assessment of variables representing each of these potential selective forces. Data were collated for latitude, prevalence of harmful parasites, mean annual temperature, and variation in annual temperature for the location of 175 hominid crania dating from 1.9 million to 10 thousand years ago. We also (...) included a proxy for population density and two indexes of paleoclimatic variability for the time at which each cranium was discovered. Results revealed independent contributions of population density, variation in paleoclimate, and temperature variation to the prediction of change in hominid cranial capacity (CC). Although the effects of paleoclimatic variability and temperature variation provide support for climatic hypotheses, the proxy for population density predicted more unique variance in CC than all other variables. The pattern suggests multiple pressures drove hominid brain evolution and that the core selective force was social competition. (shrink)

This book explains how to read Plato, emphasizing the philosophic importance of the dramatic aspects of the dialogues, and showing that Plato is an ironic thinker and that his irony is deeply rooted in his philosophy.

Shanker & King (S&K) argue that information-theoretic approaches to communication are too rigid to capture the ebb and flow of communicative interactions. They advocate instead a dynamic systems approach based on the metaphor of dance. We focus on two problems arising from the dance metaphor: first, that its inherently cooperative tone contradicts basic tenets of behavioral biology; and second, that it risks obscuring rather than clarifying the details of communicative interactions.

We make three points: (1) Overlooked studies of nonhuman communication originally inspired, but no longer support, the blinkered view of mental continuity that Penn et al. critique. (2) Communicative discontinuities between animals and humans might be rooted in social-cognitive discontinuities, reflecting a common lacuna in Penn et al.'s relational reinterpretation mechanism. (3) However, relational reinterpretation need not be a qualitatively new representational process.

At the latter half of the twentieth century, Richard Swinburne proposed a model of the incarnation built upon Freud’s divided mind theory. Over the course of two publications, Tim Bayne has formulated the most robust critique of Swinburne’s model to date. In this paper, I argue that Bayne’s objections rest on key misinterpretations of Swinburne’s work. Moreover, when one properly understands the model, these objections lose their force. I begin by expositing Swinburne’s divided mind model (DM), highlighting its four foundational (...) theses. Next, I respond to Bayne’s objections against DM, demonstrating they rest upon misconceptions of the model. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) can serve as a beneficial public policy to reduce poverty and inequality, yet a great challenge is how to fund it. This article offers a roadmap for fully funding UBI in a manner that: eliminates poverty; bolsters the middle-class; eliminates the stigma and government bureaucracy of social welfare programs; reduces ever-expanding inequality; initiates a path to meeting climate change goals; reduces speculation; and increases fairness and opportunity in the tax code. As stand-alone policies, these revenue proposals (...) are valuable correctives in their own right. If the entire package of UBI and funding sources were in effect, society (and American capitalism) would be on a more stable, equitable, and environmentally sustainable footing. (shrink)

The option of being ‘spiritual but not religious’ deserves much more philosophical attention. That is the aim here, taking the work of Robert Solomon as a starting point, with focus on the particular issues around viewing life as gift. This requires analysis of ‘existential gratitude’ to show that there can be gratitude for things without gratitude to someone for providing things, and also closer attention to the role that metaphor plays in cognition. I consider two main concerns with gift and (...) gratitude thinking, that the nonreligious justification is too instrumentalist in its approach and that viewing life as gift, whether in a religious or nonreligious way, is simply too optimistic. (shrink)

In reply to Michael Campbell, I reformulate my questions of Raimond Gaita, avoiding the expression “form of life”. I examine what might remove the need for my questions, before taking up Campbell's line of thought about what he calls the “inwardness” of moral concepts. Campbell helps to clarify the picture of moral concepts advanced by Wittgensteinian moral philosophers. But at a general level, the picture remains unclear where a grammar meets its scaffolding of facts. Some may find this unproblematic, and (...) indeed unavoidable. But I remain unsure of this, and hope to provide at least a useful caution. (shrink)

A new theory of problem solving is presented, which embeds problem solving in the theory of action; in this theory, a problem is just a difficult action. Making this work requires a sophisticated language for‐talking about plans and their execution. This language allows a broad range of types of action, and can also be used to express rules for choosing and scheduling plans. To ensure flexibility, the problem solver consists of an interpreter driven by a theorem prover which actually manipulates (...) formulas of the language. Many examples of the use of the system six given. including an extended treatment of the world of blocks. Limitations and extensions of the system are discussed at length. It is concluded that a rule‐based problem solver is necessary and feasible, but that much more work remains to be done on the underlying theory of planning and acting. (shrink)

If we lack deep free agency, like that supposed by metaphysical libertarianism, should we view life as meaningless, pointless, or not worth living? Here I present a new argument in support of meaning-compatibilism, or the view that life can indeed be meaningful without our having deep free agency. I show that this argument secures meaning-compatibilism more effectively than an argument provided by Derk Pereboom. In the process, we learn that Susan Wolf’s hybrid theory of meaning in life is not equipped (...) to handle the question of meaning-compatibilism, which a broader approach to meaning in life should help us to grasp. On the alternative approach I present, judgments about meaning in life involve a sensitivity to whether giving up on life, or “agency defeat”, is justified. I argue that, so long as we are able to exist in reality, giving up on life is difficult to justify, and even without deep free agency, we do indeed exist in reality. (shrink)

Lucy Osler's piece, "Controlling the noise: A phenomenological account of Anorexia Nervosa and the threatening body," lays out an important new interpretation of anorexia. Anorexia Nervosa is no longer viewed as primarily a perceptual distortion of body-image, an obsession with thinness, or an attempt to dematerialize—to free the subject from its inert thing-like body. Rather, the body itself, and the visceral body in particular, takes on a "voice" which the anorexic experiences as demanding and threatening. Anorexic monitoring and self-starvation beckons (...) as a way to regain power over this renegade viscerality. Unfortunately, this strategy of self-empowerment is doomed to backfire; hunger, illness, and body/food... (shrink)

Across the world, pain is under-treated in emergency departments. We canvass the literature testifying to this problem, the reasons why this problem is so important, and then some of the main hypotheses that have been advanced in explanation of the problem. We then argue for the plausibility of two new hypotheses: pain's under-treatment in the ED is due partly to an epistemic preference for signs over symptoms on the part of some practitioners, and some ED practices that themselves worsen pain (...) by increasing patients' anxiety and fear. Our argument includes the following logic. Some ED practitioners depart from formal guidance in basing their acute pain assessments on observable features rather than on patient reports of pain. This is potentially due to an epistemic preference for signs over symptoms which aims to circumvent intentional and/or unintentional misrepresentation on the part of patients. However, conducting pain assessments in line with this epistemic preference contributes to the under-treatment of pain in at least three respects, which we detail. Moreover, it may do little to help the practitioner circumvent any intentional misrepresentation on the part of the patient, as we explain. Second, we examine at least four ED practices that may be contributing to the under-treatment of pain by increasing patient anxiety and fear, which can worsen pain. These practices include failing to provide orienting information and partially objectifying patients so as to problem-solve along lines pre-established by modern medical science. We conclude by touching on some potential solutions for ED practice. (shrink)

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

Encounters with illness, impairment, and aging can disrupt one’s experiential relationship with self, body, others, and world. “Healing” takes place when the individual is able to re-integrate his or her world, even if the condition is not medically curable. Drawing on work in the phenomenology of the body, this article examines a series of eight “healing strategies” individuals employ, each representing a different way of orienting toward the painful or impaired body. One may lean into freeing oneself from the body, (...) through strategies of “refusing,” “ignoring,” “objectifying,” or “transcending” its problems. Conversely, one may choose to embrace the body, through strategies such as “accepting,” “listening,” “befriending,” or “witnessing.” It can be beneficial to have a good number of such coping strategies at one’s disposal, enhancing flexible response to chronic challenges. They also are often used in synergistic or complementary combinations. (shrink)

The lived body has structures of ability built up over time through habit. Serious illness, injury, and incapacity can disrupt these capacities, and thereby, one’s relationship to the body, and to time itself. This paper focuses attention on a series of healing strategies individuals then employ on the “chessboard” of possibilities intrinsic to lived embodiment. This can include restoring past abilities (pointing to the future to recreate the past); and/or transforming one’s bodily structure or use-patterns, or the external environment, to (...) compensate. With many conditions, including progressive aging, no full rehabilitation is possible. Nevertheless, one can also seek consolation, richness, or hope by remembering the past; anticipating the future; or presencing, that is, living fully in the now. Insofar as past, present, and future are interwoven in one’s life experience, many also meet adversity by a life-story revision, constructing a new narrative to render events meaningful. Some also access a sense of transpersonal timelessness, whether through anticipation of an afterlife, or a sense of the eternal present. There is a literature on the adaptive coping mechanism used by the chronically ill, but with its diverse patient populations, methodologies, and categories, it has proved difficult to systematize. This article suggests that the structures of lived embodiment, as explored by phenomenology, provide a way to understand the modes of wholeness individuals access over time, and in relation to time—what is here termed chronic healing. (shrink)