Psychodrama is an effective psychotherapeutic model but interventions with adolescents require age-tailored techniques that maximize engagement and facilitate communication processes. This study describes a novel adaptation of a therapeutic mask technique to psychodrama with adolescents. Over the course of eight group sessions of psychodrama, five adolescents created their own mask and explored its therapeutic use. Their experiences were captured at the end of each session with the Helpful Aspects of Therapy form, and at the end of the study with the (...) Clinical Change Interview. Awareness/insight/self-understanding, empowerment and relief were the most significant aspects experienced by the adolescents, along with perceived increase of calmness and world connection, satisfaction in interpersonal communication and better emotional expression and regulation. The mask technique was experienced as a playful and engaging task that facilitated insight and interpersonal communication. Findings provide preliminary evidence on the clinical utility of mask-based psychodrama with adolescents. (shrink)

As Raymond Williams famously declared, nature is one of the most complex words in the English language – and, we may confidently predict, its Germanic relatives including Dutch. The workshop that took place in June 2007 in the Netherlands, from which this volume is derived, was based on an earlier program exploring connections between our concepts of nature and related concepts of science and religion. Though one may not immediately expect these three realms to be interrelated, countless examples suggest otherwise.

The mobile phone has become part of our everyday lives with astonishing speed. Over four billion people now have access to mobile phones, and this number keeps increasing. Mobile media technologies shape how we communicate with each other, and relate to the world. This raises questions about their influence on identity. Medium-specific properties and user-practices challenge the idea that we understand ourselves through stories. It is proposed that the notion of play sheds new light on how technologies shape identities. The (...) mobile phone mediates identities on four play levels: we play on the mobile, with the mobile, through the mobile, and at the same time we are played by the mobile. Mobile media bring new freedom of movement. Yet at the same time they constrict us. In this dialectic we become moving circles. (shrink)

In “Flourish,” Martin Seligman maintained that the elements of well-being consist of “PERMA: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.” Although the question of what constitutes human flourishing or psychological well-being has remained a topic of continued debate among scholars, it has recently been argued in the literature that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of human psychological well-being would largely manifest most or all of the aforementioned PERMA factors. Further, in “A Neuroscientific Perspective on Music Therapy,” Stefan Koelsch also suggested (...) that “Music therapy can have effects that improve the psychological and physiological health of individuals,” so it seems plausible that engaging in practices of music can positively contribute to one living a more optimally flourishing life with greater psychological well-being. However, recent studies on music practice and participation have not yet been reviewed and integrated under the PERMA framework from positive psychology to further explore and explicate this possibility. This article therefore contributes to extant work by reviewing recent research on psychological well-being and music to offer support for the claim that music practice and participation can positively contribute to one living a flourishing life by positively influencing their emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. (shrink)

Coreferentialism refers to the common assumption in the literature that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. For instance, Vallee recently writes that “If S is an ethnic slur in language L, then there is a non-derogatory expression G in L such that G and S have the same extension”. The non-derogatory expression G is commonly considered the nonpejorative correlate of the slur expression S and it is widely thought that every S has a coreferring G (...) that possesses precisely the same extension. Yet here I argue against this widespread assumption by first briefly introducing what slurs are and then considering four sources of supporting evidence showing that slurs and descriptors are in fact not coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. I argue that since slurs and descriptors differ in their extension they thereby differ in their meaning or content also. This article additionally introduces the notion of a conceptual anchor in order to adequately account for the relationship between slurs and descriptors actually evidenced in the empirical data, and further considers the inadequacy of common dictionary definitions of slurs. This article therefore contributes to the literature on slurs by demonstrating that previous accounts operating on the assumption that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with the same extension, and that they thereby have the same meaning or content, are inconsistent with empirical data and that an alternative account in accord with Croom better fits the facts concerning their actual meaning and use. (shrink)

The question of what constitutes and facilitates mental health or psychological well-being has remained of great interest to martial artists and philosophers alike, and still endures to this day. Although important questions about well-being remain, it has recently been argued in the literature that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of human psychological well-being would characteristically consist of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Other scholarship has also recently suggested that martial arts practice may positively promote psychological well-being, although recent (...) studies on martial arts have not yet been reviewed and integrated under the PERMA framework from positive psychology to further explore and explicate this possibility. This article therefore contributes to the literature by reviewing recent work on psychological well-being and martial arts to determine whether there is substantive support for the claim that practicing martial arts can positively contribute to one flourishing with greater psychological well-being. (shrink)

In “Flourish,” the psychologist Martin Seligman proposed that psychological well-being consists of “PERMA: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.” Although the question of what constitutes flourishing or psychological well-being has been long debated among scholars, the recent literature has suggested that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of psychological well-being would manifest most or all of the aforementioned PERMA factors. The recent literature on poetry therapy has also suggested that poetry practice may be utilized as “an effective therapeutic tool” for (...) patients suffering from a variety of ailments so it seems plausible that practicing poetry can positively contribute to one flourishing with greater psychological well-being. However, recent studies on poetry therapy have not yet been reviewed and integrated under the PERMA framework from positive psychology to further explore and explicate this possibility. This article therefore contributes to extant work by reviewing recent research on poetry therapy and psychological well-being and offering support for the claim that practicing poetry can positively contribute to one flourishing with greater psychological well-being by positively influencing their emotions, engagement or “flow” experiences, social relationships, sense of meaning or purpose in life, and personal accomplishments. (shrink)

Is God's foreknowledge compatible with human freedom? One of the most attractive attempts to reconcile the two is the Ockhamistic view, which subscribes not only to human freedom and divine omniscience, but retains our most fundamental intuitions concerning God and time: that the past is immutable, that God exists and acts in time, and that there is no backward causation. In order to achieve all that, Ockhamists distinguish ‘hard facts’ about the past which cannot possibly be altered from ‘soft facts’ (...) about the past which are alterable, and argue that God's prior beliefs about human actions are soft facts about the past. (shrink)

This special issue of Journal of Poetry Therapy focuses on the use of poetry and other forms of expressive writing to explore the transformative experiences of military veterans, and so in this article I discuss how the use of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy positively influenced my life while I was serving in the United States Air Force (USAF) from 2000 through 2004. This article briefly reviews my reasons for enlisting and discusses the importance that poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy had for (...) me during four different phases of my military history: (i) Basic Military Training, (ii) Aircraft Qualification, Combat Survival, and Water Survival Training, (iii) serving in the post 9/11 operations Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and (iv) the period after fulfilling my time of service for the USAF. In discussing each phase, I explain the unique challenges that I encountered, how I used poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy to successfully overcome these challenges, point out relevant examples of poetry, hip-hop, and philosophy that were particularly influential, and include pictures of my experiences throughout. (shrink)

In his 1827 work Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Jeremy Bentham famously argued against exclusionary rules such as hearsay, preferring a policy of “universal admissibility” unless the declarant is easily available. Bentham’s claim that all relevant evidence should be considered with appropriate instructions to fact finders has been particularly influential among judges, culminating in the “principled approach” to hearsay in Canada articulated in R. v. Khelawon. Furthermore, many scholars attack Bentham’s argument only for ignoring the realities of juror bias, admitting universal (...) admissibility would be the best policy for an ideal jury. This article uses the theory of epistemic contextualism to justify the exclusion of otherwise relevant evidence, and even reliable hearsay, on the basis of preventing shifts in the epistemic context. Epistemic contextualism holds that the justification standards of knowledge attributions change according to the contexts in which the attributions are made. Hearsay and other kinds of information the assessment of which rely upon fact finders’ more common epistemic capabilities push the epistemic context of the trial toward one of more relaxed epistemic standards. The exclusion of hearsay helps to maintain a relatively high standards context hitched to the standard of proof for the case and to prevent shifts that threaten to try defendants with inconsistent standards. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends that an afterlife in which a person receives a new body after his or her old body is destroyed (as it is on some notions of bodily resurrection) is conceptually impossible. The main idea behind this argument is that such an afterlife would conceptually require that a person be a kind of thing that could be rendered plural. But since persons are not that type of thing, such an afterlife is not conceptually possible.

Courses in the philosophy of law provide philosophy departments an opportunity to focus on timely and relevant questions affecting the lives of undergraduates as well as attract students interested in the legal profession to the study of philosophy. This review article examines four recent texts in philosophy of law, three anthologies and a single-authored introductory text, and discusses their suitability to the classroom. After an overview identifying key features of each text, several comparative points are made relevant to teaching philosophy (...) of law. The diversity of issues, cases, and approaches to philosophy of law evinced by these textbooks suggests that the faculty member selecting texts should choose carefully. (shrink)

This article looks at some of the salient analyses of moderation in the ancient Greek and the Islamic traditions and uses them to develop a contemporary view of the matter. Greek ethics played a huge role in shaping the ethical views of the Muslim philosophers and theologians, and thus the article starts with an overview of the revival of contemporary western virtue ethics--in many ways an extension of Platonic-Aristotelian ethics--and then looks at the place of moderation or temperance in Platonic-Aristotelian (...) ethics. This sets the stage for an exposition of the position taken by Ibn Miskawayh and al-Ghazali, which is then used as a backdrop for suggesting a revival of the Quran's virtue ethics. After outlining a basis for its virtue ethics, the Quranic view of wasatiyya or moderation is discussed briefly. (shrink)

In “Imposing Risks,” Judith Thomson gives a case in which, by turning on her stove, she accidentally causes her neighbor’s death. She claims that both the following are true: (1) she ought not to have caused her neighbor’s death; (2) it was permissible for her to turn her stove on. In this paper it is argued that it cannot be that both (1) and (2) are true, that (2) is true, and that therefore (1) is false. How this is so (...) is explained, and the implications of this position regarding the relation between rights and duties is explored. (shrink)

Plato's Timaeus contains a powerful and influential myth, of the construction of the universe by a divine craftsman. A god imposes reason on necessity, to bring order from a primeval 'receptacle' of disordered matter. There results the 'child' that is the cosmos - a copy of an eternally-existing perfect model. Here eight new essays from a distinguished international cast, explore aspects of this challenging work: the principles of the mythical narrative, how the world soul and human body are formed, implications (...) for illness - mental and physical, the importance of music and harmonious proportion. Later developments are also treated: Aristotle's theory of generation, the commentary of Proclus and elements of modern evolutionary theory. (shrink)

CADERNOS DE FILOSOFIA EXTRAVAGANTE - ANTÓNIO TELMO Vários Autores Um dos sinais do Quinto Império é que ainda há andorinhas O provérbio diz que uma andorinha não faz a Primavera Mas eu acho que faz Enquanto houver um homem onde resida a espiritualidade há sempre um princípio do Quinto Império António Telmo Este terceiro volume dos Cadernos de Filosofia Extravagante é o primeiro que se publica após a partida de António Telmo, que os imaginou, concebeu e fundou Constitui por isso, (...) na íntegra, um preito de homenagem ao autor da História Secreta de Portugal, nele se inserindo, bem a propósito, as actas do Colóquio A Obra e o Pensamento de António Telmo, realizado em 14 e 15 de Fevereiro de 2011, no Palácio da Independência, em Lisboa, por iniciativa do Instituto de Filosofia Luso-Brasileira, documento a que acrescem alguns testemunhos de amigos que, por uma ou outra razão, não puderam participar naquela comemoração, e duas entrevistas, uma das quais se encontrava por publicar, pelo filósofo concedidas na última década Por outro lado, nestas páginas o leitor poderá ainda encontrar dois escritos do autor de O Bateleur – um poema e um conto – nunca antes dados ao papel em letra de forma E, o que talvez seja mais, uma série significativa de correspondência epistolar até agora mantida inédita, tendo o filósofo por destinatário São missivas de Álvaro Ribeiro, José Marinho, Agostinho da Silva, Dalila Pereira da Costa e António Quadros, definindo um arco temporal que vai da publicação de Arte Poética, em 1963, à de Filosofia e Kabbalah, em 1990 Quase trinta anos de uma vida filosófica singular em que, a cada passo, são bem notórias a admiração e a amizade que mestres e condiscípulos lhe dedicam Autores- António Telmo, Pedro Martins, Renato Epifânio, Américo Rodrigues, Helena Estriga, António Braz Teixeira, Joaquim Domingues, Abel de Lacerda Botelho, Roque N Brás de Oliveira, M N Vieira, Luís Paixão, António Carlos Carvalho, Cynthia Guimarães Taveira, Rui Lopo, António Quadros Ferro, Carlos Aurélio, António Cândido Franco, Rodrigo Sobral Cunha, Carlos Vargas, Manuel Ferreira Patrício, Pedro Sinde, Paulo Santos, Pedro Paquim Ribeiro, Maurícia Teles da Silva, J Pinharanda Gomes, António Quadros, Avelino de Sousa, Elísio Gala, José Paulo Ribeiro Albuquerque, Helder Cortes, Eduardo Aroso, Isabel Xavier, Jesus Carlos, Álvaro Ribeiro, José Marinho, Agostinho da Silva, Dalila Pereira da Costa. (shrink)

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains (...) how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology. (shrink)

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

Resumo: Conhecer os deveres que temos em relação às gerações futuras é cada vez mais urgente, diante da degradação individual, social e ambiental que a humanidade enfrenta. O presente artigo pretende mostrar, de início, a complexidade filosófica dessa questão, indicando que, nos enunciados sobre o assunto, há três pressuposições filosoficamente problemáticas: 1) haverá gerações futuras; 2) nossas ações são contingentes; e 3) somos responsáveis por nossos impactos sobre as próximas gerações. Discutimos essas suposições, por meio das questões sobre a eternidade (...) do mundo, a existência da liberdade e o significado de dever, e abordamos, em seguida, as ideias convergentes de Hans Jonas e Ulrich Beck, as quais apontam que a singularidade do poder que a tecnologia conferiu ao ser humano requer agora um novo pensamento ético. Na conclusão, argumentamos que é preciso definir deveres em relação às gerações futuras e elencamos quais seriam, a nosso ver, os principais deles, levando em conta a ideia de incerteza, alcançada tanto por meio das discussões filosóficas apresentadas quanto a partir da nova conjuntura tecnocientífica de nosso tempo.: Debates on our duties to future generations are increasingly urgent if we consider the individual, social, and human degradation of the present day. This article points out the philosophical complexity that underlies these debates, first indicating that the following assumptions are present in every statement concerning our duties to future generations: 1) there will be future generations; 2) our actions are contingent; 3) we are responsible for the way our actions impact future generations. The first three sections discuss each of these assumptions by presenting the debates over the eternity of the world, the existence of freedom, and the idea of duty. In the following sections we present the convergent ideas of Hans Jonas and Ulrich Beck, so as to argue that as technology has given humankind an unprecedented power over the world, a new kind of ethical thought is required. Finally, taking into account the idea of incertitude that arises both from the philosophical issues discussed and from our current techno-scientific context, we conclude by arguing that we should formulate our duties regarding future generations and specify those that are our main obligations. (shrink)

This article is focused on some conditions in today’s world of globalized media, which are producing either an uncritical acquiescence or fright in Muslim societies as a result of the interaction between these societies and the contemporary Western powers that represent modernity and postmodernity on the global stage. The rise of fundamentalism, a tendency toward returning to the roots and stringently insisting upon some pure and literal interpretation of them, in almost all the religions of the world is a manifestation (...) of this fright. The central concern of this article is to suggest that fundamentalism is neither the only nor the most reasonable response for Muslim societies in the face of contemporary modernity. Muslims need to adopt an independent and critical attitude toward modernity and reshape their societies in the light of the ethics of the Qur’an, keeping in view the historical link between Islam and science in as much as Islamic culture paved the way for emergence of modern science during European Renaissance. The necessity of a pluralistic or contextualized modernization of Muslim societies is discussed along with the need for the removal of cultural duplicity in the role of the West in relation to Muslim societies. All this leads to an overall proposal for modernization which is given towards the end. (shrink)

In the General Psychopathology Jaspers famously draws a distinction between the understandable and explainable. Meaningful connections between psychic events, he argues, can only be understood empathetically and cannot be explained causally. The idea behind this distinction, according to some interpreters at least, seems to be that psychic events do not fall under any general causal rules whereas ordinary events do fall under such rules. Also Jaspers distinguishes empathetic understanding of the connection between two psychic events from a mere interpretation of (...) it, which may turn out to be false. Hence, understanding seems to be able to give us the truth about the connection and is factive as well as self-evident in nature. Contemporary epistemologists, such as Linda Zagzebsky, Duncan Pritchard, and Jonathan Kvanvig, for example, distinguish three varieties: propositional, objectual or holistic, and atomistic understanding. They do not agree on factivity and transparency of understanding. What then is the difference between their views and that of Jaspers? This essay compares recent epistemological views of understanding with those of Jaspers and critiques his claims about empathetic understanding as being both factive and self-evident or transparent; to show that empathetic understanding of connections between psychic events needs a public criterion for its individuation. (shrink)

Considerable methodological difficulties abound in neuroimaging, and several philosophers of science have recently called into question the potential of neuroimaging studies to contribute to our knowledge of human cognition. These skeptical accounts suggest that functional hypotheses are underdetermined by neuroimaging data. I apply Mayo’s error-statistical account to clarify the evidential import of neuroimaging data and the kinds of inferences it can reliably support. Thus, we can answer the question “What can we reliably learn from neuroimaging?” and make sense of how (...) this knowledge can contribute to novel construals of cognition. (shrink)

The use of platelet rich plasma as a novel treatment is discussed in the context of a qualitative research study comprising 38 interviews with sports medicine practitioners and other stakeholders working within the English Premier League during the 2013–16 seasons. Analysis of the data produced several overarching themes: conservatism versus experimentalism in medical attitudes; therapy perspectives divergence; conflicting versions of appropriate evidence; subcultures; community beliefs/practices; and negotiation of medical decision-making. The contested evidence base for the efficacy of PRP is presented (...) in the context of a broader professional shift towards evidence based medicine within sports medicine. Many of the participants while accepting this shift are still committed to casuistic practices where clinical judgment is flexible and does not recognize a context-free hierarchy of evidentiary standards to ethically justifiable practice. We also discuss a tendency in the data collected to consider the use of deceptive, placebo-like, practices among the clinician participants that challenge dominant understandings of informed consent in medical ethics. We conclude that the complex relation between evidence and ethics requires greater critical scrutiny for this emerging specialism within the medical community. (shrink)