In her early work on Modernist poetry and avant-garde poetics, Julia Kristeva proposed a bifurcated view of the poetic text as simultaneously constituted by both a “genotext” and a “phenotext.” Reading the “genotext” of any given poem might start by “pointing out the transfers of drive energy that can be detected in phonematic devices and melodic devices ”; and, in her words, it would also need to take into consideration “the way semantic and categorial fields are set out in syntactic (...) and logical features.” This essay seeks to demonstrate how Harryette Mullen’s Muse & Drudge might be analyzed at the level of its genotext, taking as its primary example the first of the book’s eighty poems to illustrate how a straightforwardly genotextual analysis might proceed. The essay contends that, by closely observing the genotext of Mullen’s poetry in Muse & Drudge, one may eventually arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the “polyvocal” and “polymorphous” nature of the language and poetic design of the poems in this enigmatic collection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.3 (2003) 265-266 [Access article in PDF] Definition Is Limited and Values Inescapable Richard Mullen THIS IS A welcome paper that lays bare some of the presumptions of those who seek to determine the status of psychiatric disorder. At different times debate on the subject reflects stigma, prejudice, needs for coherent categorization, and occasionally just antipsychiatric resentment. As Pickering hints, much philosophical argument may (...) be selected to support a position already chosen.The article illustrates that the likeness argument is insufficient to demonstrate that mental disorders are or are not disorders in any other more profound sense. Similarly perhaps, if a debate were conducted about whether or not a bony fracture, hypertension, obesity, or bacterial infection were real illnesses, the likeness argument might be unfruitful. This is perhaps unsurprising; notions of health and illness, mental or physical, are largely abstractions. In psychiatry, so-called symptoms are themselves abstract classifications of incompletely articulated mental phenomena far more diverse than the definitions and criteria to be found in a diagnostic manual.Argument by analogy is always limited. If my car has a flat tire, the car will be dysfunctional or disordered. Its loss of performance will be the symptoms of the flat tire, which is the lesion. It is a problem quickly diagnosed and treated. If convenient, I suppose my car could have been said to be ill, but this would not lead to any particular insights into the nature of cars, mechanics, health, or anything else.A variety of concepts can be contained within terms such as illness,disease, and disorder. They include the clinicopathological approach (the disease is the organic lesion), the disease is deviance approach, disease as distress, and approaches that consider disease—particularly mental disorder—as largely socially constructed. None may resolve the questions that Pickering raises, but recognizing that our terms are not always precise or used consistently is part of formulating the problem more clearly. For the most part clinical psychiatry (and the rest of medicine) has no difficulty in properly identifying most of our patients as disordered or ill. The fact that there are some borderline instances, difficult to classify either way, does not invalidate the classification.Consideration of whether or not the features of a disorder can in themselves determine whether or not a person is disordered is timely for two reasons. As stigma about (some) psychiatric disorder lessens, and opportunities for complaint and compensation expand, an era of self-definition as mentally disordered has arrived. How are mental health practitioners to respond to someone whose mental distress appears not to be clinically significant, but who demands access to the sick role? Also of current concern for clinical psychiatry is widespread pressure to define as disordered those persons whose antisocial behavior brings them into conflict with society. Professional recognition that definitions of mental disorder are inadequate, or rather incomplete, [End Page 265] may be valid. Worryingly, there are others who are willing to define it for us.Both major international systems of classification of mental disorder offer definitions of mental disorder that turn on what is to be meant by clinical significance or clinically recognizable. In the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, mental disorder implies "clinically significant impairment or distress," and criteria for specific disorders mostly including a comment about "clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (APA 2000, 8). In the International Classification of Disease, disorder is used to imply "existence of a clinically recognizable set of symptoms or behavior associated in most cases with distress and with interference with personal function" (WHO 1992, 5). It seems that no definition of mental disorder is adequate for all purposes. Seeking to improve existing definitions by further defining the terms used quickly becomes an exercise in pedantry, far removed from practical utility.Pickering mentions as an example the "symptom" of delusions. Available definitions are widely recognized as incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory (David 1999). This leads to debate about what the individual elements within the definition precisely mean. However in practice delusions are identified with remarkably high reliability (WHO 1973... (shrink)

DAVID WARD, in his interesting essay, advances a number of propositions: -/- That moral (including evil) behavior must be governed by a principle. That the principles involved in evil actions are unconscious. That these unconscious evil principles may be the product of malignant narcissism. And somewhat tentatively, that evil is driven "independent of any conscious desires" and by implication the evil person may be stripped of moral responsibility for their behavior. -/- To begin with common ground: Those who act in (...) an evil manner, in my experience, do not usually acknowledge that they acted on an evil principle (nor do those who commit good acts, excepting the terminally self-righteous, usually explain their behavior in terms of adherence to principles). Among serious offenders, self-justification in terms of having no choice is more common or the hapless claim that "I don't know why I did that" or even "I can't believe I did that" (which all too often becomes "I can't remember doing that" for as Nietzche (1886) wrote "I have done that—says my memory. I could not have done that—says my pride and remains inexorable. Eventually memory gives in"). Those who do appeal to principle to justify their evil actions almost inevitably cite value systems that have considerable, if not universal, acceptance. I have encountered men who proudly declared their killings to be part of the pursuit of righteous aims, such as protecting children from pedophiles, stopping the killing of the unborn child, reducing AIDS, and cleansing their city of vice. Interestingly the combination of dreadful, and in many cases repeated, violence with self-righteous superiority often attracts from fellow prisoners and prison staff a label of evil. (shrink)

The Leadership Identity Journey takes readers on a breathtaking, all-consuming, transformative journey. The invitation is to think of your life as a journey that follows a mythic path. By doing so, new possibilities emerge for thinking about leadership identity and preparation, as well as artistic research and the education field. The perspectives described in this book are supported by school leaders' insights into powerful iconic photographs relative to the five mythic life phases: the human condition, trials in life, human triumph, (...) human transformation, and human crossing, with the addition of leadership as a dimension of the life-journey model. The authors conducted their study using selected photographs framed by the universal mythic framework inspired by mythologist Joseph Campbell. (shrink)

The traditional view that having a personality disorder, unlike other mental disorders, is not usually reason enough to consider a person incompetent to make healthcare decisions is challenged. The example of a case in which a woman was treated for a physical disorder without her consent illustrates that personality disorder can render a person incompetent to refuse essential treatment, particularly because it can affect the doctor–patient relationship within which consent is given.

While human beings generally act prosocially towards one another — contra a Hobbesian “war of all against all” — this basic social courtesy tends not to be extended to our relations with the more-than-human world. Educational philosophy is largely grounded in a worldview that privileges human-centered conceptions of the self, valuing its own opinions with little regard for the ecological realities undergirding it. This hyper-separation from the ‘society of all beings’ is a foundational cause of our current ecological crises. In (...) this paper, we develop an ecosocial philosophy of education based on the idea of an ecological self. We aspire to consolidate voices from deep ecology and ecofeminism for conceptualizing education in terms of being responsible to and for, a complex web of interdependent relations among human and more-than-human beings. By analyzing the notion of opinions in light of Gilles Deleuze’s critique of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ we formulate three aspects of ESPE capable of supporting an ecological as opposed to an egoistic conception of the self: rather than dealing with fixed concepts, ESPE supports adaptable and flexible boundaries between the self and the world; rather than fixating on correct answers, ESPE focuses on real-life problems shifting our concern from the self to the world; and rather than supporting arrogance, EPSE cultivates an epistemic humility grounded in our ecological embeddedness in the world. These approaches seek to enable an education that cultivates a sense of self that is less caught up with arbitrary, egoistic opinions of the self and more attuned to the ecological realities constituting our collective life-worlds. (shrink)

A rationale is presented for using social roles as the basis for developing a social roles curriculum framework at the secondary level. The construct social role is defined as a pattern of behaviours and attitudes related to a specific function or position as expected by society. Havighurst's social role concept provides background information for the current research project. This study attempts to revitalise Havighurst's social role theory within a contemporary context. Data were collected from 300 adults on a community survey (...) that was distributed within the Tampa Bay Area, USA. The survey controlled for an equal number of respondents grouped by age, gender, and SES level. Particular social roles emerged from the analysis as salient for certain adult groups. It was found that students need to be prepared for the various new social roles they will fill as adults, and that secondary school curricula should be rethought along these lines. The importance of such under-valued social roles as friendship is contemplated for formal school learning. Finally, perspectives are advanced for integrating the research findings into the secondary school curriculum. (shrink)

Bruno Latour (2004) claims that modernist critique, the kind that removes the false veils of ideology, ‘has run out of steam’. Despite its theoretical variety, it often consists in pointing out how...

This volume maps the areas of ethical concern in the debate regarding the governance of genetic information, and suggests alternative ethical frameworks and models of regulation in order to inform its restructuring. Genetic governance is at the heart of medical and scientific developments, and is connected to global exploitation, issues of commodification, commercialisation and ownership, the concepts of property and intellectual property and concerns about individual and communal identity. Thus the decisions that are made in the next few years about (...) appropriate models of genetic governance will have knock-on effects for other areas of governance. In short the final answer to 'Who Decides?' in the context of genetic governance will fundamentally shape the ethical constructs of individuals and their networks and relationships in the public sphere. (shrink)

Genetic variability is considered a key to the evolvability of species. The conversion of an adenosine (A) to inosine (I) in primary RNA transcripts can result in an amino acid change in the encoded protein, a change in secondary structure of the RNA, creation or destruction of a splice consensus site, or otherwise alter RNA fate. Substantial transcriptome and proteome variability is generated by A‐to‐I RNA editing through site‐selective post‐transcriptional recoding of single nucleotides. We posit that this epigenetic source of (...) phenotypic variation is an unrecognized mechanism of adaptive evolution. The genetic variation introduced through editing occurs at low evolutionary cost since predominant production of the wild‐type protein is retained. This property even allows exploration of sequence space that is inaccessible through mutation, leading to increased phenotypic plasticity and provides an evolutionary advantage for acclimatization as well as long‐term adaptation. Furthermore, continuous probing for novel RNA editing sites throughout the transcriptome is an intrinsic property of the editing machinery and represents the molecular basis for increased adaptability. We propose that higher organisms have therefore evolved to systems with increasing RNA editing activity and, as a result, to more complex systems. (shrink)

We review evidence of the psychological and social costs associated with punishing. We propose that these psychological and social costs should be considered (in addition to material costs) when searching for evidence of costly punishment.

Legal codes, such as the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) examined in this article, are good points of entry for AI and ontology work because of their more straightforward adaptability to relationship linking and rules-based encoding. However, approaches relying on encoding solely on formal code structure are incomplete, missing the rich experience of practitioner expertise that identifies key relationships and decision criteria often supplied by experienced practitioners and process experts from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, political economics, logistics, operations research). This research (...) focuses on the UCC because it transcends the limitations of a formal code, functioning essentially as a composite. AI work can benefit from real-world codes like the UCC, which are essentially formal codes enlightened from a more realistic experience-base from centuries of development in international commercial transactions settings. This paper then describes our initial work in converting an expert system on the U.S. law governing the sale of goods from Article II of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), into a knowledge-based system using the Web Ontology Language OWL. (shrink)

The two commentators have examined and illuminated different aspects of the analysis of delusions that we have offered. Their discussions both raise points that clarify that analysis in helpful ways. Richard Bentall (2014) makes the telling point that distinguishing the mental phenomena that count as delusions is not always straightforward and that, at the margins, there is a perennial problem with patterns of thought that seem to fall outside the realm of shared meanings that most of us derive from our (...) experiences. The problem is evident in certain marginal conditions that come to psychiatric attention, like conversion reactions, body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia, and the many obsessions or strained .. (shrink)

Psychopathy fascinates. Modernist writers construct out of it an image of alienated individualism pursuing the moment, killing they know not why, exploiting in passing, troubled, if troubled at all, not by guilt, but by perplexity (Camus 1989; Gide 1995; Mailer 1957; Musil 1996). Psychiatrists and psychologists—even those who should know better—are drawn by it to take off into philosophical speculation about morality, evil, and the beast in man (Mullen 1992; Simon 1996). Philosophers succumb to the temptation of attempting to (...) ground speculation in the supposed facticity of psychopathy. -/- Psychopathy is a cultural construct with roots going back to the eighteenth century, but which only came to full flower over the last fifty years (Hare 1998; Lewis 1974). The currently fashionable constructions of psychopathy find wide acceptance among clinicians and academics. The problem is, however, whether the concept has connections that have been established to the behavior, psychopathology, or the structure and function of brain worthy of according even a modest level of scientific status. There is little point in basing an argument on some supposed scientific gold standard if what glitters is iron pyrites (fools' gold). -/- Neil Levy's opening paragraph contains the statement "Yet in other respects they seem quite irrational; so much so that the term moral insanity has sometimes been applied to them" (p. 129). This both asserts that there is a category "them," namely the psychopaths, and connects them to "moral insanity." Moral insanity entered the language of psychiatry when Pritchard chose to use the term to translate Pinel's category of mania sans deliré (Pritchard 1836). Pinel was attempting to conceptualize a range of disorders that bordered on insanity in the sense of severe disturbances of affect, judgment, and behavior, but that were not accompanied by hallucinations or delusions (Pinel 1798/1964). In today's terminology, the cases he described would probably fall into diagnostic groups, including major depression, bipolar disorder, epilepsy, and a range of personality disorders. A number of his more striking case histories involved antisocial and even murderous behavior, which probably reflected Pinel's role in assessing offenders for the criminal courts of Paris. Pritchard's use of the English word "moral" reflected an appeal first to its use at the time to designate something which was like or similar, but not identical (a usage the OED labels "vulgar"), and second moral in the sense of ethical, conforming to virtuous behavior. Anglophones seized on the latter meaning, although Pinel emphasized the former. Forty years later, Henry Maudsley, the most widely read psychiatrist of his generation, could assert that moral insanity was as real as Colour blindness, some people being Colour blind and some moral blind (Maudsley 1879). Moral insanity became connected variously to phrenology with its own bump over the underlying moral cortex, with the twisted genetics of degeneration, with atavistic theories of criminality, and with a range of disorders of brain from epilepsy to frontal lobe damage (Combed 1853; Ellis 1890; Pick 1989). Although it is anachronistic to use the terms "psychopathy" and "moral insanity" together, it is clear they occupied a similar social and psychiatric space, albeit in different era. This should caution against too ready acceptance of psychopathy which may turn out to be as empty and dangerous a conceptualization as moral insanity. Why dangerous? Dangerous to those labeled, because the morally insane and the moral imbeciles were placed in preventive detention in asylums and prisons, and even sterilized in some jurisdictions. Dangerous to society, because it gave a spurious scientific justification for viewing crime not as reflecting the social evils of deprivation, ignorance, and inequality but as the ravages of the born criminals. -/- Psychopaths are not, as Levy asserts, "(causally) responsible for … more than fifty percent of violent crime" (p. 129). A proportion of violent offenders, which varies widely between observers, are labeled psychopaths. This is often on the basis of Hare's psychopathy checklist, which is a subjective, albeit through training aspiring to be reproducible, and to some extent self-sustaining, evaluation system (Hare 1980, 2003). Part of the checklist gathers data on prior antisocial behavior; part constrains the examiner to subjectively estimate such matters as glibness and callousness, part requires judgments about whether the... (shrink)

Delusions, a key feature of psychosis, are usually thought of as a type of belief, as in the definition of the American Psychiatric Association: A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g. it is not an article of religious (...) faith). This characterization is often criticized, but other definitions typically comprise similar elements. For some, delusions are only loosely considered as beliefs (Jaspers 1963; Moor and Tucker .. (shrink)

Enduring disparities in choice of college major constitute one of the most significant forms of gender inequality among undergraduate students. The existing literature generally equates major choice with career choice and overlooks possible variation across student populations. This is a significant limitation because gender differences in major choice among liberal arts students, who attend college less for specific career training and more for broader learning objectives, are just as great as among those choosing pre-professional majors. This study addresses this gap (...) by examining how privileged men and women at an elite, liberal arts university select their fields of study. Drawing on in-depth interviews, findings contradict the prevailing assumption of a unitary model of major choice as career choice by revealing a plurality of gendered meanings around choosing a field of study. Majors may play an important part in the construction of an intellectual identity as much as a means of career preparation. How students approach the choice relates to both gender and social background. For privileged students, traditional gendered associations with bodies of knowledge hold salience in their decision making as well as expectations of reproducing future elite family roles. This research also illuminates how gendered processes of choosing fields of study take place in relationship to particular institutional contexts. (shrink)

Christian responses to the developing field of evolutionary psychology tend to be defensive, focusing on the task of showing that Christians have not beenpresented with any reason to abandon any central beliefs of the Christian faith. A more positive response would seek to show that evolutionary psychologycan provide some sort of epistemic support for one or more distinctively Christian doctrines. This paper is an attempt to supply such a response by focusing on the distinctively Christian doctrine of original sin, which (...) presents itself as an especially likely candidate for support from evolutionary psychology. I consider five versions of the doctrine in order of increasing content, arguing that all but the last can receive such support. However, in order to argue for the fourth version (which includes the doctrine traditionally described as “original guilt”), I enlist the aid of a Molinist understanding of divine providence. A consequence of this application of Molinism is that God holds us morally accountable, not only for what we actually do, but also for what we would do in any non-actual conditions, and that He acts on His knowledge of what we would do in such conditions. Because many may find this consequence problematic, I also argue that it is both morally acceptableand necessary for the perfection of the relationship between God and human beings. The last version of original sin that I consider insists that it must be thecausal product of the first sin of the first human being(s), but I argue that this is not a reasonable alternative if original sin is to be equated with behavioraltendencies inherited from an evolutionary ancestry. (shrink)

This paper explores the comparative dynamics of self-mutilation among young, contemporary, female self-cutters, and the holy stigmatics of the Middle Ages. It addresses the types of personalities that engage in self-mutilation and how some manipulate their self-inflicted pain into a method for healing and empowerment. The similarities between teenage cutters and female stigmatics are striking in their mutual psychoanalytical need for self-alteration as a means of escaping their own disassociative identities; and offers evidence of how their mutual bricolage of pain, (...) imagining, languaging, and subsequent self-mutilation often provide a transformation from bodies under siege to a resemblance of health and transformation. (shrink)

School counselors encounter ethical and legal situations that necessitate the knowledge and confidence to apply decision-making skills. We report the findings from a correlational investigation that examines practicing school counselors’ ethical and legal self-efficacy, ethical and legal knowledge, and general self-efficacy. Higher ethical and legal self-efficacy was associated with higher general self-efficacy and ethical and legal knowledge. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Some philosophers we read to discover the nature of the universe. Others we read to discover the nature of ourselves. In the second group, Soren Kierkegaard stands alone as a towering figure, a man who revolutionized our concept of the human condition. His insights go to the core of the dilemmas that haunt the modern mind and spirit.

Beyond Subjectivity and Representation extensively explores a connection in the thinking of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty in relation to the interconnections among perception, creation, truth, and value in a way that allows the work of each author to shed light upon the others' ideas. Deborah Carter Mullen develops a non-dualistic notion of truth and value rooted in embodied, earthly existence, and considers them as ongoing happenings of metamorphosis rather than as static ideas. This idea of metamorphosis leads to an (...) understanding of the relationships among self, other, and world as temporal happenings of the flesh. In an intertwining relationship with one another, I and other, I and world, past, present, and future are considered occurrences of the moment that are redefined in each perception and in each expression, as each questions and responds to the other, creating a "mirror-play of flesh." Mullen proposes that reversibility and metamorphosis give rise to an aesthetic sense of truth and values that are not absolute, but truths that happen as they are expressed and values that occur as they are lived. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to draw a time-honored insight from Blaise Pascal, generalize it for contemporary use, and apply it to two topics of general concern to contemporary philosophers of religion. The two topics are the status of evolutionary biology as evidence for Philosophical Naturalism, and biological versions of the problem of evil (I focus specifically on the problem of long ages of animal suffering). The “Pascalian” insight is that God wants human beings to be in a state of (...) epistemic ambiguity when we consider important, life-altering claims. I call this state of epistemic ambiguity “Pascal’s Window,” and argue that God’s desire to place human beings into Pascal’s Window with respect to important, life-altering claims generates the important constraint on His creative activity that He must create gradually. This constraint is then employed to argue that evolutionary biology supplies very little evidential support for Philosophical Naturalism, and that appeals to “divine hiddenness” can become effective responses to the problem of “biological evil.”. (shrink)

In an article in this journal [2], A. C. Michalos, while arguing for the normative and empirical inadequacy of the Von Neumann and Morgenstern postulates of rational preference, completely misconstrued the concept of simple additivity contained in the postulates. As a result, the following argument is a non-sequitur.

This book offers a close reading of Adorno’s more explicitly political writings and his work on fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda, and argues for the continuing relevance of these works for contemporary political practice. Adorno’s criticism of political violence and mass movements has, surprisingly, yet to be brought to bear upon contemporary developments in critical theory in the vein of Slavoj Žižek and Alan Badiou. Since a significant portion of this book is dedicated to offering an Adornian response to Žižek, it (...) situates Adorno in the contemporary discussion on strategies for resistance to global capitalism. (shrink)

The second season of True Detective portrays the relationship between law and justice cynically; law and its enforcement seem to be divorced from any conception of justice. Austrian legal theorist Hans Kelsen jurisprudence explicitly refers to official norms, such as legal order imposed by the state. True Detective, deals largely with unofficial legal norms, such as those of a corrupt city and of criminal organizations. A central conflict in True Detective's second season is the tension between the impulse for revenge (...) and the impulse for the more noble retributive justice. The series' presentation of law and justice and the conflict between a retrograde system of justice that is the norm and a newer virtue ethic driven by moral reasoning is what brings about the inevitable tragedies of the finale— the violent deaths of Velcoro and Semyon, and the exile of Bezzerides. True Detective is, particularly in its finale, a good illustration of Hegel's vision of tragedy. (shrink)

Most of the contemporary literature regarding teleology or design in nature assumes that we human beings make some sort of tacit inference when we form "design beliefs" person is causally relevant to the occurrence of some event). It is often held that this inference occurs so quickly that we are unaware of the inferential process. Attempts to reconstruct this inference have met with varying degrees of success, but none of them seem to match the strength with which ordinary design beliefs (...) are held. This dissertation therefore offers a challenge to this "inferential model" of design belief formation by arguing that in many ordinary cases we do not infer to design beliefs at all. Rather, human design beliefs often form spontaneously and properly whenever certain conditions are met, and receive some measure of positive epistemic status just in virtue of their proper and spontaneous formation. This alternative model is called a "Reidian" model because it is analogous to Thomas Reid's account of sense perception. The Reidian model offers the dialectical advantage of shifting the burden of proof from the one arguing for design to the one who claims to have a suitable "defeater" belief. It also better matches our introspective judgments about design beliefs and resolves some puzzling problems that have been noted in recent literature on design inferences. ;The Reidian model can also generate some reasonably persuasive design arguments from the deliverances of the natural sciences , but it does not sanction the inclusion of design hypotheses within the content of the natural sciences. It is also argued that none of the "defeater" propositions one might consider carries enough epistemic "weight" to defeat design beliefs that form according to the model. The resulting Reidian design arguments also have the advantage that they do not require the rejection of the Darwinian paradigm. However, it is also noted that the Reidian model presents several occasions for dialectical impasse between disputants about design in nature. (shrink)

Developments in Buddhist Thought: Canadian Contributions to Buddhist Studies. Ed. Roy C. Amore. Wilfrid Laurier Press, Waterloo, Canada 1979. 194pp. Can. $7.00 paperback.