Imaginary worlds are not a consequence of humans' exploratory tendencies as argued in the target article but a recent spinoff of a strong human tendency to create imaginary realities, that is, versions of how the world works that are fabricated (although we believe they are real) in order to allow us to believe we understand it and can control it.

Abstract. In this essay, I describe my Cultural-Developmental Template Approach to moral psychology. This theory draws on my research with the Three Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity, and the work of many other scholars. The cultural-developmental synthesis suggests that the Ethic of Autonomy emerges early in people's psychological lives, and continues to hold some importance across the lifespan. But Autonomy is not alone. The Ethic of Community too emerges early and appears to increase in importance across the life course. (...) Then, it also seems that in most places and at most times, the Ethic of Divinity has found a voice—and in some traditions this ethic may become audible in adolescence. Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity, then, may have universal roots in the human condition. However, they are also clearly culturally and historically situated. Cultural communities—whether defined by religious, national, or other boundaries—vary in how they prioritize the three ethics and the extent to which they reinforce their development. (shrink)

This cutting-edge book brings together eminent experts who propose ways to bridge cultural and developmental approaches to human psychology. The experts heed the call of cultural psychology to study different peoples around the world and to recognize that culture profoundly impacts how we think, feel, and act. At the same time, they also take seriously the developmental science perspective that humans everywhere share common life stage tasks and ways of learning. Doing what has not previously been done, the experts integrate (...) key insights and findings from cultural and developmental research. The result is a book brimming with new and creative syntheses for theory, research, and policy. This book is in step with a world where culturally diverse peoples interact with one another more than ever due to migration, worldwide media, and international trade and travel. With these interactions come changes to cultures and the psychological development of their members, and the implications for scholarship and policy are thoughtfully examined here. The book covers a wide range of related topics. It addresses the intersection of development and culture for psychological processes such as learning and memory, for key contexts of development such as family and civil society, for conceptions of self and identity, and for how the life course is partitioned including a focus on childhood and emerging adulthood.With its inclusion of diverse life phases, diverse topics, and experts from diverse disciplines and cultures, this volume speaks to a broad range of developmental and cultural issues. The synthesis of cultural and developmental approaches should be exciting and eye-opening to anyone with an interest in human psychology in today's global world. (shrink)

The second of Nietzsche's UM, "On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life", is one of his most celebrated and influential works, profoundly shaping the work of Continental theorists such as Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Paul de Man. For all the immense attention paid to this little text, philosophers and scholars have focused mainly on Nietzsche's reflections on culture, overlooking the text's epistemological concerns. Jensen's commentary rectifies this omission and succeeds admirably not only in analyzing the often (...) cryptic and meandering arguments of the text, but also in contextualizing it in nineteenth-century debates about objectivity and teleology in history.In the first chapter, Jensen... (shrink)

Should we make significant sacrifices to ever-so-slightly lower the chance of extremely bad outcomes, or to ever-so-slightly raise the chance of extremely good outcomes? *Fanaticism* says yes: for every bad outcome, there is a tiny chance of extreme disaster that is even worse, and for every good outcome, there is a tiny chance of an enormous good that is even better. I consider two related recent arguments for Fanaticism: Beckstead and Thomas's argument from *strange dependence on space and time*, and (...) Wilkinson's *Indology* argument. While both arguments are instructive, neither is persuasive. In fact, the general principles that underwrite the arguments (a *separability* principle in the first case, and a *reflection* principle in the second) are *inconsistent* with Fanaticism. In both cases, though, it is possible to rehabilitate arguments for Fanaticism based on restricted versions of those principles. The situation is unstable: plausible general principles tell *against* Fanaticism, but restrictions of those same principles (with strengthened auxiliary assumptions) *support* Fanaticism. All of the consistent views that emerge are very strange. (shrink)

In this paper Kirsten Fink-Jensen suggests how a phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective can contribute to the knowledge of learning and teaching processes in music education in school. The philosophical frame is Danish philosophy of life, represented by Knud Ejler Løgstrup, and Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of body, both pointing to the wholeness of mind and body in all kinds of actions. Within this framework interpretation is an epistemological, practical-hermeneutic activity based on different analytical methods. Phenomenologically, experiences of music are constituted in an intertwinement (...) of personal, cultural, and local meaning. The challenge facing the teacher is then to understand what becomes meaningful to persons in a given situation. 'Bodily dialogue' is a metaphor of a hermeneutic process of understanding that highlights the importance of bodily aspects in the teacher's answer to a child's musical attuned articulations. This focus can facilitate children's learning processes and change and qualify the teacher's didactic reflections on the impact and progression of music lessons. (shrink)

There are two main ways in which things with minds, like us, differ from things without minds, like tables and chairs. First, we are conscious--there is something that it is like to be us. We instantiate phenomenal properties. Second, we represent, in various ways, our world as being certain ways. We instantiate representational properties. Jeff Speaks attempts to make progress on three questions: What are phenomenal properties? What are representational properties? How are the phenomenal and the representational related?

Eliminativists sometimes invoke evolutionary debunking arguments against ordinary object beliefs, either to help them establish object skepticism or to soften the appeal of commonsense ontology. I argue that object debunkers face a self-defeat problem: their conclusion undermines the scientific support for one of their premises, because evolutionary biology depends on our object beliefs. Using work on reductionism and multiple realizability from the philosophy of science, I argue that it will not suffice for an eliminativist debunker to simply appeal to some (...) object-free surrogate theory of evolution that results from converting any scientific proposition about some object K into a proposition about simples arranged K-wise. In the process, I examine some hazards peculiar to eliminative reductions of scientific theories, and propose a trilemma for eliminativists who attempt to recoup generality for ontologically sparse reducing theories by appealing to pluralities of simples arranged K-wise. The paper is intended to define and develop the object debunker’s self-defeat problem for further study, and to clarify some of the ways sparse and abundant ontologies interact with scientific theory. (shrink)

Everett's relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to solve the measurement problem by dropping the collapse dynamics from the standard von Neumann-Dirac theory of quantum mechanics. The main problem with Everett's theory is that it is not at all clear how it is supposed to work. In particular, while it is clear that he wanted to explain why we get determinate measurement results in the context of his theory, it is unclear how he intended to do this. There (...) have been many attempts to reconstruct Everett's no-collapse theory in order to account for the apparent determinateness of measurement outcomes. These attempts have led to such formulations of quantum mechanics as the many-worlds, many-minds, many-histories, and relative-fact theories. Each of these captures part of what Everett claimed for his theory, but each also encounters problems. (shrink)

The Epistemic Objection says that certain theories of time imply that it is impossible to know which time is absolutely present. Standard presentations of the Epistemic Objection are elliptical—and some of the most natural premises one might fill in to complete the argument end up leading to radical skepticism. But there is a way of filling in the details which avoids this problem, using epistemic safety. The new version has two interesting upshots. First, while Ross Cameron alleges that the Epistemic (...) Objection applies to presentism as much as to theories like the growing block, the safety version does not overgeneralize this way. Second, the Epistemic Objection does generalize in a different, overlooked way. The safety objection is a serious problem for a widely held combination of views: “propositional temporalism” together with “metaphysical eternalism”. (shrink)

Epistemic Consequentialism Consequentialism is the view that, in some sense, rightness is to be understood in terms conducive to goodness. Much of the philosophical discussion concerning consequentialism has focused on moral rightness or obligation or normativity. But there is plausibly also epistemic rightness, epistemic obligation, and epistemic normativity. Epistemic rightness is often denoted with talk … Continue reading Consequentialism Epistemic →.

“There are no gaps in logical space,” David Lewis writes, giving voice to sentiment shared by many philosophers. But different natural ways of trying to make this sentiment precise turn out to conflict with one another. One is a *pattern* idea: “Any pattern of instantiation is metaphysically possible.” Another is a *cut and paste* idea: “For any objects in any worlds, there exists a world that contains any number of duplicates of all of those objects.” We use resources from model (...) theory to show the inconsistency of certain packages of combinatorial principles and the consistency of others. (shrink)

A common line of thought in contemporary metaethics is that certain facts about the evolutionary history of humans make moral realism implausible. Two of the most developed evolutionary cases against realism are found in the works of Richard Joyce and Sharon Street. In what follows, I argue that a form of moral realism that I call proper-function moral realism can meet Joyce and Street's challenges. I begin by sketching the basics of proper-function moral realism. I then present what I take (...) to be the essence of Street's and Joyce's objections, and I show how proper-function realism answers them. (shrink)

What can we know about God by reason alone? Philosophical theology is the attempt to obtain such knowledge. An ancient tradition, which is perhaps more influential now than ever, tries to derive the attributes of God from the principle that God is the greatest possible being. Jeff Speaks argues that that constructive project is a failure. He also argues that the related view that the concept of God is the concept of a greatest possible being is a mistake. In the (...) last chapter, he sketches an alternative path forward. (shrink)

We prove a representation theorem for preference relations over countably infinite lotteries that satisfy a generalized form of the Independence axiom, without assuming Continuity. The representing space consists of lexicographically ordered transfinite sequences of bounded real numbers. This result is generalized to preference orders on abstract superconvex spaces.

Could space consist entirely of extended regions, without any regions shaped like points, lines, or surfaces? Peter Forrest and Frank Arntzenius have independently raised a paradox of size for space like this, drawing on a construction of Cantor’s. I present a new version of this argument and explore possible lines of response.

We consider two ways one might use algorithmic randomness to characterize a probabilistic law. The first is a generative chance* law. Such laws involve a nonstandard notion of chance. The second is a probabilistic* constraining law. Such laws impose relative frequency and randomness constraints that every physically possible world must satisfy. While each notion has virtues, we argue that the latter has advantages over the former. It supports a unified governing account of non-Humean laws and provides independently motivated solutions to (...) issues in the Humean best-system account. On both notions, we have a much tighter connection between probabilistic laws and their corresponding sets of possible worlds. Certain histories permitted by traditional probabilistic laws are ruled out as physically impossible. As a result, such laws avoid one variety of empirical underdetermination, but the approach reveals other varieties of underdetermination that are typically overlooked. (shrink)

Throughout history philosophers have relentlessly pursued what may be called "inaccessible domains." This book explores how the traditions of existential phenomenology relate to Freudian psychoanalysis. A clear, succinct, and systematic account of the philosophical presuppositions of psychoanalytic theory and practice, this work offers a deeper and richer understanding and appreciation of Freudian thought, as well as its antecedents and influences. With its unique perspective on Freud's work, Apprehending the Inaccessible puts readers in a better position to appreciate his contributions and (...) evaluate the relationship between his and other philosophical world views. The authors, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in philosophy and psychology, present balanced critical analyses of crucial developments in, for example, the evolution of the Freudian notion of the unconscious, and the engagement of existential phenomenology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Askay and Farquhar then consider-often for the first time-individual thinkers' reflections on and interpretations of Freud, ranging from the primary figures in existential phenomenology to the most prominent figures in the existential psychoanalytic movement. Even as their work offers a new approach to Freudian thought, it reasserts the importance of alternative views found in existential phenomenology as those views pertain to psychoanalysis and the question of apprehending the inaccessible. (shrink)

The counterpart theorist has a problem: there is no obvious way to understand talk about actuality in terms of counterparts. Fara and Williamson have charged that this obstacle cannot be overcome. Here I defend the counterpart theorist by offering systematic interpretations of a quantified modal language that includes an actuality operator. Centrally, I disentangle the counterpart relation from a related notion, a ‘representation relation’. The relation of possible things to the actual things they represent is variable, and an adequate account (...) of modal language must keep track of the way it is systematically shifted by modal operators. I apply my account to resolve several puzzles about counterparts and actuality. In technical appendices, I prove some important logical results about this ‘representational’ counterpart system and its relationship to other modal systems. (shrink)

The existence of mereological sums can be derived from an abstraction principle in a way analogous to numbers. I draw lessons for the thesis that “composition is innocent” from neo-Fregeanism in the philosophy of mathematics.

Recently in this journal, Jessica Morley and colleagues (AI & SOC 2023 38:411–423) review AI ethics and education, suggesting that a cultural shift is necessary in order to prepare students for their responsibilities in developing technology infrastructure that should shape ways of life for many generations. Current AI ethics guidelines are abstract and difficult to implement as practical moral concerns proliferate. They call for improvements in ethics course design, focusing on real-world cases and perspective-taking tools to immerse students in challenging (...) situations with relatable personal, social and environmental implications. The present paper considers the ACTWith model of moral cognition for use in such training contexts. Morley and colleagues' paper and contemporary literature are reviewed. Whistleblowing as a source for relatable case studies is discussed, and the purpose of ethics education considered. The ACTWith model is introduced, and correlations with contemporaries noted. The ACTWith model has been successfully employed in a broad range of technology ethics courses in the Netherlands and South Korea. Illustrations are offered. Correlations with contemporary efforts are drawn in the context of software engineering. Summary discussion considers strengths and limitations of the ACTWith program. Overall, the paper emphasizes training high-level moral reasoning through guided inquiry education informing lifetime professional practice, and indicates an outstanding need for teachers able to do the job. (shrink)

The article reflects on where AI is headed and the world along with it, considering trust, ethics and safety. Implicit in artificial thinking and doomsday appraisals is the engineered divorce from reality of sublime human embodiment. Jeffrey White, Dietrich Brandt, Jan Soeffner, and Larry Stapleton, four scholars associated with AI & Society, address these issues, and more, in the following exchange.

There is one critical way we honor great tragedies: by never forgetting. Collective remembrance is as old as human society itself, serving as an important source of social cohesion, yet as Jeffrey Andrew Barash shows in this book, it has served novel roles in a modern era otherwise characterized by discontinuity and dislocation. Drawing on recent theoretical explorations of collective memory, he elaborates an important new philosophical basis for it, one that unveils profound limitations to its scope in relation (...) to the historical past. Crucial to Barash’s analysis is a look at the radical transformations that symbolic configurations of collective memory have undergone with the rise of new technologies of mass communication. He provocatively demonstrates how such technologies’ capacity to simulate direct experience—especially via the image—actually makes more palpable collective memory’s limitations and the opacity of the historical past, which always lies beyond the reach of living memory. Thwarting skepticism, however, he eventually looks to literature—specifically writers such as Walter Scott, Marcel Proust, and W. G. Sebald—to uncover subtle nuances of temporality that might offer inconspicuous emblems of a past historical reality. (shrink)

The understanding of decision-making systems has come together in recent years to form a unified theory of decision-making in the mammalian brain as arising from multiple, interacting systems (a planning system, a habit system, and a situation-recognition system). This unified decision-making system has multiple potential access points through which it can be driven to make maladaptive choices, particularly choices that entail seeking of certain drugs or behaviors. We identify 10 key vulnerabilities in the system: (1) moving away from homeostasis, (2) (...) changing allostatic set points, (3) euphorigenic signals, (4) overvaluation in the planning system, (5) incorrect search of situation-action-outcome relationships, (6) misclassification of situations, (7) overvaluation in the habit system, (8) a mismatch in the balance of the two decision systems, (9) over-fast discounting processes, and (10) changed learning rates. These vulnerabilities provide a taxonomy of potential problems with decision-making systems. Although each vulnerability can drive an agent to return to the addictive choice, each vulnerability also implies a characteristic symptomology. Different drugs, different behaviors, and different individuals are likely to access different vulnerabilities. This has implications for an individual's susceptibility to addiction and the transition to addiction, for the potential for relapse, and for the potential for treatment. (shrink)

“Pragmatic encroachers” about knowledge generally advocate two ideas: (1) you can rationally act on what you know; (2) knowledge is harder to achieve when more is at stake. Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne have recently argued that these two ideas may not fit together so well. I extend their argument by working out what “high stakes” would have to mean for the two ideas to line up, using decision theory.

Prior work proposes a view of development of purpose and source of meaning in life as a more or less temporally distal project ideal self-situation in terms of which intermediate situations are experienced and prospects evaluated. This work considers Augustine on ensoulment alongside current work into self as adapted routines to common social regularities of the sort that Augustine found deficient. How can we account for such diversity of self-reported value orientation in terms of common structural dynamics differently developed, embodied (...) and enacted over the life course? This work in progress represents divergent views as different sorts of error theory, and hypothesizes that differential development of spindle neural projections underlies different accounts of error for attentive self-correction through iterative attenuation. Some implications for AI augmentation and value alignment of autonomous agents developed on such a model are briefly entertained. (shrink)

Some philosophers respond to Leibniz’s “shift” argument against absolute space by appealing to antihaecceitism about possible worlds, using David Lewis’s counterpart theory. But separated from Lewis’s distinctive system, it is difficult to understand what this doctrine amounts to or how it bears on the Leibnizian argument. In fact, the best way of making sense of the relevant kind of antihaecceitism concedes the main point of the Leibnizian argument, pressing us to consider alternative spatiotemporal metaphysics.

Tonkens has issued a seemingly impossible challenge, to articulate a comprehensive ethical framework within which artificial moral agents satisfy a Kantian inspired recipe—"rational" and "free"—while also satisfying perceived prerogatives of machine ethicists to facilitate the creation of AMAs that are perfectly and not merely reliably ethical. Challenges for machine ethicists have also been presented by Anthony Beavers and Wendell Wallach. Beavers pushes for the reinvention of traditional ethics to avoid "ethical nihilism" due to the reduction of morality to mechanical causation. (...) Wallach pushes for redoubled efforts toward a comprehensive account of ethics to guide machine ethicists on the issue of artificial moral agency. Options, thus, present themselves: reinterpret traditional ethics in a way that affords a comprehensive account of moral agency inclusive of both artificial and natural agents, or give up on the possibility and “muddle through” regardless. This series of papers pursues the first option, meets Tonkens' "challenge" and pursues Wallach's ends through Beavers’ proposed means, by "landscaping" traditional moral theory in resolution of a comprehensive account of moral agency. This first paper sets out the challenge and establishes the tradition that Kant had inherited from Aristotle, briefly entertains an Aristotelian AMA, fields objections, and ends with unanswered questions. The next paper in this series responds to the challenge in Kantian terms, and argues that a Kantian AMA is not only a possibility for Machine ethics research, but a necessary one. (shrink)

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s thought. "Kosky examines Levinas’s thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas’s argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas’s work." —John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality in postmodern philosophy, (...) class='Hi'>Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas’s work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas’s writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas’s early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas’s phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50. (shrink)

I examine what the mathematical theory of random structures can teach us about the probability of Plenitude, a thesis closely related to David Lewis's modal realism. Given some natural assumptions, Plenitude is reasonably probable a priori, but in principle it can be (and plausibly it has been) empirically disconfirmed—not by any general qualitative evidence, but rather by our de re evidence.

This paper explores the idea that it is instrumentally valuable to learn normative truths. We consider an argument for "normative hedging" based on this principle, and examine the structure of decision-making under moral uncertainty that arises from it. But it also turns out that the value of normative information is inconsistent with the principle that learning *empirical* truths is instrumentally valuable. We conclude with a brief comment on "metanormative regress.".

3 Abstract This paper is about modeling morality, with a proposal as to the best 4 way to do it. There is the small problem, however, in continuing disagreements 5 over what morality actually is, and so what is worth modeling. This paper resolves 6 this problem around an understanding of the purpose of a moral model, and from 7 this purpose approaches the best way to model morality.

Achieving a high quality of life is dependent upon how individuals face adversity. Positive psychological interventions are well-suited to support coping efforts; however, experimental research is limited. The purpose of the current research was to examine whether different savoring interventions could increase important coping resources in response to a social-evaluative hassle. We completed an experimental mixed subject design study with a university student sample. All participants completed a hassle induction task and were then randomly assigned into different intervention groups. Positive (...) emotion ratings were collected at three points in time. Results revealed a significant time x intervention interaction effect, such that individuals in the savoring the moment intervention reported higher levels of positive emotions compared to individuals assigned to the true control group, guided imagery control group, and savoring through reminiscence intervention. Such findings represent a significant extension to savoring theory and offer support for savoring the moment exercises as a primary prevention strategy to bolster effective responses to social-evaluative hassles. (shrink)

Nick Bostrom’s recently patched ‘‘simulation argument’’ (Bostrom in Philos Q 53:243–255, 2003; Bos- trom and Kulczycki in Analysis 71:54–61, 2011) purports to demonstrate the probability that we ‘‘live’’ now in an ‘‘ancestor simulation’’—that is as a simulation of a period prior to that in which a civilization more advanced than our own—‘‘post-human’’—becomes able to simulate such a state of affairs as ours. As such simulations under consid- eration resemble ‘‘brains in vats’’ (BIVs) and may appear open to similar objections, the (...) paper begins by reviewing objections to BIV-type proposals, specifically those due a presumed mad envatter. In counter example, we explore the motivating rationale behind current work in the development of psychologically realistic social simula- tions. Further concerns about rendering human cognition in a computational medium are confronted through review of current dynamic systems models of cognitive agency. In these models, aspects of the human condition are repro- duced that may in other forms be considered incomputable, i.e., political voice, predictive planning, and consciousness. The paper then argues that simulations afford a unique potential to secure a post-human future, and may be nec- essary for a pre-post-human civilization like our own to achieve and to maintain a post-human situation. Long-s- tanding philosophical interest in tools of this nature for Aristotle’s ‘‘statesman’’ and more recently for E.O. Wilson in the 1990s is observed. Self-extinction-level threats from State and individual levels of organization are compared, and a likely dependence on large-scale psychologically realistic simulations to get past self-extinction-level threats is projected. In the end, Bostrom’s basic argument for the conviction that we exist now in a simulation is reaffirmed. (shrink)

Teaching critical thinking skill is a central pedagogical aim in many courses. These skills, it is hoped, will be both portable and durable. Yet, both of these virtues are challenged by pervasive and potent cognitive biases, such as motivated reasoning, false consensus bias and hindsight bias. In this paper, I argue that a focus on the development of metacognitive skill shows promise as a means to inculcate debiasing habits in students. Such habits will help students become more critical reasoners. I (...) close with suggestions for implementing this strategy. (shrink)

This paper offers a non-traditional account of what was really at stake in debates over the legitimacy of teleology and teleological explanations in the later medieval and early modern periods. It is divided into four main sections. The first section highlights two defining features of ancient and early medieval views on teleology, namely, that teleological explanations are on a par (or better) with efficient causal explanations, and that the objective goodness of outcomes may explain their coming about. The second section (...) argues that it was the first thesis – the thesis of explanatory parity –that came under attack by mainstream philosophers in the later medieval and early modern traditions, rather than teleology per se. The third section argues similarly that it was the second thesis – the thesis of explanatory goodness – that was the object of Spinoza’s critique of final causes, rather than teleology itself. Finally, the fourth section argues that Leibniz’s claim to be a champion of traditional teleology rests on his willingness to defend both the theses of explanatory parity and goodness against the very charges that led to their demise. The essay concludes by contrasting the narrative offered here with Don Garrett’s recent account according to which “it is not Leibniz but Spinoza who holds the position on teleology and teleological explanation nearest to that of Aristotle” (312). (shrink)

This text is an innovative exploration of philosophy and madness in the context of the critical engagement of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Included is a play in which, after a mental breakdown, Martin Heidegger undergoes psychoanalytic treatment from Dr. Medard Boss. Boss is essentially caught between two intellectual giants: his patient, Heidegger, who challenges him to evolve beyond traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, and his mentor, Freud, who acts as a “ghostly” consultant in facilitating Heidegger’s return to health. The dialogue (...) of the play consists of actual quotes taken from the major thinkers themselves, which enhances the authenticity of this fictitious production. In addition, the theoretical perspectives of Freud, Heidegger, Boss, and Ludwig Binswanger are included to enhance the readers’ background knowledge. In the process of disclosing these brilliant theorists, this book uncovers what each orientation has to offer the others. (shrink)

water paradox has long served as an argument against the Principle of Indifference. A solution to the paradox is proposed, with a view toward resolving general difficulties in applying the principle.

Penelope Maddy advances a purportedly naturalistic account of mathematical methodology which might be taken to answer the question 'What justifies axioms of set theory?' I argue that her account fails both to adequately answer this question and to be naturalistic. Further, the way in which it fails to answer the question deprives it of an analog to one of the chief attractions of naturalism. Naturalism is attractive to naturalists and nonnaturalists alike because it explains the reliability of scientific practice. Maddy's (...) account, on the other hand, appears to be unable to similarly explain the reliability of mathematical practice without violating one of its central tenets. (shrink)

The year 2013 may someday be seen as the year a new profession was born. Clinical ethics consultation has been practiced in different ways for roughly 30 years, originally initiated by a group of h...

The `sexual citizen' is a new phenomenon in the erotic world, and a new player in the political and cultural arena, a product of the new primacy of sexual subjectivity in contemporary societies. Living at the fateful juncture of private claims to space, self-determination and pleasure, and public claims to rights, justice and recognition, the sexual citizen is a hybrid being, who tells us a great deal about the pace and scale of cultural transformation and new possibilities of the self (...) and identity. Consideration of the sexual citizen also offers a new angle on recent debates about citizenship in all its complex dimensions, bringing to the fore issues that have often been occluded in these debates. The article explores these issues through the prism of three significant social developments: the democratization of relationships; the emergence of new subjectivities; and the proliferation of new `stories' about the body, the erotic and intimate life which both signal and encourage the growth of social and cultural capital, and in turn lead to new demands on the institutions of political life. (shrink)

This paper proposes that existing computational modeling research programs may be combined into platforms for the information of public policy. The main idea is that computational models at select levels of organization may be integrated in natural terms describing biological cognition, thereby normalizing a platform for predictive simulations able to account for both human and environmental costs associated with different action plans and institutional arrangements over short and long time spans while minimizing computational requirements. Building from established research programs, the (...) proposal aims to take advantage of current momentum in the direction of the integration of the cognitive with social and natural sciences, reduce start-up costs and increase speed of development. These are all important upshots given rising unease over the potential for AI and related technologies to shape the world going forward. (shrink)