Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches (...) that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists. (shrink)

To relate theories of affordance and frame with the tradition of formal aesthetics, philosophical iconology and the life sciences (keyword Vitality Semiotics) is the starting point of the paper. According to this approach, the structural preconditions of images, as determined by materials, techniques and the composition of the design means, become essential. Through these structures, the producers are able to set impulses that become decisive for the interpretation of space and time or the "scene" as a dynamic event. Against the (...) social and cultural background of the recipients the "scene" gains a meaning to their life. This means to understand the productʼs conception and composition as an affordance which determines the framework of the reception conditions. The benefit of this approach lies in the identification of changes in the self-understanding and thus of trends in to new standards of societies. This is to be illustrated by Exekiasʼ drinking bowl around 540/30 BC in Munich. (shrink)

Individuals deceive themselves about a wide variety of subjects. In fortunate circumstances, where those who manage to leave self-deception embrace reality, an interesting phenomenon occurs: the formerly self-deceived often confess to having ‘known [the truth] all along’. These post-self-deception judgments are not conceptually innocuous; if genuine, they call into question the core feature of prominent theories of self-deception, namely that self-deceived individuals do not believe the unwelcome truth. In this paper I argue that post-self-deception judgments do not track a belief, (...) but rather a suspicion of the unwelcome truth. I do this by showing that post-self-deception judgments are themselves instances of self-deception where the individual is self-deceived that they believed the unwelcome truth. I then suggest that the motivational cause of the self-deceit is hindsight bias, specifically the kind known as foreseeability, and that as a result, post-self-deception judgments are not reliable because they do not accurately track previous self-deceptive experiences. (shrink)

Although germline editing has been the subject of debate ever since the 1980s, it tended to be based rather on speculative assumptions until April 2015, when CRISPR/Cas9 technology was used to modify human embryos for the first time. This article combines knowledge about the technical and scientific state of the art, economic considerations, the legal framework and aspects of clinical reality. A scenario will be elaborated as a means of identifying key ethical implications of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in humans and (...) possible ways of dealing with them. Unlike most other discussions of CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing, which are generally based on deontological arguments, the focus in this case will be on a consequentialistic argument against certain applications of germline and somatic editing that takes not only the potential benefits and risks but also socioeconomic issues into consideration. The practical need for an indication catalogue, guidelines for clinical trials, and for funding of basic research will be pointed out. It will be argued that this need for regulatory action and discussion does not stem primarily from the fact that CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing is revolutionary in terms of its ethical implications and potential for human therapy, although this is the prevailing view in the current discussion. Understanding the value and interest dependency of arguments put forward by different stakeholders and learning from past debates related to similar technologies might prove a fruitful method of reaching judgments and decisions that come closer to a consensus upon which society as a whole can agree - which after all should be the true goal of an ethical debate and of bioethics. (shrink)

Camill Leberer (geb. 1953) gehört zu den profiliertesten deutschen Bildhauern seiner Generation. Das vorliegende Buch untersucht seine durch die Verwendung von Stahl und Glas ausgezeichneten Plastiken erstmals unter dem Aspekt der Immaterialität. Dazu werden Bezüge zur amerikanischen Light and Space Bewegung, zu amerikanischen wie deutschen Stahlkünstlern und zur Gruppe Zero erarbeitet. Unter anderem durch diese wird das ästhetische Prinzip Immaterialität im Werk Leberers anhand der Informationsästhetik Max Benses kunsthistorisch eingeordnet.

Ontic structural realists hold that structure is all there is, or at least all there is fundamentally. This thesis has proved to be puzzling: What exactly does it say about the relationship between objects and structures? In this article, I look at different ways of articulating ontic structural realism in terms of the relation between structures and objects. I show that objects cannot be reduced to structure, and argue that ontological dependence cannot be used to establish strong forms of structural (...) realism. At the end, I show how a weaker, but controversial, form of structural realism can be articulated on the basis of ontological dependence. (shrink)

In “Obligations of the Gift,” Lee argues that ethical thinking regarding return of genetic research results has been too narrowly focused on individual consent and participants’ “right to kn...

Los tubos de gastrostomía aplicados quirúrgicamente son esenciales en el manejo de algunas condiciones. Sin embargo, muchos estudios indican una efectividad médica limitada y riesgos significativos en pacientes con demencia en estado avanzado. Los estudios no han demostrado los beneficios esperados, una mayor longevidad, un descenso en la neumonía por aspiración o mejora en la integridad de la piel. Los riesgos incluyen un deterioro cognitivo y funcional relacionado con la hospitalización, estrés por el uso de maniobras para sujetar al paciente, (...) negación al confort del paciente, y a las necesidades sociales y espirituales a favor de las maniobras relacionadas con el manejo de los tubos de gastrostomía, y una higiene exagerada. Presentamos aquí: 1. Una revisión de la literatura de los investigadores líderes de los Estados Unidos reciente; 2. La diferencia entre la bioética de los tubos de gastrostomía en el llamado "estado vegetativo ", y la demencia terminal; 3. Análisis entre riesgos y beneficios,' 4 Recomendaciones para el cuidado paliativo y la alimentación con cuchara como bioéticamente correctos y como alternativas centradas en el paciente vs. la colocación de tubos de gastrostomía a pacientes con demencia terminal. (shrink)

A growing number of decision theorists have, in recent years, defended the view that rationality is permissive under risk: Different rational agents may be more or less risk-averse or risk-inclined. This can result in them making different choices under risk even if they value outcomes in exactly the same way. One pressing question that arises once we grant such permissiveness is what attitude to risk we should implement when choosing on behalf of other people. Are we permitted to implement any (...) of the rationally permissible risk attitudes, is there some specific risk attitude that is required when choosing for others, or are we required to defer to the risk attitudes of the people on whose behalf we are choosing? This article elaborates on this question, explains its wider practical and theoretical significance, provides an overview of existing answers, and explores how to go about providing a more systematic account of how to choose on behalf of others in risky contexts. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to answer two questions: Can spin be treated as a determinable? Can a treatment of spin as a determinable be used to understand quantum indeterminacy? In response to the first question I show that the relations among spin number, spin components and spin values cannot be captured by a single determination relation; instead we need to look at spin number and spin value separately. In response to the second question I discuss three ways in which (...) the determinables model might be modified to account for indeterminacy, and argue that none of them is fully successful in helping us to understand quantum indeterminacy. (shrink)

This article argues that Lara Buchak’s risk-weighted expected utility (REU) theory fails to offer a true alternative to expected utility theory. Under commonly held assumptions about dynamic choice and the framing of decision problems, rational agents are guided by their attitudes to temporally extended courses of action. If so, REU theory makes approximately the same recommendations as expected utility theory. Being more permissive about dynamic choice or framing, however, undermines the theory’s claim to capturing a steady choice disposition in the (...) face of risk. I argue that this poses a challenge to alternatives to expected utility theory more generally. (shrink)

Intensified job demands originate in the general accelerated pace of society and ever-changing working conditions, which subject workers to increasing workloads and deadlines, constant planning and decision-making about one’s job and career, and the continual learning of new professional knowledge and skills. This study investigated how individual characteristics, namely negative and positive affectivity related to competence demands, and multitasking preference moderate the association between IJDs and cognitive stress symptoms among media workers. The results show that although IJDs were associated with (...) higher cognitive stress symptoms at work, that is, difficulties in concentration, thinking clearly, decision-making, and memory, competence demands-related negative affectivity explained the most variance in cognitive stress symptoms. In addition, IJDs were more strongly associated with cognitive stress symptoms at work in individuals with high competence demand-related negative affectivity, and low multitasking preference. Altogether, the present findings suggest that HR practices or workplace interventions to ease employees’ negative affectivity from increasing competence demands at work could usefully support employees’ effective cognitive functioning when confronted with IJDs. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the debate on Composition as Identity—the thesis that any composite object is identical to its parts—is deadlocked because both the defenders and the detractors of the claim have so far failed to take its philosophical core at face value and have, as a result, defended and criticized respectively something that is not Composition as Identity. After establishing how Composition as Identity should properly be understood and proposing for it a new interpretation centered around the (...) novel notion of metaphysical information, I set forth a strategy to defend it that crucially rests on the indefinite extensibility of the domain of quantification. I eventually suggest that “Composition as Analysis” is a name that better reflects the content and theoretical proposal of the thesis that Composition as Identity is supposed to be. (shrink)

This study describes the ways in which professionals in two contexts of health care: general practice and homeopathic consultations, respond to patients' affective expressions of a trouble or a problem. The focus is on the turns of professionals that display understanding, compassion or agreement with the patient's account. Different types of affiliative turns are described and their consequences for the following interaction are scrutinized in relation to the institutional task of solving the patients' health-related problems. It is shown that in (...) both contexts, affiliation is oriented to as working towards closing the sequence of troubles-telling and serves to shift back to problem-solving activity, whilst in homeopathy, it may also serve as a means to problem-solving and thus help to complete the institutional task at hand. Some implications of these observations for professional—client interaction will be described. To conclude, the role of emotion in institutional interaction will also be discussed. (shrink)

Some scientists are happy to follow in the footsteps of others; some like to explore novel approaches. It is tempting to think that herein lies an epistemic division of labor conducive to overall scientific progress: the latter point the way to fruitful areas of research, and the former more fully explore those areas. Weisberg and Muldoon’s model, however, suggests that it would be best if all scientists explored novel approaches. I argue that this is due to implausible modeling choices, and (...) I present an alternative ‘epistemic landscape’ model that demonstrates the alleged benefits from division of labor, with one restriction. (shrink)

A neuropsychological perspective on auditory verbal hallucinations links key phenomenological features of the experience, such as voice location and identity, to functionally separable pathways in normal human audition. Although this auditory processing stream framework has proven valuable for integrating research on phenomenology with cognitive and neural accounts of hallucinatory experiences, it has not yet been applied to other symptoms presumed to be closely related to AVH – such as thought insertion. In this paper, I propose that an APS framework offers (...) a useful way of thinking about the experience of TI as well as AVH, providing a common conceptual framework for both. I argue that previous self-monitoring theories struggle to account for both the differences and similarities in the characteristic features of AVH and TI, which can be readily accommodated within an APS framework. Furthermore, the APS framework can be integrated with predictive processing accounts of psychotic symptoms; makes predictions about potential sites of prediction error signals; and may offer a template for understanding a range of other symptoms beyond AVH and TI. (shrink)

Realists about science tend to hold that our scientific theories aim for the truth, that our successful theories are at least partly true, and that the entities referred to by the theoretical terms of these theories exist. Antirealists about science deny one or more of these claims. A sizable minority of philosophers of science prefers not to take sides: they believe the realism debate to be fundamentally mistaken and seek to abstain from it altogether. In analogy with other realism debates (...) I will call these philosophers quietists. In the philosophy of science quietism often takes a somewhat peculiar form, which I will call naturalistic quietism. In this paper I will characterize Maddy’s Second Philosophy as a form of naturalistic quietism, and show what the costs for making it feasible are. (shrink)

This paper defends revealed preference theory against a pervasive line of criticism, according to which revealed preference methodology relies on appealing to some mental states, in particular an agent’s beliefs, rendering the project incoherent or unmotivated. I argue that all that is established by these arguments is that revealed preference theorists must accept a limited mentalism in their account of the options an agent should be modelled as choosing between. This is consistent both with an essentially behavioural interpretation of preference (...) and with standard revealed preference methodology. And it does not undermine the core motivations of revealed preference theory. (shrink)

Background Moral courage means courage to act according to individual’s own ethical values and principles despite the risk of negative consequences for them. Research about the moral courage of whistle-blowers in health care is scarce, although whistleblowing involves a significant risk for the whistle-blower. Objective To analyse the moral courage of potential whistle-blowers and its association with their background variables in health care. Research design Was a descriptive-correlational study using a questionnaire, containing Nurses Moral Courage Scale©, a video vignette of (...) the wrongdoing situation with an open question about the vignette, and several background variables. Data were analysed statistically and inductive content analysis was used for the narratives. Participants and research context Nurses as healthcare professionals (including registered nurses, public health nurses, midwives, and nurse paramedics) were recruited from the membership register of the Nurses’ Association via email in 2019. A total of 454 nurses responded. The research context was simulated using a vignette. Ethical considerations Good scientific inquiry guidelines were followed. Permission to use the Nurses’ Moral Courage Scale© was obtained from the copyright holder. The ethical approval and permission to conduct the study were obtained from the participating university and the Nurses’ Association. Findings The mean value of potential whistle-blowers’ moral courage on a Visual Analogue Scale (0–10) was 8.55 and the mean score was 4.34 on a 5-point Likert scale. Potential whistle-blowers’ moral courage was associated with their socio-demographics, education, work, personality and social responsibility related background variables. Discussion and conclusion In health care, potential whistle-blowers seem to be quite morally courageous actors. The results offer opportunities for developing interventions, practices and education to support and encourage healthcare professionals in their whistleblowing. Research is needed for developing a theoretical construction to eventually increase whistleblowing and decrease and prevent wrongdoing. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I (...) show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. (shrink)

This first book of the series, contains the theory and technique on how to recognize your own presence and your connectedness to everything else, experiencing oneness, through the state of awareness. Making emphasis on how to clear the soul from any blockages, emotions or other filters that may affect that experience of recognizing the true self.

Discourse ethics represents an exciting new development in neo-Kantian moral theory. William Rehg offers an insightful introduction to its complex theorization by its major proponent, Jürgen Habermas, and demonstrates how discourse ethics allows one to overcome the principal criticisms that have been leveled against neo-Kantianism. Addressing both "commun-itarian" critics who argue that universalist conceptions of justice sever moral deliberation from community traditions, and feminist advocates of the "ethics of care" who stress the moral significance of caring for other individuals, Rehg (...) shows that discourse ethics combines impartiality with solidarity. He provides the first systematic reconstruction of Habermas's theory and explores its relationship to the work of such contemporary philosophers as Charles Taylor. His book articulates a bold alternative to the split between the "right" and the "good" in moral theory and will greatly interest philosophers, social and legal scholars, and political theorists. (shrink)

In 'How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims', Alex Voorhoeve suggests accommodating intuitions about duties in rescue cases by combining aggregative and non-aggregative elements into one theory. In this paper, I discuss two problems Voorhoeve’s theory faces as a result of requiring a cyclic pattern of choice, and argue that his attempt to solve them does not succeed.

Are laws of nature necessary, and if so, are all laws of nature necessary in the same way? This question has played an important role in recent discussion of laws of nature. I argue that not all laws of nature are necessary in the same way: conservation laws are perhaps to be regarded as metaphysically necessary. This sheds light on both the modal character of conservation laws and the relationship between different varieties of necessity.

Moral philosophy and psychology have sought to define the nature of right and wrong, and good and evil. The industrial turn of the twentieth century fostered increasingly technological approaches that conjoined philosophy to psychology, and psychology to the natural sciences. Thus, moral philosophy and psychology became ever more vested to investigations of the anatomic structures and physiologic processes involved in cognition, emotion and behavior - ultimately falling under the rubric of the neurosciences. Since 2002, neuroscientific studies of moral thought, emotions (...) and behaviors have become known as – and a part of – the relatively new discipline of neuroethics. Herein we present Part 2 of a bibliography of neuroethics from 2002–2013 addressing the “neuroscience of ethics” – studies of putative neural substrates and mechanisms involved in cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes of morality and ethics. (shrink)

New work is used as a general term to summarize professional developments in contemporary work style, structure and modus of organizations and society—this means collaborative work and flexible working hours on individual levels, and flat hierarchies and participatory decision-making on organizational levels. Contemporary corporations strive to orient toward the concept of new work to keep up with stakeholder demands, for instance in their branding strategies as an employer. However, studies on organizational practices indicate that alongside explicit values and agendas, organizations (...) tend to slyly exert power to secure their interests. Constructive dismissal is one such instance where contractually protected employees are made to resign their positions because the work environment is altered to become increasingly unbearable. This research analyzes two case studies to explicate routine dismissal procedures at the managerial level in two internationally operating German corporations. Both corporations explicitly profile as new work environments and are structured according to democratic principles including flat hierarchies, feature institutionalized diversity management including control committees for equal opportunities, and emphasize values such as workplace dignity, employee agency, and equality. The data contain long-term participatory observation collected over a 6-month period from two managers of 5 and 8 years of experience in managerial duties. The content analysis of data reveals characteristics of everyday processes in these organizations especially in terminating managers. The findings are presented as the ‘model of the silent dismissal,’ containing seven types of managerial termination carried out by implicit power and symbolic conventions that circumvent subject participation and litigation in an effortless manner. After exposing the model’s mechanisms, we turn to discuss its meaning for both terminated and surviving subjects against a critical theoretical framework of neoliberalism, democracy, and power. (shrink)

Recently, the mechanistic framework of active inference has been put forward as a principled foundation to develop an overarching theory of consciousness which would help address conceptual disparities in the field (Wiese 2018 ; Hohwy and Seth 2020 ). For that promise to bear out, we argue that current proposals resting on the active inference scheme need refinement to become a process theory of consciousness. One way of improving a theory in mechanistic terms is to use formalisms such as computational (...) models that implement, attune and validate the conceptual notions put forward. Here, we examine how computational modelling approaches have been used to refine the theoretical proposals linking active inference and consciousness, with a focus on the extent and success to which they have been developed to accommodate different facets of consciousness and experimental paradigms, as well as how simulations and empirical data have been used to test and improve these computational models. While current attempts using this approach have shown promising results, we argue they remain preliminary in nature. To refine their predictive and structural validity, testing those models against empirical data is needed i.e., new and unobserved neural data. A remaining challenge for active inference to become a theory of consciousness is to generalize the model to accommodate the broad range of consciousness explananda; and in particular to account for the phenomenological aspects of experience. Notwithstanding these gaps, this approach has proven to be a valuable avenue for theory advancement and holds great potential for future research. (shrink)

Behavioural economics has taught us that human agents don't always display consistent, context-independent and stable preferences in their choice behaviour. Can we nevertheless do welfare economics...

The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the phenomenology of conscious thought? And (2), what role does this phenomenology play? I argue that the answers to the former question bear significantly on the answers to the latter question. In particular, I show that conservatism about cognitive phenomenology is not compatible with the view that phenomenology explains the constitution of conscious thought. I proceed as follows: To begin with, I analyze the phenomenology of (...) our sensory experiences and argue for a _weak phenomenal holism_ (WPH) about sensory phenomenology. Next, I explore how WPH can be integrated into the competing accounts of cognitive phenomenology. I argue that, given WPH, conservatism turns out to reduce phenomenal character to a merely concomitant phenomenon that has no explanatory power when it comes to the constitution of conscious thoughts. In contrast, liberalism is explanatorily more powerful in this respect. Finally, I propose a new version of liberalism that explains how phenomenology constitutes conscious thoughts and fits best with WPH. (shrink)