Moral perceptualism is the view that perceptual experience is attuned to pick up on moral features in our environment, just as it is attuned to pick up on mundane features of an environment like textures, shapes, colors, pitches, and timbres. One important family of views that incorporate moral perception are those of virtue theorists and sensibility theorists. On these views, one central ability of the virtuous agent is her sensitivity to morally relevant features of situations, where this sensitivity is often (...) spoken of in perceptual terms. However, sensibility theorists have often not been careful to specify how to understand their claims about moral sensibilities as perceptual. In this paper, we distinguish between what we call Attentional Moral Perception and Contentful Moral Perception. We argue that sensibility theorists should endorse Attentional Moral Perception, because it has very powerful empirical evidence in its favor, and it can play all of the explanatory roles that the sensibility theorist needs in her theory of moral sensibilities. (shrink)

1. Sometimes perceptual experience is crystal clear, as when one inspects an object close-up in bright light with corrective lenses. But experience can be less clear. To illustrate how experiences...

When we see objects blurrily, in the periphery, or in dim light, we often experience their features unclearly. This paper argues that perceptual clarity is a dimension along which experiences vary, distinct from their distal contents. Drawing on models in perception science, the paper accounts for clarity by using the probabilistic notion of precision. The account’s first part is ecumenical: it says that experiences carry information about the precision of the representations from which each distal content of experience was selected (...) and that this precision information accounts for perceptual clarity. The account’s second part entails that experiences carry the relevant precision information in the manner in which their distal contents are represented. The precision account of clarity is shown to conform to common intuitions about experiences’ contents and accuracy conditions. And it is used to illustrate how experiences could assign probability distributions over distal possibilities, even while experiences’ contents are non-probabilistic. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 26-27, November 2011.

Since the 1990’s, the debate concerning the ethical, legal and societal aspects of ‘neuro-enhancement’ has evolved into a massive discourse, both in the public realm and in the academic arena. This ethical debate, however, tends to repeat the same sets of arguments over and over again. Normative disagreements between transhumanists and bioconservatives on invasive or radical brain stimulators, and uncertainties regarding the use and effectivity of nootropic pharmaceuticals dominate the field. Building on the results of an extensive European project on (...) responsible research and innovation in neuro-enhancement, we observe and encourage that the debate is now entering a new and, as we will argue, more realistic and societally relevant stage. This new stage concerns those technologies that enter the market as ostensibly harmless contrivances that consumers may use for self-care or entertainment. We use the examples and arguments of participants in NERRI debates to describe three case studies of such purportedly innocent ‘toys’. Based upon this empirical material, we argue that these ‘soft’ enhancement gadgets are situated somewhere in the boundary zone between the internal and the external, between the intimate and the intrusive, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the friendly and the scary and, in Foucauldian terms, between technologies of the self and technologies of control. Therefore, we describe their physiognomy with the help of a term borrowed from Jacques Lacan, namely as “extimate” technologies. (shrink)

The increasing attention to the brain in science and the media, and people’s continuing quest for a better life, have resulted in a successful self-help industry for brain enhancement. Apart from brain books, foods and games, there are several devices on the market that people can use to stimulate their brains and become happier, healthier or more successful. People can, for example, switch their brain state into relaxation or concentration with a light-and-sound machine, they can train their brainwaves to cure (...) their Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or solve their sleeping problems with a neurofeedback device, or they can influence the firing of their neurons with electric or magnetic stimulation to overcome their depression and anxieties. Working on your self with a brain device can be seen as a contemporary form of Michel Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’. Foucault described how since antiquity people had used techniques such as reading manuscripts, listening to teachers, or saying prayers to ‘act on their selves’ and control their own thoughts and behaviours. Different techniques, Foucault stated, are based on different precepts and constitute different selves. I follow Foucault by stating that using a brain device for self-improvement indeed constitutes a new self. Drawing on interviews with users of brain devices and observations of the practices in brain clinics, I analyse how a new self takes shape in the use of brain devices; not a monistic (neuroscientific) self, but a ‘layered’ self of all kinds of entities that exchange and control each other continuously. (shrink)

At a time of grave ethical failure in global security affairs, this is the first book to bring together emerging theoretical debates on ethics and ethical reasoning within security studies. In this volume, working from a diverse range of perspectives—poststructuralism, liberalism, feminism, just war, securitization, and critical theory—leading scholars in the field of security studies consider the potential for ethical visions of security, and lay the ground for a new field: "ethical security studies". These ethical ‘visions’ of security engage directly (...) with the meaning and value of security and security practice, and consider four key questions: • Who, or what, should be secured? • What are the fundamental grounds and commitments of different security ethics? • Who or what are the most legitimate agents, providers or speakers of security? • What do ethical security practices look like? What ethical principles, arguments, or procedures, will generate and guide ethical security practices? Informed by a rich understanding of the intellectual and historical experience of security, the contributors advance innovative methodological, analytical, political and ethical arguments that represent the cutting edge of the field. This book opens a new phase of collaboration and growth that promises to have great benefits for the more humane, effective and ethical practice of security politics. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, ethics, philosophy, and international relations. (shrink)

This article presents an ethnographical and historical analysis of the mode of being that is constituted when people use neurofeedback for self-improvement. I analyse how human brainwaves have been associated with the psyche since their first demonstration by the psychiatrist Hans Berger, how they were connected to personality types by the cybernetician Grey Walter, and made trainable by the psychologists Joe Kamiya and Barry Sterman. I compare these cases with the reports of contemporary neurofeedback practitioners and users, and demonstrate that (...) working on the self by working on the brain constitutes a complicated relationship between the brain and the self. Moreover, I demonstrate that combinations of brains and selves, material and spiritual ideas, and biological and social explanations are not confusions due to the ignorance of neurofeedback users, but amalgamations that emerged in the work and ideas of early scientists. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to use ethical arguments to strengthen the relationship between the concepts of legitimacy and evaluation. The analysis is based on the ethics of Levinas and Buber and is motivated by a sense of responsibility using dialogical ideology as a mediator. The main questions in this study consider the following: Does caring science as an independent academic discipline have the moral responsibility to develop a theory for evaluating the quality of basic research? and Will such (...) a quality evaluation theory have a reasonable probability of introducing legitimization into caring science? On an ethical level, this study introduces a meaningful interaction inspired by social demands and is linked to the concept of research justification. Legitimization turns from an abstract idea to an achievable entity by an act. The act of evaluation has the likelihood of delegating legitimacy and empowers the foundation of caring science, which in turn will become a cornerstone of nursing. At this stage there is no intention to develop an evaluation theory, rather to create a meaningful discussion for the future development of an ethics-based theory. (shrink)

This article takes its point of departure in Bracha Ettinger’s discussion on the “matrixial borderspace”: the structure of the experience of “the womb,” both from a “mother-pole” and a “fetus-pole”. Ettinger describes this borderspace as a place of differentiation-in-co-emergence, separation-in-jointness, and distance-in-proximity. The question this article poses is what kind of logic this experience is an expression of, as there seems to be a discrepancy in relation to the classical Aristotelian logic of identity. As an alternative to classical Aristotelian logic, (...) Nicholas of Cusa’s logic of the non-aliud is explored as a paradigm more in line with Ettinger’s description of pregnancy specifically and more generally, to an understanding of life as a co-poietic emergence of structures of pactivity and permeability. (shrink)

An estimated 15% of patients seen by neurologists have neurological symptoms, such as paralysis, tremors, dystonia, or seizures, that cannot be medically explained. For a long time, such patients were diagnosed as having conversion disorder and referred to psychiatrists, but for the last two decades or so, neurologists have started to pay more serious attention to this patient group. Instead of maintaining the commonly used label of conversion disorder – which refers to Freud’s idea that traumatic events can be converted (...) into deviant behaviour – these neurologists use the term functional neurological disorder and explain that the problems are due to abnormal central nervous system functioning. The situation that some patients with medically unexplained neurological symptoms are diagnosed with CD and treated by psychiatrists while others are diagnosed with FND and stay under the control of neurologists provides a unique case for analysing how neurological and psychological explanations affect subjectivity. In this article, I compare patient reports from English-language websites from the past 15 years to find out how minds, bodies, brains, and selves act and interact in the accounts of both patient groups. I conclude that the change in label from CD to FND has not only influenced ideas of medically unexplained disorders, but also affected ideas of the self and the body; of self-control and accountability. (shrink)

In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the ‘forgotten experience of reflection’. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies, we argue, to critical reflection concerning a specific subset of technologies which are actually oriented towards optimising human cognition. (...) In order to create a deliberative ambiance, fostering critical upstream reflection on emerging technologies, we developed the concept of a mutual learning exercise. Building on a number of case studies, we analyse what an MLE involves, both practically and conceptually, focussing on key aspects such as ambiance and expertise, the role of ‘genres of the imagination’ and the profiles of various ‘subcultures of debate’. Ideally, an MLE becomes a contemporary version of the Socratic agora, providing a stage where multiple and sometimes unexpected voices and perspectives mutually challenge each other, in order to strength-en the societal robustness and responsiveness of emerg-ing technologies. (shrink)

Programmes serving international patients are increasingly common throughout the USA. These programmes aim to expand access to resources and clinical expertise not readily available in the requesting patients’ home country. However, they exist within the US healthcare system where domestic healthcare needs are unmet for many children. Focusing our analysis on US children’s hospitals that have a societal mandate to provide medical care to a defined geographic population while simultaneously offering highly specialised healthcare services for the general population, we assume (...) that, given their mandate, priority will be given to patients within their catchment area over other patients. We argue that beyond prioritising patients within their region and addressing inequities within US healthcare, US institutions should also provide care to children from countries where access to vital medical services is unavailable or deficient. In the paper, we raise and attempt to answer the following: (1) Do paediatric healthcare institutions have a duty to care for all children in need irrespective of their place of residence, including international patients? (2) If there is such a duty, how should this general duty be balanced against the special duty to serve children within a defined geographical area to which an institution is committed, when resources are strained? (3) Finally, how are institutional obligations manifest in paradigm cases involving international patients? We start with cases, evaluating clinical and contextual features as they inform the strength of ethical claim and priority for access. We then proceed to develop a general prioritisation framework based on them. (shrink)

A century after the World War I, studies on the politics of memory and commemoration have grown into a vast and vital academic field. This book approaches the theme "monument and memory" from architectural, literary, philosophical, and theological perspectives. Drawing on diverse sources - from Augustine to Freud, from early photographs to contemporary urban monuments - the book's contributors probe the intersections between memory and trauma, past and present, monuments and memorial practices, religious and secular, remembrance and forgetfulness. (Series: Nordic (...) Studies in Theology / Nordische Studien zur Theologie - Vol. 1) [Subject: Philosophy, Religious Studies, History]. (shrink)

Evil strikes directly at what we care most deeply about, and attempts to control, predict and even eliminate it often generate new and unforeseen evils. Hence, it is no surprise that philosophers and theologians keep returning to the topic. The following special issue springs from the 21st conference of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion held in Uppsala, Sweden, August 2016.

In phenomenology, theories of empathy are intimately connected with the question of how it is possible to have insight into the mind of the other person. In this article, the author wants to show why it is self-evident for us that the other person is having experiences. In order to do so, it is not enough to discuss the phenomenon of empathy with a starting point in the already constituted adult person; instead the article presents a genetic approach to human (...) development. The author thus contrasts Edith Stein’s discussion of Einfühlung (empathy), which takes its starting point in the experience of the grown-up, with Max Scheler’s discussion of Einsfühlung (feeling of oneness), where the relation between mother and infant is taken as one example. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the world of the infant is read as one way of developing Scheler’s theory of intersubjectivity and of Einsfühlung. This genetic approach is developed further into a phenomenological analysis of the experience of the fetus and of birth. The author argues that the analysis of the fetus highlights the distinction between knowing that another person is having experiences, and knowing the specific content of the other person’s experiences. The fetus does not experience different persons, but has a pre-subjective experience of life that includes what is later experienced as belonging to “another.” Later in life, the experience of empathy, as an experience of a specific content, can be developed from this experience. In this way empathy and Einsfühlung can be understood as complementary rather than as competing phenomena. (shrink)