This paper explores the tension in Kierkegaard’s Christian discourses between Kierkegaard’s overt emphasis on Scriptural authority and Kierkegaard’s imaginative Scriptural use, through an analysis of the discourse series, “Thoughts That Wound from Behind—for Upbuilding.” The paper argues that Kierkegaard employs Scriptural language both imaginatively to create distanciation and directly to create confrontation, without differentiating how Scriptural authority functions in these two uses. The paper concludes that when Kierkegaard emphasizes Scriptural authority, he is really emphasizing the authority of “Christian concepts” stabilized (...) in Christian tradition, and that he utilizes Scripture freely and imaginatively to challenge readers with those authoritative concepts. (shrink)

In seeking to explain the evolution of social cooperation, many scholars are using increasingly complex game-theoretic models. These complexities often model readily observable features of human and animal populations. In the case of previous games analyzed in the literature, these modifications have had radical effects on the stability and efficiency properties of the models. We will analyze the effect of adding spatial structure to two communication games: the Lewis Sender-Receiver game and a modified Stag Hunt game. For the Stag Hunt, (...) we find that the results depart strikingly from previous models. In all cases, the departures increase the explanatory value of the models for social phenomena. (shrink)

This book offers cutting edge research on the modifications and disruptions of bodily experience in the context of anxiety, depression, trauma, chronic illness, pain, and aging. It presents original contributions in applied phenomenology, biomedical ethics, and the use of medical technologies.

This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of Heidegger’s account of “the uncanny” as it relates to the coronavirus pandemic. It explores how the pandemic has disrupted Dasein’s sense of “homelike” familiarity and how this disruption has undermined our ability to be, that is, to understand or make sense of things. By examining our experience of temporality, lived-space, and intersubjectivity, the paper illuminates different ways in which the pandemic has left us confused and anxious about our self-interpretations and future projects. The (...) paper concludes by showing how the uncanny is not simply something we feel in times of crisis; it is, for Heidegger, who we are. This means the secure feeling of familiarity that we embodied prior to the pandemic was an illusion all along, that we are not and never have been at-home in the world. (shrink)

The standard philosophical view is that compulsive behaviors are caused by “irresistible” desires. Gary Watson famously argued that this view conflates compulsion with weakness of the will, and proposed differentiating weakness and compulsion by appealing to the normal strength-of-will of members of the community. This extrinsic distinction leaves no room for phenomenological differences between weakness and compulsion. Evidence from clinical psychology shows, however, that compulsion is associated with certain phenomenological features that are absent in cases of weakness. I therefore reject (...) the irresistible desire account. Instead, I propose that psychological compulsions “wear down” an individual’s normal faculty of self-control, i.e., the will. The recurrent inhibition of the behavior by the will overexerts this faculty, causing the psychological stress noted by psychologists. This stress raises the cost of resistance until it is unbearable. The subject abandons resistance and therefore performs the behavior. (shrink)

This paper integrates personal narratives with the methods of phenomenology in order to draw some general conclusions about ‘what it means’ and ‘what it feels like’ to be depressed. The analysis has three parts. First, it explores the ways in which depression disrupts everyday experiences of spatial orientation and motility. This disruption makes it difficult for the person to move and perform basic functional tasks, resulting in a collapse or contraction of the life-world. Second, it illustrates how depression creates a (...) situational atmosphere of emotional indifference that reduces the person’s ability to qualitatively distinguish what matters in his or her life because nothing stands out as significant or important anymore. In this regard, depression is distinct from other feelings because it is not directed towards particular objects or situations but to the world as a whole. Finally, the paper examines how depression diminishes the possibility for ‘self-creation’ or ‘self-making’. Restricted by the illness, depression becomes something of a destiny, preventing the person from being open and free to access a range of alternative self-interpretations, identities, and possible ways of being-in-the-world. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw on Heidegger’s phenomenology of “moods” (_Stimmungen_) to interpret loneliness as a diffused and atmospheric feeling-state that often undergirds the lives of older adults, shaping the ways in which they are attuned to and make sense of the world. I focus specifically on residents in long-term care facilities to show how the social isolation and lockdown measures of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically intensified the mood. The aim is to shed light on how profound and totalizing the (...) experience has been for residents. Making use of Heidegger’s account of the affective “collapse” or “breakdown” (_Zusammenbruch_) of meaning, I argue that when older adults are functionally locked in their rooms for months at a time and cut off from the orienting routines and rhythms of the relational world, the result is a crumbling of the fundamental meaning-structures that constitute subjectivity. The global sense of abandonment and disconnection strips away the possibility for self-understanding, and residents are often left confused and abandoned to an existence that has been drained of meaning and significance. (shrink)

Reprint of paper first published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1984.

Magical ersatzism is the view that possible worlds are primitive abstract entities. In On the Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis presented what appeared to many to be a devastating argument against magical ersatzism. In this paper, I show that Lewis’ central argument does not succeed. Magical ersatzism remains a viable theory of possible worlds.

Heidegger’s failure to discuss ‘the body’ in Being and Time has generated a cottage industry of criticism. In his recently translated Zollikon Seminars, Heidegger provides a response to the critics by offering a thematic account of the body that is strikingly similar to Merleau-Ponty’s account in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article, I draw on the parallels between these two texts in order to see how Heidegger’s neglect of the body affects his early project of fundamental ontology and to determine (...) whether or not an account of the body is necessary to complete the project. I defend Heidegger by suggesting that any analysis of the body is ‘ontic’ or regional and is made possible only on the basis of Dasein, understood as a public ‘clearing’ or ‘there’ of intelligibility that determines in advance the way things emerge-into-presence as the kinds of things that they are. Heidegger’s core concern in Being and Time is to unearth the essential, ‘ontological-existential’, structures of Dasein that make it possible for us to begin regional investigations into the problem of the body in the first place. (shrink)

The rise of medically unexplained conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome in the United States looks remarkably similar to the explosion of neurasthenia diagnoses in the late nineteenth century. In this paper, I argue the historical connection between neurasthenia and today’s medically unexplained conditions hinges largely on the uncritical acceptance of naturalism in medicine. I show how this cultural acceptance shapes the way in which we interpret and make sense of nervous distress while, at the same time, neglecting the (...) unique social and historical forces that continue to produce it. I draw on the methods of hermeneutic philosophy to expose the limits of naturalism and forward an account of health and illness that acknowledges the extent to which we are always embedded in contexts of meaning that determine how we experience and understand our suffering. (shrink)

This paper advances the conception of social entrepreneurs as caring entrepreneurs. We argue that the care ethics of social entrepreneurs, implying the pursuit of caring goals through caring processes, can be challenged when they engage in the process of scaling up their ventures. We propose that social entrepreneurs can sustain their care ethics as the essential dimension of their venture only if they are able to build a caring enterprise. Organizational care designates the set of organizing principles that facilitate the (...) embedding of care ethics at an organizational level, beyond the imprinting induced by social entrepreneurs’ personal ethics. (shrink)

In her article, “Melancholia, temporal disruption, and the torment of being both unable to live and unable to die,” Emily Hughes offers a provocative and powerful analysis of an experiential aspect of depression that is often overlooked in the psychiatric literature. Drawing on Heidegger’s account of ontological death, what he calls “dying” in Being and Time, Hughes illuminates how episodes of major depression can disrupt the synchronous unity of time that structures our experience and gives meaning to our lives. When (...) this happens, the sufferer enters a paradoxical liminal space, one in which we live through our own death, where death is understood ontologically as an inability-to-be. For Heidegger, “to... (shrink)

This book explores new phenomenological research on the structural disruptions of spatiality, temporality, and understanding in the context of anxiety and depressive disorders. It offers critiques of mainstream psychopathology, taking a transdisciplinary approach to the relationship between mental illness and self-constitution.

In his Contributions to Philosophy, Martin Heidegger introduces "acceleration" as one of the three symptoms--along with "calculation" and the "outbreak of massiveness"--of our technological way of "being-in-the-world." In this article, I unpack the relationship between these symptoms and draw a twofold conclusion. First, interpreting acceleration in terms of time pathologies, I suggest the self is becoming increasingly fragmented and emotionally overwhelmed from chronic sensory arousal and time pressure. This experience makes it difficult for us to qualitatively distinguish what matters to (...) us in our everyday lives, resulting in a pervasive cultural mood of indifference, what Heidegger calls "profound boredom." Second, by drawing on Heidegger's hermeneutic method, I argue that the practice of mainstream psychology, by adopting the reductive methodology of the empirical sciences, largely ignores our accelerated socio-historical situation, resulting in therapeutic models that have a tendency to construct and perpetuate the very pathologies the psychologist is seeking to treat. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics and a standard interpretation of the awareness of pain have a common feature: Both postulate the existence of an irresolvable duality. Whereas many physicists claim that all particles exhibit particle and wave properties, many philosophers working on pain argue that our awareness of pain is paradoxical, exhibiting both perceptual and introspective characteristics. In this chapter, we offer a pessimistic take on the putative paradox of pain. Specifically, we attempt to resolve the supposed paradox by (...) undermining the reasons offered for accepting the introspective side of the dualism. (shrink)

Although many bioethicists have given attention to the special health issues of Africa and to the ethics of research on the continent, only a handful have considered these issues through the lens of African moral thought. The question has been for the most part neglected as to what a distinctively African moral perspective would be for the analysis and teaching of bioethics issues. To address the oversight, the authors of this paper describe embarking on a project aimed at incorporating African (...) moral perspective, values and philosophy into a teaching curriculum. The authors clarify the rationale for the project and discuss the strategies employed in Africanizing the bioethics curriculum. (shrink)

Thinking about truth can be more dangerous than it looks. Of course, our concept of truth is the source of one of the most frustrating and impenetrable paradoxes humans have ever contemplated, the liar paradox, but that is just the beginning of its treachery. In an effort to understand why one of the most beloved and revered members of our conceptual repertoire could cause us so much trouble, philosophers have for centuries proposed “solutions” to the liar paradox. However, it seems (...) that our concept of truth takes offense to our efforts to understand it because it appears to retaliate against those who propose “solutions” to the liar. It takes its revenge on us by creating new paradoxes from our own attempts to find resolution. That is, most proposed solutions to the liar paradox give rise to new, more insidious paradoxes—often called revenge paradoxes. For our attempts at understanding, truth rewards us with inconsistent theories, untenable logics, and a deep feeling of bewilderment. It is as if our concept of truth lashes out at us because it wants to remain a mystery. After a few run-ins with truth, many philosophers have the good sense to keep their distance. Far from being the serene, profound concept most people take it to be, those of us who think much about the liar paradox know truth to be a vengeful bully—a conceptual misanthrope. (shrink)

African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz, (...) in particular, argues that his African-derived theory best accounts for a number of plausible intuitions, such as the intuition that health care practitioners ought to be biased towards the patients for whom they are directly responsible. In this article, I claim that the plausible intuitions drawn on in favour of partiality can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of impartial moral theories. Moreover, I argue that blanket acceptance of partiality has problematic consequences for distributive justice in resource allocation in biomedical contexts. By contrast, impartial theories can justify plausible instances of partiality whilst avoiding the pitfalls of fully partial moral theories. Although this provides grounds for abandoning partiality in principle, I claim that this finding should not be seen as damaging to African medical ethics. Instead, it prompts investigation of underexplored possibilities of impartial African moral theories. To demonstrate the value of this direction, I sketch some novel and attractive conceptions that combine impartiality with elements of African ethics. (shrink)

Many critics have attempted to give an account of a gendered incarnation of Dasein in response to Heidegger’s “neutral” or “asexual” interpretation. In this paper,I suggest gendered readings of Dasein are potentially misleading. I argue Dasein is gendered only to the extent that “the Anyone” (das Man)—understood as relational background of social practices, institutions, and languages—constitutes the space or “clearing” (Lichtung) of intelligibility. However, this reading misrepresents the core motivation of Heidegger’s early project, namely to arrive at “temporality” (Zeitlichkeit) as (...) the original source of any intelligibility whatsoever. For Heidegger, Dasein is to be understood in terms of the twofold movement of being “thrown” into the Past (Vergangenheit) and “projecting” into the Future (Zukunft). It is only the basis of the neutral temporal structures of “thrown projection” that beings can emerge-into-presence as such, enabling us to make sense of our Present (Gegenwart) gendered practices in the first place. (shrink)

Essential reading for students and researchers of existentialism and phenomenology, and also of interest to those studying ethics, philosophy and gender, philosophy of race, the emotions and philosophical issues in health and illness as well as related disciplines such as Literature, Sociology, and Political Theory.

Against Hanna on Phenomenal Conservatism Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-10 DOI 10.1007/s12136-012-0148-2 Authors Kevin McCain, Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester, Box 270078, Rochester, NY 14627-0078, USA Journal Acta Analytica Online ISSN 1874-6349 Print ISSN 0353-5150.

Phenomenology was in large part the discovery of Edmund Husserl, whose Logical Investigations of 1900/01 are normally regarded as the work that launched the phenomenological movement. Yet Husserl's phenomenology, in particular in the form in which it is set out in this his most important contribution to philosophy, is itself part of an Austrian philosophical tradi tion inspired by Brentano and continued, in very different ways, by Meinong, Stumpf, Twardowski, Ehrenfels, Husserl - and Marty. Like Brentano and all his heirs (...) Marty's philosophical interests were in the philosophy of mind, where this is taken to include or at least ground the philosophy of language, and analytic metaphysics. It is Marty's discussions of topics in these two areas that provide the contributions to this volume with their subject-matter. The papers by Roderick Chisholm, S. -Y. Kuroda, Barry Smith, Peter Simons, Rosaria Egidi, Karl Schuhmann, Elmar Holenstein, Edgar Morscher, Wolf gang Wenning and myself were presented at the 1984 conference on Anton Marty in Fribourg, Switzerland. Our host in Fribourg was Guido Kung, the conference was made possible by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. I should like to thank both for their help. Geneva, April 1988 KEVIN MULLIGAN Xl Abbreviations Employed in the Text Anton Marty's two major works, the Untersuchungen and the posthumously published Raum und Zeit are referred to in what follows in the following style. U Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie, Vol. I (only volume published). Halle a. S. (shrink)

In the year 2000, there were some 27 million slaves in the world. This book brings into focus the reality of contemporary slavery with vivid examples drawn from cases ranging from the Sudan and India to France and the United States. Weaving statistical and narrative information, this volume explores the causes of the practice and sketches the organizations that exist to battle it.

“Digital footprints” is an attractive, useful, and increasingly popular metaphor for thinking about Big Data. In this essay, I elaborate on this metaphor to highlight three relatively basic fallacies in the way we tend to think about Big Data: first, that they contain information on complete populations, or “N = all”; second, that they contain recordings of naturalistic behavior; and third, that they can be understood devoid of context.

What did Jesus mean by the expression, the Kingdom of God? As an answer, Kevin Hart sketches a "phenomenology of the Christ" that explores the unique way Jesus performs phenomenology. According to Hart, philosophers and theologians continually reinterpret Jesus’s teaching of the Kingdom so that there are effectively many Kingdoms of God. Working in, while also displacing, a tradition inaugurated by Husserl and continued by philosophers such as Heidegger, Marion, and Lacoste, Hart puts forward a new phenomenology of religion (...) that claims that ethics and religion are not always unified or continuous. (shrink)

Dual labor market theory, developed as an explanation of underemployment and poverty within the economy, may also be applied to the illicit economy of crime. Criminal careers are differentiated into a primary sector, with occupational stability, low failure rate, and high chances of advancement; and a secondary sector, with instability, high failure rate, and lack of "market" control. The attraction of criminal careers, the likelihood of incarceration, and the effects of law enforcement are best understood in these contexts.

Research across a variety of domains has found that people fail to evaluate statistical information in an atheoretical manner. Rather, people tend to evaluate statistical information in light of their pre-existing beliefs and experiences. The locus of these biases continues to be hotly debated. In two experiments we evaluate the degree to which reasoning when relevant beliefs are readily accessible (i.e., when reasoning with Belief-Laden content) versus when relevant beliefs are not available (i.e., when reasoning with Non-Belief-Laden content) differentially demands (...) attentional resources. In Experiment 1 we found that reasoning with scenarios that contained Belief-Laden content required fewer attentional resources than reasoning with scenarios that contained Non-Belief-Laden content, as evidenced by smaller costs on a secondary memory load task for the former than the latter. This trend was reversed in Experiment 2 when participants were instructed to ignore their beliefs when reasoning with Belief-Laden and Non-Belief-Laden scenarios. These findings provide evidence that beliefs automatically influence reasoning, and attempting to ignore them comes with an attentional cost. (shrink)

This study presents the results of an empirical analysis of the relationship between managerial thinking style and ethical decision-making. Data from 200 managers across multiple organizations and industries demonstrated that managers predominantly adopt a utilitarian perspective when forming ethical intent across a series of business ethics vignettes. Consistent with expectations, managers utilizing a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style demonstrated a greater overall willingness to provide ethical decisions across ethics vignettes compared to managers with a predominantly linear thinking style. However, results comparing (...) the ethical decision-making of balanced thinking managers and nonlinear thinking managers were generally inconsistent across the ethics vignettes. Unexpectedly, managers utilizing a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style were least likely to adopt an act utilitarian rationale for ethical decision-making across the vignettes, suggesting that balanced thinkers may be more likely to produce ethical decisions by considering a wider range of alternatives and ruling out those that are justified solely on the basis of their outcomes. Implications are discussed for future research and practice related to management education and development, and ethical decision-making theory. (shrink)

In the aftermath of scandals such as those at Enron and WorldCom, there is a growing suspicion of the corporate world. For this reason it is more important than ever for firms to maintain a good reputation. In Building Reputational Capital, Kevin T. Jackson offers a practical guide to taking the high road--the only path that leads to lasting success. Based on extensive research and real-world experience, Building Reputational Capital reveals basic principles of integrity and fairness with which firms (...) can build an enduring reputation. More than image, a firm's reputation is a form of capital often neglected in the boardroom and overlooked in conventional analyses of financial statements. Speaking directly to the work experience of real people in practical business settings, Jackson couples each principle with straightforward actions that drive management systems, and he provides tested strategies--from downsizing techniques to e-commerce tips--that cultivate the hidden power of a good reputation. He outlines the advantages of a superior reputation, describes the vital role the firm's leader must play, offers ways to build and protect your reputation on the Internet, and shows how to rescue your reputation once disaster hits. Perhaps most important, he shows how to strike the right balance of virtues like authenticity, honesty, responsibility, and stewardship of the environment, employees, and the economy. Highlighted with real-life success stories--from giants like Hewlett-Packard to small firms like Thanksgiving Coffee Company, Building Reputational Capital offers a simple but effective guide for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, legal professionals, and corporate consultants. (shrink)

The creation of new technologies that serve humanity holds the potential to help end global poverty. Unfortunately, relatively little is done in engineering education to support engineers’ humanitarian efforts. Here, various strategies are introduced to augment the teaching of engineering ethics with the goal of encouraging engineers to serve as effective volunteers for community service. First, codes of ethics, moral frameworks, and comparative analysis of professional service standards lay the foundation for expectations for voluntary service in the engineering profession. Second, (...) standard coverage of global issues in engineering ethics educates humanitarian engineers about aspects of the community that influence technical design constraints encountered in practice. Sample assignments on volunteerism are provided, including a prototypical design problem that integrates community constraints into a technical design problem in a novel way. Third, it is shown how extracurricular engineering organizations can provide a theory-practice approach to education in volunteerism. Sample completed projects are described for both undergraduates and graduate students. The student organization approach is contrasted with the service-learning approach. Finally, long-term goals for establishing better infrastructure are identified for educating the humanitarian engineer in the university, and supporting life-long activities of humanitarian engineers. (shrink)

Macroeconomists overwhelmingly believe that macroeconomics requires microfoundations, typically understood as a strong eliminativist reductionism. Microfoundations aims to recover intentionality. In the face of technical and data constraints macroeconomists typically employ a representative-agent model, in which a single agent solves the microeconomic optimization problem for the whole economy, and take it to be microfoundationally adequate. The characteristic argument for the representative-agent model holds that the possibility of the sequential elaboration of the model to cover any number of individual agents justifies treating (...) the policy conclusions of the single-agent model as practically relevant. This eschatological justification is examined and rejected. (shrink)

With the increasingly close relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) there has been a growing tendency in the mental health professions to interpret everyday emotional suffering and behavior as a medical condition that can be treated with a particular drug. In this paper, I suggest that hermeneutic phenomenology is uniquely suited to challenge the core assumptions of medicalization by expanding psychiatry's narrow conception of the self as an enclosed, biological individual and recognizing the ways in (...) which our experience of things--including mental illness--is shaped by the socio-historical situation in which we grow. Informed by hermeneutic phenomenology, psychiatry's first priority is to suspend the prejudices that come with being a medical doctor in order to hear what the patient is saying. To this end, psychiatry can begin to understand the patient not as a static, material body with a clearly defined brain dysfunction but as an unfolding, situation existence already involved in an irreducibly complex social world, an involvement that allows the patient to experience, feel, and make sense of their emotional suffering. (shrink)

I examine the process and outcomes of animal genetic manipulation (‘transgenesis’) with reference to its morally salient features. I consider several objections to transgenesis. I examine and reject the alleged intrinsic wrongness of ‘deliberate genetic sequence alteration’, as I do the notion that transgenesis may lead to human genetic manipulation. I examine the alleged wrongness of killing inherent in transgenesis, and suggest that the concept of ‘replaceability’ successfully justifies such killing, although not for entities deemed to possess ‘personhood’. I examine (...) ‘significant suffering’ associated with transgenesis and propose the radical conclusion that, although it would be wrong to prohibit animal genetic manipulation per se, utilitarians ought to support a ‘default prohibition’ on transgenic experiments that entail significant suffering. (shrink)