In this paper, I present different ways in which transcendental argumentation has been used in contemporary debates in moral philosophy to justify the normative authority of morality. My aim is to defend strong “retorsive” transcendental argumentation as a way to ground a sort of critical realism in metaethics, comparing transcendental arguments proposed by Karl-Otto Apel, Christine Korsgaard and Alan Gewirth – which are sometimes referred to as “constitutivist” arguments. In particular, I endorse an argumentative strategy that considers the merits of (...) the respective positions while overcoming the limits of each. Such a strategy aims at grounding transcendentally the metaphysical fact of human value, making explicit the ontological implications of transcendental argumentation, and showing that a justification of fundamental values alone can ultimately make it possible to ground basic moral principles. (shrink)

The distinction between a type and its tokens is a useful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what it is, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability in linguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are briefly surveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in §3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are, both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens? What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? (...) §5 asks what a token is. §6 considers the relation between types and their tokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Must all the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains some problems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the view that they don't. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused with the type-token distinction, that between a type (or token) and an occurrence of it. It also discusses some problems that occurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolve them. (shrink)

This book provides an accessible comprehensive exploration of phenomenological theory and research methods and is geared specifically to the needs of therapists ...

People typically show excellent memory for information that is central to an emotional event but poorer memory for peripheral details. Not all studies demonstrate memory narrowing as a result of emotion, however. Critically important emotional information is sometimes forgotten; seemingly peripheral details are sometimes preserved. To make sense of both the general pattern of findings that emotion leads to memory narrowing, and findings that violate this pattern, this review addresses mechanisms through which emotion enhances and impairs memory. Divergent approaches to (...) characterising information as central versus peripheral are also addressed. By directly contrasting these approaches, and the evidence supporting them, this review helps to clarify when and how emotion enhances memory and provides directions for future research. Evidence shows that memory narrowing as a result of emotion, and a number of violations of the memory narrowing pattern, can be explained by the view that emotion enhances memory for information relevant to currently active goals. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the findings of a three-year exploratory qualitative study of teenage childbearing in 20 low-income multigeneration black families. Teenage childbearing in these families is part of an alternative life-course strategy created in response to socioenvironmental constraints. This alternative life-course strategy is characterized by an accelerated family timetable; the separation of reproduction and marriage; an age-condensed generational family structure; and a grandparental child-rearing system. The implications of these patterns for intergenerational family roles are discussed.

In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring "white awareness training" methods developed by Judith Katz and the "race traitor" politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted at the University of Mississippi.

Moving beyond the traditional feminist ethics of care, Linda A. Bell places an existentialist conception of liberation at the heart of ethics and argues that only an ethics of freedom sufficiently allows for feminist critique and opposition ...

It is generally accepted that the notion of inclusion derived or evolved from the practices of mainstreaming or integrating students with disabilities into regular schools. Halting the practice of segregating children with disabilities was a progressive social movement. The value of this achievement is not in dispute. However, our charter as scholars and cultural vigilantes is to always look for how we can improve things; to avoid stasis and complacency we must continue to ask, how can we do it better? (...) Thus, we must ask ourselves uncomfortable questions and develop a critical perspective that Foucault characterised as an 'ethic of discomfort' by following the Nietzschean principle where one acts 'counter to our time and thereby on our time... for the benefit of a time to come'. This paper begins with a fundamental question for those participating in inclusive education research and scholarship—when we talk of including, into what do we seek to include? (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that collective responsibility can be based on group membership. It argues that collective responsibility is best understood in terms of duties to respond to the victims of collective crimes. Reasonable fear on the part of the victimized groups creates duties to respond for members of the perpetrating group. This account does a better job of capturing our intuitions about actual cases and the phenomenology of collective responsibility than other accounts currently on offer. It also offers (...) us a justification of collective responsibility judgments that is compatible with the separateness of persons. (shrink)

Much has been written on Michel Foucault's reluctance to clearly delineate a research method, particularly with respect to genealogy (Harwood, 2000; Meadmore, Hatcher & McWilliam, 2000; Tamboukou, 1999). Foucault (1994, p. 288) himself disliked prescription stating, ‘I take care not to dictate how things should be’ and wrote provocatively to disrupt equilibrium and certainty, so that ‘all those who speak for others or to others’ no longer know what to do. It is doubtful, however, that Foucault ever intended for researchers (...) to be stricken by that malaise to the point of being unwilling to make an intellectual commitment to methodological possibilities. Taking criticism of ‘Foucauldian’ discourse analysis as a convenient point of departure to discuss the objectives of poststructural analyses of language, this paper develops what might be called a discursive analytic; a methodological plan to approach the analysis of discourses through the location of statements that function with constitutive effects. (shrink)

This article explores the nature of "the phenomenological attitude," which is understood as the process of retaining a wonder and openness to the world while reflexively restraining pre-understandings, as it applies to psychological research. A brief history identifies key philosphical ideas outlining Husserl's formulation of the reductions and subsequent existential-hermeneutic elaborations, and how these have been applied in empirical psychological research. Then three concrete descriptions of engaging the phenomenological attitude are offered, highlighting the way the epoché of the natural sciences, (...) the psychological phenomenological reduction and the eidetic reduction can be applied during research interviews. Reflections on the impact and value of the researcher's stance show that these reductions can be intertwined with reflexivity and that, in this process, something of a dance occurs—a tango in which the researcher twists and glides through a series of improvised steps. In a context of tension and contradictory motions, the researcher slides between striving for reductive focus and reflexive self-awareness; between bracketing pre-understandings and exploiting them as a source of insight. Caught up in the dance, researchers must wage a continuous, iterative struggle to become aware of, and then manage, pre-understandings and habitualities that inevitably linger. Persistance will reward the researcher with special, if fleeting, moments of disclosure in which the phenomenon reveals something of itself in a fresh way. (shrink)

ignette and autobiographical recall studies have often been used to test models of the appraisals associated with specific emotions. Recently, critiques of both methodologies have called into question the applicability of appraisal theory to naturally-occurring emotional responses. This study examined supporter's responses to Ross Perot's withdrawal from the 1992 presidential race to assess the extent to which appraisal models accurately capture responses to a naturally-occurring event. Supporters in Riverside County, California (N = 227) completed questionnaires concerning their interpretations of the (...) event, their initial emotional reactions, changes in their reactions in the weeks immediately following Perot's withdrawal, and their plans. Appraisal models correctly predicted the dimensions of agency and coping potential that served to differentiate sadness from anger, and the appraisals and plans associated with hope. Appraisal models did not predict the strong focus of sad supporters on their past goals and beliefs, and the plans associated with sadness and anger. Changes in emotional intensity occurred as a function of changes in goals and plans rather than merely as a function of time. These findings demonstrate the applicability of appraisal theory to naturally-occurring emotional responses, but also show that models may understate the complexity of the planning processes associated with emotions. (shrink)

Biotechnology and nanotechnology are both strategic technologies, and the former provides several lessons that could contribute to more successful embedding and integration processes for the latter. This article identifies some of the key questions emerging from the biotechnology experience and summarizes several lessons learned in the context of constructive technology assessment. This approach broadens the range of social considerations relevant to the sustainable development of nanotechnology and emphasizes the need for developing social tools for nanotechnology innovation while the technology is (...) in its early stages of design. (shrink)

This essay considers how the JRE has engaged Catholic ethics in the last 50 years and how the concerns of Catholic ethics during this period of exceptional change are reflected and developed in the JRE. It discusses the transformation of Catholic ethics by focusing on the transitions: (i) from classical to historical consciousness; (ii) from an essentialist concept of human nature to a dynamic concept of the moral subject; (iii) from abstract to contextual moral reason; and (iv) from a discourse (...) that ignored the politics of power to one that reckons with it, analyzing the distinct ways in which the JRE engaged with these transformations. It concludes by looking to the future and suggests that a deeper engagement with the breadth of Catholic ethics internationally may help advance the Journal's mission and that a fuller interaction with the comparative and humanistic dimensions of the JRE's mission will enhance Catholic ethics. (shrink)

This paper explores ethical questions arising from the work of health practitioners in immigration detention centres in Australia. It raises questions about the roles of professional disciplines and the ways in which they confront dual loyalty issues. The exploration is guided by interviews conducted with health professionals who have worked in asylum seeker detention and an examination of the outsider advocacy role undertaken by the social work profession. The paper discusses the stance taken by individuals and professional associations on participation (...) in controlled settings, including as participant, bystander and advocate, and asks when the provision of care becomes collusion with oppression. (shrink)

Wrong beliefs, known by some as ‘alternative facts’, have proliferated lately in important areas of human life, including social, political, and public health domains. This can be and has been damaging. This brief article proposes an epistemological category classification of these wrong beliefs, with the following mappings: a) ‘No-Information’ marked by willful blindness produces ‘Empty Beliefs’; b) ‘Mis-Information’ yields ‘Mis(taken) Beliefs’; and c) ‘Dis-Information’ predicated on blatant distortions produces ‘Dis(torted) Beliefs’. This simple classification system, is perhaps epistemologically satisfying, and moreover (...) could have positive policy implications. (shrink)

This article describes the work of negotiating and reinterpreting "standard" protocols and criteria at the level of local practice, using the example of the procurement of human cadaver organs for transplantation. The tension between efforts to starulardize and globalize biomedical science, on the one hand, and fitting these efforts into everyday practices and understandings of practitioners, on the other, results in new constructions of medical knowledge about bodies and persons.

As hospital ethics committees become more common in American hospitals, their degree of success should be measured. Just as new technological procedures are evaluated, institutional innovations should also be evaluated. Currently, little is known about the success of HECs, and some authors have wondered whether these committees serve any useful purpose at all. This article reviews the descriptive results of a 1990 study on HEC success as they pertain to the question of how to measure committee success.

“It is certainly true, as nominalists have been concerned to acknowledge, that judgements about kinds are determined in part by human interests, projects, and practices. But the possibility that human interests, projects, and practices sometimes develop as they do because the real (physical or social) world is as it is suggests that this sort of dependence is not by itself an argument against essentialism.”.

One way to teach or communicate embodied-relational existential understanding is to encourage the writing and reading of first person autobiographical phenomenological accounts. After briefly reviewing the field of first person phenomenological accounts, I offer my own example – one that uses a narrative-poetic form. I share my lived experience of coping with pain and hope to show how rich poetic phenomenological prose may facilitate lived understandings in others (be they our students, clients or colleagues). I argue that first person accounts (...) can powerfully evoke lived experience, especially where they focus on existential issues, use personal-reflexive and/or relational-dialogal forms, and draw on the arts. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

Although tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) is the only medication approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for acute ischemic stroke, there is no consensus about the need for informed consent for its use. As a result, hospitals throughout the U.S. have varying requirements regarding obtaining informed consent from patients for the use of tPA, ranging from no requirement for informed consent to a requirement for verbal or written informed consent. We conducted a study to (1) determine current (...) beliefs about obtaining patients’ informed consent for tPA among a large group of stroke clinicians and (2) identify the ethical, clinical, and organizational factors that influence tPA consent practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted by trained and experienced investigators and research staff to identify key barriers to implementing acute stroke services. Part of the interview explored current beliefs and practices around informed consent for tPA.This was a multicenter study that included 38 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) hospital locations. Participants were 68 stroke team clinicians, serving primarily on the neurology (35 percent) or emergency medicine (41 percent) service. We conducted thematic analysis based on principles of grounded theory to identify codes about consent for tPA. We used interpretive convergence to ensure consistency among the individual investigators’ codes and to ensure that all of the investigators agreed on coding and themes.We found that 38 percent of the stroke clinicians did not believe any form of consent was necessary for tPA, 47 percent thought that some form of consent was necessary, and 15 percent were unsure. Clinicians who believed tPA required informed consent were divided on whether consent should be written (40 percent) or verbal (60 percent). We identified three factors describing clinicians’ attitudes about consent: (1) legal and policy factors, (2) ethical factors, and (3) medical factors.The lack of consensus regarding consent for tPA creates the potential for delays in treatment, uneasiness among clinicians, and legal liability. The identified factors provide a potential framework to guide discussions about developing a standard of care for acquiring the informed consent of patients for the administration of tPA. (shrink)

This article provides an in-depth analysis of a conversational exchange initiated by a customer’s price question in real-life business-to-business sales encounters. The analysis focusses on when the customer requests a price, what that implies as well as how the price discussion is conducted. Marketing literature usually considers product/service price to be an obstacle that the salesperson needs to overcome; we demonstrate that the price question is a positive signal for the salesperson. By requesting the price, the customer claims sufficient understanding (...) of the offer, recognition of the service value and a readiness to move to the next phase in the meeting. The salesperson initiates an insert expansion to tailor the price to her or his customer and then informs the price in an expanded clausal response to build customer value. The conversation analytic study was based on a dataset of 13 video-recorded B2B sales meetings in Finland. (shrink)

In phenomenological research, layered understandings emerge from a complex process of experiencing and reflection, engaged in by both researcher and participant. Researcher and participant engage in a dance, moving in and out of experiencing and reflection while simultaneously moving through a shared intersubjective space that is the research encounter. If researchers are to empathise - imaginatively project themselves into participants' experience - they need to be open to this intersubjective space. First, I describe and reflect upon two particular moments of (...) empathy which have arisen in two different phenomenological research interviews. I then attempt to make sense of these encounters with reference to phenomenological theory and philosophy related to empathy and intersubjectivity. A final section discusses some dilemmas we face as researchers when we apply empathy in our phenomenological research practice and considers the epistemological status of our empathic findings. (shrink)

In his epistles, St. Paul sounded a universalism that has recently been taken up by secular philosophers who do not share his belief in Christ, but who regard his project as centrally important for contemporary political life. The Pauline project—as they see it—is the universality of truth, the conviction that what is true is true for everyone, and that the truth should be known by everyone. In this volume, eminent New Testament scholars, historians, and philosophers debate whether Paul's promise can (...) be fulfilled. Is the proper work of reading Paul to reconstruct what he said to his audiences? Is it crucial to retrieve the sense of history from the text? What are the philosophical undercurrents of Paul's message? This scholarly dialogue ushers in a new generation of Pauline studies. (shrink)

Just what sort of a theory is psychoanalytic theory? -- Did Kant precede Freud on a-rational thought? -- Why primary process is hard to know -- Representational a-rational thinking : a proper function account for phantasy and wish -- Drive theory and primary process -- Phantasies, neurotic-beliefs, and beliefs-proper -- Desire and the readiness-to-act -- Compare and contrast : Gardner, Lear, Cavell, and Brakel.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Will to Power in Nietzsche’s Published Works and the NachlassLinda L. WilliamsIt is universally acknowledged by scholars of Nietzsche’s work that will to power is one of the most important notions in Nietzsche’s writings, but strangely, like the other “central” notions of eternal recurrence and the Übermensch, there are relatively few aphorisms in either the published or unpublished material that include the term. In the case of will to (...) power, however, Nietzsche promises in a footnote in On the Genealogy of Morals to discuss and explore the notion of will to power in a book entitled The Will to Power. 1 Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, among others, have argued persuasively that Nietzsche abandoned this project. 2 Nevertheless, the phrase “will to power” remains the most notorious feature of Nietzsche’s philosophy, probably due to its unfortunate and mistaken connections with the Third Reich. As Walter Kaufmann notes, the notion of will to power did not “spring fully formed from Nietzsche’s brow like Pallas Athena.” 3 This was an idea that evolved over time. This paper examines both the published and his unpublished writings (the Nachlass) to gain a better understanding of how this important phrase developed.The Nachlass can be divided roughly into three different kinds of work. 4 The first kind is comprised of the works Nietzsche was editing right before his collapse. These works are Ecce Homo, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and The Antichrist, and they were so polished that we can safely take them as [End Page 447] equal in status to the works that Nietzsche had already published or, like Twilight of the Idols, were being published at the time of his collapse. The second kind are Nietzsche’s early, finished pieces that were never published, the so-called Schriften, primarily his lectures and writings while he was employed at Basel. These pieces are presumably complete and polished, although Nietzsche chose not to publish them, but they do not affect this inquiry, since will to power was a relatively late concept for Nietzsche.The third kind of work consists of Nietzsche’s notes, which vary from sentence fragments or single sentences to sketchy outlines of various projects to several long paragraphs in essay form. Nietzsche’s notebooks looked like anyone’s notebook, with passages lined out, words jotted in the margins, and overwriting. Some of the entries in the Nachlass can be found with only minor revisions in the books Nietzsche had published, and since he painstakingly recopied his books in his neatest handwriting right before he sent them to his editor, these strikingly similar entries are most probably the penultimate copy drafts of the published aphorisms.The writings that did not find their way into publication in any form are problematic. Are they rough drafts of some future work which Nietzsche was unable to complete due to his illness? If so, some of these controversial notes would have been waiting for years. Are they ideas that Nietzsche entertained but ultimately rejected? If so, we should not place them on par with the ideas in his published works. Even if we consider these notes rough drafts of future works, it remains unclear whether we should consider what is written in these notes to be as indicative of what Nietzsche thought as the works he authorized for publication. Sometimes what is written in the unpublished notes on a particular topic is very different from what is written on that topic in the published works. Bernd Magnus made this kind of case against the Nachlass notes concerning eternal recurrence, 5 and I want to make a similar claim about the notes concerning will to power. Reviewing the Nachlass notes in conjunction with the published aphorisms will give us a better understanding of how the published and unpublished notes differ.The term “will to power” (Wille zur Macht) first appeared in publication in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 6 In the aphorism “On 1001 Goals” Nietzsche describes a people’s tablets of good and bad as the voice of its will to power. Wille zur Macht appears in only two more aphorisms in the course of this long work, in “On Self-Overcoming” and in... (shrink)

In this volume, Brakel raises questions about conventions in the study of mind in three disciplines—psychoanalysis, philosophy of mind, and experimental philosophy. She illuminates new understandings of the mind through interdisciplinary challenges to views long-accepted. Here she proposes a view of psychoanalysis as a treatment that owes its successes largely to its biological nature—biological in its capacity to best approximate the extinction of problems arising owing to aversive conditioning. She also discusses whether or not "the mental" can have any real (...) ontological standing, arguing that a form of reductive physicalism can be sufficient ontologically, but that epistemological considerations require a branch of non-reductive physicalism. She then notes the positive implications of this view for psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Finally, she investigates the role of "consistency" in method and content, toward which experimental philosophers strive. In essence, Brakel articulates the different sets of challenges pertaining to: a) ancient dilemmas such as the mind/body problem; b) longstanding debates about the nature of therapeutic action in psychoanalysis; and c) new core questions arising in the relatively young discipline of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Space Gender Knowledge is an innovative and comprehensive introduction to the geographies of gender and the gendered nature of spatial relations. It examines the major issues raised by women's movements and academic feminism, and outlines the main shifts in feminist geographical work, from the geography of women to the impact of post-structuralism. In making their selection, the editors have drawn on a wide range of interdisciplinary material, ranging across spatial scales from the body to the globe. The book presents influential (...) arguments for the importance of the intersection between space and gender. Looking both at geography and beyond the discipline, it explores the gendered construction of space and the spatial construction of gender. Divided into a number of conceptual sections, each prefaced by an editorial introduction, this reader includes extracts from both landmark texts and less well-known works, making it an indispensable introduction to this dynamic field of study. (shrink)

Presenting essays rich with her own personal experiences, philosopher Linda A. Bell examines not only her own life but also problems arising from ways that living affects thinking.

Drawing on qualitative research evidence, this article offers an interpretation of morale which focuses on individual needs fulfilment. Three conceptual areas are discussed: morale as a group or an individual phenomenon; the dimensionality of morale; and the relationship between morale and satisfaction. It is suggested that work on morale has often been weakened by misinterpretation and misapplication and that what has often been presented as morale is, in fact, group cohesiveness or job satisfaction. Inappropriate generalisation has tended to obscure the (...) intricacies of morale and greater attention should now be paid to the individuality of influential factors. Salary and working conditions may be much less influential on morale than is generally thought. More significant, it is suggested, is the extent to which the job fulfils the individual's ‘ideal’. (shrink)