Madness and Modernism provides a phenomenological study of schizophrenic disorders, criticizing some standard conceptions of these disorders. Sass argues that many aspects of this group of disorders can actually involve more sophisticated (albeit dysfunctional) forms of mind and experience.

The phenomenological approach to schizophrenia has undergone something of a renaissance in Anglophone psychiatry in recent years. There has been a proliferation of works that focus on the nature of subjectivity in schizophrenia and related disorders, and that take inspiration from the work of such German and French philosophers as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, and such classical psychiatrists as Minkowski, Blankenburg, and Binswanger (Rulf 2003; Sass 2001a, 2001b). This trend includes predominantly theoretical articles, which typically incorporate clinical material as well (...) as reviews of empirical and experimental findings in psychopathology. Some very recent examples (since 2000) are studies of .. (shrink)

Various forms of anomalous self-experience can be seen as central to schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. We examined similarities and differences between anomalous self-experiences common in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, as listed in the EASE , and those described in published accounts of severe depersonalization. Our aims were to consider anomalous self-experience in schizophrenia in a comparative context, to refine and enlarge upon existing descriptions of experiential disturbances in depersonalization, and to explore hypotheses concerning a possible core process in schizophrenia . Numerous (...) affinities between depersonalization and schizophrenia-spectrum experience were found: these demonstrate that rather pure forms of diminished self-affection can involve many experiences that resemble those of schizophrenia. Important discrepancies also emerged, suggesting that more automatic or deficiency-like factors—probably involving self/world or self/other confusion and erosion of first-person perspective—are more distinctive of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. (shrink)

This paper offers a comparative study of abnormalities in the experience of space, time, and general atmosphere in three psychiatric conditions: schizophrenia, melancholia, and mania. It is a companion piece to our previous article entitled 'Varieties of Self- Experience'; here we focus on experiences of the world rather than of the self. As before, we are especially interested in similarities but also in some subtle distinctions in the forms of subjectivity associated with these three conditions. As before, we survey phenomenologicallyoriented (...) clinical and theoretical accounts as well as patient reports. Experiences involving forms of alienation from the practical and social world and a sense of uncanniness seem to be common in both schizophrenia and affective disorders. But despite some significant similarities, changes in schizophrenic subjectivity appear to be more pervasive and profound, involving experiences of fragmentation, meaninglessess, and ineffable strangeness that are rare or absent in the affective disorders. (shrink)

John Rawls famously holds that the basic structure is the 'primary subject of justice.'1 By this, he means that his two principles of justice apply only to a society's major political and social institutions, including chiefly the constitution, the economic and legal systems, and (more contentiously) the family structure.2 This thesis — call it the basic structure restriction — entails that the celebrated difference principle has a narrower scope than one might have expected. It doesn't apply directly to choices that (...) individuals make within the basic structure. Individuals can live up to the demands of justice simply by obeying whatever rules are set by, and by doing what is necessary to sustain, the basic .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 71-80 [Access article in PDF] Some Reflections on the (Analytic) Philosophical Approach to Delusion Louis A. Sass There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." —Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 The peculiar, often problematic phenome na of psychopathology have been attract ing the attention of analytic philosophers in recent years. The topic of delusion (...) has been a particular draw, with a number of analytic philosophers attempting to use their conceptual tools, usually combined with ideas from cognitive neuroscience, to criticize the traditional understanding and to clarify the nature of this central psychiatric topic. It is useful to have this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. Indeed, there is good reason to hope that concepts honed in the philosophy of mind and other philosophical subfields will help to sort out our understanding of a phenomenon (or set of phenomena) for which contemporary psychiatric definitions and conceptualizations are clearly inadequate and, in some respects, downright misleading (see Parnas and Sass 2001; Spitzer 1990).1Here, however, I would like to call attention to some weaknesses that, it seems to me, are rather common (I do not say universal) in many analytic philosophical approaches to psychopathology. In my opinion, there is a tendency to formulate issues and arguments in overly polarized, even dichotomous terms, and then to rely too uncritically on these essentialistic formulations in exploring the domain of inquiry. Although this polarizing tendency sometimes has the salutary effect of clarifying conceptual domains, it can, when taken too far, actually hamper our understanding of phenomena that are often fraught with ambiguities and complexities that defy many standard conceptualizations.The relationship between philosophy and psychopathology is obviously a two-way street—we are familiar, for example, with disorders that challenge deep philosophical assumptions about self and mind (e.g., blindsight, split-brain phenomena, perhaps also Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the first rank symptoms of schizophrenia). I am suggesting that, in their work on delusions, philosophers may need to put more emphasis on moving from the natural phenomena [End Page 71] of psychopathology and to the domain of philosophical analysis.I believe that a greater sensitivity to the modes of knowing associated with the phenomenological tradition, and to the forms of conceptual self-critique fostered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, are crucial ingredients for any adequate approach to delusion as well as many other topics in psychopathology. In my opinion, the work of many analytic philosophers interested in psychopathology would be enriched if they spent more time trying to discover and imagine what it might be like to experience certain kinds of abnormal psychiatric conditions, and also speculating about what implications such experiential modalities might have for action and verbal expression. I believe they would also be wise to spend more time questioning, and attempting to transcend, the philosophically derived conceptual distinctions and dichotomies that appear to organize their conceptual universes. Phenomenological imagination and Wittgensteinian critique can show how to move outside the conceptual capsule and into the rich and strange realms of actual experience, both normal and abnormal.So far I have offered only slogans. Let me use the articles by Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie (2004) and Robert Klee (2004) to flesh out the criticisms I have offered. There is much that is intelligent and much that is worthwhile in both their articles. (For example, I was largely convinced by the criticisms of John Campbell and of Donald Davidson that are central to the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee, respectively.) Here, however, I will focus only on issues that illustrate the above-mentioned tendencies—tendencies that, in my view, tend to infect even the best writings on the (analytic) philosophy of psychiatry. I will also make some remarks about the works of Campbell and Davidson, the two philosophers criticized in the articles by Bayne and Pacherie and by Klee. Because the article by Eugenie Georgaca (2004) is in a different tradition, I will say only a few words about it at the end. Bayne and Pacherie on the Preservation-Of-meaning... (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the straw man fallacy from the perspective of pragmatic inference. Our main claim is that the straw man fallacy is a ‘pragmatic winner’ not primarily because of its persuasive power but rather because it targets the pragmatic cognitive-inferential skills of its victim while enhancing the prestige of its author. We consider that in the context of a straw man fallacy, the issue of the burden of proof, which is ‘reversed’, does not directly bear on the (...) argumentation itself but has essentially to do with the difficulty for the targeted speaker of getting the attention of the audience back. It is difficult because countering this fallacy involves primarily a discussion of the reasons why the inference drawn was unduly derived, a process which is virtually destined to be a failure first of all because of the lack of relevance of justifications in comparison with that of actual points. Notions of retractability and the explicit-implicit divide are central to our approach. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical survey of some subtle and often overlooked disturbances of self-experience that can occur in schizophrenia, melancholia, and mania. The goal is to better understand both similarities and differences between these conditions. We present classical and contemporary studies, mostly from the phenomenological tradition, and illustrate these with patient reports. Experiential changes in five domains of selfhood are considered: Cognition, Self-Awareness, Bodily Experiences, Demarcation/Transitivism, and Existential Reorientation. We discuss: I. major differences involving self-experience between schizophrenia and affective (...) disorders; II. experiences in which these conditions nevertheless resemble each other; III. suggestions on how these experiences may still differ on a more subtle, phenomenological plane. While affective patients may undergo significant changes in self-experience, their underlying sense of basic or minimal selfhood remains intact. In schizophrenia, basic self is disturbed, and this may help to account for many characteristic disturbances of this disorder. (shrink)

The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external freedom - her (...) ability to set and pursue ends for herself without being subject to the choices of others - can justifiably be restricted only for the sake of external freedom itself. To establish that human beings can be forced to join a civil condition, it will therefore not do to show that the state promotes security, prosperity or any other such value: Kant has to show that human beings living side by side need a state to be free. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 125-132 [Access article in PDF] Incomprehensibility and Understanding:On the Interpretation of Severe Mental Illness Louis A. Sass Keywords hermeneutics, psychopathology, paradox, Wittgenstein, solipsism, delusion, principle of charity, phenomenological psychopathology. I would like to begin by thanking Rupert Read for the care he has put into reading my work, and into thinking through its implications in the context of the "new-Wittgensteinian" interpretation of (...) the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This interpretation derives from an influential reading of this philosopher's early book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1961), that is not explicitly discussed in Read's article, yet that lies behind much of his argument. Read does allude to this reading of the Tractatus when he refers to the concept of "logically alien thought" (see Conant [1992]), and by citing, in his endnotes, the Diamond, Conant, and Cerbone articles that appear in Crary and Read's edited collection, The New Wittgenstein (2000). In an earlier paper that also addresses my work, "On approaching schizophrenia through Wittgenstein," Read (2001) explicitly discusses the relevance of the new-Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Tractatus.According to this new-Wittgensteinian interpretation of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein took absolutely seriously his own realization (explicitly stated at the end of the Tractatus) that his book was internally self-contradictory, and he therefore realized that all or nearly all the sentences of the Tractatus must be totally devoid of any meaning or semantic reference. According to this austere view, the vast bulk of the Tractatus only pretends to be making meaningful statements about the nature of logic and semantics; its real purpose is to give the reader the illusion of meaning, and this it does in order to lead the reader to the eventual realization that there can in fact be no meaningful statements or thoughts at the level of self-referential abstraction at which the Tractatus pretends to be operating. Further, when Wittgenstein (1961) writes (in the famous last line of the book), "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (p. 189), this statement should, supposedly, not be taken as any kind of mystical pointing toward some ineffable realm or truth, but, rather, as an austere recognition that there just are no ineffable truths—that, so to speak, there just is no mystical there there. [End Page 125]Rupert Read sees an analogy between, on the one hand, the (supposedly mistaken) readers of Wittgenstein's Tractatus who think that Wittgenstein is exploiting self-contradiction to allude to some higher, ineffable truth (i.e., something that can be pointed at even if it cannot be said), and, on the other hand, my own elucidation of Schreber's contradictions (see especially Chapter 2 of Paradoxes of Delusion [1994]) to argue that Schreber can be said to be having particular kinds of experiences, which I refer to as solipsistic or quasi-solipsistic in nature. Just as Wittgenstein's self-contradictions can (supposedly) point nowhere other than to their own failure to mean, so Schreber's self-contradictory and other nonstandard statements cannot (according to Read) be used to illuminate in any meaningful way the form of experience that supposedly lies behind them—as I, for example, have tried to do by offering a phenomenological account of Schreber and schizophrenia. Patients like Schreber and Renée cannot really be understood, just as we cannot really understand logically alien thought—which, in fact, is not really thought at all; in both cases, there is only the illusion of meaning, only the mirage of an alternative mode of thinking or of living. This, at least, is Read's new-Wittgensteinian claim.Few readers of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology will, I suspect, be familiar with these discussions centering on Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which were introduced largely by the philosophers Cora Diamond and James Conant (see Crary and Read [2000]). (I myself have found their writings fascinating and inspiring in many ways, despite my ultimate disagreement on fundamental issues.) 1 Most readers of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology will have no way of assessing the validity of this austere reading of the Tractatus... (shrink)

This paper offers a phenomenological or hermeneutic reading—employing Heidegger's notion of the 'ontological difference'—of certain central aspects of schizophrenic experience. The main focus is on signs and symptoms that have traditionally been taken to indicate either 'poor reality-testing' or else 'poverty of content of speech' (defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III-R as: “speech that is adequate in amount but conveys little information because of vagueness, empty repetitions, or use of stereotyped or obscure phrases"). I argue (...) that, at least in some cases, the tendency to attribute these signs of illness to the schizophrenic patient results from a failure to recognize that such patients—as part of a quasi-solipsistic orientation and alienation from more normal, pragmatic concerns—may be grappling with issues of what Heidegger would call an ontological rather than an ontic type, issues concerned not with entities but with Being (i.e. not with objects in the world but with the overall status of the world itself). An application of the Heideggerian concept of the ontological difference has the potential to alter one's sense of the lived-worlds of such patients, of what they may be attempting to communicate, and of why communication with them so often breaks down. (shrink)

Here we consider interpersonal experience in schizophrenia, melancholia, and mania. Our goal is to improve understanding of similarities and differences in how other people can be experienced in these disorders, through a review of first-person accounts and case examples and of contemporary and classic literature on the phenomenology of these disorders. We adopt a tripartite/dialectical structure: first we explore main differences as traditionally described; next we consider how the disorders may resemble each other; finally we discuss more subtle but perhaps (...) foundational ways in which the phenomenology of these disorders may nonetheless be differentiated. These involve disruptions of common sense and conventionality, abnormalities of empathy, distinct forms of paranoia and the sense of personal centrality, and altered perceptions of intentionality, deadness, and artificiality. We end by considering some neurocognitive research relevant to these abnormal forms of subjectivity, including work on theory of mind, experience of human movement, and perception of faces. (shrink)

A major source of latter-day skepticism about necessity is the work of David Hume. Hume is widely taken to have endorsed the Humean claim: there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. The Humean claim is defended on the grounds that necessary connections between wholly distinct things would be mysterious and inexplicable. Philosophers deploy this claim in the service of a wide variety of philosophical projects. But Saul Kripke has argued that it is false. According to Kripke, there are necessary (...) connections between distinct existences; in particular, there are necessary connections between material objects and their material origins. In this paper I argue that the primary motivation for the Humean claim, Hume's datum, also motivates the key premise in an argument for the necessity of origins. The very considerations that the Humean takes to show that necessary connections between wholly distinct things would be mysterious and inexplicable indicate that there must be some such necessary connections. Thus, in the absence of alternative support, there is no reason to believe the Humean claim. (shrink)

This paper uses certain of Michel Foucault's ideas concerning modern consciousness (from The Order of Things) to illuminate a central paradox of the schizophrenic condition: a strange oscillation, or even coexistence, between two opposite experiences of the self: between the loss or fragmentation of self and its apotheosis in moments of solipsistic grandeur. Many schizophrenic patients lose their sense of integrated and active intentionality; even their most intimate thoughts and inclinations may be experienced as emanating from, or under the control (...) of, some external being or mysterious foreign soul (‘I feel it is not me who is thinking’; ‘I have been programmed’). Yet the same patients may also experience the self as preeminent, all-powerful or all-knowing (‘My thoughts can influence things’; ‘This event happens because I think it'). Here one may feel confronted with the very paradigm of irrationality: profound contradictions suggesting regression to primitive ‘primary-process’ thinking or utter collapse of the higher faculties of mind. I argue, however, that these dualities so basic to schizophrenia can best be understood very differently: as consequences of a kind of alienation and hyper-self-consciousness (‘hyper- reflexivity') that is closely analogous to what occurs in the post-Kantian era of Western intellectual history. The parallel dualities of modern thought have been most extensively discussed by Foucault, who describes paradoxes, tensions and other dilemmas central to what he calls the modern ‘episteme'; these result from what Foucault sees as the modern human being's introverted and ultimately self-deceiving preoccupation with, and overvaluing of, the phenomenon of his own consciousness. Parallels between these contradictions and those characteristic of several withdrawn schizophrenic individuals are described and analysed. The paper concludes with an Afterword in which some possible neurobiological underpinnings of these schizophrenic experiences are discussed. (shrink)

This paper considers contradictory features of emotional or affective experience and expression in schizophrenia in light of the “Kretschmerian paradox”—the fact that schizophrenia-spectrum patients can simultaneously experience both exaggerated and diminished levels of affective response. An attempt is made to explain the paradox and explore its implications. Recent research on emotion in schizophrenia is reviewed, including subjective reports, psychophysiological measures of arousal or activation, and behavioural measures, focusing on flat-affect and negative-symptom patients. After discussing relevant concepts and vocabulary of emotion (...) (“affect”, “emotion”, “mood”, “feelings”, the “passions”), the need for a phenomenological approach focusing on subjective experience is proposed. Four modes of nonparanoid experience in schizophrenia are discussed: Bodily Alienation, Disengagement, Unworlding, and Subjectivisation. Each mode involves withdrawal from functional contexts—temporal, practical, and interpersonal—normally associated with emotional reactivity and expression; each may be accompanied by forms of non-emotional affectivity no less intense than the emotions they replace. Possible relationships between psychophysiological measures, expressive behaviour, and subjective emotional or affective response are considered. (shrink)

This article seeks to define what is semiotic and what is Semiotics. Provided first is a brief presentation of various perspectives of Semiotics. Pursuant to this, we will seek to uncover Semiotics’ particulars by evaluating various approaches. We will commence by framing the definitions of the word “Semiotic” to consider then Semiotics via eight particular anthropic – human-related – levels. This partition, derived by the author from a Rastier typology, defines the following levels: noumenophysical, phenophysical, semiotic, representational (“mental images” and (...) concepts), sens (physical), felt (affects), cognitive other and transcendental. From here, we will consider the place of Semiotics among disciplines. Finally, the text presents a typology of relationship between disciplines, including semiotics: anadisciplinarity, disciplinarity, valodisciplinarity, intradisciplinary (such as intertheoricity), multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, metadisciplinarity). (shrink)

This essay argues for the necessity of a phenomenological perspective on mind and mental disorder while also emphasizing the inherent difficulty of adopting such an orientation. Here I adopt a via negativa approach—by considering three forms of error that the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty recognize as needing to be guarded against, lest they subvert the project of attaining an adequate understanding of consciousness or subjectivity: namely (1) prejudices deriving from theory and common sense, (2) distorting effects (...) of reflection, and (3) what Heidegger termed the forgetting of the ontological difference. Phenomenology insists on the importance of studying subjective life while also acknowledging the epistemological paradoxes inherent to this domain—a domain whose very self-evidence is inseparable from mystery, whose visibility conceals a deeper invisibility. I consider these issues in light of phenomenology’s relevance for certain issues in psychopathology and literary representation. (shrink)

The moral right to privacy consists of the power to determine who may gain access to information about oneself. Individual human beings need some measure of privacy in order to develop a sense of self and to avoid manipulation by the state. Journalists who respect the privacy rights of those on whom they report should especially be careful not to intrude unduly when gathering information, in publishing they should be able to demonstrate a public need to know private information. Individual (...) journalists should establish their own guidelines for reporting on the private lives of different categories of people in the news. (shrink)

French thought in the twentieth century is typically described as marked by a major fault line, a rupture or grande coupure, that emerged in the 1960s, the heyday of the ‘crisis of the subject.’ Before this time French philosophy, together with associated fields, were focused on issues of subjectivity—first in the vein of Bergsonian vitalism but then shifting, with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in the late 1930s and 1940s, to forms of phenomenology and existentialism inspired first by Husserl and then, even (...) more decisively, by Heidegger.1 But starting mid-century, developments in the ‘human sciences’ of linguistics, anthropology, and psychoanalysis began to offer a different.. (shrink)

This paper offers an intellectual portrait of the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, by considering his incorporation of perspectives associated with “modernism,” the artistic and intellectual avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century. These perspectives are largely absent in other alternatives in psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Emphasis is placed on Lacan’s affinities with phenomenology, a tradition he criticized and to which he is often seen as opposed. Two general issues are discussed. The first is Lacan’s unparalleled appreciation of the (...) paradoxical nature of human experience, together with his treatment of paradox as almost a criterion of truth. These points are illustrated by considering Lacan’s conceptions of the self and of erotic desire. The second issue is Lacan’s focus on the “ontological dimension,” on overall styles or modalities of what might be termed “transcendental subjectivity”: namely, what he calls the registers of the “Imaginary,” the “Symbolic,” and the “Real.” By emphasizing the incommensurable yet interdependent nature of these modalities, Lacan offers a synthesis of dynamic/conflictual and formal/ontological dimensions of the human condition. This paper offers an encompassing portrait of Lacan’s major ideas that is at odds with the widespread assumption that Lacan is somehow a deeply anti-humanist thinker who derides the subjective dimension. Lacan’s most distinctive contributions are fundamentally concerned with the nature of human experience. They show strong affinities with hermeneutic forms of phenomenology inspired by Heidegger, a philosopher who focused on ontological modes of Being and considered paradox as a mark of truth. (shrink)

Letter commenting on the paper Barry Smith, Louis J. Goldberg, Alan Ruttenberg & Michael Glick, "Ontology and the Future of Dental Research Informatics", Journal of the American Dental Association 141 2010;(10):1173-75 with responses by the authors of the paper.

French thought no longer enjoys the kind of prominence in the Anglophone world that it did in most of the last half of the twentieth century, a time when Sartre and Camus, then Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, and Derrida exercised a decisive influence on innovative work in literary and cultural theory, the human and social sciences, and on social thought more generally. It would be a mistake, however, to exaggerate the degree to which this represents either a decline in the actual influence (...) of twentieth century French thinkers or an enervation of contemporary theorizing in France. Derridean deconstruction and Foucauldian power/knowledge analyses have, for.. (shrink)

The current revival of communitarian thinking, alongside public journalism as its journalistic counterpart, is one response to thefractures that characterize modern society. I identifyfive symptoms/causes ofthefractured world. I then show, briefly, some contrasts between the communitarian ideal and that of liberal democracy. The conclusion calls for journalists to undertake the task of reworking our basic conceptual framework in ways that avoid the twin extreme, and naive anthropologies of individualism and collectivism in favor o f a communitarian view based upon acknowledgment (...) of human interdependence. (shrink)

Gasparyan shows the relationship of eigenform with semiosis. In agreement with her, I discuss these ideas from my own viewpoint.

This paper offers a comparative investigation of anomalous self-experiences common in schizophrenia instrument) and those of normal individuals in an intensely introspective orientation. The latter represent a relatively pure manifestation of certain forms of exaggerated self-consciousness, one facet of the disturbance of core- or minimal-self postulated as central in schizophrenia. Significant similarities with schizophrenia-like experience were found but important differences also emerged. Affinities included feelings of passivity, fading of self or world, and alienation from thoughts, feelings, or lived-body. Differences involved (...) confusion between self and world and severe dislocation or erosion of first-person perspective, qualities unique to schizophrenia. The purpose is threefold: 1, place the putatively schizophrenic experiences of self-disorder in a broader, comparative context; 2, evaluate hypotheses concerning core processes in schizophrenia; 3, orient investigation of possible pathogenetic pathways as well as psychotherapeutic interventions. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of a central psychopathological concept, the notion of "poor reality-testing. "Using ideas from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, I consider the nature of delusions in schizophrenia, largely through examining Daniel Paul Schreber's famous Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Many schizophrenic individuals do not in fact mistake their fantasies for reality, as is traditionally assumed. Rather, I argue, they engage in a solipsistic mode of experience, a felt subjectivization of the lived world that is associated with a (...) stance of passivity and hyperconsciousness. I discuss the existential conditions and consequences of this stance and show that certain anomalous or paradoxical features of schizophrenic delusion are explicable on this phenomenological account. (shrink)

Impairments in cognitive coordination in schizophrenia are supported by phenomenological data that suggest deficits in the processing of visual context. Although the target article is sympathetic to such a phenomenological perspective, we argue that the relevance of phenomenological data for a wider understanding of consciousness in schizophrenia is not sufficiently addressed by the authors.

We dispute Penn et al.'s claim of the sharp functional discontinuity between humans and nonhumans with evidence in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) of higher-order generalizations: spontaneous integration of previously learned rules and concepts in response to novel stimuli. We propose that species-general explanations that are in approach are more plausible than Penn et al.'s innatist approach of a genetically prespecified supermodule.

Do the demands of egalitarian justice extend to the international realm? Some believe that a positive answer follows from a simple line of reasoning: where a child happens to be born is a morally arbitrary fact; accordingly, it shouldn’t unduly influence her life prospects, as will inevitably be the case unless economic inequalities between countries are ironed out. I argue that this style of argument overlooks an important problem concerning the extent to which a person can unilaterally impose enforceable obligations (...) on others by choosing to have a child. I maintain that properly egalitarian duties of distributive justice only arise when this problem of unilateral imposition has been solved. I further argue that solving the problem requires robust political institutions that do not exist in the international context—institutions instantiating a version of what John Rawls calls pure procedural justice, to ensure that the aggregate result of individual reproductive choices is acceptable to all. (shrink)

Rudolf Louis untersucht in diesem Buch den Widerspruch in der Musik. Er zeigt, wie Komponisten mit Widersprüchen umgehen und wie diese teilweise zu großen Kunstwerken führen können. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, (...) as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This essay by the director of Washington & Lee University's applied ethics program for Society and the Professions argues that journalists must begin taking themselves seriously as members of a profession if journalism is to gain the respect it needs to function effectively in society. Journalism, argues the author, may not possess all the classical attributes of professionalism, but it does possess the most important ones. The essay maintains that professionalism in journalism is important for the welfare of both the (...) media audience and the journalist. Journalists are asked to look at journalism through the audience's eyes, to experience the reward of being true and humble servants of other human beings, and to help make people whole?in short, to be professionals, not mere technicians. (shrink)

The moral dimensions of undercover investigations by reporters are explored for their deception characteristics, using disclosures about a clinic in which doctors told women they were pregnant when they were not as an example. Three test questions are posed for the justifying of deceptive tactics in gathering information. In addition to undercover investigations, the morality of surreptitious taping is also discussed.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 331-350.