Pain sensation in autism spectrum disorder has been a growing research field in the last two decades. Existing pain research has focused on pain sensitivity, suggesting either hyposensitivity or hypersensitivity to pain in individuals with ASD. However, research about other aspects of pain experience is scarce. Moreover, most pain-related research in ASD focused on quantitative measures, such as neuroimaging or parental reports. Instead, this paper aimed to illuminate the various aspects of pain experience as perceived by adults with ASD. Its (...) descriptive qualitative research design incorporated semi-structured interviews and deductive thematic analysis. This phenomenological approach captured the subjective pain experience through the lens of people with ASD. Four primary themes emerged from the data: physical pain experience, including the sequence of pain sensitivity, pain awareness, pain-related emotional aspects, and pain communication; direct and indirect coping strategies; function and participation outcomes; and suggestions for Healthcare Providers. The findings echo the crucial role of pain awareness and communication in the pain experience of people with ASD. These two factors have been reported as profoundly influencing coping strategies, function, and participation. The results emphasize the need to expand the exploration of pain in this population, calling for greater understanding, and listening to this population’s unique pain profiles and experiences to promote better-suited evaluation, diagnosis, and intervention in pain conditions. (shrink)

This outstanding book is a leading text for symbolic or formal logic courses. All techniques and concepts are presented with clear, comprehensive explanations and numerous, carefully constructed examples. Its flexible organization (all chapters are complete and self-contained) allows instructors the freedom to cover the topics they want in the order they choose.

Professor Merrie Bergmann presents an accessible introduction to the subject of many-valued and fuzzy logic designed for use on undergraduate and graduate courses in non-classical logic. Bergmann discusses the philosophical issues that give rise to fuzzy logic - problems arising from vague language - and returns to those issues as logical systems are presented. For historical and pedagogical reasons, three-valued logical systems are presented as useful intermediate systems for studying the principles and theory behind fuzzy logic. The major fuzzy logical (...) systems - Lukasiewicz, Gödel, and product logics - are then presented as generalisations of three-valued systems that successfully address the problems of vagueness. A clear presentation of technical concepts, this book includes exercises throughout the text that pose straightforward problems, that ask students to continue proofs begun in the text, and that engage students in the comparison of logical systems. (shrink)

Ethics codes of a number of scientific societies across different disciplines promulgate ethical standards for responsible conduct in research and other professional activities. The content of these codes of ethics are compared on key dimensions of research, service or practice, and teaching in terms of the range and specificity of the activities these codes cover, and in the degree to which they are educational, aspirational or regulatory in purpose. The role of professional associations in educating, regulating, monitoring, and sanctioning their (...) membership is also discussed. (shrink)

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral disagreement and widespread moral bias pose a serious problem for moral intuitionism. Seneca’s view that we just recognise the good could be criticised using a similar argument. His approach to argumentation offers a way out, one that may serve as a model for a revisionary intuitionism.

Abstract The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to the agent's embedding (...) in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory. (shrink)

In this paper I am concerned with two questions: What is sexist humor? and what is wrong with it? To answer the first question, I briefly develop a theory of humor and then characterize sexist humor as humor in which sexist beliefs (attitudes/norms) are presupposed and are necessary to the fun. Concerning the second question, I criticize a common sort of argument that is supposed to explain why sexist humor is offensive: although the argument explains why sexist humor feels offensive, (...) it does not place responsibility for the offense in the humorist or audience that enjoys sexist humor. I develop an alternate account of the offense in sexist humor that places responsibility for offense in precisely those quarters. (shrink)

In this essay I defend the following prima facie argument: civic virtue is not dependent on integration and in fact may be best fostered under conditions of segregation. I demonstrate that civic virtue can and does take place under conditions of involuntary segregation, but that voluntary separation—as a response to segregation—is a more effective way to facilitate it. While segregation and disadvantage commonly coexist, spatial concentrations, particularly when there is a strong voluntary aspect present, often aid in fostering civic virtue. (...) Accordingly, so long as separation provides the conditions necessary for the promotion of civic virtue, integration is not an irreducible good. (shrink)

A wealth of literature has been devoted to the problem of developing an adequate semantic analysis of sortally incorrect statements. The motivation is clear, albeit controversial: sortally incorrect statements appear to exhibit an unusual behavior when coupled with other statements in logically complex statements. For instance, two senses of negation are distinguishable when the operation is applied to sortally incorrect statements. In this paper, I shall reopen the question of the "correct" semantic analysis of sortally incorrect statements.

This article critiques Jack Halberstam's concept of queer failure through a feminist cripistemological lens. Challenging Halberstam's interpretation of Erika Kohut in The Piano Teacher as a symbol of postcolonial angst rather than a figure of psychosocial disability, the article establishes a critical coalition between crip feminist theory and queer-of-color theory to promote a materialist politics and literal-minded reading practice designed to recognize minority subjectivities rather than exploiting them for their metaphorical resonance. In asserting that Erika Kohut is better understood as (...) a woman with borderline personality disorder , and in proposing borderline personality disorder as a critical optic through which to read both The Piano Teacher and The Queer Art of Failure , the article challenges the usual cultural undermining of epistemic authority that comes with the BPD diagnosis. It asserts instead that BPD might be a location of more, rather than less, critical acumen about the negative affects that accompany queer failures, and reflect on what we might call a borderline turn in queer theory. On a broader level, the article joins an emergent conversation in crip theory about the reluctance of queer theory to address disability in meaningful and substantive ways. (shrink)

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the childhood experience that seems to be preparatory for the onset of bulimia. Three women's serial experiences of bulimia were investigated and one pattern of experiencing that led to bulimia emerged. As the interview process deepened, the data moved from symptom-related to life-related. The general structure that captured the essence of the lived experience of bulimia remained the same but the individual experiences varied as these women live out their unique lives. In understanding the totality (...) of the phenomenon of bulimia, it is important to remember that although each of the six key constituents is described separately, in the life-world all the constituents merge together as they interact with each other and with the whole of the experience. These bulimic women reported having family backgrounds in which they experienced a sense of diminished self and dissatisfaction in interactions with significant others and self. They found themselves pressured to maintain a less than integrated life, and in rapid transition from 'awareful' behaving to automatic and anonymous functioning. A psychological hunger seems to possess them and this is lived out during the anonymous phase of their existence. Their need for the mastery and control ordinarily lacking in their lives becomes a symptomatic expression that has relevance for them in respect to the deep psychological pain that is only partially expressed. The phenomenal body and self are given priority over objective reality, resulting in distorted perceptions of "fatness" and feelings of terror of "fat.". (shrink)

This article positions ‘safety’ and ‘risk’ as key public health problems in mental health. I demonstrate that discourse about safety occurs extensively in relation to mental health, but it does not occur in a way where the mental health system gets any safer for the key actors involved. Ongoing unproductive discourse occurs because the different actors involved are speaking at cross purposes and about different things against the background of a ‘public’ discourse focused on safety crises. I map the general (...) interests of the main set of actors to demonstrate the conflicted and complex nature of discourse around mental health safety. In response I outline a dialogical approach to safety and risk based on the work of Habermas and values of recovery. This is presented as a framework from which to assess whether discourse is occurring effectively to develop shared meanings. Shared understandings of safety will mean that the safety needs of relevant actors can be understood and negotiated rather than giving way to an actuarial process which does not take into consideration the context of a person’s life. (shrink)

Merrie Bergmann Philosophical Review 100 :112-115Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the author forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. The argument is illustrated with analysis of metaphors from literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language.

A three-valued propositional logic is presented, within which the three values are read as ?true?, ?false? and ?nonsense?. A three-valued extended functional calculus, unrestricted by the theory of types, is then developed. Within the latter system, Bochvar analyzes the Russell paradox and the Grelling-Weyl paradox, formally demonstrating the meaninglessness of both.

Defends and transforms naturalism and materialism to show how culture itself is formed by nature. Bryant endorses a pan-ecological theory of being, arguing that societies are ecosystems that can only be understood by considering nonhuman material agencies such as rivers and mountain ranges alongside signifying agencies such as discourses, narratives and ideologies.

Strategies for tackling educational inequality take many forms, though perhaps the argument most often invoked is school integration. Yet whatever the promise of integration may be, its realization continues to be hobbled by numerous difficulties. In this paper we examine what many of these difficulties are. Yet in contrast to how many empirical researchers frame these issues, we argue that while educational success in majority-minority schools will depend on a variety of material and non-material resources, the presence of these resources (...) does not require school integration; indeed sometimes the most crucial resources are easier to foster in its absence. To that end, we briefly canvass the evidence from the United States on high performing majority-minority schools serving poor and minority students. Yet because these debates are so contentious in the American context, we pivot away from the U.S. to consider a different country, the Netherlands. We invite the reader to consider an analogous case where racial injustice and educational inequality are just as serious, yet where differences in the state school system might prove instructive concerning how some majority-minority schools choose to respond to existing segregation, but more importantly how educational success can occur in the absence of integration. (shrink)

This book challenges the view that bad beliefs - beliefs that blatantly conflict with easily available evidence - can largely be explained by widespread irrationality, instead arguing that ordinary people are rational agents whose beliefs are the result of their rational response to the evidence they're presented with.

In 1987, Crispin Wright argued that degree-theoretic solutions to the Sorites paradox fail because the solutions do not work when the paradox is restated using a conjunctive major premise. I show that Wright is incorrect: degree-theoretic solutions also work when the paradox is stated with a conjunctive major premise.

v. 1. bk. 1. Immortality of the soul -- v. 2. bk. 2. Dreams, divination, and prophecy. bk. 3. Divine knowledge. bk. 4. Divine providence -- v. 3. bk. 5. The heavenly bodies and their movers, the relationships amongst these movers, and the relationship between them and God. bk. 6. Creation of the universe.

In this paper we examine the role the Dutch gymnasium continues to play in the institutional maintenance of educational inequality. To that end we examine the relational and spatial features of state-sponsored elite education in the Dutch system: the unique identity the gymnasium seeks to cultivate; its value to its consumers; its geographic significance; and its market position amidst a growing array of other selective forms of schooling. We argue that there is a strong correlation between a higher social class (...) background and the concern to transmit one’s cultural habitus. We further speculate on the moral implications of state-sponsored elite education, both as it concerns the specific role of the gymnasium in the reproduction of social inequality as well as the curious tendency among its supporters to rationalise the necessity of its existence. (shrink)

Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the leaders of the established generation, this new focus takes numerous forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the (...) writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Žižek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the centre of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come. (shrink)

From one end of his philosophical work to the other, Gilles Deleuze consistently described his position as a transcendental empiricism. But just what is transcendental about Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism? And how does his position fit with the traditional empiricism articulated by Hume? In Difference and Givenness , Levi Bryant addresses these long-neglected questions so critical to an understanding of Deleuze’s thinking. Through a close examination of Deleuze’s independent work--focusing especially on Difference and Repetition-- as well as his engagement with (...) thinkers such as Kant, Mai;mon, Bergson, and Simondon, Bryant sets out to unearth Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and to show how it differs from transcendental idealism, absolute idealism, and traditional empiricism. What emerges from these efforts is a metaphysics that strives to articulate the conditions for real existence, capable of accounting for the individual itself without falling into conceptual or essentialist abstraction. In Bryant’s analysis, Deleuze’s metaphysics articulates an account of being as process or creative individuation based on difference, as well as a challenging critique--and explanation--of essentialist substance ontologies. A clear and powerful discussion of how Deleuze’s project relates to two of the most influential strains in the history of philosophy, this book will prove essential to anyone seeking to understand Deleuze’s thought and its specific contribution to metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Le bilan d'une vie marquée par la littérature, la peinture et la musique, et une introduction à l'oeuvre de l'anthropologue. Il évoque son itinéraire intellectuel, ses voyages et ses rencontres, ses goûts et ses aversions. Publié à l'occasion de son centenaire.

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that (...) he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. By way of systems theory and cybernetics, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he integrates the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. This work will be of great interest to Continental philosophers, ecologists, cultural theorists, media theorists, and those following recent developments in the thought of speculative realists. (shrink)

What can Dungeons & Dragons teach us about the being of beings? This article argues that Dungeons & Dragons introduces us to a world composed of objects or entities, where the being of objects is defined not by their qualities, but rather by their powers, capacities or affects. Drawing on the thought of Spinoza, Deleuze and Molnar, objects are seen to be defined by what they can do or their capacities to act, such that qualities are effects of these acts. (...) Dungeons & Dragons is particularly suited to showing us this insofar as it focuses on the action of entities. (shrink)

This is a collection of Isaac Levi's philosophical papers. Over the period represented by the work here, Professor Levi has developed an interrelated set of views, in the tradition of Peirce and Dewey, on epistemology and the philosophy of science and social science. This focus has been on the problem of induction and the growth of knowledge, the foundations of probability and the theory of rational decision-making. His most important essays in these areas are assembled here, with an (...) introduction setting out their main themes and connections. As a whole the volume presents a coherent, elaborated position which will be of great interest to a range of philosophers, decision theorists, welfare and social choice theorists and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Mindfulness exercises are presented as being compatible with almost any spiritual, religious or philosophical beliefs. In this paper, we argue that they in fact involve imagining and conceptualising rather striking and controversial claims about the self, and the self’s relationship to thoughts and feelings. For this reason, practising mindfulness exercises is likely to be in tension with many people’s core beliefs and values, a tension that should be treated as a downside of therapeutic interventions involving mindfulness exercises, not unlike a (...) side effect. Clients ought to be informed of these metaphysical aspects of the exercises, and mental health providers ought to take them into account in assessing which course of treatment to recommend. Given these concerns, the casual way in which mindfulness exercises are presently distributed by mental health providers to the general public is inappropriate. (shrink)

Most philosophers think that phenomenal consciousness underlies, or at any rate makes a large contribution, to moral considerability. This paper argues that many such accounts invoke question-begging arguments. Moreover, they’re unable to explain apparent differences in moral status across and within different species. In the light of these problems, I argue that we ought to take very seriously a view according to which moral considerability is grounded in functional properties. Phenomenal consciousness may be sufficient for having a moral value, but (...) it may not be necessary, and it may contribute relatively little to our overall considerability. (shrink)