In the “Chapter on the Benefits to the Performer of the Dharma” in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, the Buddha proclaims the many remarkable transformations that will take place in the six sense faculties of the performer of the dharma. An analysis of this chapter clarifies both the sūtra’s normative vision for the performance of the dharmabhāṇaka who announces his sensory enhancements and the nature of the bodily transformations that the sūtra promises to enact upon him as a consequence of his performance. This (...) paper demonstrates that the performed sūtra enacts the interdependent rituals of abhi⋅eka and darśan through verbal practices of impersonation, self-praise, and ontological transformation. In the process, it sheds new light on the self-referentiality of some Mahāyāna sūtras as a form of performed and performative utterance that aims to transform both speakers and listeners. As in other traditions of sensory-somatic transformation through verbal impersonation in ancient South Asia, the ritual-dramatic utterance of the sūtra engenders a manifestation of presence that takes shape in the complex embodied intersections among the “original” speaker, the performer, and the audience. (shrink)

Natalie Stoljar ist eine australische Philosophin und Professorin für feministische, politische und Rechtsphilosophie an der McGill University in Montreal, Kanada. Neben der Forschung zur Rechtsphilosophie widmete sich Stoljar den Schnittstellen von Sozialphilosophie, politischer Philosophie und Moralpsychologie. In diesem Kontext verortet sie auch das Konzept der Autonomie.

Game theory is central to modern understandings of how people deal with problems of coordination and cooperation. Yet, ironically, it cannot give a straightforward explanation of some of the simplest forms of human coordination and cooperation--most famously, that people can use the apparently arbitrary features of "focal points" to solve coordination problems, and that people sometimes cooperate in "prisoner's dilemmas." Addressing a wide readership of economists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers, Michael Bacharach here proposes a revision of game theory that resolves (...) these long-standing problems. In the classical tradition of game theory, Bacharach models human beings as rational actors, but he revises the standard definition of rationality to incorporate two major new ideas. He enlarges the model of a game so that it includes the ways agents describe to themselves their decision problems. And he allows the possibility that people reason as members of groups, each taking herself to have reason to perform her component of the combination of actions that best achieves the group's common goal. Bacharach shows that certain tendencies for individuals to engage in team reasoning are consistent with recent findings in social psychology and evolutionary biology. As the culmination of Bacharach's long-standing program of pathbreaking work on the foundations of game theory, this book has been eagerly awaited. Following Bacharach's premature death, Natalie Gold and Robert Sugden edited the unfinished work and added two substantial chapters that allow the book to be read as a coherent whole. (shrink)

Looks at the scientific basis for theories of drama, and explains how Cage's ideas have affected modern theater.

Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists examine the will and its pathologies from theoretical and empirical perspectives, offering a conceptual overview and discussing schizophrenia, depression, prefrontal lobe damage, and substance abuse as disorders of volition. Science tries to understand human action from two perspectives, the cognitive and the volitional. The volitional approach, in contrast to the more dominant "outside-in" studies of cognition, looks at actions from the inside out, examining how actions are formed and informed by internal conditions. In Disorders of (...) Volition, scholars from a range of disciplines seek to advance our understanding of the processes supporting voluntary action by addressing conditions in which the will is impaired. Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists examine the will and its pathologies from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, offering a conceptual overview and discussing specific neurological and psychiatric conditions as disorders of volition. After presenting different conceptual frameworks that identify agency, decision making, and goal pursuit as central components of volition, the book examines how impairments in these and other aspects of volition manifest themselves in schizophrenia, depression, prefrontal lobe damage, and substance abuse. Contributors George Ainslie, Tim Bayne, Antoine Bechara, Paul W. Burgess, Anna-Lisa Cohen, Daniel Dennett, Stéphanie Dubal, Philippe Fossati, Chris Frith, Sam J. Gilbert, Peter Gollwitzer, Jordan Grafman, Patrick Haggard, Jay G. Hull, Marc Jeannerod, Roland Jouvent, Frank Krueger, Neil Levy, Peter F. Liddle, Kristen L. Mackiewitz, Thomas Metzinger, Jack B. Nitschke, Jiro Okuda, Adrian M. Owen, Chris Parry, Wolfgang Prinz, Joëlle Proust, Michael A. Sayette, Werner X. Schneider, Natalie Sebanz, Jon S. Simons, Laurie B. Slone, Sean A. Spence. (shrink)

This article follows Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell, and Gregory of Nyssa in a journey of epistemic dispossession. It begins by tracing two ways of wandering off this trail, two epistemological sirens that tempt wayfarers from a path of epistemic dispossession. These are skepticism and anti‐skepticism, elaborated by Wittgenstein and Cavell as joined in their enthronement of epistemically‐anchored certainty. Following Wittgenstein and Cavell into an exploration of the forms of life and death that sustain and are sustained by grasping at such (...) certainty, this article yet identifies two sources of un‐peace in their projects. One is an ill‐confessed threat that looms over their work, and the other is the inhuman difficulty of resisting the skeptical temptations of isolation and domination after this threat is named. It is the threat of death, which becomes, under the skeptic's anxiety, the threat of murder. That is, the skeptic denies finitude in such a way that he refuses to come to terms with the way that death attends life, and such refusal introduces as a skeptical temptation the further threat of murder. The difficulty of resisting skeptical temptations rides on the incompleteness of epistemic dispossession, which will always undo itself unless deepened into a more radical form of dispossession. Such forms of dispossession are suggested by Cavell and perfected in Gregory's descriptions of his sister Macrina. Macrina illumines epistemic dispossession as a form of love that refuses certain relationships to property. Yielding a vision for how dispossession might meet the threat of murderousness, Macrina's life thus interprets relationships of property, love, and death that complete epistemic dispossession. (shrink)

This is a reflection on the visual installation piece, Hanging On, produced collaboratively for the Feminist Legal Studies ‘At the Kitchen Table’ zine in 2016. The author and co-artist considers the research that informed and helped conceptually drive the aesthetics of the piece, including academic research on abortion within literary aesthetics. How these concepts ‘translated’ into hands-on artistic practice and physical materials is discussed, including the difficulties and knowledge gained from the process. The author finally considers the benefits of such (...) interdisciplinary, aesthetic encounters within contemporary feminist knowledge production. (shrink)

In the literature of collective intentions, the ‘we-intentions’ that lie behind cooperative actions are analysed in terms of individual mental states. The core forms of these analyses imply that all Nash equilibrium behaviour is the result of collective intentions, even though not all Nash equilibria are cooperative actions. Unsatisfactorily, the latter cases have to be excluded either by stipulation or by the addition of further, problematic conditions. We contend that the cooperative aspect of collective intentions is not a property of (...) the intentions themselves, but of the mode of reasoning by which they are formed. We analyse collective intentions as the outcome of team reasoning, a mode of practical reasoning used by individuals as members of groups. We describe this mode of reasoning in terms of formal schemata, discuss a range of possible accounts of group agency, and show how existing theories of collective intentions fit into this framework. (shrink)

Everyday ethics refers to those issues which have a sometimes unrecognized moral dimension and that arise regularly within healthcare and research. These issues are often contrasted to dramatic ethics issues (i.e. issues that have seemingly higher stakes such as those arising in acute care situations or with invasive or life-threatening interventions). Claims have been made that scholarly bioethics tends to focus on dramatic ethics to the detriment of everyday ethics discussions. However, empirical evidence showing this has been lacking. Our own (...) research investigating bioethics discussions in the Parkinson’s disease literature suggested this trend. Consequently, we decided to characterize the context and content of the Parkinson’s disease bioethics literature to empirically test the hypothesis that everyday ethics is under discussed. We conducted a broad literature search using the keywords “Parkinson’s disease” AND (“ethics” OR “bioethics”) and classified results inductively based on the context in which the bioethics discussion occurred. In line with our hypothesis and initial observations, we found that there is indeed a greater focus on dramatic ethics where topics such as deep brain stimulation and neuronal cell transplantations, dominated bioethics discussions. Given the potential utility of everyday ethics in improving healthcare and research, this mismatch in focus ought to be addressed. There is a clear need for further understanding and discussion of everyday ethical issues in scholarly bioethics. (shrink)

Based on Pacherie’s dynamic theory of intentions, this study investigated how the way an intention is formed and sustained affects action performance and the experience of control during acting. In Experiment 1, task-irrelevant verbal commands were given while participants responded to stimuli in a two-choice reaction time task. The commands referred to an action goal congruent or incongruent with the actor’s current intention, or ordered the initiation or abortion of the action. In Experiment 2, the same commands were given as (...) participants freely chose between two actions. The distractors affected performance in the reactive task only. In both experiments, feelings of control were based on movement parameters as well as perceived matches between distractors and intended actions. These findings suggest that the way an intention is implemented affects how well it can be shielded against external perturbations and how much one feels in control. (shrink)

The definitive account of Aristotle's life and school This definitive biography shows that Aristotle's philosophy is best understood on the basis of a firm knowledge of his life and of the school he founded. First published in Italian, and now translated, updated, and expanded for English readers, this concise chronological narrative is the most authoritative account of Aristotle's life and his Lyceum available in any language. Gathering, distilling, and analyzing all the evidence and previous scholarship, Carlo Natali, one of the (...) world's leading Aristotle scholars, provides a masterful synthesis that is accessible to students yet filled with evidence and original interpretations that specialists will find informative and provocative. Cutting through the controversy and confusion that have surrounded Aristotle's biography, Natali tells the story of Aristotle's eventful life and sheds new light on his role in the foundation of the Lyceum. Natali offers the most detailed and persuasive argument yet for the view that the school, an important institution of higher learning and scientific research, was designed to foster a new intellectual way of life among Aristotle's followers, helping them fulfill an aristocratic ideal of the best way to use the leisure they enjoyed. Drawing a wealth of connections between Aristotle's life and thinking, Natali demonstrates how the two are mutually illuminating. For this edition, ancient texts have been freshly translated on the basis of the most recent critical editions; indexes have been added, including a comprehensive index of sources and an index to previous scholarship; and scholarship that has appeared since the book's original publication has been incorporated. (shrink)

A framing effect occurs when an agent's choices are not invariant under changes in the way a decision problem is presented, e.g. changes in the way options are described (violation of description invariance) or preferences are elicited (violation of procedure invariance). Here we identify those rationality violations that underlie framing effects. We attribute to the agent a sequential decision process in which a “target” proposition and several “background” propositions are considered. We suggest that the agent exhibits a framing effect if (...) and only if two conditions are met. First, different presentations of the decision problem lead the agent to consider the propositions in a different order (the empirical condition). Second, different such “decision paths” lead to different decisions on the target proposition (the logical condition). The second condition holds when the agent's initial dispositions on the propositions are “implicitly inconsistent,” which may be caused by violations of “deductive closure.” Our account is consistent with some observations made by psychologists and provides a unified framework for explaining violations of description and procedure invariance. (shrink)

From the contents: La fenetre sur l'absolu selon Fink (Laszlo Tengelyi).- Temps, espace et monde chez le jeune Fink (Marc Richir).- L'auto-reference de la phenomenologie (Bernhard Waldenfels).- Phenomenologie et critique chez Fink et Husserl (Ronald Bruzina).- Le spectateur phenomenologisant: au seuil du non-agir et du non-etre (Natalie Depraz).- Nouvelle determination de l'ideal (Hans Rainer Sepp).

The assessment of patients' decision-making capacity (DMC) has become an important area of clinical practice, and since it provides the gateway for a consideration of non-consensual treatment, has major ethical implications. Tests of DMC such as under the Mental Capacity Act (2005) for England and Wales aim at supporting autonomy and reducing unwarranted paternalism by being ‘procedural’, focusing on how the person arrived at a treatment decision. In practice, it is difficult, especially in problematic or borderline cases, to avoid a (...) consideration of beliefs and values; that is, of the substantive content of ideas rather than simple ‘cognitive’ or procedural abilities. However, little attention has been paid to how beliefs and values might be assessed in the clinical context and what kind of ‘objectivity’ is possible. We argue that key aspects of Donald Davidson's ideas of ‘Radical Interpretation’ and the ‘Principle of Charity’ provide useful guidance as to how clinicians might approach the question of whether an apparent disturbance in a person's thinking about beliefs or values undermines their DMC. A case example is provided, and a number of implications for clinical practice are discussed. (shrink)

The terms “essentialism” and “antiessentialism” have rhetorical, metaphysical, and political force in feminist philosophical literature. This paper develops the relation between the metaphysics and the politics of essentialism. I argue that there are broadly two metaphysical conceptions of essentialism implicit in the literature: the idea that there is a universal womanness that all women share, and the idea that each individual woman has certain essential properties. The first conception is false because it is incompatible with the existence of “multiple identities” (...) pointed out by proponents of the “politics of identity.” The second conception, while it may be true, is politically innocuous. In order to explain the observations of the politics of identity, we need a “metaphysics of diversity.” This paper argues that adopting a kind of resemblance nominalism will provide the required metaphysics of diversity. (shrink)

This is the first book to explore the connections and interactions between social epistemology and epistemic relativism. The essays in the volume are organized around three distinct philosophical approaches to this topic: 1) foundational questions concerning deep disagreement, the variability of epistemic norms, and the relationship between relativism and reliabilism; 2) the role of relativistic themes in feminist social epistemology; and 3) the relationship between the sociology of knowledge, philosophy of science, and social epistemology. Recent trends in social epistemology seek (...) to rectify earlier work that conceptualized cognitive achievements primarily on the level of isolated individuals. Relativism insists that epistemic judgements or beliefs are justified or unjustified only relative to systems of standards-there is not neutral way of adjudicating between them. By bringing together these two strands of epistemology, this volume offers unique perspectives on a number of central epistemological questions. Social Epistemology and Relativism will be of interest to researchers working in epistemology, feminist philosophy, and the sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

This article explores the role scientists at the National Cancer Institute, a US federal science agency, played in researching and testing vaccines against the human papillomavirus. Drawing upon archival sources and oral history interview data, I challenge narratives that attribute the design of HPV vaccines to profit motive. Instead, I show that the researchers who developed the technology attempted to construct ethical approaches to vaccine development based on the values that emerged from their situated environments of technological, organizational, and institutional (...) constraint. I argue that interpretations of “translational research” native to the NCI influenced these researchers’ efforts to design and test HPV vaccines. The organizational culture of translational research emerging in the NCI positioned intramural research as a countervailing and supplementary force to market-oriented translational research and development. Over time, NCI researchers’ conceptions of the Institute’s role allowed them to develop understandings of ethical HPV vaccine research as oriented toward addressing cervical cancer health disparities, especially in developing nations. NCI scientists’ understanding of their role in serving the public good through continued HPV vaccine innovation reflects the material and political economic environment they faced at different historical junctures that constrained the possibilities for innovation and ethical action. (shrink)

I have been anxious to improve the nick of time... to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.It is never too late to give up our prejudices.Inspired by Thoreau’s Walden and Other Writings, these epigraphs speak to the bridging potential I see in literature and art.1 Literature can link global issues of the day to human struggles that are anything but new, narratively fusing the past and (...) future together, helping the present to appear. When I make reference to aesthetic works in my classes, I am striving with my students to “improve the nick of time... [and] toe that line” of the present moment right there in the classroom. But what... (shrink)

I question Bitbol’s challenge about proposing a metaphysical counterpart to neurophenomenology. For this I rely on Varela’s unambiguous critique of metaphysics and question the author’s own ….

In this article it is proved the necessity of forming and monitoring the investment policy. The main task of investment policy's monitoring are the organization of continuous observation of the object of study, formation of informative indicators; assessment and analysis of the information received, forecasting development and providing recommendations to avoid or reduce adverse effects on the object of study. It is proved that a monitoring system should include investment and provide flexibility and adaptability tools. There is studied foreign experience (...) of monitoring investment climate and defined principles of monitoring systems in accordance with the concept of sustainable development for an effective system of monitoring investment policy. The system of investment policy's monitoring as is a set of multiple monitoring systems, the implementation of which will accelerate the implementation of sustainable development in the domestic financial system. (shrink)

Drawing on recent findings in the cognitive and neurosciences, this article discusses how people manage to predict each other’s actions, which is fundamental for joint action. We explore how a common coding of perceived and performed actions may allow actors to predict the what, when, and where of others’ actions. The “what” aspect refers to predictions about the kind of action the other will perform and to the intention that drives the action. The “when” aspect is critical for all joint (...) actions requiring close temporal coordination. The “where” aspect is important for the online coordination of actions because actors need to effectively distribute a common space. We argue that although common coding of perceived and performed actions alone is not sufficient to enable one to engage in joint action, it provides a representational platform for integrating the actions of self and other. The final part of the paper considers links between lower‐level processes like action simulation and higher‐level processes like verbal communication and mental state attribution that have previously been at the focus of joint action research. (shrink)

Nutrition and hydration—including artificially delivered, or assisted, nutrition and hydration (ANH)—are typically considered ordinary or proportionate care in the Roman Catholic moral tradition. They are thus morally obligatory, except when the benefit to the patient does not justify the burden their administration places on the patient or when they no longer prolong life (e.g., in end-stage disease when death is imminent). A review of Church documents and the medical literature provides convincing evidence that there are cases in which ANH provides (...) little hope of benefit and may impose an excessive burden on the patient. This paper closely examines advanced dementia of the Alzheimer’s (DAT) type and shows how ANH can be properly considered extraordinary care and hence is not obligatory in patients with advanced DAT. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 8.2 (Summer 2008): 291–305. (shrink)

La surprise est une question qui n’a semble-t-il guère sollicité l’attention des philosophes. Trop ordinaire, trop anecdotique : minimale. À y regarder de plus près, on découvre qu’une foule d’auteurs issus de traditions philosophiques différentes voire opposées s’y sont intéressés, qu’il s’agisse d’Aristote, de Descartes, de Smith, de Peirce, Dewey, Heidegger, Ricœur ou Maldiney, sans compter certaines formules saisissantes des cognitivistes comme Davidson ou Dennett. Bref, il y a un problèm...

For the most part, attention occurs as a theme adjacent to much more topical and innovatingly operating acts: first, the intentional act, which represents a destitution of the abstract opposition between subject and object and which paves the way for a detailed analysis of our perceptive horizontal subjective life; second, the reductive act, specified in a psycho-phenomenological sense as a reflective conversion of the way I am looking at things; third, the genetic method understood as a genealogy of logic based (...) on our experiential affective pre-discursive world-life. In this respect, here are some of the leading questions of my investigation: What are the differences and the proximities between these methods and attentional activity? Why is the latter not put to the fore as a method? To what extent is this secondary part played by attention linked to the constitution of phenomenology as opposed to psychology (for which attention is a central theme), and what does it mean for the impossibility of phenomenology to freeing itself completely from psychology? (shrink)