" In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“No One Is Psychotic in My Presence”S. Nassir Ghaemi (bio)Keywordsexistentialism, Semrad, delusions, psychosis, empathy, HavensWe are all prone to make wrong judgments about others (and ourselves) based on inaccurate (or insufficient) information. I recently had this experience with a relative, who cited a number of behaviors as reasons for him to make a rather harsh judgment about my internal mental states. Before hearing his rationale—and despite my belief that (...) he was wrong—I had to reserve some doubt that I might, unconsciously, have those disagreeable habits that my kind relative ascribed to me. But after I heard his explanation, the only possibility that seemed to fit was psychosis (in him, not me); because I was rather certain that he did not have a psychotic illness, I had to conclude that he had beliefs that served his own purposes in some way, although they were simply wrong.We all do this, all the time (perhaps this is the source of the wisdom behind a peasant woman’s admonition to Maxim Gorky: “Remember, above all, do not judge: that is the Devil’s work” [Gorky 1949]).But we do not all have delusions, at least in the sense that delusions are supposed to mark out psychiatric illnesses. Rhodes and Gipps (2008) make this point in their critique of cognitive theories of delusion: “One (‘rationalist’) line of research has explored to what extent people with psychotic delusions may have a malfunction in their reasoning processes (Garety and Hemsley 1994). Another (‘empiricist’) approach has it that delusions are a product of normal reasoning processes running on data provided by abnormal perceptual experiences (Maher 1988, 1999).” Both approaches identify abnormal kinds of reasoning in persons with psychosis, most of which are shared with the normal population (like my relative). But: “the question needs to be asked as to why, in many cases, clear counter-evidence has no effect in correcting the delusional belief. Confirmation bias after all itself only explains why people may not look for disconfirming evidence (Wason 1968), and does not explain why people may fail to believe it when they happen upon or are presented with it” (Rhodes and Gipps 2008, 306).This gets to the distinction between non-bizarre and bizarre delusions (a distinction that the authors do not make in their paper): Non-bizarre delusions seem completely explainable on cognitive grounds—they are not incredibly irrational (my relative’s perspective is logically plausible), yet they are just wrong (it is empirically false, I think). (Another example: I could plausibly believe that the FBI has me—a Shiite Muslim Middle Eastern male who hails from the Axis of Evil—under surveillance; it would simply be false, or not). On the other hand, the authors’ examples of delusions are both bizarre and wrong at first glance, not because they are illogical (in their conceptual associations), but simply because they just seem wrong without [End Page 315] much need to explain why (unlike my relative’s theories): “What, then, needs accounting for is why deluded persons do not themselves recognize the following: the unlikeliness of their belief, the insufficiency of the grounds they provide, the unlikeliness of their premises when they provide them (as well as their conclusions), the greater likelihood that the evidence they adduce was (for example) hallucinated rather than perceived, and so on” (Rhodes and Gipps 2008, 297).The authors turn first to Ludwig Wittgenstein, then John Searle—the former for the notion that we have “Bedrock certainties” that are founded on having served us in acting in the world (these beliefs do not require rational or empirical justification), the latter for the notion of a Background “defined as those abilities and dispositions which themselves are neither representations nor rules, yet that we need to hypothesize as functioning before we can make sense of everyday perception, thinking and language” (Searle 1995, 129). Go mow the lawn, we say, presuming that scissors will not be used:The capacity to discern what counts as the relevant context is itself a Background capacity that cannot, on pains of an infinite regress of an infinity of disambiguations, be understood as consisting in further propositional knowledge. The cultural ‘common sense... (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, the idea that climate change – and indeed global environmental change more generally – is fundamentally a moral challenge has become mainstream. But most have supposed that the challenge is one of acting morally, rather than to our morality itself. Dale Jamieson is a notable exception to this trend. From the earliest days of climate ethics, he has argued that successfully addressing the problem will involve a fundamental paradigm shift in ethics. In general, Jamieson believes (...) that our current values evolved relatively recently in “low-population-density and low-technology societies, with seemingly unlimited access to land and other resources,” and so are ill-suited to a globalized world. More specifically, he asserts that these values include as a central component an account of responsibility which “presupposes that harms and their causes are individual, that they can be readily identified, and that they are local in time and space.” But, he claims, global environmental problems such as climate change fit none of these criteria, so that a new value system is needed, one which addresses “fundamental questions” about “how we ought to live, what kinds of societies we want, and how we should relate to nature and other forms of life.” In particular, he declares that there is little hope of success without direct appeal to a hitherto underappreciated “duty of respect for nature.” In my view, Jamieson is right to question the adequacy of conventional ethical thinking for addressing global environmental problems. However, I also contend that the situation with respect to responsibility is less clear cut than he suggests. In this paper, I offer several objections to Jamieson’s main arguments, and propose an alternative, less revisionary, account of our predicament. Nevertheless, I also suggest that much of the spirit of Jamieson’s position remains intact, so that my proposal is more of a “friendly amendment” to his view than an outright rejection of it. According to this amendment, climate change involves a failure of our attempts to delegate responsibility to political institutions charged with acting on our behalf. Such failures are jarring, since they throw many of our normal practices into doubt, and threaten to restore to us demanding social burdens to which we have become largely unaccustomed. This situation need not cast doubt on our basic account of ethical responsibility. Indeed, that account helps to illuminate what is going on. Still, it does imply that we face a large (although somewhat familiar) moral and political challenge. (shrink)

It may be a myth that Plato wrote over the entrance to the Academy “Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here.” But it is a well-chosen motto for his view in the Republic that mathematical training is especially productive of understanding in abstract realms, notably ethics. That view is sound and we should return to it. Ethical theory has been bedevilled by the idea that ethics is fundamentally about actions (right and wrong, rights, duties, virtues, dilemmas and so on). That (...) is an error like the one Plato mentions of thinking mathematics is about actions (of adding, constructing, extracting roots and so on). Mathematics is about eternal relations between universals, such as the ratio of the diagonal of a square to the side. Ethics too is about eternal verities, such as the equal worth of persons and just distributions. Mathematical and ethical verities do both constrain actions, such as the possibility of walking over the seven bridges of Königsberg once and once only or of justly discriminating between races. But they are not themselves about action. In principle, neither mathematical nor ethical verities are subject to historical forces or disagreement among tribes (though they can be better understood as time goes on). Plato is right: immersion in mathematics induces an understanding of the necessities underpinning reality, an understanding that is essential for distinguishing objective ethics from tribal custom. Equality, for example, is an abstract concept which is foundational for both mathematics and ethics. (shrink)

This book contains some rare combinations: first, an author who is as concerned with conceptual clarification as he is with the absolute truthfulness of the biblical text; second, an argument that avoids the common "either-ors" and contends for the importance of both divine sovereignty and divine solicitude in equal measure; third, an approach that espouses divine determinism and divine temporality. No One Like Him takes on the most intractable intellectual challenges of contemporary evangelical theology. Kevin Vanhoozer , Research Professor of (...) Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School John Feinberg judicially reconstructs aspects of the classical view of God in a way that proves more faithful than process and openness of God theisms. Arguably, this is the best study of theology proper in print. Bruce Demarest , Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation, Denver Seminary Feinberg reads theology with a philosopher's eye and writes it with a philosopher's sensitivity to illogic and incoherence. J. I. Packer , Professor of Theology, Regent College A magisterial work, one that truly deserves to be called a magnum opus....It reveals its author as...perhaps the only modern scholar whose work, like that of Carl. F. H. Henry, can compare in size, detail, comprehensiveness, and intellectual acuity with the accomplishments of the late Karl Barth.... It is not risky to predict that Feinberg's No One Like Him will come to be a milestone in evangelical theology. Harold O. J. Brown , Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary. (shrink)

This is a short sketch of some central ideas developed in my recent book _Being No One_ (BNO hereafter). A more systematic summary, which focuses on short answers to a set of specific, individual questions is already contained _in _the book, namely as BNO section 8.2. Here, I deliberately and completely exclude all work related to semantically differentiating and empirically constraining the philosophical concept of a "quale" (mostly Chapter 2, 3 & 8), all proposals regarding conceptual foundations for the overall (...) theory (2 & 5), all of the neurophenomenological case-studies used to test and refine it (4 & 7), and all remarks of a more general or methodological character (1 & 8). In particular, the present Pr. (shrink)

John Moschos includes the story of a female filicide in his Spiritual Meadow. After exploring the authorial self of Moschos, this article discusses the relation between this beneficial story and the biblical book of Jonah on the one hand, and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and Medea on the other. Finally, the story is examined in the wider framework of the seventh century, in an attempt to understand John Moschos’ viewpoint on his own time.

Many military organizations use the code, ?Leave no one behind?. This phrase creates a deep individual commitment among fighters which will, in turn, strengthen the fighting spirit and morale of a unit. It helps to assure the families of the fighters that their relative will not be left behind?alive or dead, they will be brought home. But this code also places a heavy moral burden on the Commanding Officer. He or she must ask: How many healthy fighters will I risk (...) to bring home one wounded fighter or a body? This becomes one of the most difficult moral decisions of Command; losing an unknown number of lives of your people to uphold the important code, ?Leave no one behind?. This case is a peace-time scenario, which probably occurs much more frequently than the war-time scenario, and has the exact same moral decision at its core. (shrink)

In this bioethical poem, the narrator reflects on the experience of their father's degenerative illness, and decisions that must be made about whether to continue life support technologies such as ventilation and nutrition/hydration. What is it that is owed to family and patient at the end of life? What must no one who loves anyone ever do to the one they love?

ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Alexander Greenberg defends a truth norm of belief according to which if one has some doxastic attitude towards p, one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. He responds, in particular, to the ‘blindspot’ objection to truth norms such as da: in the face of true blindspots, such as it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, truth norms such as da are unsatisfiable; they entail that one ought to (...) believe p, but if one does believe p, they entail that it is not the case that one ought to believe p. In this paper, it is argued that Greenberg’s response to the blindspot objection is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

The primary objective of this article is to describe how the children of soldiers critiqued and examined media representations of war. Taken from a more extensive qualitative case study involving eight teachers, this article examines one social studies teacher and her students’ perspectives on media coverage of war through two Socratic Seminar discussions focused on two wars: the American Civil War and Gulf War. Data was collected through interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations. Students leveled a specific set of critiques (...) at television media and those who consume it. They also grappled with two ethical quandaries: censorship and the justness of war. This article emerged from an unusual place – a Mathew Brady photograph. The teacher, a lecturer typically, decided to engage her students in discussion. This discussion was designed to provide “process and sense-making time,” according to their teacher, Ms. Jones, after four days of lecture on the American Civil War. Yet, the discussion grew into something much different than Ms. Jones's original plan. It evolved into an interrogation of how the media represents war. Inspired by the thoughtful discussion, several months later, Ms. Jones engaged the same students in an examination of media representations of the first Gulf War. Ms. Jones is the focus of this article because out of the eight other teachers in the larger qualitative study, she was the only one to focus on classroom time (two entire class sessions) on media representations of war. (shrink)

Consider two epistemic experts—for concreteness, let them be two weather forecasters. Suppose that you aren’t certain that they will issue identical forecasts, and you would like to proportion your degrees of belief to theirs in the following way: first, conditional on either’s forecast of rain being x, you’d like your own degree of belief in rain to be x. Secondly, conditional on them issuing different forecasts of rain, you’d like your own degree of belief in rain to be some weighted (...) average of the forecast of each. Finally, you’d like your degrees of belief to be given by an orthodox probability measure. Moderate ambitions, all. But you can’t always get what you want. (shrink)

Carter and Leslie (1996) have argued, using Bayes's theorem, that our being alive now supports the hypothesis of an early 'Doomsday'. Unlike some critics (Eckhardt 1997), we accept their argument in part: given that we exist, our existence now indeed favors 'Doom sooner' over 'Doom later'. The very fact of our existence, however, favors 'Doom later'. In simple cases, a hypothetical approach to the problem of 'old evidence' shows that these two effects cancel out: our existence now yields no information (...) about the coming of Doom. More complex cases suggest a move from countably additive to non-standard probability measures. (shrink)

Prospective parents centainly ought to avoid creating a child whose life would be so terrible that no one should have to live it. However, those who sought to avoid it would risk making a serious moral error, if their reasoning did follow a certain pattern.The error would be failure to respect autonomy, which includes a claim to judge for oneself whether one's life is worth living. I explain how this applies to a decision about whether someone is to exist at (...) all, and what difference it would make if prospective parents paid autonomy the respect it merits. (shrink)

On January 5, 2019, the Associated Press reported that a woman thought to have been in the vegetative state for over a decade gave birth at a Hacienda HealthCare facility. Until she delivered, the staff at the Phoenix center had not noticed that their patient was pregnant. The patient was also misdiagnosed.Misdiagnosis of patients with disorders of consciousness in institutional settings is more the norm than the exception. Misdiagnosis is also connected to a broad and extremely significant change in the (...) understanding of the vegetative state—a change that the field of bioethics has not yet fully taken into account. In September 2018, the American Academy of Neurology, the American College of Rehabilitation Medicine, and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research issued a comprehensive evidence‐based review on disorders of consciousness and an associated practice guideline on the care of these patients. These landmark publications update the 1994 Multi‐Society Task Force Report on the Vegetative State, which subcategorized the persistent vegetative state as either persistent (once the vegetative state lasted one month) or permanent (once the vegetative state lasted three months after anoxic injury or twelve months after traumatic injury). Noting that 20 percent of patients thought to be permanently unconscious might regain some level of consciousness, the new guideline has eliminated the permanent vegetative state as a diagnostic category, replacing it with the chronic vegetative state. (shrink)

Whistleblowers remain essential as complainants in allegations of research misconduct. Frequently internal to the research team, they are poorly protected from acts of retribution, which may deter the reporting of misconduct. In order to perform their important role, whistleblowers must be treated fairly. Draft regulations for whistleblower protection were published for public comment almost a decade ago but never issued. In the face of the growing challenge of research fraud, we suggest vigorous steps, to include: organizational responsibility to certify the (...) accuracy of research including audit, required whistleblower action in the face of imminent or grave harm to subjects, strengthened legal protections against retaliation including prompt enactment of Federal whistleblower protections and consideration of criminalizing the most egregious cases of research misconduct. (shrink)

This article reflects on the relative silence of African farmers within debates around the potential for genetically modified crops to transform agriculture on the continent. It proposes two strategies for amplifying these voices—one focused on research methodologies, the other on outreach—in order to transform the conversation around GM’s potential in Africa into one that revolves around farmer preferences and priorities.

This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the permissibility of killing civilians in war. It raises some objections to their views and defends some alternative bases for weighing harms to combatants against harms to civilians.

: Drawing on the work of Michèle Le Dœuff, this paper uses the idea of "philosophical imagination" to make visible the historical intersection between philosophical ideas, social practice, and institutional structures. It explores the role of ideas of "terra nullius" and of the "doomed race" in the formation of some crucial ways in which non-indigenous Australians have imagined their relations with indigenous peoples. The author shows how feminist reading strategies that attend to the imaginary open up ways of rethinking processes (...) of inclusion and exclusion. (shrink)

Let us begin with a fundamental realization: No amount of thinking and no amount of public policy have brought us any closer to understanding and solving the problem of crime. The more we have reacted to crime, the farther we have removed ourselves from any understanding and any reduction of the problem. In recent years, we have floundered desperately in reformulating the law, punishing the offender, and quantifying our knowledge. Yet this country remains one of the most crime‐ridden nations. In (...) spite of all its wealth, economic development, and scientific advances, this country has one of the worst crime records in the world.With such realization, we return once again—as if starting anew—to the subject of crime, a subject that remains one of our most critical indicators of the state of our personal and collective being. If what is to be said seems outrageous and heretical, it is only because it is necessarily outside the conventional wisdom both of our understanding of the problem and of our attempt to solve it. (shrink)

By challenging the state's prerogative to distinguish between insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens, political movements by and in support of migrants and refugees are forcing questions about what criteria, if any, can and should be used to determine who can claim membership in the political community. To illustrate the complexity of this politics this article analyzes the major demand that underscores every campaign undertaken by non-status refugees and migrants in Canada: a program that would allow them to "regularize" their (...) status. Notably, these campaigns are being directed at both the state and city levels of governance. Together, these are two sites in which claims and counter-claims about community, belonging, and citizenship are being made by, for, and against non-status immigrants. In each case, migrant political agency is asserted in places meant to deny, limit, or repress it. The article argues that the significance of these sites is that they allow for non-status refugees and migrants themselves to act as mediators or translators between the city and nation, between polis and cosmopolis. (shrink)

One of the most important components of early modern science was the experiment. Advocates of the “new sciences” used experiments as indisputable evidence in controversies with their opponents and as powerful arguments against authoritative texts. Among the first early modern scientific works to systematically and successfully use experiments as parts of the central argumentation is William Gilbert’s treatise De magnete (1600), in which the author sought to present a completely new theory of magnetism as an explanation of phenomena on earth (...) as well as of the movements of heavenly bodies. Gilbert goes to great lengths to persuade his readers of the innovation of his nova et inaudita physiologia. For this, however, it did not suffice to present a startling number of experiments and advocate empirical investigation. This contribution will shed light on the surprising literary and rhetorical tools employed in the De magnete in questions of authority, which aided Gilbert in presenting his powerful and highly successful “New Physiology.”. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Michèle Le Dœuff, this paper uses the idea of “philosophical imagination” to make visible the historical intersection between philosophical ideas, social practice, and institutional structures. It explores the role of ideas of “terra nullius” and of the “doomed race” in the formation of some crucial ways in which non-indigenous Australians have imagined their relations with indigenous peoples. The author shows how feminist reading strategies that attend to the imaginary open up ways of rethinking processes of (...) inclusion and exclusion. (shrink)

BackgroundThe concept of ‘successful ageing’ has been a prominent focus within the field of gerontology for several decades. However, despite the widespread attention paid to this concept, its intersectional implications have not been fully explored yet. This paper aims to address this gap by analyzing the potential ageist and ableist biases in the discourse of successful ageing through an intersectional lens.MethodA critical feminist perspective is taken to examine the sensitivity of the discourse of successful ageing to diversity in societies. The (...) paper analyzes how ageist and ableist biases can manifest in the ways we conceptualize ageing, drawing on examples in the context of mental health.ResultsWe argue that the conventional approach to successful ageing is limited in its ability to account for the experiences of people who have faced intersectional discrimination throughout their lives. Drawing on examples in the context of mental health, we explore among others the link between depression and disabilities. Furthermore, we shed light on the negative impact of ageist and ableist attitudes concerning the diagnosis and treatment of dementia.DiscussionWe demonstrate how diversity is often overlooked in discussions of ageing well, and how ageist and ableist biases can manifest in the ways we conceptualize ageing. We argue that focusing solely on the health status as a means of achieving success fails to adequately counter ageism for all people. We further emphasize the role of structural factors, such as ageist attitudes, in shaping the experience of ageing and exacerbating health inequalities.ConclusionOverall, our findings emphasize the need for a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of ageing and therefore an intersectional approach to conceptions of ageing well that recognizes and addresses the biases and limitations of current discourses. Thereby, this paper offers valuable insights into the complex intersections between age and disabilities from a bioethical perspective, highlighting the need for a more inclusive and intersectional approach to ageing. (shrink)

Can there be phenomenal consciousness without self-consciousness? Strong intuitions and prominent theories of consciousness say “no”: experience requires minimal self-awareness, or “subjectivity”. This “subjectivity principle” faces apparent counterexamples in the form of anomalous mental states claimed to lack self-consciousness entirely, such as “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia and certain mental states in depersonalization disorder. However, Billon & Kriegel have defended SP by arguing that while some of these mental states may be totally selfless, those states are not phenomenally conscious and thus (...) do not constitute genuine counterexamples to SP. I argue that this defence cannot work in relation to certain experiences of ego dissolution induced by potent fast-acting serotonergic psychedelics. These mental states jointly instantiate the two features whose co-instantiation by a single mental state SP prohibits: phenomenal consciousness and total lack of self-consciousness. One possible objection is that these mental states may lack “me-ness” and “mineness” but cannot lack “for-me-ness”, a special inner awareness of mental states by the self. In response I propose a dilemma. For-me-ness can be defined either as containing a genuinely experiential component or as not. On the first horn, for-me-ness is clearly absent from my counterexamples. On the second horn, for-me-ness has been defined in a way that conflicts with the claims and methods of its proponents, and the claim that phenomenally conscious mental states can totally lack self-consciousness has been conceded. I conclude with some reflections on the intuitive plausibility of SP in light of evidence from altered states. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward a new interpretation of the “Exordium” and “Eulogy for Abraham” sections in Fear and Trembling. It reads them in tension, as mutually incompatible approaches to the biblical narrative of Abraham. I argue this tension is productive insofar as it reveals and critiques the failure of each section to respond to Abraham as a religious exemplar of faith. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricœur, I argue that this failure consists in the absence of the (...) hermeneutical moment of refiguration, which takes up what is understood in the narrative in the lived experience of the reader. By enacting this irreconcilable contrast within his text, Silentio poses a hermeneutical critique of faith by highlighting the importance of narrative refiguration in the life of faith, that is, the lived experience of those who understand Abraham to be a religious exemplar. (shrink)

Let us begin with a fundamental realization: No amount of thinking and no amount of public policy have brought us any closer to understanding and solving the problem of crime. The more we have reacted to crime, the farther we have removed ourselves from any understanding and any reduction of the problem. In recent years, we have floundered desperately in reformulating the law, punishing the offender, and quantifying our knowledge. Yet this country remains one of the most crime-ridden nations. In (...) spite of all its wealth, economic development, and scientific advances, this country has one of the worst crime records in the world.With such realization, we return once again—as if starting anew—to the subject of crime, a subject that remains one of our most critical indicators of the state of our personal and collective being. If what is to be said seems outrageous and heretical, it is only because it is necessarily outside the conventional wisdom both of our understanding of the problem and of our attempt to solve it. (shrink)

This book argues that no one deserves anything. If this is correct, then sentences that claim that people deserve general things (for example, a life that goes well) or specific things (for example, a particular salary) are false. So are sentences that deny these things if we understand them to assert that people can deserve things even if the individual or group in question does not deserve the thing in question. My argument against desert rests on three claims. (1) There (...) is no adequate theory of what desert is. (2) Even if there were an adequate theory of what desert is, nothing grounds (justifies) desert. (3) Even if there were an adequate theory of what desert is and something grounds it, there is no plausible account of what people deserve. The third claim, (3), rests on arguments about general and specific desert. The argument about general desert, (3a), is that there is no satisfactory account of how much well-being people deserve. The argument about specific desert, (3b), is that there is no satisfactory account of individuals deserving specific things such as income, love, and punishment. (shrink)

In the Rebels episode “Stealth Strike,” Kanan, Ezra, Rex, and Chopper rescue Commander Sato and his crew from the clutches of the Empire. Chopper occupies an uncomfortable moral position in Rebels, as do so many droids in the Star Wars canon. Many are highly intelligent, with unique personalities that aren't merely a function of their programming. The “organics” of the Star Wars universe, those sentient species made of flesh and blood seem to have relationships with droids similar to the kind (...) many of people have with their laptops and smartphones. Philosophers call beings who exhibit traits like self‐awareness, independent thought, and unique preferences persons. Mills says race is a social construct, not a biological fact. Social constructs, things that exist because societies create them, include things like money, empires, and rebellions, things so real that people are willing to die (or kill) for them. (shrink)

A guest's gift -- In the voice -- Square necessities -- Varieties of indefiniteness -- An imported irregularity -- Ways of indeterminacy -- From empty words -- Toward the object in general -- The infinite judgment -- Zero logic -- Non-I and I -- Collapsing sentences -- The springboard principle -- After the judgment -- A persistent particle -- Callings.