Accelerationism offers a uniquely robust theory of the future as a subject for political contestation. In this way, it is surprisingly close to the concerns of queer theory. Like queer theory in its engagement with temporality, acclerationism works to describe the causal relations between past, present, and future. However, where queer theory attributes agency to affect and aesthetics, accelerationists look to rational control. In this contribution, I demonstrate that accelerationist rationality undoes itself, involuting into a form of demonic possession that (...) might also be the basis for a queer future-working. (shrink)

Intimate relationships between emotion and action have long been acknowledged, yet contemporary theories and experimental research within affective and movement neuroscience have not been linked into a coherent framework bridging these two fields. Accumulating psychological and neuroimaging evidence has, however, brought new insights regarding how emotions affect the preparation, execution, and control of voluntary movement. Here we review main approaches and findings on such emotion–action interactions. To assimilate key emotion concepts of action tendencies and motive states with fundamental constructs of (...) the motor system, we underscore the need for integrating an information-processing approach of motor control into affective neuroscience. This should provide a rich foundation to bridge the two fields, allowing further refinement and empirical testing of emotion theories and better understanding of affective influences in movement disorders. (shrink)

This book examines Aristotle's metaphysics and his account of nature, stressing the ways in which his desire to explain observed natural processes shaped his philosophical thought. It departs radically from a tradition of interpretation, in which Aristotle is understood to have approached problems with a set of abstract principles in hand, principles derived from critical reflection on the views of his predecessors. A central example of the book interprets Aristotle's essentialism as deriving from an examination of the kinds of unity (...) that various sorts of things have: elemental motion, alteration, transformation and the growth of organisms. An important conclusion of this argument is that an essence may, under certain circumstances, lack some of its essential attributes. This is a major re-evaluation of Aristotle's metaphysics that will interest philosophers, classicists and historians of science. (shrink)

One current line of argument against the legalization of same-sex marriage, advocated primarily by the New Natural Lawyers, is that marriage is a pre-political institution that has, as an essential element, a bodily union requirement. They argue that same-sex couples cannot realize bodily union in their sexual activities and thus cannot meet the structural requirements of marriage. Accordingly, they argue that the same-sex marriage debate must be framed as a debate about what marriage is, and not, as it was in (...) the anti-miscegenation precedents, about who can get married. I argue that their position, which promulgates a set of pernicious stereotypes about same-sex couples, is, first of all, internally inconsistent. According to their own metaphysical principles about bodily union, they provide no rational basis for the claim that same-sex couples cannot realize bodily union and thus that same-sex couples cannot be married. Second, I argue for a deflationary account of the significance of bodily union. While same-sex couples, like heterosexual couples, can realize bodily union, this sort of union has no moral significance and thus cannot be the factor that distinguishes marriages from other sorts of relationships. Finally, I suggest that they have no basis for their claims about the inferiority of same-sex relationships. (shrink)

This article reflects upon the state of the philosophical profession vis‐à‐vis a close reading of the hoax perpetrated against the International Journal of Badiou Studies in 2016. This hoax is not a subversive act of disciplinary criticism (as the hoaxers contend). Rather, it is a poorly disguised attempt to enforce a partisan and myopic conception of philosophy and to delegitimize an entire subfield of philosophical production—namely, continental philosophy. The hoax is symptomatic of a deeper problem that plagues the profession today: (...) the willingness exhibited by many philosophers to police the boundaries of the discipline by engaging in what we call “acts of force.” The prevalence of acts of force demonstrates that professional philosophy is shaped not only by the giving and taking of reasons but also by shopworn disciplinary tribalisms (for example, continental versus analytic) and asymmetrical power relations involving agents with unequal amounts of social, professional, and philosophical capital. (shrink)

The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of (...) time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retrocausal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do. (shrink)

Although rationalization about one's own beliefs and actions can improve an individual's future decisions, beliefs can provide other benefits unrelated to their epistemic truth value, such as group cohesion and identity. A model of resource-rational cognition that accounts for these benefits may explain unexpected and seemingly irrational thought patterns, such as belief polarization.

For centuries, philosophers have debated the question of free will. Do we make our own choices? Or are we more like rudderless ships drifting on the ocean, buffeted by winds and currents outside ourselves? In TK, research psychologist Ken Sheldon reveals that the way we answer these questions has serious implications for our wellbeing. We may never know for certain whether free will exists, Sheldon argues, but recent studies have found that believing in free will matters-indeed, it's an (...) essential component of psychological health. Freely Determined offers an argument for embracing our capacity to choose our own destiny, and a guide for how we might recognize our freedom and use it wisely. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work on motivation, as well as recent research in personality science and social psychology, Sheldon shows us that far from being in the thrall of animal urges and unconscious biases, we humans are constantly making conscious choices: whether to eat the nachos or the salad, whether to shoot the basketball or pass it to a teammate, whether to take that job or marry that person or write that novella. Indeed, over decades of research, Sheldon has established that seeing ourselves as change-makers in our own lives, and in the world, helps us feel happier and even behave more ethically. By identifying and pursuing our deepest values, he argues, we can set and achieve meaningful goals, ones that will help us and our communities flourish. Offering readers insight into how they can live a more self-directed, satisfying life, Freely Determined demystifies the science of choice and reveals that we are radically free to live with greater purpose. (shrink)

Lessons in the study of habits by Walter L. Sheldon. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1903 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

Holistic perception is an antidote to the subject–object divide, a divide that leads to a mechanistic understanding of the world and can see human beings only in terms of parts, without a robust articulation of wholeness. In this piece, I argue that philosopher of science Henri Bortoft offers an empirically grounded theory, based on consciousness studies, which recasts the problem of the many and the one, offering insight into just such a holistic perception. I further argue that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's (...) philosophy of unity and multiplicity agrees in many respects with that of Bortoft. However, Coleridge draws further implications of his philosophy for Trinitarian theology. I will argue, in line with Bortoft and Coleridge, that perception is a hinge point in this discussion, allowing the move between the discussion of wholeness, subjectivity, and identity. I conclude that a holistic perceptual shift reconstitutes the human person in a way that is theologically significant, especially with respect to Christian Trinitarian doctrine. (shrink)

This edited volume draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation, conceptualizing race, racial identity, and racism in ways that go beyond traditional modes of psychoanalytic thought Featuring contributions from Lacanian scholars from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts, chapters span a wide breadth of topics including white nationalism and contemporary debates over confederate monuments; emergent theories of race rooted in Afropessimism and postcolonialism; Latinx and other racialized groups; apartheid and American (...) slavery; and applications of Lacan's concepts of the lamella, drive and sexuation to processes of racialization. The collection both reorients readers' understandings of race through its deployment of Lacanian theory and redefines the Lacanian subject through its theorizing of subjectivity in relation to race, racism and racial identification. Lacan and Race will be a definitive text for psychoanalytic theorists and contemporary scholars of race and appeal to readers across the fields of psychology, cultural studies, humanities, politics, and sociology. (shrink)

In articulating the protection-inclusion dilemma, Friesen et al. (2023) identify an important issue facing institutional review boards (IRBs) and elucidate historical factors contributing to its de...

A large, diverse sample of adults was interviewed about their conception of the ontological and functional properties of the mind as compared to the soul. The existence of the mind was generally tied to the human lifecycle of conception, birth, growth and death, and was primarily associated with cognitive as opposed to spiritual functions. In contrast, the existence of the soul was less systematically tied to the lifecycle and frequently associated with spiritual as opposed to cognitive functions. Participants were also (...) asked about three ethical issues: stem cell research, life support for patients in a persistent vegetative state and cloning. As expected, participants' beliefs about the ontology and function of the soul were linked to their judgments about these ethical issues whereas their beliefs about the mind were unrelated. Overall, the findings show that many adults do not espouse a simple body-mind dualism, and any tendency toward such dualism is unlikely to explain their beliefs in an afterlife. Instead, afterlife beliefs appear to be associated with the idea of an immaterial essence, potentially dissociable from the biology of life and death. (shrink)

Many theistic philosophers conceive of God’s activity in agent-causal terms. That is, they view divine action as an instance of (perhaps the paradigm case of) substance causation. At the same time, many theists endorse the claim that God acts for reasons, and not merely wantonly. It is the aim of this paper to show that a commitment to both theses gives rise to a dilemma. I present the dilemma and then spend the bulk of the paper defending its premises. I (...) conclude with some suggestions for how one might carve out an alternative model of divine action. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to explore whether children, who have been exposed to the concept of the soul, differentiate the soul from the mind. In the first experiment, 4- to 12-year-old children were asked about whether a religious ritual affects the mind, the brain, or the soul. The majority of the children claimed that only the soul was different after baptism. In a follow-up study, 6- to 12-year-old children were tested more explicitly on what factors differentiate the soul from the (...) mind and the brain. Children differentiated the soul from the mind and the brain along two dimensions: function and stability. In contrast to their responses about the mind and the brain, children did not claim that the soul was important for cognitive, non-cognitive, or biological functioning. Children consistently indicated that the mind and the brain change and grow over time. In contrast, children indicated that the soul is something that stays constant and is devoted to various, predominantly spiritual, functions. (shrink)

Confidentiality is one of the foundations on which psychotherapy is built. Limitations on confidentiality in the therapeutic process have been explained and explored by many authors and organizations. However, controversy and confusion continue to exist with regard to the limitations on confidentiality in situations where clients are considering their options at the end of life and after a client has died. This article reviews these 2 areas and provides some suggestions for future research.

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list was designed as a just and equitable system through which the limited number of organs is allocated to the millions of Americans in need of a transplant. People have trusted the system because of the belief that everyone on the list has an equal opportunity to receive an organ and also that allocation is blind to matters of financial standing, celebrity or political power. Recent events have revealed that certain practices and (...) policies have the potential to be exploited. The policies addressed in this paper enable those on the list with the proper resources to gain an advantage over other less fortunate members, creating a system that benefits not the individual most in medical need, but the one with the best resources. These policies are not only unethical but threaten the balance and success of the entire UNOS system. This paper proposes one possible solution, which seeks to balance the concepts of justice and utility. (shrink)

This book is a story about promoting systemic change of SEL in the mindset and capabilities of staff, in the structure of the district, and in the vision, mission, and policies that guide the district.

Pietraszewski contends that group representations that rely on a “containment metaphor” fail to adequately capture phenomena of group dynamics such as shifts in allegiances. We argue, in contrast, that social categories allow for computationally efficient, richly structured, and flexible group representations that explain some of the most intriguing aspects of social group behaviour.

This volume consists of original essays by academic leaders and scholars connected to Clark Kerr’s life and work. He was arguably America’s most significant higher education thinker and public policy analyst in the last 50 years of the 20th century and renowned globally. However, little thoughtful attention has been devoted to assessing the whole of his work. Some commentators misunderstand the man as well as his ideas. The California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 was one of his famous (...) undertakings, as was his part in shaping the multi-campus University of California towards global eminence. He coined the word “multiversity” to describe what he called the “uses” of the university, but began to think it had become much too “multi”. Some of his most important work was as director of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education and the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education, which laid the foundation for sophisticated policy-making. The contributors honor the achievements of a remarkable man and provide portraits of him, but of equal importance are their critical discussions of the sources of his thinking, his attempts to balance access and merit in mass higher education circumstances, the policy issues that he confronted and the success of their resolution. For many of the contributors, Kerr’s work is the starting point for understanding policy issues in varying regional and national contexts. Often thought to be a social scientist eager to keep abreast of trends, Kerr was actually au fond a moralist and surprisingly old-fashioned in his personal values. (shrink)

An engaging, compelling and disturbing confrontation with evil...a book that will be transformative in its call for individual and collective moral responsibility." - Michael A. Grodin, M.D., Professor and Director, Project on Medicine and the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust challenges you to confront the misguided medical ethics of the Third Reich personally, and to apply the lessons learned to contemporary human subjects research. While it is comforting to believe that (...) Nazi physicians, nurses, and bioscientists were either incompetent, mad, or few in number, they were, in fact, the best in the world at the time, and the vast majority participated in the government program of "applied biology." They were not coerced to behave as they did-they enthusiastically exploited widely accepted eugenic theories to design horrendous medical experiments, gas chambers and euthanasia programs, which ultimately led to mass murder in the concentration camps. Americans provided financial support for their research, modeled their medical education and research after the Germans, and continued to perform unethical human subjects research even after the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. The German Medical Association apologized in 2012 for the behavior of its physicians during the Third Reich. By examining the medical crimes of human subjects researchers during the Third Reich, you will naturally examine your own behavior and that of your colleagues, and perhaps ask yourself "If the best physicians and bioscientists of the early 20th century could do evil while believing they were doing good, can I be certain that I will never do the same?" · Presents relatively unknown aspects of human subjects research during the Third Reich · Reveals surprising relationships between German and American human subjects research · Dispels myths about Nazi human subjects research · Compels introspection and self-examination by today's medical and research practitioners · Addresses contemporary bioethical issues affecting vulnerable populations · Brings together experts in the history of medicine during the Third Reich and thoughtful new voices. (shrink)

This article contributes to carework scholarship by examining the nexus of gender, class, and race in long-term care facilities. We draw out a family ideology at work that promotes good care of residents and thus benefits nursing homes. We also found that careworkers value fictive kin relationships with residents, yet we uncover how the family model may be used to exploit these low-income careworkers. Reflecting a subordinate and racialized version of being “part of the family,” we call for an ethic (...) of reciprocity and for concrete change toward valuing equally the humanity of those who need and those who give care. (shrink)

The word ‘dignity’ may be used in a presentational sense, for example, one might say “she presents herself with dignity”, or in a social sense, for example, one might say “she fulfilled her duty with dignity, or honour.” However, in this paper I will not be using ‘dignity’ in either of these senses. Rather, the sense of dignity I will be concerned with is one that is related to ideas about the value or worth of a being. This latter sense (...) of dignity has a long history, and tends to be a concept that is thought to be applicable to human animals only, and more specifically to human persons—moral agents, capable of rationality, of directing their own lives, and of formulating... (shrink)

My subject is two fragments of rhetorical commentary that appear both in an anonymous manuscript collection of quotations ‘From Longinus’ and in Photius' Bibliotheca. My purpose is to clarify some observations that have been made on them by modern scholars and thus offer a correction or two. The collection of separate quotations labelled κ τν Λογγνου in Laurentianus 24, Plut. 58, was given its title by a later hand different from that of the writer of the original. The grounds for (...) that mistaken heading were that the name ‘Longinus’ appears in the second of the fragments. Aristotle and Theophrastus, however, are cited in other quotations, and most are anonymous, with as yet no particular resemblance found to wording in other rhetorical literature. Each begins with the word τι. All are general remarks on subjects such as rhetorical tropes, style, and different types of speeches. They are, in effect, scholia without a text. (shrink)

Genomics is increasingly becoming an integral component of health research and clinical care. The perceived difficulties associated with genetic research involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people mean that they have largely been excluded as research participants. This limits the applicability of research findings for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients. Emergent use of genomic technologies and personalised medicine therefore risk contributing to an increase in existing health disparities unless urgent action is taken. To allow the potential benefits of genomics (...) to be more equitably distributed, and minimise potential harms, we recommend five actions: ensure diversity of participants by implementing appropriate protocols at the study design stage; target diseases that disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups; prioritise capacity building to promote Indigenous leadership across research professions; develop resources for consenting patients or participants from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds; and integrate awareness of issues relating to Indigenous people into the governance structures, formal reviews, data collection protocols and analytical pipelines of health services and research projects. (shrink)

According to many accounts of faith—where faith is thought of as something psychological, e.g., an attitude, state, or trait—one cannot have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. According to other accounts of faith, one can have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. Call the first sort of account doxasticism since it insists that faith requires belief; call the second nondoxasticism since it allows faith without belief. The New Testament may seem to favor doxasticism over nondoxasticism. For it may (...) seem that, according to the NT authors, one can have faith in God, as providential, or faith that Jesus is the Messiah, or be a person of Christian faith, and the like only if one believes the relevant propositions. In this essay, I propose to assess this tension, as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. The upshot of my assessment is that, while it may well appear that, according to Mark, one can have faith only if one believes the relevant propositions, appearances are deceiving. Mark said no such thing. Rather, what Mark said—by way of story—about faith fits nondoxasticism at least as well as doxasticism, arguably better. More importantly, the account of faith that emerges from Mark is that faith consists in resilience in the face of challenges to living in light of the overall positive stance to the object of faith, where that stance consists in certain conative, cognitive, and behavioral-dispositional elements. (shrink)

Despite emerging attention to Indigenous philosophies both within and outside of feminism, Indigenous logics remain relatively underexplored and underappreciated. By amplifying the voices of recent Indigenous philosophies and literatures, I seek to demonstrate that Indigenous logic is a crucial aspect of Indigenous resurgence as well as political and ethical resistance. Indigenous philosophies provide alternatives to the colonial, masculinist tendencies of classical logic in the form of paraconsistent—many-valued—logics. Specifically, when Indigenous logics embrace the possibility of true contradictions, they highlight aspects of (...) the world rejected and ignored by classical logic and inspire a relational, decolonial imaginary. To demonstrate this, I look to biology, from which Indigenous logics are often explicitly excluded, and consider one problem that would benefit from an Indigenous, paraconsistent analysis: that of the biological individual. This article is an effort to expand the arenas in which allied feminists can responsibly take up and deploy these decolonial logics. (shrink)

Aristotle claims, in his Nicomachean Ethics, that in addition to being, for example, just and courageous, and temperate, the virtuous person will also be witty. Very little sustained attention, however, has been devoted to explicating what Aristotle means when he claims that virtuous persons are witty or to justifying the plausibility of the claim that wittiness is a virtue. It becomes especially difficult to see why Aristotle thinks that being witty is a virtue once it becomes clear that Aristotle’s witty (...) person engages in what he calls ‘educated insolence’. Insolence, for Aristotle, is a form of slighting which, as he explains in the Rhetoric, generally causes the person slighted to experience shame and anger. In this paper, I attempt to bring some clarity to Aristotle’s claim that being witty is a virtue by examining why Aristotle thinks that the object of a witty person’s raillery will find this joking pleasant. (shrink)

The rubber hand paradigm is used to create the illusion of self-touch, by having the participant administer stimulation to a prosthetic hand while the Examiner, with an identical stimulus , administers stimulation to the participant’s hand. With synchronous stimulation, participants experience the compelling illusion that they are touching their own hand. In the current study, the robustness of this illusion was assessed using incongruent stimuli. The participant used the index finger of the right hand to administer stimulation to a prosthetic (...) hand while the Examiner used a paintbrush to administer stimulation to the participant’s left hand. The results indicate that this violation of tactile expectations does not diminish the illusion of self-touch. Participants experienced the illusion despite the use of incongruent stimuli, both when vision was precluded and when visual feedback provided clear evidence of the tactile mismatch. (shrink)

This book concentrates on Nietzsche's major legacy as a philosopher.

Attempts to articulate the ways in which membership in socially subordinated social identities can impede one's autonomy have largely unfolded as part of the debate between different types of internalist theories in relation to the problem of internalized oppression. The different internalist positions, however, employ a damage model for understanding the role of social subordination in limiting autonomy. I argue that we need an externalist condition in order to capture the ways in which membership in a socially subordinated identity can (...) constrain one's autonomy, even if one is undamaged in one's autonomy competencies and self-reflexive attitudes. I argue that living among those practically empowered to harass, to engage in racial profiling, and to treat as expendable is incompatible with a freedom-condition required for unconstrained global self-determination. (shrink)