ObjectivesWorking-age cancer patients face barriers to resuming work after treatment completion. Those resuming work contend with reduced productivity arising from persisting residual symptoms. Existing studies of return to work after cancer diagnosis were done predominantly in Western countries. Given that employment and RTW in cancer survivors likely vary regionally due to healthcare provision and social security differences, we documented rates and correlates of RTW, work productivity, and activity impairment among Chinese cancer survivors in Hong Kong at one-year post-treatment.MethodsOf 1,106 cancer (...) patients assessed at six-months post-cancer treatment, 593 previously worked; detailed work status, psychological distress, physical symptom distress, supportive care needs, health-related quality of life, and illness perception were assessed. Six months later, work productivity and activity impairment were assessed. Descriptive analyses examined RTW rate. Fully adjusted regressions determined RTW, work productivity, and activity impairment predictors.ResultsAt baseline, 39% were working, 26% on sick leave, and 35% were unemployed. Compared to patients returning to work, unemployed participants were older, likely manual/service-oriented workers, and had lower family income, chemotherapy, fewer unmet health system and information needs, poorer physical functioning, and negative illness perceptions. Sick leave participants were likely service-oriented workers, who had head and neck cancer, chemotherapy, and poor physical functioning. At FU, baseline depressive symptoms, physical symptom distress, and negative illness perceptions predicted presenteeism and work productivity loss; gynecological cancer, fewer unmet health system and information needs, and greater unmet sexuality needs predicted absenteeism; physical symptom distress, negative illness perception, and poor physical functioning predicted activity impairment.ConclusionCancer survivors who had more physically demanding jobs and poorer physical functioning delayed RTW. Unmanaged physical symptom and psychological distress hindered work productivity. (shrink)

Since the Korean Philosophy of Education Society was established in 1964, the question regarding the nature of Philosophy of Education as a modern discipline has always been a vexing question to mo...

Using embodied sociology, this article offers a virtual ethnography of ‘fat male embodiment’. Reporting and analysing qualitative data generated online, it includes a typology of big/fat male body-subjects and supportive/admiring others. These fat-friendly typifications are unpacked by referencing advocated codes of self–body relatedness, sexualities and the relevance of food. The virtual construction of acceptable, admirable or resistant masculinities is then explored under the following headings: (1) appeals to ‘real’ or ‘natural’ masculinity; (2) the admiration and eroticization of fat men’s bodies; (...) (3) transgression, fun and the carnivalesque; and (4) the pragmatics and politics of fat male embodiment. While alternative (positive) understandings of fatness are presented online, discrepancies between virtual and actual identities render stigma an ever-present possibility for those with ‘real’ fat male bodies. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preparing the Boat to Sail Casting Off Some Existentialist Reflections Cruising The Social Dimensions of Sailing “Hard a' Lee” or Coming About Sailing Close‐Hauled Noticing the “Presence of the Absence” (Heavy Sailing Ahead) The Broad Reach Practical Wisdom Capsizing Human Experience Returning to the Pier Pleasure, Elegance, and Truth Final Tasks.

Profoundly important ethical and political controversies turn on the question of whether biological life is an essential aspect of a human person, or only an extrinsic instrument. Lee and George argue that human beings are physical, animal organisms - albeit essentially rational and free - and examine the implications of this understanding of human beings for some of the most controversial issues in contemporary ethics and politics. The authors argue that human beings are animal organisms and that their personal identity (...) across time consists in the persistence of the animal organisms they are; they also argue that human beings are essentially rational and free and that there is a radical difference between human beings and other animals; criticize hedonism and hedonistic drug-taking; present detailed defenses of the prolife positions on abortion and euthanasia; and defend the traditional moral position on marriage and sexual acts. (shrink)

The article aims at expanding the horizon of phenomenological psychopathology of depression from a social theoretical perspective. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology, in the first section, depression is reinterpreted as a disruption of chiasm: it is not merely the illness of the body, the disorder of the mind, or a specific form of social suffering, but the interrelated distortion of time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. The phenomenological clarification of these components provides opportunity for connecting sociological and psychopathological insight. In the (...) second part, contemporary critical theories of acceleration, globalization, biopolitics, and system colonization are reinterpreted to highlight the structural and cultural context of late modern time consciousness, agency, and interaffectivity. In the third section, it is analyzed, how these social constituents shape the space of contemporary socialization processes, including the emergence of those intersubjective distortions, which potentially affect the entirety of chiasm in a depressive way. In the final section, the conclusions for therapy are explored, including the potentials for expanding the epistemological, substantive, and emancipatory horizon of phenomenological psychopathology. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Due to the ‘civilizing process’ (Elias), the overall level of violence is decreasing; yet its transforming patterns persist. The article aims at examining the contemporary structures and mechanisms responsible for violence control, while also exploring the newly emerging, naturalized patterns of cruelty. Firstly, René Girard’s mimetic theory is overviewed: while in archaic societies, mimetic crisis is controlled by sacrificial rites, modernization reconfigures this paradigm. Secondly, these transformations are mapped: mimetic desire is channelled into the market processes, while mimetic crisis is (...) managed by the state monopolizing violence. Thirdly, the structural transformations of late modernity upsetting the fragile balance of state and market are analysed: secular scapegoating becomes part of the political toolset, while the private sphere is overwhelmed by undetectable new forms of hurting and self-harming. As a culture of cruelty is naturalized, mimetic crisis becomes a continuous threat, which generates a need for the functional equivalents of sacrificial violence control. (shrink)

Credal reductivism is the view that outright belief is reducible to degrees of confidence or ‘credence’. The most popular versions of credal reductivism all have the consequence that if you are near-maximally confident that p in a low-stakes situation, then you outright believe p. This paper addresses a recent objection to this consequence—the Correctness Objection— introduced by Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath and further developed by Jacob Ross and Mark Schroeder. The objection is that near-maximal confidence cannot entail outright belief (...) because when you believe a false proposition, you are wrong or incorrect, whereas you can be highly confident of a false proposition in a low-stakes situation without being incorrect. Both Fantl and McGrath’s and Ross and Schoeder’s versions of the Correctness Objection admit of multiple interpretations. But it is argued that even on the most charitable interpretations the objection fails. (shrink)

_Philosophers consider race and racism from the perspective of lived, bodily experience._.

The normativity of so-called “coherence” or “structural” requirements of rationality has been hotly debated in recent years. However, relatively little has been said about the nature of structural rationality, or what makes a set of attitudes structurally irrational, if structural rationality is not ultimately a matter of responding correctly to reasons. This paper develops a novel account of incoherence (or structural irrationality), critically examining Alex Worsnip’s recent account. It first argues that Worsnip’s account both over-generates and under-generates incoherent patterns of (...) attitudes, and then proposes an alternative that both avoids these problems and captures a crucial insight behind Worsnip’s account. According to this account, a set of attitudes is incoherent just in case having all of the attitudes in that set is incompatible with reacting to a question in a way that one is, in virtue of having the attitudes, committed to. (shrink)

An argument that what makes science distinctive is its emphasis on evidence and scientists' willingness to change theories on the basis of new evidence. Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Defenders of science often point to its discoveries (penicillin! relativity!) without explaining exactly why scientific claims are (...) superior. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”—caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science. McIntyre offers examples that illustrate both scientific success (a reduction in childbed fever in the nineteenth century) and failure (the flawed “discovery” of cold fusion in the twentieth century). He describes the transformation of medicine from a practice based largely on hunches into a science based on evidence; considers scientific fraud; examines the positions of ideology-driven denialists, pseudoscientists, and “skeptics” who reject scientific findings; and argues that social science, no less than natural science, should embrace the scientific attitude. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude—the grounding of science in evidence—offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science. (shrink)

Exploring the intimate tie between body movement and space and time, Lee begins with the position that body movement generates space and time and explores the ethical implications of this responsibility for the situations one’s body movements generate. Whiteness theory has come to recognize the ethical responsibility for situations not of one’s own making and hence accountability for the results of more than one’s immediate personal conscious decisions. Because of our specific history, whites have developed a particular embodiment and body (...) movement that generates places that can only be characterized as more comfortable and more enabling to whites. (shrink)

Will have appeal to a very diverse range of philosophers, across all traditional branches of philosophy (nearly all major areas are covered). Combines substantive philosophical work on the various philosophical areas, with detailed methodological work, and introductory chapters exploring the nature of public philosophy per se.

The article aims at elaborating a non-speculative concept of social pathology. In the first section, various conceptualizations (e.g. Habermas, Honneth) are critically revaluated. It is argued that (a) applying the originally medical concept of ‘pathology’ on social entities has untenable connotations (due to the lacking social equivalent of death); (b) grounding social pathology on the level of ‘social suffering’ is not in accordance with the actors’ horizon shaped by biomedical- and psy-discourses. To avoid these dead-ends, social pathologies are reinterpreted as (...) structural distortions causing diseases or mental disorders. To refine this initial definition, in the second section, Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasm is used as an ontological framework translating between medical and social diagnoses. The proposed concept of social pathology refers to those patterns of disrupted pre-intentional, intentional and mediated intertwining, which manifest as ill or psychopathological chiasm. In the third section, two case studies are elaborated: the intersubjective structures of depressed and asthmatic chiasm. Finally, the implications for critical theory and praxis are overviewed. (shrink)

In How to Talk to a Science Denier, Lee McIntyre tells the story of his own adventures in talking face to face with science deniers and their victims-including a Flat Earth convention in Denver, coal miners in rural Pennsylvania, and fishermen in the Maldives-and what he learned from the experience.

To be conscious—according to a common metaphor—is for the “lights to be on inside.” Is this a good metaphor? I argue that the metaphor elicits useful intuitions while staying neutral on controversial philosophical questions. But I also argue that there are two ways of interpreting the metaphor. Is consciousness the inner light itself? Or is consciousness the illuminated room? Call the first sense subjectivity (where ‘consciousness’ =def what makes an entity feel some way at all), and the second sense phenomenal (...) character (where ‘consciousness’ =def what it feels like to be an entity). I use this distinction—as well as the metaphor of the inner light—to clarify some philosophical questions about whether consciousness comes in degrees, whether consciousness is multidimensional, and whether there are borderline cases of consciousness. (shrink)

Let a smooth experience be an experience with perfectly gradual changes in phenomenal character. Consider, as examples, your visual experience of a blue sky or your auditory experience of a rising pitch. Do the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences have continuous or discrete structures? If we appeal merely to introspection, then it may seem that we should think that smooth experiences are continuous. This paper (1) uses formal tools to clarify what it means to say that an experience is continuous (...) or discrete, and (2) develops a discrete model of the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences. As a result, I'll argue that introspection leaves open whether smooth experiences are continuous or discrete. Yet I’ll also argue—perhaps surprisingly—that the discrete theory may better fit our introspective evidence. (shrink)

In recent years, the science and the philosophy of consciousness has seen growing interest in structural questions about consciousness. This is the Editorial Introduction for a special volume for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences on “Structuralism in Consciousness Studies.”.

Late modern existence is built around ambivalences: subjects experience the structural paradoxes of global capitalism or information society as social suffering; yet they follow behaviour patterns reinforcing the unsustainable trajectories. The article explores the discourses justifying such structural paradoxes, while normalizing the related suffering. First, the pragmatic theory of justification (Boltanski, Thévenot) is reinterpreted from a modernization theoretical perspective: a distinction is drawn between traditional, classic and late modern ‘tests’, ‘critique’ and ‘cités’. In the second and third sections, the gradual (...) emptying of critique is analysed: as disillusionment reaches the sphere of subjective experiences, not even personal suffering can ground critique any more (Berlant), thus the impossibility of critique is demonstrated in a cynical manner (Sloterdijk). In the fourth section, the various cynical modalities of justification fitting the ambivalent contemporary existence are overviewed. Finally, a way out from the naturalized, quotidian cynicism is sketched: by turning cynicism’s logic against itself, the dialectics of justification can move forward. (shrink)

On the surface, developing a social psychology of science seems compelling as a way to understand how individual social cognition – in aggregate – contributes towards individual and group behavior within scientific communities (Kitcher, 2002). However, in cases where the functional input-output profile of psychological processes cannot be mapped directly onto the observed behavior of working scientists, it becomes clear that the relationship between psychological claims and normative philosophy of science should be refined. For example, a robust body of social (...) psychological research demonstrates implicit gender bias in the evaluation of others (e.g., Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke, 1999). Many expected implicit bias to be a major cause of women’s underrepresentation in math intensive fields of science; however, quantitative sociological research of hiring and manuscript and grant evaluation has discovered no gender disparity in outcomes (Ceci & Williams, 2011). Why might this be so? This paper will discuss methodological challenges that go beyond classic problems of external validity in extrapolating psychological effects and explanations to scientific communities. These problems include more complex external validity issues raised by the introduction of multi-process models of cognition (e.g., implicit versus explicit social cognition) as well as the reflexive role that folk and experimental theories of social psychology play in guiding the behavior of scientists at the individual and community level. (shrink)

Many of the benefits and burdens we might experience in our lives — from bank loans to bail terms — are increasingly decided by institutions relying on algorithms. In a sense, this is nothing new: algorithms — instructions whose steps can, in principle, be mechanically executed to solve a decision problem — are at least as old as allocative social institutions themselves. Algorithms, after all, help decision-makers to navigate the complexity and variation of whatever domains they are designed for. In (...) another sense, however, this development is startlingly new: not only are algorithms being deployed in ever more social contexts, they are being mechanically executed not merely in principle, but pervasively in practice. Due to recent advances in computing technology, the benefits and burdens we experience in our lives are now increasingly decided by automata, rather than each other. How are we to morally assess these technologies? In this chapter, I propose a preliminary conceptual schema for identifying and locating the various injustices of automated, algorithmic social decision systems, from a broadly liberal perspective. (shrink)

Technology has been at the centre of existentialist (e.g. Heidegger) and sociological (e.g. Marcuse) critique for a long time. The latest versions of criticism rely on the results of “science and technology studies”: they argue that essentialist conceptualisations of technology should be replaced while aiming at “democratizing technology” (e.g. Feenberg). However, even these approaches are characterised by a shortcoming when it comes to providing a normative basis: as contemporary technology intermeshes with the elementary levels of existence (such as perception or (...) cognition), it remains in the blind spot of those users, who could “democratize” it through their critique. Accordingly, the formal normative bases (e.g. the one provided by Feenberg, who relies on Habermas’ democracy principle), need to be complemented with substantive claims. For this purpose, a phenomenological-existentialist framework is elaborated with the help of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. It is argued that due to the ongoing expansion of social systems relying on various forms of technology (Luhmann), the “mediated flesh” becomes rigid. By losing the plasticity of the chiasm, subjects are exposed to existential crises unmanageable by mere technology (e.g. mental disorders). Such experience of technologically induced social suffering could serve as a normative basis for criticising the over-expansion of technology. (shrink)

This book defends the conjugal view of marriage. Patrick Lee and Robert P. George argue that marriage is a distinctive type of community: the union of a man and a woman who have committed to sharing their lives on every level of their beings (bodily, emotionally, and spiritually) in the kind of union that would be fulfilled by conceiving and rearing children together. The comprehensive nature of this union, and its intrinsic orientation to procreation as its natural fulfillment, distinguishes marriage (...) from other types of community and provides the basis for the norms of marital exclusivity and permanence. Lee and George detail how the basic moral norms regarding sexual acts follow from the ethical requirement to respect the good of marriage and explain how the law should treat marriage, given its conjugal nature, examining both the same-sex-marriage issue and civil divorce. (shrink)

What is post-truth? -- Science denial as a road map for understanding post-truth -- The roots of cognitive bias -- The decline of traditional media -- The rise of social media and the problem of fake news -- Did post-modernism lead to post-truth? -- Fighting post-truth.

Reasons evidentialism is the view that normative reasons can be analyzed in terms of evidence about oughts (i.e., propositions concerning whether or not S ought to phi). In this paper, I defend a new reason-evidentialist account according to which normative reasons are evidence against propositions of the form S ought not to phi. The arguments for my view have two strands. First of all, I argue that my view can account for three difficulty cases, cases where (i) a fact is (...) both a reason for S to phi and a reason for S not to phi, (ii) a fact is both evidence for the proposition that S ought to phi and evidence for the proposition that S ought not to phi, and (iii) the subject is genuinely torn, as far as reasons are concerned, between phi-ing and not phi-ing. Second, I argue that my view can account for what a reason against S phi-ing is. (shrink)

Résumé Alberto Voltolini préconise une analyse syncrétique des entités fictives, affirmant qu'elle satisfait tous les desiderata d'une analyse appropriée des entités fictives. Cet article présente une analyse des personnages fictifs qui réponde à ces critères, tout en évitant les problèmes que rencontre l'analyse de Voltolini. Selon mon analyse antiréaliste et leibnizienne, un personnage fictif peut être identifié par la collection de prédicats attribués à son nom. Cette analyse offre le bénéfice de la théorie des faisceaux, puisqu'elle écarte la question des (...) porteurs des noms fictifs, tout en expliquant pourquoi un personnage fictif est plus qu'une simple collection de prédicats. (shrink)

This paper examines to what extent Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics can give an adequate account for empty names in natural languages. It argues that the prospect is dim because of a tension between metaphysical austerity, non-vacuousness of theorems and empirical adequacy. Sainsbury (2005) proposed a Davidsonian account of empty names called ‘Reference Without Referents’ (RWR), which explicates reference in terms of reference-condition rather than referent, thus avoiding the issue of existence. This is an inspiring account. However, it meets several difficulties. First, (...) there is no non-vacuous, interpretive truth-condition available for any T-sentence containing an empty name, because by stipulation there is no way to compose a true atomic sentence using an empty name in RWR. The absence of an interpretive truth-condition implies the absence of an interpretive reference-condition. It also entails empirical inadequacy to support an interpretation because the related propositional attitude can never be truly satisfied. These considerations cast doubt on whether truth is the proper vehicle to articulate meaning. This paper suggests that we can alleviating the problem by employing truth-conditions varying across contexts of utterance, rather than just contexts of evaluation. The result is a two-dimensional model-theoretic approach to empty names. It involves a new function coined counterfactual reference and the account is compatible with both descriptivism and Millianism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Dangerous Sport of Social Climbing Not a Doe but a Roe The Belly of the Beast Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Story One: Sewn into My Skin is Written into My Story Story Two: Tattooing at Auschwitz – Ink, Terror, Death Story Three: Tattooing as a Practice of Writing, Unwriting, Inscription, and Counterinscription Story Four: ‘Real’ Tattoos and the Excesses of Meaning A Final Story: My Geckos.

Interdisciplinary in approach, this book combines philosophy, sociology, history and psychology in the analysis of contemporary forms of suffering. With attention to depression, anxiety, chronic pain and addiction, it examines both particular forms of suffering and takes a broad view of their common features, so as to offer a comprehensive and parallel view both of the various forms of suffering and the treatments commonly applied to them. Highlighting the challenges and distortions of the available treatments and identifying these as contributory (...) factors to the overall problem of contemporary suffering, Empty Suffering promises to widen the horizon of therapeutic interventions and social policies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in mental health and disorder, social theory and social pathologies. (shrink)

Social contract theories serve a twofold purpose: by addressing acute crises, they elaborate solutions to long-standing social paradoxes. The article reinterprets the stakes of the Covid pandemic from this perspective. Firstly, the long-lasting structural paradoxes of late modernity are linked to the acute crisis of the pandemic with the help of critical theories of late modernity. It is argued that the pandemic provides opportunity for revaluating those social contracts, which are based on universalist principles of justice. Secondly, two paradigmatic historical (...) examples (Hobbes, Rawls) are overviewed in a meta-theoretical fashion, so that the dimensions of revaluation could be highlighted. Thirdly, the foundations of a post-pandemic social contract are outlined. As the pandemic is inseparable from the structural paradoxes caused by unconstrained systems based on universal principles of justice, the post-pandemic social contract aims at preventing the system paradoxes by revaluating their universal principles in a ‘trial of particularity’ (Derrida, Levinas). (shrink)