In recent years there has been some hard-won but still limited agreement that phenomenology can be of central and positive importance to the cognitive sciences. This realization comes in the wake of dismissive gestures made by philosophers of mind who mistakenly associate phenomenological method with untrained psychological introspection (e.g., Dennett 1991). For very different reasons, resistance is also found on the phenomenological side of this issue. There are many thinkers well versed in the Husserlian tradition who are not willing to (...) consider the validity of a naturalistic science of mind. For them cognitive science is too computational or too reductionistic to be seriously considered as capable of explaining experience or consciousness. In some cases, when phenomenologists have seriously engaged the project of the cognitive sciences, rather than pursing a positive rapprochement with this project, they have been satisfied in drawing critical lines that identify its limitations.On the one hand, such negative attitudes are understandable from the perspective of the Husserlian rejection of naturalism, or from strong emphasis on the transcendental current in phenomenology. (shrink)

e argue that phenomenology can be of central and positive importance to the cognitive sciences, and that it can also learn from the empirical research conducted in those sciences. We discuss the project of naturalizing phenomenology and how this can be best accomplished. We provide several examples of how phenomenology and the cognitive sciences can integrate their research. Specifically, we consider issues related to embodied cognition and intersubjectivity. We provide a detailed analysis of issues related to time-consciousness, with reference to (...) understanding schizophrenia and the loss of the sense of agency. We offer a positive proposal to address these issues based on a neurobiological dynamic-systems model. (shrink)

We argue that phenomenology can be of central and positive importance to the cognitive sciences, and that it can also learn from the empirical research conducted in those sciences. We discuss the project of naturalizing phenomenology and how this can be best accomplished. We provide several examples of how phenomenology and the cognitive sciences can integrate their research. Specifically, we consider issues related to embodied cognition and intersubjectivity. We provide a detailed analysis of issues related to time-consciousness, with reference to (...) understanding schizophrenia and the loss of the sense of agency. We offer a positive proposal to address these issues based on a neurobiological dynamic-systems model. (shrink)

We argue that phenomenology can be of central and positive importance to the cognitive sciences, and that it can also learn from the empirical research conducted in those sciences. We discuss the project of naturalizing phenomenology and how this can be best accomplished. We provide several examples of how phenomenology and the cognitive sciences can integrate their research. Specifically, we consider issues related to embodied cognition and intersubjectivity. We provide a detailed analysis of issues related to time-consciousness, with reference to (...) understanding schizophrenia and the loss of the sense of agency. We offer a positive proposal to address these issues based on a neurobiological dynamic-systems model. (shrink)

This chapter addresses two questions. First, can phenomenology be naturalized? Second, if so, how? It employs the term ‘phenomenology’, and understands the question in this second sense. At the same time, responses to the question about naturalising consciousness and the question about naturalising phenomenology, in this second sense, are interlaced. Edmund Husserl has been careful about how he defined phenomenology, distinguishing it from a naturalistic enterprise. The Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée proposal shows that a sufficiently complex mathematics can (...) help the translation of data from phenomenological and naturalistic realms. Neuroscientists often attract to personal-level practices and phenomenological experiences in establishing their experiments, and in many cases the only way to define the explanadum is in terms of phenomenology. The ‘truth’ of naturalism is not the naturalism which Husserl cautioned against, but a redefined non-reductionist naturalism that correlates with a redefined phenomenology. (shrink)

Searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience.

Hebb's conception of instinctive behavior permits the conclusion that it is just not human nature to be instinctive: while the ant brain is built for instinctive behavior, the human brain is built for intelligent behavior. Since drives cannot be instincts, even when a human driver becomes driven, human motives are not instincts either. This understanding allows us to dismiss the determinism of the old instinctivism found in Freud's bio-psychological unconscious, and of the new instinctivism, exemplified by Wilson's sociobiology. The latter (...) entails an explanatory shift from instincts to genes, in which the deterministic character of instincts is carried over to genes. Since genes are not instincts this is a mistake. (shrink)

I review three answers to the question: How can phenomenology contribute to the experimental cognitive neurosciences? The first approach, neurophenomenology, employs phenomenological method and training, and uses first-person reports not just as more data for analysis, but to generate descriptive categories that are intersubjectively and scientifically validated, and are then used to interpret results that correlate with objective measurements of behaviour and brain activity. A second approach, indirect phenomenology, is shown to be problematic in a number of ways. Indirect phenomenology (...) is generally put to work after the experiment, in critical or creative interpretations of the scientific evidence. Ultimately, however, proposals for the indirect use of phenomenology lead back to methodological questions about the direct use of phenomenology in experimental design. The third approach, 'front-loaded' phenomenology, suggests that the results of phenomenological investigations can be used in the design of empirical ones. Concepts or clarifications that have been worked out phenomenologically may operate as a partial framework for experimentation. (shrink)

By examining Dainton's account of the temporality of consciousness in the context of long-running debates about the specious present and time consciousness in both the Jamesian and the phenomenological traditions, I raise critical objections to his overlap model. Dainton's interpretations of Broad and Husserl are both insightful and problematic. In addition, there are unresolved problems in Dainton's own analysis of conscious experience. These problems involve ongoing content, lingering content, and a lack of phenomenological clarity concerning the central concept of overlapping (...) experiences. (shrink)

Recent studies in developmental psychology have found evidence to suggest that there exists an innate system that accounts for the possibilities of early infant imitation and the existence of phantom limbs in cases of congenital absence of limbs. These results challenge traditional assumptions about the status and development of the body schema and body image, and about the nature of the translation process between perceptual experience and motor ability.

In developing an enactivist phenomenology the analysis of time-consciousness needs to be pushed toward a fully enactivist account. Problem: Varela proposed a neurophenomenology of time-consciousness. I attempt to push this analysis towards a more complete enactivist phenomenology of time-consciousness. Method: I review Varela’s account of time-consciousness, which brings Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of the intrinsic temporal structure of experience into contact with contemporary neuroscience and dynamical systems theory, and pushes it towards a more enactivist conception of consciousness. I argue (...) that Varela’s analysis motivates a closer examination of the phenomenological aspects of the intrinsic temporal structure of experience, understanding it in terms of an action-oriented embodied phenomenology in its most basic manifestation. Results: This fully enactivist phenomenology of time-consciousness continues the analysis initiated by Varela and remains consistent with but also goes beyond Husserl’s later writings on time-consciousness. Implications: This analysis shows that the enactive character of intentionality in general, goes all the way down; it is embedded in the micro-structure of time-consciousness, and this has implications for understanding perception and action. Constructivist content: This account is consistent with Varela’s constructivist approach to cognition. (shrink)

This book searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience. The spirit of this book is "pragmatic" and relies on a Husserlian phenomenology primarily understood as a "method" of exploring our experience. The authors do not aim at a neo-Kantian "a priori" new theory of experience but instead they describe a concrete activity: how we examine what we live through, how we "become aware" of our own mental life. The range of experiences of (...) which we can become aware is vast: all the normal dimensions of human life (perception, motion, memory, imagination, speech, everyday social interactions), cognitive events that can be precisely defined as tasks in laboratory experiments (e.g., a protocol for visual attention), but also manifestations of mental life more fraught with meaning (dreaming, intense emotions, social tensions, altered states of consciousness). The central assertion in this work is that this immanent ability is habitually ignored or at best practiced unsystematically, that is to say, blindly. Exploring human experience amounts to developing and cultivating this basic ability through specific training. Only a hands-on, non-dogmatic approach can lead to progress, and that is what animates this book. (Series B). (shrink)

At the 2022 Clinical Ethics Unconference, the authors perceived a significant lack of racial and ethnic diversity, which was consistent with their experiences in other clinical ethics settings. As a result, they convened a working group to address the pervasive lack of diversity present in the field of clinical ethics and to propose strategies to increase the representation of people from racial and ethnic minority populations. This article identifies the harms associated with the lack of diversity in the healthcare setting (...) and translates these to the field of clinical ethics. The article then proposes a framework that may be used to help diversify the field of clinical ethics. Specifically, the authors identify existing barriers to appropriate diversity, actionable steps to increase diversity, and tools the field can utilize to systematically assess its progress with respect to achieving diversity. (shrink)

In recent philosophy of mind, informed by ongoing research in the cognitive neurosciences, there has been a tendency to offer deflationary or reductive explanations of self and selfidentity. The background to such accounts includes a complex history of the problem of personal identity from Hume to Parfit. Paul Ricoeur has provided an insightful perspective on this history based on his distinction between ipse identity and idem identity.1 My intention is not to rehearse that history, or even to update it, but (...) rather, assuming that history as background, to engage in a dialogue with the more recent proponents of deflationary, reductive, and internalist accounts of the self, and especially those accounts that put the notion of a narrative self into question. 2 Philosophically there is some question as to whether an account of the narrative self is a sufficient account of the self more generally, that is, whether the whole story about the self is just that it is nothing more than a story about the self. There is, nevertheless, a growing consensus that the concept of the narrative self captures something essential about human existence. In this regard, specifically, there are three issues that I want to address. First, is it possible to defend an account of the narrative self which is consistent with discoveries in cognitive neuroscience, but that remains nonetheless non-reductive? Second, how does such an account relate to an embodied-enactive approach to questions of self-identity? And third, to what extent does such an account involve dimensions of intersubjectivity? The appeal to neuroscience may seem misplaced to some readers. Ricoeur is clear in his insistence that questions of the mind, addressed by phenomenology and hermeneutics, belong to a discourse different from and irreducible to neuroscience.3 To speak of the body from a phenomenological perspective, or from the perspective of lived action, is quite different from speaking of the body from the perspective of natural science. (shrink)

Philosophical hermeneutics, understood as the theory of nterpretation, investigates some questions that are also asked in the cognitive sciences. The nature of human understanding, the way that we gain and organize knowledge, the role played by language and memory in these considerations, the relations between conscious and unconscious knowledge, and how we understand other persons, are all good examples of issues that form the intersection of hermeneutics and the cognitive sciences. Although hermeneutics is most often contrasted with the natural sciences, (...) there are some clear ways in which hermeneutics can contribute to the cognitive sciences and vice versa. (shrink)

We review the use of introspective and phenomenological methods in experimental settings. We distinguish different senses of introspection, and further distinguish phenomenological method from introspectionist approaches. Two ways of using phenomenology in experimental procedures are identified: first, the neurophenomenological method, proposed by Varela, involves the training of experimental subjects. This approach has been directly and productively incorporated into the protocol of experiments on perception. A second approach may have wider application and does not involve training experimental subjects in phenomenological (...) method. It requires front-loading phenomenological insights into experimental design. A number of experiments employing this approach are reviewed. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for both the cognitive sciences and phenomenology. (shrink)

Hidden away in the remote corners of one of the largest parts of Husserl's Kˆrper, if we can use that word to translate Corpus, there is ein Leib , an animate body of text that reverberates not only with some of Husserl's other little known texts, but also with some of the most recent discoveries in neuroscience. These texts suggest a theory of intersubjectivity, or what psychologists term social cognition. Let me start with a proviso: whether Husserl ever fully settled (...) on this theory is completely open to interpretation. Accordingly, I will leave it to Husserlian scholars to determine whether this is a position that Husserl actually or ultimately embraces, either in the years 1906 through 1913 when he writes some of these texts, or later when he writes other related texts. The texts in question are from Husserl's early years and they are rather tentative and reactive in nature, since he was just beginning to think of these problems, and he was responding to proposals put forward by Lipps and Meinung. That's also why I claim that these texts suggest a theory of social cognition rather than anything like a pure phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Husserl was trying to work out ways to counter the theories of Lipps and Meinung, and his reflections, I think, should count as phenomenologically informed theory. (shrink)

In recent years there has been some hard-won but still limited agreement that phenomenology may be of central importance to the cognitive sciences. This realization comes in the wake of dismissive gestures made by philosophers of mind like Dennett (1991), who mistakenly associates phenomenological method with the worst forms of introspection. For very different reasons, resistance can also be found on the phenomenological side of this issue. There are many thinkers well versed in the Husserlian tradition who do not even (...) want to consider the usefulness of phenomenology for enlightening the sciences of the mind. For them cognitive science is simply too computational or too reductionistic to be seriously considered as capable of explaining experience or consciousness. [1] This is surprising in light of the fact that a highly respected phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty was integrating phenomenological analyses with considerations drawn from the empirical sciences of psychology and neurology long before cognitive science was constructed as a framework to include just those aspects of psychology and neurology that focus on cognitive experience. Merleau-Ponty aside, philosophers on both sides of this issue have only gradually come to acknowledge the possibility that phenomenology may be directly relevant for a scientific understanding of cognition. Sometimes the empirical scientists themselves have arrived at this conclusion even before, and in spite of the philosophers. Francisco Varela's work on neurophenomenology provides an important example (Varela, 1996). Even the hardest of hard scientists have made peace offerings to phenomenology. Recently, for example, the neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux declares that his purpose "is not to go to war against phenomenology; to the contrary, [he wants] to see what constructive contribution it can make to our knowledge of the psyche, acting in concert with the neurosciences" (Changeux and Ricoeur, 2000, p. 85). (shrink)

We face significant challenges in the translation of basic biomedical research into meaningful improvements in patients' health, moving research from “bench to bedside.” The federal government's ne...

Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2019, Page 1041-1046.

En el desarrollo de una fenómenología enactivista, el análisis de la conciencia del tiempo necesita ser conducido hacia un enfoque totalmente enactivista. Así, intento impulsar este análisis hacia una fenomenología enactivista más completa de la conciencia del tiempo. Además, sostengo que el análisis de Varela motiva un examen más detallado de los aspectos fenomenológicos de la estructura temporal intrínseca de la experiencia, al entenderla en términos de una fenomenología encarnada y orientada a la acción en su manifestación más básica. (...) Esta fenomenología totalmente enactivista continúa el análisis iniciado por Varela y sigue siendo coherente, pero también va más allá de los escritos posteriores de Husserl sobre la conciencia del tiempo. En este análisis, el carácter enactivo de la intencionalidad en general está embebido en la microestructura de la conciencia del tiempo, afectando la comprensión de la percepción y la acción. Esta explicación es coherente con la aproximación constructivista de Varela a la cognición.In developing an enactivist phenomenology, the analysis of time-consciousness needs to be pushed toward a fully enactivist account. I attempt to push this analysis towards a more complete enactivist phenomenology of time-consciousness. I argue that Varela’s analy-sis motivates a closer examination of the phenomenological aspects of the intrinsic temporal structure of experience, understanding it in terms of an action oriented embodied phenomenology in its most basic manifestation. This fully enactivist phenomenology continues the analysis initiated by Varela and remains consistent with but also goes beyond Husserl’s later writings on time-consciousness. This analysis shows that the enactive character of intentionality in general, goes all the way down; it is embedded in the microstructure of time-consciousness, and this has implications for understanding perception and action. This account is consistent with Varela’s constructivist approach to cognition. (shrink)

In this article, the author introduces readers to the Catalan Marxist Andreu Nin and his writings on Italian fascism. While this is an introduction to Nin it also makes the argument that his writing is of particular importance, since it clarifies the class nature of fascism, sorting out in detail the way the fascists recruited and used the middle class (petite bourgeoisie) to build a mass movement and rise to power, and then proceeded to build a corporatist state that served (...) the interest of the Italian bourgeoisie. (shrink)

Dreyfus enlists the aid of Merleau-Ponty in his critique of representationalist theories of cognition. Such theories posit a representational element at some level of cognitive activity. The nature of the representation and how we think of it will depend upon the level at which one claims to find it. If we consider the case of perception, at one extreme it might be claimed that the representation is a conscious one, that is, that the perceiving subject is conscious of a representation, (...) a _Vorstellung_ in the Kantian sense. In this case, it would clearly come between the perceiving subject and the world and in that sense interfere with a direct perception of the world. This sort of representational theory would be equivalent to idealism, and for good phenomenological reasons it is rejected by Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus. At the other extreme, it is possible to find cognitive scientists talking about representations at the level of brain activity. Neural representations, either firing patterns or the actual "hard wiring" of neuronal connections (as, for example, neural maps in the somatosensory and motor areas responsible for the experience of the subject's own body), in some way enable perception. At this level of description there are various debates about how these mechanisms can be called representational. If the concept of representation involves reference to the perceptual field, in what sense does a neuronal pattern refer? There are also the familiar debates about how such mechanisms actually function, as well as the difficult problem of how such functions actually translate into personal level experience. Before these debates get off the ground, however, Dreyfus wants to steal the ammunition. He denies that there are representations at the level of brain processes. (shrink)

In 1578, the Anglo-Italian author, translator, and teacher John Florio wrote that English was 'a language that wyl do you good in England, but passe Dover, it is woorth nothing'. Learning Languages in Early Modern England is the first major study of how English-speakers learnt a variety of continental vernacular languages in the period between 1480 and 1720. English was practically unknown outside of England, which meant that the English who wanted to travel and trade with the wider world in (...) this period had to become language-learners. Using a wide range of printed and manuscript sources, from multilingual conversation manuals to travellers' diaries and letters where languages mix and mingle, Learning Languages explores how early modern English-speakers learned and used foreign languages, and asks what it meant to be competent in another language in the past. Beginning with language lessons in early modern England, it offers a new perspective on England's 'educational revolution'. John Gallagher looks for the first time at the whole corpus of conversation manuals written for English language-learners, and uses these texts to pose groundbreaking arguments about reading, orality, and language in the period. He also reconstructs the practices of language-learning and multilingual communication which underlay early modern travel. Learning Languages offers a new and innovative study of a set of practices and experiences which were crucial to England's encounter with the wider world, and to the fashioning of English linguistic and cultural identities at home. Interdisciplinary in its approaches and broad in its chronological and thematic scope, this volume places language-learning and multilingualism at the heart of early modern British and European history. (shrink)

To characterize human emotions, researchers have increasingly utilized Automatic Facial Expression Analysis (AFEA), which automates the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) and translates the facial muscular positioning into the basic universal emotions. There is broad interest in the application of FACS for assessing consumer expressions as an indication of emotions to consumer product-stimuli. However, the translation of FACS to characterization of emotions is elusive in the literature. The aim of this systematic review is to give an overview of how (...) FACS has been used to investigate human emotional behavior to consumer product-based stimuli. The search was limited to studies published in English after 1978, conducted on humans, using FACS or its action units to investigate affect, where emotional response is elicited by consumer product-based stimuli evoking at least one of the five senses. The search resulted in an initial total of 1,935 records, of which 55 studies were extracted and categorized based on the outcomes of interest including (i) method of FACS implementation; (ii) purpose of study; (iii) consumer product-based stimuli used; and (iv) measures of affect validation. Most studies implemented FACS manually (73%) to develop products and/or software (20%) and used consumer product-based stimuli that had known and/or defined capacity to evoke a particular affective response, such as films and/or movie clips (20%); minimal attention was paid to consumer products with low levels of emotional competence or with unknown affective impact. The vast majority of studies (53%) did not validate FACS-determined affect and, of the validation measures that were used, most tended to be discontinuous in nature and only captured affect as it holistically related to an experience. This review illuminated some inconsistencies in how FACS is carried out as well as how emotional response is inferred from facial muscle activation. This may prompt researchers to consider measuring the total consumer experience by employing a variety of methodologies in addition to FACS and its emotion-based interpretation guide. Such strategies may better conceptualize consumers' experience with products of low, unknown, and/or undefined capacity to evoke an affective response such as product prototypes, line extensions, etc. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji, in his introduction to the series, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle, of which this volume is a part, claims that these works "represent a missing link in the history of philosophy: the Latin-speaking Middle Ages obtained their knowledge of Aristotle at least partly through the medium of the commentaries. Without an appreciation of this, medieval interpretations of Aristotle will not be understood". If this remark is true of any volume in the series, it is certainly true of this one, (...) which presents R. W. Sharples' translation of the second half of Alexander's Quaestiones, a group of inquiries, 69 in total, on Aristotle's work and thought regarding the nature of providence, the soul, coming-to-be and passing-away, the finiteness of the universe, the nature of magnetism, and other topics. (shrink)

Biography of Ibn Rushd... Averroes, old heathen, If only you had been right, if Intellect Itself were absolute law, sufficient grace. Our lives could be a myth of captivity. Which we might enter: an unpeopled region.

In this paper, some basic properties of automorphisms of first order languages and some examples are presented. In particular, an omitting types theorem is proved.

This paper, in opposition to the standard theories of social cognition found in psychology and cognitive science, defends the idea that direct perception plays an important role in social cognition. The two dominant theories, theory theory and simulation theory , both posit something more than a perceptual element as necessary for our ability to understand others, i.e., to “mindread” or “mentalize.” In contrast, certain phenomenological approaches depend heavily on the concept of perception and the idea that we have a direct (...) perceptual grasp of the other person’s intentions, feelings, etc. This paper explains precisely what the notion of direct perception means, offers evidence from developmental studies, and proposes a non-simulationist interpretation of the neuroscience of mirror systems. (shrink)

Se efectuó un estudio en dos fases: una observacional descriptiva y otra correlacional, para caracterizar psicológicamente al niño y adolescente con Retinosis Pigmentaria y su familia, en el Centro Provincial que atiende a este paciente en la ciudad de Camagüey. El estudio se hizo aplicando una encuesta elaborada a los efectos del trabajo y una batería de pruebas psicológicas para niños y otra para adolescentes. Se realizó un muestreo intencional puro, no probabilístico de 41 pacientes. Las Pruebas Psicológicas aplicadas fueron: (...) Encuesta, Dibujo Libre, Rotter, Wechller Bellevue, Test Gráfico de la Familia para ambos grupos e Historietas de Madelaine Thomas, 3 Alegrías, 3 Roñas y 3 Miedos para niños y Técnica de los 10 Deseos, Inventario de Problemas Juveniles, Escala de Autovaloración de Dembo Rubinstein, para los adolescentes. A todas las madres de los pacientes se les aplicó el Cuestionario FFSIL para determinar su funcionamiento familiar. En lo metodológico, se realizaron modificaciones a las pruebas psicológicas, adaptándolas al entorno sociocultural cubano. Se reportaron hallazgos típicos explicables por el tipo de enfermedad. Como resultado de este estudio, se confirmó lo expuesto por otros autores que más que la enfermedad misma, lo que influye en su formación personológica es el proceso de socialización que se efectúe An study was made to characterize psychologically the childs and adolescent suffering from pigmentary retinosis and their family, in the Provincial Center that assists those patients in Camagüey. The study was carried out applying a battery of psychological tests for children and another for adolescents. The applied Psychological Tests were: interviews, Free Drawing, Rotter, Graphic Test of the Family for both groups and Comics of Madelaine Thomas, 3 Happiness, 3 Dirts and 3 Fears for children and Technique of the 10 Desires, Inventory of Juvenile Problems and the Scale of Dembo Rubinstein, for the adolescents. Methodological modifications to the psychological tests were carried out, adapting them to the Cuban sociocultural environment. Accountable typical discoveries were reported by the illness type. As results of this study, the most important fact for the patients' personalities is the socialization process. (shrink)

Opens up new dimensions in the philosophical thought of Merleau-Ponty and addresses contemporary issues concerning interpretation theory and postmodernity.

This article addresses questions about the sense of agency and its distinction from the sense of ownership in the context of understanding schizophrenic thought insertion. In contrast to “standard” approaches that identify problems with the sense of agency as central to thought insertion, two recent proposals argue that it is more correct to think that the problem concerns the subject’s sense of ownership. This view involves a “more demanding” concept of the sense of ownership that, I will argue, ultimately depends (...) on the sense of agency. In this regard, the sense of agency still appears to be the originating problem. (shrink)

Conversation is, first of all, an event, something that happens. But the concept of conversation has also been appropriated by various thinkers as a model or metaphor of hermeneutical experience, of communication, political discourse, the acquisition of knowledge, and so forth. As an event it has been analyzed within the hermeneutical tradition, from Schleiermacher to Gadamer, and in this analysis it has been tied to Romantic conceptions such as the universality of language, "linguistic heritage" (Angeborenheit der Sprache ), and what (...) von Humboldt called "the common denominator of human nature," the universal and spiritual humanity that we all share.1 So conceived conversation has been made a model of hermeneutical experience. Gadamer, as is well known, characterizes reading as a conversation or dialogue with a text. This is more than metaphor, he tells us. Interpretation means bringing the text "into the living present of conversation" (TM 368), restoring it to an original condition. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of gothic violence in order to better theorize how domination operates in Mary Wollstonecraft’s unfinished novel, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. The fictive companion to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Maria is an account of the titular character’s struggle for self-determination in all aspects of her life, including her desire for a companionate partnership. I argue that Maria’s ultimate lack of freedom is directly attributable to coverture, the patriarchal legal fiction whereby wives (...) are subsumed under the legal persona of their fathers or husbands. Building on scholarship that positions Wollstonecraft as a republican feminist, I show how Maria articulates what I call gothic violence, a form of psychic domination that places the other in a condition of unfreedom by denying their status as an autonomous being and holding them in subordination through a variety of techniques, such as denial of legal and social status and testimonial quieting. I show how gothic violence results in the unfreedom of women through its reliance on domestic settings and intimate relationships, and with the support of law and custom, of which coverture is a central example. I conclude by suggesting that attending to gothic violence in Wollstonecraft’s thought allows us to further see the continuity between her political and fictional writings. (shrink)

I examine several aspects of the experience of time in depression and in the experience of different emotions. Both phenomenological and experimental studies show that depressed subjects have a slowed experience of time flow and tend to overestimate time spans. In comparison to patients in control conditions, depressed patients tend to be preoccupied with past events, and less focused on present and future events. Recent empirical findings in studies of emotion perception show different degrees of over- or underestimation of time (...) in perception of faces showing different emotions compared with neutral faces. Clinical phenomenology predicts that the effects on time estimation would not be additive if these tests were conducted with depressed subjects. (shrink)

Pedro Alvares Cabral's ships left Portugal on 9 March 1500 en route for the territory that he first named Terra de Vera Cruz and that later came to be known as Brazil. On the 22 March they called at the island of São Nicolau [Caminha, 1500], one of the northernmost islands of the Cape Verde group; this was about forty years after the discovery of the archipelago in 1460-62 [Albuquerque, 1991]. It is known that Vasco da Gama had stopped at (...) the island of Santiago in 1498 on his voyage to India, and also in 1499 on the return journey. Straight after the discovery of Brazil Cabral sailed for India and on the way back also dropped anchor at Santiago. Indeed, our archipelago, which is situated off Cape Verde in Senegal (the place from which it appears to take its name), was to become an important stopover point for maritime traffic between Europe, Asia and the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both to allow crews to rest and to take on water, wood and some food supplies. It also became important as a holding point for slaves (a large number of whom came from around thirty Guinean ethnic groups and subgroups). They were dispatched from Santiago, known then as Cape Verde island, to territories such as Brazil from the early sixteenth century onwards, since these territories, which had only recently been discovered and were little known, needed people to work and populate them. (shrink)

There is a constructive method to define a structure of simple k -cyclic Post algebra of order p , L p , k , on a given finite field F ( p k ), and conversely. There exists an interpretation Φ 1 of the variety $${\mathcal{V}(L_{p,k})}$$ generated by L p , k into the variety $${\mathcal{V}(F(p^k))}$$ generated by F ( p k ) and an interpretation Φ 2 of $${\mathcal{V}(F(p^k))}$$ into $${\mathcal{V}(L_{p,k})}$$ such that Φ 2 Φ 1 ( B ) (...) = B for every $${B \in \mathcal{V}(L_{p,k})}$$ and Φ 1 Φ 2 ( R ) = R for every $${R \in \mathcal{V}(F(p^k))}$$. In this paper we show how we can solve an algebraic system of equations over an arbitrary cyclic Post algebra of order p, p prime, using the above interpretation, Gröbner bases and algorithms programmed in Maple. (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

During a clinical ethics fellow’s first week of independent supervised service, two unhoused patients on the same floor were resisting the medical team’s recommendations to discharge. In the team’s view, both were medically stable and no longer required hospitalization in an acute setting. The medical team suspected malingering for both. The social worker and case manager had employed their usual means of gentle persuasion and eliminating psychosocial barriers to no avail. Rather than call the police, the attending physician, social worker, (...) and case manager decided to call ethics. These cases lead the fledgling fellow to consider the appropriate role for ethicists in difficult discharge cases. The article analyzes each case, evaluates their similarities and differences in the context of suspected malingering, and comments on ethical issues surrounding cases of suspected malingering. Finally, I reflect on the value and importance of developing and maintaining epistemic and professional independence. (shrink)

Following on from Shaun Gallagher's influential 2005 book How the Body Shapes the Mind, this volume brings together leading experts from the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry in a productive dialogue, exploring key questions and debates about the relationship between body schema and body image.