Resumo: Este artigo intenciona mostrar como o método filosófico desenvolvido e aplicado por Bergson, a intuição, articula distintos níveis de nossa experiência. Para isso, buscaremos extrair algumas lições de um momento especial da aplicação desse método, no qual o mergulho na interioridade psicológica se relaciona com a visão objetiva da exterioridade. Trata-se aqui de retomar o bloco central da obra A Evolução Criadora, núcleo metafísico da filosofia bergsoniana, no qual encontramos a reinterpretação dos dados da biologia que deriva na cosmologia. (...) Mais precisamente, se a cosmologia elaborada nesse livro pode ser apontada como a performance mais paradigmática da intuição, nossa atenção se dirigirá a um passo metodológico anterior: a leitura dos dados da biologia evolutiva que dá contornos e subsídios à tese de que a consciência é coextensiva à vida.: This paper intends to explain how the philosophical method developed and applied by Bergson - intuition - articulates different levels of our experience. To this end, we will try to extract some lessons from a special moment in the application of this method, in which the dive into psychological interiority is related to the objective vision of exteriority. Our analysis will focus on the central part of Creative Evolution, the metaphysical nucleus of Bergsonian philosophy, in which we find a reinterpretation of the evolutionary biology of the 19th century. This reinterpretation has as a consequence the most important of Bergson's cosmological theses. More precisely, though the cosmology developed in this book can be regarded as the most paradigmatic performance of intuition, our attention will be directed to an earlier methodological step, the philosophical interpretation of the data of evolutionary biology that underlies the essential statement that consciousness is coextensive with life. (shrink)

This article presents phenomenological meta-analysis of Tymieniecka's phenomenology of life with regard to its strategies of knowledge. The novelty of phenomenology of life consists in special orientation of direct intuition of Tymieniecka's insight. The analysis suggests that the positioning of the direct intuition differes from philosopher to philosopher. Even though this perspective pays attention to individual differences in philosophical thinking, this view has to be distinguished froll1 psychologism as criticized by Husser!. and rather, seen as a (...) development of Husserl 's lheory of direct intuition. A framework for such analysis can be also found in Islamic philosophies of Suhrawardi and Ibn 'Arabi, who introduced the concepts of individual predisposition, modes of knowledge, and self-knowledge mediated by knowledge by presence. These concepts can be applied to understanding of the origins of philosophical insight. The paper examines in depth the workings of direct, or presentive, intuition in Tymieniecka's descriptions of the phenomenal field of life, and of life per se as a dynamic object. It demonstrates the dialogical nature of interrogation, and the sentience of logos as a horizon of philosophical inquiry. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of process phenomenology, and suggests directions of future research with regard to phenomenology of imagination. (shrink)

When considering the social valuation of a life-year, there is a conflict between two basic intuitions: on the one hand, the intuition of universality, according to which the value of an additional life-year should be universal, and, as such, should be invariant to the context considered; on the other hand, the intuition of complementarity, according to which the value of a life-year should depend on what this extra-life-year allows for, and, hence, on the quality (...) of that life-year, because the quantity of life and the quality of life are complement to each other. This paper proposes three distinct accounts of the intuition of universality, and shows that those accounts either conflict with a basic monotonicity property, or lead to indifference with respect to how life-years are distributed within the population. Those results support the abandon of the intuition of universality. But abandoning the intuition of universality does not prevent a social evaluator from giving priority, when allocating life-years, to individuals with the lowest quality of life. (shrink)

The concept of “life” certainly is of some use to distinguish birds and beavers from water and stones. This pragmatic usefulness has led to its construal as a categorical predicate that can sift out living entities from non-living ones depending on their possessing specific properties—reproduction, metabolism, evolvability etc. In this paper, we argue against this binary construal of life. Using text-mining methods across over 30,000 scientific articles, we defend instead a degrees-of-life view and show how these methods (...) can contribute to experimental philosophy of science and concept explication. We apply topic-modeling algorithms to identify which specific properties are attributed to a target set of entities (bacteria, archaea, viruses, prions, plasmids, phages and the molecule of adenine). Eight major clusters of properties were identified together with their relative relevance for each target entity (two that relate to metabolism and catalysis, one to genetics, one to evolvability, one to structure, and—rather unexpectedly—three that concern interactions with the environment broadly construed). While aligning with intuitions—for instance about viruses being less alive than bacteria—these quantitative results also reveal differential degrees of performance that have so far remained elusive or overlooked. Taken together, these analyses provide a conceptual “lifeness space” that makes it possible to move away from a categorical construal of life by empirically assessing the relative lifeness of more-or-less alive entities. (shrink)

When we ask ourselves about the meaning of life, two analyses are possible in principle: 1. that we are asking something about the purpose or the reason of being of life or of a life, or 2. that we are asking something the value of life or of a life. At the present article, I do not approach 1 neither the life as a whole, but I take the individual lives in the context of (...) 2. I briefly explain what would be to someone to have an objectivist conception of the meaning of life and what would be to someone to have a subjectivist one; and, then, I try to show how we can think in formulas that can capture the intuitions of those conceptions, without acquiring commitment with none of them. My way is to show that both objectivist and subjectivist conceptions think the meaning of life as related to projects or realizations that fulfill principles of value (the value can be objective or subjective according to the adopted conception), and ten I try to indicate that the projects or realizations from a person’s life come together through a simple sum to make the meaning of life of such a person’s life. The way I suggested for us to find the value of one of those realizations does not seem to present none theoretical problem. But the simple sum of realizations (and/or projects) to represent the value of the meaning of a person’s life simply did not work. That’s because it seems to lack some kind of index that is able to formalize the relations between realizations. Thus, although we couldn’t properly formalize the relation between the realizations that achieve the meaning of someone’s life at a certain moment, we get a good intuitive formalization of the value of a realization and we hope to have started an interesting investigation for future logicians, metaphysicians, mathematicians and theorists of value. (shrink)

Professor Wilhelm Blasius, physiologist at Giessen in West Germany, has written a book "Probleme der Lebensforschung" (Verlag Rombach, Freiburg 1973) which - I understand - is to be published in an English version. To me it has been of interest as an orientation in a world of traditional German thinking, best known from Goethe's natural philosophy of perceptible "Ur­ bilder", which perhaps in English could be rendered descriptively by calling it an inner vision of further irre­ ducible totalities. It is (...) in contemporary language a kind of intuitive 'holistic' insight which represents understanding different from that of natural science. The latter is devoted to the study of causal chains, is largely experimental and in its aim ultimately 'reduc­ tionist' -to use another modern term. Goethe's approach is reincarnated in the "Wesenslehre" of the late Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) and in the thinking of Carl Gustav Caruso To Klages the perceived image alone is the meaning of everything in this world and in this sense he is the advocate of a psychological phenom­ enology that is an end in itself. Originally trained as a chemist Klages soon turned to philosophy and de­ veloped a system of concepts supposed to give a deeper insight into the essence of life than did the endless causal chains of natural science. Blasius makes much use of the concepts of this philosopher, in particular his ideas on 'polarities'. (shrink)

Ethics and Qualities of Life looks at what enters into ethical judgment and choice. Interpretation of a case and of what the options are is always a factor, as is a sense of the possible values at stake. Intuitions also enter in, but often are unreliable. For a long time it seemed only fair that oldest sons inherited, and struck few people as unfair that women were not allowed to attend universities. A moral judgment is putatively part of a (...) moral order in a society that any reasonable person would accept. But what counts as "reasonable" is generally contestable. The unreliability of intuitions leads naturally to ethical theory. Kantian, contractualist, and consequentialist theories all have some important truth in them, but not the whole truth. Contractualism lacks the resources required for a fully determinate account of what counts as "reasonable". Broad general rules are important to Kant and are at the center of everyday morality. But can Kantian ethics explain why they have to have this central role? Our evolving social contract now contains elements that once would have seemed counter-intuitive to most people. But could consequentialists have predicted with entire confidence the consequences of social changes that we now think were desirable? The last part of this book contains a double argument. One is that ethical theory is employed by humans in a state of semi-ignorance of relevant factors, grasping at likely truths and evolved intuitions. The other is that consequentialist considerations have a major role at the fundamental level, but much more in justification or criticism than in ethical discovery. (shrink)

The closing chapters of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics x are regularly described as “puzzling,” “extremely abrupt,” “awkward,” or “surprising” to readers. Whereas the previous nine books described—sometimes in lavish detail—the multifold ethical virtues of an embodied person situated within communities of family, friends, and fellow-citizens, NE x 6-8 extol the rarified, god-like and solitary existence of a sophos or sage (1179a32). The ethical virtues that take up approximately the first half of the Ethics describe moral exempla who experience fear fighting for (...) their communities, are sensitive to the esteem and recognition of others, and feel love for a desire to live together with a wide variety of kinds of friends. Such good people take pleasure in prudently expending sums to improve their communities—communities in which they exchange goods and participate in ruling and being ruled in a cooperative fashion. The exemplum of x 7-8, by contrast, is a person whose activity consists almost entirely in exercising his or her mind (nous)—a part of one’s soul that Aristotle explicitly notes is disconnected from human emotions and that can be exercised, insofar as one as wise, in a wholly solitary fashion (1178a15-16, a19-20; 1177a33-34). Although Aristotle’s claim that a “life in accord with the mind” is best and most pleasant (1178a6-7) may jar the intuitions of many people—he himself endorses Anaxagoras’ claim that the happy person will appear as “someone who is absurd” (atopos, 1179a15) to most people—it is false to claim that his conclusions in NE x 6-8 are unexpected or unanticipated, or that the text is in any way discontinuous with what precedes it. The Nicomachean Ethics exhibits aspects of ring-composition both within the work as a whole and within book 10. In NE i 5 Aristotle introduces his rendition of a trope that he inherits (most immediately) from Plato, viz. that the problem of the good can be considered like a contest between three different kinds of life—the life of enjoyment (apolaustikos), the life of politics (politikos), and the life of contemplation (theôrêtikos). NE x 6-8 returns to that contest, rendering a verdict about which life takes first, second, and third place. As the opening lines of NE x 6 note, that verdict presupposes central claims articulated between the first and last books of the Ethics, specifically about the nature of the virtues, the nature of friendship, and the nature of pleasure. NE i 5 and x 6-8 thus serve as “bookends” which encase arguments and proposition located between them. Book 10 exhibits a similar ring-composition. NE x opens with methodological reflection on the gap between the theoretical positions that thinkers articulate and the way they live their lives (especially in the case of scolds who simultaneously criticize pleasure on a scientific level but seek it on a practical level [1172a33-b8]). Chapter 8 concludes with an explicit reiteration of the methodological point, a reiteration that underscores how Aristotle’s treatment of the contest of lives incorporates central aspects of the discussion of pleasure in NE x 1-5. Aristotle’s reiteration of the problem of a gap between theory and practice also draws attention to the centrality of his treatment of pleasure in his adjudication of the three lives. Although the life of pleasure takes a distant third in the contest of lives, the contemplative life wins the contest in part because it itself is the most pleasant form of life. The central philosophical problem looming behind Aristotle’s treatment of the contest of lives concerns the relationship between the notion of activity (energeia) and the notion of a way of life (bios). In the last four decades, much of the scholarship on NE x 6-8 has sought to address the question of what activities a certain way of life includes or excludes. “Monistic” or “dominant” end interpretations of the best life have viewed it as including only contemplative activities whereas “inclusivist” end interpretations of the best life have viewed it as including non-contemplative activities. Although this chapter largely side-steps this debate—partially because there are ample recent first-rate introductory treatments of the debate, partially because I have addressed the question elsewhere in my own writing —I argue that focusing solely on the contest between the two best ways of life overshadows the way that Aristotle incorporates insights from the third way of life into the best way of life. Although the notion of a contest among different kinds of lives presupposes that the lives are mutually exclusive, Aristotle has no problem saying that the contemplative life trumps the life of pleasure because the contemplative life is more pleasant. I proceed in two parts. In the first part I examine what I will call the “outer” ring of the Ethics, namely the relationship between the contest of lives proposed in NE i 5 and its overall resolution in x 6-8. I show how i 5 and x 6 establish the framework for the contest, how x 7 adjudicates that contest in large part by relying upon premises articulated in the interim between books 1 and 10, and how x 6 and x 8 determine the second and third place positions in the contest. In the second part I focus on what I will call the “inner” ring of NE x. More than half of NE x struggles with the nature of pleasure, its role in a happy life, and the methodological problems of examining pleasure within a practical science. I show how x 1 and x 8 are “bookends” that underscore the methodological problem of examining pleasure and how the contest of lives draws upon the proximate conclusions concerning the nature of pleasure in NE x 1-5. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Islamic metaphysical vision finds its Western philosophical counterpart in Anna-Teresa Tymienecka's Phenomenology of Life. Comparative analysis of the main categories and strategies of knowledge in Islamic metaphysics and the Phenomenology of Life demonstrates obvious similarities, but also significant distinctions whereby the systems can be viewed as complementary. Tymieniecka’s philosophy begins with epoché on preceding philosophical knowledge, while Islamic philosophy begins with revelation. Tymieniecka uses presuppositionless phenomenological direct intuition combined with reflective analysis, while (...) Sufi metaphysics combines logic, intuitio,n and reliance on the experience attained in states of mystical perception. Unification of Reality and realization of truth in the Phenomenology of Life is attained via phenomenological intuition of life in all forms of experience, and in Islam, via certainty attained in religious experiences of unveiling. Due to its refocusing on the dynamic moments of the ontopoiesis of life, Tymieniecka’s ontology serves as a possible solution to the problems incurred by the more static metaphysical vision of Reality in Sufism. (shrink)

This article addresses the utilitarian theory of life's meaning according to which a person's existence is significant just in so far as she makes those in the world better off. One aim is to explore the extent to which the utilitarian theory has counter-intuitive implications about which lives count as meaningful. A second aim is to develop a new, broadly Kantian theory of what makes a life meaningful, a theory that retains much of what makes the utilitarian view (...) attractive, while avoiding the most important objections facing it and providing a principled explanation of their force. (shrink)

Even if the question, “What is the meaning of life?” is coherent, the fact remains that it is vague. Its vagueness largely centers on the use of the term “meaning.” The most prevalent strategy for addressing this vagueness is to discard the word “meaning” and reformulate the question entirely into questions such as, “What is the purpose of life?” or “What makes life valuable?” among others. This approach has philosophical merit but does not account for the intuitions (...) and sub-questions driving the original question as plausibly as does an interpretation that I call the narrative interpretation. I will argue that the question, “What is the meaning of life?” should be understood as the request for a narrative that narrates across those elements and accompanying questions of life of greatest existential import to human beings. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, the life philosophy of Henri Bergson summoned the _élan vital_, or vital force, as the source of creative evolution. Bergson also appealed to intuition, which focused on experience rather than discursive thought and scientific cognition. Particularly influential for the literary and political Négritude movement of the 1930s, which opposed French colonialism, Bergson's life philosophy formed an appealing alternative to Western modernity, decried as "mechanical," and set the stage for later developments in postcolonial (...) theory and vitalist discourse. Revisiting narratives on life that were produced in this age of machinery and war, Donna V. Jones shows how Bergson, Nietzsche, and the poets Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire fashioned the concept of life into a central aesthetic and metaphysical category while also implicating it in discourses on race and nation. Jones argues that twentieth-century vitalism cannot be understood separately from these racial and anti-Semitic discussions. She also shows that some dominant models of emancipation within black thought become intelligible only when in dialogue with the vitalist tradition. Jones's study strikes at the core of contemporary critical theory, which integrates these older discourses into larger critical frameworks, and she traces the ways in which vitalism continues to draw from and contribute to its making. (shrink)

In Nishida Kitarō's Philosophy of Life, Tatsuya Higaki offers a highly novel and compelling reading of Nishida's philosophy by placing it in dialogue with the life philosophy of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. The philosophical core of the book consists of six chapters, chronologically proceeding from Nishida's early work on "pure experience" in 1911, through middle and late-middle period concepts like "self-awareness," "place," "absolute nothingness," and "acting intuition," and finally to his late-period work on "absolute contradictory selfidentity" (...) before his death in 1945. Despite this terminological diversity, Higaki reads such "slogans" together in terms of Nishida's more fundamental orientation towards... (shrink)

The dependence on history of both present and future dynamics of life is a common intuition in biology and in humanities. Historicity will be understood in terms of changes of the space of possibilities as well as by the role of diversity in life’s structural stability and of rare events in history formation. We hint to a rigorous analysis of “path dependence” in terms of invariants and invariance preserving transformations, as it may be found also in physics, (...) while departing from the physico-mathematical analyses. The idea is that the invariant traces of the past under organismal or ecosystemic transformations contribute to the understanding of present and future states of affairs. This yields a peculiar form of unpredictability in biology, at the core of novelty formation: the changes of observables and pertinent parameters may depend also on past events. In particular, in relation to the properties of synchronic measurement in physics, the relevance of diachronic measurement in biology is highlighted. This analysis may a fortiori apply to cognitive and historical human dynamics, while allowing to investigate some general properties of historicity in biology. (shrink)

Medical decision making relies heavily on the notion of the quality of a person's life in providing a reason to utilize one therapy over another or to withhold certain therapies altogether. The concept of quality of life, however, lacks clear definition as well as consensus on its constitutive elements. ;Chapter one engages a basic controversy in the literature: whether 'quality of life' should be understood as a subjective concept, or whether objective "lists" can help us assess a (...) person's quality of life. Chapter two examines whether anthropological data might provide guidance. While it is often argued that anthropological data supports relativism, John Finnis argues that anthropological data supports universalism which, in turn, bolsters objectivist claims. I argue that anthropological data may plausibly be interpreted to support either subjective or objective accounts, and thus, does not settle our approach to quality of life. ;Chapter Three examines objective list theories, in particular those of Bernard Gert and John Finnis. I find Gert's account to be problematic because it seems incomplete. Finnis's criteria, too, seems ultimately indefensible. Thus, I conclude that while objectivist claims may offer insight into human values and motivations, existing accounts are flawed. Chapter Four examines subjective accounts of quality of life. I focus on "preference satisfaction" accounts. While these accounts provide intuitively plausible descriptions, they fall victim to a host of difficulties. Perhaps the best example of this is the "fleeting preferences" problem, which undermines our confidence in making life-and-death decisions on the basis of quality of life considerations. ;The concluding chapter offers that much progress can be made by understanding quality of life in terms of finding meaning in life. Thus, the quality of one's life is determined by how much purpose and meaning is found in that life. While this notion is not without its problems, it does capture the complex elements of the kinds of cases in which we are particularly interested, and combines some of the best features of both the objective and subjective accounts. (shrink)

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms. Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and morality, they are straightforwardly construed as accounts of which final ends a person ought to realize in order to have a significant (...) existence. Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only in the last 50 years or so that something approaching a distinct field on the meaning of life has been established in analytic philosophy, and it is only in the last 25 years that debate with real depth has appeared. Concomitant with the demise of positivism and of utilitarianism in the post-war era has been the rise of analytical enquiry into non-hedonistic conceptions of value grounded on relatively uncontroversial (but not universally shared) judgments or “intuitions,” including conceptions of meaning in life. Englishspeaking philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct line of enquiry that admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar normative categories such as well-being, right action, and distributive justice. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, the life philosophy of Henri Bergson summoned the _élan vital_, or vital force, as the source of creative evolution. Bergson also appealed to intuition, which focused on experience rather than discursive thought and scientific cognition. Particularly influential for the literary and political Négritude movement of the 1930s, which opposed French colonialism, Bergson's life philosophy formed an appealing alternative to Western modernity, decried as "mechanical," and set the stage for later developments in postcolonial (...) theory and vitalist discourse. Revisiting narratives on life that were produced in this age of machinery and war, Donna V. Jones shows how Bergson, Nietzsche, and the poets Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire fashioned the concept of life into a central aesthetic and metaphysical category while also implicating it in discourses on race and nation. Jones argues that twentieth-century vitalism cannot be understood separately from these racial and anti-Semitic discussions. She also shows that some dominant models of emancipation within black thought become intelligible only when in dialogue with the vitalist tradition. Jones's study strikes at the core of contemporary critical theory, which integrates these older discourses into larger critical frameworks, and she traces the ways in which vitalism continues to draw from and contribute to its making. (shrink)

Background: Mental healthcare needs person-tailored interventions. Experience Sampling Method (ESM) can provide daily life monitoring of personal experiences. This study aims to operationalize and test a measure of momentary reward-related Quality of Life (rQoL). Intuitively, quality of life improves by spending more time on rewarding experiences. ESM clinical interventions can use this information to coach patients to find a realistic, optimal balance of positive experiences (maximize reward) in daily life. rQoL combines the frequency of engaging in (...) a relevant context (a ‘behavior setting’) with concurrent (positive) affect. High rQoL occurs when the most frequent behavior settings are combined with positive affect or infrequent behavior settings co-occur with low positive affect. Methods: Resampling procedures (Monte Carlo experiments) were applied to assess the reliability of rQoL using various behavior setting definitions under different sampling circumstances, for real or virtual subjects with low-, average- and high contextual variability. Furthermore, resampling was used to assess whether rQoL is a distinct concept from positive affect. Virtual ESM beep datasets were extracted from 1058 valid ESM observations for virtual and real subjects. Results: Behavior settings defined by Who-What contextual information were most informative. Simulations of at least 100 ESM observations are needed for reliable assessment. Virtual ESM beep datasets of a real subject can be defined by Who-What-Where behavior setting combinations. Large sample sizes are necessary for reliable rQoL assessments, except for subjects with low contextual variability. rQoL is distinct from positive affect. Conclusion: rQoL is a feasible concept. Monte Carlo experiments should be used to assess the reliable implementation of an ESM statistic. Future research in ESM should asses the behavior of summary statistics under different sampling situations. This exploration is especially relevant in clinical implementation, where often only small datasets are available. (shrink)

Questions concerning the moral status of embryos, the validity of new technologies for human reproduction, ownership of one's own genes, gene patenting, privacy and discrimination have all been raised and debated. Although debate is healthy, it is only useful if all participants understand the fundamental biological principles underlying human life, human genes and human parenthood. Many people believe that science can play no role in determining when human life begins. I argue that this false assumption is based on (...) a failure to separate different contradictory meanings of the term ‘human life’. In actuality, science has provided great insight into when and how human life and human beings come into existence. I argue as well that, contrary to our intuitive feelings, there is no physical connection between any father and his son; shared genes represent shared information and nothing more. Nevertheless, the feeling of a physical connection between parent and child is very real and instinctive, no matter how false it may be. These new understandings have profound ramifications for the way we treat issues surrounding human reproduction, including both abortion and assisted reproductive technologies. (shrink)

The essay follows the fil rouge of ancient Greek thinking in the work of Gregory Bateson, an unusually multi-faceted and energetically nomadic intellect in the landscape of twentieth-century hyper-specialized disciplines, whose eclectic research focused on the question of life and of human participation in a living world. Through the reverberation of Neoplatonic motifs and echoing pre-Socratic intuitions, Bateson reflects on the “pattern which connects”—the λόγος that says one and all things, and the interpenetration of one and all things, thus (...) operating as the connective tissue of all that is, the communicational web of contacts, exchanges, and transmissions, perhaps the nervous system of life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Because he claims that intuition can give us insight into “life” apart from space, if not time, Bergson seems to transgress Kant's limits on possible knowledge. This article argues, however, that there is a “critical” way to read Bergson that allows him to evade accusations of epistemologically and politically problematic vitalism. When compared with the archaeological and genealogical treatment of “life” found in Michel Foucault's work, Bergson's effort to save humans from the destructive effects of intellect (...) converges in interesting ways with Foucault's displacement of life as a foundational philosophical or scientific term. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 733 The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical. By JAMES TUNSTEAD BURTCHAELL. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989. xiv + 304 pp. $29.95. One looks forward to the writings of James Burtchaell not only because his judgments are almost always on the side of the angels hut also because his mastery of the English language often enables him to say in a (...) few words what writers of lesser skill say in volumes. This is a collection of previously-published essays on a wide range of topics including contraception, abortion, the use of biotechnology in human reproduction, the use of fetal tissue in medical therapy, law in a pluralist society, liberation theology, the morality of terrorism and the relationship of religion to politics. In its own way, this hook poses well the moral questions of how we and " nature " are to relate to the newly emerging generation of technology. Because the articles are so diverse, it is not possible to give a detailed account or critique of each of them, and rather than doing that I will focus attention only on the issue of ethics and the newly emerging technology which will have a profound impact on not only our personal lives, hut also our society and politics. And to an even greater extent, newly emerging technological developments will have an enormous impact on the way in which our race regenerates and orients itself in the future. On a case-by-case basis, Burtchaell raises these issues with great force and clarity, even though his understanding of nature and technology is not entirely clear. He suggests that nature is far more subtle and vital than we commonly assume and that it has its own ways of fighting hack against our technological assaults against it. Our attempts to control and manipulate nature through technological means provide nature with an opportunity to protect itself hy striking hack at us in ways previously unimagined. Using technology to bend nature to our will is much like the Australian Aborigine who vainly tried to throw away his boomerang! What is most striking about this hook is the contradictory way in which Burtchaell employs the concept of nature to determine the morality of certain enterprises. This contradiction is seen most clearly hy comparing his assessments of artificial contraception and technological transmission of human life. The contrast is so sharp that the issue of the foundations of his thought can he called into question. When one compares his favorable assessment of artificial contraception to his critical evaluation of technological reproduction of human life, one wonders if there is an underlying principle guiding his moral deliberations or whether it is merely his intuitions, likes and dislikes (strongly 734 BOOK REVIEWS colored and shaped by his cultural setting) that determine his evaluations. In "'Human Life' and Human Love", Burtchaell vigorously criticizes the substance, form and arguments of the encyclical Humanae Vitae. For him, the great flaw in this encyclical was the weight it gave to the distinction between natural and artificial contraception and the absolute condemnation visited upon the latter. Seeing little difference between more natural methods of contraception like natural family planning and the use of the pill, Burtchaell argues that artificial contraception should have been given some kind of moral permissibility by Pope Paul VI (P. 99). But it is not clear why he gives limited support to artificial birth control after one reads his harsh criticisms of it: But the venture of technology overshot its original goals in several unforeseen ways. America now has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in what we like to call the developed world. The incidence of sexual prom· iscuity, venereal disease, abortion, marital collapse, fatherless children, child abuse and abandonment, wanton breeding by the thriftless (and dusky) poor is probably higher than at any time in our national history. The founders [Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes] did concede that their program might not immediately achieve its desired results. But that was because of the lack, in their time, of an ' ideal ' contraceptive. Its development was to be expected from further assiduous scientific research. Seventy years and much assiduous research later, the same message is still... (shrink)

The most predominant and usual interpretations amongst Leibniz’s scholars, as far as his conception of space is concerned, draw from the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, and thereby, they argue for the relativist/idealist Leibnizian notion of space contra to the absolutist/realist Newtonian thesis In the present paper I intend to expand Leibniz’s conception of space, which, in our view, is much broader and fertile than the relativistic/idealistic interpretation. The main reason for the above mentioned accounts of the Leibnizian thesis on space lies on (...) the restrictive interpretation of space, i.e. only in terms of the monad’s relative perceptions of the coexistence of its compossible monadic relations, which thereby extrapolates the perspectivist/relativistic character of the monad from its simultaneous embeddedness within the objective/realist living tissue of the organic plenum of the universe. Instead, our argument is sustained by incorporating in the previous account Leibniz’s critique of the Cartesian res extensa, and mainly, his powerful idea that each monad is a perpetual, living mirror of the Universe. This would lead us beyond an one-sided relativistic and subjectivist notion of space, which, in fact, seems at odds with Leibniz’s cosmo-oriented frame of thought, since it reduces Leibniz’ conception of space to the Kantian abstract/geometrical and subjectivist conception of an apriori intuition of the external world; instead, through our interpretation we attain the alignment of Leibniz’s notion of space with his whole dynamic, organic and ensouled account of the Universe. (shrink)

Negative prognostic communication is often delayed in intensive care units, which limits time for families to prepare for end‐of‐life. This descriptive study, informed by ethnographic methods, was focused on exploring critical care physician communication of negative prognoses to families and identifying timing influences. Prognostic communication of critical care physicians to nurses and family members was observed and physicians and family members were interviewed. Physician perception of prognostic certainty, based on an accumulation of empirical data, and the perceived need for (...) decision‐making, drove the timing of prognostic communication, rather than family needs. Although prognoses were initially identified using intuitive knowledge for patients in one of the six identified prognostic categories, utilizing decision‐making to drive prognostic communication resulted in delayed prognostic communication to families until end‐of‐life (EOL) decisions could be justified with empirical data. Providers will better meet the needs of families who desire earlier prognostic information by separating prognostic communication from decision‐making and communicating the possibility of a poor prognosis based on intuitive knowledge, while acknowledging the uncertainty inherent in prognostication. This sets the stage for later prognostic discussions focused on EOL decisions, including limiting or withdrawing treatment, which can be timed when empirical data substantiate intuitive prognoses. This allows additional time for families to anticipate and prepare for end‐of‐life decision‐making. (shrink)

In contemplating any life and death moral dilemma, one is often struck by the possible importance of two distinctions; the distinction between killing and “letting die”, and the distinction between an intentional killing and an action aimed at some other outcome that causes death as a foreseen but unintended “side-effect”. Many feel intuitively that these distinctions are morally significant, but attempts to explain why this might be so have been unconvincing. In this paper, I explore the problem from an (...) explicitly consequentialist point of view. I first review and endorse the arguments that the distinctions cannot be drawn with perfect clarity, and that they do not have the kind of fundamental significance required to defend an absolute prohibition on killing. I go on to argue that the distinctions are nonetheless important. A complete consequentialist account of morality must include a consideration of our need and ability to construct and follow rules; our instincts about these rules; and the consequences that might follow if the agent breaks a good general rule, particularly if this involves acting contrary to moral instinct. With this perspective, I suggest that the distinctions between killing and letting die and between intending and foreseeing do have moral relevance, especially for those involved in the care of the sick and dying. (shrink)

One of intuitions driving the acceptance of a neat structured tree of life is the assumption that organisms and the lineages they form have somewhat stable spatial and temporal boundaries. The phenomenon of symbiosis shows us that such ‘fixist’ assumptions does not correspond to how the natural world actually works. The implications of lateral gene transfer (LGT) have been discussed elsewhere; I wish to stress a related point. I will focus on lateral function transfer (LFT) and will argue, using (...) examples of what many would call ‘superorganisms’, that the emergence of symbiotic individuals revives the importance of functional and adaptationist thinking in how we conceptualize the lineages of biological individuals. The consequence of the argument is that, if we really want to hold onto tree of life thinking, we had better accept that new saplings appear and disappear all the time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Thaddeus Metz is probably the leading expert on the meaning of life. His latest book admirably displays his intellectual agility and fairness: arguments, counter-arguments, examples and counter-examples come in wave after wave that may compel most of us to slow down the pace of reading. If you have ever had the delight of interacting with Professor Metz at a conference, you know his irrepressible energy and love for debate. In this brief essay, I challenge some of Metz’s terminology, (...) raise a worry about the role of metaphysics in the meaning of life literature, suggest a reply to the religious relational account of meaning, and firm up the intuition that meaning is enhanced in a theistic cosmos. (shrink)

In this critical notice of Clifford Williams’ Religion and the meaning of life, I focus on his argumentation in favour of the moderate supernaturalist position that, while a meaningful life would be possible in a purely physical world, a much greater meaning would be possible only in a world with God and an eternal afterlife spent close to God. I begin by expounding and evaluating Williams’ views of the physical sources of meaning, providing reason to doubt both that (...) he has captured all the central ones and that he has provided the right explanation of why we ought to care about them. Then I address Williams’ account of why God would greatly enhance the meaning of our lives, arguing that, if God could do so, then God could by the same token reduce their meaning as well, such that it is unclear that a world with God would offer a net gain in meaning. Finally, I take up Williams’ position that an eternal afterlife with God would greatly enhance the meaning of our lives, contending that, if it would do so, then it would to such an enormous degree as to make it hard to capture the intuition that a meaningful life would be possible in a purely physical world. (shrink)

Questions concerning the moral status of embryos, the validity of new technologies for human reproduction, ownership of one's own genes, gene patenting, privacy and discrimination have all been raised and debated. Although debate is healthy, it is only useful if all participants understand the fundamental biological principles underlying human life, human genes and human parenthood. Many people believe that science can play no role in determining when human life begins. I argue that this false assumption is based on (...) a failure to separate different contradictory meanings of the term 'human life'. In actuality, science has provided great insight into when and how human life and human beings come into existence. I argue as well that, contrary to our intuitive feelings, there is no physical connection between any father and his son; shared genes represent shared information and nothing more. Nevertheless, the feeling of a physical connection between parent and child is very real and instinctive, no matter how false it may be. These new understandings have profound ramifications for the way we treat issues surrounding human reproduction, including both abortion and assisted reproductive technologies. (shrink)

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerned with the notions of truth and knowledge. (...) The vast majority of recent writers on this issue have defended various versions of cognitivism, but the novelty of Gibson's cognitivist – or as he calls it ‘humanist’ – position consists in attempting to reconcile the two sides of the debate.Gibson thus takes seriously various sceptical arguments, primarily semantic and epistemological, to the effect that works of fiction qua fiction do not or cannot make reference to or represent the ‘real’ world and insofar as they do refer to it, they provide no evidence in themselves for forming justified beliefs about their claims. These arguments, Gibson holds, place a necessary ‘textual constraint’ on any plausible humanism, …. (shrink)

A clash of two worldviews -- Consciousness and the science of experience -- The physics of the subtle -- Zen and quantum physics -- Thought, feeling, and intuition -- The world of archetypes -- The ego and the quantum self -- Free will and creativity -- Involution and evolution -- A tale of two domains -- The creative principle -- Quantum reincarnation -- The meaning and purpose of life -- The meaning of dreams -- Enlightenment -- Spiritual professions; (...) spiritual society. (shrink)

It is often assumed that most people want their life to be “meaningful”. But what exactly does this mean? Though numerous research have documented which factors lead people to experience their life as meaningful and people’s theories about the best ways to secure a meaningful life, investigations in people’s concept of meaningful life are scarce. In this paper, we investigate the folk concept of a meaningful life by studying people’s third-person attribution of meaningfulness. We draw (...) on hypotheses from the philosophical literature, and notably on the work of Susan Wolf (Study 1) and an objection Antti Kauppinen raised against it (Study 2). In Study 1, we find that individuals who are successful, competent, and engaged in valuable and important goals are considered to have more meaningful lives. In Study 2, we find that the perceived meaningfulness of a life does not depend only on its components, but also on how its elements are ordered and how it forms a coherent whole (the “narrative shape” of this life). Additionally, our results stress the importance of morality in participants’ assessments of meaningfulness. Overall, our results highlight the fruitfulness of drawing on the philosophical literature to investigate the folk concept of meaningful life. (shrink)

This chapter explores how morality can be rational if moral intuitions are resistant to rational reflection. There are two parts to this question. The normative problem is whether there is a model of moral justification which can show that morality is a rational enterprise given the facts of moral dumbfounding. Appealing to the model of reflective equilibrium for the rational justification of moral intuitions solves this problem. Reflective equilibrium views the rational justification of morality as a back-and-forth balancing between moral (...) theory and moral intuition, and therefore does not require that individual moral intuitions be directly responsive to rational reflection. The psychological problem is whether human psychology actually implements the processes required for reflective equilibrium. The psychological problem is far more difficult, and requires appealing to a dual-process view of moral judgement that regards moral intuitions and moral theories as belonging to different mental systems. (shrink)

This article investigates whether Aristotelian practical wisdom could be considered as an advantageous "sense" in management practice and as an alternative rationality to that defended by modern tradition. Aristotelian practical wisdom is re-conceptualised in order to emphasise the intuitive component of practical wisdom, an aspect often sidelined by business ethicists. Levinas' insights are applied to Aristotelian practical wisdom in such a way that the role of emotion in moral action would be reinforced. It is argued that the role of emotion (...) in moral action and wise deliberation requires re-definition in accordance with the indeterminate character of the moral. Moreover, I argue Levinas' approach might be helpful to bring to light the conflictual aspect inherent in being prudential. By reinterpreting the intuitive component of practical wisdom as Levinas' moral impulse, wisdom theory is expanded to include the face, and to better account for the conflictive and the emotional aspects of phronesis. This approach enables practical wisdom to be understood as a human "sense" in ways that assist how we manage and understand contemporary organizations. (shrink)

The cognitivist/non-cognitivist debate about the nature and value of literary fiction has witnessed a lot of spilled ink amongst philosophers over the past decade. Gibson characterizes this debate as a conflict between two apparently incompatible intuitions: the ‘humanist’ intuition that works of literary fiction have some sort of cognitive value in telling us about the world, and the ‘sceptical’ anti-humanist intuition that such works, and their proper appreciation, are not essentially concerned with the notions of truth and knowledge. (...) The vast majority of recent writers on this issue have defended various versions of cognitivism, but the novelty of Gibson's cognitivist – or as he calls it ‘humanist’ – position consists in attempting to reconcile the two sides of the debate.Gibson thus takes seriously various sceptical arguments, primarily semantic and epistemological, to the effect that works of fiction qua fiction do not or cannot make reference to or represent the ‘real’ world and insofar as they do refer to it, they provide no evidence in themselves for forming justified beliefs about their claims. These arguments, Gibson holds, place a necessary ‘textual constraint’ on any plausible humanism, …. (shrink)

Conventional ethics of how humans should eat often ignore that human life is itself a form of organic activity. Using Henri Bergson’s notions of intellect and intuition, this chapter brings a wider perspective of the human organism to the ethical question of how humans appropriate life for nutriment. The intellect’s tendency to instrumentalize living things as though they were inert seems to subtend the moral failures evident in practices such as industrial animal agriculture. Using the case study (...) of Temple Grandin’s sympathetic cattle technologies, this chapter moves beyond animal welfare concerns to ground food ethics on the phenomenal character of food that is obscured by human activities of fabrication. (shrink)

This essay has as a keystone the words in which Husserl identifies life with the flux of lived experiences. It attempts a phenomenological approach to primary consciousness. Starting from the reduction to the sphere of “my ownness”, it then makes reference to the issue of the “living present” ; afterwards, it goes to the notion of reason in Husserl in its relationship with life and the lived experiences of the feeling of being alive, such as “connatus” as originary (...) intuition, and the concept, stemming from Ortega y Gasset, of “living reason”. As a last issue, a description is made of those features of life expounded by Husserl that can be interpreted in reference to “the green of the golden tree”.Este estudio tiene como clave de bóveda la frase en que Husserl identifica la vida con el fluir de las vivencias. Intenta una aproximación fenomenológica a la conciencia primaria. Parte de la reducción al ámbito de ”lo mío propio”. A continuación se hace referencia al tema del “presente viviente” ; luego se pasa a la concepción de la razón en Husserl en relación con la vida y las vivencias del sen-timiento de vivir, tales como “conatus” como intuición originaria, y al concepto orteguiano de razón vital. Como última cuestión, se estudian los rasgos de la vida expuestos por Husserl que puedan ser interpretados con referencia a “el verde del árbol dorado”. (shrink)

We find before us an excellent edition of the book which the influential American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-82) published in December of 1860, four months before the outbreak of the American Civil War. The central question which Emerson poses in this volume concerns the conduct of life, that is, of how to live. The titles of the nine essays, which compose the book, illustrate the themes tackled: “Fate,” “Power,” “Wealth”, “Culture,” “Behavior,” “Worship”, “Considerations by the Way,” “Beauty” and (...) “Illusions.” As Callaway suggests, Emerson’s is not a philosophy in the sense of contemporary technicalities, “the basic tendency of his thought is a metaphysical idealism in which the soul and intuition or inspiration are central.” (p. xvi). As an essentially religious thinker, profoundly preoccupied with the human soul and with the development of human potentialities, he has always firmly opposed to slavery: one cannot refuse to others human beings the development of their distinctively human potentialities (p. xxvii). (shrink)

This essay explores the practical significance of Michel Henry’s “material phenomenology.” Commencing with an exposition of his most basic philosophical intuition, i.e., his insight that transcendental affectivity is the primordial mode of revelation of our selfhood, the essay then brings to light how this intuition also establishes our relation to both the world and others. Animated by a radical form of the phenomenological reduction, Henry’s material phenomenology brackets the exterior world in a bid to reach the concrete interior (...) transcendental experience at the base of all exteriority. The essay argues that this “counter reduction,” designed as a practical orientation to the world, suspends all traditional parameters of onto(theo)logical individuation in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of its transcendental corporeality, i.e., in terms of the invisible display of “affective flesh.” The development of this “metaphysics of the individual” anchors his “practical philosophy” as he developed it—under shifting accents—throughout his oeuvre. In particular, the essay brings into focus Henry’s reflections on modernity, the industry of mass culture and their “barbaric” movements. The essay briefly puts these cultural and political areas of Henry’s of thinking into contact with his late “theological turn,” i.e., his Christological account of Life and the (inter)subjective self-realization to which it gives rise. (shrink)

The empirical turn has created an undercurrent of scrutiny regarding the relevance of disciplines such as philosophy and theology due to assumptions about the limitations of their epistemology. This article seeks to recognize that disciplines that are lauded as most relevant due to their reliance on empiricism as their main form of epistemology often rely upon intuition for making decisions in the research process. After delineating this process using Anthropological research as an example, I draw a parallel between descriptions (...) of how intuition can be understood and used as a means of knowing in the work of Kant and several theologians with descriptions of how intuition is relied upon and necessarily emerges as a critical epistemology in the more traditionally empirically grounded discipline Anthropology. This parallel is offered as the launching place for connections between these disciplines through further examination of the use of intuition as an epistemology and hopes to equate the epistemo- logical integrity of disciplines such as philosophy and theology that admit to the use of intuition with those that are considered empiri- cal which rely upon intuition yet may not admit to its use overtly. (shrink)

I argue that stories are ‘equipment for living’ in two senses: retrospectively, they provide ‘configurational comprehension’ of a temporal sequence of events; prospectively, they offer templates for action. Narrative conceptions of the self appear well poised to leverage these functional roles for stories into an intuitively compelling view of self-construction as self-construal. However, the narrative conception defines selves in terms of the lives they live: a self is the protagonist in a lifelong story. And narrative structure is itself defined by (...) ‘retrospective necessity’: the meaning of events within a story is given by their contribution to that story's ending. Together, this entails that life stories hold selves metaphysically, epistemically, and practically hostage to their ends. Fortunately, narratives are just one species of interpretive frame. I suggest some alternative types of frames, including identity labels and metaphors, that support configurational comprehension, action guidance, and self construction without shackling selves to their lives’ ends. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify how IT managers' decision styles affect their evaluation of information technology. Design/methodology/approach – Four different decision styles were assessed in a leadership test directed towards IT managers. Each style included two dimensions: confidence judgment ability and decision heuristic usage. Participants belonging to each style were interviewed and their answers analysed with regard to their reasoning about central areas of IT management. Findings – Results suggest that a decision style combining intuitive (...) and analytical capabilities lead to better evaluations of information technology. Originality/value – The results of the present study are valuable for the understanding of how decision styles impact on IT management in everyday life. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the rationality of law and legal decision making would be enhanced by a systematic attempt to recognize and respond to the implications of empirical uncertainty for policy making and decision making. Admission of uncertainty about the accuracy of facts and the validity of assumptions relied on to make inferences of fact is commonly avoided in law because it raises the spectre of paralysis of the capacity to decide issues authoritatively. The roots of this short-sighted (...) view are found in primitive mechanical models of relationships in the empirical and social world – those of objective causality and determinism. Insofar as it is believed that if we had sufficient data a clear and unequivocal answer would be available to each question, admission of uncertainty is seen as a sign of insufficiency, incompetence, impotence, and is avoided whenever a decision that must be seen to be based on valid reasons, cannot be avoided. Avoidance of some decisions, duplicity in others, is the result. -/- Decision-making must be restructured to recognize the provisional and context-bound validity and relevance of the models we use to conceptualize and order our understanding of phenomena, and to utilize this awareness as an instrument in the production of legal policies and decisions that will be authoritative precisely because they are honestly accurate and socially responsible. The paper makes a start on such a re-structuring of the legal process by exploring the implications of the observation that if law is to be “just”: 1) legal policy must be based on accurate information and rationally related to social goals; and 2) decisions applying policy to individual fact situations must be based on assumptions that are both relevant and accurate. -/- Reasons for determinations of fact must be given, otherwise the presumption that the trier of fact is “reasonable” is an unconditional licence to use private modes of logic and theories of social and natural science. What is not disclosed cannot be challenged on grounds of invalidity or irrelevance. -/- Use of “objective validity” as a standard to evaluate conclusions made by the trier of fact in contentious cases would only serve to beg all important questions by concealing: 1) fundamental normative conflict, and 2) the limited nature and applicability of many validity claims. -/- Our use of the phrases “undue risk,” “public interest,” “reasonable,” and “necessary,” reflects the weight we choose to give conflicting social values and goals when we must make decisions in relative ignorance of all the consequences. “Objective criteria” are of limited utility in legal decision-making because their social meaning is derivative. Policy generation in the absence of any coherent conceptual-normative framework, use of vague terminology in legislation stating policy, and the absence of rational means to distinguish between individual cases to which decision-makers are required by law to apply policy, make it inevitable that many legal “decisions” made in the guise of determinations of objective fact, are charades, an arbitrary, capricious, intuitive, subjective (and thus private) use of public decision-making power. -/- Law must alter its aspirations and recognize that rational decision-making is a process that can occur only within parameters set by present knowledge and societal preference structures. Only by working with the constraints imposed by these parameters is it possible to achieve “just” decisions. Where no rational basis for differentiating cases exists, “individualized justice” must be avoided and public policy articulated in law applied uniformly to all cases in a class. The terms “reasonable” and “necessary,” used to describe policy and its consequences for specific cases, must be understood to represent provisional societal assessments, attempts to implement societal preference structures in the face of limited knowledge. Heightened awareness of the limited nature of our knowledge can only result in legal policies that have a more explicit normative basis. -/- The volume is is published with an introduction by Michael D. Bayles. It is available in hardback, paperback, and as an ebook. (shrink)

Computationalism aspires to provide a comprehensive theory of life and mind. It fails in this task because it lacks the conceptual tools to address the problem of meaning. I argue that a meaningful perspective is enacted by an individual with a potential that is intrinsic to biological existence: death. Life matters to such an individual because it must constantly create the conditions of its own existence, which is unique and irreplaceable. For that individual to actively adapt, rather than (...) to passively disintegrate, expresses a value inherent in its way of life, which is the ultimate source of more refined forms of normativity. This response to the problem of meaning will not satisfy those searching for a functionalist or logical solution, but on this view such a solution will not be forthcoming. As an intuition pump for this alternative perspective I introduce two ancient foreign worldviews that assign a constitutive role to death. Then I trace the emergence of a similar conception of mortality from the cybernetics era to the ongoing development of enactive cognitive science. Finally, I analyze why orthodox computationalism has failed to grasp the role of mortality in this constitutive way. (shrink)

We propose that human reasoning relies on an inherence heuristic, an implicit cognitive process that leads people to explain observed patterns (e.g., girls wear pink) in terms of the inherent features of their constituents (e.g., pink is an inherently feminine color). We then demonstrate how this proposed heuristic can provide a unified account for a broad set of findings spanning areas of research that might at first appear unrelated (e.g., system justification, nominal realism, is–ought errors in moral reasoning). By revealing (...) the deep commonalities among the diverse phenomena that fall under its scope, our account is able to generate new insights into these phenomena, as well as new empirical predictions. A second main goal of this paper, aside from introducing the inherence heuristic, is to articulate the proposal that the heuristic serves as a foundation for the development of psychological essentialism. More specifically, we propose that essentialism—which is the common belief that natural and social categories are underlain by hidden, causally powerful “essences”—emerges over the first few years of life as an elaboration of the earlier, and more open-ended, intuitions supplied by the inherence heuristic. In the final part of the paper, we distinguish our proposal from competing accounts (e.g., Strevens' K-laws) and clarify the relationship between the inherence heuristic and related cognitive tendencies (e.g., the correspondence bias). In sum, this paper illuminates a basic cognitive process that emerges early in life and is likely to have profound effects on many aspects of human psychology. (shrink)