This study examined the effect of history of harsh parenting on readiness for aggression in young adults testing the mediating effect of emotional reaction to frustration and provocation that is assumed to arise in the context of a history of physical punishment and psychological aggression. Data were collected from 402 participants including 187 Poles and 215 Americans. Participants reported retrospectively on corporal punishment and psychological aggression experienced during childhood. Based on self-report instruments, sensitivity to provocation and frustration and three patterns (...) of readiness for aggression in adulthood were assessed. Contrary to the US sample, sensitivity to provocation and frustration were mediators in the Polish sample alone. The important role of contextual factors that define harsh parenting circumstances, such as cultural context and sex of the parent, are discussed. (shrink)

These investigations identify and clarify some basic assumptions and methodological principles involved in ecological explanations of plant associations. How are plants geographically distributed into characteristic groups? What are the basic conditions that organize groups of interspecific plant populations that are characteristic of particular kinds of habitats? Answers to these questions concerning the geographical distribution of plants in late 19th century European plant geography and early 20th century American plant ecology can be distinguished according to differing logical assumptions concerning the habitats (...) of plant associations. Through an analysis of several significant case studies in the early history of plant ecology, Konopka distinguishes a logic of habitats that conceives of plant associations in an analogy to individual organisms with a logic that conceives of plant associations in a reciprocal relation to habitat physiography. He argues that a phenomenological conception of the logical attributes of habitats can philosophically complement the physiographic tradition in early plant ecology and provide an attractive alternative to standard reductionism and holism debates that persist today. This wide ranging and original analysis will be valuable for readers interested in the history and philosophy of ecology. (shrink)

This essay brings together the inversion of intentionality in Levinas and the later Heidegger. In light of the later Heidegger’s traversal of the intentional horizon through the articulation of the withdrawal of Ereignis , it argues that the earlier Levinasian critique of the understanding proper to Heideggerian ontology is assuaged. In both Levinas and the post- Kehre Heidegger, Husserlian intentionality is expanded beyond the so called representational features that were criticized by both post-Husserlian figures.

This essay argues that phenomenology is uniquely suited to critique naturalism without lapsing into a romantic, anti-scientific, or dystopian view of modern science. This argument situates Husserl’s retrieval of the environmental relation in the Vienna Lecture between two alternative tendencies in contemporary ecological phenomenology: 1) the rejection of or indifference to the positive sciences, and 2) the adoption of naturalism in phenomenological methodology. On the one hand, the claim is that the phenomenological return to the environment should not imply a (...) rejection of methodological naturalism. On the other hand, while an ecological phenomenology is consistent with naturalistic investigation, there is nevertheless a heterogeneity between the two. In short, phenomenology need not become naturalized in order for it to be ecological. (shrink)

Artykuł pokazuje, jak feministyczna teoria punktu widzenia może być wykorzystana do badania marginalizacji głosów kobiet i pomijania ich wiedzy i doświadczeń w polskim dyskursie publicznym. W pierwszej części tekstu przybliżone zostały teorie, z których czerpał ten nurt badań feministycznych, z naciskiem na heglowską i marksowską dialektykę, oraz w jaki sposób przekształca je on w celu dostosowania ich do analizy problemu dyskryminacji kobiet. W drugiej części z kolei wykorzystałem omówioną wcześniej aparaturę pojęciową do przeanalizowania wypowiedzi dwóch liberalnych intelektualistów związanych bardziej lub (...) mniej pośrednio z tematyką macierzyństwa i wychowania dzieci – Jacka Żakowskiego z wywiadu dla „Super Expressu” i Zbigniewa Mikołejki w postaci jego felietonu „Wojna z wózkowymi”. (shrink)

Phenomenological resources can be used to develop a nonanthropocentric theory of ecological values that gives rise to an obligation for moral agents. There is logical space in Edmund Husserl’s early theory of value that is inclusive of nonhuman animals and vegetation as members of a life community (Lebensgemeinschaft) possessing ecological characteristics. Within this legal space is a characterization of ecological obligation that is not tied to any single moral law, as it is in deontological ethics and utilitarianism, but founded on (...) the complex value nexus of a given ecological community. Rather than judging the “rightness” or “wrongness” of actions on the law-based and single-rule philosophical theories of normativity found in modern humanism, this Husserlian inspired account locates a conception of ecological obligation that is immanent to the values operative in a given environing world. This particular experience of ecological obligation arises when the valuation of the goods of individual members of the ecological community conflict with one another and the weighing of these competing goods is appropriately accomplished in light of a communal good. (shrink)

This paper identifies the duty to care for the public interest in the commonly valued ecological goods of the Gulf as one of the basic essential features of the moral significance of the federal policies that govern the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I argue that the Clean Water Act and the Oil Protection Act implicitly provide for a communitarian interpretation of the public and ecological goods of this event that warrants a virtue ethical account of normativity that is ultimately expressed (...) in the duty to care, a duty that is one of the central moral principles that underlies the punitive damages doctrine. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs the account of the organization of unified definite manifolds that Husserl developed in his early logic of parts and wholes. I argue that Husserl’s conception of necessity gets fixed through the logic of fitness that is operative in his account of unified definite manifolds that are organized by symmetrical part/whole relations. Husserl’s logical account of necessity finds its ultimate justification in his theory of intentionality and is operative in his phenomenological methodology generally. Through this conception of necessity (...) of the way in which manifolds are unified and organized, Husserl radicalized and exploded the Kantian conception of the material a priori and distinguished among several kinds of a priori, e.g., the correlational a priori, a priori bound to the empirical, and pure material a priori. Husserl’s phenomenological account of the material a priori further clarifies the important differences with Kant’s approach to the problem of necessity. (shrink)

Artykuł stanowi analizę relacji z debaty sejmowej towarzyszącej gło - sowaniu nad wprowadzeniem ustawy o warunkach dopuszczalności przerywania ciąży z 1956. Treść ustawy oraz dyskusja wokół niej stały się przyczynkiem sporów dotyczących regulacji uro - dzin. Po wprowadzeniu ustawy w życie w dyskursie dotyczącym nowego prawa partycypowali liczni autorzy, zarówno komunistyczni, jak i katoliccy. Omawiana relacja może być również po - strzegana jako przegląd chwytów retorycznych, których używało się w PRL-u w dyskusji na temat przerywania ciąży oraz stanowisk poszczególnych opcji (...) politycznych wobec tej problematyki. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to retrieve phenomenological resources for the purposes of identifying and clarifying the lived situation of embodiment in an environing world (Umwelt). Drawn primarily from Husserlian resources, it identifies several essential perceptual features of the operative intentionality of environed embodiment. Through an engagement with Husserl’s analyses of instinctual experience, I identify an essential feature of environed embodiment: the principle of association governing the nexus among objects in an environing world that are animated toward an instrumental resolution (...) of an embodied tension, a resolution that promotes the maximization of embodied equilibrium that is instrumental for self-preservation and well-being. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Husserl’s development of the nineteenth century Natur/Geist distinction is grounded in the intentional correlate between the pre-theoretical natural attitude and environing world ( Umwelt ). By reconsidering the Natur/Geist distinction through its historical context in the nineteenth century debate between Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians from the Baden or Southwest school, it is possible to understand more clearly Husserl’s appropriations and novel contributions. One of Husserl’s contributions lies in his rigorous thematization and clarification of (...) the constitutive features proper to the natural and human sciences as they arise from the pre-theoretical experience of an environing world. This ordinary lived experience between the lived body and environing world is presupposed by and forms a unity with both Natur and Geist , thereby acting as the unified ground that is inclusive of naturalized Geist and a geistig nature. This unbuilding ( Abbau ) of the Natur/Geist distinction is necessary, according to Husserl, for the radical clarification of the respective methodologies of the natural and human sciences. (shrink)

The increasing incidence of ‘trafficking’ has added an incontestably disturbing dimension to the contestable nature of a ‘non-trafficked’ UK sex industry. Men who buy sex remain under-researched, though some studies have indicated ambivalence within men's attitudes. This study combines a critical discursive psychology in support of dialogical self theory. Secondary data, from prominent UK media resources, were analysed using Edley's method of combining ‘interpretative repertoires’, ‘ideological dilemmas’ and ‘subject positions’. Contrasting discursive practices indicative of wider ideological conflict were found. Discursive (...) concepts were ‘mapped’ onto Hermans and Hermans-Konopka's ‘I-positions’ to explore how these potentially dilemmatic positions might be understood in terms of identity production. The function of ‘uncertainty’, particularly salient with the increasing complexity of globalisation, was considered a factor in how men's identities might be limited by the current discursive space. A ‘dialogical’ model of self is introduced as a framework for understanding how men who buy sex might take up new, inclusive, positions. A corollary is reflected upon; that researchers, activists and buyers alike, who remain ideologically inflexible, may be sustaining the conditions for coercion through their contribution to the discursive conflict. The synthesis of discursive and dialogical analytical tools is recommended for investigating the production of selves in contested spaces. (shrink)

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...) vagueness in conscious experience. I also will argue that a nonreductive theory of the conscious-of relation can easily provide a very satisfying, unified explanation of the ways in which this relation is significant. (shrink)

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value either (...) when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...) they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human — this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate. (shrink)

Thus Plotinus (what is his status in the history of metaphysics and in the "Platonic" era, if one follows Heidegger's reading?), who speaks of presence, that is, also of morphē, as the trace of nonpresence, as the amorphous (to gar ikhnos tou amorphous morphē). A trace which is neither absence nor presence, nor, in whatever modality, a secondary modality.In his reading of Heidegger in his 2003 seminar, published as The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida is particularly troubled by one particular (...) aspect of Heidegger: Heidegger's "superabundant use" of the language of Walten.1 "As you see," Derrida writes of Heidegger's use of Walten, "late in my life of reading Heidegger, I have just discovered a word that seems to .. (shrink)

Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

Toward an ontology of the social-historical -- Proto-institutions and epistemological encounters -- Anthropological aspects of subjectivity: the radical imagination -- Hermeneutical horizons of meaning -- The rediscovery of physis -- Objective knowledge in review -- Rethinking the world of the living being -- Reimaging cosmology -- Conclusion: the circle of creation.

Bringing political philosophy out of the ivory tower and within the reach of all, this book provides us with tools to cut through the complexities of modern ...

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This chapter provides empirical evidence about everyday attitudes concerning euthanasia. These attitudes have important implications for some ethical arguments about euthanasia. Two experiments suggested that some different descriptions of euthanasia have modest effects on people’s moral permissibility judgments regarding euthanasia. Experiment 1 (N = 422) used two different types of materials (scenarios and scales) and found that describing euthanasia differently (‘euthanasia’, ‘aid in dying’, and ‘physician assisted suicide’) had modest effects (≈3 % of the total variance) on permissibility judgments. These (...) effects were largely replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 409). However, in Experiment 2, judgments about euthanasia’s moral permissibility were best predicted by the voluntariness of the treatment. Voluntariness was a stronger predictor than some demographic factors and some domain general elements of moral judgments. These results help inform some debates about the moral permissibility of euthanasia (e.g., the slippery slope argument) suggesting that some of the key premises of those arguments are unwarranted. (shrink)

This thoughtful new abridgment is enriched by the brilliant commentary which accompanies it. In it, Laurence Dickey argues that the _Wealth of Nations_ contains--and conceals--a great deal of how Smith actually thought a commercial society works. Guided by his conviction that the so-called Adam Smith Problem--the relationship between ethics and economics in Smith's thinking--is a core element in the argument of the work itself, Dickey's commentary focuses on the devices Smith uses to ground his economics in broadly ethical and (...) social categories. An unparalleled guide to an often difficult and perplexing work. (shrink)

This is a chapter from my introductory book *Perception* covering the representational view of experience. I use the Ramsey-Lewis method to define the theoretical term "experiential representation". I clarify and discuss various questions for representationalists, for instance, "how rich is the content of experience?" and "is the content of visual experience singular or general?" Finally, I address some objections to representationalism - in particular, that it cannot explain perceptual presence (John Campbell), and that it cannot explain the "laws of appearance" (...) (constraints on how things can appear). (shrink)

In Freedom: An Impossible Reality (FAIR), Raymond Tallis finds room in a law-abiding universe for a uniquely human form of agency, capable of envisioning and pursuing genuinely open possibilities, thereby deflecting rather than merely inflecting the course of events, in accordance with self-owned intentions, reasons and goals. He argues that the genuinely free human pursuit of such propositional attitudes depends on our acting from a “virtual outside”, at an epistemic distance from the physical world that reveals not only what is (...) the case, but that it is the case. The enactive approach in cognitive science and philosophy of mind aims to supersede the cognitivist traditional that has long dominated the field, by reframing cognition as an agentʼs immediate, embodied engagement with its environment. In an appendix of FAIR, Tallis argues that this approach risks both eliminating propositional attitudes, and collapsing the epistemic distance between agent and world. He concludes that if enactive theorists are to distinguish between genuinely pursuing an intention and merely responding to a stimulus, their corrective to cognitivism is in need of a correction of its own. This paper argues that such a correction is already to be found within the enactive literature, and furthermore, that it bears striking similarities to Tallis own account of what makes human agency unique. It is therefore concluded that the case for freedom set out in FAIR is compatible with the enactive approach. (shrink)

The paper gives a brief characterization of philosophical problems; points up something of their significance for the culture, the social order, and our lives; indicates the methodology appropriate for the problems; and presents a view of the cultural mission of philosophy today. Philosophy attempts to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the cultural mind of our civilization, the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge‐yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the (...) world. It holds the cultural mind accountable to the unavoidable presuppositions of experience, thought, and action. Errors in the cultural mind can lead to distortions in the development of the culture and to social and personal pathologies. I contend that our modern Western cultural mind undermines the humanistic dimension of the culture, and ultimately the whole culture, by a restricted view of our knowledge‐yielding powers and the resulting impoverished view of reality. The mission of philosophy today is to point out the errors in our cultural mind and to work for a humanistic cultural reformation. (shrink)

I explore how considerations about psychological damage connect with moral theories.