Online research in philosophy

Psychoanalysis has long cited poetry as the expressive vehicle for unconscious production. This article addresses the sexual politics of psychoanalysis's conjoining of poetry and the "feminine." The argument of this text is that the coupling of the "feminine" and the poetic in Lacanian discourse is a metaphorical double cross which most often leaves "woman" at a loss for words.

Cloned organisms can be genetically altered so that they do not exhibit higher brain functioning. This form of therapeutic cloning allows for genetically identical organs and tissues to be harvested from the clone for the use of the organism that is cloned. “Spare parts” cloning promises many opportunities for future medical advances. What is the ontological and ethical status of spare parts, headless clones? This paper attempts to answer this question from the perspective of Aristotle’s view of the soul. Aristotle’s metaphysics as applied to his view of biological essences generates an ethic that can contribute to moral reasoning regarding the use of headless spare parts clones. The task of this paper is to show the implications that Aristotle’s view of the soul, if it is true, would have on the ethics of headless, spare parts cloning.

How should the metaphysical hypothesis of materialism be formulated? What strategies look promising for defending this hypothesis? How good are the prospects for its successful defense, especially in light of the infamous “hard problem” of phenomenal consciousness? I will say something about each of these questions.

The paper begins by considering David Armstrong's beautiful paper 'The Headless Woman Illusion and the Defence of Materialism', which conjectures how we get the illusion that there are non-physical qualia. There are discussions of other metaphysical illusions, that there is a passage of time, that we have libertarian free will, and that consciousness is ineffable (which last also relates to Armstrong), and of their possible explanations. Moral: avoid appeal to so called intuition or phenomenology.