In this chapter, the author provides an alternative, Ojibwe‐centered lens through which to view the Avatar: The Last Airbender ( ATLA ) show, as well as explores the importance of non‐Western narratives for youth who come from non‐Western traditions by comparing the unique worldview and history presented in ATLA with an Anishinaabe worldview. Mary Makoons Geniusz defines Anishinaabe as “the self‐designation of several American Indian Peoples, including Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi”. A recurring theme in ATLA is the sense of balance, (...) spirituality, and interconnectedness in the world. Basil Johnston, an Ojibwe author, writes that, in an Ojibwe worldview, natural places like valleys, mountains, and woods each have a particular mood that reflects that location's “soul‐spirit”, the community of souls that reside there. (shrink)

WITTGENSTEIN, PHILOSOPHY, AND ETHICS Our task is only to be impartial, ie we have only to show up the ways philosophy is biased and to correct them, ...

Johnston presents an argument for a form of immortality that divests the notion of any supernatural elements. The book is packed with illuminating philosophical reflection on the question of what we are, and what it is for us to persist over time.

Although the quality and effectiveness of mental health treatments and services have improved greatly over the past 50 years, therapeutic revolutions in psychiatry have not yet been able to reduce stigma. Stigma is a risk factor leading to negative mental health outcomes. It is responsible for treatment seeking delays and reduces the likelihood that a mentally ill patient will receive adequate care. It is evident that delay due to stigma can have devastating consequences. This review will discuss the causes and (...) consequences of stigma related to mental illness. (shrink)

Frege maintains that there are not two distinct acts, assertion and denial; rather, denying p is one and the same as asserting not-p. Wittgenstein appears not to recognise this identity in Frege, attributing to him the contrary view that a proposition may have one of two verbs, "is true" or "is false". This paper explains Wittgenstein’s attribution as a consequence of Frege’s treatment of content as theoretically prior to the act of judgment. Where content is prior to judgment, the denial (...) of p—what is rejected in asserting p—is distinct from the assertion of not-p. Wittgenstein’s own embrace of Frege’s identity is then considered, an embrace explained in part by his repudiation of Frege’s theoretical order. (shrink)

Since 1980, the number of twin births in the United States has increased 76 percent, and the number of triplets or higher‐order multiples has increased over 400 percent. These increases are due in part to increased maternal age, which is associated with spontaneous twinning. But the primary reason for these increases is that more and more people are undergoing fertility treatment. Despite an emerging (but not absolute) consensus in the medical literature that multiples, including twins, should be a far less (...) frequent outcome of fertility treatment, American clinicians currently practice fertility medicine in ways likely to result in twins and, occasionally, triplets—often, they tell us, at the request of their patients. At first blush, one might conclude that these practice patterns show that patients and their doctors have weighed the risks associated with twins against the benefits of swiftly completing their families and decided that the risks are worth taking. That is, their requests for twins must represent their free and informed choices. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this interpretation, including that the preferences of many patients seem to be very strongly shaped, if not sometimes completely constrained, by concerns about costs—costs that mainly result from the routine exclusion of in vitro fertilization from health insurance coverage. It is quite possible, we believe, that these cost concerns actually undermine the autonomy of fertility patients, pushing many of them to take risks with their health and the health of their hoped‐for future children. (shrink)

Since 1980, the number of twin births in the United States has increased 76 percent, and the number of triplets or higher-order multiples has increased over 400 percent. These increases are due in part to increased maternal age, which is associated with spontaneous twinning. But the primary reason for these increases is that more and more people are undergoing fertility treatment. Despite an emerging (but not absolute) consensus in the medical literature that multiples, including twins, should be a far less (...) frequent outcome of fertility treatment, American clinicians currently practice fertility medicine in ways likely to result in twins and, occasionally, triplets-often, they tell us, at the request of their patients. At first blush, one might conclude that these practice patterns show that patients and their doctors have weighed the risks associated with twins against the benefits of swiftly completing their families and decided that the risks are worth taking. That is, their requests for twins must represent their free and informed choices. But there are reasons to be skeptical of this interpretation, including that the preferences of many patients seem to be very strongly shaped, if not sometimes completely constrained, by concerns about costs-costs that mainly result from the routine exclusion of in vitro fertilization from health insurance coverage. It is quite possible, we believe, that these cost concerns actually undermine the autonomy of fertility patients, pushing many of them to take risks with their health and the health of their hoped-for future children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

The consequences of stigma are preventable. We argue that individual attention should be provided to patients when dealing with stigma. Also, in order to deal with the impact of stigma on an individual basis, it needs to be assessed during routine clinical examinations, quantified and followed up to observe whether or not treatment can reduce its impact. A patient-centric anti-stigma programme that delivers the above is urgently needed. To this end, this review explores the experiences, treatment barriers and consequences due (...) to stigma. We also offer putative solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Like dreaming, hallucination has been a formative trope for modern philosophy. The vivid, often tragic, breakdown in the mind’s apparent capacity to disclose reality has long served to support a paradoxical philosophical picture of sensory experience. This picture, which of late has shaped the paradigmatic empirical understanding the senses, displays sensory acts as already complete without the external world; complete in that the direct objects even of veridical sensory acts do not transcend what we could anyway hallucinate. Hallucination is thus (...) the mother of Representationalism, which insists that it is mental intermediaries that make other.. (shrink)

As imaging technologies help us understand the structure and function of the brain, providing insight into human capabilities as basic as vision and as complex as memory, and human conditions as impairing as depression and as fraught as psychopathy, some have asked whether they can also help us understand human agency. Specifically, could neuroimaging lead us to reassess the socially significant practice of assigning and taking responsibility?While responsibility itself is not a psychological process open to investigation through neuroimaging, decision‐making is. (...) Over the past decade, different researchers and scholars have sought to use neuroimaging (or the results of neuroimaging studies) to investigate what is going on in the brain when we make decisions. The results of this research raise the question whether neuroscience—especially now that it includes neuroimaging—can and should alter our understandings of responsibility and our related practice of holding people responsible. It is this question that we investigate here. (shrink)

In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as (...) false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving God in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death. (shrink)

The _Mozi_ is a key philosophical work written by a major social and political thinker of the fifth century B.C.E. It is one of the few texts to survive the Warring States period and is crucial to understanding the origins of Chinese philosophy and two other foundational works, the _Mengzi_ and the _Xunzi_. Ian Johnston provides an English translation of the entire _Mozi_, as well as the first bilingual edition in any European language to be published in the West. (...) His careful translation reasserts the significance of the text's central doctrines, and his annotations and contextual explanations add vivid historical and interpretive dimensions. Part 1 of the _Mozi_ is called the "Epitomes" and contains seven short essays on the elements of Mohist doctrine. Part 2, the "Core Doctrines," establishes the ten central tenets of Mo Zi's ethical, social, and political philosophy, while articulating his opposition to Confucianism. Part 3, the "Canons and Explanations," comprises observations on logic, language, disputation, ethics, science, and other matters, written particularly in defense of Mohism. Part 4, the "Dialogues," presents lively conversations between Master Mo and various disciples, philosophical opponents, and potential patrons. Part 5, the "Defense Chapters," details the principles and practices of defensive warfare, a subject on which Master Mo was an acknowledged authority. Now available to English-speaking readers of all backgrounds, the Mozi is a rich and varied text, and this bilingual edition provides an excellent tool for learning classical Chinese. (shrink)

The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of criticism has come from proponents of the so-called biological boundaries approach to learning. These theorists have presented a variety of data showing that supposedly general laws of learning may in fact be limited in their applicability to different species and learning tasks, and they argue that the limitations are drawn (...) by the nature of each species' adaptation to the particular requirements of its natural environment. The biological boundaries approach has served an important critical function in the move away from general process learning theory, but it is limited in its ability to provide an alternative to the general process approach. In particular, the biological boundaries approach lacks generality, it is in some respects subservient to the general process tradition, and its ecological content is in too many cases limited toex post factoadaptive explanations of learning skills. A contrasting, ecological approach to learning, which can provide a true alternative to general process theory, is presented. The ecological approach begins by providing an ecological task description for naturally occurring instances of learning; this step answers the question:Whatdoes this animal learn to do? The next step is an analysis of the means by which learning occurs in the course of development, answering the question:Howdoes the animal learn to do this? On the basis of such analyses, local principles of adaptation are formulated to account for the learning abilities of individual species. More global principles are sought by generalization among these local principles and may form the basis for a general ecological theory of learning. (shrink)

Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines--European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience-- Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy (...) and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions. Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science. (shrink)

This article examines the Dobsonian Telescope as an object of material culture, showing how starting with the materiality of a scientific instrument opens up new perspectives that are lost by focusing purely on its instrumentality. It argues that the simple design and homely materials of the Dobsonian telescope, as well as the gestures that it requires from its users, are at the core of its significance to the popularization of amateur astronomy and amateur telescope making.

Weight-gain in psychiatric populations is a common clinical challenge. Many patients suffering from mental disorders, when exposed to psychotropic medications, gain significant weight with or without other side-effects. In addition to reducing the patients' willingness to comply with treatment, this weight-gain may create added psychological or physiological problems that need to be addressed. Thus, it is critical that clinicians take precautions to monitor and control weight-gain and take into account and treat all problems facing an individual. In this review, we (...) examine some of the key issues surrounding weight-gain in individuals suffering from mental disorders for contemporary practitioners in community clinics. We describe some factors known to make certain patients more susceptible to treatment-induced weight-gain and mechanisms implicated in this process. We also highlight a few psychological and pharmacological interventions that have proven effective in weight management. Importantly, we provide critical steps for management and prevention of weight-gain and related issues in the clinical practice of psychopharmacology. (shrink)

This paper traces how media representations encouraged enthusiasts, youth and skilled volunteers to participate actively in science and technology during the twentieth century. It assesses how distinctive discourses about scientific amateurs positioned them with respect to professionals in shifting political and cultural environments. In particular, the account assesses the seminal role of a periodical, Scientific American magazine, in shaping and championing an enduring vision of autonomous scientific enthusiasms. Between the 1920s and 1970s, editors Albert G. Ingalls and Clair L. Stong (...) shepherded generations of adult ‘amateur scientists’. Their columns and books popularized a vision of independent nonprofessional research that celebrated the frugal ingenuity and skills of inveterate tinkerers. Some of these attributes have found more recent expression in present-day ‘maker culture’. The topic consequently is relevant to the historiography of scientific practice, science popularization and science education. Its focus on independent nonprofessionals highlights political dimensions of agency and autonomy that have often been implicit for such historical (and contemporary) actors. The paper argues that the Scientific American template of adult scientific amateurism contrasted with other representations: those promoted by earlier periodicals and by a science education organization, Science Service, and by the national demands for recruiting scientific labour during and after the Second World War. The evidence indicates that advocates of the alternative models had distinctive goals and adapted their narrative tactics to reach their intended audiences, which typically were conceived as young persons requiring instruction or mentoring. By contrast, the monthly Scientific American columns established a long-lived and stable image of the independent lay scientist. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most interesting and important philosophers working today, known chiefly for his theoretical explorations of popular culture and contemporary politics. This book focuses on the generally neglected and often overshadowed philosophical core of Žižek’s work—an essential component in any true appreciation of this unique thinker’s accomplishment. His central concern, Žižek has proclaimed, is to use psychoanalysis to redeploy the insights of late-modern German philosophy, in particular, the thought of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. By taking this (...) avowal seriously, Adrian Johnston finally clarifies the philosophical project underlying Žižek’s efforts. His book charts the interlinked ontology and theory of subjectivity constructed by Žižek at the intersection of German idealism and Lacanian theory. Johnston also uses Žižek’s combination of philosophy and psychoanalysis to address two perennial philosophical problems: the relationship of mind and body, and the nature of human freedom. By bringing together the past two centuries of European philosophy, psychoanalytic metapsychology, and cutting-edge work in the natural sciences, Johnston develops a transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity—in short, an account of how more-than-material forms of subjectivity can emerge from a corporeal being. His work shows how an engagement with Žižek’s philosophy can produce compelling answers to today’s most vexing and urgent questions as inherited from the history of ideas. (shrink)

In 2013, the U.S. National Institutes of Health funded four large interdisciplinary research projects exploring the “implications, challenges and opportunities associated with the possible use of g...

The narratives that emerging adults wrote about a time when they learned an important moral, value or lesson were explored in order to determine the characteristics of events that lead to internalized values as well as to compare the way different kinds of moral values are socialized. Lessons resulting from misbehavior were reported most frequently. Those involving direct teaching of values were most highly internalized, with internalization assessed by importance and current impact. Self-reflection and self-generation of values was identified as (...) a key means to value learning and was reported more frequently than any other source of values (e.g., parents, peers). Finally, it appears that a framework for understanding socialization that involves different domains can reflect how individuals categorize their value-learning experiences. (shrink)

ABSTRACTZalabardo argues that the Tractatus makes an important contribution towards explaining how a representation doesn¹t merely introduce various objects, but furthermore represents them as comb...

Some difficulties arise when considering the 1930 encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI, Casti connubii, and the 1997 Vademecum for Confessors in light of the consistent teaching of the magisterium on the intrinsic evil of every contraceptive act. One difficulty is how to reconcile certain teachings of these two documents, which clearly allow for some sort of cooperation with a spouse who voluntarily renders the marital act infecund, with the absolute prohibition against formally acting in a contraceptive manner. The author (...) provides a care­ful reading of the documents that takes into account related magisterial and curial decisions, and shows that the documents reveal a consistent teaching. The teaching permits a certain limited cooperation with a spouse who renders the marital act infecund in a so-called natural way (e.g., natural onanism, or withdrawal) but excludes active material cooperation in sexual acts with a spouse who employs a condom or its equivalent. This teaching has relevance to recent debates about the prophylactic use of condoms among spouses. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.2 (Summer 2011): 301–328. (shrink)

On the formation of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Glasgow. -/- When the University of Glasgow’s new 'Crichton College' opened its doors in September 1999, its small staff had that rare opportunity in an academic’s career to launch a new curriculum based on clearly enunciated ideals. In the following six years under the direction of Professor Rex C. Taylor, those ideals remained firm even as numbers grew and external circumstances mutated. The theme of this book concerns (...) the ideas, activities and problems – intellectual, curricular and administrative – that shaped the University of Glasgow Crichton Campus during its first six years. Its dozen contributors provide varied perspectives on the problems of creation. (shrink)

In this paper we look at the suitability of modern interval-based temporal logic for modeling John Buridan’s treatment of tensed sentences in his Sophismata. Building on the paper, we develop Buridan’s analysis of temporal logic, paying particular attention to his notions of negation and the absolute/relative nature of the future and the past.We introduce a number of standard modern propositional interval temporal logics to illustrate where Buridan’s interval-based temporal analysis differs from the standard modern approaches. We give formal proofs of (...) some claims in, and sketch how the standard modern systems could be defined in terms of Buridan’s proposals, showing that his logic can be taken as more basic. In diesem Aufsatz betrachten wir das Geeignetsein einer modernen intervallbasierten temporalen Logik für die Modellierung von John Buridans Behandlung zeitabhängiger Sätze in seinen Sophismata. Aufbauend auf den Aufsatz stellen wir Buridans Analyse der temporalen Logik dar, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Begriffe der Negation und der absoluten/relativen Natur der Zukunft und der Vergangenheit. Wir führen einige standardmäßige moderne intervallbasierte temporale Aussagenlogiken ein, um zu illustrieren, wo Buridans intervallbasierte temporale Analyse von den standardmäßigen modernen Zugangsweisen abweicht. Wir geben formale Beweise einiger Behauptungen in an und skizzieren, wie die standardmäßigen modernen Systeme im Sinne der Vorschläge Buridans definiert werden könnten; wir zeigen damit, dass seine Logik als die grundlegendere aufgefasst werden kann. (shrink)

Faces carry key personal information about individuals, including cues to their identity, social traits, and emotional state. Much research to date has employed static images of faces taken under tightly controlled conditions yet faces in the real world are dynamic and experienced under ambient conditions. A common approach to studying key dimensions of facial variation is the use of facial caricatures. However, such techniques have again typically relied on static images, and the few examples of dynamic caricatures have relied on (...) animating graphical head models. Here, we present a principal component analysis -based active appearance model for capturing patterns of spatiotemporal variation in videos of natural dynamic facial behaviours. We demonstrate how this technique can be applied to generate dynamic anti-caricatures of biological motion patterns in facial behaviours. This technique could be extended to caricaturing other facial dimensions, or to more general analyses of spatiotemporal variations in dynamic faces. (shrink)