According to two critics, Georgia Warnke and John Caputo, Gadamer's hermeneutics is inherently "conservative" insofar as he appeals to tradition as a constituent in understanding. They insist that he simply preserves the ideals, norms and values of the Western metaphysical tradition without critically examining them. I do not agree and will argue that views like this depend upon several false assumptions -- for example, that Gadamer reifies the text as a "thing-in-itself" and remains trapped in subjectivism. I will begin by (...) examining some of the ways in which these charges might be warranted before proceeding to defend him. (shrink)

Are human beings essentially good or evil? Immanuel Kant responds, “[H]e [man] is as much the one as the other, partly good, partly bad.” Given this, I’d like to explore the following: What does Kant mean by human nature and how is it possible to be both good and evil? What is “original sin” and does it place limits on free will? In what respect might Kant’s views be significant for non-believers? More specifically, is Kant saying that human beings need (...) God in order to be good or is morality possible without faith? (shrink)

Multimodal prehabilitation is increasingly recognized as an important component of the pre-operative pathway in oncology. It aims to optimize physical and psychological health through delivery of a series of tailored interventions including exercise, nutrition, and psychological support. At the core of this prescription is a need for considerable health behavior change, to ensure that patients are engaged with and adhere to these interventions and experience the associated benefits. To date the prehabilitation literature has focused on testing the efficacy of devised (...) exercise and nutritional interventions with a primary focus on physiological and mechanistic outcomes with little consideration for the role of behavioral science, supporting individual behavior change or optimizing patient engagement. Changing health behavior is complex and to maximize success, prehabilitation programs should draw on latest insights from the field of behavioral science. Behavioral science offers extensive knowledge on theories and models of health behavior change to further advance intervention effectiveness. Similarly, interventions developed with a person-centered approach, taking into consideration individual needs and preferences will increase engagement. In this article, we will provide an overview of the extent to which the existing prehabilitation literature incorporates behavioral science, as well as studies that have explored patient's attitudes toward prehabilitation. We will go on to describe and critique ongoing trials in a variety of contexts within oncology prehabilitation and discuss how current scientific knowledge may be enhanced from a behavioral science perspective. We will also consider the role of “surgery schools” and detail practical recommendations that can be embedded in existing or emerging clinical settings. (shrink)

My objective here is to give an account of self-deprecating humor—examining what works, what doesn't, and why—and to reflect on the significance of the audience response. More specifically, I will be focusing not only on the purpose or intention behind self-deprecating jokes, but considering how their consequences might render them successful or unsuccessful. For example, under what circumstances does self-deprecation tend to put listeners at ease, and when is this type of humor more likely to put people off? I will (...) also consider the ways in which self-deprecating jokes are similar to gallows humor, and the extent to which context counts. The target or "butt" of these jokes, in cases of self-deprecation as well as gallows humor, will be explored; as will whether or not the audience bears some responsibility or has a role to play in the ultimate success or failure of a joke. For instance, is the audience role a completely receptive and passive one? Is the joker/jokee relationship one which confers no responsibility on the listener whatsoever? Or, do listeners have an obligation to respond with appreciative laughter to mere attempts at humor, especially the self-deprecating sort, by accepting such levity in the spirit in which it is intended? Does this mean that being a good sport—responding generously or appreciatively when a well-intentioned joke fails to land—would be a habit worth cultivating? If so and courtesy laughter or a playful appreciation of self-deprecating humor is something that can be cultivated, what specifically would that entail? In sum, although I cannot fully or definitively answer each and every one of these questions, I do hope to provide some provisional responses. To better situate the nature of self-deprecation, I will not only provide a brief description of the gallows genre, I will also explore two traditional theories of humor. Those that are particularly relevant, to both gallows and self-deprecating humor are Freud's relief theory and the incongruity view. In addition, I will identify what I believe to be the three essential ingredients of successful self-deprecation and, finally, will conclude with the argument that audiences or listeners do have an important role to play. And, moreover, that generous, appreciative laughter can and should be cultivated—even though this is something that will largely depend on one's personal history and habits, dispositional character and cultural background. (shrink)

Foveated stimuli receive visual processing that is quantitatively and qualitatively different from nonfoveated stimuli. At normal interpersonal distances, people move their eyes around another’s face so that certain features receive foveal processing; on any given fixation, other features therefore project extrafoveally. Yet little is known about the processing of extrafoveally presented facial features, how informative those extrafoveally presented features are for face perception (e.g., for assessing another’s emotion), or what processes extract task-relevant (e.g., emotion-related) cues from facial features that first (...) appear outside the fovea, and how these processes are implemented in the brain. (shrink)

There is a tendency to prune the record of restrictions on the freedom of thought and expression in fifth-century Athens. K. J. Dover has demonstrated that many of the stories of attacks on intellectuals rest on little more than flimsy speculation. Similarly there has been a reluctance to accept the historicity of the several restrictions on comedy recorded by scholiasts. Thus, for example, H. B. Mattingly has expressed doubts about Morychides' decree, and S. Halliwell has rejected Antimachus' decree as a (...) fiction and has adopted an agnostic attitude towards Syracosius' decree. But one cannot sweep all the references aside as fallacious inferences. This short paper looks first at the evidence that Cleon initiated a legal action against Aristophanes after the production of the The Babylonians, in the light of what the Old Oligarch wrote about curbs on comedians. Secondly, the historicity of Syracosius' decree will be tested by an attempt to define its nature and purpose in its political context. This exercise will show that circumstantial evidence adduced against the historicity of the decree has no compelling force. (shrink)

Eliciting negative stereotypes about ageing commonly results in worse performance on many physical, memory, and cognitive tasks in adults aged over 65. The current studies explored the potential effect of this “stereotype threat” phenomenon on older adults’ emotion recognition, a cognitive ability that has been demonstrated to decline with age. In Study 1, stereotypes about emotion recognition ability across the lifespan were established. In Study 2, these stereotypes were utilised in a stereotype threat manipulation that framed an emotion recognition task (...) as assessing either cognitive ability, social ability, or general abilities. Participants then completed an emotion recognition task in which they labelled dynamic expressions of negative and positive emotions. Self-reported threat concerns were also measured. Framing an emotion recognition task as assessing cognitive ability significantly heightened older adults’ reports of stereotype threat concerns. Despite this, older adults’ emotion recognition performance was unaffected. Unlike other cognitive abilities, recognising facially expressed emotions may be unaffected by stereotype threat, possibly because emotion recognition is automatic, making it less susceptible to the cognitive load that stereotype threat produces. (shrink)

The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...) our normative concepts can be mirrored by the imagined community? E.g., the realist might claim that using our concepts is what we ought to do if we are to describe normative facts correctly, but members of the other community can claim the same about their concepts, using their own concept of ought. A promising approach to this challenge is to try to rule out the possibility of alternative normative concepts, by arguing that any concepts that have the same normative role must share a reference as well. In this paper I argue that normative quasi-naturalism, a view that combines expressivism about normative discourse with a naturalist metaphysics of normativity, supports referential normativity and solves the problem of alternative normative concepts. (shrink)

While often presented as promising assistive technologies for motor-impaired users, electroencephalography (EEG)-based Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) remain barely used outside laboratories due to low reliability in real-life conditions. There is thus a need to design long-term reliable BCIs that can be used outside-of-the-lab by end-users, e.g., severely motor-impaired ones. Therefore, we propose and evaluate the design of a multi-class Mental Task (MT)-based BCI for longitudinal training (20 sessions over 3 months) of a tetraplegic user for the CYBATHLON BCI series 2019. In (...) this BCI championship, tetraplegic pilots are mentally driving a virtual car in a racing video game. We aimed at combining a progressive user MT-BCI training with a newly designed machine learning pipeline based on adaptive Riemannian classifiers shown to be promising for real-life applications. We followed a two step training process: the first 11 sessions served to train the user to control a 2-class MT-BCI by performing either two cognitive tasks (REST and MENTAL SUBTRACTION) or two motor-imagery tasks (LEFT-HAND and RIGHT-HAND). The second training step (9 remaining sessions) applied an adaptive, session-independent Riemannian classifier that combined all 4 MT classes used before. Moreover, as our Riemannian classifier was incrementally updated in an unsupervised way it would capture both within and between-session non-stationarity. Experimental evidences confirm the effectiveness of this approach. Namely, the classification accuracy improved by about 30% at the end of the training compared to initial sessions. We also studied the neural correlates of this performance improvement. Using a newly proposed BCI user learning metric, we could show our user learned to improve his BCI control by producing EEG signals matching increasingly more the BCI classifier training data distribution, rather than by improving his EEG class discrimination. However, the resulting improvement was effective only on synchronous (cue-based) BCI and it did not translate into improved CYBATHLON BCI game performances. For the sake of overcoming this in the future, we unveil possible reasons for these limited gaming performances and identify a number of promising future research directions. Importantly, we also report on the evolution of the user's neurophysiological patterns and user experience throughout the BCI training and competition. (shrink)

BackgroundOver the past decade, the exponential growth of the literature devoted to personalized medicine has been paralleled by an ever louder chorus of epistemic and ethical criticisms. Their differences notwithstanding, both advocates and critics share an outdated philosophical understanding of the concept of personhood and hence tend to assume too simplistic an understanding of personalization in health care.MethodsIn this article, we question this philosophical understanding of personhood and personalization, as these concepts shape the field of personalized medicine. We establish a (...) dialogue with phenomenology and hermeneutics (especially with E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty and P. Ricoeur) in order to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the meaning of these concepts We particularly focus on the relationship between personal subjectivity and objective data.ResultsWe first explore the gap between the ideal of personalized healthcare and the reality of today’s personalized medicine. We show that the nearly exclusive focus of personalized medicine on the objective part of personhood leads to a flawed ethical debate that needs to be reframed. Second, we seek to contribute to this reframing by drawing on the phenomenological-hermeneutical movement in philosophy. Third, we show that these admittedly theoretical analyses open up new conceptual possibilities to tackle the very practical ethical challenges that personalized medicine faces.ConclusionFinally, we propose a reversal: if personalization is a continuous process by which the person reappropriates all manner of objective data, giving them meaning and thereby shaping his or her own way of being human, then personalized medicine, rather than being personalized itself, can facilitate personalization of those it serves through the data it provides. (shrink)

Simone Weil's ideas proved fundamental for Iris Murdoch, opening up a difficult path of thought for one rooted in the British philosophical tradition in the 1950s (Sim 1985, Bok 2005, Lovibond 2011a, Panizza 2022a, Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman 2022). Grasping the Weilian-inspired moral theory of attention sketched by Iris Murdoch is a prerequisite for comprehending the development of her moral ideas (Panizza 2015, Broackes 2012) and the form they may take in her literary writings (Griffin 1993, Morgan 2006). This paper (...) argues that we can read an expression of Simone Weil in Iris Murdoch's novels which articulate her notions of grace and gravity, but also convey the Weilian insights that shape Murdoch's moral perfectionism. It investigates three of Murdoch's well-known male protagonists, i.e., Bradley Pearson, Charles Arrowby and Hilary Burde, so as to comprehend how their moral failures relate to a defective implementation of the concepts of love and attention as theorised by Simone Weil as leading to goodness. Hence, it offers a new examination of the way in which the Murdochian literary staging of inattention as a cause of moral deficiency reveals its Weilian-based ethics of attention. (shrink)

A la fin du XIXe siècle, alors que l'Europe assiste au retour triomphal de la métaphysique dont Henri Bergson est une figure de proue, sur le positivisme, l'Espagne de la Restauration bourbonienne fait figure de résistante. La répartition bipolaire de l'intellectualité espagnole, entre les conservateurs néo-thomistes et les réformateurs de plus en plus attirés par la psychologie scientifique notamment, rend le dialogue primordialement impossible avec le bergsonisme. Seul Leopoldo Alas, dit Clarin, tente alors de faire entendre la "philosophie nouvelle", dans (...) son pays. Après que le bergsonisme a été boudé durant ces premières décennies d'existence par l'Espagne, la crise théologique moderniste de 1907 précipite son entrée dans la péninsule. Les premiers acteurs "philosophiques" du bergsonisme sont anti-bergsoniens et catholiques. Cet anti-bergsonisme religieux se double d'un rejet politique, pendant la Grande Guerre, principalement lors de la visite diplomatique de Bergson à Madrid, en mai 1916. Parallèlement, les réformateurs, férus de pédagogie, qui ont créé en 1876 la Institucion Libre de Ensenanza, découvrent la conceptualité bergsonienne qu'ils intègrent progressivement, entre 1900 et 1930, dans leur nouvelle science psychopédagogique. Toutefois, les grands acteurs espagnols de la régénération métaphysique sont les littéraires, les poètes symbolistes, appelés "modernistes" dans ce pays, puis les avant-gardes esthétiques. Ce sont eux qui métabolisent le bergsonisme en une (méta-)physique intime et organique. Ce n'est que dans un second temps, dans les années 1910, et non sans obstacles, que les spécialistes espagnols de philosophie intègrent et diffusent le bergsonisme. (shrink)

Training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is mandated for select trainees supported by federal funds. RCR Instructors typically address standards and accepted practices for the planning, conduct and reporting of academic research. While this focus may be relevant to future academic scientists, the majority of science graduate students pursue careers in non-academic employment sectors (e.g., government, non-profit, industry). The ethical and regulatory conventions, norms and expectations of the academic setting may not always transfer to other work environments. As (...) such, educators should focus less on answering specific questions about standards and practices in academia, and instead design ethics education to actively engage students in a learning process that prepares them with the skills to identify and navigate ethical dimensions in a wide range of possible science professions. This paper introduces the principles of andragogy and provides recommendations for educators to consider when designing research ethics education for graduate students seeking cross-sector science careers. By applying principles that resonate with adult learning and integrating strategies that promote self-directed and life-long learning (e.g., reflective practice and collaborative projects), professional and research ethics instructional effectiveness may be enhanced. (shrink)

There is growing interest in tissue procurement for cancer research through autopsy. Establishing an autopsy/tissue donation programme for breast cancer research within an academic medical centre i...

Background: When adolescent boys experience close, secure relationships with their parents and peers, the implications are potentially far reaching, including lower levels of mental health problems in adolescence and young adulthood. Here we use rare prospective intergenerational data to extend our understanding of the impact of adolescent attachments on subsequent postpartum mental health problems in early fatherhood.Methods: At age 17–18 years, we used an abbreviated Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment to assess trust, communication, and alienation reported by 270 male (...) participants in their relationships with mothers, fathers, and peers. More than a decade later, we assessed the adult males, now fathers, at 12 months postpartum for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. Logistic regression was used to examine the extent to which attachment dimensions predicted paternal postpartum mental health, adjusting for potential confounding, and with assessment for interactions between parent and peer attachments.Results: Trust in mothers and peers, and good communication with fathers during adolescence, were associated with 5 to 7 percentage point reductions in postpartum mental health symptoms in early fatherhood. Weak evidence of parent-peer interactions suggested secure attachments with either parent or peer may compensate for an insecure attachment with the other.Conclusions: Our results suggest that fostering trust and communication in relationships that adolescent boys have with parents and peers may have substantial effects on rates of paternal postpartum mental health problems. The protective benefits may be preventative in intergenerational cycles of risk for mental health problems. (shrink)

Niedenthal et al. discuss the importance of eye gaze in embodied simulation and, more globally, in the processing of emotional visual stimulation (such as facial expression). In this commentary, we illustrate the relationship between oriented eye movements, consciousness, and emotion by using the case of severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma (i.e., vegetative and minimally conscious patients).

Selon Félix Guattari les systèmes de coercition matériels sont progressivement remplacés au XX e siècle par des techniques de « modelage des systèmes perceptifs », à la fois plus douces et plus prenantes. Pour rendre compte de cette théorie de la socialisation de la perception et des ses enjeux socio-politiques nous nous focalisons sur la perception du visage d’autrui en soulignant l’ensemble des biais perceptifs (notamment racistes) identifiés par Guattari. Une étude approfondie des modalités d’apprentissage perceptif permet d’actualiser une dimension (...) souvent inaperçue de la pensée de Guattari. (shrink)

Quoi que nous nous efforcions de penser, nous continuons d'appartenir à notre siècle par Les croyances les plus communes et, quand cela a lieu, par le fait tout aussi commun de ne plus croire - ou de ne pas donner notre confiance au monde. Nos pères se sont tant méfiés, ou ils ont été à ce point cyniques, que cette foi, entendue dans son sens large, semble nous être aujourd'hui interdite. À nous qui avons hérité de cette perte sans l'avoir (...) consommée, ne restent que les débris d'une tradition devenue muette. Or la foi est vitale, et pas seulement la croyance religieuse. Mais dans une époque désorientée, nous ne pourrons peut-être sauver que le désir de croire : rien ne nous dit que nous retrouverons la croyance. Le paradoxe veut que cette impuissance annonce un temps de dangereuse crédulité. Il nous faut donc tout réapprendre. C'est à cette tâche que la philosophie doit s'atteler en prenant le contrepied de son éternelle tendance : en se mettant en quête de croire aussi résolument qu'elle avait cherché à savoir. La traversée du nihilisme est à ce prix."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Resumo: O texto aqui apresentado analisa aspectos relevantes da complexa relação que Bergson estabelece com Kant. Defende-se a hipótese de que Bergson não pode ser considerado mero adversário do filósofo alemão, mas seu projeto filosófico tem como objetivo retomar a metafísica, levando em consideração os limites que a crítica kantiana lhe impôs. Nesse sentido, a Crítica da Razão Pura, à qual Bergson dedicou sua atenção, serve de guia e apoio para a colocação das questões propriamente metafísicas, as quais a filosofia (...) da duração busca responder. Procuramos mostrar também que, se Bergson criticou Kant em vários momentos da sua obra, foi apenas na medida em que a Crítica o impedia e impedia os outros de avançar. A relação entre as interdições kantianas para a razão especulativa e as ilusões da inteligência dissolvidas em A Evolução Criadora revela como Kant condensa ilusões que existiam antes dele e que, nesse sentido, Bergson não é nem pré-crítico, nem pós-kantiano. Em suma, defendemos que Bergson desloca as análises críticas e rompe com Kant do interior de sua filosofia, que ele divide em duas tendências - uma que ele rejeita, como antiga, outra da qual ele se apropria.: This paper examines important aspects of Bergson's complex relationship with Kant. Our hypothesis defends that Bergson can not be considered a mere opponent of Kant, but that instead his philosophical project aims to renew metaphysics, taking into account the limits that the Kantian critique has imposed. In this sense, the Critique of Pure Reason, to which Bergson devoted his attention, serves as a guide and support for reworking metaphysical questions that the philosophy of duration seeks to answer. We have also shown that if Bergson criticized Kant at various points in his work, it was only to the extent that the Critique was an impediment to moving forward. The relation between Kantian interdictions to speculative reason and the illusions of intelligence dissolved by the analysis of Creative Evolution shows how Kant condenses illusions that existed before him. In in this sense, Bergson is neither pre-critical nor post-Kantian. To sum up, we argue that Bergson displaces critical analysis and breaks with Kant from the inside of Kant's philosophy, which Bergson divides into two tendencies, one that he rejects as old, another that he accepts. (shrink)

Background COVID-19 has greatly impacted the health of incarcerated individuals in the US. The goal of this study was to examine perspectives of recently incarcerated individuals on greater restrictions on liberty to mitigate COVID-19 transmission.Methods We conducted semi-structured phone interviews from August through October 2021 with 21 people who had been incarcerated in Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities during the pandemic. Transcripts were coded and analyzed, using a thematic analysis approach.Results Many facilities implemented universal “lockdowns,” with time out of the (...) cell often limited to one hour per day, with participants reporting not being able to meet all essential needs such as showers and calling loved ones. Several study participants reported that repurposed spaces and tents created for quarantine and isolation provided “unlivable conditions.” Participants reported receiving no medical attention while in isolation, and staff using spaces designated for disciplinary purposes (e.g., solitary housing units) for public health isolation purposes. This resulted in the conflation of isolation and discipline, which discouraged symptom reporting. Some participants felt guilty over potentially causing another lockdown by not reporting their symptoms. Programming was frequently stopped or curtailed and communication with the outside was limited. Some participants relayed that staff threatened to punish noncompliance with masking and testing. Liberty restrictions were purportedly rationalized by staff with the idea that incarcerated people should not expect freedoms, while those incarcerated blamed staff for bringing COVID-19 into the facility.Conclusions Our results highlighted how actions by staff and administrators decreased the legitimacy of the facilities’ COVID-19 response and were sometimes counterproductive. Legitimacy is key in building trust and obtaining cooperation with otherwise unpleasant but necessary restrictive measures. To prepare for future outbreaks facilities must consider the impact of liberty-restricting decisions on residents and build legitimacy for these decisions by communicating justifications to the extent possible. (shrink)

This book is a call to educators everywhere to recognize and resist the global forces which are driving educational policy deeper and deeper into narrow discourses of performance, accountability and e~certaintiese(tm) about what works.