Do political concerns belong in psychodynamic treatment? How do class and politics shape the unconscious? The effects of an increasingly polarized, insecure and threatening world mean that the ideologically enforced split between the political order and personal life is becoming difficult to sustain. This book explores the impact of the social and political domains at the individual level. The contributions included in this volume describe how issues of class and politics, and the intense emotions they engender, emerge in the clinical (...) setting and how psychotherapists can respectfully address them rather than deny their significance. They demonstrate how clinicians need to take into account the complex convergences between psychic and social reality in the clinical setting in order to help their patients understand the anxiety, fear, insecurity and anger caused by the complex relations of class and power. This examination of the psychodynamics of terror and aggression and the unconscious defences employed to deny reality offers powerful insights into the microscopic unconscious ways that ideology is enacted and lived. _Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics_ will be of interest to all mental health professionals interested in improving their understanding of the ideological factors that impede or facilitate critical and engaged citizenship. It has a valuable contribution to make to the psychoanalytic enterprise, as well as to related scholarly and professional disciplines. (shrink)

Waar de een zijn leven geeft voor een goed geweten, haalt de ander zijn schouders erover op. Het geweten: een achterhaald begrip of hard toe aan herwaardering?

Bestselling author of The Intention Experiment reveals the latest science that proves the extensive connectedness of mind, matter, and consciousness.

In this work we extend results from [4], [3] and [2] about propositional calculi with graded modalities to the predicative level. Our semantic is based on Kripke models with a single domain of interpretation for all the worlds. Therefore the axiomatic system will need a suitable generalization of the Barcan formula. We haven't considered semantics with world-relative domains because they don't present any new difficulties with respect to classical case. Our language will have, as in [1], constant and function symbols, (...) but they will have a rigid interpretation. In this instance the terms will be considered rigid designators, that is, their interpretations will be the same in all possible worlds (cfr. [5]). Nevertheless we will not consider languages with identity: in this way we avoid the problems of identity in modal contexts. On the other hand, we think that in that context would arise essentially the same problems which occur in classical predicative modal logic. Finally we will consider only denumerable languages because the extension to non denumerable ones isn't conceptually problematic. (shrink)

Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Human persons are constituted by bodies, without being identical to the bodies that constitute them—just as, I argue, statues are constituted by pieces of bronze, say, without being identical to the pieces of bronze that constitute them. The relation of constitution, therefore, is not peculiar to persons and their bodies, but is pervasive in the natural world.

J. S. Mill's role in the Indian education controversy is well known, but scarcely well understood. That he drafted, in 1836, a despatch sharply critical of Macaulay's infamous Minute on Indian Education, is general knowledge now. That in drafting the despatch Mill drew upon the ideas of H. H. Wilson, a noted Orientalist and sharp critic of Macaulay and the Anglicists, has been adequately demonstrated. That the despatch was never sent to India, because of the objections of the President of (...) the Board of Trade, John Hobhouse, a Whig with some utilitarian connections, has been common knowledge for several decades. (shrink)

Scholars have proposed a number of courses and programs intended to improve the ethical behavior of scientists in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the scientific enterprise. In the present study, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on 26 previous ethics program evaluation efforts, and the results showed that the overall effectiveness of ethics instruction was modest. The effects of ethics instruction, however, were related to a number of instructional program factors, such as course content and delivery methods, in (...) addition to factors of the evaluation study itself, such as the field of investigator and criterion measure utilized. An examination of the characteristics contributing to the relative effectiveness of instructional programs revealed that more successful programs were conducted as seminars separate from the standard curricula rather than being embedded in existing courses. Furthermore, more successful programs were case based and interactive, and they allowed participants to learn and practice the application of real-world ethical decision-making skills. The implications of these findings for future course development and evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

The research analyzes the teledentistry service applied in health services during COVID-19, studying the quality of the teledentistry service and the level of satisfaction of patients treated with this care model. A sample of 341 patients was worked on, using the SERVQUAL model. The results showed a statistically significant relationship between quality of service in teledentistry and patient satisfaction (p<0.05), where 34.9% patients perceived low quality of service and dissatisfaction, while 33.7% were pleased with the care. We conclude that, given (...) the dental health difficulties, the population of the Peruvian central jungle is dissatisfied with the teledentistry service. (shrink)

The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has the potential to eliminate or severely restrict access to legal abortion care in the United States. We a...

Se defiende la posibilidad de que el Estado sea tolerante cuando actúa como árbitro en los conflictos de tolerancia. Se consideran dos objeciones que dependen de cómo describimos los conflictos políticos y, en particular, los de tolerancia. Se presenta una teoría de descripciones políticas y cómo con ella podemos responder, de una ma-nera políticamente satisfactoria, a las dos objeciones que se plantean en el artículo. Con ello, se discute la relación entre la justificación de las acciones políticas en un contexto (...) normativo ideal y su justificación en los contextos más locales y no ideales donde ocurre la acción política. (shrink)

What is a human person, and what is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Baker's argument is based on the 'Constitution View' of persons and bodies, which aims to show what distinguishes persons from all other beings and to show how we can be (...) fully material beings without being identical to our bodies. The Constitution View yields answers to the questions 'What am I most fundamentally?', 'What is a person?', and 'What is the relation between human persons and their bodies'? Baker argues that the complex mental property of first-person perspective enables one to conceive of one's body and mental states as one's own. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Reopening a Discussion The empiricist-derived epistemology that has directed most social and natural scientific inquiry for the last three ...

Transcending the various formal concepts of life, this captivating book offers a unique overview of life's history, essences, and future. "A masterpiece of scientific writing. You will cherish "What Is Life?" because it is so rich in poetry and science in the service of profound philosophical questions".--Mitchell Thomashow, "Orion". 9 photos. 11 line illustrations.

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a non-Cartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains us (...) persons is irreducibly personal.After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality. (shrink)

This study compares involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories in depressed and never depressed individuals. Twenty depressed and twenty never depressed individuals completed a memory diary; recording their reactions to 10 involuntary and 10 voluntary memories over 14–30 days. Psychiatric status , psychopathology, rumination and avoidance were assessed. For both groups, involuntary memories more frequently lead to strong reactions than voluntarily memories. For both modes of retrieval, depressed individuals reported more frequent negative reactions than never depressed individuals and rated memories as (...) more central to identity with higher levels of rumination and avoidance. Depressed individuals retrieved both positive and negative memories during involuntary retrieval. These findings support the view that involuntary memory retrieval represents a basic mode of retrieval during healthy and disordered cognition, and that during depression, both involuntary and voluntary memories are central to identity and associated with rumination and avoidance. (shrink)

This article discusses Hilary Putnam's views on the mind-body problem, by locating them in the general context of a satisfying pluralistic naturalism that he tried to articulate throughout his entire philosophical career. The first attempt in this direction was computational functionalism, his version of psychological functionalism centered on the analogy between mind/body and software/hardware, which (differently from David Lewis and others) he came to think of as an empirical hypothesis. That was a very successful proposal; however, later Putnam abandoned it (...) and embraced what he called 'liberal functionalism'. The reason for this change of mind was twofold: on the one hand, Putnam reached the conclusion that computational functionalism was incompatible with his views on semantic externalism; on the other hand, he began to think that mental states, besides being compositionally plastic (i.e., two entities can be in the same psychological state without being in the same physical state), are also computationally plastic (i.e., two entities can be in the same psychological state without being in the same functional state).In conclusion, I will argue that 'liberal functionalism' opened an interesting perspective for a successful non-reductive version of naturalism. (shrink)

Se defiende la posibilidad de que el Estado sea tolerante cuando actúa como árbitro en los conflictos de tolerancia. Se consideran dos objeciones que dependen de cómo describimos los conflictos políticos y, en particular, los de tolerancia. Se presenta una teoría de descripciones políticas y cómo con ella podemos responder, de una manera políticamente satisfactoria, a las dos objeciones que se plantean en el artículo. Con ello, se discute la relación entre la justificación de las acciones políticas en un contexto (...) normativo ideal y su justificación en los contextos más locales y no ideales donde ocurre la acción política. This article argues for the possibility of the State to be tolerant when acting as arbitrator in tolerance conflicts. Two objections are considered, depending on how political conflicts, and in particular tolerance conflicts, are described. The article presents a theory of political descriptions and shows how this theory can respond in a politically satisfactory manner to the two objections initially raised. Finally, it discusses the relationship between the justification of political actions in an ideal normative context and its justification in more local, non-ideal contexts where the political action takes place. (shrink)

Lynne Rudder Baker presents and defends a unique account of the material world: the Constitution View. In contrast to leading metaphysical views that take everyday things to be either non-existent or reducible to micro-objects, the Constitution View construes familiar things as irreducible parts of reality. Although they are ultimately constituted by microphysical particles, everyday objects are neither identical to, nor reducible to, the aggregates of microphysical particles that constitute them. The result is genuine ontological diversity: people, bacteria, donkeys, mountains and (...) microscopes are fundamentally different kinds of things - all constituted by, but not identical to, aggregates of particles. Baker supports her account with discussions of non-reductive causation, vagueness, mereology, artefacts, three-dimensionalism, ontological novelty, ontological levels and emergence. The upshot is a unified ontological theory of the entire material world that irreducibly contains people, as well as non-human living things and inanimate objects. (shrink)

Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is that (...) there must be a transcendent realm of norms. _Naturalism and Normativity_ engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of them—yet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

A longitudinal study of 308 white -collar U.S. employees revealed that feelings of hope and gratitude increase concern for corporate social responsibility. In particular, employees with stronger hope and gratitude were found to have a greater sense of responsibility toward employee and societal issues; interestingly, employee hope and gratitude did not affect sense of responsibility toward economic and safety/quality issues. These findings offer an extension of research by Giacalone, Paul, and Jurkiewicz.

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we (...) will first criticize the main current view of phronesis and its bearer (the phronimos), then offer another view of the nature of phronesis and of its relation to the other ethical virtues. Our proposal should not be intended as an interpretation of Aristotle’s own view; rather, it should be seen as a broadly Aristotelian theoretical proposal, which we believe can satisfyingly address most of the problems that afflict the more traditional accounts of practical wisdom. In section 2 of this paper, after criticizing first-nature naturalistic views of moral virtue, we take practical reason to be the cornerstone of second-nature naturalistic views; in section 3, we will outline criticisms to which, in our view, the traditional views of phronesis are ill-suited to respond, and, in section 4, we will outline our view of phronesis as ethical expertise – a view which in our view is immune to the above-mentioned criticisms – by spelling out the three main tenets of phronesis as ethical expertise: a conceptual thesis, an epistemic thesis, and the educational implications of the two. Finally, we will support our proposal with some empirical evidence taken from cognitive science. (shrink)

Explaining Attitudes offers an important challenge to the dominant conception of belief found in the work of such philosophers as Dretske and Fodor. According to this dominant view beliefs, if they exist at all, are constituted by states of the brain. Lynne Rudder Baker rejects this view and replaces it with a quite different approach - practical realism. Seen from the perspective of practical realism, any argument that interprets beliefs as either brain states or states of immaterial souls is a (...) 'non-starter'. Practical realism takes beliefs to be states of the whole persons, rather like states of health. What a person believes is determined by what a person would do, say and think in various circumstances. Thus beliefs and other attitudes are interwoven into an integrated, commonsensical conception of reality. (shrink)

Dealing with situations where parents’ views about treatment for their child are strongly opposed to doctors’ views is one major area of ethical challenge in paediatric health care. The traditional approach focuses on the child’s best interests, but this is problematic for a number of reasons. The Harm Principle test is regarded by many ethicists as more appropriate than the best interests test. Despite this, use of the best interests test for intervening in parental decisions is still very common in (...) clinical settings and can lead to confusion. In this paper, I propose the Zone of Parental Discretion as a means of putting into practice the key ideas of the Harm Principle, in a clear, step-by-step process. The Zone of Parental Discretion provides a tool for ethical deliberation by clinicians and ethicists about all situations in which parents and doctors disagree about treatment of a child, whether parents are refusing medically recommended treatment, or requesting non-recommended treatment. (shrink)

Today most philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism.

Practical wisdom eliminativism has recently been proposed in both philosophy and psychology, on the grounds of the alleged redundancy of practical wisdom (Miller 2021 ) and its purported developmental/psychological implausibility (Lapsley 2021 ). Here we respond to these challenges by drawing on an improved version of a view of practical wisdom, the “Aretai model”, that we have presented elsewhere (De Caro et al. 2021 ; Vaccarezza et al. 2023 ; De Caro et al. forthcoming ). According to this (...) model, practical wisdom is conceptualized: (i) as virtuousness _tout court_, i.e., as the _ratio essendi_ of the virtues, and (ii) as a form of ethical expertise. By appealing to the first thesis, we counter the charge of psychological implausibility, while we rely on the second thesis to address the accusation of redundancy. In conclusion we argue that the Aretai model implies a significant paradigm shift in virtue ethics. Practical wisdom emerges as both necessary and sufficient for virtuousness, thereby downsizing – without eliminating entirely – the role that individual virtues play in our ethical lives. (shrink)

The persistence, and international expansion, of food banks as a non-governmental response to households experiencing food insecurity has been decried as an indicator of unacceptable levels of poverty in the countries in which they operate. In 1998, Poppendieck published a book, Sweet charity: emergency food and the end of entitlement, which has endured as an influential critique of food banks. Sweet charity‘s food bank critique is succinctly synthesized as encompassing seven deadly “ins” (1) inaccessibility, (2) inadequacy, (3) inappropriateness, (4) indignity, (...) (5) inefficiency, (6) insufficiency, and (7) instability. The purpose of this paper is to examine if and how the contemporary food bank critique differs from Sweet charity’s “ins” as a strategy for the formulation of synthesizing arguments for policy advocacy. We used critical interpretive synthesis methodology to identify relationships within and/or between existing critiques in the peer-reviewed literature as a means to create “‘synthetic constructs’ (new constructs generated through synthesis)” of circulating critiques. We analyzed 33 articles on food banks published since Sweet charity, with the “ins” as a starting point for coding. We found that the list of original “ins” related primarily to food bank operations has been consolidated over time. We found additional “ins” that extend the food bank critique beyond operations (ineffectiveness, inequality, institutionalization, invalidation of entitlements, invisibility). No synthetic construct emerged linking the critique of operational challenges facing food banks with one that suggests that food banks may be perpetuating inequity, posing a challenge for mutually supportive policy advocacy. (shrink)

My aim is twofold: first, to root out the metaphysical assumptions that generate the problem of mental causation and to show that they preclude its solution; second, to dissolve the problem of mental causation by motivating rejection of one of the metaphysical assumptions that give rise to it. There are three features of this metaphysical background picture that are important for our purposes. The first concerns the nature of reality: all reality depends on physical reality, where physical reality consists of (...) a network of events.1 The second concerns the nature of causation, and the third concerns the conception of behavior. I try to vindicate a robust idea of mental causation. (shrink)

I argue that Nelson's feminist transformation of empiricism provides the basis of a dialogue across three currently competing feminist epistemologies: feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theories, and postmodern feminism, a dialogue that will result in a dissolution of the apparent tensions between these epistemologies and provide an epistemology with the openness and fluidity needed to embrace the concerns of feminists.

There is a growing call for greater public involvement in establishing science and technology policy, in line with democratic ideals. A variety of public participation procedures exist that aim to consult and involve the public, ranging from the public hearing to the consensus conference. Unfortunately, a general lack of empirical consideration of the quality of these methods arises from confusion as to the appropriate benchmarks for evaluation. Given that the quality of the output of any participation exercise is difficult to (...) determine, the authors suggest the need to consider which aspects of the process are desirable and then to measure the presence or quality of these process aspects. To this end, a number of theoretical evaluation criteria that are essential for effective public participation are specified. These comprise two types: acceptance criteria, which concern features of a method that make it acceptable to the wider public, and process criteria, which concern features of the process that are liable to ensure that it takes place in an effective manner. Future research needs to develop instruments to measure these criteria more precisely and identify the contextual and environmental factors that will mediate the effectiveness of the different participation methods. (shrink)

This is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview of liberal naturalism. Essential reading for students and researchers in all areas of philosophy it will be of particular interest for those studying philosophical naturalism, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and ethics.

Imprecise definition of key terms in the “public participation” domain have hindered the conduct of good research and militated against the development and implementation of effective participation practices. In this article, we define key concepts in the domain: public communication, public consultation, and public participation. These concepts are differentiated according to the nature and flow of information between exercise sponsors and participants. According to such an information flow perspective, an exercise’s effectiveness may be ascertained by the efficiency with which full, (...) relevant information is elicited from all appropriate sources, transferred to all appropriate recipients, and combined to give an aggregate/consensual response. Key variables that may theoretically affect effectiveness—and on which engagement mechanisms differ—are identified and used to develop a typology of mechanisms. The resultant typology reveals four communication, six consultation, and four participation mechanism classes. Limitations to the typology are discussed, and future research needs identified. (shrink)

This book investigates the issue of “pure selection”–that is, choosing the genetic characteristics of one's children, without using abortion as the method to achieve this. Pure selection is made possible by the relatively new technology of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), in conjunction with now-routine IVF procedures for creating embryos. In PGD, a cell or cells can be extracted from an early embryo, and be subjected to genetic diagnosis of whatever kind, without damaging the embryo. So embryos with the genetic make (...) up favoured by the parents-to-be can be identified and transferred to the uterus, whilst those with non-favoured genetic make up can be discarded. Hence choice about the genetic characteristics of children is achieved without recourse to invasive procedures for prenatal diagnosis, and without termination of pregnancy, which is not only physically invasive, but also ethically controversial. The author firstly presents a case study of the events involved in the …. (shrink)