SummaryVisual acuity was tested and the anterior portion of the eye inspected among the Gidra in Lowland Papua New Guinea, who depend on hunting for their animal food. The visual acuity of the youths and adults was as high as that of hunters and gatherers; 88% of the males and 81% of the females had an acuity of 1·2 or better. The elders had far lower acuity, correlated with the advance of cataract. The senescent visual acuity is discussed in relation (...) to little practice and low productivity of the elders' hunting, and to the Gidra traditional age-grade system. (shrink)

_This paper discusses the concept of compassion fatigue in light of the importance that political decisions, especially the application of the concept of public spirit, have had on care and nursing in a Danish hospital context during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is based on recent research literature in the field as well as the author’s own participatory observation study. The paper suggests that nurses already show a sense of public spirit due to their authorization and professional ethics, but at (...) the same time they must balance the ambiguity of nursing care. A linguistic-philosophical study of public spirit shows that the concept can have a discursive, double-binding and interpellative effect on nurses, who may therefore have an experience of inadequacy and compassion fatigue. In this context, compassion fatigue must be understood as the fact that nurses cannot provide the care they want or that is expected of them. Public spirit can be said to have had a renaissance and linguistic and moral supremacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper views the concept of __waywardness 1 as a possible response for how to prevent or completely avoid compassion fatigue, so that nurses instead have an experience of compassion / self-compassion. This could in the end be important for encouraging more nursing students and nurses who have the desire and opportunity to stay in the profession._ _Keywords_: Nursing care, compassion fatigue, public spirit, compassion, COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Georg Lukács (1885-1971) was one of the most original Marxist philosophers and literary critics of the twentieth century. His work was a major influence on what we now know as critical theory. Almost fifty years after his death, Lukács's legacy has come under attack by right-wing extremists in his native Hungary. Despite efforts to erase his memory, Lukács remains a philosophical gadfly. In Confronting Reification, an international team of fourteen scholars explicate, reassess, and apply one of Lukács's most significant philosophical (...) contributions, his theory of reification. Based on papers presented at the 2017 Legacy of Georg Lukács conference held in Budapest, the essays in this volume demonstrate the vitality of Lukács's thought and its relevance. Contributors include: Rüdiger Dannemann, Frank Engster, Andrew Feenberg, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Andraž Jež, Christian Lotz, Csaba Olay, Tom Rockmore, Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, Mariana Teixeira, Michael J. Thompson, Tivadar Vervoort, Richard Westerman, and Sean Winkler. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Why Worry about Future Generations?, Samuel Scheffler argues that we typically love humanity, and that this attachment gives us reasons to care about future generations. The paper explores this idea with an eye to understanding better the sense in which humanity is an object of attachment. The paper argues that the humanity we love should be understood in an enriched rather than a reductively biological sense, as a species that has historically sustained a complex set of cultural and (...) personal meanings. Caring about this object will lead us to be concerned about future generations. But these reasons of love should not be understood as reasons to be concerned directly about the fate of individual future people. The paper concludes with some reflections about the attachment-independent value of humanity in the enriched sense, distinguishing between relational and non-relational interpretations of this independent value. (shrink)

A critical discussion of Kwong-loi Shun’s account of anger as a response to situations rather than agents. The paper draws on a relational interpretation of the moral domain to argue that it makes a normative difference to one’s moral emotions whether one was the immediate victim of wrongful conduct, or merely a third-party observer of such conduct. Those who have been wronged by immoral actions have warrant for a kind of angry resentment that does not carry over to third parties. (...) The paper also questions whether negative emotions are fully intelligible as forms of anger if they are not states that put one in opposition to specific agents rather than responses to unfortunate situations. (shrink)

This book is the authorized political biography of Kenneth Waltz. The theoretical work of Kenneth Neal Waltz (June 8, 1924 - May 12, 2013) during the last half of the twentieth century in international relations theory is known by virtually everyone in this scholarly field. He is among the few likely still to be cited in the last half of the twenty-first century. Then, as now, he no doubt has followers within the realist camp who see him as an earlier (...) luminary as well as his critics drawn to the lightning-rod quality of his work. Paul Viotti identifies the intellectual sources and experiences leading to the ideas that underlie Waltz's theoretical work. Viotti has been granted unfettered access to Waltz's files at Columbia, in his residences in Manhattan and Maine, and in archives at Oberlin, and uses these documents to paint a thorough, insightful biography bolstered by some of Waltz's previously-unexplored work. Through a series of interviews with Waltz about his life-starting with his German great-grandparents' immigration to the US in the 19th century-this biography produces personal insights into the development of his theoretical and policy-based contributions. (shrink)

The present article offers three critiques of the universal basic income guarantee (BIG) proposal discussed by Standing in this volume. First, there is a fundamental tension between the way income in a monetary production economy is generated, the manner in which BIG wishes to redistribute it, and the subsequent negative impact of this redistribution on the process of income generation itself. The BIG policy is dependent for its existence on the very system it wishes to undermine. Second, the macroeconomic effects (...) of BIG on contemporary economies that use modern money are destabilizing. The job guarantee (JG), by contrast, stabilizes both the macro-economy and the currency while helping transform the nature of work itself. Finally, the employment safety-net in Standing’s piece is not an accurate representation of the modern JG proposals – a confusion which this paper aims to remedy. (shrink)

This paper addresses some connections between conceptions of the will and the theory of practical reason. The first two sections argue against the idea that volitional commitments should be understood along the lines of endorsement of normative principles. A normative account of volition cannot make sense of akrasia, and it obscures an important difference between belief and intention. Sections three and four draw on the non-normative conception of the will in an account of instrumental rationality. The central problem is to (...) explain the grip of instrumental requirements even in cases in which agents do not fully endorse the ends they are pursuing. The solution I propose appeals to coherence constraints on the beliefs that condition the distinctive volitional stance of intention. (shrink)

theories. What was Freud thinking, when, and why and what were the major influences which shaped his ideas? We follow the inner movement of his theory construction, its meaning and coherence, as well as his conceptual logic and personal directions concerning his evolving views of the reciprocal interactions between mind and body, the motivational force of instinctual drives, and the dominant role of sexuality rooted in evolutionary biology in human development, behaviour, and the creation of neurotic disturbances. We follow Freud's (...) construction and sequential reconstructions of his theoretical models concerning the nature, dynamics, and principles of unconscious mental functioning, including his changing concepts on the nature and purpose of dreams. We trace his changing views on the role of deferred action of early childhood experiences and the determining role of unconscious fantasy, psychic reality, in the formation of adult character structure and neuroses. Through such historical analysis this book provides grounding for a meaningful understanding of Freud's familiar concepts: id, ego, superego, and the Oedipus complex. We explore what these concepts meant to Freud, why he conceived them, and what functions they served in his theory of mind. This is the perfect book for students and trainees wanting to learn more about the development of Freud's ideas, as well as for established psychoanalysts and psychotherapists interested in expanding their knowledge of Freud's theories. (shrink)

Rational agency may be thought of as intentional activity that is guided by the agent's conception of what they have reason to do. The paper identifies and assesses three approaches to this phenomenon, which I call internalism, meta-internalism, and volitionalism. Internalism accounts for rational motivation by appeal to substantive desires of the agent's that are conceived as merely given; I argue that it fails to do full justice to the phenomenon of guidance by one's conception of one's reasons. Meta-internalism explains (...) this phenomenon by postulating higher-order dispositions, consitutive of (rational) agency itself, which causally interact with the agent's normative beliefs to produce corresponding motivations to action. I show that meta-internalism comes to grief over cases of akrasia, insofar as it leaves no room for the capacity for rational guidance when agents voluntarily act at variance with their judgments about what they have reason to do. Volitionalism, I contend, improves on both internalism and meta-internalism. Its distinctive feature is the postulation of a kind of motivation that is directly subject to the agent's control, and independent of the dispositions and desires to which the agent is passively subject. (shrink)

Practical reason is the general human capacity for resolving, through reflection, the question of what one is to do. Deliberation of this kind is practical in at least two senses. First, it is practical in its subject matter, insofar as it is concerned with action. But it is also practical in its consequences or its issue, insofar as reflection about action itself directly moves people to act. Our capacity for deliberative self-determination raises two sets of philosophical problems. First, there are (...) questions about how deliberation can succeed in being practical in its issue. What do we need to assume — both about agents and about the processes of reasoning they engage in — to make sense of the fact that deliberative reflection can directly give rise to action? Can we do justice to this dimension of practical reason while preserving the idea that practical deliberation is genuinely a form of reasoning? Second, there are large issues concerning the content of the standards that are brought to bear in practical reasoning. Which norms for the assessment of action are binding on us as agents? Do these norms provide resources for critical reflection about our ends, or are they exclusively instrumental? Under what conditions do moral norms yield valid standards for reasoning about action? The first set of issues is addressed in sections 1-3 of the present article, while sections 4-5 cover the second set of issues. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 634-645, September 2021.

Cristina Lafont's recent reading of Heidegger offers a powerful formulation of the widespread view that once one recognizes our `facticity' and the role of language in shaping it, there is no room left to talk about transcendental structures of meaning or experience. In this article I challenge this view. I argue that Lafont inaccurately conflates what Heidegger calls our `understanding of being' with that which language discloses. In order to show that the philosophical motivation for this conflation is unsound, I (...) also argue that Lafont's own positive theory of meaning itself tacitly assumes a distinction between factical and transcendental, and so rests on exactly what she finds problematic in Heidegger. This still leaves a puzzle as to how factical individuals are actually able to grasp anything transcendental, so I conclude by sketching Heidegger's method of `formal indication', which is meant to show precisely how this can be done. (shrink)

History of Mongolian philosophy, intellectual life, and politics; covers until 14th century.

An algebraic semantics, based on factor algebras, for one-way and two-way implicative verbs is proposed. Implicative verbs denote elements of filters or of ideals generated by identity functions in factor algebras. This semantics explains in particular the problem of implicational equivalence raised by two-way implicative verbs, and shows that the negation necessary to establish the implicativity of these verbs is the negation which preserves the presuppositions of sentences with implicative verbs. In addition, it follows from the proposed semantics that any (...) two implicative verbs denoting in the same algebra but belonging to different categories, are semantically related. (shrink)

Two of the most important topics in the field of medical ethics today are insemination by donor (AID) and in-vitro fertilization. The conclusions of a working party set up by the British Association for the Advancement of Science are embodied in a small book reviewed on pate 108 of this issue, but we feel that more discussion than can be set out in the space allocated to book reviews is justified. Also, this journal in its first number has already devoted (...) a group of papers to the issue of abortion, so the conclusions of the working party and our own comments overlap and we hope illuminate further the problems enunciated. (shrink)

Biopolitical analyses of census -taking usually focus on human censuses and consider how human experience is shaped by the practice. Instead, this article looks at the proposed global biodiversity census, which aims to take inventory of every species on earth as a response to anthropogenic species extinction. I suggest that it is possible to extend and modify Foucault's concept of biopower to consider contemporary human-nonhuman interactions. Specifically, I argue that an ecologically-extended version of biopower offers a useful way to conceptualise (...) how power circulates in the practices that surround the biodiversity census, and that it points us towards thinking about how analyses of power, authority, and community can consider ecological, rather than purely human, locations and networks. (shrink)

The insurance hypothesis is a reasonable explanation for the current obesity epidemic. One alternative explanation is that the marketing of high-sugar foods, especially sugar-sweetened beverages, drives the rise in obesity. Another prominent hypothesis is that obesity spreads through social influence. We offer a framework for estimating the extent to which these different models explain the rise in obesity.

Annihilationism provides a fruitful point of contact between philosophers and theologians for further reflection on nonexistence. In this paper I articulate a key commitment of annihilationism; namely, that some persons cease to exist. Such a commitment, I argue, amounts to the claim that some persons exist at time t and then do not exist at t+1, become ‘annihilated objects.’ Claims about annihilated objects induct the annihilationist into a wider realism/anti-realism debate about nonexistent objects. I survey some major viewpoints in this (...) debate. I then draw out some implications for each view for the annihilationist’s commitment to annihilated objects. I show that annihilationism is consistent with some forms of realism and anti-realism and inconsistent with others. (shrink)