DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Some recent authors have argued that Aquinas deliberately integrated a pacifist outlook into his just war theory. Others, by contrast, have maintained that his rejection of pacifism was unequivocal. The present article attempts to set the historical record straight by an examination of Aquinas's writings on this topic. In addition to Q. 40, A. 1 of Summa theologiae II–II, the text usually cited in this connection, this article considers the biblical commentaries where Aquinas explains how the Gospel “precepts of patience,” (...) especially Matthew 5:39, “Do not resist evil,” should be interpreted in light of the doctrine of just war. The article concludes that Aquinas formulated a two-stage theory whereby pacifism was rejected as a suitable form of agency for the state (respublica), while it was affirmed as the appropriate response to evil for the agency of the church (ecclesia). (shrink)

The Ethics of War is an indispensable collection of essays addressing issues both timely and age-old about the nature and ethics of war. Features essays by great thinkers from ancient times through to the present day, among them Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, Russell, and Walzer Examines timely questions such as: When is recourse to arms morally justifiable? What moral constraints should apply to military conduct? How can a lasting peace be achieved? Will appeal to a broad range of (...) readers interested in morality and ethics in war time Includes informative introductions and helpful marginal notes by editors. (shrink)

Intercellular signaling by growth factors, hormones and neurotransmitters produces second messenger molecules such as cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and diacylglycerol (DAG). Protein Kinase A and Protein Kinase C are the principal effector proteins of these prototypical second messengers in certain cell types. Recently, novel receptors for cAMP and DAG have been identified. These proteins, designated EPAC (Exchange Protein directly Activated by cAMP) or cAMP‐GEF (cAMP regulated Guanine nucleotide Exchange Factor) and CalDAG‐GEF (Calcium and Diacylglycerol regulated Guanine nucleotide Exchange Factor) or (...) RasGRP (Ras Guanine nucleotide Releasing Protein) are able to mediate some of the physiologic effects of the second messengers in a protein‐kinase‐independent fashion. These proteins are exchange factors for Ras family GTPases that operate in pathways that run parallel to the classic kinase‐dependent pathways. The rapidly emerging recognition of the functions of these “non‐kinase” effectors in diverse processes such as insulin secretion, thymocyte development, asthma and malignant transformation creates new opportunities for discovery and identifies potential new therapeutic targets. BioEssays 26:730–738, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Contrary to what has been alleged, the moral equivalence of combatants (MEC) is not a doctrine that was expressly developed by the traditional theorists of just war. Working from the axiom that just cause is unilateral, they did not embrace a conception of public war that included MEC. Indeed, MEC was introduced in the early fifteenth century as a challenge to the then reigning just war paradigm. It does not follow, however, that the distinction between private and public war had (...) no place in the traditional teaching. Thomas Aquinas and his successors did not analyse just war by extrapolation from the related idea of self-defense. Rather, they likened just war to a legal proceeding that could solely be undertaken by persons possessed of legitimate authority. For this reason, just war was first and foremost public war. Private war was deemed ?war? only in a secondary and reduced sense of the term. It was accordingly understood that public war should be waged and its morality judged by reference to a set of norms that are not directly reducible to those governing private self (and other)-defense. (shrink)

The mass extinction visited upon us by capitalism involves many kinds of devastation. Here I clarify the grounds for assessing the most obvious of these harms, i.e., decimation of species diversity. The thesis that variety among species has intrinsic value motivates, and in turn follows from, the “variable value view” (VVV) of abundance within any given species. In contrast, standard axiologies have no place for the intrinsic value of species diversity. I show that the VVV provides a better justification than (...) the latter do, of the way in which a widely-used empirical indicator summarizes the overall state of life on Earth. These considerations favor ecocentric value theory – which ascribes intrinsic value to properties of ecological wholes, like species diversity, that do not supervene on the well-being of their constituent organisms – over its main competitors. I conclude by widening the focus from wild nature alone to the biosphere comprising both wilderness and the domesticated realm. This broadened perspective helps to link the science and ethics of biodiversity with the political struggle to extract ourselves from the moral abyss of mass extinction. (shrink)

The background for my debate with Graham Parsons was the view, advanced by Jeff McMahan (2009),1 that the initiation of unjust war can best be prevented if rank-and-file combatants are made to unde...

Virtually all historical treatments of just war recognize the importance of the account given by Thomas Aquinas in Summa theologiae II-II, q. 40, ?De bello?, where he outlines three conditions ? legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention ? for a justifiable use of armed force. It is, however, less well known that within the same section of the work (q. 50, a. 4) Aquinas extended his reflection on just war into a theory of military prudence. By placing generalship under (...) the category of ?prudence?, rather than ?art? or ?science?, he held that military command involves more than a morally neutral skill with victory as its sole aim. Building on the premise that service to the common good constitutes the overarching purpose of the military profession, Aquinas showed how the virtue of prudence provides an inner compass for decision-making amid the uncertainty and confusion of the battlefield. (shrink)

The phenomenon of inverse linking, where a noun phrase embedded within another behaves with respect to binding as though it were structurally independent, has proven challenging for theories of the syntax–semantics interface. In this paper I show that, using an LF-movement style approach to the syntax–semantics interface, we can derive all and only the appropriate meanings for such constructions using no semantic operations other than function application and composition. The solution relies neither on a proliferation of lexical ambiguity nor on (...) abandoning the idea that pronouns denote variables, but rather on a straightforward (and standard) reification of assignment functions, which allows us to define abstraction operators within our models. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein (C&L) ignore the long history by which social scientists have developed more nuanced and ultimately more helpful ways to understand the relationship between persons and situations. This tradition is reflected and advanced in a large literature on “wise” social–psychological or mindset interventions, which C&L do not discuss yet mischaracterize.

Scientists must sometimes choose between competing definitions of key terms. The degree to which different definitions facilitate important discoveries should ultimately guide decisions about which terms to accept. In the short run, rules of thumb can help. One such rule is to regard with suspicion any definition that turns a seemingly important empirical matter into an a priori exercise. Several prominent definitions of ecological “stability” are suspect, according to this rule. After evaluating alternatives, I suggest that the faulty definitions resulted (...) from an overemphasis on population dynamics in community ecology. Machine metaphors of nature may have given rise to a related problem of experimental design. (shrink)

By accepting that the formal structure of human language is the key to understanding the uniquity of human culture and consciousness and by further accepting the late appearance of such language amongst the Cro-Magnon, I am free to focus on the causes that led to such an unprecedented threshold crossing. In the complex of causes that led to human being, I look to scholarship in linguistics, mythology, anthropology, paleontology, and to creation myths themselves for an answer. I conclude that prehumans (...) underwent an existential crisis, i.e., the realization of certain mortality, that could be borne only by the discovery-creation of the larger realm of symbolic consciousness once experienced as the sacred (but today we know it as "the world" – as opposed to our immediate natural environment and that of other animals). Thus, although we, the human species, are but one species among innumerable others, we differ in kind, not degree. This quality is our symbolically enabled self-consciousness, the fortress of cultural identity that empowers but also imprisons awareness. (shrink)

Department of Philosophy and School of Environment McGill University 855 Sherbrooke Street West Montréal, Québec H3A 2T7 Canada E-mail: gregory[email protected].

(2013). Malebranche and Chinese Philosophy: A Reconsideration. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 262-280. doi: 10.1080/09608788.2012.718869.

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here (...) to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium. (shrink)

Inquiring 'whether any war can be just', Thomas Aquinas famously responded that this may hold true, provided the war is conducted by a legitimate authority, for a just cause, and with an upright intention. Virtually all accounts of just war, from the Middle Ages to the current day, make reference to this threefold formula. But due in large measure to its very succinctness, Aquinas's theory has prompted contrasting interpretations. This book sets the record straight by surveying the wide range of (...) texts in his literary corpus that have bearing on peace and the ethics of war. Thereby emerges a coherent and nuanced picture of just war as set within his systematic moral theory. It is shown how Aquinas deftly combined elements from earlier authors, and how his teaching has fruitfully propelled inquiry on this important topic by his fellow scholastics, later legal theorists such as Grotius, and contemporary philosophers of just war. (shrink)

Richness theory offers an alternative to the paradigms that have dominated the short history of environmental ethics as a self-conscious field. This alternative theoretical paradigm defines intrinsic value as “richness”—a synonym for “organic unity” or “unity in diversity.” Richness theory can handily reconcile two kinds of ideas that seem to be in tension with each other:that (1) an individual human being has a greater worth than an individual organism of just about any other species; and (2) yet the world would (...) be a better place with substantially fewer humans and/or less consumption per capita, thus leaving more resources for other species.The mutual compatibility of such ideas within the framework of richness theory can be demonstrated both verbally and through a simplified mathematical model. (shrink)

Role models can be highly influential in conveying ethical standards. This study investigates the influence various categories of role models have had on a population of over 1,600 undergraduate students in Texas, Oregon and Michigan. Those identifying clergy, boy scout leaders, friends and college advisors as role models exhibited less willingness to adopt questionable ethical behavior in negotation situations. Journalist and spouse role models tended to cause students to be more accepting of questionable behavior. Individuals with strong end-result and social (...) contract ethical philosophies, as well as males and those who served in the military exhibited strong tendencies toward less than ethical behavior. Individuals with strong rule ethical philosophy, high levels of religiousity, and those with a cooperative attitude in negotiations tended to adopt higher ethical standards in negotiations. (shrink)

Ecologists typically invoke "law-like" generalizations, ranging over "structural" and/or "functional" kinds, in order to explain generalizations about "historical" kinds (such as biological taxa)rather than vice versa. This practice is justified, since structural and functional kinds tend to correlate better with important ecological phenomena than do historical kinds. I support these contentions with three recent case studies. In one sense, therefore, ecology is, and should be, more nomothetic, or law-oriented, than idiographic, or historically oriented. This conclusion challenges several recent philosophical claims (...) about the nature of ecological science. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new defense of scientific realism, tailored for the Akaikean paradigm of statistical hypothesis testing. After proposing definitions of verisimilitude and predictive success, I use computer simulations to show how the latter depends on the former, even in the kind of case featured in a recent argument for instrumentalism.

We emerge into everythingness. The senses mingle incestuously. Nothing is distinct or differentiated. Everything is no-thing. How is it we come to be as distinct entities? Let me personalize: In what manner did I become an "I"? Is the motive force behind this much-maligned, much-altered, much-abused body my soul? my genes? me?

[This is a commentary article on Michel Bitbol's TA: "The Tangled Dialectic of Body and Consciousness: A Metaphysical Counterpart of Radical Neurophenomenology".] -/- A summary of the major metaphysical positions reveals them to be variable enough that they do not deny experience to the researcher. Further, Merleau-Ponty’s intra-ontology and related terms are fleshed out.

The publication of Daniel Lehrman’s 1953 paper, “A Critique of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior,” (_The Quarterly Review of Biology_ 28(4):337–363) exposed a gulf between comparative psychologists and ethologists regarding the concept of instincts. At the center of this debate was a rivalry between T. C. Schneirla—Lehrman’s doctoral advisor—and Konrad Lorenz. While Schneirla maintained that the concept of innate instincts mischaracterized developmental processes, Lorenz maintained that innateness was essential to understand the evolution of behavior. A year after the publication (...) of Lehrman’s paper, the Singer-Polignac Foundation organized a small conference where leaders in evolutionary biology, ethology, behavioral physiology, and comparative psychology met to discuss the concept of instinct and innateness. The result of this meeting was the publication of the book _L’instinct dans le comportement des animaux et de l’homme_ (M. Autuori et al. ( 1956 ) Masson, Paris) in which each conference participant submitted a chapter that was followed by a discussion among the participants. Here I review the historical context surrounding this conference with a republishing of the commentary on Schneirla’s chapter, “Interrelationships of the ‘Innate’ and the ‘Acquired’ in Instinctive Behavior.” Originally published in English, German, and French, the discussion is included here with a new translation into English for the first time. A companion article (this issue; G. M. Kohn (2024) “Revisiting T. C. Schneirla’s ‘Interrelationships of the “Innate” and the “Acquired” in Instinctive Behavior’ (1956)”) discusses and makes available Schneirla’s complete paper. (shrink)

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities (...) and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural protolanguage learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and object – of self and world – the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being. -/- Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the individual. Awareness-in-itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of creative unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power – and enormous responsibility – of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, extent, and future of conscious experience will have to be made. (shrink)

During the postwar period, the concept of instinct came to encapsulate the debate around the importance of nature versus nurture. The fact that animals show highly organized behavior early in development suggested the presence of an underlying fixity where behavior was “inbuilt” into an animal’s biology despite an individual’s experiences. This placed a discrete and exhaustive line between the innate and acquired that became a foundation for the European-dominated field of ethology. Across the Atlantic, a group of comparative psychologists led (...) by the American Museum of Natural History’s T. C. Schneirla contested this approach, proposing that the study of animal behavior should avoid abstract dichotomies with a renewed focus on developmental processes. While Schneirla’s theoretical and empirical work shaped the modern study of animal behavior, his legacy requires revisiting in an era where the nature versus nurture debate is regaining prominence. In this article, I revisit Schneirla’s approach to behavior with a focus on his paper “Interrelationships of the ‘Innate’ and the ‘Acquired’ in Instinctive Behavior” (published in M. Autuori et al. (1956) _L’instinct dans le comportement des animaux et de l’homme_; Masson, Paris, pp. 387–452) for the journal’s “Classics in Biological Theory” collection; the paper is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article. A companion article (this issue; G. M. Kohn (2024) “A Discussion on Instinct, Paris, 1954”) presents the commentary that was published with it. (shrink)

[This is an edited and improved version of "You Are Not Your Brain: Against 'Teaching to the Brain'" previously published in *Review of Higher Education and Self-Learning* 5(15), Summer 2012.] Since educators are always looking for ways to improve their practice, and since empirical science is now accepted in our worldview as the final arbiter of truth, it is no surprise they have been lured toward cognitive neuroscience in hopes that discovering how the brain learns will provide a nutshell explanation (...) for student learning in general. I argue that identifying the person with the brain is scientism (not science), that the brain is not the person, and that it is the person who learns. In fact the brain only responds to the learning of embodied experience within the extra-neural network of intersubjective communications. Learning is a dynamic, cultural activity, not a neural program. Brain-based learning is unnecessary for educators and may be dangerous in that a culturally narrow ontology is taken for granted, thus restricting our creativity and imagination, and narrowing the human community. (shrink)

Preface/Introduction: The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself. -/- (...) What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only). -/- I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism. -/- Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.) -/- “Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In contrast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones must also do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness. -/- As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imaginary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210) -/- Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers). -/- I am very grateful to Huping Hu for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries. -/- References -/- Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP. -/- Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. -/- Gregory M. Nixon University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Email: [email protected] Websty: http://members.shaw.ca/doknyx. (shrink)

This paper draws on the social psychology of John Dewey to illustrate the importance of aporia, or confusion, to pragmatic pedagogywithin an ethics classroom. The strategic use of aporia solicits an appropriate expression of emotion within students. This emotional response involves dissatisfaction with the present; these dissatisfactions function as pragmatic ideals. Such ideals are not a refuge from the present, but enable students to critically and progressively reconstruct present experiences. Aporia is thus critically important for pedagogical success from a pragmatist (...) perspective. (shrink)