How exactly is accepting the bad side effects of good choices morally defensible? The best defense to date is by Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and Germain Grisez and relies on the claim that bad side effects are unavoidable. But are they? Three accounts of why bad side effects are unavoidable—one by John Zeis, a second by Boyle, Finnis, and Grisez jointly, and a third by Boyle independently—are examined and rejected. Next, an alternative proposal which suggests bad side effects are always (...) avoidable is also examined and rejected. Finally, an adequate account of why bad side effects are unavoidable is presented and defended. This defense relies on certain facts about the goods which human agents ultimately find fulfilling and about human agents’ attempts to instantiate those goods through various projects. (shrink)

This book contains essays of literary and philosophical accounts that explain who we are simply as persons, and essays that highlight who we are in light of communal ties. ACTC educators model the intellectual life for students and colleagues by showing how to read texts carefully and with sophistication.

In this volume, the Association for Core Texts and Courses has gathered essays of literary and philosophical accounts that explain who we are simply as persons. Further, essays are included that highlight the person as entwined with other persons and examine who we are in light of communal ties. The essays reflect both the Western experience of democracy and how community informs who we are more generally. Our historical position in a modern or post-modern, urbanized or disenchanted world is explored (...) by yet other papers. And, finally, ACTC educators model the intellectual life for students and colleagues by showing how to read texts carefully and with sophistication--as an example of who we can be"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Each contributor to this book has used personal experience as the basis from which to frame his individual sociological perspectives. Because they have personalized their work, their accounts are real, and recognizable as having come from 'real' persons, about 'real' experiences. There are no objectively-distanced disembodied third person entities in these accounts. These writers are actual people whose stories will make you laugh, cry, think, and want to know more.

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

In spite of a powerful tradition, more than two thousand years old, that in a valid argument the premises must be relevant to the conclusion, twentieth-century logicians neglected the concept of relevance until the publication of Volume I of this monumental work. Since that time relevance logic has achieved an important place in the field of philosophy: Volume II of Entailment brings to a conclusion a powerful and authoritative presentation of the subject by most of the top people working in (...) the area. Originally the aim of Volume II was simply to cover certain topics not treated in the first volume--quantification, for example--or to extend the coverage of certain topics, such as semantics. However, because of the technical progress that has occurred since the publication of the first volume, Volume II now includes other material. The book contains the work of Alasdair Urquhart, who has shown that the principal sentential systems of relevance logic are undecidable, and of Kit Fine, who has demonstrated that, although the first-order systems are incomplete with respect to the conjectured constant domain semantics, they are still complete with respect to a semantics based on "arbitrary objects." Also presented is important work by the other contributing authors, who are Daniel Cohen, Steven Giambrone, Dorothy L. Grover, Anil Gupta, Glen Helman, Errol P. Martin, Michael A. McRobbie, and Stuart Shapiro. Robert G. Wolf's bibliography of 3000 items is a valuable addition to the volume. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:26. IN DEFENSE OF SECTION V: A REPLY TO PROFESSOR YOLTON Professor Yolton's article is especially valuable for its opening paragraphs on the writing done in the eighteenth century on the physiological basis of cognition. These provide a much-needed background to Hume's own remarks on the nature of perceptions.. It is both correct and helpful, I think, to understand any philosopher as a man of his own century. Professor (...) Yolton offers this article, in part at least, to differ with my interpretation given in "The Location, Extension, Shape, and Size of Hume's Perceptions." It seems to me, however, that this opening part of his article serves instead to lend support to mine. I have not said, by the way, that Hume believes that ideas are "brain impressions," since Hume has not used that phrase himself. Instead, I have merely provided evidence that Hume believes some perceptions have location, extension, shape and size; and I have pointed out an inconsistency that arises in this connection. Professor Yolton warns against taking Hume to intend, in saying that an idea represents its impression, that the idea is an image of the impression. I find, however, that Hume does assert that ideas are images: Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions.... By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.... (Tl) Again, in explaining memory: For what is the memory but a faculty, by which we raise up the images of paet perceptions? And as an image necessarily resembles its object.... (T260) At the end of his Part I, Professor Yolton concludes: (1) Hume never mentions the brain and the physiological processes. It is the mind or the soul which considers, conceives, imagines, remembers, thinks It seems to me not at all clear that Hume distinguishes soul 27. or mind from the brain, for he says: Bodily pains and pleasures...arise Originally in the soul, or in the body, whichever you please to call it.... (T276) And Hume certainly does describe the brain and its physiological processes on T60-61 and T185, as Professor Yolton himself later recognizes explicitly on his pages 12 and 16. An ambiguity arises regarding 'representation', Professor Yolton concludes, because Hume is writing in two languages in his account of ideas as representations : The difficulties of interpretation arise from Hume's application of quantitative terms to ideas - size, parts, divisibility. We have to balance this quantitative language of ideas by Hume's ascription of logical properties to ideas - truth, contradiction, possibility. When he speaks of ideas 'representing' things, to which language does 'representation' belong: to the quantitative or to the logical language? (6) I gather that Professor Yolton finds some sort of incompatibility between the "quantitative" characteristics of ideas and their "logical" ones; yet he offers no explanation why he finds them incompatible. More to the point, of course, is whether Hume himself regarded them as incompatible. I find he does not. Rather, it appears that it is the "quantitative" aspects of some ideas that permit them to be adequate representations, having the same "logical" properties as do objects. On T28 Hume has concluded that some ideas are very small: This however is certain, that we can form ideas, which shall be no greater than the smallest atom of the animal spirits of an insect a thousand times less than a mite.... Then on the following page he makes use of this conclusion to argue that ideas have the same "logical" properties as the objects they represent: Wherever ideas are adequate representations of objects, the relations, contradictions and 28. agreements of the ideas are all applicable to the objects ; and this we may in general observe to be the foundation of all human knowledge. But our ideas are adequate representations of the most minute parts of extension; and thro' whatever divisions and subdivisions we may suppose these parts to be arriv'd at, they can never become inferior to some ideas, which we form. The plain consequence is, that whatever appca rn impossible and contradictory upon the comparison of these ideas, must be really impossible and contradictory, without any farther excuse or evasion. (T29), Thus I... (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)

No one who attended the 2010 national public health law conference hosted by the Public Health Law Association and the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics could miss the sense of excitement and momentum. The revival of this annual public health law meeting, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the energetic leadership of the PHLA president and board, ASLME’s expert guidance, and a rousing address by Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control (...) and Prevention, symbolize the continued commitment of a wide range of important individuals and institutions to the proposition that law is of substantial importance to public health. But there is more than just symbolism to be excited about. CDC’s public health law program continues to champion efforts to promote the use and understanding of law as a public health tool. (shrink)

No one who attended the 2010 national public health law conference hosted by the Public Health Law Association and the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics could miss the sense of excitement and momentum. The revival of this annual public health law meeting, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the energetic leadership of the PHLA president and board, ASLME’s expert guidance, and a rousing address by Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control (...) and Prevention, symbolize the continued commitment of a wide range of important individuals and institutions to the proposition that law is of substantial importance to public health. But there is more than just symbolism to be excited about. CDC’s public health law program continues to champion efforts to promote the use and understanding of law as a public health tool. (shrink)

Once upon a time, modal logic was castigated because it ‘had no semantics.’ Kripke, Hintikka, Kanger, and others changed all that. In a similar way, when Relevant Logic was introduced by Anderson and Belnap, it too was castigated for ‘having no semantics.’ The present overview marks a culmination of that effort. The semantic approach described here brings together a number of hitherto disparate efforts to set out formal systems for logics of relevant implication and entailment. It also makes clear (...) (despite some of our hopes and utterances) that the One True Logic does not exist. This is as true for relevant logics as Kripke et al., showed it to be for modal logics. In both cases, subtle (and not so subtle) variations on semantical postulates produce different logics in the same family. The question of which semantical postulates are correct makes no sense without further context, i.e., the questioner needs to answer the question: Correct for what? The question that does remain is: What motivates the relevant family of logics? And this is the question that is the main job for this chapter to investigate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Strands of System: The Philosophy of Charles PeirceRobert W. BurchStrands of System: The Philosophy of Charles Peirce, by Douglas R. Anderson; xiv & 204pp. West Layfayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1995, $24.95 cloth, $13.95 paper.The Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy was created to “present well-edited basic texts to be used in courses and seminars and for teachers looking for a succinct exposition of (...) the results of recent research.” Anderson’s contribution to this series matches the aim of the series to near perfection.Strands of System is a general introduction to both the life and the work of the American scientist-mathematician-philosopher Charles S. Peirce. Many, though by no means all, of the main themes of Peirce’s philosophy are touched. Anderson’s exposition is succinct and—usually—at a basic, introductory level; virtually no specialist knowledge of Peirce’s thinking is required to follow it. References to recent research on Peirce are ample and up-to-date. Anderson’s account falls well within the mainstream of current understanding of Peirce, and accordingly it should occasion no distasteful surprises for the teacher who desires a solid introductory survey.Besides a preface and appendices, the book contains four chapters. The first is a biographical sketch; the second is an overview of certain themes in Peirce’s philosophy; the third is the full text of and a commentary upon the rather early essay “The Fixation of Belief”; and the fourth chapter is the full text of and a commentary upon the rather late essay “A Neglected Argument for the Existence of God.”Chapter Two, entitled “Strands of System,” is perhaps the heart of Anderson’s [End Page 384] exposition of what he regards as Peirce’s somewhat-less-than-monolithic philosophical system—a system in which, as Anderson sees it, a host of diverse themes start and stop, twist and turn, and cross and recross each other like the different strands making up a rope. A wide variety of Peircean topics are briefly discussed: the classification of the sciences, mathematics, philosophy, phenomenology, normative sciences, aesthetics, ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Most of the major concepts of Peircean thought are taken up: synechism, tychism, the categories of firstness and secondness and thirdness, the theory of signs, and some features of the notion of semeiosis.Despite its apparent thoroughness, Anderson’s book mostly lacks a presentation of the technical-scientific-mathematical-logical side of Peirce’s thought. In ignoring this side of Peirce’s intellectual endeavor, however, Anderson is not very different from most other contemporary discussants of Peirce; and the omission is perhaps justified in an introductory survey. All in all, Anderson’s volume should make an excellent, if somewhat partial, introduction to the thought of Peirce, an introduction that I can highly recommend for use in a first course or seminar in the thought of this extremely important American thinker.Robert W. BurchTexas A&M UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This chapter, ‘Friendship and the Moral Life in Iris Murdoch’s Novels’ revisits the subject of sexual relationships, not from the problematic perspective brought to them in Anne Rowe’s earlier chapter, but in a positive light. In his analysis of the educational potential of friendship and sexuality Robert Baker contends that sexual intimacy teaches Murdoch’s characters not only about themselves and their own identity but also about the reality of the other person. It thus acts as a force for learning (...) to attend to the world outside the self which is the desideratum of Murdoch’s moral pilgrimage. He surveys the apparent acceptance by Murdoch scholars that such moral development is necessarily a solitary and lonely endeavour before juxtaposing that impression—given prominence in the M and D scenario Murdoch creates in The Sovereignty of Good (1970)—with the relationships she portrays in her novels. Close readings of the friendship of Tom MacCaffrey and Emmanuel Scarlett-Taylor in The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983) and of Harvey Blackett’s relationship with Sefton Anderson in The Green Knight support Baker’s contention that physical affection can be a guide to the good. Borrowing an image from the latter novel he claims that in her fiction ‘Murdoch represents the moral life not as a lonely pilgrimage toward reality, but as a passeggiata with others in which one gives way to a movement larger than and beyond oneself’ (177), a viable interpretation which reads the passeggiata with an interestingly different slant from other current critics such as Rebecca Moden, who regards it as Murdoch’s ‘metaphor for the nature of human existence’ and ‘a troubling image of the impoverished quality of human consciousness in the late twentieth century’. (shrink)

Clinical ethics is a relatively new discipline within medicine, generated not so much by the Can we . . . ? questions of fact and prognosis that physicians ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to severe shortages of many essential goods and services, from hand sanitizers and N-95 masks to ICU beds and ventilators. Although rationing is not unprecedented, never before has the American public been faced with the prospect of having to ration medical goods and services on this scale.

The Jeffreys–Lindley paradox displays how the use of a \ value ) in a frequentist hypothesis test can lead to an inference that is radically different from that of a Bayesian hypothesis test in the form advocated by Harold Jeffreys in the 1930s and common today. The setting is the test of a well-specified null hypothesis versus a composite alternative. The \ value, as well as the ratio of the likelihood under the null hypothesis to the maximized likelihood under the (...) alternative, can strongly disfavor the null hypothesis, while the Bayesian posterior probability for the null hypothesis can be arbitrarily large. The academic statistics literature contains many impassioned comments on this paradox, yet there is no consensus either on its relevance to scientific communication or on its correct resolution. The paradox is quite relevant to frontier research in high energy physics. This paper is an attempt to explain the situation to both physicists and statisticians, in the hope that further progress can be made. (shrink)

The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in healthcare have immense potential to improve the care of patients. While there are some emerging practices surro...

_A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy__ “Spare, elegant and poignant.... If there is a single contemporary book that should be pressed into the hands of those who decide issues of war and peace, this is it.”—John Gray, _New Statesman_ “It is tragic that Robert D. Kaplan’s luminous _The Tragic Mind_ is so urgently needed.”—George F. Will_ Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has (...) learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In _The Tragic Mind_, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time. (shrink)

Despite its familiarity and widespread acceptance, the concept of “brain death” remains incoherent in theory and confused in practice. Moreover, the only purpose served by the concept is to facilitate the procurement of transplantable organs. By abandoning the concept of brain death and adopting different criteria for organ procurement, we may be able to increase both the supply of transplantable organs and clarity in our understanding of death.

Robert Rupert argues against the view that human cognitive processes comprise elements beyond the boundary of the organism, developing a systems-based conception in place of this extended view. He also argues for a conciliatory understanding of the relation between the computational approach to cognition and the embedded and embodied views.

The history of religions is divided into phenomenological and historical branches: the former has no definite interpretative categories but the latter does, namely the "religions" - Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and others. But the "religions" are misleading and preclude understanding, for these categories were imposed before historical research and are neither historical nor religious. A definition of religion is needed to. begin, and Tillich's suggestion - religion is ultimate concern -is functional, enables us to identify what we are looking for, and (...) is non-judgmental. The "religions," on the other hand ' imply an essence of each religion and preclude the examination of the religious experience of each individual in his own terms. The historical study of religion should be undertaken according to areas, not "religions," and the final step should be determination of the "types" of concern-the task of phenomenology. (shrink)

We seek to change the conversation about brain death by highlighting the distinction between brain death as a biological concept versus brain death as a legal status. The fact that brain death does not cohere with any biologically plausible definition of death has been known for decades. Nevertheless, this fact has not threatened the acceptance of brain death as a legal status that permits individuals to be treated as if they are dead. The similarities between “legally dead” and “legally blind” (...) demonstrate how we may legitimately choose bright-line legal definitions that do not cohere with biological reality. Not only does this distinction bring conceptual coherence to the conversation about brain death, but it has practical implications as well. Once brain death is recognized as a social construction not grounded in biological reality, we create the possibility of changing the social construction in ways that may better serve both organ donors and recipients alike. (shrink)

This book is a history of the crucial developmental years of quantum theory with an emphasis on the literature rather than an overview of this period focusing on personalities or personal stories of the scientists involved. This book instead focuses on how the theoretical discoveries came about, when and where they were published, and how they became accepted as part of the scientific canon.

The concept of brain death has become deeply ingrained in our health care system. It serves as the justification for the removal of vital organs like the heart and liver from patients who still have circulation and respiration while these organs maintain viability. On close examination, however, the concept is seen as incoherent and counterintuitive to our understandings of death. In order to abandon the concept of brain death and yet retain our practices in organ transplantation, we need to either (...) change the definition of death or no longer maintain a commitment to the dead donor rule, which is an implicit prohibition against removing vital organs from individuals before they are declared dead. After exploring these two options, the author argues that while new definitions of death are problematic, alternatives to the dead donor rule are both ethically justifiable and potentially palatable to the public. Even so, the author concludes that neither of these approaches is likely to be adopted and that resolution will most probably come when technological advances in immunology simply make the concept of brain death obsolete. (shrink)

In the first argumentative section of Book 1, Lucretius establishes the existence of matter and void , and in the second identifies matter as the atoms and defines their properties . In the third section, following Epicurean tradition, he attempts to refute a representative selection of Presocratic philosophers – Heraclitus , Empedocles and Anaxagoras – whose explanations of basic matter are potential rivals to the atomist theory which he has just outlined. The climax to this section is reached in Lucretius' (...) triumphant personal claim to be an original poet and health-bringing purveyor of truth . His foregoing criticism of the Presocratics as writers and thinkers is deeply coloured by the values he openly professes here. The introductory passages to each philosopher, in particular, are highly revealing of Lucretius' personal inclinations as a poet and exhibit a virtuoso command of several styles and techniques. (shrink)

Savulescu and colleagues have provided interesting insights into how the UK public view the ‘best interests’ of children like Charlie Gard. But is best interests the right standard for evaluating these types of cases? In the USA, both clinical decisions and legal judgments tend to follow the ‘harm principle’, which holds that parental choices for their children should prevail unless their decisions subject the child to avoidable harm. The case of Charlie Gard, and others like it, show how the USA (...) and the UK have strikingly different approaches for making decisions about the treatment of severely disabled children. (shrink)

The concept of brain death was recently described as being “at once well settled and persistently unresolved.” Every day, in the United States and around the world, physicians diagnose patients as brain dead, and then proceed to transplant organs from these patients into others in need. Yet as well settled as this practice has become, brain death continues to be the focus of controversy, with two journals in bioethics dedicating major sections to the topic within the last two years.By way (...) of background, the Uniform Determination of Death Act states that “[a]n individual who has sustained either: irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.” In other words, death can be defined by either cardiorespiratory or neurological criteria, with “brain death” representing the loss of all brain function. This standard, or closely related variants, has become the accepted approach throughout the United States and in many parts of the world. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, medical ethics has gained a solid foothold in medical education and is now a required course in most medical schools. Although the field of medical ethics is by nature eclectic, moral philosophy has played a dominant role in defining both the content of what is taught and the methodology for reasoning about ethical dilemmas. Most educators largely rely on the case‐based method for teaching ethics, grounding the ethical reasoning in an amalgam of theories drawn from (...) moral philosophy, including consequentialism, deontology, and principlism.In this article we hope to make a case for augmenting the focus of education in medical ethics. We propose complementing the traditional approach to medical ethics with a more embedded approach, one that has been described by others as “microethics,” the ethics of everyday clinical practice. (shrink)

This paper uses an environmental justice framework to examine government response to weather-related disasters dating back some eight decades. It places the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in socio-historical context of past emergencies with an emphasis on race and class dynamics and social vulnerability. Key questions explored include: What went wrong? Can it happen again? Is government equipped to plan for, mitigate against, respond to, and recover from natural and manmade disasters? Can the public trust government response to be fair? Why (...) are so many African Americans Alocked out@ of New Orleans= post-Katrina rebuilding, reconstruction, and recovery? (shrink)

Stolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological (...) bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma. (shrink)

Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective-taking in communication, suggesting that perspective-taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful communication? We begin with the observation that the shared goal of communication induces a natural division of labor: The resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective-taking should depend on their expectations about the other's (...) allocation. We formalize this idea in a resource-rational model augmenting recent probabilistic weighting accounts with a mechanism for (costly) control over the degree of perspective-taking. In a series of simulations, we first derive an intermediate degree of perspective weighting as an optimal trade-off between expected costs and benefits of perspective-taking. We then present two behavioral experiments testing novel predictions of our model. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence or absence of occlusions in a director–matcher task. We found that speakers spontaneously modulated the informativeness of their descriptions to account for “known unknowns” in their partner's private view, reflecting a higher degree of speaker perspective-taking than previously acknowledged. In Experiment 2, we then compared the scripted utterances used by confederates in prior work with those produced in interactions with unscripted directors. We found that confederates were systematically less informative than listeners would initially expect given the presence of occlusions, but listeners used violations to adaptively make fewer errors over time. Taken together, our work suggests that people are not simply “mindblind”; they use contextually appropriate expectations to navigate the division of labor with their partner. We discuss how a resource-rational framework may provide a more deeply explanatory foundation for understanding flexible perspective-taking under processing constraints. (shrink)