In the third intermède of Le Malade Imaginaire, Molière imagines a sort of medical convention in which "the wisest experts and professors of Medicine" examine whether a bachelor candidate can be deemed to enter the medical profession. As the first question in this examination, the "Chief physician" asks, "What is the cause and reason [causam et rationem] why opium induces sleep?" The candidate answers without the least hesitation: "Because it contains a sleeping virtue [virtus dormitiva], whose nature is to put (...) the senses to sleep." The answer is followed by a jubilant reaction by the choir: "Good, good, good, he answers well, he is worthy of entering in our wise gild."1The scene is intended to be a... (shrink)

Journal Name: SATS Issue: Ahead of print.

A proper and rigorous analysis of the implications of a physicalist and reductionist concept of the mental (that is, that the mind is merely the activity of the human brain, and that the human brain is the contingent, provisional result of biological evolution) leads to several consequences that seem to have been overlooked so far. First of all, there emerges a case in favour of the existence of incommensurable conceptual schemes; secondly, the necessary nature of thought experiments on mind is (...) put into question. The further exploration of the consequences of physicalism on the necessity of logical laws does not embrace the radical critics of the naturalistic approach by A. Plantinga, whose “evolutionary argument against naturalism” has only some analogies with the one exposed here. (shrink)

The COVID-19-pandemic brought massive changes in the provision of psychotherapy. To contain the pandemic, many therapists switched from face-to-face sessions in personal contact to remote settings. This study focused on psychodynamic therapists practicing Guided Affective Imagery, Hypnosis and Autogenous Relaxation and their subjective experiences with psychotherapy via telephone and videoconferencing during the first COVID-19 related lockdown period in March 2020 in Austria. An online survey completed by 161 therapists produced both quantitative and qualitative data with the latter being subject to (...) a qualitative content analysis. Our research suggests that telephone and videoconferencing are considered valuable treatment formats to deliver psychodynamic psychotherapy. However, therapists’ experiences with remote psychotherapy are multifaceted and ambiguous. In particular, the findings raise questions concerning the maintenance of the therapeutic alliance, the development of the analytic process, the sensitivity to unconscious communication, and the indication for certain types of patients that still need further investigation. Our research indicates that the long-standing reticence toward remote treatments offers among psychodynamic therapists is becoming more differentiated and partially dissolves as therapists gain experiences in their use. Attitudes are becoming more open. At the same time, the way is being prepared to take a closer look at the specific processes and dynamics of remote psychotherapy and to examine them critically in future studies. (shrink)

This volume offers a new framework for understanding expertise. It proposes a reconceptualization of the traditional notion of expertise and calls for the development of a new contextual and action-oriented notion of expertise, which is attentive to axiological values, intellectual virtues, and moral qualities. -/- Experts are usually called upon, especially during times of emergency, either as decision-makers or as advisors in formulating policies that often have a significant impact on society. And yet, for certain types of choices, there is (...) a growing tension between experts’ recommendations and alternative views. The chapters in this volume critically assess the idea of whether possessing epistemic authority can automatically make someone’s assertions necessarily more grounded than others. They not only evaluate the epistemological implications of this idea but also reflect on its ethical, socio-cultural, and political consequences. The interdisciplinary framework advanced across the chapters seeks to overcome certain limitations that underlie current models of expertise by adopting more inclusive and representative decisions that can improve the perceived neutrality of experts’ decisions. Increasing neutrality means reducing cases in which an unidentified bias – be it a scientific one or not – puts any of the individuals involved in a specific public choice at a systematic disadvantage. -/- Philosophy, Expertise, and the Myth of Neutrality will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of the social sciences, public policy, and sociology. (shrink)

We exhibit some automorphism bases for the enumeration degrees, and we derive some consequences relative to the automorphisms of the enumeration degrees.

The present article is an analysis of Heidegger's notorious Rectoral Address in terms of its attempt to bring together philosophy and politics in a way that would revitalise both. Through the repossession and reconfiguration of common words and concepts, Heidegger hoped to provide the intellectual impetus for a radical, invigorating cultural revolution in Germany. Given this apparently laudable aim, one is faced with the pressing question concerning the tension between his philosophical insight, on the one hand, and his inexplicable political (...) blindness on the other. Hence the paper focuses, firstly, on the radical nature of Heidegger's transformation of traditional conceptions of philosophy (science), and secondly, on his failure to separate the originality and significance of this philosophy from a catastrophic ideological attachment to the idea of German spiritual unity and destiny. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(1) 2002: 18-34. (shrink)

There is an increasing movement toward accessibility in arts spaces, including recent legislative changes and commitments at individual, organizational, and systemic levels to integrating access into the arts across Canada. In this article, we explore Relaxed Performance in the context of this movement. We present the results of a reflexive thematic analysis of interviews conducted with participants who completed RP training offered by the British Council to. understand the training’s effectiveness and impact. We explore the significance of the training, and (...) of RP in general, and in relation to disability studies and cultural and political activism. We undertake this exploration against a backdrop of interrogating who RP is for and by. The themes we describe are: Committed to Access, Training is Critical, Inviting Bodies to be Bodies, and Imagining Audiences. These themes tell a story of how RP relates to broader access work, the importance of training grounded in and led by disability/difference, the need to consider the relationships between bodies and spaces, and the tensions inherent to billing RP as “for all.” We conclude with an exploration of possible modifications, enhancements, or theoretical imaginings that could help RP to become more radically open to difference as it emerges, shifts, and changes. (shrink)

Gracias a los rápidos progresos de las neurociencias cognitivas, algunos investigadores, sobre todo de áreas anglosajonas, comienzan a utilizar criterios basados sobre la neurobiología para redimensionar o disolver el concepto de persona -fundamentalmente en ámbito bioético- en cuanto definido ilusorio.En particular, se sostiene que exista un network cerebral innato, que comprende cuatro áreas especificas del encéfalo, que produciría en modo automático la percepción de una categoría especial de cosas, definidas personas. Tal hipÓtesis se basa sobre una creciente cantidad de datos (...) experimentales, tomados de modo individual y corroborados en las pruebas acumuladas.Frente a la dificultad de definir con precisión a la "persona" en los casos bioéticamente más dificiles y controvertidos, se sugiere por tanto que la idea misma sea abandonada en cuanto fruto de un mecanismo evolutivo-adaptativo actualmente inadecuado fi-ente a los dilemas creados por la medicina contemporánea. Se realiza así una naturalización total del concepto para luego sugerir el regreso a una perspectiva utilitarista respecto a los casos bioéticos en los cuales falle un acuerdo común.Después de haber presentado en detalle la propuesta presentada por MJ Farah y A.S Heberlein, en el presente articulo se ofrecen algunos argumentos para rejÚtar el monismo metodológico en el cual tal propuesta se basa, en particular subrayando la dimensión histórica del concepto de persona, surgido gradualmente y no en modo homogéneo, en contraste con la perspectiva neurobiológica innatista. Se pone en evidencia, por tanto el necesario pluralismo epistemológico que acompaña la definición de persona. No es posible excfuir a priori la dimensión filosófica, que es siempre jitndamental, mientras los descubrimientos de las neurociencias se proponen como elementos empiricos complementarios, actualmente no prescindibles por su crecienle relevancia. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz analysiert sowohl historisch als auch thematisch die Bedeutung des lebensphilosophischen Ansatzes Diltheys für die Entwicklung der hermeneutischen Position Heideggers in die Richtung, die zu der Fassung von Sein und Zeit 1927 führte. Eine Paralleluntersuchung der Haupttexte beider Autoren zeigt, dass für den jungen Heidegger die Perspektive Diltheys eine wesentliche Ergänzung der phänomenologischen Methode Husserls in Richtung eines nichtobjektivierenden Zuganges zum ,,Leben“ war. Die Problematisierung der geschichtlichen Zeit im geistigen Leben ist der Punkt, an dem Heideggers Annäherung an die (...) Philosophie Dilthey sowohl sein Höchstmaß als auch seinen Bruch erreichte. Diltheys bahnbrechendes Verständnis des Phänomens ,,Zeit“ zeigte sich durch Heideggers ,,Destruktion“ noch begrenzt und durch wissenschaftliche (d. h. noch objektivierende) Voraussetzungen gekennzeichnet. (shrink)

One of the most predictable implications of photography consists of the ability to fix some images returning them in a variable timeframe for the observation. In all the major world cities, it is common to incur in some book where recent photos are compared to old ones searching the same point of view in order to make the comparison more accurate and stimulate the critical ability of the observer. An exercise that sometimes stimulates a sort of regret for the past, (...) pointing out a diffused excess of nostalgia for times gone by. Nevertheless, the reality and meaning of modern city images are not always so prosaic. What happens when photographs are evocative of a reality that is completely lost in the collective imaginary even though it still exists and functions, despite being forgotten and buried in the depths of the city? This is the case of very few pictures capable of telling the story of a city, Milan, and its only “real” river, the Olona, whose waters, humiliated and rejected, continue to flow in total amnesia. It is a different story when photography does not have the role of nourishing nostalgia, but the power to make visible and explain the variation of a presence and its progressive obliteration. Some pictures testify to the passage from the bucolic amenity of the river and its banks in a pre-urban context to a muscular urban infrastructure. A rigid channelized river, shown with confidence, is trying to keep its presence, until the moment of its inevitable decline and disappearance. It is in these images that the possibility of reconsidering the Olona as a part of the new project for the city lies. (shrink)

In this paper I address the naturalistic assumptions in the contemporary philosophical debate about character. I begin with a brief reconstruction of the controversy between dispositionalists and situationists in moral psychology and then turn to Christian Miller’s recent proposal of a Mixed-Traits approach to character in Section I. Section II raises the familiar problem of explanatory circularity in the appeal to character traits and discusses Miller’s proposed solution in terms of grounding character traits in deeper dispositions to form beliefs and (...) desires. Section III introduces the notion of structural naturalism as the threefold underlying assumption in the contemporary debate. Section IV introduces a personalistic perspective on character following Edmund Husserl’s idea of the personalistic attitude. The following three sections (V, VI, and VII) propose alternatives to the threefold assumption of structural naturalism drawing on the work of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein and Alexander Pfänder. In the conclusion I recapitulate my argument and emphasize how phenomenology could contribute valuable insights for a radical reconfiguration of the debate on character. (shrink)

The paper proposes a dialectical approach to our understanding of the relation between teleology and mechanism. This approach is dialectical both in form and content. In _form_, it proposes a contemporary interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysical account of teleology. This account is grounded in a dialectical methodology, which consists in scrutinizing the inherent limitations of a theoretical position that lead it to suppress itself and evolve into a better one. I apply the same methodology to the function debate. For Hegel, teleology (...) can be understood in three main variants, which can be fruitfully mapped onto the three main positions in the function debate, the key conceptual distinction being whether teleological principles are understood as extrinsic or intrinsic. When it comes to autonomous systems, i.e. systems that embody the regime of _Geist_, extrinsic functionality must be grounded in intrinsic functionality. My approach is dialectical also in _content_, insofar as it concludes that intrinsic functional ascriptions rely on the relation of co-determination between the parts and the whole of a system, as well as between the system and its environment. (shrink)

This paper argues that God's immanent causation and Spinoza's account of activity as adequate causation (of finite modes) do not always go together in Spinoza's thought. We show that there is good reason to doubt that this is the case in Spinoza's early Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well‐being. In the Short Treatise, Spinoza defends an account of God's immanent causation without fully endorsing the account of activity as adequate causation that he will later introduce in the Ethics (...) (E3def2). We turn to an examination of how God's immanent causation relates to the activity of finite things in the Ethics. We consider two ways to think about the link between God, seen as immanent cause, and the activity of finite things: namely, in terms of entailment and in terms of production. We argue that the productive model is most promising for understanding the way in which the activity of finite things and God's immanent causality are connected in Spinoza's (mature) philosophy. (shrink)

We investigate a theory of Frege structures extended by the Myhill-Flagg hierarchy of implications. We study its relation to a property theory with an approximation operator and we give a proof theoretical analysis of the basic system involved. MSC: 03F35, 03D60.

This paper aims to analyze one of the highest achievements of humankind, the classical tragedy, via the application of the heuristic paradigm proposed by Aristotle in his Physics, the fourfold determination of the concept of cause. This scientific methodology – one of the most effective viatica for a comprehensive response to the question of the nature of an object – informs the inquiry into the universal nature of tragedy, its hypercomplexity and hence its ethical and human relevance. Firstly, the concept (...) of tragedy is dissected into its four causes – material, formal, efficient and final; given that the object of research is at the same time tragedy in general and this specific tragedy , each cause is subdivided in two, a distal one and a proximal one . Then, the methodology of the four causes is applied to the formal cause alone, the tragic conflict, in an attempt to better understand tragedy’s quiddity. The results of this more specific causal determination are finally applied to the four causes of tragedy, supporting the hypothesis of a close relationship between hybris, amartia, tragic conflict and education of the phronesis. (shrink)