Recent debates on phenomenal consciousness have shown renewed interest for the idea that experience generally includes an experience of the self – a self-experience – whatever else it may present the self with. When a subject has an ordinary experience (as of a bouncing red ball, for example), the thought goes, she is not just phenomenally aware of the world as being presented in a certain way (a bouncy, reddish, roundish way in this case); she is also phenomenally aware of (...) the fact that it is presented to her. This supposed phenomenal dimension has been variously called “mineness”, “for-me-ness”, “pre-reflective self-awareness” and “subjective character”, among others. This view, associated with historical figures such as William James, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, is attracting a new surge of attention at the crossroads of phenomenology, analytic philosophy of mind and the philosophy of cognitive science, but also intense controversy. This book explores some of the questions running through the ongoing debate on the putative subjective dimension of experience: Does it exist?, the existence question; What is it?, the essence question; What is it for?, the function question; and What else does it explain?, the explanation question. The volume also surveys various domains of human experience, both normal and pathological, where a “sense of self” might be at play, including agency, bodily awareness, introspection, memory, emotions and values, and offers insights into the possible relations between the notions of subjective awareness involved. The first part of the book is devoted to more sceptical or deflationary views about self-experience, and the second, to more robust ones. (shrink)

Recent debates on phenomenal consciousness have shown renewed interest for the idea that experience generally includes an experience of the self—a self-experience—whatever else it may present the self with. When a subject has an ordinary experience (as of a bouncing red ball, for example), the thought goes, she is not just phenomenally aware of the world as being presented in a certain way (a bouncy, reddish, roundish way in this case); she is also phenomenally aware of the fact that it (...) is presented to her. This supposed phenomenal dimension has been variously called “mineness,” “for-me-ness,” “pre-reflective self-awareness,” and “subjective character,” among others. This view, associated with historical figures such as William James, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, is attracting a new surge of attention at the crossroads of phenomenology, analytic philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of cognitive science, but also intense controversy. This book explores some of the questions running through the ongoing debate on the putative subjective dimension of experience: Does it exist?, the existence question; What is it?, the essence question; What is it for?, the function question; and What else does it explain?, the explanation question. The volume also surveys various domains of human experience, both normal and pathological, where a “sense of self” might be at play, including agency, bodily awareness, introspection, memory, emotions, and values, and offers insights into the possible relations between the notions of subjective awareness involved. The first part of the book is devoted to more skeptical or deflationary views about self-experience, and the second, to more robust ones. (shrink)

Carolyn M Stone; Autonomy, Emotions and Desires: some problems concerning R. F. Dearden's account of autonomy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Is.

Luce Irigaray's concept of the "sensible transcendental" is a term that paradoxically fuses mind with body while, at the same time, maintaining the tension of adjacent but separate concepts, thereby providing a fruitful locus for changes to the symbolic order. It provides this locus by challenging the monolithic philosophical discourses of the "Same" which, according to Irigaray, have dominated western civilization since Plato. As such, the sensible transcendental refuses the logic that demands the opposed hierarchal dichotomies between time and space, (...) form and matter, mind and body, self and other, and man and woman, which currently organize western civilization's discursive foundations. Instead, it provides a useful means for helping women to feel at home in their bodies, and it signifies the implementation of an ethical praxis based on the acknowledgment of sexual difference. Such a praxis demands philosophical, theological, juridical, and scientific accountability for systemic sexism and, in its acknowledgment and validation of the alterity of sexual difference, it respects life in its various forms and its vital relationship with biological and physical environments. (shrink)

Human beings as objects, and we are objects inter alia, offer information, even knowledge. And yet, in a society marked by pervasive identity prejudice, even objects do not offer neutral facts. Here, I argue that the harms imposed on those who suffer testimonial injustices cannot be sufficiently understood through the ethical lens of objectification. Such persons are not simply objectified, not simply treated as mere sources of information rather than as informants. Even as objects (not mere objects), they are often (...) unable to testify on their own behalf or testify to true facts of the matter. Rather than follow Miranda Fricker’s argument that testimonial injustices are acts of objectification, I argue that they are better understood as acts of what Ann Cahill calls derivatization. A re-examination of Fricker’s account of the wrong of testimonial injustice as derivatizing rather than objectifying clarifies the wrong of epistemic injustice, reinforces the mutuality of testimonial exchanges where both the speaker and listener are actively engaged and obligated to participate well to succeed, and opens up a discussion of how even when being treated as a source of information, informants can be mistreated. (shrink)

Administrators, faculty, and parents have been weighing the pros and cons of year-round schooling for a long time. They cite a variety of reasons for this scheduling change: growing school enrollments, working parents, and shrinking budgets. Hundreds of school districts in the USA and Canada have adopted year-round school schedules and many more are considering the option. This volume provides a comprehensive, research-based explanation of the concept and practice of year-round school scheduling. It reviews a variety of alternative school schedules (...) and contrasts them with the traditional schedules by showing the effects of year-round schooling on the students, staff, and facilities. (shrink)

Religious ritual in ancient Greece regularly incorporated music, so much so that certain instruments or vocal genres frequently became associated with the religious veneration of specific gods. The Attic cult of Pan and the Nymphs should also be included among this group: though little is often known about the specific ritual practices, the literary and visual evidence associated with the cults make repeated reference to music performed on the panpipes—and to auditory and sensory stimuli more generally—as a prominent feature of (...) the worship of these gods. I consider the Vari Cave, sacred to Pan and the Nymphs, together with the surviving marble votive reliefs from that space, to explore the sounds and sensations associated with the veneration of the rural gods. I argue that the sensory experience offered by the cave and the images within it would have enhanced the worshiper's experience of the ritual and the gods for whom they were performed. In this way, visual and auditory perceptions blurred together to create a powerful experience of the divine. (shrink)

This article explores the interface between public deliberation and interest politics. It empirically examines how and when actors with vested interests support and oppose processes of direct citizen deliberation, such as citizens’ juries. An analysis of four cases finds that interest groups and activists respond to citizen deliberation in a variety of ways from cooperative engagement to disruptive disengagement. The research suggests that partisan actors are most likely to support citizens’ forums when the ideational and political context offers instrumental reasons (...) to go public. The article explores what this strategic approach to public deliberation implies for the practice and theory of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Womanist-Buddhist Consultation as a Reading CommunityCarolyn M. Jones MedineIn Breaking the Fall, the late Robert Detweiler (1932-2008) imagines what a reading community, "a contemporary version of the old storytelling cultures,"1 might look like. He suggests that in such a community, "The accent on community itself would offer a balance to our excessively privatizing tendencies; the communal interaction could counter our relentless drive to interpret... with attitudes of play (...) and Gelassenheit (abandonment, chance, and relaxation); the writing and reading community especially as a liminal entity, could nurture a respect for the incomprehensibility of form and a reverence for mystery."2 This description offers an entry to the work of the Womanist-Buddhist Consultations. To reach a provisional understanding of the meaning of that work, I shall reflect on first what we mean when we say that we want to read something. Second, I turn to a conversation with Robert Detweiler, who was one of my mentors, as a way to address the form of reading that we do and the form of community that we make in the Womanist-Buddhist Consultations. Third, I want to draw on the thought of the consultations themselves, using Emmanuel Levinas's work on reading and ethics, to examine the capacity the consultations have to hold tensions creatively and to allow multiple meanings to be part of them. Finally, I want to address the goals for the consultations. I am thinking specifically of Melanie Harris's desire to see the consultations as generating practices that promote peace, compassion, and justice, and Charlie Hallisey's desire to generate a more complex reading of Buddhist texts in and of themselves.The Womanist-Buddhist Consultations have met three times between 2009 and 2011. We met at Harvard Divinity School and at Texas Christian University for sessions of four days each, and for an evening at the University of Georgia between the two longer meetings. The Texas Christian meeting included some previous members from the Harvard meeting, and added new ones. The University of Georgia meeting consisted primarily of students who participated in the reading practice.In the meeting at the University of Georgia, Charles Hallisey looked askance at me when I said that Buddhism offers an entry into peace and compassion; yet Melanie Harris, when she constructed the later session at Texas Christian University, deployed the terms "peace" and "justice" as descriptors for the work of the group. Hallisey's ironic glance occurred right before we read, at the University of Georgia, a text that contained magic and murder. His glance and the content of that text have prompted [End Page 47] me to think through Harris's claims and to see how our group achieves both a reading of Buddhism and an ethical practice that generates peace and points to justice.The instructions that Hallisey gives for the reading process describe a practice of "being and reading together" as we encounter a variety of Buddhist texts.3 The group's guide is the bodhisattva Manjushri, who has overseen our work through an image gracing the wall at all our meetings. Manjushri has a sword to cut through obstacles, and holds a book, signifying wisdom. The practice of reading with friends, Hallisey told us, comes from Jewish tradition: we need a friend to help us overcome what we can and to begin to see what we cannot. The work involves three steps:1. To read passages individually.2. To read the same passages together in small groups.3. To gather again as a large group and discuss what we have discovered.The major goal of reading is to encounter levels of ourselves to which we ordinarily have no access, by examining a text that becomes "generous" to us. Reading together, Hallisey asserts, makes the generosity of the text visible to us.This process of reading, I would argue, is different from what we usually do when we read and different from what we mean when we tell students to read. Patricia O'Connell Killen, an AAR Teaching Award winner, has delineated some of what we mean when we say to our students: "Read chapter 2 of 'X' and come to class prepared."4... (shrink)

pThis tribute to the late bell hooks examines her work as a Black feminist and Black Buddhist. After a brief introduction to her life, I examine her contributions to feminist thought, particularly her understanding of the need to dismantle “imperial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” As a Black feminist and woman, hooks comes to this work, first, with rage, but in her turn to Buddhist thought, she develops a love ethic, one that she wrote extensively about until her death in 2021 (...) of renal failure./p. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of social categories on the perceived trade-off between a relatively bad but equal distribution of resources between two parties and a profit maximizing yet unequal one. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people prefer to maximize profits when interacting within their social category, but chose not to maximize individual and joint profits when interacting across social categories. Study 3 demonstrated that outside observers, who were not members of the focal social categories, also were less likely (...) to maximize profits when resources were distributed across social category lines. Study 4 showed that the transaction utility of maximizing profits required greater compensation when resources were distributed across, in contrast to within social categories. We discuss the ethical implications of these decision making biases in the context of organizations. (shrink)

(1979). Motivation and Mode: an attempt to measure the attitudes of ‘O’ level GCE candidates to English language. Educational Studies: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 231-239.

This study explores gratitude as a multidimensional and work-specific construct. Utilizing a sample of 625 employees from a variety of positions in a medium-sized school district in the United States, we developed and evaluated a new measure, namely the Work Gratitude Scale, which encompasses recognized conative, cognitive, affective, and social aspects of gratitude. A systematic, six-phased approach through structural equation modeling was used to explore and confirm the factorial structure, internal consistency, measurement invariance, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity of the (...) WGS. The results supported a 10-item measure with three dimensions: “grateful appraisals”, “gratitude toward others”, and “intentional attitude of gratitude”. Thereafter, first-order, second-order, and bifactor confirmatory models were estimated and compared. Work gratitude was found to be best described by a second-order construct with three underlying first-order dimensions. Measurement invariance was supported in relation to gender. Concurrent validity was supported in relation to two existing dispositional gratitude scales, namely the Gratitude Questionnaire and the Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Scale. Convergent validity was supported in relation to the Core Self-Evaluations Scale and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire. Discriminant validity was supported in relation to various demographic factors such as age, gender, occupation, and tenure. The findings support the WGS as a multidimensional measure that can be used in practice to measure overall work-related gratitude and to track the effectiveness of gratitude-related workplace interventions. (shrink)

This article argues that we could improve the design of research protocols by developing an awareness of and a responsiveness to the social contexts of all the actors in the research enterprise, including subjects, investigators, sponsors, and members of the community in which the research will be conducted. ?Social context? refers to the settings in which the actors are situated, including, but not limited to, their social, economic, political, cultural, and technological features. The utility of thinking about social contexts is (...) introduced and exemplified by the presentation of a hypothetical case in which one central issue is limitation of the probability of injury to subjects by selection of individuals who are not expected to live long enough for the known risks of the study to become manifest as harms. Benefits of such considerations may include enhanced subject satisfaction and cooperation, community acceptance, and improved data quality, among other desirable consequences. (shrink)

Background:New graduate transition into the workforce is challenging and can involve managing ethical tensions. Ethical tensions cause new graduates to doubt their capabilities due to their lack of experience. To support new graduates, we need to know what these ethical tensions are.Objectives:To explore the ethical tensions perceived to occur in practice for new graduate health professionals.Research design:This qualitative systematic review involved a search of five databases (Medline, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL and Scopus) which resulted in the retrieval of 3554 papers. After (...) the two-phased screening process, eight studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria and had rich data on the review question. Articles were read several times, critically appraised and analysed through thematic analysis.Ethical considerations:No ethical approval was required for the systematic review. The review was conducted following well-established reporting guidelines enabling transparency and rigour.Findings:Studies originated from Australia, United States, Iran and China. One study included speech pathologists and seven were with nurses. Four themes included the following: (1) enduring an unknown workplace culture that generates uncertainty without support for new graduates; (2) being vulnerable because of distress from bullying, exclusion and being a scapegoat; (3) constraining systems and institutional restrictions that cause dilemmas; and (4) experiencing disillusionment from lost ideals about ethical practice.Discussion:This review has brought to light the vulnerability of new graduates to negative workplace culture and collegial incivility. In addition, new graduates are subjected to ethical tensions created by institutional constraints which can create dilemmas and uncertainties through practice that does not align with what they anticipated.Conclusion:Understanding ethical tensions experienced by new graduates enables provision of informed support. There needs to be considerable cultural change for orientation and socialisation of new graduates to enable them to learn and manage ethical tensions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Defending a Phenomenological–Behavioral Perspective: Culture, Behavior, and ExperienceMarino Pérez-Álvarez (bio), José M. García-Montes (bio), Adolfo J. Cangas (bio), and Louis A. Sass (bio)KeywordsBehavior, contextual phenomenology, culture, experienceWe should like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors for their commentaries on our articles. Given the restrictions of space (a limitation they too had to contend with), we can only respond to a few aspects of their interesting remarks. (...) We shall reply of course on the basis of our own approach—an approach that sets out to integrate culture, behavior, and experience, and that might be termed contextual phenomenology, phenomenological behaviorism, or perhaps most accurately (albeit more awkwardly), the phenomenological–behavioral perspective.In her commentary, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008), referring to the target articles “Phenomenology and behaviorism” (Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, and Cangas 2008) and “The role of superstition in psychopathology” (García-Montes et al. 2008), wonders whether our maintaining of the spirit of Skinner, as well as our recourse to phenomenology, might not themselves represent forms of superstitious behavior. She points out that it is not always a good idea to put new wine in old barrels. For her, the new wine and new barrels would be represented by social constructivism, of which she is reminded by some aspects of our work. But in making her own case, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008) reveals certain common prejudices concerning behaviorism, prejudices that have apparently persisted even after reading our article. Thus, for example, she does not see operant behavior as incorporating intentionality (what, in the target article, is presented in terms of final causality), because she assumes that intentionality would necessarily imply a mentalist and dualist notion involving a supposed internal mental entity that causes behavior. Skinner (1974) himself noted and rejected this very assumption in a passage that clearly distinguishes his own approach from what he calls a “stimulus-response formula”: “Possibly no charge,” he wrote,is more often leveled against behaviorism or a science of behavior than that it cannot deal with purpose or intention. A stimulus-response formula has no answer, but operant behavior is the very field of purpose and [End Page 281] intention. By its nature it is directed toward the future: a person acts in order that something will happen, and the order is temporal.(pp. 55–6)The place Skinner gives to intentionality and purpose is elaborated in our target article.Furthermore, Ibáñez-Guerra (2008) assumes that, on methodological grounds, Skinner rejects all that is not observable, or at least that cannot be operationalized. This, however, is simply incorrect, at least as regards Skinner’s radical behaviorism. As the reader may recall, radical (as opposed to methodological) behaviorism is neither operationalist nor does it reject private or subjective events because of their unobservability. Indeed, Skinner specifically acknowledges that such events are in fact observable—at least for one person: the subject him- or herself. The question for Skinner is to understand how the part of the world that is only observable and experiential for oneself is constructed or formed. In the end, it turns out that radical behaviorism is more radical, in the Aristotelian ontological sense (see Pérez-Alvarez, Sass, and García-Montes 2008), than post-modern constructionism. Indeed, as we remarked, radical behaviorism can still surprise us today. Similarly, phenomenology is starting to be missed in the clinical context (Andreasen 2007). We believe that radical behaviorism and phenomenology, mutually readjusted, are in fact excellent wines for the times we live in—if only we knew how to appreciate them.In their commentary on “Phenomenology and behaviorism: A mutual readjustment,” Fletcher and Hayes (2008) argue that the philosophy and theory of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)/Relational Frame Theory (RFT) already contain the salutary aspects of phenomenology that we highlight in our target article. Their insistence on reducing the affinities we find between phenomenology and behaviorism to ACT/RFT consists, in our view, in a scientific–technical argument that is more scientistic than strictly philosophical in nature. Their insistence on the scientific–technical argument itself implies an unclarified philosophical assumption. On what grounds do experimental data constitute the last word? Has... (shrink)

Here we defend the view that one ought to categorize and classify at least some mental disorders as clusters of interrelated dysfunctions of (usually, several) cognitive capacities – that is, the kinds of capacities that are postulated in cognitive science; capacities that are understood as entities that are primarily individuated in cognitive-functional terms (CF-systems); systems that have a set of peculiar properties in their manner of operation when processing information or representations. Usually, some of the mental disorders postulated in psychiatry (...) are clinically heterogeneous with respect to their symptoms, and tend to be comorbid – that is, one disorder is often accompanied by other disorders – for example, schizophrenia often comes with major depression. We argue that describing the manner in which CF-systems operate within themselves and with other CF-systems as well as with stimuli and other kinds of information can best explain why certain mental disorders are very heterogeneous with respect to their symptoms, and why comorbidity is so frequent among these disorders. A consequence is that both within-category heterogeneity and comorbodity are not necessarily indications of defective classifications but are rather a consequence of the actual cognitive functional architecture itself and are therefore to be expected in these cases. (shrink)

This chapter discusses fundamental problems and prospects for ethical naturalism. Section 1 explains what is meant by “ethical naturalism” and surveys different versions of the view. Section 2 discusses the central philosophical challenge to ethical naturalism, viz., the “Normativity Objection.” Section 3 offers a battery of responses to it on behalf of the ethical naturalist. Section 4 explores a promising and novel approach to ethical naturalism, viz., a moral nativist theory that that combines a Chomskian approach to moral competence with (...) a structuralist metaphysics. (shrink)

El cristianismo, obligado por la Modernidad, tuvo que hacer un desplazamiento desde el plano dogmático al plano moral; hoy estamos ante otro desplazamiento: el que va desde el terreno moral al místico. En este terreno dominará sobre todo la experiencia personal de la presencia salvífica de Dios en Cristo. Esa experiencia, vivida en medio del pluralismo, consistirá en una síntesis activa entre la Presencia y su interpretación . Este ensayo trata de diseccionar las dimensiones existenciales y lingüísticas de esa síntesis. (...) Después de ver por qué somos pobres en experiencia, se analizan los componentes y caracteres esenciales de toda experiencia religiosa A continuación se disecciona la estructura simbólica de esta experiencia , y su configuración mítico-narrativa Palabras clave: 'Hermenéutica de los símbolos'; 'Mitos'; 'Mundos ficcionales'; 'Hermenéutica narrativa'; 'Mundo del texto'; 'Apropiación del sentido'.Christianity forced by modernity had to make a shift from a dogmatic plane to a moral one; today, there is another shift which goes from a moral to a mystical ground. The personal experience of God’s saving presence in Christ will dominate, over all, in this field. That experience, lived in the midst of pluralism will consist of an active synthesis between the presence and its interpretation .This essay intends to dissect the linguistic and existential dimensions of this synthesis. After seeing why we are poor in experience, we will analyze the essential components and characteristics of the religious experience , and its mythical narrative configuration. (shrink)

In this paper an algebraic version for temporal algebras of the logical filtrations for modal and temporal logics is analysed. A structure theorem for free temporal algebras and also some results with regard to the variety of temporal algebras are obtained.

In this paper the structure of pretemporal algebra is used to study some aspects of temporal algebras and modal algebras. The paper contains a computational approach to finite temporal algebras and a general splitting theorem for finite temporal algebras.

In this introduction to the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia, the editor explains the rationale of the new project, citing increases in aggressive xenophobia internationally. He comments on the intergroup-relations theorist Todd Pittinsky's argument that, since tolerance is not logically the antithesis of negative feelings toward out-groups, even long-established traditions of toleration are inadequate to prevent intergroup aggression. Pittinsky proposes that tolerance be replaced, as a principle of peacekeeping, by the encouragement of positive feelings toward out-groups, (...) and the author of this essay responds by showing how the Freudian theory of ambivalence and the history of literature on which Freud drew in constructing it support Pittinsky's viewpoint. Enemies regularly fall in love, above all in Shakespearean drama, which Freud explains by arguing that all human relations are love-hate relations. Thus, this essay suggests, it takes as much psychic energy to repress the love in what appear to be relationships of hatred as to repress the hatred in what appear to be relationships of love. There is a metaphysical component as well to this argument: the xenophobe and xenophile equally presuppose that the identity principle is applicable to society as well as to mathematics; both assume that each discrete social group is self-identical and differs from all other groups more or less radically. The main difference between –phile and –phobe is the latter's relative incapacity to live with ambivalence. Given these arguments, one must expect to find negative as well as positive motives in the etiology and conduct of xenophilia—and the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium is said to focus on cases of xenophilia in which varieties of enmity accompany that singular and underrated variety of love. (shrink)

La presente contribución atiende a la interpretación por parte de Heidegger de la dualidad planteada expresamente por Kant de facultades cognoscitivas y sus respectivos tipos específicos de representación. Intentará mostrar cómo su interpretación fenomenológica da cuenta de esta cooriginariedad de sensibilidad y entendimiento y puede incluso –en un sentido bien determinado– legitimarla. Para ello enfoca su interés en el posicionamiento crítico de Heidegger frente a la lectura neokantiana de este elemento doctrinal de la filosofía transcendental de Kant.

In 2012, a U.S. Institute of Medicine report called for a different approach to health care: “Left unchanged, health care will continue to underperform; cause unnecessary harm; and strain national, state, and family budgets.” The answer, they suggested, would be a “continuously learning” health system. Ethicists and researchers urged the creation of “learning health organizations” that would integrate knowledge from patient‐care data to continuously improve the quality of care. Our experience with an ongoing research study on atrial fibrillation—a trial known (...) as IMPACT‐AFib—gave us some insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. Although the proposed educational intervention study placed no restrictions on what providers and health plans could do, the oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be “bystanders” in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the researchers designed a “workaround” that allowed the project to go forward. We believe the experience suggests that what we call “bystander ethics” will create challenges for the kinds of quality improvement research that LHOs are designed to do. (shrink)