We consider a class of dynamic tournaments in which two contestants are faced with a choice between two courses of action. The first is a riskless option (“hold”) of maintaining the resources the contestant already has accumulated in her turn and ceding the initiative to her rival. The second is the bolder option (“roll”) of taking the initiative of accumulating additional resources, and thereby moving ahead of her rival, while at the same time sustaining a risk of temporary setback. We (...) study this tournament in the context of a jeopardy race game (JRG), extend the JRG to $N > 2$ contestants, and construct its equilibrium solution. Compared to the equilibrium solution, the results of three experiments reveal a dysfunctional bias in favor of the riskless option. This bias is substantially mitigated when the contestants are required to commit in advance how long to pursue the risky course of action. (shrink)

Much of today's writing on medical ethics is strong on philosophical theory or on legal speculation, but weak on practice. In this book, practitioners in a wide range of specialties describe the process of making ethical decisions in their everyday work. A moral philosopher analyzes their conclusions, and the theological implications are developed by a Christian theologian and Rabbinic scholar. Thorough and eclectic, this book should be read by all who seek the good of the profession of medicine.

Contents: Ethical principals for environmental protection / Robert Goodin -- Political representation for future generations / Gregory S. Kavka and Virginia L. Warren -- On the survival of humanity / Jan Narveson -- On deep versus shallow theories of environmental pollution / C.A. Hooker -- Preservation of wilderness and the good life / Janna L. Thompson -- The rights of the nonhuman world / Mary Anne Warren -- Are values in nature subjective or objective? / Holmes Rolston III - Duties (...) concerning islands / Mary Midgley -- Gaia and the forms of life / Stephen R.L. Clark -- Western traditions and environmental ethics / Robin Attfield -- Traditional American Indian and traditional western European attitudes toward nature / J. Baird Callicott -- Roles and limits of paradigms in environmental thought and action / Richard Routley. [Book Synopsis]. (shrink)

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my approach to (...) this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work 'On the Problem of Empathy', to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

Ruba and Repacholi review an important debate in the emotion development literature: whether infants can perceive and understand facial configurations as instances of discrete emotion catego...

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my approach to (...) this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work On the Problem of Empathy, to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

This paper deals with what I take to be one woman’s literary response to a philosophical problem. The woman is Jane Austen, the problem is the rationality of Hume’s ‘sensible knave’, and Austen’s response is to deepen the problem. Despite his enthusiasm for virtue, Hume reluctantly concedes in the EPM that injustice can be a rational strategy for ‘sensible knaves’, intelligent but selfish agents who feel no aversion towards thoughts of villainy or baseness. Austen agrees, but adds that ABSENT CONSIDERATIONS (...) OF A FUTURE STATE, other vices besides injustice can be rationally indulged with tolerable prospects of worldly happiness. Austen’s creation Mr Elliot in Persuasion is just such an agent – sensible and knavish but not technically ‘unjust’. Despite and partly because of his vices – ingratitude, avarice and duplicity – he manages to be both successful and reasonably happy. There are plenty of other reasonably happy knaves in Jane Austen, some of whom are not particularly sensible. This is not to say that either Austen or Hume is in favor of knavery It is just that they both think that only those with the right sensibility can be argued out of it. (shrink)

Data are presented that focus on the nature and development of argumentative reasoning. In particular our study describes how support for or against an issue affects memory for critical parts of an argumentative interaction, judgments of argument goodness, and the content of the reasons given in support of one view versus another. Two other factors were examined: developmental differences in argumentation skill and the conditional nature of supporting one side of an argument across varying contexts. Our results show that even (...) seven year old children can recognize, identify, and use the basic components of an argument to provide evidence for and make judgements about their favored position. Moreover, if position support is held constant across all age groups of students, seven year old children were found to give reasons and explanations that were highly similar in content and principle to college students. The same similarities held across age with respect to biases in memory and judgements of argument goodness. The primary difference between children's and college students' argument behavior lay in the side of an argument the students chose to support. Seven year old children and some eleven yearold children supported positions that impute more value to friendship and social consequences than to the maintenance and advancement of individual rights, as specified in a contract agreement. The similarities and differences across development are discussed with respect to a theory of argumentation that speaks to the importance of understanding the nature of goal conflict and a theory of intentionality in predicting how arguments will be represented and resolved. (shrink)

Edith Stein claims that communal experiences are not reducible to the collection of individual experiences directed to the same object or upon the same content. Based on this intuition she gives a phenomenological description of the intentional structure that is proper to communal experiences regarding to their content, mode, and subject. While expanding on her attempts to reassess Husserl’s description of intentionality in an original social-ontological framework, I will stress her precious distinction between individual consciousness and communal stream of (...) experience. I will argue that, if Stein defines the being of the community through its the communal stream of experience, the latter has to be interpreted through Husserl’s teleological concept of ideal multiplicity of experiences. Discussing Stein’s account both against the background of the methodology of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and contextualizing it within the social-ontological struggle that took place in Germany during the Great War, I will focus on her description of we-intentionality and aim to unearth its phenomenological core as well as its methodological limits. (shrink)

Edith Stein’s life and thought intersect with many important movements of life and thought in the twentieth century. Through her life and eventual martyrdom, she gave witness to the primacy of truth and faith in the face of political totalitarianism, and in her philosophical works, she contributed to a synthesis of phenomenological thought with the thought of Aquinas, while also progressively advancing a compelling form of philosophical personalism. As a result, Stein represents one of the most important Catholic (...) thinkers of the twentieth century and is a figure of growing fascination and devotion among believers and nonbelievers alike. Being a Person – Edith Stein’s Mature Personalism is an investigation of Stein’s mature philosophical anthropology, exploring her engagement with the thought of Aquinas and Thomism while maintaining the phenomenological mode of investigation. Through a careful examination of Stein’s later works under the themes of human nature, the human individual, and the human being’s relation to God, the author shows that Stein’s mature personalism is considerably expanded and substantiated by her assimilation of key anthropological and metaphysical teachings of Aquinas and Thomism, and, conversely, that Stein significantly develops and deepens these same teachings through a phenomenological reconsideration of each from a personalist perspective. As a whole, the study reveals the profound accord between Stein’s mature thought and the received teachings of Aquinas, while yet carefully attending to the remaining differences between them. Ultimately, the author proposes that Stein imbues the teachings of Aquinas with a fundamental personalization such that her mature anthropology can be understood as a Thomistically informed personalism which represents a significant, original contribution to the anthropological dimension of the philosophia perennis. (shrink)

The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate in turn raises fundament questions in philosophy of language, science, and ethics. In this paper, a naturalistic conceptual framework is proposed for addressing these issues. This framework begins by contrasting classical and critical concepts (...) of categories, and then puts forward an integrative position that is based on cognitive-affective research. This position can in turn be used to consider the debate between pharmacological Calvinism (which may adopt a moral metaphor of disorder) and psychotropic utopianism (which may emphasize a medical metaphor of disorder). I argue that psychiatric treatment of serious psychiatric disorders is justified, and that psychotropics are an acceptable kind of intervention. The use of psychotropics for sub-threshold phenomena requires a judicious weighing of the relevant facts (which are often sparse) and values. (shrink)

Edith Stein lived an unconventional life. Born into a devout Jewish family, she drifted into atheism in her mid teens, took up the study of philosophy, studied with Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, became a pioneer in the women's movement in Germany, a military nurse in World War I, converted from atheism to Catholic Christianity, became a Carmelite nun, was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, and canonized by Pope John Paul II.

Elliot Eisner has spent the last 40 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in Arts Education, Curriculum Studies and Qualitative Research. He has contributed over 20 books and 500 articles to the field. In this book, Professor Eisner has compiled a career-long collection of his finest pieces-extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings and major theoretical contributions-so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Starting with a specially written (...) Introduction, which gives an overview of Professor Eisner's career and contextualizes his selection, the chapters cover a wide range of issues, including: · Children and art · The use of educational connoisseurship · Aesthetic modes of knowing · Absolutism and relativism in curriculum theory · Education reform and the ecology of schooling · The future of education research This is a must-have book for anyone wishing to know more about the development of Arts Education, Curriculum Studies and Qualitative Research over the last four decades, and about Elliot Eisner's contribution to these exciting fields. This book is part of the World Library of Educationalists series, which celebrates the contributions made to education by leading figures. Each scholar has selected his or her own key writings from across numerous books and journal articles, and often spread across two or more decades to be presented in a single volume. Through these books, readers can chase up the themes and strands that have been lodged in a lifetime's work, and so follow the development of these scholars' contributions to the field, as well as the development of the fields themselves. Other scholars included in the series: Richard Aldrich, Stephen J. Ball, John Elliott, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, David Hargreaves, David Labaree, E.C. Wragg, John White. (shrink)

This piece raises a new challenge for Christian materialist accounts of human persons. Revisiting one of the perennial challenges for Christian materialism, explaining the metaphysical compatibility of resurrection and the life everlasting with materialist metaphysics, I argue that resuscitation phenomena reported in scripture undermine van Inwagen’s and Zimmerman’s attempts to reconcile resurrection and materialism. Although this challenge to Christian materialism is not insurmountable, it provides good reason to reject several of the most serious Christian materialist projects and offers a reason (...) for Christians to consider alternatives to materialism. (shrink)

The problem of human unity lies at the heart of Edith Stein’s investigation of the structure of human nature in her mature works. By examining her resolution of this problem in Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person and Endliches und ewiges Sein, I show how Stein incorporates two foundational teachings of Thomistic anthropology, namely, the substantial unity of the human being and the soul as form of the body, while reinterpreting the meaning of these teachings through performing a fresh (...) phenomenological investigation. Though this investigation leads Stein to propose a conceptually different explanation of human unity and bodily formation than that given by Aquinas, I argue that this conceptual difference should not be understood as if Stein and Aquinas stand squarely opposed on these important anthropological questions, but rather that Stein’s presentation lies in decisive continuity with the adopted teachings of Aquinas and represents an expanded conception of these teachings that also includes some contrast and disagreement. (shrink)

O artigo reflete sobre o atual contexto da Educação Superior e seus desafios na formação de novos perfis de docentes. Optamos por indagar fenomenologicamente a formação docente em uma instituição confessional a fim de perceber, na pulsão das vivências dos estudantes, o lugar que a formação humana e da consciência ocupa na trajetória acadêmica. Seguindo essa pista e dialogando com profissionais e estudantes percebemos a necessidade de um maior aprofundamento dos pressupostos antropológico-filosóficos da educação. A partir disso, fizemos um contraponto (...) entre o modelo reducionista e o complexo, fundamentando as concepções de conhecimento e educação no diálogo entre dois grandes pensadores: Edith Stein e Edgar Morin. Os resultados revelam a necessidade de um diálogo multi e transdisciplinar nos programas de formação docente, bem como a necessidade de pensar a formação humana a partir do paradigma da complexidade, interligando saberes que fomentem a reforma do pensamento. A formação humano-integral requer projetos que incluam todas as dimensões do ser humano. Desse modo, o ato educativo, ensino e aprendizagem, assume proporções que ultrapassam a experiência de sala de aula e perduram em sua formação. A reflexão realizada fez emergir com maior clareza os desafios de nosso tempo: um pensar rigoroso sobre o “humano” e sua formação em uma perspectiva onto-antropológica que tenha como base uma visão de mundo, de ser humano e de transcendência comprometidos com valores pautados na ideia de “casa comum”. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo ilustrar as contribuições de Edith Stein para a Psicologia a partir de uma pesquisa empírica que buscou compreender o processo formativo dos moradores de uma região periférica de Salvador. Para tanto, apresenta os resultados de uma análise, baseada na obra Contribuições à fundamentação filosófica da Psicologia e das Ciências do Espírito, que ilustra o percurso individual de três participantes da pesquisa. A análise possibilita identificar cinco vivências comuns que marcam o processo de transformação dos (...) sujeitos, orientados por um projeto pessoal. Exemplifica, deste modo, a contribuição da fenomenologia de Edith Stein para a Psicologia no sentido de não reduzir a pessoa aos desafios do contexto em que vive ou aos condicionamentos psicofísicos aos quais está submetida, mas a enxergá-la na sua inteireza, discriminando as diferentes naturezas de vivências e o seu modo singular de viver, com a potência que ele contém. (shrink)

This essay argues that Stein’s view of the state can overcome Husserl’s skepticism about the state being an authentic, intense community rooted in solidarity while not negating his hope for the advent of a genuinely ethical, rational culture. Whereas Husserl places rationality and freedom within the framework of culture proper and not in the state, Stein sees the state as an extension of persons that can give the state its own free, deliberating and rational Ich kann.

Le visage d'Edith Stein a disparu dans le martyre qu'elle subit à Auschwitz le 9 août 1942. Depuis lors, ses différents biographes ont tenté de recomposer les éléments de sa vie et de sa personnalité à partir d'une facette de sa personnalité. Edith Stein philosophe, Edith Stein carmélite, Edith Stein féministe: les approches se succèdent et esquissent les différents traits d'un visage dont l'unité demeure cachée dans le secret d'une destinée. Dans ce livre, Philibert Secretan propose (...) une approche synchronique d'Edith Stein. "Le portrait que je propose ici s'organise autour de trois données de fait : la conversion du judaïsme au christianisme ; le passage de la phénoménologie à la sagesse philosophique ; l'entrée au Carmel. Autant de faits qu'il s'agit de traiter non plus en diachronie, comme autant d'étapes d'une existence étalée dans le temps, mais en synchronie, comme autant de strates d'une personnalité dans laquelle continuent à résonner des échos de ces moments constitutifs de son être singulier". En conclusion, Philibert Secretan s'attache à montrer comment la vertu d'obéissance - à la vérité vue par l'intelligence jusqu'à la volonté de Dieu, de l'université au Carmel - unifie les strates qui constituent la personnalité d'Edith Stein. Un livre de vie. Un testament aussi, de celui qui sur le conseil de Paul Ricoeur a introduit la pensée d'Edith Stein en France. (shrink)

Psychiatric disorders present distinct clinical challenges which are partly attributable to their multifactorial aetiology and the absence of laboratory tests that can be used to confirm diagnosis or predict risk. Psychiatric disorders are highly heritable, but also polygenic, with genetic risk conferred by interactions between thousands of variants of small effect that can be summarized in a polygenic risk score. We discuss four areas in which the use of polygenic risk scores in psychiatric research and clinical contexts could have ethical (...) implications. First, there is concern that clinical use of polygenic risk scores may exacerbate existing health inequities. Second, research findings regarding polygenic risk could be misinterpreted in stigmatising or discriminatory ways. Third, there are concerns associated with testing minors as well as eugenics concerns elicited by prenatal polygenic risk testing. Fourth, potential challenges that could arise with the feedback and interpretation of high polygenic risk for a psychiatric disorder would require consideration. While there would be extensive overlap with the challenges of feeding back genetic findings in general, the potential clinical use of polygenic risk scoring warrants discussion in its own right, given the recency of this possibility. To this end, we discuss how lay interpretations of risk and genetic information could intersect. Consideration of these factors would be necessary for ensuring effective and constructive communication and interpretation of polygenic risk information which, in turn, could have implications for the uptake of any therapeutic recommendations. Recent advances in polygenic risk scoring have major implications for its clinical potential, however, care should be taken to ensure that communication of polygenic risk does not feed into problematic assumptions regarding mental disorders or support reductive interpretations. (shrink)

In the following paper we will attempt to analyze and reconstruct Edith Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s “transcendental idealism,” notably, the reason why, in her opinion, the latter ended up embracing that specific philosophical position. As will soon become apparent, according to Stein, Husserl misunderstands the peculiar ontological structure of individual essences and, in particular, the specific connection with reality that they carry within themselves. Without raising the question of whether Stein’s own understanding of transcendental idealism perfectly corresponds (...) with Husserl’s, we will confine ourselves to discussing, first, the wider context within which she tackles it and, second, the relation between Husserl’s idealism and the formal-ontological issue of how to characterize the internal content of individual essences. No matter what we think of Stein’s critical assessment, her approach has the great and undeniable merit of forcing the “interpreter” to face the problem of the tight connection between the transcendental dimension and the eidetic dimension of Husserl’s thought. (shrink)