Self-enhancement is the biasing of one’s view of oneself in a positive direction. The brain correlates of self-enhancement remain unclear though it has been reported that the medial prefrontal cortex may be important for producing self-enhancing responses. Previous studies have not examined whether the neural correlates of self-enhancement depend on the particular domain in which individuals are enhancing themselves. Both moralistic and egoistic words were presented to participants while transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to the MPFC, precuneus or in a (...) sham orientation. Participants were asked to make decisions as to the words describing themselves, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. It was found the MPFC TMS significantly disrupted egoistic self-enhancement when TMS was delivered to the MPFC. Judgments involving moralistic words were not influenced by TMS. These data provide further evidence that MPFC is involved in self-enhancement, and that the role of MPFC may be selective in this regard. (shrink)

En este artículo se pretende exponer la antropología de Eugenio Trías como clave de comprensión de toda su filosofía. Para ello se estudia primero su ontología, en torno al ser del límite, y los tres cercos: cerco del aparecer, cerco hermético y cerco del límite. En un segundo momento se estudia su antropología filosófica, propiamente dicha, que analiza al hombre como habitante de la frontera o ser fronterizo. El hombre es entendido como un límite entre lo divino y lo animal, (...) entre la naturaleza de la que proviene (nacimiento) y el arcano hacia el que se mueve (muerte). Por último se analiza cómo esta antropología de Trías permite acceder a campos que la filosofía había descuidado, como pueden ser la ética y la religión. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that choosing to live forever comes with the threat of an especially pernicious kind of boredom. However, it may be theoretically possible to circumvent it by finding ways to pursue an infinite number of projects consistent with one’s personality, taking on endlessly pursuable endlessly interesting projects, or by rekindling old projects once you’ve forgotten about them. However, each of these possibilities is contingent upon having certain traits that you are likely not currently in a good (...) position to assess. I therefore argue that no one is in a good position to be confident about her prospects for living forever. (shrink)

Psychedelic Harm Reduction and Integration is a transtheoretical and transdiagnostic clinical approach to working with patients who are using or considering using psychedelics in any context. The ongoing discussion of psychedelics in academic research and mainstream media, coupled with recent law enforcement deprioritization of psychedelics and compassionate use approvals for psychedelic-assisted therapy, make this model exceedingly timely. Given the prevalence of psychedelic use, the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, and the unique cultural and historical context in which psychedelics are placed, it (...) is important that mental health providers have an understanding of the unique motivations, experiences, and needs of people who use them. PHRI incorporates elements of harm reduction psychotherapy and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and can be applied in both brief and ongoing psychotherapy interactions. PHRI represents a shift away from assessment limited to untoward outcomes of psychedelic use and abstinence-based addiction treatment paradigms and toward a stance of compassionate, destigmatizing acceptance of patients' choices. Considerations for assessment, preparation, and working with difficult experiences are presented. (shrink)

Much of the literature on impairment to self-governance focuses on cases in which a person either lacks the ability to protect herself from errant urges or cases in which a person lacks the capacity to initiate self-reflective agential processes. This has led to frameworks for thinking about self-governance designed with only the possibility of these sorts of impairments in mind. I challenge this orthodoxy using the case of melancholic depression to show that there is a third way that self-governance can (...) be undermined: an agent may fail to form the desire she most wants to act on. (shrink)

This book describes empirically ways to analyze and then to effectually utilize cognitive processes to advance discovery and invention in the sciences. It also explains how to teach these principles to students.

C.S. Peirce defended a pragmatist view of assertion in terms of its normative effect. This paper has two goals. First, to reconstruct and assess Peirce’s argument for the thesis that to assert a proposition is to make oneself responsible for its truth. Second, to argue that Peirce interpreted “responsibility for truth” as the acquisition of a dialogical commitment, namely, the duty to defend the proposition asserted by giving reasons upon challenge.

The author describes his efforts to become a participant observer while he was a Program Director at the NSF. He describes his plans for keeping track of his reflections and his goals before he arrived at NSF, then includes sections from his reflective diary and comments after he had completed his two-year rotation. The influx of rotators means the NSF has to be an adaptive, learning organization but there are bureaucratic obstacles in the way.

The lives of persons are valuable, but are all humans persons? Some humans—the immature, the damaged, and the defective—are not capable, here and now, of engaging in the rational activities characteristic of persons, and for this reason, one might call their personhood into question. A standard way of defendingit is by appeal to potentiality: we know they are persons because we know they have the potentiality to engage in rational activities. In this paper I develop acomplementary strategy based on normativity. (...) We know that the humans in question are persons because we know that lacking the here-and-now ability to engage in rational activities is—for them, unlike for tulips or kittens—a falling-short of some norm. Their personhood, in other words, is established on the basis of their being subject to the norm of having those here-and-now capacities. (shrink)

Deep Self views of moral responsibility have been criticized for positing mysterious concepts, making nearly paradoxical claims about the ownership of one’s mental states, and promoting self-deceptive moral evasion. I defend Deep Self views from these pervasive forms of skepticism by arguing that some criticism is hasty and stems from epistemic injustice regarding testimonies of experiences of alienation, while other criticism targets contingent features of Deep Self views that ought to be abandoned. To aid in this project, I provide original (...) naturalistic analyses of “Self” and “internality” that replace the view’s metaphorical language with common-sensical concepts that make clear their usefulness. (shrink)

The way health is conceptualized determines the actions taken to protect and promote it and, in turn, the actors responsible for such actions in an increasingly inter-dependent world. This essay presents a brief description of health policies in Peru during the last ten years in order to analyze the implications of paradigms of medical ethics, human rights and quality of care. These paradigms offer distinct ways of formulating, applying and evaluating health policies and understanding the relationship among different actors at (...) various levels. Building upon other detailed analyses of sexual and reproductive health policy in Peru (Coe, 2004; Miranda and Yamin, 2004), as well as critical appraisals of health services models (Gericke, Kurowski, Ranson and Mills, 2005; Krieger, Northridge, Gruskin, Quinn, Kriebel, Davey Smith, Bassett, Rehkopf and Miller, 2003), this article advocates the importance of construing and promoting health as a human right. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo, plantear el concepto de la tecnología como mito, y por lo tanto como un espacio mítico, lugar de enunciación desde donde el ser humano establece la comprensión que tiene de la realidad que le corresponde vivir, y así, plantea su actuar sobre ella. Para ello se presenta brevemente y a manera de barrunto una introducción de un análisis de la coyuntura vivida con la pandemia del Covid-19, que servirá para contextualizar la urgencia de reflexionar sobre (...) el tema central, y que además permitirá bosquejar la conclusión de este escrito. Luego se abordará el problema planteado desde la propuesta económico-teológica del pensador crítico Franz Hinkelammert, quien a lo largo de su obra ha presentado, de manera implícita, un análisis sobre el tema de la tecnología, y quien desarrolla radicalmente la concepción de la tecnología como un mito de la modernidad. Hacer este acercamiento nos obligará a recorrer las reflexiones que este mismo pensador tiene sobre la racionalidad económica perfecta, así mismo que sobre la concepción de la economía que emergió con la revolución industrial y que se radicaliza tras las subsiguientes revoluciones que se plantean en esa línea. A lo largo de este desarrollo argumental nos veremos en la obligación de pasar por otros conceptos clave de la propuesta de Hinkelammert, como el de ideología liberal y su concepción de concepto límite. El de mala infinitud que viene desde la lectura que nuestro autor hace de Hegel. Y por supuesto el concepto de mito y espacio mítico, así como el de tecnología y su vínculo con el imaginario social de progreso que es impuesto dentro de la racionalidad económica y social del sistema-mundo imperante. (shrink)

According to the orthodox Christian belief expressed most famously at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Jesus Christ is one person who is both divine and human. Not surprisingly, many have wondered at this, for it seems impossible for one person to have both divine and human characteristics. There are different versions of this difficulty, which correspond to different human and divine characteristics. In this article, I will defend traditional Christology against an argument that bases itself on one particular difficulty. (...) The argument contends that Christ's omniscience and non-omniscience mean that he cannot be one person; it contends, in short, that Chalcedon is self-undermining. I will begin by making some preliminary remarks. In the second section of the paper, I will show that the anti-Chalcedonian argument cannot simply be avoided or ignored. In the third section, I will examine the argument itself. (shrink)

Examples of historical writing are analysed in detail, and it is demonstrated that, with respect to the statements which appear in historical accounts, their truth and value-freedom are neither necessary nor sufficient for the relative acceptability of historical accounts. What is both necessary and sufficient is the acceptability of the selection of statements involved, and it is shown that history can be objective only if the acceptability of selection can be made on the basis of a rational criterion of relevance. (...) 'Relevance' and 'significance 1 are distinguished. The conditions of rationality of a criterion of acceptability are examined with special reference to Popper's criterion of 'falsifiability', which is shown to fail to apply to historical writing. General conclusions are drawn about the implications of the argument for the possibility of the 'unity of science', and about the conditions which need to be met if history is to be objective. (shrink)

According to authoritative Christian teaching, Jesus Christ is a single person existing in two natures, divinity and humanity. In attempting to understand this claim, the high-scholastic theologians often asked whether there was more than one existence in Christ. John Duns Scotus answers the question with a clear and strongly-formulated yes, and Thomists have sometimes suspected that his answer leads in a heretical direction. But before we can ask whether Scotus‘s answer is acceptable or not, we have to come to a (...) clear understanding of what his answer is. And before we can ask what his answer is, we have to come to a clear understanding of what question or questions he is trying to answer. In this paper I begin by explaining that the question about Christ‘s existence is ambiguous, i.e., that there are actually two questions hidden behind one formulation. Next I look at Scotus‘s writings on the topic in order to determine which question he is really trying to answer, and I argue that he is trying to answer both of them, even though he does not make this clear. Third, I provide an initial look at the answers that he gives. Fourth, I explain why these answers might seem problematic, especially from a Thomistic perspective. Fifth, I explain Scotus‘s answers in more detail and show that they are not problematic in the way that some Thomists have held. Indeed, at least some of Scotus‘s ideas are the very same ideas that Thomas spells out in one of his works. (shrink)

According to Christian doctrine as formulated by the Council of Chalcedon (451), Christ is one person (one supposit, one hypostasis) existing in two natures (two essences), human and divine. The human and divine natures are not merged into a third nature, nor are they separated from one another in such a way that the divine nature goes with one person, namely, the Word of God, and the human nature with another person, namely, Jesus of Nazareth. The two natures belong to (...) just one person, and the one person has two distinct natures. Chalcedon‟s justly-famous formula brought the debate into sharper focus and ruled out certain options, but of course it did not bring the arguments to a complete end. More councils,more debates, and more questions were to follow, although the range of disagreement tended to narrow. In the medieval Latin West, Peter Lombard (†1160) identified in book III of the Sententiae three “opinions” on the topic, but by the middle of the thirteenth century, it was widely agreed that only one of them was orthodox teaching. This relative unity of thought provided the space within which more detailed issues could be debated, and one of the most interesting of these concerned existence (esse): how many existences are there in Christ? Since Christ is only one person, it might seem that he has only one existence. On the other hand, he has two natures, so perhaps instead he has more than one existence. In this one paper, my goal is rather modest. I discuss only a few of the relevant authors, and I focus primarily on which questions they were asking. I proceed as follows. I first look at Thomas Aquinas, whose remarks on these topics had such a large influence on the debate later in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Crucial will be certain distinctions that Thomas makes, distinctions we can see as disambiguating the question we began with, namely, „How many existences are there in Christ?‟. After that I will look at how one of those distinctions makes its appearance in the writings of two post-Thomistic authors, Giles of Rome and Godfrey of Fontaines. (shrink)

Patrick Toner has recently criticized accounts of substance provided by Kit Fine, E. J. Lowe, and the author, accounts which say (to a first approximation) that substances cannot depend on things other than their own parts. On Toner’s analysis, the inclusion of this parts exception results in a disjunctive definition of substance rather than a unified account. In this paper (speaking only for myself, but in a way that would, I believe, support the other authors that Toner discusses), I first (...) make clear what Toner’s criticism is, and then I respond to it. Including the parts exception is not the adding of a second condition but instead the creation of a new single condition. Since it is not the adding of a condition, the result is not disjunctive. Therefore, the objection fails. (shrink)

This article presents a framework for practitioners who may be interested in maintaining adaptive stability of sociotechnical networks. The framework is developed from assembling several concepts that are useful for assessing and for drawing on appropriate moral reasoning strategies as sociotechnical networks are designed, constructed, and adapted. One such strategy involves the ability to assess degrees of perspective sharing and trading relationships in networks using moral imagination. The article uses the case of the design of an environmentally sustainable fabric to (...) illustrate these strategic concepts. The framework also draws on other examples of cases in which sociotechnical networks have become destabilized to illustrate instances in which the framework may have been useful for decreasing a tendency for destabilization. (shrink)

Krzysztof Brzechczyn’s important collection around Roth’s “revival” stimulates thought about the approaches adopted by analytical philosophers of history. Roth revives Danto’s 1965 pragmatic “constructivist” insights: in a narrative, earlier “events under a description” are described in terms of possibly unknowable later ones and, following Mink, in terms of possibly unknowable later concepts. Roth thinks of the resulting narrative explanation as justified in virtue of its constituting the object explained. However, earlier analytical philosophers of history faced different issues and adopted two (...) different approaches: the positivist logical empiricist analysis used by Hempel and the nonpositivist “ordinary language” conceptual analysis of Oxford linguistic philosophers used by Dray. Hempel’s Hume-sourced model of historical explanation set a scientific standard to be achieved, while Dray “tested” that analysis against historiographical practice. Both dubiously made “explanation” epistemologically central, as does Roth. Neither they nor later “narrativists” saw that more problematic was “compositionality”, the Hume-sourced view that the meanings of narratives were fully given by the meanings of their constituent sentences. (shrink)

Current scholarship on Clearchus’ Lives emphasizes a moralizing historiographical schema of pernicious luxury, in which truphē leads to koros, then to hybris, and finally to destruction. Yet all the fragments used to construct this theory are preserved in one late source, the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. A study of the diction and immediate context of these so-called fragments demonstrates that the moral themes are presented in language that is far more likely to originate in the cover text rather than in the (...) Lives. Furthermore, this moralizing schema that binds together acts both effeminate and hybristic – as if the one followed naturally from the other – cannot be found securely attested elsewhere in Greek thought before the Roman Era. Thus we argue that, based on the evidence that survives, it is anachronistic to suggest that Clearchus espoused this principle. In addition, those who study Hellenistic fragments need to scrutinize more carefully the exact phrasing and framework of the Deipnosophistae, and be more wary about Athenaeus’ attribution of contemporary values to his sources. (shrink)

ObjectiveMost young adults diagnosed with breast or gynecologic cancers experience adverse reproductive or sexual health outcomes due to cancer and its treatment. However, evidence-based interventions that specifically address the RSH concerns of young adult and/or LGBTQ+ survivor couples are lacking. Our goal is to develop a feasible and acceptable couple-based intervention to reduce reproductive and sexual distress experience by young adult breast and gynecologic cancer survivor couples with diverse backgrounds.MethodsWe systematically adapted an empirically supported, theoretically grounded couple-based intervention to address (...) the RSH concerns of young couples coping with breast or gynecologic cancer through integration of stakeholder perspectives. We interviewed 11 couples with a history of breast or gynecologic cancer to review and pretest intervention materials. Three of these couples were invited to review and comment on intervention modifications. Content experts in RSH and dyadic coping, clinicians, and community advisors participated throughout the adaptation process.ResultsFindings confirmed the need for an online, couple-based intervention to support young couples experiencing RSH concerns after breast or gynecologic cancer. Qualitative themes suggested intervention preferences for: A highly flexible intervention that can be tailored to couples’ specific RSH concerns; Active steps to help members of a dyad “get on the same page” in their relationship and family building plans; A specific focus on raising partners’ awareness about how cancer can affect body image and physical intimacy; and Accessible, evidence-based information about RSH for both partners. These results, along with feedback from stakeholders, informed adaptation and finalization of the intervention content and format. The resulting virtual intervention, Opening the Conversation, includes five weekly sessions offering training to couples in communication and dyadic coping skills for addressing RSH concerns.ConclusionThe systematic adaptation process yielded a theory-informed intervention for young adult couples facing breast and gynecological cancers, which will be evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. The long-term goal is to implement and disseminate Opening the Conversation broadly to reach young adult couples with diverse backgrounds who are experiencing RSH concerns in cancer survivorship. (shrink)

In this chapter I discuss the particular situation of being at the intersection of disability and child poverty. I then give a thick description that shows what it is like to be a nondisabled white girl living in poverty with two parents with disabilities—I give my own story. Then I offer some empirical facts to demonstrate the problems distilled from the thick description: custody challenges, child as carer, unemployment, charity, and lack of choice. I then discuss stigma from a theoretical (...) point of view. I put forward a view of ontological vulnerability that is more expansive than Martha Fineman’s or Catriona Mackenzie’s using Judith Butler’s and Jackie Leach Scully’s work on vulnerability. After that I offer some ways to combat stigma of children in poverty and disability. It is upon this that I construct an alternative political vision that would value human need and be responsive to vulnerabilities without erasing or assimilating difference. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 22 This is an attempt to discover and clarify the philosophical nature of what Eelco Runia claims to be his new and up-to-date philosophy of history, a programme offered in his 2014 book _Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation_. His suggestion that his argument is a “dance” is taken seriously, and following an analysis of historical “meaning” and its time-extended nature it is argued that the book’s presentation commits Runia to a conception of meaning (...) that requires more weight than he allows to the centrality of narrative understanding in history. His attempt to reconnect critical and substantive philosophies of history is analysed and criticised. His apparently inconsistent commitments to both Vico’s _verum-factum_ claim, where we can make history, and to Gumbrecht’s “presence”, where history can make us, is clarified in terms of a pragmatic philosophy that permits Runia to have the psychology-based approach that he relies upon. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 11, Issue 2, pp 127 - 148 This is an attempt to discover and clarify the philosophical nature of what Eelco Runia claims to be his new and up-to-date philosophy of history, a programme offered in his 2014 book _Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation_. His suggestion that his argument is a “dance” is taken seriously, and following an analysis of historical “meaning” and its time-extended nature it is argued that the book’s presentation commits Runia (...) to a conception of meaning that requires more weight than he allows to the centrality of narrative understanding in history. His attempt to reconnect critical and substantive philosophies of history is analysed and criticised. His apparently inconsistent commitments to both Vico’s _verum-factum_ claim, where we can make history, and to Gumbrecht’s “presence”, where history can make us, is clarified in terms of a pragmatic philosophy that permits Runia to have the psychology-based approach that he relies upon. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

This dissertation is an investigation of ontological priority. The Introduction argues that although philosophers have often been concerned with the things that are ontologically prior, they have seldom addressed the question of what ontological priority is. ;Part One gives a detailed analysis of what ontological priority is. Chapter 1 notes that there are two competing theories available: according to the first, ontological priority is a dependence relation; according to the second, it is a degrees-of-being relation. Since the two views are (...) in themselves irreconcilable and since there are no good grounds for choosing between them, it is better to find a "higher" theory that encompasses both of them. Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for the development of this "higher" theory by examining the Scotistic notion of "essential order", a notion that includes the two relations that have been called 'ontological priority' as noted in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 adapts Scotus's understanding of essential order to formulate a definition of ontological priority. The definition does not define just one relation; rather, it gives membership criteria for an entire class of "ontological priority relations". ;Part Two examines some of the members of the class of ontological priority relations. Chapter 4 examines dependence and concludes three things: first, that the received understanding of dependence is incorrect; second, that dependence properly understood is an ontological priority relation; third, that the relation that is usually thought to be dependence is also an ontological priority relation. Chapter 5 examines degrees-of-being. Since the question of what degrees-of-being is is too complicated to deal with in the context of the dissertation, the chapter examines several theories and shows that degrees-of-being is an ontological priority relation according to any of the theories. ;The Conclusion shows some relations among the three ontological priority relations discussed in Part Two. It also shows briefly how the concept of ontological priority relations can be used to talk about the orderings of the universe. Finally, it points the way to further investigation. (shrink)

One of the basic intuitions guiding Sartre's phenomenological works is that phenomena cannot be reduced to essences that are separate from appearances. Such a separation leads to a type of semiotic profusion that Sartre criticizes in L'Etre et le néant by evoking the example of Proust. Sartre's ontology must avoid this infinite proliferation of meaning without falling into a type of essentialism where things are merely what they appear to be. Sartre's references to Proust demonstrate not only the pitfalls of (...) essentialism and unlimited semiosis, but also why Sartre found it necessary to invent existential psychoanalysis as a response to the twin phenomenological challenge of situating intentional meaning neither on the side of the object, nor of the subject, but somewhere in between. The unsatisfactory nature of Sartre's solution is palpable in the contradictions we discover in his observations on Proust. (shrink)

Analytical philosophers, if they are true to their training, never forget the first lesson of analytical philosophy: philosophers have no moral authority.In so far as analytical philosophers believe this, they find it easy to live with. For them even to assert, let alone successfully lay claim to, moral authority would require, first, hard work of some non-analytical and probably mistaken kind and, secondly, personality traits of leadership or confidence or even charisma, which philosophers may accidentally have but which they are (...) certainly not trained to have and had better not rely upon, while they live by analytical standards. Yet a further reason why analytical philosophers find the denial of their moral authority easy to accept is that they never forget the second lesson of analytical philosophy, either: nobody else has any moral authority. (shrink)

Analytical philosophers, if they are true to their training, never forget the first lesson of analytical philosophy: philosophers have no moral authority.In so far as analytical philosophers believe this, they find it easy to live with. For them even to assert, let alone successfully lay claim to, moral authority would require, first, hard work of some non-analytical and probably mistaken kind and, secondly, personality traits of leadership or confidence or even charisma, which philosophers may accidentally have but which they are (...) certainly not trained to have and had better not rely upon, while they live by analytical standards. Yet a further reason why analytical philosophers find the denial of their moral authority easy to accept is that they never forget the second lesson of analytical philosophy, either: nobody else has any moral authority. (shrink)