This is a critical introduction to modern French philosophy, commissioned from one of the liveliest contemporary practitioners and intended for an English-speaking readership. The dominant 'Anglo-Saxon' reaction to philosophical development in France has for some decades been one of suspicion, occasionally tempered by curiosity but more often hardening into dismissive rejection. But there are signs now of a more sympathetic interest and an increasing readiness to admit and explore shared concerns, even if these are still expressed in a very different (...) idiom and intellectual context. Vincent Descombes offers here a personal guide to the main movements and figures of the last forty-five years. He traces over this period the evolution of thought from a generation preoccupied with the 'three H's' - Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, to a generation influenced since about 1960 by the 'three masters of suspicion' - Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. In this framework he deals in turn with the thought of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, the early structuralists, Foucault, Althusser, Serres, Derrida, and finally Deleuze and Lyotard. The 'internal' intellectual history of the period is related to its institutional setting and the wider cultural and political context which has given French philosophy so much of its distinctive character. (shrink)

Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love turns a past world into a modern marvel, following Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to Spain, Leclercq, Julia Kristeva's probing alter ego, visits the sites and embodiments of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and rebellion. One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting (...) works, _Teresa, My Love_ interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculpture to engage the reader in Leclercq's--and Kristeva's--journey. Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila outwitted the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character. (shrink)

Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila survived the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Julia Kristeva explores as it was expressed in Teresa's writing. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the (...) individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character. Through her dazzlingly varied formats Kristeva tests the borderlines of atheism and the need for faith, feminism and the need for a benign patriarchy. (shrink)

While central to the Christian religion, the act of faith has been notoriously difficult to define. This essay is an attempt to illuminate, with the aid of insights from cognitive science and process philosophy, what it means for a Christian to have faith, specifically in God. In doing so, the apriori and aposteriori aspects of faith are explored, along with its connections to science and empirical evidence, revelation, knowledge, doubt, morality, and additional Christian beliefs.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mourning and SubjectivityFrom Bersani to Proust, Klein, and FreudL. Scott Lerner (bio)Near the end of his recent essay “Psychoanalysis and the Aesthetic Subject,” Leo Bersani makes an unexpected conceptual turn, briefly adopting a vocabulary of “human destiny” [174]. Jacques Derrida made a similar move in 2003 when he dropped his guard, abandoning the language of critical exposition to point out, with uncharacteristic bluntness (“de façon plus crue” [18]), (...) the relevance of autobiography—his experience as a Jewish boy in Algeria—to the development of deconstruction.1 In both instances, one senses a desire for intellectual self-exposure,2 to discover the relation of real-world experience and intellectual—critical, aesthetic, psychic—practices. For Bersani, not only the phrase but the essay as a whole signals the culmination of a decades-long inquiry into the relation of human subjectivity and a “solidarity of being” both among subjects and with the world [“Psychoanalysis” 161].If there is an affirmation of a universal human condition in Bersani’s work—and his reference to human destiny indicates that there is—then it is perhaps best defined as the inclination of human subjects to seek the annihilation of others as a prerequisite for subjectivity. In this state of affairs, where subjectivity encounters the external realm of human and nonhuman objects, Bersani has long been concerned with two chief protagonists: psychoanalysis and art. He has repeatedly shown, ever by new means, that both can be complicitous with the worst inclinations of human subjectivity, just as both can also uniquely provide the means by which human subjects may exceed their own subjectivity [161]. Psychoanalysis, in Bersani’s view, provides the language and conceptual framework to describe how and why subjects go about appropriating and annihilating objects. Psychoanalysis has been misdirected, however, toward two areas of relatively limited value: depth psychology and object relations [“Psychoanalysis” 161, 163; “Sociality” 647], while the main contribution of psychoanalysis, the discovery of the unconscious, has not been adequately exploited as a means of reconceptualizing subjects in solidarity, rather than antagonism, with objects [“Psychoanalysis” 161–64].By the same token, much of great art, literature especially, has served what Bersani calls the “culture of redemption,” promoting the misconception that experience is damaged or worthless and must be repaired via the work of art [Culture of Redemption 1]. [End Page 41] In psychoanalysis, the counterpart of the culture of redemption is located not, in fact, in the areas that Bersani devalorizes (depth psychology, object relations), but rather with the core exploration of unconscious subjectivity. The literary achievement that is paradigmatic of the culture of redemption is Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), whose theorizing narrator depicts experience, history, the real, as lost to us, damaged, fallen, and in need of repair—redemption—through art.3 The best illustration of the counterpart in psychoanalysis is the work of Melanie Klein. By portraying our relations with others as repetitions of dynamics already played out in unconscious fantasy, Kleinian theory, in Bersani’s view, similarly casts real relations as subordinate to and determined by the (unconscious) imagination. No sooner has Bersani exposed these dominant tendencies in Proust and Klein, however, than he redeems both from the sins of redemptiveness. At the periphery of each writer’s work he uncovers a radically alternative—and, implicitly, ethically superior—representation of the subject in the world. Bersani devoted a seminal essay to these two writers: “The Culture of Redemption: Marcel Proust and Melanie Klein,” reprinted as the first chapter of The Culture of Redemption (1990). In subsequent essays in this volume, he applied this same bifocal approach—consisting in condemnation of a dominant tendency and affirmation of a seemingly marginal one—to Freud, Flaubert, Melville, and others.If The Culture of Redemption thus aimed not only to expose the distortions created by the culture of redemption but also to promote an alternative vision, then the title assigned to the collection told only half the story. Three years later, Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit set out, as it were, to tell the other half. They brought together the work of three artists—a novelist and playwright, a painter, and a filmmaker... (shrink)

The present article challenges the bifurcation of the world established by Kant, a bifurcation that continues to plague contemporary thinking about science, religion, and morality. This challenge is aided by Whitehead's alternative worldview.

This is a polemical essay providing an historical and cultural analysis of John Rawls’s political liberalism, and arguing that the “original position” in his philosophy is not only hypothetical, but also unrealistic by virtue of ignoring comprehensive religious and philosophical points of view. Rawls attempts to derive the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity from a mere thought experiment withoutconsidering the foundational role of the Christian religion, which was instrumental in the birth and refinement of these ideas.

This article analyzes David Hume’s influential critique of worship from a process point of view informed by the thought of Whitehead and Hartshorne.

This article treats religion as a central concern in Whitehead. His view of rational religion relies primarily on rational inference, not direct intuition. Taking seriously in religion the nonreflective elements in human cognition would not jeopardize, but would strengthen, his treatment of the reflective ones. While religion can certainly include vestiges of human savagery, it also promotes the ascent of humanity beyond social decay and enhances the art of life.

It is considered the right of children to have their pain managed effectively. Yet, despite extensive research findings, policy guidelines and practice standard recommendations for the optimal management of paediatric pain, clinical practices remain inadequate. Empirical evidence definitively shows that unrelieved pain in children has only harmful consequences, with no benefits. Contributing factors identified in this undermanaged pain include the significant role of nurses. Nursing attitudes and beliefs about children’s pain experiences, the relationships nurses share with children who are suffering, (...) and knowledge deficits in pain management practices are all shown to impact unresolved pain in children. In this article, a relational ethics perspective is used to explore the need for nurses to engage in authentic relationships with children who are experiencing pain, and to use evidence-based practices to manage that pain in order for this indefensible suffering of children to end. (shrink)

The aims of the present study were to analyse people’s natural ability to discriminate between true and false statements provided by people with intellectual disability (IQTRUE = 62.00, SD = 10.07; IQFALSE = 58.41, SD = 8.42), and the differentiating characteristics of such people’s statements using criteria-based content analysis (CBCA). Thirty-three people assessed 16 true statements and 13 false statements using their normal abilities. Two other evaluators trained in CBCA evaluated the same statements. The natural evaluators differentiated between true and (...) false statements with somewhat above-chance accuracy, even though error rate was high (38.19%). That lay participants could not effectively discriminate between false and true statements demonstrates that such assessments cannot be considered useful in a forensic context. The CBCA technique did discriminate at a better level than intuitive judgements. However, of the 19 criteria, only one significantly discriminated. More procedures specifically adapted to the abilities of people with intellectual disabilities are thus required. The presence of structured production, quantity of details, characteristics details and unexpected complications increased the probability that a statement would be considered true by non-expert evaluators. The classification made by the non-expert evaluators was independent of the participants’ IQ. A big data analysis is performed in search for better classification quality. (shrink)

An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions.

_An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions._.

Current treatments for chronic pain have limited benefit. We describe a resilience intervention for individuals with chronic pain which is based on a model of viewing chronic pain as dysregulated homeostasis and which seeks to restore homeostatic self-regulation using strategies exemplified by survivors of extreme environments. The intervention is expected to have broad effects on well-being and positive emotional health, to improve cognitive functions, and to reduce pain symptoms thus helping to transform the suffering of pain into self-growth. A total (...) of 88 Veterans completed the pre-assessment and were randomly assigned to either the treatment intervention or control. Fifty-eight Veterans completed pre- and post-testing. The intervention covered resilience strengths organized into four modules: engagement, social relatedness, transformation of pain and building a good life. A broad set of standardized, well validated measures were used to assess three domains of functioning: health and well-being, symptoms, and cognitive functions. Two-way Analysis of Variance was used to detect group and time differences. Broadly, results indicated significant intervention and time effects across multiple domains: Pain decreased in present severity [F = 5.02, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.08], total pain over six domains [F = 14.52, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.21], and pain interference [F = 6.82, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.11]; Affect improved in pain-related negative affect [F = 7.44, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], fear [F = 7.70, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], and distress [F = 10.87, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.16]; Well-being increased in pain mobility [F = 5.45, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09], vitality [F = 4.54, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.07], and emotional well-being [F = 5.53, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09] Mental health symptoms and the cognitive functioning domain did not reveal significant effects. This resilience intervention based on homeostatic self-regulation and survival strategies of survivors of extreme external environments may provide additional sociopsychobiological tools for treating individuals with chronic pain that may extend beyond treating pain symptoms to improving emotional well-being and self-growth.Clinical Trial Registration: Registered with ClinicalTrials.gov. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 83-85.

Volume 1 -- Unit 1: Tragedy as an independent art of musical drama. Chapter 1: Plato's well-educated men, the dancers: Harmonia kai rhuthmos as "music and dance" -- Chapter 2: Tragedy as a necessarily performed "musical" art in the Poetics -- Chapter 3: The irreducibility of tragedy to literature -- Chapter 4: Harmonia kai rhuthmos as "music and dance" in Politics VIII.

Pragmatism is America’s most distinctive philosophy. Generally it has been understood as a development of European thought in response to the "American wilderness." A closer examination, however, reveals that the roots and central commitments of pragmatism are indigenous to North America. Native Pragmatism recovers this history and thus provides the means to re-conceive the scope and potential of American philosophy. Pragmatism has been at best only partially understood by those who focus on its European antecedents. This book casts new light (...) on pragmatism’s complex origins and demands a rethinking of African American and feminist thought in the context of the American philosophical tradition. Scott L. Pratt demonstrates that pragmatism and its development involved the work of many thinkers previously overlooked in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

"This anthology of writings by prominent black thinkers from antiquity to the present makes the case for a central tradition of black philosophy, rooted in Africa and distinct from the intellectual heritage of the West."--From publisher description.

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the (...) negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

This study examined the effect of various antecedent variables on marketers’ perceptions of the role of ethics and socialresponsibility in the overall success of the firm. Variables examined included Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (i.e., power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and Confucian dynamism), as well as corporate ethical values and enforcement ofan ethics code. Additionally, individual variables such as ethical idealism and relativism were included. Results indicated that most ofthese variables impacted marketers’ perceptions of the importance of ethics and social responsibility, (...) although to varying degrees. (shrink)

“Natural logic” was proposed by Lewis Henry Morgan as the engine of cultural evolution, concluding that the “course and manner” of cultural development “was predetermined, as well as restricted within narrow limits of divergence, by the natural logic of the human mind.” This essay argues that Morgan’s conception of natural logic aids the project of settler colonialism. Rather than being a false account of human agency, however, it is a conception of natural logic that is produced through the systematic narrowing (...) of possibilities for agency, human, and otherwise. This narrowed logic is thus only a part of a differently conceived logic of agency that is also general and normative. The discussion proceeds in four sections: first, a presentation of Morgan’s conception of natural logic and its origins; second, an analysis of four colonizing implications of Morgan’s view; third, examples of further developments of natural logic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the work structuralist and post-structuralist theorists; and, last, a brief introduction of a decolonial logic that provides a broader alternative conception of the structure of agency, human, and otherwise, and that avoids the oppressive effects of the reductionism of the natural logic received from Morgan and his successors. (shrink)

i am humbled by the opportunity to address you today as the President of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. From my first experience at the annual meeting in Boston in 1995 to this meeting more than two decades later, SAAP has been my philosophical home. Here I have come to know many of the philosophers who have most influenced me: John Lachs, Peter Hare, John Ryder, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Jim Campbell, Marilyn Fischer, Erin McKenna, and John McDermott, (...) whose work, in particular, helped me find my philosophical voice by inspiring both the research that led to my first book and my approach to teaching American philosophy. It was McDermott, the second president of this society, who delivered... (shrink)

marilyn fischer's book Jane Addams's Evolutionary Theorizing sets a new standard for reading the central works of American philosophy. By situating Addams's Democracy and Social Ethics in the context of late nineteenth-century evolutionary theory, the text takes on meanings different from some that have become canonical. Context, in this case, is not simply historical context, but also the intellectual context in which Addams's work was written and read. Fischer argues that the meanings of terms such as "evolution," "democracy," "sympathy," and (...) "social ethics" cannot be taken at today's face value, but rather must be understood in light of the ideas and theories with which they were associated in Addams's day—what... (shrink)

Classical pragmatism, despite its recognized concern for questions of freedom and democracy, has little to say directly about questions of power. Some commentators have found Dewey’s notion of habit to be a resource for taking up issues of power while others have argued that pragmatism does not provide a sufficiently critical tool to challenge systematic oppression. Still others have proposed to shore up pragmatism by using resources found in post-structuralism, particularly in the work of Foucault. This paper begins with this (...) suggestion, but argues that while Foucault offers a useful starting point his conception of power fails—at least in an American context characterized by the experience of pluralism. I then argue that the pragmatist tradition, through the work of Mary P. Follett (1868-1933) has the theoretical resources to generate a conception of power that begins with the experience of pluralism. (shrink)

The dominant unspoken philosophical basis of medical care in the United States is a form of Cartesian reductionism that views the body as a machine and medical professionals as technicians whose job is to repair that machine. The purpose of this paper is to advocate for an alternative philosophy of medicine based on the concept of healing relationships between clinicians and patients. This is accomplished first by exploring the ethical and philosophical work of Pellegrino and Thomasma and then by connecting (...) Martin Buber's philosophical work on the nature of relationships to an empirically derived model of the medical healing relationship. The Healing Relationship Model was developed by the authors through qualitative analysis of interviews of physicians and patients. Clinician-patient healing relationships are a special form of what Buber calls I-Thou relationships, characterized by dialog and mutuality, but a mutuality limited by the inherent asymmetry of the clinician-patient relationship. The Healing Relationship Model identifies three processes necessary for such relationships to develop and be sustained: Valuing, Appreciating Power and Abiding. We explore in detail how these processes, as well as other components of the model resonate with Buber's concepts of I-Thou and I-It relationships. The resulting combined conceptual model illuminates the wholeness underlying the dual roles of clinicians as healers and providers of technical biomedicine. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that health care should be focused on healing, with I-Thou relationships at its core. (shrink)

Sound propagation within certain non-relativistic condensed matter models obeys a relativistic wave equation despite such systems admitting entirely non-relativistic descriptions. A natural question that arises upon consideration of this is, “do devices exist that will experience the relativity in these systems?” We describe a thought experiment in which ‘acoustic observers’ possess devices called sound clocks that can be connected to form chains. Careful investigation shows that appropriately constructed chains of stationary and moving sound clocks are perceived by observers on the (...) other chain as undergoing the relativistic phenomena of length contraction and time dilation by the Lorentz factor, \, with \ the speed of sound. Sound clocks within moving chains actually tick less frequently than stationary ones and must be separated by a shorter distance than when stationary to satisfy simultaneity conditions. Stationary sound clocks appear to be length contracted and time dilated to moving observers due to their misunderstanding of their own state of motion with respect to the laboratory. Observers restricted to using sound clocks describe a universe kinematically consistent with the theory of special relativity, despite the preferred frame of their universe in the laboratory. Such devices show promise in further probing analogue relativity models, for example in investigating phenomena that require careful consideration of the proper time elapsed for observers. (shrink)

This paper describes a cross-cultural research project on the relation between how people conceptualize nature and how they act in it. Mental models of nature differ dramatically among and within populations living in the same area and engaged in more or less the same activities. This has novel implications for environmental decision making and management, including dealing with commons problems. Our research also offers a distinct perspective on models of culture, and a unified approach to the study of culture and (...) cognition. We argue that cultural transmission and formation does not consist primarily in shared rules or norms, but in complex distributions of causally-connected representations across minds in interaction with the environment. The cultural stability and diversity of these representations often derives from rich, biologically-prepared mental mechanisms that limit variation to readily transmissible psychological forms. This framework addresses a series of methodological issues, such as the limitations of conceiving culture to be a well-defined system or bounded entity, an independent variable, or an internalized component of minds. (shrink)

Kathleen Wallace makes an important contribution to the theoretical frameworks available to understanding the nature of selves. Drawing on the theory of natural complexes proposed by Justus Buchler, Wallace proposes the “cumulative network model” (CNM) of selves. This article provides an overview of CNM, suggests its relation to recent New Materialist theories of agency, ideas of power, and the American philosophical tradition, and proposes that it can serve as a new resource in discussions of pressing problems faced in today’s world.

Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments that in order to create an effective and productive capitalist system, individuals must pursue interests of both the self and society. Despite this assertion, modern economic theory has become tightly focused on the pursuit of economic self-interests at the expense of other, higher order motives. This paper will argue that the tendency to employ such an egocentric strategy often generates externalities and inequalities that serve to detract (...) from the greater welfare of society. However, by tempering these economic self-interests with non-economically motivated considerations, this paper will suggest that individuals may create tremendous benefits to society, precisely as Smith outlined more than two centuries ago. In defense of this assertion, this paper will review an array of theoretical arguments and empirical findings that suggest that today''s entrepreneurs are not only seeking to satisfy both selfish and ethical motivations, but in so doing they are also contributing substantially to the overall welfare of society through job creation, wealth redistribution, and a lack of discrimination. As such, it appears that spirit and impact of the capitalist system that Smith envisioned is being realized through entrepreneurship. (shrink)

In his 1905 work on the logical foundations of geometry, Royce proposed a logic based on the “obverse” or O-relation that could provide a means of understanding any system of order. Royce explains that this relation, which he calls the O-relation, “in logical terms,... is the relation in which (if we were talking of the possible chances [choices] open to one who had to decide upon a course of action) any set of exhaustive but, in their entirety, inconsistent choices would (...) stand to one another” (Royce, 1951, 385). This focus on the process of making choices turns on the idea that the action of making a choice produces an asymmetrical relation and so a key part of Royce’s project was to demonstrate the.. (shrink)

Indeterminate art invokes a perceptual dilemma in which apparently detailed and vivid images resist identification. We used event-related fMRI to study visual perception of representational, indeterminate and abstract paintings. We hypothesized increased activation along a gradient of posterior-to-anterior ventral visual areas with increased object resolution, and postulated that object resolution would be associated with visual imagery. Behaviorally, subjects were faster to recognize familiar objects in representational than in both indeterminate and abstract paintings. We found activation within a distributed cortical network (...) that includes visual, parietal, limbic and prefrontal regions. Representational paintings, which depict scenes cluttered with familiar objects, evoked stronger activation than indeterminate and abstract paintings in higher-tier visual areas. Perception of scrambled paintings was associated with imagery-related activation in the precuneus and prefrontal cortex. Finally, representational paintings evoked stronger activation than indeterminate paintings in the temporoparietal junction. Our results suggest that perception of familiar content in art works is mediated by object recognition, memory recall and mental imagery, cognitive processes that evoke activation within a distributed cortical network. (shrink)

In 1914, Francis E. Leupp, former commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, presented an answer to the so-called Indian Problem that some have called pluralist. This paper examines the development of Leupp’s pluralism as part of the policies and practices of the genocide of American Indians as it was carried out in the years following the US Civil War. Rather than being a singular event in the history of US-Indian relations, I argue that Leupp’s pluralism is part of the (...) settler colonial system that persists and finds present expression in contemporary liberal pluralism. I consider two examples of recent pluralist theory, those of Charles Taylor and William Galston. I conclude by arguing that what both forms of pluralism—Leupp’s and recent liberal varieties—have in common is a conception of agency that rejects the American Indian conception and conserves structural genocide as a central part of present-day society. (shrink)