Deep brain stimulation (DBS) to different sites allows interfering with dysfunctional network function implicated in major depression. Because a prominent clinical feature of depression is anhedonia--the inability to experience pleasure from previously pleasurable activities--and because there is clear evidence of dysfunctions of the reward system in depression, DBS to the nucleus accumbens might offer a new possibility to target depressive symptomatology in otherwise treatment-resistant depression. Three patients suffering from extremely resistant forms of depression, who did not respond to pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, (...) and electroconvulsive therapy, were implanted with bilateral DBS electrodes in the nucleus accumbens. Stimulation parameters were modified in a double-blind manner, and clinical ratings were assessed at each modification. Additionally, brain metabolism was assessed 1 week before and 1 week after stimulation onset. Clinical ratings improved in all three patients when the stimulator was on, and worsened in all three patients when the stimulator was turned off. Effects were observable immediately, and no side effects occurred in any of the patients. Using FDG-PET, significant changes in brain metabolism as a function of the stimulation in fronto-striatal networks were observed. No unwanted effects of DBS other than those directly related to the surgical procedure (eg pain at sites of implantation) were observed. Dysfunctions of the reward system--in which the nucleus accumbens is a key structure--are implicated in the neurobiology of major depression and might be responsible for impaired reward processing, as evidenced by the symptom of anhedonia. These preliminary findings suggest that DBS to the nucleus accumbens might be a hypothesis-guided approach for refractory major depression. (shrink)

The task of the congress of the German Society for Semiotics in Passau / Germany in September 2017 was to explore and describe "boundaries". A total of 12 sections of the society wrote a call for paper for this purpose. With the present anthology it has to be made evident, how concretely also the boundaries of the own, the other and the foreign can be negotiated via pictures. -/- -------------- Papers: -/- - Martina Sauer: Ikonische Grenzverläufe. Szenarien des Eigenen, (...) Anderen und Fremden im Bild. Eine Einführung, 4 - Barbara Margarethe Eggert: Das andere Geschlecht im Altarraum – exklusive Textilien als inklusive Medien. Studien zum Gösser Ornat, 7 - Birke Sturm: Politik der Schönheit: Zur Konstruktion einer ›wissenschaftlichen‹ Bildästhetik schöner weiblicher Körper um 1900 am Beispiel des Gynäkologen Carl Heinrich Stratz, 22 - Melis Avkiran: Das rassifizierte Fremde im Bild. Zur Genese differenzbildender Konzepte in der Kunst des 15. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel des Malers Hans Memling, 40 - Leonie Licht: weiß zwischen schwarz zwischen weiß – Geschichten von Identität im Bild, 75 - Julia Austermann: Queere Interventionen im kommunistischen Polen – Krzysztof Jung und sein ›plastisches Theater‹, 91 - Sabine Engel: Tizians Porträt der Laura Dianti. Aneignung und Transformation zwischen Orient und Okzident, 111 - Anna Christina Schütz: Osman Hamdi Beys Türkische Straßenszene. Der Teppich als Verhandlungsort kultureller Identitäten im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert, 146 - Benjamin Häger, Claudia Jürgens: Ikonische Stadtstrategien. Das Fassadenplakat und die Musterfassade als Instrumente machtpolitischer Repräsentation, 175 - Irene Schütze: Fehlende Verweise, rudimentäre ›Markierungen‹: aufgeweichte Grenzverläufe zwischen Kunst und Alltag, 204 - Stefan Römer: Interesse an und in einem Bildarchiv für Migrant/innen und Flüchtlinge, 221 - Viola Nordsieck: Von der Fähigkeit, einen Stuhl zu ignorieren. A. N. Whiteheads Konzept der Wahrnehmung als symbolisierender Tätigkeit und die Art, wie wir Bilder als Bilder sehen, 239 - David Jöckel: Mythos und Bild. Roland Barthes’ Semiologie bildlicher Stereotypisierung, 255 -/- - Kurzbiographien der Autorinnen und Autoren, 274 - Impressum, 278. (shrink)

From the institutional inauguration of the discipline in 1972, philosophy of sport tends to expand, spreading itself around the world from one country to another, and including new philosophical in...

According to Smell Objectivism, the smells we perceive in olfactory experience are objective and independent of perceivers, their experiences, and their perceptual systems. Variations in how things smell to different perceivers or in different contexts raise a challenge to this view. In this paper, I offer an objectivist account of non-illusory contextual variation: cases where the same thing smells different in different contexts of perception and there is no good reason to appeal to misperception. My central example is that of (...) dihydromyrcenol, a substance that can smell both woody and citrusy depending on what other odourants one has recently been exposed to. I first argue that the subjects’ apparently conflicting reports about the way dihydromyrcenol smells are best understood as comparative characterisations of a smell. Given this understanding, different reports can be correctly made in response to perceiving the very same smell. I then argue that the phenomenal difference between the experiences subjects have across contexts can be explained compatibly with Smell Objectivism. On the account proposed, subjects perceive the very same smell but different qualities, notes, or aspects of it are salient to them, depending on the context of perception. I then consider how the proposed defence of Smell Objectivism can be adapted to other cases where the same thing is reported as smelling different in different contexts. (shrink)

Moral philosophy and psychology have sought to define the nature of right and wrong, and good and evil. The industrial turn of the twentieth century fostered increasingly technological approaches that conjoined philosophy to psychology, and psychology to the natural sciences. Thus, moral philosophy and psychology became ever more vested to investigations of the anatomic structures and physiologic processes involved in cognition, emotion and behavior - ultimately falling under the rubric of the neurosciences. Since 2002, neuroscientific studies of moral thought, emotions (...) and behaviors have become known as – and a part of – the relatively new discipline of neuroethics. Herein we present Part 2 of a bibliography of neuroethics from 2002–2013 addressing the “neuroscience of ethics” – studies of putative neural substrates and mechanisms involved in cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes of morality and ethics. (shrink)

Although germline editing has been the subject of debate ever since the 1980s, it tended to be based rather on speculative assumptions until April 2015, when CRISPR/Cas9 technology was used to modify human embryos for the first time. This article combines knowledge about the technical and scientific state of the art, economic considerations, the legal framework and aspects of clinical reality. A scenario will be elaborated as a means of identifying key ethical implications of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in humans and (...) possible ways of dealing with them. Unlike most other discussions of CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing, which are generally based on deontological arguments, the focus in this case will be on a consequentialistic argument against certain applications of germline and somatic editing that takes not only the potential benefits and risks but also socioeconomic issues into consideration. The practical need for an indication catalogue, guidelines for clinical trials, and for funding of basic research will be pointed out. It will be argued that this need for regulatory action and discussion does not stem primarily from the fact that CRISPR/Cas9 germline editing is revolutionary in terms of its ethical implications and potential for human therapy, although this is the prevailing view in the current discussion. Understanding the value and interest dependency of arguments put forward by different stakeholders and learning from past debates related to similar technologies might prove a fruitful method of reaching judgments and decisions that come closer to a consensus upon which society as a whole can agree - which after all should be the true goal of an ethical debate and of bioethics. (shrink)

The method of phenomenal contrast aims to shed light on the phenomenal character of perceptual and cognitive experiences. Within the debate about cognitive phenomenology, phenomenal contrast arguments can be divided into two kinds. First, arguments based on actual cases that aim to provide the reader with a first-person experience of phenomenal contrast. Second, arguments that involve hypothetical cases and focus on the conceivability of contrast scenarios. Notably, in the light of these contrast cases, proponents and skeptics of cognitive phenomenology remain (...) steadfast in their views. I provide an explanation of the method’s dialectical ineffectiveness by focusing on first-person performances of phenomenal contrast tasks. In particular, I argue that introspective judgments about phenomenology are regimented by the view initially held. Understanding the underlying mechanisms responsible for the dialectical standoff in the face of phenomenal contrast cases casts light on introspection-based arguments for phenomenology in general. -/- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association/article/on -the-limits-of-the-method-of-phenomenal-contrast/. (shrink)

Recently, the mechanistic framework of active inference has been put forward as a principled foundation to develop an overarching theory of consciousness which would help address conceptual disparities in the field (Wiese 2018 ; Hohwy and Seth 2020 ). For that promise to bear out, we argue that current proposals resting on the active inference scheme need refinement to become a process theory of consciousness. One way of improving a theory in mechanistic terms is to use formalisms such as computational (...) models that implement, attune and validate the conceptual notions put forward. Here, we examine how computational modelling approaches have been used to refine the theoretical proposals linking active inference and consciousness, with a focus on the extent and success to which they have been developed to accommodate different facets of consciousness and experimental paradigms, as well as how simulations and empirical data have been used to test and improve these computational models. While current attempts using this approach have shown promising results, we argue they remain preliminary in nature. To refine their predictive and structural validity, testing those models against empirical data is needed i.e., new and unobserved neural data. A remaining challenge for active inference to become a theory of consciousness is to generalize the model to accommodate the broad range of consciousness explananda; and in particular to account for the phenomenological aspects of experience. Notwithstanding these gaps, this approach has proven to be a valuable avenue for theory advancement and holds great potential for future research. (shrink)

The phenomenal concept strategy is considered a powerful response to anti-physicalist arguments. This physicalist strategy aims to provide a satisfactory account of dualist intuitions without being committed to ontological dualist conclusions. In this paper I first argue that physicalist accounts of phenomenal concepts fail to explain their cognitive role. Second, I develop an encapsulation account of phenomenal concepts that best explains their particularities. Finally, I argue that the encapsulation account, which features self-representing experiences, implies non-physical referents. Therefore, the account of (...) phenomenal concepts that has strong explanatory power does not explain away dualist intuitions—rather, it reinforces dualism. (shrink)

Instructions for authors need to be informative and regularly updated. We hypothesized that journals with a higher impact factor have more comprehensive IFA. The aim of the study was to examine whether IFA of journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports 2013, “Medical Laboratory Technology” category, are written in accordance with the latest recommendations and whether the quality of instructions correlates with the journals’ IF. 6 out of 31 journals indexed in “Medical Laboratory Technology” category were excluded. The remaining 25 (...) journals were scored based on a set of 41 yes/no questions and divided into four groups by three authors independently. We tested the correlation between IF and total score and the difference between scores in separate question groups. The median total score was 26 [portion of positive answers 0.63 ]. There was no statistically significant correlation between a journal’s IF and the total score. IFA included recommendations concerning research ethics and manuscript preparation more extensively than recommendations concerning editorial policy and research integrity. Some policies were poorly described, for example: procedure for author’s appeal, editorial submissions, appointed body for research integrity issues. The IF of the “Medical Laboratory Technology” journals does not reflect a journals’ compliance to uniform standards. There is a need for improving editorial policies and the policies on research integrity. (shrink)

Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in today's developed world that is also increasingly picked out as a focal theme in fictional literature. In dealing with the subjectivity of human experience, such literature enhances the reader's empathy and is able to teach about moral, emotional and philosophical issues, offering the chance to see situations from a position otherwise possibly never taken by the reader. The understanding and insight so gained may well be unscientific, but the literary approach offers (...) an insight into the whole person's perspective and the particularity and uniqueness of a situation that includes ethical conflicts. A key motif of fictional literature centred around dementia remains the burden the adult-child carer is confronted with, considering the parent's remorseless decline and personality change, the sudden demand for devoted and continuous care, and the constantly changing relationship with the declining parent. In the context of an ever increasing demand for a constructive public discussion regarding end-of-life treatment of demented patients, Christine Devars (Le Piano Désaccordé) and Andrés Barba (Ahora Tocad Música de Baile) illustrate how powerful and burdensome the impact of Alzheimer's disease is on both patient and carer and what extremes may be reached under such truly exceptional circumstances. (shrink)

This paper develops an analysis of a scalar implicature that is induced by the use of reportative evidentials such as the Cuzco Quechua enclitic = si and the German modal sollen. Reportatives, in addition to specifying the speaker’s source of information for a statement as a report by someone else, also usually convey that the speaker does not have direct evidence for the proposition expressed. While this type of implicature can be calculated using the same kind of Gricean reasoning that (...) underlies other scalar implicatures, it requires two departures from standard assumptions. First, evidential scalar implicatures differ from the more familiar scalar implicatures in that they do not turn on the notion of informativeness but on the notion of evidential strength. Second, the implicature arises on the illocutionary level of meaning. It is argued that a version of Grice’s maxim of quantity in terms of illocutionary strength can account for this evidential scalar implicature as well as for the more typical scalar implicatures. The account developed also proposes some revisions to the taxonomy of speech acts and suggests that the sincerity conditions of assertive speech acts contain an evidential sincerity condition in addition to the belief condition standardly assumed. (shrink)

The ArgumentWhat kind of objects are computer programs used for simulation purposes in scientific settings? The current investigation treats a special case. It focuses on “event generators,” the program packages that particle physicists construct and use to simulate mechanisms of particle production. The paper is an attempt to bring the multiplex and unfolding character of such knowledge objects to the fore: Multiple meanings and functions are embodied in the object and can be drawn out selectively according to the requirements of (...) a work setting. The object's conceptual complexity governs its application in some contexts, while the object is considered a mere “black box,” transparent and ready-to-hand, in others. These two poles span a full spectrum of object aspects, functions, and conceptions. Event generators are ideas turned into software, testing grounds for models, just a tool to study the performance of a detector, etc. The object's multiplex nature is submitted to negotiation among different actors. (shrink)

The article investigates the philosophical foundations and details of Mary Wollstonecraft's criticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on the education and nature of women. I argue that Wollstonecraft's criticism must not be understood as a constructionist critique of biological reductionism. The first section analyzes the differences between Wollstonecraft's and Rousseau's views on the possibility of a true civilization and shows how these differences connect to their respective conceptions of moral psychology. The section shows that Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau's views on women (...) was rooted in a broad scope of philosophical disagreement. The second section focuses on Rousseau's concept of nature, and I argue that Rousseau was neither a biological determinist nor a functionalist who denied that nature had any normative significance. The section ends with a discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of Rousseau's application of the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The third section focuses on Wollstonecraft's critique of Rousseau's claim that there are different standards for the perfectibility of men and women. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the claim that Aristotle would have provided Wollstonecraft with the philosophical tools she needed for her criticism of Rousseau. (shrink)

To become a unifying theory of brain function, predictive processing must accommodate its rich representational diversity. Gilead et al. claim such diversity requires a multi-process theory, and thus is out of reach for PP, which postulates a universal canonical computation. We contend this argument and instead propose that PP fails to account for the experiential level of representations.

In this paper, I argue that the debate on Composition as Identity—the thesis that any composite object is identical to its parts—is deadlocked because both the defenders and the detractors of the claim have so far failed to take its philosophical core at face value and have, as a result, defended and criticized respectively something that is not Composition as Identity. After establishing how Composition as Identity should properly be understood and proposing for it a new interpretation centered around the (...) novel notion of metaphysical information, I set forth a strategy to defend it that crucially rests on the indefinite extensibility of the domain of quantification. I eventually suggest that “Composition as Analysis” is a name that better reflects the content and theoretical proposal of the thesis that Composition as Identity is supposed to be. (shrink)

This article presents an interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's notion of pre-reflective intentionality, explicating the similarities and differences between his and Husserl's understandings of intentionality. The main difference is located in Merleau-Ponty's critique of Husserl's noesis-noema structure. Merleau-Ponty seems to claim that there can be intentional acts which are not of or about anything specific. He defines intentionality by its ``directedness'', which is described as a bodily, concrete spatial motility. Merleau-Ponty's understanding of intentionality is part of his attempt to rewrite the relation (...) between the universal and the particular. He claims that meaning is intrinsic to the phenomenal field and impossible to analyse by a distinction between form and matter. Still, Merleau-Ponty's notion of meaning and philosophy is strictly opposed to any naturalized philosophy. This becomes explicated at the end of the article, where his attempt to embody intentionality is compared to Daniel Dennett's corresponding approach. (shrink)

Self-control is normally, if only tacitly, viewed as an inherently practical capacity or achievement: as exercised only in the domain of action. Questioning this assumption, we wish to motivate the...

This article begins at a crossroads; it straddles the difficult ground between the recent public outcry against sexual violence and concerns about the coloniality of voice made visible by the recent decolonial turn within feminist theory. Wary of concepts such as “visibility” or “transparency”—principles that continue to inform the call to “break the silence” by “speaking up” central to Western liberatory movements—in this article, I return to silence, laying the groundwork for the exploration of what a revised concept of silence (...) could mean for the development of practices of cross-cultural communication that do not play into coloniality. (shrink)

It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops a space-theoretical concept according (...) to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements. (shrink)

Efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus emphasize the central role of citizens’ compliance with self-protective behaviors. Understanding the processes underlying the decision to self-protect is, therefore, essential for effective risk communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present study, we investigate the determinants of perceived threat and engagement in self-protective measures in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Austria during the first wave of the pandemic. The type of disease and the type of numerical information regarding the disease were (...) manipulated. Participants’ cognitive and emotional risk assessment as well as self-reported engagement in protective behaviors were measured. Results show that worry was the best predictor of perceived threat in all countries. Moreover, a path analysis revealed that worry and perceived threat serially mediated the effect of type of disease on engagement in self-protective behaviors. The numerical framing manipulation did not significantly impact behavior but had a direct effect on worry and an indirect effect on perceived threat. These results are in line with theoretical accounts that identify emotions as a central determinant for risk perception. Moreover, our findings also suggest that effective risk communication during the COVID-19 pandemic should not stress comparisons to other, well-known viral diseases, as this can ultimately reduce self-protective behaviors. (shrink)

The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the phenomenology of conscious thought? And (2), what role does this phenomenology play? I argue that the answers to the former question bear significantly on the answers to the latter question. In particular, I show that conservatism about cognitive phenomenology is not compatible with the view that phenomenology explains the constitution of conscious thought. I proceed as follows: To begin with, I analyze the phenomenology of (...) our sensory experiences and argue for aweak phenomenal holism(WPH) about sensory phenomenology. Next, I explore how WPH can be integrated into the competing accounts of cognitive phenomenology. I argue that, given WPH, conservatism turns out to reduce phenomenal character to a merely concomitant phenomenon that has no explanatory power when it comes to the constitution of conscious thoughts. In contrast, liberalism is explanatorily more powerful in this respect. Finally, I propose a new version of liberalism that explains how phenomenology constitutes conscious thoughts and fits best with WPH. (shrink)

This article examines the relationships between disaster type and firms’ disaster responses. We draw on a unique dataset of 2,164 press releases related to the occurrence of 206 natural disasters over a 10-year period to analyze how firm responses are shaped by the type of disaster it faces. Firms play an increasingly important role in disaster response. We find that firms engage in more anticipatory responses when the type of disaster a firm faces exhibits even impact dispersion and high expected (...) recurrence, and provides substantial warning. Our study draws a relationship between physical geography, disaster type, and more anticipatory firm responses which can improve how firms and communities respond to the risks posed by different types of natural disasters. The article concludes by outlining an agenda for future research on firm responses to natural disasters. (shrink)

We are happy to feature four invited submissions by Lisa Guenther, Kym Maclaren, Bonnie Mann, and Gayle Salamon, all of whom respond to the questions motivating our inaugural issue. Both Salamon and Maclaren offer a response to the question “What is critical phenomenology?” by exploring the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology. Salamon does this by tracing the history of the term critical phenomenology. Maclaren further explores the productive relationship between critical theory and phenomenology en route to her analysis (...) of intimacy. Focusing on the phenomena of shame and long-term solitary confinement, Mann and Guenther take up that question by performing the work of critical phenomenology. Mann also offers suggestions regarding critical or, as she calls it, feminist phenomenology’s relation to the tradition—both of classical phenomenology and feminist philosophy. Guenther shows how the work of critical phenomenology is already at play in the practices of resistance among prisoners in the Security Housing Unit of Pelican Bay State Prison in California. (shrink)

For the newly trained Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, there are a wealth of challenges and difficulties faced as they try and apply their new found skills in the outside world. These might include the stresses of working in isolation, and finding it difficult to widen their scope or bounce ideas of other CBT therapists; or the need for practical advice on setting up group therapy; the possible conflicts betweens ethical practice and theory; trying to retain ones integrity as a therapist, while (...) maintaing a viable business practice.The Oxford Guide to Surviving CBT Practice is the one-stop resource for the newly trained therapist. It offers practical guidance on a range of issues and challenges faced by the therapist. Written by people with vast experience of training and practising CBT, it draws on real life situations to help the reader hone and develop their skills, adjust to life as a therapist, and maintain a successful and satisfying career whilst helping others.With thousands of new CBT therapists due to be trained over the coming years, this book will be a well thumbed and constant companion for all those starting life as a therapist - one they will want to have to hand at all times. (shrink)

The distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness is central to debates about consciousness and its neural correlates. However, this distinction has often been limited to the domain of perceptual experiences. On the basis of dream phenomenology and neuroscientific findings this paper suggests a theoretical framework which extends this distinction to dreaming, also in terms of plausible neural correlates. In this framework, phenomenal consciousness is involved in both waking perception and dreaming, whereas access consciousness is weakened, but not fully eliminated, during (...) dreaming. However, access consciousness is more active during lucid dreaming. The proposed framework accounts for different aspects of dream phenomenology, including levels of integration of perceptual, cognitive and affective features in dreams, bizarreness, dream amnesia and the occurrence of meta-awareness and accessibility in lucid dreaming. Self-related experiences and their neural substrates are suggested to be differently involved in waking cognition and dreaming. Further, phenomenal consciousness during both waking and dream experiences involve widespread recurrent interactions and convergence-divergence zones in the thalamo-cortico-limbic system, activated before conscious access in global workspace areas. Finally, we discuss the relationships of the proposed framework with other neurocognitive theories and models of consciousness and major theories of dreaming, and propose novel experimental predictions. (shrink)

In a multiagent and multi-cultural world, the fine-grained analysis of agents’ dynamic behaviour, i.e. of their activities, is essential. Dynamic activities are actions that are characterized by an agent who executes the action and by other participants of the action. Wh-questions on the participants of the actions pose a difficult particular challenge because the variability of the types of possible answers to such questions is huge. To deal with the problem, we propose the analysis and classification of Wh-questions apt for (...) agents’ communication in a multiagent system (MAS). Our proposal of such a system consists of agents who communicate with their fellow agents by messaging so that each autonomous agent, though resource-bounded, can make less or more rational decisions to meet its own and collective goals. In addition, by communicating with other fellow agents and their environment, agents can learn new concepts and enrich their ontology so that their behaviour is dynamic. We aim to make a general proposal of the system so that the ‘envelope’ of agents’ messages can be formalized in any MAS standard, be it The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents - Agent Communication Language (FIPA-ACL) or Knowledge Query and Manipulation Language (KQML). Yet, the content of messages is encoded in a formalized natural language. To this end, we apply Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL) with its procedural semantics which is particularly apt for a fine-grained analysis in which all the semantically salient features of natural language can be plausibly formalized. In this paper, we concentrate on analysing the content of query messages, particularly the content of those that encode Wh-questions and the answers to them. We also summarize TIL deduction system that makes it possible to answer such questions in an intelligent way. Linguists distinguish several subtypes of Wh-questions. Though the linguistic classification is helpful, it is not always suitable for agents’ communication and reasoning. We need the classification based on a logical analysis of Wh-questions so that the agents can infer possible answers to such questions rather than only looking for them by keywords. This paper aims to apply an appropriate classification of the logical types of Wh-questions and the analysis of such questions; we concentrate in particular on questions concerning the participants of activities. The application of these results to the analysis of processes and events based on verb valency frames is another novelty of the paper. (shrink)

A review of Edward Winters‘s Aesthetics and Architecture (London: Continuum, 2007, 179 pp. ISBN 0826486320).

This article explores how Alzheimer’s disease caregivers struggle under the impact of a parent’s memory loss on their own personality. In particular, it analyses how caregivers perceive and, thus, present their experiences of the ever intensifying caregiving activity in terms of a ‘journey’. In doing so, this work takes into account both the patient’s continuing bodily as well as cognitive decline and its intricately linked influence on the caregiver’s physical and emotional stability. Equally, this study investigates how caregivers portray memory (...) loss, and how their portrayal fits into our conceptualisation of illness narratives and the culture of autobiographical writing. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, although neglected so far, there is a strong link between generics and testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice is a form of epistemic injustice that “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word”. Generics are sentences that express generalizations about a category or about its members without specifying what proportion of the category members possess the predicated property. We argue that generics are especially suited to cause testimonial (...) injustice for three reasons. First, generics elicit an “inferential asymmetry” :1452–1482, 2010). That is, generics are accepted even if only a few individuals possess the predicated property but are, nonetheless, taken to refer to almost all the members of the category. This peculiar combination makes generics particularly apt to cause testimonial injustice. High resistance to counter-evidence is a crucial feature of prejudice, the cause of testimonial injustice, and the more highly predictive a generalization the more it will be employed in concrete situations, leading to instances of testimonial injustice. Second, generics seem to play a key role in leading people to develop essentialist beliefs : 273–301, 2010; Rhodes et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci 109: 13526–13531, 2012). Subjects holding such beliefs treat categories as warranting strong generaliations over their members. Therefore, they will be more likely to rely on prejudice while dealing with the category members. Finally, generics are outstandingly common in everyday speech. Hence, their noxious effects are amplified by their diffusion and should not be underestimated. (shrink)

Raimund Bleischwitz and Martina Etzbach respond to the question how the global warming foracested by climate research will change the relations between the North and the South. After a description of ecological and socio-economic implication of the potential catastrophy of a global climate change the authors discuss possible instrument of an international climate policy. The considerations focus on institutional problems, especially on possible actors and borlies responsible for a global environmental policy.

Examining recent experiments on human altruism in economics, this book offers a critique of naturalistic approaches to the phenomenon of human sociality. It draws on philosophical theories of social conflict and recognition, and on theological concepts of neighborly love.

BackgroundThere are two types of voluntary interruption of pregnancy: elective and therapeutic abortion. These forms are different for many reasons, and it is reasonable to assume that they can have negative consequences that can last until a subsequent gestation. However, no study has analyzed the psychological experience of gestation after a previous abortion, distinguishing the two forms of voluntary interruption of pregnancy.ObjectiveThis study aims to explore the level of prenatal attachment and centrality of pregnancy in nulliparous low-risk pregnant women with (...) a recently previous elective or therapeutic abortion.MethodsA total of 34 nulliparous pregnant women with a history of abortion, aged from 27 to 48 years, were recruited in the maternity ward of a public hospital of the metropolitan area of Tuscany and Lombardy during the third trimester of gestation. The participants filled out a battery of questionnaires aimed at assessing prenatal attachment and centrality of pregnancy.ResultsAnalyses of variance showed that women with a history of elective abortion reported a higher centrality of pregnancy than women with a past therapeutic abortion. On the contrary, women with a past therapeutic abortion reported higher prenatal attachment.ConclusionElective and therapeutic abortions are different experiences that impact the way women experience a subsequent pregnancy. Future research should further investigate the psychological experience of gestation after abortion. (shrink)

Traditional grammar and current theoretical approaches towards modelling grammatical knowledge ignore language in interaction: that is, words such as huh, eh, yup or yessssss. This groundbreaking book addresses this gap by providing the first in-depth overview of approaches towards interactional language across different frameworks and linguistic sub-disciplines. Based on the insights that emerge, a formal framework is developed to discover and compare language in interaction across different languages: the interactional spine hypothesis. Two case-studies are presented: confirmationals and response markers, both (...) of which show evidence for systematic grammatical knowledge. Assuming that language in interaction is regulated by grammatical knowledge sheds new light on old questions concerning the relation between language and thought and the relation between language and communication. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the relation between language, cognition and social interaction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reinforce anti-physicalism by extending the hard problem to a specific kind of intentional states. For reaching this target, I investigate the mental content of the new intentional states of Jackson’s Mary. I proceed in the following way: I start analyzing the knowledge argument, which highlights the hard problem tied to phenomenal consciousness. In a second step, I investigate a powerful physicalist reply to this argument: the phenomenal concept strategy. In a third step, I (...) propose a constitutional account of phenomenal concepts that captures the Mary scenario adequately, but implies anti-physicalist referents. In a last step, I point at the ramifications constitutional phenomenal concepts have on the constitution of Mary’s new intentional states. Therefore, by focusing the attention on phenomenal concepts, the so-called hard problem of consciousness will be carried over to the alleged easy problem of intentional states as well. (shrink)

Elisabeth is widely known as a critic of René Descartes’ account of mind–body interaction and scholarly interpretations of her view on the will most often pose the question about the freedom of the will in relation to bodily impulses such as the passions. This chapter takes a different perspective and focuses on the problem of the compatibility of free will and providence, as it is discussed in a sequence of six letters that Elisabeth and Descartes wrote between September 1645 and (...) January 1646. The chapter focuses on this specific metaphysical problem in order to ask what Elisabeth’s remarks on the topic can tell about her general philosophical method as well as about her particular philosophical worries. The chapter divides into three parts. The first part discusses Elisabeth’s initial philosophical interest in the question of free will and providence, and recounts the arguments presented by her and Descartes. The second part discusses the philosophical foundation for Descartes’ position and Elisabeth’s criticism of this position. The final part compares Elisabeth’s criticism of Descartes’ account of the compatibility of free will and providence with her criticism of his account of mind–body interaction, which she develops in her three first letters to him, written in 1643. It is argued that at the core of both criticisms we find Elisabeth’s search for answers based on reason and a dissatisfaction with Descartes’ reliance on the incomprehensible nature of God as a basis for some of his philosophical arguments. (shrink)