If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you'd better think again--or rather not "think" at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our bodies--long dismissed as mere conveyances--actually constitute the core of our intelligent life. From the endocrinal means by which our organs communicate to the instantaneous decision-making prompted by external phenomena, our bodies are able to (...) perform intelligent computations that we either overlook or wrongly attribute to our brains. Embodied intelligence is one of the most exciting areas in contemporary philosophy and neuropsychology, and Claxton shows how the privilege given to cerebral thinking has taken a toll on modern society, resulting in too much screen time, the diminishment of skilled craftsmanship, and an overvaluing of white-collar over blue-collar labor. Discussing techniques that will help us reconnect with our bodies, Claxton shows how an appreciation of the body's intelligence will enrich all our lives."--Provided from Amazon.com. (shrink)

What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer. In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems (...) scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields. Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity : A Guided Tour offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time. (shrink)

Given the profound influence of social media and emerging evidence of its effects on human behavior and health, bioethicists have an important role to play in the development of professional standards of conduct for health professionals using social media and in the design of online systems themselves. In short, social media is a bioethics issue that has serious implications for medical practice, research, and public health. Here, we inventory several ethical issues across four areas at the intersection of social media (...) and health: the impact of social networking sites on the doctor‐patient relationship, the development of e‐health platforms to deliver care, the use of online data and algorithms to inform health research, and the broader public health consequences of widespread social media use. In doing so, we review discussions of these topics and emphasize the need for bioethics to focus more deeply on the ways online technology platforms are designed and implemented. We argue that bioethicists should turn their attention to the ways in which consumer engagement, bias, and profit maximization shape online content and, consequently, human behavior and health. We also offer a set of recommendations and suggest future directions for addressing ethical challenges in these domains. (shrink)

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self-representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self-representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, we examine two (...) key forms of polymorphism of self-representation: dreams in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or 'observer' perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases 'vicarious dreams' and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self-representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self-representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming. (shrink)

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self‐representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self‐representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, we examine two (...) key forms of polymorphism of self‐representation: dreams (or dream episodes) in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or ‘observer’ perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases ‘vicarious dreams’ and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self‐representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self‐representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming. (shrink)

A rebuttal is provided to each of the arguments adduced by John Harris, an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, in two editorials in the journal in support of the view that National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence’s procedures and methods for making recommendations about healthcare procedures for use in the National Health Service in England and Wales are the product of “wickedness or folly or more likely both”, “ethically illiterate as well as socially divisive”, responsible for the (...) “perversion of science as well as of morality” and are “contrary to basic morality and contrary to human rights”. (shrink)

Author Susanne Claxton offers a new ecophenomenological perspective to Heidegger and his engagement with the Greeks, and an alternative to the ruling binary in environmental ethics of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism.

: Though it is being widely argued that expanding young people's capacity to learn is a viable and desirable goal of education, it it not always clear what this means, how it is to be achieved, and how the effectiveness of interventions is to be assessed. It is argued that the capacity to learn should be interpreted as a portmanteau term that comprises a varied set of positive learning dispositions. These are illustrated, and the idea of ?expansion? is glossed in (...) terms of broadening, strengthening and deepening these dispositions. (shrink)

This paper examines six cross-sector partnerships in South Africa and Zambia. These partnerships were part of a research study undertaken between 2003 and 2005 and were selected because of their potential to contribute to poverty reduction in their respective countries. This paper examines the context in which the partnerships were established, their governance and accountability mechanisms and the engagement and participation of the partners and the intended beneficiaries in the partnerships. We argue that a partnership approach which has proven successful (...) in one context can be used as a valuable learning resource. However, a partnership's work, which includes all aspects of the partnership and its activities, cannot necessarily be transferred directly to another partnership without a thorough and locally informed analysis of the context in which it is implemented. In addition, we suggest that it is difficult to assess whether the good intentions behind partnerships were translated into real benefits for target groups as effective monitoring and evaluation procedures were not in place in the partnerships studied. Similarly, the absence of regularised governance and accountability systems in partnerships made it difficult to support partner and beneficiary participation and engagement. We conclude that there is a need to move beyond a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to partnerships and that partnership replication should focus more strongly on the transfer of learning about partnership processes instead of simply copying partnership activities. Moreover, the development of stronger mechanisms for assessing and ensuring accountability towards both partners and intended beneficiaries is required if partnerships are to meet their intended objectives. (shrink)

Harris’ reply to our defence of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence’s (NICE) current cost-effectiveness procedures contains two further errors. First, he wrongly draws a conclusion from the fact that NICE does not and cannot evaluate all possible uses of healthcare resources at any one time and generally cannot know which National Health Service (NHS) activities would be displaced or which groups of patients would have to forgo health benefits: the inference is that no estimate is or can be made (...) by NICE of the benefits to be forgone. This is a non-sequitur. Second, he asserts that it is a flaw at the heart of the use of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) as an outcome measure that comparisons between people need to be made. Such comparisons do indeed have to be made, but this is not a consequence of the choice of any particular outcome measure, be it the QALY or anything else. (shrink)

I propose a narrative fabrication thesis of dream reports, according to which dream reports are often not accurate representations of experiences that occur during sleep. I begin with an overview of anti-experience theses of Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett who reject the received view of dreams, that dreams are experiences we have during sleep which are reported upon waking. Although rejection of the first claim of the received view, that dreams are experiences that occur during sleep, is implausible, I evaluate (...) in more detail the second assumption of the received view, that dream reports are generally accurate. I then propose a “narrative fabrication” view of dreams as an alternative to the received view. Dream reports are often confabulated or fabricated because of poor memory, bizarre dream content, and cognitive deficits. It is well documented that narratives can be altered between initial rapid eye movement sleep awakenings and subsequent reports. I argue that we have reason to suspect that initial reports are prone to inaccuracy. Experiments demonstrate that subjects rationalize strange elements in narratives, leaving out supernatural or bizarre components when reporting waking memories of stories. Inaccuracies in dream reports are exacerbated by rapid memory loss and bizarre dream content. Waking memory is a process of reconstruction and blending of elements, but unlike waking memory, we cannot reality-test for dream memories. Dream experiences involve imaginative elements, and dream content cannot be verified with external evidence. Some dreams may involve wake-like higher cognitive functions, such as lucid dreams. Such dreams are more likely to elicit accurate reports than cognitively deficient dreams. However, dream reports are generally less accurate than waking reports. I then propose methods which could verify the narrative fabrication view, and argue that although the theory cannot be tested with current methods, new techniques and technologies may be able to do so in the future. -/- . (shrink)

Melanie Sarzano | : In this paper, I compare cases of self-deception and cases of pragmatic encroachment and argue that confronting these cases generates a dilemma about rationality. This dilemma turns on the idea that subjects are motivated to avoid costly false beliefs, and that both cases of self-deception and cases of pragmatic encroachment are caused by an interest to avoid forming costly false beliefs. Even though both types of cases can be explained by the same belief-formation mechanism, only (...) self-deceptive beliefs are irrational: the subjects depicted in high-stakes cases typically used in debates on pragmatic encroachment are, on the contrary, rational. If we find ourselves drawn to this dilemma, we are forced either to accept—against most views presented in the literature—that self-deception is rational or to accept that pragmatic encroachment is irrational. Assuming that both conclusions are undesirable, I argue that this dilemma can be solved. In order to solve this dilemma, I suggest and review several hypotheses aimed at explaining the difference in rationality between the two types of cases, the result of which being that the irrationality of self-deceptive beliefs does not entirely depend on their being formed via a motivationally biased process. | : Dans cet article, je compare les cas classiques de duperie de soi aux cas que l’on trouve dans les débats sur la question de l’empiètement pragmatique et défends l’idée selon laquelle ces deux types de cas peuvent être compris comme étant produits par un même mécanisme visant à éviter la formation de croyances fausses coûteuses. Cette comparaison nous mène naturellement à former un dilemme à propos de la rationalité des croyances. Le dilemme repose sur l’idée que bien que ce mécanisme mène à la formation de croyances irrationnelles dans les cas de duperie de soi, il ne semble pas affecter la rationa-lité du sujet dans les cas d’empiètement pragmatique : alors que les sujets autodupés sont irrationnels, les sujets décrits dans les cas d’empiètement pragmatique ne le sont pas. Pour résoudre ce dilemme sans rejeter les présupposés selon lesquels les croyances issues de la duperie de soi sont irrationnelles et que les cas sur lesquels repose l’empiètement pragmatique sont rationnels, je propose plusieurs hypothèses visant à expliquer cette différence, prouvant ainsi que ce dilemme n’est qu’apparent et que l’irrationalité de la duperie de soi ne peut uniquement dépendre de ce mécanisme sous l’influence de considérations pratiques. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmployees who possess cross-cultural capabilities are increasingly sought after due to unparalleled numbers of cross-cultural interactions. Previous research has primarily focused on the bright side of these capabilities, including important individual and work outcomes. In contrast, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the cross-cultural capability of cultural intelligence can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Applying the general theory of confluence, we propose that expatriates high in CQ excel in customer relationship performance, while simultaneously behaving opportunistically. (...) We also suggest that ethical relativism moderates these relationships. Using mixed methods, four separate studies generally support our predictions while also deepening our understanding of various forms of opportunism and the mechanism behind two seemingly opposing effects. Conceptual and managerial implications of CQ for opportunism, customer relationship performance, and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

In 1886, as Nietzsche's thought becomes more explicitly oriented toward the project of a revaluation of all values, he reframes BT and three middle period books with prefaces. Four out of the five prefaces show Nietzsche noticeably occupied with the theme of health, which serves in each of those four as a lens orienting the reader toward his earlier work. In his "Attempt at Self-Criticism," for instance, Nietzsche suggests that the principal contribution of BT lies in the idea of the (...) Dionysian, which carries the promise that there might exist "neuroses of health".1 The preface to GS finds Nietzsche looking for a "philosophical physician" who might "pursue the problem of the total... (shrink)

Why is it so difficult for 'voluntary simplicity' to become truly voluntary? It is suggested that an important distinction has to be made between beliefs which are 'espoused' and those which are 'embodied'. Certain crucial systems of embodied beliefs constitute traps, in the sense that they set, invisibly, a person's motivational agenda, and bias perception against their own detection. This analysis makes it clear why certain popular forms of campaigning and education are ineffective; and suggests that some methodologies of self-transformation (...) associated with spiritual traditions such as Buddhism may have much to offer the environmental movement. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: In this commentary I want to offer a general response to the papers: one which links together the introspectionist, phenomenological and Buddhist traditions, and suggests a practical relationship between first-person and third-person perspectives.

This article introduces the symposium “Toward a Philosophy of Blockchain,” which provides a philosophical contemplation of blockchain technology, the digital ledger software underlying cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, for the secure transfer of money, assets, and information via the Internet without needing a third-party intermediary. The symposium offers philosophical scholarship on a new topic, blockchain technology, from a variety of perspectives. The philosophical themes discussed include mathematical models of reality, signification, and the sociopolitical institutions that structure human life and interaction. The (...) symposium also investigates the metaphilosophical theme of how to create a philosophy of anything, specifically a new topic such as blockchain technology. Repeated themes are identified, in all areas of philosophical inquiry, and conceptual resources are elaborated to contribute to a philosophical understanding of blockchain technology. Thus, philosophy as a metaphilosophical approach is shown to be able to provide an understanding of the conceptual, theoretical, and foundational dimensions of novelty and emergence in the world, with a particular focus on blockchain technology. (shrink)

To what extent do I have a sense of agency over my thoughts while I dream? The sense of agency in dreams can alter in a variety of interesting ways distinct from normal, waking experience. In fact, dreams show many similarities to the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia. In this paper I analyze these alterations with a focus on distinguishing between reduced sense of agency and other cognitive features such as metacognition, confabulation and attention. I argue that some dream reports (...) demonstrate two interesting commonalities with schizophrenia: thought insertion (TI) and auditory hallucination (AH). This line of research has the potential to further our understanding of TI and AH in schizophrenia through the analysis of similar experience in a different conscious state. Through the analysis of dream reports, I found that although TI and AH both occur in dreams, TI is very rare. This is an interesting result since TI is common in patients with schizophrenia. I propose two speculative lines of explanation for the rarity of TI in dreams: first, the cognitive differences between the symptoms of schizophrenia and dreams, and second, the problem of dream reporting conditions. Dream reporting conditions are particularly important, as without controls, reports can be vague. Analysis of dream reports reveals that it is often unclear whether 'hearing voices' indicates sound phenomenology or thought phenomenology. I propose that dream reports could be disambiguated given the right experimental conditions and I suggest how this could be achieved in future experimental research. (shrink)

When I first open a new document on my computer, as I have just done, the relationship between my key presses and what happens on the screen is rather loose. I press Enter a few times to move the cursor down the page a bit , and sometimes nothing happens for a while; or the cursor disappears for a few seconds before reappearing in its new position. After a minute or so, the machine seems to settle down, and then the (...) correlation between taps on the keyboard and movements on the screen becomes much tighter and more consistent. Then, because taps and movements are tightly and predictably coupled, it hardly seems an inference at all to see the taps as the causes of the changes on the screen. While the computer is still 'waking up', I imagine that the taps are still the causes of the screen changes, but that the temporal relationship is lengthened and muddied by the fact that there is a lot else going on inside the machine while it is, so to speak, finishing dressing and cleaning its teeth. If, however, the machine was not just sleepy and preoccupied but seriously ill, then the relationship between taps and screen changes might become so bizarre and inconsistent that I would assume that causality had broken down. There may be causal connections inside still — the machine may still be operating in a completely deterministic fashion — but as I can no longer make sense of the relationship between input and output, I withdraw the imputation of causality. (shrink)

This article was developed as part of the forthcoming special issue on "Reparations" for the Journal of Social Philosophy and was accepted (with minor revisions) by the guest editors Christina Nick and Susan Stark in November 2021. The special issue article is available online open access for early view. -/- Abstract: The United Nations Commission on Human Rights acknowledges the Right to Know as part of state obligations to combat impunity and thereby protect and promote human rights in the aftermath (...) of “serious crimes under international law”. In light of such an institutionally acknowledged epistemic right of victims, this paper explores the normative foundations of the idea of epistemic reparation in the aftermath of genocide. I argue that such epistemic reparation requires not only fulfilment of the informational needs of victims, survivors and descendants, including access to knowledge about the violations. By taking into account epistemic injuries, which are part and parcel of genocide, it ought to also re-establish victims’ epistemic standing. This is because genocide is enabled, justified and even prescribed through a genocidal epistemology involving the propagation of falsehoods and misinformation about social reality as well as abuses of epistemic authority and epistemic authoritarianism. Hence, epistemic reparation ought to correct the dysfunctional epistemic practices that underlie and sustain a genocidal epistemology. It thereby provides victims, survivors and descendants with epistemic recognition that has been systematically withdrawn from them, making epistemic reparation a crucial element of restorative justice. (shrink)

In this essay we argue that there is a contradiction lurking at the heart of Bernard Suits's seminal book on the philosophy of games, The Grasshopper, which has oddly gone unnoticed for 43 years. Suits argues that games need inefficiency and defines inefficiency such that it wouldn't exist in Utopia. This trivially entails that there could be no games in Utopia, yet the whole normative point of The Grasshopper is that games would be the only worthwhileactivity in Utopia. We then (...) diagnose Suits's error and suggest some ways forward. (shrink)

A single mother is a person who is accountable for raising their children alone because they do not have a husband or live-in partner. Single mothers claim to have no co-parenting relationships at all, comparing single parents to those who are married, cohabiting, or without children, single parents experience the worst work-life balance. A single parent may feel overwhelmed by the demands of juggling child care, a career, paying bills, and maintaining household responsibilities. Single-parent households frequently deal with several extra (...) obligations and possible complications that other families would not. The study also emphasizes the difficulties and coping mechanisms faced by contractual single parents as well as their lived experiences. The study's findings, which were based on an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, were as follows: (1) Work-life balance can be difficult for single parents. They struggle to keep their jobs while taking care of their family because they are the only ones in charge of the children. (2) Single contractual mothers face particular difficulties due to a lack of resources for basic expenses. (3) Contractual single women lean on their kids, the good people in their lives, and their faith in God to get through problems. (shrink)

This book sets out to generate new ways of reflecting ethically about the purposes and values of contemporary higher education in relation to agency, learning, public values and democratic life, and the pedagogies which support these.

This article offers an argument of genocide denial as an injustice perpetrated not only against direct victims and survivors of genocide, but also against future members of the victim group. In particular, I argue that in cases of persistent and systematic denial, i.e. denialism, it perpetrates an epistemic injustice against them: testimonial oppression. First, I offer an account of testimonial oppression and introduce Kristie Dotson’s notion of testimonial smothering as one form of testimonial oppression, a mechanism of coerced silencing particularly (...) pertinent to genocide denialism. Secondly, I turn to the epistemology of genocide denialism and, using the example of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, show how it presents what Linda Martín Alcoff calls a substantive practice of ignorance. Thirdly, I apply these considerations to individual practices of genocide denial and analyse the particular characteristics of testimony on genocide, the speaker vulnerabilities involved and the conditions under which hearers will reliably fail to meet the dependencies of a speaker testifying to genocide. Finally, I explore the harms that testimonial oppression perpetrates on members of the victim group, insofar as it systematically deprives them of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

Ce texte est écrit à quatre mains : Tamara Dmitrieva est sociologue, spécialiste de l’enfance sourde, qui s’est découverte comme entendante par la rencontre avec des sourd·e·s, et Mélanie Joseph, artiste-chercheuse, sourde signante et implantée, vivant avec le trouble dans sa lutte d’éloignement de la doctrine oraliste. Cet article donne à voir des perspectives de leurs recherches respectives qui s’y entrelacent, en créant un espace de réflexion sur la condition sourde et les possibilités de faire exister les diversités dans la (...) société de demain, selon les perspectives sourdiennes. (shrink)

The Buddhist view of the mind - how it works, how it goes wrong, how to put it right - is increasingly being recognised as profound and highly practical by scientists, counsellors and other professionals. In The Psychology of Awakening, this powerful vision of human nature, and its implications for personal and social life, are for the first time brought to a wider audience by some of those most influential in exploring its potential for the way we live today. These (...) include: David Brazier Jon Kabat Zinn Francisco Varela Joy Manne Geshe Thubten Jinpa Mark Epstein Gay Watson Maura Sills Guy Claxton Stephen Batchelor Deeply relevant, accessible and authoritative, The Psychology of Awakening will be of interest to all those who wish to understand the workings of their minds a little better and who are also seeking new ways of mastering the challenges - personal, professional and cultural with which modern life confronts us all. (shrink)

When engaging in community-based research, it is important to consider ethical research practices throughout the project. While current research practices require many investigators to obtain approval from an ethics review board before starting a project, more is required to ensure that ethical principles are applied once the investigations begin and after the investigations are complete. In response to this concern, as expressed by workers at a feminist non-profit during a community placement, we developed a tool to foster both greater ethical (...) and feminist research practice in community-based research. Using feminist theories, methodologies, and concepts such as epistemic justice, epistemic trust, and coauthorship, a tool was developed to support researchers and other collaborators in building relationships of reciprocity. This tool, called the Research Responsibility Agreement (RRA) invites all members of a research project to explicitly reflect on their role in the research, their relationships with other collaborators, their responsibility to contributing meaningfully in the project, and their plans to remain accountable to one another. In doing so, the RRA adds to existing tools that support ethical research by sharing explicit reflections from all collaborators on how to prevent harm and by asking them to reflect on ethical practices beyond the initial stages of the project. The RRA also encourages greater engagement from researchers and collaborators toward building meaningful relationships with each other, and with participants, to work together in advancing social change. As a practical tool that promotes reflection, that builds relationships, and that holds all parties accountable to ethical and feminist research practices, the RRA has the potential to generate impactful change in community-based research projects and beyond. While the RRA is tailored to community-based research, it can be applied widely to any research project and has the potential to revolutionize how research relationships are built across disciplines. (shrink)

As earlier research on Korsakoff syndrome, a frequent neurological complication of alcohol-dependence, mainly focused on cognition, affective impairments have been little investigated despite their crucial impact in AD. This article proposes new research avenues on this topic by combining two theoretical frameworks: dual-process models, positing that addictions are due to an imbalance between underactivated reflective system and overactivated affective-automatic one; continuity theory, postulating a gradual worsening of cognitive impairments from AD to KS. We suggest that this joint perspective may renew (...) the current knowledge by clarifying the affective-automatic deficits in KS and their interactions with reflective impairments, but also by offering a direct exploration of the continuity between AD and KS regarding reflective and affective-automatic abilities. (shrink)

When we dream, we feel emotions in response to objects and events that exist only in the dream. One key question is whether these emotions can be said to be “essentially unfitting”, that is, always inappropriate to the evoking scenario. However, how we evaluate dream emotions for fittingness may depend on the model of dreams we adopt: the imagination or the hallucination model. If fittingness requires a match between emotion and evaluative properties of objects or events, it is prima facie (...) plausible that dream emotions could fail to fit under the imagination model because it is unfitting to have an emotion toward an object we do not believe to be real. Under the hallucination model, dream emotions could be unfitting because their objects do not exist but we believe them to be real. More nuance, however, is required. By comparing dream emotions with the emotions we experience while imagining, engaging with fiction, and hallucinating, we conclude that although there are compelling arguments in support of the claim that dream emotions are essentially unfitting, these arguments are not entirely convincing, and it is more plausible that particular dream emotions can be assessed for fittingness under either model of dreaming. (shrink)

Genocide remembrance is a complex epistemological/ethical achievement, whereby survivors and descendants give meaning to the past in the quest for both personal-historical and social-historical truth. This paper offers an argument of epistemic injustice specifically as it occurs in relation to practices of (individual and collective) genocide remembrance. In particular, I argue that under conditions of genocide denialism, understood as collective genocide misremembrance and memory distortion, genocide survivors and descendants are confronted with hermeneutical oppression. Drawing on Sue Campbell’s relational, reconstructive account (...) of remembering, I argue that genocide denialism involves disrespectful challenges to memory, which systematically misrecognize rememberers. Adopting the case of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, I discuss two interrelated mechanisms through which this can happen: i) through the systematic portrayal of survivors and descendants as vicious rememberers, and ii) through distortions of the very concept of ‘genocide’. Based on this, I show how hermeneutical and testimonial injustice are crucially interrelated when it comes to “contested” memories of historical injustice and the biographical testimony it gives rise to. (shrink)

One of his obituarists describes Colin Ward (1924-2010) as ‘as one of the greatest anarchist thinkers of the past half century’, ‘a pioneering social historian’ and a chuckling anarchist.1 In the p...

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

In this paper, key concepts from the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality are used to develop an art education research project that can enhance the freedom of art students in their art work and, potentially, contribute to the promotion of emancipation beyond the world of art work. In the process of developing this project, the author engages in a two-way interrogation of both concepts and empirical research. The stratified model of reality, the ontological status of absence and the concepts (...) of transcendental identification, transcendental agency and the ground-state have informed decisions about data collection and contributed to the analysis of data in this study. The research results offer some empirical support for the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality, whilst also identifying potential inconsistencies. A further original feature of the paper is that it draws on the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to complement Roy Bhaskar's account of the ground-state and of the nature of free-flowing activity; also using neuroscience to provide some neurological evidence for the differences between mindful and spontaneous activity. It is anticipated that the cross-analysis between cases resulting from the two-way interchange between theory and empirical evidence could help to generate a model for ‘unblocking the creative block’, experienced not only by students practising art-making, but also by the wider community. (shrink)

Our eyes, bodies, and perspectives are constantly shifting as we observe the world. Despite this, we are very good at distinguishing between self-caused visual changes and changes in the environment: the world appears mostly stable despite our visual field moving around. This, it seems, also occurs when we are dreaming. As we visually investigate the dream environment, we track moving objects with our dream eyes, examine objects, and shift focus. These movements, research suggests, are reflected in the rapid movements or (...) saccades of our sleeping eyes. Do we really see the dream world in the same way that we see the real world? If we do, how could dreaming, usually assumed to be mind-generated hallucinations, replicate such an experience? This problem would be deflated if dreams are not hallucinations at all, but rather imagination, illusion or simply unrealistic. I argue that imagination and illusion views do not satisfactorily explain away the problem of vision and action in sleep. The imagination model is not a complete description of dreaming that is consistent with empirical research, and it is unlikely that the visual dream world is an illusion. Given that the dreaming visual experience is most likely active, hallucinatory, and at times a realistic world simulation, there are important implications for our understanding of visual perception and its relationship to movement. Evidence suggests that our dream eyes investigate the dream world as our waking eyes investigate the waking world. If changes to the unconsciously generated dream environment are perceived as external and unintentional while dream body movements are perceived as self-generated and intentional, current theory of visual perception may have to be expanded to account for how the dreaming mind generates a stable world in which we track and visually explore mind-generated objects. (shrink)

A discussion of ethical decision-making literature is overdue. In this article, we summarize the current literature of ethical decision-making models used in mental health professions. Of 1,520 articles published between 2001 and 2020 that met initial search criteria, 38 articles were included. We report on the status of empirical evidence for the use of these models along with comparisons, limitations, and considerations. Ethical decision-making models were synthesized into eight core procedural components and presented based on the composition of steps present (...) in each model. This taxonomy provides practitioners, trainers, students, and supervisors relevant information regarding ethical decision-making models. (shrink)

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this situation is rapidly changing. Against this backdrop, our specific contribution to the literature on ethics and law vis-à-vis promoting population health is to open up the ubiquitous presence of pets within cities and towns for (...) further discussion. An expanding body of research suggests that pet animals are deeply relevant to people’s health (negatively and positively). Pet bylaws adopted by town and city councils have largely escaped notice, yet they are meaningful to consider in relation to everyday practices, social norms, and cultural values, and thus in relation to population health. Nevertheless, not least because they pivot on defining pets as private property belonging to individual people, pet bylaws raise emotionally charged ethical issues that have yet to be tackled in any of the health research on pet ownership. The literature in moral philosophy on animals is vast, and we do not claim to advance this field here. Rather, we pragmatically seek to reconcile philosophical objections to pet ownership with both animal welfare and public health. In doing so, we foreground theorizations of personhood and property from sociocultural anthropology. (shrink)