“Deep Thoughts” and “Fuzzy Memories” were fan favorites as transitional pieces between larger set pieces on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s. Delivered over soothing music and serene images, Jack Handey's bits never showed his face on screen, calling to mind his observation that “the face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.” Some dark and offbeat takes on the human condition often have an existentialist feel. Existentialism is a philosophy concerned (...) with “the individual, the experience of choice, and the absence of rational understanding of the universe with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity in human life.” In other words, human beings find themselves trying to live meaningful lives without truly comprehending the nature of what that meaning may be, or whether or not true meaning could even exist. (shrink)

An important milestone was crossed recently in the discipline of philosophy, but hardly anyone seems to have noticed. In 2004, for the first time since statistics have been gathered on such things, women earned more than 30 percent of the doctorates in philosophy in this country, 33.3 percent, up from 27.1 percent the year before. The highest percentage women had achieved previously in philosophy was 29.4 percent, in..

As Douglas Adams points out, if there is no final answer to question, 'What is the meaning of life?', '42' is as good or bad an answer as any other. Indeed, 42 quotes might be even better! Gary Cox guides us through 42 of the most misunderstood, misquoted, provocative and significant quotes in the history of philosophy providing a witty and compelling commentary along the way. This entertaining and illuminating collection of quotes doesn't merely list who said what and when. (...) Gary Cox claims that each quote is a philosophical thesis in itself. By exploring who a particular philosopher is and what he or she really meant when they said what they said, this book looks for the philosophy within the quote. Using the writings of everyone from Douglas Adams to A.J. Ayer and Thomas Aquinas to Karl Marx, Gary Cox takes us on a philosophical journey through history, culture and writing to bring us to a deeper understanding of why we think the way we do. (shrink)

The claim that the observation of a violation of a Bell inequality leads to an alleged alternative between nonlocality and non-realism is annoying because of the vagueness of the second term.

This hilarious cast of star philosophers will make you laugh while you think as they explore the moral conundrums, ridiculous paradoxes, and wild implications of Saturday Night Live Comedian-philosophers from Socrates to Sartre have always prodded and provoked us, critiquing our most sacred institutions and urging us to examine ourselves in the process. In Saturday Night Live and Philosophy, a star-studded cast of philosophers takes a close look at the “deep thoughts” beneath the surface of NBC’s award-winning late-night (...) variety show and its hosts’ zany antics. In this book, philosophy and comedy join forces, just like the Ambiguously Gay Duo, to explore the meaning of life itself through the riffs and beats of the subversive parody that gives the show its razor-sharp wit and undeniable cultural and political significance. Our guest hosts raise some eyebrows with questions like: Is Weekend Update Fake News? Does SNL upset dominant paradigms or trap us in political bubbles? When it comes to SNL, how can we tell the difference between satire, smart-assery, and seriousness? Is the Ladies Man too stupid for moral responsibility? What is the benefit of jokes that cause outrage? The Church Lady has a bad case of moral superiority. How about you? What can Wayne and Garth teach us about living a happy life? (shrink)

Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky, wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way down, when it would be too late. Jerry Fodor is loath to have content be constituted, even in part, by inferential relations. This loathing, I will argue, gets him into trouble. In his latest book, Concepts, (...) Fodor contrasts informational atomism, his view of concepts and their content, with inferential role theory. The latter, he argues, is almost certainly false. This strikes cognitive science at its core, he adds, since the major theories of concepts currently in vogue in cognitive science are all variants on inferential role theory. (shrink)

Pooh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that the Heffalump might be walking along, humming a little song, and looking up at the sky, wondering if it would rain, and so he wouldn't see the Very Deep Pit until he was half-way down, when it would be too late. Jerry Fodor is loath to have content be constituted, even in part, by inferential relations. This loathing, I will argue, gets him into trouble. In his latest book, Concepts, (...) Fodor contrasts informational atomism, his view of concepts and their content, with inferential role theory. The latter, he argues, is almost certainly false. This strikes cognitive science at its core, he adds, since the major theories of concepts currently in vogue in cognitive science are all variants on inferential role theory. (shrink)

__Deep in Thought_ provides an introduction to intellectual virtues—the personal qualities and character strengths of good thinkers and learners—and outlines a pragmatic approach for teachers to reinforce them in the classroom._ With a combination of theoretical expertise and practical experience, philosopher Jason Baehr endorses intellectual virtues as a rich, meaningful way to think about and understand the purpose of education. He makes a persuasive case for prioritizing intellectual virtues in the classroom to facilitate deeper learning, encourage lifelong learning, and enrich (...) teacher practice. Baehr profiles nine key virtues that enable learners to initiate the process of learning, maintain forward momentum, and overcome common obstacles. With engaging anecdotes and concrete examples, he presents a wealth of principles, postures, and practices that educators can employ in promoting essential habits of mind such as curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage. Baehr illustrates how opportunities to practice these intellectual habits can be integrated into the classroom in ways that align with current teaching practices. In addition, he shows how educators can adapt these practices to accommodate students’ identities, developmental abilities, and interests. This thought-provoking book supports all educators, especially middle and high school teachers, in teaching for intellectual virtues. _Deep in Thought_ is a philosophical and yet practical guide to one of the most important aims of education: helping students become skilled thinkers and learners. (shrink)

This book addresses a range of fundamental questions around the nature of Psychoanalysis. It distinguishes how Psychoanalysis differs from other forms of therapy, explores the ways in which insights into the unconscious can be used to support and help people, and asks questions around any claim for scientific validity. Informed by Bion's ideas on containment, group functioning and the fundamental need for truth, this book cites research in infant communication to assert that unconscious communication is present from birth. It goes (...) on to explores the dynamics of communication between psychoanalyst and patient, using these findings to distinguish the practice of Psychoanalysis from suggestion. Moreover, the book asserts that Psychoanalysis is uniquely placed to foster the psychological development made possible by this communication. Exploring the relationship between unconscious communication, group dynamics, containment and psychological development in a highly original way, Bion and the Language of the Unconscious: Psychoanalysis, Suggestion, and Thoughts Too Deep for Words will be of great interest to psychotherapists, psychologists and psychoanalysts who are interested in the relationship between psychoanalysis and suggestion. (shrink)

O artigo discute o impacto do pensamento tardio de Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) nas linhas gerais do pensamento ecológico atual, o qual, em tese, aproximar-se-ia da crítica do autor alemão ao fenômeno da Gestell. De fato, embora em alguns aspectos se aproxime e em outros se distancie do projeto original de Heidegger, essa discussão ressoa em alguns autores contemporâneos, como Michel Maffesoli e Félix Guattari. Nesse sentido, o trabalho visa demonstrar até onde a crítica de Heidegger ao fenômeno da Gestell repercute (...) nessa esfera de atuação da Ecosofia, que, em termos gerais, busca resgatar uma relação pluridimensional (estética-política-social-ambiental) entre o ser humano e a eco (oikos) natural. (shrink)

In recent years, the family of algorithms collected under the term ``deep learning'' has revolutionized artificial intelligence, enabling machines to reach human-like performances in many complex cognitive tasks. Although deep learning models are grounded in the connectionist paradigm, their recent advances were basically developed with engineering goals in mind. Despite of their applied focus, deep learning models eventually seem fruitful for cognitive purposes. This can be thought as a kind of biological exaptation, where a physiological structure becomes (...) applicable for a function different from that for which it was selected. In this paper, it will be argued that it is time for cognitive science to seriously come to terms with deep learning, and we try to spell out the reasons why this is the case. First, the path of the evolution of deep learning from the connectionist project is traced, demonstrating the remarkable continuity, and the differences as well. Then, it will be considered how deep learning models can be useful for many cognitive topics, especially those where it has achieved performance comparable to humans, from perception to language. It will be maintained that deep learning poses questions that cognitive sciences should try to answer. One of such questions is the reasons why deep convolutional models that are disembodied, inactive, unaware of context, and static, are by far the closest to the patterns of activation in the brain visual system. (shrink)

Although philosophers have explored several connections between neuroscience and moral responsibility, the issue of how real-world neurological modifications, such as Deep Brain Stimulation, impact moral responsibility has received little attention. In this article, we draw on debates about the relevance of history and manipulation to moral responsibility to argue that certain kinds of neurological modification can diminish the responsibility of the agents so modified. We argue for a historicist position - a version of the history-sensitive reflection view - and (...) defend that account against a rival, relational view of responsibility. We conclude that DBS can, under certain conditions, diminish responsibility, and explore the circumstances under which this might be so. We conclude by suggesting that philosophical debates about moral responsibility, manipulation, and history have greater practical relevance than is sometimes thought, and that attention to practical cases can help inform and deepen this body of scholarship. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the problem of political fragmentation via an analysis of the politics and thought of Charles Taylor. ;A politically fragmented country is one whose members increasingly identify with the concerns of specific groups rather than the country as a whole. To address political fragmentation is to address the tension between accommodating narrowly defined groups and promoting allegiance to a larger polity. Concerns about fragmentation mainly appear in two forms: First, if citizens find themselves primarily identifying with a specific (...) ethnic, cultural or social group and not with the larger polity of a given country, will this hamper the ability of citizens of that country to develop a common civic culture? The second worry involves the limits of a state's ability to provide recognition. Is there a limit to the number and variety of group rights claims which a state can accommodate such that a state dramatically loses its ability to function effectively when it nears or exceeds that limit? ;Taylor confronts these questions in two interrelated manners: his intellectual quest to diagnose the moral context In which modern liberal democracies operate, and his attempts, as a political actor and commentator, to advance his own federalist solution to Canada's unity crises. ;My analysis of Taylor's philosophy and politics reveals several lessons about mediating political fragmentation in liberal democratic states. These lessons are predicated upon the following axioms: An adequate approach to political fragmentation must be sufficiently open to the myriad of particular identities that comprise a polity that it can provide what citizens who have a given identity regard as a fair hearing of their concerns. At the same time, it must be focused on articulating the basis of commonality among citizens. Taylor, despite his professed commitments to openness, is unable to develop a theoretical model that supports these commitments because of a series of ethical and political tensions that plague his thought. (shrink)

The article provides an introduction to Heidegger's manuscript “The Argument against Need”. It comments on the nature of the manuscript, the circumstances of its composition, and its major philosop...

This article starts off with a historical section showing that deep disagreements among notions of social and political justice are a characteristic feature of the history of political thought. Since no agreement or consensus on distributive justice is possible, the article argues that political philosophers should – instead of continuously proposing new normative theories of justice – focus on analyzing the reasons, significance, and consequences of such kinds of disagreements. The next two sections are analytical. The first sketches five (...) possible reasons for deep disagreements among notions of social and political justice. The second discusses the meta-ethical relevance of the lack of consensus on justice and rejects ethical realism and cognitivism based on the argument from deep disagreements. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur clearly sought to differentiate between and keep separate his philosophical and theological intellectual endeavors. This essay brings into relief a deep, implicit, recapitulative pattern in Ricoeur’s thinking that cuts across this explicit “conceptual asceticism.” Specifically, it highlights this recapitulative pattern in Ricoeur’s treatment of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible; his understanding of utopia and ideology; the functioning of symbols in The Symbolism of Evil and of sublimation in Freud and Philosophy . On these topics Ricoeur extended his (...) typical generosity toward all that might appear to be outdated, primitive, and even regressive in our collective and personal humanity. The frequently recapitulative nature of Ricoeur’s insights indicates the importance not just of the content of his thought but also the way in which he did his thinking, a pattern which above all was generous, even to a fault. (shrink)

There is more than one way to think. Most people are familiar with the systematic, rule-based thinking that one finds in a mathematical proof or a computer program. But such thinking does not produce breakthroughs in mathematics and science nor is it the kind of thinking that results in significant learning. Deep thinking is a different and more basic way of using the mind. It results in the discontinuous "aha!" experience, which is the essence of creativity. It is at (...) the heart of every paradigm shift or reframing of a problematic situation. The identification of deep thinking as the default state of the mind has the potential to reframe our current approach to technological change, education, and the nature of mathematics and science. For example, there is an unbridgeable gap between deep thinking and computer simulations of thinking. Many people suspect that such a gap exists, but find it difficult to make this intuition precise. This book identifies the way in which the authentic intelligence of deep thinking differs from the artificial intelligence of "big data" and "analytics." Deep thinking is the essential ingredient in every significant learning experience, which leads to a new way to think about education. It is also essential to the construction of conceptual systems that are at the heart of mathematics and science, and of the technologies that shape the modern world. Deep thinking can be found whenever one conceptual system morphs into another. The sources of this study include the cognitive development of numbers in children, neuropsychology, the study of creativity, and the historical development of mathematics and science. The approach is unusual and original. It comes out of the author's lengthy experience as a mathematician, teacher, and writer of books about mathematics and science, such as How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics and The Blind Spot: Science and the Crisis of Uncertainty. (shrink)

This article is a review of Deep Postmodernism by Jerry H. Gill. In this book Gill juxtaposes and compares the philosophies of Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Polanyi, and Austin—philosophies that on the surface are very different but, examined closely, are remarkably complementary and convergent in respect of their challenging and revising key assumptions of modern thought relating to topics of reality, linguistic meaning, embodiment, and knowing. Their critiques resonate with several of the critiques of well-known postmodern thinkers but go deeper (...) by reconstructing the key assumptions in question. I compare Gill’s conception of deep postmodern philosophy with Polanyi’s conception of post-critical philosophy. Gill’s book is significant in setting out in one place the beachhead that these five thinkers have established in overcoming the philosophically sterile dead-ends that modernist and postmodernist thought have bequeathed us. (shrink)

Introduction Jamie Allen Time, of all the dimensions readily presented to experience, seems to do so most readily through things. Stuff, in supposed counter-valence to the negentropic resilience of living things, appears to us as that which degrades through time, and demarcates a more technical chronometry of sequential events. Situated outside the rotting of fruit and the ticking of clocks, a “deep time” persists. Like the ultra-hearing of the bat, and the infra-vision of the boa-constrictor, there exist living and (...) non-living agents and entities capable of revealing the fixity and finitude of our own perceptual frames for thinking and understanding. The recordings presented here consist of four extracts of documents made in deep geological repository sites (for the storage of nuclear waste). Here re-presented are the Yucca Mountain Repository; HADES, in Mol, Belgium; Gorleben in Germany and a further recording from Forsmark in Sweden (pretty much inaudible behind a loop of a pop song). These recordings are imagined acoustic amplifications of deep time, just as the astronomer’s telescope is (thought of a certain way), also a time machine. Stars and nuclear waste are unapparent objects of temporal thought. Andy Weir is an artist from London researching effects of deprioritised subjectivity and contemporary art. This project draws on work developing sonic fictions, stealthy earworms, and micropolitical agencies. Prompted for further thoughts about the recordings presented here, he offered up the interspersed discussion included. —JA Yucca Mountain Repository, Nevada, USA by continent I became interested in these sites originally as spaces that allude to a time outside of the human (‘deep time’) as they are designed to store waste ‘without future maintenance’. The very fact of thinking about these spaces or working on them—engineering etc.. (as I’m particularly interested them in a kind of practice rather than just an object of thought), in other words, forces a confrontation with thought of the extinction of humanity. I was interested in this as a production of affect at odds with the expected ‘ironic, can be whatever you like’ interpretive condition of contemporary art (art under the condition of neoliberalism, say, where the individual subject is prioritised as a free autonomous producer of the meaning of the work) When I thought about this a bit though it ran into paradoxes—yes, I could allude to deep time, but in doing so I just allude to its un-representability, drawing attention to the limits of representation and so reaffirming it—I was stuck in a representation/non-representational negative dialectic. In trying to somehow create a figure for deep time I was either reducing it to my description of it, or presenting it as irreducible. HADES Facility, Mol, Belgium by continent I don’t think I’ve escaped this in the work but my response to it was to create a sonic-fiction. This was based on the idea of a viral transmission of the affect of deep time (this is the ‘pyroclastic-soaked chrono-dread’) through receiving apparatuses, transforming the screen into an intercessor or mediating lure for the outside, a site of exposure multiplying virulently through its dissemination, invoking as much as trying to represent these spaces, the sounds as durations of exposure to contagious materials, and fictions as a way of excavating the strangeness of a world opaque to subjective reconfiguration... Testing out I suppose ways that art could start thinking about figuring the reality of ecological crisis. Gorleben Repository, Lower Saxony, Germany by continent While everything remains at the level of fiction I think the work is problematic. It doesn’t really model anything, giving too much authority to either romantic abandonment or the recuperation of romantic abandonment under its description by theory/philosophy, all contained and controlled by me within a fairly limited condition of what art can do. Deep Time Contagion is precisely a materialisation of and transmission of this paradox (i.e. with screen-media can only present deep time as unrepresentable or draw attention to an inability to present it) taking the comfort/panic induced by this paradox as its material. I’m working now on some new projects that take this as a point of departure. Forsmark Repository, Sweden (Robitussin Mix) by continent. (shrink)

.Deep disagreements are those involving a disagreement about (relatively) fundamental epistemic principles. This paper considers the bearing of testimonial injustice, in Miranda Fricker’s sense, on the depth of disagreements, and what this can teach us about the nature and significance of deep disagreements. I start by re-evaluating T. J. Lagewaard’s recent argument that disagreements about the nature, scope, and impact of oppression will often be deepened by testimonial injustice, since the people best placed to offer relevant testimony will (...) be subject to testimonial injustice, pushing the disagreement into one about the bearing of certain epistemic sources on the original debate. I take issue with this last step, but I build on the argument to bring attention to unappreciated and worrying ways in which prejudices can make a disagreement deep in ways that can be hidden from one or more of the participants and from observers. Finally, I revisit some of the ways that deep disagreement has been thought to be problematic for the proper functioning of a democracy, and I examine whether the kinds of hidden deep disagreements I argue for in the paper make these problems any worse, concluding that they likely do. (shrink)

(1996). Deep time and shallow time: Metaphors for conflict and cooperation in the natural sciences. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Science and Religion in Modern Western Thought, pp. 1752-1763.

Deep brain stimulation is an experimental procedure for treatment-resistant depression. Some results show promise, but blinded trials had limited success. Ethical questions center on vulnerability: especially on whether depressed patients can weigh the risks and benefits effectively, whether depression causes “desperation,” and whether media portrayals create unrealistic hopes. We interviewed 24 psychiatric inpatients with treatment-resistant depression, qualitatively analyzing their comments. Most had minimal interest in deep brain stimulators. Some might consider them if their depression worsened, if alternatives were (...) exhausted, or if the evidence were stronger. Fears focused on the surgery, adverse effects, and the novelty of the device. Patients felt the depression interfered with their ability to weigh the risks and benefits. Patients seemed highly attuned to the risks, and were skeptical that the treatment would be effective. We conclude that ethical concerns about vulnerability remain, yet patients with treatment-resistant depression were thoughtful and cautious about trying a novel therapy. (shrink)

Deep personal relationships involve deep mutual understanding and strong mutual affection. This paper focuses on whether having deep personal relationships is one of the elements of well-being. Roger Crisp put forward thought experiments which might be taken to suggest that having deep personal relationships has only instrumental value as a means to other elements of well-being. The different conclusion this paper draws is that having deep personal relationships is an element of well-being if, but only (...) if, the other people involved have qualities that merit affection for these people. (shrink)

This paper examines the views of Fogelin, Woods, Johnstone, etc., concerning deep disa-greements, force-five standoffs, philosophical controversies, etc. My approach is to reconstruct their views and critiques of them as meta-arguments, and to elaborate the meta-argumentative aspects of radical disa-greements. It turns out that deep disagreements are resolvable to a greater degree than usually thought, but only by using special principles and practices, such as meta-argumentation, ad hominem argumentation, Ramsey’s principle, etc.

This article starts off with a historical section showing that deep disagreements among notions of social and political justice are a characteristic feature of the history of political thought. Since no agreement or consensus on distributive justice is possible, the article argues that political philosophers should – instead of continuously proposing new normative theories of justice – focus on analyzing the reasons, significance, and consequences of such kinds of disagreements. The next two sections are analytical. The first sketches five (...) possible reasons for deep disagreements among notions of social and political justice. The second discusses the meta-ethical relevance of the lack of consensus on justice and rejects ethical realism and cognitivism based on the argument from deep disagreements. (shrink)

The idea that introspection is transparent—that we know our minds by looking out to the world, not inwards towards some mental item—seems quite appealing when we think about belief. It seems that we know our beliefs by attending to their content; I know that I believe there is a café nearby by thinking about the streets near me, and not by thinking directly about my mind. Such an account is thought to have several advantages—for example, it is thought to avoid (...) the need to posit any extra mental faculties peculiar to introspection. In this paper I discuss recent attempts to extend this kind of outwards-looking account to our introspective knowledge of desire. According to these accounts, we know our desires by attending to what in the world we judge to be valuable. This, however, does not deal satisfactorily with cases where my value judgments and introspective knowledge of my desires come apart. I propose a better alternative for the proponent of transparency, but one that requires giving up on the supposed metaphysical advantages. (shrink)

Recent disclosures regarding the relationship between Heidegger’s thought and his own version of National Socialism have led me to rethink my earlier efforts to portray Heidegger as a forerunner of deep ecology. His political problems have provided ammunition for critics, such as Murray Bookchin, who regard deep ecology as a reactionary movement. In this essay, I argue that, despite some similarities, Heidegger’s thought and deep ecology are in many ways incompatible, in part because deep ecologists—in spite (...) of their criticism of the ecologically destructive character of technological modernity—generally support a “progressive” idea of human evolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deep Listening and Virtuous Friendship:Spiritual Care in the Context of Religious MultiplicityDuane R. BidwellA monk asked Zen master Yunmen: “What is the teaching of the Buddha’s entire lifetime?” Yunmen answered:“An appropriate response.”1In a pivotal scene from the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda, con artist Wanda Gershwitz is fed up—finally—with her partner, Otto West. When his jealousy and ersatz intellectualism repeatedly jeopardize their attempts to steal $20 million (...) in diamonds, Wanda yells: “Now let me correct you on a few things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘Every Man for Himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto, I looked them up.”2 It’s a funny moment, of course. But Otto’s (mis)understanding of Gautama’s teaching demonstrates a challenge in translating a spiritual-religious tradition from one cultural setting to another. Too often, and usually without intention, we are like Otto; we colonize and domesticate unfamiliar ideas, assimilating them into our existing worldview instead of experiencing and accommodating their challenging differences. Otto’s facile appropriation of Buddhism confirms rather than confronts his pre-critical, individualistic, and perhaps Darwinist worldview. A Buddhist caregiver might say that Otto was not “listening deeply” to the myriad voices that shaped his perspective.Similar hazards face someone writing about deep listening in relation to religious multiplicity.3 Deep listening, as a caring practice, “belongs” to the emerging field of Buddhist contemplative care,4 in which it has a technical (although perhaps undertheorized) usage richly informed by Buddhist thought and practice. But when I reflect as a pastoral theologian and spiritual caregiver trained in the Christian traditions of cura animarum, the cure or care of souls, deep listening can become unmoored from its origins. Someone marinated in the discourses and practices of Christian care can easily and perhaps unintentionally conflate deep listening with classic Christian [End Page 3] concepts of care such as the ministry of presence, the practice of unconditional positive regard,5 and the giving of oneself to God for the sake of the care seeker. Although I identify as a Buddhist Christian, habitual Christian views shape my thinking the way a canyon or streambed shapes the flow of water; unless I am attentive to the ways that Buddhist thought and practice seek fissures and carve new channels through the sediment of Christian spiritual care, I risk appropriating or erasing the practices that Buddhist caregivers call deep listening.Mindful of these waters, I want to immerse myself and readers in a particular question: In the context of spiritual care, what happens at the confluence of deep listening and a practitioner’s multiple religious voices? In responding to this question I have three aims: to describe deep listening, to provide a theoretical and experiential account of deep listening in the context of religious multiplicity, and to suggest an image from the Pāli canon that can help practitioners engage religious multiplicity in ways that minimize harm, increase compassion, and realize wisdom. A particular moment in spiritually integrative psychotherapy serves as a touchstone for my reflection; thus, I begin where the canyon creates a slender and fast-moving channel for deep listening: psychotherapy with Julie.6violence, karma, and compassionAt twenty-seven years of age, Julie was a soft-spoken, biracial graduate student who radiated mindful presence. She identifies as Asian American, and with her shaved head and tendency to wear dark colors and dramatic scarves, she might seem a typical LA hipster to other passengers on the commuter train she rode to and from our appointments. One year before our psychotherapeutic work, Julie had been beaten and raped by a boyfriend; subsequent thoughts of suicide led to a brief hospitalization. At that time she was assigned diagnoses of bipolar II and post-traumatic stress disorders. Daily, she swallowed a powerful mood stabilizer; monthly, she visited a psychiatrist. The symptoms of bipolar disorder, substance abuse, addiction, schizophrenia, depression, and suicide were present in her extended family. Julie sought counseling because of tension between what she called her “Buddhist identity” and the mental health diagnoses assigned to her. She said she... (shrink)

This paper offers a critical examination of efforts to use Heidegger's thought to illuminate deep ecology. It argues that deep ecology does not entail a non-anthropocentric or ecocentric environmental ethic; rather, it is best understood as offering an ontological critique of the current environmental crisis, from a perspective of deep anthropocentrism.

This article is a review of Deep Postmodernism by Jerry H. Gill. In this book Gill juxtaposes and compares the philosophies of Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Polanyi, and Austin—philosophies that on the surface are very different but, examined closely, are remarkably complementary and convergent in respect of their challenging and revising key assumptions of modern thought relating to topics of reality, linguistic meaning, embodiment, and knowing. Their critiques resonate with several of the critiques of well-known postmodern thinkers but go deeper (...) by reconstructing the key assumptions in question. I compare Gill’s conception of deep postmodern philosophy with Polanyi’s conception of post-critical philosophy. Gill’s book is significant in setting out in one place the beachhead that these five thinkers (and others akin to them) have established in overcoming the philosophically sterile dead-ends that modernist and postmodernist thought have bequeathed us. (shrink)

This essay is written as a companion to the interview “Here I Stand,” and it examines the place of phenomenology in the environmental thought of deep ecologist Arne Naess. Tracing a line through Naess’s somewhat sporadic references to phenomenology, and his comments in the interview, the article argues that Naess’s interest in phenomenology is tied to his attempts to develop an ontology, and tries to show how this project situates Naess in relation to several phenomenologists. The essay concludes with (...) some reflections on Naess’s general criticism of phenomenology, and claims that despite his reservations, he may still be quite close to the spirit of phenomenological thinking. (shrink)

This essay is written as a companion to the interview “Here I Stand,” and it examines the place of phenomenology in the environmental thought of deep ecologist Arne Naess. Tracing a line through Naess’s somewhat sporadic references to phenomenology, and his comments in the interview, the article argues that Naess’s interest in phenomenology is tied to his attempts to develop an ontology, and tries to show how this project situates Naess in relation to several phenomenologists. The essay concludes with (...) some reflections on Naess’s general criticism of phenomenology, and claims that despite his reservations, he may still be quite close to the spirit of phenomenological thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deep TherapyDiskin ClayThe Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, by Martha Nussbaum; xiv & 558 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; $29.95For three decades now interest in Hellenistic philosophy has been gaining among philosophers both in England—and its philosophical colony the United States—and in Europe. The principal documents of the Hellenistic schools have now been made available in both scrupulously edited Greek and Latin texts (...) and fine English translations by A. A. Long and David Sedley in their The Hellenistic Philosophers (1987). Conditions are right for the latest assimilation of this philosophical culture, whose conventional dates are those of the Hellenistic age—from the death of Alexander of Macedon in 323 B.C. to the suicide of the last of his successors, Cleopatra VII of Egypt in 31 B.C., but which in fact extends through the second century A.D. In the fracturing of the autonomous Greek city state and the new empires and cosmopolitanism that grew up in its place, in the turning inward of ethical thought and the simultaneous turning outward of science, the Hellenistic age holds up a mirror to our own. Especially congenial to philosophers in this country and in England is the radical skepticism that reaches from Socrates in the fifth century to Sextus Empiricus in the second century A.D.Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire is very much a book for this age. Her topic is the “compassionate medical philosophy” of three of [End Page 501] the Hellenistic schools, the Epicurean, the Skeptic, and the Stoic. In focusing sharply on therapy, she leaves to the side—and on the outside—the connections that made Epicurean and Stoic philosophy systematic. But her awareness of the psychiatric possibilities of modern philosophy and what Michel Foucault called a technique de soi provide the contemporary context for the project of this book, at a stage when Freudian psychology is preparing to make its exit at the end of its century. Medicine is the only science that enters this book’s field of vision. Its thirteen studies (some already familiar) concentrate on the practical and therapeutic aims of Hellenistic philosophy and what the author terms the therapy of the passions, particularly the passions of erotic love, anger, and aggression, and fear of the gods. In The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986), Nussbaum took the side of Aristotle against Plato. Here she takes the part of the Epicurean, Skeptic, and Stoic against the ethical theory of Aristotle, who is impressed to illustrate the practical turn in ethics which Nussbaum explores in Therapy. Plato is glimpsed on the horizon of this book “standing on the rim of the heavens” (p. 23). What links the intellectual program of both Fragility and Therapy is Nussbaum’s keen and sympathetic attention to poetry as a vehicle for philosophy or as a provocation to philosophical engagement. Four of the chapters of this study are devoted to poetry: three to Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura; one to Seneca’s Medea.The ethical project illustrated throughout these studies is formulated by Democritus, who first enunciated the claim: “medicine heals the sickness of bodies; but wisdom rids the soul of its sufferings” (DK 68B31). Each of the Hellenistic schools Nussbaum studies repeated this claim. Unexplored is the medical end of the analogy and the degree to which this much invoked analogy (whose terms are fused in our word psychiatry) conforms to actual medical practice, with its pathology, consultation, diagnosis, and treatment (therapeia). Nor is not clear from the Greek record that desires as opposed to the individual who harbors these desires are regarded as the object of therapy. The Hellenistic philosophers were clearly concerned with “extirpating” desires and disruptive passions, but the object of therapy was usually not desire but the individual who is disturbed by desire (as Philodemus, On Plain Speaking 84.11 Olivieri makes plain). But occasionally by extension the passions are described as the objects of therapy (as they are in Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 4.II.3 Smith).No one who has read Fragility will be taken aback by Nussbaum’s [End Page 502] invention of a... (shrink)