Quelles sont nos fragilités ? Comment les distinguer ? Nous aident-elles à aimer ou, au contraire, sont-elles un obstacle à la rencontre d'autrui ? La philosophe répond à ces questions en situant les fragilités qui nous habitent et qui forment notre être profond. Elle s'arrête aussi aux fragilités plus subtiles, qui restent parfois cachées, mais qui nous font bien souvent souffrir. Elle nous guide enfin vers celles qui mettent en jeu nos désirs de réciprocité, nos langages de l'amour et nos (...) défensives psychologiques. -/- Dans la dernière partie du livre, l’auteure va à la rencontre de personnes fragilisées par le handicap ou la maladie. Qui n'a pas accompagné un être cher à l'hôpital jusqu'au moment de la séparation ultime ? À partir d'exemples concrets, de principes philosophiques de l'Antiquité et de la philosophie contemporaine, Gaëlle Fiasse nous livre une analyse capable de rejoindre tous ceux et celles qui portent une attention particulière à la fragilité de l'être humain. (shrink)

Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that (...) transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject. (shrink)

Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that (...) transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject. (shrink)

Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that (...) transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill-defined into a well-defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject. (shrink)

Caring for the competent, fragile, elderly patient at the end of life is becoming increasingly challenging. This case explores several ethical areas of concern that arise when caring for patients who have written durable powers of attorney for health care decisions and face life or death choices. Areas covered are informed consent with the elderly patient, the family's right to be involved in decision-making, futility of treatment, and the nurse's role as patient advocate during times of difficult decision-making. Recommendations for (...) increased nursing intervention during these times are incorporated. Les soins des personnes âgés, fragiles mais toujours compétentes et dont la vie touche à sa fin, posent des problèmes de plus en plus urgents. Cet article discute de plusieurs aspets qui se manifestent dans les soins des malades ayant écrit des mandats concernants leurs soins et qui doivent maintenant prendre des décisions graves concernant la vie ou la mort. Les aspets dont il s'agit dans cet article sont: le consentement informé des personnes âgés: le droit de la famille de participer à la décision; les traitements inutiles; et le rôle des infirmiers/ères pour plaider leur cause pendant des moments difficles de prises de décisions. Des recommendations pour de plus importantes interventions infirmières sont comprises. Die Pflege der geistig kompetenten aber hinfälligen Personen im hohen Alter stellt immer grössere Anforderungen. Dieser Artikel untersucht verschiedene ethische Aspekte, die bei der Pflege von Patienten, die eine schriftliche Vollmacht über medizinische Behandlung ausgestellt haben für ihre Pflege und jetzt Entscheidungen über Leben oder Tod treffen müssen. Der Artikel umfasst folgende Bereiche: informierten Zustimmung des Patienten, das Mitbestimmungsrecht der Familie, Zwecklosigkeit der Behandlung, und die Rolle des Pflegepersonals als Fürsprecher der Patienten bei schwierigen Entscheidungen. Empfehlungen für eine grössere Beteiligung oder Mitbestimmung des Pflegepersonals in diesen Fällen sind eingeschlossen. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have critically analyzed the effects of sex segregation in numerous social institutions, yet sex-segregated sport often remains unchallenged. Even critics of sex-segregated sport have tended to accept the merits of women-only teams at face value. In this article, we revisit this issue by examining the underlying assumptions supporting women’s and girls’ teams and explore how they perpetuate gender inequality. Specifically, we analyze the 14 U.S. court cases wherein adolescent boys have sought to play on girls’ teams in their (...) respective high schools. The courts’ decisions reveal taken-for-granted, essentialist assumptions about girls’ innate fragility and athletic inferiority. While the courts, policy makers, and many feminist scholars see maintaining teams for girls and women as a solution to the problem of boys’ and men’s dominance in sport, the logic supporting this form of segregation further entrenches notions of women’s inferiority. (shrink)

American bioethics has served as a safety net for the rich and powerful, often failing to protect minorities and the economically disadvantaged. For example, minorities and the economically disadvantaged are often unduly influenced into participating in clinical trials that promise monetary gain or access to health care. This is a violation of the bioethical principle of “respect for persons,” which requires that informed consent for participation in clinical trials is voluntary and free of undue influence. Promises of access to health (...) care invalidate the voluntariness of informed consent not only because it unduly induces minorities and the economically disadvantaged to participate in clinical trials to obtain access to potentially life saving health care, but it is also manipulative because some times the clinical trial is conducted by the very institutions that are denying minorities and the economically disadvantaged access to health care. To measure whether consent is voluntary and free of undue influence, federal agencies should require researchers to use the Vulnerability and Equity Impact Assessment tool, which I have created based on the Health Equity Impact Assessment tool, to determine whether minorities and the economically disadvantaged are being unduly influenced into participating in clinical trials in violation of the “respect for persons” principle. (shrink)

BackgroundAn increasing number of studies utilize intracranial electrophysiology in human subjects to advance basic neuroscience knowledge. However, the use of neurosurgical patients as human research subjects raises important ethical considerations, particularly regarding informed consent and undue influence, as well as subjects’ motivations for participation. Yet a thorough empirical examination of these issues in a participant population has been lacking. The present study therefore aimed to empirically investigate ethical concerns regarding informed consent and voluntariness in Parkinson’s disease patients undergoing deep brain (...) stimulator (DBS) placement who participated in an intraoperative neuroscience study.MethodsTwo semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted preoperatively and postoperatively via telephone. Interviews assessed participants’ motivations for participation in the parent intraoperative study, recall of information presented during the informed consent process, and participants’ postoperative reflections on the research study.ResultsTwenty-two participants (mean age = 60.9) completed preoperative interviews at a mean of 7.8 days following informed consent and a mean of 5.2 days prior to DBS surgery. Twenty participants completed postoperative interviews at a mean of 5 weeks following surgery. All participants cited altruism or advancing medical science as “very important” or “important” in their decision to participate in the study. Only 22.7% (n = 5) correctly recalled one of the two risks of the study. Correct recall of other aspects of the informed consent was poor (36.4% for study purpose; 50.0% for study protocol; 36.4% for study benefits). All correctly understood that the study would not confer a direct therapeutic benefit to them.ConclusionEven though research coordinators were properly trained and the informed consent was administered according to protocol, participants demonstrated poor retention of study information. While intraoperative studies that aim to advance neuroscience knowledge represent a unique opportunity to gain fundamental scientific knowledge, improved standards for the informed consent process can help facilitate their ethical implementation. (shrink)

Resumen La ética es un saber filosófico que puede ser enfocado de distintas maneras, y una de ellas es el enfoque de la vulnerabilidad, que es un aspecto evidente de la realidad humana. Desde este punto de vista, es preciso distinguir entre la vulnerabilidad general y la vulnerabilidad contextual. Por su parte, en el caso de la vulnerabilidad contextual, es necesario distinguir entre la que es producto de opciones voluntarias y la que se produce por razones involuntarias. En el marco (...) de estas distinciones, reflexionamos sobre la situación de pandemia mun dial que estamos padeciendo y proponemos algunas medidas de carácter ético que pueden ser útiles para afrontar la crisis.Ethics is a philosophical knowledge that can be approached in different ways, and one of them is the approach to vulnerability, which is an evident aspect of human reality. From this point of view, it is necessary to distinguish between general vulnerability and contextual vulnerability. In the case of contextual vulnerability, it is necessary to distinguish between that which is the product of voluntary choices and that which occurs for involuntary reasons. Within the framework of these distinctions, we reflect on the global pandemic situation that we are suffering from and propose some ethical measures that may be useful in facing the crisis. (shrink)

A number of influential reports on influenza pandemic preparedness include recommendations for extra-autonomous decisions to withdraw mechanical ventilation from some patients, who might still benefit from this technology, when demand for ventilators exceeds supply. An unintended implication of recommendations for nonvoluntary and involuntary termination of life support is that it make pandemic preparedness plans vulnerable to patients’ claims for assisted suicide and active euthanasia. Supporters of nonvoluntary passive euthanasia need to articulate why it is both morally different and morally (...) superior to voluntary active euthanasia if they do not wish to invite expansion of end-of-life options during health system catastrophe. (shrink)

How do human beings become human? This question lies behind the so-called human sciences. But these disciplines are scattered among many different departments and hold up a cracked mirror to humankind. This is why, in the view of Paul Ricoeur, we need to develop a philosophical anthropology, one that has a much older history but still offers many untapped resources. This appeal to a specifically philosophical approach to questions regarding what it was to be human did not stop Ricoeur from (...) entering into dialogue with other disciplines and approaches, such as psychoanalysis, history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and the philosophy of language, in order to offer an up-to-date reflection on what he saw as the fundamental issues. For there is clearly not a simple, single answer to the question what is it to be human? Ricoeur therefore takes up the complexity of this question in terms of the tensions he sees between the voluntary and the involuntary, acting and suffering, autonomy and vulnerability, capacity and fragility, and identity and otherness. The texts brought together in this volume provide an overall view of the development of Ricoeurs philosophical thinking on the question of what it is to be human, from his early 1939 lecture on Attention to his remarks on receiving the Kluge Prize in 2004, a few months before his death. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Agent Causation Choice Agent Causation (Cont.) Knowledge Moral Responsibility Moral Responsibility for Virtue and Vice Determinism and Compatibilism Criticisms Notes Bibliography.

Participants were asked to carry out a series of simple tasks while following mental control instructions. In advance of each task, they either suppressed thoughts of their intention to perform the task, concentrated on such thoughts, or monitored their thoughts without trying to change them. Suppression resulted in reduced reports of intentionality as compared to monitoring, and as compared to concentration. There was a weak trend for suppression to enhance reported intentionality for a repetition of the action carried out after (...) suppression instructions had been discontinued. (shrink)

Transplanting organs from emotionally related donors has become a fairly routine procedure in many countries. However, donors have to be chosen carefully in order to avoid not just medically, but also morally, questionable outcomes. This paper draws attention to vulnerabilities that may affect the voluntariness of the donor's decision. Suggestions are made as to how to approach the evaluation and selection of potential donors.

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this (...) chapter, we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

In this study, voluntary and involuntary visual attention focused on different interpretations of a bistable image, were investigated using magnetoencephalography. A Necker cube with sinusoidally modulated pixels' intensity in the front and rear faces with frequencies 6.67 Hz and 8.57 Hz, respectively, was presented to 12 healthy volunteers, who interpreted the cube as either left- or right-oriented. The tags of these frequencies and their second harmonics were identified in the average Fourier spectra of the MEG data recorded from the (...) visual cortex. In the first part of the experiment, the subjects were asked to voluntarily control their attention by interpreting the cube orientation as either being on the left or right. Accordingly, we observed the dominance of the corresponding spectral component, and voluntary attention performance was measured. In the second part of the experiment, the subjects were asked to focus their gaze on a red marker at the center of the cube image without putting forth effort in its interpretation. The alternation of the dominant spectral energies at the second harmonics of the stimulation frequencies was treated as changes in the cube orientation. Based on the results of the first experimental stage and using a wavelet analysis, we developed a method which allowed us to identify the currently perceived cube orientation. Finally, we characterized involuntary attention using the distribution of dominance times when focusing attention on one of the cube orientations, which was related to voluntary attention performance and brain noise. In particular, we confirmed our hypothesis that higher attention performance is associated with stronger brain noise. (shrink)

During the summer of 1999, twenty-eight interviews with some of the leading authorities on the euthanasia policy were conducted in the Netherlands. They were asked about cases of non-voluntary (when patients are incompetent) and involuntary euthanasia (when patients are competent and made no request to die). This study reports the main findings, showing that most respondents are quite complacent with regard to breaches of the guideline that speaks ofthe patient’s consent as prerequisite to performance of euthanasia.

During the summer of 1999, twenty-eight interviews with some of the leading authorities on the euthanasia policy were conducted in the Netherlands. They were asked about cases of non-voluntary (when patients are incompetent) and involuntary euthanasia (when patients are competent and made no request to die). This study reports the main findings, showing that most respondents are quite complacent with regard to breaches of the guideline that speaks ofthe patient’s consent as prerequisite to performance of euthanasia.

The claims of those who are compelled to migrate are, in general, taken to be more urgent and pressing than the claims of those who were not forced to do so. This article does not defend the moral relevance of voluntarism to the morality of migration, but instead seeks to demonstrate two complexities that must be included in any plausible account of that moral relevance. The first is that the decision to start the migration journey is distinct from the decision (...) to stop that journey, through resettlement; the latter may involve voluntary choice, without that voluntarism impugning the involuntary nature of the former. The second is that the migration decision of the individual might be voluntary, even while that individual's family or social network might be compelled to insist upon some particular individual member's migration. That is, the fact that any particular person might be free to refuse migration does not contradict the fact that the group in question does not have the effective freedom to avoid the migration of some group members. Once these two complexities are understood, I argue, the moral relevance of voluntarism in the ethics of migration becomes more complex and nuanced than is generally understood. (shrink)

Translators and commentators find difficulty in offering non-Greek equivalents for hekôn/hekousion and akôn/akousion. In English we do not speak of ordinary human acts as being either voluntary or involuntary. We do not say ordinarily that Jones brushed his teeth voluntarily, for that would falsely suggest that his brushing his teeth was not at all ordinary. But this conforms with ordinary Greek usage as well.

Clinical cases of frontal lobe lesions have been significantly associated with acquired aggressive behaviour. Restoring neuronal and cognitive faculties of aggressive individuals through invasive brain intervention raises ethical questions in general. However, more questions have to be addressed in cases where individuals refuse surgical treatment. The ethical desirability and permissibility of using intrusive surgical brain interventions for involuntary or voluntary treatment of acquired aggressiveness is highly questionable. This article engages with the description of acquired aggressiveness in general, and presents (...) a rare clinical case to illustrate the difficulties of treating this population. To expand the debate further, this article explores the ethics related to invasive brain surgery in three parts: a) it examines coercive involuntary invasive brain surgery for the benefit of protecting others on individuals suffering from acquired aggressiveness who lack decision-making capacities to consent; b) it addresses voluntary psychosurgery on individuals suffering from acquired aggressiveness who are competent to consent; and, c) it questions whether acquired aggressive individuals, who are legally competent, have a duty to consent to invasive brain surgery, in order to maintain their autonomy by reducing or even eliminate their aggressive drives. Ensuring the safety and efficacy of surgical brain interventions could increase the ethical permissibility of voluntary treatment, but it would not necessarily entail ethical justification for proceeding with invasive brain surgery for treatment of intractable acquired aggressive behaviour. (shrink)

Because sin is anything that turns our heart from God, sins are both voluntary and jnvoluntary. As a consequence, double effect can only be adequately understood in a Christian context in which it is recognized that, even when evil is not willed, our involvement in its causation can still mar our hearts. The acknowledgement of involuntary sins resituates double effect so that the traditional Christian concern with spiritual harm and healing can be maintained. In this way, one can overcome (...) the underdeveloped Western theological appreciation of double effect, which ignores the effect on the heart of causing evil. (shrink)

A vivid and bizarre dream conjures up a myriad of novel mental images. The same exact images can be created volitionally when awake. The neurological mechanisms of these two processes are different. The voluntary combination of mental objects is mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex and patients with damage to the LPFC often lose this ability. Conversely, the combination of mental objects into novel images during dreaming does not depend on the LPFC; LPFC is inactive during sleep and patients whose (...) LPFC is damaged do not notice a change in their dreams. Neither colloquial English nor scientific jargon has an established way to report on the origin of a conjured up mental image; the term “imagination” is regularly used to describe any experience generated internally whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Failing to distinguish be­tween voluntary and involuntary imagination leads to confusion in developmental psy­chology, neurolinguistics, and paleoanthropology. A comprehensive understanding of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary imagination will help develop better thera­py for children with language delay, contribute to a clearer understanding of the unique­ness of human language, and enable a more productive discussion of the evolutionary ori­gin of human language. (shrink)

In mental health policy, a central ethical dilemma concerns involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC), which aims to treat vulnerable individuals with serious mental illness who decline services. The first concern regards whether coercive services undermine the quality of clinical interactions within treatment, particularly as it relates to psychiatric medication use. The second concern is the unexamined role that OPC, and coercive psychiatric programs more broadly, play in the broader landscape of social welfare policy. To examine these concerns, the purpose of (...) this dissertation is to analyze how the management of psychiatric medications in involuntary outpatient services is undergirded by (a) provider and client interpretations of psychiatric medication effects and (b) moral discourses related to coercion and client autonomy. To achieve this aim, I examined data from a team-based ethnography that consisted of 1000 hours of participant observations and 56 semi-structured interviews with 20 clients, 21 providers, and 12 client family members with diverse backgrounds. I analyzed how medication compliance was discussed, monitored, and enforced in an involuntary outpatient program. My analysis demonstrates that medications were interpreted as a technology to control clinical symptoms (clinical control) though, particularly among clients, were also viewed as a method to control client mental experiences, behavioral expression, and autonomy (social control). Providers believed that medications were a necessary component of services (compulsory compliance) and could reduce client vulnerability to violence victimization and perpetration related to clinical symptoms (medicating vulnerability). To address client noncompliance, providers employed several strategies that I categorized as client manipulation. These strategies included providers, family members, and court officials strategizing ways to undermine client autonomy without clients’ knowledge (concealed collusion), deceiving clients into believing that medications were mandated when they were not (performing coercion), and minimizing the role of client consent and preferences in decision-making processes (circumventing consent). These findings demonstrate the pervasive role of manipulation to gain client medication compliance in OPC, which I named institutional coercion. They also highlight that the broader moral justifications for manipulating clients relate to their status as structurally vulnerable in their community settings and a growing relationship between the erosion of the welfare state and psychiatric coercion. (shrink)

This commentary considers experimental material – some new, some from earlier studies – challenging the model presented by Findlay & Walker. It concentrates on the role of voluntary and involuntary visual attention versus fixation in saccade control and on the generation of antisaccades, reflexive prosaccades, and corrective saccades. The data of a large number of subjects are presented to show the systematic relationship between voluntary saccade generation, error production, and error correction in an antisaccade task.

Involuntary autobiographical memories are conscious memories of personal events that come to mind with no preceding attempts at retrieval. It is often assumed that such memories are closely related to current concerns – i.e., uncompleted personal goals. Here we examined involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memories in relation to earlier registered current concerns measured by the Personal Concern Inventory . We found no differences between involuntary and voluntary memories with regard to frequency or characteristics of current concern-related contents. (...) However, memories related to current concerns were rated as more central to the person’s identity, life story and expectations for the future than non-concern-related memories, irrespective of mode of recall. Depression and PTSD symptoms correlated positively with the proportion of current concern-related involuntary and voluntary memories. The findings support the view that involuntary and voluntary remembering is subject to similar motivational constraints. (shrink)

It is perhaps our noblest cause, and certainly one of our oldest: to end suffering. Think of the Buddha, Chuang Tzu, or Marcus Aurelius: stoically composed figures impervious to the torments of the wider world, living their lives in complete serenity—and teaching us how to do the same. After all, isn’t a life free from suffering the ideal? Isn’t it what so many of us seek? Absolutely not, argues Todd May in this provocative but compassionate book. In a moving examination (...) of life and the trials that beset it, he shows that our fragility, our ability to suffer, is actually one of the most important aspects of our humanity. May starts with a simple but hard truth: suffering is inevitable. At the most basic level, we suffer physically—a sprained ankle or a bad back. But we also suffer insults and indifference. We suffer from overburdened schedules and unforeseen circumstances, from moral dilemmas and emotional heartaches. Even just thinking about our own mortality—the fact that we only live one life—can lead us to tremendous suffering. No wonder philosophies such as Buddhism, Taosim, Stoicism, and even Epicureanism—all of which counsel us to rise above these plights—have had appeal over the centuries. May highlights the tremendous value of these philosophies and the ways they can guide us toward better lives, but he also exposes a major drawback to their tenets: such invulnerability is too emotionally disengaged from the world, leading us to place too great a distance between ourselves and our experience. Rather than seeking absolute immunity, he argues most of us just want to hurt less and learn how to embrace and accept what suffering we do endure in a meaningful way. Offering a guide on how to positively engage suffering, May ultimately lays out a new way of thinking about how we exist in the world, one that reassures us that our suffering, rather than a failure of physical or psychological resilience, is a powerful and essential part of life itself. (shrink)

This volume, the first part of Paul Ricoeur's Philosophy of the Will, is an eidetics, carried out within carefully imposed phenomenological brackets. It seeks to deal with the essential structure of man's being in the world, and so it suspends the distorting dimensions of existence, the bondage of passion, and the vision of innocence, to which Ricoeur returns in his later writings. The result is a conception of man as an incarnate Cogito, which can make the polar unity of subject (...) and object intelligible and provide a basic continuity for the various aspects of inquiry into man's being-in-the-world. (shrink)

This study compares involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories in depressed and never depressed individuals. Twenty depressed and twenty never depressed individuals completed a memory diary; recording their reactions to 10 involuntary and 10 voluntary memories over 14–30 days. Psychiatric status , psychopathology, rumination and avoidance were assessed. For both groups, involuntary memories more frequently lead to strong reactions than voluntarily memories. For both modes of retrieval, depressed individuals reported more frequent negative reactions than never depressed individuals and (...) rated memories as more central to identity with higher levels of rumination and avoidance. Depressed individuals retrieved both positive and negative memories during involuntary retrieval. These findings support the view that involuntary memory retrieval represents a basic mode of retrieval during healthy and disordered cognition, and that during depression, both involuntary and voluntary memories are central to identity and associated with rumination and avoidance. (shrink)

Spurred by Judith Butler’s seminal work, Pamela Anderson finds herself challenged to rethink her ontological assumptions, away from the traditional conceptions of the self. This essay is an attempt to face this challenge upfront, and come to terms with the kind of vulnerability that Anderson wants to vindicate. I start with distinguishing different contrastive but interlocking pairs of concepts of vulnerability: the ontological and the ethical, the pathogenic and the self-enhancing, the inherent and the circumstantial. I then argue for the (...) relevance of ontological vulnerability and suggest that it reveals the apparent normative structure of human agency and indicates the root of mutual accountability. In this perspective, human vulnerability to love and love’s own vulnerability can be appreciated and reassessed as a distinctive drive to cooperative interactions and shared agency, which allows finite and interdependent agents to deal and cope with contingency and temporality, by relying on mutually accountable relations. Focusing on the dynamic reciprocal permeability which is distinctive of love, I concur with Anderson that emotional vulnerability is not the source of burdens and constraints but a precious capacity that enables relations of mutual accountability, shapes human identity, expands individual agency, and shapes integrity in interactive and historical ways. (shrink)

In this personal tribute to Pamela Sue Anderson, based on many conversations, I try out the idea that she was seeking to locate an underlying metaphysical and ethical unity that makes our human vulnerability, love and reflective self-understanding both possible and intelligible. I trace this unity in Pamela’s philosophical imaginary to resonances or retrievals from three philosophers who featured in her “internal dialogues”: Spinoza, Kant and Levinas. I also allude to the great influence on Pamela and myself of our mutual (...) friend Adrian Moore. My thought is that Pamela was pursuing something fundamental about our humanity as open, creative, fluid and risky becoming rather than being. I suggest that she found kinship with Spinoza’s thinking of vulnerability and love together and his vision of underlying unities to make sense of ourselves. In Kant’s First Critique, I suggest that she found a unified deduction of the possibility of objectivity and subjectivity and that she also traced in his moral philosophy the richer conception of ourselves offered by the “humanity” version of the categorical imperative and by the joint origin of the objectivity of the moral law and the subjectivity of our moral agency. These resources made room for human vulnerability, self-love and the love of others within the scope of the Kantian project. Of the three philosophers, Levinas was closest to Pamela’s perception of vulnerability and love and her conception of gendered human selves living lives of complex becoming rather than of being. His fusion of morality and metaphysics and the unity of his post-phenomenological deduction of subjectivity and saying bring into focus the influences I discern. (shrink)

Emotions and personhood are important notions within the field of mental health care. How they are related is less evident. This book provides a framework for understanding the important and complex relationship between our emotional wellbeing and our sense of self, drawing on psychopathology, philosophy, and phenomenology.

The source of hospitality lies in the fundamental ethical experiences that make up the fabric of the social lives of people. Therein lies a primary form of humanity. Whether we are guests or hosts, this reveals our situation in a world made up of receiving and meeting, leaving room for the liberty to give and receive beyond the imperatives of reciprocity. This book proposes an ethic that promotes the possibility of stirring emotion before that of protecting ourselves from unexpected encounters. (...) Fundamental ethical competence consists of opening up to the wholly-other and to others, to be accessible to the world s solicitations. There is moral superiority of vulnerable love over control and moderation, of generous passion over rational prudence and of excess over exchange. Constructing an ethic of hospitality is essential at a time when we are torn between the imperatives of modernization and growth and the demands of concern and protection. The experience we all have today, that of the fragility of the world, is giving rise to a powerful tendency toward solicitude. From such a perspective, the duty of individuals no longer consists of protecting themselves from society, but of defending it, taking care of a social fabric outside of which no identity can be formed. ". (shrink)

The distinction between 'kill' and 'help to die' is argued by analogy with the distinction between 'rape' and 'make love to'. The difference is the consent of the receiver of the act, therefore 'kill' is the wrong word for an act of active voluntary euthanasia. The argument that doctors must not be allowed by law to perform active voluntary euthanasia because this would recognise an infringement of the sanctity of life ('the red light principle') is countered by comparing such doctors (...) with the drivers of emergency vehicles, who are allowed to drive through red lights. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 1-2, February - April 2020, Page 1-2.

Volume 25, Issue 1-2, February - April 2020, Page 3-7.