In _ Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, _Dominic Murphy looks at psychiatry from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy of science, considering three issues: how we should conceive of, classify, and explain mental illness. If someone is said to have a mental illness, what about it is mental? What makes it an illness? How might we explain and classify it? A system of psychiatric classification settles these questions by distinguishing the mental illnesses and showing how they stand in relation to one (...) another. This book explores the philosophical issues raised by the project of explaining and classifying mental illness. Murphy argues that the current literature on mental illness -- exemplified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- is an impediment to research; it lacks a coherent concept of the mental and a satisfactory account of disorder, and yields too much authority to commonsense thought about the mind. He argues that the explanation of mental illness should meet the standards of good explanatory practice in the cognitive neurosciences, and that the classification of mental disorders should group symptoms into conditions based on the causal structure of the normal mind. (shrink)

Why me? -- Sticks and stones -- Hammer of God -- God is great -- The problem of atheists -- Guardian angels -- Nations under God -- God knows.

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

Certain representations are bound in special ways to our sensory capacities; consider, for instance, pictures, sound recordings, and the various forms of mental sensory imagery. What do these representations have in common, and what makes them different from representations of other kinds? Dominic Gregory employs novel ideas on perceptual states and sensory perspectives to explain the special nature of the contents of distinctively sensory representations. The book contains extensive discussions of e.g. perceptual imagination, pictorial representation, and memories.

In this paper, I will argue that the NIMH’s new Research Domain of Criteria is a useful test of the philosophical hypothesis of eliminative materialism and demonstrates the superiority of a moderate eliminativism over integrationism, which is a rival philosophical framework for the cognitive sciences. I begin by going over the motivation for RDOC, which rests on the problems with the existing Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders framework in psychiatry. Then, I introduce the main tenets of RDoC before (...) discussing eliminativism and trying to show what a moderate eliminativism looks like through the example of addiction. I then contrast that approach with intregrationism to the latter’s detriment. I end by wondering whether the broadly political consequences of eliminativism give us non-scientific reasons for resisting it, as it threatens to rob ordinary people of important means of self-description. (shrink)

Paraconsistent responses to vagueness are often thought to represent a revision of logical theory that is too radical to be defensible. The paracomplete logic of supervaluationism, SpV, is not only taken to be more conservative but is also commonly said to 'preserve classical logic'. This chapter argues that this is wrong on both counts. The paraconsistent logic SbV, or subvaluationism, is no less conservative than SpV nor more so. In the end both logics offer equally compelling theoretical approaches to vagueness. (...) Each approach is also equally objectionable, with neither providing an adequate account of vagueness, but this criticism arises from a feature shared by each approach that is independent of their paracompleteness or paraconsistency per se. For all that has been said, a paraconsistent approach, and the associated recourse to truth-value gluts, remains a contender in accounting for vagueness. (shrink)

What exactly is the human element separating humans from animals and machines? The common answers that immediately come to mind—like art, empathy, or technology—fall apart under close inspection. Dominic Pettman argues that it is a mistake to define such rigid distinctions in the first place, and the most decisive “human error” may be the ingrained impulse to understand ourselves primarily in contrast to our other worldly companions. In _Human Error_, Pettman describes the three sides of the cybernetic triangle—human, animal, and (...) machine—as a rubric for understanding key figures, texts, and sites where our species-being is either reinforced or challenged by our relationship to our own narcissistic technologies. Consequently, species-being has become a matter of _specious_-being, in which the idea of humanity is not only a case of mistaken identity but indeed the mistake of identity. _Human Error_ boldly insists on the necessity of relinquishing our anthropomorphism but also on the extreme difficulty of doing so, given how deeply this attitude is bound with all our other most cherished beliefs about forms of life. (shrink)

Ethical analyses, professional guidelines and legal decisions support the equivalence thesis for life-sustaining treatment: if it is ethical to withhold treatment, it would be ethical to withdraw the same treatment. In this paper we explore reasons why the majority of medical professionals disagree with the conclusions of ethical analysis. Resource allocation is considered by clinicians to be a legitimate reason to withhold but not to withdraw intensive care treatment. We analyse five arguments in favour of non-equivalence, and find only relatively (...) weak reasons to restrict rationing to withholding treatment. On the contrary, resource allocation provides a strong argument in favour of equivalence: non-equivalence causes preventable death in critically ill patients. We outline two proposals for increasing equivalence in practice: (1) reduction of the mortality threshold for treatment withdrawal, (2) time-limited trials of intensive care. These strategies would help to move practice towards more rational treatment limitation decisions. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Ian Hacking has produced a model of social causation in mental illness and begun to sketch in outline how this might be integrated with the medical model of psychiatry. This article elaborates and revises Hacking 's model of social forces, criticizes him for attempting a merely semantic resolution of the tension between the social and the biological, and sketches an alternative approach that builds upon his substantial insights.

Images have power - for good or ill. They may challenge us to see things anew and, in widening our experience, profoundly change who we are. The change can be ugly, as with propaganda, or enriching, as with many works of art. Sight and Sensibility explores the impact of images on what we know, how we see, and the moral assessments we make. Dominic Lopes shows how these are part of, not separate from, the aesthetic appeal of images. His book (...) will be essential reading for anyone working in aesthetics and art theory, and for all those intrigued by the power of images to affect our lives. '...tightly focused and carefully argued... an exceptionally interesting contribution to the philosophy of art: it contains subtle, concise, and convincing discussions of a number of difficult concepts and contentious doctrines... lucid and meticulous'. (shrink)

Limiting dangerous climate change is now widely believed to require negative emissions, a prospect some believe to be unjust and unacceptably risky. While NETs are not risk-free, I argue tha...

Accession Number: ATLA0001788471; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 26-43.; Physical Description: diag, table ; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Can love really be considered another form of technology? Dominic Pettman says it can - although not before carefully redefining technology as a cultural challenge to what we mean by the "human" in the information age. Using the writings of such important thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Jean-LucNancy, and Bernard Stiegler as a springboard, Pettman explores the "techtonic" movements of contemporary culture, specifically in relation to the language of eros. Highly ritualized expressions of desire - love, in other words - always (...) reveal an era's attitude toward what it means to exist as a selfamong others. For Pettman, the articulation of love is a technique of belonging: a way of responding to the basic plurality of everyone's identity, a process that becomes increasingly complex as the forms of mediated communication, from cell phone and text messaging to the mass media, multiply andmesh together.Wresting the idea of love from the arthritic hands of Romanticism, Pettman demonstrates the ways in which this dynamic assemblage - "the stirrings of the soul" - have always been a matter of tools, devices, prosthetics, and media. Love is, after all, something we make. And, love, this book argues,is not eternal, but external. (shrink)

Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. He argues that Plato and Aristotle distinguish similar levels of argument in the defence of justice, and that they both follow the same approach: Plato because he thinks it will suffice, Aristotle because he thinks there is no need to go beyond it.

There are not enough solid organs available to meet the needs of patients with organ failure. Thousands of patients every year die on the waiting lists for transplantation. Yet there is one currently available, underutilized, potential source of organs. Many patients die in intensive care following withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment whose organs could be used to save the lives of others. At present the majority of these organs go to waste.In this paper we consider and evaluate a range of ways (...) to improve the number and quality of organs available from this group of patients. Changes to consent arrangements (for example conscription of organs after death) or changes to organ donation practice could dramatically increase the numbers of organs available, though they would conflict with currently accepted norms governing transplantation.We argue that one alternative, Organ Donation Euthanasia, would be a rational improvement over current practice regarding withdrawal of life support. It would give individuals the greatest chance of being able to help others with their organs after death. It would increase patient autonomy. It would reduce the chance of suffering during the dying process. We argue that patients should be given the choice of whether and how they would like to donate their organs in the event of withdrawal of life support in intensive care.Continuing current transplantation practice comes at the cost of death and prolonged organ failure. We should seriously consider all of the alternatives. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available for (...) humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

The idea of ‘community’ dominates politics in Northern Ireland in both popular and political discourse and in academic writing, policy and legislation. Depending upon particular understandings of the notion of community different arguments are made about the policies that need to be implemented to develop the peace process. This has had a fundamental impact on areas such as legislation over parades and the development of a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. This essay critically looks at understandings of ‘community’; how (...) it becomes used in political discourse and in policy development and the character of its relationship with ideas about safety and security. (shrink)

Wakefield's (2000) responses to our paper herein (Murphy and Woolfolk 2000) are not only unsuccessful, they force him into a position that leaves him unable to preserve any distinction between disorders and other problems. They also conflate distinct scientific concepts of function. Further, Wakefield fails to show that ascriptions of human dysfunction do not ineliminably involve values. -/- We suggest Wakefield is analyzing a concept that plays a role in commonsense thought and arguing that the task of science is to (...) identify the natural processes that accord with that commonsense concept. We argue that this represents an attempt to use conceptual analysis to legislate what should be acceptable science. We conclude that this constraint on science is unacceptable and that therefore Wakefield's overall position should be rejected. (shrink)

Death and grief in the ancient world -- Predictions and disability in Rome.

Clinical guidelines summarise available evidence on medical treatment, and provide recommendations about the most effective and cost-effective options for patients with a given condition. However, sometimes patients do not desire the best available treatment. Should doctors in a publicly-funded healthcare system ever provide sub-optimal medical treatment? On one view, it would be wrong to do so, since this would violate the ethical principle of beneficence, and predictably lead to harm for patients. It would also, potentially, be a misuse of finite (...) health resources. In this paper, we argue in favour of permitting sub-optimal choices on the basis of value pluralism, uncertainty, patient autonomy and responsibility. There are diverse views about how to evaluate treatment options, and patients’ right to self-determination and taking responsibility for their own lives should be respected. We introduce the concept of cost-equivalence, as a way of defining the boundaries of permissible pluralism in publicly-funded healthcare systems. As well as providing the most effective, available treatment for a given condition, publicly-funded healthcare systems should provide reasonable suboptimal medical treatments that are equivalent in cost to the optimal treatment. We identify four forms of cost-equivalence, and assess the implications of CE for decision-making. We evaluate and reject counterarguments to CE. Finally, we assess the relevance of CE for other treatment decisions including requests for potentially superior treatment. (shrink)

Difficulties in arriving at an adequate conception of vagueness have led many writers to describe a phenomenon that has come to be known as "higher-order vagueness". Almost as many have found it to be a problem that needs to be addressed. In what follows I shall argue that, whilst we must acknowledge its presence, it is a pseudo-problem. The crucial point is the vagueness of "vague", which shows the phenomenon to be unproblematic though real enough.

Lisa Bortolotti argues convincingly that opponents of the doxastic view of delusion are committed to unnecessarily stringent standards for belief attribution. Folk psychology recognises many non-rational ways in which beliefs can be caused, and our attributions of delusions may be guided by a sense that delusions are beliefs that we cannot explain in any folk psychological terms.

Introduction : Picturing technology -- A sense of the transcendental -- The blank page -- Embodiment conditions -- Three exceptional technologies -- Which way to turn? -- Conclusion : Exceptional technologies, not technological exceptionalism.

Decisions about allocation of limited healthcare resources are frequently controversial. These decisions are usually based on careful analysis of medical, scientific and health economic evidence. Yet, decisions are also necessarily based on value judgements. There may be differing views among health professionals about how to allocate resources or how to evaluate existing evidence. In specific cases, professionals may have strong personal views (contrary to professional or societal norms) that treatment should or should not be provided. Could these disagreements rise to (...) the level of a conscientious objection? If so, should conscientious objections to existing allocation decisions be accommodated? In the first part of this paper, I assess whether resource allocation could be a matter of conscience. I analyse conceptual and normative models of conscientious objection and argue that rationing could be a matter for conscience. I distinguish between negative and positive forms: conscientious non-treatment and conscientious treatment. In the second part of the paper, I identify distinctive challenges for conscientious objections to resource allocation. Such objections are almost always inappropriate. (shrink)

Working with a minimal theory of culture, according to which cultures are group-level patterns of specific types of activities, together with a modest theory of values as features that figure in reasons to promote or inhibit, this chapter provides constitutive accounts of hedonic, aesthetic, and artistic cultures, each organized around values in different ways. Hedonic cultures generate hedonic payoffs. Aesthetic cultures coordinate sundry activities around distinctive vocabularies of aesthetic value. Artistic cultures are ones where media of making are leveraged in (...) order to generate any of a range of different varieties of value. The argument for this three-way division of the geography of taste is that it provides an effective framework for empirical investigations of the striking degree of variation within each of the three cultures of taste. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphysical status of Ezumezu logic in the direction of logical realism. While presenting Ezumezu logic as a prototype of African logic, Chimakonam makes statements that somewhat entail logical monism. Using the method of critical analysis of related literature, the paper argues that presenting Ezumezu logic as one of the prototypes of African logic while at the same time making claims that elevate it to a hegemonic status, gives rise to what is regarded in the paper as (...) the monist-pluralist paradox. Drawing lessons from Abakedi’s ID paradox, the paper argues that a monist logical foundation for African logic cannot be consistently defended without paradoxes. The paper proposes that different African philosophies should be grounded by different African logics such that one need not be trained in one particular prototype such as Ezumezu logic or argue in conformity to it to qualify as an African professional or scholar. (shrink)

Philosophers have championed contextualist and relativist semantics for aesthetic discourse that attempt to explain faultless disagreement. However, both types of semantics do a good job explaining faultless disagreement. As a rule, more explananda assist in theory choice. This chapter proposes that three more facts need explaining. Aesthetic disputes revolve around objects, even as they express attitudes. They also extend into lengthy exchanges wherein reasons are offered and withdrawn. Finally, they play a role in the formation and regulation of aesthetic practices. (...) Different views about the point of aesthetic disputes interpret these three facts differently. One option has it that we use aesthetic disputes to align with peers who share the same preferences. This option is friendly to relativist semantics. The alternative states that we use aesthetic disputes to coordinate language and concepts to fit aesthetic genres. This option mandates contextualist semantics. The weight of evidence tilts towards contextualism. (shrink)

In response to the looming environmental crisis, many have recommended lists of environmental virtues. As a result, environmental ethics has been enriched by new virtue terms, such as ecological sensitivity or kinship with nature, and with new applications of older terms, such as benevolence or care. But how do we know which of these are genuine virtues? Although this question is important, it is difficult to answer for two reasons. First, we might think of ‘nature’ in a variety of ways, (...) each of which presupposes ethical beliefs about the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world. Second, environmental virtue terms seem far less clear than our more familiar virtues, which calls into question both their intelligibility and usefulness as normative concepts. I respond to both problems by considering the environmental virtue of care for nature, and one plausible examplar of this quality, US nature writer and conservationist Rachel Carson. I claim that Carson's example illuminates this virtue, and that care for nature is one environmental virtue we have reason to recognise. While this account might seem vulnerable to a kind of relativism stemming from particular conceptions of nature, I claim that the threat of cultural variation need not shake our reflective confidence in recognising some ways of thinking about nature as excellent. (shrink)

Dominic LaRochelle | : Les religions ne constituent pas des monolithes immuables et inchangés dans le temps. Elles évoluent au fil de l’histoire humaine, changent au gré des transformations culturelles et sociales des communautés dans lesquelles elles s’implantent, négocient avec les instances séculières et religieuses leur pertinence et leur droit d’exister ; bref, elles innovent constamment pour s’assurer une place dans un monde lui aussi en constant changement. Cet article propose deux outils pour analyser les innovations au sein des traditions (...) religieuses : les théories de la réception, inspirées des travaux de Hans Robert Jauss, et l’invention des traditions, inspirée du célèbre ouvrage d’Eric J. Hobsbawm et Terence O. Ranger. L’intérêt de l’utilisation de ces outils en histoire est qu’ils permettent, entre autres choses, de dépasser les oppositions classiques tradition/modernité et authenticité/innovation en analysant les religions du point de vue des ruptures et des transformations à l’intérieur de celles-ci. Ces outils seront appliqués à un cas particulier, celui de la réception et de la réinvention du taoïsme dans les sociétés occidentales au XXe siècle. Cette tradition religieuse chinoise vieille de plusieurs siècles a en effet été réinventée en Occident et transformée en une tradition spirituelle universelle répondant aux attentes des Occidentaux en matière de spiritualité contemporaine. | : Religions are not immutable monoliths that remain unchanged over time. They evolve over the course of human history ; changing according to the cultural and social transformations of the communities in which they are established and negotiating with secular and religious authorities for their relevance and right to exist. In short, they continually innovate to secure a place in a constantly changing world. This article proposes two tools to analyze innovations within religious traditions : reception theories, inspired by the works of Hans Robert Jauss, and the invention of tradition, inspired by the celebrated work of Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger. The interest of using these tools in a historical approach is that they allow us, among other things, to overcome the traditional oppositions of tradition vs. modernity and authenticity vs. innovation by analyzing religions from a rupture and transformation point of view. These tools will be applied to a particular case, namely the reception and reinvention of Taoism in Western societies in the twentieth Century. This centuries-old Chinese religious tradition has been reinvented in the West and transformed into a universal spiritual tradition that meets the expectations of Westerners for contemporary spirituality. (shrink)

Capitalism has been an unprecedented engine of wealth creation for many centuries, leading to sustained productivity gains and long-term growth and lifting an increasing proportion of humanity out of poverty. But its effects, and hence its future, have come increasingly under question: Is capitalism still improving wealth and well-being for the many? Or, is long-term value creation being sacrificed to the pressures of short-termism, with potentially far-reaching consequences for society, the natural environment, prosperity, and global order? Building on a collaboration (...) between the Schulich School of Business and global management consultancy McKinsey & Company, this volume reflects both the urgency of the needed action and the tremendous opportunity to forge consensus and catalyze a lasting movement toward a more responsible, long-term, and sustainable model of capitalism. This unique volume brings together many of the leading proponents for a reformed, re-imagined capitalism from the Âfields of academia, business, and NGOs. Its contributors have been at the forefront of thought and action in regard to the future of capitalism. Both individually and collectively, they provide powerful suggestions of what such a long-term oriented model of capitalism should look like and how it can be achieved. Drawing on their research and professional experience, they write in an accessible style aiming to reach the broad audiences required to turn a re-imagined capitalism into a reality. (shrink)

Predictions of poor prognosis for critically ill patients may become self-fulfilling if life-sustaining treatment or resuscitation is subsequently withheld on the basis of that prediction. This paper outlines the epistemic and normative problems raised by self-fulfilling prophecies (SFPs) in intensive care. Where predictions affect outcome, it can be extremely difficult to ascertain the mortality rate for patients if all treatment were provided. SFPs may lead to an increase in mortality for cohorts of patients predicted to have poor prognosis, they may (...) lead doctors to feel causally responsible for the deaths of their patients, and they may compromise honest communication with patients and families about prognosis. However, I argue that the self-fulfilling prophecy is inevitable when life-sustaining treatment is withheld or withdrawn in the face of uncertainty. SFPs do not necessarily make treatment limitation decisions problematic. To minimize the effects of SFPs, it is essential to carefully collect and appraise evidence about prognosis. Doctors need to be honest with themselves and with patients and their families about uncertainty and the limits of knowledge. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 61-63.

Controversial cases in medical ethics are, by their very nature, divisive. There are disagreements that revolve around questions of fact or of value. Ethical debate may help in resolving those disagreements. However, sometimes in such cases, there are opposing reasonable views arising from deep-seated differences in ethical values. It is unclear that agreement and consensus will ever be possible. In this paper, we discuss the recent controversial case of Vincent Lambert, a French man, diagnosed with a vegetative state, for whom (...) there were multiple court hearings over a number of years. Both family and health professionals were divided about whether artificial nutrition and hydration should be withdrawn and Lambert allowed to die. We apply a ‘dissensus’ approach to his case and argue that the ethical issue most in need of scrutiny is different from the one that was the focus of attention. (shrink)

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give for (...) our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response. (shrink)

Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates in anthropology (...) and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)

Decisions about how and where they deliver their baby are extremely important to pregnant women. There are very strong ethical norms that women’s autonomy should be respected, and that plans around birth should be personalised. However, there appear to be profound challenges in practice to respecting women’s choices in pregnancy and labour. Choices carry risks and consequences—to the woman and her child; also potentially to her caregivers and to other women.What does it mean for women’s autonomy to be respected in (...) obstetrics? How should health professionals respond to refusals of treatment or requests for care outside normal guidelines? What are the ethical limits to autonomy? In this clinical ethics round table, service users, midwives, obstetricians, philosophers and ethicists respond to two hypothetical cases drawn from real-life scenarios. (shrink)

There is a popular conception among many Zeitgeist watchers, especially in places like the US, Western Europe and Australia, of the urbanized East as existing somehow further into the future. As William Gibson once stated: `The future is here; it just isn't equally distributed yet.' This kind of cultural fetishism extends to not only technolust, but the practices that new gadgets and electronics encourage. The specific phenomenon explored in this article is that of virtual girlfriends and boyfriends: whether in the (...) form of avatars or automated SMS text messages. This particularly Japanese `craze', if we can call it that, fascinates and appals people who still hold P2P romance IRL in high-esteem. It seems like an insult to the intrinsically human and humanist discourse of courtship; and indeed it is. How does this perspective change, however, if we consider `love' as a technology? That is, as both a code with its own algorithmic parameters, and a discourse that also challenges the hyper-rational assumptions of the `merely machinic'. Extending the argument articulated in my book, Love and Other Technologies, this article asks how the emergence of virtual dating and other techno-inflected treatments of romance are working to undo our jealously held notions of intimacy and identity. It concludes that all sex can be considered cybersex, given the communication flows that occur both before, during and after the act. For, as we continue to enframe the discourse of intimacy via new and mobile media, we find it increasingly difficult to deny that intensified inter-subjectivity is always already a matter of technics. Indeed, what Heidegger says of modern technology can effectively be applied to modern love: that it embodies an `unreasonable demand' of nature (and thus has the capacity to reveal something essential about the posthuman condition). (shrink)

Dominic Roulx Plusieurs commentateurs de l’oeuvre de Theodor W. Adorno ont à raison, dans les vingt dernières années, relevé la pertinence de sa critique de la domination de la nature (Naturbeherrschung) pour penser les tenants et aboutissants de la crise environnementale. Toutefois, ils se fondent sur un usage parfois bancal du concept adornien de « nature », ce qui appelle une clarification conceptuelle. Prenant le contre-pied de certains commentateurs qui perçoivent dans ce concept la fétichisation romantique d’une pure nature, je (...) discute dans cet article la teneur profondément dialectique de ce concept. Je reformule d’abord la Dialectique de la Raison dans les termes d’une dialectique nature-raison pour ensuite discuter du concept de « première nature » et dégager enfin ce que j’appellerai le « naturalisme dialectique et critique » d’Adorno. En résultera un éclaircissement quant à la pertinence de la théorie critique d’Adorno pour penser certaines causes de la crise environnementale et pour penser la possibilité de la critiquer et d’y remédier. (shrink)

Dr Dominic Wilkinson, Department of Neonatal Medicine, University of Adelaide, 72 King William Rd, North Adelaide, South Australia 5006, Australia; [email protected], [email protected] it good for there to be both males and females of our species? This question seems highly fanciful, and a long way from the ethical questions that health professionals face on a daily basis. However, philosophical thought experiments like this sometimes help to clarify questions that are of much broader relevance. In this case, the prospect of an all-female (...) planet focuses our attention on what it means to be normal or abnormal, on the nature and implications of the different behaviour of men and women, on the political ramifications and resonances of bioethical debate, and on our obligations to future generations.The possibility of an all-female world has featured in recent debates about enhancement—the use of medical technologies to enhance the capacities and characteristics of humans beyond what is considered normal. Philosopher Rob Sparrow has provocatively suggested that since females have a longer lifespan and are able to bear children, supporters of enhancement should support the deliberate selection of only female …. (shrink)

Cooperation towards public goods relies on credible threats of punishment to deter cheats. However, punishing is costly, so it remains unclear who incurred the costs of enforcement in our evolutionary past. Theoretical work suggests that human cooperation may be promoted if people believe in supernatural punishment for moral transgressions. This theory is supported by new work in cognitive psychology and by anecdotal ethnographic evidence, but formal quantitative tests remain to be done. Using data from 186 societies around the globe, I (...) test whether the likelihood of supernatural punishment—indexed by the importance of moralizing “high gods”—is associated with cooperation. (shrink)