As little as a decade ago most moral philosophers still believed that the exercise of their craft did not include defending positions on actual moral problems. More recently they have come to their senses, one happy result being a spate of articles in the last few years on the subject of abortion. These discussions have contributed much toward an understanding of the abortion issue, but for the most part they have not attempted a full analysis of the morality of abortion. (...) Such an analysis is too large a task for a single paper, but a sketch of it will be undertaken here, the details to be filled in elsewhere. (shrink)

Although it might seem to elicit only a marginal interest for philosophical inquiry, in 20th century continental philosophy the experience of solitude and loneliness were shown to have unexpected importance and gravity. For philosophers such as M. Heidegger, H. Arendt, H.-G. Gadamer or P. Sloterdijk, solitude and loneliness are to be seen, on the one hand, as an ontological determination of our Being and, on the other, as a cause for some of the most worrisome problems of our times such, (...) as the birth of totalitarianism or the phenomenon of self-alienation wide-spread in the Western bureaucratic societies. But none of the philosophers dealing with these matters offers us a clear positive understanding of what solitude and loneliness actually are nor what the task of philosophy should be with regard to these experiences even though they give us to understand that philosophy has one. The present paper tarries upon this question, approaching it from the other end though an investigation of the status of alterity in Heidegger and Gadamer’s philosophy. (shrink)

In section 1 I offer a definition of psychologism which applies to many of the apparently quite disparate uses that philosophers have made of the term. In section 2 I map out some distinct varieties of psychologism. In a short section 3 I indicate how the changing academic climate has injected a new urgency into the debate on psychologism. In section 4 I offer an argument for a variety of psychologism which has important consequences for cognitive science, and in section (...) 5 I consider some objections to the argument. (shrink)

This article outlines procedures for the feedback of individual research data to participants. This feedback framework was developed in the context of a personalized medicine research project in Canada. Researchers in this domain have an ethical obligation to return individual research results and/or material incidental findings that are clinically significant, valid and actionable to participants. Communication of individual research data must proceed in an ethical and efficient manner. Feedback involves three procedural steps: assessing the health relevance of a finding, re-identifying (...) the affected participant, and communicating the finding. Re-identification requires researchers to break the code in place to protect participant identities. Coding systems replace personal identifiers with a numerical code. Double coding systems provide added privacy protection by separating research data from personal identifying data with a third "linkage" database. A trusted and independent intermediary, the "keyholder", controls access to this linkage database. (shrink)

(2002). Sartre on Friendship: Promoting Difference while Preserving Commitment. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology: Vol. 33, The Human Condition, Others, and Writing, pp. 260-272.

One of the current problems in microbiology concerns the understanding of fitness in host-symbiont systems. A great deal of research and conceptual work has analysed how the host benefits from such associations; however, very little of this work has attempted to take the microbial perspective. Nevertheless, some scientists have argued that we should conduct more comparative studies of both microorganisms that interact with a host and their free-living counterparts in order to determine whether or not symbiosis is beneficial for these (...) microorganisms. In this paper, by means of analysing heritable symbiosis as a case study, I intend to provide a different perspective on this subject. Mainly, I argue that asking how the fitness of a given microorganism was changed during the evolution of heritable symbiosis may be theoretically unjustified at both the early and late stages of this process. The reason for this, I argue, is that, during the evolution of heritable symbiosis, the fitness of a microorganism becomes incommensurable with that of its free-living counterparts because their contexts become radically different; therefore, comparing their fitness makes little sense. My analysis is driven by the use of the ecological concept of fitness; accordingly, my conclusions are bound to this specific interpretation of fitness. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been proposed as a potential treatment of drug addiction on the basis of its effects on drug self-administration in animals and on addictive behaviours in some humans treated with DBS for other psychiatric or neurological conditions. DBS is seen as a more reversible intervention than ablative neurosurgery but it is nonetheless a treatment that carries significant risks. A review of preclinical and clinical evidence for the use of DBS to treat addiction suggests that more animal (...) research is required to establish the safety and efficacy of the technology and to identify optimal treatment parameters before investigating its use in addicted persons. Severely addicted persons who try and fail to achieve abstinence may, however, be desperate enough to undergo such an invasive treatment if they believe that it will cure their addiction. History shows that the desperation for a cure of addiction can lead to the use of risky medical procedures before they have been rigorously tested. In the event that DBS is used in the treatment of addiction, we provide minimum ethical requirements for clinical trials of its use in the treatment of addiction. These include: restrictions of trials to severely intractable cases of addiction; independent oversight to ensure that patients have the capacity to consent and give that consent on the basis of a realistic appreciation of the potential benefits and risks of DBS; and rigorous assessments of the effectiveness and safety of this treatment compared to the best available treatments for addiction. (shrink)

Under the symbol of Dionysus, god of annihilation, metamorphosis, tragedy, Nietzsche succeeded in fusing elements of the mythological with a new philosophical world view culminating in an anti-ethic «beyond good and evil». «Dionysian Aesthetics» delves into the three periods of Nietzsche's productivity, systematically analyzing the relationships between major works and adhering closely to Nietzsche's «Werdegang». The focus for an understanding of the aesthetic is shifted from «Die Geburt der Tragödie» to the late works of the philo- sophical-Dionysus period.

Cultura română, încă de la începuturile ei, a fost puternic legată de gândirea lui Schopenhauer, aceasta fiind o temă constantă de studiu începând odată cu Junimea şi până la mijlocul anilor ’40. Cu toate acestea, de o bibliografie asupra subiectului nu ne-am bucurat decât odată cu a doua jumătate a anilor ’90 când a fost tradusă pentru prima oară Lumea ca voinţă şi reprezentare şi totodată când au fost traduse şi reeditate şi o serie de lucrări cu caracter critic sau (...) monografic. (shrink)

The Left is scientific, rational, paradigmatic; its concern is with the networks of relationships within which all things are located and through which all things have their significance. The Right is aesthetic, emotional. It attempts to understand in terms of some concrete specific, an archetype. Hybrids of these two, such as Christianity, Communism, and Fascism, mix paradigm and archetype and are dangerous. With the reification of form and idolatry of image, inhuman criteria of reality are automatically set up and give (...) license to idealists and fanatics to ignore the integrity of individual persons in the name of those theories and images. Countervailing factors can be swept away. Human events stand to one another both as parts and wholes; historians need to recognize events as simultaneously episodes and narratives. Paradigms and archetypes are half-truths only and deny the experiential openness that is history. A mysticism of persons would defuse and absorb the Left and Right while transcending them, putting to the fore instead the diversity and novelty of history. (shrink)

The problem of universals versus particulars is central to the paradox of historical knowledge. History interpreted in terms of a closed set of universals denies qualitative change; history interpreted in terms of unique events allows no support for generalizations. Three approaches to this problem are: rationalist, intuitive, and philosophic history. Rationalist and intuitive history are unsatisfactory. Rationalist history is deterministic, reducing experiences to strictly defined universals. Intuitive history, stressing the particular, is subjective. To overcome this dilemma, philosophic history would have (...) to develop a notion of universals stable enough to sustain order and flexible enough to allow for real change. Such a notion can be found in the manner in which entities are created through metaphoric conflation. (shrink)

Brian Earp and colleagues argue that the major harms associated with the use of illicit drugs largely arise from, or are at least exacerbated by, the fact that their use attracts criminal pe...

Contributing to renewed scholarly interest in R. D. Laing and his circle, and in the radical therapeutic community of Kingsley Hall, London, this article offers the first article-length reading of Mary Barnes’ and Joseph Berke’s Mary Barnes: Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness. This text offers views of anti-psychiatry ‘on the ground’ that critique the 1960s utopianism of Laing’s championing of madness as a metanoic, quasi-psychedelic voyage. Barnes’ story, too, reveals tensions within the anti-psychiatric movement. Moving beyond existing criticism (...) of the text, Barnes, it is argued here, emerges as far more than an exemplary patient, victim or anti-psychiatric puppet. Particular attention is paid in this reading of Two Accounts to the following: the ways in which the spiritually inclined Barnes and the psychoanalytic Berke differ in this dual narrative text; the ways in which each differs from Laing; the metaphor of the journey; and the setting of Barnes’ story in the often conflicted, experimental household of Kingsley Hall. (shrink)

Romanian pedagogical theory rests on the assumption that any educational content can be taught and learned faster and better by recourse to a battery of teaching methods. In the present study we question that assumption and show that the methods generally recommended have no didactic merits when it comes to teaching philosophy and the human sciences. In order to prove that we commence by rendering manifest the origins, the specificity and the presuppositions of the teaching methods described in the literature. (...) Afterwards we determine the specificity of the objects of study of philosophy and the human sciences in general. On these bases we develop a series of three arguments that show why, given the particularity of both, the recourse to methods for teaching philosophy and the human sciences is inadequate. (shrink)

El presente artículo muestra los esfuerzos realizados por Cristina de Pizán a la hora de combatir el discurso misógino. En este contexto de lucha por el reconocimiento de las mujeres, Pizán se sirve de dos armas: el dominio del propio cuerpo femenino para contrarrestar los ataques masculinos y el discurso como herramienta para configurar performativamente una identidad flexible, abierta y en constante proceso de construcción.

This study examined the recall of car and food advertisements within either a car or food television program to investigate the relationship between recall, program content, and viewer involvement. The participants, 92 sixth-form students, aged between 16–17 years, were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. As predicted, advertisements placed within a program of dissimilar content were recalled significantly better than if placed within a program of similar content. A gender bias in recall was found with females recalling female-orientated products (...) significantly better than males. Viewer-involvement ratings factored onto three factor clusters: enjoyable, cheerful, and humorous. Negative correlations were shown between cheerfulness and recall in the car program, and positive correlations were shown between cheerfulness and recall in the food program. Finally, implications of the results were considered. (shrink)

Beginning with the second decade of the last century, after a fierce critique of W. Dilthey and the Historical School’s epistemological approach, philosophical hermeneutics has assumed the position of “official” philosophy of history of our times. However, in our previous work we have shown that philosophical hermeneutics is not actually able to give a better answer to “What is history?” than that already offered by the Historical School. Now we would like to show that its answer to the other fundamental (...) question of the philosophy of history - “How is history to be known?” - is even more problematic, making historical science impossible. For if the being of history really is tradition as philosophical hermeneutics argues, and if the essence of tradition is language then, on the one hand, the very stability of historical meaning presupposed by any epistemological process will always be displaced by the play of what Derrida calls “différance,” the ceaseless differentiation of the signifiers and signifieds. And, on the other hand, even if historical meaning were stable enough so as to be known, it could not be grasped because, we will try to argue, the process of understanding as philosophical hermeneutics describes it is always permeated by misunderstanding. (shrink)

The present paper describes an alternative mode of doing teacher observation meant to overcome the limitations of the common approach in use today. To this end, the paper first draws upon the hermeneutic theory of perception developed by Graeme Nicholson and establishes the fundamental principle that ought to govern didactic observation and the conditions of possibility of this endeavor. Subsequently, taking Lester Embree’s description of phenomenological observation as model, the paper describes the basic rules to be followed. The paper ends (...) with a series of logistic recommendations designed to increase the pedagogical gains of the process. Keywords: teacher observation; hermeneutic theory of perception; phenomenological observation; rules of observation; reflective analysis of teaching. (shrink)

Se edita, traduce, anota y comenta un texto conservado en el Ms. _Ambrosianus Graecus_ 855 y se propone que se trata de un mimo breve, representable en ámbito reducido, con intención satírica y que su autoría podría ser adjudicada a Teodoro Pródromos.

La lógica, tal como sostienen algunos autores, es una disciplina normativa. Nos dice qué está bien y qué está mal a la hora de inferir, e influye en nuestras prácticas inferenciales. Por otro lado, el problema de la adopción de Kripke y Padró propone que la idea de adoptar principios lógicos no tiene sentido o no es posible. Mediante una comparación con distintas interpretaciones de la idea de normatividad en la lógica, analizaré la compatibilidad entre ambas posturas. La aparente desconexión (...) entre lo que es correcto y las prácticas de los agentes, sumada a la impotencia de las normas para influir en las prácticas inferenciales, llevarán a una conclusión poco alentadora para quienes quieran sostener ambas posturas: si aceptamos que el problema de la adopción es un problema real, entonces hay que borrar todo rastro de normatividad de nuestra concepción de la lógica. (shrink)

Últimamente se ha producido una copiosa traducción de textos de Hei-degger. Ante la complejidad de sus expresiones, es necesario un trabajo de revisión y unificación de los términos castellanos. Con el ánimo de abrir un proceso de diá-logo entre los traductores, expondremos brevemente algunos puntos en los que se ejemplifica el problema. Por un lado, se trata de mostrar las tareas de traducción todavía pendientes de Ser y tiempo, a pesar de las dos traducciones existentes. A tal efecto se realizan (...) una serie de calas de pasajes, tanto de la versión de Gaos como de la de Rivera, ofreciendo en cada caso las propias sugerencias de traduc-ción. Y, por otro lado, se expone a discusión un elenco de términos que todavía están pendientes de una traducción definitiva.In recent times, there has been a lot of translation of Heidegger's texts. The complexity of his philosophical expressions and the diversity of translation solu-tions offered so far need to be unified. In order to open a dialogue among transla-tors we would like to expose briefly some examples that illustrate the problem of translation. On the one hand, we show that the task of translating Sein und Zeit is not yet finished, despite the translations of Gaos and Rivera. We take under consid-eration some quotes from Gaos's and Rivera's versions, offering in each case our own translation suggestion. On the other hand, we bring up for discussion different Heideggerian terms whose translations are still problematic. (shrink)

In this article, ecosexuality – as popularized by activist-artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle – is explored through archaeological and genealogical means. Through an archaeological le...

This essay considers Simone Weil's experiences in factories and her social–political reflections on work, time and energy, in conjunction with arguments from theorists Melissa Gregg, Theodor Adorno and Sara Ahmed, to raise questions about supposedly humane interventions, including the cultivation of resilience, in the contemporary workplace. The transition from time‐sense in factory work at the turn of the century is examined, along with the growth of corporate time management ideologies and practices in the mid–late 20th century, and finally, the associated (...) forms of disciplining resilience/elasticity in the worker that bring together certain notions of time, space and psychological investments. (shrink)