Current treatments for chronic pain have limited benefit. We describe a resilience intervention for individuals with chronic pain which is based on a model of viewing chronic pain as dysregulated homeostasis and which seeks to restore homeostatic self-regulation using strategies exemplified by survivors of extreme environments. The intervention is expected to have broad effects on well-being and positive emotional health, to improve cognitive functions, and to reduce pain symptoms thus helping to transform the suffering of pain into self-growth. A total (...) of 88 Veterans completed the pre-assessment and were randomly assigned to either the treatment intervention or control. Fifty-eight Veterans completed pre- and post-testing. The intervention covered resilience strengths organized into four modules: engagement, social relatedness, transformation of pain and building a good life. A broad set of standardized, well validated measures were used to assess three domains of functioning: health and well-being, symptoms, and cognitive functions. Two-way Analysis of Variance was used to detect group and time differences. Broadly, results indicated significant intervention and time effects across multiple domains: Pain decreased in present severity [F = 5.02, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.08], total pain over six domains [F = 14.52, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.21], and pain interference [F = 6.82, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.11]; Affect improved in pain-related negative affect [F = 7.44, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], fear [F = 7.70, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], and distress [F = 10.87, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.16]; Well-being increased in pain mobility [F = 5.45, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09], vitality [F = 4.54, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.07], and emotional well-being [F = 5.53, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09] Mental health symptoms and the cognitive functioning domain did not reveal significant effects. This resilience intervention based on homeostatic self-regulation and survival strategies of survivors of extreme external environments may provide additional sociopsychobiological tools for treating individuals with chronic pain that may extend beyond treating pain symptoms to improving emotional well-being and self-growth.Clinical Trial Registration: Registered with ClinicalTrials.gov. (shrink)

Globally, performative spaces and venues of artistic creativity are governed by sets of conventions which impact the creative process. In this article, we discuss the experiences of four different creatives, operating in four different creative spaces. A poet and football player, a theatre producer and script writer, a gallery curator, and a ballet dancer have all shared their experiences of how traditionally white and heteronormative discourses regulate their respective creative spaces, the ways they conform to or transgress these norms, and (...) the ways their interactions with their chosen creative spaces affect their creativity. These creatives have identities which are somehow ‘marked’, somehow ‘different’ from the ‘norms’ Wales and South-West England. Whether members of the LGBTQ+ community, migrants to Wales from European and Caribbean countries, or being a different race to many around them, the creatives all have complicated interactions with the norms of their creative spaces within Wales and South-West England. These creative’s identities often clash with an entrenched lack of diversity and the broader expectations of British society. Despite, or perhaps, because of, these conflicts and tensions, each of the creatives discussed here found immense joy in the relationship between their identity/ies and their creative spaces and discovered how their own identity/ies are a central driving force for their creativity. Regardless of the differences of their mediums, each creative interviewed sought to centre their identity, to help them create art which can challenge dominant white and heteronormative discourses in wider British society. (shrink)

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has led to heightened moral distress among healthcare providers. Despite evidence of gendered differences in experiences, there is limited feminist analysis of moral distress. Objectives: To identify types of moral distress among women healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic; to explore how feminist political economy might be integrated into the study of moral distress. Research Design: This research draws on interviews and focus groups, the transcripts of which were analyzed using framework analysis. Research Participants and Context: 88 (...) healthcare providers, based in British Columbia Canada, participated virtually. Ethical Considerations: The study received ethical approval from Simon Fraser University. Findings: Healthcare providers experienced moral dilemmas related to ability to provide quality and compassionate care while maintaining COVID-19 protocols. Moral constraints were exacerbated by staffing shortages and lack of access to PPE. Moral conflicts emerged when women tried to engage decision-makers to improve care, and moral uncertainty resulted from lack of clear and consistent information. At home, women experienced moral constraints related to inability to support children’s education and wellbeing. Moral conflicts related to lack of flexible work environments and moral dilemmas developed between unpaid care responsibilities and COVID-19 risks. Women healthcare providers resisted moral residue and structural constraints by organizing for better working conditions, childcare, and access to PPE, engaging mental health support and drawing on professional pride. Discussion: COVID-19 has led to new and heightened experiences of moral distress among HCP in response to both paid and unpaid care work. While many of the experiences of moral distress at work were not explicitly gendered, implicit gender norms structured moral events. Women HCP had to take it upon themselves to organize, seek out resources, and resist moral residue. Conclusion: A feminist political economy lens illuminates how women healthcare providers faced and resisted a double layering of moral distress during the pandemic. (shrink)

A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned (...) knowledge” – knowledge in the absence of rational confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured, even without token identity, given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification. (shrink)

It is a common line in democratic theory that citizens must only offer “public” reasons into political discourse. This is a civic obligation that is traditionally taken bypolitical liberals to fall on the citizen as speaker—as an individual who forwards political arguments. I argue here that taking proper account of the epistemic complexity involved in distinguishing public from nonpublic reasons entails robust civic obligations on listeners. Thus, those who accept this obligation for speakers must accept a corresponding civic obligation on (...) listeners—a duty to attempt to identify public reasons within others’ presented arguments, even if those arguments appear nonpublic at first blush. (shrink)

Credal reductivism is the view that outright belief is reducible to degrees of confidence or ‘credence’. The most popular versions of credal reductivism all have the consequence that if you are near-maximally confident that p in a low-stakes situation, then you outright believe p. This paper addresses a recent objection to this consequence—the Correctness Objection— introduced by Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath and further developed by Jacob Ross and Mark Schroeder. The objection is that near-maximal confidence cannot entail outright belief (...) because when you believe a false proposition, you are wrong or incorrect, whereas you can be highly confident of a false proposition in a low-stakes situation without being incorrect. Both Fantl and McGrath’s and Ross and Schoeder’s versions of the Correctness Objection admit of multiple interpretations. But it is argued that even on the most charitable interpretations the objection fails. (shrink)

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Despite the prominence of doubt in philosophy since Descartes, the published philosophical literature includes no extended treatment of the nature of doubt. In this paper, I summarize the main contributions that have been made to the subject and then develop a commonsense functionalist account of doubt by specifying the functional role of doubt that something is the case. After adding two further wrinkles, I show how the resulting account can be used to address the questions of how doubt is related (...) to belief and whether suspension of judgment can be identified with doubt. Although the account is partisan, it should hold interest for those who favor other positions in the philosophy of mind, since much of the account can be taken on board by those in other camps, and the paper demonstrates how a sufficiently detailed account of doubt can be put to work addressing longstanding questions of interest across philosophical sub-disciplines. (shrink)

Deliberative democratic theorists typically use accounts of public reason— that is, constraints on the types of reasons one can invoke in public, political discourse—as a tool to resist political exclusion; at its most basic level, the aim of a theory of public reason is to prevent situations in which powerful majority groups are able to justify policy choices based on reasons that are not even assessable by minority groups. However, I demonstrate here that a type of exclusion I call "conceptual (...) exclusion" complicates this picture. I argue that the possibility of conceptual exclusion creates the potential for public reason constraints to further exclude already marginalized groups— contrary to the standard view—and thus that taking conceptual exclusion seriously requires both a revision of traditional accounts of public reason and a reconceptualization of our civic obligations. (shrink)

This essay explores the significance of Hegel’s considerations of love for his later dialectical philosophy in order to bring to attention love’s continued import as a category of logical and theological unity and reconciliation. A lingering question for Hegel scholarship is why he seemingly drops the unifying notion of love in his more developed dialectical philosophy, choosing instead to expound a philosophy of the concept that solely grants to reason the task of dialectical recovery. On my reading, this interpretation suffers (...) from a failure to imagine Hegel’s early writings on love as contributing to the working out of his later dialectical logic and philosophy of spirit, specifically in terms of the unifying and reconciling principle of Vernunft in contrast to Verstand. Furthermore, Hegel’s substantial appeals to love in the later Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion show love's continued significance for him, not only as a logical but a theological principle of unity between finite and infinite spirit, a unity lost on the understanding alone. Reading Hegel’s Vernunft as a form of rationally reconciling love, therefore, shows a continuity in Hegel’s thinking that brings to bear Hegel’s later philosophical developments of reason and spirit on his philosophical theology. (shrink)

Child sexual abuse is a global phenomenon that affects many families and appears to be increasing dramatically in South Africa. The literature on child sexual abuse focuses mainly on the victims and perpetrators while largely ignoring the experiences of non-offending mothers. The objective of this study was to explore the lived experiences of mothers whose children were sexually abused by their intimate male partners. Existential phenomenology was employed in the study, and Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis was used to (...) analyse the data. The results indicate that the participants experienced emotions similar to those following loss including disbelief, anger, guilt, depression, trust and blame. (shrink)

Based on the "Guide to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990", this volume reviews the regulation of assisted conception including complex moral issues such as abortion, embryo research and cloning.

In this paper, we describe how critical data designers have created projects that ‘push back’ against the eclipse of environmental problems by dominant orders: the pioneering pollution database Scorecard, released by the US NGO Environmental Defense Fund in 1997; the US Environmental Protection Agency’s EnviroAtlas that brings together numerous data sets and provides tools for valuing ecosystem services; and the Houston Clean Air Network’s maps of real-time ozone levels in Houston. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, we analyse how critical (...) data designers turn scientific data and findings into claims and visualisations that are meaningful in contemporary political terms. The skills of critical data designers cross scales and domains; they must identify problems calling for public consideration, and then locate, access, link, and create visualisations of data relevant to the problem. We conclude by describing hazards ahead in work to leverage Big Data to understand and address environmental problems. Critical data designers need to understand what counts as a societal problem in a particular context, what doesn’t, what is seen as connected and not, what is seen as ethically charged, and what is exonerated and discounted. Such recognition is produced through interpretive, ‘close reading’ of the historical moment in which they operate. (shrink)

Source code is a form of human communication, albeit one where the information shared between the programmers reading and writing the code is constrained by the requirement that the code executes correctly. Programming languages are more syntactically constrained than natural languages, but they are also very expressive, allowing a great many different ways to express even very simple computations. Still, code written by developers is highly predictable, and many programming tools have taken advantage of this phenomenon, relying on language model (...) surprisal as a guiding mechanism. While surprisal has been validated as a measure of cognitive load in natural language, its relation to human cognitive processes in code is still poorly understood. In this paper, we explore the relationship between surprisal and programmer preference at a small granularity—do programmers prefer more predictable expressions in code? Using meaning‐preserving transformations, we produce equivalent alternatives to developer‐written code expressions and run a corpus study on Java and Python projects. In general, language models rate the code expressions developers choose to write as more predictable than these transformed alternatives. Then, we perform two human subject studies asking participants to choose between two equivalent snippets of Java code with different surprisal scores (one original and transformed). We find that programmers do prefer more predictable variants, and that stronger language models like the transformer align more often and more consistently with these preferences. (shrink)

First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Child sexual abuse is a global phenomenon that affects many families and appears to be increasing dramatically in South Africa. The literature on child sexual abuse focuses mainly on the victims and perpetrators while largely ignoring the experiences of non-offending mothers. The objective of this study was to explore the lived experiences of mothers whose children were sexually abused by their intimate male partners. Existential phenomenology was employed in the study, and Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phase thematic analysis was used (...) to analyse the data. The results indicate that the participants experienced emotions similar to those following loss including disbelief, anger, guilt, depression, trust and blame. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 11, Edition 1 May 2011, 11-24. (shrink)

This study explores the grief experiences of young adults in the aftermath of the murder of a sibling. Three young adults were recruited to participate in interviews in which they described their lived experience of loss. Data collection and the subsequent analyses were guided by a phenomenological research design and resulted in the identification of seven major themes, namely (1) shock and disbelief, (2) recollection, guilt and self-blame, (3) rupture and fragmentation, (4) support, (5) justice and revenge, (6) reformulation, and (...) (7) resilience, healing and growth. These themes are discussed with reference to the findings of other documented studies, and the implications for practitioners working with bereaved siblings of murder victims pointed to. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , May 2010, Volume 10, Edition 1. (shrink)

In this anthology of new and classic articles, fifteen noted feminist philosophers explore contemporary ethical issues that uniquely affect the lives of women. These issues in applied ethics include autonomy, responsibility, sexual harassment, women in the military, new technologies for reproduction, surrogate motherhood, pornography, abortion, nonfeminist women and others. Whether generated by old social standards or intensified by recent technology, these dilemmas all pose persistent, 'nagging,' questions that cry out for answers.

The use of Big Data—however the term is defined—involves a wide array of issues and stakeholders, thereby increasing numbers of complex decisions around issues including data acquisition, use, and sharing. Big Data is becoming a significant component of practice in an ever-increasing range of disciplines; however, since it is not a coherent “discipline” itself, specific codes of conduct for Big Data users and researchers do not exist. While many institutions have created, or will create, training opportunities to prepare people to (...) work in and around Big Data, insufficient time, space, and thought have been dedicated to training these people to engage with the ethical, legal, and social issues in this new domain. Since Big Data practitioners come from, and work in, diverse contexts, neither a relevant professional code of conduct nor specific formal ethics training are likely to be readily available. This normative paper describes an approach to conceptualizing ethical reasoning and integrating it into training for Big Data use and research. Our approach is based on a published framework that emphasizes ethical reasoning rather than topical knowledge. We describe the formation of professional community norms from two key disciplines that contribute to the emergent field of Big Data: computer science and statistics. Historical analogies from these professions suggest strategies for introducing trainees and orienting practitioners both to ethical reasoning and to a code of professional conduct itself. We include two semester course syllabi to strengthen our thesis that codes of conduct can be harnessed to support the development of ethical reasoning in, and a sense of professional identity among, Big Data practitioners. (shrink)

This letter responds to letters by Garson Leder and by Harrison Lee in the same issue, September‐October 2024, of the Hastings Center Report.

This paper approaches the ‘Drexler-Smalley’ debate on nanotechnology from a neglected angle – the common denominator of ‘the frontier’ as a metaphor for scientific exploration. For Bensaude-Vincent, the debate exemplifies the clash of ‘two cultures’ – the ‘artificialist’ and biomimetic’ schools. For us, the portrayal of nanosphere as ‘new frontier’ stymies the prospect of genuine inter-cultural debate on the direction of molecular engineering. Drawing on Brandon, the‘dominium’ impulse of European imperialism is contrasted to the ‘communitas’ tradition of Native America. (...) Proposing a single label – hybridist – for both schools, we juxtapose to this approach the holistic disposition of indigenous North American science. (shrink)

The exclusion problem is held to show that mental and physical events are identical by claiming that the denial of this identity is incompatible with the causal completeness of physics and the occurrence of mental causation. The problem relies for its motivation on the claim that overdetermination of physical effects by mental and physical causes is objectionable for a variety of reasons. In this paper, I consider four different definitions of? overdetermination? and argue that, on each, overdetermination in all cases (...) of mental causation either does not occur or is unobjectionable, even when mental and physical events are non-identical. I therefore conclude that the exclusion problem cannot be used as a reason to accept that mental and physical events are identical unless some other definition of? overdetermination? is provided. (shrink)

Creativity is fundamental to human experience. In _On Creativity_ David Bohm, the world-renowned scientist, investigates the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery. This is a remarkable and life-affirming book by one of the most far-sighted thinkers of modern times.

Conciliatory views about disagreement with one’s epistemic peers lead to a somewhat troubling skeptical conclusion: that often, when we know others disagree, we ought to be (perhaps much) less sure of our beliefs than we typically are. One might attempt to extend this skeptical conclusion by arguing that disagreement with merely possible epistemic agents should be epistemically significant to the same degree as disagreement with actual agents, and that, since for any belief we have, it is possible that someone should (...) disagree in the appropriate way, we ought to be much less sure of all of our beliefs than we typically are. In this paper, I identify what I take to be the main motivation for thinking that actual disagreement is epistemically significant and argue that it does not also motivate the epistemic significance of merely possible disagreement. (shrink)

도덕(morality)의 기원(origins)과 본성(nature)에 관한 철학적 탐구의 역사는 장구하다. 플라톤의 『프로타고라스』(Protagoras)에서 전개된 신화적(mythical) 설명은 홉스의 신화적 설명을 거쳐 흄의 자연주의적 설명과 칸트의 형이상학적 설명으로 발전하여 적어도 19세기까지 도덕철학의 영역을 굳건하게 지켜왔다. 하지만 20세기에 와서 과학(사회생물학, 도덕심리학, 신경과학)의 놀라운 연구성과는 도덕의 기원과 본성에 관한 전통철학의 설명방식에 대해 깊은 회의와 불신을 불러일으켰다. 전통철학의 입장이 ‘위로부터의 도덕(morality from above)’을 이야기하는데 반해서 새로운 과학적 입장은 ‘아래로부터의 도덕(morality from below)’을 주창한다. 도덕의 기원과 본성에 관한 전통철학과 현대과학의 탐구성과는 이제 분명해진 것 같다. 인간의 도덕을 신의 명령(divine command)이나 (...) 도덕원리(moral principles) 같은 저 높은 곳에서 초월적으로 존재하는 것이 아니라 인간존재 자체에서 진화한 결과물이라고 보는 것이 객관적으로 타당한 견해인 것 같다. 인간은 선한 본성(good nature)을 키워왔고, 도덕법칙과 종교적 교리는 인간의 이러한 본성에 따라 뒤에 만들어진 것이다. 인간은 스스로 도덕성(morality)을 갖추어 왔으며, 이 도덕성은 우리의 이성(reason)과 의지(will)에 따라 더 높은 차원으로 발달할 수 있는 것이다. 도덕은 ‘위로부터 내려온(come from above)’것이 아니라 ‘아래로부터 올라온(come from below)’것이다. 도덕은 인간의 진화의 역사에서 탄생한 발명품(invention)이다. (shrink)

Encountering Derrida explores the points of engagement between Jacques Derrida and a host of other European thinkers, past and present, in order to counter recent claims that the era of deconstruction is finally drawing to a close. The book rereads Derrida in order to renew deconstruction's various conceptions of language, poetry, philosophy, institutions, difference and the future. This impressive collection of essays from the world's leading Derrida scholars re-evaluates Derrida's legacy and looks forward to the possible futures of deconstruction by (...) confronting various challenges to Derrida's thought. Collectively, the essays argue that Derrida must be read alongside others , an approach that produces some surprising new accounts of this challenging critical thinker. _ _. (shrink)

Standard accounts of misinformation require that it is either false or misleading, in the sense that it leads people to false beliefs. But many examples of misinformation involve true information that leads people to true beliefs. So, I propose a new theory of misinformation: misinformation is information that is epistemically harmful in the sense that it is disposed to reduce the overall quality of a subject’s epistemic position. This includes not only causing the subject to form a false belief, but (...) also causing the subject to form beliefs that are otherwise epistemically deficient or to abandon or reduce confidence in epistemically good beliefs. This account improves on standard accounts in two ways. First, it more closely matches intuitive judgments about what counts as misinformation, including cases of failed deception and information that is spread without regard for its truth. Second, it provides a natural account of what is wrong with spreading misinformation: it contributes to an epistemically hostile environment in which we are more likely to become epistemically worse off when we gather more information. (shrink)

"In an era of economic devastation, ongoing legacies of colonization and imperialism, climate change and habitat loss, there is a call for a new understanding of the meaning and relevance of ethics. These essays on otherness, responsibility, and hospitality raise urgent questions about the state of ethics in tumultuous times. Contributors range from prominent theorists-including Levinas, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben-to more recent theorists including Judith Butler, Enrique Dussell, and Rosi Braidotti. Perhaps most crucially, this reader emphasizes the (...) always vulnerable status of a radically different Other, even as it questions what responsibility to that Other might mean."-Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The odyssey of twentieth-century philosophy has produced a number of ventures to find a way between the Scylla of continental and Charybdis of analytic philosophy. The pairing of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, arguably the greatest figures of each tradition, has been a particularly strong siren song to many on this quest, who have approached it from different angles.Egan uses Heidegger's explicit discussion of authenticity in his early work to bring out a similar idea implicit in Wittgenstein's later. Given their many parallels, (...) Egan reasons, chances are good that an idea so central to the former could be found in the latter, were one to look at it in the right way. Thus, Egan uses Being and Time to enter previously... (shrink)

In this engaging and provocative new book, Lee Eisenberg, bestselling author of The Number, dares to tackle nothing less than what it takes to find enduring meaning and purpose in life. He explains how from a young age, each of us is compelled to take memories of events and relationships and shape them into a one-of-a-kind personal narrative. In addition to sharing his own pivotal memories (some of them moving, some just a shade embarrassing), Eisenberg presents striking research culled from (...) psychology and neuroscience, and draws on insights from a pantheon of thinkers and great writers-Tolstoy, Freud, Joseph Campbell, Virginia Woolf, among others. We also hear from men and women of all ages who are wrestling with the demands of work and family, ever in search of fulfillment and satisfaction. It all adds up to a fascinating story, delightfully told, one that goes straight to the heart of how we explain ourselves to ourselves-in other words, who we are and why. (shrink)

This book is a collection of Lee McIntyre’s philosophical essays from over the last twenty years. Explaining Explanation focuses on the philosophy of social science and the philosophy of chemistry, but also covers more general problems such as underdetermination, explanatory exclusion, the accommodation-prediction debate, and laws in biological science.