Stress-related psychopathology is on the rise, and there is a pressing need for improved prevention strategies. Positive appraisal style, the tendency to appraise potentially threatening situations in a positive way, has been proposed to act as a key resilience mechanism and therefore offers a potential target for preventive approaches. In this article, we review n = 99 studies investigating associations of positive cognitive reappraisal, an important sub-facet of positive appraisal style, with outcome-based resilience and relevant other outcomes, which are considered (...) resilience-related. According to the studies reviewed, positive cognitive reappraisal moderates the relation between stressors and negative outcomes and is positively related to several resilience-related outcomes. It also mediates between other resilience factors and resilience, suggesting it is a proximal resilience factor. (shrink)

The present studies examined whether implied tactile properties during language comprehension influence subsequent direct tactile perception, and the specificity of any such effects. Participants read sentences that implicitly conveyed information regarding tactile properties (e.g., Grace tried on a pair of thick corduroy pants while shopping) that were either related or unrelated to fabrics and varied in implied texture (smooth, medium, rough). After reading each sentence, participants then performed an unrelated rating task during which they felt and rated the texture of (...) a presented fabric. Results demonstrated that the texture properties implied in sentences influence direct tactile perception. Specifically, after reading about a smooth or rough texture, subsequent fabric ratings became notably smoother or rougher, respectively. However, we also show that there was some specificity to these effects: Fabric-related sentences elicited more specific and interactive effects on subsequent ratings. Together, we demonstrate that under certain circumstances, language comprehension can prime tactile representations and affect direct tactile perception. Results are discussed with regard to the nature and scope of multimodal mental simulation during reading. (shrink)

With his powerful thought image of the constellation, Walter Benjamin provides a method for the core practices of the Humanities: reading, writing, and thinking. This collection of provocative essays demonstrates how thinking in constellations with Walter Benjamin leads us towards a new understanding of the critical task of the Humanities today: it goes beyond disciplinary boundaries and challenges assumptions of linearity, coherence, and progression inherent in our scholarly praxis. The volume brings some of the most articulate young voices in international (...) Benjamin scholarship together, and takes an interdisciplinary approach, covering wide-ranging fields of knowledge quantum physics, postcolonial studies, natural philosophy, psychoanalysis, film theory, literature, and the arts. Benjamin's texts are re-considered in light of thinkers and poets, such as Theodor W. Adorno, Sigmund Freud, Gottfried E. Leibniz, W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, or Carlos Martìnez Rivas. The critical potential of constellations in Benjamin's work and beyond will be of the highest interest for researchers and students in all areas of the Humanities. (shrink)

This article aims to present a discussion about childhood from the issues raised by the short film entitled Alma, directed, produced and scripted by the filmmaker André Morais. In the work, we experience a day in the life of a girl who lives with her grandmother and who, throughout the plot, weaves questions about her own existence, the senses of life and the dimensions of the relationships we establish with each other. It is discussed in this article, therefore, the power (...) of cinema and childhood as dimensions that invite a dialogue capable of converging art and life, also revitalizing the field of science, from the reflections that are dear to the dynamics of human experience. What conceptions of childhood are presented in the production? In what ways does the chosen approach broaden the discussion about childhood and cinema as potencies? To what extent do the questions raised by the child connect their childhood experience to the experiences of those who watch it on screen? In order to mobilize the discussion, the text is organized from scenes, which characterize the sequence of events that give meaning to what the film wants to express. In the first, the central theme is presented; in the second, the questions for which the short awakens us throughout the narrative; and in the third, it seeks to expand the possibilities of reading, rather than closing them. These scenes support the discussions brought here through Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Aristotle and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

_The Arcades Project_, the monumental unfinished work of cultural criticism by Walter Benjamin, is the German philosopher’s effort to comprehend urban modernity through the 19th-century Parisian shopping arcade. _The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin_ combines artworks with archival materials and poetic interventions to form an original, multifaceted response to this collagelike cultural text. Jens Hoffmann astutely pairs works by thirty-six well-known and emerging artists, including Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky, Pierre Huyghe, and Cindy Sherman, with the thirty-six “Convolutes,” or themes, (...) in Benjamin’s text. Bound into the main volume is a graphic novelette, from the imagination of Vito Manolo Roma, of Benjamin’s dream the night before he committed suicide while fleeing the Nazis. Scholarly essays by Hoffmann and Caroline A. Jones, texts selected by the poet Kenneth Goldsmith, reproductions of Benjamin’s handwritten notes, and a list of the main Paris arcades discussed by him round out this extraordinary publication. (shrink)

Introduction: the advance of governmentality -- Foucault, power, and governmentality: introduction; what is governmentality?; beyond the microphysics of power?; from theory of the state to genealogy of the state; history of the art of government; pastoral power; raison d'état; liberal governmentality; five propositions on foucault and governmentality -- Governmentality 3.4.7.: introduction; governmentality after Foucault; governmentality and the political sciences; some problems in governmentality -- Foucault effect redux? some notes on international governmentality studies: constellation; a few preliminary observations; problems and debates (...) in international governmentality studies -- Reconnecting governmentality and genealogy: introduction; genealogy and governmentality; pluralizing genealogy; practicing genealogy; lines of descent: the family tree of power?; counter-memory and re-serialization; the retrieval of forgotten struggles and subjugated knowledges -- Conclusion: encountering governmentality: governmentality as a new cartography of power; from mapping to encountering; governmentality and politics. (shrink)

When does a person qualify for protected and continuing life? At a time when technology can sustain marginal life, it is ever more important to understand what constitutes a person.

Are a material object, such as a statue, and its constituting matter, the clay, parts of one another? One wouldn't have thought so, and yet a number of philosophers have argued that they are. I review the arguments for this surprising claim showing how they all fail. I then consider two arguments against the view concluding that there are both pre-theoretical and theoretical considerations for denying that the statue and the clay are mutual parts.

Are workers dominated? A recent suite of neo-republican and relational egalitarian philosophers think they are. Suppose they are right; that is, suppose that some workers are governed by an unjust and arbitrary power existing in labour relations, which persists even in the presence of the actual ability to exit. My question is this: does that give us reason to impose restrictions on firms? According to the so-called Efficiency Objection there are relevant trade-offs that need to be considered between the efficiency (...) of firms and the freedom of workers, and upon considering these trade-offs, we should reject workplace democracy. In this paper, I present a dilemma for the Efficiency Objection. I argue that either the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds or non-moral grounds; if the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds, then it fails because efficiency cannot be valued for its own sake (it is only instrumentally good); if the Efficiency Objection is justified on non-moral grounds, then it fails because of the respect that we owe to persons as persons; therefore, the Efficiency Objection fails. (shrink)

I sketch here an intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types, which are individuated in part by historical paths (re)production. Although attractive, this view has been rejected by a number of authors on the basis of general claims about abstract objects. On consideration, however, these general claims are overgeneralizations, which whilst true of some abstracta, are not true of all abstract objects, and in particular, are not true of created types. The intuitive picture of repeatable artworks as created types (...) is, then, left in place. (shrink)

Reagan mixes the genres of biographical essay, memoir, philosophical essay, and interview to provide the reader with a fascinating and highly readable account. The biographical essay narrates Ricoeur’s early life, his experience as a POW during the Second World War, professorships at the Sorbonne, Nanterre, and Chicago, and his “rediscovery” in and return to France after the publication of Time and Narrative. Reagan’s analysis betrays Ricoeur’s comment that “no one is interested in my life... [since] my life is my work... (...) my books and my articles.” Ricoeur’s captivity as a prisoner of war, the problems he encountered at Nanterre University as doyen of the Faculty of Letters during the 1960s, and the pain and love he and Simone felt for Olivier, their fourth child who committed suicide, are some of the intriguing and touching elements of the narrative. After Olivier’s tragic death in 1986, Ricoeur added “suffering” to the phrase “human action” whenever he wrote about the problem of human action and suffering. (shrink)

In the wake of the non-ideal theory turn in political philosophy, few have paused to ask: Is non-ideal theory a form of ideology? And perhaps even fewer have paused to ask: Is the debate between ideal/non-ideal theorists itself a form of ideology? To the first question, I argue that non-ideal theory is ideological in virtue of the fact that it rules out more utopian ways of theorizing by methodological fiat, and in so doing, risks entrenching an unjust status quo. To (...) the second question, I argue that the debate between ideal/non-ideal theorists is itself a form of ideology, one which serves to reinforce the status quo by convincing political philosophers/theorists that the most pressing problems are problems about what we should think about what we are doing. But this is false. An upshot of my argument is that we ought to abandon the ideal/non-ideal theory debate and address the pressing problems of political philosophy head-on in pluralist fashion, oscillating back and forth between these two modes of theorizing without a decision procedure to tell us when we should take up one perspective or the other. (shrink)

Walters analyses Canadian and global information highway policy and practices from a philosophical, human rights framework that views freedom and well-being as the necessary conditions of human action.

Andrew McGonigal presents some interesting data concerning truth in serial fictions.1 Such data has been taken by McGonigal, Cameron and Caplan to motivate some form of contextualism or relativism. I argue, however, that many of these approaches are problematic, and that all are under-motivated as the data can be explained in a standard invariantist semantic framework given some independently plausible principles.

I reply to Ahmed’s rejection (2011) of my argument (Walters 2009) that all counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents are themselves true.

Are counterfactuals with true antecedents and consequents automatically true? That is, is Conjunction Conditionalization: if (X & Y), then (X > Y) valid? Stalnaker and Lewis think so, but many others disagree. We note here that the extant arguments for Conjunction Conditionalization are unpersuasive, before presenting a family of more compelling arguments. These arguments rely on some standard theorems of the logic of counterfactuals as well as a plausible and popular semantic claim about certain semifactuals. Denying Conjunction Conditionalization, then, requires (...) rejecting other aspects of the standard logic of counterfactuals, or else our intuitive picture of semifactuals. (shrink)

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

Is A & C sufficient for the truth of ‘if A were the case, C would be the case’? Jonathan Bennett thinks not, although the counterexample he gives is inconsistent with his own account of counterfactuals. In any case, I argue that anyone who accepts the case of Morgenbesser's coin, as Bennett does, should reject Bennett’s counterexample. Moreover, I show that the principle underlying his counterexample is unmotivated and indeed false. More generally, I argue that Morgenbesser’s coin commits us to (...) the sufficiency of A & C for the truth of the corresponding counterfactual. (shrink)

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof (...) relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response. (shrink)

Shamik Dasgupta (2016) proposes to tame the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) to apply to only non-autonomous facts, which are facts that are apt for explanation. Call this strategy to tame the PSR the taming strategy. In a recent paper, Della Rocca (2020a) argues that proponents of the taming strategy, in attempting to formulate a restricted version of the PSR, nevertheless find themselves committed to endorsing a form of radical monism, which, in turn, leads right back to an untamed-PSR. Suppose, (...) for the sake of argument, that Della Rocca is right. My question is this: Is there reason to believe the principle of sufficient reason (in its untamed version)? In this paper, I argue that it is impossible for there to be a reason to believe the untamed-PSR. (shrink)

Previous studies found similarities in adults’ disgust responses to benign (e.g. obesity) and actual disease signs (e.g. influenza). However, limited research has compared visual (i.e. benign and actual) to cognitive (i.e. disease label) disease cues in different age groups. The current study investigated disgust responses across middle childhood (7–9 years), late childhood (10–12 years), adolescence (13–17 years), and adulthood (18+ years). Participants viewed individuals representing a benign visual disease (obese), sick-looking (staphylococcus), sick-label (cold/flu), and healthy condition. Disgust-related outcomes were: (1) (...) avoidance, or contact level with apparel the individual was said to have worn, (2) disgust facial reactions, and (3) a combination of (1) and (2). Avoidance was greater for the sick-looking and sick-label than the healthy and obese conditions. For facial reaction and combination outcomes, middle childhood participants responded with greater disgust to the sick-looking than the healthy condition, while late childhood participants expressed stronger disgust towards the sick-looking and obese conditions than the healthy condition. Adolescents and adults exhibited stronger disgust towards sick-label and sick-looking than obese and healthy conditions. Results suggest visual cues are central to children’s disgust responses whereas adolescents and adult responses considered cognitive cues. (shrink)

The Handbook on Governmentality discusses the development of an interdisciplinary field of research, focusing on Michel Foucault's post-foundationalist concept of governmentality and the ways it has been used to write genealogies of modern states, the governance of societal problems and the governance of the self. Bringing together an international group of contributors, the Handbook examines major developments in debates on governmentality, as well as encouraging further research in areas such as climate change, decolonial politics, logistics, and populism. Chapters explore how (...) governmentality reshapes policy analysis as political practice, the relationship between Foucault's ideas of government and postcolonial experiences, and how governmentality can illuminate discourse on the green economy and biopolitics. Analysing how contemporary socio-political issues including feminist politics, migration, and racialized medicine are interwoven with the concept of governmentality, this Handbook sheds light on the modern-day uses of Foucault's work. Providing a comprehensive overview of research on governmentality, this Handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars of development studies, geopolitics, political economy, organizational studies, political geography, postcolonial theory, and public policy. It will also be a key resource for policy makers in the field looking for a deeper theoretical understanding of the topic. (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish's prolific and wide-ranging contributions to seventeenth-century intellectual culture are impossible to contain within the discrete confines of modern academic disciplines. Paying attention to the innovative uses of genre through which she enhanced and complicated her writings both within literature and beyond, this collection addresses her oeuvre and offers the most comprehensive and multidisciplinary resource on Cavendish's works to date. The astonishing breadth of her varied intellectual achievements is reflected through elegantly arranged sections on History of Science, Philosophy, Literature, (...) Politics and Reception, and New Directions, together with an Afterword by award-winning novelist Siri Hustvedt. The first book to cover nearly all of Cavendish's major works in a single volume, this collection brings together a variety of expert perspectives to illuminate the remarkable ideas and achievements of one of the most fascinating and prolific figures of the early modern period. (shrink)

The standard semantics for counterfactuals ensures that any counterfactual with a true antecedent and true consequent is itself true. There have been many recent attempts to amend the standard semantics to avoid this result. I show that these proposals invalidate a number of further principles of the standard logic of counterfactuals. The case against the automatic truth of counterfactuals with true components does not extend to these further principles, however, so it is not clear that rejecting the latter should be (...) a consequence of rejecting the former. Instead I consider how one might defuse putative counterexamples to the truth of true-true counterfactuals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 171-174 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics Inside the Beltway The Oversight of Human Gene Transfer Research LeRoy Walters Jesse Gelsinger's death last September in a gene transfer study being conducted at the University of Pennsylvania has helped to spark a national debate. In part, this debate parallels the broader discussion of how human subjects research should be reviewed and regulated in (...) the United States. However, human gene transfer research is one of a handful of biomedical technologies that seem to deserve special attention, at least in the early years of their development.The major participants in the national debate on human gene transfer include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, members of Congress, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, disease-oriented advocacy groups, reporters, and academics. At the December 1999 meeting of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), the protocol that involved Jesse Gelsinger was a central focus of discussion, but other topics emerged as well. One ad hoc panel reviewed adverse events that had occurred in other research protocols using adenovirus vectors, while a second proposed changes in the general system for reporting adverse events to NIH and the RAC.During the first several months of the year 2000, the United States Congress also became involved in the human gene transfer debate. In February, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) convened a hearing to which Jesse Gelsinger's father, representatives of NIH and FDA, and several other witnesses were invited. At approximately the same time, the House Commerce Committee and its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations initiated their own inquiries, asking the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services to review the oversight roles of NIH and FDA. In March and April, the House committee also wrote directly to the NIH Director, the FDA Commissioner, and the President of the University of Pennsylvania, requesting extensive documentation on gene transfer, in general, and the trial in which Jesse Gelsinger was involved, in particular. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) have also raised questions and proposed solutions in multiple letters to the NIH Director and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. [End Page 171]The major general questions that have emerged from this discussion are the following:(1) What kinds of information about adverse events should be reported by researchers or sponsors during the course of human gene transfer trials?(2) To what group or groups should adverse-event information be reported? How often and in what ways should the information be analyzed?(3) Should the information about adverse events remain confidential, or should it be discussed publicly?(4) How can the disclosure and consent process in gene transfer trials be improved?(5) Which federal agency should have primary responsibility for overseeing human gene transfer research, and how can it best fulfill its oversight role?How these questions are answered will have immediate relevance to the field of human gene transfer research as it enters into its next phase. At the same time, the models that are created for this important cutting-edge field also may be useful in other complex or controversial arenas of biomedical research, for example, xenotransplantation or human embryonic stem-cell research. In addition, the lessons learned from this one important area of human subjects research may suggest ways to improve protections for all the volunteers who make clinical research--and medical progress--possible.In the remainder of this article, I will turn from reporting, in as objective a way as possible, on the status of the public policy debate about human gene transfer research to suggesting measures for improving the current oversight system for such research. My initial general recommendation is that we should not expect a single regulatory agency to be solely responsible for a field as large and dynamic as human gene transfer research. Rather, there should be some helpful redundancy or, to change the metaphor, checks and balances in the public oversight of this field. Thus, an... (shrink)

Provides philosophical definitions which help scholars and students to understand Plotinus’ notions of eternity and time; presents a way in which to understand the relationship between eternity, time, and the hypostases; conveys the practical and experiential aspect of Ennead III.7.

The last quarter of the twentieth century has given rise to reproductive technologies and arrangements that in the earlier part of the century could only be dreamed of by the authors of science fiction. We stand in the middle of this reproductive revolution, trying to cope with the developments that have already occurred but with an uneasy sense that the future may be even more complicated ethically than the past and the present. In this brief essay, I will survey recent (...) ethical and public-policy discussions of two reproductive techniques (assisted insemination and in vitro fertilization) and one reproductive arrangement (surrogate motherhood). After distinguishing three phases in the normative debate, I will briefly comment on some of the characteristics of, and continuing ambiguities in, the ethical debate of the past 25 years. At the conclusion of the essay, I will attempt to anticipate three future issues in ethics and reproduction. (shrink)