Is Rabinowitz seriously suggesting that his “rules” of reading are equally applicable to the analysis of British and American forms of popular writing and their readerships between 1920 and the 1960s? Is he seriously suggesting that Gone with the Wind, for example, would be “read” in the same way and for the same meanings in the southern states, the northern states, in Yorkshire and London? In this particular case the issue of cultural reproduction is also crucial—the complex relations between the (...) book and film “texts” and readerships for both. Is the book now read “through” the film and the mythos of Hollywood? Can the novel’s “history” of the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction be seen in relation to experience of the Depression on the one hand and to dominant historical discourses of the period privileged within American educational institutions on the other?2Or, if we take a British example like A. J. Cronin, whose work was regarded as both “serious” and “popular” in the late 1930s, what happens to Rabinowitz’s distinction? Clearly, Cronin’s fiction is not “acceptable” in the literary canon but his example illustrates the weakness of any critical analysis of the popular rooted in “literary” assumptions. Very important questions are raised by the commercial success of The Citadel, not among “the people” in any generalized sense but among specific constituencies of professional, middle-class readerships in both New Deal American and in Britain during a period of history remarkable for the regrouping of the forces of social-democratic consensus politics—an alliance between “sympathetic” fractions of the professional middle class and “the people” which culminated eventually in the postwar Labour party election victory. Thus readers are not only readers, and the processes of reading—especially perhaps of popular fiction—are not reducible to abstract rules which exclude all considerations of cultural=political institutions and discourses. 2. This example is partly indebted to discussion with Greg Gaut and Jane P. Tompkins during a University of Minnesota Conference, “On the Social Edge” . Derek Longhurst is principal lecturer and course leader in communication studies at Sunderland Polytechnic and general editor of the forthcoming series Culture and Popular Fiction. His publications include chapters in Re-Reading English and An Introduction to Contemporary Cultural Studies. He is currently working on a book about the political thriller. (shrink)

Derek Longhurst’s rhetorical strategies don’t leave me much room to maneuver. By constructing my essay in such a way that we are opponents, he offers only two choices: I can recant or enter into battle. Actually, I would rather do neither; I agree with most of what he says and would like a chance to explore those points where we differ. But in order to do that, it is first necessary to see where our differences really lie; and (...) Longhurst’s response does not make it easy.Granted, some of his criticisms are sound. He is right that I use the word “we” too loosely and that I sketched out my argument on an extremely abstract level, which resulted in, among other things, a blurring of the differences between American and British literature. But more often than not, Longhurst attacks me for taking positions that I do not in fact hold. For instance, he suggests that I believe the categories “popular” and “serious” to be fixed, and that my scheme would therefore shatter when confronted with a text like The Citadel, which was regarded as “both ‘serious’ and ‘popular.’ ” Yet my essay was intended precisely to offer a way to talk about such cases—of which The Glass Key is one—and while my solution may have its flaws, the rigidity of categories that Longhurst attacks it for is surely not one of them. Peter J. Rabinowitz is associate professor of comparative literature at Hamilton College. He is the author of Before Reading , a book about the conventions of reading, and is also active as a music critic for such publications as Fanfare and Ovation. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences” , “Who Was That Lady? Pluralism and Critical Method” , and “The Turn of the Glass Key: Popular Fiction as Reading Strategy”. (shrink)

When we have a normative reason, and we act for that reason, it becomes our motivating reason. But we can have either kind of reason without having the other. Thus, if I jump into the canal, my motivating reason was provided by my belief; but I had no normative reason to jump. I merely thought I did. And, if I failed to notice that the canal was frozen, I had a reason not to jump that, because it was unknown to (...) me, did not motivate me. Though we can have normative reasons without being motivated, and vice versa, such reasons are closely related to our motivation. There are, however, very different views about what this relation is. This disagreement raises wider questions about what normative reasons are, and about which reasons there are. After sketching some of these views, I shall discuss some arguments by Williams, and then say where, in my opinion, the truth lies. [...] I [will] suggest why, as I believe, we should be non-reductive normative realists, and should regard all reasons as external. (shrink)

sonable, in this sense, if we ignore, or give too little weight to, some other people's well-being or moral claims.' Some critics have suggested that, because Scanlon appeals to this sense of 'reasonable', his formula is empty. On this objection, whenever we believe that some act is wrong, we shall believe that people have moral claims not to be treated in this way. We could therefore argue that such acts are disallowed by some principle which no one could reasonably reject, (...) since anyone who rejected this principle would be giving too little weight to people's moral claims not to be treated in this way. Since everyone could claim that the principles which they accept could not be reasonably rejected, Scanlon's Formula would make no difference to our moral thinking. That is not so. If we reject the principles that disallow certain acts, we are denying that such acts are wrong. This denial would be unreasonable if it would give too little weight to some other people's moral claims. So Scanlon's Formula implies that.. (shrink)

About the book: Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Topics addressed include the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience, artistic value, and the nature of our emotional responses to art. Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars, (...) and especially commissioned for the volume. Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in aesthetics, while also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that most or all perceptual experiences are infused with imaginative contributions. While the idea is not new, it has few supporters. I begin by developing a framework for the underlying debate. Central to that framework is the claim that a perceptual experience is infused with imagination if and only if there are self-generated contributions to that experience that have ampliative effect on its phenomenal and directed elements. Self-generated ingredients to experience are produced by the subject as (...) opposed to being received from the world. Some form of stored content is an obvious starting point. Ampliative effects are aspects of perceptual experience that outstrip the content the senses get from the world. This conceptual framework is applied to three case studies: object-sameness and object-kind recognition (section 2), memory colour (section 3), and perceptual constancy and amodal completion (section 4). If the three cases and my overall analysis are accepted (a substantive if), then we have a forceful inductive argument for perception being infused with imagination. (shrink)

This article criticises existing solutions to the 'puzzle of imaginative resistance', reconstrues it, and offers a solution of its own. About the Book : Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts is the first comprehensive collection of papers by philosophers examining the nature of imagination and its role in understanding and making art. Imagination is a central concept in aesthetics with close ties to issues in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language, yet it has not received the kind of (...) sustained, critical attention it deserves. This collection of seventeen brand new essays critically examines just how and in what form the notion of imagination illuminates fundamental problems in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Loosely put, colour constancy for example occurs when you experience a partly shadowed wall to be uniformly coloured, or experience your favourite shirt to be the same colour both with and without sunglasses on. Controversy ensues when one seeks to interpret ‘experience’ in these contexts, for evidence of a constant colour may be indicative a constant colour in the objective world, a judgement that a constant colour would be present were things thus and so, et cetera. My primary aim is (...) to articulate a viable conception of Present Constancy, of what occurs when a constant colour is present in experience, despite the additional presence of some experienced colour variation (e.g., correlating to a change in illumination). My proposed conception involves experienced colour layering – experiencing one opaque colour through another transparent one – and in particular requires one of those experienced layers to remain constant while the other changes. The aim is not to propose this layering conception of colour constancy as the correct interpretation of all constancy cases, but rather to develop the conception enough to demonstrate how it could and plausibly should be applied to various cases, and the virtues it has over rivals. Its virtues include a seamless application to constancy cases involving variations in filters (e.g., sunglasses) and illuminants; its ability to accommodate experiences of partial colours and error-free interpretations of difficult cases; and its broad theoretical-neutrality, allowing it to be incorporated into numerous perceptual epistemologies and ontologies. If layered constancy is prevalent, as I suspect it is, then our experiential access to colours is critically nuanced: we have been plunged into a world of colour without being told that we will rarely, if ever, look to a location and experience just one of them. (shrink)

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

Knowledge of one's own states of mind is one of the varieties of self-knowledge. Do any nonhuman animals have the capacity for this variety of self-knowledge? The question is open to empirical inquiry, which is most often conducted with primate subjects. Research with a bottlenose dolphin gives some evidence for the capacity in a nonprimate taxon. I describe the research and evaluate the metacognitive interpretation of the dolphin's behaviour. The research exhibits some of the difficulties attached to the task of (...) eliciting behaviour that both attracts a higher-order interpretation while also resisting deflationary, lower-order interpretations. Lloyd Morgan's Canon, which prohibits inflationary interpretations of animal behaviour, has influenced many animal psychologists. There is one defensible version of the Canon, the version that warns specifically against unnecessary intentional ascent. The Canon on this interpretation seems at first to tell against a metacognitive interpretation of the data collected in the dolphin study. However, the model of metacognition that is in play in the dolphin studies is a functional model, one that does not implicate intentional ascent. I explore some interpretations of the dolphin's behaviour as metacognitive, in this sense. While this species of metacognitive interpretation breaks the connection with the more familiar theory of mind research using animal subjects, the interpretation also points in an interesting way towards issues concerning consciousness in dolphins. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that forgiveness is a morally appropriate response only when it is grounded in the wrongdoer’s demonstration of genuine remorse, their offer of a sincere apology, and, where appropriate, acts of recompense and behavioral change. I then respond to John Kleinig’s suggestion (in his paper “Forgiveness and Unconditionality”) that when an apology is not forthcoming, there are at least three additional grounds that, when motivated by virtues such as love and compassion, could nevertheless render “unconditional forgiveness” (...) a morally laudable option. I argue that such grounds could indeed constitute or result in laudable responses to wrongdoing, but only if they are not conceived of or described in terms of forgiveness. (shrink)

Constructivism claims to be a postepistemology that replaces 'traditional' concepts of knowledge. Supporters of constructivism have argued that progress requires that pre-service teachers be weaned off traditional approaches and that they should adopt constructivist views of knowledge. Constructivism appears to be gaining ground rapidly and should no longer be viewed as an exercise in radical thinking primarily aimed at generating innovative teaching. It has become an integral part of the pedagogic mainstream. Close examination of the theoretical foundations of constructivism, however, (...) reveals that the basic assumptions of constructivism are flawed. Far from being a postepistemology, constructivism simply regresses to a pre-Renaissance mindset with theology replaced with a psychologism. Constructivists should be aware that the implications of constructivism for future generations may be both profound and non-benign. (shrink)

This paper criticises the current orthodoxy that people who engage with fiction fils are exercising their imagination.

I defend indirect perceptual realism against two recent and related charges to it offered by A. D. Smith and P. Snowdon, both stemming from demonstrative reference involving indirect perception. The needed aspects of the theory of demonstratives are not terribly new, but their connection to these objections has not been discussed. The groundwork for my solution emerges from considering normal cases of indirect perception (e.g., seeing something depicted on a television) and examining the role this indirectness plays in demonstrative assertions. (...) I argue that indirectness routinely if not typically plays a justificatory role in such judgements, and not a semantic one, and that the same can be said of such judgements when considered within the indirect realist framework. The denial of this, on my analysis, is essential to the criticisms of Snowdon and Smith. The discussion is extended to include scenarios involving the sorts of misconceptions Smith employs. (shrink)

Colour Relationalism asserts that colours are non-intrinsic or inherently relational properties of objects, properties that depend not only on a target object but in addition on some relation that object bears to other objects. The most powerful argument for Relationalism infers the inherently relational character of colour from cases in which one’s experience of a colour contextually depends on one’s experience of other colours. Experienced colour layering—say looking at grass through a tinted window and experiencing opaque green through transparent grey—demands (...) a contextual interdependency of one’s experience of one of these colours on one’s experience of the other. However, most if not all colour ontologies, and core perceptual experiential mechanisms like acquaintance and representation, can accommodate colour layering. It follows that experienced colour layering is consistent with colours being non-relational—this contextual interdependency of colours does not entail the constitutive dependency of one colour on the other. I utilize colour layering to examine the inference from the contextual to the constitutive interdependency of colours as it is employed in a well-known argument for Relationalism. I conclude that our justification for Relationalism is far weaker than Relationalists suggest. I first introduce readers to colour layering, then to Relationalism, and following this focus on the intersection of these topics. (shrink)

Intentionalism debates seek to uncover the relationship between the qualitative aspects of experience—phenomenal character—and the intentionality of the mind. They have been at or near center stage in the philosophy of mind for more than two decades, and in my view need to be reexamined. There are two core distinct intentionalism debates that are rarely distinguished (Sect. 1). Additionally, the characterization of spectrum inversion as involving inverted qualities and constant intentional content is mistaken (Sect. 3). These confusions can be witnessed (...) from an often-ignored and lonely perspective, that of the sense-datum theorist, and in particular of the projectivist (Sect. 2). In my view we have been so wary of sense-datum theory in recent years that we have failed to see that, even if false, it may permit perspectives on intentionalism issues difficult to occupy from other views. (shrink)

Debates about the concept of mental disorder involve social values, the medical model, and the sciences. It is generally agreed that the concept involves values, though how it does this continues to be disputed, and it is also recognized that the label of mental disorder or illness is stigmatizing. Wakefield's proposed definition of mental disorder in terms of harmful dysfunction locates the concept in an evolutionary theoretic framework. However, recent commentaries on Wakefield's analysis have suggested that research programs in evolutionary (...) biology and psychology envisage a broader class of "treatable conditions" that may involve no dysfunction, and hence no disorder in this sense. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. Why has the examination of many different aspects of colour been a prominent feature in philosophy, to such an extent that the topic is worthy of a handbook? Here are two related answers. First, colours are exceedingly familiar, seemingly simple features that become enigmatic under scrutiny, and they are difficult to capture in any familiar-sounding, unsophisticated theory. Second, through colour one can confront various problems that span the (...) breadth of philosophy, including problems pertaining to perception, the mind-body relation, the nature of science, scepticism, vagueness, meta-ethics, and aesthetics. In this introduction we elaborate and guide the reader to the essays in the rest of this volume. (shrink)

Projectivism is the thesis that we project at least some subjective aspects of perception into what we experience as the world outside ourselves. It is familiar from various phantom pains, afterimages, and hallucinations. Strong Projectivism asserts that all perceptual experiences involve and only involve direct awareness of projected elements. Strong Projectivism is an unpopular and I argue underappreciated variety of intentionalism (or representationalism). It straightforwardly explains the transparency of experience (section 2) and phenomena qualia theorists offer to avoid intentionalism such (...) as blurry vision and spectrum inversion (section 3). Finally, projectivism illuminates residual qualia-friendly cases involving imagination and emotion (section 4). Ultimately, instances of non-projected, non-intentional aspects of experience are hard to identify. Thus, the notion of phenomenal presence drawn from projectivism does justice to a great many of the forces at play in debates surrounding qualia and intentionalism. We should bound toward Strong Projectivism. (shrink)

Indirect realists maintain that our perceptions of the external world are mediated by our 'perceptions' of subjective intermediaries such as sensations. Multiple reference occurs when a word or an instance of it has more than one reference. I argue that, because indirect realists hold that speakers typically and unknowingly directly perceive something subjective and indirectly perceive something objective, the phenomenon of multiple reference is an important resource for their view. In particular, a challenge that A. D. Smith has recently put (...) forward for indirect realists can be overcome by appreciating how multiple reference is likely to arise when a projectivist variety of indirect realism is interpreted by speakers adhering to a naïve direct realism. (shrink)

Manipulations that draw attention to extensional or set-based considerations are neither sufficient nor necessary for enhanced use of base rates in intuitive judgments. Frequency formats are only one part of the puzzle of base-rate use and neglect. The conditions under which these and other manipulations promote base-rate use may be more parsimoniously organized under the broader notion of case-based judgment.

We perceive the objective world through a subjective perceptual veil. Various perceived properties, particularly “secondary qualities” like colours and tastes, are mind-dependent. Although mind-dependent, our knowledge of many facts about the perceptual veil is immediate and secure. These are well-known facets of sense-datum theory. My aim is to carve out a conception of sense-datum theory that does not require the immediate and secure knowledge of a wealth of facts about experienced sense-data (§1). Such a theory is of value on its (...) own, given well-known challenges to epistemic foundationalism. Beyond this such a theory helps demonstrate how sense-datum theory can accommodate challenging perceptual phenomena like shape and size constancies (§3). These ideas are bridged by the roots of perceptual ambiguity (§2). In brief, tapering acquaintance knowledge creates space for perceptual representation to resolve the ambiguities in presented objects seemingly inherent in scenarios involving perceptual constancies. Thus, I offer a two-factor (acquaintance-representation) sense-datum theory to meet the challenge posed by constancies. Following Smith (2002), from whom this challenge is drawn, my focus is on shape and size constancies. Other constancies, notably colour constancy, are treated elsewhere (Brown 2014). (shrink)

About the book: One of the issues underlying current debates between practitioners of art history, visual culture and aesthetics is whether the visual is a unique, irreducible category, or whether it can be assimilated with the textual or verbal without any significant loss. Can paintings, buildings or installations be 'read' in the way texts are read or deciphered, or do works of visual art ask for their own kind of appreciation? This is not only a question of choosing the right (...) method in dealing with visual works of art, but also an issue that touches on the roots of the disciplines involved: can a case be made for the visual as an irreducible category of art, and if so, how is it best studied and appreciated? In this anthology, this question is approached from the angles of three disciplines: aesthetics, visual culture and art history. Unlike many existing overviews of visual culture studies, it includes both painting and architecture, and investigates historical ways of defining and appreciating the visual in their own, contemporary terms. Dealing with the Visual will be of great use to advanced students because it offers an overview of current debates, and to graduate students and professionals in the field because the essays offer in-depth investigations of the methodological issues involved and various historical ways of defining visuality. The topics included range from early modern ways of viewing pictures and sixteenth-century views of Palladio's villas in their landscape settings to contemporary debate about whether there is life yet in painting. (shrink)

This paper considers the account of the content of pictures provided by T.J. Clark. It concludes that Clark's account has many virtues, but is marred by an unjustified commitment to semiotics and to an untenable Marxist theory of explanation.

It is hard not to sympathise with Professor Honderich's starting point. It is easy to feel pessimistic about philosophy's ability to throw light on the nature of consciousness. What, then, to do? One option is to persist with the various current approaches. It is clear that Honderich thinks this would be akin to putting more effort into trying to work out the temporal priority of the chicken and the egg. The thought of the orthodox is that an account of consciousness (...) is going to be either fundamentally materialist or fundamentally dualist. The first of these is untenable as consciousness has other or more than neural properties. The second is untenable for various reasons, Honderich's favoured one being that it renders consciousness as out of space and of a mysterious nature. A second option would be to follow Colin McGinn's lead, and think that the problem is of such a nature that it is necessarily unsolvable (McGinn, 1989). Alternatively, we should be more radical and think creatively, not necessarily respecting our current conceptual boundaries between the mental and the physical, the inside and the outside. The solution, Honderich says, lies in the thought that `my consciousness now consists in the existence of a world' (Honderich, 2004, p. 130). I shall say a little about what I understand by this claim, by raising what I take to be three obvious questions, looking at Honderich's answers them, and inviting some further clarification. Throughout I will address only the question of perceptual consciousness. (shrink)

The recent exhibition at the Hayward must surely have prompted anyone who paid £5 to see it to ask whether some of what they were being shown was worth looking at. This is not simply the 'But is it art?' question all over again, but something more specific. do we have a reason to _see_ these things, as opposed to hearing about them, reading about them or appreciating them in some other way? One would expect the answer to be 'yes'. (...) Art, like malt whisky, is made to be experienced. That is, one can look forward to it, talk about it, collect it, buy it or sell it but ultimately what gives its existence point is that it provides a worthwhile experience for people who try it. There would be no point in making malt whisky just to put vitriol into it and there would seem to be no point in exhibiting works of art which are not worth looking at. (shrink)

This article is an elaboration and extension of an earlier article concerned with guilt and morality in the modern age. The focus is on two general issues arising from what was presented there. First, there is an attempt to explicate the conception of human agency underlying the emphasis on individual responsibility in the original essay. Second, there is a critical examination of the moral relativism position so common in the contemporary world. Both the shrinking conception of human agency and responsibility (...) and the growing acceptance of moral relativism are strongly criticized, and it is concluded that a rationally-based morality must be defended against those many persons today for whom anything goes in the realm of human behavior. (shrink)

At first pass, colour constancy occurs when one sees a thing in one’s environment to have a stable colour despite differences in the way it is illuminated. The phenomenon is intuitively grounded for example in everyday experiences in which something is partly shadowed but, in some sense, looks to be uniformly coloured. After a brief introduction to the colour constancy concept (§0) and the science of colour constancy (§1), my focus is on the significance of colour constancy for two intertwined (...) philosophical issues. The first is colour ontology, where constancy has been used to argue for the objectivity of colour, and in particular for a reductive form of it (see §2). The second is colour constancy’s complicated connection to colour experience and colour epistemology. Colour constancy is a subtle phenomenon: it is situated at the intersection of perceptual experience and judgement; it is influenced by myriad forces within our visual-cognitive systems; and is likely a composite of interestingly disparate phenomena. I approach this suite of issues from the perspective of the given in colour perception (§3). As will become plain, the ontological and epistemic issues are related in important ways. This does not, however, detract from the value of focusing on each individually. (shrink)

Colour variation is the fact that what colour physical objects look to have depends on viewing conditions and a perceiver’s visual system. Both Colour Relationalists and Colour Eliminativists regard their analyses of colour variation as central to the justification for their respective views. Yet the analyses are decidedly different. Colour Relationalists assert that most instances of colour variation are veridical and infer from this that colours are relational properties of objects that are partly determined by perceivers. By contrast, Colour Eliminativists (...) assert that colour variation is too unsystematic to ground the claim that many or most instances of colour variation are veridical. From this they infer that objects don’t have colours. I argue that the Eliminativist analysis is superior. On my view, the Relationalist account of veridical colour experience reduces to the assertion that objects have colour simply because they cause perceivers to have colour experiences of them. In this context, I argue, the resulting conception of veridicality is vacuous. More directly, the foundational idea of Eliminativism is the opposite claim: the fact that objects cause perceivers to have colour experiences of them is on its own not sufficient to justify or ground the claim that objects have colour. The Relationalist, I argue, has failed to justify anything stronger than this. In this debate we should thus side with the Eliminativist: objects do not possess colour; they merely cause us to undergo colour experiences. (shrink)

Studying colour vision across various species suggests that different species perceive different colours (the Disunity Hypothesis). It is plausible that all species’ color visual systems are, at least in principle, equally correct/veridical regarding colour (Ecumenicism). Assuming that colours are mind-independent features of material objects (Objectivism), it follows that objects simultaneously have different colours for different species (Pluralism). But are all these colours compatible with one another? Some have argued that they are on grounds that, while comparisons between colours are possible (...) within a given species’ colour space, they are not possible across the colour spaces of different species. Since colours from different spaces are not comparable, they cannot be incompatible. Hence, a given object can have a colour from as many colour spaces as needed to explain interspecies variations in colour perception. I argue that this reasoning is flawed in two ways. First, colour spaces that are non-comparable in pure or abstract reasoning, may nonetheless be comparable in applied contexts. Second, in our applied context – our world – evidence suggests that incompatibilities between colours from different species’ spaces are extremely likely when Colour Objectivism is presumed. But then the Pluralist solution to interspecies variation seems unavailable to the colour objectivist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Better to Have No Deep Cut Anywhere in the Biopsychosocial SystemDerek Bolton, PhD (bio)It is very good to see theoretical work on the biopsychosocial model, acknowledging the causal role of these three kinds of factors in health and disease. I think Ongaro is right to argue that the biopsychosocial model requires an account of these three also being one—integrated—and that systems theoretic concepts such as dynamic, nonlinear causation are (...) helpful for capturing this. In a recent paper (Bolton, 2023) I have described Engel’s original (1997) paper as visionary but programmatic: visionary in seeing radical theory change afoot, citing von Bertalanffy’s new general system theory, but programmatic because the changes had not happened. The systems theoretic approach applies across the life, behavioral and social sciences, and typically envisages multiple interacting systems and causal pathways, including feedback and feedforward mechanisms, within and between systems. However, linear mechanisms are less complicated to research, and early social epidemiology used standard linear regression models (e.g., see the Whitehall II study [Marmot et al., 1991]). Such models do not capture non-linear connections in which the dependent variable also functions over time as an independent variable. However, the background theory typically would not exclude nonlinear dynamic causation, but on the contrary envisages it. Lower social status raises risk of ill health in a linear model, but it is also a plausible hypothesis that ill health in turn raises risk of lowering social status, which is testable in another or in a composite linear model. As well as social epidemiology, another large-scale theory change was underway at the time Engel wrote, the so-called cognitive revolution in psychology. Axiomatic in this shift was the idea that behavior is a response to the environment as perceived, thus merging the psychological/behavioral with the environmental, including the social. This latter point bears on Ongaro’s main proposal that the biopsychosocial model should envisage social causes as externalist, distinguished from the bio-psychological orientation of current psychiatry—and will be picked up below.Paper 2 makes some bold claims about the positive therapeutic value of construing causes [End Page 321] of mental health problems in external terms that have shared social meaning. These claims are made for functional neurological problems, but with extension to other kinds, in relation to a culture in which the shared social meanings refer to spirit possession, which, as a general type, is found in many non-modern Western cultures, as well as now, in our globalized world, in subcultures worldwide. One of the author’s claims is that within the spirit possession framework the shared framework of external causes enables society to adapt to the problem of living, to make it manageable, by shifting the social environment around the patient. As appropriate for ethnomethodology, there is no reference to controlled studies of outcome or mechanisms and I follow this immersed observational methodology here, with an experiential story that illustrates absence of personal and social acceptance and manageability of problematic conditions. While wandering recently with a friend in the mountains in the northern part of Africa, the local guide, in conversation in the local language and in English, having found out that two of us worked in “psychiatry/psychology,” asked us what we knew about; our brief reply included “obsessive-compulsive disorder” (OCD) and “anxiety”; the guide responded by asking whether OCD was washing hands a lot, and then wanted to discuss with us two people he knew well. One was a relation engaged, since many years, for many hours a day washing and cleaning, avoiding many daily tasks, sometimes childcare; friends and wider kinship structures had tried everything, except modern Western psychiatry (which was unavailable anyway), and, to put it briefly and colloquially, they were not at all happy about the person’s state and wished the person would get better. This person lived at a distance and we could not see them, so we do not know their view, but to judge by people with definite or probable OCD that we are familiar with, they may or may not have been happy in their reclusive state. Also to mention that the local healer had investigated... (shrink)

Gramsci recognised the inestimable historical contribution of Muslim and Arab civilisations, writing on these in his newspaper articles, his pre-prison letters and the Prison Notebooks. The Islamic world contemporary with him was largely rural, with the masses heavily influenced by religion, analogous in some ways to Italy whose economy was still largely oriented towards a peasantry among whom the Vatican played a leading role. In addition to factors such as the politics-religion nexus, what Gramsci was also analysing, without saying as (...) much explicitly, was the upheaval caused by the disintegration and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, and the inter-imperialist rivalries over the spoils and the construction of new states from its ruins. Here he draws attention to the first hesitant and contradictory anticolonial stances being adopted among the traditional leaders, as well recognising the basis for more popularly-based movements. In both Catholic countries and, as Gramsci knew especially from the experience of his Comintern work, in parts of the Muslim world, these movements could at times assume a left and politically radical orientation. What emerges is a picture of conflicting hegemonies involving principally religion, class, the political ambivalence of many religious leaders, and a burgeoning nationalism contraposed to the supra-nationalist claims of religion. But the factor underlying everything is the potential of the masses who, if awakened from torpor and detached from European colonialism, were judged capable of rupturing previous imperially-determined equilibria. (shrink)

This book looks at what it means to be wronged, and why we react to wrongdoing in ways that can cause us more suffering and pain. An alternative approach called 'restorative justice' is proposed as a safe and effective way of avoiding these reactions whilst honouring our values and our common humanity.

Jerry Fodor divides the mind into peripheral, domain-specific modules and a domaingeneral faculty of central cognition. John Tooby and Lisa Cosmides argue instead that the mind is modular all the way through; cognition consists of a multitude of domain-specific processes. But human thought has a flexible, innovative character that contrasts with the inflexible, stereotyped performances of modular systems. My goal is to discover how minds that are constructed on modular principles might come to exhibit cognitive versatility.Cognitive versatility is exhibited in (...) the ability to learn from experience. How can this ability emerge from the resources made available by earlier stages of cognitive specialization without sacrificing the many benefits of modularization? A transition into versatile cognition occurred in the history of our species. A similar development which occurs within individual ontogeny provides clues about the phylogenetic changes. (shrink)

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the terms (...) "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author. (shrink)

Derek Parfit presents the third volume of On What Matters, his landmark work of moral philosophy. Parfit develops further his influential treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. He engages with his critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences.

This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.