The article provides a conceptualization of self(-illness) ambiguity and investigates to what extent self(-illness) ambiguity is ‘special’. First, we draw on empirical findings to argue that self-ambiguity is a ubiquitous phenomenon. We suggest that these findings are best explained by a multidimensional account, according to which selves consist of various dimensions that mutually affect each other. On such an account, any change to any particular self-aspect may change other self-aspects and thereby alter the overall structural pattern of self-aspects, potentially leading (...) to self-ambiguity. Second, we propose that self-ambiguity comes in degrees and should be understood as a spectrum (as opposed to there being qualitative differences among instances of self-ambiguity). Third, we argue that complexity is the most useful dimension to organize cases of self-ambiguity, with mundane instances of self-ambiguity on the one end and self-illness ambiguity on the other end of the spectrum. Fourth, we address the promises and perils of narrativity with regard to self-ambiguity. Finally, we link our deflationary account of self(-illness) ambiguity to pattern theories of self. (shrink)

This paper examines pain and pain relief in the Caribbean, where pain is widely perceived as an unavoidable part of life, and where unnecessary suffering results from untreated and under treated pain. Barriers to pain relief in the Caribbean include patient and family attitudes, inadequate knowledge among health professionals and unduly restrictive regulations on the medical use of opioids. Similar barriers exist all over the world. This paper urges medical, nursing and public health professionals, and educators to examine attitudes towards (...) pain and pain relief and to work towards making effective pain relief and palliation more accessible. It recommends that i) health professionals and officials be better educated about pain, palliation and opioids, ii) regulatory restrictions be updated in light of clinical and scientific evidence, iii) opioid procurement policies be adjusted to facilitate increased medical use, iv) medical charts and records be modified to routinely elicit and document patients levels of pain, and v) educational campaigns be developed to inform the public that moderate and severe pain can be safely relieved at the end of life and other stages of life. The professional, respectful, and beneficent response to patients in pain is to provide rapid and aggressive pain relief or to urgently consult a pain or palliative specialist. When a health system hinders such efforts the ethical response is to identify, facilitate and advocate for overcoming barriers to improvement. (shrink)

The poster boy for my paper is the King's Messenger in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Recall that since the White Queen lives backwards, her memory works forwards. She pities Alice who can only remember things after they happen. Alice asks which things the Queen remembers best: `Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. `For instance, . . . there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial (...) doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.' (Chapter V) Is the King's Messenger being treated unjustly? Why not prepunish people for their future crimes? True, it is generally easier to have knowledge about past crimes than future crimes. But is unpredictability the only problem with prepunishment? (shrink)

Free will can be understood as a novel form of action control that evolved to meet the escalating demands of human social life, including moral action and pursuit of enlightened self-interest in a cultural context. That understanding is conducive to scientific research, which is reviewed here in support of four hypotheses. First, laypersons tend to believe in free will. Second, that belief has behavioral consequences, including increases in socially and culturally desirable acts. Third, laypersons can reliably distinguish free actions from (...) less free ones. Fourth, actions judged as free emerge from a distinctive set of inner processes, all of which share a common psychological and physiological signature. These inner processes include self-control, rational choice, planning, and initiative. (shrink)

But a winner must supply a nonevasive picture with no limit on potential detail--a purely imagistic depiction that does not rely on a mere description of an impossibility. There are logical minded philosophers from David Hume to Saul Kripke who think the prize cannot be won: What is conceivable is possible and whatever is depicted is thereby conceived, therefore, impossibilities cannot be depicted. Yet there is a rich aesthetics of inconsistency, best known through M. C. Escher. So I proceed with (...) the fine print for the competition. (shrink)

While Louis-Marie Chauvet’s (1942-) theology has been widely commented upon, relatively few commentators have critically engaged Chauvet as a fundamental theologian, particularly evaluating the ‘working-through’ of ontotheology he proposes. In approaching this, I will ask whether and how suffering has a role in this process, for, if ontotheological ways of thought are something nearly innate to human beings, then it seems likely that ‘working through’ them would be a painful process involving some existential suffering. In order to accomplish this, I (...) will be utilising insights of the relatively uncommented upon American philosopher Jerome A. Miller, who has written of how suffering through the loss of our false self-image is the way towards authentic humanity and transcendence. Moreover, I think Miller’s ‘pedagogy of suffering’ provides a means of connecting Chauvet’s project to a wider context of human experience rather than limiting the realm of ‘working-through’ to the liturgical realm. However, it is Chauvet’s notion of the ethical liturgy of the neighbour which also prevents Miller’s phenomenological analysis from remaining overly abstract. Ultimately, then, this article represents a unique engagement with Chauvet’s theology in dialogue with Miller’s philosophy, which has implications for sacramental and fundamental theology, as well as pastoral practice. (shrink)

In their target article, Moore and colleagues offer a valuable overview of the various ambivalence-related phenomena that may impede swift clinical decision-making. They argue that patients...

This book has a twofold purpose: the first is to trace the development of cosmology, the study of the universe, and the second is to demonstrate the limitation of science. Dr. Peacock questions the idea that the universe is infinite, showing that science can answer the hows of the universe, but not the whys.

As Malinowsky states, myth is closely related to rite, presenting the social and moral values that rite asserts in each cyclical repetition. Rite marks the threshold between the sacred and profane, allowing access to myth as an art form, as a narrative expression both of the sacred – in the extension of meaning Emile Durkheim introduced with the term ‘collective consciousness’ – and of the ‘collective unconscious’ as Jung defined it. If it is true that the rite of passage to (...) the adult world, the initiation rite, is one of the most archaic rites in aiming to protect society against the risk of cultural innovation inherent in the younger generations, then it is legitimate to ask what our new myths are regarding education. When technology accelerates the mechanisms eroding collective memory, which rites renew educational myths in everyday practice? When technology dematerializes the devices on which rite and its inherent techniques of control are based, what new forms does mythological narration assume? What roles do new media play in creating a direct channel between the collective consciousness and individual experience, between the nervous system and our environment, enveloping individuals in the telematic embrace Roy Ascott described in 2003, and which not only explains the concept of the Global Village that Marshall McLuhan introduced in 1966, but also delineates the space – time of students in contemporary learning processes? Reading the contemporary educational system through the lens of myth and rite, where new technologies play a central role, allows us to follow a path that traces the progressive impact of media on cognitive processes from the initial emergence of the concept ‘collective consciousness’ onwards, and that offers one of the most interesting interpretations of the ‘open school’ experience in Derrick de Kerkhove’s concept of ‘connective intelligence’ (analysed in my Ph.D. thesis). But myth also allows us to observe those cracks, breaks and discontinuities that mark the places in which contemporary knowledge is created, which is why we find Nietzsche (who dedicated much of his work to myth), Michel Foucault and Ivan Illich at the centre of International Debate on Education for the last decade due to their critical approach to institutions. (shrink)

Saul Kripke’s theory of truth suffers from expressive limitations – in particular, there are no extensional operators within that framework that allow one to characterize those sentences that fail to receive a truth value within the framework. Especially worrisome is the fact that there is no operator that outputs true on exactly the paradoxical sentences. In this paper I extend Kripke’s approach via the addition of extensional operators, which allows us to characterize many (but not all) such sentences, including the (...) paradoxical ones. (shrink)

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes -- ah, that is where the art resides." -- Artur Schabel..

Though dividing one’s attention between two input streams typically impairs performance, detecting a behaviorally relevant stimulus can sometimes enhance the encoding of unrelated information presented at the same time. Previous research has shown that selection of this kind boosts visual cortical activity and memory for concurrent items. An important unanswered question is whether such effects are reflected in processing quality and functional connectivity in visual regions and in the hippocampus. In this fMRI study, participants were asked to memorize a stream (...) of naturalistic images and press a button only when they heard a predefined target tone. Images could be presented with a target tone, with a distractor tone, or without a tone. Auditory target detection increased activity throughout the ventral visual cortex but lowered it in the hippocampus. Enhancements in functional connectivity between the ventral visual cortex and the hippocampus were also observed following auditory targets. Multi-voxel pattern classification of image category was more accurate on target tone trials than on distractor and no tone trials in the fusiform gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus. This effect was stronger in visual cortical clusters whose activity was more correlated with the hippocampus on target tone than on distractor tone trials. In agreement with accounts suggesting that subcortical noradrenergic influences play a role in the attentional boost effect, auditory target detection also caused an increase in locus coeruleus activity and phasic pupil responses. These findings outline a network of cortical and subcortical regions that are involved in the selection and processing of information presented at behaviorally relevant moments. (shrink)

The vanishing point is a representational gap that organizes the visual field. Study of this singularity revolutionized art in the fifteenth century. Further reflection on the vanishing point invites the conjecture that the self is an absence. This paper opens with perceptual peculiarities of the vanishing point and closes with the metaphysics of personal identity.

The complexity of aII 4 set of natural numbers is encoded into a linear order to show that the finite condensation of a recursive linear order can beII 2–II 1. A priority argument establishes the same result, and is extended to a complete classification of finite condensations iterated finitely many times.

What I propose to do in the present paper is to clarify critical realism on some crucial points. While such is my primary purpose, I also entertain the hope that logical positivists and pragmatists may be led to see in this form of realism a necessary supplementation to their emphases and insights. I am persuaded that there has been misunderstanding and prejudice at work partly because of verbal phobias in connection with such phrases as the copy-theory, representative perception, transcendence, the (...) subjective, Cartesian dualism, etc., etc. So strong have these accumulated prejudices been that, in America at least, there has been a tendency to outlaw epistemology. I do not find the same situation in England for instance. Here it seems at times as though pragmatism and positivism have consciously “ganged up” against epistemology—in my opinion to the hurt of philosophy. I have the impression that the younger philosophers in America are bewildered and are largely drifting. Under these conditions it is the duty of any one who believes that he has a clear-cut epistemology capable of rising above these verbal phobias to seek to present it as precisely as possible. (shrink)