In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens gives us an account of Mrs. Gargery going into a rage that is as remarkable for its brevity as for its insight. ‘I must remark of my sister,’ says Pip, ‘that passion was no excuse for her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages.’1 What is remarkable about this passage is its descriptive richness, (...) that way it shows how many of our emotional reactions involve something more than spontaneity in their actual performance. All this we glean readily and grasp as true from being with others; the genius of Dickens is to carry what is so close to us unto the page. I suspect that in his own wry manner, Husserl too would have liked this passage. He held out for a method of describing concrete lived phenomena that would neither underinterpret nor over-interpret. Such a description would avoid the twin and complementary sins of stripping meaning away from the appearances and putting strangeness into them. Presupposing too little is just as erroneous as too much, and Husserl was acutely aware that ‘in the apprehension of a man very much is already included.’2 When the descriptive imperative is to the fore, Husserl’s studies of the other are notable for their rejection of psychophysical dualism. But when the Cartesian exclusion of contingent certainty triumphs, he adopts a methodological dualism that decomposes the ordinary and unitary experience of the Other. The criticisms of his Cartesian derivation the Other are by now quite familiar, and I will only rehearse them where they intersect with the main theses of this paper. What I would first like to establish is that Husserl’s Cartesian approach to the Other - beginning in Logical Investigations and culminating in the derivation of the alter ego from the monadic sphere of ownness - clashes with the account of bracketing and reduction in Ideas I.. (shrink)

The article explores some neglected aspects of Kierkegaard's view on Ethics. The author of the article takes into account that the well-known view of ethics provided in Either-Or ii is suspended by the time Kierkegaard publishes Fear and Trembling. Nevertheless, the aim of this article is precisely to show that things are not that simple. The author begins with the view of ethics embedded in The Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and then takes up a more wide-angle view linked to Kierkegaard's notion (...) of the Sublime, which uncovers a passionate motion toward ethics as what one is and can be. The view focused by Subjectivity" is followed by the view focused by The Sublime and Perfectionism. /// O presente artigo explora alguns dos aspectos mais negligenciados nos estudos acerca da visão kierkegaardiana da Ética O autor do artigo toma em consideração o facto de que a perspectiva sobre a vida ética proposta por Kierkegaard na segunda parte da obra Alternativa parece estar já superada no momento em que Kierkegaard publica Temor e Tremor. Apesar disso, objectivo do artigo é precisamente mostrar que as coisas não são assim tão simples. O autor começa com a visão da Ética proposta na obra Post-Scriptum, avançando uma perspectiva mais ampla do ético associada com a noção kierkegaardiana de Sublime, noção essa que desvela um movimento apaixonado para a Ética entendida como aquilo que se é e que se pode vir a ser. Nesse sentido, a perspectiva do ético focalizada na noção de Subjectividade é seguida pela perspectiva focalizada nas noções de Sublime e de Perfeccionismo. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s explication of concrete or practical movement by way of the Schneider case could be read as ending up close to automatism, neglecting its flexibility and plasticity in the face of obstacles. It can be contended that he already goes off course in his explication of Schneider’s condition. Rasmus Jensen has argued that he assimilates a normal person’s motor intentionality to the patient’s, thereby generating a vacuity problem. I argue that Schneider’s difficulties with certain movements point to a means of (...) broadening Merleau-Ponty’s account of concrete movement, one that he broaches without exploiting. What could do more work is his recognition of a transposition capacity - and hence of a plasticity - in the healthy body’s skill schema. As well as avoiding vacuity, he could forestall the appearance of a dichotomy between practical coping and creativity. (shrink)

Perched on the ramparts of Volterra last July, I gaze over i dolci colli toscani, the sweet hills of Tuscany, drenched in summer sun. Warm, content and at peace, I am bemused at how much at home I feel in this strange land. I have felt this way since 1991 when I returned for the first time to la bell' Italia thirty-seven years after having lived in Rome as a young child in a Foreign Service family. In its sensuous (...) beauty and riotous disorder, Rome was stunning. My wife Eileen and I explored old childhood haunts, including the Embassy apartment residences on viale villa Graziole where my family had lived for four years in Rome—two consecutive two-year posts—in the 1950s. Memory cells exploding, I was assailed by vivid images from childhood. Once when I was five or six, my brother David and I accompanied our housemaid Marcella to her simple country home and joined villagers in the fields as they all turned out—men, women, and children—to harvest the bean crop. As dusk set in, fires were lit, simple musical instruments appeared with the wine, and the feasting and dancing began. Bonfires were soon aglow for miles up and down the sweet rolling hills. (shrink)

Kit Fine and Gideon Rosen propose to define constitutive essence in terms of ground-theoretic notions and some form of consequential essence. But we think that the Fine–Rosen proposal is a mistake. On the Fine–Rosen proposal, constitutive essence ends up including properties that, on the central notion of essence (what Fine calls ‘the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity’), are necessary but not essential. This is because consequential essence is (roughly) closed under logical consequence, (...) and the ability of logical consequence to add properties to an object’s consequential essence outstrips the ability of ground-theoretic notions, as used in the Fine–Rosen proposal, to take those properties out. The necessary-but-not-essential properties that, on the Fine–Rosen proposal, end up in constitutive essence include the sorts of necessary-but-not-essential properties that, others have noted, end up in consequential essence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One simple but relatively neglected solution to the notorious coincidence puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay claims that the property of being a statue is a phase sortal property that the piece of clay instantiates temporarily. I defend this view against some standard objections, by reinforcing it with a novel counterpart-theoretic account of identity under a sortal. This proposal does not require colocation, four-dimensionalism, eliminativism, deflationism, or unorthodox theses about classical identity.

Background: Moral distress is an important and well-studied phenomenon among nurses and other healthcare providers, yet the conceptualization of parental moral distress remains unclear. Objective: The objective of this dimensional analysis was to describe the nature of family moral distress in serious pediatric illness. Design and methods: A dimensional analysis of articles retrieved from a librarian-assisted systematic review of Scopus, CINAHL, and PsychInfo was conducted, focusing on how children, parents, other family members, and healthcare providers describe parental moral distress, both (...) explicitly through writings on parental moral experience and implicitly through writings on parental involvement in distressing aspects of the child’s serious illness. Ethical considerations: To promote child and family best interest and minimize harm, a nuanced understanding of the moral, existential, emotional, and spiritual impact of serious pediatric illness is needed. The cases used in this dimensional analysis come from the first author’s IRB approved study at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and subsequent published studies; or have been adapted from the literature and the authors’ clinical experiences. Findings: Three dimensions emerged from the literature surrounding parent moral distress: an intrapersonal dimension, an interpersonal dimension, and a spiritual/existential dimension. The overarching theme is that parents experience relational solace and distress because of the impact of their child’s illness on relationships with themselves, their children, family, healthcare providers, their surrounding communities, and society. Discussion: Elucidating this concept can help nurses and other professionals understand, mitigate, or eliminate antecedents to parental moral distress. We discuss how this model can facilitate future empirical and conceptual bioethics research, as well as inform the manner in which healthcare providers engage, collaborate with, and care for families during serious pediatric illness. Conclusion: Parent moral distress is an important and complex phenomenon that requires further theoretical and empirical investigation. We provide an integrated definition and dimensional schematic model that may serve as a starting point for future research and dialogue. (shrink)

This is an advanced introduction to and original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's greatest work, Phenomenology of Perception. Timothy Mooney provides a clear and compelling exposition of the theory of our projective being in the world, and demonstrates as never before the centrality of the body schema in the theory. Thanks to the schema's motor intentionality our bodies inhabit and appropriate space: our postures and perceptual fields are organised schematically when we move to realise our projects. Thus our lived bodies are (...) ineliminably expressive in being both animated and outcome oriented through-and-through. Mooney also analyses the place of the work in the modern philosophical world, showing what Merleau-Ponty takes up from the Kantian and Phenomenological traditions and what he contributes to each. Casting a fresh light on his magnum opus, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the philosophy and phenomenology of the body. (shrink)

Stringent non-consequentialist constraints on permitting horrendous evils pose a formidable challenge to the project of theodicy by limiting the ways in which it is permissible for God to do or allow evil for the sake of bringing about a greater good. I formulate a general and potent argument against all greater-good theodicies from the existence of robust side constraints on permitting evil. Then I contend that the argument fails. I begin by distinguishing between side constraints on doing evil and side (...) constraints on allowing evil, and then I draw on the work of David Lewis and Fiona Woollard to argue that, because of the unique ways that God is related to the world, it is plausible that God can both create and sustain our universe, despite all of its evils, without violating any of these constraints. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the criteria of identity over time for ordinary objects entail that such objects are permanent members of certain sortal kinds. The sortal kinds in question have come to be known as substance sortal kinds. But in this article, I defend a criterion of identity that is suited to phasalism, the view that alleged substance sortals are in fact phase sortals. The criterion I defend is a sortal‐weighted version of a change‐minimizing criterion first discussed by Eli Hirsch. (...) I present this criterion and then argue that it withstands attempts to show that it is inferior to non‐phasalist rivals. (shrink)

The phasalist solution to the puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay claims that being a statue is a phase sortal property of the piece of clay, just like being a child is a phase sortal property of a human being. Some philosophers reject this solution because it cannot account for cases where the statue seems to gain and lose parts that the piece of clay does not. I rebut this objection by arguing, contrary to the prevailing view, (...) that the piece of clay is not mereologically constant and might even be highly mereologically flexible. (shrink)

This paper takes meals, rather than food itself, as its focus. Meals incorporate the project of nutrition into human life, but it is a contingent matter that we nourish ourselves in this way. This paper defends the importance of meals as meaning-makers and contrasts them with art in that regard. Meals and art represent interestingly different extremes with respect to how needs for meaning are met. Artworks ask for coordination of experience, understanding and appreciation: the meaning of art is to (...) be experienced. The meaning of meals is enacted and accumulates collectively, but need not be experienced. (shrink)

When Merleau-Ponty writes about belief in the Christian God, he does not explicate the belief phenomenologically, whilst accepting Husserl’s claim that God cannot perceive panoptically or access human consciousness fully. For the later Merleau-Ponty the Christian idea of God incarnate does not separate the absolute from existence, and God is found wherever we gather in his name and ameliorate suffering. Yet Christianity remains haunted by the threat of acosmism, or the collapse of the real world into the divinity. I respond (...) that believers are not concerned by full access to their first-person states. What is important is the way we are accessed. When we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s later conception of God, I contend that it draws on the resources of the Christian tradition it disavows and is open to a Nietzschean critique. Just as importantly it neglects the phenomenon of motivation. I suggest that William James does much to set out a first-person phenomenology of an inspirational belief in God that Merleau-Ponty neglects. (shrink)

Tracing a path through Kierkegaard's writings, this book brings the reader into contact with various texts and purposes of this remarkable 19th century Danish writer and thinker. It sketches Kierkegaard's unfolding polyphonic humanistic self before embarking on a thematic tour of five of Kierkegaard's major texts. Tracing a path through Kierkegaard's writings, this book brings the reader into close contact with various texts and purposes of this remarkable 19th century Danish writer and thinker. Kierkegaard writes in a number of voices (...) and registers of concern, sometimes as a sharp observer and critic of Danish culture, at times as a moral psychologist and sometimes Kierkegaard's main concern is the evocation of a religious way of life. These multi fold concerns are close to contemporary struggles to understand self and self-development, the interweaving of spiritual concerns with the fabric of everyday life, the fragility of self and the openness of the human to artistic, moral, and religious modes of expression, in moments of insight and conflict. In developing these themes, Mooney sketches what he calls Kierkegaard's unfolding polyphonic humanistic self before embarking on a thematic tour of five of Kierkegaard's major texts, "Either/Or through Discourses" conveying throughout, a sympathy with much of Kierkegaard's accomplishments. (shrink)

The application of constructivism to “nature” and “wilderness” is intellectually and politically objectionable. Despite a proclivity for examining the social underpinnings of representations, constructivists do not deconstruct their own rhetoric and assumptions; nor do they consider what socio-historical conditions support their perspective. Constructivists employ skewed metaphors to describe knowledge production about nature as though the loaded language use of constructivism is straightforward and neutral. They also implicitly rely on a humanist perspective about knowledge creation that privileges the cognitive sovereignty of (...) human subject over nature. Politically, the constructivist approach fails to take the scientific documentation of the biodiversity crisis seriously; it diverts attention toward discourses about the environmental predicament, rather than examining that predicament itself; and it indirectly cashes in on, and thus supports, human colonization of the Earth. (shrink)

Do poems provide “scripts” for reader’s thoughts? Kendall Walton’s account of poets as thoughtwriters, in which poems can serve to express readers’ thoughts without positing an expressive thinker in the poem, is considered from various angles. While it seems a minimal expressive thinker needs to be posited, this leaves open other questions about poems as the stuff of thought. Can poems be fully thought, and do readers take ownership of the thinking that poetry prompts? Elizabeth Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses” is (...) discussed as a poem that allows the reader a chance to separate aspects of content and control of thought. (shrink)

We argue that the evil-god challenge is not an additional challenge for theists above and beyond the (much older) gap problem. One version of the evil-god challenge is merely a specific instance of the gap problem, and another is dependent on that specific instance of the gap problem. Therefore, the various solutions to the gap problem that theists have developed double as responses to the evil-god challenge, placing the evil-god challenge in a more vulnerable position than has been supposed.

In Merleau-Ponty’s later work we find certain themes and conceptions that show an overlap with the theory and above all the practice of mindfulness. These include the reversibility of the flesh, the richness of things in the perceived world that draw us towards them, and the emphasis on painting as that medium that brings this world of perception to light, the ways in which we perceive it and better ways of perceiving it. In this paper I argue that many of (...) these themes are also found in his earlier work. In Phenomenology of Perception especially he characterises the essentially embodied subject as at once an essentially projective existent. It does not live in a world of proximate opportunities and threats, but is situated in the further and virtual future, or rather futures. This is due to productive imagination and the skilled and schematised body with its motor intentional schematisations of postures and perceptual fields. Yet Merleau-Ponty does not see projection in exclusively imaginative and volitional terms, that is, as the choosing of authentic and self-transformative courses of action. Many of our projects are solicited by the things themselves as determinable indeterminacies that draw us closer, not to command them, but to appreciate their singularities or perceptual styles. In his descriptions of living amongst and towards the things he proffers a kind of mindfulness that evokes much of the magic of childhood and that enjoins a more centred existence in adulthood. (shrink)

I introduce a new approach to fission puzzles called the Diversified Approach that proceeds by distinguishing different kinds of fission and assimilating each kind to a different ordinary phenomenon, such as breaking apart, replication, or part loss. To illustrate this approach, I apply it to the case of amoebic fission. The upshot is a novel account of amoebic fission according to which the dividing amoeba ceases to exist because it breaks apart. After developing this solution and highlighting some of its (...) advantages, I discuss briefly how the Diversified Approach can be extended to other varieties of fission. (shrink)

Robert Nozick is most prominently known as the hero of the anti-taxation movement and chief libertarian. However, in his later writings he introduced a rule that could justify estate taxation of up to 100 percent, the subtraction rule. This paper shows that this subtraction rule is not only compatible with the core pillars of his entitlement theory, but also necessary for self-ownership from a strictly libertarian-individualistic point of view. As such, it deals with the compatibility of such estate taxation with (...) the historical non-patternedness of the entitlement theory as well as with the notion of self-ownership as core elements of Nozickian libertarianism. In particular, it is argued that self-ownership requires an intimate bond or explicit consent between the initial creator of an object and the current inheritor because the initial creator has poured a part of herself into the object. Where that explicit or implicit consent is not given, the transgression of the initial creator’s right has to be compensated by the inheritor. That compensation is realized through estate taxation. The subtraction rule could, therefore, help combat the ever-increasing cascading of wealth through generations and provide a useful tool for a more equal distribution of wealth. (shrink)

In this study, we argue that contemporary nursing care has been overtaken by new public management strategies aimed at curtailing budgets in the public hospital sector in Australia. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 nurses from one public acute hospital with supporting documentary evidence, we demonstrate what happens to nursing work when management imposesroundingas a risk reduction strategy. In the case study outlined rounding was introduced across all wards in response to missed care, which in turn arose as a result (...) of work intensification produced by efficiency, productivity, effectiveness and accountability demands. Rounding is a commercially sponsored practice consistent with new public management. Our study illustrates the impact that new public management strategies such as rounding have on how nurses work, both in terms of work intensity and in who controls their labour. (shrink)

This authoritative volume offers a handy compilation of contributions to the field by its leading figures.

Contemporary metaphysics is dominated by the view that every object belongs to a kind permanently in the sense that it cannot cease to belong to that kind without thereby ceasing to exist. For example, some philosophers think that a person is destroyed if they cease to be a person, a statue is destroyed if it ceases to be a statue, and so on. I believe that this standard view is false. Being a person, or a statue, or etc., is like (...) being a child: just as I did not cease to exist when I ceased to be a child, so people and statues need not cease to exist when they cease to be people and statues. Borrowing a term from Daniel Korman (who uses it in a similar but perhaps not identical way), I call this view phasalism because it entails that the kind-properties which ordinary objects instantiate are phase sortal properties, i.e., kind-properties that an object can instantiate for a temporary phase of its career. This dissertation is a partial defense of phasalism. I develop a phasalist metaphysics in detail, highlighting its virtues and rebutting objections along the way. After some stage-setting (Chapter 1), I defend a phasalist criterion of identity over time for ordinary objects (Chapter 2), as well as a phasalist account of the role that sortal properties play in the identity over time of ordinary objects (Chapter 3). Then I defend a phasalist-friendly approach to the identity over time of lumps, hunks, pieces, etc. of matter (Chapter 4). The material in these chapters amounts to a phasalist solution to certain material coincidence puzzles, such as the puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay. I go on to show that familiar puzzles about undetached parts (Chapter 5) and fission (Chapter 6) can be solved within the confines of my phasalist metaphysics as well. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics is to some extent beholden to what I will call personal aesthetics. By personal aesthetics, I mean the phenomena of individual aesthetic sensitivity: how each of us discerns and responds to elements of experience. I take that sensitivity to be finely woven into feeling to some degree at home in the world. There is something extremely local, and in a certain sense unreflective, about personal aesthetics – it is hard to notice one's own, historically specific aesthetic formation. Philosophical (...) aesthetics, meanwhile, aspires to understand aesthetic life in a more reflective and general way. Aesthetic theories in the Western tradition, like most philosophical theories, try to articulate universally relevant and illuminating theoretical concepts and values. But can a theory of this kind acknowledge what is important at the level of personal aesthetics? Can aesthetic theories find fruitful application while also respecting the locality and variability of aesthetic sensitivity? What kinds of theoretical ambition and humility are called for in philosophical aesthetics? (shrink)

The Benacerraf Problem of Mathematical Truth and Knowledge Before philosophical theorizing, people tend to believe that most of the claims generally accepted in mathematics—claims like “2+3=5” and “there are infinitely many prime numbers”—are true, and that people know many of them. Even after philosophical theorizing, most people remain committed to mathematical truth and mathematical knowledge. … Continue reading The Benacerraf Problem of Mathematical Truth and Knowledge →.

This book comprises an attempt to examine how we might set about an- swering the question: How much is society prepared to pay to reduce mortality: Or more brutally, what is the value of human life? The justification for attempting to answer such questions lies in the de- sirability of injecting increased explicitness and rationality into decision-making in those areas of the public sector which are con- cerned with life saving. Given that resources are already being de- ployed to such (...) activities as crash-barriers on motorways, helicopters for air-sea rescue, kidney machines and other life-saving measures - although such activities result only in a reduction in risk of death, not itsillimination, in the policy fields affected - this means that already at the present time, at least by implication, values are be- ing placed by decision-makers on the saving of life. (shrink)

Mooney (philosophy, Sonoma State U.) explores Kierkegaard's creative invention, the contemporary relevance of his contrasts between resignation and faith, and his conceptual analysis of aesthetic, moral, and religious psychology and life ...

This chapter focuses on Soren Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms. Some of the names he used include Johannes Climacus, Johannes de silentio, and Vigilius Haufniensus. The chapter evaluates the rationale and significance of using pseudonyms, suggesting that Kierkegaard used different names because of the varied genres of his works and in order to communicate or send specific message to a particular group in society.

Creationism and evolutionism are taken to typify a fundamental opposition among the diverse beliefs about creation to be found in the United Kingdom and the United States. A comparison between the two types and the two countries suggests that people may be more concerned about the credibility and consequences of belief in an alternative account of our origins than about the actual method by which we were created. Examples of concern include interpretations of the Bible, ethical implications, and the epistemological (...) standings of revelation and/or science that are thought to follow from acceptance of a particular belief concerning how we got here. (shrink)

Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing perspectives from science, ...