In the Original publication of the article the revised date was erroneously published as: 20 August 2017 the correct date is: 20 August 2020.

Screen time has become a hot button issue in psychology with researchers fiercely debating its mental effects. If we want to understand the psychological dynamics of technology use, however, a numerical conceptualization of screen time will lead us to gloss over crucial distinctions. To make this point, the present article takes a hermeneutic approach to a negative form of screen time known as ‘phubbing’, which is the practice of snubbing conversational partners in favor of one’s phone. Using interview data, it (...) is demonstrated that whether or not phone use amounts to phubbing, that is, whether or not it tips over and becomes harmful, depends on a host of contextual factors such as relation (who), content (what), purpose (why), timing (when), and communication (how). These findings demonstrate that not all screen time is created equal: what is harmful and inappropriate in one context is benign in another, and vice versa. Simply put, screen time is not a numerical entity whose causal effects we can measure and explain, but a meaningful activity that we must try to understand. (shrink)

Humans can recollect past events in details and/or know that an object, person, or place has been encountered before. During the last two decades, there has been intense debate about how recollection and familiarity are organized in the brain. Here, we propose an integrative memory model which describes the distributed and interactive neurocognitive architecture of representations and operations underlying recollection and familiarity. In this architecture, the subjective experience of recollection and familiarity arises from the interaction between core systems and an (...) attribution system. By integrating principles from current theoretical views about memory functioning, we provide a testable framework to refine the prediction of deficient versus preserved mechanisms in memory-impaired populations. The case of Alzheimer's disease is considered as an example because it entails progressive lesions starting with limited damage to core systems before invading step-by-step most parts of the model-related network. We suggest a chronological scheme of cognitive impairments along the course of AD, where the inaugurating deficit would relate early neurodegeneration of the perirhinal/anterolateral entorhinal cortex to impaired familiarity for items that need to be discriminated as viewpoint-invariant conjunctive entities. The integrative memory model can guide future neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies aiming to understand how such a network allows humans to remember past events, to project into the future, and possibly also to share experiences. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as (...) well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

This book explores the different ways in which psychoanalysis has been connected to various fields of Italian culture, such as literary criticism, philosophy ...

“Ethical exceptionalism” is often used as a pejorative shrouded in a superlative. The charge of wrongly treating similar things differently—for varying motives—has been leveled against exceptional...

Artist, poet, educationalist and autobiographer, Marion Milner is considered one of the most original of psychoanalytic thinkers whose life spans a century of radical change. _Marion Milner: The Life_,_ _is the first biography of this extraordinary woman. It introduces Milner and her works to the reader through her family, colleagues and, above all through her books, charting their evolution and development as well as their critical reception and contribution to current twenty-first century debates and discourses. In this book _Emma Letley (...) _draws_ _on primary sources, including the newly-opened Marion Milner Collection at the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London, as well as interviews and the re-contextualised series of Milner texts. She traces the process of Milner's writing of her books, her discovery of psychoanalysis, her training and her place in that world from the 1940's onwards. _Marion Milner: The Life _includes discussion of Milner's connection with D.W. Winnicott and her emergence as a most individual member of the Independent Group. Letley also shows how Milner's Personal Notebooks offer fascinating insights into her relationships, both personal and professional, and into many of her important ideas on creativity, the body-mind relationship, her revolutionary ideas on education and her particular personality as clinician working with both children and adults. Further, _Letley _explores Milner's literary character from her very early diaries and narratives to her last book written in her 90's published in 2012. Marion Milner: The Life places Marion Milner firmly in her Edwardian family setting and contains new material from primary sources, including a new view of her collegial connections. It provides a wealth of material on her life and works that will be invaluable to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art psychotherapists, students, those involved with life writing and autobiography, and the general reader. (shrink)

Rights of Women attracted much UK media attention in late 2014 by bringing a judicial review that challenged the reduced provisions for family law legal aid available for victims of domestic violence: R v The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice [2015] EWHC 35. In June 2015, within Rights of Women’s 40th anniversary year, Hannah Camplin interviewed the organisation’s Director Emma Scott about the decision to bring the judicial review, the advantages and challenges of the judicial review (...) process, and the experience of strategic litigation within the context of Rights of Women’s long history of campaigning for women’s rights. What emerged is a portrait of a feminist organisation in 2015, and, in a fast changing political and financial landscape, the dual importance of collaborative working and the need for flexibility in service provision and campaigning tools. (shrink)

Mirror neurons are neurons which fire in two distinct conditions: (i) when an agent performs a specific action, like a precision grasp of an object using fingers, and (ii) when an agent observes that action performed by another. Some theorists have suggested that the existence of such neurons may lend support to the simulation approach to mindreading (e.g. Gallese and Goldman, 1998, 'Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind reading'). In this note I critically examine this suggestion, in both (...) its original and a revised form (due to Iacoboni et al., 2005, 'Grasping the intentions of others with one's own mirror neuron system'), and argue that the existence of mirror neurons can in fact tell us very little about how intentional attribution actually proceeds. (shrink)

Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

Is it particularly human to feel coerced into fulfilling moral obligations, or is it particularly human to enjoy them? I argue for the importance of taking into account how culture promotes prosocial behavior, discussing how Confucian heritage culture enhances the satisfaction of meeting one's obligations.

In this paper I want to explore the arguments for so-called ‘unarticulated constituents’ (UCs). Unarticulated constituents are supposed to be propositional elements, not presented in the surface form of a sentence, nor explicitly represented at the level of its logical form, yet which must be interpreted in order to grasp the (proper) meaning of that sentence or expression. Thus, for example, we might think that a sentence like ‘It is raining’ must contain a UC picking out the place at which (...) the speaker of the sentence asserts it to be raining. In §1 I will explore the nature of UCs a little further, and, in §2, suggest that we can recognise two different forms of argument for them.. (shrink)

Harvey Siegel's epistemologically-informed conception of critical thinking is one of the most influential accounts of critical thinking around today. In this article, I seek to open up an account of critical thinking that goes beyond the one defended by Siegel. I do this by re-reading an opposing view, which Siegel himself rejects as leaving epistemology ‘pretty much as it is’. This is the view proposed by Charles Taylor in his paper ‘Overcoming Epistemology’. Crucially, my aim here is not to defend (...) Taylor's challenge to epistemology per se, but rather to demonstrate how, through its appeal to certain key tropes within Heideggerian philosophy, Taylor's paper opens us towards a radically different conception of thinking and the human being who thinks. Indeed, as will be argued, it is through this that Taylor and Heidegger come to offer us the resources for re-thinking the nature of critical thinking—in a way that exceeds the epistemological, and does more justice to receptive and responsible conditions of human thought. (shrink)

Understanding in Epistemology Epistemology is often defined as the theory of knowledge, and talk of propositional knowledge has dominated the bulk of modern literature in epistemology. However, epistemologists have recently started to turn more attention to the epistemic state or states of understanding, asking questions about its nature, relationship … Continue reading Understanding in Epistemology →.

This book redefines our interpretation of Iamblichus' theurgy and religiosity, as revealed in his only complete surviving work, the De Mysteriis. Clarke argues that the existence and operation of the supernatural, or the miraculous, is the sine qua non of this work, and yet this is often overlooked by Iamblichus' philosophical interpreters. The argument is developed through the examination of numerous religious practices described by Iamblichus, most importantly those of animal sacrifice, oracular consultation, divine possession, and the ritual observation of (...) the luminous divine epiphanies. The book seeks to understand Iamblichus' position within the framework of, rather than through the eyes of, other Neoplatonists. Emma Clarke is the chief editor of the only modern English translation of the De Mysteriis, and in this book she breaks new ground in a growing area of interest, Neoplatonism. (shrink)

This study supports the idea that fields form around issues, and describes the roles of various stakeholders in the structuring, shaping, and legitimating of the emerging field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). A model of the institutional history of the CSR field is outlined, of which a key stage is the appearance of CSR rating agencies as the significant players and Institutional Entrepreneurs of the field. We show to which extent the creation and further development of CSR rating agencies, and (...) the activism of other significant stakeholders of the field (typically portrayed as “standard setters” and “regulatory agents”), contribute to the institutionalization of CSR. With this in mind, among various stakeholders that legitimate the field of CSR, we present the efforts of global and local stakeholders such as the European Union, the United Nations, the International Organization for Standardization, and governments and their interactions. We suggest that the different paths of CSR development and institutionalization in France and in the United States depend on the nature of local and global stakeholders’ involvement in this process and their interactions. (shrink)

We propose the ‘patient-worker’ as a theoretical construct that responds to moral problems that arise with the globalization of healthcare and medical research. The patient-worker model recognizes that some participants in global medical industries are workers and are owed worker's rights. Further, these participants are patient-like insofar as they are beneficiaries of fiduciary relationships with healthcare professionals. We apply the patient-worker model to human subjects research and commercial gestational surrogacy. In human subjects research, subjects are usually characterized as either patients (...) or as workers. Through questioning this dichotomy, we argue that some subject populations fit into both categories. With respect to commercial surrogacy, we enrich feminist discussions of embodied labor by describing how surrogates are beneficiaries of fiduciary obligations. They are not just workers, but patient-workers. Through these applications, the patient-worker model offers a helpful normative framework for exploring what globalized medical industries owe to the individuals who bear the bodily burdens of medical innovation. (shrink)

The biomedical industry relies on the skills of animal technologists to put laboratory animal welfare into practice. This is the first study to explore how this is achieved in relation to their participation in implementing refinement and reduction, two of the three key guiding ethical principles––the “3Rs”––of what is deemed to be humane animal experimentation. The interpretative approach contributes to emerging work within the social sciences and humanities exploring care and ethics in practice. Based on qualitative analysis of participant observation (...) within animal research facilities in UK universities, in-depth interviews with ATs, facility managers, and other stakeholders, and analysis of regulatory guidelines, we draw a contrast between the minimum required of ATs by law and how their care work not only meets but often exceeds these requirements. We outline how ATs constitute a key source of innovation and insight into the refinement of animal care and the reduction of animal use, hitherto not formally acknowledged. Exploring AT care work as an example of ethics in practice makes an original contribution to broader debates within health care and animal welfare about how technology, regulation, and behavior can foster and sustain a “culture of care”. (shrink)

Emma Borg discusses the relationship between linguistic meaning and context, and talks about her own view, called 'Semantic Minimalism', in this Philosophy Bites interview, conducted by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton.

This article looks to the form of the puppet, both an oral and aural entity, as a receptacle or instrument which allows for a ventriloquism to take place in partnership with the puppeteer. In the work of South African Handspring Puppet Company, the puppet is a receptacle for sound, but also for the human body itself - a chamber within a chamber - highlighting the instrumentalisation of the body. In this regard, the article looks to Handspring's I Love You When (...) You're Breathing, particularly in reference to a comment once made by an audience member at a performance of the show that I watched in relation to the title; 'If you love me when I'm breathing; you don't love me when I'm dead?' In the practice of puppetry there is a focus on the ways the puppeteer conveys life in the puppet. Here, breath is significant as a sound, but more so as a movement, passed from puppeteer to puppet, a kind of bellows or organ. The 'life' of the puppet is discerned through the rhythmic breathing motions of the puppeteer. Here the aural is conveyed through movement, rather than through sound itself, which is further a reminder that sound is at its core a movement anyway, a vibration. What can be opened up if we are to think the oral/aural through the puppet in its relation to movement and stillness, life and death? (shrink)

The global distribution of laboratory mouse strains is valued for ensuring the continuity, validity and accessibility of model organisms. Mouse strains are therefore assumed mobile and able to travel. We draw on the concept of ‘animal mobilities’ to explain how attending to laboratory mice as living animal, commodity and scientific tool is shaping how they are transported through contemporary scientific infrastructures and communities. Our paper is framed around exploring how animal strains travel, rather than animals, as we show that it (...) is only through understanding strain mobility that we can explain how and why live animal movement can be replaced by germinal products. The research is based on qualitative fieldwork in 2018 and 2019 that included 2 weeks ethnography and interviews with key informants involved in the movement of laboratory animals. The empirical analysis discusses practices that relate to managing biosecurity and animal welfare concerns when moving laboratory animal strains. In closing we reflect more broadly on the contemporary ‘ethico-onto-epistemological’ entanglement that shapes who or what travels to support laboratory science data-making practices, and the intensity of care ‘tinkering’ practices that facilitate the movement. We explain how a laboratory animal strain exceeds its value solely as a mobile and thus exchangeable commodity, illustrated in how values that relate to animal sentience and infection-risk supports its material transformation. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly common for non-sentient germinal products – embryos and gametes - to replace live sentient animals when being moved. (shrink)

The strong links between cities and queer culture and its expression have occupied numerous scholars, including Henning Bech and Matt Houlbrook. Indeed, London has been viewed as a focal point of British queer urban culture for over 200 years and, as this article demonstrates, the advent of the Second World War did not preclude this centrality but ensured that the city became a focal point for service personnel on leave. Yet, the emphasis placed on the metropolises in analysing space and (...) queer expression has rendered invisible the use of more transient spaces outside of the city. This article seeks to examine these ‘alternative’ or opportunistic sites of expression, using oral testimony from queer men who served with the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. The memories of these servicemen and the significance they place on space/locations demonstrate the need to engage with subjective sites or ‘geographies’ of queerness both inside and outside of the city between 1939 and 1945. (shrink)

Professional control in the selection of treatment options for patients is changing. In light of social and legal developments emphasising patient choice and autonomy, and restricting medical paternalism and judicial deference, this article examines how far patients and families can demand NHS treatment in England and Wales. It considers situations where the patient is an adult with capacity, an adult lacking capacity and a child. In all three cases, there is judicial support for professional autonomy, but there are also inconsistencies (...) that have potential to elevate the importance of patient and family preferences. In combination, they may be perceived by healthcare professionals as an obligation to follow patient preferences, even where doing so conflicts with other professional obligations. It is argued that a more nuanced approach to shared decision-making could help clarify the boundaries of decision-making responsibility. (shrink)

This article seeks to open up a re-examination of the relationship between thought and language by reference to two philosophers: John Austin and Jacques Derrida. While in traditional philosophical terms these thinkers stand far apart, recent work in the philosophy of education has highlighted the importance of Austin’s work in a way that has begun to bridge the philosophical divide. This article seeks to continue the renewed interest in Austin in educational research, yet also take it in new direction by (...) exploring Austin’s wider philosophical concern within the William James Lectures with the nature of language. The significance of the philosophical turn to language has entered the agenda of a number of philosophers of education in recent years. The main aim of this article will be to present, as a starting point for further work, an account of language that does justice to the way language actually operates. The article will argue that Austin’s account of the performative opens up new possibilities in this regard and yet—for reasons that will be made clear—also fails in the final instance to carry these through. By illustrating the way Derrida’s philosophy works, contrastingly, to take these possibilities to their full conclusion, I will argue that Derrida succeeds in bringing a radically new conception of language to the fore. The article will end by pointing towards some of the implications of the initial exploration conducted here to be developed elsewhere—particularly for the ways we think about thinking. (shrink)

Scientists, philosophers, and policymakers disagree about how to define microaggression. Here, we offer a taxonomy of existing definitions, clustering around (a) the psychological motives of perpetrators, (b) the experience of victims, and (c) the functional role of microaggression in oppressive social structures. We consider conceptual and epistemic challenges to each and suggest that progress may come from developing novel hybrid accounts of microaggression, combining empirically tractable features with sensitivity to the testimony of victims.

To investigate possible cognitive factors influencing the cross-cultural incidence of spirit possession concepts and to develop a more refined understanding of the precise contours of 'intuitive mind-body dualism', two studies were conducted that explored adults' intuitions about the relationship between minds and bodies. Specifically, the studies explored how participants reason about the effects of a hypothetical mind-migration across a range of behaviours. Both studies used hypothetical mind-transfer scenarios in which the mind of one person is transferred into the body of (...) another person. Participants were asked to reason about the new post-transfer person's behaviours and aptitudes. In Study 1, participants were provided with a scale on which they indicated their answers; in Study 2, participants responded to open-ended questions. In both studies, the majority of participants reasoned that while the post-transfer person's performance on physical tasks would be similar to the host performance on mental tasks would be similar to the person whose mind has been transferred. Further, participants tended to assume a complete displacement of minds, such that the post-transfer person's performance on mental task items was reasoned to be identical to incoming person's performance normally. The relevance of these findings for explaining the variable incidence and spread of different possession concepts is discussed. (shrink)

La recherche récente autour du culte d’Héraclès tend à rejeter l’idée que les ambiguïtés mythiques du personnage se reflétaient dans le rituel. Cet article reprend la question, à la lumière d’études plus larges sur la prétendue opposition « ouranien/chthonien » dans la pratique religieuse des Grecs. Des éléments inhabituels apparaissent à coup sûr dans certains rituels pour Héraklès. En particulier, certains cas de sacrifices mixtes, impliquant la destruction partielle d’une victime, ou l’holocauste de petites victimes à côté d’un sacrifice régulier (...) sont attestés à Sicyone, à Thasos, à Milet et à Cos. À Athènes, la particularité tient plutôt à la forme des sanctuaires d’Héraklès, avec l’édifice à quatre colonnes, très discuté. Un autel primitif est également attesté parfois, ce qui n’a pas reçu beaucoup d’attention. La figure d’Héraklès comme heros theos livre au moins une possibilité d’explication pour tous ces éléments, et il ne faut pas en évacuer trop vite la portée.Herakles: the problem of the heros-theos yet again. Recent scholarship on the cult of Herakles has tended to argue against the idea that the ambiguities of his mythological character were reflected in ritual. This paper re-examines the case, in the light of broader studies of the supposed Olympian-chthonian opposition in Greek religious practice. Unusual elements can certainly be seen in Herakles’ ritual in a number of locations: in particular, various kinds of mixed sacrifice, involving partial destruction of a victim, or holocaust of a small victim alongside a regular sacrifice, are attested at Sicyon, Thasos, Miletos and Kos. At Athens the unusual feature is rather the form of Herakles’ sanctuaries, with their much-discussed four-column shrines; a primitive altar is also occasionally attested, which has not previously received much scholarly notice. Herakles’ character as heros theos provides at least a possible explanation for all of these elements, and we should not be too hasty to dismiss its significance. (shrink)

In Searle’s social ontology, collective intentionality is an essential component of all institutional facts. This is because the latter involve the assignment of functions, namely "status functions," on entities whose physical features do not guarantee their performance, therefore requiring our acceptance that it be performed. One counter-example to that claim can be found in Carl Menger’s individualistic account of the money system. Menger’s commitment to the self-interest assumption, however, prevents him from accounting for the deontic dimensions of institutional facts.

relevant to the differences between the two speakings, Odile’s words in the first case said what was false, while in the second case they said what was true. Both spoke of the same state of the world, or the same refrigerator in the same condition. So, in the first case, the words said what is false of a refrigerator with but a milk puddle; in the second case they said what is true of such a refrigerator.

This book asks how people understood the concept of politics in sixteenth-century France, and how those who practised it were characterised. Both concept and practitioners were referred to by the same word, politique. I trace written uses of this word as a means of studying shifts in the meaning of the concept and the figure. As much as this is a conceptual history, therefore, it is a textual, and indeed, a literary one. Part of the book's argument is that sixteenth-century (...) literary ideas and processes influenced developments in political thought and practice. It also argues that the word politique and the idea of politics hold a specific place in the literature of the period. The book is about the representation of politics and political actors in writing, the writing of politics, and writing as politics. It treats a diverse corpus, including polemical pamphlets, texts of high political thought, and works more associated with the literary canon such as Montaigne's Essais and the Satyre ménippée. (shrink)

This edition of Marcel's inspiring Homo Viator has been updated to includle fifty-seven pages of new material available for the first time in English, making this the first English-language edition to conform to the standard French edition. Here, Christianity's foremost existentialist of the twentieth century gives us a prodigious personal insight on `man on the way' that will reinforce and commend our own pilgrimages in hope. "Homo Viator - "Homo Viator - or as Marcel calls him, `itinerate man' - is (...) an outstanding example of the philosophy concerned, not with technical problems, but with the urgent problems of man. Marcel talks to our condition, emphasizing our urgent need of hope, thus discovering beyond the lack of stability the values on which we may depend. "A subtle mind, a dramatist as well as a philosopher, close to the texture of human experience, he goes far beyond current platitudes to show that our Western tradition contains living truths that are as essential to our contemporary life as they were to our ancestors when they discovered them." - Eliseo Vivas "The theme of Marcel's Homo Viator is close to the center of all preoccupations: man in his pilgrim condition. With great virtuosity in the use of his own philosophical method, he probes into interpersonal relations and the threat to ethical values. Marcel excels here in his concrete analyses of the attitude of hope, the family community in its temporal and supratemporal aspects, and the forgotten virtue of personal fidelity." - James Collins. (shrink)

In the last twenty-five years there have been so many ‘turns’ in how the ancient world is approached that you could be forgiven for wondering whether research has tended to simply spin on the spot rather than move forwards in any decisive or meaningful direction. Amongst other things, and in no particular order, the discipline of archaeology, for instance, has undergone spatial, embodied, digital, mobility, ecological, material, symmetrical, relational, ontological, sensory, posthuman and cognitive turns. The specific theoretical and methodological concepts (...) that underpin these directions can vary considerably, but collectively they reflect a shared concern to foreground the complexities of different types of matter in interpretations of past worlds. Many, although not all, also share interests in combining those material complexities with perspectives on experiences of embodiment and/or forms of ‘being-in-the-world’. Within ancient religious studies, a re-orientation towards the sensory, embodied and experiential is well evidenced across recent scholarship, where it is accompanied by a significant paradigm shift away from top-down models of so-called ‘polis’ or ‘civic’ religion, which stress the organising principles and socio-political aspects of religion, towards a focus on ancient rituals as ‘lived’. Both trends have simultaneously stimulated the need to pay close and critical attention to the role of materials in generating ancient religion not as a set of shared beliefs or practices, but as a collection of dynamic and situational lived experiences emerging from ancient people's mutually constitutive relationships with the world. (shrink)