Does life have meaning? What is flourishing? How do we attain the good life? Philosophers, and many others of us, have explored these questions for centuries. As Eva Feder Kittay points out, however, there is a flaw in the essential premise of these questions: they seem oblivious to the very nature of the ways in which humans live, omitting a world of co-dependency, and of the fact that we live in and through our bodies, whether they are fully abled or (...) disabled. Our dependent, vulnerable, messy, changeable, and embodied experience colors everything about our lives both on the surface and when it comes to deeper concepts, but we tend to leave aside the body for the mind when it comes to philosophical matters. Disability offers a powerful challenge to long-held philosophical views about the nature of the good life, what provides meaning in our lives, and the centrality of reason, as well as questions of justice, dignity, and personhood. These concepts need not be distant and idealized; the answers are right before us, in the way humans interact with one another, care for one another, and need one another--whether they possess full mental capacities or have cognitive limitations. We need to revise our concepts of things like dignity and personhood in light of this important correction, Kittay argues. This is the first of two books in which Kittay will grapple with just how we need to revisit core philosophical ideas in light of disabled people's experience and way of being in the world. Kittay, an award-winning philosopher who is also the mother to a multiply-disabled daughter, interweaves the personal voice with the philosophical as a critical method of philosophical investigation. Here, she addresses why cognitive disability can reorient us to what truly matters, and questions the centrality of normalcy as part of a good life. With profound sensitivity and insight, Kittay examines other difficult topics: How can we look at the ethical questions regarding prenatal testing in light of a new appreciation of the personhood of disabled people? What do new possibilities in genetic testing imply for understanding disability, the family, and bioethics? How can we reconsider the importance of care, and how does it work best? In the process of pursuing these questions, Kittay articulates an ethic of care, which is the ethical theory most useful for claiming full rights for disabled people and providing the opportunities for everyone to live joyful and fulfilling lives. She applies the lessons of care to the controversial alteration of severely cognitively disabled children known as the Ashley Treatment, whereby a child's growth is halted with extensive estrogen treatment and related bodily interventions are justified. This book both imparts lessons that advocate on behalf of those with significant disabilities, and constructs a moral theory grounded on our ability to give, receive, and share care and love. Above all, it aims to adjust social attitudes and misconceptions about life with disability. (shrink)

Illuminates childrens experiences of embodiment, inter-subjectivity, place, thing, time, and language through a dialogue between developmental research and ...

In these replies, I react to comments on my paper “Facts about Incoherence as Non-Evidential Epistemic Reasons”, provided by Aleks Knoks, Sebastian Schmidt, Keshav Singh, and Conor McHugh. I discuss potential counterexamples to my claim that the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an epistemic reason for her to suspend; whether such incoherence-based reasons bear on individual attitudes or only on combinations of attitudes; the prospects of restricting evidentialism about epistemic reasons to reasons to believe; whether incoherence-based (...) reasons are truly epistemic; the alleged normative and motivational expendability of incoherence-based reasons; the possibility of incoherence-based reasons to suspend without actual belief in the incoherent propositions; the relationship between suspension, inquiry, and incoherence; and the nature of suspension of judgment. (shrink)

Since Hegel, the idea of an end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. This book analyzes its role and its rhetoric in Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Heidegger in order to account for the topic's enduring persistence. In addition to providing a general overview of the main thinkers of post-Idealist German aesthetics, the book explores the relationship between tradition and modernity. For despite the differences that distinguish one philosopher's end of art from another's, all authors treated here (...) turn the end of art into an occasion to thematize and to reflect on the very thing that modernism cannot or should not be: tradition. As a discourse, the end of art is one of our modern traditions. (shrink)

Goethe belongs to the phenomenological tradition for a number of reasons: He shared Husserl's deep mistrust of the mathematization of the natural world and the ensuing loss of the qualitative dimension of human existence; he understood that the phenomenological observer must free him/herself from sedimented cultural prejudices, a process which Husserl called the epoche; he experienced and articulated the new and surprising fullness of the world as it reveals itself to the patient and participatory phenomenological observer. Goethe's phenomenological sensibilities and (...) insights become more apparent when his work is brought into dialogue with Husserl's thinking. In turn Goethe challenges Husserlian phenomenology to a more careful investigation of the natural world and human participation within its order. Both Goethe and Husserl are searching for a science of the qualitative dimension of being. (shrink)

The easiest and most tempting solution of these problems is to dissolve them by pointing out the artificiality of the issues leading to these "third things." Though tempted, I am not convinced that Kant's philosophy can be treated thus as an exercise in a complicated solution of pseudo-problems. Also, I would thereby deprive myself of the uncomfortable and nagging sense of obscure importance which assails me—and many Kant students share this feeling—whenever I consider these points. I am prepared to admit (...) that the problems may be represented as artificial. But I want to maintain, with special emphasis on the Kantian schema, that a serious reconsideration repays the effort, even if it should force us to reconsider critically also some of Kant's systematic assumptions. (shrink)

Tendencies and efforts have shifted from genome description, DNA mapping, and DNA sequencing to active and profound re-programming, repairing life on genetic and molecular levels in some parts of contemporary life science research. Mirroring and materializing this atmosphere, various life engineering technologies have been used and established in many areas of life sciences in the last decades. A contemporary progressive example of one such technology is DNA editing. Novel developments related to reproductive technologies, particularly embryo editing, prenatal human life engineering, (...) and germline engineering need to be analyzed against the broader social and structural background. The crucial analytical scope for this paper is a specific field: the life-editing technologies used in reproductive medicine and performed experimentally on viable human embryos, particularly CRISPR/cas9 technology. This text argues that germline editing technologies, as a representative part of contemporary biomedicine, are merging ideas of treatment and enhancement to avoid future risks. Using this specific life manipulation of embryos and gametes, the text analyzes these processes within the concept of power over life—biopower and the specific governing rationality that imagines, classifies, and governs contemporary societies. The text specifically focuses on the potential to create, define, and manage future risks and uncertainties related to prenatal life. (shrink)

What makes a word easy to learn? Early‐learned words are frequent and tend to name concrete referents. But words typically do not occur in isolation. Some words are predictable from their contexts; others are less so. Here, we investigate whether predictability relates to when children start producing different words (age of acquisition; AoA). We operationalized predictability in terms of a word's surprisal in child‐directed speech, computed using n‐gram and long‐short‐term‐memory (LSTM) language models. Predictability derived from LSTMs was generally a better (...) predictor than predictability derived from n‐gram models. Across five languages, average surprisal was positively correlated with the AoA of predicates and function words but not nouns. Controlling for concreteness and word frequency, more predictable predicates and function words were learned earlier. Differences in predictability between languages were associated with cross‐linguistic differences in AoA: the same word (when it was a predicate) was produced earlier in languages where the word was more predictable. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics is an area in which many strands of contemporary philosophical thinking meet. The contributors to this volume are aware of the wider logical, epistemological, moral and metaphysical implications raised by conceptual problems specific to aesthetics. Three themes recur and are taken up from different angles in several of the papers: pleasure – its nature and role in the experience of art and beauty; preference – figuring prominently in aesthetic appraising, appreciating and judging; and value – aesthetic value in (...) particular, and the status of value in general. As these themes interweave, the complexities of aesthetics bring into focus some of the central issues in the philosophy of mind. The authors argue their cases with professional expertise and perceptive understanding of the arts, making significant and original contributions. This book should be of interest not only to philosophers but also to the readers who know, care and theorise about the arts. All the essays were commissioned for this volume, which is part of an informal series of books emerging from meetings sponsored by the Thyssen Foundation. (shrink)

In the regeneration of shamanism in Buryatia, kinship and locale play a significant and, indeed, determining role. Shamans, as representatives of their clans and kinship lines, are the intermediaries between people and the sacred, between people and the spirits in nature, in particular spirits of a specific locale which is linked historically to a clan and to the ancestors who have been buried there. It is to these ancestral spirits as well as to the spirits of place that the clan (...) shaman makes entreaties and asks for blessings and protection from ill fortune.The historical relationship of the Buryat tribes to the present land of Buryatia and Ust‐Orda region and the kinship structure of these tribes as existent prior to the Soviet period is shown to have parallels with traditional spiritual territorial cults of Buryats. There is a clear‐cut link between Buryat social organization into hierarchical units of kinship structures along patrilineal descent lines and their conceptions of deities according to locality, that is, they traditionally conceived of protective deities as associated with wider or narrower territorial groupings which corresponded to the social groups of tribes, clans, villages, and families.Several cases of renewal of home and hearth through appeal to ancestral and local spirits by the clan shaman are presented. (shrink)

This essay describes the Hungarian historical background out of which Michael Polanyi’s lifelong commitment to a liberal, democratic form of government grew. Hungary’s liberal thinkers blossomed in the nineteenth centruy, but their orientation was more political and practical than philosophical. Enlightenment ideas did not penetrate deeply into Hungarian society, which in recent centuries was hampered by its Eastern European and feudal ties. Thus Polanyi felt he had to move to more liberal countries.

Eva Simantoni-Bournia Un masque humain à Hyria de Naxos, nouveau témoignage de contacts chypriotes p. 119-132 Neuf tessons d'un masque en terre cuite représentant une figure masculine barbue presque grandeur nature, datés de la fin du VIIIe - début du VIIe siècle av. J.-C., ont été découverts en 1994 dans le sanctuaire d'Hyria à Naxos. Ce masque naxien doit son importance à la rareté de ce type d'objets, surtout à haute époque. Les masques en terre cuite du sanctuaire d'Orthia à (...) Sparte, les plus connus et les plus étonnants du monde grec, sont presque tous plus récents et la plupart relève d'une tradition stylistique différente. Les masques en terre cuite du Chypro-Géométrique I mis au jour dans les sanctuaires de Kition et de Salamine à Chypre constituent les parallèles les plus proches de l'exemplaire d'Hyria. Cet article propose que le masque barbu idéalisé d'Hyria était porté, lors d'une sorte de représentation (δρώμενον), par celui qui jouait le rôle de l'époux de la déesse de la fécondité vénérée avec Dionysos dans le grand sanctuaire naxien et identifiée à Ariane. La représentation — fréquente dans le culte de Dionysos — d'une sorte d'union rituelle dans les pratiques cultuelles d'Hyria est vraisemblable. Les contacts chypriotes, confirmés par notre masque, étayent le rapprochement de l'Ariane naxienne avec la grande déesse chypro-orientale, que nous avons proposé jadis sur la base des trouvailles du sanctuaire et à partir des témoignages littéraires. (shrink)

Hans Blumenbergs Werk ist mit einer Theorie des Mythos, der Metapher und der Epochenumbrüche, technikphilosophischen Reflexionen, literaturtheoretischen Überlegungen und literarischen Glossen ungewöhnlich vielgestaltig. Die Beiträge des Bandes begegnen diesem Umstand, indem sie nicht einzelne Grundgedanken, sondern Vorgehensweisen und Techniken, methodische Ansätze und taktische Blickwendungen fokussieren. Ihr Interesse gilt Blumenbergs Verfahren. Sie betrachten etwa den Metapherngebrauch des Metaphorologen und seine Vorliebe für implikative Zugänge, die unmögliche Abschreitung des Horizonts und die Verabschiedung der Theorie als theoretisches Verfahren. Auf welche Weise nähert sich (...) Blumenberg den Wirklichkeiten, in denen wir leben? Wie wird die Arbeit an der Bedeutsamkeit ins Werk gesetzt? Und welche dieser Verfahren lassen sich heute noch in Anspruch nehmen oder weiterdenken? Mit Beiträgen von Hannes Bajohr, Rüdiger Campe, Johannes Endres, Sebastian Feil, Petra Gehring, Eva Geulen, Anselm Haverkamp, Felix Heidenreich, Katharina Hertfelder, Wolfgang Hottner, Niklaus Largier, Christoph Paret, Birgit Recki und Christine Weder. (shrink)

The literature on sensory processing disorders in institutionalized infants highlights the impact of early deprivation on infant perception. Through a Merleau-Pontian, hyperdialectic analysis of the extraordinary development of infant perception under circumstances of severe deprivation the intimate link between environmental affordances and perceptual systems becomes apparent. This paper offers an updated reading of Merleau-Ponty’s late work as a philosophy of systems and outlines some fertile philosophical concepts and methods developed by Merleau-Ponty in The visible and the Invisible. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of (...) the chiasm, understood from a systems perspective, and his method of the hyperdialectic are applied in a child case study of an infant who suffered severe neglect in a Romanian orphanage. (shrink)

The editors present the essays that are collected in the volume and which are the outcome of talks given at the international conference “Kurt Gödel Philosopher: From Logic to Cosmology” that was held in Aix en Provence (France) in summer 2013. Many of the authors belong to a group of scientists who have contributed to an ANR project with the same title under the direction of Gabriella Crocco.

This chapter provides an overview of the structure and purpose of the book. It introduces the philosophical context and motivations of the debate between conceptualism and nonconceptualism. The book is a defense of the nonconceptualist claim that experience is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content. In particular, it defends what I call ‘Modest Nonconceptualism,’ which is briefly introduced in this chapter. On this view, all perceptual experiences are at least partly nonconceptual, i.e., involve the exercise of at least some concepts. It (...) involves an argument that enables the Modest Nonconceptualist to bridge the gap between the state view and the content view of nonconceptualism. ‘Concept’ talk is taken to be anchored in conceptual abilities that the subject possesses and exercises. Nonconceptual perceptual content is taken to consist in scenario content (see Peacocke, A study of concepts. MIT, Cambridge, 1992), which is both nonconceptual and non-propositional; externally conceived, the content of an experience consists in the worldly states of affairs it represents. The latter content is needed for the Modest Nonconceptualist’s account of perceptual justification. The view claims that the Autonomy Thesis is correct: A perceiver’s experiences may have nonconceptual content even if she possesses no concepts whatsoever. The Modest Nonconceptualist account of the representational content of perceptual experience is based on the subpersonal-level organization of the underlying representational states. (shrink)

En esta investigación se realiza un análisis de las normativas y protocolos autonómicos y locales de las ludotecas pertenecientes a la Comunidad Autónoma de Castilla y León (España) durante los años 2017-2022. Parte de un diseño de mapeo sistemático de normativas con el siguiente criterio de inclusión “localidades de más de 5000 habitantes de la comunidad castellano-leonesa” por entender que estas poseen recursos económicos para mantener en el tiempo estos servicios sociocomunitarios. Se estudian los documentos entre los años 2017 y (...) 2022 con la intención de analizar la evolución de las ludotecas en Castilla y León. (shrink)

This paper explores essential characteristics of current nursing practice from the perspectives of clinically experienced registered nurses in various fields of health care in Sweden. Nursing practice has been the subject of much debate in the past and because of its complexity as well as continuous changes in society it is important to continue the debate. A qualitative study, including 16 group interviews with altogether 74 participants, was conducted. Nursing practice was viewed as a multifaceted field. The participants struggled to (...) define nursing but were able to describe it using concrete examples. The analysis, using interpretive description, identified current practice as essentially consisting of: ‘A practice pervaded by comprehensive responsibility’, ‘A practice that recognises a patient's unique needs’, ‘A practice based on multifaceted knowledge’ and ‘A practice that mediates between traditional values and changing demands’. Current nursing practice can be understood as striving to be in close proximity to the patient, but in tension with pervasive requirements and societal changes. Going forward, it is necessary to continue to reflect on and discuss the nature of nursing practice in an interprofessional context. Studies from primary and home care are also needed to broaden the understanding of nursing practice. (shrink)