This essay reads Helen Phillips’s extraordinary novel of motherhood, The Need (2019), alongside recent theorists of post-politics. Phillips’s novel is illuminating because it reveals how an adequate understanding of the post-political requires supplementing current accounts with the categories of gender and heterogeneous time. The Need subverts the postfeminist articulation of politics as an arena in which “feminism” is practicable only in preemptively curtailed and diminished form. It does so by cracking open the “reality” enforced by neoliberal motherhood to show how (...) its apparent solidity rests on the excision of alternate times—on a foreclosure of the temporal otherness that is the condition for historical change. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural CriticismVera J. Camden (bio)Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism. Ed. Greg Forter and Paul Allen Miller. New York: SUNY P, 2008. 258 pp.This collection takes up the uses of psychoanalysis for cultural studies in the new millennium. Its editors and contributors ask, “Where is psychoanalysis in contemporary thought?” At a time when the empirically based psychologies have (...) long repudiated the “talking cure” to the extent that the unconscious is not visible or easily measured, and when, on the other hand, psychoanalysis has been associated in the humanities with a radical political and social agenda, disappointed hopes for change have led many to throw the baby of psychoanalysis out with the bathwater of a utopian vision of transformation. The question now remains: “Whither psychoanalysis?” To answer this question (which is also a demand), the editors first acknowledge that the critique and curtailing of psychoanalytic thought in the cultural studies programs across the country in the last decade or so has been influenced by the works of Michel Foucault, his disciples, and the New Historicism. At the same time, they believe that the political, psychological, and moral dangers of embracing a knowing and cynical postmodernism that fosters hollow consumerism premised on modes of subjectivity that “neither ‘express’ interiority nor bear any relation to a lived past” are a real and present danger in contemporary life. “That the triumph of such a view has coincided with intellectuals’ renewed suspicion of psychoanalysis should, we believe, give us pause” (8). The essays that constitute the present volume thus insist on the persistence of the desire of the analyst: for knowledge of self and other, and by those who long for interpretive insight into interior lives and social places. The volume thus poses for its readers twin questions: “Why do we continue to desire psychoanalysis, and what should its role be in the cultural criticism of the new millennium?”This collection grew out of a conference organized around this question and thus reflects the varied but not necessarily interconnected papers offered in that setting. In an effort to provide some interconnections, the collection is divided into four sections grouped around the topics of psychoanalysis and the future of cultural criticism, collectivity, the author, and sexuality. The grouping does not, in my estimation, provide unity or coherence to the volume as a whole; nevertheless, each article emerges on its own terms as a strong contribution to the general field of psychoanalytic cultural criticism and critical theory. Henry Sussman’s “Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Cultural Criticism at the Millennium” provides an anchoring perspective to the volume, addressing with particular urgency the mutually transformative desire of and for analysis modeled on the transference/countertransference clinical encounter. This analogy [End Page 153] suggestively sets the stage for a like transformative intervention by the analyst in a cultural critique, while acknowledging that cultural studies provides the best interpretation and assessment of the ways that psychoanalysis operates historically and clinically in contemporary society. Sussman—and indeed many of the contributors—underscores the editors’ organizing declaration that since psychoanalysis derived from lived human experience it stands to reason that “analysis is both the product of and answer to suffering” (15).Thus it comes as something of a surprise that one of its editors, Greg Forter, in “F. Scott Fitzgerald, Psychobiography, and the Fin-de-Siecle Crisis in Masculinity,” locks the subject of psychoanalysis into a stranglehold with his presuppositions about the limits of history and the origins of psychoanalysis in the modern moment: “Because the theory and techniques of psychoanalysis were developed by analyzing modern men and women, psychoanalysis may be a theory of modern subjectivity rather than of subjectivity as such, and its mode of inquiry may be best suited to analyzing the phenomena of modernity” (148). Contrast this limiting and limited sense of the place of psychoanalysis in history (and the concomitant restriction of its utility expressed ironically in a volume with two major articles on premodern cultural texts!) to recent remarks in a new book by Christopher Bollas: “For thousands of years there has been an unconscious preconception of psychoanalysis. We [...] human beings [...] have been searching for... (shrink)

"AGM members lunch." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 13.

With healthcare systems under pressure from scarcity of resources and ever‐increasing demand for services, difficult priority setting choices need to be made. At the same time, increased attention to patient involvement in a wide range of settings has given rise to the idea that those who are eventually affected by priority setting decisions should have a say in those decisions. In this paper, we investigate arguments for the inclusion of patient representatives in priority setting bodies at the policy level. We (...) find that the standard justifications for patient representation, such as to achieve patient‐relevant decisions, empowerment of patients, securing legitimacy of decisions, and the analogy with democracy, all fall short of supporting patient representation in this context. We conclude by briefly outlining an alternative proposal for patient participation that involves patient consultants. (shrink)

In barely the space of one generation, Athens was transformed from a conventional city-state into something completely new--a region-state on a scale previously unthinkable. This book sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: How and when did the Athenian state attain the anomalous size that gave it such influence in Greek politics and culture in the classical period? Many scholars argue that Athens's incorporation of Attica was a gradual development, largely completed some two hundred years before the classical era. (...) Anderson, however, suggests that it is not until the late sixth century that we see the first systematic attempts by the Athenian polis to integrate all of Attica. Anderson first takes issue with the prevailing view of Cleisthenes' landmark political reforms of 508-7 b.c., arguing that they were animated by a more comprehensive vision of regional political community in Attica. The Athenians' strengthened the state by establishing institutional mechanisms that would allow inhabitants of the Attic periphery to participate as never before in the life of the center. The creation of a suitable physical setting for the new order was accompanied by religious, military, and symbolic innovations. Regional participation in Athenian affairs was stimulated by encouraging the Attic populace to imagine themselves, for the first time ever, as members of a single, like-minded, self-governing political community. Greg Anderson is Assistant Professor of Classics and History, University of Illinois at Chicago. (shrink)

Wendy S. Parker and I have advanced an inductive-risk approach to the provision of climate information that relies on the contextual values of information users. This approach aims to improve the e...

A generation ago, we adopted a national system for the protection of human subjects in research. Today, that system is facing new challenges. Many argue that the system has failed to evolve in concert with dramatic changes in the research environment. Accordingly, efforts are underway to reform the existing process to make it both more efficient and more effective. At the same time, many are also reexamining the system in more fundamental ways — going well beyond considerations of policies and (...) compliance and raising questions that go to the very foundations of what constitutes an ethical conduct of human research.Experimentation involving human subjects is a necessary step in the process of translating scientific discovery and technological advancement into procedures and products that offer the prospect of better lives for all of us. It helps us to better understand why we do the things we do and believe what we believe. (shrink)

introduction Rhetoric/Memory/Place Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott The story is told of the poet Simonides of Ceos who, after chanting a poem ...

Gendlin's Philosophy of the Implicit offers root concepts, and a schema derived from them, for thinking about living and experiencing in very general terms, in ways that build bridges for thinking about human experience and animal experience together. He describes living as occurring into implying - what occurs is happening into implying something helpful - and when what occurs actually is helpful he describes this as living carrying forward. His term “the implicit” points towards the complexity involved in being helpful, (...) from the standpoint of a life appreciated as a whole. His concepts support disciplined thick description of animals’ lives. Looking, for example, at passages of kangaroo mothers' living, reveals their concurrent, crossed sensitivity to grass and other food, to their young's behavior, to predators, and to what other members of their group are doing. Standard methods for researching behavior hide this complexity. Looking at animal lives from the perspective of implying creates opportunities for describing animals’ lives holistically. This creates new research opportunities, and provides new tools for practical problems like designing conservation strategies so they work from animals' perspectives. (shrink)

Technological progress may eventually produce sophisticated robots with human-like traits that result in humans forming meaningful relationships with them. Such relationships would likely lead to a demand for human–artificial intelligence matrimony. U.S. Supreme Court decisions that expanded the definition of marriage to include interracial and same-sex couples, as well as those that have not extended marriage to polygamous relationships, provide guidance regarding the criteria that human–AI would have to meet to successfully assert a right to marry. Ultimately, robots will have (...) to possess certain characteristics of personhood to marry, including the capacity to contract and to engage in an intimate relationship. Alternatively, if AIs can simulate these abilities sufficiently, we may believe that they have these capacities. Even if AIs genuinely possess the capabilities necessary to enter into a marriage, it is social acceptance of intelligent non-humans as life partners that will likely influence legal development is this realm rather than personhood criteria. However, AIs are likely to face bias due to their “artificial” rather than biological nature. Yet, Peter Singer’s influential argument regarding speciesism in the context of animal rights implies that AIs with specific human-like qualities cannot be justifiably denied certain rights. (shrink)

Combining phenomenological insights from Brentano and Sartre, but also drawing on recent work on consciousness by analytic philosophers, this book defends the view that conscious states are reflexive, and necessarily so, i.e., that they have a built-in, implicit awareness of their own occurrence, such that the subject of a conscious state has an immediate, non-objectual acquaintance with it. As part of this investigation, the book also explores the relationship between reflexivity and the phenomenal, or what-it-is-like, dimension of conscious experience, defending (...) the innovative thesis that phenomenal character is constituted by the implicit self-awareness built into every conscious state. This account stands in marked contrast to most influential extant theories of phenomenal character, including qualia theories, according to which phenomenal character is a matter of having phenomenal sensations, and representationalism, according to which phenomenal character is constituted by representational content. (shrink)

I argue that aesthetic ideas should play a significant role in archaeological explanation. I sketch an account of aesthetic interests which is appropriate to archaeological contexts. I illustrate the role of aesthetics through a discussion of the transition from signals to symbols. I argue that the opposition in archaeological debate between explanation and interpretation is one we should reject.

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into (...) American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines. (shrink)

In many societies, the aging of the population is becoming a major problem. This raises difficult issues for ethics and public policy. On what is known as the fair innings view, it is not impermissible to give lower priority to policies that primarily benefit the elderly. Philosophers have tried to justify this view on various grounds. In this article, I look at a consequentialist, a fairness-based, and a contractarian justification. I argue that all of them have implausible implications and fail (...) to correspond to our moral intuitions. I end by outlining a different kind of consequentialist justification that avoids those implications and corresponds better to our considered moral judgments. (shrink)

This paper maps Hardt and Negri’s use of Deleuze philosophical commitment to the control society as a temporal phenomena in the context of education. Education is important because it is pushed and pulled by those vectors that Hardt and Negri see as central tensions in late capitalism: localism vs globalisation, discipline vs control, codes vs axioms, metrics vs expertise and so on. In Empire, Hardt and Negri represent Empire as a form of governance that responds to the passing from disciplinary (...) societies to societies of control. The societies of control are central to their concept of Empire defined “as a regime of the production of identity and difference, or really of homogenization and heterogenization”. Empire, then, is a macropolitics that produces, or infiltrates, subjectivation as a means to affect the self within globalising and localising regimes. This paper takes up Hardt and Negri’s challenge in two areas. First concerns what appears to be the collapse of the ideal of publicness within public school systems. The second provocation concerns the digital, or presumptive, economy of online and adaptive learning systems. (shrink)

In this paper I urge friends of truth-value gaps and truth-value gluts – proponents of paracomplete and paraconsistent logics – to consider theories not merely as sets of sentences, but as pairs of sets of sentences, or what I call ‘bitheories,’ which keep track not only of what holds according to the theory, but also what fails to hold according to the theory. I explain the connection between bitheories, sequents, and the speech acts of assertion and denial. I illustrate the (...) usefulness of bitheories by showing how they make available a technique for characterising different theories while abstracting away from logical vocabulary such as connectives or quanti- fiers, thereby making theoretical commitments independent of the choice of this or that particular non-classical logic. (shrink)

Carruthers offers a refreshing piece of “substantive philosophy.” Going beyond the limitations of pure analysis, he adopts a methodology which is one part analysis, one part empirical data, and a heavy dose of inference to the best explanation. The overarching goal is to advance the commonsense—yet unfashionable—thesis that natural language is the primary medium of thought, and to defend the related cognitive conception of NL. In particular, Carruthers argues that imaginative phonological representations of “inner speech” are constitutive of conscious thoughts, (...) and that thinking involves operations on such symbols. While there is still a role for mentalese cognition, such thinking is always unconscious, and probably of limited innate conceptual resources. The weak thesis is that, of natural necessity, all conscious propositional thought requires NL. The strong thesis is that, of natural necessity, distinctively human thoughts can only be tokened in natural language—hence even much of our unconscious thinking occurs in English. (shrink)

Loïc Wacquant argues for a radicalization of the habitus concept provided by Pierre Bourdieu, suggesting that habitus is a site and mode for conducting research, not simply an explanatory or theoretical mechanism. Taking seriously this call to examine skills and communities of practice through apprenticeship, however, requires that the theoretical account of habitus be subject to empirical testing. Moreover, enquiry into communities of practice, especially the subtle psychological, behavioural and even neurological consequences of skill acquisition, means that claims about the (...) habitus can be scrutinized by fields such as psychology, neurology and even human biology. Habitus as a truly open path of inquiry will demand, not wholly novel concepts, but a recognition of when claims about practice are simultaneously testable, and falsifiable, by other forms of empirical enquiry, including the human sciences. (shrink)

The aim of this book is twofold: to explain the reconciliation of religion and politics in the work of John Locke, and to explore the relevance of that reconciliation for politics in our own time. Confronted with deep social divisions over ultimate beliefs, Locke sought to unite society in a single liberal community. Reason could identify divine moral laws that would be acceptable to members of all cultural groups, thereby justifying the authority of government. Greg Forster demonstrates that Locke's (...) theory is liberal and rational but also moral and religious, providing an alternative to the two extremes of religious fanaticism and moral relativism. This account of Locke's thought will appeal to specialists and advanced students across philosophy, political science and religious studies. (shrink)

According to classical and postclassical sources, the early Greek turannoi were, by definition, illegitimate rulers who overturned existing political arrangements and installed rogue monarchic regimes in their place. And on this one fundamental point at least, modern observers of archaic turannides seem to have little quarrel with their ancient informants. To this day, it remains axiomatic that Cypselus, Peisistratus, and the rest were autocrats who gained power by usurpation. Whatever their individual accomplishments, they were still, in a word, "tyrants." Relying (...) mostly on evidence from the contemporary literary and material records, my paper aims to challenge this time-honored conventional wisdom and restore the first turannoi to the political mainstream. (shrink)

Anthropological contributions are essential to understanding the evolution of writing and its potential variation. Although Stanislas Dehaene calls for a ‘neuro-anthropological perspective’, he neglects anthropological evidence, including the only indisputable case of independent invention of writing: the pre-Columbian systems of the Americas. Here I argue that anthropological and historical accounts of the cultural evolution of language suggest that ecological, technological, social and political factors have all influenced the ongoing development of writing systems, even in directions contrary to that predicted by (...) a model of increased neural efficiency. In addition, Pre-Columbian writing systems, not subject to a diffusionist confound because of their independent invention, caution that our research on diversity in writing may represent a small, systematically biased sample. To truly understand neuro-cognitive variation, we have to avoid both overly ambitious universalisms and radical cultural relativism. (shrink)

The sun is in fact the same thing as the brightest object in the sky, but it would seem that the sun and the brightest object might have been different. Socrates may now be the same thing as the seated thing (because Socrates is now seated), but it would seem that Socrates and the seated thing will later be different (once Socrates rises). Now Aristotle’s usual way of describing such situations is to say that such pairs of entities are accidentally (...) the same or accidentally one,Aristotle writes both of sameness and of unity, and, though it is not clear that the terms can be used interchangeably, the accounts of each are too similar to ignore and so I shall move freely between the two notions. the idea being that the sun and the brightest objectIt is worth pointing out that a correlate of ‘object’ or ‘thing’ does not standardly appear in Aristotle’s Greek descriptions of such cases. Greek allows the nominalization of any adjective merely by prefixing a definite article to it. Thus Aristo .. (shrink)

In the concluding chapter of The General Theory, Keynes offers a vision of socialized investment, which, according to Allan Meltzer, informs Keynes's entire analysis and critique of laissez?faire capitalism. Roger Garrison adds a critical dimension to Meltzer's interpretation, contending that Keynes's vision of the ?comprehensive socialisation of investment,? with its zero rate of interest, is Utopian, thereby weakening Keynes's case against real?world capitalism. This paper defends Keynes, arguing that Garrison and Meltzer misconstrue both Keynes's theory of interest and his proposed (...) socialization of investment. The paper criticizes Garrison's justification of interest earnings as ?a reward for waiting,? provides an alternative account of the economic arrangements implied by socialized investment, and, more generally, argues that Keynes's economic analysis shaped his social vision, not vice versa. (shrink)

This book examines Rousseau’s ideas about the natural transparency of human intention, the loss of this transparency in the opaque cities of Europe, and the possibility of its restoration within small republican communities. The author weaves together Rousseau’s provocative conjectures about transparency and opaqueness to provide an original interpretation of Rousseau’s political thought and its bearing on several contemporary controversies. He also argues that civic cooperation in Rousseau’s model republic requires mutual surveillance; that Hobbes’s argument for a sovereign state assumes (...) the natural opacity of human intention; and that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” cannot efficiently coordinate the self-interested choices of opaque traders. (shrink)

According to reductive intentionalism, the phenomenal character of a conscious experience is constituted by the experience's intentional (or representational) content. The goal of this article is to show that a phenomenon in visual perception called change blindness poses a problem for this doctrine. It is argued, in particular, that phenomenal character is not sensitive, as it should be if reductive intentionalism is correct, to fine-grained variations in content. The standard anti-intentionalist strategy is to adduce putative cases in which phenomenal character (...) varies despite sameness of content. This paper explores an alternative anti-intentionalist tack, arguing, by way of a specific example involving change blindness, that content can vary despite sameness of phenomenal character. (shrink)