This book aims to elevate the education of future mental health professionals to a higher professional level and serve as a "vade mecum" of ethical and psychological reflection for practicing professionals. This book goes beyond merely offering a set of instructions; it encourages readers to actively engage in ethical reflection and cultivate ethical attitudes grounded in factual understanding.

Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. But what do they mean by that term? Popular naturalist slogans like, "there is no first philosophy" or "philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences" are far from illuminating. "Understanding Naturalism" provides a clear and readable survey of the main strands in recent naturalist thought. The origin and development of naturalist ideas in epistemology, metaphysics and semantics is explained through the works of Quine, Goldman, Kuhn, Chalmers, Papineau, Millikan and others. The most (...) common objections to the naturalist project - that it involves a change of subject and fails to engage with "real" philosophical problems, that it is self-refuting, and that naturalism cannot deal with normative notions like truth, justification and meaning - are all discussed. "Understanding Naturalism" distinguishes two strands of naturalist thinking - the constructive and the deflationary - and explains how this distinction can invigorate naturalism and the future of philosophical research. (shrink)

It is a great pleasure to introduce this collection of papers on the use of introspective evidence in cognitive science. Our task as guest editors has been tremendously stimulating. We have received an outstanding number of contributions, in terms of quantity and quality, from academics across a wide disciplinary span, both from younger researchers and from the most experienced scholars in the field. We therefore had to redraw the plans for this project a number of times. It quickly became clear (...) to us that the collection would expand beyond the scheduled double issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. A triple issue was then drafted, but the number of excellent contributions continued to grow. We therefore had to reconsider the publication plans again, and the decision was made to publish an extended collection of papers in discrete instalments. At present substantial progress has been made towards determining the content of a second double issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, due summer 2004. A third instalment now appears to be a real possibility. We welcome enquiries from authors interested in submitting to later instalments, especially those offering a novel perspective that is not otherwise represented. However, we do not intend continue this collection indefinitely. In putting together the first major interdisciplinary collection on this topic, we view our task as that of providing a starting point. Sufficient outlets exist to support ongoing debate. (shrink)

Seminal work in moral neuroscience by Joshua Greene and colleagues employed variants of the well-known trolley problems to identify two brain networks which compete with each other to determine moral judgments. Greene interprets the tension between these brain networks using a dual process account which pits deliberative reason against automatic emotion-driven intuitions: reason versus passion. Recent neuroscientific evidence suggests, however, that the critical tension that Greene identifies as playing a role in moral judgment is not so much a tension between (...) reason and passion, but a tension between distinct forms of deliberative reasoning: analytic versus empathetic. In this paper we present results from several new studies supporting this alternative hypothesis. (shrink)

In this paper I explore a series of fertile ambiguities that Merleau-Ponty’s work is premised upon. These ambiguities concern some of the central methodological commitments of his work, in particular his commitment to transcendental phenomenology and how he transforms that tradition, and his relationship to science and philosophical naturalism and what they suggest about his philosophical methodology. Many engagements with Merleau-Ponty’s work that are more ‘analytic’ in orientation either deflate it of its transcendental heritage, or offer a “modest” rendering of (...) its transcendental dimensions. This is also true, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent, of the work of the more empirically-minded phenomenological philosophers who engage very seriously with Merleau-Ponty—e.g. Hubert Dreyfus, Shaun Gallagher, Evan Thompson, Alva Noë, and others. At the same time, many other scholars contest these proto-scientific and more naturalistic uses of Merleau-Ponty’s work on hermeneutical and exegetical grounds, and they likewise criticise the deflated reading of his transcendental phenomenology that tends to support them. By working through some of the key passages and ideas, this paper establishes that the former view captures something pivotal to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. I also extend these interpretations by arguing that, at least around the time of Phenomenology of Perception, his philosophy might be reasonably regarded as a form of minimal methodological naturalism. (shrink)

This collection of ten original essays was first published in 1977. It engages the 'crisis in sociology' at the most fundamental level of thought and experience. Existential sociology is defined as the study and understanding of all forms of human existence. Without seeking to erect a pristine philosophical sanctuary of its own, Existential Sociology examines and criticizes the underlying philosophical assumptions of previous theories of social science, while elaborating its own approach to human understanding. The contributors are concerned with constructing (...) practical as well as theoretical truths about social life - how we feel, think and act. In contrast to most other sociologies, the emphasis is on the independence and dominance of human feelings over the evaluative and cognitive features of social actions. Students and teachers of sociology and people in related fields interested in the connection between social science and their own subjects will find Existential Sociology useful and absorbing. (shrink)

Suggesting that phenomenology results in an “imperialism of the same” that considers the other only in terms of their effect upon the subject rather than in their genuine alterity, Levinas initiates a line of thought that can still be discerned in the work of Foucault, Derrida and Claude Lefort. However, this paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s work is capable of avoiding this line of criticism, and that his position is an important alternative to the more dominant Derridean and Levinasian conceptions of (...) alterity. Moreover, this essay will also extricate Merleau-Ponty from Levinas’ claim that his philosophy is “sustained by an unaccountable affection”. Rather than ignoring the alterity of the other, and also without presupposing some primordial affectionate bond with the other, Merleau-Ponty explicates an interesting conception of what responsibility towards the ‘otherness of the other’ should consist in. Basically, he insists upon the way in which self and other are always already intertwined together (or reversible), and suggests that respecting the alterity of the other should involve the imperative to further immerse oneself in this transformative bond – to transform what we think of as self, and also what we think of as ‘other’. (shrink)

Despite rarely explicitly thematizing the problem of dirty hands, this essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s political work can nonetheless make some important contributions to the issue, both descriptively and normatively. Although his political writings have been neglected in recent times, his interpretations of Marxism and Machiavelli enabled him to develop an account of political phronesis and virtù that sought to retain the strengths of their respective positions without succumbing to their problems. In the process, he provides grounds for generalizing the problem (...) of “dirty hands” beyond Michael Walzer’s influential understanding that pertains primarily to “emergencies” and singular time-slice actions, and addresses concerns about the coherence of the very idea that there is justified action that one ought to do which remains wrong. Merleau-Ponty does this by emphasizing the diachronic relationship between theoretical principles and concrete political action over a period of time, thus imbuing the problem of dirty hands with a historicity that is not sufficiently recognized in the more static and action-focused discussions. (shrink)

This paper proposes that we should think of epistemic agents as having, as one of their intellectual activities, a gatekeeping task: To decide in light of various criteria which ideas they should consider and which not to consider. When this task is performed with excellence, it is conducive to the acquisition of epistemic goods such as truth and knowledge, and the reduction of falsehoods. Accordingly, it is a worthy contender for being an intellectual virtue. Although gatekeeping may strike one simply (...) as the virtue of open- mindedness, I argue that it is not; gatekeeping does not favor a characteristic disposition to be willing to consider novel or opposing ideas. In fact, being told that an agent is excellent at gatekeeping reveals nothing about how frequently she considers or refuses to consider ideas. This paper will introduce and motivate the notion of gatekeeping, and offer some preliminary arguments in support of its candidacy as an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

In this chapter we examine Merleau-Ponty's chapter, "The Intertwining/The Chiasm", before considering some of the criticisms made by his contemporaries and ‘successors’: Lacan, Irigaray, Levinas, Derrida and Deleuze.

According to Nicole Oresme (c. 1320–1382), human beings, unlike all other animals, consist of two substances: a thinking substance and a sensing substance. This paper presents and explores the arguments Oresme uses to arrive at this position, which is unusual in medieval philosophical psychology and which at least superficially – though their methods are completely different – resembles what Descartes concluded about the nature of the human soul and body two and a half centuries later. The paper also considers some (...) moments of ambivalence in Oresme’s presentation, as well as unresolved difficulties, several of which have theological as well as philosophical implications. (shrink)

This essay is a reconstruction and defense of Davidson''s argument against the intelligiblity of the notion of conceptual scheme. After presenting a brief clarification of Davidson''s argument in On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme, I turn to reconstructing Davidson''s argument. Unlike many commentators, and occasionally Davidson, who hold that the motive force of the argument is the Principle of Charity (or the denial of the Third Dogma), I argue that there is a further principle which underlies the argument. (...) This principle I call the Strong Discrimination Principle.But the argument of the paper is not purely exegetical. Not only do I show how the Strong Discrimination Principle meets certain objections to Davidson''s argument, but I show how the Principle clarifies the realist position. In particular, I show how a line of argument advanced by Rorty and Putnam against (metaphysical) realism can be rejected. (shrink)

Without proposing anything quite so grandiose as a return to existentialism, in this paper we aim to articulate and minimally defend certain core existentialist insights concerning the first-person perspective, the relationship between theory and practice, and the mode of philosophical presentation conducive to best making those points. We will do this by considering some of the central methodological objections that have been posed around the role of the first-person perspective and “lived experience” in the contemporary literature, before providing some neo-existentialist (...) rejoinders. We will suggest that the dilemma that contemporary philosophy poses to existentialism, vis-à-vis methodology, is that it is: a) committed to lived experience as some sort of given that might be accessed either introspectively or retrospectively (with empirical science posing prima facie obstacles to the veridicality of each); and/or b) it advocates transformative experiences, and the power of philosophy in connection with such experiences, to radically revise our doxastic and inter-connected web of beliefs. In short, the charge is conservatism on the one hand, radicalism on the other. Each of these concerns will be addressed in turn, utilizing ideas from Kierkegaard (as the source for many existentialist themes, methodological concerns, and formal practices) and from the German and French twentieth century versions of existentialism. (shrink)

Chapter 1 is an introduction. I will examine the writings about Quakers of More, Locke, Leibniz and Hume, whether or not the writings are themselves philosophy. I explain why, except for what I say about them in chapter 1, Anne Conway, Princess Elisabeth and Spinoza are not otherwise within the scope of the thesis. Chapter 2 examines More’s three criticisms of Quakers: (1) Quaking is not a guide to divine inspiration or truth. He was right about this, but the objection (...) became less important as Quakers stopped quaking. (2) By ignoring reason and conscience, Quakers leave themselves open to supposed inspirations which are contrary to reason and good manners. Quakers behave badly, which is evidence that their supposed inspirations are not genuine. This is essentially the same objection as is made by Locke and Leibniz, whose writings we examine in chapter 2. (3) The Quakers’ emphasis on Christ within (the light within) leads them to deny Christ without, the external, historical man who died, was resurrected, and is now in heaven. They deny what More considers to be essential to Christian faith. More’s interpretation of the early Quakers was correct, as his example of William Smith’s Quaker primer for children proves. Keith sought to answer More’s objection in an appendix to the second edition of his Immediate Revelation. As the Quakers’ thinking developed and (in the case of Smith) was posthumously ‘clarified’ i.e. corrected, they and More came to agree on the necessity of both Christ within and Christ without. So this objection also became less important. Chapter 3 examines the writings of Locke and Leibniz, including their correspondence, relating to Quakers. Did Quakers really believe that their inspirations should be accepted without any check or test involving reason or scripture? Yes, as Barclay’s discussion of his second proposition in the Apology shows. Both Locke and Leibniz studied works by Barclay. Locke became very close friends with the Quaker, Benjamin Furly, but his consistent position was that Quakers were enthusiasts and, because of their refusal to test apparent inspirations using reason, vulnerable to delusions. Leibniz expressed the same position most clearly in a short piece on apologetic work drafted, perhaps, in 1685. Locke’s views were most fully expressed in Book four, chapter 19 (‘Of Enthusiasm’) of the 1700 edition of his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with which Leibniz agreed in this New Essays. More, Locke and Leibniz were each Christians, and each was concerned to defend Christianity from Quaker enthusiasm. Chapter 4 examines Hume’s writings about Quakers in his essay “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm”, his History and a letter to the Quaker Elizabeth Shackleton. His portrait of early Quaker enthusiasm is very similar to that of his predecessors: the early Quakers were deluded enthusiasts whose pride led them to think they communicated directly with God. But his discussion serves quite a different purpose. Hume’s criticism of early Quaker excesses implies that they were foolish to follow biblical precepts. His discussion of the Quakers also implies that in a religious body in which belief is no longer supported by either superstition and priests, or the fires of enthusiasm, only reason remains, and belief in Christianity will fall away, leaving only something like deism or Confucianism. (shrink)

This book investigates the complex, sometimes fraught relationship between phenomenology and the natural sciences. The contributors attempt to subvert and complicate the divide that has historically tended to characterize the relationship between the two fields. Phenomenology has traditionally been understood as methodologically distinct from scientific practice, and thus removed from any claim that philosophy is strictly continuous with science. There is some substance to this thinking, which has dominated consideration of the relationship between phenomenology and science throughout the twentieth century. (...) However, there are also emerging trends within both phenomenology and empirical science that complicate this too stark opposition, and call for more systematic consideration of the inter-relation between the two fields. These essays explore such issues, either by directly examining meta-philosophical and methodological matters, or by looking at particular topics that seem to require the resources of each, including imagination, cognition, temporality, affect, imagery, language, and perception. (shrink)

This book considers the ability of individuals and communities to maintain healthy relationships with their surroundings—before, during and after catastrophic events—through physical activity and sporting practices. -/- Broad and ambitious in scope, this book uses sport and physical activity as a lens through which to examine our catastrophic societies and spaces. Acknowledging that catastrophes are complex, overlapping phenomena in need of sophisticated, interdisciplinary solutions, this book explores the social, economic, ecological and moral injustices that determine the personal and emotional impact (...) of catastrophe. Drawing from international case studies, this book uniquely explores the different landscapes and contexts of catastrophe as well as the affective qualities of sporting practices. This includes topics such as DIY skateparks in Jamaica; former child soldiers in Africa; the funding of sport, recreation and cultural activities by extractive industries in northern Canada; mountain biking in the UK; and urban exploration in New Zealand. Featuring the work of ex-professional athletes, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, political ecologists, community development workers and philosophers, this book offers new perspectives on capitalism, nature, sociality, morality and identity. -/- This is essential reading for academics and practitioners in sociology, disaster studies, sport-for-development and political ecology. (shrink)

Through research that was conducted with mountain bike trail builders, this article explores the processes by which socio-natures or ‘emergent ecologies’ are formed through the assemblage of trail building, mountain bike riding and matter. In moving conversations about ‘Nature’ beyond essentialist readings and dualistic thinking, we consider how ecological sensibilities are reflected in the complex, lived realities of the trail building community. Specifically, we draw on Morton’s (2017) notion of the ‘symbiotic real’ to examine how participants connect with a range (...) of objects and non-humans, revealing a ‘spectral’ existence in which they take pleasure in building material features that are only partially of their creation. Such ‘tuning’ to the symbiotic real was manifest in the ongoing battle that the trail builders maintained with water. This battle not only emphasized the fragility of their trail construction but also the temporal significance of the environments that these creations were rendered in/with. In conclusion, we argue that these findings present an ecological awareness that views nature as neither static, inert or fixed, but instead, as a temporal ‘nowness’, formed from the ambiguity of being in and with nature. Ecologically, this provides a unique form of orientation that re-establishes the ambiguity between humans and nature, without privileging the former. It is set against this ecological (un)awareness that we believe a re-orientation can be made to our understandings of leisure, the Anthropocene and the nature-culture dyad. (shrink)

General Practitioners (GPs) and allied healthcare professionals working in primary care are regularly required to make decisions with, for and on behalf of patients who lack capacity. In England and Wales, these decisions are made for incapacitated adult patients under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which primarily requires that decisions are made in the patient’s ‘best interests’. Regarding children, decisions are also made in their best interests but are done so under the Children Act 1989, which places paramount importance on (...) the welfare of the child. Decisions for children are usually made by parents, but a GP may become involved if he or she feels a parent is not acting in the best interests of the child. Internationally, including elsewhere in the UK, different approaches are taken. We hypothesise that, despite the legislation and professional guidelines, there are many different approaches taken by GPs and allied healthcare professionals in England and Wales when making these complex decisions with, for and on behalf of patients who lack capacity. To better understand what is known about how these decisions are made, we plan to undertake a scoping review and directed content analysis of the literature. While the majority of decisions made in primary care are made by GPs, for completeness, this review will include all allied healthcare professionals working in primary care. (shrink)

Data collection regarding the disproportionate representation of autism within the United States population does not imply that there are more autistics in the country, but that the neuroscience of human development is aggressively deployed as a technique of governance. I name this technique: "neuronationalism.".

A wide variety of theoretical tasks is inescapably part of psychological research, practice, and public policy initiatives. A classification and illustrated summary of these theoretical tasks is provided, an important purpose of which is to remind providers and users of psychological research and interventions of important theoretical dimensions of these activities. A larger purpose, however, is the promotion of theoretical psychology as an orientation toward, and a set of understandings and tools with which psychologists might approach, an appropriately contextualized self-understanding (...) of their practices as researchers and practitioners. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

En 1959, la revue Scientific American publie l’une des premières études consacrées à des œuvres d’art réalisées par une personne explicitement décrite comme « autiste » : un dénommé Joey[1]. L’auteur de cette étude de cas, Bruno Bettelheim, s’est avéré par la suite être un charlatan, sa pratique a été discréditée et aujourd’hui, ses méthodes sont généralement – et à juste titre – considérées comme abusives. Néanmoins, son travail a joué un rôle important dans la création du débat autour de (...) l’autisme aux États-Unis au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.[2] Ses recherches psychanalytiques concernant l’autisme ont été par la suite rassemblées dans son livre, La forteresse vide (1967). Si celui-ci est dorénavant un texte discrédité, il s’agit cependant d’une archive essentielle concernant la situation difficile des personnes autistes et la manière dont la vie et le travail de Joey ont perturbé les compréhensions dominantes de la différence humaine. (shrink)

Jack Whitehead; Living Educational Theories and Living Contradictions: a response to Mike Newby, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 30, Issue 3, 30 May.

While the various therapeutic neurotechnologies currently in development—TMS, tDCS, and related treatment modalities—have the potential to greatly augment the treatment of a spectrum of diseases an...

In this paper, I take inspiration from some themes in Ann Murphy’s recent book, Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary, especially her argument that philosophy’s identity and relation to itself depends on an intimate relationship with that which is designated as not itself, the latter of which is a potential source of shame that calls for some form of response. I argue that this shame is particularly acute in regard to the natural sciences, which have gone on in various ways to (...) distance themselves from their progenitor discipline and to achieve both agreement and technical progress in a way that could never be said of philosophy. I trace out some of the reactions to this shame that have dominated in the twentieth century and been a factor in the so-called analytic-continental ‘divide’. The options here are many and varied, but they range from cannibalism, scientific naturalism, or some kind of irenic separatism about methods or domains such that science and philosophy do not encroach upon the territory of each other. My aims here are mainly diagnostic, but I will indicate where I think that certain responses to this shame are unproductive and unhelpful, with divergent weaknesses associated with the traditions that have come to be labelled ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’ respectively. My tacit suggestion, then, is that philosophy needs to become post-analytic and meta-continental, but I will also briefly criticize some recent efforts to do precisely this in what is sometimes called the ‘scientific turn’ in contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre's moving eulogy for Merleau-Ponty on his death was entitled "Merleau-Ponty vivant" – Merleau-Ponty lives. And it is indeed difficult to deny that Merleau-Ponty’s thought remains a live and enduring part of the contemporary philosophical scene, in a manner that could not be said for his more famous contemporary. Despite the enduring significance of Merleau-Ponty and the voluminous writings about his work, the book that was intended to be his magnum opus, The Visible and the Invisible, remains an unfinished (...) project and one that has not had the sustained attention it merits. This may seem like a strange claim, given that many of its key concepts (chiasm, flesh, reversibility, etc.) have often been addressed. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which the strengths and weaknesses of this incipient ontology are not themselves particularly well-known or discussed, especially in English. In this chapter we examine this "indirect ontology," before considering some of the criticisms made by his contemporaries and 'successors': Lacan; Irigaray; Levinas; Derrida; Deleuze. (shrink)