This study sheds light on a key concept of Yogācāra intersubjectivity that played a significant role in medieval Chinese Yogācāra. Specifically, it analyzes how Kuiji 窺基 (632–682) reinterprets adhipati (activating and amplifying influence; Ch: zengshang 增上 or zengshang li 增上力 or zengshang yuan 增上緣) to account for intersubjective karmic interactions across different lifeworlds in the events of teaching and killing.As this line of investigation shows, Kuiji’s theory of adhipati attempts to sidestep the entanglement of the problems of intersubjectivity and incommensurable (...) worlds in Yogācāra. Extant scholarship on intersubjectivity often presumes one spatio-temporal world populated by sentient beings and insentient objects, which is fundamentally at odds with the Yogācāra tenet that each mental stream generates its distinct lifeworld. To address the pragmatic question of how different mental continuums of consciousnesses can impinge into each other’s lifeworlds, Kuiji employed adhipati in a specific way to account for intersubjective interplay across different, potentially incommensurable worlds. In this framing of intersubjectivity, the problem of one world or many worlds is explained non-dualistically: these lifeworlds are neither the same nor different, neither one nor many, but karmically interconnected.Expanding on recent discussions of the puzzle of intersubjectivity in Yogācāra, this paper shows that Kuiji’s deployment of adhipati provides an account of genuine intersubjectivity in which different mental continuums are recognized as subjects and engage in causal interactions among different spatio-temporal worlds. In Kuiji’s framing, this genuine intersubjectivity gives rise to the sense of one shared world. (shrink)

Yogācāra, one of the two principal schools of Indian Mahayana Buddhism, arose in the first or second century CE and was introduced into Tibet and China in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, where it quickly became a dominant form. Roughly comparable to phenomenology in the West (and acknowledged as an influence by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty), it rejects ontology in favor of experiential foundations and claims that knowledge is produced by individual or collective consciousness. In the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth (...) centuries, in response to the introduction of evolutionary theory and its specious corollary of Social Darwinism, Chinese Buddhists asked what kind of philosophy could both accommodate the scientific enterprise and enable a better understanding of a social dynamics that could oppose racial, class, and colonial hierarchies. They turned to yogācāra; thinkers like Lu Cheng called into question unexamined materialist and empiricist assumptions that naturalized moral/rational egoism and hierarchy. He argued that scientific and social-scientific findings could be established epistemically by intersubjective agreement, coherence, and causal efficacy. Jessica Zu recovers this influential yogācāra movement in premodern and modern China and in turn asks why it has had no purchase in the West. Part of the reason is the epistemic policing of the boundary between philosophy and religion and its colonialist privileging of Western thought-we don't speak of Kant or Hegel as "Christian" philosophers. If we expand our conceptual universe to include world philosophies, antiessentialist Chinese process thinking is a valuable resource for combating systemic oppression and fostering social justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Medusa Complex:Matricide and the Fantasy of CastrationJessica Elbert MayockThe theoretical structures of psychoanalysis have excluded the female subject by placing her outside of the Symbolic, and feminist theorists' responses to this problem have been divided. Some theorists (such as Kristeva) accept the notion of an unalterable Lacanian Symbolic, while others (such as Irigaray) maintain that the current Symbolic is a manifestation of male fantasy, and suggest that feminist (...) thinkers explore the possibility of reorganizing the Symbolic. Amber Jacobs, in her recent work On Matricide (2007), takes up this challenge by analyzing matricide in myth in order to reveal matricide as latent content untheorized within psychoanalysis. Jacobs claims that the structure of the Lacanian Symbolic illegitimately asserts the "law of the father" as the only possible law, excluding any possibility of a "law of the mother" by erasing the maternal role in theory and symbolization. Her project, following Irigaray, is to make visible those unconscious contents excluded by the patriarchal imaginary in order to "be able to intervene into psychoanalysis for the purpose of working toward theorization of unconscious structures that are not reducible to the structure of Oedipus alone" (Jacobs 2007, x). If Jacobs's suggestion is correct, then analysis of Freud's evidence for the Oedipus Complex (and its accompanying concepts) will reveal repressed contents and traces of these untheorized unconscious structures—particularly those associated with the maternal body.With these considerations in mind, I take up the Freudian case of Little Hans, where Freud finds his most seminal evidence for castration anxiety [End Page 158] and the Oedipus Complex. I will demonstrate Freud's systematic occlusion of the maternal body through his overvaluation of the male body/the phallus in order to expose the elements of male fantasy that construct the Oedipus Complex. I organize these psychical elements in a configuration called "The Medusa Complex," since Freud uses the image of Medusa to explain his theory of castration. In rereading the details of this case, a powerful male fantasy begins to emerge: the desire to appropriate the female generative power. This is achieved through the theory of castration, which the decapitation of Medusa symbolizes, and the unconscious wish for male parthenogenesis—one product of this wish is the Lacanian Symbolic structure, where only the male principle of the phallus is generative. The Medusa Complex is comprised of the two intertwined male fantasies of female castration and male parthenogenesis, as well as the associated resistances that result from initiation into this paradigm. The theory of castration and the Oedipus Complex are attempts to conceal the powerful maternal body and assert male superiority and dominance.In the case of Little Hans, "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five Year Old Boy" (1909), Little Hans develops a fear of horses (especially biting horses) and is afraid to go out into the street. Hans's treatment is undertaken by his father, a medical doctor, who keeps careful notes and acts under Freud's supervision (mostly via letters). The boy's phobia begins around the time his little sister Hanna is born, as Freud and the father eventually admit, though her role in their narrative is nonexistent.1 They interpret Hans's phobia as a classic Oedipal triangle in which he desires his mother and fears the hostility of his father; his fear is translated into fear of the castrating father. Throughout the case, Freud and the father emphasize the boy's alleged awe of the adult male genital organ. In this paper, I will revisit the case (preserved in careful detail by the boy's father) and systematically return the maternal body to its rightful place within the narrative, shifting both the structure and the meaning of the phobia.I am here reading the case as an example of manifest content—like the surface content of a dream—in order to expose the male desires that create it. The current Symbolic is essentially a dream of the male imaginary, and my method is to reveal the latent content of the dream, especially the fantasies that inform it. Desire is the generating force behind this dream, and until we encounter and understand this desire, it will continue to compulsively... (shrink)

Since the publication of Kit Fine's “Essence and Modality”, there has been lively debate over how best to think of essence in relation to necessity. The present aim is to draw attention to a definition of essence in terms of modality that has not been given sufficient attention. This neglect is perhaps unsurprising, since it is not a proposal made in response to Fine's 1994 paper and ensuing discussion, but harks back to Ruth Barcan Marcus's earlier work in the 1960s (...) and 1970s on essentialist claims. At the core of Barcan Marcus's account is Minimal Essentialism, of which there are several extensions, in particular, for cases of referential predicates (such as “x is identical to Socrates”), Individuating Essentialism, and Aristotelian Essentialism. I argue that Minimal Essentialism fares favourably against a host of familiar examples. I close with some historical observations, that the distinction between essence and necessity was already commonplace in the early days of quantified modal logic and its philosophy. (shrink)

Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch? Identifying Literary Works in Genesis through Kings. Edited by Thomas B. Dozeman; Thomas Römer; and Konrad Schmid. Ancient Israel and Its Literature, vol. 8. Atlanta: SociEty of BiBlical litERatuRE, 2011. Pp. x + 313. $39.95.

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Although the field of psychiatry has witnessed the proliferation of studies on Gene x Environment (GxE) interactions, still limited is the knowledge we possess of GxE interactions regarding developmental disorders. In this perspective paper, we discuss why GxE interaction studies are needed to broaden our knowledge of developmental disorders. We also discuss the different roles of hazardous versus self-generated environmental factors and how these types of factors may differentially engage with an individual’s genetic background in predicting a resulting phenotype. Then, (...) we present exemplar studies that highlight the role of GxE in predicting atypical developmental trajectories as well as provide insight regarding treatment outcomes. Supported by these examples, we explicate the need to move beyond merely examining statistical interactions between genes and the environment, and to investigate specific genetic susceptibility and environmental contexts that drive developmental disorders. We propose that further parsing of genetic and environmental components is required to fully understand the unique contribution of each factor to the etiology of developmental disorders. Finally, with a greater appreciation of the complexities of GxE interaction, this discussion will converge upon the potential implications for clinical and translational research. (shrink)

Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to (...) these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will. (shrink)

Technologies to rapidly alert people when they have been in contact with someone carrying the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 are part of a strategy to bring the pandemic under control. Currently, at least 47 contact-tracing apps are available globally. They are already in use in Australia, South Korea and Singapore, for instance. And many other governments are testing or considering them. Here we set out 16 questions to assess whether — and to what extent — a contact-tracing app is ethically justifiable.

The construct of wellbeing has been criticised as a neoliberal construction of western individualism that ignores wider systemic issues such as inequality and anthropogenic climate change. Accordingly, there have been increasing calls for a broader conceptualisation of wellbeing. Here we impose an interpretative framework on previously published literature and theory, and present a theoretical framework that brings into focus the multifaceted determinants of wellbeing and their interactions across multiple domains and levels of scale. We define wellbeing as positive psychological experience, (...) promoted by connections to self, community and environment, supported by healthy vagal function, all of which are impacted by socio-contextual factors that lie beyond the control of the individual. By emphasising the factors within and beyond the control of the individual and highlighting how vagal function both affects and are impacted by key domains, the biopsychosocial underpinnings of wellbeing are explicitly linked to a broader context that is consistent with, yet complementary to, multi-levelled ecological systems theory. Reflecting on the reciprocal relationships between multiple domains, levels of scale and related social contextual factors known to impact on wellbeing, our GENIAL framework may provide a foundation for a transdisciplinary science of wellbeing that has the potential to promote the wellbeing of individuals while also playing a key role in tackling major societal challenges. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that agents lack the standing to blame in cases where their blame would be hypocritical. Jack for instance, would seem to lack the standing to blame Gerald for being rude to their local barista if he has himself been rude to baristas in the past. Recently, it has been suggested that Jack need not even have displayed any such rudeness in order for his blame to qualify as hypocritical; it would suffice if he too would have (...) been rude to the barista, were he in Gerald’s situation. The latter is an instance of subjunctive hypocritical blame; Jack’s blame is hypocritical not because he has committed the wrong in question, but because he would do so under particular circumstances. Many philosophers endorse a kind of symmetry between ordinary and subjunctive hypocritical blame; they maintain that Jack lacks the standing to blame Gerald if his blame would be hypocritical in either the ordinary or the subjunctive sense. However, I believe that they are mistaken to do so. I argue for an asymmetry between ordinary and subjunctive hypocritical blame: only the former should be taken to compromise an agent’s standing. (shrink)

According to evolutionary accounts of distinct emotions, these emotions are shaped by natural selection to adjust the physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral parameters of an organism to facilitate its capacity to respond adaptively to threats and opportunities present in the environment. This account has a number of implications, most notably: (a) each distinct emotion serves, or served, an adaptive function, and (b) emotions are comprised of multiple components, all of which should be functional. In this article, I briefly outline an (...) evolutionary approach to understanding distinct emotions, then explain how this approach could be falsified, how one’s own emotion experience differs from the observation of an emotion experience in someone else, and why variability in emotional responding should be expected. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the role of attention in Kant’s aesthetic theory in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. While broadly Kantian aestheticians have defended the claim that there is a distinct way that we attend to objects in aesthetic experience, Kant himself is not usually acknowledged as offering an account of aesthetic attention. On the basis of Kant’s more general account of attention in other texts and his remarks on attention in the Critique of the Power of (...) Judgment, I reconstruct Kant’s account of aesthetic attention. On this account, aesthetic attention is simultaneously directed at the form of an object and at the judging subject’s own mental states as she attends to the object. In the experience of beauty, we specifically attend to the harmonious relation between the faculties of imagination and understanding. (shrink)

The idea that one can blamelessly violate a norm is central to ethics and epistemology. The paper examines the prospects for an account of blameless norm violation applicable both to norms governing action and norms governing belief. In doing so, I remain neutral on just what are the norms governing action and belief. I examine three leading suggestions for understanding blameless violation of a norm which is not overridden by another norm: doxastic accounts; epistemic accounts; and appeal to expected value. (...) We see that all of these accounts face problems when understood as accounts of blameless norm violation applicable to both belief and action. This leaves a variety of options including seeking an alternative account of blameless norm violation common to belief and action; concluding that we cannot determine the correct account of blameless norm violation independently of what are the norms of belief; and abandoning the project of finding a common account of blameless norm violation common to ethics and epistemology. (shrink)

Alexander X. Douglas situates Spinoza's philosophy in its immediate historical context, and argues that much of his work was conceived with the aim of rebutting the claims of his contemporaries. In contrast to them, Spinoza argued that philosophy reveals the true nature of God, and reinterpreted the concept of God in profound and radical ways.

This is a comprehensive discussion of determinables, determinates, and their relation ('determination', for short), covering the historical development of these notions, the theoretical options for understanding them, and certain of their contemporary applications.

I first discuss Kit Fine's distinctive 'schema-based' approach to metaphysical theorizing, which aims to identify general principles accommodating any intelligible application of the notion, by attention to his accounts of essence and dependence. I then raise some specific concerns about the general principles Fine takes to schematically characterize these notions. In particular, I present various counterexamples to Fine's essence -based account of ontological dependence. The problem, roughly speaking, is that Fine supposes that an object's essence makes reference to just what (...) it ontologically depends on, but various cases suggest that an object's essence can also make reference to what ontologically depends on it, either by way of composition or causation. As such, Fine's account of ontological dependence is subject to the same objection he raises against modal accounts of essence and dependence---that is, of being insufficiently ecumenical. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explore various ways of thinking about the concept of manipulation in order to capture both current and potentially future instances of machine manipulation, manipulation on the part of everything from the Facebook advertising algorithm to super-intelligent AGI. Three views are considered: a conservative one, which slightly tweaks extant influence-based theories of manipulation; a dismissive view according to which it doesn't matter much if machines are literally manipulative, provided we can classify them as so (...) doing to make sense of our interactions with them; and an ameliorative analysis, according to which we should change our concept of manipulation better to make sense of machine manipulation. We tentatively favor the latter. (shrink)

(Posted version is final pre-publication version.) Is there a need for a distinctively diachronic conception of metaphysical emergence? Here I argue to the contrary. In the main, my strategy consists in considering a representative sample of accounts of purportedly diachronic metaphysical emergence, and arguing that in each case, the purportedly diachronic emergence at issue either can (and should) be subsumed under a broadly synchronic account of metaphysical emergence, or else is better seen as simply a case of causation.

Immanuel Kant’s notion of weakness or frailty warrants more attention, for it reveals much about his theory of motivation and general metaphysics of mind. As the first and least severe of the three grades of evil, frailty captures those cases where an agent fails to act on their avowed recognition that the moral law is the only legitimate determining ground of the will. The possibility of such cases raises many important questions that have yet to be settled by interpreters. Most (...) importantly, should we account for the failures of weakness by appealing to the activity of reason or sensibility? I will discuss this question in light of a tendency to adopt an overly dualistic reading of Kant’s moral psychology. Focusing on Kant’s remarks on weakness from the Religion and the Metaphysics of Morals, I argue that we should understand weakness as arising from the unique difficulties of sense-dependent judgment, rather than from self-deception, flagging commitment, or overwhelming desire. The resulting account offers a unified moral psychology capable of accommodating the many features of weakness that are difficult to reconcile on other readings. (shrink)

I argue that public officials and health workers ought to respect and protect women’s rights to make risky choices during childbirth. Women’s rights to make treatment decisions ought to be respected even if their decisions expose their unborn children to unnecessary risks, and even if it is wrong to put unborn children at risk. I first defend a presumption of medical autonomy in the context of childbirth. I then draw on women’s birth stories to show that women’s medical autonomy is (...) often ignored during labor. Medical interventions are performed during childbirth without women’s consent. Childbirth is risky and some coercive medical interventions may be understood as attempts to protect children and to prevent mothers from acting impermissibly. However, even if it is wrong to make risky choices during childbirth, women have rights to do wrong in these cases. Therefore, coercive medical interventions are impermissible during childbirth and institutions should adopt specific protections for obstetric autonomy. (shrink)

I consider whether one particular anti-individualist claim, the doctrine of object-dependent thoughts (DODT), is compatible with the Principle of Privileged Access, or PPA, which states that, in general, a subject can have non-empirical knowledge of her thought contents. The standard defence of the compatibility of anti-individualism and PPA emphasises the reliability of the process which produces a subject's second order beliefs about her thought contents. I examine whether this defence can be applied to DODT, given that DODT generates the possibility (...) of illusions of thought. Drawing on general epistemological literature, I distinguish several senses of reliability, and argue that in the relevant sense-'global reliability'-DODT does sometimes threaten reliability and hence PPA. (shrink)

This article introduces the special issue on questions, questioning, and institutional practices. We begin by considering how questioning as a discursive practice is a central vehicle for constructing social worlds and reflecting existing ones. Then we describe the different ways questions and question have been defined, typologized, and critiqued, in general and within seven institutions including policing, the courts, medicine, therapy, research interviews, education, and mediated political exchanges. The introduction concludes with a preview of the articles in the special issue.

_Offers a striking new reading of Agamben’s political thought and its implications for political action in the present._.

While Kant was arguably as deeply engaged with the emerging special sciences of his time as he was with Newtonian physics, there is a deep tension in his treatment of these disciplines. On the one hand, Kant endorses a reductionist approach in natural science. On the other hand, Kant is committed to a variety of anti-reductionist positions in empirical psychology, chemistry, and the emerging biological sciences. This chapter examines the precise form that Kant’s anti-reductionism takes in each of these domains (...) and the corresponding set of questions about the extent to which each of these constitutes a genuine science for Kant. (shrink)

“Hypertension in Blacks is a salt disease,” Dr. Anderson1 explained. “Too much salt overloads their renin-angiotensin system and their kidneys can’t handle it. It’s just the way their bodies work....

O povo Kaingang é o mais populoso do Sul do Brasil e está entre os mais numerosos povos indígenas do país. Neste trabalho faz-se uma relação entre as informações encontradas na literatura e a atualidade na Terra Indígena Kaingang em relação ao conhecimento que possuem sobre o uso de plantas para a cura de doenças e como interpretam a ação da erva no organismo. Para isto, realizou-se uma pesquisa de campo em uma Terra Indígena Kaingang no Paraná, cujo entrevistas forneceram (...) confirmações históricas em relação aos etnoconhecimentos da etnia, da evolução dos aspectos químicos e das atitudes perante a química e os remédios de origem farmacêutica e natural. (shrink)

Recent feminist theorizing has pointed to a `resurgent patriarchy' within neo-liberal postfeminist times, which re-orders and restabilizes the heterosexual matrix through a politics of `postfeminist masquerade' demanded of girls and women (McRobbie). This paper seeks to complicate this thesis, exploring the regulation and rupture of Butler's `heterosexual matrix' as a complex performative politics through which girls' conflictual relationships with themselves, and other girls and boys are staged and through which dominant versions of tweenage and teenage femininity are reinscribed but also (...) reworked, in race and class specific ways. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's powerful conceptual repertoire for disrupting Oedipal logics in Anti-Oedipus, we offer a `molecular mapping', illustrating cracks and ruptures in what is a porous heterosexual matrix, exploring a rhythm of `deterritorializations' and `reterritorializations' of the normative in our respective ethnographic and narrative interviews with girls. We also trace more sustained ruptures of heteronormative femininity drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari's notion of `lines of flight' and Braidotti's concept of `alternative figuration'. We argue ruptures and alternative figurations are not constitutive of total `molar' resistance to norms, but are significant spaces of doing girl differently and crucial to map if we are to perceive the malleability and multiplicity of contemporary girl subjectivities, which exceed heteronormative femininity and phallogocentric desire. (shrink)

Introduction to the collection "Knowledge Ascriptions" (eds. Brown, J. and Gerken, M.).

Background: Breastfeeding is currently strongly recommended by midwives and paediatricians, and the recommendations are based on documents provided by the World Health Organization and public health authorities worldwide. Research question: The underlying question is, how are non-breastfeeding mothers affected emotionally when informed that breastfeeding is the safest and healthiest option? Research design: The method used is an anonymous web-based qualitative survey exploring the narratives of non-breastfeeding mothers, published on Thesistools.com. The aim is to achieve qualitative knowledge about the emotions of (...) non-breastfeeding mothers. Participants and research context: Participants were based in Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and were selected through a purposeful sample. Ethical considerations: The online survey anonymizes responses automatically, and all respondents had to tick a box agreeing to be quoted anonymously in scientific articles. The study conforms to research ethics guidelines. Findings: Respondents describe how they were affected, and the following themes emerged in studying their descriptions: depression, anxiety and pain, feeling failed as a mother and woman, loss of freedom/feeling trapped, relief and guilt. Discussion: The themes are discussed against the background of the ethics of care and a theory of ethically responsible risk communication. Conclusion: Three conclusions are made. First, the message should become more empathetic. Second, information should be given in an attentive dialogue. Third, information providers should evaluate effects in a more inclusive way. (shrink)

Innovations in information technologies have facilitated the development of new styles of research networks and forms of governance. This is evident in genomics where increasingly, research is carried out by large, interdisciplinary consortia focussing on a specific research endeavour. The UK10K project is an example of a human genomics consortium funded to provide insights into the genomics of rare conditions, and establish a community resource from generated sequence data. To achieve its objectives according to the agreed timetable, the UK10K project (...) established an internal governance system to expedite the research and to deal with the complex issues that arose. The project’s governance structure exemplifies a new form of network governance called ‘pop-up’ governance. ‘Pop-up’ because: it was put together quickly, existed for a specific period, was designed for a specific purpose, and was dismantled easily on project completion. In this paper, we use UK10K to describe how ‘pop-up’ governance works on the ground and how relational, hierarchical and contractual governance mechanisms are used in this new form of network governance. (shrink)