Book reviewed in this article: he Powers of Psychiatry. By Jonas Robitscher.

Objective: Deficits in affective processing are associated with impairments in both mental and physical health. The role of affective processing in patients with functional somatic complaints such as irritable bowel syndrome remains unclear. Most studies have focused on the capacity for emotional awareness and expression, but neglect other dimensions of affective processing. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically analyze differences in six different dimensions of affective processing between patients with IBS and healthy controls. Additionally, we exploratively investigated the impact of (...) IBS symptom severity, psychological distress, and attachment styles on affective processing in IBS. Methods: A controlled cross-sectional multi-center study was conducted. Overall, 127 patients with IBS were compared with 127 matched HCs using multivariate analysis of variances. Affective processing was operationalized in line with the affect cascade model on six specific dimensions: emotional experience, emotional awareness, affect tolerance, affect differentiation, affect regulation, and emotional communication. They were measured using two subscales of the Mentalizing Questionnaire and four subscales of the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis–Structure Questionnaire. Linear regression analysis was used to investigate the influence of IBS symptom severity, depression, anxiety, and anxious and avoidant attachment styles on the different dimensions of affective processing in IBS. Results: Patients with IBS compared to HCs showed deficits in all six dimensions of affective processing. Deficits were largest for affect tolerance and lowest for emotional experience and emotional awareness. Moderate effect sizes were found for affect differentiation, emotional communication, and affect regulation. Moreover, explorative analyses indicated that affective processing in patients with IBS was significantly influenced by levels of anxiety and insecure attachment. Conclusion: The results indicate a specific pattern of affective processing abilities in patients with IBS. The deficits in affective processing are more prominent in the area of understanding and tolerating difficult affective states than experiencing affective states. This opens interesting perspectives for the development of specific psychotherapeutic interventions. (shrink)

BackgroundEverybody has the right to decide whether to receive specific medical treatment or not and to provide their free, prior and informed consent to do so. As dementia progresses, people with Alzheimer’s dementia (PwAD) can lose their capacity to provide informed consent to complex medical treatment. When the capacity to consent is lost, the autonomy of the affected person can only be guaranteed when an interpretable and valid advance directive exists. Advance directives are not yet common in Germany, and their (...) validity is often questionable. Once the dementia diagnosis has been made, it is assumed to be too late to write an advance directive. One approach used to support the completion of advance directives is ‘Respecting Choices’®—an internationally recognised, evidence-based model of Advance Care Planning (ACP), which, until now, has not been evaluated for the target group of PwAD. This study’s aims include (a) to investigate the proportion of valid advance directives in a memory clinic population of persons with suspected AD, (b) to determine the predictors of valid advance directives, and (c) to examine whether the offer of ACP can increase the proportion of valid advance directives in PwAD.MethodWe intend to recruit at leastN = 250 participants from two memory clinics in 50 consecutive weeks. Of these, the first 25 weeks constitute the baseline phase (no offer of ACP), the following 25 weeks constitute the intervention phase (offer of ACP). The existence and validity of an advance directive will be assessed twice (before and after the memory clinic appointment). Moreover, potential predictors of valid advance directives are assessed.DiscussionThe results of this study will enhance the development of consent procedures for advance directives of PwAD based on the ACP/Respecting Choices (R) approach. Therefore, this project contributes towards increasing the autonomy and inclusion of PwAD and the widespread acceptance of valid advance directives in PwAD.Trial RegistrationDRKS, DRKS00026691, registered 15th of October 2021,https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00026691. (shrink)

There is a tendency in the literature on local digital media use and neighborhood outcomes to conceptualize Social Network Sites as mere transmission channels, thereby ignoring SNSs’ dynamics and limiting the understanding of their role in neighborhood life. Informed by Communication Infrastructure Theory and social media literature, we propose and test a model to investigate the association between the use of SNSs, appropriated as online neighborhood networks, and neighborhood sense of community. We administered a survey to Flemish online neighborhood network (...) users and found that active localized SNS use brings about an online sense of community and community awareness, which both independently lead to a neighborhood sense of community. Based on these findings, we argue that SNSs, appropriated as online neighborhood networks, function simultaneously as neighborhood hotspots in a neighborhood’s communication action context as well as community awareness media in a neighborhood’s storytelling network. (shrink)

Tillie Olsen (1978) drew attention to an evident, yet underappreciated fact of writing, which is that it takes time: ‘Where the claims of creation cannot be primary, the results are atrophy; unfinished work; minor effort and accomplishment; silences’ (p. 13). Drawing from our experiences as a precariously employed PhD student and a postdoc in philosophy with parenting responsibilities, we want to address this type of silencing in a manner that stylistically corresponds to the exhaustion, lack of time, and lack of (...) leisure experienced by many caregivers in academia. For this, we want to record one of the few occasions in our daily routine where there is sufficient time and mental capacity to reflect on our own situation: the conversation at the kitchen table in the evening when the chores are done. Our contribution consists in a redacted transcription of this conversation for which we propose the term ‘autotheoretical dialogue’ (see Fournier 2021; Young 1997). Our dialogue covers topics such as: care in relation to class and gender (Lightman & Link 2021); teaching in higher education as a form of care work in contrast to the more prestigious work of research (Cardozo 2017); the precarious working conditions in academia and their relation to parenting (Spina et al. 2022); the ignorance and hostility towards parenthood in academia; the effects of this marginalisation like fatigue, self-doubt, and depression, but also the ambivalence that arises from the conflict of the joy of caring; and the institutional and cultural difficulties of reconciling academic work with parenthood. (shrink)

Sentience, defined as the unconscious capacity of having conscious feeling experiences, is a psychobiological phenomenon involving dynamic patterns of electrochemical waves in living systems. The process of feeling can be studied in two ways: a) Empirical identification and analysis of the universal temporal patterns that characterize feeling, forming a science to be called Sentiomics; b) Introspective identification and report of the variety of qualitative conscious experiences, from a first-person perspective, a study that could be called Qualiomics. Qualiomics is undoubtedly a (...) challenge to conventional science, as stated in the “hard problem of consciousness” (Chalmers, 1995), as the first-person perspective is not accessible to conventional scientific measurement methods and explanations. Sentiomics, focusing on dynamic patterns that define the capacity to feel, is therefore susceptible to empirical and experimental treatment. In this article, we propose to contextualize the philosophical assumptions and problems of Sentiomics and present some of its various applications, focusing on its the relation with music. (shrink)

In this article, we seek to discuss the recurrence of racism and prejudice toward black lives and childhoods, in spite of repeated initiatives to overcome it by social and educational policy-makers. Following the investigations launched by Michel Foucault on the biopower hypothesis, we revisit some of his interpreters, with the objective of discussing the challenges posed by racism to pedagogical provisions for black children and—following on a concept offered by Emmanuel Levinas--an education of the Face, as a weapon in the (...) political field of struggle against the thanatological dimension of biopolitics. To do so, we retrace some scenes from the history of inclusion devices – especially those policies aimed at black populations. We reflect on the racism embedded in our historical unconscious and discuss how it affects the education of the black Face in our country. We problematize the peculiarities of Brazilian racial prejudice and explore its necropolitical positioning when it comes to the governance of black childhoods. We conclude that the current form of governmentality and education needs a movement of de-rostification—deconstuction of the black Face--in order to identify a future for black children that makes it possible to rise up against the hegemonic order of the white-male-heterosexual-christian-European, and to create processes of subjectivation that can build solidarity with the multiplicity of others-becoming-minoritarian. (shrink)

This open access casebook addresses complex and important ethical challenges arising when health-related research in conducted in the context of epidemics and pandemics. This book provides contextually-rich real-world case studies illustrating research ethics issues encountered by researchers, ethics reviewers and regulators around the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic. The accompanying commentaries outline relevant conceptual approaches and ethical considerations. These promote understanding and reflection on relevant ethical issues, ethical approaches and competing considerations in a manner supporting thoughtful evaluation of their implications (...) for practice. As such the casebook is relevant to academic and professional audiences with an interest in global health, research ethics, and outbreaks and epidemics. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many advocacy groups and individuals criticized governments on social media for doing either too much or too little to mitigate the pandemic. In this article, we review advocacy for COVID-19 elimination or “zero-covid” on the social media platform X (Twitter). We present a thematic analysis of tweets by 20 influential co-signatories of the World Health Network letter on ten themes, covering six topics of science and mitigation (zero-covid, epidemiological data on variants, long-term post-acute sequelae (Long COVID), (...) vaccines, schools and children, views on monkeypox/Mpox) and four advocacy methods (personal advice and promoting remedies, use of anecdotes, criticism of other scientists, and of authorities). The advocacy, although timely and informative, often appealed to emotions and values using anecdotes and strong criticism of authorities and other scientists. Many tweets received hundreds or thousands of likes. Risks were emphasized about children’s vulnerability, Long COVID, variant severity, and Mpox, and via comparisons with human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). Far-reaching policies and promotion of remedies were advocated without systematic evidence review, or sometimes, core field expertise. We identified potential conflicts of interest connected to private companies. Our study documents a need for public health debates to be less polarizing and judgmental, and more factual. In order to protect public trust in science during a crisis, we suggest the development of mechanisms to ensure ethical guidelines for engagement in “science-based” advocacy, and consideration of cost–benefit analysis of recommendations for public health decision-making. (shrink)

Discusses the ethical implications of modern technology and examines the responsibility of humanity for the fate of the world.

erster Teilband. Grundlegung -- zweiter Teilband. Tragweite und Aktualität einer Zukunftsethik.

Temporal loops in which two agents are involved in a circle of reactive attitudes create a puzzle concerning who harms whom. I argue that this puzzle, which has been developed by Stephen Kearns in a recent paper in this journal, should be solved by accepting that the situation involves normative indeterminacy. A supervaluationist treatment of this indeterminacy allows us to maintain that the normative supervenes on the non-normative and that the involved agents are in normatively symmetric situations. It further allows (...) to maintain that it is determinately the case that one agent wrongs the other just in case the latter does not wrong the former. I conclude by tentatively arguing that the indeterminacy involved should not be understood as semantic and that the puzzle provides us with a novel case of indeterminacy in reality. (shrink)

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.

Although the production and recognition of social actions have been central concerns for conversation analysis from the outset, it has recently been argued that CA is yet to develop a systematic analysis of ‘action formation’. As a partial remedy to this situation, John Heritage introduces ‘epistemic status’, which he claims is an unavoidable component of the production and recognition of social action. His proposal addresses the question how is social action produced and recognized? by reference to another question how is (...) relative knowledge recognized? Despite the importance placed on the latter question, it is not clear how it is to be answered in particular cases. We argue that the introduction of epistemic status builds on a reformulation of the action formation problem that unnecessarily de-emphasizes the importance of the sequential environment. Our re-analyses of key sequences cast doubts on the empirical grounding of the epistemic program, and question whether the fundamental role of epistemic status has been convincingly demonstrated. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of noise in emotion annotation, within the context of measuring the acceptability of innovations. For the task under study, using annotator disagreement as a measure of noise tends to overestimate its presence in the data. An alternative approach is proposed, which involves modeling the annotation process through a probabilistic model. This method accounts for the variability in annotations, though it does limit the ability to accurately assess the noise component.

O texto apresentado a seguir é uma traduçáo da conferência intitulada “The Burden and Blessing of Mortality” ( The Hastings Center Report , 22, n. 1, jan-fev. 1992, p. 34-40), que foi apresentada à Fundaçáo do Palácio Real [The Royal Palace Foundation], em Amsterdam, no dia 19 de março de 1991. Esta conferência foi traduzida para o alemáo por Reinhard Löw e revisada pelo próprio Jonas, aparecendo com o título “Last und Segen der Sterblichkeit” em Scheidewege 21, 1991/92, p. (...) 26-40, e mais tarde em um livro do próprio Jonas: Philosophische Untersuchungen und metaphysische Vermutungen [Investigações Filosóficas e Suposições Metafísicas] . Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1992, p. 81-100. Por sua vez, o texto original, em inglês, veio ainda a fazer parte de uma coletânea de ensaios de Jonas, editada por Lawrence Vogel ( Mortality and Morality : a search for good after Auschwits. Ed. Lawrence Vogel. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1996, p. 87-97). (shrink)

Reality is hierarchically structured, or so proponents of the metaphysical posit of grounding argue. The less fundamental facts obtain in virtue of, or are grounded in, the more fundamental facts. But what exactly is it for one fact to be more fundamental than another? The aim of this paper is to provide a measure of relative fundamentality. I develop and defend an account of the metaphysical hierarchy that assigns to each fact a set of ordinals representing the levels on which (...) it occurs. The account allows one to compare any two facts with respect to their fundamentality and it uses immediate grounding as its sole primitive. In the first section, I will set the stage and point to some shortcomings of a rival account proposed by Karen Bennett. The second section will present my own proposal and the third section will discuss how it can be extended to non-foundationalist settings. The fourth section discusses potential objections. (shrink)

The so-called Wrong Kind of Reason (WKR) problem for Scanlon's account of value has been much discussed recently. In a recent issue of Utilitas Gerald Lang provides a highly useful critique of extant proposed solutions to the WKR problem and suggests a novel solution of his own. In this note I offer a critique of Lang's solution and respond to some criticisms Lang directs at a Brentano-style approach suggested by Sven Danielsson and me.

To gain insight into the reasons that the public may have for endorsing or eschewing pharmacological moral enhancement for themselves or for others, we used empirical tools to explore public attitudes towards these issues. Participants from the United States were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and were randomly assigned to read one of several contrastive vignettes in which a 13-year-old child is described as bullying another student in school and then is offered an empathy-enhancing program. The empathy-enhancing program is described (...) as either involving taking a pill or playing a video game on a daily basis for four weeks. In addition, participants were asked to imagine either their own child bullying another student at school, or their own child being bullied by another student. This resulted in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. In an escalating series of morally challenging questions, we asked participants to rate their overall support for the program; whether they would support requiring participation; whether they would support requiring participation of children who are at higher risk to become bullies in the future; whether they would support requiring participation of all children or even the entire population; and whether they would be willing to participate in the program themselves. We found that people were significantly more troubled by pharmacological as opposed to non-pharmacological moral enhancement interventions. The results indicate that members of the public for the greater part oppose pharmacological moral bioenhancement, yet are open to non-biomedical means to attain moral enhancement. [248 words]. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of self-overcoming has been largely misinterpreted in the philosophy of education journals. The misinterpretation partially stems from a misconstruction of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and leads to a conception of self-overcoming that is inconsistent with Nietzsche’s educational ideals. To show this, I examine some of the prominent features of the so-called “debate” of the 1980s surrounding Nietzsche’s conception of self-overcoming. I then offer an alternative conception that is more consistent with Nietzsche’s thought, and (...) provides a more nuanced understanding of Nietzsche’s “anti-democratic” pedagogy. Ultimately, I argue that while Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is not egalitarian, it can be effectively utilized in “democratic” classrooms, assuming his concept of self-overcoming is properly construed. (shrink)

The strategy of developing an ontology or models of disability as a prior step to settling ethical issues regarding disabilities is highly problematic for two reasons. First, key definitional aspects of disability are normative and cannot helpfully be made value-neutral. Second, if we accept that the contested concept of disability is value-laden, it is far from obvious that there are definitive reasons for choosing one interpretation of the concept over another. I conclude that the concept of disability is better left (...) ethically open-ended or broad enough to encompass the examination of various ethical issues. Alternatively, the concept of disability could be altogether abandoned in order to focus on specific issues without being hindered by debates about the nature of disability. Only political costs, rather than conceptual considerations internal to the models, could be weighed against such a conclusion. (shrink)

Taking a cue from Philo we may ask: If the adoption of the "seeing" approach from Greek philosophy was a misfortune for theology, does the repudiation or overcoming of that approach in a contemporary philosophy provide a conceptual means for theology to reform itself, to become more adequate to its task? Can it thus lead to a new alliance between theology and philosophy after, e.g., the medieval one with Aristotelianism has broken down? The question assumes that some use of philosophy, (...) i.e., of the elucidation of the nature of reality by secular thought, and of the nature of thinking about reality in secular thought, is desirable and even necessary for theology. This assumption must be granted, since theology, as the logos about things divine, is by definition the discursive, in some sense scientific, elucidation of the contents of faith and thus, for one thing, comes under the rules and norms of elucidation and discourse as such; and since the contents of faith comprise the dealings of God with the world and with man, the elucidation of the mundane and human side of this polarity must be informed by a knowledge of what world and man are, and philosophy is supposed to provide such knowledge. It would then follow that that philosophy is most adequate to theology which is most adequate to being, i.e., which is most nearly true—by the criteria of philosophy itself, i.e., by the criteria of secular reason. But since for a decision on this the theologians cannot wait for the consensus of philosophers, nor even necessarily trust its authority, they may be guided in their choice by the appeal of affinity, the lessons of past experience with philosophical liaisons, the present needs of their discipline, and by appraising which philosophy is most helpful to the discharge of theology's task, or least dangerous to its own trust, to its own genuineness, least seductive, least alienating—by any or all of these considerations, but as little as possible by fashion. On all these counts the theologian would do well to exercise a great deal of caution and mistrust. Especially in the face of tempting similarity: what theology needs in this relationship is the otherness of philosophy, not its similarity. On this I need not elaborate before a theological audience. However, the experiment of relationship itself is inescapable, and the one choice closed is abstention. Thus, the openness to contemporary thought shown by theology in the present experiment—as it was shown at all times—is to be welcomed. (shrink)

Recently, in the debate about the ontology of quantum mechanics some authors have defended the view that quantum particles are individuals in a primitive sense, so that individuality should be preferred over non-individuality (the alternative option). Primitive individuality involves two main claims: (1) every item is identical with itself and (2) it is distinct from every other item. Non-relativistic quantum mechanics is said to provide positive evidence for that position, since in every situation comprising multiple particles there is a well-defined (...) number of them to begin with, and so they must be distinct from each other. We argue that the link between a well-defined number of items and the relation of identity that is being claimed to hold is not imposed by quantum mechanics, but rather by a metaphysical view. Formal evidence is advanced in favor of the thesis that counting may be performed for items without identity (non-individuals), so that quantum mechanics needs not be viewed as endorsing an ontology of individuals. (shrink)

This chapter focuses exclusively on normative reasons. Normative reasons count in favor of actions and attitudes like beliefs, desires, feelings, and emotions. Section 11.2 explores the common ground concerning the metaphysics of reasons. We shall see that the really controversial metaphysical issues in metanormative theorizing about reasons arise with respect to the metaphysics of the reason relation. The two subsequent sections therefore go beyond the common ground and consider competing accounts of the reason relation. Robust and quietist versions of non-naturalism (...) are considered in section 11.3 and naturalism is considered in section 11.4. Section 11.5 summarizes and gives a brief comparative assessment of the accounts considered. (shrink)

Discussing Plato's views on knowledge, recollection, dialogue, and epiphany, this ambitious volume offers a systematic analysis of the ways that Platonic approaches to education can help students navigate today's increasingly complex moral environment. Though interest in Platonic education may have waned due to a perceived view of Platonic scholarship as wholly impractical, this volume addresses common misunderstandings of Plato's work and highlights the contemporary relevance of Plato's ideas to contemporary moral education. Building on philosophical interpretations, the book argues persuasively that (...) educators might employ Platonic themes and dialogue in the classroom. Split into two parts, the book looks first to contextualise Plato's theory of moral education within political, ethical, and educational frameworks. Equipped with this knowledge, part two then offers contemporary educators the strategies needed for implementing Plato's educational theory within the pluralistic, democratic classroom setting. A Platonic Theory of Moral Education will be of interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of: ethics; Plato scholarship; moral psychology; educational foundations; and the philosophy of education. This book would also benefit graduate students and scholars in teacher education. Mark E. Jonas is Professor of Education and Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College, US. Yoshiaki Nakazawa is Assistant Professor of Education at University of Dallas, US. (shrink)

I present and consider critically O'Regan and Noë's sensorimotor contingency theory, proposed as an alternative to solve the explanatory gap problem. I start with the criticism that these authors address the current conception of representation, according to which conscious experiences are representations of the external world produced by the brain. Afterward, I summarize the way the sensorimotor contingency theory addresses the problem of the explanatory gap, explaining the existence, form, and content of visual consciousness in terms of an "exploratory activity" (...) mediated by sensorimotor contingency laws. Finally, in agreement with criticisms addressed to O'Regan and Noë's solution, I propose a way to face the problem of the explanatory gap, which, recognizing the relevance of the body and the external environment to the existence, form and content of visual consciousness, but privileging the role of the brain as an organ of visual consciousness, and as an agent who uses visual consciousness as a guide to initiate and maintain embodied and situated adaptive actions in the world. (shrink)

Ontic Structural Realism is a version of realism about science according to which by positing the existence of structures, understood as basic components of reality, one can resolve central difficulties faced by standard versions of scientific realism. Structures are invoked to respond to two important challenges: one posed by the pessimist meta-induction and the other by the underdetermination of metaphysics by physics, which arises in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. We argue that difficulties in the proper understanding of what a structure is (...) undermines the realist component of the view. Given the difficulties, either realism should be dropped or additional metaphysical components not fully endorsed by science should be incorporated. (shrink)