A translation of a dialogue between Evelyne Grossman and Jacob Rogozinski on Artaud, Deleuze, and the status of the ego.

The guiding theme of these essays by aesthetician, musician, and Santayana scholar Morris Grossman is the importance of preserving the tension between what can be unified and what is disorganized, random, and miscellaneous. Grossman described this as the tension between art and morality: Art arrests a sense of change and yields moments of unguarded enjoyment and peace; but soon, shifting circumstances compel evaluation, decision, and action. According to Grossman, the best art preserves the tension between the aesthetic (...) consummation of experience and the press of morality understood as the business of navigating conflicts, making choices, and meeting needs. This concern was intimately related to his reading of George Santayana. The best philosophy, like the best art, preserves the tension between what can be ordered and what resists assimilation, and Grossman read Santayana as exemplifying this virtue in his embrace of multiple perspectives. Other scholars have noted the multiplicity or irony in Santayana's work, but Grossman was unique in taking such a style to be a substantive part of Santayana's philosophizing. (shrink)

1. Metaphysics -- 2. The mind -- 3. Desire and emotion -- 4. Freedom from bondage -- 5. Transcendence.

This book is a collection from the articles of 'The Skeptic' and brings together the best from the magazine's archive in one myth-busting volume. It includes mystery articles on the weeping statue at a Dublin suburban home, Turin Shroud, Britain's Roswell, Nostradamus's predictions and UFOs.

Trust and monitoring are traditionally antithetical concepts. Describing trust as a property of a relationship of reliance, we introduce a theory of trust and monitoring, which uses mathematical models based on two classes of functions, including _q_-exponentials, and relates the levels of trust to the costs of monitoring. As opposed to several accounts of trust that attempt to identify the special ingredient of reliance and trust relationships, our theory characterizes trust as a quantitative property of certain relations of reliance that (...) can be quantified and expressed as a scalar quantity. Our theory is applicable to both human–human and human–artificial agent interactions, as it is agnostic with respect to the concrete realization of trustworthiness properties, and is compatible with many views differing on which properties contribute to trust and trustworthiness. Finally, as our mathematical models make the quantitative features of trust measurable, they provide empirical studies on trust with a rigorous methodology for its measurement. (shrink)

Mitochondria contain a molecular genetic system to express the 13 protein components of the electron transport system encoded in the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Defects in the function of this system result in some diaseases, many of which are multisystem disorders, prominently involving highly aerobic, postmitotic tissues. These defects can be caused by large‐scale rearrangements of mtDNA, by point mutations, or by nuclear gene mutations resulting in abnormalities in mtDNA. Although any of these mutations would be expected to produce a similar (...) clinical phenotype by compromising oxidative phosphorylation, the surprising and puzzling result is that different clinical phenotypes are generally associated with specific mtDNA mutations. Moreover, the same mutation can produce a distinct clinical phenotype in different individuals or pedigrees. MtDNA rearrangements are also found in aged individuals, but at a subclinical level, suggesting that normal and pathological processes can differ by the effect of genetic or environmental factors on the error rate of mtDNA replication. (shrink)

This article considers Foucault’s analysis of ordoliberal and neoliberal governmental reason and its reorganization of social relations around a notion of enterprise. I focus on the particular idea that the generalization of the enterprise form to social relations was conceptualized in such exhaustive terms that it encompassed subjectivity itself. Self as enterprise highlights, inter alia, dynamics of control in neoliberal regimes which operate through the organized proliferation of individual difference in an economized matrix. It also throws into question conceptions of (...) individual autonomy that underpin much political thought and upon which ideas about political resistance are based. Self as enterprise also problematizes the viability of Foucault’s later work on ethics of the self as a practice of resistance. I go on to argue that Foucault’s discussion of an unresolved clash in civil society between monarchical and governmental power, between law and norm, offers an elliptical but more promising account of opposition to normalizing bio-power. (shrink)

Mindfulness, derived from Buddhist psychology and philosophy, has gained broad popularity in the last decades, due importantly to scientific interest and findings. Yet Buddhist mindfulness developed in Asian pre-scientific culture and religion, and is predicated upon long-term cultivation of introspective awareness of lived experience, not highly accessible to empirical study. Further complicating the ‘science' of mindfulness, mindfulness's very definition is multifaceted, resistant to dismantling and requires substantial amounts of personal practice to gain expertise. Most scientists investigating mindfulness have not achieved (...) a high level of this expertise. Here I address how mindfulness is currently being invented as a scientific fact or object of inquiry. The intrinsic porosity of subjective and objective factors influencing the investigation of mindfulness is highlighted: the evolving body of ‘scientific' experts, instruments used to measure mindfulness, the alliances of funders and other supporters of mindfulness research, and the public representation of the related findings. (shrink)

Here, we provide an ethical analysis of discrimination in private insurance to guide the application of non-discriminatory algorithms for risk prediction in the insurance context. This addresses the need for ethical guidance of data-science experts, business managers, and regulators, proposing a framework of moral reasoning behind the choice of fairness goals for prediction-based decisions in the insurance domain. The reference to private insurance as a business practice is essential in our approach, because the consequences of discrimination and predictive inaccuracy in (...) underwriting are different from those of using predictive algorithms in other sectors. Here we focus on the trade-off in the extent to which one can pursue indirect non-discrimination versus predictive accuracy. The moral assessment of this trade-off is related to the context of application—to the consequences of inaccurate risk predictions in the insurance domain. (shrink)

Several philosophers of science have claimed that the conceptual difficulties of quantum mechanics can be resolved by appealing to a particular interpretation of probability theory. For example, Popper bases his treatment of quantum mechanics on the propensity interpretation of probability, and Margenau bases his treatment of quantum mechanics on the frequency interpretation of probability. The purpose of this paper is (i) to consider and reject such claims, and (ii) to discuss the question of whether the ψ -function refers to an (...) individual system or to an ensemble of systems. (shrink)

"Exhibition dates: The Phillips Collection, Oct. 10, 2009-Jan. 10, 2010; University of New Mexico Art Museum, Feb. 6-May 30, 2010; University of Virginia Museum of Art, Aug. 7-Oct. 10, 2010; University of British Columbia, Museum of Anthropology Oct. 29, 2010-Jan. 23, 2011." --T.p. verso.

The Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) movement is an ideological force in health research and health policy which asks for allegiance to two types of methodological doctrine. The first is the highly quotable motherhood statement: for example, that we should make conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence (paraphrasing Sackett). The second type of doctrine, vastly more specific and in practice more important, is the detailed methodology of design and analysis of experiments. This type of detailed methodological doctrine tends to (...) be simplified by commentators but followed to the letter by practitioners. A number of interestingly dumb claims have become entrenched in prominent versions of these more specific methodological doctrines. I look at just a couple of example claims, namely: Any randomised controlled trial (RCT) gives us better evidence than any other study. Confidence intervals are always useful summaries of at least part of the evidence an experiment gives us about a hypothesis. To offer a positive doctrine which might move us past the current conflict of micro-theories of evidence, I propose a mild methodological pluralism: in any local context in which none of a variety of scientific methodologies is clearly and uncontentiously right, researchers should not be discouraged from using any methodology for which they can provide a good argument. (shrink)

The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is a central element of mindfulness-based interventions and derives from a systematic phenomenological programme developed over several millennia to investigate subjective experience. Enthusiasm for ?mindfulness? in Western psychological and other science has resulted in proliferation of definitions, operationalizations and self-report inventories that purport to measure mindful awareness as a trait. This paper addresses a number of seemingly intractable issues regarding current attempts to characterize mindfulness and also highlights a number of vulnerabilities in this domain that (...) may lead to denaturing, distortion, dilution or reification of Buddhist constructs related to mindfulness. Enriching positivist Western psychological paradigms with a detailed and complex Buddhist phenomenology of the mind may require greater study and long-term direct practice of insight meditation than is currently common among psychologists and other scientists. Pursuit of such an approach would seem a necessary precondition for attempts to characterize and quantify mindfulness. (shrink)

There is a need to feminize the research on entrepreneurs — to include the experiences of women in what we know to be true about entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process. This paper highlights some of the most significant methodological problems in researching women's entrepreneurial experience, problems which in the past, have prevented researchers from gaining an understanding of this experience, and which continues to stand in the way of developing female perspectives. Instead of using the existing male-based models, new approaches (...) are called for in incorporating women's experiences into entrepreneurship theory. This paper outlines the state of research and suggests future directions for developing research on women as entrepreneurs. (shrink)

The Guest Editorial On Wolverines and Epistemological Totalitarianism by Etzel Cardeña (JSE 24(3), Fall 2011) is little more than a rant, in which invective, ridicule, and mockery take the place of reasoned argumentation. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with a good rant, especially when one agrees with the overall perspective, and I actually found myself in agreement with much of what the author had to say. Most of Cardeña’s anger is directed at those Materialist philosophers and psychologists who happily pontificate (...) against the possibility of psi while remaining studiously ignorant of the data that parapsychological research has uncovered. I think everyone who comes to parapsychology with an open mind at some point experiences the same frustration that Cardeña expresses toward Materialist idealogues, whose conclusions and opinions have been formed a priori and appear to be impervious to empirical data. But he seems equally upset with those who are “pro-psi,” lamenting "the epistemological absolutism that pervades both the strident anti-psi and pro-psi proponents from what I consider a healthy abeyance from fully committing to a closed position in science or in other aspects of life." (Cardeña, p. 539). (shrink)

Thinking with, against, and after Ernst Käsemann’s appropriation of the biblical metaphor of eschatological birth pangs, this article seeks to reassess our understanding of what it means to be a theologian of the cross. It does so by way of a depiction of Paul’s apostolic practice as a social and embodied—and yet cruciform—mode of epiphanic manifestation. Thinking with Käsemann, it brings to the fore the significance of this apocalyptic understanding of apostolic practice for contemporary theological reflection at the interface of (...) biblical studies, philosophy, and ethics. Thinking against Käsemann, it demonstrates ways in which this reading of Paul enables us to address more effectively major criticisms of a theology of the cross and Pauline theology in general. Finally, thinking after Käsemann, it discusses the ways that this portrayal of Paul’s practice funds resources for reconfiguring theological education ‘after whiteness’. (shrink)

This paper supports the personal data platform cooperative as a means of bringing about John Rawls’s favoured institutional realisation of a just society, the property-owning democracy. It describes personal data platform cooperatives and applies Rawls’s political philosophy to analyse the institutional forms of a just society in relation to the economic power deriving from aggregating personal data. It argues that a society involving a significant number of personal data platform cooperatives will be more suitable to realising Rawls’s principle of fair (...) equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Embedded pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs), like other types of randomized comparative-effectiveness research (CER) studies, are sometimes conducted without informed consent. Indeed, authors of both...

: Dr. Smith is an internist in private practice who works at an inner city clinic affiliated with a university hospital. He is also a member of the university faculty. Many of Dr. Smith’s patients have type 2 diabetes mellitus and struggle with health care and other costs. Thinking about opportunities to better serve his patients and advance his career, Dr. Smith considers conducting clinical research in his office. ACME is a respected pharmaceutical company that for decades has engaged in (...) research, development, and production of widely used drugs. Several of ACME’s oral agents for type 2 diabetes will soon go off patent. In an effort to retain its market share in this class of drugs, ACME wants to complete clinical trials expeditiously and obtain approval for its new oral hypoglycemic medicine. The company approaches Dr. Smith to be a coinvestigator in its multicenter clinical trial. (shrink)

This article compares Honneth’s attempt to revise socialist thinking on women’s subordination in the family with feminist work on the topic. Both identify economism as the reason why socialism has historically failed to come up with an adequate account of women’s oppression in the family. However, their attempts to overcome economism proceed in different directions. Feminists overcome economism by expanding and enriching ideas of the economic and value producing activity and applying these reworked categories to women’s reproductive labour. Honneth overcomes (...) economism by suspending materialist explanation and focussing on emancipatory ethical dynamics implicit in the family. In comparison to feminist work, Honneth’s ethicised account of gender and family is as reductive as the economism it aims to surmount. First, his progressive historiography engenders a Whiggish narrative of the steady expansion of women’s social freedom in the family that downplays ambiguous and negative historical developments related to the changing nature of patriarchy. Second, his reified archetype of the family obscures the systemic causes of persistent gendered asymmetries within households. Finally, his Hegelian endorsement of institutionally expressed normativity leads in a reformist political direction and away from the radical, deep-democratic options that socialist feminists deem necessary to counteract women’s subordination. (shrink)

Recent epidemiological reports of associations between socioeconomic status and epigenetic markers that predict vulnerability to diseases are bringing to light substantial biological effects of social inequalities. Here, we start the discussion of the moral consequences of these findings. We firstly highlight their explanatory importance in the context of the research program on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) and the social determinants of health. In the second section, we review some theories of the moral status of health inequalities. (...) Rather than a complete outline of the debate, we single out those theories that rest on the principle of equality of opportunity and analyze the consequences of DOHaD and epigenetics for these particular conceptions of justice. We argue that DOHaD and epigenetics reshape the conceptual distinction between natural and acquired traits on which these theories rely and might provide important policy tools to tackle unjust distributions of health. (shrink)

The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal Is Bringing Science and Spirit Together by Charles T. Tart. Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple Personality by Logi Gunnarsson. Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena by Hereward Carrington. Can the Mind Survive beyond Death? In Pursuit of Scientific Evidence by Satwant K. Pasricha. Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation by Rupert Sheldrake. A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation by Rupert Sheldrake. “Why AI Is a Dangerous Dream,” (...) Opinion, Interview with Noel Sharkey by Nic Fleming. (shrink)