This paper offers a comparative study of abnormalities in the experience of space, time, and general atmosphere in three psychiatric conditions: schizophrenia, melancholia, and mania. It is a companion piece to our previous article entitled 'Varieties of Self- Experience'; here we focus on experiences of the world rather than of the self. As before, we are especially interested in similarities but also in some subtle distinctions in the forms of subjectivity associated with these three conditions. As before, we survey phenomenologicallyoriented (...) clinical and theoretical accounts as well as patient reports. Experiences involving forms of alienation from the practical and social world and a sense of uncanniness seem to be common in both schizophrenia and affective disorders. But despite some significant similarities, changes in schizophrenic subjectivity appear to be more pervasive and profound, involving experiences of fragmentation, meaninglessess, and ineffable strangeness that are rare or absent in the affective disorders. (shrink)

Opponents of conscience protections for Catholic Health Care institutions claim that, since institutions are not autonomous individuals, they are not subjects of conscience. Therefore, since institutional conscience does not exist, it does not deserve protection. In this article, the author demonstrates not only that institutional conscience exists but that it is an activity that pervades all human institutions. He provides a metaphysical sketch that illustrates how institutions are organic outgrowths of human social nature which mitigate the natural limitations of human (...) individuals. Consequently, the activity of conscience is inherently a component of the life of human institutions. (shrink)

Poussin, à Rome, dit du Caravage qu'il était venu au monde pour détruire la peinture et cependant il est dit aussi qu'il possédait l'art de peindre tout entier. Ce livre cherche non point à résoudre une contradiction mais plutôt à développer une inconsistance du système représentatif dans le procès de peindre de Poussin au Caravage et vice versa. Il y sera donc question de mimésis et de fantaisie, d'histoire et d'action, de perspective et de ténèbres, de mort et de décapitation...

Dans sa précognition de toutes choses, le Créateur avait pris grand plaisir à lire les philosophes présocratiques. C'est ainsi qu'Il avait appris que, même en sa toute-puissance, Il ne disposerait que de deux modèles fondamentaux pour créer son univers. Alors Il se dit : "Je pourrais me laisser guider par la pure rationalité de Parménide, toute de clarté et de rigueur. C'est un système remarquablement simple. Une fois que j'aurais allumé la mèche du big-bang, je n'aurais plus à m'occuper de (...) rien. Qu'est-ce qui pourrait changer dans les lois que j'aurais établies? Et comment les entités que j'aurais créées pourraient-elles ne pas leur obéir? Je n'aurais plus qu'à assister au merveilleux spectacle dont j'aurais été le créateur et le régisseur. Oui, mais voilà, je connaîtrais d'avance et jusque dans ses moindres détails le spectacle qui se déroulerait ainsi devant mes yeux. Que vaut un spectacle dont la mise en scène, chaque tableau, chaque épisode sont connus du spectateur, pour finalement se confondre en l'instantanéité d'un moment? Quelle triste perspective d'un éternel ennui! Et dans ce monde parfaitement déterminé, même le serpent le plus malin ne saurait exercer son pouvoir tentateur sur ce premier couple, qui jamais ne connaîtrait la liberté de pécher. Du coup, l'autre voie qui m'est offerte paraît infiniment plus attrayante, cette voie qu'avait explorée Héraclite, voie hésitante, toute en contradiction, où être et n'être pas, c'est et ce n'est pas la même chose. Mais cette incertitude se mue en une infinité de possibles, où tout peut être, où rien n'est jamais donné d'avance. A chaque coup de dés de cet enfant toujours jeune qu'est le Temps, de nouvelles possibilités surgissent. Assister à la naissance d'un monde inachevé et toujours en gésine, voilà qui peut être captivant!" Et c'est ainsi que, se laissant guider par Héraclite, Dieu inventa la mécanique quantique, avec ce qui, en elle, dépend du hasard le plus authentique. Du coup le spectacle du monde devient fascinant et toujours inattendu. Depuis ce jour, Dieu se promène de planète en planète, de galaxie en galaxie, sûr d'y découvrir chaque fois quelque nouveauté à laquelle lui-même n'avait pas songé... (shrink)

In a recently proposed interpretation of quantum mechanics, U. Mohrhoff advocates original and thought-provoking views on space and time, the definition of macroscopic objects, and the meaning of probability statements. The interpretation also addresses a number of questions about factual events and the nature of reality. The purpose of this note is to examine several issues raised by Mohrhoff's interpretation, and to assess whether it helps providing solutions to the long-standing problems of quantum mechanics.

The York Retreat is famous in the histor y of nineteenth-centur y psychiatr y because of its association with moral treatment. Although there exists a substantial historical literature on the evolution of moral treatment at the Retreat, several interpretive problems continue to obscure its unique therapeutic legacy. The nature of moral treatment as practised at the Retreat will be clarified and discussed in a historical perspective. It will be argued that moral treatment at the Retreat was pr imar ily a (...) matter of affective conditioning guided by `benevolent theory'. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the straw man fallacy from the perspective of pragmatic inference. Our main claim is that the straw man fallacy is a ‘pragmatic winner’ not primarily because of its persuasive power but rather because it targets the pragmatic cognitive-inferential skills of its victim while enhancing the prestige of its author. We consider that in the context of a straw man fallacy, the issue of the burden of proof, which is ‘reversed’, does not directly bear on the (...) argumentation itself but has essentially to do with the difficulty for the targeted speaker of getting the attention of the audience back. It is difficult because countering this fallacy involves primarily a discussion of the reasons why the inference drawn was unduly derived, a process which is virtually destined to be a failure first of all because of the lack of relevance of justifications in comparison with that of actual points. Notions of retractability and the explicit-implicit divide are central to our approach. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

Beginning from a definition of philosophical discourse which states the necessity of rhetoric meant as the whole of the linguistic devices aiming to persuade the interlocutor of truth and justice, the author points out that Pascal's text would be an outstanding example of such a discourse, while showing, nevertheless, the specificity of the rhetoric he employs. Such a specificity would aim to carry out a complex logic of the secret, concerning chiefly the ackowledgement and identification procedures of the subject of (...) the discourse-enunciation, and its pronominal and nominal markers.The author studies this logic on one hand by starting from the pragmatic patterns developed by the linguistics of enunciation, and on the other taking into account the philosophical, ethical and religious themes of the Jansenist thought in the XVIIth century. The distinction between concealment and secret leads the author to set up the forms of political rhetoric against the actual Pascalian aspects of philosophical rhetoric. Such a logic of the secret, which is the projection of the hidden God teologema into the field of philosophical discourse, would enable us to position as “absent” the subject producing this discourse and thus to transform what he states into a discourse of truth and justice. The very careful examination of the anonymity strategies and mostly of the writing tactics concerning the author's real name (anagram) would seem to confirm this conception of the rhetoric of Pascal's philosophical discourse. (shrink)

We agree with MacNeilage's claim that speech stems from a volitional vocalization pathway between the cingulate and the supplementary motor area (SMA). We add the vocal self- monitoring system as the first recruitment of the Broca-Wernicke circuit. SMA control for “frames” is supported by wrong consonant-vowel recurring utterance aphasia and an imaging study of quasi-reiterant speech. The role of Broca's area is questioned in the emergence of “content,” because a primary motor mapping, embodying peripheral constraints, seems sufficient. Finally, we reject (...) a uniquely peripheral account of speech emergence. (shrink)

In Engineering Philosophy, the author explores how the concerns of philosophers are relevant to engineering thought and practice in negotiating tradeoffs in diagnosing failure, in constructing adequate models and simulations, and in teaching.

V.1. livres I-IV V.2. livres V-VII. V.3 livres VIII-X.

It is assumed that bipolarity in happiness and sadness requires mutual exclusion. However, we present psychometric research to show how coendorsements of happiness and sadness do not necessarily constitute evidence against bipolarity. Because individuals have a tendency to endorse emotion terms close to their current state, individuals whose current state is close to the middle of a bipolar continuum would report both happiness and sadness, despite their current state being best represented by a single point. As such, endorsements of happiness (...) and sadness are theoretically expected when individuals’ current state is in the middle of the continuum. Bipolarity however would be violated if endorsements of extreme levels of happiness and sadness can be demonstrated, which has yet to be shown. (shrink)

t. 1. Sections I à X -- t. 2. Sections XI à XXVII -- t. 3. Sections XXVIII à XXXVIII et index.