There is growing attention towards atypical brain-body interactions and interoceptive processes and their potential role in psychiatric conditions, including affective and anxiety disorders. This paper aims to synthesize recent developments in this field. We present emerging explanatory models and focus on brain-body coupling and modulations of the underlying neurocircuitry that support the concept of a continuum of affective disorders. Grounded in theoretical frameworks like peripheral theories of emotion and predictive processing, we propose that altered interoceptive processes might represent transdiagnostic mechanisms (...) that confer common vulnerability traits across multiple disorders. A deeper understanding of the interplay between bodily states and neural processing is essential for a holistic conceptualization of mental disorders. (shrink)

This introduction to this special issue of Inquiry looks at recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theory theory. Looking at two related worries expressed in the wider conspiracy theory theory (the academic study of conspiracy theories) – the Problem of Conspiracy Theories and the Problem of Conspiracy Theorists – this special issue argues that recent work in the philosophy of conspiracy theories is getting all the more closer to not just an epistemic understanding of what, if anything, is wrong (...) with belief in conspiracy theories, but also a framework for both investigating conspiracy theories and understanding how we should talk about the beliefs of conspiracy theorists. (shrink)

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human discourse and a crucial force in shaping our social reality. From mundane squabbles about matters of taste to high-stakes disputes about law and public policy, the way we express and navigate disagreement plays a central role in both our personal and political lives. Legal discourse, in particular, is rife with disagreement - it is the very bread and butter of courtroom argument and legal scholarship alike. Consider a debate between two legal philosophers, Ronald (...) and Herbert, about the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Ronald asserts: ‘It is the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. In response, Herbert states: ‘It is not the law that capital punishment is prohibited’. We intuitively think Ronald and Herbert are disagreeing, which reveals in the fact that they are licensed to use ex¬pressions like no (it isn’t) and nuh-uh when responding to their opponent’s claim. But despite the ubiquity and significance of legal disagreement, its precise nature remains elusive. This chapter discusses what exactly is going on when two people disagree about what the law requires, and how can hybrid theory may answer this question. (shrink)

This article appeals to the table of nothingness (Nichts) occurring within Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to assess three recent accounts of nothingness - by Graham Priest, Filippo Costantini, and Filippo Casati & Naoya Fujikawa - under the light of folk preconceptions about nothingness. After defining the two strongest preconceptions as the absence of unrestrictedly everything (nihil absolutum) and the idea of nothingness as a self-contradictory item (nihil negativum), I argue that both might be read as two Aristotelian connected homonyms, (...) rather than conflating them into a single item (as Priest's and Casati and Fujikawa's accounts seem to do), or dropping the idea of the nihil absolutum, as Costantini's account does. (shrink)

More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing - vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process during which the eyes continually sample the environment. Where most books on vision consider it as a passive activity, this book is unique in focusing on vision as an 'active' process. It goes beyond most accounts of vision where the focus is on (...) seeing, to provide an integrated account of seeing AND looking. The book starts by pointing out the weaknesses in our traditional approaches to vision and the reason we need this new approach. It then gives a thorough description of basic details of the visual and oculomotor systems necessary to understand active vision. The book goes on to show how this approach can give a new perspective on visual attention, and how the approach has progressed in the areas of visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception and neuropsychology. Finally, the book summarises progress by showing how this approach sheds new light on the old problem of how we maintain perception of a stable visual world. Written by two leading vision scientists, this book will be valuable for vision researchers and psychology students, from undergraduate level upwards. (shrink)

Two and a half thousand years ago Greek philosophers "looked up at the sky and formed a theory of everything." Though their solutions are little credited today, the questions remain fresh. Early Greek thinkers struggled to come to terms with and explain the totality of their surroundings, to identitify an original substance from which the universe was compounded, and to reconcile the presence of balance and proportion with the apparent disorder of the cosmos. M. R. Wright examines cosmological theories of (...) the "natural philosophers" from Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes to Plato, the Stoics and the NeoPlatonists. The importance of Babylonian and Egyptian forerunners is also emphasized. Cosmology in Antiquity is a comprehensive introduction to the cosmological thought in ancient times. (shrink)

I argue on the basis of extensive empirical research that perception and emotion are more deeply entangled than we might have thought. This evidence strongly suggests that we should expand our conception of perception to include emotional elements, and our conception of emotion to include perceptual ones. This expansion poses a challenge to our current taxonomic practices. In the face of this challenge, I advocate principled pluralism about psychological kinds. This view holds that, depending on our explanatory purposes, psychological processes (...) can be legitimately classified in more than one way. (shrink)

Retributivists are often thought to give 'deontological' theories of punishment, arguing that we should punish not for the beneficial consequences of doing so such as deterrence or incapacitation, but purely because justice demands it. Kant is often regarded as the paradigmatic retributivist. In some passages Kant does appear to give a deontological theory of punishment. For example, Kant insists that on an island where all the people were to leave the next day, forever dissolving and dispersing the community, the last (...) murderer in jail would have to have his execution carried out before the diaspora--justice demands it. In other passages, however, Kant defends punishment by appealing to its beneficial consequences. For example, after supposing that one man on a life raft pushes the other off to save his own life, Kant says that the former man should not be legally punished "because that punishment would have to be death, and it would be an absurd law that threatened death to one who refuses to die voluntarily in a dangerous situation." In this passage Kant's reasoning is that state laws, by threatening us with sanctions, are intended to prevent us from violating rights--the point of these laws is to deter. A law that imposes a punishment that could not deter is an absurd law. I argue that while Kant rejects consequentialism in thinking about moral actions, he distinguishes law and morality, and in the sphere of law, an action we take is to be justified by appealing to the good it yields. The point of legal punishment is to deter violations of rights and protect us from a state of nature in which no one's freedom is assured. Kant's theory of legal (as opposed to moral) punishment is not deontological. Nevertheless we can characterize his consequentialist theory of legal punishment as retributive in some sense. The paper then considers how the passages about punishment in which Kant invokes consequentialist thinking can be reconciled with other passages where he insists on punishment regardless of the consequences. (shrink)

The Kennedy Krieger lead paint study received a lot of attention after a US Court of Appeals ruled that a parent cannot consent to the participation of a child in non-therapeutic research. The ruling has raised fears that, if it goes unchallenged, valuable research might not proceed and ultimately all children would be harmed. The author discusses significant aspects of the study that have been neglected, and argues that the study was unethical because it involved injustice and its design meant (...) that the study lacked importance and value. Issues of benefit, risk, and consent are vital, but it is sometimes a mistake to consider these issues before settling questions about justice and the importance and value of a research project. The author concludes by offering a strategy for researchers and reviewers of research to appreciate, in a vivid way, the implications of research participation. (shrink)

The model of language can relatively concretely reveal the mechanism of the epistemology, which is extended by the ontology that takes “person” as the unit. It unveils an intuitable dimension to represent the epistemolog’s paradigm and limitations. Deriving from the inherent relation between epistemology and ontology, the retrospection of the epistemology’s ontological origin can be actualized by locating or grasping the epistemological first person’s ontological essence. Hence, the illusional and frail essence of the ontology behind this epistemology would be uncovered. (...) “Person” is not a stable unit in the ontological world, since the application of this unit stimulates the development of the operating style of the epistemology which relies on the supplement of paradox. After this study that intends to get the epistemological and ontological truth of the current using nominative, the new era of one or more unknown but solid epistemology and its ontology will be gradually recognized. Furthermore, the circumstance of past and current philosophical study is going to be changed. (shrink)

The considerable attention to financial interests in clinical research has focused mostly on academic medical centers, even though the majority of clinical research is conducted in community practice settings. To fill this gap, this article maps the practices and policies in 73 community hospitals and several hundred specialized facilities around the country for reviewing clinical investigators’ financial relationships with research sponsors. Community hospitals face a substantially different mix of issues than academic medical centers do because their physician researchers are usually (...) not employees, and more of their studies are later-phase, multicenter trials. Accordingly, community physicians stand to benefit personally from per capita payments, but they tend to have less direct influence over research findings when compared with their academic peers. These and other contrasts require separate guidance for community-based organizations that takes into account their particular needs, circumstances, and institutional capacities. (shrink)