This article proposes how theatre, as a site of expert adult imaginative play, provides a unique window into how E-cognition can advance our understanding of imagination as a lifelong practice. I characterize theatrical activity as highly developed actions and strategies for wielding bodies, objects, and environments as imaginative practice. Through an enactively based case study of the play _Provenance_ by Autopoetics ( 2018 ), I reveal how creation and performance processes literally and epistemically engineer novel niches for the spectator. This (...) case study investigates how _Provenance_’s recurring theatrical device of newspaper manipulation constitutes a cognitive device for an affordance-oriented and predictive spectator. As I track the priorities and processes of these longstanding play development and performance techniques informed by the theatrical tradition of Jacques Lecoq (1921–1999), I suggest how concepts such as affordances, affordance spaces, predictive engagement, and the free energy principle are apt conceptual tools for understanding how these practices engender imaginative encounters. I follow this analysis by suggesting, via the free energy principle’s conception of “models,” that there may be cognitive consequences to the possible changes experienced by the spectator that exceed theatrical experience. I conclude this discussion by pointing toward how my 4-E inflected insights on the imaginative practices of _Provenance_ may be applicable to imagination and pretense in other arenas not just behind but also beyond the footlights. (shrink)

This book argues that R.G. Collingwood’s philosophy is best understood as a diagnosis of and response to a crisis of Western civilisation. The various and complementary aspects of the crisis of civilisation are explored and Collingwood is demonstrated to be working in the traditions of Romanticism and ‘historicism’. On these subjects, the theories of Collingwood and Ortega y Gasset are contrasted with those of Nietzsche and Weber.

What is trustworthiness? -- Being trustworthy -- Spreading trust.

Jennifer Radden argues that delusions play an important role in modernist epistemology, which is preoccupied with the justification and evaluation of beliefs. Another theme running through the book is the importance of culture for attribution of delusion. Beliefs that look delusional will not be treated as pathological if they are expressions of religious views or other culturally acceptable forms of life. It is hard to see why cultural acceptability should play a role in the modernist project of justification. I suggest (...) that we think less about a philosophical project of justification and turn our attention instead to commonsense judgements of the circumstances in which we see a belief as evidence of underlying pathology. I discuss cases in which unjustified beliefs are nonetheless treated as phenomena that are consistent with our views of how healthy human beings act, and suggest that alongside folk psychology we should acknowledge a folk epistemology that embraces such instances. I suggest that delusions are beliefs that folk epistemology treats as inexplicable, and that this approach solves some of the puzzles that Radden identifies as growing out of the modernist epistemic project. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the NIMH’s new Research Domain of Criteria is a useful test of the philosophical hypothesis of eliminative materialism and demonstrates the superiority of a moderate eliminativism over integrationism, which is a rival philosophical framework for the cognitive sciences. I begin by going over the motivation for RDOC, which rests on the problems with the existing Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders framework in psychiatry. Then, I introduce the main tenets of RDoC before (...) discussing eliminativism and trying to show what a moderate eliminativism looks like through the example of addiction. I then contrast that approach with intregrationism to the latter’s detriment. I end by wondering whether the broadly political consequences of eliminativism give us non-scientific reasons for resisting it, as it threatens to rob ordinary people of important means of self-description. (shrink)

Some commentators confer the right to children on those who gestate them because of the personal intimate relationship they say obtains in gestation.1 Benjamin Lange criticises two variants of that argument.2 He argues against the view that gestation creates a sui generis relationship that in its distinctiveness confers the right to the child on its gestator and the right of the child to its gestator. He also argues against the view that gestation involves a relationship whose dissolution necessarily causes morally (...) significant harm. I do not dispute these lines of reasoning, but the analysis goes further than Lange indicates. The reasons that Lange deploy to reject the relationship involved in gestation as conferring any kind of proprietary right to children also undercut that relationship as a ground of a presumptive duty towards those children. In the first instance, Lange disputes the idea that gestation produces a non-instrumental good that both the gestator and child have an interest in maintaining. In part, he argues that this kind of relationship lacks the emotional complexity, intimacy and intensity that underwrite other kinds of relationships, namely the very qualities that constitute the value of those relationships. More tellingly, he says, there is no unambiguous evidence that …. (shrink)

This book reflects upon the manner in which medical research is performed and interpreted.

We often impute responsibility to others for the purpose of retributive punishment - sometimes hoping that they receive the level of suffering proportional to what Kant calls their "inner wickedness". But do we know enough to do this without reckless error? Are we morally pure enough to do this without hypocrisy? The present essay explores these two questions. Oftmals rechnen wir anderen Verantwortlichkeit zu, um durch Strafe Vergeltung zu üben - und dies manchmal in der Hoffnung, daß ihnen gerade der (...) Grad an Leid zugefügt wird, der im rechten Verhältnis zu dem steht, was Kant "innere Bösartigkeit" nennt. Aber wissen wir eigentlich genug, um dies ohne grobe Fahrlässigkeit, und sind wir moralisch rein genug, um dies ohne Heuchelei tun zu können? Der vorliegende Beitrag befaßt sich mit diesen beiden Fragen. (shrink)

This paper argues that Collingwood's theories of logic and metaphysics ought to be understood in the context of a diagnosis of a crisis in modern Western civilisation and a response to this problem in the form of a dialectical and historical philosophy.The crisis of civilisation is explained as the failure of contemporary civilisation to significantly move beyond a dependency on a Platonic philosophy of being. The solution, it is proposed, is the development of a philosophy of becoming, which reconciles normative (...) thinking with historical change. Collingwood's reform of logic and metaphysics is supplemented by a broader philosophy of history where the criteria for value and truth are located, not in an ideal transcendent world, but in a 'way of life' in the widest sense.Collingwood's answer to the crisis of Western civilisation, I contend, is a theory of culture as process, historicity and identity realising itself by undergoing diversity. This interpretation of Collingwood's philosophy is developed through a comparison with the historicist philosophy of Ortega y Gasset and a contrast with Nietzsche. (shrink)

It is often claimed that John Finnis's natural law theory is detachable from the ultimate theistic explanation that he offers in the final chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights . My aim in this paper is to think through the question of the detachability of Finnis's theistic explanation of the natural law from the remainder of his natural law view, both in Natural Law and Natural Rights and beyond. I argue that Finnis's theistic explanation of the natural law as (...) actually presented can be, without too much strain, treated as largely detachable in the way that his readers have by and large supposed it to be; indeed, Finnis's account as actually presented really amounts to no explanation of the natural law at all, theistic or otherwise, and that fact accounts in part for the ease with which Finnis's natural law view can be detached from theism of that final chapter. Nevertheless, the considerations raised in that chapter militate in favor of a much more thoroughgoing, largely nondetachable theistic account. And it is just such an account that we find Finnis affirming in the development of his views after Natural Law and Natural Rights. (shrink)

This article discusses the way in which substantive criminal law is generally taught in United States law schools and argues that more room should be given in these courses to familiarize students with the horrendous nature of much of our criminal law system—in particular the terrible conditions faced by most prison inmates after conviction.

This paper examines moral misconduct and recidivism at the corporate level. We analyze the factors that facilitate moral transgressions and why some companies appear to be serial offenders. We propose that negative learning is a core process that encourages repeat misconduct. We offer a framework of negative learning, grounded in a case example. The framework also suggests circumstances that reverse the vicious selfreinforcing cycle of negative learning, so companies learn to adopt a more ethical stance when faced with moral choices.

Concerned with pedagogy and the learning achievement of both girls and boys, this book examines international trends in subject performance throughout schooling and looks critically at a range of interventions in difference contexts and countries, all aimed at enhancing equity in schools and higher education institutions.; The book argues that pedagogy can not be isolated from the overarching gender-education system. What can be done, it claims, is that teachers can be provided with a range of pedagogic strategies which can be (...) used to make education, as it is experienced by students and reflected in their achievements, more just. (shrink)