Dogs are here to live with, not just to think with. In this autoethnographic essay, I share my experience of loneliness and more-than-human kinship while being in lockdown with my dog, Frank, in our small flat in Edinburgh due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I open with our histories and how we have come to be kin in order to make our positionalities explicit. I then tell three stories that illustrate how our lives – and our bodies – are being shaped (...) by the current pandemic, addressing the ways in which its contribution to my loneliness in COVID-induced lockdown manifested in our everyday life. Engaging with existing scholarship on emotional/personal, social and cultural loneliness, I theorise that life in lockdown suffers from a new type of loneliness: proximal loneliness. Then, I build on the concept of response-ability to argue that multispecies kinship helps to alleviate feelings of proximal loneliness through emergent practices that make us response-able – care and respond – to one another. I contend that even in these unprecedented and viral times that have come to elicit profound feelings of loneliness and despair for many, the repertoire of our multispecies emergent practices that may help us through the difficulties of proximal loneliness continues to exist and grow with shared response-abilities of our kinship across the species boundaries. (shrink)

Unlike in Western academia, Japanese studies in Korea have not receded, but rather have rather vigorously refocused on Japan during the last two decades. This paper examines the rapid development and governing dynamics of the Japanese politics studies (JPS), with a particular focus on Japanese international relations studies (JIRS). It answers the following four questions. How does JIRS perceive, measure, and interpret Japan? What are the outstanding features of JIRS? What are the internal dynamics in the JPS community? How does (...) the JPS community interact with the real political world? The study results emphasize the policy-oriented research style, prevailing realistic nationalism, and vigorous interaction between academia and politics in JPS/JIRS behind the refocusing on Japan. (shrink)

Service providers working for a service organization are asked to express such positive emotions as joy, pleasure, and politeness required at the organizational level rather than their natural emotions they are experiencing at the moment. They cannot express their emotion they are actually going through and accordingly, their level of emotional labor and emotional dissonance influence on their job commitment and trust toward their organization. This study thus set out to investigate the effects of leading variables of emotional labor on (...) the level of emotional labor and the impact of emotional labor on organizational trust and organizational commitment with a subject group of college administrative staffs. Three underlying factors such as job stress, intimacy, and professionalism were identified as the determinants of emotional labor. Conceptual background about job stress, intimacy, emotional labor, and organizational effectiveness as the core variables of the study was investigated. Based on the conceptual background and our research questions, 5 research hypotheses and the proposed research model regarding the effects of emotional labor on organizational commitment and trust were developed. We also tried to include the moderating effects of work environment and gender of service providers on the research model. Unlike many different studies on emotional labor from the traditional perspective of service, this study also offers a practical implication by expanding and applying it to the field of college administrative service, which is an area where service providers are in the different working environment from the traditional company work environment. Finally, the managerial implications and the limitations of the study were also discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of corporate crime on the stock market in South Korea. Specifically, we examine the effect of crime type, industry type, business group affiliation, and corporate governance on the relationship between corporate crime announcement and stock market reaction. We find negative reactions to stock prices around the announcements of corporate crimes but no significant difference in reactions between announcements of individual and organizational crimes. Individual white-collar crimes have a stronger negative impact on stock prices than do (...) individual street crimes on average, while financial crimes have a significantly greater negative impact than do operational crimes in organizations. Moreover, financial sector firms are impacted more significantly by the announcement of corporate crimes than are non-financial firms. In addition, the stock prices of chaebol-affiliated firms decrease less than do those of non-chaebol-affiliated firms, and those with a higher board committee subindex seem to be influenced less by news of corporate crimes if the size control variable is excluded. Multivariate cross-sectional analyses show consistent findings after controlling for firm-specific factors, crime-type effect, and industry and year effects. The results of this study provide valuable insights because it covers several types of corporate crime, including those committed by individuals and those perpetrated by firms. (shrink)

This study assessed the knowledge and perception of human biological materials (HBM) and biorepositories among three study groups in South Korea. The relationship between the knowledge and the perception among different groups was also examined by using factor and regression analyses. In a self-reporting survey of 440 respondents, the expert group was found more likely to be knowledgeable and positively perceived than the others. Four factors emerged: Sale and Consent, Flexible Use, Self-Confidence, and Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Action restriction perception. (...) The results indicate that those who are well aware of the existence of biobanks were more positively inclined to receive the Sale and Consent perception. As a result of the need for high quality HBMs and the use of appropriate sampling procedures for every aspect of the collection and use process, the biorepository community should pay attention to ethical, legal, and policy issues. (shrink)

_Background:_ Weight-related stigma is reported frequently by higher body-weight patients in healthcare settings. Bariatric surgery triggers profound weight loss. This weight loss may therefore alleviate patients' experiences of weight-related stigma within healthcare settings. In non-clinical settings, weight-related stigma is associated with weight-inducing eating patterns. Dietary adherence is a major challenge after bariatric surgery. _Objectives:_ (1) Evaluate the relationship between weight-related stigma and post-surgical dietary adherence; (2) understand if weight loss reduces weight-related stigma, thereby improving post-surgical dietary adherence; and (3) explore (...) provider and patient perspectives on adherence and stigma in healthcare settings. _Design:_ This mixed methods study contrasts survey responses from 300 postoperative bariatric patients with ethnographic data based on interviews with 35 patients and extensive multi-year participant-observation within a clinic setting. The survey measured experiences of weight-related stigma, including from healthcare professionals, on the Interpersonal Sources of Weight Stigma scale and internalized stigma based on the Weight Bias Internalization Scale. Dietary adherence measures included patient self-reports, non-disordered eating patterns reported on the Disordered Eating after Bariatric Surgery scale, and food frequencies. Regression was used to assess the relationships among post-surgical stigma, dietary adherence, and weight loss. Qualitative analyses consisted of thematic analysis. _Results:_ The quantitative data show that internalized stigma and general experiences of weight-related stigma predict worse dietary adherence, even after weight is lost. The qualitative data show patients did not generally recognize this connection, and health professionals explained it as poor patient compliance. _Conclusion:_ Reducing perceptions of weight-related stigma in healthcare settings and weight bias internalization could enhance dietary adherence, regardless of time since patient's weight-loss surgery. (shrink)

This study assessed the knowledge and perception of human biological materials (HBM) and biorepositories among three study groups in South Korea. The relationship between the knowledge and the perception among different groups was also examined by using factor and regression analyses. In a self‐reporting survey of 440 respondents, the expert group was found more likely to be knowledgeable and positively perceived than the others. Four factors emerged: Sale and Consent, Flexible Use, Self‐Confidence, and Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Action restriction perception. (...) The results indicate that those who are well aware of the existence of biobanks were more positively inclined to receive the Sale and Consent perception. As a result of the need for high quality HBMs and the use of appropriate sampling procedures for every aspect of the collection and use process, the biorepository community should pay attention to ethical, legal, and policy issues. (shrink)

This descriptive study was undertaken to identify the degree of ethical sensitivity of staff nurses and to analyze the differences in ethical sensitivity in terms of both general and ethics-related characteristics. Participants were 236 staff nurses working in general hospitals in Korea. Ethical sensitivity was measured by means of an instrument developed by the researchers. The results showed that the mean score for the degree of ethical sensitivity was 0.71 out of a possible maximum score of 1 (range 0.30 to (...) 0.97). For general characteristics, there was a significant difference in ethical sensitivity according to age (F (df 2233)-3.99, P-0.02). For characteristics related to ethics, there was a significant difference in ethical sensitivity according to attitude towards the nursing profession (F (df 4231)-2.94, P-0.03). It is therefore recommended that a training program reflecting these variables be developed to enhance staff nurses’ ethical sensitivity. (shrink)

This longitudinal study examined the development of moral judgement in 37 nursing students attending a university in Suwon, Korea. The participants completed the Korean version of the Defining Issues Test to allow analysis of their level of moral judgement. The development of moral judgement was quantified using ‘the moral development score’ at each stage (i.e. the six stages detailed by Kohlberg) and the ‘P(%) score’ (a measure of the overall moral judgement level). The results were as follows: (1) the moral (...) development score for stage 5A was consistently the highest across the four years of the students’ course, showing significant differences in some sociodemographic factors including home, birth order and monthly income; and (2) the P(%) score was higher in fourth-year (47.47 ± 11.21) than in first-year (46.13±9.73) students. There was no significant difference in the P(%) score according to sociodemographic factors. Further studies will examine in detail the correlation between curriculum and moral judgement development. We suggest that courses in ethics education should be made more relevant. (shrink)

The current moral education is focused on character building of Lickona. Several papers and books pointed out that his thesis has some drawbacks. As a teacher in charge of moral education in class, I have also found out them without effort. For these reasons, I simply pointed out disadvantages of Lickona’s thesis on this paper, then studied how to apply philosophical community of inquiry (PCOI) as the new model of moral education for Korean middle school classes (Now I teach students (...) moral subject at Wondong middle school in Gyeong-nam, Republic of Korea). This study is thought to be well-grounded as an alternative idea because it has been very successful when I have tried to apply PCOI model to Korean classroom for about 4 years. With this PCOI model, I won the first rank in Gyeong-nam secondary teaching contest in 2007. I have tried to apply PCOI model to Korean history, economy, the world history and geography class as well as moral class. And I have been studying how to apply to these subjects more effectively. (shrink)

It is the year 20-something--we don't know the exact date yet, but figure 20 to 50 years from today--and your doctor has just given you some really bad news. That nasty little pain in your lower abdomen turns out be serious. The doctor explains to you with great tact and kindness that, although medicine can now fix almost everything that can go wrong with the human body, there remain one or two really ferocious ailments that cannot be cured. You won't (...) be in pain, he says. You won't even be bedridden, except at the very end--but the fact is that you have just six months left to live. (shrink)

François Jacob is known as one of the key figures in the history of molecular biology. His elaboration, together with Jacques Monod, of the operon model and the basic features of the regulation of gene expression in bacteria, as well as the concept of genetic messenger, won him the Nobel Prize in 1965. Both notions were decisive for the novel imagery of molecular genetics in which the notion of information came to stand central. From a close reading, this article tries (...) to reconstruct how the new language of molecular genetics took shape in the scientific writings of Jacob. In particular, it analyzes how the notions of regulation, information, and language came to be articulated, and how this articulation changed and underwent modulations over time. It shows that a scientific language consists of several layers and thus, as a rule, forms a hybrid structure. The time span covered reaches from the early experiments done together with Monod and Arthur Pardee between 1958 and 1960, also known as the “PaJaMo” experiment, to Jacob’s book on the history of heredity, The Logic of Life, which appeared in 1970. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments by Simon TruwantHans-Jörg RheinbergerTRUWANT, Simon. Cassirer and Heidegger in Davos: The Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 288 pp. Cloth, $99.99The legendary debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in Davos, where the two philosophers met and exchanged views on the occasion of the second Davoser Hochschultage in 1929, has been investigated and commented upon many times. The general (...) tenor of these assessments was, as Simon Truwant states, to conclude either that the young Heidegger won out over his elder contemporary Cassirer, or that in fact they talked past each other, that is, that there was no real debate at all. Truwant sets out to contest both of these conclusions, and he fully succeeds in doing so. What may appear as an unnecessary rehearsal at the beginning reveals itself as a balanced and in-depth assessment of the two philosophical projects of the mature Cassirer and the early Heidegger from within and, more broadly speaking, as the expression of a "parting of the ways" (Michael Friedman) in early twentieth-century Western philosophy.Truwant identifies three core topics in the dispute between the two thinkers: first, their assessment of the core of Kant's transcendental philosophy; second, their stance on the human condition; and third, their position toward the proper task of philosophy. Accordingly, the book with its altogether ten chapters is meaningfully divided into three parts. In each part devoted to each of the three topics, a meticulous and close reading of Cassirer's philosophy of human culture qua philosophy of symbolic forms and Heidegger's existential ontology toward being and time is carried out. As the debate advances from an assessment of Kant's critical project, as exposed in his Critique of Pure Reason, to their takes on the essence of the human condition, and finally to the proper task of philosophy, their respective positions more and more appear to become incompatible. This is to be expected, Truwant argues, since each one's stance toward the task of philosophy determines his view on the human condition and, in turn, his interpretation of Kant's transcendental philosophy.This short review is not the place to enter into the carefully exposed argumentative details of Cassirer and Heidegger's views. Suffice it to say that Truwant successfully demonstrates that neither of the above-mentioned standard accounts of the Davos debate can be substantiated. Heidegger did not outmatch Cassirer. Both philosophers argued from an internally consistent position. Cassirer saw the task of his philosophy of symbolic forms as a cosmopolitan one that ultimately strives toward a self-understanding of human culture in all of its facets. He looked at the [End Page 562] human condition from the perspective of mankind as a species of living beings capable of creating a multiplicity of symbolic forms, from myth to language to science, from religion to economy to politics, and he saw the essence of human culture in precisely this irreducible multiplicity that offered the human being a route to transcend its finiteness. At the same time, he shared with Kant the idea that the sciences offer a privileged perspective for the assessment of man's proliferating symbolic capacities, and he held with Kant that our takes on the world are never immediate but always, and necessarily so, mediated by the means with which we approach it. Heidegger, on the other hand, saw the task of his existential ontology to recuperate the fundamental meaning of the being of beings (das Sein des Seienden) that tended to be forgotten (Seinsvergessenheit) both in the course of the history of philosophy and in the busyness of everyday life. He looked at the human condition as being fundamentally finite, and he articulated the necessity to come to terms with its finitude. Finally, he approached Kant's transcendental philosophy as an attempt to have glimpsed, although it was ultimately eschewed, the unavoidability of such a fundamental ontology.In one respect, however, both philosophers shared a common ground, and it is this common ground that lets their controversy appear as a real dispute in an originary sense. In the introduction to his book, Truwant formulates... (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to re-consider the aesthetics of tragedy in the work of the seventeenth-century dramatist Jean Racine. The purpose of the essay is twofold. On the one hand, the intention is to re-invigorate the reading of a dramatist whose work is too easily buried beneath labels such as “French Classicism.” On the other, an attempt is made to use this re-reading to cast new light on some of the central questions of representation, pleasure and tragedy that were (...) to become fundamental to later developments in aesthetic theory in the century that followed. We could cast Racine’s rejection of his mentor Pierre Nicole in familiar terms, describing it as the rejection of a repressive theological moralizing in favor of a hard-won “expressive freedom.” However, a closer examination of both Nicole’s aesthetics and Racine’s dramatic art reveals a different picture. As this paper will show, Nicole’s critique of seventeenth-century aesthetic practice is complex, nuanced, and trenchant. It is a critique that succeeds in posing significant questions about representation, self and other, and about the mechanics of “tragic pleasure.” In turn, Racine’s more private reflections (in his notes on Aristotle) as well as the development of his dramatic practice, indicate not a rejection, but a serious attempt to appropriate this critique, and transform his own dramatic practice in response to it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe eighteenth century was a peaceful era for East Asia, ruled by the emperors of Ching. However, intellectuals who refused to accept the Great Ching order appeared in Chosŏn and Japan. They developed homeland-centric ideologies. This article compares the Han Wŏn-chin ‘s Chosŏn-centrism with the Motoori Norinaga ’s Japan-centrism. There is a lot of research about the Norinaga’s Japan-centrism in Japanese academia, which contains both aspects of the culture theory and order theory. In Korea, however, discourse about Chosŏn-centrism is still (...) ongoing argument under the concept of ‘Chosŏn’s Sino-centrism ’. I would like to pay attention to that, although homeland-centrism is constructed with two aspects, which are theories of international order and culture, the Chosŏn’s Sino-Centrism related discourse only discuss about culture theory aspect. Therefore, comparing Japan-centrism, which contains both culture and order parts, I will point out the problem of Chosŏ.. (shrink)

The most notorious and celebrated forger of the twentieth century, Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), was born in the Dutch town of Deventer. He was fascinated by drawing as a child, and pursued it despite his father’s disapproval, sometimes spending all his pocket money on art supplies. In high school he was able finally to receive professional instruction, and went on to study architecture, according to his father’s wishes. In 1911 he married Anna de Voogt. His artistic talents were recognized when (...) he soon after won first prize and a gold medal from the General Sciences Section of the Delft Institute of Technology for a drawing of a church interior. He agreed to sell this drawing, but was discovered by his wife making a copy of it to sell as the original. She dissuaded him from carrying out this small swindle, but the incident is the first evidence of an interest in faking, even if in this case the artist was merely forging his own prize-winning work. (shrink)

This study offers a new and stimulating interpretation of Theophrastus' "De sensibus, a treatise unique in content and method, as it reports and criticizes the ...

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault’s work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault’s constant focus on the (Kantian) question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be (...) understood as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism (a de-historicized, subject-centered perspective exemplified for Foucault by Husserlian phenomenology) or of materialism (which would amount to interpreting these conditions as ideological and thus as the effect of economic determination by the infrastructure). The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault’s work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided (such as the e;piste;mè, the historical a priori, the regimes of truth, the games of truth, and problematizations) manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the “anthropological sleep”—various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault’s work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks, and: The Buddha's Gospel: A Buddhist Interpretation of Jesus' WordsJohn D'Arcy MayThe Lost Sutras of Jesus: Unlocking the Ancient Wisdom of the Xian Monks. Edited by Ray Riegert and Thomas Moore. London: Souvenir Press, 2004. 140 + xi pp.The Buddha's Gospel: A Buddhist Interpretation of Jesus' Words. By Lindsay Falvey. Adelaide: Institute for International (...) Development, 2002. 108 pp.Since Roy C. Amore's Two Masters, One Message (1987) revived the hypothesis of Buddhist influence on Christian origins and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit's research established links between Nestorian Christianity, Gnostic Manichaeism, and Mahayana Buddhism in Central Asia, there is scope for further reflection on commonalities between the two traditions over and above the purely doctrinal and philosophical. The two books under review, though intended for a general readership, are indications that interest in these matters is very much alive.Riegert and Moore preface their selection of texts with the story of Bishop Aleben (A-lo-pen), who travelled the Silk Road from Persia and was received with honour at the imperial capital of Xian (Chang-an) at the beginning of the Tang dynasty (635 CE). The emperor Taizong was sympathetic to what he called the "Luminous Religion," a Nestorian version of Christianity, possibly in Syriac, as presented by Aleben. It seems that these teachings were translated into Chinese in the form of sutras. One of them, preserved in stone as the Monument Sutra, features the cross rising from the lotus, the symbol chosen by Karl Reichelt for Tao-fung Shan, his Christian center in Buddhist style at Sha-tin outside Hong Kong, many centuries later. Thousands of Buddhist texts were preserved in the library cave at Dunhuang monastery, about one thousand miles west of Xian, where they were rediscovered by the Taoist priest Wang Yuanlu, who arrived there in the 1890s and became the self-appointed guardian of the scrolls.Included in this treasure trove were the Jesus Sutras, which are now scattered in museums and private collections, largely inaccessible to the public. But if the selection published here in a very elegant translation is anything to go by, they are [End Page 190] extremely significant religious documents with a spiritual value all their own. For the uninitiated, there is no way of checking the authenticity of these translations. The commentaries that accompany them could be slightly tendentious in that they nudge us in the direction of the editors' particular holistic worldview. But the texts themselves have a beauty and integrity that speaks for itself. They represent a Higher Dharma of perfect purity (p. 86), which, like a mirror, reflects the world with no trace of self: no desire, no action, no virtue, no truth (pp. 80–83, 126–129). The Jesus story is retold, and Jesus is portrayed as the teacher of this Higher Path. The sutras speak of One Spirit who is self-created, One God who is creator of the world, and One Lord, the Messiah who will return. There are prayers, too: "O Loving Father, Enlightened Son, Holy Spirit King"; "Lamb of Love and Bliss"; "O Holy Sage, Universal Lord, Messiah" (pp. 110–113). The texts obviously bear witness to a Buddhist-Christian dialogue much earlier and at a far deeper level than many would have thought possible. Whether they represent the religion of the future, as the editors suggest, remains to be seen.Lindsay Falvey's project of interpreting the canonical texts of Buddhism and Christianity in reference to one another has a similar orientation. In the course of agricultural development work in Thailand he came to realize "that the striking similarity between the two teachers may well be a seamless cloak of congruence beneath the mantle of culture and lore" (p. 13); the texts, in other words, may be quite literally translatable into one another's terms. Though aware that Q, the collection of Jesus' sayings that is supposed to have been available to the synoptic evangelists, is a hypothetical reconstruction, he still feels able to use a version of it as a basis for his experiment. He prefaces this with what he calls "A... (shrink)

Resumen: Varios filósofos han hecho notar que el naturalismo metafísico ha sido un supuesto compartido por los miembros de la comunidad científica involucrada en la investigación acerca del origen de la vida. Es una consecuencia de esta presuposición que la emergencia de la vida debe haber sido muy probable bajo las condiciones físicas y químicas de la Tierra primitiva. El estado de la investigación sobre el origen de la vida, sin embargo, está muy lejos de poseer una hipótesis naturalista convincente (...) en los términos buscados. La actitud de los investigadores y de algunos filósofos ha sido suponer que estos fracasos no son una razón para pensar que alguna otra hipótesis naturalista no fuese a funcionar. Aquí se ofrece una reconstrucción epistemológica de esta actitud en términos bayesianos. Se argumenta, luego, que el aislamiento del naturalismo metafísico respecto de la desconfirmación no es racional, y podría convertirse en un obstáculo para el avance del conocimiento. Abstract: Several philosophers have noted that metaphysical naturalism has been an assumption shared by the members of the scientific community involved in the research concerning the origin of life. It is a consequence of this presupposition that the emergence of life should have been very probable under the physical and chemical conditions in the primitive Earth. The state of the research on the origin of life, though, is very far from having a convincing naturalist hypothesis in the terms sought after. The attitude of the researchers and some philosophers has been to suppose that these failures are not reason to think that some other naturalist hypothesis won’t work. Here, an epistemological reconstruction of this attitude in Bayesian terms is offered. It is argued that the insulation of metaphysical naturalism from disconfirmation is not rational, and would become an obstacle to the advancement of knowledge. (shrink)

activity” has been considered to play a major role in the short-term maintenance of memories. Many studies since then have provided support for this view and greatly advanced our knowledge of the effects of stimulus type and modality on delay activity and its temporal dynamics. In humans, working memory has also been a subject of intense investigation using scalp and intracranial electroencephalography as well as magnetoencephalography, which provide estimates of local population activity. The published findings include reports of systematic changes (...) in signal amplitude during working memory in the theta, alpha, beta. (shrink)

This book begins with a survey of various readings of Locke as a materialist, as a substance dualist, and as a property dualist, and demonstrates that these inconsistent interpretations result from a general failure of modern commentators to notice the significance of Locke’s ‘mind-body nominalism’. By illuminating this largely overlooked aspect of Locke’s philosophy, this book reveals a common mistake of previous interpretations: that of treating what Locke conceives to be ‘nominal’ as real. The nominal symmetry that Locke posits between (...) mind and body is distinct from any form of metaphysical dualism, whether substance dualism or property dualism. It is a brand of naturalism, but does not insist that the material is ontologically more basic than the mental or that the former determines the latter. On this view, the material and the mental both relate solely to a certain set of functional roles, rather than to an intrinsic property that plays these roles. The term ‘matter’ is thus rendered vague, and materialism is conceived as a precariously grounded ontological doctrine. Elaborating on this interpretation of Locke’s Essay, this book examines the insightful readings of Locke developed by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers such as Richard Burthogge, William Carroll, and Joseph Priestley. This book also seeks to clarify what Locke’s position would look like in a modern setting by noting some significant parallels with the ideas of leading contemporary philosophers such as Donald Davidson, David Lewis, and Colin McGinn. (shrink)

This paper follows the tradition of treating Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream episode as presenting a version of skepticism. However, unlike the prevalent interpretations within that tradition, it attempts to show that the skepticism conveyed in the episode is more radical than it has been conceived, such that the episode can be read as a skeptical response to Descartes' refutation of skepticism based on the _Cogito, ergo sum_ proof. The paper explains how the lack of commitment in Zhuangzi to the dubious assumption (...) about 'I' that it necessarily refers to something existing to which Descartes seems to uncritically adhere allows Zhuangzi to doubt what for Descartes is absolutely indubitable: _I exist_. (shrink)

Since fully covering such a topic in the short space imparted to this paper is an impossible task, I have chosen to focus on three philosophers: Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre. Of the three, only the latter was undoubtedly an existentialist ⎯ Heidegger explicitly rejected the categorisation (in the Letter on Humanism), and there is disagreement among commentators about Nietzsche’s status1. However, they have two major common points which justify my focusing on them: firstly, they uphold the primacy of existence over (...) essence. Against the rationalist trend prevalent until the end of the XVIIIth Century, which saw human nature as determined a priori (as rational), all three authors consider human beings as living, self-interpreting entities, whose understanding of themselves is dependent on specific cultural and historical conditions. Given that this self-understanding is taken as constitutive of what it means to be human, it becomes impossible to define the essence of man independently of (let alone prior to) his existence. Secondly (and consequently), they reject the idea that philosophy can start from the study of man as a detached, disembodied consciousness primarily bent on knowing the world ⎯ or even that such a consciousness exists, except as a fiction propagated by rationalism2. Man is viewed as an embodied being, whose reason and cognitive powers are only the visible part of a much deeper and wider engagement with the world. In turn, this rejection of the primacy of rationality and of consciousness explains the central part played by affectivity in our three authors’ works. In all its forms3, affectivity is strongly tied to the body (although existentialist thinkers hold that it is neither identical to nor determined by physical reactions4): once the importance of embodiment has been recognised, an analysis of affectivity becomes necessary to understand the ways in which human beings relate both to themselves and to the world. Whereas the rationalist tradition mostly rejected affectivity5, either on moral grounds (as emotions interfere with self-mastery) or for epistemological reasons (because they cloud the clarity of mind supposedly required by knowledge), Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre insist on rehabilitating it, mostly for two reasons: firstly, as it is constitutive of what it means to be human, affectivity just cannot be set aside ⎯ so the rationalist ideal to do away with emotions is unmasked as an illusion, the roots of which need to be investigated.. (shrink)

Negative feedback is an important mechanism whereby the organism maintains its balance in a complicated system. It may beregarded as a modern version of the ancient Eastern wisdom of Yin and Yang balance. Control of pain and analgesia, is no exception: CCK seems to serve as a built-in mechanism for the modulation of opioid analgesia system [dickenson].