I explore the impact of memory altering technologies in the science fiction drama (2016–2020) in order to show that unreconciled altered traumatic memory may lead to a dystopian breakdown of society. I bring Miroslav Volf's theological perspectives on memory into conversation with the plot of Westworld in order to reveal connections between memory altering technologies and humanity's responsibility to remember rightly. Using Volf's theology of remembering as an interpretive lens, I analyze characters’ inability to remember rightly while recalling partial memories (...) of their trauma. In virtue of this examination, I contend that memory altering technologies may inhibit individuals from relational processes of healing, such as forgiveness. Consequently, I argue that this study leads to a richer understanding of the potential that memory altering technologies have for undermining humanity's ability to interact in a relational capacity, specifically in terms of forgiveness. (shrink)

PrécisDespite significant scholarship, research, and funding dedicated to implementing criminal diversion programs over the past two decades, persons with serious mental illness and substance use disorders remain substantially overrepresented in United States jails and prisons. Why are so many U.S. adults with behavioral health problems incarcerated instead of receiving treatment and other support to recover in the community? In this paper, we explore this persistent problem within the context of “relentless unmet need” in U.S. behavioral health (Alegría et al., 2021).

This book develops an intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. It accomplisheses four main goals. First, it outlines a concise list of the main principles of intersectional feminism. Second, it uses these principles to critique prevailing philosophical theories of moral responsibility. Third, it offers an account of moral responsibility that is compatible with the ethos of intersectional feminism. And fourth, it uses intersectional feminist principles to critique culturally normative responsibility practices. -/- This is the first book to provide an explicitly (...) intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. After identifying the five principles central to intersectional feminism, the author demonstrates how influential theories of responsibility are incompatible with these principles. She argues that a normatively adequate theory of blame should not be preoccupied with the agency or traits of wrongdoers; it should instead underscore, and seek to ameliorate, oppression and adversity as experienced by the marginalized. Apt blame and praise, according to her intersectional feminist account, is both communicative and functionalist. The book concludes with an extensive discussion of culturally embedded responsibility practices, including asymmetrically structured conversations and gender- and racially biased social spaces. -/- An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Moral Responsibility presents a sophisticated and original philosophical account of moral responsibility. It will be of interest to philosophers working at the crossroads of moral responsibility, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, queer theory, critical disability studies, and intersectionality theory. (shrink)

Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education and public benefits create a permanent under-caste based largely on race. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to (...) skeptical dexterity and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries. (shrink)

Building on contemporary research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind, this book explores how social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states systematically affect our thoughts, feelings, and agency. Human beings are, necessarily, social animals who create and belong to social institutions. But social institutions take on a life of their own, and literally shape the minds of all those who belong to them, for better or worse, usually without their being self-consciously aware of it. Indeed, in contemporary neoliberal societies, (...) it is generally for the worse. In The Mind-Body Politic, Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna work out a new critique of contemporary social institutions by deploying the special standpoint of the philosophy of mind—in particular, the special standpoint of the philosophy of what they call essentially embodied minds—and make a set of concrete, positive proposals for radically changing both these social institutions and also our essentially embodied lives for the better. (shrink)

This collection of essays is based on the 2005 Society for American Archaeology symposium and presents research that epitomizes Richard I. Ford’s approach of engaged anthropology. This transdisciplinary approach integrates archaeological research with perspectives from ethnography, history, and ecology, and engages the anthropologist with Native partners and with socio-natural landscapes. Research papers largely focus on the U.S. Southwest, but also consider other areas of North America, issues related to museums collections, and indigenous approaches to materials research.

We explore and critically reflect on the process of science and engineering research assistant skill development both within laboratory-based research teams and, when no team is present, within the faculty supervisor-research assistant interactions. Using a performance-based measure of research skill development, we identify research assistants who, over the course of an academic year of service as a researcher, markedly developed, modestly developed, or failed to develop their research skills. Interviews with these research assistants and their faculty supervisors, seen through the (...) lens of cognitive apprenticeship, provide insight into this variation. We found that within the contours of supervisory relationships and research teams, research skill development is indelibly shaped, for better or worse, by supervisor influence and abundant trial-and-error. (shrink)

The idea for this special issue came from our mutual interest in research education and the development of future researchers. Our shared program of research has led us to discover the potentials, complexities, and dilemmas associated with research assistantships where newcomers assist more experienced researchers to conduct research projects. We considered a wide range of proposals and papers addressing different aspects of research assistantships. The resulting collection includes self-studies and analyses of others, as well as policy reviews and recommendations. The (...) pieces consider research assistantships involving bachelor's, master's, and doctoral students in four different countries (Canada, Denmark, South Africa, United States) and across a range of disciplines. (shrink)

Traditionally economists have based their economic predictions on the assumption that humans are super-rational creatures, using the information we are given efficiently and generally making selfish decisions that work well for us as individuals. Economists also assume that we're doing the very best we can possibly do - not only for today, but over our whole lifetimes too. But increasingly the study of behavioural economics is revealing that our lives are not that simple. Instead, our decisions are complicated by our (...) own psychology. Each of us makes mistakes every day. We don't always know what's best for us and, even if we do, we might not have the self-control to deliver on our best intentions. We struggle to stay on diets, to get enough exercise and to manage our money. We misjudge risky situations. We are prone to herding: sometimes peer pressure leads us blindly to copy others around us; other times copying others helps us to learn quickly about new, unfamiliar situations. This Very Short Introduction explores the reasons why we make irrational decisions; how we decide quickly; why we make mistakes in risky situations; our tendency to procrastination; and how we are affected by social influences, personality, mood and emotions. The implications of understanding the rationale for our own financial behaviour are huge. Behavioural economics could help policy-makers to understand the people behind their policies, enabling them to design more effective policies, while at the same time we could find ourselves assaulted by increasingly savvy marketing. Michelle Baddeley concludes by looking forward, to see what the future of behavioural economics holds for us.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

Michelle Kosch examines the conceptions of free will and the foundations of ethics in the work of Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. She seeks to understand the history of German idealism better by looking at it through the lens of these issues, and to understand Kierkegaard better by placing his thought in this context. Kosch argues for a new interpretation of Kierkegaard's theory of agency, that Schelling was a major influence and Kant a major target of criticism, and that both (...) the theory and the criticisms are highly relevant to contemporary debates. (shrink)

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics.

What is given to us in conscious experience? The Given is an attempt to answer this question and in this way contribute to a general theory of mental content. The content of conscious experience is understood to be absolutely everything that is given to one, experientially, in the having of an experience. Michelle Montague focuses on the analysis of conscious perception, conscious emotion, and conscious thought, and deploys three fundamental notions in addition to the fundamental notion of content: the (...) notions of intentionality, phenomenology, and consciousness. She argues that all experience essentially involves all four things, and that the key to an adequate general theory of what is given in experience lies in giving a correct specification of the nature of these four things and the relations between them. (shrink)

Awe has been defined as an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that overwhelm current mental structures, yet facilitate attempts at accommodation. Four studies are presented showing the information-focused nature of awe elicitors, documenting the self-diminishing effects of awe experience, and exploring the effects of awe on the content of the self-concept. Study 1 documented the information-focused, asocial nature of awe elicitors in participant narratives. Study 2 contrasted the stimulus-focused, self-diminishing nature of appraisals and feelings associated with a prototypical awe (...) experience with the self-focused appraisals and feelings associated with pride. Study 3 found that dispositional awe-proneness, but not dispositional joy or pride, was associated with low Need for Cognitive Closure, and also documented a relationship between dispositional awe and increased emphasis on membership in “universal” categories in participants’ self-concepts. Study 4 replicated the self-concept finding from Study 3 using experimentally elicited awe. Implications for future work on awe are discussed. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. The claim is that grammar provides homo sapiens with the ability to think in certain grammatical ways and that this in turn explains the vast cognitive powers of human beings. Evidence is considered from biology, the evolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.

Researchers have emphasized the value of authenticity, but not much is known about what makes a person authentic in the eyes of others. Our research takes an interpersonal perspective to examine the determinants of followers’ perceptions of leader authenticity. Building on social identity theory, we propose that two fundamental self-identifications–a leader’s sense of uniqueness and sense of belongingness–interact to influence followers’ perceptions of a leader’s authenticity via perceptions of a leader’s self-concept consistency. In a field study conducted among leader–follower dyads (...) and in a controlled laboratory experiment, we find that when a leader feels a low sense of belongingness, there is a positive relationship between a leader’s sense of uniqueness and perceptions of leader authenticity. When a leader feels a low sense of uniqueness, there is a positive relationship between a leader’s sense of belongingness and perceptions of leader authenticity. This is because followers perceive this leader as having high self-concept consistency. (shrink)

Emotion terms such as “sad”, “happy” and “joyful” apply to a wide range of entities. We use them to refer to mental states of sentient beings, and also to describe features of non-mental things such as comportment, nature, events, artworks and so on. Drawing on the literature on polysemy, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of emotion descriptions. It argues that emotion terms are polysemous and distinguishes seven related senses. In addition, the paper applies the analysis to shed light on (...) a long-standing debate in philosophy of music concerning emotion descriptions of music. (shrink)

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

Are epistemic reasons merely a species of instrumental practical reasons, making epistemic rationality a specialized form of instrumental practical rationality? Or are epistemic reasons importantly different in kind? Despite the attractions of the former view, Kelly (2003) argues quite compellingly that epistemic rationality cannot be merely a matter of taking effective means to one’s epistemic ends. I argue here that Kelly’s objections can be sidestepped if we understand epistemic reasons as instrumental reasons that arise in light of the aims held (...) by social collectives of which we are members, rather than being fixed by our own individual goals. This social version of epistemic instrumentalism would not be subject to counterexamples that point to the failure of individual people to possess desires or goals that would account for all of the epistemic reasons we find it natural to attribute to them. I conclude by comparing the proposed view to the alternative version of instrumentalism defended by Kornblith (1993). I argue that the social view I sketch here has one noteworthy advantage. It better accounts for the intuitive distinctness of our practical and epistemic reasons for belief in cases where flouting epistemic norms would better help us to achieve our own individual goals. (shrink)

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. It is not a straightforward text on Kant’s methodology. Rather, the author uses Kant’s methods of analysis and synthesis as a backdrop in order to “complete the task where Kant left off”. The “task” is varyingly described by the author as that of leading us back to the “engendering archê” or the “originary”. This journey back to the originary will presumably allow us to explain the “world’s worlding”. The book draws on a (...) broadly phenomenological interpretation of Kant and thus emphasizes, a la Heidegger, the role of the imagination in Kant’s philosophy. Indeed, according to the author, Kant’s first Critique heralds the deep and profound notion that the “way to truth” is through the imagination. Again echoing Heidegger, the author takes it to be an unfortunate fact that Kant “shrunk back from this abyss”. Despite Kant’s timidity, however, the Critique is nevertheless said to provide us with the resources for a robust phenomenology. (shrink)

This book brings together insights from the enactivist approach in philosophy of mind and existing work on autonomous agency from both philosophy of action and feminist philosophy. It then utilizes this proposed account of autonomous agency to make sense of the impairments in agency that commonly occur in cases of dissociative identity disorder, mood disorders, and psychopathy. While much of the existing philosophical work on autonomy focuses on threats that come from outside the agent, this book addresses how inner conflict, (...) instability of character, or motivational issues can disrupt agency. In the first half of the book, the author conceptualizes what it means to be self-governing and to exercise autonomous agency. In the second half, she investigates the extent to which agents with various forms of mental disorder are capable of exercising autonomy. In her view, many forms of mental disorder involve disruptions to self-governance, so that agents lack sufficient control over their intentional behavior or are unable to formulate and execute coherent action plans. However, this does not mean that they are utterly incapable of autonomous agency; rather, their ability to exercise this capacity is compromised in important respects. Understanding these agential impairments can help to deepen our understanding of what it means to exercise autonomy, and also devise more effective treatments that restore subjects' agency. Autonomy, Enactivism, and Mental Disorder will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophy of psychiatry, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)