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)

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)

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)

We assessed the attitudes, perceptions, and stereotypes toward Latino immigrants among 247 mental health professionals across 32 U.S. states. We also randomly presented two versions of an attitude measure that varied in their references to immigrants. Participants reported that they did not agree with the anti-immigration law Arizona SB 1070 and other similar bills. Also, greater multicultural awareness was related to positive attitudes and fewer stereotypes toward immigrants. Furthermore, participants who were asked to think about “undocumented immigrants” viewed Latino immigrants (...) more positively than those who were asked think about “illegal aliens.” Findings show the continued need for multicultural awareness and competence training for mental health professionals, which align with the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed. (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.

Embodied Selves and Divided Minds examines how research in embodied cognition and enactivism can contribute to our understanding of the nature of self-consciousness, the metaphysics of personal identity, and the disruptions to self-awareness that occur in case of psychopathology. The book reveals how a critical dialogue between Philosophy and Psychiatry can lead to a better understanding of important issues surrounding self-consciousness, personal identity, and psychopathology.

Zeugmatic oddness is a linguistic intuition of oddness with respect to an instance of zeugma, i.e. a sentence containing an instance of a homonymous or polysemous word being used in different meanings or senses simultaneously. Zeugmatic oddness is important for philosophical debates as philosophers often use it to argue that a particular philosophically interesting expression is ambiguous and that the phenomenon referred to by the expression is disunified. This paper takes a closer look at zeugmatic oddness. Focusing on relevant psycholinguistic (...) literature on homonymy and polysemy processing and representation, I argue that there are two different ways in which zeugmatic oddness can arise. Philosophical upshots concerning zeugmatic oddness are then drawn. (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)

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)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Beginning with the view that human consciousness is essentially embodied and that the way we consciously experience the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and surroundings, the book argues that emotions are a fundamental manifestation of our embodiment, and play a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition.

(2013). Herding, social influence and expert opinion. Journal of Economic Methodology: Vol. 20, Methodology, Systemic Risk, and the Economics Profession, pp. 35-44. doi: 10.1080/1350178X.2013.774845.

In this paper I consider the uses to which certain psychological phenomena—e.g. cases of seeing as, and linguistic understanding—are put in the debate about cognitive phenomenology. I argue that we need clear definitions of the terms ‘sensory phenomenology’ and ‘cognitive phenomenology’ in order to understand the import of these phenomena. I make a suggestion about the best way to define these key terms, and, in the light of it, show how one influential argument against cognitive phenomenology fails.

The author argues that well-known forms of relativism are unable to accommodate, at once, a set of three highly intuitive theses about the distinctive character of moral reasons. Yet the author argues it is possible to formulate a novel form of normative relativism that has the power to accommodate these claims. The proposed view combines the relativist idea that the normative facts are attitude-dependent with the insight that there are non-human agents to which it makes sense to attribute the kinds (...) of attitudes that give rise to normative reasons. Societies, too, can possess reasons to pursue their aims. What distinguishes moral reasons from reasons of practical rationality is that the former apply directly to societies in virtue of aims held by each society as a group, while the latter apply directly to persons in light of their own individual interests. (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)

Franz Brentano’s theory of emotion is tightly bound up with many of his other central claims, in such a way that one has to work out how it relates to these other claims if one is to understand its distinctive character. There are two main axes of investigation. The first results from the fact that Brentano introduces his theory of emotion as part of his overall theory of mind, which consists of a number of closely interconnected theses concerning the nature (...) of mental phenomena, the nature of consciousness, and the classification of mental phenomena into fundamental kinds (Brentano 1874/1973a). The second derives from the fact that his theory of emotion also forms the foundation of his epistemology of objective value, which he elaborates in a framework constituted by an epistemic theory of truth and an extended analogy he draws between emotions and judgments (Brentano 1889/1969). I will consider both of these axes in what follows. (shrink)

Few theorists would challenge the idea that affect and emotion directly influence decision-making and moral judgment. There is good reason to think that they also significantly assist in decision-making and judgment, and in fact are necessary for fully effective moral cognition. However, they are not sufficient. Deliberation and more reflective thought processes likewise play a crucial role, and in fact are inseparable from affective processes. I will argue that while the dual-process account of moral judgment set forth by Craigie (2011) (...) has great merit, it fails to appreciate fully the extent to which affective and reflective processes are not only integrated, but also mutually interdependent. Evidence from psychopathy indicates that when reflective processes are not assisted adequately by what I will call ?affective framing?, and moral cognition is of the ?cooler,? less emotionally-informed variety, what results is not effective cognitive functioning, but rather psychopathology. My proposed account of affective framing aims to make sense of the way in which affect plays a strictly necessary and integral role not just in intuitive moral responses, but also in reflective moral judgments, so that moral cognition is accomplished by the joint operation of affective processes and reflective reasoning processes. (shrink)

The emergence of environmental governance practices raises a fundamental question as to whether they are substantive or symbolic. Toward that end, we analyze the relationship between a firm’s environmental governance and its environmental management as reflected in its ultimate outcome, environmental performance. We posit that substantive practices would bring changes in organizations, most notably in terms of improved environmental performance, whereas symbolic practices would portray organizations as environmentally committed without making meaningful changes to their operations. Focusing on a sample of (...) environmentally sensitive firms, results are consistent with environmental governance mechanisms being predominantly part of a symbolic approach to manage stakeholder perceptions on environmental management, having little substantial impact on organizations. Statistical analyses show mostly that there is no relation between environmental governance mechanisms and environmental performance, measured in terms of regulatory compliance, pollution prevention, and environmental capital expenditures. However, there is some indication that environmental incentives are associated with pollution prevention. Interviews with corporate directors shed further light on these results by underlining that environmental governance mechanisms are employed at the board level to protect the organization from reputational and/or regulatory harm, but are not necessarily intended to proactively improve environmental performance. (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.

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)

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 purpose of this article is to transcend the assumption that stakeholder engagement is necessarily a responsible practice. Stakeholder engagement is traditionally seen as corporate responsibility in action. Indeed, in some literatures there exists an assumption that the more an organisation engages with its stakeholders, the more it is responsible. This simple 'more is better' view of stakeholder engagement belies the true complexity of the relationship between engagement and corporate responsibility. Stakeholder engagement may be understood in a variety of different (...) ways and from a variety of different theoretical perspectives. Stakeholder engagement may or may not involve a moral dimension and, hence, is primarily a morally neutral practice. It is therefore argued that stakeholder engagement must be seen as separate from, but related to, corporate responsibility. A model that reflects the multifaceted relationship between the two constructs is proposed. This model not only allows the coincidence of stakeholder engagement with corporate responsibility, but also allows for the development of the notion of corporate irresponsibility. (shrink)