For the framework of event causation—i.e. the framework according to which causation is a relation between events—absences or omissions pose a problem. Absences, it is generally agreed, are not events; so, under the framework of event causation, they cannot be causally related. But, as a matter of fact, absences are often taken to be causes or effects. The problem of absence causation is thus how to make sense of causation that apparently involves absences as causes or effects. In an (...) influential paper, Helen Beebee offers a partial solution to the problem by giving an account of causation by absence. I argue that Beebee's account can be extended to cover causation of absence as well. More importantly, I argue that the extended Beebeeian account calls for a major modification to David Lewis's theory of causal explanation, usually taken as standard. Compared to the standard theory, the.. (shrink)

Life history data, attractiveness ratings of male photographs, and attitudes towards partnership and child-rearing of 321 women were used to test four evolutionary models (quantitative reproductive strategy, male short-age, polygyny indication, and maternal reproductive interests) which attempt to explain the influence of family composition on reproductive strategies. Links between early menarche and other markers of reproductive strategy were investigated. Childhood stress and absence of a father figure, whether genetically related or not, were found to have accelerated menarche whereas having (...) younger siblings decelerated it. Early menarche was associated with attractiveness ratings, the number of partners desired for the immediate future, and the early onset of intimate relationships. It was not linked with sociosexual orientation, mate choice criteria, and investment in the subjects’ own children, but these three markers were interrelated. The implications of the findings for the four evolutionary models are discussed. (shrink)

Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating (...) absences—that has been overlooked by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the implications of grief for philosophical theorising about absence experience. I argue that whilst some absence experiences that occur in grief might be explained by extant philosophical accounts of absence experience, others need different treatment. I propose that grieving subjects' descriptions of feeling as if the world seems empty or a part of them seems missing can be understood as referring to a distinctive type of absence experience. In these profound (...) class='Hi'>absence experiences, I will argue, the absence of a person as a condition on various possibilities is made manifest in the structure of experience over time. Thus, by paying close attention to grief, we can see that even accounts of absence experience that are presented as in competition with one another may not be so, and that to explain all kinds of absence experience we sometimes need to appeal to something overlooked in other accounts, and which is neither straightforwardly perceptual or cognitive. I also suggest that we would have good reason to take such experiences to be part of and not merely psychological effects of grief. (shrink)

Absences pose a dilemma for theories of causation. Allowing them to be causes seems to make theories too permissive (Lewis, 2000). Banning them from being causes seems to make theories too restrictive (Schaffer, 2000, 2004). An increasingly popular approach to this dilemma is to acknowledge that norms can affect which absences count as causes (e.g., Thomson, 2003; McGrath, 2005; Henne et al., 2017; Willemsen, 2018). In this article, I distinguish between two influential implementations of such ‘abnormality’ approaches and argue that (...) so-called ‘double-prevention mechanisms’ provide counterexamples against both. (shrink)

Imagine that in entering a café, you are struck by the absence of Pierre, with whom you have an appointment. Or imagine that you realize that your keys are missing because they are not hanging from the usual ring-holder. What is the nature of these absence experiences? In this article, we discuss a recent view defended by Farennikova (2012) according to which we literally perceive absences of things in much the same way as we perceive present things. We (...) criticize and reject the perceptual interpretation of absence experiences but we also reject the cognitive view which reduces them to beliefs. We propose an intermediary, metacognitive account according to which absence experiences belong to a specific kind of affective experience, involving the feeling of surprise. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of three different types of father absence on the timing of life history events among women in rural Bangladesh. Age at marriage and age at first birth are compared across women who experienced different father presence/absence conditions as children. Survival analyses show that daughters of fathers who divorced their mothers or deserted their families have consistently younger ages at marriage and first birth than other women. In contrast, daughters whose fathers were labor migrants (...) have consistently older ages at marriage and first birth. Daughters whose fathers died when they were children show older ages at marriage and first birth than women with divorced/deserted fathers and women with fathers present. These effects may be mediated by high socioeconomic status and high levels of parental investment among the children of labor migrants, and a combination of low investment, high psychosocial stress, and low alloparental investment among women with divorced/deserted fathers. Our findings are most consistent with the Child Development Theory model of female life history strategies, though the Paternal Investment and Psychosocial Acceleration models also help explain differences between women in low paternal investment situations (e.g., father divorced/abandoned vs. father dead). Father absence in and of itself seems to have little effect on the life history strategies of Bangladeshi women once key reasons for or correlates of absence are controlled, and none of the models is a good predictor of why women with deceased fathers have delayed life histories compared with women whose fathers are present. (shrink)

Absences, i.e., agential omissions and forbearances, but also ‘natural’ negative states and events beyond the sphere of human agency, seem to be part and parcel of the real world. Yet, it is exactly the putative reality of absences that strikes many philosophers as utterly mysterious, if not entirely unintelligible. As a promising approach towards solving the problem of real absences, I wish to explore the idea that absences are latent potentialities. To this end, I shall investigate what potentialities are, what (...) kinds of potentiality exist, and what it means for a potentiality to remain latent. I will also discuss whether the framework of latent potentiality is able to meet the extensional constraints imposed on the theory of absences by our intuitions about the reach of negative acts and events, i.e., whether latent potentialities can account for all real absences. (shrink)

This paper discusses an important phase in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s analytic philosophy through a comparative examination of the profound correspondences that exist between his concept of silence and the poetics of another crucial authorial figure of the 20th century: James Joyce. Based on the hypothesis that there are striking resemblances between their early works, that is, between Joyce’s realistic short-story collection Dubliners and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the article employs mostly close-reading, analytical-interpretative and comparative methods. It argues that silence was an intentional (...) intellectual, aesthetic and ethical choice of both these authors, their way to preserve the autonomy of metaphysics and to honour the beauty of the unspoken. Starting from their common critical treatment of the habitual and largely alienated speech, the discussion connects Wittgenstein’s philosophical attitudes regarding the imprecision and inadequacy of every-day language and Joyce’s notion of ‘spiritual paralysis’ of the city-life, which he saw as the main motive for writing his collection about fin-desiècle Dublin. On the grounds of their shared views about the limits of words, behind which there are worlds that cannot be properly uttered, the idea of silence – or the highly significant narrative absence – grows to permeate the work of both. In the case of Wittgenstein, it is a call for a new philosophy, or anti-philosophy, which in negating metaphysics in effect preserves its independence from a discursive speech which cannot express it, whereas in the case of Joyce, correspondingly (and almost simultaneously), it is a quest for a new literary mode that will foreground a particular Modernist allusiveness, rhetoric of omission and deliberately incomplete, gnomonical narrative structures. (shrink)

Intuitively, we often see absences. For example, if someone steals your laptop at a café, you may see its absence from your table. However, absence perception presents a paradox. On prevailing models of perception, we see only present objects and scenes (Marr, Gibson, Dretske). So, we cannot literally see something that is not present. This suggests that we never literally perceive absences; instead, we come to believe that something is absent cognitively on the basis of what we perceive. (...) But this cognitive explanation does not do justice to the phenomenology. Many experiences of absence possess immediate, perceptual qualities. One may further argue that the ability to detect certain absences confers strong adaptive advantage and therefore must be as primitive and fundamental to humans as seeing positive things. I argue that we can literally see absences; in addition to representing objects, perception represents absences of objects. I present a model of seeing absence based on visual expectations and a visual matching process. The phenomenon of seeing absence can thus serve as an adequacy-test for a theory of perceptual content. If experiences of absence are possible, then we have another reason (following Siegel) to reject the view that perceptual content is restricted to colors and shapes. Furthermore, if the proposed account is correct, then we have grounds for dissociating seeing absence from other imagery-based phenomena termed “perceptual presence-in-absence” (Noë, Macpherson). (shrink)

The hypothesis that father absence during childhood, as well as other forms of childhood psychosocial stress, might influence the timing of sexual maturity and adult reproductive behaviors has been the focus of considerable research. However, the majority of studies that have examined this prediction have used samples of women of European descent living in industrialized, low-fertility nations. This paper tests the father-absence hypothesis using the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS), which samples young adults in Cape Town, South Africa. (...) The sample contains multiple racial groups (blacks, coloureds [mixed race], and whites) and includes both males and females. Dependent variables include age at menarche, age at first sexual intercourse, and age at first pregnancy. Childhood stress is measured by father absence by age six (either never lived with father or lived with father some but not all years) and an index of childhood exposure to violence (measuring threatened or actual verbal or physical abuse). The hypothesis received no support for effect on age at menarche but was supported for age at first sex and first pregnancy. The model showed stronger support for coloureds and whites than blacks and had no predictive power at all for black males. (shrink)

Nous nous intéressons dans cette contribution à l’absence de déterminant en chinois et en français. Bien qu’en chinois il n’existe pas d’article, cela ne signifie pas l’absence des fonctions assumées par l’article et par l’article zéro. Concernant les fonctions des articles, nous nous intéresserons à la dissymétrie fonctionnelle entre ces deux langues : présence / absence d’article en français et présence / absence de classificateur en chinois. Pour étudier leurs fonctions, nous procèderons à une analyse contrastive (...) des fonctions assumées par l’article et par les classificateurs, et ce particulièrement sur les aspects suivants : distinction entre fonction prédicationnelle et identificationnelle ; concrétion et actualisation des noms en français et en chinois ; phénomènes dissymétriques entre le chinois et le français par rapport à l’article / classificateur. Une étude comparative comme celle-ci permet de prendre conscience d’un certain rapprochement grammatical entre ces deux langues apparemment éloignées. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that subvenient bases of natural kinds and also of thoughts, must be ocnstrued as involving absences.

In this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought—science, religion, and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, _Absence of Mind_ challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents (...) a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality. By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry,_ Absence of Mind_ restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate. (shrink)

Following J. N. Mohanty’s (1992) “Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian Philosophical Thinking”, John Taber offers an account of why the _a priori_ is absent in Indian epistemology. His account is comprehensive, well-argued, and plausible. However, in this essay, I argue for three points. First, that Taber’s argument conflates the _faculty_ view of the _a priori_ with the _status_ view of the _a priori_. Second, that there is one place where a case for (...) the presence of the _a priori_ can be made in Indian philosophy. It is in the _pramāṇa_ debates concerning knowledge of absences, especially with respect to the Bhātta-Mīmāṃsā school. Third, in contrast to Mohanty and Taber, that it is incorrect to see Indian epistemology as a kind of epistemology that eschews the _a priori_ in favor of the _a posteriori_; or one that favors empiricism over rationalism. Rather, it is better to see the general outlines of Indian epistemology as one where there is an insensitivity to the distinction between _a priori_ vs. _a posteriori_ knowledge, because there is an insensitivity to the enabling vs. evidential role of sense experience used to draw the distinction. Following contemporary work by Timothy Williamson (2020) “Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian PhilosophicalThinking” on how the _a priori—a posteriori_ distinction is not epistemically joint carving, I defend the view that Indian epistemology is best cast as neither _a posteriori_ nor _a priori_ centered because the distinction is not joint carving. Indian epistemology was ultimately on the right track in not drawing this distinction. It is a mistake to think that the kind of epistemology they produced was impoverished compared to the West because they didn’t acknowledge the _a priori_. (shrink)

Often when one omits to do a certain thing, there's no action that is one's omission; one's omission, it seems, is an absence of any action of some type. This paper advances the view that an absence of an action--and, in general, any absence--is nothing at all: there is nothing that is an absence. Nevertheless, it can result from prior events that one omits to do a certain thing, and there can be results of the fact (...) that one omits to do something. This is so even if absences cannot be causes or causal effects. (shrink)

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” is a slogan that is popular among scientists and nonscientists alike. This article assesses its truth by using a probabilistic tool, the Law of Likelihood. Qualitative questions (“Is E evidence about H ?”) and quantitative questions (“How much evidence does E provide about H ?”) are both considered. The article discusses the example of fossil intermediates. If finding a fossil that is phenotypically intermediate between two extant species provides evidence that those (...) species have a common ancestor, does failing to find such a fossil constitute evidence that there was no common ancestor? Or should the failure merely be chalked up to the imperfection of the fossil record? The transitivity of the evidence relation in simple causal chains provides a broader context, which leads to discussion of the fine-tuning argument, the anthropic principle, and observation selection effects. (shrink)

Contrasting brain states when subjects are aware compared to unaware of a presented stimulus has allowed researchers to isolate candidate neural correlates of consciousness. Here we propose that an important next step in this research program is to investigate, perhaps paradoxically, brain states that covary with reports of absences of awareness. Specifically, we propose that in order to distinguish content-specific and content-invariant neural correlates of consciousness, a distinction needs to be made between the neural correlates of awareness of stimulus (...) class='Hi'>absence, and the neural correlates of absence of awareness. We ground this distinction in higher-order computational models of consciousness, where the state of higher-order nodes is invariant to the specific contents of awareness. To map the different levels of these models to neurophysiological correlates, we suggest two empirical approaches – inverted designs and two-dimensional awareness reports – in which reports about awareness and stimulus presence can be dissociated. (shrink)

I argue that so-called ‘absence causation’must be treated in terms of counterfactuals about causation such as ‘had a occurred, a would have caused b’. First, I argue that some theories of causation that accept absence causation are unattractive because they undermine the idea of possible causation. And second, I argue that accepting absence causation violates a principle commonly associated with relativity.

Identifying patterns in the world requires noticing not only unusual occurrences, but also unusual absences. We examined how people learn from absences, manipulating the extent to which an absence is expected. People can make two types of inferences from the absence of an event: either the event is possible but has not yet occurred, or the event never occurs. A rational analysis using Bayesian inference predicts that inferences from absent data should depend on how much the absence (...) is expected to occur, with less probable absences being more salient. We tested this prediction in two experiments in which we elicited people's judgments about patterns in the data as a function of absence salience. We found that people were able to decide that absences either were mere coincidences or were indicative of a significant pattern in the data in a manner that was consistent with predictions of a simple Bayesian model. (shrink)

This article will address sexuality as a medium of empire, approaching this question through the absence of empire in Foucault’s history of sexuality. This absence of empire is all the more enigmatic given that it coincides with the omnipresence of race. To that extent, I argue for an “alteration of absence” in the reading of Foucault. Acknowledging the paradoxical presence of race--perhaps even its centrality--in Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and liberalism is a necessary step to reveal the (...) depth of another absence, that of empire and coloniality. The article discusses this blind spot in Foucault’s work, arguing that a form of racial distinction operates through sexuality.It attempts to assess how influential this “imperial absence” is to the genealogy of sexuality and race. Lastly, it also sketches some possible reconfigurations of Foucault’s theses when read in colonial or postcolonial contexts. (shrink)

Two of the most important contributions that Bimal Krishna Matilal made to comparative philosophy are his doctoral dissertation The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation: The Semantics and Ontology of Negative Statements in Navya-Nyāya Philosophy and his classic: Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowing. In this essay, we aim to carry forward the work of Bimal K. Matilal by showing how ideas in classical Indian philosophy concerning absence and perception are relevant to recent debates in Anglo-analytic philosophy. In (...) particular, we focus on the recent debate in the philosophy of perception centering on the perception of absence. In her Seeing Absence, Anya Farennikova argues for the thesis that we literally see absences. Her thesis is quite novel within the contexts of the traditions that she engages: analytical philosophy of perception, phenomenology, and cognitive neuroscience. In those traditions there is hardly any exploration of the epistemology of absence. By contrast, this is not the case in classical Indian philosophy where the debate over the ontological and epistemological status of absence is longstanding and quite engaging. In what follows, we engage Farennikova’s arguments, and those of John-Rémy Martin and Jérome Dokic in their response to her work. Using the work of Matilal, Bilimoria and Shaw we show that there are several engaging ideas that can be taken from Indian philosophy into the terrain explored by Farennikova, and Martin & Dokic. Our aim is to provide an updated comparative engagement on absence and its perception for the purposes of enhancing future discussions within global philosophy. However, we do not aim to do this merely by focusing on the history of primary texts or on twentieth century commentary on primary texts. Instead, we hope to show that the living tradition of Indian philosophy that Matilal embodied carries forward in his students and colleagues as they revive, revise, and extend Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Whether it pertains to what is not considered, what cannot be determined, what is not allowed to be known, or what is deliberately concealed, absences figure as the constant shadows of what is made present by social research. This article explores the relation between what is presented and what is not by treating it first as a vexing conundrum for representation and then as a vehicle for understanding. The matters under examination include what is written about the social world as (...) well as the methods of writing employed. This article seeks an orientation toward both aspects that attends to the binds, contradictions, and possibilities of depicting what is missing. That involves addressing how authors labor to render absences present, the criteria for assessment, as well as the metaphors that guide activities. (shrink)

Whether it pertains to what is not considered, what cannot be determined, what is not allowed to be known, or what is deliberately concealed, absences figure as the constant shadows of what is made present by social research. This article explores the relation between what is presented and what is not by treating it first as a vexing conundrum for representation and then as a vehicle for understanding. The matters under examination include what is written about the social world as (...) well as the methods of writing employed. This article seeks an orientation toward both aspects that attends to the binds, contradictions, and possibilities of depicting what is missing. That involves addressing how authors labor to render absences present, the criteria for assessment, as well as the metaphors that guide activities. (shrink)

Absence of evidence arguments are indispensable to comparative neurobiology. The absence in a given species of a homologous neural architecture strongly correlated with a type of conscious experience in humans should be able to be taken as a prima facie reason for concluding that the species in question does not have the capacity for that conscious experience. Absence of evidence reasoning is, however, widely disparaged for being both logically illicit and unscientific. This paper argues that these concerns (...) are unwarranted. There is no logical barrier to formulating cogent absence of evidence arguments; indeed, accepting such arguments is part of what it is to be committed to falsifiability as a critical aspect of the scientific method. Absence of evidence arguments can always be blocked, however, by assuming that psychological properties are ‘multiply realizable’. While we take multiple realizability to be highly likely at some level of analysis, we argue that it is question-begging to assume that it exists at every level of analysis, and thus it should not automatically be thought to undermine absence of evidence reasoning in the animal consciousness debate. Using the example of pain and focusing on homologies at the level of information processing tasks, we show how, in the science of consciousness, an absence of evidence might well serve as evidence of absence. (shrink)

At least within the last century, artists have produced works that seem to have something missing. Salvatore Garau’s sculpture Sono is (apparently) composed of empty space; the original drawing at the heart of Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing is essentially gone; Rauschenberg’s White Paintings are primarily just white canvases. In this paper, I examine this ‘something missing’ – which I call an ‘aesthetic absence’. These absences are aesthetically relevant to the identities, meaning, and value of the works of (...) art where audiences find such absences, but such relevance can only fully be ascertained and assessed once the absence is resolved, and this resolution comes through an act of interpretation. (shrink)

Despite its complex experiential structure, the phenomenon of grief following bereavement has not been a major topic of phenomenological research. The paper investigates its basic structures, elaborating as its core characteristic a conflict between a presentifying and a ‘de-presentifying’ intention: In grief, the subject experiences a fundamental ambiguity between presence and absence of the deceased, between the present and the past, indeed between two worlds he lives in. This phenomenological structure will be analyzed under several aspects: regarding bodily experience, (...) as disruption of a shared intercorporeality; as a loss of the shared world and shared habitualities, leaving the bereaved person with ubiquitous indications of absence and with a contraction of their own self; regarding temporality, as a separation of two strands of time, namely a still ongoing past and an alienated present which become more and more desynchronized; finally, as an “as-if presence” of the deceased which the bereaved continue to feel and sometimes to perceive, leading to a cognitive-affective conflict between two experienced realities. The transforming process of grief is then analyzed as a gradual adjustment to the loss, finally enabling a re-integration of the conflicting realities. This is achieved through an incorporation and identification with the deceased on the one hand, and through various forms of representation on the other hand, in particular by recollection and symbolization. (shrink)

Post-decision wagering has been proposed as a method of demonstrating that perception can occur without conscious awareness. When wagering is independent from above-chance performance there is evidence of a lack of awareness of the correctness of the first-order discriminations. However, there are reasons to believe that the contingency analysis conducted by Persaud and colleagues failed to measure “the zero accuracy-wagering criterion”. The author shows that a Pearson chi-square test employed by Persaud and colleagues is unable to accommodate the hypothesis of (...) partial independence between accuracy and advantageous wagering. On the contrary, the problem of “the zero accuracy-wagering criterion” is best conducted with log-linear models. Moreover, log-linear analysis suggests that absence of advantageous wagering is not sufficient evidence for a lack of conscious awareness. In the case of the blindsight study, there was compelling evidence that the patient GY was partially aware of having information about the correctness of his decisions. (shrink)

On peut considérer comme relevant de « l'impuissance de Dieu » le thème de l'absence de Dieu et de l'abandon de l'homme en présence de Dieu chez Georges Bataille. Cette réflexion sur le sentiment d'absence est ce qui permet d'échapper à la confusion théologique traditionnelle du sacré et de l'utile. Cet athéisme de la peur de la mort est à la base de l' anthropologie de Bataille. The themes of God's absence and of man abandoned in the (...) presence of God in the work of Georges Bataille may be viewed as part of the larger theme of « God's impotence ». These reflections regarding the sense of [His] absence allow us to go beyond the traditional theological confusion between the sacred and the useful. Such atheism of the fear of death is fundamental to Bataille's anthropology. (shrink)

Several theories of causation reject causation of or by absences. They thereby clash with much of what we think and say about what causes what. This paper examines a way in which one kind of theory, causal dispositionalism, can be modified so as to accept absence causation, while still retaining a fundamental commitment of dispositionalism. The proposal adopts parts of a strategy described by David Lewis. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the problem of the proliferation of (...) causes. (shrink)

BackgroundDo sexual minority persons who have undergone unsuccessful sexual orientation change efforts suffer subsequent psychological or social harm from the attempt? Previous studies have conflated present and past, even pre-SOCE, harm in addressing this question. This study attempts, for the first time, to isolate and examine the question of current psychosocial harm for former SOCE participants among sexual minorities in representative population data.MethodUsing nationally representative data across three cohorts of sexual minorities in the United States, persons exposed to SOCE were (...) compared with the remainder not exposed to SOCE on two measures of internal distress—psychological distress and current mental health—and seven measures of behavioral harm: substance abuse ; alcohol dependence ; self-harm; suicide ideation; suicide planning; suicide intentions; and suicide attempts.ResultsThe SOCE group was statistically indistinguishable from the non-SOCE group on any measure of harm. For behavioral harm, risk ratios were 0.97–1.02. Harm was equivalent for the two groups despite the SOCE group having experienced higher lifetime and current minority stress, greater childhood adversity, and lower socioeconomic status. Logistic regression models that adjusted for these differences suggest that SOCE exposure reduced the effect of minority stress and childhood adversity for suicide attempts, although this effect did not fully account for the equivalence between the SOCE and non-SOCE groups.ConclusionDespite higher exposure to factors predicting behavioral harm—minority stress, childhood adversity, and lower socioeconomic background—sexual minority persons who had undergone failed SOCE therapy did not suffer higher psychological or social harm. Concerns to restrict or ban SOCE due to elevated harm are unfounded. Further study is needed to clarify the reasons for the absence of harm from SOCE. (shrink)

Elliott Sober argues that the statistical slogan “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” cannot be taken literally: it must be interpreted charitably as claiming that the absence of evidence is (typically) not very much evidence of absence. I offer an alternative interpretation, on which the slogan claims that absence of evidence is (typically) not objective evidence of absence. I sketch a definition of objective evidence, founded in the notion of an epistemically objective (...) likelihood, and I show that in Sober’s paradigm case, the slogan can, on this understanding, be sustained. (shrink)

A growing body of literature about the phenomenological and epistemic role of structural features of experience, as well as on the topic of absence experience itself, point toward the view that absence experience is non-veridical. Here I challenge that result.

Défini comme l’une des parties du discours traditionnelles, l’article, « l’un des instruments odieux de notre grammaire » (Alexis François, La grammaire du purisme et l’académie française au 18ème siècle, Paris, Société Nouvelle de Librairie et d’Édition, p. 70) crée une véritable ligne de démarcation pour le phénomène langagier en tant qu’il divise les langues en deux catégories distinctes : langues avec article et langues sans article. Au-delà de la technicité grammaticale que créent le système d’article et l’absence d’article (...) au sein du groupe nominal, cette étude permet de repenser la nécessité noologique et phénoménologique de cette classe de mot bien particulière. Il convient donc de s’interroger sur l’absence d’article dans des langues avec article (français, allemand, anglais, italien, macédonien, etc.) et sur l’« absence de tout » dans des langues sans article (croate, serbe, russe, turc, etc.). Au sein des langues dépourvues de tout système d’articles, un déterminant d'origine numérale s'apparente à l'article et, ce faisant, s'approprie une valeur d'adjectif indéfini : « (un) certain ». Les deux cas de figure ou, mieux encore, les deux voies qu'empruntent les langues concernées permettent d'enrichir le tenseur binaire en psychomécanique du langage, notamment en y ajoutant des extensités médianes, non réductibles à la traditionnelle échelle « article défini » - « article indéfini » – « article zéro ». (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article engages Bhaskar's category of absence and Foucault's notion of problematization in the context of explaining an example of the historical emergence of political activism. Specifically, it considers the emergence of the ‘psychiatric survivors’ social movement in the UK, with a focus on the ‘politics of self-harm’. The politics of self-harm refers to acts of self-injurious behaviour, such as drug over-dosage or self-laceration, which do not result in death and which bring individuals to the attention of psychiatric services. (...) For many years survivors have protested about the harmful treatment they receive from such services and have campaigned for their reform and for new, non-psychiatric understandings of the meaning of self-harm. The article explains how such activism emerged in the late 1980s. Its contribution is at the interface of critical realism and social movement studies. (shrink)

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is an idiographic approach to qualitative research. It is widely used in psychologically-informed studies which aim to understand the meaning and context of specific experiences. In this paper, we provide some background and introduction to the principles and processes underpinning IPA research. We extend this via a practical example, reporting on selected analyses from a study which explores the phenomenology and meaning of loneliness, through interviews conducted with a group of religious women. Through our observations on (...) the complex role of absence for loneliness, we show that IPA can be a powerful tool for exploring and understanding the meaning of salient experiences. We reflect on the significance of the results for advancing theories of loneliness; and on the capacity of the IPA approach to provide researchers with an important and useful phenomenological perspective, through its emphasis on context, and its commitment to integrating convergent and divergent claims. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the Anatman experience as described by Guatma(6th century BCE). Many Buddhist philosophers consider the absence of self as a foundational experience of Buddhism. This paper elaborates the Buddhist Absence of Self from the View of Existential Phenomenology. The paper articulates the phenomenological difference between the Ontic-Ontological absence of Self in early Buddhism and the Ontic-Ontological presence of Self in Contemporary Existential Phenomenology. Throughout the paper there is an Existential Phenomenological focus on the intertwining (...) of our Sense of Self and our Sense of Being. The sense of self in early Buddhism is being-less, baseless and empty. Empty of What? Empty of Being! There is no presence of Being and no Being of presence. There is no experience of Being. There is no source of Being. There is no source of Being for our mind. The mind is absent of Being. There is no source of Being for us as person. In early Buddhism the absence of self is the absence of Being-ness. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the claim that the determination conditions for thought must include absences.

Resumen El presente artículo investiga la visión de la presencia y ausencia de Dios en y después de Auschwitz en el pensamiento del filósofo judío Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Analizando especialmente los escritos judíos del autor publicados en el período post-Auschwitz, tras el horror del Holocausto, se muestra cómo responde Dios al clamor de los inocentes y sufrientes estableciendo una relación adulta que respeta la libertad humana y funda una responsabilidad infinita. Se destaca que el vínculo entre Dios y el ser (...) humano es una relación mediada por la experiencia de fidelidad a la Toráh y que la revelación de Dios, esencialmente mandamiento, implica una obediencia insoslayable. En fin, subraya que el contenido fundamental de la revelación divina es el “no matarás”, esto es, promover y defender en toda circunstancia la vida integral de los otros y otras, ejerciendo la responsabilidad y procurando una auténtica justicia social. Abstract This article investigates the presence and absence of God in and after Auschwitz in the thought of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Analyzing especially the author's Jewish writings published in the post-Auschwitz period, after the horror of the Holocaust, it shows how God responds to the cry of the innocent and suffering by establishing an adult relationship that respects human freedom and founds an infinite responsibility. The article emphasizes the bond between God and the human being, which is mediated by the experience of fidelity to the Torah, and that God's revelation, essentially a commandment, implies unavoidable obedience. Finally, it stresses that the critical content of divine revelation is "thou shalt not kill," to promote and defend the integral life of others in all circumstances, exercising responsibility and striving for authentic social justice. (shrink)

I focus on token, deterministic causal claims as they feature in causal explanations. Adequately handling absences is difficult for most causal theories, including theories of causal explanation. Yet so is adequately handling cases of late preemption. The best account of absence-causal claims as they appear in causal explanations is Jonathan Schaffer's quaternary, contrastive account. Yet Schaffer's account cannot handle preemption. The account that best handles late preemption is James Woodward's interventionist account. Yet Woodward's account is inadequate when it comes (...) to absences. I propose an account that handles both absences and preemption by transposing Schaffer's account into an interventionist framework. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose un examen philosophique de la question du sens de la vie. Il prend son point de départ dans le constat que nous donnons sens à notre existence en poursuivant des buts mais où cette quête mène-t-elle? En dernière instance, il n'est que trop facile de souligner leur vanité. De là vient la tentation, au coeur de la tradition philosophique occidentale, de postuler l'existence d'un absolu en quoi tout trouverait sa justification ultime. Celui-ci ne se donne cependant nulle (...) part, il est absent, et le sentiment de l'absurde n'est jamais loin. Plutôt que de chercher à résoudre ce problème, il s'agit de montrer en quoi il est mal posé. Notre vie est justifiée, même en l'absence de tout absolu ; elle l'est malgré sa complète et radicale gratuité. Ainsi, la manière de résoudre le problème du sens de la vie est simplement de montrer pourquoi il n'existe pas. L'auteur s'y attache en recourant à la philosophie classique, le zen japonais ou la poésie contemporaine. (shrink)

Les absents jouent un rôle considérable dans la création des signes qui servent, dans toute société, à désigner, nommer, et même instituer les places des présents et celles des absents tout en mettant du sens dans leurs relations. La sémiotique conçoit ainsi le processus d'humanisation à travers la création des signes alors que la psychanalyse a permis, à sa manière, de voir combien le monde des absents participe à la construction psychique du sujet. La fonction de l'absence perceptive chez (...) le bébé est également étudiée dans cet ouvrage dans sa contribution à la transformation des signes gestuels binaires en signes ternaires qui intègrent du sens. Ces transformations sémiotiques sont aussi éclairées par le regard des poètes et des philosophes présents dans cet ouvrage. (shrink)

Although stockholders may benefit from information regarding the frequently substantial charitable and political contributions of the corporations they own, US corporations are typically not required to disclose any information about such payments in annual financial statements or information submitted periodically to regulatory agencies. This lack of transparency is confounded by disclosure requirements of private foundations, which a corporation may choose to establish for the purposes of administering charitable giving for the corporation. The resulting disclosure fog engendered by extant regulations may (...) be confusing to those corporation owners who would like to know what corporation contributions are being made to charities and politicians. This article enumerates the magnitude of the charitable and political gifts of 40 of the most generous public corporations in the USA, the current disclosure requirements for public companies, the role of foundations, rationales for withholding relevant information from owners, and ethically questionable strategies that corporations may use to manage those disclosures for their benefit. (shrink)

Among the most serious challenges to scientific realism are arguments for the underdetermination of theory by evidence. This paper defends a version of scientific realism against what is perhaps the most influential recent argument of this sort, viz. Kyle Stanford’s New Induction over the History of Science. An essential part of the defense consists in a probabilistic analysis of the slogan “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. On this basis it is argued that the likelihood of (...) a theory being underdetermined depends crucially on social and historical factors, such as the structure of scientific communities and the time that has passed since the theory first became accepted. This is then shown to serve as the epistemological foundation for a version of scientific realism which avoids Stanford’s New Induction in a principled and non-question-begging way. (shrink)

Our main aim in this paper is to contribute towards a better understanding of the epistemology of absence-based inferences. Many absence-based inferences are classified as fallacies. There are exceptions, however. We investigate what features make absence-based inferences epistemically good or reliable. In Section 2 we present Sanford Goldberg’s account of the reliability of absence-based inference, introducing the central notion of epistemic coverage. In Section 3 we approach the idea of epistemic coverage through a comparison of alethic (...) and evidential principles. The Equivalence Schema–a well-known alethic principle–says that it is true that $p$ if and only if $p$ . We take epistemic coverage to underwrite a suitably qualified evidential analogue of the Equivalence Schema: for a high proportion of values of $p$ , subject $S$ has evidence that $p$ due to her reliance on source $S^{*}$ if and only if $p$ . We show how this evidential version of the Equivalence Schema suffices for the reliability of certain absence-based inferences. Section 4 is dedicated to exploring consequences of the Evidential Equivalence Schema. The slogan ‘absence of evidence is evidence of absence’ has received a lot of bad press. More elaborately, what has received a lot of bad press is something like the following idea: absence of evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in $p$ is evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in $\sim p$ . A striking consequence of the Evidential Equivalence Schema is that absence of evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in p is evidence sufficiently good to justify belief in $\sim p$ . We establish this claim in Section 4 and show how this supports the reliability of an additional type of absence-based inference. Section 4 immediately raises the following question: how can we make philosophically good sense of the idea that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? We address this question in Section 5. Section 6 contains some summary remarks. (shrink)