Semantic externalism in the style of McDowell and Evans faces a puzzle formulated by Pryor: to explain that a sentence such as 'Jack exists' is only a posteriori knowable, despite being logically entailed by the seemingly logical truth 'Jack is self-identical', and hence being itself a logical truth and therefore a priori knowable. Free logics can dissolve the puzzle. Moreover, Pryor has argued that the existentially hedged 'If Jack exists, then Jack is self-identical', when properly formalised, is a logical truth (...) in a system of neutral free logic and therefore a priori knowable, while it does not entail that Jack exists. The latter holds also for negative free logic. In response, Yeakel has argued that on any system of neutral free logic existence hedges will either entail some unwanted existence claims or they will not entail some wanted existence claims. The dilemma also holds for any non-positive free logic. It will be shown that the extension of one of the systems of neutral free logic with a truth operator escapes Yeakel's dilemma, whereas no other non-positive free logic when extended with the truth operator does the same (or it breaks quantifier exchangeability). (shrink)

I argue that neutral free logic and existence hedging are incompatible. Primarily, I respond to proposals by James Pryor intended to reconcile the two. Consideration of those proposals will reveal that on any neutral free logic either some existence hedges will entail some undesired existence claims, or they will not entail some desired existence claims.

A common quest among theoretical psychologists is the transformation of psychology to accommodate human agency and meaning. Several strong experimental methods are used in cognitive neuroscience but are based almost entirely upon a mechanistic ontology. A step toward rapprochement is proposed using precise and powerful experimental methods that are holistic, individualized, and compatible with an agentive ontology. Such methods must be applicable to all aspects of human experience, the subjective and agentive aspects, as well as the behavioural and the neurophysiological (...) Multivariate methods are capable of expressing and capturing the holistic isomorphism among multiple aspects of human existence and might even help provide insight into the mind-body problem. Results from a cognitive neuroscience study are used to illustrate this approach. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

By the slant of their aims, presidential candidates rely on their own rhetorical arsenal to win the acquiescence of the public. Hedges and boosters, two subcategories of metadiscourse markers, are among the rhetorical tropes which assist politicians to increase or decrease commitment, blur or sharpen the boundaries between good and evil, and bolster or emasculate solidarity. Despite the many functions hedges and boosters can play in political discourse, studies that address these devices in relation to their persuasive effect (...) in televised presidential debates cross-linguistically are tremendously scant. To this aim, the current study examined the hedging and boosting strategies used by the winners of American and Iranian presidential elections during one of their latest televised debates. A bottom–up method of analysis was adopted to analyze the debates in terms of hedges and boosters, and a functional model in light of what surfaced in the analysis along with awareness of the existing literature was proposed. The study showed that not only were the frequencies significantly different, but the functions these devices fulfilled were also varied cross-linguistically as the winners of both groups demonstrated diverse tendencies towards using hedges and boosters. (shrink)

Suppose that an altruistic agent who is uncertain between evidential and causal decision theory finds herself in a situation where these theories give conflicting verdicts. We argue that even if she has significantly higher credence in CDT, she should nevertheless act in accordance with EDT. First, we claim that the appropriate response to normative uncertainty is to hedge one's bets. That is, if the stakes are much higher on one theory than another, and the credences you assign to each of (...) these theories are not very different, then it is appropriate to choose the option that performs best on the high-stakes theory. Second, we show that, given the assumption of altruism, the existence of correlated decision makers will increase the stakes for EDT but leave the stakes for CDT unaffected. Together these two claims imply that whenever there are sufficiently many correlated agents, the appropriate response is to act in accordance with EDT. (shrink)

Across numerous languages, the attitude verb "think" is learned later than other attitude verbs like "want." But why? This essays advances a new hypothesis: children initially treat think as a veridical yet non-factive verb akin to a class of verbs I call "confirmatives." This hypothesis is argued to better explain existing data that troubles other hypotheses, and to find support from the ease with which children represent knowledge but not belief.

Background: Positive effects of acute exercise on cognitive performances in general inspired research that investigated the effects of acute exercise on specific cognitive subdomains. Many existing studies examined beneficial effects of acute exercise on subsequent set shifting performance in healthy adults. Set shifting, a subdomain of executive function, is the ability to switch between different cognitive sets. The results of existing studies are inconsistent. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted that pooled available effect sizes. Additionally, moderator analyses were carried out to (...) identify covariates that determine the magnitude of exercise-induced set shifting benefits.Methods: Medline, PsycINFO, and SPORTDiscus were searched for eligible studies. Hedges' g corrected standardized mean difference values were used for analyses. Random-effects weights were applied to pool effects. Potential moderation of the effect of acute exercise on subsequent set shifting performance by exercise intensity, type of exercise, participants' age, and type of control group were examined.Results: Twenty-two studies were included into analysis. All aggregated effect sizes ranged from small to moderate. Overall, a small significant beneficial effect was revealed. Heterogeneity of included effect sizes was moderate and significant. Moderator analyses revealed a larger average effect in older adults than for studies examining younger adults. Light exercise led to larger effects than moderate or vigorous exercise. Studies testing acute exercise against active control groups showed a noticeably smaller average effect than studies that used passive or cognitive engaging control groups. Interestingly, application of resistance or aerobic exercise led to no different average effect sizes. However, none of the tested covariates reached statistical significance.Conclusion: Acute exercise improves subsequent set shifting performance. However, effect sizes are small, making the relevance for everyday life questionable. The results indicate that older adults benefit more from acute exercise than younger adults do. Light intensity exercise seems most effective while the type of exercise does not seem to influence the magnitude of effects. Research designs with active control groups show the smallest average effect, raising concerns about placebo effects.PROSPERO registration number: CRD42019138799. (shrink)

In the growing literature on decision-making under moral uncertainty, a number of skeptics have argued that there is an insuperable barrier to rational "hedging" for the risk of moral error, namely the apparent incomparability of moral reasons given by rival theories like Kantianism and utilitarianism. Various general theories of intertheoretic value comparison have been proposed to meet this objection, but each suffers from apparently fatal flaws. In this paper, I propose a more modest approach that aims to identify classes of (...) moral theories that share common principles strong enough to establish bases for intertheoretic comparison. I show that, contra the claims of skeptics, there are often rationally perspicuous grounds for precise, quantitative value comparisons within such classes. In light of this fact, I argue, the existence of some apparent incomparabilities between widely divergent moral theories cannot serve as a general argument against hedging for one's moral uncertainties. (shrink)

Place mouse over image continent. 2.1 (2012): 36–39. From an ethical and political perspective, people and property can hardly be separated. Indeed, the modern political subject – that is, the individual, the person, the self, the autonomous actor, the rational self-interest maximizer, etc. – has taken shape in and through the elaboration, institutionalization, and enactment of that which rightfully belongs to it. This thread can be traced back perhaps most directly to Locke’s notion that the origin of the political state (...) occurs when people rise above the state of nature by ceding the power to prosecute offenses. The rule of law begins then with a defense of the right to property. People become subjects by adhering to the social contract, which they do by deferring the defense of their own property to the state. In this light, the response of the United States federal government to the financial crisis of 2008 appears to many as a breach of the social contract. The chant “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” states the claim plainly. Why exactly did some subjects (e.g., the banks) have their property defended by the state (i.e., through the variety of programs including TARP, the discount window at the US Federal Reserve, etc.), when other subjects (e.g., homeowners) found themselves without protection of their property rights, forced to default on mortgage debts and face dispossession? Even if the rhetoric about “too big to fail” can be believed, and the collapse of the financial system would lead to negative consequences for people who had little or no connection to the activities that brought it about, such consequences need not call into question the notion that everyone stands equally before the law. To occupy, then, appears as a form of civil disobedience, an intentional, retaliatory breach of the social contract by those who feel that they have lost the support of the state to which they ceded their power as sovereign agents. The visible and the invisible The violation of property rights of people who have recognition, protection and power under the law destabilizes their very status as citizens and tests the limit of democracy. Does the financial system force the dematerialized victimization of individuals? Do people become numbers, or worse still, percentages of unemployed, tranches of defaulted mortgages and foreclosures? Are they perhaps instead disenfranchised prospectively from the privileged position occupied by virtual entities and actors such as those involved in the derivatives markets, always already exiled back into the physical, visible realm? The line of conflict appears to be drawn between invisibility/absence/deferral and visibility/presence/realization. The demonstrators occupy an excess property of those subjects, namely, the banks and financial elite, who did receive recognition and protection under the law. By domesticating this excess property, rendering its invisibility visible within the political economy, the protesters raise a new form of threat to the hegemonic order. To occupy, then, involves a rejection of the order under which the “99%” have been subjected to erasure. The occupation seeks creatively to establish a new means of communication and law for its subjects. In the face of an existing power structure that is increasingly disenfranchising the majority of people while consolidating nodes of power and influence, the “occupation”, or the work of the Occupy movement, involves seizing a space that refuses the rules of the existing, allegedly corrupt sovereign state. This refusal of governance extends even to include a steadfast refusal to articulate a strategy, to formulate a list of demands, to converse with the sovereign power on the grounds of its own conventions, to put forth a leader, to resolve the ambiguity of the movement into a discreet identity, face, or voice. Do these tactics provide a resolution to the problem that was its genesis? Not in such a direct and easily resolved manner, but it remains difficult to imagine a direct and simple resolution to the problematic of the breach of the social contract. The ambiguity of the situation has generated significant interest within the broader populace, though many people sympathetic to the cause appear to be frustrated because the movement has not simply put forward a short list of concrete demands, or even a set of leaders and spokespeople, much less a resolution. And yet, this lack of coherence appears as a resolution of a problem generic to protest movements in the past, where individual leaders can be removed or discredited, and lists of demands can be co-opted by others holding more political power. Meanwhile, the ambiguity has compelled imitations on a global scale, with the Occupy Wall Street participants consciously taking actions that can be replicated by anyone anywhere without significant cost. These actions have taken place not in a peripheral location such as a parking lot in New Jersey, but instead close to the centers of power and governance, adjacent to Wall Street, close to the White House, on college campuses, etc. This spontaneous archipelago of protests becomes an irritant, a negation of the accepted order of protests, but when the protesters themselves move outside of their encampments, they are escorted by the police, constantly monitored and maintained so that a permanent state of paranoid persecution takes hold. To occupy, occupying, occupation – these actions involve a variable degree of danger – are you willing to step into a different space, where the rule of law is unclear and evolving? Are you presenting yourself as a representative of the majority, the 99%? Who has a sense of belonging to the 99%? This previously invisible population becomes a focal point of political power, garners increasing public support, infects the public dialogue. The government recognizes this population by forcing it from the occupied space, removing the element of possession of property. It is at this point of conflict, in the struggle to hold the physical property, where the greatest friction and violence occurs. Scaling the rule of law While occupied, the property calls for a redress of grievances, a restoration of the rule of law. The Occupy movement does not select and put forward individuals or leaders, it puts forward places – the occupied property represents the point of conflict, not the individual. And it is this very property that the government then tries to reclaim. The movement remains faceless, anonymous, uncounted, or rather counted only as a mass, the self-labeled mass of 99%. These spaces are like refugee camps or favelas, but constructed to unite the political life and private life of the protesters. This objective is presented as a tactical necessity, as all other means of protest and communication have failed, leaving only the option of seizing, holding, occupying a property. But to what end, exactly? Can anyone deliberately return to the prior social contract, embrace, affirm, and govern in strict accordance with the earlier relationship to property, following the logic of Locke’s arguments? In this respect, the contemporary crisis indicates a new, transitional phase in the way that property operates, or rather, in the balance between real and virtual value. The roots of the crisis lay in the massive overvaluation of property caused by lax lending practices, as more people were encouraged to borrow more money, which drove up the prices of property. At the same time, these individual properties, these mortgages for homes actual families lived in and worked to support, were bundled into securities that could be bought, sold, and speculated on. The reduction of a physical house or piece of real estate to an almost incalculably small element in an investment vehicle appears as a scaling of the hedge that radically diminishes the value of any individually owned property. Moreover, a number of recently-innovated financial products allow investors to hedge in new ways, to deliberately spread risk around a portfolio in hopes of bringing returns even when the individual mortgage defaults. At the level of the ‘free’ market, these virtual negative valuations are designed to balance the physical positive valuation, though many of the biggest lenders are now being investigated for controlling both sides of this valuation, the positive and the negative, to facilitate both the creation and failure of the investments and to profit from both. The ability to benefit from both the negative and positive value of an investment is a result of a technologically enabled capacity to operate within a complex field. These layered and scaled investment vehicles and the simultaneous negation of their value together represent a commingling of the virtual and physical existence that is both complex and multiple. The valuation of a virtual property has tremendous power to change the valuation of the physical - either injecting it with or depriving it of funds, pumping in or draining life and energy. This situation has roots of its own – the notion of property advanced e.g., throughout the enclosure movement in Britain was, from the outset, an imposition of virtuality (i.e., the concept of law, the institutions associated with ownership, etc.) on the physical reality of land. 1 The difference today is that technological trading platforms combined with innovations within the financial services industry have enabled the reduction of each individual property receiving or losing value in scale to an almost atomic level. In turn, the number of properties held simultaneously and valued as a massive, multiple wholes – i.e., the derivatives market in mortgage-backed securities – is a new phenomenon made possible through the application of similar technologies and institutional structures. And those actors who can trade in these layers of complexity can then profit from the new phase of disassociation of the virtual and the physical – unconcerned with and operating at such a virtual distance from the individual residing physically on a particular piece of real estate that they no longer feel the tug of the physical tying them back to the physical, operating literally as in a video game, in a virtually distanced world. What can or should be done about this situation? Answers lie outside the scope of this current essay, but merit consideration in the near future… NOTE 1) Hernando de Soto has emphasized this dimension by empirically demonstrating its non-existence in many countries in The Mystery of Capital. (shrink)

Standard models of portfolio investment rely on various statistical measures of dispersion. Such measures favor returns smoothed over all states of the world and penalize abnormally low as well as abnormally high returns. A model of portfolio investment based on the tradeoff between expected return and expected loss considers only abnormally low returns as undesirable. Such a model has a comparative advantage over other existing models in that a first-order stochastically dominant portfolio always has a higher expected return and a (...) lower expected loss. Expected return—expected loss model of portfolio investment can rationalize the equity premium puzzle. Two random variables are not comoving if there is at least one state of the world in which one random variable yields a positive return and the other—a negative return. Such random variables provide hedging benefits from diversification in portfolio investment according to the expected return—expected loss model. A special case of this model, when an investor linearly trade-offs expected returns and expected losses, is also a special case of the prospect theory when a decision-maker has a piece-wise linear value function without any probability weighting. (shrink)

Generic propositions are statements that make general claims about ‘kinds’ that are found in a wide variety of written genres and speech. By definition, generics do not include in their structure any reference to the conditions under which they hold true. Their misuse in popular scientific writing, however, can erode the public’s confidence in the process of science itself when they discover that conclusions are highly contingent on certain truth conditions. The language used in scholarly scientific papers often includes qualifiers (...) and hedges, the epistemological consequences of which have been explored by Bruno Latour, Thomas Kuhn, Ian Hacking and others. Some research shows that abstracts, however, of-ten include generic statements that are not warranted by the scientific evidence described in the full text. Similarly, when accounts of scientific discoveries appear in popular media, journalists often remove qualifiers, hedges and context markers that existed in the original study. Studies in anthropology by Joseph Dumit, Annemarie Mol, Harris Solomon and others explore the human reactions to such pronouncements. One possible solution to the over-use of generics in scientific abstracts, especially for studies that rely on human subjects, is the inclusion of a mandatory section entitled “Constraints on Generality,” as suggested by Gutiérrez and Rogoff. Other suggestions include using less nominalized verbs and more past-tense descriptions of what actually occurred in the particular study. (shrink)

Liquidity risk arises from the inability to unwind or hedge trading positions at the prevailing market prices. The risk of liquidity is a wide and complex topic as it depends on several factors and causes. While much has been written on the subject, there exists no clear-cut mathematical description of the phenomena and typical market risk modeling methods fail to identify the effect of illiquidity risk. In this paper, we do not propose a definitive one either, but we attempt to (...) derive novel mathematical algorithms for the dynamic modeling of trading volumes during the closeout period from the perspective of multiple-asset portfolio, as well as for financial entities with different subsidiary firms and multiple agents. The robust modeling techniques are based on the application of initial-value-problem differential equations technique for portfolio selection and risk management purposes. This paper provides some crucial parameters for the assessment of the trading volumes of multiple-asset portfolio during the closeout period, where the mathematical proofs for each theorem and corollary are provided. Based on the new developed econophysics theory, this paper presents for the first time a closed-form solution for key parameters for the estimation of trading volumes and liquidity risk, such as the unwinding constant, half-life, and mean lifetime and discusses how these novel parameters can be estimated and incorporated into the proposed techniques. The developed modeling algorithms are appealing in terms of theory and are promising for practical econophysics applications, particularly in developing dynamic and robust portfolio management algorithms in light of the 2007–2009 global financial crunch. In addition, they can be applied to artificial intelligence and machine learning for the policymaking process, reinforcement machine learning techniques for the Internet of Things data analytics, expert systems in finance, FinTech, and within big data ecosystems. (shrink)

I defend moral generalism against particularism. Particularism, as I understand it, is the negation of the generalist view that particular moral facts depend on the existence of a comprehensive set of true moral principles. Particularists typically present "the holism of reasons" as powerful support for their view. While many generalists accept that holism supports particularism but dispute holism, I argue that generalism accommodates holism. The centerpiece of my strategy is a novel model of moral principles as a kind of (...) "hedged" principles that incorporate an independently plausible "basis thesis" concerning the explanation of moral reasons. The model implies that moral reasons requires the existence of a comprehensive set of true hedged principles, and so it captures generalism. But the model also offers an alternative explanation of holism, and so it undercuts much of the motivation for particularism. I defend this moderate (because holism-tolerating) form of generalism against a number of objections, and show how it can be used to defeat three distinct arguments from holism to particularism. (shrink)

In response to the many pressures facing public higher education, public universities are experimenting with business-oriented practices that seem likely to alter their nature and purposes. In this paper, we examine several hybrid experiments—new organizational strategies intended deliberately, sometimes explicitly, to hybridize the traditional norms and practices associated with academia and business at one emblematic public university. These cases illustrate how each hybrid experiment is a tacit response to existing norms and strategies that govern the university–business boundary, initiated as a (...) hedge against the challenging fiscal and political climate. Taken together, they do not lead to a unitary and/or linear spread of business codes and practices. Instead, what some have referred to as “business logic” appears multifaceted, having many elements that are deployed, institutionalized, and perceived differently in different contexts, even within a single university. (shrink)

In the target article, Christie, Brusse, et al. argue that selected effect functions do not, in general, explain why a trait exists in a population and, therefore, theories of representational content should not rely on selected effect functions. This response focuses on the claim about functions-for-representation. The role of evolutionary functions in a theory of content is to pick out outcomes that have been systematically stabilized by natural selection. Correctness conditions are conditions involved in explaining how that happened. Selected effect (...) functions can play that role in the complex equilibria that Christie, Brusse, et al. identify. Non-equilibrium cases are also discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Elements of Eleatic Ontology' MONTGOMERY FURTH THE TASKOF AN INTERPRETERof Parmenides is to find the simplest, historically most plausible, and philosophically most comprehensible set of assumptions that imply (in a suitably loose sense) the doctrine of 'being' set out in Parmenides' poem. In what follows I offer an interpretation that certainly is simple and that I think should be found comprehensible. Historically, only more cautious claims are possible, for (...) several portions of the general view from which I 'deduce the poem' are not clearly stated in the poem itself; my explanation of this is that they are operating as tac/t assumptions, and indeed that the poem is best thought of as an attempt to force these very assumptions to the surface for formulation and criticism -that the poem is a challenge. To be sure, there are dangers in pretending, as for dramatic purposes I shall, that ideas are definite and explicit which for Parmenides himself must have been tacit or vague--that Parmenides knew what he was doing as clearly as I represent him; I try to avoid them, but the risk must be taken. I even believe that not to take it, in the name of preserving his thought pure from anachronous contamination, actually prevents us from seeing the extent to which he, pioneer, was ahead of his timc the argument works both ways. So let me hedge my historical claim in this way: the view I shall discuss could have been an active-indeed a controlling---element of Eleaticism; to suppose that Parmenides held it not only explains the poem, but also helps explain the subsequent reactions to Eleaticism of Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Plato (though there is not space to elaborate this here). In addition, it brings his thought astonishingly close to some contemporary philosophical preoccupations. In the first of the following sections, I lay down some sketchy but necessary groundwork concerning the early Greek concept of 'being.' Then in Section 2 an interpretation is given of what I take to be the central Parmenidean doctrine, that 'it cannot be said that anything is not.' This section is the lengthiest and most involved, but it also contains all the moves that appear to be important. Of the remaining sections, Section 3 exp]Mn.qthe principle: 'of what is, all that can be said is: it is,' Section 4 deals briefly with the remaining cosmology of "The Way of Truth," and Section 5 considers the question whether Parmenides himself believed the fantastic conclusions of his argument. There is a short postscript on a point of methodology. 1. A Word on 6v If we are to examine Parmenides' reasoning profitably, an indispensable pre1This paper wasprepared while the author was beneficiary of a Grant-in-Aid of Research from the American Council of Learned Societies, hereby gratefully acknowledged. [111] 112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY liminary is to estabhsh at least a provisional reading for the Greek words translated "is" or "it is" (tar,v), "what is" or "being" (Sv,rb 5v), "to be" (alva0. For while it is evident enough that in his poem Parmenides purports to be delivering an insight of the utmost significance concerning rb tbv (as he calls it), still the construction which he puts upon the term and its cognates, and the understanding which he expects of his listener, are not so clear and have been topics of dispute. Especially notable, and often noted, is the fact that Parmenides' discussion of 'being' shows no sign of the conceptual distinction considered elementary nowadays, between the "is" linking subject and predicate and the "is" of existence; and in fact it needs no documentation here that this distinction was not reflected in either ordinary or philosophical Greek idiom until, at least, a much later date than his, the word tare expressing both concepts. Also highly visible in the poem is the abundance of occurrences of tare used absolutely, unaccompanied by any predicate expression. As a result of this last, the poem can create in the contemporary reader the impression that r5 tSv is being used to mean what is in the existential sense only, to mean what there is; indeed some students of the poem conclude not only that Parmenides... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Author, AuthorBernard KnoxThe title of this essay is not a reference to that enthusiastic but misguided shout from his friends in the audience at the St. James Theatre in 1895 that brought a reluctant Henry James to the stage at the end of his play Guy Domville, only to be greeted by whistles, shouts, and insults from the irate denizens of the gallery, one of whom had somewhat spoiled (...) the dramatic effect of the actor’s climactic line—“I am the last of the Domvilles”—by shouting: “And a bloody good thing y’are!” My title is the rubric of an infuriating competition that appears every week in the pages of the London Times Literary Supplement; it offers three quotations, all dealing more or less with the same subject, and defies the reader to identify the authors. Since the fiends who concoct these puzzles have carefully avoided passages likely to turn up in anthologies, having, in fact, ransacked their authors’ lesser-known works for texts innocent of such clues as proper names, dates, or allusions to historical events, the reader unwise enough to take a hand in the game has to rely on indications of the personality of the author.Not, obviously, the historical, biographical personality, but the literary personality: the characteristic attitudes and concerns, the rhythms, tones, and levels of discourse, the literary individuality that enables us to distinguish a paragraph of Jane Austen from one of Henry James, and either of them from one of Ernest Hemingway, or the epic blank verse of Milton from that of Keats or Tennyson. This literary identity is now the target of academic assaults from many quarters, of which I propose to single out two in particular—the Roland Barthes-Derrida denial of authors’ identity or even of their existence, and the New [End Page 76] Historicism, which confines that identity to the stringent limitations of the author’s time and place.The first aberration treats the author’s work as a “text,” material for the discovery of intertextuality, subtext, and—a word that I have not seen in print but that, if not yet born, is surely close to delivery from the womb of the goddess Terminologia—metatext, which, on the analogy of “metatheater,” would denote a text discussing its own textuality. In the deconstruction of the text the author disappears; Barthes in fact proclaimed the “death of the author.” But though such theories are usually thought of as French products of the Sixties and Seventies, their origins can be discerned in much earlier work done by Americans in the Forties, the years that saw the birth of that New Criticism which Norman Fruman recalls in his short history of our association, reasserting its basic principle: that “there should be a primary focus on literature as literature and not as something else.” I am myself a child—an aging child—of the New Criticism; the first article I ever published had a title that sounds like a parody of the typical New Critical title—“The Serpent and the Flame.” The editors of the American Journal of Philology, who reluctantly accepted the article after several unsuccessful attempts to get me to tone it down, felt constrained to add to the title: “Patterns of Imagery in the Second Book of the Aeneid.”But there was one aspect of the New Criticism that disturbed me: the influential idea, expounded by a formidable member of the Yale English department, William Wimsatt, called the Intentional Fallacy, which proclaimed that “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.” Though this pronouncement was hedged about with many limitations and provisos it still seemed to me to give rein to freewheeling interpretations that eased the acceptance of the radical hijacking of the author’s work by Derrida, Barthes, Lacan, and hoc genus omne.I was especially disturbed by this doctrine because, as a classical scholar, I had been very much concerned, as is every member of our discipline, with authorial intention at the basic level—the often vexed question not of what impression the author sought to make on the... (shrink)

It should be clear that Lyell's scientific contemporaries would hardly have agreed with Robert Munro's remark that Antiquity of Man created a full-fledged discipline. Only later historians have judged the work a synthesis; those closer to the discoveries and events saw it as a compilation — perhaps a “capital compilation,”95 but a compilation none the less. Its heterogeneity made it difficult to judge as a unity, and most reviewers, like Forbes, concentrated on the first part of Lyell's trilogy. The chapters (...) on glaciation were admired by Lyell's friends but had relatively little appeal to more general readers. His discussion of the species question hedged far too much to please those who accepted the cogency of Darwin's evidence and arguments. This last section of the book blatantly lacks originality or commitment and certainly has no claim to classical status in anthropology.We are left, then, with the first twelve chapters, for it was this portion that dictated the book's title and that amassed the available evidence favoring the antiquity of the human species. Did it do anything more than marshall the evidence that others had discovered? I think not. Lyell could write with style and verve. Principles of Geology is a remarkably readable book. But Antiquity is the work of a geologist, not of a systematic student of man. Despite its occasional touches of power, it never captures the freshness and immediacy of Lubbock's Pre-historic Times nor the theoretical brilliance of E. B. Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865).96 Antiquity utilizes little of the comparative method whereby Lyell's contemporaries used data from modern “savagery” to elaborate the possible social functions of the prehistoric remains being uncovered. It contains little social theory and has virtually no integrated framework. Even the first twelve chapters do not really hang together. As Hooker, commenting to Darwin on Lubbock's review, sadly wrote: “Lubbock in [the] N[atural] H[istory] Review, had in a note called attention to Lyell's ... ‘doing injustice’ to Prestwich & Falconer. I modified this expression ‘injustice’ in Lubbock's paper (which was friendly and apologetic). I am deeply sorry for it, but what can one do? I do think Lyell's first XII chapters a complete mess.”97 In another letter to Darwin, Hooker described this first portion of Antiquity as “confused and confusing.”98Part of the problem, of course, lay in the subject's novelty for Lyell and for most of his contemporaries. At a deeper level, however, I believe that the book accurately reflects Lyell's uncertainties about Darwin's work and its implications for man.99 Leonard Wilson's edition of Lyell's Scientific Journals provides a unique insight into Lyell's mind during the years just before he began to write Antiquity.100 Preoccupied with the human implications of evolutionary biology, Lyell was not clear how many of those implications were compatible with his deep convictions about the dignity of man's place in the cosmos. With a certain naiveté, Lyell complained in 1873 that many of his readers had failed to see the “natural connections” among the three portions of Antiquity.101 Connections could indeed be drawn between man's antiquity and his evolutionary origins; Lyell's private Scientific Journals movingly demonstrate that he was well aware of this fact. But he never fully made the connections in his published writings. Antiquity of Man is more appropriately seen as the last gasp of the heroic period in British geology than as the opening salvo in a new, post-Darwinian anthropological synthesis. Between the founding of the Geological Society of London in 1807 and the middle of the nineteenth century, geology was recognized as one of the most exciting and innovative scientific fields in Britain.102 Lyell himself had contributed much to that drama, and by the 1860's he was a public figure of venerable proportions. More then any other man he represented a geology that had extended the boundaries of process, time, and life. The fundamental achievements of Lyell and his colleagues had been assimilated into the wider Victorian consciousness, yet the earlier public debates about “genesis and geology” had left untouched in its essentials the concept of Man as a moral, responsible, created being.103Lyell never abandoned this view of his own species, and in 1863 it was a completely responsible creature which, under the weight of empirical evidence, Lyell admitted had lived on earth far longer than had previously been thought. Certainly this more generous allowance for human existence was constitutive to what Burrow calls the evolutionary social theory of midcentury Britain.104 Unlike Lyell, the younger representatives of this anthropology quietly accepted both man's antiquity and his aboriginal animality. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (1855), as well as the other volumes of his grand Synthetic Philosophy, presented as part of the cosmic process the development of human from prehuman beings.105 Tylor's discussion of what in his Researches (1865) he called the “gesture-language” presupposed the gradual and de novo origin of language in early human populations.106 Lubbock's young and polished mind was untroubled by the human implications of Darwin's work, and he cast his Prehistoric Times into such a perfect mold that it and its companionpiece (On the Origin of Civilization, 1870) went through seven editions each between 1865 and World War I, with their original theoretical structures intact. In a way that Lyell could not grasp, Lubbock was intrigued by questions concerning the origins of moral and religious beliefs and did not flinch at the thought of an amoral, atheistic creature as an ancestor.107 Indeed, as the German naturalist Carl Vogt pointed out in his Lectures on Man, translated into English the year after Antiquity, both Darwin's theories and the primitive flint knives of the Stone Age bore witness to a time beyond that imaginable from the condition of the lowest present-day “savage”:From such a low condition [little better than anthropomorphous apes], compared to which that of the so-called savages of the old and new world is a refined civilisation, has the human species gradually extricated itself, in a bitter struggle for existence, which it was well able to maintain, by being gifted with a larger amount of brain and intelligence than that possessed by the surrounding animal world.108The easy integration of biological and social themes was perhaps the distinguishing hallmark of Victorian anthropology of the 1850's and 1860's. After his fashion, Lyell got both themes into Antiquity, but he carefully separated them with a seven-chapter wall of glacial ice. Lyell's anthropology was not that of a thoroughgoing evolutionist like Lubbock, Tylor, or Spencer. For Lyell prehistoric man was not a product of biological evolution. Rude and superstitious he may have been, but he possessed ritual and a belief in a future state, and thus deserved “the epithet of ‘noble,’ which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race: as Nature first made man/when wild in woods the noble savage ran.”109As a systematic argument, Lyell's book was at best a significant failure. As a popularization, it was a success — largely because of the personal stature of its author and the particular moment of its appearance. It helped establish the fact of man's antiquity with a wider Victorian audience, in itself no mean achievement. But Lyell was unable to exploit the fuller implications of his material in the service of a secular science of man. Ironically, he exploited only his colleagues' discoveries. Though the aging Lyell, with failing eyesight but unfailing mental powers, can still be seen as a man of considerable importance, his Antiquity belongs to the carefully circumscribed world of British geology rather than to the less disciplined world of Victorian anthropology. (shrink)

Minsky proposed classifying firms in three categories: hedge finance units which borrow no more than they are able to service in interest and principal out of operating cash flows, speculative finance units which are overleveraged to the point where they can service interest on their debt out of operating cash flows, but cannot repay the principal, and thus must continually roll over their existing debt, and Ponzi finance units, whose operating cash flows are inadequate even to service interest on their (...) debt. In Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis protracted prosperity leads endogenously to firms overleveraging themselves and transforming a market dominated by hedge finance into one dominated by speculative and Ponzi finance. Since Ponzi finance units are forced to sell off assets to service their existing interest payments, once the market is sufficiently dominated by Ponzi finance units, this creates an oversupply of assets offered for sale, and the resulting debt deflation causes a financial crisis and drastic shortage of liquidity. It appears this crisis state can be brought about by a deceptively low critical mass of Ponzi and speculative finance units. This paper uses a large 2002–2009 quarterly data set of all publicly traded North American firms and foreign firms traded on North American exchanges, a total of 8,905 stocks. Financial ratios are used to classify these firms in each quarter according to Minsky’s FIH categories. Market value is used to weight the categories, and average betas are computed as measures of volatility. Results provide dramatic support for the FIH. The FIH is then reinterpreted in terms of Austrian business cycle theory, which depends on inflationary credit expansion to drive the unsustainable prosperity. According to Minsky’s FIH, unsustainable prosperity emerges endogenously as long periods of economic expansion make borrowers and lenders alike more willing to engage in investment activities for which they fail to see the inherent risk. It becomes clear that this process is amplified and exacerbated by credit expansion. Minsky’s FIH helps flesh out some of the missing dynamics of the malinvestment liquidation phase of ABC theory, and the two views turn out to be surprisingly complementary. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): ‘Full Disclosure of the “Raw Data” of Research on Humans: Citizens’ Rights, Product Manufacturer’s Obligations and the Quality of the Scientific Database.’Philosophy Compass 6/2 (2011): 90–99. doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2010.00376.x Author’s Introduction Securing consent (and informed consent) from patients and research study participants is a key concern in patient care and research on humans. Yet, the legal doctrines of consent and informed consent differ in their applications. In patient care, the judicial doctrines of consent and informed (...) consent are disclosure doctrines based on the obligation of physicians to inform their patients of the following types of information: the nature of the procedure the physician is recommending in the patent’s care (P), the alternatives to the physician‐recommendation (A), and the risks of procedure and its alternatives (R). In addition, the physician must provide truthful answers to the patient’s questions (Q) to the best of the physician’s abilities. In research on humans, the onus of disclosure by study sponsors and principal investigators is much greater than in patient care precisely because the purpose of research is not patient care. The purpose of research is the identification and development of new generalizable knowledge. Thus, participation in a research study or trial may not benefit the study volunteer at all. In addition, the participant may carry a heavy risk burden in relationship to any testing of a newly designed drug or device as part of their experiences in the research study. Presently, despite the risks borne by the research study participant, the raw data collected from volunteers in research trials are treated by courts as if they were the private property of the study sponsor rather than generally owed to the public as would be expected by an effort like research participation aimed at contributing to the development of generalizable knowledge. This paper reviews the obligations that study sponsors owe to their study participants based on the very definition of research as a systematic activity whose purpose is to develop generalizable knowledge to help all humans. Author Recommends Court cases Canterbury v. Spence, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate decision heard in the District of Columbia, USA) Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980). (Supreme Court of Canada) Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Canterbury v. Spence is the landmark Federal informed consent case in the United States heard in the District of Columbia. In this case, Judge Spottswood Robinson articulated the reasonable person standard of informed consent. This standard was subsequently adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada (Reibl v. Hughes, 2 S.C.R. 880 (1980)) and the High Court of Australia (Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L. R. 479 (1992)). The House of Lords rejected the reasonable person standard in England in Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985). Book Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. This book is a detailed guide for the review of scientific and ethical aspects of research on humans contained in the research study protocols and research informed consent forms which need to be submitted by study sponsors and principal investigators to institutional review boards (IRBs) for IRB review before a research study can receive approval to be conducted within a human study population in those institutions over which the IRB has authority. It also presents basic definitions in the area of research on humans and basic approaches to help conduct a deep review of the underlying scientific and ethical issues that are present within a research study protocol and its accompanying research informed consent form. Report National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). This U.S. National Commission in the Belmont Report argued for the necessity of a reasonable volunteer standard in research on humans in the United States. Arguing that the professional standard and the reasonable person standard of consent and informed consent were insufficient to base a disclosure standard in research on humans, this National Commission developed the reasonable volunteer standard where a study participant is to be approached in research informed consent with that information that a reasonable volunteer would want to know. Online Materials Belmont Report: Syllabus Topics for Lecture and Discussion Week I: Introduction and Overview Readings: Rogers v. Whitaker, 175 C.L.R. 479 (1992). (High Court of Australia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week II: The Different Standards of Consent and Informed Consent Readings: Canterbury v. Spence, 464 F.2d 772 (1972). (Federal appellate opinion heard in the District of Columbia) Sidaway v. Board of Governors of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital and Others. 1 A.C. 871 (1985) (House of Lords) Week III: Definition of Research Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 2 and 3) Week IV: How to Review a Research Study Protocol and Research Informed Consent Form Reading: Mazur, Dennis J. The Science and Ethics of Research on Humans. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (Especially Chapters 4–6, 10, and 12–14) Week V: Obligations in Research of Humans Versus Patient Care Reading: National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Belmont Report: Ethical Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: DHEW Publications, 1978 (78‐0012). Focus Questions • How do the judicial doctrines of consent in England and Australia compare to the judicial doctrines of informed consent in the United States and Canada? • How does a professional standard of disclosure differ from a reasonable person standard of disclosure? • What is the definition of research? • How is a research study (study proposal and research informed consent form) reviewed from scientific and ethical bases for considerations of approval by an IRB? • How do the obligations of a study sponsor, a principal investigator, and a research team conducting a research trial on human study participants differ from the obligations of a physician caring for a patient? • Should all raw data of research derived from humans be made available to the public for use in developing generalizable knowledge to help others, or should raw data be considered the private property of the study sponsors (for example, prescription drug manufacturers), who fund the research trials? Seminar/project Idea Draw a timeline of the development of the basic concepts of consent and informed consent in patient care and in patient research. On this timeline, first place the dates of the key court cases in England, the United States, Canada, and Australia on consent and informed consent. Then place the date of the development of the Belmont Report. Why do differences exist between these four countries in terms of the legal requirements of informedness of a patient (in medical care) and a study participant (in medical research)? What roles if any do the concepts of self‐determination and self‐decision have in consent and informed consent in patient care and in informed consent in research on humans among the four countries of interest? What are the realities of research on human participants that require a new standard of informed consent, the reasonable volunteer standard, to be developed beyond the two standards in patient care, the professional standard, and the reasonable person standard? Counterpoint Arguments The following are counterpoint arguments that need to be appreciated to more fully understand the concepts that impact the thesis that ‘raw data’ should be open to the public to allow the opportunity of checking of the results of its associated scientific paper and for further analysis. De‐Identified (Anonymized) Raw Data A current approach to identifying (anonymizinig) raw data is based on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (P.L.104‐191). HIPAA was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996 to keep a person’s medical information private. In a research study, a person’s private medical information can become research data. HIPAA’s Privacy Rule allows a covered entity to de‐identify data by removing all 18 elements that could be used to identify the individual or the individual’s relatives, employers, or household members; these elements are enumerated in the Privacy Rule. The covered entity must also have no actual knowledge that the remaining information could be used alone or in combination with other information to identify the individual who is the subject of the information. Under this method, the identifiers that must be removed are the following: 1 Names. 2 All geographic subdivisions smaller than a state, including street address, city, county, precinct, ZIP Code, and their equivalent geographical codes, except for the initial three digits of a ZIP Code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: 2a. The geographic unit formed by combining all ZIP Codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people. 2b. The initial three digits of a ZIP Code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people are changed to 000. 3 All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, and date of death, and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older. 4 Telephone numbers. 5 Facsimile numbers. 6 Electronic mail addresses. 7 Social security numbers. 8 Medical record numbers. 9 Health plan beneficiary numbers. 10 Account numbers. 11 Certificate/license numbers. 12 Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers. 13 Device identifiers and serial numbers. 14 Web universal resource locators (URLs). 15 Internet protocol (IP) address numbers. 16 Biometric identifiers, including fingerprints and voiceprints. 17 Full‐face photographic images and any comparable images. 18 Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code, unless otherwise permitted by the Privacy Rule for re‐identification. Even though ‘raw data’ can be de‐identified (anonymized) so that there is no way to trace back the data to the study participant from which it was drawn, there are still questions whether the ‘de‐identified raw data’ can be given to other researchers or made public without the original study participant’s approval. It may be the case that this approval could be done at the start of any research study where the individual considering study participation would be counseled on what the process of de‐identification consists of and would be asked whether the participant would allow use of the data by other researchers or made available to the public in a de‐identified state. However, there may be questions of the study participants as to whether the data are truly de‐identified and untraceable back to the study participant since the participant would not be able to see the process actually being carried out in detail in all relevant circumstances. Using Raw Data in Context Simply being in possession of raw data is never enough to build on that data from a research perspective. Researchers need to understand the context of the scientific research study in which the data were collected. This research context includes (but is not limited to): (i) the scientific hypothesis of the research study, (ii) the inclusion and exclusion criteria selected by the research designers of the study to determine which study participants were included and which were excluded from the study, (iii) the methods used to collect the data and possibilities of errors in the data collection processes, and (iv) answers to questions regarding whether any data were excluded from the study data and why these data were excluded. Ownership Rights Over Data There are ownership rights over data. Ownership rights include court decision making related to the question which parties are to be considered as the owners of the data. Possible owners here include (but are not limited to) (i) the study sponsor whose only role was to fund that study, (ii) the principal investigator(s) who developed the scientific hypothesis, and (iii) individual study participants through special contracts made by individual participants who negotiate such contracts with study sponsors and principal investigators to share in the ownership of data. Examples of such data are participant sources of unique gene lines or unique cell lines to be used in future research. Objections to Data Sharing Finally, individual researchers may simply object to sharing data. A researcher’s arguments here may be simply stating that he or she has a right to fully analyze the data since the collection of the data was the researchers’ idea in the first place. These researchers may argue that they have the right to mine the data as fully as they can before deciding to make the data open to the public for others to analyze. Works Cited 1 Kaiser, J. ‘Making Clinical Data Widely Available.’Science 322.5899 (10 Oct. 2008): 217–8. 2 de Lusignan, S., J.F. Metsemakers, P. Houwink, V. Gunnarsdottir, and J. van der Lei. ‘Routinely Collected General Practice Data: Goldmines for Research? A Report of the European Federation for Medical Informatics Primary Care Informatics Working Group (EFMI PCIWG) from MIE2006, Maastricht, The Netherlands.’Informatics in Primary Care 14.3 (2006): 203–9. 3 Sim, I. ‘Human Studies Database Project’, CTSA Data Repositories Symposium (17 Oct. 2008). 23 Nov. 2010. 4 Sim, I., C.G. Chute, H. Lehmann, R. Nagarajan, M. Nahm, and R.H. Scheuermann. ‘Keeping Raw Data in Context.’Science 323.5915 (6 Feb. 2009): 713. 5 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, HIPAA Privacy Rule, Information for Researchers. 13 Nov. 2010. 6 Wilczynski, N.L., R.B. Haynes, and Hedges Team. ‘EMBASE Search Strategies for Identifying Methodologically Sound Diagnostic Studies for Use by Clinicians and Researchers.’BMC Medicine 29.3 (March 2005): 7. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that platonism with respect to a discourse of metaphysical interest, such as fictional or mathematical discourse, affords a better account of the semantic appearances than nominalism, other things being equal. Of course, other things may not be equal. For example, platonism is supposed to come at the cost of a plausible epistemology and ontology. But the hedged claim is often treated as a background assumption. It is motivated by the intuitively stronger one that the platonist can (...) take the semantic appearances at ‘face-value’ while the nominalist must resort to ad hoc and technically problematic machinery in order to explain those appearances away. In this article, I argue that, on any natural construal of ‘face-value’, the platonist, like the nominalist, is not able to take the semantic appearances at face-value. And insofar as the nominalist is forced to resort to ad hoc and technically awkward devices in order to explain those appearances away, the platonist must resort to such devices as well. One moral of the story is that the thesis that platonism affords a better account of the semantic appearances than nominalism – even other things being equal – is not trivial. Another is that we should rethink a widespread methodology in metaphysics. (shrink)

This article develops a new and expanded interpretation of the typology exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism. The proposal refines the categories of what was originally a Christian typology in order to provide a truly cross-cultural and interreligious framework to better understand and compare the most common views of religious diversity found not only in Christianity, but also in Buddhism and other religions. Although building upon Schmidt-Leukel's logical reinterpretation of the typology, the article substantially modifies his framework and understands the typology, not as (...) a comprehensive classification of possible attitudes toward other religions, but rather as an open-ended framework to clarify the nature of the most common theologies of religions that exist in reality. The new interpretation provides a more precise definition of inclusivism that does not conflate inclusivism with the affirmation of a singular maximum, thus distinguishing between absolutistic and non-absolutistic forms of inclusivism. The new interpretation introduces an intermediate position between inclusivism and pluralism called pluralistic inclusivism. The article challenges David Ray Griffin's concept of generic pluralism and proposes a new understanding of pluralism indebted to Raimundo Panikkar. (shrink)

Genes dance. They dance with culture. Theydance with environment. Genes act on the world through the brain, mind and behavior. Historically, psychologists, therapists,educators and most lay people have understoodgenes in the context of Gregor Mendel'sexperiments, which were only partiallyexplained to us. While many studies show thatbrain structures and behaviors have quiterobust influences from inheritance, mostbehavior is not influenced in the classic waywe were taught in our introduction to genetics– which has been revolutionized by molecularstudies and understandings that most of theimportant (...) genes of everyday life arequantitative, or polygenic.Popular culture and naïve theory has a verysimplistic view of genes. They are bad,impolite and vaguely anti-democratic if notsinister. A very simple truth exists, however.Were it not for the genes of our grandparents,no one would be reading this article.This article introduces the reader to an ideathat emerges from evolutionary psychology andbehavior genetics, which may turn our thinkinginside out. For the most part, genes are giftsof nature to solve problems, and to hedge a beton the future. Most true genetic diseases,regulated by the classic processes that Mendelobserved, are extremely rare – typically belowone in several hundred. Most of the behaviorsthat cause us grief or joy in our homes,schools and communities and with some form ofgenetic contribution happen far more often –3%, 5%, 10% or more of the time in thepopulation. If such behaviors were ``defects''harming our reproductive success, Mother Naturewould have quickly made short work of thosegenes in a handful of generations. The factthat many of the genes related to thesebehaviors and subtle changes in the brain seemto have been recent changes (pejorativelycalled by some ``mutations'') in the past fewthousand years implies that these changes are insome sense Nature's Gifts.Gifts are to be treasured, saved and perhapspassed on. Sometimes a gift may be burdensome. This paper is about reframing and explainingadvances in science in the past 10 years or so,parallel to the brain imaging studies. Themolecular studies, explored in the context ofevolutionary psychology and behavioral geneticsprovide a new model for human development,enhancing our understanding of more traditionalviews of human phylogeny and ontogeny. Thesame molecular studies, when framed in thecontext of twin, adoption and longitudinalstudies, provide new insights for parenting,schools, community and therapy. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to develop a phenomenological understanding of discrimination from the perspective of the discriminator. Since early existential phenomenology, the phenomenon of discrimination has received a great deal of attention. While much of this work has focused on the experience of the discriminatee, recent scholarship has begun to reflect on the intentional structures on the side of the discriminator. In a contribution to this trend, I argue that our sense of what is (ab)normal plays a constitutively (...) significant role in the reiteration and reinforcement of harmful discriminatory practices. More specifically, I argue that Husserl's distinction between two forms of normality, namely, concordance-normality [Einstimmigkeit] and optimal-normality [Optimalität], is an important tool for illuminating otherwise overlooked aspects of the discriminator's experience. I achieve this by demonstrating how these two notions of normality play distinct constitutive roles when comparing deliberate acts of discrimination committed with malintent, compared with more primordial, habitual, and prereflective expectations which are already discriminatory in nucleo. I argue that at the heart of discriminatory practices there is a naïve, normalizing attempt to stabilize concordance at the expense of critical self-reflection, normative revisions, and enriched horizons of expectation. In doing so, this paper provides a novel and important contribution to philosophical discussions surrounding discrimination. (shrink)

Over the years, phenomenology has provided illuminating descriptions of discrimination, with its mechanisms and effects being thematised at the most basic levels of embodiment, (dis)orientation, selfhood, and belonging. What remains somewhat understudied is the lived experience of the discriminator. In this paper I draw on Husserl's phenomenological account of normality to reflect on the ways in which we discriminate at the prereflective levels of perceptual experience and bodily being. By critically reflecting on the intentional structures undergirding discriminatory practices, I argue (...) that discrimination is characteristic of a naïve normalising attitude which is habitually interested in securing a familiar experience of a static normality. I first demonstrate how this attitude problematically tends to reproduce, enforce, and further sediment discriminatory and exclusionary norms. Further, I provide an internal critique which problematises discrimination—without recourse to external normative standards—on three fronts: as epistemically unproductive, experientially obscuring, and normatively non-instantiating. In discriminatory acts we see an abnormal refusal to enrich, revise, and genetically establish new normative commitments, new ways of seeing, and a new normality. (shrink)

Phenomenological discussions of sociality have long been concerned with the relations between the I, the You, and the We. Recently, dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophical work on collective intentionality has given rise to a corpus of literature oriented around the first-person plural “we.” In this paper, I demonstrate how these dominant accounts of the “we” are not exhaustive of first-person plural experiences as such. I achieve these aims by arguing for a phenomenological distinction between an experience of being part (...) of a “we” compared to an experience of being part of an “us.” To have a “we-experience” there must be a plurality of (unified) subjects sharing in an experience together such that the experience has the phenomenal character of being ours. An “us-experience,” on the other hand, requires the experiential salience of an external “Third” in a way that is constitutively significant. Drawing on Sartrean social ontology, I argue that the “us” is distinct from the “we” on three levels, all of which pertain to the constitutive and unifying role of the Third. I then outline two forms of us-experiences: (1) the experience of being grouped and (2) the experience of apprehending one's seriality. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on Alfred Schutz’s theoretical framework to better understand how oppression is enacted through discriminatory acts. By closely examining the role of typifications and relevances in our experience of others, and by supplementing this analysis with contemporary social scientific resources, we argue that a Schutzian perspective on oppression yields important phenomenological insights. We do this in three key steps. Firstly, we contextualise Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World within Schutz’s broader body of work, (...) elucidating his central conditions of discrimination. Secondly, we highlight the limitations of Schutz’s account, in how it fails to capture more peripheral, subtle, and implicit oppressive practices. Finally, we introduce two underexplored insights derived from Schutz’s framework: the role of relevances in understanding the motivational underpinnings of implicit biases, and the connection between self-typification and stereotype threat. With this multidimensional approach, we hope to enhance our understanding of oppression whilst bridging gaps in Schutz’s original conceptualization. (shrink)

In recent years, misogyny has become a central concept in philosophy as well as an established concept in public discourse and political policy. But where is misogyny’s supposed counterpart, namely, misandry? In this paper I argue for an ameliorative analysis of "misandry", arguing that it can be reformulated in an effort to reclaim it from its misogynistic weaponisation. The term "misandry" is used almost exclusively as a misogynistic rhetorical device for attributing unjust anger, hatred, or other similar emotions to a (...) speaker, thereby undermining their epistemic authority. Rather than dismissing the term as conceptually flawed and politically problematic, I argue that we ought to ameliorate misandry to instead refer to a felt anger, hostility, or fear toward the patriarchal social order and its valorisation and/or expression in misogynistic and machismo behaviour. To support these claims, I begin with a discussion of Kate Manne's analysis of misogyny before reflecting on how this can inform our understanding of misandry. I then demonstrate the various ways in which misandry is rhetorically deployed as a means of silencing speakers that express dissent against the patriarchy. Following this, I argue that we should ameliorate the term, not only to undermine these misogynistic practices, but also to articulate a legitimate affective and reactive attitude against the patriarchal imposition of a hierarchical gender binary. (shrink)

Care is a feature of all of our lives, all of the time. An analysis of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence reveals that care and caring permeate complex dimensions of life in and after school and we ask here, if, on some accounts, care can do the work required of it. Acknowledging the significance of her contribution to care, we focus on the work of Nel Noddings suggesting that she pays insufficient attention to other emotions implicated in the work of morally (...) appropriate care. We argue here that Noddings' version of care would benefit from the support of an ethical theory of the emotions, including a moralized form of compassion, if care in schools is to be both better understood and more likely realised. (shrink)

Cinema has long played a crucial role in the way that societies remember and represent themselves. In the last quarter century, film has been an important medium in the public debate around the memory of the Holocaust and of Hiroshima; of the Algerian war for independence and of the Spanish Civil War; of the Allende legacy in Chile, the utopian dreams of 1968, and the aborted project of the German Democratic Republic; in identity formation in Palestine and in the African (...) diaspora. Hedges discusses the role of cinema within a global perspective that spans five continents, and proposes an original typology of cultural memory. In the process, she re-evaluates the contributions of major directors and uncovers hitherto neglected yet important works. The author develops her arguments in an approachable style that will encourage readers to rethink their own memories of films and to reflect on the way that cinema contributes to collective and cultural memory. The book's innovative approach should transform the way that we think of film and its social effects. (shrink)

Human allografts for life-threatening organ failure have been demonstrated to be lifesaving and are now considered to be standard of care for many conditions. Transplantation of non-vital anatomic body parts has also been accomplished. Hand transplantation after limb loss in adults has been shown to offer some promising benefits in both functional and psychological measures in preliminary studies. It has been suggested to expand eligibility criteria to include minors, with one such operation having already been performed. With this in mind, (...) we examine the current state of hand transplantation research in the context of available alternatives. We examine the ethics of carrying out these operations in minors, including under the protections of clinical research. We argue that children should not be considered for this surgery due to the substantial risks of immunosuppressive medication, the likelihood that the graft will need to be replaced during the patient’s lifetime and the lack of significant compensatory advantages over modern prosthetics. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on Alfred Schutz’s theoretical framework to better understand how oppression is enacted through discriminatory acts. By closely examining the role of typifications and relevances in our experience of others, and by supplementing this analysis with contemporary social scientific resources, we argue that a Schutzian perspective on oppression yields important phenomenological insights. We do this in three key steps. Firstly, we contextualise _Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World_ within Schutz’s broader body of work, (...) elucidating his central conditions of discrimination. Secondly, we highlight the limitations of Schutz’s account, in how it fails to capture more peripheral, subtle, and implicit oppressive practices. Finally, we introduce two underexplored insights derived from Schutz’s framework: the role of relevances in understanding the motivational underpinnings of implicit biases, and the connection between self-typification and stereotype threat. With this multidimensional approach, we hope to enhance our understanding of oppression whilst bridging gaps in Schutz’s original conceptualization. (shrink)

Phenomenological discussions of sociality have long been concerned with the relations between the I, the You, and the We. Recently, dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophical work on collective intentionality has given rise to a corpus of literature oriented around the first-person plural 'we'. In this paper, I demonstrate how these dominant accounts of the 'we' are not exhaustive of first-person plural experiences as such. I achieve these aims by arguing for a phenomenological distinction between an experience of being part (...) of a 'we' compared to an experience of being part of an 'us'. To have a 'we-experience' there must be a plurality of (unified) subjects sharing in an experience together such that the experience has the phenomenal character of being ours. An 'us-experience', on the other hand, requires the experiential salience of an external 'Third' in a way which is constitutively significant. Drawing on Sartrean social ontology, I argue that the 'us' is distinct from the 'we' on three levels, all of which pertain to the constitutive and unifying role of the Third. I then outline two forms of us-experiences: (1) the experience of being grouped and (2) the experience of apprehending one's seriality. (shrink)

The August 2011 riots in England occasioned widespread condemnation from government and the media. Here, we apply the concepts of hypocrisy and affiliation to explore reactions to these riots. Initially acknowledging that politics necessitates a degree of hypocrisy, we note that some forms of hypocrisy are indefensible: they compromise integrity. With rioters condemned as thugs and members of a feral underclass, some reactions exemplified forms of corrosive hypocrisy that deflected attention away from economic, social and cultural problems. Moreover, such reactions (...) omitted to attend to the concept of [dis]affiliation amongst young rioters. Accordingly, we look to the role that education might play in re-affiliating those who do not feel they belong to, or have a sufficient stake in, society. Whilst our focus is on the riots in England, the exploration of hypocrisy and affiliation, and discussion of education for re-affiliation, transcends that national context. (shrink)

Often regarded simply as a nuisance in clinical drug trials in which the aim is to separate drug response from placebo response in a statistically significant manner, the placebo response has important implications. These implications relate to the nature of illness, the study of non-specific factors in the treatment setting that are related to clinical improvement, methods of enhancing these non-specific sources of benefit, and the neurobiology that is associated with the placebo response. Specific sources of clinical improvement in medical (...) and psychological treatment generally consist of drugs or clear interventions that appear to directly contribute to the desired treatment. Non-specific factors, on the other hand, include the clinician–patient relationship, installation of hope, relationship with authority, and other such factors that are more implicit to treatment and may contribute to the placebo response. Our understanding of how these non-specific aspects of treatment relate to clinical improvement and ways of enhancing these non-pharmacological elements of therapy may form important aspects of treatment. Furthermore, an important, albeit potentially overlooked element of the placebo response are clinical-trial designs and methodologies, themselves. Specific neurobiological changes also appear to be associated with the placebo response in at least some cases. Finally, it is suggested that the placebo response may in some instances represent a type of brain plasticity in which expectation and desire — agency — can result in specific changes in brain function that either may mirror or differ from the effects of certain drugs. (shrink)