Shoma Morita, M.D. was a Japanese psychiatrist-professor who developed a unique four stage therapy process. He challenged psychoanalysts who sanctioned an unconscious or unconsciousness that resides inside the mind. Significantly, he advanced a phenomenal connection between existentialism, Zen, Nature and the therapeutic role of serendipity. Morita is a forerunner of eco-psychology and he equalised the strength between human-to-human attachment and human-to-Nature bonds. This book chronicles Morita's theory of "peripheral consciousness", his paradoxical method, his design of a natural therapeutic setting, and (...) his progressive-four stage therapy. It explores how this therapy can be beneficial for clients outside of Japan using, for the first time, non-Japanese case studies. The author's personal material about training in Japan and subsequent practice of Morita's ecological and phenomenological therapy in Australia and the United States enhance this book. LeVine's coining of "cruelty-based trauma" generates a rich discussion on the need for therapy inclusive of ecological settings. As a medical anthropologist, clinical psychologist and genocide scholar, LeVine shows how the four progressive stages are essential to the classic method and the key importance of the first "rest" stage in outcomes for clients who have been embossed by trauma. Since cognitive science took hold in the 1970s, complex consciousness theories have lost footing in psychology and medical science. This book reinstates "consciousness" as the dynamic core of Morita therapy. The case material illustrates the use of Morita therapy for clients struggling with the aftermath of trauma and how to live creatively and responsively inside the uncertainty of existence. The never before published archival biographic notes and photos of psychoanalyst Karen Horney, Fritz Perls, Eric Fromm and other renowned scholars who took an interest in Morita in the 1950s and 60s provide a dense historical backdrop. (shrink)

Throughout, this book questions our accepted definitions and biases, showing the self-reflective nature of scientific activity within society.

In this book, Dr. Robert J. Levine reviews federal regulations, ethical analysis, and case studies in an attempt to answer these questions.

Darwin the writer -- Learning to see : Darwin's prophetic apprenticeship on the Beagle voyage -- The prose of On the origin of species -- Surprise and paradox : Darwin's artful legacy -- Darwinian mind and Wildean paradox -- Hardy's Woodlanders and the Darwinian grotesque -- Coda : the comic Darwin.

I offer a new interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time as an account of the relationship between individual agents and the public normative practices of their communities. According to a prominent recent interpretation, Heidegger’s discussions of anxiety, death and the “call of conscience” together explain how we can respond to the norms of our practices as reasons and subject them to critical reflection. I argue that this is only part of the story. Anxiety is an occasion (...) for Dasein to take responsibility for its ongoing activity of interpreting the possibilities for living and acting made available by the normative practices of its community, which is presupposed and overlooked from the perspective of everyday Dasein. Public normativity underdetermines Dasein’s conception of what it would mean to take up any of the possibilities available in its world as a way of living its own life. (shrink)

Images abound of women throughout the ages engaging in various activities. But why are there so few representations of childbirth in visual art? Feminist artist Judy Chicago once suggested that depictions of women giving birth do not commonly occur in Western culture but can be found in other contexts such as pre-Columbian art or societies previously considered "primitive." Chicago's own exploration of the theme resulted in the creation of The Birth Project (1980-85): an unprecedented series of eighty handcrafted works of (...) art created in a variety of needlework techniques by more than 130 artisans that celebrate the experience of birth and a woman's transformation into motherhood. But why is The Birth Project an aberration from today's norm? What are the reasons that childbirth remains a taboo subject in our visual culture? Why is the birthing experience--so pervasive for women--so infrequently celebrated, even by female artists? (shrink)

The paper proposes a solution to the problem with Odysseus’ kingship in the Odyssey by maintaining that Odysseus is not officially considered dead. Consequently, Telemachus cannot inherit the position of king and Penelope must leave Odysseus’ household before remarrying. After discussing the modern concept of legal death and previous interpretations of the Ithacan situation, the paper focusses on Athena's speech at 1.275–92. A close reading demonstrates that erecting a cenotaph to Odysseus would be tantamount to a modern declaration of death (...) in absentia, since it will render Penelope a widow and Telemachus the head of the household. This legal convention chimes with the Homeric depiction of Hades. (shrink)

This thesis presents and criticizes Hilary Putnam's argument that mathematics is as empirical as science, in particular the argument that the switch from Euclidean geometry to Riemannian geometry as the approporiate geometry for physical space constituted an instance of revising mathematics as a result of observation. The thesis explains Putnam's views on mathematics as following from his theory of meaning and reference for natural kind terms. It is argued that Putnam's account of reference is unsuitable for mathematical terms and that (...) an "if-thenist" approach to mathematical knowledge is more fruitful. (shrink)

different spaces and places, therefore construct the way in which architecture operates in Western society. The use and occupation of architecture also ...

This book covers all the material typically addressed in first or second-year college courses in Critical Thinking: Chapter 1: Critical Thinking 1.1 What is critical thinking? 1.2 What is critical thinking not? Chapter 2: The Nature of Argument 2.1 Recognizing an Argument 2.2 Circular Arguments 2.3 Counterarguments 2.4 The Burden of Proof 2.5 Facts and Opinions 2.6 Deductive and Inductive Argument Chapter 3: The Structure of Argument 3.1 Convergent, Single 3.2 Convergent, Multiple 3.3 Divergent Chapter 4: Relevance 4.1 Relevance 4.2 (...) Errors of Relevance Chapter 5: Language 5.1 Clarity 5.2 Neutrality 5.3 Definition Chapter 6: Truth and Acceptability 6.1 How do we define truth? 6.2 How do we discover truth? 6.3 How do we evaluate claims of truth? Chapter 7: Generalizations, Analogies, and General Principles 7.1 Sufficiency 7.2 Generalizations 7.3 Analogies 7.4 General Principles Chapter 8: Inductive Argument – Causal Reasoning 8.1 Causation 8.2 Explanations 8.3 Predictions, Plans, and Policies 8.4 Errors in Causal Reasoning (Three additional chapters – categorical logic, propositional logic, thinking critically about ethics – are available on the companion website.) -/- Special Features: -/- - The book takes a practice approach to learning how to think critically, so there are LOTS of exercises (within each chapter, focusing on discrete skills, and at the end of each chapter, focusing on more global skills in a cumulative fashion – thinking critically about what one sees, hears, reads, writes, and discusses). -/- - There is an extensive “Answers, Explanations, and Analyses” section that provides not just ‘the right answer’ but explanations as to why the right answer is right and why wrong answers are wrong; when the exercise is not a matter of providing an answer but of analyzing material, a detailed analysis is provided in this section; this feature is intended to help the student fully understand why some arguments are better than others (and why it’s not ‘just a matter of opinion’!). -/- - The regularly-appearing end-of-chapter “Thinking critically when you discuss” exercise is carefully graduated throughout the text, to gently lead students from sounding like a bad tv talk show to being able to hold an intelligent discussion. -/- - The regularly-appearing end-of-chapter “Thinking critically about what you write” exercise assumes almost no skill at the beginning and leads up to, in the last chapter, writing a 2,000 word position paper. -/- - A critical analysis template (a step-by-step approach to critical analysis) is presented in the first chapter and at the beginning of each subsequent chapter, and specific reference to it is made at the beginning of each end-of-chapter “Thinking critically about what you read” exercise (consisting of ten bits of increasing difficulty); this feature is intended to encourage the development of habitual, thorough analysis of arguments. -/- - Actual questions from standardized reasoning tests like the LSAT, GMAT, MCAT, and GRE are included. -/- - Ancillaries include an instructor’s manual; a test bank; PowerPoint slides; downloadable MP3 study guides; and interactive flash cards. (shrink)

Darwin in Argentina -- Conflicting Systems -- Francisco Javier Muniz (1795-1871) -- Hermann Burmeister (1807-1891) -- Francisco P. Moreno (1852-1919) -- Domingo F. Sarmiento (1811-1888) -- Eduardo Holmberg (1852-1937) -- Florentino Ameghino (1854-1911) -- Jose Ingenieros (1877-1925) -- Carlos Octavio Bunge (1875-1918).

I consider the question of what moral obligations prospective parents owe to their future children. It is taken as an almost axiomatic premise of a wide range of philosophical arguments that prospective parents have a moral obligation to take such steps as ensuring their own financial stability or waiting until they are emotionally mature before conceiving. This is because it is assumed that parents have a moral obligation to lay the groundwork for their children's lives to go well. While at (...) first glance such a premise seems benign, I will argue that when it is applied to arguments in assisted reproductive technology, as it is in Julian Savulescu's procreative beneficence argument or as it is in Daniel Groll's recent argument for open gamete donation, we see problems with this premise. Problems in Groll's argument also become apparent when it is scrutinized in connection with this premise. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

Marx's Rebellion Against Lenin is a representative of the contemporary revitalization of the thought of Marx. It fulfils this task in three ways. First, it overthrows the dialectical materialism of Engels and of Stalinist Bolshevism by exploring 18th century historical thought and illustrating how these Enlightenment historians and political theorists first explored method of historical explanation that were later adopted by Marx. It is shown that contrary to the theory of Stalinist Bolshevism, Hegel was a vital influence on Marx. Second, (...) Levine's book represents Marx as an exponent of Classical Humanism. Marx did not define communism as a form of materialism, as economic egalitarianism, but rather related communism to the Classical ethics of Aristotle, to the Aristotelian ideas of polis citizenship and the ethics of distributive justice. Third, it is argued that the 17th and 18th Century Enlightenment was not simply a liberal center extolling property, individual rights and capitalism. Instead it is shown that the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment was divided between an Enlightenment Center and an Enlightenment Left, with the Enlightenment Left challenging the domination of capitalism and private property. Marx's Rebellion Against Lenin traces the flow of the theories of the Enlightenment Left into Marx and in doing so liberates Marxist thought from its imprisonment in 19th century materialism and relocates it within the traditions of Classical Humanism. (shrink)

Take a trip back in time with award winning Star Tribune reporter Peg Meier.

If Savulescu and Kahane’s Principle of Procreative Beneficence were implemented regarding cognitive enhancement, the result would be highly impoverishing for future children. For, apart from being inadequate to rationality itself, advocates’ accounts of cognitive enhancement sever reason from the input to judgments and decision-making that other faculties provide. When handling desire, supporters of cognitive enhancement frame conflicts between reason and the nonrational in terms of self-governance or akratic failure, depending on which one triumphs. Further, so-called negative emotions are treated as (...) simply deleterious and hostile to the rational. Alliances of the nonrational with reason toward shared ends are hence unthinkable. Having critiqued advocates’ views directly, I amplify my assessment through engagement with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Per Savulescu and Kahane, to know how to direct enhancement endeavors, “we need to form reasonable opinions on difficult questions about the nature of well-being and the good life.” Thus far, however, enhancement supporters have been largely silent on this crucial matter. Because the debate over enhancement is ultimately over what values our views of flourishing embody, it should be recast so that this crux is squarely at the fore. What is more, for our own and our children’s sakes, as we embark on this reframing, we would do well to bear in mind Aristotle’s insights about the nonrational in relation to reason and his unwavering focus on the human “that for the sake of which” (hou heneka) all that we do is, perforce, undertaken. (shrink)

How we assess current calls for vigorous, or “radical”, enhancement through befitting procreative choices depends in part on the plausibility of supporters’ rejecting all substantive ties between their views and earlier eugenics. When denying such connections, today’s advocates of vigorous enhancement routinely emphasize that enhancement decisions would stem from individuals and families, not the state. In a multipronged critique, I show the untenability of transhumanists’ denials.

It's easy to accept God's will when all is well and life is going along smoothly. But what about the hard times? Here is a compassionate guide for yielding to God's sovereignty in times of need -- and remembering His promise to never leave us nor forsake us.

Davies presents the reader with a sterling review of the literature--the recent history of the interest in defining "art" through the writings of Anglo-American philosophers that follow Morris Weitz' well-known 1956 essay, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics"--and a stimulating discussion of the role of conventions in the making and appreciating of contemporary art. His emphasis on the social nature of art leads one to wonder how other recent inquiries into the multilayered contextually of the artistic enterprise might fare under (...) his perusal, for example, feminist critiques of traditional definitions of "art," challenges to the elitist makeup of the Artworld, . . . and opposition to his very choice of paradigms: in addition to Duchamp, the "hard cases" include works by John Cage, Andy Warhol, Olivier Messiaen, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gerald Hoffnung. Definitions of Art is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of aesthetics and as it informs the current dialectic on art. (shrink)

In many spheres, the law takes the legal concept of causation to correspond to the folk concept (the correspondence assumption). Courts, including the US Supreme Court, tend to insist on the "common understanding" and that which is "natural to say" (Burrage v. United States) when it comes to expressions relating to causation, and frequently refuse to clarify the expression to juries. As recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has uncovered, lay attributions of causation are susceptible to a great number (...) of unexpected factors, some of which seem rather peripheral to causation. One of those is the norm effect (Knobe & Fraser, 2008): Agents who, in acting as they do, break a salient norm, are more likely to be considered as having caused a certain consequence than when they do not violate a norm. According to some (e.g., Alicke, 1992) this constitutes a bias. According to others (e.g., Sytsma, 2020), the folk concept of causation is sensitive to normative factors, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In this paper, we explore the question whether the norm effect should be considered a bias from the legal perspective on the one hand, and from the psychological perspective on the other. To do this, we test whether norms which are nonpertinent to the consequences or outright silly also impact causation judgements. The data from two preregistered experiments (total N=593) clearly show they do. This, we argue, makes the bias interpretation plausible from the psychological perspective, and both plausible and problematic from the legal perspective. It also shows that the law should abstain from unreflectively assuming conceptual correspondence between legal and ordinary language concepts. (shrink)

Talking About Trees ranges widely, from personal narratives to theoretical discussions on the need for the precautionary principle in science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Architectural Theory, Volume 1: An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870Peg RawesArchitectural Theory, Volume 1: An Anthology from Vitruvius to 1870, edited by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Malden MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 590 pp., $49.95.This anthology is a rich and comprehensive documentation of the key stages that construct Western architectural theory, from Vitruvius's classical writing to Gottfried Semper's theories in late-nineteenth-century Europe. Comprised of 229 texts by these (...) and other significant writers of architectural theory, it represents an extremely valuable resource for architectural design, history, and theory education and, more broadly, for aesthetic education, art history, aesthetics, and visual culture. Professor Mallgrave's career as an architectural historian and theorist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and editor of Architecture and Aesthetics for the Texts and Documents Series at the Getty Research Institute, has enabled him to bring together a large number of canonical texts by architects and writers, including Alberti, Palladio, Vasari, Perrault, Wotton, Wren, Soufflot, Blondel, Boullée, Ledoux, Soane, Reynolds, Pugin, Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin, and Greenough. In addition, Mallgrave has selected important contextualizing texts that inform the philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic development of the discipline by writers such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Morris, Chambers, Winckelmann, Locke, Hume, Ramsey, Burke, Walpole, Price, von Schlegel, Wolff, Jefferson, Emerson, Hugo, Zola, and Leibnitz.Six stages of development are laid out, beginning with the Classical and Renaissance periods in part I. In part II the debates about Classicism in France and Britain develop, leading into part III, in which texts from the Neoclassical and Enlightenment debates in Europe take precedence. In part IV, Picturesque and Sublime theories are documented, from which part V turns to consider the importance of Historicism in the nineteenth century and, finally, in part VI the impact of Historicism is examined in relation to developments in industrialization.Introducing each part, Mallgrave succinctly highlights the historical, cultural, and political structures that underpin the development of architectural ideas and debates during the period. Within each part, internal sections further distinguish the particular ideas that preoccupied specific individuals and groups to comprise different theoretical positions. Part II, for example, is divided into the nationalist differences between "French Classicism: Ancients and Moderns" and "British Classicism and Palladianism," and part IV identifies key texts that contribute to the theorization of eighteenth-century aesthetics in three stages: "Sources of the Picturesque," "Toward a Relativist Aesthetics," and "Consolidation of Picturesque Theory." In addition, Mallgrave introduces each individual text, drawing attention to the author's intellectual ambitions and the contemporary debates in which their contribution is constructed. Architectural [End Page 111] theory is therefore characterized as a discipline that is made up of dynamic discussions, which are frequently unresolved and irregular in their formation. Diverse and opposing agendas are pursued, both within and between different institutions, academies, and communities, including the late-sixteenth-century "stylistic battles" of Alberti and Serlio's treatises, which were developed out of Vitruvius's ten "books" of architecture; the pluralism of styles in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century that was comprised of puritanical influential theories, Gothic and French Classicism, and the new generation of American architectural theorists; and the emergence of a German architectural theory within the political disputes that led to the unification of Germany in 1871. Architectural theory is therefore firmly constructed in relation to social, material, cultural, and political systems and frameworks.This colorful construction of architectural theory is evident, especially in those sections that are central to Mallgrave's ongoing research interests, in the tension between the rational, technical, and empirical discussions that inform seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century aesthetics. Running through parts II and III, for example, is one of the most drawn-out and bitter disputes, which dominated architectural theory in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French Academy of Architecture. Focused on the value of Vitruvius's Roman origins of Classicism, versus revivalist ambitions to retrieve the ornamental Classicism of Greek and Gothic styles, this great quarrel occupies the texts, letters, essays, and articles by architects and writers, including Blondel, Perrault, Piranesi, Soufflot, Winckelmann, Le Roy, Boullée, and Ledoux. But this debate is also important in the context of... (shrink)

A number of imposing problems now have our best minds in thrall. These include questions regarding the unity or plurality of the races of Man, whether his creation ought to be dated thousands of years or thousands of centuries past, whether species are fixed, or rather undergo a slow, progressive transformation into new species, how supposedly eternal matter relates to the nothingness outside of it, and whether the idea of God is useless. These are just a few of the issues (...) now subject to learned debate. You need, however, have no fear that my address tonight has any pretensions toward resolving any one of these earnest questions. But in the neighborhood of such mysteries lies another question, more or less closely related, to which I may, perhaps, venture to direct your attention; for its complexities, which I have made the object of concerted and conscientious study, are accessible to experiment. This is the question of what we call "spontaneous generations." Mightn't matter, perhaps, organize itself? Or posed differently, mightn't creatures enter the world without parents, without forebears? This is the question I seek to resolve. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author shows that the affinity between the two thinkers is far greater than interpreters like Farrell allow. He focuses on evaluating the argument that Richard Rorty is not able to get past the dichotomies ‐ although he will have cause to comment on the first one as well. In the context of a continued anti‐representationalism, Rorty comes to admit that there is a “truth in realism” and that our relations to the world are not just causal (...) but also normative. The author argues that with these admissions Rorty comes to articulate a view that can, with some plausibility, be said to have gotten beyond the dichotomies of scheme and content, subject and object, and realism and antirealism. D. Davidson agrees with Rorty that truth is not definable by simpler and more transparent concepts. Davidson has a pronged attack on the concept of representation. (shrink)

A philosophical investigation of new year's celebrations.

Violence is gendered, so let's call it like it is.

Peg Rawes examines a "minor tradition" of aesthetic geometries in ontological philosophy. Developed through Kant’s aesthetic subject she explores a trajectory of geometric thinking and geometric figurations--reflective subjects, folds, passages, plenums, envelopes and horizons--in ancient Greek, post-Cartesian and twentieth-century Continental philosophies, through which productive understandings of space and embodies subjectivities are constructed. Six chapters, explore the construction of these aesthetic geometric methods and figures in a series of "geometric" texts by Kant, Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson, Husserl and Deleuze. In (...) each text, geometry is expressed as a uniquely embodies aesthetic activity because each respective geometric method and figure is imbued with aesthetic sensibility and geometric sense (rather than as disembodies scientific methods). An ontology of aesthetic geometric methods and figures is therefore traced from Kant’s Critical writings, back to Plato and Proclus Greek philosophy, Spinoza and Leibniz’s post-Cartesian philosophies, and forwards to Bergson’s "duration" and Husserl’s "horizons" towards Deleuze’s philosophy of sense. (shrink)

British art historian Charles Harrison presumes the existence of a patriarchal world with power in the hands of men who dominate the representation of women and femininity. He applauds the ground-breaking work of feminist theorists who have questioned this imbalance of power since the 1970s. He stops short, however, of accepting their claims that all women have been represented by male artists as images of “utter passivity” (p. 4), routinely reduced by the male gaze to the status of exploited sexual (...) objects, or that women’s subjectivity is eroded by the visual treatment they receive at the hands of male artists such as Manet and Picasso. He wants to show that what is depicted in the picture plane by the (typically male) artist and enjoyed by the (typically male) spectator is more nuanced than just a simple privileged understanding between two men. He adds a third (and possibly fourth or more) party to the mix when he significantly redefines and expands our concept of the gaze: “A gaze may also be conceived of as a function of a painting’s represented content” (p. 9). In other words, a gaze may be “addressed outward by a represented figure,” and regardless of who and where, “the assumption conveyed by the term [‘gaze’] is that some differential and usually asymmetrical relation will be at stake in any exchange between one who directs the gaze and another at whom it is directed. In fact, it is just this difference—in age, in sex, in class, in interest, in power —that the operation of the gaze tends to mark” (p. 9). Referring to a woman depicted within the picture plane, he asks us to consider, “What does it feel like to look like this?” (p. 21) in order to entertain our many emotional responses and interpretations. When he adds, “What does it feel like to whom?” the sexual difference of the spectator also clearly comes into play. (shrink)

A proprietor from a Washington State wildlife sanctuary shares true stories about some of the most remarkable animals she has worked with, including a mother cat and kittens who were shot with a pellet gun, a bear who was targeted by a poacher and Pete, the feline "co-author" of three of her books.