_Essays on Beauvoir’s influences, contemporary engagements, and legacy in the philosophical tradition._.

Argues that choice, as a form of interpretation, is completely intertwined with the development of both sexual orientation and sexual identity. Sexual orientation is not simply a given, or determined aspect of personality.

The theory-theory claims that the explanation and prediction of behavior works via the application of a theory, while the simulation theory claims that explanation works by putting ourselves in others' places and noting what we would do. On either account, in order to develop a prediction or explanation of another person's behavior, one first needs to have a characterization of that person's current or recent actions. Simulation requires that I have some grasp of the other person's behavior to project myself (...) upon; whereas theorizing requires a subject matter to theorize about. The frame problem shows that multiple, true characterizations are possible for any behavior or situation. However, only one or a few of these characterizations are relevant to explaining or predicting behavior. Since different characterizations of a behavior lead to different predictions or explanations, much of the work of interpersonal interpretation is done in the process of finding this characterization - that is, prior to either theorizing or simulating. Moreover, finding this characterization involves extensive knowledge of the physical, cultural, and social worlds of the persons involved. (shrink)

Argues that standard interpretations of Merleau-Ponty's criticisms of Sartrean freedom fail and presents an alternative interpretation that argues that the fundamental issue concerns their different theories of time.

This paper argues that one's perception of another person's bodily activity is not the perception of the mere flexing and bending of that person's limbs, but rather of that person's intentions. It makes its case in three parts. First, it examines what conditions are necessary for children to begin to imitate and assimilate the behavior of other adults and argues that these conditions include the perception of intention. These conditions generalize to adult perception as well. Second, changing methodologies, the paper (...) presents a first person phenomenology of watching another person act which demonstrates that one's own perception is of intentions. The phenomenological analysis of time consciousness is the keystone of this argument. Finally, the paper looks at some recently established facts about infant and child development, and shows that these facts are best explained by thinking that the child is already perceiving intention. (shrink)

Argues that Dennett's apparent inability to commit ontologically on the being of intentionality can be resolved by regarding intentionality as realized at the ontological level of a pattern of social behavior.

Kant’s and Sartre’s theories of freedom are both famous and controversial. Kant requires the subject to be both in time and not in time in order to be fully free, while Sartre seemingly requires that the subject continually reinvent itself each moment. I argue that these peculiarities stem from the similar way each thinker conceives of the relationship between freedom and time. A full and meaningful account of human freedom requires both continuity and rupture in the flow of time, and (...) the paradoxes in both philosophers’ theories of freedom originate in their attempt to satisfy both of these temporal requirements. (shrink)

Responds to a paper delivered by Ladelle McWhorter at the Spindel Conference. Argues that we must be more careful in distinguishing Foucault's thought from feminist criticism.

Beauvoir and Merleau‐Ponty both recognize human freedom as fully situated and never total. Yet the concept of freedom receives radically different treatments and emphases in their work. Beauvoir never ceases to tout the importance of freedom to human existence, and to use it as the basis for an ethics of authenticity. Merleau‐Ponty offers only one extended treatment of the concept of freedom and appears skeptical of authenticity. After arguing that their views on both freedom and authenticity are aligned, this chapter (...) argues that the different weight placed on freedom and authenticity emerges from differences in their social ontology. (shrink)

"Knowledge of self, knowledge of others, error and the place of consciousness" examines texts and problems from the phenomenological tradition to show that the other does not present her/himself as a consciousness enclosed in a merely material body. I discuss Merleau-Ponty''s attempt to supplant this view with the view that the other is always seen as an "incarnate consciousness" - a unity of mind and body in activity. This view faces a difficulty in that it seems to collapse the distinction (...) between one''s own understanding of one''s behavior and the understanding which another might have of this same behavior. In response to this objection, I study how the meaning of people''s behaviors are settled in dialogue. I argue that the meanings that an actor gives to her or his behavior cannot rest entirely with that person, nor are they determined solely by the interpreter, but instead develop in the interaction between the actor and the interpreter. (shrink)

Abstract"Knowledge of self, knowledge of others, error and the place of consciousness" examines texts and problems from the phenomenological tradition to show that the other does not present her/himself as a consciousness enclosed in a merely material body. I discuss Merleau-Ponty's attempt to supplant this view with the view that the other is always seen as an "incarnate consciousness" - a unity of mind and body in activity. This view faces a difficulty in that it seems to collapse the distinction (...) between one's own understanding of one's behavior and the understanding which another might have of this same behavior. In response to this objection, I study how the meaning of people's behaviors are settled in dialogue. I argue that the meanings that an actor gives to her or his behavior cannot rest entirely with that person, nor are they determined solely by the interpreter, but instead develop in the interaction between the actor and the interpreter. (shrink)

This essay pushes the ontological implications of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception to their limit. While everybody knows he used Gestaltist notions to displace atomistic ontologies,1 I completely subordinate the phenomenological to the ontological, so that his deployment of Form from The Structure of Behavior becomes the fundamental maneuver of the Phenomenology. The more traditional concerns with subject/object and mind/body dualities are then both secondary to and solved by this use of Form, and the book becomes not so much a phenomenology (...) as an explicitly new metaphysics.Merleau-Ponty introduces the living body as être au monde amid his discussion of the phantom limb and initially compares it neither .. (shrink)

An edited collection of all new work in the area of "new critical theory," intended to serve as a signature volume for the New Critical Theory Series. The volume, like the series as a whole, is designed to capture the present moment in postdisciplinary theory, as the older tradition of critical theory in the Frankfurt School sense comes together with postmodernism and the new critical theory. It represents the dialogue that is taking place among the various strands of theory and (...) can serve as a survey of contemporary leftist philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay explores recent trends and major issues related to gay and lesbian philosophy in ethics (including issues concerning the morality of homosexuality, the natural function of sex, and outing and coming out); religion (covering past and present debates about the status of homosexuality and how biblical and qur'anic passages have been interpreted by both sides of the debate); the law (especially a discussion of the debates surrounding sodomy laws, same-sex marriage and its impact on transsexuals, and whether the (...) law should be used to enforce morality); scientific research into the origins of homosexuality (including discussion of arguments against such research); and metaphysics (especially the question of whether homosexuality is socially constructed during particular times and in particular cultures, or whether sexual orientation is an essential trait cutting across times and cultures). (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

1 Non-reductive physicalists deny that there is any explanation of mentality in purely physical terms, but do not deny that the mental is entirely determined by and constituted out of underlying physical structures. There are important issues about the stability of such a view which teeters on the edge of explanatory reductionism on the one side and dualism on the other (see Kim 1998). 2 Save perhaps for eliminative materialism (see Churchland 1981 for a classic exposition). In fact, however, while.

‘Bayesian epistemology’ became an epistemological movement in the 20th century, though its two main features can be traced back to the eponymous Reverend Thomas Bayes (c. 1701-61). Those two features are: (1) the introduction of a formal apparatus for inductive logic; (2) the introduction of a pragmatic self-defeat test (as illustrated by Dutch Book Arguments) for epistemic rationality as a way of extending the justification of the laws of deductive logic to include a justification for the laws of inductive logic. (...) The formal apparatus itself has two main elements: the use of the laws of probability as coherence constraints on rational degrees of belief (or degrees of confidence) and the introduction of a rule of probabilistic inference, a rule or principle of conditionalization. (shrink)

The idea of representation has been central in discussions of intentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begun playing a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly in theories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiple representational theories of consciousness, corresponding to different uses of the term "conscious," each attempting to explain the corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. More cautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon in terms of _intentionality_, and assumes that intentionality (...) is representation. (shrink)

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge of the existence of various (...) mental states that Descartes took for granted. (shrink)

Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events. Behavior is caused by muscles that contract upon receiving neural impulses, and neural impulses are generated by input from other neurons or from sense organs. On the epiphenomenalist view, mental events play no causal role in this process. Huxley (1874), who held the view, compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of (...) a locomotive. James (1879), who rejected the view, characterized epiphenomenalists' mental events as not affecting the brain activity that produces them "any more than a shadow reacts upon the steps of the traveller whom it accompanies". (shrink)

Louis Agassiz.--Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord.--Robert Gould Shaw.--Francis Boott.--Thomas Davidson: a knight-errant of the intellectual life.--Herbert Spencer's autobiography.--Frederick Myers' services to psychology.--Final impressions of a psychical researcher.--On some mental effects of the earthquake.--The energies of men.--The moral equivalent of war.--Remarks at the peace banquet.--The social value of the college-bred.--The university and the individual: The Ph.D. octopus. The true Harvard. Stanford's ideal destiny.--A pluralistic mystic.