Dans son article de 1913, «L’intérêt de la psychanalyse», Freud déclarait que la philosophie pouvait profiter des lumières de la psychanalyse parce que celle-ci peut dévoiler la motivation subjective et individuelle de doctrines philosophiques prétendument issues d’un travail logique et impartial, et ainsi désigner à la critique les points faibles du système d’un philosophe. Mon texte présente quelques exemples de l’utilisation de la psychanalyse pour identifier l’impact de l’inconscient sur la pensée de certains philosophes tels que Parménide, Berkeley, Kant, Sartre. (...) À la lumière de ces exemples, j’examine brièvement quelques questions à propos du conseil de Freud : Est-il praticable ? Quand peut-on l’appliquer ? Comment en rendre l’application moralement acceptable ? Selon quels critères juger de la valeur de vérité d’interprétations psychanalytiques de ce genre ? Quels sont les bénéfices, et en valent-ils la peine ?In his article of 1913, " The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to Scientific Interest", Freud stated that philosophy could profit from psychoanalysis because it can indicate the subjective and individual motives of philosophical theories which are ostensibly based on impartial logical work, and in this way it can draw critical attention to the weak spots in a philosopher’s system. This paper presents a few examples of the use of psychoanalysis to identify the impact of the unconscious on the theories of certain philosophers, e.g., Parmenides, Berkeley, Kant, Sartre. In the light of these examples, I examine briefly a number of questions concerning Freud’s recommendation : Can it be put into practice ? In what circumstances ? How can it be applied in a way that is morally defensible ? By what criteria can one evaluate the truth value of such psychoanalytic interpretations ? What are the advantages, and are they worth the effort required ? (shrink)

This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a "two-way" power which ...

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

The purpose of this text is to draw attention to eight forgotten heroes: William C. Bagley, Charles DeGarmo, David Felmley, William Torrey Harris, Isaac L. Kandel, Charles McMurry, William C. Ruediger, and Edward Austin Sheldon. They have been marginalized from our profession, and drawing upon their legacy is the best hope for restoring the profession of teaching today. This work also includes a chapter at the end of the book entitled "John Dewey's Forgotten Essays." The audience for this book includes: (...) 1) classroom teachers, 2) school administrators, 3) teacher educators, 4) deans and other university administrators, 5) college and university presidents, 6) legislators, 7) historians of education, 8) curriculum specialists, 9) specialists in teacher training, and 10) the general public. (shrink)

Delayed responses are a common phenomenon in experience sampling studies. Yet no consensus exists on whether they should be excluded from the analysis or what the threshold for exclusion should be. Delayed responses could introduce bias, but previous investigations of systematic differences between delayed and timely responses have offered unclear results. To investigate differences as a function of delay, we conducted secondary analyses of nine paper and pencil based experience sampling studies including 1,528 individuals with different clinical statuses. In all (...) participants, there were significant decreases in positive and increases in negative affect as a function of delay. In addition, delayed answers of participants without depression showed higher within-person variability and an initial strengthening in the relationships between contextual stress and affect. Participants with depression mostly showed the opposite pattern. Delayed responses seem qualitatively different from timely responses. Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these differences. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on sport and games has had little to say about boredom beyond presuming that sports and games can be important ways of overcoming or preventing it. But boredom is an interesting and often misunderstood phenomenon with overlooked implications in this context. Boredom has significant human value and motivates play in ways that contribute to well-being and culture, often through encouraging engaged agency and exploration of novelty. Understanding boredom can also help to clarify problems and tendencies in sports (...) and games that qualify them as havens from boredom. (shrink)

This paper argues that for the purposes of any sort of serious discussion about immoral conduct in sport very little is illuminated by claiming that the conduct in question is cheating. In fact, describing some behavior as cheating is typically little more than expressing strong, but thoroughly vague and imprecise, moral disapproval or condemnation of another person or institution about a wide and ill-defined range of improper advantage-seeking behavior. Such expressions of disapproval fail to distinguish cheating from many other types (...) of immoral conduct. The discussion shows that we should set the concept aside and assess the moral disapproval implied by claims of cheating by reference to the moral and other principles that underlie the practice of sport. This allows us to consider carefully the complexity of the issues that are raised when allegations of cheating are made and not be distracted by the emotionally loaded, conversation-stopping tendency of the concept. This means that some types of disputes in sport will be messy and demand more effort to resolve, but the payoff will be better informed and more thoughtful discussions and greater awareness of the moral complexity of sport and of its principled underpinnings. (shrink)

The present paper investigates the potential benefits of a strong safety culture. Specifically, we build on the organizational support theory to explore the direct and indirect effects of SC on firm performance. Partial least squares method is used to analyze the data collected from a survey among 251 Canadian plants. The results show that SC is associated with several performance indicators all linked to sustainable development. Importantly, our findings also suggest that the relationships between SC and environmental/safety performance are mediated (...) by the actual level of implemented environmental/safety practices within plants. We conclude the paper by highlighting the study’s limitations and contributions as well as theoretical and managerial implications. (shrink)

Philosophical Analysis Its Development between the Two World Wars.

There are numerous well-documented problems with the DSM’s polythetic-categorical approach to the delineation of mental disorders. However, the DSM-5 introduces an empirically based dimensional model of personality traits. These traits form a hierarchical structure that represents the organization of dispositions to common mental disorders. We connect emotions to this joint hierarchical structure using a modified set point model, which accommodates major theories linking personality and psychopathology—continuum, risk, scar, and pathoplasty—as well as more dynamic multivariate models. We argue that these traits (...) represent typical causal pathways that can be extracted from a complex web of equifinality and multifinality. Ultimately, research on mood disorders provides a stronger account of their underling traits than the variably endorsed symptoms of their polythetic criteria. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer a phenomenological and hermeneutical perspective on the presence of clinicians who care for the suffering and dying patients in the context of end-of-life care. Clinician presence is described as a way of (1) being present to the patient and to oneself, (2) being in the present moment, and (3) receiving and giving a presence (in the sense of a gift). We discuss how presence is a way of restoring human beings’ relational and dialogical nature. To (...) inform a different perspective on relational ethics, we also discuss how accompaniment refers to the clinician’s awareness of the human condition and its existential limits. (shrink)

Maxime Vachon | Résumé : Le but de cet article est de mettre en lumière les apories sur l’existence du temps et sur le maintenant telles que présentées dans la première partie du chapitre IV, 10 de la Physique d’Aristote par une traduction et un commentaire de ce texte. Plus précisément, l’auteur tente de dégager les présupposés philosophiques des apories en question, notamment à partir des occurrences du verbe histanai et de ses composés. |: The aim of this article (...) is to shed light upon the aporias about the existence of time and about the now as presented in the first part of chapter IV, 10 of Aristotle’s Physics through a translation and a commentary of this text. More precisely, the author attempts to bring out the philosophical presuppositions of the aporias, especially in consideration of the occurrences of the verb histanai and its compounds. (shrink)

Maxime Vachon | : L’objectif de cet article est de montrer l’unité du chapitre 14 du Peri Hermeneias, chapitre dans lequel Aristote retourne au fondement de l’échange dialectique, à savoir la doxa. Je montre ainsi que ce chapitre expose progressivement les trois conditions sémantiques que des points de vue doivent respecter pour être contraires : le sujet doit être le même, l’objet doit aussi être le même, mais le mode de prédication doit être contradictoire. | : The aim of (...) this paper is to show the unity of chapter 14 of the Peri Hermeneias, in which chapter Aristotle goes back to the basis of dialectical exchange, that is doxa. Thus I show that this chapter presents in successive order the three semantical conditions that points of view must respect in order to be contrary : the subject has to be the same, the object has also to be the same, but the mode of predication must be contradictory. (shrink)

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is the most likely site where egocentric spatial relationships are represented in the brain. PPC cells receive visual, auditory, somaesthetic, and vestibular sensory inputs; oculomotor, head, limb, and body motor signals; and strong motivational projections from the limbic system. Their discharge increases not only when an animal moves towards a sensory target, but also when it directs its attention to it. PPC lesions have the opposite effect: sensory inattention and neglect. The PPC does not seem (...) to contain a “map” of the location of objects in space but a distributed neural network for transforming one set of sensory vectors into other sensory reference frames or into various motor coordinate systems. Which set of transformation rules is used probably depends on attention, which selectively enhances the synapses needed for making a particular sensory comparison or aiming a particular movement. (shrink)

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

In this article, we want to analyse the principal characteristics of three faculties of the soul in Proclus’ work : discursive thinking, contemplation and theurgic practice. We will then establish links between these faculties and the process of purification, divided into philosophical, dialectic and telestic types. We will then analyse these types of purification in relation with three metaphors exploited by Proclus : the naked soul, the flower of the intellect, and silence. The goal of this article consists in proving (...) that dianoia (discursive thinking), even if it has to be overcome by other faculties (contemplation and theurgic practice), still operates implicitly in the process of assimilation to the One. In other words, contemplation and theurgic practice are not a substitute for rational thinking, but rather its ultimate achievement. (shrink)

Dans son article de 1915 sur l'inconscient, Freud pose la question suivante: « Nous disions qu'il y avait des représentations conscientes et des représentations inconscientes; mais y a-t-il aussi des motions pulsion-nelles, des sentiments, des sensations inconscients, ou bien, dans leur cas, de telles alliances de mots sont-elles dénuées de sens?».

This chapter addresses the potential contributions of neuroscience to criminal justice decision-making and policy, with special emphasis on criminal responsibility. The central question is whether neuroscience is relevant to criminal justice. The general conclusion is that it is scarcely useful at present but may become more relevant as the science progresses. After explaining the meaning of criminal responsibility in use, the chapter speculates about the source of claims for the positive influence of neuroscience. The scientific status of behavioral neuroscience and (...) two radical challenges to responsibility neuroscience allegedly raises, determinism and the death of agency, are discussed next. Then, the specific relevance of neuroscience to criminal law and the use of neuroscience in criminal cases in the United States and abroad are addressed. The penultimate section points to some areas warranting modest optimism for the use of neuroscience in criminal justice. A brief conclusion follows. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. This book argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive (...) values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. The first half of the book demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. The second part of the book constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drives toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Descent of the Dialectic will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy, political theory, social theory, and critical theory. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

Appearing in English for the first time, Schelling’s 1842 lectures develop the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions.

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

Prolegomena : the ritual context for Ambrose's soteriology -- The case of Augustine's baptism -- The loss of harmonic unity : Ambrose's account of the fallen human condition -- The soul : Ambrose's true self -- Essential unity of soul and body : Ambrose's hylomorphic theory -- The body of death : the legacy of the fall -- Raised to new life : Ambrose's theology of baptism -- Baptism : sacrament of justification -- Resurrection and regeneration -- Baptismal regeneration : (...) participation in the new humanity -- The inner man's new desire -- Conclusion : the inner man's heavenly dwelling place. (shrink)