While ideals of racial purity may be out of fashion, other sorts of purity ideals are increasingly popular in the United States today. The theme of purity is noticeable everywhere, but it is especially prominent in our contemporary fixation on health and hygiene. This may seem totally unrelated to issues of racism and classism, but in fact, the purveyors of purity draw upon the same themes of physical and moral purity that have helped produce white identity and dominance in the (...) US. Historically, this is where the purity rhetoric gets its power. To invoke purity ideals in the US is to mobilize this genealogy of racialized associations. Today's zealous preoccupation with hygiene is part of our living heritage in a racist culture.Just as ideas of race and racial purity were debunked by biologists long before the public would begin to question them, ideals of extreme hygienic purity linger with us, even flourish, despite scientific evidence of their futility and harm. Why are we still so enamored with purity? Because, to some extent, our very self-conceptions are at stake. Other scholars have described how our process of self individuation is based upon exclusion. The unique contribution of a genealogical approach to this issue is that, instead of merely locating the problem in ideologies held by others, it can evoke self-recognition and self-transformation. We will tend to assume the problem lies elsewhere until we learn to recognize ourselves in practices that reproduce cultural ideals. As inheritors of this racist culture, we are all lovers of purity, and we are all responsible for rethinking this value. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with a familiar puzzle about forgiveness, namely, how to distinguish forgiveness from excuse on the one hand and “letting go” on the other. After considering three recent and influential accounts of forgiveness that offer answers to this challenge among others, I develop an alternative model of forgiveness as a kind of personal release from debt or obligation. I argue that this model has a number of distinct advantages, including offering a new explanation of the subtle (...) connections between forgiveness, resentment and perspective taking, as well as helping to provide plausible answers to normative questions such as whether forgiveness is ever morally required. Finally, I draw connections between the debate about forgiveness and the debate about free will, and suggest one way in which the compatibility of forgiveness and understanding of an action’s causes can illuminate the debate about the compatibility of freedom and determinism. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve infinite collections of Grim Reapers, assassins, demons, deafening peals, or even sentences. These paradoxes have recently been used in arguments for finitist metaphysical theses such as temporal finitism, causal finitism, and discrete views of time. Here we develop a new _finite_ Benardete-like paradox. We then use this paradox to defend a companions in guilt argument that challenges recent applications of patchwork principles on behalf of the aforementioned finitist arguments. Finally, we develop another problem for those applications by (...) examining the notion of exact duplication. (shrink)

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements can (...) be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

This essay is a response to Robert Scharff’s “Before Empirical Turns and Transcendental Inquiry: pre-philosophical Considerations”. Scharff digs beneath the empirico-transcendental debate between Ihde and Stiegler in order to critique this debate’s Cartesian presuppositions. He uses the work of Nietzsche and the early Heidegger to further his critique. There is much to like in Scharff’s rich and intricate analytic interpretation but this is also the crux of my critique. The detour into Nietzsche’s and the early Heidegger’s work is ultimately unnecessary. (...) If Scharff looks closer, he will see that Feenberg’s revised theory of instrumentalization already accomplishes the return to technical experience and the critique of Cartesian techno scientific rationality that Scharff desires. (shrink)

In this paper, I endorse the idea that age is a defensible criterion for eligibility to vote, where age is itself a proxy for having a broad set of cognitive and motivational capacities. Given the current (and defeasible) state of developmental research, I suggest that the age of 16 is a good proxy for such capacities. In defending this thesis, I consider alternative and narrower capacity conditions while drawing on insights from a parallel debate about capacities and age requirements in (...) the criminal law. I also argue that the expansive capacity condition I adopt satisfies a number of powerful and complementary rationales for voting eligibility, and conclude by addressing challenging arguments that, on the one hand, capacity should not underlie voting eligibility in the first place, and, on the other, that capacity should do so directly and not via any sort of proxy, including age. (shrink)

Animate vision systems have gaze control mechanisms that can actively position the camera coordinate system in response to physical stimuli. Compared to passive systems, animate systems show that visual computation can be vastly less expensive when considered in the larger context of behavior. The most important visual behavior is the ability to control the direction of gaze. This allows the use of very low resolution imaging that has a high virtual resolution. Using such a system in a controlled way provides (...) additional constraints that dramatically simplify the computations of early vision. Another important behavior is the way the environment “behaves‘. Animate systems under real-time constraints can further reduce their computational burden by using environmental cues that are perspicuous in the local context. A third source of economy is introduced when behaviors are learned. Because errors are rarely fatal, systems using learning algorithms can amortize computational cost over extended periods. Further economies can be achieved when the learning system uses indexical reference, which is a form of dynamic variable binding. Animate vision is a natural way of implementing this dynamic binding. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt was one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her particular interests have made her one of the most frequently cited thinkers of our time. This Companion examines the primary themes of her multi-faceted work, from her theory of totalitarianism and her controversial idea of the 'banality of evil' to her classic studies of political action and her final reflections on judgment and the life of the mind. Each essay examines the political, philosophical, and historical (...) concerns which shaped Arendt's thought, and which prompted her to become one of the most unapologetic champions of the political life in the history of Western thought. (shrink)

The cerebral cortex is a rich and diverse structure that is the basis of intelligent behavior. One of the deepest mysteries of the function of cortex is that neural processing times are only about one hundred times as fast as the fastest response times for complex behavior. At the very least, this would seem to indicate that the cortex does massive amounts of parallel computation.This paper explores the hypothesis that an important part of the cortex can be modeled as a (...) connectionist computer that is especially suited for parallel problem solving. The connectionist computer uses a special representation, termed value unit encoding, that represents small subsets of parameters in a way that allows parallel access to many different parameter values. This computer can be thought of as computing hierarchies of sensorimotor invariants. The neural substrate can be interpreted as a commitment to data structures and algorithms that compute invariants fast enough to explain the behavioral response times. A detailed consideration of this model has several implications for the underlying anatomy and physiology. (shrink)

The German term “Antiziganismus” could be translated as “antigypsyism”, but the semantic roots are, in fact, different. Coined in the 1980s, “Antiziganismus” might be misconceived as a sheer abstraction: a “close reading” of the term's context could indeed partially justify the assumption that it in many ways reproduces certain impacts and implications of its better known equivalent – an actively employed anti-Semitism. However, the article's main thesis is that “Antiziganismus” denotes a term in its own right. This status cannot be (...) challenged even by the most recent development, which is an interest group's attempt to internationalize the scope of the term by coining the derivative “antiziganism”. (shrink)

In examining Hegel's and Kierkegaard's theories of language, I argue that both entail conceptions of the therapeutic power of language to heal us from madness and despair. I show that whereas Hegel quite straightforwardly celebrates the emancipatory power of language, Kierkegaard is more ambivalent; on the one hand, he devotes his life to a maieutic authorship in service of aiding the reader, but on the other, he believes that ultimately it is only faith in God that can cure us, and (...) that faith requires silence. I use Lacan's psychoanalytic account of the role of language to explore Hegel's view that language constitutes the self and Kierkegaard's experimentation with an indirect form of communication that he hopes will enable him to fulfill each of his apparently conflicting goals, to write and yet to remain silent. (shrink)

In Flip Thinking, Berthold Gunster, the founder of the Dutch omdenken--or flip thinking--philosophy, presents fifteen strategies to transform your thinking away from limitations and negativities and towards possibilities and opportunities. From disrupting (turn all the rules upside down) to flaunting (play up what you want to hide) and from importing (get the enemy on board) to amplifying (do more of what works), Gunster's strategies and stories will have you approaching even the most challenging problems--from an annoying neighbor to an (...) angry colleague to an unhappy partner--in a whole new way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Talking Cures, the Clinic, and the Value of the IneffableDaniel Berthold (bio)KeywordsMadness, disease, the normal, the abnormal, the ineffable, Hegel, Kierkegaard, LacanI am most grateful to my readers, James Phillips and Louis Sass, who have led me to several new insights by suggesting ways of complicating my reading of a Lacanian approach to Hegel's and Kierkegaard's conceptions of madness. I am a Kierkegaard and Hegel scholar, with very (...) little pretense to expertise about Lacan and regrettably even less about the theory and practice of psychiatry. In submitting my essay to Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Philosophy, I was hoping to entice a community of practitioners and theoreticians I have great respect for to consider the musings of a philosopher on topics which engage them as thinkers and actors in their professions. I could not possibly have hoped for more intelligent and provocative replies than I have been given by my two respondents.Phillips' framing of his response in terms of the distinction between the "madness of the philosophers" and the "madness of the clinic" is very helpful. It is a distinction that is indeed central to the question of the possibility of dialogue between philosophers and clinicians—so central, in fact, that it is generous of Phillips not to reproach me for failing to mention it. On the one hand, the challenge for philosophers is to show that their descriptions are not merely metaphoric and that their preoccupation with the dark side of human experience connects in some way with the reality of disease, so that there is some way for clinicians to translate their language into the language of psychiatry. Otherwise, philosophers will have only poetic or literary interest for the psychiatrist or psychologist.On the other hand, the challenge for clinicians is the extent to which they are open to moving beyond a reduction of "mental illness" to a purely biological conception of disease. One needn't go so far—nor should we—as Thomas Szasz or Michel Foucault in seeing "mental disease" as itself merely a metaphor. But granting the evidence of underlying organic disorder, symptoms nevertheless display themselves as mental and behavioral states (what Hegel calls "shapes of consciousness") that, as Hegel argued, are paralleled in "normal" experience, so that the distinction between disease and normality (and hence illness and metaphor) is often elusive. Madness "has the healthy consciousness for its presupposition," Hegel writes, because the healthy mind is still grappling with the same sorts of contradictions and feelings of alienation, the same "infinite pain" which characterizes insanity. Madness is not the absolute "other" of rationality, but an echo of it (1978, 3:382, 408).Hegel himself accepted the medicalization of madness that began to occur in the late eighteenth [End Page 325] century, and rejected the metaphysical and theological categories of what was called "romantic medicine." But he also cautioned against the narrowness of the "somatic" school which he felt lacked sufficient explanatory value if not connected to a "speculative" (i.e., philosophic) framework (see Berthold-Bond 1995, ch. 2).It might even be argued that every person seeking therapy is first of all suffering from "philosophic" madness, at least in the sense that initially she does not understand her own suffering as "disease," but experiences her torment in the vocabulary of the philosopher. Thus the philosopher's descriptions are the closest to the subject's own self-understanding, and while the therapist must seek to rephrase these descriptions into the vocabulary of the clinic (just as Hegel, for example, translated his own philosophic description of the madness of his friend Hölderlin in the Phenomenology as the "lost soul" whose "light dies away within it" into the medical category of Wahnsinn—mania or frenzy, which today we would call schizophrenia—in the classificatory scheme of mental disorder he gives in the Encyclopaedia; 1977, 400; 1978, 408)—there is a real question about which vocabulary is a metaphor for the other.The second main point Phillips addresses, which is taken up in different ways by Sass as well, has to do with the relation between speech and silence in madness. Phillips finds that Kierkegaard offers a more complex and subtle view than... (shrink)

Trust in the doctor-patient relationship is an indispensable structural element for the medical profession. The discourse concerning trust and its importance in the healthcare context, although quite old, elicits increasingly more interest in research, especially for empirical approaches. The importance of trust in the doctor and in the medical profession can be demonstrated by starting from the Christian meaning of illness and medicine ; generally, the patristic sources see medicine and physicians as God’s gifts. T he perception of Christian physicians (...) as dedicated, unselfish and compassionate preservers or restorers of health, always committed to the good of their patients is well known. The model of the Christian physician is a Hippocratic model, of one who seeks the sick so that he may bring relief to them and strengthen them. When illness occurs, Christianity affirms an ethical duty to struggle against sickness, which if unaddressed can lead to death. The moral requirement to care for the health of the body indicates it is appropriate to use healing methods that will enhance health and maintain life. The aim of this paper is to explore the dimensions of the concept of trust in the doctor-patient relationship, by starting from the Christian meaning of illness and of the role of the doctor. The paper presents a number of essential theoretical elements related to trust, as presented in the literature dealing with the doctor-patient relationship: the meaning of trust, its dimensions, its stages of development, its impact, its sources, the patient’s perspectives on trust, the importance of trust for healthcare systems. (shrink)

Socrates engages his audience in Phaedrus with speeches that include revised or newly composed myths that express his theory of philosophical eros. The aim of the speeches is to generate a love for truth that spills over into dialogue. Speeches are a starting point for dialogue, just like physical attraction is the beginning of love. In the case of Phaedrus, the beginning of philosophy is portrayed using playful and rhetorically rich speeches that serve as "love potions" awakening the novice's soul, (...) and ultimately leading Phaedrus to higher rungs on the ladder of love through the palinode, a medicinal speech. It is thinking about speeches, not the speeches themselves, which moves Socrates' student Phaedrus from the love of speeches to the love of Beauty itself. This is a stark contrast to the purpose of speechmaking for the sophist. The sophist seeks to enchant the soul, while the philosopher seeks to charm the soul into loving wisdom through stimulating discussions. Socrates also uses role reversals in the lover-beloved relationship to model the soul's ascent, contrasting the traditional roles with the way the lover and beloved are presented in Socrates' speeches. The novice must actively recollect Beauty itself in order to ascend, rather than passively listening to speeches that provide an image of beauty. Socrates' interlocutors must move themselves up the ladder of love from their own philosophical eros; wisdom is not attained by merely being pushed all the way up the ladder of love. (shrink)

The idea of “place” has become a topic of growing interest in environmental ethics literature. I explore a variety of issues surrounding the conceptualization of “place” in bioregional theory. I show that there is a necessary vagueness in bioregional definitions of region or place because these concepts elude any purely objective, geographically literal categorization. I argue that this elusiveness is in fact a great meritbecause it calls attention to a more essential “subjective” and experiential geography of place. I use a (...) reading of Aldo Leopold’s Sand Country Almanac as an example of the value of a non-literalistic geography for the understanding of place. (shrink)

When Humpty-Dumpty had his great fall nobody could put him together again. A vastly more moderate challenge is to reunite the two partial beams of a Stern-Gerlach apparatus with such precision that the original spin state is recovered. Nevertheless, as we demonstrate, a substantial loss of spin coherence always occurs, unless the experimenter is able to control the magnetic field's inhomogeneity with an accuracy of at least one part in 105.

This paper examines the legitimacy of two common methodologies within philosophy: thought experiments and conceptual analysis. In particular, I examine the uses to which these two methodologies have been put within modal epistemology. I argue that, although both methods can be used to reveal conditional essentialist claims (e.g. necessarily: if x is water, then x is H20), neither can be used to reveal the de re essentialists claims (e.g. x is water and x is essentially H20) they’re often taken to (...) reveal. (shrink)

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

A deeply personal reckoning with family, mental illness, and suicide, Dana Trusso captures the meaning of Nietzsche's armor fati--to love one's fate--through her surreal imagery and longing to heal intergenerational wounds. Lines are drawn from Lars von Trier's Melancholia, Sonic Youth's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, and lines she read from her aunt's journals as a child. -/- The photo is a sculpture of an earth goddess by Jean-Philippe Richard located in the botanical gardens of Èze, France. (...) Nearby is Le Chemin de Nietzsche, a steep hike from the seaside to mountainous ruins that is said to have inspired Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (shrink)

This paper considers the responsibilities of the FDA with regard to disseminating information about the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes. Tobacco harm reduction advocates claim that the FDA has been overcautious and has violated ethical obligations by failing to clearly communicate to the public that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than cigarettes. We argue, by contrast, that the FDA’s obligations in this arena are more complex than they may appear at first blush. Though the FDA is accountable for informing the (...) public about the health risks and benefits of products it regulates, it also has other roles that inform when and how it should disseminate information. In addition to being a knowledge purveyor, it is also a knowledge producer, an advisor to the public, and a practical agent shaping the material conditions in which people make health-related choices. In our view, those other roles call for caution in the way the FDA interprets and communicates the available evidence. (shrink)

Considerable attention has been paid recently to the gendering of organizations and occupations. Unfortunately, the gendered-organizations approach remains theoretically and empirically underdeveloped, as there have as yet been few clear answers to the question central to the perspective: What does it really mean to say that an organization itself, or a policy, practice, or slot in the hierarchy, is “gendered”? Reviewing literature in the gendered-organizations tradition, the author discusses three of the most common ways the perspective has been applied and (...) argues that all of these definitions pose potential problems for the project of meaningful social and organizational change. The article concludes with some suggestions about how a more useful conception of the gendered organization might be built. (shrink)

Heron Heart is a poem born out of reflecting on the nature of existence during long stretches of isolation, where the boundary of what is and is not a living being was challenged—the nonhuman more alive than the human. It evokes the absurdity of the banal out of the confusion and beauty of sensory experience, with hints of nostalgia for a mythological world that never existed but is ever-present.

Recently, there have been several illuminating discussions highlighting a connection between the appropriate conditions for morally responsible agency and for valid informed consent in health care (including for personal medical decisions and for participation in clinical trials). In this chapter, I begin by drawing parallels between debates in both areas (e.g. “substantive” versus “procedural” accounts, “capacity” versus “flow” accounts) and then briefly defend the idea that we should focus on a particular family of substantive views that appeal to high-enough quality (...) opportunities for decision-making which are determined by both agents’ reasons-responsive capacities and situational factors. Notably, even if reasons-responsiveness conditions feature in both accounts of responsible agency and of informed consent, it remains an open question just how similar the conditions are in each area. In particular, since the basis for and the quality of our reasons-responsive capacities come in degrees, there is a question of when a threshold is met so that a person can be said to have a capacity, or a sufficiently high-quality capacity, which is a difficult question to answer in both realms. In this chapter, I assess possible answers and consider how constrained those answers should be by independent reasons to treat responsible agency and eligibility for informed consent similarly. (shrink)

Nelkin presents a simple and natural account of freedom and moral responsibility which responds to the great variety of challenges to the idea that we are free and responsible, before ultimately reaffirming our conception of ourselves as agents. Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility begins with a defense of the rational abilities view, according to which one is responsible for an action if and only if one acts with the ability to recognize and act for good reasons. The view is (...) compatibilist -- that is, on the view defended, responsibility is compatible with determinism -- and one of its striking features is a certain asymmetry: it requires the ability to do otherwise for responsibility when actions are praiseworthy, but not when they are blameworthy. In defending and elaborating the view, Nelkin questions long-held assumptions such as those concerning the relation between fairness and blame and the nature of so-called reactive attitudes such as resentment and forgiveness. Her argument not only fits with a metaphysical picture of causation -- agent-causation -- often assumed to be available only to incompatibilist accounts, but receives positive support from the intuitively appealing Ought Implies Can Principle, and establishes a new interpretation of freedom and moral responsibility that dovetails with a compelling account of our inescapable commitments as rational agents. (shrink)

The aim of this inquiry is to investigate Heidegger's ontology of technology. We will show that this ontology is aporetic. In Heidegger's key technical essays, ?The question concerning technology? and its earlier versions ?Enframing? and ?The danger?, enframing is described as the ontological basis of modern life. But the account of enframing is ambiguous. Sometimes it is described as totally binding and at other times it appears to allow for exceptions. This oscillation between, what we will call total enframing and (...) partial enframing, is underscored in the work of two influential scholars of Heidegger's later thought, Hubert Dreyfus and Iain Thomson. We will show that like Heidegger, Dreyfus and Thomson unwittingly perpetuate this dilemma that ultimately covers up the aporetic structure of enframing. (shrink)