According to Alain Badiou, truth’s existence is not dependent upon philosophy because philosophy itself is not a creator of truth. Badiouan thought submits philosophy to the universe of truth through the mediation of truth procedures. Badiou names these procedures love, politics, art and science. In contrast, the instinctual reason of democratic materialism, which Badiou defines as the partnership between parliamentary democracy and neo-liberal pragmatism, replaces love with physical beauty, politics with technical power, art with a marketable talent and science with (...) a competitive genius. These replacements also correspond to post-truth. This article contrasts the concept of “disinterested interest” in Badiou’s truth procedures with “self-interest” reigning over democratic materialism’s reality procedures. Following Badiou, I explain how “self-interested interest” reproduces the human-animal’s instinctual reason, which triggers post-truth politics. Commitment to truth in a post-truth era therefore cannot be sustained by appealing to democratic materialism’s manipulated knowledge but must be guided by disinterested interest. The article argues that knowledge cannot be an antidote to post-truth because democratic materialism often uses knowledge as an instrument or sometimes as a control mechanism, to strengthen the position of post-truth in many circumstances. (shrink)

The goal of this study was to evaluate affective changes induced during mental imaging of instinctual action patterns. Subjects were first trained to simulate the bodily rhythms of laughter and crying and were then trained to image these processes without any movement. The mere imagination of the motor imagery of laughter and crying were sufficient to significantly facilitate happy and sad mood ratings as monitored by subjective self-report. In contrast, no changes in mood were reported while imaging the affectively neutral (...) task of walking. The work suggests that motor imagery is sufficient to modify emotional feelings, suggesting the feasibility of this method for brain imaging of emotional processes. (shrink)

In his anthology of socio-political essays, Evolution and Human Life, Oka Asajirō, early twentieth century Japan’s foremost advocate of evolutionism, developed a biological vision of the nation-state as super-organism that reflected the concerns and aims of German-inspired Meiji statism and anticipated aspects of radical ultra-nationalism. Drawing on non-Darwinian doctrines, Oka attempted to realize such a fused or organic state by enhancing social instincts that would bind the minzoku and state into a single living entity. Though mobilization during the Russo-Japanese War (...) seemed to evince this super-organism, the increasingly contentious and complex society that emerged in the war’s aftermath caused Oka to turn first to Lamarckism and eventually to orthogenesis in the hopes of preserving the instincts needed for a viable nation-state. It is especially in the state interventionist measures that Oka finally came to endorse in order to forestall orthogenetically-driven degeneration that the technocratic proclivities of his statist orientation become most apparent. The article concludes by suggesting that Oka’s emphasis on degeneration, autarkic expansion, and, most especially, totalitarian submersion of individuals into the statist collectivity indicates a complex relationship between his evolutionism and fascist ideology, what recent scholarship has dubbed radical Shinto ultra-nationalism. (shrink)

In his anthology of socio-political essays, Evolution and Human Life, Oka Asajirō (1868-1944), early twentieth century Japan's foremost advocate of evolutionism, developed a biological vision of the nation-state as super-organism that reflected the concerns and aims of German-inspired Meiji statism and anticipated aspects of radical ultra-nationalism. Drawing on non-Darwinian doctrines, Oka attempted to realize such a fused or organic state by enhancing social instincts that would bind the minzoku (ethnic nation) and state into a single living entity. Though mobilization during (...) the Russo-Japanese War seemed to evince this super-organism, the increasingly contentious and complex society that emerged in the war's aftermath caused Oka to turn first to Lamarckism and eventually to orthogenesis in the hopes of preserving the instincts needed for a viable nation-state. It is especially in the state interventionist measures that Oka finally came to endorse in order to forestall orthogenetically-driven degeneration that the technocratic proclivities of his statist orientation become most apparent. The article concludes by suggesting that Oka’s emphasis on degeneration, autarkic expansion, and, most especially, totalitarian submersion of individuals into the statist collectivity indicates a complex relationship between his evolutionism and fascist ideology, what recent scholarship has dubbed radical Shinto ultra-nationalism. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to retrieve phenomenological resources for the purposes of identifying and clarifying the lived situation of embodiment in an environing world (Umwelt). Drawn primarily from Husserlian resources, it identifies several essential perceptual features of the operative intentionality of environed embodiment. Through an engagement with Husserl’s analyses of instinctual experience, I identify an essential feature of environed embodiment: the principle of association governing the nexus among objects in an environing world that are animated toward an instrumental resolution (...) of an embodied tension, a resolution that promotes the maximization of embodied equilibrium that is instrumental for self-preservation and well-being. (shrink)

This paper explores issues that arise between Adorno and Marcuse over the potentials and implications of Freudian theory. These concern whether it is possible to expound a non-repressive relationship between what Freud calls the life and death drives, on the one hand, and the ego, on the other, that does not collapse into abstract utopianism or clear heteronomy. After detailing the theory of instincts and ego formation that early critical theory draws from Freud, I argue that neither Adorno nor Marcuse (...) is successful in articulating the possibility of such a non-repressive form of subjectivity: Adorno produces a powerful conception of freedom as non-reductive, communicative reconciliation between ego and instinctual nature, but remains committed to a Freudian conception of the interplay between elements of the psyche that makes it difficult to see how reconciliation could be actualized therein. Marcuse, on the other hand, develops a conception of liberation that largely abandons the ideal of ego autonomy by rendering the ego a spectator to the unfurling of instinctual impulses. In the concluding section, I argue that a more judicious evaluation of the death drive’s contribution to critical thought could clear space for a rapprochement between Adorno and Marcuse, and a more successful incorporation of Freud into critical theory. (shrink)

This essay identifies the source, and traces both the subsequent use and the changing definition, of the expression instinctu naturae in the early history of natural law discourse. It also examines the later assimilation and endurance of the expression in English, as well as the efforts of Hobbes to proscribe the use, and Locke to limit the meaning, of the term instinct. Initially serving simply to predicate a divine stimulus as the source of human knowledge of the natural law-natura, id (...) est Deus-instinctu naturae was later understood to refer to an instinct of human nature, that is, an instinct of the reason that defined human nature, an intuitive instinct that recognized immediately, in a pre-deliberative, non-discursive way, the self-evident practical principles of the moral order, once their terms were understood. ☆ This essay complements and extends the scope of an earlier article on the same topic in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 58 (1997) 173–98: “Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis and the Moral Sense”. (shrink)

The question of human nature has not been effectively addressed in our time because of great skepticism in the academic and philosophical discourses about the idea of social progress and the validity of a common humanity. As a result the question has been reduced by neoliberalism, biopsychology, and social psychology to demonstrating the malleability of humans in response to hierarchical, biological, or social-conformist pressures. To recover the concept of human nature it will be necessary to reconceptualize the dynamic of human (...) development as a feature of the modern and late modern achievements of a more evolved vision of individuality and community. (shrink)

The agenda -- The instinctual management of feeling -- The instinctual management of life -- Behind the scenes of choice -- Anger -- Going beyond ego -- Belief system components -- Conscious values -- Conscious morals -- Conscious expectations and self-image -- The conscious management of feelings -- Managing 'mad' -- Managing 'sad' -- Managing 'bad' -- Managing 'fear' -- Managing 'glad' -- Integrity : one choice at a time -- Nature meets nurture : the peace of mind perspective is (...) born. (shrink)

In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book--part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation--describes (...) Koch's search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest--his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work--to uncover the roots of consciousness. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is twofold: to establish that Kierkegaard's so‐called theory of the leap strongly anticipates a line of argument that is central to Wittgenstein's so‐called rule‐following considerations; and to begin to show how Kierkegaard's work has fruitful contributions of its own to make to on‐going discussions about rules and rule‐following. The paper focuses throughout on the question of how, if at all, human rule‐following can be distinguished from behaviour that is merely mechanical or instinctual. I identify a (...) central line of argument in Wittgenstein that problematizes this question by establishing the basis our ability to follow rules in our spontaneous responses. I argue that Kierkegaard not only strongly anticipates this line of argument but also offers a distinctive story about what, at bottom, makes the difference between human rule‐following and behaviour that is merely mechanical or instinctual. In a word, on Kierkegaard's story, what makes the difference is: anxiety. (shrink)

A common assumption among Kantians is that the feelings/inclinations constituting non-moral motivation are little different from the brute sensations and blind instinctual urges found in animals. And since this “inner animal” lacks reason, it cannot control itself. So our rational nature must step in to govern. The problem, however, is that it must do so as a nature standing above the animal as an independent ruler. I reject this understanding of our lower nature, arguing instead that reason governs from within (...) our lower nature, by giving it shape and structure. I show that this is possible because Kant actually held a cognitive theory of emotion, one in which feeling takes the form of judgments of fit between an object and the sensible needs of the subject, by which the life or well-being of the subject is promoted. Through these judgments of feeling, reason generates a complex evaluative framework that structures our practical point of view. (shrink)

The position advanced in this paper is that the bedrock of emotional feelings is contained within the evolved emotional action apparatus of mammalian brains. This dual-aspect monism approach to brain–mind functions, which asserts that emotional feelings may reflect the neurodynamics of brain systems that generate instinctual emotional behaviors, saves us from various conceptual conundrums. In coarse form, primary process affective consciousness seems to be fundamentally an unconditional “gift of nature” rather than an acquired skill, even though those systems facilitate skill (...) acquisition via various felt reinforcements. Affective consciousness, being a comparatively intrinsic function of the brain, shared homologously by all mammalian species, should be the easiest variant of consciousness to study in animals. This is not to deny that some secondary processes cannot be evaluated in animals with sufficiently clever behavioral learning procedures, as with place-preference procedures and the analysis of changes in learned behaviors after one has induced re-valuation of incentives. Rather, the claim is that a direct neuroscientific study of primary process emotional/affective states is best achieved through the study of the intrinsic , albeit experientially refined, emotional action tendencies of other animals. In this view, core emotional feelings may reflect the neurodynamic attractor landscapes of a variety of extended trans-diencephalic, limbic emotional action systems—including SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC, and PLAY. Through a study of these brain systems, the neural infrastructure of human and animal affective consciousness may be revealed. Emotional feelings are instantiated in large-scale neurodynamics that can be most effectively monitored via the ethological analysis of emotional action tendencies and the accompanying brain neurochemical/electrical changes. The intrinsic coherence of such emotional responses is demonstrated by the fact that they can be provoked by electrical and chemical stimulation of specific brain zones—effects that are affectively laden. For substantive progress in this emerging research arena, animal brain researchers need to discuss affective brain functions more openly. Secondary awareness processes, because of their more conditional, contextually situated nature, are more difficult to understand in any neuroscientific detail. In other words, the information-processing brain functions, critical for cognitive consciousness, are harder to study in other animals than the more homologous emotional/motivational affective state functions of the brain. (shrink)

Some interpreters claim Kant distinguishes between organisms and living things. I argue that this claim is underdetermined by the textual evidence. Once this is recognized, it becomes a real possibility that Kant’s various remarks about the essential properties of living things generalize to organisms as such. This, in turn, generates a puzzle. Kant repeatedly claims that the capacity for representation is essential to the nature of a living thing. If he does not distinguish between living things and organisms, then how (...) might the capacity for representation be essential to the latter? Drawing on the writings of Kant and his contemporaries, I reconstruct a framework within which representational capacities might conceivably be thought to play this role. On this view, what distinguishes an organism from mechanically explicable products of nature is its capacity for endogenous behavior that is instinctual and representationally mediated. (shrink)

A clarification of Husserl's changing conceptions of imaginary consciousness ( phantasy ) and memory, especially at the level of auto-affective time-consciousness, suggests an interpretation of Freud's concept of the Unconscious. Phenomenology of consciousness can show how it is possible that consciousness can bring to present appearance something unconscious, that is, something foreign or absent to consciousness, without incorporating it into or subordinating it to the conscious present. This phenomenological analysis of Freud's concept of the Unconscious leads to a partial critique (...) of Freud's metapsychological determination of the Unconscious as a simple, internally unperceived representational consciousness. It also suggests an account of how a reproductive inner consciousness can free the subject from the experience of anxiety by allowing for possibilities of self-distanciation and symbolic self-representation that protect the subject from traumatic affection by and through its own instinctual drives. (shrink)

The Primitivist (responsible for chapters 8-11 of the heterogeneous Zhuangzi) has largely been interpreted as just another exponent of the philosophy of the Laozi or Daodejing. This is a shame, because the Primitivist is an idiosyncratic thinker whose theories do not simply reiterate those found in the Laozi. In this essay, I argue that even though the Primitivist embraced some of the values of the Laozi’s brand of Daoism, (e.g. simplicity, harmony with nature, being rid of knowledge, etc.) he would (...) have censured its prescriptions; he had little faith that order could be achieved through an emphasis on minimalism, by doing nothing, or by advocating a change (or reversal) in values. Instead, the Primitivist suggests that the only way to curb the massive disorder of the late Warring States period was to purge the world of its root causes—namely, of all the artifice that kept the masses in competitive, violent strife—and suppress their reappearance. Without such a purge, the masses would be helpless to lead a natural, instinctual, pre-reflective mode of existence. By advocating such a strategy, the Primitivist seems to have membership in what must be a very exclusive group: he is a Daoist who thinks the world can only be brought into order by doing something—indeed, doing a whole lot of unpleasant, nasty things. I thus situate the Primitivist within the trend toward authoritarianism that characterized the period in which he wrote (3rd century BCE). (shrink)

Rene Descartes and William James had "body first" theories of the passions or emotions, according to which sensory stimulation causes a bodily response that then causes an emotion. Both held that this bodily response also causes an initial behavioral response (such as flight from a bear) without any cognitive intervention such as an "appraisal" of the object or situation. From here they differ. Descartes proposed that the initial processes that produce fear and running are entirely mechanical. Even human beings initially (...) run from the bear as a result of physiological processes alone, without mental contribution. These physiological processes also cause a mental passion, which is a cognitive representation of the situation (as regards novelty, benefit, or harm), and which motivates the will to continue the behavior already in progress. According to James, emotions are caused by instinctive bodily responses that are triggered by noncognitive but nonetheless conscious perceptual states. Emotions are bare feelings of internal physiological stirrings that accompany an instinctual response that has evolved through Darwinian natural selection. Jamesian emotions initially have no motivational or cognitive content, which they subsequently acquire through learning. The methodological legitimacy of comparing these positions across the centuries is defended, and the two theories are compared to recent theories. (shrink)

In ‘The Revisionist Psychoanalysis’, Adorno criticizes the neo-Freudian psychoanalysis for losing the critical edge of Freud’s theory with regard to social critique. Neo-Freudians whom Adorno calls ‘revisionists’ criticize Freud for his ‘mechanical’ views of the human psyche and for his over-emphasis on sexual libido. They reverse Freud’s dictum – ‘where id was, there ego shall be’ – by stressing the importance of development of the ego, and thus that of its adaptive functions. For revisionists, the aim of psychoanalytic practice is (...) to help analysands be better adapted to their social environment. According to Adorno, the revisionist psychoanalysis is suspected of conformism, and implicitly advocating an ideology that what is existent is the best of all possible worlds. The emphasis on adaptation actually weakens the ego instead of strengthening it – leaving it vulnerable to the whim of social conditions, and that of instinctual impulses. Most importantly, it weakens individuals’ ability to think critically and makes them susceptible to ideological and psychological manipulation against their own rational interests. (shrink)

Although Husserl’s analyses of the unconscious are scattered throughout various writings, many of which have been published in Hua III/2, Hua VI, Hua X, Hua XI, Hua XV, Hua XVII, Hua XXXIX and _Experience and Judgment_, nowhere else has he addressed the unconscious in such fascinating detail as in the manuscripts collected in Hua XLII. The publication of this volume has made it patently clear that the unconscious has many meanings in Husserl. A clarification of the different ways in which (...) Husserl has spoken of the unconscious is still missing in the literature and it is much needed. With the aim of developing a taxonomy of the unconscious in Husserl, here I trace the different meanings Husserl has given to this concept and I argue that in his phenomenology, the unconscious can be understood at least in seven ways: as the horizonal unconscious, the time-constituting unconscious, the sedimented unconscious, the repressed unconscious, the absorbed unconscious, the dormant unconscious, and the instinctual unconscious. Besides articulating the essential features of each determination, I also clarify what they all share. With the aim of showing what is distinctive of Husserl’s approach to the unconscious, I offer some reflections on what differentiates Husserl’s phenomenology of the unconscious vis-à-vis Freud’s psychoanalysis. In general, I maintain that while it is a limit problem in phenomenology, the unconscious should also be considered a central phenomenological theme, for as Husserl’s reflections show, without offering a phenomenology of the unconscious, phenomenology can only operate with a preliminary and insufficient conception of consciousness. (shrink)

A cross-species affective neuroscience strategy for understanding the primary-process (basic) emotions is defended. The need for analyzing the brain and mind in terms of evolutionary stratification of functions into at least primary (instinctual), secondary (learned), and tertiary (thought-related) processes is advanced. When viewed in this context, the contentious battles between basic-emotion theorists and dimensional-constructivist approaches can be seen to be largely nonsubstantial differences among investigators working at different levels of analysis.

This chapter looks at how Beauvoir appropriates Lacan's account of the family complexes in The Second Sex, and in particular how Lacan's conception of infantile prematurity and instinctual (vital) insufficiency illuminates a conceptual conundrum in The Second Sex, namely the tension between the value of independence, autonomy, and active agency and the suspicion of its origin in familial life, an origin that also provides the foundations for hierarchical sexual difference. The complexities of the cultural/biological interplay in Lacan's Family Complexes essay (...) clarify Beauvoir's appropriation of the psychoanalytic concept of narcissism and its implications for the limits of independence and agency. Lacan's essay reveals ambiguities in Beauvoir's thinking about the ambiguity of freedom. (shrink)

Konrad Lorenz's popularity in the United States has to be understood in the context of social concern about the mother‐infant dyad after World War II. Child analysts David Levy, René Spitz, Margarethe Ribble, Therese Benedek, and John Bowlby argued that many psychopathologies were caused by a disruption in the mother‐infant bond. Lorenz extended his work on imprinting to humans and argued that maternal care was also instinctual. The conjunction of psychoanalysis and ethology helped shore up the view that the mother‐child (...) dyad rests on an instinctual basis and is the cradle of personality formation. Amidst the Cold War emphasis on rebuilding an emotionally sound society, these views received widespread attention. Thus Lorenz built on the social relevance of psychoanalysis, while analysts gained legitimacy by drawing on the scientific authority of biology. Lorenz's work was central in a rising discourse that blamed the mother for emotional degeneration and helped him recast his eugenic fears in a socially acceptable way. -/- . (shrink)

Sciences able to identify appropriate analytical units for their domain, their natural kinds, have tended to be more progressive. In the biological sciences, evolutionary natural kinds are adaptations that can be identified by their common history of selection for some function. Human brains are the product of an evolutionary history of selection for component systems which produced behaviours that gave adaptive advantage to their hosts. These structures, behaviour production systems, are the natural kinds that psychology seeks. We argue these can (...) be identified deductively by classing behaviour first according to its level of behavioural control. Early animals in our lineage used only reactive production, Vertebrates evolved motivation, and later Primates developed executive control. Behaviour can also be classified by the type of evolutionary benefit it bestows: it can deliver either immediate benefits (food, gametes), improvements in the individual’s position with respect to the world (resource access, social status), or improvements in the ability to secure future benefits (knowledge, skill). Combining history and function implies the existence of seven types of behaviour production systems in human brains responsible for reflexive, instinctual, exploratory, driven, emotional, playful and planned behaviour. Discovering scientifically valid categories of behaviour can provide a fundamental taxonomy and common language for understanding, predicting and changing behaviour, and a way of discovering the organs in the brain––its natural kinds––that are responsible for behaviour. (shrink)

Nietzsche announces his intentions to publish a “physiology of aesthetics”, namely a naturalistic explanation for how aesthetic judgements are grounded in the physiology of both the one experiencing the work, and the creator of it. But as well as the physiological reduction of aesthetic judgements, Nietzsche in many places across his oeuvre frames the apparatus of physiology, especially the prescriptive dimension of self-cultivation, in terms amenable to being treated as ‘aesthetic’. The first section will mount a (re-) defense of the (...) use of aestheticized language for discussing Nietzschean self-cultivation. The second section demonstrates an aesthetic evaluation of capacities that make possible the acquisition and removal of instinctual components, ultimately arguing for Nietzsche’s qualified indeterminism regarding the capacity for self-cultivation. The third section will assess the pres- ence of another aesthetic measure, this time in terms of envisaging one’s psycho-physiology by reference to an external spectacle. The final section discusses metaethical questions stemming from Nietzsche’s prescriptive language regarding the aestheticization of our physiology. (shrink)

This article presents Heidegger’s little-known theory of the organism developed in his 1929/30 lecture The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics and interprets it as an antithesis to Kant’s theory of the organism contained in his Critique of Judgement (1790 and 1792/3). Heidegger drops Kant’s transcendental caveats in favour of a robust ontological understanding of organismic teleology. Moreover, Heidegger’s alternative approach draws attention to the fact that Kant’s notion of a ‘natural end’ (Naturzweck), by being tied to the idea of intelligent design, (...) still places the organism too close to the machine, notwithstanding assumptions of a ‘formative force’ (bildende Kraft) and ‘productive organs’ (hervorbringende Organe). Heidegger, in contrast, analyses organismic purposiveness in terms of an instinctual capacity (triebhafte Fähigkeit) in which an organism’s organs are ontologically grounded as its products, and which explains the specificity of an organism’s wholeness, motility and relation to the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Konrad Lorenz's popularity in the United States has to be understood in the context of social concern about the mother‐infant dyad after World War II. Child analysts David Levy, René Spitz, Margarethe Ribble, Therese Benedek, and John Bowlby argued that many psychopathologies were caused by a disruption in the mother‐infant bond. Lorenz extended his work on imprinting to humans and argued that maternal care was also instinctual. The conjunction of psychoanalysis and ethology helped shore up the view that the (...) mother‐child dyad rests on an instinctual basis and is the cradle of personality formation. Amidst the Cold War emphasis on rebuilding an emotionally sound society, these views received widespread attention. Thus Lorenz built on the social relevance of psychoanalysis, while analysts gained legitimacy by drawing on the scientific authority of biology. Lorenz's work was central in a rising discourse that blamed the mother for emotional degeneration and helped him recast his eugenic fears in a socially acceptable way. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A growing body of research suggests that political polarization in the United States is at a forty-year high, and that it is rooted less in disagreements over policy than in hostile attitudes toward political opponents. Such attitudes explain the manifest increase of intolerant behavior in American culture and politics in recent years. But what explains the attitudes themselves? One significant contributor may have been the rise of scientism in the early twentieth century, which undermined the metaphysical, epistemic, and institutional (...) foundations of the type of morality required to transcend our instinctual tribalism. (shrink)

How do our feelings for others shape our attitudes and conduct towards them? Is morality primarily a matter of rational choice, or instinctual feeling? Joseph Duke Filonowicz takes the reader on an engaging, informative tour of some of the main issues in philosophical ethics, explaining and defending the ideas of the early-modern British sentimentalists. These philosophers - Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith - argued that it is our feelings, and not our 'reason', which ultimately determine how we judge what is (...) good or bad, right or wrong, and how we choose to act towards our fellow human beings. Filonowicz draws on contemporary sociology and evolutionary biology as well as present-day moral theory to examine and defend the sentimentalist view and to challenge the rationalistic character of contemporary ethics. His book will appeal to readers interested in both the history of philosophy and current ethical debates. (shrink)

Neural organization raises, in an especially clear way, a major problem confronting contemporary cognitive science. The problem (the “big issue” of my title) is: What is the relation between the strategies used to solve basic problems of perception and action and those used to solve more abstract or “cognitive” problems? Is there a smooth, incremental route from what Arbib et al. call “instinctual schemas” to higher-level kinds of cognitive prowess? I argue that, despite some suggestive comments, Arbib et al. do (...) not resolve this issue. (shrink)

The theory of ‘objective thought’ can be characterized as an essential core of the Hegelian philosophy and, at the same time, as one of its most indigestible kernels. This theory, at the intersection of foundational and epistemological problems, on the one hand, provides Hegel’s solution to the problem of the relation between being and thought. On the other hand, this theory is the result of a powerful conceptual torsion carried out by Hegel on the notion of thought. This torsion consists, (...) in a first approximation, of a strong enlargement of the scope of such a notion, articulated principally in two steps. In the first step, we have an enlargement within the finite subject, inside the mental realm. Thought (conceived of as Denken) becomes, from a mental faculty or activity separated from the other mental activities, an active element working in an unconscious and instinctual way in the whole of the mental. This step, naturally, requires a redefinition of thought as a faculty or activity, i.e. a redefinition of conscious and reflective thought (conceived of as Nachdenken). In the second step, the scope of the notion of thought is enlarged in order to encompass reality in all of its different spheres, natural and spiritual. Here, thought is conceived as the logicrational structure of reality. With this further step, thought evades the mental sphere in which it would be enclosed on a merely psychological account. In this paper, I will move from the assumption that the first step, providing a first sense in which objectivity can be attributed to thought, is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for the second step, and then for the further sense of this attribution. Thus, I will attempt to provide a conceptual map of the fundamental distinctions within the notion of thought, particularly regarding the first step of this conceptual torsion. (shrink)

Jung’s individuation process, the central process of human development, relies heavily on several core philosophical and psychological ideas including the unconscious, complexes, the archetype of the Self, and the religious function of the psyche. While working to find empirical evidence of the psyche’s religious function, Jung studied a variety of subjects including the Eastern liberatory traditions of Buddhism and Patañjali’s Classical Yoga. In these traditions, Jung found substantiation of his ideas on psychospiritual development. Although Jung’s career in soul work was (...) lengthy, throughout, he aimed to steer clear of metaphysics. Patañjali’s metaphysics, on the other hand, are straightforward, and his ontological commitments are evident. Because Jung’s ontological commitments were not explicit, his theories, when seen through Patañjali’s lens, confuse ontological questions with epistemic issues. As a result, when comparing the Jungian and Patañjalian notions of the Self, Jung’s insightful ideas seem to be constructed upon a considerably shaky foundation. Yet, utilizing the exceptionally consistent ontological and epistemological commitments of Patañjali Yoga, as well as the objective measures of affective neuroscience, brings credence to the innate aspects and instinctual nature of Jung’s archetype of the Self, and assists in answering the question of whether the archetype is innate or emergent. (shrink)

Recent neuroscientific evidence brings into question the conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are gone in patients who have descended into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Here we summarize the evidence from human brain imaging as well as neurological damage in animals and humans suggesting that some form of consciousness can survive brain damage that commonly causes PVS. We also raise the issue that neuroscientific evidence indicates that raw emotional feelings (primary-process affects) can exist without any cognitive awareness of those (...) feelings. Likewise, the basic brain mechanisms for thirst and hunger exist in brain regions typically not damaged by PVS. If affective feelings can exist without cognitive awareness of those feelings, then it is possible that the instinctual emotional actions and pain "reflexes" often exhibited by PVS patients may indicate some level of mentality remaining in PVS patients. Indeed, it is possible such raw affective feelings are intensified when PVS patients are removed from life-supports. They may still experience a variety of primary-process affective states that could constitute forms of suffering. If so, withdrawal of life-support may violate the principle of nonmaleficence and be tantamount to inflicting inadvertent "cruel and unusual punishment" on patients whose potential distress, during the process of dying, needs to be considered in ethical decision-making about how such individuals should be treated, especially when their lives are ended by termination of life-supports. Medical wisdom may dictate the use of more rapid pharmacological forms of euthanasia that minimize distress than the de facto euthanasia of life-support termination that may lead to excruciating feelings of pure thirst and other negative affective feelings in the absence of any reflective awareness. (shrink)

Originally published in 1966 and now recognized as a classic, Norman O. Brown's meditation on the condition of humanity and its long fall from the grace of a natural, instinctual innocence is available once more for a new generation of readers. Love's Body is a continuation of the explorations begun in Brown's famous Life Against Death . Rounding out the trilogy is Brown's brilliant Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis.

The theory of affective intelligence dichotomizes challenging situations into threatening and risky ones. When people perceive a familiar threat, they tend to be dogmatic and partisan, since they are mobilizing decisive action based on habitual behaviors and nearly instinctual perceptions that have proved their worth in similar situations. When facing a novel risk, however, people tend to become more open‐minded and deliberative, since old solutions do not apply. An experiment with students' reactions to challenges to their opinions about a divisive (...) political issue suggests that, indeed, democratic citizens display the different competencies that are demanded by these two different types of situation. The actual conduct of political campaigns, too, can be expected to reflect the differences between trying to guard against defections from one's side by encouraging the appearance of routine partisan combat, and trying to promote defections from the other side by prompting anxiety, hence open‐minded deliberation. (shrink)

This article seeks to clarify the potential that Herbert Marcuse's and Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytic accounts may have with respect to the philosophy of education today. Marcuse and Adorno both share the view that psychoanalytic theory enables a deeper understanding of the social and biological dynamics of consciousness. For both thinkers, psychoanalytic theory provides conceptual tools for thinking through contradictions between the needs of an individual and those of the governing entity. In fleshing this out, I first explore Marcuse's radical (...) account of sublimation which seeks to demonstrate how the revision of instinctual energy makes it possible to establish a subjectivity which utilises the human potentiality to its fullest. I then turn to Adorno who emphasises the importance of understanding that exterior conditions transform our instinctual energies. After recapitulating Adorno's conception of natural, instinctual impulses and his use of psychoanalytic theory, I will explore the possibility of a critical rationality through a critique of rationality's current mode. From the perspective of Adorno's and Marcuse's theories, both rationality and sensuous desire play their respective roles in enabling critical rationality. In conclusion, the article reflects the different advantage points of Marcuse's and Adorno's accounts from the perspective of philosophy of education. Thus, education should provide individuals with the ability to recognise the subtle and invisible ways through which the calculating mode of rationality operates in late-capitalist society. Regarding education, Adorno's conception of non-identity could be developed in the direction of promoting ways of experiencing non-conformity within such a society. (shrink)

The Emotions chapter (XXV) in James' Principles of Psychology traverses the entire range of experienced emotions from the “coarser” and more instinctual to the “subtler” emotions intimately involved in cognitive, moral, and aesthetic aspects of life. But Principles limits himself to an account of emotional consciousness and so there are few direct discussions in the text of Principles about what later came to be called moral psychology, and fewer about anything resembling philosophical ethics. Still, James’ short section on the subtler (...) emotions, when read in connection with his later philosophical writings, still provides insight on James’ views about how human emotion colors our moral psychology and agency. The paper tries to articulate how James' somatic account of emotion adds significantly to contemporary discussions at the borders of moral psychology and philosophy: discussions over the foreground/background distinction, emotional temperament, emotional learning, moral imagination, and selfhood and narrativity. The final section focuses on the neo-Jamesian character of "new sentimentalist" moral psychologists. Among the substantial connections I discuss between James and 1) between Jonathan Haidt’s “social intuitionism” and 2) Jesse Prinz’s "emotionism" are the critiques that they each share of the pretensions of hard universalist ethical theories. (shrink)

The nature of “the self” has been one of the central problems in philosophy and more recently in neuroscience. This raises various questions: Can we attribute a self to animals? Do animals and humans share certain aspects of their core selves, yielding a trans-species concept of self? What are the neural processes that underlie a possible trans-species concept of self? What are the developmental aspects and do they result in various levels of self-representation? Drawing on recent literature from both human (...) and animal research, we suggest a trans-species concept of self that is based upon what has been called a “core-self” which can be described by self-related processing as a specific mode of interaction between organism and environment. When we refer to specific neural networks, we will here refer to the underlying system as the “core-SELF.” The core-SELF provides primordial neural coordinates that represent organisms as living creatures—at the lowest level this elaborates interoceptive states along with raw emotional feelings while higher medial cortical levels facilitate affective-cognitive integration . Developmentally, SRP allows stimuli from the environment to be related and linked to organismic needs, signaled and processed within core-self structures within subcorical-cortical midline structures that provide the foundation for epigenetic emergence of ecologically framed, higher idiographic forms of selfhood across different individuals within a species. These functions ultimately operate as a coordinated network. We postulate that core SRP operates automatically, is deeply affective, and is developmentally and epigenetically connected to sensory-motor and higher cognitive abilities. This core-self is mediated by SCMS, embedded in visceral and instinctual representations of the body that are well integrated with basic attentional, emotional and motivational functions that are apparently shared between humans, non-human mammals, and perhaps in a proto-SELF form, other vertebrates. Such a trans-species concept of organismic coherence is thoroughly biological and affective at the lowest levels of a complex neural network, and culturally and ecologically molded at higher levels of neural processing. It allows organisms to selectively adapt to and integrate with physical and social environments. Such a psychobiologically universal, but environmentally diversified, concept may promote novel trans-species studies of the core-self across mammalian species. (shrink)

Classical pragmatists, especially William James, have long been known as defenders of the rationality of religious commitment. Recently, however, scholars have begun to appreciate Charles Sanders Peirce's unique contributions to that defense. For instance, Richard Atkins defends Peirce's Sentimental Conservatism as advising us to trust in our instinctual sentiments rather than our reasonings and theories, elucidating an account of the rationality of religious belief in Peirce's "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God." Likewise, Michael Raposa examines Peirce's religious writings (...) and underscores their significance for his philosophical writings in general.1 The aim of this essay is to supplement... (shrink)

Basic affects reflect the diversity of satisfactions and discomforts that are inherited tools for living from our ancestral past. Affects are neurobiologically-ingrained potentials of the nervous system, which are triggered, moulded and refined by life experiences. Cognitive, information- processing approaches and computational metaphors cannot penetrate foundational affective processes. Animal models allow us to empirically analyse the large-scale neural ensembles that generate emotional-action dynamics that are critically important for creating emotional feelings. Such approaches offer robust neuro-epistemological strategies to decode the fundamental (...) nature of affects in all mammals, including humans, but they remain to be widely implemented. Here I summarize how we can develop a cross-species affective neuroscience that probes the neural nature of emotional affective states by studying the instinctual emotional apparatus of the mammalian body and brain. Affective feelings and emotional actions may reflect the dynamics of the primal viscero-somatic homunculus of SELF-representation. (shrink)

In his article, “Wittgenstein and Basic Moral Certainty,” Nigel Pleasants argues that killing an innocent, non-threatening person is wrong. It is, he argues, “a basic moral certainty.” He believes our basic moral certainties play the “same kind of foundational role as [our] basic empirical certaint[ies] do.” I believe this is mistaken. There is not “simply one kind of foundational role” that certainty plays. While I think Pleasants is right to affiliate his proposition with a Wittgensteinian form of certainty, he exposes (...) himself to a tension that exists in On Certainty regarding how we acquire it: is certainty natural, is it social? In this paper, I present two ways in which we come to possess certainty: a bottom-up approach, where certainty is part of our instinctual predisposition, and a top-down approach, where certainty is acquired through positive reinforcement by family and culture. (shrink)

RESUMO No Curso de Inverno de 1928/29, Heidegger afirmou que a matematização irrestrita no conhecimento dos seres vivos resultaria numa falha no propósito de elaborar a ontologia da vida orgânica. No presente artigo, examino as razões que justificam essa concepção. Com base em interpretações das investigações de biólogos como Hans Driesch J. v. Uexküll e Hans Spemann, o argumento de Heidegger integra quatro passos: 1) uma abordagem mereológica do corpo orgânico, concebido como uma unidade funcional de aptidões e intrinsecamente relacionado (...) a um ambiente; 2) uma análise formal da constituição dinâmica das aptidões, cuja estrutura pulsional consiste no atravessamento regulatório de uma dimensão; 3) uma interpretação do princípio de unificação das aptidões em termos da aptidão para comportar-se com algo em um ambiente. Esta argumentação leva a duas conclusões gerais: a matematização irrestrita implica uma descrição mecânica que supõe a desconsideração da determinação modal dos organismos; a estrutura dimensional, regulatória e protointencional das aptidões orgânicas é o fator limitante da matematização da vida. ABSTRACT In the Winter Course of 1928/29, Heidegger declared that an unrestricted mathematical determination in the knowledge of living beings would imply a failure in the purpose of developing the ontology for organic life. In this paper, I examine the reasons that justify this idea. Based on interpretations of biological researches carried by Hans Driesch, J. v. Uexküll and Hans Spemann, Heidegger’s argument has three steps 1) a mereological account of the organic body, which is conceived both as a functional unity of capabilities and as intrinsically related to an environment; 2) a formal analysis of the dynamic constitution of capabilities, which instinctually driven structure is a regulatory traversing of a dimension; 3) an interpretation of the unification principle of capabilities, which is conceived as a capability of behaving towards something within an environment. This argument entails two general conclusions: first, the unrestricted mathematical determination implies a mechanical description that presupposes the neglect of the modal structure of organisms; second, the dimensional, regulatory and proto-intentional structure of the organic capabilities is the limiting factor of the mathematical determination of living organisms. (shrink)

RESUMO No Curso de Inverno de 1928/29, Heidegger afirmou que a matematização irrestrita no conhecimento dos seres vivos resultaria numa falha no propósito de elaborar a ontologia da vida orgânica. No presente artigo, examino as razões que justificam essa concepção. Com base em interpretações das investigações de biólogos como Hans Driesch J. v. Uexküll e Hans Spemann, o argumento de Heidegger integra quatro passos: 1) uma abordagem mereológica do corpo orgânico, concebido como uma unidade funcional de aptidões e intrinsecamente relacionado (...) a um ambiente; 2) uma análise formal da constituição dinâmica das aptidões, cuja estrutura pulsional consiste no atravessamento regulatório de uma dimensão; 3) uma interpretação do princípio de unificação das aptidões em termos da aptidão para comportar-se com algo em um ambiente. Esta argumentação leva a duas conclusões gerais: a matematização irrestrita implica uma descrição mecânica que supõe a desconsideração da determinação modal dos organismos; a estrutura dimensional, regulatória e protointencional das aptidões orgânicas é o fator limitante da matematização da vida.ABSTRACT In the Winter Course of 1928/29, Heidegger declared that an unrestricted mathematical determination in the knowledge of living beings would imply a failure in the purpose of developing the ontology for organic life. In this paper, I examine the reasons that justify this idea. Based on interpretations of biological researches carried by Hans Driesch, J. v. Uexküll and Hans Spemann, Heidegger’s argument has three steps 1) a mereological account of the organic body, which is conceived both as a functional unity of capabilities and as intrinsically related to an environment; 2) a formal analysis of the dynamic constitution of capabilities, which instinctually driven structure is a regulatory traversing of a dimension; 3) an interpretation of the unification principle of capabilities, which is conceived as a capability of behaving towards something within an environment. This argument entails two general conclusions: first, the unrestricted mathematical determination implies a mechanical description that presupposes the neglect of the modal structure of organisms; second, the dimensional, regulatory and proto-intentional structure of the organic capabilities is the limiting factor of the mathematical determination of living organisms. (shrink)

This article explores Mencius’ extension of moral feelings and its potential to address a key challenge in cosmopolitan education: how to motivate students to expand their existing affection and obligations towards their family and community to the rest of the world. Rather than strong universalism, a Mencian orientation is aligned with rooted cosmopolitanism that takes into account localised and cultural contexts that underpin, determine and give value to social practices. Mencius’ approach, as argued in this essay, highlights the spontaneous human (...) reactions to ethical situations, innate human goodness, analogical reasoning, moral character and agency. A Confucian form of cosmopolitan education gives emphasis not only to the students’ moral imagination but also their instinctual responses, self-reflection and rationality. Such an education seeks to integrate emotions and reasoning through the utilisation of paradigm scenarios that identify and reinforce the natural compassionate feelings in the learner. (shrink)

Abraham Maslow’s needs theory is one of the most influential motivation theories in management and organizational behavior. What are its anthropological and ethical presuppositions? Are they consistent with sound business philosophy and ethics? This paper analyzes and assesses the anthropological and ethical underpinnings of Maslow’s needs theory from a personalistic framework, and concludes that they are flawed. Built on materialistic naturalism, the theory’s “humanistic” claims are subverted by its reductionist, individualistic approach to the human being, which ends up in a (...) needs-based ethics that understands goodness, virtue, and rights in instinctual, subjectivistic, and relativistic terms. Its moral imperative, “Be yourself!,” is either the materialistic fiat of genetic drives or the voluntaristic command of unbridled will. Significant implications for business educators, managers, and organizations are discussed, along with recommendations. Managerial theories and approaches that reduce personality to individuality are inconsistent with proper anthropological and ethical business principles. Adopting those individualistic theories may ultimately undermine organizational effectiveness, and the very essence of business as human activity and of management as human calling. Instead, personalistic anthropology and virtue ethics, rooted in Aristotelian–Thomistic thought, soundly account for properly human nature and the good life. Business educators and practitioners are encouraged to embrace this integral, truly humanistic framework for motivation, and management theory and practice. (shrink)

This paper argues that children as members of a perennial psychoclass represent one potential vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. I argue from Herbert Marcuse’s prophetic invocation of a “new sensibility,” which is characterized by an increase in instinctual revulsion towards violence, domination and exploitation and, correspondingly, a greater sensitivity to all forms of life. As the embodiment of (...) a form of philosophical “post-animism” or hylozoism, it represents the evolutionary shift that, it could be argued, our species requires for survival at this historical moment. I suggest that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” I argue for a form, or archetype of schooling first articulated in ancient Greece called skholé, a space that functions, according to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, as a “meeting place,” a “form of gathering and action” dedicated to inquiry, and not to the production of calculated, preordained outcomes—a space removed from the world of production, and characterized by a form of temporality associated with childhood: aion, or “timeless time,” as opposed to kronos, or linear time. Skholé is dedicated to emergence and cultural reconstruction, which follows from an educative relationship between adults and children based on understanding the latter as bearers of the “novel,” and on a faith in the “reorganizing potentialities” of childhood impulse, or interest—that is, on natality as a fundamental principle of cultural evolution. (shrink)

This paper proposes a semiotic theory of norms—what I term normative semiotics. The paper’s central contention is that social norms are a language. Moreover, it is a language that we instinctively learn to speak. Normative behaviour is a mode of communication, the intelligibility of which allows us to establish cooperative relationships with others. Normative behaviour communicates an actor’s potential as a cooperative partner. Compliance with a norm is an act of communication: compliance signals cooperativeness; noncompliance signals uncooperativeness. An evolutionary model (...) is proposed to explain how this comes about: evolution has generated an instinctual proficiency in working with these signals much like a language—a proficiency that manifests in an emotional context. We see these social rules as possessing a certain ‘rightness’ in normative terms. This adaptive trait is what we call internalization. Internalization enhances the individual’s ability to speak this code. Because these signals communicate who is and who is not a reliable co-operator, sending and receiving cooperation signals is crucial to individual survival. Individuals who internalized the entire process and thus became more adept at speaking the language were at an advantage. Law seeks to shape the language of norms by maintaining the collective standards of society; as such, understanding how and why this normative language emerges is critical to understanding a core function of law. (shrink)

Weaver birds create intricate nests; sculptors and other artists and artisans also create intricate, ingenious constructions out of similar materials. The products may look similar, and outwardly the creative processes that create those processes may look similar, but there are surely large and important differences between them. What are they, and how important are they? The weaverbird nestmaking is ‘instinctual,’ and ‘controlled by the genes’ some would say, but we know that this is a crude approximation of a more interesting (...) truth, involving an intricate interplay between genetic variation, long-term developmental and environmental interaction and short-term environmental variation–in opportunities and materials accessible at the time of nest building. And on the side of the human creator, a similarly complex story must be told. Genes play some role surely (think of the likelihood of heritable differences in musical aptitude, for instance), but so do both long-term and short-term environmental interactions. The myth of the artist “blessed†by a spark of ‘divine genius’ is even cruder and more distorted than the myth of the birdnest as a simple product of a gene–as if it were a protein.                Our thinking about human creativity is pulled out of shape somewhat by a famous contrast introduced to the world by Darwin. One of his earliest–and most outraged–critics summed it up vividly:   In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all the achievements of creative skill.. (shrink)