Psychedelic-assisted Psychotherapy combines the use of psychedelic compounds, such as psilocybin, with psychotherapy. PAP has shown some promise as a novel treatment for Major Depressive Disorder, and empirical research suggests that its efficacy turns on the altered states induced by psychedelic compounds. In this paper we draw on the literature of phenomenology to explain the therapeutic potential of psychedelic experiences. Svenaeus characterises mental illness as a form of suffering that entails three distinct but related experiences of alienation or “unhomelike being-in-the-world”: (...) illness suffering, which relates to embodiment; existential suffering, which relates to self-narratives, and political suffering, which relates to social relationships. Ratcliffe further characterises the experience of MDD in phenomenological terms as a loss of pre-intentional possibility that manifests as excessive noematic feeling in the experience of embodiment, restrictive narratives in the construction of self, and disconnectedness in experience of the social world. We contend that PAP ameliorates the suffering associated with MDD by inducing and consolidating a state of broadened pre-intentional possibility—one that entails sudden, profound and enduring changes in embodiment, self-narratives, and social experience. We argue further that this phenomenological account is consistent with a bio-psycho-social model of mental health and illness, and we frame it as an argument supporting the plausibility of recent claims about treatment success. This helps to justify ongoing future empirical research in this setting. (shrink)

The recent renaissance in research on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is showing great promise for the treatment of many psychiatric conditions. Interestingly, therapeutic outcomes for patients undergoing these treatments are predicted by the occurrence of a mystical experience—an experience characterised in part by a sense of profound meaning. This has led to hypotheses that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is therapeutic because it enhances perception of meaning, and consequently leads to a meaning response. The putative mechanism of action of psychedelics as meaning enhancers raises normative (...) ethical questions as to whether it can be justified to pharmacologically increase the perception of meaning in order to heal patients. Using the perspectives of hedonistic moral theories, this paper argues that if psychedelics operate as meaning enhancers, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy can be ethically justified. An anti-hedonistic objection is presented by applying Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment to the case of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. However, it is argued that this objection falls short for two reasons. First, even if pleasure and pain are not the only consequences which have moral value they are not morally irrelevant, therefore, therapeutic meaning enhancement can still be justified in cases of extreme suffering. Second, it is possible that psychedelic states of consciousness do not represent a false reality, hence their therapeutic meaning enhancement is not problematic according to Nozick’s standards. (shrink)

"Psychiatry and Philosophy of Science" explores conceptual issues in psychiatry from the perspective of analytic philosophy of science. Through an examination of those features of psychiatry that distinguish it from other sciences - for example, its contested subject matter, its particular modes of explanation, its multiple different theoretical frameworks, and its research links with big business - Rachel Cooper explores some of the many conceptual, metaphysical and epistemological issues that arise in psychiatry. She shows how these pose interesting challenges for (...) the philosopher of science while also showing how ideas from the philosophy of science can help to solve conceptual problems within psychiatry. Cooper's discussion ranges over such topics as the nature of mental illnesses, the treatment decisions and diagnostic categories of psychiatry, the case-history as a form of explanation, how psychiatry might be value-laden, the claim that psychiatry is a multi-paradigm science, the distortion of psychiatric research by pharmaceutical industries, as well as engaging with the fundamental question whether the mind is reducible to something at the physical level. "Psychiatry and Philosophy of Science" demonstrates that cross-disciplinary contact between philosophy of science and psychiatry can be immensely productive for both subjects and it will be required reading for mental health professionals and philosophers alike. (shrink)

A report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, contrary to the Declaration of Helsinki, permits most important research initiatives in developing countries.The Ethics of Research Related to Health Care in Developing Countries by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics makes a number of innovative recommendations that depart from codes such as the Declaration of Helsinki. It recommends that standards of care might be relativised to the standard of that nation. It recommends that very good reasons need to be given for not (...) giving post-trial access to medications but recognises that there may be justifiable instances of this. It is the view of the authors that these and other recommendations of the report are sensible pieces of advice given the complexities of the developing world. (shrink)

Anger is probably one of the mostly debated basic emotions, owing to difficulties in detecting its appearance during development, its functional and affective meaning (is it a positive or a negative emotion?), especially in human beings. Behaviors accompanied by anger and rage serve many different purposes and the nuances of aggressive behaviors are often defined by the symbolic and cultural framework and social contexts. Nonetheless, recent advances in neuroscientific and developmental research, as well as clinical psychodynamic investigation, afford a new (...) view on the role of anger in informing and guiding many aspects of human conducts. Developmental studies have confirmed the psychophysiological, cognitive and social acquisition that hesitate in the pre-determined sequence appearance of anger and rage in the first two years of life. The so-called affective neurosciences have shown the phylogenetic origin of the two circuits underlying the emergence of anger along with its evolutionary role for promoting survival. This view has been integrated by the psychodynamic theory of motivational systems that attribute a double role to anger: on the one hand, this affect works as an inwardly directed signal concerning a pressure to overcome an obstacle or an aversive situation; on the other hand, anger is also an outwardly directed communicative signal establishing differentiation and conflict within interpersonal relationships and affective bonds. Of course, human peculiar mental functioning requires the appraisal of such signals by higher cortical functions and, there is little doubt that the meaning that orientates individual behaviors is, eventually, construed on a social and cultural level. At the same time, everyday life experiences as well as clinical insights into psychopathic, narcissistic and borderline personality pathology clearly illustrate the necessity to correctly interpret and give answers to the basic questions raised around the topic of anger as a basic emotion. (shrink)

This article examines the nature of the child´s right to be loved. In particular, it argues that besides reasons for ensuring that children are affectively cared for by their parents, we have strong reasons for why children should be loved unconditionally -that is, loved independently of their morally irrelevant features. The article defends this claim by engaging closely with an argument recently formulated by Samantha Brennan and Colin Macleod, according to which the child´s right to be loved would be violated (...) by strongly homophobic parents. I argue that Brennan’s and Macleod’s argument needs to be revised because, while it generates a convincing conclusion in the case of homophobic parents, it fails to do so in other cases. This problem calls for a reconsideration of the nature of the right to be loved. Drawing on Philip Pettit’s analysis of robust goods, I argue that this right is a right to be loved unconditionally and an appeal to unconditional love allows us to accommodate the conviction that strongly racist as well as homophobic parents wrong their children by failing to love them (unconditionally). (shrink)

This article argues that hope is of value in clinical ethics and that it can be important for clinicians to be sensitive to both the risks of false hope and the importance of retaining hope. However, this sensitivity requires an understanding of the complexity of hope and how it bears on different aspects of a well-functioning doctor-patient relationship. We discuss hopefulness and distinguish it from three different kinds of hope, or ‘hopes for’, and then relate these distinctions back to differing (...) accounts of autonomy. This analysis matters because it shows how an overly narrow view of the ethical obligations of a clinician to their patient, and autonomy, might lead to scenarios where patients regret the choices they make. (shrink)

A widely debated issue in contemporary metaphysics is whether the modal profile of ordinary objects has to be explained in non-modal terms (that is, Thesis 1). However, how to solve such an issue with respect to occurrences – namely, processes and events – is a question that has been largely neglected in the current metaphysical debate. The general goal of this article is to start filling this gap. As a first result of the article, we make it plausible that, if (...) Thesis 1 holds for objects, then it also holds for processes and events. Then, we develop a metaphysical account of processes derived from Fine’s (1999, 2022) suggestions, according to which a process is a variable embodiment that is manifested by different events at the different times it goes on – namely, Thesis 2. We raised the challenge from the completion of a process that asks the Finean account of processes to explain relevant modal features of processes in non-modal terms. As a second result, we argue that four initially plausible strategies for solving such a challenge fall short of solving it. As a third result, we show that the theory of variable embodiments Fine formulates for objects must differ from the theory of variable embodiments that aims to model processes. We conclude by investigating some revisions to a theory of variable embodiments that aims to model processes. (shrink)

The theory of variable embodiments has been primarily formulated to model ordinary objects as things that change their parts over time. A variable embodiment /f/ is a sui generis whole constructed from a principle f, the principle of a variable embodiment, and it is manifested at different times by different things picked out by such a principle f. This principle is usually clarified as a function that picks out, at any given time the variable embodiment exists, its corresponding manifestation at (...) that time, and it fails to pick out anything at any other time. The first purpose of this article is to examine and refute three natural understandings of such a principle. Specifically, first, we argue against the view that it should be understood extensionally as either a partial function or total function. Next, we provide some motivations to reject the understanding of the principle as a function in intensional terms, where the notion of intension is analyzed in terms of a specific version of a possible world semantics. The second goal of the article is to make it plausible that the principle has an intensional character and, on the basis of the results achieved, to formulate some constraints that an account of such a principle should meet. (shrink)

Monists and pluralists disagree concerning how many ordinary objects there are in a single situation. For instance, pluralists argue that a statue and the clay it is made of have different properties, and thereby are different. The standard monist’s response is to hold that there is just a single object, and that, under the description “being a statue”, this object is, e.g., aesthetically valuable, and that, under the description “being a piece of clay”, it is not aesthetically valuable. However, Fine (...) provided an ontological reading of the expression “an object under a description”: the theory of rigid embodiments. The debate between monists and pluralists reduplicates in the domain of ordinary occurrences, like walks and conferences. Specifically, they disagree whether an occurrence in progress (also called “process”) like John’s walk that is happening at tn is identical to some completed occurrence (also called “event”) like John’s walk that happened between, e.g., t1 and tn. Under the adoption of the pluralist’s position, the article aims to provide a novel theory of ordinary occurrences that develops the ontological reading of “under a description” to account for occurrences in progress and completed occurrences. As a first result, we formulate a theory according to which both occurrences in progress and completed occurrences are rigid embodiments. As a second result, we argue that the suggested theory is explanatorily powerful to the extent it solves two puzzles that we call “the Puzzle from the Completion of a Process” and “the Metaphysical-cum-Semantical Puzzle”. (shrink)

The paper provides some introductory comments and a preliminary translation of Avicenna’s Burhān, IV, 2. I shall first set the stage by outlining the structure of the book (sec. 1). I will then briefly introduce (sec. 2) a number of notions that are dealt with in the first treatise of the Burhān (e.g. definition, description). Burhān, IV, 2 is split into two parts: the first focuses mainly on Aristotle’s An. Post., B, 4, whereas the second covers some of the topics (...) of B, 5 and B, 6. Accordingly, sec. 3 will be devoted to a cursory presentation of Aristotle’s arguments in An. Post., B, 4 along with a more detailed discussion of its Avicennan counterpart, focusing on the indemonstrability of definition; sec. 4, finally, will be a presentation of the second part of the chapter, concerning the relationship between definition and division. An English translation of the entire chapter is appended to the paper and is accompanied by some notes. (shrink)

This study investigates interpersonal processes underlying dialog by comparing two approaches, interactive alignment and interpersonal synergy, and assesses how they predict collective performance in a joint task. While the interactive alignment approach highlights imitative patterns between interlocutors, the synergy approach points to structural organization at the level of the interaction—such as complementary patterns straddling speech turns and interlocutors. We develop a general, quantitative method to assess lexical, prosodic, and speech/pause patterns related to the two approaches and their impact on collective (...) performance in a corpus of task-oriented conversations. The results show statistical presence of patterns relevant for both approaches. However, synergetic aspects of dialog provide the best statistical predictors of collective performance and adding aspects of the alignment approach does not improve the model. This suggests that structural organization at the level of the interaction plays a crucial role in task-oriented conversations, possibly constraining and integrating processes related to alignment. (shrink)

While the UK Home Office’s proposals to preventively detain people with what it has called dangerous severe personality disorder have been subjected to debate and criticism the deeply troubling jurisprudential issues in these proposals have not yet entered into public debate in a way that their seriousness deserves.1 It is good that a commentator as well known as Professor Szasz is speaking out on this issue.Professor Szasz focuses upon a crucial question by calling into question the medicalisation of terms like (...) dangerousness and mental illness.2 There is a great temptation for legislators and the public to treat these terms as if they are purely scientific terms and to think of risk assessment as a precise science. I don’t share Professor’s Szasz’s worry about how psychiatry is using these terms but I think there are some important questions about how these concepts function in the public sphere.This issue is important enough to justify the use of some rhetorical claims because such claims can serve to bring out what are neglected and important issues. In raising the following objections I am not attempting to refute the message that is in Szasz’s article or to say that he is not making an important point but rather to attempt to sharpen the issues and to suggest ways that we can respond to Professor Szasz’s challenge.Psychiatry has progressed in a number of ways since Professor Szasz wrote The Myth of Mental Illness.3 The science is much better, we have much better medications, and psychiatrists are acutely aware of the tension between treating their patient and their obligations to the public interest.So when Professor Szasz says: “Psychiatrists offer to relieve the disturbed person of the burden of coping …. (shrink)

Prevention is a pervasive phenomenon. It is about blocking an effect before it happens or stopping it as it unfolds: vaccines prevent (the unfolding of) diseases; seat belts prevent events causing serious injuries; circuit breaks prevent the manifestation of overcurrents. Many disciplines in the information sciences deal with modeling and reasoning about prevention. Examples include risk and security management as well as medical and legal informatics. Having a proper conceptualization of this phenomenon is crucial for devising proper modeling mechanisms and (...) tools to support these disciplines. Forming such a conceptualization is a matter of Formal Ontology. In fact, prevention and related notions have become a topic of interest in this area. In this paper, with the support of Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), we conduct an ontological analysis of this and other related notions, namely, the notions of countermeasures and countermeasure mechanisms, including the notion of antidotes. As a result of this conceptual clarification process, we propose an ontology-based reusable module extending UFO and capturing the relations between these elements. Finally, we employ this module to address a few cases in risk management. (shrink)

NICE, the draft fertility guideline and dodging the big question: should fertility treatment be provided by the NHS?In August of this year the National Institute for Clinical Excellence made its draft guideline on fertility treatment available for consultation.1 As has been widely reported in the media the draft guideline recommends that the National Health Service should provide publicly funded fertility treatment in a consistent way across England and Wales. The guideline recommends that three cycles of IVF should be available when (...) “The woman is within the optimal range for in vitro fertilisation and there is an appropriately diagnosed cause of infertility of any duration, or unexplained infertility of at least three years’ duration .Those who need fertility treatment will celebrate the guideline, as will many fertility clinics. The guideline does not, however, address key questions that will be obvious to many. Is fertility treatment the kind of thing that ought to be available on the NHS? Will the inevitable increase in demand mean that resources are directed away from other services? Is fertility treatment really the same kind of intervention as heart or hip replacement surgery?My view is that there are good reasons for doing what we can to help people access fertility services. Most of us will start a family and for those of us who do it is probably the most important of all of our life projects. Given that social status and wealth can be significant obstacles to many of the things that people would like to do with their lives, the fact that most of us are able to pursue this important life project is good from an egalitarian …. (shrink)

When successful and ethical managers are alerted to possible organizational wrongdoing, they take corrective action before the problems become crises. However, recent research [e.g., Rynes et al. (2007, Academy of Management Journal50(5), 987–1008)] indicates that many organizations fail to implement evidence-based practices (i.e., practices that are consistent with research findings), in many aspects of human resource management. In this paper, we draw from years of research on whistle-blowing by social scientists and legal scholars and offer concrete suggestions to managers who (...) are interested in encouraging internal reporting of problems requiring attention, and to observers of questionable activity who are considering reporting it. We also identify ways that research suggests policy-makers can have a more positive influence. We hope that these suggestions will help foster evidence-based practice regarding whistle-blowing. (shrink)

In Prior Analytics 1.15, Aristotle attempts to give a proof through the impossible of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, and Ferio with an assertoric first premiss, a contingent second premiss, and a possible conclusion. These proofs have been controversial since antiquity. I shall show that they are valid, and that Aristotle is able to explain them by relying on two meta-syllogistic lemmas on the nature of possibility interpreted as syntactic consistency. It will turn out that Aristotle's proofs are not of the intended (...) schemata. I shall investigate some of the results that the impact of this reconstruction on the modal syllogistic has: the relationship between Aristotle's syllogistic and the logics of relevance; the value of Aristotle's requirement that universal affirmative propositions be taken ‘absolutely’; the destruction of many Aristotelian proofs; the recovery of certain principles of modal opposition from a charge of inconsistency. (shrink)

Avicenna is the most influential figure in the intellectual history of the Islamic world. This book is the first comprehensive study of his theory of science, which profoundly shaped his philosophical method and indirectly influenced philosophers and theologians not only in the Islamic world but also throughout Christian Europe and the medieval Jewish tradition. A sophisticated interpreter of Aristotle’s _Posterior Analytics_, Avicenna took on the ambitious task of reorganizing Aristotelian philosophy of science into an applicable model of scientific reasoning, striving (...) to identify conditions of certainty for scientific assertions and conditions of adequacy for real definitions. Riccardo Strobino combines philosophical and textual analysis to explore the scope and nature of Avicenna’s contributions to the logic of scientific reasoning in his effort to recalibrate Aristotle’s model and overcome some of its internal limitations. Focusing on a broad array of philosophical innovations at the intersection of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology, this book casts light on an essential aspect of the thought of the preeminent philosopher and physician of the Islamic world. (shrink)

Herbert Simon's renowned theory of bounded rationality is principally interested in cognitive constraints and environmental factors and influences which prevent people from thinking or behaving according to formal rationality. Simon's theory has been expanded in numerous directions and taken up by various disciplines with an interest in how humans think and behave. This includes philosophy, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, economics, political science, sociology, management, and organization studies. The Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality draws together an international team of leading experts to (...) survey the recent literature and the latest developments in these related fields. The chapters feature entries on key behavioural phenomena, including reasoning, judgement, decision making, uncertainty, risk, heuristics and biases, and fast and frugal heuristics. The text also examines current ideas such as fast and slow thinking, nudge, ecological rationality, evolutionary psychology, embodied cognition, and neurophilosophy. Overall, the volume serves to provide the most complete state-of-the-art collection on bounded rationality available. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of economics, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, political sciences, and philosophy. (shrink)

Processes are occurrents that were, are, or will be happening. They endure or they perdure, i.e. they are either “fully” present at every time they happen, or they rather have temporal parts. According to Stout (2016), they endure. His argument assumes that processes may change. Then, Stout argues that, if something changes, it endures. As I show, Stout’s Argument misses its target. In particular, it makes use of a notion of change that is either intuitive but illegitimate or technical but (...) question-begging. (shrink)

In May 2023, Reset Dialogues on Civilizations organized the international conference ‘Nationalism, Nation-Building, and the Decline of Empires’ in Dublin. The purpose was to gather a group of historians, political scientists, theorists, philosophers, and experts who could grasp the significant trends, over the long term, in nationalism, nation-building, and imperial issues and could create a forum for dialogue that would compare different, and in many ways related, contexts, defining the challenges of the contemporary politics in the international scene.

Sharing a public language facilitates particularly efficient forms of joint perception and action by giving interlocutors refined tools for directing attention and aligning conceptual models and action. We hypothesized that interlocutors who flexibly align their linguistic practices and converge on a shared language will improve their cooperative performance on joint tasks. To test this prediction, we employed a novel experimental design, in which pairs of participants cooperated linguistically to solve a perceptual task. We found that dyad members generally showed a (...) high propensity to adapt to each other’s linguistic practices. However, although general linguistic alignment did not have a positive effect on performance, the alignment of particular task-relevant vocabularies strongly correlated with collective performance. In other words, the more dyad members selectively aligned linguistic tools fit for the task, the better they performed. Our work thus uncovers the interplay between social dynamics and sensitivity to task affordances in successful cooperation. (shrink)

In 1991, new political discourses emerged in the Soviet republics that had to reinvent themselves as independent states, redefining their national identity on several dimensions. This process matured ambiguous attitudes toward the former imperial center and different visions over the scopes, perspectives, and claims of a ‘Russian World’ in the former Soviet space, where Moscow still asserted an exclusive political and cultural sphere of influence. In this article, we will review the cases of Armenia and Uzbekistan with peculiar national projects (...) and relationships with Moscow, reviewing their inclusion within the USSR, their path to independence, their post-Soviet relations with Moscow, and the changes during the turning points of 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its introduction into clinical pathways presents an array of ethical issues that are being discussed in the JME. 1–7 The development of AI technologies that can produce text that will pass plagiarism detectors 8 and are capable of appearing to be written by a human author 9 present new issues for medical ethics. One set of worries concerns authorship and whether it will now be possible to know that an author or student in fact produced submitted (...) work. That seems likely to be a general worry for secondary and higher education, as well as for all academic journals. Thus far generative AI chatbots do not seem to be able to produce a fully referenced and well-argued ethics article, but they probably could generate a blog or student essay that would... (shrink)

Vocational Education and Training programs are fuelled by technical and practical educational modules. The teaching staff adopts both traditional and innovative pedagogical frameworks to increase the generalization and maintenance of practical skills. At the same time, VET teachers and trainers have a few occasions to promote and include disciplines and educational programs for enhancing students' soft skills, e.g., critical thinking skills and media literacy. Following the European VET framework and literature of the field, CT and ML represent a social challenge (...) that requires even more efforts by academics, practitioners, and policymakers. Thisstudy situates into this context with the aim of introducing a novel educational approach for supporting the teaching staff in the promotion of students' CT and ML. This educational approach has been realized by the team of researchers and trainers of the NERDVET project, an Erasmus+ KA3 project devoted to the promotion of new tools and policies for enhancing CT and ML in VET. To pursue this aim, the team has employed the self-nudging model which regards the individuals' set of cognitive and behavioral strategies that individuals can develop to target a specific objective. By framing pedagogical strategies into this perspective, the team realized an initial approach for educational activities and teaching strategies to promote students' CT and ML. (shrink)

At Prior Analytics II 22.68a16–21, Aristotle argues that if A is predicated of all B and C and nothing else, and B is predicated of all C, then A and B convert. In justifying his argument, however, he appears to claim that B is not predicated of all A. This claim has long been a cause of puzzlement to commentators. A widespread view is that the kind of conversion discussed in the passage at issue should be explained in both extensional (...) and intensional terms. After providing some textual evidence that Aristotle only apparently claims that B is not predicated of all A, I give a purely extensional account of Aristotle’s argument. This account is plausible, conservative and simpler than any of the intensional accounts that have been proposed so far. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the reception of Owen's thought in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy. The articles shows that while Owen attracted the attentionof Piedmontese liberals in the early 1820s, such as Giovanni Arrivabene, and were integrated into the wider Risorgimento, they were, as the Guiseppe Manzzini's work demonstrated, eclipsed by what were considered more the immediate political objectives of the Risorgimento. Where Owen's ideas did attract widespread interest was on the question of educational reform. This was because education was very (...) much bound up with questions of individual independence, autonomy, and self-governance that were also integral to the political objectives of the Risorgimento. The article traces the impact of Owen's educational thought not only in the nineteenth-century Italian context but in the twentieth century as well. It shows how Owen's reflections on the role of education in character formation would prove important to twentieth-century Italian political and social thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 91-92 [Access article in PDF] Jaspers and Defining Phenomenology John McMillan IT IS POSSIBLE TO DISTINGUISH a number of positions that you might take on the importance of phenomenology for the study of the mind. The strongest position is to think that phenomenology is sufficient for understanding the mind. This is a position that would be very hard to defend and it (...) is unlikely that Gupta and Kay want to endorse such a view. It is clear that Jaspers did not believe this; although he thought that first-person experience was undervalued, his project was an attempt to make sense of different kinds of explanation, all of which contribute to our understanding of the mind.A second position is to deny that phenomenology gives us anything that is of use in understanding the mind and psychopathology. Philosophers have developed a number of such positions, from the eliminativism of Churchland (1981) to the heterophenomenology of Daniel Dennett (1989, 1991).A third position is to hold that phenomenology is one of the methods that are useful for understanding the mind and psychopathology. Along with neuroscience and other more behavioral approaches to behavior, phenomenology is an important component of an adequate understanding of the mind. This position appears to be that endorsed by Jaspers, Gupta, Kay, and the authors they discuss. It is also the position that Grant Gillett and I defend in Consciousness and Intentionality (2001). Gupta and Kay's paper presents an argument about where the boundaries between phenomenology and other approaches to the mind and psychopathology ought to be drawn. Gupta and Kay, following Jaspers, think that the boundaries of the phenomenological ought to be drawn around those approaches that employ empathy and the presuppositionless stance and do not include objective phenomena.Given that the paper is primarily about what phenomenology means and that it endorses the way that Jaspers used the term, it is fairly important that we have a definition from Jaspers. Gupta and Kay give a description of some of Jaspers's methods for getting at subjective phenomena, but do not give an account of what Jaspers thinks the aim of phenomenology is. In other words, one way to classify something as phenomenological is its methods and another is by what the point of the exercise is. In General Psychopathology, Jaspers (1997) says that phenomenology is an empirical method for investigating "individual psychic experience" (p. 55). We can think of this as a claim about the objective of phenomenology and then consider the merits of different phenomenological methodologies in terms of their success in achieving this objective. This opens up the possibility that a theory may be genuinely phenomenological because it has a plausible method for getting at psychic lived experience but does not use all of the methods advocated by Jaspers.Gupta and Kay are correct that Jaspers does stress the importance of the presuppositionless [End Page 91] stance, the importance of empathy and the importance of not simply relying on objective phenomena. However, it is not obvious why an approach to understanding the mind or psycho- pathology must satisfy these conditions to be phenomenological. Imagine the following kind of situation: when I am observed to hit my big toe against a brick and give a yelp, it is possible to infer something about my psychic lived experience. There is not much is room for doubt about my first-person experience and, although you might ask me questions about my pain, they are unlikely to add much to what you can simply read from my behavior. This example may appear a little crude because the first-person experience in this case is not especially complex and is not that interesting as a entrance to the inner workings of an individual's mental life. It is not hard to come up with other examples where we can read the first-person experience from behavior in a fairly accurate and informative way. A father gazing at his young child while she is sleeping in his arms may be having a number of thoughts that we would not know about... (shrink)

What is the proper unit of analysis in the psycholinguistics of dialog? While classical approaches are largely based on models of individual linguistic processing, recent advances stress the social coordinative nature of dialog. In the influential interactive alignment model, dialogue is thus approached as the progressive entrainment of interlocutors' linguistic behaviors toward the alignment of situation models. Still, the driving mechanisms are attributed to individual cognition in the form of automatic structural priming. Challenging these ideas, we outline a dynamical framework (...) for studying dialog based on the notion of interpersonal synergy. Crucial to this synergetic model is the emphasis on dialog as an emergent, self-organizing, interpersonal system capable of functional coordination. A consequence of this model is that linguistic processes cannot be reduced to the workings of individual cognitive systems but must be approached also at the interpersonal level. From the synergy model follows a number of new predictions: beyond simple synchrony, good dialog affords complementary dynamics, constrained by contextual sensitivity and functional specificity. We substantiate our arguments by reference to recent empirical studies supporting the idea of dialog as interpersonal synergy. (shrink)

Human social coordination is often mediated by language. Through verbal dialogue, people direct each other’s attention to properties of their shared environment, they discuss how to jointly solve problems, share their introspections, and distribute roles and assignments. In this article, we propose a dynamical framework for the study of the coordinative role of language. Based on a review of a number of recent experimental studies, we argue that shared symbolic patterns emerge and stabilize through a process of local reciprocal linguistic (...) alignment. Such patterns in turn come to facilitate and refine social coordination by enabling the alignment, joint construction and navigation of conceptual models and actions. Implications of the framework are illustrated and discussed in relation to a case study where dyads of interlocutors interact verbally to reach joint decisions in a perceptual discrimination task. (shrink)

This work provides an analysis of the basic cognitive components of envy. In particular, the roles played by the envious party's social comparison with, and ill will against, the better off are emphasised. The ill will component is characterised by the envier's ultimate goal or wish that the envied suffer some harm, and is distinguished from resentment and sense of injustice, which have often been considered part of envy. The reprehensible nature of envy is discussed, and traced back to the (...) analysis of its components. Finally, we explore both points of overlap and distinguishing features between envy and other emotions such as jealousy or emulation, and make a few general remarks, pointing to the necessity of overcoming conceptual looseness in the notion of envy. (shrink)

Plotinus’ outline of his method on inquiry on eternity and time in 3.7(45).1.4 includes a reference to ‘concentrated apprehensions of thought’ ([…] ταῖς τῆς ἐννοίας ἀθροωτέραις ἐπιβολαῖς […]). Scholars sometimes argue that Plotinus is here referring to the Epicurean notion of ἀθρόα ἐπιβολή (Epic., Ep. Hdt. 35.9; PHerc. 346, col. 4.24–28). I suggest instead that Gal., mm x.38 Kühn provides the closest parallel to Plotinus’ passage. Further parallels between 3.7 and Galens’ lost On Demonstration suggest that Galen, not Epicurus, is (...) Plotinus’ immediate source. (shrink)

The speculative direction that Fink in the ’30s had imprinted on phenomenology finds its development – distant in many ways from its theoretical premises in Husserl’s thought – in the first university lectures of the post-war period, among which Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1947) is of peculiar relevance. Some common threads connect Fink’s early phenomenological reflections with his following attempt to develop a philosophical cosmology and anthropology. In the course of lectures here examined we can see the revival of (...) the theme that considers philosophy – understood as a radical inquiring, open to the world and at the same time to the self of the human being – the primary place of freedom. In connection with this theme Fink theorizes a concept of freedom that does not confine freedom to a subjective polar opposite to nature, but focuses on the exposure of the human being to the world. Fink, indeed, starts a discussion on the question of freedom through a comparison between two opposite patterns of thought, namely the philosophies of Kant and Nietzsche, read with a perspective that puts both these philosophies in contrast to the absolutization of subjectivity in the systems of German idealism. (shrink)

The notion of intersubjectivity has achieved a primary status in contemporary psychoanalytic debate, stimulating new theoretical proposals as well as controversies. This paper presents an overview of the main contributions on inter-subjectivity in the field of neurosciences. In humans as well as—probably—in other species, the ability for emotional resonance is guaranteed early in development. Based on this capacity, a primary sense of connectedness is established that can be defined inter-subjective in that it entails sharing affective states and intentions with caregivers. (...) We propose to define such a form of inter-subjectivity ascontingent, since the infant’s early abilities for resonance do not imply the more generalized capacity to permanently conceive of the relationship outside the realm of current interactions and the infant-caregiver’s mutual correspondence of internal states. This form of connection, hence, results in a self-referential, bodily, and affectively codified, context- and time dependent, like-me experience of interactions. The gradual maturation of brain structures and processes as well as interactive experiences allow proper intersubjectivity exchanges, grounded on new intentional and representational capacities, to evolve. In this more mature form of intersubjectivity, the individual is allowed to conceive of her own psychic space both as distinct and as possibly connected with the other’s contents and experience, even in the absence of current behavioral indicators of such correspondence. This multi-layered model of intersubjectivity, which is embraced by current neuroscience research, seems to allow for new interpretations of psychoanalytic models of human relatedness based upon classic clinical observations. (shrink)

Contempt and disgust share a number of features which distinguish them from other hostile emotions: they both present two distinct facets—a nonmoral facet and a moral one; they both imply a negative evaluation of the dispositional kind as well as disrespect towards the target of the feeling; and they trigger avoidance and exclusion action tendencies. However, while sharing a common core, contempt and disgust are in our view distinct emotions, qualified by different cognitive-motivational features. Contempt is felt exclusively towards human (...) targets, and implies sense of superiority over them, pessimistic feelings about their possibility of betterment, detachment from them, and avoidance driven by detachment; whereas disgust can be directed at a wide range of possible targets, and implies contamination sensitivity, fear of contamination, and fear-driven avoidance. The differences between contempt and disgust are related to the different kinds of standard against which the target is evaluated, and the different kinds of disrespect engendered by the negative evaluation. (shrink)

This paper offers an analysis of a hitherto neglected text on insoluble propositions dating from the late XiVth century and puts it into perspective within the context of the contemporary debate concerning semantic paradoxes. The author of the text is the italian logician Peter of Mantua (d. 1399/1400). The treatise is relevant both from a theoretical and from a historical standpoint. By appealing to a distinction between two senses in which propositions are said to be true, it offers an unusual (...) solution to the paradox, but in a traditional spirit that contrasts a number of trends prevailing in the XiVth century. It also counts as a remarkable piece of evidence for the reconstruction of the reception of English logic in italy, as it is inspired by the views of John Wyclif. Three approaches addressing the Liar paradox (Albert of Saxony, William Heytesbury and a version of strong restrictionism) are first criticised by Peter of Mantua, before he presents his own alternative solution. The latter seems to have a prima facie intuitive justification, but is in fact acceptable only on a very restricted understanding, since its generalisation is subject to the so-called revenge problem. (shrink)

Empirical research in bioethics has developed rapidly over the past decade, but has largely eschewed the use of technology-driven methodologies. We propose “design bioethics” as an area of conjoined theoretical and methodological innovation in the field, working across bioethics, health sciences and human-centred technological design. We demonstrate the potential of digital tools, particularly purpose-built digital games, to align with theoretical frameworks in bioethics for empirical research, integrating context, narrative and embodiment in moral decision-making. Purpose-built digital tools can engender situated engagement (...) with bioethical questions; can achieve such engagement at scale; and can access groups traditionally under-represented in bioethics research and theory. If developed and used with appropriate rigor, tools motivated by “design bioethics” could offer unique insights into new and familiar normative and empirical issues in the field. (shrink)

This essay is about the Wolfgang Köhler’s philosophical ideas expressed in his The Place of Value in a World of Facts of 1938. Köhler, who strongly supports a scientific world view, considers the question as to whether science is able to cope with human values, besides natural facts. Relying upon phenomenological analyses, and on his previous researches in natural philosophy, Köhler introduces his doctrine of “epistemological dualism”. From a historical point of view, this theory exhibits some similarity with the philosophical (...) ideas expressed by Köhler’s Berlin mentor Carl Stumpf. It is argued that Köhler’s epistemological dualism actually supports ontological monism and aims at offering a unified view of natural facts and human values. (shrink)