Dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists (nor should they be)

Sometimes in philosophy one view engenders another. If you hold the first, chances are you hold the second. But it’s not always because the first entails the second. Sometimes the tie is less clear, less clean. One such tie is between substance dualism and anti-criterialism. Substance dualism is the view that people are, at least in part, immaterial mental substances. Anti-criterialism is the view that there is no criterion of personal identity through time. Most philosophers who hold the first view also hold the second. In fact, many philosophers just assume that substance dualists ought to, or perhaps even have to, accept anti-criterialism. But I aim to show that this assumption is baseless. Substance dualism doesn’t entail, suggest, support, or in any way motivate anti-criterialism, and anti-criterialism confers no benefit on dualism. Substance dualists have no special reason—and, indeed, no good reason at all—to accept anti-criterialism. Or so I shall argue. My aim isn’t to defend substance dualism, nor is it to attack anti-criterialism. My aim is to show that, contrary to a long-standing trend, dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists. Nor, as it will turn out, should they be.     

So why can’t you intend to drink the toxin?

In this paper I revisit Gregory Kavka’s Toxin Puzzle and propose a novel solution to it. Like some previous accounts, mine postulates a tight link between intentions and reasons but, unlike them, in my account these are motivating rather than normative reasons, i.e. reasons that explain (rather than justify) the intended action. I argue that sensitivity to the absence of possible motivational explanations for the intended action is constitutive of deliberation-based intentions. Since ordinary rational agents display this sensitivity, when placed in the toxin scenario they will believe that there is no motivational explanation for actually drinking the toxin and this is why they can’t form the intention to drink it in the first place. I thus argue that my Motivating-Explanatory Reason Principle correctly explains the toxin puzzle, thereby revealing itself as a genuine metaphysical constraint on intentions. I also explore at length the implications of my account for the nature of intention and rational agency.     

I might ease your pain,but only if you’re sad: The impact of the empathized emotion in the empathy-helping association

Ample research demonstrated that empathizing with someone in need promotes helping that person. Two studies examined whether this effect of empathy on helping behavior holds across different emotional reactions expressed by a target in need. Results of Study 1 indicate that perspective taking with a sad needy target increased empathic concern which, in turn, fostered helping the individual. This relation was not found for participants taking the perspective of angry or disgusted needy targets. Study 2 provides further support for the underlying mechanism of the results of Study 1. Perspective taking with a sad needy target increased empathizers’ empathic concern because perception of target neediness was increased. Again, this pattern was not found for perspective taking with an angry needy target. The findings correspond to theorizing on the role of emotions in person perception. Hence, the current research provides insights regarding the boundary conditions of the empathy-helping association.     

Why we should(n’t) be discretionists about free will

One of the projects Shaun Nichols takes up in Bound is to provide a folk psychological diagnosis of the problem of free will. As part of this diagnosis, Nichols suggests that the dispute between eliminativists (those who claim free will does not exist) and preservationists (those who claim free will does exist) depends to some extent on assumptions about the way ‘free will’ refers. In light of this, he argues that we might have good reason to accept a discretionary view of free will. Here, I will focus on teasing out some of the more fine-grained features of the discretionary view Nichols proposes. In so doing I will challenge the idea that there is a tenable strategy for consistently preserving two main features of the view: (1) that eliminativists and preservationists can both speak truly, and (2) that the apparent disagreement between them can be diffused by appealing to the role that different practical interests play in the context of utterance. I will conclude with some suggestive remarks on how the spirit of the discretionary view Nichols offers might still be preserved despite the challenge I raise, and why there are good reasons to pursue this kind of view further.     

When are you dead enough to be a donor? Can any feasible protocol for the determination of death on circulatory criteria respect the dead donor rule?

The basic question concerning the compatibility of donation after circulatory death (DCD) protocols with the dead donor rule is whether such protocols can guarantee that the loss of relevant biological functions is truly irreversible. Which functions are the relevant ones? I argue that the answer to this question can be derived neither from a proper understanding of the meaning of the term “death” nor from a proper understanding of the nature of death as a biological phenomenon. The concept of death can be made fully determinate only by stipulation. I propose to focus on the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness and the capacity for spontaneous breathing. Having accepted that proposal, the meaning of “irreversibility” need not be twisted in order to claim that DCD protocols can guarantee that the loss of these functions is irreversible. And this guarantee does not mean that reversing that loss is either conceptually impossible or known to be impossible with absolute certainty.

     

‘… you kind of frantically go from one thing to the next and there isn’t any time for thinking any more’: a reflection on the impact of organisational change on relatedness in multidisciplinary teams

This paper reflects on the relational impact on Clinical Psychologists of NHS organisational change in the context of cuts and reorganisation. The reflections illustrate one theme drawn from a study of eight Clinical Psychologists working within adult Community Mental Health Multi-Disciplinary Teams. The paper considers the impact of competition and change in healthcare on the ability to engage in reflective practice potentially affecting client care due to reduced joint-working, consistency and creativity. The paper considers how acts of kindness (compassion) within organisational contexts at all levels can facilitate relatedness, reflection and more human care. It concludes by considering how shifting from short-term planning evaluating efficiencies based on perceived financial value, to thinking more widely and long-term about relational value may be of benefit to clinicians, clients and the system as a whole.     

Your Sexism Predicts My Sexism: Perceptions of Men’s (but not Women’s) Sexism Affects One’s Own Sexism Over Time

The effects of perceived normative (societal) levels of benevolent (BS) and hostile sexism (HS) on one’s own sexist attitudes were examined over a four-month period in an undergraduate New Zealand sample (76 women, 26 men). Perceptions of normative levels of men’s BS produced longitudinal change in one’s own BS, and this effect was invariant across gender. However, contrary to previous research suggesting that women endorse BS when men are high in HS for its protective benefits, women instead expressed subjectively positive paternalistic attitudes toward their gender to the extent that they perceived BS as normative in men. The transmission of patriarchical-defined ideologies is tempered by the degree to which such ideologies espouse benevolent versus more overtly hostile attitudes toward women.     

Response to ‘Transgender medicalization and the attempt to evade psychological distress’ (Withers 2020) and to Herdzik’s (2021) response to Withers

Psyche is non-binary and multiple and clinical work in the analytic container must be held in the fluidity of multiplicity. Analysts are called to bring Queer energy to analytical attitude. Queer energy is intrinsically non-conforming and desires to confront a priori concepts in service to the unfolding of the Self. A Queer analytic attitude seeks to blur narrative, deconstruct language and listen deeply for what is emergent in the field. Queer energy is also deeply activating and often results in polarizations of attitude and a failure to hold what is emergent. This response to Withers (2020) and to (Herdzik 2021) is an invitation for all of us to engage our activated complexes around work with transgender issues and the fluidity of the Queer experience. The multiplicity of the Self seeks to be known through analytic process. Consciously held authentic experience of what is emergent and thus unknown is at the core of this process. An analysis capable of holding Queer energy offers a theatre for the exploration of gender identity and its expression.     

I hear you (not): sharers’ expressions and listeners’ inferences of the need for support in response to negative emotions

When in emotional distress, people often turn to others for support. Paradoxically, even when people perceive social support to be beneficial, it often does not result in emotional recovery. This paradox may be explained by the fact that the sharing process disproportionately centres on support that is not helpful in the long run. A distinction has been made between two types of support that are differentially effective: Whereas socio-affective support alleviates momentary emotional distress, cognitive support fosters long-term recovery. But can listeners tell what support the sharer needs? The present study examines the hypothesis that sharers communicate their support goals by sharing in such a way that it allows listeners to infer the sharer’s needs. In Experiment 1, we manipulated participants’ support goals, and showed that socio-affective support goals led participants to express more emotions, whereas cognitive support goals resulted in greater use of appraisals. In Experiments 2 and 3, we tested whether these differential expressions would affect the support goals that listeners inferred. We found no evidence for such an effect: Listeners consistently perceived the sharer to predominantly want socio-affective support. These findings help explain why many social sharing instances revolve around socio-affective support, leading to subjectively experienced benefits, but not to genuine recovery.     

How (not) to think of the ‘dead-donor’ rule

Although much has been written on the dead-donor rule (DDR) in the last twenty-five years, scant attention has been paid to how it should be formulated, what its rationale is, and why it was accepted. The DDR can be formulated in terms of either a Don’t Kill rule or a Death Requirement, the former being historically rooted in absolutist ethics and the latter in a prudential policy aimed at securing trust in the transplant enterprise. I contend that the moral core of the rule is the Don’t Kill rule, not the Death Requirement. This, I show, is how the DDR was understood by the transplanters of the 1960s, who sought to conform their practices to their ethics—unlike today’s critics of the DDR, who rethink their ethics in a question-begging fashion to accommodate their practices. A better discussion of the ethics of killing is needed to move the debate forward.     

“Why do (don't) you ask?” transference and the desire (not) to know

One of the criterial distinctions of psychoanalysis is its renunciation of indoctrination through suggestion. In spite of the fact that psychoanalysis is both an organized body of knowledge and a disciplined form of interpersonal influence, it regards an analyst who tells the analysand what to think or do as essentially doing harm by substituting a new form of prejudice and alienation for the preexisting form he is attacking. Even though an analyst regards his knowledge of psychoanalytic theory as adequate at a general level, this "truth" is not an adequate mode of discourse with an individual. Why not? It is a fact that analysands often do not accept an analyst's idea. However, the fundamental problematic of clinical psychoanalysis comes precisely at the point that the analysand would accept the analyst's idea, involving the distinction between a properly psychoanalytic cure and a transference cure. Psychoanalytic theory itself holds that unreflective incorporation of another's idea about oneself comes at the expense of autonomous and spontaneous self-revelation. Despite its resolute pursuit of new truths, the aim of psychoanalysis is less concerned with attaining specific ideas about unrecognized conflicts than it is with achieving a general attitude--that self-understanding requires a capacity to admit dubious and unwanted ideas and feelings that symptoms, dreams, and free associations bring to light. This "psychoanalytic" attitude permits a new type of discourse in which the person recognizes himself or herself through expression, rather than parrotting the analyst's (or others') words, or continuing rigidly to hide the truth of desire for oneself. In the long run, psychoanalysis offers to correct a primary misunderstanding: that one can acquire a comprehensively true image of oneself. As Barratt (1988) emphasizes, this transformation is tantamount to a change in personal epistemology for the analysand and a change in epistemological theory for the culture as a whole. In our culture, most analysts and lay people alike take for granted that the ego is an agent that is to be integrated and strengthened in order to direct one's life. Likewise, the unconscious is commonly regarded as a type of savage alter ego that must be mastered by the ego. According to Lacan's critique, the ego is a snare and a delusion for the patient, however highly commended by society it may be, because its very essence is to furnish the illusion of enduring self-knowledge.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Cohen’s d needs to be readily interpretable: Comment on Shieh (2013)

Shieh (2013) discussed in detail δ*, a proposed standardized effect size measure for the two-independent-groups design with heteroscedasticity. Shieh focused on inference—notably, the large challenge of calculating confidence intervals for δ*. I contend, however, that the standardizer chosen for δ*, meaning the units in which it is expressed, is appropriate for inference but causes δ* to be inconsistent with conventional Cohen’s d. In addition, δ* depends on the relative sample sizes in the particular experiment and, thus, lacks the generality that is highly desirable if a standardized effect size is to be readily interpretable and also usable in meta-analysis. In the case of heteroscedasticity, I suggest that researchers should choose as standardizer for Cohen’s δ the best available estimate of the SD of an appropriate population, usually the control population, in preference to δ* as discussed by Shieh.     

‘May those who know nothing be content to listen': Loys Bourgeois's Advertissement to the Psalms (1551)

Abstract

In 1551 the Genevan cantor, Louis Bourgeois, published an updated collection of metrical psalms with melodies, as part of Jean Calvin's project to publish all 150 psalms in French verse. With this collection, Bourgeois wrote a short notice describing the changes he had made to some of the pre-existing psalm tunes, and offered advice to the congregation on how they might improve the quality of their psalm-singing. After the appearance of the publication, Bourgeois was imprisoned for making unauthorized changes to the psalms, and for encouraging people to remain silent rather than sing out of tune or out of time. Although the intervention of Calvin ensured the cantor's quick release, the Genevan town council ordered that all copies of the book be destroyed. For the first time, Bourgeois's Advertissement to the reader is presented here in the original and in English translation with commentary.     

What could have been done (but wasn’t). On the counterfactual status of action in Alva Noë’s theory of perception

Alva Noë’s strategy to solve the puzzle of perceptual presence entirely relies on the principle of presence as access. Unaccessed or unattended parts or details of objects are perceptually present insofar as they are accessible, and they are accessible insofar as one possesses sensorimotor skills that can secure their access. In this paper, I consider several arguments that can be opposed to this claim and that are chiefly related to the modal status of action, i.e. the fact that the action that would secure access to the absent aspects is a possibility, something that can (or maybe could) be done. The main difficulty Noë’s account must face is –as several situations demonstrate– that the action that should be performed for the absent aspects to be actually accessed does not have to be itself available for these aspects to be perceptually present. What matters for the absent aspects to be present is not their de facto (i.e. effective) accessibility, but their de jure accessibility. To overcome those difficulties, I propose to rely on a ternary model of the role of action possibilities in perceptual awareness. This model builds on Husserl’s analysis of the role of perceptual circumstances in perception and connection between sense (Sinn) registering and horizontal intentionality.