Can Only Human Lives Be Meaningful?

Duncan Purves and Nicolas Delon have argued that one’s life will be meaningful to the extent that one contributes to valuable states of affairs and this contribution is a result of one’s intentional actions. They then argue, contrary to some theorists’ intuitions, that non-human animals are capable of fulfilling these requirements, and that this finding might entail important things for the animal ethics movement. In this paper, I also argue that things besides human beings can have meaningful existences, but I disagree with Purves and Delon’s theory of meaning, and some of the practical implications they suggest arise from their conclusion. Specifically, I argue that Purves and Delon are wrong to suggest that intentional agency is necessary for one’s life to be meaningful; contributing to valuable states of affairs can be sufficient by itself. Purves and Delon’s objection to such a claim is that it would allow even inanimate objects’ existences to count as meaningful. However, while I accept this consequence, I argue that it only seems counterintuitive because of two false beliefs they appear to hold: that some X cannot have a meaningful existence without that meaning (a) making X better off or (b) giving X reasons for pride.     

Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome?

Philosophia - In this article, I critique a moral argument developed in Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. The argument, which I label the Best...     

Consume More,Work Longer,and Be Unhappy: Possible Social Roots of Economic Crisis?

Applied Research in Quality of Life - According to the Negative Endogenous Growth (NEG) model, economic systems are susceptible to economic crises because they produce wealth from the erosion of...     

Subjects Without a World? An Husserlian Analysis of Solitary Confinement

Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian has proposed the term “SHU syndrome” to name the cluster of cognitive, perceptual and affective symptoms that commonly arise for inmates held in the Special Housing Units (SHU) of supermax prisons. In this paper, I analyze the harm of solitary confinement from a phenomenological perspective by drawing on Husserl’s account of the essential relation between consciousness, the experience of an alter ego and the sense of a real, Objective world. While Husserl’s prioritization of transcendental subjectivity over transcendental intersubjectivity underestimates the degree to which first-person consciousness is constitutively intertwined with the embodied consciousness of others, Husserl’s phenomenology nevertheless provides a fruitful starting-point for a philosophical engagement with the psychiatric research on solitary confinement.     

How Could There Be True Causal Claims Without There Being Special Causal Facts in the World?

Some philosophers of physics recently expressed their skepticism about causation (Norton 2003b, 2007). However, this is not new. The view that causation does not refer to any ontological category perhaps can be attributed to Hume, Kant and Russell. On the other hand, some philosophers (Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe) view causation as a physical process and some others (Cartwright) view causation as making claims about capacities possessed by objects. The issue about the ontological status of causal claims involves issues concerning the ontological status of capacity, modality and dispositional claims. In this paper, my goal is to show that without engaging metaphysical debates about the ontological status of causal claims, it can be shown that we can objectively assign truth values to these statements. I argue that for causal claims to be objective we don't need to postulate the existence of special facts (specific to causal claims) in addition to ordinary physical facts described by physical theories. This, I think, is enough to justify the usefulness of this concept in certain branches (may be all) of science. Once this is achieved, there is no need to engage in unnecessary metaphysical debates. So, even if advanced physical theories don't mention this notion, causal reasoning can still be important in understanding the world not in the sense that science discovers special ontological category called causation but in the sense that we come to know certain facts about the world.     

Millennials and the World of Work: An Economist’s Perspective

This article uses an economic approach to address whether and how the Millennial generation is significantly different from its predecessors. Particular attention is paid to the normal life cycle stages through which all generations pass, and the implications for forecasting how the Millennials’ relationship with the world of work will evolve. A second key issue is the extremely large differences in economic opportunity that exist among the members of each generation, and which have increased for more recent generations, particularly those with lower levels of education. Other key issues include the rise in international competition for jobs, and the rising cost of a college education. These factors together imply that simple stereotypes about Millennials taking a privileged view of the world of work may be simplistic at best, and likely are significantly off target.     

Did Mom Really Love You Best? Developmental Histories,Status Transitions,and Parental Favoritism in Later Life Families

In this paper, we draw upon insights from the developmental psychological literature on younger families to investigate within-family differences in parent–adult child relations in later life families. Using data from 30 families, we examine whether mothers aged 65–75 report greater closeness to particular adult children, and the extent to which patterns of closeness can be explained by within-family differences in the children's status transitions and developmental histories. Eighty percent of the mothers reported being closer to at least one of their adult children. Further, mothers were more likely to report that the children to whom they were closest had experienced nonnormative status transitions or other problematic events that had been involuntary and had made the children more dependent on their mothers. In contrast, mothers were least likely to name children who experienced voluntary problematic events. Comparison of the data from mothers with that from adult children revealed substantial discrepancies in reporting developmental histories, thus demonstrating the limitations imposed by collecting data from only one generation. Taken together, these findings suggest that examining within-family variations in social structural transitions and developmental histories, in combination with collecting data from multiple generations, may shed light on the quality of intergenerational relations.     

Can We Really Have It All? The Attainment of Work and Family Values

We discuss the role values and value attainment play in the complex and dynamic process of balancing work and family demands. We contend that an individual experiences conflict between work and family demands because of value incongruence between that individual and a pivotal family member (i.e., lack of value similarity) or because of the incongruent values between that individual and the organization (i.e., lack of value congruence). We further argue that work-family conflict leads to job and life dissatisfaction for individuals because this conflict frustrates the attainment of important work and family values. We develop and propose a conceptual model, capturing both work and family values as they relate to work-family conflict, value attainment, and outcomes.     

Pediatric Neuropsychological Reports: Do They Really Have To Be So Long?

This article offers a proposal to keep reports on pediatric neuropsychological assessments succinct and specific. A format is recommended that emphasizes interpretation and implications of assessment data, as opposed to detailed review of numeric test results. Practical applications and ramifications are discussed and are illustrated with case examples.     

What Should a Correspondence Theory Be and Do?

Correspondence theories are frequently either too vaguely expressed – “true statements correspond to the way things are in the world,” or implausible – “true statements mirror raw, mind-independent reality.” I address this problem by developing features and roles that ought to characterize what I call ldquo;modest” correspondence theories. Of special importance is the role of correspondence in directing our responses to cases of suspected non-factuality; lack of straightforward correspondence shows the need for, and guides us in our choice of, various kinds of reconstrual projects. This, I argue, is in contrast to the approaches suggested by deflationism and coherence, and thus modest correspondence theories are appropriately distinct from rivals     

It's a Total Way of Life? Catholic Priests,Women's Ordination,and Identity Work

Research has shown Catholic priests to be polarized on a few issues, including women's ordination. Explanations have been offered for why priests are initially polarized—particularly the influence of ordination cohort—but not for how attitudes are maintained over time. Using 31 in‐depth interviews with Catholic priests in the United Kingdom, I find that priests are indeed polarized into groups I call “Total Identity Priests” and “Plural Identity Priests.” Taking the example of women's ordination, I show that these two groups of priests maintain their anti‐ or pro‐women's ordination attitudes (respectively) via patterned, everyday identity work, in which they mobilize available cultural schemata. I highlight four areas in which their identity work differs: explicit identity talk, narratives of calling, clericalism and titles, and clothing. This identity work serves to summarize, communicate, and reinforce their personal identities, which in turn reinforce their existing attitudes towards women's ordination.     

Whose Lives? How History,Societies, and Institutions Define and Shape Life Courses

This article outlines how current sociology constructs life courses. First, a set of general heuristics is provided. Second, the development of life course sociology over the last 50 years is traced as an intellectual process whereby the life course has emerged as an analytical construct in addition to such concepts as human development, biography, and aging. A differential life course sociology has gradually developed in which contexts are specified according to time and place. Third, these differential constraints operating on life courses are illustrated from the perspective of 2 research areas. One perspective introduces historical periods as a sequence of regimes that regulate life courses. Another perspective looks at cross-national differences and especially focuses on institutions as the mechanisms by which life courses are shaped. The article concludes with reflections about the relation between the variable social contexts of life courses and human development.