This chapter examines ethical concerns posed by one form of psychiatric research, the “challenge study,” whereby investigators administer a psychopharmacological agent or psychological challenge procedure to patients under controlled conditions to probe psychiatric symptoms and other neurobiological responses. The principal scientific rationale behind the “challenge study,” or “psychiatric symptom-provoking study,” is to learn more about the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms responsible for the symptomatic expression of psychiatric disorders. In addition, the knowledge gained from this type of study might lead to better (...) predictors of treatment response or the identification of novel therapeutic interventions. The chapter considers two issues related to psychiatric symptom-provoking studies and which have important implications for research ethics: informed consent and risk-benefit ratio. It also recommends guidelines for the design of psychiatric symptom-provoking studies and their review by institutional review boards. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop Mauricio Suárez’s distinction between denotation, epistemic representation, and faithful epistemic representation. I then outline an interpretational account of epistemic representation, according to which a vehicle represents a target for a certain user if and only if the user adopts an interpretation of the vehicle in terms of the target, which would allow them to perform valid (but not necessarily sound) surrogative inferences from the model to the system. The main difference between the interpretational conception I (...) defend here and Suárez’s inferential conception is that the interpretational account is a substantial account—interpretation is not just a “symptom” of representation; it is what makes something an epistemic representation of a something else. (shrink)

Taking steps to build a more dementia‐friendly society is essential for addressing the needs of people experiencing dementia. Initiatives that improve the quality of life for those living with dementia are needed to lessen controllable factors that can negatively influence how people envision a future trajectory of dementia for themselves. Programs that provide better funding and better coordination for care support would lessen caregiver burden and make it more possible to imagine more people being able to live what they might (...) consider a “good life” with dementia. Specific proposals, such as payment for dementia care managers and new systems to support high‐quality, symptom‐based palliative care beyond the hospice benefit of only six months, would improve and reframe how many people in the United States experience a dementia illness. Such changes should be incorporated into discussions about improving and respecting preferences in the later stages of dementia. (shrink)

One of the most commonly referenced ethical principles when it comes to the management of dying patients is the doctrine of double effect (DDE). The DDE affirms that it is acceptable to cause side effects (e.g. respiratory depression) as a consequence of symptom‐focused treatment. Much discussion of the ethics of end of life care focuses on the question of whether actions (or omissions) would hasten (or cause) death, and whether that is permissible. However, there is a separate question about the (...) permissibility of hastening or causing unconsciousness in dying patients. Some authors have argued that the DDE would not permit end of life care that directly aims to render the patient unconscious. The claim is that consciousness is an objective human good and therefore doctors should not intentionally (and permanently) suppress it. Three types of end of life care (EOLC) practices will be explored in this article. The first is symptom‐based management (e.g. analgesia); the second is proportional terminal sedation as a means of relieving suffering (also referred to as palliative sedation or continuous deep sedation); and finally, deliberate and rapid sedation to unconsciousness until death (a practice we call terminal anaesthesia in this paper). After examining the common arguments for the various types of symptom‐based management and sedation, we apply the DDE to the latter two types of EOLC practices. We argue that aiming at unconsciousness, contrary to some claims, can be morally good or at least morally neutral in some dying patients. (shrink)

There is one concept in medicine which is prominent, the symptom. The omnipresence of the symptom seems, however, not to be reflected by an equally prominent curiosity aimed at investigating this concept as a phenomenon. In classic, traditional or conventional medical diagnostics and treatment, the lack of distinction with respect to the symptom represents a minor problem. Faced with enigmatic conditions and their accompanying labels such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, medically unexplained symptoms, and functional somatic syndromes, the contestation of (...) the symptom and its origin is immediate and obvious and calls for further exploration. Based on a description of the diagnostic framework encompassing medically unexplained conditions and a brief introduction to how such symptoms are managed both within and outside of the medical clinic, we argue on one hand how unexplained conditions invite us to reconsider and re-think the concept we call a “symptom” and on the other hand how the concept “symptom” is no longer an adequate and necessary fulcrum and must be enriched by socio-cultural, phenomenological and existential dimensions. Consequently, our main aim is to expand both our interpretative horizon and the linguistic repertoire in the face of those appearances we label medically unexplained symptoms. (shrink)

Today, we encounter a question that has rarely been treated as a serious or provocative issue: women and sexuality as a philosophical problem. This theme now acts as a critical marker—an axis that divides entire fields of thought into a before and after. The beginning of this epistemic shift can be traced back to a Freudian question: What does a woman really want? In this article, we follow this question through the lens of Lacanian theory, in which he introduces the (...) concept of sexuation and illuminates the foggy, ambiguous terrain of femininity through the formulation of the hysterical discourse. Moving beyond a purely hysterical approach to womanhood, the French psychoanalyst carved a path for the re-inscription of her historically ambivalent and fragmented image. For Lacan, woman is a symptom—an embodiment of the fundamental contradiction and rupture within the symbolic order. The Woman does not exist; rather, la femme is a rebel who struggles to exist. (shrink)

Pojęcie gęstości systemów symbolicznych odgrywa kluczową rolę w książce Nelsona Goodmana Languages of Art. Po pierwsze, ma ono wyjaśniać różnicę między sztuką allograficzną (reprodukowalną, np. literaturą i muzyką) a sztuką autograficzną (niereprodukowalną, np. sztukami pięknymi). Po drugie, stanowi dla Goodmana jedyną odpowiedź na pytanie, co odróżnia reprezentację wizualną od innych sposobów symbolizacji, po tym, jak całkowicie odrzucił on jakąkolwiek rolę podobieństwa w tej funkcji. Wreszcie dwie wersje gęstości (syntaktyczna i semantyczna) stanowią dwa z czterech symptomów estetyczności (a więc pośrednio tego, (...) czym jest sztuka) proponowane przez Goodmana. Formalnie poprawna, adekwatna definicja gęstości ma zatem fundamentalne znaczenie dla jego teorii. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest wykazanie, że definicja Goodmana w żaden sposób nie spełnia oczekiwań, jakie Goodman wiąże z tym pojęciem. Jego definicja gęstości może być zastosowana tylko do nielicznych systemów symbolicznych. Wbrew sugestiom Goodmana, nie można jej zastosować do malarstwa ani reprezentacji wizualnej, a więc dokładnie do tych systemów symbolizacji, których specyficzne własności miały być za pomocą pojęcia gęstości wyjaśnione. Wynikiem analizy będzie konkluzja, że sposób, w jaki Goodman pojęcie to definiuje, nie da się utrzymać: jeśli chcemy dać wyraz intuicjom, które za nim stoją, musimy poszukiwać innej definicji. (shrink)

Advancements in women's reproductive health have been hindered by insufficient knowledge and the underrepresentation of women in research, leading to symptom‐focused care with poor outcomes. Modeling female reproductive biology and disease pathophysiology has been challenging due to the complexity and dynamic nature of the female organs. Here, we briefly review recent advancements made with a new in vitro microfluidic organ‐on‐a‐chip model of the human cervix (Cervix Chip) that faithfully mimics key features of the cervix, including mucus production and physiological responses (...) to hormonal, environmental, and microbial stimuli. We also discuss how this preclinical platform can provide a way to obtain unique insights into the role of mucosal immunity, genetic and risk factors, as well as microbiome and pathogen interactions in human cervix health and disease, while bridging knowledge gaps in fertility and pregnancy‐related conditions. By enabling preclinical drug screening and accelerating translational research, the Cervix Chip holds the potential to improve the development of therapeutics, diagnostics, and ultimately, the sexual and reproductive health of millions of women globally. (shrink)

Semantic pathology is most widely recognized in the liar paradox, where an apparent inconsistency arises in ‘‘liar sentences’’ and their ilk. But the phenomenon of semantic pathology also manifests a sibling symptom—an apparent indeterminacy—which, while not largely discussed (save for the occasional nod to ‘‘truthteller sentences’’), is just as pervasive as, and exactly parallels, the symptom of inconsistency. Moreover, certain ‘‘dual symptom’’ cases, which we call naysayers, exhibit both inconsistency and indeterminacy and also manifest a higher-order indeterminacy between them. In (...) this paper, we explore and lay out the full, broader extent of semantic pathology. We then turn to the best-known attempts to diagnose and treat the phenomenon: consistentist approaches, proposed by Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke, and an inconsistentist approach, originally presented by Graham Priest and dubbed ‘‘dialetheism’’. We explain the basic elements of each view and argue that each fails to provide an adequate way of dealing with the full extent of semantic pathology. We conclude that a new kind of approach is required and briefly sketch the pretense-based view that we favor. (shrink)

People with long‐term psychiatric disorders often display complex behaviours that cannot be fully explained by existing categories in diagnostic classification systems. As a result, translating such symptom profiles into truly person‐centred and recovery‐oriented care remains a challenge. This article explores how symptom‐focused observation through transdiagnostic dimensions can be integrated within person‐centred psychiatric nursing, and oriented toward meaning‐making and recovery. A narrative literature approach was used, based on an analysis of theoretical frameworks such as the Research Domain Criteria and practical insights (...) from psychiatric nursing. Structuring behaviour along symptom dimensions such as affect regulation or social cognition provides tools for understanding so‐called ‘challenging behaviour’. Nurses play a key role in this process, as they interpret symptoms based on individual context, values and needs. Symptom‐based approaches only become meaningful when linked to idiographic interpretation. This enhances a recovery‐oriented and relational model of person‐centred care. Observation instruments such as the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire may support nurses in interpreting symptoms, provided they are embedded within relational attunement. Nurses should be recognised as key actors in translating symptom profiles into person‐centred interventions within multidisciplinary teams. The analysis is theoretical in nature; practical application requires further empirical validation. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a novel interpretation of the so-called “negative symptoms” of schizophrenia (symptoms characterized by diminishment of overt behavior or expression, including flat affective expression, restricted speech, and apparent apathy), and I consider these symptoms in relation to key aspects of modern culture and consciousness. Contrary to standard assumptions, many “negative-symptom” experiences in schizophrenia actually involve forms of subjectivity characterized by hyperreflexivity and alienation – namely, by exacerbation of various kinds of self-consciousness, often involving disengagement from the (...) grounding frameworks, assumptions, and bodily dispositions that would normally serve as the taken-for-granted background of practical action and experience. Many of these features show a remarkable resemblance to key aspects of modern culture and society – which itself is marked by a “wholesale reflexivity” (Anthony Giddens) and associated detachment from shared, common-sense reality. After discussing these affinities between modernity and madness, I consider various ways in which modern society might actually contribute to, or at least exacerbate, certain characteristics of schizophrenia, and also how it might be especially problematic for persons with this style of being. The person with schizophrenia seems an anomalous yet also an exemplary figure: a person who fails to adopt the social practices or internalize the cultural frameworks essential to normal existence, yet who, in this very failure, typifies some of the most distinctive features of the modern age. (shrink)

Žižeks frühes Hauptwerk The Sublime Object of Ideology besteht aus drei Hauptkapiteln, von denen das erste „Das Symptom“ heißt, das seinerseits ein Unterkapitel mit dem Titel „Vom Symptom zum Sinthom“ beinhaltet. Dies zeigt die Bedeutung der beiden Begriffe für Žižeks Ideologiekritik, wirft aber auch die Frage auf, inwiefern sich Symptom und Sinthom (ein Konzept Lacans) voneinander unterscheiden. Im vorliegenden Kapitel wird Žižeks Auffassung beider Konzepte erörtert. Es wird aufgewiesen, dass das Symptom ein Effekt des differenziellen Spiels der Signifikanten ist, während (...) das Sinthom die Realität eines unauflösbaren Antagonismus verkörpert. (shrink)

This chapter seeks to reconstruct what a “decolonial Freud” might look like through a Fanonian lens. Freud’s writings are used to excavate a theory of mind, clinical approach, and critical theory of culture, race, and class, showing how Freud’s understanding of the unconscious as primarily associative and mediated through language and the body paves the way for a decolonial understanding of human suffering. Key to this is Freud’s formulation of the symptom as a compensation which helps the individual avoid pain (...) (the symptom’s benefit), even if it results in suffering (its cost)—what Lacan later termed jouissance, or a “pleasure in pain.” An examination of Freud’s published cases and first-person accounts by former patients shows how his surprisingly “relational” clinical stance betrayed an exquisite attention to language, culture, and identity in the consulting room. Although he did not integrate this tacit theory of race, class, and culture with his clinical writings, these cases provide clues about how to integrate theory and practice in routine clinical work. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly its treatment and its instrumentalization as yet another manifestation or “symptom” of neoliberalism—a crisis that perpetuates itself endlessly. The response to the pandemic, relying solely on the paradigm of “individual responsibility” and implementing widespread bans that risked devastating key sectors of the economy, exacerbated inequalities and social exclusion. This response has unmistakably revealed that the erosion of the welfare state, exemplified by cuts in public spending (...) on healthcare, directly endangers human life.Furthermore, the pandemic crisis is evolving into a crisis of democratic institutions. It has been wielded as a tool for the erosion of fundamental constitutional provisions, as well as social and political rights. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Exception in Žižek’s ThoughtErik Vogt (bio)One cannot fail to be struck by the repeated occurrences and invocations of some logic of exception as well as by the proliferation of examples or stand-ins for exceptional positions (“Jew”; “woman”; “class struggle”) or exceptional collectives (“proletariat”; “slum dwellers”) in many of Slavoj Žižek’s writings. The significance of thinking exception is evident not only in Žižek’s powerful reconceptualization of (a supposedly outdated) ideology (...) critique and in his intriguing materialist account of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, but also in his interventions into contemporary debates as to what constitutes proper politics. For this reason, it might be appropriate, in a first sketch, to attempt to weave together some of the threads that combine into Žižek’s (critique of the) logic of exception.11The Symptom and Its Logic of ExceptionAlready Žižek’s early brilliant elaboration of a contemporary ideology critique in terms of a powerful coarticulation of Marx and Freud analyzes the “social symptom” in light of its hidden logic of exception [Sublime Object 11–53]. Since the “social symptom” is not to be grasped as some imbalance external to universality, but rather as its constitutive moment, it marks “a point of breakdown heterogeneous” to a given universal field that at the same time is “necessary for that field to achieve its closure, its accomplished form” [21]. A symptomatic ideology critique will seize on the logic of exception implicit in the fissures of universality by deciphering its “falseness,” insofar “as it necessarily includes a specific case which breaks its unity, lays open its falsity” [21]. What is impossible, then, is the claim to some totality or universality without including in it “the point of exception functioning as its internal negation” [23]. This seems to suggest that the “social symptom” does not present any obstacles to its ideological-critical decipherment according to the logic of exception. However, Žižek makes clear immediately that it often does not effect the dissolution of the “social symptom”; on the contrary, it might even reinforce it, insofar as this interpretive procedure appeals to and relies on an addressee that continues to be figured in terms of consistency, completeness, totality. Consequently, this interpretive procedure of dissolving the symptom remains stuck in the very logic of exception that it attempts to unearth [73–74]. This is the reason why Žižek suggests supplementing this notion of the “social symptom” as ciphered message with the notion of fantasy. He describes the relation between symptom and fantasy in the following manner: “Symptom implies and addresses some non-barred, consistent big Other which will retroactively confer on it its meaning; fantasy implies a crossed-out, barred, non-whole, inconsistent [End Page 61] Other—that is to say, it is filling out a void in the Other” [74]. A contemporary ideology critique will therefore have to account for both the exceptional status of the social symptom and its underlying social fantasy. In other words, ideology critiques must consist of two stages, of two complementary procedures:—one is discursive, the “symptomal reading” of the ideological text [...] demonstrating how a given ideological field is a result of a montage of heterogeneous “floating signifiers,” of their totalization through the intervention of certain “nodal points”;—the other aims at extracting the kernel of enjoyment, at articulating the way in which [...] an ideology implies, manipulates, produces a pre-ideological enjoyment structured in fantasy.[125]In short, what is required from ideology critique is an interpretation of the social symptom in such a way that it brings to light the very fundamental fantasy that, precisely as a preideological blockage to interpretation, has then to be traversed and correlated to the identification with the symptom. The social symptom has to be grasped as master signifier and as objet a. And Žižek illustrates the working of (a theory of) ideology via anti-Semitism and its construction of the “Jew.”2Briefly, anti-Semitic ideology articulates the “Jew” through a network of symbolic “overdetermination”; that is, the “Jew” becomes the point of condensation for heterogeneous and often incompatible attributes. What has to be taken into account, moreover, is the inversion... (shrink)

Człowiek w logoterapii Viktora E. Frankla charakteryzuje się trzema podstawowymi sposobami bycia: fizycznym, psychicznym, duchowym. Duchowy sposób bycia jest sferą autonomiczną, w której jesteśmy zdolni do pozyskania sensu przez przeżycie i robienie czegoś wartościowego oraz dzięki któremu możemy nabrać dystansu i odnieść się do chorobowych symptomów zaburzonej psychiki. Wypełnienie się sensem przez robienie czegoś wartościowego jest możliwe dzięki trzem zdolnościom, zakorzenionym w strukturzebycia ludzkiego: zdolności do intencjonalnego kierowania się poza siebie do świata zewnętrznego, zdolności transcendowania siebie ze względu na doświadczenie (...) czegoś wartościowego i zdolności do dystansowania się od siebie, dzięki której w ogóle możemydoświadczyć czegoś takiego, jak to, że jesteśmy także duchowymi osobami i objawić się w swoim człowieczeństwie. W artykule ukazano antropologiczne podstawy logoterapii Frankla, akcentując aspekt ludzkiej wolności. ------------------------- Zgłoszono: 28/11/2022. Zrecenzowano: 26/04/2023. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 02/05/2023. (shrink)

This is a version of a paper delivered at the Beckett centenary conference held at University College Cork, May 26-27, 2006. It was subsequently published under the title ‘Stellar Separation orMachine? Badiou and Deleuze and Guattari on Beckett’ in Beckett Re-Membered: After the Centenary, edited by James Carney,Mi chael O’Sullivan, Leonard Madden and Karl White, pp. 92-107, ISBN 1443835005. This is a pre-publication version of the paper as it appeared in the latter publication. OPENING PARAGRAPH: In the most important study (...) to date of the respective use of Beckett’s writings in the work of Deleuze and Badiou, Jean-Jacques Lecercle concludes by surmising that “Perhaps the close proximity, in the French edition, of Deleuze’s essay, ‘The Exhausted’, to Beckett’s own text, is indeed more than a fortunate coincidence: perhaps it is a symptom”.1 For, Lecercle, despite his long-term support for Deleuze and indeed despite his misgivings concerning Badiou’s characteristically strong reading of Beckett, decides that there may be, after all, something more compelling in the Badiou than in the less consistent Deleuze. This may also be, he suggests, attributable to Deleuze’s own modernism as a writer, which, though it gives him greater access to, and understanding of, the materiality of Beckett’s writing, also in the final analysis, renders his reading of Beckett somewhat orthodox. By contrast, the defiantly declarative and unhesitatingly dogmatic reading advanced by Badiou, is able to disclose strikingly original insights, not least because of the co-implication and reversibility of the readings of Badiou-Beckett and Beckett-Badiou. This essay seeks to examine the symptomatology of one text in particular as it operates and produces or is indicative of symptoms in the work of Badiou and Deleuze respectively. (shrink)

This is a version of a paper delivered at the Beckett centenary conference held at University College Cork, May 26-27, 2006. It was subsequently published under the title ‘Stellar Separation or Abstract Machine? Badiou and Deleuze and Guattari on Beckett’ in Beckett Re-Membered: After the Centenary, edited by James Carney,Mi chael O’Sullivan, Leonard Madden and Karl White (Cambridge Scholars Press), pp. 92-107, ISBN 1443835005. This is a pre-publication version of the paper as it appeared in the latter publication. OPENING PARAGRAPH: (...) In the most important study to date of the respective use of Beckett’s writings in the work of Deleuze and Badiou, Jean-Jacques Lecercle concludes by surmising that “Perhaps the close proximity, in the French edition, of Deleuze’s essay, ‘The Exhausted’, to Beckett’s own text, is indeed more than a fortunate coincidence: perhaps it is a symptom”.1 For, Lecercle, despite his long-term support for Deleuze and indeed despite his misgivings concerning Badiou’s characteristically strong reading of Beckett, decides that there may be, after all, something more compelling in the Badiou than in the less consistent Deleuze. This may also be, he suggests, attributable to Deleuze’s own modernism as a writer, which, though it gives him greater access to, and understanding of, the materiality of Beckett’s writing (Deleuze has, after all, his own écriture, not least in Anti-Oedipus), also in the final analysis, renders his reading of Beckett somewhat orthodox. By contrast, the defiantly declarative and unhesitatingly dogmatic reading advanced by Badiou, is able to disclose strikingly original insights, not least because of the co-implication and reversibility of the readings of Badiou-Beckett and Beckett-Badiou. This essay seeks to examine the symptomatology of one text in particular as it operates and produces or is indicative of symptoms in the work of Badiou and Deleuze respectively. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"WITH A ROD OR IN THE SPIRIT OF LOVE AND GENTLENESS?" PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF EXPULSION IN 1 CORINTHIANS 5 Dizdar Drasko Australian Catholic University II "n 1 Corinthians 5 Paul is dealing with a serious case of sexual.misconduct. He is understood to be urging the expulsion ofa member of the church for incest. Incest is, of course, a serious sexual crime, universally abhorred and prohibited. It has (...) the potential to cause much harm to a community. Not only does it bring disrepute to any who are accused of it, but also to any who appear to condone it. It is scandalous: a cause or at least a symptom—of deep social disease, division, and even disintegration. That Paul should urge—indeed, command—the immediate and uncompromising expulsion ofthe incestuous evildoer, without even the hint of any kind of due process of inquiry and trial for the accused, seems obvious. Does it? To whom? And why? This article will reread 1 Cor 5 as part of Paul's response to what he saw as the attempt ofthe divided Corinthian community (see 1 Cor 1:10-13, 11:18, 2 Cor 10- 13) to regain its lost unity in the only way it knew how: by cleansing itself of undesirable elements among their number and thereby re-establishing harmony by means of the tried and true method, the scapegoat mechanism. The main thesis ofthis article is that Paul, far from joining in a bit of classical scapegoating, shows it up for what it is: puffed up arrogance, or "inflation." as he calls it (5:2), and a blind mimicking of the very sacrificial system the Corinthians, as "spiritual people" (see 1 Cor 3:1), so self-righteously think they are above. Since this article is methodologically informed by the work ofthe literary critic and cultural theorist René Girard, our preliminary task will 1 62Dizdar Drasko be to outline his method, establishing aworking hermeneutical context. We will focus on five key ideas in Girardian theory that have immediate relevance for our reading of 1 Cor 5, namely: the mimetic nature ofdesire; the often resulting rivalry and conflict; the role of scandal; the accusatory principle; and the scapegoat mechanism ofthe sacrificial system. We then need to establish the textual context that precedes 1 Cor 5 by offering a brief summary ofthe letter leading up to the text under discussion. That will enable us to engage in a close rereading ofthe said passage, for which our main exegetical dialogue partner will be the recent commentary on First Corinthians by Raymond F. Collins. Desire's Double-Bind: Mimesis, Rivalry, and the Victim The important anthropological role??mimesis, or imitation, goes back to the Greeks. Aristotle noted in his Poetics (1448b, 4-10) that the greater human capacity for imitation is what distinguishes humanity from all other animals. By imitation we acquire not only language, and therefore the ability to reason, but our very sense of self in and through our relationship to the rest ofthe world: in short, personhood and culture (see Alison 1990, 18-21.). How? Given the current climate of individualism, it comes as something ofa surprise to hear the claim that it is through the imitation of another's desire. According to Girard, our desires are neither original nor spontaneous to us; they are learned by imitating the desires of others.1 Human beings are intrinsically mimetic, imitating one another's desire. This leadsto rivalry. Mimetic rivalry leads to conflict, which, ifunchecked, degenerates into an all-against-all violence. This, in turn, threatens the complete disintegration ofthe group. So a problem arises: how is order (cosmos) to be re-established out of chaos? Once humans had evolved beyond the submission/domination mechanism (that still works for the other higher primates), our primal ancestors were in real danger of"species 1 A word of clarification before we proceed to explore this claim in the hope of averting a simple misunderstanding: desire is not to be confused with appetite They are related, obviously; but they are not the same. What is the difference? At the risk ofover-simplifying, simply put: appetite is about needs; desire is about wants. Needs are instinctive, automatic... (shrink)

Religion, especially Islam, plays a crucial role in Malaysia’s post-plural society and ethnic Malay identity. Atheism, as a conviction that challenges religious beliefs, is therefore highly controversial in Malaysia: it not only conflicts with the Rukun Negara (national principles) state ideology, which holds the belief in God as its first principle, but also challenges the notion of ethnic Malay identity, which is framed as Islamic and occupies a special place in Malaysian society. This article explores the potential of atheism to (...) challenge Malaysia’s religious pluralism by analysing cases of public atheism and responses to it. Rather than simply concluding that atheism is not acceptable to Malaysians, the article demonstrates the circumstances under which public atheism is possible. It also argues that atheism, although seldom discussed in public, represents a ‘social symptom’ for Malaysian society: atheists are regarded as ‘malfunctioning’ citizens, but they tell us much about how Malaysia’s post-plural religious society functions as it simultaneously rejects and tolerates atheism. This paradoxical social context, we argue, stabilises and challenges the idea of Malaysia’s religious society as the essence of the Malaysian people. (shrink)

Scott Welsh is likely to elicit a sigh of relief from the many academics who struggle with what, if any, public intellectual persona they should adopt. Welsh (2012) argues against a broad swathe of mostly left-leaning rhetorical scholars that the academic’s democratic duty is adequately discharged by providing suitably ambivalent rhetorical resources for others to use in their political struggles. For Welsh, following Slavoj Žižek (2008), the scholar’s first obligation is to “enjoy your symptom”—that is, to demonstrate in one’s discursive (...) practice the problematic nature of trying to claim epistemic privilege in a society ostensibly of equals. The main conceptual difference between Welsh’s and my own conception of .. (shrink)

Obecna dominacja hedonizmu, a ściślej eudajmonistycznego ideału „udanego życia” jako samorealizacji opierającej się na potęgowaniu jednostkowego szczęścia stanowi symptom procesów modernizacyjnych, które dogłębnie zmieniły naszą społeczną i kulturową rzeczywistość. Poziom względnego dobrobytu osiągnięty w najbardziej rozwiniętych częściach świata sprzyja upowszechnianiu się wiary w nieomal bezgraniczną wolność jednostki, która coraz częściej i intensywniej poddaje krytycznej refleksji panujące dotąd systemy aksjologiczne. Świat wartości etycznych pluralizuje się, rozprasza i traci na naszych oczach swoje stabilne fundamenty. Pomimo licznych symptomów kryzysowych wciąż jednak utrzymuje się (...) powszechny stan względnego samozadowolenia, który syci się przekonaniem o „etycznej wyższości” kultury Zachodu. Wprawdzie przyznajemy, że świat liberalnej demokracji, w jakim żyjemy, stopniowo traci swój „moralny kręgosłup", ale nadal żywimy przekonanie, że nie ma dla niego żadnej lepszej realnej alternatywy. Opisywany przez prezentowanych w niniejszej monografii autorów proces estetyzacji życia codziennego, historii i polityki bynajmniej nie poprawia tej sytuacji, lecz wydaje się jedynie pogłębiać nasze etyczne rozchwianie. (shrink)

W artykule przedstawiono postać Henry Sidgwicka oraz główne założenia i recepcję jego najważniejszego dzieła The Methods of Ethics. Myśl Sidgwicka, w Polsce znana marginalnie, wpłynęła na współczesną dyskusję filozoficzną w większym stopniu niż teorie Benthama czy Milla i to nie tylko w obrębie utylitaryzmu i konsekwencjalizmu, ale również teorii umowy społecznej czy etyki cnoty. Kwestie moralne, które Sidgwick omawiał w The Methods, w dużym stopniu wynikły z obecnego w historycznych i społecznych realiach wiktoriańskich kryzysu powstałego na tle konfliktu wiary i (...) rozumu. Myśl Sidgwicka zrodziła się z dwu bodaj najbardziej charakterystycznych symptomów owego okresu: zainteresowania nauką i wiary w postęp oraz sceptycyzmu w stosunku do religii. Zarówno w swym wielkim dziele jak i w życiu osobistym Sidgwick dowiódł, iż rzeczą podstawowej wagi było dla niego poszukiwanie prawdy. Świadectwem jego oddania prawdzie było to, że po racjonalnym dojściu do konkluzji sprzecznych z jego utylitarystycznymi „preferencjami”, uznał, iż istnieją dwie ostateczne, nie dające się ze sobą pogodzić zasady moralne — utylitarystyczna zasada życzliwości oraz egoistyczna zasada roztropności. (shrink)

Fredric Jameson’s recent book, Allegory and Ideology, argues that allegory has become a ‘social symptom’, an attempt during moments of historical crisis to represent reality even as that reality, rife with contradictory levels, eludes representation. Mobilising the fourfold medieval system of allegory he first introduced in The Political Unconscious, Jameson traces a formal history of attempts to come to terms with the ‘multiplicities’ and incommensurable levels that emerge within modernity and postmodernity. This article identifies the complexities of Jameson’s understanding of (...) allegory and draws on the brief moments when Jameson references the Anthropocene to argue for an allegorical reading of our contemporary environmental crisis that would allow us to see the problem the Anthropocene names as truly contradictory: at one and the same time, the world we inhabit appears to us as a world of our own making and as a world that has become truly alien to us. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new hypothesis for the rise of the politically correct left via an analysis of Black America. Drawing on Žižekian and psychoanalytical theory, it explores the ideological role of ‘symptom’ within America’s cultural landscape - of that which states that society ‘doesn’t work’ - by way of examining prominent African American figures and how they relate to this ‘symptom’: Will Smith and the ‘hystericization of the symptom’; Barack Obama and the ‘identification with the symptom’; the PC left (...) and the ‘implementation of the symptom as law’; the far right and the ‘fear of loss of the symptom’; Kanye West, Candace Owens and the ‘rejection of clinging to the symptom’. Additionally, the 90s sit-com The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and the film Black Panther are analyzed and juxtaposed in order to further illustrate the process by which the recent ideological shift in our cultural and political discourse towards political correctness and identity politics has occurred. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ice Cream for BreakfastMichelle MethvenIn June of 2011, on a warm sunny day in Toronto, Canada, my partner and I brought our daughter Stella into the local hospital emergency room for what we believed would be a routine check–up. She had been exhibiting worsening clumsiness and limping for the previous two weeks and we thought it would be easier just to get her seen and have whatever it was (...) dealt with rather than wait two months to see a specialist. My partner and I believed it was likely a severe ear infection, or maybe Lyme disease from a recent camping trip. We each called our workplaces and said we would be an hour or so late. Nothing could have prepared us for the news 22 hours after arriving at the hospital, that Stella had a cancerous mass in her brain. After a biopsy three days later to confirm the diagnosis, Stella was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), and given less than a year to live.Parents most often describe DIPG as “a monster.” The tumour saturates the pons and shuts down nerve pathways one at a time. In no particular order, and in no particular time, sufferers (most often young children) lose the ability to walk, sit up, hold up their head, speak and see. The pons is also responsible for breathing, swallowing and regulating the heartbeat, so death can come in many forms at any given time. Though it destroys the brain’s ability to command, the person continues to think and understand as the main part of the brain is untouched. Different from most cancers, chemotherapy and radiation have almost no effect on DIPG; even trials with the most toxic chemotherapies do not slow its progress.My partner and I were shaken to the core at this diagnosis. Looking at our energetic, redheaded [End Page 31] mop–topped little imp, it was impossible to fathom that she had just been given a fatal diagnosis. Yet we knew the doctors at the hospital were among the best and most sought–after in the world, so denial was never a part of our mantra.A week after Stella was diagnosed, we met with a neuro–oncologist to discuss our plans. The only treatment that is slightly effective for DIPG is focal radiation, which can stall the tumor’s growth, granting what is known as a “honeymoon period” of no new symptoms. The honeymoon lasts approximately six months, but there are no guarantees. Twenty percent of children get no honeymoon whatsoever after radiation, and others get only weeks. The doctor we met with confirmed radiation would not be curative, but would “buy time”. He explained that radiation involved six weeks of treatment, seven days a week. Following the six weeks of treatment, there would be a period of anywhere from one to six months in which Stella would likely be asymptomatic. However, at some point, the symptoms generally return and when they do, children deteriorate relatively quickly. Sometimes it takes a month or two, but on occasion there is as little as two weeks between progression and death.As Stella’s parents, we were not convinced that the prescribed radiation was something we wanted to subject Stella to. Because she was only two, and a very spirited and energetic child, it would have been virtually impossible to have her lie quietly on the table in hospital each day for six weeks while radiation was put behind her ear. The neuro–oncologists’ solution was that Stella be sedated for each daily radiation treatment, which would make her groggy for a big part of the day and necessitate needles and IV. As parents, we were presented with an impossible gamble. Do we risk taking away six weeks of her still somewhat symptom–free life for a possible extra three to six months later? And the timing was difficult as well. It was late June. If we chose to radiate it would mean spending the entire summer shuttling her between hospital and home with no weeks at the cottage, and much less time to attend neighbourhood BBQ’s, parties, trips to the park, the library, science centre and zoo... (shrink)

The article is related to the revealing of the intent of Hegel’s “Science of Logic”. As authors take it, there is an attempt to imagine the fundamental level of reasoning, where there is no opposition between cognition and its object. In this dimension there is no need to substantiate compatibility between them — it is a level of primary foundation of knowledge. Consequently, any knowledge at this level may be characterized as “Ultimate”. That being said, place of such knowledge is (...) not taken by several specific statements, but by the certain way of organizing those “mental definitions” that are already used by common human sense. To organize these definitions, to arrange them into consistently deployed sequence of logical notions, there is need to abort the search for the primary foundation for knowledge inherent in philosophy from its very origins. This attempt was reflected in Kant's theory of knowledge, where the problem of the reliability of knowledge was solved due to self-limitation in the process of cognition — it was necessary to stop before a certain line, beyond which thought leaves “the limits of possible experience” and falls into the area of insoluble contradictions (antinomies). Hegel's Logic, which, according to the authors, is in a kind of “symbiosis” with the Kantian program, consists in considering these insoluble contradictions precisely as a “symptom” of achieving the primary foundation of knowledge. It is in the collision with an insoluble contradiction that the definitions are organized in the necessary logical sequence, and that fundamental level is reached where there is no opposition between cognition and its object. (shrink)

Die Erforschung von Krankheitskomorbidität und Symptomkoexistenz wirft mehrere Fragen in Bezug auf Studiendesign und analytische Techniken auf, die sorgfältig berücksichtigt werden müssen. In diesem Kapitel befassen wir uns zunächst mit methodischen Fragen, die für die Komorbiditätsforschung von besonderer Relevanz sind, einschließlich Symptomüberschneidungen und der daraus resultierenden doppelten Zählung von Symptomen, der Fallstricke und Vorteile der Entfernung von sich überschneidenden Skalenpunkten und des Nutzens der Erstellung von latenten Variablen oder „Symptomgruppen“. Anschließend diskutieren wir die Vor- und Nachteile der Verwendung verschiedener Studiendesigns (...) im Kontext der Komorbiditätsforschung und geben Empfehlungen zur Maximierung der wissenschaftlichen Strenge statistischer Analysen und zur Sicherstellung der Einhaltung ethischer Standards. Schließlich heben wir analytische Techniken hervor, die relativ neu und/oder weniger häufig in Studien zur Komorbidität eingesetzt werden, und wie diese Techniken die Forschung in diesem Bereich voranbringen könnten. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Pleasure of the PlayDeborah KnightThe Pleasure of the Play, by Bert O. States; 226 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, $34.50, cloth, $12.95, paper.I am an Aristotelian about narrative structure. This is not always a fashionable position, and in some company I know just what to expect: a pop deconstructivist dressing down by those who assume that I must have simply missed the point of poststructuralism and (...) postmodernism. Surely, the nay-sayers claim, no one believes in beginnings, middles, and ends anymore—certainly not since Godard taught us that we don’t need to put them in that order. Isn’t it just obvious (they continue) that we must reject the ideology of wholeness and unity, and opt instead for fragmentation, or self-reflexivity, or other violations of Aristotelian form? And there is no mistaking that, in some quarters, notions like mimesis and catharsis haven’t received much good press lately.But there are still kindred Aristotelians, and Bert O. States is one. His The Pleasure of the Play takes the Poetics as its pivotal text and sets in motion around it a lively discussion of plays from, yes, Oedipus Rex to The Real Inspector Hound, stopping along the way to consider Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht, Handke (among others), before concluding with an essay on Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe, a play dedicated to Václav Havel. States adopts an open rather than a closed view of what the Poetics has to say about tragedy, expanding the discussion well beyond tragedy itself, out toward drama and, indeed, comedy. But he is clearly unwilling to go as far as another group of Aristotelians, notably Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jerome Bruner, who treat narrative as a mode of actual lived existence. States’s objective is to show the continued vitality of the Poetics, especially in terms of what it can tell us about drama in cultural contexts much removed from the one which offered Aristotle his range of primary textual material. [End Page 272]To be clear, then, States doesn’t claim to be doing either Poetics “scholarship” or exegesis. Indeed, this book is not what one might typically think of as a philosophical examination of the Poetics. Anyone looking for such a thing would do well to consult the excellent but unmistakably philosophical Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. States is doing something else here. Like Aristotle, he is showing how dramatic structures work.The book is engaging. It features wonderfully turned phrases, examples that immediately illuminate a point, and nicely interwoven references to a range of theorists and philosophers who only rarely are found in each other’s company, for example: Richard Boyd, Martin Heidegger, Douglas Hofstadter, Wolfgang Iser, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Francis Sparshott, Tzvetan Todorov. Some of States’s more delightful examples might offend Aristotle purists. Hard cheese to them. Consider how States uses Roland Barthes’s analysis of the newspaper feature story, or fait divers, to illuminate the structure of the great dramatic plots. In States’s examples—GENERAL SACRIFICES DAUGHTER IN WEDDING CEREMONY (Iphigenia at Aulis) or WIFE FORCED INTO ADULTERY BY HUSBAND, MOTHER, PRIEST (Mandragola) or, to use Aristotle’s own example, MAN’S STATUE AVENGES HIS MURDER (pp. 67-68)—what each mock headline captures is the peculiar, often ironic, internal logic of drama. For States, this peculiar logic is characterized by events which are simultaneously improbable, unthinkable, unanticipatable, yet—given the unfolding course of actions—uncannily probable after all.Central to understanding this internal logic is the Aristotelian notion of peripety, the critical “divulging event” (p. 49) which turns out to be just the reverse of what one intended (as for example Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother). Where Aristotle seems to treat peripety as a mere plot device, States considers it “a principle of plot development.” Thus, the status of peripety as a crucial dramatic plot device is “really a symptom” of its more basic function (p. 86). Peripety as a principle of plot development helps to show why it makes little sense to claim that what narratives imitate is “reality”—peripety is just what “open life” lacks (p... (shrink)

This chapter is about approaches to the history of science developed by figures associated with the structuralist movement. It focuses on the work of Louis Althusser, and in particular his argument that Marx had played a central role in the history of science. The chapter discusses how Althusser’s ideas on this topic differed from Lacan’s own. It begins with a broad intellectual history of the structuralist movement, emphasising how structuralists struggled to theorise the process of historical change. Althusser, the chapter (...) describes, attempted to resolve this problem, by taking from Spinoza an acausal logic of the ‘symptom’. Althusser applied this idea to argue that a fundamental shift in the history of science had been begun by Marx, and then continued by Freud. The chapter makes a detailed discussion of this argument, before illustrating how Lacan’s own way of understanding history was fundamentally different. The chapter aims to show that the position Lacan took on Marx in the late 1960s was a direct critical response to Althusser’s theories. (shrink)

The author argues that regardless of whether an individual is suffering from neurodegeneration or neurotrauma, the cognitive changes that take place extend beyond the individual and into social domains, which often are the domain of one’s family. Based on a comparative case analysis of two families, one concerned with Alzheimer’s disease and the other with stroke, the author argues that the attempt to track the person’s shifting identity is enacted in everyday life in an ongoing interpretation of what a “symptom” (...) might be and what it might mean for various family members. There are commonalities across families regarding how this is accomplished, irrespective of whether the cognitive challenges are due to injury or dementia. At the same time, however, there are fundamental differences between neurodegeneration and neurotrauma, as degeneration involves gradual cognitive decline, whereas trauma comes with the chance of recovery. (shrink)