This article examines an embedded model of ethical governance, as practised by the Mind in Bexley Research and Ethics Advisory Board, in overseeing the Unpaid Mental Health Carers in Bexley oral history project. Unlike conventional university-based research ethics committees (RECs), this Board was rooted in the local community, comprising unpaid carers, mental health service users, clinicians, safeguarding leads and qualitative/oral history researchers. Its deep contextual knowledge, direct links to support and safeguarding pathways, and procedural rigour enabled ethical deliberations grounded in (...) lived realities and local service infrastructures. The Board’s design transformed ethics from a pre-approval checkpoint into an active safeguarding partner, exemplified by real-time crisis interventions during fieldwork. Meetings in accessible community venues, the use of plain-language documentation, and a collaborative approach fostered trust and transparency, aligning with the concept of “everyday ethics.” Drawing on this case, the article argues that de-centralised, co-produced ethics governance can enhance contextual sensitivity, strengthen lived experience participation, and mitigate participant risk more effectively than standard institutional models. It concludes by considering implications for research governance frameworks seeking to embed ethical oversight within the relational and place-based contexts in which research unfolds, while recognising that statutory research ethics committees remain essential in biomedical and NHS-facing domains. (shrink)

Julia Knopes (2025) claims that peer providers are drawing from two models of disability, the medical and neurodiversity models, to understand their experiences. I take no issue with Knopes’s claim...

Medical ethicist, Guidry-Grimes has critically reviewed the concept of insight, voicing concerns that it lacks consensus as to its components and that it undermines patient perspectives. We respond by briefly summarising research over the last 30 years that she overlooks which has helped establish the clinical validity of the construct. This includes the adoption of standardised assessment tools—at least in research—and longitudinal and cross-sectional studies quantifying associations with psychopathological, clinical and cognitive measures. We also make the distinction between the current (...) standards for assessing decision-making capacity leading to, where appropriate, involuntary treatment in clinical and medico-legal settings which in most legislations do not include insight assessments, and anecdotal reports of the use and misuse of ‘lack of insight’ as a proxy for more comprehensive evaluation. We conclude by encouraging a broader view of insight akin to self-knowledge. (shrink)

For about the last three decades, postmodernists have exposed the weaknesses of modernist formalism. Western modernist formalism effectively locates art’s meaning in its formal qualities. Clive Bell’s twentieth-century significant form aesthetic theory, Clement Greenberg and abstract art, and art educators’ preoccupation with design elements and principles typify this modernist tendency.1 In contrast, postmodernists generally insist that sociocultural context supplies art’s meaning. Within contemporary art education, postmodernist theory relies strongly on semiotics, neopragmatism, and social constructivist theories of culture; these tend to (...) reduce form to being an arbitrary vehicle for content supplied by cultural.. (shrink)

Despite his place as one of the most original thinkers of the Middle Ages, the legacy of Joachim of Fiore has eluded clear comprehension in at least two areas, those of texts and transmission. That is, Joachim studies have, until most recently, been limited by a lack of modern editions for Joachim’s works, and by an incomplete understanding of how the revolutionary ideology inspired by a twelfth-century abbot from Calabria ultimately came to be appropriated by disparate groups such as the (...) Spiritual Franciscans, the Münster Anabaptists, and Spanish missionaries in colonial Latin America. Yet there has been much scholarship, of exacting standards and of immense value, which has pushed forward our knowledge of... (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the global trend towards spending increasing amounts of time online. I explore some of the potential negative consequences of lockdown-induced increases in time spent online, and I argue that the stressful context of the pandemic and lockdowns is exacerbated by being online beyond that which is required for essential purposes. Time spent online may increase stress levels by perpetuating the sympathetic nervous system's fight-or-flight response, draining a person’s energy and diminishing one’s ability to deal with illness. (...) I frame the situation as one in which the pandemic context, combined with a mandatory need to be online more, forces many people into what Daniel Kahneman calls “System 1 thinking”, or “fast thinking”. I argue that digital hygiene requires the suspension of System 1 thinking, and that “philosophical perception” resonates with potential remedies in this regard. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 116-127 [Access article in PDF] Authority, Solidarity, and the Political Economy of Identity: The Case of the United States David A. Hollinger Theorists of nationalism tend to circle around the United States like boy scouts who have spotted a clump of poison oak. The nationalism of the United States has figured small in the robust and wide-ranging discourse about nationalism that has involved sociologists, historians, (...) political scientists, philosophers, and literary scholars during the past two decades. Although there are significant exceptions to this pattern of avoidance--David Miller and Liah Greenfeld are convenient examples--several prominent cases illustrate the pattern. The United States is mentioned in only a single footnote in Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism. The United States is given short shrift in three of the most important collections of the 1990s: Homi Bhabha's Nation and Narration, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith's Nationalism, and Geoff Eley and Ronald G. Suny's Becoming National. Montserrat Guibernau mentions the United States only twice, and in passing, in her Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. The United States gets less attention than Canada and the Ukraine in John A. Hall's rich, state-of-the-art collection of 1998, The State of the Nation. Ronald Beiner's Theorizing Nationalism has much more to tell us about Quebec than about the United States, which is alluded to even in passing by only half the contributors to this valuable anthology of 1999. That "nationalism is unknown" in the United States is claimed by Elie Kedouri, even in the fourth edition of his classic text Nationalism [143]. But the most interesting case of all is that of nationalism's most creative and influential theorist, Benedict Anderson.Anderson provides only episodic treatment of the United States while discussing "creole nationalism" in his influential book Imagined Communities. To be sure, Anderson's demonstration of the similarities between a large number of similarly situated, comparably developing national projects among creole populations in the New World is no cause for complaint. It is a signal contribution, and still insufficiently absorbed by a persistently Europe-centered discourse about nationalism. Anderson's recent book, The Spectre of Comparisons, also deals episodically with the United States, which Anderson now tells us explicitly has proved "too sui generis for ready-to-hand" [336] comparisons with other national projects in the Western Hemisphere. Most of Spectre of Comparisons is about Southeast Asia, just as the preponderance of Imagined Communities is about Latin America. Fair enough. [End Page 116]My point is not to find fault with Anderson for being an Area Studies specialist in so many areas of the world outside the United States. Nor do I have any significant quarrel with what little Anderson does say about the United States. What is worth remarking upon is simply that even the least Eurocentric of our era's leading theorists of nationalism in general has emerged not from the study of the United States, but from the study of Southeast Asia and Latin America. This is less a comment about Anderson than about the class of theorists of which he is a member. The scholars whose careers focus on the United States are "area studies specialists" of a kind, but few of them have intervened tellingly in the cross-disciplinary discussion of nationalism. One who did was the historian David Potter, whose still-powerful article "Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa" was published nearly forty years ago but is rarely cited today.The poison oak effect among theorists of nationalism would not be worthy of notice were it not for one fact that might be expected to attract rather than repel these theorists: the United States is the most successful nationalist project in all of modern history. What makes it "successful" is its longevity, its absorption of a variety of peoples, and its sheer power. Two-and-one-quarter centuries after its founding and 135 years after its Civil War, it is by far the most powerful nation-state... (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

This essay examines the paradoxical human impulse to control meaning by scripting permanence into finite existence, a compulsion that manifests in religious, political, and personal forms. Drawing from Jeff Noonan’s account of “tarrying with meaninglessness,” it argues that the attempt to secure significance through purpose (whether divine destiny, national myth, or personal legacy) ultimately negates the fragile sources of value in lived experience. By distinguishing between meaning (the contingent significance of finite practices) and purpose (a teleological imposition oriented toward eternity) (...) the essay clarifies how conflating the two leads to what Noonan calls a “superabundance of meaning,” wherein finite life is subordinated to transcendent narratives. Engaging Camus, Dostoyevsky, Charles Taylor, and George Grant, the analysis situates this pathology within both existential and historical contexts, showing how modernity’s will to mastery intensifies the compulsion to control meaning. Against this, the essay advances a materialist ethic of finite affirmation: by tarrying with meaninglessness, one recognizes mortality as the condition of valuation and grounds ethical life in shared vulnerability, care, and presence. Contemporary conflicts and nationalist movements illustrate the dangers of purpose-driven control, where finite lives are sacrificed for imagined permanence. By contrast, tarrying affirms finitude as the only ground for meaning and solidarity. (shrink)

These are set against introductory essays describing the philosophical, historical and psychological approaches, making this a uniquely inclusive overview.

The insight a patient shares into their own psychosis is fundamental to their condition - it goes to the heart of what we understand 'madness' to be. Can a person be expected to accept treatment for a condition that they deny they have? Can a person be held responsible for their actions if those actions are inspired by their own unique perceptions and beliefs - beliefs that no-one else shares? The topic of insight in schizophrenia and related disorders has become (...) a major focus of research in psychiatry and psychology. It has important clinical implications in terms of outcome, treatment adherence, competence, and forensic issues. In order to study 'insight' a broad perspective is required. This involves applying knowledge from the cognitive and brain sciences, as well as from philosophy and the social sciences. Insight and Psychosis comprises a series of in-depth, well-referenced, scholarly overviews from each of these perspectives with a strong empirical foundation - including in some cases the presentation of new data and meta-analysis of the published literature. These are integrated and synthesised by the editors, both acknowledged experts in the field. The scope is truly international and spans theoretical perspectives, clinical practice, and consumer views. The book will act as a source for students and researchers interested in pursuing any number of questions and controversies around lack of insight and awareness, and will guide clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who seek a broader view of the many facets of insight that might arise during their day-to-day work. (shrink)

Mindreading in schizophrenia has been shown to be impaired in a multitude of studies. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence to suggest that metacognition is damaged as well. Lack of insight, or the inability to recognise one's own disorder, is an example of such a failure. We suggest that mindreading and metacognition are linked, but separable.

Before a general cognitive model for recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) is accepted, there must be more research into the neuropsychological and cognitive characteristics of the various disorders in which they occur. Currently available data are insufficient to distinguish whether the similar phenomenology of RCVH across different disorders is in fact produced by a single or by multiple cognitive mechanisms.

Throughout the darkest moments of human history, evildoers have convinced communities to turn on groups that are regarded as in some way other and, by starting to think of them as less than human, persecute or even eliminate them. We can all recognize the unfathomable evils of dehumanization in slavery, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the Jim Crow South, but we are not free from its power today. With climate change and political upheaval driving millions of refugees worldwide to (...) leave their homes, we are likely to see more and more of this ugly and persistent phenomenon. What are we to do? Drawing on his deep and wide-ranging knowledge of the history, psychology, and politics of dehumanization, David Livingstone Smith shows us how to recognize it and how to fight back. (shrink)

In this stimulating introduction, David Woodruff Smith introduces the whole of Husserl’s thought, demonstrating his influence on philosophy of mind and language, on ontology and epistemology, and on philosophy of logic, mathematics and science. Starting with an overview of his life and works, and his place in twentieth-century philosophy, and in western philosophy as a whole, David Woodruff Smith introduces Husserl’s concept of phenomenology, explaining his influential theories of intentionality, objectivity and subjectivity. In subsequent chapters he (...) covers Husserl’s logic, metaphysics, realism and transcendental idealism, and epistemology. Finally, he assesses the significance and implications of Husserl’s work for contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Including a timeline, glossary and extensive suggestions for further reading, Husserl is essential reading for anyone interested in this eminent philosopher, phenomenology or twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore the full range of Husserl's work and reveal just how systematic his philosophy is. There are treatments of his most important contributions to phenomenology, intentionality and the philosophy of mind, epistemology, the philosophy of language, ontology, and mathematics. An underlying theme of the volume is a resistance to the idea, current in much intellectual history, of a radical break between 'modern' and 'postmodern' philosophy, with Husserl as the last of the great Cartesians. Husserl is (...) seen in this volume as a philosopher constantly revising his system in order to be able to integrate philosophy with ideas emanating from science and culture. The so-called rift between analytic and 'continental' philosophy emerges as an artificial construct. (shrink)

Assessment of decision-making capacity (DMC) can be difficult in acquired brain injury (ABI) particularly with the syndrome of organic personality disorder (OPD) (the “frontal lobe syndrome”). Clinical neuroscience may help but there are challenges translating its constructs to the decision-making abilities considered relevant by law and ethics. An in-depth interview study of DMC in OPD was undertaken. Six patients were purposefully sampled and rich interview data were acquired for scrutiny using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Interview data revealed that awareness of deficit (...) and thinking about psychological states can be present. However, the awareness of deficit may not be “online” and effectively integrated into decision-making. Without this online awareness of deficit the ability to appreciate or use and weigh information in the process of deciding some matters appeared absent. We argue that the decision-making abilities discussed are: (1) necessary for DMC, (2) threatened by ABI, and (3) assessable at interview. Some advice for practically incorporating these abilities within assessments of DMC in patients with OPD is outlined. (shrink)

The following interview of Mark William Westmoreland with Anthony Paul Smith–well-known scholar and translator of François Laruelle –considers both implications and extensions of Laruelle's non-philosophy for contemporary thought. Smith has helped bring about a surge of interest in Laruelle due to his many translations of his texts as well as being the author or co-editor of several books on Laruelle. Discussed are in particular the difficulties and joys of translating and the usefulness of Laruelle's thought for (...) class='Hi'>Smith's own work, especially in environmental and animal studies. Also considered are some themes of non-philosophy, the adaptability of Laruelle's thought for various disciplines, as well as new paths for Laruelle studies –new, unforeseen landscapes and uses of non-philosophy –that explore social phenomena such as race, racism, sexism, victim a.o. (shrink)

We developed a technique to examine the effects of emotional content and context on verbal memory. Two sets of sentences were devised: in the first, each sentence was emotionally arousing due to the inclusion of an emotional “target” word. In the second set, “targets” were replaced with well-matched neutral words. Subjects read aloud a selection of emotional and neutral sentences, and were then surprised with memory tasks after a range of time delays. Emotional target words were remembered significantly better than (...) neutral words in all experiments. Recognition of emotional words was relatively stable despite increasing delays between encoding and recognition testing, in contrast to memory for neutral words, which decayed over time. Memory for neutral non-target words was enhanced when words had been presented in an emotional context. The results confirm the phenomenon of emotional enhancement of memory at short and long delays and suggest that emotional context may be encoded independently of word meaning. (shrink)

Husserl’s philosophy, by the usual account, evolved through three stages: 1. development of an anti-psychologistic, objective foundation of logic and mathematics, rooted in Brentanian descriptive psychology; 2. development of a new discipline of "phenomenology" founded on a metaphysical position dubbed "transcendental idealism"; transformation of phenomenology from a form of methodological solipsism into a phenomenology of intersubjectivity and ultimately (in his Crisis of 1936) into an ontology of the life-world, embracing the social worlds of culture and history. We show that this (...) story of three revolutions can provide at best a preliminary orientation, and that Husserl was constantly expanding and revising his philosophical system, integrating views in phenomenology, ontology, epistemology and logic with views on the nature and tasks of philosophy and science as well as on the nature of culture and the world in ways that reveal more common elements than violent shifts of direction. We argue further that Husserl is a seminal figure in the evolution from traditional philosophy to the characteristic philosophical concerns of the late twentieth century: concerns with representation and intentionality and with problems at the borderlines of the philosophy of mind, ontology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

It is argued, on the basis of ideas derived from Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Husserl's Logical Investigations, that the formal comprehends more than the logical. More specifically: that there exist certain formal-ontological constants (part, whole, overlapping, etc.) which do not fall within the province of logic. A two-dimensional directly depicting language is developed for the representation of the constants of formal ontology, and means are provided for the extension of this language to enable the representation of certain materially necessary relations. The (...) paper concludes with a discussion of the relationship between formal logic, formal ontology, and mathematics. (shrink)

Background Studies from different countries report a stagnation or regression of moral competence in medical students between the first and the last year of their studies, and the value of various educational interventions remains uncertain. Methods We used Moral Competence Test (MCT) to measure C-scores of moral competence to determine the change in the MCT C-scores between the first- and the fifth-year medical students from two medical schools in the Czech Republic in the academic year 2022/2023 and to analyze factors (...) associated with the C-scores (observational study). In addition, for the first-year students, we compared the results of the MCT before and after an intervention in medical ethics curriculum (interventional study). We used a cross-sectional and descriptive design for the observational study. Students completed the MCT, consisting of two moral dilemmas (Worker´s Dilemma and Doctor´s Dilemma), the results measured by the C-score, which represents moral competence. Results In total, 685 students participated in the observational study. Objective 1: based on the analysis of the C-score, we observed a decrease in moral competence between the first and the fifth-year medical students (p <.001). Objective 2: we did not observe a statistically significant effect of gender (p =.278), or self-rated religiosity (p =.163). Objective 3: in the interventional study, 440 students participated in the pretest and 422 students participated in the posttest. The test of statistical significance found no improvement in students’ moral competence after the intervention (p =.253). Conclusion Medical students show a regression in moral competence during medical education; it was lower in medical students in their fifth year, compared to the first-year medical students without the effect of gender, or self-rated religiosity. Although educational intervention consisting of multiple tools of medical ethics teaching (PBL, CBL, KMDD and StorED) did not lead to increase in moral competence, the longitudinal effect of such intervention remains to be seen. (shrink)

Do mountains exist? The answer to this question is surely: yes. In fact, ‘mountain’ is the example of a kind of geographic feature or thing most commonly cited by English speakers (Mark, et al., 1999; Smith and Mark 2001), and this result may hold across many languages and cultures. But whether they are considered as individuals (tokens) or as kinds (types), mountains do not exist in quite the same unequivocal sense as do such prototypical everyday objects as chairs or (...) people. (shrink)

Anselm of Canterbury, in his work Proslogion," originated the "ontological argument" for God's existence, famously arguing that "something than which nothing greater can be conceived," which he identifies with God, must actually exist, for otherwise something greater could indeed be conceived. Some commentators have claimed that although Anselm may not have been conscious of the fact, the Proslogion "as well as his Reply to Gaunilo" contains passages that constitute a second independent proof: a "modal ontological argument" that concerns the supposed (...) logical necessity of God's existence. Other commentators disagree, countering that the alleged second argument does not stand on its own but presupposes the conclusion of the first. Anselm's Other Argument "stakes an original claim in this debate, and takes it further. There is" a second a priori" argument in Anselm, A. D. Smith contends, but it is not the modal argument past scholars have identified. This second argument surfaces in a number of forms, though always turning on certain deep, interrelated metaphysical issues. It is this form of argument that in fact underlies several of the passages which have been misconstrued as statements of the modal argument. In a book that combines historical research with rigorous philosophical analysis, Smith discusses this argument in detail, finally defending a modification of it that is implicit in Anselm. This "other argument" bears a striking resemblance to one that Duns Scotus would later employ. (shrink)

It is argued that Husserl was an “externalist” in at least one sense. For it is argued that Husserl held that genuinely perceptual experiences—that is to say, experiences that are of some real object in the world—differ intrinsically, essentially and as a kind from any hallucinatory experiences. There is, therefore, no neutral “content” that such perceptual experiences share with hallucinations, differing from them only over whether some additional non-psychological condition holds or not. In short, it is argued that Husserl was (...) a “disjunctivist”. In addition, it is argued that Husserl held that the individual object of any experience, perceptual or hallucinatory, is essential to and partly constitutive of that experience. The argument focuses on three aspects of Husserl’s thought: his account of intentional objects, his notion of horizon, and his account of reality. (shrink)