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This book examines both standard practice and ongoing controversies in social, medical, scientific, ethical, and philosophical approaches to ADHD. The complex web of concepts, data, needs, and attitudes is not fully unified. But, overall, the book argues, current approaches to research and care accidentally reinforce intolerance of ADHD-diagnosed people, and simultaneously slow down growth in knowledge. To avoid these outcomes, the wide range of people involved with ADHD—including clinicians, scientists, educators, parents, policy-makers, and diagnosed individuals—need to jointly re-examine and change the attitudes, concepts, and practices typically taken toward ADHD. The book demonstrates how we derived our current medical, scientific, and social concepts of ADHD, shows why the concepts we now use are optional, and explains that we need change for both ethical and epistemic reasons. Ethically, we need new approaches because our current concepts and practices, which center on DSM-defined ADHD, dichotomization of “ADHD” from “non-ADHD,” and intervening on individuals rather than society, embed values that reflect and reinforce intolerance. Epistemically, opposition to alternatives has created a relative stasis in our understanding of ADHD. The book argues that any change will need to recognize the centrality of both facts and values to improved scientific, medical, and social approaches to ADHD. Shared goals of increasing knowledge, providing new options for diagnosed people, and decreasing stigmatization will drive the much-needed change; adopting inclusive, responsive decision making in all areas of practice will foster it.

Action and Interaction is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the nature of action, starting with questions about action individuation, context, the notion of ?basic action? and the temporal structure of action. The importance of circumstance for understanding action is stressed. These topics lead to questions about intention and the sense of agency and ultimately to the idea that we need to consider action in the social contexts of interaction. The second part looks at the role of interaction in discussions of social cognition, building a contrast between standard theory- of-mind approaches and embodied/enactive accounts. Gallagher defends an enactive-interactionist account drawing on evidence from both phenomenology and empirical studies of development, ecological psychology, and studies of communicative and narrative practices, especially in more complex social practices. The third part transitions from considerations that focus on social-cognitive issues to understanding their implications for concepts that are basic to the development of a critical theory that addresses social and political issues, especially with respect to basic concepts of autonomy, recognition and justice, and the effects of norms and social institutions on our actions and interactions

Most philosophical explorations of responsibility discuss the topic solely in terms of metaphysics and the “free will” problem. By contrast, the chapters in this book view responsibility from a variety of perspectives: Metaphysics, ethics, action theory, and the philosophy of law. After a broad, framing introduction by the book’s editors, the contributors consider such subjects as responsibility as it relates to the “free will” problem; the relation between responsibility and knowledge or ignorance; the relation between causal and moral responsibility; the difference, if any, between responsibility for actions and responsibility for omissions; the metaphysical requirements for making sense of “collective” responsibility; and the relation between moral and legal responsibility.

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social. The author proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. This book is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.

Addictive behavior threatens not just the addict’s happiness and health but also the welfare and well-being of others. It represents a loss of self-control and a variety of other cognitive impairments and behavioral deficits. An addict may say, “I couldn’t help myself.” But questions arise: Are we responsible for our addictions? What responsibilities do others have to help us? This book offers a range of perspectives on addiction and responsibility, and how the two are bound together. Contributors—from theorists to clinicians, from neuroscientists and psychologists to philosophers and legal scholars—discuss these questions using a variety of conceptual and investigative tools. Some offer models of addiction-related phenomena, including theories of incentive sensitization, ego-depletion, and pathological affect; others address such traditional philosophical questions as free will and agency, mind–body, and other minds. Two chapters, written by scholars who were themselves addicts, attempt to integrate first-person phenomenological accounts with the third-person perspective of the sciences. Contributors distinguish among moral responsibility, legal responsibility, and the ethical responsibility of clinicians and researchers. Taken together, the chapters offer the argument that we cannot fully understand addiction if we do not also understand responsibility.

The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from accepted assumptions. Hence the book begins by identifying basic presuppositions required for Advaita and determining the different cognitive possibilities arising out of them. After thus determining what is logically and conceptually possible and impossible in Advaita, the new framework is used to assess whether or not the traditionally held Advaitic concepts and theories are satisfactory and acceptable. This is done in many chapters covering discussions of the notions of not-Self (anātman), cosmic ignorance (māyā), individual ignorance (avidyā), illusoriness (mithyātva), sublation (bādha), entities that are different from the real and the unreal (sadasadvilaksana) and so on. The book argues that all these concepts, as specifically formulated and defended in traditional Advaita for centuries after Śankara, are simply faulty and untenable both individually and as related clusters of concepts. Traditional Advaita has also defended an elaborate ontology of experiences like mistaking a rope-for a snake. It has also heavily defended the metaphysical thesis of the empirical world of our experience being a total illusion. The logical faults and conceptual inadequacies of this ontology and metaphysics are also discussed in great detail, offering absolutely new criticisms of them. Despite this almost totally negative portrayal of traditional Advaita, the book is also quite positive in showing that any belief in non-duality is still very much philosophically possible and also necessary.

The book contains a selection of essays on aesthetics, some of which have been revised or added to. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster of the most important issues in aesthetics which are not specific to particular art forms. These include the nature and proper scope of the aesthetic, the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgements, the correct understanding of aesthetic judgements expressed through metaphors, aesthetic realism versus anti-realism, the character of aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic value, the aim of art, and the artistic expression of emotion. Others are focussed on central issues in the aesthetics of particular art forms: two engage with the most fundamental issue in the aesthetics of music, the question of the correct conception of the phenomenology of the experience of listening to music with understanding; and two consider the nature of pictorial representation, one examining the well-known views of Ernst Gombich, Richard Wollheim, and Kendall Walton, the other articulating an alternative conception of seeing a picture as a depiction of a certain state of affairs. The final essay in the book is a comprehensive reconstruction and critical examination of Wittgenstein's aesthetics, both early and late.

This book offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics. Aesthetic theory has traditionally occupied itself with fine art in all its forms, sometimes with craft, and often with notions of beauty and sublimity in art and nature. In so doing, it has largely ignored the quotidian and familiar objects and experiences that make up our daily lives. Yet how we interact with design involves aesthetic choices and judgements as well as practical, cognitive and moral considerations. This work challenges the discipline to broaden its scope to include design, and illustrates how aesthetics helps define our human concerns. Subjecting design to as rigorous a treatment as any other aesthetic object exposes it to three main challenges that form the core of this book. First, design must be distinguished from art and craft as a unique kind of object meriting separate philosophical attention, and is here defined in part by its functional qualities. Second, the experience of design must be defended as having a particularly aesthetic nature. Here Forsey adapts the Kantian notion of dependent beauty to provide a model for our appreciation of design as different from our judgments of art, craft and natural beauty. Finally, design is important for aesthetics and philosophy as a whole in that it is implicated in broader human concerns. Forsey situates her theory of design as a constructive contribution to the recent movement of Everyday Aesthetics, which seeks to re-enfranchise philosophical aesthetics as an important part of philosophy at large.

The book develops a process metaphysical conception of subjectivity from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead. This alters existential orientations towards affect and attention in ways described as ecological attunement. The study is guided by two methodological commitments: (i) demonstrating the importance and relevance of responsible speculative thinking and (ii) translating metaphysical ideas into their existential implications. Both commitments are motivated by a contemporary context of ecological crisis and paradigm transformation. In the course of its argument, the book relates the work of Deleuze and Whitehead to other speculative trends in recent philosophy, particularly posthumanisms and speculative realisms. Deleuze and Whitehead are read in a shared lineage of radical empiricism that emphasizes processes and events as metaphysically primary. A key theme is understanding subjectivity through dynamic processes of individuation at variable scales where feeling/affect and attention acquire metaphysical rather than psychological scope and status. Whitehead’s analysis of “feeling” as metaphysical operation is explored in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's Spinozist-inspired deployment of affect. Attending participates as a crucial bridge between the metaphysical and the existential in processes of consolidation of present real actual occasions. The book develops existential implications of these claims in the context of an expanded philosophical conception of ecology. These implications challenge dominant modes of subjectification under what Guattari calls “Integrated World Capitalism” (IWC). The book concludes with discussion of how speculative philosophy may contribute to alternative futures.

Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with Leibniz. In doing so it hopes to offer a focused framework for understanding some of the most difficult aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. Part One examines Deleuze’s account of the “anti-Cartesian reaction” of Spinoza and Leibniz which culminates in their two competing theories of expression. It argues that in some key respects Deleuze favours Leibniz’s interpretation of this key concept over Spinoza’s. Part Two looks at Deleuze’s critique of representation and his attempt to create a theory of difference that will underlie, rather than rely upon, conceptual opposition. It examines the crucial role played by the Leibnizian concepts of incompossibility and divergence in Deleuze’s theory of ‘vice-diction’, created in order to offer a sub-representational, or pre-individual, substitute for Hegelian contradiction. Part Three looks in detail at one of Deleuze’s last major works, The Fold. It argues for Leibniz’s central place in this text, and shows how Deleuze uses concepts from across Leibniz’s philosophy and mathematics as a framework to articulate a systematic account of his own mature philosophy.

Histories of German philosophy in the nineteenth century typically focus on its first half—when Hegel, idealism, and Romanticism dominated. By contrast, the remainder of the century, after Hegel's death, has been relatively neglected because it has been seen as a period of stagnation and decline. This book argues that the second half of the century was in fact one of the most revolutionary periods in modern philosophy because the nature of philosophy itself was up for grabs and the very absence of certainty led to creativity and the start of a new era. This innovative concise history of German philosophy, from 1840 to 1900, focuses not on themes or individual thinkers but rather on the period's five great debates: the identity crisis of philosophy, the materialism controversy, the methods and limits of history, the pessimism controversy, and the Ignorabimusstreit. Schopenhauer and Wilhelm Dilthey play important roles in these controversies but so do many neglected figures, including Ludwig Büchner, Eugen Dühring, Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Fraunstaedt, Hermann Lotze, Adolf Trendelenburg, and two women, Agnes Taubert and Olga Pluemacher, who have been completely forgotten in histories of philosophy. The result is a wide-ranging, original, and surprising new account of German philosophy in the critical period between Hegel and the twentieth century.

The chapters of this book, which are by liberal and feminist philosophers, address whether marriage reform ought to stop with same-sex marriage. Some philosophers have recently argued that marriage is illiberal and should be abolished or radically reformed to include groups and friendships. In response, Chapter 1 argues that marriage law can be justified without illiberal appeal to an ideal relationship type, and Chapter 2 argues that the liberal values justifying same-sex marriage do not justify further extension. Other chapters argue for new legal forms for intimate relationships. Chapter 3 argues that piecemeal directives rather than relationship contracts should replace marriage, and Chapter 4 argues for separating marriage and parenting, with parenting rather than marriage becoming the family’s foundation. The fifth chapter argues for a non-hierarchical friendship model for marriage. The next one argues that polygamy should be decriminalized but that the liberal state need not recognize it, while Chapter 7 argues that polygamy could be legally structured to protect privacy and equality. The eighth chapter argues for temporary marriage as a legal option, while the chapter that follows argues that marital commitments are problematic instruments for securing romantic love. These essays challenge contemporary understandings of marriage and the state’s role in it.

Humanity has sat at the center of philosophical thinking for too long. The recent advent of environmental philosophy and posthuman studies has widened our scope of inquiry to include ecosystems, animals, and artificial intelligence. Yet the vast majority of the stuff in our universe, and even in our lives, remains beyond serious philosophical concern. This book develops an object-oriented ontology that puts things at the center of being—a philosophy in which nothing exists any more or less than anything else, in which humans are elements but not the sole or even primary elements of philosophical interest. And unlike experimental phenomenology or the philosophy of technology, this book’s alien phenomenology takes for granted that all beings interact with and perceive one another. This experience, however, withdraws from human comprehension and becomes accessible only through a speculative philosophy based on metaphor.

All Thoughts Are Equal is an introduction to the work of French philosopher François Laruelle and an experiment in nonhuman thinking. For Laruelle, standard forms of philosophy continue to dominate our models of what counts as exemplary thought and knowledge. By contrast, what Laruelle calls his “non-standard” approach attempts to bring democracy into thought, because all forms of thinking are equal in value. Philosophy–the discipline that posits itself as the power to think at the highest level–does not have a monopoly on reason. Such democracy clearly has relevance for the nonhuman, too. If non-philosophy hopes to extend what we mean by thinking beyond the boundaries set by classical approaches, then such a project has important implications as regards the existence and value of nonhuman forms of thought. This study strives to see how philosophy might appear when we look at it with non-philosophical and nonhuman eyes. And it does so by refusing to explain Laruelle through orthodox philosophy, opting instead to follow the structure of a film, Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions, to introduce the non-standard method. Von Trier’s documentary is a meditation on the creative constraints set by film, both technologically and aesthetically, and how they can push our experience of film, and of ourselves, beyond what is normally deemed “the perfect human.” All Thoughts Are Equal adopts those constraints in its own experiment by showing how Laruelle’s radically new style of philosophy is best introduced using our most nonhuman form of thought, that found in cinema itself.

This book seeks to elucidate Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty’s treatments of the question of truth by using each of their philosophies to shed light on the other. For both philosophers, the question of truth arises from the fact that even though truth is an illusion, it remains a meaningful concept. What authentic experience is truth an inauthentic expression of? By following the trajectory of this question in both authors’ works, this book demonstrates how this question structures both their philosophies and how its answer constitutes the systematic and intrinsic link between them: the concept of truth arises from the authentic experience of Being as an endless movement of falsification. For Being must be defined as the very movement whereby the world transforms itself into truths.

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. This book sets out to explain and illustrate a certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. The author draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed his route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method (the ideal of ‘analysing’ complex ideas into simpler elements) in favour of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry.

Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical distancing from the sometimes claustrophobic proximity of empathy – currently the prevailing mode in Animal Studies – this book interrogates the claims made of empathy without exchanging it for the kind of abstract, disembodied reason which has long disavowed the ethical status of nonhuman life. This book is particularly interested in the stories that we tell, and are told, by beings at the edges of animal life, insects, and the possibility that the indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke might form the basis for an ethics which is not bounded by empathy. Across five interdisciplinary chapters, it asks: is it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? How might we develop approaches to nonhuman life which are affectively and critically informed? It contends that reframing the human in relation to the elements of itself which it denounces as inhuman can inform a renewed attentiveness to nonhuman life.

Apocalypse-cinema is not only the end of time that has so often been staged as spectacle in films like 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and Terminator. By looking at blockbusters that play with general annihilation while also paying close attention to films like Melancholia, Cloverfield, Blade Runner, and Twelve Monkeys, this book suggests that in the apocalyptic genre, film gnaws at its own limit. Apocalypse-cinema is, at the same time and with the same double blow, the end of the world and the end of the film. It is the consummation and the (self)consumption of cinema, in the form of a cinema that Lyotard evoked as the nihilistic horizon of filmic economy. The innumerable countdowns, dazzling radiations, freeze-overs, seismic cracks, and crevices are but other names and pretexts for staging film itself, with its economy of time and its rewinds, its overexposed images and fades to white, its freeze frames and digital touch-ups. The apocalyptic genre is not just one genre among others: it plays with the very conditions of possibility of cinema. And it bears witness to the fact that, every time, in each and every film, what Jean-Luc Nancy called the cine-world is exposed on the verge of disappearing. In a postface specially written for the English edition, the book extends its argument into a debate with speculative materialism. Apocalypse-cinema, it argues, announces itself as cinders that question the “ultratestimonial” structure of the filmic gaze. The cine-eye, it argues, eludes the correlationism and anthropomorphic structure that speculative materialists have placed under critique, allowing only the ashes it bears to be heard.

This book is about long-term romantic love and how we go about developing it—or fail to do so. It is about building the foundations for such love and dealing with the difficulties that inevitably emerge in such a challenging and critical construction project. The reader will discover the good news that there is no reason to despair: enduring love can be achieved. And time plays a leading role in this process. The book takes an optimistic perspective. Not only is enduring, profound love possible; it is also more common than most of us think. Yet the romantic road is often bumpy and long. Enticing romances encounter many blind alleys. How is the would-be lover to know when such romances are promenades for flourishing love and when they are dead-end streets? The book provides some helpful signposts along the “freeway of love.” Love is not all you need; but if you have enough of what you need, and love infuses life with joy, your life is more likely to be, as the classic song has it, a many-splendored thing. The book casts doubt on prevailing popular attempts to make love as fresh as it was at its very beginning. When freshness is foremost, we are setting ourselves up to lose the battle for long-lasting profound love before the war has begun, as there will always be fresher and tastier occasional romantic affairs than the present one.