Creative Uses of Psychology and Reflexivity

In this series, I summarized major arguments in A Suspicious Science: The Uses of Psychology. My exploration of the uses of psychology has emphasized the explanatory roles it fulfills within broader cultural projects. Briefly, empirical psychology seeks mechanistic explanations which then filter into popular uses of psychology, and discursive clinical …

Drugs and Agency

The ethical quandary at the core of how we represent the mind in practical uses of psychology is the technology of agency. The biomedical and psychodynamic (i.e., discursive) approaches are “two different ways to identify, understand, and respond to mental anguish.”[i] In the latter, there are mechanistic accounts for how …

Morality, the Problem of Possible Future Selves, and Christmas Parables

In my 2016 book, Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory, I argue that morality is a solution to a problem of diachronic rationality called ‘the problem of possible future selves.’ To simplify (very) greatly, the problem–which is partially inspired by L.A. Paul’s groundbreaking work on transformative experience–is that (A) our present …

Primates Who Are Calm Enough to Pay Attention, or How Touch Allows Human and Non-Human Infants to Engage in Social Interactions

When orphans who have had to overcome difficult upbringings are portrayed in movies or books, they are usually described as smart, sensible children who are capable of facing any challenge and are able to intuitively excel in anything they attempt (even quidditch). The reality of a harsh upbringing, especially for …

CFP – Technological Mediation & Changing Conceptions of Humanity

Please see the following Call for Authors: https://philevents.org/event/show/15174 (Feel free to contact me, if you have questions.) Cheers! Frank Scalambrino https://udallas.academia.edu/FrankScalambrino Summary Version of the Call for Authors: This edited volume seeks to bring together scholars from across disciplines to discuss the social effects of technological mediation, focusing on the …

2013 Spindel Conference: The Lives of Human Animals

The problem of personal identity is one of the most bewitching puzzles in all of philosophy. Until very recently, most philosophers subscribed to the view first advocated by the 17th-century British philosopher, John Locke. Locke held that our fundamental nature is given by our status as self-conscious, rational agents (“persons”) …

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