Authority and Estrangement

Authority and Estrangement
Author: Richard Moran
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2001-11-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691089450

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others.

Rules of Estrangement

Rules of Estrangement
Author: Joshua Coleman, PhD
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2024-09-03
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0593136888

A guide for parents whose adult children have cut off contact that reveals the hidden logic of estrangement, explores its cultural causes, and offers practical advice for parents trying to reestablish contact with their adult children. “Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren. As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible. While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.

Authority and Estrangement

Authority and Estrangement
Author: Richard Moran
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2012-01-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400842972

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others.

Authority and Autonomy

Authority and Autonomy
Author: Susanne Ekman
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2012-09-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1137272880

Offers a detailed and entertaining analysis of the daily interactions between managers and employees in creative knowledge intensive organizations. Based on vivid examples, the book shows how both managers and employees entertain contradictory understandings of their mutual commitment.

The Philosophical Imagination

The Philosophical Imagination
Author: Richard Moran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2017
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190633778

A collection of philosophical articles on subjects ranging from aesthetics, the philosophy of mind and action, the first person, to engagements with various contemporary philosophers.

Learning from Other Worlds

Learning from Other Worlds
Author: Patrick Parrinder
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2001
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780822327738

A definite look at the state of science fiction studies today that surveys the field from Hugo Gernsbach to the present.

Art of Estrangement

Art of Estrangement
Author: Pamela Anne Patton
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0271053836

"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.

Self-Knowledge and Resentment

Self-Knowledge and Resentment
Author: Akeel Bilgrami
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2012-03-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674064526

In Self-Knowledge and Resentment, Akeel Bilgrami argues that self-knowledge of our intentional states is special among all the knowledges we have because it is not an epistemological notion in the standard sense of that term, but instead is a fallout of the radically normative nature of thought and agency. Four themes or questions are brought together into an integrated philosophical position: What makes self-knowledge different from other forms of knowledge? What makes for freedom and agency in a deterministic universe? What makes intentional states of a subject irreducible to its physical and functional states? And what makes values irreducible to the states of nature as the natural sciences study them? This integration of themes into a single and systematic picture of thought, value, agency, and self-knowledge is essential to the book's aspiration and argument. Once this integrated position is fully in place, the book closes with a postscript on how one might fruitfully view the kind of self-knowledge that is pursued in psychoanalysis.

The Exchange of Words

The Exchange of Words
Author: Richard Moran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190873345

The capacity to speak is not only the ability to pronounce words, but the socially-recognized capacity to make one's words count in various ways. We rely on this capacity whenever we tell another person something and expect to be believed, and what we learn from others in this way is the basis for most of what we take ourselves to know about the world. In The Exchange of Words, Richard Moran provides a philosophical exploration of human testimony as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. The book brings together themes from literature, philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this fundamental human phenomenon. The account developed here starts from the difference between what may be revealed in one's speech (like a regional accent) and what we explicitly claim and make ourselves answerable for. Some prominent themes include: the meaning of sincerity in speech, the nature of mutuality and how it differs from 'mind-reading', the interplay between the first-person and the second-person perspectives in conversation, and the nature of the speech act of telling and related illocutions as developed by philosophers such as J. L. Austin and Paul Grice. Everyday dialogue is the locus of a kind of intersubjective understanding that is distinctive of the transmission of reasons in human testimony, and The Exchange of Words is an original and integrated account of this basic way of being informative to and in touch with one another.

Expression and the Inner

Expression and the Inner
Author: David H. Finkelstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2008-12-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674263413

At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. Expression and the Inner contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. Following what he takes to be a widely misunderstood suggestion of Wittgenstein's, Finkelstein argues that we can make sense of self-knowledge and first-person authority only by coming to see the ways in which a self-ascription of, say, happiness (a person's saying or thinking, "I'm happy this morning") may be akin to a smile--akin, that is, to an expression of happiness. In so doing, Finkelstein contrasts his own reading of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind with influential readings set out by John McDowell and Crispin Wright. By the final chapter of this lucid work, what's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.