Death by Dealer: When Addicts Overdose, Should Dealers Be Charged with Murder?

The nation is currently in the throes of an epidemic of opiate addiction. More Americans now die from fatal opiate overdoses than from automobile accidents every year -- and the problem is especially pronounced in white suburban, exurban, and rural communities.One fascinating by product of the whiteness of this new crisis has been the emergence of a more humane vocabulary for understanding -- and combating -- drug addiction. As a headline in the New York Times had it, in battling heroin addiction, "White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs." When the Obama administration committed, recently, to allocate over $1 billion in new funding to address opiate addiction, officials referred to the problem as an epidemic, signaling that the acute social problems related to this type of chemical dependence should be regarded first and foremost as a public health crisis, rather than a law enforcement crisis.As a new addiction crisis sweeps the country, and as presidential candidates from both parties call for greater compassion and more comprehensive treatment options for addicts, there is another intriguing development that has received little media attention or policy debate: a widespread push for harsher sentences for drug dealers, rather than addicts. As addicts die in increasing numbers due to overdoses related to heroin and prescription opiate use abuse, prosecutors in communities across the country have been looking for new ways to hold people responsible for those deaths. Whether they are reviving old statutes, aggressively interpreting the ambit of existing law, or advancing tough new legislation at the state level, prosecutors in at least a dozen jurisdictions are pursuing charges against the dealers who sell drugs that cause overdoses, and they are looking to hold these dealers responsible not simply for drug sales, but for murder

The New Opiate Epidemic

On the subject of narcotics, American public discourse is prone to alarmism, but it is not an exaggeration to say that the United States is currently experiencing an epidemic of opiate addiction. To be exact, we are in the grip of two related epidemics: one involving legal, regulated prescription painkillers, and the other involving black market heroin. Chemically, these two types of drugs have a great deal in common, and both are devastatingly addictive. But the rise in pill addiction and the rise in heroin addiction are linked on a deeper causal level, as well.Drug overdoses now kill more Americans than car accidents, and most of those overdoses are from opiates. Heroin-related deaths have quadrupled since 2000, leading to what the New York Times has suggested may be "the worst drug overdose epidemic in United States history." Former attorney general Eric Holder described the rise in heroin addiction as a "public health crisis," with heroin overdoses leading to 10,574 deaths in 2014.But in fact, the spike in heroin abuse is an outgrowth of a much broader and in some ways more pernicious problem -- the widespread addiction to prescription painkillers. Pharmaceutical opioid overdoses have also quadrupled since 2000, leading to 18,893 deaths in 2014 -- almost double the number of heroin overdoses for the same year. The suppliers of these drugs are not street-corner dealers, but ostensibly respectable physicians, and behind them, multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies, with squadrons of lawyers and lobbyists

Cognitive Metaphors of the Mind in the Canterbury Tales

The paper presents an analysis of a number of cognitive metaphors pertaining to the concept of mind (e.g. sanity and insanity), heart, and fire. The study has been based on the text of Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The paper contains a short theoretical introduction and a discussion of different linguistic and psychological approaches to issues related to figurative and literal, conventional language use. The analytical part focuses on the detailed contextual study of the cognitive metaphorical concepts. It is argued that many apparently similar concepts can evoke semantically conflicting metaphors, while concepts that appear to be mutually exclusive can sometimes evoke common associations and thereby similar metaphors

Recognition rights, mental health consumers and reconstructive cultural semantics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Those in mental health-related consumer movements have made clear their demands for humane treatment and basic civil rights, an end to stigma and discrimination, and a chance to participate in their own recovery. But theorizing about the politics of recognition, 'recognition rights' and epistemic justice, suggests that they also have a stake in the broad cultural meanings associated with conceptions of mental health and illness.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>First person accounts of psychiatric diagnosis and mental health care (shown here to represent 'counter stories' to the powerful 'master narrative' of biomedical psychiatry), offer indications about how experiences of mental disorder might be reframed and redefined as part of efforts to acknowledge and honor recognition rights and epistemic justice. However, the task of cultural semantics is one for the entire culture, not merely consumers. These new meanings must be <it>negotiated</it>. When they are not the result of negotiation, group-wrought definitions risk imposing a revision no less constraining than the mis-recognizing one it aims to replace. Contested realities make this a challenging task when it comes to cultural meanings about mental disorder. Examples from mental illness memoirs about two contested realities related to psychosis are examined here: the meaninglessness of symptoms, and the role of insight into illness. They show the magnitude of the challenge involved - for consumers, practitioners, and the general public - in the reconstruction of these new meanings and realities.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To honor recognition rights and epistemic justice acknowledgement must be made of the heterogeneity of the effects of, and of responses to, psychiatric diagnosis and care, and the extent of the challenge of the reconstructive cultural semantics involved.</p

Aplicaciones didácticas de la metáfora cognitiva al aprendizaje del inglés para la ciencia y la tecnología

En las últimas décadas, el cognitivismo ha realizado una importante contribución al desarrollo de las competencias comunicativas de los estudiantes de lenguas extranjeras. Por una parte, ha ofrecido un soporte teórico mediante la determinación de los estilos y de las estrategias de aprendizaje para obtener, almacenar y utilizar la información (O´Malley, 1987; Chamot, 1990; O´Malley y Chamot, 1990). Por otra, ha proporcionado pruebas empíricas de que la percepción de la metáfora tiene un efecto positivo en la adquisición de lenguas y facilita el empleo de estrategias de extensión metafórica (Low, 2008; Littlemore, 2004). Este estudio propone un marco teórico para mejorar el proceso de enseñanza/aprendizaje que combina ambos aspectos, ya que asume que la metáfora es un componente fundamental de la cognición que posibilita la integración de conceptos nuevos en campos de conocimiento ya existentes. Por ello, con el propósito de crear recursos didácticos en los que se apliquen estrategias metafóricas, se ha elaborado un listado de metáforas de imagen y de metáforas conceptuales tomadas de la base de datos METACITEC. Se presenta la propuesta metodológica validada por los resultados de encuestas y por la observación en el aula

Kant’s “mere delusions of misery”. Replies to Arnaudo, Bortolotti & Belvederi Murri, Kind and Noordhof on imaginary pain

Author's reply to comments on J. RADDEN, Imagined and delusional pain, Forum Imagining pain, in: «Rivista internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia», vol. XII, n. 2, 2021, pp. 151-206

Imagined and delusional pain

Abstract: Extreme pain and suffering are associated with depression as well as tissue damage. The impossibility of imagining any feelings of pain and suffering intersect with two matters: the kind of imagining involved, and the nature of delusions. These two correspond to the sequence of the following discussion, in which it is contended first that feelings of pain and suffering resist being imagined in a certain, key way (defined here as proprietary imagining P simpliciter), and second that, given a certain analysis of delusional thought, this precludes the possibility of delusional affections while allowing delusions about affections (here affective delusions).Keywords: Pain; Imagination; Delusion; Affection; Feelings Dolore immaginato e dolore illusorio Riassunto: Dolore estremo e sofferenza sono solitamente associati a depressione e danni tissutali. L’impossibilità di immaginare il provare dolore e sofferenza dipende da due fattori: il tipo di immaginazione coinvolta e la natura dell’illusione. Questi due fattori saranno trattati in parallelo nell’analisi che qui si propone, in cui si discuterà in primo luogo come il provare dolore e sofferenza oppongano resistenza all’essere immaginati in un certo modo (qui indicato come carattere proprietario dell'immaginare P simpliciter) e in secondo luogo come, secondo una certa analisi del pensiero illusorio, questo preclude la possibilità di affezioni illusorie mentre consente illusioni circa le affezioni (qui indicate come illusioni affettive).Parole chiave: Dolore; Immaginazione; Illusioni; Affezione; Sensazion

The Metaphor TIME AS SPACE across Languages

The impact of spatial orientation on human thought and, in particular, our understanding of time has often been noted.1 Lakoff (1993: 218) assumes that our metaphorical understanding of time in terms of space is biologically determined: “In our visual systems, we have detectors for motion and detectors for objects/locations. We do not have detectors for time (whatever that could mean). Thus, it makes good biological sense that time should be understood in terms of things and motion.” This explanation is not fully convincing because there is empirical evidence that humans directly perceive and “feel” the passage of time (see Evans, in print). Our direct experience of time is subjective and may, therefore, be strikingly different from objective time. Thus, a given duration of time is experienced as lasting longer or shorter depending on our state of awareness and the amount of information registered. For example, the duration of time in situations of heightened awareness and high information processing such as during times of suffering or danger is experienced as passing more slowly, while in situations of low information processing, such as during routine activities, time appears to pass more quickly. Evans convincingly argues that our experience of time results from internal, subjective responses to external sensory stimuli and that by imparting spatio-physical “image content” to a subjective response concept we are able to “objectify” our temporal experience. According to this view of time, our spatial understanding of time is not determined by biological needs, but by intersubjective, or communicative, needs. We need spatio-physical metaphors to speak about time in the same way that we need concrete metaphors to speak about other internal states such as emotions or thoughts. We may, however, consider a third reason why the metaphor TIME AS SPACE is so pervasive. In Metaphors We Live by, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: Ch. 21) draw attention to the power of metaphor to create new meaning. Our veridical experience of time is restricted to only a few of its aspects: simultaneity and duration, and the awareness of the present as the time experienced at each moment, the past as the time related to remembered events, and the future as time related to predicted events. In metaphorizing time as space, these notions are typically seen with respect to a one-dimensional line, the time axis. But the “cognitive topology” of space has more to offer than a straight, one-dimensional line. Space is, in the first place, three-dimensional. Secondly, orientation in three-dimensional, earth-based space requires three axes: a longitudinal axis, a vertical axis, and left-to-right axis. Thirdly, objects in space may come in any shape. Fourthly, reference to space may be absolute or relative, and relative space may be relative with respect to things in the world or the observing EGO. Fifthly, things in space may be stationary or in motion. Sixthly, space is populated with things in the widest sense, which may serve as figures or reference points and are associated with certain properties and typical behaviors. In conceptualizing time as space, we may take advantage of the conceptual richness inherent in the spatial domain as a whole and, in mapping its structural elements onto time, impart new meanings onto temporal notions. For example, we may think of time as moving up or down, which we do, or as staggering from left to right, which, under normal circumstances, we do not. It is to be expected that those aspects of space which best conform to our everyday experience in the spatial world are preferentially made use of and typically found across languages. But, in lexicalizing notions of time, different languages may also exploit the cognitive topology of space in different ways. This paper will be concerned with the ways different cultures and their languages conventionally make use of the pool of spatial meanings in conceptualizing and expressing notions of time. We will look at the following dimensions of space and their metaphorical mappings on time: dimensionality of time (Section 2), orientation of the time-line (Section 3), shape of the time-line (Section 4), position of times relative to the observer (Section 5), sequences of time units (Section 6), and time as motion (Section 7)