In summary we have as follows, leaving aside here the complex and important cometary theories of the pre-socratics, Aristotle, and the Stoics. First, ca. 145-35 B.C.E. Nechepso-Petosiris wrote a book of astrology including a passage on cometary prognosis based on heavenly region of appearance. He assumed that comets were fiery without further ado. His view of comets seems to be that they appear in, move toward, or pause in, any quadrant of the sky. Their descriptions are irrelevant to their nature, (...) serving only to identify them. Within the next century five further books were written. Epigenes refined the standard theory with details about whirl-winds and the like, referred to the Chaldaians, was also an astrologer, and has the simplest view of the planets 82). Although fundamentally Epigenes' theory is simple, it seems to have involved a detailed reworking of Aristotle's theory 83), perhaps making use of Hipparchos or of Hipparchos' Babylonian sources. First, the three outer planets by their conjunctions generate thunder and lightning. Then the events called trabes and faces are formed from. (shrink)

Biton’s Construction of Machines of War and Catapults describes six machines by five engineers or inventors; the fourth machine is a rolling elevatable scaling ladder, named sambukē, designed by one Damis of Kolophōn. The first sambukē was invented by Herakleides of Taras, in 214 BCE, for the Roman siege of Syracuse. Biton is often dismissed as incomprehensible or preposterous. I here argue that the account of Damis’ device is largely coherent and shows that Biton understood that Damis had built a (...) machine that embodied Archimedean principles. The machine embodies three such principles: (1) the proportionate balancing of the torques on a lever (from Plane Equilibria, an early work); (2) the concept of specific gravity or density (from Floating Bodies, a late work); and (3) the κοχλίας, i.e., a worm drive (invented ca 240 BCE), with the toothed wheel functioning as the horizontal axis of rotation of the elevated ladder. Moreover, the stone-thrower of Isidoros of Abydos (the second machine in Biton) also embodies the κοχλίας. (shrink)

Measuring neuronal activity with electrophysiological methods may be useful in detecting neurological dysfunctions, such as mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). This approach may be particularly valuable for rapid detection in at-risk populations including military service members and athletes. Electrophysiological methods, such as quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) and recording event-related potentials (ERPs) may be promising; however, the field is nascent and significant controversy exists on the efficacy and accuracy of the approaches as diagnostic tools. For example, the specific measures derived from an (...) electroencephalogram (EEG) that are most suitable as markers of dysfunction have not been clearly established. A study was conducted to summarize and evaluate the statistical rigor of evidence on the overall utility of qEEG as an mTBI detection tool. The analysis evaluated qEEG measures/parameters that may be most suitable as fieldable diagnostic tools, identified other types of EEG measures and analysis methods of promise, recommended specific measures and analysis methods for further development as mTBI detection tools, identified research gaps in the field, and recommended future research and development thrust areas. The qEEG study group formed the following conclusions: 1. Individual qEEG measures provide limited diagnostic utility for mTBI. However, many measures can be important features of qEEG discriminant functions, which do show significant promise as mTBI detection tools. 2. ERPs offer utility in mTBI detection. In fact, evidence indicates that ERPs can identify abnormalities in cases where EEGs alone are nondisclosing. 3. The standard mathematical procedures used in the characterization of mTBI EEGs should be expanded to incorporate newer methods of analysis including nonlinear dynamical analysis, complexity measures, analysis of causal interactions, graph theory and information dynamics. 4. and 5. are too long to include here. (shrink)

As social creatures, human beings possess a number of identities. A young woman, for example, is a daughter and a member of a particular ethnic group. She is also likely to be a citizen, a friend,...

The abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib had far-reaching consequences, leading many people around the world to question the legitimacy of U.S. goals and activities in Iraq. Drawing on extensive unclassified reports from multiple investigations that followed Abu Ghraib, this article considers both psychological and social-situational factors that contributed to ethical failures there. This analysis suggests that leaders need to be more attuned to the developmental stage of subordinates and take appropriate steps to reinforce ethical behaviors. From (...) a psychological standpoint, young adults especially are strongly inclined to behave in accord with social conventions and pressures around them. Particularly in ambiguous circumstances, it is important that standards of behavior be clear and explicit throughout all phases of an operation and that leaders at all levels represent and reinforce those standards. (shrink)

Dual-process models of cognition suggest that there are two types of thought: autonomous Type 1 processes and working memory dependent Type 2 processes that support hypothetical thinking. Models of creative thinking also distinguish between two sets of thinking processes: those involved in the generation of ideas and those involved with their refinement, evaluation, and/or selection. Here we review dual-process models in both these literatures and delineate the similarities and differences. Both generative creative processing and evaluative creative processing involve elements that (...) have been attributed to each of the dual processes of cognition. We explore the notion that creative thinking may rest upon the nature of a shifting process between Type 1 and Type 2 dual processes. We suggest that a synthesis of the evidence bases on dual-process models of cognition and of creative thinking, together with developing time-based approaches to explore the shifting process, could better inform the development of i.. (shrink)

Physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington require the person's current competency and a prognosis of terminal illness. In The Netherlands voluntariness and unbearable suffering are required for euthanasia. Many people are more concerned about the loss of autonomy and independence in years of severe dementia than about pain and suffering in their last months. To address this concern, people could write advance directives for physician-assisted death in dementia. Should such directives be implemented even though, at the time, the person (...) is no longer competent and would not be either terminally ill or suffering unbearably? We argue that in many cases they should be, and that a sliding scale which considers both autonomy and the capacity for enjoyment provides the best justification for determining when: when written by a previously well-informed and competent person, such a directive gains in authority as the later person's capacities to generate new critical interests and to enjoy life decrease. Such an extension of legalized death assistance is grounded in the same central value of voluntariness that undergirds the current more limited legalization. (shrink)

Almost all jurisdictions where physician-assisted death is legal require that the requesting individual be competent to make medical decisions at time of assistance. The requirement of contemporary competence is intended to ensure that PAD is limited to people who really want to die and have the cognitive ability to make a final choice of such enormous import. Along with terminal illness, defined as prognosis of death within six months, contemporary competence is regarded as an important safeguard against mistake and abuse, (...) arguably the strongest objections to legalizing PAD.The insistence on contemporary competence is problematic. It means that someone who has dementia is ruled out as a candidate for PAD, even if she is terminally ill and suffering terrible and unrelievable pain. It also rules out individuals with strong and unwavering desires not to end their life in dementia. (shrink)

Competent patients have considerable legal authority to control life‐and‐death care. They may refuse medical life support, including medically delivered food and fluids. Even when they are not in need of any life‐saving care, they may expedite death by refusing food and water by mouth—voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, or VSED. Neither right is limited to terminal illness. In addition, in four U.S. states, competent patients, if terminally ill, may obtain lethal drugs for aid‐in‐dying.For people who have dementia and are no (...) longer competent, however, control over the end of life is much less extensive. They may have written a clear advance directive for refusing life‐saving care in specified circumstances yet subsequently find themselves living for years in severe dementia with no need for life‐saving care that could be refused. Chronic progressive dementia is not itself life threatening until its very final stage. Even in jurisdictions that permit active aid‐in‐dying, individuals with advanced dementia are not eligible; they lack the required current competence, and they are seldom deemed terminally ill. As for the right to VSED, its very name—voluntarily stopping eating and drinking—is seen as excluding noncompetent persons.One option for ensuring that one does not live years in severe dementia is to use advance directives to withhold food and water by mouth. The driving element behind VSED is that forcing people to ingest food is as objectionable an intrusion on bodily integrity, privacy, and liberty as imposing unwanted medical treatment. Thus, if incompetent people do not lose their rights to refuse life‐saving treatment, and if people when competent have just as strong a right to VSED as they do to refuse life‐saving treatment, then people do not lose their right to VSED when incompetent either. They only have to exercise it by AD. (shrink)

The Big Bang is a myth, says Paul Brockelman in this fascinating look at the spiritual side of modern cosmology. But it is a myth in the best sense--a fully realized creation story, one that, for all its scientific origins, has the power to transform us spiritually. In Cosmology and Creation, philosopher and religious scholar Brockelman seeks to bridge the gap between the scientific and the spiritual, to bring together the head and the heart. We have isolated the two (...) realms from each other for so long, he argues, that we have begun to lose a mystical sense of our place in the universe. But Brockelman believes that contemporary physics has advanced far beyond the mechanical view of nature, as propagated in the Enlightenment; the cosmology of the Big Bang has fostered a new way of understanding existence itself. To illustrate, he examines creation myths of the past, showing how they transcend simple explanations of the world to provide a deeper understanding of what our lives mean. And the fifteen-billion-year tale of the universe embraced by scientific cosmology serves precisely the same purpose, Brockelman claims; it bears a close resemblance to classic creation myths--and, indeed, it can transform our inner relationship with nature. The new scientific cosmology, Brockelman argues, offers something never before seen in human history: a scientifically accurate understanding of the entire universe and a spiritual vision of a "wider order of being" to which we all belong. Passionate and provocative, Cosmology and Creation promises to spark a lively debate about the new links between science and religion. (shrink)

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_Speaking _is an introduction to the philosophy of language from an existential and phenomenological point of view. Gusdorf's central concern is to analyze speech within the context of human reality. Speech is an abstraction, but speaking is not, he says. Speaking expresses the experimental and dialectical relation of man, nature, and society. It is through speaking that nature is sublimated into the meant and expressive world of human reality.

Nietzsche and Kant on Aesthetics and Anthropology is the third of a three-volume collection exploring Nietzsche’s relationship to the Kantian legacy in philosophy. This volume examines his relationship to Kant’s aesthetic and anthropological views, focusing on the traces of Kant’s third Critique and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View that can be found in Nietzsche’s published and unpublished works. In this review, I offer a summary of each of its chapters, with some brief commentary, and underscore its major themes, (...) contributions, and omissions. In their introduction, Maria Branco and Katia Hay signal that the scope of this volume goes well beyond a strict understanding of aesthetics as the evaluation of... (shrink)

In the United States, amid the fractious politics of attempting to achieve something close to universal access to basic health care, two impressions are likely to feed skepticism about the status of a right to universal access: the moral principles that underlie any right to universal access may seem incredibly "ideal," not well rooted in the society's actual fabric, and the necessary practical and political attempts to limit the scope of universally accessible care to make its achievement realistic may seem (...) marked less by moral rhyme and reason than by the pull of conflicting interests. I try to directly dispel the first of these impressions and to obliquely question the second. The immense political barriers to .. (shrink)

The case of Mrs A is a provocative example of euthanasia by advance directive to avoid increasingly severe dementia. It is also a ‘perfect storm’ of a disturbing case, revealing both the challenges that can arise with advance euthanasia directives generally and particular issues in the Dutch procedures. Kim, Miller and Dresser have done a distinct service to bioethics in detailing the case, in explaining the basis of the regional euthanasia review committee reprimand of the administering geriatrician and in highlighting (...) some significant deficiencies in Dutch procedures.1 Many readers, after encountering the case, may find themselves sceptical that AEDs can be an ethically viable vehicle for avoiding living into severe dementia. I will argue that caution and care, not resistance to AEDs for dementia, is in order. Real dilemmas of implementation are inherent in advance directives, to be sure, dilemmas that can be aggravated by a patient’s dementia. Yet much can be done in writing an AED to make its implementation in dementia less problematic, and the Dutch emphasis on intolerable suffering as a necessary condition for euthanasia is not the appropriate legal framework. The difficulties in the case begin with the directive itself. Any advance directive, whether for refusing lifesaving treatment or for physician-assisted death, needs to be clear about what is and is not to happen and when. At first Mrs A’s directive seems to provide a trigger point: ‘I want to make use of the legal right to … euthanasia when I am still at all mentally competent and am no longer able to live at home with my husband. I absolutely do not want to be placed in an institution for elderly dementia patients’. In a revision added a year before her death, the time had become ‘whenever I think the time …. (shrink)

The Roman Catholic theological approach to euthanasia is radically prohibitive. The main theological argument for this prohibition is the so-called “stewardship argument”: Christians cannot escape accounting to God for stewardship of the bodies given them on earth. This contribution presents an alternative approach based on European existentialist and philosophical traditions. The suggestion is that exploring the fullness of our relational responsibility is more apt for a pluralist – and even secular – debate on the legitimacy of euthanasia.

In using quality of life as a guide to rationing health services, Oregon laid itself open to charges of bias against the disabled—charges that cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The case for U.S. health system reform aimed at achieving wider insurance coverage in the population and disciplining the growth of costs is fundamentally a moral case, grounded in two principles: a principle of social justice, the Just Sharing of the costs of illness, and a related principle of fairness, the Prevention of Free-Riding. These principles generate an argument for universal access to basic care when applied to two existing facts: the phenomenon of “market failure” in health insurance and, in (...) the U.S., the existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. The principles are widely shared in U.S. moral culture by conservatives and liberals alike. Similarly, across the political spectrum, the fact of market failure is not contested , and the guarantee of access to emergency care is rarely challenged. The conclusion generated by the principles is not only that insurance for a basic minimum of care should be mandatory but that the scope of that care should be lean, efficient, and constrained in its cost. (shrink)

The case for U.S. health system reform aimed at achieving wider insurance coverage in the population and disciplining the growth of costs is fundamentally a moral case, grounded in two principles: (1) a principle of social justice, the Just Sharing of the costs of illness, and (2) a related principle of fairness, the Prevention of Free‐Riding. These principles generate an argument for universal access to basic care when applied to two existing facts: the phenomenon of “market failure” in health insurance (...) and, in the U.S., the existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. The principles are widely shared in U.S. moral culture by conservatives and liberals alike. Similarly, across the political spectrum, the fact of market failure is not contested (though it is sometimes ignored), and the guarantee of access to emergency care is rarely challenged. The conclusion generated by the principles is not only that insurance for a basic minimum of care should be mandatory but that the scope of that care should be lean, efficient, and constrained in its cost. -/- . (shrink)

In using quality of life as a guide to rationing health services, Oregon laid itself open to charges of bias against the disabled—charges that cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Refusal of lifesaving treatment, and such refusal by advance directive, are widely recognized as ethically and legally permissible. Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is not. Ethically and legally, how does VSED compare with these two more established ways for patients to control the end of life? Is it more questionable because with VSED the patient intends to cause her death, or because those who assist it with palliative care could be assisting a suicide?In fact the ethical and legal basis for (...) VSED is virtually as strong as for refusing lifesaving treatment and less problematic than the basis for refusing treatment by advance directive. VSED should take its proper place among the accepted, permissible ways by which people can control the time and manner of death. (shrink)