There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

Introduction; Aidos in Homer; From Hesiod to the Fifth Century; Aeschylus; Sophocles; Euripides; The Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle; References; Glossary; Index of Principal Passages; General Index.

A pivotal focus of exegesis of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārïkā (MMK) for the past half century has been the attempt to decipher the text's philosophy of language, and determine how this best aids us in characterizing Madhyamaka thought as a whole. In this vein, MMK 24:18 has been judged of particular weight insofar as it purportedly insists that the concepts pratītyasamutpāda (conditioned co-arising) and śūnyatā (emptiness), both indispensable to Buddhist praxis, are themselves only "nominal" or "conventional," that is, they are merely labels (...) that do not referentially signify anything that can be taken to be an ontologically ultimate reality. In various guises, as a result of this explication, Nāgārjuna's thought has been seen to embrace an overarching linguistic nominalism or conventionalism in which words, whether they are used for the purposes of theory or practice, though they serve as commonly accepted currency in the transactions of worldly business (vyavahāra), are in the end only ideas (prajñapti) or metaphysical fabrications (prapanca). This interpretation is largely due to tenaciously inaccurate translations and expositions of MMK 24:18 and their dependence on Candrakīrti's peculiar analysis of this verse in his Prasannapadā. This essay will attempt to correct both the diction of the major translations of MMK 24:18 and the fictions of nominalism and conventionalism that the consequent interpretations of this stanza have perpetuated. The argument that will be developed in the course of this essay is that Candrakīrti's reading of this verse proffers a strong form of linguistic nominalism that Nāgārjuna himself does not embrace. It will be shown, based on everything else found in the MMK, that Nāgārjuna, rather than advocating the mere nominal or conventional status of terms such as pratītyasamutpāda and sunyata, demands they be accepted as both pedagogically useful and even referentially accurate descriptions of the world as it is. (shrink)

For over twenty years Douglas Berger has advanced research and reflection on Indian philosophical traditions from both classical and cross-cultural perspectives. This volume reveals the extent of his contribution by bringing together his perspectives on these classical Indian philosophies and placing them in conversation with Confucian, Chinese Buddhist and medieval Indian Sufi traditions. Delving into debates between Nyaya and Buddhist philosophers on consciousness and identity, the nature of Sankara's theory of the self, the precise character of Nagarjuna's idea of (...) emptiness, and the relationship between awareness and embodiment in the broad spectrum of Indian thought, chapters exhibit Berger's unusually broad range of expertise. They connect Chinese Confucian and Buddhist texts with classical Indian theories of ethics and consciousness, contrast the ideas of seminal European thinkers like Nietzsche and Derrida from prevailing themes in Buddhism, and shed light on the spiritual and political dimensions of the Mughal prince Dara Shukoh's immersion into Vedantic thought. Always approaching the arguments from an intercultural perspective, Berger shows how much relevance and resonance classical Indian thought has with ancient Confucian views of ethics, Chinese Buddhist depictions of consciousness and medieval Mughal conceptions of divinity. The result is a volume celebrating the rigor, vitality and intercultural resonance of India's rich philosophical heritage. (shrink)

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the work of researchers in anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, biology, and ...

Discusses the journey of Buddhist ideas on awareness and personhood from India to China. Encounters of Mind explores a crucial step in the philosophical journey of Buddhism from India to China, and what influence this step, once taken, had on Chinese thought in a broader scope. The relationship of concepts of mind, or awareness, to the constitution of personhood in Chinese traditions of reflection was to change profoundly after the Cognition School of Buddhism made its way to China during the (...) sixth century. India’s Buddhist philosophers had formulated the idea that, in order for human beings to achieve perfect enlightenment, they had to produce a state of awareness through practice that they described as “luminous.” However, once introduced to the Chinese tradition, the concept of the “luminous mind” was to become a condition already found within human nature for the possibility of achieving human ideals. This notion of the luminous mind was to have far-reaching significance both for Chinese Buddhism and for medieval Confucianism. Douglas L. Berger follows the transforming path of conceptions of the luminosity of consciousness and the perfectibility of personhood in order to bring into clearer relief the history of Indian and Chinese philosophical dialogue, as well as in the hope that such dialogue will be reignited. (shrink)

I am most grateful to Professors Garfield and Westerhoff for their comments on my article "Acquiring Emptiness: Interpreting Nāgārjuna's MMK 24 : 18" in the January 2010 issue of Philosophy East and West. Their responses to my essay and the critiques they offer, grounded in their considerable expertise in Buddhist philosophical schools, are well argued and rooted in thorough commentarial analysis. In what follows, I attempt to respond to their critiques and concerns.There can be no doubt that the occurrence of (...) the phrase sā prajñāptir upādāya in MMK 24 : 18 has been understood by the bulk of the commentarial literature on the treatise as a compound technical term meaning something like "dependent designation." The .. (shrink)

. This paper describes a cross-cultural and developmental research project on naïve or folk biology, that is, the study of how people conceptualize nature. The combination of domain specificity and cross-cultural comparison brings a new perspective to theories of categorization and reasoning and undermines the tendency to focus on “standard populations.” From the standpoint of mainstream cognitive psychology, we find that results gathered from standard populations in industrialized societies often fail to generalize to humanity at large. For example, similarity-driven typicality (...) and diversity effects and basic level phenomena either are not found or pattern differently when we move beyond undergraduates. From the perspective of domain-specificity, standard populations may yield misleading results, because such populations represent examples of especially impoverished experience with respect to nature. Conceptions of humans as biological kinds vary with cultural milieu and input conditions. We also show certain phenomena that are robust across populations, consistent with notions of domain-specificity. (shrink)

This paper continues joint work of the authors with P. Clote, R. Soare and S. Wainer (Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, vol. 31 (1986), pp. 145--163). An element x of the Cantor space 2 ω is said have rank α in the closed set P if x is in $D^\alpha(P)\backslash D^{\alpha + 1}(P)$ , where D α is the iterated Cantor-Bendixson derivative. The rank of x is defined to be the least α such that x has rank α in (...) some Π 0 1 set. The main result of the five-author paper is that for any recursive ordinal λ + n (where λ is a limit and n is finite), there is a point with rank λ + n which is Turing equivalent to O (λ + 2n) . All ranked points constructed in that paper are Π 0 2 singletons. We now construct a ranked point which is not a Π 0 2 singleton. In the previous paper the points of high rank were also of high hyperarithmetic degree. We now construct ▵ 0 2 points with arbitrarily high rank. We also show that every nonrecursive RE point is Turing equivalent to an RE point of rank one and that every nonrecursive ▵ 0 2 point is Turing equivalent to a hyperimmune point of rank one. We relate Clote's notion of the height of a Π 0 1 singleton in the Baire space with the notion of rank. Finally, we show that every hyperimmune point x is Turing equivalent to a point which is not ranked. (shrink)

These essays engage Jin Y. Park’s recent translation of the work of Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun and public intellectual in early twentieth-century Korea. Park’s translation of Iryŏp’s Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun was the subject of two book panels at recent conferences: the first a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the second at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association on a group program session sponsored by the (...) International Society for Buddhist Philosophy. This exchange also includes a response from Park. (shrink)

Analysis and case studies show that including different orientations toward the natural world makes for more effective scientific practice and science education.

In Categorisation in Indian Philosophy: Thinking Inside the Box, Jessica Frazier has brought together an impressive array of scholars who have contributed nine essays, plus an introductory and concluding chapter, both written by her, which collectively provide a most fruitful perspective for examining classical South Asian traditions of thought. Creating categorial frameworks was certainly a prolific activity among the ancient and medieval authors of the darśanas, and indeed these authors drew heavily from pre-scholastic texts and language to build their systems. (...) Frazier in her concluding chapter gives a helpful synopsis of the various roles played by categories in Indian philosophies, classifying them as.. (shrink)

The scholarly career of Professor Chad Hansen has been devoted in large measure to an elucidation of the relationship between the classical Chinese language and the structure and aims of pre-Qin philosophical thought. His “mass-noun” hypothesis of classical Chinese thought, his notion of dao 道 as “guiding discourse,” and his clarifications of the significance of Mohism are marked achievements from which all of us have benefited immensely. In the opening chapters of A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, Hansen prefaces his (...) interpretation of how the Chinese language lends uniqueness to its philosophical tradition with a sharp contrast to Indo-European language and thought. Hansen attempts to show how the Indo-European .. (shrink)

Does cross-cultural philosophy stand in need of a hermeneutical expansion? In engaging with this question, the symposium focuses upon methodological issues salient to cross-cultural inquiry. Douglas L. Berger lays out the ground for the debate by arguing for a methodological approach, which is able to rectify the discipline’s colonial legacies and bridge the hermeneutical distance with its objects of study. From their own perspectives, Hans-Georg Moeller, Paul Roth and A. Raghuramaraju analyze whether such a processual and hermeneutically-sensitive approach can (...) indeed open up new hermeneutic horizons. Their responses shed light upon cross-cultural philosophy’s continued embedment in Euroamerican professional philosophy and how the locality of its knowledge-seeking endeavors may indeed have repercussions on attempts to bridge temporal and spatial distances. (shrink)

This discussion concentrates on the meaning of Nausicaa's words in lines 286–8, in particular on the force of the phrase κα δ' λλ κτλ. and the sense of the verb μσγηται. On the latter Hainsworth comments, ‘In later usage the simple verb in such a context is used as a euphemism for the sexual act. The line must have sounded most odd to the classical age.’ Thus he translates ‘associate with’, citing Odyssey 7.247 as an exact parallel; since, in that (...) place, the verb refers to nothing more than ordinary human intercourse , with no further connotations, one must conclude that Hainsworth sees no innuendo whatever in 6.288. (shrink)

This discussion concentrates on the meaning of Nausicaa's words in lines 286–8, in particular on the force of the phrase κα δ' λλ κτλ. and the sense of the verb μσγηται. On the latter Hainsworth comments, ‘In later usage the simple verb in such a context is used as a euphemism for the sexual act. The line must have sounded most odd to the classical age.’ Thus he translates ‘associate with’, citing Odyssey 7.247 as an exact parallel; since, in that (...) place, the verb refers to nothing more than ordinary human intercourse, with no further connotations, one must conclude that Hainsworth sees no innuendo whatever in 6.288. (shrink)

Confronted with the suggestion that he contrived to see Candaules’ wife naked, Gyges immediately expresses his horror.

Confronted with the suggestion that he contrived to see Candaules’ wife naked, Gyges immediately expresses his horror.

The paper examines constraints and preferences employed by people in learning decision rules from preclassified examples. Results from four experiments with human subjects were analyzed and compared with artificial intelligence (AI) inductive learning programs. The results showed the people's rule inductions tended to emphasize category validity (probability of some property, given a category) more than cue validity (probability that an entity is a member of a category given that it has some property) to a greater extent than did the AI (...) programs. Although the relative proportions of different rule types (e.g., conjunctive vs. disjunctive) changed across experiments, a single process model provided a good account of the data from each study. These observations are used to argue for describing constraints in terms of processes embodied in models rather than in terms of products or outputs. Thus AI induction programs become candidate psychological process models and results from inductive learning experiments can suggest new algorithms. More generally, the results show that human inductive generalizations tend toward greater specificity than would be expected if conceptual simplicity were the key constraint on inductions. This bias toward specificity may be due to the fact that this criterion both maximizes inferences that may be drawn from category membership and protects rule induction systems from developing over‐generalizations. (shrink)

This volume is the result of a three-year collaboration (funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the British Academy) between scholars of early China and of ancient/Hellenistic Greece to investigate the emergent discourses of emotions in philosophy, medicine, and literature from around the fifth century BCE to the second century CE. It brings together scholars working on the history and philosophy of emotions in the two ancient traditions, and with different areas of expertise, to investigate the emotions and (...) their conceptualization at a crucial period in the cultural and intellectual development of both cultures. The project was motivated by a desire to make an intervention in the existing scholarship on emotions in both fields, which stands to benefit from a greater methodological self-awareness about the category of emotions and the kinds of commitments it entails. The volume aims to explore how the tools of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary investigation might be deployed to advance our understanding of the emotions in the two ancient societies and to use that understanding as a contribution to current research on the emotions more generally. (shrink)

The precautionary principle brings a special challenge to the practice of evidence-based public health decision-making, suggesting changes in the interpretative methods of public health used to identify causes of disease. In this paper, precautionary changes to these methods are examined: including discounting contrary evidence, reducing the number of causal criteria, weakening the rules of evidence assigned to the criteria, and altering thresholds for statistical significance. All such changes reflect the precautionary goal of earlier primary preventive intervention, i.e. acting on insufficient (...) evidence, the least amount, or minimum level, of evidence for causation. Evaluating the impact of these changes will be difficult without a careful study of how well the current methods of causal inference work, their theoretical foundations, and the ethical implications of their applications. That research program will be most productive if it is jointly developed by public health professionals trained in the ethics and philosophy and by bioethicists and philosophers trained in the theories, methods, and practice of public health. (shrink)

In verse nine of the Vigrahavyavartani, Nagarjuna gives a defense of his skepticism by insisting that he makes no proposition concerning the nature of reality. B. K. Matilal has argued that this position is not an untenable one for a skeptic to hold, using as an explanatory model Searle’s distinction between a propositional and an illocutionary negation. The argument runs that Nagarjuna does not refute rival philosophical positions by simply refuting whatever positive claims those positions might make, but rather he (...) refuses the very act of making an assertion. From this kind of illocutionary negation, however, a certain paradoxicality arises: for in the negating the act of assertion, the skeptic is barred from asserting his or her own position, for under this condition, if he or she asserts that position, it is falsified! I want to argue that there are certain senses in which it seems that Nagarjuna’s resorting to the illocution we find in the Vigrahavyavartani may not have been necessary for the maintenance of his skeptical position, for he has recourse to prasanga counter-arguments which can always offset the metaphysical and epistemological claims of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophers whom he confronts. There are also places in the Karika itself, where certain pramanas seem to be employed, that give one the impression that this kind of skepticism and the pramanas are only inimical to one another insofar as the latter may lead to the metaphysical, essentialist extremes criticized by the Buddhists. Nagarjuna’s illocution in this light seems an attempt to radicalize his difference from a developing Nyaya extensionalist theory of the pramanas, a theory in which the Buddhists and the Naiyayikas are closer than anywhere else. (shrink)

Neil Young and Philosophy examines the music, career, and life of Neil Young from a variety of philosophical perspectives in ethics, socio-political thought, and aesthetics. It will be of great interest both to Neil Young fans and to scholars and teachers of philosophy and culture.