For three decades Jeremy Holmes has been a leading figure in psychodynamic psychiatry in the UK and across the world. He has played a central role in promoting the ideas of John Bowlby and in developing the clinical applications - psychiatric and psychotherapeutic - of Attachment Theory in working with adults. Drawing on both psychoanalytic and attachment ideas, Holmes has been able to encompass a truly biopsychosocialperspective. As a psychotherapist Holmes brings together psychodynamic, systemic and cognitive (...) models, alert to vital differences, but also keenly sensitive to overlaps and parallels. This volume of selected papers brings together the astonishing range of Holmes' interests and contributions. The various sections in the book cover: An extended interview - covering Holmes' career and philosophy as a psychodynamic psychiatrist 'Juvenilia' - sibling relationships, the psychology of nuclear weapons, and the psychodynamics of surgical intervention. Psychodynamic psychiatry: Integrative and Attachment-Informed A psychotherapy section inwhich he develops his model of psychotherapeutic change 'Heroes' - biographical pieces about the major influences including, John Bowlby, Michael Balint, David Malan, Jonathan Pedder and Charles Rycroft. 'Ephemera' - brief pieces covering such topics as frequency of psychodynamic sessions and fees. Attachments: Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis - The Selected Works of Jeremy Holmeswill be essential and illuminating reading for practitioners and students of psychiatry and psychotherapy in all its guises. (shrink)

In the first collection of his essays to be published, Jeremy Holmes discusses the wider application of psychotherapy within psychiatry and suggests that psychoanalysis needs to escape from its esotericism by taking into account contemporary advances in cognitive science, family therapy and the realities of psychiatric work in a public health setting. Illustrating his arguments with literary as well as clinical examples, he emphasizes the importance of creativity in psychotherapy and the connections between the artistic and psychotherapeutic impulse.

Use of the imagination is a key aspect of successful psychotherapeutic treatments. Psychotherapy helps clients get in touch with, awaken, and learn to trust their creative inner life, while therapists use their imaginations to mentalise the suffering other and to trace the unconscious stirrings evoked by the intimacy of the consulting room. Working from this premise, in _The Therapeutic Imagination_ _Jeremy Holmes_ argues unashamedly that literate therapists make better therapists. Drawing on psychoanalytic and literary traditions both classical and contemporary, Part (...) I shows how poetry and novels help foster therapists’ understanding of their own imagination-in-action, anatomised into five phases: attachment, reverie, logos, action and reflection. Part II uses the contrast between secure and insecure narrative styles in attachment theory and relates these to literary storytelling and the transformational aspects of therapy. Part III uses literary accounts to illuminate the psychiatric conditions of narcissism, anxiety, splitting and bereavement. Based on Forster’s motto, ‘Only Connect’, Part IV argues, with the help of poetic examples, that a psychiatry shorn of psychodynamic creativity is impoverished and fails to serve its patients. Clearly and elegantly written, and drawing on the author’s deep knowledge of psychoanalysis and attachment theory and a lifetime of clinical experience, _Holmes _convincingly links the literary and psychoanalytic canon. _The Therapeutic Imagination _is a compelling and insightful work that will strike chords for therapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and psychologists. (shrink)

_Winner of the 2010 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship!_ This book builds a key clinical bridge between attachment theory and psychoanalysis, deploying Holmes' unique capacity to weld empirical evidence, psychoanalytic theory and consulting room experience into a coherent and convincing whole. Starting from the theory–practice gap in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the book demonstrates how attachment theory can help practitioners better understand what they intuitively do in the consulting room, how this benefits clients, and informs evidence-based practice. Divided into (...) two sections, theory and practice, _Exploring in Security_ discusses the concept of mentalising and considers three components of effective therapy – the therapeutic relationship, meaning making and change promotion – from both attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives. The second part of the book applies attachment theory to a number of clinical situations including: working with borderline clients suicide and deliberate self-harm sex and sexuality dreams ending therapy. Throughout the book theoretical discussion is vividly illustrated with clinical material, personal experience and examples from literature and film, making this an accessible yet authoritative text for psychotherapy practitioners at all levels, including psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, mental health nurses and counsellors. (shrink)

On New year's Eve 1992 a man suffering from schizophrenia climbed into a lions' cage at the London Zoo and was badly mauled. This event provoked a full-scale moral panic among the media and government, the tragedy seeming to violate many of the comfortable myths about progress in psychiatry, echoing the impact of the civil war in former Yugoslavia which had shattered the hope of an era of unbroken European peace following the end of the cold war. Whatever we may (...) wish in reality the lion does not lie down with the lamb. Daniel the visionary, the interpreter of dreams, the one who asserted that his God, the God of angels and saints with power over man and beasts would eventually endure, while all earthly kings were found wanting, emerged from the lions’ den unscathed—but secular, psychiatric, suffering, decarcer-ated, visionless, late-twentieth-century man does not. (shrink)

The need for a concise, comprehensive guide to the main principles and practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy has become pressing as the psychoanalytic movement has expanded and diversified. An introductory text suitable for a wide range of courses, this lively, widely referenced account presents the core features of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice in an easily assimilated, but thought-provoking manner. Illustrated throughout with clinical examples, it provides an up-to-date source of reference for a wider range of mental health professionals (...) as well as those training in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy or counselling. (shrink)

It now seems technically feasible to culture human embryos beyond the “fourteen‐day limit,” which has the potential to increase scientific understanding of human development and perhaps improve infertility treatments. The fourteen‐day limit was adopted as a compromise but subsequently has been considered an ethical line. Does it remain relevant in light of technological advances permitting embryo maturation beyond it? Should it be changed and, if so, how and why? What justifications would be necessary to expand the limit, particularly given that (...) doing so would violate some people's moral commitments regarding human embryos? Robust stakeholder engagement preceded adoption of the fourteen‐day limit and should arguably be part of efforts to reassess it. Such engagement could also consider the need for enhanced oversight of human embryo research. In the meantime, developing and implementing reliable oversight systems should help foster high‐quality research and public confidence in it. (shrink)

With the publication of this book psychotherapy finally arrives at the mainstream of mental health practice. This volume is an essential companion for every practising psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, psychotherapy counsellor, mental health nurse, psychotherapist, and mental health practitioner. It is integrative in spirit, with chapters written by an international panel of experts who combine theory and research with practical treatment guidelines and illustrative case examples to produce an invaluable book. Part One gives a comprehensive account of all the major psychotherapeutic (...) approaches. Parts Two and Three systematically describe psychotherapeutic approaches to the major psychiatric disorders and personality disorders. Many chapters are multi-authored and describe the psychodynamic, cognitive behavioural and other approaches for treating these illnesses. Part Four examines applications and modifications of psychotherapy across the lifecycle. Part Five describes psychotherapy with specific populations such as medical patients and those where gender is an issue, and finally Part Six tackles some of the special topics of concern to psychotherapists including ethics, legal issues, and psychotherapy and neuroscience. The first of its kind, this is a 'must have' volume for all trainee and practising psychological therapists, whatever their background - psychiatry, psychology, social work, or nursing. (shrink)

It now seems technically feasible to culture human embryos beyond the “fourteen‐day limit,” which has the potential to increase scientific understanding of human development and perhaps improve infertility treatments. The fourteen‐day limit was adopted as a compromise but subsequently has been considered an ethical line. Does it remain relevant in light of technological advances permitting embryo maturation beyond it? Should it be changed and, if so, how and why? What justifications would be necessary to expand the limit, particularly given that (...) doing so would violate some people's moral commitments regarding human embryos? Robust stakeholder engagement preceded adoption of the fourteen‐day limit and should arguably be part of efforts to reassess it. Such engagement could also consider the need for enhanced oversight of human embryo research. In the meantime, developing and implementing reliable oversight systems should help foster high‐quality research and public confidence in it. (shrink)

Emerging adult newlywed couples often experience many demands on their time, and three common problems may surface as couples try to balance these demands—problems related to finances, sleep, and sex. We used two waves of dyadic data from 1,001 emerging adult newlywed couples to identify four dyadic latent profiles from husbands’ and wives’ financial management behaviors, sexual satisfaction, and sleep quality: Flounderers, Financially Challenged Lovers, Drowsy Budgeters, and Flourishers. We then examined how husbands’ and wives’ marital satisfaction, in relation to (...) profile membership, varied at a later wave. We found that Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers had significantly higher marital satisfaction than Drowsy Budgeters and Flounderers. Whereas, Financially Challenged Lovers and Flourishers did not differ in terms of marital satisfaction, Drowsy Budgeters seemed to have slightly higher marital satisfaction than Flounderers for wives only. However, we did not find evidence that these connections meaningfully differed by sex. Implications for the efforts of clinicians and educators are discussed. (shrink)

Aristotle's Politics is widely recognized as one of the classics of the history of political philosophy, and like every other such masterpiece, it is a work about which there is deep division.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cur Deus Verba: Why the Word Became Words by Jeremy HolmesJames B. ProthroCur Deus Verba: Why the Word Became Words by Jeremy Holmes (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2021), 284 pp.This book's title plays on the incarnational analogy, and its argument begins and ends with God's purposes to draw humanity into communion with himself through revelation. In both aspects, Holmes echoes Dei Verbum (DV, §§2, 13). (...) However, rather than pursuing a revelation-historical organization or beginning with Scripture's texts to derive conclusions about its nature and purpose, the book takes a "top-down" (13) approach to bibliology. In this way, its strength is the theological framing or refraining it gives to common questions.The first three chapters culminate, he claims, in a "definition of Scripture" (11). Beginning with the Trinity and creation, Holmes argues that all things have their being by participating in the inner life (the Word) of the Father, thus reflecting him, and that the Spirit drives creatures "toward the pattern of the Son" (33). God desires creatures to be good and causes of goodness in others, patterned after and in the Son through the Spirit's impulse to return them to God. In the Incarnation, God "reconciles nature with grace" (39) and in Christ perfects these desires. In Christ, man is now "included in the life of the Trinity" (37) and an agent of revelation, reflects God perfectly, and in love sends the Spirit to return humans to God through himself. This leads to reflections on Scripture directly. "Scripture is meant to impress the interior life of the Church on each generation; put another way, it is meant to impress Christ the Head on the members of his Mystical Body" (69). This brings Holmes to the topics of inspiration and canon. In order for human texts to impress Christ on his members, to communicate the divine through human means, "God himself" must be "addressing the [End Page 393] heart of the believer" (72). He makes a case for canon by pointing to the communal nature of humans. Tradition and canon, by which truth as a common good is formulated for a society, order and inform the society regarding its purpose, history, and character. "Tradition," then, "is good for man as man" (57) even in natural society, and all the more so in the supernatural society, the Church. The "texts that embody and transmit the tradition" (63) give continuity and life to the organism that is the Church, while within that tradition these texts can function as a sort of "guide rail" and a "mirror" of its identity (67).This overall view of Scripture lends perspective to particular topics (chs. 4-12). Turning to Scripture's authorship and inspiration, Holmes emphasizes again that God means humans to be real causes of revelation as God "attaches his voice" to their writing (82, 91, and throughout). This may, in differing circumstances, involve endowing them with particular and even unusual graces, many of which God grants to others who hand on revelation (such as Augustine), but in the case of the biblical authors the ("only") difference is that God "intended" biblical texts like Luke "to sound not only Luke's voice but God's voice as well" (91). His "general account of the fact of biblical difficulties" (202), then, depicts the human "author's soul" as "like the body of an instrument, determining the overtones of everything he writes" (208). God writes the notes to be played and selects the instruments, and God "asserts what the human author asserts" (210). But the particularities of an author's soul (and upbringing, assumptions, etc.) can be seen in anything from grammatical infelicities in Paul to the author's assumptions about a geocentric solar system, the goodness of killing the Canaanites, or Qoheleth's unawareness of an afterlife. God attaches his voice to their writing, and these instruments play "only God's note" (219), but God "does not affirm or deny" the assumptions or unasserted views of the author when writing (209). Scripture's purpose is not merely to impart doctrine but to conform one to Christ, and difficult passages are inspired in part for us to... (shrink)

Environmental Ethics is a systematic account of values carried by the natural world, coupled with an inquiry into duties toward animals, plants, species, and ecosystems. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is illustrated by and integrated with numerous actual examples of ethical decisions made in encounters with fauna and flora, endangered species, and threatened ecosystems. The ethics developed is informed throughout by ecological science and evolutionary biology, with attention to the logic of moving from what is in nature to what ought (...) to be. The ethical theory is applied in detail to social, public, and business policy. Written in an engaging style, using diagrams and figures as well as numerous case studies, Environmental Ethics prods the reader into concrete application and invites reader participation in the ethical discussions. The ethics concludes by exploring the historical experiences of personal residence in a surrounding environment. Here is an adventure into what it means to live as responsible human beings in the community of life on Earth. In the series Ethics and Action, edited by Tom Regan. (shrink)

Principles of legislation.--Principles of the civil code.--Principles of the penal code.

Jeremy Sherman distills Terrence Deacon's breakthrough natural science hypothesis for the emergence of agents and agency, selves and aims in an otherwise aimless universe. The theory cuts a new path through the dualistic spirit vs. mechanism debate, unifying the hard and soft sciences and suggesting new solutions to philosophical mysteries.

We characterize a type of functional explanation that addresses why a homologous trait originating deep in the evolutionary history of a group remains widespread and largely unchanged across the group’s lineages. We argue that biologists regularly provide this type of explanation when they attribute conserved functions to phenotypic and genetic traits. The concept of conserved function applies broadly to many biological domains, and we illustrate its importance using examples of molecular sequence alignments at the intersection of evolution and cell biology. (...) We use these examples to show how the study of conserved functions can integrate knowledge of a trait’s causal effects on fitness and its history of natural selection without invoking adaptation. We also show how conserved function provides a novel basis for addressing objections against evolutionary functions raised by Robert Cummins. (shrink)

Although the pedagogy literature indicates significant relationships between cheating intentions and both personal and situational factors, no published research has examined the joint effect of personal moral philosophy and perceived moral intensity components on students’ cheating intentions. Hence, a structural equation model that relates magnitude of consequences, relativism, and idealism to willingness to cheat, is developed and tested. Using data from undergraduate business students, the empirical results provide insight into these relationships and evidence of mediation for magnitude of consequences on (...) idealism and students’ cheating intentions. Implications for educators are offered. (shrink)

In considering the debate about the meaning of ‘disease’, the positions are generally presented as falling into two categories: naturalist, e.g., Boorse, and normativist, e.g., Engelhardt and many others. This division is too coarse, and obscures much of what is going on in this debate. I therefore propose that accounts of the meaning of ‘disease’ be assessed according to Hare’s (1997) taxonomy of evaluative terms. Such an analysis will allow us to better understand both individual positions and their inter-relationships. Most (...) importantly, it will show that it is unlikely that there is a single unique disease-concept at issue. Rather, different authors are, for the most part, considering different concepts. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that free will requires alternative possibilities. Other philosophers deny this. There are plenty of philosophical arguments on both sides of this debate, but here I want to highlight various theological pressures that might push Christians into rejecting the principle of alternative possibilities. In this paper, I explore six cases that might push Christians in that direction: the case of divine foreknowledge, the case of prophecy, the case of the blessed in heaven, the case of Christ's human freedom, (...) the case of Mary's fiat in light of her immaculate conception, and the case of prayers for the past. As I will argue, in each of these cases, given certain other standard theological commitments, it seems that Christians are pushed to admit that the agent in question does indeed act freely but also that he or she did not possess alternative possibilities at the moment of decision. (shrink)

Auf den ersten Blick haben Hannah Arendt und Michel Foucault kaum etwas gemein. Tatsächlich beziehen sie sich jedoch auf die identischen Topoi der Philosophiegeschichte - wenn ihre Auslegungen der Quellen auch denkbar verschieden sind. Als Grund hierfür bestimmt Hannah Holme die komplementären Perspektiven der beiden, die sie als Aneignungen des heideggerschen Sorgebegriffs deutet: die ethische Sorge um sich Foucaults und die politische Sorge um die Welt Arendts. Am Ende steht ein Plädoyer für eine Verbindung des machtkritischen Ethos der Sorge um (...) sich mit der Macht des politischen Handelns, das der Sorge um die Welt unterstellt ist. (shrink)

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Education identifies and confronts key ethical issues generated over years of AI research, development, and deployment in learning contexts. Adaptive, automated, and data-driven education systems are increasingly being implemented in universities, schools, and corporate training worldwide, but the ethical consequences of engaging with these technologies remain unexplored. Featuring expert perspectives from inside and outside the AIED scholarly community, this book provides AI researchers, learning scientists, educational technologists, and others with questions, frameworks, guidelines, policies, and (...) regulations to ensure the positive impact of artificial intelligence in learning. (shrink)

A rigorous, authoritative new anthology which brings together some of the most significant contemporary scholarship on the theory of knowledge Carefully-calibrated and judiciously-curated, this strong and contemporary new anthology builds upon Epistemology: An Anthology, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2008) by drawing a concise and well-balanced selection of higher-level readings from a large, diverse, and evolving body of research. Includes 17 readings that represent a broad and vital part of contemporary epistemology, including articles by female philosophers and emerging thought leaders Organized (...) into seven thoughtful and distinct sections, including virtue epistemology, practical reasons for belief, and epistemic dysfunctions among others Designed to sit alongside the highly-successful anthology of canonical essays, Epistemology: An Anthology, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2008) Edited by a distinguished editorial team, including Ernie Sosa, one of the most influential active epistemologists Highlights cutting edge methodologies and contemporary topics for advanced students, instructors, and researchers. (shrink)

"Arguing that debates over legitimacy, political violence, freedom, and justice would benefit greatly from cross-tradition theorizing, this book shows how putting analytic and continental political theory in conversation would help us to overcome these intractable problems"--.

The epsilon calculus is a logical formalism developed by David Hilbert in the service of his program in the foundations of mathematics. The epsilon operator is a term-forming operator which replaces quantifiers in ordinary predicate logic. Specifically, in the calculus, a term εx A denotes some x satisfying A(x), if there is one. In Hilbert's Program, the epsilon terms play the role of ideal elements; the aim of Hilbert's finitistic consistency proofs is to give a procedure which removes such terms (...) from a formal proof. The procedures by which this is to be carried out are based on Hilbert's epsilon substitution method. The epsilon calculus, however, has applications in other contexts as well. The first general application of the epsilon calculus was in Hilbert's epsilon theorems, which in turn provide the basis for the first correct proof of Herbrand's theorem. More recently, variants of the epsilon operator have been applied in linguistics and linguistic philosophy to deal with anaphoric pronouns. (shrink)

Cecilia Sjöholm reads Hannah Arendt as a philosopher of the senses, grappling with questions of vision, hearing, and touch even in her political work. Constructing an Arendtian theory of aesthetics from the philosopher's fragmentary writings on art and perception, Sjöholm begins a vibrant new chapter in Arendt scholarship that expands her relevance for contemporary philosophers. Arendt wrote thoughtfully about the role of sensibility and aesthetic judgment in political life and on the power of art to enrich human experience. Sjöholm draws (...) a clear line from Arendt's consideration of these subjects to her reflections on aesthetic encounters and works of art mentioned in her published writings and stored among her memorabilia. This delicate effort allows Sjöholm to revisit Arendt's political concepts of freedom, plurality, and judgment from an aesthetic point of view and incorporate Arendt's insight into current discussions of literature, music, theater, and visual art. Though Arendt did not explicitly outline an aesthetics, Sjöholm's work substantively incorporates her perspective into contemporary reckonings with radical politics and their relationship to art. (shrink)

We have two aims. The main one is to expound the idea of renormalization in quantum field theory, with no technical prerequisites. Our motivation is that renormalization is undoubtedly one of the great ideas—and great successes--of twentieth-century physics. Also it has strongly influenced in diverse ways, how physicists conceive of physical theories. So it is of considerable philosophical interest. Second, we will briefly relate renormalization to Ernest Nagel's account of inter-theoretic relations, especially reduction. One theme will be a contrast between (...) two approaches to renormalization. The old approach, which prevailed from ca. 1945 to 1970, treated renormalizability as a necessary condition for being an acceptable quantum field theory. On this approach, it is a piece of great good fortune that high energy physicists can formulate renormalizable quantum field theories that are so empirically successful. But the new approach to renormalization explains why the phenomena we see, at the energies we can access in our particle accelerators, are described by a renormalizable quantum field theory. For whatever non-renormalizable interactions may occur at yet higher energies, they are insignificant at accessible energies. Thus the new approach explains why our best fundamental theories have a feature, viz. renormalizability, which the old approach treated as a selection principle for theories. That is worth saying since philosophers tend to think of scientific explanation as only explaining an individual event, or perhaps a single law, or at most deducing one theory as a special case of another. Here we see a framework in which there is a space of theories. And this framework is powerful enough to deduce that what seemed “manna from heaven” is to be expected: the good fortune is generic. We also maintain that universality, a concept stressed in renormalization theory, is essentially the familiar philosophical idea of multiple realizability; and that it causes no problems for reductions of a Nagelian kind. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's main work in political philosophy, the _Social Contract_, contains two beginnings; on the one hand, it commences, quite conventionally, with a social contract between individuals, on the other hand it also states that a lawmaker needs to precede the agreement of such a contract. This curious co-existence of two beginnings in the text has usually been ignored or played down by interpreters. This article, on the other hand, presents a reading of their interplay inspired by Zizek's theory of (...) ideology. It demonstrates how one of the beginnings, if seen from this point of view, may be understood as the truth about the other, and how the figure of the lawmaker specifically reveals the text as torn apart by contradictory internal tendencies. (shrink)

This essay develops a framework for understanding what I call the ethics of reflexivity, that is, the norms that govern attitudes and actions with respect to one’s own worth. I distinguish five central aspects of the reflexive commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals: the extent to which and manner in which one regards oneself from an evaluative point of view, the extent to which one cares about receiving the respect of others, the degree to which one interprets (...) one’s personal ideals in an individualistic or collective manner, the degree to which one’s commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals is rigid or flexible, and the worthiness of one’s personal ideals. This framework, I argue, illuminates the nature and moral significance of virtuous and vicious forms of the character trait of pride. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the ethical issues that arise in the context of the use of physical enhancement techniques, i.e.techniques that aim at enhancing one or more physical functions of human beings. First, it discusses the different types of physical enhancement and points doping in sports is only a minor part of the whole enhancement field. Considerable attention is devoted to enhancement in sports, primarily because of the extensive extant literature. Then, the chapter moves on to problematize the concept of enhancement. (...) It shows that deciding whether something should count as an enhancement is not a matter for pure personal decision. The chapter engages with the ethical arguments put forward in the enhancement debate, showing that the validity of both the pro‐ and the anti‐enhancement arguments is context‐dependent and the growth hormone treatment can only be justifiably claimed if it aims at giving someone a height in the normal range. (shrink)

The question that this paper tries to answer is Q: “Can good academic bioethics be done without commitment to moral theory?” It is argued that the answer to Q is an unequivocal “Yes” for most of what we could call “critical bioethics,” that is, the kind of bioethics work that primarily criticizes positions or arguments already in the literature or put forward by policymakers. The answer is also “Yes” for much of empirical bioethics. The second part of the paper then (...) provides an analysis of Q in relation to “constructive bioethics,” that is, bioethics work aimed at providing an argument for a particular position. In this part, it is argued that a number of the approaches or methods used that initially look like they involve no commitment to moral theory, nevertheless, involve such a commitment. This is shown to be the case for reflective equilibrium, mid-level theory, the use of theory fragments, and argument by analogy. (shrink)

One of the most important philosophical topics in the early twentieth century and a topic that was seminal in the emergence of analytic philosophy was the relationship between Kantian philosophy and modern geometry. This paper discusses how this question was tackled by the Neo-Kantian trained philosopher Ernst Cassirer. Surprisingly, Cassirer does not affirm the theses that contemporary philosophers often associate with Kantian philosophy of mathematics. He does not defend the necessary truth of Euclidean geometry but instead develops a kind of (...) logicism modeled on Richard Dedekind's foundations of arithmetic. Further, because he shared with other Neo-Kantians an appreciation of the developmental and historical nature of mathematics, Cassirer developed a philosophical account of the unity and methodology of mathematics over time. With its impressive attention to the detail of contemporary mathematics and its exploration of philosophical questions to which other philosophers paid scant attention, Cassirer's philosophy of mathematics surely deserves a place among the classic works of twentieth century philosophy of mathematics. Though focused on Cassirer's philosophy of geometry, this paper also addresses both Cassirer's general philosophical orientation and his reading of Kant. (shrink)

As our civilization careens toward climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. The dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world, has been invalidated by modern science. Award-winning author, Jeremy Lent, investigates humanity's age-old questions -- Who am I? Why am I? How should I live? -- from a fresh perspective, weaving together findings from modern systems (...) thinking, evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience with insights from Buddhism, Taoism, and Indigenous wisdom. The result is a breathtaking accomplishment: a rich, coherent worldview based on a deep recognition of connectedness within ourselves, between each other, and with the entire natural world. It offers a compelling foundation for a new philosophical framework that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on a flourishing Earth. The Web of Meaning is for everyone looking for deep and coherent answers to the crisis of civilization. -- Amazon. (shrink)

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject (...) of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some. (shrink)

Quizás sea lícito decir que este Tratado de los Sofismas Políticos es, en alguna medida, el libro síntesis de toda la obra de Jeremías Bentham, porque con demoledora lógica se aplica a mostrar las inconsistencias y falacias de los opositores a la deliberación política, vale decir, al ejercicio de la democracia, en última instancia. Bentham es una figura que espera el reconocimiento de los americanos todos, en la medida en que impulsó con su racionalismo revolucionario (valga la contradicción), la capacidad (...) de todo el continente americano para constituirse como un ámbito de libertad, frente a la opresión colonial europea. Es conocida su correspondencia con grandes figuras de la emancipación americana, y con Bernardino Rivadavia entre nosotros. Todavía no lo hemos ubicado suficientemente en nuestra conciencia ideológica. (shrink)

Physicians place significant weight on the distinction between acts and omissions. Most believe that autonomous refusals for procedures, such as blood transfusions and resuscitation, ought to be respected, but they feel no similar obligation to accede to requests for treatment that will, in the physician’s opinion, harm the patient (e.g., assisted death). Thus, there is an asymmetry. In this paper, we challenge the strength of this distinction by arguing that the ordering of values should be the same in both cases. (...) The reason for respecting refusals is that, in such cases, autonomy outweighs well-being. We argue that the same should be true in request cases, which means that requests should not be denied only due to the treatment being too harmful in the physician’s opinion. Our strategy is to consider and reject a number of arguments for the asymmetrical view, including an appeal to the doing–allowing distinction and positive and negative rights. The duty to respect refusals is still greater than the duty to grant requests on our view, but, by arguing that the ordering of values is the same in both cases, we show that there is less of a distinction in healthcare between requests and refusals than many currently believe. (shrink)

This chapter offers an opinionated introduction to higher-order formal languages with an eye towards their applications in metaphysics. A simply relationally typed higher-order language is introduced in four stages: starting with first-order logic, adding first-order predicate abstraction, generalizing to higher-order predicate abstraction, and finally adding higher-order quantification. It is argued that both β-conversion and Universal Instantiation are valid on the intended interpretation of this language. Given these two principles, it is then shown how we can use pure higher-order logic to (...) ask, and begin to answer, metaphysical questions with non-trivial implications. In particular, while we must reject the popular idea that structural differences between sentences correspond to parallel distinctions in the logical structure of extra-linguistic reality, it may still be possible to give a purely logical characterization of objectual aboutness and related notions. (shrink)

The concept of minimal risk has been used to regulate and limit participation by adolescents in clinical trials. It can be understood as setting an absolute standard of what risks are considered minimal or it can be interpreted as relative to the actual risks faced by members of the host community for the trial. While commentators have almost universally opposed a relative interpretation of the environmental risks faced by potential adolescent trial participants, we argue that the ethical concerns against the (...) relative standard may not be as convincing as these commentators believe. Our aim is to present the case for a relative standard of environmental risk in order to open a debate on this subject. We conclude by discussing how a relative standard of environmental risk could be defended in the specific case of an HIV vaccine trial among adolescents in South Africa. (shrink)

In the ‘analytic tradition’, Hans Sluga wrote thirty years ago in his book Gottlob Frege, there has been a ‘lack of interest in historical questions — even in the question of its own roots. Anti-historicism has been the baggage of the tradition since Frege’ (Sluga, 1980, p. 2). The state of the discussion of Frege among analytic philosophers, Sluga claimed, illustrated well this indifference. Despite the numbers of pages devoted to Frege, there was still, Sluga claimed, little understanding of the (...) sources of Frege’s ideas, his intellectual debts, and the historical circumstances of his thought. Sluga singled out Michael Dummett’s Frege: Philosophy of Language ‘as a paradigm for the failure of analytic philosophers to come to grips with the actual, historical Frege’. In that book, Dummett famously wrote that the logical system that Frege put forward in his 1879 Begriffsschrift ‘is astonishing because it has no predecessors: it appears to have been born from Frege’s brain unfertilized by external influences’ (Dummett, 1981a, p. xxxv) — and Dummett devoted almost none of its 700 pages to the relationship between Frege and his contemporaries. (shrink)