Book reviewed in this article: What Does It Mean to Grow Old? Reflections from the Humanities. By Thomas R. Cole and Sally Gadow Our Aging Society: Paradox and Promise. Alan Pifer and Lydia Bronte.

Stephen Cole Kleene was one of the greatest logicians of the twentieth century and this book is the influential textbook he wrote to teach the subject to the next generation. It was first published in 1952, some twenty years after the publication of Godel's paper on the incompleteness of arithmetic, which marked, if not the beginning of modern logic. The 1930s was a time of creativity and ferment in the subject, when the notion of computable moved from the realm (...) of philosophical speculation to the realm of science. This was accomplished by the work of Kurt Gode1, Alan Turing, and Alonzo Church, who gave three apparently different precise definitions of computable. When they all turned out to be equivalent, there was a collective realization that this was indeed the right notion. Kleene played a key role in this process. One could say that he was there at the beginning of modern logic. He showed the equivalence of lambda calculus with Turing machines and with Godel's recursion equations, and developed the modern machinery of partial recursive functions. This textbook played an invaluable part in educating the logicians of the present. It played an important role in their own logical education.". (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking ...

Within this paper, we discuss Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs as a promising approach to address and mitigate moral distress experienced by healthcare professionals. We briefly review the empirical and theoretical literature on critical incident stress debriefing and psychological debriefing to highlight the potential benefits of this modality. We then describe the approach that we take to facilitating reflective group discussions in response to morally distressing patient cases (“Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs”). We discuss how the debriefing literature and other clinical ethics (...) activities influenced the development of our approach. In particular, we focus on the role of the clinical ethicist as a facilitator with particular emphasis on encouraging perspective-taking and nurturing ethical attunement in a supportive manner. We suggest that this approach reduces the narrowing effects of frustration and anger that are often reported when individuals experience moral-constraint distress. Finally, we provide an example of Moral Distress Reflective Debriefs, elucidating how this supportive process complements ethics consultation and can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. (shrink)

In Making Science, Cole shows how social variables and cognitive variables interact in the evaluation of frontier knowledge.

Whose Keeper? is a profound and creative treatise on modernity and its challenge to social science. Alan Wolfe argues that modern liberal democracies, such as the United States and Scandinavia, have broken with traditional sources of mortality and instead have relied upon economic and political frameworks to define their obligations to one another. Wolfe calls for reinvigorating a sense of community and thus a sense of obligation to the larger society.

The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill demonstrates that Mill both saw his views as part of a systematic defense of empiricist epistemology and utilitarian ethics, and was to a large extent successful in offering a coherent and connected defense of this system. At the time Alan Ryan's highly acclaimed study was first published, it was unusual in insisting on the systematic character of Mill's philosophy. Since 1970, however, many writers have contributed to a more systematic understanding of Mill's program (...) for philosophy, ethics and social science, and Alan Ryan's new preface to the second edition assesses the way Mill appears in this new climate of opinion. (shrink)

Rowlands defends environmentalism, that is, the conjunction of the ontological claim that cognitive processes are not located exclusively inside the skin of cognizing organisms and the epistemological claim that it is not possible to understand the nature of cognitive processes by focusing exclusively on what is occurring inside the skin of cognizing organisms. Chapter 3 is devoted to explaining how environmentalism differs from other forms of externalism about the mental. The crucial points are that the arguments to be presented for (...) the ontological claim do not turn on considerations about the content of mental states, that environmentalism implies a strong form of externalism, and that standard arguments for externalism, based on considerations about content, do not establish the strong form. (shrink)

There is a tendency in current philosophical thought to treat sensory experiences as a peculiar species of propositional attitude. Alan Millar argues against this view. While allowing that experiences may in some sense bear propositional content, he presents a view of sensory experiences asa species of psychological state. He applies the resulting analytical framework to a discussion of justified belief, dealing, firstly, with how beliefs may derive justification from other beliefs, and secondly, with how current sensory experiences may contribute (...) to the justification of a person'sbeliefs. A key theme in his general approach is that justified belief results from the competent exercise of conceptual capacities, some of which involve an ability to respond appropriately to current experience. In working out this approach the author develops a view of concepts and theirmastery, explores the role of groundless beliefs drawing on suggestions of Wittgenstein, illuminates aspects of the thought of Locke, Hume, Quine, and Goldman, and finally offers a response to a sophisticated variety of scepticism. (shrink)

Using undergraduate students from the Waikato University in New Zealand as a sample, this study compared the ethical positions of students of different field of study and demographic characteristics. It was found that the ethical standard of business students are not significantly different from that of non-business students. The findings also suggest that female students are more ethical than male students, and senior students are more ethical than junior students.Besides sex and year of study, other variables studied were parents' occupation, (...) religiosity and household income of the students. All these variables were found to have no significant impact on the ethical position of the students. Furthermore, all the interaction effects between the variables studied and the students' major field of study were nonsignificant. (shrink)

There is a traditional conception of sensory experience on which the experiences one has looking at, say, a cat could be had by someone merely hallucinating a cat. Disjunctivists take issue with this conception on the grounds that it does not enable us to understand how perceptual knowledge is possible. In particular, they think, it does not explain how it can be that experiences gained in perception enable us to be in ‘cognitive contact’ with objects and facts. I develop this (...) chal- lenge to the traditional conception and then show that it is possible to accommo- date an adequate account of cognitive contact in keeping with the traditional conception. One upshot of the discussion is that experiences do not bear the explanatory burden placed upon them by disjunctivists. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 32 In this paper we first set the stage with a brief overview of the tangled history of humility in theology and philosophy—beginning with its treatment in the Bible and ending with the more recent work that has been done in contemporary philosophy. Our two-fold goal at this early stage of the paper is to explore some of the different accounts of humility that have traditionally been developed and highlight some of the key debates in the (...) current literature. Next, we present the findings from several studies we recently conducted in an effort to explore people’s intuitions and beliefs about humility as well as their experiences with being humble. Finally, we discuss the relevance of our findings to the ongoing philosophical debates about humility—suggesting that while some varieties of humility are problematic, other varieties of humility are certainly worth wanting. (shrink)

This paper defends the traditional view that the laws of nature are contingent, or, if some of them are necessary, this is due to analytic principles for the individuation of the law-governed properties. Fundamentally, I argue that the supposed explanatory purposes served by taking the laws to be necessary --showing how laws support counterfactuals, how properties are individuated, or how we have knowledge of properties--are in fact undermined by the continued possibility of the imagined scenarios--this time, described neutrally--which seemed to (...) disprove the claim to necessity in the first place. I speculate that this will be true for any proposed necessary a posteriori truths, and is a basis for rejecting their supposed metaphysical significance. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this reinterpretation and reconstruction of Spinoza's thought, Donagan (humanities, Caltech) demonstrates that it was Spinoza's unique usage of traditional philosophical vocabulary that resulted in the history of misunderstanding that is his continuing fate. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This volume explores questions about conceptual change from both scientific and philosophical viewpoints by analyzing the recent history of evolutionary developmental biology. It features revised papers that originated from the workshop "Conceptual Change in Biological Science: Evolutionary Developmental Biology, 1981-2011" held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in July 2010. The Preface has been written by Ron Amundson. In these papers, philosophers and biologists compare and contrast key concepts in evolutionary developmental biology and their (...) development since the original, seminal Dahlem conference on evolution and development held in Berlin in 1981. Many of the original scientific participants from the 1981 conference are also contributors to this new volume and, in conjunction with other expert biologists and philosophers specializing on these topics, provide an authoritative, comprehensive view on the subject. Taken together, the papers supply novel perspectives on how and why the conceptual landscape has shifted and stabilized in particular ways, yielding insights into the dynamic epistemic changes that have occurred over the past three decades. This volume will appeal to philosophers of biology studying conceptual change, evolutionary developmental biologists focused on comprehending the genesis of their field and evaluating its future directions, and historians of biology examining this period when the intersection of evolution and development rose again to prominence in biological science. (shrink)

Applies a philosophical analysis of the natural sciences to the social sciences.

There is a traditional conception of sensory experience on which the experiences one has looking at, say, a cat could be had by someone merely hallucinating a cat. Disjunctivists take issue with this conception on the grounds that it does not enable us to understand how perceptual knowledge is possible. In particular, they think, it does not explain how it can be that experiences gained in perception enable us to be in ‘cognitive contact’ with objects and facts. I develop this (...) challenge to the traditional conception and then show that it is possible to accommodate an adequate account of cognitive contact in keeping with the traditional conception. One upshot of the discussion is that experiences do not bear the explanatory burden placed upon them by disjunctivists. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1987, investigates what distinguishes the part of human behaviour that is action from the part that is not. The distinction was clearly drawn by Socrates, and developed by Aristotle and the medievals, but key elements of their work became obscured in modern philosophy, and were not fully recovered when, under Wittgenstein’s influence, the theory of action was revived in analytical philosophy. This study aims to recover those elements, and to analyse them in terms of a (...) defensible semantics on Fregean lines. Among its conclusions: that actions are bodily or mental events that are causally explained by their doers’ propositional attitudes, especially by their choices or fully specific intentions; that choice cannot be reduced to desire and belief, and hence that the traditional concept of will as intellectual appetite must be revived. (shrink)

How does the human animal who thinks and loves relate to criminal justice? This essay takes up the idea of a moral psychology of guilt promoted by Bernard Williams and Herbert Morris. Against modern liberal society’s ‘peculiar’ legal morality of voluntary responsibility, it pursues Morris’s ethical account of guilt as involving atonement and identification with others. Thinking of guilt in line with Morris, and linking it with the idea of moral psychology, takes the essay to Freud’s metapsychology in Civilization and (...) Its Discontents. Two conflicting routes to guilt are noted in Freud, one involving internalisation of external anger to suppress destructive instincts, the other loving identification with others in the process of self-formation. This second route is developed through the psychoanalytic thought of Hans Loewald and Jonathan Lear. Following Loewald, the moral psychology of self-formation makes loving identification with others the root of responsibility, guilt and atonement. Following Lear, the moral psychology of guilt developed on these lines renders psychoanalysis part of a broadly understood philosophical project following Aristotelian and Socratic principles. Underlying Morris’s account of guilt is the possibility of ‘prospective identification’, understood as the moral and psychological ground of guilt and reconciliation. This is the rational core of criminal justice, which maintains an uneasy relationship with law’s ‘peculiar’ morality. (shrink)

To say that an object is beautiful or ugly is seemingly to refer to a property of the object. But it is also to express a positive or negative response to it, a set of aesthetic values, and to suggest that others ought to respond in the same way. Such judg- ments are descriptive, expressive, and normative or prescriptive at once. These multiple features are captured well by Humean accounts that analyze the judgments as ascribing relational properties. To say that (...) an object is beautiful is to say, in part, that it is such as to elicit a response expressing pleasure in certain observers. The observers in question must not be ignorant, biased, insensitive, or of poor taste, and they must not base their evaluations on aesthetically irrelevant properties of the objects they judge. The reference to the object's "being such . . ." captures the objective side of the relation; refer- ence to the pleasurable response captures the expressive function of these judgments; and the ideal properties of the observers suggest that others ought to judge in the same way. (shrink)

Although natural philosophers have long been interested in individuality, it has been of interest to contemporary philosophers of biology because of its role in different aspects of evolutionary biology. These debates include whether species are individuals or classes, what counts as a unit of selection, and how transitions in individuality occur evolutionarily. Philosophical analyses are often conducted in terms of metaphysics (“what is an individual?”), rather than epistemology (“how can and do researchers conceptualize individuals so as to address some of (...) their scientific goals?”). We review several philosophical distinctions in order to shift attention from metaphysics to epistemology. Many controversies involve epistemological differences rather than metaphysical disagreement. This implies that a pluralist stance about individuality in biology is warranted and has metaphysical consequences because the pluralism emerges from the diversity of scientific interests that investigate the complexity of living phenomena. (shrink)

The phenomenon of rigid designation - in particular, de jure rigidity - is typically treated metaphysically. The picture is: reference is gained in a way that puts no constraints on what an object in other worlds, or counterfactual situations must be like, in order to be the referent of that term, other than 'being this thing'. This allows 'pure metaphysical' investigation into, and discovery of 'the nature' of the referent. It is argued that this presupposes a 'privileged' ontology, of a (...) sort that is far from obvious. An alternative picture of rigidity is sketched, terms have associated criteria of identity and criteria of application for counterfactual situations. A term is rigid when these coincide. Aside from being a better account of rigidity, it also undermines the picture of rigid terms allowing us to 'metaphysically' investigate the nature of the referent: matters of identity and essence for the referent are settled by these semantic constraints (though it can be done in a way that allows are a posteriori necessities). (shrink)

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Drawing upon ancient Hindu philosophy, the author explores the human psyche and the importance of personal identity.

Background Encounters of moral distress have long-term consequences on healthcare workers’ physical and mental health, leading to job dissatisfaction, reduced patient care, and high levels of burnout, exhaustion, and intentions to quit. Yet, research on approaches to ameliorate moral distress across the health workforce is limited. Research Objective The aim of our study was to qualitatively explore multi-professional perspectives of healthcare social workers, chaplains, and patient liaisons on ways to reduce moral distress and heighten well-being at a southern U.S. academic (...) medical center. Participants & Research Context Purposive sampling and chain-referral methods assisted with recruitment through hospital listservs, staff meetings, and newsletters. Interested participants contacted the principal investigator and all interviews were conducted in-person. Consent was attained prior to interviews. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Research Design Directed content analysis was used to deductively organize codes and to develop themes in conjunction with the National Academy of Medicine’s National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. Rigor was attained through peer-debriefing, data triangulation methods, and frequent research team meetings. Ethical Considerations Ethics approval was obtained from the university and medical center institutional review boards. Findings Themes demonstrate that rather than offering interventions in the aftermath of moral distress, multilevel daily practices ought to be considered that pre-emptively identify and reduce morally distressing encounters through (1) the care team, (2) management and leadership, and (3) the health care industry. Strategies include interdisciplinary decision-making, trusting managerial relationships, and organizational policies and practices that explicitly invest in mental health promotion and diverse leadership opportunities. Conclusion Moral distress interventions ought to target short-term stress reactions while also addressing the long-term impacts of moral residue. Health systems must financially commit to an ethical workplace culture that explicitly values mental health and well-being. (shrink)