This essay examines historical and contemporary connections between Buddhist and medical traditions through a study of the Accomplishing Medicine ( sman sgrub ) practice and the Yuthok Heart Essence ( G.yu thog snying thig ) anthology. Accomplishing Medicine is an esoteric Buddhist yogic and contemplative exercise focused on several levels of “alchemical” transformation. The article will trace the acquisition of this practice from India by Tibetan medical figures and its assimilation into medical practice. It will propose that this alchemical practice (...) forms the central nexus of connection between Tibetan medicine and the Buddhist Nyingma tradition, and that this little-studied link is not a marginal feature of Tibetan medicine but rather one that has had a significant shaping factor on each tradition throughout history. (shrink)
Why is there something rather than nothing? Does god exist? Who am I? Metaphysics is concerned with ourselves and reality, and the most fundamental questions regarding existence. This clear and accessible introduction covers the central topics in Metaphysics in a concise but comprehensive way. Brian Garrett discusses the crucial concepts in a highly readable manner, easing the reader in with a look at paradoxes that aptly illustrate some important philosophical problems. He then goes on to address key areas of (...) metaphysics: · existence and modality · causation · God · time · universals · personal Identity · truth What is this thing called Metaphysics? contains many helpful student-friendly features. Each chapter concludes with a useful summary of the main ideas discussed, a glossary of important terms, study questions, annotated further reading, and a guide to web resources. Text-boxes provide bite-sized summaries of key concepts and major philosophers, and clear and interesting examples are used throughout. This is an ideal first textbook on Metaphysics for undergraduates taking a first course in philosophy. (shrink)
The publication of 'Animal Rights and Souls in the 18th Century' will be welcomed by everyone interested in the development of the modern animal liberation movement, as well as by those who simply want to savour the work of enlightenment thinkers pushing back the boundaries of both science and ethics. At last these long out-of-print texts are again available to be read and enjoyed - and what texts they are! Gems like Bougeant's witty reductio of the Christian view of animals (...) are included together with path-breaking works of ethics such as Primatt's A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals . There are works I have never seen before, including the remarkable Cry of Nature by the Scottish revolutionary Jacobin, John Oswald. In this set, everyone will find something novel, delightful and truly enlightening. - Peter Singer The discussion of animal rights and the moral status of animals, so prevalent in the late twentieth century, has its roots in the mid to late eighteenth century. Some of the themes we consider of recent invention - the legal standing of animals, the ethical status of vegetarians, cruelty towards animals, ultimately resulting in cruelty to humans - are of long standing. But in the eighteenth-century literature they are interconnected with theological issues surrounding animal souls, the birth of the life sciences, the great chain of being and other peculiarly eighteenth-century problems. This collection explores the exciting early discussions of moral theories concerning animals, placing them within their historical and social context. It reveals that issues such as vivisection, animal souls and vegetarianism were very much live philosophical subjects 200 years ago. The six volumes reprinted here includes complete works and edited extracts from such key eighteenth-century thinkers as Oswald, Primatt, Smellie, Monboddo and Jenyns. Many of the materials are extremely rare and never previously reprinted. The collection, edited with a new introduction and bio-bibliography by Aaron V. Garrett provides valuable original source material to supplement contemporary discussions of animal rights. --18th-century material on the theme of animal rights and practical ethics --an important supplement to contemporary animal rights discussions --provides a broader account of early discussions of the 'science of human nature' through animals --widens our understanding of 18th-century ethics through an important area of practical ethics --includes many scarce texts, most of which have never been reprinted before. (shrink)
It is widely believed that Hume often wrote carelessly and contradicted himself, and that no unified, sound philosophy emerges from his writings. Don Garrett demonstrates that such criticisms of Hume are without basis. Offering fresh and trenchant solutions to longstanding problems in Hume studies, Garrett's penetrating analysis also makes clear the continuing relevance of Hume's philosophy.
In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)
Readers of Spinoza's philosophy have often been discouraged, as well as fascinated, by the geometrical method which he employs in his masterpiece Ethics. Aaron Garrett examines this method and suggests that Spinoza intended not only to make claims and propositions but also to transform readers by enabling them to view themselves and the world in a different way. This original and controversial book will be of interest to historians of philosophy.
In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)
In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)
In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)
This translation of this classic text contains a balance of cultural and biological considerations. While arguing for the strong influence of exposure and of formal training on the way that music is perceived, Frances draws on the literature concerning the amusias to illustrate his points about the types of cognitive abstraction that are performed by the listener.
In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner (...) all further questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)
In The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that only a form of philosophising that sprung from a deep commitment to the subject could ever hope for success. ‘All great problems’, he wrote, ‘demand great love’. He continued: It makes the most telling difference whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his problems and finds in them his destiny, his distress and his greatest happiness, or an ‘impersonal’ one, meaning he is only able to touch them with the antennae of (...) cold, curious thought. In the latter case nothing will come of it, that much can be promised; for even if great problems should let themselves be grasped by them, they would not allow frogs and weaklings to hold on to them. Nietzsche went on to complain that, to his knowledge, no one had yet approached moral philosophy in this way: Why, then, have I never yet encountered anyone, not even in books, who approached morality in this personal way and who knew morality as a problem, and this problem as his own personal distress, torment, voluptuousness, and passion? No one familiar with Frances Kamm’s work in moral philosophy could share Nietzsche’s complaint. In her two-volume Morality, Mortality and in her other work in moral theory and applied ethics, Kamm meticulously and imaginatively analyses moral cases in order to gain insight into our fundamental moral concepts and principles. The tenacity with which she pursues this 1 aim springs from her personal engagement with the issues she investigates—an engagement reflected in her dedication of the second volume of Morality, Mortality to ‘the love of morality’. At the centre of Kamm’s work lie her development and defence of a nonconsequentialist ethical theory. Consequentialism holds that the rightness or wrongness of our conduct is determined solely by the expected goodness or badness of the consequences of our acts or of the rules to which these acts conform. According to consequentialism, to act rightly is to act in ways that bring about the best possible expected consequences.. (shrink)
Brian Garrett has criticized my diagnosis of the paradox of self-consciousness. In reply, I focus on the classification of 'I'-thoughts, and show how the notion of immunity to error through misidentification can be used to characterize 'I'-thoughts, even though an important class of 'I'-thoughts (those whose expression involves what Wittgenstein called the use of 'I' as object) are not themselves immune to error through misidentification. 'I'-thoughts which are susceptible to error through misidentification are dependent upon those which are not. (...) The dependence here has to do with how a thinker understands what would defeat such thoughts. (shrink)
In The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that only a form of philosophizing that sprung from a deep commitment to the subject could ever hope for success. ‘All great problems,’ he wrote, ‘demand great love.’ He continued: It makes the most telling difference whether a thinker has a personal relationship to his problems and finds in them his destiny, his distress, and his greatest happiness, or an ‘impersonal’ one, meaning he is only able to touch them with the antennae of (...) cold, curious thought. In the latter case nothing will come of it, that much can be promised; for even if great problems should let themselves be grasped by them, they would not allow frogs and weaklings to hold on to them. Nietzsche went on to complain that, to his knowledge, no one had yet approached moral philosophy in this way: Why, then, have I never yet encountered anyone, not even in books, who approached morality in this personal way and who knew morality as a problem, and this problem as his own personal distress, torment, voluptuousness, and passion? Alex Voorhoeve run01.tex V1 - 07/29/2009 7:23am Page 16.. (shrink)
I thank both my critics for their praise, their searching comments and objections, and their careful attention to my book. In the very short time allotted to respond to them both, I will address their objections in an integrated way, following the order of my book.Both Elizabeth Radcliffe and Don Garrett protest that for the last twenty years the noncognitivist reading has not dominated Hume scholarship in the way that I suggest when I include it in the common reading (...) of Hume's metaethics. In the book I admit that noncognitivism is not as popular among experts as the other two elements of the common reading, and I discuss the alternatives to it that have been proposed. But most of those who offer such alternatives .. (shrink)
Best?candidate theories of identity have been accused of absurdity. In my response to Garrett, I argue that my four?dimensionalist reconstruction of best?candidate theories allows the appearance of absurdity to be explained, while Garrett's own defence of the position leaves the demand for such explanation unsatisfied. I also argue against the assumption that three?dimensionalists can give a satisfactory account of unity or change.
Brian Garrett (Analysis (2012), 293–5) comments on McCall's paper (Analysis (2011), 501–6). McCall had claimed that since the truth of true empirical propositions supervenes on, and depends upon, empirical fact, what God knows and does not know also depends upon being, i.e. upon facts. Consequently God's foreknowing what I freely decide to do depends upon what I freely do. Garrett objects that the dependence of truth on being seems to play no essential role in McCall's argument. McCall replies (...) that his argument is an up-to-date version of Luis de Molina's 16th century reconciliation of freewill with omniscience, in which the dependence of God's knowledge on what humans do is crucial. (shrink)
I respond to Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder’s criticisms of my arguments in another place for the conclusion that human supplicants would have little responsibility (if any) for the result of answered petitionary prayer, and criticize their defense of the claim that God would have good reasons for creating an institution of petitionary prayer.
Frances Kamm argues that physical distance is per se relevant to our duty to give aid to strangers. Her methods, however, fail to bring into light the relevance per se of distance. To understand the claim that distance is per se morally relevant, it is helpful to use distinctions devised by Jonathan Dancy among different roles a feature may play in the explanation of moral reasons, yielding thus different senses of relevance. A feature can directly count in favor of an action, enable another (...) feature to count in favor of an action, or strengthen the favoring already done by another feature. For the relevance of nearness that is at issue in Kamm's thesis, if nearness is relevant at all to our duty to aid strangers, it cannot be relevant in the way Kamm takes it to be. It cannot directly count in favor of aiding or be a special reason to aid, someone that non-near agents lack. Nor can physical distance be seen as a consideration that strengthens our independently existing pro tanto duty to aid strangers, whenever we are near them. (shrink)
Ruth Millikan is one of the most interesting and influential philosophers alive. Her work is also hard to penetrate. In this review, I try to present and assess her work on the nature of language, which is collected in this anthology. I also criticize her analysis of “natural convention” as well as her discussion of illocutionary acts.
Millikan contrasts her substance-based view of concepts with “descriptionism” according to which description determines what falls under a concept. Focusing on her discussion of the role of language in the acquisition of concepts, I argue that descriptions cannot be separated from perception in the ways Millikan's view requires.
