Moral theory has mostly focused on idealized situations in which the morally relevant properties of human actions can be known beforehand. Here, a framework is proposed that is intended to sharpen moral intuitions and improve moral argumentation in problems involving risk and uncertainty. Guidelines are proposed for a systematic search of suitable future viewpoints for hypothetical retrospection. In hypothetical retrospection, a decision is evaluated under the assumption that one of the branches of possible future developments has (...) materialized. This evaluation is based on the deliberator’s present values, and each decision is judged in relation to the information available when it was taken. The basic decision rule is to choose an alternative that comes out as morally acceptable (permissible) from all hypothetical retrospections. (shrink)

What level of government subsidy of higher education is justified, in what form, and for what reasons? We answer these questions by applying the hypothetical insurance approach, originally developed by Ronald Dworkin in his work on distributive justice. On this approach, when asking how to fund and deliver public services in a particular domain, we should seek to model what would be the outcome of a hypothetical insurance market: we stipulate that participants lack knowledge about their specific resources (...) and risks, and ask what insurance contracts they would take out to secure different types of benefit and protection in the domain in question. The great benefit of the hypothetical insurance approach is that it allows us to take apparently intractable questions about interpersonal distribution and transform them into questions about intrapersonal distributions: that is, questions about how an individual would choose to distribute risks and resources across the various lives that they might end up living, in light of their individual ambitions and preferences. Applying this approach to higher education, we argue that the UK model of higher education funding in which the costs of an individual's higher education are shared between general taxation and the individual herself, with the latter element to be paid retrospectively through an income-contingent state-backed loan, is vindicated as just. In particular, we argue that it is more just than alternatives such as a graduate tax, full funding through general taxation, and full privatisation. (shrink)

We present a novel procedure to engage the public in ethical deliberations on the potential impacts of brain machine interface technology. We call this procedure a convergence seminar, a form of scenario-based group discussion that is founded on the idea of hypothetical retrospection. The theoretical background of this procedure and the results of five seminars are presented.

This paper explores the intertwining of uncertainty and values. We consider an important but underexplored field of fundamental uncertainty and values in decision-making. Some proposed methodologies to deal with fundamental uncertainty have included potential surprise theory, scenario planning and hypothetical retrospection. We focus on the principle of uncertainty transduction in hypothetical retrospection as an illustrative case of how values interact with fundamental uncertainty. We show that while uncertainty transduction appears intuitive in decision contexts it nevertheless fails (...) in important ranges of strategic game-theoretic cases. The methodological reasons behind the failure are then examined. (shrink)

Any future-oriented work, whether of academic or policy kind, needs a vision of the future, however vague. It is well known that such predictions are bound to be wrong, at least on the margin. The question is how to minimise that threat and make reliable assumptions. In this chapter we discuss a strategy of hypothetical retrospection. By imagining a future state of the world that is radically different from the present, we scrutinise hidden assumptions and suppositions taken for (...) granted in philosophical and policy visions of the future. More specifically, we discuss one example from political philosophy, which is John Rawls’s theorising about justice between generations, and three examples from policy, which are all from a Swedish context. We highlight some of the assumptions made in these disparate works, such as economic growth and acceptance of inequality. With the use of Tim Mulgan’s thought experiment of a ‘broken world’, where there are not enough resources to meet everyone’s basic needs, we, as it were, retrospectively assess the embedded assumptions. The main ambition is not to suggest that they are wrong from this perspective, but that the optimism they exhibit is not beyond doubt. (shrink)

Available methods such as technology assessment and risk analysis have failed to predict the effects of technological choices. We need to give up the futile predictive ambitions of previous approaches and instead base decisions on systematic studies of alternative future developments. It will then be necessary to cope with mere possibility arguments, i.e., arguments in which a conclusion is drawn from a mere possibility that a course of action may have certain consequences. A five-step procedure is proposed for the assessment (...) of such arguments. It includes a search for mere possibility arguments pointing in different directions, a scientific evaluation that may lead to the specification or refutation of some of these arguments, two symmetry tests, evaluation of the seriousness of the arguments in terms of novelty, spatio-temporal unlimitedness and interference with complex systems, and hypothetical retrospection that aims at finding a course of action that will be defensible in retrospect. (shrink)

Clinical equipoise has been proposed as an ethical principle relating uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical research. Although CE has traditionally been indicated as a necessary condition for a morally justified introduction of a new RCT, questions related to the interpretation of this principle remain woefully open. Recent proposals to rehabilitate CE have divided the bioethical community on its ethical merits. This paper presents a new argument that brings out the epistemological difficulties we encounter in justifying CE as a principle (...) to connect uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical ethics. The argument proposes, first, that the methodology of hypothetical retrospection is applicable to the RCT design and that it can accommodate uncertainty. As currently understood, however, HR should give up its reliance on the assumption of uncertainty transduction, because the latter assumes the principle of indifference, which does not accommodate uncertainty in the right way. The same principle is then seen to distort also the received interpretations of CE. (shrink)

Essay I explores brain machine interface technologies. These make direct communication between the brain and a machine possible by means of electrical stimuli. This essay reviews the existing and emerging technologies in this field and offers a systematic inquiry into the relevant ethical problems that are likely to emerge in the following decades. Essay II, co-written with professor Sven-Ove Hansson, presents a novel procedure to engage the public in ethical deliberations on the potential impacts of brain machine interface technology. We (...) call this procedure a Convergence seminar, a form of scenario-based group discussion that is founded on the idea of hypothetical retrospection. The theoretical background of this procedure and the results of the five seminars are presented here. Essay III discusses moral enhancement, an instance of human enhancement that alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behavior in order to make that person more moral. Moral enhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy is behavioral enhancement. The second strategy, favored by prominent defenders of moral enhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. (shrink)

Essay I explores brain machine interface technologies. These make direct communication between the brain and a machine possible by means of electrical stimuli. This essay reviews the existing and emerging technologies in this field and offers an inquiry into the ethical problems that are likely to emerge. Essay II, co-written with professor Sven-Ove Hansson, presents a novel procedure to engage the public in deliberations on the potential impacts of technology. This procedure, convergence seminar, is a form of scenario-based discussion that (...) is founded on the idea of hypothetical retrospection. The theoretical background and the results of the five seminars are presented. Essay III discusses moral bioenhancement, an instance of human enhancement that alters a person’s dispositions, emotions or behavior. Moral bioenhancement could be carried out in three different ways. The first strategy is behavioral enhancement. The second strategy, favored by prominent defenders of moral enhancement, is emotional enhancement. The third strategy is the enhancement of moral dispositions, such as empathy and inequity aversion. I argue that we ought to implement a combination of the second and third strategies. Essay IV considers the possibility and potential desirability of sensory enhancement. It is proposed that existing sensory modalities in vertebrate animals are proof of concept of what is biologically possible to create in humans. Three considerations on the normative aspects of sensory enhancement are also presented in this essay. Essay V rejects disease prioritarianism, the idea that the healthcare system ought to prioritize the treatment of diseases. Instead, an approach that focuses on what medicine can accomplish is proposed. Essay VI argues that from the idea that species have an intrinsic value and that humanity has a collective responsibility to protect animal species from extinction, the conclusion that we ought to recreate species follows. Essay VII argues that unknown existential risks have not been properly addressed. It proposes a heuristic for doing so, and a concrete strategy. This strategy consists in building refuges that could withstand a large number of catastrophic events. (shrink)

In order to explore public views on nanobiotechnology (NBT), convergence seminars were held in four places in Europe; namely in Visby (Sweden), Sheffield (UK), Lublin (Poland), and Porto (Portugal). A convergence seminar is a new form of public participatory activity that can be used to deal systematically with the uncertainty associated for instance with the development of an emerging technology like nanobiotechnology. In its first phase, the participants are divided into three “scenario groups” that discuss different future scenarios. In the (...) second phase, the participants are regrouped into three “convergence groups”, each of which contains representatives from each of the three groups from the first phase. In the final third phase, all participants meet for a summary discussion. This pilot project had two aims: (1) to develop and assess the new methodology and (2) to gather advice and recommendations from the public that may be useful for future decisions on nanobiotechnology (NBT). Participants emphasized that they wanted the technology to focus on solutions to environmental and medical problems and to meet the needs of developing countries. The need for further public participation and deliberation on NBT issues seemed to be acknowledged by all participants. Many of them also raised equality concerns. Views on the means by which NBT should be steered into socially useful directions were more divided. In particular, different views were expressed on how much regulation of company activities is needed to curb unwanted developments. The participants’ responses in a questionnaire indicate that the methodology of the convergence seminars was successful for decision-making under uncertainty. In particular, the participants stated that their advice was influenced both by access to different possible future developments and by the points of view of their co-participants, which is what the method is specifically intended to achieve. (shrink)

The results of a hypothetical experiment requiring a sequence of quantum measurements are obtained retrospectively, after the experiment has been completed, from a single reading of an “apparatus register.” The experiment is carried out reversibly and Schrödinger's equation is satisfied until the terminal reading of the register. The technique is illustrated using a feasible method of measuring photon spin as the quantum “object” observable and using the photon energy as the “apparatus register.” The technique is used to discuss the (...) “watchdog” effect, the effect of repeated measurements inhibiting quantum jumps. (shrink)

This paper grapples with two objections against Max Weber’s methodology that arise because Weber borrows some ideas from Heinrich Rickert’s neo-Kantian philosophical system. The first objection (“the contradiction argument”) is raised by Julius J. Schaaf who disagrees with Weber’s claim that historical objects are constituted through retrospectively and hypothetically applied selections of value relations and that we can understand these objects. Weber’s idea that the relating ideal type constructions are also non-arbitrary—i.e., not merely subjective—and can be rectified, Schaaf maintains, contradicts (...) his own characterization of historical objects and reality. The second objection (“the incom¬patibility argument”) was made by Gerhard Wagner and Heinz Zipprian. It focuses on the conception of objective possibility. According to this, counter¬factual chains of historical events are contrived to figure out the relevant set of causes by which a certain event can be said to necessarily occur. The critics claim that it is only based on the ontological assumption of a preexisting real object that this thought-experiment can operate. That is, the pre-emptive assumption of realism is indis¬pensable for explaining the historical individual. To refute these two objections, I clarify some foundational notions and ideas of Weber’s methodology. (shrink)

Contents Acknowledgements iii I. Royce and the Interpretation of His Contemporaries Introduction 1 1. Royce and Lotze 25 Introduction to Lotze. Lotze's ontology. Royce's response to Lotze. Successfull metaphysics renders experience broadly consistent without denying types of human experience. Logically testing metaphysical assumptions offers a promising methodology. The individual is not immediately given but realized through a process. The individual is not immediately given but realized through a process. Conclusion. 2. Royce and James 66 The friendship of James and Royce. (...) James's position. James summarized. Royce's response. The ‘abstract’ ideal has its pragmatic aspect. Logic can supplement pragmatism. Experience itself drives the unifying efforts of speculative philosophy. A more consistent pragmatism hypothesizes broader experience and allows an active and constructive process of response to that experience. Conclusion. 3. Royce and Bradley 108 Bradley's destruction of appearances. Bradley's construction? Royce's response - non-technical. Metaphysics is interpretively applicable to special experiential problems. In active willful attention the ethical complements the theoretical, rendering the relation of finite and absolute interpretable. Royce's response - technical development. Conclusion. 4. Royce and Whitehead 163 Statement of Whitehead's three primary presuppositions. Scheme of Whitehead's philosophy: the role of extended events. The building blocks of Whitehead's metaphysics. Process as an action within and upon experience. The process of concrescence. Consciousness and propositions in Whitehead's philosophy. Royce in comparison with Whitehead. Royce's cosmology in outline. Explicit contrast and comparison of Royce's and Whitehead's philosophies. Principles suggested by the contrast of Royce and Whitehead. II. An Extension of Royce’s Philosophy of Interpretation Preamble: The Need for a Re-Envisioned Philosophy of Interpretation 212 5. The Roycean Hypothetical Method and Its Prospects 226 The interpretation of Christianity. Metaphysical foundations of community. The synthesis and promise of Royce's insights. 6. Hyperthematics 269 Working definition. Some methodological considerations. Some general considerations. Some definitions. The foundational hypertheme and the derivatives. Hyperthematic expansion. The hyperthematic structure of the game. The hyperthematic structure of narrative. The hyperthematic structure of dance. The hyperthematic structure of music. Retrospect and prospect. 7. Hyperthematics Applied: The Corporation As a Hyperthematic Structure 339 Introduction. Restatement of the hyperthemes. The problematic of the corporation. Some exemplifications of the historical development of the corporation. Consideration of several prominent views regarding the purpose of commercial corporations. Consideration of consistency of the corporation as a hyperthematic structure. Hyperthematic reconstruction of the corporation as a community of epsionomic interpretation. Bibliography 412. (shrink)

Some of the most virulent public trans-exclusionary radical feminist discourse in the UK follows the grammatical form of the third conditional: if I had grown up now, I would have been persuaded to transition. This articulation of the hypothetical threat of a transition that did not happen but is imagined, in retrospect, to be not just possible but forcibly enacted plays an important role, both politically and psychically, in a contemporary political landscape that is threatening the livelihoods of trans (...) children. Interrogating this discourse via an analysis of an open letter by J.K. Rowling, and a documentary by Stella O’Malley, this article asks: what might we learn about contemporary transphobia in the UK if we took seriously the grammar of TERF discourse animated by trans childhood? It argues that while the third conditional grammar of TERF discourse could articulate a politics of solidarity between cis and trans positionalities and politics, its potential for a shared political standpoint is routinely interrupted by the defence mechanisms that are oriented by the psychic life of the child. Interrogating these defence mechanisms at the level of the cultural, the article traces out paranoia as well as projection, as two main modes of TERF engagement with trans childhood. The article thus engages with the range of real and fantasmatic impossibilities that haunt the trans child both in the present and the past, and it contributes to the growing body of scholarship on trans childhoods. In doing so, it makes the case that public discourse on trans children should desist from hypothetical third conditional claims, and instead find ways of embracing trans childhoods unconditionally. (shrink)

Prospective ascription of responsibility is hypothetical, commonly noting or setting conditions for critical judgment or liability if some event occurs or fails to occur, thus determining vulnerability to retrospective judgments. Prospective liabilities can be classified by source, by type or degree (if any) of accompanying control, and by structure or stages.But not all prospective responsibility can be understood in terms of liability. Actual or de facto control over X and/or responsibility for Y (persons, animals, inanimate things, etc.), though they (...) may involve prospective liabilities, may not be responsibilities to any person in particular. Such responsibilities may be called responsibilities in rem and distinguished from those assignable to persons (responsibilities in personam).Though prospective responsibility judgments often provide the most important grounds for retrospective judgments, if the concern is with the meaning of responsibility judgments, retrospective responsibility judgments are more basic. For, while we can understand retrospective judgments even though we know nothing of prospective ones, the opposite is not true. (shrink)

Prospective ascription of responsibility is hypothetical, commonly noting or setting conditions for critical judgment or liability if some event occurs or fails to occur, thus determining vulnerability to retrospective judgments. Prospective liabilities can be classified by source, by type or degree (if any) of accompanying control, and by structure or stages.But not all prospective responsibility can be understood in terms of liability. Actual or de facto control over X and/or responsibility for Y (persons, animals, inanimate things, etc.), though they (...) may involve prospective liabilities, may not be responsibilities to any person in particular. Such responsibilities may be called responsibilities in rem and distinguished from those assignable to persons (responsibilities in personam).Though prospective responsibility judgments often provide the most important grounds for retrospective judgments, if the concern is with the meaning of responsibility judgments, retrospective responsibility judgments are more basic. For, while we can understand retrospective judgments even though we know nothing of prospective ones, the opposite is not true. (shrink)

Prospective ascription of responsibility is hypothetical, commonly noting or setting conditions for critical judgment or liability if some event occurs or fails to occur, thus determining vulnerability to retrospective judgments. Prospective liabilities can be classified by source, by type or degree (if any) of accompanying control, and by structure or stages.But not all prospective responsibility can be understood in terms of liability. Actual or de facto control over X and/or responsibility for Y (persons, animals, inanimate things, etc.), though they (...) may involve prospective liabilities, may not be responsibilities to any person in particular. Such responsibilities may be called responsibilities in rem and distinguished from those assignable to persons (responsibilities in personam).Though prospective responsibility judgments often provide the most important grounds for retrospective judgments, if the concern is with the meaning of responsibility judgments, retrospective responsibility judgments are more basic. For, while we can understand retrospective judgments even though we know nothing of prospective ones, the opposite is not true. (shrink)

Prospective ascription of responsibility is hypothetical, commonly noting or setting conditions for critical judgment or liability if some event occurs or fails to occur, thus determining vulnerability to retrospective judgments. Prospective liabilities can be classified by source, by type or degree (if any) of accompanying control, and by structure or stages.But not all prospective responsibility can be understood in terms of liability. Actual or de facto control over X and/or responsibility for Y (persons, animals, inanimate things, etc.), though they (...) may involve prospective liabilities, may not be responsibilities to any person in particular. Such responsibilities may be called responsibilities in rem and distinguished from those assignable to persons (responsibilities in personam).Though prospective responsibility judgments often provide the most important grounds for retrospective judgments, if the concern is with the meaning of responsibility judgments, retrospective responsibility judgments are more basic. For, while we can understand retrospective judgments even though we know nothing of prospective ones, the opposite is not true. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Trauma, Recognition, and the Place of LanguageJuliet Mitchell (bio)Definitions of trauma abound within the psychoanalytic discipline. My own definition is going to be simple. A trauma, whether physical or psychical, must create a breach in a protective covering of such severity that it cannot be coped with by the usual mechanisms by which we deal with pain or loss. The severity of the breach is such that even if (...) the incident is expected, the experience cannot be foretold. We cannot thus make use of anxiety as a preparatory signal. The death of a sick relative, the amputation of a diseased limb may be consciously known about in advance, but if they are to be described as traumatic then the foreknowledge was useless. In trauma we are untimely ripped.Whether it is as childhood seduction, infantile abuse, shell shock, or war violence, or as a preoccupation with the place of neoteny and the trials of human birth, trauma is continually posited as the hypothetical “origin” of psychic states. However, although “trauma” is crucial to psychoanalytic theory, trauma in itself is not really the focus of its analysis. Freud proposed a “biological bedrock” on which psychic states were formed, but this bedrock was not the object of psychoanalytic inquiry. I suggest that what emerges as a motif in the many retheorizings of psychoanalysis time and again, as another “bedrock,” is trauma. One might call it an “experiential bedrock.” As with biology, it is crucial—but as the area of another mode of inquiry. Psychoanalysis is equipped to contribute to the understanding of the reaction to trauma, not to the trauma itself.In a colloquial context we tend to look from the perspective of the observer and label a range of difficult or tragic occurrences “traumatic.” Instead, I want to define trauma from the perspective of the person who experiences it. This means both that the same event will not always be traumatic for different people, and that the experience of different events, if they are experienced as trauma, will be the same whatever the event and whoever the sufferer. It was essentially for this reason that Freud eventually disagreed with the rich findings of Otto Rank, who proposed the trauma of birth as the origin of mankind’s neurosis. Trauma is the great equalizer. What differentiates us, since we were all born? Furthermore, what appears to be the trauma from the observer’s perspective may, from the viewpoint of the psychic response of the recipient, only be the catalyst that brings to the surface an experience which, were it not for this later event, might not in itself have been traumatic (or vice versa). Even so extreme an experience as the Holocaust may not breach the defenses of a particular individual. The catalytic event in the present triggers an earlier occurrence which becomes traumatic only by virtue of its retrospectively endowed meaning.Probably all animate matter can be traumatized; it would seem likely that the response to the breach in the human defensive system takes place at a generalizable psychosocial level. Recognition and language are interactional social processes; without another person neither a psyche nor language is possible. Object relations analysts, notably D. W. Winnicott, whom Max Hernandez addresses in his paper in this issue, have devoted their work to aspects of the psyche, Lacanians to language. To me the fields are interdependent and gain from being looked at together, both in their practice and in the theories that can [End Page 121] be applied to them. When we have a physical trauma it is common for an immediate aftereffect to be some uncertainty about words; even the ability to spell correctly can temporarily disappear. There are undoubtedly physiological explanations for this. But I shall argue that there are psychological parallels. Every patient whom I would regard as having had some relevant form of trauma had a specific relationship to language, and it is this that concerns me. In addition, Max Hernandez describes the breach in the defenses caused by the anal rape of a patient when he was a young boy. But neither the patient’s symptom nor his complaint on coming to a therapist for treatment pertains to... (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 136-140. In early 2011, Cow Heavy Books published The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature , a compendium of catalog 'blurbs' for non-existent desired or ideal texts. Along with Erinrose Mager, I edited the project, in a process that was more like curation as it mainly entailed asking a range of contemporary writers, theorists, and text-makers to send us an entry. What resulted was a creative/critical hybrid anthology, a small book in which each page opens (...) to a new iteration of textual desire. These texts explore the material possibilities of the book. Somewhat parallel to the call of N. Katherine Hayles who, in her book Writing Machines , urges literary theorists to take up the practice of Medium Specific Analysis (to account for the way the medium in which it is presented conditions or at least bears on a literary text). I see in the imagined works of The Official Catalog a call for the innovative writers of today to become Medium-Responsive. This would mean thinking through the specific (materially constrained) possibilities offered by the media in which texts are presented, and in thinking of the literary text as a kind of art in the greater context of other arts and the book as a medium situated within the context of many other media. In doing so, the contemporary writer refutes the chorus of critics who lament the death of the book by consistently reinvigorating literary innovation. The following are selections from The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature that show possible paths for (thinking about) new writing that engages with its medium. —Ben Segal, Editor THE CUBE Even the most radical non-linear texts have tended to exploit or subvert only the sequential possibilities of print—from the continuous loop of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to the shuffled cards of Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 —but The Cube takes such multiplicities to an entirely new level. Set in a grid, the book's words can be read conventionally, across the page, as well as down each column—with either route making complete grammatical sense. But they can also be read as stacked strata and mined like lexical core samples through the layered pages of the book. Each path tells the same story from a different perspective (the narrative, naturally, hinges on the potential outcomes of a throw of cubed dice). By opening up the z-axis to reading in this way, The Cube recognizes the book as a three-dimensional sculptural space. Taking its lead from Armand Schwerner's (If Personal) and Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes , The Cube reads like a experiment by Christian Bök precision printed by Emily McVarish. Craig Dworkin is the editor, most recently, of The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (Roof Books, 2008), The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound , with Marjorie Perloff (U. Chicago Press, 2009), and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing , with Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern UP, 2010). He teaches at the University of Utah. HE GOES In He Goes , we read notes, letters and e-mails from a scholar father to his novelist daughter. We read of the father's musings on Beckett, on Pinter, on Anne Frank; his description of a woman hanging laundry from a line. We read about his journey toward dying, followed by a brief, third person account of his death, and his obituary. Then a long series of blank pages that demand to be read in real time, non-sentence by non-sentence, blank page by blank page. Finally—and it is here that this peculiar little book begins to soar—the dead father writes to his as-of-yet-still-living daughter. He does not write from death. He does not write from life. The words unprint, unstamp, unkindle. Still, they require no translation. The father "writes" (for lack of a better word) about the serendipitous, the commonplace; he recommends another book. He jokes. He asks his daughter how her stomach is. He says forget about presence in absence, darling; screw words as memorial and the guys in garbage cans and loss as redemption and I can't go on I must go on. He goes, "Love, Fodder." He goes, "incidentally." He goes, "I thought you might like to know." Elizabeth Graver is the author of a story collection, Have You Seen Me? , and three novels: Unravelling ; The Honey Thief ; and Awake . Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories , Best American Essays , and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards . She teaches at Boston College. THE PAPER ARCHIVIST A stunning package and a triumph of imagination, The Paper Archivist at times looks to be less a book than an abstract expressionist painting. Softly bound, its contents unfold to a single sheet of uneven thickness and texture—a canvas splattered with colored lines, stickers, broken sentences, and nonsense pictographs. But by following the directions to fold, dip, smell, rub, scratch, and tear the sheet according to the contingencies of the weather and using only the objects at hand, the reader slowly brings the forces hidden in the noise into a glorious sculptural convergence, processing a different story and shape each time. This is the rare book that continues to stir, whirl, and pop on every new reading. Sean Higgins blogs at BOMBlog where he is responsible for the column Volumes and Territories, as well as Ghost Island , a fledgling collaborative intellectual collective. THE SLOW BOOK The Slow Book , written by an anonymous author at the dawn of literacy, on a minor planet (otherwise notable only as the source of that exceptionally hardy, not very tasty grain called “shef” sowed on hostile planets as an early step to colonization), and encoded into a series of punctures on a strip of copper coiled inside a clever device, something between a player piano and an old-fashioned film projector, is being released into print, as was the author’s intention, at a rate of one word per century (local time). Each word is, across the Forty Galaxies, agreed to be uncannily apt for the century in which it appears—even “of,” in a century during which the highest value was attached to fidelity, whether to ideals, worlds, or romantic love; even “the,” which governed two centuries, one extraordinarily materialistic, during which advances in propulsion and navigation accelerated the exchange of exceptional objects between the remotest planets of the Forty, and one in which the central concern, both of philosophers and the common man, was whether, in an age of rapidly proliferating hypothetical worlds, anyone or anything concretely existed at all. Even those words published long before interstellar contact can be seen in retrospect to have transgalactic pertinence. As a result, attempts to abstract the machine from its publishers, Hobson & Hui, in order to “predict the future” for insight or gain by “fast- forwarding” the copper strip have been many and ingenious. While, in centuries of skepticism (“maybe”), or of unrest (“go”) the book has been nearly forgotten, in others it seems to haunt every thought, every deed, despite the fact that the subject of The Slow Book is still unclear. So far only a few sentences exist in print; everyone knows them, can quote them, offer the standard exegeses and assorted heresies; yet certainties are the stuff of adolescence; mature readers are forced to acknowledge that these sentences are probably only a preamble to the main argument. They contain no proper nouns, nor can we identify any definite theme. There is even disagreement about their tone, whether coolly ironic, as some insist, or ardent. The appearance of an unusual grammatical case, sometimes called the future pluperfect continuous, used to describe events that at some future point will have always been true (but are not yet)—hitherto known to appear only in the synthetic dogmas of the Thanatographical Society, and in certain highly circumscribed religious contexts—has suggested to some scholars that the Slow Book was originally intended for ritual use, but the proximity of the usage to a term designating a small hand plow that, as Pott and Mielcke have convincingly shown, would have borne a distinctly obscene double meaning in its culture of origin in the author’s time, argues otherwise. It is likewise unclear whether the situation that seems to be—with teasing incompleteness—sketched out in these few lines is intended as an illustration of general principles, a case study, a dramatic scene, or an extended metaphor. In short, we have no idea what The Slow Book is about. In our own time, we believe that it is almost certainly a work of fiction, but that may be because we live in the century of “if”. In each age, perhaps, we see the book we most need to read. Some have dared to suggest that the metal strip is blank until, with millennial fanfare, it advances into its new position, that no ur-text exists, that the book itself is brought into being—written—by our need. But that is exactly the sort of thing we would believe, in 7645. Shelley Jackson is the author of the story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy , the novel Half Life , and hypertexts including Patchwork Girl . The recipient of a Howard Foundation grant, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2006 James Tiptree Jr Award, she has also written and illustrated several children's books, including The Old Woman and the Wave ; Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog ; and Mimi's Dada Catifesto . Her stories and essays have appeared in Conjunctions , McSweeney's , The Paris Review , and Cabinet Magazine . In 2004 she launched her project SKIN , a story published in tattoos on 2095 volunteers. THE BOOK OF SOUNDS The Book of Sounds is just that: a book of sounds made when letters are construed in new ways to bring forth out of the alphabet new forms of speech. A book meant to be read out loud, The Book of Sounds is not unlike Laurie Anderson's O Superman or Brian Eno's Music for Airports in its attempt to make music out of the most primary and simplest of methods. It breaks language down to its barest bones and makes out of the page a drum that has never before been beaten upon. Peter Markus is the author of a novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) as well as two books of short fiction, Good, Brother and The Singing Fish , both of which were published by Calamari Press. A new collection of stories, We Make Mud , is now available from Dzanc Books. PARADISE OF THE BLIND by Celan Solen Although the reclusive Celan Solen published his first and only book in 1963—paying out-of-pocket for a limited edition of the slim collection No One May Have the Same Knowledge Again —he remained in American obscurity for almost three decades. In 1992 a micro-press in Istanbul brought out No One in Turkish. A German translation followed in 1995. Soon it became clear in literary circles Solen was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist—lyrical, dense, enigmatic—who could undo the conventional short story in 397 words by inventing impossible worlds housed in impossible whirls (in “Small Sadnesses,” a single chartreuse tree frog in Borneo unknowingly holds time together by its very presence in the universe, while each letter of its tale refers, not to itself, but to the one preceding it in the alphabet). By his disappearance last year, Solen was considered master by a generation of writers and critics (except, alas, for those gentlemen in the Swedish Academy). Imagine, then, that generation’s delight at the discovery, locked away in the author’s safe-deposit box, of his second and final composition. Had Lynch’s Lost Highway been book instead of film, and had it been penned by Beckett at his least certain, revised by Barthelme at his most formally deranged, and typeset by Derrida at his most semiotically catastrophic, the result might have been something like Paradise of the Blind : interlacing narratives of a man composed of borrowed organs (whose most cheerless and difficult to locate, god, could only have been invented by an empty heart), a nonexistent medieval painting blamed for the ruin of future hope, and the spread of a philosophy that holds earth a mistake constantly recurring in the dream of a fish lying on the floor of the Atlantic (if the fish wakes, our world winks off)—all contained in a text packed with typed-over passages, torn postcards, poems that can be deciphered only when held up to a mirror, pages ornamented with trompe-l'œil paperclips and coffee stains and buzzing houseflies, some busy with illegible runes that dissolve when exposed to light, three that smell like roses or lemons (depending on whether a man or woman is reading), two that stain with the bloody fingerprints of the those who handle them, one that ignites when brushed with breath, thirteen sewn from baby skin, one that moans when touched, and one that screams—yet all without mass, unimaginable, and invisible. Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative fiction, including, most recently, the novels Calendar of Regrets (2010) and Head in Flames (2009). He teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. SUPERSTRUCTURE! by Barbara D'Albi As soon as I opened the third drawer of Barbara D'Albi's wooden novel, everything became hopeless. Now in Ithaca, there was no going back. And it wasn't just the intricate series of shelves, hinged doors and locked drawers which D'Albi layered into the book, no, lo, I was constructed anew by the story. Who else but D'Albi to imagine a God who becomes a carpenter and gets killed?! And makes it good! You want stories? D'Albi is a skyscraper, built with planes and levers. Momentarily I wondered where I could shelve this book, and then I thought: no matter; I couldn't put it down. Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius. He is the author of Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say, Poem. 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Social contract theory imagines political societies as resting on a fundamental agreement, adopted at a discrete moment in hypothetical time, that both bound individual persons together into a single polity and set fundamental rules regarding that polity's structure and powers. Written constitutions, adopted at real moments in historical time, dictating governmental structures, bounding governmental powers, and entrenching individual rights, look temptingly like social contracts reified. I argue in this article, however, that something essential is lost in the casual slippage (...) between social contract theory and the practice of constitutionalism. Enacted constitutions do not come into being against the background of a state of nature of isolated individuals; and by this I do not mean to invoke the too-familiar critique of the supposedly decontextualized liberal person, but rather to critique the aspiration to decontextualize the legal and political order. Constitutions are enacted in ongoing societies (whether newly politically sovereign or otherwise) with pre-existing laws and legal systems, political organizations, cultural and linguistic and religious divisions, and norms and mores. Moreover, the practice of constitutionalism is usually, at least in part, a practice of reconciling those legacies to a new political order, of making use of those legacies to build loyalties to or counterbalances against the state (or both). Most constitutions cannot be well-understood by retrospectively characterizing them as the kind of complete and radical break with the past envisioned by social contract theory. Contractarian blinders lead us to look for greater individualism, greater social unity, and greater coherence of principles than can actually be expected of constitutions or constitutionalism. Real constitutional orders appropriate, incorporate, and channel the histories and divisions of the societies they govern. Treating them as if they are social contracts will flatten and distort them, making those engagements with the past or with social plurality appear anomalous and encouraging their minimization. I aim to redirect some of our attention to non-contractarian constitutionalism, or non-contractarian strands within constitutionalism, both as intellectual inheritance and as lived practice. Non-contractarian elements persisted in constitutional theory across the apparent break of the late 1700s, even though these have to some degree been lost sight of more recently; and they have persisted and should persist in constitutional practice. (shrink)

The theory of beauty has always rested on the representation of the infinite, understood in its finite expression and perceptible through the senses. The relationship of beauty to truth, of art to science, is inevitably modified with the new way of treating the infinite in the modern conception of the world. Non-classical science works with the notions of “infinitely large” and “infinitely small,” modifying their meanings in terms of experimental observations. We put these words in quotation marks because the Whole (...) may be considered as finite or infinite according to the angle from which it is viewed: the “infinitely small” only becomes so in determined circumstances, for example, when we consider the extended and discrete elements of space and time in a macroscopic approximation, as infinitely small elements of perpetual motion. Modern science studies these two poles of being—the Whole and its parts—in their interaction, admitting the dependence of macroscopic and even cosmic processes with regard to the processes being created in infinitely small spheres (or, according to another interpretation, finite but extremely small). However, as characteristic of our time as these concepts are—most often hypothetical—they nonetheless express a very old historical tradition that contemporary retrospection, turned toward classical science and the past of science in general, allows us to discern very clearly. All the culture of the past was dominated by the principle of the authority of the Whole over its parts. In peripatetic cosmology and physics, individual processes depended on the cosmic harmony of the center and frontiers of the universe, on the spheres and places toward which bodies tend. This authority of the general law, of universal harmony, of the system hinging on individual processes, is confirmed in Aristotle's Physics, but not only there: we find it in almost all the thinkers of antiquity. On the plane of general logic, it received expression in the Hegelian concept of the true infinite, a concept constituting to a high degree the philosophical equivalent of classical science. In Hegel's time, this last was already drawing away somewhat from the idea of an absolute and strict subordination of elementary processes to integrating systems and general laws, laws being realized through the probability of microprocesses, thus statistical laws, and whose exact application ignored individual acts, for example, the mechanism of molecules in thermodynamics. The statistical theory of heat has rendered continual a discrete microcosm—for the movement of individual molecules it substituted the average speed of the molecules—and continual laws became supreme points determining macroscopic processes. These laws had a differential nature. In other words, they prescribed the defined relationships between the infinitely small increases in size. Also, the schema of the classic law consisted in defining infinitely small processes by an infinitely large integral legality because of the number of processes. The infinitely true of Hegel is the actual infinite being realized in each of its finite elements; it is the subjection of the finite element to the infinite. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In antiquity we encounter a distinction of two types of hypothetical syllogisms. One type are the ‘mixed hypothetical syllogisms’. The other type is the one to which the present paper is devoted. These arguments went by the name of ‘wholly hypothetical syllogisms’. They were thought to make up a self-contained system of valid arguments. Their paradigm case consists of two conditionals as premisses, and a third as conclusion. Their presentation, either schematically or by example, varies in (...) different authors. For instance, we find ‘If (it is) A, (it is) B; if (it is) B, (it is) C; therefore, if (it is) A, (it is) C’. The main contentious point about these arguments is what the ancients thought their logical form was. Are A, B, C schematic letters for terms or propositions? Is ‘is’, where it occurs, predicative, existential, or veridical? That is, should ‘A esti’ be translated as ‘it is an A’, ‘A exists’, ‘As exist’ or ‘It is true/the case that A’? If A, B, C are term letters, and ‘is’ is predicative, are the conditionals quantified propositions or do they contain designators? If one cannot answer these questions, one can hardly claim to know what sort of arguments the wholly hypothetical syllogisms were. In fact, all the above-mentioned possibilities have been taken to describe them correctly. In this paper I argue that it would be mistaken to assume that in antiquity there was one prevalent understanding of the logical form of these arguments - even if the ancients thought they were all talking about the same kind of argument. Rather, there was a complex development in their understanding, starting from a term-logical conception and leading to a propositional-logical one. I trace this development from Aristotle to Philoponus and set out the deductive system on which the logic of the wholly hypothetical syllogisms was grounded. (shrink)

In this article, I present a schema for generating counterexamples to the argument form known as Hypothetical Syllogism with indicative conditionals. If my schema for generating counterexamples to HS works as I think it does, then HS is invalid for indicative conditionals.

This book uncovers and examines the confusion in antiquity between Aristotle's hypothetical syllogistic and Stoic logic, and offers a fresh perspective on the ...

본 논문의 목적은 아리스토텔레스로부터 시작하여 초기 페리파토스학파를 거쳐 고대후기에 이르기까지 ‘아리스토텔레스 논리학’의 특정 요소가 발전해 가는 과정을 추적하는 것이다. 고대 후기에는 가언삼단논법으로 분류된 4개의 논증형식이 있었다. 긍정적 긍정식(modus ponendo ponens), 부정적 부정식(modus tollendo tollens), 긍정적 부정식(modus ponendo tollens), 부정적 긍정식(modus tollendo ponens)이 그것들이다. 우리가 다루게 될 문제는 다음과 같은 것들이다. 앞에서 제시되었던 4개의 논증형식은 정확하게 어떤 상황에서 생겨났는가? 이 4개의 논증형식이 왜 ‘가언’ 삼단논법이라고 명명되었는가? 어떤 근거에서 이 4개의 논증형식이 타당하게 되는가? 논의를 진행하는 가운데 우리는 이 4개의 논증형식이 『분석론 전서』와 (...) 『토피카』에 보존되어 있는 아리스토텔레스 논리학의 특정 요소들이 오랜 기간에 걸쳐 점진적으로 발전한 결과임을 논증할 것이다.BR 우리의 논의결과는 이렇다. 첫째, 고대 후기에 오늘날의 조건명제와 선언명제가 가언명제로 분류된 이유는 단순히 조건명제와 선언명제에 조건적 요소가 포함되어 있기 때문이었다. 둘째, 고대 후기에 4가지 유형의 가언삼단논법이 ‘가언’ 삼단논법이라고 명명된 이유는 이 4가지 유형의 논증에 귀결관계와 비정합성관계의 조합으로부터 획득되는 가언명제가 적어도 한 개는 포함되어 있기 때문이었다. 셋째, 고대 후기에 4가지 유형의 가언삼단논법이 타당한 것으로 간주된 이유는 그것들 모두가 ‘모두스 포넨스’(modus ponens)유형의 형식을 갖고 있기 때문이었다. (shrink)

Hypothetical consent is puzzling. On the one hand, it seems to make a moral difference across a wide range of cases. On the other hand, there seem to be principled reasons to think that it cannot. In this article I put forward reasonably precise formulations of these general suspicions regarding hypothetical consent; I draw several distinctions regarding the ways in which hypothetical consent may make a moral difference; I distinguish between two autonomy-related concerns, nonalienation and sovereignty; and, (...) utilizing these distinctions, I show that—and in a preliminary way, when—the objections to the moral significance of hypothetical consent fail. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to elaborate philosophical and ethical underpinnings of posthumous diagnosis of famous historical figures based on literary and artistic products, or commonly called retrospective diagnosis. It discusses ontological and epistemic challenges raised in the humanities and social sciences, and attempts to systematically reply to their criticisms from the viewpoint of clinical medicine, philosophy of medicine, particularly the ontology of disease and the epistemology of diagnosis, and medical ethics. The ontological challenge focuses on the doubt about (...) the persistence of a disease over historical time, whereas the epistemic challenge disputes the inaccessibility of scientific verification of a diagnosis in the past. I argue that the critics are in error in conflating the taxonomy of disease and the act of diagnosing a patient. Medical diagnosis is fundamentally a hypothesis-construction and an explanatory device that can be generated under various degrees of uncertainty and limited amount of information. It is not an apodictic judgment as the critics presuppose, but a probabilistic judgment with varying degrees of plausibility under uncertainty. In order to avoid this confusion, I propose that retrospective diagnosis of a historical figure be syndromic without identifying underlying disease, unless there is justifiable reason for such specification. Moreover it should be evaluated not only from the viewpoint of medical science but also in a larger context of the scholarship of the humanities and social sciences by its overall plausibility and consistency. On the other hand, I will endorse their concerns regarding the ethics and professionalism of retrospective diagnosis, and call for the need for situating such a diagnosis in an interdisciplinary scope and the context of the scholarship of the historical figure. I will then enumerate several important caveats for interdisciplinary retrospective diagnosis using an example of the retrospective diagnosis of Socrates for his life-long intermittent neurologic symptoms. Finally, I will situate the present argument in a larger context of the major debate among the historians of medicine and paleopathologists, and discuss the similarities and differences. (shrink)

According to the standard view, Kant held that hypothetical imperatives are universally binding edicts with disjunctive objects: take-the-means-or-don't-have-the-end. But Kant thought otherwise. He held that they are edicts binding only on some - those who have an end.

Hypothetical contracts have been said to be not worth the paper they are not written on. This paper defends hypothetical consent theories of justice, such as Rawls's, against the view that they lack justificatory power. I argue that while hypothetical consent cannot generate political obligation, it can generate political legitimacy.

The deceptive clues in the impossible puzzle film confirm the viewer’s internal expectations and allow retrospective attributing. In the film, a transcendental object negates an internal expectation, causing a retrospective blockage. Retrospectivity does not stop there; the transcendental object reinterpreting deceptive clues in the associative area leads to repeated attribution. This article consists of three parts. First, it discusses impossible puzzle films in the context of complex narrative classification. The following section introduces the Jungian concept of synchronicity and illustrates how (...) it works. The article concludes with a case study of Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), which contains more complicated puzzles and explains how mind-game narrative techniques create deceptive clues and induce deceptive retrospective attribution. (shrink)

The debate over Hypothetical Syllogism is locked in stalemate. Although putative natural language counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism abound, many philosophers defend Hypothetical Syllogism, arguing that the alleged counterexamples involve an illicit shift in context. The proper lesson to draw from the putative counterexamples, they argue, is that natural language conditionals are context-sensitive conditionals which obey Hypothetical Syllogism. In order to make progress on the issue, I consider and improve upon Morreau’s proof of the invalidity of (...) class='Hi'>Hypothetical Syllogism. The improved proof relies upon the semantic claim that conditionals with antecedents irrelevant to the obtaining of an already true consequent are themselves true. Moreover, this semantic insight allows us to provide compelling counterexamples to Hypothetical Syllogism that are resistant to the usual contextualist response. (shrink)

Highly idealized models, such as the Hawk-Dove game, are pervasive in biological theorizing. We argue that the process and motivation that leads to the introduction of various idealizations into these models is not adequately captured by Michael Weisberg’s taxonomy of three kinds of idealization. Consequently, a fourth kind of idealization is required, which we call hypothetical pattern idealization. This kind of idealization is used to construct models that aim to be explanatory but do not aim to be explanations.

ABSTRACT: Galen’s Institutio Logica is the only introduction to logic in Greek that has survived from antiquity. In it we find a theory that bears some resemblance to propositional logic. The theory is commonly understood as being essentially Stoic. However, this understanding of the text leaves us with a large number of inconsistencies and oddities. In this paper I offer an comprehensive alternative interpretation of the theory. I suggest that it is Peripatetic at base, and has drawn on Stoic elements, (...) but adapted them to an overall decidedly non-Stoic conception of logic and language, a conception indebted to Aristotelian logic in many respects. This interpretation makes it possible to reduce the seeming inconsistencies dramatically. The Peripatetic theory on which Galen draws was possibly developed in the first century BCE. Importantly, it differs from Stoic logic in that it shuns the latter’s syntactic approach, and considers certain linguistic assumptions and language conventions as part of the logical theory itself. My reconstruction of the theory results in a logic of propositions which differs wildly both from Stoic logic and from the ‘classical’ propositional logic of the 20th century. Interestingly, though, the theory in Galen shows that the ancients grappled with a number of logico-linguistic problems that over the last two decades have again become a matter of debate among contemporary logicians and linguists. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider an argument of Harvey Siegel's according to which there can be no hypothetical normativity anywhere unless there is categorical normativity in epistemology. The argument fails because it falsely assumes people must be bound by epistemic norms in order to have justified beliefs.

The last few decades have given rise to the study of practical reason as a legitimate subfield of philosophy in its own right, concerned with the nature of practical rationality, its relationship to theoretical rationality, and the explanatory relationship between reasons, rationality, and agency in general. Among the most central of the topics whose blossoming study has shaped this field, is the nature and structure of instrumental rationality, the topic to which Kant has to date made perhaps the largest contribution, (...) under the heading of his treatment of hypothetical imperatives. (shrink)

The hypothetical syllogism is invalid in standard interpretations of conditional sentences. Many arguments of this sort are quite compelling, though, and you can wonder what makes them so. I shall argue that it is our parsimony in regard to connections among events and states of affairs. All manner of things just might, for all we know, be bound up with one another in all sorts of ways. But ordinarily it is better, being simpler, to assume they are unconnected. In (...) so doing, we jump to the conclusions of some compelling but invalid arguments. (shrink)

I here defend hypothetical intentionalism, the view of literary and cinematic interpretation that I endorse, from some recent criticisms, and then illustrate the appeal of the view in connection with a recent film of enigmatic cast.

A very common but untested assumption is that potential children would consent to be exposed to the harms of existence in order to experience its benefits. And so, would-be parents might appeal to the following view: Procreation is all-things-considered permissible, as it is morally acceptable for one to knowingly harm an unconsenting patient if one has good reasons for assuming her hypothetical consent—and procreators can indeed reasonably rely on some notion of hypothetical consent. I argue that this view (...) is in error. My argument appeals to a consent-based version of anti-natalism advanced by Seana Valentine Shiffrin. Anti-natalism is the view that it is always wrong to bring people into existence. While, like Shiffrin, I stop short of advocating a thoroughgoing anti-natalism, I nevertheless argue that procreators cannot appeal to hypothetical consent to justify exposing children to the harms of existence. I end by suggesting a more promising route by which this justification might be achieved. (shrink)

Abstract:Recently, the idea that every hypothetical imperative must somehow be ‘backed up’ by a prior categorical imperative has gained a certain influence among Kant interpreters and ethicists influenced by Kant. Since instrumentalism is the position that holds that hypothetical imperatives can by themselves and without the aid of categorical imperatives explain all valid forms of practical reasoning, the influential idea amounts to a rejection of instrumentalism as internally incoherent. This paper argues against this prevailing view both as an (...) interpretation of Kant and as philosophical understanding of practical reason. In particular, it will be argued that many of the arguments that claim to show that hypothetical imperatives must be backed up by categorical imperatives mistakenly assume that the form of practical reasoning must itself occur as a premise within the reasoning. An alternative to this assumption will be offered. I will conclude that while instrumentalism may well be false, there is no reason to believe it is incoherent. (shrink)

The transitory and ever-evolving process of law making plays a role of primal importance in the regulation of human conduct of society. It goes without saying that in this entire process, judges have a participation. The power entrusted by law and the nature of judicial process, make judges the prime mover of the development of law. It matters how judges decide cases. It matters most to people unlucky or litigious or wicked or saintly enough to find themselves in court... The (...) effect emanating from the decision of a case affects the life of a person in many ways that at times has far reaching impact...When the law in question happens to be criminal law, it requires a cautious consideration to see how the interpretive tools used by judges affect the life of a litigant in ways both seen and unseen... Several areas concerning adjudication and judicial interpretation have been the subject matter of study. This paper includes a discussion on the principle of non- retrospectivity in light of judicial adjudication in criminal matters. (shrink)

Anna Chavlovski,1 Greg A Knoll,1–3 Timothy Ramsay,4 Swapnil Hiremath,1–3 Deborah L Zimmerman1–31University of Ottawa, 2Ottawa Hospital, 3Kidney Research Centre, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, 4Ottawa Methods Centre, Ottawa, ON, CanadaBackground: In patients with end-stage renal disease, use of vitamin D and calcium-based phosphate binders have been associated with progression of vascular calcification that might have an impact on renal transplant candidacy. Our objective was to examine management of mineral metabolism in patients wait-listed for renal transplant and to determine the impact on (...) cardiac perfusion imaging.Methods: Data was collected retrospectively on patients wait-listed for a renal transplant, being either active and on hold. Demographic data, medications, serum concentrations of calcium, phosphate, parathyroid hormone, and cardiac perfusion imaging studies were collected from the electronic health record. Chi-square and Student’s t-tests were used to compare active and on-hold patients as appropriate. Logistic regression was used to examine variables associated with worsening cardiac imaging studies.Results: The wait-listed patients were of mean age 56 ± 14 years and had been on dialysis for 1329 ± 867 days. On-hold patients had received a significantly greater total dose of calcium and were more likely to have developed worsening cardiovascular imaging studies. Total doses of calcium and calcitriol were associated with worsening cardiovascular imaging studies.Conclusion: Patients on hold on the renal transplant waiting list received higher total doses of calcium. A higher total dose of calcium and calcitriol was also associated with worsening cardiovascular imaging. Time on dialysis before transplant has been associated with worse post-transplant outcomes, and it is possible that the total calcium and calcitriol dose received contributed to these inferior outcomes.Keywords: dialysis, calcium, cardiac, transplantation. (shrink)

In retrospecting "Two Dogmas" I find myself overshooting by twenty years. I think back to college days, 61 years agao. I majored in mathematics and was doing my honors reading in mathematical logic, a subject that had not yet penetrated the Oberlin curriculum. My new love, in the platonic sense, was Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica.

This article starts by examining the appeal to hypothetical consent as used by law and economics writers. I argue that their use of this kind of argument has no moral force whatever. I then briefly examine, through some remarks on Rawls and Scanlon, the conditions under which such an argument would have moral force. Finally, I bring these considerations to bear to criticize the argument of judge Frank Easterbrook's majority opinion in Flamm v. Eberstadt.

The so-called Substituted Judgment Standard is one of several competing principles on how certain health care decisions ought to be made for patients who are not themselves capable of making decisions of the relevant kind. It says that a surrogate decision-maker, acting on behalf of the patient, ought to make the decision the patient would have made, had the latter been competent. The most common way of justifying the Substituted Judgment Standard is to maintain that this standard protects patients’ right (...) to autonomy, or self-determination, in the situation where they are no longer able to exercise this right on their own. In this paper we question this justification, by arguing that the most commonly suggested moral reasons for allowing and encouraging people to make their own choices seem not to apply when the patient’s decision-making is merely hypothetical. We end with some brief sketches of possible alternative ways of justifying the Substituted Judgment Standard. (shrink)