John Locke's subtle and influential defense of religious toleration as argued in his seminal _Letter Concerning Toleration_ appears in this edition as introduced by one of our most distinguished political theorists and historians of political thought.

This essay constructs an argument for a dialectic between the scientific and clinical aspects of medicine using the hermeneutical approach of Paul Ricoeur as a theoretical and philosophical guide. Additionally, the relationship between this dialectic and narrative case histories is examined as a way of expressing this abstract and theoretical concept in more concrete terms.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The supposition of the manifest covariance of average trajectory world lines is violated in Hamiltonian formulations of relativistic quantum mechanics. This is due to the nonlinear appearance of particle dynamical variable operators in the Heisenberg picture boosted position, velocity, and momentum operators. The magnitude of this deviation from world line manifest covariance is found to be exceedingly small for a number of common time of flight experiments.

There is robust evidence that women with eating disorders (EDs) display an attention bias (AB) for disorder-salient stimuli. Emerging data suggest that the presence of these biases may be due, in part, to neurological deficits, such as poor set shifting and weak central coherence. While some have argued that these biases function to predispose and/or act to maintain disordered eating behaviours, evidence supporting this view has rarely been examined. This report summarises and integrates the existing literature on AB in EDs (...) and other related psychiatric disorders to better understand its potential role in the development and maintenance of an ED. The domains reviewed include experimental data using the dot-probe and modified Stroop task and neurobiological findings on AB in women with EDs as well as the role of AB in current theoretical models. We conclude by proposing an integrated model on the role of AB in EDs and discuss treatment approaches aimed at modifying these biases. (shrink)

Now in a third edition, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a highly acclaimed, topically organized collection that covers five major areas of philosophy--theory of knowledge, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, freedom and determinism, and moral philosophy. Editor Louis P. Pojman enhances the text's topical organization by arranging the selections into a pro/con format to help students better understand opposing arguments. He also includes accessible introductions to each chapter, subsection, and individual reading, a unique feature for an (...) anthology of this depth. While the book focuses on a compelling sampling of classical material--including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant--it also incorporates some of philosophy's best twentieth-century and contemporary work, featuring articles by Bertrand Russell, Richard Taylor, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, and others. This third edition contains an expanded glossary, more extensive section introductions, and twelve new selections: Karl Popper: "Epistemology without a Knowing Subject" Richard Rorty: "Dismantling Truth: Solidarity Versus Objectivity" Daniel Dennett: "Postmodernism and Truth" Bruce Russell: "The Problem of Evil: Too Much Suffering" David Chalmers: "Against Materialism: Can Consciousness Be Reductively Explained?" Baron Paul Henri d'Holbach: "A Defense of Determinism" Michael Levin: "A Compatibilist Defense of Moral Responsibility" Plato: Socratic Morality: "Crito" Herodotus: "Custom Is King" J. L. Mackie: "The Subjectivity of Values" Louis P. Pojman: "A Critique of Mackie's Theory of Moral Subjectivism" Thomas Nagel: "Moral Luck". (shrink)

Liver transplantation (LT) activities during the COVID-19 pandemic have been curtailed in many countries. The impact of various policies restricting LT on outcomes of potential LT candidates is unclear. We studied all patients on the nationwide LT waitlists in Hong Kong and Singapore between January 2016 and May 2020. We used continuous time Markov chains to model the effects of different scenarios and varying durations of disruption on LT candidates.

A provocative, insightful explanation for why it is that belief—not religion—keeps us in a perilous state of willful ignorance In The Religious Case Against Belief , James Carse identifies the twenty-first century’s most forbidding villain: belief. In distinguishing religions from belief systems, Carse works to reveal how belief—with its restriction on thought and encouragement of hostility—has corrupted religion and spawned violence the world over. Galileo, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesus Christ—using their stories Carse creates his own brand of (...) parable and establishes a new vocabulary with which to study conflict in the modern world. The Religious Case Against Belief introduces three kinds of ignorance: ordinary ignorance (a mundane lack of knowledge, such as ignorance of tomorrow’s weather or the reason why your stove is malfunctioning), willful ignorance (an intentional avoidance of accessible knowledge), and finally higher ignorance (a learned understanding that no matter how many truths we may accumulate, our knowledge falls infinitely short of the truth). While ordinary ignorance is common to all people, Carse associates the strongest manifestation of willful ignorance with the most fervent (and dangerous) of believers. He points to the historic conflict between Martin Luther and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V both to reveal this seemingly religious collision as a clash of belief and to identify belief ’s inherently destructive characteristics. From Luther to the contemporary Christian right, we learn that believers construct identity by erecting boundaries and by fostering aggression between the believer and the other. This is why belief systems choose—at great cost—to remain locked in bloody conflict rather than to engage in dialogue, recognizing the great deal they have in common. This is willful ignorance. In fierce contrast to willful ignorance, higher ignorance is an acquired state enhanced by religion. Those traveling the path to higher ignorance recognize faith teachings (such as the Bible) as poetry intended to promote contemplation, interpretation, and a sense of wonder. For evidence of religion’s deeply embedded rejection of singular truth and its acceptance of diverse dialogue, Carse looks to the many faces of Jesus presented in the books of the Bible and elsewhere. Uncontaminated by belief systems, religion rejects the imagined boundaries that falsely divide people and ideas, working to expand horizons. The Religious Case Against Belief exposes a world in which religion and belief have become erroneously (and terrifyingly) conflated. In strengthening their association with powerful belief systems, religions have departed from their essential purpose as agencies of higher ignorance. Carse uses his wideranging understanding of religion to find a viable and vital path away from what he calls the Age of Faith II and toward open-ended global dialogue. Far from abstract philosophical musing, The Religious Case Against Belief is required reading for our age. (shrink)

The Objective of “Tranquillity’s Secret” Is To Present A New More Veridical Way Of Understanding The World, And The Meditation Technique And Its Unexcelled Support That Directly Leads One To See The World Differently. -/- In our rational attempts to understand ourselves and our world today, it is the case that in comparison to matter, which is so definite, measurable, actual, and sometimes literally concrete, we have ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’, which is exactly the opposite: it is indefinite, unmeasurable, undiscoverable, and (...) abstract. And yet, it is the reverse within our lived experience in which it is our being aware that is actual, indisputable, irrefutable, true, and well-grounded, while matter is only an abstraction from our experiences, that is wholly contingent, and about which everything is unsure. So why do we search for ‘consciousness’ by reasoning about the world, rather than meditating upon our immediate lived experience? ‘Consciousness’ is an abstraction taken from our experience, so we cannot use ‘consciousness’ to explain experience. A contemplative science would. -/- The meditation technique that Tranquillity’s Secret presents uses Inner Spontaneous Sound as its support. These uncaused sounds which are always available to meditate with, have no material basis, and so their very presence calls into question our faith that only matter matters. These sounds appear in different forms in the myriad of contemplative traditions which have employed them for millennia and have universally acknowledged them as the most efficacious path to a direct experience of the nature of Reality. Unfortunately, during modern times, the correct use of these sounds has been almost lost, along with the reasons why they were claimed to be so highly effective. The primary condition for this loss is the mechanical materialism which frames what is allowable for thought, and constrains our reasoning to only consider reductionist mechanical explanations in every case. Even those who believe they have escaped from the limitations of this understanding, continue to be enframed because our language has been structured by it, so that there is no true escape via a simple substitution or redefinition of concepts. Instead, Tranquillity’s Secret presents a new understanding that supersedes mechanical materialism and its paradigm of physical causality. It begins with an acceptance that Time is only a formalism, and does not exist in the sense of either an arrow or a stream. This leads to a radical reorientation of what it means to be aware and conscious, and the discovery of a revolutionary understanding of coherent Responsive Naturing that supplants the never-solved paradoxes of ‘consciousness’ and ‘causal change over time’ with coherent and immediate processual reconfigurations based upon contextual conditions, potentials, and probabilities — and the recognition of each reconfiguration. -/- Thus, Responsive Naturing provides a sound foundation for veridical science, so that both science and spirituality can be founded upon a common understanding of ‘how things work’. This empowers us in ways that our disjointed and parochial schools of thought lock us out of completely, while opening up new possible methods of looking at problems and finding solutions across disciplines. (shrink)

James VI and I united the crowns of England and Scotland. His books are fundamental sources of the principles which underlay the union. In particular, his Basilikon Doron was a best-seller in England and circulated widely on the Continent. Among the most important and influential British writings of their period, the king's works shed light on the political climate of Shakespeare's England and the intellectual background to the civil wars which afflicted Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. James' political (...) philosophy was a moderated absolutism, with an emphasis on the monarch's duty to rule according to law and the public good. Locke quoted his speech to parliament of 1610 approvingly, and Hobbes likewise praised 'our most wise king'. This edition is the first to draw on all the early texts of James' books, with an introduction setting them in their historical context. (shrink)

The locked-in syndrome is a state of profound paralysis with preserved awareness of self and environment who typically results from a brain stem stroke. Although patients in LIS have great difficulty communicating, their consciousness, cognition, and language usually remain intact. Medical decision-making by LIS patients is compromised, not by cognitive impairment, but by severe communication impairment. Former systems of communication that permitted LIS patients to make only “yes” or “no” responses to questions was sufficient to validate their consent for simple (...) medical decisions but not for consequential medical decisions such as whether to refuse further life-sustaining therapy. Emerging technologies including computer-tracking assistance of retained partial motor function and brain-computer interfaces promise to improve the communication ability of LIS patients and, when better developed, will allow them to fully exercise their right to actively participate in consequential medical decisions about their own medical care. Although so-called “covert cognition” patients clinically diagnosed as vegetative state that are shown to be aware by functional neuroimaging maybe metaphorically considered locked-in, it is nosologically more coherent not to categorize them formally as LIS. (shrink)

John Locke's theory of property is perhaps the most distinctive and the most influential aspect of his political theory. In this book James Tully uses an hermeneutical and analytical approach to offer a revolutionary revision of early modern theories of property, focusing particularly on that of Locke. Setting his analysis within the intellectual context of the seventeenth century, Professor Tully overturns the standard interpretations of Locke's theory, showing that it is not a justification of private property. Instead he shows (...) it to be a theory of individual use rights within a framework of inclusive claim rights. He links Locke's conception of rights not merely to his ethical theory, but to the central arguments of his epistemology, and illuminates the way in which Locke's theory is tied to his metaphysical views of God and man, his theory of revolution and his account of a legitimate polity. (shrink)

An approach to political philosophy: Locke in contexts brings together Professor Tully's most important and innovative statements on Locke in a treatment of the latter's thought that is at once contextual and critical. The essays have been rewritten and expanded for this volume, and each seeks to understand a theme of Locke's political philosophy by interpreting it in light of the complex contexts of early modern European political thought and practice. These historical studies are then used in a variety of (...) ways to gain critical perspectives on the assumptions underlying current debates in political philosophy and the history of political thought. The themes treated include government, toleration, discipline, property, aboriginal rights, individualism, power, labour, self-ownership, community, progress, liberty, participation, and revolution. (shrink)

John Locke is probably one of the highest-regarded English philosophers, and the first of the British empiricists. His ideas on the mind and consciousness have continued to resonate throughout philosophy and philosophical thought ever since An Essay Concerning Human Understanding first appeared in 1690. James Gibson's Locke's Theory of Knowledge and its Historical Relations was first published in 1917, and saw its fourth reprinting in 1968. Here, it is made available for the first time in paperback. This hugely detailed (...) work is an invaluable collation of Locke's theories, exploring his thoughts on the problems of knowledge, the formation of ideas, causality and the self. Furthermore, Gibson also provides an in-depth historical evaluation of the effects of these theories on contemporary philosophy as a whole, and on thinkers such as Descartes, Kant and Leibniz more specifically. As such, this book is a valuable reference work for any student of philosophy. (shrink)

This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to "absolute power" in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory--or vice versa. This creates (...) hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet "racist," it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery. (shrink)

One of the several good questions asked by Robin Mills in this short but rich book concerns the explanation of change in the intellectual climate of a particular time and place. In mid-seventeenth-...

This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to “absolute power” in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory—or vice versa. This creates (...) hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet “racist,” it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery. (shrink)

In the early iterations of his political thought, The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes proposed a new account of the nature of the people. In Section 2 I describe Pufendorf’s critical response. Pufendorf’s theory of the people is a neglected aspect of the political argument of the De Jure. Just as neglected is Locke’s theory of the people in Two Treatises of Government, though there is better reason for neglect in Locke’s case, in so far as he fails (...) in his major work of political philosophy to present anything resembling a theory of the people at all. In Section 3 I bring Locke’s thinking about the people into clearer focus. In the concluding Section 4 I explore some of the weaknesses of his position. (shrink)

Deductive Irrationality examines and critiques economic rationalism by assessing the work of influential political philosophers and economic theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, and John F. Muth. It is one of the first serious attempts to investigate the dominant sub-fields in economic theory through the lens of political philosophy.

This study evaluates the ontological and ethical premises and presuppositions of three abortion theorists: Germain Grisez, Eike-Henner W. Kluge, and Michael Tooley. ;Grisez's argument that human embryos and fetuses are moral persons because moral rights are derived from moral value, and the full moral value of human adults who are moral persons is implicit in the living genetic mechanism of all human beings, is criticized on the basis of the tension in Aristotle's doctrine between the notion of essence as an (...) internal causitive principle, and as a set of observable qualities considered to be definitive of the nature of a living thing. However, David Wiggins' use of the semantical theory of natural kind terms of Hilary Putnam is suggested as a possible resolution. ;Kluge's argument that rational beings are moral persons because rational awareness has an absolute and intrinsic value, and that mature fetuses are moral persons because their neurological systems have become sufficiently complex to provide the present capability for rational awareness is criticized because he fails to show that mature fetuses do have such a present capability, and because his discussion of the relationship of potential being to actual being of living things wrongly presupposes that human gestation is analogous to the making of an artifact. ;Tooley's contrary argument that the right to life is not derivable from moral value but must, itself, be something violable, and that there is a conceptual connection between its violation and one's desire to continue to live, excludes fetuses and neonates because they lack the mental capability to desire to continue to live. Tooley's analysis is criticized as incomplete, and his argument as presupposing the existence of an essentially mentalistic self. ;The final chapter is a synthesis which considers the ontology of the development of personality or self, including the theories of Descartes, Locke and Wiggins. The conclusion is reached that theories which claim that a moral person "comes to be" as a fundamentally different kind of being at some point after conception, due to either morphological changes or the development of personality or self, entail dual principles of identity and, hence, are in danger of unintelligibility. (shrink)

John Locke proposed a straightforward relationship between qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions: belief corresponds to a sufficiently high degree of confidence. Richard Foley has further developed this Lockean thesis and applied it to an analysis of the preface and lottery paradoxes. Following Foley's lead, we exploit various versions of these paradoxes to chart a precise relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence. The resolutions of these paradoxes emphasize distinct but complementary features of coherent belief. These features suggest principles that (...) tie together qualitative and quantitative doxastic notions. We show how these principles may be employed to construct a quantitative model - in terms of degrees of confidence - of an agent's qualitative doxastic state. This analysis fleshes out the Lockean thesis and provides the foundation for a logic of belief that is responsive to the logic of degrees of confidence. (shrink)

In the wake of Locke’s Essay, empiricists faced the challenge of giving an empiricist account of the origins of moral knowledge. Locke did not rise to this challenge and relied on revelation as the source of moral knowledge. Other empiricists, including Hume and Hutcheson, opted for either emotivism or subjectivism. Clarke and others opted for rationalism and non-naturalism. In contrast, Catharine Cockburn’s meta-ethics combined Locke’s empiricism with naturalism. She held that moral good is natural good and that natural good is (...) known just as any other matters of natural fact are known: empirically. Cockburn’s position was unusual for its time, and the full originality and appeal of her meta-ethical position have not been fully appreciated. (shrink)

The eighteenth century was a time of brilliant philosophical innovation in Britain. In Of Liberty and Necessity James A. Harris presents the first comprehensive account of the period's discussion of what remains a central problem of philosophy, the question of the freedom of the will. He offers new interpretations of contributions to the free will debate made by canonical figures such as Locke, Hume, Edwards, and Reid, and also discusses in detail the arguments of some less familiar writers. Harris (...) puts the eighteenth-century debate about the will and its freedom in the context of the period's concern with applying what Hume calls the "experimental method of reasoning" to the human mind. His book will be of substantial interest to historians of philosophy and anyone concerned with the free will problem. (shrink)

This paper describes how Locke’s Two Treatises of Government was read in Britain from Josiah Tucker to Peter Laslett. It focuses in particular upon how Locke’s readers responded to his detailed and...

In a penetrating investigation of the relationship between belief and quantitative degrees of confidence (or degrees of belief) Richard Foley (1992) suggests the following thesis: ... it is epistemically rational for us to believe a proposition just in case it is epistemically rational for us to have a sufficiently high degree of confidence in it, sufficiently high to make our attitude towards it one of belief. Foley goes on to suggest that rational belief may be just rational degree of confidence (...) above some threshold level that the agent deems sufficient for belief. He finds hints of this view in Locke’s discussion of probability and degrees of assent, so he calls it the Lockean Thesis.1 The Lockean Thesis has important implications for the logic of belief. Most prominently, it implies that even a logically ideal agent whose degrees of confidence satisfy the axioms of probability theory may quite rationally believe each of a large body of propositions that are jointly inconsistent. For example, an agent may legitimately believe that on each given occasion her well-maintained car will start, but nevertheless believe that she will eventually encounter a.. (shrink)