Conscious awareness comprises two distinct states, autonoetic and noetic awareness. Schizophrenia impairs autonoetic, but not noetic, awareness. We investigated the strategic regulation of relevant and irrelevant contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia using a directed forgetting paradigm. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls were presented with words and told to learn some of them and forget others. In a subsequent test, they were asked to recognize all the words they had seen previously and give remember, know or guess (...) responses according to whether they recognized words on the basis of autonoetic awareness, noetic awareness, or guessing. Overall, patients showed the same degree of a directed forgetting effect as normal subjects. However, whereas the effect was observed both for remember and know responses in normal subjects, it was observed for know, but not for remember, responses in patients. These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia exhibit an impaired strategic regulation of contents of autonetic awareness for relevant and irrelevant information. (shrink)

SummaryThis article approaches eighteenth-century views on scientific academies by examining Haller's utterances, public and private, especially those occasioned by the founding of the Göttingen Society. It deals in turn with his understanding of the distinctive purpose of academies, with his explanation of the chief ways in which they realized this end, with his thoughts on their broader usefulness, and finally with his various reasons for considering close ties with the state to be essential to their productive and harmonious operations.

This article sets the dancing of religious and saints and their role models in the perspective of imitation in terms of an essential cultural technique of the Middle Ages. Since the religious were compelled in their search for God by the imitation of Christ and the saints, their dancing was also to be integrated into the symbolic order of the monastery. Given that dance and religious practice are both governed equally by two fundamental categories – regularity and ritualization on the (...) one hand, and ecstasy, unboundedness from all being and in result ascension to God on the other – this heterogeneous phenomenon could not be seamlessly integrated into another phenomenon. Here, it clashed with the symbolic ordering of the monastery; the ambiguities contained in this dualism could be reinforced or cancelled out. With the individual and his or her conscience becoming more appreciated, and the ushering-in of a more plural society, as well as the rearrangement of old role models which had been typical of mysticism towards Christ, had clear consequences for the image of God, which in the Late Middle Ages received a new more human face with the ‘playing’ God. As a result, believers re-anchored dance and all its facets in the order-oriented thinking of the European-Christian Middle Ages. Christ had become the best of all dancers, someone every believer had to imitate, at least in his or her soul. (shrink)

Professionalization of the engineer, from the perspective of sociology of technology, registrant in the statements of principle and Canadian standards of accreditation of university engineering programs. The question of the development of technologies (production, dissemination and appropriation) is attached in all respects with personal and social qualities of which refer engineer schools of engineering and regulatory bodies. The engineering profession s’roots from elsewhere in industrial ans social sectors increasingly sensitive to the social dimensions of technology, considering the new dynamics that (...) s’are attached with regard to the technology impacts on society and businesses. (shrink)

This book is a collage of ideas designed for eighth through twelfth grade students and their parents to have better relationships with one another and with the entire school community, to help and support their communities in different ways, and to appreciate the value of the experiences offered within and outside their communities.

Die Bedeutung des Spiels in der Lebenswelt der mittelalterlichen Klöster und Orden ist bislang nicht als Phänomen von kultureller Tragweite erörtert worden, denn der (scheinbare) Antagonismus aus kontemplativem Leben einerseits und heiterem Spiel andererseits verhinderte, dass der religiosus ludens wissenschaftlich Beachtung fand. Die im Band vereinigten, interdisziplinären Analysen der theologischen, liturgischen, kunstgeschichtlichen, rechtlichen und sozialen Dimensionen von Ball-, Würfel-, Brett-, Karten- und Wissensspielen verdeutlichen erstmals die gestalterische Kraft der Ordensleute zur Erfindung, Adaption und Vermittlung von Spielen wie deren Sinngehalten innerhalb (...) der vormodernen Gesellschaft. Im Aufzeigen der innovativen und mannigfaltigen Wege der Legitimation und Delegitimation monastischen und außermonastischen Spiels, aus denen Ordensleute zudem wegweisende und gesamtgesellschaftlich tragfähige Kategorisierungen des ludus entwickelten und nahezu sämtliche Lebensentwürfe der Vormoderne erklärten, stellt der Band nicht nur eine neuartige Perspektive auf das Spiel und die vita religiosa vor. Zugleich öffnet er ein noch unbekanntes Fenster zum Verständnis kultureller Mechanismen im Mittelalter. (shrink)

Moral philosophers agree that welfare matters. But they disagree about what it is, or how much it matters. In this vital new work, Wayne Sumner presents an original theory of welfare, investigating its nature and discussing its importance. He considers and rejects all notable theories of welfare, both objective and subjective, including hedonism and theories founded on desire or preference. His own theory connects welfare closely with happiness or life satisfaction. Reacting against the value pluralism that currently dominates moral philosophy, (...) he advances welfare as the only basic ethical value. He concludes by discussing the implications of this thesis for ethical and political theory. Written in clear, non-technical language, and including a definitive survey of other work in this area, Sumner's book is essential reading for moral philosophers, political theorists, and welfare economists. (shrink)

Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims about the (...) world are similar to scientific methods used to make claims about the world, but that the subjects of metaphysics are not the subjects of science. Those who argue that metaphysics uses a problematic methodology to make claims about subjects better covered by natural science get the situation exactly the wrong way around: metaphysics has a distinctive subject matter, not a distinctive methodology. The questions metaphysicians address are different from those of scientists, but the methods employed to develop and select theories are similar. In the first section of the paper, I will describe the sort of subject matter that metaphysics tends to engage with. In the second section of the paper, I will show how metaphysical theories are classes of models and discuss the roles of experience, common sense and thought experiments in the construction and evaluation of such models. Finally, in the last section I will discuss the way these methodological points help us to understand the metaphysical project. Getting the right account of the metaphysical method allows us to better understand the relationship between science and metaphysics, to explain why doing metaphysics successfully involves having a range of different theories, to understand the role of thought experiments involving fictional worlds, and to situate metaphysical realism in a scientifically realist context. (shrink)

This book closely examines our commonly held beliefs about human suffering, and offers unique insights into God's role in why we suffer. Dr. Perri critically examines what it means to be human from a Judeo-Christian perspective, and extrapolates from the work of Carl Gustav Jung showing a deeply complex development of human transcendence in human suffering. On an interpersonal level, Dr. Perri elaborates on the work of Martin Buber and Emanuel Levinas and shows how our suffering can be shared and (...) lessened by our unconditionality and presence for the other. Scriptural passages are quoted from both the Hebrew and New Testament texts, and are used to depict the suffering of humankind as seen in the face of Job. It was this face, according to Perri, that Jesus saw in the faces of those He came to redeem, and that ultimately brought Him to the crucifix of redemption. Dr. Perri challenges Sartre's position that our existence precedes our essence, and draws on the work of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Christian theology in this regard. He further elaborates a neurodevelopmental paradigm that creates essence as the basis of our freedom to choose. This book can be read and studied by both professionals in the helping and healing professions, and lay persons seeking to better understand our suffering, and how to better help those who suffer. Dr. Perri offers specific ways in how to be present for those who suffer, how to read and receive the hidden language of human suffering, and how to use silence as a communication skill. (shrink)

I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between particular and property, replacing it (...) with a single fundamental category of intrinsic characters or qualities. We may describe the qualities as qualitative charactersor as modes, perhaps on the model of Aristotelian qualitative (nonsubstantial) kinds, and I will use the term “properties” interchangeably with “qualities”. The qualities are repeatable and reasonably sparse, although, as I discuss in section 2.6, there are empirical reasons that may suggest, depending on one’s preferred fundamental physical theory, that they include irreducibly intensive qualities. There are no uninstantiated qualities. I also assume that the fundamental qualitative natures are intrinsic, although physics may ultimately suggest that some of them are extrinsic. On my view, matter, concrete objects, abstract objects, and perhaps even spacetime are constructed from mereological fusions of qualities, so the world is simply a vast mixture of qualities, including polyadic properties (i.e., relations). This means that everything there is, including concrete objects like persons or stars, is a quality, a qualitative fusion, or a portion of the extended qualitative fusion that is the worldwhole. I call my view mereological bundle theory. (shrink)

Over the course of its first seven editions, Principles of Biomedical Ethics has proved to be, globally, the most widely used, authored work in biomedical ethics. It is unique in being a book in bioethics used in numerous disciplines for purposes of instruction in bioethics. Its framework of moral principles is authoritative for many professional associations and biomedical institutions-for instruction in both clinical ethics and research ethics. It has been widely used in several disciplines for purposes of teaching in the (...) classroom, during conferences, etc. (shrink)

I summarize the main argument of Transformative Experience (OUP 2014). The book develops familiar examples from classical philosophical debates, as well as original examples, to argue that an agent’s decision to undergo a transformative experience—an experience constituted by radical personal and epistemic change for the agent—must either be authentic or irrational, but not both. The Precis of Transformative Experience walks the reader through the main ideas involved in epistemically and personally transformative experiences, the problems they pose for rational decision-making, and (...) discusses a number of key original examples of transformative experiences. (shrink)

I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de re modal properties? Second, what is the best defence of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de re modal properties and address the most threatening antiessentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can accommodate the variability of modal (...) intuitions while holding that objects have their modal properties independently of contexts. (shrink)

The draft Code of Conduct for Research is an important initiative towards assisting the scientific community in complying with the provisions of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). However, its approach towards cross-border data sharing should be reconsidered to clarify the ambiguities inherent in the legal requirements for the cross-border sharing of health data in the POPIA. These ambiguities include the concept of ‘transfer of information’, the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer, the (...) nature of consent for cross-border sharing and the scope of the recipient third party. We suggest that the draft Code of Conduct for Research can be improved by: Explaining or defining the concept of ‘transfer of information’ and when it applies to cross-border sharing in research Clarifying the application of adequacy as a legal mechanism for transfer vis-à-vis the other alternatives Expanding on the interpretation and application of consent as a legal mechanism for cross-border transfers Expanding the category of persons who may be recipients of personal information in a third country. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the phenomenological approach to delusions, emphasizing what Karl Jaspers called the "true delusions" of schizophrenia. Phenomenological psychopathology focuses on the experience of delusions and the delusional world. Several features of this approach are surveyed, including emphasis on formal qualities of subjective life and questioning of standard assumptions about delusions as erroneous belief. The altered modalities of world-oriented and self-oriented experience that precede and ground delusions in schizophrenia, especially the experiences of revelation that Klaus Conrad (...) termed the outer and inner apophany, are then discussed. The chapter first considers the famous "delusional mood", then the role of ipseity-disturbance. In both cases it is explained how delusions can develop out of these distinctive alterations of perception and feeling. The classic question of the understandability or comprehensibility of schizophrenic delusion, together with the related issues of wish-fulfillment and rationalizing motives are then considered. The chapter addresses the crucial but neglected issue of the felt reality-status of delusions or the delusional world, discussing derealization, "double bookkeeping", and "double exposure". The chapter concludes by discussing delusions typically found in paranoid and affective psychoses, and monothematic delusions found in certain organic conditions. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 9, Page 26-28, September 2012.

Language, like other human traits, could only have evolved during one or more stages of development. We enlist the theoretical framework of human life history to account for certain aspects of linguistic evolution, with special reference to initial phases in the process. It is hypothesized that selection operated at several developmental stages, the earlier ones producing new behaviors that were reinforced by additional, and possibly more powerful, forms of selection during later stages, especially adolescence and early adulthood. Peer commentaries have (...) provided opportunities to explain human life history more comprehensively, and to add details to our account of spoken language. We made no attempt to explain syntax in the target article, but we propose here that selection for “vocal plumage” may have increased our species’ capacity for utterance complexity, a development that would have benefited all levels of language. (shrink)

In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process.

The genetic modification of pigs as a source of transplantable organs is one of several possible solutions to the chronic organ shortage. This paper describes existing ethical tensions in xenotransplantation (XTx) that argue against pursuing it. Recommendations for lifelong infectious disease surveillance and notification of close contacts of recipients are in tension with the rights of human research subjects. Parental/guardian consent for pediatric xenograft recipients is in tension with a child’s right to an open future. Individual consent to transplant is (...) in tension with public health threats that include zoonotic diseases. XTx amplifies concerns about justice in organ transplantation and could exacerbate existing inequities. The prevention of infectious disease in source animals is in tension with the best practices of animal care and animal welfare, requiring isolation, ethologically inappropriate housing, and invasive reproductive procedures that would severely impact the well-being of intelligent social creatures like pigs. (shrink)

What is the nature of temporal passage—the movement of events or moments of time from the future through the present into the past? Is the future and the past as real as the present, or is the present—or perhaps the present and the past—all that exists? What role, if any, does language play in giving us an insight into temporal reality? Is it possible to travel through time into distant regions of the future or the past? What accounts for the (...) direction of time, the sense we have that we are moving toward the future and not back into the past? What is the relation between the physics of time and the philosophy of time? These are the kind of dizzying questions that have been addressed by metaphysicians since antiquity, and time has remained a critical concept for many thinkers and philosophers since then (for instance, in his Confessions, St Augustine, restating an observation by Plotinus, wrote: ‘So what is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I seek to explain it, I do not’). Interest in the subject has also been enduring—and has blossomed anew in the past century. The Philosophy of Time is a new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in Philosophy. It meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by L. Nathan Oaklander, a leading scholar in the philosophy of time, this new Major Work from Routledge brings together in four volumes the canonical and the very best cutting-edge scholarship in the field to provide a synoptic view of all the key issues and current debates. With a comprehensive introduction to the collection, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, The Philosophy of Time is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by philosophers of time—as well as those working in related areas of philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion—as a vital research resource. (shrink)

Rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons. Given the independence of appearance and reality, why think that apparent normative reasons necessarily provide real normative reasons? And if they do not, why think that mistakes of rationality are necessarily real mistakes? This paper gives a novel answer to these questions. I argue first that in the moral domain, there are objective duties of respect that we violate whenever we do what appears to violate our first-order duties. The existence of (...) these duties of respect, I argue, ensures that apparent moral reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. I then extend these arguments to the domain of overall reason. Just as there are objective duties of respect for moral reasons that explain moral blameworthiness, so there are objective duties of respect for reasons that explain blameworthiness in the court of overall reason. The existence of these duties ensures that apparent reasons are exceptions to the independence of appearance and reality. (shrink)