Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Survival after solid-organ transplantation has improved significantly, and many contemporary transplant recipients are of childbearing potential. There are limited data to guide decision-making surrounding pregnancy after transplantation, variations in clinical practice, and significant knowledge gaps, all of which raise significant ethical issues. Post-transplant pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of maternal and fetal complications. Shared decision-making is a central aspect of patient counselling but is complicated by significant knowledge gaps. Stakeholder interests can be in conflict; exploring these tensions can (...) help patients to evaluate their options and inform their deliberations. We argue that uniform, evidence-based recommendations for pregnancy after solid organ transplantation are needed. Conducting research, including patient-engaged studies, in this area should be priority for the transplant community. (shrink)

Meat is a multi-billion-dollar industry that relies on people performing risky physical work inside meat-processing facilities over long shifts in close proximity. These workers are socially disempowered, and many are members of groups beset by historic and ongoing structural discrimination. The combination of working conditions and worker characteristics facilitate the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Workers have been expected to put their health and lives at risk during the pandemic because of government and industry pressures to keep (...) this “essential industry” producing. Numerous interventions can significantly reduce the risks to workers and their communities; however, the industry’s implementation has been sporadic and inconsistent. With a focus on the U.S. context, this paper offers an ethical framework for infection prevention and control recommendations grounded in public health values of health and safety, interdependence and solidarity, and health equity and justice, with particular attention to considerations of reciprocity, equitable burden sharing, harm reduction, and health promotion. Meat-processing workers are owed an approach that protects their health relative to the risks of harms to them, their families, and their communities. Sacrifices from businesses benefitting financially from essential industry status are ethically warranted and should acknowledge the risks assumed by workers in the context of existing structural inequities. (shrink)

BackgroundSocio-cultural perceptions surrounding death have profoundly changed since the 1950s with development of modern intensive care and progress in solid organ transplantation. Despite broad support for organ transplantation, many fundamental concepts and practices including brain death, organ donation after circulatory death, and some antemortem interventions to prepare for transplantation continue to be challenged. Attitudes toward the ethical issues surrounding death and organ donation may influence support for and participation in organ donation but differences between and among diverse populations have not (...) been studied.ObjectivesIn order to clarify attitudes toward brain death, organ donation after circulatory death and antemortem interventions in the context of organ donation, we conducted a scoping review of international English-language quantitative surveys in various populations.Study appraisalA search of literature up to October 2020 was performed, using multiple databases. After screening, 45 studies were found to meet pre-specified inclusion criteria.Results32 studies examined attitudes to brain death, predominantly in healthcare professionals. In most, around 75% of respondents accepted brain death as equivalent to death of the person. Less common perspectives included equating death with irreversible coma and willingness to undertake organ donation even if it caused death. 14 studies examined attitudes to organ donation following circulatory death. Around half of respondents in most studies accepted that death could be confidently diagnosed after only 5 min of cardiorespiratory arrest. The predominant reason was lack of confidence in doctors or diagnostic procedures. Only 6 studies examined attitudes towards antemortem interventions in prospective organ donors. Most respondents supported minimally invasive procedures and only where specific consent was obtained.ConclusionsOur review suggests a considerable proportion of people, including healthcare professionals, have doubts about the medical and ethical validity of modern determinations of death. The prognosis of brain injury was a more common concern in the context of organ donation decision-making than certainty of death. (shrink)

After a spate of monographs on Pierre Gassendi in the mid-1990s, the scholarly discussion of this most difficult French philosopher has largely been confined to the pages of scholarly journals. Except for Sylie Taussig's fine translation of Gassendi's Latin letters into French, and an issue of Dix-septième siècle devoted to the thinker, no major book-length study has appeared. Antonia LoLordo fills this gap in Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy. Her aim is "defamiliarizing the early modern philosophic (...) landscape" by introducing Gassendi as a major player in a diverse topography of thought. In her analysis, LoLordo articulates and critiques the philosophic content of Gassendi's various works, as well as challenging the interpretations of some of his modern exegetes, most notably, O. R. Bloch and Margaret J. Osler.LoLordo focuses on Gassendi's natural philosophy, epistemology, and ontology. Her contention that Gassendi "was a central figure in seventeenth-century philosophy" will come as no surprise to those familiar with the course of early modern philosophy. LoLordo systematically treats Gassendi's major and minor works, especially his early anti. (shrink)

Philosophy and the scientific revolution / Daniel Garber -- Old history and introductory teaching in early modern philosophy : a response to Daniel Garber / Lisa Downing -- Meaning and metaphysics / Susan Neiman -- Evil and wonder in early modern philosophy : a response to Susan Neiman / Mark Larrimore -- The forgetting of gender / Nancy Tuana -- The forgetting of gender and the new histories of philosophy : a response to Nancy Tuana / Eileen O’Neill -- (...) The idea of early modern philosophy / Knud Haakonssen -- Response to Knud Haakonssen / Jeffrey Edwards -- Arguments over obligation : teaching time and place in moral philosophy / Ian Hunter -- Response to Ian Hunter / T.J. Hochstrasser -- Teaching the history of moral philosophy / J.B. Schneewind -- Historicism, moral judgment, and the good life : a response to J.B. Schneewind / Jennifer A. Herdt -- Integrating history of philosophy with history of science after Kant / Michael Friedman -- Response to Michael Friedman / Juliet Floyd -- Thought versus history : reflections on a French problem / Denis Kambouchner -- Response to Denis Kambouchner / Bé́atrice Longuenesse -- Teaching the history of philosophy in 19th-century Germany / Ulrich Johannes Schneider -- Response to Ulrich Johannes Schneider / Karl Ameriks -- Comment : philosophy in practice / Lorraine Daston -- A note from inside the teapot / Anthony Grafton -- Philosophy, history of philosophy, and L’histoire de l’esprit humain : a historiographical question and problem for philosophers / Jonathan Israel -- History and/or philosophy / Donald R. Kelly -- Historians look at the new histories of philosophy : roundtable discussion. (shrink)

My assumption is that thought itself arises out of incidents of living experience and must remain bound to them as the only guideposts by which to take its bearings. Hannah Arendt.

I explore Locke’s complex attitude toward the natural philosophy of his day by focusing on Locke’s own treatment of Newton’s theory of gravity and the presence of Lockean themes in defenses of Newtonian attraction/gravity by Maupertuis and other early Newtonians. In doing so, I highlight the inadequacy of an unqualified labeling of Locke as “mechanist” or “Newtonian.”.

I. Introduction Siris, Berkeley's last major work, is undeniably a rather odd book. It could hardly be otherwise, given Berkeley's aims in writing it, which are three-fold: 'to communicate to the public the salutary virtues of tar-water,'1 to provide scientific background supporting the efficacy of tar-water as a medicine, and to lead the mind of the reader, via gradual steps, toward contemplation of God.2 The latter two aims shape Berkeley's extensive use of contemporary natural science in Siris. In particular, Berkeley's (...) focus on what he calls fire (or aether or light) as a quasiuniversal 'cause' of natural change3 serves these purposes, for the 'activity' of the aether, in his view, can both explain the miraculous virtues of a certain medicine, i.e. tar-water, and reveal God's action and his divine order.4 Berkeley's corpuscular speculations, including his use of fire-theory, are not especially idiosyncratic as natural philosophy. In his theorizing, as Jessop and other have noted, he is heavily indebted to the work of Hermann Boerhaave, the Dutch chemist, botanist, and physician whose teachings were highly influential in mid-eighteenth century Britain.5 Boerhaave, along with other Dutch natural philosophers cited by Berkeley, assigned a central role in accounting for physio-chemical activity to fire, a subtle, insensible particulate substance, sometimes identified with light. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the work of W. E. B. Du Bois to expose the disastrous effects of white supremacy in the U.S. and the world. While his early works suggest that white supremacy might be rehabilitated by the careful presentation of contrary evidence, in later works he catalogs the primary features of whiteness, including an infantile comportment, a pathological attachment to innocence, and an epistemic incapacity to absorb evidence of its own error. To capture the scope of the (...) delusion of whiteness on Du Bois’s account, I suggest the term “irrevocable license.” The remainder of the paper uses Du Bois’s account to examine the case of a “Karen”—a white woman who obliviously and inappropriately interferes with the lawful actions of a family of color—and further considers police violence against people of color as an outgrowth of white irrevocable license. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Locke now joins the long list of titles available in this excellent series. As we have come to expect, the contributors to this Companion are distinguished and the result is comprehensive and eminently useful. This volume is one of the more accessible in the series, with most of the chapters pitched at a level accessible to advanced undergraduates and especially helpful to beginning graduate students. Many of the chapters will be of considerable interest to scholars; here (...) I myself think especially of Edwin McCann’s chapter on Locke’s philosophy of body, which considerably advances our understanding of the place of mechanism in Locke’s thought. In addition, the notes, selective bibliography, and index of passages cited will serve as resources for readers at all levels of expertise. (shrink)

In their paper "Conceptual Challenges in the Neuroimaging of Psychiatric Disorders," Kanaan and McGuire (2011) review a number of methodological and analytical obstacles associated with the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study psychiatric disorders. Although we agree that there are challenges and limitations to this end, it would be a shame for those without a background in neuroimaging to walk away from this article with the impression that such work is too daunting, and thus not worth pursuing. (...) On the contrary, despite a number of challenges (which are an inevitable part of all research), fMRI has already contributed many important insights into the nature and mechanisms of .. (shrink)

Philosophical Analysis Its Development between the Two World Wars.

Moral philosophers tend to discriminate, explicitly or implicitly, three types of action from the point of view of moral worth. First, they recognize actions that are a duty, or obligatory, or that we ought to perform, treating these terms as approximately synonymous; second, they recognize actions that are right in so far as they are permissible from a moral standpoint and not ruled out by moral considerations, but that are not morally required of us, like the lead of this or (...) that card at bridge; third, they recognize actions that are wrong, that we ought not to do. (shrink)

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is not a counsel to perform mean or moderate actions. It states that excellence of character is a mean state with regard to the having and displaying of emotions. All emotions are morally neutral; character is shown by displaying emotions on the right occasions, Not too often or too rarely, Not too strongly or too weakly, For sufficient and only sufficient reasons, Etc. The difficulties for such a view presented by justice and such bad emotions (...) as envy are discussed. The conclusion is that basically aristotle's theory can resist critical scrutiny. (shrink)

J. O. Urmson; VIII*—A Defence of Intuitionism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 111–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

Peter Kivy argues that Handel was the first composer to be regarded as a genius and that only in the eighteenth century was the philosophical apparatus in place that would enable any composer to be conceived of as a musical genius. According to Kivy, a Longinian conception of genius transformed Handel into a genius. A Platonic conception of genius was used to classify Mozart as a genius. Then Kant adopted a Longinian conception of genius and this shaped the perception of (...) Beethoven. Kivy is wrong on all counts. Composers were thought to be geniuses long before Handel. The emergence of philosophical aesthetics in the eighteenth century did little to shape conceptions of musical genius. More specifically, Kivy misrepresents Kant's conception of genius and the role that it plays in the recognition of Beethoven as a musical genius. (shrink)

What is it to base a belief on reasons? Existing attempts to give an account of the basing relation encounter a dilemma: either one appeals to some kind of neutral process that does not adequately reflect the way basing is a content-sensitive first-personal activity, or one appeals to linking or bridge principles that over-intellectualize and threaten regress. We explain why this dilemma arises, and diagnose the commitments that are key obstacles to providing a satisfactory account. We explain why they should (...) be rejected anyway, and then offer a new, knowledge-first virtue epistemological theory of the basing relation that shows how we can substantially theorize about mental processes without these commitments. The resulting view plausibly captures the way in which basing is an inherently mental and content-sensitive process. (shrink)

J. O. Urmson; VIII*—A Defence of Intuitionism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 111–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/.