In this study, we developed and validated an instrument that researchers can use to measure the collective effort of principals and teachers who excise their own unique leadership to genera...

During a clinical ethics fellow’s first week of independent supervised service, two unhoused patients on the same floor were resisting the medical team’s recommendations to discharge. In the team’s view, both were medically stable and no longer required hospitalization in an acute setting. The medical team suspected malingering for both. The social worker and case manager had employed their usual means of gentle persuasion and eliminating psychosocial barriers to no avail. Rather than call the police, the attending physician, social worker, (...) and case manager decided to call ethics. These cases lead the fledgling fellow to consider the appropriate role for ethicists in difficult discharge cases. The article analyzes each case, evaluates their similarities and differences in the context of suspected malingering, and comments on ethical issues surrounding cases of suspected malingering. Finally, I reflect on the value and importance of developing and maintaining epistemic and professional independence. (shrink)

There is increased recognition of a common suite of global challenges that hamper food system sustainability at the community scale. Food price volatility, shortages of basic commodities, increased global rates of obesity and non-communicable food-related diseases, and land grabbing are among the impediments to socially just, economically robust, ecologically regenerative and politically inclusive food systems. While international political initiatives taken in response to these challenges and the groundswell of local alternatives emerging in response to challenges are well documented, more attention (...) is needed to the analysis of similarities between community approaches to global pressures. While we are not suggesting the application of a template set of good practices, the research reported in this paper point to the benefits of both sharing good practices and enabling communities to adopt good practices that are suited to their place-based capacities. The work also suggests that sharing community-derived good practices can support and reinforce global networks of sustainable community food systems, foster knowledge co-creation and ultimately cement collective action to global pressures. In turn these networks could enhance the sustainability and resilience of community food systems and facilitate wide scale food system transformation. (shrink)

The work of every school of psychotherapy and every therapist is inevitably structured by a value system and requires codes of ethics and practice. This book addresses the conscious and unconscious aspects of the value system in which therapists are situated. Values and Ethics in the Practice of Psychotherapy and Counselling explores the central issues through the experience of the contributors, each of whom is well known in this field. Each chapter will raise questions for the reader which will stimulate (...) individual thinking about practice or can form a basis for discussion and debate for training or graduate groups. The book is firmly rooted in practice. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the psychotherapist's work beginning with the general underlying principles, continuing through matters of technique and on to contextual issues. Finally the book moves to the outer world, politics and spirituality as ways of connecting inner and outer, social and individual. The arrangement of chapters allows for flexibility and creativity while providing a coherent structure. Values and Ethics in the Practice of Psychotherapy and Counselling is recommended reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and counsellors in training and practice. (shrink)

AimsThis study evaluates a protocol for early, routine ethics consultation for patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to support decision-making in the context of clinical uncertainty with the aim of mitigating ethical conflict and moral distress.MethodsWe conducted a single-site qualitative analysis of EC documentation for all patients receiving ECMO support from 15 August 2018 to 15 May 2019. Detailed analysis of 20 ethically complex cases with protracted ethics involvement identifies four key ethical domains: limits of prognostication, bridge to nowhere, burden of (...) treatment and system-level concerns. There are three subthemes: relevant contextual factors, the role of EC and observed outcomes. Content analysis of transcripts from interviews with 20 members of the multidisciplinary ECMO team yields supplemental data on providers’ perceptions of the impact of the early intervention protocol.ResultsLimited outcome data for ECMO, unclear indications for withdrawal, adverse effects of treatment and an obligation to attend to programme metrics present significant ethical challenges in the care of this patient population. Upstream EC mitigates ethical conflict by setting clear expectations about ECMO as a time limited trial, promoting consistent messaging among multiple services and supporting surrogate decision-makers. When ECMO becomes a ‘bridge to nowhere’, EC facilitates decision-making that respects patient values yet successfully sets limits on non-beneficial use of this novel therapy.ConclusionData from this study support the conclusion that ECMO poses unique ethical challenges that necessitate a standardised protocol for early, routine EC—at least while this medical technology is in its nascent stages. (shrink)

Companion Animal Ethics explores the important ethical questions and problems that arise as a result of humans keeping animals as companions. The first comprehensive book dedicated to ethical and welfare concerns surrounding companion animals Scholarly but still written in an accessible and engaging style Considers the idea of animal companionship and why it should matter ethically Explores problems associated with animals sharing human lifestyles and homes, such as obesity, behavior issues, selective breeding, over-treatment, abandonment, euthanasia and environmental impacts Offers insights (...) into practical ways of improving ethical standards relating to animal companions. (shrink)

We found a direct relationship between variation in informants' grammaticality intuitions about pronoun coreference and variation in the same informants' use of a clause segmentation strategy during sentence perception. It has been proproposed that ‘c‐command’, a structural principle defined in terms of constituent dominance relations, constrains within‐sentence coreference between pronouns and noun antecedents. The relative height of the pronoun and the noun in the phrase structure hierarchy determines whether the c‐command constraint blocks coreference: Coreference is allowed only when the complement (...) structure containing the noun is attached higher than the pronoun. We collected informants' judgments on pronoun‐noun coreference in which the noun antecedent was contained in a complement structure dominated by either the Sentence‐node (S‐node) (higher than the pronoun) or the Verb‐phrase‐node (VP‐node) (not higher than the pronoun). We also assessed each informant's perceptual clause‐closure tendency using an auditory word‐monitor paradigm. Informants who strongly segmented clauses in the perceptual task did not differentiate between an S‐ and VP‐attachment of sentence complements, as revealed in their coreference judgments, but rather appeared to attach all sentence complements to the S‐node. Informants with relatively weak perceptual segmentation differentiated their coreference judgments according to the node attachment of the complement structure. These results indicate that the linguistic universal controlling within‐sentence coreference applies to the perceptually available structure for a sequence, not to its pure linguistic structure. Hence, linguistic intuitions result from the interaction of three independent faculties: language‐specific knowledge, perceptual processes, and linguistic universals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Motion and Mercutio in Romeo and JulietDaryl W. PalmerThere is nothing permanent that is not true, what can be true that is uncertaine? How can that be certaine, that stands upon uncertain grounds? 1It is by now a commonplace in modern scholarship that drama, particularly Tudor drama, poses questions, rehearses familiar debates, and even speculates about mere possibilities. 2 In 1954, Madeleine Doran spelled out some of the ways (...) in which debate "affected the structure of Elizabethan drama." 3 In turn, Joel B. Altman, having eloquently extended Doran's examination, concludes that "the plays functioned as media of intellectual and emotional exploration for minds that were accustomed to examine the many sides of a given theme, to entertain opposing ideals, and by so exercising the understanding, to move toward some fuller apprehension of truth that could be discerned only through the total action of the drama." 4 Altman points to Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres (c. 1490) as an exemplar of this practice. Although the interlude instructs and entertains, "the center of interest has shifted from demonstration to inquiry. The action develops not from an abstract assertion, but from a specific question: who is the nobler man, Cornelius or Gaius?" 5 By the time William Shakespeare began to write his plays, inquiry was an essential part of dramatic construction. So Juliet asks, "What's in a name?" 6 Hamlet opens with the question: "Who's [End Page 540] there?" (1.1.1), and achieves a kind of apotheosis in the figure of its hero: "To be, or not to be, that is the question..." (3.1.55). Everyone recognizes these familiar questions, and we know (or think we know) how to describe the most viable answers. I want to suggest, however, that this familiarity has dulled our appreciation of the drama's interrogative range. As a way of resisting this tendency, I want to argue that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet takes up an ancient conversation about motion, a dialog that originates with the pre-Socratics. This is not to say that the play is ultimately about motion. It obviously engages a panoply of thematic materials. I have simply chosen, in this limited space, to concentrate on the way the playwright stages his questioning as a kind of fencing lesson. My goal is to produce neither a "reading" of the play nor an allegory of philosophy, but rather to recollect the ways in which Shakespeare's drama qualifies and extends an ancient interrogative tradition. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell who maintains "that Shakespeare could not be who he is—the burden of the name of the greatest writer in the language, the creature of the greatest ordering of English—unless his writing is engaging the depth of the philosophical preoccupations of his culture." 7Some of the most venerable documents of Western philosophy fix on the problem of motion. If we go back more than 2,300 years, we come upon Plato's Theaetetus, in which Socrates explains a "first principle" to the title character, namely that "the universe really is motion and nothing else." 8 A kind of history lesson in ontology and epistemology, this tentative explanation has its origins in Heraclitus or Empedocles or Protagoras or some combination of the aforementioned. Perhaps the most famous expression of this ideal comes from Heraclitus: "You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on." 9 More to the point is the following declaration from the same philosopher: "Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed." 10 In this spirit, Protagoras declares, "All matter is in a state of flux." 11 Such precedents provide the backdrop for Socrates in the Theaetetus as he summarizes: "The point is that all these things are, as we were saying, in motion, but there is a quickness or slowness in their motion" (Thea, 156c). In this historical spirit, he identifies "a tradition from the ancients, who hid their meaning from the common herd in poetical figures, that Oceanus and Tethys, the source of all things, are flowing streams and nothing is at rest" (Thea, 180d–e).To... (shrink)

This important textbook introduces the six great arguments for the existence of God, as found in a wealth of primary sources from classic and contemporary texts. It requires no specialist knowledge of philosophy, and is ideally suited to students and teachers at school or university level. Sections include: * The Ontological Argument * The Cosmological Argument * The Argument from Design * The Argument from Miracles * The Moral Argument * The Pragmatic Argument. Additional features include: * revision questions * (...) key reading for each chapter and an extensive bibliography * illustrated biographies of key thinkers and their works * marginal notes and summaries of arguments. (shrink)

Introduction -- The pre-socratic philosophers -- Sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. -- Thales -- Anaximander -- Anaximenes -- Pythagoras -- Heraclitus -- Parmenides -- Zeno -- Empedocles -- Anaxagoras -- Leucippus and Democritus -- The Athenian period -- Fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. -- The Sophists -- Protagoras -- Gorgias -- Thrasymachus -- Callicles and Critias -- Socrates -- Plato -- Aristotle -- The Hellenistic and Roman periods -- Fourth century B.C.E. through fourth century C.E. -- Epicureanism -- Stoicism -- (...) Neoplatonism -- Medieval and Renaissance philosophy -- Fifth through fifteenth centuries -- Saint Augustine -- The encyclopediasts -- John Scotus Eriugena -- Saint Anselm -- Muslim and Jewish philosophies -- Averroës -- Maimonides -- The problem of faith and reason -- The problem of the universals -- Saint Thomas Aquinas -- William of Ockham -- Renaissance philosophers -- Continental rationalism and British empiricism -- The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Descartes -- Hobbes -- Spinoza -- Leibniz -- Locke -- Berkeley -- Hume -- Kant -- Post-kantian British and continental philosophy -- The nineteenth century -- Hegel -- Schopenhauer -- Kierkegaard -- Marx -- Nietzsche -- Utilitarianism -- Bentham -- Frege -- Pragmatism, the analytic tradition, and the phenomenological tradition and its aftermath -- The twentieth century -- Pragmatism -- James -- Dewey -- The analytic tradition -- Moore -- Russell -- Logical positivism -- Wittgenstein -- Quine -- The phenomenological tradition and its aftermath -- Husserl -- Heidegger -- Sartre -- Structuralism and poststructuralism -- Saussure -- Lévi-Strauss -- Lacan -- Derrida -- Irigaray. (shrink)

Global citizenship education (GCE) is an active entanglement in the civic priorities of the planet. In recent research, the concept has emerged as a multivalent coalescence of being, an engagement with planetary tensions and revisions of cosmopolitan ideology. In this article, I argue for a theoretical interpretation of GCE reliant on liminal-oriented practice and the potentialities of regenerative agency. Privileging Axel Honneth’s interpretation of social freedom and Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ post-abyssal thinking, I argue that interfaces with the limit of (...) our global perception reveal the regenerative qualities of our relations, allowing us to conceive ourselves as uniquely influenced by globality and possessing critical agency for otherness. Although such global perceptions can only ever be wrought within the ideological constraints of locality, a globally situated agency is more agile as a regenerative set of dispositions and inter-knowledge ‘globalities’. I further argue that regenerative liminalities hold significant implications for teaching and learning, as they signify the importance of a global consciousness over a technologically rationalized competency-based approach. (shrink)

Descartes thought that belief was a voluntary matter. His account of error in the Fourth Meditation is based on this. Given his account of what it is to have a true idea he thought that our false beliefs could be accounted for by the fact that while our intellectual capacity is limited our capacity for willing is unlimited, and so allows us to give our assent to what we do not truly perceive. Spinoza, on the other hand, thought that the (...) intellect and will cannot be separated in such a way, and urged that ‘In the mind there is no volition or affirmation and negation excepting that which the idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves’ . One philosopher, S. Hampshire, sees this distinction between Descartes and Spinoza as one of the dividing lines of philosophy . Yet it is not easy to see wherein the division lies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 194-199 [Access article in PDF] June Boyce-Tillman, Constructing Musical Healing. (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000) June Boyce-Tillman has written a wonderfully stimulating book. Her writing style is eminently readable and the flow of ideas can be readily absorbed. Her forays across many different areas of musical ideation and the various oppositions that exist in and among different cultures reveal that we still (...) have much to learn about the true nature of music. We also have much to change to reach the necessary levels of enlightenment that would be universally beneficial to human life. This book offers some enlightenment. Enlightenment, as the Buddha says, is a process, not a thing, so my purpose here is to give enough of an overview so that you may experience reading the book, the author's cogent insights, posing your own questions about music as a human endeavor, and to consider some of my criticisms.Her primary thesis is spelled out succinctly: My aim in this book is to examine how these polarities are associated with the healing/therapeutic properties of music and how they are reflected in different musical traditions (32). [End Page 194]The emphasis on the healing/therapeutic properties of music is well taken and she pursues these to glorious ends. In examining these properties, one becomes completely engrossed in thinking about music per se, raising both answers and puzzles. Boyce-Tillman effectively plants the seeds for inquiry that remain long after the reading is complete.Chapter 1, "Setting the Scene," is insightful in laying the ground for examining several distinct areas: ways of knowing, notions of well-being, healing as process, models of health, creativity and well-being, and musical development. She then comes to the task prepared to battle with a difficult subject, difficult because of the elusive nature of the subject, by reporting on her own musical and contemplative experiences. It is important to know her own path so that we can examine her conclusions from a deeper perspective.Next she establishes the polarities on which the rest of the book rests, and the framework on which each chapter is built: community/individualism; containment/freedom; expression/confidentiality; unity/diversity; challenge/nurture; excitement/relaxation; and embodiment/transcendence. These are explored after setting forth "A model of the self" and "Music and the model of the self."Two features are helpful to understanding the thesis and keeping track of the narrative. One is the case studies she includes to further explain the specific polarity, and the other is the summary at the end of each chapter which assists greatly in retaining cogent contact with the discourse.Chapter 2, "Of Philosophers and Thinkers," an examination of the Western outlook, although viewed from Boyce-Tillman's healing-therapeutic perspective, is a worthwhile read for even the casual reader. It spans the philosophical/aesthetic area sufficiently so that I will assign the reading of this particular chapter to my graduate students where that subject is appropriate. Here again, the six polarities come into play through an explication of each from the point of view of philosophers, aestheticians, and other writers on music.Having dealt with the Western view, she turns to shamanistic practice in Chapter 3, "Of Shamans and Healers." Intentional or not, these two chapters form a metapolarity for this is where the contrasts are at their widest points. The various dimensions and uses of music as they exist in cultures based on metaphysical beliefs are detailed and revealed through extensive and representative examples.Chapter 4, "Of a New Consciousness," explores the New Age view. She states: [t]he New Age is a many-faceted collection of traditions that has drawn on a variety of sources—both ancient and modern—to balance contemporary trends such as elitism, commercialism, materialism, racism and sexism. It has produced a variety of musical practices, many of the syntheses of ancient traditions and contemporary ideas. Communal music making can represent healing at a personal, ecological and cosmic level. The interconnectedness of the cosmos can be accessed and expressed in music (199). [End Page... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Music Education and Spirituality:Philosophical Exploration IiAnthony J. PalmerMusic, beyond its pitches and rhythms, timbres and dynamics, has elusive qualities that many have difficulty identifying and discussing. In this regard Rabindranath Tagore speaks of the "ineffable":But when our heart is fully awakened in love, or in other great emotions, our personality is in its flood-tide. Then it feels the longing to express itself for the very sake of expression. Then (...) comes art, and we forget the claims of necessity, the thrift of usefulness; the spires of our temples try to kiss the stars and the notes of our music to fathom the depth of the ineffable.1Abraham Maslow points to a similar state of being:Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than as means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.2 [End Page 143]One deep, the other beyond, both direct attention toward something richer, exceeding technical competence and excellent rendition of the score. Yet, the very realms where these qualities reside seem to be above our ability to assess other than to say, "we know it when we experience it."3 Is there some realization that we have transcended the mundane, passed over to another plane of existence and gone beyond an egocentric mind-frame? And could subjective reports satisfy any objective criteria that the event truly happened? Moreover, could one's experience be distinguished qualitatively from another's? This is one of the quandaries when attempting to assess experience of such an elusive nature. Although, these questions lie at the foundation of such an inquiry as this, answers await additional investigation at a later time. For the present, this study will be limited to laying the groundwork for these future explorations.A clarification of terms preceding this essay is imperative. To begin, the discourse will use 'spirituality' and 'transcendence' interchangeably. Various readings suggest that there is sufficient agreement that these terms describe the same noumenal experience. For example, physicist Fritjof Capra states that:Spiritual experience is an experience of aliveness of mind and body as a unity. Moreover, this experience of unity transcends not only the separation of mind and body, but also the separation of self and world. The central awareness in these spiritual moments is a profound sense of oneness with all, a sense of belonging to the universe as a whole.4This essay continues in this vein and that of my previous article on the subject5 that the religious and doctrinal are not part of the discussion. Therefore, an effort will be made to distance spirituality, as used here, from religion. In that light, a brief comparison will prove helpful.Spirituality has its roots in the Latin: "in + spirare (Latin to breathe). Archaic: to breathe or blow into or upon; to infuse (as life) by breathing."6 This "blowing upon" is no better illustrated than in the account in Genesis. Chapter 2, verse 4, line 7 reads: "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."7 Psyche in Greek and atman in Sanskrit have essentially the same meaning of breath and being alive, that is, embodying an animating force.This animating force, in my view, is not of metaphysical origins, but rather inherent in the evolution of the human species. Spirituality is a human quality as a product of supreme levels of consciousness. Additionally, it has the quality of knowing that we are conscious. C. G. Jung's statement is appropriate in describing this seemingly incomprehensible characteristic.Were organized religion to disappear by some quirk of social process, the human community still cannot and must not do without cultivating the spiritual, [End Page 144] what Jung calls the "attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by experience of the numinosum."8Diane Ackerman supports the non-metaphysical origins of the impulse.Our sensitivity to religion means that at some stage in human history, our chance of mating and surviving increased... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 126-138 [Access article in PDF] Music Education for the Twenty-First Century A Philosophical View of the General Education Core Anthony J. Palmer Boston University We are all one species with one brain and neural system, yet consciousness about our existence is highly contextual. Any culturally transcendent view will still be limited to one's personal experience, analytical capabilities, and cultural shaping. Nevertheless, (...) looking beyond our narrow perspectives is essential if we are to find commonality and compatibility with all humankind.Therefore, I find it incumbent that we, as college/university professors, examine our present culture-national and global-to ascertain current conditions and what positive roles each citizen may be able to play on the larger stage of world affairs. Musician-teachers, who are the products of the curriculum, should not be exempt from the responsibilities of contributing solutions. Rather, they should produce a program that is sensitive to the larger context in which we all reside. To be sure, we have no direct control over global events. We do, however, exercise at least a modicum of control over the kind of person emerging from our courses of study.In light of the foregoing, this paper will examine (1) the present global conditions with which we are confronted, (2) responsibilities of the college/university [End Page 126] faculties toward developing students with greater awareness, (3) examination of the general education that all baccalaureate students must satisfy for the degree, (4) the education within the general education courses with a focus on the music education student, and (5) a proposal on general education. The Present Context Today we are at a juncture where no one can predict the future with any assurance of accuracy. The world in the twenty-first century has taken an unexpected turn toward greater chaos and has the potential to end life as we have known it in previous centuries. Although earlier generations experienced many changes and watershed moments, the conditions were never potentially as cataclysmic as they are today because of the explosive power of our so-called defensive weapons. In addition, fed by technology, the pace of change is extremely rapid and multiplies exponentially. Robert Wright states in this regard, Neither biological evolution nor human history is a smooth, steady process. Both pass through thresholds.... To some people, the current era has the aura of a threshold; it has that unsettling, out-of-control feeling that can portend a major shift. Technological, geopolitical, and economic change seem ominously fast, and the fabric of society seems somehow tenuous.1He goes on to say, World currency markets are rocked by the turbulent force of electronically lubricated financial speculation. Weapons of mass destruction are cultivated by rogue regimes and New Age cults. Nations seem less cohesive than before, afflicted by ethnic or religious or cultural friction. Health officials seriously discuss the prospect of a worldwide plague-the unspeakably gruesome Ebola virus, perhaps, or some microbe we don't yet know about, spread around the world by jet-propelled travelers. Even tropical storms seem to have grown more intense in recent decades, arguably a result of global warming.2The foregoing was written in 2000, well before the devastating events of September 11 and subsequent human-initiated disasters, yet it still rings true. Where are we heading? What is our future with a world torn by terror, the continual development of more destructive weapons, and a seeming lack of desire to ameliorate our differences in a peaceful manner? Add to these the inexorable advance of technology that seems to know no end. It is most likely that the world in 2050-perhaps even as early as 2025-will not be recognized by our present population, assuming that we do survive as a civilized world.Of course, the outlook is not exclusively bleak and the continued development of technology is not all on the debit side of the ledger. Advances made in [End Page 127] medicine portend the re-growing of brain cells, repair... (shrink)

Wildlife Ethics A systematic account of the ethical issues related to wildlife management and conservation Wildlife Ethics is the first systematic, book-length discussion of the ethics of wildlife conservation and management, and examines the key ethical questions and controversies. Tackling both theory and practice, the text is divided into two parts. The first describes key concepts, ethical theories, and management models relating to wildlife; the second puts these concepts, theories, and models to work, illustrating their significance through detailed case studies (...) on controversies in wildlife management and conservation. The book explores pressing topics including human responsibilities due to climate change, tradeoffs when managing zoonotic disease risks, the ethics of the wildlife trade, culling non-native species, indigenous wildlife use, and zoo-based conservation programs. Readers are encouraged to explore different ways of valuing wild animals and their practical implications. This essential text: Explains and explores relationships between valuing biodiversity, human utility, ecosystems, species, and animal welfare Describes established approaches to wildlife management, such as sustainable use, and emerging concepts, such as compassionate conservation Discusses key ethical theories, including utilitarianism, ecocentrism, and animal rights Offers a practical model of how to analyze ethical issues in wildlife management and conservation Wildlife Ethics: The Ethics of Wildlife Management and Conservation is an accessible introduction to complex ethical issues, making the book an important resource for students in fields such as conservation biology, ecology, environmental science and policy, game management, public health and veterinary medicine. It will also be an invaluable tool for wildlife managers, conservationists, One Health practitioners, practicing veterinarians and animal rehabilitation staff, contemporary wildlife professionals and other stakeholders. (shrink)

A primary problem in the area of natural language processing has been semantic analysis. This book looks at the semantics of natural languages in context. It presents an approach to the computational processing of English text that combines current theories of knowledge representation and reasoning in Artificial Intelligence with the latest linguistic views of lexical semantics. The book will interest postgraduates and researchers in computational linguistics as well as industrial research groups specializing in natural language processing.

My writing is simply a set of experiments in life—an endeavour to see what our thought and emotion may be capable of—what stores of motive, actual or hinted as possible, give promise of a better after which we may strive—what gains from past revelations and discipline we must strive to keep hold of as something more than shifting theory. I became more and more timid—with less daring to adopt any formula which does not get itself clothed for me in some (...) human figure and individual experience, and perhaps that is a sign that if I help others to see at all it must be through the medium of art. George Eliot. In his inaugural lecture, given in Birkbeck College in 1987, Roger Scruton, who has done as much as anyone else in recent years to bring the importance of art in general and literature in particular to the attention of philosophers, contends that ‘philosophy severed from literary criticism is as monstrous a thing as literary criticism severed from philosophy’. The first, he argues, aims to be science: strives after theoretical truth which it can never attain; and results in banality clothed in pseudo-scientific technicalities: while the second is liable to find consolation in the kind of nonsense which pretends that in the study of literature we are confronted with nothing other than an author-less, unreadable, ‘text’. Philosophy, he maintains, ‘must return aesthetics to the place that Kant and Hegel made for it: a place at the centre of the subject, the paradigm of philosophy and the true test of all its claims’. (shrink)

The ways in which mental concepts can seem problematic are various, and consequently the idea of a coherent body of issues forming one part of philosophy, namely the philosophy of mind, is highly misleading. When Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle inaugurated the flood of recent writings about the concept of mind there was some similarity, although not identity, in the problems which led them to concentrate their attention on mental concepts. Wittgenstein saw that lack of clarity about such notions as (...) willing, thinking, feeling and imagining generated powerful but misleading pictures about logic—about the difference between sense and nonsense —so that if we were to become clear about one we should have to become clear about the other. Worries about logic generated his interest in what it is to have a mind. In the case of Ryle, if we are to accept his own autobiographical remarks, an exposition of the logic of mental concepts was undertaken to illustrate whatever clarity had already been achieved by him and others with regard to logic and logical investigations. ‘The Concept of Mind was a philosophical book written with a meta-philosophical purpose’. Although I think it should be open for speculation just why specifically mental notions were singled out by him for such an illustrative purpose. In each case questions about logic prompted writing about the mind. There remains an echo of this in some of the books under review, but, as often with deepseated changes, the original impetus can soon be lost, and debates about distinctions in which it was first embodied can take on a life of their own. (shrink)

Concern about high-profile ethical lapses by business managers has led to an increasing emphasis on ethics instruction in business schools. Various pedagogical methods are used to expose business students to real-world ethical dilemmas, yet students may not readily grasp the linkages between ethical theories and dilemmas to identify possible ethical solutions. Venn diagrams are a valuable instructional tool in business ethics classes when used with other teaching methodologies such as case studies. We describe how the use of Venn diagrams assists (...) students in visualizing the key points of and the connections between ethical theories and dilemmas to shed light on possible ethical solutions. Examples of teaching exercises are provided along with ideas for future research in the use of Venn diagrams in activating moral imagination and improving ethical reasoning. Overall, positive student reactions to the introduction of Venn diagrams in business ethics classrooms support the use of this methodology. (shrink)

Concern about high-profile ethical lapses by business managers has led to an increasing emphasis on ethics instruction in business schools. Various pedagogical methods are used to expose business students to real-world ethical dilemmas, yet students may not readily grasp the linkages between ethical theories and dilemmas to identify possible ethical solutions. Venn diagrams are a valuable instructional tool in business ethics classes when used with other teaching methodologies such as case studies. We describe how the use of Venn diagrams assists (...) students in visualizing the key points of and the connections between ethical theories and dilemmas to shed light on possible ethical solutions. Examples of teaching exercises are provided along with ideas for future research in the use of Venn diagrams in activating moral imagination and improving ethical reasoning. Overall, positive student reactions to the introduction of Venn diagrams in business ethics classrooms support the use of this methodology. (shrink)

Community-based healthcare organisations manage competing, and often conflicting, priorities. These conflicts can arise from the multiple roles these organisations take up, and from the diverse range of stakeholders to whom they must be responsive. Often such conflicts may be titled conflicts of interest; however, what precisely constitutes such conflicts and what should be done about them is not always clear. Clarity about the duties owed by organisations and the roles they assume can help identify and manage some of these conflicts. (...) Taking divisions of general practice in Australia as an example, this paper sets out to distinguish two main types of conflicts of interest, so that they may be more clearly identified and more effectively managed. (shrink)

Philosophically, Søren Kierkegaard was the “bridge” that led from Hegel to Existentialism. Kierkegaard abhorred Hegel’s abstract, know-it-all idealism that tried to capture reality in a few words. Kierkegaard’s attack on social and religious complacency and his single-handed assault on traditional Western philosophy generated a crisis that produced a radically new way of philosophizing and made him the founder of the school that would later be called Existentialism. To Kierkegaard, reality was personal, subjective–it began and ended with the individual–and philosophy was (...) not something one merely talked about, it was the way you lived. Kierkegaard For Beginners explains, plainly and simply, the great Danish thinker’s obsession with the particularity of human existence as well as his demonstration of how the creation of an authentic new kind of individual is possible. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that implicit sequence learning is superior for believers in the paranormal and individuals with increased cerebral dopamine. Thirty-five healthy participants performed feedback-guided anticipations of four arrow directions. A 100-trial random sequence preceded two 100-trial biased sequences in which visual targets on trial t tended to be displaced 90° clockwise or counter-clockwise from those on t − 1. ISL was defined as a positive change during the course of the biased run in the difference between pro-bias and counter-bias (...) responses. It was hypothesized that this difference would be greater for believers in the paranormal than for skeptics, for those who received dopamine than for those who received placebo, and for believers who received dopamine than for the other groups. None of the hypotheses were supported by the data. It is suggested that a simple binary guessing task with a focus on prediction accuracy during early trials should be considered for future explorations. (shrink)