Much has been written by many distinguished persons about the philosophical, religious and ethical considerations of doctors and their involvement with torture. What follows will not have the erudition or authority of the likes of St Augustine, Mahatma Gandi, Schopenhauer or Thomas Paine. It represents the views of a very ordinary person; a presumption defended by the submission that many very ordinary persons have been, and will be, instruments for effecting, assisting or condoning the physical or mental anguish of others. (...) As practitioners of medicine, we are particularly vulnerable, since our particular knowledge and our privileged position may be so easily abused--to the detriment of others. Those of us who practice clinical forensic medicine have even greater responsibility by virtue of our daily contact with the enforcement of law, criminal procedure, and the machinations of the judiciary. We are thus particularly well placed to monitor, encourage or discourage the occurrence of evil practices within the community. It is imperative, therefore, that the ordinary doctor should be cognisant of, and be party to, a code of conduct formulated by his peers and having reference to his obligations as a citizen, and doctor, and to his ability to manipulate human activity. Forensic physicians have further discretionary powers as arbiters in the marriage of the art and ethics of healing with the principles and practice of justice. (shrink)

In his PhD proposal, now published as Seeing Sociological, Garfinkel [2006] formulated action in terms of a mutually constitutive structure—the Noesis-Noema Structures. This structure can be traced to Aaron Gurwitsch’s gestalt psychology and Law of Good Gestalt which theorises how participants prioritise functional Gestalts over other possible meanings of what is perceivable in their surroundings. While Gurwitsch illustrated his theory using images, in this paper we revisit Gurwitsch’s theory in light of the advances in recording real-time interaction to consider Gestalt (...) in spatio-temporality of real-time interaction. We consider the Law of Good Gestalt in terms of the dimensions of time and space, and postulate two analytical principles—the Principle of Good Momentary Gestalt and the Principle of Good Temporal Gestalt—for analysing a multi-angle video segment of a monologue taken from a training event. The analysis examines how the monologue was embedded in a multi-layer projection structure, so that during the time of the monologue, the trainer and trainees can be seen as achieving a transition between one activity to another while sustaining the frame of the training event. Through this, the analysis highlights the multi-layered structure of participants’ field of perception that constitutes their experience of the social activity, and explores a “method” to reconstruct such a structured field of perception through re-coupling meanings to the assemblages of multimodal resources recoverable on video. (shrink)

Genomic research is an expanding and subversive field, leaking into various others, from environmental protection to food production to healthcare delivery, and in doing so, it is reshaping our relationship with them. The international community has issued various declaratory instruments aimed at the human genome and genomic research. These soft law instruments stress the special nature of genomics and our genetic heritage, and attempt to set limits on our activities with respect to same, as informed by the human rights paradigm. (...) This paper examines the primary thrust and, more importantly, the joint value position of the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, concluding that, though important legal instruments from the human rights paradigm, these instruments, or rather the values contained therein, must find a more influential hard law voice and a broader policy environment. (shrink)

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is a sensitive, specific and rapid form of testing for the presence of HIV antibodies. Post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV infection can reduce seroconversion rates by up to 80%. Needlestick injuries are the second commonest cause of occupational injury in the NHS and 20% of these occur during operations. In the NHS, in order to protect staff and patients from the risk of bloodborne viruses such as HIV, it is mandatory to report such injuries; however, numerous studies have (...) shown that many groups, particularly doctors, are reluctant to do so. This article outlines the arguments for and against the introduction of preoperatively seeking consent from patients to have their blood tested for HIV via POCT in order to improve the reporting rates of needlestick injuries incurred during surgery and to protect staff from infection. (shrink)

Background:The Taiwan Nursing Accreditation Council has proposed eight core professional nursing qualities including ethical literacy. Consequently, nursing ethics education is a required course for student nurses. These courses are intended to improve the ethical literacy. Moral sensitivity is the cornerstone of ethical literacy, and learning moral sensitivity is the initial step towards developing ethical literacy.Objectives:To explore the effect of nursing ethics educational interventions based on multiple teaching strategies on student nurses moral sensitivity. Based on the visual, auditory and kinaesthetic model, (...) three strategies were developed for determining the programme components and corresponding learning styles.Research design:This was a quasi-experimental study.Participants:A total of 234 junior-college student nurses participated in this study. All participants were aged 18–19 years.Ethical considerations:The study protocol was approved by the institutional review boards of Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital. Only the participants who signed an informed consent form took part in the study. The participants were permitted to withdraw from the study at any point if they wished to do so without affecting their academic score.Results:The scores of Modified Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire for Student Nurses were significantly improved after the intervention of integrating multiple teaching strategies. Significant relationships were observed between the satisfaction scores of two teaching strategies and moral sensitivity. The results indicated that using multiple teaching strategies is effective for promoting nursing ethics learning.Conclusion:This strategy was consistent with the student nurses’ preferred learning style and was used to correct their erroneous ethical conceptions, assisting in developing their ethical knowledge. (shrink)

Many have argued against the claim that Plato posited the mathematical objects that are the subjects of Metaphysics M and N. This paper shifts the burden of proof onto these objectors to show that Plato did not posit these entities. It does so by making two claims: first, that Plato should posit the mathematical Intermediates because Forms and physical objects are ill suited in comparison to Intermediates to serve as the objects of mathematics; second, that their utility, combined with Aristotle’s (...) commentary on Plato’s posit of Intermediates, provides good reason to conclude that Plato did posit them. (shrink)

In this article, we study the impact of the so?called non?meritocratic factors gender, immigrant origin and social origin, and the meritocratic factors ability and achievement, on timely graduation within a specific high school type. Furthermore, the possible influence of teacher assessments of students in elementary school is investigated. Although the group of graduated students contains more girls, fewer students from immigrant origin and more students of higher social origin, multivariate analyses show that only grade point average during high school significantly (...) affects the chances of graduating. Teachers? assessments that distinguished between graduation chances of students did not affect graduation when controlled for the non?meritocratic and meritocratic factors in the multivariate model. (shrink)

Healthcare workers are often assumed to have a duty to work, even if faced with personal risk. This is particularly so for professionals. However, the health service also depends on non-professionals, such as porters, cooks and cleaners. The duty to work is currently under scrutiny because of the ongoing challenge of responding to pandemic influenza, where an effective response depends on most uninfected HCWs continuing to work, despite personal risk. This paper reports findings of a survey of HCWs conducted across (...) three National Health Service trusts in the West Midlands, UK, to establish whether HCWs’ likelihood of working during a pandemic is associated with views about the duty to work. The sense that HCWs felt that they had a duty to work despite personal risk emerged strongly regardless of professional status. Besides a strong sense that everyone should pull together, all kinds of HCWs recognised a duty to work even in difficult circumstances, which correlated strongly with their stated likelihood of working. This suggests that HCWs’ decisions about whether or not they are prepared to work during a pandemic are closely linked to their sense of duty. However, respondents’ sense of the duty to work may conflict with their sense of duty to family, as well as other factors such as a perceived lack of reciprocity from their employers. Interestingly, nearly 25% of doctors did not consider that they had a duty to work where doing so would pose risks to themselves or their families. (shrink)

Most academic papers on ethics in pandemics concentrate on the duties of healthcare professionals. This paper will consider non-professional healthcare workers: do they have a moral obligation to work during an influenza pandemic? If so, is this an obligation that outweighs others they might have, e.g., as parents, and should such an obligation be backed up by the coercive power of law? This paper considers whether non-professional healthcare workers—porters, domestic service workers, catering staff, clerks, IT support workers, etc.—have an obligation (...) to work during an influenza pandemic. It uses data collected as part of a study looking at the attitudes of healthcare workers to working during a pandemic to suggest the philosophical arguments explored. These include: being in a position to do good, the ethics of work, competing obligations to family members and in particular to children and the obligations of citizens in a state of national emergency. We also look at whether compulsory measures are justified to support a national health service during a health emergency. We conclude that even if they are, compulsion should not be restricted to non-professionals who happen to be working in the health service at the time. Rather, compulsion involving a larger pool of people with the relevant skills and abilities is more equitable. (shrink)

Propositional attitudes are often classified as non-phenomenal mental states. I argue that there is no good reason for doing so. The unwillingness to view propositional attitudes as being essentially phenomenal stems from a biased notion of phenomenality, from not paying sufficient attention to the idioms in which propositional attitudes are usually reported, from overlooking the considerable degree to which different intentional modes can be said to be phenomenologically continuous, and from not considering the possibility that propositional attitudes may be transparent, (...) just like sensations and emotions are commonly held to be: there may be no appropriate way of describing their phenomenal character apart from describing the properties and objects they represent. (shrink)

Sweden features near the top of most gender-equality rankings. The World Economic Forum rates it as having one of the narrowest gender gaps in the world. But Sweden is not only a good place to be a woman: it also appears to be an idyll for new dads. Close to 90% of Swedish fathers take paternity leave. In 2013, some 340,000 dads took a total of 12 million days’ leave, equivalent to about seven weeks each. Women take even more leave (...) days to spend time with their children, but the gap is shrinking. Why do Swedish dads take so much time off work to raise their children? (shrink)

This paper will examine a sample case encountered by ambulance staff in the context of the basic principles of medical ethics.An accident takes place on an intercity highway. Ambulance staff pick up the injured driver and medical intervention is initiated. The driver suffers from a severe stomach ache, which is also affecting his back. Evaluating the patient, the ambulance doctor suspects that he might be experiencing internal bleeding. For this reason, venous access, in the doctor's opinion, should be achieved and (...) the patient should be quickly started on an intravenous serum. The patient, however, who has so far kept his silence, objects to the administration of the serum. The day this is taking place is within the month of Ramadan and the patient is fasting. The patient states that he is fasting and that his fast will be broken and his religious practice disrupted in the event that the serum is administered. The ambulance doctor informs him that his condition is life-threatening and that the serum must be administered immediately. The patient now takes a more vehement stand. ‘If I am to die, I want to die while I am fasting. Today is Friday and I have always wanted to die on such a holy day,’ he says. The ambulance physician has little time to decide. How should the patient be treated? Which type of behaviour will create the least erosion of his values? (shrink)

The balance between births and deaths in an age-structured population is strongly influenced by the spatial distribution of sub-populations. Our aim was to describe the demographic process of a fish population in an hierarchical dendritic river network, by taking into account the possible movements of individuals. We tried also to quantify the effect of river network changes (damming or channelling) on the global fish population dynamics. The Salmo trutta life pattern was taken as an example for.We proposed a model which (...) includes the demographic and the migration processes, considering migration fast compared to demography. The population was divided into three age-classes and subdivided into fifteen spatial patches, thus having 45 state variables. Both processes were described by means of constant transfer coefficients, so we were dealing with a linear system of difference equations. The discrete case of the variable aggregation method allowed the study of the system through the dominant elements of a much simpler linear system with only three global variables: the total number of individuals in each age-class. (shrink)

The beginnings of Hegel’s interest in “logic” as a branch of philosophy are somewhat obscure. In a lecture of 1830 Schelling claimed that Hegel first began to attend to the subject only because “his friends at the University” suggested that it was a good topic for his lectures because it was being neglected. Schelling’s object by then was evidently to suggest that Hegel’s “logic” had always been a superficial pretense. But Hegel was alive to contradict him. So I think his (...) statement of the facts must be right as far as it goes. I do not therefore believe that Hegel came to Jena with any “logical” manuscripts. In my view, it was Schelling himself—especially in his System of Transcendental Idealism —who sparked Hegel’s interest in the subject. (shrink)

The essay published here in English was one of the earliest documents of the birth of the form of idealism which Giovanni Gentile called “Actual Idealism.” The most celebrated full-length statement of it was published in 1916 as General Theory of the Spirit as Pure Act. But there is no other essay in which the relation between Gentile’s view and the great German tradition from which it derives is made so plain.

Pursuant to the Doctrine of Consumer Sovereignty, we believe that tobacco companies should be compelled to disclose their ingredients so that the public health community can make more informed recommendations in order to protect consumer autonomy and sovereignty. However, a recent decision by the First Circuit precludes such a disclosure since it would be unduly burdensome to the industry, while granting only minimal gains to the public. We argue that many of the Court’s key claims rest on a misunderstanding of (...) the science and chemistry of tobacco products. In our view, a mandatory disclosure of ingredients would more effectively protect the public interest, whilst posing minimal burdens on the tobacco industry. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is seen to be incomplete not because it cannot explain the correlations that characterize entanglement without invoking either non-locality or realism, both of which, despite special relativity or no-go theorems, are at least conceivable. Quantum mechanics is incomplete, in a perhaps broader than hidden variable sense, because it fails to address within its theoretical structure the question of how even a single particle, by being in a given quantum state, causes the frequency distribution of measurement values specified by (...) the state. This incompleteness of quantum mechanics as it is currently conceived is both fundamental and indefeasible. Failure to address the question of how the states of entangled particles are given effect to yield the correlations they specify is simply a particular albeit attention arresting instance of this incompleteness. But if that is so then quantum mechanics cannot be held to be inconsistent with locality. (shrink)

Sustainable development requires sustainability transformations of (so far unsustainable) companies. Sustainability transformations of companies do not happen by themselves but are the result of individuals and groups who purposefully act for sustainability. It is individual managers and employees within an organization—so-called “change agents for sustainability”—who play a vital role in advancing corporate sustainability, as they are responsible for starting initiatives, making decisions, and implementing measures. Recent contributions have started to address the transformational role of individual sustainability professionals and employees shaping (...) decisions around social and environmental issues in organizations. An overview and conceptualization of what can be understood by change agents for sustainability, their roles, and interactions is however missing. This article therefore proposes a framework and typology of six archetypes of change agents for sustainability: their key competencies and roles in initiating, scaling, and sustaining change in and beyond organizational boundaries. (shrink)

For me personally the year 1945 is significant because it marked the beginning of my own academic career. In that year I matriculated at Oxford as a candidate for the B.A. in Literae Humaniores. For Hegel studies it is significant for a different reason. It is the year in which Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies appeared. Popper’s book contributed nothing to the understanding of Hegel - M. B. Foster’s Political Philosophy of Plato and Hegel, which appeared ten years earlier, (...) is much more important in that respect - but it sealed in amber, so to speak, the image of Hegel which had become canonical for the liberal generation whose public conscience was Bertrand Russell. It marked the nadir of Hegel’s reputation in the Anglo-Saxon world.. (shrink)

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) have been successful for modelling the dynamics of carefully dictated speech, but their performance degrades severely when used to model conversational speech. Since speech is produced by a system of loosely coupled articulators, stochastic models explicitly representing this parallelism may have advantages for automatic speech recognition (ASR), particularly when trying to model the phonological effects inherent in casual spontaneous speech. This paper presents a preliminary feasibility study of one such model class: loosely coupled HMMs. Exact model (...) estimation and decoding is potentially expensive, so possible approximate algorithms are also discussed. Comparison of one particular loosely coupled model on an isolated word task suggests loosely coupled HMMs merit further investigation. An approximate algorithm giving performance which is almost always statistically indistinguishable from the exact algorithm is also identified, making more extensive research computationally feasible. (shrink)

Presocratic philosophy, for all its diverse features, is united by the quest to understand the origin and nature of the world. The approach of the Pythagoreans to this quest is governed by their belief, probably based on studies of the numerical relations in musical harmony, that number or numerical structure plays a key role for explaining the world-order, the cosmos. It remains questionable to what extent the Pythagoreans, by positing number as an all-powerful explanatory concept, broke free from Presocratic ideas (...) that certain stuffs or material elements sufficed to account for the source and constitution of the world, but apparently number found such a universal application with them that Aristotle could summarize the Pythagorean position as ‘numbers…are the whole universe’. Historians of Greek philosophy have generally accepted Aristotle's assessment. Of late, however, certain scholars have argued that the Pythagorean number doctrine is Aristotelian interpretation, unjustly foisted upon the Pythagoreans. Enlisted in support of their arguments are the fragments of Philolaus of Croton. Here we have the foremost representative of fifth-century Pythagoreanism, who states as his basic principles, not numbers exactly, but ‘limiters’ and ‘unlimiteds’, and who, it is argued, regards number solely as an epistemological aid for understanding the structure of reality. So Philolaus is called upon as a witness against Aristotle. The rationale goes something like this: Aristotle most likely had written sources for his knowledge of Pythagorean teachings; the only texts we know of with any certainty are Philolaus' book and the writings of Archytas; since Aristotle treats Archytas separately, he is mainly relying on Philolaus; because Philolaus does not expressly state that things are numbers, Aristotle's interpretation is wrong. (shrink)

With improvement in medical services in the last few years, there has been a constant rise in the geriatric population throughout the world, more so in the developing countries. The elderly are highly prone to develop psychiatric disorders, probably because of age related changes in the brain, concomitant physical disorders, as well as increased stress in later life. Psychiatric disorders in this population may have a different presentation than in other groups and some of psychopathologies might be mistaken for normal (...) age related changes by an unwary clinician. Therefore the need of the day is to train psychiatrists and physicians to better recognize and manage mental disorders in this age group. (shrink)

Presocratic philosophy, for all its diverse features, is united by the quest to understand the origin and nature of the world. The approach of the Pythagoreans to this quest is governed by their belief, probably based on studies of the numerical relations in musical harmony, that number or numerical structure plays a key role for explaining the world-order, the cosmos. It remains questionable to what extent the Pythagoreans, by positing number as an all-powerful explanatory concept, broke free from Presocratic ideas (...) that certain stuffs or material elements sufficed to account for the source and constitution of the world, but apparently number found such a universal application with them that Aristotle could summarize the Pythagorean position as ‘numbers…are the whole universe’ . Historians of Greek philosophy have generally accepted Aristotle's assessment. Of late, however, certain scholars have argued that the Pythagorean number doctrine is Aristotelian interpretation, unjustly foisted upon the Pythagoreans. Enlisted in support of their arguments are the fragments of Philolaus of Croton. Here we have the foremost representative of fifth-century Pythagoreanism, who states as his basic principles, not numbers exactly, but ‘limiters’ and ‘unlimiteds’, and who, it is argued, regards number solely as an epistemological aid for understanding the structure of reality. So Philolaus is called upon as a witness against Aristotle. The rationale goes something like this: Aristotle most likely had written sources for his knowledge of Pythagorean teachings; the only texts we know of with any certainty are Philolaus' book and the writings of Archytas; since Aristotle treats Archytas separately, he is mainly relying on Philolaus; because Philolaus does not expressly state that things are numbers, Aristotle's interpretation is wrong. (shrink)

The use of technology and teaching techniques derived from technology is currently a bourgeoning topic in higher education. Teachers at all levels and types of institutions want to know how these new technologies will affect what happens in and outside of the classroom. Many teachers have already embraced some of these technologies but remain uncertain about their educational efficacy. Other teachers have waited because they are reluctant to try tools or techniques that remain unproven or, as is often the case, (...) lack institutional support. This book is designed to help both groups, so that those with technological expertise can extend their knowledge, while technological novices can "ramp up" at their own pace and for their own purposes. Best Practices for Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning brings together expert teacher-scholars who apply and assess technology's impact on traditional, hybrid or blended, or completely on-line courses, relying on technology as a teaching tool for classroom management and interaction, as well as student-based uses of technology largely independent of instructors. Each chapter will address how technological improvements can be connected to assessment initiatives, as is now routinely advocated in psychology and social science education. The book features current scholarship and pedagogy involving innovative technology that impacts on student learning in psychology and related disciplines, focusing also on student reactions to these novel technologies, and proper assessments of how well they promote learning. This text will serve as the standard reference on emerging technologies for undergraduate instructors. (shrink)

In the far-off days before the first World War, the British journal Mind was full of articles by writers who thought of themselves as “Neoidealists”. So when the enfant terrible of the groves of Academic Oxford in that generation—a “pragmatic Humanist” by the name of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller—played his most notorious practical joke upon his colleagues by publishing a mock-issue of the journal he offered as a frontispiece “A portrait of the Absolute in the pink of condition”. Beneath a (...) pale-pink semi-transparent tissue one found a printed frame that embraced a perfectly blank white sheet of paper. (shrink)

Summary This article approaches post-war debates about the relationship between normative political theory and empirical political science from a French perspective. It does so by examining Raymond Aron's commentaries on a series of articles commissioned by him for a special issue of the Revue française de science politique on this theme as well as through an analysis of his wartime dialogue with the neo-Thomist philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Following a consideration of Aron's critique of contemporary approaches to this issue in France, (...) we discuss his own distinctive attempt to draw normative theory and empirical science into the same orbit by tracing the interaction of these two elements in his work from the late 1930s to the mid-1960s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:19. HUME AND BARKER ON THE LOGIC OF DESIGN I find myself in complete agreement with what I take to be the main thesis of Stephen Barker's paper. It is certainly a mistake to concentrate our attention on the negative critique which Hume directed at the modes of argument of his rationalist predecessors and contemporaries and directed even more at the mode of certain conviction with which they presented (...) conclusions arrived at by arguments that did not have a logically compelling force. Hume was very much concerned with the problem of just what kind of force an argument that was not logically compelling could have; and he was even more concerned (perhaps) with the problem of how the logical structure of non-compelling argument could best be exhibited so that the logic of the argument would not be confused with its force. He made significant contributions to both of these problems; and I think he knew what he was doing well enough not to deserve the charge of inconsistency which Barker seems inclined to bring against him. There are some questions which he did not address, for the very good reason that they could only arise, or at least they could only be formulated clearly, as a result of the clarification of our ideas and our situation that Hume himself achieved. His distinction between "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" may be overly simplistic. But in all its simplicity this distinction is powerful enough to enable Hume to deal quite shortly with any claim that it is inconsistent to want to achieve this goal of knowing and saying what is true, just because we have shown that we have no logical guarantee that we shall achieve it. Christian orthodoxy has always maintained that we are all of us equally "sinners"; but no orthodox Christian moralist has ever maintained the Stoic paradox that all sins are equal. It is precisely because we know that we cannot achieve Stoic wisdom that we cannot possibly be tempted to 20. accept that paradox. Hume's achievement was to show that (in spite of the serpent's false promise) our situation with respect to knowledge has always been just as parlous as our situation with respect to action. But even in these unhappy circumstances it is not inconsistent to strive for whatever measure of truth we can achieve; and to strive at the same time for absolute logical clarity about the limits of our insight and about the comparative merits of all proposed approaches to the goal. But I must not devote my time to an issue that Barker wisely asks us to keep an open mind about. I want to discuss the form and substance of the arguments with which Barker supports the thesis that I do agree with, rather than take up an aside of his that I happen not to agree with. So then, first, let us consider the fault that he finds in the "fifth way" of Thomas. He says that it "begs the question". It "obscures the nexus of controversy" because the first premiss of the syllogism makes a crucial assumption that needs to be proved. Now I deny that the "fifth way" obscures the nexus of controversy in that way. Thomas (and all of his competent hearers) knew perfectly well that his first premiss had not been universally accepted. He was stating the view of Aristotle about the generally purposive character of nature, and he knew that it had been doubted. But he did not think that a rational believer could hesitate about the choice between Aristotle's position and that of the atheist defenders of chance. Anyone who did hesitate was a fool, and arguments could not touch him. That some men were fools, and could "say in their heart, 'There is no God'", was part of the "problem of evil" which we must consign trustfully to the inscrutable wisdom of God (save in so far as Scripture reveals to us the origin of and reason for our fallen condition). In Hume's world, Aristotle's conception of the orderliness of Nature had been supplanted by Newton's. Newton accepted the atomist view that "natural bodies... (shrink)

I have spent more than thirty years struggling with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit; and I am absolutely weary of wrestling with the angel I found in it. So when I was pressed to contribute to the silver anniversary issue of The Owl I decided to take the easy way, and to send in an essay on the Phenomenology and the Logic that is literally the last word from the two-volume commentary that will be published as Hegel’s Ladder. Far from being (...) complete the “Hegel Renaissance” is still only in its adolescence. But my part in it is now over. Laus Deo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE 'NATURALNESS' OF NATURAL RELIGION Among Hume's philosophical works the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is unquestionably the easiest to read. One can easily imagine a precocious fifteen-year-old like Miss Jane Austen — who set herself to write her own History of England only a decade or so after Hume's death — coming upon the little volume that nephew David published, reading it with great excitement (and a steadily rising (...) intellectual fury), and recording the same verdict that Pamphilus offers us, but in much more 2 trenchant terms. we can also imagine her reading it again twenty years later, armed with an explanatory commentary like the one that Stanley Tweyman has now given us, and maintaining her position (this time in the more temperate terms of Pamphilus himself). For Miss Jane Austen at thirty-five had one of the most critically commonsensical minds of her time; and she was also a person of deep religious feeling. It is in defence of her feelings, rather than of my own, that this essay is written. For she was close enough to what I take to have been Hume's position to have agreed with it once she had understood it; I, on the other hand, am not. To claim that a meeting of minds between the Rector of Steventon' s daughter and the Scottish apostle of infidelity is even conceivable may seem ridiculous. Hume himself would never have thought it likely. But even if my estimate is unduly optimistic, it serves at least to underline the importance of Tweyman' s constructive commentary. For without Tweyman 's commentary, Jane Austen's reaction to the Dialogues would have been one of morally indignant, and quite categorical rejection at any age. With it to guide her, she would have been appreciative and sympathetic, even if she was still ultimately dissatisfied. (I hope to persuade those who admire them both, as I do, that David Hume and Jane Austen belonged to the same 'invisible Church'). To read the Dialogues is still relatively easy. We only have to know that we are listening to a conversation between educated men in a society where everyone professes (at least) to believe that the world they were born into was created by a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely just and good, and, above all, infinitely loving towards the only creatures in his world who are capable of recognizing what he has done for them. The Rector of Steventon's daughter would have had difficulty in appreciating the discussion properly, because she had some further, more specific, beliefs about God's relations with his beloved children. We have some (smaller) difficulties now, because we are far from believing so much (and many of us believe nothing of the sort at all). But to grasp what we are supposed to believe is not difficult; and once we know that, the conversation itself is easy to follow. Only once does it seem to get out of hand to the point of actual implausibility; and there are only three things about it that are genuinely puzzling. The conversation does not reach any conclusion — at least none that convinces us. We are not convinced because the obvious solution for the most pervasive of our three puzzles is the assumption that Philo, the speaker who appears to state an agreed conclusion, is only pretending. That he should pretend is quite right and proper for a modern philosophical dialogue. Augustine may have written straightforward expository (or 'dogmatic') dialogues; and Berkeley, following in the wake of some of Augustine's medieval imitators, may have managed to raise this form into the best imitation of a live discussion that has been achieved for the dogmatic dialogue in English. But the religious doctrine of these 'dogmatists' was orthodox. One glance at the fortunes of the great Italian dialogue writers — Bruno, Galileo, Campanella — is enough to teach us that it was not prudent to let one's own doctrine win openly when one was teaching against the Church. Jane Austen would certainly have adopted the hypothesis that Philo's professions of religious feeling are hypocritical throughout the discussion. She would have assumed that Cleanthes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE 'NATURALNESS' OF NATURAL RELIGION Among Hume's philosophical works the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is unquestionably the easiest to read. One can easily imagine a precocious fifteen-year-old like Miss Jane Austen — who set herself to write her own History of England only a decade or so after Hume's death — coming upon the little volume that nephew David published, reading it with great excitement (and a steadily rising (...) intellectual fury), and recording the same verdict that Pamphilus offers us, but in much more 2 trenchant terms. we can also imagine her reading it again twenty years later, armed with an explanatory commentary like the one that Stanley Tweyman has now given us, and maintaining her position (this time in the more temperate terms of Pamphilus himself). For Miss Jane Austen at thirty-five had one of the most critically commonsensical minds of her time; and she was also a person of deep religious feeling. It is in defence of her feelings, rather than of my own, that this essay is written. For she was close enough to what I take to have been Hume's position to have agreed with it once she had understood it; I, on the other hand, am not. To claim that a meeting of minds between the Rector of Steventon' s daughter and the Scottish apostle of infidelity is even conceivable may seem ridiculous. Hume himself would never have thought it likely. But even if my estimate is unduly optimistic, it serves at least to underline the importance of Tweyman' s constructive commentary. For without Tweyman 's commentary, Jane Austen's reaction to the Dialogues would have been one of morally indignant, and quite categorical rejection at any age. With it to guide her, she would have been appreciative and sympathetic, even if she was still ultimately dissatisfied. (I hope to persuade those who admire them both, as I do, that David Hume and Jane Austen belonged to the same 'invisible Church'). To read the Dialogues is still relatively easy. We only have to know that we are listening to a conversation between educated men in a society where everyone professes (at least) to believe that the world they were born into was created by a God who is all-knowing and all-powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely just and good, and, above all, infinitely loving towards the only creatures in his world who are capable of recognizing what he has done for them. The Rector of Steventon's daughter would have had difficulty in appreciating the discussion properly, because she had some further, more specific, beliefs about God's relations with his beloved children. We have some (smaller) difficulties now, because we are far from believing so much (and many of us believe nothing of the sort at all). But to grasp what we are supposed to believe is not difficult; and once we know that, the conversation itself is easy to follow. Only once does it seem to get out of hand to the point of actual implausibility; and there are only three things about it that are genuinely puzzling. The conversation does not reach any conclusion — at least none that convinces us. We are not convinced because the obvious solution for the most pervasive of our three puzzles is the assumption that Philo, the speaker who appears to state an agreed conclusion, is only pretending. That he should pretend is quite right and proper for a modern philosophical dialogue. Augustine may have written straightforward expository (or 'dogmatic') dialogues; and Berkeley, following in the wake of some of Augustine's medieval imitators, may have managed to raise this form into the best imitation of a live discussion that has been achieved for the dogmatic dialogue in English. But the religious doctrine of these 'dogmatists' was orthodox. One glance at the fortunes of the great Italian dialogue writers — Bruno, Galileo, Campanella — is enough to teach us that it was not prudent to let one's own doctrine win openly when one was teaching against the Church. Jane Austen would certainly have adopted the hypothesis that Philo's professions of religious feeling are hypocritical throughout the discussion. She would have assumed that Cleanthes... (shrink)

Through the study of selected works of literature the author seeks what they show to be philosophically interesting without it being said to be so in these works.

Plato was born around 2,500 years ago. He lived in a small city-state in Greece and busied himself with the problems of his fellow Greeks, a people living in scattered cities around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In all he tried to do for the Greeks he failed. Why, then, should people in the modern world bother to read what he had to say? Does it make sense to go to a Greek thinker for advice on the problems of (...) an age so different from his own? To anyone who has questioned the relevance of Plato to the modern world Richard Crossman’s lively book provides a brilliant reply. The problems facing Plato’s world bear striking parallels to ours today, the author maintains, so who better to turn to than Plato, the most objective and most ruthless observer of the failures of Greek society. Crossman’s engaging text provides both an informed introduction to Greek ideas and an original and controversial view of Plato himself. (shrink)

Plato was born around 2,500 years ago. He lived in a small city-state in Greece and busied himself with the problems of his fellow Greeks, a people living in scattered cities around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In all he tried to do for the Greeks he failed. Why, then, should people in the modern world bother to read what he had to say? Does it make sense to go to a Greek thinker for advice on the problems of (...) an age so different from his own? To anyone who has questioned the relevance of Plato to the modern world Richard Crossman’s lively book provides a brilliant reply. The problems facing Plato’s world bear striking parallels to ours today, the author maintains, so who better to turn to than Plato, the most objective and most ruthless observer of the failures of Greek society. Crossman’s engaging text provides both an informed introduction to Greek ideas and an original and controversial view of Plato himself. (shrink)

Working memory limits are best defined in terms of the complexity of the relations that can be processed in parallel. Complexity is defined as the number of related dimensions or sources of variation. A unary relation has one argument and one source of variation; its argument can be instantiated in only one way at a time. A binary relation has two arguments, two sources of variation, and two instantiations, and so on. Dimensionality is related to the number of chunks, because (...) both attributes on dimensions and chunks are independent units of information of arbitrary size. Studies of working memory limits suggest that there is a soft limit corresponding to the parallel processing of one quaternary relation. More complex concepts are processed by or In segmentation, tasks are broken into components that do not exceed processing capacity and can be processed serially. In conceptual chunking, representations are to reduce their dimensionality and hence their processing load, but at the cost of making some relational information inaccessible. Neural net models of relational representations show that relations with more arguments have a higher computational cost that coincides with experimental findings on higher processing loads in humans. Relational complexity is related to processing load in reasoning and sentence comprehension and can distinguish between the capacities of higher species. The complexity of relations processed by children increases with age. Implications for neural net models and theories of cognition and cognitive development are discussed. (shrink)

Both individuals and governments around the world have willingly sacrificed a great deal to meet the collective action problem posed by Covid-19. This has provided some commentators with newfound hope about the possibility that we will be able to solve what is arguably the greatest collective action problem of all time: global climate change. In this paper we argue that this is overly optimistic. We defend two main claims. First, these two collective action problems are so different that the actions (...) that individuals have taken to try to solve the problem posed by Covid-19 unfortunately provide little indication that we will be able to solve the problem posed by climate change. Second, the actions that states have taken in response to Covid-19 might—if anything—even be evidence that they will continue to fail to cooperate towards a solution to the climate crisis. (shrink)

Plato was born around 2,500 years ago. He lived in a small city-state in Greece and busied himself with the problems of his fellow Greeks, a people living in scattered cities around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In all he tried to do for the Greeks he failed. Why, then, should people in the modern world bother to read what he had to say? Does it make sense to go to a Greek thinker for advice on the problems of (...) an age so different from his own? To anyone who has questioned the relevance of Plato to the modern world Richard Crossman’s lively book provides a brilliant reply. The problems facing Plato’s world bear striking parallels to ours today, the author maintains, so who better to turn to than Plato, the most objective and most ruthless observer of the failures of Greek society. Crossman’s engaging text provides both an informed introduction to Greek ideas and an original and controversial view of Plato himself. (shrink)

How linguistic structures evolve so as to become easier to process is addressed by Isbilen and Christiansen for the Now‐or‐Never bottleneck. The authors suggest that this fundamental challenge in language processing is coped with by rapid compression of the transient linguistic input into chunks then to be passed on. As linguistic structures that can be chunked more easily tend to stabilize and proliferate, language evolves to fit learners’ cognitive capabilities.

ABSTRACTTreating conditionals as probabilistic statements has been referred to as a defining feature of the “new paradigm” in cognitive psychology. Doing so is attractive for several reasons, but it complicates the problem of assessing the merits of conditional arguments. We consider several variables that relate to judging the persuasiveness of conditional arguments with uncertain premises. We also explore ways of judging the consistency of people's beliefs as represented by components of conditional arguments. Experimental results provide evidence that inconsistencies in beliefs (...) are more prevalent if the arguments’ components are spatially and temporally dispersed than if they are contiguous in space and time. This supports the idea that assuring the consistency among even a small number of beliefs is difficult to do, especially if the beliefs in question are not brought into consciousness at the same time; but consistency can be enhanced when beliefs are considered simultaneously or nea... (shrink)

F. H. Bradley’s work was for a long time neglected by English speaking philosophers. He had virtually ceased to have any readers by the time of his death in 1924. But in the last few years there has been a small resurgence of interest in his work. Richard Wollheim produced a significant monograph for the Penguin Philosophers series in 1959; and Barnes and Noble published Anthony Manser’s sympathetic study of Bradley’s logic in 1983. But MacNiven has now returned to his (...) first book, Ethical Studies, and in so doing has enabled us to put the later metaphysical and logical work in what I believe is the right perspective. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley’s work was for a long time neglected by English speaking philosophers. He had virtually ceased to have any readers by the time of his death in 1924. But in the last few years there has been a small resurgence of interest in his work. Richard Wollheim produced a significant monograph for the Penguin Philosophers series in 1959; and Barnes and Noble published Anthony Manser’s sympathetic study of Bradley’s logic in 1983. But MacNiven has now returned to his (...) first book, Ethical Studies, and in so doing has enabled us to put the later metaphysical and logical work in what I believe is the right perspective. (shrink)

Research Objective: This study focuses on ADs in the Netherlands and introduces a cross-cultural perspective by comparing it with other countries. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to a panel comprising 1621 people representative of the Dutch population. The response was 86%. Results: 95% of the respondents didn't have an AD, and 24% of these were not familiar with the idea of drawing up an AD. Most of those familiar with ADs knew about the Advanced Euthanasia Directive (AED, 64%). Both low (...) education and the presence of a religious conviction that plays an important role in one's life increase the chance of not wanting to draw up an AD. Also not having experienced a request for euthanasia from someone else, and the inconceivability of asking for euthanasia yourself, increase the chance of not wanting to draw up an AD. Discussion: This study shows that the subjects of palliative care and end-of-life-decision-making were very much dominated by the issue of euthanasia in the Netherlands. The AED was the best known AD; and factors that can be linked to euthanasia play an important role in whether or not people choose to draw up an AD. This differentiates the Netherlands from other countries and, when it comes to ADs, the global differences between countries and cultures are still so large that the highest possible goals, at this moment in time, are observing and possibly learning from other cultural settings. (shrink)

In the final volume of his Homo Sacer series, The use of bodies, Agamben claims that for Foucault ethics never escapes the horizon of governmentality and therefore his conception of ethics is ‘strategic.’ In light of this criticism, motivated by Agamben’s Pauline conception of ‘use,’ we reassess the status and function of ethics in Foucault’s late lectures. We investigate how Foucault’s approach to ethics develops from his treatment of liberal governmentality and also how its methodological foundation is developed in an (...) interpretation of truth-telling in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Our interpretation emphasizes the ambiguous status of ethics in Foucault’s late work: on the one hand, Agamben is right that Foucault assigns an irreducible strategic function to ethics thereby connecting it intrinsically to governmentality. On the other hand, Agamben overlooks how Foucault’s interpretation of Sophocles implies a conception of governmentality which emphasizes how ethical practices cannot be captured solely in strategic terms. Foucault’s ‘anarcheological’ approach thus articulates a dimension of ethics that remains, using Agamben’s own terms, ‘ungovernable’ and therefore also genuinely creative. Even so, Foucault’s approach to ethics remains in Agamben’s perspective on the deepest level faced with an antinomy that Agamben seeks to mediate with his Pauline conception of ‘inoperativity.’. (shrink)

This introduction to quantum mechanics requires little previous knowledge of physics. The book consists of three separate projects completed with varying degrees of success. The first chapters discuss classical physics with special attention to the concepts of matter and light. The middle chapters are devoted to quantum physics itself and how it developed from, and accounted for, problematic phenomena of earlier physics. Detailed, although not heavily mathematical, attention is given to the key experiments of quantum physics. These chapters go on (...) to discuss the so-called elementary particles, conservation laws, "strangeness," spin, various field theories, and other topics of current research. The final chapters are devoted to the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. This section, focused mainly on causality and free will, is superficial and disappointing--of more interest to ethics and theology than to the philosophy of science. The philosophical remarks which were made parenthetically in the first two sections of the book were more provocative and might well have been expanded in this section. If this last section were eliminated, the first section abbreviated, and the book released in paperback, the book would be a better buy as informative introduction to quantum mechanics. There are many diagrams, tables, illustrations, and photographs, as well as a glossary of technical terms and a critical bibliography.--S. O. H. (shrink)

"What is most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking." Thus Heidegger sets the tone for these 1951 lectures indicating that he has in mind a special and lofty notion of thinking--a notion that can be understood only by following the master as he demonstrates how to think by showing what it is, after all, that calls for thinking. Heidegger sees thinking and Being as inextricably related, each the key to the other. Thinking is "relatedness (...) to Being." Furthermore, "only when man speaks does he think." Thus we must learn to listen, really listen, if we are to know what thinking is. Nietzsche looms as an important figure in this discussion, and the key to the understanding of Nietzsche, says Heidegger, is the concept of revenge. For Nietzsche, the bridge to the highest hope for man is his deliverance from revenge. Heidegger interprets this to mean that because revenge tries to affect the past and thus cannot understand time as a passing away, it is only through deliverance from revenge that man can be in proper orientation to time and thus to Being. The awkward translation of the title, Was Heisst Denken?, is justified by the text because Heidegger closely examines the German wording of the question--an examination which involves philosophical discussion of the notions of calling and naming. The latter sections of the book are an exhaustive--or should I say exhausting--exegesis of Parmenides' fragment 6: χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ'ἒον ἔμμεναι. The translation starts out as the traditional "One should both say and think that Being is," and ends up through Heidegger's characteristic brand of creative etymology, as "useful is the letting-lie-before-us, so taking-to-heart, too: beings in being." That is, in order to think, we should allow things to be as they are, pay attention to what they are, and know that we are related to them.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Unless the title is a McLuhanesque play on words--which Finkelstein would never allow himself--the book is mistitled, for Finkelstein dwells almost exclusively on what he considers to be the nonsense of McLuhan. Writing with all the venom of an anti-smut campaigner whose moral principles are threatened because they are too weak and too inflexible, Finkelstein wages his polemics against McLuhan in an effort to discredit him and expose him as a false prophet. What nettles Finkelstein most is that McLuhan, a (...) professor--a guardian of truth and goodness--should be so irresponsible as to fail to denunciate T.V. commercials, Madison avenue mind-manipulators, T.V.'s causing the atrophy of the ability to read and think, and the other bogeymen of humanist dogma. How dare McLuhan, the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at a great University, challenge the foundations of the humanities themselves? Finkelstein is at least thorough in his refusal to come to grips with what is valid in McLuhan: he does us the service of pointing out the errors in McLuhan's reading of history, in his dictum that the medium is the message, in his suggestion that media are extensions of man, and in his advocacy of media involvement. The final and the least weak chapter draws a parallel between McLuhan and Marx, showing how McLuhanism can lead to a world totalitarian monolith. We should pay Finkelstein the courtesy, however, of pointing out that there is a sense in which his criticisms, if not always valid, are at least important to keep in mind while seeking to understand McLuhan without being seduced by him.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Yarnold is motivated by the thesis that theology must interpret science. It does so presumably for the benefit of the religious community, being careful that the formulations emanating from such an interpretation are "true to the facts of biblical and Christian experience." Yarnold's main focus is the distinction between time and eternity, or between the temporal world and the eternal world. The book is a valiant attempt to explore post-Newtonian concepts of space and time and space-time, and to relate them (...) to the traditional theological notion of eternity. After exploring our biological and physical awareness of time and relating that awareness with the law of entropy and after exploring some biblical concepts of time, Yarnold reaches the formula that we in the temporal world experience successiveness, while God in the eternal realm experiences everything all at once. "The space-time continuum may be regarded as a valid representation of the external world as apprehended by Deity." Unfortunately, when he is through investigating the dynamism of modern science, he continues to cling to a basically static and traditional theology which seems to ignore that dynamism.—S. O. H. (shrink)

This collection of essays was originally designed as an anthology of Lamprecht's earlier articles. However, about one third of the essays collected here are new for this volume and serve to integrate the old essays so that the volume has become "a record of the course of his thought... and a kind of epilogue to his career of philosophical speculation." For Lamprecht, naturalism is a "philosophical position, empirical in method, that regards everything that exists or occurs to be conditioned in (...) its existence or occurrence by causal factors within one all encompassing system of nature." The author seems to be uncomfortable in the face of extreme solutions to philosophic problems. He takes a mediating position between "determinacy and indeterminacy," "causality and contingency," the primacy of "subject-matter" and the primacy of "method." Lamprecht is at his best when exploring the implications of his theories rather than when defending them. His observations on freedom and necessity, the nature of man, the role of historiography in philosophy, and the question of religion bear a richness of insight that must be appreciated regardless of the reader's attitude toward the author's philosophical position.—S. O. H. (shrink)

in a scientific way, and takes the patient and his family into his confidence. Thus he learns something from the sufferer, and at the same time instructs the invalid to the best of his power. He does not give his prescriptions until he has won the patient's support, and when he has done so, he steadilY aims at producing complete restoration to health by persuading the sufferer in to compliance (Laws 4. 720 b-e, [28]). This passage shows the perennial nature (...) of the problems of treating the patient as a person. It shows as well the historical'depth of philosophical interest in medicine. The history of philosophy includes more reflections upon medical ethics than the casual reader might suspect. Many of these reflections are pertinent to contemporary issues such as abortion and population control. Plato, for example, recommends abortion in cases of incest (Republic 5. 461c); and Aristotle argues for letting seriously deformed children die, while forbidding infanticide as a means of popUlation control, suggesting instead the use of early abortions. 'As to the exposure in rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in the number of children... let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what mayor may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation' (Politics VII, 16,335 b20-26, [4]). (shrink)