Book Information Hume's Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'. By Stephen Buckle. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2001. Pp. xi + 351. Hardback, 40.

Book Information Hume's Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'. By Stephen Buckle. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2001. Pp. xi + 351. Hardback, £40.

© Mind Association 2017Shapiro’s wide-ranging and thought-provoking book marks a major milestone in the recent debate initiated by JC Beall and Greg Restall’s influential Logical Pluralism. Pluralism about a given subject, such as etiquette or logic, is loosely characterized as ‘the view that different accounts of the subject are equally correct, or equally good, or equally legitimate, or perhaps even true’. Shapiro’s book offers us many ways to adopt ‘an eclectic orientation to logic’. But his official position, which sometimes takes (...) some unexpected twists, is incrementally developed over the seven main chapters. Before we delve into some of the details, it’s worth outlining the overarching argument, helpfully summarized in a short closing chapter....The first chapter presents the framework Shapiro employs for discussing pluralism and related issues. The key notion is Crispin Wright’s folk-relativism—slogan: ‘There is... (shrink)

A laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demon is proposed that utilizes the electric field energy of an open-gap p-n junction. Numerical results from a commercial semiconductor device simulator (Silvaco International–Atlas) verify primary results from a 1-D analytic model. Present day fabrication techniques appear adequate for laboratory tests of principle.

Freeman's pioneering work -- and neurodynamics in general -- has largely ignored specification of an anatomical framework within which features of coherent objects are represented, associated, deleted, and manipulated in computations. Recent theoretical work suggests such a framework can emerge during embryogenesis by selection of neuron ensembles and synaptic connections that maximize the magnitude of synchrony while approaching ultra-small-world connectivity. The emergent structures correspond to those of both columnar and non-columnar cortex. With initial connections thus organized, spatio-temporal information in sensory (...) inputs can generate systematic and specific patterns of synchronous oscillation, with consequent synaptic storage. The theoretical assemblies of connections resemble experimentally observed 'lego sets', while facilitation and interference among synchronous patterns, particularly when executed by fast synapses under metabolic entanglement, imply powerful parallel computation. (shrink)

This is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the history of understanding of the human mind or soul and its relationship to the body, through the course of more than two thousand years. Thirteen specially commissioned chapters, each written by a recognized expert, discuss such figures as the doctors Hippocrates and Galen, the theologians St Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, and philosophers from Plato to Leibniz.

The glucocorticoid receptor belongs to an important class of transcription factors that alter the expression of target genes in response to a specific hormone signal. The glucocorticoid receptor can function at least at three levels: (1) recruitment of the general transcription machinery; (2) modulation of transcription factor action, independent of DNA binding, through direct protein‐protein interactions; and (3) modulation of chromatin structure to allow the assembly of other gene regulatory proteins and/or the general transcription machinery on the DNA. This review (...) will focus on the multifaceted nature of protein‐protein interactions involving the glucocorticoid receptor and basal transcription factors, coactivators and other transcription factors, occurring at these different levels of regulation. (shrink)

The study examined the influence of the Pond Report on the teaching of medical ethics in the London medical schools. A questionnaire was given to both medical students and college officers. All medical colleges reported that ethics was included in the curriculum. However, from students' replies, it seems that attendance of optional courses is low and that not all current final year medical students have had any formal teaching in medical ethics. Stronger guidelines are necessary to ensure appropriate ethical training (...) in London medical schools. (shrink)

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Psyche and Soma is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the conceptions of the human soul or mind and body, through the course of more than two thousand years of Western history. Thirteen specially commissioned chapters, each written by a recogized expert, discuss figures such as the physicians Hippocrates, Galen, Stahl, and Cabanis; theologians St Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas; and philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Leibniz, and La Mettrie. The chapters explore in chronlogical sequence the views of these writers on (...) such questions as the soul's immortality, the control it exerts over the body, how mental disturbances arise out of bodily imbalances, and the roles of the priest and the physician in promoting spiritual and mental health. Psyche and Soma will be a key point of reference and a rich source of illumination in this central area of human inquiry. (shrink)

J. Budziszewski responds in turn to each of the papers that were presented as part of the session honoring him at the twenty-fourth annual conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in October 2016. He responds to the comments of John P. Hittinger, William McCormick, SJ, Kevin E. Stuart, Matthew J. Wright, and Paul R. DeHart.

Early in this century, only a few biologists accepted that natural selection was the chief cause of evolution, until the independent calculations of John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), Sewall Wright and R. A. Fisher demonstrated that ideal populations subject to Mendel's laws could behave as Darwin had said they would. Evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith, a student of Haldane's, has raised the question of why Haldane, who was no naturalist, took up the subject of evolution, and he suggests that (...) the answer may have to do with Haldane's lively interest in religion. In fact Maynard Smith's answer has much more evidence in its favour than he knew. (shrink)

This chapter discusses author's view a Thomistic‐like dualism. Next, it lays out the details of his position and he argues that it has certain advantages over physicalist treatments of the human person, and, to a lesser degree, over alternate versions of substance dualism. Then, he responds to some objections against his position. He accepts constituent realism regarding properties (and relations), according to which properties (and relations) are universals that, when exemplified (and they need not be to exist), become constituents of (...) the ordinary particulars that have them. Furthermore, with the Thomistic framework in mind, the chapter offers his view of a human person. Finally, there is the argument that attempts to show that the unity of consciousness cannot be explained if one is a brain, because a brain is just an aggregate of different physical (separable) parts. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Section One: The Backdrop for Locating Consciousness in a Naturalist Ontology Section Two: The AC Section Three: John Searle and Contingent Correlation Section Four: Timothy O'Connor and Emergent Necessitation Section Five: Colin McGinn and Mysterian “Naturalism” Conclusion Further Reading References.

In their thought-provoking article, Sedlakova and Trachsel (2023) defend the view that the status—both epistemic and ethical—of Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI) used in psychotherapy is complicated. While therapeutic CAI seems to be more than a mere tool implementing particular therapeutic techniques, it falls short of being a “digital therapist.” One of the main arguments supporting the latter claim is that even though “the interaction with CAI happens in the course of conversation… the conversation is profoundly different from a conversation with (...) a human therapist” (Sedlakova and Trachsel 2023, 8). In particular, unlike a human therapist, CAI cannot help its users gain new insight and self-understanding (Sedlakova and Trachsel 2023). We agree that currently available therapeutic CAI cannot be considered a “digital therapist,” however, we think that the issue surrounding the acquisition of new self-understanding in the interaction with therapeutic CAI is more complicated than Sedlakova and Trachsel suggest. (shrink)

Despite Vancil’s (1979) proclamation over twenty years ago that topoi have been abandoned in argument theory, this essay contends that topoi should have a vital role in contemporary argumentation theory. Four key areas are identified where topoi are (or can be) essential tools for argumentation: Locating argument, building argument, development of critical thinking, and argument pedagogy. As a result, teachers and students of argument can both benefit from a (re)discovery of topoi.

Growing demand for broadly accessible mental health care, together with the rapid development of new technologies, trigger discussions about the feasibility of psychotherapeutic interventions based on interactions with Conversational Artificial Intelligence (CAI). Many authors argue that while currently available CAI can be a useful supplement for human-delivered psychotherapy, it is not yet capable of delivering fully fledged psychotherapy on its own. The goal of this paper is to investigate what are the most important obstacles on our way to developing CAI (...) systems capable of delivering psychotherapy in the future. To this end, we formulate and discuss three challenges central to this quest. Firstly, we might not be able to develop effective AI-based psychotherapy unless we deepen our understanding of what makes human-delivered psychotherapy effective. Secondly, assuming that it requires building a therapeutic relationship, it is not clear whether psychotherapy can be delivered by non-human agents. Thirdly, conducting psychotherapy might be a problem too complicated for narrow AI, i.e., AI proficient in dealing with only relatively simple and well-delineated tasks. If this is the case, we should not expect CAI to be capable of delivering fully-fledged psychotherapy until the so-called “general” or “human-like” AI is developed. While we believe that all these challenges can ultimately be overcome, we think that being mindful of them is crucial to ensure well-balanced and steady progress on our path to AI-based psychotherapy. (shrink)

The use of tensed language and the metaphor of set ‘formation’ found in informal descriptions of the iterative conception of set are seldom taken at all seriously. Both are eliminated in the nonmodal stage theories that formalise this account. To avoid the paradoxes, such accounts deny the Maximality thesis, the compelling thesis that any sets can form a set. This paper seeks to save the Maximality thesis by taking the tense more seriously than has been customary (although not literally). A (...) modal stage theory, MST, is developed in a bimodal language, governed by a tenselike logic. Such a language permits a very natural axiomatisation of the iterative conception, which upholds the Maximality thesis. It is argued that the modal approach is consonant with mathematical practice and a plausible metaphysics of sets and shown that MST interprets a natural extension of Zermelo set theory less the axiom of Infinity and, when extended with a further axiom concerning the extent of the hierarchy, interprets Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. (shrink)

First published in 1982, this reissue contains a critical exposition of the views of Frege, Dedekind and Peano on the foundations of arithmetic. The last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the foundations of arithmetic. This work analyses both the reasons for this growth of interest within both mathematics and philosophy and the ways in which this study of the foundations of arithmetic led to new insights in philosophy and striking advances in logic. This (...) historical-critical study provides an excellent introduction to the problems of the philosophy of mathematics - problems which have wide implications for philosophy as a whole. This reissue will appeal to students of both mathematics and philosophy who wish to improve their knowledge of logic. (shrink)

We isolate two abstract determinacy theorems for games of length $\omega_1$ from work of Neeman and use them to conclude, from large-cardinal assumptions and an iterability hypothesis in the region of measurable Woodin cardinals thatif the Continuum Hypothesis holds, then all games of length $\omega_1$ which are provably $\Delta_1$ -definable from a universally Baire parameter are determined;all games of length $\omega_1$ with payoff constructible relative to the play are determined; andif the Continuum Hypothesis holds, then there is a model of (...) ${\mathsf{ZFC}}$ containing all reals in which all games of length $\omega_1$ definable from real and ordinal parameters are determined. (shrink)