The text is divided into four chapters: 1.0 Metaphysics, transcendental philosophy and analytic philosophy; 2.0 The senses of being ; 3.0 Being and existence ; and 4.0 Modalities. After a defense of contemporary analytic philosophy against the usual charge of its supposedly superficial character and its lack of philosophical significance, Llano offers a thoughtful reading of Wittgenstein against his ancient, medieval and Kantian scholastic background. Following Gilson's historical analysis, Llano diagnoses a "tendency to reflect upon concepts with the risk of (...) forgetting the real things whose natures these concepts represent.... While the scholasticism most directly bound to Aristotle kept the consideration of real, concrete being firmly in view, Duns Scotus--in a direction already pointed out by Avicenna--was completely occupied with the concept of pure being ; a concept which, by being abstract, was understood as univocal. This perspective led him to 'prescind' from the actual reality of things, i.e., from their real existence; because, although existence itself is a notion or ratio knowable in the object, it is nevertheless required as actually belonging to the object in so far as it is knowable: 'existentia non est per se ratio obiecti, ut scibile est'". Against this background, being is taken as intelligibility, involving a relationship to the understanding that logicizes the meaning of being itself so that "the formal-essential dimension takes unto itself the whole weight of reality" and "esse is reduced to a quasi-accidental mode of the essence", which comes to be thematized in its own right as "the real modality, until a linguistic analysis, which can accept only the logical modality, passing through the logico-transcendental mediation of the gnoseological modality". Being is accordingly progressively "reabsorbed into human thought and later into various anthropological dimensions ". Section 1.3, "Toward a realist semantics," starts from Frege's attack on psychologism in the Foundations of Arithmetic and leads to a reinstatement of Aristotelian semantics in section 1.4, "Word and concept." Chapter 2 deals with the standard topics: 2.1, Predication, identity, existence; 2.2, being in propositions and being in reality; 2.3, accidental being ; and 2.4, being as it pertains to truth. Chapter 3 on being and existence suggests the thought-provoking comparison: as natura is to suppositum in Aquinas, so is Begriff to Gegenstand in Frege. Chapter 4, on the modalities of being, gets to the heart of the metaphysical issue of what happens when one of the modalities of being is substituted for being as the foundation of metaphysics. In Section 4.1, on actuality and facticity, Llano deftly centers attention on Heidegger's Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, where Heidegger maintains that the Thomistic notion of actus essendi is merely another instance of the forgetfulness of being. Llano rightly judges that Heidegger's understanding of an opposition between essence as one thing and existence as another is derived from a position of Giles of Rome and has nothing to do with the position of Aquinas himself. Llano cites Avicenna roughly five times as often as he does Giles of Rome; Heidegger, apparently relying on hearsay reports, mentions Avicenna only once in the Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, without citing any text, and mentions Giles of Rome three times, citing only one text. Heidegger uses a late scholastic as his authority for discrediting Aquinas. Llano quotes some of the explicit Thomistic criticisms against Avicenna including one that Heidegger partially omits ; the passage Heidegger suppresses begins "Opinio Avicennae fuit...." Though rhetorically subtle, Llano's clearly and forcefully written book is loaded with philosophical insights, bridges conversational gaps between analysts and phenomenologists, and offers a glimpse at some of the most important medieval notions sedimented within contemporary philosophy.--E. M. Macierowski, Washington, D.C. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

Is God's foreknowledge compatible with human freedom? One of the most attractive attempts to reconcile the two is the Ockhamistic view, which subscribes not only to human freedom and divine omniscience, but retains our most fundamental intuitions concerning God and time: that the past is immutable, that God exists and acts in time, and that there is no backward causation. In order to achieve all that, Ockhamists distinguish ‘hard facts’ about the past which cannot possibly be altered from ‘soft facts’ (...) about the past which are alterable, and argue that God's prior beliefs about human actions are soft facts about the past. (shrink)

Two experiments examine the effects of unreportable hints on anagram solving performance and on solvers' subjective experience of insight. In Experiment 1, after seeing a hint presented too briefly to identify, participants solved anagrams preceded by the solution fastest and solved anagrams preceded by unrelated hints slowest. Participants' “warmth” ratings for solution hints were more insight-like than those for unrelated hints. In Experiment 2 a hint, or no hint, was presented at one of three different exposure durations . Participants benefited (...) from solution-relevant hints that were either unreportable or reportable, but showed a cost only for unrelated hints that were reportable. Participants' ratings of their insight experiences showed that unreportable solution and semantically related hints produced more insight-like experiences than did unrelated hints. The results suggest that unreportable processing of solution-related information is important for the insight experience. (shrink)

This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

Recombinant DNA technology will soon allow physicians an opportunity to carry out both somatic cell- and Germ-Line gene therapy. While somatic cell gene therapy raises no new ethical problems, gene therapy of gametes, fertilized eggs or early embryos does raise several novel concerns. The first issue discussed here relates to making a distinction between negative and positive eugenics; the second issue deals with the evolutionary consequences of lost genetic diversity. In distinguishing between positive and negative eugenics, the concept of malady (...) is applied as a definitional criterion for identifying genetic disorders that could qualify for Germ-Line therapy. Because gene replacement techniques are currently unavailable for humans, and because even if they were possible the number of people involved would be quite small, the loss of diversity concern seems moot. Finally, we dissuss the issue of iatrogenic disorders associated with gene therapy and discuss several ‘real world considerations.’. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their (...) marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering. (shrink)

Comparatively speaking, philosophy has not been especially long-winded in attempting to answer questions about what is funny and why we should think so. There is the standard debate of many centuries’ standing between superiority and incongruity accounts of humor, which for the most part attempt to identify the intentional objects of our amusement.1 There is the more recent debate about humor and morality, about whether jokes themselves may be regarded as immoral or about whether it can in certain circumstances be (...) wrong to laugh.2 There is even apparently some disagreement about whether amusement is an emotion proper or a different kind of psychological attitude altogether. While I have almost despite myself taken .. (shrink)

Born of a terrible insomnia--"a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell"--this book presents the youthful Cioran, a self- described "Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a (...) theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to a metaphysical revelation. "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."--Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix "The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. . . . Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."-- Publishers Weekly, starred review "This is self-pity as epigram, the sort of dyspeptic pronouncement that gets most people kicked out of bed but that has kept Mr. Cioran going for the rest of his life."--Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review Emil M. Cioran (1911-1995) is the author of numerous works, including The Fall into Time, A Short History of Decay, and Tears and Saints. (shrink)

Romanian born E.M. Cioran, who lived in Paris until his death in 1995, writes of politics, of history, and of the utopian dream. "Cioran has a claim to be regarded as among the handful of original minds... writing today".--NEW YORK TIMES.