Although much has been written on Descartes’ thought on animals, not so much has originated in, or has taken full account of, Descartes’ views on emotions. I explore here the extent to which the latter can contribute to the debate on whether he embraced, and to which extent, the doctrine of the bête machine. I first try to show that Descartes’ views on emotions can help offer new support to the skeptical position without necessarily creating new tensions with other central (...) aspects of his philosophy. And second, I sketch the type of theory of animal passions which Descartes could have accepted. The general conclusion I draw is not that Descartes did not hold the view of the bête machine but rather that we can find within his thought a solid stream of ideas, which became stronger towards the end of his life, that points in the opposite direction. (shrink)

Film emotions are genuine emotions whose formation and development is affected by conflictive factors. Whereas their arousal, similar to that of real-life emotions, is disproportionately strengthened by the cinematographic medium, their subsequent course is both weakened and interrupted. Their objects, which I view as members of our personal emotional world (not in terms of their supposed fictionality, as often assumed), are also proper intentional objects of emotions: our fear is about the shark on the screen, our pity about the main (...) character. This view allows also for an explanation of two of film emotions’ neglected features: (a) the viewer's emotional attachment and empathy toward film objects and (b) the long-lasting emotional impact films can have on viewers. (shrink)

I argue that our everyday evaluations of architecture are primarily evaluations of spaces and, in particular, of their inhabitability— that is, whether they serve or can serve to the realization of our individual ideal of life. Inhabitability is not only a functional criterion but an aesthetic one as well. It is aesthetic insofar as the evaluations about inhabitability include evaluations about the quality of the experience of actually doing something in —or simply occupying—a particular space. This aesthetic aspect of our (...) everyday evaluations explains, on one hand, the distinctive features of our everyday preferences for some architectonic spaces over others—namely, their very personal nature; their noticeable value in our daily lives; their inseparability from the activities we plan to realize in those spaces; and the importance of the spaces which are contiguous to the one we are evaluating. And on the other, it both reveals architecture’s significance for the quality of our daily life and serves as a guide for us to choose spaces that improve that quality. (shrink)

Abstract:I defend that the distinctive object of our aesthetic evaluation of films is the full emotional experience, taken as a unified whole, that we go through as we watch a film and that I call the viewer's film emotional life. The aesthetic value itself—the positive quality we perceive in the experience of having had a certain film emotional life—is in the significance we experience in that film emotional life insofar as it contributes to the discovery and the exploration of the (...) viewer's human and individual emotional nature. I finally suggest that the explanation of the positive felt quality of such experience is in the progress it represents regarding our resourcefulness as emotional subjects toward the realization of our individual ideal of life. (shrink)

I defend that Cartesian passions are a function—in fact, the only function—of the mind-body union responsible for guiding us in the pursuit of our (natural) perfection, a perfection that we increase by joining goods that our nature deems to be so. This view is in conflict, on one hand, with those (a majority) who have emphasized either the epistemic or survival role of our passions and, on the other and more precisely, with a recent proposal according to which Cartesian passions (...) should not be even seen as guides for happiness. Against the latter, I will attempt to show that passions perform a guiding function (1) by discriminating what is “important” for us regarding the increase of our natural perfection (which includes informing the soul about the current state of perfection both of the body and of the mind-body union); and (2) by disposing us to act (which includes proposing to the will possible ways of action to increase or maintain our perfection). Our passions are, thus, both informative and motivational. Making explicit their informative role will require, negatively, showing that this does not mean they are reliable and, positively, undertaking a study—largely absent among commentaries—of their specific intentionality. (shrink)

A study of what Descartes calls émotions in his Passions of the Soul suggests that, rather than just a theory of passions—as Descartes himself explicitly claims to be proposing—he was in practice putting forward a more comprehensive theory of passions-émotions, a unified theory which would be closer to what today should properly be called Descartes’ theory of emotions. I try here to make explicit the grounds of this unity by showing that émotions both fit within the functional account Descartes attributes (...) to what he calls passions; and complement the intentionality of passions by expanding it to new objects. In order to show this I offer also a tentative distinction, functionally and intentionally, between passions and émotions in general, on one hand, and, on the other, between the two apparent types of émotions Descartes refers to in the treatise—interior or internal [intérieure] and intellectual [intellectuelle] émotions. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that Descartes's goal with his doctrine of the continuous recreation of the world is to offer a unified and ultimate causal explanation for the possibility of motion and duration in the world, the permanence of created things, and the continuation of their motion and duration. This unified explanation seems to be the only one which, according to Descartes, satisfies the two basic requirements any ultímate cause should meet: the cause must be active and not being (...) in motion itself. God's recreations of the world is Descartes's solution to this search. I also show in this article, on the one hand, that this doctrine successfully overcomes, in particular, the four major conflicts which threaten its consistency, and, on the other, the new meaning which the laws of nature acquire under the doctrine of the continuous recreation of the world. /// En este artículo defiendo que la pretensión principal de Descartes al proponer la doctrina de la recreación continua del mundo es encontrar una explicación unificada y última de la posibilidad de movimiento y duración en el mundo, de la permanencia de las cosas creadas y de la continuación del movimiento. Esta explicación unificada es la única que, según Descartes, satisface los dos requisitos que parece buscar en la explicación causal última del movimiento: la causa debe ser activa y no debe estar ella misma en movimiento. Las recreaciones del mundo constituyen esa causa. Por una parte, también muestro cómo esta solución supera, en concreto, los cuatro conflictos mayores que amenazan su consistencia, y, por otra, el nuevo significado que las leyes de la naturaleza adquieren en consonancia con esta doctrina de la recreación continua del mundo. (shrink)

This paper provides a historical reevaluation of the originality and implications of Avempace's critique of Aristotle's causal explanation of the motion of projectiles. It also offers a serious revision of the place which has usually been assigned to Avempace in the history of science. The views regarding projectiles defended in Avempace's Arabic commentary are in sharp opposition to the anti-Aristotelian Avempace that was known in the Medieval West through Averroes. Avempace's commentary reveals only a moderate critic of Aristotle, a critic (...) who did not, in any case, break with the master, and who, therefore, did not even go as far as Philoponus in creating a new and more profound theory of projectile motion. (shrink)

Si prescindiéramos de la composición acto-potencial entre «essentia» y «esse» en la línea del ente creado, necesariamente nos veríamos arrojados al monismo spinozista, esto es, a admitir que solamente hay una substancia (a) única, (b) infinita, (c) increada, (d) necesariamente existente, (e) acto puro, (f) identificada, en último término, con la misma substancia de Dios. En el capítulo LII del segundo libro de la Summa contra gentiles, Santo Tomás obtiene esos atributos divinos a partir de siete argumentos que tienen como (...) objetivo probar que, en el caso que no se aceptara la diferencia real entre essentia y esse en el ente finito —tanto material como inmaterial—, necesariamente deberíamos reconocer que sólo hay una substancia con los seis atributos anteriormente mencionados (cada argumento da lugar a un atributo distinto, exceptuando los dos primeros que desembocan en el mismo, a saber, el de la unicidad). En el artículo presente, siguiendo la interpretación de Norberto del Prado, nos proponemos exponer cómo puede refutarse el monismo spinozista desde la doctrina de Santo Tomás en dos etapas: la primera viene representada por el ya citado capítulo de la Summa contra gentes; la segunda, por la cuarta vía (Summa Theologiae, I, q.2, a.3). (shrink)

BackgroundEverybody has the right to decide whether to receive specific medical treatment or not and to provide their free, prior and informed consent to do so. As dementia progresses, people with Alzheimer’s dementia (PwAD) can lose their capacity to provide informed consent to complex medical treatment. When the capacity to consent is lost, the autonomy of the affected person can only be guaranteed when an interpretable and valid advance directive exists. Advance directives are not yet common in Germany, and their (...) validity is often questionable. Once the dementia diagnosis has been made, it is assumed to be too late to write an advance directive. One approach used to support the completion of advance directives is ‘Respecting Choices’®—an internationally recognised, evidence-based model of Advance Care Planning (ACP), which, until now, has not been evaluated for the target group of PwAD. This study’s aims include (a) to investigate the proportion of valid advance directives in a memory clinic population of persons with suspected AD, (b) to determine the predictors of valid advance directives, and (c) to examine whether the offer of ACP can increase the proportion of valid advance directives in PwAD.MethodWe intend to recruit at leastN = 250 participants from two memory clinics in 50 consecutive weeks. Of these, the first 25 weeks constitute the baseline phase (no offer of ACP), the following 25 weeks constitute the intervention phase (offer of ACP). The existence and validity of an advance directive will be assessed twice (before and after the memory clinic appointment). Moreover, potential predictors of valid advance directives are assessed.DiscussionThe results of this study will enhance the development of consent procedures for advance directives of PwAD based on the ACP/Respecting Choices (R) approach. Therefore, this project contributes towards increasing the autonomy and inclusion of PwAD and the widespread acceptance of valid advance directives in PwAD.Trial RegistrationDRKS, DRKS00026691, registered 15th of October 2021,https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00026691. (shrink)

Se busca presentar y analizar críticamente la filosofía interpretacionista de Günter Abel como una de las reflexiones más recientes y originales sobre el fenómeno de la interpretación. Al recoger atisbos provenientes de diversos horizontes teóricos (Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Goodman, Davidson), Abel ..

In his wide-ranging study of architecture and cultural evolution, Chris Abel argues that, despite progress in sustainable development and design, resistance to changing personal and social identities shaped by a technology-based and energy-hungry culture is impeding efforts to avert drastic climate change. The book traces the roots of that culture to the coevolution of Homo sapiens and technology, from the first use of tools as artificial extensions of the human body to the motorized cities spreading around the world, whose uncontrolled (...) effects are fast changing the planet itself. Advancing a new concept of the meme, called the 'technical meme', as the primary agent of cognitive extension and technical embodiment, Abel proposes a theory of the 'extended self' as a complex and diffuse outcome of that coevolution. Challenging conventional ideas of the self as a separate and autonomous being, the extended self, he explains, encompasses material and spatial as well as psychological and social elements, including the built environment and artifacts, and now reaches out into the virtual world of cyberspace. Drawing upon research into extended cognition and embodied minds from philosophy, psychology and the neurosciences, the book presents a new approach to environmental and cultural studies. N.B. This book was the winner of the International Committee of Architectural Critics 2017 Bruno Zevi Book Award by unanimous decision of the international jury. (shrink)

Hypotheticals, conditionals, and their connecting relation, implication, dramatically changed their meanings during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. Modern logicians ordinarily do not distinguish between the terms hypothetical and conditional. Yet in the late nineteenth century their meanings were quite different, their ties to the implication relation either were unclear, or the implication relation was used exclusively as a logical operator. I will trace the development of implication as an inference operator from these earlier notions into the (...) first third of the twentieth century using as the starting point the ideas primarily of R. Whately and W. Hamilton before discussing the work of the transitional logicians, A. De Morgan and G. Boole on these topics. Then we discuss the relevant views of four prominent but relatively unknown nineteenth century British logicians, W.E. Johnson, J.N. Keynes, E.E.C. Jones, and H. MacColl, as well as those of the more influential logicians, W.S. Jevons and J. Venn, closing with a section on ‘implication as inference’ where we explore some key ideas of B. Russell and sketch the work of D. Hilbert, P. Hertz, and G. Gentzen who together are responsible for the development of the modern ideas related to the subjects of this paper. (shrink)

An anthology of substantive selections on human nature from fifteen authors: Plato, Aristotle, Mencius, Seneca, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Beauvoir, B. F. Skinner, and E. O. Wilson. Reprinted in 2015 by Biblio Publishing, ISBN 978-1-62249-267-1.

Individuals operating within the scientific paradigm presume that the world is made of matter. Although the perspective engendered by this presupposition is very powerful, it excludes value and subjective experience from its fundamental ontology. In addition, it provides very little guidance with regards to the fundamentals of ethical action. Individuals within the religious paradigm, by contrast, presume that the world is made out of what matters. From such a perspective, the phenomenon of meaning is the primary reality. This meaning is (...) revealed both subjectively and objectively, and serves—under the appropriate conditions—as an unerring guide to ethical action.The ancient stories of Genesis cannot be properly understood without viewing them from within the religious paradigm. Genesis describes the primary categories of the world of meaning, as well as the eternal interactions of those categories. Order arises out of Chaos, through the creative intermediation of Logos, and man is manifested, in turn. Man, a constrained Logos, exists within a bounded state of being, Eden. Eden is a place where order and chaos, nature and culture, find their optimal state of balance. Because Eden is a walled garden, however—a bounded state of being—something is inevitably excluded. Unfortunately, what is excluded does not simply cease to exist. Every bounded paradise thus contains something forbidden and unknown. Man's curiosity inevitably drives him to investigate what has been excluded. The knowledge thus generated perpetually destroys the presuppositions and boundaries that allow his temporary Edens to exist. Thus, man is eternally fallen. The existential pain generated by this endlessly fallen state can undermine man's belief in the moral justifi0ability of being—and may turn him, like Cain, against brother and God. (shrink)

The last survey of philosophy in France to appear in this journal was published in July 1939. Although the circumstances of the war do not seem to have prevented the publication of philosophical books in France to the extent that they have done so in this country, they have pretty effectively limited their transmission across the Channel until the last year or two. In consequence it is by no means easy to re-establish continuity between the publications of the pre-war period (...) and the rather random trickle of new books now being received by the editor of Philosophy. Some useful information on the intervening period is contained in an article by Professor Lalande in the Philosophical Review for January 1946. Readers of this article or of the files of the Revue Philosophique will find that in 1940 occurred the deaths of Abel Rey, known for his work on science in the ancient world, and of the philosopher and sociologist Célestin Bougié. In 1941 Bergson died. 1944 saw the death of Léon Brunschvicg, whose Descartes et Pascal lecteurs de Montaigne appeared that same year. Jean Cavaillfès, a logician known for his works published in 1938 on the axiomatic method and the theory of groups, was shot by the Germans for his part in the resistance movement. Maurice Halbwachs, for many years associated with the Année Sociologique died in Buchenwald in 1945. As for books that appeared during the war, I have not seen Professor Le Senne's Traité de Morale Générale, which appeared in 1942. (shrink)

There are many similarities between the Christian concept of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Stoic concept of internal events, the Hebrew concept of 'awon (sin, punishment), and the existential concept of bad faith. All of these evidence a concern for an internalization of sin or bad faith, which is more common in Eastern than Western religions. These four views are contrasted with the English concept synne which represents the Western extemalization of sin or bad faith. This existential interpretation includes an (...) exploration of 'awon in the Cain and Abel story as well as several reflections concerning the difference between bad faith and good faith. (shrink)

Attention only "recently"--i.e. in the eighteenth century--achieved chapter status in psychology textbooks in which psychology is conceived as a natural science. This report first sets this entrance, by sketching the historical contexts in which psychology has been considered to be a natural science. It then traces the construction of phenomenological descriptions of attention from antiquity to the seventeenth century, noting various aspects of attention that were marked for discussion by Aristotle, Lucretius, Augustine, and Descartes. The chapter goes on to compare (...) selected theoretical and empirical developments in the study of attention over three time slices: mid eighteenth century (C. Wolff, C. Bonnet, J. F. Abel), turn of the twentieth century (E. B. Titchener), and late twentieth century. Significant descriptive, theoretical, and empirical continuity emerges when these developments are considered in the large. This continuity is open to several interpretations, including the view that attention research shows long-term convergence because it is conditioned by the basic structure of attention as a natural phenomenon, and the less optimistic view that theory making in at least this area of psychology has been remarkably conservative when considered under large grain resolution, consisting in the reshuffling of a few core ideas. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of Jacek Dehnel’s presence in Spain. On the one hand, it contains references to Spain within his works: the Francisco Goya family in the novel Saturn. Czarne obrazy z życia mężczyzn z rodziny Goya (W.A.B. Publishers, Warsaw 2011; translated into English as Saturn: Black Paintings from the Lives of the Men in the Goya Family by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Dedalus, Cambridgeshire 2012) and two maps: Ancient Spain and Modern Spain in the book Kosmografia, czyli trzydzieści apokryfów (...) tułaczych (Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw 2012). On the other hand, the paper refers to the translation of Dehnel’s works into Spanish: the novel Lala (W.A.B. Publishers, Warsaw 2006) translated by Jerzy Sławomirski and Anna Rubió as El jardín de Lala (Duomo ediciones, Barcelona 2012; translated into English as Lala by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Oneworld Publications, London 2019) and eight poems by the poet inside the volume Poesía a contragolpe. Antología de poesía polaca contemporánea (autores nacidos entre 1960 y 1980), selected and translated by Abel Murcia, Gerardo Beltrán and Xavier Farré (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, Zaragoza 2012). Analysis covers one of the poems from the anthology, entitled El abogado Federico G. L. dicta una citación. (shrink)

Before examining de Moivre's contributions to the science of mathematics, this article reviews the source materials, consisting of the printed works and the correspondence of de Moivre, and constructs his biography from them. The analytical part examines de Moivre's contributions and achievements in the study of equations, series, and the calculus of probability. De Moivre contributed to the continuing development from Viète to Abel and Galois of the theory of solving equations by means of constructing particular equations, the roots of (...) which can be written in the form $$\sqrt[n]{{a + \sqrt b }} + \sqrt[n]{{a - \sqrt b }}$$. He also discovered the reciprocal equations. In the course of this work de Moivre discovered an expression equivalent to (cos α+i sin α) n =cos n α+i sin n α and, following Cotes, he succeeded in expressing the nth roots of unity in trigonometric form. In the theory of series, de Moivre developed a polynomial theorem encom-passing Newton's binomial theorem and, in particular, a theorem of recurrent series useful in the calculus of probability. The demands of the calculus of probability led de Moivre to an approximation for the binomial coefficients $$\left( {_m^n } \right)$$ for large values of n. The interaction between de Moivre and James Stirling, particularly in regard to the asymptotic series for log (n!), is treated at length. This work supplied the foundation for de Moivre's limit theorem for the binomial distribution. The calculus of probability, which occupied him from 1708 onward, became in time ever more the center of de Moivre's inquiries. Proceeding from contemporary collections of gambling exercises, de Moivre, by introducing an explicit measure of probability for the so-called Laplace experiments, found the beginnings of a theory of probability. De Moivre expanded the classic application of probability calculus to games of chance by addressing himself to the problem of annuities and by adopting Halley's work with its conception of “Probability of life”. De Moivre was the first to publish a mathematically formulated law for the decrements of life derived from mortality tables. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:François H. Lapointe PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY ThL· survey is limited to articles written in English that have appeared in journals published between 1 January 1974 and 31 December 1976. Abbott, Don. "Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke." Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 217-33. Abel, Lionel. "Jacques Derrida: His 'Difference' With Metaphysics." Salmagundi no. 25 (1974): 3-21. Adamowski, T. H. "Character and Consciousness: D. (...) H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Reich, and Jean-Paul Sartre." University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 31 1-34. Adams, D. J. "Style and Social Ideas in Jacques le fataliste." Studies in Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 124 (1974): 231-48. Adams, Hazard. "Contemporary Ideas of Literature: Terrible Beauty or Rough Beast?" Contemporary Literature 17 (1976): 349-77. Adorno, Theodor W. "Lyric Poetry and Society." Telos no. 20 (1974): 56-71. Ages, Arnold. "Bonald and the Jews." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 44 (1974): 32-43. Allen, Diogenes. "The Experience of Existence: Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch." International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974): 181-87. Allen, Marcus. "Character Development in the Oreste of Voltaire and Les Mouches of Jean-Paul Sartre." CLA Journal 18 (1974): 1-21. Alter, Jean. "A (Terrorist) System of the Novel." Diacritics 6 (1976): 10-15. Altieri, Charles. "Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory." MLN 91 (1976): 1397-1423. Altieri,Charles. "Wordsworth's 'Preface' as Literary Theory." Criticism 18 (1976): 122-146. [On Wordworth and Wittgenstein.] Ames, Van Meter. "Art for Art's Sake Again?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1975): 303-307. Appleman, Philip. "The Dread Factor: Eliot, Tennyson, and the Shaping of Science." Columbia Forum, N. S. 3 (1974): 32-38. Armstrong, Paul B. " E. M. Forster's Howard's End: The Existential Crisis of the Liberal Imagination." Mosaic 8 (1974): 183-99. Arnold, A. James. "La Condition humaine as Nietzschean Tragedy." Mélanges Malraux Miscellany 6 (1974): 15-24. 366 François H. Lapointe367 Aronson, Ronald. "L'Idiot de la famille: The Ultimate Sartre?" Telos no. 20 (1974): 90-107. Arthos, John. "Du Bartas, Petrarch and the Poetry of Deism." Rice University Studies 60 (1974): 1-17. Artz, Johannes. "Newman as Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976): 263-88. Ausmus, Harry J. "Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Language." The Midwest Quarterly 18 (1977): 169-86. Ayala, Francisco. "Ortega y Gasset, Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 395-414. Bakalar, H. Nicholas. "The Cartesian Legacy to the Eighteenth-century Grammarians." MLN 91 (1976): 698-721. Barnes, Hazel. "Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley." Philosophy and Literature 1 (1976): 3-24. Baron, Dennis E. "Role Structure and the Language of Literature." Journal of Literary Semantics 4 (1975): 43-52. Barooskian, Vahan D. "The Aesthetics of the Russian Revolutionary Theatre 1917-1921." British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 99-117. Bart, B. F. "Hypercreativity in Stendhal and Balzac." Nineteenth Century French Studies 3 (1974-75): 18-39. Barthes, Roland. "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." New Literary History 6 (1975): 237-72. Bashford, Bruce. "The Rhetorical Method in Literary Criticism." Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 133-46. Bass, Alan. "Time and the Witch: Femininity, Metapsychology and the Temporality of the Unconscious." MLN 91 (1976): 871-912. Bassett, Sharon. "Towards a Critique of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Pater and the 'Anima Mundi'." Criticism 17 (1975): 262-75. Batchelor, R. "Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt." European Studies Review 5 (1975): 395-427. Battin, M. Pabst. "Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy in the Poetics, Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 155-70, and Part II in Ibid. 33 (1975): 293-302. Bauer, George. "Sartre and the 'Sugars' of History." L'Esprit Créateur 15 (1975): 377-86. Baumgarten, Murray. "The Historical Novel: Some Postulates." Clio 4 (1975): 173-82. Beauchamp, Gorman. "Gulliver's Return to the Cave: Plato's Republic and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels." The Michigan Academician 7 (1974): 201-10. Bennett, Jonathan. "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn." Philosophy 48 (1974): 123-34. Benzon, William. "Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics." MLN 91 (1976): 952-82. Bergonzi, Bernard. "A Grid of Codes: Views of Structuralism." Encounter 45 (1975): 52-58. Berry, Wanda Warren. "The... (shrink)

Biobank research is potentially fruitful. It is argued that broad consent is acceptable for future research on biological material because a) the benefit is high, b) it pays respect to people’s autonomy, c) it is consistent with current practices and d) because the risk is low. Furthermore, broad consent should be allowed if information is handled safely, people can withdraw and expanded research should be approved by an ethics review board. However, these arguments are flawed and the criteria for broad (...) consent are either too restrictive to allow any research or fail to address important challenges with biobank research. Broad consent for biobank research can hide substantial ethical challenges and threaten trust in research. This does not mean that biobank research should be abandoned or that people cannot authorise future research on donated biological material. (shrink)

Our goal in producing this special issue is to encourage our colleagues to incorporate topics related to LGBT populations into bioethics curricula and scholarship. Bioethics has only rarely examined the ways in which law and medicine have defined, regulated, and often oppressed sexual minorities. This is an error on the part of bioethics. Medicine and law have served in the past as society's enforcement arm toward sexual minorities, in ways that robbed many people of their dignity. We feel that bioethics (...) has an obligation to discuss that history and to help us as a society take responsibility for it.We can address only a small number of topics in this special issue of the Hastings Center Report, and we selected topics we believe will stimulate discourse. Andrew Solomon offers an elegant overview of the challenges that bioethics faces in articulating a solid basis for LGBT rights. Timothy F. Murphy asks whether bioethics still faces issues related to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, given the deletion of homosexuality as a disease and the progress toward same‐sex marriage. Jamie Lindemann Nelson's essay addresses the search for identity for transgender persons and the role of science in that search. Two articles, those by Brendan S. Abel and by Jack Drescher and Jack Pula, take up the complex issue of medical treatment for children who reject their assigned birth gender. Celia B. Fisher and Brian Mustanski address the special challenges of engaging LGBT youth in research, balancing the need for better information about this vulnerable group against the existing restrictions on research involving children. Tia Powell and Edward Stein consider the merits of legal bans on psychotherapies intended to change sexual orientation, particularly in the light of current research on orientation. Mary Beth Foglia and Karen I. Fredricksen‐Goldsen highlight health disparities and resilience among LGBT older adults and then discuss the role of nonconscious bias in perpetuating disparities. Stephan Davis and Nancy Berlinger assess the challenges of access to care and health policy for transgender persons. Edward J. Callahan et al. tackle the ways in which diverse aspects of medicine should change to better incorporate the needs of LGBT patients, including through use of the electronic medical record, education of health professionals, and recruitment efforts for LGBT health professionals. Virginia Ashby Sharpe and Uchenna S. Uchendu describe multifaceted efforts within Veterans Administration facilities to create change for LGBT veterans across the largest integrated health care network in the United States. Lance Wahlert and Autumn Fiester find a mixed record in the use of case studies in teaching about LGBT issues. (shrink)

In this book, David B. Wong defends an ambitious and important new version of moral relativism. He does not espouse the type of relativism that says anything goes, but he does start with a relativist stance against alternative theories such that there need not be only one universal truth. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities existing across different traditions and cultures, all with one core human question as to how we can all live together.

This book addresses the most important questions asked about higher education: What should its content be? What should we educate for, and why? What constitutes a meaningful liberal education, as distinct from mere training for a vocation? These and many other questions are addressed by Reuben Abel, M.H. Abrams, Robert L. Bartley, Ronald Berman, Also S. Bernardo, Wm. Theodore deBary, Gray Dorsey, Joseph Dunner, Nathan Glazer, Feliks Gross, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Gerald Holton, Sidney Hook, Charles Issawi, Montimer R. Kadish, Paul Oscar (...) Krissteller, paul Kurtz, Herbert I. London, Ernest Nagel, Henry R. Novotny, Frederick A. Olafson, Michael Rabin, Howard B. Radest, Joseph J. Schwab, Robert F. Sexton, Thomas Sowell, John B. Stephenson, and Miro M. Todorovich. (shrink)

This book takes a bold new look at ways of exploring the nature, origins, and potentials of consciousness within the context of science and religion.

While the question of free will does not figure as prominently in Buddhist writings as it does in western theology, philosophy, and psychology, it is a topic that was addressed in the earliest Buddhist writings. According to these accounts, for pragmatic and ethical reasons, the Buddha rejected both determinism and indeterminism as understood at that time. Rather than asking the metaphysical question of whether already humans have free will, Buddhist tradition takes a more pragmatic approach, exploring ways in which we (...) can acquire greater freedom to make wise choices that are truly conducive to our own and others' genuine well-being. One key to achieving such freedom is the cultivation of attentional skills so that one can deliberately focus one's attention with continuity and clarity on one's chosen object. A second theme is the cultivation of insight into the manner in which our own attitudes shape experience, allowing for the possibility of altering not only the way we experience events in the present, but also how we are influenced by our memories of the past. Finally, the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes the realization of the deepest dimension of consciousness -- pristine awareness -- which transcends the nexus of causality. This is regarded as the ultimate source of freedom and the ultimate nature of human identity. (shrink)

Between Saying and Doing aims to reconcile pragmatism with analytic philosophy. It investigates the relations between the meaning of linguistic expressions and their use. Giving due weight both to what one has to do in order to count as saying various things and to what one needs to say in order to specify those doings, makes it possible to shed new light on the relations between semantics and pragmatics. Among the vocabularies whose interrelated use and meaning are considered are: logical, (...) indexical, modal, normative, and intentional vocabulary. As the argument proceeds, new ways of thinking about the classic analytic core programs of empiricism, naturalism, and functionalism are offered, as well as novel insights about the ideas of artificial intelligence, the nature of logic, and intentional relations between subjects and objects. (shrink)