There is a story about a distinguished mathematician who had been invited to deliver a course of advanced lectures to other high-powered students of mathematics on a subject about which he was known to have some original ideas. The course, however, got off to a slow start. He devoted three lectures to discussing whether a certain proposition P was or was not self evident. The proposition P was essential to the argument he wanted to develop. Happily, he was able (...) to announce at the opening of his fourth lecture that he had decided that P was self evident. There was an audible sigh of relief. It was now known, on the highest authority, that P was self evident. From that the argument proceeded briskly and with irresistible logic to the lecturer's surprising and devastating conclusions. (shrink)

In Towards the Light, A.C. Grayling tells the story of the long and difficult battle for freedom in the West, from the Reformation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the battle for the vote to the struggle for the right to freedom of conscience. As Grayling passionately affirms, it is a story - and a struggle - that continues to this day as those in power use the threat of terrorism in the 21st century to roll-back (...) the liberties that so many have fought and died to win for us. Including an appendix of landmark documents, including the British and American Bills of Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the Bloomsbury Revelations edition also includes a new preface by the author reflecting on developments since the book's original publication. (shrink)

'Updating Bertrand Russell for the 21st century... a cerebrally enjoyable survey, written with great clarity and touches of wit... The non-western section throws up some fascinating revelations' Sunday Times The story of philosophy is an epic tale: an exploration of the ideas, views and teachings of some of the most creative minds known to humanity. But since the long-popular classic Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, first published in 1945, there has been no comprehensive and entertaining, single-volume history of (...) this great intellectual journey. With his characteristic clarity and elegance A. C. Grayling takes the reader from the world-views and moralities before the age of the Buddha, Confucius and Socrates, through Christianity's dominance of the European mind to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and on to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre, and philosophy today. And, since the story of philosophy is incomplete without mention of the great philosophical traditions of India, China and the Persian-Arabic world, he gives a comparative survey of them too. Intelligible for students and eye-opening for philosophy readers, he covers epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, logic, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, political philosophy and the history of debates in these areas of enquiry, through the ideas of the celebrated philosophers as well as less well-known influential thinkers. He also asks what we have learnt from this body of thought, and what progress is still to be made. The first authoritative and accessible single-volume history of philosophy for decades, remarkable for its range and clarity, this is a landmark work. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes.

_An entertaining and provocative investigation of friendship in all its variety, from ancient times to the present day_ A central bond, a cherished value, a unique relationship, a profound human need, a type of love. What is the nature of friendship, and what is its significance in our lives? How has friendship changed since the ancient Greeks began to analyze it, and how has modern technology altered its very definition? In this fascinating exploration of friendship through the ages, one of (...) the most thought-provoking philosophers of our time tracks historical ideas of friendship, gathers a diversity of friendship stories from the annals of myth and literature, and provides unexpected insights into our friends, ourselves, and the role of friendships in an ethical life. A. C. Grayling roves the rich traditions of friendship in literature, culture, art, and philosophy, bringing into his discussion familiar pairs as well as unfamiliar—Achilles and Patroclus, David and Jonathan, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Huck Finn and Jim. Grayling lays out major philosophical interpretations of friendship, then offers his own take, drawing on personal experiences and an acute awareness of vast cultural shifts that have occurred. With penetrating insight he addresses internet-based friendship, contemporary mixed gender friendships, how friendships may supersede family relationships, one’s duty within friendship, the idea of friendship to humanity, and many other topics of universal interest. (shrink)

"Jada's working on her science project. She's finding out whether plants grow best in water, milk, juice, or soda. There's just one problem--she keeps getting interrupted. From her cousin texting and her friends stopping by to her little brother playing with the plants, Jada runs into one obstacle after another. Find out how [she] relies on grit to keep on going"--Back cover.

In early 1984, the AIDS epidemic was less than four years old. Chemists at the pharmaceutical company Syntex, situated in the rolling green hills near Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, had recently synthesized a new antiviral drug (Martin et al. 1983). The drug, at first given the awkward chemical abbreviation DHPG, later came to be known by the generic name ganciclovir. Ganciclovir was a potent drug for the treatment of herpes virus infection (such as genital herpes or chickenpox), but (...) the unique characteristic of ganciclovir was that it worked against cytomegalovirus (CMV), a heretofore untreatable virus infection. Although relatively harmless in healthy individuals, CMV caused .. (shrink)

Researchers in the field of discourse processing have investigated how mental models are constructed when adults comprehend stories. They have explored the process of encoding various classes of inferences “on-line” when these mental microworlds are constructed during comprehension. This commentary addresses the extent to which these inferences and mental microworlds are “embodied.”.

In her book Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights, Diana Meyers offers a careful analysis of victims' stories as a narrative genre, and she argues that stories in this genre function as a call to care: they both depict a moral void and issue a moral demand, thereby fostering the development of a culture of human rights. This article, while finding Meyers's articulation of this idea compelling, questions Meyers's account of how victims' stories do their moral work. Whereas (...) Meyers argues that victims' stories are complete narratives, characterized by a distinctive form of closure, it suggests that the moral power of victims' stories may lie in part in their open-endedness or lack of closure. In telling their stories, victims engage their audiences in a new moral relationship and implicitly give them a role to play in bringing about the moral closure they seek. (shrink)

Cutting across boundaries of art and science, evolution is a fundamental process that has beguiled thinkers through the ages. This collection draws together world renowned thinkers and communicators with their own intriguing insights. In these essays they offer a feast of dazzling thoughts and ideas to challenge and enthrall the reader. Why and how do civilisations and societies change over time? Why do our cells develop the way they do? Why are some villages still villages while others have grown into (...) vast cities? Can we learn from our evolutionary past to plan a better future for our health and society? Tracing a line from the history of biological evolution, through the evolution of cultures, society, science and the universe, Evolution brings together intriguing parallels from all levels of life. From the evolution of the developing embryo to the evolution of a developing star, common threads develop into a fascinating story. (shrink)

Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914. Edited by Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, and Edhem Eldem. Istanbul: SALT, 2011. Pp. 520, illus. TRL 80, $41.60.

A judicious account of the discovery and significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bruce presents careful documentation for his view that the discovery of these manuscripts "affects only incidental features of the story" of Christianity.--A. C. P.

A major aim of the books in this series is to promote psychology's appreciation of the neglected giants in its history. The chapters document the significance of these early contributions, many of them made more than a century ago. Most of the chapters are revisions of invited addresses delivered at psychological conventions. Several of the authors are students, colleagues, or offspring of their pioneers and all of them are intrigued by the life and work of the psychologists about whom they (...) have written. All of the portraits are informal; on occasion, even humorous. Some are "impersonations"--telling stories in what were or might have been the pioneer's own words. This book provides source materials for teachers of undergraduate courses in psychology--particularly the history of psychology--who want to add a personal view in their lectures and offer interesting readings for their students. Each of the five volumes in this series contains different profiles thereby bringing more than 100 of the pioneers in psychology more vividly to life. (shrink)

This is the story of Lisa 1 —a woman like so many others who has been abused—and of her healing journey using music and creative arts experiences. It is also a story about how music, song, poetry, art, and dance awakened her to a new consciousness and provided the necessary empowerment she needed in order to reclaim the woman she had been before experiencing the trauma of abuse. While the question of how utilization of music and the creative (...) arts encourages personal transformation and healing is also deserving of a theoretical exploration, in this article I have chosen to foreground Lisa's story as narrative, in order to also engage the reader with the transformative potential of empowerment that comes through listening. I have chosen an approach that foregrounds Lisa's experience over theory explicitly, for, it is with the process of "finding voice" and of engaging the listener in that process, that transformation of consciousness and empowerment occurs. (shrink)

The story of Meleager as it is told in Greek literature clearly reflects two discrete versions, which may be termed the epic and the non-epic. The latter, as retold by Apollodorus, shows the folktale elements of love and the life-token . The other version, as told by Homer followed by Apollodorus , is an epic story where Meleager is the great hero whose μνις keeps him from fighting for his native Calydon against the neighbouring Curetes of Pleuron.

One of the most extensive yet least conclusive methodological debates within religious studies revolves around the question of what, precisely, the phenomenology of religion is and what contribution it can make to the study of religion. I do not intend to answer this important question here. To do so satisfactorily would require a range of historical, philosophical and methodological inquiry which would go quite beyond the bounds of a single article. My intention in this paper is, by comparison, unambitious. It (...) is to take one view of what phenomenology of religion is and to consider an area outside that usually explored by students of religion which can, nonetheless, shed some light on how religions might be studied in a way which is in accordance with the phenomenology of religion so understood. What follows will offer an answer to the question of what contribution one particular understanding of phenomenology might make to the study of religion, but no attempt will be made to establish whether or not this particular understanding ought to be regarded as normative. (shrink)

The discovery and ongoing investigation of microRNAs suggest important conceptual and methodological lessons for philosophers and historians of biology. This paper provides an account of miRNA research and the shift from viewing these tiny regulatory entities as minor curiosities to seeing them as major players in the post-transcriptional regulation of genes. Conceptually, the study of miRNAs is part of a broader change in understandings of genetic regulation, in which simple switch-like mechanisms were reinterpreted as aspects of complex cellular and genome-wide (...) processes. Among them are the activities of small RNAs, previously regarded as non-functional. Methodologically, the miRNA story suggests new ways of characterizing biological research that should prove helpful to philosophers of science who seek to develop more pluralistic, pragmatic models of scientific inquiry. miRNA research displays iterative movements between multiple modes of investigation that include not only the proposal and testing of hypotheses but also exploratory, technology-oriented and question-driven modes of research. As an exemplary story of scientific discovery and development, the miRNA case illustrates transitions from genetics to genomics and systems biology, and it shows how diverse configurations of research practice are related to major scientific advances. (shrink)

The story of Meleager as it is told in Greek literature clearly reflects two discrete versions, which may be termed the epic and the non-epic. The latter, as retold by Apollodorus, shows the folktale elements of love and the life-token. The other version, as told by Homer followed by Apollodorus, is an epic story where Meleager is the great hero whose μῆνις keeps him from fighting for his native Calydon against the neighbouring Curetes of Pleuron.

Well chosen selections from the works of idealists from Berkeley to Blanshard. Four critical articles--including Moore's "refutation of Idealism"--give the other side of the story. Ewing contributes a balanced and illuminating introduction.--A. C. P.

Background Implementing person-centred care (PCC) in nursing homes is challenging due to a gap between theory and practice. Bridging this gap requires suitable education, which focuses on learning how to attune care to the values and preferences of residents and take moral, relational, and situational aspects into account. Staff’s stories about the care they provide (i.e. caring stories) may deliver valuable insights for learning about these aspects. However, there is limited research on using staff's narratives for moral learning. Objective This (...) study aims to provide insight into the perspectives of nursing staff on using their caring stories to learn about PCC. Research design In this qualitative research, we conducted two rounds of interviews with 17 participants working in nursing homes. We wanted to obtain nursing staff’s perceptions of working with their caring stories and the impact on PCC. Ethical considerations Participation was voluntary, and participants provided written consent. The study protocol is approved by The Institutional Review Board of the Medical Ethical Committee Leiden-Den Haag-Delft. Findings Working with caring stories enables nursing staff to provide PCC and improves job satisfaction. It increases awareness of what matters to residents, fosters information rich in context and meaning, and enhances voice and vocabulary. Through in-depth team reflections, nursing staff discussed the significant moments for residents, which centralizes the discussions on the moral quality of care. Discussion Working with caring stories fosters dialogue on PCC and enhances reflection on ethical situations in daily encounters, contributing to the moral development of nursing staff. Putting nursing staff’s narratives at the centre of learning suits their daily practice and intrinsic motivation. Therefore, the outcomes of this study are an addition to the existing literature about using narratives in long-term care. Conclusion Using nursing staff's narratives contributes to PCC and positively impacts nursing staff. We recommend using staff's caring stories as a vehicle for moral learning in the transition to PCC. (shrink)

The Radical Enactive/embodied view of Cognition, or REC, claims that all cognition is a matter of skilled performance. Yet REC also makes a distinction between basic and content-involving cognition, arguing that the development of basic to content-involving cognition involves a kink. It might seem that this distinction leads to problematic gaps in REC’s story. We address two such alleged gaps in this paper. First, we identify and reply to the concern that REC leads to an “interface problem”, according to (...) which REC has to account for the interaction of two minds co-present in the same cognitive activity. We emphasise how REC’s view of content-involving cognition in terms of activities that require particular sociocultural practices can resolve these interface concerns. The second potential problematic gap is that REC creates an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. In response, we clarify and further explicate REC’s notion of content, and argue that this notion allows REC to justifiably mark the distinction between basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind. We conclude by pointing out in what sense basic and content-involving cognitive activities are the same, yet different. They are the same because they are all forms of skilled performance, yet different as some forms of skilled performance are genuinely different from other forms. (shrink)

I discuss the Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) as a new approach to folk psychology, by highlighting some of the main differences between the NPH and so-called 'principled approaches' and elaborating on the importance of the distinction between intentional and propositional attitudes. Furthermore, I address the question whether reason explanations as understood by the NPH constitute a distinctive and autonomous kind of explanation.

In 2018-2019, at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, we developed and piloted a narrative-based health systems science intervention for patients living with HIV and medical students in which medical students co-wrote patients’ life narratives for inclusion in the electronic health record. The pilot study aimed to assess the acceptability of the “life narrative protocol” from multiple stakeholder positions and characterize participants’ experiences of the clinical and pedagogical implications of the LNP. Students were recruited from (...) KSOM. Patients and staff were recruited from the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent/Adult Center for Infectious Disease and Virology at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. Ten patients, seventeen students, and ten MCA staff participated in the pilot study. Qualitative methods were used to gather data from students’, patients’, and staff’s perspectives. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: patients’ life narratives conveyed their unique life experiences and voices; the protocol could result in wide-ranging effects on HIV care; the LNP enabled students to contribute value to patients’ healthcare. Across groups, participants considered the LNP an acceptable intervention. The LNP, its limitations, and implications for HIV care, narrative medicine, and health information technology are presented. (shrink)

At the beginning, all there is is world. It’s not all alike: here is mama, there is cold, over there—noise. Soon we begin to distinguish and to recognize: more mama, more cold, more noise! Yet initially these things appear to be all of a type. Each is, in Quine’s words, just a history of sporadic encounter, a mere portion of all there is. Only with time does this fluid totality in which we are immersed begin to take shape: sensations recur; (...) objects stick out; noise changes depending on the things around us. We learn how to act and to predict. We launch into giving names, using verbs, painting adjectives. Such marvelous unfolding is the subject of much inquiry by psychologists and biologists, and eventually by sociologists. But for a philosopher it is first and foremost the source of deep and bemusing bewilderment, if not a dilemma: Are we learning to make out the structure of the world, or are we endowing the world with a structure of our making? Is reality gradually revealing the mechanisms according to which it is organized, or is it we who progressively organize the amorphous and continuous flux of our experience? (shrink)

Policymakers need to start considering the impact smart connected toys (SCTs) have on children. Equipped with sensors, data processing capacities, and connectivity, SCTs targeting children increasingly penetrate pervasively personal environments. The network of SCTs forms the Internet of Toys (IoToys) and often increases children's engagement and playtime experience. Unfortunately, this young part of the population and, most of the time, their parents are often unaware of SCTs’ far-reaching capacities and limitations. The capabilities and constraints of SCTs create severe side effects (...) at the technical, individual, and societal level. These side effects are often unforeseeable and unexpected. They arise from the technology's use and the interconnected nature of the IoToys, without necessarily involving malevolence from their creators. Although existing regulations and new ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence provide remedies to address some of the side effects, policymakers did not develop these redress mechanisms having children and SCTs in mind. This article provides an analysis of the arising side effects of SCTs and contrasts them with current regulatory redress mechanisms. We thereby highlight misfits and needs for further policymaking efforts. (shrink)

Policymakers need to start considering the impact smart connected toys (SCTs) have on children. Equipped with sensors, data processing capacities, and connectivity, SCTs targeting children increasingly penetrate pervasively personal environments. The network of SCTs forms the Internet of Toys (IoToys) and often increases children's engagement and playtime experience. Unfortunately, this young part of the population and, most of the time, their parents are often unaware of SCTs’ far-reaching capacities and limitations. The capabilities and constraints of SCTs create severe side effects (...) at the technical, individual, and societal level. These side effects are often unforeseeable and unexpected. They arise from the technology's use and the interconnected nature of the IoToys, without necessarily involving malevolence from their creators. Although existing regulations and new ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence provide remedies to address some of the side effects, policymakers did not develop these redress mechanisms having children and SCTs in mind. This article provides an analysis of the arising side effects of SCTs and contrasts them with current regulatory redress mechanisms. We thereby highlight misfits and needs for further policymaking efforts. (shrink)

In 2006, Bill Crain was a psychology professor and his wife, Ellen, a pediatrician. They purchased a run-down farm in upstate New York, and two years later opened Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary. It is now home to over 170 animals rescued from slaughter. In Animal Stories, Bill writes about how he and Ellen decided to start the sanctuary and tells the stories of 25 animals and their many surprising behaviors. Read about Katie, a hen who cared for a little partridge; (...) Cesar, a little goat who constantly gets into trouble; Reggie, a rooster who instilled fear in all the staff; Milo, a goat who suddenly charged the dominant Duncan to defend his mother; four rambunctious young turkeys who quietly listened to a reverent Girl Scout ceremony; Ducky, a turkey who, despite severe arthritis, walked from her barn to greet a Buddhist monk; Ethel, an elderly cow who assumes the responsibility of a matriarch; and many others. In addition to enjoying the stories, readers will learn a great deal about nonhuman animals. (shrink)

: According to a consensus of psycho-physiological and philosophical theories, color sensations (or qualia) are generated in a cerebral "space" fed from photon-photoreceptor interaction (producing "metamers") in the retina of the eye. The resulting "space" has three dimensions: hue (or chroma), saturation (or "purity"), and brightness (lightness, value or intensity) and (in some versions) is further structured by primitive or landmark "colors"—usually four, or six (when white and black are added to red, yellow, green and blue). It has also been (...) proposed that there are eleven semantic universals—labeling the previous six plus the "intermediaries" of orange, pink, brown, purple, and gray. There are many versions of this consensus, but they all aim to provide ontological, epistemological and semantic blueprints for the brute fact of the reality of color ordained by Nature (evolution). In contrast to this consensus, we have argued that "seeing color" is not a matter of light waves impacting on our eyes, producing sensations to be categorized and labeled in the "color space" in the brain. While electrochemical events may unproblematically be regarded as the causal precondition for seeing color, the reception of sensations in "the color space" as semantically labeled natural categories, kinds, or information, is a "just so" story: it is Wittgenstein's beetle in a box. In contrast we consider that the authority of this consensus might better be regarded not as the result of the truth-tracking of nature, but as the sociohistorical outcome of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological apparatus, and their feed forward into the lifeworld. The question we shall therefore explore is whether, or to what extent, we ourselves are changed, as the conditions of production of color science change. Thus we are doing a kind of anthropology at two levels: of color science itself (and its effect on our own lifeworld), and of those studied by the "anthropology of color". As befits this stance we are agnostic about the theoretical entities of color science (cf. van Fraassen 2001), and within this new context, we propose to cross-cut object-and-subject, organism-and-environment (the bedrock of color science) in socio-historical ways. Our approach is in part inspired by, but not the same as, that of Gibson, in that we wish to pursue the notion of "social affordances" (Burmudez 1995). We suggest that color has become a naturalization through science-based technologies, which, through praxes and materializations, have become the perceptual and cultural entities that structure experience and understanding in the lifeworld. It is this naturalization that we shall refer to and characterize as "the historically inflected exosomatic organ". Consequently we shall explore the historical ontology of "color" without assuming an underlying biological constant (Dupré 2001). In part 1 we show the flimsiness of the evidence for the three dimensions of color, borrowed from physics, and fine-tuned to a "standard observer" (a "spectral creature" with a phenomenal "color space"). In part 2 we address the structuring of hue through the development of color circles and color spaces. This is followed by a review of the evidence for unique hues. Again the evidence is shown to be flimsy. We then show that an isolated domain of color is a particular kind of model, not a "natural given". In part 3, after reviewing what is referred to as "the isomorphy thesis," we discuss the exemplary case study of Berlin and Kay (1969). This illustrates the pull of stadial models presupposed by their evolutionary theory of color language. The Berlin and Kay paradigm proposes that American English color terms are incorrigible and can provide the universal metalanguage. We conclude by presenting an alternative account, namely that we ourselves are changed as the conditions of production of color science change. We argue that it is better to regard "seeing-color" as a historically inflected exosomatic organ that provides social affordances for those trained to grasp them. (shrink)

STORY L, MAYFIELD‐JOHNSON S, DOWNEY LH, ANDERSON‐LEWIS C, YOUNG R and DAY P. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 373–384 Getting on Target with Community Health Advisors (GOTCHA): an innovative stroke prevention projectHealth disparities along with insufficient numbers of healthcare providers and resources have created a need for effective and efficient grassroots approaches to improve community health. Community‐based participatory research (CBPR), more specifically the utilization of community health advisors (CHAs), is one such strategy. The Getting on Target with Community Health Advisors (...) (GOTCHA) project convened an interdisciplinary team to answer the call from 10 counties in the rural Mississippi Delta area of ‘The Stroke Belt’ to meet the region’s identified health needs, and to impact the health of a disparaged state. This article explores this CBPR project including the community involvement strategies, innovative CHA training curriculum, evaluation plan, and implications to healthcare professionals, particularly nurses. (shrink)

This paper considers whether a divine-command theory of moral obligation could justify morally horrible acts, partly by examining Kierkegaard’s writings. It argues that only the commands of a God who is essentially good could be morally justified, and thus no defensible version of a DCT could actually justify horrible acts. In Works of Love Kierkegaard defends such a DCT, and thus is committed to the claim that any actual commands of God must be aimed at the good. This is consistent (...) with the claim that if we knew that a command that is alleged to be from God is directed at what is bad, the command must not be authentic. The issue raised by Fear and Trembling, where Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes de Silentio considers the “binding of Isaac” story, thus raises crucial epistemic issues, which cannot be settled without considering how one might come to know that a purported revelation from God is authentic, as well as how one might come to believe that some particular moral belief is wrong. The paper defends the view that if one knew that a revelation from God was authentic, then one could be justified in holding a moral view on some particular issue, such as veganism, that clashes with the dominant views of one’s contemporaries. (shrink)

Descriptively many Protestant perspectives on access to health care share much in common with secular accounts…perhaps too much. A normative account of a Protestant perspective on access to health care must be perceptively qualified by the Christ story. A genuinely theocratic approach may not lead one to the conclusion that the faith commits us to the notion of equality; rather the faith commits us to the notion of care. What counts as care may not be the same in every (...) instance (if this is indeed what equality means; in ordinary use, equality is tantamount to sameness). The Christ story reminds us who we are, beloved, sinful, redeemed. Acting out this story is to accept, to give, and to receive reconciliation. For many Christians this will mean that we are called to deny ourselves “equal” access to the system (as if equality actually existed!). (shrink)

Wolf stories, including the systematic and government-sponsored killing of Yukon wolves, provide a context for the examination of assumptions about Western epistemology, and particularly science, in light of the “ethics-based epistemology” presented by Jim Cheney and Anthony Weston, with implications for research, responsibility, and animal welfare. Working from a premise of universal consideration, andminding the ethical basis of knowledge claims, enables richer conceptions of environmental ethics and creates new possibilities for animal welfare and managing for wildlife.