Charles Rosenberg’s latest book is a collection of ten essays spanning twelve years’ work on the history of American medicine, and seeks to provide both the historian and the practicing physician with an understanding of the framework that lies beneath our modern medical system. He states his cause explicitly in the opening chapter: “Insofar as I have a personal agenda, it is a desire to underline the need...for physicians to think and act on an understanding of [their] unique (...) social and moral identity. It means thinking critically about...the world that informs and constrains clinical choices” (p. 11). (shrink)

Martin E. Rosenberg -/- The Gift of Silence: Towards an Anthropology of Jazz Improvisation as Neuro-Resistance. -/- ABSTRACT: -/- This essay addresses how the complex processes that occur during jazz improvisation enact behaviors that resemble the logic of gift exchange first described by Marcel Mauss. It is possible to bring to bear structural, sociological, political economical, deconstructive or even ethical approaches to what constitutes gift exchange during the performance of jazz. Yet, I would like to shift from focusing this (...) analysis of jazz improvisation with reference to the language of music as symbolic action (which all of these approaches require), to grounding improvisation in embodied and distributed cognition, the performance of which begins with a ritual gift of silence. By silence, I refer to the embodied, yet shared pure duration as felt synchrony within an individual performer, that extends to the members of an ensemble. Thus, I refer to both aesthetic and micro-political implications of embodied, yet also distributed musical cognition in real time. -/- For jazz musicians, embodied silence becomes the initial condition for processes of cognitive bifurcation. For it is bifurcation that attracts us to jazz in the first place. Here I expand my previous work establishing similarities in the behavior of bifurcating systems in physical and cognitive sciences to the unfolding of ambiguity in real time during improvisation with respect to polyphony, polytonality and polyrhythms in the history of jazz from Charlie Parker to Ornette Coleman. We can therefore re-conceptualize jazz improvisation as a subversive antidote for processes of determination identified in a sub-discipline of cultural studies called “cognitive capitalism.” By examining silence from this anthropological perspective, we can conceive of jazz performance as a ritualized resistance to top-down cognitive control immanent with social and digital networks. The ritual enactment that is jazz improvisation points towards an aesthetics of bifurcation that is simultaneously a micro-politics of neuro-resistance. In other words, I argue that freedom of thought requires freedom from thought as an initial condition. -/- Yet, I emphasize the empirical rather than mystical grounds to this gift of silence. The valorization of silence by jazz musicians is not simply etiquette, an ethics of reciprocity for performers exchanging “riffs,” but an initial condition that jazz performers (and, I would argue, listeners) experience in their bodies, thus linking embodied cognition to a collective field of cultural production that emerges from each embodied individual, and yet also pervades the ensemble in ways reminiscent of feedback loops in complex systems. The recent and remarkable research on music and the brain has demonstrated that it is now possible to describe jazz improvisation as possessing both embodied and distributed cognitive properties. The emergent neuronal ensemble behavior within the individual that is visible in jazz improvisors, discovered by the neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins led by Charles Limb, bears striking resemblance to the interactive behaviors of the jazz ensemble itself. Thus, it is by recourse to recent research by myself and others into the cognitive neuroscience of music generally, and jazz improvisation specifically, that the empirical grounds for an anthropology of neuro-resistance become visible. (shrink)

The increasing use of cluster randomised trials in low-resource settings raises unique ethical issues. The Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomised Trials is the first international ethical guidance document specific to cluster trials, but it is unknown if it adequately addresses issues in low-resource settings. In this paper, we seek to identify any gaps in the Ottawa Statement relevant to cluster trials conducted in low-resource settings. Our method is to analyse a prototypical cluster trial conducted (...) in a low-resource setting with the Ottawa Statement; to identify ethical issues in the design or conduct of the trial not captured adequately and to make recommendations for issues needing attention in forthcoming revisions to the Ottawa Statement. Our analysis identified six ethical aspects of cluster randomised trials in low-resource settings that require further guidance. The forthcoming revision of the Ottawa Statement should provide additional guidance on these issues: streamlining research ethics committee review for collaborating investigators who are affiliated with other institutions; the classification of lay health workers who deliver study interventions as health providers or research participants; the dilemma experienced by investigators when national standards seem to prohibit waivers of consent; the timing of gatekeeper engagement, particularly when researchers face funding constraints; providing ancillary care in health services or implementation trials when a routine care control arm is known to fall below national standards and defining vulnerable participants needing protection in low-resource settings. (shrink)

This book intends to introduce readers to the work of Charles E. Butterworth, and thereby to introduce students to Medieval islamic political philosophy, of which Butterworth is one of the world's most prominent scholars. In a wider sense, the Festschrift introduces its readers to the current debates on Medieval islamic political philosophy, related as they are to the questions of the relationship between islam and Christianity, the Medieval to the Modern world, and reason and revelation. Butterworth's scholarship spans six (...) decades, primarily translating, editing, and interpreting the works of the Muslim political philosopher Alfarabi (d. 950) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198). He began his studies of Muslim political philosophy at a time when the Middle East and islam did not have the political salience they have acquired in more recent years. instead, Butterworth's reason for engaging with islam was rooted in the question of the relationship between reason and revelation. While one possible answer was pursued in the Christian, latin West, the islamic borderlands of Greek, Roman, and Muslim civilization offered another. By exploring Averroes, who provides the possibility of an Aristotelian-Islamic political philosophy, and Alfarabi, who pursues a Platonic-islamic political philosophy, Butterworth showed how islamic civilization provided a viable alternative to the theologico-political question reason v revelation, as well as serving as an inspiration to the latin West. (shrink)

A problem which was widely recognised during Schleiermacher's life, and one which I think is not yet satisfactorily solved, concerned the integration of feeling and concepts within human consciousness. Within the domain of philosophy of religion it may be phrased as follows: How does religious feeling relate to rational reflection such that each complements and enriches the other? Schleiermacher was convinced that religion never originates in human understanding or autonomy and that one's understanding of the world is not necessarily dependent (...) on religious faith. But he was equally convinced that reflection and religion ought to enjoy a harmony which reflects the harmony of the universe, and this ideal motivated his continuous attempt to construct a complementary philosophy and theology. His hope was to show that ‘understanding and feeling… remain distinct, but they touch each other and form a galvanic pile.… The innermost life of the spirit consists in the galvanic action thus produced in the feeling of the understanding and the understanding of the feeling, during which, however, the two poles always remain deflected from each other.’. (shrink)

This essay begins by providing a new account of wittgenstein's private language argument. Wittgenstein's rejection of a "cartesian" account of mind is examined, And it is argued that this rejection carries no commitment to behaviorism, Or to the view that sensation terms have public meanings and private references. Part ii of the essay attempts to forge a link between the two parts of the "philosophical investigations", By arguing that wittgenstein's discussion of "seeing-As" reinforces and illuminates his account of how sensation (...) language is mastered. (shrink)

After a run of over forty years, the series Readings in Moral Theology comes to a close with this retrospective volume by one of the original editors, Charles E. Curran.

Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally Larmore agrues (...) for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience. (shrink)

"... stimulating and insightful... a thoroughly researched and timely contribution to the secondary literature of ethics... " —Library Journal "His important new work establishes Scott... as one of the foremost interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition of the US.... Necessary for anyone working in ethics or the Continental tradition." —Choice "... a provocative discourse on the consequences of the ethical in the thought of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger." —The Journal of Religion Charles E. Scott's challenging book advances the broad (...) claim that ethics as a way of judging and thinking has come into question as philosophers have confronted suffering and conflicts that arise from our traditional systems of value. (shrink)

An examination of split-brain syndrome, and whether split-brain patients have two minds.

Having a deaf student in class can pose a tremendous challenge for both the professor and the student, but it can also be an incredibly rewarding experience. To help make it so, this article briefly covers the differences between American Sign Language and English and then identifies aspects of linguistic skills where the deaf student may encounter difficulty in dealing with Philosophy. Those discussed are inadequate vocabulary, problems in reading and writing, insufficient background or “life” information, and difficulty in dealing (...) with abstractions. Since English will most likely be a second language for deaf students, there is also a brief discussion of similarities and differences between them and ESL students. An appendix to the article presents a collection of techniques that I developed to accommodate the needs of a profoundly deaf student who took an introductory Philosophy and an upper level Religion course with me. Among them are suggestions for lectures, class discussions, testing, written assignments, student-teacher conferences, and audio-visual materials. Finally, there are some useful on-line resources together with some tips for working with interpreters. (shrink)

One of the major intellectual figures of the twentieth century, Paul Ricoeur has influenced a generation of thinkers. In this, the first philosophically informed biography of Ricoeur, student, colleague, and confidant Charles E. Reagan provides an unusually accessible look at both the philosophy of this extraordinary thinker and the pivotal experiences that influenced his development. "A valuable introduction to Ricoeur; highly recommended."—_Library Journal_ "[A] lively introduction to the life and thought of one of this century's most notable philosophers."—Norman Wirzba, (...) _Christian Century_ "Reagan lucidly explains Ricoeur's difficult philosophy while shining overdue light on the personality behind it."—Carlin Romano, _Philadelphia Inquirer_ "Combines biographical and philosophical essays with a more personal memoir that makes Ricoeur's humane and magnanimous nature abundantly evident. Four revealing interviews, coupled with photographs, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, complete this illuminating study."—_Choice_. (shrink)

Living with Indifference is about the dimension of life that is utterly neutral, without care, feeling, or personality. In this provocative work that is anything but indifferent, Charles E. Scott explores the ways people have spoken and thought about indifference. Exploring topics such as time, chance, beauty, imagination, violence, and virtue, Scott shows how affirming indifference can be beneficial, and how destructive consequences can occur when we deny it. Scott’s preoccupation with indifference issues a demand for focused attention in (...) connection with personal values, ethics, and beliefs. This elegantly argued book speaks to the positive value of diversity and a world that is open to human passion. (shrink)

This volume compiles writings by leading moral theologians and ethicists on an important, emerging topic in the field of ethics. As spirituality asserts its broad humanistic interdisciplinarity, and moral theology emerges from its fixation on sin to address broader questions of human formation and Christian discipleship, the need for the two disciplines to be in dialogue is clear.

Sin, reconciliation, and the manuals of moral theology -- Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition -- Natural law -- Papal teaching office -- Second Vatican Council -- Where do we stand today?