Israel Kirzner cautions us that, because commodity price arbitrage as such does not operate outside commodity markets, the logic of Pareto-improving entrepreneurship does not provide a “copybook example” for explaining the evolution of social institutions in general. He characterizes Menger’s theory of the emergence of money as non-entrepreneurial; by implication, while it assures us that some monetary standard will emerge, it does not assure us that a superior monetary standard will spontaneously emerge. I argue that entrepreneurial opportunities for private gain (...) do in fact drive the Mengerian evolution from barter to money, and systematically promote the emergence of superior monetary standards, though not necessarily the best conceivable standards. In choosing among potential exchange media to accept and offer, a pre-monetary trader has a private incentive to choose commodities that have whatever properties other traders prefer in their exchange media.Israel Kirzner nous met en garde sur le fait que parce que l’arbitrage des prix des marchandises en soi n’opère pas hors des marchés des produits, la logique de l’amélioration de l’esprit d’entreprise ne procure pas un “exemple classique” pour expliquer l’évolution des institutions sociales en général. Il caractérise la théorie mengerienne de l’émergence de la monnaie comme étant non entrepreneuriale; l’implication en est que si cette théorie nous assure qu’un certain étalon monétaire va émerger, elle ne peut affirmer avec certitude que cet étalon monétaire spontané sera supérieur.L’article suggère que des opportunités entrepreneuriales de gains privés orientent en effet l’évoluti- on décrite par Menger d’une situation de troc vers une économie monétaire et promeuvent systéma- tiquement l’émergence d’étalons monétaires supérieurs, bien que pas nécessairement les meilleurs étalons concevables. En choisissant parmi les intermédiaires d’échange potentiels lequel accepter ou offrir, un négociant d’avant l’ère monétaire a une insitation privée à choisir les marchandises dotées de propriétés que les autres négociants préfèrent dans le cadre de leurs échanges. (shrink)

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. ECMO是一項高風險、高創傷、高消耗的創新技術，它能夠為新冠病毒肺炎重症患者提供挽救性治療°ECMO的治療目標是幫助患者恢復心肺功能，或者橋接最終治療，包括器械植入，或者器官移植等。然而，容易被忽視的 事實是，ECMO挽救了一些患者的生命，但也可能讓那些沒有康復機會的患者陷入醫療困境。於是，ECMO的臨床應用不得不面對一些反對意見，包括嚴重併發症危害患者生命安全、無效治療導致技術失敗，以及大量佔用資 源損害醫療公平等。ECMO技術的臨床應用應該在尊重生命價值和患者意願的基礎上，合理設置治療目標、確立可接受退出標準、妥善處理患者意願與ECMO設備撤除困境之間的倫理衝突，建立適度倫理框架以合理控制醫療 干預的邊界。 Characterized by high risk, high trauma and high consumption, Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) is an innovative technology that can be used as salvage therapy for COVID-19 patients. ECMO treatment can help restore patients' cardiopulmonary function or can bridge their final treatment, including device implantation or organ transplantation. However, although ECMO saves some patients' lives, it can also leave those with no chance of recovery in a medical dilemma. ECMO (...) is thus controversial: it is criticized for technical failures and ineffective treatments, and its use raises questions about medical equity. This paper argues that the clinical application of ECMO technology should be based on a respect for the value of life and the will of patients, reasonably set therapeutic goals, acceptable withdrawal criteria, proper management of the conflict between patients' desires and the medical dilemma, and the establishment of an ethical framework to control the limits of medical intervention. (shrink)

Members of a human group are bound with one another by multiple flows of information. (Here we use “information” in a broad sense that includes not only the content of people’s knowledge, but also that of their beliefs, assumptions, fictions, rules, norms, skills, maps, images, and so on.) This information is materially realized in the mental representations of the people, and in their public productions, that is, their cognitively guided behaviors and the enduring material traces of these behaviors. Mentally represented (...) information is transmitted from individuals to individuals through public productions. Public representations such as speech, gestures, writing, or pictures are a special type of public productions, the function of which is to communicate a content. Public representations play a major role in information transmission. Much information, however, is communicated implicitly, that is, without being publicly represented. Information can also be transmitted without being properly speaking communicated, not even implicitly, as when one individual acquires a skill by observing and imitating the behavior of others. Most information transmitted among humans is about local and transient circumstances, and is not transmitted beyond these. Some information of more general relevance, however, is repeatedly transmitted, and propagates throughout the group. Talk of “culture” (whatever the preferred definition or theory of culture) is about this widely distributed information and about its material realizations inside people’s mind and in their common environment (see Sperber 1996). One can study cultural phenomena in two main ways. One can interpret them, that is, try and make their contents intelligible to people of another culture, or more intelligible to members of the culture in which these phenomena occurs, as do anthropologists and historians. One may also try and explain causally how these cultural phenomena emerge, stabilize and evolve.. (shrink)

Chimpanzee behaviour with mirrors makes it plausible that they can recognise themselves as themselves in mirrors, and so have a 'self-concept'. I defend this claim, and argue that roughly similar behaviour in pigeons, as reported, does not in fact make it equally plausible that they also have this mental capacity. But for all that it is genuine, chimpanzee self-consciousness may differ significantly from ours. I describe one possibility I believe consistent with the data, even if not very plausible: that the (...) chimpanzee is aware of itself only as a material being, and not as a subject of any psychological states. As I try to make clear, this possibility exists even if the chimpanzee has psychological states, and is aware of some of them. (shrink)

This book seeks to resolve an issue that has divided psychoanalysts and other scholars of aggression for decades, namely the nature of aggression. The work expands and unifies the Freudian drive-based explanation of aggression into contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice and brings Freudian theory into the 21st Century.

This book seeks to resolve an issue that has divided psychoanalysts and other scholars of aggression for decades, namely the nature of aggression. The work expands and unifies the Freudian drive-based explanation of aggression into contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice and brings Freudian theory into the 21st Century.

One might expect functionalism to imply that personal identity is preserved through various operations on the brain, including transplantation. I argue that this is not clearly so even where the whole brain is transplanted. It is definitely not so in cases where only the cerebrum is transplanted, a conceivable kind of hemispherectomy, and even certain cases in which the brain is "gradually" replaced by an inorganic substitute. These results distinguish functionalism from other accounts taking what Eric T. Olson calls the (...) "Psychological Approach" to personal identity, enabling it to avoid some of his objections to them. (shrink)

Ritalin use has increased by 500 percent in the last five years. The reasons for this dramatic surge are rooted in changes and pressures in psychiatry and society at large.

My One Fallacy theory says there is only one fallacy: equivocation, or playing on an ambiguity. In this paper I explain how this theory arose from rnetaphilosophical concerns. And I contrast this theory with purely logical, dialectical, and psychological notions of fallacy.

Our understanding of language, its origins and subsequent evolution, is shaped not only by data and theories from the language sciences, but also fundamentally by the biological sciences. Recent developments in genetics and evolutionary theory offer both very strong constraints on what scenarios of language evolution are possible and probable, but also offer exciting opportunities for understanding otherwise puzzling phenomena. Due to the intrinsic breathtaking rate of advancement in these fields, and the complexity, subtlety, and sometimes apparent non-intuitiveness of the (...) phenomena discovered, some of these recent developments have either being completely missed by language scientists or misperceived and misrepresented. In this short paper, we offer an update on some of these findings and theoretical developments through a selection of illustrative examples and discussions that cast new light on current debates in the language sciences. The main message of our paper is that life is much more complex and nuanced than anybody could have predicted even a few decades ago, and that we need to be flexible in our theorizing instead of embracing a priori dogmas and trying to patch paradigms that are no longer satisfactory. (shrink)

What distinguishes actions of persons from other events? Too big a question; we make a customary substitution: what distinguishes a person's raising his arm from a person's arm rising? In each case, the arm rises. But in the former, we have something in addition. Let us say that in the former case, the person causes the arm's rising. Our problem then is to interpret this notion of causation by an agent.It can be done, I believe, in terms of the notion (...) of causation of events by other events-events which may not be “mental,” contrary to one common view. My account of agent causation is presented in the concluding section of this paper. I set the stage for this account by first examining rivals of three types: one asserting that agent causation is or involves a causal concept which cannot be interpreted further, but which we all understand well enough; one which invokes causation by mental events of certain kinds; and one which avoids all reference to causation. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker has claimed that functionalism, a theory about mental states, implies a certain theory about the identity over time of persons, the entities that have mental states. He also claims that persons can survive a "Brain-State-Transfer" procedure. My examination of these claims includes description and analysis of imaginary cases, but-notably-not appeals to our "intuitions" concerning them. It turns out that Shoemaker's basic insight is correct: there is a connection between the two theories. Specifically, functionalism implies that "non-branching functional continuity" (...) is sufficient for personal identity. But there is no implication that it is necessary. And the "BST" procedure may not preserve functional continuity. I consider several possibilities. On what may be the most attractive, the survivor of this-or any similar-procedure is not identical with the original person, but related to him or her as are the survivors in a case of fission. (shrink)

Sydney Shoemaker has claimed that functionalism, a theory about mental states, implies a certain theory about the identity over time of persons, the entities that have mental states. He also claims that persons can survive a “Brain-State-Transfer” procedure.My examination of these claims includes description and analysis of imaginary cases, but-notably-not appeals to our “intuitions” concerning them.It turns out that Shoemaker’s basic insight is correct: there is a connection between the two theories. Specifically, functionalism implies that “non-branching functional continuity” is sufficient (...) for personal identity. But there is no implication that it is necessary. And the “BST” procedure may not preserve functional continuity. I consider several possibilities. On what may be the most attractive, the survivor of this---or any similar---procedure is not identical with the original person, but related to him or her as are the survivors in a case of fission. (shrink)

What distinguishes actions of persons from other events? Too big a question; we make a customary substitution: what distinguishes a person's raising his arm from a person's arm rising? In each case, the arm rises. But in the former, we have something in addition. Let us say that in the former case, the person causes the arm's rising. Our problem then is to interpret this notion of causation by an agent.It can be done, I believe, in terms of the notion (...) of causation of events by other events-events which may not be “mental,” contrary to one common view. My account of agent causation is presented in the concluding section of this paper. I set the stage for this account by first examining rivals of three types: one asserting that agent causation is or involves a causal concept which cannot be interpreted further, but which we all understand well enough; one which invokes causation by mental events of certain kinds; and one which avoids all reference to causation. (shrink)

In contrast to what merely happens to us, or to parts of us, actions are what we do. My moving my finger is an action, to be distinguished from the mere motion of that finger. My snoring likewise is not something I ‘do’ in the intended sense, though in another, broader sense, it is something I often ‘do’ while asleep.

Ad hominem arguments argue that some opponent should not be heard and no argument of that opponent should be heard or considered. The opponent has generally pernicious views, false and harmful. Moreover he is diabolically clever at arguing for his views. Thus, the ad hominem argument is essentially a device by which non-intellectuals try to wrest control of a dialectical situation from intellectuals. Stifling intellectuals, disrupting the dialectical situation, is an unpleasant conclusion, but no fallacy has been shown in what (...) leads up to that conclusion. (shrink)

The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the (...) Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt. (shrink)