John Forrester’s book Thinking in Cases does not provide one ultimate definition of what it means to ‘think in cases’, but rather several alternatives: a ‘style of reasoning’ (Hacking), ‘paradigms’ or ‘exemplars’ (Kuhn), and ‘language games’ (Wittgenstein), to mention only a few. But for Forrester, the stories behind each of the figures who suggested these different models for thinking (in cases) are as important as the models themselves. In other words, the question for Forrester is not only what ‘thinking in (...) cases’ is, but also who might be considered a ‘thinker in cases’. Who could serve as a case study for such a thinker? The major candidates that Forrester considers in his book to be ‘thinkers in cases’ are Kuhn, Foucault, Freud, and Winnicott. In what follows, I will argue that one name is missing from this list, as well as from Forrester’s book more generally: Michael Balint. This name is missing not only because Balint was a great ‘thinker in cases’, but also because we have some reasons to believe that Forrester himself thought so and wished to add him to the list. Forrester, I will argue, found in Balint an exemplar for a thinker in cases that combined elements from Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and Foucault’s philosophy of the case-based sciences. (shrink)

The Cambridge Malting House, an experimental school, serves here as a case study for investigating the tensions within 1920s liberal elites between their desire to abandon some Victorian and Edwardian sets of values in favour of more democratic ones, and at the same time their insistence on preserving themselves as an integral part of the English upper class. Susan Isaacs, the manager of the Malting House, provided the parents – some of whom were the most famous scientists and intellectuals of (...) their age – with an opportunity to fulfil their ‘fantasy’ of bringing up children in total freedom. In retrospect, however, she deeply criticized those from their milieu for not fully understanding the real socio-cultural implications of their ideological decision to make independence and freedom the core values in their children’s education. Thus, 1920s progressive education is a paradigmatic case study of the cultural and ideological inner contradictions within liberal thought in the interwar era. The article also shows how psychoanalysis – which attracted many progressive educators – played a crucial role in providing liberals of all sorts with a new language to articulate their political visions, but, at the same time, explored the limits of the liberal discourse as a whole. (shrink)

This article argues that Empedocles’ trust in Strife (DK31 B115.14 = LM22 D10.14) is not, as the prevailing interpretation has it, only a past misjudgement and failure. Rather, trust in Strife still, and to his own lament, infects Empedocles’ mind and informs his life. This detail then offers a fresh perspective on Empedocles’ self-conception and on how, through the daimōn’s cosmic peregrinations, Empedocles raises and pursues questions of agency and responsibility. Furthermore, it sheds light on Empedocles’ understanding of his own (...) ethical standing: common assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding, he does not see himself as an unqualifiedly successful embodiment of his own ideals. (shrink)

Dorit Bar-On develops and defends a novel view of avowals and self-knowledge. Drawing on resources from the philosophy of language, the theory of action, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, she offers original and systematic answers to many long-standing questions concerning our ability to know our own minds. We are all very good at telling what states of mind we are in at a given moment. When it comes to our own present states of mind, what we say goes; an (...) avowal such as "I'm feeling so anxious" or "I'm thinking about my next trip to Paris," it is typically supposed, tells it like it is. But why is that? Why should what I say about my present mental states carry so much more weight than what others say about them? Why should avowals be more immune to criticism and correction than other claims we make? And if avowals are not based on any evidence or observation, how could they possibly express our knowledge of our own present mental states? Bar-On proposes a Neo-Expressivist view according to which an avowal is an act through which a person directly expresses, rather than merely reports, the very mental condition that the avowal ascribes. She argues that this expressivist idea, coupled with an adequate characterization of expression and a proper separation of the semantics of avowals from their pragmatics and epistemology, explains the special status we assign to avowals. As against many expressivists and their critics, she maintains that such an expressivist explanation is consistent with a non-deflationary view of self-knowledge and a robust realism about mental states. The view that emerges preserves many insights of the most prominent contributors to the subject, while offering a new perspective on our special relationship to our own minds. (shrink)

This book demonstrates that we need not choose between seeing so-called Presocratic thinkers as rational philosophers or as religious sages. In particular, it rethinks fundamentally the emergence of systematic epistemology and reflection on speculative inquiry in Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Shaul Tor argues that different forms of reasoning, and different models of divine disclosure, play equally integral, harmonious and mutually illuminating roles in early Greek epistemology. Throughout, the book relates these thinkers to their religious, literary and historical surroundings. It (...) is thus also, and inseparably, a study of poetic inspiration, divination, mystery initiation, metempsychosis and other early Greek attitudes to the relations and interactions between mortal and divine. The engagements of early philosophers with such religious attitudes present us with complex combinations of criticisms and creative appropriations. Indeed, the early milestones of philosophical epistemology studied here themselves reflect an essentially theological enterprise and, as such, one aspect of Greek religion. (shrink)

Changes in the foundations of the negotiability of deeds took place in Jewish law in Christian Spain towards the end of the thirteenth century and in the fourteenth century. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sages there adopted the legal tradition that had been shaped in Muslim Spain and North Africa in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This was a direct continuation of the tradition of the Geonim in Babylon of the ninth to the eleventh centuries, and was based on (...) Talmudic law. According to this tradition, a creditor could sell a loan deed, which is a necessary condition for the possibility of developing a negotiable bill, but two other decrees significantly impeded the emergence of the negotiable bill: one was the rule enabling a lender who sold the deed to forgive the debt, and the other was the requirement of a bill of sale in order to transfer ownership of the loan deed. In the kingdom of Catalonia, the famous scholar Rashba stood at the forefront of the changes, blocking the forgiveness of a debt by a lender who sold a deed of the types: "to the lender and to whom he has empowered," and "to lender or bearer." Both deeds resemble the "pay to order" promissory note in English law. However, there is no evidence of modern negotiable instruments, where the transferee as a holder in due course obtains a bill without defects and with almost no direct links to the transferor. Rashba’s and his followers’ position appears consistent with the economic reality in the region of Catalonia and its capital city of Barcelona as a result of the transformation of the kingdom into a Mediterranean empire. Changes in the kingdom of Castile were hesitant and focused on easing the transferability of deeds by adding special clauses. Harosh ruled in the case of a deed "to lender and whom he has empowered" or a deed "to lender or bearer" that the lender/seller can forgive the debt to the borrower after the sale of the deed, rejecting the innovation of Rashba, his contemporary in Catalonia. Thus, the legal tradition in Castile, a powerful landlocked country, failed to make significant progress toward negotiability at that time, perhaps, unlike Catalonia, because of a lack of economic pressure to do so. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 60, Issue 1, pp 3 - 39 This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Alētheia and Doxa. It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa, his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa’s investigations and to those in Alētheia, and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even appropriate aspect (...) of mortal life. The mortal agent, however, is nonetheless capable of sustaining the cognition of Alētheia by momentarily coming to think with—or as—his divine soul. (shrink)

Following the lead of Duncan Pritchard’s “Wittgensteinian Pyrrhonism,” this paper takes a further, comparative and contrastive look at the problem of justification in Sextus Empiricus and in Wittgenstein’sOn Certainty. I argue both that Pritchard’s stimulating account is problematic in certain important respects and that his insights contain much interpretive potential still to be pursued. Diverging from Pritchard, I argue that it is a significant and self-conscious aspect of Sextus’ sceptical strategies to call into question large segments of our belief systemen (...) masseby exposing as apparently unjustifiable fundamental propositions which are closely related in their linchpin role to Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions. In the first instance, the result is a more complex account of both a deeper affinity between Wittgenstein’s approach to hinge propositions and Sextus’ approach to what I termarchaipropositions and a divergence between the two. In the second instance, I suggest how the comparison withOn Certaintycan be illuminating for the interpreter of Sextus. In particular, it can help us to see how the Pyrrhonist’s everyday conduct—common assumptions to the contrary notwithstanding—involves rational procedures of justification, in line with a naturalism reminiscent of Wittgenstein. Furthermore, it can help us to reflect on the Pyrrhonist’s attitude to what Wittgenstein would have called her ‘worldview’. Throughout, I suggest that the comparison with Wittgenstein is interesting, although it must be cashed out differently, not only on the interpretation—or, perhaps, strand—of ancient Pyrrhonism which has the sceptic exempt ordinary beliefs from her suspension of judgement, but also on the interpretation (or strand) which has her disavow all beliefs categorically. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe quartz clock, the first to replace the pendulum as the time standard and later a ubiquitous and highly influential technology, originated in research on means for determining frequency for the needs of telecommunication and the interests of its users. This article shows that a few groups in the US, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands developed technologies that enabled the construction of the new clock in 1927–28. To coordinate complex and large communication networks, the monopolistic American Telephone and Telegraph Company, (...) and national laboratories needed to determine and maintain a common ‘standard’ frequency measurement unit. Exploiting novel piezoelectric quartz methods and valve electronics techniques, researchers in these organizations constructed a new crystal-based frequency standard. To ensure its accuracy they compared it to an accepted absolute standard - an astronomical clock, constructing thereby the first quartz clock. Other groups, however, had different, though connected, technological aims, which originated from the diverse interests of the industrial, governmental and academic institutes to which they belonged, and for which they needed to measure, control and manipulate with frequencies of electric oscillations. The present article suggests a comparative examination of the research and development paths of these groups on their incentives, the technological and scientific resources they utilized, and the kind of research carried out in the various institutional settings. (shrink)

Developers are often the engine behind the creation and implementation of new technologies, including in the artificial intelligence surge that is currently underway. In many cases these new technologies introduce significant risk to affected stakeholders; risks that can be reduced and mitigated by such a dominant party. This is fully recognized by texts that analyze risks in the current AI transformation, which suggest voluntary adoption of ethical standards and imposing ethical standards via regulation and oversight as tools to compel developers (...) to reduce such risks. However, what these texts usually sidestep is the question of how aware developers are to the risks they are creating with these new AI technologies, and what their attitudes are towards such risks. This paper asks to rectify this gap in research, by analyzing an ongoing case study. Focusing on six Israeli AI startups in the field of radiology, I carry out a content analysis of their online material in order to examine these companies’ stances towards the potential threat their automated tools pose to patient safety and to the work-standing of healthcare professionals. Results show that these developers are aware of the risks their AI products pose, but tend to deny their own role in the technological transformation and dismiss or downplay the risks to stakeholders. I conclude by tying these findings back to current risk-reduction recommendations with regards to advanced AI technologies, and suggest which of them hold more promise in light of developers’ attitudes. (shrink)

Introduction -- Closed mindedness in movies -- Failed alternatives to optional thinking -- Optional thinking in movies -- Conclusion.

This book provides the reader with a theoretical and practical understanding of two health care delivery models: the patient/child centred care and family-centred care. Both are fundamental to caring for children in healthcare organizations. The authors address their application in a variety of paediatric healthcare contexts, as well as the ethical and legal issues they raise. Each model is increasingly pursued as a vehicle for guiding the delivery of health care in the best interests of children. Such models of health (...) care delivery shape health care policies, programs, facility design, resource allocation decisions and day-to-day interactions among patients, families, physicians and other health care professionals. To maximize the health and ethical benefits these models offer, there must be shared understanding of what the models entail, as well as the ethical and legal synergies and tensions they can create. This book is a valuable resource for paediatricians, nurses, trainees, graduate students, practitioners of ethics and health policy. (shrink)

This book provides the reader with a theoretical and practical understanding of two health care delivery models: the patient/child centred care and family-centred care. Both are fundamental to caring for children in healthcare organizations. The authors address their application in a variety of paediatric healthcare contexts, as well as the ethical and legal issues they raise. Each model is increasingly pursued as a vehicle for guiding the delivery of health care in the best interests of children. Such models of health (...) care delivery shape health care policies, programs, facility design, resource allocation decisions and day-to-day interactions among patients, families, physicians and other health care professionals. To maximize the health and ethical benefits these models offer, there must be shared understanding of what the models entail, as well as the ethical and legal synergies and tensions they can create. This book is a valuable resource for paediatricians, nurses, trainees, graduate students, practitioners of ethics and health policy. (shrink)

[1] Tseṭil ḳaṭan -- [2] Hanhagot ha-adam -- [3] Mikhtav ḳodesh -- [4] Liḳuṭim neʻimim -- [5] Igeret ha-ḳodesh -- [6] Kitve ḳodesh -- [7] Tefilah noraʼah -- [8] Noʻam Elimelekh -- [9] Yalḳuṭ Darkhe tsedeḳ.

Postliberal theology has been a topic of considerable theological debate over the past few decades. In his 2011 book Another Reformation, Peter Ochs deploys a postliberal theological model for the purpose of developing a sophisticated understanding of the future of interreligious relations. Ochs argues that postliberal theology is a reparative theology focusing on alleviating human suffering. He argues that the Christian idea of supersessionism may be the most challenging for Christians to confront as they explore avenues for making interreligious dialogue (...) more effective. Ochs critiques the Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder's understanding of Zionism as Jewish Constantianism for being an instance of an ostensibly postliberal theology losing its way. In this essay, I offer a critique of Ochs's reading of Yoder, claiming that Yoder's view actually mirrors an important intra-Jewish debate about the relationship between political power and piety, and retrieves an ingenious contribution of both early Judaism and early Christianity that is effaced in today's growing Constantinian approach to Christian imperialism and Jewish nationalism. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 36 - 58 This essay explores Martin Buber’s rendering of Jesus and the Ba‘al Shem Tov as two exemplars of religious anarchism that create a lens through which to see the symmetry between Judaism and Christianity. The essay argues that Buber’s use of Jesus to construct his view of the Ba‘al Shem Tov enables us to revisit the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity through the category of the religious anarchist.

This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia examines the life choices of two Jews who loved Christianity. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, born into an ultra-Orthodox, nineteenth-century rabbinic dynasty in Lithuania, spent much of his life writing a Hebrew commentary on the Gospels in order to document and argue for the symmetry or symbiosis that he perceived between Judaism and Christianity. Oswald Rufeisen, from a twentieth-century secular Zionist background in Poland, converted to Catholicism during World War II, became a monk, (...) and attempted to immigrate to Israel as a Jew in 1958. Rufeisen, while permitted to move to Israel to join a Carmelite monastery in Haifa, was denied the right to immediate citizenship of Israel which the Law of Return guarantees to all bona fide Jews. And this particular Soloveitchik has largely been forgotten, given the limits of Jewish interest in the New Testament and of Christian attention to rabbinic literature. This article explores the complex and vexing questions that the careers of these two men raise about the elusive distinctions between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and, on the other, between the Jewish religion and Jewish national identity. (shrink)

This essay is a close examination of one of Nahman of Bratslav's early and largely unexamined texts, Sefer ha‐Middot. The question it addresses is whether one can call this a study of “ethics” or, in Jewish nomenclature, musar, a work that seeks to cultivate human behaviors and describe ethical formation. In addition, it asks whether Sefer ha‐Middot can be called a text of “virtue ethics” given its focus on virtues and their enactment. The essay argues that Nahman's peculiar metaphysical notion (...) that all mitzvot are inextricably intertwined prevents any analysis of behavioral causality severing his “ethics” from any Aristotelian or Kantian tradition and brings him closer to Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of ethics as tied to traditional norms. And even with MacIntyre, the comparison is quite limited. Discussing “faith,” the “zaddik,” and “money,” the essay explores Nahman's view of how these and other virtues are cultivated and achieved. (shrink)

In this response to the essays in the symposium on my book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical I tried to clarify and expand some of the thoughtful and astute themes in the remarks of my interlocutors, especially about how the book was not intended to be about one figure but rather an intervention into postwar American and Israeli Judaism through the lens of a maligned figure who is ignored by most American Jews (...) and demonized by most Israeli Jews. Meir Kahane remains present because he never went away. And he never went away because he offered solutions that, while unpopular and egregious, continue to resonate when Jews begin to feel unstable about their place in America or Israel. He is the dark underside of the modern Jewish project that will not go away. (shrink)

The legal risks associated with health research involving human subjects have been highlighted recently by a number of lawsuits launched against those involved in conducting and evaluating the research. Some of these cases have been fully addressed by the legal system, resulting in judgments that provide some guidance. The vast majority of cases have either settled before going to trial, or have not yet been addressed by the courts, leaving us to wonder what might have been and what guidance future (...) cases may bring. What is striking about the lawsuits that have been commenced is the broad range of individuals/institutions that are named as defendants and the broad range of allegations that are made. The research community should take this early experience as a warning and should reflect carefully on practices where research involving human subjects is concerned. (shrink)

The research examined the use of moral justification as a mediating mechanism of stress, used by compulsory Israeli soldiers who had served at army roadblocks in the West Bank. Employing Bandura’s model of moral disengagement, we expected that the greater the justification of army roadblocks by the soldier, the more he would feel adjusted to army demands. Feelings of adjustment to this situation were examined using three components: cognitive, affective and behavioral. The sample was composed of 170 Israeli ex-soldiers who (...) had served for at least 1 month at army roadblocks in the West Bank during the Al-Aksa Intifada. The results supported the hypothesis regarding association between moral justification and feelings of adjustment at the end of army service. The mediating hypothesis was partially supported. Significance of moral justification as a mechanism of coping with the enforced situation of military law is discussed. (shrink)

Researchers have converged on the idea that a pragmatic understanding of communication can shed important light on the evolution of language. Accordingly, animal communication scientists have been keen to adopt insights from pragmatics research. Some authors couple their appeal to pragmatic aspects of communication with the claim that there are fundamental asymmetries between signalers and receivers in non-human animals. For example, in the case of primate vocal calls, signalers are said to produce signals unintentionally and mindlessly, whereas receivers are thought (...) to engage in contextual interpretation to derive the significance of signals. We argue that claims about signaler-receiver asymmetries are often confused. This is partly because their authors conflate two conceptions of pragmatics, which generate different accounts of the explanatory target for accounts of the evolution of language. Here we distinguish these conceptions, in order to help specify more precisely the proper explanatory target for language evolution research. (shrink)

a single life-span. Philosophers, then, do not see more or know more, and they do not see less or know less. They aim to see less detail and more of the abstract. Their details, if you like, are abstractions. Walking on God’s earth as a pedestrian, as a farmer working his fields or as a passer-by, one’s picture of one’s surroundings is every bit as intelligent as that of the pilot riding the sky. The views of the field are radically (...) different, however. One sees only a specific field and in all lively detail: the exact pattern of the land, or even the exact outline of a given leaf, grasshopper, grain of sand even. Acquaintance with minute detail is not without its price: details may stand in the way of conjuring the big picture. It may be difficult to compare whichever field one happens to be in with far off fields, with respect to their size or shape or any other quality. One may wish to inquire if far off fields were already planted, harvested, or even if they exist. A pedestrian may find it hard or even impossible to do so. The pedestrian view contains fine points that the pilot’s map never would, but it does not necessarily contain more information, for it lacks the general context. After all, there are only so many items that one can observe and account for at a single glance, a single map, a single book, a single life-span. (shrink)

Summary Between 1911 and 1914, Owen Richardson formulated a theory of photoelectricity based on thermodynamics and statistical reasoning. Although this theory succeeded in accounting for most of the relevant phenomena and despite the lack of competing causal or descriptive accounts of the phenomena, it failed to attract other physicists. This paper seeks the reasons for the neglect of this theory in contemporary cultures of photoelectric research. Four main causes of neglect are identified: the relatively high number and the nature of (...) the theory's assumptions, the contradiction of one of these assumptions with contemporary views, the failure to suggest new predictions or to account for hitherto unexplained regularities, and the view shared by many scientists that the problem of electromagnetic radiation required a radical solution that a descriptive theory could not provide. The expectation for a radical solution defines the revolutionary character of a research field. In the case of photoelectricity, it originated in a web of evidence to which other fields contributed. The very possibility of Richardson's theory shows that, taken separately, this phenomenon could receive an account which, unlike Einstein's light quantum, did not require deep changes in the conception of nature. (shrink)

The life of Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk -- The Gate of Prayer -- The Tzetel katan -- The mitzvah of kiddush Hashem -- Hanhagos ha'adam -- Stories and teachings -- Be strong and don't give up -- Hebrew prayers.

A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920. By Henry Abramson, xxi+255 pp. $36.95/£24.50/€36.95 cloth; $19.95/£13.50/€19.95 paper.

Sextus’ interpretation of Xenophanes’ scepticism in M 7.49–52 is often cited but has never been subject to detailed analysis. Such analysis reveals that Sextus’ interpretation raises far more complex problems than has been recognised. Scholars invariably assume one of two ways of construing his account of Xenophanes B34, without observing that the choice between these two alternatives poses an interpretive dilemma. Some scholars take it that Sextus ascribes to Xenophanes the view that one may have knowledge without knowing that one (...) has knowledge. Others take it that he ascribes to Xenophanes the view that one may have true belief without knowing that one has true belief. A close examination of Sextus’ paraphrase exposes a crucial but overlooked complication. Sextus elides Xenophanes’ pivotal distinction between knowing “the clear and certain” and believing “what has been fulfilled” . He eliminates altogether tetelesmenon from his analysis of B34, and expands the role of to saphes. I demonstrate that, as a result, Xenophanes B34, as interpreted by Sextus, does not consistently and straightforwardly express either view or view . Sextus, I argue, in fact develops a fundamentally incoherent interpretation of Xenophanes B34. On Sextus’ interpretation, Xenophanes justifies the proposition “No human knows” by arguing that, even if a human does, in fact, know, he does not know that he knows. Finally, I argue that Sextus’ incoherent account reflects not unthinking negligence, but a sophisticated if ultimately doomed attempt to interpret the logical structure of Xenophanes B34 in line with later models of second-order scepticism. (shrink)

Officially inaugurated in 1925, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was designed to serve the academic needs of the Jewish people and the Zionist enterprise in British Mandatory Palestine, as well as to help fulfill the economic and social requirements of the Middle East. It is intriguing that a university with such practical goals should have as one of its central pillars an institute for pure mathematics that purposely dismissed any of the varied fields of applied mathematics. This paper tells of (...) the preparations for the inauguration of the Hebrew University during the years 1920–1925 and analyzes the founding phase of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics that was established there during the years 1924–1928. Special emphasis is given to the first terms in which this Institute operated, starting from the winter of 1927 with the activities of the director and one of the founders, the German mathematician Edmund Landau, and onward from 1928 when his successors, particularly Adolf Abraham Halevi Fraenkel and Mihály-Michael Fekete, continued Landau's heritage of pure mathematics. The paper shows why and how the Institute succeeded in rejecting applied mathematics from its court and also explores the controversial issue of center and periphery in the development of science, a topic that is briefly analyzed in the concluding section. (shrink)