This target article focuses on dynamics that arise in three typical ethically complex cases in which psychiatric consultations are requested by physicians: a dying patient refuses life-prolonging treatment, an uncooperative patient demands to be allowed to go outside and smoke, and an angry patient demands to be admitted to the hospital. The discussion canvasses what is at stake morally and clinically in each of these cases and explores clinician–patient interactions, dynamics in relationships between consulting physicians and consultant psychiatrists, patient transference, (...) and physician countertransference. The article defines legalism and countertransference and argues that an ethically and clinically important consequence of these phenomena for patients is distortion of clinicians' perceptions of patients' decisions and vulnerabilities. The discussion also describes how legalism and countertransference adversely affect how clinicians treat their psychiatrist colleagues. Finally, the article suggests how the effects of legalism and countertransference can be mitigated. (shrink)

Philosopher Kings? The Adjudication of Conflicting Human Rights and Social Values, by George C. Christie, examines the attempts by courts to sort out conflicts involving freedom of expression, including religious expression, on the one hand, and rights to privacy and other important social values on the other. It approaches the subject from a comparative perspective, using principally cases decided by European and United States courts. A significant part of this book analyzes conflicts between freedom of expression and the (...) right to privacy. In a world in which, freedom of expression and privacy are said to be of equal value, the book explores whether it is possible to develop, through case-by-case adjudication, a legal regime which can give clear direction as to what expression is or is not permitted. Otherwise, if such a regime proves impossible, in the guise of recognizing the equal value of expression and privacy, privacy may become de facto the preferred value. (shrink)

This book is designed for use in courses in law schools and university departments of philosophy. It can serve as a text for basic and advanced courses and seminars. Readings include excerpts of classic works of Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Bentham, and Austin. Provided also are excerpts from standard works of twentieth century philosophers. The book explores current legal discourse with readings on topics such as sociobiology, Islamic law, the legal process school, legal feminism, critical legal studies, intersectionality and (...) gender identity theories, law and economics, and new private law theories. It reprints leading cases on natural rights/human rights and readings from online blogs, op-ed essays, news stories and internet publications, as well as drawing on literary treatment of topics relevant to legal philosophy. (shrink)

"To what extent can legal decisions be objective and fair, and how far does government depend on the law for its legitimacy? This concise analytical book examines the theory of both individual and political justice, concluding that many modern legal philosophers have undermined the prestige of the law by exaggerated claims in its defence. This is a basic book in jurisprudence"--Jacket.

Rationale: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the hippocampus is proposed for enhancement of memory impaired by injury or disease. Many pre-clinical DBS paradigms can be addressed in epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring for seizure localization, since they already have electrodes implanted in brain areas of interest. Even though epilepsy is usually not a memory disorder targeted by DBS, the studies can nevertheless model other memory-impacting disorders, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Methods: Human patients undergoing Phase II invasive monitoring for (...) intractable epilepsy were implanted with depth electrodes capable of recording neurophysiological signals. Subjects performed a delayed-match-to-sample (DMS) memory task while hippocampal ensembles from CA1 and CA3 cell layers were recorded to estimate a multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) model of CA3-to-CA1 neural encoding and a memory decoding model (MDM) to decode memory information from CA3 and CA1 neuronal signals. After model estimation, subjects again performed the DMS task while either MIMO-based or MDM-based patterned stimulation was delivered to CA1 electrode sites during the encoding phase of the DMS trials. Each subject was sorted (post hoc) by prior experience of repeated and/or mild-to-moderate brain injury (RMBI), TBI, or no history (control) and scored for percentage successful delayed recognition (DR) recall on stimulated vs. non-stimulated DMS trials. The subject’s medical history was unknown to the experimenters until after individual subject memory retention results were scored. Results: When examined compared to control subjects, both TBI and RMBI subjects showed increased memory retention in response to both MIMO and MDM-based hippocampal stimulation. Furthermore, effects of stimulation were also greater in subjects who were evaluated as having pre-existing mild-to-moderate memory impairment. Conclusion: These results show that hippocampal stimulation for memory facilitation was more beneficial for subjects who had previously suffered a brain injury (other than epilepsy), compared to control (epilepsy) subjects who had not suffered a brain injury. This study demonstrates that the epilepsy/intracranial recording model can be extended to test the ability of DBS to restore memory function in subjects who previously suffered a brain injury other than epilepsy, and support further investigation into the beneficial effect of DBS in TBI patients. (shrink)

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

I argue that Edward Feser misconstrues the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition on issues relevant to the arguments for God’s existence that proceed from finality in nature because he misapplies the A-T view that ordering to an end is inherent in natural things: (1) Feser speaks as if human action in no way serves as a model for understanding action for an end in nature; (2) he misreads, and ultimately undermines, the Fifth Way, by substituting intrinsic end-directedness in place of end-directedness; (3) he (...) overlooks striking similarities between Paley’s argument from design and the Fifth Way. He also fails to consider the role of the good in the Fifth Way. (shrink)

Scholars explore from many fresh angles the interweavings of two of the richest strands of human culture-music and esotericism-with examples from the medieval period to the modern age. Music and esotericism are two responses to the intuition that the world holds hidden order, beauty, and power. Those who compose, perform, and listen to music have often noted that music can be a bridge between sensory and transcendent realms. Such renowned writers as Boethius expanded the definition of music to encompass not (...) only sounded music but also the harmonic fabric of human and cosmic life. Those who engage in pursuits called "esoteric," from ancient astrology, magic, and alchemy to recent and more novel forms of spirituality, have also remarked on the relevance of music to their quests. Esotericists have composed music in order to convey esoteric meaning, performed music to create esoteric influences, and listened to music to raise their esoteric awareness. The academic study of esotericism is a young field, and few researchers have probed the rich interface between the musical and esoteric domains. In Explorations in Music and Esotericism, scholars from numerous fields introduce the history of esotericism and current debates about its definition and extent. The book's sixteen chapters present rich instances of connections between music and esotericism, organized with reference to four aspects of esotericism: as a form of thought; as the keeping and revealing of secrets; as an identity; and as a signifier. Edited by Marjorie Roth and Leonard George. Contributors: Elizabeth Abbate, Malachai Komanoff Bandy, Adam Bregman, Charles E. Brewer, Benjamin Dobbs, Anna Gawboy, Pasquale Giaquinto, Adam Knight Gilbert, Joscelyn Godwin, Virginia Christy Lamothe, Andrew Owen, Christopher Scheer, Codee Ann Spinner, Woodrow Steinken, and Daphne Tan. (shrink)

This intriguing and ground-breaking book is the first in-depth study of the development of philosophy of science in the United States during the Cold War. It documents the political vitality of logical empiricism and Otto Neurath's Unity of Science Movement when these projects emigrated to the US in the 1930s and follows their de-politicization by a convergence of intellectual, cultural and political forces in the 1950s. Students of logical empiricism and the Vienna Circle treat these as strictly intellectual non-political projects. (...) In fact, the refugee philosophers of science were highly active politically and debated questions about values inside and outside science, as a result of which their philosophy of science was scrutinized politically both from within and without the profession, by such institutions as J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. It will prove absorbing reading to philosophers and historians of science, intellectual historians, and scholars of Cold War studies. (shrink)

Cognitive science is a child of the 1950s, the product of a time when psychology, anthropology and linguistics were redefining themselves and computer science and neuroscience as disciplines were coming into existence. Psychology could not participate in the cognitive revolution until it had freed itself from behaviorism, thus restoring cognition to scientific respectability. By then, it was becoming clear in several disciplines that the solution to some of their problems depended crucially on solving problems traditionally allocated to other disciplines. Collaboration (...) was called for: this is a personal account of how it came about. (shrink)

In the light of two unpublished letters from Carnap to Kuhn, this essay examines the relationship between Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Carnap's philosophical views. Contrary to the common wisdom that Kuhn's book refuted logical empiricism, it argues that Carnap's views of revolutionary scientific change are rather similar to those detailed by Kuhn. This serves both to explain Carnap's appreciation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and to suggest that logical empiricism, insofar as that program rested on Carnap's (...) shoulders, was not substantially upstaged by Kuhn's book. (shrink)

Akerlof's substantial introduction to this volume tells the story of these papers, connecting them and showing how his later work has built upon his early contributions, in many cases improving their arguments, their subtlety, and their usefulness today.

"This book is a sorely needed corrective. Animal Spirits is an important--maybe even a decisive--contribution at a difficult juncture in macroeconomic theory.

Identity Economics provides an important and compelling new way to understand human behavior, revealing how our identities--and not just economic incentives--influence our decisions. In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people--facing the same economic circumstances--would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration--and of Identity Economics. The authors explain how (...) our conception of who we are and who we want to be may shape our economic lives more than any other factor, affecting how hard we work, and how we learn, spend, and save. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions--at work, at school, and at home. With it, we can better appreciate why incentives like stock options work or don't; why some schools succeed and others don't; why some cities and towns don't invest in their futures--and much, much more. Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People's notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people's identity--their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be--may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives. And the limits placed by society on people's identity can also be crucial determinants of their economic well-being. (shrink)

Identity Economics provides an important and compelling new way to understand human behavior, revealing how our identities--and not just economic incentives--influence our decisions. In 1995, economist Rachel Kranton wrote future Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof a letter insisting that his most recent paper was wrong. Identity, she argued, was the missing element that would help to explain why people--facing the same economic circumstances--would make different choices. This was the beginning of a fourteen-year collaboration--and of Identity Economics. The authors explain how (...) our conception of who we are and who we want to be may shape our economic lives more than any other factor, affecting how hard we work, and how we learn, spend, and save. Identity economics is a new way to understand people's decisions--at work, at school, and at home. With it, we can better appreciate why incentives like stock options work or don't; why some schools succeed and others don't; why some cities and towns don't invest in their futures--and much, much more. Identity Economics bridges a critical gap in the social sciences. It brings identity and norms to economics. People's notions of what is proper, and what is forbidden, and for whom, are fundamental to how hard they work, and how they learn, spend, and save. Thus people's identity--their conception of who they are, and of who they choose to be--may be the most important factor affecting their economic lives. And the limits placed by society on people's identity can also be crucial determinants of their economic well-being. (shrink)

I criticize conceptual pluralism, as endorsed recently by John Dupre and Philip Kitcher, for failing to supply strategies for demarcating science from non-science. Using creation-science as a test case, I argue that pluralism blocks arguments that keep creation-science in check and that metaphysical pluralism offers it positive, metaphysical support. Logical empiricism, however, still provides useful resources to reconfigure and manage the problem of creation-science in those practical and political contexts where pluralism will fail.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Christ's Male Sexuality and Acting In Persona Christi:A New Argument in Favor of the All-Male PriesthoodPaul Gondreau"One must be allowed to think about and discuss the issues.... [And on the issue of women's ordination] the discussion is still with us, it is still alive, and cannot be stifled [ersticken] by a paper [ein Papier]." So declares Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 2020, where "a (...) paper" refers to an apostolic letter, Pope St. John Paul II's 1994 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which definitively rules out the admissibility of women to priestly ordination.1 No doubt the archbishop was drawing inspiration from Cardinal Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who a month earlier had opined that arguments against women's ordination were becoming increasingly "weaker" (schwächer).2 In his capacity as president of the German bishops' conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing [End Page 805] of Limburg also pronounced on the issue in even more unabated terms; after insisting in June of the same year that Catholics can "continue to talk about the issue of women's ordination," he went further in an interview with the German magazine Herder Korrespondenz six months later: "There are well-developed arguments in theology in favor of opening up the sacramental ministry to women," he asserted, after declaring his desire for "change" (Veränderung), a change that he opined could begin with ordaining women as deacons before ordaining them as priests and bishops.3 Two years later, Bätzing remained adamant, going so far as to declare to speak in the name of the faith of the entire Church on this issue: "The sensus fidelium, that is, the sense of the faithful," he stated, "has moved on" (geht weiter).4 Since the deposit of faith, of which the sensus fidelium is expressive, does not and cannot "move on," that is, change, Bätzing's appeal to the sensus fidelium marks a curious—if also audacious—move, to say the least.It appears we are destined ever "to think about and discuss" the issue of women's ordination, no matter if the Holy Father himself, in the person of the John Paul II, should seek to quell this discussion in the strongest and most authoritative of terms: "In order that all doubt be removed regarding [this] matter," writes the Polish Pontiff, "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful" (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis §4).As regards John Paul II's assertion that his judgment is to be "definitively held" by all Catholics, it is worth recalling that, even if one high-ranking German churchman (Hesse) might esteem Ordinatio Sacerdotalis as [End Page 806] tantamount to ein Papier das erstickt, "a paper that stifles," another, Joseph Ratzinger (in his role as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], before becoming Pope Benedict XVI), holds up John Paul II's apostolic letter as expressive of the infallible teaching of the Church's ordinary magisterium and as "belonging to the deposit of faith." As such, the letter requires all Catholics, asserts Ratzinger, to offer their "definitive assent" to the Holy Father's pronouncement.5John Paul II and Ratzinger may as well have been talking to the wind. If Archbishop Hesse and his disparaging attitude—dismissing a papal apostolic letter as a paper that "stifles"—serves to indicate what "definitive assent" looks like, and if Bishop Bätzing can find that the deposit of faith (represented by the sensus fidelium), particularly as it concerns women's ordination, is able to "move on," it is no wonder that we find the issue "still alive." And recall Hesse and Bätzing hardly stand alone among German prelates in their willingness to ignore Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, as Cardinal Marx and the much touted German "synodal way" show (the archbishop of Luxembourg, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, could also be added to the list).6 Further, when Hesse asserts, "one must be allowed to think about and discuss [women's ordination]," there is little doubt that, for him and those... (shrink)

Philosophical (p-) zombies are constructs that possess all of the behavioral features and responses of a sentient human being, yet are not conscious. P-zombies are intimately linked to the hard problem of consciousness and have been invoked as arguments against physicalist approaches. But what if we were to invert the characteristics of p-zombies? Such an inverse (i-) zombie would possess all of the behavioral features and responses of an insensate being yet would nonetheless be conscious. While p-zombies are logically possible (...) but naturally improbable, an approximation of i-zombies actually exists: individuals experiencing what is referred to as “anesthesia awareness.” Patients under general anesthesia may be intubated (preventing speech), paralyzed (preventing movement), and narcotized (minimizing response to nociceptive stimuli). Thus, they appear—and typically are—unconscious. In 1-2 cases/1000, however, patients may be aware of intraoperative events, sometimes without any objective indices. Furthermore, a much higher percentage of patients (22% in a recent study) may have the subjective experience of dreaming during general anesthesia. P-zombies confront us with the hard problem of consciousness—how do we explain the presence of qualia? I-zombies present a more practical problem—how do we detect the presence of qualia? The current investigation compares p-zombies to i-zombies and explores the “hard problem” of unconsciousness with a focus on anesthesia awareness. (shrink)

(2001). Against a third dogma of logical empiricism: Otto Neurath and 'unpredictability in principle' International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 199-209. doi: 10.1080/02698590120059068.

Hempel's proposal of covering laws which explain historical events has a certain plausibility, but can never be actually realized due to the chaotic nature of history. The natural laws that would govern both individual lives and greater history would be nonlinear; consequently, in the terminology of chaos theory, the final states of both are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Initial conditions would need to be exactly known in order to account correctly for historic phenomena, especially for causes and effects which (...) span long, historically interesting, lengths of time. Covering-law history therefore fails because the details of initial conditions are generally unknowable. Since this constraint diminishes as the time over which covering laws operate is divided into smaller consecutive intervals of scenes, covering-law explanations resolve into those having a narrative temporal structure. (shrink)

A revision of George Kennedy's translation of, introdution to, and commentary on Aristotle's On Rhetoric. His translation is most accurate, his general introduction is the most thorough and insightful, and his brief introductions to sections of the work, along with his explanatory footnotes, are the most useful available.

It will be recalled that Aristotle cites two examples of relations of this type: relations of knowledge and of vision, both of which are internal to the knower and seer, but external to the objects seen and known. However, neither of these relations can be the ones which exist between God and world for they are in a sense cul-de-sacs. Action is involved in their establishment, but they do not necessarily lead to further action, and so they cannot account for (...) the eternal movement of the universe. Only when their objects become desiderata do they result in additional activity. (shrink)

In the spring of 1937, the University of Chicago Press mailed hundreds of subscription forms for its latest enterprise – a projected series of twenty short monographs by various philosophers and scientists. Together the monographs were to form the first section of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Included in each mailing was an introductory prospectus which began:Recent years have witnessed a striking growth of interest in the scientific enterprise as a whole and especially in the unity of science. The (...) concern throughout the world for the logic of science, the history of science, and the sociology of science reveals a comprehensive international movement interested in considering science as a whole in terms of the scientific temper itself. A science of science is appearing. The extreme specialization within science demands as its corrective an interest in the scientific edifice in its entirety. This is especially necessary if science is to satisfy its inherent urge for the systematization of its results and methods and if science is to perform adequately its educational role in the modern world. Science is gradually rousing itself for the performance of its total task. (shrink)

When philosophers participate in the interdisciplinary ethical, environmental, economic, legal, and social analysis of nanotechnologies, what is their specific contribution? At first glance, the contribution of philosophy appears to be a clarification of the various moral and ethical arguments that are commonly presented in philosophical discussion. But if this is the only contribution of philosophy, then it can offer no more than a stalemate position, in which each moral and ethical argument nullifies all the others. To provide an alternative, we (...) must analyze the reasons behind the prevailing individual and cultural relativism in ethics. The epistemological investigation of this stalemate position will guide us to the core problem of the relation between theory and action . The stalemate can be overcome from a pragmatic philosophical standpoint, which combines epistemology, philosophy of language—that is, the philosophy of speech acts—and practical reasoning—that is, reasoning about decision-making . From this philosophical standpoint, it will be possible to show how philosophy can accompany and support the development of nanotechnologies. (shrink)

This article is about Otto Neurath’s infamous proposal to combat metaphysics by creating and publishing an index of prohibited words. The logic of this proposal is explicated in the frameworks of Neurath’s philosophy of science and his International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. I reconstruct two arguments within Neurath’s project to defend the proposal against criticisms from Neurath’s colleagues and against the charge that philosophers ought not be censors.

Everyone has felt those tingling, tickly sensations occurring spontaneously all over the body in the absence of stimuli. But does anyone know where they come from? Here, right-handed subjects were asked to focus on one hand while looking at it and while looking away and subsequently to map and describe the spatial and qualitative attributes of sensations arising spontaneously. The spatial distribution of spontaneous sensations followed a proximo-distal gradient, similar to the one previously described for the density of receptive units. (...) The intensity and spatial extent of the reported sensations were modulated by the focusing condition, especially in respect of the left hand. Convergent focusing acted upon the conscious perception of sensations by enhancing or suppressing them. To our knowledge, this is the first ever study of spontaneous sensations, and it offers considerable insight into their sources. The presence of the proximo-distal distributional gradient is a clear sign that receptive units are involved. The enhancement/suppression effects also confirm the involvement of attention. Finally, left-hand dominance suggests several right-hemisphere processes may be involved, such as spatial and tactile perception, and probably interoception. (shrink)

Four philosophical problems--predication, speech acts, rules, and innate ideas--are discussed in the light of their implications for psychological and linguistic research. The discussion of predication concerns both form and use. With respect to form, it is argued that our lexical memory is organized according to a predicate-argument formula that underlies the subject-predicate form of our sentences. With respect to use, it is argued that the illocutionary force of the sentence as a speech act must be taken into account. Both the (...) formation and the use of such verbal constructions are normally characterized by systems of rules, but there is no clear account of what a rule is or how it might operate to control behavior, and this problem is especially difficult when, as in language, the person's knowledge of the rules is implicit. The innate basis for our human ability to acquire linguistic rules is considered and the problem of innateness is redefined around the conjecture that there are innate, language-specific mechanisms unique to human beings. The problem of investigating such language-specific mechanisms psychologically, however, is quite difficult at the present time. (shrink)