Conviction Narrative Theory bears a close resemblance to the Theory of Narrative Thought, although the two were designed to address different questions. In this commentary, we detail some of the more pronounced similarities and differences and suggest that resolving the latter could produce a third theory of narrative cognition that is superior to either of these two.

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

Recent discussions in the various circles of feminism, postmodernism, and environmentalism have begun to make clear that ontology and epistemology without ethics is deadly - oppressive to women, oppressive to men, oppressive to the earth. In response to this crisis of reason in modernity, this collection of essays suggests the importance of knowing other-wise, non-rational ways of knowing which are wise to the "other" - a spiritual knowing of the heart with the passionate eye of love. Knowing Otherwise (...) calls into question the Western philosophical tradition of giving pride of place to reason in the acquisition of knowledge. Reasoning is only one of many ways in which we engage, i.e. know, the world. We know more than we think. We know by touch, by feel, by taste, by sight, by sounds, by smell, by symbols, by sex, by trust - by means of every modality of human experience. Philosophy becomes, in the fashion of Levinas, "the wisdom of love at the service of love. Tracing connections between epistemology, ethics, and spirituality - between "knowing" and the "other," between an other and the Other - all the essays serve as points of convergence between postmodern discussions and the Calvinian spirituality which is the home for writers in this collection. In particular, this collection explores the contributions of feminist thought and thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Richard Rorty, Jacqes Derrida, and John D. Caputo to a spiritually and ethically sensitive knowing. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

A vibrant new translation of Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life,” a pointed reminder to make the most of our time Who doesn’t worry sometimes that smart phones, the Internet, and TV are robbing us of time and preventing us from having a life? How can we make the most of our time on earth? In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger offered one of the most famous answers to that question in his essay “On the (...) Shortness of Life”—a work that has more to teach us today than ever before. In How to Have a Life, James Romm presents a vibrant new translation of Seneca’s brilliant essay, plus two Senecan letters on the same theme, complete with the original Latin on facing pages and an inviting introduction. With devastating satiric wit, skillfully captured in this translation, Seneca lampoons the ways we squander our time and fail to realize how precious it is. We don’t allow people to steal our money, yet we allow them to plunder our time, or else we give it away ourselves in useless, idle pursuits. Seneca also describes how we can make better use of our brief days and years. In the process, he argues, we can make our lives longer, or even everlasting, because to live a real life is to attain a kind of immortality. A counterweight to the time-sucking distractions of the modern world, How to Have a Life offers priceless wisdom about making our time—and our lives—count. (shrink)

In chapter five of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings Allan Gibbard develops what he calls a ‘normative logic’ intended to solve some problems that face an expressivist theory of norms like his. The first is “the problem of embedding: The analysis applies to simple contexts, in which it is simply asserted or denied that such-and-such is rational. It says nothing about more complex normative assertions.”1 That is the problem with which I will be concerned. Though he doesn’t list it as (...) one of the problems to be solved, Gibbard’s devices also explain what it means to say that a certain normative argument is ‘valid’, that one normative statement follows from some others. Both of these questions arise because of the ways we ordinarily think and speak, ways which on a simplistic version of expressivism appear not to make any sense. An expressivist committed to making sense of the way we ordinarily think and speak in normative language owes some account of embeddings and of logic. Gibbard’s device seems to me the clearest and most systematic of any expressivist attempt to meet these challenges. (shrink)

Notwithstanding these wise pronouncements, my project here is to characterize the biological phenomenon of death of the higher animal species, such as vertebrates. My claim is that the formulation of “whole- brain death ” provides the most congruent map for our correct understanding of the concept of death. This essay builds upon the foundation my colleagues and I have laid since 1981 to characterize the concept of death and refine when this event occurs. Although our society's well-accepted program of (...) multiple organ procurement for transplantation requires the organ donor first to be dead, the concept of brain death is not merely a social contrivance to permit us to obtain the benefits of organ procurement. Rather, the concept of whole- brain death stands independently as the most accurate biological representation of the demise of the human organism. (shrink)

In an attempt to learn from COVID-19, this essay features six responses to the question: what did COVID-19 teach us, expose in us, or purge out of us when it comes to spiritual formation in Christ? Each response was written independently of the others by one of the coauthors. Diane J. Chandler focuses in on how COVID-19 exposed grievous inequities for ethnic groups in the American church and broader society. Kelly M. Kapic reminds us of the goodness of human finitude (...) and how COVID restrictions have forced many of us to embrace our limitations. Siang-Yang Tan reflects on eight lessons he has learned during this pandemic year in his role shepherding a local church. James C. Wilhoit calls us to consider the structures that are needed for local church leadership to make wise and godly decisions in times of crisis. Richard Peace draws our attention to what might be learned from the forced monasticism brought about by COVID-19 quarantines. Finally, Ruth Haley Barton pauses to consider the interdependence of human life that has been dramatically illustrated by this pandemic. While these six responses certainly do not exhaust all there is for the church to learn from COVID, we present them in the spirit of “O Lord, teach us what we do not see” and hope they will inspire your own reflections. (shrink)

A dispute in the form of rival interpretations of Carneades arose in the New Academy about whether the wise person is permitted to form opinions. One party rejected opinion; the other defended it. Because the terms enjoy a certain currency, the positions are here labelled ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ respectively. This essay tackles the question whether and how they differed. It argues that the disagreement was less about human epistemic capacities than about the standards and aspirations against which they should (...) be measured and that Cicero, our principal source, was a consistent adherent of the ‘radical’ party. (shrink)

This review essay assesses Michael Jackson’s ongoing project of staging an encounter between anthropology and philosophy in two books: Lifeworlds (2013) and As Wide as the World Is Wise (2016). Considering his philosophical enrichment of ethnographic theory and method, this essay addresses foundational questions about the prospects and practices of interdisciplinary engagement. It also suggests future avenues for continued dialogue between philosophy and anthropology.

Now that mankind has created the capability of destroying itself through nuclear technology, is it still possible to think in terms of a "just war"? Johnson argues that it is, and in the context of specific case studies he offers moral guidelines for addressing such major contemporary problems as terrorist activity in a foreign country, an individual’s conscientious objection to military service, and an American defense policy that requires development of weapons that may be morally employed in case of need. (...) "Remarkable.... A thoughtful and even profound book, which can be warmly recommended."—Adam Roberts, _New Society_ __ "[A] wise, prudential, and moral thesis.... A most important book, one that all Americans who can should read."—George Armstrong Kelly, _Political Science Quarterly_ __ "At its heart, _Can Modern War be Just? _Is a challenge to the common assumption that any modern war must be total—an unrestrained, spasmodic release of one’s entire destructive capacity against the whole of the enemy’s population."—Richard Allen, _Journal of Religious Ethics_ __ "Johnson... seriously attempt[s] to balance principles and respect facts. For this he is to be praised."—Gary Jason, _Chronicles of Culture_ __ "Johnson’s application of just war doctrine to the hardest problems of contemporary warfare is both morally sensitive and intellectually bold. Readers will sometimes disagree with his arguments, but they will be forced to think hard, and they will learn what it is to work within a moral tradition."—Michael Walzer. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

Trust within a secular or organizational context is much like the concept of faith within a religious framework. The purpose of this article is to identify parallels between trust and faith, particularly from the individual perspective of the person who perceives a duty owed to him or her. Betrayal is often a subjectively derived construct based upon each individual's subjective mediating lens. We analyze the nature of trust and betrayal and offer insights that a wise believer might use in (...) understanding his or her relationship with the divine. We suggest that the parallels between trust and faith involve a willingness to relinquish one's power or control in the expectant hope that our needs will be met. Betrayal, however, is often profoundly misunderstood. (shrink)

Wisely, the authors begin this book by describing it as a polemic. They argue that most contemporary analytic metaphysics is a waste of time and resources since contemporary ‘neo-scholastic’ metaphysical theorizing cannot hope to attain objective truth given its penchant for making a priori claims about the nature of the world which are backed up by appeal to intuition. In engaging in this activity, metaphysicians have, the authors claim, abandoned hope of locating any interesting connection between their metaphysical pronouncements and (...) how our best empirical theories describe the world. Moreover, the success attained by empirical science just cannot be matched by metaphysical theorizing and so, faced with this asymmetry, empirical science wins: a priori metaphysical theorizing must give way to a naturalistic form of metaphysics, a positive account of which the authors attempt to elucidate in the second and third, rather lengthy chapters of the book.The first chapter consists of a statement of the authors’ negative view, a vigorous, sustained and sometimes withering attack upon contemporary a priori metaphysics. Most ire is reserved for those who indulge in what the authors call ‘pseudo-scientific metaphysics’; that is, those who pay lip service to keeping their metaphysical speculation in tune with physics, only to constrain their ontology in such a way that the entities and processes within it do not even play a role in current physical theory, or are in straightforward contradiction with it. Much philosophy of science and scientific metaphysics is too superficial and simplistic to deserve the name and bears more relation to ‘the philosophy of “A” Level chemistry’. The guilty in this respect include David Lewis, Jaegwon Kim, Jonathan Lowe, Donald Davidson, Jerry Fodor, Crawford Elder, Trenton Merricks among …. (shrink)

Before military action, and even before mobilization, the decision on whether to go to war is debated by politicians, pundits, and the public. As they address the right or wrong of such action, it is also a time when, in the language of the just war tradition, the wise would deeply investigate their true claim to jus ad bellum (“the right of war”). Wars have negative consequences, not the least impinging on human life, and offer infrequent and uncertain benefits, (...) yet war is part of the human condition. James G. Murphy’s insightful analysis of the jus ad bellum criteria—competent authority, just cause, right intention, probability of success, last resort, and proportionality—is grounded in a variety of contemporary examples from World War I through Vietnam, the "soccer war" between Honduras and El Salvador, Afghanistan, and the Middle East conflict. Murphy argues persuasively that understanding jus ad bellum requires a primary focus on the international common good and the good of peace. Only secondarily should the argument about going to war hinge on the right of self-defense; in fact, pursuing the common good requires political action, given that peace is not simply the absence of violence. He moves on to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the jus ad bellum criteria, contending that some criteria depend logically on others—and that competent authority, not just cause, is ultimately the most significant criterion in an analysis of going to war. This timely study will be of special interest to scholars and students in ethics, war and peace, and international affairs. (shrink)

IN the recently published Life by I.eslie Stephen of his brother, Fitz- James, there is an account of a school to which the latter went when he was a boy. The teacher, a certain Mr. Guest, used to converse with his pupils in this wise: "Gurney, what is the difference between justification and sanctification?- Stephen, prove the omnipotence of God " etc. In the midst of our Harvard freethinking and indifference we are prone to imagine that here at (...) your good old orthodox College conversation continues to be somewhat upon this order; and to show you that we at Harvard have not lost all interest in these vital subjects, I have brought with me tonight something like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you, --I mean an essay in justification of faith, a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. 'The Will to Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper. (shrink)

This paper affirms human enhancement in principle, but questions the inordinate attention paid to two particular forms of enhancement: life extension and raising IQ. The argument is not about whether these enhancements are possible or not; instead, I question the aspirations behind the denial of death and the stress on one particular type of intelligence: the logico-analytic. Death is a form of finitude, and finitude is a crucially defining part of human life. As for intelligence, Howard Gardner and Daniel Goleman (...) show us the importance of multiple intelligences. After clarifying the notion of different psychological types, the paper takes five specimens of a distinct type and then studies the traits of that type through their examples. Seeking a pattern connecting those traits, the paper finds them bound together by the embrace of the computational metaphor for human cognition and then argues that the computational metaphor does not do a good job of describing human intelligence. Enlisting the works of Jaron Lanier and Ellen Ullman, the paper ends with a caution against pushing human intelligence toward machine intelligence, and points toward the human potential movement as a possible ally and wise guide for the transhumanist movement. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on lying. It it outlines the differences between different kinds of falsehoods in Plato (real falsehoods and falsehoods in words), the difference between myths and lies, the 'noble' (i.e., pedigree) lie in The Republic, and how Plato defended rulers lying to non-rulers about, for example, eugenics. It considers whether Socrates's opposition to lying is consistent with Socratic irony, and especially with his praise of his interlocutors as wise. Finally, it (...) looks at Aristotle's condemnation of lies, and asks whether lies to enemies, and self-deprecating lies by the magnanimous person, are not base. (shrink)

Excerpt from From Passion to Peace or the Pathway of the Pure The first three parts of this book, Passion, Aspiration, and Temptation, represent the common human life, with its passion, pathos, and tragedy; the last three parts, Transcendence, Beatitude, and Peace, present the Divine Life - calm, wise, and beautiful - of the sage and Saviour. The middle part, Transmutation, is the transitional stage between the two; it is the alchemic process linking the divine with the human life. (...) Discipline, denial, and renunciation do not constitute the Divine State; they are only the means by which it is attained. The Divine Life is established in that Perfect Knowledge which bestows Perfect Peace. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

According to a venerable ideal, the core aim of philosophical practice is wisdom. The guiding concern of the ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese traditions was the nature of the good life for human beings and the nature of reality. Central to these traditions is profound recognition of the subjection to adversities intrinsic to human life. I consider paradigmatic exemplars of wisdom, from ancient Western and Asian traditions, and the ways that experiences of adversity shaped their life. The suggestion is that (...) these exemplars, if any, will show how to live wisely in adversity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 297-327 [Access article in PDF] Liberal Irony A Program for Rhetoric James P. McDaniel [Figures] Seeing like a state Perhaps these famous yet simple pictures display not so much the virtuosity of photography or photographers as they statically represent fragments of Mahatma Gandhi's theosophical and political dynamism, his uncanny blend of calm and charisma, thought and play. The compositions are technically simple yet (...) thematically rich. The great leader being led by a boy, the public figure reflecting quietly in private over news reports: these modest representations key awareness of the place of overturning in Gandhi's thought, words, and deeds. A man who encouraged non-violent resistance (ahimsa) to British Imperialists, Gandhi submitted his body to great harshness (himsa). A witness to incredible atrocities committed against his people, Gandhi exhorted his followers to present their bodies before armed imperialist soldiers with full knowledge that they would be brutalized, many killed. Legally prohibited from doing so, Gandhi made salt. Exhausted and hungry, Gandhi walked hundreds of kilometers without rest and fasted for long stretches of time. Hated and feared, Gandhi loved. Perpetually reversing the "logic" of the world he knew, overturning its values to find and clarify truer values, insisting that choices be made between the received and the [End Page 297] promised, the "is" and the "ought," the actual and the possible, Gandhi was an ironist.Each picture can also be seen as an allegory, or taken together as an allegorical complex of mutually illuminating signs, and Gandhi as a political allegorist of human relations for early twentieth-century India and the globe. Allegory's signature inscriptions are everywhere about these simple photos. Personification of virtue, a stock technique of allegorical composition, abounds: Humility becomes Gandhi. Each photograph personifies humility uniquely: sparseness of setting, simplicity of garb, and other visual cues for self-abasement adorn the one; richness of natural setting, playfulness, childlikeness, and such ornament the other. Both images suggest the presence of the eternal in the temporal, but in different ways, another key fixture of allegorical design: Gandhi's stillness sitting near his spinning wheel, itself an image of eternal circuitousness, in the one, and his vigorous exertion against a vast, seemingly static, natural landscape, both "frozen" in time thanks to the technology of photography, in the other. Likewise, time's flow seems in a sense reversed in a manner that mirrors symmetrical ontological reversals: the older follows the younger, the man the boy, and the wise follow the inexperienced. Further allegorical decoding could be endeavored, for instance rearticulating the two texts on four tiers of signification: literal, figural, historical, and anagogical—the "four-level" allegorical hermeneutic initially developed for application to sacred texts and later ascendant as a critical method from the Middle Ages to some versions of poststructuralism in recent years (e.g., Fredric Jameson's Political Unconscious, Frederick Dolan's Allegories of America,Paul de Man's Allegories of Reading). Each tier reveals a unique dimension of discourse: its textual surface (literal), its embedded significations (figural), its reflexive display of placement in time and society (historical), and its alignment with archetypal or ultimate patterns of existence (anagogical).As two approaches to the same texts, irony and allegory are more complementary than exclusive. Neither renders the other invalid or uninteresting, nor do they deplete their common rhetorical resources, yet each features distinctive fixations. The first perspective fixates on a single strategy reflected in the texts and explores the ramifications of that strategy: dialectical reversal. The second fastens on and traverses across myriad textures and patterns of discursive technique displayed in the texts: allegorical personification (e.g., Gandhi as humility), temporality (e.g., fusing of public, private, and eternal time), paratactic association of images (i.e., interplay between visual signs not necessarily regulated by a single code [End Page 298] of meaning), and cosmic ornamentation (e.g., the spinning wheel that, by the way, is not spinning; like Gandhi, it is sitting still in a world of tumult, as if mirroring a moment of individual and universal arrest). Ironic strategizing and inventorying, in this light... (shrink)

The contemporary historical situation suggests fascinating parallels with that period of the 13th/7th century when the massive destruction of the Mongol invasions opened the way for popular new forms of Islamic life and practice that eventually spread Islam throughout Asia. Today, as in earlier periods of dramatic upheaval, we can witness those processes of inspiration and awakening that give rise to the spiritual pathways of future centuries, through each soul’s gradual discovery of its unique challenges and demands of ihsan. One (...) way of describing this transformation, to use the Qur’anic language adapted by Ibn ‘Arabi, is in the terms of the process of spiritual realization by which people discover their guiding inner relationship to those divine qualities or “Names” that eventually come to define the meaning and purpose of their lives. Through our life long movement of service to the “Lord” constituted by each divine Name, the transformation of the soul follows a familiar, naturally ascending trajectory. It begins with a curiosity drawing us toward some particular dimension of the Real ; then a compelling striving leading to heightened discipline and awareness; and ultimately to the creative manifestation of that devotion through the appropriate means of teaching, communication, and new communities of fellow- seekers—the Qur’anic “servants of the All-Merciful”—that slowly emerge from this shared spiritual work of devotion, discovery and creative response. Here we point to some ways this process of civilizational renewal is unfolding around the world, focusing on three of the most far-reaching of those divine Names: the “servants of the All-Wise”, in their exploring and deciphering the infinite Signs of God’s Wisdom “on the horizons”, in all of the sciences of nature and society; to those muhsinūn and “servants of the Beautiful” whose creative acts of beauty help awaken that love and awe which mark the beginnings of each spiritual journey; or to those “servants of the Subtly-Gracious” whose lives are dedicated to deepening our understanding of the presence and meaning of each of the divine Signs “in our souls,” in the emerging science of spirituality. These “servants of the all- Merciful” and their communities are themselves the first seeds of an emerging global civilization. (shrink)

Abstract:An integrated and principled neuroethics offers ethical guidelines able to transcend conventional and medical reliance on normality standards. Elsewhere we have proposed four principles for wise guidance on human transformations. Principles like these are already urgently needed, as bio- and cyberenhancements are rapidly emerging. Context matters. Neither “treatments” nor “enhancements” are objectively identifiable apart from performance expectations, social contexts, and civic orders. Lessons learned from disability studies about enablement and inclusion suggest a fresh way to categorize modifications to the (...) body and its performance. The term “enhancement” should be broken apart to permit recognition of enablements and augmentations, and kinds of radical augmentation for specialized performance. Augmentations affecting the self, self-worth, and self-identity of persons require heightened ethical scrutiny. Reversibility becomes the core problem, not the easy answer, as augmented persons may not cooperate with either decommissioning or displacement into unaccommodating societies. We conclude by indicating how our four principles of self-creativity, nonobsolescence, empowerment, and citizenship establish a neuroethics beyond normal that is better prepared for a future in which humans and their societies are going so far beyond normal. (shrink)

James VI and I united the crowns of England and Scotland. His books are fundamental sources of the principles which underlay the union. In particular, his Basilikon Doron was a best-seller in England and circulated widely on the Continent. Among the most important and influential British writings of their period, the king's works shed light on the political climate of Shakespeare's England and the intellectual background to the civil wars which afflicted Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. James' political (...) philosophy was a moderated absolutism, with an emphasis on the monarch's duty to rule according to law and the public good. Locke quoted his speech to parliament of 1610 approvingly, and Hobbes likewise praised 'our most wise king'. This edition is the first to draw on all the early texts of James' books, with an introduction setting them in their historical context. (shrink)

A classic result in the foundations of Yang-Mills theory, due to J. W. Barrett ["Holonomy and Path Structures in General Relativity and Yang-Mills Theory." Int. J. Th. Phys. 30, ], establishes that given a "generalized" holonomy map from the space of piece-wise smooth, closed curves based at some point of a manifold to a Lie group, there exists a principal bundle with that group as structure group and a principal connection on that bundle such that the holonomy map corresponds (...) to the holonomies of that connection. Barrett also provided one sense in which this "recovery theorem" yields a unique bundle, up to isomorphism. Here we show that something stronger is true: with an appropriate definition of isomorphism between generalized holonomy maps, there is an equivalence of categories between the category whose objects are generalized holonomy maps on a smooth, connected manifold and whose arrows are holonomy isomorphisms, and the category whose objects are principal connections on principal bundles over a smooth, connected manifold. This result clarifies, and somewhat improves upon, the sense of "unique recovery" in Barrett's theorems; it also makes precise a sense in which there is no loss of structure involved in moving from a principal bundle formulation of Yang-Mills theory to a holonomy, or "loop", formulation. (shrink)

The beginning of the fifteenth century marks a new stage in the reception of the Platonic dialogues in the Latin West. Throughout the medieval period only four dialogues of Plato--the Timaeus, Phaedo, Meno, and part of the Parmenides--were accessible to Latin readers, and the study of Plato was almost wholly confined to the first of these texts, which is chiefly concerned with natural philosophy. In the first half of the fifteenth century this situation changed dramatically: six new dialogues or parts (...) of dialogues were translated by Leonardo Bruni, the Republic was translated three times, George of Trebizond made versions of the Laws, the Epinomis, and the Parmenides, and a dozen other dialogues were made available in Latin by various other translators. With the work of Marsilio Ficino, who published in 1484 the first translation of the Complete Works, the translation activity of the fifteenth century come to fruition. ;The renewed interest in translating Plato in the early fifteenth century was not however at first a renewal of Platonism. The translation of Plato made part of a cultural program whose premisses were in fact foreign to Platonic thought; Plato was instead put to the task of showing that pagan literature was compatible with Christianity, or read as a wise sage full of melodious maxims in usum scholarum, or so twisted as to endorse with his authority some political belief of the translators. These ulterior motives had their influence on the translations themselves, which were frequently excerpted, bowdlerized, or otherwise expurgated of inappropriate sentiments. Such philosophical understanding of Plato as the early humanists displayed was derived from the Philosophica of Cicero. ;It is only with the Plato-Aristotle controversy of mid-century that some more sophisticated understanding of Platonic philosophy begins to emerge. Despite the central role Plato played in his apocalyptic theology, George of Trebizond does not seem to have had a very firm grasp of Platonic thought, but his opponent in the controversy, Cardinal Bessarion, was able to draw upon the philosophical sagacity of the Byzantine and Western scholastic traditions, and produced a more penetrating, if at times incoherent, interpretation of Plato's thought. It is only with Marsilio Ficino however that philosophical understanding was combined with the philological attainments necessary to produce a respectable translation of Plato, and this may account for the great success Ficino's translations enjoyed in subsequent centuries. (shrink)

Introduction -- Interlude #1: Consider the oxen -- The agrarian ideals of Cerridwen farm -- Vine sanctuary responds -- Interlude #2: Moral syllogism 101 -- Green Mountain College students mount a defense -- Professors and administrators make their case -- Voices of dissent shatter the cocoon at GMC -- Interlude #3: President Fonteyn provides a reprieve -- A wise intervention, a suspicious death -- Conclusion -- About the author -- About the publisher.

Physician-Assisted Death is the eleventh volume of Biomedical Ethics Reviews. We, the editors, are pleased with the response to the series over the years and, as a result, are happy to continue into a second decade with the same general purpose and zeal. As in the past, contributors to projected volumes have been asked to summarize the nature of the literature, the prevailing attitudes and arguments, and then to advance the discussion in some way by staking out and arguing forcefully (...) for some basic position on the topic targeted for discussion. For the present volume on Physician-Assisted Death, we felt it wise to enlist the services of a guest editor, Dr. Gregg A. Kasting, a practicing physician with extensive clinical knowledge of the various problems and issues encountered in discussing physician assisted death. Dr. Kasting is also our student and just completing a graduate degree in philosophy with a specialty in biomedical ethics here at Georgia State University. Apart from a keen interest in the topic, Dr. Kasting has published good work in the area and has, in our opinion, done an excellent job in taking on the lion's share of editing this well-balanced and probing set of essays. We hope you will agree that this volume significantly advances the level of discussion on physician-assisted euthanasia. Incidentally, we wish to note that the essays in this volume were all finished and committed to press by January 1993. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Selected Letters by William, Henry JamesWilliam James EarleWilliam and Henry James. Selected Letters. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Introduction by John J. McDermott. Charlottesville VA: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Pp. xxxi + 570. $ 39.95.Almost fifty years of letters to and from the very diversely brilliant James brothers: in this volume a generous, and probably ample, selection of 216 from (...) a total of 740 surviving letters or postcards, from an original total, according to the present editors, of twice as many. This volume of correspondence reflects the deep, unquestioned, unshakable familial (and virtually statutory) closeness of William and Henry who happened, as adults, to be seldom in the same place. There is, it must be said, very little explicit philosophy, narrowly or broadly defined, in these letters, but the philosophical reader will—or ought to—find much raw material for philosophical reflection. For example, a reasonable historicist thesis of how brotherhood, or family connection generally, plays itself out is supported by these documents. The nineteenth century is not the same as the twentieth. For example, here is William’s comment on the will of his sister, Alice, who left more to her companion and care-giver, Katherine Loring, a [End Page 479] women of extraordinary virtue and burden, than to her brother Robertson: “I can well sympathize with Alice’s desire to leave her something handsome; but I must say that her own consent (being apparently privy to the will) strikes me as tant soit peu lacking in delicacy. Surely no one of us would like to be in such a position in her family or any other” (271). This would be, in 1998, a rather unenlightened and ungenerous attitude, but is natural enough in 1892, even if not quite inevitable, not being shared by Alice herself. There is, incidentally, much discussion of wills and bequests, for the Jameses were of the genteel class, people with small family money and modest private incomes for whom the wherewithal to maintain homes with servants and to provide themselves with country houses and recuperative European vacations was always a faintly embarrassing, and occasionally a pressing, problem.It is probably also true that the much-discussed question of Henry’s homosexuality has, somehow, to be recast in historically relative terms. Here is an early report—1869—of Henry’s from Oxford: “As I walked along the river I saw hundreds of the mighty lads of England, clad in white flannel & blue, immense, fair-haired, magnificent in their youth, lounging down the stream in their punts or pulling in straining crews & rejoicing in their godlike strength” (41). This could not, the point is, be said by anyone, gay or straight, in 1998. Yet Henry is neither generally naive nor uncritically anglophile. He says of the Warwickshire scenery, which in a way he likes, that it is “too monotonously sweet & smooth—too comfortable, too ovine, too bovine, too English in a word.” And he adds, a little surprisingly: “It seems like a vast show region kept up at the expense of the poor” (41). This is only one of many appealing comments not sparsely scattered, but unpredictably, in letters of more ordinary news. Here’s one I liked occasioned by seeing theater in Paris: “We talk about it & write about it & criticize & dogmatize & analyse to the end of time: but those brave players stand forth & exemplify it & act—create—produce!” (66).Of course the “wit and wisdom” are not the monopoly of Henry. Here is William being wise: “We all learn sooner or later that we must gather ourselves up and more or less arbitrarily concentrate our interests, throw much overboard to save any” (55–56). Again: “It is a sweet world, in the interstices of its bedevilment & brutality” (321). And William being funny: “Boils are surely the most slowly evolving things in nature—Christian doctrine is nothing to them” (393). He is talking about his own boils and was subject, at every period, to ailments and infirmities: “Since writing to you, I have been swimming in deep seas of influenza, gout and Erysipelas of the face” (443). Or as he, in 1900, sums it up: “My... (shrink)

Although “rationing” continues to be a dirty word for the public in health policy discourse, Nir Eyal and colleagues handle the concept exactly right in their article in this issue of the Hastings Center Report. They correctly characterize rationing as an ethical requirement, not a moral abomination. They identify the key health policy question as how rationing can best be done, not whether it should be done at all. They make a cogent defense of what they call “rationing through inconvenience” (...) as a justifiable allocational technique. And they wisely call for research on the effectiveness and fairness of this approach and other methods of rationing. I fully agree with their approach to rationing and with their argument that the process they provocatively label “rationing through inconvenience” should not be rejected out of hand. But I believe they have underestimated two ways in which the practical impacts of rationing through inconvenience limit its potential usefulness: the asymmetry of its effect on patients and physicians and the way in which it reduces the capacity of health systems to learn from experience. (shrink)

"Logic", one of the central words in Western intellectual history, compre hends in its meaning such diverse things as the Aristotelian syllogistic, the scholastic art of disputation, the transcendental logic of the Kantian critique, the dialectical logic of Hegel, and the mathematical logic of the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell. The term "Formal Logic", following Kant is generally used to distinguish formal logical reasonings, precisely as formal, from the remaining universal truths based on reason. (Cf. SCHOLZ, 1931). A text-book (...) example of a formal-logical inference which from "Some men are philosophers" and "All philosophers are wise" concludes that "Some men are wise" is called formal, because the validity of this inference depends only on the form ofthe given sentences -in particular it does not depend on the truth or falsity of these sentences. (On the dependence of logic on natural language, English, for example, compare Section 1 and 8). The form of a sentence like "Some men are philosophers", is that which remains preserved when the given predicates, here "men" and "philosophers" are replaced by arbitrary ones. The form itself can thus be represented by replacing the given predicates by variables. Variables are signs devoid of meaning, which may serve merely to indicate the place where meaningful constants (here the predicates) are to be inserted. As variables we shall use - as did Aristotle - letters, say P, Q and R, as variables for predicates. (shrink)

Veronica Mars is a kick-ass private investigator, smart and street-wise. But what can her character tell us about larger life issues, such as knowledge and skepticism, trust and friendship, revenge, race, gender, and feminism? What makes her tick? And why is Logan such a sarcastic bad boy, anyway? Veronica Mars and Philosophy features a thought-provoking collection of essays centered on philosophical issues brought forth in Veronica Mars, the critically acclaimed neo-noir detective series set in the fictional town of Neptune, (...) California. Fans and newcomers alike will gain unique insights into the philosophical make-up of a hit show that tackled both crime and some of the larger mysteries of life. Introduces significant philosophical concepts that arise in the cult TV show, Veronica Mars Tackles topics relevant to contemporary youth culture, including trust and friendship, revenge, knowledge and skepticism, race, class, gender, and feminism Offers insights into darker themes explored in the series, which is noted for the complexity and intricate plotting of its storylines Delves deeply into the psychology of Veronica Mars during her transition from high school to college Written for fans of the television show, philosophy students or readers interested in popular culture Timed for release with the highly anticipated Veronica Mars feature film. (shrink)

This article is intended to serve as a reminder of the themes that have been present in Christian spiritual formation through the centuries. In a WISDOM orientation we ground our approach to CSF in Scripture, in theology, and in “best practices,” yet we also seek to thoughtfully locate CSF within specific contexts. The WISDOM acronym reminds us that formation must involve: Wise planning, where the leaders prayerfully seek to implement what is needed in a specific situation; Intentionality, calling people (...) to commit to walk differently from the ways of the world; Scripture, salvation, and Spirit, where the Salvation message and the Spirit-led mission of the whole of Scripture provides the framework for CSF; Discipleship, where the end of CSF is the imitation of Jesus Christ; Optimism, where we pursue our formation in an atmosphere of hope and expectation of change; and Means. (shrink)

A new Clinical Ethics Advisory Group was created to contribute to NHS Trust policies and guidelines in response to ethical issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. An ethical analysis framework used in medical education, the CoRE-Values Compass and Grid, was adapted to form a step-wise ‘ABC’ decision-making process. CEAG members found the framework simple to understand and use and the model facilitated time-efficient decisions that were explicitly justifiable on moral, ethical, professional and legal grounds. The adapted CoRE-Values framework might (...) help facilitate decision-making processes for similar new clinical ethics advisory or support committees. (shrink)