On elective students may not always be clear about safeguarding themselves and others. It is important that placements are safe, and ethically grounded. A concern for medical schools is equipping their students for exposure to and response to uncomfortable and/or unfamiliar requests in locations away from home, where their comfort and safety, or that of the patient, may be compromised. This can require legal, ethical, and/or moral reasoning on the part of the student. The goal of this article is to (...) establish what students actually encounter on elective, to inform better preparing students for safe and ethical medical placements. We discuss the implications of our findings, which are arguably applicable to other areas of graduate training, e.g. first medical roles post-qualification. An anonymised survey exploring clinical and ethical dilemmas on elective was issued across 3 years of returning final year elective medical students. Questions included the prevalence and type of potentially unsafe scenarios encountered, barriers to saying ‘no’ in unsafe situations, perceived differences between resource poor and developed world settings and the degree to which students refused or consented to participation in events outside of the ‘norms’ of their own training experience. Three hundred seventy-nine students participated. 45% were asked to do something “not permissible” at home. 27% were asked to do something they felt “uncomfortable” with, often an invasive clinical task. Half asked to do something not usually permissible were “comfortable”. 48% felt it more acceptable to bypass guidelines in developing settings. 27% refused an offer outside their experience. Of interest are reasons for “going along with” uncomfortable invitations, e.g. “emergency”, self-belief in ‘capability’ and being ‘more qualified’ than host-personnel. This “best pair of hands available” merits scrutiny. Adverse scenarios were not exclusive to developing settings. We discuss preparing students for decision-making in new contexts, and address whether ‘home’ processes are too inflexible to prepare students for ‘real’ medical life? Ethical decision-making and communicating reluctance should be included in elective preparation. (shrink)

The mind-body problem: background and history -- Dualist theories of mind and body -- Physicalist theories of mind -- Anti-materialism about the mind -- Science and the mind-body problem: consciousness -- Three neutral theories of mind and body -- Neutral monism.

Various scientists and philosophers have heavily criticized what they see as problematic forms of ‘nutritional reductionism’ or ‘nutritionism’ whereby studying food–health interactions at the level of isolated food components produces largely misguided science and misleading interpretations. However, the exact target of these diverse criticisms remains elusive, and its implications are overstated, which may hinder scientific understanding. To better identify the types of flaws supposedly hindering reductionist research, we disentangle three types of reductionist claims to better determine what the debate is (...) about and to propose ways to move it forward. We then present a qualified defence of the reductionist programme that hinges on the ability to identify nutritional causes that make a difference, which we illustrate through central examples in the history of nutrition. This defence is taken further by using insights from the philosophy of mechanisms to analyse how the field of nutritional ecology offers a synthetic framework to explain, generate, and test predictions about nutrient–organism interactions, which is premised on the biological mechanisms of nutrient-specific appetite regulation. The result, which we call ‘synthetic reductionism’, avoids many, though perhaps not all, of the challenges raised by anti-reductionists, and also highlights the potential of reductionism to identify nutritional difference makers. (shrink)

In this much-anticipated book, Jonathan Dancy offers the only available full-scale treatment of particularism in ethics, a view with which he has been associated for twenty years. Dancy now presents particularism as the view that the possibility of moral thought and judgement does not in any way depend on an adequate supply of principles. He grounds this claim on a form of reasons-holism, holding that what is a reason in one case need not be any reason in another, and (...) maintaining that moral reasons are no different in this respect from others. Ethics Without Principles offers detailed treatment and criticism of opposing positions of all sorts, with useful summaries. It also contains three chapters on the nature of what Dancy calls 'contributory' reasons, which, though the topic of much interest at the moment, are not often discussed in anything like the detail given here. And it offers a distinctive form of value-holism to go with the holism of reasons. As Dancy's definitive statement on particularism, the book will be required reading for all those working on moral philosophy and ethical theory. (shrink)

Practical Reality is a lucid original study of the relation between the reasons why we do things and the reasons why we should. Jonathan Dancy maintains that current philosophical orthodoxy bowdlerizes this relation, making it impossible to understand how anyone can act for a good reason. By giving a fresh account of values and reasons, he finds a place for normativity in philosophy of mind and action, and strengthens the connection between these areas and ethics.

Jonathan Dancy aims to establish the possibility of reasoning to action, by showing how similar it is to reasoning to belief. He offers a general theory of reasoning, which smoothly admits the differences there may be between the two types, while also considering the possibility of reasoning to hope, to fear, to doubt, and to intention.

We situate the well-trodden debate about defining health and disease within the project of a metaphysics of science and its aim to work with and contribute to science. We make use of Guay and Pradeu’s ‘metaphysical box’ to reframe this debate, showing what is at stake in recent attempts to move beyond it, revealing unforeseen points of agreement and disagreement among new and old positions, and producing new questions that may lead to progress. We then discuss the implications of the (...) two-way benefits between medicine and philosophy when the latter is driven and constrained by medical science. (shrink)

This essay discusses four key criticisms recently leveled against the main attempts to use conceptual analysis to understand health and disease. First, it examines the weaknesses of these attempts and suggests a better way to proceed. Next, it briefly discusses another disease debate concerning pathological mechanisms and suggests that this approach could be more fruitful than that of conceptual analysis. The final section demonstrates how Georges Canguilhem's biological philosophy of disease avoids some of the problems associated with conceptual analysis, and (...) how he can contribute to both debates. Canguilhem's appeal to biological normativity is understood as contributing to a theoretical explanation, and a possible naturalization, of what is specific to healthy and pathological phenomena. (shrink)

This book attempts to place a realist view of ethics (the claim that there are facts of the matter in ethics as elsewhere) within a broader context. It starts with a discussion of why we should mind about the difference between right and wrong, asks what account we should give of our ability to learn from our moral experience, and looks in some detail at the different sorts of ways in which moral reasons can combine to show us what we (...) should do in the circumstances. The second half of the book uses these results to mount an attack on consequentialism in ethics, arguing that there are more sorts of reasons around than consequentialists can even dream of. (shrink)

In this concluding chapter, we gather the various contributions of this volume and attempt to extract some of the many key insights and challenges raised when it comes to the project of explaining health across the sciences. These insights were distilled down into a selection of the central concepts and issues defended or discussed by the authors, and were organized into a table to see, at a glance, where the attention was given. Reflecting on these insights will go some way (...) towards addressing the question of whether these explanations can be brought together into a coherent or unifying framework or whether we are simply stuck with mutually exclusive views about the multifaceted phenomenon of ‘health’. (shrink)

It would be very desirable to have an account of the relation between mind and world that sustained the integrity of each. In this paper, we will argue that a theory of cognition which is broadly Thomistic can do just that. Many commentators recognize that cognitio is Aquinas’s basic epistemic concept, and that it designates knowledge in the broadest and most basic sense, as distinguished from scientia, or knowledge in the paradigmatic sense. There are several important consequences of this distinction (...) which are relevant to a proper understanding of the way in which a theory of knowledge which is in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition approaches the issue of the relation between the mind and the world. First and foremost, knowledge cannot be construed as a univocal concept in the A/t context. There are different senses of knowledge and we should not expect there to be a theory which supplies necessary and sufficient conditions for “S knows that p” that satisfies all the different senses of knowledge. It is perplexing that the contemporary discussion seems to miss this point, for the same sort of systematic ambiguity of the term ‘knowledge’ seems to hold in English. Second, the A/t theory of knowledge is not an epistemological theory in the modern sense, if by “epistemological” we mean one which is clearly demarcated from a metaphysical, psychological, or even semantical theory. The A/t theory is a metaphysics of knowledge. Third, a Thomistic theory of knowledge begins with a theory of cognition which provides the grounds of knowledge across the board, including even that of scientia. (shrink)

Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and suggests how this movement has moved beyond standard cognitive science. The article then clarifies important respects in which embodied cognition (...) has not departed fundamentally from the standard view. A shared commitment to representationalism, and ultimately, mechanism, suggest that the standard and embodied cognition movements are more closely related than is commonly acknowledged. Arguments against representationalism and mechanism are reviewed and an alternative position that does not entail these conceptual undergirdings is offered. (shrink)

Debates in fields studying the biological aspects of aging and longevity, such as biogerontology, are often split between ‘anti-aging’ approaches aimed largely at treating diseases and those focusing more on maintaining, promoting, and even enhancing health. However, it is far from clear what this ‘health’ is that would be maintained, promoted, or enhanced. Interestingly, what few have yet to fully reflect on is that there is still no theory of health within the health or aging sciences that would provide an (...) integrative explanatory framework akin to other scientific theories. After clarifying why such a theory could be useful, I discuss five general features of medical theories that could be used to evaluate the utility of a given proposal. With these features in hand, I suggest that philosophers and scientists work together on analyzing actual medical research (experimental analysis), and the ways in which a theoretical construct of ‘health’ is being progressively identified and measured therein. I conclude by suggesting that research fields studying stress and aging might be particularly helpful in developing candidates for theory construction due to their broad scope, increasing specificity, and potential for providing integrative explanations. (shrink)

The Enlightenment project of theodicy did not so much diminish relations between God and man as it elevated the opacity of these relations into a vehicle for moral reflection. This vehicle was a suitable one for a moment when uncertainty embedded itself in the very bones of human experience. It was a felt sense of discontinuity between what is experienced and what is assumed to be true about the world that made the Book of Job speak so powerfully to the (...) Enlightenment. More generally, this chapter argues, if we want to understand the role of God in the Enlightenment, we are poorly served by focusing on metaphysical or theological axioms, or any other programmatic statements about the world, God, heaven, hell, and so on. It was above all the sense that such axioms were inadequate to experienced reality that compelled the Enlightenment to such creative reuse of the Christian archive. (shrink)

My claim in this article is that, contra what I take to be the orthodoxy in the wider literature, we do trust inanimate objects – per the example in the title, there are cases where people really do trust a ladder (to hold their weight, for instance), and, perhaps most importantly, that this poses a challenge to that orthodoxy. My argument consists of four parts. In Section 2 I introduce an alleged distinction between trust as mere reliance and trust as (...) a rich, morally loaded notion. In the course of doing so, I briefly sketch some models of trust. This will help us to get a handle on how some of the mainstream models of trust preclude or ignore the trusting of inanimate objects. In Section 3 I introduce cases designed to show that we have reason to think that we do trust inanimate objects. In Section 4 I consider an objection, and in Section 5 I discuss some consequences of this finding, before concluding in Section 6. (shrink)

What was the impact of Lavoisier's new elementary chemical analysis on the conception and practice of chemistry in the vegetable kingdom at the end of the eighteenth century? I examine how this elementary analysis relates both to more traditional plant analysis and to philosophical and mathematical concepts of analysis current in the Enlightenment. Thus I explore the relationship between algebra, Condillac's philosophy and Lavoisier's chemical system, as well as comparing Lavoisier's analytical approach to those of his predecessors, such as Baumé (...) and Bucquet. With reference to the aims of vegetable analysis, I show how the dominance of elementary analysis devalued a tradition that sought to isolate immediate principles , marginalizing the chemical practices of many doctors and pharmacists in the context of the new chemistry in France. (shrink)

I start with a brief look at what the classic British intuitionists (Ewing, Broad, Ross) had to say about the relation between judgment and emotion. I then look at some more recent work in the intuitionist tradition and try to develop a conception of moral emotion as a form of practical seeming, suggesting that some moral intuitions are exactly that sort of emotion. My general theme is that the standard contrast between intuition and emotion is a mistake and that intuitionism (...) can happily accommodate the results of recent work in empirical moral psychology. (shrink)

This chapter elucidates one small sliver of the developments within the philosophy of mind. It has the dual aim of (a) clarifying Chaba's account of cognition and its objects and (b) examining some of the more profound philosophical consequences that flow from this Kadam Tibetan understanding of cognition. The first half of the chapter elucidates the Kadam understanding of the phenomenology of cognition. Here, the author argues that Chaba and his followers should be seen as endorsing a disjunctive theory of (...) perception. The second half takes up the issue of intentionality and how cognition engages objects that are not directly present to it. The author shows that Chaba's categorization of cognitive states forces him to adopt a strong form of cognitive externalism. (shrink)

No piece of the present conjuncture is more alarming than the explosive growth of the American prison population since the late 1970s. The prison has been a critical element of American government since the early 19th century, but the mentalities of rule and the technologies of power linked to the prison, have changed several times during that history. Building more prison cells, therefore, does not have the same constancy of meaning that building more tanks or more strategic bombers does. While (...) the prison has played a crucial role in construction of successful political orders since the American Revolution, its role at present is unprecedented. In the current era of the neo_liberal, neo_conservative, post_New Deal state, which we can call for shorthand, the "Carceral State," the prison has become the very meaning of sovereignty: a steel leviathan in which an increasingly hollowed out version of the state comes to rest with brutal force on selected parts of the population. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to answer the question, ‘could there be causation in a timeless world?’ My conclusion: tentatively, yes. The paper and argument have three parts. Part one introduces salient issues and spells out the importance of this line of investigation. Section two of the paper reviews recent arguments due to Baron and Miller, who argue in favour of the possibility of causation in a timeless world, and looks to reject their arguments developed there. Section three is a (...) response to a response. In their, Baron and Miller also argue that an argument in favour of the possibility of causation at timeless worlds, that I put forward, is an argument that fails. In section three, my response to Baron and Miller is that their argument against me succeeds, but that there is a nearby argument that we can appeal to in order to demonstrate the possibility of causation at timeless worlds. (shrink)

Trent Dougherty argues (contra Jonathan Matheson) that when taking into consideration the probabilities involving skeptical theism (ST) and gratuitous evils, an agent may reasonably affirm both ST and that gratuitous evils exist. In other words, Dougherty thinks that assigning a greater than .5 probability to ST is insufficient to defeat the commonsense problem of evil. I argue that Dougherty’s response assumes, incorrectly, that ST functions solely as an evidential defeater, and that, when understood as a closure of inquiry defeater, (...) ST may still defeat reasonable belief in gratuitous evils, even in the face of strong evidence that gratuitous evils exist. (shrink)

This dissertation reassesses the chemical revolution that occurred in eighteenth-century France from the pharmacists' perspective. I use French pharmacy to place the event in historical context, understanding this revolution as constituted by more than simply a change in theory. The consolidation of a new scientific community of chemists, professing an importantly changed science of chemistry, is elucidated by examining the changing relationship between the communities of pharmacists and chemists across the eighteenth century. This entails an understanding of the chemical revolution (...) that takes into account social and institutional transformations as well as theoretical change, and hence incorporates the reforms brought about during and after the French Revolution. First, I examine the social rise of philosophical chemistry as a scientific pursuit increasingly independent of its practical applications, including pharmacy, and then relate this to the theoretical change brought about by Lavoisier and his oxygenic system of chemistry. Then, I consider the institutional reforms that placed Lavoisier's chemistry in French higher education. ;During the seventeenth century, chemistry was intimately entwined with pharmacy, and chemical manipulations were primarily intended to enhance the medicinal properties of a substance. An independent philosophical chemistry gained ground during the eighteenth century, and this development culminated in the work of Lavoisier who cast pharmacy out of his chemistry altogether. Fourcroy, one of Lavoisier's disciples, brought the new chemistry to the pharmacists in both his textbooks and his legislation. Under Napoleon, Fourcroy instituted a new system of education for pharmacists that placed a premium on formal scientific education. Fourcroy's successors, Vauquelin and Bouillon-Lagrange, taught the new chemistry to the elite pharmacists in the School of Pharmacy in Paris. These pharmacists also developed new analytical techniques that combined the aims of the new chemistry with traditional pharmaceutical extractive practices. The scientific pharmacist was created, who, although a respected member of the community of pharmacists, helped to define the new chemistry precisely by not being a true chemist. (shrink)

This volume presents articles on epistemology and the theory of perception and introduces readers to the various problems that face a successful theory of perceptual knowledge. The contributors include Robert Nozick, Alvin Goldman, H.P. Grice, David Lewis, P.F. Strawson, Frank Jackson, David Armstrong, Fred Dretske, Roderick Firth, Wilfred Sellars, Paul Snowdon, and John McDowell.

This paper is an exploration of the role of intuition in physics. The ways in which intuition is appealed to in physics are not well understood. To the best of my knowledge, there is no analysis of the different contexts in which we might appeal to intuition in physics, nor is there any analysis of the different potential uses to which intuition might be put. In this paper I look to provide data that goes some way to giving a sense (...) of the different contexts in which intuition is appealed to in physics. As I note in the conclusion, there is still much work to be done but I hope that the work here provides us with a first step in the journey to properly understand the use to which intuitions are put in physics and science more generally. (shrink)

Using real-world examples and vivid illustrations drawn from other disciplines, An Introduction to Moral Philosophy challenges preconceived notions about morality and demonstrates why ethics matters. From respected philosopher and writer Jonathan Wolff, this edition features a thoughtful and contemporary treatment of the ethics of gender, race, and non-Western moral philosophy, engaging narrative introductions to moral theories and the thinkers behind them.

To the extent, then, that we set our face against admitting the truth of Humeanism in the theory of motivation, to that extent we are probably going to feel that there is no such thing as the theory of motivation, so conceived, at all. And that will be the position that this paper is trying to defend, though not only for this reason. It might seem miraculous that so much can be extracted from the little distinction with which we started, (...) between the reasons why an action was right and the agent's reasons for doing it. It is not so much the distinction itself which is the culprit, however, as the account of it that sees motivating reasons as complexes of beliefs and desires, i.e. as complexes of psychological states of whatever sort, and sees justifying reasons as truths. It is this account, which puts into form the attempt to combine value realism with Humean philosophical psychology, that leads to the results I have outlined above. (shrink)

This paper presents a refinement of a result by Conidis, who proved that there is a real $X$ of effective packing dimension $0\lt \alpha\lt 1$ which cannot compute any real of effective packing dimension $1$. The original construction was carried out below $\emptyset''$, and this paper’s result is an improvement in the effectiveness of the argument, constructing such an $X$ by a limit-computable approximation to get $X\leq_{T}\emptyset'$.

Eighteenth-century theologian_Jonathan Edwards remains a significant influence on modern religion, and this book constitutes his most important contribution to Christian thought. Edwards_raises timeless questions about desire, choice, good, and evil, contrasting the opposing Calvinist and Arminian views of free will and addressing issues related to God's foreknowledge, determinism, and moral agency.