In the traditional form of canonical quantization, certain field components (not having “conjugate” momenta) must be regarded as noncanonical. This long-known distinction enters modern gauge theories, when they are canonically quantized as by Kugo and Ojima. We avoid that peculiarity by not using any conjugate “momenta” at all. In our formulation, canonical quantization can be related to Feynman's path integral.

This book explores Rousseau's contribution to the Republican tradition in political thought. Through comparisons with various Republican lineages, it addresses problems that have defined and redefined Republicanism: attaining virtue, preserving liberty, sustaining the social order, orienting persons toward the common good, and having the law rule over men.

If a guilty offender is justly sentenced to be punished and an innocent volunteer agrees to be punished instead, is that any reason to leave the offender unpunished? In the context of mundane criminal justice, we mostly think not. But in a religious context, some Christians do believe in penal substitution as a theory of the atonement. However, it is not just these Christians, but most of us, who are of two minds. If the punishment is an imprisonment or (...) death, we do not believe in penal substitution. But if it’s a fine, even a big fine, we mostly do. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spiritual Experience and PsychopathologyMike Jackson and K. W. M. Fulford (bio)AbstractA recent study of the relationship between spiritual experience and psychopathology (reported in detail elsewhere) suggested that psychotic phenomena could occur in the context of spiritual experiences rather than mental illness. In the present paper, this finding is illustrated with three detailed case histories. Its implications are then explored for psychopathology, for psychiatric classification, and for our understanding of (...) the concept of mental illness. It is argued that pathological and spiritual psychotic phenomena cannot be distinguished by 1) form and content alone (as in traditional psychopathology), 2) by their relationship either with other symptoms or with pathological causes (as in psychiatric classification), or 3) by reference to the descriptive criteria of mental illness implied by the “medical” model. The distinction is shown to depend, rather, on the way in which psychotic phenomena themselves are embedded in the values and beliefs of the person concerned. This in turn is shown to have implications for diagnosis (it shows the need for clinicians to attend to the values and beliefs of individual patients), for treatment (it points to a cognitive problem-solving model), and for research in psychopathology (especially as related to the emerging sciences of dynamic brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience).Keywordsfirst rank symptoms, schizophrenia, delusion, hallucination, thought disorder, religious experience, mystical experienceIntroductionThis paper explores some of the conceptual and practical implications of the finding that phenomena which in a medical context would probably be diagnosed as psychotic symptoms, may occur in the context of non-pathological, and indeed essentially benign, spiritual experiences.The existence of non-pathological psychotic experiences of this kind (we will call them “psychotic phenomena” as distinct from “psychotic symptoms”—see also Endnote 1, terminology) was a key finding in a study carried out by one of us (MJ) at the Alister Hardy Research Centre (AHRC) in Oxford. Details are given elsewhere both of the overall empirical findings of the study, including the relationship between spiritual experience and personality variables, and of a hypothetical cognitive problem-solving model of these phenomena (Jackson 1991, and forthcoming a and b). In the present paper, 1) the background to the study is described briefly in relation to earlier work on the possible links between spiritual experience and psychopathology; 2) some of the psychotic phenomena identified are illustrated with three detailed case histories; 3) the significance of these phenomena is reviewed for our understanding respectively of psychopathology, of diagnostic syndromes, and of the concept of mental illness; and 4) some of the practical implications of the study for clinical work and research in psychiatry are indicated.BackgroundIt has long been recognized that there are similarities between spiritual and psychotic experiences. [End Page 41] William James (1902), for example, argued that “in delusional insanity, paranoia as they sometimes call it, we may have a kind of diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down” (426). Other commentators have noted a wide variety of phenomena, such as time distortion, synesthesias, loss of self-object boundaries and the transition from a state of conflict and anxiety to one of sudden “understanding,” all of which are reported in both spiritual and psychotic experiences (Buckley 1981; Watson 1982; Wapnick 1969; and Wootton and Allen 1983).Yet the similarities notwithstanding, the distinction between these two kinds of experience can be crucially important. Spiritual experiences, whether welcome or unwelcome, and whether or not they are psychotic in form, have nothing (directly) to do with medicine (Fulford 1996a). It would be quite wrong, then, to “treat” spiritual psychotic experiences with neuroleptic drugs, just as it is quite wrong to “treat” political dissidents as though they were ill (Fulford, Smirnoff and Snow, 1993). Pathological psychotic experiences, on the other hand, or psychotic symptoms, are by definition a proper object of medical treatment, sometimes even against the wishes of the person concerned. Hence it would be both negligent and, as Wing (1978) put it, morally “repellent,” to leave untreated someone who is genuinely ill (244).Given how much turns on the distinction between spiritual experience and psychopathology, it is perhaps not surprising that scholarly discussion of the relationship between them has at times... (shrink)

It is well documented that the higher the socioeconomic status (SES) of patients, the better their health and life expectancy. SES also influences the use of health services—the higher the patients' SES, the more time and specialised health services provided. This leads to the following question: should clinicians give priority to individual patients with low SES in order to enhance health equity? Some argue that equity is best preserved by physicians who remain loyal to ‘ordinary medical fairness’ in non-ideal circumstances (...) when health disparities persist; ie, doctors should allocate care according to needs only and treat everyone with equal regard by being neutral with respect to patients' SES. This paper furthers a discussion of this view by questioning how equitable needs relate to SES. To clarify, it distinguishes between four versions of ‘healthcare need’ and approaches an acceptable conceptualisation of the notion supported by Norman Daniels' theory on health equity. It concludes that doctors should remain neutral to patients' SES in cases in which several patients require the same health care. However, equitable health care requires considerations of the impact of socioeconomic factors (SEF) on patients' capacity to benefit from the care. Remaining neutral towards patients' SES in this respect does not promote equal regard. It follows that priority setting on the basis of SEF is required in fair clinical distribution of care, eg, through allocating more time to patients with low SES. In order to advance equity accurately, the concept of ordinary medical fairness should be amplified according to this clarification. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright's 1983 book How the Laws of Physics Lie argued that theories of physics often make use of idealisations, and that as a result many of these theories were not true. The present paper looks at idealisation in logic and argues that, at least sometimes, the laws of logic fail to be true. That might be taken as a kind of skepticism, but I argue rather that idealisation is a legitimate tool in logic, just as in physics, and (...) recognising this frees logicians up to use false laws where these are helpful. (shrink)

The dominant framework for addressing procreative ethics has revolved around the notion of harm, largely due to Derek Parfit’s famous non-identity problem. Focusing exclusively on the question of harm treats what procreators owe their offspring as akin to what they would owe strangers (if they owe them anything at all). Procreators, however, usually expect (and are expected) to parent the persons they create, so we cannot understand what procreators owe their offspring without also appealing to their role as prospective parents. (...) I argue that prospective parents can wrong their future children just by failing to act well in their role as parents, whether or not their offspring are ultimately harmed or benefitted by their creation. Their obligations as prospective parents bear on the motivations behind their reproductive choices, including the choice to select for some genetic trait in their offspring. Even when procreators’ motivations aren’t malicious, or purely selfish, they can still fail to recognize and act for the end of the parental role. Procreators can wrong their offspring by selecting for some genetic trait, then, when doing so would violate their obligations as prospective parents, or when their motivation for doing so is antithetical to the end of the parental role. (shrink)

Many accounts of the morality of abortion assume that early fetuses must all have or lack moral status in virtue of developmental features that they share. Our actual attitudes toward early fetuses don’t reflect this all-or-nothing assumption: early fetuses can elicit feelings of joy, love, indifference, or distress. If we start with the assumption that our attitudes toward fetuses reflect a real difference in their moral status, then we need an account of fetal moral status that can explain that difference. (...) I argue that we can have or lack relational obligations to early fetuses in light of our own activities or choices, independent of the fetus’s own features or properties. Those relational obligations make the early fetus morally considerable to the persons who stand in a moral relation to it. Pregnant persons (and other participants in the procreative process) can come to have relational obligations to an early fetus just in virtue of their own decision to create a person, either by intentionally getting pregnant or by deciding to continue a pregnancy. That decision not only makes it appropriate for them to care about the fetus, but it also generates obligations to the fetus that they didn’t have before that decision. (shrink)

Ten years ago the Royal Institute of Philosophy marked the establishment of the Society for Applied Philosophy with a series of public lectures, published in an earlier book in this series, under the title Philosophy and Practice. Looking back it i s hard to believe this was only ten years ago. Applied philosophy still has its critics. But it is now so pervasive, so much the norm, that it seems to have been with us always. Law, medicine, education, nursing, the (...) environment, politics, economics … almost it seems, no subject is quite respectable nowadays without its philosophy and its philosophical exponents. (shrink)

Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14850 [email protected] are motorcycles made of? Presumably the answer is something like ‘wheels, pistons, fuel lines …’ or perhaps ‘metal, leather, plastic …’. Whatever precisely the parts of a motorcycle are, surely they are all material. Kathrin Koslicki disagrees. She has recently argued that ordinary material objects like motorcycles not only have material proper parts, but also have formal proper parts . On her view, an accurate list of the proper parts of a motorcycle must include (...) something like motorcyclehood in addition to the sorts of things just listed. Although she remains neutral about what exactly such a formal part is , she is explicit about what it does. The formal part of an object dictates structure; it dictates how the material parts must be arranged. It is ‘a kind of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind’ . Koslicki claims that this recipe or structure is itself a proper part of every motorcycle. That is what she calls the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis . A strange claim! So let us examine Koslicki’s argument for it. She begins by asking us to consider a case in which an artist shapes a single lump of clay L, thereby creating a statue S. The argument then proceeds as follows : The argument for the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis:1.It is possible to make an object S from a single preexisting material ingredient L. 2.L is a proper part of S. 3.Weak Supplementation: anything that has a proper part has at least two non-overlapping proper parts. 4.S has a proper part Q that does not overlap L . 5.S has no material proper parts other than L 6.Q is a proper part, but not a material proper part, of S 7.S has …. (shrink)

This paper evaluates a recent method proposed by Jeremy Gwiazda for calculating the value of gambles that fail to have expected values in the standard sense. I show that Gwiazda’s method fails to give answers for many gambles that do have standardly defined expected values. However, a slight modification of his method (based on the mathematical notion of the ‘Cauchy principal value’ of an integral), is in fact a proper extension of both his method and the method of ‘weak expectations’. (...) I show that this method gives an appropriate value when the ‘tails’ of the gambles that are eliminated in the truncation are ‘stable’, but that the value is not appropriate when the tails are not stable. I do not attempt to give an argument for the use of this method, but just note that it is more general than Gwiazda’s method, and is mathematically quite natural. (shrink)

I take another look at the history of science and offer some fresh insights into why the history of science is filled with discarded theories. I argue that the history of science is just as we should expect it to be, given the following two facts about science: theories are always only partial representations of the world, and almost inevitably scientists will be led to investigate phenomena that the accepted theory is not fit to account for. Together these facts (...) suggest that most scientific theories are apt to be discarded sometime, superseded by new theories that better serve scientists’ new research interests. Consequently, it is reasonable to expect that many of the theories we currently accept, despite their many impressive successes, will be discarded sometime in the future. But I also argue that discarded theories are not always aptly characterized as a sign of failure or as a sign of some sort of shortcoming with science. Theories are discarded because scientists are making advances in their pursuit of knowledge. Thus, discarded theories are often a sign of the good health of science. Scientists are responding to their changing research interests. (shrink)

In mirror mark tests dolphins twist, posture, and engage in open-mouth and head movements, often repetitive. Because postures and an open mouth are also dolphin social behaviours, we used self-view television as a manipulatable mirror to distinguish between self-examination and social behavior. Two dolphins were exposed to alternating real-time self-view and playback of the same to determine if they distinguished between them. The adult male engaged in elaborate open-mouth behaviors in mirror mode, but usually just watched when playing back (...) the same material. Mirror mode behavior was also compared to interacting with real dolphins . Mark tests were conducted, as well as switches from front to side self-views to see if the dolphins turned. They presented marked areas to self-views to see if the dolphins turned. They presented marked areas to the self-view television and turned. The results suggest self-examination over social behavior. (shrink)

Painting, according to Jean-Luc Marion, is a central topic of concern for philosophy, particularly phenomenology. For the question of painting is, at its heart, a question of visibility—of appearance. As such, the painting is a privileged case of the phenomenon; the painting becomes an index for investigating the conditions of appearance—or what Marion describes as "phenomenality" in general. In _The Crossing of the Visible_, Marion takes up just such a project. The natural outgrowth of his earlier reflections on icons, (...) these four studies carefully consider the history of painting—from classical to contemporary—as a fund for phenomenological reflection on the conditions of visibility. Ranging across artists from Raphael to Rothko, Caravaggio to Pollock, _The Crossing of the Visible_ offers both a critique of contemporary accounts of the visual and a constructive alternative. According to Marion, the proper response to the "nihilism" of postmodernity is not iconoclasm, but rather a radically iconic account of the visual and the arts that opens them to the invisible. (shrink)

Couples should not be allowed to select either for or against deafnessRecently, a US couple deliberately attempted to ensure the birth of a deaf child via artificial insemination.1 In opposing this action, I wish to focus on one argument they employ to support it, namely that in trying to have a deaf child, the women see themselves as no different from parents trying to have a girl. Girls can be discriminated against the same as deaf people and “black people have (...) harder lives”, one of them argues. They compare themselves to a minority group.2In using this argument to justify their attempt to secure the birth of a deaf child, they make four claims: It is not wrong to deliberately try to have a child who is expected to experience harm when the harms the child will experience are socially imposed. As a group experiencing socially imposed harms, the deaf are to be understood as a minority group. Women and people of colour also experience social harms, and are to be understood as minority groups. Because the deaf, women, and people of colour are all groups experiencing socially imposed harms, distinctions should not be made between attempts to have a child who will be a member of one of these groups.In reply, I will advance two arguments. First, I will argue that this couple’s decision is inherently just. Here I will acknowledge that this couple’s position draws a great deal of strength from its appeal to the experiences of women. My second argument will contend, however, that despite the reasonableness of this choice, the intentional selection of deaf children is indefensible. Granting this couple’s contestable assertion that the deaf ought to be understood as a minority cultural group, allowing individuals to secure the birth of deaf …. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes argues (...) that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)

The idea that there could be spatially extended mereological simples has recently been defended by a number of metaphysicians (Markosian 1998, 2004; Simons 2004; Parsons (2000) also takes the idea seriously). Peter Simons (2004) goes further, arguing not only that spatially extended mereological simples (henceforth just extended simples) are possible, but that it is more plausible that our world is composed of such simples, than that it is composed of either point-sized simples, or of atomless gunk. The difficulty for (...) these views lies in explaining why it is that the various sub-volumes of space occupied by such simples, are not occupied by proper parts of those simples. Intuitively at least, many of us find compelling the idea that spatially extended objects have proper parts at every sub-volume of the region they occupy. It seems that the defender of extended simples must reject a seemingly plausible claim, what Simons calls the geometric correspondence principle (GCP): that any (spatially) extended object has parts that correspond to the parts of the region that it occupies (Simons 2004: 371). We disagree. We think that GCP is a plausible principle. We also think it is plausible that our world is composed of extended simples. We reconcile these two notions by two means. On the one hand we pay closer attention to the physics of our world. On the other hand, we consider what happens when our concept of something—in this case space—contains elements not all of which are realized in anything, but instead key components are realized in different features of the world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Brave New (Sexual) World The Original Study “Let's get this party started”: How Friends with Benefits Relationships Were Established “Is this a good idea?” Motivations and Barriers to Friends with Benefits Relationships “How does it feel?” Emotions Associated with Friends with Benefits Relationships “Can we make this work?” Rules for Maintaining Friends with Benefits Relationships “Was it good for you?” Outcomes of Friends with Benefits Relationships “So, what do you think?” Friends' Reactions to Friends (...) with Benefits Relationships Friends with Benefits Relationships: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we (...) should recognize a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda­ tions will be given special attention. (shrink)

Thinking is a dynamic process resulting from practices of integration. Thought encounters in openness, wonder, receptivity, and contemplation confer upon us intellectual work that is uniquely our own. Digital patterns, however, distract us from these creative encounters. Our intellectual searching is weakened and fragmented by frenetic consumption of information. We miss out on reason's innate pull toward integration and concrete reality. This book is an invitation to enter into openness, wonder, receptivity, and contemplation with deeper understanding and intentionality. We can (...) do this by considering exemplars, persons who lived out the integrity of their hard-won beliefs, such as Thomas Merton, Eva Saulitis, Malcom X and St. Anselm. Each process of integration is applied also, so that practical knowledge and practice become a way into this intellectual restoration. We need deeper knowledge won in the slow orbit of encounters. Encounters in thought are precisely what each generation needs to apprehend the cosmos, nature, authority, truth, and moral action. Responsibility to this ecologic age requires a reform of reason; this book is just one attempt to convey a way toward this restoration. (shrink)

Most of the economic models on basic income account just for pecuniary forms of work, i. e. “time spent making money”, in employment. This restriction is a drawback of these analyses and of the standard economic labor supply model itself. If one wants to understand the potential effects of basic income on individual and social welfare, one should not restrict observation to the pecuniary uses of time. The objective of this contribution is to rethink the meaning of work usually (...) applied in economic models, based on contributions of other social scientists. This reassessment is undertaken through the development of a microeconomic model, which discusses the effects of basic income on time use and interprets work not just as a source of income, but also of non-pecuniary benefits. Further, we disentangle the usual work-leisure dichotomy in two other ones. (shrink)

Just war theory has a long history, during which it changed its nature and its constituent components. Its purpose was to justify and limit the evil of war. The term just war is found in Aristotle in his work "Politics" and is used in describing the wars fought by the Greeks "in the name of the spread of culture and civilization" against non-Greeks, because they were considered barbarians. In fact, the cause of these wars was the expansion of (...) political and economic control over new territories. (shrink)

This article sets out key contributions to the long-running debate about mental disorder from the ordinary language philosophy of the ‘Oxford School’. The distinction between definition and use of concepts underpinning ordinary language philosophy reframes the debate as a debate not just about mental disorder but about disorder in general, bodily as well as mental. The field work of ordinary language philosophy (focusing on the use of concepts as a guide to their meanings) shows that, attempts at elimination notwithstanding, (...) there is an essential evaluative element in the meaning of disorder, bodily as well as mental. The concept of disorder in the debate thus reframed presents a double challenge for analysis: to explain why disorder has evaluative connotations used of mental conditions but descriptive connotations used of bodily conditions. Philosophical value theory, derived by applying ordinary language philosophy to the language of values, provides a rich resource of ideas for meeting this double challenge. It meets the double challenge at the level of theory by allowing both aspects of the double challenge of disorder to be derived from a logical property that disorder shares with all other value terms. It meets the double challenge at the level of practice by supporting the development of a new approach to working with values alongside evidence in healthcare called values-based practice. Ordinary language philosophy, notwithstanding these several contributions, is no panacea. It helps us to make a start, no more and no less, in understanding mental disorder. (shrink)

Innocence is a notion that can prove controversial. Claims of innocence typically support not imposing burdens on the innocent when their conduct is relevantly unobjectionable. This paper examines innocence in the context of violent conflict between states or groups. Many thinkers about the morality of such violence want to establish a principle that would protect innocent civilians. Yet the common view in just war theory does not affirm the moral innocence of civilians. Similarly, the common view that soldiers have (...) an equal right to kill does not affirm their equal moral culpability. (shrink)

We live in a time of significant change in the world. The end of XX century. marked by the gradual expansion of the globalization process through closer economic and information links, which also leads to different levels of interdependence between countries and regions. Instead of the state, transnational forces act as units of political discourse. The threat to the national interests of individual states comes precisely from transnational forces. Significant changes in the world make it imperative that global security strategies (...) be revised in the light of cultural factors. (shrink)

Most people know Ursula K. Le Guin for her extraordinary science fiction and fantasy writing. Fewer know just how pervasive Taoist themes are to so much of her work. And in Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, we are treated to Le Guin's unique take on Taoist philosophy's founding classic. Reflecting more than forty years of Le Guin's personal study and contemplation, her rendering of the text is a brilliant testament to her deep-seated understanding of Taoist principles and their value (...) for our troubled world today. Avoiding traditional patriarchal interpretations, scholarly fixations, and esotericism, she embues the Tao Te Ching with transformative, awe-inspiring power like no other. Also included are Le Guin's personal reflections and notes on the text throughout. To anyone who has enjoyed Le Guin's writing and yearns for a deeper window into her mind--or to all who simply wish to explore the philosophical bedrock that shaped an incredible, historically significant author--Le Guin's Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching will be an incomparable treasure. (shrink)

Hoyningen-Huene develops an account of what science is, distinguishing it from common sense. According to Hoyningen-Huene, the key distinguishing feature is that science is more systematic. He identifies nine ways in which science is more systematic than common sense. I compare Hoyningen-Huene’s view to a view I refer to as the “Continuity Thesis.” The Continuity Thesis states that scientific knowledge is just an extension of common sense. This thesis is associated with Quine, Planck, and others. I argue that Hoyningen-Huene (...) ultimately rejects the Continuity Thesis, and I present further evidence to show that the Continuity Thesis is false. I also argue that it is the systematicity of science that ultimately grounds the epistemic authority of science. Hoyningen-Huene thus draws attention to an important feature of science that explains the place of science in contemporary society. (shrink)

To understand the tma we should follow a rule of polemical force as well as a rule of validity. Following just the latter vlastos renders the explicit theory of forms and the two suppressed premises as an inconsistent triad. But the rule of polemical force indicates that the explicit theory is ambivalent. Just one f-Ness must be the basis, Either for any f thing being f, Or for any set of f things being just that set. It (...) cannot be the basis for all f things being f. (shrink)

In this essay I call attention to the fact that there is a work of art in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and yet almost no one talks about it: the C. F. Meyer poem “Roman Fountain.” This critical silence is all the more ironic, since (1) it is a self-sufficient artwork, and not just described or mentioned in the text; and (2) the poem’s fountain, as man-made spring, seems to speak to—if not speak of—Heidegger’s thesis (...) concerning the Ur-sprung of the artwork itself. I argue that the poem illuminates a central problem or question concerning the status of art as mimesis, and I suggest that the reason why this poem tends to be overlooked amid the “obsessive” critical attention that it otherwise attracts can be found within the essay itself. (shrink)

In this essay I call attention to the fact that there is a work of art in Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and yet almost no one talks about it: the C. F. Meyer poem “Roman Fountain.” This critical silence is all the more ironic, since it is a self-sufficient artwork, and not just described or mentioned in the text; and the poem’s fountain, as man-made spring, seems to speak to—if not speak of—Heidegger’s thesis concerning the (...) Ur-sprung of the artwork itself. I argue that the poem illuminates a central problem or question concerning the status of art as mimesis, and I suggest that the reason why this poem tends to be overlooked amid the “obsessive” critical attention that it otherwise attracts can be found within the essay itself. (shrink)

Objective: To provide an ethical analysis of whether the Ethiopian and Tanzanian national HIV/AIDS treatment guidelines can be considered legitimate and fair rationing tools.Method: Qualitative study and ethical analysis involving guideline documents and interviews with nine key members involved in the development of the guidelines. The analysis followed an editing organising style. The theoretical framework was a guideline-specific framework based on theories of just resource allocation in healthcare and conditions that ensure fair processes in guideline development. According to this (...) framework, legitimate rationing requires reasons for patient selection to be explicit, public and relevant, and decisions must be open to question and revision.Results: The only explicit rationing criteria that both guidelines recommended were clinical antiretroviral treatment indications. Explicit non-clinical rationing criteria were expressed in a separate Ethiopian implementation guideline. Neither of the guideline development processes fully satisfies minimal requirements of procedural fairness. There is a lack of transparency. The reasons for decisions are rarely given and are not publicly available. This reduces the opportunity for public questioning, debate and revisions. The guidelines were based on expert opinion and consensus. Recommendations from the WHO were copied without much discussion, disagreement or adjustment.Conclusions: The two national HIV treatment guidelines discussed are de facto mechanisms for rationing but were developed using methods that do not fully satisfy the requirements of fair processes. (shrink)

Are today’s wars different from earlier wars? Or do we need a different ethics for old and new wars alike? Unlike most books on the morality of war, this book rejects the ‘just war’ tradition, proposing a virtue ethics of war to take its place. Like torture, war cannot be justified. This book asks and answers the question: “If war is a very great evil, would a leader with courage, justice, compassion, and all the other moral virtues ever choose (...) to fight a war?” A ‘philosophy of co-existence’ is proposed which is much more restrictive than just war theory but not pacifist. War can be correctly chosen by a virtuous leader only in rare ‘supreme emergencies’ when faced with enemies as evil as Hitler. This virtue ethics approach to war is used to find new answers to difficult issues such as humanitarian intervention, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. (shrink)

We sometimes strive to achieve difficult goals when our evidence suggests that success is unlikely – not just because it will require strength of will, but because we are targets of prejudice and discrimination or because success will require unusual ability. Optimism about one’s prospects can be useful for persevering in these cases. That said, excessive optimism can be dangerous; when our evidence is unfavourable, we should be at most agnostic about whether we will succeed. This paper explores the (...) nature and rational significance of agnostic practical commitments. Most importantly, the rationality of striving against the odds can depend on investing in a plan for failure: a plan B. I aim to make headway on an account of what backup plans are, how they are related to primary plans, and whether the standard norms of plan rationality apply to our agnostic commitments. (shrink)

The void is deadly. If you were cast into a void, it would cause you to die in just a few minutes. It would suck the air from your lungs. It would boil your blood. It would drain the warmth from your body. And it would inflate enclosures in your body until they burst}.

This thesis has two main goals: (1) to argue that myths are natural products of human cognition; and (2) that structuralism, as introduced by Claude Levi-Strauss, provides an over-arching theory of myth when supplemented and supported by current research in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, and cognitive anthropology. With regard to (1), we argue that myths are naturally produced by the human mind through individuals’ interaction with their natural and social environments. This interaction is constrained by both the type of (...) body the individual has and the environment in which the individual is situated. From this interaction, we argue, is produced the human-body metaphor which plays an essential role in forming analogical mental models which humans use to navigate, predict, and think about their environment(s). With regard to (2), we argue that these analogical mental models are the structures from which myths are created, just as structural anthropology suggests. (shrink)

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) served as a test case for determining the role of extant vocabulary knowledge, endogenous attention, and phonological working memory abilities in cross-situational word learning. First-graders (Mage = 7 years; 3 months), 44 with typical development (TD) and 28 with DLD, completed a cross-situational word-learning task comprised six cycles, followed by retention tests and independent assessments of attention, memory, and vocabulary. Children with DLD scored lower than those with TD on all measures of learning and (...) retention, a performance gap that emerged in the first cycle of the cross-situational protocol and that we attribute to weaknesses in initial encoding. Over cycles, children with DLD learned words at a similar rate as their TD peers but they were less flexible in their strategy use, demonstrating a propose-but-verify approach but never a statistical aggregation approach. Also, they drew upon different mechanisms to support their learning. Attention played a greater role for the children with DLD, whereas extant vocabulary size played a greater role for the children with TD. Children navigate the problem space of cross-situational learning via varied routes. This conclusion is offered as motivation for theorists to capture all learners, not just the most typical ones. (shrink)

Despite the wide and daunting array of cross-cultural obstacles that the formulation of a global policy on advance directives will clearly pose, the need is equally evident. Specifically, the expansion of medical services driven by medical tourism, just to name one important example, makes this issue urgently relevant. While ensuring consistency across national borders, a global policy will have the additional and perhaps even more important effect of increasing the use of advance directives in clinical settings and enhancing their (...) effectiveness within each country, regardless of where that country's state of the law currently stands. One cross-cultural issue that may represent a major obstacle in formulating, let alone applying, a global policy is whether patient autonomy as the underlying principle for the use of advance directives is a universal norm or a construct of western traditions that must be reconciled with alternative value systems that may place lesser significance on individual choice. A global policy, at a minimum, must emphasize respect for patient autonomy, provision of medical information, limits to the obligations for physicians, and portability. And though the development of a global policy will be no easy task, active engagement in close collaboration with the World Health Organization can make it possible. (shrink)

Notice that this paper has not claimed that all natural languages are CFL's. What it has shown is that every published argument purporting to demonstrate the non-context-freeness of some natural language is invalid, either formally or empirically or both.18 Whether non-context-free characteristics can be found in the stringset of some natural language remains an open question, just as it was a quarter century ago.Whether the question is ultimately answered in the negative or the affirmative, there will be interesting further (...) questions to ask. If it turns out that natural languages are indeed always CFL's, it will be reasonable to ask whether this helps to explain why speakers apparently recognize so quickly whether a presented utterance corresponds to a grammatical sentence or not, and to associate structural and semantic details with it. It might also be reasonable to speculate about the explanation for the universally context-free character of the languages used by humans, and to wonder whether evolutionary biological factors are implicated in some way (Sampson (1979) could be read in this light). And naturally, it will be reasonable to pursue the program put forward by Gazdar (1981, in press) to see to what extent CFL-inducing grammatical devices can be exploited to yield insightful descriptions of natural languages that capture generalizations in revealing ways.If a human language that is not a CFL is proved to exist, on the other hand, a different question will be raised: give the non-context-free character of human languages in general, why has this property been so hard to demonstrate that it has taken over twenty-five years to bring it to light since the issue was first explicitly posed? If human languages do not have to be CFL's, why do so many (most?) of them come so close to having the property of context-freeness? And, since the CFL's certainly constitute a very broad class of mathematically natural and computationally tractable languages, what property of human beings or their communicative or cognitive needs is it that has caused some linguistic communities to reach beyond the boundaries of this class in the course of evolving a linguistic system?Either way, we shall be interested to see our initial question resolved, and further questions raised. One cautionary word should be said, however, about the implications (or lack of them) that the answer will have for grammatical studies. Chomsky has repeatedly stated that he does not see weak generative capacity as a theme of central importance in the theory of grammar, and we agree. It is very far from being the case that the recent resurgence of interest in exploring the potential of CF-PSG or equivalent systems will, or should, be halted dead in its tracks by the discovery (if it is ever forthcoming) that some natural language is not a CFL. In the area of parsing, for instance, it seems possible that natural languages are not only parsed on the basis of constituent structure such as a CF-PSG would assign, but are parsed as if they were finite state languages (see Langendoen (1975) and Church (1980) for discussion along these lines). That is, precisely those construction-types that figure in the various proofs that English is not an FSL appear to cause massive difficulty in the human processing system; the sentences crucial to the proofs are for the most part unprocessable unless they are extremely short (yet the arguments for English not being and FSL only go through if length is not an issue). This means that in practice properties of finite state grammars are still of great potential importance to linguistic theory despite the fact that they do not provide the framework for defining the total class of grammatical sentences. The same would almost certannly be true of CF-PSG's if they were shown to be inadequate in a similar sense. It is highly unlikely that the advances made so far in far in phrase structure description could be nullified by a discovery about weak generative capacity. Moreover, there are known to be numerous ways in which the power of CF-PSG's can be marginally enhanced to permit, for example, xx languages to be generated without allowing anything like the full class of recursively enumerable or even context-sensitive languages (see Hopcroft and Ullmann (1979), Chapter 14) for an introduction to this topic, noting especially Figure 14.7 on p. 393. The obvious thing to do if natural languages were ever shown not to be CFL's in the general case would be to start exploring such minimal enhancements of expressive power to determine exactly what natural languages call for in this regard and how it could be effectively but parsimoniously provided in a way that closely modelled human linguistic capacities.In the meantime, it seems reasonable to assume that the natural languages are a proper subset of the infinite-cardinality CFL's until such time as they are validly shown not to be. (shrink)

TheCulexis now widely recognized as a piece of post-Ovidian, possibly Tiberian, pseudo-juvenilia written by an author impersonating the young Virgil, although it was attached to Virgil's name already in the first centuryc.e., being identified as Virgilian by Statius, Suetonius and Martial. Dedicated to the young Octavian (Octauiin line 1), the poem seems to fill a biographical gap in Virgil's career before his composition of theEclogues. It is introduced as aludus, which Irene Peirano suggests may openly refer to ‘the act of (...) impersonating Virgil’, and, like many of the poems in theAppendix Vergiliana, it seems to have a parodic intent. TheCulexhas been interpreted as a parody of neoteric style and the epyllion, as mock-epic, as Virgil parody (John Henderson called it a ‘spoofAeneidin bucolic drag’), as pointed Augustan satire, as mock Ovidian ‘Weltgedicht’ and as just very bad poetry (Housman's ‘stutterer’). Glenn Most has observed that the poem's three ‘acts’ structurally recapitulate Virgil's three major works in chronological succession. Little attention, however, has been paid to theCulex's final lines, which contain a catalogue of flowers thepastorplaces on the gnat's tomb. Recent scholarship has reintroduced an older interpretation of the gnat's tomb as a political allegory of Augustus’ Mausoleum; in this paper I suggest instead that the tomb and its flowers serve a closural and metapoetic function at the end of the poem. (shrink)

Equality is a concept that is often used in health care discussions about the allocation of resources and the design of health care systems. In secular discussions and debates the concept of equality is highly controverted and can take on many different specifications. One might think that Christians hold a common understanding of equality. A more careful study, though, makes it quite clear that equality is just as controversial among different Christian communities as it is in the secular world.

In their ‘Ethical and Technical Challenges in Compensating for Harm Due to Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering’ (2014), Toby Svoboda and Peter Irvine (S&I) argue that there are significant technical and ethical challenges that stand in the way of crafting a just solar radiation management (SRM) compensation system. My aim in this article is to contribute to the project of addressing these problems. I do so by focusing on one of S&I’s important ethical challenges, their claim that the polluter pays (...) principle (PPP) is too problematic to be useful in determining responsibility for SRM compensation. Their argument for the latter claim consists in a series of allegations, mostly in the form of questions, that are thought to indicate serious difficulties standing in the way of using the PPP to craft a just compensation system. I argue that S&I fail to substantiate these allegations: the PPP is not as problematic as S&I suggest, and moreover, is a viable candidate for determining responsibility for SRM compensation. S&I raise five allegations against the PPP. I discuss each in turn. (shrink)

Can groups really be agents or is group agency just a fiction? Christian List and Philip Pettit argue influentially for group-agent realism by showing how certain groups form and act on attitudes in ways they take to be unexplainable at the level of the individual agents constituting them. Group agency is therefore considered not a fiction or a metaphor but a reality we must account for in explanations of certain social phenomena. In this paper, I challenge this defence of (...) group-agent realism by showing how it is undermined by individual-level analysis of how individuals interact within groups. While group agency can be a useful fiction, real agents are at the individual level, not the collective level. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to present a systematic account of F. H. Bradley's philosophy in so far as it is relevant to an understanding of his conception of the nature and criterion of truth. I argue that, for Bradley, the nature of truth is the identity of thought with reality given in immediate experience. There is no absolute separation between thought and its object. Bradley therefore rejects both the correspondence theory and epistemological realism. Thought is not just (...) a mirror which reflects an independently existing reality. ;Concerning the criterion of truth, I argue that his criterion for our ordinary and scientific beliefs is practice, and the criterion for philosophical positions is a kind of coherence based on the doctrine of relative truth. For Bradley, some positions are truer than others, and the best philosophy is a comprehensive system which contains the truth of all different positions. ;Bradley does not accept the coherence theory of justification as it is understood today, since it is based on the standard account of negation and the doctrine of absolute truth. Bradley has a different approach to negation and inconsistency, according to which there are no absolutely inconsistent beliefs. Further, he insists that truth is not absolute but "relative," a matter of degree. All philosophical positions contain some truth, and none is completely false. The truth in philosophy is a position which accounts for the whole of reality and includes all apparently inconsistent positions within it. ;I explain Bradley's place in the history of philosophy and show his connections with the British empiricist tradition. I believe one of Bradley's central concerns is to explain the nature and criterion of truth in philosophy within the constraints of empiricism. I also contrast Bradley's positions on important issues with those of philosophers in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, such as Russell, Moore, Ayer, Tarski, Quine, Churchland, Lehrer and Campbell. I argue that most recent commentators on Bradley overlook the importance of understanding his philosophy as a system constructed according to the doctrine of relative truth. (shrink)

This opinion revolves around the discussion of matters that are beyond the realm of space-time. For instance, it discusses parallel universes, wormholes, and extrasensory perception or psi. Rationality is operationally defined. The opinion throws light on the manner in which the lines of rationality become unclear when it takes into consideration extrasensory phenomena. In addition, it contends that psychiatric disorders such as Schizophrenia are the result of contact from different parallel universes. Hence, Schizophrenia according to this paper is not a (...) disorder by itself but rather just a communication of messages from an alternate reality. Also, another psychological disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder is also the result of different souls in one person or communication from different souls from parallel universes. Whether atoms are conscious or not is debatable but can be a possibility due to their eerie and unpredictable nature. The concept of parallel universes introduces a paradoxical manner of thinking, which is dealt with in the paper. The paper concerns itself with issues in quantum physics, clubbed with extrasensory perception in parapsychology. It subtly emphasizes rational thinking in the debate about space-time and beyond. Rationality as a concept is dealt with from different angles. Finally, quantum cognition is used to explain an all too familiar, pervasive yet inexplicable domain of knowledge, which is human behaviour. (shrink)

We characterize, more precisely than before, what Rawls calls the “analytical” method of drawing up a list of basic liberties. This method employs one or more general conditions that, under any just social order whatever, putative entitlements must meet for them to be among the basic liberties encompassed, within some just social order, by Rawls’s first principle of justice (i.e., the liberty principle). We argue that the general conditions that feature in Rawls’s own account of the analytical method, (...) which employ the notion of necessity, are too stringent. They ultimately fail to deliver as basic certain particular liberties that should be encompassed within any fully adequate scheme of liberties. To address this under-generation problem, we provide an amended general condition. This replaces Rawls’s necessity condition with a probabilistic condition and it appeals to the standard liberal prohibition on arbitrary coercion by the state. We defend our new approach both as apt to feature in applications of the analytical method and as adequately grounded in justice as fairness as Rawls articulates the theory’s fundamental ideas. (shrink)

Does respect for autonomy imply respect for precedent autonomy? The principle of respect for autonomy requires us to respect a competent patient’s treatment preference, but not everyone agrees that it requires us to respect preferences formed earlier by a now‐incapacitated patient, such as those expressed in an advance directive. The concept of precedent autonomy, which concerns just such preferences, is problematic because it is not clear that we can still attribute to a now‐incapacitated patient a preference which that patient (...) never disaffirmed but can no longer understand. If we cannot make that attribution, then perhaps we should not respect precedent autonomy – after all, how can you respect patient autonomy by giving patients what they no longer want, even if they never disaffirmed those wants? I argue that whether an earlier preference can still be attributed to a now‐incapacitated patient depends on the reasons behind the preference, for a preference includes (and is not merely supported by) the reasons behind it. When the considerations that served as reasons no longer exist, neither does the preference which included those reasons. In particular, if the considerations that served as reasons for the patient exist only under conditions where the patient retains full mental capacity, then once that capacity is lost, so are those reasons and the preference based upon them. I use this analysis of precedent autonomy to ascertain the merits of various approaches to advance medical decisionmaking, including Nancy Rhoden’s approach, approaches based on a Parfitian personal identity analysis, approaches based on soft paternalism, and approaches based on the stability and longevity of preferences. Despite the apparent absurdity of respecting patient autonomy by giving patients what they no longer prefer but have never disaffirmed, I conclude with some programmatic remarks on when and why respect for (precedent) autonomy nonetheless requires us to respect former preferences. (shrink)