Introduction -- Overview of religious realism -- A realist interpretation of religious diversity -- Religious exclusivism : the problem of being arbitrary -- Overview of religious irrealism -- Religious non-realism : neither realist nor anti-realist -- Religious non-realism pushed beyond its limits -- Conclusion.

In their article, Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) outline the conditions that they have identified as situations in which it is ethically permissible to use chemical restraints, defined as medicati...

Narratives of Jihadi-Salafi operations are often filled with praise for what are considered exemplary acts of self-renunciation in the vein of early Islamic tradition. While many studies sift through the biographies of these so-called martyrs for evidence of social, psychological, political, or economic strain in an effort to rationalize what are often labeled "suicide bombings," Nathan French argues that, through their legal arguments, Jihadi-Salafis craft a theodicy that is meant to address the suffering and oppression of the global Muslim (...) community. (shrink)

Research shows that people often do not intervene to stop immoral action from happening. However, limited information is available on why people fail to intervene. Two preregistered studies (Ns = 248, 131) explored this gap in the literature by staging a theft in front of participants and immediately interviewing them to inquire about their reasons for intervening or not intervening. Across both studies, most participants did not try to stop the theft or even report it to the experimenter afterward. Furthermore, (...) many participants reported confusion and inattention as precursors to nonintervention, yielding insight into what inhibits moral courage. (shrink)

This textbook brings the humanities to students in order to evoke the humanity of students. It helps to form individuals who take charge of their own minds, who are free from narrow and unreflective forms of thought, and who act compassionately in their public and professional worlds. Using concepts and methods of the humanities, the book addresses undergraduate and premed students, medical students, and students in other health professions, as well as physicians and other healthcare practitioners. It encourages them to (...) consider the ethical and existential issues related to the experience of disease, care of the dying, health policy, religion and health, and medical technology. Case studies, images, questions for discussion, and role-playing exercises help readers to engage in the practical, interpretive, and analytical aspects of the material, developing skills for critical thinking as well as compassionate care. (shrink)

PurposeAdolescents develop their decision-making ability as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Participation in their medical care should be encouraged through obtaining assent, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In this research, we aim to define the current knowledge of AAP recommendations and surgeon practices regarding assent for elective reconstructive procedures.MethodsAn anonymous electronic survey was distributed to North American paediatric surgeons and fellows through the American Pediatric Surgical Association (n=1353).ResultsIn total, 220 surgeons and trainees responded (16.3%). Fifty (...) per cent of the surgeons who are familiar with the concept of assent had received formal training; 12% of the respondents had not heard of assent before the survey. Forty-seven per cent were aware of the 2016 AAP policy statement regarding assent in paediatric patients. Eighty-nine per cent always include adolescents as part of the consent discussion. Seventy-seven per cent solicit an expression of willingness to accept the proposed care from the patient. The majority (74%) of the surgeons perceived patient cooperation/understanding as the biggest barrier to obtaining assent. Over half of the respondents would consider proceeding with elective surgery despite the adolescent patient’s refusal. Reasons cited for proceeding with elective surgery include surgeons’ perception of medical necessity, perceptions of disease urgency, and lack of patient maturity.ConclusionPaediatric surgeons largely acknowledge the importance of assent, but variably practice the principles of obtaining assent from adolescent patients undergoing elective reconstructive procedures. Fewer surgeons are explicitly aware of formal policy statements or received formal training. Additional surgeon education and institutional policies are warranted to maximise inclusion of adolescents in their medical care. (shrink)

Towards the end of his life, the French theorist and philosopher René Girard (1923–2015) published a series of conversations titled Battling to the End in which.

Although compassion in healthcare differs in important ways from compassion in everyday life, it provides a key, applied microcosm in which the science of compassion can be applied. Compassion is among the most important virtues in medicine, expected from medical professionals and anticipated by patients. Yet, despite evidence of its centrality to effective clinical care, research has focused on compassion fatigue or barriers to compassion and neglected to study the fact that most healthcare professionals maintain compassion for their patients. In (...) contributing to this understudied area, the present report provides an exploratory investigation into how healthcare professionals report trying to maintain compassion. In the study, 151 professionals were asked questions about how they maintained compassion for their patients. Text responses were coded, with a complex mixture of internal vs. external, self vs. patient, and immediate vs. general strategies being reported. Exploratory analyses revealed reliable individual differences in the tendency to report strategies of particular types but no consistent age-related differences between older and younger practitioners emerged. Overall, these data suggest that while a range of compassion-maintaining strategies were reported, strategies were typically concentrated in particular areas and most professionals seek to maintain care using internal strategies. A preliminary typology of compassion maintaining strategies is proposed, study limitations and future directions are discussed, and implications for the study of how compassion is maintained are considered. (shrink)

Clark and Fischer's dismissal of extant human–robot interaction research approaches limits opportunities to understand major variables shaping people's engagement with social robots. Instead, this endeavour categorically requires multidisciplinary approaches. We refute the assumption that people cannot (correctly or incorrectly) represent robots as autonomous social agents. This contradicts available empirical evidence, and will become increasingly tenuous as robot automation improves.

This essay critically examines one of the dominant tendencies in recent theoretical discussions of anarchism, postanarchism, and argues that this tradition fails to engage sufficiently with anarchism’s history. Through an examination of late 19th-century anarchist political thought—as represented by one of its foremost exponents, Peter Kropotkin—we demonstrate the extent to which postanarchism has tended to oversimplify and misrepresent the historical tradition of anarchism. The article concludes by arguing that all political-theoretical discussions of anarchism going forward should begin with a fresh (...) appraisal of the actual content of anarchist political thought, based on a rigorous analysis of its political, social, and cultural history. (shrink)

Boyer's formulation neglects that humans are embodied agents. It is a biological imperative to distinguish self from other. Ownership of ideas, bodies, objects, and locations is an inevitable extension of this. We argue that (1) the body's capability influences the inputs that guide future actions, and (2) bodies in action influence all of cognition, from perception to decision making.

We address the claim that nonhuman animals do not represent unobservable states, based on studies of physical cognition by rooks and social cognition by scrub-jays. In both cases, the most parsimonious explanation for the results is counter to the reinterpretation hypothesis. We suggest that imagination and prospection can be investigated in animals and included in models of cognitive architecture.

Few doubt that automation and artificial intelligence will change business and society in the future. Questions arise, however, regarding the motivations associated with such expensive corporation expenditures and the related ethics of the disruption and unemployment that may result from corporation development and installation of sophisticated technology. This study analyzes financial statement data of 100 large public corporations to understand those motivations and their consequences for corporation profitability and employees. The study results indicate that a more automated future may be (...) profitable for corporations and their shareholders, but one of the costs of that future is significant disruption to employees. While some new positions may be created as a result of this technology, many employees will suffer disruption and will need extensive training to maintain employment in an evolving workplace. Many other employees will lose their jobs because the tasks that they once performed will be automated. The related ethics to business and society are profound. (shrink)

In recent years, the biological inheritance of what has been traditionally known as original sin has come more clearly to the fore. Examining the genetic forebears of Homo sapiens has allowed for a richer understanding of what exactly the "propagation" of original sin might really mean. The wounded imperfection of the human biological inheritance has clarified matters concerning the question of where exactly original sin comes from. Since the human experience of sentience and agency is built biologically upon the shoulders (...) of its ancestors, the human experience of being always-already bound by sin—an essential component of the meaning of original sin—comes into clearer relief. At the same time, a much richer... (shrink)

This is the 1991 (2nd) edition of the 1986 book (MIT Press), considered to be the classic defense of Millianism. The nature of the information content of declarative sentences is a central topic in the philosophy of language. The natural view that a sentence like "John loves Mary" contains information in which two individuals occur as constituents is termed the naive theory, and is one that has been abandoned by most contemporary scholars. This theory was refuted originally by philosopher Gottlob (...) Frege. His argument that the naive theory did not work is termed Frege's puzzle, and his rival account of information content is termed the orthodox theory. In this detailed study, Nathan Salmon defends a version of the naive theory and presents a proposal for its extension that provides a better picture of information content than the orthodox theory gives. He argues that a great deal of what has generally been taken for granted in the philosophy of language over the past few decades is either mistaken or unsupported, and consequently, much current research is focused on the wrong set of questions. Salmon dissolves Frege's puzzle as it is usually formulated and demonstrates how it can be reconstructed and strengthened to yield a more powerful objection to the naive theory. He then defends the naive theory against the new Frege puzzle by presenting an idea that yields both a surprisingly rich and powerful extension of the naive theory and a better picture of information content than that of the original orthodox theory. Nathan Salmon is Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Barbara. (shrink)

Objective To assess parental permission for a neonate's research participation using the MacArthur competence assessment tool for clinical research (MacCAT-CR), specifically testing the components of understanding, appreciation, reasoning and choice. Study Design Quantitative interviews using study-specific MacCAT-CR tools. Hypothesis Parents of critically ill newborns would produce comparable MacCAT-CR scores to healthy adult controls despite the emotional stress of an infant with critical heart disease or the urgency of surgery. Parents of infants diagnosed prenatally would have higher MacCAT-CR scores than parents (...) of infants diagnosed postnatally. There would be no difference in MacCAT-CR scores between parents with respect to gender or whether they did or did not permit research participation. Participants Parents of neonates undergoing cardiac surgery who had made decisions about research participation before their neonate's surgery. Methods The MacCAT-CR. Results 35 parents (18 mothers; 17 fathers) of 24 neonates completed 55 interviews for one or more of three studies. Total scores: magnetic resonance imaging (mean 36.6, SD 7.71), genetics (mean 38.8, SD 3.44), heart rate variability (mean 37.7, SD 3.30). Parents generally scored higher than published subject populations and were comparable to published control populations with some exceptions. Conclusions The MacCAT-CR can be used to assess parental permission for neonatal research participation. Despite the stress of a critically ill neonate requiring surgery, parents were able to understand study-specific information and make informed decisions to permit their neonate's participation. (shrink)

Locke's Education for Liberty presents an analysis of the crucial but often underestimated place of education and the family within Lockean liberalism. Nathan Tarcov shows that Locke's neglected work Some Thoughts Concerning Education compares with Plato's Republic and Rousseau's Emile as a treatise on education embodying a comprehensive vision of moral and social life. Locke believed that the family can be the agency, not the enemy, of individual liberty and equality. Tarcov's superb reevaluation reveals to the modern reader a (...) breadth and unity heretofore unrecognized in Locke's thought. (shrink)

Originally edited by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, this text examines how different countries around the world approach the same challenges in health care law and ethics: how to finance care for as many people as possible; how to ensure quality care; how to best secure patients' rights; how to regulate abortion, end of life decision making, and assisted reproduction; and how to manage infectious diseases, tobacco use, and human subject research. The new edition considers a broader array of countries, particularly from (...) Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. (shrink)

A range of leading philosophers set the best resources of the philosophical tradition to the task of interpreting violence in its diverse expressions. >.

Excerpt from Maine De Biran's Philosophy of Will No special account of Maine de Biran's philosophy has before appeared in English, and the sources are rendered somewhat difficult by the author's highly involved style. It has seemed, therefore, that a somewhat extended exposition of his work may prove useful. In the composition of this monograph my object has been two-fold: to give a statement of Biran's system, and to show his exact position in the history of speculative thought. As a (...) result of careful investigation, I have found it necessary to call attention to the unitary character of the system, which, as a matter of fact, centers around the single idea - will. This conclusion is, of course, opposed to the view of Naville, who in his introduction to the Œuvres inedites divides Biran's work into three sharply distinguished periods. I am convinced, however, that this division rests on insufficient grounds. For in the idea of activity is to be found the keynote of the entire philosophy. This idea is clearly evident in the writings assigned by Naville to the earlier and the later periods, as well as in the more important works that were written during the intervening years. On the whole, it may seem surprising that I have not emphasized more strongly the importance of Biran's philosophy. It is perhaps unusual in a work of this kind to minimize the significance of the subject. However that may be, I have to confess that the motive which led me to begin my study, the expectation of finding elements of permanent value in Biran's philosophy based on frequent references to him as 'French Kant,' has scarcely been realized by my subsequent investigation. Even with the most sympathetic interpretation, Biran cannot be placed among philosophers of the first rank. Kant's great significance does not consist merely in his emphasis on the activity of mind against the empiricists, but rather in the fact that he shows that the activity in which the nature of mind is expressed is universal and objective in character. 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)

The PEIRCE EDITION contains large sections of previously unpublished material in addition to selected published works. Each volume includes a brief historical and biographical introduction, extensive editorial and textual notes, and a full chronological list of all of Peirce’s writings, published and unpublished, during the period covered.

The Secret Symmetry of Maimonides and Freud presents the parallels between The Guide of the Perplexed and The Interpretation of Dreams, considering how Maimonides might be perceived as anticipating Freud's much later work. In this volume, Nathan M. Szajnberg suggests that humankind has secrets to hide and does so by using common mechanisms and embedding revealing hints for the benefit of the true reader. Using a psychoanalytic approach in tandem with literary criticism and an in-depth assessment of Judaica, Szajnberg (...) demonstrates the similarities between these two towering Jewish intellectual pillars. Using concepts of esoteric literature from the Torah and later texts, this book analyses their ideas on concealing and revealing to gain a renewed perspective on Freud's view of dreams. Throughout, Szajnberg articulates the challenges of reading translated works and how we can address the pitfalls in such translations. The book is a vital read for psychoanalysts in training and practice, as well as those interested in Judaica, the history of ideas and early Medieval studies. (shrink)

Emotions play a prominent role in social life, yet the direct impact of emotions on behavior and judgment remains a point of disagreement. The current investigation used meta-analysis to test two theoretical perspectives. The emotion-as-direct-causation perspective asserts that current emotions guide behavior and judgment, whereas the emotion-as-feedback perspective asserts that anticipated emotions guide behavior and judgment. Although the emotion-as-direct-causation perspective was frequently tested, only 22% of tests were significant. Although the emotion-as-feedback perspective was rarely tested, 87% of tests were significant. (...) Our findings suggest that empirical evidence is weak for the default assumption that emotion is the proximal cause of behavior and judgment. Our preliminary findings also suggest that anticipated emotion reliably impacts social behavior and judgment. (shrink)

In recent months, pharmaceutical manufacturers have brought legal challenges to a provision of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) empowering the federal government to negotiate the prices Medicare pays for certain prescription medications. One key argument made in these filings is that price negotiation is a “taking” of property and violates the Takings Clause of the US Constitution. Through original case law and health policy analysis, we show that government price negotiation and even price regulation of goods and services, including (...) patented goods, are constitutional under the Takings Clause. Finding that the IRA violates the Takings Clause would radically upend settled constitutional law and jeopardize the US’s most important state and federal health care programs. (shrink)

Shadow Philosophy: Plato’s Cave and Cinema is an accessible and exciting new contribution to film-philosophy, which shows that to take film seriously is also to engage with the fundamental questions of philosophy. Nathan Andersen brings Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange into philosophical conversation with Plato’s Republic , comparing their contributions to themes such as the nature of experience and meaning, the character of justice, the contrast between appearance and reality, the importance of art, and the impact of images. (...) At the heart of the book is a novel account of the analogy between Plato’s allegory of the cave and cinema, developed in conjunction with a provocative interpretation of the most powerful image from A Clockwork Orange , in which the lead character is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. Key features of the book include: a comprehensive bibliography of suggested readings on Plato, on film, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of film a list of suggested films that can be explored following the approach in this book, including brief descriptions of each film, and suggestions regarding its philosophical implications a summary of Plato’s Republic , book by book, highlighting both dramatic context and subject matter. Offering a close reading of the controversial classic film A Clockwork Orange , and an introductory account of the central themes of the philosophical classic The Republic , this book will be of interest to both scholars and students of philosophy and film, as well as to readers of Plato and fans of Stanley Kubrick. (shrink)

Abstract Both parties in the active philosophical debate concerning the conceptual character of perception trace their roots back to Kant's account of sensible intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason. This striking fact can be attributed to Kant's tendency both to assert and to deny the involvement of our conceptual capacities in sensible intuition. He appears to waver between these two positions in different passages, and can thus seem thoroughly confused on this issue. But this is not, in fact, the (...) case, for, as I will argue, the appearance of contradiction in his account stems from the failure of some commentators to pay sufficient attention to Kant's developmental approach to philosophy. Although he begins by asserting the independence of intuition, Kant proceeds from this nonconceptualist starting point to reveal a deeper connection between intuitions and concepts. On this reading, Kant's seemingly conflicting claims are actually the result of a careful and deliberate strategy for gradually convincing his readers of the conceptual nature of perception. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are thought to result in part from altered cortical excitatory-inhibitory balance; this pathophysiology may impact the generation of oscillations on EEG. We investigated premotor-parietal cortical physiology associated with praxis, which has strong theoretical and empirical associations with ASD symptomatology. 25 children with high-functioning ASD (HFA) and 33 controls performed a praxis task involving the pantomiming of tool use, while EEG was recorded. We assessed task-related modulation of signal power in alpha and beta frequency bands. Compared with (...) controls, subjects with HFA showed 27% less left central (motor/premotor) beta (18-22 Hz) event-related desynchronization (ERD) (p = 0.030), as well as 24% less left parietal alpha (7-13 Hz) ERD (p = 0.046). Within the HFA group, blunting of central ERD attenuation was associated with impairments in clinical measures of praxis imitation (r = -0.4; p = 0.04) and increased autism severity (r = 0.48; p = 0.016). The modulation of central beta activity is associated, among other things, with motor imagery, which may be necessary for imitation. Impaired imitation has been associated with core features of ASD. Altered modulation of oscillatory activity may be mechanistically involved in those aspects of motor network function that relate to the core symptoms of ASD. (shrink)

The phrase military ethics is sometimes regarded as a contradiction in terms. To some, the idea of ethics seems out of touch with modern realities and sensibilities. "How can an external moral standard dictate one's actions?" some might ask. Ethics can therefore bring up memories of bygone eras that seem irrelevant. Coupled with the qualifier military, ethics can seem even more puzzling. Ethics is not merely a concern for past eras, but is increasingly relevant in an age of rapid technological (...) and societal development. From its beginning, our nation's military leaders have viewed ethics as imperative to the task of warfighting. This is a refrain echoed by contributions to this book who address a range of issues concerning political actors, technological capabilities, and societal shifts of the past and the present. And in commemorating the centenary of World War I, it is appropriate to consider the ethics of warfare. This book helpfully relates lessons from the past to the major ethical issues of modern warfare. By providing diverse reflections on the history of military ethics and challenges of contemporary and future warfare, this book serves as a repository of meaningful material for a new generation of warfighters to develop their own faculties of ethical judgment. (shrink)

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the (...) validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)