Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease can lead to the development of neuropsychiatric symptoms. These can include harmful changes in mood and behaviour that alienate family members and raise ethical questions about personal responsibility for actions committed under stimulation-dependent mental states. Qualitative interviews were conducted with twenty participants following subthalamic DBS at a movement disorders centre, in order to explore the meaning and significance of stimulation-related neuropsychiatric symptoms amongst a purposive sample of persons (...) with PD and their spousal caregivers. Interview transcripts underwent inductive thematic analysis. Clinical and experiential aspects of post-DBS neuropsychiatric symptoms were identified. Caregivers were highly burdened by these symptoms and both patients and caregivers felt unprepared for their consequences, despite having received information prior to DBS, desiring greater family and peer engagement prior to neurosurgery. Participants held conflicting opinions as to whether emergent symptoms were attributable to neurostimulation. Many felt that they reflected aspects of the person’s “real” or “younger” personality. Those participants who perceived a close relationship between stimulation changes and changes in mental state were more likely to view these symptoms as inauthentic and uncontrollable. Unexpected and troublesome neuropsychiatric symptoms occurred despite a pre-operative education programme that was delivered to all participants. This suggests that such symptoms are difficult to predict and manage even if best practice guidelines are followed by experienced centres. Further research aimed at predicting these complications may improve the capacity of clinicians to tailor the consent process. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

In this book, Peter Achinstein proposes and defends several objective concepts of evidence. He then explores the question of whether a scientific method, such as that represented in the four "Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy" that Isaac Newton invoked in proving his law of gravity, can be employed in demonstrating how the proposed definitions of evidence are to be applied to real scientific cases.

Peter Achinstein has gathered some prominent philosophers and historians of science for critical and lively discussions of both general questions about the ...

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of early Christian philosophy and of ancient science. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition appears in the shape of (...) Philo of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, _The Letters and Other Writings_ features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of both _The Calamities of Peter Abelard_ and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to (...) this edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature. In addition to the _The Calamities_ and the letters--the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years--this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard's _Confession of Faith_, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to _The Questions of Heloise_, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated shaped poem, Open Wide Your Eyes. Extracts of lost letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are given in appendixes. (shrink)

This article responds to Daniel Coren’s very insightful critical discussion of Baumann. It clarifies and defends the view that there is a problem of mutually consistent but necessarily incompatible desires. Distinguishing explicitly between semantic and syntactic consistency, one can show that the problem remains under each interpretation of “consistent.”.

Hotchin, Peter Around the middle of the 20th century the UK philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe had become critical of ethical doctrines that have no reference to the good. She was concerned that the notions of moral duty and obligation had been rendered anchorless because of an attenuation in our understanding of what the good consists in. Bereft of an anchor, ethical doctrines had, in her view, lost contact with human needs and desires. Anscombe's concern was that of someone from a (...) major school of thought known as 'virtue ethics', and her criticism was aimed at another major school of thought, that of 'deontology'. (shrink)

Nicknamed the "Eye of Paris" by Henry Miller, Brassaï was one of the great European photographers of the twentieth century. This volume of letters and photographs, many published for the first time, chronicles the fascinating early years of Brassaï's life and artistic development in Paris and Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s. "[Brassaï] is probably the only photographer—at least in France—to have acquired such a vast audience and mastered his material to such a degree that he can express himself with (...) a flexibility and apparent ease that is almost literary in its nature."—Jean Gallien, Photo-Monde "The letters that Brassaï wrote to his parents between 1920 and 1940 chronicle the sometimes painful stages by which this gifted man hauled himself from penury to celebrity."—Peter Hamilton, Times Literary Supplement "In these proud, protective, occasionally conscience-stricken missives, the young man full of eager dreams emerges as one of the century's pioneering photographers, revered for his lushly atmospheric portraits of Paris after dark."—Elle "A fascinating insight into how a bright individual slowly found his calling."—Christine Schwartz Hartley, New York Times Book Review. (shrink)

had a salutary influence in encouraging metaphysicians to think about these issues of each other. But, as it happens, they come across their victim at the same time and place. Both assassins take careful aim, their fingers poised to pull their in clear-headed, realist ways.

In Navigating Everyday Life, Peter Adams explores the moments when everyday experience seems to open up spaces beyond what we normally experience. Adams draws on two philosophical concepts: finitude, the things that bind a person to a situation, and transcendence, the things that lie beyond these boundaries.

What explains variation in hunting success? This paper examines foraging success among Inuit hunters, paying particular attention to factors that account for differential returns in hunting. Although there are several possibilities for explaining hunting success, this study finds that birth order and age are important predictors of foraging returns. Furthermore, data on food sharing suggests that birth order has important effects on the distribution of food. That is, early-born hunters not only produce more food, they give much of that food (...) to their parents, who then distribute it to the hunter’s younger siblings. These findings are discussed within the context of local resource enhancement and the value of early-born sons to Inuit parents. (shrink)

This volume showcases six of Deutsch's more notable and influential papers, and include complementary chapters written by other significant contributors working ...

The intertwining careers of William Torrey Harris converge in twelve of the Annual Reports of the Board of Directors for St. Louis Public Schools. Harris formulated most of the essential features of these twelve reports as the Superintendent of Schools from 1867 to 1869. These particular reports—which have been acclaimed nationally and internationally—are said to be among the most valuable official publications in American educational literature. They are far different from the descriptive documents originally intended by their author. This study (...) demonstrates that Harris provided an authentic philosophy of education, a set of interrelated philosophical principles and their applications to educational problems. The substance of Harris's philosophy of education is focused upon a broadly based philosophical anthropology in relationship primarily to the purposes, curriculum, and teaching methods in intellectual, moral, and religious education. (shrink)

Abigail Lang’s La conversation transatlantique: Les échanges franco-américains en poésie depuis 1968 [Transatlantic Conversation: Franco-American Exchanges in Poetry Since 1968] is a book that needed to be written. Anyone reading and studying French and/or American poetry of the mid- to late twentieth century was keenly aware of the fruitfulness of the exchanges between French and American poets. This book archives, records, and documents the challenging theoretical, national, and literary questions that both French and American poetries of this period address. Lang’s (...) book is composed of an approximately thirty-page introduction, followed by chapters dedicated to Objectivist poetry, the “community of poets,” and... (shrink)

This book seeks to join the ongoing, interdisciplinary approach to children’s literature by means of sustained readings of individual texts by means of important works in the history of philosophy. Its inclusion of authors from both various departments—philosophy, literature, religion, and education—and various countries is an attempt to show how traditional boundaries between disciplines might become more permeable and how philosophy offers important insights to this interdisciplinary, critical conversation.

In the modern world, science and technology touch our lives every day, and if they are to serve the public interest it is more important than ever that society discusses the way in which scientific research is performed, funded, organized and reported. Science for Survival provides an accessible and readable examination of the ways in which society interacts with science and the means by which political and other leaders use and misuse science and engineering. Case studies, such as the handling (...) of 'mad cow disease' and the internet revolution, reveal both how mistakes are often made in handling science and technology, and also how good practice can contribute to the public interest. Each of the first eight chapters of Science for Survival is focused on an issue of public debate – such as the environment, unemployment, defence, pensions, or transport policy – and uses recent examples and historical parallels to demonstrate different aspects of the relationship between science and the rest of society. The final chapter examines some of the ways in which society can discuss science, technology and engineering in order to maximise mutual understanding between scientists and non-scientists. Science for Survival is written for anyone who cares about the public interest in twenty-first century society, and about how science and technology can be used to serve the public good. (shrink)

This book includes fifty-six selections from many countries, including France, England, Scotland, the German and Italian states, the American colonies, and Russia.

In this discussion I take it for granted that proper names are words of a language, are not mere interjections or burps. I also take it for granted that for any proper name “N. N.” there is some general term “A” that gives the relevant criterion of identity; repeated use of “N. N.” involves an intention to keep on saying things about one and the same A, or as I shall put it for short “N. N.” is a name for (...) an A. An intention to keep on referring barely to the same thing is, as lawyers say, void for uncertainty. These theses have been denied, but I think not reasonably. Some very silly arguments have been used recently: e.g. an argument from the logical possibility of Protean change is put up to show that a proper name may attach to a thing no matter what sort it comes to belong to. (shrink)

Die Vergangenheit ist unwiederholbar, zugleich bleiben aber Bilder und Spuren von ihr zurück. Neben solchen Formen des Nachlebens können Darstellungen des Vergangenen aber auch nachträgliche Rekonstruktionen sein, d. h. Formen der Sichtbarmachung, die selbst nicht alt sind, sondern, aus der jeweiligen Sicht einer Gegenwart heraus, Vergangenes nachstellen, simulieren oder anschaulich machen. Beide Formen der Vergegenwärtigung - Nachleben und Rekonstruktion - ermöglichen es einer Kultur, sich mit ihrer eigenen Vergangenheit in Beziehung zu setzen. Zugleich bleibt diese Aneignung des Vergangenen aber zwangsläufig (...) unvollständig und von den Möglichkeiten und Motiven der jeweiligen Gegenwart bestimmt. Am Beispiel konkreter Fallstudien aus dem Bereich der historischen Wissenschaften, der bildenden Kunst, des Dokumentar- und Spielfilms, der Fotografie und der Literatur untersuchen die Beiträge des Bandes dieses besondere Zusammenwirken von Zeugenschaft und Imagination, Wiederholung und Entzug des Vergangenen. (shrink)

I dedicate this essay to the memory of the late Wolfgang Mommsen—the subject would have been congenial to him. It is one of a series of offshoots from a central project: a scholarly edition of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with commentary. When I first told Prof. Mommsen of my plan in 1994 he looked me full in the face and gave a characteristic growl: “All that work!” Here was a man who knew what he was about. My thanks to Ross (...) McKibbin and Keith Tribe for reading this paper in draft. The article begins by examining Max Weber's relations with Lujo Brentano, much the most important “precursor” to Weber in the field of economics. In particular, Brentano conducted a form of parallel inquiry into the rise of ‘the spirit of capital’ in England 35 years before Weber looked for the origins of “spirit” of capitalism there, and the contrast between these two ideas casts much light both on Brentano and on Weber's Protestant Ethic. This personal history leads into a broader history of the transition in German economic thought between the 1860s – the formative decade for Brentano but also the era of Marx's Capital – and that of Weber's generation coming to maturity c.1890. Marx and Weber remain the two great canonical thinkers and original minds; but any authentic historical comparison between Marx and Weber must take in Brentano. The essence of the contrast between the generations is that between Weber's novel conception of an ethical ‘capitalism’, and the materialism and naturalism underpinning Brentano's and Marx's ‘capital’, although Weber and Brentano are alike as liberals, democrats and bourgeois. ☆ Some abbreviations for Weber: AfSS for Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; GARS for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen, 1920) vol. i; WL for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1968); Grundriss for Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine (“theoretische”) Nationalökonomie [1898], repr. Tübingen, 1990; MWG for Max Weber Gesamtausgabe ed. Horst Baier et al. (Tübingen, 1984); Briefe for letters by Weber in this edition; ‘Nachlaß Max Weber’ for unpublished letters from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Berlin-Dahlem, VI. HA Nachlaß Max Weber. Lebensbild for Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen, 1926); Zohn for idem, Max Weber. A Biography (New Brunswick, 1988) tr. Harry Zohn. For Brentano: Der wirtschaftende Mensch for Der wirtschaftende Mensch in der Geschichte (Leipzig, 1923); Konkrete Grundbedingungen for Konkrete Grundbedingungen der Volkswirtschaft (Leipzig, 1924); Der tätige Mensch for Der tätige Mensch und die Wissenschaft von der Wirtschaft (Marburg, 2006) ed. R. Bräu, H.G. Nutzinger. ‘Die Entwickelung der Wertlehre’ for ‘Die Entwickelung der Wertlehre’, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-philologische und historische Klassen. Jahrgang 1908, 3. Abhandlung (15 Feb. 1908), 1–84; ‘Theorie der Bedürfnisse’ for ‘Versuch einer Theorie der Bedürfmisse’, ibid., 10. Abhandlung (5 Dec. 1908), 1–79; ‘Die Malthussche Lehre’ for ‘Die Malthussche Lehre und die Bevölkerungsbewegung der letzten Decennien’ [1909], Abhandlungen der historischen Klasse der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XXIV (1906–1909), 565–625, 1*–39*. (shrink)

One of the most striking and yet neglected strands in Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic is the evident interest it displays in the affinity between Puritanism and Judaism. Whilst it would be an exaggeration to describe this as a principal theme, still it is one which recurs, and leads to one of those little essays masquerading as footnotes that highlight points in the text where Weber’s interests exceed the bounds of his avowed historical subject [XXI.91 n. 49] – the formation of (...) an ascetic Protestant ethic in the 17th century and its contribution to the formation of the modern Occidental “spirit” of capitalism. On the face of it Judaism can have very little to do with 17th century Puritanism, whilst in the original text of 1904–5 Weber says nothing directly about the possible links between Judaism and capitalist behaviour, though this would seem the most obvious way to introduce this subject. [181 n. 2] The sense that Weber has diverged a long way from his “real” subject is greatly enhanced when we see that the Judaism he is most interested in is ‘Talmudic Judaism’ [XX.45; XXI.90] – an entity which cries out for definition and clarification. On the other hand it is well-known that Weber was deeply interested in the study of Judaism, as is evident from his book-length study of ‘Ancient Judaism’ within the series of the ‘Economic Ethics of the World Religions’ – and even this was only a fragment of the ground he wished to cover. Plainly there are hidden currents at work here, and in charting them we may cast light both on Weber’s thinking about Judaism, and also on the construction of the Protestant Ethic : to what extent was it confined to ‘the Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism’? and to what extent was it, not merely incomplete but, an “open-plan” text which tacitly embraced a much wider subject area? (shrink)