Background -/- Innovative neurosurgical treatments present a number of known risks, the natures and probabilities of which can be adequately communicated to patients via the standard procedures governing obtaining informed consent. However, due to their novelty, these treatments also come with unknown risks, which require an augmented approach to obtaining informed consent. -/- Objective -/- This paper aims to discuss and provide concrete procedural guidance on the ethical issues raised by serious unexpected complications of novel deep brain stimulation treatments. -/- (...) Approach -/- We illustrate our analysis using a case study of the unexpected development of recurrent stereotyped events in patients following the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat severe chronic pain. Examining these unexpected complications in light of medical ethical principles, we argue that serious complications of novel DBS treatments do not necessarily make it unethical to offer the intervention to eligible patients. However, the difficulty the clinician faces in determining whether the intervention is in the patient's best interests generates reasons to take extra steps to promote the autonomous decision making of these patients. -/- Conclusion and recommendations -/- We conclude with clinical recommendations, including details of an augmented consent process for novel DBS treatment. (shrink)

Although it is argued that social justice is a core concern for the discipline, nursing has not generally played a leadership role in the responses to many of the greatest social problems of our time. These include the accelerated rate of climate change, pandemic threats, systemic racism, growing health and social inequities, and the regulation of new technologies to ensure an equitable future ‘for all.’ In nursing codes of ethics, administration, education, policies, and practice, social justice is often claimed to (...) be a core value, yet it is rarely contextualized by philosophical or theoretical underpinnings. It appears that nurses’ commitment to social justice may stem more from a penchant for ‘doing good’ than an attempt to explore, understand, and enact what is meant by social justice from an ontological, epistemological, and methodological perspective. We contend that the dominance of a human science perspective in nursing contributes to a narrow definition of health and relegates many issues central to social justice to the margins of nurses’ care. In this article, we explore how the focus on ‘the human’ in the human science perspective may not only be limiting the capacity of nurses to develop strategies to adequately address social injustice, but in some instances, direct nurses to contribute to their very reproduction. We suggest that a critical interrogation of this human‐centric hegemony can identify avenues of rupture and introduce posthumanism as an additional philosophical perspective for consideration to help bridge the human‐social divide. (shrink)

By examining an exemplar sample of mental health nursing educational policies and related legislation, in this article, we trace the discursive production of madness as an “othered” identity category. We engage in a critical discourse analysis of mental health nursing education in Canada, drawing on provincial and federal policies and legislation as the main sources of data. Theoretically framed by critical posthumanism and mad studies, this article outlines how the mad subjectivity becomes decontextualized out of its identity‐based understanding and recontextualized (...) as an inferior category of “the human,” circulating within discourses of pedagogy, economics, law, and psychiatry. The article maps the intertextual nexus of the discourse of mental health nursing education, making visible the complex, the arbitrary, and the sometimes‐contradictory nature of the discipline's grappling with identity‐based mental health concepts. We close with several implications for nursing policy, education, and practice. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to refute the metaphysicians ‘methodological continuation’ argument supporting epistemic realism in metaphysics. This argument aims to show that scientific realists have to accept that metaphysics is as rationally justified as science given that they both employ inference to the best explanation, i.e. that metaphysics and science are methodologically continuous. I argue that the reasons given by scientific realists as to why inference to the best explanation is reliable in science do not constitute a (...) reason to believe that it is reliable in metaphysics. The justification of IBE in science and the justification of IBE in metaphysics are two distinct issues with only superficial similarities, and one cannot rely on one for the other. This becomes especially clear when one analyses the debate about the legitimacy of IBE that has taken place between realists and empiricists. The metaphysician seeking to piggyback on the realist defense of IBE in science by the methodological continuation argument presupposes that the defense is straightforwardly applicable to metaphysics. I will argue that it is, in fact, not. The favoured defenses of IBE in scientific realism make extensive use of empirical considerations, predictive power and inductive evidence, all of which are paradigmatically absent in the metaphysical context. Furthermore, I argue that the metaphysician, even if the realist would concede to the methodological continuation argument, fails to offer any agreed upon conclusions resulting from its application in metaphysics. As a result, the scientific realist is not committed to believing that there is metaphysical knowledge. (shrink)

Beginning with a critical examination of the humanist assumptions of critical ethnography, this article interrogates and surfaces problems with the ontological and epistemological orientations of this research methodology. In drawing on exemplar empirical data from an arts‐based project, the article demonstrates the limitations in the humanist‐based qualitative research approach and advances a postdualist, postrepresentationalist direction for critical ethnography called entangled ethnography. Using data from a larger study that examined the perspectives of racialized mad artists, what is demonstrated in this inquiry (...) is that the entanglement of bodies, objects, and meaning‐making practices is central to working with the ontologically excluded, such as those who find themselves in various states of disembodiment and/or corporeal and psychic distribution. We propose the redevelopment of critical ethnography, extended by entanglement theory (a critical posthuman theory), and suggest that for it to be an inclusive methodology, critical ethnography must be conceptualized as in the process of becoming and always in regeneration, open to critique, extension, and redevelopment. (shrink)

This is a systematic review of the concept of indistinguishability, in both classical and quantum mechanics, with particular attention to Gibbs paradox. Section 1 is on the Gibbs paradox; section 2 is a defense of classical indistinguishability, notwithstanding the widely-held view, that classical particles can always be distinguished by their trajectories. The last section is about the notion of object more generally, and on whether indistinguishables should be thought of as objects at all.

In this paper I explore the points of similarity and difference that distinguish expressivists such as myself from the position known as Cornell realism. I argue that there are considerable overlaps of doctrine, although these doctrines are arrived at in very different ways. I urge that Cornell realism can only benefit by taking on some of the commitments of expressivism.

In this commentary we concur with Frost's view of the centrality of universal principles in models of word identification. However, we argue that other processes in sentence comprehension also fundamentally constrain the nature of written word identification. Furthermore, these processes appear to be universal. We, therefore, argue that universality in word identification should not be considered in isolation, but instead in the context of other linguistic processes that occur during normal reading.

The Harivaṃśa has usually been seen as a later addition appended to the Mahābhārata, and so the Mahābhārata has usually been understood without it. This article first introduces an alternative approach, whereby these two texts are viewed as a single whole, and justifies that approach on the basis of the details presented in Mbh 1.2. Then the Harivaṃśa’s narrative mechanics are summarized, to contextualize what follows. The main body of the article offers three kinds of answer to the title question (...) of what difference the Harivaṃśa makes to the Mahābhārata. The first answer is theological: the Harivaṃśa emphasizes the divine level of the Mahābhārata story as the story of the gods descending to help the earth. The second answer is narratological: the Harivaṃśa continues and completes the story of Janamejaya begun in Mbh 1, thus emphasizing his role for the text as a whole. The third answer is structural: if the Mahābhārata includes the Harivaṃśa then the whole text can be studied and analyzed as a macrocompositional unit. The “Mahābhārata as a whole” has been the subject of collaborative study in recent years, and this article continues that study, with regard to a fuller whole. The article, unlike that whole, is short, sketchy, and provisional. It looks forward to further and corrective studies in all the sketched areas, and more. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.3 (2001) 89-107 [Access article in PDF] Teaching DeconstructionGiving, Taking, Leaving, Belonging, and the Remains of the University Simon Morgan Wortham The Remains of the University and the Study of Culture In his recent essay "Literary Study in the Transnational University," J. Hillis Miller tries to account for the hostility shown by some practitioners of a certain kind of cultural studies toward what is perceived as "high" (...) theory—in particular, deconstruction. Describing the emergence of cultural studies as a quasi-discipline, he remarks:Insofar as cultural studies still depends on the traditional idea of culture as the production in a subject or subjectivity of an identity produced through indoctrination by a nation-state or by a subculture such as an ethnic or gender community... it was necessary to resist the questioning by deconstruction of all the key concepts necessary to this idea of culture. These include identity, agency, the homogeneity of a given culture, whether hegemonic or minority, the definition of an individual by his or her participation in a nation or community, the unbreakable tie of a text or any other assemblage of signs to its context. The questioning by theory of these concepts often needed to be sidestepped in order for the project of cultural studies and related new disciplines to get going. These key concepts are glued together by a reinstalled referentiality that can no longer afford to be put in question and remain in question. [83] For Miller, a cultural studies of this sort relies on a minimal degree of retention of such unquestioned "referentiality" as a condition of its need to thematize, narrativize, or interpret various texts, events, and artifacts according to a wider "context" (whether this be described as "historical," "social," or "cultural") to which these phenomena remain unbreakably tied. A "context" such as outlined by Miller would of course need to be accorded a basic level of coherence for the analysis to get underway. Furthermore, insofar as—for Miller—this "context" would thereby establish a more or less generalizable framework within which might be understood the shaping of identity in particular instances, thus facilitating rather traditional ways of determining objects of cognition and knowledge, it could be considered to work so as to reanimate conventional ideas of the "self" or "agency." In assuming that there is always a "context" for every "text," in a way that could be comprehended in the above terms, a cultural studies of the kind described by Miller would reinstall the particular as an expression or exemplar of a more clearly determined situation or setting (history, nation, culture, society, ideology), which, in turn, might be considered to fuel critical misrecognition or reduction of the effects and implications of "transnationality" or "globalization." Furthermore, in this case, the [End Page 89] supposed exemplarity of the particular in its identity with the general would inevitably tend to prompt an account, as Miller himself puts it, of the "production in a subject or subjectivity of an identity" produced by a culture, whether it be hegemonic or minority: the assumed culture of a nation-state or, as is more often emphasized nowadays, a subculture existing in some sort of relation to more dominant cultural practices and trends. In addition to this reinscription of knowledge in relation to the human subject, the founding of a certain kind of cultural study upon longstanding models of cognition, as described above, would reestablish cultural studies practitioners working in this way as themselves knowing subjects. From this perspective, then, Miller would doubtless see certain aspects of the critical landscape of cultural studies—its not infrequent commitment to "identity politics" over the years, its shift of emphasis toward the participatory agency of subjects within contemporary popular culture, even some versions of the debate about the ethics of cultural studies—as set up to reinstall the coextensivity of subjects of knowledge and knowing subjects in a way that would depend uncritically on deeply structured relations of reference, identity, and agency.Miller therefore views cultural studies as, in the last analysis, based on a rather unquestioning reversion to more orthodox humanistic... (shrink)

How we engage in epistemic practice, including our methods of knowledge acquisition and transmission, the personal traits that help or hinder these activities, and the social institutions that facilitate or impede them, is of central importance to our lives as individuals and as participants in social and political activities. Traditionally, Anglophone epistemology has tended to neglect the various ways in which these practices go wrong, and the epistemic, moral, and political harms and wrongs that follow. In the past decade, however, (...) there has been a turn towards the non-ideal in epistemology. Articles in this volume focus on topics including intellectual vices, epistemic injustices, interpersonal epistemic practices, and applied epistemology. In addition to exploring the various ways in which epistemic practices go wrong at the level of both individual agents and social structures, the papers gathered herein discuss how these problems are related, and how they may be addressed. (shrink)

Economic inequality is a pressing issue that the global community must address in an urgent and detailed manner if global peace is to be sustained. This paper makes the claim that viable alternative solutions to global economic inequality can be found outside the boundaries of western capitalism. This claim is defended via three movements: first, a critique of Christian teachings on the common good is presented as a pathway to this economic alternative. Second, insights from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (...) that call for strategic solidarity to help undo structures of inequality in our world are appropriated. Third, a cultural and philosophical notion of what it means to be human in African thought is presented as a means for justifying the relevance of the African ethic of Ubuntu as a global economic alternative; one that grounds cosmic flourishing in a vision and praxis of relationality and shared identity for all. Keywords: African Philosophy, Inequality, Political Theology, Ubuntu, Ujamaa, Wealth. (shrink)

L’ouvrage Mourir au 21 siècle : entre corporalités et technologies de Audrey Deveault et Michaël Lessard s’intéresse aux questions juridiques, éthiques et phénoménologiques soulevées par l’impact des innovations technologiques sur la mort. Il explore le vide juridique, ainsi que les représentations individuelle et sociale de la mort, proposant une vision plurielle de son symbolisme et différentes pistes de réflexion pour alimenter le débat.

We focus on two components of Page's argument in favour of localist representations in connectionist networks: First, we take issue with the claim that localist representations can give rise to generalisation and show that whenever generalisation occurs, distributed representations are involved. Second, we counter the alleged shortcomings of distributed representations and show that their properties are preferable to those of localist approaches.

This paper essentially makes two remarks that are pertinent to many of the axiomatisations of subjective probability. First, the auxiliary experiment used to quantify qualitative feelings of relative likelihood is essentially distinct from the field of events of actual interest and may be kept so in the axiomatisation. Second, all theories of subjective probability agree that beliefs are conditional on the present state of knowledge and on the present mood and attitude of the individual concerned. As the individual moves through (...) time this conditioning set, his knowledge and psychological state, change. This ever present change has implications for the conditions under which Bayes' Theorem may be invoked to prescribe how the individual should rationally update his beliefs in the light of a particular observation. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 11, Page 42-43, November 2011.

According to Luck egalitarians, fairness requires us to bring it about that nobody is worse off than others where this results from brute bad luck, but not where they choose or deserve to be so. In this paper, I consider one type of brute bad luck that appears paradigmatic of what a Luck Egalitarian ought to be most concerned about, namely that suffered by people who are born to badly off parents and are less well off as a result. However, (...) when we consider what is supposedly unfair about this kind of unequal brute luck, luck egalitarians face a dilemma. According to the standard account of luck egalitarianism, differential brute luck is unfair because of its effects on the distribution of goods. Yet, where some parents are worse off because they have chosen to be imprudent, it may be impossible to neutralize these effects without creating a distribution that seems at least as unfair. This, I argue, is problematic for luck egalitarianism. I, therefore, explore two alternative views that can avoid this problem. On the first of these, proposed by Shlomi Segall, the distributional effects of unequal brute luck are unfair only when they make a situation more unequal, but not when they make it more equal. On the second, it is the unequal brute luck itself, rather than its distributional effects, that is unfair. I conclude with some considerations in favour of this second view, while accepting that both are valid responses to the problem I describe. (shrink)

This book begins at the intersection of Dracula and War of the Worlds, both published in 1897 London, and describes the settings of Transylvania, Mars, and London as worlds linked by the body of the vampire. It explores the "vampire from another world" in all its various forms, as a manifestation of not just our anxieties around alien others, but also our alien selves. Unsurprisingly, many of the tropes these novels generated and particularly the themes they have in common have (...) been used and adapted by vampire narratives that followed. From Nosferatu to Alien, Interstellar, Stranger Things, and many others, this book examines how these narratives have evolved since the end of the nineteenth century. Bringing together texts and films from across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, from the far reaches of outer space and the distant future, it concludes that the unexpected and the unknown are not always to be feared, and that humanity does have the power to write its own future. (shrink)

哲學作家朱家安、哲學研究者邱振訓、哲學系副教授許漢愛智推薦！ 英國劍橋大學著名哲學教授賽門‧布雷克本 教你這樣探索人生的20個大問題！ 他在一連串彼此相關的問題與論證中推敲、從前人的思路中借鏡 縱橫解析偉大思想家們思考的來龍去脈 主題深刻，內容精闢，是了解自己、了解世界的經典之作 「你幹嘛要想這些奇怪的問題呢？」 「它們看起來根本就沒有答案啊！」 當代知名哲學家賽門‧布雷克本教授在《這一切究竟是為什麼：20個哲學大哉問》這本書裡，幫助你迅速釐清每個主題的「哲學戰況」： 目前最重要的問題是什麼？ 有哪些當紅的立場？ 主要是誰跟誰對上？ 各自有哪些難解的任務？ 不但可以讓你少走冤枉路， 也可以誘引你跟隨、批判，並發展自己的獨到見解。 作者賽門‧布雷克本所列舉的20個題目，是無論男女老幼都會經常感到困惑的問題。就算不依靠反省能力，這些問題似乎也會自然迸生出來，而我們都想找到這些問題的解答。 《這一切究竟是為什麼》一書所羅列的20個問題沒有按一定順序編排，只有最後一個問題例外，因為那是我們所有人最終都會面臨的問題。每個問題的相關討論都是各自獨立的，所以讀者可以挑自己感興趣的主題來看。不過， 有時候不同的問題討論難免會涉及彼此，因此讀者可能會需要前後對照。 所有題目都沒有「標準」答案，但是大家都能從作者的思路、思考的角度來省思我們實際上如何思考、如何感受，以及我們應該如何思考與感受。 ※ 愛智推薦 或許你會忽然覺得「我幹嘛想這些奇怪的問題？」於是轉頭就走不再回來；或許你會覺得這些問題有點有趣，甚至找到志同道合的人一起討論。不管你是哪種人，這本書都能提供一些有趣的幫助。 ──哲學作家 朱家安 哲學思考實在不是為了什麼額外好處才要進行的活動，就像是「美」、「健康」、「正義」一樣，本身就是具有獨立內在價值的事。亞里斯多德說哲學起源於驚嘆，想來約是此意。 ──哲學研究者 邱振訓 這本書並不容易閱讀，讀者多少會感覺到布雷克本的思考或行文脈絡不容易完全掌握，有時引述討論某個哲學家或科學家或文學家的說法，有時是對流行意見的觀察，有時是他自己的看法，這些不同說法交雜在他的思考與討論中 ……哲學問題是反思性的，讀者需要夠努力去思考才能掌握或品味其中的趣味。 ──國立中正大學哲學系副教授 許漢.

This book presents a counter-history to the relentless critique of the humanist subject and authorial agency that has taken place over the last fifty years. It is both an interrogation of that critique and the tracing of an alternative narrative from Romanticism to the twenty-first century which celebrates the agency of the artist as a powerful contribution to the well-being of community. It does so through arguments based on philosophical aesthetics and cultural theory interspersed with case histories of particular artists. (...) It also engages with a second issue that cannot be separated from the first. This is the question of what the role and purpose of art is in society. This has become particularly important since the 1990s because of the 'social turn' in art in which it is claimed that the only valid role for art was one that had explicit social consequences. This book argues that a political role for art is valuable, but not the only one that can be envisaged nor indeed is it the most obvious or most important. Art has other social roles both as a means to engender empathy and community, as well as to re-enchant a world bereft of meaning and reduced to material values. The book will appeal to practicing artists as well as scholars working in art history, philosophy, aesthetics, and curatorial studies. (shrink)

Traditionally, attempts to verify communications between individuals and cultures appeal to 'public' objects, essential structures of experience, or universal reason. Contemporary continental philosophy demonstrates that not only such appeals, but fortuitously also the very conception of isolated individuals and cultures whose communication such appeals were designed to insure, are problematic. Indeed we encounter and understand ourselves, and are also originally constituted, in relation to others. In view of this the traditional problem of communication is inverted and becomes that of how (...) we are sufficiently differentiated from one another such that communication might appear problematic. (shrink)

The ego is traditionally held to be synonymous with individual identity and autonomy, while the mind is widely held to be a necessary basis of cognition and volition, with responsibility following accordingly. However Buddhist epistemology, existential phenomenology and poststructuralism all hold the notion of an independent, subsisting, self-identical subject to be an illusion. This not only raises problems for our understanding of cognition and volition, as well as for the notion of responsibility. For Buddhism, no-self theory raises serious problems for (...) the doctrine of reincarnation. Arguing for such "no-self" theories, the paper attempts to demonstrate how such difficulties can nevertheless be resolved. (shrink)