Clinicians have an obligation to ensure that patients with adequate capacity can make autonomous decisions. Thus, patients who choose to forego treatment and leave hospitals “against medical advice” are typically allowed to do so. But what happens when they require clinicians’ assistance to physically leave? Is it incumbent upon clinicians to not only respect and fulfill patients’ requests with which they disagree, but to physically assist in their fulfillment? We attempt to develop an ethical framework wherein clinicians can honor patients’ (...) wishes without necessarily sacrificing their own moral position. (shrink)

The failure of conventional quantum theory to recognize time as an observable and to admit time operators is addressed. Instead of focusing on the existence of a time operator for a given Hamiltonian, we emphasize the role of the Hamiltonian as the generator of translations in time to construct time states. Taken together, these states constitute what we call a timeline. Such timelines are adequate for the representation of any physical state, and appear to exist even for the semi-bounded and (...) discrete Hamiltonian systems ruled out by Pauli’s theorem. However, the step from a timeline to a valid time operator requires additional assumptions that are not always met. Still, this approach illuminates the issues surrounding the construction of time operators, and establishes timelines as legitimate alternatives to the familiar coordinate and momentum bases of standard quantum theory. (shrink)

The fission of a person involves what common sense describes as a single person surviving as two distinct people. Thus, say most metaphysicians, this paradox shows us that common sense is inconsistent with the transitivity of identity. Lewis’s theory of overlapping persons, buttressed with tensed identity, gives us one way to reconcile the common sense claims. Lewis’s account, however, implausibly says that reference to a person about to undergo fission is ambiguous. A better way to reconcile the claims of common (...) sense, one that avoids this ambiguity, is to recognize branching persons, persons who have multiple pasts or futures. (shrink)

This article re-evaluates the significance attributed to Hecataeus¿ encounter with the Theban priests described by Herodotus (2.143) by setting it against the evidence of Late Period Egyptian representations of the past. In the first part a critique is offered of various approaches Classicists have taken to this episode and its impact on Greek historiography. Classicists have generally imagined this as an encounter in which the young, dynamic and creative Greeks construct an image of the static, ossified and incredibly old culture (...) of the Egyptians, a move which reveals deeper assumptions in the scholarly discourse on Greeks and ¿other¿ cultures in the Mediterranean world. But the civilization that Herodotus confronted in his long excursus on Egypt was not an abstract, eternal Egypt. Rather, it was the Egypt of his own day, at a specific historical moment ¿ a culture with a particular understanding of its own long history. The second part presents evidence of lengthy Late Period priestly genealogies, and more general archaizing tendencies. Remarkable examples survive of the sort of visual genealogy which would have impressed upon the travelling Greek historians the long continuum of the Egyptian past. These include statues with genealogical inscriptions and relief sculptures representing generations of priests succeeding to their fathers¿ office. These priestly evocations of a present firmly anchored in the Egyptian past are part of a wider pattern of cultivating links with the historical past in the Late Period of Egyptian history. Thus, it is not simply the marvel of a massive expanse of time which Herodotus encountered in Egypt, but a mediated cultural awareness of that time. The third part of the essay argues that Herodotus used this long human past presented by the Egyptian priests in order to criticize genealogical and mythical representations of the past and develop the notion of an historical past. On the basis of this example, the article concludes by urging a reconsideration of the scholarly paradigm for imagining the encounter between Greeks and ¿others¿ in ethnographic discourse in order to recognize the agency of the Egyptian priests, and other non-Greek ¿informants¿. (shrink)

This paper consists of two sections. In section one, I explore Val Plumwood's description of the features of normative dualism, and briefly discuss how these features are manifest in Immanuel Kant's view of nature. In section two, I evaluate the claims of Holly L. Wilson, who argues that Kant is not a normative dualist. Against Wilson, I will argue that Kant maintains normative dualisms between humans/nature, humans/animals, humans I culture, and men/women. As such, Kant's philosophy is antithetical to the aims (...) of ecofeminism, which seeks to expose and dismantle such dualistic thinking. (shrink)

: This paper consists of two sections. In section one, I explore Val Plumwood's description of the features of normative dualism, and briefly discuss how these features are manifest in Immanuel Kant's view of nature. In section two, I evaluate the claims of Holly L. Wilson, who argues that Kant is not a normative dualist. Against Wilson, I will argue that Kant maintains normative dualisms between humans/nature, humans/animals, humans/culture, and men/women. As such, Kant's philosophy is antithetical to the aims of (...) ecofeminism, which seeks to expose and dismantle such dualistic thinking. (shrink)

Detection in contemporary genre films is in the process of being transformed: viewers see less and less of moving, traveling, and active human bodies entering in interaction and exchanging words. Instead, what takes up a significant part of film time is the view of computer screens, with digitally stored and retrieved traces, meaningful for detection, playing the lead role. One result of this type of detection on screen – rather than detection in the streets or on murder scenes – is (...) that detection is presented as a process happening on the human-computer interface. With reference to Lev Manovich the article asks how the “illusion of navigating through virtual spaces” is recreated, when the context of such an illusion is filmic diegesis defined by genre rules, where “the virtual spaces of the screen” should have a direct effect on “the real spaces of filmic diegesis”? (shrink)

Puzzles about persistence and change through time, i.e., about identity across time, have foundered on confusion about what it is for ‘two things’ to be have ‘the same thing’ at a time. This is most directly seen in the dispute over whether material objects can occupy exactly the same place at the same time. This paper defends the possibility of such coincidence against several arguments to the contrary. Distinguishing a temporally relative from an absolute sense of ‘the same’, we see (...) that the intuition, ‘this is only one thing’, and the dictum, ‘two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time’, are individuating things at a time rather than absolutely and are therefore compatible with coincidence. Several other objections philosophers have raised ride on this same ambiguity. Burke, originating what has become the most popular objection to coincidence, argues that if coincidence is possible there would be no explanation of how objects that are qualitatively the same at a time could belong to different sorts. But we can explain an object’s sort by appealing to its properties at other times. Burke’s argument to the contrary equivocates on different notions of ‘cross-time identity’ and ‘the statue’. From a largely negative series of arguments emerges a positive picture of what it means to say multiple things coincide and of why an object’s historical properties explain its sort rather than vice versa – in short, of how coincidence is possible. (shrink)

Objective: This study examined whether patients who were randomly assigned to their preferred therapy arm had stronger engagement with their treatment than those who were randomly assigned to a non-preferred therapy arm.Method: Data were drawn from a RCT comparing Individual Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy, with Individual Supportive Psychotherapy, in patients with advanced cancer. Treatment engagement was operationalized as patients' perceptions of the therapeutic alliance with their therapist and therapy sessions attended. Two 2 by 2 Analysis of Variance models were used, with treatment (...) preference and treatment assignment as the independent variables and working alliance and number of sessions attended as outcome variables.Results: Patients who preferred and were assigned to IMCP reported a significantly stronger alliance than those who preferred IMCP but were assigned to ISP.Conclusions: The findings from this study have broader implications for research on psychotherapy beyond the appeal of IMCP in advanced cancer patients. Patients who prefer a novel psychotherapy that they cannot engage in elsewhere, but receive the standard treatment may experience weaker alliance than patients who prefer the standard but receive the novel therapy.Trial registration:Clinicaltrial.gov ID: NCT01323309. (shrink)

For those who think the statue and the piece of copper that compose it are distinct objects that coincide, there is a burden of explanation. After all, common sense says that different ordinary objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. A common argument in favour of four-dimensionalism (or ?perdurantism? or ?temporal parts theory?) is that it provides the resources for a superior explanation of this coincidence. This, however, is mistaken. Any explanatory work done by the four-dimensionalist notion (...) of absolute parthood rests ultimately on notions equally available to the three-dimensionalist. Thus, a neutral explanation of coincidence is at least as good while avoiding commitment to temporal parts. ?Many thanks to David Christensen, Louis deRosset, Matti Eklund, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. (shrink)

Can different material objects have the same parts at all times at which they exist? This paper defends the possibility of such coincidence against the main argument to the contrary, the ‘Indiscernibility Argument’. According to this argument, the modal supervenes on the nonmodal, since, after all, the non-modal is what grounds the modal; hence, it would be utterly mysterious if two objects sharing all parts had different essential properties. The weakness of the argument becomes apparent once we understand how the (...) modal is grounded in the nonmodal. By extending the ideas of combinatorialism so that we recombine haecceities as well as fundamental properties, we see how modal properties can be grounded in non-modal properties in a way that allows coincidence and yet also explains why there are differences in the modal properties of coinciding objects. Despite this, some de re modal facts are not grounded in the non-modal but instead are brute. However, although we cannot explain why a particular object has the basic modal properties it has, we can explain a closely related, semantic fact and, comparing the facts we can’t explain to more familiar brute facts, we understand why there should be no better explanation. As a result, we can see how coincidence is, after all, possible. (shrink)

A radical metaphysical theory typically comes packaged with a semantic theory that reconciles those radical claims with common sense. The metaphysical theory says what things exist and what their natures are, while the semantic theory specifies, in terms of these things, how we are to interpret everyday language. Thus may we “think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar.” This semantic accommodation of common sense, however, can end up undermining the very theory it is designed to protect. This paper (...) is a case study, showing in detail how one popular version of temporal parts theory is self-undermining. This raises the specter that the problem generalizes to other metaphysical theories. (shrink)

Kim argues that weak and global supervenience are too weak to guarantee any sort of dependency. Of the three original forms of supervenience, strong, weak, and global, each commonly wielded across all branches of philosophy, two are thus cast aside as uninteresting or useless. His arguments, however, fail to appreciate the strength of weak and global supervenience. I investigate what weak and global supervenience relations are functionally and how they relate to strong supervenience. For a large class of properties, weak (...) and global supervenience are equivalent to strong supervenience. I then offer a series of arguments showing that it is precisely because of their strength, not their weakness, that both weak and global supervenience are useless in characterizing any dependencies of interest to philosophers. (shrink)

As of this writing, twenty‐one states have passed laws barring transgender youth‐athletes from competing on public‐school sports teams in accordance with their gender identity. Proponents of these regulations claim that transgender females in particular have inherent physiological advantages that threaten a “level playing field” for their cisgender competitors. Existing evidence is limited but does not support these restrictions. Gathering more robust data will require allowing transgender youth to compete (rather than preemptively barring them), but even if trans females are shown (...) to retain some advantage, this would not have greater moral significance than the many other “fair” physical and economic advantages found across sports. These regulations deprive transgender youth, an exceptionally vulnerable population, from the vast physical, mental, and social benefits of sports. While we advocate for transgender inclusion under our current, gender‐segregated model of sport, we propose changes to the overarching structure that would promote a more inclusive and fairer athletic environment. (shrink)

In the 1960s, newborn screening programs tested for a single very rare but serious disorder. In recent years, thanks to the development of new screening technology, they have expanded into panels of tests; a federally sponsored expert group has recommended that states test for twenty-nine core disorders and twenty-five secondary disorders. By the standards used to decide whether to introduce new preventive health services into clinical use, the decision-making in newborn screening policy has been lax.

The Moral Life: Obligation and Affirmation examines the broad scope of moral thought and behavior over the centuries. Moyers considers the notion of morals from various perspectives, asking: if everything is a matter of interpretation and morality is not written in stone, then how should we live?

Introduction to ethics -- The counselor as a person and professional identity -- Ethical decision making -- Ethics & diversity -- Clients' rights and counselors' responsibilities -- Confidentiality and privileged communication -- Ethics in theory, practice, and professional relationships -- Appropriate boundaries and multiple relationships -- Ethics and technology -- Ethics in group work, couples, and families -- Ethics in school counseling -- Ethics in counselor education -- Ethics in supervision -- Ethics in research and publications.

In 1566 and 1567, two noted Florentine humanists–—Vincenzio Borghini and Girolamo Mei— carried on a written debate about Florence's origins and early history. That debate reveals significant features and innovations about the ways late humanists approached and employed historical evidence, as well as their own reflections on their methods. We see important roles for both humanistic tools of textual and linguistic analysis, and for antiquarian studies of artifacts and inscriptions. Borghini won the debate, but Mei remained committed to his own (...) emphasis on textual analysis and never accepted Borghini's broad and more eclectic use of artifacts as historical sources. (shrink)

Andrew Marr has built this masterful study of Mutio Oddi on a set of ironies. He begins with a bitter blow of fortune: Oddi, in the middle of an apparently promising life as mathematician and architect in his native Urbino, had fallen afoul of his lord the Duke, accused of participating in a plot to depose him. After years of apparently unjust imprisonment, he was released in 1610, but into exile. Yet Oddi managed to recast his career in Milan and (...) then in Lucca, building upon a varied set of skills, and even returned eventually to Urbino. That varied set of skills had resulted from yet another, earlier, set of reversals and recoveries: he had turned to mathematics only after first training as an artist in the studio of Federico Barocci, a field he had been forced to abandon due to problems with his eyesight. Oddi was widely respected in his day, not only for his achievements themselves but also for his persistence and ingenuity in overcoming such obstacles. Yet to modern historians of .. (shrink)

The ArgumentDuring the later European Renaissance, some scholars began to write about the history of scientific disciplines. Some of the issues and problems they faced in constructing their narratives have had long-term effects on the history of science. One of these issues was how to relate scholars from the Islamic traditions of scientific scholarship to those of antiquity and of postclassical Europe. Recent historians of science have rejected a once-common Western opinion that the contribution of these Islamic scientists had lain (...) mainly in their preservation of ancient texts that were then handed over to Western scholars, who mastered them and then moved beyond them as part of the scientific revolution. This article examines the first effort to write a history of mathematics, theLives of the Mathematiciansby Bernardino Baldi (1553–1617), to determine how he treated this issue in his work. Baldi's efforts are especially important here because he was also an early European scholar of Arabic.An examination of the work shows that Baldi did not share the negative views held by later Europeans about these non-European scientists. However, despite his knowledge of Arabic he had no active contacts with ongoing mathematical scholarship in Arabic. As a consequence, his narrative does follow the chronology of those later Europeans who would limit consideration of these mathematicians to approximately the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. In Baldi's writings, then, we can see the later narrative shape used by Western historians of science until recent years, but not the subsidiary role accorded to non-European scholars. (shrink)

The formal study of both astronomy and astrology in later medieval Europe was firmly based in the universities. Instruction in astrology is attested by the presence of an educational board game, known as the ludus astronomorum, in several university-related miscellanies of fifteenth-century English provenance. William Fulke also published an edition of the game a century later , which is attested in a number of Elizabethan libraries. The game serves to rehearse for its players the celestial motions and astrological principles described (...) by Ptolemy. It also employs principles of stellar rays described by al-Kindi in his De radiis stellarum. (shrink)

Weak and global supervenience are equivalent to strong supervenience for intrinsic properties. Moreover, weak and global supervenience relations are always mere parts of a more general underlying strong supervenience relation. Most appeals to global supervenience, though, involve spatio-temporally relational properties; but here too, global and strong supervenience are equivalent. _Functionally_ we can characterize merely weak and global supervenience as follows: for A to supervene on B requires that at all worlds an individual’s A properties be a function of its B (...) properties, where this function varies from world to world. But what are the. (shrink)

Measuring responsiveness to gain accurate diagnosis in populations with disorders of consciousness (DOC) is of central concern because these patients have such complex clinical presentations. Due to the uncertainty of accuracy for both behavioral and neurophysiological measures in DOC, combined assessment approaches are recommended. A number of standardized behavioral measures can be used with adults with DOC with minor to moderate reservations relating to the measures’ psychometric properties and clinical applicability. However, no measures have been standardized for use with pediatric (...) DOC populations. When adapting adult measures for children, confounding factors include developmental considerations for language-based items included in all DOC measures. Given the lack of pediatric DOC measures, there is a pressing need for measures that are sensitive to the complex clinical presentations typical of DOC and that can accommodate the developmental levels of pediatric populations. The music therapy assessment tool for awareness in disorders of consciousness (MATADOC) is a music-based measure that has been standardized for adults with DOC. Given its emphasis on non-language based sensory stimuli, it is well-suited to pediatric populations spanning developmental stages. In a pre-pilot exploratory study, we examined the clinical utility of this measure and explored trends for test-retest and inter-rater agreement as well as its performance against external reference standards. In several cases, MATADOC items in the visual and auditory domains produced outcomes suggestive of higher level functioning when compared to outcomes provided by other DOC measures. Preliminary findings suggest that the MATADOC provides a useful protocol and measure for behavioral assessment and clinical treatment planning with pediatric DOC. Further research with a larger sample is warranted to test a version of the MATADOC that is refined to meet developmental needs of pediatric DOC populations. (shrink)

Round to elongate microbodies associated with fossil vertebrate soft tissues were interpreted as microbial traces until 2008, when they were re‐described as remnant melanosomes – intracellular, pigment‐containing eukaryotic organelles. Since then, multiple claims for melanosome preservation and inferences of organismal color, behavior, and physiology have been advanced, based upon the shape and size of these microstructures. Here, we re‐examine evidence for ancient melanosomes in light of information reviewed in Vinther (2015), and literature regarding the preservation potential of microorganisms and their (...) exopolymeric secretions. We: (i) address statements in Vinther's recent (2015) review that are incorrect or which misrepresent published data; (ii) discuss the need for caution in interpreting “voids” and microbodies associated with degraded fossil soft tissues; (iii) present evidence that microorganisms are in many cases an equally parsimonious source for these “voids” as are remnant melanosomes; and (iv) suggest methods/criteria for differentiating melanosomes from microbial traces in the fossil record. (shrink)

A collection of essays from some of the world's leading intellectual historians, representing an international spectrum of research into the history of philosophy, intellect, science and music. This collection of essays addresses, in specific historical ways and from particular disciplinary standpoints, the problem of knowledge and what used to be called the classification of the sciences. What is, or what passes for, knowledge? What are its divisions, and how should they be related? Who possesses this knowledge, and to what uses (...) has it been put? How is it transmitted, and how can its history be understood and written? Ranging across the epistemological barrier formed by the revolution of modern science, these contributions inquire into the changing disciplinary patterns of the tumultuous times between the renaissance and the enlightenment, that saw the fragmentation of old ideals and the creation of European modernity. Contributors: Donald R. Kelley, Ann Blair, Paul Nelles, Constance Blackwell, Ulrich Schneider, Martin Mulsow, J.B. Schneewind, Donald Verene, Peter Miller, Ann Moyers, Michael Seidler, Anthony Pagden, Paula Findlen, Anthony Grafton, Heikki Mikkeli, Nicholas Jardine, Londa Schiebinger. (shrink)

Contrary to what Jeanne Moyer asserts, Kant does not have a normative dualism going in his works on teleological judgment and these can be used to develop a more woman friendly view of human nature.

In "Does Four-Dimensionalism Explain Coincidence" Mark Moyer argues that there is no reason to prefer the four-dimensionalist (or perdurantist) explanation of coincidence to the three-dimensionalist (or endurantist) explanation. I argue that Moyer's formulations of perdurantism and endurantism lead him to overlook the perdurantist's advantage. A more satisfactory formulation of these views reveals a puzzle of coincidence that Moyer does not consider, and the perdurantist's treatment of this puzzle is clearly preferable.

In volume 1 of this three-volume work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing. Now, in volume 2, he examines these relations in fiction and theories of literature. Ricoeur treats the question of just how far the Aristotelian concept of "plot" in narrative fiction can be expanded and whether there is a point at which narrative fiction as a literary form not only blurs at the edges but ceases to exist at all. Though some semiotic (...) theorists have proposed all fiction can be reduced to an atemporal structure, Ricoeur argues that fiction depends on the reader's understanding of narrative traditions, which do evolve but necessarily include a temporal dimension. He looks at how time is actually expressed in narrative fiction, particularly through use of tenses, point of view, and voice. He applies this approach to three books that are, in a sense, tales about time: Virgina Woolf's _Mrs. Dalloway;_ Thomas Mann's _Magic Mountain;_ and Marcel Proust's _Remembrance of Things Past_. "Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear."—Eugen Weber, _New York Times Book Review _ "A major work of literary theory and criticism under the aegis of philosophical hermenutics. I believe that... it will come to have an impact greater than that of Gadamer's Truth and Method—a work it both supplements and transcends in its contribution to our understanding of the meaning of texts and their relationship to the world."—Robert Detweiler, _Religion and Literature_ "One cannot fail to be impressed by Ricoeur's encyclopedic knowledge of the subject under consideration.... To students of rhetoric, the importance of Time and Narrative... is all too evident to require extensive elaboration."—Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, _Quarterly Journal of Speech_. (shrink)