Background: Moral distress is the inability to do the right thing due to institutional constraints. The Measure of Moral Distress – Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP) measures this phenomenon and has extensively explored moral distress among nurses. There are limited large-scale research studies using the MMD-HP to identify levels of moral distress across multiple healthcare professionals (HPs) and settings. Research question: What are the overall levels of moral distress among HPs? Research design: A quantitative, exploratory, cross-sectional study of HPs in a healthcare (...) system using the MMD-HP. Participants and research context: Eligible participants included HPs ( N = 8,206) working in all inpatient and outpatient units and centers in a multi-site healthcare system located in the Southeastern United States. Ethical considerations: The Institutional Review Board provided approval for this research. A survey preamble supplied information within the learning management system and consent was presumed with survey completion. Findings: A total of 3,561 HPs completed the MMD-HP. The top three morally distressing items included compromised patient care due to inadequate resources, caring for more patients than is safe, and low quality of patient care due to poor team communication. Intensive care unit (ICU) areas had significantly greater moral distress than all other areas ( p < 0.001). Formal leaders had the greatest moral distress ( p < 0.001). Mixed-acuity and medical-surgical HPs accounted for 22.8% of those who reported considering leaving their current position due to moral distress. Nurses represented 42.2% of those considering leaving their current position due to moral distress. Conclusions: This study uniquely identified that formal leaders and HP participants in the ICU setting had the greatest moral distress. Exploring moral distress is imperative for healthcare systems to decrease turnover, improve engagement, and the quality of patient care. (shrink)

This study reports the results of a survey of 405 high school students in a school district in the western United States. The data were used to determine why so many students take only the minimal science required for graduation. Key areas addressed included how science is taught; science literacy; science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); science, technology, and society (STS); and who influences students to take science. Results were directed at how to motivate more students to continue science study (...) beyond the required courses and how to improve the prospect of more students choosing STEM majors in higher education. Key conclusions included that no new science courses are needed to increase enrollments, but existing courses need to be taught differently, specifically with more labs and activities that create more interest and relevance for students. Furthermore, students need more awareness of good reasons for taking science. Last, science instruction must improve. (shrink)

Background: The Measure of Moral Distress – Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP) is a 27-item survey that quantifies moral distress. The MMD-HP was distributed to healthcare professionals (HPs), and analysis of a free-text response item revealed information-rich descriptions of morally distressing situations. Research question: What are HPs’ perceptions of their experiences of morally distressing situations? Research design: A descriptive, qualitative approach explored respondents’ free-text responses to the following open-ended response item: “If there are other situations in which you have felt moral distress, (...) please write and score them here.” Participants and research context: Eligible participants were HPs ( N = 8206) working in a large, multi-site healthcare system located in a major, urban city in the Southeastern United States. Ethical considerations: The Institutional Review Board provided approval for this research. A survey preamble supplied information, and consent was presumed with survey completion. Findings: Three themes were identified from 282 free-text responses: Theme 1: Compromised Quality of Care, Theme 2: Hostile Work Environment, and Theme 3: Ineffective Leadership. Conclusions: This study is unique because it provided in-depth qualitative analysis of morally distressing situations in a free-text response item across a wide array of HPs within multiple settings. Responses revealed that moral distress impacted the quality of patient care and provided descriptions of powerlessness to act. (shrink)

In this paper I want to suggest that, while the argued philosophical distinction between logic, epistemolgoy and ontology is one of the many achievements of Aristotle, his predecessor Parmenides was in fact already operating with a theory of knowledge and an elementary propositional logic that are of abiding philosophical interest. As part of the thesis I shall be obliged to reject a number of interpretations of particular passages in his poem, including one or two currently fashionable ones. Since so much (...) turns on points of translation, I note for purposes of comparison what seem to be significant alternatives to my own in any particular instance. The line numbers are those of the DK text. (shrink)

If in the context of early and classical Greek thought, the term “theology” is taken to mean “of God/gods/the gods and his/their putative relationship, causal and directive, to the world and its operations, and to ourselves within that world,” or something of that order, the first ascription of such a notion to a Presocratic philosopher is to be found in Aristotle's comment that “Thales thought that all things are full of gods”. The Presocratic period ends with no neat causal sequence. (...) If one train of thinking was moving in the direction of a divinely guided, teleologically explicable universe, another was moving in exactly the opposite direction. For the atomists Democritus and Leucippus, the ever-changing universe is an infinity of space in which, across eternity, chance agglomerations of ever-moving atoms produce and will forever go on producing those contents of the universe that we call realities, from gazelles to galaxies. (shrink)

Cultures, institutions, and social roles powerfully shape affective experience. Four types of social affect—cultural sentiments, characteristic emotions, structural emotions, and consequent emotions—characterize relations between culture, social structure, and individual affective experience within social interactions. This article briefly reviews findings from contemporary research traditions about these forms of affect and finishes with simulations comparing predictions about social emotions across cultures. The results of that simulation study illustrate how we might use data and tools from affect control theory to investigate differences in (...) basic cultural sentiments, as well as predictions about the core types of social emotions—those associated with identities, those associated with structural relationships, and those evoked by a social event. (shrink)

Drawing on the tools of social, cultural and intellectual history, and using Maimonideanism as the interpretative lens, this volume offers a fresh approach to ...

Kanger [4] gives a set of twelve axioms for the classical propositional Calculus which, together with modus ponens and substitution, have the following nice properties: (0.1) Each axiom contains $\supset$ , and no axiom contains more than two different connectives. (0.2) Deletions of certain of the axioms yield the intuitionistic, minimal, and classical refutability1 subsystems of propositional calculus. (0.3) Each of these four systems of axioms has the separation property: that if a theorem is provable in such a system, then (...) it is provable using only the axioms of that system for $\supset$ , and for the other connectives, if any, actually occurring in that theorem. (0.4) All twelve axioms are independent. It is easily seen that two of Kanger's axioms can be shortened, and that two others can be replaced by a single axiom which is the same length as one of the two which it replaces, without disturbing properties (0.1)-(0.3). These alterations have advantages of simplicity and elegance, but bring property (0.4) into question, in that similarities among some of the axioms in the altered system make demonstrations of independence considerably more difficult. It is the purpose of this paper to show that independence is nonetheless provable for the simplified system, and in another system which also satisfies (0.1)-(0.3), in which f (falsehood) is taken to be primitive instead of ∼ (negation). Nonnormal truth-tables2 are used to obtain the independence of one of the axioms. (shrink)

In a recent article I attempted to show in some detail how Parmenides’ poem treats of ascertainment and the Real. I return to the argument here, and attempt to draw out some philosophical implications. Translations are in all cases my own; for a defense of them the reader is referred to my earlier work.

Purpose – To review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Design/methodology/approach – Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions. Findings – Floridi’s PI, including (...) this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects. Research implications – Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS. Originality/value – The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas. (shrink)

Medical students may fear that their training leeches away the caring attitudes which attracted them to medicine. Some research suggests they are right. The medical school has a duty to support and encourage their values, but the reverse may happen. Students are taught about legal consent but not ethical consent. They may see or participate in concealment of medical mistakes and learn to practise deceit. The use of unconscious females for gynaecology teaching may encourage the wrong attitudes to patients. Trainee (...) GPs may learn that the doctors' rights are more important than those of the patient. Measuring patients' views should be included in research protocols. (shrink)

"An American psychologist, Daniel N. Robinson, traces the development of the insanity plea...[He offers] an assured historical survey." Roy Porter, The Times [UK] "Wild Beasts and Idle Humours is truly unique. It synthesizes material that I do not believe has ever been considered in this context, and links up the historical past with contemporaneous values and politics. Robinson effortlessly weaves religious history, literary history, medical history, and political history, and demonstrates how the insanity defense cannot be fully understood (...) without consideration of all these sources." Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School "Daniel N. Robinson has written a graceful history of insanity and the law stretching from Homer to Hinckley. He attempts no final theory as to how the law should cope with the insane; he seeks, rather, to use the shifting notions of when madness exculpates criminal activity to illuminate the core self-perceptions of the cultures developing ever-evolving resolutions of the problem...[T]he grandeur of the theme...commands attention and respect." --Neal Johnston, The Nation . (shrink)

What is our nature? : What does government do for us, and to us? -- Cooperation : lepers & pirates -- Punishment : Drop City & the utopian communes -- Justice : 1850's San Francisco & the California gold rush -- Injustice : the Attica uprising & the Batavia shipwreck -- Survival : the Inuits of King William Land & the mutineers on Pitcairn Island -- Subversion : hellships & prison camps -- Credibility : America's prohibition -- Excess : committing (...) felony murder while asleep in bed & life in prison for an air-conditioning fraud -- Failure : getting away with murder beyond a reasonable doubt -- Collapse : Escobar's Colombia -- Taking justice seriously five proposals -- Epilogue : what are they doing now? (shrink)

I came to utopia by accident, having painted myself into a corner with an idea for a trilogy: three science fiction novels consisting of an after-the-fall novel, a dystopia, and a utopia, all set in the same place and about the same distance into the future. The idea came to me in 1972, and I didn’t know how to write a novel then, so the plan needed brooding on. Some sixteen years later, the time came for the utopia. I had (...) written the after-the-fall novel, The Wild Shore, and the dystopia, The Gold Coast. The utopia was the only one left.By that time many aspects of it had been determined by the previous two books. I needed it to be in Orange County, California; I needed it to be fifty years in the future; and I.. (shrink)

In the first part of the article I show how Descartes employs the sceptical theist strategy as part of his response to the problem of evil in Meditation Four. However, Descartes's use of this strategy seems to raise a serious challenge to his whole project: if Descartes is ignorant of God's purposes, then how can he be sure that God doesn't have some morally sufficient reason for creating him with unreliable clear and distinct perceptions? Drawing on related objections from Mersenne (...) and Hobbes, I show in the second half of the article how Descartes can sidestep this objection. (shrink)

Humility is a paradoxical virtue. This should come as no great surprise. It doesn’t take much explanation for one to realize that if someone is boasting about how humble he is, then he probably is not humble. In fact, as we shall see, the paradoxical nature of humility has a long history, going back to at least Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. While it may not be a novel claim that there exists an apparent paradox of humility, I will (...) argue that there is more than one humility paradox, perhaps as many as five: the epistemic paradox, the paradox of self-attribution, the inculcation paradox, the agentic paradox, and the axiological paradox. All these paradoxes are distinct, yet seemingly intertwined. Upon examining them each in turn, we will be left with a Gordian knot of humility paradoxes. (shrink)

An essential motif of the Western is the frontier in which people of European descent encounter American Indians as other. Indians were viewed as bloodthirsty savages, despite the fact that Europeans were the primary aggressors. The bloodthirsty savage stereotype finds intellectual support in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Governance in most traditional North American Indian communities isn't about ruling over subordinates, but about forging consent among equals. Indigenous government was often based on equal respect for the values and sovereignty (...) of each member of the community. The Federation embodies Star Trek's vision of multicultural liberalism. The history of Western philosophy has placed masculinity in dominance and control over femininity. This breeds a culture of violence and disharmony and people in need of healing. People of European descent are infected by this history in need of the thawing warmth of the South and a vision that harmonizes masculinity with femininity. (shrink)

For the theist, human knowledge of God’s nature is, at best, partial, and this implies that there are characteristics of God beyond our ken which I call ‘the unknown attributes’. However, this confessed ignorance, I argue, has largely unappreciated skeptical consequences for determining the scope of God’s power. Consider some mundane future state of affairs normally considered to be within the scope of God’s power. If it lies within the scope of God’s power, then it is consistent with God’s nature, (...) and hence the unknown attributes. However, what grounds does the theist have for making this claim? More generally, we can ask: how do we know what God can do, if we don’t know what God is? I call this question The Problem of the Unknown Attributes, and take up and evaluate four plausible answers. I argue that the each of these answers fails, but close the paper by gesturing toward a partial reply. The overall aim of the paper is to draw out some of the skeptical consequences of human ignorance of God’s nature, and to thereby highlight an unrecognized tension in theistic thought. (shrink)

Ethical topics are attractive starting points for philosophical enquiry with children who must live and learn together in classrooms that accommodate a plurality of values. However the appealing familiarity, practicality and accessibility of certain ethical topics can obscure the challenges such sessions present to teachers and their students. The teacher’s role as facilitator of philosophical enquiry requires her to encourage open-ended, conceptually-focused dialogue, fuelled by questioning that, for the most part, ‘doesn’t offer any new ideas or information to the group (...) but simply attempts to make visible, clarify, or connect what has already emerged’. Even where a facilitator does introduce new information, ideas, questions, or lines of enquiry, these contributions are not designed to lead the class to a particular conclusion. The facilitator typically assumes a ‘self-effacing non-judgemental, and neutral role’ with regards to the verdicts reached by the children, intervening only where it will challenge the class to work harder and not to advance her own position. However the teacher also embodies the often-unarticulated role of ethical instructor. In this role she must inform, guide, praise, promote, encourage, incentivise, reward, uphold and police conventional standards of good character and conduct. When we examine these two roles in context as this paper does, we begin to feel the pull. How can a teacher create space in which ethical norms can be challenged – even rejected – in the spirit of intellectually vigorous philosophical enquiry whilst simultaneously upholding and reinforcing them as non-negotiable expectations? The paper argues that the tension between the roles of ‘teacher-as-philosophical-facilitator’ and ‘teacher-as-ethical-instructor’ is not intractable, in fact when acknowledged and better understood, the apparently competing demands of these roles can be dissolved leading to an enriched ethical education for children. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Training and Other Important Needs for Nursing AssistantsNanci RobinsonTraining of Nursing AssistantsI think the nursing assistant (NA) training programs should be longer. My original course for Long Term Care was four weeks long after that I took an additional two months at a hospital to work on a Med/ Surg floor. So, I have a combined three months of schooling.Personally, I'd like to see certified nursing assistants (CNAs) given (...) more responsibilities. I'd like to see a six-month program to include CPR and capillary blood glucose (CBG) training as well as more in depth anatomy training. I think six months would keep some, who are just looking for money, out of the field and help keep those of us who really want a career in nursing in the field. It would be a better stepping stone for those who plan to go on to a LPN or RN program.I currently have CBG training but my employer will not let me use it. It's disappointing because it's a skill I have that I can't use and it could really help out the nurses. I think if courses were a bit longer, CNAs might be taken a bit more seriously by their employers and respected by their colleagues in the medical field.I was trained in CBG while working for the hospital and received a card like a CPR card to show I was trained. I live and work and was trained in Arkansas. I'm not allowed to do CBGs in the long-term care and rehab facility where I work now, though. However, unless the resident is diabetic we do have to clip and file nails. It took many years for nurses to gain respect and be allowed to do some things that now CNAs do. For example, for many years doctors didn't feel nurses were qualified to even take vital signs. I suppose CNAs will have the same struggle. [End Page 147]"I'm wondering if extending the initial training time would not keep many out of the field, because they need a job with income ASAP." The same could be said for LPN training, could it not? Or even an RN. I don't understand why there is a train of thought that "anyone" should be allowed to be a CNA and as quickly as possible. I can tell when I'm working alongside a Certified Nursing Assistant who is in it because they want to be versus someone who wants the paycheck (not sure why, though, because to be honest Arkansas doesn't pay CNAs all that great, though I suppose for some it might be better than McDonalds). I took a $5 an hour paycut go get back into nursing because it's my passion, and while we all need a paycheck, that should not be the only reason for doing this work."If extending the initial training time would keep many out of the field because they need a job with income ASAP, maybe employer facility-specific follow-up training would seem to be much more feasible for all. A CNA-in-training could be responsible for a lighter than 'normal' shift assignment while under the guidance of a qualified proctor CNA. It could improve efficiency and quality of care in the long run and probably improve retention rate of CNAs, for those administrators that are astute enough to consider the long-term effects of their policies." This might be good—the only problem is that most facilities aren't going to want to absorb any cost this might create by having additional staff for this purpose. Also, on the job training is not appreciated by employers as much as what might be considered actual "education" hours. Most CNAs want to do as much patient care as they can for the nurse—learning to assist with dressing changes, CBGs and other things that would be beneficial for both CNAs and the Nurse.Ensuring there is enough staff and that those staff members are there for the right reasons would do much more to improve the retention rate of NAs or CNAs. (I'm a... (shrink)

Clear, concise, and easy to read, this eye-opening book offers readers a walk through some of the greatest and most thought-provoking arguments from classical, modern, and contemporary philosophy. Along the path, it looks closely at: Socrates' answer to the question, "Did God create morality, or did he discover it?"; what Descartes meant when he said, "I think, therefore I am"; why Berkeley thought that matter and the material world don't really exist; an argument that shows that God necessarily exists; whether (...) we can really know anything at all; and finally, why (and whether) you owe any allegiance to the rules or laws of your government and society. An expert educator with more than twenty years' experience bringing these ideas to life for students, the author presents these influential, surprising philosophical arguments in a delightful and accessible way. While the topics span the four corners of western philosophy, the unifying theme here is one about philosophical skepticism, and how it's applied as a tool for greater intellectual inquiry. The book doesn't presuppose any familiarity with philosophy, though it certainly rewards those with a strong curiosity about big important ideas. After all, as Plato famously quipped, philosophy begins in wonder. (shrink)

Game theory is a branch of economics that uses powerful mathematical models to predict what agents ought to do when interacting with other agents strategically. Bounded rationality is a sub-field of game theory that sets out to explain why, in some interesting cases, people don't act according their utility maximizing strategies, as described by game theory. Interactive Epistemology is formal tool used by Game Theorists and computer scientists to model interactive cases of knowledge. This interesting and useful tool has been (...) previously ignored by philosophers. I'd like to introduce philosophers to interactive epistemology. After doing so, I'll go on to describe the way I've used this powerful formal tool in my own research, by giving some arguments about Bounded Epistemology, which is an analogue of Bounded Rationality, and, if I'm right, is explainable according to many, but not all, of the same models. Doing so, however, requires first setting out and explaining many of these concepts more fully. (shrink)

The inconsistency between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, known as the “attitude-behaviour” gap, is exceptionally pronounced in scenarios associated with “green” choice. The current literature offers numerous explanations for the reasons behind the “attitude-behaviour” gap, however, the generalisability of these explanations is complex. In addition, the answer to the question of whether the gap occurs between attitudes and intentions, or intentions and behaviours is also unknown. In this study, we propose the moral dimension as a generalisable driver of the “attitude-behaviour” gap (...) and investigate its effectiveness in predicting attitudes, pro-environmental intentions and subsequent behaviours. We do so by using Hunt–Vitell’s moral philosophy-based framework of ethical decision-making, which conceptualises morality as the central decision-making parameter. The results from 557 US MTurk participants revealed that the manipulation of moral dimensions, specifically deontology and teleology, impacted ethical evaluation of presented dilemmas, however, failed to translate into subsequent intentions and behaviours. This finding suggests (i) that the moral dimension has an effect in shaping attitudes toward environmental issues, and (ii) that gap occurs between attitudes and intentions rather than intentions and behaviours. Further investigation of what strengthens and/or overrides the effects of the moral dimension would help understand the reasons why moral attitudes do not always translate into subsequent intentions and behaviours in the pro-environmental domain. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: How to Read a Story What is Emotional Involvement? Processing a Narrative Interpretation as Reflection on Emotional Responses to a Text Why Be Emotionally Involved? Objections.

In the vast literature on architectural theory and practice, the ways in which architectural knowledge is actually taught, debated, and understood are too often ignored. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. The issues considered range from the form and content of architectural education to the architect's social and environmental obligations and the emergence of a new generation of architects. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer (...) a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination, and reception of architectural knowledge. Contributors: Sherry Ahrentzen, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Stanford Anderson, MIT; Carol Burns, Harvard U; Russell Ellis, UC Berkeley; Thomas Fisher, U of Minnesota; Linda Groat, U of Michigan; Kay Bea Jones, Ohio State U; David Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; A. G. Krishna Menon, TVB School of Habitat Studies, India; Garth Rockcastle, U of Minnesota; Michael Stanton, American U, Beirut; Sharon E. Sutton, U of Washington; David J. T. Vanderburgh, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; and Donald Watson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (shrink)

It is traditionally believed that cerebral activation (the presence of low voltage fast electrical activity in the neocortex and rhythmical slow activity in the hippocampus) is correlated with arousal, while deactivation (the presence of large amplitude irregular slow waves or spindles in both the neocortex and the hippocampus) is correlated with sleep or coma. However, since there are many exceptions, these generalizations have only limited validity. Activated patterns occur in normal sleep (active or paradoxical sleep) and during states of anesthesia (...) and coma. Deactivated patterns occur, at times, during normal waking, or during behavior in awake animals treated with atropinic drugs. Also, the fact that patterns characteristic of sleep, arousal, and waking behavior continue in decorticate animals indicates that reticulo-cortical mechanisms are not essential for these aspects of behavior. (shrink)

This comment identifies and elaborates three assumptions that underlie the proposal made by the Rogers, Schröder, and von Scheve article. First, our theories of emotion need to take into account, and be consistent with, supported theories of social outcomes and processes. Second, a thorough understanding of affective processes requires investigation at multiple levels of analysis, which in turn requires multilevel theories—or single-level theories that interact well with theories at other levels. Third, our broad understanding of emotion will be served best (...) when we cultivate a field of intersecting and interacting theories of emotion. (shrink)

Various attempts have been made in recent years to present Christianity in such a way that no use is made of the traditional dichotomy between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’. Braithwaite, Hare, and van Buren, for instance, appear to have no use for the dichotomy; and I think that, without too much distortion, one can say the same of Bultmann, Tillich, and Robinson. I am not, however, concerned in this paper with the work of any one thinker as such, (...) but rather with a general climate of opinion. What I want to do is to examine the grounds on which it might be argued that belief in the supernatural is discredited. The issue seems to me of special importance at the present time, since, if these grounds are inadequate, programmes of reform under the general heading ‘Christianity without the supernatural’lose much of their point; if, on the other hand, the grounds are compelling, then reform of some kind is forced upon us whatever the accompanying difficulties. (shrink)

Moses Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed is the greatest philosophical text in the history of Jewish thought and a major work of the Middle Ages. For almost all of its history, however, the Guide has been read and commented upon in translation—in Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, French, English, and other modern languages—rather than in its original Judeo-Arabic. This volume is the first to tell the story of the translations and translators of Maimonides’ Guide and its impact in translation on philosophy from (...) the Middle Ages to the present day. A collection of essays by scholars from a range of disciplines, the book unfolds in two parts. The first traces the history of the translations of the Guide, from medieval to modern renditions. The second surveys its influence in translation on Latin scholastic, early modern, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, as well as its impact in translation on current scholarship. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book will be essential reading for philosophers, historians, and religious studies scholars alike. (shrink)

An ongoing challenge facing emotion researchers is finding appropriate measurement tools. Many of our theories focus on emotion in the context of dynamic interaction, yet many of our most relied-upon measures either interrupt or alter interaction. New research suggests that infrared thermography may be useful as a nonintrusive way to measure emotion. Here we discuss the viability of thermography for studying emotion response and advancing emotion theory.

In contrast with some recent theories of infinitesimals as non-Archimedean entities, Leibniz’s mature interpretation was fully in accord with the Archimedean Axiom: infinitesimals are fictions, whose treatment as entities incomparably smaller than finite quantities is justifiable wholly in terms of variable finite quantities that can be taken as small as desired, i.e. syncategorematically. In this paper I explain this syncategorematic interpretation, and how Leibniz used it to justify the calculus. I then compare it with the approach of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis, (...) as propounded by John Bell. I find some salient differences, especially with regard to higher-order infinitesimals. I illustrate these differences by a consideration of how each approach might be applied to propositions of Newton’s Principia concerning the derivation of force laws for bodies orbiting in a circle and an ellipse. “If the Leibnizian calculus needs a rehabilitation because of too severe treatment by historians in the past half century, as Robinson suggests (1966, 250), I feel that the legitimate grounds for such a rehabilitation are to be found in the Leibnizian theory itself.”—(Bos 1974–1975, 82–83). (shrink)

We are told modernity's end will destabilize familiar ways of knowing, doing, and being, but are these changes we should dread--or celebrate? Four significant events catalyze this question: the consecration of openly gay Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson, the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, the politicization of the death of Terri Schiavo, and the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Framed by an original appropriation of Michel Foucault, and drawing on resources in visual culture theory and the history of (...) photography, Ellen T. Armour explores the anxieties, passions, and power dynamics bound up in the photographic representation and public reception of these events. Together, these phenomena expose modernity's benevolent and malevolent disruptions and reveal the systemic fractures and fissures that herald its end, for better and for worse. In response to these signs and wonders, Armour lays the groundwork for a theology and philosophy of life better suited to our modern moment: one that owns up to the vulnerabilities that modernity sought to disavow and better enables us to navigate the ethical issues we now confront. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem The Filmstrip Argument Metacomics Bomb Queen's Editor Girl The Filth's Max Thunderstone Conventions and Aesthetic Analysis Conclusions Notes References.

Pragmatism has affected American historical writing since the early twentieth century. Such contemporaries and students of Peirce, James, and Dewey as Frederick Jackson Turner, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Harvey Robinson, Charles Beard, Mary Beard, and Carl Becker drew on pragmatism when they fashioned what was called the “new history.” They wanted to topple inherited assumptions about the past and replace positivist historical methods with the pragmatists' model of a community of inquiry. Such widely read mid-twentieth-century historians as (...) Merle Curti, Henry Steele Commager, and Richard Hofstadter embraced the perspectivalism, fallibilism, and instrumentalism of the pragmatists, thereby helping to sustain the tradition during its nadir in American philosophy departments. Many historians have been drawn to the study of pragmatism during its recent renaissance; others have advanced pragmatist-inspired philosophies of history. Through such prominent contemporary historians as Thomas Haskell, David Hollinger, and Joyce Appleby, the ideas of Pierce, James, and Dewey continue to influence the historical profession. (shrink)