Adequate treatment of pain is essential to alleviate suffering, yet studies show that patients with terminal or serious illness receive inadequate pain relief. In the case of terminally ill patients, adequate palliation of pain may be likely to reduce requests for physician-assisted suicide. This issue of the journal addresses barriers to effective pain relief and suggests how treatment of pain can be improved. The symposium features the Pain Relief Act, which is designed to provide practitioners who prescribe controlled substances for (...) pain with protection from inappropriate legal sanctions. The Act is the product of the Project on Legal Constraints on Access to Effective Pain Relief, whose principal investigators were Nancy Neveloff Dubler, LL.B., Sandra H. Johnson, J.D., LL.M., Robert J. Levine, M.D., and Benjamin W. Moulton, J.D., M.P.H.The Project was supported by the Mayday Fund and the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation. (shrink)

This paper is intended as a contribution to a recent vigorous debate inThe Times, between the distinguished journalist Bernard Levin, the eminent Oxford economist Wilfred Beckerman and the Archbishop of York, John Habgood, among others. The debate concerns morality, ‘free will’ and determinism. As a former German Jew, who lost close relatives at Auschwitz and who suffered personally severely in my youth under daily virulent Nazi persecution, I obviously cannot remain strictly detached and neutral. Yet, I shall attempt to (...) retain as much neutrality as possible, since I think that the main rivals in this debate have all some very relevant, interesting and valid things to say. Let me also state other, probably very relevant, biases. I am an ardent Zionist. In addition, I am a diehard mechanistic materialist as regards basic philosophy, although I am tolerant of other people's religious feelings, because I realize that my materialism is as metaphysical as their religious views. With this as background let me return to the technical issues. Obviously, in a philosophical journal one can write at a level above that ofThe Times, where there is, perhaps, insufficient room to debate philosophical, biological, physical and other niceties in some depth. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a model of demonstrative thought. I distinguish token-demonstratives, that pick out individuals, from type-demonstratives, that pick out kinds, or properties, and provide a similar treatment for both. I argue that it follows from my model of demonstrative thought, as well as from independent considerations, that demonstration, as a mental act, operates directly on mental representations, not external objects. That is, though the relation between a demonstrative and the object or property demonstrated is semantically direct, the (...) mechanism by which a demonstrative acquires its referent involves mediation by a perceptual representation. Finally, I argue that so-called 'demonstrative concepts'—which I treat as type-demonstratives—cannot perform the various philosophical functions that have been assigned to them. (shrink)

Vulnerability is one of the least examined concepts in research ethics. Vulnerability was linked in the Belmont Report to questions of justice in the selection of subjects. Regulations and policy documents regarding the ethical conduct of research have focused on vulnerability in terms of limitations of the capacity to provide informed consent. Other interpretations of vulnerability have emphasized unequal power relationships between politically and economically disadvantaged groups and investigators or sponsors. So many groups are now considered to be vulnerable in (...) the context of research, particularly international research, that the concept has lost force. In addition, classifying groups as vulnerable not only stereotypes them, but also may not reliably protect many individuals from harm. Certain individuals require ongoing protections of the kind already established in law and regulation, but attention must also be focused on characteristics of the research protocol and environment that present ethical challenges. (shrink)

Argument that Lewis and others are wrong that physicalism is if true then contingently true.

Book reviewed in this article: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. By Oliver Sacks.

At the turn of the 1980s, Félix Guattari became interested in the Free Radio movement . He then became directly associated between 1986 and 1991 with the Minitel service entitled “3615 ALTER”, initiated by the a collective including C31, an association of critical IT specialists currently editing the journal Terminal. Contrary to the traditional Left, Félix Guattari was less interested in a critique of the content of the media and of their political instrumentalization than in their form and mode of (...) social organization. The proliferation of machine-arrangements was expected to make possible new technological articulations likely to generate innovative assemblings. (shrink)

Michael Dummett has long argued that Frege is committed to recognizing a distinction between two sorts of analysis of propositional contents: 'analysis', which reveals the entities that one must grasp in order to apprehend a given propositional content; and 'decomposition', which is used in recognizing the validity of certain inferences. Whereas any propositional content admits of a unique ultimate 'analysis' into simple constituents, it also admits of distinct 'decompositions', no one of which is ultimately privileged over the others. I argue (...) that although Russell accepts this distinction between analysis and decomposition, Frege does not. In particular, I consider claims which Dummett makes regarding how 'analysis' and 'decomposition' are related to two different models Frege at least suggests in discussing the composition of thoughts, the part/whole model and the function/argument model; and I argue that in each case, while Russell accepts views which Dummett attributes to Frege, Frege does not. (shrink)

This intellectually discomfiting, disturbingly provocative, yet still thoroughly scholarly Handbook reproduces the intellectual ferment that accompanied the Russian Revolution including the wholly polarising effect at that time of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Palgrave Handbook of Leninist Political Philosophy does not settle for one safe interpretation of the thought of this world-historic figure but rather revels in a clash of viewpoints. Most interestingly it presents a contrast between the Western editors who emphasise pure democracy and Marxian humanism with many of the (...) contributing scholars who take a more sanguine view of the Leninist political project. Perhaps reflecting the current Western political crisis, some of the volume’s other European and North American scholars more closely align with their colleagues from the Global South. Key Features: · Places particular emphasis on the key elements of Lenin’s thought – the dictatorship of the proletariat, the nature of the dialectic and the New Economic Policy · Additional comprehensive coverage includes the theory of the party, Bolshevism, imperialism, and the class struggle in the countryside · Examines the relation of Lenin’s thought to the ideas of his most influential contemporaries as well as the most eminent thinker to interpret Lenin since his death – György Lukács This Handbook is essential reading for scholars, researchers and advanced students in political philosophy, political theory, the history of political ideas, economics, international relations and world history. It is also ideal for the general reader who wishes to understand some of the most powerful ideas that have shaped the modern world and that may yet shake the world again. (shrink)

L’auteur traite de la question fondamentale qui est une personne et, plus spécifiquement, si tous les êtres humains sont des personnes ou s’il existe des êtres humains qui ne seraient pas des personnes et qui n’auraient donc pas les mêmes droits à la vie que celles-ci. Certains philosophes, tels que Peter Singer, Michael Tooley et Tristram Engelhardt, se sont proposés de résoudre bon nombre des délicats problèmes bioéthiques contemporains en distinguant, d’une part, la vie humaine biologique, propre à l’être humain (...) et, d’autre part, la vie humaine personnelle, qui est celle de la personne à laquelle est octroyé un droit à la vie. L’auteur soutient que tout être humain est fondamentalement une personne. The author discusses the fundamental question who is a person and more specifically if every human being is a person or if there exists some human beings who are not persons and who do not have the same rights to life as the human being. In an attempt to resolve a good number of delicate bioethical problems some philosophers, such as Peter Singer, Michael Tooley et Tristram Engelhardt, propose to distinguish between human biological life, belonging to all human beings, and human personal life, which belongs to a person to whom is accorded the right to life. The author maintains that every human being is fundamentally a person. (shrink)

Collingwood’s account of re-enactment is often misunderstood as providing methodological guidance to historians. Williams’s chapter is perceptive in seeing through this erroneous interpretation. Williams is however very critical of Collingwood’s account of the relationship between philosophy and history. He reads Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions as embracing a form of ‘radical historicism’ and argues that, like many other philosophers who reject foundationalism, Collingwood tends to use the word ‘we’ in an evasive way, both in an inclusive sense “as implying universalistic (...) preconditions on interpretation and intelligibility” and in a contrastive sense “under which ‘we’ here and now are distinct from others elsewhere and elsewhen, who lived in others and different intelligible human formations”. William’s chapter appropriately introduces this volume since the question concerning the nature of absolute presuppositions, and in what sense they can be said to be constitutive of the forms of inquiry which they make possible, is a central concern of this collection and is discussed by several contributors. (shrink)

Intended for courses in sensation and perception, this book covers the anatomy, physiology and phenomenology of the way humans sense and perceive the world. It is grounded in physiology to explain perceptual phenomena, on the theory that understanding sensation and perception is based in the physiology of the sensory organs and the brain.

In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: (i) physicalism about the non-mental world, (ii) consistency with what is known from color science, and (iii) transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral reflectance, subjectivism, dispositionalism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all (...) three constraints. By treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences (particularly hallucinations) and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems. (shrink)

Cet article étudie les principales classifications grecques anciennes des sciences mathématiques. Je souligne le rôle joué par Platon dans cette topique.

This paper aims to show, on the one hand, that the humility mentioned in book 7 of the Confessions would become the prelude for Augustine to the humility that constitutes the true conversion, and, on the other hand, that the context in which this humility presented itself is continentia. In a passage of linguistic beauty (conf. 8, 27), Augustine describes the struggle that occurred between allegorical persons: those who pulled him back with the chain of the past, and those who (...) urged him forward towards the decision to embrace continentia. The enjoyment of love not only requires the truth that remains forever, but also the steadfastness of all the emotions that come together in the lasting unity of the will. According to the author, Augustine in his Confessions has Christianised the Roman uirtus of continentia. (shrink)

The essays in Part I of _Beyond Poststructuralism seek_ to demonstrate fallacies of structuralist and poststructuralist thought that remain potent even though the theoretical structures that led to their enunciation have lost much of their original influence. These fallacies include the idea that one must avoid the consideration of authorial intention; that meanings are undecidable; that there is no justification for seeking unity in a text; that all hierarchies of value are reversible; that history is no more than an open (...) contest among competing narrative constructions; and that the very nature of language makes the falsifiability of statements about human experience impossible. The essays in Part II suggest ways to bring literary study into closer relation with human experience of the world. Their authors emphasize the role of literature in providing new perspectives and broadening the range of available alternatives to what is threatening, unjust, fallacious, or absurd in social and cultural structures. Contributors are Bernard Bergonzi, John Holloway, Wendell V. Harris, A. D. Nuttall, Raymond Tallis, John Searle, Richard Levin, Robert Scholes, James Battersby, David Bromwich, Quentin Kraft, Michael Fischer, Charles Altieri, Christopher Clausen, Gayle Greene, André Lefevere, Daniel R. Schwarz, Virgil Nemoianu, and Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

Born in Vienna in 1864, Bernard Hollander was a London-based psychiatrist. He is best known for being one of the main proponents of phrenology. This title, originally published in 1916, deals with "the nervous defects of children, and the various forms and degrees of mental and moral deficiency that may occur from infancy up to the age of twenty-one." Very much of its time, it looks at both what it calls the "subnormal" and the "supernormal" child, the causes of (...) abnormality, and suggests ways of educating children in order to minimise their defects and maximise their abilities. This is an opportunity to enjoy a historical look at child psychology from the early twentieth century. (shrink)

I examine Robert Brandom's reading of the classical pragmatists, as given in his new book Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary. I argue that his reading is deficient in certain fundamental respects, and that this deficiency illuminates important blind spots in Brandom's overall theoretical project. Specifically, I focus on Brandom's rationalist pragmatism and its rejection of the classical pragmatic conception of experience. I argue that this rejection is based on an overly instrumental reading of the classical figures, as well (...) as on an incorrect interpretation of them as succumbing to the Myth of the Given. My overall goal is to demonstrate that Brandom is lead astray in his encounter with the classical pragmatists because of his unwillingness to integrate into his theoretical picture the essentially embodied nature of human cognitive and practical activity. (shrink)

This study is based on the self-reporting by circus artists’ concerning their injuries. We refer to the theoretical framework of emersiology and argue that circus artists may be able to soothe their distress and pain by learning through their body. We will draw further on the comparison between our therapeutic approach and the techniques of self-care introduced by Michel Foucault in his History of Sexuality.