Dans cette contribution, nous présentons la base CLAPI développée au laboratoire ICAR dans le contexte de l’évolution des bases de données de langues parlées en France au cours des trente dernières années. Nous détaillons les deux composantes de CLAPI, l’archive de corpus de langue parlée en interaction audio et vidéo enregistrés dans des situations sociales naturelles variées, et la plateforme d’outils.L’usage et l’apport de CLAPI sont illustrés par deux études. L’une décrit comment la base peut être utilisée pour des travaux (...) de linguistique interactionnelle intégrant la multimodalité (« oh là là ») ; l’autre concerne une recherche combinant données et métadonnées (« trop »). L’article est aussi l’occasion d’un bilan plus général. La mise en perspective montre en effet qu’après la période des questions est venue celle des dilemmes. La période des questions, choix et décisions à toutes sortes de niveaux a accompagné la mise en place des bases de données. L’expérience permet maintenant de mesurer leurs indéniables apports en termes non seulement de quantité de données disponibles (et traitables grâce aux outils), mais aussi de qualité (comme conséquence des exigences de standardisation liées au partage des données). La période des dilemmes nous conduit à nous interroger sur les meilleurs choix à opérer aujourd’hui dans les relations entre la poursuite des recherches sur des corpus variés (et parfois sensibles) et les exigences des bases de données ouvertes. (shrink)

Editor's Note: This paper was found in galley proof form from the journal Mind in the C.I. Lewis Archives in the Special Collections Department of the Stanford University Libraries, call number M174, Box 18, Folder 1. There are two copies of the proofs in this folder, one includes Lewis's corrections. The version that appears here incorporates all of Lewis's corrections. Where these corrections are substantive, the original wording is give in a footnote. The paperwas withdrawn from publication by Lewis early (...) in 1935. The proofs were found with Lewis's other papers in his house in Menlo Park after his death in 1964. (shrink)

C. H. Whiteley; I—The Presidential Address*: Confirmation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 1–14, https://doi.org.

By considering the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group, an analysis of the different spin-2 waves is presented. In particular, the question of the helicity is discussed. It is concluded that, although from the point of view of representation theory there are no compelling reasons to choose between spin-2 waves with helicity σ=±1 or σ=±2, consistency arguments of the ensuing field theories favor waves with helicity σ=±1.

Books Reviewed in this Article: Transforming Bible Study. By Walter Wink. Pp.175, London, SCM Press, 1981, £3.50. Isaiah 1–39. By R.E. Clements. Pp.xvi. 301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1980, £3.95. Isaiah 40–66. By R.N. Whybray. Pp.301, London, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1975, Reprinted 1981, £3.95. Die Gestalt Jesu in den synoptischen Evangelien. By Heinrich Kahlefeld. Pp.264, Frankfurt, Verlag Josef Knecht, 1981, no price given. Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark. By Ernest Best. Pp.283, Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1981, (...) £15.00, £5.95. The Origin of Paul's Gospel. By Seyoon Kim. Pp.xii, 391, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1981, 78 DM. An die Römer. By Ernst Käsemann. Pp.xvi, 411, Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1980, 48 DM. Les Récits de Resurrection des Morts dans le Nouveau Testament. By Gerard Rochais. Pp.xv, 252, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £15.00. Prêtres Anciens, Prétre Nouveau selon le Nouveau Testament. By Albert Vanhoye. Pp.366, Paris Editions du Seuil, 1980, no price given. Woman in the World of Jesus. By Evelyn and Frank Stagg. Pp.292, Edinburgh, The St Andrew Press, 1981, no price given. Jesus, Man and the Church. By Karl Rahner. Pp.260, London, Darton Longman & Todd, 1981, £14.50. Jesus Lord and Savior: A Theopathic Christology and Soteriology. By William M. Thompson. Pp.ix, 287, Leominster, Fowler Wright, 1981, £7.45. God and World in Schleiermacher's ‘Dialektik’ and ‘Glaubenslehre’. Criticism and the Methodology of Dogmatics. By John E. Thiel. Pp.xiv, 239, Bern, Frankfurt and Las Vegas, Peter Lang, 1981, SF 49.50. Ministry: A Case for Change. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Pp.ix, 165, London, SCM Press, 1981, £4.95. The Sacraments: Readings in Contemporary Sacramental Theology. Edited by Michael J. Taylor. Pp.274, New York, Alba House, 1981, $7.95. Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith. A Report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England. Pp.ix, 310, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.50. Confessing the Faith in the Church of England Today. By R.T. Beckwith. Pp.36, Oxford, La timer House, 1981, £1.00. A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. By J.I. Packer. Pp.39, Oxford, Latimer House, 1981, £1.00. Reasonable Belief: A Survey of the Christian Faith. By Anthony Hanson and Richard Hanson. Pp.xii, 283, Oxford University Press, 1981, £8.50. Doctrine in the Church of England. The 1938 Report with a new introduction by G.W.H. Lampe. Pp.lx, 242, London, SPCK, 1982, £8.50. The Divine Right of the Papacy in Recent Ecumenical Theology. By J. Michael Miller. Pp.xvi, 322, Rome, Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1980, 18,000 Lire. Der heilige Geist in der Theologie von Heribert Mühlen: Versucheiner Darstellung und Würdigung. By John B. Banawiratma. Pp.ix, 310, Frankfurt and Bern: Peter D. Lang, 1981, SFr. 60.00. Standing Before God: Studies on Prayer in Scriptures and Tradition with Essays in Honor of John M. Oesterreicher. Edited by Asher Frinkel and Lawrence Frizzell. Pp.410, New York, Ktav Publishing House, 1981, $29.50. Judaism and Healing. By J. David Bleich. Pp.xiii, 199, New York, Ktav, 1981, $15.00. The Diversity of Moral Thinking. By Neil Cooper. Pp.x, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press, 1981, £15.00. L'Homme: Sujet ou Objet? By Jacques Croteau. Pp.260, Montreal, Bellarmin: Tournai, Desclée et Cie, 1981, $15.00. The Texture of Knowledge: An Essay on Religion and Science. By James W. Jones. Pp.97, Washington, University Press of America, 1981, no price given. Cosmos and Creator. By Stanley L. Jaki. Pp.xii, 168, Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press, 1980, £6.75. Dante, Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos. By Patrick Boyde. Pp.vii, 408, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £30.00. Dissidence et Philosophie au Mayen Âge. By E.L. Fortin. Pp.201, Montreal, Bellarmin, 1981, $12.00. The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton. By Richard Acworth. Pp.x, 388, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1979, 74 DM. Philosophy and Ideology in Hume's Political Thought. By David Miller. Pp.xii, 218, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £15.00. Hegelianism. By John Edward Toews. Pp.x, 450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £25.00. One Hundred Years of Thomism. Edited by V.B. Brezik. Pp.210, Houston, Centre for Thomistic Studies, 1981, no price given. Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. By J.V. Femia. Pp.xiii, 303, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1981, £17.50. Greek and Roman Slavery. By Thomas Wiedemann. Pp.xvi, 284, London, Croom Helm, 1981, £10.95, £5.95. Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves. Edited by Ann Williams. Pp.x, 355, London, Longman, 1980, £25.00. Of Prelates and Princes: A Study of the Economic and Social Position of the Tudor Episcopate. By Felicity Heal. Pp.xv, 353, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, £17.50. Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe. By Michael Mullett. Pp.xxiv, 193, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1980, £10.50. The Jesuits. By J.C.H. Aveling. Pp.390, London, Blond and Briggs, 1981, £16.95. The Beginnings of Ideology. By Donald R. Kelley. Pp.xv, 351, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £24.00. Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700. By J.C. Davis. Pp.x, 427, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £25.00. Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917–1979. By Hansjakob Stehle. Pp.466, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981, £16.20, £8.10. Structuralism or Criticism? By Geoffrey Strickland. Pp.viii, 209, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981, £17.50. The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert. By Robert B. Shaw. Pp.xiii, 123, Cambridge, Mass., Cowley Publications, 1981, $5.00. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Edited by Frank Whaling. Pp.xx, 412, London, SPCK, 1981, £8.95. The Trickster in West Africa: A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. By Robert D. Pelton. Pp.312, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980, £15.00. (shrink)

I. The Antiope.—The papyrus fragments of theAntiope, written in a small and crabbed hand of the third century B.C., were first published by Mahaffy in vol. 1 of the Petrie papyri in 1891, a time when the study of writing on papyrus was in its early days and there was not the abundance of other literary texts to provide practice and comparison that there is to-day. An advance in the study of the text was made by Blass in 1892, whose (...) readings were based on first-hand knowledge of the manuscript; he was followed by von Arnim, who in his text in the Supplementum Euripideum introduced several startling alterations, based on the autotypes alone and very rarely justified by the papyrus. A landmark in the history of the text was reached when Hans Schaal published his dissertation De Euripidis Antiopa; not only had he studied the papyrus closely in London, but he was able to make use of several readings of Wilamowitz. Though he left some of the major problems unattacked, perhaps too readily, his text represents a great advance on that of his predecessors, and I have found his readings in the majority of cases where he differs from Mahaffy or von Arnim confirmed by the papyrus, and consequently I have taken his text as the basis of my collation. That there was still a little more to be deciphered was suggested to me by the late Dr. Hunt, and I am indebted to him as the instigator of these notes if there is anything of value in them. (shrink)

En dépit de témoignages explicites d'auteurs anciens, auxquels des historiens modernes ont fait confiance, la date tardive du Phèdre ne fait plus de doute. Ce résultat est dû aux études stylistiques bien plus qu'aux travaux d'exégèse. Quand il s'agit de définir le sens et le but du dialogue ou de démêler les liens qui le rattachent aux autres dialogues ou à des écrits contemporains, on est loin d'aboutir à un accord. Platon veut-il simplement établir le programme d'une rhétorique philosophique pour (...) faire pièce à l'action envahissante des écoles de rhétorique ? Vise-t-il plus spécialement telle ou telle doctrine rhétorique ? Vu les points de contact avec des écrits d'Isocrate, d'Alcidamas et d'autres, a-t-il peut-être voulu trancher certaines questions brûlantes, intervenir en conciliateur ou en arbitre ? Le fait est que l'examen dialectique se termine à la p. 272b par la récapitulation et la réponse définitive à la question posée p. 258d et reprise p. 259e. Alors que le débat portait sur le logos en tant que discours écrit ou prononcé, Socrate introduit dans la finale la notion du logos de l'âme pour répondre aux objections de Phèdre. Alors qu'il a prouvé (261e-262b) la nécessité de la connaissance de la vérité, peu importe de quel genre de discours il s'agit, il revient en arrière pour discuter à nouveau la théorie de la vraisemblance de Tisias appliquée au seul genre judiciaire. Pourquoi, après chacune des objections (273d-274a, 278bc) répéter la conclusion finale et reprendre coup sur coup le problème de l'œuvre écrite, qu'il avait expédié en passant, p. 257d-258d ? Au terme de cette dernière diversion, Socrate oppose à la philosophie les techniques spéciales qui lui sont subordonnées : législation, poésie, éloquence. Est-ce peut-être dans ce message destiné à Lysias et doublé d'un message analogue à Isocrate que Platon a voulu nous donner la clef de l'œuvre ? Le Phèdre été conçu comme un drame parfait axé sur la mission et la condamnation de Socrate et cette structure lui donne son sens et son unité. Le cœur, c'est la péripétie et cette „reconnaissance” dans laquelle le daimonion ouvre les yeux de Socrate. Ecoutant son daimonion, il embrasse ses dieux à lui, son Eros, et dès lors sera traité d'impie par le jury. Les politiques, les poètes et les orateurs impuissants à appuyer leurs paroles (par la philosophie) (273c) deviendront ses accusateurs, et c'est Socrate qui, ignorant leur éloquence, sera impuissant à se défendre. On lui reprochera de corrompre la jeunesse. C'est que son discours ici se termine par cette prière significative : „Accorde-moi... d'être, plus encore qu'à présent, en crédit auprès des beaux garçons” (257a trad. Robin). Bref, la scène du Phèdre est le prélude, ou, si l'on veut, la contre-partie du drame de 399. Quel est le rôle de Lysias ? Exactement le même que dans la République et le Clitophon. Contrairement à son frère Polémarque (257b) il ne pense que politique et barreau, une politique qui en définitive adopte les principes de violence de Thrasymaque (Rép. I et Phèdre 266c). Dans une soi-disant Défense de Socrate, il a répondu à Polycrate en ramenant toute l'affaire sur le plan purement politique et en reniant le verdict de 399, imputable à l'absence d'une défense efficace. Soucieux du relèvement de la démocratie, il désire reléguer à l'arrière-plan l'affaire de 399, faire oublier les griefs religieux et peut-être tendre la main aux Socratiques, pour, ainsi, passer à l'ordre du jour. Or, se prêter à cette manoeuvre, pour Platon, c'est renier son maître. Que reproche-t-il à Lysias ? De tourner le dos à la Philosophie en médisant d'Eros. Et nous apprenons en finale, pour mettre fin à toute équivoque, qu'Isocrate n'échappe pas à ce même reproche. Mais tout cela se situe à l'arrière-plan. Dans la trame du Phèdre, celui qui est directement accusé d'impiété, celui qui s'accuse lui-même, c'est Socrate. S'il n'y avait vu clair, s'il avait quitté ce lieu sacré après un succès oratoire sur un thème imposé par Lysias, il aurait renié ses daimonia ; il aurait trouvé grâce auprès des hommes, mais serait justiciable des dieux (242d). Dans ce cas le drame, le vrai drame du Phèdre, n'aurait pas eu lieu et Socrate aurait échappé à son arrêt de mort. (shrink)

At the University of Newcastle, health law and ethics is taught and assessed in each year of the five-year curriculum. However, the critical question for assessment remains: 'Does teaching ethics have a measurable effect on the clinical activity of medical students who have had such courses?' Those responsible for teaching confront this question each year they sit down to construct their assessment tools. Should they assess what the student knows? Should they assess the student's moral reasoning, that is, what decisions (...) the student makes, and, how these decisions are justified, or should they assess what the student actually does when dealing with patients in the clinical setting, and how he or she does it? From 1982 to 1991, assessment at Newcastle was primarily aimed at determining the quality of the students' ethics knowledge base. This paper describes the strengths and limitations of a purely knowledge-based method of evaluation and why in 1992, we are now attempting to redefine and assess, what we call 'clinical ethical competence' in terms of how students actually apply this knowledge base in a controlled clinical context. (shrink)

The problem I shall discuss is What reason have we for believing that there are physical objects? My purpose is not either to raise or to dispel doubts as to the existence of physical objects; this doubt constitutes a medical rather than a philosophical problem. The point of asking the question is that, while there can be no reasonable difference of opinion as to whether there are physical objects, there can be and is reasonable difference of opinion as to how (...) the notion of a physical object is to be analysed; and if we are clear as to what grounds there are for believing in physical objects, we shall also be clearer as to what sort of physical objects we have grounds for believing in. Also, it is worth while to inquire which other beliefs are logically connected with, and which are logically independent of, the belief in physical objects. (shrink)

I Take and as correlative terms: to say of words or other symbols that they have meaning is to say that they are understood, or could be understood, by some interpreter. To specify a meaning fully, one must specify the interpreter or class of interpreters who do or might understand the symbols in a given way. There aretwo ways of doing this for a given utterance of words: we can take the interpretation which the utterer intended () the words to (...) receive, or the interpretation which would be given to them by the majority of speakers of the language to which they belong (or a specially qualified group of such speakers). In the vast majority of cases these interpretationswill coincide; in a small minority of cases they will not. Sometimes a speaker will coin a new word, or use an old word in a new sense. Sometimes he will ignorantly or carelessly intend his words to be interpreted in a way inwhich they would not be interpreted by most understanders of his language. In cases of this kind, we have to distinguish between and . (English judges, in interpreting statutes, are supposed to consider only the former, ignoring the latter; but usually it is rather the latter which matters.) Normally,however, an utterer of words uses them with meanings already determined independently of his use of them (though not, of course, independently of the totality of uses of them). (shrink)

Purpose of the study is to shed light on the role of psychophysiology in the creative process, namely, the style corrections connected with pathological changes in the artist’s organism, deviating from empirical-descriptive methods. Theoretical basis of the study implies the interpretation of the notions style and disease not in their narrow professional limitation but from the standpoint of expanding the parameters of these concepts to philosophical dimensions. Based on the principle of analogy, the research findings prove that non-mimetic creative process (...) manifests itself exclusively in connection with a human from a bodily viewpoint through anthropological mimesis, which can program the propensity to certain capabilities of the individual organism. C. G. Jung was the first who pointed to the productivity of this method in his work "Theoretical Reflections on the Nature of the Psyche". The creativity phenomenon reflects not only "pure" psychology and the intellectual and spiritual component but also its relation to the artist as a physical being. It, outside its belonging to and being conditioned by transcendent factors, includes a quantitative aspect related to the moment of intensity. The disease acts to some extent as a stimulator of the production/change of aesthetic enzyme. In this context, the dialectic method is also effective because the subject of study cannot be comprehensively argued using naturalistic approaches only and requires a semantic explanation too. The essence of it is the logic of contradictions. In this case, the antinomy of matter-spirit plays a conceptual role in the projection on the plane of word-formation. Originality of the research findings is in the expansion of the causal relationship range of the creative process, namely the inclusion of the factor of psycho-physiological pathology into the system artist-work. This factor performs important stylistic functions. Conclusions. In contrast to scientific studies, where 1) style is analyzed separately and 2) the figure of the artist, this study argues the need to correlate these issues, taking them beyond descriptiveness to avoid schematics and one-dimensionality. (shrink)

A retributive theory of punishment must at least say that it is a necessary condition for the justification of a punishment that the person punished should be guilty. But “guilty” here may be taken in two different senses, giving two very different kinds of justification. In the first sense, to be guilty is to have wilfully disobeyed a law or order of some authority, and it is the defiance of this authority which justifies punishment. Mr. Mabbott has put up a (...) good case for a view of this kind. It is clear that we regularly do justify the punishment of offenders on the ground that they have broken rules, and therefore deserve to be punished. And there are some moral situations in which this is the only fact to be considered in deciding whether or not to punish. As to the view that this constitutes the only valid justification of punishment, I wish to make two comments. (shrink)

We prove that the observational equivalence of third-order finitary Idealized Algol is decidable using Game Semantics. By modelling the state explicitly in our games, we show that the denotation of a term M of this fragment of IA is a compactly innocent strategy-with-state, i.e. the strategy is generated by a finite view function fM. Given any such fM, we construct a real-time deterministic pushdown automaton that recognizes the complete plays of the knowing-strategy denotation of M. Since such plays characterize observational (...) equivalence, and there is an algorithm for deciding whether any two DPDAs recognize the same language, we obtain a procedure for deciding the observational equivalence of third-order finitary IA. Restricted to second-order terms, the DPDA representation cuts down to a deterministic finite automaton; thus our approach gives a new proof of Ghica and McCusker’s regular-expression characterization for this fragment. Our algorithmic representation of program meanings, which is compositional, provides a foundation for model-checking a wide range of behavioural properties of IA and other cognate programming languages. Another result concerns second-order IA with full recursion: we show that observational equivalence for this fragment is undecidable. (shrink)

In Philosophy for April 1961 Mr J. R. Lucas argues that Gödel's theorem proves that Mechanism is false. I wish to dispute this view, not because I maintain that Mechanism is true, but because I do not believe that this issue is to be settled by what looks rather like a kind of logical conjuring-trick. In my discussion I take for granted Lucas's account of Gödel's procedure, which I am not competent to criticise.

When I began to study philosophy sense-data were in the fashion; everybody had some. Nowadays talking about sense-data, like distinguishing between “shall” and “will”, is apt to be regarded as an indication that one has stopped moving with the times. Before abandoning this old habit, I want to consider whether there may not after all be something in a doctrine adopted by so many leading philosophers in pre-war England.

Health promotion efforts are commonly directed towards encouraging people to discard ‘unhealthy’ and adopt ‘healthy’ behaviours in order to tackle chronic disease. Typical targets for behaviour change interventions include diet, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption, sometimes described as ‘lifestyle behaviours.’ In this paper, I discuss how efforts to raise awareness of the impact of lifestyles on health, in seeking to communicate the need for people to change their behaviour, can contribute to a climate of ‘healthism’ and promote the moralisation (...) of people’s lifestyles. I begin by summarising recent trends in health promotion and introducing the notion of healthism, as described by Robert Crawford in the 1980s. One aspect of healthism is moralisation, which I outline and suggest is facilitated by efforts to promote health via information provision and educational strategies. I propose that perceived responsibility plays a role in mediating the tendency to moralise about health and behaviour. Since I argue that states ought to avoid direct and indirect moralisation of people’s health-related behaviour, this suggests states must be cautious with regard to the use of responsibility-indicating interventions to promote health. (shrink)

In Kingdom and Glory, Agamben analyzed the dual perspective of the void, through the metaphor of the empty throne, in the governmental machine in the West. I engage with the ambiguous question of the void with regard to the concept of sovereignty through my reading of two Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing period, Liang Qichao (1872–1929) and Zhang Taiyan (1869–1936). This paper therefore addresses the question of sovereignty and the void in the discourse of nation in early modern China, (...) an issue that is related to the problem of the political economy or the politics of life. I argue that the rhetorical move in Liang Qichao’s argument for the birth of a new nation and new people was to move from the not-having (無) to the there is (有) in support of the formation of a new nation-state and a restricted logic of sovereignty, while Zhan Taiyan’s position was to affirm the dynamitic re-composition of the void by constantly negating the given fixated state, and thus proposing a different and radical vision of nation and full sovereignty of the lives of each and every one of the people who are co-inhabiting in the polis. (shrink)

This volume contains the final portion of Ingarden's extensive treatment of the existence of the external world. Entitled Welt und Bewußtsein, it is divided into four chapters: "Das Problem der Identität eines individuellen zeitlich bedingten Gegenstandes," "Die Form eines Seinsgebietes und die Form der Welt," "Das Problem der Form des reinen Bewußtseins," and "Anwendung der gewonnenen formal-ontologischen Ergebnisse auf das Problem der Existenz der Welt." The plan of the work calls for a third part, material ontology, as the systematic complement (...) to Pt. I, existential ontology, and Pt. II, formal ontology. In this volume, therefore, the problem is not resolved, although Ingarden has reduced the statements of the alternative solutions to just two—H. C. (shrink)

Despite the growing routinization of prenatal diagnosis, little research has examined men's roles in this reproductive arena or these technologies' possibilities for reinforcing or transforming gender roles and relations. The authors analyze male partners' participation in the amniocentesis decisions of Mexican-origin women at high risk for problems, drawing on interviews with 157 women and 120 of their male partners. The primary aim is to explore whether the normalization of prenatal testing poses a threat to women's autonomy in this decision arena. (...) The findings challenge critics of new reproductive and genetic technologies who assume that these technologies inherently represent male attempts to control women's bodies and the processes of reproduction. In contrast, the authors find many couples try to balance their desire to share equally in parenting responsibilities while maintaining the woman's ultimate control over her body and decisions associated with it. (shrink)

The question I shall consider is whether there are any mental causes, that is, whether there is anything which is both a state of mind and a cause of other mental or physical happenings. The obvious common-sense answer to this question is Yes. In ordinary discourse we constantly refer to human actions and experiences in what appears to be causal language; we seem to be saying that some states of mind are causes of other states of mind, and of some (...) bodily activities. Sometimes we do this by using the word ‘cause’ itself— ‘His driving into the ditch was caused by his seeing a child run into the road’, ‘The cause of his silence was his wish to protect his friend’. More often we use expressions which in physical contexts are admittedly causal— ‘A glimpse of the look on her face made him hesitate’, ‘Ambition was the driving force of his career’. Most philosophers have taken for granted the genuineness of these causal attributions. But recently it has been frequently denied that any state of mind can be properly described as the cause either of other states of mind or of physical occurrences, at any rate if by a state of mind one means a state of consciousness. Some philosophers who deny this are materialists, advocates of the Unity of Science. They believe that everything that happens in the universe can be causally accounted for by reference to a single set of fundamental laws, the laws of physics, and since a state of consciousness is not, as such, a physical state of any kind, it cannot have a place in the causal explanation of any event, and must be an epiphenomenon. Others are believers in an indeterminist interpretation of human freedom, and hold that o t introduce the category of cause and effect into the explanation of human actions is to deny that there is any genuine free will. I shall not be concerned with either of these general metaphysical objections, neither of which convinces me; but I shall consider some more specific objections to the admission of particular sorts of mental causes. (shrink)

Many countries tightly ration access to publicly funded fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilisation. One basis for excluding people from access to IVF is their body mass index. In this paper, I consider a number of potential justifications for such a policy, based on claims about effectiveness and cost-efficiency, and reject these as unsupported by available evidence. I consider an alternative justification: that those whose subfertility results from avoidable behaviours for which they are responsible are less deserving of treatment. (...) I ultimately stop short of endorsing or rejecting such a justification, though highlight some reasons for thinking it is unlikely to be practicable. (shrink)