Researchers have documented negative physical and emotional consequences for both family caregivers of persons with cancer as well as caregivers of persons with a neurologic disorder. However, there is a unique subset of caregivers who must provide care for someone who may suffer from both a short, terminal trajectory of disease, as well as neurological and neuropsychiatric sequelae — the caregiver of a person with a primary malignant brain tumor. The purpose of this article was to describe a conceptual framework (...) for providing care for a person with a primary malignant brain tumor. The demands of this particular care situation are described, as well as potential resources available to the caregiver to meet those demands. Finally, the stress response that results from the balance between care demands and caregiver resources is illustrated. Development of a conceptual framework for this caregiving population is the first step in assisting nurses to identify factors that place caregivers of persons with a primary malignant brain tumor at risk for negative consequences, and to design interventions to improve caregiver health. (shrink)

Charles Travis presents a series of essays in which he has developed his distinctive view of the relation of thought to language. The key idea is "occasion-sensitivity": what it is for words to express a given concept is for them to be apt for contributing to any of many different conditions of correctness (notably truth conditions). Since words mean what they do by expressing a given concept, it follows that meaning does not determine truth conditions. This view (...) ties thoughts less tightly to the linguistic forms which express them than traditional views of the matter, and in two directions: a given linguistic form, meaning fixed, may express an indefinite variety of thoughts; one thought can be expressed in an indefinite number of syntactically and semantically distinct ways. Travis highlights the importance of this view for linguistic theory, and shows how it gives new form to a variety of traditional philosophical problems. (shrink)

A longstanding issue in attempts to understand the Everett (Many-Worlds) approach to quantum mechanics is the origin of the Born rule: why is the probability given by the square of the amplitude? Following Vaidman, we note that observers are in a position of self-locating uncertainty during the period between the branches of the wave function splitting via decoherence and the observer registering the outcome of the measurement. In this period it is tempting to regard each branch as equiprobable, but (...) we argue that the temptation should be resisted. Applying lessons from this analysis, we demonstrate (using methods similar to those of Zurek's envariance-based derivation) that the Born rule is the uniquely rational way of apportioning credence in Everettian quantum mechanics. In doing so, we rely on a single key principle: changes purely to the environment do not affect the probabilities one ought to assign to measurement outcomes in a local subsystem. We arrive at a method for assigning probabilities in cases that involve both classical and quantum self-locating uncertainty. This method provides unique answers to quantum Sleeping Beauty problems, as well as a well-defined procedure for calculating probabilities in quantum cosmological multiverses with multiple similar observers. (shrink)

Divided into three parts, this book's purpose, as given in the introduction, is to consider whether or not man is descended from a pre-existing form, his manner ...

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is considered to be among the half dozen most important philosophers the United States has produced. The Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress opened at Harvard University on September 5, 1989 and concluded on the 10th - Peirce's birthday. The Congress was host to approximately 450 scholars from 26 different nations. Papers concerning Peirce's philosophy of science were given at the Congress by representatives from Italy, France, Sweden, Finland, Korea, India, Denmark, Greece, Brazil, (...) Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the United States. The present volume is a compilation of some of the papers that were presented at that Congress. (shrink)

Examining a range of sixth-century literary sources, this paper explores the authors' attitudes toward the marital relationship of the Late Roman emperor Justinian I and his empress, Theodora. It emerges that the sources characteristically appeal to the agency of Theodora or to an underlying level of mutual understanding between the imperial couple in order to reconcile inconsistencies or apparent contradictions between the regime's rhetoric and its actions. Recourse to such an interior dynamic gave scope to the recognition and expression of (...) contradiction without thereby entailing an admission of disorder: it enabled the imperial couple, and thus in an overarching sense the instrumental function of the imperial "role" in the state, to work if necessary at cross purposes while preserving an unbroken unity of purpose. Special attention is paid to the particular interests and expectations of two distinct groups: the classically-educated mandarinate of the Roman civil service, and the schismatic hierarchy of the nascent Monophysite church. (shrink)

Of laws in general -- Of laws directly derived from the nature of government -- Of the principles of the three kinds of government -- That the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government -- That the laws given by the legislator ought to be relative to the nature of government -- Consquences of the principles of different governments, with respect to the simplicity of civil and criminal laws, the form of judgements, and inflicting (...) of punishments -- Consquences of the different principles of the three governments, with respect to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women -- Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments -- Of the laws in the relation they bear to defensive force -- Of laws, in the relation they bear to offensive force. (shrink)

It is and has been widely assumed, e.g., in Hintikka and Hintikka, that the logical theory available from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus affords a foundation for the conventional logic represented in standard formulations of classical propositional, first-order predicate, and perhaps higher-order formal systems. The present article is a detailed attempt at a mathematical demonstration, or as much demonstration as the sources will allow, that this assumption is false by contemporary lights and according to a preferred account of argument validity. When Wittgenstein’s (...) description of the forms of propositions or Sätze in the 5-numbered remarks and Remark 6 is given a close reconstruction, one sees that no Tractarian proposition is logically equivalent to a simple universally or existentially quantified formula of first-order predicate logic. Therefore, although Wittgenstein employs the sign ∀—or, in his notation—occasionally in explanations and illustrations, e.g., 4.0411 and 5.1311, when it comes to logic, the sign ∀ should receive in Tractatus a semantical treatment that is nonstandard. En route to that result, we show that the hierarchy of variables–and, hence, of propositions–defined at 5.501 incorporates the expressive power of finitary classical propositional logic. Also, when constructed over a first-order language for arithmetic, formulae corresponding to the specification of 5.501 pick out all and only arithmetic sets of numbers. Consequently, Wittgenstein’s hierarchy of iterated N-propositions–as described in vide Remark 6–does not collapse: at any level k, one finds propositions at k + 1 or above that are not logically equivalent to any proposition formed at k or below. (shrink)

As a youngster of perhaps 8 years, Charles S. Peirce was given a chemistry laboratory in which he probably did experiments in qualitative analysis. These experiments were modeled on the hypothetico-deductive method of inquiry. I argue that this laboratory experience initiated Peirce’s life-long interest in logic and the logic of science, and flowered in his “pragmaticism.”.

In this paper I criticize the most significant recent examples of the practical knowledge analysis of knowledge-how in the philosophical literature: David Carr [1979, Mind, 88, 394–409; 1981a, American Philosophical Quarterly, 18, 53–61; 1981b, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 15(1), 87–96] and Stanley & Williamson [2001, Journal of Philosophy, 98(8), 411–444]. I stress the importance of know-how in our contemporary understanding of the mind, and offer the beginnings of a treatment of know-how capable of providing insight in to the use (...) of know-how in contemporary cognitive science. Specifically, I claim that Carr’s necessary conditions for know-how fail to capture the distinction he himself draws between ability and knowing-how. Moreover, Carr ties knowing-how to conscious intent, and to an explicit knowledge of procedural rules. I argue that both moves are mistakes, which together render Carr’s theory an inadequate account both of common ascriptions of knowledge-how and of widely accepted ascriptions of knowledge-how within explanations in cognitive science. Finally, I note that Carr’s conditions fail to capture intuitions (heshares) regarding the ascription of know-how to persons lacking ability. I then consider the position advocated by Stanley & Williamson (2001), which seems avoid Carr’s commitments to conscious intent and explicit knowledge while still maintaining that “knowledge-how is simply a species of knowledge-that" (Stanley & Williamson, 2001, p. 411). I argue that Stanley and Williamson’s attempt to frame a reductionist view that avoids consciously occurrent beliefs during exercises of knowledge-how and explicit knowledge of procedural rules is both empirically implausible and explanatorily vacuous. In criticizing these theories I challenge the presuppositions of the most pervasive response to Ryle in the philosophic literature, what might be described as “the received view." I also establish several facts about knowing-how. First, neither conscious intent nor explicit representation (much less conscious representation) of procedural rules are necessary for knowing-how given the theory of cognition current in cognitive science. I argue that the discussed analyses fail to capture the necessary conditions for knowledge-how because know-how requires the instantiation of an ability and of the capacities necessary for exploiting an ability—not conscious awareness of purpose or explicit knowledge of rules. Second, one must understand knowledge-how as task-specific, i.e., as presupposing certain underlying conditions. Conceiving of know-how as task-specific allows one to understand ascriptions of know-how in the absence of ability as counterfactual ascriptions based upon underlying competence. (shrink)

This model explores consensus among agents in a population in terms of two properties. The first is a probability of belief change. This value indicates how likely agents are to change their mind in interactions. The other is the size of the agents audience: the proportion of the population the agent has access to at any given time. In all instances, the agents converge on a single belief, although the agents are arational. I argue that this generates a skeptical (...) hypothesis: any instance of purportedly rational consensus might just as well be a case of arational belief convergence. I also consider what the model tells us about increasing the likelihood that one agent’s belief is adopted by the rest. Agents are most likely to have their beliefs adopted by the entire population when their value for PBC is low relative to the rest of the population and their audience sizes are roughly three-quarters of the largest possible audience. I further explore the consequences of dogmatists to the population; individuals who refuse to change their mind end up polarizing the population. I conclude with reflections on the supposedly special character of rationality in belief-spread. (shrink)

In this paper I will suggest an interpretation of Spinoza's ontological argument on which the argument, properly construed, is valid, and Spinoza, if granted the claim that it is possible that God exists, is successful in obtaining the conclusion of the argument. The interpretations given by H.A. Wolfson, G.H.R. Parkinson, and William A. Earle will then be argued to be deficient on textual and logical grounds. Leibniz’ assessment of the argument, namely that it “permits us only to conclude that (...) God's existence follows if his possibility is already proven,” is thus held to be correct. (shrink)

Tomorrow has never looked better. Breakthroughs in fields like genetic engineering and nanotechnology promise to give us unprecedented power to redesign our bodies and our world. Futurists and activists tell us that we are drawing ever closer to a day when we will be as smart as computers, will be able to link our minds telepathically, and will live for centuries--or maybe forever. The perfection of a "posthuman" future awaits us. Or so the story goes. In reality, the rush toward (...) a posthuman destiny amounts to an ideology of human extinction, an ideology that sees little of value in humanity except the raw material for producing whatever might come next. In Eclipse of Man, Charles T. Rubin traces the intellectual origins of the movement to perfect and replace the human race. He shows how today's advocates of radical enhancement are--like their forebears--deeply dissatisfied with given human nature and fixated on grand visions of a future shaped by technological progress. Moreover, Rubin argues that this myopic vision of the future is not confined to charlatans and cheerleaders promoting this or that technology: it also runs through much of modern science and contemporary progressivism. By exploring and criticizing the dreams of post humanity, Rubin defends a more modest vision of the future, one that takes seriously both the limitations and the inherent dignity of our given nature. (shrink)

Even when it embraces Socratic critique, education instills a particular tradition or way of life. But the postmodern shift invites suspicion of such efforts, and so engenders a crucial question: Given inevitable biases, how can educators do their work with a (justifiably) clear conscience? This essay approaches the question by way of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s “philosophical hermeneutics.” It introduces the title’s “rabbi” and “gadfly” images, then illuminates the argument’s context by considering two recent philosophies of education. Gadamer’s framework shows how (...) his emphasis on conversation sheds light on the question of integrity in education. Finally, given the inevitable “tradition-assertion” that education involves, and in light of a seeming deficiency in Gadamer’s treatment of conversation, the essay explores an “ethics of affirmation.” The key claim is that the obligation to declare, or even to persuade, is as important as the obligation to listen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Oedipus Smart?Charles B. DanielsWhat does it amount to, to ask whether Oedipus is smart, intelligent, clever? I take this to mean that he is quicker than most to gain understanding about difficult matters. Now, does Sophocles in Oedipus Rex portray Oedipus to be an intelligent, clever man?The Yes AnswerA "yes" answer to the title question may rest upon three grounds:Y1. Everyone in the play, including Oedipus himself (...) and the citizens of Thebes who have been his subjects for some 15 to 20 years, everyone, that is, save Teiresias, thinks that Oedipus is intelligent.Y2. In both legend and Sophocles' play, the only person smart enough to solve the Sphinx's riddle is Oedipus. Everyone in the play, as well as in the play's audiences, knows that Oedipus has solved the Sphinx's riddle. This is a major reason why everyone in the play, again excepting Teiresias, believes Oedipus to have a first-class mind. Oedipus is renown for this deed and thought by his subjects to be very clever in doing of it.Y3. John P. Carroll, in his interesting study of the extraordinary number of questions posed by Oedipus in Oedipus Rex (one in each nine lines of text uttered by him), concludes, "King Oedipus was endowed at birth with the heritage of the 'riddler's mind,' which by constant use throughout the course of his life he sharpened and brought to greater [End Page 562] perfection than it ever had had in his parents." 1 Oedipus is clever because he has a "riddler's mind": he asks lots of questions.Y1, Y2, and Y3, I believe, constitute the sole evidential textual base for the "yes" response to the title question. 2The No AnswerThe "no" answer, the view that Oedipus is not clever, rests upon four grounds:N1. The first consists of events from Oedipus' past that took place prior to the opening scene of the play and hence do not occur on stage. These are disclosed as the play progresses and its characters relate in dialogue what they believe to have taken place. We discover that Oedipus has lived his entire adult life with unresolved doubts about who his parents are. Worse yet, at the very beginning of his adult life, his inquiry at the Delphic Oracle met with terrible, enigmatic pronouncements that raised the ante on these doubts and made the tenor of his whole subsequent life up to the present worrisome to say the least. We learn of six questions of high moment to Oedipus—questions that touch him as profoundly as did the Sphinx's riddle, "What walks on two, three, and four legs?"—questions which he continues to be aware of and yet has not resolved, or in some cases even probed. A truly clever person, one with a "riddler's mind," would have done so. But the mature Oedipus we meet at the beginning of the play has yet to puzzle out correct answers to the questions:1. Where did the scars on my feet come from?2. Who are my real parents, Polybus and Merope, or some other couple?3. How can I best avoid doing the terrible things the Oracle foretells I shall do—killing my father and marrying my mother—given I am not sure who my father and mother really are?4. Is this old man who has just forced me off the road and arrogantly swatted me from his passing carriage my father?5. Who killed the king whose throne I have just been given?6. Is this widow I am about to marry my mother?The Oedipus we see at the beginning of the play is a man who has solved the riddle of the Sphinx, but has not solved a single one of these six questions from his own past life, which, it turns out, are easily of comparable importance to him. [End Page 563]N2. Another source of evidence in support of a "no" answer consists of failures on Oedipus' part to evince a quick wit concerning two puzzles that arise in the dramatic present among the events we see unfold on stage:7. The riddles... (shrink)

In various writings Maimonides claims that God’s knowledge encompasses sublunar things, including human affairs, that we are incapable of understanding the nature of this knowledge, and that the term “knowing” is equivocal when said of God and of humans. In the fourteenth century these claims were given widely divergent interpretations. According to Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides, 1288–1344), Maimonides was compelled by religious considerations to maintain that God knows sublunar particulars in all their particularity, and to adopt a position that (...) was diametrically opposed to the Aristotelian one. By contrast, Moses of Narbonne (Narboni, d.1362) found Maimonides’ views on divine knowledge to be identical with those of the “ancient philosophers,” that is to say, the Peripatetics, as presented by Averroes. Whether ultimately convincing or not, Narboni’s Averroist interpretation forces the reader to admit that Maimonides shares a great deal more in common with Averroes on this topic than is often thought. By examining briefly the view of Maimonides and Averroes on these matters I hope to make Narboni’s interpretation appear less far-fetched. (shrink)

Affective dynamics are discussed from the perspective of a view of origin and functions of affective valence based in control processes. This view posits that affect reflects the error signal of a feedback loop managing rate of progress at goal attainment or threat avoidance. Negative feelings signal doing poorly, demanding more effort. Positive feelings signal doing better than necessary, allowing coasting, which yields goal attainment without unnecessary resource expenditure. Given multiple simultaneous goals, these functions assist in moment-to-moment priority management, (...) facilitating attainment of all. (shrink)

Learning to understand a single causal system can be an achievement, but humans must learn about multiple causal systems over the course of a lifetime. We present a hierarchical Bayesian framework that helps to explain how learning about several causal systems can accelerate learning about systems that are subsequently encountered. Given experience with a set of objects, our framework learns a causal model for each object and a causal schema that captures commonalities among these causal models. The schema organizes (...) the objects into categories and specifies the causal powers and characteristic features of these categories and the characteristic causal interactions between categories. A schema of this kind allows causal models for subsequent objects to be rapidly learned, and we explore this accelerated learning in four experiments. Our results confirm that humans learn rapidly about the causal powers of novel objects, and we show that our framework accounts better for our data than alternative models of causal learning. (shrink)

Rue, Charles Inserting a Season of Creation into the Catholic liturgical year during September is one way to structurally help implement the vision of Pope Francis given in his encyclical Laudato Si'. As a pastoral initiative a new liturgical season would help believers face the twenty-first-century ecological challenge. This article first looks at the liturgical reform initiated by the Second Vatican Council as an example of reform. The second part explores recent initiatives to express the creation dimension of (...) theology in communal worship. In 1993 the ecumenical association, Church and Environment, proposed a Creation Time running from 1 September to 4 October. In 2004 Norman Habel in Adelaide developed a set of scriptural readings and ecological themes on this timetable. It was adapted by some Protestant communities around the world. Catholic and Orthodox communities wanting to celebrate creation during September have tended to focus on a particular day, often 1 September. Taking a more systematic approach, for the last three years the Columban Mission Institute in Sydney has prepared resources as an ecological reading of the existing lectionary to celebrate a Catholic Season of Creation during September. Creating a new lectionary would be a more radical reform. (shrink)

One potentially extremely fruitful use of the tools of corpus analysis in the philosophy of science is to help us understand disputed terrains within the sciences that we study. For philosophers of biology, for instance, few controversies are as heated as those over the concepts we use in taxonomy to classify the living world, with the definition of ‘species’ perhaps most fundamental among them. As many understandings of biodiversity, in turn, involve counting the number of species present in a (...) class='Hi'>given area, these taxonomic concepts thus become crucially implicated in our efforts in conservation biology and our response to climate change. In this chapter, we present a corpus of taxonomic journal papers, and illustrate how it might be used to make progress in the history and philosophy of taxonomy. What parts of the biological world do taxonomists most often study? Are these areas of focus related to other methodological commitments, or perhaps to their underlying conceptual disagreement? Are species that are more important to conservation, or economic concerns, or more important to local cultures, more or less likely to be the target of biological study? Corpus-based methods, we argue, are uniquely powerful for approaching questions such as these, and we hope that the case we present can serve as a fruitful example for others considering their implementation. (shrink)

There is a strong presumption in favour of the maintenance of life. Given sufficient evidence, it can be rebutted. But the epistemic uncertainties about the best interests of patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness ("PDOC") and the wishes that they should be presumed to have are such that, in most PDOC cases, the presumption cannot be rebutted. It is conventional and wrong (or at least unsupported by the evidence) to assume that PDOC patients have no interest in continued existence. (...) Treatment withdrawal/continuation decisions should focus on the patient as he or she actually is, and should not unjustifiably assume that the premorbid patient continues to exist unchanged, and that the actual patient has the same interests as the premorbid patient and would make the same decisions in relation to treatment as the premorbid patient would have done. (shrink)

Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's 'Treasury of Metaphysics'. This neglect is unjustified. The account of the nature of the physical world given in the 'Treasury' is a one-category ontology of dharmas, which are simple, momentary tropes. They include basic physical tropes, the most fundamental level of the physical world, as well as higher-level tropes, including sensible properties such as colours, which are known as derived form. I argue that the relationship between (...) the basic physical tropes and derived form is one of supervenience. Vasubandhu's theory is a powerful and flexible one, which can be adapted so as to be consistent with modern science. (shrink)

Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are these tax reforms likely to meet their (...) aims of greater economic and political equality? We argue that these policies are likely to fail because, following neoclassical economic theory, they are based on a conception of capital as possessing given values in what amounts to a static equilibrium. This mischaracterizes the dynamic and subjective character of market economies and the contested value of real instantiations of capital goods. This makes them very difficult, often impossible, to value apart from at the point of voluntary transfer or profit realization. This means most taxes levied on a mark-to-market basis will be arbitrary and unfair. We propose alternative policies based on an income realization approach to taxation that are more likely to curb excessive wealth holdings. This includes introducing international treaties that prohibit preferential tax treatment for individual companies and specific sectors, and broadening the income tax base to include the imputed rent of personal housing wealth. (shrink)

Robust realism is defended by developing further the account in Inquiry 42 (1999), pp. 49-78 of how human beings make things and people intelligible. Incommensurate worlds imply a violation of the principle of noncontradiction, but this violation does not have the consequences normally feared. Given our capacities to make things intelligible, some things, like human action, are most intelligible when they are understood as contradictory (e.g. free and determined). Things-in-themselves need not have contradictory features for multiple orders of nature (...) to make sense. We can coherently suppose that both Western and Chinese science give two incommensurable and complete accounts of the functioning of the human body. Since things do not have contradictory properties, we would then have to suppose that, in the case of bodies, there are two independent functional orders. If this can be true for bodies, it can be true for the orders of nature as a whole. John Haugeland's account of systems and interfaces shows us how to make sense of necessary functional components of the universe. Finally, multiple realism makes more sense than Rorty's deflationary pragmatism because it explains how things can matter. (shrink)

Once assessments and continuers are focussed on as distinguishable phenomena it becomes clear that they differ from each other not just in the details of their sequential placement within an extended turn, but in other significant ways as well.First, though assessments can take the form of talk with clear lexical content (for example `Oh wow' and assessment adjectives such as ‘beautiful’), they can also be done with sounds such as ‘Ah:::’ whose main function seems to be the carrying of an (...) appropriate intonation contour, as well as gesturally (cf. M. Goodwin, 1980). In this they resemble continuers, which can be performed both with talk whose lexical status is not always granted, and with appropriate gestures such as nods. In view of the way in which both continuers and brief assessments are characteristically situated within a rather specialized environment, the ongoing talk of another, it is not surprising that they share these characteristics. Indeed in so far as these features provide minimal lexical and auditory interference with the other talk already in progress, they are precisely some of the adaptations that would be expected of action able to function in such an environment. Given such structural similarity in action that is also quite brief, the clarity with which assessments can be distinguished from continuers becomes interesting. If in fact these objects are doing different work in the same environment, the salience of their distinctness from each other becomes an important feature of the structure of each. In view of the economy and clarity that brief assessments require, it is all the more remarkable that many of them, through the details of the way in which they are pronounced and their intonation contour, are able to convey quite detailed, even intricate, information about their speaker's involvement in both the assessment and the talk of the moment.Second, while ‘uh huh’ seems to be restricted to placement in the midst of extended talk by another, assessments can occur at the completion of such extended turns as well. Indeed assessments are one of the prototypical ways of bringing an extended turn such as a story to completion. Such differential placement is quite compatible with what has already been noted about the organization of these phenomena. For example, insofar as a continuer treats the talk just heard as preliminary to further talk it would be quite inappropriate as a technique for marking completion of an extended turn. On the other hand by virtue of the way in which they appreciate the details of what has just been said without marking that talk as a prelude to something else, assessments are apt structures for doing terminal work on an extended sequence.Third, ‘uh huh’ seems to be an exclusively recipient action — indeed its work as a continuer is accomplished precisely through placement relative to more extended talk by another speaker. Assessments, however, can be done by speaker as well as recipient.Fourth, though analysis in the present paper has focussed on brief assessments (the type of assessment most similar in form to continuers), assessments unlike continuers can in fact take many shapes, some of them quite elaborate with, for example, extended sentences and even sequences of turns being devoted exclusively to the activity of doing an assessment.In sum, alternative types of action are available to recipients for constructing responses in the midst of another's extended talk. Though the responses themselves are typically brief, the presence of alternatives that can be placed in a variety of sequential positions provides recipients with resources that enable them to participate in speaker's emerging talk in a differentiated fashion, something which has consequences for speaker's actions as well. (shrink)

Although Gaius Julius Victor has attracted scholarly attention due to his inclusion of letter-writing in his fourth-century rhetorical manual, his peculiar notion of sermocinatio or “impersonation” has gone largely unnoticed. Set against the backdrop of earlier accounts of sermocinatio as a technique of the grand style—including accounts in Quintilian and Cicero—Julius Victor presents impersonation as a method of subtle eloquence most germane to plain-style rubrics. Given Julius Victor’s coupling of sermocinatio and letter-writing, too, his manual suggests that the ascending (...) importance of writing tracks this stylistic reorientation, anticipating our own era’s evolving media and techniques for impersonating others. (shrink)

In an earlier paper Sayward argued that a speaker could not make an assertion by uttering a sentence of form “p, but I believe not-p” given that the speaker spoke honestly and literally. Robert Imlay criticized some things said in that earlier paper. This paper responds to those criticisms.

In a recent paper in this journal, John Worrall (2008) used the example of a series of trials involving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a technology for the treatment of respiratory failure in newborns, to illustrate the relationship between ethics and epistemology in medical research. One of the issues considered was whether or not it was ethical to perform a particular clinical trial at all, and he showed clearly that the answer was intimately related to epistemological judgments about the weight to (...) be given existing evidence concerning treatment effectiveness. In the case of ECMO, a trial was initiated at the University of Michigan (Bartlett et al. 1985), despite the fact that the researchers had .. (shrink)

The main exegetical work of Jean Philopon, the De opificio mundi, which rehearses the literalist reading of Genesis found in the Basil of Caesarea’s Hexaemeron rather than an allegorical reading, uses a surprising hermeneutic given the general expectations of the era and in particular the Miaphysite milieu to which Philoponus belongs. This paper studies how Philoponus’ work stems from the demands of the Christological debate in which he took part, and offers an evaluation of its immediate aftermath.

This is a book about hope in the midst of a polarized culture. Camosy begins with a hopeful starting point in the midst of a crumbling US political culture: two of every three Americans constitute an exhausted majority who reject right/left polarization and are open to alternative viewpoints. Especially at this time of realignment, we have been given a unique moment to put aside the frothy, angsty political debates and think harder about our deepest values. A Consistent Life Ethic, (...) especially one which embraces Pope Francis' challenge to resist throwaway culture, has the capacity to unite people who for the last several decades imagined themselves in a polarized culture war. On issues ranging from hook-up culture, reproductive technology, abortion, euthanasia, poverty, immigration, treatment of animals, and mass incarceration, this book articulates a new moral vision in which a culture of encounter and hospitality replaces a consumer culture in which the most vulnerable get used and discarded as so much trash. At bottom, Camosy offers readers a golden opportunity to dialogue about what kinds of values should serve as the foundation for a new political culture. (shrink)

What is an object? A prior question: What is objecthood?Au fond, and to logic’s eye,objectis a role to be played with respect to a thought (on a decomposition). It is to be a countable which that thought represent as being some way for such a countable to be; what restores the business of truth-of to that of truth outright. What plays that role for some given thought is then an object with respect to that thought. Given this, there (...) are corresponding absolute notions,to be fit for this role, andto be fit only for this role. So the fundamental task here is identifying the conditions on playing this role at all. All this is a contribution, however limited, to a topic called ‘ontology’. This last word also occurs in the plural in several contexts. The end of this essay considers how these notions (non-countable, and the several countables) might relate, and what assumptions underlie what some have seen them to. (shrink)

Charney discusses the growing realization in the postgenomic era that genomic biology deviates from Mendelian assumptions at the heart of genetic heritability and association studies. Given the complexity of genomic biology, how are we to identify meaningful genetic factors that contribute to behavioral? One response is to make genetic variants the focus of biological rather than statistical analyses of behavior.

Given the concern they share for the common good, both patriotic and deliberative conceptions of democracy can be said to have roots in classical republicanism. But these two modern approaches to politics are not the same. In order to show this, as well as demonstrate patriotism's superiority to deliberative democracy, I offer four criticisms of the latter: (i) its support of a theory or systematic set of procedures for conversation distorts its practice; (ii) it is ideologically biased; (iii) its (...) distinction between conversation and negotiation is overstated; and (iv) its conception of the political community, in particular, of the proper relations between the state and civil society, is impoverished. The essay concludes with the suggestion that the debate in political philosophy between patriots and deliberative democrats is itself an exemplification of patriotic, rather than deliberative, conversation. (shrink)

In complexity theory, both the brain and consciousness are understood as trophic systems—they consume metabolic energy when they function. Complex systems are dynamic and nonlinear and comprise diverse entities that are interdependent and interconnected in such a way that information is shared and that entities adapt to one another. Some natural complex systems are complex adaptive systems (CAS), which are sensitive to change in relation to their environments and are often chaotic. Consciousness and the neural systems mediating consciousness may be (...) modeled as CAS and, more specifically, as intelligent complex adaptive systems (ICAS), where intelligence means that a nervous system can solve problems successfully by intervening between sensory input and behavioral output. Evolution of any ICAS will result in emergent properties, particularly advanced brains. Two processes are involved in integrating experience and knowledge: the effort after meaning and the effort after truth. These efforts are mediated by the predominance given to direct experience presented to the brain's sensorium and modeling processes mediated by higher cognitive functions. Understanding consciousness as an ICAS has profound repercussions in how anthropology conceives of culture. (shrink)

John Lachs tells us in the short “Preface” to his latest book that in an earlier work, “Intermediate Man, a book I wrote some years ago,” (1981) he “presented similar ideas. But this book is significantly different from the earlier. It covers more topics and makes, I hope, a more compelling case for my analysis” (p. vii). He goes on to state that in The Cost of Comfort one can find his analysis of contemporary life a “testable form,” given (...) over to an invitation to experiment (similar to anoth... (shrink)

"It was sheer chance that I encountered David Bohm's writing in 1958 ... I knew nothing about him. What struck me about his work and prompted my initial letter was his underlying effort to seek for some larger sense of reality, which seemed a very humanized search." - Charles Biederman, from the foreword of the book This book marks the beginning of a four thousand page correspondence between Charles Biederman, founder of Constructivism in the 1930s, and David Bohm (...) the prestigious physicist known for his interpretation of quantum theory. Available for the first time, we are given a rare opportunity to read through and engage in a remarkable transatlantic, intellectual discussion on art and science, creativity and theory. (shrink)

Environmental policy has a size bias. Small organisms, such as microorganisms, command less attention from environmentalists than larger organisms, such as birds and large mammals. A simple thought experiment involving microscopic polar bears and giant microorganisms illustrates the importance of size in environmental ethics. Given the positive correlation between body size and brain size, there is probably a basis for a size bias in environmental ethics using ethical frameworks based on conations. This paper examines the relevance of the size (...) of organisms in environmental ethics. It emphasizes the need to understand the theoretical reasons for the importance of size, and not to base a size bias merely on a subjective anthropocentric prejudice favouring large organisms. (shrink)

Foucault’s invitation to the subject is to become free of themselves by learning to think differently. Such a project has as its goal the mastery of the self, and can be understood as a Foucaultian ‘politics of ourselves’. Foucault’s ethical turn is an invitation for subjectivity to undertake its own radical education. Whilst this invitation has characteristics unique to Foucault’s philosophical discipline, I argue that it sheds light upon a diversity of practices of subjectivity from the psychotherapeutic and mystic traditions. (...) By seeing these currently available technologies of self in the Foucaultian lens we are given the opportunity to appreciate their work on subjectivity as necessarily political and social, a radical education not limited to the realm of individualistic aspiration and narcissistic temptations. The paper concludes by drawing attention to some implications for education, and for a teacher education that embraces the ‘radical reflexivity’ of some psycho-spiritual practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 40-62 [Access article in PDF] Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mixture Charles Stewart * The subject matter of anthropology has gradually changed over the last twenty years. Nowadays ethnographers rarely search for a stable or original form of cultures; they are usually more concerned with revealing how local communities respond to historical change and global influences. The burgeoning literature on transnational flows of (...) ideas, global institutions, and cultural mixture reflects this shift of attention. This increased awareness of cultural interpenetration has, furthermore, been instrumental in the critique of earlier conceptions of "culture" that cast it as too stable, bounded, and homogeneous to be useful in a world characterized by migrations (voluntary or forced), cheap travel, international marketing, and telecommunications. 1 Contemporary social theory has accordingly turned to focus on phenomena such as globalization, transnational nationalism, and the situation of diaspora communities. In this body of literature the word syncretism has begun to reappear alongside such related concepts as hybridization and creolization as a means of portraying the dynamics of global social developments.In what follows I consider some current attempts to theorize mixture before turning to examine the suitability, or not, of the terms listed above. Anthropologists and other social scientists have expressed ambivalence about all three terms--syncretism, hybridity, and creolization. I discuss these reservations before presenting a genealogical consideration of the single term syncretism. My purpose in considering the history of syncretism up to the present is not to enforce a standard usage confined to the domain of religion; nor is it my goal to promote syncretism to a position of primus inter pares in the company of all other terms for mixture. I see my approach instead as an attempt to illustrate historically that syncretism has an objectionable but nevertheless instructive past. If this past can be understood, then we are in a position to consciously reappropriate syncretism [Shaw and Stewart 2] and set the ethnographic study of cultural mixture on new tracks.This might seem too minimalist to readers who currently have no reservations about the term, but many anthropologists, on both sides of the Atlantic, have personally expressed to me strong reservations about ever employing the word syncretism. If asked why they hold this view, they are often unable to articulate a specific reason. Some, however, did express one or both of the following objections: (1) syncretism is a pejorative term, one that derides mixture, and/or (2) syncretism presupposes "purity" in the [End Page 40] traditions that combine. Both of these reservations will be considered below, but it is the broad disagreement within the anthropological community on the appropriateness of the very term syncretism that has stimulated this inquiry. Such ambivalence reflects basic uncertainties about how to conceptualize cultural mixture. Current Discussions of Mixture Cultures, if we still wish to retain this term (and I do), are porous; they are open to intermixture with other, different cultures and they are subject to historical change precisely on account of these influences. 2 This has no doubt always been the case. Certainly decolonization and the entry into a postmodernity where master narratives of purity and homogeneity are vulnerable to doubt have contributed to valorizing recognitions of mixture where formerly they had been stigmatized as inauthentic and hence uninteresting for anthropological study. Research in the Caribbean, in Sidney Mintz's view, started relatively late precisely because this region "was considered theoretically unfruitful... its peoples supposedly lacked culture, or were culturally bastardized" [303].Cultural borrowing and interpenetration are today seen as part of the very nature of cultures [Glissant 140-41; Rosaldo, Foreword xv]. To phrase it more accurately, syncretism describes the process by which cultures constitute themselves at any given point in time. Today's hybridization will simply give way to tomorrow's hybridization, the form of which will be dictated by historico-political events and contingencies. In examining cultural hybridity, writers such as Edward Said and James Clifford [Predicament 14-15] have lifted syncretism out of the framework of acculturation. Syncretism is no longer a transient "stage" which will disappear when, with time, assimilation occurs. As Said... (shrink)

In the Summer 2017 NCBQ, Joshua Evans strongly criticized arguments made by Charles Camosy about the possibility of a prenatal child being a material mortal threat to her mother. Here Camosy demonstrates that the formal/material debate remains open for non-dissenting Catholic moral theologians. He also shows that his reference to just-war theory is used to discuss innocence; it is not evidence of a particular methodology. Despite Evans’s claim to the contrary, Camosy notes multiple examples where he affirms the uniqueness (...) of pregnancy and the special duty of parents to children. He argues for full deference to the magisterium in matters where doctrine has been defined and urges solid theological grounding for teachings on abortion when the mother’s life is at risk, especially given the profound personal and political issues at stake. (shrink)

Some of Austin's general statements about the doctrines of sense-datum philosophy are reviewed. It is concluded that Austin thought that in these doctrines "directly see" is given a new but inadequately explained and defined use. Were this so, the philosophical use of "directly see" would lack a definite sense and this would correspondingly affect the doctrines. They would lack definite truth-value. Against this, it is argued that the philosopher's use of "directly see" does not support Austin's general thesis that (...) the sense-datum doctrines lack truth-value. (shrink)

In hospital rooms across the country, doctors, nurses, patients, and their families grapple with questions of life and death. Recently, they have been joined at the bedside by a new group of professional experts, bioethicists, whose presence raises a host of urgent questions. How has bioethics evolved into a legitimate specialty? When is such expertise necessary? How do bioethicists make their decisions? And whose interests do they serve? Renowned sociologist Charles L. Bosk has been observing medical care for thirty-five (...) years. In What Would You Do? he brings his extensive experience to bear on these questions while reflecting on the ethical dilemmas that his own ethnographic research among surgeons and genetic counselors has provoked. Bosk considers whether the consent given to ethnographers by their subjects can ever be fully voluntary and informed. He questions whether promises of confidentiality and anonymity can or should be made. And he wonders if social scientists overestimate the benefits of their work while downplaying the risks. Vital for practitioners of both the newly prominent field of bioethics and the long-established craft of ethnography, What Would You Do? will also engross anyone concerned with how our society addresses difficult health care issues. (shrink)

The title of this book, __Leibniz's Mill__, is taken from Leibniz's famous metaphor in support of a dualism between the mind, or self, and the body. Given that Descartes constructed the most famous defense of mind/body dualism, the first chapter is a basic exposition and defense of Descartes' arguments, as well as Leibniz's supporting argument. Charles Landesman's basic claim, argued with clarity and philosophical precision, is that dualism is to be preferred to materialism; namely, the self is not (...) reducible to the body, mental processes are not reducible to brain processes, and the idea that the self is a mental substance constitutes the best understanding of all the facts of mental life. Landesman takes up the central philosophical topics on the nature of the self and the mind in arguing that dualism is a defensible position, even if our mental life is dependent in some respects on the body. Dependency is not the same as identity. Nor should one deny that many bodily events are dependent upon states of mind. He examines our knowledge of other minds, the mind's knowledge of itself, and Descartes' famous argument "I think, therefore I am"; efforts by philosophers such as Hume, Nietzsche, William James, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger to deny the reality of a substantial ego; the mind's way of knowing of the physical world, with its "great deception of sense"; and finally, the teleological structure of human action and the problem of free will. Landesman argues that the dualism of mind and body is perfectly compatible with modern science and that, contrary to the claims of many philosophers, there is no reason to hold that science presupposes a naturalistic or materialistic framework. "Charles Landesman shows that Cartesian mind-body dualism is alive and well and more plausible than its naturalistic and materialistic competitors. This is a first-rate piece of work that will be of real interest to philosophers and educated readers with interests in the philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and epistemology. It should find a large readership among those who are looking for an alternative to the physicalist perspective that has long dominated the academy." --_Stewart Goetz, Ursinus College_ "Charles Landesman writes effortlessly, conveying to readers a rich alternative to today's mainline forms of materialism. This is a book that is comparable to Richard Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_ or Roderick M. Chisholm's _Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study_. Like the former, it is historical and substantial, like the latter it is unapologetic in advancing with clear arguments an under-represented position." --_Charles Taliaferro, St. Olaf College _. (shrink)

The use of conventional logical connectives either in logic, in mathematics, or in both cannot determine the meanings of those connectives. This is because every model of full conventional set theory can be extended conservatively to a model of intuitionistic set plus class theory, a model in which the meanings of the connectives are decidedly intuitionistic and nonconventional. The reasoning for this conclusion is acceptable to both intuitionistic and classical mathematicians. En route, I take a detour to prove that, (...) class='Hi'>given strictly intuitionistic principles, classical negation cannot exist. (shrink)

In reflecting on the relation between early empiricist conceptions of the mind and more experimentally motivated materialist philosophies of mind in the mid-eighteenth century, I suggest that we take seriously the existence of what I shall call ‘phantom philosophical projects’. A canonical empiricist like Locke goes out of his way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind” (...) (Essay, I.i.2). An equally prominent thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to make an elementary mistake, given such a clear statement, when he claims that Locke’s project was a “physiology of the understanding,” in the Preface to the A edition of the first Critique). A first question, then, would be: what is this physiology of the understanding, if it was not Locke’s project? Did anyone undertake such a project? If not, what would it have resembled? My second and related case comes out of a remark the Hieronymus Gaub makes in a letter to Charles Bonnet of 1761: criticizing materialist accounts of mind and mind-body relations such as La Mettrie’s, Gaub suggests that what is needed is a thorough study of the “mechanics of the soul,” and that Bonnet could write such a study. What is the mechanics of the soul, especially given that it is presented as a non-materialist project? To what extent does it resemble the purported “physiology of the understanding”? And more generally, what do both of these phantom projects have to do with a process we might describe as a ‘naturalization of the soul’? (shrink)