Harper appeals to philosophy, literature, psychiatry and theology from Augustine to R. D. Laing to present what he calls a coherent picture of the major existential themes found in interior experience. This is not a book in existential philosophy in the usual sense. Indeed Harper argues that academic philosophers have failed to adequately treat interior experience. Interior experience, he says, is largely emotional and does not yield easily to analysis and conceptualization. Harper’s style is exploratory and suggestive, even lyrical at (...) points, as he interprets human experience in accordance with the themes: existence, insecurity, the void, self-isolation and presence. Human existence is, according to Harper, what I make it to be. Yet it is also characterized by insecurity or anxiousness, a sense of estrangement rather than fulfillment and reconciliation. The experience of contemporary man is characterized not only by insecurity but also by a sense of emotional and spiritual disability. God is absent and man experiences reality as indifferent and himself as alone and isolated in a void. Man is not, however, without hope for there is in existentialism and in personal experience the parallel theme of presence, being open to reality as grace, which gives hope of acceptance and love, satisfying the whole man. Harper’s study is scattered with references to Augustine, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Camus, Sartre and others. But these references are controlled from Harper’s own perspective, the result of his meditations on his own and other reports of interior experience. In the Afterword, Harper makes this perspective and his view of the nature of philosophy more clear.—E. T. L. (shrink)

David Blank presents a new translation into clear modern English of a key treatise by one of the greatest of ancient philosophers, together with the first ever commentary on this work. Sextus Empiricus' Against the Grammarians is a polemical attack on ancient Greek ideas about grammar, and provides one of the best examples of sustained Sceptical reasoning.

The history of the National Health Service research ethics system in the UK and some of the key drivers for its change into the present system are described. It is suggested that the key drivers were the unnecessary delay of research, the complexity of the array of processes and contradictions between research ethics committee (REC) decisions. It is then argued that the primary drivers for this change are and will be replicated by the systems of research ethics review being put (...) in place at UK universities in response to the Economic and Social Research Council research ethics framework. It is argued that this is particularly problematic for multi-centre review and for researchers who switch institutions. Finally, some potential solutions to this problem and their feasibility are discussed. (shrink)

There has been a troublesome anomaly in the UK between cash payment to men for sperm donation and the effective assumption that women will pay to donate eggs. Some commentators, including Donald Evans in this journal, have argued that the anomaly should be resolved by treating women on the same terms as men. But this argument ignores important difficulties about property in the body, particularly in relation to gametes. There are good reasons for thinking that the contract model and payment (...) for gametes are both inappropriate, and that a model based on altruism should be applied to both sexes. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is devoted to the analysis of the urgent problem of the information society: the overload of a person with information and, as a result, the impossibility of adequate formation and development of the personality; as well as the problem of "digitization" of human existence and the formation of a new reality of dataism. Theoretical basis. A lot of modern scientific works are devoted to the analysis of the information society, its problems and features. The information society is (...) a logical continuation of the scientific and technological revolution, which led to the rapid growth of scientific knowledge and the technology development. In the 20th century, technologies have touched the sphere of knowledge and information, as a result of which the formation and development of the information society, or "knowledge society", takes place. Information becomes the main resource in it, and, one way or another, a person’s life is inextricably connected with the information space. With the information society formation, the problem of information search and processing becomes one of the most urgent. It turns out that despite the abundance and availability of information, it is very difficult to determine its relevance. A lot of effort is spent on developing information retrieval algorithms. Another problem is related to the person’s inability to process large amounts of data. This situation begins to influence not only the education process and professional activity, but also the formation of a person’s personality. A person is "lost" in the information space and gradually loses his/her "I". Algorithms for data analysis come to the rescue, but gradually, instead of giving a person material for thought, they begin to make decisions on their own, and therefore, live life instead of a person. With the advent of Big Data processing algorithms, a new ideological paradigm appears – dataism, which predicts the merger of a person with the general data flow. Originality. The authors make assumptions that the dataistic future is "natural". A lot of works, including in the framework of philosophy, are focused on the problem of "dissolving" a person in the information space and finding ways to overcome it. But, in our opinion, this process is a completely logical continuation of human evolution. Conclusions. Existence of a person as a data flow is not a problem and a threat, but a new dimension of his/her being, and, therefore, requires a careful study and formulation of the main principles of this form of existence. (shrink)

The nature of the Plague described by Thucydides in Book 2, chapter 49, has long been discussed both by medical and by classical scholars. Of numerous suggested identifications none has found general approval; and it is doubtful whether any opinion is more prevalent today than that the problem is insoluble. The classical scholar is handicapped by his ignorance of medical science; his medical colleague has often been led astray by translations deficient in exactitude if not disfigured by error. The difficulties (...) are great enough: but there is one indispensable preliminary task which can be undertaken with some prospect of success. If Thucydides' description is to be compared with modern records, it is necessary first to determine what the Greek words mean; and that can only be done by determining how far the Greek is expressed in the technical terms of contemporary medical science. It is obvious that Thucydides required a special vocabulary for this part of his work; and in fact over forty words in chapters 49 and 50 are unexampled elsewhere in his History, and a dozen more are used in meanings unexampled elsewhere. It is certain that a number of medical treatises were in circulation in Thucydides' lifetime, and that a more or less standard vocabulary had been or was being established. Now if it can be shown that the great majority of the terms employed by Thucydides in ch. 49 recur, apparently with the same meanings, as standard terms in the contemporary doctors, our second task—the comparison of Thucydides' description with modern records—will become a more rational undertaking than it was before, no longer the doubtful speculation which many of the modern doctors suppose it to be, thinking as they do that they have to deal with a layman's generalities expressed in literary language. (shrink)

How do we acquire knowledge through a sensory input from our environment? In The Enigma of Perception, D.L.C. Maclachlan revives the traditional causal representative theory of perception which dominated philosophical thinking for hundreds of years by revealing the important element of truth the theory contained. The traditional theory was not a complete explanation of perception, because it presupposed a causal system including both the physical objects and the subjective experiences. The pattern of inference from sensations to external objects, which lies (...) at its heart, is nevertheless legitimate, because the assumptions on which it depends are generally recognized as true. The emerging enigma is how to explain this original knowledge of the world on which the traditional theory depends. The key idea is that sense experience is constructed as a response to sensory input - an act whose purpose is to represent a reality beyond the cognitive subject. The Enigma of Perception develops original ideas to explain this process in detail, with help from numerous philosophers from John Locke to David Chalmers. (shrink)

Sperber and Wilson (1987) have criticised Fodor's (1983) pessimistic view about the possibility of a science of central systems. Fodor's pessimism stems from the holistic nature of central systems – people can access anything that they know when engaging in belief fixation. It is argued that Sperber and Wilsons theory of how relevance is realized during verbal comprehension fails to elucidate this crucial aspect of central processes. Their claims about how a context is selected are shown to presuppose the ability (...) to realize relevance. (shrink)

Sustained attention, a key cognitive skill that improves during childhood and adolescence, tends to be worse in some emotional and behavioural disorders. Sustained attention is typically studied in non-affective task contexts; here, we used a novel task to index performance in affective versus neutral contexts across adolescence (N = 465; ages 11–18). We asked whether: (i) performance would be worse in negative versus neutral task contexts; (ii) performance would improve with age; (iii) affective interference would be greater in younger adolescents; (...) (iv) adolescents at risk for depression and higher in anxiety would show overall worse performance; and (v) would show differential performance in negative contexts. Results indicated that participants performed more poorly in negative contexts and showed age-related performance improvements. Those at risk of depression performed more poorly than those at lower risk. However, there was no difference between groups as a result of affective context. For anxiety there was no difference in performance as a function of severity. However, those with higher anxiety showed less variance in their reaction times to negative stimuli than those with lower anxiety. One interpretation is that moderate levels of emotional arousal associated with anxiety make individuals less susceptible to the distracting effects of negative stimuli. (shrink)

Traditional theists are, with few exceptions, global semantic realists about the interpretation of external world statement. Realism of this kind is treated by many as a shibboleth of traditional Christianity, a sine qua non of theological orthodoxy. Yet, this love affair between theists and semantic realism is a poor match. I suggest that everyone (theist or no) has compelling evidence drawn from everyday linguistic practice to reject a realist interpretation of most external world statements. But theists have further reason to (...) forswear this view, because those who insist on global semantic realism open themselves to the charge of hubris of a theologically inappropriate kind. If the arguments in this paper are sound, then neither God nor any of us have reason to apply a realist interpretation to all or even most statements about the external world. (shrink)

In this thesis I shall summarize and critically examine the central features of the theories of values of four contemporary moral philosophers: A.J. Ayer, C.L. Stevenson, R.M. Hare, and P.H. Nowell - Smith. I shall first look back, however, to the theory of moral philosophy of the most influential 'forefather' of this group, David Hume. Hume's theory stands as a challenge to moral philosophers who would assume that moral judgments are primarily, in some sense, acts of 'reason'. Although our four (...) contemporaries follow Hume in this, his challenge, in the form I shall indicate shortly, will provide the main theme for this thesis. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley: Logic Although the logical system expounded by F. H. Bradley in The Principles of Logic is now almost forgotten, it had many virtues. To appreciate them, it is helpful to understand that Bradley had a very different view of logic from that prevalent today. He is hostile to the idea of … Continue reading Bradley, F. H.: Logic →.