There are three outstanding events in the internal history of Sparta during the sixth century. First, there is the constitutional settlement denning the functions of the Crown, the Senate, and the Assembly: this is now generally admitted to have taken place about 600 B.C. Secondly, there is the increase in the importance of the ephorate, a pseudo-democratic development associated with the ephor Chilon and the year 556. Thirdly, there is the decline in Spartan material culture; this process begins shortly after (...) the turn of the century with the abandonment of gold and ivory work, and culminates shortly after the middle of the century in an almost total collapse of artistic and cultural standards. (shrink)

This is one of the most controversial passages in Thucydides' Archaeological Introduction, and perhaps the least happily phrased. Scholiasts explain is as meaning Athens in other respects, Greece other than Athens. Jowett, whose suggestions have not on the whole been bettered by later commentators, suggests three main possibilities of interpretation.

In a recent re-assessment of the medical aspects of the Plague of Athens which is, to date, the most scholarly and comprehensive, Poole and Holladay have emphasized the tendency of many infectious diseases markedly to decline in virulence over decades and centuries and, sometimes, significantly to change their clinical manifestations. In the light of modern medicine they consider four possibilities: The Plague was a disease which still exists today. This they regard as improbable, It still exists in some remote place (...) or places unknown to medical science. This is discussed and dismissed, It became extinct, It was caused by an agent which nowadays causes a significantly different clinical syndrome. They conclude as follows: ‘The truth, we suggest, almost certainly lies in possibility or . But we can see no way of choosing between them. On either view the question: “What was the Athenian Plague?” is in principle unanswerable if the questioner is wanting to attach to the Plagsie the name of some modern disease or diseases’. (shrink)

This study investigated potential risk factors (coping, perfectionism and self-regulation) for substantial injuries in contemporary dance students using a prospective cohort design, as high-quality studies focusing on mental risk factors for dance injuries are lacking. Student characteristics (age, sex, BMI, educational program and history of injury) and psychological constructs (coping, perfectionism and self-regulation) were assessed using the Performing artist and Athlete Health Monitor (PAHM), a web-based system. Substantial injuries were measured with the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center (OSTRC) Questionnaire on (...) Health Problems and recorded on a monthly basis as part of the PAHM system. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to test the associations between potential risk factors (i.e. student characteristics and psychological constructs) and substantial injuries. 99 students were included in the analyses. During the academic year 2016-2017, 48 students (48.5%) reported at least one substantial injury. Of all factors included, coping skills (OR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.84–0.98), age (OR: 0.67; 95% CI: 0.46–0.98) and BMI (OR: 1.38; 95% CI: 1.05–1.80) were identified as significant risk factors in the multivariate analysis. The model explained 24% of the variance in the substantial injury group. Further prospective research into mental risk factors for dance injuries with larger samples sizes is needed to develop preventive strategies. Yet, dance schools could consider including coping skills training as part of injury prevention programs and, perhaps, providing special attention to younger dancers and those with a higher BMI through transitional programs to assist them in managing the stress they experience throughout their (academic) career. (shrink)

The book attempts, in as comprehensive a way as possible, to make clear the central issues for the theory of knowledge, so as to provide a framework for that subject and also to indicate something of the way in which, as the author believes, the issues should be faced.

D W Hamlyn; The Concept of Development, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 26–39, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.197.

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Consumer involvement in clinical research is an essential component of a comprehensive response during emergent health challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the moderation of research policies and regulation to facilitate research may raise ethical issues. Meaningful, diverse consumer involvement can help to identify practical approaches to prioritize, design, and conduct rapidly developed clinical research amid current events. Consumer involvement might also elucidate the acceptability of flexible ethics review approaches that aim to protect participants whilst being sensitive to the challenging context (...) in which research is taking place. This article describes the main ethical challenges arising from pandemic research and how involving consumers and the community could enable resolution of such issues. (shrink)

There has been a good deal of interest in recent years in what Franz Brentano had to say about the notion of ‘intentional objects’ and about intentionality as a criterion of the mental. There has been less interest in his classification of mental phenomena. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint Brentano asserts and argues for the thesis that mental phenomena can be classified in terms of three kinds of mental act or activity, all of which are directed towards an (...) immanent object. These are, respectively, presentation, judgment and what he calls the phenomena of love and hate. Once again, less interest has been shown in what he has to say about the last of these three than in what he says about the others. I wish to take Brentano's views as the point of departure for a discussion of love and hate, since these notions seem to me to have a good deal of philosophical interest, for at least two main reasons. First, I have recently had some concern with the part that personal relations play in our understanding of others and of ourselves, and love and hate seem to be very important elements in such relations. Second, love and hate have long seemed to me to provide important counter-examples to some prevalent philosophical theories about the emotions. I shall take this issue first. (shrink)

It is through our actions that we affect the way the world goes. Whenever we face a choice of what to do, we also face a choice of which of various possible worlds to actualize. Moreover, whenever we act intentionally, we act with the aim of making the world go a certain way. It is only natural, then, to suppose that an agent's reasons for action are a function of her reasons for preferring some of these possible worlds to others, (...) such that what she has most reason to do is to bring about the possible world which, of all those available to her, is the one that she has most reason to want to obtain. This is what is known as the `teleological conception of practical reasons'. Whether this is the correct conception of practical reasons is important not only in its own right, but also in virtue of its potential implications for what sort of moral theory we should accept. Below, I argue that the teleological conception is indeed the correct conception of practical reasons. (shrink)

D W Hamlyn; Education and Wittgenstein's Philosophy, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 213–222, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Background. South Africa (SA) currently has a golden opportunity to legislate on human heritable genome editing (HHGE), as the country is revising its assisted reproductive technology regulations. A set of sub-regulations that deals with HHGE, which could seamlessly slot into the current regulations, has already been developed. The principles underlying the proposed set of sub-regulations are as follows: HHGE should be regulated to improve the lives of the people and should not be banned; the well-established standard of safety and efficacy (...) should be used in the regulation of HHGE; quality of life is what matters, and not preserving a ‘normal’ genome; parents’ reproductive autonomy must be respected; and equality of access to approved HHGE technology should be promoted. Objectives. To ascertain whether the proposed set of sub-regulations that deals with HHGE is aligned with public opinion in SA, and SA’s Bill of Rights. Methods. Public opinion in SA is determined with reference to a deliberative public engagement study on HHGE conducted among South Africans, and the relevant rights in the Bill of Rights are interpreted with reference to recent case law. Results. This proposed set of sub-regulations that deals with HHGE is aligned with public opinion in SA, and SA’s Bill of Rights. Conclusion. Despite the legal and ethical complexities of HHGE, the proposed set of sub-regulations provides a targeted and effective legislative approach. They fit seamlessly into the country’s existing health law framework, creating specific legal standards for HHGE that align with both public opinion and the country’s Bill of Rights. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To study empirically whether ethical theory (from the mainstream principles-based, virtue-based, and feminist schools) usefully describes the approaches doctors and nurses take in everyday patient care. DESIGN: Ethnographic methods: participant observation and interviews, the transcripts of which were analysed to identify themes in ethical approaches. SETTING: A British old-age psychiatry ward. PARTICIPANTS: The more than 20 doctors and nurses on the ward. RESULTS: Doctors and nurses on the ward differed in their conceptions of the principles of beneficence and respect (...) for patient autonomy. Nurses shared with doctors a commitment to liberal and utilitarian conceptions of these principles, but also placed much greater weight on relationships and character virtues when expressing the same principles. Nurses also emphasised patient autonomy, while doctors were more likely to advocate beneficence, when the two principles conflicted. CONCLUSION: The study indicates that ethical theory can, contrary to the charges of certain critics, be relevant to everyday health care-if it (a) attends to social context and (b) is flexible enough to draw on various schools of theory. (shrink)

D W Hamlyn; Need Philosophy of Education be so Dreary?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 159–165, https://doi.org/10.1.

There are substantial data establishing that surrogates are often mistaken in predicting what treatments incompetent patients would have wanted and that supplements such as advance directives have not resulted in significant improvements. Rid and Wendler’s Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) proposal will attempt to gather data about what similar patients would prefer in a variety of treatment choices. It accepts the usual goal of patient autonomy and the Substituted Judgment principle for surrogate decisions. I provide reasons for questioning sole reliance on (...) autonomy when surrogates, not patients, are deciding and for giving some independent weight to patient well-being. Moreover, that family members, typical surrogates, will know best what the patient if incompetent would have wanted is not the only reason why they are chosen. The more pressing problem is that the PPP would fail to remove the more serious mistakes that empirical psychology over the last few decades has shown to infect such decision making. (shrink)

Social scientists could learn some useful things from philosophy. Here I shall discuss what I take to be one such thing: a better understanding of the concept of utility. There are several reasons why a better understanding may be useful. First, this concept is commonly found in the writings of social scientists, especially economists. Second, utility is the main ingredient in utilitarianism, a perspective on morality that, traditionally, has been very influential among social scientists. Third, and most important, with a (...) better understanding of utility comes, as I shall try to show here, a better understanding of “personal welfare”. or, in other words, of what may be said to be in people's best interests. Such an understanding is useful to social scientists and philosophers alike, whether for utilitarian purposes or not. (shrink)

In a recent article [Mertz 2001] in this journal I argued for the virtues of a realist ontology of relation instances (unit attributes). A major strength of this ontology is an assay of ontic ('material') predication that yields an account of individuation without the necessity of positing and defending 'bare particulars'. The crucial insight is that it is the unifying agency or combinatorial aspect of a relation instance as predicable that is for ontology the principium individuationis [Mertz 2002; 1996]. Or (...) in short, what is ontically predicable, precisely as such, is the cause of individuation. As a preface to this positive doctrine I offered arguments against the coherence of bare particulars as defended in an article by J. P. Moreland [1998]. In a reply contained in this issue Moreland and Timothy Pickavance (hereafter M/P) propose to answer my objections [2002]. The response that follows provides reasons why, I contend, M/P have not succeeded in parrying my objections to bare particulars. (shrink)

Central to Elements is an assay of the attributional union properties and relations have with their subjects, a topic historically left metaphorical. The work critiques eight Aristotelian assumptions concerning attribute dependence and ‘inherence’, per se subjects, attributes as agent-organizers, and unity-by-a-shared-one. Groups of these assumptions are seen to yield contradiction, vicious regress, or other problems. This analysis, joined with insights from an assay of ubiquitous structure, motivate ten theses explicating attribution and its primary ontic status. The theses detail: attributes proper (...) as individuated instances, structure as instance-generated facts and their two forms of composition, the conditioning role and universal nature of instances’ component intensions, the primacy of attribute instances for generating all forms of composition and complex entities, and identity and indiscernibility criteria for the latter. Principal is the insight that attribution is intension-determined combinatorial agency. It is its systematizing implications that provide solutions to classic problems, e.g., Composition, Individuation, and Universals, and in net generate a comprehensive one-category structuralist ontology. (shrink)

Is it possible to do something intentionally and yet be unconscious of so doing? Many philosophers would answer ‘No’ to this question on the grounds that it is of the essence of intention that if we do something intentionally we do it knowing what we are doing.

A model of spontaneous collapse of fermionic degrees of freedom in a quantum field is presented which has the advantages that it explicitly maintains energy conservation and gives results in agreement with an existing numerical method for calculating quantum state evolution, namely the quantum trajectories model.

INTRODUCTION If there is one underlying implication in the following essays it is the inadequacy of the information-processing model for cognitive ...