In the face of the moral pluralism that results from the death of God and the abandonment of a God's eye perspective in secular philosophy, bioethics arose in a context that renders it essentially incapable of giving answers to substantive moral questions, such as concerning the permissibility of abortion, human embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, etc. Indeed, it is only when bioethics understands its own limitations and those of secular moral philosophy in general can it better appreciate those tasks that (...) it can actually usefully perform in both the clinical and academic setting. It is the task of this paper to understand and reevaluate bioethics by understanding these limits. Academic bioethicists can analyze ideas, concepts, and claims necessary to understanding the moral questions raised in health care, assessing the arguments related to these issues, and provide an understanding of the different moral perspectives on bioethical issues. In the clinical setting, bioethicists can provide legal advice, serve as experts on IRBs, mediating disputes, facilitating decision-making and risk management, and clarifying normative issues. However, understanding this is only possible when one understands the history, genesis, and foundations of bioethics and its inability to provide a resolution to postmodern moral pluralism. (shrink)

The cortical visual mechanisms involved in processing spatial relationships remain subject to debate. According to one current view, the ''dorsal stream'' of visual areas, emanating from primary visual cortex and culminating in the posterior parietal cortex, mediates this aspect of visual processing. More recently, others have argued that while the dorsal stream provides egocentric coding of visual location for motor control, the separate ''ventral'' stream is needed for allocentric spatial coding. We have assessed the visual form agnosic patient DF, whose (...) lesion mainly affects the ventral stream, on a prehension task requiring allocentric spatial coding. She was presented with transparent circular disks. Each disk had circular holes cut in it. DF was asked to reach out and grasp the disk by placing her fingers through the holes. The disks either had three holes (for forefinger, middle finger, and thumb) or two holes (for forefinger and thumb). The distance between the forefinger and thumb holes, and the orientation of the line formed by them, were independently varied. DF was quite unable to adjust her grip aperture or her hand orientation in the three-hole task. Although she was able to orient her hand appropriately for the two-hole disks, she still remained unable to adjust her grip aperture to the distance between the holes. These findings are consistent with the idea that allocentric processing of spatial information requires a functioning ventral stream, even when the information is being used to guide a motor response. (shrink)

The object of this article is to examine, with the work of Jeremy Bentham as the principal example, one strand in the complex pattern of European social theory during the second half of the eighteenth century. This was of course the period not only of the American and French revolutions, but of the culmination of the movements of thought constituting what we know as the Enlightenment. Like all great historical episodes, the Enlightenment was both the fulfilment of long-established processes and (...) the inauguration of new processes of which the fulfilment lay in the future. Thus the seminal ideas of seventeenth-century rationalism realized and perhaps exhausted their potentialities in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The ideas with which this article is concerned, however—conveniently grouped and labelled as the ideas of utilitarianism—only began to achieve systematic development in these later decades of the eighteenth century. Within that period—during the first half and more of Bentham's long life—attempts to apply those ideas to the solution of social problems met largely with failure and frustration. Yet unrealized potentialities remained, the realization of which was reserved for a time when the world of the philosophes no longer existed. The movements for social and political reform which have played so large a part in modern history since the French Revolution may be judged in widely differing ways; but whatever the verdict, these movements surely cannot be understood without due consideration of that part of their origins which lies in eighteenth-century utilitarianism. (shrink)

With the rise of the scientific authority of neuroscience and recent neurotechnological advances, the understanding of the human being and its future is beginning to undergo a radical change. As a result, a normative and existential vacuum is opening and hopes as well as fears about the future are flourishing. Some philosophers are anticipating a broad neuroscientific disenchantment, sociocultural disruption and a new existential anxiety related to the clash of the neuroscientific and humanistic image of humans. Others are expecting the (...) technological and scientific developments to lead to human enhancement and existential emancipation. In the first part of this commentary, I outline these two contrasting responses to the rise of neurocentricism and non-anthropocentrism. In the second part, I argue that the divide between the old anthropocentric paradigm and the emerging neuroscientific is misconceived and that literature and fictional narrative are particularly illustrative of the possibility of integrating scientific materialism with humanism. I use the contemporary literary-philosophical work The Creative Act by Rick Rubin to show that humanist ideas can indeed cohere with anti-essentialist and neuroscientific notions of personal identity and self and how existential meaning and comfort can be found in a neuroscientifically and deterministically explained world. (shrink)

The act of exchanging one thing for another seems to involve a promise. The confidence needed to relinquish something one has on the understanding that one will receive what another has in exchange can be expressed in terms of resolve. In binding oneself, one thinks that if the other binds himself or herself to perform a given action, then he or she will do that action. In cases in which one person's action does not precede the other's, one's promise involves (...) thinking that if the other binds himself or herself, then he or she will carry out the promised action. (shrink)

The question of whether the Einstein shift in clock rates has a bearing on the validity of the fourth Heisenberg uncertainty relation is discussed. It is shown that, even if one would accept all the relevant assumptions and conclusions of Bohr and Rosenfeld, this uncertainty relation could not be saved by an Einstein shift in the case of an electrostatic weighing. This means that the Einstein shift does not play any role in determining the validity of the fourth Heisenberg relation.

The author re-Examines the evidence (including the manuscript evidence) relevant to an understanding of the historico-Philosophical relationship of john locke to rene descartes and, Consequently, Of the relationship of "the empirical school" to "rationalism." arguing against a standardly accepted view (that of, Among others, Richard aaron), He suggests that, Both early and late, In the drafts of 1671 and in the "mature" "essay", Locke rejected descartes' science and philosophy of science precisely because he rejected his epistemology; furthermore, He rejected descartes' (...) epistemology precisely because he rejected his method and logic. (shrink)

Collected lectures of the author on Sufism and Islamic philosophy.

Das mythologische Handbuch Die uns uberlieferte Endfassung von Apollodors Sagensammlung stammt vermutlich aus dem 1. Jahrhundert n. Chr. Die Wurzeln dieses mythologischen Handbuchs reichen aber, wie Paul Drager nachweist, wesentlich weiter zuruck. Wir finden hier - unbeeinflusst von Pindar, Apollonios Rhodios oder den grossen Tragodiendichtern - die Urfassung der antiken Gotter- und Heldensagen: von Uranos und Gaia bis zur Heimkehr des Odysseus nach Ithaka.".

Conspiracy theories are widespread across the world, including in the Arab Middle East and North Africa. The term “conspiracy” (muˀāmara) itself is also frequently used in contemporary Arabic. However, we know little about when and how the term emerged and how it was used originally. Based on a digital corpus of Arab newspapers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as plain text versions of classical Arabic literature, this article finds that muˀāmara appears and rises to prominence (...) in the late nineteenth century in the emerging Arabic-speaking public sphere. The term was probably coined in response to influence from European public discourse at the same time, which included conspiracy theories. Unlike that European discourse and today's Arabic conspiracy talk, the early usage of muˀāmara had little to do with either conspiracy theories or religion. The word was used in a more sober way than in Europe. (shrink)

This paper reports two cases in Hong Kong involving two native Chinese adolescent cancer patients (APs) who were denied their rights to consent to necessary treatments refused by their parents, resulting in serious harm. We argue that the dynamics of the 'AP-physician-family-relationship' and the dominant role Chinese families play in medical decision-making (MDM) are best understood in terms of the tendency to hierarchy and parental authoritarianism in traditional Confucianism. This ethic has been confirmed and endorsed by various Chinese writers from (...) Mainland China and Hong Kong. Rather than giving an unqualified endorsement to this ethic, based more on cultural sentimentalism than rational moral reasoning, we warn that a strong familism in MDM, which deprives 'weak' family members of rights, represents the less desirable elements of this tradition, against which healthcare professionals working in this cultural milieu need to safeguard. Specifically for APs, we suggest that parental authority and family integrity should be re-interpreted in terms of parental responsibility and the enhancement of children's interests respectively, as done in the West. This implies that when parents refuse to consent to necessary treatment and deny their adolescent children's right to consent, doctors, as the only remaining advocates of the APs' interest, have the duty to inform the state, which can override parental refusal to enable the doctors to fulfill their professional and moral obligations. In so doing the state exercises its 'parens patriae' power to defend the defenseless in society and the integrity of the medical profession. (shrink)

Theories of linguistic meaning have been a major influence in twentieth century philosophy. This is due, in part, to the assumption that meaning is the crucial and interesting thing about language. To know the meaning of an expression is to understand it, and since understanding is central to philosophy in many different ways, it should be no surprise that the notion of meaning has often taken center stage. The aim of this paper is to briefly explore some influential views concerning (...) linguistic meaning. The final objective will be to demonstrate some alternatives which are open to theory with respect to this notion,for there are those who have wanted to ban talk of meaning from serious scientific discourse. The point is that many of the disadvantages of traditional notions of meaning are avoidable¾in particular, they are avoidable along a path which starts from Frege and moves on via Tarski and Davidson. (shrink)

One area of language research that has received a great deal of attention, both theoretical and empirical, is the use of anaphoric expressions. Such expressions can be thought of as serving two functions: the primary function is to refer back to a referent from previous discourse, and the secondary, but no less important, function is to help provide discourse coherence and structure. Third person pronouns such as he or she are anaphoric expressions par excellence, but fuller anaphoric expressions, including demonstrative (...) and definite noun phrases (NPs) such as that woman and the woman are also used in natural discourse. In this chapter we shall focus primarily on issues concerning definite NP anaphor resolution, and in particular we shall examine the interaction of two factors that are related to the identification of antecedents: the focus status of the antecedent and the semantic relationship between the antecedent and the anaphor (including semantic overlap). After presenting these factors, we will discuss one particular approach to anaphor resolution, Almor's (1999) Informational Load Hypothesis (ILH), and present three experiments that examined the findings presented in Almor (1999). The results of these experiments will lead us to consider in more detail the secondary, discourse-structuring function of anaphoric expressions. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se estudia la crítica que Charles Taylor ha formulado al modelo del liberalismo procedimental y a la concepción de racionalidad práctica moderna. El punto de partida es que la crítica de Taylor se sustenta en los aportes de la tradición filosófica sustantiva, la cual posibili..