Gray's integration of the different levels of description and explanation in his theory is problematic: The introduction of consciousness into his theorising consists of the mind-brain identity assumption, which tells us nothing new. There need not be correlations between levels of description. Gray's account does not extend beyond “brute” correlation. Integration must be achieved in a principled, mutually constraining way.

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

We consider the desirability, or otherwise, of various forms of induction in the light of certain principles and inductive methods within predicate uncertain reasoning. Our general conclusion is that there remain conflicts within the area whose resolution will require a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationship between individuals and properties.

As the community corrections system has moved away from a focus on rehabilitation, it has been suggested that criminal offenders are no longer understood psychologically, but rather as rational actors for whom criminality is a choice. Rehabilitative efforts thus aim to guide these choices. Utilizing mixed methodology that draws on observational, interview, and case note data collected within the probation/parole system of a western U.S. state, I suggest that both officers’ conceptualizations of the criminal self and the rehabilitative strategies they (...) use are gendered. I find that officers view the male criminal self as flawed or underdeveloped and the female as permeable and amorphous, that is, lacking firm boundaries. In response to these constructions, officers aim to rehabilitate men largely by encouraging economic roles and responsibilities, while for women, rehabilitation aims to solidify boundaries: discouraging relationship formation and containing emotions. The differences identified point to ways in which gendered concepts of the criminal self contribute to gender disparities in contemporary supervision. (shrink)

Current thinking and research on consciousness and the brain.

In Pure Inductive Logic, the rational principle of Predicate Exchangeability states that permuting the predicates in a given language L and replacing each occurrence of a predicate in an L-sentence phi according to this permutation should not change our belief in the truth of phi. In this paper we study when a prior probability function w on a purely unary language L satisfying Predicate Exchangeability also satisfies the principle of Unary Language Invariance.

This discussion is grounded in Aristotelian–Thomistic realism and takes the position that nursing is a practical science. As an exposition of the title statement, distinctions are made between opinion and truth, and the speculative, productive and practical sciences. Sources of opinion and truth are described and a discussion follows that truth can be achieved through knowing principles and causes of the natural kind behind phenomena. It is proposed that humans are the natural kind behind nursing phenomena. Thus, human nature provides (...) proper principles (the truth) of nursing practice. (shrink)

In this paper we consider a natural generalization of the Principle of Instantial Relevance and give a complete characterization of the probabilistic belief functions satisfying this principle as a family of discrete probability functions parameterized by a single real δ ∊ [0, 1).

Preparing to lecture on Aristotle's contribution to Nursing at the International Philosophy of Nursing Conference August 22, 2016, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, I came upon the recently published article by my IPONS colleague, Allmark (2016), “Aristotle for Nursing.” Allmark (2016) provides a comprehensive and understandable overview of Aristotle's philosophical system including the substantial nature of being and the four causes of change. Nurses using Aristotle to support practice and theoretical research will benefit from a careful reading of Allmark to (...) enrich their use of the realist understanding of knowledge of nature (epistemology) and the matter–form causal relationships within natural being (ontology and teleology). Allmark carefully displays the distinction between good health and flourishing; a distinction sometimes hard to grasp. Nurses are concerned with the end of health, but cannot achieve for others, the fullness of living which is flourishing.We will limit ourselves to expanding three areas that seem important, first, that nursing is much more than a productive science or craft, second, that Aristotle does provide an important note on the persistence of the soul, and, third, while Aristotle does not address the possibility of a personal creative highest being as Allmark says, his references to the divine are worth considering. (shrink)

In Portraits of American Philosophy, eight of America's most prominent philosophers offer autobiographical narratives that remind us that the life of a scholar is both a tale of personal struggle and an adventure in ideas.

(2013). Statistical models as cognitive models of individual differences in reasoning. Argument & Computation: Vol. 4, Formal Models of Reasoning in Cognitive Psychology, pp. 89-102. doi: 10.1080/19462166.2012.674061.

The legal framework governing claims of medical negligence is extensively documented within South African (SA) jurisprudence, with a predominant focus on the liability of medical practitioners. In contrast, the liability of pharmacists has received comparatively scant attention. This issue was recently highlighted by a case in which a woman from the Western Cape initiated legal action against Clicks, a leading health, beauty and wellness retailer and SA’s largest retail pharmacy chain, alleging that the provision of incorrect medication nearly cost her (...) life. At the time of writing, the case has yet to advance to trial. This article explores the legal and ethical dimensions of medical negligence attributed to pharmacists within the context of their professional duties. Additionally, it investigates how similar cases are adjudicated in foreign jurisdictions, with a specific focus on the US. (shrink)

The question naturally arises: Is public art inherently violent, or is it a provocation to violence? Is violence built into the monument in its very conception? Or is violence simply an accident that befalls some monuments, a matter of the fortunes of history? The historical record suggests that if violence is simply an accident that happens to public art, it is one that is always waiting to happen. The principal media and materials of public art are stone and metal sculpture (...) not so much by choice as by necessity. “A public sculpture,” says Lawrence Alloway, “should be invulnerable or inaccessible. It should have the material strength to resist attack or be easily cleanable, but it also needs a formal structure that is not wrecked by alterations.”12 The violence that surrounds public art is more, however, than simply the ever-present possibility of an accident—the natural disaster or random act of vandalism. Much of the world’s public art—memorials, monuments, triumphal arches, obelisks, columns, and statues—has a rather direct reference to violence in the form of war or conquest. From Ozymandias to Caesar to Napoleon to Hitler, public art has served as a kind of monumentalizing of violence, and never more powerfully than when it presents the conqueror as a man of peace, imposing a Napoleonic code or a pax Romana on the world. Public sculpture that is too frank or explicit about this monumentalizing of violence, whether the Assyrian palace reliefs of the ninth century b.c., or Morris’s bomb sculpture proposal of 1981, is likely to offend the sensibilities of a public committed to the repression of its own complicity in violence.13 The very notion of public art as we receive it is inseparable from what Jürgen Habermas has called “the liberal model of the public sphere,” a dimension distinct from the economic, the private, and the political. This ideal realm provides the space in which disinterested citizens may contemplate a transparent emblem of their own inclusiveness and solidarity, and deliberate on the general good, free of coercion, violence, or private interests.14 12. Lawrence Alloway, “The Public Sculpture Problem,” Studio International 184 : 124.13. See Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, “The Forms of Violence,” October, no. 8 : 17-29, for an important critique of the “narrativization” of violence in Western art and an examination of the alternative suggested by the Assyrian palace reliefs.14. Habermas first introduced this concept in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence . First published in 1962, it has since become the focus of an extensive literature. See also Habermas’s short encyclopedia article, “The Public Sphere,” trans. Sara Lennox and Frank Lennox, New German Critique 1 : 49-55, and the introduction to it by Peter Hohendahl in the same issue, pp. 45-48. I owe much to the guidance of Miriam Hansen and Lauren Berlant on this complex and crucial topic. W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry, is Gaylord Donnelly Distinguished Service Professor of English and art at the University of Chicago. His recent book is Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. (shrink)

J. B. Schneewind's "The Invention of Autonomy" has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition from late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over their work calls into question at least some of Schneewind's larger agenda for the history of ethics.

This volume continues the grouping of natural philosophers with cosmological interests and moral philosophers. With the natural philosophers, the contrast is between those who deny that true being can be found in the sensible world and those atomists who react to this monism in favour of the multiplicity of the sensible world. Since the exactly opposite conclusion has been recently maintained, Guthrie's assertion that Parmenides distinguished the concept of eternity from the concept of everlastingness is of particular interest. Of course, (...) Guthrie's acumen and erudition are so well established as to make his projected five volume history of Greek philosophy indispensable for any student—D. J. B. (shrink)

In explicating the terms "Evangelical," "Catholic," and "Reformed," Vassady outlines what he thinks are the essential characteristics of any new Church communion. His analysis generally develops along classical or Neo-Orthodox Protestant lines, as is most obvious in his treatment of the apostolic succession of the episcopacy. The new Church will have a functional episcopacy but "without declaring any particular doctrine of the episcopacy." Given Vassady's theological leanings and conception of the Church, it is somewhat anomalous that he thinks organic unity (...) so highly desirable.—D. J. B. (shrink)

Marsh borrows Richard McKeon's methodological notion of the "problematic" approach to intellectual history. Concentrating on their dialectical character, English criticism from 1650-1800 is explored in the writings of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Mark Akenside, David Hartley, and James Harris.—D. J. B.

Starting from Plato's statement in the Seventh Letter that Plato never intended to write down his philosophy in systematic form, Sinaiko conceives of the dialogues as attempts to combine the power of the spoken word with the written word while avoiding the limitations of either. Dramatic form and philosophic content are interdependent. The three dialogues are interrogated for statements about dialectic, and each dialogue's account of dialectic is taken to be complete in itself. It is not simply a dialectical method (...) which Plato is using; Being itself is dialectical, and there is no final philosophical system but rather an "infinite multiplicity of systems." While it is certain that philosophy for Plato can not be separated from the activity of philosophizing, Sinaiko's claim is far more controversial: that each dialogue "sets forth a complete ontology, an entire philosophical system." One might well disagree with that contention and other more detailed points of interpretation. But Sinaiko's position is defended ably and his book has a philosophical vitality which sets it apart from the usual pedantic efforts to expose this or that Platonic argument.—D. J. B. (shrink)

Interpreting European reactions to the outside world from the beginning of European history to the end of the nineteenth century, Baudet discusses Utopian literature, the idea of the "noble savage," and the search for the temporal and geographical location of paradise. Baudet argues that the more historically oriented and self-satisfied cultures were less inclined toward a nostalgic paradise. All in all, this is a fascinating little essay in social history.—D. J. B.

Beardsley and Beardsley are to be congratulated for providing a definitively "non-run-of-the-mill" introductory text which is entirely intelligible for the beginner and yet genuinely philosophical in content and presentation. Twelve very well written chapters, each with a bibliography, cover most of the important problems in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. The authors even try to convey that philosophy has human and moral relevance beyond game activity. A significant feature of the book is its intelligent and prolonged discussion of religious beliefs. The (...) authors keep their own views well into the background and make good their claim to stimulate the student's own thinking. For that reason, teachers of widely different philosophical persuasions will find this book equally useful. —D. J. B. (shrink)

Using the principles and sometimes the conclusions of his teacher Adolf Stöhr, Cleve insists that he is giving a philosophical interpretation and not simply a philological reconstruction of these Pre-Socratics. The philosophers have been divided into 1) "Religious Reformers", 2) "Philosophers of Nature", 3) "Champions of Culture Politics"—"The Glossomorphics". There will certainly be disagreement on some of Cleve's interpretations but it must be said that Cleve carries through his philosophical reconstruction with admirable lucidity and consistency though, occasionally, some of his (...) criticisms of the "philologists" are rather waspish. Nevertheless, this is a splendid and important study which is a tribute to the author's erudition and insight.—D. J. B. (shrink)

The greater part of this book consists of a series of general expositions of the works of de Saussure, Ogden and Richards, Whorf, Weisgerber, Mauthner and Wittgenstein. Moore and Russell, Carnap and the Vienna Circle, the Oxford school and other contemporary movements come in for only passing attention. A sizable bibliography provides useful references to German philosophers little known in this country.--J. B. B.

The excitement generated among philosophers by Chomsky's work arises not only from his contributions to the study of language but also from the ramifications of his work for general issues of epistemology and the philosophy of science. Chomsky has been attacking cherished dogmas of empiricism and its ally, behaviorism. He has suggested that Descartes—the favorite whipping boy of contemporary philosophers—and his theory of innate ideas provide a fruitful starting point for understanding and appreciating recent work in transformational linguistics. In this (...) brief historical essay, he sets forth what he takes to be the chief doctrines of Cartesian linguistics and traces their development through the nineteenth century. The essay is self-consciously written from a contemporary perspective and the topics selected for discussion are those which anticipate and are related to contemporary empirical linguistics. The importance of the creative aspect of language use, the distinction between deep and surface structure in language, the belief in a universal grammar are the key themes of this stimulating study in the history of ideas.—R. J. B. (shrink)

A collection of essays by a group of international scholars from Israel, England, the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and Argentina testify to the humane influence of Baumgardt. There is little that unites the subject matter of these essays and only one deals explicitly with the thought of Baumgardt. A bibliography of Baumgardt's writings is included.—R. J. B.

In his Preface, Vendler acknowledges the influence of Ziff, who taught him philosophy; Harris, who taught him linguistics; and Austin, who made him see the connection of the two. The influence of these three is manifest in both the philosophical style and content of this book. The opening chapter reviews the dispute between the staunch defenders of ordinary language analysis and the champions of the new transformational linguistics. Vendler sensitively reviews the claims and counterclaims concluding that linguistics is helpful in (...) analytic philosophy "and its empirical source need not sully the transcendental purity of philosophical thought." The chapters that follow set out to show just how linguistics and a sensitive ear for English can help us through the tangle of issues in getting clear about singular terms; quantifiers; verbs and time; facts and events; effects, results, and consequences; and the grammar of goodness. Vendler's inquiries, which may appear oblique, are always directed at those concepts that have been central to philosophy. And in the course of his analyses, even the unsympathetic will probably be provoked and illuminated.—R. J. B. (shrink)

Has anything of value been contributed to aesthetic issues from a Marxist point of view? I suspect that most intelligent people asked this question might be inclined to answer no. If they hesitated, it might be because of some dim awareness that there has been a great deal of concern about aesthetic issues by European intellectuals influenced by Marxism. But this present bibliography which is limited to books and articles in English shows how extensive and diverse the literature has been. (...) Many items are included here which are not primarily concerned with aesthetic issues, but which are nevertheless relevant. And there are many items which are not Marxist in orientation but bear on Marxism. The annotations are helpful and the bibliography will be a great aid to anyone interested in exploring this dimension of Marxism. It is unfortunate that the bibliography is limited to work written or translated into English, for many of the best works have not been translated. However, the compiler promises a supplemental volume dealing with foreign material.--R. J. B. (shrink)

Beginning with a brief study of the Polish philosophy which flourished after the First World War, the scene is set for following the conflicts between philosophy and ideology. At first the spokesmen for ideology--supported by the State--vehemently attacked the claims of philosophy. But gradually, after the passing of the Stalinist era, the ideologists changed their initial position, reducing their claims. They had discovered the value of objectivity, logical consistency and free inquiry which had been characteristic of the Polish philosophic tradition. (...) The careful attention given to a wide variety of thinkers and the extensive bibliography help to make this an invaluable study for anyone interested in contemporary intellectual life in Poland.--R. J. B. (shrink)