This book explores the role of aggression in primate social systems and its implications for human behavior.

Book reviewed in this article: The New Health Care For Profit: Doctors and Hospitals in a Competitive Environment. Edited by Bradford H. Gray The Healing Mission and the Business Ethic. By Robert M. Cunningham The Medical Industrial Complex. By Stanley Wohl.

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

In this paper, I will give a new characterisation of the spaces of complete theories of pseudofinite fields and of algebraically closed fields with a generic automorphism (ACFA) in terms of the Vietoris topology on absolute Galois groups of prime fields.

The essays range from Hegel and Modernism to Marcel Duchamp and the Avant-Garde, postmodern poetics, boredom and Proust, the romance of Arendt and Heidegger, ...

In Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys, Irwin, a sixth-form history tutor destined for a media career (based, it is rumored, on that specialist in historical controversy Niall Ferguson) sets out his views on how a difficult change in the law that will affect individual rights should be dealt with. The tactic Irwin advocates is for the Government to insist that the Bill, rather than reducing the liberty of the subject “amplifies it.” The use of paradox, notes Irwin, “works well (...) . . . the loss of liberty is the price we pay for freedom type thing” (Bennett 2004, 3). Thus, in a few sentences, Bennett encapsulates one of the greatest, or, at least, what we in the West have come to think of as one of the greatest, of .. (shrink)

...this work covers a great deal of philosophical ground, and it does so in a competent, workmanlike fashion which should be comprehensible even to a student in a lower level undergraduate introductory course.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

Originally published by Ballinger, this book is a result of an Atlantic Council study of U.S. international relationships on energy. It examines the uncertainties of a political, strategic, economic, and technological nature that are involved in energy supply, as well as the unavoidable certainty of finite resources.

Well known as the British politician responsible for the Balfour Declaration during World War I, James Balfour was also a philosopher. Long forgotten, his remarkable book The Foundations of Belief (1895) merits contemporary reassessment. Critical of modern compartmentalization, Balfour argues for an integration of religion, philosophy, and science---a position now often identified as postmodern. This article presents some of Balfour’s contemporary scholarly significance, and hints at his usefulness in undergraduate teaching.

This essay outlines one aspect of a larger collaboration with John Beatty and Alan Love.2 The project’s focus is philosophical, but for reasons that will become clear momentarily, the method of approach is historical. All three of us share the conviction that philosophical issues concerning the foundations of the sciences are often illuminated by investigating their history. It is my hope that this paper both provides support for that thesis, and illustrates it. The focal philosophical issue can be stated in (...) the form of a puzzle about contemporary discussions of the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. The role of the concepts of “chance” and “randomness” in that theory is a significant part of .. (shrink)

The self is a common yet unclear theme in addiction studies. William James's model of self provides a framework to explore the experience of self. His model details the subjective and objective constituents, the sense of self‐continuity through time, and the ephemeral and plural nature of the changing self. This exploration yields insights into the self that can be usefully applied to subjective experiences with psychoactive drugs of addiction. Results of this application add depth to the common understanding of (...) self in addiction, acknowledge the importance of feelings and choice in the sense of self created in addiction experiences, and affirm the values salient to these interior experiences in addiction. These results suggest meaning derived from those values, and provide important background knowledge for the nurse interacting with these clients. (shrink)

This book provides an eye-opening look at the outsized role that seven Presidents played in shaping the policies and practices relative to school desegregation through their bully pulpit.

In his recent book, "The Metaphysicians of Meaning" (2000), Gideon Makin argues that in the so-called "Gray's Elegy" argument (the GEA) in "On Denoting", Russell provides decisive arguments against not only his own theory of denoting concepts but also Frege's theory of sense. I argue that by failing to recognize fundamental differences between the two theories, Makin fails to recognize that the GEA has less force against Frege's theory than against Russell's own earlier theory. While I agree with many (...) aspects of Makin's interpretation of the GEA, I differ with him regarding some significant details and present an interpretation according to which the GEA emerges as simpler, stronger, and more integrated. (shrink)

There is no epistemic fault in interpreting events in ways that improve our behavior and lifestyle in situations that force interpretation. Fictionalized but possibly true narratives endow adult life with meaning, in turn rendering day-to-day affairs more agreeable. In this essay, I call the practice of introducing stories when a situation forces interpretation to affect behavior or lifestyle faux-believing, and I explicate and defend faux-believing against the objection that it is epistemically blameworthy After giving two examples of 'faux belief,' and (...) distinguishing it from similar concepts, including belief proper, I ask if we can have the right to faux-believe independent of whether the faux belief is justified. Next, I turn to William James's "The Will to Believe" to argue that if James is correct that we have the right to believe, then we also have the right to faux-believe. While explicating James's argument for when we have the right to believe on insufficient evidence, I highlight two separate theses of James's (often erroneously thought to be a single thesis). It is one of these two theses that implies we also have the right to faux-believe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Medical Tourism:Crossing Borders to Access Health CareHarriet Hutson Gray (bio) and Susan Cartier Poland (bio)Traveling abroad for one's health has a long history for the upper social classes who sought spas, mineral baths, innovative therapies, and the fair climate of the Mediterranean as destinations to improve their health. The newest trend in the first decade of the twenty-first century has the middle class traveling from developed countries to (...) those with emerging economies to avoid treatment delays, prohibitive costs for life-saving procedures, or simply high costs for elective surgery. Others leave to have access to assisted suicide in countries that have legalized it: Belgium, The Netherlands, and Switzerland. This new era of globalization in health care has arrived without the benefit of international standards, government oversight, or ethical and legal review.Howard Staab, a self-employed carpenter from North Carolina, flew to India for his medically necessary heart surgery, scheduled a side trip to the Taj Mahal, and returned home to work in North Carolina. He spent a total of less than $10,000, instead of the $200,000 required from the local hospital (I, Milstein and Smith 2006).At first blush, the outsourcing of medical care to India seems to be a particular solution for a particular problem. However, the particularity of Mr. Staab is not unique. His experience is emblematic of those patients in the United States with a medical need for major and elective procedures, but who also must bear the total cost of these procedures. These middle-class, under-insured Americans go abroad.In tandem with increasingly aggressive marketing campaigns, American hospitals and companies have begun to leverage their connections in Asia to grow the medical tourism business into a major economic force. What are the consequences of this?Several authors point to the effect on the host country's population, particularly the poor, to be pushed farther down the queue to receive adequate, affordable care. Resources are applied to the foreign trade instead of building the local [End Page 193] medical infrastructure. Another potential problem is the obligation of the home-country physician to provide follow-up care. What are the legal ramifications when the procedure was illegal to begin with? Are there opportunities for redress for medical errors?These factors may be converging into a "perfect storm" for health care in the U.S., in which the potential participation of the major insurance companies in promoting offshore care will be the tipping point in the precarious structure that represents the economic currents in health care. Third-party administrators and self-funded employers may be on the cutting edge in 2009 by providing incentives to employees to travel overseas for care.I. Economic ConsiderationsConnell, John. Medical Tourism: Sea, Sun, Sand and... Surgery. Tourism Management 27: 1093–1100, 2006.As evidence of the interest of traditional tour operators in this newer twist on the industry, the author explores medical tourism as an element of the growth of world tourism. In promoting medical tourism, he urges consideration of such issues as the privatization of health care, the foundational role of technology, and uneven access to health resources.Dunn, Philip. Medical Tourism Takes Flight. H and HN: Hospitals and Health Networks: 40–44, November 2007.Writing for U.S. health care executives, Dunn emphasizes that the reality of medical tourism competes with the local medical center for patients and their insurance dollars in a significant way. He examines the possibility that U.S. insurance plans soon may offer to pay for what is currently a cash only business and that the economic impact to the local medical center could be significant or even devastating.Frontiers of Health Services Management [Selected Articles] 24 (2), Winter 2007.In "Managing Healthcare Services in the Global Marketplace" (pp. 3–18), Bruce J. Fried and Dean M. Harris consider legal, ethical, and financial implications of the international workforce. In "Globalization of Health Care" (pp. 19–30), Lynn Schroth and Ruthy Khawahja point out that the transfer of comprehensive management expertise and intellectual property from U.S. medical centers to international sites is driving the success of collaboration between U.S. and foreign health care centers. In "Is... (shrink)

"... chronicles the story of U.G. Krishnamurti, the Cosmic Naxalite, from his troubled childhood to his disillusionment with many of the leading spiritual teachers of the twentieth century and his catastrophic personal life. In 1967, UG underwent a series of biological mutations that left him in the 'natural state'--functioning without the interference of thought. With no fixed address, no followers and no organization, UG spent the next thirty years travelling the world with an uncompromising message: that 'mind is a myth' (...) and dthe human condition should be demystified and de-psyhologized and viewed in purely physiological terms."--Cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY asks questions like these: What is there in favor of calling green a primary color, and not a blend of blue and yellow? (1, 6) or, Why can something be transparent green but not transparent white? (1, 19). The effect of such questions is to force us to realize that our concept of color is more complex than we might have realized, or would want (...) it to be if we are committed to epistemologicaI theories in which color experience counts as basic. Other questions make us aware that the simple contrast of conceptual and empirical turns out to be hopelessly inadequate, and that this immensely complicates, if it does not vitiate, the task of drawing a comprehensive map of knowledge. We understand, in a way, what Wittgenstein is doing, but come to think we do not, since the effect of reading these remarks is to unsettle us about beliefs we had thought we could safely assume. The difficulties of Wittgenstein's questions pass over into the Companion, as was the case with Max Black's Companion to the "Tractatus" as well. Both works fortify standard ventures at interpretation, and both frustrate by leaving untouched one's worst perplexities. But perhaps one sweeping thought can be ventured. Wittgenstein once remarked that the present age is a time for popular science, and therefore not a time for philosophy. 6 Reading Wittgenstein, or his Companion, restores vitality to ways of thought and speech more primitive, and more basic, than science. Surely the typical object of his therapy is the muddle we get into by borrowing the language and method of science to describe and explain the relation of the perceiver to the world, or the agent to influences on his conduct. Moreover, the language of thought, act, and agency is presupposed in a description of how scientists can and do proceed. The temptations of a religious picture of the world for this point of view are strong--and reflected in the positive interest Wittgenstein evinced for religious thinkers. For religion expresses the limits of science by means of imagery that is not alien to a description of the world in terms of things and processes. But to say this is to come to a halt before the apparatus of language games and deep grammar as one comes to exegetical dead ends before Plato's Forms or Spinoza's infinite attributes. They are the imperfect means of communicating essentially private visions. One final cavil: The reader is sometimes teased rather than appeased by numbered citations referring to unpublished manuscripts. To quote them in full would of course have made the Companion impossibly tong. But for many readers Hallett's citations wilt be, at best, promissory notes to be cashed only when it suits Wittgenstein's executors to publish this material. It is to be hoped that when that day arrives it will be possible to correlate the manuscripts with Hallett's citations. As the Remarks on Colour show, however, we cannot be too sanguine. Would it not be wiser to publish the manuscripts as they were written, rather than to select passages which in the editor's judgment are related by theme? Such a policy would better serve future students of Wittgenstein, who from now on will go to the texts Hallett in hand. ALFRED LOUCH Clarement Graduate School Martin Heidegger. The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heidegger. Translated, with notes and commentary, by James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976. Pp. xi + 212. The possible significance of Martin Heidegger's works for theology and for religious faith has long been a question as intriguing as it is complex. Since the first appearance of Being and Time about life," which, Professor Anscombe promises, "will appear elsewhere." The translation, by Linda L. McAlister and Margaret Schuttle, is up to the expected standard of accuracy and lucidity. Normal Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein:A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 73. BOOK REVIEWS 243 in 1927 Catholic and Protestant theologians have sought to appropriate Heidegger for their own understandingof Christianity. With the publicationof his many later works over the last fifty years, the controversy over Heidegger's... (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s posthumously published one act play, The Drowning Eye (2018, 81–112), reframes French existentialism in a postcolonial context by examining both the absurd and racial identity. Divided into three parts, this article first discusses the many parallels between The Drowning Eye and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit (1989), both one act plays set in one room with the entire action of the play consisting of a dialogue among three individuals in a love triangle. The second part explores the role of (...) the absurd in existentialism by looking at character and thematic similarities between The Drowning Eye and Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1982), both of which reject religion as a source of meaning in life and embrace acceptance of the absurd as a liberating force. Fanon’s echoes of French existentialist themes situated in the context of decolonialism are explored in the third part. Fanon diverges from the apolitical alienation of The Stranger by instead interrogating racial binaries of former colonial subjects who either embrace or reject black consciousness. The Drowning Eye foreshadows Fanon’s later work, Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 2008) and lays the foundation for the analysis of decolonialism and national consciousness in The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 2004). (shrink)

In 1981, the Atlantic Council's Energy Policy Committee, in collaboration with the Japanese Committee for Energy Policy Promotion and the Japanese Institute of Energy Economics, published a joint policy paper entitled 'U.S.-Japan Energy Relationships in the 1980s.'.

Rozhovor s profesorkou Athertonovou má docela široký záběr, ale soustřeďuje se hlavně na Berkeleyho teorii vidění a na jeho imaterialismus. Athertonová zastává poměrně silné pojetí imaterialismu, jež zdaleka překračuje pouhé popření látky. Dále nabízí svůj pohled na rozdíl mezi empirismem a racionalismem a na roli ženských filosofek jak na začátku novověku, tak později.

From its inception, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruptive force on U.S. health care and public health systems. President Biden’s announced termination of the national public health emergency on May 11, 2023 portends a return to normalcy and relief for Americans from the greatest infectious disease scourge the nation has ever faced. In reality, closing out this pandemic presents a tempest of legal and practical complications.

The United States has never been culturally or religiously homogeneous, but its diversity has greatly increased over the last century. Although the U.S. was first a multicultural nation through conquest and enslavement, its present diversity is due equally to immigration. In this paper I try to explain the difference it makes for one area of thought and policy – equal opportunity – if we incorporate cultural and religious pluralism into our national self-image. Formulating and implementing a policy of equal opportunity (...) is more difficult in diverse, pluralistic countries than it is in homogeneous ones. My focus is cultural and religious diversity in the United States, but my conclusions will apply to many other countries – including ones whose pluralism is found more in religion than in culture. (shrink)

Regardless of formalization used, one on-going challenge for AI systems that model legal proceedings is accounting for contextual issues, particularly where judicial decisions are made in criminal cases. The law assumes a rational approach to rule application in deciding a defendant’s guilt; however, judges and juries can behave irrationally. What should a model prize: efficiency, accuracy, or fairness? Exactly whether and how to incorporate the psychology of courtroom interactions into formal models or expert systems has only just begun to be (...) examined in a serious fashion. Here, I outline data from the United States which suggest that trying to incorporate psychological biases into formal models of legal decision-making will be challenging. I focus on the use of neuroscience data in criminal trials, homing in on so-called group-to-individual inferences. I argue that data which should be the most effective at swaying judicial decisions are in fact those most likely not to make a difference in the disposition of the case. I conclude that judges often assign culpability by ignoring what our best science regarding how human decision-making occurs. (shrink)

"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."--John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. "Beautifully written, this book calls into (...) sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."--New Yorker "A tour de force."-- Charles Tilly, Columbia University. (shrink)

How should we live? To answer that question, many people turn to the Bible. What they find is often inspiring, although it may set standards that are uncomfortably high: love your neighbor as yourself, treat others as you would like to be treated, and walk humbly with God. Inspiration, however, can be found in a great many books. To Kill a Mockingbird teaches the virtue of tolerance, and A Tale of Two Cities impresses us with the nobility of self-sacrifice. William (...) J. Bennett, a philosopher who served as U. S. Secretary of Education, edited a collection called The Book of Virtues that includes dozens of stories and poems designed to teach courage, selfreliance, and responsibility.i But the Bible, many people think, is different. It has an authority that other books lack. Therefore, they look to the Bible, not just for inspiration, but for answers to specific moral questions, such as questions about abortion and homosexuality. (shrink)

This book is part of that American phenomenon whereby senior or emeritus scholars turn away from their speciality to write something about the institutions they have lived in all their lives, the u...

This is a critical notice of three books which discuss aspects of James Lovelock's Gaia Theory.