Athens and Wittenberg explores how Luther and early Lutheranism did not neglect the classics of Greece and Rome, but continued to draw from the philosophy and poetry of antiquity in their quest to reform the church.

Ojectives Low energy hip fractures are one of the greatest causes of morbidity and mortality in orthopaedics. This study aims to evaluate written consent forms with respect to basic standards as set out in the Good Practice in Consent Initiative. In particular the stated risks and benefits of each procedure were assessed. Methods 100 consecutive consent forms were reviewed prospectively. The stated procedure, side and complications were recorded. Appropriate signature and legibility was assessed. 13 consultant orthopaedic surgeons were surveyed to (...) identify what risks and benefits they thought should be stated. Results Of 100 consent forms, 31 were for patients who are unable to consent. All 100 consent forms were correctly filled in with patient details and signed. 98% were legible. All stated the side of the operation. The number of complications listed per form ranged from 4 to 11. Infection, bleeding and thromboembolic complications were stated in the majority of consent forms. In total, 30 different complications were recorded; some were only stated once. Discussion and Conclusions This work suggests consent forms are completed well with respect to patient identifiers, legibility and procedure. The variability of complications stated is vast. We suggest standard pre-printed consent forms containing risks and benefits should be used as this may improve standards of informed consent. This has also been recently supported by the British Orthopaedic Association. (shrink)

Much has been written on the relative merits of different readings of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The recent renewal of the debate has almost exclusively been concerned with variants of the ineffabilist (metaphysical) reading of TL-P - notable such readings have been advanced by Elizabeth Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and H. O. Mounce - and the recently advanced variants of therapeutic (resolute) readings - notable advocates of which are James Conant, Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd and Michael Kremer. During this (...) debate, there have been a number of writers who have tried to develop a third way, incorporating what they see as insights and avoiding what they see as flaws in both the ineffabilist and resolute readings. The most prominent advocates of these elucidatory readings of TL-P are Dan Hutto (2003) and Marie McGinn (1999). In this paper we subject Hutto's and McGinn's readings of TL-P to critical scrutiny. We find that in seeking to occupy the middle ground they ultimately find themselves committed to (and in the process commit Wittgenstein to) the very ineffabilism they (and Wittgenstein) are seeking to overcome. (shrink)

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t.argument: pluralistic theory opens itself toward different values, languages, histories, modes of reasoning, and forms of experience with a commitment not to reduce or hierarchize the many by means of the one. Such theory has emerged out of various traditions, including those associated with American pragmatism (Emerson, James, Dewey), analytic philosophy (Wittgenstein, Rorty), and continental philosophy (Derrida, Nancy). Not surprisingly, the (...) pluralism issuing from these traditions takes diverse forms and articulates itself through heterogeneous concepts and styles. Many pluralist philosophers in the present, however, have .. (shrink)

Neither a philosopher by training nor a scholar by temperament, James Hutchinson Stirling was undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the history of nineteenth-century British philosophy. Although he published a large number of books and articles on both philosophical and literary topics, probably little if any of it is read today. Stirling is best known—if he is known at all—for his pioneering efforts to introduce Hegel’s system of philosophy in his book, The Secret of Hegel. Published (...) in 1865, this strange and lengthy book was the first examination of Hegel to appear in English and marks the beginning of a period of intense interest in Hegel’s work. While such German figures as Goethe, Schiller, and even Schelling had attracted the attention of a handful of British writers before 1865, Hegel was virtually unknown until Stirling’s book was published. If Stirling’s enthusiasm for Hegel seemed to have no bounds, it was because he saw in him the hope for the future of British culture—the intellectual champion of the age. In Hegel’s philosophy Stirling saw the culminating work of the romantic era, the final philosophic statement, and the long sought for antidote to the Enlightenment. Although Stirling’s efforts to promote Hegel were regarded by many as strange and eccentric, they were also applauded by thinkers like Benjamin Jowett who himself had sympathies with Hegelian thought. Other thinkers, roused for the first time out of their native empiricist slumbers by Stirling’s book, felt themselves compelled to examine Hegel and many were drawn to his thought and method. Within twenty years of Stirling’s initial efforts on behalf of Hegel, a clear change in the philosophical climate of Britain was readily apparent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hegelian RhetoricThora Ilin BayerIntroduction: Rhetoric and DialecticAristotle in the famous first line of his Rhetoric defines the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic: "Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic" (1354a). Both rhetoric and dialectic belong to no definitive science. They treat those things that come within the purview of all human beings. As an antistrophes to dialectic, rhetoric concerns particular cases and "may be defined as the faculty [dynamis] of (...) observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (1355b). Dialectic concerns reasoning on general issues and in its generality it is like deduction. But unlike deductive demonstration, dialectic, as Aristotle says in Topics, "reasons from reputable opinions," rather than from premises that are true and primitive (100a).Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason takes a more extreme view of dialectic than Aristotle. Kant regards dialectic as a logic of illusion (Schein) that occurs when reason takes its powers beyond experience to make claims concerning the nature of the soul, world, and God. When reason attempts to determine the nature of what the soul is in itself, its assertions end in paralogisms; when it does so about the world its claims end in antinomies; and when it does so about God its efforts end in the impossibilities of the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. Kant regards rhetoric as having no role in the philosophical pursuit of truth. In the Critique of Judgment Kant classifies rhetoric (Beredsamkeit) as belonging [End Page 203] to fine art. He regards ars oratoria as an art of manipulation and deception that achieves its end by a beautiful show (Schein) of speech that plays upon human weaknesses. He says oratory deserves no respect whatsoever—"ist gar keiner Achtung würdig" (1951, 172n50; 1974, 185n).1 Kant's exclusion of rhetoric from Kritik (with which he identifies philosophy) establishes the general exclusion of rhetoric in the development of philosophical idealism.Hegel interpretation for a century and a half presumed that rhetoric was irrelevant to understanding Hegel's thought. It considered Hegel's dialectic as a method independent of any connection to rhetoric. The first book on Hegel in English, James Hutchinson Stirling's The Secret of Hegel, published in 1863, regards the key to Hegel's system as his formulation of the concrete universal (Begriff). He makes no reference to rhetoric as an element in Hegel's thought (1887, xxii). In his preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel mentions Plato's Parmenides as "surely the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic," but he makes no mention of rhetoric (1952, 57; 1977, 44). A ground for ignoring rhetoric as important for Hegel's philosophy is the fact that Hegel himself ignores it. There is no discussion of rhetoric (Redekunst) in his whole corpus beyond a few pages concerning the differences between poetry and prose in his Lectures on Fine Art (1986, 15:257–68; 1998, 2:986–95).All of the approaches to Hegel in nonrhetorical terms changed with the appearance of Donald Phillip Verene's Hegel's Recollection: A Study of Images in the "Phenomenology of Spirit" (1985) followed by John H. Smith's The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel's Philosophy of "Bildung" (1988).2 Verene's work showed that there is a dialectic between image (Bild) and concept (Begriff) within Hegel's mode of expression that provides the reader with a necessary means of access to the work. Smith's study showed not only that Hegel employs rhetorical principles in the composition of the Phenomenology but that Hegel in his early years studied rhetoric closely and was concerned to master it. Smith's work, although developed independently of Verene's, joined with it to present a new reading of Hegel. This poetical and rhetorical grasp of Hegel's thought has been recently restated in Verene's Hegel's Absolute (2007).My views that follow begin where Verene's and Smith's accounts leave off. I wish to consider two questions that extend what has been broached in their readings of Hegel. (1) In what sense does Hegel's Phenomenology embody a transformation of the Aristotelian conception of rhetoric as an antistrophes to dialectic? (2) To... (shrink)

In his long-awaited new edition of Philosophy of Mathematics, James Robert Brown tackles important new as well as enduring questions in the mathematical sciences. Can pictures go beyond being merely suggestive and actually prove anything? Are mathematical results certain? Are experiments of any real value?" "This clear and engaging book takes a unique approach, encompassing nonstandard topics such as the role of visual reasoning, the importance of notation, and the place of computers in mathematics, as well as traditional topics (...) such as formalism, Platonism, and constructivism. The combination of topics and clarity of presentation make it suitable for beginners and experts alike. The revised and updated second edition of Philosophy of Mathematics contains more examples, suggestions for further reading, and expanded material on several topics including a novel approach to the continuum hypothesis."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 2, Page 169-201, Spring 2022.

A tacit assumption since the 19th Century has been that the neocortex serves as the "seat of consciousness." An unexpected challenge to that assumption arose in 1949 with the discovery that high-frequency EEG activation associated with an alert state requires the intactness of the brainstem reticular formation. This discovery became the impetus for nearly three decades of research on what came to be known as the reticular activating system. By the 1970s, however, methodological and philosophical controversies led to general abandonment (...) of subcortical theories of attention and consciousness, with a return to an almost exclusive focus upon the cortex. With recent advances in the neurosciences the focus is shifting once more, this time to the unique contributions of cortical, thalmic, and brainstem structures in mediating selective attention and perceptual awareness. This paper offers a nontechnical review of the history of these developments up to contemporary interest in the putative role of oscillatory EEG patterns in the integration of perceptual features of experience. It puts forward the thesis that a key to understanding attention and consciousness is an appreciation of contributions of the thalmus to these cognitive processes. (shrink)

Over the past quarter century, organ donation after the circulatory determination of death (DCD) has grown in acceptance and prevalence throughout the world (Domínguez-Gil et al. 2021). Notwithstan...

The book demonstrates that speaking, feeling, reflecting, and identifying are interrelated processes and shows how desire or shame are attached to language.

The Belmont Report’s distinction between research and the practice of accepted therapy has led various authors to suggest that these purportedly distinct activities should be governed by different ethical principles. We consider some of the ethical consequences of attempts to separate the two and conclude that separation fails along ontological, ethical, and epistemological dimensions. Clinical practice and clinical research, as with yin and yang, can be thought of as complementary forces interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole (...) exceeds the sum of its parts. Just as effective clinical practice cannot exist without clinical research, meaningful clinical research requires the context of clinical practice. We defend this thesis by triangulation, that is, by outlining how multiple investigators have reached this conclusion on the basis of varied theoretical and applied approaches. More confidence can be placed in a result if different methods/viewpoints have led to that result. (shrink)

A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY FOR WAR TIME BY THE AUTHOR OF STREAMLINE YOUR MIND A Personal Philosophy for War Time JAMES L. MURSELL Professor of Education Teachers ...

In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel closure principle of epistemic justification that has the virtues of its close cousin closure principles, without their vices. This closure principle of epistemic justification can be happily thought of as a multi-premise closure principle and it cannot be used in Cartesian skeptical arguments that employ a closure principle of epistemic justification. In this way, (...) then, it represents marked improvement over other contemporary closure principles of epistemic justification that require both sacrificing multi-premise closure and forcing anti-Cartesian skeptics who reject the closure principle employed in certain Cartesian skeptical arguments to cast aside justification closure. (shrink)

Explores the Pragmatists' contributions to American social thought, drawing upon the writings of William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James Hayden Tufts, and their various critics. This work also explores the Pragmatic analysis of society's potential for ongoing intelligent inquiry and cooperative evaluation to address social ills.

In a recent series of papers, Timothy Williamson argues that one can reach Edmund Gettier’s conclusion that the justified-true-belief (JTB) theory of knowledge is insufficient for knowledge by constructing Gettier cases in the framework of epistemic logic. In this paper, I argue, however, that Williamson’s Gettier cases in the framework of epistemic logic crucially turn on an assumption that the JTB theorist can plausibly and justifiably reject. In particular, I argue that it is rational for the JTB theorist to reject (...) Williamson’s preferred epistemic accessibility relation in favor of one for which Gettier cases in epistemic logic do not arise. Thus, I conclude that Williamson’s Gettier cases in epistemic logic do not genuinely threaten the tripartite theory of knowledge. (shrink)

For all its popularity as a psychological construct, willpower is irremediably polysemous. A more helpful construct is self-control, defined as the self-regulation of conflicting impulses. We show how the process model of self-control provides a principled framework for examining how undesirable impulses may be weakened and desirable impulses may be strengthened.

In this paper I argue for a computational theory of thinking that does not eliminate the mind. In doing so, I will defend computationalism against the arguments of John Searle and James Fetzer, and briefly respond to other common criticisms.

This paper attempts to examine some of Rorty’s recent writings on religious beliefs. Two claims stand at the core of these texts: (1) that religious beliefs are “private projects” and (2) that those who maintain such beliefs are not intellectually responsible for them because of their essentially private character. Other commentators on Rorty have challenged one or the other of these claims by utilizing resources outside the pragmatic tradition. But since Rorty typically allies himself with this tradition, I try to (...) examine both claims by employing the writings of two classical pragmatists, i.e., William James and John Dewey. I argue that neither James nor Dewey would accept the claims that stand at the core of Rorty’s view with respect to religious beliefs. In effect, Rorty’s thinking on religious beliefs marks a significant departure from his pragmatic forebears, even though he employs them (especially Dewey) to bolster his own position. (shrink)

ABSTRACTNew trends in behavioral decision research see researchers attempting to integrate multiple-self models of behavioral economics with dual-process and dual-system theories of cognitive psych...

In this essay, I argue that those who embrace animal rights should also embrace primitivism—the view that humans should abandon modern technology and take up something like hunter-gatherer technology instead. I call my view “animal-rights primitivism” to distinguish it from human-centered arguments for primitivism. In particular, I employ a vital-needs framework to make my argument. I argue that hunter-gatherer technology is the least harmful kind of technology, it is sufficient to meet human vital needs, and it is possible for humans (...) to make the transition to hunter-gatherer technology while still meeting their vital needs. Alternatively, I argue that even if humans cannot make the transition while still meeting their vital needs, they are responsible for putting themselves in that situation and therefore forfeit the right to aggress against other sentient species to do so. (shrink)