" Here Jonathan Lear argues that irony is one of the tools we use to live seriously, to get the hang of becoming human.

Philosophers have recently argued that traditional discussions of virtue and character presuppose an account of behaviour that experimental psychology has shown to be false. Behaviour does not issue from global traits such as prudence, temperance, courage or fairness, they claim, but from local traits such as sailing-in-rough-weather-with-friends-courage and office-party-temperance. The data employed provides evidence for this view only if we understand it in the light of a behaviourist construal of traits in terms of stimulus and response, rather than in the (...) light of the more traditional construal in terms of inner events such as inclinations. More recent experiments have shown this traditional conception to have greater explanatory and predictive power than its behaviourist rival. So we should retain the traditional conception, and hence reject the proposed alteration to our understanding of behaviour. This discussion has further implications for future philosophical investigations of character and virtue. Key Words: character traits • situationism • social psychology • virtue ethics. (shrink)

In 2018-2019, at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, we developed and piloted a narrative-based health systems science intervention for patients living with HIV and medical students in which medical students co-wrote patients’ life narratives for inclusion in the electronic health record. The pilot study aimed to assess the acceptability of the “life narrative protocol” from multiple stakeholder positions and characterize participants’ experiences of the clinical and pedagogical implications of the LNP. Students were recruited from (...) KSOM. Patients and staff were recruited from the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent/Adult Center for Infectious Disease and Virology at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. Ten patients, seventeen students, and ten MCA staff participated in the pilot study. Qualitative methods were used to gather data from students’, patients’, and staff’s perspectives. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: patients’ life narratives conveyed their unique life experiences and voices; the protocol could result in wide-ranging effects on HIV care; the LNP enabled students to contribute value to patients’ healthcare. Across groups, participants considered the LNP an acceptable intervention. The LNP, its limitations, and implications for HIV care, narrative medicine, and health information technology are presented. (shrink)

‘Public justice’ is one of the most widely-invoked of the many distinctive terms coined by Herman Dooyeweerd but, strangely, one of the least well analysed. Dooyeewerd holds that that the identity of the state is defined by a single, integrating and directing norm, the establishment of ‘public justice’. Elaborating the implications of this claim has occupied much neo-Calvinist political reflection and guided much political action inspired by that movement. Yet surprisingly little sustained theoretical reflection has been devoted in recent times (...) to examining its inner meaning and coherence. This article offers some preliminary groundwork necessary to that theoretical project. The first part presents a close reading of Dooyeweerd’s account of public justice, identifies ambiguities and inconsistencies in that account, and suggests a reconstruction displaying its wide-ranging dynamic thrust more prominently. The second part identifies two substantial challenges confronting this account: its relative neglect of processes of democratic deliberation and advocacy, and its underdeveloped critical potentials. (shrink)

Much of the critical praise for the film concerns the first of these aims. Bigelow’s use of at least four film crews for every scene affords the sense of being present in the situation, continuously shifting perspective, alert to possible danger. The relative anonymity of the scenery, clearly somewhere in the Middle East but not clearly anywhere in particular, fosters this uneasy sense of immersion in an unfamiliar scenario where the sources of danger are unpredictable. Protracted periods of silence, punctuated (...) by incidental sounds that often turn out to be irrelevant, increase this tension. The occasional quiet ring of tinnitus imparts a sense of the incessant nature of the soldiers’ anxiety. Much of the negative criticism of the film, on the other hand, concerns the psychology of its central characters. Some veterans of the war in Iraq have claimed that it is a wildly inaccurate portrayal of the attitudes and behaviour of professional soldiers. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on conversational thinking to demonstrate the value of public reasoning in building a decent world and true democracies. We shall take into account the views of selected scholars, especially John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, on law and democratic practice, to explain why post-colonial Africa is weighed down by sociopolitical hegemonies that have aversion to their opposition and eliminate room for strong institutions, rule of law and human rights. In light of conversational thinking, this eliminates any (...) chance for “creative struggle,” i.e. a philosophers struggle against the post-colonial imaginary/social agents to dethrone strong individuals and create strong institutions. In the absence of these indices which a conversational orientation may engender, it is difficult to transform bogus democracy into true democracy and thus to create a decent society. Post-colonial Africa mired in social regression, political crisis and economic stagnation urgently needs conversational tonics to overcome the ineffectiveness of bogus democracy. We postulate a thesis about three structural transformations forming what we call Democratic Transformational Programme. (shrink)

This article investigates the figurative role of water in martial similes, metaphors, and personifications in the Iliad. Such imagery, it is argued, is generally informed by a thematic association of Greeks and their camp with the sea, and Trojans and their territory with rivers; as heroes sound and move like waves and streams, bodies of water become sympathetically animated warriors, and gods of sea and river rush into battle. The conclusion is that an ancient antithesis between saltwater and freshwater lends (...) the Iliad a sense of unity in setting and plot and endows heroic action with greater cosmic and theological significance. (shrink)

In this paper I consider what might be my best response to various difficulties and challenges that emerged at a conference held at the University of Kent in December 2004, the contributions to which are given in the same volume. I comment on Crisp's distinction between ultimate and non-ultimate reasons, and reply to McKeever and Ridge on default reasons, and to Norman on the idea of a reason for action. I don't here consider what other particularists might want to say; (...) I certainly don't think that my way of doing these things is the only possible one, but not surprisingly I am interested in seeing what resources it might have to defend itself. (shrink)

This volume’s two target articles explore novel approaches to word order alternations, especially Scandinavian Object Shift. They share the common perspective that aspects of linear order long considered the exclusive purview of syntax may be better understood if the burden of explanation is split between phonological and syntactic modules. The two articles differ substantially, however, in how this general hunch plays out, in particular in the amount of the explanation that is attributed to extra-syntactic factors. Fox and Pesetsky’s “Cyclic Linearization” (...) model (hereafter F&P, CycLin) is compatible with familiar syntactic models, and can be seen as a filter running (cyclically) on the output of syntactic derivations. F&P suggest that their proposal can explain various heretofore stipulated conditions on syntactic operations as consequences of the architecture of their system and a single axiom about linearization. Erteschik-Shir’s proposal in “Sound Patterns of Syntax” (hereafter E-S) is more radical, in the sense that far less of the familiar syntax is retained; where for CycLin movement is still a syntactic process, on E- S’s view a good deal of traditionally syntactic movement must be rethought in linear, rather than hierarchical terms. Both articles are largely exploratory and leave many of the details still to be spelled-out. To engage the ideas on specifics, then, will involve to some degree making some educated guesses about what ancillary assumptions the relevant authors might condone. I will therefore restrict myself to a few comments at a general level, though it will be impossible to do justice to these authors’ ideas in the allotted space. (shrink)

Jacobs introduces the issues, language, concepts and positions central to ethical theorizing. Entries range from antiquity to the present and basic to advance. Cross-referencing allows readers to explore topics in depth. Items explain complex issues of normative ethics, metaethics and moral psychology in non-technical language.

Presents a response to the Paul Burkett's review of the book ``Ecology and Historical Materialism.'' Overview of the book; Details of the criticisms presented by Burkett; Information on sociologist Karl Marx's theory of history.

This paper argues that if one considers just a single clinical moment there may be no principled way to choose among different approaches to psychoanalytic technique. One must in addition take into account what Aristotle called the final cause of psychoanalysis, which this paper argues is freedom. However, freedom is itself an open-ended concept with many aspects that need to be explored and developed from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper considers one analytic moment from the perspectives of the techniques of (...) Paul Gray, Hans Loewald, the contemporary Kleinians and Jacques Lacan. It argues that, if we are to evaluate these techniques, we must take into account the different conceptions of freedom they are trying to facilitate. (shrink)

This paper draws upon research on a complementary currency to explore the ethical dimensions of that community economic development work. In doing so, the paper argues that the figure of the stranger is increasingly important to understand in theorizing community, especially given increased attention to the discourse of the stranger in theories of ethics and identity in a globalizing world. As such, the paper lays out three modes of the strange—economic, geographic and ethical—which emerge out of this complementary currency project. (...) In identifying these three modes of being strange, the paper validates ways of articulating strangers and strangeness without essentializing the strange, ignoring the power relations that produce strangers, or pushing aside the strange in favor of blas communion. (shrink)

Baumann (2008a) raises three main concerns for epistemic contrastivism. These lead him to a more complicated re-conception of knowledge, involving varying numbers of argument places for varying sorts of arguments. I will argue that these complications are unneeded. The more elegant and uniform contrastive treatment can resolve all of Baumann’s concerns, in a straightforward way.

This paper argues that Locke often used "ideas" to stand for qualities, and used the quality-word "mode" to stand for ideas, because of a substantive conflation in his thought; not because of a mere superficial ambiguity in his use of the word "idea." Suggestions are offered as to the possible sources of this conflation.

The American health care system long has been distinctive in its embrace of market forces. For-profit private insurers play a major role in providing coverage, though they operate alongside public insurance programs that cover over one-third of the population. Historically, federal and state governments’ regulation of insurance markets was limited, leaving insurers to set premiums and coverage rules largely as they saw fit.Government’s role in controlling health care spending has been even more circumscribed. Purchasing power is fragmented, with each insurer (...) negotiating its own rates with physicians and hospitals. A formidable medical-industrial complex of for-profit providers, from hospitals to home-health care agencies, dialysis facilities, pharmaceutical companies and much more, has arisen to sell services. (shrink)

Examines Aristotle's scientific research, logic, metaphysical theories, analysis of change and scientific explanation, work in psychology and practical philosophy, and ideas about and poetry.