How is it that we think and refer in the first-person way? For most philosophers in the analytic tradition, the problem is essentially this: how two apparently conflicting kinds of properties can be reconciled and united as properties of the same entity. What is special about the first person has to be reconciled with what is ordinary about it. The range of responses reduces to four basic options. The orthodox view is optimistic: there really is a way of reconciling these (...) apparently contradictory properties as contained within the same thing. The heretical views are pessimistic and content to be so: there is no such way, and that is because there is simply nothing to reconcile – because there is really nothing special about what is in question; or there is really nothing ordinary about it; or there is really nothing …. (shrink)

In this paper I want to propose that we see solipsism as arising from certain problems we have about identifying ourselves as subjects in an objective world. The discussion will centre on Wittgenstein’s treatment of solipsism in his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus. In that work Wittgenstein can be seen to express an unusually profound understanding of the problems faced in trying to give an account of how we, who are subjects, identify ourselves as objects in the world. We have in his (...) compressed remarks, the kernels of a number of arguments which all come together to form what can be called the problem of self-identification. I want to argue that the solipsism of the Tractatus arises at least in part as a solution to, or – to put it less optimistically – as a symptom or articulation of this problem. In approaching Wittgenstein’s early discussion of solipsism in this way I will obviously be in disagreement with some other interpretations of the work. For example, there are those who think that there is no ‘solipsism of the Tractatus’.1 In fact, the Tractarian arguments presented below as motivating solipsism have been seen as fulfilling the quite opposite function of refuting it. I do not intend in this piece to engage with alternative interpretations. Let me say a little bit about why I have granted myself the licence not to do so. First, the focus of my concern with solipsism is on how it connects with what I have called the problem of self-identification. While it is a concern that emerged in an attempt to make sense of Wittgenstein’s remarks in. (shrink)

Although connectionism is advocated by its proponents as an alternative to the classical computational theory of mind, doubts persist about its _computational_ credentials. Our aim is to dispel these doubts by explaining how connectionist networks compute. We first develop a generic account of computation—no easy task, because computation, like almost every other foundational concept in cognitive science, has resisted canonical definition. We opt for a characterisation that does justice to the explanatory role of computation in cognitive science. Next we examine (...) what might be regarded as the “conventional” account of connectionist computation. We show why this account is inadequate and hence fosters the suspicion that connectionist networks aren’t genuinely computational. Lastly, we turn to the principal task of the paper: the development of a more robust portrait of connectionist computation. The basis of this portrait is an explanation of the representational capacities of connection weights, supported by an analysis of the weight configurations of a series of simulated neural networks. (shrink)

Carruthers presents evidence concerning the cross-modular integration of information in human subjects which appears to support the “cognitive conception of language.” According to this conception, language is not just a means of communication, but also a representational medium of thought. However, Carruthers overlooks the possibility that language, in both its communicative and cognitive roles, is a nonrepresentational system of conventional signals – that words are not a medium we think in, but a tool we think with. The evidence he cites (...) is equivocal when it comes to choosing between the cognitive conception and this radical communicative conception of language. (shrink)

O'Brien provides a critical assessment of Ernest Mandel's 1975 monograph Late Capitalism. In so doing, he offers a historical narrative that puts into question Mandel's framing of 'waves' of capitalist development as a process of capital accumulation that was dependent upon uneven development in the Third World. O'Brien starts by problematising Mandel's argument that an initial concentration of money, capital and bullion in the hands of Europeans explains combined and uneven development. He goes on to demonstrate that Mandel's notion of (...) imperialism as a necessary conduit for the flow of surplus capital from industrialising Europe does not stand up to the historical evidence. In fact, O'Brien maintains an alternative thesis, namely that these marginalised regions were insuffciently penetrated by European capital. (shrink)

O'Brien, Roderick When we held the Woods Centenary Seminar in 1989, the local Naracoorte Herald gave us excellent publicity. I recall sitting with the editor, Richard Peake, as he was briefed by the great Sr Margaret Press, assisted by Fr Kevin Horsell, the parish priest of Bordertown who brought his scientific background, and by me. The editor asked the question: 'If Mary MacKillop is to be canonised, why not Woods?'.

Doctors have an ethical and legal duty to respect patient confidentiality. We consider the basis for this duty, looking particularly at the meaning and value of autonomy in health care. Enabling patients to decide how information about them is disclosed is an important element in autonomy and helps patients engage as active partners in their care.Good quality data is, however, essential for research, education, public health monitoring, and for many other activities essential to provision of health care. We discuss whether (...) it is necessary to choose between individual rights and the wider public interest and conclude that this should only rarely be necessary. The paper makes some recommendations on practical steps which could help ensure that good quality information is available for work which benefits society and the public health, while still enabling patients’ autonomy to be respected. (shrink)

Following the introduction of do-not-resuscitate orders in the 1970s, there was widespread misinterpretation of the term among healthcare professionals. In this brief report, we present findings from a survey of healthcare professionals. Our aim was to examine current understanding of the term do-not-attempt-resuscitate, decision-making surrounding DNAR and awareness of current guidelines. The survey was distributed to doctors and nurses in a university teaching hospital and affiliated primary care physicians in Dublin via email and by hard copy at educational meetings from (...) July to December 2014. A total of 519 completed the survey. The response rate in the hospital doctors group was 35.5%, 19.8% in the nurses group but 68.8% in the specialist nurses group and 40% in the primary care physician group.Alarmingly, our results demonstrate that 26.8% of staff nurses and 30% of primary care physicians surveyed believed that a patient with a DNAR order could not receive any/at least one of a list of simple treatments including antibiotics, physiotherapy, intravenous fluids, pain relief, oxygen, nasogastric feeding or airway suctioning, which were higher percentages compared to the other hospital doctors and experienced nurses groups with statistically significant differences. Furthermore, a higher percentage of staff nurses and primary care physicians believed that a patient with a DNAR order could not be referred to hospital from home/a nursing home, when compared with other healthcare groups. Our findings highlight continued misunderstanding and over-interpretation of DNAR orders. Further collaboration and information is required for meaningful Advance Care Plans. (shrink)

Cognitive science is founded on the conjecture that natural intelligence can be explained in terms of computation. Yet, notoriously, there is no consensus among philosophers of cognitive science as to how computation should be characterised. While there are subtle differences between the various accounts of computation found in the literature, the largest fracture exists between those that unpack computation in semantic terms (and hence view computation as the processing of representations) and those, such as that defended by Chalmers (2011), that (...) cleave towards a purely syntactic formulation (and hence view computation in terms of abstract functional organisation). It will be the main contention of this paper that this dispute arises because contemporary computer science is an amalgam of two different historical traditions, each of which has developed its own proprietary conception of computation. Once these historical trajectories have been properly delineated, and the motivations behind the associated conceptions of computation revealed, it becomes a little clearer which should form the foundation for cognitive science. (shrink)

In this disarmingly witty look at the disrepair of the divine, George Dennis O'Brien offers a guide for finding the sacred in the everyday. Christopher Lasch called the book, first published over twenty years ago, "an astute analysis of our spiritual malaise." God and the New Haven Railway, with a new preface by the author, speaks to us still with humor and hope because neither God nor the railroad seems to be running much better today. The book is an excellent (...) introductory text for Religion 101 courses. Adult education classes in various denominations will also profit from reading it. (shrink)

Lucy F. O'Brien; XII*—The Problem of Self-Identification, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 235–252, https://doi.o.

The first introduction of the Yogsutra to present the Sanskrit text as a classic of world philosophy.

The interface between mental health services and the criminal justice system presents challenges both for professionals and patients. Both systems are stressed and inherently complex. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act is unusual being both an aspect of the Mental Health Act and a power of arrest. It has a long and controversial history related to concerns about who has been detained and how the section was applied. More recently, Section 136 has had a public profile stemming from the (...) use of police cells as places of safety for young, mentally disturbed individuals. This paper explores the current state of health of this piece of legislation. Specifically, we consider whether alternative approaches are more suitable for those individuals in crisis and/or distress who come into contact with the police. This requires careful thought as to the proper role of both health and criminal justice professionals who are daily grappling with an ethically contentious domain of multiagency work. (shrink)

_"The Essential Plotinus_ is a lifesaver. For many years my students in Greek and Roman Religion have depended on it to understand the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The translation is crisp and clear, and the excerpts are just right for an introduction to Plotionus's many-layered view of the world and humankind’s place in it." --F. E. Romer, University of Arizona.

Lucy O'Brien argues that a satisfactory account of first-person reference and self-knowledge needs to concentrate on our nature as agents. Clearly written, with rigorous discussion of rival views, this book will be of interest to anyone working in the philosophy of mind and action.

ANALOGY has not just to do with the abstruse details and niceties of metaphysics but rather underlies the structure of all metaphysical thought. It is the heart of metaphysics. No system of metaphysics can discard it, without prejudice to the richness and variety of being. Without analogy there is elimination and over-simplification. Metaphysics is far from being a straightforward science; it is highly complex and its method and style of argument are not easy to master. Its field of inquiry is (...) wide. It is the task of the metaphysician to reduce the world of things to an intelligible unity. (shrink)

It has been widely accepted that intentional actions are “the actions to which “a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ is given application” (Anscombe 1957/2000: 9). But there are robust reasons for thinking that this claim is false. First, there are intentional actions for which such questions are unsound. We have good reasons for thinking that the questions are not “given application” in these cases. Second, when these questions are “given application” this is best explained, it is argued, not in (...) terms of a necessary link between intentional action and this type of enquiry, but in terms of the fact that this is an enquiry that we pursue when we take an agent to have exercised certain of their rational capacities. (shrink)

THIS article concerning Mr. Marshall's open letter to Governor Smith does not pretend to be an answer. It suggests some philosophical considerations on the point at issue. The Editor.

The application of a `Foucaultism' to contemporary critical analysis is by no means an easy task and Poster's book contains many valuable insights into the functioning of Foucault's work — particularly as it relates to modern Marxisms — within critical theory. Yet there remain a number of important themes which Poster appears merely to gloss over (eg, the precise nature of `historicity', the relation between the dialectic and reason, etc) providing no solution to the dilemmas thrown up by grounded theory (...) attempting to work within the field of a discursive analysis. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the particular nature of `history' as it appears in Marx and in Foucault and to indicate some of the main characteristics of Foucault's analytical tools. The logic of the paper follows the logic of Poster's book, dealing with Marx first, Foucault second, and closes with an examination of some analytical implications of adopting a discursive/genealogical approach to the study of contemporary social phenomena. (shrink)

Hosea-Zephaniah so closely conform to Zechariah's description of the “former prophets” that these books may have been written or edited as a prelude to Zechariah. Recognizing that Zechariah constructed a picture of earlier prophets that would support his own message in the Persian period invites modern readers to reflect on the promise and the dangers of engaging in a similar process of reshaping the past in the interests of the present.

This paper addresses the question “what connection is there between our answer to the question of what we are, and the question, what our actions are?” Suppose that actions are reflexive changes of agents. On that supposition, there would be a direct connection between the answers to those two questions. An action of mine will be a reflexive change of me, and what I am will fix the nature of those changes. I hold that supposition to be true and consider (...) reasons in favor of believing it. However, the paper is not primarily aimed at defense of that thesis. It rather concerned with exploring what consequences accepting it has for the competing notions of what we are, given what we ordinarily think actions are, and bringing to light a tension between thinking of actions as reflexive changes of agents in this way, and a kind of causal understanding of actions that is prevalent. What emerges is that we should shift where we start our theorizing: we cannot assume that action theory primarily involves the task of characterizing the relation between an agent and changes caused, rather than a characterization of a particular kind of relation between the agent and herself. (shrink)

In this article I consider and reflect upon the aesthetic significance of Simon Hail-wood's conception of nature as articulated in an earlier volume of this journal in his paper ‘The Value of Nature's Otherness’ (Hailwood 2000: 353–72). I provide a brief elucidation of Hailwood's conception of nature as other and I maintain that recognition of the value of nature's otherness and respect for nature's otherness requires as a necessary condition that one know and perceive that nature is other. I then (...) go on to consider Hailwood's concerns over the possibility of locating nature's value as other in aesthetic responses to nature. I argue that such reservations are warranted insofar as they focus on an inadequate ‘subjectivist’ account of aesthetic experience but are not warranted for all accounts of aesthetic experience, in particular, I will argue that such reservations do not apply to the ‘cognitive’ model of aesthetic appreciation proposed by Allen Carlson as the ‘environmental model’ and developed in the work of Yuriko Saito. I conclude this paper by claiming that aesthetic value is a necessary component of otherness as a ground of nature's value and that this needs to be conceded if we are to be able to acknowledge the reality of something other than ourselves, to treat it appropriately and with respect. (shrink)

The 2015 Paris Agreement set a global warming limit of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Corporations play an important role in achieving this objective, and methods have recently been developed to map global climate targets to specific industries, and individual corporations within those industries. In this article, we assess whether Sustainability ratings capture corporate performance in meeting the 2°C target. We analyze nine rating schemes used by investors and three commonly used in academic studies. Most rating schemes do consider corporate greenhouse (...) gas emissions in their analysis, whereas only a minority scale emissions by factors that have the potential to allow benchmarking against science-based targets. None take the final step of mapping climate indicators against the 2°C target. Furthermore, we find a lack of consistency in the climate change ratings of the databases used in academic studies. These results are concerning in the context of being able to meet global climate change goals. (shrink)

In this innovative and cogent presentation of her concept of sustainable happiness, Catherine O’Brien outlines how the leading recommendations for transforming education can be integrated within a vision of _well-being for all_. Solution-focused, the book demonstrates how aspects of this vision are already being realized, and the potential for accelerating education transitions that enable people and ecosystems to flourish. Each chapter assists educators to understand how to apply the lessons learned, both personally and professionally. The aim is to support (...) educators to experience themselves as change-makers with growing confidence to implement new teaching strategies and inspire their students to become change-makers as well—engaged in deep learning that develops character, connections with life, and invigorating collaborations that revitalize the very purpose of education. (shrink)

Longtermism is the view that positively influencing the long-term future is one of the key moral priorities of our time. Longtermists generally focus on humans, and neglect animals. This is a mistake. In this paper I will show that the basic argument for longtermism applies to animals at least as well as it does to humans, and that the reasons longtermists have given for ignoring animals do not withstand scrutiny. Because of their numbers, their capacity for suffering, and our ability (...) to influence their futures, animals ought to be a central concern of longtermists. Furthermore, I will suggest that longtermism is a fruitful framework for thinking about the wellbeing of animals, as it helps us to identify actions we can take now that have a reasonable chance of improving the wellbeing of animals over the very long term. (shrink)

Well‐functioning agents ordinarily have an excellent epistemic relationship to their intentional actions. This phenomenon is often characterized as knowledge of what one is doing and labeled “practical knowledge”. But when we examine it carefully, it seems to require a particular kind of understanding ‐ understanding of the normative structure of one's action. Three lines of argument are offered to support this Necessity of Understanding thesis. The first appeals to the nature of intentional action and the second to our everyday reasons (...) explanation of action. The final line of argument draws on a practical amnesia case in which an agent forgets her overall goal while acting. Implications of the Necessity of Understanding thesis for the widely endorsed non‐observational view of practical knowledge are briefly discussed. It is argued that support for the non‐observational view is weaker than has been appreciated. (shrink)