Expressed emotion is a measure of the family environment that has been demonstrated to be a reliable, cross-culturally valid psychosocial predictor of relapse in patients with schizophrenia, mood disorders, and other — also somatic — illnesses. Assessed during the Camberwell Family Interview CFI, relatives are classified as being high in EE if they make more than a specified threshold number of critical comments or show any signs of hostility or marked emotional overinvolvement. In schizophrenia, the median relapse rate for patients (...) returning after hospital discharge to a high EE environment is 48%, compared with 21% in a low EE-environment. In this article, the history of EE research will be outlined, and the evidence for the association between family EE and the course of schizophrenia and mood disorders will be presented. Conclusions about the treatment of major mental disorders are discussed as well as the directions of future studies. (shrink)

In _The Immorality of Punishment_ Michael Zimmerman argues forcefully that not only our current practice but indeed any practice of legal punishment is deeply morally repugnant, no matter how vile the behaviour that is its target. Despite the fact that it may be difficult to imagine a state functioning at all, let alone well, without having recourse to punishing those who break its laws, Zimmerman makes a timely and compelling case for the view that we must seek and (...) put into practice alternative means of preventing crime and promoting social stability. (shrink)

How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy’s perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology. Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also (...) draws on a rich range of examples from Plato’s Meno and Dickens’ David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein. (shrink)

It is often claimed that humans are rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral creatures. What these characterizations may all have in common is the more fundamental claim that humans are normative animals, in the sense that they are creatures whose lives are structured at a fundamental level by their relationships to norms. The various capacities singled out by discussion of rational, linguistic, cultural, or moral animals might then all essentially involve an orientation to obligations, permissions and prohibitions. And, if this is (...) so, then perhaps it is a basic susceptibility, or proclivity to normative or deontic regulation of thought and behavior that enables humans to develop the various specific features of their life form. This volume of new essays investigates the claim that humans are essentially normative animals in this sense. The contributors do so by looking at the nature and relations of three types of norms, or putative norms-social, moral, and linguistic-and asking whether they might all be different expressions of one basic structure unique to humankind. These questions are posed by philosophers, primatologists, behavioral biologists, psychologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists, who have collaborated on this topic for many years. The contributors are committed to the idea that understanding normativity is a two-way process, involving a close interaction between conceptual clarification and empirical research. (shrink)

Recent writers claim that responsibilist virtue epistemology courts skepticism, owing to the fact that most of us lack the virtues it deems necessary for justified belief and knowledge. A powerful version of this objection is the challenge from situationist social psychology pressed by Alfano (2012, 2013) and Olin and Doris (2014). This paper develops a new version of responsibilism that is immune from this objection, and shows that this view has many advantages over other forms of virtue epistemology. My responsibilism (...) dispenses with the ubiquitous but (I argue) mistaken idea that responsibilist virtue properties must be understood in terms of character traits. My view parallels an often overlooked form of virtue ethics suggested by Thomson (1997) that some situationists (e.g., Harman (2001)) have praised. That form shares with other forms the thought that virtue properties are normatively fundamental, but it adds that act-attaching ones are prior to person-attaching ones, and require no backing by character traits. Far from being an ad hoc retreat position, I argue that this view is independently attractive. (shrink)

Spécialiste de la philosophie antique et médiévale, l'auteur, à 83 ans, entend faire le bilan de ses expériences. Il considère que l'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament sont en décalage avec l'époque actuelle. De ce fait, il se détourne de la religion chrétienne dont il ne renie pas pour autant les apports culturels. --[Memento].

During the past several years, numerous studies have been conducted regarding advance directives for health care). Studies have examined how many individuals have executed advance directives, who is more likely to execute such directives, and whether factors such as education, income, race, religiosity, or family status affect the likelihood of having executed an advance directive or one's willingness to do so. Studies have also investigated the effectiveness of different educational strategies aimed at increasing the number of individuals who execute these (...) documents. Finally, a number of researchers have looked at the implementation of advance directives.Although we now have a better understanding of some of these issues, one area that has been virtually ignored is the reliability, validity, and overall user friendliness of the advance directive forms themselves, and, in particular, of the statutory advance directive forms. (shrink)

I attempt to rebut Dean Zimmerman's novel argument (2010), which he presents in support of substance dualism, for the conclusion that, in spite of its popularity, the combination of property dualism with substance materialism represents a precarious position in the philosophy of mind. I take issue with Zimmerman's contention that the vagueness of 'garden variety' material objects such as brains or bodies makes them unsuitable candidates for the possession of phenomenal properties. I also argue that the 'speculative materialism' (...) that is available to a substance materialist property dualist who abandons the identification of persons with such garden variety objects is significantly more attractive than Zimmerman allows. Although I do not attempt to refute its substance dualist rival, I conclude that the combination of property dualism with substance materialism can withstand Zimmerman's objections. (shrink)

Das Buch bietet eine Konzeption der Sozialphilosophie, die in der Medialität das eigentlich Soziale erkennt. Damit stellt sich der soziale Prozess als kommunikativer Text dar, der durch die drei Dimensionen der Zeit, des Sozialen und des Diskursiven strukturiert ist. Der Band fokussiert die diskursive Ebene und rekonstruiert das Symbolische (Noetik) und das Normative (Ethik) als seine Hauptrichtungen. Kurt Röttgers zeigt: Eine solche kommunikationstheoretisch fundierte Sozialphilosophie kommt erstmals ohne die berüchtigten Menschenbilder aus und ermöglicht zugleich eine neue Grundlegung der Ethik (...) und des Denkens des Politischen. (shrink)

Kurt Godel was the most outstanding logician of the 20th century. This second volume of Godel's works collects the remainder of his published work, covering the period 1938-1974. Each article or closely related group of articles is preceded by an introductory note that elucidates it and places it in its historical context.

Developed in the mid‐twentieth century, game theory is a mathematical discipline that now drives fields as diverse as warfare, economics, evolutionary theory, and foreign policy. This chapter explores the importance of understanding others to Ender's military brilliance. For Ender, this understanding was not merely intellectual, but also emotional. The chapter also shows how Ender's instinctive ability to understand his enemies places him in a prime position, according to game theory, to redefine the game to create a path to victory. This (...) is the lesson that Ender's Game teaches about how to find a path to victory even when one doesn't seem to exist. For Ender, at least, it seems that sympathy, empathy, and love are not fundamentally different. Instead, they lie on a continuum. Love and sympathy, experienced simultaneously, allow empathy. (shrink)