Bernard Harcourt, Language of the Gun: Youth, Crime, and Public Policy Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, xiii + 278 pp.

The Metacognitive, Affective, Cognitive Experience questionnaire was designed to assess metacognition across sleep and waking . The present research evaluates the psychometric properties of the MACE. Data from two recent studies were used to assess the inter-item consistency, test–retest reliability, and factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity of the MACE. Results show that the MACE is a reliable measure with good construct validity. Exploratory factor analyses revealed one self-regulation and two monitoring factors. One monitoring factor emphasized monitoring internal conditions; the other (...) emphasized monitoring external conditions. This factor structure is consistent with the Metacognitive Model . Tests of convergent and discriminant validity suggest that the MACE is assessing metacognition and is appropriately related to similar constructs such as mindfulness and self-consciousness. The implication of these findings as well as suggestions for research and clinical applications of the MACE are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper we evaluate two sets of theistic arguments against the traditional position that Cod created with absolute freedom. The first set features several variations of Leibniz’s basic proof that Cod must create the best possible world. The arguments in the second set base the claim that Cod must create on the Platonic or Dionysian principle that goodness is essentially self-diffusive. We argue that neither the Leibnizian nor the Dionysian arguments are successful.

When ethics committees are consulted about patients who have or need court-appointed guardians, they lack empirical evidence about several common issues, including the relationship between guardianship and prolonged, potentially medically unnecessary hospitalizations for patients. To provide information about this issue, we conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses using a retrospective cohort from Veterans Healthcare Administration. To examine the relationship between guardianship appointment and hospital length of stay, we first compared 116 persons hospitalized prior to guardianship appointment to a comparison group (n (...) = 348) 3:1 matched for age, diagnosis, date of admission, and comorbidity. We then compared 91 persons hospitalized in the year following guardianship appointment to a second matched comparison group (n = 273). Mean length of stay was 30.75 days (SD = 46.70) amongst those admitted prior to guardianship, which was higher than the comparison group (M = 7.74, SD = 9.71, F = 20.75, p. (shrink)

The Treatment Escalation Plan (TEP) was introduced into our trust in an attempt to improve patient involvement and experience of their treatment in hospital and to embrace and clarify a wider remit of treatment options than the Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order currently offers. Our experience suggests that the patient and family are rarely engaged in DNR discussions. This is acutely relevant considering that the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) now obliges these discussions to take place. The TEP is a form (...) that the doctor completes, ideally with the competent patient or close relative, documenting what treatment options would be appropriate if that patient were to become acutely unwell. Ventilation of the lungs, cardiac resuscitation, renal replacement therapy, intravenous fluids and antibiotics are all discussed. The study evaluated patient and relative experiences with the TEP. 55 patients or their relatives were interviewed regarding their experience of the TEP and thoughts regarding the process. 96% of patients and relatives evaluated thought that the TEP was a good idea. Free text comments were all positive and only 34% of patients claimed to feel anxious when completing the form. Following this study, the TEP has been expanded hospital wide and into the community within our trust. Discussions are currently taking place in hospitals within our region to introduce the TEP form into other local trusts. (shrink)

Ronald Mercer - Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 410-411 Book Review Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky. Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv + 223. Cloth, $39.95. Emmanuel Levinas's thought has been a sleeping giant in continental philosophy, having influence upon many of his contemporaries while drawing minimal attention to himself. In the last (...) few years, however, as evidenced by the explosion of secondary literature on Levinas, it is clear that scholars are awakening to Levinas's importance. Jeffrey Kosky's work, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion, joins this secondary.. (shrink)

The authors argue that while meaning holism makes massive error possible, it does not, as Donald Davidson fears, threaten interpretability. Thus they hold, in opposition to Davidson, that meaning holism need not be constrained by an account of meaning according to which in the methodologically most basic cases the content of a belief is given by the cause of that belief. What ensures interpretability, they maintain, is not that speakers' beliefs are in the main true, but rather that beliefs have (...) the contents they do because of events others can in principle identify and describe. (shrink)

Dotted throughout the records of the turbulent last decades of fourth-century Athens are reports—often frustratingly vague—of prosecutions, many of intellectuals on the charge of . Most belong to the period of Macedonian domination: Theophrastus was one targeted at this time, and we hear also of actions against Demetrius of Phalerum, Theodorus the atheist, and Stilpo of Megara. Even before the Athenian capitulation to Macedon, in the immediate aftermath of the death of Alexander, prosecutions were launched against Demades and Aristotle. These (...) two early prosecutions are generally accepted to have had a political purpose, being attacks aimed at Macedonian sympathizers by the more staunchly pro-democratic Athenian elements; the later trials, however, are poorly attested in the sources and have received less scholarly attention, particularly for their political aspects. (shrink)

This path-breaking book reconceptualizes our understanding of political tolerance as well as of its foundations.

In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it which save it (...) from many objections in the literature (in particular, objections raised by Harman, Pappas and Swain, Klein, Dretske, Goldman, Shope, Ackermann, Morawetz, and Collier). (shrink)

In this article, we present the contemporary conceptualization of metamemory as beliefs, accurate and naive, about memory. We discuss the implications of metamemory for memory construction in general and for suggestibility and the recovery of memories in particular. We argue that beliefs about memory influence the probability that suggestions will be incorporated into memory and judgements about the veracity of subsequent recollections. Implications for research on the role of beliefs in suggestibility and memory recovery are outlined.

This article examines Michael Oakeshott's views on European political history, based on the essays, reviews, lectures and unpublished works which he produced throughout his intellectual career. These pieces are less familiar than his writings on political philosophy, but deal with the same themes, notably the relationships between individuals, groups and the state. The conclusion is that Oakeshott was telling a new version of an old tale, the history of the development of a fundamental division in European political thought and practice (...) between two contrasting forms of human association, one communal and consensual, the other individualistic and contractarian. (shrink)

During the past two decades there has been increasing dissatisfaction with established political categories, on the grounds that they no longer fit many of the facts of contemporary life, or adequately express many contemporary political ideals. Political Theory in Transition explores the principle reasons for this dissatisfaction and outlines some of the most influential responses to it.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 174-177.

The documentary program "Confusion in a Jar," shown on the PBS series NOVA, is analyzed in terms of rhetorical theory. The program is characterized as an instance of the genre of epideictic rhetoric. However, unlike most studies of epideictic that emphasize the way the genre builds communion, in this case the negative side of epideictic as the rhetoric of exclusion or excommunication is investigated, especially its rhetorical function of closing off discussion. The program is shown to follow six episodes of (...) an excommunication narrative modeled on the narrative structure of the New Testament Gospels. (shrink)

In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it which save it (...) from many objections in the literature (in particular, objections raised by Harman, Pappas and Swain, Klein, Dretske, Goldman, Shope, Ackermann, Morawetz, and Collier). (shrink)

(1995). Migrating across disciplinary boundaries: The case of the periodicity paper of David Raup and John Sepkoski. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Boundary Rhetorics and the Work of Interdisciplinarity, pp. 151-164.

Although clinical ethics consultation is a high-stakes endeavor with an increasing prominence in health care systems, progress in developing standards for quality is challenging. In this article, we describe the results of a pilot project utilizing portfolios as an evaluation tool. We found that this approach is feasible and resulted in a reasonably wide distribution of scores among the 23 submitted portfolios that we evaluated. We discuss limitations and implications of these results, and suggest that this is a significant step (...) on the pathway to an eventual certification process for clinical ethics consultants. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:nook REVIEWS 689 if everyone behaves as if everyone is saved the result is a world in which God could appear and not be crucified. To be sure, there is a chance of an infinite life. Pascal believed human beings are potentially infinite--as is shown by our capacity for extending our knowledge to the infinite--but we are also potentially nothing, as is shown by the fact that the person (...) never really appears in our scientific accounts. It is through God that our infinity is to be achieved, and so betting on God is also betting on ourselves in a perfectly intelligible way. This involw~s a notion of infinity not explored in any of these essays, which makes it possible to share with God without changing the divine nature (or losing ours). This sharing is a payoff which cannot be attained by.just any act. Our lives may also be endless and possessed of positive value because they are not lived in hell, but this is icing on a cake which you are supposed to eat anyhow. Still, though Pascal might have taught the authors a thing or two, he would have found this book handy for some of its new conceptual analyses and some of its classic essays. Ian Hacking's 1972 analysis of what he takes to be three different arguments in Pascal remains a good starting point and John K. Ryan's historical article of 1945 still has useful things to say about Tillotson, whose maximization-of-utility argument really was the one many commentators have taken to be Pascal's. (But Ryan misses much of the background in the combination of scepticism and fideism in Charron and La Mothe le Vayer.) Among the others Jeff Jordan does a good job on the "many gods" objections, Richard Foley's account of pragmatic grounds for belief adds some clear insights (though his account of rationality is open to some objections), and Thomas V. Morris's account of the problems of wagering and evidence will be a handy reference point. Edward F. McClennen's account of finite decision is a necessary counterpart to Sorensen's infinity paper, and Philip L. Quinn opens some of the moral issues involved in all such wagers. Finally, George Schlesinger's assessment of the subtleties of theistic argument well repays the time spent reading it. The bibliography is useful and up-to-date. The editor would probably cheerfully admit his book's shortcomings as a work in the history of philosophy, but the volume must nevertheless have a place on the bookshelf of everyone for whom these issues are central. LESI,IE ARMOUR Universityof Ottawa G. W. Leibniz. De Summa Rerum: MetaphysicalPapers, z675-76. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by G. H. R. Parkinson. The Yale Leibniz. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Pp lxiv + 145. Cloth, $37.oo. The YaleLeib,niz, under the general editorship of Daniel Garber and Robert C. Sleigh, Jr., will provide scholarly editions of Leibniz's original texts along with an English translation on facing pages. As the general editors explain in their introduction, each volume in the series will be "a collection of texts that constitute a natural unit," each will be edited and translated by a specialist who will also contribute an introduction, and 690 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER i99 5 each will include writings most of which either have not been published or, if published, have not been translated. The first volume of The Yale Leibniz, edited by G. H. R. Parkinson, is a tantalizing beginning. In it, Parkinson has collected, translated, and introduced some of the most interesting papers from the Academy edition's Series VI, Vol. 3, first published in 198o. In this volume the Academy editors have placed under the title of De Summa Return those papers which Leibniz wrote between late 1675 and December 1676 and which treat problems in the philosophy of mathematics (especially those of the infinite) and in metaphysics and philosophical theology. The papers are enormously important. Toward the end of his Paris stay (which lasted from March, 1672 to October 4, 1676) and after a breakthrough in his work on... (shrink)

Contributing Authors Include Oliver L. Reiser, Alvin Priestly Bradford, Irving J. Lee, And Others. Non-Aristotelian Methodology Applied For Sanity In Our Time.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Erotic Attunement: Parenthood and the Ethics of Sensuality between Unequals by Cristina L. H. TrainaSandra Sullivan-DunbarErotic Attunement: Parenthood and the Ethics of Sensuality between Unequals CRISTINA L. H. TRAINA Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, 363 pp. $55.00In this ambitious and broadly interdisciplinary work, Cristina Traina begins from an experience that evades contemporary discussion: maternal sensual pleasure in the care of infants and young children. As Traina (...) notes, this experience puts two contemporary dogmas on a “collision course”: the widely accepted norm that sexual pleasure is intrinsically good and the widely accepted norm that sexual pleasure between unequals is intrinsically exploitative. As with other feminist turns toward neglected experience, this one calls for a recalibration of ethical models—in this case, a more complex and nuanced sexual ethic.Traina challenges readers to broaden notions of sexuality beyond androcentric models focused primarily on particular acts and on genital release. Such models are deeply graven in the Christian tradition and reinforced through reductive cultural appropriations of Freudian thought. But all human relations are embodied and involve desire, argues Traina, and are thus in some sense erotic, though most do not involve genital sexuality. Likewise, her readers are challenged to recognize the pervasiveness of relations of inequality in human life, when most Christian sexual ethics limit themselves to relations between equals, or at least understand a sexual ethic to aim at equality and mutuality.The book engages psychological resources demonstrating the human need for appropriate touch as well as the profound damage done by abusive touch. The need is so universal and foundational that Traina casts it as a human right; yet offering such touch appropriately is a subtle and challenging moral task beset with danger and the potential for self-deception.Traina diagnoses the sexual abuser as a fragmented self, one unable to perceive the concrete reality, needs, and experiences of her victim and bent on the doomed project of creating a whole self by appropriating and objectifying the other. Thus, at the heart of her ethic of sensuality between unequals is the notion of “attunement.” The attuned caregiver can acknowledge and fully experience inclinations, joys, and pains with a contemplative and compassionate awareness that allows considered and appropriate responses. The attuned care-giver lives with “unending, acknowledged desire” (177), a desire that glories in the goodness of the child in her care and, in so doing, creatively elicits subjectivity from her rather than manipulating her to meet the needs of the caregiver. [End Page 240]This ethical vision is developed in dialogue with a number of resources from Christian and secular sources. Traina helpfully nuances a Thomistic account of the virtue of temperance as a guideline for appropriate touch. She also develops revisionist accounts of Augustinian desire offered by Wendy Farley and Linda Holler. I found myself wondering whether some more traditional interpretations of Augustine might serve Traina’s project as well as or better than these revisionist understandings, which emphasize desire as a permanent state rather than directed toward final rest in God.Likewise, Traina works her way through the plethora of recent eros theologies, drawing in particular on recent interpretations of Plato’s Symposium that stress the creativity of eros in bringing to birth goodness and beauty as well as its potential for enabling a degree of other-regard. It seems to this reader that a contemporary ethic of sexuality between unequals calls for greater other-regard than the most generous interpretation of Plato’s ladder of love can suggest. However, Plato’s caution about the profound difficulty of directing eros toward the true good resonates with the difficulty of achieving the “erotic attunement” described by Traina.In any case, quibbles about the resources and interpretations that Traina mines to support her ethic do not lessen the originality, power, and importance of this book, which extends beyond sexual ethics to reframe questions about embodiment, (in)equality, and moral agency in profound and necessary ways.Sandra Sullivan-DunbarLoyola University, ChicagoCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis provoked an organizational ethics dilemma: how to develop ethical pandemic policy while upholding our organizational mission to deliver relationship- and patient-centered care. Tasked with producing a recommendation about whether healthcare workers and essential personnel should receive priority access to limited medical resources during the pandemic, the bioethics department and survey and interview methodologists at our institution implemented a deliberative approach that included the perspectives of healthcare professionals and patient stakeholders in the policy development process. Involving (...) the community more, not less, during a crisis required balancing the need to act quickly to garner stakeholder perspectives, uncertainty about the extent and duration of the pandemic, and disagreement among ethicists about the most ethically supportable way to allocate scarce resources. This article explains the process undertaken to garner stakeholder input as it relates to organizational ethics, recounts the stakeholder perspectives shared and how they informed the triage policy developed, and offers suggestions for how other organizations may integrate stakeholder involvement in ethical decision-making as well as directions for future research and public health work. (shrink)

The effects of religion, population sub-division and geography on the prevalence of deaf-mutism were investigated using information collected in the 1921 Census of Punjab. The total sample size was 9·36 million, and comprised data on thirteen Hindu castes, seventeen Muslim biraderis and two Sikh castes. A two-way analysis of variance comparing males in Hindu castes in which consanguineous marriage was prohibited, with males in Muslim biraderis which favoured first cousin marriage, indicated major differences with respect to the patterns of deaf-mutism (...) within each religion. In the Muslim population 9·1% of the relative variation in the prevalence of deaf-mutism was inter-biraderi, 36·8% between geographical regions, and 48·8% an interaction between biraderi and region, whereas among Hindus 46·8% of the observed variation was inter-caste, 12·8% inter-region and 33·6% due to caste–region interaction. From a wider disease perspective the results obtained with the Hindu community indicate the significant genetic differentiation associated with caste endogamy. As the overwhelming majority of Hindu marriages continue to be within-caste, it can be predicted that similar levels of inter-caste differences in disease frequency currently exist. By comparison, the lower level of inter-biraderi variation among Muslims is probably indicative of the dissolution of pre-existing caste boundaries and the resultant gene pool mixing that followed the large-scale conversion of Hindus to Islam during Muslim rule in North India from the 13th to the 19th centuries. (shrink)