Mood disorders, including major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, are highly prevalent, frequently disabling, and sometimes deadly. Additional research and more effective medications are desperately needed, but clinical trials research in mood disorders is fraught with ethical issues. Although many authors have discussed these issues, most do so from a theoretical viewpoint. This manuscript uses available empirical data to inform a discussion of the primary ethical issues raised in mood disorders research. These include issues of consent and decision-making capacity, including (...) patients’ motivations for participating in research. We also address drug withdrawals, placebo controls, and the overall safety of research. Finally, we examine the extant literature for studies discussing potential indirect benefits of clinical trials research to participants. Taken together, the evidence suggests that clinical trials research incorporating drug withdrawals and placebo controls can be conducted safely and ethically, even in patients with severe or treatment-resistant mood disorders. In fact, given the dearth of effective treatment options for this population, it is our opinion that a moral imperative exists to extend the offer of research participation to severely ill or treatment-resistant groups. (shrink)

According to Quine’s indispensability argument, we ought to believe in just those mathematical entities that we quantify over in our best scientific theories. Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment is part of the standard indispensability argument. However, we suggest that a new indispensability argument can be run using Armstrong’s criterion of ontological commitment rather than Quine’s. According to Armstrong’s criterion, ‘to be is to be a truthmaker (or part of one)’. We supplement this criterion with our own brand of metaphysics, 'Aristotelian (...) realism', in order to identify the truthmakers of mathematics. We consider in particular as a case study the indispensability to physics of real analysis (the theory of the real numbers). We conclude that it is possible to run an indispensability argument without Quinean baggage. (shrink)

La verdad, entendida por Tomás de Aquino como la adecuación entre el intelecto y la realidad, forma, en aquel que la busca y la dice, una virtud moral denominada veracidad. Dicha comprensión de la verdad, epistemológica y moral, inspira una manera de entender tanto la pedagogía como la responsabilidad social universitarias. Este artículo desarrolla las relaciones entre epistemología realista, virtud moral y universidad, y muestra cómo la noción de veracidad ha servido de inspiración para las apuestas pedagógicas de la Universidad (...) Santo Tomás. (shrink)

Plochmann and Robinson closely analyze this great dialogue in the first two-thirds of their book, turning in the final four chapters to a broader discussion of its unity, sweep, and philosophic implications.

Given the long-standing controversy about whether the brain-dead should be considered alive in an irreversible coma or dead despite displaying apparent signs of life, the ethical and policy issues posed when family members insist on continued treatment are not as simple as commentators have claimed. In this article, we consider the kind of policy that should be adopted to manage a family's insistence that their brain-dead loved one continues to receive supportive care. We argue that while it would be ethically (...) inappropriate to continue to devote scarce acute care resources to such patients in a hospital setting, it may not be ethically inappropriate for patients to receive these resources in certain other settings. Thus, if a family insists on continuing to care for their brain-dead loved at their home, we should not, from a policy perspective, interfere with the family's wishes. We also argue that healthcare professionals should make some effort to facilitate the transfer of brain-dead patients to these other settings when families insist on continued treatment despite being informed about the lack of any potential for recovery of consciousness. Our arguments are strengthened by the fact that patients in a persistent vegetative state, who, when correctly diagnosed, also have no potential for recovery of consciousness, are routinely transferred from hospitals to nursing homes or long-term care facilities where they continue to be ventilated, tube fed and to receive other supportive care. We also briefly explore the question of who should be responsible for the costs of such treatment at the long-term care facility. (shrink)

Leibniz's best-of-all-possible worlds solution to the problem of evil is defended. Enlightenment misrepresentations are removed. The apparent obviousness of the possibility of better worlds is undermined by the much better understanding achieved in modern mathematical sciences of how global structure constrains local possibilities. It is argued that alternative views, especially standard materialism, fail to make sense of the problem ofevil, by implying that evil does not matter, absolutely speaking. Finally, itis shown how ordinary religious thinking incorporates the essentials of Leibniz's (...) view. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager and Leibniz’s theory that this is the best of all possible worlds are latecomers in the Faith-and-Reason tradition. They have remained interlopers; they have never been taken as seriously as the older arguments for the existence of God and other themes related to faith and reason.

Interpretations of recollection in the "Phaedo" are divided between ordinary interpretations, on which recollection explains a kind of learning accomplished by all, and sophisticated interpretations, which restrict recollection to philosophers. A sophisticated interpretation is supported by the prominence of philosophical understanding and reflection in the argument. Recollection is supposed to explain the advanced understanding displayed by Socrates and Simmias (74b2-4). Furthermore, it seems to be a necessary condition on recollection that one who recollects also perform a comparison of sensible particulars (...) to Forms (74a5-7). I provide a new ordinary interpretation which explains these features of the argument. First, we must clearly distinguish the philosophical reflection which constitutes the argument for the Theory of Recollection from the ordinary learning which is its subject. The comparison of sensibles to Forms is the reasoning by which we see, as philosophers, that we must recollect. At the same time, we must also appreciate the continuity of ordinary and philosophical learning. Plato wants to explain the capacity for ordinary discourse, but with an eye to its role as the origin of philosophical reflection and learning. In the "Phaedo", recollection has ordinary learning as its immediate explanandum, and philosophical learning as its ultimate explanandum. (shrink)

Bioethics is a hybrid discipline. As a theoretical enterprise it stands for untrammeled inquiry and argument. Yet it aims to influence medical practice and policy. In this article we explore tensions between these two dimensions of bioethics and examine the merits and perils of a “Socratic” approach to bioethics that challenges “the conventional wisdom.”.

In this innovative examination of works by Poe, Melville, Twain, Nabokov, Barth, and Pynchon, Herbert F. Smith establishes an aesthetic theory that allows for fresh readings of six problematic texts. He explores how the texts came to be written and what semiotic processes are involved in their creation, and in so doing he opens the way for new theoretical speculation.

By 1800 Schelling’s thought had moved from the Fichtean Ich through all-encompassing systems of objective nature to the point where the idea for a first synthesis, a first system, captured his attention. And so at twenty-five, at Jena, he composed the first of those systems written and published each year between 1800 and 1802.

In a recent paper, Guy Kahane asks whether God’s existence is something we should want to be true. Expanding on some cryptic remarks from Thomas Nagel, Kahane’s informative and wide-ranging piece eventually addresses whether personal anti-theism is justified, where personal anti-theism is the view that God’s existence would make things worse overall for oneself. In what follows, I develop, defend, but ultimately reject the Meaningful Life Argument, according to which if God’s existence precludes the realization of certain goods that seem (...) to an agent to constitute a meaningful life, it is rational for an agent both to believe that personal anti-theism is true and to prefer that God not exist. (shrink)

"Mitchell Franklin (1902-1986) is described by the Buffalo Law Review as the foremost Marxist legal philosopher in the English-speaking world. In these selected writings, Franklin, a professor of law at Tulane University for 37 years, discusses how the development of natural law from an idealist to a materialist concept in the transition from feudalism to capitalism is reflected in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and its interpretation today" --Publisher's summary.

No single theory so far proposed gives a wholly satisfactory account of the origin and maintenance of bird-song dialects. This failure is the consequence of a weak comparative literature that precludes careful comparisons among species or studies, and of the complexity of the issues involved. Complexity arises because dialects seem to bear upon a wide range of features in the life history of bird species. We give an account of the principal issues in bird-song dialects: evolution of vocal learning, experimental (...) findings on song ontogeny, dialect descriptions, female and male reactions to differences in dialect, and population genetics and dispersal.We present a synthetic theory of the origin and maintenance of song dialects, one that accommodates most of the different systems reported in the literature. The few data available suggest that large, regional dialect populations are genetically differentiated; this pattern is correlated with reduced dispersal between dialects, assortative mating by females, and male-male exclusion. At the same time, “subdialects” may be formed within regional dialects. Subdialect clusters are usually small and may represent vocal mimicry among a few adjacent territorial males. The relative importance of genetic and social adaptation may contribute to the emergence of subdialects; their distinctiveness may be correlated with the degree of polygyny, for example. Thus, subdialect formation is linked to one theory of the evolution of repertoire size, but data are too fragmentary to examine this idea critically. (shrink)

That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period, a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.

Selon Kirk Lougheed, favoriser une version objective de l’argument du sens de la vie établit une sorte d’antithéisme, c’est-à-dire une perspective qui maintient que l’existence d’un Dieu théiste aggraverait les choses et qu’il est donc plus rationnel de préférer que Dieu n’existe pas. Cette version objective est présentée par Lougheed comme une amélioration par rapport à ma version subjective de l’argument du sens de la vie. Je soutiens que la version de Lougheed ne réussit pas mieux que la version subjective (...) que j’ai développée, puis rejetée. (shrink)

Previous research has proposed the exploratory hypotheses that hostility could differ from anger in the sense that it involves higher possibility for inflicting physical harm while anger could invo...

Pro-theism is the view that God’s existence would be good in that God’s existence increases the value of a world. Anti-theism is the view that God’s existence would decrease the value of a world. We develop and defend the morally good agent argument for pro-theism. The basic idea is that morally good agents tend to add value to states of affairs, and God, moral agent par excellence is no exception. Thus, we argue that the existence of God would be, on (...) balance, a good thing and therefore something that one can rationally desire to be true. (shrink)