From early sage philosophers to Leopold Senghor of Senegal and Steve Biko of South Africa, African thinking has challenged the way we think. As we enter a new millenium, the perspectives provided in this volume offer wise and refreshing alternatives to problems of self and society, culture, aesthetics, metaphysics and religion. Out of Africa always something new, and in these pages contemporary problems of cross-cultural cognition and post-coloniality are not only addressed, but also enacted. The reader witnesses the collision and (...) the coalescence of cultures in the writings of philosophers from Africa. (shrink)

An important contribution to the foundations of probability theory, statistics and statistical physics has been made by E. T. Jaynes. The recent publication of his collected works provides an appropriate opportunity to attempt an assessment of this contribution.

Hume's 'Natural History of Religion' offers a naturalized account of the causes of religious thought, an investigation into its 'origins' rather than its 'foundation in reason'. Hume thinks that if we consider only the causes of religious belief, we are provided with a reason to suspend the belief. I seek to explain why this is so, and what role the argument plays in Hume's wider campaign against the rational acceptability of religious belief. In particular, I argue that the work threatens (...) a form of fideism which maintains that it is rationally permissible to maintain religious belief in the absence of evidence or of arguments in its favour. I also discuss the 'argument from common consent', and the relative superiority of Hume's account of the origins of religious belief. (shrink)

Theism, according to David O'Connor, has in recent centuries been on trial for its life, the charge being that the existence of so much evil in the world is incompatible with belief in a benevolent creator. But this trial, he claims is incapable of producing a reasoned verdict.

Multidisciplinary healthcare committees meet regularly to discuss patients’ candidacy for emerging functional neurosurgical procedures, such as Deep Brain Stimulation . Through debate and discussion around the surgical candidacy of particular patients, functional neurosurgery programs begin to mold practice and policy supported both by scientific evidence and clear value choices. These neurosurgical decisions have special considerations not found in non-neurologic committees. The professional time used to resolve these conflicts provides opportunities for the emergence of careful, ethical practices simultaneous with the expansion (...) of therapy applications. (shrink)

Religion and the external world -- Projection, religion, and the external world -- The senses, reason and the imagination -- Realism, meaning and justification : the external world and religious belief -- Modality, projection and realism -- 'Our profound ignorance' : causal realism, and the failure to detect necessity -- Spreading the mind : projection, necessity and realism -- Into the labyrinth : persons, modality, and Hume's undoing -- Value, projection, and realism -- Gilding : projection, value and secondary qualities (...) -- The gold : good, evil, belief and desire -- The golden : relational values, realism and a moral sense. (shrink)

This essay engages Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus as a salient intervention into modern political theory. I analyze the work as a cipher for the tensions inhabiting Euro-modernity’s stitched together fictions of racial determinism and racial dynamism legible in slavery, assimilationist projects and White fears reverberating throughout. Adapting the mythical ancient Prometheus as one who steals fire from the gods to create humans and civilization, Frankenstein dramatizes the risks and monstrous results of White imperial masculinity as a Euro-colonial (...) Promethean project of subject formation and race-making. Viewed through the prism of the Modern Prometheus, modernity in general and liberal humanism in particular are recast as monster-making projects. The European “discovery” of Indigenous peoples amplified Promethean aspirations to create subjects through civilizational processes of religious conversion, the infusion of Enlightenment rationality, and assimilation into whiteness. Politically, the Promethean capacity to engineer humans and proto-humans using Native peoples as raw material allowed progressives to argue against outright extermination in favor of cultural genocide. Seeking to create a subserviant species, Victor Frankenstein confronts a revolting insurrection of his own making—a Creature who refuses slavery, claims mastery over his creator and demands a female companion. Yet Frankenstein’s fear of creating “a race of devils” betrays a terror of what Whites know, but refuse to acknowledge, about themselves and racial others. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe published research articles that were named in official findings of scientific misconduct and to investigate compliance with the administrative actions contained in these reports for corrections and retractions, as represented in PubMed. Between 1993 and 2001, 102 articles were named in either the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts ( Findings of Scientific Misconduct ) or the U.S. Office of Research Integrity annual reports as needing retraction or correction. In 2002, (...) 98 of the 102 articles were indexed in PubMed. Eighty-five of these 98 articles had indexed corrections: 47 were retracted; 26 had an erratum; 12 had a correction described in the comment field. Thirteen had no correction, but 10 were linked to the NIH Guide Findings of Scientific Misconduct , leaving only 3 articles with no indication of any sort of problem. As of May 2005, there were 5,393 citations to the 102 articles, with a median of 26 citations per article (range 0–592). Researchers should be alert to Comments linked to the NIH Guide as these are open access, and the Findings of Scientific Misconduct’ reports are often more informative than the statements about the retraction or correction found in the journals. (shrink)

Introduction to, and overview of, the contents of the Symposium on consent and confidentialityThe papers in this symposium are based on a meeting held by the Academy of Medical Sciences in London on 12 February 2002. The decision to hold this meeting, and to explore in detail these important and contentious issues, arose from a number of concerns that the Academy felt about what may reasonably be called “impediments to medical research”.These include: The regulations arising from the implementation of the (...) European data protection directive and their effect on the gathering and holding of data needed for disease surveillance as well as for research. Phil Boyd, in his paper, presents the views and the work of the Information Commission, the responsible UK body in this area. The “Source Informatics” case where the Department of Health requested a judicial review on the use, by this company, of anonymised prescribing data from general practitioner records for informing the pharmaceutical industry about patterns of drug use. Mr Justice Latham ruled that the use of even this anonymised data for commercial purposes could be a breach of patients' rights to confidentiality. The Court of Appeal, however, emphatically reversed his decision and, no further appeal having been made to the House of Lords, the law of the land is now clear that there is no breach of confidentiality in the use of anonymised data. It did seem to us, …. (shrink)

Layers of complexity arise when a person arrives in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) due to self-harm intended to end their life and when there is known past personal trauma. We highlight three importa...

This paper first considers why it is important to give children genetic information about hereditary conditions in the family, which will go on to affect their lives in a salient way. If it is important to inform children that they are at risk for an adult-onset disease that exists in the family, why should they not also grow up knowing whether they actually carry the genetic mutation? Central to this discussion is the importance of the process of disclosure and the (...) environment in which genetic information is divulged. It is concluded that the reasons given for defending disclosure of genetic conditions in the family to children are also important reasons to cautiously defend predictive genetic testing of children for adult-onset diseases. (shrink)

Joel Feinberg and Dan Brock have independently developed a solution to the Problem of Nonidentity as it occurs in cases where a mother's negligent act of conception causes her child to be born with a severe disability. I display three problems in the Feinberg‐Brock proposal and develop an alternative view that explains both cases of wrongful conception and additional instances of the Problem of Nonidentity presented by Derek Parfit and others.

In his paper ‘Has the Ontological Argument Been Refuted?’, 97–110) William F. Vallicella argues that my attempt to show that the Ontological Argument begs the question is unsuccessful. 1 I believe he is wrong about this, but before endeavouring to vindicate my position I must first make clear what precisely is the point at issue between us. The Ontological Argument is not a single argument, but a family of arguments. Newly devised formulations of the argument are frequently put forward by (...) philosophers in an effort to avoid difficulties that have been pointed out in previous versions. As a consequence there is no possibility of a conclusive proof that every form of the argument embodies the same fallacy. Nevertheless, one can, I believe, prove that all the standard versions of the argument embody a certain fallacy and that, given the nature of the argument, it is therefore unlikely that the argument can be formulated in such a way as to avoid this difficulty. What I tried to show in my paper is that the six best-known versions of the argument all beg the question and that they do so at the same point in the argument, namely when it is asserted that it is possible that an absolutely perfect being exists. It is difficult to see how an ontological argument could be formulated without including this claim as one of its premises, since the distinguishing badge of the argument is the inference from the possibility of an absolutely perfect being to its actuality. It must be unlikely then, if my criticism of these six versions is correct, that there is any way of formulating the argument that avoids this fallacy. (shrink)

This essay explores a variety of important Chinese conceptions of the actual and ideal relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world. It presents views from the earliest period of historical China, the latter part of the Shang dynasty (ca. 1200–1050 bce), and from representative thinkers of other periods, extending down to the last imperial era, the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 ce). There is a fairly clear line of development from the earliest period, when the Chinese saw the (...) natural realm as chaotic, dangerous and largely inscrutable, to a later view of the world as well ordered, inclined toward human good and more open to understanding. This later view was first expressed during the “Eastern Zhou” (770–221 bce), and reached a mature and systematic form in the following Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). Subsequent periods saw remarkable variation in the specific features of this view but its general form – a belief in a well ordered and manageable world, inclined toward human good and open to human understanding – remained dominant throughout subsequent Chinese history. (shrink)

Inleidend overzicht van de wijsgerige ethiek.

Natural duty theorists of political obligation try to base a moral duty to obey the law on some natural duty, such as the duty to promote justice. Their critics say they confront an insurmountable obstacle in the particularity problem: Since natural duties do not bind us to some persons and institutions more strongly than to others, they cannot support a duty to one particular state or society. I solve the particularity problem, by developing a version of the political obligation thesis, (...) giving a natural duty argument for it and showing that the particularity problem does not arise for the argument. I reply to some likely objections to my view. (shrink)

The dossier of decrees concerning the Deceleans and the Demotionidae of Athens presents fascinating problems and has attracted plentiful discussion. For a long time there has been a division between the view of Wilamowitz and his followers, that the Demotionidae were a phratry and the Deceleans a privileged genos within it, and that of Wade–Gery refined by Andrewes, that the Deceleans were a phratry and the Demotionidae a privileged genos within it.3 Each of these interpretations gave rise to problems; and (...) since the work of Bourriot and Roussel on the gene there has been a reluctance to believe in gene as aristocratic clans able to control their phratries. Recently Hedrick has argued that the Demotionidae were the phratry and the Deceleans the members of the deme of Decelea; and Lambert has argued that the Demotionidae were the phratry and the Deceleans a genos–like body which formed a semi–independent group within the phratry and which in these decrees was extending its independence further. These interpretations also give rise to problems: in this paper I attempt to continue the debate and to show that an interpretation on Wade–Gery′s lines is after all the most likely to be right. (shrink)

In a world in which it was easy to contrast slavery as being ruled by others with freedom as the power to rule others, it might have been said that subjection to a tyrant was bad but being a tyrant was good if one could get away with it. But in the fourth century Plato and Aristotle created a contrast between kings as good rulers and tyrants as bad rulers, which has been standard ever since. However, recent studies have tried (...) to move away from the polarisation of good kings and bad tyrants, and look more generally at the nature of monarchic rule in Greece. This article explores the topic of tyrants and the use of the notion of tyranny in classical Greece, at the end of the sixth century and in the fifth and fourth. (shrink)

This paper examines Hume’s ‘Title Principle’ and its role in a response to one of the ‘manifest contradictions’ he identifies in the conclusion to Book I of A Treatise on Human Nature. This ‘contradiction’ is a tension between two ‘equally natural and necessary’ principles of the imagination, our causal inferences and our propensity to believe in the continued and distinct existence of objects. The problem is that the consistent application of causal reason undercuts any grounds with have for the belief (...) in continued and distinct existence, and yet that belief is as ‘natural and necessary’ as our propensity to infer effects from causes. The TP appears to offer a way to resolve this ‘contradiction’. It statesWhere reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us.’ In brief, if it can be shown that the causal inferences that undermine the belief in external world are not ‘lively’ nor mixed with some propensity’ then we have grounds for think that they have no normative authority. This is in part a response to another ‘manifest contradiction’, namely the apparently self-undermining nature of reason. In this paper I examine the nature and grounds of the TP and its relation to these ‘manifest contradictions’. (shrink)