Critics often suggest that Socrates’ portrait of the philosopher’s inspired madness in his second speech in Plato’s Phaedrus is incompatible with the other types of divine madness outlined in the same speech, namely poetic, prophetic, and purificatory madness. This incompatibility is frequently taken to show that Socrates’ characterisation of philosophers as mad is disingenuous or misleading in some way. While philosophical madness and the other types of divine madness are distinguished by the non-philosophical crowd’s different interpretations of them, I aim (...) to show that they are not, in fact, presented as incompatible. Socrates’ pair of speeches demonstrates that madness can be divided into harmful and beneficial kinds, and in Socrates’ key discussion of philosophical madness (249c4-e4), I argue that the crowd correctly recognises that the philosopher is mad on the basis of his eccentricity, but wrongly assumes that the philosopher’s madness is of the harmful type because it fails to realise that the philosopher is enthused. Socrates’ second speech provides information about human souls and gods which shows that philosophical madness belongs to the beneficial type and so falls under the heading of divine enthusiasm after all. Importantly, human souls and gods are shown in the speech to be roughly isomorphic. Both philosophical and other kinds of divine madness involve having something divine inside a human body (entheos): in the former a human soul has become godlike; in the latter a human soul has been displaced by a god. Because of this, I propose that philosophy is presented as a genuine form of divine madness alongside the other more conventional examples. (shrink)

Advance directives are critically important for capable individuals who wish to avoid the burdens of life-prolonging interventions in the advanced stages of dementia. However, this paper will argue that advance directives should have less application to questions about feeding patients during the clinical course of dementia than often has been presumed. The argument will be framed within the debate between Ronald Dworkin and Rebecca Dresser regarding the moral authority of precedent autonomy to determine an individual’s future end-of-life care plan. We (...) will use a brief analysis of the positions taken in two important papers that come out of the Dworkin/Dresser debate and a hypothetical patient, John, who will be followed from diagnosis of dementia to death, to show how advance directives should apply to key points in the progression of his disease, particularly in relation to food and nutrition. (shrink)

As the coronavirus pandemic continues apace in the United States, the dizzying amount of data being generated, analyzed and consumed about the virus has led to calls to proclaim this the first ‘data-driven pandemic’. But at the same time, it seems that this plethora of data has not meant a better grasp on the reality of the pandemic and its effects. Even as we have the potential to digitally track and trace nearly every single individual who has contracted the virus, (...) we have no idea exactly how many people have had the virus, been hospitalized, or died because of it, largely due to a confluence of factors, particularly active obfuscation and mismanagement by public authorities and misinformation spread through social media and right-wing media channels. But beyond these dynamics, there also lies the less nefarious ways that the everyday, subjective practices of data collection, analysis and visualization have the potential to themselves produce these very same dynamics where data is at once valorized and ignored, preeminent and completely useless. That is, the pandemic has revealed only the general inadequacy of our data infrastructures and assemblages to solving pressing social issues, but also the more general shift towards a ‘post-truth’ disposition in contemporary social life. But, as this paper argues, it would be a mistake to see the centrality of data as being somehow the opposite from the larger post-truth apparatus, as the two are instead fundamentally intertwined and co-produced. (shrink)

Michael Hardimon’s new book is a valuable study of Hegel’s social and political philosophy. Hardimon takes seriously Hegel’s intention to offer a social philosophy that can reconcile people to the modern social world. Since Hegel’s own presentation of his philosophy is motivated by a number of competing concerns, Hardimon’s admirable success at reconstructing Hegel’s view in accordance with this fundamental intention offers an important and insightful perspective on Hegel’s project. The focal points of Hardimon’s reconstruction—the aim of reconciliation and the (...) problem of alienation it is meant to overcome—are explained and interpreted with considerable clarity in a way that shows their significance to the tradition of modern political philosophy. Hardimon deliberately resists using Hegel’s technical terminology and engaging in detailed scholarly disputes in a successful effort to avoid obscurity and distraction. The result is a book that should be prized by anyone seeking an accessible presentation of Hegel’s social philosophy, particularly as a vehicle for teaching Hegel’s political thought without having to devote an entire course to the task. (shrink)

Adaptations can occur at different hierarchical levels (e.g., cells and multicellular organisms), but it can be difficult to identify the level(s) of adaptation in specific cases. A major problem is that selection at a lower level can filter up, creating the illusion of selection at a higher level. We use optimality modeling of the volvocine algae to explore the emergence of genuine group (i.e., colony-level) adaptations. We find that it is helpful to develop an explicit model for what group fitness (...) would be in the absence of group-level relationships between traits and group fitness. We call this “counterfactual fitness,” because in many actual cases of interest there are group-level relationships. Once counterfactual fitness is modeled, the difference between effects that filter up and genuine group selection is explicit and so, therefore, is the distinction between apparent and genuine group adaptations. We call the latter group-specific adaptations. Recognizing group-specific adaptations is important because only group-specific adaptations would cause the lower-level units (cells in this case) to be maladapted if they were to leave the group and enter a global cell-level population. Thus, as group-specific adaptations evolve, they create selective pressure for increased cohesiveness and individuality of groups. This article suggests that group-specific adaptations could be present in the simplest, earliest branching colonial volvocine species, which do not have distinct specialized cells. The article also makes predictions about the kind of empirical evidence needed to support or refute the hypothesis that a particular trait is a group-level adaptation. (shrink)

We describe a virtue ethics approach and its application in a four-year, integrated, longitudinal, and required undergraduate medical education course that attempts to address some of the challenges of the hidden curriculum and minimize some of its adverse effects on learners. We discuss how a curriculum grounded in virtue ethics strives to have the practical effect of allowing students to focus on their professional identity as physicians in training rather than merely on knowledge and skills acquisition. This orientation, combined with (...) a student-generated curriculum, is designed to prepare students to identify and face challenges during their clinical years, further nurturing their professional growth. In short, a four-year integrated ethics and professionalism curriculum intentionally centered on cultivating virtuous physicians may alleviate, and even counteract, the effects of the hidden curriculum in the clinical years of medical training. (shrink)

This paper was first presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Christian Ethics, Toronto School of Theology, Toronto, Ontario in January 1977. Robert Shelton aims to focus on the concept of 'right to health care,' its related principle, 'distributive justice' in an attempt to suggest 'where we are' at present and where we perhaps ought to be heading. The paper is divided into three parts, which in their turn explore the moral grounds, the US general public's (...) policy and the part justice and government are likely to play in the development and distribution of health care. He concludes by highlighting 'omissions', an intentional one of his own and the other a major gap in the literature. (shrink)

Fins and colleagues rightly note that “clinical ethics consultation is a high-stakes endeavor with an increasing prominence in health care systems” for which “progress in developing standards for q...

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2022.

Understanding good design requires addressing the question of what units undergo natural selection, thereby becoming adapted. There is, therefore, a natural connection between the formal Darwinism project (which aims to connect population genetics with the evolution of design and fitness maximization) and levels of selection issues. We argue that the formal Darwinism project offers contradictory and confusing lines of thinking concerning level(s) of selection. The project favors multicellular organisms over both the lower (cell) and higher (social group) levels as the (...) level of adaptation. Grafen offers four reasons for giving such special status to multicellular organisms: (1) they lack appreciable within-organism cell selection, (2) they have multiple features that appear contrived for the same purpose, (3) they possess a set of phenotypes, and (4) they leave offspring according to their phenotypes. We discuss why these rationales are not compelling and suggest that a more even-handed approach, in which multicellular organisms are not assumed to have special status, would be desirable for a project that aims to make progress on the foundations of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

We review Evolution and the Levels of Selection by Samir Okasha. This important book provides a cohesive philosophical framework for understanding levels-of-selections problems in biology. Concerning evolutionary transitions, Okasha proposes that three stages characterize the shift from a lower level of selection to a higher one. We discuss the application of Okasha’s three-stage concept to the evolutionary transition from unicellularity to multicellularity in the volvocine green algae. Okasha’s concepts are a provocative step towards a more general understanding of the major (...) evolutionary transitions; however, the application of certain ideas to the volvocine model system is not straightforward. (shrink)

Along the way he interviewed professional resource managers and naturalists, biologists, interpreters, conservation agents, engineers, farmers, hunters, fishermen, writers, and many others in an effort to gain a perspective that only people who work with the land - for business or for pleasure - can have." "Shelton describes a range of land-management philosophies and techniques, from largely hands-off, as in state parks, to largely hands-on, as in farming. He also addresses the questions that surround some of the more controversial (...) practices, such as the use of fire for land management and the introduction of nonnative species."--Jacket. (shrink)

Your perspective on life can be your power or your prison. It can serve your anxiety, your stress, and your depression, or it can support your peace, your courage, and your growth. Trent Shelton, one of the most groundbreaking and dynamic teachers of our time, wants to help you chart your path to a new perspective. Protect Your Peace offers tools to reshape your mindset and redefine the meaning you find in your life-tools that he knows can work for (...) you, because he has used them himself to transform his own life. In these pages, Trent outlines nine essential principles to help you: · Protect your energy from the things that drain it · Protect your mind from the things that distract you · Protect your soul from the things that don't fulfill you You'll learn simple strategies for setting clear boundaries, disconnecting from negativity, honing your vision and your focus, and bringing your life into alignment with your true power and purpose-with Trent as your straight-talking, profoundly inspiring guide who's with you every step of the way. Trent lets you know in no uncertain terms that there is a war on-a war for your worth. The toughest battle in it is the one you're fighting within yourself. And Protect Your Peace gives you a road map to victory. (shrink)

This paper explores the variety of ways that emerging sources of data are being used to re-conceptualize the city, and how these understandings of what the urban is shapes the design of interventions into it. Drawing on work on the performativity of economics, this paper uses two vignettes of the ‘new urban science’ and municipal vacant property mapping in order to argue that the mobilization of Big Data in the urban context doesn’t necessarily produce a single, greater understanding of the (...) city as it actually is, but rather a highly variegated series of essentialized understandings of the city that render it knowable, governable and intervene-able. Through the construction of new, data-driven urban geographical imaginaries, these projects have opened up the space for urban interventions that work to depoliticize urban injustices and valorize new kinds of technical expertise as the means of going about solving these problems, opening up new possibilities for a remaking of urban space in the image of these sociotechnical paradigms. Ultimately, this paper argues that despite the importance of Big Data, as both a discourse and practice, to emerging forms of urban research and management, there is no singular or universal understanding of the urban that is promoted or developed through the application of these new sources of data, which in turn opens up meaningful possibilities for developing alternative uses of Big Data for understanding and intervening in the city in more emancipatory ways. (shrink)

THE ARTICLE IS AN EXAMINATION OF THE CLAIM MADE BY\nHUSSERL, AND RECENTLY RENEWED BY M M VAN DE PITTE, THAT\nMORITZ SCHLICK MISREPRESENTED HUSSERL'S VIEW OF THE NATURE\nOF PHENOMENOLOGICAL PROPOSITIONS. IT IS ARGUED THAT SCHLICK\nDID NOT MISREPRESENT HUSSERL'S NOTION OF SYNTHETIC "A\nPRIORI" PROPOSITIONS. THE DISPUTE IS VIEWED FROM SCHLICK'S\nPOINT OF VIEW IN WHICH A FIRM DISTINCTION IS MADE BETWEEN\nINTUITION AND KNOWLEDGE.

The article by Professor Fiester (2015) expresses concern about the long-term moral distress or negative moral emotions, both aspects of moral residue, that linger in some stakeholders’ experiences...

In this paper I aim to clarify Hegel's objection to the use of ideals in ethical thinking by examining his opposition to Kant's ideal of perpetual peace. I explain why Hegel believes that the ideal of peace amounts to nothing more than a moral condemnation that ignores the significance for international relations of appreciating the modern nation-state as an ethical achievement. I argue, however, that Kant's proposed federation can be grounded in the concrete ethical realities Hegel accepts as compelling and (...) uses this basis to sketch a defensible understanding of the obligating force of ethical ideals against Hegel's objections. (shrink)

Research on interdisciplinary science has for the most part concentrated on the institutional obstacles that discourage or hamper interdisciplinary work, with the expectation that interdisciplinary interaction can be improved through institutional reform strategies such as through reform of peer review systems. However institutional obstacles are not the only ones that confront interdisciplinary work. The design of policy strategies would benefit from more detailed investigation into the particular cognitive constraints, including the methodological and conceptual barriers, which also confront attempts to work (...) across disciplinary boundaries. Lessons from cognitive science and anthropological studies of labs in sociology of science suggest that scientific practices may be very domain specific, where domain specificity is an essential aspect of science that enables researchers to solve complex problems in a cognitively manageable way. The limit or extent of domain specificity in scientific practice, and how it constrains interdisciplinary research, is not yet fully understood, which attests to an important role for philosophers of science in the study of interdisciplinary science. This paper draws upon two cases of interdisciplinary collaboration; those between ecologists and economists, and those between molecular biologists and systems biologists, to illustrate some of the cognitive barriers which have contributed to failures and difficulties of interactions between these fields. Each exemplify some aspect of domain specificity in scientific practice and show how such specificity may constrain interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

This paper discusses the views of Moritz Schlick connecting aesthetics with the meaning of life. The fundamental question that Schlick asks is how anything appears beautiful. The discussion of the beautiful comes down to a discussion of aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure has the characteristic of having no use defined in survival terms of self-preservation and propagation. Art, for Schlick, is seen as essentially play. Schlick addressed how his view that connects aesthetic pleasure and play essentially to the non-useful, can be (...) explained in light of the theory of natural selection. Then this is related to the meaning of life as play or youth. (shrink)

Corruption has caused serious dysfunction in most of the public institutions in Zimbabwe. The effectiveness of public institutions on providing meaningful services today hinges upon the capacity of the Church and other social institutions to combat corruption. Regrettably, corruption has infected and affected both the Church and the secular institutions. This theoretical qualitative study explores the potential of the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (COCZ) in curbing corruption in Zimbabwe. It employs a combination of the Christological kenosis and Ubuntu or (...) Hunhu as its theoretical lenses. The article argues that the Church has great potential to tackle corruption. The potential of the COCZ manifests in its organisation and public engagement. The restorative nature of the COCZ Restoration Movement (RM) magnifies scripture, the gospel of Christ (Christological kenosis) as a tool of conviction and behaviour change in public spaces to combat corruption. These unique attributes of the COCZ provide the rationale for choosing it as a case study in this article. The data were collected through the engagement with literature largely from the Zimbabwean scholars on the subject and the COCZ documents. The findings were that the COCZ can only unlock its potential if it is committed to taking a self-introspection and reconfigure itself in order to take a robust anti-corruption stance. Contribution: The study poses questions about the potential of the Church’s voice, through the case of the COCZ, in the context of corruption in Zimbabwe. It pushes for the Church to reclaim its authentic status in order to root out corruption and have relevance in the Zimbabwean communities’ lived experiences. Religion has always claimed higher ground in ethical and moral issues, but there is scanty literature on the COCZ’s role in combating corruption in Zimbabwe. The study maintains that the Church has a consequential opportunity to either drive the agenda to end corruption or lose relevance due to perceived complicit attitudes towards the same. (shrink)

Injuries from failed suicide attempts account for a large number of patients cared for in the emergency and trauma setting. While a fundamental underpinning of clinical ethics is that patients have a right to refuse treatment, individuals presenting with life-threating injuries resulting from suicide attempts are almost universally treated in this acute care setting. Here we discuss the limitations on physician ability to determine capacity in this setting and the challenges these pose in carrying out patient wishes.

In this paper I argue that both Hegel's and Korsgaard's attempts to ground moral obligation in the inherent necessity of committing to being a self‐determining agent fall short of accounting for the full strength of our considered sense of moral obligation. I examine the differences between their accounts in order to show that their efforts suffer from a common inadequacy, namely, overlooking that there are two distinct ways we can value things as self‐determining agents. I maintain that accounting for the (...) actual stringency of moral judgment depends on explaining the superiority of one of these ways of valuing over the other. (shrink)

Medical students’ concerns during clinical clerkships may not always be addressed with mentors who work under significant time constraints. This study examined 3rd year students’ survey responses regarding patient encounters to elucidate what may be hidden aspects of their learning environment. We analyzed results to an 18-item survey completed during a required ethics and professionalism course in third-year medicine clerkships over a period of 18 months. The survey covered types of concerns elicited by patient encounters, interactions with mentors about concerns, (...) perceptions of mentors, and level of moral distress. We also examined results of a 7-item evaluation of small group discussions during the study period. 1210 surveys and 195 evaluations constituted the study samples. Students’ concerns related primarily to ethics (36.4%, n = 441) and quality of care (34.5%, n = 418). Concerns had not been raised with a mentor in 535 (44.2%) instances. Students experienced moral distress in connection with 35.4% (n = 324) of cases; this was particularly common when a concern applied to a mentor. Higher levels of moral distress were associated with a lower likelihood of wishing to emulate the mentor (r = -0.27, p <.001). Two thirds of students, 66.9% (n = 107), stated that small group discussions where concerns were discussed lowered their stress levels. We suggest that clinical mentors be made aware of students’ learning needs and that structured discussions be available for students to articulate concerns with peers and facilitators in efforts to uncover elements of the hidden curriculum with the goal of optimizing students’ well-being, learning and professional development. (shrink)

This is a patient in the relatively early stages of a serious chronic disease requiring ongoing vigilant management if acute complications are to be minimized. In today's healthcare system, we see...

In 2004, the agricultural economies of many rural communities in the United States were impacted by the cessation of a price-support and supply-control program for tobacco production. Tobacco was not only an important livelihood, but also was central to social and cultural life. Using a social–ecological systems lens and the adaptive cycle metaphor, we examine the reorganization of agriculture in communities that previously produced tobacco under the program. Specifically, we seek to understand how transitional policy that provided financial support to (...) tobacco farmers interacted with other social, cultural, physical and human capitals to condition system reorganization. We conducted semi-structured interviews with farmers, extension agents, and policy makers in Kentucky as well as examined trends in income and number of farmers before and after the transition as indicators of reorganization. We determined that the financial support was perceived as helpful in supporting the transition and that tobacco farmers reorganized their livelihoods primarily around existing, remnant assets and endogenous capacities. In addition, we determined that though the agricultural system may be reorganizing economically, it is not necessarily supportive of the same social bonds and values that co-existed with tobacco economy. Understanding agricultural economies as part of complex social–ecological systems that consist of interconnected values, identities, ecology and social ties is important for developing policies to support systems and communities through economic transitions. (shrink)

This essay examines the contemporary approaches to systems theory, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and how communication researchers can apply them creatively. It points out that using system approaches requires communication scholars to study the mutual interaction of both information inputs and matter/energy inputs. Overloads of these inputs coupled with storage problems could engender positive feedback loops and move the system away from the linear region of stability toward the edge of chaos. It could then self-organize as a (...) more complex system in a new phase space of its trajectory. This complexity approach could be used to trace the trajectory of the global mass communication system or to conduct empirical research on all or any of the information-processing subsystems within the eight hierarchical levels of nested systems ranging from cell to supranational systems. Although systems thinking is writ large in the onto-cosmology of Eastern philosophies, its epistemological and methodological refinements did not occur until quantum physics challenged the ‘atomism’ of the dominant Newtonian-Cartesian model. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a descriptive theoretical overview of the medical futility debate. I will first argue that quantitative data cannot alone resolve the medical futility debate. I will then examine two aspects of medical futility, which I call the prospective and immediate, respectively. The first involves making prospective factual and value judgments about the efficacy of proposed medical interventions, while the latter involves making value judgments about ongoing medical conditions where the clinical data are clear. At stake is (...) the nature and scope of individual rights. Thus, I maintain there is an undeveloped aspect to the medical futility debate and, briefly, analyze two political perspectives which give rise to different understandings of medical futility. The view that I will defend is that only a system with defined collective goals can accommodate a normative concept of medical futility. These larger questions are the value options which, if unaddressed, may be settled by default of economic grounds. (shrink)