Sylvia Berryman offers a fresh understanding of Aristotle's ethical theory, challenging the common belief that he aimed to give it a biological foundation in human nature. Berryman reinterprets Aristotle's views as a 'middle way' between the metaphysical grounding offered by Platonists and sceptical or subjectivist alternatives.

Sylvia Walsh explores Kierkegaard's understanding of Christianity and the existential mode of thinking theologically appropriate to it in the context of the ...

It has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting (...) water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought. (shrink)

This article discusses how the concept of a fair finite lottery can best be extended to denumerably infinite lotteries. Techniques and ideas from non-standard analysis are brought to bear on the problem.

The Snow White problem is introduced to demonstrate how learning something of which one could not have learnt the opposite (due to observer selection bias) can change an agent’s probability assignment. This helps us to analyse the Sleeping Beauty problem, which is deconstructed as a combinatorial engine and a subjective wrapper. The combinatorial engine of the problem is analogous to Bertrand’s boxes paradox and can be solved with standard probability theory. The subjective wrapper is clarified using the Snow White problem. (...) Sample spaces for all three problems are presented. The conclusion is that subjectivity plays no irreducible role in solving the Sleeping Beauty problem and that no reference to centered worlds is required to provide the answer. (shrink)

Noradrenergic pathways are involved in mediating the central and peripheral effects of physiological arousal. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of noradrenergic transmission in moral decision-making. We studied the effects in healthy volunteers of propranolol (a noradrenergic beta-adrenoceptor antagonist) on moral judgement in a set of moral dilemmas pitting utilitarian outcomes (e.g., saving five lives) against highly aversive harmful actions (e.g., killing an innocent person) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group design. Propranolol (40 mg orally) (...) significantly reduced heart rate, but had no effect on self-reported mood. Importantly, propranolol made participants more likely to judge harmful actions as morally unacceptable, but only in dilemmas where harms were ‘up close and personal’. In addition, longer response times for such personal dilemmas were only found for the placebo group. Finally, judgments in personal dilemmas by the propranolol group were more decisive. These findings indicate that noradrenergic pathways play a role in responses to moral dilemmas, in line with recent work implicating emotion in moral decision-making. However, contrary to current theorising, these findings also suggest that aversion to harming is not driven by emotional arousal. Our findings are also of significant practical interest given that propranolol is a widely used drug in different settings, and is currently being considered as a potential treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in military and rescue service personnel. (shrink)

This collection of essays analyzes relations of social inequality that appear to be logical extensions of a "natural order," and in the process demonstrates that a revitalized feminist anthropology of the 1990s has much to offer the field of feminist theory. Fashioned as a response to the lack of cultural analysis in feminist scholarship, the contributors question the category of gender within the inclusive context of the structural dynamics of inequality. They also examine how cultural identities, domains and institutions affect (...) our perception of gender in society. The first selection of essays addresses how ideas of family and kinship have fostered society's hierarchies and legitimized the status quo. In part two, the essays show how several dimensions of inequality are implicit in the construction of identities that are based upon ideas of social solidarity. Contributors: Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia; Kath Weston, Arizona State West; Rayna Rapp, New School for Social Research; Janet Dolgin, Hofstra University; Harriet Whitehead, Duke University; Carol Delaney, Stanford University; Brackette Williams, University of Arizona; Sylvia Yanagisako, Stanford University; Phyllis Chock, Catholic University; Sherry Ortner, University of Michigan; Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz. (shrink)

This article contributes to the revision of the concept of system in social theory using complexity theory. The old concept of social system is widely discredited; a new concept of social system can more adequately constitute an explanatory framework. Complexity theory offers the toolkit needed for this paradigm shift in social theory. The route taken is not via Luhmann, but rather the insights of complexity theorists in the sciences are applied to the tradition of social theory inspired by Marx, Weber, (...) and Simmel. The article contributes to the theorization of intersectionality in social theory as well as to the philosophy of social science. It addresses the challenge of theorizing the intersection of multiple complex social inequalities, exploring the various alternative approaches, before rethinking the concept of social system. It investigates and applies, for the first time, the implications of complexity theory for the analysis of multiple intersecting social inequalities. Key Words: complexity theory • inequality • intersectionality • social theory. (shrink)

The topic of coercion has a long and contentious history in both political philosophy and medical ethics. This substantial literature centers on two fundamental questions: What is coercion? And when is it justified? In the context of psychiatry there has been a recent upsurge of interest in coercion, with particular focus on the latter question. For example, a number of research groups have been investigating the relationship between coercion and clinical outcomes. But of course such research relies heavily on assumptions (...) about the former question, that of the concept of coercion. Coercion is often tracked in these studies by various measures of “perceived coercion,” in response to the recognition that involuntary legal status is a poor gauge of the presence of coercion. A result of this approach is that empirical research has started to provide an interesting picture of a variety of coercive pressures and experiences. And these newly emerging findings, in turn, underscore the need for further conceptual analysis. The aim of this paper, then, is to draw out provisional implications for philosophical debates about coercion from recent research in psychiatry. (shrink)

Narcissism continues to be an important topic of research, with a great deal of ongoing empirical work in social and personality psychology. But there are theoretical issues that have received less attention recently, including those that relate to the foundational theories of the psychoanalytic tradition. As the first step in a larger project of reevaluation, this article offers a critical review of Freud and Heinz Kohut’s theories of narcissism. Centered on a theoretical reconstruction, it clarifies several significant – and often (...) underspecified – features of each account. I also explore the continuities and discontinuities between these two closely related systems. Most notably, both Freud and Kohut lacked fully developed accounts of primary narcissism and the relevant instinctual drives. At the same time, Kohut’s theory expanded upon Freud’s in innovative ways, particularly with its emphasis on a secondary line of narcissistic development that has positive, transformative features. In the final section, however, I introduce a speculative reading that describes theoretical prefigurations of these features in elements of Freud’s structural theory. (shrink)

Systems architecture is seeking to cooperate with the creative processes characteristic of life on earth for novel and sustainable design outcomes. To achieve this, new design methodologies are needed to create structures and processes that are composed of the inanimate and the living the physical, the biological and the artificial to differing degrees. The principle of symbiosis is presented as a biologically inspired model for some of the design challenges, and design ethics, in systems architecture.

Despite widespread recognition that psychiatry would be better served by a classificatory system based on etiology rather than mere description, it goes without saying that much of the necessary work is yet to be done. In this chapter I take up the increasingly important question of how mechanistic explanation fits into the larger effort to build a scientifically sound etiological and nosological framework. I sketch a rough picture of what mechanistic explanation should look like in the context of psychiatric research, (...) with a focus on several potential challenges posed by the special features of many psychiatric conditions. These include the role of social and environmental factors, the relatively transient nature of symptoms, the presumably complex organization of underlying systems, and the likelihood that many disorders are the product of nonstandard development. I suggest that these explanatory challenges can be met with a sufficiently broad notion of mechanism, one that allows for something less than the flawless execution of internal operations, appeals to the influence of contextual factors, and attends to organizational relations both within the mechanism itself and across the wider cognitive system. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to formal and computational philosophy. -/- In the first part, we show that by exploiting the parallels between large, yet finite lotteries on the one hand and countably infinite lotteries on the other, we gain insights in the foundations of probability theory as well as in epistemology. Case 1: Infinite lotteries. We discuss how the concept of a fair finite lottery can best be extended to denumerably infinite lotteries. The solution boils down to the introduction (...) of infinitesimal probability values, which can be achieved using non-standard analysis. Our solution can be generalized to uncountable sample spaces, giving rise to a Non-Archimedean Probability (NAP) theory. Case 2: Large but finite lotteries. We propose application of the language of relative analysis (a type of non-standard analysis) to formulate a new model for rational belief, called Stratified Belief. This contextualist model seems well-suited to deal with a concept of beliefs based on probabilities ‘sufficiently close to unity’. -/- The second part presents a case study in social epistemology. We model a group of agents who update their opinions by averaging the opinions of other agents. Our main goal is to calculate the probability for an agent to end up in an inconsistent belief state due to updating. To that end, an analytical expression is given and evaluated numerically, both exactly and using statistical sampling. The probability of ending up in an inconsistent belief state turns out to be always smaller than 2%. (shrink)

Ce texte est l'introduction d'un dossier remarquable de la Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, n° 136, 2014, p. 13-183, entièrement disponible ici. Nous remercions Sylvia Chiffoleau de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire sur RHUTHMOS. Les contributions de ce numéro se proposent d'explorer quelques-unes des multiples facettes du temps. Lorsqu'on aborde la question du temps, il est convenu de rappeler la difficulté à appréhender celui-ci, en s'appuyant sur le célèbre aphorisme de Saint - Histoire – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)

A sympathetic examination of the failure of anti-corruption efforts in contemporary Indonesia. Combining ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Kupang with an acute historical sensibility, Sylvia Tidey shows how good governance initiatives paradoxically perpetuate civil service corruption while also facilitating the emergence of new forms of it. Importing critical insights from the anthropology of ethics to the burgeoning anthropology of corruption, Tidey exposes enduring developmentalist fallacies that treat corruption as endemic to non-Western subjects. In practice, it is often indistinguishable (...) from the ethics of care and exchange, as Indonesian civil servants make worthwhile lives for themselves and their families. This book will be a vital text for anthropologists and other social scientists, particularly scholars of global studies, development studies, and Southeast Asia. (shrink)

The field of mental health continues to struggle with the question of how best to structure its diagnostic systems. This issue is of considerable ethical importance, but the implications for public health approaches to mental health have yet to be explored in any detail. In this article I offer a preliminary treatment, drawing out several core issues while sounding a note of caution. A central strand of the debates over diagnosis has been the contrast between categorical and dimensional models, with (...) renewed attention due to recent publication of the DSM-5, launch of the RDoC, and ongoing work on the ICD-11. This dispute involves an interesting assortment of ethical and empirical considerations, many with direct relevance for public health. It has been proposed, for example, that dimensional diagnosis may be morally preferable because it can help reduce the stigma associated with mental disorder. This is a pressing concern, as preventive strategies are expanded in mental health, often operating under dimensional assumptions that target various risk factors. But this type of proposal relies upon an empirical claim and the scientific status of dimensionality remains unresolved, including its relation to stigma. I suggest, then, that the current state of the evidence does not yet warrant clear adjudication between competing frameworks, and thus any implications for public mental health remain highly provisional. More research is needed to help resolve these issues, including ethical analysis. (shrink)

Cancer treatment decisions should be based on all available evidence. But this evidence is complex and varied: it includes not only the patient’s symptoms and expert knowledge of the relevant causal processes, but also clinical databases relating to past patients, databases of observations made at the molecular level, and evidence encapsulated in scientific papers and medical informatics systems. Objective Bayesian nets offer a principled path to knowledge integration, and we show in this chapter how they can be applied to integrate (...) various kinds of evidence in the cancer domain. This is important from the systems biology perspective, which needs to integrate data that concern different levels of analysis, and is also important from the point of view of medical informatics. (shrink)

_Living Poetically_ is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. _Living Poetically_ traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in (...) Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds. Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age. (shrink)

The most recent global refugee figures are staggering, with over 82.4 million people forcibly displaced and 26.4 million registered refugees. The ongoing conflict in Syria is a major contributor. After a decade of violence and destabilization, over 13.4million Syrians have been displaced, including 6.7 million internally displaced persons and 6.7 million refugees registered in other countries. Beyond the immediate political and economic challenges, an essential component of any response to this humanitarian crisis must be health-related, including policies and interventions specific (...) to mental health. This policy and practice review addresses refugee mental health in the context of the Syrian crisis, providing an update and overview of the current situation while exploring new initiatives in mental health research and global health policy that can help strengthen and expand services. Relevant global health policy frameworks are first briefly introduced, followed by a short summary of recent research on refugee mental health. We then provide an update on the current status of research, service provision, and health policy in the leading destinations for Syrians who have been forcibly displaced. This starts within Syria and then turns to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Germany. Finally, several general recommendations are discussed, including the pressing need for more data at each phase of migration, the expansion of integrated mental health services, and the explicit inclusion and prioritization of refugee mental health in national and global health policy. (shrink)

The application of human right frameworks is an increasingly important part of efforts to accelerate progress in global mental health. Much of this has been driven by several influential legal and policy instruments, most notably the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the World Health Organization’s QualityRights Tool Kit and Mental Health Action Plan. Despite these significant developments, however, much more needs to be done to prevent human rights violations. This chapter focuses on (...) a critical component of this broader challenge, which is the question of how best to regulate and reduce the use of coercive measures. The recent literature on coercion in psychiatry – which addresses involuntary commitment, seclusion, restraint, and forced medication – represents a useful resource that can help guide tractable solutions in global mental health. These issues are evaluated from the perspective of global health governance, and several general recommendations are made in order to improve monitoring and enforcement, provide guidance for domestic legislative reform, and strengthen health systems. (shrink)

What does it mean to live in asylum? How is health affected by the living conditions in camps and camp-like facilities? And what is unjust about it? Combining philosophical analysis with exploring methods of qualitative research, namely reflexive thematic analysis, this work identifies global pat-terns of the situation in and the space of asylum. Using results of existing empirical public health research as well as a phenomenological approach and the concept of forms of life developed in Social philosophy by Rahel (...) Jaeggi, the interdisciplinary methodology allows to look at the impact of every-day-life conditions, the multifaceted intersectional and ambiguous patterns of in-/exclusion as well as the global political forces shaping asylum. Asylum viewed from - as close as possible - the perspective of having to live in it as a forced form of life and a place shaped by power-asymmetries, control and dependency proves to be an unlivable non-place. (shrink)

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate associations between demographic and clinical variables and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) in a sample of cases of psychosis across an adult early intervention in psychosis service and a child and adolescent community team. Method: Cross-sectional baseline data for cases of psychosis across the two teams on the caseload at a given time point were collected, including age of onset, gender, ethnicity, referral route, and DUP. Results: The median DUP across the (...) entire sample was 91 days, while those patients with initial treatment for psychosis from the child and adolescent team had a median DUP of 69 days. Using multiple linear regression, there were two variables that showed a significant association with DUP: referral route (p < .001), and age of onset, with earlier age of onset associated with shorter DUP (p = .015). Conclusion: These findings are discussed in relation to possible explanatory factors, with particular focus on service-level variables and pathways to care. It is suggested that the involvement of child and adolescent teams is vital to the work of early intervention in psychosis services. (shrink)

Recent cognitive models of delusions have attempted to explain why delusions are commonly circumscribed, in that they tend to center on isolated beliefs, and incorrigible, as they often persist in the face of countervailing evidence. In this effort, the suggestion has been made that ‘modularity’ – a concept originating in seminal accounts of the architecture of perceptual and cognitive processes – may help explain delusions. The aim of this paper is to take up this suggestion, critically evaluating the applicability of (...) modularity and its attendant features to the explanation of delusions. The conclusion presented here is that although a modular explanation of delusions may be relatively consistent with models that implicate dysfunctional cognitive components such as motor control and ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) systems, ultimately the application of modularity to delusions conflicts with traditional understandings of cognitive architecture and does not help provide satisfactory or sufficient explanations of delusional symptomatology. (shrink)

A continuación se plantean las bases epistemológicas de un modelo que busca explicar y guiar el tratamiento informativo de los conflictos en la prensa. El aporte teórico parte del discurso; desde el lenguaje y hacia el lenguaje. Se recomienda el estudio de las estrategias lingüístico-comunicativas q..

L’idée de l’article est de mettre en exergue l’approche critique et matérialiste de Benjamin à travers sa lecture de Proust. Benjamin dispose d’une série de concepts plus ou moins définis qui permettent d’établir une critique transversale des œuvres choisies dans l’histoire. La remémoration et la présentification, la peinture et la photographie, l’aura et l’expérience du choc façonnent une volonté qui produit de façon artificielle l’expérience de la durée. Or, la réussite de cette entreprise artistique dépend également de l’évolution historique des (...) moyens techniques qui sont à son service. (shrink)

Summary: Ted Partin widmet sich in eindringlichen Fotoarbeiten dem Bild des Menschen, einem der grossen emotionalen Kernthemen der Fotografiegeschichte. Erstmals wird Partins Blick auf eine junge amerikanische Gesellschaft in einer Monographie vorgelegt. Exhibition: Kunstmuseum Krefeld.

This paper emanates from the concept of empathy as understood by the German philosopher Edith Stein. It begins by highlighting different interpretations of empathy. According to the German philosopher Martin Buber, empathy cannot be achieved as an act of will. In contrast, the psychologist Carl Rogers believes that empathy is identical with dialogue and is the outcome of a cognitive act of active listening. The empathy concept of Edith Stein, philosopher and follower of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, goes beyond these conflicting (...) views and offers a more complex interpretation, with relevance for both healthcare and nursing education. When studying Stein's three‐level model of empathy, a field of tension between perspectives of closeness and distance becomes apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting Stein's model of empathy as a strategy to overcome the tension and meet the demands of empathy. (shrink)

Across the health sector there is increased recognition of the ethical significance of interventions that constrain or coerce. Much of the recent interest stems from debates in public health over the use of quarantines and active monitoring in response to epidemics, as well as the manipulation of information in the service of health promotion (or ‘nudges’). But perhaps the area in which these issues remain most pressing is mental health, where the spectre of involuntary treatment has always loomed large. Indeed, (...) there are good reasons to think of psychiatry as ethically exceptional given its broader role as social and legal arbiter. This is compounded by the fact that mental health treatment has other special features that can serve as potential entry points for more subtle forms of pressure and influence. These include the relative cognitive and emotional vulnerability of patients, the highly confidential information involved, and the importance of the therapeutic relationship. Thus the field of mental health needs to grapple with a range of closely related issues concerning the ethics of influence. In this chapter I explore several, with a primary focus on clinical concerns, although implications for research ethics are also touched on. Discussion of treatment pressure has traditionally focused on ‘coercion,’ or, very roughly, the use of threats or force to get someone to do something they otherwise would not. Here I follow suit, beginning with discussion of its conceptual standing alongside other categories of influence, including manipulation and persuasion. As it stands, there is nothing close to a consensus on these matters. But a relatively broad understanding of coercion is available and can be useful for ethical deliberation. Or so I suggest here. Interestingly enough, there is also a growing body of empirical literature on coercion in psychiatry, including research on the use of coercive measures such as hospitalization, physical restraint, and forced medication, as well as the construct of ‘perceived coercion,’ which tracks patients’ experiences of treatment pressure. I briefly describe several key findings and their relation to recent recommendations to reduce coercion. Building on all of this, I then take up the normative questions directly, by way of evaluating a recently proposed framework for the ethical analysis of influence. (shrink)

In recent years there has been increased recognition of the global burden of mental disorders, which in turn has led to the expansion of preventive initiatives at the community and population levels. The application of such public health approaches to mental health raises a number of important ethical questions. The aim of this collection is to address these newly emerging issues, with special attention to the principle of prevention and the distinctive ethical challenges in mental health. The collection brings together (...) an interdisciplinary group of experts in bioethics, mental health, public health, and global health. (shrink)

Big Data enhances the possibilities for storing personal data extracted from social media and web search on an unprecedented scale. This paper draws on the political economy of information which explains why the online industry fails to self-regulate, resulting in increasingly insidious web-tracking technologies. Content analysis of historical blogs and request for comments on HTTP cookies published by the Internet Engineering Task Force illustrates how cookie technology was introduced in the mid-1990s, amid stark warnings about increased system vulnerabilities and deceptive (...) personal data extractions. In conclusion, online users today are left with few alternatives but to enter into unconscionable contracts about the extraction of their personal data when using the Internet for private purposes. (shrink)

No thinker has reflected more deeply on the role of religion in human life than Søren Kierkegaard, who produced in little more than a decade an astonishing number of works devoted to an analysis of the kind of personality, character, and spiritual qualities needed to become an authentic human being or self. Understanding religion to consist essentially as an inward, passionate, personal relation to God or the eternal, Kierkegaard depicts the art of living religiously as a self through the creation (...) of a kaleidoscope of poetic figures who exemplify the constituents of selfhood or the lack thereof. The present study seeks to bring Kierkegaard into conversation with contemporary empirical psychology and virtue ethics, highlighting spiritual dimensions of human existence in his thought that are inaccessible to empirical measurement, as well as challenging on religious grounds the claim that he is a virtue ethicist in continuity with the classical and medieval virtue tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:April 3, 2010 (11:17 am) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE2902\russell 29,2 050 red.wpd 188 Reviews 1 A.yW. Brown, The Metaphysical Society (New York: Octagon, 1973), pp. 180–1. THE ETHICS OF BELIEF Sylvia Nickerson History & Philosophy of Science & Technology / U. of Toronto Toronto, on, Canada m5s 1k1 [email protected] Timothy J. Madigan. W.yK. CliVord and “The Ethics of Beliefz”. Newcastle, uk: CambridgeScholars Publishing, 2009. Pp. [x], 202. (...) isbn 1-84718-503-7. £29.99; us$44.99 (hb). The mathematician William Kingdon CliTord (1845–1879) is generally remembered as a potentially great man whose life was cut short before his genius was fully realized. During his lifetime CliTord was well known in London as a public intellectual and noted authority on science. He was also an iconoclast, a leader in the application of Darwinian principles to areas beyond biology, and a proponent of non-Euclidean geometry. Unlike other agnostics, CliTord did not mourn the loss of his religious belief, nor did he worry that a secularized society would bring about general social decay. While other scientiWc naturalists worried that a collapse of religion would destroy morality and lead to social disintegration, CliTord willingly ceded the universal truths religion oTered, embracing the uncertainty that scientiWc knowledge actually entailed. He even dared to call himself an atheist. However, CliTord’s death at age 34 curtailed the trace of his thought. What remains is consigned to his scant private notebooks and collected works. Perhaps it was the brevity of his life that has led to his neglect within the history of science; no comprehensive appraisal of his mathematical work has been written. CliTord’sbest-knownnon-mathematical statementisthat“itiswrongalways, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insuUcient evidence.” This was the statement he defended in his lecture “The Ethics of Beliefz”, which he delivered to London’s Metaphysical Society in 1876. The Metaphysical Society, founded in 1869 to promote discussion between religious believers and scientiWc rationalists, ceased operation in 1880 after members could not Wnd enough common ground to begin debate. The rationalist position CliTord argues in “The Ethics of Beliefz” stands on the far side of the spectrum within this discourse. CliTord’s immoderate stance, along with his use of biblical rhetoric to argue a secularist position, was calculated to provoke conservative intellectuals and institutions.1 When his essay appeared in the January 1877 issue April 3, 2010 (11:17 am) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE2902\russell 29,2 050 red.wpd Reviews 189 of Contemporary Review, it proved antagonistic enough that it led in part to the dismissal of James Knowles as editor. Timothy Madigan’s book W.yK. CliVord and “The Ethics of Beliefz”z provides an introduction to and analysis of CliTord’s ethical philosophy. His goal is to outline the historical context from which CliTord’s most famous essay arose, and to analyze the merits and demerits of its argument through the viewpoints of critics and freethinkers from the nineteenth century to the present. Madigan gives a brief history of the Victorian crisis of faith, CliTord’s mathematical work, and the biographical details of his life. He presents the argument CliTord makes within “The Ethics of Beliefz”, and outlines the critical response from his contemporaries, including founding members of the Metaphysical Society William George Ward and Richard H. Hutton, poet Matthew Arnold, physiologist George John Romanes, and American psychologist and philosopher William James. Madigan also discusses the positions argued by other rationalists in the 1870s,1880sandlater(Leslie Stephen, Karl Pearson, FriedrichNietzsche, Charles Peirce and Bertrand Russell) and by modern philosophers who have contributed to the rationalist/religionist debate (C.yS. Lewis, J.yL. Mackie, Michael Martin, Peter van Inwagen, Susan Haack, Anthony Quinton, and Lorraine Code). In Chapter 6 Madigan presents his own defence of CliTord’s ethics of belief. While early sections of the book provide a helpful summary of previously published work, I found Madigan’s discussion of CliTord’s writings on psychology and theory of mind particularly valuable (pp. 58–65). Madigan notes positively that CliTord’s contribution helped steer the early development... (shrink)

Rasmussen (1993) argues that, because electron microscopists did not use robustness and would not have been warranted in using it as a criterion for the reality or the artifactuality of mesosomes, the bacterial mesosome serves as a test case for robustness that it fails. I respond by arguing that a more complete reading of the research literature on the mesosome shows that ultimately the more robust body of data did not support the mesosome and that electron microscopists used and were (...) warranted in using robustness as a criterion for the artifactuality of mesosomes. (shrink)