Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception - a canonical text of twentieth-century philosophy - concludes with an appeal to 'heroism' by citing a series of enigmatic sentences drawn from Saint-Exupe;ry's Pilote de guerre. Surprisingly, however, these lines are antithetical to the philosophical thrust of Merleau-Ponty's project. This book aims to explain this situation. Foregrounding liminal themes in Merleau-Ponty's thought that have been largely overlooked - e.g., sacrifice, death, myth, faith - and showing how these themes support Merleau-Ponty's reinterpretation of Husserlian phenomenology, Smyth (...) shows that Merleau-Ponty's appeal to 'heroism' represents an extra-philosophical appeal to a historical purposiveness as a universal feature of human nature, and that Merleau-Ponty makes this appeal in virtue of his recognition of the intrinsic methodological limitations of philosophy as a theoretical endeavor. The book thus recovers the 'militant' dimension of Merleau-Ponty's thought. This sheds considerable new light on his work. It does so in a way that challenges some of the basic parameters of existing Merleau-Ponty scholarship by illuminating the intrinsic normativity of his existential phenomenology, and its epistemic reliance on forms of non-reason such as faith and myth. (shrink)

We argue that once a normative claim is developed, there is an imperative to effect changes based on this norm. As such, ethicists should adopt an “implementation mindset” when formulating...

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 82-84.

Patient safety has assumed a prominent role on the policy agenda since the Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human was released in November 1999. The report maintained that medical error is the predominant mechanism by which patients in the United States and around the world are injured. This finding, along with the report’s recommendation for a “systems” approach to reducing medical error, provided an extremely important insight into the operation of our medical delivery system. Clearly, while advances in (...) medical technology, diagnostic techniques, and knowledge provide the foundation for saving lives, medical error has resulted in their loss. However, recognition that medical error is a primary cause of these avoidable patient injuries and deaths is a key one and may result in improvements within our system of health-care delivery as well as minimization of the emotional and financial toll that iatrogenic injury causes. (shrink)

Patient safety has assumed a prominent role on the policy agenda since the Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human was released in November 1999. The report maintained that medical error is the predominant mechanism by which patients in the United States and around the world are injured. This finding, along with the report’s recommendation for a “systems” approach to reducing medical error, provided an extremely important insight into the operation of our medical delivery system. Clearly, while advances in (...) medical technology, diagnostic techniques, and knowledge provide the foundation for saving lives, medical error has resulted in their loss. However, recognition that medical error is a primary cause of these avoidable patient injuries and deaths is a key one and may result in improvements within our system of health-care delivery as well as minimization of the emotional and financial toll that iatrogenic injury causes. (shrink)

In the history of palliative care, all roads lead back to Dame Cicely Saunders, a remarkable social worker/nurse/physician who promoted the concept of total pain and founded the first modern hospic...

The triadic parent–patient–clinician interaction in pediatrics creates unique ethical challenges when parents and clinicians disagree about treatments or interventions. Rather than an autonomous ro...

Although the target article emphasizes the important role of prediction in language use, prediction may well also play a key role in the initial formation of linguistic representations, that is, in language development. We outline the role of prediction in three relevant language-learning domains: transitional probabilities, statistical preemption, and construction learning.

Gene therapy is the modification of the human genetic code to prevent disease or cure illness. This technology is in its infancy and remains confined to experimental clinical trials. Once the present barriers are overcome, gene therapy will confront humanity with a host of ethical challenges. Therapies targeted to the genes of germ-line cells will introduce permanent changes to the human gene pool. Furthermore, nonmedical gene modifications have the potential to introduce a new form of eugenics into our society by (...) which some members attempt to become inherently superior to others and humanity is re-engineered to man-made specifications. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.1 (Spring 2010): 45–50. (shrink)

This paper reports the introduction of electronic handsets, like those used on the television show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' into the teaching of philosophical logic. Logic lectures can provide quite a formidable challenge for many students, occasionally to the point of making them ill. Our rationale for introducing handsets was threefold: to get the students thinking and talking about the subject in a public environment; to make them feel secure enough to answer questions in the lectures because the (...) system enabled them to do this anonymously; and to build their confidence about their learning by their being able to see how they were progressing in relation to the rest of the students in the class. We have achieved all of these and more. Our experience has revealed that the use of handsets encourages a more dynamic form of student interaction in an environment - the lecture - that can, in the wrong hands, be utterly enervating, but they also provide an opportunity for the lecturer to respond to students' difficulties at the time when they really matter. In this paper, we discuss our case of rapid adoption, our grounds for judging it a success, and what that success seems to have depended on. (shrink)

It describes and explains the patient-centered model examining and evaluating qualitative and quantitative research. It comprehensively covers the evolution and the six interactive components of the patient-centered clinical method, taking the reader through the relationships between the patient and doctor and the patient and clinician. All the editors are professors in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.

Four Testaments brings together four foundational texts from world religions--the Tao Te Ching, Dhammapada, Analects of Confucius, and Bhagavad Gita--inviting readers to experience them in full, to explore possible points of connection and divergence, and to better understand people who practice these traditions.

There are a number of problematic features within the current treatment of time in physical theories, including the “timelessness” of the Universe as encapsulated by the Wheeler–DeWitt equation. This paper considers one particular investigation into resolving this issue; a conditional probability interpretation that was first proposed by Page and Wooters. Those authors addressed the apparent timelessness by subdividing a faux Universe into two entangled parts, “the clock” and “the remainder of the Universe”, and then synchronizing the effective dynamics of the (...) two subsystems by way of conditional probabilities. The current treatment focuses on the possibility of using a realistic clock system; namely, a coherent-state description of a damped harmonic oscillator. This clock proves to be consistent with the conditional probability interpretation; in particular, a standard evolution operator is identified with the position of the clock playing the role of time for the rest of the Universe. Restrictions on the damping factor are determined and, perhaps contrary to expectations, the optimal choice of clock is not necessarily one of minimal damping. (shrink)

Advocates anthropology as a science focused on social structure.

Current theories of knowledge, art, and power are locked into sterile debates around the question of representation. This book examines the limits of antirepresentationalism in these fields and argues that the anarchist tradition can point the way beyond our contemporary crisis of representation. The author rereads the theory and practical experiences of anarchism from the nineteenth century to the present, proposing a radical revision of received notions of the subject - from the equation of anarchy with literary decadence to the (...) interpretation of anarchism as yet another discourse founded on a notion of the human essence. What emerges, instead, is a complex portrait of anarchism as a body of thought that provides the framework for a kind of critical realism, with implications for fields ranging from aesthetics to economics, from philosophy to politics. Jesse Cohn teaches English at Purdue University North Central. (shrink)

_Black Intellectual Thought in Education_ celebrates the exceptional academic contributions of African-American education scholars Anna Julia Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and Alain Leroy Locke to the causes of social science, education, and democracy in America. By focusing on the lives and projects of these three figures specifically, it offers a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant, established discourse in education and critical social theory--helping to better serve the population that critical theory seeks to advocate. Rather than attempting to "rescue" a few (...) African American scholars from obscurity or marginalization, this powerful volume instead highlights ideas that must be probed and critically examined in order to deal with prevailing contemporary educational issues. Cooper, Woodson, and Locke’s history of engagement with race, democracy, education, gender and life is a dynamic, demanding, and authentic narrative for those engaged with these important issues. (shrink)