Health disparities are primarily driven by structural inequality including systemic racism. Medical educators, led by the AAMC, have tended to minimize these core drivers of health disparities. Ins...

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 112-114.

This book examines Platos account in the Timaeus of a third kind and its cosmic members, a material principle and place.

This paper gives a brief discussion of the problem of ascribing authorship to ancient philosophical texts when there is evidence both for and against traditional ascription. The case in point is tradition’s claim that Simplicius is the author of the De Anima commentary. It is argued here that, while Gabor provides new and important methodological evidence for Simplicius’s authorship, we should not expect certainty. It is suggested that, in cases where historical fact may never be ascertained, we will be better (...) served by the notion of credences. (shrink)

The health system is, in particular ways, a microcosm of society and both reflects and contributes to its ills of racism, inequities, and disparities. As such, the house of medicine is obligated to...

Plato’s chief argument against rhetoric is epistemological. Plato claims that rhetoric accomplishes what it does on the basis of experience,not knowledge. In this article I examine Plato’s criticisms of rhetoric in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. I argue that Plato is right to identify rhetoric’s empirical basis, but that having this epistemic basis does not constitute an argument against rhetoric. On the contrary, Plato’s criticism of rhetoric serves to give us an epistemological explanation of rhetoric’s success.

The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of (...) intellectual, material, and institutional influences. The volume offers a unique perspicuity, viewing the entire landscape of early modern philosophy and science, and also marks an epoch in contemporary scholarship, surveying recent contributions and suggesting future investigations for the next generation of scholars and students. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

It is difficult to write clearly about any aspect of Plotinus’ thought. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that he is a very systematic thinker. So, for example, to treat his aesthetics one must also discuss his metaphysics, psychology, and his ethics. Anther reason is his well-known subtlety and obscurity of expression. Kuisma’s book on Plotinus’ aesthetics, however, shows that it is possible to write clearly, accurately, and succinctly about Plotinus. This book is a pleasure to read. (...) Kuisma argues against a modern, widely held interpretation of Plotinus’s aesthetics which claims that “Plotinus, in contrast to Plato, accepted the possibility of the artistic imitation of intelligible Forms,” thus giving “a new direction to Platonic art theory”. His thesis is, instead, that “the objects of artistic imitation are limited to the sphere of perceptions,” although this limitation can be overcome to some extent by “the use of symbols and symbolic conventions”, inasmuch as symbolic representations do not convey on the basis of sameness of form. He calls the common view “strong mimesis,” and his own view, “weak mimesis”. Clearly, Kuisma’s view shows Plotinus to be a traditional Platonist. Indeed, it would be odd if Plotinus, of all people, should discount Plato’s doubts about the ability of sensibles to represent eternal form. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays, many of which were given originally as papers at a conference on Ancient Method held at Amherst College in 1994. Few directly address the subject of method in ancient philosophy. Readers whose primary interest is this subject and have high hopes for this new volume from Oxford University Press will be somewhat disappointed. Yet those of us whose interests in ancient philosophy are broader will find not a few excellent essays on important questions by (...) some of the leaders in the field. (shrink)

History and Philosophy of Logic, Volume 33, Issue 1, Page 104-106, February 2012.

This is a wonderful book. It is, in my opinion, the best book on Aristotle’s treatment of the physical world to appear in recent years. Still, this book is not one that can be read through on a Sunday afternoon. It resembles a text of Aristotle in the compactness of argument, though not, I am happy to report, in clarity. Like a guide raised in the wild, Lang leads us through a large sector of the forest of arguments in the (...) Physics and De Caelo. This analogy brings me to the following point: Lang’s perspective on Aristotle is extraordinary. Lang is the author of another excellent book, Aristotle’s Physics and Its Medieval Varieties. Discussions of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature through the lens of medieval philosophy and science are not uncommon. These discussions, however, face the peril of attributing, in one way or another, viewpoints to Aristotle that are actually those of his medieval successors. For this reason most work on Aristotle is now done without reference to medieval thought. Perhaps this is as it should be. But one of the great difficulties in understanding Aristotle’s conception of the world is how we are to interpret what he says. Our perspective on the world is largely formed on the basis of early modern rejections of medieval Aristotelian views. That is to say that built into our perspective is a negative response not to Aristotle directly but to medieval interpretation of Aristotle. This fact makes it extremely difficult for us to see Aristotle clearly. Here lies the advantage of knowing the “medieval varieties” of Aristotle’s natural philosophy when we try to make sense of Aristotle. Knowing this helps us distinguish more clearly between our own perspective and its roots and Aristotle’s. Aristotle’s perspective is in fact fundamentally different from ours. For example, Lang points out that to insert the notion of “speed” into Aristotle’s discussion of motion is “seriously misleading” because speed is conceptually distinguishable from moving bodies and is so treated, whereas motion, for Aristotle, is always the actualization of a capacity intrinsic to a moved body; therefore motion can neither be quantified nor abstracted from what is moved. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues are masterpieces of philosophy and literature. This insures their place in the firmament of human achievement, but it also makes their interpretation difficult. For example, does the literary artifice contribute to the philosophic argument? If it does, how does it do so and how are we to judge its contribution? Much of modern interpretation of Plato's dialogues focuses on the logical strength and direction of the philosophical arguments. One reason for this is that here we have something we (...) have means to evaluate; we can determine, for the most part, what the arguments are, whether they are consistent, and how much they demonstrate. Here we seem to stand, more or less, on a philosophical terra firma. Yet the contribution of Plato's literary artifice remains, for such interpretive efforts, a philosophical terra incognita precisely because there seem to be no evident, objective standards by which to judge this contribution. (shrink)

This latest volume of BACAP Proceedings contains some innovative research by international scholars on Plato, Aristotle, and Sophocles. It covers such themes as Plato on the philosopher ruler, and Aristotle on essence and necessity in science. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

This Introduction introduces readers to the concepts of political philosophy: authority, democracy, freedom and its limits, justice, feminism, multiculturalism, and nationality. Accessibly written and assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, it encourages the reader to think clearly and critically about the leading political questions of our time. THe book first investigates how politcial philosophy tackles basic ethical questions such as 'how should we live together in society?' It furthermore looks at political authority, discusses the reasons society needs politics in (...) the first place, explores the limitations of politics, and asks if there are areas of life that shouldn't be governed by politics. Moreover, the book explores the connections between political authority and justice, a constant theme in political philosophy, and the ways in which social justice can be used to regulate rather than destroy a market economy. In his travels through this realm, Miller covers why nations ar the natural units of government and wonders if the rise of multiculturalism and transnational co-operation will change all this, and asks in the end if we will ever see the formation of a world government. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve infinite collections of Grim Reapers, assassins, demons, deafening peals, or even sentences. These paradoxes have recently been used in arguments for finitist metaphysical theses such as temporal finitism, causal finitism, and discrete views of time. Here we develop a new _finite_ Benardete-like paradox. We then use this paradox to defend a companions in guilt argument that challenges recent applications of patchwork principles on behalf of the aforementioned finitist arguments. Finally, we develop another problem for those applications by (...) examining the notion of exact duplication. (shrink)

This essay is a response to Robert Scharff’s “Before Empirical Turns and Transcendental Inquiry: pre-philosophical Considerations”. Scharff digs beneath the empirico-transcendental debate between Ihde and Stiegler in order to critique this debate’s Cartesian presuppositions. He uses the work of Nietzsche and the early Heidegger to further his critique. There is much to like in Scharff’s rich and intricate analytic interpretation but this is also the crux of my critique. The detour into Nietzsche’s and the early Heidegger’s work is ultimately unnecessary. (...) If Scharff looks closer, he will see that Feenberg’s revised theory of instrumentalization already accomplishes the return to technical experience and the critique of Cartesian techno scientific rationality that Scharff desires. (shrink)

To describe phenomena that occur at different time scales, computational models of the brain must incorporate different levels of abstraction. At time scales of approximately 1/3 of a second, orienting movements of the body play a crucial role in cognition and form a useful computational level embodiment level,” the constraints of the physical system determine the nature of cognitive operations. The key synergy is that at time scales of about 1/3 of a second, the natural sequentiality of body movements can (...) be matched to the natural computational economies of sequential decision systems through a system of implicit reference called deictic in which pointing movements are used to bind objects in the world to cognitive programs. This target article focuses on how deictic bindings make it possible to perform natural tasks. Deictic computation provides a mechanism for representing the essential features that link external sensory data with internal cognitive programs and motor actions. One of the central features of cognition, working memory, can be related to moment-by-moment dispositions of body features such as eye movements and hand movements. (shrink)

In this paper, I endorse the idea that age is a defensible criterion for eligibility to vote, where age is itself a proxy for having a broad set of cognitive and motivational capacities. Given the current (and defeasible) state of developmental research, I suggest that the age of 16 is a good proxy for such capacities. In defending this thesis, I consider alternative and narrower capacity conditions while drawing on insights from a parallel debate about capacities and age requirements in (...) the criminal law. I also argue that the expansive capacity condition I adopt satisfies a number of powerful and complementary rationales for voting eligibility, and conclude by addressing challenging arguments that, on the one hand, capacity should not underlie voting eligibility in the first place, and, on the other, that capacity should do so directly and not via any sort of proxy, including age. (shrink)

Animate vision systems have gaze control mechanisms that can actively position the camera coordinate system in response to physical stimuli. Compared to passive systems, animate systems show that visual computation can be vastly less expensive when considered in the larger context of behavior. The most important visual behavior is the ability to control the direction of gaze. This allows the use of very low resolution imaging that has a high virtual resolution. Using such a system in a controlled way provides (...) additional constraints that dramatically simplify the computations of early vision. Another important behavior is the way the environment “behaves‘. Animate systems under real-time constraints can further reduce their computational burden by using environmental cues that are perspicuous in the local context. A third source of economy is introduced when behaviors are learned. Because errors are rarely fatal, systems using learning algorithms can amortize computational cost over extended periods. Further economies can be achieved when the learning system uses indexical reference, which is a form of dynamic variable binding. Animate vision is a natural way of implementing this dynamic binding. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt was one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century, and her particular interests have made her one of the most frequently cited thinkers of our time. This Companion examines the primary themes of her multi-faceted work, from her theory of totalitarianism and her controversial idea of the 'banality of evil' to her classic studies of political action and her final reflections on judgment and the life of the mind. Each essay examines the political, philosophical, and historical (...) concerns which shaped Arendt's thought, and which prompted her to become one of the most unapologetic champions of the political life in the history of Western thought. (shrink)

The cerebral cortex is a rich and diverse structure that is the basis of intelligent behavior. One of the deepest mysteries of the function of cortex is that neural processing times are only about one hundred times as fast as the fastest response times for complex behavior. At the very least, this would seem to indicate that the cortex does massive amounts of parallel computation.This paper explores the hypothesis that an important part of the cortex can be modeled as a (...) connectionist computer that is especially suited for parallel problem solving. The connectionist computer uses a special representation, termed value unit encoding, that represents small subsets of parameters in a way that allows parallel access to many different parameter values. This computer can be thought of as computing hierarchies of sensorimotor invariants. The neural substrate can be interpreted as a commitment to data structures and algorithms that compute invariants fast enough to explain the behavioral response times. A detailed consideration of this model has several implications for the underlying anatomy and physiology. (shrink)

Platonists and nominalists disagree about whether mathematical objects exist. But they almost uniformly agree about one thing: whatever the status of the existence of mathematical objects, that status is modally necessary. Two notable dissenters from this orthodoxy are Hartry Field, who defends contingent nominalism, and Mark Colyvan, who defends contingent Platonism. The source of their dissent is their view that the indispensability argument provides our justification for believing in the existence, or not, of mathematical objects. This paper considers whether commitment (...) to the indispensability argument gives one grounds to be a contingentist about mathematical objects. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national responsibility (...) is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ?political? theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)

People increasingly form beliefs based on information gained from automatically filtered Internet ‎sources such as search engines. However, the workings of such sources are often opaque, preventing ‎subjects from knowing whether the information provided is biased or incomplete. Users’ reliance on ‎Internet technologies whose modes of operation are concealed from them raises serious concerns about ‎the justificatory status of the beliefs they end up forming. Yet it is unclear how to address these concerns ‎within standard theories of knowledge and justification. (...) To shed light on the problem, we introduce a ‎novel conceptual framework that clarifies the relations between justified belief, epistemic responsibility, ‎action, and the technological resources available to a subject. We argue that justified belief is subject to ‎certain epistemic responsibilities that accompany the subject’s particular decision-taking circumstances, ‎and that one typical responsibility is to ascertain, so far as one can, whether the information upon which ‎the judgment will rest is biased or incomplete. What this responsibility comprises is partly determined by ‎the inquiry-enabling technologies available to the subject. We argue that a subject’s beliefs that are ‎formed based on Internet-filtered information are less justified than they would be if she either knew how ‎filtering worked or relied on additional sources, and that the subject may have the epistemic ‎responsibility to take measures to enhance the justificatory status of such beliefs.‎. (shrink)

Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily indicate the existence of shared knowledge among (...) the members of the consensus community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions—social calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. (shrink)

Trust in the doctor-patient relationship is an indispensable structural element for the medical profession. The discourse concerning trust and its importance in the healthcare context, although quite old, elicits increasingly more interest in research, especially for empirical approaches. The importance of trust in the doctor and in the medical profession can be demonstrated by starting from the Christian meaning of illness and medicine ; generally, the patristic sources see medicine and physicians as God’s gifts. T he perception of Christian physicians (...) as dedicated, unselfish and compassionate preservers or restorers of health, always committed to the good of their patients is well known. The model of the Christian physician is a Hippocratic model, of one who seeks the sick so that he may bring relief to them and strengthen them. When illness occurs, Christianity affirms an ethical duty to struggle against sickness, which if unaddressed can lead to death. The moral requirement to care for the health of the body indicates it is appropriate to use healing methods that will enhance health and maintain life. The aim of this paper is to explore the dimensions of the concept of trust in the doctor-patient relationship, by starting from the Christian meaning of illness and of the role of the doctor. The paper presents a number of essential theoretical elements related to trust, as presented in the literature dealing with the doctor-patient relationship: the meaning of trust, its dimensions, its stages of development, its impact, its sources, the patient’s perspectives on trust, the importance of trust for healthcare systems. (shrink)