We argue that the secular cannot offer a materialist response to “The Problem of Too Many Thinkers” that makes autonomy possible. The materialist can accommodate what truths about respecting personal freedom and autonomy only by accepting a counterintuitive sparse ontology. Immaterial accounts of the person look good by comparison. However, those immaterialist theories that don’t posit a divinely created soul suffer from certain metaphysical puzzles avoided by those who do claim divine creation. A soul that requires divine creation strongly suggests (...) that such immaterial beings were made for a purpose. Such purposeful creation makes theistic ethics seem far more plausible. (shrink)

According to the thesis of divine ‘middle knowledge’, first propounded by the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina in the sixteenth century, subjunctive conditionals stating how free agents would freely respond under counter-factual conditions may be straightforwardly true, and thus serve as the objects of divine knowledge. This thesis has provoked considerable controversy, and the recent revival of interest in middle knowledge, initiated by Anthony Kenny, Robert Adams and Alvin Plantinga in the 1970s, has led to two ongoing debates. One (...) is a theoretical debate over the very intelligibility of middle knowledge;1 the other is a practical debate over its philosophical and theological utility.2. (shrink)

Split brains that result in two simultaneous streams of consciousness cut off from each other are wrongly held to be grounds for doubting the existence of the divinely created soul. The mistake is based on two related errors: first, a failure to appreciate the soul's dependence upon neurological functioning; second, a fallacious belief that if the soul is simple, i.e. without parts, then there must be a unity to its thought, all of its thoughts being potentially accessible to reflection or (...) even unreflective causal interactions. But a soul theorist can allow neurological events to keep some conscious thoughts unavailable to others. (shrink)

We argue that animalism is the only materialist account of personal identity that can account for the autonomy that we typically think of ourselves as possessing. All the rival materialist theories suffer from a moral version of the problem of too many thinkers when they posit a human person that overlaps a numerically distinct human animal. The different persistence conditions of overlapping thinkers will lead them to have interests that conflict, which in many cases prevents them both from autonomously forming (...) and acting on the same intentions. These problems are exacerbated by problems of self-reference plaguing the overlapping thinkers. We contend that the impossibility of simultaneous autonomous action by animals and persons provides a reason to favor animalism over Neo-Lockeanism, Four-Dimensionalism, Constitution theory, and brain-size views of the person. We anticipate and reject arguments that the autonomy of the person and the animal can be shown to be compatible by relying upon either the Parfitian thesis that identity isn’t what matters or claiming that animals acquire the interests of the person they constitute. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

We investigate a recently devised polyhedral semantics for intermediate logics, in which formulas are interpreted in n-dimensional polyhedra. An intermediate logic is polyhedrally complete if it is complete with respect to some class of polyhedra. The first main result of this paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for the polyhedral completeness of a logic. This condition, which we call the Nerve Criterion, is expressed in terms of Alexandrov’s notion of the nerve of a poset. It affords a purely combinatorial (...) characterisation of polyhedrally complete logics. Using the Nerve Criterion we show, easily, that there are continuum many intermediate logics that are not polyhedrally complete but which have the finite model property. We also provide, at considerable combinatorial labour, a countably infinite class of logics axiomatised by the Jankov–Fine formulas of ‘starlike trees’ all of which are polyhedrally complete. The polyhedral completeness theorem for these ‘starlike logics’ is the second main result of this paper. (shrink)

Language’s intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production (...) of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans. (shrink)

_The Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities for Healthcare Ethics Consultants_ instructs clinical ethics consultants to preserve their professional integrity by “not engaging in activities that involve giving an ethical justification or stamp of approval to practices they believe are inconsistent with agreed-upon standards” (ASBH, 2014, p. 2). This instruction reflects a larger model of how to address value uncertainty and moral conflict in healthcare, and it brings up some intriguing and as yet unanswered questions—ones that the drafters of the (...) _Code_, and the profession more broadly, should seek to address in upcoming revisions. The objective of this article is to raise these questions as a way of urging greater clarification of the _Code’s_ overall approach to professional integrity, its meaning, and implications. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

Offers comprehensive treatment of Thomas Hobbes’s thought, providing readers with different ways of understanding Hobbes as a systematic philosopher As one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is best known for his ideas regarding the nature of legitimate government and the necessity of society submitting to the absolute authority of sovereign power. Yet Hobbes produced a wide range of writings, from translations of texts by Homer and Thucydides, to interpretations of Biblical books, to works devoted to geometry, (...) optics, morality, and religion. Hobbes viewed himself as presenting a unified method for theoretical and practical science—an interconnected system of philosophy that provides many entry points into his thought. A Companion to Hobbes is an expertly curated collection of essays offering close textual engagement with the thought of Thomas Hobbes in his major works while probing his ideas regarding natural philosophy, mathematics, human nature, civil philosophy, religion, and more. The Companion discusses the ways in which scholars have tried to understand the unity and diversity of Hobbes’s philosophical system and examines the reception of the different parts of Hobbes’s philosophy by thinkers such as René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Presenting a diversity of fresh perspectives by both emerging and established scholars, this volume: Provides a comprehensive treatment of Hobbes’s thought in his works, including Elements of Law, Elements of Philosophy, and Leviathan Explores the connecting points between Hobbes’ metaphysics, epistemology, mathematics, natural philosophy, morality, and civil philosophy Offers readers strategies for understanding how the parts of Hobbes’s philosophical system fit together Examines Hobbes’s philosophy of mathematics and his attempts to understand geometrical objects and definitions Considers Hobbes’s philosophy in contexts such as the natural state of humans, gender relations, and materialist worldviews Challenges conceptions of Hobbes’s moral theory and his views about the rights of sovereigns Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Hobbes is an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students of Early modern thought, particularly those from disciplines such as History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Intellectual History, History of Politics, Political Theory, and English. (shrink)

It was, until recently, accepted that the two classes of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors are distinct in an important sense: muscarinic ACh receptors signal via heterotrimeric GTP binding proteins (G proteins), whereas nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) open to allow flux of Na+, Ca2+, and K+ ions into the cell after activation. Here we present evidence of direct coupling between G proteins and nAChRs in neurons. Based on proteomic, biophysical, and functional evidence, we hypothesize that binding to G proteins modulates the activity (...) and signaling of nAChRs in cells. It is important to note that while this hypothesis is new for the nAChR, it is consistent with known interactions between G proteins and structurally related ligand‐gated ion channels. Therefore, it underscores an evolutionarily conserved metabotropic mechanism of G protein signaling via nAChR channels.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

It was, until recently, accepted that the two classes of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors are distinct in an important sense: muscarinic ACh receptors signal via heterotrimeric GTP binding proteins (G proteins), whereas nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) open to allow flux of Na+, Ca2+, and K+ ions into the cell after activation. Here we present evidence of direct coupling between G proteins and nAChRs in neurons. Based on proteomic, biophysical, and functional evidence, we hypothesize that binding to G proteins modulates the activity (...) and signaling of nAChRs in cells. It is important to note that while this hypothesis is new for the nAChR, it is consistent with known interactions between G proteins and structurally related ligand‐gated ion channels. Therefore, it underscores an evolutionarily conserved metabotropic mechanism of G protein signaling via nAChR channels.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Tench Coxe, a member of the second rank of this nation's Founders and a leading proponent of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, wrote prolifically about the right to keep and bear arms. In this Article, the authors trace Coxe's story, from his early writings in support of the Constitution, through his years of public service, to his political writings in opposition to the presidential campaigns of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The authors note that Coxe (...) described the Second Amendment as guaranteeing an individual right, and believed that an individual right to bear arms was necessary for self-defense and hunting, as well as for militia purposes and protection against oppression by large standing armies. The views of this important Founding Era political commentator and public servant inform the ongoing Second Amendment debate. The authors argue that Coxe's depiction of an individual right to bear arms encompassing hunting, self-defense, and the public militia power supports the "Standard Model" of the Second Amendment prevalent in the legal literature. This Article also discusses Coxe's important role as an economic scholar in early America, and in the creation of the protectionist system of the early Republic, as both an journalistic advocate and as an executive branch official. One of his executive branch positions involved heading the federal government program to give guns to militiamen who could not afford their own. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

1. IntroductionIn this superb book, Williams sets a very ambitious goal for himself: to sketch biconditionals that define representational conditions in non-representational terms (p. xvii). Representation is not a spooky, primitive capacity of the mind; it is built from more basic ingredients. At the centre is his radical interpretation theory of belief and desire, inspired by the work of David Lewis. To a first approximation: Basic radical interpretation theory. The correct assignment of beliefs and desires to an agent is (...) the most rationalizing assignment given her perceptual evidence and dispositions to act. (pp. 16, 97ff)Williams does not give a master argument for this account of belief and desire over rival accounts in which constitutive rationality plays no role. Rather, his main goal is the laudatory one of theory-building. In this respect, his book hearkens back to the decade or so from the early 80s to the early 90s that was the heyday for developing grand theories of representation. In particular, his main aim is to develop the details of the basic radical interpretation theory – something Lewis never fully did. The result is a unique, multi-stage theory of representation that departs importantly from Lewis in many places. (shrink)

Inferential Internalists accept the Principle of Inferential Justification (PIJ), according to which one has justification for believing P on the basis of E only if one has justification for believing that E makes probable P. Richard Fumerton has defended PIJ by appeal to examples, and recently Adam Leite has argued that this principle is supported by considerations regarding the nature of responsible belief. In this paper, I defend a form of externalism against both arguments. This form of externalism recognizes what (...) I call the phenomenon of reflective defeat: if one is justified in not believing that E makes probable P, then this defeats whatever justification one has for believing P upon the basis of E. I argue that this modified version of externalism has the virtue of accommodating the intuitions that motivate internalism, without the cost of the vicious regress that makes internalism so unattractive. (shrink)

David Gauthier is one of the most outstanding and influential philosophers working in moral theory today, and his book Morals by Agreement has established him as a preeminent defender of contractarian moral theory. This volume brings together a selection of his best essays on contractarianism, many of which have become difficult to find.

I want to deal in this essay with the group of philosophers that G.E.M. Anscombe includes under the term ‘modern moral philosophy’ in her essay by that name. The stars of this group are Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Mill, Sidgwick, Moore. I mean to include as well generally the last hundred years of emotivists, utilitarians, and those theorists who have emphasized universalizability in its various versions. For reasons which I hope will soon become clear, I will refer to this broad (...) group as the ‘atomistic tradition.’ I will be assuming, though not often saying, that the most forthright and thorough spokesman of the tradition is David Hume who, in his purely skeptical moments, was so atomistic and extensionalist that he even denied personal identity over time. Anything less than that is not purely atomistic. (shrink)

The meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why we have problem intuitions about consciousness, why we intuitively think that conscious experience cannot be scientifically explained. In his discussion of this problem, David Chalmers briefly considers the possibility of giving a 'genealogical' solution, according to which problem intuitions are 'accidents of cultural history' (2018, p. 33). Chalmers' response to this solution is largely dismissive. In this paper, we defend the viability of a genealogical solution. Our strategy is to (...) focus on a particular problem intuition: the thought that the phenomenal character of colour experience is irreducibly subjective. We use the history of the inverted spectrum thought experiment as a window into how various philosophers have thought about colour experience. Our genealogy reveals that problem intuitions about colour are not timeless, but instead arise in a specific historical context, one that, in large part, explains why we have these intuitions. (shrink)

Impressions of Hume consists of an editorial Introduction and twelve original essays, most of which were earlier presented at the “Hume Studies in Britain” interdisciplinary workshops held in Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford. This collection is a valuable one, especially for those interested in the intellectual contexts of Hume’s metaphysics and ethics. It might be shelved alongside—in parts it seems an extension of—M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright’s edited collection from 1994, Hume and Hume’s Connexions. Indeed, Impressions of Hume begins (...) with M. A. Stewart’s 47-page article, “The Intellectual Development of Hume, 1711–1752,” which covers Hume’s life of reading in detail from the curriculum at the College of Edinburgh through his bookish interests of 1725–1729, and then leaps ahead, in more summary fashion, to Hume’s professional interests in the decade after completing the Treatise, including his ongoing concern to distance himself from that work, culminating in the 1775 “Advertisement” and 1776 “My Own Life.” Rich in archival research and in full command of Hume’s intellectual and social milieus, Stewart’s article whets the appetite for the full-blown biography of which this seems a partial draft. According to this volume’s “Notes on Contributors,” however, Hume’s intellectual biography is now in the hands of James A. Harris, whose contribution here, “Hume’s Use of the Rhetoric of Calvinism,” marks him as a worthy successor to Stewart and the other scholars—Harris cites Roger Emerson and James Moore—who have set the understanding of Hume’s life on a whole new footing since E. C. Mossner’s second edition of The Life of David Hume. Harris argues that Hume used fideistic pronouncements, especially in the first Enquiry, to align himself strategically with the Calvinist opponents of the neo-Stoic moderates in church and university, including Hutcheson, who blocked Hume from securing the Edinburgh moral philosophy chair in 1745. Hume’s intention, according to Harris, “was to discredit by whatever means possible the revolution in moral philosophy being engineered by Hutcheson, and so to imply a need for a return to the time when moral philosophy was one thing, and the teaching of natural religion another”. (shrink)

Impressions of Hume consists of an editorial Introduction and twelve original essays, most of which were earlier presented at the “Hume Studies in Britain” interdisciplinary workshops held in Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford. This collection is a valuable one, especially for those interested in the intellectual contexts of Hume’s metaphysics and ethics. It might be shelved alongside—in parts it seems an extension of—M. A. Stewart and John P. Wright’s edited collection from 1994, Hume and Hume’s Connexions. Indeed, Impressions of Hume begins (...) with M. A. Stewart’s 47-page article, “The Intellectual Development of Hume, 1711–1752,” which covers Hume’s life of reading in detail from the curriculum at the College of Edinburgh through his bookish interests of 1725–1729, and then leaps ahead, in more summary fashion, to Hume’s professional interests in the decade after completing the Treatise, including his ongoing concern to distance himself from that work, culminating in the 1775 “Advertisement” and 1776 “My Own Life.” Rich in archival research and in full command of Hume’s intellectual and social milieus, Stewart’s article whets the appetite for the full-blown biography of which this seems a partial draft. According to this volume’s “Notes on Contributors,” however, Hume’s intellectual biography is now in the hands of James A. Harris, whose contribution here, “Hume’s Use of the Rhetoric of Calvinism,” marks him as a worthy successor to Stewart and the other scholars—Harris cites Roger Emerson and James Moore—who have set the understanding of Hume’s life on a whole new footing since E. C. Mossner’s second edition of The Life of David Hume. Harris argues that Hume used fideistic pronouncements, especially in the first Enquiry, to align himself strategically with the Calvinist opponents of the neo-Stoic moderates in church and university, including Hutcheson, who blocked Hume from securing the Edinburgh moral philosophy chair in 1745. Hume’s intention, according to Harris, “was to discredit by whatever means possible the revolution in moral philosophy being engineered by Hutcheson, and so to imply a need for a return to the time when moral philosophy was one thing, and the teaching of natural religion another”. (shrink)

Monogenesis of language is widely accepted, but the conventional argument seems to be mistaken; a simple probabilistic model shows that polygenesis is likely. Other prehistoric inventions are discussed, as are problems in tracing linguistic lineages. Language is a system of representations; within such a system, words can evoke complex and systematic responses. Along with its social functions, language is important to humans as a mental instrument. Indeed, the invention of language,that is the accumulation of symbols to represent emotions, objects, and (...) acts may be the most important event in human evolution, because so many developments follow from it. For example, Edward Sapir speculated that some embryonic form of language must have been available to early man to help him fashion tools from stone (Sapir,1921). Sophisticated biface stone tools date to early Homo erectus some 1.5 million years ago, suggesting a similar age for language. This paper considers whether the invention of language occurred at only one pre-historic site or at several sites. In other words, did language emerge by monogenesis or polygenesis? Early thinkers believed in monogenesis, against a background of divine creation. Perhaps the best known account is the biblical story of Adam giving names to plants and animals in the Garden of Eden. Similar legends are found among many peoples. Modern linguists too assume monogenesis, but on probabilistic grounds (see, for instance, Southworth and Daswani, 1974, p.314). The argument seems to be that the invention of language is an extremely unlikely event, because symbolization involves abstraction and requires synchronized insight by several individuals; therefore, the probability of occurrence at more than one site must be vanishingly small. We have found no explicit quantitative treatment of this question in the literature, but the underlying logic has to be the multiplication of probabilities. If p is small at one site,then p.p for two sites is smaller still, and so on. This reasoning is false, as we show here. The fallacy lies in the focus on two particular sites rather than consideration of all pairs of sites. (shrink)

Is morality rational? In this book Gauthier argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. He proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of cooperation, rather than according to what would give an individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice (...) did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason. Gauthier's argument includes an account of value, linking it to preference and utility; a discussion of the curcumstances in which morality is unnecessary; and an application of morals by agreement to relations between peoples at different levels of development and different generations. Finally, he reflects on the assumptions about individuality and community made by his account of rationality and morality. (shrink)

I first argue that the Matrix trilogy is a Gnostic cyber-epic; I then use this interpretive lens to review the films' treatment of fundamental questions in epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory.

Robert M. Adams has written a fairly short book, but into it he has packed a lifetime of rigorous analytic thought, and, what is rarer, deep insight into the nature of things. The book expands and recasts Gifford Lectures that Adams delivered in 1999, as well as other lectures and papers, and though it addresses difficult issues, Adams's clear style, retaining the informality of lectures, considerably eases the task of the reader; and the book is not without (...) an occasional touch of humour, e.g. ‘As metaphysicians we may wish to assign a certain oomph to one side or the other in such lawgoverned relations; but it is not clear that the concept of oomph is at home in fundamental physics’ (p. 12).I cannot cover all the many and various topics in the book, but I shall endeavour in what follows to present a central thread of argument in it, the distinction between what is and what is in itself (the centrality of which is indicated by its presence in the book's title) and to show how this distinction leads to the theistic and idealist metaphysics to which the author is inclined. (shrink)

In “Consensus, Clinical Decision Making, and Unsettled Cases,” David M. Adams and William J. Winslade make multiple references to both editions of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation in their discussion of two assumptions that are supposed to be at the heart of the facilitated consensus model’s inability to handle unsettled cases; that is, that:1. Consultants “should maintain a kind of moral impartiality or neutrality throughout the process,” “explicitly condemn[ing] anything (...) resembling a substantive ‘ethics’ recommendation,” and2. “What counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible.”Herein, I argue that neither of these assumptions is required by ASBH’s ethics facilitation approach. I then conclude by suggesting that, despite their fundamentally mistaken interpretation of the ASBH approach—perhaps even because of it—Adams and Winslade have made two important contributions to the ethics consultation literature. (shrink)

Just as it is impossible to understand the American religious landscape without some familiarity with evangelicalism, one cannot grasp the shape of contemporary Christian ethics without knowing the contributions of evangelical Protestants. This newest addition to the Library of Theological Ethics series begins by examining the core dynamic with which all evangelical ethics grapples: belief in an authoritative, inspired, and unchanging biblical text on the one hand, and engagement with a rapidly evolving and increasingly post-Christian culture on the other. It (...) explores the different roles that scholars and popular figures have played in forming evangelicals' understandings of Christian ethics. And it draws together the contributions of both senior and emerging figures in painting a portrait of this diverse, vibrant, and challenging theological and ethical tradition. This book represents the breadth of evangelical ethical voices, demonstrating that evangelical ethics involves nuance and theological insight that far transcend any political agenda. Contributors include David P. Gushee, Carl F. H. Henry, Jennifer McBride, Stephen Charles Mott, William E. Pannell, John Perkins, Soong-Chan Rah, Gabriel Salguero, Francis Schaeffer, Ron Sider, Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Glen H. Stassen, Eldin Villafañe, Allen Verhey, Jim Wallis, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and John Howard Yoder. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important, and otherwise unavailable, texts—English-language texts and translations that have fallen out of print, new translations, and collections of significant statements about problems and themes of special importance—in an easily accessible form. This series enables sustained dialogue on new and classic works in the field. (shrink)

W. R. D. Fairbairn (1889-1964) challenged the dominance of Freud's drive theory with a psychoanalytic theory based on the internalization of human relationships. Fairbairn assumed that the unconscious develops in childhood and contains dissociated memories of parental neglect, insensitivity, and outright abuse that are impossible the children to tolerate consciously. In Fairbairn's model, these dissociated memories protect developing children from recognizing how badly they are being treated and allow them to remain attached even to physically abusive parents. Attachment is paramount (...) in Fairbairn's model, as he recognized that children are absolutely and unconditionally dependent on their parents. Kidnapped children who remain attached to their abusive captors despite opportunities to escape illustrate this intense dependency, even into adolescence. At the heart of Fairbairn's model is a structural theory that organizes actual relational events into three self-and-object pairs: one conscious pair (the central ego, which relates exclusively to the ideal object in the external world) and two mostly unconscious pairs (the child's antilibidinal ego, which relates exclusively to the rejecting parts of the object, and the child's libidinal ego, which relates exclusively to the exciting parts of the object). The two dissociated self-and-object pairs remain in the unconscious but can emerge and suddenly take over the individual's central ego. When they emerge, the "other" is misperceived as either an exciting or a rejecting object, thus turning these internal structures into a source of transferences and reenactments. Fairbairn's central defense mechanism, splitting, is the fast shift from central ego dominance to either the libidinal ego or the antilibidinal ego-a near perfect model of the borderline personality disorder. In this book, David Celani reviews Fairbairn's five foundational papers and outlines their application in the clinical setting. He discusses the four unconscious structures and offers the clinician concrete suggestions on how to recognize and respond to them effectively in the heat of the clinical interview. Incorporating decades of experience into his analysis, Celani emphasizes the internalization of the therapist as a new "good" object and devotes entire sections to the treatment of histrionic, obsessive, and borderline personality disorders. (shrink)

Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in our society that has only recently come to be acknowledged in public discussion. Though many see it as a social and political problem grounded in unequal gender roles, this level of analysis fails to explain adequately why many battered women return to their abusers despite intense suffering and the certainty of more physical violence. The Illusion of Love challenges the prevailing model, which views the victim of abuse as a normal woman who is (...) unable to escape from her batterer due to the effects of terror and psychological collapse. Instead, David Celani offers a new answer--that women who are battered have a fundamental attraction to partners who are abusive. Based on his years of clinical experience treating battered women, Celani applies object relations theory and case examples from his own practice to show that many women--and indeed some men--are unconsciously drawn to abusive partners because of personality disorders caused by childhood abuse and neglect. He argues that any effective treatment for battered women must help unravel futile and self-defeating patterns, such as ones that spring from fears of abandonment and fascination with men who produce exaggerated promises of love followed by extreme rejecting behaviors. _The Illusion of Love_ examines the personalities of abusers as well, many of whom suffer from narcissism, a disorder that is also often associated with childhood abuse and neglect. Narcissistic men lash out violently in an attempt to control their own fears or abandonment and to compensate for unsatisfied emotional needs. Celani concludes that domestic violence is often the tragic result of a union between individuals with complementary personality disorders. His findings fly in the face of the politically correct refusal to examine the behavior of the victim of abuse, a strategy that has led to a severe misunderstanding of the dynamics of the battering scenario. _The Illusion of Love_ calls for primary prevention of neglectful parenting to stem the tide of abuse in the future, offering tangible hope for the treatment of victims of abuse as they attempt to extricate themselves from unhealthy, damaging relationships. (shrink)

Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in our society that has only recently come to be acknowledged in public discussion. Though many see it as a social and political problem grounded in unequal gender roles, this level of analysis fails to explain adequately why many battered women return to their abusers despite intense suffering and the certainty of more physical violence. The Illusion of Love challenges the prevailing model, which views the victim of abuse as a normal woman who is (...) unable to escape from her batterer due to the effects of terror and psychological collapse. Instead, David Celani offers a new answer--that women who are battered have a fundamental attraction to partners who are abusive. Based on his years of clinical experience treating battered women, Celani applies object relations theory and case examples from his own practice to show that many women--and indeed some men--are unconsciously drawn to abusive partners because of personality disorders caused by childhood abuse and neglect. He argues that any effective treatment for battered women must help unravel futile and self-defeating patterns, such as ones that spring from fears of abandonment and fascination with men who produce exaggerated promises of love followed by extreme rejecting behaviors. _The Illusion of Love_ examines the personalities of abusers as well, many of whom suffer from narcissism, a disorder that is also often associated with childhood abuse and neglect. Narcissistic men lash out violently in an attempt to control their own fears or abandonment and to compensate for unsatisfied emotional needs. Celani concludes that domestic violence is often the tragic result of a union between individuals with complementary personality disorders. His findings fly in the face of the politically correct refusal to examine the behavior of the victim of abuse, a strategy that has led to a severe misunderstanding of the dynamics of the battering scenario. _The Illusion of Love_ calls for primary prevention of neglectful parenting to stem the tide of abuse in the future, offering tangible hope for the treatment of victims of abuse as they attempt to extricate themselves from unhealthy, damaging relationships. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading with FeelingDavid NovitzReading with Feeling, by Susan Feagin; viii & 260 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, $27.50.There are things that critics and philosophers love to burble on about, and literary appreciation is one of them. Susan Feagin puts an end to our burbling. Even if one does not always agree with Feagin, it is a singular merit of her book that it points to the problems (...) that need to be addressed in order to offer a passable theory of appreciation. Her book is subtle, considered, and perceptive, and offers an account that is demanding yet informative and helpful.To appreciate a literary work, we are told, is “not merely to recognize that a work has certain properties,” still less that it has a specific value. Rather, it is to [End Page 201] interact with the work in a way that “gets the value out of it,” where “this involves being affectively or emotionally moved” by the fiction (p. 1).The account of appreciation that follows aims first to explain how affective responses to fiction are possible—where this involves describing in a detailed explanatory way, the activity of appreciation and what it necessarily involves. Second, it aims to explain what it is that warrants or justifies an affective response to literature.Although interpretation is related to, perhaps intertwined with, appreciation, Feagin is adamant that the two activities are entirely different. An interpretation is the end-result, the product, of a certain activity, and gives us the meaning of a work or its parts. Appreciation, by contrast, is the successful exercise of an ability—namely that of interacting appropriately with a text—and does not result in any end product (pp. 34–37). Hence the desire to appreciate a novel is the desire to do various things with it, and in the process to exercise an acquired ability, namely that of responding appropriately to it. The crucial thing about this desire, Feagin suggests, is that it does not involve the mental representation of its object: it is not, for instance, the desire to have experiences of a certain sort. It is what she calls a “no-rep desire” (pp. 51–58).One has to wonder about this. When I buy and sit down to read my next Joanna Trollope novel, I do so partly because I have a pretty good idea of the delights that lie in store. In Feagin’s terms, I wish to exercise a certain ability, and interact appropriately with the text, but in this case I desire to do so because of a well-founded idea that I am going to engage with a certain subject matter: with the personal lives of people in traumatic relationships, and with a range of subtle perceptions and observations about human frailties. While perhaps not fully “rep,” this is far from being a no-rep desire; yet it seems wrong to deny that I desire to appreciate the work.In the three chapters that follow, Feagin looks closely at the activities involved in appreciating a work. As we read, our psychological sensitivity to what we read next is changed, and we move into “different mental gears.” Here Feagin emphasizes the slides and shifts, and the repeated reconfigurations that enter into the appreciation of a text (chap. 3). Such cognitive and affective shifts are to some degree automatic, to some degree under the reader’s control, even though we do not formulate intentions to move into them. But either way, they are what Feagin calls sensitivities—that is, a psychological readiness to respond in certain ways to events in the fiction. Crucially, they introduce into appreciation a temporal dimension, since our sensitivities are enhanced or diminished by what precedes them, and this, as we shall shortly see, is of considerable significance when deciding whether our affective responses to a work are warranted.These mental shifts and slides are required for an empathetic engagement with fictional characters. Feagin’s approach here is largely based on contemporary work in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology. As a result, [End Page 202] she suggests in chapter 4 that empathizing involves simulating another’s mental states; something that... (shrink)

This study uses a “science pipeline” model and cross-national data to examine women's participation in science education and occupations in seven countries. Gender stratification in later science education and in science occupations is found in every country examined. Young women's participation in science education decreases with each stage in the science pipeline, but there is considerable cross-national variation in the extent of gender stratification in science. Findings show greater gender stratification in science occupations than in science education, suggesting factors other (...) than training help maintain inequality in high-status science occupations. (shrink)

Frederick Dretske′s views on the nature of seeing, the possibility of knowledge, the nature of content or non-natural meaning, the nature of behavior, and the role of content in teh causal explanation of behavior have been profoundly important. Dretske and His Critics contains original discussions of these issues by Joh Heil, Stuart Cohen, David H Sanford, Jaegwon Kim, Fred Adams, Daniel Dennett, Robert Cummins, Terence Horgan and Brian McLaughlin. Each chapter is responded to by Dretske himslef.

I THE NATURE OF MAN To understand morals and politics, understand man. Leviathan , 'that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and ...