Letter to the Editors in response to Alasdair Richmond's 'Time Travelers'.

Decision making and choices are frequent themes in medical ethics. Game theory is based upon modelled decision making. Game theory, and associated logic traps, may have relevance to the clinical practice of medicine and medical ethics. The “prisoner’s dilemma” is one logic trap from game theory in which “rational” decision making on the part of participating individuals can lead to “suboptimal” situations. An example of such a situation involving brain death is presented and discussed from the perspective of the prisoner’s (...) dilemma. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Foundations For Flow:A Philosophical Model For Studio InstructionKrista RiggsThe need for a new approach to studio instruction becomes evident when the current state of the profession and the effects of typical teaching methods are considered. In a profession with relatively little demand for a large supply of candidates for professional employment, realistically very few undergraduate music performance majors will achieve success as either orchestral players or as soloists. Extreme (...) competitiveness and the political hierarchy common in a typical music studio setting can squelch creativity and hinder a student's possibility to attain optimal experience in performance. Such an environment can pose a threat to a student's self-image and motivation, possibly becoming detrimental to the success of the student in any chosen occupation, whether ultimately within music or outside the profession.1As Roland Persson notes, studio teachers are generally hired primarily for their performance accomplishments and place in the historic lineage of their instrument's pedagogy without much regard for previous training in educational theories.2 With a lack of training in instructional methods or developmental theories, college music teachers tend to conduct lessons in the manner in which they were taught. Thus, little attention may be paid to individual differences or developmental issues.3 Studio instruction has also traditionally been approached [End Page 175] in a maestro-like, authoritarian manner with one-directional commands given as law from master teacher to seemingly subordinate students. Such a manner of teaching may contradict the tendency of creative individuals to show more deviant traits of critical and independent thought, possibly hindering the student's potential for artistic growth.4Many music students tend to gain much of their concept of self-worth based on how they perceive their musical ability to be assessed by their studio instructor.5 A dependency for approval can lead to the pursuit of unachievable perfection that can be detrimental to the emotional development and self-confidence of the student.6 A common focus on a final product in instruction rather than on the creative process of personal and artistic growth can also contribute to the detrimental setting of unrealistic goals and resulting lack of self-esteem in the student. Evaluation of artistically, intellectually, and emotionally developing students against an unattainable perceived aesthetic ideal or in comparison to other students of differing strengths and levels of development can hinder motivation while increasing anxiety, extreme competition, and negative emotional response in the learning experience.7 In a more personalized curriculum that centers on individual strengths and weaknesses through a mentoring approach, each student may be guided to develop the intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual faculties leading to optimal experience. From creative flow and the peak experiences of self-actualization comes intrinsic motivation for students to pursue creativity as a way of life, with further motivation to find moments for artistic expression and personal satisfaction in all aspects of their being.8A new model concerned with the development of the "whole" student as an individual can serve as a philosophical supplement to studio instructors who may not have received much training in developmental issues, educational theories, or related facets of the psychology of learning and performance. Although each aspect of the model can be considered separately, the potential of guiding a student toward the attainment of optimal experience is increased when all aspects are considered according to strengths and weaknesses present in the individual student. Incorporating the theories and ideas in studio instruction may help enhance a student's artistic and personal development while also strengthening a healthy mentoring relationship between teacher and student. While the model presents aspects of psychology alongside developmental and educational theories, the focus remains as a philosophical synthesis of diverse ideas into a unified system with flow at the center. Rather than aiming to deconstruct or refute opposing theories, the model synthesizes supporting ideas. As Estelle Jorgensen notes, the purpose of a synthesis-oriented or "synoptic" model is not so much to argue or refute contrasting views as it is to build upon the supporting theories and ideas of other writers. The "body of thought" serves an explanatory purpose [End Page 176] of the "clarification of terms and exposition... (shrink)

A. NATURAL. HISTORY. OF. THE. SENSES. “This is one of the best books of the year—by any measure you want to apply. It is interesting, informative, very well written. This book can be opened on any page and read with relish.... thoroughly  ...

In the 70 years since Alan Turing’s ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ appeared in Mind, there have been two widely-accepted interpretations of the Turing test: the canonical behaviourist interpretation and the rival inductive or epistemic interpretation. These readings are based on Turing’s Mind paper; few seem aware that Turing described two other versions of the imitation game. I have argued that both readings are inconsistent with Turing’s 1948 and 1952 statements about intelligence, and fail to explain the design of his game. (...) I argue instead for a response-dependence interpretation. This interpretation has implications for Turing’s view of free will: I argue that Turing’s writings suggest a new form of free will compatibilism, which I call response-dependence compatibilism. The philosophical implications of rethinking Turing’s test go yet further. It is assumed by numerous theorists that Turing anticipated the computational theory of mind. On the contrary, I argue, his remarks on intelligence and free will lead to a new objection to computationalism. (shrink)

Introduction : but is it ethics? -- Alterity : the problem of transcendence -- Singularity : the unrepresentable face -- Responsibility : the infinity of the demand -- Ethics : normativity and norms -- Scarce resources? : Levinas, animals, and the environment -- Failures of recognition and the recognition of failure : Levinas and identity politics.

Building on the breakthrough text Philosophy and Engineering: An Emerging Agenda, this book offers 30 chapters covering conceptual and substantive developments in the philosophy of engineering, along with a series of critical reflections by engineering practitioners. The volume demonstrates how reflective engineering can contribute to a better understanding of engineering identity and explores how integrating engineering and philosophy could lead to innovation in engineering methods, design and education. The volume is divided into reflections on practice, principles and process, each of (...) which challenges prevalent assumptions and commitments within engineering and philosophy. The volume explores the ontological and epistemological dimensions of engineering and exposes the falsity of the commonly held belief that the field is simply the application of science knowledge to problem solving. Above all, the perspectives collected here demonstrate the value of a constructive dialogue between engineering and philosophy and show how collaboration between the disciplines casts light on longstanding problems from both sides. The chapters in this volume are from a diverse and international body of authors, including philosophers and engineers, and represent a highly select group of papers originally presented in three different conferences. These are the 2008 Workshop on Philosophy and Engineering held at the Royal Academy of Engineering; the 2009 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands; and the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology, held in Golden, Colorado at the Colorado School of Mines. (shrink)

This paper sets out to give sufficient detail to the notion of mental simulation to allow an appraisal of its contribution to ‘mindreading’ in the context of the ‘false-belief tasks’ used in developmental psychology. We first describe the reasoning strategy of ‘modified derivation’, which supports counterfactual reasoning. We then give an analysis of the logical structure of the standard false-belief tasks. We then show how modified derivation can be used in a hybrid strategy for mindreading in these tasks. We then (...) formulate the hypothesis that children become able (around the age of 4 years) to pass these tasks when they acquire the counterfactual reasoning ability required in this strategy. We find this to be consistent with various empirical findings. We then discuss the implications for the theory/simulation debate, meta-representation and pretence. (shrink)

This book offers a thorough investigation into the development of the cognitive processes that underpin judgements about mental states (often termed 'theory of ...

Turing used the expression “emotional” in three distinct ways: to state his philosophical theory of the concept of intelligence, to classify arguments for and against the possibility of machine intelligence, and to describe the education of a “child machine”. The remarks on emotion include several of the most important philosophical claims. This paper analyses these remarks and their significance for current research in Artificial Intelligence.

Showing that a radical feminist analysis cuts across class, race, sexuality, region, and religion, the varied contributors in this collection reveal the global reach of radical feminism and analyze the causes and solutions to patriarchal oppression.

In this paper the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic bases for a pattern of conventionalization of two types of iconic handshapes are described. Work on sign languages has shown that handling handshapes and object handshapes express an agentive/non-agentive semantic distinction in many sign languages. H-HSs are used in agentive event descriptions and O-HSs are used in non-agentive event descriptions. In this work, American Sign Language and Italian Sign Language productions are compared as well as the corresponding groups of gesturers in each (...) country using “silent gesture.” While the gesture groups, in general, did not employ an H-HS/O-HS distinction, all participants used iconic handshapes more often in agentive than in no-agent event descriptions; moreover, none of the subjects produced an opposite pattern than the expected one . These effects are argued to be grounded in cognition. In addition, some individual gesturers were observed to produce the H-HS/O-HS opposition for agentive and non-agentive event descriptions—that is, more Italian than American adult gesturers. This effect is argued to be grounded in culture. Finally, the agentive/non-agentive handshape opposition is confirmed for signers of ASL and LIS, but previously unreported cross-linguistic differences were also found across both adult and child sign groups. It is, therefore, concluded that cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors contribute to the conventionalization of this distinction of handshape type. (shrink)

Henceforth "to transform" should mean "to change the sense of sense."The field of the entity … is structured according to the diverse—genetic and structural—possibilities of the trace.The first article in the first issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric is "The Rhetorical Situation," Lloyd Bitzer's critical exegesis on "the nature of those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse". Bitzer contends that the rhetor produces "the rhetorical text" when a "real" or "natural" —"objective and publicly observable" —situation "calls the discourse (...) into existence". That was 1968. Five volumes later, as you know, Richard E. Vatz flips the causal relation, maintaining instead that... (shrink)

In two experiments, we tested whether fearful facial expressions capture attention in an awareness-independent fashion. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a visible neutral face presented at one of two positions. Prior to the target, a backward-masked and, thus, invisible emotional or neutral face was presented as a cue, either at target position or away from the target position. If negative emotional faces capture attention in a stimulus-driven way, we would have expected a cueing effect: better performance where fearful or (...) disgusted facial cues were presented at target position than away from the target. However, no evidence of capture of attention was found, neither in behavior, nor in event-related lateralizations. In Experiment 2, we went one step further and used fearful faces as visible targets, too. Thereby, we sought to boost awareness-independent capture of attention by fearful faces. However, still, we found no significant attention-capture effect. Our results show that fearful facial expressions do not capture attention in an awareness-independent way. Results are discussed in light of existing theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Addressing Alterity:Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and the Nonappropriative RelationDiane DavisTeaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain.—Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and InfinityThere is always the matter of a surplus that comes from an elsewhere and that can no more be assimilated by me, than it can domesticate itself in me. A teaching that may part ways with Heidegger's motif of our being (...) able to learn only what we already understand—when does learning take place? what do we already understand?—the Conversation belongs, as ethical relation, to the effort of thinking the infinite, the transcendent, the Stranger. None of this amounts to thinking an object.—Avital Ronell, DictationsFrom Rhetorical Power to Reception Histories Steven Mailloux has brilliantly performed and explicated a "rhetorical hermeneutics" that demonstrates the "practical inseparability of interpretation and language use and thus of the discourses that theorize those practices, hermeneutics and rhetoric" (1998, 3). Many rhetoricians have challenged the specifics of Mailloux's various arguments and have more generally objected that "rhetorical hermeneutics" leans too far toward the hermeneutical, reducing rhetoric to an analytic or critical art and giving its productive (political) function the squeeze.1 Yet within these lively debates, very few have challenged his basic premise that rhetoric and hermeneutics are inextricably intertwined: the question has not been whether they are indissociable but which side of the production-reception coin rhetorical studies ought to emphasize.2 Michael Leff, for example, flipped Mailloux's adjective-noun relation to spotlight production, promoting a "hermeneutical rhetoric" that focuses more on political than literary texts; nonetheless, he agrees that "all interpretive work involves participation in a rhetorical exchange, and that every rhetorical exchange involves some interpretive work" (1997, 197-98). [End Page 191] Rosa Eberly goes further in Citizen Critics, offering a hermeneutical rhetoric that is less interested in "already-written discourses" than in spotlighting "rhetoric's power as an art productive of discourses and subjectivities for the present and the future" (2000, 34). Yet Eberly, too, affirms Mailloux's basic premise, which was nudged in the direction of conflation in the introduction to the 1997 collection Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time, in which the editors, Walter Jost and Michael Hyde note in passing that their title can "be understood as virtually tautological."And there is of course no doubt that rhetoric has a hermeneutic dimension; or, more carefully, that rhetoric constitutes the hermeneutic dimension. If "hermeneutics" indicates "the art of understanding," as Friedrich Schleirmacher wanted, then interpretation clearly depends upon production.3 "Rhetoric not only has its place within the sphere of objects surveyed by hermeneutics," as Werner Hamacher puts it, "but also constitutes an integral component of every hermeneutic operation. Every step in an interpretation corresponds to a rhetorical—or grammatical—figure" (1996, 70). Put more bluntly: intelligibility, including self-intelligibility, is a tropological product; cognition itself is a trope that can in no way be secured. Hermeneutics—as it's being used here—is completely dependent on, even absorbed by, rhetoric.4 I have no problem with this. Nor with Mailloux's suggestion that the reverse is also true:In some ways rhetoric and interpretation are practical forms of the same extended human activity: Rhetoric is based on interpretation; interpretation is communicated through rhetoric. Furthermore, as a reflection on practice, hermeneutics and rhetorical theory are mutually defining fields: hermeneutics is the rhetoric of establishing meaning, and rhetoric the hermeneutics of problematic linguistic situations.(Mailloux 1998, 4)I don't disagree: As the production and appropriation of meaning, rhetoric and hermeneutics are an indissociable team; together, they complete understanding's circle. I take this as a given.However, I want to suggest that there is also a non-hermeneutical dimension of rhetoric that has nothing to do with meaning-making, with offering up significations to comprehension. This dimension is reducible neither to figuration nor to what typically goes by the name persuasion; it is devoted to a certain reception, but not to the appropriation of meaning. Preceding and exceeding all hermeneutic interpretation, it deals not in signified meaning but in the address itself, in the exposure to the other; it deals not... (shrink)

Marshall et al. (2024) identify a potential ethical conflict between the principles of beneficence and respect for patient autonomy when patients refuse to remain in an emergency department (ED) fo...

This volume discusses the importance of a multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach to Christian formation based upon godly love and the imago Dei (Latin, image of God). Grounded biblically and theologically, this interdisciplinary collection offers perspectives drawn from spirituality, ethics, philosophy, psychology, counselling, ecclesiology, physical health sciences, and leadership studies. Contributors address spiritual, emotional, and psychological formation, while highlighting how suffering has the potential to draw one closer to God and others. The book also details vocational development, appropriate stewardship of the (...) physical body, and the ways in which the Eucharist sacramentally contributes to the process of formation. The book concludes with a call for further exploration of additional research trajectories, not the least of which is how Christian formation contributes to the missio Dei, the mission of God. (shrink)

A superb compilation that explores the history, major topics, and controversies in philosophical work on friendship. It gives an overview and in-depth exploration of the connections between friendship and the history of philosophy, morality, practical rationality, value theory, and interpersonal relationships more generally.

Le mouvement Occupons nous a démontré qu’il était fort côté tactique. Le moment est venu de prouver qu’il a aussi une stratégie.

Julian of Norwich (b. 1342) anticipated the ontological and epistemological work on sexed embodiment pioneered in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the 20th century. Her epistemology of sensual ‘showings’ helped reconfigure women’s embodiment and speech acts (‘bodytalk’): by recognizing cognitive emotions and the knowledge-producing body; and by envisioning the intertwining of human flesh with All That Is. The paper next examines Merleau-Ponty’s somatic discourse on the chiasmic flesh, which leads to a discussion of Irigaray’s work on poetic mimesis.

The role of Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) in health research is well established. Ethics committees have the good of research participants in mind but they must also assess scientific merit including the design and conduct of studies. In this article the authors’ focus is on qualitative research method and the challenge that the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) poses for ethics committees when they assess proposals using the methods outlined in the National Statement.We set out (...) a process for judging the standard of qualitative research proposals and propose that qualitative health research can be assessed using a hierarchy designed for evaluating interview studies. We contrast well-designed studies with those that have design flaws in order to focus on the hallmarks of research merit in studies that use qualitative research methods. Finally, we show that our proposal is compatible with the National Statement.Ethics review provides an early opportunity to identify and redesign inadequate studies that will not contribute to our knowledge base. The challenge for members of ethics committees with little experience in qualitative studies is to be able to assess research excellence by assessing research merit in proposals, recognising the special design features of qualitative research methods. (shrink)

From domestic goddess to desperate housewife, this book explores the importance and centrality of postfeminism in contemporary popular culture.

For twenty years, Avital Ronell has stood at the forefront of the confrontation between literary study and European philosophy. She has tirelessly investigated the impact of technology on thinking and writing, with groundbreaking work on Heidegger, dependency and drug rhetoric, intelligence and artificial intelligence, and the obsession with testing. Admired for her insights and breadth of field, she has attracted a wide readership by writing with guts, candour, and wit. Coyly alluding to Nietzsche's gay science, The UberReader presents a solid (...) introduction to Avital Ronell's later oeuvre. It includes at least one selection from each of her books, two classic selections from a collection of her early essays, previously uncollected interviews and essays, and some of her most powerful published and unpublished talks. An introduction by Diane Davis surveys Ronell's career and the critical response to it thus far. With its combination of brevity and power, this Ronell primer will be immensely useful to scholars, students, and teachers throughout the humanities, but particularly to graduate and undergraduate courses in contemporary theory. (shrink)

Garrett Hardin's 'lifeboat ethics' is examined in the light of historical evidence which may be applied in part and with moderation to avoid both Hardin's predicted catastrophe and the inevitable guilt for survivors. If the metaphor of the lifeboat is re-examined, and slightly modified by including examples of real open boat passages, a scheme for implementing lifeboat ethics may be supported. In a case where some or all of the victims outside the lifeboat may be safely rescued, it is the (...) moral obligation of those in the boat to do so. The goal of any lifeboat situation, actual or metaphorical, is to secure the rescue of the greatest number of victims. The wrecks of both Endurance, on an exploratory voyage to Antarctica, and Essex, a whaling voyage, give insight into the application of lifeboat ethics. (shrink)

This paper examines the journals of Frances W. Willard, founder and organ izer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the United States, and their revelations about the gender battle that raged within the psyche of Willard and other young women of her day. The failure of organized Chris tianity to provide solace or unbiased counsel to women such as Willard is apparent in a close reading of Willard's work. Within the pages of her journals, the struggle she faced is (...) obvious on almost every page; her strug gle with what society said she should do, and what she knew she was capable of doing, is present for all to see. The paper argues that because, however, lived in the United States within a short window of nineteenth- century time, she was able to form a 'Boston Marriage' with a young woman who provided her with the comfort and support she needed. The Boston Marriage, arguably, was available only for relatively well-to-do, white-middle-class women of an educated class, who had attended col lege and, because they were able to find a 'service' career of some kind, could live together in harmony. Enlightened families, like that of Henry James, were able to support female members of their class who did not 'fit in' to societal norms of the day and accept their lifestyle, while negat ing the sexuality of it. Organized religion, however, did not, and it is the failure of her church to help her find a way of life she can tolerate about which Willard writes. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (shrink)