Two right-to-die organisations offer assisted suicide in Switzerland. The specific legal situation allows assistance to Swiss and foreign citizens. Both organisations require a report of the person’s health status before considering assistance. This qualitative study explored these reports filed to legal authorities after the deaths of individuals in the area of Zurich. Health status reports in the legal medical dossiers of the deceased were analysed using content analysis and Grounded Theory. From 421 cases of assisted suicide (2001–2004), 350 reports on (...) health status were filed. Many cases contained diagnosis lists only. Other reports had more elaborate reports revealing that some physicians were aware about the patient’s death wish and the intention to solicit assisted suicide. Physicians’ attitudes ranged from neutral to rather depreciative. Few physicians openly referred the patient to the organisations and supported the patient’s request by highlighting a history of suffering as well as reporting understanding and agreement with the patient’s wish to hasten death. In the health status reports five categories could be identified. Some files revealed that physicians were aware of the death wish. The knowledge and recognition of the patient’s death wish varied from no apparent awareness to strongly supportive. This variety might be due to difficulties to discuss the death wish with patients, but might also reflect the challenge to avoid legal prosecution in the country of origin. To require comparable health status reports as requirements for the right-to-die organisations might be difficult to pursue. (shrink)

Professor Parkinson's book on Spinoza's theory of knowledge makes a serious attempt to consider this theme in isolation. The author argues that an understanding of this particular theory is a prerequisite to any understanding of Spinoza's theory of ethics or his metaphysical views. The text also discusses Spinoza's interests, especially the influence of science on the development of his thought, and ultimately provides a critical account of the philosopher's methodology, theory of truth, and theory of differing kinds of knowledge.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes published this work in two volumes in 1845–6. This is a reissue of an 1892 printing, which brought the volumes into one book. Lewes wrote widely on literature, science and philosophy, and was also the long-term intimate companion of George Eliot. This book is a narrative history, rather than an encyclopedia, of key philosophers. It is, therefore, a partial and personal study instead of an exhaustive textbook. The first volume concentrates (...) solely on Greek philosophy, beginning with the Pre-Socratics and ending with the Neo-Platonists. The second volume jumps to Francis Bacon, concentrating on British, German and French philosophy, and addressing, among others, Spinoza, Locke, Hume and Kant, and ending with Auguste Comte. Containing both historical anecdotes and pithy analyses of ideas, this book reflects the expertise and intellectual sympathies of a Victorian polymath. (shrink)

With the help of American friends, he revised the book and published it anew six years later. The present volume is the third version of the biography, completed in 1908 but never published in Salt's lifetime.

* Presents a broad survey of philosophical thought * Each chapter explores, and places in context, a major area of philosophical enquiry - including the theory of meaning and of truth, the theory of knowledge, the philosophies of mathematics, science and metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, aesthetics, and religion * Annotated bibliographies for each chapter and indexes of names and subjects * Glossary of commonly-used philosophical terms * Chronological table of the history of philosophy from 1600 (...) `It is a fine achievement and deserves the warmest praise... Anyone interested in learning what contemporary philosophical debate is about will find this book invaluable... for a book of this size and quality of content the cover price is modest. Every public library as well as every university, college and school library should have a copy on its shelves.' - Times Higher Education Supplement `A stimulating collection.' - Reference Reviews. (shrink)

We can understand viewed scenes and extract task-relevant information within a few hundred milliseconds. This process is generally supported by three cortical regions that show selectivity for scene images: parahippocampal place area (PPA), medial place area (MPA) and occipital place area (OPA). Prior studies have focused on the visual information each region is responsive to, usually within the context of recognition or navigation. Here, we move beyond these tasks to investigate gaze allocation during scene viewing. Eye movements rely on a (...) scene’s visual representation to direct saccades, and thus foveal vision. In particular, we focus on the contribution of OPA, which is i) located in occipito-parietal cortex, likely feeding information into parts of the dorsal pathway critical for eye movements, and ii) contains strong retinotopic representations of the contralateral visual field. Participants viewed scene images for 1034 ms while their eye movements were recorded. On half of the trials, a 500 ms train of five transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses was applied to the participant’s cortex, starting at scene onset. TMS was applied to the right hemisphere over either OPA or the occipital face area (OFA), which also exhibits a contralateral visual field bias but shows selectivity for face stimuli. Participants generally made an overall left-to-right, top-to-bottom pattern of eye movements across all conditions. When TMS was applied to OPA, there was an increased saccade latency for eye movements toward the contralateral relative to the ipsilateral visual field after the final TMS pulse (400ms). Additionally, TMS to the OPA biased fixation positions away from the contralateral side of the scene compared to the control condition, while the OFA group showed no such effect. There was no effect on horizontal saccade amplitudes. These combined results suggest that OPA might serve to represent local scene information that can then be utilized by visuomotor control networks to guide gaze allocation in natural scenes. (shrink)

The writers of these works make the transition from folk psychology, theological views on human nature and metaphysical speculation to a more empirical and scientific study of the human mind, giving an insight into how pyschology emerged.

Isaiah Berlin is widely acknowledged as a major figure in twentieth-century political philosophy and the history of ideas. His famous Oxford inaugural lecture, Two Concepts of Liberty, especially the last, crucial, section, entitled The One and the Many, has provoked a vast secondary literature. So it is surprising that until now there has been no substantial critical reader dedicated to his work.Editors George Crowder and Henry Hardy have admirably filled this need with this stimulating new volume, which provides (...) a systematic and comprehensive treatment of the main aspects of Berlin's work. The essays (all but two of which are newly commissioned) critically examine Berlin's work across its whole range, including his treatment of Marx, Russian thinkers, Jewish themes, liberty, pluralism, the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, nationalism, history, and religion.The contributors are: Jonathan Allen (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); Shlomo Avineri (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Terrell Carver (University of Bristol); Joshua L. Cherniss (Harvard and Oxford Universities); George Crowder (Flinders University); William A. Galston (University of Maryland); Graeme Garrard (Cardiff University); Ryan Hanley (Marquette University); Henry Hardy (Oxford University); Michael Jinkins (Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary); David Miller (Oxford University); Mario Ricciardi (University of Milan); and Andrzej Walicki (University of Notre Dame).Complete with a valuable bibliography, this outstanding collection of recent scholarship on a seminal thinker shows the continuing relevance and importance of Berlin's many contributions to the understanding of our contemporary predicament.George Crowder (Adelaide, Australia), associate professor in the School of Political and International Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, is the author of Classical Anarchism, Liberalism and Value Pluralism and Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism.Henry Hardy (Oxford, England), a Fellow of Wolfson College (Oxford, England), Isaiah Berlin's editor, and one of his literary trustees, has edited or co-edited 17 books by Isaiah Berlin, most recently Political Ideas in the Romantic Age, Flourishing: Letters 1928-1946, and The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism. He is currently working with Jennifer Holmes on an edition of Berlin's letters. (shrink)