Given two incomparable c.e. Turing degrees a and b, we show that there exists a c.e. degree c such that c = (a ⋃ c) ⋂ (b ⋃ c), a ⋃ c | b ⋃ c, and c < a ⋃ b.

Background While it is generally acknowledged that self-prescribing among physicians poses some risk, research finds such behaviour to be common and in certain cases accepted by the medical community. Largely absent from the literature is knowledge about other activities doctors perform for their own medical care or for the informal treatment of family and friends. This study examined the variety, frequency and association of behaviours doctors report providing informally. Informal care included prescriptions, as well as any other type of personal (...) medical treatment (eg, monitoring chronic or serious conditions). Method A survey was sent to 2500 randomly-selected physicians in Colorado, 600 individuals returned questionnaires with usable data. The authors hypothesised: (1) physicians would prescribe the same types of treatment at home as they prescribed professionally; and (2) physicians who informally prescribed addictive medications would be more likely to engage in other types of informal medical care. Results Physicians who wrote prescriptions for antibiotics, psychotropics and opioids at work were more likely to prescribe these medications at home. Those prescribing addictive drugs outside of the office treated more serious illnesses in emergency situations, more chronic conditions and more major medical/surgical conditions informally than did those not routinely prescribing addictive medications. Physicians reported a variety of informal care behaviour and high frequency of informal care to family and friends. Discussion The frequency and variety of informal care reported in this study strongly argues for profession-wide discussion about ethical and guideline considerations for such behaviour. These areas are discussed in the paper. (shrink)

There are $\Pi_5$ formulas in the language of the Turing degrees, D, with ≤, ∨ and $\vedge$ , that define the relations $x" \leq y"$ , x" = y" and so $x \in L_{2}(y)=\{x\geqy|x"=y"\}$ in any jump ideal containing $0^(\omega)$ . There are also $\Sigma_6$ & $\Pi_6$ and $\Pi_8$ formulas that define the relations w = x" and w = x', respectively, in any such ideal I. In the language with just ≤ the quantifier complexity of each of these definitions (...) increases by one. On the other hand, no Π2 or Σ2 formula in the language with just ≤ defines L2 or $x\inL_{2}(y)$ . Our arguments and constructions are purely degree theoretic without any appeals to absoluteness considerations, set theoretic methods or coding of models of arithmetic. As a corollary, we see that every automorphism of I is fixed on every degree above 0" and every relation on I that is invariant under double jump or joining with 0" is definable over I if and only if it is definable in second order arithmetic with set quantification ranging over sets whose degrees are in I. Similar direct coding arguments show that every hyperjump ideal I is rigid and biinterpretable with second order arithmetic with set quantification ranging over sets with hyperdegrees in I. Analogous results hold for various coarser degree structures. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper examines the American sojourn of the Enlightenment philosopher and theologian George Berkeley. While living in coastal Rhode Island between 1729 and 1731, Berkeley penned his longest philosophical tract, Alciphron: Or, the Minute Philosopher (1732), which criticized “freethinking,” mechanical conceptions of nature in favor of those that emphasized God's providence. To illustrate these two ways of knowing nature, Berkeley, a careful prose stylist, evoked nearby coastal landscapes for contrast. Accordingly, his work broke down dichotomies between ideas and matter and, (...) by extension, culture and nature, which could, this paper argues, inform an environmental ethic for a “hybrid” world. (shrink)

Ranging from Joseph Bellamy to Hilary Putnam, and from early New England Divinity Schools to contemporary university philosophy departments, historian Bruce Kuklick recounts the story of the growth of philosophical thinking in the United States. Readers will explore the thought of early American philosphers such as Jonathan Edwards and John Witherspoon and will see how the political ideas of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson influenced philosophy in colonial America. Kuklick discusses The Transcendental Club (members Henry David Thoreau, Ralph (...) Waldo Emerson) and describes the rise of pragmatism centered on Metaphysical Club of Cambridge (and members William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce). He examines the profound impact Darwinism had on American philosophy and looks at Idealists such as the Kantian Josiah Royce and the Hegelian John Dewey. The book shows how, in the twentieth century, the Nazi conquest of Europe unleashed a flood of European intellectuals onto these shores, including such major thinkers as Theodore Adorno, Erich Fromm, Rudolph Carnap, and Alfred Tarski. Finally, Kuklick examines the contributions of such contemporary philosophers as Sidney Hook and Willard Quine and such books as John Rawl's A Theory of Justice and Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Kuklick pulls no punches in portraying the state of American philosophy today and its contested role in the intellectual life of the nation and the world. The range of philosophical thought in our nation's history has been great, from Edwards's Religious Affections to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Bruce Kuklick has captured it all in a book that blends intricate details with sweeping vision. (shrink)

Classical pragmatism, despite its recognized concern for questions of freedom and democracy, has little to say directly about questions of power. Some commentators have found Dewey’s notion of habit to be a resource for taking up issues of power while others have argued that pragmatism does not provide a sufficiently critical tool to challenge systematic oppression. Still others have proposed to shore up pragmatism by using resources found in post-structuralism, particularly in the work of Foucault. This paper begins with (...) this suggestion, but argues that while Foucault offers a useful starting point his conception of power fails—at least in an American context characterized by the experience of pluralism. I then argue that the pragmatist tradition, through the work of Mary P. Follett (1868-1933) has the theoretical resources to generate a conception of power that begins with the experience of pluralism. (shrink)

This book examines the intersection between religious belief, dynastic ambitions, and late Renaissance court culture within the main branches of Germany's most storied ruling house, the Wittelsbach dynasty. Their influence touched many shores from the "coast" of Bohemia to Boston.

After one has read for a while in the history of Western thought, one becomes cognizant of how many great intellects, believers and non-believers alike, have presented compelling examinations of Christian theism. And until recently, religious skeptics, following in the wake of David Hume, assumed that the ship of Christian philosophy of religion was too damaged to sail again. However, something unexpectedly emerged recently from the weathered ship, even after many pilots advised cautious hugging the shores, especially in light of (...) the ‘death of God’ storms of the 1960’s. Many abandoned the ancient mother ship, some escaping on rafts, lifeboats, or flotsam, transferring to modern vessels, such as SS Darwin, Freud, Marx, or Nietzsche. Still, a number of sailors stayed on board the ancient craft, and responded to the latter secularist fleet, honing their skills as navigators, first mates, and lookouts, so as to safeguard the ancient ship from secularist vessel forays.The anthology under re .. (shrink)

Love's memories, love recalling itself in letters lost and found over an interval of forty years: Cixous's writer-narrator advances here far into a labyrinth of passions long ago delivered and yet still arriving through the mail, through letters and literature, in other words, the poetry of the post. As for the lovers' returning scenes, they have their addresses in Paris and in New York, but also in a lost oasis of the Egyptian desert during the Napoleonic wars, in Athens and (...) along the shores of a great lake centuries ago in the country of myth. The lovers are poets or soldiers, philosophers or students madly in love with poetry and poets. They are as well mermaids or panthers. Panthers? Yes, for it is the passion of the animal that drives all these lovers to bare themselves, and sometimes their claws, before the beloved. Misunderstandings are often, even inevitably the result. Seconded and witnessed by her passionate, truth-telling cats, Cixous's narrator-writer returns unerringly to moments of errancy inflicted on address and language, those errors and faults when love, perhaps, is listening only to itself, without subject or object, lover or beloved, just love itself, l'amour meme, l'amour m'aime, love loving me, in the letter box of memory. (shrink)

Moral philosophers agree that welfare matters. But they disagree about what it is, or how much it matters. In this vital new work, Wayne Sumner presents an original theory of welfare, investigating its nature and discussing its importance. He considers and rejects all notable theories of welfare, both objective and subjective, including hedonism and theories founded on desire or preference. His own theory connects welfare closely with happiness or life satisfaction. Reacting against the value pluralism that currently dominates moral philosophy, (...) he advances welfare as the only basic ethical value. He concludes by discussing the implications of this thesis for ethical and political theory. Written in clear, non-technical language, and including a definitive survey of other work in this area, Sumner's book is essential reading for moral philosophers, political theorists, and welfare economists. (shrink)

We show that there are Π5 formulas in the language of the Turing degrees, [Formula: see text], with ≤, ∨ and ∧, that define the relations x″ ≤ y″, x″ = y″ and so {x ∈ L2 = x ≥ y|x″ = y″} in any jump ideal containing 0. There are also Σ6&Π6 and Π8 formulas that define the relations w = x″ and w = x', respectively, in any such ideal [Formula: see text]. In the language with just ≤ (...) the quantifier complexity of each of these definitions increases by one. For a lower bound on definability, we show that no Π2 or Σ2 formula in the language with just ≤ defines L2 or L2. Our arguments and constructions are purely degree theoretic without any appeals to absoluteness considerations, set theoretic methods or coding of models of arithmetic. As a corollary, we see that every automorphism of [Formula: see text] is fixed on every degree above 0″ and every relation on [Formula: see text] which is invariant under the double jump or under join with 0″ is definable over [Formula: see text] if and only if it is definable in second order arithmetic with set quantification ranging over sets whose degrees are in [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

It is commonly assumed that teasing is restricted to encounters among intimates or close acquaintances. As a result of examining initial interactions among speakers of English, however, this article shows that teasing also occurs between persons who are becoming acquainted. Analysis reveals that tease sequences unfold across three actions that constitute the tease as an invitation to intimacy: a teasable action on the part of the target, the tease proper and a moment of interactionally generated affiliation. Given teasing is one (...) way of criticising another, it constitutes a potential breach of tact or interactional propriety. In initial interactions, however, participants can construe this potential impropriety as an invitation to intimacy, as it involves the proposal of a shared ironic stance that may be either accepted or declined by the target of the tease. (shrink)

Culture in Mind is an ethnographic portrait of the human mind. Using case studies from both western and nonwestern societies. Shore argues that "cultural models" are necessary to the functioning of the human mind. Drawing on recent developments in cognitive science as well as anthropology, Culture in Mind explores the cognitive world of culture in the ongoing production of meaning in everyday thinking and feeling.

In this timely book L.W. Sumner addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process.

In the course of writing this book, answers to the following questions and many others were given in both narrative and visual form. Most of them were presented rather forcefully, and not when I was expecting them. I understood that I was to share what I learned. What is in store for the geology of North America? How do we create matter every day? What is the nature of nature? How did people live more than a half million years ago? (...) What was space travel like a half million years ago? Where is God? What are our responsibilities as humans? Is Hitler in heaven? How can we go to heaven? (shrink)

A definitive feature of Kant's moral philosophy is its rationalism. Kant insists that moral theory, at least at its foundation, cannot take account of empirical facts about human beings and their circumstances in the world. This is the core of Kant's commitment to ‘metaphysics of morals’, and it is what he sees as his greatest contribution to moral philosophy. The paper clarifies what it means to be committed to metaphysics of morals, why Kant is committed to it, and where he (...) thinks empirical considerations may enter moral theory. The paper examines recent work of contemporary Kantians who argue that there is a central role for empirical considerations in Kant's moral theory. Either these theorists interpret Kant himself as permitting empirical considerations to enter, or they propose to extend Kant's theory so as to allow them to enter. With some qualifications, I argue that these interpretive trends are not supported by the texts, and that the proposed extensions are not plausibly Kantian. Kant's insistence on the exclusion of empirical considerations from the foundations of moral theory is not an incidental feature of his thought which might be modified while the rest remains unchanged. Rather, it is the very centre of his endeavours in moral philosophy. If we disagree with it, I argue, we have grounds for moving to a distinctly different theoretical framework. (shrink)

"Clearly argued and captivatingly developed through subtle analyses of ethnographic materials...[this book] will revitalize cultural anthropology."--Fredrik Barth.

We investigate the complexity of various combinatorial theorems about linear and partial orders, from the points of view of computability theory and reverse mathematics. We focus in particular on the principles ADS (Ascending or Descending Sequence), which states that every infinite linear order has either an infinite descending sequence or an infinite ascending sequence, and CAC (Chain-AntiChain), which states that every infinite partial order has either an infinite chain or an infinite antichain. It is well-known that Ramsey's Theorem for pairs (...) (RT₂²) splits into a stable version (SRT₂²) and a cohesive principle (COH). We show that the same is true of ADS and CAC, and that in their cases the stable versions are strictly weaker than the full ones (which is not known to be the case for RT₂² and SRT₂²). We also analyze the relationships between these principles and other systems and principles previously studied by reverse mathematics, such as WKL₀, DNR, and BΣ₂. We show, for instance, that WKL₀ is incomparable with all of the systems we study. We also prove computability-theoretic and conservation results for them. Among these results are a strengthening of the fact, proved by Cholak, Jockusch, and Slaman, that COH is Π₁¹-conservative over the base system RCA₀. We also prove that CAC does not imply DNR which, combined with a recent result of Hirschfeldt, Jockusch, Kjos-Hanssen, Lempp, and Slaman, shows that CAC does not imply SRT₂² (and so does not imply RT₂²). This answers a question of Cholak, Jockusch, and Slaman. Our proofs suggest that the essential distinction between ADS and CAC on the one hand and RT₂² on the other is that the colorings needed for our analysis are in some way transitive. We formalize this intuition as the notions of transitive and semitransitive colorings and show that the existence of homogeneous sets for such colorings is equivalent to ADS and CAC, respectively. We finish with several open questions. (shrink)

Ethical naturalism holds that ethical facts about such matters as good and bad, right and wrong, are part of a purely natural world — the world studied by the sciences. It is supported by the apparent reasonableness of many moral explanations. It has been thought to face an epistemological challenge because of the existence of an “is-ought gap”; it also faces metaphysical objections from philosophers who hold that ethical facts would have to be supernatural or “nonnatural,” sometimes on the grounds (...) that ethical thought has a practical role that no thought about purely natural facts could have. Its defenders have argued resourcefully against these challenges. (shrink)

When medical assistance in dying (MAiD) was legalized in Canada in June 2016, the question of allowing decisionally capable persons to make advance requests in anticipation of later incapacity was reserved for further consideration during the mandatory parliamentary review originally scheduled to begin in June 2020 (but since delayed by COVID-19). In its current form the legislation does not permit such requests, since it stipulates that at the time at which the procedure is to be administered the patient must give (...) “express consent” to receiving it. Since express consent presupposes decisional capacity, this requirement rules out administering MAiD to a patient who has lost capacity. Amendments to the legislation passed by Parliament in March 2021 open the door slightly by allowing advance requests by patients after they have been approved for MAiD, if they fear losing capacity before the procedure can be administered. But this provision would apply only to patients whose natural death was deemed to be “reasonably foreseeable”, and would continue to exclude (a) requests made after diagnosis of a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” but in advance of approval for MAiD, and (b) requests made before such a diagnosis. My aim in this paper is twofold: to explore the ethical and legal issues concerning advance requests for MAiD, and to argue for expanding provision for such requests to include both of these further scenarios. (shrink)

Hate speech, understood broadly, is any form of expression intended to arouse hatred or contempt toward members of a particular social group. When university administrators have reason to believe that a planned speaking event on campus may feature hate speech (at least in the eyes of some), how should they respond? In this paper I address this question as it arises for Canadian universities. I argue that, where the regulation of campus speech is concerned, the right course of action for (...) university administrators is nearly always to do absolutely nothing. They will have reason to become actively involved only in order to ensure that a speaking event proceeds safely, or when it threatens to disrupt the functioning of the university, or when it is itself threatened with disruption by protesting groups. In those instances the justification for intervention will be to protect and facilitate speech, not to shut it down. (shrink)

Even though the measurement of fear of crime in criminological research commenced a few decades ago, specific populations, such as social activists, remain undocumented. This article is an attempt to address this gap. A study was conducted among 153 social activists involved in exposing corruption and irregularities that take place in the government system in India. This article explores the gap between the fear of crime and actual victimization among the specific social activists in India. The results indicate activists expressed (...) moderate fear of any one form of victimization including verbal and emotional, physical, and sexual victimization. It was also found that one-third of them have reported facing some form of abuse. The research implications are discussed. (shrink)

The continental philosophy of non-classical logics is a relatively new field that seeks to determine whether any aspects of certain continental philosophers’ thinking can be characterized in terms of non-classical logics. Some of the main figures that have been examined so far are Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and François Laruelle. Although many of these studies are grounded in the writings of Graham Priest, who wrote some of the seminal texts in the field, Jc Beall’s work also features prominently (...) in a number of cases. After surveying this field and highlighting Beall’s influence within it, I claim that it can be substantially expanded by making further uses of Beall’s writings, especially ones that introduce non-classical logics in ways that are especially suitable for this particular field of study and also that discuss such topics as negation, subclassical logics, logical pluralism, and glutty futures. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate computable models of -categorical theories and Ehrenfeucht theories. For instance, we give an example of an -categorical but not -categorical theory such that all the countable models of except its prime model have computable presentations. We also show that there exists an -categorical but not -categorical theory such that all the countable models of except the saturated model, have computable presentations.