The prolific English poet John Lydgate has been known as the “monk of Bury” since the early fifteenth century. Both his popularity and perceptions of his literary merit have fluctuated wildly since his zenith as the famous laureate of Henry V, Henry VI and Duke Humphrey, but readers have been constant in their association of Lydgate with the Benedictine abbey from which the epithet derives. However, there has been remarkably little examination of the details of Lydgate's existence at Bury: the (...) critical emphasis has been on Lydgate's contact with Lancastrian society rather than on his quotidian life as a monk. “To trace in detail the connection between the Bury library and the characteristic configuration of Lydgate's thought and work, to see how his mind was formed and influenced by the books with which he was in such familiar contact” remains an unfulfilled desire. In particular, given the range of Lydgate's literary and intellectual allusions, it is surprising that there has been no full attempt to compare what we know of Bury's sizeable late medieval library, catalogued in the late fourteenth century by Henry Kirkstede, with Lydgate's poetic output. Likewise, few critics have attempted to trace connections between Lydgate's poetry and the intellectual and cultural atmosphere of a grand Benedictine abbey in the late medieval period. This article, a study of one manuscript from Bury that Lydgate certainly handled and that is typical of the type of book he would have encountered in great numbers in the monastic library, endeavours to reassert the importance to his poetry of the environment in which Lydgate spent most of his life. (shrink)

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy is one of the last great works of English prose to have remained unedited. The present volume inaugurates an authoritative edition of the work, which is being prepared by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be followed by two further volumes of text with textual apparatus, and two volumes of commentary. Burton concentrated a lifetime of inquiry into the Anatomy, describing and analysing melancholy and its causes - devoting especial attention to (...) love and religion - and recording possible cures. Primarily a scholarly study of morbid psychology, it is also a compendium of curious facts and anecdotes, and combines seriousness of purpose with a marked satirical vein. First published in 1621, it was a great success: four more editions were published in Burton's lifetime, in each of which new material was added, and a sixth, containing his final revisions, was published in in 1651, eleven years after his death. The textual complexity and Burton's extraordinary range of reference have hitherto deterred editors: this is the first scholarly edition to appear. The text is based on a complete collation of all six authoritative editions. (shrink)

Five years ago, the Journal of Nietzsche Studies published a special issue on Nietzsche and the affects. In it, Aurelia Armstrong wrote generically about the passions, Michael Ure discussed Schadenfreude, Joanne Faulkner addressed disgust, and Joseph Kuzma focused on eroticism.1 In subsequent issues, authors have discussed love,2 emotion in general,3 resentment,4 compassion,5 honor and empathy,6 and affect in general.7 This special section on emotions and reactive attitudes is a chance to take stock of the progress we have made as (...) a field, draw connections among the affects and emotions addressed in the secondary literature, and introduce new ideas and tools for future research.If the articles here are any... (shrink)

Trust is central to our social lives. We know by trusting what others tell us. We act on that basis, and on the basis of trust in their promises and implicit commitments. So trust underpins both epistemic and practical cooperation and is key to philosophical debates on the conditions of its possibility. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these issues. On the practical side, discussions of cooperation address what makes society possible—of how it is that life is not (...) a Hobbesian war of all against all. On the epistemic side, discussions of cooperation address what makes the pooling of knowledge possible—and so the edifice that is science. But trust is not merely central to our lives instrumentally; trusting relations are themselves of great value and, in trusting others, we realize distinctive forms of value. What are these forms of value, and how is trust central to our lives? These questions are explored and developed in this volume, which collects fifteen new essays on the philosophy of trust. They develop and extend existing philosophical discussion of trust and will provide a reference point for future work on trust. (shrink)

As sources of knowledge, perception and testimony are both vulnerable to sceptical arguments. To both arguments a Moorean response is possible: both can be refuted by reference to particular things known by perception and testimony. However, lies and dreams are different possibilities and they are different in a way that undercuts the plausibility of a Moorean response to a scepticism of testimony. The condition placed on testimonial knowledge cannot be trivially satisfied in the way the Moorean would suggest. This has (...) substantial implications for any non-sceptical epistemological theory of testimony. (shrink)

The child directed speech of twelve English‐speaking motherswas analyzed in terms of utterance‐level constructions. First, the mothers' utterances were categorized in terms of general constructional categories such as Wh‐questions, copulas and transitives. Second, mothers' utterances within these categories were further specified in terms of the initial words that framed the utterance, item‐based phrases such as Are you …, I'll …, It's …, Let's …, What did … The findings were: (i) overall, only about 15% of all maternal utterances had SVO (...) form (most were questions, imperatives, copulas, and fragments); (ii) 51% of all maternal utterances began with one of 52 item‐based phrases, mostly consisting of two words or morphemes (45% began with one of just 17 words); and (iii) children used many of these same item‐based phrases, in some cases at a rate that correlated highly with their own mother's frequency of use. We suggest that analyses of adult–child linguistic interaction should take into account not just general constructional categories, but also the item‐based constructions that adults and children use and the frequency with which they use them. (shrink)

On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context of (...) dialectical argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)

Let us begin with the simple observation that applied mathematics can be very tough! It is a common occurrence that basic physical principle instructs us to construct some syntactically simple set of differential equations, but it then proves almost impossible to extract salient information from them. As Charles Peirce once remarked, you can’t get a set of such equations to divulge their secrets by simply tilting at them like Don Quixote. As a consequence, applied mathematicians are often forced to pursue (...) roundabout and shakily rationalized expedients if any useful progress is to be made. Often these provisional and quasi-empirical procedures within applied mathematics loom large in motivating the “anti-realist” or “anti-unificationist” conclusions of Nancy Cartwright and allied authors. (shrink)

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

This article examines Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Nietzsche in light of the claim that interpretation was for her both an articulation of her identity and a mode of deconstructing the very notion of identity. Faulkner argues that Kofman's work on Nietzsche can be understood as autobiographical, in that it served to mediate a relation to her self. Faulkner examines this relation with reference to Klein's model of the child's connection to its mother. By examining Kofman's later writings on (...) Nietzsche alongside her autobiography, this article contends that Kofman's defense of anti-Semitism in Nietzsche serves to fend off her own ambivalence about being Jewish. (shrink)

There is considerable likelihood that Gottlob Frege began writing his Foundations of Arithmetic with the expectation that he could introduce his numbers, not with sets, but through some algebraic techniques borrowed from earlier writers of the Gottingen school. These rewriting techniques, had they worked, would have required strong philosophical justification provided by Frege's celebrated "context principle," which otherwise serves little evident purpose in the published Foundations.

Paul Faulkner presents a new theory of testimony - the basis of much of what we know. He addresses the questions of what makes it reasonable to accept a piece of testimony, and what warrants belief formed on that basis. He rejects rival theories and argues that testimonial knowledge and testimonially warranted belief are based on trust.

Current sociological theories appear to have lost their general persuasiveness in part because, unlike the theories of the ‘classical era’, they fail to maintain an integrated stance toward society, and the practical role that sociology plays in society. The authors explore various facets of this failure and possibilities for reconstructing sociological theories as integrated wholes capable of conveying a moral and political immediacy. They discuss the evolution of several concepts (for example, the social, structure, and self) and address the significant (...) disputes (for example, structuralism versus humanism, and individual versus society) that have dominated twentieth-century sociological thought. Their ideas and analyses are directed towards an audience of students and theorists who are coming to terms with the project of sociological theory, and its relationship with moral discourses and political practice. The authors of these essays are sociological theorists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They are all established, but not ‘establishment’ authors. The book contains no orthodoxies, and no answers. However, the essays do contribute to identifying the range of issues that will constitute the agenda for the next generation of sociological theorists. (shrink)

Stereological techniques allow biologists to create quantitative, three-dimensional descriptions of biological structures from two- dimensional images of tissue viewed under the microscope. For example, they can accurately estimate the size of a particular organelle, the total length of a mass of capillaries, or the number of neurons or synapses in a particular region of the brain. This book provides a practical guide to designing and critically evaluating stereological studies of the nervous system and other tissues. It explains the basic concepts (...) behind design-based stereology and how to get started. Also included are detailed descriptions of how to prepare tissue appropriately, perform pilot studies and decide on the appropriate sampling strategy, and account for phenomena such as tissue shrinkage. Numerous examples of applications of stereological methods that are applicable to studies of the central system and a wide variety of other tissues are explained. The book is therefore essential reading for neurobiologists and cell biologists interested in generating accurate representations of cell and tissue architecture. (shrink)

Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal (...) and fixed aspects of modern life. (shrink)

In ancient China, a revered Taoist sage named Zhuangzi told many parables. In Existential Psychology and the Way of the Tao, a selection of these parables will be featured. Following each parable, an eminent existential psychologist will share a personal and scholarly reflection on the meaning and relevance of the parable for psychotherapy and contemporary life. The major tenets of Zhuangzi's philosophy are featured. Taoist concepts of emptiness, stillness, Wu Wei (i.e. intentional non-intentionality), epistemology, dreams and the nature of reality, (...) character building in the midst of pain, meaning and the centrality of relationships, authenticity, self-care, the freedom that can come from one's willingness to confront death, spiritual freedom, and gradations of therapeutic care are topics highlighted in this book. (shrink)

What can we learn about the nature of technology by studying practices of maintenance and repair? This volume addresses this question by bringing together scholarship from philosophers of technology working at the forefront of this emerging and exciting topic. -/- The chapters in this volume explore how attending to maintenance and repair can challenge and complement existing ways of thinking about technology focused on use and design and introduce new philosophical perspectives on the relationship between technology, time and human practice. (...) They examine the significance of maintenance and repair practices at different scales in relation to a diverse range of philosophical traditions and a wide variety of technologies, from urban infrastructure such as bridges and buildings to data technologies such as servers and software systems. Together, the contributions highlight common themes in the philosophical study of maintenance, including the role of skill, the significance of social values and the potential of these practices to transform the technologies to which they are applied. By reflecting on the different ways in which we keep technologies going, from the devices we use in our homes to the large technical systems which surround us, this volume reveals the philosophical significance of practices of maintenance, not only as a source of new insights but also as a resource for enriching our understanding of a variety of existing topics in philosophy. -/- Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, philosophy of engineering and science & technology studies. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

The principle of informed consent, codified in the Declaration of Helsinki, has been widely seen as fundamental to bio-medical and research ethics. The importance of informed consent is increasing in procedures regulating the acquisition, possession and use of personal information, including genetic and medical information. Informed consent, it is believed, ensures that patients and research subjects can decide autonomously whether to permit or refuse actions that affect them. In response to this assurance, there are numerous guidelines at local, national and (...) international levels that recognise the importance of informed consent, especially in research related to healthcare in developing countries. However, complications arise in applying these guidelines to a particular situation, especially under conditions that are prevalent in developing societies, for instance in India. This article discusses common forms of impediments or hindrances encountered while exercising the principles of informed consent in the context of genetic and genomics related research among the tribal and rural caste communities in India. These hindrances include: illiteracy, poverty, paternalistic attitudes, socio-cultural barriers, ineffective regulatory mechanism and procedural inconsistency among others. The data used in this article is based on an ethnographic study conducted between December 2006 and May 2007 using social-science qualitative research techniques. We observe that three areas require attention: first, the ways in which informed public debate on bioethical issues can be held, and how the application of genetics and genomics in Indian society can be discussed; second, the readiness with which researchers, IRB members and the state appreciate and wish to map the genetic diversity in Indian society; and, third, the risks associated with the application of bioethical principles at a micro-level. (shrink)

In the present study we analyse a sample of Irish Child Directed Speech in terms of item-based constructions and the communicative intents which they express. The study is based on the speech of an Irish native speaker engaged in daily activities with her son (aged 1;9). The findings of the analyses indicate the high degree of lexical specificity attested in the sample; in total 35 item-based frames account for just under 70% of analysed utterances. In most cases there was a (...) one-to-one relationship between item-based frame and communicative intent. However, of particular interest was the clustering of structurally related frames around specific functions. We propose that this relationship highlights the role of communicative intent in the organisation of structural linguistic knowledge. (shrink)

Through communication, we form beliefs about the world, its history, others and ourselves. A vast proportion of these beliefs we count as knowledge. We seem to possess this knowledge only because it has been communicated. If those justifications that depended on communication were outlawed, all that would remain would be body of illsupported prejudice. The recognition of our ineradicable dependence on testimony for much of what we take ourselves to know has suggested to many that an epistemological account of testimony (...) should be essentially similar to accounts of perception and memory. This premise I want to dispute. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ways in which the use of the notion of Asian bioethics since the 1990s has become a tool for building a platform of debate among East Asian countries. In many ways, the use of “Asian bioethics” is in an effort to counter what is perceived as Western bioethics and characterized by what are regarded as Western tendencies of individualism, rationalism, and modernization. I will argue, however, that, just as any notion of “Western bioethics,” the concept of (...) “Asian bioethics” offers little potential to solve issues of bioethical governance. First, although no doubt the notion of “bioethics” has been and is used hegemonically to push certain agendas, the view that bioethical issues in Asia and... (shrink)

A key debate in the epistemology of testimony concerns when it is reasonable to acquire belief through accepting what a speaker says. This debate has been largely understood as the debate over how much, or little, assessment and monitoring an audience must engage in. When it is understood in this way the debate simply ignores the relationship speaker and audience can have. Interlocutors rarely adopt the detached approach to communication implied by talk of assessment and monitoring. Audiences trust speakers to (...) be truthful and demonstrate certain reactive attitudes if they are not. Trust and the accompanying willingness to these reactive attitudes can then provide speakers with a reason to be trustworthy. So through ignoring interlocutors' engagement with the communicative process, the existing debate misses the possibility that it is an audience's trusting a speaker that makes it reasonable for the audience to accept what the speaker says. (shrink)

Most philosophical discussion of trust focuses on the three-place trust predicate: X trusting Y to φ. This article argues that it is the one-place and two-place predicates – X is trusting, and X trusting Y – that are fundamental.

ABSTRACT This article argues that taking concepts of euthanasia out of their political and economic contexts leads to violations of the premises on which the Stoic ideal of euthanasia is based: ‘a quick, gentle and honourable death’.2 For instance, the transplantation of the narrowly defined concept of euthanasia developed under the Dutch welfare system into a developing country, such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), seems inadequate. For it cannot deal with questions of anxiety about degrading forms of dying (...) and suffering without reference to its economic rationale, demanded by a scarcity (unequal distribution) of health care resources. The weakness of health care provisions for the terminally ill in Mainland China has become increasingly poignant since the collapse of collective health care institutions in the countryside since the reforms of the late‐1980s. As in most cases where health care facilities are wanting, it is difficult to apply the criteria of gentleness and dignity at reaching death. Its solution lies not in a faster relief from suffering by euthanasia, but in extending the quality of life through distributive justice within Chinese healthcare policy‐making. This paper begins with a brief description of the Dutch euthanasia law, after which it discusses Chinese conceptions of euthanasia in biomedical textbooks, the media and in surveys. It concludes by pointing out the need for a transnational framework in which both the specifics and generalities of euthanasia can be discussed. (shrink)

Empirical studies of life science research and biotechnologies in Asia show how assemblages of life articulate bioethics governance with global moralities and reveal why the global harmonization of bioethical standards is contrived.

This volume investigates human genetic biobanking and its regulation in various Asian countries and areas, including Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, ...

Taylor focuses on the dramatic presentation of time and self at each state of Kierkegaard's dialectic of the stages of existence.

Should we tell other people the truth? Should we believe what other people tell us? This paper argues that something like these norms of truth-telling and belief govern our production and receipt of testimony in conversational contexts. It then attempts to articulate these norms and determine their justification. More fully specified these norms prescribe that speakers tell the truth informatively, or be trustworthy, and that audiences presume that speakers do this, or trust. These norms of trust, as norms of conversational (...) cooperation, would then seem to be justified on the basis of the interest that each has in the cooperative outcome. The norms of trust would then be justified as Lewisian conventions. Howver, the joint outcome prescribed by these norms is not a equilibrium point: a speaker always does better to have an audience’s trust and the liberty to tell the truth or not as it suits. In this way, testimony presents a problem of trust. The justification of these norms of trust then starts from the recognition that any society that did not resolve this problem of trust would be stymied as a society. The resolution of this problem then requires securing the motivations characteristic of trusting and being trustworthy, where to have these motivations is to have an ethical outlook defined in terms of internalising these norms of trust. This justification genealogical and it is one of value. (shrink)

One thing wrong with lying is that it can be manipulative. Understanding why lying can be a form of manipulation involves understanding how our telling someone something can give them a reason to believe it, and understanding this requires seeing both how our telling things can invite trust and how trust can be a reason to believe someone. This paper aims to outline the mechanism by means of which lies can be manipulative and through doing so identify a unique reason (...) for accepting testimony; a reason based on trusting a speaker’s telling. (shrink)

In trusting a speaker we adopt a credulous attitude, and this attitude is basic: it cannot be reduced to the belief that the speaker is trustworthy or reliable. However, like this belief, the attitude of trust provides a reason for accepting what a speaker says. Similarly, this reason can be good or bad; it is likewise epistemically evaluable. This paper aims to present these claims and offer a genealogical justification of them.

In his groundbreaking book, Thin Objects, Linnebo (2018) argues for an account of neo-Fregean abstraction principles and thin existence that does not rely on analyticity or conceptual rules. It instead relies on a metaphysical notion he calls “sufficiency”. In this short discussion, I defend the analytic or conceptual rule account of thin existence.

Most action can be explained in Humean or teleological terms; that is, in most cases, one can explain why someone acted by reference to that person’s beliefs and desires. However, trusting and being trustworthy are actions that do not permit such explanation. The action of trusting someone to do something is a matter of expecting someone to act for certain reasons, and acting trustworthily is one of acting for these reasons. It is better to say that people act out of (...) trust, rather than for some end. Thus, teleological considerations do not suffice to trust. This is the negative claim of the paper. Its positive proposal is an account of the practical rationality of trust. The key idea is that in trusting one takes on commitments, not merely to act in certain way, but also to premise one’s practical reasoning on a trust-based view of the interaction situation. (shrink)