The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.

This paper evaluates the argument for the contradictoriness of unity, that be- gins Priest’s recent book One. The argument is seen to fail because it does not adequately differentiate between different forms of unity. This diagnosis of the argument’s failure is used as a basis for two consistent accounts of unity. The paper concludes by arguing that reality contains two absolutely fundamental and unanalysable forms of unity, which are in principle presupposed by any theory of anything. These fundamental forms of (...) unity are closely related to the unity of propositions and facts. (shrink)

As is well-known, Bradley maintained the curious view that Reality was a single, self-consistent whole without individuable parts. He supported this view not by direct arguments but indirectly, by trying to show that alternative positions led to contradiction. Undoubtedly the most important among his reductio arguments were the battery of arguments he used against relations in an attempt to prove that, since relations were impossible, there could be no multiplicity of related items. For if there were two or more (...) items, there would certainly be relations between them. The defects of these arguments are by now well-known. However, Bradley’s arguments against relations were only part of the case he made for monism. Another important part of his case concerns the arguments he brought against subject-predicate propositions. Bradley was concerned to argue not merely the now generally conceded view that not all propositions were subject-predicate in form, but the more radical thesis that there were no true subject-predicate propositions at all. (shrink)

Mill was not a naturalist and cannot be understood within the context of the empiricist‐rationalist debate. Mill believed himself to have joined a conversation that was defined directly by Kant, and therefore qualifies as an advocate of Copernican metaphysics. Mill's starting point is the pre‐theoretical, the common sense world of individuals engaging in various practical tasks with the world. The philosophical idealism, which Mill thinks is consonant with common sense, is a rejection of both naturalism and the kind of idealism (...) one finds in Berkeley, Green and Bradley. Like the idealists, he insists upon the distinction between, and the irreducibility of, subjects to objects; but, unlike idealism, the subject is rooted in the pre‐theoretical world of everyday practices. A thing can only be known indirectly by its properties. We discover the Self through its interactions, and a “free” ‘will’ is an inherent property of the self. (shrink)

A review of R Bradley's 'The Nature of All Being: A Study of Wittgenstein's\nModal Atomism'. Bradley argues that Wittgenstein's modal commitments\nin the 'Tractatus' are more extensive than usually appreciated. I\nargue that, nonetheless, Bradley's attempt to see Wittgenstein as\na major contributor to modal 'logic' is hard to square with Wittgenstein's\npervasive conflation of modal issues with significance ones.

This article examines Abu Nasr al-Farabı (c. 872–950/1) on the topic of intentionality, with particular focus on how intentionality is integral for the constitution of the intellect within his psychology. Unfortunately, targeted study of al-Farabı’s doctrine of intentionality has been largely neglected since Kwame Gyekye’s 1971 essay, The Terms ‘Prima Intentio’ and ‘Secunda Intentio’ in Arabic Logic. Gyekye showed that the Arabic (and thus the Latin) doctrine of first and second intention originated within the texts of al-Farabı,not the texts of (...) Avicenna, as had been previously thought. In response, this article aims to show three things. First, while the doctrine of first and second intention appears in al-Farabı’s texts, it is not as clearly developed or defined as is presented in Gyekye’s 1971 article. al-Farabı both lacks consistent technical terminology for the doctrine (as he discusses it across disparate sciences, in unrelated contexts) and develops it far too little to fully flesh out his doctrine. Second, even given the fact that al-Farabı’s discussion of intentionality is underdeveloped, Gyekye was right to credit the doctrine to him. And third, al-Farabı’s doctrine of first and second intention is not merely important to understand his positions regarding signification and universals; they play a pivotal role in the constitution of the human intellect. (shrink)

We agree with Branigan & Pickering that structural priming experiments should supplant grammaticality judgments for testing linguistic representation. However, B&P overlook a vast linguistic literature that converges with – but extends – the experimental findings. B&P conclude that syntax is functionally independent of the lexicon. We argue that a broader approach to priming reveals cracks in the façade of syntactic autonomy.

Proper conduct of an AIDS vaccine trial in Africa must be informed not only by the epidemiology and biology of HIV infection in African settings, but also by the ethical norms and cultural constraints prevailing in African settings.

This book contains an introduction to mathematical proofs, including fundamental material on logic, proof methods, set theory, number theory, relations, functions, cardinality, and the real number system. The book is divided into approximately fifty brief lectures. Each lecture corresponds rather closely to a single class meeting.

Researchers have proposed that blocking facial feedback via glabellar-region botulinum toxin injections can reduce depression. Random-effects meta-analyses of studies that administered GBTX...

Acoustical changes in the prosody of mothers’ speech to infants are distinct and near universal. However, less is known about the visible properties of mothers’ infant-directed (ID) speech, and their relation to speech acoustics. Mothers’ head movements were tracked as they interacted with their infants using ID speech, and compared to movements accompanying their adult-directed (AD) speech. Movement measures along three dimensions of head translation, and three axes of head rotation were calculated. Overall, more head movement was found for ID (...) than AD speech, suggesting that mothers exaggerate their visual prosody in a manner analogous to the acoustical exaggerations in their speech. Regression analyses examined the relation between changing head position and changing acoustical pitch ( F0 ) over time. Head movements and voice pitch were more strongly related in ID speech than in AD speech. When these relations were examined across time windows of different durations, stronger relations were observed for shorter time windows (< 5 sec). However, the particular form of these more local relations did not extend or generalize to longer time windows. This suggests that the multimodal correspondences in speech prosody are variable in form, and occur within limited time spans. (shrink)

Acoustical changes in the prosody of mothers’ speech to infants are distinct and near universal. However, less is known about the visible properties of mothers’ infant-directed speech, and their relation to speech acoustics. Mothers’ head movements were tracked as they interacted with their infants using ID speech, and compared to movements accompanying their adult-directed speech. Movement measures along three dimensions of head translation, and three axes of head rotation were calculated. Overall, more head movement was found for ID than AD (...) speech, suggesting that mothers exaggerate their visual prosody in a manner analogous to the acoustical exaggerations in their speech. Regression analyses examined the relation between changing head position and changing acoustical pitch over time. Head movements and voice pitch were more strongly related in ID speech than in AD speech. When these relations were examined across time windows of different durations, stronger relations were observed for shorter time windows. However, the particular form of these more local relations did not extend or generalize to longer time windows. This suggests that the multimodal correspondences in speech prosody are variable in form, and occur within limited time spans. (shrink)

Freedom to smoke is part and parcel of overall freedom. The former cannot be abrogated without violating the latter. The present paper applies this insight to the regulations placed on the tobacco industry and smoking in general. We find that government interventions into people’s lives regarding smoking are highly incompatible with libertarian principles. We examine many regulations such as prohibiting youths from smoking, preventing second hand smoke, restrictions on advertising, taxing the industry, and liability issues.

An experiment examined goal understanding and how perceivers’ suspiciousness was associated with the accuracy, valence, and certainty of their inferences about a pursuer’s goal. In initial interactions, one dyad member was randomly assigned as the pursuer, and the other was the perceiver. The congruency of the perceiver’s and the pursuer’s conversation goals and the perceiver’s cognitive busyness were manipulated. Results confirmed that accuracy decreased as perceivers’ suspiciousness increased only for not-busy perceivers in the goal-discord condition because perceivers’ inferences were negatively (...) valenced. Results also supported the hypotheses that certainty decreased as perceivers’ suspiciousness increased only for not-busy perceivers in the goal-discord condition and that certainty increased as perceivers’ suspiciousness increased both for not-busy perceivers in the identical-goal condition and for busy perceivers in the goal-discord condition. (shrink)

Acoustical changes in the prosody of mothers’ speech to infants are distinct and near universal. However, less is known about the visible properties of mothers’ infant-directed speech, and their relation to speech acoustics. Mothers’ head movements were tracked as they interacted with their infants using ID speech, and compared to movements accompanying their adult-directed speech. Movement measures along three dimensions of head translation, and three axes of head rotation were calculated. Overall, more head movement was found for ID than AD (...) speech, suggesting that mothers exaggerate their visual prosody in a manner analogous to the acoustical exaggerations in their speech. Regression analyses examined the relation between changing head position and changing acoustical pitch over time. Head movements and voice pitch were more strongly related in ID speech than in AD speech. When these relations were examined across time windows of different durations, stronger relations were observed for shorter time windows. However, the particular form of these more local relations did not extend or generalize to longer time windows. This suggests that the multimodal correspondences in speech prosody are variable in form, and occur within limited time spans. (shrink)