Pre-Socratic -- Socrates (469-399 B.C.) -- Plato (429-347 B.C.) -- Existentialism -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) -- The ship of Theseus -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- The cow in the field -- David Hume (1711-1776) -- Hedonism -- Prisoner's dilemma -- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) -- Hard determinism -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) -- The trolley problem -- Realism -- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -- Dualism -- Utilitarianism -- John Locke (1632-1704) -- Empiricism versus Rationalism -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) -- René (...) Descartes (1596-1650) -- A-Theory -- The liar paradox -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) -- Philosophy of language -- Metaphysics -- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) -- Free will -- Philosophy of humor -- The Enlightenment -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) -- The Sorites paradox -- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) -- Aesthetics -- Philosoph of culture -- Epistemology -- Twin Earth -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) -- Karl Marx (1818-1883) -- Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) -- Voltaire (1694-1778) -- Relativism -- Eastern philosophy -- Avicenna (980-1037) -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) -- Phenomenology -- Nominalism -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) -- Ethics -- Philosophy of science -- Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) -- Philosopy of religion. (shrink)

Tracing the contributions of Edgar Anderson (1897-1969) of the Missouri Botanical Garden to the important discussions in evolutionary biology in the 1940s, this paper argues that Anderson turned to corn research rather than play a more prominent role in what is now known as the Evolutionary Synthesis. His biosystematic studies of Iris and Tradescantia in the 1930s reflected such Synthesis concerns as the species question and population thinking. He shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures with Ernst Mayr. But rather than preparing (...) his lectures as a potentially key text in the Synthesis, Anderson began researching Zea mays -- its taxonomy, its origin, and its agronomic role. In this study, Anderson drew on the disciplines of taxonomy, morphology, genetics, geography, anthropology, archaeology, and agronomy among others in his own creative synthesis. Though his maize research in the 1940s represented the most sustained work of his career, Anderson was also drawn in many directions during his professional life. For example, he enjoyed teaching, working with amateurs, and popular writing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction:Developing Health Care in Severely Resource-Constrained SettingsPaul Farmer and Sadath SayeedThis symposium of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics catalogues the experiences of health care providers working in resource-poor settings, with stories written by those on the frontlines of global health. Two commentaries by esteemed scholars Renee Fox and Byron and Mary-Jo Good accompany the narratives, helping situate the lived experiences of global health practitioners within the frameworks of sociology and (...) medical anthropology respectively.The burgeoning interest in global health among students, health science trainees, clinical practitioners, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and government officials is often linked with substantial moral claims. People working in global health often start with the rhetorical premise that each and every human being, regardless of economic, social, or political circumstances that lie beyond his or her control, deserves equal access to quality health care services. This is a bold position at risk of trivialization, in part because the sentiment is so commonplace among global health equity activists.Despite this relatively recent global outpouring of solidarity and concern, billions of poor people still lack access to basic health services. All too often, interventions that perpetuate existing trade practices and market economics are promoted, usually to the detriment of the poor. As our good friend and colleague Arthur Kleinman warns:The irrelevance of ethics can be seen when considering universal ethical formulations of justice and equity that do not begin with the local moral conditions of poor people, those experiencing the systematic injustice of higher disease rates and fewer health-care resources because of their positioning at the bottom of local social structures of power.(1999, p.72)If we are serious about reducing health disparities globally, we must be prepared to mobilize resources in Africa just as we would in the United States or in Europe. If we fetishize cost-effective (read: low-cost) interventions for the poor, we must ask whether we use the same metrics in other situations. In other words, we must always strive to address the fundamental structural and social causes of health inequity.We believe that global health must avoid the "iron cage of rationality," to use sociologist Max Weber's words. One unanticipated consequence of the growth of global health as a field is that the "audit culture"—which encourages accountability and effectiveness—can at times reinforce power differentials between donors (whether government agencies or multilateral foundations) and their intended beneficiaries. Agendas are often set not by community members but by global health leaders who rarely demonstrate sustained commitments to a local community. [End Page 73]As the guest editors of this issue, we hope to recapture the soul of global health work through the art of storytelling. Narratives, even when presented as raw and unrefined as many within this issue, remind us of the immense challenges—both programmatic and moral—involved in this work. The profound scarcity of resources available to health providers in poor countries forces ethical questions on doctors, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, and other health care workers, who make difficult choices every day about what to do with the few resources they have. These are the ethical dilemmas of mortal dramas at their most dire. Global health work demands of its practitioners an alternate mode of audit than academic methodologies can provide. Narratives return us to the basic human commitments that led many of us to this work, and they remind us to use words like equality and justice meaningfully.The narratives that follow offer unmitigated perspectives on the working lives of global health practitioners. They highlight the translation of the moral and programmatic challenges of health care delivery into real choices: for example, between a visiting surgeon's desire to treat a patient and his capacity (or really incapacity) to provide follow-up care. They acknowledge the necessity of interdisciplinary cooperation in resource-constrained settings, as well as the difficulties in collaborating across cultures and continents. Most importantly, they make the claim that a newborn in distress in a tent in Port-au-Prince merits the same resources and attention as one in Boston, and that his or her death merits the same indignation. They demonstrate the radical solidarity inherent in the... (shrink)

In this study, we investigate the use of narrative in online conversations among persons suffering from chronic opiate addiction and evaluate both its positive and negative uses. Illness narratives, as argued by sociologist Arthur Frank and psychiatrist/medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, enable patients to give order to life experiences and receive support from others. We wished to explore under what circumstances online support coalesces and breaks apart. The narratives we examined exemplify two topics frequently discussed on the message board: the (...) recovery process and what it means to be ‘clean’. To better understand these narratives from a theoretically based approach, we used the work of rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke. Burke's description of two human motives, suffering and perfection, led us to an understanding of how unification and division happened within the online community. We found that the recovery narrative primarily embodied the author's suffering and, consequently, received support from other members of the message board. The second narrative centered on what it means to be ‘clean’ through a discussion of the author's desire to court temptation, revealing what Burke calls the rotten nature of perfection. As a result, the author of the narrative provoked disagreements and did not receive support. (shrink)

The last decade has seen an explosion of interest in the health and welfare of marginalized communities around the world. In one striking indicator, public and private development assistance for health programs increased from $8.65 billion in 1998 to $21.79 billion in 2007 [1]. There has been emergent academic interest as well, with growing ranks of undergraduate and graduate students and professionals adopting the field as their specialty. Despite the burgeoning interest, however, much about the field remains unclear. Reimagining Global (...) Health is an important contribution to this budding field for two reasons: it proposes a cohesive introductory text for a field in desperate need of one, and it seeks to “reimagine” some key concepts in global health in an effort to provide a bold new direction for the field. Its stated aim is to move global health from a mere “collection of problems” into an identifiable discipline .As a textbook, the work succeeds admirably. The book .. (shrink)

This self-contained treatise, originally published in 1947 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, examines fundamental features of nature in order to lay the groundwork for providing a solution to the major problems of ethics.

This note is in part a response to Alastair Hannay's review discussion, ?A Kind of Philosopher: Comments in Connection with Some Recent Books on Kierkegaard? (Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975], No. 3). In his review, Hannay states that Kierkegaard and philosophy appear to be on the road to a reconciliation, and asks What is behind this get?together if it is one??. I suggest that in some remarks touching on Kierkegaard's theory of Truth, Hannay has touched on the ground for that ?get?together?, (...) a Pyrrhonian scepticism. (shrink)

v. 1. 1955-1960.--v. 2. 1960-1964.--v. 3. March-November 1964.--v. 4. November 26, 1964-September 2, 1965.--v. 5. September 3, 1965-August 27, 1968.--v. 6. August 28, 1968-May 22, 1971.--v. 7. April 13, 1975-June 21, 1976.--v. 7, pt. 2. September 17, 1977-February 26, 1978.--v. 8. April 28, 1978-July 28, 1980 -- v. 9. August 16, 1980-March 15, 1984 -- v. 11. January 19, 1986-May 27, 1987.

The options in a decision problem generally have outcomes with common features. Putting aside the common features simplifies deliberations, but the simplification requires a philosophical justification that this book provides.

Bringing Pierre Bourdieu to Science and Technology Studies Content Type Journal Article Pages 263-273 DOI 10.1007/s11024-011-9174-2 Authors Mathieu Albert, Wilson Centre and Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 200 Elizabeth Street , Eaton-South 1-581, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4, Canada Daniel Lee Kleinman, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 348 Agricultural Hall 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA Journal Minerva Online ISSN 1573-1871 Print ISSN 0026-4695 Journal Volume Volume 49 Journal Issue Volume 49, (...) Number 3. (shrink)

Feyerabrend argues that intellectual progress relies on the creativity of the scientist, against the authority of science.

Zusammenfassungen der Referate in französischer Sprache.

In the first part of this paper some general theses concerning the difference between logic and mathematics are defended. In the second part four different views for a possible demarcation between logic and mathematics are stated.

An agent often does not have precise probabilities or utilities to guide resolution of a decision problem. I advance a principle of rationality for making decisions in such cases. To begin, I represent the doxastic and conative state of an agent with a set of pairs of a probability assignment and a utility assignment. Then I support a decision principle that allows any act that maximizes expected utility according to some pair of assignments in the set. Assuming that computation of (...) an option's expected utility uses comprehensive possible outcomes that include the option's risk, no consideration supports a stricter requirement. (shrink)

Schelling und Hegel benutzen in ihren philosophischen Texten mathematische und naturwissenschaftliche Modelle wie Unendlichkeit oder Gleichgewicht. Die Strukturen dieser Begriffe liefern einen Massstab fur den Vergleich der Positionen Schellings und Hegels, der fur Schellings Identitatsphilosophie und Hegels erste Jenaer Schriften durchgefuhrt wird. Als wichtigstes Resultat kann eine grundlegende Differenz zwischen beiden Positionen bereits um 1801 nachgewiesen und gezeigt werden, dass diese auf einer unterschiedlichen Auffassung der Rolle des Absoluten beruht.

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und (...) Literaturwissenschaften sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

The first book-length study of a leading tenth-century Ismaili theoretician Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani.

This text explores the border between medical and social problems, the boundary between health and social change. The book studies the body as the mediator between individual and collective experience, finding that many health problems, for example the trauma of violence or depression in the course of chronic pain, are less individual medical problems than interpersonal experiences of social suffering. It argues for an ethnographic approach to moral practice in medicine, one that embraces the infrapolitical context of illness, responses to (...) it, the social institutions relating to it and the way it is configured in medical ethics. (shrink)

The present article shows that there are consistent and decidable manyvalued systems of propositional logic which satisfy two or all the three criteria for non-trivial inconsistent theories by da Costa . The weaker one of these paraconsistent system is also able to avoid a series of paradoxes which come up when classical logic is applied to empirical sciences. These paraconsistent systems are based on a 6-valued system of propositional logic for avoiding difficulties in several domains of empirical science ).

The centrality of death rituals has in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism been little documented. The current volume brings together a range of perspectives on Buddhist death rituals including ethnographic, textual, historical and theoretically informed accounts, and presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. It arises out of the University of Bristol's Centre for Buddhist Studies research project Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia and China, funded by the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities (...) Research Council. This project involved extensive new research in Thailand, Laos and China. Other items from that project included several public exhibitions, extensive stills photographs, and several video films. The project-team produced two 30 minutes films on the ghost festival in Laos and China, one on urban funerals in Chiang Mai (Thailand) and several shorter clips dealing with funeral cultures in Laos, Thailand and China. Most of this material (and an extensive bibliography on the topic) is available free of charge from the project website located at the webpage of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies (Centre for Buddhist Studies) at the University of Bristol. (shrink)

This article contends that the evolution toward interdisciplinary collaboration that we are witnessing in the sciences must also occur in the humanities to ensure their very survival. That is, humanists must be open to working with scientists and social scientists interested in similar research questions and vice versa. Digital humanities is a positive first step. Complexity science should be the next step. Even though much of the ground-breaking work in complexity science has been done in the natural sciences and mathematics, (...) it can, if critically adapted, provide the needed metaphor for a broad integration of disciplines, humanistic and otherwise. Given its almost a-disciplinary nature, a complexity approach to the research problems in the humanities necessarily breaks down silos. Moreover, it can restore and reframe the seamless intellectual fabric sought by researchers before the atomization of the various disciplines in the nineteenthcentury academy. (shrink)

This article utilizes the ongoing debates over the role of certain agricultural insecticides in causing Colony Collapse Disorder —the phenomenon of accelerated bee die-offs in the United States and elsewhere—as an opportunity to contribute to the emerging literature on the social production of ignorance. In our effort to understand the social contexts that shape knowledge/nonknowledge production in this case, we develop the concept of epistemic form. Epistemic form is the suite of concepts, methods, measures, and interpretations that shapes the ways (...) in which actors produce knowledge and ignorance in their professional/intellectual fields of practice. In the CCD controversy, we examine how the privileging of certain epistemic forms intersects with the social dynamics of academic, regulatory, and corporate organizations to lead to the institutionalization of three interrelated and overlapping types of ignorance. We consider the effects of these types of ignorance on US regulatory policy and on the lives of different stakeholders. (shrink)

Recent studies of Reinhold Niebuhr's life and work demonstrate his continued importance in theology, ethics, and political thought. Historical studies by Heather Warren, Mark Kleinman, and Normunds Kamergrauzis provide new assessments of Niebuhr's role as a political and religious leader in his own time and trace the consequences of the movements in which he participated. They also show us more clearly how his work was connected to the ideas and programs of his contemporaries. Colm McKeogh offers a more systematic (...) treatment of Niebuhr's political realism in relation to just war theory. Niebuhr's intellectual legacy remains disputed, with Stanley Hauerwas and Langdon Gilkey offering radically different assessments of his theology. Hauerwas sees in Niebuhr a close connection to the religious liberalism of William James that precludes any authentic Christian witness. Niebuhr's empiricism reduces God to a necessary feature of human consciousness. Gilkey notes Niebuhr's early use of James' psychology, but discerns a theology of history that is central to Niebuhr's mature work. In that theology, the ground of hope necessarily lies beyond human consciousness, and indeed beyond history itself. (shrink)

Through arresting narratives we meet a woman aiding refugees in sub-Saharan Africa, facing the chaos of a meaningless society and a doctor trying to stay alive during Mao's cultural revolution - individuals challenged by their societies and in existential moral experiences that define what it means to be human.

The political ideology of neoliberalism is widely recognized as having influenced the organization of national and global economies and public policies since the 1970s. In this article, we examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science. To do so, we develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the sociology of social movements, and economic and organizational sociology and that draws attention to patterns of increasing and uneven industrial influence amid several (...) countervailing processes. Specifically, we explore three fundamental changes since the 1970s: the advent of the knowledge economy and the increasing interchange between academic and industrial research and development signified by academic capitalism and asymmetric convergence; the increasing prominence of science-based regulation of technology in global trade liberalization, marked by the heightened role of international organizations and the convergence of scientism and neoliberalism; and the epistemic modernization of the relationship between scientists and publics, represented by the proliferation of new institutions of deliberation, participation, activism, enterprise, and social movement mobilization. (shrink)

Although scholarship in the social construction of technology has contributed much to illuminating technological development, most work using this theoretical approach is committed to an agency-centered approach. SCOT scholars have made only limited contributions to illustrating the influence of social structures. In this article, the authors argue for the importance of structural concepts to understanding technological development. They summarize the SCOT conceptual framework defined by Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker and survey some of the methodological and explanatory difficulties that arise (...) with their approach. Then the authors present concepts from organizational sociology and political economy that illuminate structural influences in shaping phenomena of interest to SCOT scholars. These structural concepts can be applied to the study of the design, development, and transformation of technology. The authors conclude that the limited amount of scholarship on structural factors in the social shaping of technological development presents numerous opportunities for research. (shrink)