Conducting “difficult conversations” with patients and caregivers is one of the most difficult aspects of the medical profession. These conversations can involve communicating a terminal prognosis, advance care planning, or changing the goals of treatment. Although they are challenging, the need for these conversations is underwritten by the tenets of medical ethics. Unfortunately, medical professionals lack adequate training in communication skills and overestimate their abilities in conducting difficult conversations. I suggest that one way to improve that ability would be the (...) strategic use of pharmaceutical neuroenhancements. Pharmaceutically augmenting a professional’s capacity for recognizing masked emotional expressions might conduce to his or her development of open and responsive communication with patients and caregivers. I conclude by examining the limitations and objections to this use of a communication enhancement by illustrating that it would still require the development of, and indeed a greater emphasis on, communication skills in medical education and training. (shrink)

Emerging data indicates the prevalence and increased use of pharmaceutical enhancements by young medical professionals. As pharmaceutical enhancements advance and become more readily available, it is imperative to consider their impact on medical professionals. If pharmaceutical enhancements augment a person’s neurological capacities to higher functioning levels, and in some situations having higher functioning levels of focus and concentration could improve patient care, then might medical professionals have a responsibility to enhance? In this paper, I suggest medical professionals may have a (...) responsibility to use pharmaceutical enhancements. In some situations, having higher functioning levels of focus and concentration is conducive to providing the best possible care to a patient. In these circumstances medical professionals should use pharmaceutical cognitive enhancements. I conclude by examining the limitations and implications of this responsibility in the practice of medicine and areas for future research. (shrink)

Discussions about the permissibility of students using enhancements in education are often framed by the question, “Is a student who uses cognitive-enhancing drugs cheating?” While the question of cheating is interesting, it is but only one question concerning the permissibility of enhancement in education. Another interesting question is, “What kinds of students do we want in our academic institutions?” I suggest that one plausible answer to this question concerns the ideals of human excellence or virtues. The students we want in (...) our academic institutions are virtuous or, at least minimally, possess certain virtues. I argue that a virtuous student may choose to use cognitive-enhancing drugs for reasons of self-improvement. That a virtuous student may choose to use cognitive-enhancing drugs for reasons of self-improvement illustrates that under certain conditions motivation can determine the permissibility of using enhancements. Building upon this I suggest a virtues-based institutional rule for governing and guiding student-use of cognitive enhancers in an academic institution to be for the right reasons. This ideals of human excellence or virtues approach offers interesting and unique insights for issues of enhancement in education, as it might turn out, that uneasiness many people have about students using cognitive-enhancing drugs has less to do with issues of enhancement and more to do with the motivations and character of students. (shrink)

Peterson, Karlawish, and Largent’s “Supported Decision Making with People at the Margins of Autonomy” not only elucidates the conceptual framework but also the practical importance of suppor...

Bryan Frances’s recent argument is for the epistemic position called Live Skepticism. The Live Skepticism Argument (LSA) attempts to establish a restricted set of skeptical conclusions. The LSA’s “skeptical hypotheses” are scientific and philosophical positions that are “live actual possibilities” in an intellectual community. In order to “rule out” live hypotheses, an expert must know them to be false. However, since these are live hypotheses in this expert’s intellectual community—endorsed by others who have parallel levels of knowledge, intelligence, and understanding—this (...) expert is unable to rule them out. Consistent with the LSA is the outcome that people not exposed to these live hypotheses can know what these experts cannot. However, in this paper, I defeat the LSA by developing and defending a counterexample that focuses on the phenomenon of genius testimony. Everyone, including the LSA’s proponent, can and should allow that expertise comes in degrees. While in many cases a person’s intelligence, understanding, and knowledge are parallel to others in the field, there are some who are extraordinary in their intelligence, understanding, and knowledge (geniuses). If an expert meets with a genius, it is possible that the genius provides this individual with beliefs that can rule out a skeptical hypothesis. Therefore, an expert can have knowledge, even if the skeptical hypothesis is live and endorsed by others who have parallel levels of knowledge, intelligence, and understanding. After providing this counterexample, I present three potential objections, and show how people can know global warming exists and that smoking does not give someone cancer. I conclude by defending this counterexample from a likely reply by proponents of the LSA involving luck and knowledge. (shrink)

In end-of-life care discussions, I contend that the distinction between “having a life” vs. “being alive” is an underutilized distinction. This distinction is significant in separating different states of existence conflated by patients, families, and clinicians. In the clinical setting, applying this distinction in end-of-life care discussions aids patients’ and family members’ decision-making by helping them understand that being alive can differ from having a life. Moreover, this distinction helps them decide which state may be the most important to them. (...) After applying this distinction to three complex cases, I respond to the likely objection that “having a life” vs. “being alive” is less accurate and more controversial than other distinctions. I conclude by arguing that “having a life” vs. “being alive” is more accurate and less controversial than distinctions between medically indicated vs. medically inappropriate treatments, personhood, and quantity vs. quality of life. (shrink)

In this commentary, I offer an account of an error theory of biotechnology and apply it to Brian D. Earp, Olga A. Wudarczyk,Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu’s (2013)ethical framework for chemical reakups.

For healthcare professionals and organizations, there is an emphasis on addressing moral distress and compassion fatigue among clinicians. While addressing these issues is vital, this paper suggests that the philosophical concept of agent-regret is a relevant but overlooked issue in healthcare. To experience agent-regret is to regret your harmful but not wrongful actions. This person’s action results in someone being killed or significantly injured, but it was ethically faultless. Despite being faultless, agent-regret is an emotional response concerning one’s agency in (...) a situation that results in death or significant harm. In healthcare, many clinicians are likely to experience regret for faultless actions that significantly harm or cause the death of a patient. The recognition of agent-regret in healthcare is significant because it differs, conceptually and practically, from moral distress and compassion fatigue. Building on the work of Wojtowicz (Citation2022), we should strive to understand clinicians’ agent-regret by recognizing their agency in the situation, not lessening or removing it. (shrink)

Microbiologists are transitioning from the study and characterization of individual strains or species to the profiling of whole microbiomes and microbial ecology. Equipped with high-throughput methods for studying the taxonomic and functional characteristics of diverse samples, they are just beginning to encounter the conceptual, theoretical, and experimental problems of comparing taxonomy to function, and extracting useful measures from such comparisons. Although still unresolved, these problems are well studied in macro-ecology and are reiterated here as an historical precautionary for microbial ecologists. (...) Beyond expected and unresolved terminological vagueness, we argue that assessments and comparisons of taxonomic and functional profiles in micro-ecology suffer from theoretically unresolvable arbitrariness and ambiguities. We divide these into problems of scale, individuation, and commensurability. We argue that there is no technically/theoretically “correct” scale, individuation, or comparison of taxonomy and function, but there are nonetheless better and worse methodologies for profiling. (shrink)

Purpose Prescription stimulant use as “cognitive enhancers” has been described among undergraduate college students. However, the use of prescription stimulants among future health care professionals is not well characterized. This study was designed to determine the prevalence of prescription stimulant misuse among students at an academic health sciences center. -/- Method Electronic surveys were e-mailed to 621 medical, pharmacy, and respiratory therapy students at East Tennessee State University for four consecutive weeks in fall 2011. Completing the survey was voluntary and (...) anonymous. Surveys asked about reasons for, frequency of, and side effects of nonprescription misuse of prescription stimulants. Given the sensitive material, an opportunity to win one of ten $50 gift cards was used as an incentive. -/- Results Three hundred seventy-two (59.9%) students completed the survey from three disciplines (47.6% medical, 70.5% pharmacy, and 57.6% respiratory therapy). Overall, 11.3% of responders admitted to misusing prescription stimulants. There was more misuse by respiratory therapy students, although this was not statistically significant (10.9% medicine, 9.7% pharmacy, 26.3% respiratory therapy; P = .087). Reasons for prescription stimulant misuse included to enhance alertness/ energy (65.9%), to improve academic performance (56.7%), to experiment (18.2%), and to use recreationally/get high (4.5%). -/- Conclusions Prescription stimulant misuse was prevalent among participating students, but further research is needed to describe prevalence among future health care workers more generally. The implications and consequences of such misuse require further study across professions with emphasis on investigating issues of academic dishonesty (e.g., “cognitive enhancement”), educational quality, and patient safety or health care quality. (shrink)

While the terrorism studies literature speaks of a shape of terrorism unique to modernity, the exact nature of modern terrorism, let alone the nature of modernity or its starting point, remain much in dispute. In this article we suggest that the confusion and conflict within the literature arises from a tendency to focus on certain outward or inessential features associated with modernity. In order to truly answer the question of what makes modern terrorism modern, the question needs to be set (...) on a new footing, one which inquires into the necessary and not instrumental relationship between modernity and terrorism—i.e., that inquires into the possibility of an inner dynamic which can take us from the nature of modernity itself to terrorism. In this article we suggest that the intellectual resources for an understanding of modern terrorism in the fullest sense can be found within the preeminent nineteenth-century philosopher of the birth of the modern, G.W.F. Hegel. More specifically, through a reconstruction of Hegel’s account of the French Revolution we can uncover the possibility of understanding modern terrorism as an ontological rather than a temporal category. In other words, we can uncover resources that help us grasp what modern terrorism is, rather than in what age—with its instrumental possibilities given by, say, technology or ideology—it is found. What makes modern terrorism truly modern, we will argue, is a particular shape of self-consciousness that, Hegel shows us, stands as the deep structure of early modernity, and which contains within it an inner dynamic towards a uniquely modern shape of terrorism. While all terrorism that occurs within modernity is not modern, a truly modern terrorism can be identified. (shrink)

Landscape Agency New York was founded by Gavin Keeney, c.1997, and encompassed a wide array of activities and effects – e.g., research, writing, design, consulting, and teaching. /S/OMA (Syntactical Operations Metaphorical Affects) was the mobile, and sometimes global design and teaching module within LANY, focusing primarily on entirely hypothetical and/or irreal projects, many becoming the foundation for lectures and courses delivered at institutions in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, from 2003 to 2007. Lastly, the LANY Archive-Grotto was established (...) following publication of On the Nature of Things: Contemporary American Landscape Architecture (Birkhauser, 2001), primarily as a means of escaping the then-formulaic production of texts common to Landscape Architecture and Architecture. (shrink)

Diaristic, mixed notes on: John Ruskin's The Poetry of Architecture (1837) and Modern Painters (1885); Caravaggio, Victorian Aesthetes, G.K. Chesterton, and Tacita Dean; Jay Fellows' Ruskin’s Maze: Mastery and Madness in His Art (1981); Slavoj Žižek at Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, New York, USA, April 23, 2009, “Architectural Parallax: Spandrels and Other Phenomena of Class Struggle”; “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice”, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, March 15-August 16, 2009; Janet Harbord, Chris Marker: La Jetée (...) (2009); The Politics of the Envelope, Princeton Envelope Group (PEG), ARC504, Princeton School of Architecture, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, Friday, May 8, 2009; Rhode Island School of Design, Degree Project Reviews, Division of Architecture & Design, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, May 16, 2009; etc. (shrink)

“The Will to Believe” defines the religious question as forced, living and momentous, but even in this article James asserts that more objective factors are involved. The competing religious hypotheses must both be equally coherent and correspond to experimental data to an equal degree. Otherwise the option is not a live one. “If I say to you ‘Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan’, it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive.” James, (...) WB, p. 3. Analogously, in A Pluralistic Universe James is at pains to convince the reader that his own religious hypothesis is just as “objective,” makes just as much sense, etc. as alternative possibilities: the “only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it [pluralistic pantheism] is a fully coordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block universe; but on the other hand, it may be a universe only strung along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that possibility I do insist.”William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909) p. 328.Here, once again, before the will to believe can be employed, the objective factors of competing hypotheses, their equal coherence and correspondence, must be brought out.When reconstructed, James' overall outlook has a “qausi Kuhnian” taint to it- though obvious differences remain. Much of what goes on in evaluating competing scientific hypotheses is either not forced, or not living, or not momentous, but rather “typical,” “dead,” and “avoidable,” in short very “normal.” But there are moments in the history of science where the decision between hypotheses might well be forced, living and momentous, and sometimes James comes close to recognizing this.Analogously, a good deal of what goes on in religion is not forced, not living or not momentous - in short it is all too “normal”. In The Varieties of Religious Experience for example, James proposes to ignore the institutional branch of the religious domain and to concentrate on personal and psychological factors, his reason being that the institutional aspect concentrates on the routine, the normal. “Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods.” James, VRE, p. 29. and again “The word ‘religion,’ as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to ‘organize’ themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word ‘religion’ nowadays, we think inevitably of some ‘church’ or other.” Clearly here religion has a normal, i.e. trivial side, just as does science. On the other hand, there are revolutionary moments in religion, such as that of choosing between theism and materialism in Pragmatism, or choosing among theism, monistic pantheism and pluralistic pantheism in A Pluralistic Universe. Such moments involve the will to believe and are clearly more personal than their counterparts in the domain of normal institutionalized religion. Going further, there are no doubt differences of degree between the will to believe decisions in science and the will to believe decisions in religion. These have been explicated in more specific terms by Ian Barbour in his article, “Paradigms in Science and Religion.” ...each of the ‘subjective’ features of science... is more evident in the case of religion: (1) the influence of interpretation on data, (2) the resistance of comprehensive theories of falsification, and (3) the absence of rules for choice among paradigms. Each of the corresponding ‘objective’ features of science is less evident in the case of religion: (1) the presence of common data on which disputants can agree, (2) the cumulative effect of evidence for or against a theory, and (3) the existence of criteria which are not paradigm-dependent. It is clear that in all three respects religion is a more ‘subjective’ enterprise than science. But in each case there is a difference of degree - not an absolute contrast between an ‘objective’ science and a ‘subjective’ religion. Ian Barbour, “Paradigms in Science and Religion,” in Paradigms and Revolutions, edited by Gary Gutting (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) pp. 242–43. Barbour correctly notes that the “...choice is not between religion and science, but between theism, pantheism, and naturalism, let us say, as each is expressed in a particular historical tradition. No basic beliefs are capable of demonstrable proof.”Ibid., p. 243. James sometimes comes close to recognizing this but his oscillation on the status of the everyday world of common sense, or the perceptual world, causes him not to see the issue clearly. When the animated world of the perceptual is taken as the all inclusive ‘really real,’ science is viewed as an abstract, second class citizen. But James offers what we would consider a more sophisticated and adequate perspective when he views the world of common sense, having become linguistified, as itself suspicious, and consequently views all three tiers - common sense, scholastic philosophy, and science - as “regional ontologies”, or “language games” in Wittgenstein's terminologySee Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1953), paragraph 7, paragraph 23. For the notion of “regional ontology” see Edmund Husserl, Ideas, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1962) p. 57ff; p. 158ff. - and opposes all three to a more primordial or prereflexive level. When James takes this second approach it is easier to see that the basic distinction he began to make in “The Will to Believe” was between the scientific and religious domain where the will to believe was to be employed, and the domain of “ordinary” religion and science. Finally this position anticipates his ultimate metaphysical outlook, viz. “pure experience” as approachable through language on a series of diverse regional levels, but nonetheless not completely describable within language. It is important to recall that in The Varieties of Religious Experience James distinguishes between the science of religions and what he calls living religion: [T] he science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. James, VRE, p. 489. The study of religion, in short is not the activity of religion; the latter is animated, personal, and, we would argue, necessitates a commitment in terms of the will to believe. Once again, however, James hesitates over offering the same two-fold delineation in other areas of science. On the one hand he tells the reader that “science-has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view.”Ibid., p. 491. On the other hand, he offers the following comment a few pages later on in a footnote: ...the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared to primitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final opinion may, in short, in some manner now impossible to forsee, revert to the more personal style, just as any path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitely triumphant position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be.Ibid., p. 501, Footnote. The burden of this paper has been to indicate that when James' two-fold outlook on perception and/or common sense is properly reconstructed, the raproachment between science and religion is not so “impossible to forsee.”. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the investigation of term-definable connexive implications in substructural logics with exchange and, on the semantical perspective, in sub-varieties of commutative residuated lattices (FL ${}_{\scriptsize\mbox{e}}$ -algebras). In particular, we inquire into sufficient and necessary conditions under which generalizations of the connexive implication-like operation defined in [6] for Heyting algebras still satisfy connexive theses. It will turn out that, in most cases, connexive principles are equivalent to the equational Glivenko property with respect to Boolean algebras. Furthermore, we (...) provide some philosophical upshots like, e.g., a discussion on the relevance of the above operation in relationship with G. Polya’s logic of plausible inference, and some characterization results on weak and strong connexivity. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to D'Costa's article ("Religious Studies," 32, pp. 223-32) in which he argues that there is no such position as religious pluralism because in distinguishing between, e.g., Christianity or Buddhism, and Nazism or the Jim Jones cult, a criterion is involved and to use a criterion is a form of exclusivism. In reply I point out that this sense of 'exclusivism', as consisting in the use of criteria, is self-destructive; that the pluralistic hypothesis, as a meta-theory (...) about the religions, has a different logical status from the creeds of the historical religions; and I also show the origin of the ethnical criterion used by the religious pluralist who stands within one or other of the great world faiths. (shrink)

In 1837 the German-born astronomer F. G. W. Struve published his famous catalogue of double stars. For Struve this was the culmination of 12 years' detailed observation of a class of celestial objects lying exclusively beyond the solar system; for historians of astronomy it poses the problem of explaining why the study of double stars became a significant part of astronomical endeavour, as it did, during the 1820s and 1830s. For, although Struve's interest was extreme, it was shared to a (...) lesser extent by several eminent contemporaries, including John Herschel, Friedrich Bessel, Johann Encke, James South and Félix Savary. Their combined efforts represented an important transition in astronomy: for the first time one of the emphases of the subject moved beyond the solar system to the so-called fixed stars. The question of the emergence of interest in double stars is of historical significance, therefore, as it is related to the problem of the origins of ‘stellar astronomy’. This essay is thus intended to offer an explanation of astronomers' interest in double stars, and to tackle the related question of whether this transition constituted a major break in the history of astronomy. Furthermore it is proposed that answers to these problems may be found by considering the practice of astronomy dominant during the first half of the nineteenth century. Astronomers in this period were overwhelmingly concerned with a refined form of positional astronomy. The problems they chose to solve were by and large related to the difficulties of the accurate reduction of observational data, and the compilation of reliable tables and star charts, which were then used as a background against which the motions of solar system objects were plotted. By assessing individuals' studies of double stars within this context it can be seen firstly that such studies were no more or less than specific examples of a general case, and secondly that the stars themselves were not usually of intrinsic interest. In general it was the positions of the stars on the. (shrink)

Book Reviws in this ArticleThe Human Body and the Law, 2nd edition by D.W. Meyers, Edinburgh University Press, 1990Classic Cases in Medical Ethics by Gregory E. Pence. New York: McGraw‐Hill Publishing Co. 1990Changing Values in Medical and Health Care Decision Making, edited by Uffejuul Jensen and Gavin Mooney. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1990IVF and Justice by Teresa Iglesias, London: The Linacre Centre For Health Care Ethics, 1990The Practical, Moral and Personal Sense of Nursing: A Phenomenon‐ological Philosophy of Practice (...) by Anne H. Bishop and John R. Scudder, Jr. New York: State University of New York Press, 1990A Companion to Ethics, edited by Peter Singer. Oxford and Cambridge, Mass: Basil Blackwell, 1991.Ethics and Law in Health Care and Research edited by Peter Byrne, Chichester, UK: 1990The Human Embryo edited by G.R. Dunstan, Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1990Everyday Ethics: Resolving Dilemmas in Nursing Home Life by Rosalie A. Kane and Arthur L. Caplan. N.Y.: Springer Publishing Company, 1990Psychiatric Ethics, 2nd edition, edited by S. Bloch and P. Chodoff. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991Health Care and Gender by Charlotte Muller. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

James Connelly and Giuseppina D'Oro present a new edition of R. G. Collingwood's classic work of 1933, supplementing the original text with important related writings from Collingwood's manuscripts which appear here for the first time. The editors also contribute a substantial new introduction. The volume will be welcomed by all historians of twentieth-century philosophy.

To incorporate medical ethics into clinical practice, it must first be understood and valued by health care professionals. The recognition of this principle led to an expanding and continuing educational effort by the ethics committee of the Vancouver General Hospital. This paper reviews this venture, including some pitfalls and failures, as well as successes. Although we began with consultants, it quickly became apparent that education in medical ethics must reach all health care professionals—and medical students as well. Our greatest successes (...) came in the formative years of a medical career (ie, in medical school and residency training programmes), but other efforts were not wasted, particularly among nurses and other health care professionals.Although this is a personal review of the experience in one institution, the lessons learnt in Vancouver are applicable to the further development of medical ethics in the UK. (shrink)

This article explores children’s narrative identity formation and the impact of adult–child relationships on shaping a child’s narrative. The formation of identity in all children is vulnerable to a culture of ‘adultism’, wherein the authority wielded by adults can potentially subject children to abuse and neglect. Consequently, adultism has the aptitude to hinder the constructive development of a life-affirming identity in children. The primary objective of this article is to develop a childist narrative theology of praxis methodology, aimed at raising (...) consciousness and educating adults on both life-denying and life-giving ways of engaging in the process of children’s narrative identity formation.To achieve this goal, the methodology is developed by adapting Denise Ackermann’s ‘feminist theology of praxis’ to focus specifically on children. The application of feminist theory principles is deemed relevant to the social standing of children as it aligns with the broader goal of liberating oppressed groups, whether women or children. Additionally, John Wall’s work is employed to elucidate the terms ‘childist’ and ‘childism’ as interpretive frameworks. Positioned within the scientific domain of Practical Theology, this study seeks to transform conditions that impede human flourishing into opportunities for positive change.The research objectives determine that a literature review will be suitable to gather essential information for the formulation of a childist narrative theology of praxis. This review, characterised as explorative and descriptive, is conducted within the field of Practical Theology.Contribution: The significance of this study is underscored by its exploration and description of the pastoral functions of consciousness, awareness-raising, and education concerning adult–child relations. By scrutinising these pastoral functions, the emphasis is placed on the proactive, preventive, and universal aspects of pastoral care in the context of children, thereby contributing valuable insights to the discourse. (shrink)

The adjective ἱερός is a central term in Greek religion and is used in various contexts. Generally translated ‘sacred’, it indicates that an object has been conceded to the gods and is now in relation with them (relation of belonging, protection, etc.). It appears frequently in Greek inscriptions in the expression τὰ ἱερά, to designate sacred objects or, in a more abstract meaning, sacred matters.

This interview deals with the major themes in the work of Ruth Millikan. Her most fundamental idea is that the intentionality of inner and outer representations can be understood in analogy to biological functions. Another innovative feature is the view that thought and language stand parallel to each other. Thirdly, the basic ideas concerning the ontology and the epistemology of concepts are explained. Millikan aims at clarifying her position by contrasting it with Dretske, Fodor, Sellars, and Brandom. Finally, the interview (...) addresses topics that pose problems for her account as well as questions she does not treat in her work. (shrink)