This important new book offers the first full-length interpretation of the thought of Martin Heidegger with respect to irony. In a radical reading of Heidegger's major works (from Being and Time through the ‘Rector's Address' and the ‘Letter on Humanism' to ‘The Origin of the Work of Art' and the Spiegel interview), Andrew Haas does not claim that Heidegger is simply being ironic. Rather he argues that Heidegger's writings make such an interpretation possible - perhaps even necessary. Heidegger_begins_ (...) Being and Time with a quote from Plato, a thinker famous for his insistence upon Socratic irony. The Irony of Heidegger takes seriously the apparently curious decision to introduce the threat of irony even as philosophy begins in earnest to raise the question of the meaning of being. Through a detailed and thorough reading of Heidegger's major texts and the fundamental questions they raise, Haas reveals that one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century can be read with as much irony as earnestness. The Irony of Heidegger attempts to show that the essence of this irony lies in uncertainty, and that the entire project of onto-heno-chrono-phenomenology, therefore needs to be called into question. >. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Almost all philosophers recognize the fundamental importance of the Phenomenology of Spirit. But Hegel's way of thinking and speaking—which he names, “speculative”—needs explaining. The example of “the speculative sentence” is helpful—for here, speculating means implying, that is, neither bringing meaning to presence nor keeping it in absence; but rather, speaking and thinking by implication. If the history of philosophy, however, overlooks what is implied, then it cannot grasp what is, and what is thought and said in the speculative sentence. (...) Luckily, there is another way: implying that which can neither be said nor left unsaid, neither thought nor unthought. Reinterpreting Hegel's speculative sentence, therefore, for implication, for what is implied—and neither present nor absent—Haas demonstrates how to think and speak speculatively about thinking and speaking, substance and subject, being and becoming, whether in philosophy or not, even if we implicate ourselves thereby. (shrink)

Our concept of politics – especially democracy – presupposes a principle of friendship, but our principle of friendship comes out of an understanding of the friend. However, from the Greeks to Derrida, such relations have been dominated by a philosophy of presence and/or absence, limiting our very idea of politics and friendship. A radical break with this tradition is only possible through an other way of speaking to, thinking about, acting toward, and being a friend, and the politics thereof. The (...) Aristotelian saying, “O friends, [there is] no friend,” provides a clue – for “being” is not there, not present in the Greek, nor absent therefrom, but just implied. Then the being of the friend, and of politics (and of being), is an implication. So, if we hope to be friends, and to be political, we must think and act and speak by implication: O friends no friend, and O democrats no democracy. (shrink)

What is first philosophy today? In Unity and Aspect, the questioning begins with a new (old) approach to metaphysics: being is implied; it is implied in everything that is; it is an implication. BUt then, the history of philosophy must be rethought completely - for being implies unity, and time, and the other of time, namely, aspect. THe effect on the self and on self-understanding is radical: we can no longer be thought as human beings; rather, reaching back to the (...) ancient Greek name for us (phos), Haas seeks to rearticulate us as illuminating, as illuminating ourselves and others, and as implicated in our illuminations. UNity and Aspect then provokes us to problematize words and deeds, thoughts and things - and this means reconsidering our assumptions about history and survival, meaning and universality, sensibility and intimacy, knowledge and intentionality, action and improvisation, language and truth. ANd if Haas suspends the privilege enjoyed by our traditional philosophical concepts, this has implications for fields as diverse as ontology and phenomenology, ethics and aesthetics, education and linguistics, law and politics. (shrink)

Interrogation of metaphysics -- Difference of absolute particularity -- From science to speculation -- Being multiple-- Quality of quantity -- Measure of multiplicity -- Conceptual subjectivity -- Conceptual objectivity -- Idea of totality -- Metaphysics of multiplicity.

Tense is the clue to the discovery of the meaning of time. Speaking hints at thinking, and language suggests a way to conceive of philosophical concepts. Here, the universality of temporality is that out of which the grammar of tense and the concept of time first come. Temporality, however, is not simply present in tense or time. On the contrary, temporality’s way of being—like being’s—is implication: tense is implied by how the verbality of verbs can be spoken; time, by how (...) temporal beings come to presence—just as being is implied in Greek, and many other languages. But then, the habits of modern Western language and philosophy must be radically reformed in order to learn how to imply again, and to think and speak about time and being as implications. (shrink)

Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

What is time? Neither the numbering of the motion of things nor their schema, but their way of being. In language, time shows itself as tense. But every verb has both tense and aspect. So what is aspect? Irreducible to tense, it is the way in which anything is at any time whatsoever. Thus the way things are, their being, is not merely temporal – for it is just as aspectual.

Threatening the whole of nature, the climate crisis puts us on the verge of self-destruction. But what can philosophy contribute to considering this problem? It can take up the task of thinking nat...

Cet article cherche à interroger Heidegger en tant que traducteur. Nous montrons d’abord que le refus de traduire hypokeimenon par subiectum rend possible une onto-héno-chrono-phénoménologie de la choséité de la chose comme constance. Ensuite, nous démontrons que la tentative visant à penser la transformation de l’ alētheia ne peut éviter la traduction et toutes ses violences. Enfin, nous faisons retour aux Grecs en vue de penser la traduction comme metalēpsis , de réinterpréter la traduction platonicienne des Idées comme choses, de (...) repenser le noūs aristotélicien comme auto-traducteur, et de suggérer que l’origine de la pensée réside peut-être aussi dans la traduction. (shrink)

It is perhaps time to revivify our other name in Greek: phos. For although the Greeks named us anthrôpos, they also called us phos. And the Greeks used the word phos because we are like light. Indeed, our way of being light-like is illuminating, which illuminates being and the truth of being, so that it can be thought and said, imagined, and sensed—especially insofar as we are this illumination. Thus, it is time to reclaim phos as our name and so (...) rethink what it means to illuminate, whether we light up everything that is, as well as ourselves, or not. (shrink)

The stranger is strange, the xenos is xenikos. What is strange, however, is captured neither by the fear of the presence of an original corruption, a non-Greek at the presumed origin of Greek philosophy, which would threaten its privilege; nor by the presence of an êthos in general that allows for hospitality towards the xenos, understood as both guest and host. Rather, that which is most strange about the xenos and its êthos is that which never simply presents itself – (...) and that is what Heraclitus “implies” in saying: êthos anthrôpô daimôn. Thus, the origin of the origin of the hatred of the xenos is the strangeness of implication, which has implications for how we think about the stranger, and how we act towards the implied strangeness of the stranger. (shrink)

This text argues that Hegel's Concept, insofar as it has already deconstructed all opposed and fixed standpoints, supersedes deconstruction. Reducing the Logic and Phenomenology to the same kind of schematic formalism for which Hegel criticized his predecessors (Fichte and Schelling), Derrida misses the ways in which Absolute Spirit shows itself as the bacchanalian revel wherein no member is not drunk. Thus, this article defends Hegel against Derrida on Derrida's terms.

What is the origin of language? For Levinas, from Aristotle to von Humboldt, the tradition of Western metaphysics has understood language as a representation of reality, going beyond or transcending experience. In this way, language is a metaphor that substitutes for experience—and all language is originally metaphorical. Experience however, is essentially inexpressible—for it not only transcends language, but it does so because experience is always experience of the other, of that which remains infinitely other. And language reminds us of its (...) failure (a failure which Derrida sees, ironically, as a success) to express this other by maintaining a trace of the inexpressible in every expression—and metaphor is failure of expression par excellence. But what is the origin of this original failure? In fact, it can be found in the way in which language makes metaphors (which is the way in which it makes itself, transcends itself, substitutes for itself, becomes other than itself). For as Aristotle reminds us: metaphor-making (indeed, all language, every word and deed) is poiēsis—and the origin of poiēsis is improvisation. If we have, however, discovered the origin of language in improvisation—but what is that? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 597-600 [Access article in PDF] Andrew Haas. Hegel and the Problem of Multiplicity. SPEP Studies in Historical Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000. Pp. xxxii + 355. Paper, $29.95. Jon Stewart. The Unity of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic Interpretation. SPEP Studies in Historical Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000. Pp. xv + 556. Cloth, $69.95. In his (...) study, The Unity of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Systematic Interpretation, Jon Stewart not only analyzes Hegel's Phenomenology in chapter-by-chapter fashion but he also provides a compelling argument as to why even individual sections of the book can only be interpreted in the context of the unity of the work as a whole. [End Page 597]Stewart views the Phenomenology as a continuation of Kant's project in the first Critique, claiming that Kant did not go far enough in uncovering and justifying the necessary conditions of understanding. Thus, Stewart sees the Phenomenology as a transcendental argument. Like Kant, Hegel is concerned with truth and objectivity but in each subsequent chapter of the Phenomenology, according to Stewart, Hegel takes the reader through a different determination of objectivity.Perhaps most important is Stewart's view of Hegel's notion of "Absolute Knowing," the last section of the Phenomenology. Eschewing theological or metaphysical interpretations or interpretations according to which history comes to an end or some type of divine knowledge is attained, Stewart impressively argues that, for Hegel, absolute knowing means that self-consciousness has finally arrived at the point at which all of the conditions for cognition have been unpacked and that self-consciousness sees these conditions in their necessary systematic and developmental unity. As such, "Absolute Knowing" is merely backward looking; self-consciousness comes to realize all of the forms that knowledge has taken in the past and how this past relates to the way in which self-consciousness cognizes at present. Thus, the Phenomenology, on Stewart's view, is a ladder from common sense to science; it completes a deduction of the categories of thought—universality, particularity, and individuality—that are present in all forms of human thinking in all time periods.At the beginning of this work, Stewart summarizes Hegel's life and works, as well as discusses the Kantian background of Hegel's project as a whole. The subsequent chapters of his book parallel the major divisions in the Phenomenology. Each chapter and each of the various subsections within the chapters—again always paralleling Hegel's work—begins with a brief overview of what Stewart sees as the goal toward which Hegel is progressing in the particular section of the Phenomenology. He then provides an account of the "Notion" or paradigm of truth that Hegel presently criticizes. Accordingly, the author addresses the dialectic by which the particular Notion is sublated or overcome. It is in this section that Stewart explicitly sets out whenever possible the In-Itself, the For-Itself, and the In-Itself-For-Itself moments of the dialectic. Stewart always makes an explicit attempt at discussing what is at issue in the dialectical moment, say, either an irreconcilable split between immediacy and mediacy or between universal and particular. Finally, he ends each chapter or subsequent section with a review of what Hegel has done and how this, then, leads into the next section of the work.In the course of this study, Stewart admirably argues for why the Phenomenology should not be regarded as a "patchwork," by convincingly demonstrating the intricate unity of Hegel's Phenomenology. He shows how Hegel always returns to a similar structure—using, in fact, the very same categories—even in some of the parts of the book that scholars or certain schools of interpretation have tended to dismiss. In the chapter of his book that addresses the first formal chapter of the Phenomenology, "Consciousness," Stewart argues that each of the three subdivisions in the chapter focuses on, respectively, 1) being, 2) the one and the many, and... (shrink)

This is a review of a book by Andrew Haas.

This ambitious book by one of the most original and provocative thinkers in science studies offers a sophisticated new understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical, and engineering practice and the production of scientific knowledge. Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number of factors—social, technological, conceptual, and natural—that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, (...) disciplined practices, and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another—"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time, and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice—the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of machines and social organization. (shrink)

In this article we revisit two different temporal phases related to the main publication of Serge Moscovici's book La Psychanalyse, son image et son public together with two key promissing notions of the theory, cognitive polyphasia and anchoring. The first phase, initiated by the durkheimian cercle, will give us the occasion to retrieve the traces of the fascinating intellectual debate about collective psychology that was involved in producing ¨frontier¨ propositions and renewing their perspectives in today's light, namely throught cognitive polyphasia. (...) The second phase, more recent, inspired by classical and modern research into the social representation's field, will serve us as a basis for a new hypothesis about anchoring. We will attempt to suggest that traditional familiarization allocated to anchoring can also work in the opposite sense, transmitting and guaranteeing the non-familiar, establishing strangeness. Finally, we are arguing that social representations are more than a simple theory, just as the symbol is always more than what it symbolizes. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly (...) defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. (shrink)

Sir Isaac Newton left a voluminous legacy of writings. Despite his influence on the early modern period, his correspondence, manuscripts, and publications in natural philosophy remain scattered throughout many disparate editions. In this volume, Newton's principal philosophical writings are for the first time collected in a single place. They include excerpts from the Principia and the Opticks, his famous correspondence with Boyle and with Bentley, and his equally significant correspondence with Leibniz, which is often ignored in favor of Leibniz's later (...) debate with Samuel Clarke. Newton's exchanges with Leibniz place their different understandings of natural philosophy in sharp relief. The volume also includes 'De Gravitatione', offered here in a corrected translation, which is crucial for understanding Newton's relation to his great predecessor Descartes. In a historical and philosophical introduction, Andrew Janiak examines Newton's philosophical positions and his relations to canonical figures in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

This work presents a version of the correspondence theory of truth based on Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Russell's theory of truth and discusses related metaphysical issues such as predication, facts and propositions. Like Russell and one prominent interpretation of the Tractatus it assumes a realist view of universals. Part of the aim is to avoid Platonic propositions, and although sympathy with facts is maintained in the early chapters, the book argues that facts as real entities are not needed. It includes discussion (...) of contemporary philosophers such as David Armstrong, William Alston and Paul Horwich, as well as those who write about propositions and facts, and a number of students of Bertrand Russell. It will interest teachers and advanced students of philosophy who are interested in the realistic conception of truth and in issues in metaphysics related to the correspondence theory of truth, and those interested in Russell and the Tractatus. (shrink)

I investigate the widely held view that fundamental musical ontology should be descriptivist rather than revisionary, that is, that it should describe how we think about musical works, rather than how they are independently of our thought about them. I argue that if we take descriptivism seriously then, first, we should be sceptical of art-ontological arguments that appeal to independent metaphysical respectability; and, second, we should give ‘fictionalism’ about musical works—the theory that they do not exist—more serious consideration than it (...) is usually accorded. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article provides an ethical analysis of the U.S. practice guideline update on disorders of consciousness. Our analysis focuses on the guideline’s recommendations regarding the use of investigational neuroimaging methods to assess brain‐injured patients. Complex and multifaceted ethical issues have emerged because these methods alter the clinical understanding of consciousness. We address issues of false hope, patient suffering, and cost. We argue that, in spite of these concerns, there is significant benefit to using neuroimaging to assess brain‐injured patients in most (...) cases. (shrink)

Kearns and Star have previously recommended that we measure the degree to which a reason supports a conclusion, either about how to act or what to believe, as the conditional probability of the conclusion given the reason. I show how to properly formulate this recommendation to allow for dependencies and conditional dependencies among the considerations being aggregated. This formulation allows us to account for how considerations, which do not themselves favour a specific conclusion, can modify the strength of a reason (...) for that conclusion, and thus to explain the intensifiers and attenuators described by Dancy. The formulation also accounts for the workings of partial undercutters in epistemology. I then show how my account avoids the counterexamples that Brunero levied against probability-based theories of the strengths of reasons. My account supports the theory, suggested by Kearns and Star, that the strengths of reasons are measured by conditional probabilities. If my account is successful, then it will count in favour of the idea that the strengths of reasons are measured on the same scale as are conditional probabilities. (shrink)

The Second World War was a watershed in history in many ways. I focus on the World War II discontinuity as it relates to the intersection of scientific and military enterprise. I am interested in how we should conceptualize that intersection and in offering a preliminary tracing of the “World War II regime” that has grown out of it—a regime that includes new forms of scientific and military practice but that has invaded and transformed many other cultural spaces, including—my primary (...) example here—the industrial workplace. I exploit the figure of the cyborg to thematize the social, material, and conceptual heterogeneity of the developments at issue; specify a distinct range of cyborg objects and sciences that emerged from the World War II matrix; and exemplify a historiographical approach that escapes the traditional master-narrative structures of science studies. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate musical silence. I first discuss how to integrate the concept of silence into a general theory or definition of music. I then consider the possibility of an entirely silent musical piece. I begin with John Cage’s 4′33″, since it is the most notorious candidate for a silent piece of music, even though it is not, in fact, silent. I conclude that it is not music either, but I argue that it is a piece of non-musical (...) sound art, rather than simply a piece of theatre, as Stephen Davies has argued. I end with consideration of several other candidates for entirely silent pieces, concluding that two of these are in fact pieces of music consisting entirely of silence. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse examined the subjective and material conditions of radical social change and developed the "Great Refusal," a radical concept of "the protest against that which is." The editors and contributors to the exciting new volume The Great Refusal provide an analysis of contemporary social movements around the world with particular reference to Marcuse's revolutionary concept. The book also engages-and puts Marcuse in critical dialogue with-major theorists including Slavoj Žižek and Michel Foucault, among others. The chapters in this book analyze (...) different elements and locations of the contemporary wave of struggle, drawing on the work and vision of Marcuse in order to reveal, with a historical perspective, the present moment of resistance. Essays seek to understand recent uprisings-such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement-in the context of Marcuse's powerful conceptual apparatus. The Great Refusal also charts contemporary social movements against global warming, mass incarceration, police brutality, white supremacy, militarization, technological development, and more, to provide insights that advance our understanding of resistance today. Contributors include: Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Joan Braune, Jenny Chan, Angela Y. Davis, Arnold L. Farr, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Forman, Christian Fuchs, Stefan Gandler, Christian Garland, Toorjo Ghose, Imaculada Kangussu, George Katsiaficas, Douglas Kellner, Sarah Lynn Kleeb, Filip Kovacevic, Lauren Langman, Heather Love, Peter Marcuse, Martin J. Beck Matuštík, Russell Rockwell, AK Thompson, Marcelo Vieta, and the editors. (shrink)

In recent years, several scholars have hinted at a resemblance between Maximus the Confessor's logoi cosmology and evolutionary biology. In this article, I develop these suggestions further and claim that the logoi (divine ideas or wills) do indeed behave in an evolutionary fashion, diverging hierarchically and interactively from the Logos. However, there the similarity ends, for the logoi are also purposeful, inviolable, and good, unlike evolution which is said to be random, ever‐changing, and cruel. But rather than abandon the logoi–evolution (...) congruity, I argue that, by harnessing theological resources from across the Eastern tradition, one can integrate Maximus’ logoi vision more fully, resulting in an “incarnationally panentheistic” model of God's action and presence in evolution. More speculatively, within canonical Darwinism, the underlying (good) evolutionary motion of the logoi might be discernible in variation and adaptation, with the “evil” of competition and natural selection being “garments of skin” conceded by God as part of a simultaneous creation and cosmic fall. (shrink)

This book arises from a three-year study of Preventive Justice directed by Professor Andrew Ashworth and Professor Lucia Zedner at the University of Oxford. The study seeks to develop an account of the principles and values that should guide and limit the state's use of preventive techniques that involve coercion against the individual. States today are increasingly using criminal law or criminal law-like tools to try to prevent or reduce the risk of anticipated future harm. Such measures include criminalizing (...) conduct at an early stage in order to allow authorities to intervene; incapacitating suspected future wrongdoers; and imposing extended sentences or indefinate on past wrongdoers on the basis of their predicted future conduct - all in the name of public protection and security. The chief justification for the state's use of coercion is protecting the public from harm. Although the rationales and justifications of state punishment have been explored extensively, the scope, limits and principles of preventive justice have attracted little doctrinal or conceptual analysis. This book re-assesses the foundations for the range of coercive measures that states now take in the name of prevention and public protection, focussing particularly on coercive measures involving deprivation of liberty. It examines whether these measures are justified, whether they distort the proper boundaries between criminal and civil law, or whether they signal a larger change in the architecture of security. In so doing, it sets out to establish a framework for what we call 'Preventive Justice'. (shrink)

Expert skill in music performance involves an apparent paradox. On stage, expert musicians are required accurately to retrieve information that has been encoded over hours of practice. Yet they must also remain open to the demands of the ever-changing situational contingencies with which they are faced during performance. To further explore this apparent paradox and the way in which it is negotiated by expert musicians, this article profiles theories presented by Roger Chaffin, Hubert Dreyfus and Tony and Helga Noice. For (...) Chaffin, expert skill in music performance relies solely upon overarching mental representations, while, for Dreyfus, such representations are needed only by novices, while experts rely on a more embodied form of coping. Between Chaffin and Dreyfus sit the Noices, who argue that both overarching cognitive structures and embodied processes underlie expert skill. We then present the Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes approach—a differently nuanced model of expert skill aligned with the integrative spirit of the Noices’ research. The AIR approach suggests that musicians negotiate the apparent paradox of expert skill via a mindedness that allows flexibility of attention during music performance. We offer data from recent doctoral research conducted by the first author of this article to demonstrate at a practical level the usefulness of the AIR approach when attempting to understand the complexities of expert skill in music performance. (shrink)

The philosophical tradition has given rise to many competing moral theories. Virtue ethics encourages the flourishing of the person, theories of justice and rights tell us to act according to principles, and consequentialist theories advise that we seek to bring about good ends. These varied theories highlight the morally relevant features of the problems that we encounter both in everyday personal interactions and on a broader social scale. When used together, they allow us to address moral conflicts by balancing a (...) plurality of reasons in order to reach nuanced ethical decisions. In _Ethical Reasoning: Theory and Application_, Andrew Kernohan guides the reader through the basics of these moral theories, showing their strengths and weaknesses and emphasizing the ways in which competing moral reasons can be collectively employed to guide decision-making. Throughout, the focus is on practical applications and on how each theory can play a role in solving problems and addressing issues. Numerous questions and exercises are provided to encourage active reflection and retention of information. (shrink)

In this article, I present an argument that suggests neuroscience should inform judgments of decision-making capacity. First, I review key behavioral and neurocognitive data to demonstrate that neuroscientific tests might be predictive of decision-making capacity, and that these tests might inform clinical judgments of capacity. Second, I argue that, consistent with the principles of autonomy and justice, such data should inform judgements of decision-making capacity. While the neuroscience of decision-making capacity still requires time to mature, there is strong reason to (...) believe that neuroscience might assist clinicians in adjudicating difficult cases in the future. This article focuses on the assessment of capacity in brain injury patients who have profound communication impairments, however, the overarching aim of the article is to highlight the potential use of neuroscience to improve our understanding of the relationship between cognition and decision-making capacity. (shrink)