Cranial electrotherapy stimulation is a neuromodulation tool used for treating several clinical disorders, including insomnia, anxiety, and depression. More recently, a limited number of studies have examined CES for altering affect, physiology, and behavior in healthy, non-clinical samples. The physiological, neurochemical, and metabolic mechanisms underlying CES effects are currently unknown. Computational modeling suggests that electrical current administered with CES at the earlobes can reach cortical and subcortical regions at very low intensities associated with subthreshold neuromodulatory effects, and studies using electroencephalography (...) and functional magnetic resonance imaging show some effects on alpha band EEG activity, and modulation of the default mode network during CES administration. One theory suggests that CES modulates brain stem, limbic, and cortical regions and increases relative parasympathetic to sympathetic drive in the autonomic nervous system. There is no direct evidence supporting this theory, but one of its assumptions is that CES may induce its effects by stimulating afferent projections of the vagus nerve, which provides parasympathetic signals to the cardiorespiratory and digestive systems. In our critical review of studies using CES in clinical and non-clinical populations, we found severe methodological concerns, including potential conflicts of interest, risk of methodological and analytic biases, issues with sham credibility, lack of blinding, and a severe heterogeneity of CES parameters selected and employed across scientists, laboratories, institutions, and studies. These limitations make it difficult to derive consistent or compelling insights from the extant literature, tempering enthusiasm for CES and its potential to alter nervous system activity or behavior in meaningful or reliable ways. The lack of compelling evidence also motivates well-designed and relatively high-powered experiments to assess how CES might modulate the physiological, affective, and cognitive responses to stress. Establishing reliable empirical links between CES administration and human performance is critical for supporting its prospective use during occupational training, operations, or recovery, ensuring reliability and robustness of effects, characterizing if, when, and in whom such effects might arise, and ensuring that any benefits of CES outweigh the risks of adverse events. (shrink)

The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen. The title of the volume alludes to a phrase found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, referring to aspects of living behaviour involving both body and soul, and is a commonplace in ancient philosophy, dealt with in very different ways by different authors.

In this paper it is argued that we have three dispositions, each of which is very laudable in itself: a preference for the positive, constructive and creative aspects of human endeavours; a desire to be open‐minded and tolerant concerning ideas and beliefs; and an admiration of profundity. I have suggested that these dispositions can, if exaggerated or employed uncritically, seduce us into intellectual positions that are very dubious. These arguments are applied to some of the debates within the philosophy of (...) nursing. (shrink)

This paper is perhaps an impressionistic response to accounts of the extraordinary set-theoretical activity being undertaken by W. Hugh Woodin and colleagues in the present moment, in the context of the mathematical ontology proposed and elaborated by Alain Badiou. The argument presented is that the prevailing and sustained incoherence of the mathematical ontology underscores a contemporary deficit of humanity’s symbolic organization which, in turn, yields confusion and conflict in terms of subjective orientation. But a new axiom promises to realize a (...) coherent set theory, i.e. stable, consistent and complete. This remarkable development offers hope for the pursuit of a modern symbolic, and a consequent resolution of the general subjective disorientation. (shrink)

The academic journey to a widely acknowledged Machine Consciousness is anticipated to be an emotional one. Both in terms of the active debate provoked by the subject and a hypothesized need to encapsulate an analogue of emotions in an artificial system in order to progress towards machine consciousness. This paper considers the inspiration that the concepts related to emotion may contribute to cognitive systems when approaching conscious-like behavior. Specifically, emotions can set goals including balancing explore versus exploit, facilitate action in (...) unknown domains and modify existing behaviors, which are explored in cognitive robotics experiments. (shrink)

A new translation of Aristotle's classic work on the natural sciences.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper examines two issues related to research of certified fair trade goods. The first is the question of how agendas for fair trade research should be developed. The second issue is the existence of major gaps in the fair trade literature, including the study of the particular features of fair trade practice in individual northern countries. In taking up the first of these issues, the paper proposes that normative analysis should provide the basis for developing research agendas. Such an (...) approach is important to ensure that the necessary types of questions to make normative judgments and policy decisions are posed and that biases that tend to favor mainstreaming practices in the generation of knowledge are minimized. The paper addresses the second research issue by examining the development of research agendas at the level of individual countries, using Canada as a case. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

The essays in this collection were originally given at the international colloquium _Cent Ans de Bataille: La Bataille de Cent Ans_ held at the Fondació Tàpies in Barcelona in September 1998. They are written from a variety of perspectives but are drawn together by the singular aim of addressing and interrogating Georges Bataille as our contemporary whose fascination with the rupture between mythical and experimental forms of discourse defines our own age as much as it did in Bataille’s own time. (...) More precisely, the essays in this collection range over Bataille’s status as a novelist, a poet, an art critic, a philosopher and a prophet of post-modernity with this aim in mind. They not only seek to advance and clarify debate about Bataille’s present status in the post-modern canon but also shed new light on the complex relation between Bataille and the present generation of readers who have come to him through the prism of post-modernist thought. It is of significance for each writer in this collection, most crucially, that the premonition of catastrophe which defined Bataille’s fluid political positions is also located between tragedy and irony. (shrink)

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This title is a powerful and topical critique of the higher education system in the UK, with relevance for countries with similar systems. The issues discussed focus on the problems facing the principle responsibilites of universities: teaching, learning and research.

This comprehensive account of the history of ancient Greek thought circa 600 to 400 B.C. offers an accessible, nontechnical introduction to Presocratic philosophy.

It is argued that philosophical realism is well suited to serve as a perspective from which to understand nursing, and that it should be considered as an alternative to positivist, interpretivist, hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches. However, existing forms of realism, including theory and entity realism are shown to be faced with serious problems. In response, an alternative form ‘constraint realism’ is outlined, and shown to be apposite for illuminating the rule or convention governed behaviour characteristic of human beings. A brief (...) sketch is offered of its application to the social practice of nursing. (shrink)

It is argued that philosophical realism is well suited to serve as a perspective from which to understand nursing, and that it should be considered as an alternative to positivist, interpretivist, hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches. However, existing forms of realism, including theory and entity realism are shown to be faced with serious problems. In response, an alternative form ‘constraint realism’ is outlined, and shown to be apposite for illuminating the rule or convention governed behaviour characteristic of human beings. A brief (...) sketch is offered of its application to the social practice of nursing. (shrink)

Nurses, like many other professional and semiprofessional groups, have a code of con duct. This raises important philosophical questions about the point of including nursing ethics in nursing education and about the content and methods of such teaching. This paper identifies seven functions that might be fulfilled by professional codes; it discusses the philosophical issues these raise and the implications for teaching professional ethics. It is argued that, far from codes rendering the teaching of ethics unnecessary, they pro vide additional (...) reasons for its inclusion. An enhanced ability to make moral decisions helps to overcome the shortcomings of the codes, enables a profession to be autonomous in the development of its code, enables individuals to be authentic moral agents, and is essential in matters concerning the disciplinary function of the codes. The role of emo tions, feelings and attitudes in ethics also presents philosophical problems that moral edu cation can help to resolve. (shrink)

Those matters that are judged to be spiritual are seen as especially valuable and important. For this reason it is claimed that nurses need to be able to offer spiritual care when appropriate and, to aid them in this, nurse theorists have discussed the nature of spirituality. In a recent debate John Paley has argued that nurses should adopt a naturalistic stance which would enable them to employ the insights of modern science. Barbara Pesut has criticized this thesis, especially as (...) it is applied to palliative care. This paper re-examines this debate with particular attention to the meaning of 'spirituality' and the justification for accepting spiritual and religious theories. It is argued that when we take into consideration the great diversity among religious and spiritual ideas, the lack of rational means of deciding between them when they conflict, and the practicalities of nursing, we find that a spiritual viewpoint is less useful than a naturalistic one, when offering palliative care. (shrink)

What is consciousness? What is its importance and how is it to be described? The paper looks at some of the principal theories and their attempts to solve the “hard problem” of how consciousness is produced by nervous tissue, and attempts to close the “explanatory gap” between such (apparently) profoundly different things as subjective awareness and a physical brain. It ends with a tentative suggestion that, despite centuries of philosophical frustration, recent appeals to quantum physics may offer a glimmer of (...) hope. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the debate in evolutionary epistemology about the nature of the evolutionary process at work in the development of science: whether it is Darwinian or Lamarckian. It is claimed that if we are to make progress through the many arguments that have grown up around this issue, we must return to an examination of the concepts of change and evolution, and examine the basic kinds of mechanism capable of bringing evolution about. This examination results in two (...) kinds of processes being identified, dubbed direct and indirect, and these are claimed to exhaust all possibilities. These ideas are then applied to a selection of the debates within evolutionary epistemology. It is shown that while arguments about the pattern and rate of evolutionary change are necessarily inconclusive, those concerning the origin of novel variations and the mode of inheritance can be resolved by means of the distinctions made here. It is claimed that the process of selection in the evolution of science can also be clarified. The conclusion is that the main process producing the evolution of science is a direct or Lamarckian one although, if realism is correct, an indirect or Darwinian process plays a vital role. (shrink)