Exploring the origins, doctrines and conceptions of the self.

Nerve cells - neurons - are arguably the most complex of all cells. From the action of these cells comes movement, thought and consciousness. It is a challenging task to understand what molecules direct the various diverse aspects of their function. This has produced an ever-increasing amount of molecular information about neurons, and only in Molecular Biology of the Neuron can a large part of this information be found in one source. In this book, a non-specialist can learn about the (...) molecules that control information flow in the brain or the progress of brain disease in an approachable format, while the expert has access to a wealth of detailed information from a wide range of topics impacting on his or her field of endeavour. The text is designed to achieve a balance of accessibility and broad coverage with up-to-date molecular detail. In the six years since the first edition of Molecular Biology of the Neuron there has been an explosion in the molecular information about neurons that has been discovered, and this information is incorporated into this second edition. Entirely new chapters have been introduced where recent advances have made a new aspect of neuronal function more comprehensible at the molecular level. Written by leading researchers in the field, the book provides an essential overview of the molecular structure and function of neurons, and will be an invaluable tool to students and researchers alike. (shrink)

Circumcision of males represents a surgical “vaccine“ against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. In experienced hands, this common, inexpensive procedure is very safe, can be pain‐free and can be performed at any age. The benefits vastly outweigh risks. The enormous public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV, syphilis and chancroid, penile and prostate cancer, phimosis, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses. (...) In women circumcision of the male partner provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia. Circumcision has socio‐sexual benefits and reduces sexual problems with age. It has no adverse effect on penile sensitivity, function, or sensation during sexual arousal. Most women prefer the circumcised penis for appearance, hygiene and sex. Given the convincing epidemiological evidence and biological support, routine circumcision should be highly recommended by all health professionals. BioEssays 29:1147–1158, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Circumcision of males represents a surgical “vaccine“ against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. In experienced hands, this common, inexpensive procedure is very safe, can be pain‐free and can be performed at any age. The benefits vastly outweigh risks. The enormous public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV, syphilis and chancroid, penile and prostate cancer, phimosis, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses. (...) In women circumcision of the male partner provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia. Circumcision has socio‐sexual benefits and reduces sexual problems with age. It has no adverse effect on penile sensitivity, function, or sensation during sexual arousal. Most women prefer the circumcised penis for appearance, hygiene and sex. Given the convincing epidemiological evidence and biological support, routine circumcision should be highly recommended by all health professionals. BioEssays 29:1147–1158, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive study of the varying conceptions of the human subject in the Western intellectual tradition. Although informed by an anthropological perspective, the author draws on material from all the major intellectual disciplines that have contributed to this tradition and offers biographical and theoretical vignettes of all the major Western scholars. By scrutinizing the classical texts of the Western tradition, he succeeds in delineating the differing conceptions of the human individual which emerge from these writings, and gives a (...) guide to the most important ideas in Western cultural traditions. (shrink)

In a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Svoboda and Van Howe commented on the 2012 change in the American Academy of Pediatrics policy on newborn male circumcision, in which the AAP stated that benefits of the procedure outweigh the risks. Svoboda and Van Howe disagree with the AAP conclusions. We show here that their arguments against male circumcision are based on a poor understanding of epidemiology, erroneous interpretation of the evidence, selective citation of the literature, statistical manipulation (...) of data, and circular reasoning. In reality, the scientific evidence indicates that male circumcision, especially when performed in the newborn period, is an ethically and medically sound low-risk preventive health procedure conferring a lifetime of benefits to health and well-being. Policies in support of parent-approved elective newborn circumcision should be embraced by the medical, scientific and wider communities. (shrink)

Morris, Brian The dust has not settled on this year's disastrous Census, yet already there are calls to amend the question on Religious Affiliation. While the latest change brought Australia into line with most Western countries - by placing 'No Religion' as first option - elements of the 'not-quite-religious' community feel bitterly aggrieved.

Renin is the rate‐limiting enzyme in a cascade that leads to production of angiotensin II, which is perhaps our most important regulator of salt and water balance and blood pressure. In this personal perspective, I describe how I entered the renin field 33 years ago by discovering that proteases increased the level of renin activity in biological fluids, so revealing the existence of a ‘pro’ form of the molecule. This led me on a journey that encapsulated all of the major (...) milestones in molecular discovery for renin. These included (1) the elucidation of the steps in renin biosynthesis, (2) the cloning of renin cDNA and its gene, (3) demonstration of the structure of the renin protein, (4) using the renin gene in the first genetic studies in hypertension, (5) finding the mechanism by which the major controller, cyclic AMP, regulates the promoter, (6) showing that a strong enhancer and its weak promoter control this physiologically regulatable gene in accord with the variegation (on/off switching) model, and (7) being the first to identify molecules involved in posttranscriptional control. The renin molecule, its gene and molecular control are now very well understood, but more fine details on the topic of renin continue to emerge to delight ‘reninologists’ and others. BioEssays 25:520–527, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We critically evaluate arguments in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics article by Svoboda, Adler, and Van Howe disputing the 2012 affirmative infant male circumcision policy recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We provide detailed evidence in explaining why the extensive claims by these opponents are not supported by the current strong scientific evidence. We furthermore show why their legal and ethical arguments are contradicted by a reasonable interpretation of current U.S. and international law and ethics. After (...) all considerations are taken into account it would be logical to conclude that failure to recommend male circumcision early in infancy may be viewed as akin to failure to recommend childhood vaccination to parents. In each case, parental consent is required and the intervention is not compulsory. Our evaluation leads us to dismiss the arguments by Svoboda et al. Instead, based on the evidence, infant male circumcision is both ethical and lawful. (shrink)

As the title suggests, we are here addressing the most fundamental questions: Who is man? What is art? What is the bond that unites man, nature and art? The argument at the heart of this book is that what should be common to all men and women-a natural affinity with the sacred that holds out the promise of spiritual experience in everyday life- is in fact made all but impossible by the very nature of modern society. For what the modern (...) world has set in place is nothing other than a pattern of life that prevents us from being what we truly are. The destruction of man that is part and parcel of the scientific, industrial view of our destiny cannot do otherwise than in turn destroy those values and meanings that have always been the bedrock of normal human existence. At a time when the inadequacy of modernism has become apparent, the author returns to the challenge of the English radical tradition of thought (Blake, Cobbett, Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, Gill and others), with its critique of the industrial-now post-industrial-way of life. Through a series of highly original studies of several major English artists and craftsman, and by addressing key themes that relate to the spiritual, cultural and environmental crisis that now confronts us, the author offers a positive development of the radical perspective. Can modern man survive the process of self-mutilation he has embarked upon? In this unique study of our present predicament, the author suggests we cannot do so by turning our back on the perennial wisdom that has always informed the wisest philosophies of life, with their intuition of the sacred nature of reality. (shrink)

In this book, Richard Brian Davis explores various attempts to solve the Dependence Problem – the problem posed by the following question: How can necessary truths stand to God in a one-way relation of dependence when neither they nor God could have failed to exist? Critics charge that this problem is insoluble. Davis argues at length that the most powerful and promising contemporary solutions to this problem – those offered by Linda Zagzebski, Brian Leftow, Thomas V. Morris, (...) and William Mann – are all fatally flawed. In making his case, Davis treats the reader to helpful and interesting discussions of counterpossibles, broadly logical necessity, identity statements, as well as the divine attributes of sovereignty, aseity, and simplicity. He concludes with what is perhaps the most forceful and sustained defense of the claim that necessary truths can stand to God in an asymmetrical relation of causal dependence. (shrink)

Brian Leftow offers a theist theory of necessity and possibility, and a new sort of argument for God's existence. He argues that necessities of logic and mathematics are determined by God's nature, but that it is events in God's mind - his imagination and choice - that account for necessary truths about concrete creatures.

A textbook on modal logic, intended for readers already acquainted with the elements of formal logic, containing nearly 500 exercises. Brian F. Chellas provides a systematic introduction to the principal ideas and results in contemporary treatments of modality, including theorems on completeness and decidability. Illustrative chapters focus on deontic logic and conditionality. Modality is a rapidly expanding branch of logic, and familiarity with the subject is now regarded as a necessary part of every philosopher's technical equipment. Chellas here offers (...) an up-to-date and reliable guide essential for the student. (shrink)

Focusing on the rise of the mechanistic idea that we can know the natural world only by distancing ourselves from it, Berman shows how science acquired its ...

Morris N. Eagle explores the understanding and role of subjective experience in the disciplines of psychology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of mind. Elaborating how different understandings of subjective experience give rise to very different theories of the nature of the mind, Eagle then explains how these shape clinical practices. In particular, Eagle addresses the strong tendency in the disciplines concerned with the nature of the mind to overlook the centrality of subjective experience in one's life, to view it with suspicion, (...) and to reduce it to neural processes. Describing examples of research in which subjective experience is a central variable, Eagle provides an outline of a model in which the dichotomy of conscious and unconscious is supplemented by subjective experience as a continuum. This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of theories of the mind to therapeutic practice. (shrink)

A characteristic feature of Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian opera is the tendency to link scenes with numerous and often surprisingly lengthy orchestral interludes, frequently performed with the curtain closed. Often taken for granted or treated as a filler by audiences and critics, these interludes can take on very prominent roles, representing dream sequences, journeys and sexual encounters, and in some cases becoming a highlight of the opera. Christopher Morris investigates the implications of these important but strangely overlooked passages. Combining close (...) readings of individual musical texts with an investigation of the critical discourse surrounding the operas, Morris shows how the interludes shed light not only on the representational and narrative capacities of the orchestra, but also on the supposed 'absolute' realm of instrumental music, a concept to which many critics appealed when they associated the interludes with 'purely musical' and 'symphonic' qualities. (shrink)

Proofs are central, and unique, to mathematics. They establish the truth of theorems and provide us with the most secure knowledge we can possess. It is thus perhaps unsurprising that philosophers once thought that the only value proofs have lies in establishing the truth of theorems. However, such a view is inconsistent with mathematical practice. If a proof’s only value is to show a theorem is true, then mathematicians would have no reason to reprove the same theorem in different ways, (...) yet this is a practice they frequently engage in. This suggests that proofs can have a wide variety of values. My purpose in this chapter is to provide a survey of some of them. I will discuss how proofs can have practical value, for example, by helping mathematicians to make new discoveries or learn new mathematical tools, and how they can have abstract value, for example, by being beautiful or explanatory. I will also explore the relationships between different proof values. (shrink)

A theoretical and sociological exploration of the relationship between law and society, this book constructs an approach to law that integrates legal theory with sociological approaches to law. Law is generally understood to be a mirror of society--a reflection of its customs and morals--that functions to maintain social order. Focusing on this common understanding, the book conducts a survey of Western legal and social theories about law and its relationship within society, engaging in a theoretical and empirical critique of this (...) common understanding. (shrink)

This work stresses the illogical manner in which mathematics has developed, the question of applied mathematics as against 'pure' mathematics, and the challenges to the consistency of mathematics' logical structure that have occurred in the twentieth century.

Subjective feelings of familiarity associated with a stimulus tend to be strongest when specific information about the previous encounter with the stimulus is difficult to retrieve . Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.]). When a stimulus has been encountered previously and the circumstances of the encounter cannot be recollected, additional cognitive resources may be directed toward recollection processes; this resource allocation is accompanied by autonomic arousal [Dawson, M. E., Filion, D. L., & Schell, A. M. . (...) Is elicitation of the autonomic orienting response associated with allocation of processing resources?. Psychophysiology, 26, 560–572]. One easily measurable index of autonomic arousal is the skin conductance response . In the present study, participants studied lists of words and then gave recognition ratings to briefly displayed and masked studied and nonstudied test words while their SCRs were monitored. Results revealed a relationship between recognition ratings and the temporal characteristics of the SCR, supporting the idea that feelings of familiarity are indeed “feelings” in that they stem from autonomic arousal associated with cognitive resource allocation. (shrink)

In the first full-length analysis of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Brian R. Clack presents a fresh and innovative interpretation of Wittgenstein's conception of religion. While previous commentators have tended to sideline the Remarks on Frazer, Clack shows how the key to Wittgenstein's thought on religion lies in these remarks on primitive magico-religious observances. This book shows that Wittgenstein neither embraces expressivism, as it is generally assumed, nor straightforwardly denies instrumentalism. Focusing instead on Wittgenstein's suggestion that magic is (...) somehow akin to metaphysics, a view of ritual as the spontaneous expression of human beings is presented. (shrink)

All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate (...) in pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by a common framework of laws. This solution is rejected by an influential school of political theorists, among whom some of the best known are William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young. According to them, this 'difference-blind' conception of liberal equality fails to deliver either liberty or equal treatment. In its place, they propose that the state should 'recognize' group identities, by granting groups exemptions from certain laws, publicly 'affirming' their value, and by providing them with special privileges or subsidies. In Culture and Equality, Barry offers an incisive critique of these arguments and suggests that theorists of multiculturism tend to misdiagnose the problems of minority groups. Often, these are not rooted in culture, and multiculturalist policies may actually stand in the way of universalistic measures that would be genuinely beneficial. (shrink)

Pt. I. Zeno and the metaphysics of quantity. Zeno's paradox of measure -- Tractarian nominalism -- Logical atoms and combinatorial possibility -- Strict coherence, sigma coherence, and the metaphysics of quantity -- pt. II. Coherent degrees of belief. Higher-order degrees of belief -- A mistake in dynamic coherence arguments? -- Dynamic coherence and probability kinematics -- Updating, supposing, and MAXENT -- The structure of radical probabilism -- Diachronic coherence and radical probabilism -- pt. III. Induction. Carnapian inductive logic for Markov (...) chains -- Carnapian inductive logic and Bayesian statistics -- Bayesian projectability. (shrink)

Almost every country today contains adherents of different religions and different secular conceptions of the good life. Is there any alternative to a power struggle among them, leading most probably to either civil war or repression? The argument of this book is that justice as impartiality offers a solution. According to the theory of justice as impartiality, principles of justice are those principles that provide a reasonable basis for the unforced assent of those subject to them. The object of this (...) book is to set the theory out, explain its rationale, and respond to a variety of criticism that have been made of it. As the second volume of his work-in-progress, A Treatise on Social Justice, this work lies at the heart of a thriving academic debate which the author has played a key role in shaping. (shrink)

This essay investigates whether or not we should think that the things we say are identical to the things our sentences mean. It is argued that these theoretical notions should be distinguished, since assertoric content does not respect the compositionality principle. As a paradigmatic example, Kaplan's formal language LD is shown to exemplify a failure of compositionality. It is demonstrated that by respecting the theoretical distinction between the objects of assertion and compositional values certain conflicts between compositionality and contextualism are (...) avoided. This includes the conflict between eternalism and the semantics of tense, the embedding problems for contextualism about epistemic modals and taste claims, and the conflict between direct reference and the semantics of bound pronouns (and monstrous operators). After presenting the theoretical picture which distinguishes assertoric content from compositional semantic value, some objections to the picture are addressed. In so doing, the objection from King (2003) stemming from apparent complications with the interaction of temporal expressions and attitude reports is assessed and shown to be non-threatening. (shrink)

While increasing numbers of philosophers have argued for eliminating the retributivist elements of criminal justice systems, their arguments often fall short due to internal inconsistency. Some of the best known of these arguments — such as those provided by Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso — rely on the claim that there are moral grounds for rejecting retributivism. In defending this claim, these philosophers typically provide arguments seeking to undermine the type of agent responsibility that they believe is needed to justify (...) retributivism. This is usually followed by an assertion that since the excessive suffering caused by retributivist punishment cannot be justified, it is therefore immoral to preserve remnants of it in our criminal justice systems. This paper — which opposes the moral case against retributivism provided by Pereboom and Caruso, and favors non-moral reasons that recommend rejecting a retributivist approach — is divided into three parts. In part one, I discuss why Pereboom and Caruso are correct in thinking that free will skepticism undercuts the moral justification for retributivism. Part two sets out to explain why their moral case against retributivism fails insofar as it runs afoul of the folk intuitions that are called upon to defend Pereboom’s account of free will skepticism. In part three, I provide a non-moral case against the retributivism that is founded on considerations of self-interest and empathy. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg recently invoked the parent-child analogy in an argument against Christian theism. The argument relies on the claim that a loving parent would never allow her child to feel abandoned in the midst of what feels like gratuitous suffering. In this paper, I offer three clear counterexamples to Wielenberg’s central premise. At the same time, a successful counterexample does not a robust theology of suffering make. To that end, and with a careful eye towards anti-theodical concerns, I defend the (...) need for a more proactive Christian philosophical examination of the role of suffering in a meaningful life. (shrink)