A survey of the literature of philosophy reveals that the distinction between the conceivable and the inconceivable is the ground of many of the more characteristic and interesting theses of philosophy. To cite a few famous cases, it is used variously: by Immanuel Kant, as a basis for determining the limits of human knowledge; by George Berkeley, as a ground for arguing for the nonexistence of material substance; and by René Descartes as a proof for his own existence. This paper (...) is written on the assumption that a distinction which has been so fruitful and useful in the history of philosophy is worthy of examination for its own sake, and in the hope that such an examination might prepare a way through the present relative impasse in substantive metaphysics and philosophical cosmology. What is being attempted is a propaedeutic to future metaphysics, but one which will be justified only if future metaphysics is forthcoming. This paper is an attempt to survey the resources which the human mind possesses within itself for achieving a unified view of reality. As a means I make use of insights from many areas of philosophy, both traditional and analytic. But the end is frankly speculative. (shrink)

Paul Edwards' October 1989 essay, ‘Heidegger's Quest for Being’ illustrates the wisdom of the dictum that the only legitimate criticism of a philosopher's position is a constructive criticism. His negative critique amounts to no more than expressions of distaste, dislike, and displeasure, and nothing of philosophical interest follows from his assertions, as the discourse is primarily an argument ad hominem . He grossly misinterprets Heidegger on some elemental and fundamental matters as well. In particular, he sorely misinterprets what he refers (...) to as the ‘Quest for Being’, which only further contributes to the objectionable character of the essay. (shrink)

Employs philosophy to help illuminate the nature of nursing and provide a holistic view of both nursing and persons.

Glenn Carruthers presents a very detailed and thorough critique of our multi-factorial twostep account of agency to the effect that it would not succeed in being superior and more general as the comparator model (CM). This critique gives us the opportunity to refine some of our points and to make the overall argument clearer. As Carruthers notes, “This move [the distinction between a feeling of agency (FoA) and a judgment of agency (JoA)] usefully limits the explanatory target of the (...) CM to FoA”. This is exactly right in our view but contrasts with a lot of views present in the empirical literature which neglect this important difference. As a paradigmatic example see the claim by Jeannerod that “agency judgements made by the subject are based on the state of the comparator (Jeannerod, 1999, pp. 17-18) (for further experimental conflation of feeling and judgement of agency see e.g.Daprati et al., 1997; Farrer et al., 2003b). Thus, with this point we are not only fighting straw men but show severe limits of the explanatory force of the comparator model. (shrink)

Albert Einstein insists that his epistemology made his discovery of relativity possible. He believed it was his understanding of the relationship of experience and reason that allowed him to reconsider certain “truths” of physics. Specifically, he believed that reality and thought were independent but related, and that conceptual systems are independent of but conditioned by experience. Failure to understand the relation between experience and reason had, Einstein believed, limited progress in science. His understanding of the relation, on the other (...) hand, enabled him to formulate relativity theory and therefore provides one example of the relevance of philosophy to scientific inquiry. When Albert Einstein discussed his discoveries in physics, particularly the theory of relativity, he often began with an explanation of his epistemology and referred to thinkers like Hume and Kant. Einstein may have been a physicist, but he had definite ideas about how we know and regarded epistemological theories as crucial to science, especially to physics. Indeed, he placed such importance on the question of how we know that the discussion of his work in his “Autobiographical Notes” begins with the question, “What, precisely, is ‘thinking?'” (1951, 7). The correct answer to this philosophical question, he believed, makes progress in science possible. The present article focuses on the relationship of the two elements, experience and reason, in Einstein's epistemology. Einstein himself frequently concentrates on what he characterizes as “the eternal antithesis between the two inseparable components of our knowledge, the empirical and the rational” (1934b, 271) in his papers and lectures on physics, for he regards them as independent in origin but related in scientific truth. His insistence that experience and reason do not determine one another yet must be related proved, for him, to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for the formulation of relativity theory and for scientific progress in general. The discussion of the relationship has four parts. First, experience and reason are explained; included in this explanation are Einstein's reasons for maintaining that the two are independent. The second section discusses the connection between the two that produces truth and knowledge. The third section follows with discussion of the way that Einstein believes reason can be both conditioned by and independent of experience. Finally, the significance of this understanding of the relation for relativity theory is examined. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 3rd ed. By Tom Beauchamp and James Childress Moral Theory and Moral Judgments in Medical Ethics, Baruch Brody. Theory and Practice in Medical Ethics. By Glenn C. Graber and David C. Thomasma.

Expounds on the relationship between theory and practice as applied, adjusted, and inaugurated in health care.

Some people of colour feel shame in response to racist incidents. This phenomenon seems puzzling since, plausibly, they have nothing to feel shame about. This puzzle arises because we assume that targets of racism feel shame about their race. However, I propose that when an individual is racialised as non-White in a racist incident, shame is sometimes prompted, not by a negative self-assessment of her race, but by her inability to choose when her stigmatised race is made salient. I argue (...) that this can make sense of some shame responses to racism. My account also helps to highlight some of the emotional and cognitive costs of racism that have their root in shame as well as a new form of hermeneutical injustice and distinctive communicative harms, contributing to a fuller picture of what is objectionable about racism. (shrink)

What are we to make of Western Buddhism? Glenn Wallis argues that in aligning their tradition with the contemporary self-help industry, Western Buddhists evade the consequences of Buddhist thought. This book shows that with concepts such as vanishing, nihility, extinction, contingency, and no-self, Buddhism, like all potent systems of thought, articulates a notion of the "real." Raw, unflinching acceptance of this real is held by Buddhism to be at the very core of human "awakening." Yet these preeminent human truths (...) are universally shored up against in contemporary Buddhist practice, which contradicts the very heart of Buddhism. The author's critique of Western Buddhism is threefold. It is immanent, in emerging out of Buddhist thought but taking it beyond what it itself publicly concedes; negative, in employing the "democratizing" deconstructive methods of François Laruelle's non-philosophy; and re-descriptive, in applying Laruelle's concept of philofiction. Through applying resources of Continental philosophy to Western Buddhism, A Critique of Western Buddhism suggests a possible practice for our time, an "anthropotechnic", or religion transposed from its seductive, but misguiding, idealist haven. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu is arguably one of the twentieth century’s greatest socio-philosophical thinkers and his writings have much to offer anyone interested in the ways that people value, consume and produce architecture. Bourdieu spent much of his life attempting to understand cultural consumption and production through detailed empirical research that included studies of dwellings, art, museums, photography and aesthetics. This book introduces the architectural reader to Bourdieu’s key writings on culture and outlines the ways in which they offer powerful practical tools (...) and novel conceptual frameworks for understanding architectural value, taste, and practice. (shrink)

Setting the scene -- Sentience and the sentient mind -- Special senses and their interpretation Survival strategies -- Social strategies -- Animals of the waters -- Animals of the air -- Animals of the savannah and plains -- Animals of the forests -- Close neighbours -- Our duty of care.

Man controls and dominates the habitat of most animals, both domestic and wild and there is a need for a pragmatic, workable approach to the problem of reconciling animal welfare with economic forces and the needs of man. It is the author's contention that much of the current philosophical discussion of animal welfare is misdirected now that it is possible to measure to some extent what animals think and feel and how much they can appreciate their quality of life. The (...) book deals with farm animals, pets, wild animals and laboratory animals and dicusses their environmental requirements, fear and stress, their response to pain, injury, disease and death, behaviour and aggression, and the implications of biotechnology and genetic engineering. Finally, the book tries to reconcile reverence for life with the inescapability of killing and reviews the prospects of preserving and enhancing quality of life for animals through legislations, education, economic and moral incentives. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 279-301.

John Webster provides a major scholarly analysis, the first in any language, of the final sections of the Church Dogmatics. He focuses on the theme of human agency in Barth's late ethics and doctrine of baptism, placing the discussion in the context of an interpretation of the Dogmatics as an intrinsically ethical dogmatics. The first two chapters survey the themes of agency, covenant and human reality in the Dogmatics as a whole; later chapters give a thorough analysis of Church Dogmatics (...) IV/4 and the posthumously published text The Christian Life. A final chapter examines the significance of Barth's work for contemporary accounts of moral selfhood. The book is important not only for a detailed analysis of a neglected part of Barth's oeuvre, but also because it casts into question much of what has hitherto been written about Barth's ethical dogmatics. (shrink)

Degrees of belief; Dempster's rule of combination; Simple and separable support functions; The weights of evidence; Compatible frames of discernment; Support functions; The discernment of evidence; Quasi support functions; Consonance; Statistical evidence; The dual nature of probable reasoning.

Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic prompted people and institutions to turn to online virtual environments for a wide variety of social gatherings. In this perspectives article, we draw upon our previous work and interviews with Ghanaian Christian leaders to consider implications of this shift. Specifically, we propose that the shift from physical to virtual interactions mimics and amplifies the neoliberal individualist experience of abstraction from place associated with Eurocentric modernity. On the positive side, the shift from physical to virtual environments (...) liberates people to selectively pursue the most fulfilling interactions, free from constraints of physical distance. On the negative side, the move from physical to virtual space necessitates a shift from material care and tangible engagement with the local community to the psychologization of care and pursuit of emotional intimacy in relations of one’s choosing—a dynamic that further marginalizes people who are already on the margins. The disruptions of the pandemic provide an opportunity to re-set social relations, to design ways of being that better promote sustainable collective well-being rather than fleeting personal fulfillment. (shrink)

Narratives of hope are omnipresent in democratic life, but what can they tell us about the structure and orientation of politics? While common, they are often reduced to an all-compassing understanding that overlooks hope's various forms and implications. Democratic theory, however, lacks the theoretical language to attend to these distinctions. The aim of this essay is thus to define a collective and political account of hope and recover the normative basis of a democratic theory of hope. Drawing on the literature (...) on hope and juxtaposing it with extracts from Harvey Milk's ‘The Hope Speech,’ I first distinguish its collective experience before turning to Hannah Arendt. While Arendt rejects a politics of hope that turns away from the world, exploring how she thinks with and against hope provides a theoretically fruitful approach that elevates the in-betweenness of its worldly expression. From that standpoint, I relate the work and experience of hoping with others to her notions of natality, action and promises. These three conceptual touchstones provide the normative basis of a democratic theory of hope and help situate a collective sense of possibility inherent in democratic politics. (shrink)

: This paper responds to the sense of "crisis" or "trouble" that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.

This paper responds to the sense of “crisis” or “trouble” that dominates contemporary feminist debate about the categories of sex and gender. It argues that this perception of crisis has emerged from a fundamental confusion of theoretical and political issues concerning the implications of the sex/gender debate for political representation and agency. It explores the sense in which this confusion is manifest in a debate between Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler.

Introduction: the age of Paine -- Portrait of a failure -- The great American cause -- The peculiar honor of France -- The Age of Reason -- An honest and useful life.

The social construction of space -- The anatomy of taste -- Towards a theory of cultural practice --Fields of cultural production -- Cultural practice, reflexivity and political action.

Introduction Watching the Doctor In some cultures, it is said, villagers cluster around a healer and a patient, eagerly listening to their conversation and ...

It is important for educators to recognise that the various calls to decentre the subject—or self—should not be interpreted as necessarily requiring the removal of the subject altogether. Through the individualism of the Enlightenment the self was centred. This highly individualistic notion of the sovereign self has now been decentred especially through post‐structuralist literature. It is contended here however, that this tendency to decentre the subject has been taken to an extreme at times, especially by some designers of school frameworks (...) and curricula, who have eliminated the subject altogether. Such elimination is argued to contribute to the numbers of youth who are dropping out of school. By adopting an existential perspective and by drawing mainly upon Kierkegaard's subjective truth and Dewey's notion of centeredness, the case is made that for education the subject should not only be included but should actually be centred—at least momentarily. (shrink)

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

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

The separating and isolating tendencies of measuring practices can lead educators to lose sight of the aims and purposes of education. These end purposes can be used to guide and ensure that the activities of educators are educational, and therefore, Biesta recommends there is a need for educators to reconnect with them. This article. explores this notion of a ‘reconnection’ and argues that if educators are to challenge any potentially miseducative measuring practices, then this reconnection must require educators to value (...) and desire particular end purposes. Desires are recognised to be existential in character and are identified as being necessary for initiating actions. It is argued here that this aspect of desires is important for understanding the significance of a ‘reconnection’ because without it the purposes of education may remain only as abstract philosophical ideals. To make a difference and to challenge the isolating and miseducative tendencies of some measuring practices, educators must come to value particular purposes of education, and in addition, they must exercise the courage to enact them. This can be made possible because educators strongly care for and desire the actualisation of the purposes to which they are connected. (shrink)

An account of the conflict between our positive and negative emotional relationships to the Earth and how they will be resolved for the Symbiocene, the next period in the history of the Earth.

Conceived as a solution to clinical dilemmas, and now required by organizations for hospital accreditation, ethics committees have been subject only to small-scale studies. The wide use of ethics committees and the diverse roles they play compel study. In 1999 the University of Pennsylvania Ethics Committee Research Group (ECRG) completed the first national survey of the presence, composition, and activities of U.S. healthcare ethics committees (HECs). Ethics committees are relatively young, on average seven years in operation. Eighty-six percent of ethics (...) committees report that they play a role in ongoing clinical decision making through clinical ethics consultation. All are engaged in developing institutional clinical policy. Although 4.5% of HECs write policy on managed care, 50% of HEC chairs feel inadequately prepared to address managed care. The power and activity of ethics committees parallels the composition of those committees and the relationship of members to their institutions. The role of ethics committees across the nation in making policies about clinical care is greater than was known, and ethics committees will likely continue to play an important role in the debate and resolution of clinical cases and clinical policies. (shrink)

This Book is an important study of Barth's theology of human action, arguing that Barth's work cannot be properly understood unless his interest in human agency is fully appreciated. Throughout, Professor John Webster demonstrates the contemporary vitality of the style and content of Barth's theology. Many of the studies introduce posthumous texts by Barth which have so far received little attention (such as his lectures on Calvin and his ethics lectures), but which substantially revise the received views of Barth's thinking (...) about ethics and human action. Developing from the author's earlier study of Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation (CUP, 1995), this book argues forcefully for Barth's work as a whole to be understood as moral theology. (shrink)

In most forms of evaluation the benefits of preventive health care are narrowly defined in terms of reductions in future morbidity and mortality. Thus it is normally assumed that it is the final health gains alone which bear utility. This discounts the possibility that individuals may derive utility from the process of health care and other outcomes as well as the end health states. Attributes such as anxiety, reassurance, autonomy, regret and hope provide potential benefits or disbenefits in addition to (...) health gains. This paper explores the concept of process utility in the specific context of preventive goods. Characteristics such as information, awareness and autonomy are examined for two preventive goods—hip protectors and mammographic screening. If individuals trade off process attributes for final health outcomes, then to ignore process utility may lead to a sub-optimal allocation of resources. (shrink)

Are there no new ideas to be invented? Are today's ideas really just borrowed from previous times? Postmodernism says this is so, and it's one of the hottest philosophies of today. The book provides an indispensable guide to this often-demanding terrain for readers encountering theories of postmodernism for the first time and places the subject in a broad context. It introduces a wide range of ideas, thinkers, and views yet maintains the readers' focus by linking theory with concrete examples from (...) both "high" and "popular" culture. After completing Teach Yourself Postmodernism , readers will never look at their world the same way again. (shrink)

This article examines the argument that biodiversity is crucial for well-functioning ecosystems and that such ecosystems provide important goods and services to our human societies, in short the ecosystem services argument (ESA). While the ESA can be a powerful argument for nature preservation, we argue that its dominant functionalist interpretation is confronted with three significant problems. First, the ESA seems unable to preserve the nature it claims to preserve. Second, the ESA cannot explain why those caring about nature want to (...) preserve it. Third, the ESA might undermine its own goal because it potentially decreases environmental motivations. (shrink)

Borrowing from evolutionary biology, existentialism, developmental psychology, and social learning theory, an integrated model of human behavior is applied to several forms of self-destructive behavior, to include anorexia nervosa, suicide, substance abuse, and pathological gambling. It is argued that self-destructive behavior is a function of how the individual psychologically construes survival and copes with perceptions of isolation and separation from the environment. The paradox of self-destructive behavior in organisms motivated by self-preservation is resolved by taking note of the fact that (...) self-destruction stems from peopleís efforts to survive psychologically and resolve the subjectóobject duality, even when this places their physical well-being in jeopardy. (shrink)