In informal terms, abductive reasoning involves inferring the best or most plausible explanation from a given set of facts or data. It is a common occurrence in everyday life and crops up in such diverse places as medical diagnosis, scientific theory formation, accident investigation, language understanding, and jury deliberation. In recent years, it has become a popular and fruitful topic in artificial intelligence research. This volume breaks new ground in the scientific, philosophical, and technological study of abduction. It presents new (...) ideas about inferential and information-processing foundations for knowledge and certainty. The authors argue that knowledge arises from experience by processes of abductive inference, in contrast to the view that it arises non-inferentially, or that deduction and inductive generalization are enough to account for knowledge. Much AI research is hypothetical, so the importance of this book is that it reports key discoveries about abduction that have been made as a result of designing, building, testing, and analyzing actual working knowledge-based systems for medical diagnosis and other abductive tasks. The book tells the story of six generations of increasingly sophisticated generic abduction machines, RED-1, RED-2, PEIRCE, MDX2, TIPS, QUAWDS, and the discovery of reasoning strategies that make it computationally feasible to form well-justified composite explanatory hypotheses, despite the threat of combinatorial explosion. The final chapter argues that perception is logically abductive and presents a layered-abduction computational model of perceptual information processing. This book will be of great interest to researchers in AI, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

John R. Schneider explores the problem that animal suffering, caused by the inherent nature of Darwinian evolution, poses to belief in theism. Examining the aesthetic aspects of this moral problem, Schneider focuses on the three prevailing approaches to it: that the Fall caused animal suffering in nature (Lapsarian Theodicy), that Darwinian evolution was the only way for God to create an acceptably good and valuable world (Only-Way Theodicy), and that evolution is the source of major, God-justifying beauty (Aesthetic Theodicy). (...) He also uses canonical texts and doctrines from Judaism and Christianity - notably the book of Job, and the doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, and resurrection - to build on insights taken from the non-lapsarian alternative approaches. Schneider thus constructs an original, God-justifying account of God and the evolutionary suffering of animals. His book enables readers to see that the Darwinian configuration of animal suffering unveiled by scientists is not as implausible on Christian theism as commonly supposed. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Religion under Scrutiny Debating Dogma Theology and Atheology Could Atheism Prove God Doesn't Exist? Could Religion Disprove Atheism?

The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires—for example, the actions of (...) a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works. (shrink)

In this study John Bowlin argues that Aquinas's moral theology receives much of its character and content from an assumption about our common lot: the good we desire is difficult to know and to will, in particular because of contingencies of various kinds - within ourselves, in the ends and objects we pursue, and in the circumstances of choice. Since contingencies are fortune's effects, Aquinas insists that it is fortune that makes good choice difficult. Bowlin then explicates Aquinas's treatment (...) of a number of topics in light of this difficulty: the moral and theological virtues, the first precepts of the natural law, the voluntariness of virtuous action, and the happiness available to us in this life. By noting that Aquinas proceeds with an eye on fortune's threats to virtue, agency, and happiness, Bowlin places him more precisely in the history of ethics, among Aristotle, Augustine, and the Stoics. (shrink)

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world? In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe comprises brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute (...) physical particles in fields of force? The essays in this collection are all related to the broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. Gathering in an accessible manner essays available only in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular value to professionals and upper-level students in philosophy as well as to Searle's more extended audience in such fields as psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

This book covers the first 500 years of the common era. These years witnessed the revivals of Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism, Cynicism, and Pythagoreanism; but by far the most important movement was the revival of Platonism under Plotinus. Here, the historical context of Plotinus is provided including the currents of thought that preceded him and opened the path for him. The presuppositions of the Enneads are made explicit and the thought of Plotinus is reconstructed. The author reorients the expositions of Middle (...) Platonism and neo-Pythagoreanism. He provides a full exposition of Hermeticism and the doctrines of the Chaldean Oracles. He also defends the notion that Philo of Alexandria nourished a Jewish philosophy, not an eclectic mixture. (shrink)

This book covers the first 500 years of the common era. These years witnessed the revivals of Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism, Cynicism, and Pythagoreanism; but by far the most important movement was the revival of Platonism under Plotinus. Here, the historical context of Plotinus is provided including the currents of thought that preceded him and opened the path for him. The presuppositions of the Enneads are made explicit and the thought of Plotinus is reconstructed. The author reorients the expositions of Middle (...) Platonism and neo-Pythagoreanism. He provides a full exposition of Hermeticism and the doctrines of the Chaldean Oracles. He also defends the notion that Philo of Alexandria nourished a Jewish philosophy, not an eclectic mixture. (shrink)

The most important scientific discovery of the present era will come when someone -- or some group -- discovers the answer to the following question: How exactly do neurobiological processes in the brain cause consciousness? This is the most important question facing us in the biological sciences, yet it is frequently evaded, and frequently misunderstood when not evaded. In order to clear the way for an understanding of this problem. I am going to begin to answer four questions: 1. What (...) is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid? (shrink)

Is there a distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions? I think most philosophers who approach Donnellan’s distinction from the point of view of the theory of speech acts, those who see reference as a type of speech act, would say that there is no such distinction and that the cases he presents can be accounted for as instances of the general distinction between speaker meaning and sentence meaning: both alleged uses are referential in the sense that they (...) are cases of referring to objects, the only difference is in the degree to which the speaker makes his intentions fully explicit in his utterance. Such objections are in fact quite commonly made, both in the literature and in the oral tradition, but I have never seen a version of the objection I was fully satisfied with and the main aim of this article is to attempt to provide one. (shrink)

SummaryAttributions of intrinsic Intentionality must be distinguished from other kinds. Intrinsic Intentionality is a natural biological phenomenon, caused by processes in the brain and realized in the structure of the brain. This view makes it possible to see how both naive mentalism and naive physicalism can be true. Intentional causation is crucial to the production and explanation of actions. This form of causation has special logical features not common to other kinds of causation. Teleology is an intrinsic feature of certain (...) biological organisms. (shrink)

As the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, political leaders across Western Europe have increasingly pointed to Muslims' bodily attitudes as indicative of their refusal to join the wider society, and as indicative of the failure of the society to sufficiently carry out programs of political socialization and assimilation. Among the targeted practices have been covering the hair or face , wearing loose, short trousers , refusing to shake hands with those of the opposite sex, and praying in the (...) street . Political actors have made both broader and more specific claims: that these badges of separation show that some Muslims refuse the rules of common social life, and that covering the hair or face shows that the oppression of women, either in particular cases or generally, remains part of Islamic culture. Civic "normality" is thereby portrayed against images of its opposite: people who by their bodily practices show themselves to be visibly and slavishly obedient, unmodern, and sectarian. I examine here how politically useful condemnations have been given the force of law in France. In particular, I trace a shift in the legal justifications for French laws and decisions targeting women's dress during the first decade of the 2000s. The shift, to be found in texts of court decisions and administrative practice, consists in moving from harm-based arguments to values-based ones. (shrink)

This paper attempts to begin to answer four questions. 1. What is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid?

The central intellectual fact of the present era is that knowledge grows. This growth of knowledge is quietly transforming philosophy, making it possible to do a new kind of philosophy. With the abandonment of the epistemic bias in the subject, such a philosophy can go far beyond anything imagined by the philosophy of a half century ago. It begins, not with skepticism, but with what we know about the real world. It begins with such facts as those stated by the (...) atomic theory of matter and the evolutionary theory of biology, as well as such “common sense” facts as that we are all conscious, that we all really do have intentional mental states, that we form social groups and create institutional facts. Such a philosophy is theoretical, comprehensive, systematic, and universal in subject matter. (shrink)

Mental images are one of the more obvious aspects of human conscious experience. Familiar idioms such as “the mind's eye” reflect the high status of the image in metacognition. Theoretically, a defining characteristic of mental images is that they can be analog representations. But this has led to an enduring puzzle in cognitive psychology: How do “mental pictures” fit into a general theory of cognition? Three empirical problems have constituted this puzzle: The incidence of mental images has been unpredictable, innumerable (...) ordinary concepts cannot be depicted, and images typically do not resemble things well. I argue in this paper that theorists have begun to address these problems successfully. I argue further that the critical theoretical framework involves thinking of mental images as information within a cognitive system that is fundamentally adaptive. The main outline of the adaptationist framework was evident in the school of thought known as American Functionalism, but adaptationism has formed a consistent pattern of theorizing across many authors and decades. I briefly describe Functionalism and then present seven basic claims about imagery that were common in the years before the predominance of behaviorism. I then show how these claims have reappeared and been further articulated in modern cognitive psychology. I end with a brief integration of some of the basic elements of an adaptationist theory of imagery. (shrink)

Citizens, political leaders, and scholars invoke the term 'democracy' to describe present-day states without grasping its roots or prospects in theory or practice. This book clarifies the political discourse about democracy by identifying that its primary focus is human activity, not consent. It points out how democracy is neither self-legitimating nor self-justifying and so requires critical, ethical discourse to address its ongoing problems, such as inequality and exclusion. Wallach pinpoints how democracy has historically depended on notions of goodness to ratify (...) its power. The book analyses pivotal concepts of democratic ethics such as 'virtue', 'representation', 'civil rightness', 'legitimacy', and 'human rights' and looks at them as practical versions of goodness that have adapted democracy to new constellations of power in history. Wallach notes how democratic ethics should never be reduced to power or moral ideals. Historical understanding needs to come first to highlight the potentials and prospects of democratic citizenship. (shrink)

The ethical authority carried in the conventions of fairness and human well-being has been widely adopted under the idea of “moral economy,” forming an eclectic and interdisciplinary debate. Significant, though external to this debate, is a corpus of medieval thought which exhibits a fundamental interest in legitimate market protocols, and the political rights and obligations of agents in relation to the common good of the community. This article asserts the imperative status of a customary basis for understanding not just the (...) analytic version of moral economy but the legacy contained in what might be termed the “the moral economy of Aquinas.”. (shrink)

Utilitarianism and rights -- Libertarianism, classical economics and liberty -- Mill's minimalist ethics -- The Rawlsian objection.

Some decisions result in cognitive consequences such as information gained and information lost. The focus of this study, however, is decisions with consequences that are partly or completely noncognitive. These decisions are typically referred to as ‘real-life decisions’. According to a common complaint, the challenges of real-life decision making cannot be met by decision theory. This complaint has at least two principal motives. One is the maximizing objection that to require agents to determine the optimal act under real-world constraints is (...) unrealistic. The other is the precision objection that the numeric requirements for applying decision theory are overly demanding for real-life decisions. Responses to both objections are aired in the History section of this chapter. The maximizing objection is addressed with reference to work by Weirich and Pollock, while the precision objection is countered via a proposal by Kyburg and another by Gärdenfors and Sahlin. However, the Current Research section urges a different response to the precision objection by introducing a comparative version of decision theory. Drawing on Chu and Halpern’s notion of generalized expected utility, this version of decision theory permits many choices to be based on merely comparative plausibilities and utilities. Finally, the Further Research section undertakes an open-ended exploration of three of the assumptions upon which this form of decision theory (and many others) is based: transitivity, independence, and plausibilistic decision rules. (shrink)

Grievance landscapes form in rapidly industrialising contexts where social and environmental impacts are inevitable. This paper focuses on the complex operational and organisational settings in which grievances arise and the industrial pathologies that form around resource development projects. The arguments draw on classic and contemporary literature on “grievance”, “right” and “entitlement”, and the authors’ own sustained engagement with global mining companies and local communities. Our contention is that the grievance landscape is far more critical to understanding environmental, human rights, and (...) mining interactions than the managerial systems that companies construct to signal compliance with voluntary international norms. These managerial systems, or operational-level grievance mechanisms, map the procedural contours of how a local grievance would travel once it is made visible to the company. In practice, however, it is fiction, illegibility and invisibility that dominate. Across the pathologies, the common denominator is the corporate propensity to avoid recognising the legitimacy of a local grievance and the source of its cause. (shrink)

Most people are aware of the health benefits of being physically active. The question arises then why people so easily fall into sedentary habits. The idea developed here is that sedentary behavior is part of a suite of behaviors to reduce levels of physical activity that were strongly selected in the evolutionary past, likely because high levels of physical activity had direct negative consequences for survival. However, hunter‐gatherer populations could not reduce activity indefinitely because of the need to be active (...) to hunt for, and gather food. Hence they never experienced low levels of activity that are damaging to health, and no corresponding mechanism avoiding low activity evolved. Consequently, gene variants promoting efficiency of activity and increased sedentariness were never selected against. Modern society facilitates reduced activity by providing many options to become less active and divorcing food intake from the need to be active. Choosing the less active option is hard wired in the genes; this explains why being sedentary is so common, and why reversing it is so difficult. Incentivizing activity may be enabled using modern technology, but ultimately may only end up replacing one set of health issues with others. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/ekHbUwPw-v4. (shrink)

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.Only an American could have seen in a single lifetime the growth of the whole tragedy of civilization from the primitive forest clearing. An Englishman grows up to think that the ugliness of Manchester and the slums of Liverpool have existed since the beginning of the world.LUCA [Last Universal Common Ancestor], the researchers say, was the common point of origin for three great domains of life—bacteria, archaea, which are bacteria-like single-cell prokaryotes, (...) and the eukaryotes, a domain that includes all plants and animals [including Homo sapiens].Our language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory … [s]ocial cooperation is our key for survival and... (shrink)

Postmodern theory is well placed to provide a useful resource in carrying forward the project of instituting cosmopolitan morality and justice at the local level. It is qualified to contribute because the central problematic of postmodern political theory is shared by cosmopolitanism, namely, how can a multiplicity of divergent autonomous groups, with few, or no shared cultural resources, negotiate and agree to share common spaces? How, can we have political and moral order when the preconditions, normally believed to accompany these, (...) are non existent or unstable. Postmodern thinking also brings to the debate about cosmopolitanism, the resources that will allow for the toleration, openness and ingenuity that build upon eclecticism, pluralism, the celebration of difference, and expressivism in a period experiencing alteration, vulnerability, irony and insecurity. In approach, postmodern thinking shares with cosmopolitanism: a preference for particular narrative over grand narrative; the local over the global; particular over universal; difference over generalisation; eclecticism over absolutism; synchrony over unity; and pluralism over monism. Both approaches are resources that can help us re-learn how neighbours can live together in strange times. (shrink)

THE heterogeneity of the good--its division into the moral good, as virtue, and the natural good, as happiness--is central to Kant's philosophy. In order to clarify and sustain this division, Kant was compelled to specify the valuational characteristics of each kind of good and their relation to one another. But in trying to analyze the good in its heterogeneity Kant faced a terminological difficulty. He could no longer speak simply of "the good" without speaking ambiguously. To avoid this ambiguity Kant (...) decided to refer to the moral good by the term "das Gute," and to the natural good by the term "das Wohl," to moral evil by the term "das Böse," and to natural evil by the term "das Übel." This attempt at linguistic reform was not successful, however, for at least two reasons. First, Kant did not carry his reform of the language far enough. And second, Kant seriously underestimated and quickly fell victim to the power of common usage. The force of linguistic habit, both personal and social, and the wisdom inherent in common usage opposed the adoption of his terminology. (shrink)

It has been argued that we find zeno's paradoxes of motion persuasive because physical time is dense and continuous, While time as we experience it is discrete. But we do not experience time as a succession of distinct, Countable, Consecutively ordered mental "nows." nor is it common to attempt the futile mental task of traversing in thought the infinite number of spatial subintervals in zeno's paradoxes, As has also been suggested. Rather, We find the paradoxes persuasive because there are a (...) number of different conceptual and linguistic problems inherent in them. For instance, Understanding how it is possible for achilles to come to the end of an endless sequence of spatial intervals requires disambiguating different senses of the word "end.". (shrink)

This paper is an analysis of the reasoning behind Megan’s Laws, which pertain to the notification of communities when convicted sex offenders move into the area, especially those offenders who have carried out crimes against children. Liberals tend to criticize these laws and often point to the value of privacy, which they claim would be unacceptably compromised by allowing them. Communitarians tend to endorse these laws and often point to the value of safety, which they claim would be unacceptably compromised (...) were it not for such laws. Both sides also rely on the notion of human dignity in support of their arguments. In this paper, I offer a common foundation for these values and suggest implications regarding the moral acceptability of Megan’s Laws. (shrink)

This paper is an analysis of the reasoning behind Megan’s Laws, which pertain to the notification of communities when convicted sex offenders move into the area, especially those offenders who have carried out crimes against children. Liberals tend to criticize these laws and often point to the value of privacy, which they claim would be unacceptably compromised by allowing them. Communitarians tend to endorse these laws and often point to the value of safety, which they claim would be unacceptably compromised (...) were it not for such laws. Both sides also rely on the notion of human dignity in support of their arguments. In this paper, I offer a common foundation for these values and suggest implications regarding the moral acceptability of Megan’s Laws. (shrink)

The debate over international trade has long pitted “free trade” advocates against those who argue that particular reasons support trade restraints. The newest argument is that open trade leads to a “race to the bottom” in the regulation of health, safety, welfare, and especially labor and environmental concerns, harming the nation’s citizens and undermining national sovereignty. One predicate for this argument – that trade increases competitive pressure on domestic industry – is accurate. That, in turn, will raise the cost of (...) some national policies that otherwise would win political approval. But the remainder of the race to the bottom argument rests on assumptions about regulation, the political process, and trade that do not stand up to examination. While responses to increased international competition will vary, the effects of such competition will generally be consistent with any meaningful notion of sovereignty and also will improve national welfare judged by common economic norms.Le débat sur le commerce international a longtemps opposé les défenseurs du libre échange à ceux qui soutiennent qu’il existe des raisons particulières en faveur de barrières à l’échange. L’argument le plus récent est que le libre échange conduit à une course au “nivellement par le bas” au niveau de la réglementation de la santé, de la sécurité, du bienêtre, et plus particulièrement dans les domaines du travail et de l’environnement. Selon ses tenants, elle aurait pour conséquence de léser les citoyens de la nation et d’affaiblir la souveraineté nationale.Un présupposé de cet argument – selon lequel le commerce accroît la pression concurrentielle subie par l’industrie nationale – est fondé. A son tour cela entraînera une augmentation du coût de certaines politiques nationales qui auraient par ailleurs obtenu un assentiment politique.Mais le reste de l’argumentation du nivellement par le bas repose sur des hypothèses à propos de la réglementation, du processus politique, et du commerce qui ne résistent pas à un examen critique.Bien que les réactions à une concurrence internationale accrue varient, les effets d’une telle concurrence seront généralement cohérents avec toute notion pertinente de souveraineté et amélioreront le bien-être national tel que jugé par les normes économiques standard. (shrink)

Red-2 is a computer program for red-cell antibody identification, a piece of "normal science". Abstracting from Red-2, a general problem solving mechanism is described that is especially suited for performing a form of abductive inference or best explanation finding. A problem solver embodying this mechanism synthesizes composite hypotheses by combining hypothesis parts. This is a common task of intelligence, and a component of scientific reasoning. The work addresses the question, 'How is science possible?' by showing how a simple but powerful (...) form of hypothesis synthesis is computationally feasible. (shrink)

This paper describes in some detail a pattern of justification which seems to be part of common sense logic and also part of the logic of scientific investigations. Calling this pattern “abduction,” the paper lays out an “abduction-prediction” model of scientific inference as an update to the traditional hypothetico-deductive model. According to this newer model, scientific theories receive their claims for acceptance and belief from the abductive arguments that support them, and the processes of scientific discovery aim to develop theories (...) with strong abductive support. It is suggested that the study of diagnosis presents a good opportunity for studying abduction under somewhat simpler and more reproducible conditions than occur in scientific discovery. A computer-based diagnostic system is described which provides a small-scale validation of the abduc-tion-prediction model by showing that a version of it can be made precise enough to be implemented and to perform correctly for diagnosis. (shrink)

Creativity in Whitehead is analogous to prime matter in Aristotle; both principles serve as the counterpart of form. A fundamental difference is that whereas prime matter is purely passive, creativity is pure activity. ;My dissertation focuses on the question whether creativity in some sense exists as numerically one running throughout the entire universe, or only as numerically many in the many individual actual entities which are the basis of his avowed ontological pluralism? ;The most common view in the literature is (...) that creativity exists only as many . Four leading commentators are examined, and each is seen to face a problem with creativity's on-goingness. If creativity exists only in its individuals, then why do new individuals continue to come into existence? Two of the commentators attempt to answer this question by appealing, each in a slightly different way, to creativity's universality; but in both cases it is argued that this form of answer is circular for the pluralist must show that creativity is universal in the future. ;Two other interpreters of creativity are examined who emphasize creativity's causal role in perpetuating the universe. Analysis of their interpretations shows that each in fact requires creativity to be something numerically one throughout the universe , though this view is not made explicit. ;A monistic interpretation is then put forward and defended against a common criticism; namely, that it is inconsistent with Whitehead's ontological pluralism. It is argued that creativity implies process and process implies a plurality of stages. The monistic creativity is not more real than its plurality of stages, since these stages are essential to its being a creating activity. Creativity is merely the counterpart of form; each stage of creativity's process has its own ingredient eternal objects and its own subjective aim at satisfaction in terms of which it is a novel atomic individual . A monistic creativity does not imply ontological monism. Furthermore, since it solves the problem of on-goingness, it should replace the received pluralistic interpretation. (shrink)

The perspectives of academic journal editors regarding self-plagiarism were examined by means of an online survey in which 277 editors of education journals participated. Following the survey, a sub-sample of 14 editors were interviewed. A substantial majority of editors were found to be in accord with the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the APA in believing that re-use of long, verbatim passages or tables, figures and images from an author’s previously published work without appropriate citation is unethical, (...) and most editors viewed less egregious self-borrowing as wrong also. However, numerous editors expressed unease with the general concept of self-plagiarism, and several of them noted contextual factors that can make limited self-plagiarism acceptable. A clear majority indicated support for a common policy regarding self-plagiarism but had doubts about the feasibility of getting agreement on a comprehensive statement. (shrink)

We make three points: (1) Overlooked studies of nonhuman communication originally inspired, but no longer support, the blinkered view of mental continuity that Penn et al. critique. (2) Communicative discontinuities between animals and humans might be rooted in social-cognitive discontinuities, reflecting a common lacuna in Penn et al.'s relational reinterpretation mechanism. (3) However, relational reinterpretation need not be a qualitatively new representational process.

This paper addresses what some view as a progressive and decades-long devaluing of the liberal arts in our educational institutions and society at large. It draws attention to symptoms of this trend and possible contributing factors, identifies benefits commonly attributed to the liberal arts, and then shows how insights from recent research on neuroplasticity provide good reason to believe that a traditional liberal education has positive effects on a person's brain. The paper supports the thesis that well-designed liberal arts courses (...) can literally transform students' minds and lives as a result of unique and synergistic brain processes activated and strengthened by the leaming experiences such courses provide. It finishes with recommendations to help reinvigorate and promote the value of liberal education. (shrink)

In a free society, it is common to hear the request that one â ~keep an open mind.â Just what exactly is it, however, to keep an open-mind? How does open-mindedness function? How does it square with important personal commitments? These issues are particularly acute when it comes to matters of religious belief in which open-mindedness can sound to the pious a bit too much like doubt. Certainly, in a discipline whose discourse remains rational dialogue, effort should be spent discerning (...) the contours of this virtue, especially in light of its formal role in establishing responsiveness to new inquiries in matters philosophical and religious. This book provides a collection of essays serving to promote conversation about open-mindedness, its virtue, and its role and application in problems in the philosophy of religion in particular. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

Civility is an essential feature of health care, as it is in so many other areas of human interaction. The article examines the meaning of civility, reviews its origins, and provides reasons for its moral significance in health care. It describes common types of uncivil behavior by health care professionals, patients, and visitors in hospitals and other health care settings, and it suggests strategies to prevent and respond to uncivil behavior, including institutional codes of conduct and disciplinary procedures. The article (...) concludes that uncivil behavior toward health care professionals, patients, and others subverts the moral goals of health care and is therefore unacceptable. Civility is a basic professional duty that health care professionals should embrace, model, and teach. (shrink)

The most important distinctively American contribution to philosophy is the pragmatist tradition. In this short, lucid, and completely convincing exposition, Professor John P. Murphy begins by exploring the roots of this tradition as found in the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey, demonstrating its power and originality. Historians of philosophy will appreciate the insight Murphy brings to these figures, but the special value of this book lies in his discussion of how the pragmatist spirit has flowered in contemporary philosophy (...) in the work of Quine, Rorty, and Davidson.Throughout, Murphy emphasizes the logic and structure of the views held by these six philosophers and what it is they have in common that makes their work especially “pragmatist.” There is no better introduction to this historical tradition and perhaps no better way into the philosophies of the contemporaries whom Murphy discusses.Interest in pragmatist ideas is undergoing a revival at present, and this book shows us why. It will be of interest to both historians of philosophy and students of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This volume brings together sixty items from 1933 and 1934, including Dewey's Terry Lectures at Yale University. With the publication of the lectures as A Common Faith, Dewey encouraged his readers to see religion as human experience in a naturalistic and humanistic setting. He proposed that institutional religions would do well to focus on ideal possibilities in the present time and place rather than relying on the supernatural and the hereafter. Book jacket.

Loneliness in medicine is a serious problem not just for patients, for whom illness is intrinsically isolating, but also for physicians in the contemporary condition of medicine. We explore this problem by investigating the ideal physician-patient relationship, whose analogy with friendship has held enduring normative appeal. Drawing from Talbot Brewer and Nir Ben-Moshe, we argue that this appeal lies in a dynamic form of companionship incompatible with static models of friendship-like physician-patient relationships: a mutual refinement of embodied virtue that draws (...) both persons together. The ideal physician-patient relationship has a dialectical character that fosters each member's improvement of phenomenologically recognizing and embodying moral virtues. A key component of this dynamic is a commitment to the common goal of the patient's health, realized through joint interactivities and conversations over time. The physician's presence to the patient's suffering—understood best as an alienating phenomenological condition for the patient—orients and discloses possibilities for virtuous caregiving by structuring the meanings of the goals, conversations, and joint narrative constitutive of their relationship. Presence to suffering, paradoxically, is perhaps an important prerequisite for this dynamic partnership. These activities dialectically build an interpretive horizon of understanding through which moral goods and character refinement—in and for the other—may become revealed for both persons in their shared being-in-the-world. This analysis of suffering, mood, and revealing of (possible) moral goods has implications for addressing the modern problem of loneliness for patients and physicians, who are increasingly inhibited from building flourishing relationships with each other. (shrink)