Western science has generally addressed human nature in its most negative aspects-the human potential for violence, the genetic and biochemical bases for selfishness, depression, and anxiety. In contrast, Tibetan Buddhism has long celebrated the human potential for compassion, and is dedicated to studying the scope, expression, and training of compassionate feeling and action. Science and Compassion examines how the views of Western behavioral science hold up to scrutiny by Tibetan Buddhists. Resulting from a meeting between the Dalai Lama, leading Western (...) scholars, and a group of Tibetan monks, the volume includes essays exploring points of difference and overlap between the two perspectives. Opening with the story of the extraordinary meeting in Dharamsala India, the book then takes the reader through the best of what Western behavioral scientific tradition has to say about altruism, ethics, empathy, and compassion-looking at how different elements of this science are challenged by cross-cultural examination. In a series of essays, the participating scientists and scholars ask not only how Tibetan and Western understandings of emotion differ, but how Western behavioral science might broaden and enrich its understanding of human nature to do justice to the study of human emotions. An essay by the Dalai Lama reveals his views on human nature, offering a useful exposition of the Buddhist point of view. Also included are direct excerpts from the dialogues themselves, which are filled with intellectual intensity, moments of convergence, and frequent humor. This extraordinary cross-cultural dialogue about our most essential natures will appeal to scientists, scholars, and the educated lay reader. (shrink)

Abstract. The placebo effect these days is no longer merely the insubstantial, subjective response that some patients have to a sham treatment, like a sugar pill. It has been reconceived as a powerful mind-body phenomenon. Because of this, it has also emerged as a complex reference point in a number of high-stakes conversations about the metaphysical significance of experiences of religious healing, the possible health benefits of being religious, and the feasibility of using double-blind placebo-controlled trials to investigate the efficacy (...) of prayer. In each of these conversations, the placebo effect is always pointing toward some larger issue, serving some larger agenda. The agendas, though, tend to pull in different directions, leading to a situation that feels at once fractured and stalemated. This essay reviews the main areas of interest, and proposes some specific issues where humanistic scholars of religion in particular might be able to introduce constructive and creative new perspectives. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is concerned with “holism” as a German cultural “style” of doing psychobiology in Central Europe between the two world wars. The paper takes its starting point from a critical analysis of Forman's writings on nationalism versus internationalism in interwar German science, and the alleged “accommodation” of interwar German physics to an antiscientific, irrationalist culture. The paper argues that psychobiological holism was not just a reaction against nineteenth-century atomistic or mechanistic approaches to modeling life and mind; it also (...) represented a domestically directed answer from within the German biomedical scientific community to broad religious and cultural “disenchantment.” As such, holistic psychobiology emerges as a phenomenon that challenges us with at least four levels of discourse: experimental/clinical, epistemological/philosophical, existential/religious, and ideological/political. The paper defends the methodological appropriateness of a collective case-study approach to the problem of holism as a multilevel discourse. It concludes by offering a preliminary contextualized analysis of the thought of three representative holistic leaders of the time: behavioral biologist and ethologist Jakob von Uexküll; clinical neurologist Constantin von Monakow; and neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein. (shrink)

This book examines how Western behavioral science--which has generally focused on negative aspects of human nature--holds up to cross-cultural scrutiny, in particular the Tibetan Buddhist celebration of the human potential for altruism, empathy, and compassion. Resulting from a meeting between the Dalai Lama, leading Western scholars, and a group of Tibetan monks, this volume includes excerpts from these extraordinary dialogues as well as engaging essays exploring points of difference and overlap between the two perspectives.

It is widely felt that the sorts of ideas current in modern laterality and split-brain research are largely without precedent in the behavioral and brain sciences. This paper not only challenges that view, but makes a first attempt to define the relevance of older concepts and data to present research programs.

Cultural diversity between residents and staff is significant in aged care homes in many developed nations in the context of international migration. This diversity can be a challenge to achieving effective cross‐cultural communication. The aim of this study was to critically examine how staff and residents initiated effective cross‐cultural communication and social cohesion that enabled positive changes to occur. A critical hermeneutic analysis underpinned by Giddens’ Structuration Theory was applied to the study. Data were collected by interviews with residents or (...) their family and by focus groups with staff in four aged care homes in Australia. Findings reveal that residents and staff are capable of restructuring communication via a partnership approach. They can also work in collaboration to develop communication resources. When staff demonstrate cultural humility, they empower residents from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to engage in effective communication. Findings also suggest that workforce interventions are required to improve residents’ experiences in cross‐cultural care. This study challenges aged care homes to establish policies, criteria and procedures in cross‐cultural communication. There is also the challenge to provide ongoing education and training for staff to improve their cross‐cultural communication capabilities. (shrink)

Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq’s aim in this work is to show, by uncovering the traces of Harrington’s writings in a variety of French eighteenth-century texts, the broad relevance of his thought, despite...

Rhetoric -- Paradox -- Space -- Time -- Utopia -- Progress -- Art -- Ethics.

Excerpt from The Political Writings of James Harrington: Representative Selections Finally, I should like to express my deep gratitude to three scholars who have generously helped me in the preparation of this volume: Carl J. Friedrich, of Harvard University, under whose kind and expert guidance I first undertook the study of James Harrington's political thought; Cecil Driver, of Yale University, who tried (with scant success, I fear) to give my prose style something of the grace and elegance that (...) distinguish his own; and Harry Hubbell, of Yale, whose erudi tion made the identification of even the most obscure classical passages seem easy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

By re-examining the writings of Gadamer and Habermas and their views of earlier interpretive theorists, this book offers a radical challenge to their idea of the 'dialogue' between researchers and their subjects.

Time: A Philosophical Introduction presents the philosophy of time as the central debate between being and the becoming.This core theme brings together the key topics, debates and thinkers, making ideas such as Zeno's paradoxes, the experience of change and temporal flow and the direction and shape of time and time travel, clear and understandable. Alongside a glossary and detailed timeline to further enhance study and understanding, each chapter features: • Extensive lists of further reading in both primary and secondary sources (...) • A chronological listing of key figures, brief biographical data and references • True/false questions, matching, multiple choice, and short answer questions Time is a central philosophical subject, impacting on all many different aspects of philosophy. More technical discussions of issues from mathematics, logic and physics are separated into Technical Interludes,allowing readers to choose their level of difficultly. As a result this comprehensive introduction is essential reading for upper-level undergraduates studying the philosophy of time,metaphysics or the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Who gets to decide what it means to live a healthy lifestyle, and how important a healthy lifestyle is to a good life? As more governments make preventing obesity and diet-related illness a priority, it's become more important to consider the ethics and acceptability of their efforts. When it comes to laws and policies that promote healthy eating--such as special taxes on sugary drinks and the banning of food deemed unhealthy--critics argue that these policies are paternalistic, and that they limit (...) individual autonomy over food choices. In Healthy Eating Policy and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach, Anne Barnhill and Matteo Bonotti show that both paternalistic justifications for healthy eating efforts and anti-paternalistic arguments against them can be grounded in perfectionist views that overly prioritize some values over others. The authors therefore propose a more inclusive, public reason approach to healthy eating policy that will be appealing to those who take pluralism and cultural diversity seriously, by providing a framework through which different kinds of values, including but not limited to autonomy and health, can be factored into the public justification for healthy eating efforts. Additionally, the book adopts a 'farm to fork' approach to the ethics of healthy eating efforts: it engages with theories and debates in political philosophy, considers the implications of different theoretical positions for healthy eating efforts, and then develops a concrete tool for assessing policies that will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers. As well as offering a novel normative analysis of healthy eating policy, the authors offer a new theoretical framework that will be applicable to a wide range of public policy scenarios. (shrink)

Examines how violence has been conceptually and rhetorically put to use in continental social theory.

_Examines how violence has been conceptually and rhetorically put to use in continental social theory._.

There are countless circumstances under which random individuals COULD act together to prevent something morally bad from happening or to remedy a morally bad situation. But when OUGHT individuals to act together in order to bring about a morally important outcome? Building on Philip Pettit’s and David Schweikard’s account of joint action, I will put forward the notion of joint duties: duties to perform an action together that individuals in so-called random or unstructured groups can jointly hold. I will show (...) how this account of joint duties is preferable to one which defends individual duties to cooperate. I then discuss the limits of joint duties and the ways in which one can fail to comply with them. It will become apparent that the circumstances under which individuals in random collectives acquire such joint duties are rare. (shrink)

In this article, I will consider whether, and in what way, doxastic states can harm. I’ll first consider whether, and in what way, a person’s doxastic state can harm her, before turning to the question of whether, and in what way, it can harm someone else.

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, (...) or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals. (shrink)

People hold wildly opposing and very strong views on the question whether mental disorders are brain disorders, and the disagreement is primarily a conceptual one, not one about whether there are,...

Analytic metaphysics has recently discovered biology as a means of grounding metaphysical theories. This has resulted in long-standing metaphysical puzzles, such as the problems of personal identity and material constitution, being increasingly addressed by appeal to a biological understanding of identity. This development within metaphysics is in significant tension with the growing tendency amongst philosophers of biology to regard biological identity as a deep puzzle in its own right, especially following recent advances in our understanding of symbiosis, the evolution of (...) multi-cellular organisms and the inherently dynamical character of living systems. Moreover, and building on these biological insights, the broadly substance ontological framework of metaphysical theories of biological identity appears problematic to a growing number of philosophers of biology who invoke process ontology instead. This volume addresses this tension, exploring to what extent it can be dissolved. For this purpose, the volume presents the first selection of essays exclusively focused on biological identity and written by experts in metaphysics, the philosophy of biology and biology. The resulting cross-disciplinary dialogue paves the way for a convincing account of biological identity that is both metaphysically constructive and scientifically informed, and will be of interest to metaphysicians, philosophers of biology and theoretical biologists. (shrink)