Fifteen essays by as many contributors with a summative introduction by Edie. The contributors are Dreyfus, Adamczewski, Earle, Compton, J. E. Smith, J. M. Anderson, Natanson, Silber, Crosson, Molina, G. E. Myers, Tillman, W. J. Richardson, Langan, and Findlay. All of the essays were presented in one form or another at one of the last three meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Some of them have been considerably reworked and expanded, the most important of which is John (...) Silber's fifty-seven page paper, "Being and Doing." Silber subjects the contemporary analytical version of voluntary responsibility, as found paradigmaticaliy in H. L. A. Hart's work, to a severe critique, arguing that a notion of status responsibility which involves following intentions and motives back to their pre-thematic roots in attitudes and a whole style of life, or way of being, is more consonant with human experience and nature than the antiseptic notion of responsibility developed by Hart. Even Hampshire takes his lumps at Silber's hands. Other excellent papers include Findlay's "Essential Probabilities," which can be read as a plea for a material logic, and Richardson's "Kant and the Late Heidegger," which uses Heidegger's reflection on the Kantian problematic to examine the issue of the continuity between the early and the later Heidegger. Not all of the essays approach the standards of these three, but for a collection of papers that have only the meeting of the same society in common, this is better than most.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is a competent and sympathetic introduction to the life and thought of Leibniz. It reads, on the surface, like an encyclopedia article or a chapter in a critical history of philosophy. But there is a meta-critical strain governing the exposition. Within a limited space, Van Peursen has molded a presentation which manages to balance considerations of what was central to Leibniz' philosophy from Leibniz' point of view with issues which have special relevance for contemporary philosophy. For example, Van Peursen (...) devotes his longest chapter, "The Logic of an Optimal World: Truth, Freedom, God," to the teleological and ethical roots of Leibniz' ontology. Leibniz preferred to stress the nature/grace and best-of-all-possible-worlds aspects of this teleological ontology. But contemporary philosophy has difficulty relating to this way of expressing the Platonic notion of the primacy of the good over the true. So Van Peursen, while not neglecting Leibniz' focus, also draws attention to a modern reworking of this point: the idea, familiar to contemporary semiotic, that syntactics must ultimately be grounded in pragmatics. Beginning students will find this introduction readable and genuinely helpful. Teachers of philosophy will benefit from the author's historical acuity as well as the clarity of exposition. An index and a brief bibliography are included.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Eleven previously published essays presenting a moderately unified argument in favor of the general conception of what Jonas calls the "Philosophy of Life," as well as detailed arguments pointing in the direction of a non-dualistic, realistic, and non-naturalistic philosophy of mind. The "nons" are deliberately placed, as Jonas spends the better part of the book questioning the tenability of dualistic and, especially, materialistic and mechanistically oriented theories of mind. With extraordinary historical sensitivity—at times threatening to dissolve a problem by laying (...) bare the conceptual confusions which surrounded its origins—and with a better than working knowledge of biology and physiology, not to mention anthropology, Jonas argues, on the one hand, that the clues to the dynamism and structure of mind are to be found in such organic features as sentience, motility, and emotion: e.g., the conceptual strands that unite in the notions of causality and truth are rooted in the respective experiences of force and resistance, and vision. On the other hand, Jonas argues for the irreducibility of the subject-object structure of man's relation to nature on the grounds that this is the necessary burden of subjectivity. In all, the book is an impressive performance.—E. A. R. (shrink)

The book is designed as an introductory text in the history of pre-Christian religion. The religions are examined in their socio-historical context and are treated as religions in the broad sense in which they provided total frameworks of meaning for a particular culture. The religions treated are the standard ones: Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek. Loew's technique is to examine in detail the literature of each culture and to reconstruct from it the sacred space in which the people of (...) that culture must have moved. His categories of myth, sacred history, and philosophy are meant to be more or less adequate characterizations of the shape of the expression of the sacred in the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek cultures respectively. Of course there is overlap, e.g., the obviously mythic roots of Greek literature. Loew is best on the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian religions. When he comes to the Hebraic religions he oversimplifies the picture to a considerable degree, as is the case also with his treatment of the Greeks. But this is perhaps a justifiable procedure in an introductory text. Each chapter concludes with a brief but helpfully annotated bibliography.--E. A. R. (shrink)

Eighteen of Gurwitsch's papers, all previously published between 1929 and 1961; nine of the papers appear in English for the first time. With the exception of the mainly expository "The Last Work of Edmund Husserl," in which Gurwitsch limns the structure of Husserl's Krisis, all of the papers are serious forays into "constitutive" as distinguished from "existential" phenomenology. At times Gurwitsch goes about his business historically, engaging Descartes, Kant, a good deal of Hume, James, and, of course, Husserl in dialogue. (...) In almost half of the papers Gestalt psychology, the psychological and biological work of Gelb and Goldstein, and the distinctively psychological work of James are the focus. The dominant theme of all the studies is consciousness and an exploration of the logical rather than existential problematic of intentionality. Gurwitsch wishes his work to be assessed as part of the Husserlian program of radically founding in the constituting consciousness all the systematized noematic fruits, i.e., sciences, of this same consciousness.. He is, however, a self-confessed heretic from the strict Husserlian point of view, having abandoned the doctrines of hyletic data, and, more interestingly, the egological root of consciousness.—E. A. R. (shrink)

"Hegel and the Foundations of Literary Theory: Do the various forms of literary theory - deconstruction, Marxism, new historicism, feminism, post-colonialism, and cultural/digital studies - have anything in common? If so, what are the fundamental principles of theory? What is its ideological orientation? Can it still be of use to us in understanding basic intellectual and ethical dilemmas of our time? These questions continue to perplex both students and teachers of literary theory. Habib finds the answers in theory's largely unacknowledged (...) roots in the thought of German philosopher Hegel. Hegel's insights continue to frame the very terms of theory to this day. Habib explains Hegel's complex ideas and how they have percolated through the intellectual history of the last century. This book will interest teachers and students of literature, literary theory and the history of ideas, illuminating how our modern world came into being, and how we can better understand the salient issues of our own time"--. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is a pertinent example of a framework that has been stretched over many conceptual contexts and that has been applied to a wide variety of empirical phenomena. A pressing issue involves the scope of application of stakeholder theory, however, because it is not a comprehensive ethical scheme or problem-solving algorithm. We begin our search for the boundaries of stakeholder management by identifying a presently under-acknowledged yet major underlying assumption, notably that the approach is rooted in voluntary action and (...) association. Building on this presumption, we argue that firm - stakeholder relationships are best to be understood in contractualist terms; i.e. as voluntary arrangements between two or more parties seeking mutual benefit. This assertion subsequently allows us to identify three boundary conditions applying to stakeholder theory: (1) the parties should be sufficiently autonomous; (2) their interests need to be alignable; and (3) they should be capable of living up to their commitments. We substantiate these criteria with evidence from a collective case study of buyer - supplier relationships in the Dutch manufacturing sector, demonstrating that the stakeholder management model fails when these boundary criteria are violated. (shrink)

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education (CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender relations. A threefold model of gender structures, relations (...) of power, production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical literature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine university provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university. (shrink)

This distinctive and contemporary departure from hackneyed discussions of political theory introduces readers to a contemporary personalism rooted in the work of Bartolome de Las Casas and emerging again in the contributions of Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin as well as the liberation theology of Gustavo Guiterrez and Jon Sobrino. Thomas R. Rourke and Rosita A. Chazarreta Rourke introduce readers to new sources of personalism by investigating and revising the intellectual history of this theory and its development.

Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to suggest that at least one strain of what has come to be called “stakeholder theory” has roots that are deeply libertarian. We begin by explicating both “stakeholder theory” and “libertarian arguments.” We show how there are libertarian arguments for both instrumental and normative stakeholder theory, and we construct a version of capitalism, called “stakeholder capitalism,” that builds on these libertarian ideas. We argue throughout that strong notions of “freedom” and “voluntary action” are the (...) best possible underpinnings for stakeholder theory, and in doing so, seek to return “stakeholder theory” to its managerial and libertarian roots found in Freeman (1984). (shrink)

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

In the ancient Arabic dictionaries, the root “ḍ-r-r” has three main meanings: “to harm”, “to gather” and “strength”. In the course of history, many words have been derived from these root meanings and have acquired various meanings. In the present article, the words derived from the root “ḍ-r-r” are semantically analyzed. First, the etymological origins of the root as well as its compounds and their meanings in early Arabic dictionaries are analyzed. In this context, it was (...) aimed to determine the literal and figurative meanings they acquired over time. In doing so, Arabic poetry of the Jahiliyyah period and hadiths were also utilized. Afterwards, in order to determine the semantic meaning pattern of the root “ḍ-r-r” and its compounds, words containing antonymous and proximate meaning relations with this root were included and their semantic relations were compared. While words have “essential meanings” that they always carry and do not lose no matter which system they enter, there are also “relative meanings” that do not originate from the root of words but arise from the system of relations they are in. For this reason, in the next stage, it was aimed to determine the relative meanings of the related words in the Qur’anic context by including the uses of the root “ḍ-r-r” and its derivatives in the Qur’an. Finally, various uses of words that have a semantically antonymous or proximate relationship with the root “ḍ-r-r” and its de-rivatives in the Qur’an were presented and their semantic pattern was tried to be determined. (shrink)

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

'Most of us are still groping for answers about what makes life worth living, or what confers meaning on individual lives', writes Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. 'This is an essentially modern predicament.' Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis, analysing the writings of such thinkers as Augustine, Descartes, Montaigne, Luther, and many others. This then serves as a starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Taylor argues that modern (...) subjectivity has its roots in ideas of human good, and is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and attain the good. The modern turn inwards is far from being a disastrous rejection of rationality, as its critics contend, but has at its heart what Taylor calls the affirmation of ordinary life. He concludes that the modern identity, and its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, is far richer in moral sources that its detractors allow. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defence of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics. (shrink)

In lowland South America, sacred food plants have taken an ethnographic back seat to psychotropic plants. Yet, such foods are often central to local understandings of mythology, healing, ceremony, and spiritual well‐being. In this article, I elucidate the sacred nature of two kinds of food plants that occupy special sociocultural spaces among the A’uwẽ (Xavante) in Central Brazil: cultivated maize and collected root vegetables. Although these are not the only sacred food plants in A’uwẽ society, they are iconic because (...) they are considered uniquely appropriate gifts during certain ceremonial and ritual events. I also explore how I conducted research about ceremonial ethnobotanical topics in a society that considers most sacred and spiritual knowledge privileged. Both sacred plant foods highlighted here continue to be commonly given as presents expressing gratitude to others during popular ceremonial occasions, thereby maintaining them in the collective consciousness as integral components of contemporary social life. (shrink)

Detection of deception and confirmation of truth telling with conventional polygraphy raised a host of technical and ethical issues. Recently, newer methods of recording electromagnetic signals from the brain show promise in permitting the detection of deception or truth telling. Some are even being promoted as more accurate than conventional polygraphy. While the new technologies raise issues of personal privacy, acceptable forensic application, and other social issues, the focus of this paper is the technical limitations of the developing technology. Those (...) limitations include the measurement validity of the new technologies, which remains largely unknown. Another set of questions pertains to the psychological paradigms used to model or constrain the target behavior. Finally, there is little standardization in the field, and the vulnerability of the techniques to countermeasures is unknown. Premature application of these technologies outside of research settings should be resisted, and the social conversation about the appropriate parameters of its civil, forensic, and security use should begin. (shrink)

A sequent root-first proof-search procedure for intuitionistic propositional logic is presented. The procedure is obtained from modified intuitionistic multi-succedent and classical sequent calculi, making use of Glivenko’s Theorem. We prove that a sequent is derivable in a standard intuitionistic multi-succedent calculus if and only if the corresponding prefixed-sequent is derivable in the procedure.

Though nominalism is a major presupposition in academia and western society, R. Scott Smith shows that nominalism undermines all knowledge whatsoever. In light of the many clear examples of knowledge that we do have, nominalism should be replaced by a realist view of properties.

SummaryPedigree structures of 161 uncle/niece-aunt/nephew and 4420 first cousin consanguineous marriages registered during the 19th and 20th centuries in two large and very different Spanish regions have been analysed and their genetic consequences evaluated. The frequencies of the different pedigree subtypes within each degree of relationship were quite similar in both populations despite significant heterogeneity in inbreeding patterns. The mean X-linked inbreeding coefficient for each type of cousin mating was calculated and compared to that expected for autosomal genes. The effect (...) of genealogical structure on theFx/Fradio was compared to different cultural populations worldwide. Preferentiality and avoidance of close consanguinity along with specific types of pedigrees are discussed on the basis of premarital migration and sociocultural rules still deeply rooted in certain human groups. By admitting that the observedFxcoefficient is usually higher thanFin most human populations some remarks have been made in terms of population genetic risk. (shrink)

The dominance of capitalism, through the hegemony of neoliberal ideology, is maintained as an illusion through the use of four main strategies. In order to obtain the consent of the population, mass schooling tends to produce graduates who accept this illusion because they are vulnerable to these strategies and cannot imagine a post-capitalist world. However, through education, people can better appreciate the problematic reality of unbridled capitalism, such as the degradation of the global ecosystem. It is argued here that programs (...) which are designed to address these problems, such as Education for Sustainable Development, are dependent upon citizens developing a critical consciousness. This consciousness is firstly able to confront the four strategies maintaining capitalism’s dominance. It is argued that an education which engages with spiritual ideals and values regarding how a good life is understood in an aspirational sense, enables people to engage with the dominance of capitalism and to envision other possibilities for society in which capitalism is harnessed to serve the greater public good. This requires education’s ontology – as the character of students – to critically read the world, imagine possibilities which can constitute a good life, and are courageous to enact the social actions required to make these ideals a reality. This is made possible by an education which returns to the spiritual roots of ideals. (shrink)

Phillip R. Sloan - Performing the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 229-253 Preforming the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori Phillip R. Sloan Situating Kant's philosophical project in relation to the natural sciences of his day has been of concern to several scholars from both the history of science and the history of (...) philosophy. Historians of philosophy have displayed an expanded awareness of, and interest in, the importance of the scientific context of the period in which Kant carried out his "Copernican" revolution. Most commonly among philosophers, this interest has been analyzed in relation to Kant's concerns with the foundations of mechanics, matter theory, and the epistemology of Newtonian science, with the central text of interest being the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe. On the other hand, historians of philosophy and historians of science, interested in the issues of the third Critique and in the several papers of Kant dealing with biological and anthropological issues, have emphasized the unified nature of Kant's inquiries into the natural sciences, and the importance of his continued interest in the life and human sciences alongside his interests in the foundations of the physical sciences. The effort to understand the unity of Kant's.. (shrink)

The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition emerged within the context of Muslim political dominance in Bengal. As such, perceptions of Muslims embedded within Gauḍīya literature are part and parcel of their worldview. Muslims, however, have to construct perceptions of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas from the ground up, utilizing scriptural references emerging in a distinctively different milieu and putting them into conversation with scholarly methodologies for cross-cultural engagement. This paper articulates a contemporary method for Muslim engagement with Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas that is rooted in a decolonial (...) solidarity of respect for the internal logics of religious traditions. (shrink)

The book is designed as an introductory text in the history of pre-Christian religion. The religions are examined in their socio-historical context and are treated as religions in the broad sense in which they provided total frameworks of meaning for a particular culture. The religions treated are the standard ones: Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek. Loew's technique is to examine in detail the literature of each culture and to reconstruct from it the sacred space in which the people of (...) that culture must have moved. His categories of myth, sacred history, and philosophy are meant to be more or less adequate characterizations of the shape of the expression of the sacred in the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian, Hebraic, and Greek cultures respectively. Of course there is overlap, e.g., the obviously mythic roots of Greek literature. Loew is best on the Sumero-Babylonian and Egyptian religions. When he comes to the Hebraic religions he oversimplifies the picture to a considerable degree, as is the case also with his treatment of the Greeks. But this is perhaps a justifiable procedure in an introductory text. Each chapter concludes with a brief but helpfully annotated bibliography.--E. A. R. (shrink)

This paper explores a pair of puzzling and controversial topics in the history of late nineteenth-century philosophy: the psychologism debates, and the nature of neo-Kantianism. Each is sufficientl...

Benjamin Barber is one of America's preeminent political theorists. He has been a significant voice in the continuing debate about the nature and role of democracy in the contemporary world. A Passion for Democracy collects twenty of his most important writings on American democracy. Together they refine his distinctive position in democratic theory. Barber's conception of "strong democracy" contrasts with traditional concepts of "liberal democracy," especially in its emphasis on citizen participation in central issues of public debate. These essays critique (...) the "thin representation" of liberal democracy and buttress the arguments presented in Barber's twelve books, most recently in his well-received Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Re-shaping the World. In these pieces, Barber argues for participatory democracy without dependence on abstract metaphysical foundations, and he stresses the relationship among democracy and civil society, civic education, and culture. A Passion for Democracy is divided into four sections. In the first, "American Theory: Democracy, Liberalism, and Rights," Barber addresses issues of ongoing relevance to today's debates about the roots of participatory democracy, including individualism vs. community, the importance of consent, and the irrelevance of Marxism. Essays in the second section, "American Practice: Leadership, Citizenship, and Censorship" provide a "strong democracy" critique of American democratic practice. "Education for Democracy: Civic Education, Service, and Citizenship" applies Barber's theories to three related topics and includes his much-discussed essay "America Skips School." The final section, "Democracy and Technology: Endless Frontier or End of Democracy?" provides glimpses into a future that technology alone cannot secure for democracy. In his preface, Barber writes: "In these essays... I have been hard on my country. Like most ardent democrats, I want more for it than it has achieved, despite the fact that it has achieved more than most people have dared to want." This wide-ranging collection displays not only his passion for democracy, but also his unique perspective on issues of abiding importance for the democratic process. (shrink)

Background As our society is ageing, nursing homes are finding it increasingly difficult to deal with an expanding population of patients with dementia and a decreasing workforce. A potential answer to this problem might lie in the use of technology. However, the use and application of surveillance technology in dementia care has led to considerable ethical debate among healthcare professionals and ethicists, with no clear consensus to date. Aim To explore how surveillance technology is viewed by care professionals and ethicists (...) working in the field, by investigating the ideal application of surveillance technology in the residential care of people with dementia. Methods Use was made of the concept mapping method, a computer-assisted procedure consisting of five steps: brainstorming, prioritising, clustering, processing by the computer and analysis. Various participants (ranging from ethicists to physicians and nurses) were invited on the basis of their professional background. Results The views generated are grouped into six categories ranging from the need for a right balance between freedom and security, to be beneficial and tailored to the resident, and clearly defined procedures to competent and caring personnel, active monitoring and clear normative guidance. The results are presented in the form of a graphic chart. Conclusions There appears to be an inherent duality in the views on using surveillance technology which is rooted in the moral conflict between safety and freedom. Elaboration of this ethical issue has proved to be very difficult. (shrink)

Compassion is a prosocial motivation that is critical to the development and survival of the human species. Cultivating compassion involves developing deep wisdom, insight, and understanding into the nature and causes of human suffering; and wisdom and commitment to take positive action to alleviate suffering. This perspective piece discusses how compassion relates to the context of modern technology, which has developed at a rapid pace in recent decades. While advances in digital technology build on humankind’s vast capacity to develop practical (...) tools that promise to enrich our lives and improve our social connections, in reality the effects are often far from benign. The motives underlying the development of many contemporary digital platforms seem rooted in competitiveness and capitalism; while modern social media and online platforms are having a profound and pervasive impact on the mental health and wellbeing of humans around the globe. Nonetheless, digital technology holds considerable potential to promote compassionate insight, wisdom, and prosocial behavior. We reflect on the current state of technology within human society and examine the notion of compassionate technologies; discuss how contemporary paradigm shifts such as the inclusive design movement may be harnessed to build tools and platforms that promote collective good and increase prosocial behavior; and highlight examples of initiatives that are harnessing modern technology to advance democracy, collective knowledge, and personal freedoms and agency. (shrink)

Participant safety and data integrity, critical in trials of new investigational drugs, are achieved through honest participant report and precision in the conduct of procedures. HIV prevention post-trial access studies in middle-income countries potentially offer participants many benefits including access to proven efficacious but unlicensed technologies, ancillary care that often exceeds local standards-of-care, financial reimbursement for participation and possibly unintended benefits if participants choose to share or sell investigational drugs. This case study examines the possibility that this combination of benefits (...) may constitute an undue inducement for some participants in middle-income countries, where economic challenges are prevalent. A case study is presented of a single participant in a cohort of 382 participants who used concealment, fabrication and deception to ensure eligibility for a post-trial access study of an unlicensed HIV prevention technology at potential risk to her health and that of her fetus. A root cause analysis revealed her desire to access HIV prevention during an unplanned pregnancy with a partner whose faithfulness was in question. Researchers should consider implementation of systems to efficiently identify similar cases without inconveniencing the majority of participants Trial registration number NCT01691768. (shrink)

Originally published in 1963, this classic book is a rethinking of the history of Western political philosophy. Charles N. R. McCoy contrasts classical-medieval principles against the "hypotheses" at the root of modern liberalism and modern conservativism. In Part I, "The Classical Christian Tradition from Plato to Aquinas," the author lays the foundation for a philosophical "structure" capable of producing "constitutional liberty." Part II, "The Modern Theory of Politics from Machiavelli to Marx," attempts to show, beginning with Machiavelli, the reversal (...) and destruction of the pre-modern "structure" postulated in Part I. McCoy stresses the great contributions of Aristotle to political thought found in his more familiar Ethics and Politics, but also includes key insights drawn from Metaphysics and Physics. These contributions are developed and perfected, McCoy argues, by Augustine and Aquinas. Two other important features include McCoy's epistemological insights into Plato's work that will be new to many readers and the author's juxtaposition of traditional natural law with "the modernized theory of natural law." The modern account of autonomous natural law, in McCoy's view, helps explain the totalitarian direction of key aspects of modern political thought. This classic volume on the origins of modern philosophical thought remains a standard in the field. (shrink)

Arthur Miller is one of the most important and enduring playwrights of the last fifty years. This new edition of The Theater Essays has been expanded by nearly fifty percent to include his most significant articles and interviews since the book's initial publication in 1978. Within these pages Miller discusses the roots of modern drama, the nature of tragedy, and the state of contemporary theater; offers illuminating observations on Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, O'Neill, and Williams; probes the different approaches and attitudes (...) toward theater in Russia, China, and at home; and, of course, provides valuable insights into his own vast dramatic corpus. For this edition the literary chronology and cast and production information have been updated, and an extensive new bibliography has been added. The Theater Essays confirms Arthur Miller's standing as a brilliant, eloquent commentator on drama and culture. No one interested in theater should be without this definitive collection. (shrink)

Background Contemporary societies are rife with moral disagreement, resulting in recalcitrant disputes on matters of public policy. In the context of ongoing bioethical controversies, are uncompromising attitudes rooted in beliefs about the nature of moral truth?Methods To answer this question, we conducted both exploratory and confirmatory studies, with both a convenience and a nationally representative sample (total N = 1501), investigating the link between people’s beliefs about moral truth (their metaethics) and their beliefs about moral value (their normative ethics).Results Across (...) various bioethical issues (e.g., medically-assisted death, vaccine hesitancy, surrogacy, mandatory organ conscription, or genetically modified crops), consequentialist attitudes were associated with weaker beliefs in an objective moral truth. This association was not explained by domain-general reflectivity, theism, personality, normative uncertainty, or subjective knowledge.Conclusions We find a robust link between the way people characterize prescriptive disagreements and their sensibility to consequences. In addition, both societal consensus and personal conviction contribute to objectivist beliefs, but these effects appear to be asymmetric, i.e., stronger for opposition than for approval. (shrink)

This article considers the positions of Gabriel Marcel and Thomas Aquinas on self-knowledge and argues for a synthesis between them. The basis of this Marcelian-Thomistic synthesis is their common understanding of the self as inherently in relation to that which is other and in the necessity of activation for self-knowledge to occur. The divergence between these thinkers occurs in regard to the process of activation. While Aquinas presents an Aristotelian account of activation rooted in his understanding of cognition, Marcel offers (...) a broader vision of activation that gives pride of place to intersubjectivity. A Marcelian-Thomistic synthesis preserves the Aristotelian systematization of Aquinas, while adding Marcel’s expanded understanding of activation and his prioritization of intersubjectivity. Such a synthesis allows for a treatment of self-knowledge that is metaphysically systematic and true to lived experience. (shrink)

The Conceptual Roots of Mathematics is a comprehensive study of the foundation of mathematics. J.R. Lucas, one of the most distinguished Oxford scholars, covers a vast amount of ground in the philosophy of mathematics, showing us that it is actually at the heart of the study of epistemology and metaphysics.

"Knowing how we know" is the subject of this book. Its authors present a new view of cognition that has important social and ethical implications, for, they assert, the only world we humans can have is the one we create together through the actions of our coexistence. Written for a general audience as well as for students, scholars, and scientists and abundantly illustrated with examples from biology, linguistics, and new social and cultural phenomena, this revised edition includes a new afterword (...) by Dr. Varela, in which he discusses the effect the book has had in the years since its first publication. (shrink)

R J W Evans: Political Chronology; IntroductionJan Rychlík: Czech-Slovak Relations in Czechoslovakia, 1918-39Eagle Glassheim: Ambivalent Capitalists: The Roots of Fascist Ideology among Bohemian Nobles, 1880-1938Melissa Feinberg: The New 'Woman Question': Gender, Nation, and Citizenship in the First Czechoslovak RepublicRobert B. Pynsent: The Literary Representation of the Czechoslovak 'Legions' in RussiaCatherine Albrecht: Economic Nationalism in the Sudetenland, 1918-38R.J.W. Evans: Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks: Some Mutual Perceptions, 1900-50Mark Cornwall: 'A Leap into Ice-Cold Water': the Manoeuvres of the Henlein Movement in Czechoslovakia, 1933-8Vít (...) Smetana: Old Wine in New Bottles? British Policy towards Czechoslovakia, 1938-9 and 1947-8Tatjana Tönsmeyer: The German Advisers in Slovakia, 1939-45: Conflict or Co-Operation?Mark Dimond: The Sokol and Czech Nationalism, 1918-48Jiri Kocian: The Czechs versus the Slovaks: Bilateral Relations, 1944-8Zdenk Radvanovský: The Transfer of Czechoslovakia's Germans and its Impact in the Border Region after the Second World WarKeith Robbins: Britain and Munich Reconsidered: A Personal Historical Journey. (shrink)

The target article proposed that women display greater self-protectiveness than men to major physical and social threats because such self-protective responses have higher fitness value for women than men. Rather than having evolutionary roots, we suggest the various physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to social and physical threats exhibited more by women than men are instead rooted in sociocultural forces.

Anthropology is the study of the origin of the man. It is basically concern with the concept of _Homo__ __sapiens_, and it is scientifically questioning what are human physical traits as well how do men behave and the variation among different groups of human with his social and cultural dimensions. Ontology is a subfield in traditional philosophy which is mainly focuses on the nature of being, existence or reality as such. There are some similarities and differences among these two areas. (...) However when we deeply study the philosophical basis of the anthropology it is proof that it was derived from ontology. Anthropology discusses the social and cultural world or the physical entity of human nature. Ontology focuses the invisible aspect of human nature along with the ultimate reality. Therefore, it has a metaphysical aspect of human being; this philosophical notion has in fact, contributed to the development of the subject of anthropology. The present modern day has given very little attention to this philosophical combination of ontolog y to anthropology, rendering further investigation into the philosophical roots of anthropology. This research paper seeks to evaluate the relationship between ontology and anthropology by paying attention to the ontological arguments about the concept of man and human nature within Greek and modern western thoughts, in comparing with modern anthropological arguments. (shrink)

SummaryBy now, the story of T. D. Lysenko's phantasmagoric career in the Soviet life sciences is widely familiar. While Lysenko's attempts to identify I. V. Michurin, the horticulturist, as the source of his own inductionist ideas about heredity are recognized as a gambit calculated to enhance his legitimacy, the real roots of those ideas are still shrouded in mystery. This paper suggests those roots may be found in a tradition in Russian biology that stretches back to the 1840s—a tradition inspired (...) by the doctrines of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The enthusiastic reception of those doctrines in Russia and of their practical application—acclimatization of exotic life forms—gave rise to the durable scientific preoccupation with transforming nature which now seems implicated in creating the context for Lysenko's successful bid to become an arbiter of the biological sciences. (shrink)

The health care industry has moved at a rapid pace away from paper records to an electronic platform across almost all sectors — much of it at the encouragement and insistence of the federal government. Such rapid expansion has increased exponentially the risk to individuals in the privacy of their data and, increasingly, to their physical well-being when medical records are inaccessible through ransomware attacks. Recognizing the unique and critical nature of medical records, the United States Congress established the Health (...) Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force under the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 for the purpose of reviewing cybersecurity risks within the health care industry and identifying who will lead and coordinate efforts to address such risks among the various agencies. The Task Force has since issued a report setting forth six high-level imperatives that the health care industry needs to achieve in order to combat cybersecurity, and, notably, many of the vulnerabilities plaguing the industry identified in the Report as requiring correction are not necessarily related to specific flaws in the current cybersecurity framework, but rather susceptibilities presented by the infrastructure and associated regulatory regime that has evolved over the last few decades over the health care industry generally. That is, the current health care infrastructure by its nature exacerbates cybersecurity risk. Between a lack of information sharing of industry threats, risks, and mitigations, disparate leadership and governance goals for cybersecurity, the confluence and contradiction of existing federal and state laws, fragmentation in the fee-for-service delivery system, lack of care coordination, and disparate resources across and among sectors, the industry suffers from heightened cyber risk. Solutions that are reactive to problems within the current infrastructure will likely have little long term impact toward reducing cybersecurity vulnerabilities because they do not address the underlying system challenges. All of these confluences causes one to wonder whether if in fact the current health care delivery infrastructure is a contributing factor to the incidents of cybersecurity attacks and the exorbitant costs associated with resolving data breaches, should Congress look not just to curb breach incidents, but to address root cause systematic challenges in the health industry infrastructure that create increased exposure of cybersecurity threats? This article argues that cybersecurity risks will continue to be heightened and more costly to the health care industry as compared to other industries unless and until some general system redesign is achieved that allows for greater sharing of resources among industry participants to ensure the same protections are implemented at all levels of the industry, which can be strengthened through greater interoperability of systems across the health care industry; and increased focus and attention on the importance of cybersecurity issues as a priority among system reforms. (shrink)

To Wrestle With Demons offers a rare glimpse of a psychiatrist's innermost thoughts about how his work affects patients, deeply move him, and reflects the society in which we live. Describing the unconscious as music, "a silent and explosive score," Dr. Ablow recalls the process of helping patients ferret out the past from the deep recesses of their minds. In so doing, he becomes enchanted with "the subtlety and power of human interaction." He describes the lonely gentleman who, gaining a (...) sense of security from hearing voices, refuses the medication that would take them away...the depressed woman whose extreme dependence on others is rooted in a violent and abusive childhood...the doting husband whose obsessive devotion to his ill wife harks back to the tragic loss of a childhood friend. In delving into the minds of his patients, Dr. Ablow must also wrestle with his own demons. He speaks with unabashed candor about the guilt he feels exchanging empathy for money, his struggle to help a homeless veteran, and the embarrassment of warning a mother of her son's intent to kill her. Through his eyes, the reader confronts a patient's suicide and a close colleague's murder. While sharing these private revelations, Dr. Ablow provides to us all a looking glass to society. Discussed here, among many issues are poverty, the insanity defense, patients' rights, sexual malpractice, and changing medical economics. Captured is the critical moment which psychiatry now finds itself - attempting to integrate technology with spirituality, science with the soul, and economics with empathy. To Wrestle With Demons offers anyone who has ever wondered whether psychiatrists are touched by the lives of their patients a resounding yes. (shrink)

This book explores and develops a new philosophical argument for the existence of God from metaphysics. It focuses on exploring the pressing questions of God's existence, the truth of theistic belief, and its relevance in modern philosophy. In doing so, it bridges the discussions and debates in the field of contemporary metaphysics with that of analytic philosophy of religion. At its core, metaphysics is dedicated to unveiling the fundamental structure of reality, playing a critical role in any intellectual endeavour in (...) the quest for truth. However, a noticeable gap has persisted between today's metaphysical conversations and the debates in analytic philosophy of religion, especially regarding the topic of God's existence. In this book, the author embarks on a rigorous exploration, presenting an innovative a posteriori argument for theism, rooted in the latest evidence and theories from contemporary metaphysics. The first part of the book details the explanatory framework of the analysis, which is focussed on introducing a new abductive methodology within metaphysics that provides a way for assessing the veracity of the Theism and the leading fundamental theories in contemporary metaphysics. The second part of the book then focuses on demonstrating how the central concepts and theories within contemporary metaphysics-such as quantum foundations, four-dimensionalism, formal ontology, essentialism, grounding, powerful causation, mereology, free will, personhood and the reality of suffering-are best explained by the existence of God, and thus justify theism, over that of the competing theories within contemporary metaphysics. Theism is thus the best working metaphysical theory and should take a central place in fundamental enquiries within the field of contemporary metaphysics and beyond. Analytic Theism: A Philosophical Investigation is a must-read for scholars and advanced students venturing into philosophy of religion and metaphysics. Beyond its appeal to those in analytic philosophy of religion and metaphysics, this work also resonates with those immersed in contemporary philosophy on a whole, and related fields of inquiry, serving as a pivotal read for anyone keen on the intersections of philosophy, theology, and science. (shrink)

Alzheimer's Disease is a form of dementia that affects the memory, cognition, and motor skills of patients. Extensive research has been done to develop accessible, cost-effective, and non-invasive techniques for the automatic detection of AD. Previous research has shown that speech can be used to distinguish between healthy patients and afflicted patients. In this paper, the ADReSS dataset, a dataset balanced by gender and age, was used to automatically classify AD from spontaneous speech. The performance of five classifiers, as well (...) as a convolutional neural network and long short-term memory network, was compared when trained on audio features and text features. The same audio and text features were used to train five regression models to predict the Mini-Mental State Examination score for each patient, a score that has a maximum value of 30. The top-performing classification models were the support vector machine and random forest classifiers trained on BERT embeddings, which both achieved an accuracy of 85.4% on the test set. The best-performing regression model was the gradient boosting regression model trained on BERT embeddings and CLAN features, which had a root mean squared error of 4.56 on the test set. The performance on both tasks illustrates the feasibility of using speech to classify AD and predict neuropsychological scores. (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)