In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Chance to CutBruce H. CampbellMy gloved hand reaches for progressively sharper surgical instruments. The prior radiation therapy and recurrent cancer [End Page E3] have made his neck tissues as stiff and hard as an old block of wood; everything appears too dull and feels too dry under the bright operating room lights. I push, dissect, urge, divide, prod, and spread with little effect.The nursing staff keeps to its (...) routine—completing computer entries, retrieving supplies, counting sponges—only intermittently aware that things are not going well at the point of attack. Nondescript music plays softly and the anesthesia machine continues to emit its gentle sounds. The junior resident—assisting me with the first of many neck dissections she will see during her five years of training—grips the retractor as she has been told and dabs the wound periodically to clear any blood or fluid.I glance up to recheck the CT scan. It confirms that this man’s recurrent cancer is just below the next layer of neck muscles. There are also some large blood vessels and major nerves nearby. I am confident, though, that I will be able to expose the mass, protect all of the critical structures, and safely remove the cancer.Curing cancer with surgery is no small feat, mind you. Cancer is, after all, a molecular disease not easily confined to an obvious lump, even though we sometimes refer to a malignant mass being “like a walnut” or “as hard and round as a marble.” The actual disease rests deep inside each cancer cell where the genetic code—the DNA—makes mistake–after–mistake. If cancer is to be cured with a surgical procedure, the surgeon must remove every last cell that is capable of making the same nonsensical, life–threatening error. Given Science’s rudimentary knowledge of cancer cell dynamics and signaling, it’s a miracle that surgery ever works. Yet, we continue to try. And we succeed just often enough to keep on trying.I rearrange the retractors and alter my approach. My mentors would have known what to do next, I imagine. My training included time well–spent with brilliant and technically–gifted surgeons. How would they have approached this case? Their experience and instincts might have told them to open the wound more widely, work the lateral and deep margins first, or position the instruments differently.Perhaps, one of my mentors would have attacked this man’s tumor using the same approach I am attempting but would have known exactly where to exploit some area of weakness that I cannot locate. A few swift, confident moves and he would have held the mass in his hands. “That’s it. We’re done,” he would have said.I met this patient several months ago when his cancer was first discovered and have seen him throughout his course of treatment. Recently, his daughter had accompanied him to the office to review his options. “Treatment has been rugged, Doc,” he reminded me. “The cancer’s still there and they said I can’t get any more radiation. Chemo would only prolong things. I don’t really want surgery, but what choice do I have if I want to be cured?”“Supportive care is an option, but the only curative approach is surgery.”“Well, I’m not ready to quit yet, Doc. I got grand-kids, y’know. I want to watch them grow up.” He nodded to his daughter. “I’m in charge of spoiling her little boys.”The daughter smiled. We crowded around the computer screen to look at the scans. I showed them how the tumor was invading and destroying surrounding structures. I described the surgery and the risks.“There are many things I will not know about your tumor until we are actually in the operating room,” I explained. Surgery in the setting of recurrent disease involves a series of on–the–spot decisions and course corrections. The odds of success are unknowable. “Sometimes, the only way to find out if we can remove the cancer is simply to try.”He took a deep breath and looked at his daughter. “Well then, Doc, if surgery is the only... (shrink)

A traditional task of epistemology is to establish and defend systematic standards that must be met in order for us to have knowledge or justified beliefs. A "naturalized epistemology" tries to arrive at such standards through an empirical investigation into how we interact with our fellows and the world around us, what we seek in these activities, and the particular ways in which we can and cannot succeed. This approach is a radical departure from tradition because its means of investigation (...) is empirical. Nevertheless, since its inception three decades ago, this style of epistemology has become a powerful trend in contemporary theory of knowledge. This collection breaks new ground in extending the insights and methodology of naturalized epistemology to the subject of moral knowledge and moral theory. The essays are divided between two overarching themes. One is the so-called fact-value distinction. How can an empirical study of knowledge hope to address the normative questions about how we should reason about moral matters, how we should live morally? The other is the relation of practical moral know-how to moral discourse. Can the biological underpinning of morality explain most of its central features or is moral discourse essential to our understanding of the cognitive dimensions of moral experience? (shrink)

The Value of Trees project, funded bythe International Development Research Council ofCanada (IDRC), supported the joint efforts of theUniversity of Alberta and the University of Zimbabweto investigate the economic costs and benefitsassociated with trees and forests in the small holderfarming sector in Zimbabwe. The Value of Trees project provided funding for graduate students andfaculty from the two participating universities tocarry out studies in the disciplines of forestry,agricultural economics, and sociology in order toprovide policy recommendations regarding the role ofwoodlands in sustainable (...) small holder farming in acontext where agricultural production appears to putincreasing stress on woodlands. The numerous projectsincluded such topics as the following: the use offuelwood under conditions of scarcity, tree tenure andlocal institutions in woodland use and sustainability,gender and wealth as related to tree planting andconservation, time preferences in natural resourceconsumption, ownership and economic impact ofeucalyptus woodlots, cultural and economic valuesassociated with woodlands, and uses and conflictsrelating to woodlands across different land categoriessuch as resettlement land and state forests. Manyother studies were not funded by, but were associatedwith Value of Trees. The findings fall withintwo broad categories. The first set includes thosedirectly related to generating values for differentaspects of the woodlands, particularly from theperspectives of rural households. The main finding isthat despite being highly valued by local people forboth economic and social reasons, woodlands are rankedlower in importance by local farmers than agriculturalland. The second set of findings relates to thecomplexities of the social system of the woodlands.Local institutions, history, resource conflicts, andtenure issues emerge as key to understanding the waythat people interact with the woodlands. Finally,local people have valuable knowledge and strategies tooffer in the design of sustainable management. Thepolicy implications of these findings for Zimbabwe arethat economic incentives could be important in asustainable woodlands strategy, but that anysuccessful program must incorporate an understandingof the profoundly complex and at times contradictoryhuman dynamics of woodland use and values. (shrink)

: This comment on Campbell argues that a good book could be made better if more critical judgment was displayed. Attempts to recover the complete past must be abandoned, and especially in the history of ideas, evaluative judgments about the worth of ideas must be made and the presuppositions of thought must be explored.

To the Editor: The sensitive discussion by Courtney Campbell and Jessica Cox on hospice care and physician-assisted death (“Hospice and Physician-Assisted Death: Collaboration, Compliance, and Complicity,” September-October 2010) is a model blend of ethical analysis, empirical study, and policy assessment in bioethics. The legalization of physician aid in dying has raised important ethical issues for hospice that go to the broader question of its evolving mission and its place in the landscape of end-of-life care in our society. Hospice began, (...) one might say, as a philosophy of care of the dying that formed a countercultural movement. It offered a systematic and holistic approach to care involving not .. (shrink)

: This paper is a response to a series of five papers—by Michael Eldridge, Bruce Kuklick, John Lachs, Erin McKenna, and John Ryder—that examine my recently published volume, A Thoughtful Profession: The Early Years of the American Philosophical Association. It discusses those papers in two phases: What they have to say about the volume's account of the history of the philosophy profession in America, and what they have to say about the present and future of the profession based upon (...) its past. Each of the papers demonstrates a sincere interest in exploring the history or the meaning of the APA. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a series of five papers—by Michael Eldridge, Bruce Kuklick, John Lachs, Erin McKenna, and John Ryder—that examine my recently published volume, A Thoughtful Profession: The Early Years of the American Philosophical Association. It discusses those papers in two phases: What they have to say about the volume's account of the history of the philosophy profession in America, and what they have to say about the present and future of the profession based upon its (...) past. Each of the papers demonstrates a sincere interest in exploring the history or the meaning of the APA. (shrink)

The book examines what advocates of the law of karma mean by the doctrine, various ways they interpret it, and how they see it operating. The study investigates and critically evaluates the law of karma's connections to significant philosophical concepts like causation, freedom, God, persons, the moral law, liberation, and immortality. For example, it explores in depth the implications of the doctrine for whether we are free or fatalistically determined, whether human suffering can be reconciled with cosmic justice, the nature (...) of the self, and the character of moral experience. (shrink)

Over the course of his work, Graham Oppy developed numerous important criticisms of versions of the cosmological argument. Here I am not concerned with his specific criticisms of cosmological arguments but rather with his claim that cosmological arguments per se are not good arguments, for they provide no persuasive reason for believing the conclusion that God exists and are embedded in theories that already affirm the conclusion. I explore what he believes makes an argument good, contend that cosmological arguments can (...) have functions within worldviews other than persuasion, and consider his recent modifications of the discussion that address competing worldviews. (shrink)

Locates in Schelling a new understanding of our relation to nature in philosophy.

What kind of technology is the piano? It was once a distinctly everyday technology. In the bourgeois home of the nineteenth century it became an emblematic figure of gendered social life, its role shifting between visually pleasing piece of furniture, source of light entertainment, and expression of cultured upbringing. It performed this role unobtrusively, acting as a transparent mediator of social relations. To the composer of concert music it was, and sometimes still is, says Samuel Wilson, like the philosopher’s table: (...) “an assumed background on which one writes.” Like other instruments standard to Western art music, the piano was designed to facilitate the production of a consistent and refined timbre. More than most other such instruments, the piano also facilitated a kind of sonic neutrality. With its wide pitch range and smoothing of the percussive attack of its predecessor instruments, the piano presented composers with a technological means of approaching composition from a seemingly objective vantage point. It exemplified, in Heideggerian terms, the instrumentality of the instrument, serving as a mediator between idea and expression that apparently adds no character of its own. -/- This notion of the invisibility, or transparency, of the mediations that musical technologies such as the piano enact is one of my areas of concern here. So too is its inverse: when these mediations become visible or opaque. Transparency has been a topic of significant recent theoretical attention. Stefanos Geroulanos, for example, has detailed how the supposed transparency of intersubjective, epistemological, and social relations was a major point of critique in postwar French thought, where the supposition of transparency was taken to suppress how the world was “complex, layered, structured, filled with heterogeneity” – and, as I will stress here, contingency. The thinkers Geroulanos considers, from Jean-Paul Sartre through to Jean-François Lyotard, can be said to be united in their refusal to invisibilise mediatedness. From a starting point of conceiving of the piano as a technological artifact, and in particular from John Cage’s ‘prepared piano,’ I will explore how a similar concern has appeared in musical contexts, albeit not without the risk of reversion back into a logic of transparency. (shrink)

This essay explores the relationship between boredom, leisure, selfhood, and education in Kevin Hood Gary’s book, Why Boredom Matters, paying particular attention to connections between Aristotelian and existentialist approaches to the subject. Following Gary, the essay argues that schools force students to endure boredom or try to stimulate them with distractions, rather than helping them focus on enduring sources of meaning or cultivate stronger senses of self.

Why do states who are committed to the principle of civilian immunity and the protection of non-combatants end up killing and injuring large numbers of civilians during their military operations? Bugsplat explains this paradox through an in-depth examination of five conflicts fought by Western powers since 1989.

« Ce guide offre aux étudiants en formation initiale à l'enseignement, au personnel enseignant en poste, à leurs formateurs et aux directions d'établissement scolaire les ressources nécessaires pour se frayer un chemin à travers les cadres éthiques et légaux complexes qui réglementent le quotidien de la pratique enseignante. ».

One of America's foremost philosophers reflects on the discipline and its relation to everyday life.

Three main issues are of cardinal interest in this paper. The first issue relates to the canons of discourse—the parameters that inform and guide any discussion—in African philosophy. These canons are accepted in one form or the other by the philosophers who have actually formulated some of them and those who have devoted their academical careers to the promotion of the positive study of African philosophy. Consequently this paper should be viewed in the same light as C.E.M. Joad's A Critique (...) of Logical Positivism in which the “Great Tradition” in philosophy is classically expounded and defended against the onslaught of the philosophical exuberance and extraordinary claims of the logical positivists in the sense that it is a rejoinder to the attack on African philosophy by those who actually may want to be known as African logical neo-positivists. (shrink)

The second edition of The Great Psychotherapy Debate has been updated and revised to include a history of healing practices, medicine, and psychotherapy, an expanded theoretical presentation of the contextual model, an examination of therapist effects, and a thorough review of the research on common factors such as the alliance, expectations, and empathy.

This volume unites Peter Winch's previously unpublished work on Baruch de Spinoza. The primary source for the text is a series of seminars on Spinoza that Winch gave, first at the University of Swansea in 1982 and then at King's College London in 1989. What emerges is an original interpretation of Spinoza's work that demonstrates his continued relevance to contemporary issues in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, and establishes connections to other philosophers - not only Spinoza's predecessors such as René Descartes, (...) but also important 20th Century philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Simone Weil. Alongside Winch's lectures, the volume contains an interpretive essay by David Cockburn, and an introduction by the editors. (shrink)

Volume 1: A-B -- Volume 2: C-E -- Volume 3: F-I -- Volume 4: J-O -- Volume 5: P-R -- Volume 6: S-X.

In Philosophy as Frustration: Happiness Found and Feigned from Greek Antiquity to Present Bruce Silver argues that traditional philosophical views of happiness, as well as recent psychological theories of happiness, are at odds with themselves and with important accounts of a truly happy life.

This chapter examines the role of Soren Kierkegaard in the so-called Danish Golden Age from 1800 to 1850, which was marked by a remarkable outpouring of artistic, scientific, literary, philosophical, and theological productivity. It explains that Kierkegaard, together with Hans Christian Andersen, belongs to the third generation of this Golden Age. The chapter considers the major works of Kierkegaard and Andersen, who were the two most prominent figures of the Golden Age both in and outside Denmark.

Introduction -- Methodology and method -- Present educational ethics -- Archaeology and genealogy -- Power and subjectivity -- Educational ethics -- Implications and conclusion.

The idea that there are three types of argumentation, deduction, induction, and a third type variously called hypothesis, abduction, or retroduction, first appeared in an 1867 paper by Charles S. Peirce, “On the Natural Classification of Arguments”. According to Peirce’s tripartite division of argumentation, induction is not merely any form of argument that fails to be deductive, but argumentation that generalizes from a sample. In later writings Peirce broadened his notion to mean any testing of hypotheses through observation—as Peirce said, (...) “trying how things will act”. If we understand an observation to be a sample of experience, as Peirce did in 1901 (R L 409:3... (shrink)

This volume explores leadership as a form of loving one’s employees, centering on the biblical concepts of Agapao and Agape. It is organized into three parts: Part 1 examines biblical principles about Agapao and Agape; Part 2 employs Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) to identify the role of love in organizational contexts; Part 3 offers case studies illustrating instances of love demonstrated by biblical figures in organizational and familial settings. Aligned with POS research, the book accentuates positive, life-giving, and conditions fostering (...) human flourishing within organizations. This scholarly endeavor contributes to advancing research in areas such as work relationships, workplace spirituality, meaningful work, and the role of leadership in improving organizational performance. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1982, _Beyond Positivism _has become established as one of the definitive statements on economic methodology. The book’s rejection of positivism and its advocacy of pluralism were to have a profound influence in the flowering of work methodology that has taken place in economics in the decade since its publication. This edition contains a new preface outlining the major developments in the area since the book’s first appearance. The book provides the first comprehensive treatment of twentieth century (...) philosophy of science which emphasizes the issues relevant to economics. It proceeds to demonstrate this relevance by reviewing some of the key debates in the area. Having concluded that positivism has to be rejected, the author examines possible alternative bases for economic methodology. Arguing that there is no best method, he advocates methodological pluralism. (shrink)