Literal meaning is often identified with conventional meaning. In A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs Donald Davidson argues (1) that literal meaning is distinct from conventional meaning, and (2) that literal meaning is identical to what he calls first meaning. In this paper it is argued that Davidson has established (1) but not (2), that he has succeeded in showing that there is a distinction between literal meaning and conventional meaning but has failed to see that literal meaning and first meaning (...) are also distinct. This failure is somewhat surprising, since it is through a consideration of Davidson's notion of radical interpretation that the distinction between literal meaning and first meaning becomes apparent. (shrink)

The authors argue that while meaning holism makes massive error possible, it does not, as Donald Davidson fears, threaten interpretability. Thus they hold, in opposition to Davidson, that meaning holism need not be constrained by an account of meaning according to which in the methodologically most basic cases the content of a belief is given by the cause of that belief. What ensures interpretability, they maintain, is not that speakers' beliefs are in the main true, but rather that beliefs have (...) the contents they do because of events others can in principle identify and describe. (shrink)

The traditional verbal/nonverbal dichotomy is inadequate for completely describing cerebral lateralization. Musical functions are not necessarily mediated by the right hemisphere; evidence for a specialist left-hemisphere mechanism dedicated to the encoded speech signal is weakening, and the right hemisphere possesses considerable comprehensional powers. Right-hemisphere processing is often said to be characterized by holistic or gestalt apprehension, and face recognition may be mediated by this hemisphere partly because of these powers, partly because of the right hemisphere's involvement in emotional affect, and (...) possibly through the hypothesized existence of a specialist face processor or processors in the right. The latter hypothesis may, however, suffer the same fate as the one relating to a specialist encodedness processor for speech in the left. Verbal processing is largely the province of the left because of this hemisphere's possession of sequential, analytic, time-dependent mechanisms. Other distinctions are special cases of an analytic/holistic dichotomy. More fundamentally, however, the left hemisphere is characterized by its mediation of discriminations involving duration, temporal order, sequencing, and rhythm, at thesensory level, and especially at themotorlevel. Spatial aspects characterize the right, the mapping of exteroceptive body space, and the positions of fingers, limbs, and perhaps articulators, with respect to actual and target positions. Thus there is a continuum of function between the hemispheres, rather than a rigid dichotomy, the differences being quantitative rather than qualitative, of degree rather than of kind. (shrink)

On 6 September 1966, the prime minister of South Africa, Dr HF Verwoerd was killed by Mr Tsafendas, a Portuguese national of Greek descent, in parliament by stabbing him in the chest. Mr Tsafendas was a messenger in parliament. At the enquiry trial of Mr Tsafendas, he was found unfit to stand trial on the ground that he suffered from schizophrenia. The psychiatric evidence during the enquiry trial was reviewed and discussed under the following headings: Diagnosis of schizophrenia; Consideration of (...) cultural factors in forensic psychiatric settings; Delusional infestation v. extreme overvalued beliefs; Simulation of psychosis; Ethical considerations in criminal capacity and trial competency assessments. Lessons from the Mr Tsafendas enquiry trial for forensic psychiatrists where a defendant previously diagnosed with schizophrenia commits a prominent political murder, are summarised. It is emphasised that the personhood of an accused referred for forensic observation should be respected and protected, instead of focusing exclusively on a specific diagnosis. (shrink)

Semantic localism is the view of meaning defended by Michael Devitt in Coming to Our Senses. In this paper I assess this view by considering how well it answers the concerns that led Akeel Bilgrami in Belief and Meaning to put forward his thesis of the locality of content.

The central topic of this book is the relationship between persons or selves who think, feel, and act and their physical bodies. While this is a familiar topic, the position taken by E. J. Lowe is decidedly unfamiliar. Unlike most contemporary philosophers, Lowe rejects all versions of physicalism in favour of the dualist view that selves are irreducible psychological substances. As just stated, this view might well strike one as all too familiar. However, despite his commitment both to dualism and (...) to the idea that selves are substances, Lowe is as much concerned with distancing himself from Descartes as he is with aligning himself with him. Thus, the earlier chapters are devoted to an attempt first to explicate and then to defend a version of substance dualism that is distinctly non-Cartesian. (shrink)

This article explores the accounts of Canadian-trained health professionals working in humanitarian and development organizations who considered not treating a patient or group of patients because of resource limitations. In the narratives, not treating the patient(s) was sometimes understood as the right thing to do, and sometimes as wrong. In analyzing participants’ narratives we draw attention to how medications and equipment are represented. In one type of narrative, medications and equipment are represented primarily as scarce resources; in another, they are (...) represented as patient care. In the contexts respondents were working, medications and equipment were often both patient care interventions and scarce resources. The analytic point is that health professionals tend to emphasize one conceptualization over the other in coming to assert that not treating is right, or wrong. Rendering tacit ethical frameworks more explicit makes them available for reflection and debate. (shrink)

Research Ethics Committees (RECs) are frequently a focus of complaints from researchers, but evidence about the operation and decisions of RECs tends to be anecdotal. We conducted a systematic study to identify and compare the ethical issues raised in 54 letters to researchers about the same 18 applications submitted to three RECs over one year. The most common type of ethical trouble identified in REC letters related to informed consent, followed by scientific design and conduct, care and protection of research (...) participants, confidentiality, recruitment and documentation. Community considerations were least frequently raised. There was evidence of variability in the ethical troubles identified and the remedies recommended. This analysis suggests that some principles may be more institutionalized than others, and offers some evidence of inconsistency between RECs. Inconsistency is often treated as evidence of incompetence and caprice, but a more sophisticated understanding of the role of RECs and their functioning is required. (shrink)