Among ancient writers Aristotle offers the most profound analysis of the ancient Greek household and its relationship to the state. The household was not the family in the modern sense of the term, but a much more powerful entity with significant economic, political, social, and educational resources. The success of the polis in all its forms lay in the reliability of households to provide it with the kinds of citizens it needed to ensure its functioning. In turn, the state offered (...) the members of its households a unique opportunity for humans to flourish. This 2006 book explains how Aristotle thought household and state interacted within the polis. (shrink)

This letter responds to the article “Love Your Patient as Yourself: On Reviving the Broken Heart of American Medical Ethics,” by Tyler Tate and Joseph Clair, in the March‐April 2023 issue of the Hastings Center Report.

Research involving recently deceased humans that are physiologically maintained following declaration of death by neurologic criteria—or ‘research involving the recently deceased’—can fill a translational research gap while reducing harm to animals and living human subjects. It also creates new challenges for honouring the donor’s legacy, respecting the rights of donor loved ones, resource allocation and public health. As this research model gains traction, new empirical ethics questions must be answered to preserve public trust in all forms of tissue donation and (...) in the practice of medicine while respecting the legacy of the deceased and the rights of donor loved ones. This article suggests several topics for immediate investigation to understand the attitudes and experiences of researchers, clinical collaborators, donor loved ones and the public to ensure research involving the recently deceased advances ethically. (shrink)

Research suggests that perceptual experience of our movements adapts together with movement control when we are the agents of our actions. Is this agency critical for perceptual and motor adaptation? We had participants view cursor feedback during elbow extension–flexion movements when they actively moved their arm, or had their arm passively moved. We probed adaptation of movement perception by having participants report the reversal point of their unseen movement. We probed adaptation of movement control by having them aim to a (...) target. Perception and control of active movement were influenced by both types of exposure, although adaptation was stronger following active exposure. Furthermore, both types of exposure led to a change in the perception of passive movements. Our findings support the notion that perception and control adapt together, and they suggest that some adaptation is due to recalibrated proprioception that arises independently of active engagement with the environment. (shrink)

Research suggests that the reaching hand automatically deviates toward a target that changes location during the reach. In the current study, we investigated whether movement intention can influence the target jump’s impact on the hand. We compared the degree of trajectory deviation to a jumped target under three instruction conditions: GO, in which participants were told to go to the target if it jumped, STOP, in which participants were told to immediately stop their movement if the target jumped, and IGNORE, (...) in which participants were told to ignore the target if it jumped and to continue to its initial location. We observed a reduced response to the jump in the IGNORE condition relative to the other conditions, suggesting that the response to the jump is contingent on the jump being a task-relevant event. (shrink)

Recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) represent a form of psychosis. It may be useful to compare RCVH to another form of psychosis, catatonia. Both include a long list of medical illnesses and have been examined using several different hypotheses. Catatonia has a variety of hypotheses, including neurocircuitry, neurochemistry, and an integrated neuropsychiatric hypothesis. This hypothesis for catatonia supports Collerton et al.'s Perception and Attention Deficit model (PAD) for RCVH.

Imaginative resistance refers to cases in which one’s otherwise flexible imaginative capacity is constrained by an unwillingness or inability to imaginatively engage with a given claim. In three studies, we explored which specific imaginative demands engender resistance when imagining morally deviant worlds and whether individual differences in emotion predict the degree of this resistance. In Study 1 (N = 176), participants resisted the notion that harmful actions could be morally acceptable in the world of a narrative regardless of the author’s (...) claims about these actions but did not resist imagining that a perpetrator of harm could believe their actions to be morally acceptable. In Study 2 (N = 167) we replicated the findings of Study 1 and showed that imaginative resistance is greatest among participants who experience more negative affect in response to imagining harm and are lower in either trait anxiety or trait psychopathy. In Study 3 (N = 210) we show that this is the case even when the harms assessed include both low-severity (i.e., emotional harm) and high-severity (i.e., killing) cases. Thus, people’s moral beliefs constrain their ability to imagine hypothetical moral alternatives, although this ability systematically varies on the basis of stable individual differences in emotion. (shrink)

Welche Relevanz hat Leibniz für aktuelle Debatten? Untersucht wird Leibniz’ Konzeption der Individualität (V. Gerhardt) sowie seine These: „Der Ort des Anderen ist der wahre Standpunkt sowohl in der Politik als auch in der Moral.“ (W. Li) Ferner, wie weit Kants Theorie des Subjekts als Explikation Leibnizscher Einsichten zu lesen ist (P. Stekelr-Weithofer) und wie die Monadenlehre Einspruch gegen den Szientismus erhebt (H. Nagl-Docekal). Die Aktualität der Leibnizschen Systematik wird auch im Blick auf Religion dargestellt: hinsichtlich der europäischen Rezeption buddhistischer (...) Traditionen (V.Lysenko) wie auch der Problematik der inter-religiösen Relationen (H.-D. Klein). Untersucht werden ferner Leibniz-Lektüren im nachmetaphysischen Denken, von Ch. S. Peirce über G. Deleuze bis J. Rawls (L. Nagl). Einen weiteren Fokus bildet die Grundidee von Akademien: das Prinzip ‚theoria cum praxi‘ (J. Mittelstraß) und die Forderung, dass die Wissenschaften dem Gemeinwohl verpflichtet sein sollen (E. Knobloch). Die Implementierung dieser Konzeption wird durch die Geschichte der Philosophie an der Russischen Akademie (A. Guseynov) sowie die österreichischen Entwicklungen nach dem letzten Aufenthalt von Leibniz in Wien (T. Wallnig) illustriert. (shrink)

This paper is a critical reflection and response to the religious fideism of D. Z. Phillips, and especially to recent attempts to defend this fideism. Over the course of his career, Phillips argued for a number of interesting but quite dramatic theses about religious belief, including the claim that what is sometimes called the propositional nature of religious belief is frequently misunderstood by philosophers, and that this misunderstanding involves a distortion of what religious believers are doing when they say they (...) believe in God and engage in various religious practices. This paper explores these and other claims in the light of recent interesting attempts to defend them, especially in the work of Patrick Horn. I elaborate the distinction between the propositional and expressive dimensions of religious belief, and argue that Horn does not succeed in rescuing Phillips’s view from a number of serious philosophical objections, including the objection that theirs is a metaphorical interpretation of religion. I suggest also that Horn’s and Phillips’s fideistic versions of religious belief and religious phenomena may involve an element of self-deception, and would likely lead to people giving up their religious beliefs, or at least to their beliefs playing a decreasing role in their everyday lives. (shrink)

Sentences such as "The author started the book" are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun "book" to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting (...) enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex or at the left inferior frontal gyrus. These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing fMRI, we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus, the right inferior frontal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate cortex, more so than control sentences ("The author wrote the book"). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences ("…drank the book") and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion. (shrink)

Erving Goffman’s “Asylums” is a key text in the development of contemporary, community-orientated mental health practice. It has survived as a trenchant critique of the asylum as total institution, and its publication in 1961 in book form marked a further stage in the discrediting of the asylum model of mental health care. In this paper, some responses from a range of disciplines to this text, 50 years on, are presented. A consultant psychiatrist with a special interest in cultural psychiatry and (...) mental health legislation, two collaborating psychotherapists in adult and forensic mental health, a philosopher, and a recent medical graduate, present their varying responses to the text. The editors present these with the hope of encouraging further dialogue and debate from service users, carers, clinicians, and academics and researchers across a range of disciplines. (shrink)

Abstract:Facial transplantation is emerging as a therapeutic option for self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The self-inflicted nature of this injury raises questions about the appropriate role of self-harm in determining patient eligibility. Potential candidates for facial transplantation undergo extensive psychosocial screening. The presence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound warrants special attention to ensure that a patient is prepared to undergo a demanding procedure that poses significant risk, as well as stringent lifelong management. Herein, we explore the ethics of considering mechanism of injury (...) in the patient selection process, referring to the precedent set forth in solid organ transplantation. We also consider the available evidence regarding outcomes of individuals transplanted for self-inflicted mechanisms of injury in both solid organ and facial transplantation. We conclude that while the presence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound is significant in the overall evaluation of the candidate, it does not on its own warrant exclusion from consideration for a facial transplantation. (shrink)

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to debates concerning general scientific methodology and theory choice, the demarcation of science from non-science, the nature of probability and quantum mechanics, and the methodology of the social sciences. His work is notable for its wide influence both within the philosophy of science, within science itself, and within a broader social context. Popper’s early work attempts to solve the problem of (...) demarcation and offer a clear criterion that distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological claims. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival or by maintaining the theory as is and changing an auxiliary hypothesis. In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. While Popper recognizes that scientists can and do hold onto theories in the face of failed predictions when there are no predictively superior rivals to turn to. He holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific. Among other things, Popper argues that his falsificationist proposal allows for a solution of the problem of induction, since inductive reasoning plays no role in his account of theory choice. Along with his general proposals regarding falsification and scientific methodology, Popper is notable for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences. Popper defends a propensity theory of probability, according to which probabilities are interpreted as objective, mind-independent properties of experimental setups. Popper then uses this theory to provide a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, though its applicability goes beyond this specific case. With respect to the social sciences, Popper argued against the historicist attempt to formulate universal laws covering the whole of human history and instead argued in favor of methodological individualism and situational logic. Table of Contents 1. Background 2. Falsification and the Criterion of Demarcation a. Popper on Physics and Psychoanalysis b. Auxiliary and Ad Hoc Hypotheses c. Basic Sentences and the Role of Convention d. Induction, Corroboration, and Verisimilitude 3. Criticisms of Falsificationism 4. Realism, Quantum Mechanics, and Probability 5. Methodology in the Social Sciences 6. Popper’s Legacy 7. References and Further Reading a. Primary Sources b. Secondary Sources -/- . (shrink)

This paper considers two related claims in the work of D. Z. Phillips: that commitment to God precludes a distinction between the commitment and the grounds for the commitment, and that belief and understanding are the same in religion. Both these claims motivate Phillips’s rejection of natural theology. I examine these claims by analyzing the notion of commitment, discussing what is involved in making a commitment to a worldview, why commitment is necessary at all in religion, levels of commitment, and (...) commitment and justification. I show that Phillips fails to distinguish between adopting a hypothesis, where justification would be germane, and committing to the hypothesis after one has adopted it, where justification is not so pressing. This failure fatally undermines his rejection of natural theology. (shrink)

RésuméCet article démontre qu'un exemple cité par Ernest Adams pour montrer que l'implication matérielle n'est pas l'interprétation correcte de la sémantique de la conjonction de subordination si, n'est rien d'autre qu'un corollaire d'une observation d'jà faite par Lewis Carroll, il y a cent ans, dans l'exposition de son paradoxe du salon de coiffure.

Dr. Strange sees Dr. Stephen Strange abandon his once-promising medical career to become a superhero with the ability to warp time and space, and to travel through various dimensions. In order to make this transition, he is required to abandon many of his previous assumptions about the way the world works and learn to see things in a new way. Importantly, this is not merely a matter of learning a few facts, or of mastering new techniques. Instead, Dr. Strange is (...) required to alter his conception of the basic nature of the world and of how he relates to it. In time, this change extends to his values as well, as Strange comes to embrace his role in safeguarding the human world from interdimensional threats. -/- It is tempting to interpret Dr. Strange’s experience as one that shows the limits of rational, scientific inquiry, or even of human knowledge more generally. However, in this essay, I’d like to explore a different interpretation: that Strange’s experience can most fruitfully be thought of as a scientific revolution, in which Strange moves from one way of carrying out scientific inquiry to a different, incompatible way of doing it. In order to do this, I’ll be exploring the work of philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn, who wrote a book—The Structure of Scientific Revolutions--about just this topic. Among other things, Kuhn’s work introduced the highly useful (though commonly misunderstood) notion of a paradigm shift. -/- We’ll begin by exploring what Kuhn describes as normal science, which consists of applying a set of well-understood concepts and methods to problems of interest. This “puzzle-solving” aspect of science is exemplified by Strange’s early successes in medicine. During this stage, scientists have good reasons to avoid questioning the basic validity of their paradigm, and to instead blame any problems that arise on other factors, such as human error. (As fans will know, Strange is quite good at assigning blame in just this way.) A crisis only occurs when significant, serious anomalies have accrued, such as those that Strange encounters in the aftermath of his accident. Even then, however, the old paradigm will only be abandoned only if a new paradigm can be found. Again, Strange’s experience bears this out, as he is able to move on only when the Sorcerer Supreme introduces him to the Mystic Arts. -/- Along the way, we’ll consider what it means for a practice to count as a scientific paradigm, and why it’s not just “anything goes.” Among other things, a paradigm requires that practitioners agree on which problems are most important, which techniques are appropriate to which problems, and what exemplary models of successful work look like. The Mystic Arts of Strange’s world, unlike the pseudoscientific theories of our own, plausibly do quite well on these sorts of criteria. (shrink)

L ’article examine des armoiries situées sur la margelle d’un puits dans la forteresse médiévale d’Arta. Ces armoiries ont été publiées en 1936 par A. Orlandos, qui les a attribuées à la famille italienne dite des Orsini, présente à Arta au xive s. L ’article démontre qu’il faut, au contraire, les attribuer à une autre famille italienne, celle des Tocco, ayant régné à Arta de 1416 à 1449. Il décrit leur composition associant aux armoiries de la famille Tocco elle‑même celles (...) des princes de Tarente, empereurs titulaires de Constantinople, ainsi que la célèbre aigle bicéphale byzantine. Il étudie la signification des armoiries en les replaçant dans le contexte de l’héraldique familiale des Tocco, de celle des familles occidentales liées au monde byzantin et de celle de Byzance. Enfin, il étudie leur postérité dans les armoiries ultérieures des descendants de la famille. (shrink)

Comment la philosophie peut-elle contribuer à lutter contre le processus actuel d’atomisation sociale? Cherchant à éviter les raccourcis de la controverse qui a opposé le communautarisme au libéralisme, la recherche récente s’inspirant de la « pensée post-métaphysique » distingue quatre types de communauté : la communauté éthique constitutive de l’identité, la communauté légal, la communauté politique et la communauté morale. En ce qui concerne cette dernière, l’article remet en cause l’affirmation du discours théorique selon laquelle on peut résoudre les questions (...) morales en termes de « communauté justificative » (Habermas, Forst). En montrant que la logique du contrat est impuissante à définir la moralité de manière adéquate, l’article invite à se tourner vers la démarche kantienne. On s’intéresse tout particulièrement à la façon dont Kant, en liant la théorie morale à la philosophie de la religion, fournit les bases d’un concept de la communauté globale qui s’abstient de tracer une ligne entre « nous » et « eux ». (shrink)

Comment la philosophie peut-elle contribuer à lutter contre le processus actuel d’atomisation sociale? Cherchant à éviter les raccourcis de la controverse qui a opposé le communautarisme au libéralisme, la recherche récente s’inspirant de la « pensée post-métaphysique » distingue quatre types de communauté : la communauté éthique constitutive de l’identité, la communauté légal, la communauté politique et la communauté morale. En ce qui concerne cette dernière, l’article remet en cause l’affirmation du discours théorique selon laquelle on peut résoudre les questions (...) morales en termes de « communauté justificative » (Habermas, Forst). En montrant que la logique du contrat est impuissante à définir la moralité de manière adéquate, l’article invite à se tourner vers la démarche kantienne. On s’intéresse tout particulièrement à la façon dont Kant, en liant la théorie morale à la philosophie de la religion, fournit les bases d’un concept de la communauté globale qui s’abstient de tracer une ligne entre « nous » et « eux ». (shrink)

This collection of ten essays “by a team of leading philosophers, social scientists, intellectual historians and literary critics” aims to critically engage Jürgen Habermas’s critique of postmodernism in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Five of the essays have been previously published, and Habermas’s essay, “Modernity: An Unfinished Project,” is also reprinted here. The book also contains a very helpful introduction by Passerin d’Entrèves, and an index.

In the target article, “Revive and Refuse: Capacity, Autonomy, and Refusal of Care After Opioid Overdose,” Kenneth D. Marshall and collaborators (2024) highlight important complexities in the care...

The author responds to a letter by D. Brendan Johnson in the July‐August 2023 issue of the Hastings Center Report concerning his and Joseph Clair's article “Love Your Patient as Yourself: On Reviving the Broken Heart of American Medical Ethics.”.