We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste SystemChristopher S. QueenDr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. By Christophe Jaffrelot. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xiii + 205 pp.Outside of India, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar remains virtually unknown. Everyone knows that Mahatma Gandhi led the fight for Indian independence and that his nonviolent marches inspired Dr. King and the American civil rights movement. Most educated men (...) and women have heard of Nehru and some of the political and literary figures that India has produced in modern times. But few know of the first Untouchable to attend college, who went on to earn advanced degrees in the social sciences and law at Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and Grays Inn, who returned to India in the 1920s to launch a civil rights movement for Untouchables, [End Page 168] who drafted the constitution for the Republic of India as its first law minister, and who led a mass conversion to Buddhism weeks before this death.Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) is venerated by millions of Buddhist and low-caste followers in India today, and at the same time feared by politicians determined to preserve the Hindu caste system he vowed to destroy. Admirers call him Babasaheb Ambedkar or simply Baba, using a traditional term of respect for a guiding elder, and many use the greeting Jai Bhim (“Victory to Bhimrao”) within the Untouchable communities. Ambedkar is portrayed on ubiquitous wall calendars, public statues, and home altars alongside that of the Buddha, wearing a Western suit and tie, with the horn-rimmed glasses and pocket pens of a scholar and diplomat. Although widely regarded as a bodhisattva or Buddhist saint, he is never pictured in the robes of a holy man or entreated in prayer by his devotees. And while most of his campaigns for Untouchable human rights were driven back by the Hindu nationalists, many of the provisions of his path-breaking legislation were eventually adopted after his death. In the intervening decades, amid deepening polarization over his legacy, the state government of Maharashtra has published eighteen volumes of Ambedkar’s collected works and the government of India has bestowed on him its highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna.Given the dearth of Western scholarship on Ambedkar’s place in the history of modern India and the emergence of socially engaged Buddhism, I welcome Chris-tophe Jaffrelot’s Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting the Indian Caste System. As a social scientist and director of the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internatio-nales (CERI) who has published more than a dozen books on South Asian politics, Jaffrelot is well qualified to assess Ambedkar’s life and thought. Drawing on a wide range of materials on the social reform movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Ambedkar’s contributions to sociology and politics, the author aims to redress Ambedkar’s neglect by Indian scholars before the 1990s, when the low-caste movement began finally to gain traction. However, he does not address the anomaly of Ambedkar’s neglect by all but a small circle of Western authors.1The strength of Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability is its concise analysis of the geographical, political, and social context of Ambedkar’s career. Jaffrelot shows how British recruitment of the Mahars, members of Ambedkar’s lowly but numerous caste, for service in the colonial army resulted in disproportionate levels of literacy. Ambedkar was the fourteenth child in such a military family, whose father held the rank of major and served as a school master for the barracks. Both parents and all of Bhimrao’s uncles could read and write, compared to less than one percent of Mahars in village life. Moreover, in spite of his brilliance and determination, Ambedkar could not have continued his education without the financial support of Maratha maharajahs who opposed the Brahmins’ monopoly in education. “Ambedkar was the heir to a regional tradition; his struggle harked back to the anti-Brahmin movements which emerged in western Maharashtra from the mid-nineteenth century onward, a precocity that only the Dravidian South—the other key area of anti-Brahmin mobilization—could match.”Jaffrelot presents... (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

The explosion of health-related costs in U.S. firms over more than a decade is a huge concern for managers. The initiation of Health and Safety programs at the firm level is an adequate Corporate Social Responsibility initiative to contain this evolution. However, in spite of their documented efficiency, firms underinvest in those programs. This appears as a puzzle for health economists. In this paper, we uncover a strong negative relation of financial leverage to the implementation of H&S programs. The negative (...) impact of debt on investment and CSR activities is generally interpreted as an efficient disciplinary effect of debt on managers. H&S are particularly well suited to revisit this evidence, given their strong profitability and homogeneity across firms. Very interestingly, the negative effect is stronger for firms with high free cash flows, for which debt is used to prevent overinvestment. This strongly suggests that debt, while disciplining managers, also discourages investments which are valuable both for firms and society. (shrink)

It is argued that Hume’s definition of miracle stands in need of revision because it fails to be inclusive of acts of supernatural intervention in the world which are non-law-violating. Potential revisions of the definition, due to Paul Dietl and Christopher Hughes are considered and found to be inadequate, and a new definition is put forward; a miracle is "an intended outcome of an intervention in the natural world by a supernatural agent." An objection to this definition is anticipated (...) and a distinction is made between miracles and magic in order to address the objection. (shrink)

Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people's intuitions about moral relativism vary widely. Though many philosophers are quite critical of moral relativism, there are several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it. These include such prominent figures as Gilbert Harman, Jesse J. Prinz, J. David (...) Velleman and David B. Wong. The term ‘moral relativism’ is understood in a variety of ways. Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to the moral standard of some person or group of persons. Sometimes ‘moral relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them. (shrink)

Most accounts of the history of autism begin with the Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Leo Kanner's classic 1943 paper, "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact," an article with unforgettable case descriptions of 11 children whose features differed "so markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far" as to merit a new syndrome. It is less often noted that in the same paper, Kanner described an image of the stereotypical parent of the autistic child that was every bit as striking. "They all," he (...) noted in a boldly italicized sentence, "come of highly intelligent families". Most fathers had doctoral degrees, nine of the 11 mothers were college graduates, and the extended families included an... (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

The critical reception of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus Tales has often interpreted these animal fables as allegories of American slavery. Such an approach, however, risks what Steve Baker calls the ‘denial of the animal’, which displaces animal signifiers onto human signifieds. Through readings of ‘The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story’ and ‘How the Birds Talk’, I ask what it might mean to take seriously the numerous historical, political and philosophical questions posed by the animal ‘form’ that these characters assume, including (...) Heidegger's ontological differentiation between thing, animal and human, and Derrida's displacement of the conventional Cartesian distinction between animal reaction and human response. I argue that the racist equation of blacks with mimicry relies precisely on this dubious opposition. Remus's stories thus challenge our understandings of both race and language by showing how repetition and mimicry condition every ‘human’ response. (shrink)

In this stimulating work, Dr. Wong propounds Christian Wholism as a path to peace and joy as well as healing for our 'brokeness' and 'lostness' in the postmodern world. Wong discusses what it means to be whole in our spiritual, intellectual, physical, ethical, psychological, and other domains of our multidimensional personhood. Some practical suggestions are offered. He voices a hope in God's promise of a resurrected body as the gift of ultimate wholeness.

Dr Lloyd writes for those who want to discover and explore Aristotle's work for themselves. He acts as mediator between Aristotle and the modern reader. The book is divided into two parts. The first tells the story of Aristotle's intellectual development as far as it can be reconstructed; the second presents the fundamentals of his thought in the main fields of inquiry which interested him: logic and metaphysics, physics, psychology, ethics, politics, and literary criticism. The final chapter considers the unity (...) and coherence of Aristotle's philosophy, and records briefly his later influence on European thought. This is a concise and lucid account of the work of a difficult and profound thinker. Dr Lloyd's business is only with the essentials; but he does not shirk the difficulties which arise in their interpretation, nor does he invest Aristotle with a spurious modernity. (shrink)

This book review outlines and comments on the ten sections of Robert Allinson’s edited collection, Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots. It begins with John E. Smith, whose essay presents three types of intercultural scholarly occurrences: parallels and agreements, divergences, and conflict. Next is Robert Neville, who discusses common ontological and cosmological themes in Confucianism, Daoism, and Sinicized Buddhism. General themes are then tied to Plato and the mystical side of Western monotheistic religions. In the following essay, Chad Hansen (...) discusses his interpretation of the Chinese theory of language, suggesting that the prescriptive and socializing nature of the Chinese language make for a radically different conceptions of language and mind from Western theories (except functionalist theories), one in which concerns for truth are secondary. In response to Hansen, Christoph Harbsmeier draws on Chinese classical philosophy to argue that a concern for truth is central in the Chinese canon. The reviewer then comments on the limitations of Harbsmeier’s critique, which adopts Tarski’s ‘T schema’ of truth to assess notions of truth in Chinese classical philosophy. Continuing with the essays, Chung-ying Cheng compares Chinese and Western metaphysics on the Parmenidean problem of change. Drawing mainly from Xunzi, Antonio Cua sets up a dialogue between Confucianism and Anglo-American moral philosophy on the function and justification of ritual code. Kuang-ming Wu compares and contrasts prominent Chinese and Western approaches to the apprehension of beauty in the arts, the former being heavily analytical and prone to universal generalizations and the latter being more adumbrative and contextualized. The reviewer then comments on Wu’s apparent omission of the difference between a Western experience of beauty and Western philosophizing about the experience of beauty. The last essay, Lao Sze-kwang suggests that the difference between the practical, “orientative” direction of Chinese philosophy which aims at effecting change in the self or the world and the highly theoretical slant of Western philosophy as an absolute difference between the two canons, a difference which the reviewer welcomes but at the same time pulls back from any claims of absoluteness. Finally, the book review turns to Allinson’s introduction, which reflects on the multiplicity of perspectives in both Western and Chinese mind and, like Sze-kwang, draws attention to the higher degree of emphasis that Chinese philosophy places on practice, explaining the difference in part in terms of the propensity of Chinese philosophers to envision humanity as in or capable of regaining fundamental harmony with the cosmos. The reviewer concludes with suggestions for further dialogues. (shrink)

No matter how insulated we are by wealth or friends we can all expect to undergo some form of loss, failure, or disappointment. The common reaction is to bear it as best we can--some do this better than others--and move on with life. Dr. Christopher Hamilton proposes a different response to adversity. Focusing on the arenas of family, love, illness, and death, he explores constructive ways to deal with adversity and embrace it to derive unique insight into our condition. (...) Offering examples from history, literature, and science, he suggests how we might recognize it as a precious source of enlightenment, shaping our very existence. - The School of Life is dedicated to exploring life's big questions: How can we fulfill our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Can relationships last a lifetime? We don't have all the answers, but we will direct you toward a variety of useful ideas--from philosophy to literature, from psychology to the visual arts--that are quaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish, and console. (shrink)

Talk therapy is, by definition, difficult, if not impossible, to represent materially. Whereas other scholars have sought to do so by referencing Sigmund Freud’s drawings or the setting of his consulting room, this article looks instead to the use of cloth in Joanne Greenberg’s 1964 semiautobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The two main treatments given to protagonist Deborah Blau were therapy sessions with Dr. Clara Fried, based on Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and the “cold pack,” in which the (...) patient was restrained and wrapped in sheets drenched with ice water. The two treatments, this article argues, can be considered in parallel, and through analysis of the material descriptions of the cold pack, one can learn more about the talking cure. Namely, this article analyzes the care in both cases as one of constraint, giving material form to the metaphorical “holding environment” of psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott. Deborah uses the cold pack to endure her psychosis and return to reality. Similarly, Winnicott describes the ideal therapeutic space as one that, by its reliability, allows regression in service of finding a new self and distinguishing between fantasy and the outside world. The aim of this article is thus twofold: one, to further elucidate the role of cloth in treating mental distress, and two, to understand more fully the therapeutic relationship via the literal and figurative constraint of treatment. (shrink)

During the 1940s in America, as medicine became more research-focused, medical researcher heroes were described as devotedly pursuing miraculous medicine. At the same time, Hollywood thrived, and films were an effective means to help build the myth of the physician hero. Cinematic techniques, rather than only the narrative, of four films, Dr. Arrowsmith, The Story of Louis Pasteur, Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, are discussed to understand how they helped construct the image of the physician (...) hero, both in terms of what they were and what they were not. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Breathing:Proustian Therapy1Christopher Prendergast (bio)I begin with a question I would never have imagined myself asking. Is Proust good for you? Might there even be, albeit in carefully controlled doses, a place for him in modern 'health care'? He certainly belongs in the select, if occasionally scary, company of writers whose name, or that of one of their fictional characters, has lent itself to the designation of a psycho-physical condition (...) often with medical characteristics. A short list includes: Stendhal ('Stendhal syndrome,' the condition of obsessional attachment to works of art); Musset (the 'Musset Sign,' manifested as an uncontrollable tremor of the head); Gogol's Plyushkin in Dead Souls ('compulsive hoarding syndrome'); Dickens's Miss Havisham in Great Expectations ('senile squalor syndrome'); Wilde's Lady Windermere ('Lady Windermere syndrome,' associated with pulmonary illness and breathing difficulties).There is no evidence that Proust was directly acquainted with Wilde's play, but there can be little doubt that what came to be called 'Lady Windermere Syndrome' would have spoken to him loud and clear. In an early story called L'Indifférent, Proust penned an encomium to the air we breathe: "A child who from birth has always breathed without paying any attention has no idea how much the air, which swells so sweetly his chest that he doesn't even notice it, is essential to life." A memory of this is doubtless somewhere in the background of the passing mention in Le Côté de Guermantes of "the alpine resort" that teaches him "that the act of breathing, to which we habitually pay no attention, can be a constant source of pleasure." It was almost certainly also in Proust's thoughts when, in the final volume, he penned the famous definition of Paradise Lost as the place and time of "an air we have breathed before, this purer air which the poets have tried in vain to make reign in paradise and which could not provide this profound feeling of renewal if it has not already been breathed, for the only true paradise is a paradise that we have lost."But the early story, like the novel itself, is also haunted by a subtext in which what is precious to life can also be the enemy of life, as, in an access of fever and sudden convulsion, the child feels himself to be suffocating. The story clearly has its origins in Proust's own life, the moment of his first asthma attack as a young boy on a family outing to the Bois de Boulogne. It struck out of the blue with a frightening intensity, and was to pursue [End Page 49] him throughout his life like a fury, proliferating further symptoms such as emphysema and cardiac seizures. As late as 1919, he writes in a letter of an attack that leaves him "gasping like someone half-drowned who is pulled out of water." And it was there again at the moment of Proust's exit from the world, carried off by a bout of pneumonia exacerbated by a pulmonary abscess.There were treatments and consultations galore, the former on a spectrum from inhalations to cauterizing of the nasal tubes, and the latter including a meeting with his father's colleague, Dr. Buissand, who inclined to the view– and increasingly fashionable in medical circles–that the prime cause was neurasthenic. Proust himself hesitated: in a letter he described it as "a bodily illness," but in the Recherche, "asthma crises" are linked to a "mystery" of the "unconscious" and strike out of the blue. The 'mystery' is often, and plausibly, associated with fear of separation from the protective mother. This will be one of the major themes of the novel, and the source of the "sobs that never cease" of which the narrator speaks in the opening volume. But whether physical or psychosomatic, a guaranteed trigger was proximity to tree blossoms (apple especially virulent) and certain flowers–that is, the very things that, for Proust, often something approaching quasi-sacred status, thus illustrating the law that it is what you most love that can kill you.In the novel, however, much of this is distilled into comedy, all terrifying... (shrink)

Memory is everywhere in Blade Runner 2049. From the dead tree that serves as a memorial and a site of remembrance (“Who keeps a dead tree?”), to the ‘flashbulb’ memories individuals hold about the moment of the ‘blackout’, when all the electronic stores of data were irretrievably erased (“everyone remembers where they were at the blackout”). Indeed, the data wiped out in the blackout itself involves a loss of memory (“all our memory bearings from the time, they were all damaged (...) in the blackout”). Memory, and lack of it, permeates place, where from the post-blackout Las Vegas Deckard remembers it as somewhere you could “forget your troubles.” Memory is a commodity, called upon and consumed by the Wallace Corporation, purchased from the memory-maker, Dr Ana Stelline, who constructs and implants “the best memories” in replicants so as to instil in them real human responses. Memory is ubiquitous in Blade Runner 2049, involving humans, replicants, objects, and machines. Even “God,” we are told, “remembered Rachael.” Nowhere, though, is the depiction of memory more important than in the attempt to solve a question of identity. Officer K has a memory of his past. Even though he knows it is an implant, it is a memory he is emotionally attached to, frequently narrating it to Joi, his digital girlfriend. But it is a memory that starts to puzzle and trouble him. When K discovers the remains of a dead replicant, a female NEXUS-7, he uncovers a secret—this replicant was pregnant and died during childbirth, a discovery that could “break the world.” K is charged with hunting down the child and making the problem disappear. Yet as K starts seeking answers to the question of the child’s identity he gets inextricably caught up in the mystery. Is he merely Officer K, or is he Joe, the miracle child of Rachael and Deckard? The answer to this question hinges on K’s memory. But is the memory genuine? Is the memory his? Blade Runner 2049 encourages us to think deeply about the nature of memory, identity, and the relation between them. Indeed, the film does not just serve as a starting point for thinking about philosophical issues related to memory and identity. Rather, as we show in this chapter, the film seems to offer a view on these philosophical issues. Blade Runner 2049 offers us a view of memory as spread out over people, objects, and the environment, and it shows us that memory’s role in questions of identity goes beyond merely accurately recalling one’s past. Identity depends not on memory per se, but partly on what we use memory for. (shrink)

Discussing what Wittgenstein means by ‘the use’ of an expression, Dr Kenny writes: Does a word have a use provided that it can fit into acceptable sentences, or does its use have to make some difference in the world ? Wittgenstein's two favourite similes point in opposite directions. A game, like chess, has only syntactical rules; what goes on in chess has no effect on the world except indirectly through the consequence of winning and losing.

This is a book about sensory states and their apparent characteristics. It confronts a whole series of metaphysical and epistemological questions and presents an argument for type materialism: the view that sensory states are identical with the neural states with which they are correlated. According to type materialism, sensations are only possessed by human beings and members of related biological species; silicon-based androids cannot have sensations. The author rebuts several other rival theories, and explores a number of important issues: the (...) forms and limits of introspective awareness of sensations, the semantic properties of sensory concepts, knowledge of other minds, and unity of consciousness. The book is a significant contribution to the philosophy of mind, and has much to say to psychologists and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive theory of consciousness. The initial chapter distinguishes six main forms of consciousness and sketches an account of each one. Later chapters focus on phenomenal consciousness, consciousness of, and introspective consciousness. In discussing phenomenal consciousness, Hill develops the representational theory of mind in new directions, arguing that all awareness involves representations, even awareness of qualitative states like pain. He then uses this view to undercut dualistic accounts of qualitative states. Other topics include visual awareness, visual appearances, (...) emotional qualia, and meta-cognitive processing. This important work will interest a wide readership of students and scholars in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

“Marlowe wrote Edward The Second in 1590. He found a suitable tragic theme in the Holinshed’s account of Edward II’s reign though it was not a promising dramatic material from the chronological point of view as the events were disjointed and uninspiring disastrous. Improper coordinates of the sources has left its mark on Marlowe’s play, nevertheless, this is his most finished and satisfactory of plays…Edward The Second can surely be regarded as Marlowe’s finest technical achievement.” (Edited, Dr. S. Sen…).

The 2003 blackout in the northern and eastern U.S. and Canada which caused a $6 billion loss in economic revenue is one of many indicators that the current electrical grid is outdated. Not only must the grid become more reliable, it must also become more efficient, reduce its impact on the environment, incorporate alternative energy sources, allow for more consumer choices, and ensure cyber security. In effect, it must become smart. Significant investments in the billions of dollars are being made (...) to lay the infrastructure of the future Smart Grid. However, the authors argue that we must take great care not to sacrifice consumer privacy amidst an atmosphere of unbridled enthusiasm for electricity reform. Information proliferation, lax controls and insufficient oversight of this information could lead to unprecedented invasions of consumer privacy. Smart meters and smart appliances will constitute a data explosion of intimate details of daily life, and it is not yet clear who will have access to this information beyond a person’s utility provider. The authors of this paper urge the adoption of Dr. Ann Cavoukian’s conceptual model ‘SmartPrivacy’ to prevent potential invasions of privacy while ensuring full functionality of the Smart Grid. SmartPrivacy represents a broad arsenal of protections, encapsulating everything necessary to ensure that all of the personal information held by an organization is appropriately managed. These include: Privacy by Design; law, regulation and independent oversight; accountability and transparency; market forces, education and awareness; audit and control; data security; and fair information practices. Each of these elements is important, but the concept of Privacy by Design represents its sine qua non. When applying SmartPrivacy to the Smart Grid, not only will the grid be able to, for example, become increasingly resistant to attack and natural disasters—it will be able to do so while also becoming increasingly resistant to data leakage and breaches of personal information. The authors conclude that SmartPrivacy must be built into the Smart Grid during its current nascent stage, allowing for both consumer control of electricity consumption and consumer control of their personal information, which must go hand in hand. Doing so will ensure that consumer confidence and trust is gained, and that their participation in the Smart Grid contributes to the vision of creating a more efficient and environmentally friendly electrical grid, as well as one that is protective of privacy. This will result in a positive-sum outcome, where both environmental efficiency and privacy can coexist. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 175-191, October 2020.

Drawing on Ezekiel Emanuel’s controversial piece ‘Why I hope to die at 75,’ I distinguish two types of concern in ethical debates about extending the human lifespan. The first focusses on the value of living longer from prudential and social perspectives. The second type of concern, which has received less attention, focusses on the value of aiming for longer life. This distinction, which is overlooked in the ethical literature on life extension, is significant because there are features of human psychology (...) and the structure of a life that should give pause when considering how long one should aim to live, but which do not neatly coincide with considerations about how valuable additional life is likely to be. I argue that, while Emanuel’s case for hoping to die at 75 is unconvincing, he nonetheless provides weak pro tanto considerations in favour of taking a moderate life span as a prudential aim around which to base at least some significant life plans. (shrink)

In this book, Christopher Celenza provides an intellectual history of the Italian Renaissance during the long fifteenth century, from c.1350–1525. His book fills a bibliographic gap between Petrarch and Machiavelli and offers clear case studies of contemporary luminaries, including Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Pietro Bembo. Integrating sources in Italian and Latin, Celenza focuses on the linked issues of language and philosophy. He also examines the conditions in which Renaissance intellectuals operated in an (...) era before the invention of printing, analyzing reading strategies and showing how texts were consulted, and how new ideas were generated as a result of conversations, both oral and epistolary. The result is a volume that offers a new view on both the history of philosophy and Italian Renaissance intellectual life. It will serve as a key resource for students and scholars of early modern Italian humanism and culture. (shrink)

Visual experience is shaped by a number of factors that are independent of the external objects that we perceive—factors like lighting, angle of view, and the sensitivities of photoreceptors in the retina. This paper seeks to catalog, analyze, and explain the fluctuations in visual phenomenology that are due to such factors.

There are two main accounts of what it is for external objects to be presented in visual experience. According to particularism, particular objects are built into the representational contents of experiences. Existentialism is a quite different view. According to existentialism, the representational contents of perceptual experiences are general rather than particular, in the sense that the contents can be fully captured by existentially quantified statements. The present paper is a defense of existentialism. It argues that existentialism is much better equipped (...) than particularism to explain the contents of hallucinations, and it defends existentialism against three objections. (shrink)

This note is concerned with Ned Block's claim that cognition differs from perception in being paradigmatically conceptual, propositional, and non-iconic. As against Block, it maintains that large stretches of cognition constitutively involve, or depend on, iconic representations.

There are two main accounts of what it is for external objects to be presented in visual experience. According to particularism, particular objects are built into the representational contents of experiences. Existentialism is a quite different view. According to existentialism, the representational contents of perceptual experiences are general rather than particular, in the sense that the contents can be fully captured by existentially quantified statements. The present paper is a defense of existentialism. It argues that existentialism is much better equipped (...) than particularism to explain the contents of hallucinations, and it defends existentialism against three objections. (shrink)

Schellenberg's book The unity of perception is full of innovative ideas and challenges to preconceptions. This discussion endorses several of Schellenberg's main contentions, but it also challenges her handling of several key topics, such as hallucinations and perceptual awareness of particulars, and it expresses doubts about the informativeness of her main analytic tool, the notion of a perceptual capacity.

In the first chapter of his Knowledge and Lotteries, John Hawthorne argues that thinkers do not ordinarily know lottery propositions. His arguments depend on claims about the intimate connections between knowledge and assertion, epistemic possibility, practical reasoning, and theoretical reasoning. In this paper, we cast doubt on the proposed connections. We also put forward an alternative picture of belief and reasoning. In particular, we argue that assertion is governed by a Gricean constraint that makes no reference to knowledge, and that (...) practical reasoning has more to do with rational degrees of belief than with states of knowledge. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of essays by the leading philosopher Christopher S. Hill. Together, they address central philosophical issues related to four key concerns: the nature of truth; the relation between experiences and brain states; the relation between experiences and representational states; and problems concerning knowledge.