The study of the influence of the religious factor on the life of modern society is currently one of the most relevant areas of research activity. This is due to the fact that in the modern world the religious component of social life is becoming increasingly important. The role of religious organizations, especially the traditional majority religions, in solving many of the pressing problems of our time, related to the preservation and strengthening of peace, from social support to vulnerable groups (...) of the population, from the formation of spiritual and moral values, is becoming noticeable. (shrink)

G. E. R. Lloyd explores the amazing diversity of views that humans have held on being, humanity, and understanding. In a cross-cultural study that ranges from ancient to modern times, he asks how far we are bound by the conceptual systems to which we belong, and explores topics such as ontology, morality, philosophy of language, and communication.

Now in its fourth edition, Rational Diagnosis and Treatment: Evidence-Based Clinical Decision - Making is a unique book to look at evidence-based medicine and the difficulty of applying evidence from group studies to individual patients._ The book analyses the successive stages of the decision process and deals with topics such as the examination of the patient,_the reliability of clinical data, the logic of diagnosis, the fallacies of uncontrolled therapeutic experience and the need for randomised clinical trials and meta-analyses. It is (...) the main theme of the book that, whenever possible, clinical decisions must be based on the evidence from clinical research, but the authors also explain the pitfalls of such research and the problems involved in applying evidence from groups of patients to the individual patient._ For this new edition, the sections on placebo and meta-analysis and on alternative medicine have been thoroughly updated, and there is more focus on insufficient reporting of harms of interventions. The sections on different research designs describe advantages and limitations, and the increased medicalisation and the effects of cancer screening on health people are noted. A section on academic freedom when clinicians collaborate with industry and ghost authors is added._ This essential reference work integrates the science and statistical approach of evidence-based medicine with the art and humanism of medical practice; distinguishing between data, sets of data, knowledge and wisdom, and their application. Such an intellectually challenging book is ideal for both medical students and doctors who require theoretical and practical clinical skills to help ensure that they apply theory in practice. (shrink)

We analyse a recent paper in which an alleged devastating criticism of the so called GRW proposal to account for the objectification of the properties of macroscopic systems has been presented and we show that the author has not taken into account the precise implications of the GRW theory. This fact makes his conclusions basically wrong. We also perform a survey of measurement theory aimed to focus better on the physical and the conceptual aspects of the so-called macro-objectification problem.

Context: Affective neuroscience has not developed first-person methods for the generation of first-person data. This neglect is problematic, because emotion experience is a central dimension of affectivity. Problem: I propose that augmenting affective neuroscience with a neurophenomenological method can help address long-standing questions in emotion theory, such as: Do different emotions come with unique, distinctive patterns of brain and bodily activity? How do emotion experience, bodily feelings and brain and bodily activity relate to one another? Method: This paper is theoretical. (...) It advances ideas for integrating neurophenomenology and affective neuroscience, and explains how this integration would allow progress on the above questions. Results: An integrated “affective neuro-physio-phenomenology” may help scientists understand whether discrete emotion categories come in different experiential varieties, which would in turn help interpret concomitant brain and bodily activity. It may also help investigate the bodily nature of emotion experience, including how experience relates to actual brain and bodily activity. Implications: If put into practice, the ideas advanced here would enrich the scientific study of emotion experience and more generally further our understanding of the relationship of consciousness and physical activity. The paper is speculative and its ideas need to be implemented to bear fruit. Constructivist content: This paper argues in favor of the neurophenomenological method, which is an offshoot of enactivism. (shrink)

After briefly reviewing the standard set-theoretic resolutions of the Burali-Forti paradox, we examine how the paradox arises in set theory formalized with plural quantifiers. A significant choice emerges between the desirable unrestricted availability of ordinals to represent well-orderings and the sensibility of attempting to refer to ‘absolutely all ordinals’ or ‘absolutely all well-orderings’. This choice is obscured by standard set theories, which rely on type distinctions which are obliterated in the setting with plurals. Zermelo's attempt ( 1930 ) to secure (...) ordinal representability of arbitrary well-orderings through relativization of quantification to set-theoretic models is reviewed and found wanting. The natural modal-structural recasting provides, it is claimed, a good repair. (shrink)

Modern science faces a series of problems that undermine confidence in its reliability. To solve these problems, we must reflect on what makes science work and what leads it astray. This book is about Science, its strengths and weaknesses. The papers that scientists write form a vast resource of evidence and theory that is doubling about every ten years, along with the number of scientists. The size of this resource makes it hard for it to be used effectively by scientists, (...) and along with this are growing concerns about its integrity and reliability. This book looks at the scientific method, as currently applied and as understood philosophically by scientists, the social structure of science, and the structure of scientific communication through journals. It includes case studies of controversies, and looks at how fields develop over time. (shrink)

We tend to assume that our map of the intellectual disciplines is valid cross-culturally. G. E. R. Lloyd challenges this in relation to eight main areas of human endeavour, namely philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, art, law, religion, and science, by examining how the disciplines were conceived and developed in different times and places.

Drawing on conceptual tools from philosophical bioethics, economics, and materialist feminism, we advocate viewing transnational commercial surrogacy as labor and consider what it means to compensate women for this work. We find two distinct but interrelated concerns emerge in our discussion of wages for surrogates: how to value and compensate for social reproduction, and how to establish a fair wage for surrogates. We explore limitations of minimum wage policy in addressing the undervaluation of biological and emotional labor in the transnational (...) commercial surrogacy industry. We argue that subsidization is a superior method of addressing at least one cause of undervaluation. (shrink)

This paper argues that the choice of backing to certify the authority of a warrant requires a legitimation inference. When brought into question, such an inference becomes a claim defended by showing sound reasons for the selection of backing pertinent to a shared context. Legitimation controversies ensue when an attributed consensus meets objection. It is argued that attention to legitimation controversies renders the Toulmin model a more useful critical paradigm for investigating the development and risks of communicative reasoning in a (...) public forum. The nomination of John Tower as Secretary of Defense is employed to illustrate how critical analysis of legitimation controversies reflexively expands the domain of inquiry for informal reasoning. (shrink)

Given Conciliar Christology and a compositionalist metaphysics of the incarnation, I explore whether ‘qua-propositions’ are capable of solving the coherence problem in Christology. I do this by probing the metaphysical aspect of qua-propositions, since ‘semantics presupposes metaphysics’. My proposal focuses on the fact that the Word accidentally owns an individual human nature. Due to that individuality, the human properties first characterise the individual human nature and, in a ‘next step’, this individual human nature characterises the Word. I call this ‘stepped (...) characterisation’. Subsequently, I show that stepped characterisation validates the use of qua-propositions in Conciliar Christology. Hence, qua-propositions are not merely ‘muddling the waters of logic’. (shrink)

The dictum ‘“ought” implies “can”’ has a status in moral philosophy in some respects like that of ‘a good player needs good co-ordination’ in talk about ball-games. Clearly, you say something important but not conclusive about proficiency in playing a ball-game when you say that it requires good co-ordination: similarly, you say something important but not conclusive about obligation when you say that it implies a certain possibility or power or ability. Each dictum is a reminder: the one about such (...) courses of physical instruction, the other about such exhortations to duty, as are worth persevering with. It would be hopeless to keep on teaching a boy the moves and tricks of rugby football if he could never co-ordinate well enough to get his eye in, so to speak. Correspondingly, it would be meaningless to recommend that someone ought to do something the specification of which involved a contradiction, and pointless to suggest that he ought to do something which, for quite general reasons, was not, and was certain to remain not, within his power. So each dictum expresses a bluff, no-nonsense wisdom which we should count on before involving ourselves in certain more detailed commitments. But probably this is as far as the comparison between the two sayings can well be taken. (shrink)

We explore three questions about Earth system modeling that are of both scientific and philosophical interest: What kind of understanding can be gained via complex Earth system models? How can the limits of understanding be bypassed or managed? How should the task of evaluating Earth system models be conceptualized?

Decompressive craniectomy is a technically straightforward procedure whereby a large section of the cranium is temporarily removed in cases where the intracranial pressure is dangerously high. While its use has been described for a number of conditions, it is increasingly used in the context of severe head injury. As the use of the procedure increases, a significant number of patients may survive a severe head injury who otherwise would have died. Unfortunately some of these patients will be left severely disabled; (...) a condition likened to the RUB, an acronym for the Risk of Unacceptable Badness. Until recently it has been difficult to predict this outcome, however an accurate prediction model has been developed and this has been applied to a large cohort of patients in Western Australia. It is possible to compare the predicted outcome with the observed outcome at 18 months within this cohort. By using predicted and observed outcome data this paper considers the ethical implications in three cases of differing severity of head injury in view of the fact that it is possible to calculate the RUB for each case. (shrink)