The Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU on the basis of Marxist-Leninist theory, analyzing the experience and results of previous work and defining the tasks of the next period of struggle for the building of communism, stressed that "the problem of ideological struggle increasingly comes to the fore, and the truth about socialism is the most powerful tool in this struggle.".

In a series of works published over a period of twenty five years, C.W. Huntington, Jr. has developed a provocative and radical reading of Madhyamaka inspired by ‘the insights of post- Wittgensteinian pragmatism and deconstruction’. This article examines the body of Huntington’s work through the filter of his seminal 2007 publication, ‘The Nature of the M?dhyamika Trick’, a polemic aimed at a quartet of other recent commentators on Madhyamaka who attempt ‘to read N?g?rjuna through the lens of modern symbolic logic’, (...) a project which is the ‘end result of a long and complex scholastic enterprise … [which] can be traced backwards from contemporary academic discourse to fifteenth century Tibet, and from there into India’ and which Huntington sees as distorting the Madhyamaka project which was not aimed at ‘command[ing] assent to a set of rationally grounded doctrines, tenets, or true conclusions’. This article begins by explicating some disparate strands found in Huntington’s work, which I connect under a radicalized notion of ‘context’. These strands consist of a contextualist/pragmatic theory of truth, a contextualist epistemology, and a contextualist ontology where entities are viewed as necessarily relational I then use these linked theories to find fault with Huntington’s own readings of Candrak?rti and N?g?rjuna, arguing that Huntington misreads the semantic context of certain key terms and fails to follow the implications of N?g?rjuna and Candrak?rti’s reliance on the role of the pram??as in constituting conventional reality. Thus, I find that Huntington’s imputation of a rejection of logic and rational argumentation to N?g?rjuna and Candrak?rti is unwarranted. Finally, I offer alternate readings of the four contemporary commentators selected by Huntington, using the conceptual apparatus developed earlier to dismiss Robinson’s and Hayes’s view of N?g?rjuna as a charlatan relying on logical fallacies, and to find common ground between Huntington’s project and the view of N?g?rjuna developed by Tillemans and Garfield as a thinker committed using reason to reach, through rational analysis, ‘the limits of thought.’. (shrink)

Plutarch, in his work,_ Peri __Deisidaimon_ia_ __,_ presents a striking portrayal of superstition in the First Century. The Philosopher who also served for decades as a priest of Apollo portrays the pernicious effects of some supposed religious practices as worse than the outcome of atheism. His position constitutes a forceful explanation to ostensibly controversial socio-religious behaviours. This article discusses some of the priest’s concerns as well as his rebuff of religious attitudes that are borne out of what he describes as (...) misrepresentation of the gods or superstition. Plutarch’s essay is seen as illustrating a reason for a socio-religious situation in Africa, a continent that shares a similar religious background with the world of the writer. Specifically, with the example of the hard fight against street begging in some parts of Nigeria, the article shows how social reform programmes could fail when effects of traditional African beliefs and cultural practices remain potent. __. (shrink)

Two years ago, astrophysicists studying Type Ia supernovas discovered that our universe is a much stranger place than we had imagined, with invisible vacuum energy accelerating its expansion. (See my column about this in the May-1999 Analog.) However, new astrophysical observations from the BOOMERanG experiment (Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geomagnetics), a balloon-borne cryogenic microwave telescope measurement that flew at an altitude of about 24 miles over the Antarctic, indicate that our universe is also rather ordinary, in that (...) its space is maximally flat. The term “flat” as used here means that the space of our universe is neither positively curved like a ball or negatively curved like a potato chip. It appears that in our universe, the tendencies of space toward positive curvature from gravitational attraction and towards negative curvature from expansion kinetic energy are precisely in balance, leaving space on the average completely free of curvature. (shrink)

In October-2010 the headlines of the science press were dominated by the announcement of the discovery of a “Goldilocks Planetâ€, Gleise 581g, which has a mass not too different from that of the Earth and has an orbit squarely in the middle of the habitable zone of its parent star. It was supposed to be not too hot, not too cold, but just right for the evolution of life. Steven Vogt of UC Santa Cruz, the lead author of the paper, (...) was quoted (out of context) as saying, “The chances of life on the planet are 100%.†Now that some of the dust has settled concerning this reported discovery, I’d like to have a look at the work behind the announcement and consider its present status. (shrink)

The diagnostic category of borderline personality disorder (BPD) has come under increasing criticism in recent years. In this paper, we analyze the role and impact of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice, in relation to the diagnosis of BPD. We first offer a critical sociological and historical account, detailing and expanding a range of arguments that BPD is problematic nosologically. We then turn to explore the epistemic injustices that can result from a BPD diagnosis, showing how they can lead to experiences (...) of testimonial injustice which impede patient engagement in meaning-making activities, thereby undermining standard therapeutic goals. We conclude by showing how our arguments bolster ongoing efforts to replace the diagnostic category of BPD with alternatives such as complex post-traumatic stress disorder. (shrink)

In this book we attempted to gather together a set of chapters that describe new ways of approaching questions about aesthetics and innovation. Rather than going over old ground, the chapters describe attempts to break out in new directions. The book begins with a description of von Ehrenfels development of a Gestalt theory of aesthetics so evocative of the Vienna of 1900 that readers will wish that they had been there to experience the intellectual excitement and ends with a survey (...) the very latest research on brain scan research on perception of art. In between, we encounter chapters as diverse as a description of cognitive effects on art perception and on the analogies between oscillations in art history and waves in the physical world. About half of the book contains chapters by well known western psychological aestheticians and half chapters by Russian scholars many of whom will be new to western readers. As well as describing new methods and results, the chapters by Russian scholars will be novel to most western readers, because the Russian perspective on aesthetics and innovation is rather different than the traditional western perspectives. Looking at phenomena from new viewpoints never hurts and very often helps in science. (shrink)

BackgroundDeep brain stimulation is approved for treating refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder in adults under the US Food and Drug Administration Humanitarian Device Exemption, and studies hav...

Current models of autobiographical memory suggest that self-identity guides autobiographical memory retrieval. Further, the capacity to recall the past and imagine one’s self in the future can influence social problem solving. We examined whether manipulating self-identity, through an induction task in which students were led to believe they possessed high or low self-efficacy, impacted episodic specificity and content of retrieved and imagined events, as well as social problem solving. Compared to individuals in the low self efficacy group, individuals in the (...) high self efficacy group generated past and future events with greater specificity, positive words, and self-efficacious statements, and also performed better on social problem solving indices. A lack of episodic detail for future events predicted poorer performance on social problem solving tasks. Strategies that increase perceived self-efficacy may help individuals to selectively construct a past and future that aids in negotiating social problems. (shrink)

Do we need a right to mental privacy? In an era of increasing sophistication in recording, interpreting, and directly intervening on our neural activity – not to mention efforts at combining neural...

The ongoing debate within neuroethics concerning the degree to which neuromodulation such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) changes the personality, identity, and agency (PIA) of patients has paid relatively little attention to the perspectives of prospective patients. Even less attention has been given to pediatric populations. To understand patients’ views about identity changes due to DBS in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the authors conducted and analyzed semistructured interviews with adolescent patients with OCD and their parents/caregivers. Patients were asked about projected impacts (...) to PIA generally due to DBS. All patient respondents and half of caregivers reported that DBS would impact patient self-identity in significant ways. For example, many patients expressed how DBS could positively impact identity by allowing them to explore their identities free from OCD. Others voiced concerns that DBS-related resolution of OCD might negatively impact patient agency and authenticity. Half of patients expressed that DBS may positively facilitate social access through relieving symptoms, while half indicated that DBS could increase social stigma. These views give insights into how to approach decision-making and informed consent if DBS for OCD becomes available for adolescents. They also offer insights into adolescent experiences of disability identity and “normalcy” in the context of OCD. (shrink)

The debate about what constitutes the discipline of ethics and who qualifies as an ethics consultant is linked unavoidably to a debate that is potentiated by the reality of a rapidly changing and high-stakes health care consultation marketplace. Who we are and what we can offer to the moral gesture that is medicine is shaped by our fundamental understanding of the place of expert knowledge in the transformation of social reality. The struggle for self-definition is particularly freighted since clinical ethics (...) consultation aspires to be more than academic contemplation. Two recent books (Ethics Consultation by John La Puma and David Schiedermayer and The Health Care Ethics Consultant: A Practical Guide, edited by Francoise Baylis) exemplify the two most popular but most widely divergent positions on these issues. We argue that while useful, neither book addresses fully the particular and distinct role of the professional ethicist. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article develops a theory of just contractual relationships for a liberal society. As a liberal theory, our account is premised on liberalism's canonical commitments to self-determination and substantive equality. As a theory of contract law, it focuses on the parties’ interpersonal interactions rather than on the justice of the social order as a whole.Normatively, the article claims that the rules governing cases where one party experiences harsh circumstances or vulnerability during the bargaining process or operates under significant informational disadvantage (...) must be guided by the commitment to relational justice, that is, to reciprocal respect for self-determination and substantive equality. Jurisprudentially, the article studies the systemic difficulties hindering the translation of these normative prescriptions into legal language and analyzes how they affect the form assumed by the law of precontractual justice and its institutional pedigree. (shrink)

In these pages we seek to integrate two claims. First, we argue that, taken to their logical conclusions, the considerations that support a strict form of protection for tangible property rights do not call for a similar form of protection when applied to the case of copyright. More dramatically, these considerations demand, on pain of glaring inconsistency, a substantially weaker protection for copyright. In pursuing this claim, we show that the form of protecting property rights is, to an important extent, (...) a feature of certain normal, though contingent, facts about the human world. Second, the normative question concerning the selection of a desirable protection for creative works is most naturally pursued from a tort law perspective, in part because the normative structure of copyright law simply is that of tort law. (shrink)

Questions about when to limit unhelpful treatments are often raised in general medicine but are less commonly considered in psychiatry. Here we describe a survey of U.S. psychiatrists intended to characterize their attitudes about the management of suicidal ideation in patients with severely treatment-refractory illness. Respondents (n = 212) received one of two cases describing a patient with suicidal ideation due to either borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder. Both patients were described as receiving all guideline-based and plausible emerging (...) treatments. Respondents rated the expected helpfulness and likelihood of recommending each of four types of intervention: hospitalization, additional medication changes, additional neurostimulation, and additional psychotherapy. Across both cases, most respondents said they were likely to provide each intervention, except for additional neurostimulation in borderline personality disorder, while fewer thought each intervention would be helpful. Substantial minorities of respondents indicated that they would provide an intervention they did not think was likely to be helpful. Our results suggest that while most psychiatrists recognize the possibility that some patients are unlikely to be helped by available treatments, many would continue to offer such treatments. (shrink)

This study aimed to examine how anxiety related to different styles of coping during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these relationships were moderated by the cultural orientations of individualism/collectivism and a person’s sense of meaning in life. A sample of 849 participants from Georgia completed an online survey during the final stage of lockdown. To measure the main variables, we used the State Anxiety Inventory, the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism Scale, the Meaning of Life Questionnaire, the COVID-19 Worry (...) Scale, and the Ways of Coping Scale tailored to COVID-19 pandemic. The latter measured rational coping via the subscales of information accessing/processing and action-planning coping, and affective coping – via the subscales of passive-submissive and avoidant coping. Results suggested that anxiety positively predicted both affective coping styles and negatively predicted the action-planning coping style, while COVID-19 worry predicted all coping styles; presence of meaning in life positively predicted both rational coping styles and negatively predicted the avoidant coping style, while search for meaning positively predicted all coping styles; individualism negatively predicted the passive-submissive style and positively predicted the action-planning style, whereas collectivism predicted all coping styles; furthermore, individualism and collectivism moderated the link between anxiety and the passive-submissive coping style, presence of meaning in life moderated the link between anxiety and avoidant coping style, while search for meaning in life moderated the link between anxiety and the action-planning coping style. Overall, the findings enrich the cultural transactional theory of stress and coping, and generate insights for the culture-sensitive approach to the meaning in life. The results were conceptualized vis-a-vis Georgia’s intermediate position between clear-cut individualism and clear-cut collectivism. (shrink)

The debate about what constitutes the discipline of ethics and who qualifies as an ethics consultant is linked unavoidably to a debate that is potentiated by the reality of a rapidly changing and high-stakes health care consultation marketplace. Who we are and what we can offer to the moral gesture that is medicine is shaped by our fundamental understanding of the place of expert knowledge in the transformation of social reality. The struggle for self-definition is particularly freighted since clinical ethics (...) consultation aspires to be more than academic contemplation. Two recent books (Ethics Consultation by John La Puma and David Schiedermayer and The Health Care Ethics Consultant: A Practical Guide, edited by Francoise Baylis) exemplify the two most popular but most widely divergent positions on these issues. We argue that while useful, neither book addresses fully the particular and distinct role of the professional ethicist. (shrink)