This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with professional boundary (...) issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change. (shrink)

We propose a model mechanism for the initiation and spatial positioning of teeth primordia in the alligator, Alligator mississippiensis. Detailed embryological studies by Westergaard and Ferguson have shown that jaw growth plays a crucial role in the developmental patterning of the tooth initiation process. Based on biological data we develop a dynamic patterning mechanism, which crucially includes domain growth. The mechanism can reproduce the spatial pattern development of the first seven teeth primordia in each half jaw of A. mississippiensis. The (...) results for the precise spatio-temporal sequence compare well with experiment. Simulation of the model also predicts that certain transplantations can alter the spatial sequence of teeth primordia initiation. (shrink)

Background: Legislation on physician-assisted suicide is being considered in a number of states since the passage of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act in 1994. Opinion assessment surveys have historically assessed particular subsets of physicians.Objective: To determine variables predictive of physicians’ opinions on PAS in a rural state, Vermont, USA.Design: Cross-sectional mailing survey.Participants: 1052 physicians licensed by the state of Vermont.Results: Of the respondents, 38.2% believed PAS should be legalised, 16.0% believed it should be prohibited and 26.0% believed it should (...) not be legislated. 15.7% were undecided. Males were more likely than females to favour legalisation . Physicians who did not care for patients through the end of life were significantly more likely to favour legalisation of PAS than physicians who do care for patients with terminal illness . 30% of the respondents had experienced a request for assistance with suicide.Conclusions: Vermont physicians’ opinions on the legalisation of PAS is sharply polarised. Patient autonomy was a factor strongly associated with opinions in favour of legalisation, whereas the sanctity of the doctor–patient relationship was strongly associated with opinions in favour of not legislating PAS. Those in favour of making PAS illegal overwhelmingly cited moral and ethical beliefs as factors in their opinion. Although opinions on legalisation appear to be based on firmly held beliefs, approximately half of Vermont physicians who responded to the survey agree that there is a need for more education in palliative care and pain management. (shrink)

The paper's first four sections give a taxonomy and criticism of three classes of objections to the argument from illusion. the last section raises the question whether its main premise does not misclassify perceptual accusatives (e.g. 'sensation of bentness') as individuatives that imply the existence of, say, bent particulars.

In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy and (...) theology. Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

This paper opens with first‐hand accounts of critical care medical interventions in which detainees, in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are brought to the emergency department for treatment. This case dramatizes the extent to which the provision of ethical and acceptable nursing care is jeopardized by federal law enforcement paradigms. Drawing on the scholarship of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this paper offers a theoretical account of the power dynamics that inform the health care of patients (...) who find themselves caught in the custodial scaffolding of a vast immigration and detention apparatus. It offers an analysis of the display of sovereign and biopolitical power over the lives (and deaths) of detainees (Foucault), as well as the ways these individuals are reduced to “bare life” under the political pretext of an emergency or “state of exception” (Agamben). Our purpose here is both theoretical and practical: to better understand the often hidden agency or impersonal “will” exercised by the immigrant detention system, but also to equip clinicians in these and cognate facilities (e.g., prisons) with the critical tools by which they might better navigate incommensurable paradigms (i.e., care vs. custody) in order to deliver the best care while upholding their ethical duties as a care provider. This is all the more pressing because hospitals are not sanctuaries and given the incursion of federal law enforcement agents, nurses may find themselves conscripted as de facto agents of the state. (shrink)

Philosophers and other scholars have often claimed that the arts are not only cognitively valuable but also morally improving (e.g., Nussbaum, 1997). However, their arguments often proceed with little attention to empirical evidence. At the same time, filmmakers and media creators deliberately use devices to direct their audience’s attention, with the intention of impacting viewers’ cognitive, affective, and neurological responses in meaningful ways (Carroll & Seeley, 2013). Whether these devices have the desired effects, and on whom, also remains largely untested. (...) If we want to understand the ways that film and media can have moral impacts, we must step out of our disciplinary siloes. It is not enough for film experts, philosophers, and experimentalists to merely take note of each other’s work; collaborative interdisciplinary research is required, both to improve methods and to examine questions that have not yet been empirically explored. In this article we propose a model for this kind of research, focusing on how media can influence moral understanding. We first outline the challenges that must be met for such research to be successful, including clarifying and operationalizing concepts, measuring moral understanding, and applying empirical methods to media and the arts. We then describe the advantages of interdisciplinary collaboration for meeting these challenges, in the context of some recent examples of interdisciplinary projects on related themes. (shrink)

Book Three of George Santayana's letters covers a period of intense intellectual activity in Santayana's life, and the correspondence reflects the establishment of his mature philosophy. Santayana becomes more permanently established in Italy, but continues to travel in France, Spain, and England. The year 1927 marks the beginning of his long friendship with Daniel Cory, who became his literary secretary and eventually his literary executor. Also, with the death of Santayana's half-brother Robert, George Sturgis, Robert's son, becomes an important part (...) of Santayana's life and letters as his financial manager. Santayana continues to write to his sister Susana, as well as to numerous friends and fellow philosophers, including Bernard Berenson, Robert Seymour Bridges, Curt John Ducasse, John Erskine, Horace Meyer Kaller, Lewis Mumford, George Herbert Palmer, John Francis Stanley Russell, Herbert Wallace Schneider, Charles Augustus Strong, Paul Weiss, and Harry Austryn Wolfson. Other correspondents include Wendell T. Bush, Alys Gregory, Marianne Moore, John Middleton Murray, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. (shrink)

The first English translation of Fichte’s second set of 1804 lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre.

In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philosophy and (...) theology. Leibniz addresses such topics as free will, moral responsibility, divine causation, justice, punishment, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom, revealing crucial aspects of the genesis of his mature metaphysics and the theological motivations behind it. (shrink)

This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do not (...) succeed. (shrink)

Representation theorems are often taken to provide the foundations for decision theory. First, they are taken to characterize degrees of belief and utilities. Second, they are taken to justify two fundamental rules of rationality: that we should have probabilistic degrees of belief and that we should act as expected utility maximizers. We argue that representation theorems cannot serve either of these foundational purposes, and that recent attempts to defend the foundational importance of representation theorems are unsuccessful. As a result, we (...) should reject these claims, and lay the foundations of decision theory on firmer ground. (shrink)

Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying and assessing the variants (...) of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)

In Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the Non-Identity Problem, avoids the Repugnant and Absurd Conclusions, and solves the Mere-Addition Paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes a person-affecting (...) account which meets Parfit's challenge. The account satisfies Parfit's four requirements, and avoids many of the criticisms that have been raised against person-affecting views. (shrink)

At the heart of the Bayesianism is a rule, Conditionalization, which tells us how to update our beliefs. Typical formulations of this rule are underspecified. This paper considers how, exactly, this rule should be formulated. It focuses on three issues: when a subject’s evidence is received, whether the rule prescribes sequential or interval updates, and whether the rule is narrow or wide scope. After examining these issues, it argues that there are two distinct and equally viable versions of Conditionalization to (...) choose from. And which version we choose has interesting ramifications, bearing on issues such as whether Conditionalization can handle continuous evidence, and whether Jeffrey Conditionalization is really a generalization of Conditionalization. (shrink)

In recent work, Adlam (2022b), Chen & Goldstein (2022), and Meacham (2023) have defended accounts of laws that take laws to be primitive global constraints. A major advantage of these accounts is that they’re able to accommodate the many different kinds of laws that appear in physical theories. In this paper I’ll present these three accounts, highlight their distinguishing features, and note some key differences that might lead one to favor one of these accounts over the others. I’ll conclude by (...) briefly discussing a version of a “constraint” account that I think is especially attractive. (shrink)

It is proved that the relevance logic \ has no structurally complete consistent axiomatic extension, except for classical propositional logic. In fact, no other such extension is even passively structurally complete.

Descartes nimmt in Anspruch, daß sein Argument des Deus malignus über die Einwände der Skeptiker hinausgehe. Was fügt es dem Traumargument hinzu? Die verbreitete Ansicht, der Dämon stelle die Erkenntnis mathematischer und logischer Wahrheiten in Frage, wird im folgenden diskutiert und zurückgewiesen. Die richtige Interpretation lautet: Die Annahme des Dämons unterstützt den Skeptizismus und verstärkt die Zweifel an der Existenz äußerer Objekte. Es werden drei Einwände gegen diese Interpretation erörtert und zurückgewiesen. Eine andere Auffassung vertritt Frankfurt: Die Rolle des Traumarguments (...) sei wesentlich begrenzt; die durch den Dämon aufgeworfenen Zweifel seien umfassender. Eine genaue Analyse der Entwicklung des Traumarguments in der Ersten Meditation führt zur Widerlegung dieser Interpretation. (shrink)

This essay is written on the following premises and argues for them. “Enlightenment” is a word or signifier, and not a single or unifiable phenomenon which it consistently signifies. There is no single or unifiable phenomenon describable as “the Enlightenment,” but it is the definite article rather than the noun which is to be avoided. In studying the intellectual history of the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth, we encounter a variety of statements made, and assumptions proposed, to which the (...) term “Enlightenment” may usefully be applied, but the meanings of the term shift as we apply it. The things are connected, but not continuous; they cannot be reduced to a single narrative; and we find ourselves using the word “Enlightenment” in a family of ways and talking about a family of phenomena, resembling and related to one another in a variety of ways that permit of various generalizations about them. We are not, however, committed to a single root meaning of the word “Enlightenment,” and we do not need to reduce the phenomena of which we treat to a single process or entity to be termed “the” Enlightenment. It is a reification that we wish to avoid, but the structure of our language is such that this is difficult, and we will find ourselves talking of “the French” or “the Scottish,” “the Newtonian” or the “the Arminian” Enlightenments, and hoping that by employing qualifying adjectives we may constantly remind ourselves that the keyword “Enlightenment” is ours to use and should not master us. (shrink)