Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Phillips & Singer (P&S) extend ideas derived from the observation eight years ago that the coherence (synchronization) of cortical oscillations can be modulated by the structure of visual stimuli. As described in the target article, a large part of the continued interest in this finding is related to independent theoretical work suggesting that synchronized cell firing could help solve the problem of binding together within cortex neuronal activity associated with different attributes of visual stimuli. The authors present an abstract (...) “proof of concept” model describing how their cortical processing scheme could work, but our biologically realistic models of cortical relationships suggest that the proposal is biologically implausible. Our realistic models lead to a very different interpretation of the significance of cortical oscillations. (shrink)

Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.

Focusing on four cases presented by Lloyd Wells, M.D., this paper addresses the relationship of clinical psychopathology to the philosophical concept of narrative identity. The paper begins with a review of the debate among historians, literary critics, and philosophers over the referential status of narrative identity, that is, whether the narrative self is a fictive structure unrelated to lived life or whether ordinary life is in fact lived narratively. Agreeing with those philosophers who argue for the reference of narrative identity (...) to actual life, the author analyzes the four cases from the perspective of narrative identity to determine what light this philosophical concept sheds on the various psychopathologies. Then, having used the philosophical concept to illuminate psychopathology, he reverses direction and questions what psychopathology has to offer philosophy and its notion of narrative identity. The author argues both that the philosophical concept of narrative identity contributes to our understanding of psychopathology and that psychopathology offers challenges to the philosophical notion of narrative identity. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

In this volume, Elizabeth Phillips brings together scholarly essays on eschatology, ethics, and politics, as well as a selection of sermons preached in the chapels of the University of Cambridge arising from that scholarly work. These essays and sermons explore themes ranging from ethnography to Anabaptism and Christian Zionism to Afro-pessimism. Drawing on a wide range of authors from Flannery O'Conner and Herbert McCabe to James Cone and M. Shawn Copeland, this collection provides insight into the fields of (...) Christian ethics and political theology, as well as ethnography and homiletics. Phillips challenges theologians to interdisciplinarity in their work, and to keep historical and traditional sources in conversation with contemporary sources from critical and liberative perspectives. She challenges Christians to engage in apocalyptic practices which name and resist the false pretenses of the political status quo. And she challenges preachers to call their congregations to moral and political faithfulness, opening up possibilities beyond both the squeamish evasion of politics in some preaching traditions and the didactic political partisanship of others."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The (...) authors argue that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 299-300 [Access article in PDF] D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin, editors. Religion and Hume's Legacy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xx + 282. Cloth, $65.00. Books on Hume's philosophy usually emphasize either close textual analysis or historical influences on Hume. The audience for such books consists of Hume specialists and historians of philosophy. Religion and Hume's Legacy (...) defies this categorization. Edited by D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin, the book is a collection of 18 essays, most of which connect Hume's philosophy of religion with broader and more contemporary philosophical interests. The authors urge us to take seriously Hume's skeptical challenges and they use Hume as a springboard to develop nontraditional views of the philosophy of religion. The essays were originally presented at the 1997 Claremont Conference on the Philosophy of Religion. Although a few of these are written by prominent Hume scholars, many of the authors are Wittgenstein scholars—as is Phillips himself—and Wittgensteinian perspectives figure prominently throughout the volume.The book is thematically divided into six parts, and at the close of five of these Phillips presents a fictitious dialog—much like a panel discussion—in which about 15 voices debate the topic under consideration. The book's first part is titled "Hume's Epistemological and Moral Critique." The first essay, by Simon Blackburn and titled "Playing Hume's Hand," criticizes Hume's "Bare Claim" about the existence and nature of God. In particular, Blackburn addresses the limitations of Hume's view from a Kantian, Jamesian, and Wittgensteinian stance. The second essay, "Morality and Religion: Towards Meeting Hume's Challenge," by William H. Brenner, draws on Chesterton, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein in critique of Hume's conception of an amoral God in the Dialogues.The book's second part is on "Hume's 'True Religion.'" The first of these essays, "Hume's 'Mitigated Scepticism': Some Implications for Religious Belief" by M. Jamie Ferreira, explains how Hume's Natural History of Religion exemplifies Hume's reflectively-tempered skepticism. The second, "Is There Anything Religious about Philo's 'True Religion'?" by Van A. Harvey, reacts against Gaskin's theory of Hume's attenuated theism. According to Harvey, Philo's minimalist religion reflects, on the one hand, the believer's assertion of true religious feelings, and, on the other hand, the believer's distrust of rational theology and organized religion. The third, "Is Hume's 'True Religion' a Religious Belief?" by D. Z. Phillips, criticizes Harvey's interpretation and defends Gaskin; however, Philips adds that Hume's minimalist theism is inconsistent by Hume's own standards and Hume should have rejected it. [End Page 299]The third part discusses "Hume on Miracles." The first essay is "Hume and the Miraculous" by R.W. Beardsmore, who has since passed away and to whom the book is dedicated. Beardsmore agrees with Hume that it is never rational to believe that a miracle has occurred—largely because of scientific advances today. However, Beardsmore believes that Hume's argument for this position is weak. In the next essay Stephen T. Davis responds to Beardsmore. The fourth part discusses "Hume on Superstition." The first essay, "Hume on Superstition" by Martin Bell, discusses Hume's view of superstitious religion in the context of Bayle's account of superstition. In the next essay Jane L. McIntyre responds to Bell, emphasizing the role of human passions in religious belief. The fifth part is on "Philosophy of Religion after Hume." Anthony Flew opens with "Can Religion be Rational?" explaining how Hume delineates the issue of religion in his various writings. Flew also clarifies his own view of religion and reason as appears in his essay "Theology and Falsification." Nancy Murphy responds to Flew in "Overcoming Hume on His Own Terms," and suggests that we find an answer to Hume's religious critique in Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of tradition-constituted reason. The third essay by B. R. Tilghman, "Religion after Hume: Tightrope Walking in an Age of Enlightenment," contends that Hume's legacy is the... (shrink)

This book defends the view that any adequate account of rational decision making must take a decision maker's beliefs about causal relations into account. The early chapters of the book introduce the non-specialist to the rudiments of expected utility theory. The major technical advance offered by the book is a 'representation theorem' that shows that both causal decision theory and its main rival, Richard Jeffrey's logic of decision, are both instances of a more general conditional decision theory. The book solves (...) a long-standing problem for Jeffrey's theory by showing for the first time how to obtain a unique utility and probability representation for preferences and judgements of comparative likelihood. The book also contains a major new discussion of what it means to suppose that some event occurs or that some proposition is true. The most complete and robust defence of causal decision theory available. (shrink)

When Ken Malone investigates a case of something causing mental static across the United States, he is teleported to a world that doesn't exist.

This anthology of philosophical essays explores the interpersonal and political contexts in and against which the films of ten major postwar filmmakers were made.

This paper addresses the role of categories and dimensions in the classification of psychopathology. While psychopathology does not sort itself out neatly into natural categories, we do find rough, symptom-based groupings that, through refinement, become diagnostic categories. Given that these categories suffer from comorbidity, uncertain boundaries, and excessive “unspecified disorder” diagnoses, there has been a move toward refining the diagnoses with dimensional measures. The paper traces efforts both to improve the diagnostic categories with validators that allow at least partial validity (...) and to introduce dimensional measures into the diagnostic manual. Drawing from the philosophical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, which emphasizes the practical, effect-sensitive consequences of a theory along with an emphasis on empirical evidence and the progressive, probabilistic character of knowledge, the paper argues that these efforts must be guided both by scientific validity and clinical utility. (shrink)

The pragmatic character of the Dutch book argument makes it unsuitable as an "epistemic" justification for the fundamental probabilist dogma that rational partial beliefs must conform to the axioms of probability. To secure an appropriately epistemic justification for this conclusion, one must explain what it means for a system of partial beliefs to accurately represent the state of the world, and then show that partial beliefs that violate the laws of probability are invariably less accurate than they could be otherwise. (...) The first task can be accomplished once we realize that the accuracy of systems of partial beliefs can be measured on a gradational scale that satisfies a small set of formal constraints, each of which has a sound epistemic motivation. When accuracy is measured in this way it can be shown that any system of degrees of belief that violates the axioms of probability can be replaced by an alternative system that obeys the axioms and yet is more accurate in every possible world. Since epistemically rational agents must strive to hold accurate beliefs, this establishes conformity with the axioms of probability as a norm of epistemic rationality whatever its prudential merits or defects might be. (shrink)

Andy Egan has recently produced a set of alleged counterexamples to causal decision theory in which agents are forced to decide among causally unratifiable options, thereby making choices they know they will regret. I show that, far from being counterexamples, CDT gets Egan's cases exactly right. Egan thinks otherwise because he has misapplied CDT by requiring agents to make binding choices before they have processed all available information about the causal consequences of their acts. I elucidate CDT in a way (...) that makes it clear where Egan goes wrong, and which explains why his examples pose no threat to the theory. My approach has similarities to a modification of CDT proposed by Frank Arntzenius, but it differs in the significance that it assigns to potential regrets. I maintain, contrary to Arntzenius, that an agent facing Egan's decisions can rationally choose actions that she knows she will later regret. All rationality demands of agents it that they maximize unconditional causal expected utility from an epistemic perspective that accurately reflects all the available evidence about what their acts are likely to cause. This yields correct answers even in outlandish cases in which one is sure to regret whatever one does. (shrink)

Our lives are dominated by technology. We live with and through the achievements of technology. What is true of the rest of life is of course true of medicine. Many of us owe our existence and our continued vigour to some achievement of medical technology. And what is true in a major way of general medicine is to a significant degree true of psychiatry. Prozac has long since arrived, and in its wake an ever-growing armamentarium of new psychotropics; beyond that, (...) neuroscience promises ever more technological advances for the field. -/- However, the effect of technology on the field of psychiatry remains highly ambiguous. On the one hand there are the achievements, both in the science and practice of psychiatry; on the other hand technology's influence on the field threatens its identity as a humanistic practice. In this ambiguity psychiatry is not unique - major thinkers have for a long time been highly ambivalent and concerned about the technological order that now defines modern society. For the future, the danger is that the psychiatrically real becomes that which can be seen, the symptom, and especially that which can be measured. Disorders and treatments might become reduced to what can be defined by diagnostic criteria and what can be mapped out on a scale. -/- This book exams how technology has come to influence and drive psychiatry forward, and considers at just what cost these developments have been made. It includes a range of stimulating and thought-provoking chapters from a range of psychiatrists and philosophers. (shrink)

To achieve its goals of managing andrestricting access to psychiatric care, managedcare organizations rely on an instrument, theoutpatient treatment report, that carriessignificant implications about how they viewpsychiatric patients and psychiatric care. Inaddition to involving ethical transgressionssuch as violation of patient confidentiality,denial of access to care, spurious use ofconcepts like quality of care, and harassmentof practitioners, the managed care approachalso depends on an overly technical,instrumental interpretation of human beings andpsychiatric treatment. It is this grounding ofmanaged care in technical reason that I (...) willexplore in this study. I begin with a reviewof a typical outpatient treatment report andshow how, with its dependence on the DSM-IV,on behavioral symptoms and patient`functioning'', on the biomedical model ofpsychiatric illness, and on gross quantitativemeasures, the report results in a crude,skeletonized view of the human being as acongeries of behavioral symptoms and functions. I then develop the managed care construal ofhuman existence further by showing itsgrounding in technical reason, exploring thelatter in its modern embodiment and deriving itand its opposite, practical reason, fromAristotle''s distinction between technical andpractical reason, techne and phronesis. Inthis analysis of the role of technical reasonin managed care, I point out that managed caredid not have to develop its rationale de novobut could rather lift its arguments, e.g. thebiomedical model, from contemporary psychiatryand simply apply them in a restrictive manner. Finally, I conclude this study by arguing forpsychiatry''s status as a discipline ofpractical knowledge. (shrink)

I take it as my assignment to criticize the Gauthier enterprise. At the outset, however, I should express my general agreement with David Gauthier's normative vision of a liberal social order, including the place that individual principles of morality hold in such an order. Whether the enterprise is, ultimately, judged to have succeeded or to have failed depends on the standards applied. Considered as a coherent grounding of such a social order in the rational choice behavior of persons, the enterprise (...) fails. Considered as an extended argument implying that persons should adopt the moral stance embodied in the Gauthier structure, the enterprise is, I dunk, largely successful. Considered as a set of empirically falsifiable propositions suggesting that persons do, indeed, choose as the Gauthier precepts dictate, the enterprise offers Humean hope rather than Hobbesian despair. (shrink)

Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929) turns on a reading of the productive imagination in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). In siding with the imagination, Heidegger declares his dissent from the neo-Kantianism of his contemporaries. Yet, when Heidegger subsequently elaborates his philosophy of art in the 1930s, he is dismissive of the imagination altogether. His earlier partisanship was qualified. In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger treats the productive imagination of Kant’s critical (...) period as still a step short of Heidegger’s own problem of the time of finite human beings. German Idealism’s step past Kant is, for Heidegger, a step beyond, but in the wrong direction. The aesthetics of German Idealism builds on the unification of experience and conceptuality wrought by the productive imagination in its transcendental use, thereby inscribing in the work of art a neglect of finitude that Heidegger will dispute. If what Heidegger holds against the imagination is its transcendental use, the fully empirical concept of the imagination in Kant’s precritical writings invites reassessment in light of an engagement with finitude. I will show it has particular promise for rehabilitating the imagination in a Heideggerian philosophy of art. (shrink)

This book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging (...) engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date. (shrink)

Book Information Off the Beaten Track. Off the Beaten Track Heidegger Martin, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 291, AUS$49.95 By Heidegger Martin., trans. Julian Young. and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 291. AUS$49.95.

International law guarantees rights to indigenous peoples regarding traditional lands, knowledge, cultural preservation, and human security. This paper will examine the sources of these rights and legal remedies for violations of law. Protection of indigenous peoples’ cultures and resources contribute to the protection of the global environment.

There exists a common view that for theories related by a ‘duality’, dual models typically may be taken ab initio to represent the same physical state of affairs, i.e. to correspond to the same possible world. We question this view, by drawing a parallel with the distinction between ‘interpretational’ and ‘motivational’ approaches to symmetries.

This paper is intended to contribute to the discussion of the differential level of adoption of Big Data among research communities. Recognising the impracticality of conducting an audit across all forms and uses of Big Data, we have restricted our enquiry to one very specific form of Big Data, namely general purpose taxonomies, of which Mosaic, Acorn and Origins are examples, that rely on data from a variety of Big Data feeds. The intention of these taxonomies is to enable the (...) records of consumers and citizens held on Big Data datasets to be coded according to type of residential neighbourhood or ethno-cultural heritage without any use of questionnaires. Based on our respective experience in the academic social sciences, in government and in the design and marketing of these taxonomies, we identify the features of these classifications which appear to render them attractive or problematic to different categories of potential user or researcher depending on how the relationship is conceived. We conclude by identifying seven classifications of user or potential user who, on account of their background, current position and future career expectations, tend to respond in different ways to the opportunity to adopt these generic systems as aids for understanding social processes. (shrink)

In "Truth and Politics" Hannah Arendt defends opinion against the judgment of the philosophical tradition. This defense risks misinterpretation as epistemologically nihilistic unless read in conjunction with Arendt's position on facts and acting in concert. What Arendt prizes in opinion is its performative dimension rather than its constative dimension where it falls short of truth. It is opinion as action that Arendt rehabilitates: she subscribes to the philosophical tradition's harsh verdict on the pseudotruths of an anonymous and repressive public opinion. (...) For opinion to be an action, for action to be recognizable as such, there has to be a world beyond each given opinion and action on which they leave a mark. This world, irreducible in its diversity and historical contingency to rational truth, is the arena common to facts and action. To acknowledge the facts is to trust in the testimony of others, but if this trust is not to be gullibility, if it is not to mistake the facts for lies and vice versa, it stands in need of judgment. (shrink)

With "Literature and the Right to Death", Blanchot makes his most sustained contribution to the debate initiated in France by Kojeve and Hippolyte concerning Hegel's philosophy. At times Blanchot's reading is forced and idiosyncratic. Yet this reading has another motivation than the succinct and faithful paraphrase of the earlier thinker. Arguably Blanchot positions himself within Hegel’s terminology in order to rethink the sense of the expression 'the philosophy of art'. What is with Hegel an objective genitive becomes a subjective genitive. (...) The rules therefore change. Whereas Hegel offers in his lectures on aesthetics an expatiation on art fixed under the gaze of philosophy, Blanchot installs art as the subject and submits the conventions and expectations of philosophical discourse to its procedures. In the light of this reversal, what might otherwise be judged a deviation or a lapse with respect to the genre of the philosophical essay can be seen to play its role in Blanchot's reassessment of the relations between metaphysics and literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hildegard and HolismSuzanne M. Phillips (bio) and Monique D. Boivin (bio)Keywordsbiopsychosocial, integration, medieval, mental illnessWe appreciate the careful and enriching commentary offered by Kroll and by Radden on our paper about holistic views of mental illness in the writings of the twelfth-century abbess and healer Hildegard of Bingen. Both reviewers are well-established figures in the study of historical perspectives on mental illness, an area that we have just (...) begun to explore. We are glad for the opportunity to respond to their observations and thereby to continue the dialogue.First, we would like to clarify our purpose in preparing this paper. Nowhere do we claim that Hildegard used a biopsychosocial model of mental illness, either in addressing the needs of the particular case of Sigewiza, or more generally in her writings on illness and health. In fact, we agree with Kroll (2007, 370), when he states that Hildegard did not use a biopsychosocial model. We use the term “biopsychosocial” only three times in the paper, always by contrast with what we see in Hildegard’s writings. The present-day biopsychosocial model focuses on getting a range of perspectives on the table, encouraging the consideration of biological, psychological, and social issues when thinking about mental illness. This is a good thing, but we argue that it does not go far enough. Specifically, there has been insufficient attention to ways these perspectives might interact.How, then, might we describe Hildegard’s way of conceptualizing mental illness? In place of the label “biopsychosocial model,” Kroll suggests that Hildegard’s approach could be described as a “religious model” (p. 372). Here we disagree. By our reading, Hildegard’s description of mental illness involves religious components, certainly, but also humoral, astrological, interpersonal, community, and intrapsychic components. Radden correctly notes that we are not so much interested in the particular components as we are in their interactions. We are attracted to Hildegard’s writings because she attends to these interactions. Our students, like Kroll’s (p. 371), are curious about mind–body relationships, which represent one example of the interplay between components. Our concern is that the current biopsychosocial model often fails to satisfy our own, and our students’, interest in the nature of those interactions. Our hope is that Hildegard’s writings might help us to think more richly about the interactions.As Radden (2007, 373) points out, present-day psychiatrists and psychologists do in fact use mul-ticausal accounts of depression. And we agree that such accounts need not be reductionistic (Kroll, 371). But we also recognize that psychology and psychiatry have well-established reductionist (more specifically, materialist) habits. To borrow [End Page 377] Kroll’s phrase, the biological model threatens “to swallow all other models” (p. 371). We must guard against such reductionism, given the habits of our disciplines. As we noted, McHugh and Slavney (1998) respond to that threat by building walls between the perspectives, suggesting that we might use different perspectives when thinking about different sorts of problems. We think that there ought to be more synthetic, holistic ways of responding to that threat, and we are hopeful that Hildegard’s writings can help us to develop those.At a basic level, we see Hildegard asking different questions than people ask today. On the first page of his commentary, for example, Kroll poses the question of “which of these three modalities [bio-, psycho-, social] may be sufficient” (p. 369) in the particular medieval text. We found that the sufficiency of one modality or another does not concern Hildegard. We are not able to speak to the general point that Kroll raises, that one or another element is emphasized depending on the goal of the medieval text; we can report our experience in reading Hildegard, where we found no sense in which one or another component is privileged. Even though Hildegard operated within a thoroughly religious context, we did not find examples of her subsuming other factors under religion. Everything interacts with spiritual concerns, to be sure, but everything also interacts with the biological, and with the interpersonal, and with the astrological. Although it may seem odd to us post-Darwinian thinkers, Hildegard’s model is essentially... (shrink)

Historian James H. Jones published the first edition of Bad Blood, the definitive history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, in 1981. Its clear-eyed examination of that research and its implications remains a bioethics classic, and the 30-year anniversary of its publication served as the impetus for the reexamination of research ethics that this symposium presents. Recent revelations about the United States Public Health Service study that infected mental patients and prisoners in Guatemala with syphilis in the late 1940s in (...) order to determine the efficacy of treatment represent only one of the many attestations to the persistence of ongoing, critical, and underaddressed issues in research ethics that Bad Blood first explored. Those issues include, but are not limited to: the complex and contested matters of the value of a given research question, the validity of the clinical trial designed to address it, and the priorities of science. (shrink)

Abstract:This study links Homeric and Machiavellian outlooks in Henry James's The Ambassadors. We first relate Lambert Strether's embassy seeking Chad's return to Woollett to what Alexander Pope famously designated the "Embassy to Achilles," i.e., the Achaean effort to induce Achilles's return to battle. Achilles impassionedly rejects the embassy's hypocrisy; he will not be bought. We then find Chad Newsome conspiratorially excluding Strether from the family fortune via intended marriage to Mrs. Newsome. Contrary to Achilles's forthrightness and integrity, Chad and (...) his Parisian circle adopt a post-Machiavellian ethos of deceit as the norm. (shrink)

First published in 1865, this book puts forth a new ethical system that aims to provide practical guidance on how to live a good life based on reason, empathy, and social responsibility. The author argues that traditional religious and philosophical systems have failed to keep up with the changing social and economic conditions of modern life and proposes a set of principles that are grounded in the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. The book covers a wide range of topics, (...) including work, family, education, politics, and the environment. A thought-provoking read for anyone interested in ethics and social justice. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Evidence from egocentric space is cited to support bicoding of navigation in three-dimensional space. Horizontal distances and space are processed differently from the vertical. Indeed, effector systems are compatible in horizontal space, but potentially incompatible (or chaotic) during transitions to vertical motion. Navigation involves changes in coordinates, and animal models of navigation indicate that time has an important role.

In commenting on Hamm, Buck, and Lysaker’s “Reconciling the Ipseity-Disturbance Model with the Painful Affect in Schizophrenia”, let me first acknowledge the authors’ fine work in delineating this issue. They review very clearly the history of theoretical models of schizophrenia, including biological, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological approaches. They emphasize the need to include accounts of subjective experiences of persons with schizophrenia, and for this they underline the role of phenomenological research. In the latter, they note an emphasis on cognitive and perceptual (...) disturbances, with an apparent neglect of painful affective experience. To demonstrate the neglect, they focus on the work of Louis.. (shrink)

_Tragic Play_ explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age _after_ tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, and (...) Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In _Hamlet_, _Endgame_, _Philoktet_, and _Ithaka_, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence. (shrink)

This is a study of all the recent literature on william james written from a phenomenological perspective with the purpose of showing that william james made fundamental contributions to the phenomenological theory of the intentionality of consciousness, To the phenomenological theory of self-Identity, And to the phenomenological conception of noetic freedom as the basic concept of ethical theory.