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)

This article articulates and defends an indeterministic weightings model of libertarian free will. It begins by defining the conception of free will at issue and then goes on to present versions of the luck objection which is often made against theories of LFW. It is argued that the sort of indeterministic weightings model of LFW which has been defended in the recent literature by Storrs McCall and E.J. Lowe and John Lemos has the resources to answer such luck (...) objections while possessing virtues which some other libertarian views lack. According to the indeterministic weightings model of LFW, in making undetermined free-willed choices between two courses of action, A or B, the reasons for choosing each option don’t come with pre-established evaluative weights. During the process of deliberation, the agent assigns weight in an undetermined way to the reasons for each option and this typically leads to the choice of the option that has been assigned a greater value. In the paper, it is not only argued that this theory can resolve worries about luck but also that the view has virtues which certain other libertarian views lack, as such the view is contrasted with the modest libertarian models of LFW from Daniel Dennett and Alfred Mele as well as Robert Kane’s view. (shrink)

Is morality too difficult for human beings? Kant said that it was, except with God's assistance. Contemporary moral philosophers have usually discussed the question without reference to Christian doctrine, and have either diminished the moral demand, exaggerated human moral capacity, or tried to find a substitute in nature for God's assistance. This book looks at these philosophers--from Kant and Kierkegaard to Swinburne, Russell, and R.M. Hare--and the alternative in Christianity.

In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive ...

As a work of a scholarship it seems to me to compare favourably with the best books on the subject, including those by Marcus Singer and Onora Nell.' Prof.

This book, first published in 1990, takes a critical look at the major assumptions which support critical thinking programs and discovers many unresolved questions which threaten their viability. John McPeck argues that some of these assumptions are incoherent or run counter to common sense, while others are unsupported by the available empirical evidence. This title will be of interest to students of the philosophy of education.

Examines Arthur Schopenhauer's (1788-1860) conception of human agency and responsibility, his unique ethics of the morally virtuous character, and his assessment of life as fundamentally suffering. This title focuses on his contention that the human will and the human body cannot have a cause and effect relationship with each other.

We present a simple distributed concept that appears to insinuate SWARM behavior in a collection of mobile platforms. The control is based on the inter-mobile platform communication links’ signal-to-noise ratio. This double use of communications is a natural linkage for SWARM behavior.

Well and Good presents a combination of "classic" and little-known but real-life cases. Included are a range of cases involving nurses and other health professionals as well as many involving doctors. The cases in the main body of the book are accompanied by the editors' impartial discussions of the issues involved. The final section is comprised of unanalysed cases for further study. For the new edition, the introduction has been expanded to include discussions of feminist bioethics and of virtue ethics, (...) alongside the Kantian, Rossian and utilitarian frameworks discussed in previous editions. Most of the existing cases have been updated to reflect these additional foci, and four analysed cases have been added. Several cases have been added to the group of unanalysed cases, which now includes questions for discussion. Among cases new to this edition are the "mercy killing" case of Robert Latimer, the assisted suicide of Sue Rodriguez, the pregnancy solvent-abuse case of Ms. G., and a case involving sex-selection and abortion on gender grounds. (shrink)

In response to Charles Taylor's book "Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity," Becker defends the Western view of ethical conceptions based on our unique identity, reasoning, and historical heritage.

This article, taking a social semiotic approach, analyses two pieces of music written, shared and exalted by two pre-1945 European fascist movements – the German NSDAP and the British Union of Fascists. These movements, both political and cultural, employed mythologies of unity, common identity and purpose in order to elide the realities of social distinction and political–economic inequalities between bourgeois and proletarian groups in capitalist societies. Visually and inter-personally, the fascist cultural project communicated a machine-like certainty about a vision for (...) a new society based on discipline, conformity and the might of the nation. In this article, we are interested in the ways that these very same discourses are also communicated through sound and music in two songs: The Horst Wessel Lied and the BUF marching song, two songs that used the same melody. We analyse the discourses communicated by the semiotic choices made in melody, arrangements, sound qualities, rhythms as well as in lyrics. The article first identifies some of the underlying semiotic resources for meaning making in sound and then shows how these are used in order to communicate specific ideas, values and attitudes. (shrink)

This book presents a detailed fieldwork-based study of the ancient Indian religion of Jainism. Drawing on field research in northern Gujarat and on the study of both ancient Sanskrit and Prakrit and modern vernacular Jain religious literature, John Cort provides a rounded portrait of the religion as it is practiced today.

A mutual relation between God and the world provides a crucial distinction between panentheism and both classical theism and pantheism. Several proposals responding to Analytical Theology's challenge to distinguish panentheism from other forms of theism are considered and found inadequate. After defining mutual relation, conceptual evidence and the frequency of descriptions of panentheism that affirm a mutual relation between God and the world provide evidence that a mutual relation is crucial to distinguishing panentheism. Finally, benefits of recognizing a mutual relation (...) between God and the world as crucial to panentheism are described. (shrink)

The distinctiveness of panentheism will facilitate its future development. Further, having a clear distinctive can facilitate conversations among panentheists from diverse religious traditions by helping recognize concepts that are compatible or similar to aspects of panentheism. Finally, having a clear distinctive facilitates recognizing relations between positions that are similar to panentheism and explicit forms of panentheism. An examination of three claims about the distinctiveness of panentheism suggests that a mutual relation between God and the world aids in identifying the distinctiveness (...) of panentheism. The nature of a mutual relation, evidence that a mutual relation is important to panentheism, and describing the benefits of recognizing a mutual relation support a mutual relation as distinctive of panentheism. (shrink)

This article explores the rhetoric, and mass mediation, of the national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration ceremony, as broadcast on British television. I argue that the televised national ceremonies should be approached as an example of multi-genre epideictic rhetoric, working up meanings through a hybrid combination of genres, author/animators and modes. Epideictic rhetoric has often been depreciated as simply ceremonial ‘praise or blame’ speeches. However, given that the topics of praise/blame assume the existence of social norms, epideictic also acts to presuppose (...) and evoke common values, in general, and a collective recognition of shared social responsibilities, in particular. My methodology draws on the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, given, first, its central prominence in analysing argumentative strategies in discourse and, second, the ways it facilitates a reflexive ‘shuttling’ between text-discursive features, intertextual relations and wider contexts of society and history. Here, I examine how a catastrophic past is invoked in speech and evoked through image and music, in response to the demands that uncertainty of the future ‘places upon one’s conscience’. (shrink)

The Division of Investigative Oversight within the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is responsible for conducting oversight review of institutional inquiries and investigations of possible research misconduct. It is also responsible for determining whether Public Health Service findings of research misconduct are warranted. Although ORI findings rely primarily on the scope and quality of the institution’s analyses and determinations, ORI often has been able to strengthen the original findings by employing a variety of analytical methods, often computer based. Although (...) ORI does not conduct inquiries or investigations, it has broad authority to provide assistance to institutions at all stages of their reviews of allegations. This assistance can range from providing advice on best practices, to legal assistance, to suggestions for how best to investigate specific allegations. When asked, ORI can also conduct certain forensic analyses, such as a statistical examination of questioned digits or a simple examination of a questioned figure in Photoshop. ORI will not provide opinions or render judgment on such analyses while the institution is still conducting its investigation. Such analyses can be done without knowing much else about the case. (shrink)