José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favor of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I (...) develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes. (shrink)

This is the first article in a two-part series describing subject and family perspectives from the central thalamic deep brain stimulation for the treatment of traumatic brain injury using the Medtronic PC + S first-in-human invasive neurological device trial to achieve cognitive restoration in moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, with subjects who were deemed capable of providing voluntary informed consent. In this article, we report on interviews conducted prior to surgery wherein we asked participants about their experiences recovering from (...) brain injury and their perspectives on study enrollment and participation. We asked how risks and benefits were weighed, what their expectations and fears were, and how decisions were reached about trial participation. We found that informed consent and enrollment decisions are fraught. Subjects and families were often split, with subjects more focused on putative benefits and families concerned about incremental risk. Both subjects and families viewed brain injury as disruptive to personal identity and relationships. As decisions were made about study enrollment, families struggled with recognizing the re-emergent agency of subjects and ceding decision-making authority to subjects who had previously been dependent upon them for protection and guidance. Subjects and family members reported a hope for the relief of cognitive disabilities, improved quality of life, normalization of interpersonal interactions, and a return to work or school as reasons for study participation, along with altruism and a desire to advance science. Despite these aspirations, both subjects and families appreciated the risks of the intervention and did not suffer from a therapeutic misconception. A second essay to be published in the next issue of Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics—Clinical Neuroethics will describe interviews conducted after surgery, the effects of cognitive restoration for subjects, families, and challenges presented to the social structures they will call upon to support them through recovery. This subsequent article will be available online prior to its formal publication in October 2023. (shrink)

That Descartes’ God is not a deceiver is amongst the canonical claims of early modern philosophy. The significance of this (purported) fact to the coherence of Descartes’ system is likewise canonical, infused in how we teach and think about the _Meditations_. Though prevalent, both ends of this narrative are suspect. We argue that Descartes’ color eliminativism, when coupled with his analysis of the cognitive structure of our sensory systems, entails that God is a deceiver. It’s doubtful that Descartes recognized this, (...) given his insistence that God is not a deceiver, and the role this plays in his system. But this is a concession Descartes can grant if we are careful about the kind of deception at play—a kind Descartes _does_ recognize, albeit not without some ambiguity. On our story, Descartes’ metaphysics and epistemology are not driven by concerns about deception _per se_, but by concerns about God’s _benevolence_. (shrink)

Over the past half century, our best scientific understanding of the immune system has been transformed. The immune system has turned out to be extremely sophisticated, densely connected to the central nervous system and cognitive capacities, deeply involved in the production of behaviour, and responsive to different kinds of psychosocial event. Such results have rendered the immune system part of the subject-matter of psychology and cognitive science. I argue that such results, alongside the history of psychoneuroimmunology, give us good reason (...) to be sceptical about the characterization of cognitive science and psychology as studying the mind and the mental. (shrink)

The thesis of self-elusiveness says, roughly, that the self fails to be phenomenally manifest from the first-person perspective. This thesis has a long history. Yet many who endorse it do so only in a very specific sense. They say that the self fails to be phenomenally manifest as an object from the first-person perspective; they say that self-experience is not a species of ‘object-consciousness’. Yet if consciousness outstrips object-consciousness, then we are left with the possibility that there is another sense (...) in which the self is phenomenally manifest. Alas, efforts to articulate just what this form of self-experience comes to—often a holy grail of sorts for those in, and influenced by, the phenomenological tradition—have remained stubbornly obscure. This essay attempts a partial remedy. Taking a cue from Bernard Lonergan, I suggest that self-experience, while not a species of object-consciousness, is nonetheless partially grounded in it. The result is a view that is compatible with self-experience being representational and relational, contra tradition. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is a history of moral circle expansion. This history correlates with a history of expansionism about consciousness. Recently, expansionism about consciousness has exploded: to invertebrates, to plants, to logic gates, and to fundamental entities. The last of these expansions stems from a surge of interest in panpsychism. In an exploratory spirit, this paper considers some largely uncharted territory: the ethical implications of panpsychism. Our conclusion is that while panpsychism probably does significantly expand our moral circle, it's (...) also probably short on anything of practical significance. (shrink)

Van Leeuwen’s Religion as Make-Believe, A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity argues that religious and political beliefs are fundamentally different from mundane, factual beliefs and represent a cognitive attitude more akin to imagining. To ground this difference, Van Leeuwen proposes four principles defining factual beliefs: ‘involuntariness’ mandates that people cannot choose what they believe; ‘no compartmentalization’ says that factual – but not religious – beliefs guide behavior in all domains; ‘cognitive governance’ requires that inferences be readily drawn from (...) factual beliefs; ‘evidential vulnerability' entails that beliefs are revised given contradictory evidence. While factual beliefs are supposed to meet these standards, Van Leeuwen marshals evidence that religious and tribal beliefs – or “credences” – fail to obey these four principles. In this commentary, I argue that beliefs – both factual and religious – are often much more complicated than Van Leeuwen assumes. This complexity makes perfect conformity to the four principles unlikely, even for factual beliefs. I review Van Leeuwen’s evidence for credences and suggest that this evidence is compatible with the null hypothesis: that religious beliefs are simply beliefs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 517 she does on these issues; this is hardly the case. And lastly she fails to discern that some feminist christology does not spring from a love for Jesus and what he has done through his cross and resurrection; rather, Jesus is merely used (and thus abused) to further a theological and political agenda. [Men obviously are not immune from this either.] Despite my disagreements with some (...) of Johnson's arguments and conclusions, and despite my disappointment at the way she addresses the feminist issues, I found this hook to he a basically reliable and clear summary of the christology of the last forty years. Whether it has all been true development, as Johnson maintains, is a debatable question. Nonetheless, this book does elaborate the contemporary issues and possible answers that confront christology today, and for this makes it a book well worth reading. Mother of God Community Washington. D.C. THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. By ALLAN B. WOLTER, O.F.M. Ed. Marilyn McCord Adams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pp. ix+ 356. $47.50. Duns Scotus was a brilliant light that flashed a brief time across the medieval sky hut was destined ultimately to he outshone by other luminaries immediately preceding him (Aquinas) and following him (Ockham). Perhaps no individual in the past half century has done more to illuminate the Subtle Doctor's thought and times than Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Both his editing and his translating of primary sources as well as his detailed readings and expositions of Scotus's theories have put medieval scholars in his debt. The present volume is a collection of thirteen essays on particular aspects of Scotus's work, preceded by an introduction. Ten of the essays have been previously published in other sources ranging from.the late 1940s to the present. But as editor Marilyn McCord Adams points out in her forward, many of these can be found only with difficulty in often inaccessible journals and books. Thus the value of this single volume. The essays are grouped under three headings: metaphysics and epistemology, action theory and ethics, and philosophical theology. As is often true with any volume spanning a number of topics and years, the quality of exposition and analysis is uneven. Obviously, in a limited space, I cannot hope to treat all subjects in a volume as comprehensive 518 BOOK REVIEWS as Wolter's. Permit me, however, to begin by making some general comments and then to narrow my remarks to one particular issue. Wolter's introduction to the volume is as clear and concise an overview of Scotus's ideas as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. In general, the essays in the first part of the book on matters meta· physical and epistemological are quite solid. Here we find explicated many of the concepts which have become identified with Scotus: the formal distinction, univocity of being, the common nature and the hraecceity that constitutes distinct individuals. Wolter does justice to the subtlety and brilliance of Scotus's thinking and allows readers both old and new to Scotus to acknowledge him as a metaphysician for the ages. The author is particularly adept at explicating with helpful analogies some of the Subtle Doctor's most difficult concepts. I benefitted from his thought-provoking comparison between the formal distinction and a spotlight on a stage which can illuminate different and distinguishable aspects of the same reality. The next section on action rtheory and ethics draws in part on Wolter's work which culminated in the 1986 publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Wolter has been in the forefront of those who urge that Scotus's description of an innate affection for justice in the will is crucial in understanding the freedom Scotus thought proper to humans. What remains unclear to me is how this strand in Scotus's writing relates to others which clearly imply a libertarian view of free• dom emphasizing the will's utter self-determination. The problem I see is this: if the will truly is self-determining, then an innate affectio justitiae seems to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christianity and Secular Reason: Classical Themes and Modern Developments ed. by Jeffrey BloechlJoseph W. Koterski, S.J.Christianity and Secular Reason: Classical Themes and Modern Developments. Edited by Jeffrey Bloechl. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. vii + 288. $40.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-268-02228-0.It does not bode well for a collection of essays when the introduction needs to make a concession like the one found here: “This (...) volume brings together a plurality of approaches to a loosely related set of questions, themes, and phenomena” (6). Yet, surely, truth in advertising is an uncommon virtue. The frank honesty of Jeffrey Bloechl, the editor of this volume, is much to be commended.What unifies the essays in this volume is not a common topic or a common approach but a common concern with the problem of understanding the relation between Christianity and secular reason. The issue in play is how much respect a religion that claims to be the recipient of divine revelation owes to autonomous reasoning in any particular age. The problem is exacerbated in those periods of history that are marked by strong claims for the powers of human reasoning.Bloechl’s introduction is particularly helpful due to its distinction between secular reason and secularized reason. Unless a believer takes the fideist position of holding that only claims grounded in faith are valid knowledge-claims, there is no reason to deny or cast skeptical aspersions on secular reason. The term simply names the use of reason according to its proper governing principles on any topic where the justifications for various truth-claims are drawn only from this-worldly experience and, for disciplinary reasons, make no use of divine revelation. It is the type of reasoning that is done within a saeculum, that is, within a given period of time, according to the canons of sound reasoning operative in that epoch. The term “secularized reason,” by contrast, names the view of reason that is hostile to the legitimacy of any knowledge-claim that involves the testimony of divine self-disclosure as its warrant. The proponents of secularized reason often conveniently overlook the likelihood that such hostility risks begging the question by disallowing any form of divinely backed testimony in principle, while allowing human testimony in such spheres as history or courts or law. If one is prepared in general to accept testimony as a justification for a truth-claim, then the proper criterion is the credibility of the source. But then there is no principled way to preclude in advance the possibility that testimony that originates with God might provide the strongest possible type of warrant for certain knowledge-claims. It is mere prejudice to decide in advance that this alternative is simply beyond the pale of consideration.Threaded through the essays in this volume is the perennial problem of the relationship of faith and reason. Earlier ages posed the problem on their own terms, sometimes quite different from modern assumptions. Readers unfamiliar with the thought of Thomas Aquinas, for instance, might well be [End Page 141] surprised to learn that the very first question of the Summa theologiae asks whether any sort of sacra doctrina is necessary beyond the philosophical sciences. Such a stance does not raise a question about whether faith can be a genuine source of knowledge, but merely asks if there is need for the sort of knowledge that is grounded in faith. Aquinas answers the question not only by reflecting on the difficulties that arise from expecting that everyone will have the necessary time, interest, and intellectual resources to figure out for themselves the things that they need to know for the sake of salvation; he also notes certain areas that are entirely beyond the scope of unaided reason, such as knowledge about the triune nature of God.By contrast, the proponents of secularized reason tend to cast doubt on the very possibility that any truth-claim based on religious faith could even be counted as knowledge. Brad Gregory’s recent book, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard University Press, 2012) does a masterful job in tracing the unforeseen... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology by Paige E. HochschildJoseph T. Lienhard, S.J.Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology. By Paige E. Hochschild. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 251. $125.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-964302-8.When students of St. Augustine consider his teaching on memory, they turn instinctively to the Confessions, book 10, and to On the Trinity, books 11 and 12. The lyrical passage in the Confessions is easy to teach and (...) intriguing in its contents. Paige Hochschild paints a much larger picture, drawing on far more sources. She also sees memory as a central category in Augustine’s thought. In the opening paragraph of the introduction, she describes memory (for Augustine) as the way the mind meets the world, as the way things external to the body are apprehended, as the way intelligible objects are known, and as what it means to be constituted in the image of God. This is a big order. And “order,” in Augustine’s sense, is key: the mind, as memory, brings order to the natural world, but also brings to light a providential order that is implicit in the sensible.The book is divided into three parts: (1) the philosophical tradition (Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus), (2) Augustine’s earlier writings (from the Cassiciacum dialogues up to De magistro and De musica), and (3) the Confessions and De trinitate. The conclusion of this complex study is that memory is salvific: it accounts for the soul’s progress by the dialectical play of the knowledge and love of what is possessed, yet not possessed. The lifelong process of healing in which memory functions is fulfilled in contemplation.Two characteristics of Hochschild’s book can be mentioned at the outset. First, she studies each author diachronically, measuring progress and growth in the author’s thought, and particularly in his understanding of memory. Second, she readily invokes a wide range of categories to explain and illuminate her main topic. The book is anything but an extended encyclopedia article on “memoria in Augustine.” The two principal terms in the title, “memory” and “theological anthropology,” are richly developed and elaborated.Chapter 1 begins with a short note on Augustine’s knowledge of Plato. It is generally admitted that Augustine read some of the dialogues of Plato in translation: the Timaeus, the Republic (albeit only parts of it), the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus. Some of these works, at least, may have come down to him through doxographers. But Plato’s influence on Augustine remains shadowy. It is “Platonism,” and particularly Plotinus, that influences him so clearly, a point made memorably in Confessions 7.9.13-15, and its intriguing reference to the libri Platonicorum. Before all else, Platonism delivers Augustine from the bondage of materialism.Hochschild treats Plato’s doctrine of memory under four headings: sense perception, knowledge as recollection, divisions in the ways of knowing, and the practice of dialectic. In regard to sense perception, the sharp distinction (found in the Republic) between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (epistêmê) [End Page 144] needs to be refined, Hochschild avers. At least in some later works, the sensible is an image of the intelligible, and hence some sense perception can be infallible. On the next topic, Plato invokes recollection to explain direct apprehension of the forms, but recollection does not recall what was perceived in the past but is a restoration of a clear, logical relationship. The Republic introduces a new element, “the illuminative power of the Good” (21). The final section of chapter 1 treats dialectic, concluding that “knowledge is fulfilled in virtue, and the art of dialectic is not merely an exercise in definition, but a hexis, and a way of living” (27).Chapter 2, on Aristotle, begins with the observation that, if Plato’s influence on Augustine was indirect, Aristotle’s was even more indirect, reaching Augustine through Plotinus. Most familiar, of course, are Augustine’s account of reading Aristotle’s Categories during his days at Carthage (Confessions 4.16.28-31) and his later use of the categories of substance and relation in his understanding of the Trinity, creating the category of “substantial relation,” which would... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:540 BOOK REVIEWS automatically without requiring the intervention of human beings who are convinced of its validity" (p. 356). If, however, a representative legislature, acting according to proper constitutional procedures, should decide to effect a strict egalitarian redistribution of property, then on Kant's theory this decision of the general will would be perfectly rightful and legitimate. The wealthy could not complain that their rightful property was being taken from (...) them because their actual or peremptory right to any property whatever is conditional on submitting themselves to the general will and to whatever laws of distribution it might choose to give. The state's only responsibility here would be to make sure that each citizen's right to freedom, equality, and independence is pro· tected; and Kant was even aware to some extent (if not as much as he might have been) that under a genuinely republican system, it is always the unequal distribution of property in society which poses the most serious threat to these rights. In spirit, therefore, Kant's theory is at the very opposite end of the political spectrum from theories of the minimal or nightwatchman state. Cornell University Ithaca, New York ALLEN W. Wooo History Making History: The New Historicism in American Religious Thought. By WILLIAM DEAN. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 175. $57.50 (hardcover) ; $18.95 (paper). This hook sets out to explicate, not historicism generally, hut a particular local and American variety thereof. Indeed one of Dean's major points concerns the importance of " local knowledge." He is addressing readers located, for better or worse, in American institutions, in a time and space shaped by American experience. These, he argues, need to cultivate a distinctively American way of knowing in philosophy and religion, a way of knowing that will be historicist, pragmatic, and empirical in character; adopting it would require important revisions in how we conceive and practice theology. Like all good historicists, Dean presents his argument by telling a story, creating a narrative context for the understanding of ideas. The story is most immediately about a group of contemporary thinkers that includes secular philosophers (Richard Bernstein, Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty), philosophers of religion and ethics (Jeffrey Stout, Corne! West), theologians (Gordon Kaufman, Mark C. Taylor), and a lone literary critic, Frank Lentriccia. By treating these writers together as " the new American historicists," Dean hopes to BOOK REVIEWS 541 show that they exemplify a distinctive style of thought that is both locally valid (because rooted in American traditions and practices) and religiously interesting. At the same time, the new historicists suffer from an ironic case of intellectual amnesia. While they consistently stress the inevitability of tradition and context in shaping thought, these writers often seem oblivious to the uniquely American tradition in which they stand. Thus Dean reaches back to recover elements of an older American historicism with roots in pragmatism, religious naturalism, and the liberal Protestantism of the prewar " Chicago School." The thought of these illustrious precursors, he argues, can help save today's historicists from the formalism that is their constant temptation. But what is historicism? Dean makes an emphatic distinction be· tween the historicism that grows out of the German idealist tradition and the historicism that " can be traced to the classical era in Ameri· can philosophy," e.g., to the thought of the pragmatists (p. 2). When Dean speaks of the older, idealist-influenced historicism he does not mean simply Ernst Troeltsch's famous proposal for a form of cultural and religious relativism; he is painting with a much broader brush. " Continental " historicism means for him something more like the idealist conviction concerning the " historicity " of the subject. After Kant, we do not simply apprehend the world, we construe it; and ever since Kant we have become more and more aware that we do so from particular, contingent perspectives. " Historicism" in this wide sense might be taken as a thesis about the inevitability of hermeneutics. But belief in the necessity of interpretation or hermeneutics is com· patible with affirming the reality of certain universal anthropological structures, e.g., of "reason" or "subjectivity" or "understanding". It is just such structures, Dean argues... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 149 Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel: Interpretations of St. Thomas Aquinas in German Nominalism on the Eve of the Reformation. By JOHN L. FARTHING. Duke Monographs in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 9. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988. Pp. x +265. $22.50 (cloth). In this hook, John Farthing examines the use made by the fifteenth· century theologian Gabriel Biel of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Contemplating the various (...) aspects of what he calls the ' dialogue ' between Biel and Aquinas {see e.g., pp. ix, 58, 191), Farthing wants to determine the extent and quality of Biel's knowledge and appropriation of Thomas's thought. Biel was a major shaper of contemporary theological opinion, who stood in the Occamist tradition in theology. Yet, although he himself shared Occamist presuppositions in theology and usually came out in various theological disputes on the Occamist side (pp. 5, 6, 8, 13-14, 16, 28, 33, 56, 122), as has long been recognized Biel often made a determined effort in his analyses to become acquainted with, and to repor·t, the thought of significant non-Occamist theologians, including Thomas Aquinas. Farthing thus justifies the present study by asking how precisely Thomas figures in the ' theological enterprise' of Gabriel Biel: Farthing wants to know how Biel used Aquinas and what Biel learned from his reading of Aquinas (pp. ix, 68 ). While Biel's significance for late fifteenth-century thought in itself justifies a study of his theological project and method, Farthing also believes that this hook on Biel and Aquinas is warranted on other grounds as well. Martin Luther learned much about scholasticism through his mastery of Biel's corpus. Hence, by establishing the quality of Biel's study and reporting of Aquinas on various theological questions, Farthing prepares the way for a future study of Luther's knowledge of Aquinas, a task however that he will leave to others (pp. x, 5, 7). Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel is divided into ten chapters. After a brief Preface in which he provides the rationale for this study and an opening chapter on Thomas Aquinas and the via moderna, Farthing looks in turn at Biel's reading of Aquinas in the subject areas "God and Creatures," "Christ and Mary," "The Human Condition," "Ethics," "Church, Ministry, and Worship," "Sacraments," "Justification," and "Eschatology; " the tenth chapter, entitled "Post Thomam," summarizes the principal results of Farthing's research. After listing in an early footnote the hooks on Aquinas which he has found especially useful on each subject, Farthing in each chapter examines Biel's citations of Aquinas on the topic at hand. As he pro- 150 BOOK REVIEWS ceeds through each chapter, Farthing is careful to indicate when Biel has misread or misquoted Aquinas, offering in these instances possible reasons for Biel's errors. The longest chapters are on ethics and on sacraments (Chapters Five and Seven), reflecting Biel's own greater interest in these aspects of Thomistic theology (pp. 103, 191). On the basis of this close study, Farthing offers the following general conclusions about Biel's reading of Thomas Aquinas. On the whole, Biel is accurate in his reporting of Thomas's thought on various questions : Farthing claims that " statistically speaking, it is exceedingly rare for Biel to lay himself open to the change of infidelity to Thomas's intention" (p. 193). Second, Biel exploits Thomas's expertise more on ' practical ' than on ' speculative ' matters; the greater number of Thomas citations in Biel have to do with ethics and practical issues associated with the sacraments (pp. 58, 94, 191, 195-96). Third, Biel holds Aquinas in esteem because he sees in Thomas a thinker who shares his interest in summarizing and reporting fairly the thought of other theologians. In this regard, Biel often uses Aquinas as one today would use a' theological encyclopedia' (the term, in fact, is Farthing's; see pp. 26, 132). Biel wants to provide for his own time as extensive as possible a spectrum of opinions on a given question ; to this end he takes over Aquinas's characterizations of different theological opinions on the question at hand. Fourth, while Aquinas's thought is usually fairly reported, Biel does occasionally misrepresent Thomas... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arguing about PsychiatryNatural Selection, Austinian Conservatism, and Finding Our Way to the BestJoseph Gough (bio)Professors Murphy and Lieberman have offered two generous and interesting commentaries on my article, each very insightful and helpful in its own way, and each offering an interesting alternative characterization of the subject matter of psychiatry. I found each extremely thought-provoking, hence this rather bloated response. I strongly disagree with each. In brief, I disagree (...) with the 'preliminaries' of each commentary, struggle to see the tension between Hull's view of science and my view of psychiatry, reject Lieberman's appeal to the history of mind-like and mental-illness-like concepts, and finally, believe my position neither suffers from the instability of psychiatry, nor blocks the route to best practice, nor counsels despair.Metaphysical Precision and Conceptual Evolution: Response to MurphyMurphy begins by offering some helpful context for the debate, and for our disagreement within that debate. Partly it is helpful because it raises a cluster of questions, which I agree with him, are related to the topic at hand. Partly it is helpful because it lays out Murphy's background metaphysics, with which I broadly agree, but where I think it is important to be more pedantic than Murphy himself is. Murphy and I agree that there are animate objects, importantly different from inanimate objects; we also agree that there is no object in nature that is a mind. However, in that [End Page 45] opening paragraph, there are a few things that look to me a little like conflations—and while I am happy to grant this as pedantry, I am not happy to deny its importance.First, not everything animate is intelligent and unpredictable—a presumably accidental implication of Murphy's use of 'these' throughout the paragraph. Second, intelligence and unpredictability do not in my view cluster in the way that Murphy suggests in the passage—a highly intelligent system may be exceptionally predictable at least so long as its goals and knowledge are fixed, and a highly unpredictable system may, of course, be entirely unintelligent. Of course, when some systems behave other than we expect, we count this as a failing of the system; but this is a feature of artifacts as well as animate systems, and perhaps also of objects that are neither artifacts nor animate (think of a farmer whose crops fail to go—might they not think there is something wrong with the soil?). The class of 'predictions' Murphy identifies is what I would describe as a class of normative expectations, that, of course, must be somewhat in line with the way things actually are, but are not 'predictions' in the paradigmatic sense of guesses about what will happen.This pedantry matters because this implied (or perhaps less charitably, enforced) alignment between non-coextensive categories in this picture of Murphy's is leveraged, I think, to gesture towards an objection. First, Murphy claims that this class of systems has required a special vocabulary, 'mental' vocabulary. Second, it is, I think, suggested in Murphy's set-up (and perhaps in Murphy's work; Murphy & Stich, 1999) that at some level this vocabulary anchors what we are talking about when we are talking about 'mental illness.'But here, of course, I disagree—or at least, I might disagree if I were clear what is being claimed. Which class of systems is that gives rise to this 'special vocabulary? Several have been mentioned. It should also come as no surprise that I think it is deeply unclear what counts as 'mental' vocabulary. Is it the vocabulary of animacy? Of normative expectation and function-ascription? Perhaps of intentionality? Or of consciousness? Maybe it is defined 'ostensively' with respect to terms like belief and desire?After these preliminaries, Murphy offers an objection to my position, and a brief defense of his own. I would like to begin with his defense of his own position:the best way to think about the claim that mental illnesses are brain diseases … is to see them as committing us to a form of explanation that treats psychiatry as continuous with other sciences of mind, in... (shrink)

Originally put forward to defend history from the encroachment of physics, the distinction between understanding and explanation was built into the foundations of Karl Jaspers’ ‘phenomenological’ psychiatry, and it is revised, used and defended by many still working in that tradition. On the face of it, this is rather curious. I examine what this notion of ‘understanding’ amounts to, why it entered and remains influential in psychiatry, and what insights for contemporary psychiatry are buried in the notion. I argue that (...) it is unhelpfully associated with the view that the mental is epistemologically and methodologically autonomous, but that it nevertheless highlights an important lacuna in many views of psychiatry and the scientific study of humans more generally. (shrink)

An eight hundred‐square‐foot house greets me and a licensed practical nurse. We walk on uneven, disintegrating concrete steps before entering the patient's daughter's home, and we can see a haze of cigarette smoke before we enter the living room. Although the patient is old enough for retirement, she tells me that, if it were up to her, she would still be working. Noticing the medical equipment occupying her room—oxygen, pulse oximeter, and blood pressure machine—I am reminded that our health system (...) is trying, like many other systems across the country, to manage people's chronic illness better by bringing technology into patients’ homes in hopes of preventing hospital readmissions. For this patient, the hope is that, if she gets symptoms that suggest another exacerbation of her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she can manage it herself. If I hadn't spent hundreds of hours in patients’ homes, I would have a low threshold for ordering home‐based nursing and telehealth; it would often seem like a good solution. (shrink)

Ethics for Managers introduces students to the philosophical underpinnings of business ethics and translates this theory into practical terms, demonstrating the moral implications of the decisions managers make. This edition features new material on global ethics, the financial downturn, and ethical sustainability. New, student-friendly features include: Learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter, which provide a roadmap to what is covered and how to use it. Cases that demonstrate real-world scenarios, allowing readers to grapple with real moral ambiguity. Discussion (...) questions at the end of each chapter, which challenge students to see different moral perspectives and to practice good decision-making. A new chapter on international business ethics. Students of business ethics courses will find this compact, well-organized text a useful tool to understand ethics in the digital age. (shrink)

Chapman & Huffman (C&H) offer a theory of why we humans want to believe that we are different: to justify our cruelty to animals. This commentary offers further supporting evidence of this and examines more closely what the claim that humans are ‘different’ amounts to. It also considers some methodological issues in animal psychology closely related to C&H ‘s theory. These problems result from a common strategy for defending hypotheses about human difference.

In putting forward the modern concept of mind, Descartes identified the mind with the self. Recently, communitarian and feminist scholars have argued in favor of a conception of the self according to which it includes relations to the social world and parts of the body. If they are correct, it initially seems damning for the view that the self is the mind. I examine whether this is so, by considering whether the identification of self and mind can be saved by (...) recent views of the mind according to which it is partly constituted by aspects of the body other than the brain and by the world beyond the skin. I argue that it cannot, before considering what this means for the mind and its relationship to selves and persons. (shrink)

Bioregionalism is an environmental movement that attempts to create decentralized, self‐determined communities connected to landscape and ecological features. Activists and scholars have used the phrase “becoming native” to describe the process of belonging to place. Despite its cultural appropriation, not only do bioregional writers still use the metaphor, but it has also been defended within religious studies. Instead of relying on these arguments to address ethical issues, claims to place need a decolonial framework. Looking at various voices within bioregionalism through (...) Indigenous critiques displays both the movement’s issues as well as decolonial processes for local adaptation. Wendell Berry exemplifies the problems of bioregional ethics but also shows bioregionalism's capacity for decolonization. (shrink)

An important divide in the free will literature—one that is arguably almost as common as the distinction between compatibilism and incompatibilism—concerns the distinction between event and substance causation. As the story typically goes, event-causalists maintain that an action is free only if it is caused by appropriate mental events, and agent-causalists maintain that an action is free only if it is caused directly by a substance (the agent). This paper argues that this dichotomy is a false one. It does this (...) by introducing a new view called Causal Pluralism, which maintains that free will is compatible with both event and substance causation. Furthermore, it is argued that agent-causalists have good reason to adopt Causal Pluralism, and also that that the view has interesting implications for the free will dialectic. (shrink)

Précis of _Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics_ and replies to comments by Samantha Matherne and Moran Godess-Riccitelli.

Søren Kierkegaard was engaged with the press in a variety of ways throughout his authorship. Although studies of Kierkegaard's interactions with the public press of his time have largely focused on his dispute with the satirical newspaper, Corsaren, in this paper I examine his first engagement with the press—a mostly anonymous newspaper dispute with the Danish social activist, Orla Lehmann, about the freedom of the press in Denmark—as a lens through which to understand his thoughts on the press in general, (...) on anonymous authorship in the newspapers and otherwise, and the ethical and religious significance Kierkegaard sees in the methods we employ, including anonymity, when we engage one another in public writings. (shrink)

Philosophers have yet to provide a systematic analysis of the relationship between historical science and model-based science. In this paper I argue that prototypical model-based sciences exhibit features understood to be central to historical science. Philosophers of science have argued that historical scientists are distinctly concerned with inference to the best explanation, that explanations in historical science tend to increase in complexity over time, and that the explanations take the form of narratives. Using general circulation models in climate science as (...) a reference, I illustrate how simulation models in model-based science share these features exhibited by historical science. That model based sciences share these features raises important philosophical questions about how we should understand prototypical types of scientific enquiry, including the relationship between experimental science, historical science, and model-based science. I conclude by exploring several options for how to accommodate the noted similarities within a more general taxonomy of the sciences. (shrink)

This book attempts to give a comprehensive examination of the principal philosophical issues associated with the AIDS pandemic and in particular with the radical challenges that global diseases raise for modern society and political systems. The thesis of the book is that AIDS is but a part of a wider environmental and social crisis that not only challenges received opinion about the relationships between humantiy, technology and the environment, but challenges the ecological adaptability of modern social and political system. The (...) challenge posed by AIDS, and other diseases likely to appear in the next century, are explored in detail. (shrink)

Particle theories intend to describe the fundamental constituents from which all matter is constructed and the interactions among them. These constituents include atoms and molecules as well as their subatomic constituents, nuclei and their component parts including elementary particles. We consider an alternative to the usual particle theories, but dealing with the same phenomena. We call these theories ‘QT’s’. This is an attempt to provide a formal description of the essential features of elementary particle theories within the framework of metatheoretical (...) structuralism. (shrink)

In today's readings from Mark's Gospel and from the book of the prophet Isaiah we hear the stirring affirmation of 'Good News'. We use the words gospel and good news in many different situations, evoking different responses, including a colloquial statement for truthfulness, a book of the Bible, a sermon, a successful or a hoped-for happy outcome, and many others ways. On the other hand, sadly, we sometimes say, 'no news is good news'. We are also accustomed to hearing 'The (...) Gospel of the Lord' proclaimed at the end of the gospel reading; we might note that what we have just heard is gospel, good news, rather than the book itself from which it was read. (shrink)

Nowadays a basic investigation of morality and ethos would be of great importance. There is a crying need for clarification of many practical problems, both in the individual-private and in the social-ethical realms. There are too many uncertainties in which we live today, uncertainties about what we ought to do. We should try to infer from our ethical tradition certain standards that should govern our conduct. In particular, I notice confusion among rabbis as regards basic problems whose solution cannot be (...) found in the Shulhan Arukh and must rather be inferred by way of deduction from ancient principles and axioms. He approaches this task through an in-depth examination of the beginning of Pirkei Avot, raising topics such as: the sources of ethics, power and persuasion, elitism and democracy, educational philosophy, study and action, freedom and coercion, and more. (shrink)

Statistics circulate with ambivalence in governance settings and mass publics—both extolled as authoritative knowledge and the object of distrustful scrutiny. In the field of human rights activism, where the means to create authoritative knowledge operates asymmetrically between activists, organizations, and state actors, this makes statistical production and circulation subject to an intense politics of knowledge. LGBTI human rights actors in Brazil, for instance, constantly produce numbers that endeavor to make homophobia and transphobia epistemically and affectively real to various audiences. From (...) community surveys of personal experiences of violence or discrimination, to civil society reports of homicides, to federal government reports from human rights hotline complaints, LGBTI activists are awash in figures where they find themselves the producers, consumers, and subject material of such data. This article documents how activists and civil servants count violence, constructing homophobia and transphobia as knowable objects. These counting practices emerge from activists’ counterpublic circulations of knowledge about objects as well as epistemic infrastructures (police, journalistic coverage, hotlines) through which LGBTI peoples’ experience becomes refracted. Aware of these complications, activists deploy epistemic doubt and affective certainty to the field of statistics—utilizing the knowledge they offer while questioning whether violence can be measured at all. (shrink)