Motion-sound synesthesia is characterized by illusory auditory sensations linked to the pattern and rhythms of motion of visually experienced but soundless object, like an optical flow array, a ball bouncing or a horse galloping. In an MRI study with a group of three synesthetes and a group of eighteen control participants, we found structural changes in the brains of synesthetes in the subcortical multisensory areas of the superior and inferior colliculi. In addition, functional magnetic resonance imaging data showed activity in (...) motion-sensitive regions, as well as temporal and occipital areas, and the cerebellum. However, the synesthetes had a higher activation within the left and right cuneus, with stronger activations when viewing optical flow stimuli. There was also a general difference in connectivity of the colliculi with the above mentioned regions between the two groups. These findings implicate low-level mechanisms within the human neuroaxis as a substrate for local connectivity and cross activity between perceptual processes that are “distant” in terms of cortical topography. The present findings underline the importance of considering the role of subcortical systems and their connectivity to multimodal regions of the cortex and they strengthen a parsimonious account of synesthesia, at the least of the visual-auditory type. (shrink)

Aim:The purpose of this study was to explore how adolescent patients displaying developmental trauma experience and describe meaning in life. Schnell’s model of meaning in life is applied to explore meaningfulness, crises of meaning and sources of meaning. Method: The study has a qualitative design based on individual interviews with eight adolescents aged 14–18 years in treatment in an outpatient clinic for mental health care for children and adolescents. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using systematic text condensation. Results: The (...) adolescents related meaning in life to the experience of coherence, intrinsic values, progress and belonging, or the absence of these. Examples of sources of meaning among the informants were positive relations with meaningful others, structure and routines, moments of well-being, achieving goals related to education, work and family, and seeking something else outside oneself such as playing computer games, being engaged in politics, being with animals, having a belief in a god or being outdoors in natural surroundings. Conclusion: Although the topic of meaning in life was unknown to this group, they used sources of meaning intuitively. This group seems to have similar preferences to the general population. More knowledge is needed on how the topic of meaning in life can be useful in therapy for adolescents with development trauma. (shrink)

This paper investigates how people conceive and evaluate nature through language, in a climate change context. With material consisting of 1,200 answers to open-ended questions in nationally representative surveys in Norway, we explore what semantic roles and values the respondents attribute to nature as well as to how they interact with the public debate about climate change. We observe that different conceptions and valuations of nature are tied to different perspectives on the climate change issue: some address the responsibilities of (...) causing climate change, others its consequences, and others yet its potential solutions. The study provides knowledge about the variety of conceptions of nature that can be mobilised by individuals and suggests that policy measures and public communication could benefit by taking this diversity into account. (shrink)

Objective: Previous research suggests a positive association between pain, depression and sleep. In this study, we investigate how sleep correlates with varying levels of pain and depression in nursing home patients with dementia.Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study with sleep-related data, derived from two multicenter studies conducted in Norway. We included NH patients with dementia according to the Mini-Mental State Examination from the COSMOS trial and the DEP.PAIN.DEM trial whose sleep was objectively measured with actigraphy. In the COSMOS trial, NH patients (...) were included if they were ≥65 years of age and with life expectancy >6 months. In the DEP.PAIN.DEM trial, patients were included if they were ≥60 years and if they had depression according to the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia. In both studies, pain was assessed with the Mobilization-Observation-Behavior-Intensity-Dementia-2 Pain Scale, and depression with CSDD. Sleep parameters were total sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset, early morning awakening, daytime total sleep time and time in bed. We registered use of sedatives, analgesics, opioids and antidepressants from patient health records and adjusted for these medications in the analyses.Results: Mean age was 86.2 years and 76.3% were female. Hierarchical regressions showed that pain was associated with higher TST and SE, less WASO and more DTS. More severe dementia was associated with more WASO and TiB. More severe depression was associated with less TST, less DTS and less TiB. Use of sedative medications was associated with less TiB.Conclusion: When sleep was measured with actigraphy, NH patients with dementia and pain slept more than patients without pain, in terms of higher total sleep time. Furthermore, their sleep efficiency was higher, indicating that the patients had more sleep within the time they spent in bed. Patients with more severe dementia spent more time awake during the time spent in bed. Furthermore, people with more severe depression slept less at daytime and had less total sleep time Controlling for concomitant medication use did not affect the obtained results. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends a novel hybrid account of well-being. We will call our view a Robust Hybrid. We call it robust because it grants a broad and not subservient role to both objective and subjective values. In this paper we assume, we think plausibly but without argument, that there is a significant objective component to well-being. Here we clarify what it takes for an account of well-being to have a subjective component. Roughly, we argue, it must allow that (...) favoring attitudes that are not warranted by the lights of objective values can ground benefits. Given this understanding, we show that there is an important and unrecognized expansion in the resources available to fully objectivist views: namely that such views can help themselves to the value of warranted love of objective goods. Such a move by the objectivist can help them respond to concerns that, on their view, a person’s well-being can be too alien to them. We next argue that, nonetheless, such objectivist views are still unconvincing due to their lack of a subjective component. This motivates a move from fully objective accounts to hybrid accounts. We show that many prominent hybrid theories in the literature are inadequate because they implausibly minimize the subjective component. This motivates a move to a robust hybrid view that has an expanded subjectivist component. We conclude with some remarks about the interrelation between the subjective and objective components in the hybrid account that we favor and a role for resonance in a theory of well-being other than serving as a hard constraint on any benefit. (shrink)

The paper discusses Rawls’ and Habermas’ theories of deliberative democracy, focusing on the question of religious reasons in political discourse. Whereas Rawls as well as Habermas defend a fully inclusivist position on the use of religious reasons in the ‘background culture’ or ‘informal public sphere’, we defend a moderately inclusivist position. Moderate inclusivism welcomes religiously inspired contributions to public debate, but it also makes normative demands on public argumentation beyond the ‘public forum’ or ‘formal public sphere’. In particular, moderate inclusivism (...) implies what we call a ‘conversational translation proviso’ according to which citizens have a duty to supplement religious with proper political arguments if – but only if – they are asked to do so by their co-discussants. This position, we argue, is more in line with the deeper intuitions behind Rawls’ political liberalism and Habermas’ deliberative model than is the fully inclusivist alternative. _Keywords_: conversational translation proviso, deliberative democracy, ethics of citizenship, Habermas, moderate inclusivism, public reason, Rawls. (shrink)

Having visited Ireland regularly during the 1930s, Ludwig Wittgenstein resigned his Cambridge philosophy professorship in 1947 and moved there, living in a fishing village on the Atlantic coast and hotels in Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains. Although Wittgenstein spent some time out of the country, Ireland was effectively his base for three very productive years during which he worked on what would become one of his key books, the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein in Ireland represents the first sustained account (...) of Wittgenstein's time in Ireland, placing it in its historical context. Wall pays a good deal of attention to the representation of the Irish landscape in which the Austrian philosopher found himself able to work; a large part of his writings were produced in the bleak landscapes of Ireland and Norway. (shrink)

This article is a cry for help. It is a search for some possible view of legal philosophy that does not render it either intrinsically useless or useless in its current form. In this article I focus on two methodological hallmarks of contemporary anglophone legal philosophy. The first is the Archimedean way in which the legal theorist places a critical distance between him- or herself and the subject matter of the philosophical inquiry. The second is the introverted way in which (...) the accuracy of any given legal theory is confined to the theorist’s own puzzles, concerns, controversies, and preoccupations. Whilst I consider those who have turned against these methodological commitments and called for an anti-Archimedean or extroverted approach to legal theory, I explain how those who accept both commitments adopt a very modest view of the helpfulness of legal philosophy. I then consider whether, contrary to the modest view, if we accept both commitments, then whatever is true in legal philosophy will always be trivially true, irrelevant, or inconsequential, for any non-philosophical practice or non-philosophical inquiry about the law. The value of this article, I hope, lies in its refutation. (shrink)

Introduction: the fingerprint of spirit -- The subject/object of cinema: The Maltese falcon -- "A deeper breath": from body to spirit in Kiss me deadly -- Negative dioretix: Repo man -- "Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women!": two types of fetishism in The big Lebowski.

Many writers claim that democratic government rests on a principled commitment to the ideal of political equality. The ideal of political equality holds that political institutions ought to be arranged so that they distribute political standing equally to all citizens. I reject this common view. I argue that the ideal of political equality, under its most plausible characterizations, lacks independent justificatory force. By casting doubt on the ideal of political equality, I provide indirect support for the claim that democratic government (...) is only instrumentally justified. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls aims to demonstrate in his book Hell: The Logic of Damnation that some traditional views of hell are still defensible and can be believed with intellectual and moral integrity. Focusing on the issues from the standpoint of philosophical theology, Walls explores the doctrine of hell in relation to both the divine nature and human nature. He argues, with respect to the divine nature, that some traditional versions of the doctrine are compatible not only with God's omnipotence and (...) omniscience, but also with a strong account of His perfect goodness. The concept of divine goodness receives special attention since the doctrine of hell is most often rejected on moral grounds. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls, the author of books on hell and heaven, completes his tour of the afterlife with a philosophical and theological exploration and defense of purgatory, the traditional teaching that most Christians require a period of postmortem cleansing and purging of their sinful dispositions and imperfections before they will be fully made ready for heaven. He examines Protestant objections to the doctrine and shows that the doctrine of purgatory has been construed in different ways, some of which are fully (...) compatible with Protestant theology. In particular, while purgatory has often been understood as matter of punishment in order to make satisfaction for sins that have not been fully remitted, it can also be seen as the completion of the sanctification process, an account of the doctrine that is fully consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Purgatory assumes not only continuity of personal identity but also gradual moral and spiritual growth between death and resurrection. Different theories of personal identity are examined and assessed in light of these assumptions. Walls also shows that the traditional doctrine of purgatory is not understood as a second chance for salvation, but goes on to argue that it should be modified to allow for postmortem repentance. He concludes with an examination of C.S. Lewis's writings on purgatory, and suggests that Lewis can be a model for evangelicals and other Protestants to engage the doctrine of purgatory in a way that is true to their theology. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls argues that the doctrine of heaven is ripe for serious reconsideration. He contends not only that the orthodox view of heaven can be defended from objections commonly raised against it, but also that heaven is a powerful resource for addressing persistent philosophical problems, not the least of which concern the ground of morality and the meaning of life. Walls shows how heaven is integrally related to central Christian doctrines, particularly those related to salvation, and tackles the difficult (...) problem of why faith in Christ is necessary to save us from our sins. In addition, heaven is shown to illumine thorny problems of personal identity and to be an essential component of a satisfactory theodicy. Walls goes on to examine data from near-death experiences from the standpoint of some important recent work in epistemology and argues that they offer positive evidence for heaven. He concludes that we profoundly need to recover the hope of heaven in order to recover our very humanity. (shrink)

The article critically considers the role of NGOs at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. On the basis of observation of pre-trial hearings for the case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed et al.—those allegedly responsible for the September 11 attacks—the article analyses NGOs as trial monitors of the US military commissions set up to deal with ‘alien unprivileged enemy belligerents’. In spite of continued efforts by human rights NGOs and incremental improvements in the military commissions’ institutional arrangements and practice, (...) the article shows how NGOs have become so much a part of the everyday operation of justice at ‘Gitmo’ that they legitimate the military commissions’ claim to be delivering fair and transparent justice. (shrink)

Much of the recent work on modus vivendi politics has come from writers who are broadly sympathetic to the realist critique of liberal moralism. They present modus vivendi politics as an alternative to the political moralism that is associated with liberal Anglo-American philosophers such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. This chapter argues that the opposition between these two sets of views—liberal moralism and modus vivendi politics—has been misconceived. On the one hand, it argues that liberal moralists have failed both (...) to accurately characterize and to adequately appreciate the importance of modus vivendi arrangements for political order. On the other hand, it argues that realist critics of liberal moralism have generally failed to appreciate the extent to which an adequate defense of a modus vivendi arrangement presupposes commitment to moral principles of the sort defended by liberal moralists. After advancing these two lines of criticism, the chapter takes a more constructive turn and discusses the notion of a moralized modus vivendi, explaining how this notion draws on ideas from both liberal moralism and modus vivendi political theory. The possibility of a moralized modus vivendi, the chapter concludes, illustrates not only the compatibility but also the integration of liberal moralism and modus vivendi politics. (shrink)

Joseph Blado critiqued my probabilistic arguments against Roman papal doctrines by deploying probability arguments, particularly Bayesian arguments, in favor of the papacy. He contends that there are good C-inductive arguments for papal doctrine that, taken together, add up to a good P-inductive argument. I argue that his inductive arguments fail, and moreover that there are three good C-inductive arguments against papal doctrine in the neighborhood of his failed arguments. I conclude by critiquing his retreat to what he calls ‘skeptical papalism’ (...) as a last ditch sort of move to defend papal doctrine. (shrink)

A full understanding of emotion necessitates the bridging of disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches. This special section uses emotional development as a foil to illustrate how suc...

The fact that a number of popes have been bad in the sense that they did not even meet minimal standards of moral integrity and sincere piety poses a serious problem for Roman Catholicism. After surveying a gallery of these infamous popes, I hone in more exactly on just what the problem is. I then argue that the problem remains on both a weak providence view and a strong providence view. According to the former, there is no guarantee that the (...) man chosen pope is God’s will. According to the latter, deploying the resources of middle knowledge, God can make sure that popes infallibly avoid error and teach only truth by making sure the right man is chosen pope. Neither view satisfactorily explains how the papacy can be as important as Rome says it is while so many popes have been such unworthy holders of the office. (shrink)

The theological map of the world has been transformed through demographic changes in the Church brought about by the recession from Christian faith in the West and the huge accession to it in other parts of the world. The implications for theological education and Christian scholarship are considered in relation to geopolitical, religio-demographic, academic and theological factors. All point to an urgent need for the development of Christian scholarship in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and for increasing African, Asian and (...) Latin American leadership in theological education. (shrink)

At least since Aristotle, phronesis (practical wisdom) and poetics (making or creating) have been understood as essentially different activities, one moral the other (in itself) non-moral. Today, if anything, this distinction is sharpened by a Romantic association of poetics with inner subjective expression. Recent revivals of Aristotelian ethics sometimes allow for poetic dimensions of ethics, but these are still separated from practical wisdom per se. Through a fresh reading of phronesis in the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, I argue that (...) phronesis should be viewed as at least in part poetic at its very core. That is, phronesis deals with the fundamentally tragic human situation of moral incommensurability, and it responds to this by making or creating new moral meaning. Such a poetics of practical wisdom helps phronesis stand up to significant and important critiques made of it by a range of modernists and post-modernists, pointing a way forward for some important contemporary moral debates. (shrink)

Some of the ways in which the experience of mothering is shaped by the moral and cultural constructions surrounding breastfeeding discourse are examined using a critical deconstruction of recent Canadian health education material. Connections between the understandings surrounding breastfeeding and cultural constructions of nature and sexuality are raised, as is the overlap between breastfeeding discourse and a number of other social discourses including those surrounding child-centered parenting expertise, the remoralization of pregnancy, and the neoliberal preoccupation with individual responsibility and the (...) cost of social programs. Some of the implications that this understanding poses for mothers are examined. (shrink)

This book tackles the concerns of stressed teachers. Whether from nurturance suffering or from the piles of paperwork yet to be tackled, the author helps the reader sort through the causes of stress, the emotional, physical and social reactions to stress and how one can begin to plan a stress management plan.

Are liberalism and perfectionism compatible? In this study Steven Wall presents and defends a perfectionist account of political morality that takes issue with many currently fashionable liberal ideas but retains the strong liberal commitment to the ideal of personal autonomy. He begins by critically discussing the most influential version of anti-perfectionist liberalism, examining the main arguments that have been offered in its defence. He then clarifies the ideal of personal autonomy, presents an account of its value and shows that a (...) strong commitment to personal autonomy is fully compatible with an endorsement of perfectionist political action designed to promote valuable pursuits and discourage base ones. (shrink)

This volume will be the primary resource for students, scholars, and others interested in questions of our ultimate existence.

Although a personal god of mixed moral character is logically possible, no personal god that has been represented as less than wholly good has gained more than a strictly local appeal. The Judaeo-Christian god is no exception. The god is represented as merciful, kind, longsuffering, forgiving, loving - in a word, wholly good. Of course, representing a god as wholly good is one thing; providing a convincing defence of his goodness is quite another. Indeed, many would contend that of all (...) the defences provided within the Judaeo-Christian system, the defence of the goodness of God is the least convincing. (shrink)

David Hume's philosophy is notoriously naturalistic. It is an attempt to give an account of man and his world relying only on evidence which can be gleaned from sense observation and introspection. Whatever can be inferred from this evidence is a proper philosophical conclusion.

Bio-ontologies are essential tools for accessing and analyzing the rapidly growing pool of plant genomic and phenomic data. Ontologies provide structured vocabularies to support consistent aggregation of data and a semantic framework for automated analyses and reasoning. They are a key component of the Semantic Web. This paper provides background on what bio-ontologies are, why they are relevant to botany, and the principles of ontology development. It includes an overview of ontologies and related resources that are relevant to plant science, (...) with a detailed description of the Plant Ontology (PO). We discuss the challenges of building an ontology that covers all green plants (Viridiplantae). Key results: Ontologies can advance plant science in four keys areas: 1. comparative genetics, genomics, phenomics, and development, 2. taxonomy and systematics, 3. semantic applications and 4. education. Conclusions: Bio-ontologies offer a flexible framework for comparative plant biology, based on common botanical understanding. As genomic and phenomic data become available for more species, we anticipate that the annotation of data with ontology terms will become less centralized, while at the same time, the need for cross-species queries will become more common, causing more researchers in plant science to turn to ontologies. (shrink)