Mental disorders such as depression and anxiety are increasingly common. Yet there are too few specialists to offer help to everyone, and negative attitudes to psychological problems and their treatment discourage people from seeking it. As a result, many people never receive help for these problems. The Oxford Guide to Low Intensity CBT Interventions marks a turning point in the delivery of psychological treatments for people with depression and anxiety. Until recently, the only form of psychological intervention available for patients (...) with depression and anxiety was traditional one-to-one 60 minute session therapy - usually with private practitioners for those patients who could afford it. Now Low Intensity CBT Interventions are starting to revolutionize mental health care by providing cost effective psychological therapies which can reach the vast numbers of people with depression and anxiety who did not previously have access to effective psychological treatment. The Oxford Guide to Low Intensity CBT Interventions is the first book to provide a comprehensive guide to Low Intensity CBT interventions. It brings together researchers and clinicians from around the world who have led the way in developing evidence-based low intensity CBT treatments. It charts the plethora of new ways that evidence-based low intensity CBT can be delivered: for instance, guided self-help, groups, advice clinics, brief GP interventions, internet-based or book-based treatment and prevention programs, with supported provided by phone, email, internet, sms or face-to-face. These new treatments require new forms of service delivery, new ways of communicating, new forms of training and supervision, and the development of new workforces. They involve changing systems and routine practice, and adapting interventions to particular community contexts. The Oxford Guide to Low Intensity CBT Interventions is a state-of-the-art handbook, providing low intensity practitioners, supervisors, managers commissioners of services and politicians with a practical, easy-to-read guide - indispensible reading for those who wish to understand and anticipate future directions in health service provision and to broaden access to cost-effective evidence-based psychological therapies. (shrink)

In this chapter, we discuss a selection of current views of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). We focus on the different predictions they make, in particular with respect to the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) during visual experiences, which is an area of critical interest and some source of contention. Our discussion of these views focuses on the level of functional anatomy, rather than at the neuronal circuitry level. We take this approach because we currently understand more about experimental (...) evidence at this coarse level and because these results are appropriate for arbitrating between current theoretical frameworks. We discuss the Two-Visual-Systems Hypothesis (Milner & Goodale 1995; 2006), Local Recurrency (Lamme 2010; Lamme 2006), Higher Order (Lau 2008; Lau & Rosenthal 2011) and Global Workspace theories (Baars 1997; Baars 2005; Dehaene & Naccache 2001; Dehaene 2014). Despite the apparent stark differences between conscious and unconscious perceptual processing, available evidence suggests that their neural substrates must be largely shared. This indicates that the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious perceptual processing is likely to be subtle and highly specialized. We argue that current experimental evidence about the involvement of specific activity in prefrontal cortex supports the higher order neural theory of consciousness. In consequence, imaging techniques that focus only on marked differences between conscious and unconscious level of activity are likely to be insensitive to the relevant neural activity patterns that underlie conscious experiences. Finally, it follows from the evidence we discuss that the functional advantages of conscious over unconscious perceptual processing may be more limited than commonly thought. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh (Int J Soc Robot 1:217–221, 2009) argues that robot ethics should investigate what interaction with robots can do to humans rather than focusing on the robot’s moral status. We should ask what robots do to our sociality and whether human–robot interaction can contribute to the human good and human flourishing. This paper extends Coeckelbergh’s call and investigate what it means to live with disembodied AI-powered agents. We address the following question: Can the human–AI interaction contribute to our (...) moral development? We present an empirically informed philosophical analysis of how the AI personal assistant Siri changes its users’ way of life, based on the responses obtained from 20 semi-directive individual interviews with Siri users. We identify changes in the users’ social interaction associated with the adoption of Siri. These changes include: (1) the indirect effect of reducing opportunities of human interaction, (2) the second-order effect of diminished expectations toward each other in a community, and (3) the acquired preference to obtain hassle-free interaction with Siri over human interaction. We examine them in relation to concerns that are voiced in the current debates over the rise of AI, namely the suspicion that humans could become overly reliant on AI (Danaher 2019) and the worry that social AI could impede on moral development (Fröding and Peterson, Ethics Inf Technol 23:207–214, 2012; Li, Ethics Inf Technol 23:543–550, 2021). We analyze the ethical costs that come from these changes in light of virtue ethics and address potential objections along the way. We end by offering directions for thinking about how to live with AI personal assistant while preserving favorable conditions for moral development. (shrink)

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

In De Anima II.6, Aristotle divides the objects of perception into three kinds: “special perceptibles" (idia aisthêta) such as colours, sounds and flavours, which can be perceived in their own right by only one sense; “common perceptibles" (koina aisthêta) such as shapes, sizes and movements, which can be perceived in their own right by multiple senses; and “incidental perceptibles,” such as the son of Diares, which can be perceived only “incidentally” (kata sumbebêkos). In this paper, I examine this division of (...) perceptibles and consider what it amounts to. First, I argue that Aristotle’s distinction between perceiving something in its own right (kath' hauto) and perceiving it incidentally marks a causal distinction: what is perceived in its own right causes perception as such, whereas what is perceived incidentally coincides with what is perceived in its own right. Second, I argue that for Aristotle special perceptibles, unlike common perceptibles, belong to homogeneous bodies on account of their chemical composition. Finally, I explain the primacy Aristotle assigns to special perceptibles and his claim that perception of them alone is free from error. I conclude with some brief remarks on Aristotle and the primary/secondary quality distinction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 61-72 [Access article in PDF] From Personal to Social Transaction:A Model of Aesthetic Reading in the Classroom Mark A. Pike This article seeks to define more precisely the nature of the individual transaction that occurs between reader and text and the potential for aesthetic reading in literature classrooms by relating knowledge of the way pupils engage in literary transactions to theoretical (...) perspectives that address the issue. The validity of Louise Rosenblatt's transactional theory of the literary work, expounded in Literature as Exploration and The Reader, The Text, The Poem, and its relevance for contemporary educators, particularly in the field of English education, has recently been reasserted by Jeanne Connell in her timely and cogent article in this journal. 1 The present article, however, seeks to refocus debate by problematizing and subsequently developing some aspects of key theories such as Rosenblatt's while examining the individual and social nature of reading in schools. Rosenblatt's view that aesthetic experiences can have both social origin and effect certainly deserves further theorizing if aesthetic experience in school communities and classrooms is to flourish.The influence of John Dewey's Art as Experience upon Rosenblatt is evident as this seminal text conceives of our primary task as the restoration of "continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and everyday events." 2 Such continuity with experience is vital because, for Dewey, "experience is the fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ." 3 Applying such a notion to education in schools, Rosenblatt saw the aim of literature lessons as the growth of experience rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Yet, despite such progress, in the United Kingdom, teachers of English are in the unenviable position of having to deliver an extensive body of knowledge prescribed by the National Curriculum and also to focus explicitly upon the features of certain types of text as they teach the National Literacy Strategy. 4 In Rosenblatt's work the emphasis on our experience of [End Page 61] literary works provides a much needed alternative to positions such as that adopted by New Criticism where "it is never what a poem says which matters, but what it is" because we acknowledge we can only ever gain access to what a poem says as "the sentence that seems to need no interpretation is already the product of one." 5 Clearly, understanding the reader's transaction with texts is where we must begin if we wish to foster aesthetic reading in our classrooms.Transactional theory also appears to be closely related to Martin Heidegger's thought in Being and Time where Dasein (givenness, existence, being) is seen as a distinctive characteristic of the human being as our consciousness projects things of the world and is also subjected to the things of the world which belong to us, in some sense, only as long as our consciousness is projecting them. 6 The validity of Dewey's view, where experience is not separated from art, can be seen when we acknowledge that we can "never adopt an attitude of detached contemplation, looking down on the world as if from a mountain top" for we are "inevitably merged with the very object of our consciousness." 7Such a view reflects Hans-Georg Gadamer's position in Truth and Method in which Heidegger's explanation of situation is applied to literary theory because, for Gadamer, the literary work cannot appear as a packaged and completed artefact in which meaning is neatly wrapped because it is influenced by a particular reader's actions at a particular moment. 8 Rosenblatt's realistic conception that "each reading involves a particular person at a particular time and place" is developed in this article as it seems that, even now, many reader response critics and curriculum designers "write as though people read literature in a vacuum or in a generalized kind of academic setting" which often does not apply... (shrink)

The HIPAA Privacy Rule is notoriously weak because of its incomplete coverage, numerous exclusions and exemptions, and limited rights for individuals. The three areas in which it provides the most protection are fundraising, marketing, and research. Provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act, pending in Congress, and the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to amend the federal research regulations, awaiting final regulatory action, would weaken the privacy protections for research. If these measures are adopted, the HIPAA Privacy Rule would have so (...) little value that it might not be worth the aggravation and burden. (shrink)

Mobile devices with health apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, crowd-sourced information, and other data sources have enabled research by new classes of researchers. Independent researchers, citizen scientists, patient-directed researchers, self-experimenters, and others are not covered by federal research regulations because they are not recipients of federal financial assistance or conducting research in anticipation of a submission to the FDA for approval of a new drug or medical device. This article addresses the difficult policy challenge of promoting the welfare and interests of (...) research participants, as well as the public, in the absence of regulatory requirements and without discouraging independent, innovative scientific inquiry. The article recommends a series of measures, including education, consultation, transparency, self-governance, and regulation to strike the appropriate balance. (shrink)

This article discusses N. K. Jemisin's Afrofuturist utopian short story entitled “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” the opening story of her 2018 collection, How Long 'Til Black Future Month? As is suggested by its title, Jemisin's story is a direct reply to Ursula K. Le Guin's “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and this article discusses the ways in which Jemisin, one of the most prominent members of a new generation of SF/Fantasy writers, pays homage to, replies to, (...) and reimagines Le Guin's 1973 story in the twenty-first century. In particular, drawing on utopian scholarship, scholars of Afrofuturism, and the work of African American studies scholar-activists, it argues that Jemisin's utopia builds a world that embodies the “revolution of value” as well as the intersectional Black feminist praxis at the foundation of contemporary activist groups such as Black Lives Matter. It also argues for the ways in which Jemisin's text confronts common criticisms of utopia as well as the limits of the utopian imagination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 20-37 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Teaching Mark A. Pike I think aesthetic teaching is the highest of all teaching because it deals with life in its highest complexity. But if it ceases to be purely aesthetic — if it lapses anywhere from the picture to the diagram — it becomes the most offensive of all teaching.1George Eliot asserts that "the (...) highest of all teaching" which "deals with life in its highest complexity" is essentially aesthetic in character for it has features of the "picture" or work of art rather than the more straightforwardly instructional "diagram." Yet, George Eliot not only ascribes greatest worth to teaching that is aesthetic but considers teaching that is merely diagrammatic to be "the most offensive of all teaching." Evidently, there are similarities between pictures and diagrams but essential features present in the former are conspicuously absent from the latter. The current obsession with effectiveness in teaching and repeated attempts to reduce that which should be aesthetic and inspired to the wholly rational, diagrammatic and instrumental make George Eliot's views remarkably pertinent. Consequently, features of aesthetic teaching will be explored in this essay. In doing so it will be suggested that Martin Heidegger's ontology (theory of existence) offers a philosophical foundation for conceiving teaching in the arts as a form of engagement with students which is unreservedly aesthetic in character. As such, Heidegger provides us with a valuable position from which to counter forces that militate against the aesthetic in our schools and also provokes us to eschew all that is diagrammatic in our approach to that which is rightly aesthetic. Teaching: Drawing the Diagram or Painting the Picture? Teaching is currently being construed, in both the United Kingdom and the United States, as a technology with which to get something done or as a [End Page 20] vehicle which "delivers" a subject in an efficient or effective manner, or even as a science where the analytical approach is the method for problem solving. Even as I write, I find myself part of a proposed "delivery team" for literature education. It appears that this is the sort of language policy makers in a rational economy like to hear. Any dissenting voices, those subscribing to a view of teaching as an art itself, are considered dangerous as they jeopardize progress in our brave new world. For example, in their introduction to Effective Teaching — Evidence and Practice, Daniel Muijs and David Reynolds articulate the view that construing teaching as an art rather than a technology may be responsible for the lack of excellent teachers in our schools.2 In marked contrast to George Eliot, they suggest "the view that teaching is an 'art,' not a science" results in attention being devoted to "personal factors and qualities" which are "often idiosyncratic and difficult to influence by educational policies."3 Further, they suggest that the placing of education within the humanities tradition — is clearly wrong and probably condemns societies where it is prevalent to having only those small number of excellent teachers who inherit the "art," rather than the larger number who could acquire the applied science of a teaching methodology.4It is difficult to conceive of a position further removed from George Eliot's ideal of aesthetic teaching. There are, of course, a number of problems with reducing teaching to a technology, or an applied science, as Muijs and Reynolds prefer to call it. Such argument betrays the assumption that the world can be known in a rational, analytical and scientific way. The concomitant of this view is the misguided belief that teaching about such a world can be precisely planned, implemented and assessed. Elliot Eisner is surely more accurate when he explains that "teaching is a form of human action in which many of the ends achieved are emergent" and that these ends are often "found in the course of interaction with students rather than preconceived."5 Clearly, allowing "for the creation of ends in process" necessitates "a model of teaching akin to other arts."6 This is more... (shrink)

Aristotle is history’s most famous and influential proponent of the view that there are exactly five senses. But was he entitled to hold this view, given his other commitments? In particular, was he entitled to treat touch as a single sense, given the diversity of its correlated objects? In this paper I argue that Aristotle wished to individuate touch on the basis of its correlated objects, just as he had the other four senses. I also argue, contrary to what is (...) often supposed, that he was well-placed to do so, given his other commitments and views. (shrink)

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment as it develops from Heidegger's early writings to his later work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language and history. 'Unconcealment' is the idea that what entities are depends on the conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept, central to Heidegger's work, also applies to worlds in a dual sense: first, a condition of entities manifesting themselves is the existence of a world; and second, worlds themselves are disclosed. (...) The unconcealment or disclosure of a world is the most important historical event, and Heidegger believes there have been a number of quite distinct worlds that have emerged and disappeared in history. Heidegger's thought as a whole can profitably be seen as working out the implications of the original understanding of unconcealment. (shrink)

Beginning in the 20th century, scientific research came to be dominated by a growing class of credentialed, professional scientists who overwhelmingly displaced the learned amateurs of an earlier time. By the end of the century, however, the exclusive realm of professional scientists conducting research was joined, to a degree, by “citizen scientists.” The term originally encompassed non-professionals assisting professional scientists by contributing observations and measurements to ongoing research enterprises. These collaborations were especially common in the environmental sciences, where citizen scientists (...) participated in counting wildlife and measuring environmental conditions. Later, patient groups began to play a more active role in supporting clinical trials and collecting health records from affected individuals. (shrink)

In Republic 8–9, Socrates describes four main kinds of vicious people, all of whose souls are “ruled” by an element other than reason, and in some of whom reason is said to be “enslaved.” What role does reason play in such souls? In this paper, I argue, based on Republic 8–9 and related passages, and in contrast to some common alternative views, that for Plato the “enslavement” of reason consists in this: instead of determining for itself what is good, reason (...) is forced to desire and pursue as good a goal determined by the soul’s ruler. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack's theory defines temporal behavior from an awareness of time, but lacks one critical element: the impact of “psychological presence” in the “moment now.” Central to experience of temporal non-stationarity: “Nowness” links future with past in the context of time flow. Does this differ between species? Evidence suggests not: Different temporal experiences between species requires greater critical evaluation.

Laws in the 20 jurisdictions studied for this project display many similar approaches to protecting privacy in biobank research. Although few have enacted biobank-specific legislation, many countries address biobanking within other laws. All provide for some oversight mechanisms for biobank research, even though the nature of that oversight varies between jurisdictions. Most have some sort of controlled access system in place for research with biobank specimens. While broad consent models facilitate biobanking, countries without national or federated biobanks have been slow (...) to adopt broad consent. International guidelines have facilitated sharing and generally take a proportional risk approach, but many countries have provisions guiding international sharing and a few even limit international sharing. Although privacy laws may not prohibit international collaborations, the multi-prong approach to privacy unique to each jurisdiction can complicate international sharing. These symposium issues can serve as a resource for explaining the sometimes intricate privacy laws in each studied jurisdiction, outlining the key issues with regards to privacy and biobanking, and serving to describe a framework for the process of harmonization of privacy laws. (shrink)

The Blackwell Companion to Heidegger is a complete guide to the work and thought of Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Considers the most important elements of Heidegger’s intellectual biography, including his notorious involvement with National Socialism Provides a systematic and comprehensive exploration of Heidegger’s work One of the few books on Heidegger to cover his later work as well as Being and Time Includes key critical responses to Heidegger’s philosophy Contributors include many of (...) the leading interpreters of, and commentators on, the work of Heidegger. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, Congress considered enacting comprehensive privacy legislation, but it was unable to do so. In 1974, it passed the Privacy Act, applicable only to information in the possession of the federal government. In the intervening years, other information privacy laws enacted by Congress, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, have been weak and sector specific. With the explosion of information technology and the growing concerns about an absence of effective federal privacy laws, the legal (...) focus has shifted to the states. Signaling a new direction in state data privacy and consumer protection law, the California Consumer Privacy Act establishes important rights and protections for California residents with regard to the collection, use, disclosure, and sale of their personal information. The CCPA is certain to spur similar legislation and to affect national and international businesses that collect data from California's residents. Understanding the new law is important for all data‐driven industries, including health care. (shrink)

This paper is an indirect critique of the practice of American liberal education. I show that the liberal, integrative model that American colleges and universities have adopted, with one key exception, is essentially an approach to education proposed some 2400 years ago by Stoic philosophers. To this end, I focus on a critical sketch of the Stoic model of education—chiefly through the works of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius—that is distinguishable by these features: education as self‐knowing, the need of logic and (...) critical thinking for informed decision‐making, learning as preparation for life, and knowledge for integration in private, local, and global affairs. Such a critical sketch may not only help institutions instantiate their own similar aims more effectively, but also help them assess those aims with apposite normative force, which today they lack. (shrink)

The participation of physicians in the atrocities of the Holocaust exposed vulnerabilities in medicine’s moral commitment to patients’ best interests that every health professional should recognize. Teaching about this history is challenging, as it is extremely complex and there are no common standards for what basic historical facts students in health professions training programs should learn. Nor is there guidance on how these historical facts can or should be related to contemporary ethical issues facing health professionals. To address these problems, (...) we propose a set of core historical facts about health professional involvement in the Holocaust that every student in a health professional training program should learn. We then identify three ethical lessons from the Holocaust that are pertinent today as physicians struggle to maintain their moral compass and earn the trust of patients and the public: 1) The lesson of commitment to science; maintaining balance between reason and skepticism in the search for truth, The lesson of clinical detachment; maintaining balance between necessary professional distance with a commitment to humanism and intimacy with patients, and 3) The lesson of competing loyalties; maintaining balance in upholding medicine’s multiple responsibilities, including to individual patients and the larger community. Embedding these facts and lessons into the education of health professionals is challenging yet critically important. Today’s physicians struggle with some of the same ethical tensions as did German physicians in the Nazi era, albeit in a much-attenuated fashion. Awareness of these tensions and taking active measures to maintain them in balance are necessary components of humanistic health care, which should be an integral part of health professional training programs. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and many published histories of “Green Chemistry” describe its start as being a result of governmental and/or regulatory actions at the US Environmental Protection Agency during the early 1990’s. But there were many Real World industrial examples of environmentally friendly commercial processes in the oil and commodity chemicals industries for decades prior to the 1990s. Some early examples of commercial “Green Chemistry” are briefly described in this article. The Boots/Hoechst Celanese Ibuprofen process was one of the earliest multiple-award-winning (...) examples of industrial “Green Chemistry” in the fine chemical/pharmaceutical industry. The author, who conceived the BHC Ibuprofen synthetic strategy in 1984, reveals and documents that the BHC Ibuprofen process was not primarily a result of governmental or regulatory mandates, or environmentalist or political motivations. The BHC ibuprofen process, and probably many other early industrial “green” inventions, evolved from, and their development and commercialization motivated and guided by, a long prior industrial culture of both scientific and technical evolution. The invention and commercialization of these early industrial commercialized processes, and the BHC Ibuprofen process were also guided by both competitive and economic market needs, personal human motivations, and a low waste culture of “Quality” and “Continuous Improvement” that the commodity chemical industry internally promoted in the 1980’s. The author comments on some perceptions of the status of Green Chemistry now, and directions it should consider going in the future. The author recommends that young Green Chemists and/or Green Engineers reconsider “Quality” approaches in order to genuinely lead Society toward a Greener future. (shrink)

In 2018, the remarkable rescue of twelve young boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand captured worldwide attention. The rescue required the boys to be dived out of the cave system while fully anaesthetized which presented unique practical and ethical challenges for the rescue team. Major departures from normal anaesthetic practice were required. Taking anaesthetized children underwater was unprecedented, complex, and dangerous. To do this underground in a flooded cave meant the risks were extreme. Using (...) a principlist approach, this essay will outline the rescue plan highlighting the ethical dilemmas faced by the rescue team. Informed consent and full disclosure of information are justifiably waived in emergency disaster scenarios. Beneficence as a guiding principle becomes a major challenge when all rescue options appear destined to cause likely fatalities of healthy young boys. Importantly, virtues and virtue ethics also have a vital role to play when confronting and dealing with ethical challenges in disaster scenarios—this will be discussed with particular reference to the cave rescue. (shrink)

Can passing antidiscrimination laws ever be a bad idea? Yes, if broad policy reform is abandoned in favor of genetic‐specific legislation. But in spite of its serious flaws, both in concept and in practice, genetic‐specific legislation is sometimes worth passing anyway.

This paper paper will examine some very different positions that Leibniz held or explored on monism, force, and substance during his long philosophical life. For reasons to be explained, positions drawn from Leibniz’s youth as well as his maturity will be considered. It will prove useful to consider these Leibnizian positions on these issues in relation to some of the leading alternatives of his age, in particular, those of Descartes, Spinoza and Malebranche. A guiding idea of this paper is that (...) by meditating seriously on some key ideas explored by Leibniz on our topics, one can gain new insight into the philosophical options of his era. A few introductory remarks on Descartes, followed by an overview of the main divisions and aims of the present paper, will help set the stage for these Leibnizian meditations. (shrink)

Starting from Leibniz’s complaint that Newton’s views seem to make God the soul of the world, this paper examines Leibniz’s critical stance more generally towards God as the soul of the world and related theses. A preliminary task is determining what the related theses are. There are more of these than might have been thought. Once the relations are established, it becomes clear how pervasive the various guises of the issue of God as the soul of the world are in (...) Leibniz’s thought and how central they are in his debates with contemporaries about the truths of natural religion and even more strictly philosophical issues. Leibniz’s arguments against God as the soul of the world are reconstructed and evaluated, and the difficult question of the exact meaning, or meanings, that Leibniz ascribes to the thesis that God is the soul of the world is taken up. The clearest core of meaning discussed in this paper is most directly relevant to Leibniz’s criticisms of Spinoza and the Stoics, as well as of Descartes. Less clear, but obviously important, are meanings relevant to Leibniz’s debates with the occasionalists and Newtonians. (shrink)

Exploring mysteries that have evoked wonder and consternation for millennia, this handbook covers topics such as the nature of divinity and humanity, the legitimacy of religious experience, the possibility of miracles, and idea of life after death. As a reference volume and introductory text, this is an essential resource for students and scholars.

At least since the time of Hippocrates, the physician-patient relationship has been the paradigmatic ethical arrangement for the provision of medical care. Yet, a physician-patient relationship does not exist in every professional interaction involving physicians and individuals they examine or treat. There are several “third-party” relationships, mostly arising where the individual is not a patient and is merely being examined rather than treated, the individual does not select or pay the physician, and the physician's services are provided for the benefit (...) of another party. Physicians who treat NFL players have a physician-patient relationship, but physicians who merely examine players to determine their health status have a third-party relationship. As described by Glenn Cohen et al., the problem is that typical NFL team doctors perform both functions, which leads to entrenched conflicts of interest. Although there are often disputes about treatment, the main point of contention between players and team physicians is the evaluation of injuries and the reporting of players’ health status to coaches and other team personnel. Cohen et al. present several thoughtful recommendations that deserve serious consideration. Rather than focusing on their specific recommendations, however, I would like to explain the rationale for two essential reform principles: the need to sever the responsibilities of treatment and evaluation by team physicians and the need to limit the amount of player medical information disclosed to teams. (shrink)

In the post-genome world of biomedical research, an increasingly common research strategy is to focus on large repositories of biological specimens. There are now several well-known efforts to compile vast collections of biological materials, reanalyze extant samples, collect new ones, and link the samples to medical records. The significant issues of law, ethics, and policy raised by these research activities usually are heightened when commercial enterprises play a leading role in accumulating and distributing the samples. Emerging companies are not only (...) compiling repositories for their own use, but some companies are positioning themselves to act as intermediaries, developing vast biobanks for sale to a wide range of other researchers. (shrink)