Los estudios sobre el Hadiz desde un punto de vista literario son escasos y se ocupan en buscar las influencias judías y cristianas. El objetivo final de este trabajo seria, reconocer las diferentes Técnicas Narrativas utilizadas en los llamados hadices naturales.

Virtue ethics seems to be a promising moral theory for understanding and interpreting the development and behavior of artificial moral agents. Virtuous artificial agents would blur traditional distinctions between different sorts of moral machines and could make a claim to membership in the moral community. Accordingly, we investigate the “machine question” by studying whether virtue or vice can be attributed to artificial intelligence; that is, are people willing to judge machines as possessing moral character? An experiment describes situations where either (...) human or AI agents engage in virtuous or vicious behavior and experiment participants then judge their level of virtue or vice. The scenarios represent different virtue ethics domains of truth, justice, fear, wealth, and honor. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that moral attributions are weakened for AIs compared to humans, and the reasoning and explanations for the attributions are varied and more complex. On “relational” views of membership in the moral community, virtuous machines would indeed be included, even if they are indeed weakened. Hence, while our moral relationships with artificial agents may be of the same types, they may yet remain substantively different than our relationships to human beings. (shrink)

Incivility among physicians, between physicians and learners, and between physicians and nurses or other healthcare professionals has become commonplace. If allowed to continue unchecked by academic leaders and medical educators, incivility can cause personal psychological injury and seriously damage organisational culture. As such, incivility is a potent threat to professionalism. This paper uniquely draws on the history of professional ethics in medicine to provide a historically based, philosophical account of the professional virtue of civility. We use a two-step method of (...) ethical reasoning, namely ethical analysis informed by pertinent prior work, followed by identifying the implications of clearly articulated ethical concepts, to meet these goals. The professional virtue of civility and the related concept of professional etiquette was first described by the English physician-ethicist Thomas Percival (1740–1804). Based on a historically informed philosophical account, we propose that the professional virtue of civility has cognitive, affective, behavioural and social components based on a commitment to excellence in scientific and clinical reasoning. Its practice prevents a dysfunctional organisational culture of incivility and sustains a civility-based organisational culture of professionalism. Medical educators and academic leaders are in a pivotal and powerful position to role model, promote and inculcate the professional virtue of civility as essential to an organisational culture of professionalism. Academic leaders should hold medical educators accountable for discharge of this indispensable professional responsibility. (shrink)

The generative AI boom is unleashing its minions. Enterprise software vendors have rolled out legions of automated assistants that use large language model (LLM) technology, such as ChatGPT, to offer users helpful suggestions or to execute simple tasks. These so-called copilots and chatbots can increase productivity and automate tedious manual work. In this article, we explain how that leads to the risk that users' ethical competence may degrade over time — and what to do about it.

Gravitational decoherence (GD) refers to the effects of gravity in actuating the classical appearance of a quantum system. Because the underlying processes involve issues in general relativity (GR), quantum field theory (QFT), and quantum information, GD has fundamental theoretical significance. There is a great variety of GD models, many of them involving physics that diverge from GR and/or QFT. This overview has two specific goals along with one central theme:(i) present theories of GD based on GR and QFT and explore (...) their experimental predictions;(ii) place other theories of GD under the scrutiny of GR and QFT, and point out their theoretical differences. We also describe how GD experiments in space in the coming decades can provide evidence at two levels:(a) discriminate alternative quantum theories and non-GR theories;(b) discern whether gravity is a fundamental or an effective theory. (shrink)

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism’s basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state—a critique as cogent today as when it first appeared. George Schwab’s introduction to his translation of the 1932 German edition highlights Schmitt’s intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. In addition to analysis by Leo Strauss and a foreword by Tracy B. (...) Strong placing Schmitt’s work into contemporary context, this expanded edition also includes a translation of Schmitt’s 1929 lecture “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations,” which the author himself added to the 1932 edition of the book. An essential update on a modern classic, The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

When experimental participants are given the chance to reflect and revise their initial judgments in a dynamic conversational context, do their responses to philosophical scenarios differ from responses to those same scenarios presented in a traditional static survey? In three experiments comparing responses given in conversational contexts with responses to traditional static surveys, we find no consistent evidence that responses differ in these different formats. This aligns with recent findings that various manipulations of reflectiveness have no effect on participants’ judgments (...) about philosophical scenarios. Although we did not find a consistent quantitative effect of format (conversation vs. static survey), conversational experiments still provide qualitative insights into debates about how participants are understanding (or misunderstanding) the scenarios they read in experimental studies, whether they are replacing difficult questions with questions that are more easily answered, and how participants are imagining the scenarios they read in ways that differ from what is explicitly stated by experimenters. We argue that conversational experiments—"Socratic questionnaires"—help show what is going on “under the hood” of traditional survey designs in the experimental investigation of philosophical questions. (shrink)

Over a career spanning American history from the 1880s to the 1950s, John Dewey sought not only to forge a persuasive argument for his conviction that "democracy is freedom" but also to realize his democratic ideals through political activism. Widely considered modern America's most important philosopher, Dewey made his views known both through his writings and through such controversial episodes as his leadership of educational reform at the turn of the century; his support of American intervention in World War I (...) and his leading role in the Outlawry of War movement after the war; and his participation in both radical and anti-communist politics in the 1930s and 40s. Robert B. Westbrook reconstructs the evolution of Dewey's thought and practice in this masterful intellectual biography, combining readings of his major works with an engaging account of key chapters in his activism. Westbrook pays particular attention to the impact upon Dewey of conversations and debates with contemporaries from William James and Reinhold Niebuhr to Jane Addams and Leon Trotsky. Countering prevailing interpretations of Dewey's contribution to the ideology of American liberalism, he discovers a more unorthodox Dewey—a deviant within the liberal community who was steadily radicalized by his profound faith in participatory democracy. Anyone concerned with the nature of democracy and the future of liberalism in America—including educators, moral and social philosophers, social scientists, political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians—will find John Dewey and American Democracy indispensable reading. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most elusive thinkers in the philosophical tradition. His highly unusual style and insistence on what remains hidden or unsaid in his writing make pinning him to a particular position tricky. Nonetheless, certain readings of his work have become standard and influential. In this major new interpretation of Nietzsche’s work, Robert B. Pippin challenges various traditional views of Nietzsche, taking him at his word when he says that his writing can best be understood as a (...) kind of psychology. Pippin traces this idea of Nietzsche as a psychologist to his admiration for the French moralists: La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Stendhal, and especially Montaigne. In distinction from philosophers, Pippin shows, these writers avoided grand metaphysical theories in favor of reflections on life as lived and experienced. Aligning himself with this project, Nietzsche sought to make psychology “the queen of the sciences” and the “path to the fundamental problems.” Pippin contends that Nietzsche’s singular prose was an essential part of this goal, and so he organizes the book around four of Nietzsche’s most important images and metaphors: that truth could be a woman, that a science could be gay, that God could have died, and that an agent is as much one with his act as lightning is with its flash. Expanded from a series of lectures Pippin delivered at the Collège de France, _Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy_ offers a brilliant, novel, and accessible reading of this seminal thinker. (shrink)

Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of Platonism, as (...) a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning experiment, (...) we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

Linguistic category learning has been shown to be highly sensitive to linear order, and depending on the task, differentially sensitive to the information provided by preceding category markers (premarkers, e.g., gendered articles) or succeeding category markers (postmarkers, e.g., gendered suffixes). Given that numerous systems for marking grammatical categories exist in natural languages, it follows that a better understanding of these findings can shed light on the factors underlying this diversity. In two discriminative learning simulations and an artificial language learning experiment, (...) we identify two factors that modulate linear order effects in linguistic category learning: category structure and the level of abstraction in a category hierarchy. Regarding category structure, we find that postmarking brings an advantage for learning category diagnostic stimulus dimensions, an effect not present when categories are non‐confusable. Regarding levels of abstraction, we find that premarking of super‐ordinate categories (e.g., noun class) facilitates learning of subordinate categories (e.g., nouns). We present detailed simulations using a plausible candidate mechanism for the observed effects, along with a comprehensive analysis of linear order effects within an expectation‐based account of learning. Our findings indicate that linguistic category learning is differentially guided by pre‐ and postmarking, and that the influence of each is modulated by the specific characteristics of a given category system. (shrink)

In this latest book, renowned philosopher and scholar Robert B. Pippin offers the thought-provoking argument that the study of historical figures is not only an interpretation and explication of their views, but can be understood as a form of philosophy itself. In doing so, he reconceives philosophical scholarship as a kind of network of philosophical interanimations, one in which major positions in the history of philosophy, when they are themselves properly understood within their own historical context, form philosophy’s lingua franca. (...) Examining a number of philosophers to explore the nature of this interanimation, he presents an illuminating assortment of especially thoughtful examples of historical commentary that powerfully enact philosophy. After opening up his territory with an initial discussion of contemporary revisionist readings of Kant’s moral theory, Pippin sets his sights on his main objects of interest: Hegel and Nietzsche. Through them, however, he offers what few others could: an astonishing synthesis of an immense and diverse set of thinkers and traditions. Deploying an almost dialogical, conversational approach, he pursues patterns of thought that both shape and, importantly, connect the major traditions: neo-Aristotelian, analytic, continental, and postmodern, bringing the likes of Heidegger, Honneth, MacIntyre, McDowell, Brandom, Strauss, Williams, and Žižek—not to mention Hegel and Nietzsche— into the same philosophical conversation. By means of these case studies, Pippin mounts an impressive argument about a relatively under discussed issue in professional philosophy—the bearing of work in the history of philosophy on philosophy itself—and thereby he argues for the controversial thesis that no strict separation between the domains is defensible. (shrink)

Agriculture in Western Europe has become efficient and productive but at a cost. The quality of biodiversity, soil, air, and water has been compromised. In the search for ways to ensure food security and meet the challenges of climate change, new production systems have been proposed. One of these is the transition to circular agriculture: closing the cycles of nutrients and other resources to minimise losses and end the impact on climate change. This development aims to address existing problems in (...) food production but also raises questions about animal health and welfare. Although the role animals can play in this development is not ignored, the animal welfare dimension of circular agriculture seems to be overlooked. We argue that this is a problem both for the success of circular agriculture and for the animals involved. To substantiate this claim, we analyse the background to this lack of attention, which we find in (a) the way circular agriculture is conceptualised; (b) the institutional hurdles related to the legal, political and economic context; and (c) the concept of animal welfare, which requires further innovation. By analysing these aspects, we develop stepping stones for an animal-welfare inclusive concept of circular agriculture. These stepping stones include: recognising the animal as a participant with its own interests in the innovation towards circular agriculture; using a dynamic concept of animal welfare; a concept of circularity that provides space for social values, including animal welfare; and attention to institutional innovation by improving public engagement and building trust. (shrink)

The rise of global populism reveals a tension in Western thinking about democracy. Warnings about the "populist threat" to democracy and "authoritarian" populism are now commonplace. However, as Emily B. Finley argues in The Ideology of Democratism, dismissing "populist" as anti-democratic is highly problematic. In effect, such arguments essentially reject the actual popular will in favor of a purely theoretical and abstract "will of the people." She contends that the West has conceptualized democracy--not just its populist doppelgänger--as an ideal that (...) has all of the features of a thoroughgoing political ideology which she labels "democratism." As she shows, this understanding of democracy, which constitutes an entire view of life and politics, has been and remains a powerful influence in America and leading Western European nations. Through a careful analysis of several of history's most vocal champions of democracy, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, John Rawls, and both American neoconservatives and liberal internationalists, Finley identifies an interpretation of democracy that effectively transforms the meaning of "rule by the people" into nearly its opposite. Making use of democratic language and claiming to speak for the people, many politicians, philosophers, academics, and others advocate a more "complete" and "genuine" form of democracy that in practice has little regard for the actual popular will.A heterodox argument that challenges the prevailing consensus of what democracy is and what it is supposed to be, The Ideology of Democratism offers a timely and comprehensive assessment of the features and thrust of this powerful new view of democracy that has enchanted the West. -- Dust jacket. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Review Essay:Aquinas, Modern Theology, and the TrinityGuy Mansini O.S.B.As one would expect from his Incarnate Lord, Thomas Joseph White's Trinity is no exercise in historical theology, although of course it calls on history, but aims to give us St. Thomas's theology as an enduring and so contemporary theology that both respects the creedal commitments of the Catholic Church and offers a more satisfying understanding of the Trinity than anything (...) proposed by the great theologians, Catholic and Protestant, of the past hundred years.1 The Trinity, however, gives a more complete and satisfying view of its subject than does The Incarnate Lord.Can St. Thomas really be fruitfully located within the dialectic of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Trinitarian speculation? Yes, and it is one of White's principal contributions to show how St. Thomas's medieval contemporaries, the early Franciscans on the one hand and William of Ockham on the other, remotely but really adumbrate nineteenth- and twentieth-century theological positions, once due attention is paid to the key issues of the analogical naming of God and his knowability. The reader is thus assured that Aquinas's original project was composed with some awareness of temptations and alternatives repeated (though not exactly, of course) in modern thought. It should be added that St. Thomas is by no means treated as the only systematic theological authority for Trinitarian theology, but White recognizes his paradigmatic place in the Catholic theological tradition. [End Page 1415]The most important issue for assessing the enduring value of Thomas's Trinitarian theology, then, whether in the thirteenth century or twentieth century, turns out to be the applicability and centrality of the psychological analogy for an understanding of the immanent intelligibility of the Trinity, an analogy suggested by Scripture, and developed by the Cappadocians, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and other medieval writers, not to mention John Henry Newman and Matthias J. Scheeben.What is the status of this analogy? Olivier-Thomas Venard laconically describes it as "revealed"—too hot. Michael Maria Waldstein has recently argued vigorously and at length that it is not revealed at all—too cold. White does not discuss this in detail but is satisfied with saying that it is "derived" from Scripture—just right. However one thinks this question is to be resolved, White robustly defends the psychological analogy as a proper analogy and as the only systematic theological instrument ever offered by the theological tradition that succeeds in providing real understanding of the immanent life of the Trinity, one that preserves the transcendence of God and honors the dogmatic tradition of the Church bearing on the nature of God and the Trinity of persons—Nicaea, Lateran IV, and Vatican I, especially. This is how he does it in chapter 22.1. We know the mystery of interior Trinitarian life based on God's manifestation of it to us in the economy of salvation via the missions of Word and Spirit, which disclose to us distinct personal processions.2. Such processions are either immanent or transitive.3. But transitive processions terminate in some substance distinct from whence they emanate.4. God, however, is one in nature (essence, substance) both specifically and numerically.5. Therefore, the processions are immanent to the godhead.6. However, there are only two immanent immaterial activities known to us, that of knowing and that of loving.7. Therefore, we cannot have some understanding of the mystery of interior Trinitarian life except by analogy with these two [End Page 1416] activities. That is to say, we know the mystery of the Trinitarian life according to the "psychological model" or not at all.This argument can be re-phrased with more pointed reference to modern theologies of the Trinity.1. If we wish to understand the mystery of the immanent Trinitarian life of distinct persons, but not by way of immanent activities and processions, then we must appeal to transitive activity to account for the distinction of persons.2. Transitive divine activity can be conceived of (1) as creative, (2) as within creation relative to its history (the continental way), or (3) as taking place between three already constituted divine individuals, relating transitively to one... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy, Spirit, and RevitalizationWalter B. Gulick (bio)The assumptions of democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life are, first, that we don't already know how best to order our common life and, second, that we don't know what the abstract ideals of empathy, emancipation, and equity entail in the concrete.—Michael Hogue1In American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World, Michael S. Hogue grounds his proposal for a political theology in (...) a critique of American exceptionalism and its supportive "redeemer symbolic."2 In the Anthropocene era, Hogue states, American exceptionalism "legitimates the extraction of diverse forms of value and justifies the externalization of diverse costs" (29) with unconscionable costs to the natural environment and international justice. As indicated in the passage quoted above, Hogue's reaction to the rigid assumptions supportive of American exceptionalism is to offer a humble acknowledgement of political fallibility coupled with what he terms "a theopolitics of resilient democracy" (184; see also 3–6).My concern in this essay is largely practical. I will focus on discerning what intellectual, emotional, and communal resources might be drawn upon to further develop and actually effect the needed changes that Hogue so ably points out. Relatedly, I will inquire into who the most likely candidates are to devote energy to the reconstruction of social structures and practices so that they express values that Americans at their best uphold. Finally, I will reflect upon the role that spiritual ideals and communal practices might play in energizing effective democratic action. [End Page 5]I. Hogue's Critical and Constructive TasksHogue's overriding interest is to outline an epistemic/axiological/environmental/political stance that does not give rise to the various sorts of injustices and dysfunctions that mark the Anthropocene era, especially our allegiance to policies that eventuate in what he calls "climate wickedness." The alternative vision he embraces develops pragmatic naturalism as a method of inquiry and exposition. His reflections are especially indebted to the thought of Dewey, James, and Whitehead (78–82). During a time when e-words are normally associated with forms of electronic communication, Hogue offers instead two trios of e-words with another sort of significance—one that signifies a stance he wishes to overcome and one that communicates what he hopes to achieve. Our current era is unfortunately in thrall, he says, to extraction, externalization, and exception, whereas what we should strive for is a society marked by empathy, emancipation, and equitability. Well put. He presupposes that democratic governance, deeply embedded in American history, ought to serve as the vehicle for achieving what the positive set of e-words promotes. To this end, Hogue quotes appreciatively from Dewey's article, "Democracy is Radical": Democracy "is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural" (170). This understanding of democracy slumbers now; what might it take to reawaken it? And if reawakened, what changes might be made to establish the more nearly equitable political influence that is basic to the promise of democracy?Hogue, recognizing in good pragmatic fashion the importance of consequential change, states, "In contrast to foundationalist commitments to antecedents and precedents, pragmatic naturalism commits to a prospective concern with consequents" (80). Foundational commitments to antecedents may certainly impede needed change, but surely attention to the historical events and practices that gave rise to current problems is needed to avoid repeating previous errors. Hogue refers to Whitehead's vision of social symbolism, suggesting that "social change can be catalyzed by the improvised revision of existing symbolic repertoires or the innovative formation or subversive interjection of new symbols" (99). I'm not fully convinced by Whitehead's claim. I suspect that many of our social problems are rooted below the linguistic level in an array of affective issues that elude symbolic adjustment. New strategies are needed to counter the prevalence of fear and resentment in society as promoted for political and commercial reasons and tied to Hogue's strongly voiced recognition that we live in an uncertain world.Here is my understanding of how Hogue both frames our current social and cultural situation and what he says might begin to remediate these circumstances. [End Page... (shrink)

Positivism has had a tremendous impact on the development of the social sciences over the past two centuries. It has deeply influenced method and theory, and has seeped deeply into our broader understandings of the nature of the social sciences. Postmodernism has attempted to loosen the grip of positivism on our thinking, and while it has not been without its successes, postmodernism has worked more to deconstruct positivism than to construct something new in its place. Psychologists today perennially wrestle to (...) find and retain their intellectual balance within the methodological, theoretical, and epistemological struggles between positivism and postmodernism. In the process, pre-postmodern criticisms of positivism have been largely forgotten. Although they remain deeply buried at the core of psychology, these early alternatives to positivism are rarely given explicit hearing today. The current piece explores some of the early critiques of positivism, particularly of its scientism, as well as early suggestions to tip the scales in favor ofsapientia. This third option, largely overlooked within mainstream psychology, is of tremendous value today as it is both deconstructive and constructive relative to the shortcomings of positivism. It avoids the overly reductionistic “trivial order” of positivism, as well as the deeply unsatisfying and disorienting “barbaric vagueness” of postmodernism, while simultaneously embracing important core elements of both currents of thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Excited DeliriumWhat’s Psychiatry Got to do With It?Paul B. Lieberman, MDIf in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our intellect by madness.—WittgensteinDelirium is a medical syndrome defined as “a relatively acute decline in cognition that fluctuates over hours or days” whose primary manifestation is a deficit of attention. It is common, estimated to occur in 10% to more than 50% of hospitalized patients, (...) with higher prevalence rates among people in nursing homes and at the end of life. It is often fatal, with a mortality rate in the hospital estimated to be 25% to 33%. Caused by a wide variety of conditions and frequently difficult to diagnose, it lacks characteristic postmortem pathology (Josephson & Miller 2018)‘Excited delirium,’ as Byju and Friesen forcefully argue (Byju & Friesen, 2023), is, if nothing else, an excuse. The ‘diagnosis’ has not been empirically validated and remains controversial (American Psychiatric Association, 2020). And while delirium is usually treated by internists and emergency medicine physicians, psychiatrists should also be concerned about the misuse of a putative medical diagnosis and join actively in discussion about it. For one thing, patients mis-diagnosed with this condition, as Byju and Friesen’s examples suggest, may actually have another psychiatric condition and, so, be people for whose safety we should advocate. Moreover, the kinds of police interventions which Byju and Friesen document as involving excited delirium also befall patients with other psychiatric problems in whom the issue of delirium does not arise.There are at least two broad ways in which psychiatrists are qualified and obligated to engage with this issue. As physicians, we should join our medical colleagues in carefully but persistently telling the scientific, medical truth. As psychiatrists, we should bring psychiatric knowledge into the discussion, for example, by explaining what can happen when people who do not, apparently, have a diagnosable mental disorder interact under stress with other people who, apparently, do.Delirium is a clinical diagnosis, made when characteristic signs and symptoms are present which should not be made ‘by exclusion’ when, as may happen, other causes are not found. There is no evidence of delirium in any of the three clinical descriptions Byju and Friesen provide. Perhaps such evidence exists which is not in their brief reports, but these three people appear to have had, either, another psychiatric condition, such as psychosis or drug intoxication, or perhaps no [End Page 353] diagnosis at all. Psychiatrists are particularly wellpositioned to make this point since patients with mental health problems are often misdiagnosed when they seek medical attention and are told, and treated as if, “it’s all (“just”!) psychological.”Excited delirium, if it exists, is fatal in 10% of cases (Gonin, Beysard, Hersin, & Carron, 2018) and, although this is lower than the rate for delirium in general, it is still high. Medical personnel must be available to evaluate and ensure the safety of patients in custody.The potential conflict between protecting the patient and protecting the public should not be overstated. Although physical trauma and excessive administration of medications, including ketamine 500 mg IV (Orhurhu, Vashicht, Claus, & Cohen, 2023) can be lethal, mechanical restraint by itself is not (Chieze et al., 2019; Gleerup et al., 2019): something else is necessary, such as asphyxiation (Evans, Wood, & Lambert, 2003). Nor is restraint necessary in many cases in which ‘de-escalation’ techniques can be equally effective (Garriga et al., 2016; Fernández-Costa, 2020). Perhaps these points are best made by law enforcement leaders—and they have been—but psychiatrists can add that safe management of potential violence can be provided for agitated people with psychiatric conditions.Although it is not clear what kind of strength ‘superhuman’ strength might be (certainly not medical), relative imperviousness to pain is clinically described. Its locus classicus is Beecher’s observation, during World War II, that injured soldiers awaiting return home from the front, required lower than usual doses of analgesics (Beecher, 1946). And it’s a common experience, scientifically confirmed, that physical trauma may not become painful until sometime after the injury (Melzack, Wall, & Ty, 1982). But pain is a warning. Its absence is not a license, but a caution... (shrink)

Integrity, honesty, and truth seeking are important virtues that most people care about and want to see promoted in society. Yet surprisingly, there has been relatively little work among scholars today aimed at helping us better understand this cluster of virtues related to truth. This volume incorporates the insights and perspectives of experts working in a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, law, communication and rhetorical studies, theology, psychology, history, and education. For each virtue, there is a conceptual chapter, an application (...) chapter, and a developmental chapter. The resulting volume significantly deepens our knowledge about and appreciation for these central virtues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theories of Emotion: Expressing, Feeling, Acting by Pia CAMPEGGIANISabrina B. LittleCAMPEGGIANI, Pia. Theories of Emotion: Expressing, Feeling, Acting. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. xiv + 199 pp. Cloth, $80.89; paper, $21.60In Theories of Emotion, Pia Campeggiani provides a philosophical introduction to the emotions. The book is multidisciplinary and empirically informed. It is organized around three “groundbreaking intuitions” of emotion theory—(1) expression, (2) subjectivity, and (3) action. Each section (...) corresponds to a different thinker—Charles Darwin, William James, and John Dewey, respectively—and each section concludes with a discussion of relevant debates. This book is outstanding. It is clearly written, well organized, and impressive in its scope. In what follows, I outline key ideas and raise questions generated by each section, then conclude with general reflections on the text.Campeggiani begins with the “scandal” of emotion research: There is no agreement about what an emotion is. In part, this lack of consensus is due to the imprecise ways we employ concepts like feelings, emotions, affect, and passions in ordinary discourse. In part, it is due to empirical difficulties. For example, Campeggiani describes how implicit assumptions and a forced-choice format compromised an experiment about expression universality.Additionally, Campeggiani points out that the category “emotions” has an internal structure that lacks clear-cut boundaries. There are paradigmatic examples of emotions, such as fear and anger, but there are also ambiguous phenomena, such as respect and modesty, which we may or may not recognize as such. Throughout the text, Campeggiani introduces and evaluates numerous accounts of emotions, drawing our attention to the strengths, limitations, and empirical adequacy of each.Part 1 begins with Charles Darwin’s contributions to emotion theory—an emphasis on the biological origins of emotions and a focus on expression. This section examines emotions in connection to adaptive fitness, exploring phenomena such as blushing when we are ashamed and the biological bases of emotions. A highlight of this section is an exploration of the social or communicative character of the emotions, which Darwin described as “only a secondary effect” of expression. Campeggiani examines emotional contagion and imitation, as well as the [End Page 141] phenomenon of feeling more pain when we express pain on our faces. There is also a rich discussion about constructionism as an alternative to basic emotions theory.Part 2 opens with William James on subjective experience. Campeggiani describes the limitations of James’s position—of understanding emotions to be reducible to feelings. For starters, this position is not empirically well supported. Campeggiani cites Walter Cannon’s observation that “many of the autonomic changes that are symptomatic of a given emotion can also occur in its absence.” Additionally, James fails to “properly flesh out the link between emotions and evaluations.” Campeggiani then describes the cognitive turn in emotion theory that emerged in response to the lack of attention paid to evaluation. Cognitive accounts of emotion deemphasize the bodily dimensions of emotional experiences in favor of the intentional properties, or “aboutness,” of emotions. Emotions see things as things.From my vantage, this was the best part of the book. Campeggiani highlights Damasio’s point that decision-making depends on having a “correct affective perception of the values at stake in a given situation.” For instance, feeling outsized or misdirected fear may undermine our decision-making. Campeggiani also introduces debates about whether emotions are appraisals, and whether emotions entail judgments or make judgments more likely. In the introduction, she mentions that “decision-making processes are always and inevitably underpinned by emotions, for good and for ill.” We see what she means in this section. Emotions participate in reason, impede reason, and have cognitive content themselves.That emotions involve or participate in our judgments raises two kinds of concerns—epistemic and normative. The epistemic worry is that inaccurate appraisals may undermine our understanding of the world. This is especially worrisome for the class of emotions Campeggiani calls “recalcitrant,” or closed off to other mental states, and for the emotions she says are “heavily influenced by our needs and goals.” Emotions are imperfectly truth-tracking, as was made clear earlier, in part 1, regarding their adaptive nature. The normative worry is that certain emotional... (shrink)

Functional localization is a central aim of cognitive neuroscience. But the nature and extent of functional localization in the human brain have been subjects of fierce theoretical debate since the 19th Century. In this essay, I first examine how concepts of functional localization have changed over time. I then analyze contemporary challenges to functional localization drawing from research on neural reuse, neural degeneracy, and the context-dependence of neural functions. I explore the consequences of these challenges for topics in philosophy of (...) science and philosophy of mind including localizationist versus anti-localizationist approaches to cognitive neuroscience, multiple realizability, reverse inference in functional neuroimaging, and the modularity of mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Excited DeliriumWhat’s Psychiatry Got to do With It?Paul B. Lieberman, MDIf in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our intellect by madness.—WittgensteinDelirium is a medical syndrome defined as “a relatively acute decline in cognition that fluctuates over hours or days” whose primary manifestation is a deficit of attention. It is common, estimated to occur in 10% to more than 50% of hospitalized patients, (...) with higher prevalence rates among people in nursing homes and at the end of life. It is often fatal, with a mortality rate in the hospital estimated to be 25% to 33%. Caused by a wide variety of conditions and frequently difficult to diagnose, it lacks characteristic postmortem pathology (Josephson & Miller 2018)‘Excited delirium,’ as Byju and Friesen forcefully argue (Byju & Friesen, 2023), is, if nothing else, an excuse. The ‘diagnosis’ has not been empirically validated and remains controversial (American Psychiatric Association, 2020). And while delirium is usually treated by internists and emergency medicine physicians, psychiatrists should also be concerned about the misuse of a putative medical diagnosis and join actively in discussion about it. For one thing, patients mis-diagnosed with this condition, as Byju and Friesen’s examples suggest, may actually have another psychiatric condition and, so, be people for whose safety we should advocate. Moreover, the kinds of police interventions which Byju and Friesen document as involving excited delirium also befall patients with other psychiatric problems in whom the issue of delirium does not arise.There are at least two broad ways in which psychiatrists are qualified and obligated to engage with this issue. As physicians, we should join our medical colleagues in carefully but persistently telling the scientific, medical truth. As psychiatrists, we should bring psychiatric knowledge into the discussion, for example, by explaining what can happen when people who do not, apparently, have a diagnosable mental disorder interact under stress with other people who, apparently, do.Delirium is a clinical diagnosis, made when characteristic signs and symptoms are present which should not be made ‘by exclusion’ when, as may happen, other causes are not found. There is no evidence of delirium in any of the three clinical descriptions Byju and Friesen provide. Perhaps such evidence exists which is not in their brief reports, but these three people appear to have had, either, another psychiatric condition, such as psychosis or drug intoxication, or perhaps no [End Page 353] diagnosis at all. Psychiatrists are particularly wellpositioned to make this point since patients with mental health problems are often misdiagnosed when they seek medical attention and are told, and treated as if, “it’s all (“just”!) psychological.”Excited delirium, if it exists, is fatal in 10% of cases (Gonin, Beysard, Hersin, & Carron, 2018) and, although this is lower than the rate for delirium in general, it is still high. Medical personnel must be available to evaluate and ensure the safety of patients in custody.The potential conflict between protecting the patient and protecting the public should not be overstated. Although physical trauma and excessive administration of medications, including ketamine 500 mg IV (Orhurhu, Vashicht, Claus, & Cohen, 2023) can be lethal, mechanical restraint by itself is not (Chieze et al., 2019; Gleerup et al., 2019): something else is necessary, such as asphyxiation (Evans, Wood, & Lambert, 2003). Nor is restraint necessary in many cases in which ‘de-escalation’ techniques can be equally effective (Garriga et al., 2016; Fernández-Costa, 2020). Perhaps these points are best made by law enforcement leaders—and they have been—but psychiatrists can add that safe management of potential violence can be provided for agitated people with psychiatric conditions.Although it is not clear what kind of strength ‘superhuman’ strength might be (certainly not medical), relative imperviousness to pain is clinically described. Its locus classicus is Beecher’s observation, during World War II, that injured soldiers awaiting return home from the front, required lower than usual doses of analgesics (Beecher, 1946). And it’s a common experience, scientifically confirmed, that physical trauma may not become painful until sometime after the injury (Melzack, Wall, & Ty, 1982). But pain is a warning. Its absence is not a license, but a caution... (shrink)

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was a giant among men. He made major contributions to genetics, population biology, and evolutionary theory. He was at once comfortable in mathematics, chemistry, microbiology and animal physiology. But it was his belief in education that led to his preparing his popular essays for publication. In his own words: "Many scientific workers believe that they should confine their publications to learned journals. I think that the public has a right to know what is going on inside (...) the laboratories, for some of which it pays." So begins Haldane's collection of essays, perhaps the most public intellectual communicating science before the writings of Stephen Jay Gould. The first part of the volume emphasizes the important developments in biology and natural science in the first quarter of the century. As such, it provides a benchmark for studies of the next three quarters of the century. In an unusual introduction, Price takes the readers through their paces, discussing the situation then and now in vitamins, oxygen want, disease controls, and the rewards of science as such. This is followed by Haldane's views on society, art, religion and economy as seen through the eyes of a politically alert major scientist. The editor provides readers unfamiliar with Haldane with a carefully rendered chronology of a life that began in 1892 and that spanned much of the present century. Despite ideas on race, class and politics that have seen better times, Haldane was truly exceptional in translating the science of his time into ideas that "everyman" could readily grasp. His predictions on what science would achieve were on target far more often than not. But even his failed predictions are perhaps the most interesting of all. They throw into sharp relief the truly novel and revolutionary developments in science over the past 75 years. J.B.S. Haldane held many positions and received many honors during his lifetime. But for most of the period covered in this volume, he was the William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. He simultaneously served as Fellow of New College, in Oxford University's Horticultural Institute. Carl A. Price served until 1999 as professor IIof plant molecular biology in the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He also served as the editor of Plant Molecular Biology Reporter from 1983 until 1997. This is the first volume in a new series on the history and theory of science. (shrink)

New foreword written by HeritageMom, Amber O'Neal Johnston. "During a time when the United States needed to be reminded of the contributions Black people have made to its democracy, freedom, music, literature, and more, W.E.B. Du Bois took on the task of enumerating the gifts that we've provided to our country. "When I began reading The Gift of Black Folk...the story that unfolded was one that I had never anticipated. We the People of the United States, all of us, have (...) left our indelible mark on America the Beautiful." -Amber O'Neal Johnston In 1924, William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868-1963) penned The Gift of Black Folk in response to systemic racism in the United States, showing that "...the American spirit is a new and interesting result of diverse threads of thought and feeling coming not only from America but from Europe and Asia and indeed from Africa." Du Bois was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and later became a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University. In 1909 he co-founded the NAACP. Du Bois was a lifelong leader and proponent of civil rights. Amber O'Neal Johnston is a writer, speaker, and home educator who blends life-giving books with a culturally-rich environment for her four children and others. She's the author of A Place to Belong, a guide for families of all backgrounds to celebrate cultural heritage and embrace inclusivity in the home and beyond, and she's known for sharing literary "mirrors and windows" on HeritageMom.com. (shrink)

This paper reports our analysis of the ELSI Virtual Forum: 30 Years of the Genome: Integrating and Applying ELSI Research, an online meeting of scholars focused on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics.

This paper presents core features of the virtue ethics of American philosopher Ella Lyman Cabot. It offers an articulation of her position in Everyday Ethics (1906), and argues that Cabot's account has the resources to respond to a critique leveled against her mentor, Josiah Royce—namely, that a virtue ethics organized around loyalty is too easily corrupted by loyalty to bad causes. In addition to its importance to a full picture of the pragmatist tradition in moral philosophy, engagement with Cabot's work (...) is critical to an accurate grasp of the virtue ethics revival of the 20th century. (shrink)

Essays on the History and Philosophy of Science by David B. Levy.

Wael Hallaq explores the history, development, and contemporary trends in Muslim political thought using the work of Morocco-based philosopher Taha Abdurrahman. A sweeping intellectual history and philosophical examination, this book examines the trajectory of how we understand the central questions plaguing modernity in both the West and Muslim lands.

In our ‘The Professional Virtue of Civility and the Responsibilities of Medical Educators and Academic Leaders’,1 we provided an historically based conceptual account of the professional virtue of civility and the role of leaders of academic health centres in creating and sustaining an organisational culture of professionalism that promotes civility among healthcare professionals and between medical educators and learners. We emphasised that any adequate understanding of the virtues, including professional virtues, has cognitive, affective, behavioural and social components. Some of the (...) commentators expand on these components in important ways. Xuhao et al emphasises the importance of role models, especially in the hierarchical context of medical education.2 The hierarchy of faculty in the senior position and junior doctors and other learners below them has characterised medical education for centuries. Xuhao et al rightly call for academic leaders to shape this hierarchy in a morally responsible way, by becoming ‘exemplary role models’.2 Berry, a clinician manager, in critiquing our account, calls for an increased appreciation for the psychological and environmental factors that might explain why uncivil behaviour occurs.3 …. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard is well known for his claim that human life is marked by three existential spheres — the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. In Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence, Christopher B. Barnett argues that Kierkegaard's theory provides a key interpretative lens through which to evaluate the songwriting of Bob Dylan.

Maḥmūd, Zakī Najīb, 1905-; philosophers; Egypt; biography; interview.

Researchers from diverse disciplines, including organismal and cellular physiology, sports science, human nutrition, evolution and ecology, have sought to understand the causes and consequences of the surprising variation in metabolic rate found among and within individual animals of the same species. Research in this area has been hampered by differences in approach, terminology and methodology, and the context in which measurements are made. Recent advances provide important opportunities to identify and address the key questions in the field. By bringing together (...) researchers from different areas of biology and biomedicine, we describe and evaluate these developments and the insights they could yield, highlighting the need for more standardisation across disciplines. We conclude with a list of important questions that can now be addressed by developing a common conceptual and methodological toolkit for studies on metabolic variation in animals. (shrink)

Chronic pain is one of the most disabling medical conditions globally, yet, to date, we lack a satisfying theoretical framework for research and clinical practice. Over the prior decades, several frameworks have been presented with biopsychosocial models as the most promising. However, in translation to clinical practice, these models are often applied in an overly reductionist manner, leaving much to be desired. In particular, they often fail to characterize the complexities and dynamics of the lived experience of chronic pain. Recently, (...) an enactive, affordance-based approach has been proposed, opening up new ways to view chronic pain. This model characterizes how the persistence of pain alters a person’s field of affordances: the unfolding set of action possibilities that a person perceives as available to them. The affordance-based model provides a promising perspective on chronic pain as it allows for a systematic investigation of the interactive relation between patients and their environment, including characteristic alterations in the experience of their bodies and the space they inhabit. To help bridge the gap from philosophy to clinical practice, we unpack in this paper the core concepts of an affordance-based approach to chronic pain and their clinical implications, highlighting aspects that have so far received insufficient attention. We do so with an analogy to playing video games, as we consider such comparative illustration a useful tool to convey the complex concepts in an affordance-based model and further explore central aspects of the lived experience of chronic pain. (shrink)

The digital revolution has widened the array of curriculum materials available to history teachers. Given the variable quality of these new materials and the deeply contextual nature of teaching, educators need better tools for selecting among the vast options available. This study aimed to validate a device designed for that purpose, called the Curriculum Materials Evaluation Tool (CMET). Using a questionnaire and think-aloud interview, the study examined how four social studies teachers evaluated a novel material set for potential classroom use, (...) and how the CMET mediated their analysis. Findings showed that the teachers preferred when materials are readily accessible and adaptable for their specific teaching context, in contrast to “one-size-fits-all” resources that dominate the Web. The CMET appeared to foster a deeper and broader analysis of the given material set, especially regarding its political and cultural orientation. The study suggests that teachers’ role in vetting and adapting digital materials be recognized and embraced. The CMET can contribute to that end through its use in district adoption committees, teacher professional development, and collaborative curriculum research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minding Psychiatric PracticePaul B. Lieberman, MD (bio)In recent discussions of what makes or should make something 'a psychiatric disorder' (if anything does; Lange, 2007), attention and contention have mostly involved problems distinguishing disorder from normal life, expectable suffering, neurological disease, criminality, prejudice, error, religious experience and effects of injustice, but the question of what makes or should make something psychiatric is also important and difficult to answer. It's important (...) because general conceptions of what kinds of things we treat (e.g., disorders of the heart, brain, or mind) guide practice by specifying what constitutes, nurtures or poisons them, ways they may break apart or be repaired and processes that produce change, as well as by helping to draw appropriate boundaries between psychiatry and other fields. It's difficult because psychiatry comprises many kinds of objects, theories and forms of practice (primarily biomedical, psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral), and we don't know which, if any, are 'natural' or valid. It's also not established whether or why all or any should be called, 'psychiatric,' what explains their being so-called (if it is correct to do so), or which may be fundamental or constitutive and which derivative and potentially eliminable.One appealing answer (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] an swer; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) to the question of what makes something psychiatric is that it is mental in some essential way. But few psychiatrists could explain what that might mean, nor would many be able to say what a mental disorder is or defend the idea that the conditions they work with are (always?) such things (though many probably wouldn't deny it either; they wouldn't know what to say and most wouldn't think it mattered). But if the idea that 'psychiatric disorders are essentially mental' seems obvious yet unclear to psychiatrists, what's the alternative? And if no alternative leaps to mind, then are psychiatrists practicing without knowing what they're treating?In "What makes a disorder 'mental'? A practical treatment of psychiatric disorder," Joseph Gough (2023) addresses these problems with two bold proposals: first, that we abandon altogether using 'mental' (assuming we understand its meaning) in the definition of 'psychiatric disorder,' and, second, that we, instead, define psychiatric disorders as those conditions best treated by psychiatrists (including psychologists, social workers, nurses and other practitioners).To a psychiatrist, these proposals seem, both, a welcome validation of our work ("At last, someone appreciates us!"), but also a troubling destabilization of how we understand that work ("That can't be right: it's backwards!") In Gough's [End Page 37] wide-ranging and carefully reasoned defense of his two proposals, he offers many novel and provocative insights relevant to problems defining psychiatric disorders. I will consider only a few of the issues he raises, which I think are especially worth emphasis and further thought.Gough initially rejects mentality in the definition of psychiatric disorder by reminding us that it is neither sufficient nor necessary for inclusion in the DSM. Vision is mental but blindness is not in the manual; caffeinism and erectile dysfunction are not mental but are included. Later, he offers two additional reasons for abandoning mentality: it promotes stigma and encourages dualism. I think all these arguments are correct. (Although blindness is not the best example because DSM defines mental disorders as disturbances of "thought, feeling and behavior" and blindness is none of these. But many other examples (e.g., encephalopathies) could make the point.)But Gough passes over this issue too quickly: we should pause and consider more carefully possible reasons to keep or even privilege the mental in psychiatry as well as the losses we might suffer if we gave it up. The examples and arguments he offers for abandoning the mental could be contested if one were motivated to do so. For example, one could argue, as Gough does elsewhere, that the DSM is just wrong sometimes and should be revised. Perhaps, as Gough briefly considers, there is a subset of 'mental' disorders that are properly psychiatric (where, e.g., certain favored features such as meaning, agency, narrative, or connection of 'self and world' are preserved, and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Peirce on Realism and Idealism by Robert LaneAaron B. WilsonPeirce on Realism and Idealism Robert Lane. Cambridge UP, 2018.Robert Lane's Peirce on Realism and Idealism is the ultimate secondary source for those who wish to engage the forms of realism and idealism that Peirce develops over the course of his writings. Lane could not have given his monograph a more concise and descriptive title. He never strays from (...) the topics of realism and idealism, and it is remarkably complete. It includes extensive discussion on Peirce's basic realism (Lane's term) as well as his extreme scholastic realism (Peirce's term), his basic idealism (Lane's term), and his objective idealism (Peirce's term). It might not be the best resource for those interested in the historical influences on Peirce's forms of realism and idealism. For instance, if one is interested mainly in Peirce's extreme scholastic realism and its roots in scholastic philosophy, Mayorga (2007)1 might still be a more useful resource. Also, Lane leaves much to be said about the epistemological underpinnings of Peirce's forms of realism and idealism. Peirce's theory of perception and his critical common-sensism do not get much attention. Also, there is much in Peirce's later semeiotic writings that could have been brought to bear on the issues.However, I do not see any of these omissions as failures of Lane's work. As I read it, the book's central aims are to determine the following: (1) what metaphysical views did Peirce hold, (2) when did he hold them, (3) are they consistent with one another, and (4) what is the textual evidence that he held them as such. With respect to these aims, Peirce on Realism and Idealism exhibits the gold standard of Peirce scholarship: it is remarkably sensitive to dates, different writings, and contexts of writings, and the reader gets a strong impression that Lane has not left any stone unturned—that he had at least skimmed every word in every lecture, published writing, letter, and unpublished manuscript that Peirce produced.Although the book contains some interpretations about which I have some reservations, which I describe further on, I agree with most of its central claims. This includes the claim that, despite various developments, Peirce had always subscribed to "basic realism": the thesis that there are things independent of what anyone thinks about them. A whole chapter is dedicated to showing that Peirce's 1868–1869 "anti-Cartesian" papers are consistent with basic realism, and I found that chapter very helpful. Another thesis that Lane defends, and that I strongly agree with, is that Peirce held a representationalist view of truth. Truth as "correspondence" with reality is one of two [End Page 107] key aspects of Peirce's account of truth (the other being, as Lane calls it, an "investigative aspect"). After works by Christopher Hookway, Cheryl Misak, and others that attempt to de-emphasize or obscure Peirce's representationalism, perhaps to make him more appealing to contemporary analytic "neopragmatists," it is absolutely refreshing to read a book that embraces Peirce's representationalism without apology.However, in the remainder of this review, I will focus on parts that I found troubling. Some of this trouble is probably due more to Peirce himself than to Lane's interpretation of Peirce. But some of it directly concerns Lane's interpretation. In particular, the parts of chapter 6 concerning Peirce's modal realism, while stimulating and enlightening, are also problematic. Further, I do not think that Lane's account of Peirce's idealism appropriately recognizes its similarity to Hegelian or Absolute idealism.To begin with Peirce's modal realism, Lane's discussion of it sets out by addressing the fact that, as Peirce recognizes, the conditionals comprising "pragmatic clarifications," or what result from applying the "pragmatic maxim" to a concept, must be in the hypothetical or subjunctive mood. This is in order to make sense of the truth of even indicative non-conditional propositions such as, to use Peirce's and Lane's example, "the diamond is hard." If the conditionals into which a concept is pragmatically clarified are in the indicative mood... (shrink)