While much excitement has been generated surrounding evidence-based medicine, internal documents from the pharmaceutical industry suggest that the publicly available evidence base may not accurately represent the underlying data regarding its products. The industry and its associated medical communication firms state that publications in the medical literature primarily serve marketing interests. Suppression and spinning of negative data and ghostwriting have emerged as tools to help manage medical journal publications to best suit product sales, while disease mongering and market segmentation of (...) physicians are also used to efficiently maximize profits. We propose that while evidence-based medicine is a noble ideal, marketing-based medicine is the current reality. (shrink)

Our topic is the theory of topics. My goal is to clarify and evaluate three competing traditions: what I call the way-based approach, the atom-based approach, and the subject-predicate approach. I develop criteria for adequacy using robust linguistic intuitions that feature prominently in the literature. Then I evaluate the extent to which various existing theories satisfy these constraints. I conclude that recent theories due to Parry, Perry, Lewis, and Yablo do not meet the constraints in total. I then introduce (...) the issue-based theory—a novel and natural entry in the atom-based tradition that meets our constraints. In a coda, I categorize a recent theory from Fine as atom-based, and contrast it to the issue-based theory, concluding that they are evenly matched, relative to our main criteria of adequacy. I offer tentative reasons to nevertheless favour the issue-based theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Plato’s Euthyphro phenomenologically, reading the dialogue as manifesting the posture and activity of gratitude as an essential moment of piety. This phenomenon of gratitude appears directly through Euthyphro’s own remarks and indirectly through Socrates’s interaction with Euthyphro. Other recent commentators, notably Mark McPherran, David Parry, James Brouwer, and William Mann, have noted the importance of the Euthyphro as a dialogue that offers a great deal to the discussion of piety through the shape of the (...) relationship between Socrates and Euthyphro. In building my argument, I follow Parry’s examination of the notion of therapeia or care in order to mark out my own emphasis on charis or gratitude. And I note that, when gratitude is taken as an important phenomenon in the dialogue, what also appears to the reader is the pious possibility of authentic gift-giving and mutual recognition, something Brouwer, Mann, and McPherran have also noted indirectly. Finally, in addition to its synthesis of previous scholarship around a new theme, this paper applies to the dialogue the arguments of Melanie Klein’s “Envy and Gratitude,” Martin Heidegger’s lectures entitled What Is Called Thinking, and Jacques Derrida’s Given Time. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Plato’s Euthyphro phenomenologically, reading the dialogue as manifesting the posture and activity of gratitude as an essential moment of piety. This phenomenon of gratitude appears directly through Euthyphro’s own remarks and indirectly through Socrates’s interaction with Euthyphro. Other recent commentators, notably Mark McPherran, David Parry, James Brouwer, and William Mann, have noted the importance of the Euthyphro as a dialogue that offers a great deal to the discussion of piety through the shape of the (...) relationship between Socrates and Euthyphro. In building my argument, I follow Parry’s examination of the notion of therapeia or care in order to mark out my own emphasis on charis or gratitude. And I note that, when gratitude is taken as an important phenomenon in the dialogue, what also appears to the reader is the pious possibility of authentic gift-giving and mutual recognition, something Brouwer, Mann, and McPherran have also noted indirectly. Finally, in addition to its synthesis of previous scholarship around a new theme, this paper applies to the dialogue the arguments of Melanie Klein’s “Envy and Gratitude,” Martin Heidegger’s lectures entitled What Is Called Thinking, and Jacques Derrida’s Given Time. (shrink)

It is argued here that Prior's non-standard modal system Q, and the Parry-Dunn system of analytic implication, though entirely independent and independently motivated systems, together provide a rationale for explicating the concept of validity in a non-standard way; their implications are explored for the theory of natural deduction as well as for modal logic and the concept of entailment. I give an account of formal logic from this non-standard viewpoint, together with an informal presentation of the system that unites (...) the insights of Prior (drawing on Russell) and, Parry (drawing on Kant), and the motivations for both in the concept of the contingent existence - as opposed to the contingent truth or falsehood - of a proposition. (shrink)

The perspectives of the dominant Western ethical theories, have dominated the concepts of autonomy and informed consent for many years. Recently this dominant understanding has been challenged by ethics of care which, although, also emanates from the West presents a more nuanced concept: relational autonomy, which is more faithful to our human experience. By paying particular attention to relational autonomy, particularity and Process approach to ethical deliberations in ethics of care, this paper seeks to construct a concept of informed consent (...) from the perspective of ethics of care which is here called relational autonomy-in-informed consent. Thus, providing a broader theoretical basis for informed consent beyond the usual theoretical perspectives that are particularly Western. Care ethics provides such a broader basis because it appeals to a global perspective that encompasses lessons from other cultures, and this will help to enrich the current ideas of bioethics principles of autonomy and informed consent. This objective will be achieved by exploring the ethics of care emphasis on relationships based on a universal experience of caring; and by contrasting its concept of autonomy as relational with the understanding of autonomy in the approaches of the dominant moral theories that reflect rational, individualistic, and rights-oriented autonomy of the American liberalism. (shrink)

Economics is privileged in contemporary government policy such that all human transactions are seen as economic forms of exchange. Education has been discursively restructured according to the logic of the market, with education policy being increasingly colonised by economic policy imperatives. This paper explores some of the consequences of this reframing which draws upon metaphors from industrial and business domains. This paper examines a significant dimension of teaching that currently has marginal presence in official discourse: social contingency. We argue that (...) social contingency is characterised by a variety of distinctive features that include unpredictability, relationality and ethical demands. The significance of social contingency is highlighted by a comparison with industrial production, which is organisationally contingent, and craft production, which is characterised as materially contingent. We argue that the different nature of contingency in these domains makes them inappropriate as metaphors for teaching. We explore the nature of social contingency and some of the practical and ethical consequences of the failure to articulate this in official discourse. Its absence in such discourse is illustrated by consideration of competence statements in the Initial Teacher Education context. We argue that the neglect of social contingency is founded on assumptions of teacher sovereignty that are both philosophically and ethically unsustainable. (shrink)

Building on the long-standing tradition of challenging oppression and questioning whose interests are being served in the field of language education, we report on a study that involved a group of U.S.-based graduate students who collaborated with a ninth-grade English teacher in Nepal. The study comes out of a larger project that sought to internationalize the curriculum of a graduate educational linguistics course at a U.S. university. At the heart of this internationalizing curriculum endeavour was a commitment to expose graduate (...) students in the U.S. to the issues of language teaching outside of the U.S. This was done through co-designing of a unit of lessons, with six graduate students meeting virtually with their teacher partner, Ditya, in Nepal over the course of a semester. The graduate students and Ditya constitute our research participants. The graduate student participants learned about the need to develop pedagogical materials that were relevant to the local context in Nepali classroom, and not attempt to transplant a Western-centric curriculum onto the Nepali classroom. In keeping with recent calls to decolonize higher education, we illustrate how critical theory in general and decolonizing pedagogy in particular can be infused into a U.S. graduate curriculum by drawing on the rich, indigenous knowledge and resources of a teacher collaborator from the Global South. We do this by reporting how this critical, decolonizing goal was realized through collaborative professionalism, which is characterized by the sharing of knowledge, skills, and experience to improve student achievement, reflection, dialogue and collective responsibility. (shrink)

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing foregrounds the East Asian cultural beliefs and practices that shape the environmental consciousness of the twenty-first century. In highlighting such influences, this anthology also foregrounds the closely related new and exciting directions in ecocriticism.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories (...) and On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Over the course of the Progressive Era, revised scientific accounts of the connections between dust, germs, and disease recast debates over public health. The American School of Home Economics and other institutions affiliated with the emerging subfield of household bacteriology regarded detecting and eliminating pathogens as necessary means to achieve safer homes and communities. Although several historians have attributed the rise of early twentieth-century technocracy and the decline of grassroots health activism to germ theory, household bacteriology complicates this standard narrative. (...) Educators like Sophronia Maria Elliott (1854–1942) rejected the command-and-control tactics of the “new” public health and instead instructed women how to culture microorganisms and to measure the risks of infection within their surrounding environments using kitchen experiments. Household bacteriologists aspired to train “sanitary citizens” with the right and the duty to test for germs with everyday equipment, to prevent disease with effective housekeeping, and to advocate for policies and infrastructure to keep society well. (shrink)

Starmaking brings together a cluster of work published over the past 35 years by Nelson Goodman and two Harvard colleagues, Hilary Putnam and Israel Scheffler, on the conceptual connections between monism and pluralism, absolutism and relativism, and idealism and different notions of realism -- issues that are central to metaphysics and epistemology. The title alludes to Goodman's famous defense of the claim that because all true representations of stars and other objects are human creations, it follows that in an important (...) sense the stars themselves are made by us. More generally, the argument moves from the fact that our right representations are constructed by us to the claim that the world itself is similarly constructed. Starmaking addresses the question of whether this seeming paradox can be turned into a serious philosophical view. Goodman and Putnam are sympathetic; Scheffler is the critic. Although many others continue to write about pluralism, relativism, and constructionalism, Starmaking brings together the protagonists in the debate since its beginnings and follows closely its still developing form and substance, focusing sharply on Goodman's claim that "we make versions, and right versions make worlds.". (shrink)

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)

This paper consists of two parts. In the first, we discuss the neuropsychological correlates of belief in a 'paranormal' or magical causation of coincidences. In particular, we review experimental evidence demonstrating that believers in ESP and kindred forms of paranormal phenomena differ from disbelievers with respect to indices of sequential response production and semantic-associative processing. Not only do believers judge artificial coincidences as more 'meaningful' than disbelievers, they also more strongly suppress coincidental productions (i.e. repetitions) in their generation of random (...) sequences. These findings illuminate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of paranormal beliefs for which the right cerebral hemisphere is hypothesized to play a central role. These same right hemispheric semantic-associative processing characteristics are centrally implicated in the creative thought process as well as the genesis of delusional (pathological) beliefs (e.g. ideas of reference). (shrink)

Title from title page of source document.

We have shown that FEF lesion-induced extinction could be compensated for by changing the relative temporal onsets of two targets presented on either side of the midline. Monkeys were trained to make saccades to either of two identical visual stimuli presented with various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA). In intact animals the targets were chosen with equal probability when they appeared simultaneously. After unilateral FEF lesions an SOA of 67–116 msec had to be introduced, with the contralesional target appearing first, to (...) obtain equal probability choice. With a smaller target separation, averaging saccades occurred with highest frequency at similar SOAs. Our findings suggest that neglect may be attributable to more time being required in the damaged hemisphere for converting sensory information into motor responses. (shrink)

Drawing upon core phenomenological contributions of the last decades, the present paper provides an integrated description of the development of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. Specifically, these contributions are the transitional sequences of development of psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia as envisioned by Klosterkötter and rooted in the basic symptoms approach, Conrad’s Gestalt-analysis of developing psychosis, and Sass and Parnas’ self-disturbance approach. Klosterkötter’s contribution provides a general descriptive psychopathological approach to the transitional sequence of the development of auditory hallucinations. The key concepts (...) in Conrad’s proposal are discussed, as their role is central as driving forces of the process from non-psychotic symptoms to overt hallucinations. Finally, Parnas and Sass link psychiatry to philosophy and psychology, and provide an in-depth and thorough description of these phenomena in their work on schizophrenia as a disorder of consciousness and self-experience with hyper-reflexivity and diminished self-affection as key aspects. (shrink)

One of the first envatted brains, the most cyborgian element of J. D. Bernal’s 1929 futuristic manifesto, The world, the flesh and the the devil, proposed a technological solution to the dreary certainty of mortality. In Bernal’s scenario the brain is maintained in an ‘out of body’ but ‘like-body’ environment—in a bath of cerebral–spinal fluid held at constant body temperature. In reality, acquiring prospective immortality requires access to very different technologies—those that allow human organs and tissues to be preserved in (...) a quite ‘inhuman’ life-world—the cryogenic storage chamber. Like Bernal, today’s cryonicists consider that immortality can be secured through preservation of the brain alone. In this article I trace attempts to preserve or suspend life, and especially brain function, through the application of new ‘technologies of immortality’. Drawing together historical information on the development of refrigeration, cryopreservation, transplantation, and nanotechnologies, I explore the uneasy relationship between cryonics and the technology on which it depends for its success—cryogenics. In so doing, I argue that the ability to successfully realize the science fiction fantasy of human immortality will rest on a moral and scientific parasitism: the capacity to use the biotechnological artifacts or proxies—cryogenically preserved brains, archived brains, tissues, and immortalized cell lines—derived from the dead, in order to prolong life. (shrink)

Intended for high school and college students studying ancient Greece and Rome as part of a larger world history curriculum, this book's coverage of key wars and battles; important leaders, armies, organizations, and weapons; and other aspects of conflict will enable readers to better understand the complex role warfare played in ancient Western civilization.

We used a participatory approach and a rural livelihoods framework to explore the knowledge and capacity of southeast Queensland graziers to adapt to climate change. After being presented with information on climate change projections, participants identified biophysical and socio-economic opportunities and challenges to adaptation. Graziers identified key opportunities as components of resilience, and in many cases were options that they had some knowledge of either from their own region or elsewhere in the grazing industry. The major constraint to adaptation was (...) the lack of financial capital: with low profitability of the industry and high land costs restricting their capacity to diversify and exploit economies of scale. These constraints were exacerbated by the pressure many graziers experienced from the demand for land as a result of urban expansion. While the focus of the workshop was on the impact of climate change and capacity to adapt, many of the issues raised by graziers were pressures not solely related to climate change. Adaptation needs to be considered in light of the appropriate level and spatial scale required to tackle the issues identified. Policy needs to support good natural resource management, rural amenity, and food and fibre production close to urban population and markets in the face of urban encroachment. (shrink)

Behavioral ecologists often assume that natural selection will produce organisms that make optimal decisions. In the context of information processing, this means that the behavior of animals will be consistent with models from fields such as signal detection theory and Bayesian decision theory. We discuss work that applies such models to animal behavior and use the case of Bayesian updating to make the distinction between a description of behavior at the level of optimal decisions and a mechanistic account of how (...) decisions are made. The idea of ecological rationality is that natural selection shapes an animal's decision mechanisms to suit its environment. As a result, decision-making mechanisms may not perform well outside the context in which they evolved. Although the assumption of ecological rationality is plausible, we argue that the exact nature of the relationship between ecology and cognitive mechanism may not be obvious. (shrink)

c.4,000 word critical discussion of Fabre's book. Provides an overview of the book plus comments on the themes of (i) loyalty and treason and (ii) the ethics of spying and sex.

Neurotechnologies that promise to dampen (via pharmacologicals), disassociate (via electro-convulsive therapy), erase (via deep brain stimulation), and replace (via false memory creation) unsavory episodic memories are no longer the subject of science fiction. They have already arrived, and their funding suggests that they will not disappear anytime soon. In light of their emergence, this essay examines the neurostructure of normative morality to clarify that memory manipulation, which promises to take away that which is bad in human experience, also removes that (...) which enables human beings to be good. Concepts such as free will, moral responsibility, and the neurobiological basis of moral reasoning are explored to underscore the fundamental hubris inherent to the memory manipulation enterprise. (shrink)