Uses epistemic logic to clarify a number of possible interpretations of the principle, 'if you know you can't be wrong' and the deceptively similar principle 'if you may be wrong you don't know.' shows that on all plausible interpretation sceptical arguments beg the question at issue.

Here is an in-depth look at the role myth, mortality, and religion play in J. R. R. Tolkien's works such as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion -- including Tolkien's private letters and revealing opinions of his own work. Richard L. Purtill brilliantly argues that Tolkien's extraordinary ability to touch his readers' lives through his storytelling -- so unlike much modern literature -- accounts for his enormous literary success. This book demonstrates the moral depth in Tolkien's (...) work and cuts through current subjectivism and cynicism about morality. A careful reader will find a subtle religious dimension to Tolkien's work -- all the more potent because it is below the surface. Purtill reveals that the author's fantasy stories creatively incorporate profound religious and ethical ideas. For example, Purtill shows us how hobbits reflect both the pettiness of unimaginative parochial humanity and the unexpected heroism of ordinary people in crisis. Purtill effectively addresses larger issues of the place of myth, the relation of religion and morality to literature, the relation of Tolkien's work to traditional mythology, modern fantasy and science fiction, and the lessons Tolkien's work teaches that are applicable to our own lives. Book jacket. (shrink)

"[This book] is a fascinating look at the fantasy and philosophy of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The two men were friends and fellow professors at Oxford, renowned Christian thinkers who both 'found it necessary to create for the purposes of their fiction other worlds—not utopias or dystopias, but different worlds.'" --.

Each stage has its difficulties and its points of interest, and I will examine each in turn.

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age - violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except (...) on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. The book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate co-operation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends. Audi offers a balanced and sophisticated treatment of the relations between religion and politics in a modern, secular society. (shrink)

Copyright © 2015 by the Society of Criti. Objective: Global lung stress varies considerably with low tidal volume ventilation for acute respiratory distress syndrome. High stress despite low tidal volumes may worsen lung injury and increase risk of death. No widely available parameter exists to assess global lung stress. We aimed to determine whether the volume delivered during a recruitment maneuver is inversely associated with lung stress and mortality in acute respiratory distress syndrome. Design: Substudy of an acute respiratory distress (...) syndrome clinical trial on esophageal pressure-guided positive end-expiratory pressure titration. Setting: U.S. academic medical center. Patients: Forty-two patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome in whom airflow, airway pressure, and esophageal pressure were recorded during the recruitment maneuver. Interventions: A single recruitment maneuver was performed before initiating protocol-directed ventilator management. Recruitment maneuvers consisted of a 30-second breath hold at 40 cm H2O airway pressure under heavy sedation or paralysis. VRM was calculated by integrating the flow-time waveform during the maneuver. End-inspiratory stress was defined as the transpulmonary pressure during end-inspiratory pause of a tidal breath and tidal stress as the transpulmonary pressure difference between end-inspiratory and end-expiratory pauses. Measurements and Main Results: VRM ranged between 7.4 and 34.7 mL/kg predicted body weight. Lower VRM predicted high end-inspiratory and tidal lung stress. After adjusting for Pao2/Fio2 and either driving pressure, tidal volume, or plateau pressure and positive end-expiratory pressure, VRM remained independently associated with both end-inspiratory and tidal stress. In unadjusted analysis, low VRM predicted increased risk of death. VRM remained significantly associated with mortality after adjusting for study arm. Conclusions: Low VRM independently predicts high lung stress and may predict risk of death in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. (shrink)

This text, serving as an introduction to Aristotelian, symbolic, inductive, and practical logic, presents the techniques of these approaches to logic, some of the philosophical problems of logic, and some of the attempts to solve philosophical problems by means of various logical techniques. It discusses the problem of universals and null classes; briefly introduces the theory of types; and presents Lukasiewicz's formalization of Aristotelian syllogistic logic as an example of a formal system. Classical logic and propositional logic are carefully and (...) fully presented. The text, however, is weak in its presentation of quantificational logic. After a correct, but brief and very inadequate introduction to quantificational logic, the readers are referred to Quine, Methods of Logic, or to Copi, Symbolic Logic, for a more adequate development. The chapter on inductive logic discusses the uses and dangers of generalizations and introduces the probability calculus; the chapter on informal logic discusses criteria of rationality and presents the usual informal fallacies. There are problems and exercises after many of the sections, and answers in the back of the book.—R. L. S. (shrink)

The expository material in this book is ninety-nine pages long and covers very sketchily the philosophy of language, classical logic, symbolic logic, informal fallacies, the philosophy of science, and probability theory. To supplement the text material, the authors have included 142 pages of exercises, which may be removed from the book by tearing along the perforations. The authors have deliberately written a brief text so that the instructor "will be left free to elaborate according to his own judgment as his (...) classroom situation warrants." Eight pages are devoted to quantificational logic. The high price of this paperback text does not seem to be warranted by either the brief expository material, the removable pages of exercises, or the uniqueness of this approach.—R. L. S. (shrink)

This text, serving as an introduction to Aristotelian, symbolic, inductive, and practical logic, presents the techniques of these approaches to logic, some of the philosophical problems of logic, and some of the attempts to solve philosophical problems by means of various logical techniques. It discusses the problem of universals and null classes; briefly introduces the theory of types; and presents Lukasiewicz's formalization of Aristotelian syllogistic logic as an example of a formal system. Classical logic and propositional logic are carefully and (...) fully presented. The text, however, is weak in its presentation of quantificational logic. After a correct, but brief and very inadequate introduction to quantificational logic, the readers are referred to Quine, Methods of Logic, or to Copi, Symbolic Logic, for a more adequate development. The chapter on inductive logic discusses the uses and dangers of generalizations and introduces the probability calculus; the chapter on informal logic discusses criteria of rationality and presents the usual informal fallacies. There are problems and exercises after many of the sections, and answers in the back of the book.—R. L. S. (shrink)

This is the first of four papers to be published in Research Ethics Review in 2009 that address methodological issues of relevance to research ethics committees. These will be practical papers, intended to assist ethics committee members to determine whether a research method is both ethically justified and likely to lead to high quality research. This paper prepares the way for the series through a consideration of the relationship between research ethics and methodology.

Interest in the retrieval of organs from non-heart-beating cadaver donors has been rekindled by the success of transplantation of solid organs and the insufficient supply of donor organs currently obtained from heart-beating cadaver donors. There are currently two retrieval techniques being evaluated, the in situ cold perfusion approach and the controlled death approach. Both, however, raise ethical concerns. Reanimation is a new method which has been used successfully in animals. We believe this new approach overcomes the ethical objections raised to (...) these other methods. (shrink)

This article presents an overview ofregulations, guidelines and societal debates ineight member states of the EC about a)embryonic and fetal tissue transplantation(EFTT), and b) the use of human embryonic stemcells (hES cells) for research into celltherapy, including `therapeutic' cloning. Thereappears to be a broad acceptance of EFTT inthese countries. In most countries guidance hasbeen developed. There is a `strong' consensusabout some of the central conditions for `goodclinical practice' regarding EFTT.International differences concern, amongstothers, some of the informed consent issuesinvolved, and the (...) questions whether anintermediary organisation is necessary, whetherthe methods of abortion may be influenced bythe possible use of EFT, and whether EFTTshould only be used for the experimentaltreatment of rare disorders. The potential useof hES cells for research into cell therapy hasgiven a new impetus to the debate about (human)embryo research. The therapeutic prospects withregard to the retrieval and research use of hEScells appear to function as a catalyst for theintroduction of less restrictive regulationsconcerning research with spare embryos, atleast in some European countries. It remains tobe seen whether the prospect of treatingpatients suffering from serious disorders withtransplants produced by therapeutic cloningwill decrease the societal and moral resistanceto allowing the generation of embryos for`instrumental' use. (shrink)

Explains the intersubjective nature of the self and the function of role taking in the development of the personal level of intersubjectivity out of primordial, pre-personal sociality or corporeal intersubjectivity of the lived body. Pragmatic philosophy of George Herbert Mead; Existential-phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Fundamental and pervasive rapport; More.