Recent studies show that psychiatry residents express a relatively greater need for ethics curricula than their colleagues in other specialties. Such studies have been limited in their generalizability because they were conducted at one site. This study of 151 psychiatry residents at seven U.S. psychiatry programs aims to address that limitation. Residents were surveyed on issues pertaining to ethics and professionalism education. Participants were found to support such curricula during training and to value its relevance to the practice of psychiatry. (...) Gender differences and the influence of the “hidden curriculum” on such results merit further study. (shrink)

This article examines the complex relationship between culture, values, and ethics in mental health care. Cultural competence is a practical, concrete demonstration of the ethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence (doing good), nonmaleficence (not doing harm), and justice (treating people fairly)—the cornerstones of modern ethical codes for the health professions. Five clinical cases are presented to illustrate the range of ethical issues faced by mental health clinicians working in a multicultural environment, including issues of therapeutic boundaries, diagnosis, treatment choice, (...) confidentiality and informed consent, and the just distribution of limited health care resources. (shrink)

Surrogate (proxy) decision makers must make research decisions for people with dementia who lack decision-making capacity. Proxies’ decision-making processes are minimally understood. We randomly assigned 82 proxies of AD patients to informed consent for one of three hypothetical protocols with differing levels of risk and benefit. Proxies answered questions about potential benefits of the described research to the patient and society, as well as about whether they would enroll their relative and why or why not. Proxies interested in enrolling their (...) relative cited the potential for direct benefit to their relative, altruism, and trust in researchers. Those declining cited risks, inconvenience, and stage of illness. Proxies weighed numerous factors, incorporating both substituted judgment and best interests standards in their decision-making processes. Although further empirical work is needed to understand the influences on and adequacy of proxies’ decision making regarding research, these findings can help inform policy regarding surrogate consent. (shrink)

In recent discussions in this journal, Moti Mizrahi defends the claim that knowledge equals epistemic certainty. Howard Sankey finds Mizrahi’s argument to be problematic, since, as he reads it, this would entail that justification must guarantee truth. In this article, I suggest that an account of the normativity of justification is able to bridge the gap between Mizrahi’s proposal and Sankey’s objections.

Science and technology studies scholars have turned their attention to the materiality of objects and buildings in order to examine what they make users do in practice. Taking a close look at a therapeutic community in a psychiatric day care center for teenagers, this paper joins these discussions by exploring the materiality of “spaces of care” as part of the center’s everyday practice. The analysis incorporates the concepts of scripts and dispositifs to describe the conditions of possibility in which caregivers (...) and youths may position themselves in relation to others and to the space itself. This paper describes how spaces of care offer open, enticing, and variable conditions for fostering a dynamic of personal and relational responses as part of the care work. In this sense, the material environment entails potentialities in ways that are unpredictable but nonetheless consequential. Rather than arguing that material arrangements and things act, this paper draws attention to their impact via their potential within dispositifs of care that request participants’ attentiveness and responsiveness. Describing these potentialities brings out the subtler requirements of material environments in care practices that aim at circumventing the coercion of disciplinary spaces and their impersonal classifications. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

Classical American pragmatism: the pragmatist -- Enlightenment-and its problematic semantics -- Analyzing pragmatism: pragmatics and pragmatisms -- A Kantian rationalist pragmatism: pragmatism -- Inferentialism, and modality in Sellars's arguments against -- Empiricism -- Linguistic pragmatism and pragmatism about norms: an arc of -- Thought from Rorty's eliminative materialism to his pragmatism -- Vocabularies of pragmatism: synthesizing naturalism and -- Historicism -- Towards an analytic pragmatism: meaning-use analysis -- Pragmatism, expressivism, and anti-representationalism: -- Local and global possibilities.

A sourcebook for developing and facilitating collaborative groups capable of continuously adapting to anticipate the evolving learning needs of students. Based on a theoretical foundation of schools as complex systems in which linear management models are no longer sufficient.

ABSTRACTWe report the findings of an experimental study that tested the contributions of semiotic and critical discourse studies on immigration. Two-way analyses of variance were conducted to examine the effects of immigration terminology on measures of attribution and empathy. Our experiment revealed a statistically significant difference in attribution. Participants who received a narrative prompt with the term ‘illegal immigrant’ evaluated the character's situation with internal attribution, and thus deserving of any negative outcomes, such as racial profiling, deportation, and separation from (...) one's family. This finding is consistent with studies that have reported the concrete effects of immigrant labels on public opinion and policy, as migrants become scapegoats for macro-structural forces. Our experiment did not reveal an effect on empathy, demonstrating the complicated symbolic and material effects produced by immigration discourse. (shrink)

Develops a theory of culture based on a metaphysics that elaborates on the Platonic and Confucian traditions. In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead’s project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville’s focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou Dunyi. (...) Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines. “Neville’s work is informed by a lifelong engagement with the most important philosophers in history, including Plato, Aristotle, Whitehead, and Dewey. Here, he offers an important argument that there is beauty not only in how people see the world, but also in the world itself.” — Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University. (shrink)

Did modern American social thought take a wrong turn when it followed John Dewey and William James? In this searching history of early twentieth-century political theory, James Hoopes suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, these pragmatic philosophers did not provide the basis for a socially-minded political theory. Dewey and James did not provide intellectual safeguards against the amoral acceptance of realpolitik and managerial elitism that has given liberalism a bad name. Hoopes finds a more substantial basis for liberal (...) political theory in the communitarian-based pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce. Had modern social thought been influenced by Peirce, argues Hoopes, society could be seen as a set of interpretive relationships rather than a collection of discrete interests to be managed from the top down by elitist experts. Hoopes traces the influence of James and Dewey in the thought of Walter Lippman, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Mary Parker Follett. He concludes with a critical examination of contemporary thinkers, most notably Richard Rorty, who believe that James and Dewey offered the most socially useful philosophy within the pragmatic tradition. Combining philosophy, political theory, history, and close textual analysis in original ways, Community Denied offers a bold departure from previous studies of the subject and demonstrates the damage done to liberalism by reliance on a philosophy with no way of truly conceptualizing community. (shrink)

A subtle and distinguished work by a philosopher renowned for his groundbreaking analysis of human emotions, About Love.

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but (...) that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works-the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world. (shrink)

Robert Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of the scientific process as a whole. He maintains that asymptotic reasoning is essential for explaining what physicists call universal behavior. With clarity and rigor, he simplifies complex questions about universal behavior, demonstrating a profound understanding of the underlying structures that ground them. This book introduces a valuable new method that is certain to fill explanatory gaps across disciplines.

Comprehensie collection of historical and contemporary philosophies of technology, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Simon, Comte, Marx, Heidegger, Mumford, Foucault.

This article discusses minimal model explanations, which we argue are distinct from various causal, mechanical, difference-making, and so on, strategies prominent in the philosophical literature. We contend that what accounts for the explanatory power of these models is not that they have certain features in common with real systems. Rather, the models are explanatory because of a story about why a class of systems will all display the same large-scale behavior because the details that distinguish them are irrelevant. This story (...) explains patterns across extremely diverse systems and shows how minimal models can be used to understand real systems. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to elucidate the processes that characterize natural language interpretation. The basic hypothesis is that natural language interpretation can be characterized as an optimization problem. This innovative view on interpretation is shown to account for the crucial role of contextual information while avoiding certain well-known problems associated withcompositionality. This will become particularly clear in the context of incomplete expressions. Our approach takes as a point of departure total freedom ofinterpretation in combination with the parallel application (...) of soft constraints on possible interpretations. These constraints can be contextual, intonational or syntactic in nature. The integration of pragmatic andsyntactic/semantic information in a system of ranked constraints is proposed to correctly derive the optimal interpretations in cases of nominal anaphorization, determiner quantification and elliptical comparatives. (shrink)

Cushman (1913-93) was a systematic theologian at Duke University. He looks at Plato's philosophy as a whole and single system, but also reappraises the basis of his pervasive and unyielding conviction that metaphysical relations actually obtain for people's finite existence, whether recognized or not, and that it is upon those relations that their present and ultimate hope rests. The 1958 edition was published by the University of North Carolina Press. Michae Henry (philosophy, St. John's U.) contributes a new introduction. c. (...) Book News Inc. (shrink)