Ruth Millikan is well known for having developed a strikingly original way for philosophers to seek understanding of mind and language, which she sees as biological phenomena. She now draws together a series of groundbreaking essays which set out her approach to language. Guiding the work of most linguists and philosophers of language today is the assumption that language is governed by prescriptive normative rules. Millikan offers a fundamentally different way of viewing the partial regularities that language displays, comparing (...) them to biological norms that emerge from natural selection. This yields novel and quite radical consequences for our understanding of the nature of public linguistic meaning, the process of language understanding, how children learn language, and the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

In this book, first published in 1975, Dr Kempson argues that previous work on presupposition - whether in philosophy or linguistics - has been mistakenly based on a conflation of two different disciplines: semantics, the study of the meanings assigned to the formal system which constitutes a language, and pragmatics, the study of the use of that system in communication. The first part of the book deals generally with the nature of semantics in linguistic theory and its formal representation within (...) a transformational grammar; Dr Kempson argues against incorporating the relation of presupposition within such a grammar. The second part provides a pragmatic account of the foundations of a theory of communication and its detailed application to the problems raised by presupposition. The book is intended for those studying both philosophy and linguistics and also for those sociolinguists and psychologists with a more general interest in the theory of communication. (shrink)

Nearly every theory of perception just focuses on one sense at a time; but most of the time we perceive using multiple senses. Casey O'Callaghan offers a revisionist multisensory philosophy of perception: he explores how our senses work together and influence each other, leading to surprising perceptual illusions and novel forms of experience.

Offers a philosophical exploration of the pervasiveness of place. Presenting an account of the role of place in human experience, this book points to place's indispensability in navigation and orientation. The role of the lived body in matters of place isconsidered, and the characteristics of built places are explored.

William James (1842-1910) was both a philosopher and a psychologist, nowadays most closely associated with the pragmatic theory of truth. The essays in this Companion deal with the full range of his thought as well as other issues, including technical philosophical issues, religious speculation, moral philosophy and political controversies of his time. The relationship between James and other philosophers of his time, as well as his brother Henry, are also examined. By placing James in his intellectual landscape the volume will (...) be particularly useful to teachers and students outside philosophy in such areas as religious studies, history of ideas, and American studies. New readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to James currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of James. (shrink)

In February 2020, the British Medical Association will be surveying members for their views on what the BMA’s position on physician-assisted dying should be. The BMA is currently opposed to physician-assisted dying in all its forms, a position that was agreed in 2006 at the annual representative meeting, the Association’s policy-making conference.1 As previously reported in Ethics briefing,2 the decision to survey members follows a motion passed at last year’s ARM which called on the BMA to “carry out a poll (...) of members to ascertain their views on whether the BMA should adopt a neutral position with respect to a change in the law on assisted dying”. The results from the survey will not determine BMA policy. Rather, the results be published ahead of this year’s ARM and provided to those attending to inform a debate and discussion on the BMA’s policy position. More information about the survey, including a briefing pack of useful information, and information for BMA members on how to participate can be found online at www.bma.org.uk/PAD. ### High Court rejects Judicial reviews on assisted suicide The High Court has refused permission for two separate challenges to the law on assisted suicide in the UK to proceed to a full hearing. In the first case, Phil Newby, who has motor neuron disease, applied for judicial review of the law on assisted suicide and asked for the court to carry out a detailed examination of what he termed “legislative facts” – that is, an examination of the existing evidence on the “costs, risks and benefits” of regulating assisted suicide – including a cross-examination of relevant expert witnesses.1 Handing down the judgement, Lord Justice Irwin and Mrs Justice May, held that assisted dying …. (shrink)

Healthcare professionals are currently working under extreme pressure as they respond to the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19. At the time of writing, there is currently no effective vaccine or anti-viral treatment. The pandemic is fast-moving, relatively unpredictable and of uncertain duration. In many countries, it is placing an enormous stress on healthcare resources and providing care to existing standards is proving difficult. Unfortunately, in some countries, health services have been overwhelmed. The impact of the pandemic on resource-poor countries is of (...) particular concern. This extraordinary situation is raising, or has the potential to raise, many ethical challenges for doctors delivering care to patients. It is possible, for example, that there may be points in this pandemic where decisions need to be made about who should have access to finite specialised intensive care beds, drugs and equipment. This has happened in some countries and, despite efforts by the UK Government to reduce demand and increase supply, it is still possible that this could happen in the UK. Some hospital trusts in the UK are already reporting concerningly low supplies of oxygen and vital medicines such as propofol and alfentanil.1 In these circumstances, where not everyone can be treated, difficult ethical decisions will have to made. For example, can some patients be prioritised over others? How should a doctor decide on which patients to treat? Can treatment be withdrawn from patients who are currently being treated, but are not responding, in order to offer treatment to those who may have a better chance of benefiting? The UK is also reporting concerningly low supplies of vital personal protective equipment for frontline workers, raising the question - what are a doctor’s obligations to treat patients, in circumstances that present a high …. (shrink)

This dynamic collection provides an overview of the relationship between linguistic form and interpretation as exemplified by the most influential of these ...

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional (...) response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)

Physicians in rural settings confront many of the same ethical dilemmas as their urban counterparts: confidentiality, quality‐of‐life decisions, resource allocation, and their moral responsibility for bettering the life of the community. However, the courses of action they choose as morally justifiable are influenced by distance from other professional facilities, the interrelationship of private and professional roles in a small community, and the non‐specialized orientation of their practices.

On a hot sleepy summer day an old truck rattles along a dusty road. A turnip falls off the truck, the truck does not stop. Perhaps the old man who drives the truck does not know that the turnip fell off, or perhaps he does not care. He values his time or his ease more than he values the I turnip. We, who know not only that turnips are nourishing but that many people go hungry, may say that the man (...) ought to have stopped to pick up the turnip. (shrink)

A special version of arguments from hypocrisy, those known as tu quoque arguments, is introduced and developed. These are arguments from what one’s opponent would do, were conditions different, so they are what we call subjunctive tu quoque arguments. Arguments of this form are regularly taken to be fallacious, but the authors discuss conditions for determining when hypothetical inconsistency is genuinely relevant to criticizing a speaker’s assertion or proposed action and when it is not relevant.

Starting from the late Renaissance, efforts to make vocal music more expressive heightened the power of words, which, in turn, gave birth to the modern semantics of musical expression. As the skepticism of seventeenth-century science divorced the acoustic properties from the metaphysical qualities of music, the door was opened to dicern the rich links between musical perception and varied mental faculties. In Tuning the Mind, Ruth Katz and Ruth HaCohen trace how eighteenth century theoreticians of music examined anew (...) the role of the arts within a general theory of knowledge. As the authors note, the differences between the physical and emotional dimensions of music stimulated novel conceptions and empirical inquiries into the old aesthetic queries. Tracing this development, their opening chapter deals with seventeenth-century epistemological issues concerning the artistic qualities of music. Katz and HaCohen show that painting and literature displayed a comparable tendency toward "musicalization," whereby the dynamic of forms-the modalities specific to each artistic medium-rather than subject matter was believed to determine expression. Katz and HaCohen explore the ambiguities inherent in idealization of an art form whose mimetic function has always been problematic. They discuss the major outlines of this development, from Descartes to Vico through Condillac. Particular emphasis is placed on eighteenth-century British thinkers, from Shaftesbury to Adam Smith, who perceived these problems in their full complexity. They also explore how the French and the Germans dealt differently with questions that preoccupied the British, each nation in accordance with their own past tradition and tendencies. The concluding chapter summarizes the parallel development of abstract art and basic hypotheses concerning the mind and explores basic theoretical questions pertaining to the relationship between perception and cognition. In addressing some of the most complex problems in musical aesthetics, Katz and HaCohen provide a unique historical perspective on the ways their art creates and develops coherent worlds, and, in so doing, contribute to our understanding of the workings of the mind. Ruth Katz is Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is co-editor with Carl Dahlhaus of Contemplating Music, a four-volume study of the philosophy of music. Ruth HaCohen is Clarica and Fred Davidson Senior Lecturer of Musicology at the Hebrew University. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay addresses the historiographical question of how to study scientific instruments and the connections between them without rigidly determining the boundaries of the object under historical scrutiny beforehand. To do this, I will explore an episode in the early history of the tachistoscope — defined, among other things, as an instrument for the brief exposure of visual stimuli in experimental psychology. After looking at the tachistoscope described by physiologist Volkmann in 1859, I will turn to the gravity chronometer, (...) constructed by Cattell at Wundt's Leipzig institute of psychology in the 1880s. Taking Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances as a methodological suggestion to travel from one member to another to find out just how members relate to one another, I will investigate part of the family to which both the tachistoscope and the gravity chronometer turn out to belong. A detailed analysis of these instruments, using both historical sources and historical accounts of psychological instruments, may demonstrate that the instrument is not a standard package that, if well applied, will simply secure good results. Each package needs to be assembled again and again; the particular package that is assembled may differ on different occasions. Thus an alternative is developed to an understanding of instruments as univocally functioning material means. (shrink)

IMAGINING and remembering, two of the most frequent and fundamental acts of mind, have long been unwelcome guests in most of the many mansions of philosophy. When not simply ignored or over-looked, they have been considered only to be dismissed. This is above all true of imagination, as first becomes evident in Plato’s view that the art of making exact images tends to degenerate into the making of mere semblances. Kant, despite the importance he gives to imagination in the first (...) edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, nevertheless considers images to be lowly "monograms" that are unruly and thus untrustworthy. In more recent times, Sartre, who is nearly as ambivalent as Kant on the subject, has stressed imagination’s "essential poverty"—its character as "debased thought"—while Ryle, in covert counterpoint, has attempted to conceive imagining as parody and pretense: as mere make-believe. (shrink)

Congo Style presents a postcolonial approach to discussing the visual culture of two now-notorious regimes: King Leopold II's Congo Colony and the state sites of Mobutu Sese Seko's totalitarian Zaïre. Readers are brought into the living remains of sites once made up of ambitious modernist architecture and art in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the total artworks of Art Nouveau to the aggrandizing sites of post-independence Kinshasa, Congo Style investigates the experiential qualities of man-made environments intended to entertain, (...) delight, seduce and impress. In her study of visual culture, Ruth Sacks sets out to reinstate the compelling wonder of nationalist architecture from Kinshasa's post-independence era, such as the Tower of the Exchange (1974), Gécamines Tower (1977), and the artworks and exhibitions that accompanied them. While exploring post-independence nation-building, this book examines how the underlying ideology of Belgian Art Nouveau, a celebrated movement in Belgium, led to the dominating early colonial settler buildings of the ABC Hotels (circa 1908-13). Congo Style combines Sacks's practice as a visual artist and her academic scholarship to provide an original study of early colonial and independence-era modernist sites in their African context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.4 (2004) 299-301 [Access article in PDF] The Right Not to Know: A Challenge for Accurate Self-Assessment Ruth F. Chadwick Anderson and Lux present a very interesting and thought-provoking argument for the view that accurate self-assessment is a requirement for personal autonomy. What I want to suggest is that although this may be helpful in the context with which these authors are primarily concerned, (...) namely psychiatry and brain dysfunction, it is of less value to an account of autonomy more widely construed. I want to look at a possible counterexample, taken from another area of medicine, namely genetics.Toward the end of their article Anderson and Lux consider three objections to their position. I shall not discuss them all. My concern is with the third, that inaccurate self-assessment sometimes promotes autonomy, because knowing the truth about one's weaknesses is sometimes very debilitating. It is commonly argued that "you can if you think you can" and vice versa. As they point out, there are some complex issues involved here, in that if the result of the positive thinking is the ability to do the thing in question, then how can the self-assessment be deemed to have been inaccurate in the first place? They go on, however, to say that "it is unclear that inflated self-assessments yield benefits in contexts where what is required is not just effort but competence" (290).Now it has been argued, by some, in the context of genetics, that the proper understanding of autonomy may imply a "right not to know" facts about oneself. In other words, this is not just a matter of accurate or inaccurate assessment of the relevant facts about oneself; rather, what may be involved is a deliberate decision not to have access to facts that may be relevant to that assessment. There are clearly cases in which genetic information appears to be pertinent to an accurate self-assessment, as the following example suggests. Suppose there is information "available", through genetic testing, that would affect one's chances of having children, or of having children without a particular genetic disorder, and, knowing that such information is available, a couple decides not to avail themselves of this. This is clearly an inaccurate self-assessment, but is their autonomy compromised?It might be thought that the reasons for this decision not to know could be relevant. If they have no family history of any particular genetic disorder, it could be regarded as subjectively reasonable to decline such testing as might be offered. Anderson and Lux, however, argue that whether or not a self-assessment is accurate depends on externalities. In other words, A's self-assessment is not to be assessed as accurate, or [End Page 299] not, according to what it is subjectively reasonable to believe; it has to be measured against the facts. The more that the possibilities of genetic testing increase, the more that "facts" of this nature will be available, including in the context of psychiatry.It might be objected that genetic information is not the type of information that is relevant in this context. In so far as it is predictive and probabilistic it is, arguably, different from the type of diagnostic information involved in the cases discussed by Anderson and Lux. It is not the place here, however, to discuss in general terms the thesis of "genetic exceptionalism" with regard to medical information. The important point is refusal of access to information that may be relevant to an accurate self-assessment. Historically, people have been mistaken in their self-assessment because of lack of information—for example, lack of understanding of facts about the reproduction process has led individuals automatically to blame the woman partner of a couple for infertility. And, as Anderson and Lux rightly point out, being autonomous is compatible with making mistakes, and indeed requires the freedom to make mistakes, it would look rather different if a person continued to hold this without any attempt to avail himself of the relevant—and now available—information... (shrink)

In May 2009 the World Health Assembly passed a resolution on reducing health inequities through action on the social determinants of health, based on the work of the global Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2005–2008. The Commission's genesis and findings raise some important questions for global health governance. We draw out some of the essential elements, themes, and mechanisms that shaped the Commission. We start by examining the evolving nature of global health and the Commission's foundational inspiration – the (...) universal pattern of health inequity and the imperative, driven by a sense of social justice, to make better and more equal health a global goal. We look at how the Commission was established, how it was structured internally, and how it developed external relationships – with the World Health Organization, with global networks of academics and practitioners, with country governments eager to spearhead action on health equity, and with civil society. We outline the Commission's recommendations as they relate to the architecture of global health governance. Finally, we look at how the Commission is catalyzing a movement to bring social determinants of health to the forefront of international and national policy discourse. (shrink)

This interview deals with the major themes in the work of Ruth Millikan. Her most fundamental idea is that the intentionality of inner and outer representations can be understood in analogy to biological functions. Another innovative feature is the view that thought and language stand parallel to each other. Thirdly, the basic ideas concerning the ontology and the epistemology of concepts are explained. Millikan aims at clarifying her position by contrasting it with Dretske, Fodor, Sellars, and Brandom. Finally, the (...) interview addresses topics that pose problems for her account as well as questions she does not treat in her work. (shrink)

From our deep interest in the neuroconstructivist framework, we would like to comment on two fundamental aspects of Mareschal et al.'s work: the role of neuroconstructivism for clinical work with people suffering from developmental disorders; and the relation between the process of progressive specialization and the increasing abstraction of representations in development.

### British Medical association survey on physician-assisted dying closes Previous Ethics briefings have highlighted the survey of members on physician-assisted dying being carried out by the British Medical Association.1 This survey closed at midnight on Thursday 27 February. In total, 29 011 members responded – 20.1% of all members who received an invitation to participate – making this one of the largest surveys of medical opinion carried out on this issue, ever. The results of the survey will not make BMA (...) policy, but will inform a debate and discussion at the organisation’s main policy-making conference, the annual representative meeting in June this year. You can find out more about the survey and how it was carried out at www.bma.org.uk/PAD This page will continue to be updated when more information about the survey results is available. ### Royal College of General Practitioners remains opposed to a change in the law on assisted dying In October 2019, the Royal College of General Practitioners began surveying its members on the College’s position on physician-assisted dying. The College published its results on 21 February. Of the 49 539 members invited to participated, 6674 responded – a response rate of 13.47%.2 In response to a question about what the College’s position on the law on assisted dying should be: Following the results of the survey, the RCGP Council decided that the College should continue to oppose a change in the law on assisted dying. ### Belgian doctors acquitted in country’s first criminal euthanasia case As noted in previous Ethics briefings, three Belgian doctors faced criminal charges of “unlawfully poisoning” a …. (shrink)

In this commentary, we raise two issues. First, we argue that in any species, the comparative study of metacognitive abilities must be approached from a developmental perspective and not solely from the adult end state. This makes it possible to explore the trajectories by which different species reach their phenotypic outcome and whether different cognitive systems interact over developmental time. Second, using our research comparing different genetic disorders in humans, we challenge the authors' claim that it is unparsimonious to interpret (...) the same performance in humans and animals in qualitatively different ways, because even the same overt behaviour in different groups of humans can be sustained by different underlying cognitive processes. (shrink)

This article demonstrates that watching speech as well as listening to it is very much part of what a person does when looking at other people, and that observing someone talking can relate to other aspects of face processing. The perception of speaking faces can offer insights into how human communication skills develop, and the role of the face and its actions in relation to those skills. Cross-modal processing occurs at a relatively early cognitive processing stage in relation to speech (...) processing and identifying aspects of the talker. It shows that multimodal processing is apparent early in cognitive processing for faces and for speech. Two domains—each of which is inherently multimodal—underpin much of the ability to process communicative information. The cortical correlates for each of these domains can be identified and each of their distinctive cognitive characteristics can be described. The details of how these domains interact await discovery. (shrink)

Red Riding Hood is a story that has been retold and reimagined more frequently than most. Where the oral tradition often celebrated Red's sexuality and cunning, literary versions transform the tale into one in which a young girl is blamed for her own rape – or, in many feminist versions, where she fights back. Drawing on discussions with writers and feminist activists in Uganda, and on work by Ugandan and Irish writers and scholars, I explore how this troubling and ambiguous (...) story can be used to facilitate communication across difference and culturally situated solidarities. I present a retelling of Red Riding Hood from an Irish perspective, using this as a springboard to explore parallels and disjunctures between Irish and Ugandan storytelling traditions and perspectives on women's rights and sexuality. I explore the potential of using this well-known European story to surface and contest dominant framings of women's rights, and as a contact point to enable dialogue between more peripheral European (Irish) and Ugandan (Kiganda and Soga) cultural traditions, facilitating mutual recognition, while remaining aware of and explicitly surfacing differences between these traditions. Telling and retelling ambiguous stories like Red Riding Hood can create space to consider where we come from and what we desire, and how those desires might be engaged through or might influence relationships of solidarity. (shrink)