In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

Polyclonal antibodies raised against the human erythrocyte nucleoside transporter were used to investigate the distribution of the nucleoside transporters in the placenta. Immunoblots of brush-border membranes isolated from the human syncytiotrophoblast revealed a cross-reactive species that co-migrated with the erythrocyte nucleoside transporter as a broad band of apparent M 55,000. In contrast, no labelling was detected in basal membranes containing a similar number of equilibrative nucleoside transporters as assessed by nitrobenzylthioinosine -binding. The absence of cross-reactive epitopes in basal membranes and (...) their presence in brush-border membranes was confirmed by confocal immunofluorescence microscopy. The results suggest that at least two isoforms of the NBMPR-sensitive nucleoside transporter are present in the human placenta. The lumenal surfaces of fetal capillaries, small placental vessels and umbilical vein ware also strongly labelled by the antibody, a finding that suggests that the high fetal-placental adenosine uptake previously reported is due to endothelial transporters. (shrink)

State Medical Boards (SMBs) can take severe disciplinary actions (e.g., license revocation or suspension) against physicians who commit egregious wrongdoing in order to protect the public. However, there is noteworthy variability in the extent to which SMBs impose severe disciplinary action. In this manuscript, we present and synthesize a subset of 11 recommendations based on findings from our team’s larger consensus-building project that identified a list of 56 policies and legal provisions SMBs can use to better protect patients from egregious (...) wrongdoing by physicians. (shrink)

The literature on affective determinants of physical activity is growing rapidly. The present paper aims to provide greater clarity regarding the definition and distinctions among the various affect-related constructs that have been examined in relation to PA. Affective constructs are organized according to the Affect and Health Behavior Framework, including: affective response to PA; incidental affect; affect processing; and affectively charged motivational states. After defining each category of affective construct, we provide examples of relevant research showing how each construct may (...) relate to PA behavior. We conclude each section with a discussion of future directions for research. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on the development and validity of the Professional Decision-Making in Research measure, a vignette-based test that examines decision-making strategies used by investigators when confronted with challenging situations in the context of empirical research. The PDR was administered online with a battery of validity measures to a group of NIH-funded researchers and research trainees who were diverse in terms of age, years of experience, types of research, and race. The PDR demonstrated adequate reliability and parallel form (...) correlation. As hypothesized, the PDR was significantly negatively correlated with narcissism, cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement; it was not correlated with socially desirable responding. In regression analysis, the strongest predictors of higher PDR scores were low compliance disengagement, speaking English as a native language, conducting clinical research with human subjects, and low levels of narcissism. Given that the PDR was written at an eighth grade reading level to be suitable for use with English as a second language participants and that only one-fourth of items focused on clinical research, further research into the possible roles of culture and research ethics training across specialties is warranted. This initial validity study demonstrates the potential usefulness of the PDR as an educational outcome assessment measure and a research instrument for studies on professionalism and integrity in research. (shrink)

In Public Reason Confucianism, Kim Sungmoon presents a perfectionist theory that is based on a partially comprehensive Confucian doctrine but is non-sectarian, since the doctrine is widely shared in East Asian societies. Despite its attractiveness, I argue that this project, unfortunately, fails because it is still vulnerable to the sectarian critique. The blurred distinction between partially and fully comprehensive doctrines will create a loophole problem. Sectarian laws and policies may gain legitimacy that they do not deserve. I further defend political (...) Confucianism, which is regarded by Kim as an inadequately intelligible form of Confucianism. Kim assumes a too narrow understanding of intelligibility. Although political Confucianism may not be politically intelligible, it is civically intelligible, i.e. it is culturally intelligibly different from other political theories in terms of its implications in citizens’ actions in civil society. In light of civic intelligibility, the distinctiveness of political Confucianism should not be underestimated. (shrink)

Let be a class of models with a notion of ‘strong’ submodel and of canonically prime model over an increasing chain. We show under appropriate set-theoretic hypotheses that if K is not smooth , then K has many models in certain cardinalities. On the other hand, if K is smooth, we show that in reasonable cardinalities K has a unique homogeneous-universal model. In this situation we introduce the notion of type and prove the equivalence of saturated with homogeneous-universal.

Objectives—To evaluate a departmental computer system.Design—a. Direct comparison of the time taken to use a manual system with the time taken to use a computer system for lung function evaluation, loan of equipment and production of correspondence. b. Analysis of the accuracy of data capture before and after the introduction of the computer system. c. Analysis of the comparative running costs of the manual and computer systems.Setting—Within a department of respiratory medicine serving a hospital of 1323 beds.Main Outcome Measures—a. Time (...) taken to perform functions with the assistance of computerised methods, in comparison to the manual method used alone. b. Accuracy of data capture. c. Relative running costs.Results—a. The computer system (CS) was significantly faster than the manual system (MS) for lung function evaluation (CS=7.63 min/test, MS=12.25 min/test), loan of equipment (CS=0.40 min/loan, MS=2.07 min/loan), and checking for overdue equipment (CS=0.49 s/record, MS=9 s/record). The production of correspondence was slightly slower with the computer (CS=9.30 min/letter, MS=8.54 min/letter). b. All outpatient episodes, but only 43 of 65 (66%) of inpatient episodes, were captured. Lung function and managerial report data were accurate using both manual and computerised methods. The manual system for equipment loans was inefficient, and use of the computer resulted in the recovery of 221 nebulisers. c. Development costs for 1988–1990 were high (£72 178). Only £1200 to £1845 per year was recovered directly from staff time saved by the computer but larger savings resulted from changes in work practice (£4049–4765). After 10 years the projected deficit is £10 000 per annum in running costs.Conclusions—In comparison with the manual methods, the computer system has shown significant advantages which provide accurate information, with significant favourable effects on working practices. In evaluating computer systems used in clinical practice it is essential to ensure that the projected work practice benefits are achieved without unacceptable costs in staff time, inaccurate data and high financial outlay. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

Baldwin and McNabb explore how non-Christian religious traditions can utilize Plantinga’s epistemology. This book pays particular attention to the question, if there are believers from differing religious traditions that can rightfully utilize his epistemology, does this somehow prevent a Plantingian’s creedal-specific belief from being warranted?

Fitouchi et al.'s moral disciplining approach highlights the significant role social evaluations of self-control appear to play in human moral judgment. At the same time, attributing the wide range of puritanical concerns to a singular focus on self-control seems unwarranted. A more pluralistic approach would enrich understanding of moral judgment in all its cultural and historical diversity.

This paper proposes a philosophically informed decision-making methodology, inspired by Aristotle, that encourages constructive discussions amongst employers and employees; is directed towards shared higher-level goals; is consistent with planning frameworks already in place in many businesses; can be amended over time without disruptive disputes; and accounts for the particularities of each industry, enterprise, workplace, and job. It seeks to establish a more fundamental basis for discussions about remote vs. in-person office work: specifically, the purpose and nature of the work of (...) those affected. If these matters can be decided, then subsequent discussions might be focused more upon the shared outcomes to which stakeholders are committed and less upon individual preferences and ‘hunches.’. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga’s externalist religious epistemology, which incorporates a proper function account of warrant, forms the basis for his standard and extended Aquinas/Calvin models. Respectively, these models show how it could be that Theistic Belief and Christian Belief could be warranted for believers in a properly basic manner. Christianity and Islam share fundamental theses that underlie the plausibility of Plantinga’s models: the Dependency Thesis, the Design Thesis, and the Immediacy Thesis. Accordingly, an Islamic worldview can endorse the truth of the standard (...) A/C model but recommend a uniquely Islamic extension. Thus, there are multiple viable extensions of the standard A/C model. That there are Multiple Viable Extensions of the standard A/C model grounds the Multiple Viable Extensions Objection (MVE): given the truth of the standard A/C model, it is more likely than not that a given extension of it is probably incorrect, thus those who accept some extension of the standard A/C model have a reason to think that model they affirm is incorrect. After considering the plausibility of second-order knowledge states and responding to objections, I conclude that because a uniquely Islamic extension of the standard A/C model advocates a limited second-order awareness condition on knowledge, it is plausible to think that an Islamic model of warrant (and its corresponding Islamic extension) suggests ways in which a satisfactory response to the MVE objection might be formulated. (shrink)

Principia Ethica is recognised as the definitive starting point for twentieth-century ethical theory. Its influence was first largely confined to the Bloomsbury Group - Maynard Keynes wrote that it was 'better than Plato' - who took it up for its celebration of the values of art and love; but later it achieved the widespread recognition it still retains as a classic text of analytic ethical theory. It is particularly renowned for Moore's argument that previous ethical theories have been guilty of (...) a fallacy - the 'naturalistic fallacy'. Principia Ethica is reprinted here with the previously unpublished Preface Moore wrote for a planned, but never completed, second edition. Though unfinished, it sets out clearly Moore's second thoughts about his own work. The volume also includes two important pieces from his later ethical writings, 'Free will' and 'The conception of intrinsic value', and a new introduction by Thomas Baldwin. (shrink)

In most of the introductions to Rawls and contemporary contractarianism, Rawls is seen as the representative of Kantian contractarianism. He is understood as inheriting a contractarian tradition that can be traced back to Kant and which has inspired followers such as Barry and Scanlon. This paper argues that the label does not fit Rawls. While a Kantian contractarian would presuppose a monistic conception of practical reason, Rawls is a hybrid contractarian who presupposes a dual conception. I shall first argue that (...) the way in which a contractarian model is labeled is determined by its conception of practical reason. Then I show that Rawls and Kantian contractarians assume different conceptions of practical reason, and therefore should be seen as belonging to two strands of thought. I further argue that, although Rawls acknowledges his intellectual affiliation with Kant, he cannot be considered a Kantian contractarian in the commonly understood way. In his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Rawls interprets Kant as endorsing a hybrid contractarian model that is similar to his. By understanding Rawls as a hybrid contractarian and not confusing his philosophical project with that of Kantian contractarians, Rawls’s contribution to the history of contractarianism can be better evaluated. (shrink)

[Robert Stalnaker] Saul Kripke made a convincing case that there are necessary truths that are knowable only a posteriori as well as contingent truths that are knowable a priori. A number of philosophers have used a two-dimensional model semantic apparatus to represent and clarify the phenomena that Kripke pointed to. According to this analysis, statements have truth-conditions in two different ways depending on whether one considers a possible world 'as actual' or 'as counterfactual' in determining the truth-value of the statement (...) relative to that possible world. There are no necessary a posteriori or contingent a priori propositions: rather, contingent a priori and necessary a posteriori statements are statements that are necessary when evaluated one way, and contingent when evaluated the other way. This paper distinguishes two ways that the two-dimensional framework can be interpreted, and argues that one of them gives the better account of what it means to 'consider a world as actual', but that it provides no support for any notion of purely conceptual a priori truth. /// [Thomas Baldwin] Two-dimensional possible world semantic theory suggests that Kripke's examples of the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori should be handled by interpreting names as implicitly indexical. Like Stalnaker, I reject this account of names and accept that Kripke's examples have to be accommodated within a metasemantic theory. But whereas Stalnaker maintains that a metasemantic approach undermines the conception of a priori truth, I argue that it offers the opportunity to develop a conception of the a priori aspect of stipulations, conceived as linguistic performances. The resulting position accommodates Kripke's examples in a way which is both intrinsically plausible and fits with Kripke's actual discussion of them. (shrink)

No names are more closely associated with modern trade theory than Eli Heckscher and Bertil Ohlin. The basic Heckscher-Ohlin proposition, according to which a country exports factors in abundant supply and imports factors in scarce supply, is a key component of modern trade theory. In this book, Robert Baldwin traces the development of the HO model, describing the historical twists and turns that have led to the basic modern theoretical model in use today. Baldwin not only presents a (...) clear and cohesive view of the model's evolution but also reviews the results of empirical tests its various versions. Baldwin, who published his first theoretical article on the HO model in 1948, first surveys the development of the HO model and then assesses empirical tests of its predictions. Most discussions of empirical work on HO models confine themselves to the basic theorem, but Baldwin devotes a chapter to empirical tests of three related propositions: the Stolper-Samuelson theorem; the Rybczynski theorem; and the factor price equalization theorem. He concludes that the formulation and testing of these later models have improved economists' understanding of the forces shaping international trade, but that many empirical trade economists were so enamored of the elegant but highly unrealistic factor price equalization models developed from the insights of Heckscher and Ohlin that they have neglected investigation of other models without this relationship. (shrink)

Martin Luther King Jr. said and wrote as much or more about the meaning, nature, and power of truth as any other prominent figure in the 1950s and '60s. King was not only vastly influential as an advocate for and defender of truth; he also did more than anyone in his time to organize truth into a movement for the liberation, uplift, and empowerment of humanity, efforts that ultimately resulted in the loss of his life. Drawing on King's published and (...) unpublished sermons, speeches, and writings, The Arc of Truth explores King's lifelong pilgrimage in pursuit of truth. Lewis Baldwin explores King's quest for truth from his inquisitive childhood to the influence of family and church, to Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, Boston University, and other academic institutions in the Northeast. Continuing on, the book follows King's sense that he was involved in experiments of truth within the context of the struggle to liberate and empower humanity, to his understanding of the civil rights movement as unfolding truth, to his persistent challenge to America around its need to engage in a serious reckoning with truth regarding its history and heritage. Baldwin investigates King's determination to speak truth to power, and his untiring efforts to actualize what he envisioned as the truthful ends of the beloved community through the truthful means of nonviolent direct action. King believed, taught, and demonstrated by example that truth derives from a revolution in the heart, mind, and soul before it can be translated into institutions and structures that guarantee freedom, justice, human dignity, equality of opportunity, and peace. Ultimately, King's significance for humanity cannot be considered only his contributions as a preacher, pastor, civil rights leader, and world figure--he was and remains equally impactful as a theologian, philosopher, and ethicist whose life and thought evince an enduring search for and commitment to truth. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty was a pivotal figure in twentieth century French philosophy. He was responsible for bringing the phenomenological methods of the German philosophers - Husserl and Heidegger - to France and instigated a new wave of interest in this approach. His influence extended well beyond the boundaries of philosophy and can be seen in theories of politics, psychology, art and language. This is the first volume to bring together a comprehensive selection of Merleau-Ponty's writing. Sections from the following are included: The (...) Primacy of Perception The Structure of Behaviour The Phenomenology of Perception The Prose of the World The Visible and the Invisible Sense and Non-Sense The Adventures of the Dialectic In a substantial critical introduction Thomas Baldwin provides a critical discussion of the main themes of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, connecting it to subsequent philosophical debates and setting it in the context of the ideas of Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. Each text is also prefaced with an explanation which sets it in its context in Merleau-Ponty's work; and there are extensive suggestions for further reading to enable students to pursue the issues raised by Merleau-Ponty. Thus the book provides the ideal materials for students studying Merleau-Ponty for the first time. (shrink)

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * _A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External World (...) In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein._. (shrink)

Researchers encounter challenges that require making complex professional decisions. Strategies such as seeking help and anticipating consequences support decision-making in these situations. Existing evidence on a measure of professional decision-making in research that assesses the use of decision-making strategies revealed that NIH-funded researchers born outside of the U.S. tended to score below their U.S. counterparts. To examine potential explanations for this association, this study recruited 101 researchers born in the United States and 102 born internationally to complete the PDR and (...) measures of basic personal values, values in scientific work, discrimination between the seriousness of rules in research, exposure to unprofessional research practices, and acculturation to American culture. Several variables were associated with PDR scores—discrimination between types of rules in research, exposure to unprofessional research practices, acculturation, and the basic personal values of power, security, and benevolence. However, only security, benevolence, acculturation, and rule discrimination were also associated with nation of origin. In multivariate models, the variance explained by these variables in accounting for the association of nation of origin and PDR scores was somewhat overlapping, thus, only security and benevolence remained as unique, statistically significant predictors. Thus, this study identified some important variables in the association of nation of origin and PDR, but more research is needed. In a secondary analysis to examine the “clinical significance” of scores on the PDR, this study examined aggregated PDR score data from the present sample and past samples of investigators. This analysis identified scores that may suggest a concern versus those scores that may be interpreted as excellent, proficient, or marginal. Implications for training and mentoring, along with considerations for future research are discussed. (shrink)

In “Sex selection and regulated hatred”1 John Harris launches a vehement critique of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s recent report Sex Selection: options for regulation, raising several issues that merit discussion.He begins by complaining about the recommendation that because of the theoretical risk associated with the use of flow cytometry as a method of sperm sorting, its use should be restricted for the moment to cases in which a clear medical benefit is to be gained from its use. Harris (...) objects that in this recommendation “an absurdly high standard of caution is employed”, since a theoretical risk is associated with almost all medical procedures. This objection is misplaced: as paragraph 142 of the report indicates, the phrase “theoretical risk” is to be understood here in the light of the earlier discussion of the risks arising from the fact that flow cytometry exposes sperm to laser energy, a procedure which is known to be liable to damage DNA. Since the application of flow cytometry to humans is a new procedure, the risk of human genetic defects caused this way is still only “theoretical”; nonetheless it is serious enough to warrant caution—hence the recommendation that at present flow cytometry should be available only when its use brings clear medical benefits. The HFEA has recently been criticised by some for not being cautious enough when permitting the use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection even though in that case there are clear medical benefits from its use. It is extraordinary that Harris should now criticise the HFEA for not throwing caution to the winds concerning flow cytometry.Harris’ next point concerns the justification for this suggestion that preimplantation sex selection should be available only where it is undertaken for medical reasons. The obvious way to justify this would appear …. (shrink)

The Law Most Beautiful and Best is a thoughtful and creative examination of the role irrational rhetoric ought to play in persuading citizens to voluntarily obey laws. Author Randall Baldwin Clark explores the figure of the physician in Plato's Laws to address this question, identifying the subtle ways in which Plato uses the physician's role in healing as a metaphor for the task of governance and arguing that Plato hints that rational discourse may ultimately be inadequate as a persuasive (...) technique. (shrink)

The Law Most Beautiful and Best is a thoughtful and creative examination of the role irrational rhetoric ought to play in persuading citizens to voluntarily obey laws. Author Randall Baldwin Clark explores the figure of the physician in Plato's Laws to address this question, identifying the subtle ways in which Plato uses the physician's role in healing as a metaphor for the task of governance and arguing that Plato hints that rational discourse may ultimately be inadequate as a persuasive (...) technique. (shrink)

Hrushovski originated the study of “flat” stable structures in constructing a new strongly minimal set and a stable 0-categorical pseudoplane. We exhibit a set of axioms which for collections of finite structure with dimension function δ give rise to stable generic models. In addition to the Hrushovski examples, this formalization includes Baldwin's almost strongly minimal non-Desarguesian projective plane and several others. We develop the new case where finite sets may have infinite closures with respect to the dimension function δ. (...) In particular, the generic structure need not be ω-saturated and so the argument for stability is significantly more complicated. We further show that these structures are “flat” and do not interpret a group. (shrink)

This book is devoted to the work of Robert A. Dahl, who passed away in 2014. Dahl was one of the most important American political scientists and normative democratic theorists of the post-war era, and he was also an influential teacher who mentored some of the most significant academics of the next two generations of American political science. As an incredibly productive scholar he had a career that spanned more than half a century, his first book was published in 1950 (...) his last was in 2007 at the age of 92. As a political scientist, he was respected even by those who were critical of his works. This theoretical significance and profound influence is reflected in the collection of chapters in this volume, which reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the contemporary US political science scene. His co-author Bruce Stinebrickner documents the evolution of his and Dahl’s seminal text, _Modern Political Analysis_ and how it became the standard introduction to American political science for nearly fifty years. Katharine MacKinnon’s chapter is of significance for its insights upon Dahl and also represents a succinct statement of a feminist reading and critique of contemporary political science. Steven Lukes contributes a highly concise statement of the difference between one-dimensional and three-dimensional power. This work will be a standard reference work for any researchers or those interested in the work of Robert Dahl, among both established academics and students. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _Journal of Political Power_. (shrink)

Engaging, accessible, and up-to-date, this work introduces the central debates of English language philosophy since 1945. It begins with a brief description of philosophical debate during the first half of the twentieth century, offering fascinating discussions of writings by Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, Quine, and Sellars. It then describes several ensuing philosophical debates that have shaped philosophical discussions since the 1960s, addressing the Davidson/Dummett debate on language; the Kripke/Lewis debate on possible worlds; the Popper/Kuhn debate on the justification in epistemology; the (...) debates on materialism, functionalism, and dual-aspect theories of mind; and recent work in moral psychology, metaethics, and normative ethics. It also includes a critical discussion of Rorty's metaphilosophical skepticism and pays extensive attention to writings of Strawson, Putnam, Evans, McDowell, Williams, Nagel, and many other contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

We give a model theoretic proof, replacing admissible set theory by the Lopez-Escobar theorem, of Makkai's theorem: Every counterexample to Vaught's Conjecture has an uncountable model which realizes only countably many ℒ$_{ω₁,ω}$-types. The following result is new. Theorem: If a first-order theory is a counterexample to the Vaught Conjecture then it has 2\sp ℵ₁ models of cardinality ℵ₁.

Successfully navigating the norms of a society is a complex task that involves recognizing diverse kinds of rules as well as the relative weight attached to them. In the United States, different kinds of rules—federal statutes and regulations, scientific norms, and professional ideals—guide the work of researchers. Penalties for violating these different kinds of rules and norms can range from the displeasure of peers to criminal sanctions. We proposed that it would be more difficult for researchers working in the U.S. (...) who were born in other nations to distinguish the seriousness of violating rules across diverse domains. We administered a new measure, the evaluating rules in science task, to National Institutes of Health-funded investigators. The ERST assessed perceptions of the seriousness of violating research regulations, norms, and ideals, and allowed us to calculate the degree to which researchers distinguished between the seriousness of each rule category. The ERST also assessed researchers’ predictions of the seriousness that research integrity officers would assign to the rules. We compared researchers’ predictions to the seriousness ratings of 112 RIOs working at U.S. research-intensive universities. U.S.-born researchers were significantly better at distinguishing between the seriousness of violating federal research regulations and violating ideals of science, and they were more accurate in their predictions of the views of RIOs. Acculturation to the U.S. moderated the effects of nationality on accuracy. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of future research and education. (shrink)

In their recent article on this subject, Rose and Sullivan suggest that we read: super scorpionem locustam, super sagittarium oculatam, super capricornum caprum et cornutam, etc. This is attractive and can, I suggest, be supported by a further argument. I propose that locustam be regarded as a pun on the celebrated lady poisoner of the period, Locusta. According to Tacitus, she was already infamous by the year 54, and continued to be a valuable tool of Nero throughout his reign. Petronius (...) is fond of puns, and the passage under discussion contains more than one. And the suggested play on locusta may be confirmed by Trimalchio himself, a little later on, in his lecturette on astrology: in scorpione venenarii et percussores. (shrink)

In their recent article on this subject, Rose and Sullivan suggest that we read: super scorpionem locustam, super sagittarium oculatam, super capricornum caprum et cornutam, etc. This is attractive and can, I suggest, be supported by a further argument.I propose that locustam be regarded as a pun on the celebrated lady poisoner of the period, Locusta. According to Tacitus, she was already infamous by the year 54, and continued to be a valuable tool of Nero throughout his reign. Petronius is (...) fond of puns, and the passage under discussion contains more than one. And the suggested play on locusta may be confirmed by Trimalchio himself, a little later on, in his lecturette on astrology: in scorpione venenarii et percussores. (shrink)

As an atheistic religious tradition, Buddhism conventionally stands in opposition to Christianity, and any bridge between them is considered to be riddled with contradictory beliefs on God the creator, salvific power and the afterlife. But what if a Buddhist could also be a Classical Theist? Showing how the various contradictions are not as fundamental as commonly thought, Tyler Dalton McNabb and Erik Baldwin challenge existing assumptions and argue that Classical Theism is, in fact, compatible with Buddhism. They draw parallels (...) between the metaphysical doctrines of both traditions, synthesize their ethical and soteriological commitments and demonstrate that the Theist can interpret the Buddhist's religious experiences, specifically those of emptiness, as veridical, without denying any core doctrine of Classical Theism. By establishing that a synthesis of the two traditions is plausible, this book provides a bold, fresh perspective on the philosophy of religion and reinvigorates philosophical debates between Buddhism and Christianity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Knave and the Interests of JusticeJason Baldwin, doctoral student in philosophyHume's account of the artificial virtues of justice and promise-keeping developed in Book III, Part ii of the Treatise is among the most provocative elements of his ethics. His goal there is to tell a naturalistic story of the origin and moral standing of these virtues, a story that makes no appeal to any irreducibly moral motives (...) or properties but instead grounds even our most basic and apparently binding obligations in the same thoroughly human passions and sentiments with which Hume explains all our actions. Several modern critics, including David Gauthier and Stephen Darwall, have claimed that Hume's story of the artificial virtues is inconsistent with his account of natural human motivations, and have further claimed that Hume himself became aware of this problem in the second Enquiry, where he discussed it in the famous "sensible knave" passage in the last paragraphs of the "Conclusion." They therefore claim that Hume abandoned in the Enquiry what is usually taken to be his official Treatise account of justice and promise-keeping, and may also have intended a different account in the Treatise itself.This paper argues that the sensible knave passage neither signals nor requires any significant change in Hume's official Treatise story of the artificial virtues. Part 1 summarizes this official account, Part 2 explains the challenge Gauthier and Darwall believe the sensible knave poses to this account, and Part 3 defends the standard Humean account from this challenge. Whatever other problems Hume's account of justice and promise-keeping may have, the free rider problem, as developed by Gauthier and Darwall through the character of the sensible knave, is not among them.1. The Interest Account of Artificial Virtues1.1 Hume's Predecessor TraditionsHume makes few explicit references to the English-speaking predecessors whose work informs his thinking about the artificial virtues, and I shall follow his example. [End Page 277] But without pretending to survey that rich and varied history, we may usefully think of Hume's approach to justice and its allied virtues as an attempt to preserve the strengths of two opposed predecessor traditions.1 The first tradition, represented most prominently by Hobbes but also by Mandeville, explains the origin of virtues generally, including Humean artificial virtues, in purely naturalistic terms, without any appeal to divinely ordained ends or observer-independent moral facts. Hume shares this humanistic aspiration, but he disavows the cynical skepticism and crude egoism which are usually taken to accompany it. He wants to tell a story about justice which will allow us to admire its genuine moral worth even as we acknowledge its human pedigree.The second tradition, a reaction to the first, is the moral sense school represented by Shaftesbury, Butler, and especially Hutcheson. This tradition insists, against the cynical egoists, on a moral reality to which our sentiments or consciences give us immediate access, an access secured by God's design. Also characteristic of the moral sense theorists is the claim that human nature contains benevolent motives which are the objects of the moral sense's approval and which are just as basic to our constitution as are selfish motives. Hume avails himself of both moral sense strands, albeit in attenuated form. He agrees that justice and injustice are known by the sentiments, and he also believes that benevolent first-order motives are a part of human nature. But Hume rejects the moral sense tradition's Christian teleology, and he is also less optimistic about the potential of benevolence to explain such complex moral behaviors as are involved in our institutions of justice and promise-keeping.Hume's standard Treatise story of the origin of justice and promise-keeping, which we may call the "interest account," has two stages. In the first stage, Hume explains how the practices which constitute justice and promise-keeping arise through the working of our natural interests; in this stage Hume might be seen as working in the broadly naturalistic-egoist tradition. In the second stage, Hume explains how these practices and the motives which underlie them become the objects of moral evaluation, i.e., why... (shrink)

Kant's claim that modality is a 'category' provides an approach to modality to be contrasted with Lewis's reductive analysis. Lewis's position is unsatisfactory, since it depends on an inherently modal conception of a world. This suggests that modality is 'primitive'; and the Kantian position is a prima facie plausible position of this kind, which is filled out by considering the relationship between modality and inference. This provides a context for comparing the Kantian position with Wright's non-cognitivist 'conventionalism'. Wright's position is (...) vulnerable to the type of argument used against ethical non-cognitivism, and the Kantian position is further confirmed by Blackburn's acknowledgment that modality is 'antinaturalistic to its core'. The position is further elaborated to show that it can accommodate the famous Kripkean categories of the empirically necessary and the contingent a priori, and finally defended against the criticisms used by Quine against Carnap. (shrink)

This book brings together contributions from scholars from Europe and the United States to honor the theological work of Antje Jackelén, the first female Archbishop of the Church of Sweden. In Archbishop Antje Jackelén's installation homily, she identifies the strength of the Church as a "global network of prayer threads." This book is an honorary and celebratory volume providing a "global network of prayerful essays" by contributors from a variety of academic disciplines to creatively engage, reflect, and illuminate the theological (...) work of Archbishop Jackelén. Prior to her tenure in the Church of Sweden as Bishop of the Diocese of Lund and now the Archbishop of the Church of Sweden, Jackelén served as professor of Systematic Theology, Director of the Zygon Center and President of European Society for the Study of Science and Religion (ESSSAT). While each essay intentionally embraces the theological and ministerial work of Jackelén during her academic tenure, they also venture into areas as diverse as climate change, media studies, human uniqueness, hermeneutics, time, ethics, Christian theological tradition and history, traumatology, politics and society. As the first diverse explication of the theological thinking of Archbishop Jackelén by her theological colleagues, this text provides scholars with an expansion of the scope of Archbishop Jackelén's theological thinking and initiates laity into the impact of Jackelén thinking that combines with grace and precision the traditions of the Church, the challenges and gifts of the sciences, and the needs and longings of society and the world. (shrink)

We give a general account of the goals of axiomatization, introducing a variant on Detlefsen’s notion of ‘complete descriptive axiomatization’. We describe how distinctions between the Greek and modern view of number, magnitude, and proportion impact the interpretation of Hilbert’s axiomatization of geometry. We argue, as did Hilbert, that Euclid’s propositions concerning polygons, area, and similar triangles are derivable from Hilbert’s first-order axioms. We argue that Hilbert’s axioms including continuity show much more than the geometrical propositions of Euclid’s theorems and (...) thus are an immodest complete descriptive axiomatization of that subject. (shrink)

High moral standards and adherence to a moral code have long been strong tenets of the profession of medicine, even though there have been occasional lapses that have led to renewed calls for a revitalization of moral integrity in medicine. Certainly, a moral component has generally been held to be an important aspect of the concept of a physician.

G. E. Moore's fame as a philosopher rests on his ethics of love and beauty, which inspired Bloomsbury, and on his 'common sense' certainties which challenge abstract philosophical theory. Behind this lies his critical engagement with Kant's idealist philosophy, which is published here for the first time. These early writings, Moore's fellowship dissertations of 1897 and 1898, show how he initiated his influential break with idealism. In 1897 his main target was Kant's ethics, but by 1898 it was the whole (...) Kantian project of transcendental philosophy that he rejected, and the theory which he developed to replace it gave rise to the new project of philosophy as logical analysis. This edition includes comments by Moore's examiners Henry Sidgwick, Edward Caird and Bernard Bosanquet, and in a substantial introduction the editors explore the crucial importance of the dissertations to the history of twentieth-century philosophical thought. (shrink)

[Robert Stalnaker] Saul Kripke made a convincing case that there are necessary truths that are knowable only a posteriori as well as contingent truths that are knowable a priori. A number of philosophers have used a two-dimensional model semantic apparatus to represent and clarify the phenomena that Kripke pointed to. According to this analysis, statements have truth-conditions in two different ways depending on whether one considers a possible world 'as actual' or 'as counterfactual' in determining the truth-value of the statement (...) relative to that possible world. There are no necessary a posteriori or contingent a priori propositions: rather, contingent a priori and necessary a posteriori statements are statements that are necessary when evaluated one way, and contingent when evaluated the other way. This paper distinguishes two ways that the two-dimensional framework can be interpreted, and argues that one of them gives the better account of what it means to 'consider a world as actual', but that it provides no support for any notion of purely conceptual a priori truth. /// [Thomas Baldwin] Two-dimensional possible world semantic theory suggests that Kripke's examples of the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori should be handled by interpreting names as implicitly indexical. Like Stalnaker, I reject this account of names and accept that Kripke's examples have to be accommodated within a metasemantic theory. But whereas Stalnaker maintains that a metasemantic approach undermines the conception of a priori truth, I argue that it offers the opportunity to develop a conception of the a priori aspect of stipulations, conceived as linguistic performances. The resulting position accommodates Kripke's examples in a way which is both intrinsically plausible and fits with Kripke's actual discussion of them. (shrink)

Russell famously propounded scepticism about memory in The Analysis of Mind (1921). As he there acknowledged, one way to counter this sceptical position is to hold that memory involves direct acquaintance with past, and this is in fact a thesis Russell had advanced in The Problems of Philosophy (1911). Indeed he had there used the case of memory to develop a sophisticated falibilist, non-sceptical, epistemology. By 1921, however, Russell had rejected the early conception of memory as incompatible with the neutral (...) monism he now affirmed. In its place he argued that memory involves a distinctive type of belief whose content is given by imagery. Russell's language here is off-putting but without much distortion his later position can be interpreted as an early formulation of a functionalist theory of mind based on a causal theory of mental representation. Thus interpreted it provides the basis for a different response to Russell's sceptical thesis. (shrink)