First truths, by G.W. von Leibniz.--Necessary and contingent truths, by G.W. Leibniz.--Of proposition, by T. Hobbes.--Introduction to the critique of pure reason, by I. Kant.--Kant, by A. Pap.--Of demonstration, and necessary truths, by J.S. Mill.--Views of some writers on the nature of arithmetical propositions, by G. Frege.--What is an empirical science, by B. Russell.--Two dogmas of empiricism, by W.V.O. Quine.--The meaning of a word, by J. Austin.--In defense of a dogma, by H.P. Grice and P.F. Strawson.

Stanley Cavell has been a brilliant, idiosyncratic, and controversial presence in American philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies for years. Even as he continues to produce new writing of a high standard -- an example of which is included in this collection -- his work has elicited responses from a new generation of writers in Europe and America. This collection showcases this new work, while illustrating the variety of Cavell's interests: in the "ordinary language" philosophy of Wittgenstein and Austin, (...) in film criticism and theory, in literature, psychoanalysis, and the American transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The collection also reprints Richard Rorty's early review of Cavell's magnum opus, The Claim of Reason (1979), and it concludes with Cavell's substantial set of responses to the essays, a highlight of which is his engagement with Rorty. (shrink)

The question of the moral significance of Scripture is in reality a question about what kind of community the church must be to make the narratives of Scripture central for its life.

This article is concerned with exploring the idea of places as providing persons with nourishment. This version of person–place relations is displayed in a paper by McHugh and, in provocative fashion, in Michel Serres’s analysis of the human condition as a parasitic one. Unlike McHugh, Serres combines his analysis of parasites with a concern that principled actors may be insufficiently attached to places. His views are revealed in his interpretations of works by Molière and Plato. By reinterpreting these works, I (...) try to suggest that Serres’s well-founded scepticism as to the level of commitment of principled actors to the places that, as he rightly points out, are nourishing them, may not apply to the sub-set of principled actors who deserve to be called particular. (shrink)

In contrast to attempts that have been made to measure the clarity of reporting of the methods of clinical trials in journal articles, we report here an attempt to measure the accuracy of methods reporting. We focus in this article on eligibility criteria as a test case for the reporting of clinical trial methods. We examined the reporting of eligibility criteria in the protocol, methods paper (if applicable), journal article, and Clinical Alert for articles appearing in print between January 1988 (...) and September 1994 for which a Clinical Alert had been issued. Eligibility criteria were further classified into five categories in order to examine the content of information loss, if any. On average, 82% of protocol eligibility criteria were reported in methods papers. Journal articles and Clinical Alerts fared somewhat worse: 63% of criteria were reported in journal articles, 19% in Clinical Alerts. In all three categories of medical communication, the reporting of criteria that defined the study disease tended to be complete; reporting of criteria relating to trial precision, patient safety, legal and ethical concerns, and administrative considerations, was not complete. We found that criteria for clinical trial eligibility are frequently under-reported in medical communications. Moreover, some of the criteria omitted are of considerable clinical importance. We suggest that in the design phase of clinical trials, proposed eligibility criteria be scrutinized closely. Those criteria that survive this scrutiny and that have clinical import must be reported upon fully and accurately when communicating trial results. (shrink)

Little is known about how children and adolescents conceptualize psychiatric disorders and psychiatric treatment. In the current study, children and adolescents diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) were interviewed about their understanding of ADHD and the medication used to treat their disorder. The participants were all taking Ritalin and ranged in age from 5 to 16 years. With increasing age, children improved in their ability to name their condition and the medication. Latency-aged children often did not perceive Ritalin as (...) helpful while adolescents recognized some value in taking medication. Some of the adolescents were also able to describe medication side effects. The implications of these findings for patient education are discussed. (shrink)

Aquesta publicació recull els textos de les ponències de "L'encontre Fora d'equi libri", organitzat pel Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació els dies 5, 6 i 7 de setembre de 2008, que planteja el paper de la inestabilitat i la tra nsformació en el món contemporani. Les causes, els mecanismes i les conseqüèncie s d'estar fora d'equilibri apareixen de forma diversa en els més diversos àmbits de les ciències, les humanitats i la creació en general. L'encontre s'organitzàe n tres (...) sessions: "homo ecologicus", que reflexiona sobre el fer de manera respec tuosa amb l'ambient; "viure el canvi", que reflexiona sobre la necessitat d'adap tació a un món canviant, i "artistes al laboratori", que reflexiona sobre les co ndicions favorables al procés de creació. (shrink)

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Remembering Fermi MORREL H. COHEN Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University Frelinghuysen Road. Piscataway, NJ 08854-8019 USA and Department ...

The past 15 years have witnessed a call for allopathic medicine to incorporate psychosocial perspectives into education and clinical practice. While a biopsychosocial perspective has influenced academic medicine in areas such as primary care and psychiatry, its direct impact on clinical medicine has been questionable. One barrier to the incorporation of psychosocial information into medicine which has only recently received attention has been different cultural assumptions which govern medicine versus the social-behavioral sciences. These assumptions are examined in the context of (...) four issues: knowledge paradigms, models of education, acculturation of psychosocial knowledge into medicine, and patient autonomy. This cultural analysis provides a vantage point for understanding similarities as well as points of divergence between psychosocial and biomedical knowledge and practice. (shrink)

Complex systems can be characterized by classes of equivalency of their elements defined according to system specific rules. We propose a generalized preferential attachment model to describe the class size distribution. The model postulates preferential growth of the existing classes and the steady influx of new classes. According to the model, the distribution changes from a pure exponential form for zero influx of new classes to a power law with an exponential cut-off form when the influx of new classes is (...) substantial. Predictions of the model are tested through the analysis of a unique industrial database, which covers both elementary units (products) and classes (markets, firms) in a given industry (pharmaceuticals), covering the entire size distribution. The model's predictions are in good agreement with the data. The paper sheds light on the emergence of the exponent tau approximately 2 observed as a universal feature of many biological, social and economic problems. (shrink)