ObjectivesThe end of life is an ethically challenging time requiring complex decision-making. This study describes ethical frameworks among physician trainees, explores how these frameworks manifest and relates these frameworks to experiences delivering end-of-life care.DesignWe conducted semistructured in-depth exploratory qualitative interviews with physician trainees about experiences of end-of-life care and moral distress. We analysed the interviews using thematic analysis.SettingAcademic teaching hospitals in the United States and United Kingdom.ParticipantsWe interviewed 30 physician trainees. We purposefully sampled across three domains we expected to be (...) associated with individual ethics in order to elicit a diversity of ethical and experiential perspectives.ResultsSome trainees subscribed to a best interest ethical framework, characterised by offering recommendations consistent with the patient’s goals and values, presenting only medically appropriate choices and supporting shared decision-making between the patient/family and medical team. Others endorsed an autonomy framework, characterised by presenting all technologically feasible choices, refraining from offering recommendations and prioritising the voice of patient/family as the decision-maker.ConclusionsThis study describes how physician trainees conceptualise their roles as being rooted in an autonomy or best interest framework. Physician trainees have limited clinical experience and decision-making autonomy and may have ethical frameworks that are dynamic and potentially highly influenced by experiences providing end-of-life care. A better understanding of how individual physicians’ ethical frameworks influences the care they give provides opportunities to improve patient communication and advance the role of shared decision-making to ensure goal-aligned end-of-life care. (shrink)

A physical and mathematical framework for the analysis of probabilities in quantum theory is proposed and developed. One purpose is to surmount the problem, crucial to any reconciliation between quantum theory and space-time physics, of requiring instantaneous “wave-packet collapse” across the entire universe. The physical starting point is the idea of an observer as an entity, localized in space-time, for whom any physical system can be described at any moment, by a set of (not necessarily pure) quantum states compatible with (...) his observations of the system at that moment. The mathematical starting point is the theory of local algebras from axiomatic relativistic quantum field theory. A function defining thea priori probability of mistaking one local state for another is analysed. This function is shown to possess a broad range of appropriate properties and to be uniquely defined by a selection of them. Through a general model for observations, it is argued that the probabilities defined here are as compatible with experiment as the probabilities of conventional interpretations of quantum mechanics but are more likely to be compatible, not only with modern developments in mathematical physics, but also with a complete and consistent theory of measurement. (shrink)

Lucas Matthews and I substantially revised my SEP entry on Heritability. This version includes discussion of the missing heritability problem and other issues that arise from the use of Genome Wide Association Studies by Behavioral Geneticists.

In this introduction we set out some salient themes that will help structure understanding of a complex set of intersecting issues discussed in this special issue on the work of Marc Lewis: conceptual foundations of the disease model, tolerating the disease model given socio-political environments, and A third wave: refining conceptualization of addiction in the light of Lewis’s model.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Against Definition. Eric Matthews. -/- Keywords: definition, mental illness, ideology -/- Varelius rightly says, in the very first sentence of his article, that 'The nature of mental disorder is a controversial issue.' But I do not think he recognizes just how deeply controversial it is. He hopes to be able to find a way of resolving the controversy by his chosen method, based on a consideration of (...) 'the goals that we have in classifying certain persons as mentally disordered.' However, not only does the adoption of that method presuppose that the controversy is resoluble, it is also somewhat circular. For to be able to set out the goals that we have in classifying some people as mentally disordered, we already have to know which persons we so classify, and so what is meant by calling them 'mentally disordered.' There are several appeals to alleged 'intuitions' and one to a 'paradigm case' in Varelius's article; but, if we had such intuitions, they would be all we needed to define the concept of mental disorder, and there would be no need for the further reference to our goals in demarcating this class of human conditions.I want to argue that any alleged 'intuitions' we might have in regard to mental disorder are philosophically useless, and that the controversy about the nature of mental disorder is intrinsically irresoluble. Any claimed intuition can always be met by a rival intuition that is irreconcilable with the first. It is this, indeed, that makes the dispute about mental disorder essentially philosophical, rather than scientific, in character. Philosophical positions have to be based on, and defended by, rational argument, but there necessarily comes a point in any philosophical dispute at which no rational argument can settle the matter one way or the other. Varelius derives his methodology of considering goals of demarcation from some work done using this method on the concept of science. But people have different goals for demarcating 'science' from 'non-science' or 'pseudo-science.' The demarcation is not made, as Varelius suggests, on the basis of such criteria as testability of hypotheses or clarity of concepts; or rather, the application of these criteria themselves is determined by the goals of demarcation. The debate about what is to count as a 'science' is irresoluble in part because what we classify as such has evaluative and practical consequences. To be a 'science,' in our culture, is to be a valued activity, to have a status to be aspired to. This makes arguments about what it is to be scientific what I would like to call 'ideological' in character. Similar considerations apply to the dispute about the nature of mental disorder. Human societies have always distinguished madness from reason, disturbed or disordered behavior, thoughts, and emotions from those that are not disordered. But the purpose of making the distinction, and thus the character of the distinction made, has varied from society to society and from one historical period to another. The historian Roy Porter, in his short work Madness: A Brief History (2002) describes some of the different images of madness which have prevailed at different times in Western culture—as a divine punishment for hubris, as [End Page 53] a source of poetic inspiration, as the inevitable result of moral excess, as diabolical possession, and so on. The modern idea of mental disorder as mental illness is only one possible way of classifying together certain sorts of deviations from normality. Varelius's method of arriving at a definition of mental illness involves 'considering the goals that we have in classifying certain persons as mentally disordered.' But we can ask who are the 'we' in question, and whether 'we' have only one set of goals in classifying people in this way. The history referred to in the preceding paragraph suggests that 'we' means those members of society who do not regard themselves as disordered—the 'normal' people whose behavior can be readily understood by other normal people. Classifying someone as mentally disordered is distinguishing them as 'not one of us,' and this can serve various purposes, for instance, treating them as objects of entertainment in a human zoo, as in Bedlam; or treating them as moral. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 205-207 [Access article in PDF] The Relevance of Phenomenology Eric Matthews Keywords phenomenology, introspective psychology, Merleau-Ponty, melancholia Martin wyllie's paper raises very impor-tant issues about the relevance of phe-nomenology to psychiatry, but the language in which he presents phenomenology unfortunately makes it sound (contrary to his own intentions) too much like empirical introspective psychology. The aim of this commentary is to improve (...) the presentation of phenomenology, drawing particularly on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to develop Wylie's position and to bring out better the relevance of this approach to our understanding of mental disorder in general and of melancholia/depression in particular.I am essentially in sympathy with Martin Wyllie's account of the phenomenology of what he prefers to call melancholia (and indeed have discussed it with him on numerous occasions). His present paper, as well as containing many valuable insights on that topic, also raises important questions about the relevance of phenomenology to the theory and practice of psychiatry, and it is on those questions that I aim to concentrate in this commentary, in the hope of developing further what Martin has begun. To do this, it is necessary first of all to set out a more thorough account of what is meant, in this context, by phenomenology.Phenomenology is often presented as if it were a kind of empirical introspective psychology, and Martin's choice of language unfortunately sometimes (certainly not always) gives the impression that he shares that understanding of the term. For instance, he says that a phenomenological description of "lived time" tells us " 'what it is like' to experience 'lived time'" (2005, 173); and in other places uses causal terms about the relation between different aspects of lived experience, for example, that are more appropriate to an empirical, scientific, study. This is certainly one accepted use of phenomenology, but it is not what was meant by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the two philosophers whom he clearly has most in mind in his paper; and, more important perhaps, it is not the sort of phenomenology likely to shed the most light on the psychiatry of melancholia.In my commentary, therefore, I try to set out as clearly and briefly as I can an alternative and more appropriate account of relevant aspects of phenomenology, in the form with which I am most familiar, that which it takes in the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology was, just as Husserl, its founder, had described it, "the study of essences" (Merleau-Ponty 2002, vii). That is, it was not an empirical study of the contingent contents of any individual's experience, but an investigation of the universal structures of human experience as such. But at the same time (and here we see a distinctive approach of Merleau-Ponty's own, derived from his reading of Heidegger and the [End Page 205] later Husserl), "phenomenology is also a philosophy which puts essences back into existence" (2002, vii). Human experience is not, for him, that of a "transcendental subject", standing outside the world and simply observing it: human being is, in the phrase he derived from Heidegger, "being-in-the-world". That is, we exist within the world, actively engaging with it, and our experience of it directly "opens on to" the world which we experience.The world is thus "objective" in the sense that it is always already there—we do not create it, we inhabit it, and the world we inhabit necessarily extends beyond our experience of it. But the world we inhabit necessarily has a "subjective" meaning for us, just because we inhabit it and actively engage with it. To take a simple example, we necessarily see some items in the world as food because we experience hunger. These subjective meanings are just as much part of the world as we experience it as the measurable properties of objects in which science is interested. They give sense to the idea that the world is our world, that "subjective" and "objective" are not polar opposites, but are necessarily entangled in our... (shrink)

We have argued elsewhere that moral responsibility over time depends in part upon the having of psychological connections which facilitate forms of self-control. In this chapter we explore the importance of mental time travel - our ordinary ability to mentally travel to temporal locations outside the present, involving both memory of our personal past and the ability to imagine ourselves in the future - to our agential capacities for planning and control. We suggest that in many individuals with dissociative disorders, (...) forms of amnesia, or other frontal lobe damage, our capacity for mental time travel is impaired, resulting in commensurate losses to agency autonomy, and a forensic condition essential for holding persons responsible: in legal terms, the capacity for mens rea. (shrink)

The organization of the genome into topologically associated domains (TADs) appears to be a fundamental process occurring across a wide range of eukaryote organisms, and it likely plays an important role in providing an architectural foundation for gene regulation. Initial studies emphasized the remarkable parallels between TAD organization in organisms as diverse as Drosophila and mammals. However, whereas CCCTC‐binding factor (CTCF)/cohesin loop extrusion is emerging as a key mechanism for the formation of mammalian topological domains, the genome organization in Drosophila (...) appears to depend primarily on the partitioning of chromatin state domains. Recent work suggesting a fundamental conserved role of chromatin state in building domain architecture is discussed and insights into genome organization from recent studies in Drosophila are considered. (shrink)

The contrast between the reception of Anselms argument in the prior acceptance of univocal or analogical accounts of being. 1 P. A. Daniels argued that the prerequisites for Bonaventureontologicals argument among the first scholastics of the thirteenth century depended upon their allegiance to Augustinian or Aristotelian traditions. 3 Anton Pegis did the same when he insisted that recovery of the Anselmian argument in its original form involved stripping away the Aristotelian framework in terms of which the Proslogion has been read (...) since Thomas. 4. (shrink)

The Critique of the Power of Judgment is the third of Kant's great critiques following the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason. This translation of Kant's masterpiece follows the principles and high standards of all other volumes in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. This volume, first published in 2000, includes: the indispensable first draft of Kant's introduction to the work; an English edition notes to the many differences between the first and second (...) editions of the work; and relevant passages in Kant's anthropology lectures where he elaborated on his aesthetic views. All in all this edition offers the serious student of Kant a dramatically richer, more complete and more accurate translation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 5-8.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 193-198.

Research on personality psychology is making important contributions to psychological science and applied psychology. This second edition of The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology offers a one-stop resource for scientific personality psychology. It summarizes cutting-edge personality research in all its forms, including genetics, psychometrics, social-cognitive psychology, and real-world expressions, with informative and lively chapters that also highlight some areas of controversy. The team of renowned international authors, led by two esteemed editors, ensures a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Each research (...) area is discussed in terms of scientific foundations, main theories and findings, and future directions for research. The handbook also features advances in technology, such as molecular genetics and functional neuroimaging, as well as contemporary statistical approaches. An invaluable aid to understanding the central role played by personality in psychology, it will appeal to students, researchers, and practitioners in psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and the social sciences. (shrink)

“A Liberal Account of Addiction‘ is a major contribution to the discussion of addiction, its treatment, and the social and policy issues which arise from it. Questioning as it does many generally accepted assumptions about addictive behavior, particularly the use of hard drugs, it will provoke even those who do not agree with it to rethink their positions. Many of its suggestions are relevant also, in my opinion, to thinking about other areas of psychiatric interest. Nevertheless, I want to argue (...) that its authors have perhaps not freed themselves sufficiently from some common assumptions, in particular about the nature of mental disorder, and that their argument might benefit from such liberation. The central assumption that I have in mind is that understanding human actions is nothing but understanding the brain activity that accompanies them. If so, then a pattern of behavior can count as a ’mental disorder’ in any clinically or legally relevant sense only if it is the result of a brain disease, causing a breakdown in normal brain functioning. Starting from this assumption, the authors seek to show, by means of evidence from neuroscience, that addiction to drugs does not have a unique ’neural substrate,’ distinct from that of any other kind of pleasure-seeking behavior. When we have a pleasurable experience of any kind, as they point out, dopamine is normally released within the brain. This, they say, activates the ’reward’ pathways, making the person more likely to repeat the behavior that gives rise to the pleasurable experience in questionÑwhether it is eating, sex, or injecting heroin. Addiction, they argue, is therefore just a tendency to repeat an intensely pleasurable experience, whatever the nature of that experience might be. The particular chemistry of the substance involved in this particular form of pleasure is, they argue, irrelevantÑall that matters is that the experience it gives someone is pleasant. Addiction, they. (shrink)

Forty years ago Norman Malcolm presented a now-famous paper at the Eastern Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association in Burlington, Vermont. MalcolmKnowledge of Other Minds.” The paper focused on the Argument from Analogy for Other Minds, which, of course, Malcolm roundly criticized. After making a number of preliminary points, Malcolm stated.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 437-438 [Access article in PDF] Michael V. Wedin. Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford Aristotle Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 482. Cloth, $55.00. Michael Wedin has written the equivalent for Aristotle of what biblical scholars would call a "harmony of the gospels." It is a wonderfully rich and argumentatively dense reconstruction of (...) Aristotle's two most important treatises on substance, the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta, works that many of our most able Aristotle scholars have declared irreconcilable.The first chapter, on "the plan" of the Categories, includes a sensible account of the role in that work of the "onymies," as Wedin calls homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. The second chapter, which focuses on "nonsubstantial individuals" in the Categories, gives the most philosophically sophisticated reconstruction known to me of how Aristotle might have conceived this white in Socrates to be a nonrecurrent particular. Having myself contributed to the glut of recent scholarship on nonsubstantial individuals in the Categories, I have personal, as well as professional, reasons to praise the rigor and insight of this chapter.In Chapter 3 Wedin tries to pin down the ontological commitment of Aristotle's Categories. Since, if there were no primary substances there would not be anything else, the fundamental ontological commitment of the Categories is a commitment to primary substances. Individual nonsubstances exist just in case there are primary substances in which they inhere. As for species and genera of substances and species and genera of the nonsubstantial individuals that inhere in them, Wedin finds Aristotle curiously indifferent to their existence.Chapter 4, a transitional chapter, takes up a range of possible views on the relation between the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Incompatibilism is argued against, yet the arguments for compatibilism in recent commentaries are found to be insufficient. In the next chapter Wedin moves on to his own statement of, and justification for, compatibilism.The key to Wedin's compatibilist interpretation is the distinction he draws between being a substance and being the "substance-of" something. Zeta can then be seen to be supplementing, rather than revising, let alone contradicting, the Categories, if Zeta can be understood to be about the substance-of the primary substances of the Categories (157-8).Aristotle proposes in Z3 three candidates for what the substance of, say, Socrates, is, namely, his matter, his form, and the compound of the two. Aristotle settles on form and discusses form as essence in Z4 and Z5, which discussion Wedin takes up in his own [End Page 437] Chapter 6. Then in Chapter 7 Wedin takes on the enigmatic claim of Z6, "In the case of things that are primary and spoken of per se, it is clear that the thing and the essence of the thing are the same" (1032a4-6).Wedin makes Chapter 8, which is primarily a treatment of Z10 and Z11, a discussion of Aristotle on "compositional plasticity," that is, on whether, say, the form of human being might be realized in something other than flesh and bones. "[O]ne could grant," Wedin writes, that to be a human being is just to be a member of a determinate biological species and so to have a very specific material nature, and yet insist that the form of such creatures be realizable in quite different sorts of matter. Creatures so constituted would not be human beings but they would be entities with similar functional capacities and states... From the point of view of philosophy of mind, for example, what matters are the psychological capacities, functions, and states characteristic of persons. Just what these are is determined by a form—the form that happens to be realized in human matter. (340-41) In Chapter 9 Wedin turns to Z13, which, as he acknowledges, has often been thought to be the most confounding chapter in Zeta. Wedin draws on Z16 to help resolve the aporia with which Z13 ends (roughly this... (shrink)

Augustine is both one of the great dogmatic thinkers in our Western tradition and also one of the most Socratic. How can that be? I suggest that Augustine is given to puzzling over questions of the form “How is it possible that p?”– for example, “How is it possible to measure time when no length of time is ever present to be measured?” Moreover, he asks questions of this form even when he is in no doubt that p is the (...) case. (Thus he is in no doubt that we can measure periods of time even though, strictly speaking, no period of time is ever present.) I suggest further that we can learn something about good teaching from studying Augustine's Socratic‐style inquiry. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: the goals of science education; what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for all students; how science should be taught in traditional cultures; what (...) integrated science is; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. In part, answers to these questions hinge on views about the nature of science, views that are best informed by historical and philosophical study. Outlining the history of liberal, or contextual, approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education. The book will appeal to school and university science teachers, educators of science teachers, and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

The Anthropocene prompts renewed critical reflection on some of the central tenets of modern thought including narratives of ‘progress’, the privileging of the nation state, and the universalist rendering of the human. In this context it is striking that ‘rights’, a quintessentially modern mode of articulating normativity, are often presumed to have an enduring relevance in the contemporary moment, exemplified in renewed recourse to rights in their attribution to parts of the nonhuman world. Our intervention contemplates ways in which the (...) apparent disorientations of the Anthropocene might allow for a generative reorientation of some of these presuppositions. We critically consider the institutional and discursive limitations of rights and the ambivalence of rights language, and argue that the monism that rights so often implies limits the capacity to foster generative encounters between Indigenous and non-Indigenous legal traditions. We develop a critical discourse of obligation, understood here to both precede and exceed the rights-duty correlate so central to modern law. An attentiveness to the priority of obligation, we argue, might allow us to foreground an ethics of encounter between traditions, to examine the limits of modernity’s legal and political imaginary, and to pursue a ‘radical re-storying’ of laws for the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This collection of essays examines how philosophers in the Western tradition have viewed and written about children through the ages. (Philosophy).

This anthology contains selected papers from the 'Science as Culture' conference held at Lake Como, and Pavia University Italy, 15-19 September 1999. The conference, attended by about 220 individuals from thirty countries, was a joint venture of the International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Group (its fifth conference) and the History of Physics and Physics Teaching Division of the European Physical Society (its eighth conference). The magnificient Villa Olmo, on the lakeshore, provided a memorable location for the presentors of the (...) 160 papers and the audience that discussed them. The conference was part of local celebrations of the bicentenary of Alessandro Volta's creation of the battery in 1799. Volta was born in Como in 1745, and for forty years from 1778 he was professor of experimental physics at Pavia University. The conference was fortunate to have had the generous financial support of the Italian government's Volta Bicentenary Fund, Lombardy region, Pavia University, Italian Research Council, and Kluwer Academic Publishers. The papers included here, have or will be, published in the journal Science & Education, the inaugural volume (1992) of which was a landmark in the history of science education publication, because it was the first journal in the field devoted to contributions from historical, philosophical and sociological scholarship. Clearly these 'foundational' disciplines inform numerous theoretical, curricular and pedagogical debates in science education. Contemporary Concerns The reseach promoted by the International and European Groups, and by the journal, is central to science education programmes in most areas of the world. (shrink)

It has become quite common for people to develop `personal'' relationships nowadays, exclusively via extensive correspondence across the Net. Friendships, even romantic love relationships, are apparently, flourishing. But what kind of relations really are possible in this way? In this paper, we focus on the case of close friendship. There are various important markers that identify a relationship as one of close friendship. One will have, for instance, strong affection for the other, a disposition to act for their well-being and (...) a desire for shared experiences. Now obviously, while all these features of friendship can gain some expression through extensive correspondence on the Net, such expression is necessarily limited –you cannot, e.g., physically embrace the other, or go on a picnic together. The issue we want to address here however, is whether there might be distinctive and important influences on the structure of interaction undertaken on the Net, that affect the kind of identity ``Net-friends'''' can develop in relation to one another. In the normal case, one develops a close friendship, and in doing so, one''s identity, in part, is shaped by the friendship. To some extent, through extensive shared experience, one comes to see aspects of the world (and of oneself) through the eyes of one''s friend and so, in part, one''s identity develops in an importantly relational way, i.e., as the product of one''s relation with the close friend. In our view, however, on account of the limits of, and/or the kind of, shared contact and experience one can have with another via correspondence on the Net, there are significant structural barriers to developing the sort of relational identity that is a feature of close friendship. In arguing our case here, and by using the case of Net ``friendship'''' as our foil, we aim to shed light on the nature and importance of certain sorts of self-expression and relational interaction found in close friendship. (shrink)

This book provides a richly documented account of the historical, cultural, philosophical and practical dimensions of feng shui. It argues that where feng shui is entrenched educational systems have a responsibility to examine its claims, and that this examination provides opportunities for students to better learn about the key features of the nature of science, the demarcation of science and non-science, the characteristics of pseudoscience, and the engagement of science with culture and worldviews. The arguments presented for feng shui being (...) a pseudoscience can be marshalled when considering a whole range of comparable beliefs and the educational benefit of their appraisal. Feng shui is a deeply-entrenched, three-millennia-old system of Asian beliefs and practices about nature, architecture, health, and divination that has garnered a growing presence outside of Asia. It is part of a comprehensive and ancient worldview built around belief in chi the putative universal energy or life-force that animates all existence, the cosmos, the solar system, the earth, and human bodies. Harmonious living requires building in accord with local chi streams; good health requires replenishment and manipulation of internal chi flow; and a beneficent afterlife is enhanced when buried in conformity with chi directions. Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on the proper manipulation of internal chi by acupuncture, tai-chi and qigong exercise, and herbal dietary supplements. Matthews has produced another tour de force that will repay close study by students, scientists, and all those concerned to understand science, culture, and the science/culture nexus. Harvey Siegel, Philosophy, University of Miami, USA With great erudition and even greater fluidity of style, Matthews introduces us to this now-world-wide belief system. Michael Ruse, Philosophy, Florida State University, USA The book is one of the best research works published on Feng Shui. Wang Youjun, Philosophy, Shanghai Normal University, China The history is fascinating. The analysis makes an important contribution to science literature. James Alcock, Psychology, York University, Canada This book provides an in-depth study of Feng Shui in different periods, considering its philosophical, historical and educational dimensions; especially from a perspective of the ‘demarcation problem’ between science and pseudoscience. Yao Dazhi, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. (shrink)

We argue that contemporary conceptualizations of “persons” have failed to achieve the moral goals of “person-centred care” (PCC, a model of dementia care developed by Tom Kitwood) and that they are detrimental to those receiving care, their families, and practitioners of care. We draw a distinction between personhood and selfhood, pointing out that continuity or maintenance of the latter is what is really at stake in dementia care. We then demonstrate how our conceptualization, which is one that privileges the lived (...) experiences of people with dementia, and understands selfhood as formed relationally in connection with carers and the care environment, best captures Kitwood’s original idea. This conceptualization is also flexible enough to be applicable to the practice of caring for people at different stages of their dementia. Application of this conceptualization into PCC will best promote the well-being of people with dementia, while also encouraging respect and dignity in the care environment. (shrink)

This paper describes how to ethically conduct research with Black populations at the intersection of COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. We highlight the issues of historical mistrust in the USA and how this may impact Black populations’ participation in COVID-19 vaccination trials. We provide recommendations for researchers to ethically engage Black populations in research considering the current context. Our recommendations include understanding the impact of ongoing trauma, acknowledging historical context, ensuring diverse research teams and engaging in open and (...) honest conversations with Black populations to better address their needs. The core of our recommendation is recognising the impact of trauma in our research and health care practices. (shrink)

We present a framework for machine implementation of families of non-classical logics with Kripke-style semantics. We decompose a logic into two interacting parts, each a natural deduction system: a base logic of labelled formulae, and a theory of labels characterizing the properties of the Kripke models. By appropriate combinations we capture both partial and complete fragments of large families of non-classical logics such as modal, relevance, and intuitionistic logics. Our approach is modular and supports uniform proofs of soundness, completeness and (...) proof normalization. We have implemented our work in the Isabelle Logical Framework. (shrink)

Translation with notes of Ammonius' Commentary on Aristotle's Categories.

In the wake of colonial fragmentation and genocide, Indigenous ‘Khoisan resurgence’ movements in South Africa have mobilised subversive forms of authenticity, including heteroglossic and inventive translanguaging from fragments of Khoekhoegowab. In our analysis of video ethnographic texts produced in collaboration with the Gamtkwa Khoisan Council (GKC) in Hankey, the birthplace of Sarah Baartman, we explore how memory, language politics, and environmental activism are interwoven in acts of linguistic citizenship that constitute the ‘rememorying’ of a history that has remained persistently obscured. (...) We argue that rememorying advances a politics of reminding which counters the Rainbow Nation’s institutionalised politics of forgetting, as well as anthropological accounts that consider Indigenous activist invocations of history as merely ‘therapeutic’. Through an engagement with the memory activism of the GKC, we identify how reconstructing word-histories, reliving historical traumas, retelling histories of sites of memory, seeing oneself mirrored in one’s ancestors, and the nexus of land, memory, and time form the basis for shared meaning-making, bringing impetus, focus, and intergenerational continuity to struggles for environmental and land justice. (shrink)

This latest volume of BACAP Proceedings contains some innovative research by international scholars on Plato, Aristotle, and Sophocles. It covers such themes as Plato on the philosopher ruler, and Aristotle on essence and necessity in science. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

According to a Kantian conception truthfulness is characterised as a requirement of respect for the agency of another. In lying we manipulate the other’s rational capacities to achieve ends we know or fear they may not share. This is paradigmatically a failure of respect. In this paper we argue that the importance of truthfulness also lies in significant part in the ways in which it supports our agential need to make sense of the world, other people, and ourselves. Since sense-making (...) is something we do together, and that we can support or undermine, it generates norms of interaction that constitute a further, distinct, mode of recognition and respect for another’s agency. But the requirements of truthfulness and support for sense-making sometimes conflict. Through a series of cases, we analyze why and when a rigid insistence on truthfulness is disrespectful of the other and undermining of their agency. (shrink)