We argue that intelligible appeals to interlevel causes (top-down and bottom-up) can be understood, without remainder, as appeals to mechanistically mediated effects. Mechanistically mediated effects are hybrids of causal and constitutive relations, where the causal relations are exclusively intralevel. The idea of causation would have to stretch to the breaking point to accommodate interlevel causes. The notion of a mechanistically mediated effect is preferable because it can do all of the required work without appealing to mysterious interlevel causes. When interlevel (...) causes can be translated into mechanistically mediated effects, the posited relationship is intelligible and should raise no special philosophical objections. When they cannot, they are suspect. (shrink)

Suppose that an altruistic agent who is uncertain between evidential and causal decision theory finds herself in a situation where these theories give conflicting verdicts. We argue that even if she has significantly higher credence in CDT, she should nevertheless act in accordance with EDT. First, we claim that the appropriate response to normative uncertainty is to hedge one's bets. That is, if the stakes are much higher on one theory than another, and the credences you assign to each of (...) these theories are not very different, then it is appropriate to choose the option that performs best on the high-stakes theory. Second, we show that, given the assumption of altruism, the existence of correlated decision makers will increase the stakes for EDT but leave the stakes for CDT unaffected. Together these two claims imply that whenever there are sufficiently many correlated agents, the appropriate response is to act in accordance with EDT. (shrink)

To live the complete Christian life through the cycle of conviction of sin, repentance, justification, sanctification, obedience, and hope is to experience the Decalogue in its fullness through Christ in the worship, preaching, and spiritual and moral witness in the community of believers and in the world.

James and Stumpf first met in Prague in 1882. James soon started corresponding with a “colleague with whose persons and whose ideas alike I feel so warm a sympathy.” With this, a lifelong epistolary friendship began. For 28 years until James’s death in 1910, Stumpf became James’s most important European correspondent. Besides psychological themes of great importance, such as the perception of space and of sound, the letters include commentary upon Stumpf’s and James’s main books, and many other works. The (...) two friends also exchange views concerning other scholars, religious faith and metaphysical topics. The different perspectives of the American and the German way of living, philosophizing and doing science are frequently under discussion. The letters also touch upon personal questions of historical interest. The book offers a critical edition and the English translation of hitherto unpublished primary sources. Historians of psychology and historians of philosophy will welcome the volume as a useful tool for their understanding of some crucial developments of the time. Scholars in the history of pragmatism and of phenomenology will also be interested in the volume. (shrink)

According to policy makers, telemedicine offers “huge opportunities to improve the quality and accessibility of health services.” It is defined as diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring, with doctors and patients separated by space but mediated through information and communication technologies. This mediation is explored through an ethnography of a U.K. teledermatology clinic. Diagnostic image transfer enables medicine at a distance, as patients are removed from knowledge generation by concentrating their identities into images. Yet that form of identity allows images and the (...) expert gaze to be brought into potentially lifesaving proximity. Following Latour’s thread, images must be captured and then mobilized to the knowledge base, where they must be stabilized into standard diagnoses, then combined with different images, waiting lists, skin lesions, dermatologists, paper records, and beds, so that ultimately, outcomes are produced. This huge task requires new knowledges and a widening of agency that, if unacknowledged, may see telemedicine projects continue to founder. (shrink)

Examines the notion of passivity in the work of Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben.

Global Justice: The Basics is a straightforward and engaging introduction to the theoretical study and practice of global justice. It examines the key political themes and philosophical debates at the heart of the subject, providing a clear outline of the field and exploring: the history of its development the current state of play its ongoing interdisciplinary development. Using case studies from around the world which illustrate the importance of the debates at the heart of global justice, as well as activist (...) campaigns for global justice, the book examines a wide range of theoretical debates from thinkers worldwide making it ideal for those seeking a balanced introduction to global justice. (shrink)

Papers from Binghamton University's Conferences on Medieval Latin Philosophy, 1995-2000, on St. Thomas Aquinas' oeuvre. The essays examine his sources within the Neoplatonic and Islamicist traditions, major themes in his writing, and his reflections on time and thought.

Considerable controversy has recently arisen regarding the patenting of medical and surgical processes in the United States. One such patent, viz. for a "chevron" incision used in ophthalmologic surgery, has especially occasioned heated response including a major, condemnatory ethics policy statement from the American Medical Association as well as federal legislation denying patent protection for most uses of a patented medical or surgical procedure. This article identifies and discusses the major legal, ethical and public policy considerations offered by proponents and (...) opponents of such patents. The existing literature divides up into those who favor such patents essentially without qualification, and those who condemn and wish to outlaw them. We advance a compromise position where administrative and legislative action is called for to provide more specific guidelines regarding the patentability of such processes by the Patent and Trademark Office. Our position, in sum, will be that too much is at stake in this complicated area for either the blanket prohibition, or wholesale, uncritical acceptance, of the patenting of medical and surgical processes or techniques. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to the esthetics of music. Aesthetics, which were of prime importance in thinking about music in the nineteenth century, are today sometimes suspected of being idle speculation. Yet judgments about music and every sort of musical activity are based on aesthetic presuppositions. Carl Dahlhaus gives an account of developments in the aesthetics of music from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. He combines a historical and systematic approach. Central themes in music are grouped together to illustrate (...) both the historical course of events and a systematic unity of the essential elements in the aesthetics of music. For this edition, the late Carl Dahlhaus provided an annotated bibliography. William Austin has added books for the English-speaking reader, and has also supplied notes to the text to help the student. (shrink)

The foundation of the Christian counselling movement -- Christian counselling in the UK -- The aims of Christian counselling -- Integrating psychological and biblical truth -- Sigmund Freud--the founding father of psychotherapy -- The individual psychology of Alfred Adler -- Abraham Maslow--the man with new age tendencies -- Carl Rogers--a man who believed in himself -- Albert Ellis--the aggressive atheist -- The Bible's verdict on psychological 'truth' -- The case against Larry Crabb -- Self-esteem: the secular foundation -- Self-esteem (...) and the Christian counselling movement -- Self-esteem dogma in the light of scripture. (shrink)

This is the first full-length study in English of twentieth-century Germany's most influential authoritarian right-wing political theorist, Carl Schmitt, that focuses on the central place of his attack on the liberal rule of law. This is also the first book in any language to devote substantial attention to Schmitt's subterranean influence on some of the most important voices in political thought in the United States after 1945.

William Rasch offers a reading of Carl Schmitt that avoids rehashing the controversies of the Weimar era in favour of examining a broader historical context. He examines Schmitt's notion of political theology, eschewing theocratic intention but taking seriously the 'secularization' of patterns of thought derived from Medieval theology.

By challenging any assumed passivity in British adoption of continental reform, reception calls for a closer scrutiny of their relationships. The reception of Martin Luther in England reflects his changing role among continental Protestants. This chapter identifies how English reception of Luther shifted over time. Whereas the early English writer William Tyndale adapted Luther’s theological writing to speak to his own preoccupations, John Foxe was largely responsible for Elizabethan translations of Luther’s commentaries that provided pastoral guidance for afflicted consciences. (...) Luther’s translations continued to speak to troubled consciences in the seventeenth century, yet English divines more often cited Luther as a symbol than as a source in the heated debates over justification in the mid-seventeenth century. The symbolic status of Luther in theological disputes, however, did not simply introduce the indiscriminate use of his example. (shrink)

One of the main early forms of “functionalism,” developed by writers like Jerry Fodor and William Lycan, focused on “mechanistic” explanation in the special sciences and argued that “functional properties” in psychology were continuous in nature with the special science properties posited in such mechanistic explanations. I dub the latter position“Continuity Functionalism” and use it to critically examine the “Standard Picture” of the metaphysics of functionalism which takes “functional” properties to be second-order properties and claims there are two metaphysical (...) forms of “functionalism,” in so-called “role” and “realizer” functionalism. Looking at mechanistic explanations, I show that the “functional properties” posited in the special sciences are not second-order properties and that Continuity Functionalism is a distinctive metaphysical version of functionalism not covered by the Standard Picture. My conclusion is that the Standard Picture offers us a false dichotomy of ways to be a “functionalist” and that “functionalists” thus need to look once more to the special sciences to configure their views, thus eschewing the machinery inherited from “analytic” philosophers. (shrink)

By revisiting late-Weimar debates between Carl Schmitt and two left-wing critics, Otto Kirchheimer and Franz L Neumann, we can shed light on the surprising alliance of populist politics with key tenets of economic liberalism, an alliance that vividly manifests itself in the political figure and retrograde policies of Donald Trump. In the process, we can begin to fill a striking lacuna in recent scholarly literature on populism, namely its failure to pay proper attention to matters of political economy. We (...) can also perhaps begin to make sense of the roots of Trump’s assault on the US federal state: formal law and its organizational basis, modern bureaucracy, represent potential restraints on the alliance of populism with neoliberalism. (shrink)