In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Health Care Ethics: Theological Foundations, Contemporary Issues, and Controversial Cases, revised edition by Michael R. Panicola, David M. Belde, John Paul Slosar, and Mark F. Repenshek, and: On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, third edition ed. by M. Therese Lysaught and Joseph J. Kotva Jr. with Stephen E. Lammers and Allen VerheyLindsey EsbensenReview of Health Care Ethics: Theological Foundations, Contemporary Issues, and Controversial Cases, revised (...) edition MICHAEL R. PANICOLA, DAVID M. BELDE, JOHN PAUL SLOSAR, AND MARK F. REPENSHEK Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2011. 438 pp. $37.95Review of On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, third edition EDITED BY M. THERESE LYSAUGHT AND JOSEPH J. KOTVA JR. WITH STEPHEN E. LAMMERS AND ALLEN VERHEY Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012. 1180 pp. $61.55Health Care Ethics and On Moral Medicine are excellent resources for those studying and teaching in the field of medical ethics. Each text on its own provides a very good initial evaluation of contemporary conversations in health care ethics. Together they provide a thorough foundation for the study of health care ethics that encourages further exploration of topics in the field. They both provide an excellent overview for undergraduate students as well as anyone interested in the field of medical morality.Health Care Ethics is especially helpful for those entering the field of ethics in general and the more particular realm of medical morality. User-friendly, [End Page 211] the book is accessible to beginners while also being relevant to those already well-versed in medical ethics. The book provides case studies culled from the experiences of the authors throughout their careers in the practice of medical ethics. Perhaps even more useful, however, are the other exercises in which readers are given the opportunity to actively engage the text in order to discover and more fully articulate their own moral stance. Although Health Care Ethics approaches the topic from a theological perspective, using scriptural passages as well as broader religious themes and contexts, the book is accessible to those outside of the religious arena as well.The first three chapters lay the framework for general theological and ethical inquiry while the later chapters discuss more specific topics in applied health care ethics. The opening chapters by Michael Panicola are thought-provoking, especially since they encourage readers to participate in exercises to determine how they would respond to particular scenarios in their personal decision making. For example, after laying out the classic ethical theories, readers are asked to take a “quiz” by responding to multiple-choice questions to determine how they would respond to various ethical situations. The exercise demonstrates that moral discernment that relies on one ethical theory alone or one single approach to ethics is too narrow and confining for authentic dialogue in ethics. Another exercise calls upon readers to examine their fundamental bases for personal decision making by asking them to create a list of what they think are the ten things that constitute human flourishing and then narrow that list down to the top two. In addition to being engaging, these exercises help readers establish their personal moral stance by asking them to appropriate foundational norms in the process of moral discernment to the case studies throughout the book. They also help readers apply these norms to the specific topics in health care ethics presented in the later chapters.The authors of Health Care Ethics clearly identify human flourishing as the center and goal for all ethical inquiry. Demonstrating that “human flourishing” has different connotations for different people, they also argue that certain norms can be agreed upon to establish a framework for all conversations regarding moral decision making in health care. They especially emphasize a concern for the optimization of human flourishing in final chapters of the text. Chapters 4–12 provide detailed examinations of current topics in medical ethics. Each chapter includes case studies that raise questions concerning social ethics as well as health care morality, employing sources from law, sociology, philosophy, and theology. Each case underscores the complexity of moral decision making in health care ethics as well as the point that there is no one, pure approach to medical ethics that... (shrink)

In this paper, I expand my upon earlier linguistic research (Lian, 2023), which delved into the genre of abstracts from Western philosophical papers. I engage with the philosophical ramifications emanating from the guidelines established for crafting philosophy paper abstracts (Lian, 2023) and underscore their significance in the domain of academic philosophical writing. A pivotal focus of this research is to navigate the intricate philosophical challenges posed by cross-disciplinary investigations bridging applied linguistic statistics with philosophical paper composition, specifically, the nuanced interpretation (...) of linguistic findings in a manner palatable to philosophers. My exploration probes into the dynamics of various concepts within Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), highlighting the complexities in reconciling semantic intuitions related to the notions of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". I delineate three philosophical stances: (1) deferring to scientific authority, (2) recognizing domain-specific terminologies, and (3) interrogating peripheral scientific theories. I posit that these stances significantly influence the ways philosophers engage with and resolve the cross-disciplinary semantic and theoretical contentions stemming from the rhetorical structures of "Method (M)" and "Conclusion (C)". This work proposes avenues to attain either "theoretical coherence" or "disciplinary synthesis", thereby fostering enhanced cross-disciplinary collaboration and fortifying academic discourse across diverse fields. -/- Keywords: Inter-Disciplinary Research (IDR), Applied linguistics, Philosophical writing, Genre Analysis, Rhetorical Moves . (shrink)

: The development of the interdisciplinary areas of cognitive, affective and action neurosciences contributes to the identification of neurobiological bases of conscious experience. The structure of consciousness was philosophically conceived a century ago as consisting of a subjective pole, the bearer of experiences, and an objective pole composed of experienced contents. In more recent formulations, Nagel refers to a “point of view”, in which qualitative experiences are anchored, while Velmans understands that phenomenal content is composed of mental representations “projected” to (...) the space external to the brains that construct them. In Freudian psychology, the conscious mind contains a tension between the Id and the Ego. How to relate this bipolar structure with the results of neuroscience? I propose the notion of projection [also used by Williford et al. ] as a bridge principle connecting the neurobiological systems of knowing, feeling and acting with the bipolar structure. The projective process is considered responsible for the generation of the sense of self and the sense of the world, composing an informational phenomenal field generated by the nervous system and experienced in the first-person perspective. After presenting the projective hypothesis, I discuss its philosophical status, relating it to the phenomenal and high-order thought approaches, and a mathematical model of projection. Eight ways of testing the status of the projective hypothesis are briefly mentioned. Resumo: O desenvolvimento de áreas interdisciplinares das neurociências, contribui para a identificação das bases neurobiológicas da experiência consciente. A estrutura intrínseca da experiência consciente foi filosoficamente concebida há um século como consistindo de um pólo subjetivo, o portador de experiências, e um pólo objetivo, composto dos conteúdos experimentados. Em formulações mais recentes, Thomas Nagel refere-se a um “ponto de vista”, no qual experiências qualitativas são ancoradas, enquanto Max Velmans entende que o conteúdo fenomenal é composto de representações mentais “projetadas” para o espaço externo ao cérebro que as constrói. Na psicologia freudiana, a mente consciente contém uma tensão entre o Id e o Ego. Como relacionar esta estrutura bipolar com os resultados da neurociência? Proponho a noção de projeção como princípio-ponte, conectando os sistemas neurobiológicos do saber, sentir e agir com a estrutura bipolar. O processo projetivo é considerado responsável pela geração do sentido do eu e do sentido do mundo, compondo um campo fenomenal informacional gerado pelo sistema nervoso e vivenciado na perspectiva da primeira pessoa. Após apresentar a hipótese projetiva, discuto seu status filosófico, relacionando-o às abordagens fenomenológicas, à teoria do pensamento de ordem superior e ao modelo matemático da projeção. Oito maneiras de testar o status da hipótese projetiva são brevemente mencionadas. (shrink)

Nature Network Groups hosted an invited workshop on 'Theories of Consciousness' during the second semester of 2009. There were presentations by each of 15 authors active in the field, followed by debate with other presenters and invitees. A week was allocated to each of the theories proposed; general discussion threads were also opened from time to time, as seemed appropriate. We offer here an account of the principal outcomes. It can be regarded as a contemporary, 'state of the art' snapshot (...) of thinking in this field. (shrink)

My argument has three parts. In the first, I shall explain some key Thomist distinctions concerning necessity and premotion. In the second, I shall argue that many philosophers who object to the Thomist position misconstrue the relevant understanding of necessity and contingency. In the third, I shall focus directly on their denial that the doctrine of premotion is helpful for discussions of how God moves the human will. The first two sections illustrate that the Thomists think plausibly that our understanding (...) of necessity is connected either with a logical necessity or secondary causality. Consequently, in order to show that the will is free, they argue that human actions are necessitated neither logically nor by secondary causes. In the third section, I argue that Thomists do not simply beg the question by asserting that God’s predetermining decrees are compatible with human freedom. They have an understanding of God’s causation which allows both for God’s infallible motion and the contingency of many created events, among which are free human actions. (shrink)

The investigation of a method for postulating counterfactual histories of science has led to the development of a theory of science based on general units of knowledge, which are called “advances”. Advances are passed on from scientist to scientist, and may be seen as “causing” the appearance of other advances. This results in networks which may be analyzed in terms of probabilistic causal models, which are readily encodable in computer language. The probability for a set of advances to give rise (...) to another advance is taken to be invariant through history, but depends on a typical time span which is an inverse function of the degree of development of science. Examples are given from the early science of magnetism and from the 19th century physics. (shrink)

According to the colored-brain thesis, sense data or qualia are real physical-chemical qualities, located inside the brain, possibly at a specific locus. Our hypothesis is that the seats of phenomenal consciousness have a structure and a materiality. According to the proposed view, a chromatic quale emerges when a certain pixel of the visual sensorium is fed with a certain pattern Σ of spikes; a change in this pattern quickly changes the color that is subjectively generated. How could one manage to (...) measure chromatic qualia? In principle, with nanoscopical techniques, one could capture all the patterns that fall on the sensorium, and transmit the information to other media. But this does not capture the qualia. However, if the patterns are made to fall on a tissue of the same kind, typically inside another person’s brain, this other person will have roughly the same subjective experience as the first person. The model is used to explore two different situations involving qualia inversion. The paper also explores Cartesian materialism, and the claim that phenomenal time and space are identical to a region of physical time and space. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the ascription of probabilities in a causal model of an episode in the history of science. The aim of such a quantitative approach is to allow the implementation of the causal model in a computer, to run simulations. As an example, we look at the beginning of the science of magnetism, “explaining” — in a probabilistic way, in terms of a single causal model — why the field advanced in China but not (...) in Europe (the difference is due to different prior probabilities of certain cultural manifestations). Given the number of years between the occurrences of two causally connected advances X and Y, one proposes a criterion for stipulating the value pY/X of the conditional probability of an advance Y occurring, given X. Next, one must assume a specific form for the cumulative probability function pY/X(t), which we take to be the time integral of an exponential distribution function, as is done in physics of radioactive decay. Rules for calculating the cumulative functions for more than two events are mentioned, involving composition, disjunction and conjunction of causes. We also consider the problems involved in supposing that the appearance of events in time follows an exponential distribution, which are a consequence of the fact that a composition of causes does not follow an exponential distribution, but a “hypoexponential” one. We suggest that a gamma distribution function might more adequately represent the appearance of advances. (shrink)

The distinctions between the different sense of "perfect" and "imperfect" virtue are essential for understanding Thomas’ view of the development of and connection between the virtues. In this article I set out a fairly traditional schema of the states of virtue and shown how they are found in Thomas’ own texts. An understanding of the distinction between imperfect and perfect acquired virtue is necessary in order to grasp the issue at stake in my previous article on the Augustianism of Thomas (...) Aquinas's Moral Theory: “The question is whether without grace someone can be good by the fact that he has acquired virtues that are perfect – that is, connected with the other virtues through prudence.”. (shrink)

A recent trend in Russell scholarship has been towards the thesis that, contrary to his own recollections, Bertrand Russell really didn’t need the 1905 theory of descriptions to deflate an excessive ontology, because (1) there was no excessive ontology in The Principles of Mathematics, at least not one with golden mountains and the like, and so (2) Russell’s real motive, at least his main one, was not ontological but rather was to replace the incoherent sense–reference distinction on which the old (...) theory of denoting depended. I want to gently dispute that thesis by showing that Russell’s old theory in the Principles was ambivalent on ontic commitment to non-existent things and it could not give an adequate account of the central problem which Russell faced before “On Denoting”, viz. our apparent discourse—including our ability to make true and false propositions—about non-existent things. I also show briefly how the new theory solves the old problem. (shrink)

This book treats the thirteenth-century debate concerning the natural love of God over self with an eye to how the thinkers of this period saw the connection between one's own good and the aims of virtuous action. It shows that the main difference in this debate reflects a fundamental contrast between Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus over the importance of natural inclination in Ethics and the priority of the common good. It indicates how medieval thinkers attempted to reconcile eudaimonism (...) with the claim that everyone must love the common good more than themselves. It considers perhaps the most crucial issue in the thirteenth-century reception of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. It also indicates how later theories that separate morality from self-interest have their origins in concepts that were created in earlier debates, such as this one. (shrink)

The question of which is the logic that underlies quantum physics does not have an absolute answer, but only in relation to a conventional choice of interpretation . Most of the interpretations that have been offered work within the framework of classical logic. In contrast to these, we examine the corpuscular interpretation which is assumed in the application of non-distributive logic . The experiment in which single photons pass through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer is examined, indicating the difficulty of employing a (...) realist corpuscular interpretation in this context. One way to save this interpretation would be to use non-distributive logic to analyze the experiment, but this is not satisfactory . However, the use of an alethic modal logic solves the problem, blocking the argument that put the aforementioned corpuscular interpretation into difficulty. In the discussion of the conceptual problems involved, we suggest that a stochastic corpuscular interpretation is well adapted to this logical description. The project of extending this modal logical approach to other experiments in quantum physics, and of providing a rigorous logical treatment, is left open. (shrink)

Although Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines disagree with each other profoundly over the relationship between the intellect and the will, they all think that someone who sees God must also love him in the ordinary course of events. However, Godfrey rejects a central thesis argued for by both Henry and Giles, namely that by God’s absolute power there could be such vision without love. The debate is not about the ability to freely reject or at (...) least refrain from willing complete happiness, but about the connection between the known object and the will’s act. Godfrey’s discussion is an occasion for him to criticize Giles’ idiosyncratic view that an elicited act of love for the known object is necessary for every act of knowing, and Henry’s development of the view that the known object is merely a sine qua non cause of an act of love. In his response, Godfrey defends a thesis that later becomes widespread, namely that the known object is an efficient cause of love. (shrink)

Sentience, defined as the unconscious capacity of having conscious feeling experiences, is a psychobiological phenomenon involving dynamic patterns of electrochemical waves in living systems. The process of feeling can be studied in two ways: a) Empirical identification and analysis of the universal temporal patterns that characterize feeling, forming a science to be called Sentiomics; b) Introspective identification and report of the variety of qualitative conscious experiences, from a first-person perspective, a study that could be called Qualiomics. Qualiomics is undoubtedly a (...) challenge to conventional science, as stated in the “hard problem of consciousness” (Chalmers, 1995), as the first-person perspective is not accessible to conventional scientific measurement methods and explanations. Sentiomics, focusing on dynamic patterns that define the capacity to feel, is therefore susceptible to empirical and experimental treatment. In this article, we propose to contextualize the philosophical assumptions and problems of Sentiomics and present some of its various applications, focusing on its the relation with music. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:358 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY und k6nnen es nur sein. Das Gleiche ist der Fall mit den Erfahrungstatsachen des wissenschaftlichen Versuches und im Grunde aller Wissenschaft gibt es nichts anderes und kann es nichts anderes geben. Mag ein gewandter Dialektiker die Voraussetzungen, yon denen er ausgeht, noch so sehr durcheinanderwirbeln, sie verbinden und zu Schliissen aufeinandertiirmen: Was er erhiilt, wird stets wieder eine Aussage sein. Niemals wird er zu einem (...) Gesetze gelangen, das lauten wiirde: Tue dies! oder Tue dies nicht! also zu einem Satze, der dem sittlichen Gesetze entsprechen oder ibm entgegenstehen kSnnte,r Kann Morscher dann noch immer behaupten, dass Poincar6 nur kategorische Syllogismen oder nur Schhssfolgerungen mit gerade Priimissen im Sinne hatte? Wir sind dem t3bersetzer eine Ehrenrettung schuldig: wenn er hier "syllogisme" mit "logischer Schluss" iibersetzt hat, hat er keinen Fehler begangen, es trifft ihn nicht der Tadel, durch eine scblechte Ubersetzung eine Legende hervorgerufen zu haben. Morscher soUte jedoch nicht, wenn er "syllogisme" liest, "kategorischer Syllogismus" verstehen, lind bei geistesgeschichtlichen Diskussionen immer den hermeneutisch relevanten Kontext beachten, d.h. wnigstens den Absatz, den er gerade analysiert, zu Ende lesen. Es liisst sich rticht daran zweifeln, dass Hare mit Recht [PR] Poincar6 zuschreibt. Nicht ganz sicher bin ich, ob Poincar6, wenn er sah und es ausdriicklich sagte, dass die iiblichen logischen Regeln fiir Imperativfolgerung nicht anwendbar sind, damit auch gleichzeitig die Entwicklung einer Imperativlogik (Normenlogik) forderte, oder ob er sich dieser programmatischen Konsequenz nicht ganz bewusst war. OTAWEINBERGER Universitiit Graz RUSSELL'S REALIST THEORY OF REMOTE MEMORY In a paper on Bertrand Russell's theory of memory1 David Pears undertakes to amend certain aspects of his version of Russell's theory of memory which he had presented in his Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy. ~ In that work Pears had attributed to Russell an extreme realist theory of memory from 1905 through 1918, i.e., a general theory of memory according to which the mind maintains direct contact by the dual relation of acquaintance with past sense-data. 3 This, he now believes, is historically incorrect in view of two of Russell's lesser known papers which have since come to his attention and which make it clear that in 1915 Russell held the extreme realist account only in connection with immediate memory--i.e., with memory within what is often called the specious present--and that as regards remote memory--i.e., memory of things not very recent and, so, outside the specious present--past sense-data 7 Poincare, Letzte Gedanken, aus dem FranzSsischen iibersetzt yon Karl Lichteneeker (Leipzig : Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1913),pp. 226 f. 1 D. F. Pears, "Russell's Theories of Memory 1912-1921," in Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, ed. George Nakhnikian (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 117-137. The papers are from the Indiana University Russell centenary conference, 1972. 2 (London: Collins~I967), pp. 7I, 181-182. 3 Ibid. NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 359 were knowable only by description and not by acquaintance.4 But Pears still argues, as against J. O. Urmson,5 that Russell did hold the realist theory of remote memory before 1915, although he was "changing his mind" in that year and, by 1917 ("The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"), had definitely abandoned the theory,e I believe that Pears is partly right about this matter: Russell almost certainly did hold a realist theory of remote memory before 1915. However, it can be shown, I think, that the theory was abandoned, not in 1915 or later, but in 1914. Pears shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Russell held a realist theory of remote memory in 1912. The strongest evidence may be found in a passage in Problems of Philosophy: There is some danger of confusion as to the nature of memory, owing to the fact that memory of an object is apt to be accompanied by an image of the object, and yet the image cannot be what constitutes memory. This is easily seen by merely noticing that the image is in the present, whereas what is remembered is known to be in the past. Moreover, we are certainly able to some extent to compare our image with the object remembered, so that we often know, within... (shrink)

An experimental realization of quantum computers is composed of two or more calcium ions trapped in a magnetic quadripole. Information is transferred to and read from the ions by means of structured lasers that interact with the ions’ vibration pattern, causing changes of energy distribution in their electronic structure. Departing from an initial state when the ions are cooled, the use of lasers modifies the internal state of one ion that is entangled with the others, then changing the collective states. (...) In such quantum computers, some of the physically possible electronic states are avoided or not taken into consideration, to force the system to work as a binary device. In this essay, we discuss the dynamics that the ions could spontaneously display and its possible implications for the principles of computational logics. (shrink)

In 1971, Ivan Illich wrote that school had become the world religion of a modernized proletariat. Without undoing the power of human interaction undergirding it, understanding how we learn is thus vital to undoing the institutional power of the West – of ‘deschooling’ society. Responding to the conflict between secular and religious schemes of education, the article investigates the ways in which the ‘atheist’ Gilles Deleuze and the ‘mystic’ Simone Weil both employed related stratagems from Stoic philosophy to critique ‘schooling’ (...) construed as the acquisition of, rather than participation in, knowledge. Through a critical reading of the differences between Deleuze's and Weil’s ideas of education, the argument suggests that these differences run aground on the fundamental opposition to a common adversary: that normative pedagogy which trivializes the need to re-school, as well as de-school, society. (shrink)

"This fine work's ample documentation should gladden the scholarly reader while its accessible prose & well-organized presentation will make it useful for ...

This text is an interview given by Prof. Dr. Alfredo Pereira Jr. to Leonardo Ferreira Almada, on the occasion of the call for publication of interviews with different Brazilian philosophers. In response to the goal of the Trans/Form/Ação journal call, we sought to carry out an interview in which a PhD professor with an established career presents some elements of his personal and academic stories, as well as clarifies important points of his research, some of his theses and vision of (...) the world based on questions asked by another professor, a historical research partner, and in-depth knowledge of the interviewee’s career. (shrink)