There is no epistemic fault in interpreting events in ways that improve our behavior and lifestyle in situations that force interpretation. Fictionalized but possibly true narratives endow adult life with meaning, in turn rendering day-to-day affairs more agreeable. In this essay, I call the practice of introducing stories when a situation forces interpretation to affect behavior or lifestyle faux-believing, and I explicate and defend faux-believing against the objection that it is epistemically blameworthy After giving two examples of 'faux belief,' and (...) distinguishing it from similar concepts, including belief proper, I ask if we can have the right to faux-believe independent of whether the faux belief is justified. Next, I turn to William James's "The Will to Believe" to argue that if James is correct that we have the right to believe, then we also have the right to faux-believe. While explicating James's argument for when we have the right to believe on insufficient evidence, I highlight two separate theses of James's (often erroneously thought to be a single thesis). It is one of these two theses that implies we also have the right to faux-believe. (shrink)

Once a term used primarily by moral philosophers, “moral distress” is increasingly used by health professionals to name experiences of frustration and failure in fulfilling moral obligations inherent to their fiduciary relationship with the public. Although such challenges have always been present, as has discord regarding the right thing to do in particular situations, there is a radical change in the degree and intensity of moral distress being expressed. Has the plight of professionals in healthcare practice changed? “Plight” encompasses not (...) only the act of pledging, but that of predicament and peril. The author claims that health professionals are increasingly put in peril by healthcare reform that undermines their efficacy and jeopardizes ethical engagement with those in their care. The re-engineering of healthcare to give precedence to corporate and commercial values and strategies of commodification, service rationing, streamlining, and measuring of “efficiency,” is literally demoralizing health professionals. Healthcare practice needs to be grounded in a capacity for compassion and empathy, as is evident in standards of practice and codes of ethics, and in the understanding of what it means to be a professional. Such grounding allows for humane response to the availability of unprecedented advances in biotechnological treatments, for genuine dialogue and the raising of difficult, necessary ethical questions, and for the mutual support of health professionals themselves. If healthcare environments are not understood as moral communities but rather as simulated marketplaces, then health professionals’ moral agency is diminished and their vulnerability to moral distress is exacerbated. Research in moral distress and relational ethics is used to support this claim. (shrink)

In this book John Gray argues that we live in a time of endings for the ideologies that governed the modern period. The Enlightenment projects of universal emancipation animates all the political doctrines and movements that are central in contemporary western societies. Yet it does not reflect the reality of the plural world in which we live. The western cultural hegemony which the Enlightenment embodied is coming to a close. Western liberal societies are not precursors of a universal civilization, (...) but only one form of life among many in the late modern world. Our inherited stock of political ideas no longer tracks that world. The crisis of New Right thought is as profound as that of the Left. Green theorists and communitarian thinkers have not understood the deep diversity and intractable conflicts of contemporary societies. And postmodernists, whose thought is ruled by the dated utopias of the modern period, do not engage with the real conditions of the world's emerging postmodern societies. Late modern thought occurs in an interregnum between modern projects that are no longer credible and postmodern realities that many find intolerable. John Gray suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress must be extinguished if we are to learn to respect cultural diversity and accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for other species and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadian projects that haunt modern thought. We should aim to moderate the impact of human activity on the Earth while alleviating the unavoidable evils of human life. Yet the hubris which treats the Earth as an instrument of human purposes, and which regards other cultures as approximations to a universal civilization, embodies ancient and powerful traditions. John Gray's aim is to question these traditions and thereby to prepare our thinking for a time of beginnings. (shrink)

Marxism, one of the few philosophies that turned into an effective movement, not so long ago was the official ideology in one form or another of much of humanity. It was promulgated, initially by the Soviet Union, then imposed on much of Central and Eastern Europe, later emerged in the People's Republic of China, and gradually spread to other parts of Asia and even bits of Africa and Latin America. Although declining in its initial popularity, it still remains strong in (...) several countries and is supported by numerous communist and other parties and countless individuals around the world. The Historical Dictionary of Marxism covers the history of Marxism and all its thinkers and schools of thought in a comprehensive manner. This is done, through a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-reference dictionary entries on basic terms and concepts, significant thinkers and doers, and also the parties and countries that followed it. (shrink)

The A to Z of Marxism covers the history of Marxism and all its thinkers and schools of thought in a comprehensive manner. This is done, through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-reference dictionary entries on basic terms and concepts, significant thinkers and doers, and also the parties and countries that followed it.

While there may be interesting theoretical differences between cortical and subcortical malfunctions, it is not a difference that is going to separate the psychological from the biological. For, the distinctions we draw between the “psychological” and “biological” turn on our assessments of others' conscious experiences, and not on anything deeper or more profound.

Shaw explores the concept of the ego and its role in human psychology and philosophy. He discusses different theories of the ego and its relationship to the self and society. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in psychology or philosophy. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly (...) other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this paper, we pay attention to the impact on staff of what was a new place, Ko Awatea, within a large New Zealand hospital. The place became a space from within which a particular mood arose. This paper seeks to capture that mood and its impact. Using a Heideggerian hermeneutic approach, the study reported on drew on data from interviews with 20 staff. Philosophical notions about the nature and mood of place/space are explored. As staff claimed this space, the (...) mood that emerged was of liveliness, buzz and comfort. It became a space where people wanted to be, where they met others, where conversations unfolded, where thinking happened in new ways. Staff places tend to be sacrificed or poorly resourced in resource-tight environments. We argue that creating a space that feels home-like, where staff come, linger and engage in community is a priority for generating the mood and thinking of an organization. Such spaces do not happen by chance; it takes forethought and intentionality. The gift of such space is the thinking that is sparked and grown. (shrink)

The recent discovery and translation of Herman Bavinck’s (1854–1921) Reformed Ethics and the ongoing work on the sources and contours of his organic ontology create the impetus to relate these two trajectories together. The twin questions this article will be asking, precisely, are these: what is the logical relationship between Bavinck’s organic whole federalism, where ethical ties are ontologically constitutive, with his claim in the Reformed Ethics that sin’s organizing principle is the prioritization of the ego above all else? Further, (...) how does that organic whole anthropology inform his vision of renewal and the subsequent ethical imperative that flow from the Spirit’s regenerative work? This article traces Bavinck’s logic through the Ethics on these twin questions, while being cognizant of the rest of his oeuvre. With this exposition in hand, this article then relates Bavinck’s outlook to current discussions in Protestant theological ethics. (shrink)

Feminist theory and the politics of life -- Nonhuman nostalgia -- Embryos -- Alphabets -- Conclusion.

In this article, I draw on my fieldwork creating protein models of hepatitis B at a biotech laboratory to think through how to approach the body and disease from ontological and phenomenological perspectives. I subsequently draw on Mariella Pandolfi’s work on how bodies can be made to suffer history and Paul Farmer’s work on global tuberculosis disparities to explore ways of analysing embodied activity as a means of identifying and clinically addressing enactments of social inequality and disease. I also introduce (...) Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological concept of ‘flesh’ as a conceptual heuristic that allows us to understand the meaningful structuring of ontological worlds beyond our own. As I argue, bringing these perspectives together not only allows us to re-envision what an effective disease treatment should be in diverse medical contexts, but also how to better understand health disparities and the nature of disease itself. (shrink)

The essays in this collection show how law is relevant in both an "instrumental" and a "constitutive" sense, as a tool to accomplish particular purposes and as ...

Excerpt from The Samkhya Karikas of Is'vara Krishna: With the Commentary of Gaudapada; Abstract of Thesis In a concise and comprehensive way, these sixty-nine me morial verses, each in turn, explain the several doctrines of the earlier and pure Samkhya school, as yet untouched by Vedantic colorings, and in their brevity and terseness they resemble, in every particular, except their metrical structure, the sutras of the remaining five orthodox systems of Hindu philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of (...) thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Pat Brereton 'The Audience as Reader is Seldom Caught in the Act?' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 4 no. 26, November 2000.

This volume offers a fresh exploration of the parts-whole relations within a power and among powers. While the metaphysics of powers has been extensively examined in the literature, powers have yet to be studied from the perspective of their mereology. Powers are often assumed to be atomic; and yet what they can do--and what can happen to them--is complex. But if powers are simple, how can they have complex manifestations? Can powers have parts? According to which rules of composition do (...) powers compose into powers? Given the centrality of powers in current scientific as well as philosophical thought, recognizing and understanding the ontological differences between atomic and mereologically complex powers is important, for both philosophy and science. The first section of this book explores how powers divide; the second section how powers compose. The final section showcases some specific study cases in the domains of quantum mechanics and psychology. Powers, Parts and Wholes will be of interest to professional philosophers and graduate students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science and logic. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Runner is Born A Runner's Conversion to Cycling A Few Lessons from a Relatively New Convert The End of the Tour Notes.

Understanding how best to educate for sustainability must be a priority in this time of environmental uncertainty. This commentary examines the role of inquiry-based learning in education for ….