Background Coping with end-of-life issues is a major challenge for governments and health systems. Despite progress in legislation, many barriers exist to its full implementation. This study is aimed at identifying these end-of-life barriers in relation to Israel. Methods Qualitative in-depth interviews using professionals and decision makers in the health-care and related systems were carried out, along with two focus groups based on brainstorming techniques consisting of nurses and social workers. Data was managed and analyzed using Naralyzer software. Results Qualitative (...) analysis showed identification of six primary barriers: 1) law, procedures, and forms; 2) clinical aspects; 3) human aspects; 4) knowledge and skills of medical teams; 5) communication; and 6) resource allocation. These were further divided into 44 sub area barriers. Conclusions This study highlights the role of the family doctor in end-of-life by training physicians in decision-making workshops and increasing their knowledge in the field of palliative medicine. Effectively channeling resources, knowledge, and support for medical teams, by accounting for the structure and response of the units for home treatment will improve patient’s access to information on and support for end-of-life laws, as well as reduce legislative barriers in other countries that face the same issues. (shrink)

Permissivist metaontology proposes answering customary existence questions in the affirmative. Many of the existence questions addressed by ontologists concern the existence of theoretical entities which admit precise formal specification. This causes trouble for the permissivist, since individually consistent formal theories can make pairwise inconsistent demands on the cardinality of the universe. We deploy a result of Gabriel Uzquiano’s to show that this possibility is realised in the case of two prominent existence debates and propose rejecting permissivism in favour of substantive (...) ontology conducted on a cost–benefit basis. (shrink)

There has been very little discussion of the appropriate principles to govern a modal logic of plurals. What debate there has been has accepted a principle I call (Necinc); informally if this is one of those then, necessarily: this is one of those. On this basis Williamson has criticised the Boolosian plural interpretation of monadic second-order logic. I argue against (Necinc), noting that it isn't a theorem of any logic resulting from adding modal axioms to the plural logic PFO+, and (...) showing that the most obvious formal argument in its favour is question begging. I go on to discuss the behaviour of natural language plurals, motivating a case against (Necinc) by developing a case that natural language plural terms are not de jure rigid designators. The paper concludes by developing a model theory for modal PFO-f which does not validate (Necinc). An Appendix discusses (Necinc) in relation to counterpart theory. Of course, it would be a mistake to think that the rules for "multiple pointing" follow automatically from the rules for pointing proper. Max Black—The Elusiveness of Sets In some influential articles during the 1980s George Boolos proposed an interpretation of monadic second-order logic in terms of plural quantification [4, 5]. One objection to this proposal, pressed by Williamson [22, 456-7], focuses on the modal behaviour of plural variables, arguing that the proposed interpretation yields the wrong results in respect of the modal status of atomic predications. In the present paper I will present this objection and argue against it. In the course of developing the argument, I will have cause to consider the under-investigated question of how a logic for plurals should be extended to incorporate modal operators. (shrink)

It is argued that Gabriel Uzquiano's approach to set-theoretic indefinite extensibility is a version of in rebus structuralism, and therefore suffers from a vacuity problem.

Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment is often considered a decisive refutation of hedonism. I argue that the conclusions we draw from Nozick's thought experiment ought to be informed by considerations concerning the operation of our intuitions about value. First, I argue that, in order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative reaction to the experience machine, we must not merely stipulate their irrelevance (since our intuitions are not always responsive to stipulation) but fill in the (...) concrete details that would make them irrelevant. If we do this, we may see our feelings about the experience machine becoming less negative. Second, I argue that, even if our feelings about the experience machine do not perfectly track hedonistic reasons, there are various reasons to doubt the reliability of our anti-hedonistic intuitions. And finally, I argue that, since in the actual world seeing certain things besides pleasure as ends in themselves may best serve hedonistic ends, hedonism may justify our taking these other things to be intrinsically valuable, thus again making the existence of our seemingly anti-hedonistic intuitions far from straightforward evidence for the falsity of hedonism. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 174 - 211 This article explores the metaphysical, epistemological, and mystical aspects of happiness in the Judeo-Arabic _Treatise on Ultimate Happiness_, of which only two chapters have survived from what is thought to have been a more comprehensive text. Although the treatise is attributed to Moses Maimonides, the conception of happiness it presents is clearly that of the Pietists, the Jewish-Sufi circle of thirteenth-century Egypt. The discussion of happiness in this short treatise constitutes (...) an important chapter in the philosophical and mystical discourse about happiness in medieval Jewish-Islamic thought, especially within the Jewish-Sufi mystical stream led by Maimonides’s descendants. (shrink)

COVID-19 created a global crisis of unprecedented comprehensiveness affecting personal and professional lives of individuals worldwide. The pandemic and various governmental guidelines associated with it had numerous consequences for the workplace and the marketplace. In light of the global nature and multiplicity of the consequences of the pandemic, this study examines the impact of individual characteristics of respondents from three countries from various areas of the world: China, Israel, and the USA toward COVID-19 related business ethics decisions in three different (...) spheres: human resources, marketing, and social responsibility. Data from 374 respondents in these three countries indicated that moral disengagement was negatively related to all of the ethical decisions presented, with national pride moderating the above. Possible implications of these findings and future research directions are presented. (shrink)

_NeuroAnalysis _investigates using the neural network and neural computation models to bridge the divide between psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience when diagnosing mental health disorders and prescribing treatment. Avi Peled builds on Freud's early attempts to explain the neural basis of mental health by introducing neural computation as a bridging science to explain psychiatric disorders. Peled describes the brain as a complex system of interconnected units and goes on to suggest that conscious experience, feelings, and mood are emergent properties arising from (...) these complex organisations. This model describes mental health disorders in terms of perturbation to the optimal brain organisation, and demonstrates how particular disorders can be identified through a specific breakdown pattern of the brain’s organisation. This fresh approach to the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders will interest students, professors, and researchers of psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and their related fields. (shrink)

Logical Philosophy: A Compendium brings together five works by Avi Sion published in 2002-06, namely: Phenomenology (2003), Volition and Allied Causal Concepts (2004), Meditations (2006), Ruminations (2005), and Buddhist Illogic (2002). These works together define what may be termed 'Logical Philosophy', i.e. philosophical discourse distinguished by its steadfast reliance on inductive and deductive logic to resolve epistemological and ontological issues. This collection does not include work done on The Logic of Causation in the same period (published in 2003, 2005).

'A mere metaphor', 'only symbolic', 'just a myth' - these tell tale phrases reveal how figurative language has been cheapened and devalued in our modern and postmodern culture. In God and the Creative Imagination, Paul Avis argues the contrary: we see that actually, metaphor, symbol and myth, are the key to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. Avis examines what he calls an alternative tradition, stemming from the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth and Keats and drawing on (...) the thought of Cleridge and Newman, and experience in both modern philosophy and science. God and the Creative Imagination intriguingly draws on a number of non-theological disciplines, from literature to philosophy of science, to show us that God is appropriately likened to an artist or poet and that the greatest truths are expressed in an imaginative form. Anyone wishing to further their understanding of God, belief and the imagination will find this an inspiring work. (shrink)

This book opens by providing the historical context of Plato’s engagement with education, including an overview of Plato’s life as student and educator. The author organizes his discussion of education in the Platonic Corpus around Plato’s images, both the familiar – the cave, the gadfly, the torpedo fish, and the midwife – and the less familiar – the intellectual aviary, the wax tablet, and the kindled fire. These educational images reveal that, for Plato, philosophizing is inextricably linked to learning; that (...) is, philosophy is fundamentally an educational endeavor. The book concludes by exploring Plato’s legacy in education, discussing the use of the “Socratic method” in schools and the Academy’s foundational place in the history of higher education. The characters in Plato’s dialogues often debate – sometimes with great passion – the purpose of education and the nature of learning. The claims about education in the Platonic corpus are so provocative, nuanced, insightful, and controversial that educational philosophers have reckoned with them for millennia. (shrink)

This paper develops a formal system, consisting of a language and semantics, called serial logic ( SL ). In rough outline, SL permits quantification over, and reference to, some finite number of things in an order , in an ordinary everyday sense of the word “order,” and superplural quantification over things thus ordered. Before we discuss SL itself, some mention should be made of an issue in philosophical logic which provides the background to the development of SL , and with (...) respect to which I wish to contend that the system permits progress. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Classical and intuitionistic logic both validate Ex Contradictione Quodlibet, according to which any proposition whatsoever follows from a contradiction. Many philosophers have found ECQ counter-intuitive, but criticisms of the principle have almost universally been directed from a position of support for relevance or other orthodox paraconsistent logics, according to which some, but not necessarily all, propositions follow from a contradiction. This paper draws attention to the historically significant view that nothing whatsoever follows from a contradiction – Ex Contradictione Nihil. (...) It addresses the key arguments – model-theoretic, proof-theoretic, meaning theoretic and holist – deployed by proponents of ECQ against their standard opponents, and shows that each can be defeated from a position of support for ECN. In the course of answering these arguments, some understanding is developed of possible motivations for ECN and a solid case is built that ECN deserves further investigation. (shrink)

In A Platonic Theory of Moral Education, Mark Jonas and Yoshiaki Nakazawa have argued that Plato outlines a theory of virtue education. Alkis Kotsonis has similarly argued that Plato articulated a theory of intellectual character education. I think that Jonas, Nakazawa, and Kotsonis have opened a productive line of enquiry on this matter, and I expand on their work in this paper by identifying connections between Plato’s work and the contemporary discourse on character education, which features four domains of virtues: (...) moral, intellectual, civic, and performance virtues. Plato’s treatment of virtue, I argue, not only can be mapped onto the contemporary treatment of character education but it also further demonstrates that cultivating virtue—the project of character education—was a paramount concern for Plato. (shrink)

We characterize pairs of monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 over finite domains that give rise to an entailment relation between their two relative scope construals. This relation between quantifiers, which is referred to as scope dominance, is used for identifying entailment relations between the two scopal interpretations of simple sentences of the form NP1–V–NP2. Simple numerical or set-theoretical considerations that follow from our main result are used for characterizing such relations. The variety of examples in which they hold are (...) shown to go far beyond the familiar existential-universal type. (shrink)

This paper raises the question under what circumstances a plurality forms a set, parallel to the Special Composition Question for mereology. The range of answers that have been proposed in the literature are surveyed and criticised. I argue that there is good reason to reject both the view that pluralities never form sets and the view that pluralities always form sets. Instead, we need to affirm restricted set formation. Casting doubt on the availability of any informative principle which will settle (...) which pluralities form sets, the paper concludes by affirming a naturalistic approach to the philosophy of set theory. (shrink)

In Democracy and Education, in the midst of the pivotal chapter on “The Democratic Conception in Education,” Dewey juxtaposes his educational aims with those of Plato, Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel. Perhaps Dewey believed that an account of their views would help elucidate his own, or he intended to suggest that his own ideas rivaled or bested theirs. I argue that Dewey’s discussion of historical philosophers’ aims of education was also designed to critique his contemporaries subtly and by analogy. My analysis (...) of Dewey’s critique supports a second argument: one of the reasons Dewey’s legacy has been long debated (particularly his relationship to pedagogical progressivism) derives from his reluctance to criticize his contemporaries explicitly and directly. Had Dewey critiqued his fellow American progressives in the same way he did historical European philosophers of the past, his readers would have better understood his relationship to progressive American educational ideas and practices. Yet Dewey’s subtle approach also accounts for the creation of a work that genuinely warrants being called a classic – it rises above the educational debates of the early twentieth century to enter into a conversation with its educational ancestry, a conversation that Dewey propelled forward. (shrink)

UK blood services, supported by the Health Protection Agency/Health Protection Scotland, carried out an exercise over the summer of 2005 to notify 110 donors whose blood was transfused to three recipients who later developed vCJD. These donors were to be informed that they were now considered 'at risk of vCJD for public health purposes'. The notification began on 20 July 2005 and was completed (barring follow-up) at the end of the first week of October 2005. Apart from two donors who (...) had died, contact was attempted with all donors, including four who were not currently registered with a GP. The lessons learnt about the conduct of such notification have been reviewed. The limited ad hoc feedback available suggests the process and content of this notification was acceptable to donors and their GPs. (shrink)

This article offers a critical discourse analysis of the Israeli television series In Treatment. The series unfolds the therapy sessions of a 40-year-old single female attorney with her therapist. The main objective of the study was to identify the scripted tactics or narrative strategies that establish and maintain singlehood. The findings indicate that the therapeutic discourse plays a central role in the construction and interpretation of single women’s subjectivities, prompting a narrative that encourages the ‘discarding’ of singlehood as well as (...) therapeutic work slanted towards a more familial and maternally oriented subjectivity. This narrative unfolds through two dominant scripted tactics: the symbolic annihilation of singlehood and the construction of feminine identity hierarchies. Moreover, it is also prompted by the discursive alliance between the therapeutic discourse and the postfeminist discourse. Consequently, long-term singlehood is portrayed as an unnatural and pathological life script characterized by its lack and deficiency. Furthermore, as opposed to childless singlehood, single motherhood by choice emerges as a preferred and desirable life option. The category of single motherhood is endowed with new forms of legitimacy, reinforcing new-old patriarchal and postfeminist conceptions of women’s reproductive potential and what is considered to be women’s primary life purpose. (shrink)

Avi Sion's book The Logic of Causation (2010) could not include all relevant tables (which either justified or applied various doctrines in the book), due to their sizes or quantity. These additional tables were made available to interested readers at time of publication in the author's website The Logician. The present 'Annex' collects in one pdf file the numerous original pdf files, to facilitate download. The file is almost 0.5 Gb in size, and contains almost 108,000 pages.

A diagnosis of schizophrenia is often taken to denote a state of global irrationality within the psychiatric paradigm, wherein psychotic phenomena are seen to equate with a lack of mental capacity. However, the little research that has been undertaken on mental capacity in psychiatric patients shows that people with schizophrenia are more likely to experience isolated, rather than constitutive, irrationality and are therefore not necessarily globally incapacitated. Rational suicide has not been accepted as a valid choice for people with schizophrenia (...) due in part to a belief that characteristic irrationality prevents autonomous decision-making. Since people with schizophrenia are often seen to lack insight into the nature of their disorder, both psychiatric and ethical perspectives generally presume that suicidal acts result directly from mental illness itself and not from second-order desires. In this article, I challenge notions of global irrationality conferred by a diagnosis of schizophrenia and argue that, where delusional beliefs are unifocal, schizophrenia does not necessarily lead to a state of mental incapacity. I then attempt to show that people with schizophrenia can sometimes be rational with regard to suicide, where this decision stems from a realistic appraisal of psychological suffering. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the impact of CEO and board gender diversity on the risk management decisions of 179 U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) during the 2001–2018 period. Using a bottom-up analysis on the properties in REIT portfolios, we find significant risk reduction associated with gender-diverse REIT leadership. We document that REITs with a woman CEO, in combination with more women on the board, display less active trading and a longer hold period for assets. In addition, REITs with (...) more gender-diverse leadership are more geographically focused, which for REITs is considered a lower risk investment strategy. Finally, REITs with more gender-diverse leadership are more actively investing in environmentally sustainable real estate. We conclude that gender diversity in real estate firms carries real-life implications for U.S. cities, given their key role as developers, owners, and operators of the built world. (shrink)

We can introduce singular terms for ordered pairs by means of an abstraction principle. Doing so proves useful for a number of projects in the philosophy of mathematics. However there is a question whether we can appeal to the abstraction principle in good faith, since a version of the Caesar Problem can be generated, posing the worry that abstraction fails to introduce expressions which refer determinately to the requisite sort of object. In this note I will pose the difficulty, and (...) then propose a solution. Since my solution appeals to a plausible constraint on the introduction of new expressions to a language, it is of interest independently of the particular case of terms for pairs. Since these provide the occasion for discussion we should nonetheless review the use of abstraction for pairs before the argumentative business of the paper commences. (shrink)

: Educational historians, philosophers, and sociologists have long warned that the increasing encroachment of business logic in public schools bodes ill for democracy as a way of life. Many have concluded that the business person's interest in affecting public education is to bring about a greater bottom line, which, of course, is profit, albeit secured in the name of democratic freedom and social progress. These scholars have noted that the corporate parasite is eating away the insides of our public schools (...) and is reproducing its hereditary material (consumer materialism) within the bodies and souls of its captive hosts: our children. Through corporate advertisements on school walls, corporate-sponsored curriculum materials and programs, and corporate-sponsored fundraisers and contests (not to mention the enormous political influence corporations have in framing the very aim and purpose of public education), corporations use schools as conduits by which to establish consumption as the ultimate expression of participatory democracy and, thus, as the supreme good and standard of personal growth. Drawing upon the work of John Dewey, this paper articulates a conception of democracy and a democratic theory of education that privileges the social over the private, the public over the corporate, such that the homo-economicus ideal that our public schools train our children to aspire to on a daily basis is checked by a wider commitment to the good life, defined in more socially benevolent ways. (shrink)

This book is the first treatment at length of negative, or apophatic, theology within the analytic tradition. Apophatic theology holds that there is a significant sense in which we cannot say what God is. Important negative theological elements are present in a host of Christian thinkers, from Gregory of Nyssa to Aquinas, and yet apophaticism is neglected in philosophical theology as practiced within the analytic tradition. By contrast, Hewitt shows how apophatic theology is integral to how Christians have thought (...) about God, and how it can be defended against standard attacks in the philosophical literature. Hewitt diagnoses the unease with apophaticism amongst contempory philosophical theologicans as rooted in a certain picture of how language functions, here called referentialism. Arguing that this picture is not compulsory, an account of language which sits more comfortably with negative theology (originating from work of later Wittgenstein) is invoked, and applied to key themes in philosophical theology including divine personhood, the Trinity, the Incarnation and the afterlife. (shrink)

The book grapples with one of the most difficult questions confronting the contemporary world: the problem of the other, which includes ethical, political, and metaphysical aspects. A widespread approach in the history of the discourse on the other, systematically formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and his followers, has invested this term with an almost mythical quality—the other is everybody else but never a specific person, an abstraction of historical human existence. This book offers an alternative view, turning the other into a (...) real being, through a carefully described process involving two dimensions referred to as the ethic of loyalty to the visible and the ethic of inner retreat. Tracing the course of this process in life and in literature, the book presents a broad and lucid picture intriguing to philosophers and also accessible to readers concerned with questions touching on the meaning of life, ethics, and politics, and particularly relevant to the burning issues surrounding attitudes to immigrants as others and to the relationship with God, the ultimate other. (shrink)

What is the role of language in human cognition? Could we attain self-consciousness and construct our civilisation without language? Such were the questions at the basis of eighteenth-century debates on the joint evolution of language, mind, and culture. Language and Enlightenment highlights the importance of language in the social theory, epistemology, and aesthetics of the Enlightenment. While focusing on the Berlin Academy under Frederick the Great, Avi Lifschitz situates the Berlin debates within a larger temporal and geographical framework. He argues (...) that awareness of the historicity and linguistic rootedness of all forms of life was a mainstream Enlightenment notion rather than a feature of the so-called 'Counter-Enlightenment'. -/- Enlightenment authors of different persuasions investigated whether speechless human beings could have developed their language and society on their own. Such inquiries usually pondered the difficult shift from natural signs like cries and gestures to the artificial, articulate words of human language. This transition from nature to artifice was mirrored in other domains of inquiry, such as the origins of social relations, inequality, the arts and the sciences. By examining a wide variety of authors - Leibniz, Wolff, Condillac, Rousseau, Michaelis, and Herder, among others - Language and Enlightenment emphasises the open and malleable character of the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. The language debates demonstrate that German theories of culture and language were not merely a rejection of French ideas. New notions of the genius of language and its role in cognition were constructed through a complex interaction with cross-European currents, especially via the prize contests at the Berlin Academy. (shrink)

It is common for contemporary ontologists to claim that they are not concerned with what exists simpliciter, but rather with what exists ’fundamentally’, or what ’really’ exists. I argue that positions of this sort cannot satisfy reasonable constraints concerning the acquisition of language. I assess and dismiss possible responses to this complaint before commenting on the prospects for a metaphysics without bespoke existence claims.

The interpretation of quantum mechanics is an area of increasing interest to many working physicists. In particular, interest has come from those involved in quantum computing and information theory, as there has always been a strong foundational element in this field. This paper introduces one interpretation of quantum mechanics, a modern ‘many-worlds’ theory, from the perspective of quantum computation. Reasons for seeking to interpret quantum mechanics are discussed, then the specific ‘neo-Everettian’ theory is introduced and its claim as the best (...) available interpretation defended. The main objections to the interpretation, including the so-called “problem of probability” are shown to fail. The local nature of the interpretation is demonstrated, and the implications of this both for the interpretation and for quantum mechanics more generally are discussed. Finally, the consequences of the theory for quantum computation are investigated, and common objections to using many worlds to describe quantum computing are answered. We find that using this particular many-worlds theory as a physical foundation for quantum computation gives several distinct advantages over other interpretations, and over not interpreting quantum theory at all. (shrink)

A number of recent studies have examined the sources of conflict surrounding the presence of Muslim minorities in Western contexts. This article builds upon, and challenges, some of the principal findings of this literature through analyzing popular opposition to mosques in Badalona, a historically industrial city in Catalonia where several of the most vigorous anti-mosque campaigns in Spain have occurred. Drawing upon 46 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation conducted over a two-year period, I argue that opposition to mosques in Badalona (...) is not reducible to anti-Muslim prejudice or fears of Islamic extremism. Rather, it is rooted in powerful associations drawn between Islam, immigration, and a series of social problems affecting the character of communal life and the quality of cherished public spaces in the city. These associations are expressed through local narratives that emphasize a sharp rupture between a glorified ethnically homogeneous past of community and solidarity, and a troublesome multicultural present fraught with social insecurity and disintegration. I show how the construction of these “rupture narratives” has entailed active memory work that minimizes the significance of prior social cleavages and conflicts, and selectively focuses on disjuncture over continuity with the past. I also highlight how these narratives have been reinforced by strong socio-spatial divisions, which have intensified contestations over public space and led to the integration of mosque disputes into broader struggles over social justice and public recognition. (shrink)

Why do people do horrific things to one another? This article reviews two recent books that attempt to answer that question, Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil and Barbara Coloroso's Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide . The author discusses the educational implications of these works and raises preliminary considerations for an education for heroism.

The book offers a new insight into the political, social, and religious conduct of religious-Zionism, whose consequences are evident in Israeli society today. Before the Six-Day War, religious-Zionism had limited its concern to the protection of specific religious interests, with its representatives having little share in the determination of Israel's national agenda. Fifty years after it, religious-Zionism has turned into one of Israeli society's dominant elements. The presence of this group in all aspects of Israel's life and its members' determination (...) to set Israel's social, cultural, and international agenda is indisputable. Delving into this dramatic transformation, the book depicts the Six-Day War as a constitutive event that indelibly changed the political and religious consciousness of religious-Zionists. The perception of real history that had guided this movement from its dawn was replaced by a "sacred history" approach that became an actual program of political activity. As part of a process that has unfolded over the last thirty years, the body and sexuality have also become a central concern in the movement's practice, reflection, and discourse. The how and why of this shift in religious-Zionism--from passivity and a consciousness of marginality to the front lines of public life--is this book's central concern. The book will be of interest to readers and scholars concerned with changing dynamic societies and with the study of religion and particularly with the relationship between religion and politics. (shrink)