Determining whether or not noncommunicative patients are phenomenally conscious is a major clinical and ethical challenge. Clinical assessment is usually limited to the observation of these patients' motor responses. Recent neuroimaging technology and brain computer interfaces help clinicians to assess whether patients are conscious or not, and to avoid diagnostic errors.

Pain, suffering and positive emotions in patients in vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/uws) and minimally conscious states (MCS) pose clinical and ethical challenges. Clinically, we evaluate behavioural responses after painful stimulation and also emotionally-contingent behaviours (e.g., smiling). Using stimuli with emotional valence, neuroimaging and electrophysiology technologies can detect subclinical remnants of preserved capacities for pain which might influence decisions about treatment limitation. To date, no data exist as to how healthcare providers think about end-of-life options (e.g., withdrawal of artificial nutrition (...) and hydration) in the presence or absence of pain in non-communicative patients. Here, we aimed to better clarify this issue by re-analyzing previously published data on pain perception (Prog Brain Res 2009 177, 329–38) and end-of-life decisions (J Neurol 2010 258, 1058–65) in patients with disorders of consciousness. In a sample of 2259 European healthcare professionals we found that, for VS/uws more respondents agreed with treatment withdrawal when they considered that VS/uws patients did not feel pain (77%) as compared to those who thought VS/uws did feel pain (59%). This interaction was influenced by religiosity and professional background. For MCS, end-of-life attitudes were not influenced by opinions on pain perception. Within a contemporary ethical context we discuss (1) the evolving scientific understandings of pain perception and their relationship to existing clinical and ethical guidelines; (2) the discrepancies of attitudes within (and between) healthcare providers and their consequences for treatment approaches, and (3) the implicit but complex relationship between pain perception and attitudes toward life-sustaining treatments. (shrink)

We look for tricks used to create a group of collaborative research which proposes to trainers of nurses researchers’ support in the appropriation of an original tool to help the learners analyze and develop their practice in vocational training : the narrative. The analysis of a corpus based on the first exchanges of the group shows the central role that plays the tool in itself, the mutual discovery of the cultures and the « habitus », the emergence and the discussion (...) of a generic definition of the job and its adjustment by the styles, the flexibility looked for in « scaffolding » and temporality. (shrink)

BackgroundCancer diagnosis and treatment represent a real upheaval both for the patient and for his or her life partner. Adjustment to cancer has been widely studied at the individual level, however, there is little in the literature about the experiences of the couple as an entity. This is especially true with regard to a population facing advanced cancer. This systematic review aimed to make an inventory of 1) the current knowledge relating to the experience of the patient-partner dyad when confronted (...) with advanced cancer, and 2) the psychosocial interventions specifically centered on this dyad.MethodThis review was conducted using the Cochrane methodology. The eligibility criteria for the literature review were: one of the members of the dyad being treated for advanced cancer, dyad composed of the patient and his/her life partner. Databases from PubMed, PsycArticle, PsycInfo, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection and Scopus were investigated. A thematic content analysis on the basis of admitted articles made it possible to respond to each of our research objectives.ResultsThree hundred eighty-nine citations were found. Twenty were admitted to the systematic review of the literature. It highlighted the following experiences of the advanced cancer patient-life partner dyad: uncertainty about the future, disjointed time, intrusion into the couple's intimacy, attachment style and caregiving within the couple, couple's adjustment to cancer symptomatology, the couple's supportive care needs, role changes, nature of communication within the couple, anticipation of the coming death, and the meanings and beliefs around death. This review also describes the range of couple therapies used in the context of advanced cancer: emotionally focused-couple therapy, existential therapy, art therapy, support therapy and couple communication and intimacy promotion. These therapies seem to have individual beneficial effects for both the patient and his or her life partner as well as improving marital functioning.ConclusionsThese results clearly highlight that consideration of the couple and communication within the couple during care are fundamental to dyadic adjustment to advanced cancer. Further studies are needed to better understand the couple's experience in order to adapt the management of the couple facing advanced cancer. (shrink)

Hertwig and Ortmann have made a laudable effort to bring together experimental practices in economics and in psychology. Unfortunately, they ignore one of the primary objectives of psychological research, which is an analytic description of general cognitive processes. Among experimental practices in probability judgment tasks they discussed, we will focus hereafter on enactment of scripts and repetition of trials.

Drosophila responds to a septic injury by the rapid synthesis of antimicrobial peptides. These molecules are predominantly produced by the fat body, a functional equivalent of mammalian liver, and are secreted into the hemolymph where their concentrations can reach up to 100 μM. Six distinct antibacterial peptides (plus isoforms) and one antifungal peptide have been characterized in Drosophila and their genes cloned. The induction of the gene encoding the antifungal peptide relies on the spätzle/Toll/cactus gene cassette, which is involved in (...) the control of dorsoventral patterning in the embryo, and shows interesting structural and functional similarities with cytokine‐induced activation of NF‐ϰB in mammalian cells. An additional pathway, dependent on the as yet unidentified imd (for immune‐deficiency) gene, is required for the full induction of the antibacterial peptide genes. Mutants deficient for the Toll and imd pathways exhibit a severely reduced survival to fungal and bacterial infections, respectively. Recent data on the molecular mechanisms underlying recognition of non‐self are also discussed in this review. (shrink)

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that overexpression of p25, an activator of cdk5, led to increased levels of BACE1 mRNA and protein in vitro and in vivo. A p25/cdk5 responsive region containing multiple sites for signal transducer and activator of transcription was identified in the BACE1 promoter. STAT3 interacts with the BACE1 promoter, and p25-overexpressing mice had elevated levels of pSTAT3 and BACE1, whereas cdk5-deficient mice had reduced levels. Furthermore, mice with a (...) targeted mutation in the STAT3 cdk5 responsive site had lower levels of BACE1. Increased BACE levels in p25 overexpressing mice correlated with enhanced amyloidogenic processing that could be reversed by a cdk5 inhibitor. These data demonstrate a pathway by which p25/cdk5 increases the amyloidogenic processing of APP through STAT3-mediated transcriptional control of BACE1 that could have implications for AD pathogenesis. (shrink)

Le débat qui partage les partisans et les détracteurs de l'humanisme n'est pas seulement dicté par l'ampleur des événements planétaires. La question de l'humanisme est d'abord l'héritière de toute l'histoire de la pensée. Qu'il ait cependant appartenu à Martin Heidegger, à peine arraché à un temps d'inhumanité radicale, de transformer, dans sa fameuse Lettre sur l'humanisme de 1947, le simple recours aux " valeurs ", de l'humanisme en l'affaire par excellence de la pensée, constitue une énigme sur laquelle il valait (...) la peine de s'arrêter. Depuis lors, le débat sur l'humanisme a occupé la pensée française à travers les contributions majeures de Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault ou, récemment encore, hors de France, de Sloterdijk. Des philosophes appartenant à plusieurs générations ont voulu proposer une nouvelle lecture de la lettre fondatrice de Heidegger. On trouvera dans cet ouvrage toutes les facettes du dossier, les circonstances de la publication de la lettre, sa réception européenne jusqu'à nos jours, le débat avec la pensée de la Renaissance qu'elle implique, ainsi que les différentes voies pour dialoguer avec un texte aussi ambigu que les événements auxquels il se mesure. Bruno Pinchard est professeur à l'Université jean Moulin-Lyon 3 Ont également contribué à ce volume Pierre Aubenque, Alain Boutot, Pierre Coye, Pascal David, Emmanuel Faye, Marc Foglio, Thierry Gontier, Dominique Janicoud, jeanFrançois Marquet, Jean-François Mottéi, Rita Messori, Henri Mongis, Roger Munier, Alexis Pinchard, Alexandra Roux, Luco Salzo, Alain Séguy-Dtrclot, Jean-Marie Voysse et Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron. Themis la Titanide, née de Ciel et de Terre, incarnait chez Hésiode la figure de la Justice qui réunissait les dieux sur l'Olympe et les hommes au caeur de la cité. En un temps de dispersion du sens, "Thémis" s'ouvre à la philosophie pour recueillir ses interrogations sur notre partage commun. Au carrefour de l'éthique, de la politique, de l'art et des sciences, cette collection présente des essais originaux qui explorent les voies obscures de notre avenir à la lumiere de notre plus ancienne tradition. Repenser la philosophie à partir de ce commencement qui était, pour Hésiode, l'exigence éternelle de la justice, c'est découvrir, en un autre mode que l'éclaircie grecque, ce que donne à voir la naissance de Thémis, pF. M. (shrink)

Dans le cadre de notre thèse, nous avons confronté les Lais de Marie de France datant du xiie siècle qui présentent la particularité alors inédite d’avoir pour auteur une femme et le Genji Monogatari de Murasaki Shikibu (une femme également), écrit au xie siècle au Japon, qui fait aussi figure d’exception dans un paysage scriptural majoritairement masculin, a fortiori pour une œuvre d’une telle ampleur. Le rapprochement entre les deux œuvres était avant tout motivé par une thématique de fond, (...) l’imaginaire féminin, déployé dans deux cultures géographiquement et sociologiquement éloignées, cependant immergées dans un milieu élitiste, celui de la Cour. Ce choix s’inscrivait surtout dans la perspective d’une approche mythocritique plutôt que strictement littéraire, dont l’intérêt se situait en deçà du cadre du texte, puisqu’il puisait dans la mythologie fondatrice des deux cultures, source de l’émergence d’un imaginaire féminin à des époques chiches de féminité. Or, cette analyse, que nous avons qualifiée de contrastive, a permis l’ouverture de la réflexion sur d’autres perspectives que seul autorisait un tel rapprochement ; elle a également cherché à distinguer, parmi les motifs communs aux deux textes, ceux qui relevaient d’une universalité (contextuelle) de ceux qui relevaient d’une commune origine eurasiatique. La réflexion était axée sur la notion d’altérité selon une acception très large mais concentrée sur la représentation par l’imaginaire féminin de l’Autre sexe et d’un Ailleurs avant tout textuel et narratif. (shrink)

In this article, I pursue the question whether it is possible to understand Derridean ethics in terms of space rather than time. More precisely, I ask whether what Derrida proposes as an ethics (and exactly what that is will have to be explained) falls under the general heading of future-oriented, ‘eschatological’ or ‘messianic’, ethics that sacrifices the present for a better future, or whether it can be understood in terms of presence, more specifically of the demand to cohabit here and (...) now in the world. After proposing a reading of the to-come in terms of the intrusion of exteriority in the present, I turn to the figure of hospitality to show that Derrida's ethics is better understood in spatial rather than temporal terms: it requires a certain way of relating to the space in which we dwell. (shrink)

In his lifetime, Bruno Latour (1947-2022) made many provocative and controversial arguments, such as about the nature of the practices of the natural sciences, and against standard social scientific forms of critique. Running through many of Latour’s interventions, aimed at what he took to be stultifying forms of academic and intellectual orthodoxy, was a concern with the nature of truth. Whether emphasising how science fabricates its ‘facts’, or in having to deal with uncomfortable similarities between that sort of analysis (...) and the attacks on the allegedly fraudulent nature of climate science by climate sceptics, or in presenting the societal bases of standard forms of social critique as fictitious, Latour was constantly engaged in battles about and polemics concerning what counts as truths and truthfulness. In this paper, we consider the nature of some of the main contours of Latour’s battles about and with truths. We present an account of his practice in a critical light. Sometimes that involves stepping outside of the ‘anti-critical’ frame of reference he sought to construct and impose on how philosophy, sociology and other ways of thinking are done, but it also sometimes involves using that apparatus, while turning it against the intentions of the author. The purpose of this paper is not to try out-do Latour in the dismissal of intellectual positions other than one’s own. Instead, we focus on other types and levels of failure in the career-long endeavours and engagements with matters of truth of this curious but undoubtedly unavoidable figure, ‘Bruno Latour’. We end by speculating if more ‘Bruno Latours’ will be fabricated in the service of new modes of truth-creation in the future. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and The VirusMary-Jane Rubenstein (bio)I. PunitheologyThe explanations started pouring in even before the virus attained “pandemic” status in March of 2020: we were being punished. According to a vocal subset of Evangelical pastors and ultra-Orthodox rabbis, the death-dealing virus was divine retribution for the sins of (who else?) LGBT-identified people and their allies, who aggressively violated what the pastors and rabbis called (...) “the order of nature.”1 Meanwhile, their left-leaning counterparts argued that the sin in question wasn’t so much sexual as ecological: in the words of one Roman Catholic commentator, the coronavirus was God’s punishment for “our unfettered domination attitude toward nature.”2At the same time, an equally vocal throng of secular environmentalists called the virus nature’s own punishment for our manifold violations against her—in particular, the extractivism, pollution, alleged overpopulation, deforestation, carbon emissions, and industrial slaughterhouses that allowed the zoonotic strain to break out among humans in the first place.3 Depending on whom [End Page 5] you ask, then, the disaster we’ve come to encapsulate as COVID-19 is either godly or natural retribution for our manifold sins against “nature.”Although these sacred and secular punitheologies are not equivalent, they bear striking similarities to one another thanks to the monotheistic heritage of the concept of “nature” itself. As we will see, whether it is invoked by pastors, politicians, activists, or scientists, “nature” in the Western-descended world is presented as singular, nonwhite, and feminine; morally normative; and prone to abuse. Nature is often capitalized, often maternalized, and reliably distinguished either from a disembodied male God, a universalized “humanity,” or both. Nature, in short, carries immense ideological freight. Specifically, it installs and polices the work of what Kelly Brown Douglas calls “theo-ideology”: a “sacred legitimation” for a social order that seeks to present itself as unquestionable.4 And “nature” does this unparalleled ideological work thanks to the freedom it keeps promising from ideology: “your” way of being might be constructed, distorted, historical, subjective, contingent, artificial, cultural, or indeed sinful, but “ours” is natural—which is to say universally, even transcendently, true.Whether it comes from the mouths of angry clerics or righteous ecologists, then, the call to get right with nature is a call to adhere to one or another self-concealing social arrangement—to a set of interests and values whose power derives from its seeming so “natural.” For this reason, many contemporary thinkers recommend abandoning the term altogether. Donna Haraway suggests we try the non-binary and carefully pluralized “naturecultures”; Bruno Latour proposes “critical zones,” and Timothy Morton pivots to ecological practice which, he insists, can only function if we let go of the romantic delusion of “nature.”5Regardless of nature’s conceptual integrity, it is important to attend to the term in order to account for its rhetorical force and ubiquity—for the polyphibious presence of “nature” within the left and right-wings of science, religion, and politics alike. In this article, I will decode some of the recent, theologically [End Page 6] retributive appeals to nature within early, informal, literary responses to the COVID-19 outbreak in the US. In the process, I hope to unearth some of the mythic norms of race and gender that this concept both entrenches and conceals in the American imagination. Finally, I will ask what happens when we start messing with these categories, beginning with the mirroring chasms between humans and nature, and nature and God. How might we start to think pantheologically about this unrelenting pandemic, and why would anybody want to?II. Sins against NatureAs Catherine Keller noticed as early as April 2020, American pundits across the political spectrum immediately attributed COVID-19 to the relentless justice of an angry God.6 It is perhaps America’s favorite theological maneuver: explaining natural and social disasters as the product of divine vengeance. From Jonathan Edwards’s spider to Fred Phelps’s funeral protests, American preachers and political commentators have got a long-standing knack for putting the fear of God into a suffering nation. (Even my home insurance policy washes its hands of... (shrink)

Bruno Latour, as part of his advocacy of science studies urges us to move beyond what he calls ‘the Modernist Settlement’ that, among other things, separated science from politics and subject from object. As part of this project he has frequently called for the abolition of epistemology, including quite specifically the historical epistemology/epistemological history of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. Pierre Bourdieu, on the other hand, deploys the resources of historical epistemology, to dismiss Latour’s science studies. After examining the (...) charges against historical epistemology and their rebuttal, I rule in favor of the defense. However, I also suggest that Latour raises genuine concerns about how to equip ourselves to tackle problems such as those associated with climate change; these are problems that require engagement with the politics of nature, with the politics of the sciences of nature and with the epistemological challenges associated with the need to deploy multiple disciplines in the service of complex, practical, policy-relevant problem solving. (shrink)

The contribution of Jesuits to the different fields of knowledge, including philosophy, is historically well known. In fact, since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in the 16th century, Jesuits from different generations and cultures have taken part in the philosophical debates of their time and their different contexts. Since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in 1540, the Jesuits, individually and as a body, have engaged in a fruitful dialogue between the Christian tradition and different dimensions of (...) human culture. During almost five centuries, numerous Jesuits taught philosophy in academic institutions all over the world. Some of them have their names recorded in the history of philosophy. Of course, the majority of them is not anymore remembered, despite their valuable contribution to the development of the Jesuit intellectual tradition up to our times. In fact, as an heir of the Roman College, the first academic institution founded by the Society of Jesus, in 1551, the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, is a witness to this tradition, which has been kept alive thanks to the discrete work of both Jesuits and lay intellectuals. Known as the University of the Nations, this institution corroborates not only the capacity of the Jesuit tradition to put faith in dialogue with reason, but also the option to take the concrete reality of each human culture and its historical context as its point of departure. The Jesuits’ willingness to engage in dialogue with different intellectual perspectives is underpinned by one of the most defining traits of the Jesuit charism, namely, the conviction that God can be found and served in all things. Accordingly, Jesuits have adopted, from the beginning, an amenable stance towards the world with its different cultures and intellectual trends. As such, Jesuits have, since the beginning, inhabited the frontiers of human thought. According to the contemporary philosopher Paul Gilbert, SJ, within the institutions under the leadership of the Society of Jesus, it was always possible to maintain an equilibrium between two principles: “intellectual unity” and “openness to the world.” Without detriment to the Jesuit identity, the companions of Ignatius have been willing to dwell in the various dimensions of human reality, in their multiplicity and plurality. Either in the renewal of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ metaphysics, or in the dialogue with modern philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, or Hegel, and even in the inculturation in non-European contexts, the Jesuits have been able to preserve the Christian tradition through an original development of human culture in all its richness and diversity. With respect to the last century, it has to be acknowledged that a significant number of Jesuits made significant contributions, with recognized competence, to philosophy. Certainly, the 20th century was particularly complex in many respects. It would be enough to recall that this period, which brought with it unprecedented social, scientific, and technological developments, was also the stage for the two World Wars. With the emergence or consolidation of philosophical currents such as Marxism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Structuralism, and Post-Modernism, the past century was, without any doubt, fascinating from the intellectual point of view. Jesuits such as Karl Rahner, Frederick Copleston, Bernard Lonergan, William Norris Clarke, John F. Kavanaugh, Teilhard de Chardin, Gaston Fessard, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Michel de Certeau, Xavier Tilliette, Paul Valadier, Paweł Siwek, Ignacio Ellacuría, Francisco Taborda, Henrique de Lima Vaz and, in the Portuguese context, Diamantino Martins or Júlio Fragata, among many others, were able to engage different philosophical currents, problems and controversies of their times. Faithful to their long tradition of being present in the frontiers of thought, those Jesuits have engaged in a fruitful dialogue with these intellectual trends, offering relevant contributions to different ongoing debates. Within this context, the present volume recalls and discusses the philosophical contribution of some of the most prominent Jesuit protagonists of the intellectual interchange that took place in the 20th century. This volume also intends to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, which happens just before the inauguration of the Ignatian Year. Decreed by Father Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, this celebratory Year will start on May 20, 2021, precisely 500 years after Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, was wounded at the battle of Pamplona. We are happy that this volume could bring together outstanding specialists in the thought of some of the most prominent Jesuits philosophers of the last century, namely Paul Valadier, Paul Gilbert, Józef Bremer, Jacek Poznański, Alexander Maar, Patrick H. Byrne, M. Ross Romero, Carlos Alvarez, Hélio Pereira Lima, José Gama, Domingos Terra, Gabriel Flynn, Marie-Gabrielle Lemaire, José Sols Lucia, Lorena Zuchel Lovera, Pedro Pablo Achondo Moya, Enzo Solari, Massimo Borghesi, Mendo Castro Henriques, João Barbosa, and Dominique Lambert. In addition, in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Júlio Fragata’s birth, Maria Teresa Fragata presents a memory of his life and thought. We hope that this volume may be useful to all those interested in the Jesuit philosophical tradition. Hopefully, it will stimulate scholars to pursue a fruitful and creative dialogue with contemporary philosophy, in the footsteps of the Jesuit philosophers featured here. We would like to thank all the authors and all those who, in different ways, made this volume possible. (shrink)

"The Concept of Number", by Ernst Cassirer, is the second chapter of his first systematic work, the "Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff: Untersuchungen über die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik", originally published in German in 1910. The translation to English, in 1953, by Marie Collins Swabeyand William Curtis Swabey, under the title "Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity", despite its importance for having widely disseminated the work, loses in its title the work's essence: the opposition between "concept-substance" and "concept-function", or rather, (...) between "substantial-concept" and "functional-concept". Cassirer possesses along with a "theory of symbolical forms" a "theory of culture". These theories are "theories of conceptual formation" and they are in charge of various case studies developed by Cassirer in “Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff”. Chapter 2, now translated, is a reading of the historical development of the concept of number under the view of a general theory of the concept that he presents in the second chapter of the book “Zur Theorie der Begriffsbildung” (On the theory of the conceptual formation). (shrink)

Carnaps Denken wurde während seines Studiums und der Arbeit an seiner Dissertation von Neukatianischen Motiven beeinflusst, von denen er sich nach seiner Habilitation in Wien (1926) zunehmend distanzierte. Er besuchte in Freiburg bei Heinrich Rickert (1911/1912) und in Jena (1913/14) bei Bruno Bauch Lehrveranstaltungen zur Philosophie. Außerdem besuchte er in Freiburg bei Jonas Cohn Lehrveranstaltungen zur experimentellen Psychologie. Bei Bauch reichte er 1920 eine Arbeit mit dem Titel Welche philosophische Bedeutung hat das Problem der „Grundlegung der Geometrie“ für die (...) Lehramtsprüfung und 1921 seine darauf aufbauende Dissertation Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre ein. Rickert war das Haupt der von Wilhelm Windelband begründeten Südwestdeutschen Schule des Neukantianismus, zu der auch Cohn und Bauch gezählt werden. Bauch war jedoch auch von der von Hermann Cohen begründeten Marburger Schule des Neukantianismus, deren herausragenste Vertreter Paul Natorp und Ernst Cassirer sind, beeinflusst. Vor allem Natorps Die logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften (1910a) und Cassirers Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff (1910) beeinflussten Carnaps Verständnis der methodischen Grundlagen der Mathematik und der Physik (Richardson 1998, 115-117, 138-139; Mormann 2000, 44-46). In persönlichem Kontakt war Carnap seit seinem Umzug nach Buchenbach Anfang der 1920er Jahre auch mit dem Rickert-Schüler Broder Christiansen. (shrink)

Sextant, la revue belge du groupe interdisciplinaire d’études sur les femmes et le genre, a consacré pour la première fois un numéro entier aux masculinités, numéro coordonné et présenté par Bruno Benvindo. Sur les vingt-cinq contributions rédigées par des chercheurs confirmés mais aussi par des doctorants, l’histoire et la sociologie se taillent la part du lion avec les trois quarts des articles. Des philosophes, politistes, anthropologues ou spécialistes du cinéma ont, toutefois, également...

This first volume of The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap includes Carnap’s published writings from 1921 when he submitted his dissertation Der Raum (Space) in Jena to Bruno Bauch to 1926 the year he completed his habilitation in Vienna under Moritz Schlick. It thereby documents Carnap’s early writings during his formative years that culminated in his first major publication Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World) which appeared in 1928 and will be included in the (...) second volume. Fourteen volumes are planned in total. In his foreword Richard Creath, the general editor, states that the series will include “all of the books and papers Carnap authorized for publication in his lifetime.” (viii). (shrink)

Marie-Aure´lie Bruno,1 Jan L Bernheim,2 Didier Ledoux,1 Fre´de´ric Pellas.

Back cover: This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. (...) Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences. Beginning with a disclosure of the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie the author’s analysis of reductive explanation, the book leads into the debate about reduction(ism) in the philosophy of biology and continues with a discussion on the two perspectives on explanatory reduction that have been proposed in the philosophy of biology so far. The author scrutinizes how the issue of reduction becomes entangled with explanation and analyzes two concepts, the concept of a biological part and the concept of a level of organization. The results of these five chapters constitute the ground on which the author bases her final chapter, developing her ontic account of reductive explanation. (shrink)

Farrell, Marie Review(s) of: A thinker's guide to sin: talking about wrongdoing today, by Neil Darragh ed. (Auckland, N.Z.: Accent Publications, 2010), pp.228, $35.

Farrell, Marie Review(s) of: Falling in Love with God: Recognising the Call of Christian Love, by Frank Fletcher MSC, ed. (Strathfield: St Paul's, 2010), pp.143, $24.95.

To revitalize nursing science, there is a need for a new approach to guide nurse scientists in addressing complex problems in health care. By applying theoretical concepts from a revolutionary philosopher of science, Paul K. Feyerabend, new nursing knowledge can be produced using creativity and pluralistic approaches. Feyerabend proposed that methods within and outside of science can produce knowledge. Despite the recognition of Feyerabendian philosophy within science, there is currently a lack of literature regarding the relevance of Feyerabendian philosophy for (...) nursing science. We aim to (a) describe and critique Feyerabendian concepts, (b) discuss the potential application of Feyerabendian philosophy for knowledge production within gerontological nursing and (c) describe theoretical possibilities for nurse scientists in using Feyerabendian philosophy to guide nursing knowledge development. We begin by introducing Feyerabend's life and his inspirations for his theoretical concepts, epistemological anarchism, theoretical pluralism and humanitarianism, and conclude by offering suggestions of how to apply Feyerabendian philosophy in nursing research. (shrink)

The use of forward models is well established in cognitive and computational neuroscience. We compare and contrast two recent, but interestingly divergent, accounts of the place of forward models in the human cognitive architecture. On the Auxiliary Forward Model account, forward models are special-purpose prediction mechanisms implemented by additional circuitry distinct from core mechanisms of perception and action. On the Integral Forward Model account, forward models lie at the heart of all forms of perception and action. We compare these neighbouring (...) but importantly different visions and consider their implications for the cognitive sciences. We end by asking what kinds of empirical research might offer evidence favouring one or the other of these approaches. (shrink)

Personhood is ascribed on others, such that someone who is recognized to be a person is bestowed with certain civil rights and the right to decision making. A rising question is how severely brain-injured patients who regain consciousness can also regain their personhood. The case of patients with locked-in syndrome is illustrative in this matter. Upon restoration of consciousness, patients with LIS find themselves in a state of profound demolition of their bodily functions. From the third-person perspective, it can be (...) expected that LIS patients might experience a differential personal identity and may lose their status as persons. However, from the patients’ perspective, it is uncontested that they retain their personal identity and that they consider themselves to be persons. We here include results from a survey with patients with LIS aimed at identifying the primary expectations of patients for their care by non-medical professionals. Based on these first-hand reports, we argue that personhood in LIS is progressively regained as the widening circle of others recognizes them as persons. (shrink)

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.