Increasing rates of psychiatric problems like depression and anxiety among Swedish youth, predominantly among females, are considered a serious public mental health concern. Multiple studies confirm that psychological as well as existential vulnerability manifest in different ways for youths in Sweden. This multi-method study aimed at assessing existential worldview function by three factors: 1) existential worldview, 2) ontological security, and 3) self-concept, attempting to identify possible protective and risk factors for mental ill-health among female youths at risk for depression and (...) anxiety. The sample comprised ten females on the waiting list at an outpatient psychotherapy clinic for teens and young adults. Results indicated that both functional and dysfunctional factors related to mental health were present, where the quality and availability of significant interpersonal relations seemed to have an important influence. Examples of both an impaired worldview function and a lack of an operating existential worldview were found. Psychotherapeutic implications are discussed. (shrink)

The basilica of Haghia Sophia in Nicaea is the result of multiple phases of development. A number of scholars have dealt with the architecture of the monument and the history of its construction: Brounoff published a rather outdated description and analysis of the building in 1925, Schneider gave two accounts of the excavations he carried out in the church in 1935, Sabine Möllers studied the monument thoroughly in her doctorate thesis in 1994 and Peschlow produced a complete outline of (...) the relevant scientific knowledge in 2001, in the context of a wider presentation of the churches of Nicaea. Based on the information presented in the latter, the original edifice, episcopal church of the city and venue of the seventh Ecumenical Council, was possibly constructed in the fifth or sixth century. The building went through various transformations during the following centuries, the last of which – by the architect Sinan – occurred in the sixteenth century, since the church had been converted into a mosque after the conquest of Nicaea by the Turks in 1331. The most important of the Byzantine repairs of the church have been dated by the aforementioned scholars to the eleventh century, and more specifically to a time soon after the earthquakes which affected Nicaea in the period 1063–1065, causing serious damage to most buildings. The neighbouring church of the Dormition of the Virgin was also extensively reconstructed at the time, after the partial collapse of its superstructure. (shrink)

Both unipolar and bipolar depression have been linked with impairments in executive functioning. In particular, mood symptom severity is associated with differences in common EF, a latent measure of general EF abilities. The relationship between mood disorders and EF is particularly salient in adolescence and young adulthood when the ongoing development of EF intersects with a higher risk of mood disorder onset. However, it remains unclear if common EF impairments have associations with specific symptom dimensions of mood pathology such as (...) blunted positive affect, mood instability, or physiological arousal, or if differences in common EF more broadly relate to what is shared across various symptom domains, such as general negative affect or distress. To address this question, bifactor models can be applied to simultaneously examine the shared and unique contributions of particular mood symptom dimensions. However, no studies to our knowledge have examined bifactor models of mood symptoms in relation to measures of common EF. This study examined associations between common EF and general vs. specific symptom dimensions using structural equation modeling in adolescents and young adults with varying severity of mood symptoms. A General Depression factor capturing shared variance across symptoms statistically predicted lower Common EF. Additionally, a factor specific to physiological arousal was associated with lower Common EF. Anhedonia-specific and Mania-specific factors were not significantly related to Common EF. Altogether, these results indicate that deficits in common EF are driven by, or reflect, general features of mood pathology that are shared across symptom dimensions but are also specifically associated with physiological arousal. (shrink)

Leibniz’s lengthy theological treatise, Examen religionis christianae, has long puzzled scholars. Although a lifelong Lutheran who spurned many attempts to convert him to Catholicism, in the Examen Leibniz defends the Catholic position on a range of matters of controversy, from justification of the sinner to transubstantiation, from veneration of images to communion under both kinds. Inevitably, when finally published in 1819, the Examen quickly became the focus of a heated and sometimes ill-tempered debate about Leibniz’s true religious commitments. For many, (...) what was at stake was not simply the interpretation of a particular text but the very soul of Leibniz, that universal genius and ornament of Europe. The aim of this paper is to chart the various ways in which the earliest readers of the Examen responded to the text and sought to understand it. Such a study will enable us not only to see the varying and quite contrasting interpretations put forward for Leibniz’s motive for writing the Examen, some of which inform contemporary interpretations, but also give us the opportunity to take a deeper look at certain features of the text and the context in which it was written. (shrink)

Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. Plotinus was the greatest philosopher in the 700-year period between Aristotle and Augustine. He thought of himself as a disciple (...) of Plato, but in his efforts to defend Platonism against Aristotelians, Stoics, and others, he actually produced a reinvigorated version of Platonism that later came to be known as 'Neoplatonism'. In this volume, sixteen leading scholars introduce and explain the many facets of Plotinus' complex system. They place Plotinus in the history of ancient philosophy while showing that he was a founder of medieval philosophy. (shrink)

For the past 40 years, the 14-day rule has governed and, by defining a clear boundary, enabled embryo research and the clinical benefits derived from this. It has been both a piece of legislation and a rule of good practice globally. However, methods now allow embryos to be cultured for more than 14 days, something difficult to imagine when the rule was established, and knowledge gained in the intervening years provides robust scientific rationale for why it is now essential to (...) conduct research on later stage human embryos. In this paper, I argue that the current limit for embryo research in vitro should be extended to 28 days to permit research that will illuminate our beginnings as well as provide new therapeutic possibilities to reduce miscarriage and developmental abnormalities. It will also permit validation of potentially useful alternatives. Through consideration of current ethical arguments, I also conclude that there are no coherent or persuasive reasons to deny researchers, and through them humanity, the knowledge and the innovation that this will generate. (shrink)

This article argues that Bogdanov’s ideas are relevant for analysis of contemporary theory and practice of social designing. We show that activism and empiriomonism together lead to an instrumental...

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This text aims to convey some of the interest and charm of modal logic, and to put a reader new to the subject in a position to have an informed opinion as to its applicability to each of several areas of philosophical concern in which the merits of a modal approach' have been controversial. he main focus, for these purposes, is on normal modal logics, though some attention is given to the non-normal side of the picture.

The sophisticated philosophical literature on supervenience stands in need of supplementation by a treatment of more fundamental questions about what features this notion possesses solely in virtue of the form of the definition it is standardly given. We provide a discussion of these features without getting involved in the merits of particular supervenience claims advanced and contested in that literature.

Efforts to include women in the canon have long been beset by reactionary gatekeeping, typified by the charge “That's not philosophy.” That charge doesn't apply to early and mid‐analytic female philosophers—Welby, Ladd‐Franklin, Bryant, Jones, de Laguna, Stebbing, Ambrose, MacDonald—with job titles like lecturer in logic and professor of philosophy and publications in Mind, the Journal of Philosophy, and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. It's hopeless to dismiss their work as “not philosophy.” But comparable reactionary gatekeeping affects them, this paper argues, (...) typified by the labels “bad philosophy” and “derivative philosophy.” Virtue and vice epistemology help explain why these women have been neglected and why their own approaches are epistemically virtuous. Their contemporaries and historians are deficient in scholarly virtues in labelling these women's work “bad” or derived from male mentors with no or specious justification. Their disparaged qualities—intellectual humility, modesty, critical self‐reflection, disclosing biases—are often epistemic virtues. (shrink)

This paper describes a teaching methodology whereby students can gain practical experience of ethical decision-making in the engineering design process. We first argue for the necessity to teach a ‘practical’ understanding of ethical issues in engineering education along with the usual theoretical or hypothetical approaches. We then show how this practical understanding can be achieved by using a collaborative design game, describing how, for example, the concept of responsibility can be explored from this practical basis. We conclude that the use (...) of games in design education can provide an excellent basis for discussing practical and ethical reasoning during the process of design. (shrink)

It is initially odd to ask whether Confucianism is compatible with systems of law. Confucian thought has co-existed with Chinese legal systems throughout the various dynasties of China’s long history. Nevertheless, despite the extensive laws that China has boasted, traditional Chinese legal thought is not typically recognized as a genuine rule-of-law system, given its focus on moral development and the “rule of man.” In this essay, we argue that Confucianism, specifically Pre-Qin Confucianism, is compatible with the rule-of-law. We examine the (...) different models of compatibility, including “soft compatibilism” in which we examine whether abstract concepts between Confucianism and legal systems are compatible, as well as co-existing and integrating compatibilism. Co-existing compatibilism sees Confucianism and the law occupying different spheres within the same legal system while integrating compatibilism sees Confucianism and the law coming together into a new system. In this way, Confucianism offers China an alternative to liberal democratic and Marxist theories of law. (shrink)

Am(B m B). Specifically I was wondering whether for every BCI-provable formula A there is a B for which the inset formula was provable. If you want to read about this issue, which I..

Knowing Persons is an original study of Plato's account of personhood. For Plato, embodied persons are images of a disembodied ideal. The ideal person is a knower. Hence, the lives of embodied persons need to be understood according to Plato's metaphysics of imagery. For Gerson, Plato's account of embodied personhood is not accurately conflated with Cartesian dualism. Plato's dualism is more appropriately seen in the contrast between the ideal disembodied person and the embodied one than in the contrast between mind (...) or soul and body. (shrink)

In his third and concluding volume, Lloyd P. Gerson presents an innovative account of Platonism, the central tradition in the history of philosophy, in conjunction with Naturalism, the "anti-Platonism" in antiquity and contemporary philosophy. In this broad and sweeping argument, Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of philosophy (...) depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible. (shrink)

In his ground-breaking series of films The Decalogue , Krzysztof Kieslowski creates an enigmatic character who appears in nine of the ten otherwise-disconnected films. Kieslowski neither names this mysterious man nor allows him one word of dialogue. In several of the films, the man is seen by other characters; in others he remains invisible to them. Sometimes he seems to influence the decisions of the protagonists; other times, he seems to remain a passive observer of their problems. Many scholars who (...) write on The Decalogue either do not note the «silent witness», or limit themselves to peripheral comments of little substance; others comment only briefly, and superficially on his enigmatic presence in one or other of the films. The present article offers a detailed analysis of the «silent witness» in each of the Decalogue films and develops a comprehensive synthesis of his critical moral significance in the series, proposing that the witness is an effective metaphor of the providential presence of the loving God for the protagonists; while respecting their liberty, he moves in their often-troubled lives, guides their moral decisions, gives them hope and brings them to higher levels of freedom and Christian responsibility. (shrink)

Insightful text and elegant line drawings detail this philosopher's life.

The plurivalent logics considered in Graham Priest's recent paper of that name can be thought of as logics determined by matrices whose underlying algebras are power algebras, where the power algebra of a given algebra has as elements textit{subsets} of the universe of the given algebra, and the power matrix of a given matrix has has the power algebra of the latter's algebra as its underlying algebra, with its designated elements being selected in a natural way on the basis of (...) those of the given matrix. The present discussion stresses the continuity of Priest's work on the question of which matrices determine consequence relations which remain unaffected on passage to the consequence relation determined by the power matrix of the given matrix with the corresponding question in equational logic as to which identities holding in an algebra continue to hold in its power algebra. Both questions are sensitive to a decision as to whether or not to include the empty set as an element of the power algebra, and our main focus will be on the contrast, when it is included, between the power matrix semantics and the four-valued Dunn--Belnap semantics for first-degree entailment a la Anderson and Belnap) in terms of sets of classical values, in which the empty set figures in a somewhat different way, as Priest had remarked his 1984 study, `Hyper-contradictions', in which what we are calling the power matrix construction first appeared. (shrink)

This paper analyses the main perceptions of capitalism and crises from a mainstream and heterodox perspective. Broadly defined within the neoclassical structure, the mainstream approaches support the idea of long-term stability of capitalism and describe crises as exogenous events. The heterodox perceptions, on the contrary, perceive crises as an internal feature of capitalism and propose to reframe the global economy within the limits of the socio-environmental systems. Despite the historical recurrence of crises, the neoclassic capitalist framework and the related mainstream (...) perceptions are still dominating the international economic debate. Most of the crises have then been addressed with reforms oriented to adjust some elements of the system without changing the overall economic structure. On the contrary, limited numbers of initiatives have been implemented to reorganise the economy according to the heterodox perspectives. Within this context, further analysis would be needed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed heterodox solutions. By discussing the main perceptions of capitalism and crises and by considering the ethical implications of the mainstream and the heterodox approaches, the present paper contributes to the existing debate around stability of capitalism and provides a starting point for analysis oriented to investigate the feasibility of alternative economic structures. (shrink)

It is observed that a consistent congruential modal logic is not guaranteed to have a consistent extension in which the Box operator becomes a truth-functional connective for one of the four one-place truth functions.

Nana Sita is best known for being the secretary of the Transvaal Indian Congress and for his leadership in the passive resistance movement for which he was incarcerated three times. This article focusses specifically on three more times he was sentenced to hard labour for refusing to submit to the Group Areas Act and to leave his house at 382 Van Der Hoff Street in Hercules, Pretoria. The main sources for telling the story of Nana Sita’s resistance are interviews with (...) his 93-year-old daughter, a chapter written on him by E.S. Reddy and other unpublished material placed at the author’s disposal by Maniben Sita herself. The focus of the article will be on the religious arguments against the Group Areas Act put forward by Nana Sita himself in his defense during his final trial in 1967.Contribution: Historical thought and source interpretation are not limited to historic texts but include social memory in the endeavour of faith seeking understanding. People of faith in South Africa can only come to grips with reality by engaging with the stories of the past, like that of Nana Sita. (shrink)

The prevalence of the term post-truth suggests that we have, in the last few years, moved from being members of societies dedicated to truth to being members of ones that cannot agree on truth’s parameters and, even worse, have given up trying. But is this really what has happened? The author argues that, under the sway of the Enlightenment, truth has actually been unstable and a source of contention in public life ever since the founding moment for modern democracies in (...) the late eighteenth century; the ‘post’ in ‘post-truth’ elides this complex history even as it accurately describes some of the conditions of our moment. What that means, though, is that rather than attempt to turn the clock back to past models and practices for restoring the reign of truth, we should be looking for new, post-Enlightenment paradigms for how to define and locate truth in the context of democracy, as well as new mechanisms for making this possible. (shrink)

Being in Time examines philosophical treatments of time and self-consciousness in relation to concepts of narrative, focusing on the literary aspects of philosophical writing. Lloyd shows how philosophy bears on the human and emotional aspects of the experience of time which are often neglected by the history of philosophy. Starting with Augustine's treatment of the ways in which time makes him a 'problem to himself', the book traces the themes of unity and the experience of fragmentation and loss as (...) expressed by Descartes, Hume and Kant. The idea of the past as 'lost' is explored through Bergson's philosophy of time and Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return. The book concludes with a discussion of philosophical aspects of themes of self-consciousness, memory and writing in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and the novels of Virginia Woolf. (shrink)

The pressure of evil -- Out of the heart -- Satan, where is thy victory? -- The ethics of tragedy -- The tragic drama of today -- Tragedy and the gospel -- The sin against the Holy Ghost -- The society for corporate penitence -- The serene soul.