The U.S. stock market is one of the largest and most complex marketplaces in the global financial system. Over the past several decades, this market has evolved at multiple structural and temporal scales. New exchanges became active, and others stopped trading, regulations have been introduced and adapted, and technological innovations have pushed the pace of trading activity to blistering speeds. These developments have supported the growth of a rich machine-trading ecology that leads to qualitative differences in trading behavior at human (...) and machine time scales. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of comprehensive market data to quantify nonstationary dynamics throughout this system. We quantify the relationship between fluctuations in the number of active trading venues and realized opportunity costs experienced by market participants. We find that information asymmetries, in the form of quote dislocations, predict market-wide volatility indicators. Lastly, we uncover multiple micro-to-macro level pathways, including those exhibiting evidence of self-organized criticality. (shrink)

To the Socratic injunction ‘Know Thyself’ one wonders how to respond. Presumably Socrates is asking us to attempt a project at which we are supposed to have some chance of success and this leads one to ask ‘ Can I know myself?’ One is led to ask it, but the question can seem rhetorical. Many would reply that of course one can do this because there is nothing easier for me to know than my own self. I do, therefore I (...) can. I know it simply by being myself. Not only this, one might regard knowledge of oneself as unavoidable so that the answer to the question ‘Can I know myself?’ is ‘Yes’ and the answer to the question ‘Can I avoid knowing myself?’ is ‘No’. Now if we cannot avoid knowing ourselves, if Socrates is asking us to do somethingwhich we inevitably do anyway, then he has certainly earned his reputation for irony. (shrink)

A common complaint among those involved in teaching the educational foundations is the reluctance of many trainee teachers to engage in issues of educational theory. This is particularly apparent with those trainees who are more concerned with managing classrooms of children than grappling with what are often abstract and difficult ideas. This paper considers the current use of educational stories as a pedagogical strategy in teacher training, and a story that has been used in this way is presented. It is (...) argued that teachers of the educational foundations disciplines can, via stories, appeal to the opposing tensions and schemata in students’ own minds, and this engagement can be enhanced when students are confronted with broader educational debates, perspectives and proposals. Stories provide abstract concepts with a necessary tension, they suggest a way of entering the theoretical via the concrete and they show students the personal relevance of certain debates, which may have previously appeared remote and obscure. The end result is that students are challenged to make decisions about matters of fundamental importance such as the kinds of teachers they will be and about the ethical commitment they will make to teaching. (shrink)

In real-time, Twitter strongly imprints world events, popular culture, and the day-to-day; Twitter records an ever growing compendium of language use and change; and Twitter has been shown to enable certain kinds of prediction. Vitally, and absent from many standard corpora such as books and news archives, Twitter also encodes popularity and spreading through retweets. Here, we describe Storywrangler, an ongoing, day-scale curation of over 100 billion tweets containing around 1 trillion 1-grams from 2008 to 2020. For each day, we (...) break tweets into 1-, 2-, and 3-grams across 150+ languages, record usage frequencies, and generate Zipf distributions. We make the data set available through an interactive time series viewer, and as downloadable time series and daily distributions. We showcase a few examples of the many possible avenues of study we aim to enable including how social amplification can be visualized through ‘contagiograms’. (shrink)

In Globalization and Justice, Kai Nielsen brings his distinctive and passionate voice and considerable philosophical abilities to one of the pressing issues of our time: Is justice possible in our increasingly globalized world? Nielsen argues that it is, though the demands of justice are great, the challenges substantial, and the odds very long. Without a clear philosophical understanding of justice and a firm and focused political will, Nielsen maintains, we are likely to have globalization without justice. This is surely correct.

Perspectives On Gratitude: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Edited By Carr David.

David Lewis suggests and dismisses two ways, and endorses one further way, of visually representing persisting objects as changing over time. He argues that reflecting on these artistic observations should lead us to endorse a temporal parts theory of objects. This paper argues that Lewis's objections on these grounds to alternative theories of persistence and intrinsic change can be resisted, and that his argument in favour of his preferred method of drawing changing persisting objects fails to show that objects (...) perdure. (shrink)

You quite rightly need not fear being owned in the most traditional and reprehensible sense by which humans ... New and more subtle forms of ownership have emerged in the past hundred years that now impact on essential qualities and ...

Structuralism about mathematical objects and structuralist accounts of physical computation both face indeterminacy objections. For the former, the problem arises for cases such as the complex roots i and \, for which a automorphism can be defined, thus establishing the structural identity of these importantly distinct mathematical objects. In the case of the latter, the problem arises for logical duals such as AND and OR, which have invertible structural profiles :369–400, 2001). This makes their physical implementations indeterminate, in the sense (...) that their structural profiles alone cannot establish whether a given physical component is an AND-gate or an OR-gate. Doherty has recently shown both problems to be analogous, and has argued that computational structuralism is threatened with the absurd conclusion that computational digits might be indiscernible, such that, if structural properties are all that we have to go on, the binary digit 0 must be treated as identical to the binary digit 1. However, we think that a solution to the indiscernibility problem for mathematical structuralists, drawing on the work of David Hilbert, can be adapted for the analogous problem in the computational case, thereby rescuing the structuralist approach to physical computation. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously compares units of language to games, but his pupil Rush Rhees finds that analogy limiting. Unlike uses of language, says Rhees, games are not part of a larger whole and do not have a point, which means that games, unlike language, cannot lead to growth in understanding. Treating language like a game, according to Rhees, is characteristic of sophistry. But this paper claims that sophistry is not like playing a game but like playing the spoilsport. Wittgenstein’s fluid (...) understanding of the distinction between games and non-game play allows his conception of language-games to avoid the charge of sophistry. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek’s new book [...] was written at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis and quickly rushed into publication in an effort to provide the public with a philosophical engagement with the opportunities and challenges of the novel coronavirus and the social, political, and technological responses that have been marshalled to contend with the panic that has accompanied it.

We may think of the notion of “trust” primarily in epistemological terms or, alternatively, primarily in ethical terms. These different ways of thinking of trust are linked with different ways of picturing language, and my relation to the words of another. While an analogy with an individual continuing an arithmetical series has had a central place in discussions of language originating from Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees suggests that conversation provides a better model for thinking about language. Linking this with Knud Løgstrup’s (...) suggestion that “In its basic sense trust is essential to every conversation”, the paper develops the idea of speech as fundamentally a form of contact between human beings. With that, the constraints on which we need to focus if we are to grasp the nature of conversation are not, as in Grice’s influential treatment, maxims whose observance will aid the pursuit of certain general human ends. The relevant constraints are, rather, limits on our goal-directed activity: limits that are fundamental to our relations with others. It is within this framework that we must understand the form of “trust” that is central to conversation. (shrink)

The new information technologies hold out the promise of instantaneous, 24/7 connection and co-presence. But to be everywhere at once is to be effectively nowhere; to be connected to everyone and everything is to be effectively disconnected. Why then do we long for faster connections and fuller connectivity? The answer this paper proposes is that we are trying to fill our existential lack, our radical sense of inadequacy and incompleteness as human beings. From such a perspective, our pursuit of speed (...) and connectivity is doomed to failure insofar as it only exacerbates the condition we are fleeing. Rather than rushing faster, the Buddhist-inspired solution would have us slow down and directly investigate our sense of lack. (shrink)

Bacon?s Sylva Sylvarum and his New Atlantis both appeared soon after his death, edited by his chaplain, Rawley. The works are, on the face of it, dissimilar, and have been treated as unrelated, on the assumption that Rawley was merely attempting to rush out (in the wake of his employer?s death) two works that had occupied his last years. In order to establish just what their relation is, we need to establish, first, whether New Atlantis was simply a last?minute addition (...) to the Sylva volume; second, what Rawley says about their association and how he effects it; and third, whether the two works have other concerns in common that would have led Bacon himself to consider them as companion pieces. Such an examination shows that there were intrinsically connected pieces, and can be used to throw light on the aims of both works. (shrink)

This philosophy of education paper describes a schizophrenic situation. A new airport is being planned in the locale of a university which is a Centre of Excellence of Education for Sustainable Development, and the university is a major partner. The airport involves an investment in jobs, resources, and will encourage further economic development. The planners have named the inter-connected developments around the airport as the ‘Aerotropolis’, including new university facilities. One could argue that the airport is a classic example of (...) the ‘Capitalocene’, where capital rushes into a new project, and environmental costs are ignored. This paper will execute a schizoanalytic critique of the process, from the perspective of a university education researcher caught up in the rushing flows of capital. Schizoanalysis has been chosen as the educational methodology to analyse this situation, because the researcher is part of what is happening, and is turned inside out by the designation in their region of the new airport. This paper is positioned in education between capital and the environment – it will describe from an insider’s perspective what it is like to be possessed, evacuated, sold out, and exploited by capital. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rebirth of Cool:Toward a Science SublimeE. David Wong (bio)We love and hate "the cool." As educators, few things are more coveted than being recognized as teaching the "coolest" class in the school. We look forward to the rare moment when students gasp in awe or scream in amazement. However, in the quiet that returns after the last student rushes out the classroom door, we may feel an (...) uneasy ambivalence. Perhaps we admonish ourselves that serious science is substantial, enduring, and intellectual. We wonder whether our "cool" class was merely superficial, fleeting, and mindless.In this article I examine the cool—this idea we love and hate—and assert its importance in science education. I acknowledge that some experiences can be engaging but are superficial and unimportant—this is the "merely cool." By contrast, some experiences are deeply moving because we feel a growing capacity to perceive meaning and value in the world—this is the "sublimely cool." I draw from philosophy, literature, psychology, and aesthetics to build connections between cool and sublime experiences. By highlighting the surprisingly substantial connection between the cool and sublime, I hope to bring greater depth to the meaning of "cool," this imprecise, but honest, term. I also take care to define sublimely cool experiences in science as having a direct relationship with subject-matter understanding. It is true that the full meaning of aesthetic experiences extends beyond the grasp of words and conceptualization; however, it is equally true that knowledge and reason are central to all worthwhile experiences. The expansion of meaning and perception, not just intense sensation or emotion, is the heart of the sublimely cool experience. Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman provides a personal example of how his knowledge of science enhances his sublimely cool experience of Nature: "Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars—mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere.' I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The [End Page 67] vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination—stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light."1Cool as a Sign of Compelling Experience"Cool" is an intriguing expression for it is at once both crude and incisive. On the one hand, "cool" is a colloquial term used by people of all ages and backgrounds in many contexts to describe many things. So wide and informal is its use that "cool" may seem trite and banal. "Cool" is rarely chosen carefully when used: indeed, it is more often an unintentional, reflexive utterance.Thus, the more one thinks before speaking, the less likely "cool" will be used. Nonetheless, because it is an impulsive expression, "cool" may be all the more honest. Dewey made a similar point in his observation of the word "beauty": "Beauty... is properly an emotional term, though one denoting a characteristic emotion. In the presence of a landscape, a poem or a picture that lays hold of us with immediate poignancy, we are moved to murmur or to exclaim 'How beautiful.' The ejaculation is a just tribute to the capacity of the object to arouse admiration that approaches worship."2 With "just tribute" Dewey emphasizes the honesty of the term. By "admiration that approaches worship," Dewey reminds us that the spontaneous uttering of "beautiful" is a sign that a powerful experience has been had. I will make a similar argument that the term "cool"—although common and ordinary—can signal the having of a compelling experience. As a compelling experience, the cool becomes an important resource for teachers.Dewey goes on to describe how the meaning of "beauty" has, unfortunately, lost its value to aesthetic theoreticians: "Beauty is at the furthest remove from an analytic term, and hence from a conception that can figure in theory as a means of explanation or classification. Unfortunately, it has been hardened into a peculiar object; emotional rapture has been subjected to what philosophy calls hypostatization, and the concept of beauty as an essence of intuition has resulted. For purposes of theory, it then becomes an obstructive term."3Because of the way they are... (shrink)

There is no doubt that industry-sponsored biomedical research is under the microscope. Unfortunately, this new era of skepticism prematurely rushes in doubts of the ethos of science. Skepticism can lead to positive changes, but only when timely and supported by sound reasoning. Snapshot views and theories, especially those that result in costly new regulations and inefficient policies often do more harm than good. Many critics would have the reader doubt scientific integrity because they believe that the relationship between the pharmaceutical (...) industry and biomedical research poses an unavoidable and dangerous conflict of interest. However, these conflicts are neither unavoidable nor dangerous per se. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nature as Guide: Wittgenstein and the Renewal of Moral Theology by David Goodill, O.PCajetan Cuddy and O.P.Nature as Guide: Wittgenstein and the Renewal of Moral Theology. By David Goodill, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. Pp. xiii-319. $75.00. (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3445-8.Nature as Guide is an intriguing reevaluation of the philosophical legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the light of Thomistic moral theology after (...) the Second Vatican Council. Goodill helpfully lays out his fundamental argument in the book’s introduction: Wittgenstein can help the philosopher to reconcile the “modern dichotomy between nature and reason,” and the theologian to reevaluate “the associated oppositions typical of modern thought, such as that between moral agency and natural agency or between grace and nature” (2). The author is overt in his appreciation for Fergus Kerr’s 1997 monograph Theology after Wittgenstein. Nonetheless, Nature as Guide is unique insofar as it focuses on specifically moral theological issues in a moment of theological “renewal”—one in which we can recognize “the restoration of metaphysics to the center of theological debate” (12).The first four chapters of Nature as Guide consider Wittgenstein in relation to themes associated with classical philosophy. Goodill’s “objective in the first part of the book is to construct a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the metaphysical tradition which illuminates both conversation partners” (38). This initial part of the book culminates in an account of human nature that serves as the foundation for the moral theological inquiry that follows in the second part (the fifth through the eighth chapters).In the first chapter (“What Lies Hidden: Wittgenstein, Metaphysics, and Moral Theology”), Goodill introduces Wittgenstein’s “philosophical practice”—specifically his “insistence on grounding philosophical enquiry in everyday thinking” that effectively “connects him to the [metaphysical] tradition that begins with Plato and Aristotle” (16). Goodill is perceptive and nuanced in his analysis of Wittgenstein’s texts. He recognizes that “it would be wrong to treat [Wittgenstein] as an unproblematic inheritor of this tradition” (37). Nonetheless, he wants his readers to appreciate the careful balance between theory and praxis maintained in Wittgenstein’s thought vis-à-vis the priorities of classical philosophy. To this end, he examines G. E. M. Anscombe’s account of how Wittgenstein helped her to overcome the “trap” of phenomenalism.In the second chapter (“Nature, Logic, and Grammar”), Goodill attends to the progress of key tenets in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. He identifies as “the guiding theme” of this narrative “the development of Wittgenstein’s understanding of the relationship between the meaning and the application of linguistic expressions” (40–41). Specifically, he suggests that Wittgenstein’s “mistake” in the Tractatus (51) can be reduced a fundamental point: the erroneous presupposition that there is “one general notion of clarity which is required in all contexts. It was precisely this requirement which Wittgenstein came later to reject in the Investigations” (52). Indeed, between the Tractatus [End Page 703] and the Investigations Wittgenstein abandoned his efforts to establish a “forced unity” of language through “the general form of the proposition”—turning, instead, to “our actual linguistic practices” (85). The whole of human life, thus, “provides the unity of our grammar” (ibid.). Nonetheless, Goodill also points out that Wittgenstein does not reject “the central insight” of the Tractatus, namely, “that meaning is internal to our forms of representation” (59). This immanence remains throughout the Tractatus and the Investigations.The third chapter (“Grammar, Teleology, and Understanding”), summarizes objections to Goodill’s proposal that Wittgenstein can be read in continuity with the metaphysical tradition. William Charlton “argues that in the absence of a teleological conception of nature Wittgenstein’s account of language collapses into pragmatism” (88-89). Rush Rhee “accuses Wittgenstein of being misled by his analogy between language and games to neglect the basis of our linguistic practices in the human search for universal understanding” (89). In brief, both “Charlton and Rhee argue that a much richer conception of our natural human capacities and reactions is required than that provided by Wittgenstein”—and they do so in a complementary way (103). Although Goodill does not believe that their objections stand above... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 75 REASON AND RELIGION Stefan Andersson [email protected] Erik J.Wielenberg. God and the Reach of Reason: C. S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell. Cambridge and NewYork: Cambridge U. P., 2008. Pp. x, 243.£50.13 (hb); us$30.99 (pb). rik J.Wielenberg is Johnson Family University Professor, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at DePauw University. His interest in and affinity for Bertrand Russell’s views on religion (...) came through in his first book Value andVirtue in a Godless Universe, where he used a quotation from What I Believe as the epigraph: “Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world”, and he referred to Russell in several places in discussing religion, naturalism, happiness and courage. b= 76 Reviews The central project of that book is an examination of the ethical implications of “naturalism”, which he uses as a synonym for “atheism”. In the introduction he writes: “In a naturalistic universe, there is no God, no afterlife, and no immortal soul.” He combines these familiar Russellian beliefs with metaethical views that Russell supposedly held until he abandoned Moore’s ethical objectivism and converted to some form of emotivism.1 Wielenberg leaves open the possibility that there are ethical facts that are not reducible to physical or scientific facts. He argues that we have good reasons to be moral and that life can be good and meaningful without believing in God, a soul or immortality (whether in heaven or hell). In the introduction he also outlines a two-part account of “why I am not Christian”, which is along the lines of Russell’s arguments for not having been one also. His latest book starts with a passage from the Phaedo where Socrates, facing execution, said:“… the one aim of those who practise philosophy in the proper manner is to practise for dying and death.” Wielenberg comments: “If the measure of a philosopher is the ability to face death without fear, then Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963), David Hume (1711–1776), and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) were great philosophers indeed” (p. 1). He uses a passage from “How to Grow Old” to illustrate Russell’s philosophy of life, ethic and attitude towards our mortality: An individual human existence should be like a river—small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his ______ 1 Towards the end of his life Russell showed signs of returning to Moorean objectivism and a belief in “absolute values”. In a letter to the editor of The Observer, 20 Oct. 1957, Russell wrote: “I cannot meet the arguments against absolute ethical values, and yet I cannot believe that a dislike of wanton cruelty is merely a matter of taste, like a dislike of oysters. But I am in complete agreement with Professor Ayer in thinking that the question whether ethical values are absolute has no bearing whatever on the question of the existence of God.” A week earlier he had written: “What Mr. Toynbee says in his criticism of my views on ethics has my entire sympathy. I find my own views argumentatively irrefutable, but nevertheless incredible. I do not know the solution.” See Papers 29: 21b and 21a, and Ramsay, Freedom and Immortality, pp. 43– 7. Both Pigden in Russell on Ethics and Potter in Bertrand Russell’s Ethics seem to have overlooked the possibility that Russell in old age returned to metaethical cognitivism and objectivism. Although he had difficulties in defending these positions theoretically, his practical involvement in cnd and protests against theVietnamWar show that he was at heart and in practice a believer in absolute values. See also n. 3. Reviews 77 life in this way, will not suffer from fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue.2 (PfM, p. 52) One... (shrink)

Let me tell you what philosophy is about, then about how Sydney does it in its own special way. Does life have a meaning, and if so what is it? What can I be certain of, and how should I act when I am not certain? Why are the established truths of my tribe better than the primitive superstitions of your tribe? Why should I do as I’m told? Those are questions it’s easy to avoid, in the rush to acquire (...) goods and prestige. Even for many of a more serious outlook, they are questions easy to dismiss with excuses like “it’s all a matter of opinion” or “let’s get on with practical matters” or “they’re too hard”. They are questions that may be ignored, but they do not go away. They’re philosophical questions. There’s a right way to approach them – you read the writings of the classical and recent philosophers and consider carefully their arguments back and forth. There are many wrong ways to approach them, such as choosing at random among the ideas your parents or friends or gurus have, or ideas that feel good. Or you can just not bother. Sydney has a certain reputation for superficiality in this regard. A character in David Williamson’s Emerald City says “No-one in Sydney ever wastes time debating the meaning of life — it’s getting yourself a water frontage”, says If you have a Writers Festival or a conference on Happiness in Sydney, you don’t normally expect philosophers to be invited. Caroline Jones’ radio series, ‘The Search for Meaning’. (shrink)

This book aims to reinvigorate discussions of moral arguments for God's existence.

I’m certainly not alone in noting that the year 2011 brings, for those of us who are students of the work of Frantz Fanon, two different anniversaries. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Les damnés de la terre , Fanon’s final book and, for many, his most lasting achievement. But it also marks the fiftieth anniversary of Fanon’s death: he died, tragically young, on December 6, 1961, not long after the book’s publication. It is no exaggeration (...) to say that Les damnés de la terre was composed by Fanon from his deathbed, and that he was well aware that he was racing death as he rushed to complete the manuscript, as his publisher François Maspero remarked, “in pitiful haste.” Fanon had managed to complete it by July, although, as he told a friend, “I should have liked to have written something more.” As David Macey notes in his indispensable biography, “Fanon did see copies of his last book, but for its first readers, Les damnés de la terre was a posthumous work.” The book and Fanon’s death thus come to us bound inextricably together, fifty years later. So it would seem that we have an anniversary to celebrate (and in doing so, we would thus be celebrating the continuing relevance of a classic work, as this special issue intends us to do), but also a death to mourn. If I proceed to make a suggestion that will seem at first to be the height of perversity, let me preface it by saying that this suggestion is occasioned by what I believe to be Fanon’s greatest legacy, a legacy of unsparing intellectual and political commitment. For I want to begin by suggesting that this year brings us the mournful fact that fifty years on, Les damnés de la terre remains, in many ways, as relevant to our contemporary world as it was in 1961; but conversely, the anniversary of Fanon’s death offers us a cause for celebration. . (shrink)

For this volume David Wiggins has selected and revised eleven of his essays in an area of metaphysics where his work has been particularly influential, and he has added a substantial introduction and one new unpublished essay. Among the subjects treated are substance, identity, persistence, persons, sortals, and artefacts.

We don't yet have adequate theories of what the human mind is representing when it represents a social group. Worse still, many people think we do. This mistaken belief is a consequence of the state of play: Until now, researchers have relied on their own intuitions to link up the conceptsocial groupon the one hand and the results of particular studies or models on the other. While necessary, this reliance on intuition has been purchased at a considerable cost. When looked (...) at soberly, existing theories of social groups are either (i) literal, but not remotely adequate (such as models built atop economic games), or (ii) simply metaphorical (typically a subsumption or containment metaphor). Intuition is filling in the gaps of an explicit theory. This paper presents a computational theory of what, literally, a group representation is in the context of conflict: It is the assignment of agents to specific roles within a small number of triadic interaction types. This “mental definition” of a group paves the way for acomputational theory of social groups– in that it provides a theory of what exactly the information-processing problem of representing and reasoning about a group is. For psychologists, this paper offers a different way to conceptualize and study groups, and suggests that a non-tautological definition of a social group is possible. For cognitive scientists, this paper provides a computational benchmark against which natural and artificial intelligences can be held. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 and died in Cambridge in 1951. He studied engineering, first in Berlin and then in Manchester, and he soon began to ask himself philosophical questions about the foundations of mathematics. What are numbers? What sort of truth does a mathematical equation possess? What is the force of proof in pure mathematics? In order to find the answers to such questions, he went to Cambridge in 1911 to work with Russell, who had just (...) produced in collaboration with Whitehead (1861-1947) Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), a monumental treatise which bases mathematics on logic. But on what is logic based? Wittgenstein's attempt to answer this question convinced Russell that he was a genius. During the 1914-8 war he served in the Austrian army and in spare moments continued the work on the foundations of logic which he had begun in 1912. His war-time journal, Notebook s 1914-16 (1961), reveals the development of his ideas more clearly that the final version, Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, which he published in the early 1920s. (shrink)

The identity of indiscernibles states that indiscernible objects must be identical. Many philosophers have held that the PII turns out to be either true but trivial, or non-trivial but false, depending on how the notion of discernibility is spelled out. In this paper, I propose and defend an account of this notion which aims to yield a minimally non-trivial and yet plausible version of the PII. I argue moreover that this version of the principle is immune to a number of (...) well-known and recent objections to the PII. (shrink)

Medical ethics changed dramatically in the past 30 years because physicians and humanists actively engaged each other in discussions that sometimes led to confrontation and controversy, but usually have improved the quality of medical decision-making. Before then medical ethics had been isolated for almost two centuries from the larger philosophical, social, and religious controversies of the time. There was, however, an earlier period where leaders in medicine and in the humanities worked closely together and both fields were richer for it. (...) This volume begins with the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment when professors of medicine such as John Gregory, Edward Percival, and the American, Benjamin Rush, were close friends of philosophers like David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. They continually exchanged views on matters of ethics with each other in print, at meetings of elite intellectual groups, and at the dinner table. Then something happened, physicians and humanists quit talking with each other. In searching for the causes of the collapse, this book identifies shifts in the social class of physicians, developments in medical science, and changes in the patterns of medical education. Only in the past three decades has the dialogue resumed as physicians turned to humanists for help just when humanists wanted their work to be relevant to real-life social problems. Again, the book asks why, finding answers in the shift from acute to chronic disease as the dominant pattern of illness, the social rights revolution of the 1960's, and the increasing dissonance between physician ethics and ethics outside medicine. The book tells the critical story of how the breakdown in communication between physicians and humanists occurred and how it was repaired when new developments in medicine together with a social revolution forced the leaders of these two fields to resume their dialogue. (shrink)

This important volume will be of great interest to scholars of early modern philosophy.

The model of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) defended in the ASBH Core Competencies report has gained significant traction among scholars and healthcare providers. On this model, the aim of CEC is to facilitate deliberative reflection and thereby resolve conflicts and clarify value uncertainty by invoking and pursuing a process of consensus building. It is central to the model that the facilitated consensus falls within a range of allowable options, defined by societal values: prevailing legal requirements, widely endorsed organizational policies, and (...) professional standards of practice and codes of conduct. Moreover, the model stipulates that ethics consultants must refrain from giving substantive recommendations regarding how parties to a moral disagreement in the clinic should evaluate their options. We argue that this model of CEC is incomplete, because it wrongly assumes that what counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible. We illustrate this problem with a recent case on which one of us consulted—a neonate born with trisomy 18 (T18). We try to show that law, policy, and standards of practice reveal no clear answer to the question posed by the case: namely, whether forgoing gastrostomy tube feedings for a baby with T18 is allowable. We suggest there may be other kinds of cases in which it may simply be unsettled whether a given choice falls within the set of allowable options within which consensus is to be facilitated. What should an ethicist do when confronting such unsettled cases? We agree with the facilitation model that an ethicist should remain neutral among the allowable options, when it is clear what the allowable options are. But, in unsettled cases, the role of a consultant should be expanded to include a process of moral inquiry into what the allowable options should be. We end by raising the issue of whether this means an ethicist should share his or her own conclusions or views about the allowability of a given clinical option. (shrink)

Unravelling the contradictions and complexities of Friedrich Schiller's labyrinthine thought, David Pugh illuminates the inner dynamics of these writings and places them within a wider philosophical and cultural context. Modern discussions tend to focus o.