The paper is written in response to those who fail to recognize the relation between a patient's mental competency and her state of pain. Some clinicians claim that a proper diagnosis can only be made in the absent of analgesia. Rather, the patient's state of pain directly affects her mental competency and thus her ability to give valid consent. Clinicians should rethink their approach to diagnosis when the patient is in pain.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 577-593 [Access article in PDF] Machina Ex Deo: William Harvey and the Meaning of Instrument Don Bates Introduction Since our clocks do consistently disclose each hour of the day and night--do they not seem to partake of another body (beyond the elements), and that more divine? But if, under the dominion and management of [our human] Art, such splendid (...) things are daily achieved beyond the powers of the objects themselves,... And if, in serving men they carry out such things as are to be marvelled at, what I ask, may we expect from them when they be instruments in the hand of God? These words come near the end of William Harvey's De generatione animalium. 1 As he does often in this work, he is arguing that it is possible for a material object to behave supra vires elementorum, i.e., in a manner that exceeds what can be explained merely from the qualities of the elements from which it is made. In fact, just before this, he argues that human craftsmanship enables the elements of air and water to make ships sail in opposite directions, fire to do one sort of thing in the kitchen, another in the shops of metal-workers, including the production of iron, which in its turn peacefully tills the soil or besieges the town in war. So if even human Art is capable of making something as wonderful as a clock out of the elements, how much more might God be able to do with them? [End Page 577]Not only is it entirely conceivable that the (divinely) artful manipulation of these same elements can account for the wonders of God's nature--such as the generation of a chick out of an egg--there is also no need to infer the existence of additional entities such as faculties, qualities, agents, and the like. All that is needed is the concept of "instrument." Today such things as his appeal to a clock, his reference to "art," and the word "instrument" itself, are liable to arouse in our minds a fairly mechanical sort of image. Therefore, we need to put this idea in its intellectual context, by looking at where Harvey's notion of instrument is coming from.First, our much more mechanical world view was just coming into being as Harvey (1578-1657) wrote these words. Although the philosophy of his younger contemporary, René Descartes (1596-1650) was not yet in full bloom (he died a year before Harvey's book appeared), Cartesianism was certainly on the explanatory horizon, 2 as was the work of another contemporary and contributor to the "new philosophy," Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). 3 And, of course, Harvey had certainly known Francis Bacon (1561-1626). 4 Nevertheless, Harvey was a devout Aristotelian who was adamantly opposed to the efforts of these contemporaries to replace Aristotle. 5 Moreover, it was from the Aristotelian tradition, not from the new mechanics, that Harvey had derived the concept of instrument.If, broadly speaking, the "new philosophy" was about a universe that was built like a clock, then the "old" natural philosophies, whether dominated by Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christian theology, or some combination, were about a universe that was socially constructed. 6 Not only was man at the center, to a large extent the workings of the universe were envisioned in terms of social experience. The regularity, predictability, harmony, and wonder of natural phenomena seemed best explained in the language of reason, moral values, motives, responsibilities, hierarchies, laws (in the social sense), and the like, explanatory resources that, in the late ancient and medieval intellectual cultures of Europe, far outweighed either those that appealed to the passively material and the mechanical, or to the random and the chance.But very central to that social model of nature was the concept of instrument, which gave to it something of a mechanical twist. To see how this was so, we need to go back temporarily to the works of Aristotle, the influence of... (shrink)

This book sorts out the confusion created by the use of the term "postmodern" in relation to widely divergent theological positions. Four different types of postmodern theology are distinguished in the preface: constructive, deconstructive, liberationist, and conservative. Two forms of each type are discussed in the book. Writing from a constructive, postmodern perspective, the authors enter into dialogue with the deconstructive postmodernism of Mark C. Taylor and Jean-François Lyotard, with the liberationist postmodernism of Harvey Cox and Cornel West, and (...) with the conservative postmodernism of George William Rutler and John Paul II. (shrink)

This work will be of interest to archaeologists and philosophers of science alike. Book jacket.

In this book, William P. George examines both the morality of mining – what’s good and not so good about resource extraction – and the mining of morality, thereby bringing mining closer to the center of personal and collective moral consciousness.

In the 1960s, archaeologists en masse were voicing dissatisfaction with the archaeological status quo. Rather than record static facts as historians, archaeologists wanted to study fluid processes as scientists. As Hempelian explanation, where an event is explained when it is subsumed under a law or law-like statement, showed promise as a way to recast archaeology in this manner, it was chosen as the theoretical base for what became known as processual, or 'new archaeology.' ;Unfortunately, Hempelian archaeology ran into a number (...) of serious theoretical and methodological problems. Archaeology lacked the regularities that were thought to exist in sciences such as physics, so archaeological laws were difficult, if not impossible to define. In addition, equifinality, or under-determinism, made it impossible for archaeologists to choose between equally subsumable, albeit contradictory explanations. ;These problems were not limited to archaeology. Philosophers of science were already aware of these issues, and continue to search for answers for problems surrounding scientific explanation. As both groups continue to ask similar questions about the nature of science, this project posits that both archaeologists and philosophers of science have much to gain by resuming their original dialogue. ;By reengaging with philosophy, archaeologists can understand that the failure of Hempelian archaeology should not be seen as a failure of philosophical archaeology. Archaeologists would then see that ongoing questions about the future of archaeology actually mirror debates going on in philosophical explanation. ;Philosophers of science can also learn much from archaeology. As a transdisciplinary science, archaeology puts an interesting spin on standard philosophical problems. For instance, archaeological practice can be seen as questioning the centrality of laws to scientific explanation, and raises questions about the unity of science. In addition, claims that scientists have to be realists in regard to theoretical entities may need to be rethought, due to antirealist tendencies found in some archaeological contexts. Finally, as the interplay between the theory and practice of science has not been ironed out in archaeology, a study of this issue could be of great interest to philosophers of science. In summary, the goal of this dissertation is to provide concrete examples of how a study of problems central to archaeology can provide philosophers of science a new way to approach philosophical issues. At the same time, these examples should prove to archaeologists that a study of contemporary philosophy of science will strengthen the epistemological foundations of their relatively young science. (shrink)

It seems that the only scientific device which is not widely applicable is the special experimental technique necessary to establish the cause-and-effect ...

"22. Looking for a Global Ethic? Try International Law" published on 01 Jan 2004 by Brill | Nijhoff.

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ‘social construction of reality’ – the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it – and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to (...) person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the _linguistic _construction of reality. (shrink)

Fine has recently proved the surprising result that satisfaction of the Bell inequality in a Clauser-Horne experiment implies the existence of joint probabilities for pairs of noncommuting observables in the experiment. In this paper we show that if probabilities are interpreted in the von Mises-Church sense of relative frequencies on random sequences, a proof of the Bell inequality is nonetheless possible in which such joint probabilities are assumed not to exist. We also argue that Fine's theorem and related results do (...) not impugn the common view that local realists are committed to the Bell inequality. (shrink)